by CD Reiss
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Drew asked, brushing his fingers through his hair as he drove. It had loosened from its stiff lawyer-do and fell in his face the way it used to.
I’d settled into a mellow trust with him. The same zone as I’d fallen into eleven years earlier. “Strat was like an animal in a jungle. You were comfortable. Accessible.”
“Accessible? That sounds a little demeaning.”
“Just a little? Shit. When that flew out of my mouth, my subconscious was going in for the kill.”
He smirked, elbow on the edge of the door, rubbing his thumb on his bottom lip. Had he done that before? At the Palihood house? I didn’t remember. He seemed pensive and maybe a little hurt. I felt protective of him, even if I was the one I was protecting him from.
“If it’s any comfort, you were the one who hurt me most.” I put my hand on his knee. He put his hand over mine and squeezed my fingers together. “After that night, when it was just us, I really started to like you.”
“That’s no comfort whatsoever.”
“Didn’t think so.”
The rain stopped as if God had flipped a switch. If it were daytime, the sun would have come out.
“I wasn’t out to hurt you,” he said. “I was out to not get hurt.”
“Get off here.” I pointed at the exit, holding my next thought until I knew he wasn’t going to drift on the slick road. “You know you don’t have a case. Your cellist.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Make a left here. And you knew I was working in the LA office.”
“Read it in the company newsletter. Fine print on the last page. New hires.”
“Martin Wright? Does he really think he was ripped off?”
“Every couple of weeks. Especially when he doesn’t take his meds.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. If I was being honest with myself, I’d known it all along. The case was built out of ice cubes and set on a frying pan. He didn’t have to come to Los Angeles for it either. He could have managed the whole thing with faxes. So why? I’d gotten easier to find. There were a few hundred TV channels and libraries had computers now.
Fuck it. He was a goddamn lawyer. He could have found me anytime.
“What do you want?” I asked.
His Adam’s apple bobbed down and back up with a deep swallow. He squeezed my fingers again. “Something came across my desk. I don’t do international cases, but I was helping an associate, and I saw your name.”
“House at the end of the block with the hedge and the gate. Where did you see my name?”
“It wasn’t yours. Your family’s.” He pulled up to the gate and stopped. The gate was closed, and outside his window sat a wet keypad waiting for my code. He put the car in park and shifted to face me. “I didn’t think it had anything to do with you. I came to LA to see if you’d thought of me at all. Strat had all the girls. I did all right, but…”
“But? What came across your desk?”
“You were different. Cin—sorry. Margie. I never stopped thinking about you. When I saw your name twice in a month, I had to do something. I should have sent an interoffice or something, but I didn’t want to freak you out.”
“This has been so much more successful.”
“Did you think about me? All that time? The baby—”
“No.”
He looked stricken. Or maybe confused. Then he tilted his head a little as if he didn’t believe me. Fuck him. But gently and sweetly. Again.
“Between having the baby and crashing into you in the hall, I didn’t think about you once.”
“Not once?”
“When I read about Strat dying, of course. Sometimes ‘Blue Valley’ comes on the radio. But otherwise, no. Not really. You haven’t even existed to me.”
Behind him, a tiny light in the corner of the keypad went from orange to green. The camera was on. There was a disembodied bleep a second later.
“Enter my code, or security’s going to be out here with an agenda.”
He rolled down the window.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just telling it like it is.”
“It’s fine.” He stuck his hand out the window. If his posture and tone were any indication, it wasn’t fine. Not at all. “What’s the code?”
“My code. We each have our own.”
“Okay. What is it?” He looked at me expectantly, fingers poised an inch from the keypad.
I choked back a sob that nearly broke the speed barrier rushing up my throat. “Fifty-one-fifty.”
I pressed my lips together to hold it all back and squeezed my eyes shut until little bursts of light exploded in the darkness.
“Just press it,” I said, running my words together. “Just do it. I didn’t forget you. I thought you didn’t want me, and I was okay with that. I just took my lumps, but I think about you every day. Every time there’s music anywhere. Jingles in commercials. Muzak in the elevator. You’re there, and sometimes you’re mocking me and sometimes you’re holding me, but you’re there. I didn’t want you to know that. Ever.”
He squeezed my hand, flipped it on his knee, and put our palms together. I didn’t open my eyes, just felt him there. Heard the clicks and beeps of the buttons. When I opened my eyes, the windshield was clear, but my vision was fogged.
Drew leaned over and ran his thumb under my eyes. I pushed him away and flipped out his hankie. He smiled. I sniffed as I wiped my face.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It was a crazy time. We were both kids. And you had a lot on your plate. I should have been there for you.”
The gate creaked open. God, the last thing I wanted to deal with was my family.
“I don’t know how I feel.”
“But you feel something.” He rolled up his window.
“Yeah.” I sniffed as he pulled forward.
“That was all I wanted to hear. Because I’d hate to think fucking in the front seat of a rental was our last time together.”
Drew pulled around the circular drive and planted the Audi close to the front door. The stones were wet and glistening in the front lights. The fountain tinkled, and the spring flowers leaned against the direction of the wind. Cars lined up on each side of the drive, and the valet staff hung out under the eaves.
