He shrugged. “The late nineties were a confusing time,” he said, reaching over and taking the tape out of my hand. “But that’s not who you’re thinking about tonight, is it?”
He had me there. “How do you know?”
He picked up a postcard from where I’d let it fall by my side and for a terrifying moment I panicked, thinking he would read it aloud and demand an explanation. Instead, he handed it back to me, Guinness logo facing up. “Because no man who would have broken your heart like this would have made you a tape,” he said. “CD, maybe, but no one outside of Williamsburg has made a mix tape since 1998 at the absolute latest.”
“Except George Parker Lennox,” I said, pointing to the tape on my dresser.
“Except George Parker Lennox,” he said in agreement. “But my point is, as long as I’ve known you, Jett, you’ve carried around some kinda hurt that could only have happened recently. You’re always looking over your shoulder like you’re running from something, holding your heart in a lock box you don’t seem to have the key to.”
“You got me,” I said. I put the postcard in the box and sucked in a long, slow breath. “This guy, Catch, my best friend through the end of college and into grad school. I can’t get into it tonight; it’s too complicated and I’d probably have to draw you a diagram. But no matter how I tell it, the end is the same. He’s gone because I didn’t mean enough for him to stick around.” It wasn’t even that simple, it wasn’t even that kind. Catch had the ability to love me better than any man I’d known and damage me just the same. The night he walked out, a coldness had settled into my soul, a chill I could never escape.
The chill was there until Sid put his arms around me. Sid understood everything as though by instinct, like our souls were such precise photocopies that we’d forgotten which one of us was the original. I began to feel warmth in the piece of my heart that I’d long given up for dead. And for a moment, I forgot about Catch.
Even with a face like a raw steak, Sid still had a proud beauty to him. His eyes got a glazed, feral distance as the pills kicked in. I remembered that look from the nights Catch would drink that last glass of wine and brush my mouth with his fingertips while I held my breath, resisting the urge to take one in my teeth, taste him on the tip of my tongue. Sometimes he’d tell me he adored me, stopping just short of saying love until one night the dreaded word spilled out of him. A drunk man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts, he’d said, breath fragrant with wine, mouth just inches from mine. It wasn’t the first—or the last—time he’d said it, but that moment is frozen in time, crystalline, so easily shattered that I never dared to touch it, worried it would break and the two of us would just go back to being normal, terrified of how we made each other feel.
Sid took my chin between his fingers and my breath caught hard in my chest. He turned my face to his and kissed me. I could still taste the mint of his toothpaste.
“I have so much to tell you,” he whispered, mouth against mine. “But you wouldn’t believe me if I told you tonight.”
Chapter 42
LEARNING THE HARD WAY
I woke up to the faint sound of a kettle about to boil. Baldrick was sleeping in the space that Sid had been in the night before. How is it, I asked myself, that I couldn’t feel 160 pounds of man rise just inches away from me but could hear a teakettle across the apartment and through a closed door? I looked at the clock. Six thirty A.M.
Sid was showered, dressed, and stirring coffee grounds in the French press. “Good mornin’, darlin’,” he said, pushing down on the plunger. “I didn’t want to slip out without leaving you some coffee.”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“The office,” he said. “Not all of us can take ourselves off the books.”
His left eye socket was the color of a sliced-open plum. The swelling in his lips had gone down a little, but he still had a nasty cut on his cheek. “Sid,” I said. “You cannot go in looking like that.”
“I cannot afford to miss work,” he said. “As it is, I’ll be lucky if I’m only a half an hour late and no one asks how my weekend went.”
“At least let me do something about that bruise,” I said. “Make us some coffee and I’ll see what I can dig up.”
I found a sample of bareMinerals in Fairly Light and a cotton ball from the bottom of my grandmother’s bathroom drawer, and while we sipped our coffee I smeared the powder on as much of his face as I could cover. “You’re a little more olive,” I remarked. “But it will at least take some of that color out. What are you going to say if someone asks?”
