The Kissing Game (21 page)

My ears ring like bells. My eyes begin to tear by
themselves, and Todd shimmers, a strange life form roughly ready. While he
lunges at me, I lean back on my left leg and arch my kick toward his side,
feeling those unused tendons stretch beyond capacity. He grabs my leg before it
hits him, and I lose my balance and fall. Then he gracefully kneels over me,
smelling of expensive lotion and hair gel while a drop of sweat falls off his
nose and onto my chin.

“Usually I kill people much smaller than you. They’re
faster and noisier, but you’ve been sitting at a desk too long. You’ve lost all
your muscle mass,” he states. I suddenly remember all those times Todd couldn’t
go to lunch with us because he had to go to the gym. He raises his arm high and
then pummels the knife at me. Pulling my knees out from under him, I roll to
the left until I come to a rest at the balcony railing. The knife plows into
the hardwood floor, twanging by my ear. Wildly he scrambles over and clutches my
neck with one hand, instantly cutting off my air supply. As I kick and punch at
him, I feel the blood rushing to my cheeks in a hot mass. Shit. I can’t quite
believe the reality pounding in my head. By itself, death is a terrible shame,
but death by Todd is like death at the hands of a changeling in a Shakespeare
play. I reach down to his crotch. Thank god he wears expensive pants, a thin
silky material. With all my strength, I squeeze as hard as I can. He yelps and
rolls into a crumple, but before I can stand, he’s already seizing my foot. The
dude is one indestructible fairy. I yank it away, losing my shoe in the process,
I hear it land in the koi pond below.

With the railing behind me, Todd lunges. Knowing
I can’t get past him and back down the stairs, I glance back over my shoulder
and reach for the chandelier, clutching a hunk of no-doubt expensive crystal. With
all my energy I hurl myself over the railing, my right arm hugging balls of
crystal just as a piece falls from my left hand, splashing into the water below.
Like a tree climber I wrap my legs around it, feeling the hooks jab into my
jeans. Better to die at my own hands than at his.

He laughs, bent over slightly. “Fuck’n freak,”
he says.

Another piece of crystal falls, and I hear the chandelier
creak. I realize that if I inch myself downward, maybe I can fall into the
water and get out the door. With great effort, I ease myself down to the next
layer of crystal, smaller and thinner than the first. Another piece drops into the
water, and the koi pond splashes below me, the fish scampering. My heart
bludgeons my ribcage and the hooks pierce my jeans. I have to lift my leg to
unhook them before I can ease down further. Meanwhile, Todd saunters toward the
stairs, his eyes vacant terrors. He then glides down slowly, one step at a time,
laughing as he goes, as if he’s enjoying the spectacle of my dangling on a
chandelier. The knife does little twirls in his hand, and I’ve almost forgotten
about the FBI outside. Perhaps they aren’t there anymore. Perhaps they got
bored and hit the sushi joint down the road. I’m going to die a violent death
while they stuff themselves with vegetable tempura.

“You’re going to die anyway, Caroline,” he says
as though he reads my thoughts. “Sooner or later. Could be a car crash, a heart
attack, cancer …
me
. The only difference is time.”

A hook tears my jeans, the weight of my body
ripping a long hole in the fabric and descending me down to the lower notch on
the chandelier. I realize my mistake, of course: the chandelier may not have
been the best option. At least I’m still alive. Several crystals splash into
the water below, where the fish have found cover under foliage. Beneath me, the
water looks black, and I wonder how deep it is. Two feet? It must be two
stories below, but feels like four, only with no cushy grass to break my fall.
Out the grand window, the city in the distance glows like white glaze. Feeling
cat-clawed, my limbs start to ache.

Having descended the stairs, Todd now stands as
if waiting for the sun to rise. Perhaps I’ll just hold on, settle in, and wait
for the feds, I think. They’ll have to come sometime. How long does it take to
eat vegetable tempura?

The ceiling creaks and shards of plaster fall on
my head in a white rain.

“It won’t hold you. You’re small, but not that
small.” Todd chuckles. “That chandelier came from Murano, Italy, shipped in
four separate pieces. He designed it himself. It took three men a week using
scaffolding to put all the delicate parts in place and hang each crystal. It
was made to be beautiful, not strong. That’s why Collin put it in the Koi pond
below. If the chandelier failed, as it no doubt would, the pieces would fall
into the Koi pond.” 

Without warning, several chandelier tentacles
give way and the lowest rung drops into the shallow water below, only one sharp
piece of metal sticks straight up like a dagger waiting for me. I almost want
to laugh myself at the sight of it. How ironic it would be to kill myself? The
screeching sound stops my heart as my jeans tear a little further and my leg
grip on the chandelier weakens. Another crosspiece falls, disappearing into the
water and leaving my left leg dangling with nothing to hug.

