by Reiss, CD
Chapter 12
JONATHAN
After I tucked my wife back into bed next to my daughter, I pretended to sleep so that she would. But I didn’t. I’d spoken aloud what I’d barely dared to think about. The artificial heart project was complete. I had an arts foundation that managed itself and more money than I could spend or give away in a lifetime. And I wanted another child.
Monica’s submission was the only thing I’d created. It was a work of art, and its very nature meant it would be the last of its kind. I needed to make something else, not just finance or support someone else’s creation.
Restless, I went to the bathroom, and as I washed my hands, I looked at myself in the mirror.
The transplant had taken a toll on me. I wasn’t vain enough to pay someone to remove the lines from the corners of my eyes, but death had drawn every one of them with a double-dog-dare to cross. I’d taken each dare, stepping over them to live and live again.
I had Monica. She was the difference between surviving and living. But the lines told me how I’d made it, not how to make more of it.
After looping the towel through the ring, I shut the light and returned to the bedroom to stand over my wife and our daughter, watching the gentle adjustments of their faces as they breathed, swallowed, lived inside the safety I’d built around them. But I couldn’t join them. Instead, I went to the wide hallway with the window at the end and looked over our yard and all the adjustments we’d made to it for our girl. The gate around the pool. The swing set she’d be too old for one day. The section of garden that she’d planted.
I didn’t want Byron’s house, but I wanted to fill this one with my creations. I was an artist without talent. Nothing musical came from me, and though my wife was convinced was a poet, I found the act of writing mind-numbingly boring. The eye my dealer Hank said I had was as rare as he implied, but taste could only choose from what was available—it didn’t create. Taste wasn’t the singular voice of a rich man looking out the window onto his pool, wishing he needed a bigger house, and knowing that even with another child, he never would.
“Hey.” Her voice came from behind me a couple of hours before the sun was due.
“Did I wake you?”
“I’m jet lagged.” She wrapped her arms around my waist and laid her cheek on my back. “Can’t sleep.”
“There’s this house,” I said. “It’s a Byron Crowne.”
“Oh? I like his specs. Sandra and Max bought one up in Runyon.”
She thought I was just making conversation.
“It’s too big,” I said. “It’s got a moat.”
“Jesus,” she laughed.
“I think that’s what set me off. Bigger house. More family.”
“Are you apologizing for asking for more kids before I’ve been home even twenty-four hours?”
Turning to face her, I held her close. “Sure. If you want to put it like that.”
“What’s a reasonable length of time for me to think about it?”
“About slowing down your career?”
“Yep.”
“Confronting your fear of failure? Getting over the idea of fatherless children?”
“That too.”
I made my hand into a plane and seesawed it as if to equivocate. “Morning should be enough time.”
“Hm.”
We looked out the window at the yard we shared, and over the horizon, where the earth met the sky.
“What time is it?” she asked.
I checked over my shoulder, looking at the green digits on the stove clock. “Little after four.”
“In the morning?” Her face was turned up to me, brows knotted as if she didn’t actually know the answer to the question.
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay, I’m going to cut down on touring.” She held out her thumb to count, then her index finger. “And okay, I’m totally behind you finding some other purpose in life and”—middle finger made an L-shaped third—“yes, I want another baby.”
Too much.
She’d offered too many things at once. All I’d had to do was ask.
Overwhelmed, I nodded and looked out the window.
“Four,” I said.
“In the morning?”
“I owe you four orgasms before Gabby interrupts.”
I crouched and scooped her up. She wrapped her legs around my waist and I carried her to the couch where I’d take what was mine in exactly the portion she chose.
* * *
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IRON CROWNE
OLIVIA
I was on my back. My legs were spread, and my underpants were on a chair by the door. The lights had been dimmed. The crashing of ocean waves came from the speakers, and a mobile with seagulls spinning at the ends of the strings hung from the ceiling.
A light rap at the door was followed by the sound of it opening and quickly closing.
“Hello, Ms. Monroe,” Luciana said with her gravelly Spanish-accented voice.
I raised my head enough to see her. She was in her fifties and wore teddy-bear scrubs that clashed with her seriousness.
“Hey,” I said. “You got a haircut.”
She put down a tray of instruments. “You like it?”
“Love it.” I put my head back on the little paper-covered pillow. “It makes your eyes look huge.”
“My son says I won’t attract a husband. I told him good. Men who say no to short hair before they even talk to you? Not my kind.”
“They’re trouble.”
“Exactly.” She sat on the stool at the foot of the table. “How are you feeling today?”
“Fine.” The air conditioning went on, spinning the plastic seagulls. “Dr. Galang says everything looks good.”
“Yes.” She snapped on her gloves. “Let’s see. Open up.”
I hadn’t realized I’d been clamping my knees shut. I opened them with a cringe.
Seagulls.
The ocean.
