Crowne Rules

by Reiss, CD

  “You’re not the only one who can keep a promise around here,” I reminded him, sounding much more confident than I felt. “I said I would. So, I’m going to.”

  “I can follow you. Which direction is it?”

  Well, I had no idea, and in order to find out, I had to move the light off the spider. It was sleeping or dead or more focused on catching a bug than biting a giant.

  “Come on, Mandy,” I whispered to myself. I’d never know if there were more spiders if I kept the light on that one.

  That logic got me to trace a path of light along the wet wood until it disappeared.

  “Toward the front door,” I said.

  The ceiling creaked. He was standing. He was going to walk faster than I could crawl.

  “Stay with me!” I cried.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  “You have to keep making noise so I know where you are.”

  I tapped on the ceiling above me as I shuffled along, and Dante followed the noise, his boot steps heavy and reassuring. Tapping meant I had to stop, so I talked instead.

  “Did you ever have such a gross excuse for a fling before?” I asked, noticing a dozen or so tiny spiders in a wet patch. Different species. Too small to bite.

  “I’ve never had to send a woman to war with an army of spiders, no.”

  “It’s just a platoon.”

  “Hm,” he said, and I noticed his voice was close again. The creaking spanned a wide area, as if he were riding a four-legged animal or crawling on his hands and knees. “We had an army installed.”

  “Maybe the rest are under my clothes.”

  “That’s where I’d like to be.”

  His comment reminded me of getting naked and checking my body for tiny spiders, then a bath, but reality cut into the fantasy. It was still a mess in the tub.

  “Are you taking pictures?” he asked.

  Shit. Right.

  “Yep.” I took out my phone and realized immediately why the thumb of the glove had been cut off. Dante Crowne thought of everything.

  I aimed into the darkness, hoping that the flash would scare off any further would-be spider assassins, and the crawlspace was drowned in light.

  “One Samanda,” I said, knowing the thunder wouldn’t come. Counting was just comfort, a joke to myself that lightning had struck inside the crawlspace and made me less afraid.

  Dante did too. He chased the fear away, but right then, I knew I had the tools to do it on my own. That was so shocking that I tried it again, taking more pictures and counting off the seconds before thunder didn’t come.

  It wasn’t as funny as the first time, but nothing ever is. And though I knew I could chase away my own fear if I needed to, fear was courageous, coming back like a leak you patched but never really fixed.

  “Good thing we set an expiration date,” I called up to Dante. “On us.”

  “Oh?”

  “Rules are helpful, you know?”

  “They are. Are you all right?”

  At his question, I realized I’d stopped moving. It wasn’t because of the spider that looked exactly like the one that had threatened me earlier. It was all me, realizing I was going back to LA without the rules I now found so helpful. The attackers back home were larger and had two legs. They ambushed, pounced, bit, and stung.

  Under pressure, I’d go back to my old self. I knew I would.

  Maybe I didn’t need Dante, but I needed the boundaries.

  “That’s why you hooked up with Veronica,” I said. My voice gave my limbs the will to move.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Veronica Hawkins,” I said as if he needed to be reminded of her last name. “I saw her… I was maybe twelve, at the mayor’s mansion Christmas party. One of the first big events my mother let me go to. I got lost coming out of the bathroom. It was late, and my cousins were gone, so I followed grown-up voices and ended up outside, and there’s this fountain. You know the one?”

  Though I heard the creaking of him crawling above me, I asked to make sure he was still paying attention.

  “Yes.”

  “She was with Mr. Hawkins. William. And he’s like… you know, this really tough guy. Even in a tuxedo, he walks around like he can either kiss you or kill you.”

  I could barely hear the little derisive laugh that shot out of him, but it was definitely there. And who could blame him? William Hawkins was known to be a toxic mix of smooth entitlement and pent-up anger.

  “And he was—well, I hadn’t really thought about it until now—but he was being kind of an asshole.” I ran the light along the top corner of the crossbeam, which was wet all the way down to the bottom edge. “He was grabbing her wrist really hard. You could tell it hurt. And it wasn’t what he said, because the fountain drowned it out, but there was this danger, this threat coming off him in every direction. I was literally too terrified to move.”

  The water collected at the bottom of the beam in a silvery rivulet that ran in the direction I’d come from and split in two directions. If I had to guess, I’d say one path led to my room and the other to the bathroom.

  “But,” I said, “she was amazing. Totally together. Once I saw her face, I was like, ‘Oh, he’s having a temper tantrum,’ and I just went back to the party.”

  “Did you find it?”

  It took me a second to realize what he was talking about. I was on a roll now, imagining how Veronica must have appeared to Dante then, as a boy learning how to be a man.

  “She stayed in her lane because she was afraid of her husband. She followed the rules. And that’s what you want.”

  “Amanda.” Dante’s voice was severe again, and I thought I’d overstepped some boundary. Instead, he asked, “Did you find it?”

  “I think so.” I knocked on the place where the dampness spread into a dark almond on the planks above.

  “Okay,” he said. “You can come down.”

  “Don’t you want me to see the damage over the bathroom? For the scope of work or whatever?”

