by CD Reiss
“I know lots of people. Some of them don’t like me. Comes with the territory.”
“What territory is that exactly?”
“No matter what you do, when you have things other people don’t, they’re going to resent you. They’re going to blame you for their own failures. Get used to it.”
“So you know her?”
“Carrie, if I let everyone’s opinion of me ruin my dinners, I’d have starved long ago.”
Peter laughed gently. Andrea too.
He was right, in a way. You can’t control what people think of you.
But why?
I couldn’t let it go without knowing why.
After dinner and before dessert, I slipped away to the bathroom and stopped at a pay phone to call Gabriel. Six rings, then his message machine beeped.
“Hey, Gabriel. It’s Carrie. I’m just calling to tell you I thought you were great and um… see if everything’s okay? That was weird. Okay, bye.”
As I hung up, Peter came down the hall.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yeah. Just checking in on a friend.”
“I was wondering.” He cleared his throat and shuffled his feet as if he was a much younger man. “You. Well, you’re very beautiful.”
Crap. I’d hoped the silent pissing match between him and Gabriel had been a misinterpretation on my part.
I put on the mask of benign disinterest I’d perfected for when men I didn’t want asked me out. “Thank you.”
“And smart. I’d like to see you sometime. Get to know you better.”
“That would be nice, but I’m leaving for school in August. I’m not dating right now.”
His smirk didn’t have even a shade of disappointment. It was an expression of cockiness, as if I’d come around eventually, and I was familiar with it. A guy like that didn’t take no for an answer.
“I understand,” he said. “We can be friends though?”
The answer wasn’t an acknowledgement of rejection, and I would have said no to even friendship, but he was an associate of my father’s. I had to be nice. “Sure.”
“Great.”
“I should get back.”
“I ordered the black forest cake. It should be there by now.”
“I love black forest cake.”
“Leave me some.” He stepped toward the men’s room. “I’ll see you back there.”
I waved and went back to the table.
Chapter 9
LOS ANGELES - 1995
In the mirror, Peter jerked his tie slack as if it were a noose.
“That sanctimonious little bitch is going to pay for that,” he growled.
“I thought you handled it well.” I took the diamond clip out of my chignon and let my hair fall over my shoulders. The gala to fund arts programs in public schools had gone well, until the chairman of the FDIC joined our conversation and expressed disappointment that the Savings and Loan crisis was coming to a close with none of the perpetrators facing justice.
“She acts like I’m going to prison tomorrow. I swear, the one place I’m not going? Where my father went. Because he was stupid. Lazy and sloppy and stupid.” He could go on like that indefinitely, railing against his father’s idiocy and how he’d die rather than get locked up like him.
None of the savings-and-loan crisis had been litigated. The case had gone to the media, where it had been tried by the jury of popular opinion, and the consensus wasn’t that my husband was innocent of bank fraud. Actually, the evidence of fraud was pretty clear. But like most of the culprits, he’d walked with more money than he could burn.
After we were married, my father had bought his bank, closed it, and hired the man who had made it insolvent. Instead of being grateful, Peter acted as if he’d been wrongfully ruined.
Don’t get sold, Carrie.
“Don’t let one silly comment by a government employee wreck your night.” I took off my diamond earrings. “She’s not worth it. You’re better than her.”
I didn’t believe that, but in the interest of appeasing him, I needed to say it.
He stopped and looked at me in the mirror. Had I said something wrong? He came up behind me, lifting his hands. The best thing to do was go slack and passive. Fighting only made it worse.
He placed his hands on my shoulders, tenderly running them under my hair, down my back, to the top of my zipper. “You’re right.” He unzipped my satin dress, amber eyes watching the bodice loosen in the mirror. “You’re always right. But it looks bad, and looking bad erodes trust. Business is built on trust.”
He unhooked my bra and ran his hands under my dress, pushing both off my shoulders. My arms crossed in front of me, holding up the gown. He laid his palms on my arms until I dropped them. The dress and bra fell, exposing my breasts.
“Look at you,” he said. “You’re so beautiful it hurts. Can you see how stunning you are? When we go out, I see how men look at you. They want to fuck you, but more than that, they want to worship you. Collect you. And women hate you on sight. But when all of them look at me, I can read their minds. They’re thinking, ‘What did this asshole do to get a woman like that?’” He cupped my breasts with reverence.
“You’re not a gold digger,” he continued. “You don’t need my money. You have your own. So they think—maybe Peter Thorne is worth something. Maybe we can trust him. But, Carrie… beautiful Carrie…” He broke our reflected gaze to whisper in my ear. “Why doesn’t anyone look at you and wonder if you’re worthy of trust?”
My trustworthiness hadn’t come up before. He’d never implied I’d betrayed him, and I’d never given him a reason to. Even when he repulsed me.
“I am worthy of your trust,” I said.
“Ron Davitch from LA Opera was there tonight. He said Aiden Klerk’s been asking questions about Adam Brate.”
I didn’t want him to feel me go cold. I pushed his hands off me and picked up my hairbrush.