“The truth,” he said, washing down another Vicodin with a sip of coffee. “That I got mugged.”
“Maybe they’ll send you home anyways,” I said. “In which case, get some more clothes and come back here.”
He looked up from under his lashes. He was so goddamn beautiful that I wanted to make him the wallpaper on my phone. “You mean that?”
“Of course,” I said. “You think I’m going to let you go home to Terry like that?”
He let out a half breath, half laugh. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, yeah. For a few days. I’ll do that.”
“And I’ll go on a Trader Joe’s run,” I said. “We can hit the Redbox when you get back from work.”
He stood up and kissed me on the cheek. Then he bent a little further and kissed me—quick—on the mouth. “It’ll be like playing house,” he said.
After he left, it was all I could do not to dance around the apartment. I didn’t even know what this feeling was. Love? Joy? A grown-up version of the thrill you get when your mom says your best friend can stay the whole weekend? I was giddy in a way I had forgotten I could feel. I kissed Baldrick on the head, put on Sid’s copy of the Psychedelic Furs’ Mirror Moves, and spun around the living room. This was heaven, I mouthed along. This was the whole of our hearts. I didn’t care that it was only seven A.M. If this was what early mornings looked like, I would get up with the sunrise for the rest of my life.
When I was finished dancing, I took a shower and used Sid’s still-damp towel. Everything he’d touched suddenly seemed precious and holy and terrifying all at once. What if two days from now, when the drugs and the fear and Cinderella wore off, he realized that this was not meant to be, that the kisses and the two nights we’d slept beside each other were out of loneliness and need and nothing more? I couldn’t stand the thought.
I filed away his record and put Pretenders II on in the background while I washed out our coffee cups. The phone rang. Philip wanted me to come in whenever I could get a minute. I didn’t have any other plans for the morning, so I got dressed in jeans and a cardigan and my Doc Martens. Outside it was foggy and cool, but it would be summer by the afternoon. Maybe Sid and I would go out for a walk.
There was a newspaper stand on the corner and even from halfway down the block I recognized the face on the cover.
Cinderella. GLASS STRIPPER NABBED IN ROBBERY PLOT! the headline screamed.
Sid was going to kill me.
I HAD MEANT to tell Sid everything, but we’d gotten so wrapped up in that strange happiness that I hadn’t wanted to disturb the moment by reminding him of the girl who’d rolled him. And I sure as hell didn’t expect it to make the front page of the tabloids. It wasn’t that big of a bust.
Maybe the next murder I got myself wrapped up in would be sexier, I thought as Lauren opened the door to Philip’s office and showed me in.
Philip smiled, but it did nothing to settle my nerves. “You know,” he began as I passed him the bag, “I have never had an assistant as good as you. I wish there was a way I could promote you, but this will have to do until I figure that out.” He set a small lavender box between us. “Go on, open it.”
I convinced my trembling hands to slip off the bow and it opened to reveal a slim silver cuff bracelet with my name etched in delicate script. “It’s beautiful,” I breathed. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “I figured that you deser
ved something pretty you could wear on the outside.”
I slipped it onto my left wrist, admiring the way it caught the dim light of his office. But even though our jewelry looked nothing alike, all I could think of was KitKat, the bracelet she’d treasured, the one she’d been buried without. Before I could stop them, my eyes started to tear up.
“Jett?” Philip asked. “Is everything all right?”
I started bawling. I was at a dead end. Two days ago I had been so sure that it was all about to come together, but with Sid and Cinderella, I’d lost track of everything I’d had. And now I was going to lose Sid, and I had to confess to Philip that I hadn’t followed his advice to leave this case alone. If I was lucky, I’d be able to keep the bracelet when he fired me.
He looked like he wasn’t quite sure what to do, but he opened his drawer, got out a white handkerchief, and passed it to me. I wiped my eyes and he waited with his hands folded on his chest for me to get myself together. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I really love the bracelet—it’s just . . .”
