Burning September (22 page)

I slipped onto a stool by the island.  “I really don’t think anyone I know would call them.  And they have a guest list, you know.  The coordinators of the event.  You have to be invited, and your name goes on the list.  Any number of people could have found my name off of that.”

“Who’s that guy you were with?  The one who threatened to call security?  He stayed there talking to reporters after you left, something about the function you guys were at.”

“Jeff.  Victoria Rasmussen’s undergrad professor.  An old friend of Caroline’s.  He’s completely in love with her.”

“With
her
?”  He rolled his eyes at my flummoxed face.  “Don’t play dumb, Kat.  I’m not buying that.  Give me all the big Bambi eyed looks you want.”

“What the hell is your problem?” 
Bambi
eyes?  “You don’t even know him, how can you say that with such conviction?  Maybe you should drink a few beers, calm the fuck down.  I bet you get cranky when your blood alcohol’s at zero.”  He’d only have to be around Jeff for two minutes to realize his suspicion was sorely misplaced.  Jeff wanted to hang around me because I was the closest he’d ever get to Caroline, he had no choice but to settle for the knock-off. 

Kyle’s eyelids fluttered closed as he sucked in a breath.  “Look,” he said, once he’d opened his eyes.  “I know way more about these things than you do.  He didn’t have to stand there playing to the cameras after you left, but he did, yammering about some stupid magazine that nobody could possibly care less about.  There’s always a few hangers on during media blitzes.  Okay?  Always.  No exceptions.  It’s possible that yours is Jeff.”  But he said
Jeff
as if it were allegedly his name, like it tasted bitter as it fizzled on his tongue. 

I stared at him for a while, rusty wheels in my mind turning, turning, scrutinizing and cataloguing the hard set of his jaw, the vales carved into his forehead, his fleeting flashes of eye contact, his white knuckled grip on the side of the island.  The way he couldn’t keep his lips still, twitching them from side to side, biting the insides, running his tongue over his gums.  I’d seen that look before, but never directed at me. 

“Oh, my God,” I finally said.  “You’re jealous.  Of
Jeff
. Wow.” 

“Excuse me?”

I pushed back from the kitchen island, the better to see his face, contorted into an expression of what I imagined he’d intended to look calmly flabbergasted.  Maybe his acting skills would work on a jury, but they would never know him like I did.  “You
are
.  You could have called instead of coming over.  You didn’t.  You saw me on the news, saw him right there with me, and got jealous.”

“That,” he said, a tight muscle in his jaw tensing, “is ridiculous.”

I flipped a hand palm-up, raked the other through a wave of my hair.  “I don’t think it is.”

“Whether or not you think I’m jealous has nothing to do with my point.  You need to watch what you say to this guy.  Something could come back to bite you in the ass.”

I swung one leg over the other, drumming my nails on the island’s butcher block surface.  “Did you decide you were in love with me before or after I accidentally met Crystal?  I may be better looking, but she looks like she puts out.  I can see why you’ve waffled with telling me how you really feel,” I said, reveling in the flush creeping up his neck like invisible strangling hands.  I’d never seen him blush before, didn’t think it was possible. 

“I totally asked for this, didn’t I?” he said, more to himself than to me, shaking his head.  “I don’t know why I expected anything different.  This may be a classic case of transference.  You watch enough Dr. Phil; you know what that means.”

“He really is in love with Caroline, you know.”  I cupped my chin in my palm.  “Jeff.  You should have seen him moon over her handwriting and stare at old pictures of her last time he was over.  Completely disgusting, you have laughed.  Once you got over your initial wave of envy, that is.”  

He tipped his head back, sighing at the ceiling.  “You’re impossible.  Now I definitely need that beer.”

“I’d go on a beer run for you, but that’d be illegal,” I called, twisting on the bar stool as he made his way out of the kitchen, muttering under his breath.  “Something you should have considered before falling head over heels for an eighteen-year-old girl!”

He shook his head, looking like he was fighting the urge to smile, unwilling to give me the satisfaction.

