by Ana Sparks
“Why?”
“It was just wrong,” I sighed.
“I think we just proved that statement wrong,” Billy said, rising up on his elbow. He blew at my sweat-drenched blond curls, which coiled around my ears. “And I think, if you let me stay, we can try a second round.”
I bit my lip, teetering on letting him stay. But I forced myself to remember my mother, my home, and my old friends. Nothing about Billy would mix with what I was returning to.
I got up from the mattress, reaching for a pair of shorts and a T-shirt from a pile of clean clothes. I sat on the edge of the bed, waiting. The pressure grew in the room.
“You really want me to go, don’t you?” he asked, sounding stunned.
“I really do.” I was reluctant, hating the feeling of the words on my tongue. His body lay, glistening, on my bed, eager and waiting for me. But I was showing him the door.
“I really didn’t want to hurt you with this Clark Lambert bullshit,” Billy said, rising up wiping his forehead. He rolled to the side of the mattress and sat up. “We just couldn’t avoid each other—meeting you was fate.”
“We could have.” I laughed, if only slightly. The anger was returning. I was reminded that he had endangered my life. That Clark Lambert had been robbed, and that Clark Lambert knew my face—in connection with the thief. I shivered, pointing toward the door. “If I’m ever going to get packed to leave the country, then I need you to get out of here.”
Billy scratched the side of his nose, assessing me. “This is really goodbye, isn’t it? You don’t want to find any way of reaching each other, later on in life?”
I imagined it, for a brief moment. Five years down the line, after Clark Lambert had “let it go” or “given up.” When we could come together on the London Eye—be it metaphorical, or not—and “meet each other” properly. Maybe even fall in love, if we wanted to.
“It’s just the wrong time,” I sighed, opening the door and heading out into the living room. I collected his suit, and handed it back to him awkwardly. Strands of my hair stuck to my neck, still sweaty from sex. “I’m sorry.”
I watched him dress. It was the worst few minutes of my life. He slid his boxers over his hips, shrugging, and then pulled his shirt over his shoulders. I tried to memorize his abdomen, his thighs. I tried to remember the way he had cupped my breasts, with such tenderness. Nobody else would ever be like him, and I was sending him away.
I ramped up my outward anger, not wanting to allow him any chance of making me change my mind. I could see him saying one wrong word, smiling at me in a strange way. If it hit me right, I would ask him to marry me, to be with me for the rest of my life. It was dramatic, girlish, and stupid. I fixed my posture and glared at him.
“I hope you never do anything like this to another girl again,” I said.
“What? Make her feel something?” Billy retorted. He finished buttoning his pants and entered the living room to find his shoes. “Make her feel like she’s the only woman I want to be around?”
I didn’t speak. I watched as he reached for the door handle. My head spun with thoughts. You’re making a big mistake. You should tell him to stay. This might be your only chance at love in your life. Why won’t you listen to your gut on this?
Is the gut ever right? Is it ever wrong?
But I let him leave. It was all I could do. I watched as he closed the door behind him, as he cranked on the engine of his sister’s black, beat-up car. I watched as he pulled away from the curb and drove away from Silver Lake, and away from me, as I stood in the center of the living room, unable to breathe. As his taillights disappeared around the corner, I allowed the sob that had been perched in my throat to escape my lips.
That was the last time I would ever see Billy Jay Johnston. I was certain of it. It felt sour, like I had allowed life to pass me by without doing a goddamn thing.
Chapter Twelve
Ruby
When I woke up the next morning, I watched the sun crest over the horizon. Standing on the front porch, I sipped my coffee, letting it burn my tongue and reminding myself, over and over, that Billy was gone and I had absolutely no way of knowing what would happen to him. I wouldn’t know his future. I would never know if he was okay.
And based on my experience with him, I really wasn’t sure he’d make it through his next “dealing” alive.
Brian arrived home at around seven, giving me a half-assed high-five as he entered the house. He reeked of pizza and booze. As he brushed his teeth, he came into the living room and analyzed me with soft, pity-filled eyes.
