The Kissing Game (11 page)

“Listen Caroline, I’ve operated on little sleep
before, in law school, before the bar exam, at various times, but never lost as
much sleep as I have recently. So if I don’t say what I need to say, I’ll just
lose more. With the hours I work, I can’t afford to lose much sleep.”

He glances around the meticulously organized
office, binders alphabetized on the wall, files stacked in precise piles, the closed
door, before looking back at me. “I’ve decided the reason you kissed me isn’t
important. I just think it’s important you know that I wasn’t drunk or tipsy,
or whatever you think I was,” he says.

He scratches his perfect chin, and then his
eyes explore the contours of my panted knees as if they’re worthy of study.

 “I didn’t kiss you back in some stupor,” he
says. “Maybe you don’t realize the potential consequences for me. Maybe you do.
Regardless, I wish I had the drunken blur that might have blocked out the memory.
I might have lost less sleep. But it doesn’t matter now.” He stands and grabs
the chair along the wall and places it beside him. “What matters now is we’ve
got an important conference call this morning. Judge Herrington. It’s about to
begin. I’ll need you to sit in and take notes.” He gestures at the seat beside
him, pushes his laptop over, and flips open the screen. “You can type.” At the
thought of having to sit right next to him, I feel as though my breathing has
sped up to the pace of hamsters on treadmills. He points at the empty chair
beside him again.

“Okay,” I say, rising and taking several steps over
to sit down beside him. Robert retrieves the file from the stack and dials the
number on his phone. Judge Herrington’s old voice crackles on the speaker.

“Hello,” the retired judge says, speaking to
Robert as if they’re old friends.

“Judge Herrington, it’s Robert Carver. How are
you this morning?” Robert announces loudly.

“Fine, Robert, thanks for calling. Did you hear
back on the claim yet?”

“No, not yet. I imagine it’ll take a few weeks
before we hear back, but I’m sure it’ll go through. Just have to be patient.”

“I see, is Caroline there?” the judge asks, his
voice a little higher.

“Yes, she’s here.” Robert looks at me.

“Hello, Judge Herrington,” I say.

“Hello, Caroline. How are you? I have a letter
to dictate. Would you be a sweet and type it for me?”

“Certainly,” I reply. With my hands on the
keyboard of Robert’s laptop, I begin typing a letter to a government official
about a property holding the judge wants to sell. The letter is long, and I
have to pause at intervals to read it back to him. Meanwhile, beside me, Robert
pulls out a thick document and a red pen and commences scratching red edit
marks onto it.

When I finish the letter, the judge asks, “Robert,
would you sign it for me and mail it out?”

“Certainly,” Robert answers professionally.

“If I ever had a secretary like yours, Robert,
I don’t know, I wouldn’t have gone through so many,” the judge laughs. “You’re
lucky, you got the only good one. You should keep her.”

“Yes, yes,” Robert answers, and I feel
something on my knee, something warm, so I glance down and see Robert’s hand there.
Perhaps he’s mistaken the texture of my pants for the texture of his chair? I
wiggle but feel him grip more tightly, his middle finger sliding just under my
knee and locking there.

I’m a statue.

The judge says something else—something about
next Tuesday, a meeting.

“Right,” Robert says to the judge in the most
businesslike tone. “Once I hear back, we’ll schedule another meeting with
opposing counsel.” His thumb rubs over my knee and I feel sucked into another
universe where everything is backwards. Where clocks reverse, where birds bark,
where the sun moves east across the sky.

“Thank you. And Caroline, you don’t let Robert
yell at you too much, alright?” the old judge says.

“Uh, I won’t.”

“We’ll talk with you soon, then,” Robert
states.

“Alrighty, buh-bye.” I hear the click as the
line disconnects.

Robert’s hand remains on my knee. Certainly he
has simply failed to realize he put his hand there and will note the mistake
and jerk it away.

Instead, he gazes at his own fingers and frowns,
as if contemplating the arc of his arm and the length of his tether to my leg.
His other hand then moves toward me, and I feel my chair swivel to face him as
he swivels his own chair to face me. There’s a faint intake of breath when I
come to a halt. His hand remains on my knee while the other holds the seat of
my chair, and he looks at me as if deciding where to begin. Considering the
fact that the hates me, I wonder if he’s going to take me apart piece by piece
or just rip me in half. As always, it’s impossible to be unaware of him, of the
direction of his gaze, of the straightness of his posture, of the round
tightness of his shoulders, of the black leather belt on his pants that remains
slightly hidden under his tucked dress shirt, of the meanness in his
unnaturally appealing eyes. Seconds pass as he sits still, fastened to his
position.