Harvey, our butler, ran out with a black umbrella and opened my door. “Good evening, Ms. Drazen. I’m afraid they started dinner without you.”
“Thanks. It’s fine.”
“Watch your step.”
“It’s not raining anymore.” I indicated the umbrella.
“There’s mist.”
I’d grown up with this type of attention and found it was always best to let people do their jobs the best way they knew how.
Drew stood by the trunk of the car, trying to not look off-put by the butler and the huge span of the umbrella. But I knew better. Whenever a regular person saw the Malibu house and the staff, they had to hide their reaction.
I was about to tell Harvey that the fountain sounded louder than usual when Drew looked down. Water was pouring from the trunk.
“Crap,” I said, keeping it clean for Harvey. “Aren’t these things waterproof?”
Drew didn’t know how sensitive the butler was, so he cursed up a storm as he opened the trunk. Three inches of water sat at the bottom, soaking the bottoms of the banker’s boxes.
“We’d better bring them in,” I said then turned to Harvey. “Can you find us some dry boxes?”
“Indeed.”
I took his umbrella, and he dashed inside.
“Well, now your case against Moxie Zee is really dead,” I said.
“And to think I was betting my career on this fingerprinting technique.”
He picked up a box from the bottom. I held my arms out, and he placed it on them.
“Let’s go in the side door. Avoid everyone. This way.”
Drew took the second box and closed the trunk. “I was looking forward to meeting your family.”
“No, you weren’t. Trust me.”
I took him to the side of the house, through the five-car garage I rarely saw because we had a valet to move cars around, to the part of the house the eight of us hid out in. The real kitchen. Not the ones the caterers heated up stuff in, the one everyone could see. But the kitchen the cook and his staff used. We curled up in the pantries and cooled off in the walk-in fridge. Sheila had made herself an apprentice and actually learned to cook there.
“Margie!” Orry shouted with a thick French accent, a clump of his grey comb-over flying up as he jogged to me. It looked like a parking barrier going up and down. He’d been our family chef for as long as I could remember.
The kitchen was alive with shouts, flames, chopchopchop for the night’s dinner.
“Hey.” I turned my cheek to him so he could kiss it. “This is Drew. He…” I caught myself. I didn’t want to send the staff buzzing. “He works with me.”
“Nice to meet you. You’re not putting those on my butcher’s block.”
“I thought your bed would—”
“I’ll laugh in advance. You can go in the wine cellar. Shoo. Before Grady forgets the blue in black and blue. Grady!” Orry was off, shouting to his grill chef about the temperature of the sea bass. Dad was picky about his blacks and blues.
“You running a restaurant?” Drew asked, juggling the box to keep stuff from falling out the bottom.
“It’s Good Friday. Day of fasting and woe followed by gorging on fish. Come on.” I jerked my head toward a narrow, half-open door and headed for it. He followed.
The lights were already on, which was good because I didn’t have a free hand. We walked carefully down the creaky wood stairs to the cold, dry cellar, into the tasting room. It had only a few racks of seasonal wines that the sommelier decided should be consumed sooner rather than later, clean glasses, a refrigerator for cheese, and a metal table with stools. I put my box on the table, and Drew put his next to mine.
“Feel like a drink?” I said.
“Actually, yes.”
I picked up two glasses and a bottle at random while he unloaded a box, laying the masters out in a line. The labels had fallen off.
“Are they ruined?” I asked, popping the cork.
“Yes, but no one cares about Opus 33.” He found a file and opened it. Half-wet contracts. Runny-inked documentation. A package of bowstrings. “They must put away anything left in the studio. I had no idea they even cleaned the place. Ever.”
He slid the top off the second box. Deep breath. His history was soaked inside.
“Here.” I handed him his wine and held mine up for a toast. “To… I don’t know what.”
“To Stratford Gilliam. May he rest in fucking peace.”
We clinked glasses. I looked at him over the rim as I sipped the red nectar. It went right to my head.
Stratford Gilliam.
May he rest in peace.
Chapter 28.
1982 – The night of the Quaalude
Six hours before I crawled out from under Indy, I’d been a drug-free virgin. But in the early morning hours after Hawk got kicked out of the house and I fulfilled a fantasy I didn’t know I had, I had a sore asshole and a sour feeling in my bones. I’d seen Lynn’s grouchy ass after she was luded, and I empathized for the first time.
The Palihood house was dead quiet and lit only by the moon through the windows. I padded to the kitchen naked, bold in my crankiness. I wasn’t doing that blue shit again. Feeling scrambled and rancid afterward wasn’t worth the happy hornies. I could get horny on my own, thank you. And happy was pure bullshit anyway.
At least that was done. I didn’t have a single virgin part of my body anymore.
I filled a glass with water and slogged it. Refilled. Drank. Refilled. Drank more slowly.
The pool lights were on under the perfectly flat bean shape. Maybe a swim would cheer me up. It wasn’t until I got to the screen door that I saw the orange pin of a lit cigarette making an arc from Strat’s mouth to the side of the couch.
“I hear you, Cin.”