“You all right, champ?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Feeling reservations about going home yet?”
“I don’t really have a choice.”
“You always have a choice,” he slurred around his toothbrush. “Always.”
His words were haunting. I returned to my room and analyzed the small collection of “things” I had amassed since my move to Los Angeles. So many of them seemed like they belonged to a different person, to a different life.
There was the year I’d decided to be typecast as the “quirky girl,” and I’d tried to take on the role in my personal life—wearing feather boas and horn-rimmed glasses to friends’ parties. That collection went into the trash immediately. Then, there were the “L.A. woman” clothes. Summer dresses, torn and worn-out from years in the sun, which also went into to the trash. I definitely wouldn’t need those where I was going.
I chose a large suitcase from the top of my closet, deciding that whatever I could fit inside it, I would take home. But after a few hours of packing, I’d only filled half of it—everything else, I threw away. Shrugging, I opted for a smaller suitcase. I wondered, in an abstract sense, if it was better to just not bring anything. Maybe I could start over and live a new and better life. I would be able to forget California altogether. No one would have to know that I’d wasted four years of my life overseas.
Brian tried to keep me company in the days before my flight, but I was inconsolable. He offered to buy my car for a thousand dollars, and I tearfully accepted the money, asking if I could drive it around until the hour before I had to be at the airport.
He had agreed, and as I drove through Los Angeles, memorizing the roads, stopping at various areas of Mulholland Drive, I tried desperately to feel the magic that the city had once given me. But in the end, all I could see were the movie studios, each one I passed a reminder of my failed career. They looked so fake, each offering a different possibility to be a part of a different, fake world.
I had wanted to be a part of those worlds.
I tried to have a good, hard think about what I actually wanted to be. As I child, all I’d done was write, direct, and act in my own plays, which I’d performed for my mother, who had always praised my work with zeal. Perhaps I could become a writer? But being a writer was almost as difficult as getting into the acting game, and already it seemed too late.
Get a business degree, the back of my mind told me—the area of logic. Go work in an office. Drink free coffee, do your commute, and die when you’re able. This life had nothing for me. I wouldn’t let it take anything else of me, for nothing in return.
My flight left at five in the evening. It would take me to Vancouver for a short layover, before sending me all the way to London in the morning. When I arrived in London, it would be nighttime, but only the late morning in Los Angeles.
Before leaving on the final day, I hugged Brian goodbye, giving him my mum’s phone number just in case he found his way to England sometime. When I tried to call a cab on my phone, I found that my service had already been cut off. So, I hovered outside the house that was no longer my home, feeling like a fool, with my arm waving in the air.
Luckily, a cab saw me just a few minutes later. He skirted up, even coming out of the driver’s side to help me with my small suitcase. He opened the back door for me, looking into my dejected eyes and saying, “Where are you off
to, ma’am?”
I smiled, and hopped into the back. “Just the airport, thanks. Terminal B.”
“Terminal B. Going far away?”
“I’m going home.”
He turned on the engine and began to drive toward LAX, chatting to me amicably. I leaned my head against the chill of the window. His air conditioning was up full-blast, cooling my skin. I was grateful for that.
“Not a bad time to leave,” he said. “August is the worst time to be in L.A. No release from the heat. No escape! And London, you said? Well. That’ll be perfect weather.”
My ears perked up and I sat up in my seat. I paused, running my tongue along my teeth. I realized, with a jolt, that I hadn’t told him where I was going. Just the terminal..
“Um. I didn’t say where I was going,” I said, frowning into the rearview mirror. I knew that he could see me.
“Oh. Right. I just assumed, with the accent,” he said, his eyes flashing in the rearview mirror. “Where else would you go? Manchester?” He laughed, his voice high-pitched and false. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to excuse me. Us Yanks aren’t very good with geography.”
Something felt off to me. I hesitated, falling into words of apology. “Oh, no. It’s perfectly fine. Of course, you’d think I meant London!”
