The Opposite of Love (5 page)

“This was not meant to be a fight,” Catherine said finally. “I just don’t think you’re able to see what you’re doing, and I think it’s my job, as your mother, to help you see it.”

“See what, Mom?”

“That you need to take a chance. You need to trust that the universe isn’t going to yank everything away from you.”

“Like it did with you?”

Catherine looked up sharply. “It most certainly did not. It took away your father, yes. But I have three amazing daughters and I had a very fulfilling career. Darling, you look great for your age and I’m glad you’re taking care of yourself. But you’re not getting any younger. If you keep on this way, you’ll end up alone.”

“You’re alone too.”

“Hardly.” Catherine made a sound of derision in the back of her throat. “I’m not the kind of woman who sits home on a weekend, as you know. It was only a year after your father died when I started dating again. At this very moment, I’ve got two different men vying for my affection and they keep me quite busy. And again, I have the three of you.”

Melanie had never gotten used to her mother dating and avoided meeting any of her boyfriends, with the exception of one who had lasted several years, but that had been almost a decade ago. Just the mention of her mother’s love life made her a little queasy.

Melanie picked at her coleslaw and realized her appetite was shot. She threw up her hands. “So what is it that you’d like me to do, Mom? What will get you to drop this single-minded objective of yours to marry me off? Shall I agree to date the next guy who comes along?”

“In a word, yes. But it’s more than that. I’d like you to be aware of your defenses and how you might be sabotaging the relationship. Relationships are work, darling.” And here she pointed her fork at Melanie. “If you understand that and treat them that way, they have a much better chance of succeeding.”

Melanie abandoned her food and finished off her beer. When they left the restaurant, she walked her mother to her Mercedes and gave her an obligatory hug goodbye. Her father had demanded that they treat their mother with respect, no matter how furious with her they might be. Now that he was potentially in the ether watching every move Melanie made, there was even less room for disrespect than there had been when he was alive and she only had to worry about information getting back to him.

As Melanie slid into her SUV, she considered what it would be like when her mother was out there watching as well, and she shuddered. Perhaps she would have to change her beliefs, convince herself that there wasn’t any ether for them to hang around in after all.

A woman can always have sex. What she really wants is someone she can talk to while the sweat dries.

—Melanie Leon

Chapter Four

“So what made
you change your mind?” James asked.

They were at the Drop Bar at the Green Valley Ranch Resort and Casino, James sipping a vodka tonic and Melanie swirling her merlot in its glass. They were lounging in plush comfort in the darkened bar on velvet banquettes with the corner of the low coffee table between them.

“I guess I just figured it wouldn’t hurt to talk about it,” she said.

James nodded, leaned in a bit resting his elbows on his knees, furrowing his brow in an effort to look concerned. After she’d called him that afternoon, he’d stopped by the tanning salon, aware of how a tan made his eyes stand out. Now he was trying to catch her gaze without staring. The balance between seductive and creepy was a delicate one, but one he felt confident he’d mastered.

“So tell me,” he said. “How are you holding up?”

She shrugged. “I think I’m doing pretty well, actually.” He watched her lips as she spoke; they were a bit thin compared to those of the last girl he dated. She wore her dark hair in an understated style, straight past her shoulders with a slight curl at the ends. No bangs. Her eyes were a light brown with a wide shape to them that he found interesting, but overall she couldn’t be called beautiful. She was in the ‘pretty’ category. Women fell easily under one of three labels: beautiful, pretty, or simply cute. Anyone whose looks weren't in one of those categories was unlikely to catch his eye. Intelligence and personality counted, sure, but looks were what got your foot in the door. He didn’t think of this as arrogance or objectification; in his experience, women were just as hung up on looks as men.

Regardless, he’d seen her in her workout clothes at the accident scene so he knew she had the kind of tight and toned body he liked. Plus she was the right height, probably five-five or five-six, not taller than him in heels, so she had that going for her too.

“Do you see that kind of thing often? A accident like that?” she asked.

“No, not like that,” he answered. “Not involving an infant. But there are some real sickos out there who do some really messed up things to kids. It’s not the kind of thing you ever get used to.”

James held his glass and looked down into his drink and scowled, shook his head, took a big swallow, and then glanced at Melanie to gauge her reaction. As expected, she wore a look of concern and pity.

“It’s gratifying though, you know, to get the bad guys—for lack of a better word.” He shrugged, leaned back against the cushions and put on his stoic smile. “And someone’s gotta do it, right?”

“Isn’t your job dangerous?”

“Not as much as you’d think.”

“Seems like I hear about local cops dying all the time these days.”

“That’s because we lost four in 2009, we haven’t lost one in the past three years though.”

“Four in one year?”