I blurted out the whole story. I even told him about my search for her killer, despite his warning to me not to. He listened like I was telling him a fairy tale before bedtime. And when I’d gasped myself to the dead end, he leaned forward, hands still folded, face unreadable.
“I know I told you not to dig into this case,” he began. “But I’m actually impressed with how you’ve handled it.”
“How?” I sniffled. “I didn’t solve it. I don’t think it’s going to be solved, and Bronco’s going to go to prison.”
“I wish I knew what to tell you,” he said. “I really do. I wish I could impart some sort of PI wisdom to help you crack the case. But it’s never as easy as it looks on TV. Most of the time, the bad guys get away. Hopefully they just don’t send an innocent guy to jail in their place. Tell you what,” he said, opening his drawer again. “I know a couple good lawyers, real sharks, but they get the job done. I’ll put in some calls and see if one of them will take your friend’s case. It’s not much, but it’s a start.” He set down two business cards and a packet of his lingerie between us. “Just do me one more favor,” he said.
“Anything,” I said. And I meant it. A fair chance for Bronco was worth whatever he wanted from me.
He pointed to the bracelet. “Just keep it covered until you get out of here,” he said with a wink. “Wouldn’t want the other temps to get jealous.”
Chapter 43
WHAT A FOOL BELIEVES
Waiting for Sid to get back was utter agony. I paced the apartment in silence, checking my phone every few minutes to see if he’d texted. I made rationalizations to myself: The paper might be sold out by the time he gets home; he wouldn’t have noticed it out of the corner of his eye if it was still almost swollen shut. More than once, I had to lie down and take long, slow breaths like I’d learned in my college yoga class. I got a B in that class. Who gets a B in yoga? Someone who can’t calm down, that’s who.
The phone finally rang and I dove for it. “Did you see the paper this morning?” Gloria gushed. She was snapping gum that sounded like gunshots.
“I did,” I replied. “You worked fast—how’d it go down?”
“Turns out Fairy Tales is a favorite spot for cops,” she said. “And not just for the girls. They’d been looking at the owner for drugs, which he doesn’t do because he’s actually a pretty decent guy, and I’m not dumb enough to do my part-time gig at my full-time job. But when word came down from an anonymous source—let’s just say she’s mad cute and leave it at that—that guys were getting rolled, they shifted their priorities.” She snapped her gum again. “Fun fact: you can’t blow bubbles with nicotine gum,” she said. “So Cinderella was working a couple other guys on the line when Sid wasn’t around, and when she took that mark out back, someone other than Tommy followed—they caught her right in the act. Guy still ended up in the hospital, but only a couple of bruises.”
“They got Tommy too?”
“Of course,” she said. “And Cinderella will flip on him like a pancake breakfast. She’ll probably skate on a misdemeanor, but she won’t be back at Fairy Tales, that’s for damn sure. And that’s all I care about. But hey, one of the detectives slipped me a fifty on a twenty-dollar lap dance. I’ll rat out the other dancers on parking tickets if it means he’ll come back.” She laughed.
I wanted to laugh with her, but I kept looking at the clock, wondering when—and if—Sid would walk back through my door. The buzzer rang, rattling both me and Baldrick nearly out of our skins. He skittered under the bed and I mumbled some kind of good-bye to Gloria. Now was the moment of truth.
At least he came back, I told myself as I waited the three anxious minutes for him to climb the stairs. And when Sid finally did arrive in my doorway, he had a copy of the paper under his arm. I stepped aside and he tossed it down on the table. Neither of us spoke.
“Not the most flattering photo of her,” he finally said.
“Sid—”
He held up his hand. “Save it, Jett,” he said. He crossed the room and sat on the radiator, staring out the window for a minute before he spoke again. “I thought I was special to her,” he said. “I thought she felt for me the same way I felt for her. I’m not even so mad that she rolled me, but to find out she was doing this to other guys too? That I wasn’t her first, or even her last, mark? I couldn’t even be special enough to be the only guy she robbed in the alley.” He ran his hand through his hair, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. I stood there, hanging on his every word.
