Burning September (12 page)

I took a slug of mojito, held the mouthful in my cheeks for a second.  Chewed a mint leaf after the hard swallow, hoping the drink wouldn’t be for me what it had been for Caroline, a witch’s brew that made her talk too much, tell too much. 

My head swirled.  So did his shape, five feet away.  I blinked the glassiness out of my eyes.  “I thought I could trust you,” I finally said, and I hated the way my voice sounded, weak and pathetic, the little girl I’d vehemently claimed I wasn’t not five minutes earlier.  “I didn’t like you at first, but then I did, and I didn’t think you’d lie to me.  Which was stupid.”

“It wasn’t stupid.”

“Then what was it?”

“How much have you had to drink?”

“And you say
I
dodge questions.”

He slipped an arm out of his suit jacket, and though his lips didn’t betray him, I saw the jester’s smile climbing up into his eyes, peering out at me.  “You smell like alcohol.”

“You smell…like an asshole.”

“God, I hope not.”  He draped the jacket over the banister.  “I guess all those Axe commercials were wrong.” 

I took another sip.

“Can we sit?”  He jerked his head at the couch.  “Look, I’ll try to make this up to you.  Answer whatever questions you have, so long as I can legally do so.  Anything to get you to stop trying to kill me with your eyes.”

I’d have killed him a million times over if that were the case.  “I don’t believe you.”

“So, don’t.”  He dropped onto the sofa.  Ran his fingers through a halo of tousled blond hair.  “You can ask whatever you want anyway.”

“How did you get involved in Caroline’s case?”

“I was contacted by a third party who subsequently hired me.”

“Just use his name.”  I sank to the floor, cradling my drink to my chest the way Caroline cradled her secrets.  “Graham Brown.”

His nostrils flared as he leaned forward, linking his hands, resting his elbows on his knees.  “Call this third party whatever you like.”

“How long ago did you take on the case?”

“Nearly as soon as she’d been arrested.”

No wonder I didn’t make the shortlist for Caroline’s one phone call from jail.  I didn’t pass bank background.

“Does this person have something to do with why she’s in a relatively cushy mental institution instead of a psych ward in jail?”

“A lot to do with it, yes, though you shouldn’t discount my efforts.”  His cell phone chimed, and he dug for it in his back pocket, silencing it with one hard jab and a look of annoyance.

“Does Caroline know who’s paying the tab?”

“I think so.”

“Do you think she’s guilty?”

“Without a doubt.”

“Then why are you defending her?”

“Okay.”  He leaned back into the cushions, eyes narrowing as he considered me, the half-drunk eighteen-year-old moron he’d made an idiotic promise to.  “I’m sure in movies and television, you’ve heard all sorts of actors portraying lawyers who claim to only protect innocent defendants, how immoral it is to do otherwise and whatnot, but here in the real world, everyone deserves a lawyer who’ll protect their best interests.  Caroline isn’t the worst I’ve defended, not by a long shot.  Her guilt makes no difference to me.”

Well why would it, I wondered dully.  There had to be a reason for all those
lawyers are scum
jokes.

His gaze fell on the sweating glass in my hand.  I could tell he wanted one, but I wouldn’t be offering.  “I can tell you one thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“I have no idea where you’ve gotten the name Graham Brown,” he said, scratching the back of his neck, “or who he is, exactly, but he’s not the one paying for my counsel.”  To my blank stare, he added, “I’d ask your sister if you really want to know.”

She’d tell me nothing.  I’d have to crack her head open, eat her brain to find out.  I was sure she’d rather keep me in the dark, claiming ignorance was bliss, was best, especially under these conditions. 

Alcohol crept through my blood, making my heart race.  Maybe it was the rum, but I found myself wondering how I could love someone so much and want to throttle them at the same time. 
It was all because I tried to protect you
, I knew Caroline would say. 
The less you know, the better.  Don’t worry about me, go to school, work hard—your future is more important.

Was that it, she was putting me first?  I guess she always had.  But how could I not insert myself, given the issue at hand?