“How did you know it wasn’t Indy?” I asked from behind the screen.
He arched his back and neck until he could see me. “He walks like a fucking elephant.” He lay flat again. “You’re naked.”
I opened the door. “Yeah. My ass hurts.”
“Bad?” He looked over the pool and dragged on his cigarette.
I took his pack off the table. “No. Just irritated.” I sat and lit one.
“That can’t happen again.”
“Did I blow your mind?” I dropped his lighter on the table with a clickclack.
“That guy’s like my brother. He cares about you. Really cares about you.”
He had a towel over his waist, but the rest of him was bare. The musical staffs on his chest rippled. I hadn’t tasted them. I hadn’t done much of anything but received him. I felt cheated.
“And what about you?” I said.
“He and I have a deal.”
“Oh yeah?”
“You’re his.”
“You flip a coin or something?” I said it without breathing, half joking, half too far on the wrong side of a lude to be anything but negative. I emptied my lungs, letting the nicotine rush make my hands tingle.
“Played a few hands.”
“You serious?”
“He pulled a straight.”
I leaned back on the couch. “You could have asked me.”
He stretched his arm out to the ashtray. The muscles were given definition by the tattoo. What a gorgeous thing he was.
“Nah.” He stamped his butt out with a flutter of orange embers. “We didn’t want to fight.”
“How do you explain your dick in my ass then?”
He shrugged. “One night.”
I leaned on the arm of the outdoor couch and stuck my cigarette in my teeth. Fuck them. I wasn’t a baseball card to be traded around. “Fuck you guys.”
“You did.” He got up and stood over me. The towel was gone, and his cock stood straight and hard between us.
“One night,” I said. “Did you agree ahead of time?”
“If the situation came up, yeah. That was part of the agreement.”
“Fuck you twice.” My voice dripped with honey. I hadn’t intended it, but the sore feeling in my ass had abated, and the poor judgment of my cunt went live.
We regarded each other, above and below, half-drugged and young, looking for stupid excuses to do stupid things.
“You might get your chance. It’s still night.”
“For a few hours. Then, yeah, I’m his.”
He touched the inside of my knee. No pressure, just a touch. “Open your legs, Cin.”
I pulled my knees apart slowly. He kneeled on the couch and spread them, tilting forward to kiss me. He kissed like a man. As if he was marking territory with his tongue. I wrapped my arms around him.
Just once, I told myself. Just the once, I could trade them the way they’d traded me.
I let Strat take me. There was no other way to describe the way he held me down, pushed on my clit until I was close, then slowed down to keep me on the edge, kissing me tenderly right before I came and he exploded inside me.
Only then was I satisfied.
Chapter 29.
1994
The wine was going to my head. It seemed as if Drew pulled the Bullets and Blood masters out with special reverence. I’d laid a towel out to soak up the water, and he placed the boxes on them gently.
I was going to have to tell him that the baby that had split us apart might not have been his. We’d been careless with our bodies then.
But when I saw him pull an envelope out of the box and I felt the bond that he’d had with his friend, I felt a real pull to tell him and a stronger pull to just bury it forever. Why bring it up? To what end would I risk hurting him with his friend’s betrayal? I didn’t fool myself into thinking I meant so much to him that my betrayal was equal to Strat’s. The only th
ing I risked by telling the truth was damaging his memory of his best friend. I didn’t want to turn that bond into a lie.
I was a coward. I owed him the truth.
“Drew. Indy… I—”
A young man’s voice came from the top of the stairs, yelling in French. Orry shouted back. The door slammed. Feet scuffled along the wood, and a boy barreled into the room, shirt half untucked, ginger hair askew.
“What the—?”
“Jonathan,” I said, noticing his frozen, terrified features.
“Margie. When did you get here?”
“This is Drew. He works with me.”
They nodded at each other, practically grunting like apes. Little Jon was a man already, too tough for his own good.
“What’s wrong?” I said. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”
He swallowed. The kids came to the wine cellar when they needed to get away from the bullshit of the huge house. Sometimes to hide. Sometimes to sulk. I knew where to find Fiona during report cards’ week, Leanne every twenty-eight days, Carrie whenever Dad was home.
“I’m all right.” He started back upstairs.
Drew thumbed through an envelope.
“Wait,” I said to Jonathan. “Try this.”
I handed him my glass of wine. He was in fifth grade, but he was allowed to sip, and I wasn’t ready to let him go back up to whatever was bothering him. He took the glass. Treating him like a grown-up worked, and he seemed calmer when he handed it back.
“It tastes fine,” he said.
“Come in the storage room with me for a sec. I want to talk to you. Drew, do you mind?”
“It’s fine.” He looked up from a wet, runny note for a second and locked eyes on Jonathan.
I thought nothing of it. Not Indy’s slack jaw or the way his eyes went a millimeter wider. I just pulled my brother into the inner chamber and sat him on a case of ancient vintage.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered.
“Nothing.”
“Jon.”
“What?”
“Let’s be efficient with our time. You’re going to tell me. Might as well get it over with.”
He pursed his lips, crossed his arms, jutted his jaw. I leaned on a low shelf and waited.