“The investigator?” I ran the brush through my hair. “That’s interesting.”
Peter took his hands off my body and leaned on the dresser, facing me with his arms crossed. “Bernie swears by him.”
“Is he the one who got those pictures of his wife?”
“Yes.”
“And what does this have to do with me?”
“I just find it interesting, since we just saw him perform.”
“So did a few thousand other people.”
“The effect Brate had on you was noticeable. By everyone. You left the hall with your mascara running. People saw. Two days later, Aiden Klerk shows up asking questions about the identity of the man who brought you to tears. If Davitch made the connection, who else did?”
I laid down the brush. He’d gotten close enough to the truth to frighten me, and fear made me bold. “You know why people aren’t questioning my trustworthiness, Peter? Because they’re normal.”
He picked up the brush and turned it to the back, then the front again. “Maybe.” He ran his thumbnail over the bristles. “Normal people don’t look past the surface.”
As I turned away from the mirror to leave, he stepped behind me and held me still in one move.
“Let me go.”
“I’m sorry, Carrie, but my instincts are telling me things I don’t want to hear.” He shoved me down, bending me over the dresser. “My gut is always right.”
“I’m not cheating on you.”
“Maybe not. Maybe not yet. Maybe never.” He tapped the bristle side of the brush against the back of my thighs. “You need to know what I feel when you hurt me.”
Holding me down, he hit the space between my bottom and my thigh with the brush. Each bristle was a white-hot needle, opening the tender skin.
“When everyone thinks I’m shit compared to you.” He turned the brush around and struck me where I was raw.
“Stop! Please!”
“This is how much it hurts me when people think I married a whore.”
He hit me repeatedly, pulling down my pant
ies when he needed to mark my skin.
When I thought it couldn’t hurt more, he made sure his pain was seared into my skin.
In a big stone house at the end of a long driveway, standing behind hedges and concrete walls, no one could hear me scream.
Chapter 10
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA - 1993
Gabriel didn’t answer my calls. He never picked up the phone, and I’d swear, the Monday after the concert, I heard the violin playing as his roommate picked up.
“You gave him the last message?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Tell him I’m not calling again.”
“Will do.”
“Thanks.”
I hung up and went outside into the crisp early spring afternoon. Andrea was on my patio, studying like I should have been. She straddled a lounge chair, bent over an array of open books. I had a penthouse apartment Downtown that was quieter than any library or shared dorm room.
“That was a long bathroom break,” she said.
I sat at the text-covered wrought-iron table. “Yeah. Have you covered Cognitive yet?”
“You called him again.”
“I just want to know. I have to know. If he’s over me, that’s fine, but I can’t think.”
The study materials swam in my brain. I read the words, but I couldn’t discern the connections between them.
Andrea put down her pen and leaned back. “Let’s do a little therapy.”
“We don’t have time for that.”
“Have you ever been rejected before? Romantically?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with it.”
“You’re avoiding.”
For a psych major, I distrusted the whole therapeutic method when it was directed at me. “No. I’ve never been rejected. But he’s not rejecting me. He’s rejecting my father.”
“Maybe. You don’t know that. But I know something. What’s happening to you? It sucks, but everyone goes through it. You have to embrace the suck.”
“Embrace the suck? Is that from Methods 201 or something?”
“It’s just normal life.”
“I hate being normal.”
“That’s also normal.”
I swung around in my seat, facing my books.
This whole normal thing was for the birds.
The Cognitive midterm the Wednesday after the concert went okay. I didn’t embrace the suck or accept normal, but I had to admit that I was powerless to do anything but replay every word between us endlessly. The not-knowing was torture, an ever-growing throb in my mind.
Lenny said the only cure was distraction, and he invited me out for jazz and beers. I was moving my stuff between my Prada bag and something less showy when the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Carrie? Hi. It’s Peter.”
“Oh, hey.”
Outside of my distraction, dinner at Tristan’s had been uneventful. Peter had been charming and nice, but he hadn’t been overly attentive or obsequious. I chalked that up to his age. It was kind of nice, the way he didn’t fall all over himself.
“I was wondering if I could take you out for dinner this weekend.”
“Um…”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Is it a bad time?”
“No, no, I’m just thinking.”
How long could I wait for Gabriel to call me back before I gave up? He’d gotten my messages. And really, what was the difference anyway? We’d agreed not to start something we couldn’t finish. Nothing was keeping me from going to dinner with Peter.
“I could see that about you,” he said. “You’re a thinker.”
Was I? Or had he mistaken my distraction for deep thought? Did it matter? If he valued a thinker over a pretty face, didn’t that speak well of him?
“Is Friday good?” I said, zipping my bag. “I can do Friday.”
“I’ll see you then.”
The band was a bassist, keyboards, drums, and a fuzzy-haired singer in a shredded lace skirt who crooned like a siren. We sat at a long, communal table with pitchers of beer lined up in the center. A miasma of smoke hung under the stage lights.
Emerson was talking close to me so he could be heard over the music. “So accounting for every molecule may be possible with a powerful enough computational model, but what’s the point when we can take a broader approach?”