Then he pulls at my knee as though it were a
rope and he were tightening the line. His knees part and my knees slide between
his legs. I have no other choice but to allow my wheeled chair to slide toward
him inch by inch. He doesn’t speak. Not
Come here.
Not
I’m going to
kill you now.
Nothing. He just pulls me.

Inching forward, I watch his hand and think:
His
hand is touching me,
which ridiculously reminds me of the painting in the
Sistine Chapel where Adam and God touch fingers. I’m watching as if my eyes are
witness to a magic trick; he’s going to pull out a shiny silver dollar from
behind my knee and say
Ah-hah
! Only there’s no coin, no ah-hah, just the
feeling of his hand pulling me with so much determination that one of his
fingers presses behind my knee, hitting a nerve sharply. His right hand then
cups around my other knee and joins the effort. The strangeness of his touch
whorls and flares and draws back again and I think he’s too austere, too cruel
to be touching me. Something is so very wrong with the gesture, with the
simplicity of the effort, with the closeness of it all. And then my chair bumps
into his knees

He leans toward me and my lungs contract in a series
of unequal elongations. I’m terribly aware of my chest, of the slim fit of my
pants, of the alien-ness of his proximity.

“I think I need to make something clear, so
that you understand,” he states, all business-like. All lawyer. “
You
initiated
the kiss that night, not me.”

“I understand,” I say, because of course I
initiated. Why argue the point now, when we’re having some sort of existential
crisis while his legs are parted around my knees? Why quibble with him when he
has me all figured out, like one of those brianiacs who can divide 486,234 by
22 and instantly give the answer. I should’ve known to never take on someone
like Robert. I wonder how he plans to lift me up, open his window, and hoist me
out. It will be challenging, but I don’t doubt his ability. Yet processing
thoughts becomes perilous due to closeness of his face, the mythical nature of
his eyelashes, long and curved upward, like fake things if fake things could
ever look so real.

“If I
had
initiated,” he states. “I’d
have properly considered the outcomes. Given it thought, and I certainly wouldn’t
have done so in your condition.”

I nod, not capable of speech.

“I’d have made sure you were in your right
mind, that you knew what I was doing.”

As he leans toward me, I think about how the
moon has two sides but we only see one. How fish have scales but if you scrape
them away, there’s just soft skin underneath. My shoes look tiny on the floor next
to his black dress shoes. He smells of soap and the stiff starchy fabric of his
shirt as the ball of this thumb slides across my thigh. His whole body angles
while I grip my arm rests as if in an electric chair. His face moves toward me
in sparks through empty space. My long red hair hangs down, tickling my
forearms, then tickling his, and then it’s a strange phenomenon to feel him
reach out and actually touch the bare skin on my forearm.

 “I know you hate me, Caroline.”

If an apocalypse had destroyed all nature’s
beauty, he would be enough to make up for every ugly thing. Mountains, forests,
oceans—everything. And when his hand slides down to touch my fingers, I feel
tiny trembles but cannot fathom when they’re mine or his.

While his mouth closes in, it’s unsettling,
like that nervous tension you feel right before you’re strapped into a roller
coaster. The tension in his legs and arms seems synchronized with my own. I hear
the creak in his chair. The irony combined with the electric that pools in my stomach,
the sourceless sensation that shivers at my knees, and the stupidity at the
core of all human beings makes me almost wince. I move with him as he urges me
forward, the act of doing like both cutting and suturing all in one gesture, the
urge hammered somewhere inside that void that all people feel but never talk
about.

To compare a photograph of a jungle to standing
under the canopy of the real thing is to compare this kiss to the first one. It
is to compare the sight of a shark from a distance to the force of the one
actually pulling you under. It is to stand on a droughty plane like a native in
prayer and then feel rain as comes clanging down from the absolute reaches in a
torrent. His hand grips around my back and logic doesn’t lecture me away. I’ve
forgotten that he’s the cruel, evil man who ruined my life for two years. I
feel freedom before spending the eternity in hell. His left hand slides up my
outer thigh, and my thoughts are shadows while the focus of my brain that hid
the memory of the night in the elevator with Robert zooms in.