Todd laughs loudly now. The idea of my falling
on the chandelier piece and slaughtering myself is too comical for him to
handle. He sees the irony too.

Just then, large chunks of the chandelier start
falling, like the crystal beast is a self-peeling fruit. I have to scramble to
find hold, until all but the upper rungs have catapulted into the water. Now my
legs dangle, one pant leg of my jeans floating in the water below. Only my
hands clutch the chandelier now, so my entire bodyweight rests in the strength
of my arms. Not good.

Telling myself I can do it, I hold tightly, but
the sweat of my palms makes me slide slowly until I grasp the last part of
metal with two hands. Todd leans on the railing below, waiting for the
certainty of my fall.

And then I lose grip and plummet. Just as I do
I hear the racing crash of the front door bursting open, the massive tumult of
men and women in boots and swat gear. The water is ice cold and deeper than it
looks. I’m under water for a second before my backside hits the slimy bottom.
Around me fish scurry in the chilly water like clammy angels. When I come up
for air, four men tackle Todd and slam his face against the stairs, no doubt fearing
Todd might slip away somehow. The knife flies out of Todd’s hand and lands in
the Koi pond, almost slicing my leg and nearly decapitating a white-orange fish.
The room is all grunting and yelling, but it all happens so ordinarily. Another
day at work for federal officers.

With koi pond in my lungs, I watch as the
agents handcuff Todd. He doesn’t fight. As he rises with his hands cuffed
behind him, he smiles like a man with expensive lawyers to bail him out. Pushing
myself up, I’m soon standing knee-deep in koi and watching breathless as the
agents cart one of my best friends away. I had sat next to Todd at the firm for
two years. We were workmates, friends, and never would I have imagined he was
this person.

Agent Larsen strides up to me, a smile on his
face as I pluck a large slimy leaf from my hair.

“What the hell? Where were you guys?” I demand,
shivering.

“We equipped you with the latest technology, an
acoustic device designed to focus, channel, and amplify speech. Once you
stepped out of the vehicle and your body began moving, the transmission was
briefly interrupted. Then we had good signal for nearly two hours before we got
‘unable to receive’ messages. After that, when we did hear you, we only caught
unusable sounds and muffled movement. Were you shaking? Because we shouldn’t
have had so much interruption.”

“Hell yes, I was shaking.”

“Hmm. Clearly, the bugs still need to be worked
out, but I wasn’t worried since we had surveillance all around and knew the
house was vacant. It was only when we saw you hanging from the chandelier that
we realized. Sorry about that,” he says. Maybe people under his care nearly die
every day. Routine.

“You might want to check your gear before you
send some civilian off to die,” I suggest.

“Will note that for the future. Where’d he come
from? Nobody saw anyone enter.”

“He’s my coworker Todd. He came in from next
door. You probably want to look there.” I point and feel as if my shuddering might
shatter my teeth.

Agent Larsen nods. “Thanks for your help. It
was brave of you to come here. You’ve done a good thing.”

“That’s great,” I say thinking suddenly of the
irony of the name Children’s Refuge Project.

“You okay?” he asks, noticing my missing pant leg
floating beside me.

“Yeah.”

“So you’ll get probation, as promised. Just
don’t go breaking into anymore homes. I can’t thank you enough, Ms. Stone. I’ve
been focused solely on finding Collin’s contact for years. Now we’ll get a
search warrant for next door, and we’ll make a strong case against them. You’ll
likely need to testify.”

I nod, wondering if I can leave. I’m
half-frozen. “Can I go now?” I step out of the pond with Agent Larsen’s help.

“Sure, Agent Silver will drive you home.” He
waives over Agent Silver, who’s still chewing gum. Silver has to walk through a
throng of busy agents to get to me. After Agent Larsen gives him various orders
I don’t bother to listen to, Agent Silver leads me past swat-geared officers who
are now readying themselves to step knee-deep into the koi pond to fish out the
knife. Silver and I trod outside, where the world looks ghastly normal. With
wobbly limbs and one bare foot, I follow him to the car around the corner. As
I’m about to sit in the back seat of the sedan, he waves me up front.
Apparently I’ve redeemed myself and earned a better seat in the car.

“Where to?” he asks.

For a minute, I consider the road heading south
and going back to my apartment, but my toothbrush, my cell phone, all my
important belongings are at Robert’s house.

“Just take me back to the same place?”