  “I don’t want someone like her.” He avoided the practical question I’d asked in favor of an emotional one I hadn’t.

  “Oh?” I turned my body around like a clock, leaning elbows and knees on the beams.

  “You sure you’re okay down there?”

  “I’m heading toward the bathroom.” If he wasn’t going to worry about the job, I could do it for him.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “You said you don’t want someone like Veronica.”

  “Good.”

  Going back over familiar ground went quickly, but following the stream to the bathroom was slower. New spiders. A hornet’s nest. A dry stalactite from an ancient leak.

  “So,” I said because one of us had to talk before I freaked out again, “what do you want?”

  “In a woman?”

  “No, in a new car. Of course in a woman.”

  The kneepad slid off the edge of a beam and hit the insulation. The ceiling didn’t break, and I got back up on the beam. This crawlspace was treacherous.

  “She’s fun,” he said. “She doesn’t take herself too seriously. She holds onto friendships but lets go of grudges. She lives life as it’s handed to her, and she forgets herself all the time. Says the wrong thing because the truth isn’t always the right thing to say, but she says it to me because she trusts me.”

  “I like her.”

  Either the kneepads were really working, or I was getting used to discomfort, because the wood didn’t bite as hard. The view was getting grosser.

  “I like her too.”

  “When I get back to LA, I’ll keep all that in mind. Maybe I’ll hook you up on a date.” The words were barely out of my mouth when I identified them as lies.

  Sure, I’d used his body, and he’d used mine for emotion- and attachment-free sex.

  Sure, we were parting ways by nightfall.

  And sure, I was feeling more like the woman I always wanted to be.

  But
I wasn’t a saint. Dante was going to find a woman like he’d described—one who wasn’t anything like me—and he would be fine. I would run into the happy couple at some thing or another, and he and I would pretend we were old friends.

  I didn’t have to like it, and I certainly didn’t have to make it happen.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked. “Another Renaldo DeWitt?”

  “Ugh.”

  The disgust was for my ex and the black mold growing on the insulation between my elbows. No wonder there were fewer spiders this way.

  “There are plenty of men like him out there.”

  My pupils tightened. The light from the flashlight seemed dimmer as the hole in the bathroom ceiling chased away the dark. “No, thanks.”

  “Some are even single, if you’re into that sort of thing.”

  Fuck him for judging me, even if he didn’t sound judgmental.

  I needed this conversation to keep going so that I didn’t lose my mind. But also, I needed to tell Dante the truth. If I died of an undiagnosed mold allergy or the venom of a spider bite, I wanted him to think well of me—to understand why I’d done what I’d done, that I’d had a real reason and not just shallow, selfish desires.

  “Every man I’ve been with has been Renaldo, one way or another,” I insisted, opening my mouth to say things I shouldn’t have because the dark space was tight and cold and I felt utterly alone and squeezed in—yet secure in my limits here. “He was the only married one, and it was a sham, and I’m not the reason it fell apart. It was window dressing because his wife is gay, but she wanted to be America’s sweetheart, and she thinks America’s sweetheart isn’t a lesbian.”

  “Wait.”

  “I was his consolation prize for a loveless performance with her that made him famous and miserable, and he always treated me that way.”

  “Hold on.”

  “And I’m done with guys like him.”

  “You kept this secret?”

  “Of course!” I pushed forward like a soldier through the trenches. “What was I supposed to do? Out her? Why? So everyone would hate me ten percent less?”

  “Amanda—”

  “Stop calling me that!” I glared at the black-spotted ceiling six inches from my face. “I hated when Renaldo chewed gum, so he did it more to spite me, and when you call me Amanda, you’re no better.” Knowing he wouldn’t apologize, I continued forward, grumbling, “Men. All the same.”

  “He could have stood by you when everyone found out,” Dante said, following.

  “Yeah. He coulda. And for the record, I’m telling you all of this because I want you to respect me, which I shouldn’t care about, but I do because I’m an insecure half person. My emotional thermostat’s broken. That won’t change your mind about me, and that’s fine, but I thought you should know that I care too much, and yes… it’s embarrassing.”

  Adrenaline and bone-deep fear were turning out to be a hell of a drug. I was babbling as though I’d just swallowed a truth serum.

  “I know I can come off as disapproving, but—”

  “I can’t imagine why.” I felt bad as soon as the words left my mouth. Dante had been legitimately kind to me during this conversation; he didn’t deserve my sarcasm. “The sex aside,” I said with the sharpness removed, “letting me stay was decent. You took care of my hand last night and this morning. I see that you care. I want you to know I care too.”

  “I do care.” He laughed. “My last girlfriend called me ‘intentionally cold and emotionally unavailable.’”

  “I’d call you more… aggressively controlled.”

  “If you must.”

  “No. Emotionally precise. Passionately guarded, maybe.”

  “It’s a habit. A bad one.”

  The wooden beams were soaked through, and the insulation squished when I poked it, releasing a little pool of mold-flaked water in the indent. The damage started here. I took out the phone and took pictures of everything.

