Burning September (25 page)

She didn’t smile when she spoke to Karen, not unless she was talking about me.  Kyle didn’t miss that either.  When I pointed it out, he nodded, chewing on a Reuben, and said, “Yep.  She’s good.”

She’d written a new script, my sister, but they were her same lies.  That was one thing you could always count on; Caroline would never deviate from her story. 

Nicholas turned onto his back, baring his belly for scratches.  The glitter of his eyes reminded me of another glittery object I’d found in this very same spot the last time I’d been to Kyle’s apartment.

I wanted to torch his couch, suddenly.  Caroline would be proud. 
Let it burn.  Fire’s not so scary, sweetheart.

How could he invite me to sit here like it was nothing, like he hadn’t kissed me and splayed some woman out on it a second later? 

“I don’t think I want to watch the interview with me,” I said, running a nail over Nicholas’s furry stomach.  “I remember what I said.  They wouldn’t have edited it to make me look bad.”

He gave me a sidelong look, gaze running from my eyes to the cat purring helplessly on my lap.  “We don’t have to if you don’t want to.”  He knocked back a slug of beer and wiped off the foam mustache with the back of his hand.  “Something wrong?”

Yeah, I wanted to snap.  Yeah, a shit ton of things.  My murdering sister slash best friend was locked up, a stalker had rendered me unable to protect my cat, I had a gun in my purse which was probably illegal, and oh yeah, here I am on a couch that you’ve probably christened with some woman who wore too much makeup and was so snotty she ought to be fined. 

And I was so annoyed with him for not knowing with sudden, chill clarity what was wrong, how it hadn’t fallen out of the sky like an anvil and bonked him on the head. 
How dense are you?  Didn’t you go to law school, dazzle your firm’s partners with your brilliance? 

I wanted him to read my mind so I didn’t have to spell it all out, I wanted to smack that confusion off his face, tear it into a million little pieces and throw it into the air like confetti. 

Something wrong?
  Yes, everything.

He put his hand on my shoulder, squeezing it lightly, and though I knew I was being ridiculous, it made me so mad, red patterns and constellations bloomed behind my clenched eyelids.  I shook his hand off. 

He let it hang in the air for a moment before he reached over to press pause on the TV remote.  “I have a feeling you’re going to think this is a stupid question, but are you mad at me for some reason?”

“I just think it would be awesome if you kept your hands to yourself.”

“It was supposed to be comforting, not lecherous.”

Lecherous, how many SAT points did that one net?  “So do you consider it
lecherous
to go around kissing random girls when you have a girlfriend?”   

I wasn’t looking at him, but out of the corner of my eye I saw him stab the space between his brows with a finger.  “You’re not exactly a random girl, and I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Oh sure.  It was the cleaning lady’s earring.  Or hell, someone broke in and instead of stealing shit, left you an earring.  Somebody call Karen Stone, we’ve got another mystery to solve.”

“So, just to be clear, you’re mad about an earring?”

“I’m mad that you kissed me and then acted like it was some huge joke.  Fucking LOL, right?  Hilarious.  You should do stand-up.”

He fell back against the couch cushions, slowly swilling his beer.  “It wasn’t a joke.  It was funny, but not a joke.”

“That makes no sense at all.”

He blew out a sigh.  “I meant it when I said I haven’t been as professional with you as I should be.  I
am
only human.  I shouldn’t have done it, but I wanted to, so I did it anyway.”  He shook his head in that odd way he had, as if ridding himself of persistent cartoon birds.  “If I knew you’d wind up getting this upset over it, I’d have shown more restraint.”

What the hell did he know about restraint, this guy who drank on the job and lied for a living.  I sincerely doubted he knew the first thing about restraint, what it entailed. 

“I don’t know why you’d want to at all.”

“You’re not very good at playing dumb, you know.”

I bet Crystal was.  I bet she didn’t know the first thing about him, probably never asked about his parents, how they’d died.  It took him two times to pass his driver’s test over in Pomona. 

