Sleeping Beauty (27 page)

Rev releases my arms. “Oh, fuck,” he mutters.

My cheeks burn as I peek up through my bangs at the screen, just in time to watch as he tries to stand, dragging me with him, my arms clamped around his neck. Then we’re kissing and groping again as he stumbles towards the bathroom.

The door partially obscures the view into the bathroom in interior, but I can see Brendan pushing me up against the wall of an open shower. There’s a lot of movement then that’s hard to make out, our mouths still on each other. My shorts appear to suddenly loosen at the waist.

Then I hear myself scream.

There’s a blur of limbs, and what looks like the spray of water. I watch myself struggle as Brendan clamps a hand over my mouth, pushing his whole body against mine until I’m pressed flush against the wall. My hands flail, and I dig my fingernails into his face, kick my feet against his shins.

I finally stop fighting, my whole body drooping against his. He shudders, his body going taut. He speaks. I respond. The camera is too far away to pick up the words. Still pushed against the wall, and now soaked from head to toe, I watch myself faint a second time.

The video ends, the screen going blank. The conference room is dark.

“How many months have you been engaged in a physical relationship with Dr. Charmant, Claire?” says Lucinda’s disembodied voice.

Snippets of memories hit me, one after the other, like baseballs fired in a batting cage:

He was in your bed, okay?

He is
not
your doctor anymore.

What do you remember?

He couldn’t stand for long anyway…looked like he’d been in a bar fight

He wasn’t making any kinds of medical decisions for you anymore
.

You obviously don’t have any memory of anything that happened…

You’re pregnant.

I don’t remember…

When did you two become sexually active?

That one, the last one, gets bigger and bigger in my mind until all I can see is one word: “WHEN.”

I collapse forward onto the table, head in my arms, my body wracked with sobs.

A chair falls backwards onto the floor, hitting it with a
thump
. “You’re a fucking bitch!” Davin screams at Lucinda.

“Joan, call security,” she says, her voice flat.

“That won’t be necessary,” says Rev. He puts his arm on my back. “Will it, Wib?” He leans across me and punches Davin in the arm.

“I’m cool,” says Davin, dropping into the chair beside me and covering my hand on the tabletop with his own.

“Would you like me to call for an ambulance?”

Still crying, I shake my head violently from side to side.

“That won’t be necessary,” Rev says again.

Lucinda Gaelic leads her team to the door. A strange odor, like boiled cabbage or freshly-cut celery, wafts over my face as she passes us. “In that case, I’ll have the head of our sex crimes division contact you to arrange a meeting. We have some questions about your client’s medications.”

Davin’s grip on my hand tightens to the point of discomfort. With some effort, I manage to tug it free.

“How exactly is that relevant?” says Rev.

I can’t see her, but I know she’s grinning like a shark as she answers. “If you can work it into your busy e-Bay bidding schedule, I suggest you google “sodium oxybate.”

Chapter Twenty

I’m staring at myself in the bathroom mirror, wondering if I’m going to have to wear this silk navy blue dress for the rest of my life when I hear a knock on the door.

I walk back into the bedroom. “Come in.”

It’s Davin. “West is on his way,” he says. “He says he’ll be here tomorrow afternoon.”

“Oh, great,” I say sarcastically.

“I had to tell him!”

“Why? You don’t think we have enough people on the party train here already?”

“Look, he was already pissed that he had to find out what’s going on from TV, okay? I had to tell him.”

I nod, still not happy.

“Evan says the police will give him an escort when he gets close so he can get through the haters.”

“Okay.”

“Listen, I’m sorry about you losing the part. Totally blows.”

“Yeah. Sorry you had to be the messenger.”

When Charley Coney couldn’t reach me, he gave Davin the unenviable job of telling me that I’d been summarily fired from my next movie before filming had even begun.

I shrug. “Who ever heard of a ‘negative publicity clause?’”

“Still, what a dick move, you know?”

“I don’t think my head would’ve be in the game anyways.”

“Okay, well…” Davin starts to close the door, then stops. “He…he wants to know if you’ll talk to him.”

My head snaps up. “Brendan?”

He pushes the door all the way open with his fingers, staring at me like I’m crazy. “No, why would you want to talk to that…” He stops. “Andy Gordon.”