In your condition. In your condition.
What condition? What did he mean when he said
in
your condition
? I was tipsy, yes. But there was no
condition
?

He places a finger on the top button of my
blouse and says, “Your lips don’t hate me.”

I shake my head while a thought sticks in my
brain.
He just kissed me, w
illfully and without medication
.
How
is this possible?

            He frowns and leans away. There’re
several seconds when we look at each other and I wonder if he might laugh and
tell me that the kiss was all a joke.
Payback bitch. That’s what you get for
teasing! How does it feel?
Followed by uproarious laughter. Or, better yet,
I wonder if my alarm will ring and I’ll wake and laugh at the strangeness of my
dream. Neither occurs. Just this beautiful man sitting so close to me.

Is he going to speak? Tell me why he just
kissed me? Or maybe just throw me out the window after all?

            The tape. All I can think about is
the tape suddenly.

            “I have to tell you—” he begins.

“I’m sorry,” I cut him off, feeling warmth on
my neck. “I have something really important to take care of,” I say.

“Now?” he asks, his lips parted.

“Yes, right now. It’s … I have to return a call
to a client,” I say standing and pushing my chair back to its proper place.

“What client?” he asks as if clients were
aliens.

“Not a client, the copy place. I meant to call
Conrad back about some questions he has.”  

Robert’s head wobbles slightly. I’m sure as he
watches me fumble as I walk out his door. Outside his office the dry air hits
me like a wall.

“Más remedio tiene un muerto.”

Even a dead man has more to hope for.     

Within minutes, I’m standing at Henry’s desk,
feeling as though the fire of dread steams through me.

Henry’s talking with an associate, a skinny
pale man with slicked-back hair who speaks as if he has something stuck in his
throat. I wait for them to finish. It takes a million years. As soon as the
associate walks away, I glance around and lean over Henry’s partition.

“I’ve got to get that video back from your
boss,” I say, my eyes bulging.

Henry scowls and shakes his head as if I’ve
just told him I’m going to join the circus and become a clown. “You know it’s
out of my hands now. It’s at my boss’s house.”

“I know, but I’ve got to do
something
.
Can’t you get the tape somehow? It’s dire, Henry, dire.”

He bites the inner part of his lip and taps his
pen on his desk. “I don’t know,” he says. His boss’s phone rings, and he
answers it, writes down the message, and then hangs up. I wait while he
finishes.

“It’s really insane that you want the tape back
now, you know that?”

“I know,” I admit.

“You know,” he hedges, leaning back into his chair
and adjusting his sweater vest. He speaks in a ghostly whisper. “We could do
something, but it’s risky,” Henry offers finally.

“What?” I whisper, leaning.

“I do have a key,” Henry gazes around his
cubicle to make sure no one is within earshot.

“To your boss’s house?”  Air fills my lungs in
a rush.

“Yeah, he had me water his plants when he went
on vacation. I’ve still got the key and code. What can I say? The man trusts
me.”

A key to his boss’s house.

As I stand there, the first thought that scurries
in my mind is
breaking and entering
. Am I that person who breaks and
enters? Am I a criminal now? Do I do enter people’s homes unlawfully and take
stuff? I was, after all, the woman who tried to drug her boss, kissed him on
camera, and planned to use the evidence against him. Considering those facts,
maybe I’m capable of worse. I realize Henry could possibly be leading me down a
dangerous path, but I’m past the point of danger. I’m a villain already. The
only thing missing is the deeply dented breastplate over my torso and a
blood-spattered sword in my hand. Henry’s desk phone rings again, but he
doesn’t answer it. He just sits there looking at me while I contemplate the
consequences of venturing further down this path: hard time, the color orange, being
someone’s bitch.

“I’m not sure,” I say, considering the fact
that Henry helped me get where I am now, and maybe can help me out of this
mess. “Would you get in trouble? What if your boss caught you?”

“I doubt I’d be implicated. To be sure, I could
just give you the key and park down the street. You could go in yourself. But,
why the sudden change of heart? I don’t get it. Just because Robert’s dad is in
the hospital? You gotta have a little more backbone than that if you want to deal
with lawyers, sweetie. And did we not all agreed that Robert deserved a little
of his own steel-toed boot?” A printer nearby whines and three pages slide out
if it, perfectly, one on top of the other.

“Yeah, but I can’t do this to him.”

