Sociopath

by Lime Craven

  The handle's pretty fucking slippery, let me tell you.

  "Well?" She bats her eyelashes at me, like I'm one of her unfortunate black widow boy toys. "You have nothing to say for yourself?"

  My vision blurs. Furniture slides back and forth; I feel drunk and shivery.

  "Yeah." My voice cracks. "You need to put Ash down."

  14

  Empathy (noun): when feeling someone else's emotions is safer than feeling your own

  Twenty six people saw Rachel Fordham shoot herself in my lobby. The police don't have to question us for long.

  I held my broken Leo while she told them that Rachel was her ex-girlfriend; that they'd argued since she left Rachel for me. The security camera footage will fit her story, and the cops took that, too. I held on to my temper and my jealousy and my very American curse words while Leo detailed the intricacies of their relationship, though every nerve in my body was on the war path, every muscle twitching to hit something, cut something, savage it all because what the fuck, grasshoppers?

  What the actual motherfucking fuck is going on?

  While the ambulance crew packed Rachel away in a body bag, we watched. We said nothing. The alarm has been off for the best part of two hours and yet I can still hear it screeching in my ears. My own reporters are all up in my face asking questions, and outside, the place is heaving with press. It's carnage. In the next forty eight hours, the world will get their teeth into Rachel Fordham. I may not like what they find.

  There are so many ways to commit suicide. She had to go and do it in my very public lobby.

  As soon as we're free, Leo tears off to a separate elevator with Rachel's bag, leaving my hands full of shadows and honeyed smoke. I want to call after her but the words won't come. Ever the faithful assistant, however, Tuija is there to escort me back to my office with a coffee. I've never been so glad to slip back into my beige abyss.

  "So I guess Princess Priss comes with more baggage than OCD," Tuija mutters.

  I glare at her from my spot on the office couch.

  "Okay. Sorry." Air hisses through her clenched teeth. "Just wanted to start a nice gentle dialogue. Because you know...despite the shitty hours, it's not every day some girl blows her brains out at Lore Corp HQ."

  The silence in here is too much. I can't get used to it.

  "Boss." She stalks over and perches beside me. "You okay?"

  No! I'm petrified that someone's going to find out who Rachel really is. Oh, and apparently Leo was screwing her. When did I fall into the shitting Twilight Zone? "I've been better."

  "Is there anything I need to know?" There's a jagged edge to her voice, as if she already has the answer.

  "No."

  "You want a drink? Whiskey? I've got like, three different kinds in my mini bar."

  I should scold her for that. Slather on the concern. Trouble is, I got nothing. There's just an empty space where my fucks ought to be.

  "Okay. So no whiskey." She drums her fingers on the leather couch.

  For a moment, we both watch my muted screens play out: Kasha stands in the Lore Corp lobby, all shaken and concerned and no doubt parroting the statement I gave just thirty minutes ago.

  Shit. Shit. I don't need this. I've had enough negative press in my life and this isn't fucking fair. I'm meant to control the news, not make it.

  "I already called a therapy consultancy," Tuija babbles. "We'll get our poor, traumatized colleagues plenty of support. So that's that covered. The cleaning company have been notified—they'll wait until forensics have finished, obviously. Wow...forensics." She sits back. "This is some serious shit."

  "I lied," I say quietly. "There's stuff you should know."

  Tuija cocks her head. Tries to hide her curiosity, badly.

  My first Big Reveal, and I can't even bring myself to be excited about it. I want to laugh but nausea gets in the way. "The girl...Rachel. I was involved with her a long time ago."

  Tuija blinks. Her mouth forms a thin, drawn little line. "The girl who's been boning Leo? If girls could bone. You know what I mean."

  "Small world," I manage before nearly choking.

  "You don't say." She leans in, her brows knitted together. "How the hell did your old girl get mixed up with your new one?"

  "Do not give me your karma lecture."

  "I wasn't even thinking about it." She crosses her legs and sighs. "Of course, now, I am."

  I side-eye her. "Point is...things didn't end well with me and Rach. If the wrong person starts digging around—if Montgomery gets a hold of it—the shit will hit the fan. I'll drown in it."

