Crowne of Lies

by Reiss, CD

  My phone chimed again.

  —I’ll come with you. What time?—

  —Ella? You there?—

  So. Fucking. Demanding.

  I had to drop everything because he had a few free hours. Fuck him.

  “Ella,” I said to myself, “he doesn’t owe you anything besides a few million dollars.”

  —Seven. Be home at six or I leave without you—

  —Okay—

  Okay. Sure.

  I put away the phone and slumped in the chair.

  Alone with the Big Blank, I pried open a can of red enamel. “I can be whoever I want.”

  I pushed a three-inch brush into the center of the flat crimson circle to the base of the bristles, let the excess drip off, and flung the brush at the Big Blank. It landed flat on the white primer and dropped to the clean tarp, leaving a puncture wound in the center of the canvas.

  I still didn’t know what to do with it.

  * * *

  At five thirty, I was in the shower, washing off the day’s disappointments, when Logan’s voice echoed off the wet walls.

  “Honey, I’m home.”

  “Jesus, you scared the shit out of me.”

  I wiped the fog off the glass. He was leaning on the counter with his arms crossed as if he belonged there at all.

  “Sorry.”

  He wasn’t sorry.

  “You’re early.”

  “Not sorry.”

  At least that was honest.

  I shut off the water and snapped the door open a crack. He didn’t move.

  “Logan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m naked,” I said.

  “Good thing, since you’re in the shower.”

  “Is there a reason you’re standing there?”

  “You never mentioned a friend in a play, and I don’t want to be late, so you can tell me all about them while you’re getting dried off.”

  I stuck my hand out of the shower. “Get me the towel then.”

  When I felt the terrycloth in my hand, I pulled it inside and clicked the door shut.

  “You remember Amilcar?” I rustled the towel over my hair.

  “The first impressionist?”

  “Yes.” I dried myself from the top down, conscious of Logan’s body so close to my skin, separated by a thin glass wall. “His sister’s a senior at the performing arts school Downtown, and she’s in Les Mis.”

  I could leave the stall naked. He’d just go on about his business, because that was all we were. Business with a touch of friendship. He didn’t want me. That was how he could just walk in on me in the shower.

  “And?” he said.

  “And I think she’s a great person. I want to support her.”

  “The guy. Amilcar. What’s going on with him?”

  How could he still be uncomfortable with Amilcar? I could bust his balls about his friendship with Mandy or any other woman in his orbit, but that would have missed the point. He was transparently jealous.

  “What do you mean?” I wrapped the towel around myself, knowing exactly what he meant.

  “How often do you see him?”

  “A few times since we got married.” I opened the door and stepped onto the heated marble floor. “Why? You think I’m breaking our agreement? Is that why you haven’t bought a single fucking share of Papillion yet?”

  “No.”

  I brushed past him to peer in a mirror unfogged by the steam. Some rich person’s way of avoiding the inconvenience of condensation. “Good.”

  “I admire you for waiting until after the divorce.”

  Was he serious?

  I looked right at him.

  He was dead fucking serious.

  “I’ve known him a long time,” I said. “He’s a good man who’s dealt with more shit since last Tuesday than you’ve dealt with your whole life. And I’m not fucking him. He’s my friend and he always will be. Period.”

  His eyes drifted from my face to my neck and down to where my towel was knotted over my breasts. I wanted to believe my nipples tightened because they got cold, but I couldn’t lie to myself. It was the way he looked at me.

  “Does he know?” Logan asked. “About why we’re married?”

  A tendril of wet hair fell out of place, dropping over my eye. He gently brushed it back, and I shuddered at his touch.

  “No. I told you. Just Mandy.”

  “About Paris…”

  “You want me to flip the coin again?”

  “I want you to want to go. If you don’t want to, we can go somewhere else.”

  “Why?”

  His laugh was short, subtle, and silent. “No reason.”

  What was going on with him? If he wanted to fake a honeymoon to convince the world we were real, he’d just say so.

  “Then shoo.” I pushed him away. “Go put on something normal.”

  He lingered long enough for his gaze to brush against every inch of my exposed skin, then he went to his room to get out of his stuffed shirt.

  22

  ELLA

  The auditorium at the school for performing arts was huge and packed with parents, friends, and the odd Hollywood agent looking for a diamond in the rough. Logan looked like one of the latter in jeans and a blue polo shirt that made his eyes look supernatural. Even in normal clothes, he stuck out like a sore thumb.

  “What?” I said as we sat with our programs.

  “What, what?”

  “You’re jumpy.”

  “Not my usual crowd.”

  “You mean regular people?”

  “In what world are you regular, Estella Papillion?”

  “Shush, you.” I slapped him with my program. “I can see normal from where I am. I can talk to normal about normal problems. You’re a satellite looking at dots and blobs.”

  “Metaphorically interesting, yet objectively incorrect.”

  The lights went down.

  “The thing about being a satellite is you think you’re looking at the big picture,” I whispered. “But it’s just the weather.”

  “You push that analogy any further, you’re going to send it out of orbit.”