Henry huffs and throws up his hands. “Whatever,
fine. You want to go tonight? My boss will only be out of town until tomorrow.
We’ll have to go quickly.”

“Yeah, let’s do it,” I say. “We don’t have any
other options. I can’t let your boss get that tape.”

“Look, I’ll meet you on the corner of Market
after work. I’ve got a long day and I won’t finish until around seven o’clock.”

“Thanks, Henry,” I tell him.

That day, Robert takes several conference calls
that keep him occupied. He exits his office only twice: once to go to a lunch
meeting, and the second time to hand me the tiny tape that he’s dictated his
timesheets into. Each time his lashed eyes catch mine and I feel a jolt of hell
more horrible than brimstone moving up my spine. When he comes out to hand me
the tape, he leans in over my desk, closer than professionally necessary, so
close that his open suit jacket tickles my spine.

“I’ll be on a conference call for the rest of
the day, but if you could enter these, I’d appreciate it,” he says so sweetly
that forty priests couldn’t baptize the evil visitant of my guilt away.

At 6:55, I grab my bag and set out without
saying goodbye to Robert. His little red phone light is on, indicating he’s
still on a conference call, likely making up for being out of the office yesterday
because of his dad.

Soon, I’m out in the street in front of the
building. A lamppost flickers blue even though the sky is still pale. It highlights
cracks in the street, lines that creep like hands up the road despite the fresh
tar covering them. While I wait, one distant cloud ghostly arches down over the
side of a distant skyscraper.

Henry soon pulls up in his red Toyota. I
collapse inside his car and shut the door. He glances around us as if he’s
looking for watching eyes. He’s wearing his typical sweater vest, and his hair
looks tired.

As he pulls up to the red light, he instructs
me, “I’m gonna drop you off a block away from my boss’s house. You can’t miss
it. It’s the oddly shaped building second from the last at the top of the hill
on the right.” He hands me a key and a slip of paper with the number code
4847
written on it.

As he turns right at the intersection and drives
towards Pacific Heights, he explains, “The thing is—his mailbox isn’t right
inside the front door. The mail slot delivers straight into his office, but his
office is on the second floor. It’s a weird layout. The key gives you access to
the gate outside, but you have to go downstairs to enter the code to get into
the house. Once inside, you’ll have to go upstairs to his office, which is
facing the street.” Henry glances over at me while he’s driving, seeming to
make sure I’m paying attention. I’m holding the key in my hand and thinking
I’ve lost all hold on reality. “When you get inside, you have to type in the
code backwards: 7484 or the alarm will sound.”

“Okay, backwards?”

“Yeah, backwards.” He eyes me. “You can do
this, right? Because we don’t need any shit to go down. Just get in and get out.”

“Certainly,” I say, thinking of Robert. What
could go wrong when you’re doing something right? “Thanks for doing this,
Henry. I’m sorry to be so much trouble, and I’m forever grateful.”

I watch out the window as we drive toward
Henry’s boss’s house. We pass a group of homeless people leaning against a
decaying brick building, their stuffed carts nearby. They look like disheveled
remnants of war party. It takes less than ten minutes to arrive at our
destination, but by then the sky has lost its light.

“I’m going to park here. If anything happens,
and I mean anything, I’ll meet you over on Westin, just a few blocks from here,
just look for my car.” Henry doesn’t shout at me or show emotion. He just
nudges the car into a spot under a tree a block away from his boss’s house and
slides the gearshift into park, as if he routinely does this kind of thing, as
if breaking and entering is a normal Thursday night activity for him. The
street outside looks ridiculously dark, like the edge of the earth. “Good
luck,” Henry tells me. And no worries. It’ll be fine. You’ll be in and out.
Just grab the envelope and get out quickly. Problem solved.”

I remove my cell phone from my backpack and
shove it in my pocket before placing my backpack in the rear seat of Henry’s
car.

“See you soon,” I say as I jump out and then
shut the door.

Briskly, I turn the corner in and rise up the
dark Pacific Heights street alone. The air has grown remarkably crisp in the
short drive, and dark wind comes at me from all directions. No cars climb the
steep hill but instead crouch in parking spots that hug the curbs. With the air
smelling like someone’s beef stew, the hill steepens as I pass glossy garages
and a short tree that has sprouted out of a circle in the sidewalk. Like of
victim of circumstance, it waves weakly in the wind. In front of me, the
apartments turn into houses with actual front yards and winding walkways that
lead to gated entrances and sparkly windows.

