“I know.”
“And I wanted to spend more time just… dealing. Adjusting. I wanted to take some time off before I started a job, especially because you were working so much. I think things would have gone better if I’d spent the time with you, rather than going to work and learning way too much about this case that’s going to burn me, big time. It’s bad, okay? It’s really, really bad. And the press convinced my own mother that you’re cheating on me and… it’s a lot to take in.” Hot tears spilled from my eyes. How had I turned this conversation to me and my problems?
“I never meant to force you to go to work.”
“Whenever I said I didn’t want to, you said it was ‘out of the question’. I know you meant it to be supportive, but there was literally no way to tell you I was serious. I tried.”
His shoulders sagged and I felt even more awful.
This wasn’t fair to him. He hadn’t force marched me into the lab. I could have just refused to go, announced that I wouldn’t start work immediately and spent time with him in LA instead. “Okay, wait-”
“You wanted to be a forensic scientist long before you ever met me.”
“I know-”
“I just didn’t want to derail you. You’ve had to change so much about your life to be with me.”
“I know you meant well. I do. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to just start complaining here. Listen, let’s just drop it.”
He sighed, put his elbows on the table and his forehead in his hands.
“Okay, let me put it like this,” I said. “You derailed me in a good way. I mean, I wanted to take a break from the career ladder because I had something even better I wanted to do. I have this husband I love more than anything, and I really do not want to hurt your feelings right now. Or ever, really.” And, I thought, if I’d put off starting work, he wouldn’t have had the chance to hang around with his ex-girlfriend while I wasn’t there.
“Thanks.”
“No, I really mean it. I love you.” I stopped eating and dug a little. I wasn’t good at expressing things close to my heart. The reason Jason and my mother’s jibes about me holding grudges hurt was because I knew they were true. My reason, though, wasn’t because I couldn’t forgive, it was because I couldn’t deal with my own emotional pain so I just left it to stew. “I never had anyone I trusted growing up. This new situation is… it’s really good.” I cringed at the lame wording. Was “good” really the best adjective I could come up with?
He nodded. “Seems like I can’t do anything right.”
“I never said that.”
“Which one of my movies changed you as a person?”
“Jason…”
“Have I ever broken the fourth wall for you?”
“Okay, I kind of remember that term from English class but… not really.”
“If I quit, they’d replace me in five minutes. Get another guy with blue eyes who works out-”
“If that were true, why are you booked up with so many projects? It’s you people want.”
“Fifty years from now, they won’t even remember who I am.”
“Well… same here.” I shrugged. “It’s… you know… hard to go down in history no matter what you do.”
“Oh, so now I’m being arrogant?”
“No. I just think you’re being too hard on yourself.”
“Vicki thinks I can do it, that I can act a role that’ll break me out of my typecast. She thinks I’ve got what it takes to be brilliant.”
I did not have to care what Vicki thought.
“I don’t know anything about acting,” I said. “I mean, if I got upset about whether or not I could use a comparison microscope to its best effect, what would you be able to say to me about that? Nothing. You’ve probably never even seen one.”
“I have.”
“Do you get my point? Or are you saying you wish you were with someone who knew more about what you do?” Say no, I thought. Please.
“Just someone who believed in me.”
That wasn’t a no. I felt like he’d punched me square in the chest. But rather than let myself show the hurt, I punched back. After all, he wasn’t playing fair. He’d married me. He had no right to make comparisons with other women. The ring on my finger said, as far as I was concerned, that our love life was between him and me, no third parties. “I do believe in you. I believe you can figure these things out for yourself. If you want to be a great actor, I support you, but you’re right. I can’t do much to help you. And I’m sorry. I really am.”
He just brushed that off and kept eating.
We finished the rest of the meal in silence. I wanted to stay angry, but I was also terrified of his anger. What would I do if Jason gave up on us and left me? I’d let myself fall in love with him. I’d trusted him completely. What if I’d made a mistake?
Clayborn paced in her office, furious. “We’ve got to find the father. Nobody’s seen him since the kidnapping. It’s been five days.”
Mitchell, her supervisor, sat in one of the chairs on the opposite side of her desk. “You had any sleep since all this began?”
“Could you sleep?”
“We have to, Clayborn. Life goes on. Killing yourself in the pursuit of justice defeats the purpose.”
“I just gotta find the kid’s father.”
“If he loves his daughter and he’s got her, he’ll-”
“Wait, repeat that?”
“If he loves-”
“You’re a genius.” She made a beeline for the door.
“Clayborn! What are you doing?”
I called Kyra after dinner and she asked if she could come over. This seemed like a good diversion from my fight with Jason. Fifteen minutes later she was at our door.
The first thing she said when I let her in was, “So, on the drive here are at least fifty arrows in day glo spray paint with, ‘Jason V. House’ written over them. Gotta love fans.” She was dressed down in loose jeans and minimal makeup.
“Are you serious?” I said.
“If you get bombarded with people tomorrow morning, you’ll know why. There was an APD cruiser checking them out, though. They’ll get painted over. You know, after everyone takes pictures with their phones and uploads a map onto the internet.”
“Thanks for the warning. Were they sprayed on walls or what?”