I look away. “Oh.”

“Not about…” he flails his hands around, unable to finish. “Just, you know, about where you’re going to stay, how that’s going to work.”

We’d left the courthouse in a modified reverse of our arrival. Details of the case against Brendan had leaked to the media, and this time no one was fooled by Jonathan Varner’s feint at the entrance. The police had offered to arrange an escort, me riding in an unmarked police cruiser, but I’d vehemently refused.

In the end, Davin had backed the van right up to the loading dock in the rear of the courthouse, and I’d ridden in the windowless rear all the way to Manhattan Beach, news vans trailing us the distance to the gated entry to Evan Tallant’s property. Not until his garage door had completely closed did I get out (smelling like an onion bagel sandwich).

“Evan says you can stay here as long as you want. I’ve seen his security system…he’s got alarms, cameras, laser motion detectors–the works. He says he can hire extra security to patrol the perimeter, and I can ask Rev about getting the police to assign a detail to the main road.”

“So I can’t go outside? I don’t really want to be trapped inside a house.”
Especially one that looks like a shrine to the gods of bleach and Oxy-Clean
, I think
.

He shakes his head. “Alarm won’t go off if you’re going
out
. When you come in, just disable the alarm. The code’s five-oh-five-oh.”

I roll my eyes, recognizing the wink and nod to the surfing TV show
Hawaii Five-O
from the seventies, coupled with the street reference for ‘cop.’ “You’d better hope none of the reporters out there is gray,” I say, visualizing some sixty-year-old surfer-turned-cameraman hunkered down on the other side of Evan’s property line. “That’ll probably be the first combination he tries.”

“You know…” He trails off, and shuts the door behind him like he’s afraid someone will overhear us. “We can hit the water, gidget,” he says quietly. “I’ll take you somewhere, they’ll never find you.”

I look at him, incredulous. “And do what? Get wet ‘til it all goes away?” I pat my stomach. “Besides, I think it’s going to be a little hard to pop-up on the stick pretty soon in my condition.”

He shrugs. “Caught in a fish net. How’s that different from your normal flail and bail?”

“Probably not much different,” I agree. “Paddling out might eventually be a challenge.”

“Well, the offer still stands if you change your mind.” He tries to smile, but it doesn’t convince. “I told Andy you’d call him as soon as you could,” he says, holding my phone out to me.

“Thanks.” I’ve been in such a daze, I’d never asked for it back. I take it and throw it onto the bed.

“So…what are you going to do?”

I raise one leg, pointing my toes towards the bed. “I really,
really
need a nap.”

“You look tired.”

“Exhausted.” I kick off the high heel shoes and drop onto the bed, testing the mattress. “Is this a blanket-covered brick or something? It’s hard as a rock.”

“Claire…” he trails off, thumping down next to me on the cement slab.

“I’m kidding, you tool,” I say, punching him in the arm. “I like mattresses on the firm side anyway.”

He starts an intense staring show-down with the white carpet. “It’s my fault,” he says. “I was the one who let him stay with you, you know, I had no idea…”

I realize what he’s talking about and frown. “Shut up, Davin.” I fold down the coverlet, nudging him with my leg, hinting for him to get off the bed.

He takes the hint and walks to the door. “You were right, you know?” he says, his hand on the handle. “That day you woke up for good. You didn’t remember anything, and I don’t know how, but you
knew
.”

I’m such a tangle of conflicting emotions–confusion, love, disgust, grief, disbelief, loss–like every paint color in the box has been mixed together all at once, producing a murky gray. I’m not sure a vocabulary even exists for saying what I’m thinking.

“It’s not your fault, okay?” My jaw starts to quiver, a presage of the weeping and wailing to come. I slip between the cool sheets and flop backwards, almost drowning in a mountain of down pillows. I fight my way out, folding one of them three times just to get it to support my head without asphyxiating me.

He holds up a set of car keys. “Gotta go get the Porsche. Evan’s seen Tag’s catering van, and he’s not feeling too good about his new ride.”

“I’ll be fine. Besides, there’s no one between here and L.A. I haven’t blubbered on, so I’m going to take advantage of some me-time to cry alone.”