I’d always felt like such a nuisance, remembering my younger years, how the frequency of my little girl demands must have tasked her.  I’d interrupt her reading, her phone calls, her homework without any qualms at all, and she’d stop what she was doing without a second thought.  Juice?  No problem.  Won’t eat the macaroni and cheese?  She’d make something else.  Oh, don’t worry about this calculus homework, it’ll do itself, let’s take you on that walk.

How she must have resented me.  I probably didn’t know the half of the things I’d robbed her of.  What right did I have resenting her when she had dibs?  Did it matter she may have been involved with Mr. Graham?  It had started so long ago.  Several lifetimes, it seemed.  She was legal now, right?  She could do whatever she wanted. 

“You look a long way away,” Kyle said, holding his phone, punching buttons with his thumbs. 

“Send a search party.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“I think I just want another drink.”  Adding insult to injury, the clumped ice at the bottom of my glass fell on my face as I drained the contents.  I slapped my skin dry with the hem of my shirt.  “I don’t know what to do.  Caroline always knew what to do.  Whenever I had no idea, I’d go to her.  She had all the answers.  Now she won’t tell me anything unless it involves school.”

I needed her guidance.  An alternate Caroline who wasn’t locked up, one who could take care of this, put things back in order with a few snapped words or an icy glare.  My senior year in high school, I’d gotten an F on my last English essay which doubled as a final and counted for twenty-five percent of my total grade.  It was on D.H Lawrence, a favorite of Caroline’s, and I’d used the term ‘polar opposites’ to describe his parents.  The teacher told me there was a snowball’s chance in hell a seventeen-year-old girl could know such a phrase, proving I’d plagiarized, and when I came home to tell the tale, Caroline was livid.  Slitty eyes, thin lips, sucked in apple-red cheeks.  She stomped into that classroom, told the woman she didn’t know what kind of goddamned morons she’d grown used to teaching, but ‘polar opposites’ is something a middle-schooler would know, and was she aware that we had quite a few thesauruses at home?  The principal agreed with Caroline, made the teacher change the grade. 

If I had any kind of future, it was only because she’d given it to me. 

I wanted her back.  I wanted to go to some horrible play at the university with her, listen to her low voice say something softly cruel about the lead actress’s ill-fitting costume.  I wanted her to make another paper fortune teller and predict I’d marry Carrot Top, drive a Razor scooter, live in a shack.  I wanted her to make a mojito the right way, because the ones I’d mixed tasted funny.

How would I paint this new Caroline-less era?  Maybe in smoky red moons, pale blue scrubs, wildfire lies, pearl-rimmed tarot cards, Mexican Day of the Dead masks. 

“She’s trying to protect you.  Parents always make some mistakes.  I reckon she’d make even more, since she’s not a real one.”  He let that marinate in the silence for a while until another chime from his cell interrupted it.  He poked another button, set the phone on the coffee table beside a healing crystal.  “If it has any bearing, I’ll try be as transparent with you as possible to make up for her vagueness.” 

“Who keeps texting you?”

“Someone I don’t feel like talking to right now.”

“I hope it’s not important. That you’re not blowing them off on my account.”

“Well, when someone starts throwing around the words ‘goddamned prick’, you really ought to shirk other responsibilities and see what the problem is.”

“Sorry.  I’m just tired of all this.  She was always around, you know?  It’s not the same, seeing her at Breakthrough.  Those ugly scrubs, she doesn’t look like herself.  I miss her.  She made me laugh all the time, even when she wasn’t trying to be funny.  I feel like I haven’t laughed in forever.”

“You have.  Last time I was here.  I saw it with my own eyes.”

I shrugged one non-committal shoulder.

“We could ask each other embarrassing questions.  Or just questions, what the hell, that could be funny, too.”

I traced the filigree pattern on my frosted glass.  “I’m not very interesting.”  But I wanted him to stay, having gotten so sick of being alone.  The silences were suffocating, like a bomb site, and anywhere I looked, something reminded me of Caroline.  I wished I’d involved myself more in the decorating process instead of following her lead, but then I remembered her lead had always been my law. 