“What, you’re not going to kiss me goodbye?”  I painted myself in the fiery outrage I’d seen in Mexican soap operas, pressing a hand to my naked collarbone, laughing when he stopped dead in his tracks and made an about face.  I didn’t even have time to stop laughing before he’d curled his hand around the back of my neck and flattened my lips with his. 

And he was back at the front door before I finished choking on my own shock and spluttered, “What the fuck was that?”

He wrenched the door open, and it was him laughing now.  “How did I know you were all bark?”  He stood in the threshold of the door, blue eyes glittering with amusement, the slight sheen of lipstick shimmering on his mouth, mocking me.  “I know I’m right about Jeff.  Lock the deadbolt behind me.”

The door clicked shut.  I pressed two fingers to my lips, positive I was redder than the Challenger could ever wish to be.  A boulder had formed in my throat, and my lips still burned from the contact. 

“Asshole,” I said to my empty kitchen, bristling at the predictably dull
tick tick tick
of the clocks, wishing I could tear them off the walls.

***

“Oy vey,” Caroline said after a loud catcall whistle that made the patients in the rec room jump.  “You look like shit.”

“At least my outfit’s better than yours.”

She shut the door behind her.  “If this is your high school rebellion phase creeping up, I think you’re a little late.” She fell in a graceful pile of ugly blue scrubs and flipped her hair over one shoulder.  “You had some night.  I love how I have to watch the news now to catch up on your life; you’re so glamorous.  Brian’s mother’s a real hag, isn’t she?”

“I guess she’s got a right to be pissy.  You’re just mad she called you a whore.” 

She laughed.  “No, that was one of my favorite parts.  You looked good in my dress.  I don’t think I’ll be able to wear it anymore.  I’ll always compare myself to you and feel inadequate.”  She made two fingers walk up my forearm, trying to get my attention.  “What’s up with you?  The impromptu press conference freaked you out this much?”

“Yeah,” I lied.  I didn’t want to tell her what happened later, didn’t want to hear her laugh like it was some predictable non-event, some trivial nothing she’d gone through more times than she could even hope to count.  It wasn’t funny, far from it.  I didn’t want her congratulations, as if I’d done what she did so well, used subtle mind tricks and careful prodding to draw some unfortunate guy into her steel trap web of belladonna and hemlock. 

She arched an eyebrow high on her custard-smooth forehead.  “You didn’t look freaked out, the way you snatched that reporter’s microphone.  Have you been taking acting lessons?”

Yeah, I wanted to snap, detesting the note of black humor in her voice.  I learned it from you.  I watched you playact and wear different costumes my whole goddamned life.  No wonder I was good at it once I finally tried my hand at playing your game.  What other role models did I have?  The drunk loser or the suicidal mess?  Of course it was your footsteps I’d fill, I couldn’t hold alcohol well and was too much of a coward to kill myself. 

But I lost my nerve when I looked up to find her
concerned about Kat
eyes blinking back at me.  “I’m just getting used to it now, I guess.” I ran a hand over my face, mentally wiping it of guilt.  “Are you going to clue me in on this avoiding Karen Stone thing?  I keep getting emails from her producers.  They still want to talk to you.”

“Then they’ll be that much more grateful when I finally give in.”  As if she were stating the most obvious fact in the world.  Of course they’d be falling all over themselves with gratitude that Her Highness, Reigning Queen of the Lunatics, had deigned them worthy to speak to.  Of course. 

This wasn’t some guy waiting for her to accept his date proposal with bated breath and a bouquet of roses behind his back; she didn’t have possession of the puppet strings this time, she couldn’t conjure hoops for them to jump through now, not from Breakthrough Recovery Center in her lunatic scrubs and ten minutes of internet and phone privileges a day.  When would she get that through her perfect skull?  I didn’t think I had the strength required to snatch the reins from her vise grip, but Kyle and Karen Stone probably did. 