  “They’re starting.” I put my fingers to his lips, and he surprised me by pushing my hand against his mouth to kiss my middle and ring fingers.

  Though I’d experienced Logan’s affection before, that touch was different. It wasn’t a thing in itself, done to be seen, with its own beginning, middle, and end. It was a flirtation. A promise of more. An aperitif before the best meal you ever had.

  Or I was imagining it.

  It was possible that when he dipped a hand into my lap to knot our fingers together, it was code for “someone’s looking,” or when his body keened toward me, it was to relieve an ache in his back.

  He held my hand on the armrest. No one who needed to see that could see it, but he did it and I couldn’t figure out why. He didn’t need to fake for Amilcar, who was sitting ten rows up. The nearest GAC person in the audience was Irma, who he didn’t know he had to fake for anyway, but I liked it too much to move away.

  The lights came up for intermission, and he didn’t take his hand off mine. It felt good and right, but distracting. Like a rock in my shoe exactly where the sole itched.

  “Wow,” he said. “They’re kids.”

  “And amazing.”

  “Were we that good? At Wildwood?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  We stood to let people in the row out, and he tugged me to go with traffic.

  “We were that good,” I said when we got to the aisle. “And we had everything. Alexis had voice coaching Tasha doesn’t get. More money for tech and costumes.”

  “And you.” He put his arm around me. “They had you.”

  Yeah. They had me until Bianca took me out.

  I let it go. We were having fun and I didn’t want to ruin it with old grudges.

  “You buying me a Coke?” I asked, pulling him into the refreshment line.

  “Sin
ce when do you drink Coke?”

  “I’m in the mood for it.”

  My shoulder tucked itself right under his arm and my hand reached for his pocket as if we were sized to wait in line side-by-side. I felt as if I could slide under his skin and become one person.

  “Why’d you come home early?” I asked.

  He shrugged as if it wasn’t the first time in six months he’d left work before dinner. “I was in the mood.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Crowne.”

  He smiled, looking at me as we got to the front of the line. “I missed you.”

  “Stop lying and order me a bev.”

  He ordered my Coke and a water for himself, taking his arm away to reach for his wallet.

  The lady behind the counter couldn’t change a hundred, because of course that was all he had, so I rolled my eyes and paid.

  “When you have kids,” he asked as we walked back to our seats, “you sending them to private school or public?”

  “I doubt I’ll have a choice. You know what private schools cost in LA?”

  “No.”

  Of course he didn’t. Why bother tallying it up when you could buy the entire school?

  “But,” he continued, “what if we had kids?”

  “How’s that even possible?”

  “Let’s say.”

  “Let’s say there was truth and justice and the moon was made of American cheese.”

  “Green cheese.”

  “Let’s say the earth was circled by a ball of dairy product and we had babies.”

  We sat in our assigned places and waited for the lights to go down again.

  “Seriously. Do you want children?” he asked. “Or are you too wild and independent?”

  “We should have fake discussed this before we were fake married.”

  “We did.” He cracked open his water. “It’s the only TBD in our contract.”

  “Right, you wanted to make sure you stamped your name on nonexistent kids.”

  “Are you going to answer?”

  “Yes. I want one. Maybe two. But if I can swing it, I want to adopt.”

  “Hm.” He drank from the bottle.

  “What? You want me to assure you that if we accidentally adopt, they’ll be Crownes?”

  “Just asking.”

  “No follow-up?”

  He hadn’t shaved before we went out, so when he rubbed his chin, I could see the stretching shadow. “Adopting. Why? You don’t want to be pregnant or something else?”

  “When I was a kid, I took my parents for granted. When my father died, it shook me so bad. I felt abandoned by both of them, and I was eighteen. Practically an adult. Can you imagine being a little kid and feeling like that?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Okay, then can you imagine being the person who doesn’t abandon them?”

  He screwed the cap back on his bottle and stuck it in the circle at the end of the armrest. “You’re a good person.”

  The lights went down and the show started again.

  * * *

  After the last bow was taken, we joined the flow of bodies walking out, arm in arm so we wouldn’t get separated. Loranda waited right out front, illegally parked. She smiled at us and waved, opening the back of the Cadillac. Some stared, some ignored it, but everyone had to change their path to get around it.

  Logan stopped in the center of the front courtyard. The breeze blew his hair out of place as he faced the Cadillac.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Let’s take the bus.”

  “The what?”

  “It’ll be fun.”

  He made it to Loranda in five long steps. By the time I got to them, his driver was closing the back door.

  “Logan,” I said.

  “Where’s the bus stop?”

  “Do you have a Tap card?” I asked. “Or cash even? Like dollar bills. They don’t change hundreds and I spent what I had on a soda.”

  He looked down, instinctively patting his pockets. I expected him to turn them out. “How much is the bus?”

  “I have it,” Loranda said, reaching for her wallet.

  “No,” I said. “No, no, no, no. No. No.”

  “It’s not a big deal,” she said. “Really.”

  “My wife doesn’t really want to take the bus.” He turned to me with a smirk. “Not so regular, are you?”

  “I have cash,” I said. “But no quarters. I’m going to overpay for you. You’re welcome.”