“You know perfectly well I have an ill-fated crush on you.”

He was very particular about his toothpaste, too, never the gel kind, he felt like he was brushing with slimy hair products. 

“A crush?  What are you, twelve?”  I kneaded Nicholas’s back, taking care not to exert too much pressure.  I had a feeling I could crumble a diamond to dust at the moment. 

“I wish you’d stop covering your shyness with pithy phrases, you know.  You’re not fooling anyone.”

Maybe I was trying to fool myself.  Well why not, I’d done it before.

For some insane reason, he didn’t like black mulch. 
It’s like it’s pretending to be potting soil and it bugs the hell out of me.
  I’d been surprised anybody could have such strong feelings about mulch at all.  If we were walking anywhere, any time he saw trash on the ground something compelled him to pick it up, carry it around until he saw a garbage can.  I had no clue why he didn’t apply that same logic to his own apartment.  He never cared about a mess at home.

“Does Crystal know about the mulch?” I heard myself ask. 

“Excuse me?”

“The mulch.  You hate black mulch.”

A line of amused irony stamped itself around one corner of his mouth.  “No, I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it to her.  I haven’t seen her in months.”  He tucked a curtain of my hair behind my ears.  I let him even though I hated having my hair like that, it made me look like an elf.  “Are we okay?”

I didn’t know how to answer that one.  We had all our limbs and no yawning wounds.  Was
he
okay?  I wasn’t, but I hadn’t been for so long it was old news, a ton of waterlogged and wavy
TV Guides
piled in a corner of a garage. 

“Yeah.  I guess so.”

He leaned over to grab the remote, thought better of it, and turned back to me.  “Still don’t want to watch your interview?”

Suddenly I was very tired, too tired to make any decisions, no matter their importance.  “I don’t know what I want.”

“We could make out instead.”

“Go to hell,” I said, but I couldn’t muster enough gusto to really embody the feel of the phrase, it only made him laugh. 

He pressed play, settling back into the cushions with his beer. 

“It’s been a few months since we last spoke, Kat,” Karen Stone said, prim as ever in her off-white cardigan.  “How have you been?”

“About as good as I can be, given the situation.  The support Caroline’s been getting online has been overwhelming, we appreciate it so much.  It’s hard to believe we’d get this much support at all, given the charges, how the prosecutors have vilified both me and my sister.”

“I imagine it’s been a humbling experience.  I understand your recent ‘fame’ for lack of a better word, has brought about a few new concerns for you.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Would you be willing to tell us about it?”

TV Kat pressed her mauve lips together, looked at her hands for a moment before back up at Karen.  “I’m hesitant to call it anything more than a few incidents, since the police seem to think it’s all been teenagers pulling pranks.  It started with my cat going missing.  Someone had put the collar I made him in an envelope, shoved it in the doorjamb.  He turned up later, thank God, but with a different collar, one someone had gone out and bought, engraved it with my address.  After that, someone started messing with the power in my place one night.  Turning the lights on and off over and over, playing with the main breaker switch.  Whoever it was ran when I went outside to confront them.  The police couldn’t do much.  I guess I can’t blame them, it’s hardly enough proof of a legitimate stalker, but it’s been scary all the same.”

“I can imagine,” Karen said, eyes wide with what could have been real or phony concern.  “As if you haven’t gone through enough.”

One in six women and one in nineteen men have experienced stalking in their lifetime,
Karen’s voiceover proclaimed as charts and stock photos fell onto the screen.
  Persons eighteen to twenty-four experience the highest rate of stalking in the United States, and college women are the highest group targeted.  Eighty percent of campus stalking victims know their stalker, and the average duration of stalking is a little under two years. 

“Jeez,” I said, over the TV Kat’s response.  “Wonder how many stalkers Caroline’s had in her life?  My last count brought the total to like, one hundred and twelve.  But she wasn’t afraid of any of them.  She’s not afraid of anything, though.”

