Christina’s eyes narrowed against the light pouring in behind him. “Nope.”
“Close?”
“Not even.” She studied his companion. “But I know the guy with him.” She scooted out of the booth. “Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”
“You want me to come with you?”
“For crying out—” Christina paused to rethink what she was about to say. “No, it’s okay. He’s an old friend from school.”
The waitress appeared. “You ready for a refill?”
“Sure,” Elizabeth told her. She watched Christina approach the guy, saw him pull back in surprise, grin, and give her a quick hug. They talked for several minutes, his facial expression going from surprised to serious to commiserating. After several more minutes they hugged, Christina gave a little wave, and she returned to the booth.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said, reaching for her purse.
“Why?”
“Randy pulled out this morning.”
“Why?”
“He found out the film didn’t place.”
Elizabeth couldn’t tell whether Christina was more disappointed that she’d missed Randy or that her film had been rejected. “I thought they weren’t going to announce the winners until—”
“He knew one of the women on the panel.”
“Well, shit.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“Now what?”
The waitress came by holding the coffeepot, giving them a questioning look. Changing her mind about leaving, Christina sat down again. “Screw the coffee. I’ll have a beer.”
Bailey’s over ice, Elizabeth’s usual bar drink, seemed embarrassingly quaint. “I’ll have a Cosmo,” she said, having no idea what it was, only that her kids talked about them.
The first sip of the innocent-looking drink took Elizabeth’s breath away. The second went down easier. To keep from drinking on an empty stomach, she started shelling and eating the peanuts the waitress had brought with their drinks.
“How long were you and Randy together?” she asked, looking for something to distract Christina from her disappointment.
“Two years. I was still in school when we met.” She ran her finger down the icy glass in a zigzag pattern. “We started dating and discovered we were both fired up about doing an independent film. I wanted it to be something with social conscience. He didn’t care, so we settled on Illegal Alien.”
Elizabeth caught the attention of the waitress and motioned to her empty glass.
“Thirsty?” Christina asked pointedly.
“Yeah, a little.” More than that, she needed something to do with her hands, something to hang on to. “Have you noticed that guy at the bar keeps looking at us?” she said, changing the subject.
“That’s what guys in bars do,” Christina said. “He probably thinks we’re here looking to hook up with someone.”
“You mean he’s flirting with us?”
“Oh, please,” Christina groaned. “When was the last time you had a night out with the girls?”
“I go out with ‘the girls’ all the time.” To afternoon teas and movies and shopping, never anything like this. “None of them are like you, of course.”
“Meaning?”
What did she mean by that? “All of my friends are pretty much like me.”
“Oh—you mean boring.”
“Why do you do that?” Elizabeth shot back, disappointed. Every time she thought they were past the sniping, Christina hit her with a zinger.
Instead of snapping back the way she usually did, Christina took her time and glanced around, looking at everyone except Elizabeth. “I don’t know,” she finally admitted.
“Does your mother talk to you that way?”
“My mother? Where did that come from?”
“I see my mother in myself sometimes. It kills me when it happens, but there it is. I figure you had to have gotten your defensiveness from somewhere—or someone.”
“My grandmother once told me that my mother and I didn’t get along because we were too much alike. I thought it was the meanest thing anyone had ever said to me.”
“Are you? Alike, I mean.”
“If she’s had any influence over me it’s my determination to be nothing like her. Every decision she makes is based on how it’s going to look to others. My whole life everything revolved around what will Grandpa think, or Enrique, or the neighbors. When I came home with the broken jaw, she had a whole story worked out about how I fell off the stage during rehearsals. I didn’t have any choice but to go along with a lie that just kept growing.”
Elizabeth wasn’t going to say anything, then thought what the hell and stuck her neck out. “Was it her idea to let me and Ginger and Rachel think that was the way it happened, too?”
Christina glared at her. “And your point is?”
“Maybe she was just trying to protect you.”
“She was ashamed of me.”
“How can you be so sure?” Elizabeth asked gently.
“She’s always been ashamed of me.”
The waitress came by to check on their drinks. Elizabeth nodded that they would take another round, even though Christina wasn’t half through her first beer. “Why do you think that?”
“I’m not going there with you. It’s none of your business.”
“Give it a rest, Christina. What possible harm could it do to open up a little? You think there’s some big reward waiting for you at the end of your life because you kept everything inside?”
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“Nope.”
“All right—I’m lighter-skinned than anyone else in my family.” When Elizabeth didn’t respond, she added, “That makes it obvious I don’t belong. It’s like flashing a great big neon sign that Enrique wasn’t my mother’s first husband.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“In a Catholic society? Are you kidding?”
Their drinks arrived. “So why didn’t she just give you to Jessie?”
“Probably because he didn’t want me either.”
The pain in Christina’s voice stopped Elizabeth cold. “Fuck.”
Christina laughed. “Well put.”
Elizabeth finished her drink and motioned for another. “I’m surprised you turned out as well as you did.”
“Thanks—I think.”
“Oh, I mean it in the best way.”