“I think you are.” He got up, locking his fingers together above his head in a deep stretch.  “I could sweeten the deal.  Make some mojitos that won’t make you cringe every time you take a sip.  You’ll remember I was a bartender many moons ago.” 

“Don’t you have better things to do?”

“There are
other
things, not better things, and I’d rather not be doing them.  Do you keep your rum in the freezer?”  he called over his shoulder, already headed toward the kitchen.

“Yeah.” 

When I caught up, he’d removed the rum and stuck his head in the fridge.  “You don’t have any mint or lime?”

“I get the limes from the tree outside.  The mint’s right here.”  I plucked a few springs from the windowsill herb garden. 

“After you rinse them, chop them roughly.  Helps the flavor bleed through.  Where’s the tree?”

He followed me into the cramped backyard, wild with the flowers Caroline had long ago stopped caring for.  I liked it better that way.  Red roses with thorny spines twisted around and beneath fat poppies with inky insides, lilacs that could drown you with their sweetness snaked up the trellis—it all seemed to suit her more than when it had been neat and organized.  The boiling sun of August had bleached the wooden labels she’d made, but I could still name every plant.  Obstinate geraniums with yellow faces that stared back at the bloated sun in the summer and refused to wither, shy primroses hidden behind a patch of swaying daisies, cattails Caroline and I had been flummoxed to find creeping behind sunflowers.  She hadn’t planted them; they must have blown in from the wind one spring.  They were wetland plants, they didn’t belong. 

Kyle plucked a lime off the tree, squeezed it in his palm.  “I think this one’ll do.”  He must have noticed me zoning out, staring blankly around the remains of a garden Caroline had once loved, because he tipped his head back, blinking lashes which looked like they’d been dipped in gold. “Nice night, huh?”

I never noticed weather the way other people did.  Never once had I been overcome with the urge to discuss the beauty of an angry sun or comment on a breeze.  But I agreed anyway, albeit mutely, and jumped when I felt his hand on my shoulder, steering me back inside to the kitchen. 

“I hate those mojitos that are too crowded at the bottom, makes them impossible to drink, especially with a ton of lime seeds rolling around in the glass, so instead of putting all the wedges in, I just juice half and add one wedge inside.”

I pushed the chopped mint across the butcher block island.  “You act like it’s an art form.”

“Well, it is.  Maybe not in the same way your paintings are, but talk to any bartender, they’ll tell you it takes some type of skill.”  Ice clinked together, tumbling from the pitcher.  He didn’t measure the rum the way I had, carefully with a shot glass, just sloshed a stream into both glasses, topped it off with club soda, stirred in some sugar. 

Hands of a dozen clocks rimming the perimeter of the ceiling shelves ticked, competing with the neighbor’s wind chime, floating through the patio screen.  I was glad for the noise.  It was better than the silence, something to focus on rather than the furtive looks Kyle kept throwing at me, like he could see everything I was thinking about. 

“You want sugar on the rim?”

“I’m not a big fan of sweet stuff.”

He nodded as though he’d expected such an answer and handed me the finished product.  “This’ll be better than the crap you made.” 

It was better.  The rum untangled my tongue.  “If it’s illegal for you to make me a drink and you’re not bothered, why won’t you tell me who’s paying you?”

“One is the equivalent to two years of probation and a slap on the wrist, and the other is disbarment.  Plus I really wanted a mojito.  I’d forgotten how well I make them.”  He smacked his lips, aiming a wet smile my way.  “What’s the deal with all the clocks?  I hardly noticed how noisy they are last time, with you banging around pots and pans, frying bacon and whatnot.”

“Time is running out.”

“What?”

“Caroline said that’s what they were for, a reminder.  Time is running out.  Every day.  So don’t waste one, don’t put stuff off for tomorrow.  Tomorrow may never come.”  Had they been what had convinced her to burn Brian’s house to the ground?  Had the clashing ticks driven her crazy, had she spent hours staring at them until they’d given her answer, cogs clunking into place? “I think she put them there to keep her procrastination at bay, mainly.  The poetic stuff came later.”