Wind in my face.
Smell of salt water.
“Just relax,” she said as if it was the easiest thing in the world.
Luciana inserted something inside me. It didn’t hurt, but on the whole, I would have rather been on the beach.
“How do you say?” She placed the syringe at the opening of my vagina. “Third time is lucky?”
“Third time’s the charm.” My face tightened as she moved a tube through my cervix.
Sand in my toes.
The ocean at my ankles.
“Try to relax.” The syringe entered.
Breathe, breathe, breathe. Third time’s the charm.
“Trying.”
Laughter of children.
Finding a whole shell in the sand.
“What are you doing today?” she asked to distract me, as always, and as always, I took the hint and talked through the process.
“After this, I have to go up to Bel-Air.”
“Fancy.”
“There’s a greedy developer building too close to a creek we’re trying to recategorize as a preserve. He’s from a rich family that has more money than God, and I’m going to beat him.”
“I don’t think God is so interested in money. Or the winners.”
“Probably. I’m just tired of seeing guys like that walk all over everyone.”
“You got my landlord to fix the toilet with one letter.” Luciana removed the syringe and plopped it back on the tray. “You’ll get this one too.”
Her landlord
was a two-bit scumbag who’d never expected to hear from an actual lawyer. He’d been easy. Byron Crowne was another order of magnitude, but I took the vote of confidence in the spirit it was cast.
“I will.”
“Good.” Luciana pulled the blanket over my knees. “Think happy thoughts. Babies like it when mamas are calm.” She stood and picked up her tray.
“I’m borderline serene. I’m feeling so tranquil I could fall asleep.” I closed my eyes to prove my point. “Actually, I’m thinking of taking a nap.”
I was actually thinking about traffic to Bel-Air.
“Sweet dreams.” The door clicked open, then closed.
I was alone. Finally.
Wind in my face.
Smell of salt water.
Traffic on the 10.
Battling a man with infinite resources.
Winning anyway.
* * *
The first time I met Byron Crowne, he was breaking ground on the most disgusting, showy, look-how-big-my-dick-is spec house ever conceived. Ninety thousand square feet. Five pools. Thirty bathrooms. A moat. A literal moat. All of it was perched on the only Bel-Air hilltop with 360-degree views.
He was known throughout Los Angeles as the King of the Spec. He bought premium property, tore down whatever was on it, and immediately petitioned city councils for environmental abatement so he didn’t have to do impact studies. He promised jobs, community input, and the actual moon. Then he did what every spec developer did—turned it around to sell at a huge markup.
He was one of the scions of the Crowne Petroleum dynasty, but everyone said it wasn’t the money that got him past all the rules. It was his charm and cunning. Which was really about money because charm and cunning weren’t free.
I’d never counted on how handsome he was.
Dressed for a demolition site in boots and jeans, Martin and I approached a group of people looking at plans on the hood of a truck.
“Mr. Crowne,” I said over the roar of the yellow bulldozer pushing the detritus of the old house. The structure had been a scrapper from the minute it was listed, but that wasn’t the point. The offense came from what Crowne was trying to replace it with.
Byron Crowne looked up, and the second his eyes locked on mine, I slowed my stride. Even in the rugged setting, his shirt was crisp and his tie was centered. He towered over the men he spoke with, commanding and confident, copper-highlighted brown hair flicking in the breeze. He was thirty-five, six-three, and broad-shouldered with green eyes that seemed slightly larger than expected. They gave the illusion of sincerity and trustworthiness, contrasted by the snide curve of his mouth. He was a mixed message. A loophole in a rock-solid contract. The coexistence of lies and truths.
He was terrible. I knew that. But he’d cast a spell over me without saying a word.
“Yes?” he said, glancing at Mitch, who stood behind me. The woman and two men he was speaking to parted like the Sea of Reeds.
“My name is Olivia Monroe,” I said. “And I’m from the Environmental Protection Fund.”
His eyebrows were full and manly, low over his eyes, and when one arched, the jade in his eyes shot from the shadows. His mouth crooked on the left when he smiled.
“Nice to meet you.” He didn’t mean it.
“It’s come to our attention that the northwest corner of your proposed structure encroaches on the proposed boundary of the Stone Canyon Creek Preserve.”
“Creek?” He looked down the hill.
The drought had left a dry ditch where the creek had been, but he didn’t comment on that. He didn’t need to.
“Stone Canyon Creek is coming under review for wildlife protection by the Board of Supervisors. You can’t build on it without impact statements. Your permits are illegal.”
“You’re a lawyer?”
“Yes, and I—”
“They’re making them more attractive every year, aren’t they?”
He was trying to disarm me, and it would have worked on anyone else. I’d been brought up to take a compliment separate from inappropriate context.