  "I don't get how this didn't come up in her background check," Tuija goes on, incredulous. "I mean, I went over that girl with a fine-tooth comb. Miniscule. She had boyfriends, Aeron. No girlfriends. No Rachel pissing Fordham."

  "So I gathered."

  "You know I take care of business. I do my job."

  "I know, firecracker." I put my face in my hands and rub my cheeks vigorously, trying to feel something, anything. "I've got to deflect before things get ridiculous."

  "With what?"

  "What else? Montgomery and his twinkie."

  "You are not going to fling crap at GNS just because you're panicking," Tuija says sharply. "I mean it. You know what'll happen—he'll just retaliate, and it'll be even worse than before. I won't let you. Nuh-uh."

  "I'm not asking your fucking permission, am I?"

  "No. But you're getting my fucking opinion, regardless." She jumps up, heading toward my refrigerator. "And I'm getting a drink."

  "Tuija!"

  "Just a Coke." She thrusts up the bottle, rolling her eyes. "Don't waste your drama on me, Marilyn. I'm just telling it like it is."

  "I meant what I said about Montgomery. When the time is right, I'm gonna give you the word, and you're gonna walk into the editor's suite with that file and make them very, very happy."

  "Aeron." She lowers her voice, puts force behind it. "That guy is dangerous. His second wife, you remember? A golf caddy accident, my silicon ass."

  Despite the gravity of the situation, I can't help but snort. She thinks he's dangerous. She has no idea. "I need to see Leo. She's in her office, right?"

  "Last I heard." She shrugs and does a spectacularly bad job of hiding her displeasure. It pulls at her upper lip like a hooked finger.

  "Go on then, spit it out. Might as well say what you think," I goad. It's not a good move, but then my fucks bank is still empty and the world has gone to shit.

  She lets off a dry, incredulous laugh. "I can't believe you're going to trust her. All the holes in her story...Jeez. She's Spongebob fucking Prisspants."

  "I never said I trusted her."

  "Oh, but you do, Aeron. It's all over you. You were right about one thing—pussy makes you stupid."

  "I've had enough." I jerk my head toward the door. "Out."

  She takes a long swig of Coke. "The truth hurts, Hitler."

  "I said, OUT!" I yell.

  When she doesn't move, I shove past her and out of the office, slamming the door hard. She wants to make her point? Fine. She can do it on her own.

  I miss my Leo.

  Leontine might be in her office, but most of her has left the building. I find her folded into her big leather desk chair, her legs pulled up and her arms around her knees. The bag sits in her lap and she fiddles with it listlessly as she swings left and right. Her blind is pulled closed, and she's framed by the sliver of square outline that filters in around it. The place still reeks of lilies.

  She barely even looks up when I enter.

  "I never finished taking care of you," I manage to say.

  Nothing. She just sniffs.

  "You should let me take you home, sweetheart. Today's been pretty damn rough." I walk closer, just slowly, as if she's a small animal I might frighten away. Normally I wouldn't give a shit, but my base instincts took over the same time Rachel's gun went off and now I can't switch the bastards off. "I'll clean you up there. We'll take the r
est of the day if you want, just crash out. What do you say?"

  She presses her lips together, like she wants to smile. But no smile comes. "Don't you have questions for me?"

  I eye the brown canvas bag still tucked between her legs. "Oh yeah. I got a couple."

  "But you aren't asking them."

  "I'm worried about you." I creep around to her and drop to my knees, so she's just a couple inches taller. I put my hands on the arms of the chair. "What just happened...it's kind of a mindfuck."

  "Mmm." She sniffs again. Her black eyes are rimmed with rosy wet pink, and their liquid sheen seems to tremble. "I'm sorry."

  "What the hell are you sorry for? You think she did that because of you?"

  "I—I think you gave her the gun and I pulled the trigger. And I wish...I wish I hadn't..." She zeroes in on me, suddenly panting. "But you're not sorry, are you?"

  "I'm sorry you're hurting."

  "Jesus Christ." She tries to swing the chair from my grip, but I hold it firm.