“That fearlessness is to her detriment.”  Kyle aimed the remote, fast-forwarding through the commercial break.  “If you’re not afraid of anything, consequences mean little.  You wind up doing stupid things, hurting yourself, hurting other people.  Getting into bad situations.  There’s a damn good reason for all those little hairs on the back of your neck.”

MAY

I’d learned through movies and watching Caroline that receiving a
we need to talk
message of any kind meant nothing good.  Every time Caroline had said as much, it had been because she intended to break up with some poor schmuck who had no idea what was about to hit him. 

We weren’t in a relationship, but waking up to that text from Kyle still made my blood run cold.

***

Gemma delivered me to Kyle at half past nine that morning, but the only greeting I received was a flickering bout of eye contact and a customary chin jut of recognition as he spoke into his office line. 

“Why don’t you just sit down, honey.”  Gemma squeezed my shoulder with her soft, wrinkled hand.  “He should be done with the call soon.”

He glanced at me again upon his secretary’s exit, and the next round of eye contact was longer, probing, and he’d added a small smile that could have meant any number of things. 

“Well?” I turned one hand palm-up when he hung up the phone.  “What do we need to talk about?”

“Good morning to you, too.  I have some news.”

“Good news or bad news?”

“Depends on how you look at it.”

“Well, you know me, I’m a glass half-full type chick.”

“I got a call from the DA this morning.  They wanted to offer your sister a plea bargain.”

I waited for the punch line to no avail, blinking stupidly.  “Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack.”

“Is it a good deal?”

“Voluntary manslaughter.  She’d do three to six.  Maybe a year and a half with good behavior.”

I stifled a groan.  Caroline’s behavior could rarely be classed as good.  “In jail, or at Breakthrough?”

“Those details haven’t been hammered out.  I didn’t even tell Caroline yet.  It’s a good deal.  Proves all the media coverage has shaken their faith in their own case.  I don’t think it’s likely they’ll offer better than that.”

“Is this what we needed to talk about?”

“Is it not big enough news?  Is there something else we need to discuss?”  He waited for an answer I wouldn’t give him, leaning back in his creaky swivel chair.  “I’m going to set up a meeting with Caroline to go over all this.  On the fairly good chance she refuses the deal, I want you to talk to her.  Make her see sense.  A trial isn’t just a fun distraction for her, and it could go badly, we’ve got no way of predicting the outcome.”

What kind of magician did he think I was?  As if I could cast an obedience spell, force her into compliance.  She’d only relented on doing the Karen Stone interview because she’d always planned on giving it anyway, I’d just asked her to speed up her self-imposed timeline, not publicly accept defeat and plead guilty to a crime she had no intention of admitting to.  I could sooner convince her Kandinsky was nothing more than a simpleton someone had armed with a paintbrush.   

“Kyle, I can’t convince her to do anything she doesn’t want to do.  Believe me, I’ve tried.  If she says no, there’s probably not a damn thing I can do about it, barring me conking her on the head.”

“I think you’re selling yourself short.”

My eyes narrowed.  “I couldn’t convince
you
to even talk to her at the start of all this.  Convincing is not my strong suit.”

He didn’t say anything for a few beats, just looked out at me under a fringe of lashes the sun streaming through his windows had turned gold.  His cell phone chimed, and he silenced it with one poke.  “Even if you don’t think you’re capable, I still want you to try.  This would be easier on everyone involved, and while I don’t expect her to care about sparing Brian’s family the hardship of a highly publicized trial, I
do
expect her to care about sparing you any more public appearances and a three-day stint on a witness stand.  That’s what’s at stake, here.  To be frankly honest, a trial is more billable hours for me, more exposure for my firm and myself, a chance at more business.  But I don’t care about all that.  I care about what all this will do to you in the long run, and if it’s avoidable, it’s the way I’d choose to go.” He exhaled loudly through flaring nostrils and peered into a coffee mug on his desk.  “Have you had breakfast yet?”