“I thought she was angry at me,” he said. “I thought I’d done something wrong, disrespected her, like I deserved it somehow. That in itself was the fairy tale, some weird horrid hope that I could earn her forgiveness. But there wasn’t any to be had. I was just a target. So not only has my heart been broken—I really did love her, Jett—but I feel like an idiot for falling in love in the first place.”
I crept up behind him and put my arms around his shoulders. He leaned back into my hold. “One day I’ll be grateful for this,” he said, stroking my arm with a firm hand. “One day I’ll thank Gloria for letting me bleed all over her fishnets. And one day I’ll thank you for being right about Cinderella all along.” He let out a long sigh. “But tonight, all I’m asking is that you please let me mourn. Go get us a bottle of cheap cabernet and let me play a bunch of depressing records and drink too much and maybe even cry. Just give me that, Jett, and tomorrow I’ll be fine. I promise. I just need tonight.”
I put on the Smiths’ Strangeways, Here We Come and left him with the A-side while I went and bought wine. He drank two glasses in the living room and played “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” three times while I made dinner. I joined him until all the records were played and the bottle was empty. And when we went to bed, I held him in the darkness as he let out a handful of soft sobs before surrendering to sleep.
Chapter 44
EVERYTHING FALLS APART
Aside from his preexisting injuries and a mild headache, Sid kept his promise about being better in the morning. He was almost cheerful as he made coffee, dressed in clothes I’d smuggled out of his apartment, let me smear more concealer on his fading bruises, and kissed me before heading into work.
I had just put shampoo in my hair when I heard the phone ringing. I dove out of the shower to grab it, hoping it was work. It had been almost a week since I’d been called in for anything other than laundry, and not only was my fridge nearly empty, my student loan was also coming due. As badly as I wanted the time to work on KitKat’s case, I wasn’t going to solve anything if I had to move back in with my parents.
Instead it was Reese, creator, in part, of the Boyfriend Box. I hadn’t talked to him since Christmas, when he’d come to New Jersey for obligatory family gatherings. Whenever he was home, we made it a point to get together and catch up on everything we couldn’t say over e-mail or Facebook.
“Didn’t actually expect you to pick up,” he said by
way of hello. “What the hell are you doing up this early?”
I didn’t want to tell him I was standing naked in my living room, dripping water and cheap shampoo all over the carpet. “Could ask you the same thing,” I said, taking the phone with me back to the bathroom to grab a towel.
“I’m not up,” he said. “I haven’t gone to bed yet. I’ve been playing Gun Shy all night. I got the fucking Uzi! It’s insane, best game of the year.”
“You say that about every game you play,” I teased.
“That’s because games keep getting better,” he scoffed. “But I didn’t call to talk about video games. I’ve got some bad news, and I hate to be the one to tell you this early in the morning. Really wish you’d just stayed in bed.”
“If you’d had the man I had in my kitchen making coffee, you’d be up at the crack of dawn too,” I said.
“If there was a man in my kitchen making coffee I’d be telling the fucking police that there was a lunatic in my house using up all my fucking coffee,” Reese said. “But if that’s the case, maybe this won’t sting so badly. Is he still there?”
“He went to work,” I said. “Reese, just spit it out.”
“Catch’s getting married,” he said. “To Amanda. Saw it on Facebook this morning, thought I should be the one to break the news to you before you saw it someplace else. I’m sorry.”
I could see Amanda as though she was standing in front of me, the impossibly beautiful curve of her bronzer-brown back marred with a Playboy bunny tramp stamp peeking out over the top of her low-rise jeans. Catch’s lean, pale hand had covered the tattoo as he’d slid his tongue into her mouth, stealing a kiss in the stucco kitchen of my $350-a-month basement apartment like I wasn’t standing there with dinner for two just out of the oven. It was the Killers’ “Mr. Brightside” come to life right in front of me.
The Big Rewind Page 17