  "Tell me about you and Rachel," I murmur. "Make me sorry, baby."

  The rough strap of the bag forms an undulating knot in her palms. "I should probably explain all that, huh?"

  "It would help."

  "I...we weren't really ever together. Officially, like. Which means I lied to the police officers. Fuck." She sounds so angry with herself; I want to wrap her up in my arms, peel her clothes away, find ways to make it all better. "We just had this thing...it went deeper than friendship, I guess. It's hard to describe."

  "Were you sleeping with her?" There's a foul-tasting lump in my throat because I'm not sure I want to hear the answer.

  She bites her lip. "For a while."

  I dig my fingers into the leather seat until the fabric creaks for mercy. "When?

  "Oh god. Not recently, Aeron. Not since I've been with you."

  "I...good."

  "It started a long time ago. Therapy's a pretty intense place to be." She drops a leg down, her bare calf brushing my jaw in a sandpapery rush of skin and stubble. "But we stopped speaking when I got the offer from you—or technically, I stopped speaking to her. Cut her out. I couldn't take it anymore."

  I press my mouth to her knee. Kiss it. "Couldn't take what?"

  She lifts the bag down and hands it to me. "You should probably take a look through this. You know, before the police figure out it's missing when they watch the security footage."

  I frown into the gaping old bag, which appears to contain a bunch of print outs and newspaper clippings. Shiny magazine pages, their edges frayed with age.

  "She kept everything she could find on you," Leo says softly. "Well. We did, I suppose." She drops a hand to cup my face, and studies me, her eyelashes shining with tears. "You're a beautiful man."

  I flash her my dimpled grin. "I know."

  "I wish you weren't."

  "Let me take you home, sweetheart. Please." I will fuck this misery out of her. Carve new wounds I can make better. "I don't want to stay here."

  She draws back up into the chair. "Then go home."

  Already, I can feel my lip curling into the prerequisite snarl; she refused me. Unacceptable. I should force her to obey. But for some obscure reason...it's not what I want.

  "We are like a cut, aren't we?" she says, her tone bitter. "Everything between us just bleeds and bleeds."

  "Leo."

  "I just can't right now. I can't. Leave me alone for a night, Aeron."

  "I don't want to." I grip the chair tighter, afraid of what I might do otherwise. Of what I could fuck up. "Did you love her?"

  "What?"

  "You heard me." I lean upward so our faces are just inches apart. "Did. You. Love. Her?"

  "No." She whimpers, her shoulders shuddering with badly stifled sobs. "Not the way she loved me."

  It's the only good thing I've heard today, and it makes me ache in places I didn't know I had.

  * * *

  Later that night, I wait for Ash to fall asleep before I pull out Rachel's bag.

  Even after three beers, I can't calm down. My cell goes off every five minutes but it's never Leo; just another work call, or a press officer, or Tuija reminding me not to "cut off my fucking nose to spite my fucking face," by running the Montgomery photos. When I got in, Ash was all hyped up from waving to a gazillion paparazzi, and Ethan looked like he'd seen a ghost. All I want is the peaceful feeling I get when I'm buried inside Leo. My canvas. My button-eyed doll. Just mine, fucking mine, and who the fuck does Rachel think she is, laying her hands on my property?

  Or who did she think she was? Was. Rachel's dead now.

  I remember how Leo crumpled into me as the gun went off, and the beer bottle shakes in my hand.

  It seems Rachel poured all her yearbook experience and GPA smarts into compiling the Aeron Lore bible. Inside the bag is a concise dictionary of media me; everything from game reports from our old high school newspaper to the interview I just did with Forbes. There's a whole plastic wallet on the investigation surrounding my mother's death—website printouts, conspiracy sites (ha). A transcript from that shithead Dr Brody, from when some crappy local news crew interviewed him on the eve of my arrest.

  Rachel wanted to throw my past right in Leo's face, so she'd remember what a monster I am.

  Like I'd let her forget.

  I close the door firmly, plug in the shredder, and feed each document through its metal teeth. With every savage buzz, my breathing slows. My heartbeat comes down. Bye bye, evidence of Rachel Fordham's suspicious preoccupation with the sins of Aeron Lore.