 Agent Silver gives me a knowing look and slides
the car out of its spot on the curb and then drives through neighborhood. Soon he
turns onto dense streets where the bright lights of a movie theater display bloody
heroes dressed in black, the name of the movie a jumble of light. A line of
patrons, young and old couples, stand out front. In the distance, I see the
Transamerica Building all aglow, as if the air is full of brighter days. Of
course, I am suspicious of destructive hopefulness, but feel it nonetheless.
Odd, considering my current jobless state and the fact that I’m wearing torn clothes
and only one shoe, and I’ve accomplished nothing in the way of getting Robert’s
job back.

When we finally arrive at Robert’s house, Agent
Silver tells me, “I’m sure you realize I’m gonna need the wire and bullet-proof
vest back.”

“I’ll mail them to you,” I offer, stepping out
of the vehicle. Advancing down the somewhat familiar path towards Robert’s
front door, I can hardly walk. My hair still drips and the foggy coastal air
jitters in my bones. Lights remain on inside his house although it has to be
past midnight. I knock on the front door and hear Robert pad across the floor. It
opens with a welcome gust of warm air hitting my whole body.

Standing there with whited eyes, his cell phone
to his ear, he looks like a man who has been fasting. His teeth suddenly
glisten in the dark, until he notices my disheveled state.

“Oh god, what happened to you?”

“Dime con quien andas y te diré quién eres.”
.

Tell me who you’re with, and I will tell you who you are.

Standing
at his front door, Robert puts his cell phone in his pocket. I expect a hug or
some similar gesture, but I’m grateful because Robert gazes out at the unmarked
car instead, where Agent Silver waves in his white sedan before it glints under
the streetlights and silently vanishes around the corner. In Robert’s house,
the dining table is cleared of food. On the end table near the black couch, a
lamp emits golden warmth.

“Come in,” Robert says, pulling me inside, his
hand gripping the elbow of my wet sweater. “I’ve been on the phone trying to
figure out which jail they took you to so I could arrange bail, but you weren’t
anywhere. What happened? Why are you all … wet?” He notices my missing pant leg
and absent shoe, and his eyes look pregnant with worry.

 “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later,” I
say, dripping slightly on his floor. I can smell the fish on my clothes, but
I’m too spent to explain. “Would you mind if I used your shower again?” I say.
It seems that all I do is use his shower.

“Of course.”

I trudge toward the bathroom, one bare and one
shoed foot, not bothering to worry about dripping across his floor. I can feel
his eyes on my back as I go and hear him lock the front door. I’m sure he’ll
wait until I get inside the shower to clean up the water mess. He’s that kind
of guy, the kind who would never dream of leaving drips of fish-smelling water
trailing like breadcrumbs down his hallway, not even for a minute. When I reach
the bathroom, I can’t wait to extract myself from my clothes and be ventilated
from koi scent. I tear off my drippy sweater and torn shirt. Next, I turn on
the shower and un-Velcro the front of my bulletproof vest.

While attempting to pull it over my head, I
realize the thing won’t budge. It seems to have contracted with moisture and
now has transformed into a body-hugging wetsuit. With the effort of a half-dead
person, I reach back to unclasp whatever fetters me, but the straps won’t move.
Then, like a feral woman, I commence yanking wildly to free myself, but it’s
glue on my skin. Before I got out of the car, I should’ve asked Agent Silver
how to get the damned thing off. Realizing I have only one option, I open the
bathroom door.

“Robert?” I say, peeking out. He’s using a
large terrycloth towel on the floor. What did I tell you?

He stops mid swipe and looks up. “Yeah?”

“Would you mind helping me a minute?” With two
eyebrows turned into one, he strides toward me. I show him my back and point,
“I can’t get this damned thing off. There’re straps back there or something.
Could you?”

I feel forceful hands tugging.

“You know,” he says, “all the times I
envisioned doing this, you were never wearing a bulletproof vest.” And I think
I would smile at his comment if I weren’t presently so disgusting.

Soon enough, I’m free. The vest opens,
revealing my bare back to Robert.

When I turn around, I can’t help but notice the
commotion and concern in his eyes.

“You going to tell me what happened tonight?”
he asks again.

“I just need to shower,” I say. “It’s been a
long day.” A long, terrible day. I edge myself back inside the bathroom and
close the door. I can’t wait to be de-fished.