“Yeah, three were car accidents, one was an off-duty robbery, but every time another one was killed the news brought up everything all over again. We’ve only lost seven in the past twenty years. Four car accidents, one was the robbery, one was hit by falling ice on Mount Charleston, and one was Sergeant Prendes.”

“Oh right, I remember that. The domestic violence call, right?”

“Yeah, ambushed. Didn’t have a chance.” Henry Prendes had started working for Metro in 1992, the same year James did, and James had genuinely liked the guy. Back in the day they’d put down a few beers together, but when Henry got married they no longer had much in common.

“What got you into police work?” she asked.

James spotted the waitress and drew a small circle in the air above the table—the universal sign for another round of drinks—before launching into his lie; it had become more comfortable in the retelling and now rolled off the tongue more smoothly than the truth. He told her of his father and his grandfather’s loyal service to the force out in Los Angeles. He told her what an honor it was to follow in their footsteps, explained that it was a matter of pride in their family that they lived honest, hardworking lives while making their city safe for people who did the same. He'd chosen L.A. for his story because it was the only place he'd ever been besides Las Vegas. It was where his mother was born and near where his grandmother had lived.

His superiors in the Las Vegas department knew the real story but were sympathetic to his concerns about keeping it a secret, especially Lieutenant Lennox. But that was how it should be; it was
his
family, after all.

The truth was, things had begun to unravel when he was six years old. His father had started playing poker and craps after work and bringing home less and less of his paycheck. His mother, out of spite toward his father, had hidden her drinking less and less and berated him mercilessly about the gambling. Within four years—partly because he had stopped bringing home money altogether and partly because of the nagging—his father left. They’d heard through his friends that he was still in Las Vegas, they just didn’t know where.

James’ mother found a boyfriend to contribute food to the household. He also showed her how to make money without having to get a real job that would interfere with her drinking. They stayed in a hotel that rented by the week with a single bedroom and a living room with a mini refrigerator and a small stove in the corner. James played with other kids in the parking lot that wrapped around the building while his mother entertained her new friends one at a time, and at night he slept on the sofa and pretended not to hear. He was still in school, but his grades were going downhill because he’d stopped doing his homework.

It was one of his mother’s new friends who introduced her to crack. He was a big beast with greasy hair and dirty fingernails, and teeth that substantiated his crack habit, even if his gut didn’t. He scared away his mother’s boyfriend and was hateful toward any child who came too close. He put a fear greater than death into James.

His mother had developed scabs on her face and arms. On weekends she would come out of the bedroom around noon and sit with him on the tattered avocado-green sofa, watching TV, picking at her skin with filthy nails, yesterday’s whiskey oozing from her pores. He often found himself monitoring the space between them, pressing his body against the arm of the sofa, moving a pillow between himself and his mom. He found her appearance and odor so revolting that he frequently had to leave the apartment, even though he had nowhere to go.

When he was twelve, he found his mom passed out in the bedroom one afternoon and took the opportunity to sneak a soda from the mini-fridge. The Beast came in the front door and stood staring at him as though he was an intruder. Tired of skittering away like a cockroach every time the man walked into the room, James stood his ground, made eye contact. The Beast let out an actual growl, like a bear, and when James didn’t back down, he crossed the room in two strides, grabbed him by the upper arm and shook him like a rag doll. At one hundred five pounds, there wasn’t much he could do to defend himself, but when he felt his arm crack, he didn’t scream. The Beast must have felt something too; he stopped shaking him and heaved him across the room where his forehead struck the corner of the mini-fridge.

When The Beast stormed out and slammed the door, James was left with a broken arm and a cut on his forehead, but also with a sense of strength that he’d never had before, and he felt like he might be ok, like he might be able to take care of himself. In his preadolescent mind, he’d faced his worst threat, he’d stood up to The Beast, and he’d survived.

His mother borrowed car keys from a neighbor and drove him to the emergency room. The whole way she cursed under her breath about how much money this was going to cost, and James kept his face turned toward the passenger window, pressing his wadded-up t-shirt to his forehead with his good arm. (After this, he would always have the good arm and the other one.)

James didn’t want his mother to see his face because he was hiding his happiness from her. He knew that this was going to change something, maybe everything. The Beast would not be allowed to beat up on him again, that was for sure. His mother would have a laundry list of reasons that this was unacceptable: the cost of the emergency room, the cops potentially getting involved, not to mention the damage to her little boy. James knew the latter would probably not register as a legitimate concern to The Beast, but it might be worth mentioning anyway. Regardless, the bottom line was that The Beast would be in trouble, and he would either have to change his attitude or leave.