“Nope, in the road. Big old arrows in the road telling people which lane to get in and everything.”
“Well, thanks for letting me know. We’ll have to get rid of them somehow.” I wasn’t even sure how one went about painting over stuff on asphalt. The stupid things I was likely to learn just because of my celebrity marriage.
Kyra looked past me. “Where’s Jason?”
I took her with me to the living room, where Jason sat on the floor, tapping away at his iPad. He looked sidelong at Kyra, then lifted his head. “Yes?”
She looked at me, then at him, then at the floor.
This was the room with the six foot television and surround sound system. Picture windows showed mostly the Sandias, which were now black against a deep, royal blue sky. Directly overhead, the cathedral ceiling was made out of gold and green stained glass in an ivy pattern. This room was the size of the house I’d lived in during undergrad, or so it seemed.
Kyra was completely unfazed by it. She’d known Jason since she was a little girl.
“Something happen with Zach?” I asked.
“There’s kind of this fact about Zach that I left out.”
“Who’s Zach?” said Jason.
“The reason I didn’t come home that one night. When Chloe was at the crime scene?”
Jason blinked. “Zach Wechsler?”
“Wait, what?” I cut in. Zach Wechsler was a member of a boy band that had the current number one single in the US. Ninety percent of the lyrics were “Nah-nah”, and that’s pretty much all I knew about them.
“He had a small part in Insider,” said Jason.
That was one of Jason’s upcoming
movies. Kyra had worked for the catering company on the set.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“Okay, so what really happened that night?” I asked. I wondered why she was telling this to Jason. It was as good as telling it directly to Jen.
“Everything I said, only, yeah. It’s Zach Wechsler and it was a hotel room that we were in, talking. His band stopped here on their tour. They played Journal Pavilion, remember?”
I didn’t.
“Kyra,” said Jason. “You’ve gotta be careful. You don’t go into a situation like that alone. Zach’s not just some guy, he’s a guy with a small army of people who control his world. All of them versus you? Bad stuff can happen.”
“But it didn’t. My friends were watching DVDs and thinking this was so cool, and I accidentally fell asleep and… they all sneaked out because they assumed that he and I were… you know.”
“How did the tabloids not pick this up?” I asked.
Both Kyra and Jason looked at me.
“I’m nobody,” she said. “You think some random Hispanic girl leaving Zach Wechsler’s room in the early morning is news? And my friends don’t talk.” That was a good point. Any friends of hers would have to be used to her famous connections, and not cashing in on them.
“Right,” said Jason. “Girls hooking up with famous guys rarely make an impression.”
“Unless you’re Jason Vanderholt hugging some random girl who’s just had dinner with his family,” said Kyra, “and even that picture only made it onto a few sites.” No one at UNM had begun to point at me even after that picture went up on TMZ.
“But Kyra,” said Jason, “because you’re under the radar like that, you really have to be careful. His corporate machine could eat you alive. A lot of guys like him think they’re above the law and human decency, and they’re kind of right.”
“Okay, wait, let’s stop lecturing here,” I said. “What do you need help with? Did something else happen?”
“I like him.”
Jason heaved a sigh and got to his feet. “Listen, Kyra… even if he likes you, he’s not a person. He’s a brand. He doesn’t have control over his own life. Where he’s at right now? I’ve been there, kind of. Whatever he does has to be spun one way or another by his ‘team’, and his mother’s famous for being a stage mom on crack. A girlfriend probably isn’t in the cards right now. She wouldn’t allow it. And a non-famous girl who’s a racial minority… I know that’s completely unfair, but that’s how the world is sometimes.”
Kyra nodded. “So what did you do when you were there? When you were that kind of famous?”
“Well, I slept around and partied constantly and kind of missed out on the bad side of it. Let my people just handle whatever. I don’t know. Nobody was micromanaging me like Zach’s mom. But if I’d met Chloe back then-”
“I’d have been twelve,” I said.
“If I’d met my soul mate back then-”
“I’m not looking for soul mates,” said Kyra. “Gimme a break. I’m eighteen. I just want to date a guy I like.”
“Honest advice? Pick another guy. Later in his career, when he’s got more control, then maybe, but right now is the worst possible time. He’s worth too much money as a mascot for his band and he’s too new to fame to have much control over his people.”
She nodded. “Okay. Guess I just needed to hear it.” She bit her lip and scuffed her toe against the carpet, looking for all the world like a normal teenage girl with normal teenage problems.
“You want ice cream?” I asked.
“Loads.”
“That I can provide.”
“Kyra, sorry to harp,” said Jason, “but when you go into Hollywood-mega-star-world, you let me arrange it. I’m serious. It’s an alternate universe. Zach Wechsler isn’t some frontman for a little indie garage band who used to work at WalMart. He’s got a lot of people, a lot of money, and a lot of power. They could really do a number on you. If you see him again, you’re going to have my people backing you up, we clear? Level the playing field.”
I remembered Dave’s warning to me. What happened behind closed doors didn’t necessarily happen at all, as far as the rest of the world knew. Money, and the loyalty it bought, could hide a multitude of sins.
“Yeah, okay,” said Kyra.