“We’re filing a temporary restraining order on your permits, and we’ll get it,” I said, chin high. “If you stop construction now, revise the footprint, and file the correct impact reports, you can avoid years in court, and you can still pitch it as bordering the preserve.”
“I’ll have an expedited review through in a week.”
“And I’ll stop it.”
He laughed to himself and stepped closer to me. “Olivia Monroe. You’re related to Rhonda Monroe?”
“She’s my mother.”
“You have her eyes.”
My mother had been a model, so the compliment wasn’t lost on me. No. The only thing lost was my senses. They were melting like an ice cube in the July sun, dripping into the well of my pelvis, where he was causing an inexplicable, unwanted arousal.
“And you have the inappropriate sense of entitlement of every man who ever tried to stop me.”
“Mister Crowne,” Mitch cut in, “we’re here to give you notice—”
“Why are you here?” he asked, looking at me.
The air between us warmed, expanding until it pressed against my chest.
“To save both of us trouble.”
“You’re clocking billable hours to protect a creek that doesn’t exist anymore. That flavor of trouble is pretty profitable for you.”
“I’m not in it for the money, Mr. Crowne.” Somehow, I’d been cornered into defending myself when he was the one who should have been offering apologies and promising to rectify his wrongs.
“I’m sure,” he said. “File your complaint. We’ll find out who should be issuing warnings.”
Any response I made would have cemented my position as the underdog. The likely casualty of his dominance. David to his Goliath. I discarded them all and nodded once. “This courtesy won’t be repeated.”
“‘Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.’” He quoted Balzac, looking me up and down.
Even though the sun was hot, my skin felt chilled and exposed. People were looking, and I felt as if he’d stripped me bare with a few words.
“Good day, Mr. Crowne.”
“Ms. Monroe.”
How could I walk away when I was locked in place by the way his attention made my mouth dry and my panties wet?
A pressure on my elbow pulled me out of the moment. Mitch, letting me know it was time to go. I spun on the heel of my boot and walked back to the car. When I opened the door to get in, I saw Byron Crowne standing in the same spot with the sky as a background, watching me go.
* * *
“‘Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness,’” I said. “Does he even know what that means? And the way he questioned whether I was in it for the money. Ugh.”
“Guys like him…” Brown coils of hair danced across Emilio’s forehead when he shook his head. He kept his blue eyes on the roux, his thin face turned down, tapered fingers handling the wooden spoon the way a conductor handles his baton. “They can’t understand that some things aren’t about money.”
We were in his little one-bedroom bungalow in West Hollywood. His family had come from Naples two generations before. They spoke Italian in their house in Long Beach and kept up Catholic traditions. Yet they’d realized he was gay from a young age, embraced his boyfriends, and made no bones about loving him. Their only complaint was his lack of children, and we were working on that.
“He has more than he can spend,” I said. “It’s about power. Dominance. Leaving his mark on the entire city.”
The idea of it was ugly. Gross. Animalistic. Shameful.
Emilio and I had met eight years before, when I was interning for the City of Los Angeles and his first restaurant had come under environmental scrutiny. He’d been more affable about it than Crowne. After he complied, he invited me in for a private dinner. That was when he discovered my special talent. I could taste what was hidden to most people.
“And what are you in it for?” He scraped the roux into a saucepot.
“The environment,” I said.
“You’d do more for the environment if you took the bus to work,” he said.
He was right. I cared about the environment, but I fought for it because it was where I’d landed and I was good at it. Passion was optional.
“I recycle.”
“Alert the media. We have an activist here.”
“Are we arguing? Because I’m hungry enough to take your balls off.”
His second restaurant was named after his grandmother, Amelia. It was opening soon. Most nights, he was there, perfecting the menu, and when he wasn’t, he cooked things for me to try. I loved it because my “supertasting” was unrelated to anything else in my life.
“You need my balls.” He put down the pan and stirred what was in the pot. “Speaking of… how did it go this morning?”
Emilio’s DNA had been in the syringe Luciana had administered. He was going to be the biological father of my child. Our agreement was cast in legalese and notarizations. He wasn’t interested in fatherhood any more than I was interested in having a partner in parenthood. He’d demanded unclehood, and that was something I could give him.
“Uncomfortable, but…” I twisted two fingers and held them up. “Fingers crossed.”
“Fingers crossed he looks like you.”
“He?”
“I’m avoiding saying ‘it.’ Can you grab me the cheese?”
I slid off the barstool and got him the bowl of shredded cheese.
“He thinks he’s unstoppable,” I said.
“The baby? That’s a good sign, no?”
“Crowne. The retrofit in Culver City was a joke, and the Board of Supervisors signed off on it like nothing mattered. So, Byron Crowne’s ego is propped up with another win.”
“Ah,” Emilio said, stirring in the cheese. “It’s the winning.”
“Yeah. He won because I wasn’t on the other side of the table. Again. It’s a sickening habit I’m going to break.”