While showering, I notice the long scrapes on
my legs and arms from the chandelier and the nick of the knife blade on my
sternum, which has fortunately stopped bleeding. My stitches look freshly
scabbed but intact. So attractive, I think, as I step out of the shower and eye
my beaten up form in the mirror. With three new bandages, I soon cover my
stitches and the knife-wound. I no longer smell like fish, thank god, but my
clothes are ruined, and my limbs feel unhinged. On the counter, my sweater is
dog-eared, and the shirt and jeans are a total loss. 

            With only a towel around me and a
ball of koi-smelling clothes in hand, I exit the bathroom. Before I make a
swift dash to the guest bedroom to find my clothes, I look both ways down the
hall as if crossing a street. No Robert. I make quick effort to the bedroom to
dress. After switching on the light, I set my clothes on a chair and look for
fresh clothes in my bag. But I find only another t-shirt and pajama bottoms.
Great. Ted may not be the best bag-packer. As I turn around to close the door
and dress myself, I see Robert standing in the doorway.

            “You’re not planning to leave, are
you?” he asks.

            “Do you want me to?”
             

“Don’t be silly. Of course I want you to stay,”
he states, walking over to me and squeezing his arms around me. My face rests
against his t-shirt while one of his hands clutches my hair. His back feels
like a wall of muscled tension while he kisses my temple. “So you’re not
arrested?” he asks with cautious excitement.

“Free as a wanton woman.”

I look up at him while he smiles uncertainly.
Perhaps he feels as I do—hope might be dangerous.

“So you can stay?” he wants to know, a dark-haired,
blue-eyed deity in a white t-shirt and jeans, bare feet.

“Uh-huh.” A tremble glides up my spine.

“You hungry?” he asks.

 “No. Thanks.”

“Thirsty? Something to drink?”

I shake my head.

While I lean up to kiss him, my heart feels
wrecked and I’m a caravan of raw nerves. Of course, he kisses me thoroughly, as
if feeling liberation that he couldn’t before and making sounds that suggest
he’s putting the world in its rightful place. His hands touch my towel in ways
that would’ve most certainly gotten him fired before, but with purgative force
requiring total commitment. One of my hands finds his hair while he foregoes
etiquette and touches me in new places. Perhaps it’s the events of the day, but
my whole life before this moment seems suddenly blue and frigid and dimmed to
black as a draft blown in straight from India warms in the room.

With a familiar force, he stops kissing me and
then takes my hand and leads me across the hallway, his pace toward his bedroom
usually hasty. Frowning as he goes, he looks anxious that someone will break
the door down and stop us mid-fornication. Meanwhile, I wonder how many women
have taken this same walk, have partaken in the nopal fruit of Robert’s
bedroom. The thought makes gunpowder swirl in my head.

In his room, the grey light of the neighborhood
through the high window illuminates his king-size bed, which is covered in a grey
and black striped comforter and pillows. On either side of the textured
headboard is a pair of abstract paintings that look like white clouds in a
black sky. Against the far wall is a side table under the windows, a few books
on it. If I were clothed, I’d walk over and inspect them. The room is neat,
orderly, tasteful, as if everything has been put in position with thought and
interest. I don’t know what I would’ve expected. A dungeon, catacombs, a
passageway into hell? This seems far more reasonable.

Avoiding formality, Robert turns quarterwise
and kisses me again. Unlike before, this kiss promises something. It’s not a
confused, frantic surrender in some elevator. It’s not a kiss sitting behind
his desk while trying to prove something. It’s a kiss that he means to finish.
It includes moans and hair-touching and the raising of my towel.

When he pulls away, his beautiful face suggests
he’s enjoying some joke as he tells me, “You have no idea how often I’ve wanted
this, how often I wanted to buzz you into my office and take you over my desk
like some perverted lawyer.”

“A very attractive perverted lawyer,” I say, the
floor beneath me made of quicksand suddenly.

I lift his t-shirt over his head while he
raises his arms to ease my efforts. This task upturns parts of his hair and
gives him a look that would make snow melt. He seems perpetually fresh, as
though he’s always just showered. It’s a curse, really. A Robert curse. Fortunately
my towel doesn’t fall with the action.

He’s so tall standing in front of me, or maybe I’m
so used to his ordering me around while he sits behind his desk that I can’t
help but feel small. In all the times I saw him in his suit at the office, I
had briefly wondered what the man looked like beneath, but I’d always pictured
the scales of a sharp-toothed dragon. The sight of the real man is a pleasant
surprise.

 “A year ago,” I say, hooking my fingers in his
jeans. “if someone had told me I’d be in your bedroom taking off your shirt, I
would’ve thought them insane.’”

He smiles madly at this comment and then
touches the scrapes on my arm. “Does anything hurt?”

I shake my head. It’s a lie. Everything aches
right now.