“It might take me awhile. All those reporters…I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay?”

I shut my eyes and wait. When I don’t hear the door close, I say, “See? This is me sleeping. It works a lot better when you’re not standing there watching me.”

I hear him sigh.

“Davin, I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah…you say that a lot.”

The door finally closes with a soft
click
.

*****

November 2
^nd

When I wake up, it’s dark. My cell phone is blinking, buzzing so hard it’s practically walking across the top of the nightstand towards me. Still half-asleep, I mindlessly roll sideways into the plume-filled, death trap of a pillow before finally getting my hands on it.

I emit a garbled, non-word from my mouth that sounds approximately like “Hrgn?”

“You know Shadow Point?”

I open one eye, pulling the phone from my ear so I can look at the number. What catches my attention instead is the time. “Who is this?”

“Sorry, it’s Rev Carlin.”

I squint again at the phone. “It’s five o’clock in the morning.” My eyes are so dry it hurts to blink. I keep them closed, trying to encourage a little moisture production.
Must have used up everything I had last night,
I think.

“You know it?”

“Know what?”

“Shadow Point.” He says the two words slowly, with lots of silence in between.

“Rev?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m paying you, like, a million dollars an hour, and I just want to be sure you’re aware that every time you talk, you sound like you’ve been raked, and you’re just starting to regain consciousness.” I rub my right eye with my free hand. “I can get all the crazy I want during daylight hours for free.”

He ignores me. “Has Wib shown you?”

I run my tongue over my front teeth and smack my lips. “Yeah, he’s shown me.”

“Dawn patrol at seven. You in?”

I clear my throat. “Dude, are you aware that I am currently a reluctant guest in my brother’s boyfriend’s boss’s house…”

“Yeah, I know.” He sounds absurdly impatient.

“…and that I am not exactly in top physical or emotional shape…”

“Shadow’s all bumps, plenty of lull this time of year. Safer than walking. Clear your mind.”

“…with every news outlet in the state parked outside just waiting for me to leave…”

“Guy in my crew at Channel Six said the last van left two hours ago.”

“…with no way to get anywhere…”

“Wib’s boat’s right there on the dock. Get your ass here and drop anchor.”

“…with a choice in clothing between a silk dress and a Raggedy Ann costume?”

“Even girls wear underwear on Halloween, don’t they?” he says dryly. “I’ll loan you a board and a steamer.”

I snort, picturing myself in his wetsuit, the arms and legs of it being rolled up like a three year-old trying to wear her dad’s pants. “What are you going to do…go trunkin’?”

“Done it before,” he says. “Water’s not too cold.”

“You’re crazy.”

“You in?”

I sigh. “If I find out that you’ve ever pulled a wettie warmer in that suit, I’m going to beat you down.”

“Beaver tail,” he says.

Beaver tail wetsuits come with a snap-on crotch, which means he hasn’t, like other core surfers reluctant to miss a wave in order to tend to their bodily functions, resorted to peeing in his wetsuit.

It just means he’s peed in the ocean.

“Sick.”

“See you in an hour, dally.”

I tip-toe through the house in my new red carpet look: a silk dress, a terrycloth robe from the guest bathroom, and my Raggedy Ann thigh highs. I snake a white blanket from the white couch in the white living room as I pass. Once I silence the alarm system, I slip outside into the thick fog that’s drifted onshore overnight. The space between Evan’s house and the water looks like a roiling cloud bank. Unable to see where the stairs to the dock begin, I inch my feet along the flagstones towards the sounds of the shore break until I find the drop of the first step.

Once I’m in Davin’s boat, I throw off the lines, letting the retreating tide pull me away from the dock so I can avoid starting the engine. The fog acts like a muffler, dampening and distorting the calls of the gulls that I know are overhead, winging low over the water in the hopes of an early breakfast.

To be safe, I flip on the radar reflector. It won’t help me see other boats, but at least anyone equipped with radar will be able to see
me
. I’ve always been anxious about getting disoriented in this kind of pea soup, so I activate the GPS to be sure that I’m going west, out to sea. Starting the engines, only to motor at a high rate of speed straight back into Evan’s dock, might be the only way to make this day worse than yesterday.