Ten minutes later, when Elizabeth had finished her third drink and started on her fourth, Christina stared at her and asked carefully, “Do you always drink like this?”
It was one of those have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife questions that Elizabeth wasn’t sure how to answer. “No. Never. But don’t worry, I’m fine.” She grinned. “My kids drink these all the time. How strong can they be? Besides, they’re really good and I’m really thirsty.”
“Personally, I think they taste like lighter fluid.”
Elizabeth laughed, a little too long and a lot too hard, a sure sign she was relaxing. Plainly she hadn’t realized how tense she’d been over the prospect of confronting Randy. She was actually having a good time just sitting and talking to Christina. “I’m beginning to think I might like you after all.”
Christina groaned and rolled her eyes. “You’re a sloppy drunk, aren’t you? Maybe we should order something to eat.”
“Not for me. These peanuts are plenty. And I’m not even close to being drunk.” Only the peanuts were gone. When she held up the empty bowl the waitress assumed she was asking for another drink, too, and brought both.
“Last one,” she told Christina. “Soon as I’m finished, we’ll find someplace to eat.” But first she had to go to the bathroom. “I’ll be right back. If one of Randy’s friends should happen to come in while I’m gone, don’t do anything. Wait for me.”
“And what am I supposed to do if they see me?”
If it wasn’t sarcasm Elizabeth detected in Christina’s voice, it was something close
to it. “Cover your face.”
Christina shook her head. “Oh great. I’ve got a drunk for a bodyguard.”
“I’m not drunk,” Elizabeth insisted. And she wasn’t, or at least she didn’t feel like she was. Until she stood up. Then it was as if the room had tilted one way and she’d gone the other. Her hands and feet felt numb, her lips nonexistent. When had that happened?
She’d never experienced anything like this. With concentrated, towering effort, she grabbed hold of the part of her mind that still functioned with some lucidity and directed her feet to transport her to the bathroom.
Her hand on the back of the seat for support, she stood very, very still, plotting her course across the room. She could do this. One step at a time, threading her way around the tables. No. She’d never make it that way. Too many obstacles. Around the room then, booth by booth. That way she could hang on to the backs of seats and no one would notice. It was dark in the bar. People held on to things in the dark. Normal. Natural.
She started. She could do this. She had to do this. Christina couldn’t know. She’d never hear the end of it.
She made it, only weaving once or twice, covering the seemingly odd steps by stopping to study butchered, dusty heads of deer and elk and moose hanging on the walls along the way.
Once safely inside the bathroom, she stumbled to the sink and looked at herself in the mirror. “Ohmygod,” she murmured to the stranger looking back. “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod.”
“Do something,” the stranger demanded. “Christina can’t know.”
She soaked paper towels in cold water and plastered them to her face, then slapped her cheeks and wrists. It didn’t help. Oh-mygod. She wasn’t getting better, she was actually getting worse. Now the room was spinning. How could that happen? She closed her eyes. Bad idea. More water, more slapping, still drunk.
She had to get back before Christina came looking for her. She took one last look in the mirror. Her hair was wet and looked scary. She opened her purse to dig for her comb and remembered she’d taken everything out to accommodate the pepper spray. The hell with her hair.
Christina wasn’t at the table. She was at the bar, talking to a guy with dark, shoulder-length hair—a guy with a cute girl at his side.
Christina had an envelope in her hand. The restraining order. What the . . . and then it hit her. The friend had lied. Randy hadn’t left. Christina tried to give him the envelope. Suspicious, he looked down at her outstretched hand. He must have realized what she was trying to do because he jerked back and threw his hands up in the air. His face contorted in anger, he said something to Christina and began backing toward the door. She went after him, slapping the envelope against his chest. He grabbed her wrist and twisted her arm behind her back. She aimed a kick, missed, and tried again, the second time connecting with his shin.
A blinding protective instinct hit Elizabeth with the force of a mother defending her child. “Let go of her, you son of a bitch,” she roared. She dug into her purse for the pepper spray as she flung herself across the room. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the man who’d been flirting with them earlier leap up from his bar stool.
Randy had a friend and he was coming after her. She had to get to Christina.
Elizabeth brought the pepper spray up and pointed it at the friend’s face. Somehow the instructions Sam had made her memorize cut through the Cosmo fog and she managed to get off a shot. But not in the direction she’d intended. A woman beside her screamed and fell. Elizabeth ignored the woman writhing on the floor and tried to get off another shot, but nothing happened. She did the only thing she could think to do next—hit him with the can. Hard. He swore, brought his hand up to touch the wound, and glared at her.
“What the fuck?” he moaned.
Blood poured down the side of his face. The sober corner of Elizabeth’s mind reassured her it wasn’t serious. Any mother of sons knew even small head wounds bleed a lot.
Without warning, something hit the backs of her knees and she dropped to the floor in a heap. The man looked down at her, dripping blood on her blouse, a mixture of concern, anger, and something she couldn’t identify on his face. “Get away from me,” she shouted. Or at least she thought she shouted.