“Never been to London myself,” the cabbie continued. “Seen lots of photos, though. That Big Ben looks awful cool.”
“Hmm.” I’d begun to notice strange things out the window. I hadn’t been to the airport more than twice, but I couldn’t help but sense that we were heading in the opposite direction. I stuttered. “Isn’t the airport the other way?”
“This is a short cut,” the cabbie told me quickly, excitement making his words seem untruthful. “Most people don’t know about it. Cabbie secret. But this way, you don’t have to wait in that ridiculous line to get through the terminals. Get in, get out.”
“Hmm.”
I couldn’t follow what he was saying. Panic made my heart beat tumultuously in my chest. I wrapped my arm around my suitcase, wondering if I should open the door and jump out of the cab. I had seen people do it in the movies. The just flung themselves out of the moving vehicle, rolled down the asphalt and then walked away unscathed.
I doubted I would walk away from this. The car was going at least 40 or 50 miles per hour, which meant more than a bump and a bruise. The cab driver’s hands clenched the steering wheel, sensing the tension rising between us. He no longer spoke to me.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked him, my words quivering. The cabbie didn’t respond.
I pressed my face into my hands, trying to think. I almost wished that I knew some kind of prayer to say. Anything that would make me feel better about the possibility that I was about to be murdered and tossed into the back of somebody’s truck. Instead, I called my mother’s voice to mind. Her soothing me, when I’d had a bad day. Telling me I didn’t need those boys, or that friend—that I was better than any of them. I had believed her.
And now, I wasn’t going to see her again.
“Just tell me where we’re going,” I said, speaking in a low voice. “This isn’t fair. This is fucked up.”
“Shhh.”
The cab lurched down an exit ramp. I glanced around at the towering signs advertising fast food joints, a mall, and even a casino. I shuddered as we neared the casino, turning toward it. The cab stopped at the front doors, which glistened in the afternoon light.
“This is where you get off,” the cabbie said. “Ma’am.”
I scoffed, and kicked the door open. With my eyes burning, I said, “I would have paid you double what they offered you. Whatever they offered you.”
But before I could finish, two strong men with wide shoulders gripped me and yanked me out of the cab. I grabbed my suitcase at the last minute, clutching it to my chest, as the two burly men guided me into the casino. I made eye contact with the cabbie as I was dragged away. Tears streamed down my cheeks.
I struggled against their grip, pulling my arms away from them, succeeding in slowing our trajectory toward the front door. A few casino-goers paused, their eyes dizzy-looking, lost. So lost in their own gambling universe, they didn’t pay me much attention.I tried to stamp on one of the burly men’s shoes, but I was wearing only sandals, and it did absolutely nothing. Instead, he chuckled to his partner.
“She’s a live one, eh?”
They brought me inside, placing me on the flat, purple carpet. One of them pressed his finger against the tip of my nose, looking at me with small, beady, rat eyes. “You’re going to listen to us, got it?” he said. “It’ll just make it easier on everyone. Do you understand?”
“Who the hell is ‘us’?” I spat.
The men exchanged glances, clearly trying not to burst out into laughter. I felt meaningless. After a long moment of apprehension, I let my muscles relax. They led me past the various tables, the Blackjack and the Texas Hold ‘em. I closed my eyes near the slot machines, remembering the time my mum and I had played a round, winning a free dinner to the local pub. That had been six years ago.
Why on earth had I ever come to Los Angeles?
After walking down a long hallway, the men thrust me through a doorway, bringing me face-to-face with none other than Clark Lambert. He was sitting at the edge of a leather couch, his right foot up on his left knee, and a smile tracing across his pudgy cheeks. He gestured toward the plastic chair in front of him, saying, “Ah, my darling Claire. My English Rose. Please. Sit down.”
My heart sank as I understood, for the first time, what all this was about. The goons pushed me into the chair, and Clark rose from his seat. I felt fresh tears spring into my eyes. Pressing my lips together, I remained quiet, waiting. The tension in the room mounted.