I led her up the stairs to the kitchen, where we dug out some gourmet ice cream and split a carton. Her melancholy seemed to lift a notch with every bite we pried loose with our spoons. She even shouted, “Hey, so I’m taking socially irresponsible Libby out of your socially responsible, climate controlled, four car garage and going home,” to Jason on her way out.
“Who let you park in the garage?”
“I love you, too.”
Once she was gone, I returned to the living room and sat down on the floor with Jason, who’d returned to his iPad.
He looked up at me. “You all right?”
I shook my head. “Are you thinking of leaving me for Vicki Hanson?”
“What kind of question is that?” His pushback made me quake. A few words from him, and the foundations of my life could shift in a drastic way.
“One you should answer honestly, right now.”
He set his iPad aside and looked me in the eye. Whatever it was he saw there, fear, perhaps, or sadness, made his shoulders slump. “No,” he said. “Never.”
I nodded and palmed a couple of tears from my eyes. “Have you ever asked Dave to lie for you?”
“Huh?”
“Just… have you?”
“What lie did he tell you?”
“I’m asking. Would you ever ask him to lie for you?”
“Yeah. I’ve had him lie and say I wasn’t somewhere or that I was busy on a certain day or whatever. Of course.”
“He told me never to trust him. Never let him know where I am so that-”
“Oh.”
“He just said-”
“Okay, I get it now.”
“Get what now?”
“Why you dropped in early on Saturday. Why you still have your own bank account and didn’t tell me your flights.”
My own bank account seemed like a peripheral issue. I just had never gotten around to closing it down. Now was not the time to tell him about the credit cards I still had in my name only – I’d changed my name, but not added him to the account, and it never occurred to me to even think about why. “I don’t want to not trust you. I just feel in over my head sometimes, and I don’t know if the way the media is behaving about you and Vicki is normal. If it just gets like this sometimes, or if they’re actually on to something. I haven’t been married to you long enough to know what normal is.”
“There is no normal. They’re completely unpredictable. Sometimes they find out a truth with CIA level precision, and sometimes they’ll pick up on the stupidest, easy to disprove rumor and pass it around for months. And… I need to remember you’re from a broken home, so fine. You’ve got your trust issues and quirks. Be sneaky if it makes you feel better.”
“It doesn’t. I don’t want a marriage like that.”
“Then let’s be a normal couple and you tell me when you’re coming. Forget my staff, you don’t have to talk to them if you don’t want to, and if you want to surprise me sometimes, fine. You can do that too, for the fun of it. Or to check up on me but pretend you’re doing it for the fun of it.”
I nodded. Seemed simple enough. “Is Dave in trouble now?”
“For caring about you so much that he’d jeopardize his career? No.”
I took a deep breath. That was part of the issue dealt with, the easy part. “Okay, so about Vicki… The stuff you say about her is… hard to hear. That she believes in you and I supposedly don’t.”
He picked at the carpet. “I still want to be your hero. Maybe it’s old fashioned of me. Maybe it’s an ego thing. If you think what I do is great, that would mean the world to me.”
“Okay… I do think you’re great. I don’t really remember what breaking the fourth wall
even means. And I’m sorry.”
“Making you forget you’re watching a movie. Living the experience like it’s real life. The fourth wall is the barrier between the audience and the actor, the constant understanding that it’s all fiction. You see a fictional character die, and you know it’s fiction. Every actor dreams of being so powerful that a character’s death is like a real death to the audience.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve never done that for you, have I?”
“Not exactly like that. But I mean… you’ve done gladiator movies, which are always gonna look like fiction in the twenty-first century. Your crime dramas, I’m always going to be aware of the inaccuracies in how the criminal justice system works.”
“I want that not to matter.”
“Okay… just don’t go turning to other women over stuff like that. Keep it between us.”
“Fine.”
“Because there are plenty of women who’ll say anything you want to hear.”
“Good point.”
“And Vicki has an agenda and is, by your own admission, a really good actress.”
“She’s not like that, but fine. Okay.”
I took a deep breath and pushed on ahead, going deeper. “Do you still have feelings for Vicki?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“What do you feel for her?”
“Attraction.”
“Ouch, Jason.”
“I’m bad at this. You just tell people how it is and come off as trustworthy and no-nonsense. Me, I’m coming off as a jerk, aren’t I? I’m just trying to tell you everything. We’re married, but we’ll still feel attraction for other people sometimes. We won’t do anything about it. We won’t pursue it, and I’m trying to tell you about it so that you know I’ll tell you anything.”
Well, I thought, I could pick a fight over whether that was a good idea, or I could trust Jason enough get to the bottom of this and feel better. “So you’re attracted to her?” I forced my voice to stay steady.
“Let me tell you what I don’t like about her. I don’t like that she played games all those years by not returning my phone calls and was arrogant enough to think it wouldn’t make any difference, that fate or destiny or whatever was on her side. I don’t like that she got mad at me for living my life, meeting the woman of my dreams, and getting married. I’m not actually interested in pursuing anything with her, but I’ll always feel a connection with her. We’ll always be friends. And I hate seeing her career going down the drain.”
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