“I don’t usually eat in the mornings.”

“It’s the most important meal of the day.”

“I heard that myth was debunked a while ago.”

“But breakfast has bacon.”

“Every other meal can have bacon, too.”

He rolled his eyes, waving me off as he stood and headed for the door. 

I followed suit.  “Bacon cheeseburgers, macaroni and cheese with bacon, meat lover’s pizza.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he called over his shoulder, sailing through his office door, threading his way through cubicles.

“Cornbread and bacon stuffed pork chops, bacon quesadilla, potato soup, you can’t deny that I’m right, walk as fast as you like, the truth will always catch up,” I said, sidestepping secretaries who shot me odd looks as I bobbed along in Kyle’s wake.

***

Hey,

How’d you think the interviews turned out?  No more curse-laden diatribes about the grotesque Mardi Gras makeup?  Personally, I thought it was just whorish enough.  You never emailed or called or smoke signaled afterward.  Is everything okay? 

Guess who I got a letter from?  Have you been neglecting Jeff?  He wants to dedicate the June edition of his magazine to me, or more specifically, us.  Said he hadn’t heard from you in a while, or something.  Anyway, as I haven’t made any new pieces whilst stuck in my rubber room, I figured you two could just go through the stuff under my bed and use whatever strikes his fancy.  There’s nothing that would be extremely useful in my studio, and the whole place is probably covered in dust anyway.  Have you done anything new to add? Maybe you can take pictures of some of your pieces and show me the next time you visit, we can pick the best ones.

I hope you haven’t gotten in touch because you’re suddenly the famous, busy sister, not because of something I’ve done, or whatever, because to be honest I have no idea what the problem is, which is a problem in and of itself. 

Hope I hear from you soon. Love you.

C.

Of course she’d have no idea what the problem could be; the problem was her—her arrogance, her pride, everything that would keep her from accepting this plea bargain—and I could never take issue with wonderful, special Caroline.  Inconceivable.

***

“Well, you know what they say.  No news is good news, or whatever,” Professor Lawlis told me, hunched over his guitar, after I’d explained how the recordings from the camera mounted above the entryway to my condo had been suspiciously dull, void of activity, not even a mailman or gardener to behold.  “Probably helps that you made some noise about the problem on national TV.  Any stalker worth his salt would lay low after that.”

“Any stalker worth his salt would have chosen someone more interesting to stalk.”

“Well, one man’s trash, and all that jazz.”  To my scowl, he added, “It’s just a phrase.  This is what I mean about being insensitive and not a people person.”

“That isn’t news to me.”  I tried to copy his signature deadpan expression and won a signature grim smile for my trouble. 

“Well.  Anything else going on?  Something that’ll make you forget about me putting my foot in my mouth?”

“Kyle said the district attorney offered Caroline a deal.  A good one.”

“You sure kept that quiet.”  He consulted the clock on the far wall.  “It’s been half an hour. I’d have expected you to open with that news.” He paused, strumming mindlessly.  “Unless you’re worried about it, for some reason.”

I gave him a non-committal jerk of the head. 

“You don’t think she’ll accept?”

“I doubt it.  She’d have to do three to six.  Maybe a year and a half with good behavior.”  I sighed, ruffling wisps of hair falling about my neck.  “Caroline has a lot of pride.  She wouldn’t accept a guilty plea.  I don’t think it matters how good a deal it is.  And I’m scared that in the long run it’ll screw her over.  She could get life in prison, no parole, a two-man cell forever.  I don’t think she’s realized she’s not invincible.”

“Young people rarely do.”

“
I’m
young, and
I
realize what’s at stake, what a trial could potentially cost her.  This isn’t a young people thing, it’s a Caroline thing.  Most things have worked out for her in the past.  Jobs fell into her lap, anything she wanted was always within reach.  She worked hard for most of it, yeah, but apart from a bad home life growing up, she’s been pretty lucky.  So she’s expecting this to eventually work out, too.  She’s never been one to make back-up plans.”   