“I suppose you know why you’re here?” Clark said, leaning close to me. I could smell the stench of his cigar breath.
I shook my head, maintaining eye contact as best as I could.
“Well, of course, you remember. We’ve met before, haven’t we, Miss—I’m sorry. I seem to have forgotten your name. Was it Claire Harrington?” The way his voice lifted in a singsong only added to my mounting anxiety.
I remained still, waiting for the ax to fall.
“Of course it wasn’t,” Clark boomed. “I should have known immediately. Some London upper-echelon bitch with an asshole who doesn’t even know how to dress himself properly. I used to know my own people better than this. That is my fault. Not totally yours.” He smiled, almost as if he were letting me off the hook. Still, his tone was biting.
“We fooled you,” I said, reverting back to my Coventry accent, leaning on its coarseness.
“Ah. The Midlands,” Clark said, tossing his head back. “So that’s it. Just a Midlands girl, trying to make her way through Los Angeles. And joining up with people like—oh, what was his name again?” His eyes danced toward his two goons, on either side of me. “Something ridiculous. Something painfully American. Ah—” He snapped his fingers, his face a ghoulish mask. “Billy Jay Johnston.”
I pressed my lips together, resigning myself to my fate. If Billy was hiding somewhere, then he should remain there. I didn’t want to be the cause of his downfall.
“Tell me, little lady. What do you know about Billy? Is he your boyfriend? Does he make you tick? Is he paying you off?” Clark leaned forward, his eyes dancing. Clearly, his curiosity took many paths. “Come on. Tell me everything you know about him and I’ll let you off pretty easy. You were the real talent back there at Fleur de Ville, I know that. But you weren’t the con artist. He was.”
I shifted in my seat, feeling the space behind my ears burn with fear. I shook my head, becoming lost as my eyes filled with tears. When I spoke, my words were gruff and angry, like the low-class Midlands kids I’d grown up with. You wouldn’t mess with them. Not then, and not now.
“I don’t know much about Billy Jay Johnston, besides his name,” I said. “I know he was somewhere in Brooklyn for a while. That his li
fe seems even more in the shitter than yours.” I glanced around the casino backroom. “I can’t believe you’d leave Wales for this grimy shithole in eastern Los Angeles. But I guess it’s your life to live.”
Clark leaned forward, scratching at his five o’ clock shadow. He grimaced. “If you don’t tell me something I can use, little girl, then I’ll make sure you never make it out of this casino. Let alone back home to the Midlands, where you obviously belong.”
I clenched my teeth and remained silent. In response, Clark began screaming every profanity in the book at me, calling me some horrific—albeit creative—names.
Chapter Thirteen
Billy
I met up with Everett to get the cash a few days after the robbery. We’d decided to let the heat die down, avoiding one another in the city until then. Everett had never been out to Los Angeles before, and I knew he’d dig it: walking up and down the boulevard at the beach, watching the women as they lay beneath the sun. It was a spectacular town, if a strange one, when compared to New York.
When we did meet up, it was late afternoon. I stood outside my sister’s beauty parlor, itching for a cigarette. I hadn’t smoked in three years.
Ruby had probably already left for England, and it was rubbing me wrong, making my heart ache. A girl hadn’t messed me up in a really long time. Even after all of that incredible passion that existed between us, she’d kicked me out. It was cold. It had felt heartless, and I couldn’t explain it. It was wrong.
Everett pulled up in a rental car, grinning madly at me. A bulging suitcase sat in the front seat. I leaned over the open passenger window, smiling back. We hadn’t had a heist together in a while, and it felt refreshing to be back on the perpetrating end. Out east, we were often protecting the bad guys. Here, we could work on whichever side we wanted.
“Hey, Ev. What’s good?”
“Just five million dollars, is all,” Everett said, tapping the suitcase. “Hope you don’t mind, I took a bit out so I could cover some of my expenses. The hotel, a hooker or four.” He laughed, showing his crooked teeth.