“You don’t want to talk about it?”

“Not really.” Especially while he stands
shirtless in front of me.

            Lifting his brows, he looks at me
as if I’m made of sugar and says, “You know that night when you kissed me in
the elevator?”

I nod.

“After I drove you home, and you fell asleep on
the couch, I was so torn. I wanted to take you in your room and sleep with you
there, just to make sure you’d be alright. I couldn’t bear the thought of
leaving you alone.”

            “Why didn’t you?”

            “I figured you’d drunk too much,
but that you’d sleep it off. You’d wake up in the morning and see me lying next
to you and scream.”

We both smile.

“I’ve wanted you such a very long time. Like a
beggar in a madhouse.” His eyes have an air of abandonment while he speaks. “While
we’re on the topic, you know I’m a horrible person. You’ll likely regret this
someday.” I want to ask him why, but he answers my thought. “Because I’m demanding,
and I’ll expect you to do all kinds of things for me.”

I’m too afraid to ask what he means. Don’t want
to spoil the grand moment with a dumb question. Is he talking about sex or timesheets?
I have no idea. The man is still an ambiguity. He’s like those Chinese boxes
that once you open, a smaller box sits inside, and you have to keep opening
them, one after the other, until you find the last one.

“My whole life, I’ve never known anyone like
you. I’ve wanted to tell you how I felt, but I failed miserably at delivery,”
he says, swiping my wet hair behind my shoulder. He removes my towel, and his blue
eyes lower. He shakes his head at the new bandage and my many scrapes.

Then Robert tosses the comforter and extra
pillows of the bed as if preparing for some sacred ritual, leaving the floor of
the dim room looking pillaged around us. Being his former assistant, I have
this instant instinct to tidy, but instead, what transpires next is better than
any hospital morphine, enough to make me forget the villainy of the day.

Still wearing his jeans, he holds my bare hips
with both hands as if I’m a threshold he’s not supposed to cross and eases me
onto the bed until I’m lying on my back feeling like the recipient of some
great reward after a long battle. And Robert, my boss—the man I hated and
feared for two long years, the man I used to fantasize about being burned at
the stake by dancing natives, the man I got fired, the person who caused me to retreat
to the office bathroom while making simpering cow noises and having panic
attacks at the mere thought of his anger—hovers over me shirtless, ready to do
god knows what. Briefly, I wish I still had the towel.

The sheets feel cool, and I shiver as he says,
“Now’s your chance to back out.” He looks like a beautiful, wicked man.

“I’m sure,” I reply, sounding like my own
witness, insecure as a naked person can get while waiting for the great unveiling
that is Robert de-clothed. He then does me a service by standing and undoing
his jeans. I doubt I’d be very graceful at the monumental task. I almost laugh
as I think that music should accompany the moment. And then he’s there, on top
of me, and to describe him naked would be to defile the sinful splendor itself,
to deface the complete faultlessness that is bare Robert.

While we kiss, I think about the fact that love
and hate are so very similar, two devils of the same family, both of which can
do anything. They can choose to find the meanness in the least or greatest of gestures
or do their best not to. I think about all the times I wanted Robert to feel
pain and how at this moment I’d rather be homeless, cold and alone, than let
him suffer at all. My scraped and beat-up body is a testament to this fact. The
revelation of these thoughts almost scares me.

In his bed I feel small and his chest feels colossal
and the sheets feel now like warmth. The sky outside the high window seems dim
and remote, as if seen from a great distance, as if the whole city were unconscious
or unclaimed by any life form, a fact that seems only to add to our abandonment.

At first, he’s slow and cautious as though
treading on the edge of a cliff, but at my urging his body becomes an implement
of primitive frenzy, concentrated and intense. He makes love just as he does
everything else, as if the act has genuine significance by itself. He’s careful
not to lean on my bandages, but at moments he forgets. He tells me he loves me
and he’s sorry. He says that now makes up for before, and that the past cannot
be changed but the future can, that we don’t need to remember those years when
we can remember these moments. And I think that change is the secret to life. Right
now I’m alive, my body is intact, and his body is a marvel. And the sounds he makes
are so unlike his office formalities, so unchecked, that I’m reminded at
strange intervals that he was very recently my mean, daunting boss, a
confliction that multiplies the feelings of exhilaration. Locked in this conflagration,
the tumult becomes meteors travelling through my body and vanishing in amazing wakes.
All night long, we’re gluttonous like this, with only brief intervals of
collapse before the next, and he doesn’t tire until the dark sky out his widow
promises sun. By then, I’m too exhausted to think about being hungry, even while
my stomach emptily aches.