“Have you told her all this?”

“Not yet.”  I dragged my hand through my hair, sweeping it off my face.  “Kyle hasn’t even mentioned the deal to her.  Naturally he expects her to decline, and in the likely event that it happens, I’m supposed to talk to her.  As if
that’s
ever worked.” 

“You should just be honest.”

Honesty wouldn’t help me in this situation.  Caroline would listen to my concerns and then promptly toss them out the window, smother me with
don’t worry about me’s
and
I’m a big girl’s
and whatever else occurred to her. 

“Were you honest with your wife?  About the PTSD?” I heard myself ask without thinking it through.

His gray eyes flashed my way, brows crashing into each other above a prominent nose. The emotional temperature in the classroom went from seventy-two to one hundred and twelve in one second flat.  “It’s a very different situation.”

“So?  Were you?”

“No.”  He set his guitar down, leaning it against his chair.  “I wasn’t.  But I don’t think I’d have been capable then.  They’re not the same, these situations.  They’re not even second cousins.  One is a mental disorder, the other is you not having the balls to tell your sister to knock off the princess routine and think about someone else for a change.”

“I read up on PTSD.  After you explained it.  It’s not psychosis or anything, it didn’t mean you were crazy, you could have talked to her.  Why didn’t you?  And I’m not even asking because you said I lack balls.  It’s true, I have no balls.  Ask anyone.  I’m just interested, that’s all.  You don’t even have to answer.  Just tell me to leave, and I will.”

The look in his eyes could have melted metal, but it came and went quickly and left a deflated Greg Lawlis sack in his place, sagging in his chair, the life sucked out of him. 

“Color me a hypocrite, then, for not practicing what I preach.  But I think you’ll have a hell of an easier time talking to your sister than I would have back then, telling my wife sob stories about my nightmares and missing leg and fear of loud noises.”

***

I turned tarot cards over idly, sitting on the living room floor as I waited for Jeff’s imminent arrival, trying not to think about the fact that as I sat there in a funk, Kyle was meeting with Caroline.  His luck had to be better than mine.  Maybe he could convince her, maybe I was silly to sit here, wasting time worrying, maybe everything would be over shortly.  He’d convinced juries before, hadn’t he?  What was one murderer who wore her arrogance like a crown compared to a handful of jurors?

I couldn’t help picturing her supremely indifferent expression as Kyle laid out the terms of the plea agreement, how one delicate brow would lift almost imperceptibly, the beginnings of a soft smirk playing over her lips.  Acting like it wasn’t his hard work or my public appearances that had helped her out so enormously thus far; no, she’d believe it had all come down to her and her intellect, her leaving behind little to no evidence, her gauzy white veil of an acting flair.
Ah, but don’t you see what this means?
  she’d say. 
It means I’ve already won, reduced their case to smoking shambles, this is their last ditch, We’re Completely Fucked effort.  Why should I entertain such a ridiculous offer? 

Because not everything is about you, Caroline, hard as that may be to believe.

The Queen of Wands gazed up at me, haughty upon her throne, black cat twisting around her skirts which swirled out like smoke.  Caroline’s tarot suit was Wands, and she embodied their every aspect.  Fiery and strong, powerful attraction, energetic in the extreme, authoritative and impatient with opposition of any kind.  That cat at her feet symbolized a darker side to her personality, how she could be revengeful and domineering, unafraid of embracing and using black magic to achieve her goals. 

I flicked the card aside.  It landed face-up, still watching me, so I gathered up the deck and shoved it back into its case as the doorbell rang. 

I couldn’t match Jeff’s exuberant greeting, but I tried anyway, pasting on a smile as I shut the door behind him. 

“Thanks for inviting me over.”  He dropped his backpack.  “I’m glad you’re interested in contributing some of your work.”