He was working hard to impress me and I wanted to respect that, but more beer meant more confidence. More confidence meant more words with less punctuation.
He refilled our glasses from the pitcher. It was difficult to keep count of how much I was drinking if the glass never got empty.
“This wider systemic approach yields consistent predictive results without the contradictions inherent with quantum particles.”
Nodding, I sipped my beer. I didn’t know anything about quantum physics, but Emerson thought his knowledge was his most attractive trait. He was a pale-skinned guy with intentionally nerdy horn-rimmed glasses and a pleasant face. And he was wrong. His knowledge wasn’t the attractive thing. His excitement for the subject was what made him handsome. For someone else.
Andrea caught my attention. She made the “do you need to be rescued” sign, and I gave her the “no” sign. I wasn’t going to date Emerson, but listening to him was entertaining.
“So,” I said, “you’re saying you feel like you’re wasting your time?”
His eyes widened a little behind his glasses. “You get me.”
“It seems obvious.”
“No, no. You really connected with what I was trying to say. Have you ever heard of quantum entanglements?”
“Um, no.”
The song ended with a long, raspy note, and the band closed their set.
“Particles are coupled across dimensions, and I believe people—when they have a real connection”—he leaned forward deeply, staring into my eyes—“I believe they share entangled particles.”
That, along with legit pressure on my bladder, was the signal the conversation needed to end. I put down my beer glass. “Interesting. I have to go to the ladies’.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll save your seat.”
I walked around to Andrea, who was deep in conversation with her boyfriend. “Bathroom.”
“One sec.”
She’d catch up. I really had to go.
There was a line for the bathroom. I couldn’t wait. I knew where the employee only bathroom was. Through a hall and out a door to a back building. Just a quick pitstop.
Pleasantly buzzed, I pushed my way back through the crowd and out the back door.
I didn’t understand quantum entanglements, but the idea that two people could be connected down to their very atoms sparked an idea. When I’d seen Gabriel that first time, I felt something. I couldn’t define it, but maybe Emerson had. Maybe Gabriel and I were linked in a way so small yet grand only music could activate it. His playing touched me, his presence shook me. He couldn’t stay away. The laws of physics demanded he call me.
The bathroom was clean but messy with mops and brooms. I did my business, tipsy mind buzzing with the idea that fate was physics. I washed my hands, and came out determined to demand Emerson clarify the concept so I could cement the connection.
He was right outside the door.
“Hey!” I said, ready to ask about quantum entanglements and how they related to soul mates.
But he had other ideas about connections. I should have seen it. Should have waited for Andrea. Should have used the customer bathroom.
I saw stars when the back of my head smacked against the wall. His beer-soaked tongue was down my throat and his erection was pushing against me. I shoved him away, but he must have taken refusal as a breachable obstacle, putting his hand on a breast and using it to pin me.
“I know you can feel it,” he said as he caught a breath.
“Wait.” I pushed him away.
His hand jammed between my legs, folding the thin fabric of my skirt against the crotch
of my underpants. “Just admit it.”
I must have been more than tipsy. I couldn’t mount a focused defense. Couldn’t make words. I slapped at him and missed, which made him come at me harder. I was going to be sick. His hands were everywhere, and they were strong, holding me up and probing at the same time.
Then the hands were gone and I stumbled forward. My arms crumbled under me and my face hit the pavement.
“Fuck!” Emerson cried from behind me.
The sound of impact. Skin on skin. Someone grunted. I rolled onto my elbows, facing up. The world swam. My stomach twisted and flipped. Bodies wrestled in the haze. Saliva filled my mouth, and I coughed up beer and chips.
“Jesus, Carrie.” Gabriel’s face came into focus.
“I knew it,” I said, trying to get up. The sharp, acid smell of digestion rose from my shirt.
“Let me help you up.”
“I knew you’d find me.”
He got me standing and put his arm around my waist, holding me up. I rested my head on him. That was the last thing I remembered.
Someone had duct-taped a brick to my head. The tape went under my chin, weakening my ability to stifle a gag reflex, holding the hard block painfully tight.
Also, light was made of knives. When I moved, my brain was half a second behind, banging around my skull as if it wasn’t properly attached.
“Hey.” Andrea’s voice cut through the thick soup of ickiness.
“Unh.”
A cool hand rested on my cheek. “How are you feeling?”
“Mmph.”
“Sometimes I worry you’re going to turn into a party girl on me. Then I see how you handle your liquor and I’m pretty sure you can’t.”
“Are you sure he didn’t put something in it?”
“I didn’t think of that. He’s Lenny’s friend. Or was Lenny’s friend. So, maybe?”
I sat up. Andrea handed me a glass of water and two smooth pills.
“You never know a person.” I took the Advil, holding the water down with effort. “I think I’m still drunk.”
“I have to get home.”
“I’m okay. Thanks for staying. You’re a good friend.” I looked at the clock. Five in the morning. She was really and truly a better friend than I could express.