When I nearly reach the top of the hill, I see
the oddly shaped house. It’s mostly glass and looks industrial. Soon I’m
walking the path to the entrance, where small lights ignite beneath my feet,
turning the ground into a fiery path. Using the key Henry gave me, I open the
iron gate and soon descend down the steps toward the front entrance. Pausing, I
listen for noise. For a second, I’m certain I hear the mumbling chatter of
conversation. Holding my breath, I press my ear against the front door and
listen. I hear only a car chugging up the steep hill.

In the partial light, I notice the keypad next
to the front door. With nearly shaking fingers, I type the code and hear the
lock slide open with a snap. With my hand on the door handle, I barely turn it
and the front door wafts open. As my right foot steps inside, a light flicks on
in the entryway, revealing shiny parquet floors and an steel railing that wraps
a grand staircase around an atrium.

If I had the time, I would walk around the
place and get a good look at how the other half lives. Instead, I slide the
front door shut, and take a few steps inside. Something tells me to call out,
“Hello!” but I opt to remain silent.

Beyond the atrium, the floor-to-ceiling walls
of glass reveal the sparkling view of San Francisco and lights across the bay.
I pause and hear my pulse thumping in my temples, telling myself that I’m just
running an errand. Just an errand. I’m not breaking the law. This is all for good
deed, a voice keeps telling me. To save a cruel man who ruins my life but who
is so beautiful that nuns would rip off their veils and habits at the sight of
him. A man whom I’ve also kissed. Twice.

Taking the stairs on the tips of my toes, I’m
soon at the top of the landing and entering what I hope is the office. With my
right hand on the wall, I flick on the light. The room is long and narrow,
grassy wallpaper behind a plain bed. Past the bed are glass double doors that
lead out onto a balcony. The window looks down onto lines of lights in the
city. I flick off that light and continue toward the next door, which I enter.
My hand shakes as I flick on those lights, feeling as if something might grab
my fingers in the dark before.

Overhead hangs an oval-shaped light that looks
like a massive eye. The office is wood paneled with a television mounted on the
left wall and the desk on the right. Near the window at the far end is a
cabinet that I suspect holds the mail. At the sight, I feel a lifting sensation
that my task is nearly accomplished. Having whipped the cabinet open, I reach
for the mail, which falls out in a tumble of paper and advertisements. On the
floor, I see the envelope sitting right there on top. Simple as that! I nab it
so fast that the envelope opens, and out fall three pictures of beautiful,
scantily clad young women. One is a tall Asian wearing a black leather negligee
thing and holding a whip. The second photo is a busty blonde wearing a tight
leather bikini and pointing at the camera. The third photo is a pixie redhead
wearing a maid costume, only this one has a ball strapped into her open mouth,
a pitiful expression in her
eyes.
On top of this photo, a post-it note reads:
Contact
[email protected]
. Clearly not my envelope. I shove the photos back inside and
shuffle through the mail on the floor until I find mine. Then I stash the mail
back into the cabinet and shut it, flicking off the office light before I
leave. It’s so easy it’s nothing, nothing at all. I tip-toe out of the office,
and as I descend the stairs, I think about Robert.

With one foot at the bottom of the stairs, I
notice red-white-and-blue lights twinkling like candy. The house is made of so
much glass that I can’t tell where the lights are coming from.

I’m nearly at the front door when I hear
footsteps outside. Without contemplation, I bolt in the other direction,
deciding to turn right at the stairs instead of heading for the front door. The
darkness blinds me, so I use my hand along the wall and find myself in a
massive kitchen. It’s all metallic and angular, lit through windows by the
lights of nearby homes. At the end of the kitchen, tall glass doors lead to a
room that’s full of plants with fern-like arms.

Hearing swish of the front door, I push open
the atrium door and dash through the room, leaves slapping me in the face and
arms before I reach another set a glass doors. I see nothing but windows and
plants and more windows and plants. My hand clutches the envelope tightly. My
pulse pulverizes my ears.

Do I hear talking? Yes, talking and footsteps.

I find a sliding glass door that leads out onto
a balcony over a little grassy hill that must constitute the backyard to this
little mansion. An icicle-like breeze hits my face as I look down. It’s a full
story drop, like jumping off the roof of a house. Turning back, I see and hear lights
inside the house turning on. Flick. Flick. Flick.