“I don’t know if this is one of those
absence makes the heart grow fonder
times.  More like
out of sight, out of mind
.  They’ll stop asking eventually, and if you change your mind, you’ll have to crawl back groveling,” I said, appealing to the only religion she practiced, her pride.

“It’s not
out of sight, out of mind
, the way they’ve latched onto you.  They’ll keep trying.  And when the story gets big enough, I’ll tell them I’m ready to talk.”

“Can’t you make this easy, for once?  Things are hard enough as it is, I don’t want to wake up every day to a hundred emails begging me to convince you to reconsider.”  

“What do you think spam folders are for?”

I wished I had a spam folder for my life, some virtual garbage can I could sweep messes into, deal with them at a later time. 

MARCH

I’d gone through the pre-entrance rituals of checking the carbon copy paper so often I was on auto pilot these days.  Slump up the front door, check the paper, find nothing, repeat it around the corner by the sliding glass door.  Always in that order, nothing ever out of place, no footsteps of any kind, until one March afternoon, when there was. 

I blinked at them for a few seconds.  Why were they there?  It could have been a door to door salesman, though they usually left their business cards wedged in the doorjamb. 

Heading toward the back door, I told myself it was a fluke.  Had to be.  Don’t overreact, I told the part of my brain that was responsible for my hyperventilating.  Who’s afraid of feet?  Not me. 

But when I peeled back the ratty outdoor runner lining the cement near the sliding glass door, there they were again.  So normal looking.  I don’t know what I expected.  Maybe jagged claw marks, some creepy hoof prints.  Not slender outlines that looked like they came from a pair of Vans.  It seemed outrageous that my stalker wore Vans. 
I
wore Vans, who the hell did they think they were, walking around in the same brand of shoes I sometimes wore? 

I straightened up, squinting around the yard for anything unusual, but found nothing.  What really filled me with dread, however, wasn’t the proof of someone’s unwanted presence; it was the fact that I had to call for help, and that list contained only one name. 

***

“Hmm.”  Kyle gazed down at the footprints with thoughtful eyes in an otherwise vacant expression. “So I’m guessing your boyfriend Jeff didn’t stop by to see you randomly while you were out?”

“I’m getting really tired of people calling guys who aren’t my boyfriend my boyfriend.”

He lifted a brow, the prelude of a smirk on his lips.  “That happens a lot?”

“This isn’t from anyone who’d stop by randomly. 
Nobody
stops by randomly, and if they did, they wouldn’t go around to the back door and try to break in.  They’d ring the bell, knock, and leave after they got no answer.”

“What about mail carriers, landscapers?  Are you expecting a package?”  He turned toward the patch of grass lining the walkway, the sun drizzling over his face.  “Someone’s gotta cut this grass, tend to the shrubs.”

“I didn’t order anything, and the landscapers don’t tend to the backyards.  I’m telling you, there’s no reason on earth why anyone would go around to the sliding glass.”

“They tried the knob.”  He waved a hand at the smeared toe of the Vans impression.  “They look the same at the back door?”

“Yeah.”

“Looks like a guy, unless it’s some tall Amazon woman with huge feet.  You didn’t go in yet, did you?”

“No.”

He turned his hand palm-up, and I shot it a leery glance. 

“I want your house key, I’m not asking you to dance.”

I handed it over. 

He inserted the key, turned the knob, stepped inside.  “Looks empty,” he said, his head swiveling from side to side, “but stay behind me.”

I stood in the foyer, watching him look behind sofas, throw back the drapes, check behind the entertainment center, but I didn’t follow when he went to the kitchen.  I didn’t need any reminders of his assault on my lips.  It had already infected my brain like Mad Cow disease, turned it into Swiss cheese, frequent still frame images of it blooming behind my closed eyelids at inopportune times. 

He strode back into the living room a moment later, swung himself around the stair banister.  “I’ll just check the bedrooms.”

I stayed where I was, hoping I hadn’t left any random undergarments scattered across the floor of my room.