  Leo doesn't answer when I call her. It makes my stomach twist. I worry about her untreated wounds. Her tears.

  I'm not supposed to empathise, not with my condition. So how come all I can think about is how terrible she must feel?

  * * *

  It's barely nine a.m. and I'm done being today's bitch.

  Yesterday was a shaky day. We all have them. Rachel's little stunt threw me for a loop; it happens. But I've had enough of this fuckery and I'm taking matters back into my conscience-free hands.

  It took America's media about eight hours, all told, to connect me and Rachel Fordham. One of my Facebook friends—some sucker from high school that I keep around for the very opposite purpose—went straight into his vault of pathetic nostalgia and pulled out a couple old photos of Rachel and me.

  We're at a party, some post-game event strewn with team bunting and paper cups of crappy beer. She's next to me in her purple Gap hoodie, her hand disappearing beneath the coat draped over my lap. It looks half like we're flirting and fooling around, and half like she's giving me a hand job.

  She was totally giving me a hand job. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I remember the scene, sure, but I never knew photographs existed. Since I was seventeen at the time, I was probably drunk.

  Said photo is now all over the national fucking news, and the phone calls I've been avoiding all morning? They were from my own editors, asking permission to run the same damn shot. What am I meant to say—no, you can't run it? Nobody will fucking watch us!

  I've already wired Tommy Chavez a wedge of cash just to make sure he doesn't talk. I should not be bankrolling this shit. I resent it, sports fans, and I am going to make the world pay me back.

  Tuija walks in as my cell hits the wall.

  She freezes, inspecting the mess of cracked screen and plastic now littering my floor. "So today's started well."

  I keep pacing. "Is Leo in?"

  She blinks a couple times. "Not yet. Her escort was having trouble moving her, I think."

  I jerk up. "Is she okay?"

  "Last I heard, she was just peachy." Tuija cocks her head. "Aside from the whole dead girlfriend thing."

  "I told her I'd understand if she didn't want to come in." I'm almost talking to myself now. "She could use some space, maybe. Have her come in through the back? So she doesn't have to use the lobby or go past all the forensics."

  "I'm sorry—it's just, I think I can hear actual compassion.
Bleugh. Are you ill?"

  "I need you to run the Montgomery photos," I say through my teeth.

  "Nuh-uh. We both know where that leads."

  "Tuija. You will run the story."

  She pretends to wring an invisible neck, clutching empty air. "I'm not going to let you commit career suicide like that. We've been through this."

  I thrust a fist toward one of my silent news screens; it lands just inches from the display. "What in hell's name do you call this, then? GNS may as well throw me a whole Suicide Ball." Rachel's parents flicker up on the report, their tired eyes and drawn mouths all puckered and ready to accuse. Please, please don't let them talk. They took the money. They aren't supposed to talk.

  Everybody wants to empathise with them, as if it somehow validates every fault they possess.

  "This will blow over," Tuija insists. "It just all colluded at the wrong time—you and Leo making your little announcement, and Rachel Fordham pulling a Shawshank Warden on your ass. It's unfortunate, but I promise it will go away."

  "Oh, will it fuck!"

  "The last bad thing went away," she mutters. "Aeron. Look at me."

  I try, but all I can see is the money I've spent her. Tuija is this thing I've made, and now she's trying to undo me; I was made by my mother, the dark she created, and look how that ended. History on repeat.

  No matter which angle I come in from, Tuija's just tits and ass and painted lips and bottled hair. Capped teeth. A pop-culture perfect body sprayed with honey and rolled in bank notes. I could throw a match at her and she'd catch light in a second. Frankenklein.

  "Run the damn story, firecracker."

  She lowers her gaze. Folds her arms. "I don't like you like this. I'm worried. You're not yourself."

  "You heard me."

  She brings balled fists to her mouth and bleats into them, exasperated. "Well don't say I didn't warn you."

  I roll back on my office couch to stretch my bunched-up muscles. "I don't need your warnings, Tuij. I just need you to do what you're told."