  “When Veronica died,” he started, then stopped himself. I got took three more shots before he continued. “I acted out. At home, I was angry and cruel. But I couldn’t grieve in public because I loved her and I had to protect her.”

  Death was immune to his protection, but I knew what he meant. As a teenager, Dante had shown more chivalry to Veronica’s corpse than Renaldo had given my still-living ass.

  “When Samantha died,” I said, “I imagined she saw me crying and she’d know I loved her. She’d feel good about it, and at the same time… she’d regret how much she hurt me. She’d know she committed suicide for nothing. Was it like that?”

  “Something like that. If I showed one ounce of sadness, I’d break apart and everyone would know. I wanted them to know so I could finally claim her. But I also didn’t want anyone to accuse her of being a cheat when she couldn’t defend herself. I wanted her to be at peace.”

  “And that meant not showing anyone how sad you were.”

  “My parents’ hatred for her was unbearable. It was easier to stay… what did you call it? Aggressively controlled.”

  I’d stopped taking pictures. The intensity of his confession pinned me in place.

  “Now,” he continued, “some days, I don’t know whether I’ve forgotten how to show what I feel… or if I’ve just stopped feeling altogether.”

  The last four days flashed in front of me, a stuttering montage of our strange, intense time together: Dante putting me in my place in the kitchen that first night, then bursting into my room, kissing me as if he was starving for it. The way he’d teased me and spanked me and fed me when I’d hurt myself. I had all of those memories, but I didn’t need them to tell me which option was true. The tone of his voice said everything I needed to know.

  They were all true.

  The closeness and the distance. The intimacy and aloofness.

  He wasn’t any one thing.

  “Your emotional thermostat’s broken,” he said, waking me from my thoughts. “I turned mine off. I didn’t even see a woman for a long time after. I put all my energy into clubs, traveling back and forth. Feeling nothing for years.”

  With difficulty, I turned to take more pictures, and every time the flash went off, I saw more damage in the corners of the light that needed attention.

  “I tried to get right back into it,” I said, taking pictures. “She died, and I called Caleb. It was Christmas break. He returned the call at two in the morning. Told me to meet him at some party, and I went. We spent two days together. He said he missed me and he thought about me constantly. It was the first time in months I didn’t feel like I could burst into tears at any moment. Then… poof. Gone.” I got up on my knees between two beams so I could shoot around a corner.

  “He’s worthless,” Dante said. “You know that, right?”

  “I know, but what does that say about me?”

  “Who the—”

  The rest of the sentence never happened because, right then, I lost my balance and managed to get my elbow under me. All my weight landed on it as it jabbed the insulation between the beams, which felt as soft under me as wet bread.

  What had felt merely gross was genuinely unstable, and with a crunch and an increase in the amount of light, I lost my sense of the walls around me, realizing as I fell that spiders and the dark weren’t half as dangerous as gravity.

  Chapter 23

  DANTE

  The big leak that had dropped the bathroom ceiling was caused by a ragged gash in the roofing, and by the time Amanda and I were over the bathroom, I no longer cared that it was too complex a job for me to finish myself.

  I’d told Amanda too much, and she’d countered by telling me everything.

  Shamelessly, completely, with a humility I never would have given her credit for, she’d crawled beneath me with only a few planks of wood and a sheet of roofing between us and opened herself up to derision and ridicule.

  “He’s worthless,” I said. “You know that, right?”

  “I know, but what do
es that say about me?”

  It said she was trusting and whole and reckless with her needs because she only knew how to commit fully. She was so rare and beautiful in a world of charmingly armored emotions that I wanted to stand between her tender heart and the world’s betrayal. Her protector. Her safety.

  The only thing that could have distracted me from telling her everything was the sound of a car coming down the drive. I would have assumed Lyric was finally convinced to come check on me, except the car—which I couldn’t see over the HVAC unit—rumbled in a way my sister’s Prius couldn’t have even if it had the horsepower.

  “Who the—”

  I stood up to see over the HVAC, but the car had come too close to see. “Who the fuck is that?”

  In the middle of my sentence, I was drowned out by the sound of wood splintering and crumbling, then a crash, then her voice, distinct and plaintive, saying, “Ow!”

  “Amanda!” I shouted into a wall of wet roofing. “Amanda!”

  No answer.

  I was moving before I knew where I was going, running to the edge of the roof and leaping onto the patio overhang by her room with the assumption it would hold—which it did. My rational brain knew it would have been safer to cross the roof back to the ladder, but I couldn’t wait. If she needed me, I needed to be there for her immediately. From the patio overhang, I shimmied down a concrete pillar that painlessly scraped the skin off my palms.

  At last, my feet were on solid ground. As I threw open the huge glass doors of her room, I kicked past the debris at the threshold to the bathroom to find Amanda leveraging herself against the tub to try to sit up straight.

  In the bathroom door that led to my bedroom, looking as if she was ready to kick the next pair of balls that got in her way, stood Ella Papillion-Crowne.

  * * *

  For an artist, Ella was a practical woman. She didn’t make a fuss or ask questions until the fire was going and Amanda was settled on the couch with ice against her forehead and left knee.