“Nice bra on the bed,” he said when he galloped down the staircase a minute later.  “Other than that, nothing of interest going on up there.”

“Should I call the cops?”

He exhaled loudly, crossing his arms over his chest, his eyes tracing the corners of the room.  “I don’t know.  There’s nothing they’d be able to do, but you should still make a note of it in that log I told you to keep.  You were considering a security camera, you said.  I can help you install one.”

“I can probably pay someone to do it for me.”

“Why pay someone when I can do it for free?”

“Why do it for free when I can pay someone?”

“Are you mad at me or something?”

I shook my head, unwilling to inflate his ego even further and give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d managed to rattle me the last time we were together.

“Looks like you might be.”

“Well I’m not,” I said, in a tone that betrayed anger in every syllable. 

“You baited me.  You know you did.” I didn’t have to look at him to know he was smiling, a big one, I was willing to bet, one that showed the tips of his canines and the whites of his eyes all the way around. 

“It’s not baiting if it’s the truth,” I shot back.  “It was just you being irrational and me pointing it out.  I’m the innocent party here. Not you.  I could probably even get you fired.” 

“I wouldn’t get fired over that.  Maybe at most a stern talking-to and a slap on the back.”

“I’m sure it’s against the rules to fraternize with clients.”

“Ah.  But you’re not a client, and therein lies the loophole.”  I felt the burn of his eyes on my skin, but I didn’t look at him.  “I probably haven’t been as professional as I should be with you, though.  I’m only human.”

So was I, but you wouldn’t ever find me running around kissing unsuspecting people. 
Baiting him
.  Bullshit.  It was a joke, I’d have never said it had I known he’d follow through.  Caroline would say the fact that I made the joke at all was proof I’d ‘baited him’ on purpose, evidence I wanted him to do it, but she was a lunatic for Christ’s sake, had the papers and the scrubs to prove it. 

I’m only human
, what the hell did that even mean? Thanks for stating the most obvious fact in the world.

“Do you even know how to install cameras?”

“It’s not rocket science, they come with instruction manuals.  Tomorrow works best, Tuesdays are light for me.  I have one condition, though.”

“If it’s another kiss, you can leave right now.”

“God, how nervous do I really make you? I just wanted to drive the Challenger to Best Buy.”

***

Darkness pressed heavily against my eyelids, my vision reduced to two puffy slits as I sat on the couch, staring at a truly terrible reality show on TV.  Some sobbing woman claiming she’d never been vulnerable in her life, now look where letting her walls down had gotten her?  A first class ticket to the island of fools. 

Hadn’t she been asking for it, though, lining up at
The Bachelor
casting calls?  Could any reasonable woman really waste tears on some guy she had only a slender chance of being with? 

I’d never let that happen to me, not ever, look how well a broken heart turned out for Caroline?  And she was the strongest person I’d ever met.  Vulnerability handed people the weaponry and tools needed to destroy you with as little as a few words.  You just had to trust that they wouldn’t.  Fat chance. 

Understanding why Caroline had held her rules so close to her heart was easy now.  Once you broke one, you started thinking it was easy to break the rest.  They all snapped like toothpicks, one after the other, and then look what happened?  The mother of all splinters. 

I remember seeing Caroline break up with a man when I was fifteen.  I’d been waiting in the Buick, watched her knock on his door, take two dainty steps back, shrug her hair behind her shoulders.  The sun at her back turned her gauzy dress completely transparent, I saw the gap between her thighs clear as day as the boiling wind ruffled the hem around her knees.  I couldn’t hear their exchange after he’d opened the door, but when she walked away two minutes later, she held her head high, strode back to the car with one foot directly in front of the other, sliding her sunglasses back down on her nose as the wind whipped her hair back like a supermodel’s.  Quick and easy.  She didn’t look back, even though she had to have known he was standing there stupefied, watching her grand exit.  I remember thinking this is the way all women should stage their breakups, no need for tears, long closure attempts, messy details, just walk away wearing your sunglasses and high heels, get in your car, drive off.  Just another thing to scratch off your to-do list. 