But rather than kicking out The Beast, his mother said it was too dangerous for a boy his age in Las Vegas and she sent him to live with his grandmother in Orange County, California. This was not something he’d ever dreamed could happen. He’d never even allowed himself to imagine what would happen if his mother’s drug use got worse, if she overdosed. She had just always been there, and always would be. He could see that his father had one foot out the door long before he actually left, and so he’d been prepared for it. But his mother was forever. He’d never doubted that.

Over the years, especially in his line of work, he’d seen the heroics of mothers thousands of times. Mothers were supposed to put children first and move mountains to provide for and protect them. But his mother hadn’t done that. In fact, both his parents had succumbed to their own desires, their own selfish behavior, rather than love him.

So when his mother shipped him off, it changed everything he believed about her in particular, and about people in general.

James’ grandmother had enrolled him in the Explorers in Orange County the very week he arrived. There would be no middle ground; he would be like his mother, or he would be the opposite. The choice was his, but he felt so betrayed by his mother that he couldn't find the words to plead for what he really wanted: to bring her back, to fix her, to make her better so she could love him again.

He’d done well in high school, joined the police academy in L.A. at eighteen, was hired by the Bell Gardens police department at nineteen, and transferred to Las Vegas at the age of twenty-two.

“Why Vegas?” Melanie asked.

“I felt like I could do more good here than in L.A. Plus, the opportunity for advancement is much better. So are the benefits.”

The rest he could be truthful about if he wanted to. For twenty years he’d been working for Metro, first as a beat cop, now as detective. At forty-two, it was time for him to move on up to sergeant and have a little more power and a lot less interaction with the dregs of this town. He could’ve done it sooner, but he’d still had hope that he could make a bigger difference on the street than he could behind a desk. Year by year, however, what had started as a desire to fix what was wrong with Vegas had morphed into a desperate urge to just have some effect upon the rampant crime and community apathy—the byproducts of lives dominated by poverty and addiction. But now his career ambitions had changed and his energy had shifted from serving the community, to something he
could
have an effect upon: his own advancement.

The loss of his idealism had been a tough defeat, but it was inevitable when he saw the same people day after day committing the same crimes or going back to the same fucked-up situations. When your best effort wasn’t helping anyone, it could drive a man insane, or to drink, or to buy cars that went one hundred ninety miles an hour, or to fuck people whose names he didn’t know. In public. He’d never gone so far as to do anything that would jeopardize his career. It was, after all, what made him better than his parents—proof that the apple could fall wherever gravity dictated, but after that, it was all about personal choice. About self-control. About sacrifice and work. He’d seen plenty of his fellow cops break laws and use their get-out-of-jail-free cards. Typical really, but that kind of thing made a guy a lot harder to promote. So James kept his shenanigans to the legal variety. Strip joints, poker rooms, and once in a while, the sex clubs. He was a cop after all, not a politician.

After years of service and a slow degradation of his desire to make Vegas a better place, he knew it was best to just accept the limitations of policing this city and start focusing on what he could control. To start planning his future after police work along with the gentlest path to that future. He thought he might buy a boat and hire himself out as a fishing guide on Lake Mead. He could do anything; the sky was the limit and his pension would support him. And once he realized that there was going to be another life after this—a better life—a nice, safe desk job started to look like a damn good idea, and a promotion to sergeant would get him there.

James took a swig of his drink. He smelled the sweet burn of a cigarette and glanced toward the center bar where a man was smoking and playing a video poker machine. He thought about bumming one from him, then glanced at Melanie and figured she was probably not a smoker. He really wasn’t either, not enough to buy a pack, it just went well with a drink sometimes. Everyone knew that. That’s why it had driven him nuts when they’d passed the “Clean Indoor Air Act” in 2006, banning smoking from all the restaurants, pubs and taverns. It was all complete bullshit of course. A plot cooked up by the powers that be to get people out of the neighborhood bars and into the casinos.

He remembered the ridiculous commercials in support of the law. One particular TV ad had aired showing a blond five-year-old little girl in the non-smoking section of a restaurant sweetly peering over the back of the booth at a fat, disgusting middle-aged man marinating in a cloud of smoke a couple of booths away—in the smoking section. “Second-hand smoke kills” and all that. Waitresses were portrayed as exploited refugees forced to work under smoky conditions that were killing them by the hour. The public bought it—of course they bought it. Morons. So the law passed, banning smoking in any establishment that served food. All that ended up happening was that the neighborhood bars—all eight hundred or more of them—now had to decide if they were going to ban smoking or close their kitchens. Smokers were gamblers, as it went—addicts being addicts. The food was only a convenience for the gamblers, not an income for the pubs. Thus many kitchens closed, kitchen and wait-staff lost jobs—the very people those commercials were purporting to protect from the evils of secondhand smoke.