  “You sure?” Loranda asked. “I think he’s good for it.”

  “I’m sure.” I nudged my husband toward the end of the block. “We’ll see you later.”

  “Tomorrow morning!” Logan cried.

  Loranda waved and got in the car.

  The crowd had thinned. Across the street, a group of men laughed loudly, and in front of us, three young women belted out the refrain of “On My Own.”

  “The songs are catchy,” Logan said.

  “They sure are. So.” We stopped at the corner with the singers, waiting for the light. “Which bus?”

  “Which…” He looked around and didn’t find a sign that said “Logan’s House” or “Hancock Park,” so he pointed at a bus rocking down Grand Street. “What about that one?”

  “You’re going to Long Beach? I guess that could be fun.”

  He turned to where Loranda had been parked, but she was long gone.

  The light changed.

  “Poor satellite,” I said, hooking my arm through his. “Come on.”

  I led him across the street, following the three women to the west-flowing side, who had moved on to “I Dreamed a Dream,” and stopped under the bus awning.

  “Just because I don’t know which bus to get on in a strange neighborhood doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Okay,” I stopped under the bus awning with the singing trio as a bus pulled up, brakes squeaking. “What’s the nearest bus to your place?”

  The doors opened with a hiss and a clap. We lined up behind the trio and I got out my wallet.

  “The orange one.”

  “They’re all orange. And I’ll end your suffering now.” I got up on tiptoe so I could whisper, “There are no busses to Hancock Park.” I got up on the first step and looked down at him. He didn’t know where he was going or how to get there, but he looked completely in charge, even below me. Damn him. “I hope those are comfortable shoes. We have a long walk.”

  We got seats next to each other, facing forward. He let me in first so I had the window.

  The driver was a woman who laughed loudly with a regular passenger. A guy in front had so many bags at his feet, he blocked three seats. The couple standing nearby didn’t ask him to move them.

  “This isn’t so terrible,” he said when he was settled and the bus lurched forward.

  “I don’t think Loranda’s going to lose her job any time soon.”

  “See?” He put his arm around the back of my seat and leaned into me to look out the window. “I employ people. I pay taxes. I’m not so bad.”

  “No one said you were bad, and you better pay your taxes or the people you employ won’t be able to get to work. On the bus. Which is partly paid for with… da da da… you get it.”

  His gaze was still out the window, but he was looking inward, as if I’d put together pieces of a puzzle he’d thought was solved.

  “Hey,” I said. “Do you want the window? Sunset’s pretty cool to watch go by.”

  “I wouldn’t have an excuse to lean over you.”

  “True.” I twisted away from the boulevard lights. “Did I tell you about the time I took the bus up to Griffith Park?”

  “It couldn’t be more fun than this.”

  I poked him. “No. It sucked.”

  “Tell me, Ella.” As if he knew the importance of the story, he gave me his full attention.

  “I was fourteen, and it was my father’s wedding day.”

  “To Bianca,” he confirmed.

  “Duh. So. My mother wa
s dead barely two years, and Daddy married her. She worked at Papillion—in merchandising—so he’d known her awhile. That was his excuse. Anyway, she ignored me at the office and the house the same. I thought it would change after they were married, but I realized on their wedding day that no, Bianca didn’t want to teach me anything or know me at all.”

  “Her loss.”

  “Sure.” I turned to face him fully, and he leaned closer. “Dad stayed at his best man’s house the night before the wedding so he wouldn’t see the bride. Bianca was at the house with me and, like, a billion bridesmaids. Thomas Dworkin—have you heard of him?”

  “No.”

  “Famous fashion photographer. Got a curly moustache like Salvador Dali? Anyway, he’d set up the living room to get the pre-wedding bridal shots. And I’m ready. Hair up. Shoes on. Got this precious little powder blue dress. And Bianca comes down the stairs in her white gown and one of Daddy’s cleaning ladies holding up the train. Bridesmaids behind like a bucket of giggling pale blue paint spilling down the stairs.”

  “Giggling paint?”

  “Whatever. So they all pile into the living room, and there’s this sliding door. Dworkin’s about to close it when he says, ‘You coming?’ and I realize, no. No, I’m not coming. I’m not taking a picture with my stepmother and her fucking gaggle. I’m just not. I don’t know what I’m going to do instead, but then I see my father’s office in the mirror. And up on a high shelf, behind me? My mother’s urn. Her ashes, and it just makes me mad that she’s got to be up there, watching this whole performance.”

  “You look mad thinking about it.” He touched my chin with the pad of his thumb.

  “I don’t think I am, but maybe. I don’t know. So I tell Thomas my father needs me and I have to go. I’m getting Roger—Roger was my Loranda—to take me to Daddy, and I’d be in the reception pictures. Part of me wanted to see if Bianca even noticed. The other part didn’t even care. And you know what Thomas says? He says, ‘Basile is never wrong,’ which we always said, and I believed it until Bianca showed up. Then I knew he got shit wrong. He was needy and weak, and he let her poison him.”

  “You’re turning red,” Logan said. “And you haven’t even gotten to the bus yet.”