She still had the pepper spray in her hand and brought it up, pointed it at him, and this time managed to get off a shot in the right direction.
He howled and grabbed her arm. “Jesus, lady—you’re crazy.”
“Elizabeth?” Christina pushed the man out of the way. “What happened? Are you all right? What’s going on?”
“That man”—Elizabeth pointed to the man desperately wiping his eyes and spreading blood all over his face—“that man—” Again the sober part of her mind spoke up, this time sending a warning. She was going to be sick. She tried to get up but only made it to her knees. Disgusting sounds came from her, followed by disgusted sounds from everyone around her. Oh, God—she would never ever eat peanuts again. And she would never drink again. Not ever. Not even at her children’s weddings.
With Christina’s help, she managed to stand, but when she tried to walk it felt like her legs had flesh but no bones. Christina clamped her hands around Elizabeth’s arm to keep her from falling. “Did he hurt you?” Elizabeth asked, determined to fulfill the role she’d come to play.
She saw Christina’s lips moving but couldn’t hear the answer. The room started spinning, then turned into a shrinking circle that grew smaller and smaller. She blinked. The circle disappeared. It was the last thing she remembered.
Later, when she woke up in a hospital room and opened her eyes, it felt like knives of light were being shot into her pupils. She immediately closed them again. She had an Academy Award–winning headache, a runaway contender in a field that included sinus and migraines.
“It’s about time,” Christina said.
“What am I doing here?” she asked, moving her lips and jaw as little as possible.
“Waiting for lab results to see if someone slipped something into your drink before the police officially arrest you for assault and battery,” she said casually. “The officer said something about charging you with drunk and disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace, but I think they’re going to drop those and concentrate on the charge that carries the longest jail term, assault and battery.”
“I’m going to be sick.”
“Impossible. There can’t be anything left.”
“I’m serious.” Elizabeth sat up, her hand over her mouth. Christina handed her a kidney-shaped plastic container. Elizabeth gagged, her stomach heaved, nothing came up.
“I told you, you’re empty,” Christina said.
“Ohmygod,” Elizabeth groaned. The evening was coming back to her in horrifying snatches. “Please tell me I didn’t do what I think I did.”
Christina dragged the chair she’d been sitting in over to the bed. “You don’t know the half of it. The man you assaulted? Sam hired him. He’s a private detective.”
It took several seconds to absorb this latest bit of news. “A private detective?” she repeated, incredulous. “Why?”
“To protect us. He was on our tail the whole way.”
And then it hit her. “Sam knows what happened?”
“Every detail.”
Elizabeth groaned again. “I need to be sick.” Christina reached for the plastic container. “Not that kind of sick, the kind that will keep me in Oregon until he misses me more than he’s mad at me.”
“I think the cops might take care of that for you.”
“Am I really going to be charged with all those things?” People went to prison for assault. She tried to picture herself behind bars, confined in a cell with a toilet attached to the wall, sleeping on a hard narrow bed, Sam taking time off work to visit, her children humiliated.
“Don’t you dare cry,” Christina threatened. “I’ve been through enough histrionics in the past couple of hours to last a lifetime. By the way, nice shot with the pepper spray. That was Ran
dy’s girlfriend.”
“I was aiming for the detective.”
“I figured as much. But not to worry, you got him, too.”
The scream and string of profanity that followed the misdirected shot came back to her in horrifying detail. “Is she all right?”
“They brought her in and cleaned her up, and according to Randy, she’s back to her good old double-D-cup self.” Christina propped her feet on the railing under the bed. “I thought Randy had better taste in women. How could he go from me to her?”
“Did you at least get him served?” Elizabeth was looking for a bright spot in the fiasco.
“Yeah, but I changed my mind. Seeing him made me realize I want my freedom more than I want my movie. I have a hundred movies ahead of me—fighting for this one isn’t worth being connected to him again.”
“So after all of this you just gave it to him?”
“Pretty much.”
A nurse appeared in the doorway. “Good. You’re awake. I’ll let the officer know.”
“I need a lawyer,” Elizabeth said when the nurse was gone. “Do you suppose Lucy knows anyone up here?” She thought about trying to explain to Lucy what she’d done and groaned. “This is so embarrassing.”
Christina responded with a half-ass grin. “I guess you’ve suffered enough. I might as well tell you, the detective isn’t pressing charges. Neither is the bar—not after I told them you’d pay for the damages.”
“What damages?”
“Some broken glasses, a couple of broken chairs. You created a panic when you let loose with that spray.”
“What about Randy’s girlfriend?”
“She’s taken care of, too.”
“And the detective?”
“I think Sam must have offered him something, because he was really happy when he left. He said we weren’t to worry about anything, that it was all taken care of.”
“How did you get Randy to—” But then she knew. Her heart sunk. “That’s the real reason you gave him the movie.”
“That’s why he thinks I gave him the movie. I told you the real reason.”
“So he gets away with both the movie and breaking your jaw? It’s not fair.”
The Year that Everything Changed Page 29