That never happened in
The Bachelor
.   

What was the point of the host barging into the ceremony to announce this was the last rose?  It was obvious by virtue of the fact that only one rose was left on that little silver tray. The cameraman never failed to zoom in for a close-up. 

If Kyle were around, he’d propose a drinking game.  Anytime someone said
amazing
you’d take a shot.  Whenever the word
vulnerable
made an appearance, you’d take two.  If tears erupt, take three.  Guaranteed to get you a brand new DUI in thirty minutes flat.

Caroline, so sophisticated and superior, loathed reality television, but I’d always been drawn to it in a car crash kind of way. 
What fresh hell is this
, she’d say, walking through the front door with a finger pressed to her temple like a gun barrel, her thumb the trigger. 
Who cares if it may be scripted
had always been my answering line.  There was always a chance it wasn’t, that people this outrageous really existed outside the viewfinder of a camera lens.

And she’d settle in beside me, sipping her herbal tea from a thrift store teacup, gracing me with her running commentary the whole time. 
You do realize they’re only keeping this jackass around for ratings, right?  They’ve got a never-ending full bar in their ‘mansion’, you know, that’s why everyone’s so emotional, so loud and obnoxious.  This is their make it big moment, they’re all desperate to be famous.  How did these women manage to graduate high school thinking that ‘conversate’ is a word?  Christ on a bike. 

The Bachelor took a deep breath after Chris Harrison informed him unnecessarily of the number of roses on the table.  The sea of women standing before them exchanged looks, shifted in their glittering gowns, blinked furry fake eyelashes that looked like the legs of a tarantula—

And then the television cut off.  Beneath it, the digital clock’s green numbers faded.  I glanced out the blinds and found all of the neighbor’s lights ablaze, the blue glints of TVs flashing against windows, their silhouettes swaying behind sheer curtains.   

I sat up straight, clutching a prom dress pillow to my chest.  Blackouts weren’t unheard of, but to have it limited to one condo,
mine
, was.  But before I could give the thought any real traction, the TV blinked back on, the clock illuminated,
The Bachelor’s
dramatic music blared. 

I sank back down.  The Bachelor still stood there, pretending to waffle with his decision, the women holding roses still wore smug smiles—

Before I could bolt upright, the momentary blackness had abated, the Bachelor had already called the name of the final rose winner, she looked so relieved, like she wanted to sag into the carpeting, the only thing keeping her standing had to be the lethal-looking shoes she wore—

And I was drowned in darkness yet again, such a thick darkness it seemed like I could cut it straight through with a knife, and this time, the TV didn’t flick back on immediately. 

That’s why the footprint-leaver went around to the sliding glass door, that’s where the circuit panel was, and he was out there right now, pulling the main breaker switch again and again and again, probably laughing under his breath and a ski mask.

I could be just as sneaky, as light on my feet as a cat, having been forced to tiptoe around my hungover father as he slept on the couch, so I crept toward the kitchen, blending into deeper shadows, breathing so lightly it felt like I wasn’t breathing at all. 

My hand closed around the largest knife in the butcher block, I’d gotten two steps from the sliding glass, watching the wind snake through the moonlit grass like a serpent, when the TV blared again from the living room, Chris Harrison now blathering on about the book he wrote for the umpteenth time.

I flattened myself against the wall, reached out to flick the lock on the sliding glass, and flung it open as the TV fell silent. 

A great rustling erupted, so loud it was like a sasquatch hid in the shrubs near the circuit panel, and as I planted the ball of one bare foot onto the patio, muffled steps pounded around the corner, toward the wooden back gate of the condo which led to the main walkway. 

I threw the sliding glass door into place and followed the asshole around the corner, knowing it would be too late, he had a head start, his footsteps had already faded. 

The only proof he’d been there at all was the distant, wet sound of a car engine coughing like an old man. 

I think I’m going to have to call the police
, I texted to Kyle once I’d flipped the breaker switch back on and made my way inside.