Wired (18 page)

Kitty came up a few minutes later; I was still sitting there trying to process. “Parking karma. Thank God.”

“Where are the boxes?” I asked hoarsely.

“Which boxes?”

“Like, my files and . . . stuff.”

“That's all still in the basement locker. Except for what you keep in your office.” She pressed her palm against my forehead, then shrugged helplessly. “I'll make some soup you can take to your room.”

I stood there for another moment or so, then went out to find her. She was still upstairs, coming out of my office with a box containing a grimy old binder and a bunch of crumpled paper. She stopped and gave me a nervous sort of laugh. “I just had the weirdest déjà vu.”

“Happens to me all the time,” I said numbly. It occurred to me then that if I was a Major, Kitty, my closest friend—at least, in some versions of my life—was a Peripheral. She'd feel things were out of place now and then, though according to the boys it wouldn't be anything like what I was experiencing. As far as Kitty knew, this was the only reality.

But what reality was she living in?

“Your trash can was overflowing,” she was saying,
skipping sprightly down the stairs. “I'll just go dump this out then start your soup.”

I sighed, thinking how my trash can had been essentially empty in the prior reality in which Leonardo had stolen everything out of it, then headed back downstairs to the kitchen to have a look around. There, things were more or less the same as they had been, but there were more touches of Kitty. Or so it seemed to me. The refrigerator wasn't laden with as many menus; just one for pizza and one for Chinese. And there were canisters and things with her miscellaneous New Age paraphernalia that hadn't been around in years.

She joined me a few minutes later, pulled a can of minestrone out of the pantry, and poured it into a pot. She pulled a tin from the cupboard, sniffed the contents, then sprinkled some wrinkled dry stuff into the soup. She put the pot on the range. “Guy at the health food store said this has some really good rejuvenation properties. I think he's Wiccan, so I figured, What the hell.”

“Cool. I could use a little rejuv.” She had no idea. I tried to think about the last four years. What Kitty and I might have palled around doing, but I couldn't see anything. I supposed the memories would come in time.

I watched her stir the soup. “You know, you really don't have to baby me like this. I can make my own damn soup. Hell, I can
order
soup.”

She didn't look up. “I make soup all the time. It's no big deal. Besides, I need to make sure you eat properly.”

I laughed. “I'm fine. It was a . . . onetime thing. Listen, tomorrow why don't we go out? We haven't gone out in ages.”

She looked at me as if I were totally insane. “What are you talking about?”

“I just thought . . . I mean, for old times' sake. We should go do something fun.”
Create some memories I can remember.

Kitty grabbed a soup bowl from the cupboard and ladled out a serving. “You don't go out,” she said calmly.

I laughed. “Yeah, okay.”

She paused, her hand gripping the soup ladle. I stared at her. She stared at me.

“Oh, come on,” I said.

“What can I say? You never go out. Now, go lie down and I'll be up with a tray in a minute.”

I turned and slogged my way up the stairs in a kind of a daze.
This is just ridiculous.
I leaned over the banister and called out, “Why not?”

After a moment, Kitty appeared, hands on hips. She looked up at me. “Well . . . because.”

“Because why?”

“Because . . . because you're a workaholic.” Then she disappeared back into the kitchen.

I slipped into my bed and stared up at the ceiling. I jumped back out of bed and went again to the banister. “I've decided not to be a workaholic anymore!” I yelled.

Kitty's head popped into view, framed on three sides by the angles of the staircase. I could see she was trying to decide whether I was serious or not. Finally, she just laughed. “That's great, Rox! When
you're ready to walk around Union Square and hit the town for dinner and a show, let me know!”

Dinner and a show.
Dinner and a show?
What, like some overpriced tourist chicken dish and a seven-thirty p.m. showing of
The Fantastiks
revival? For fuck's sake. You didn't have to be a workaholic to find that totally out of the question.

Wait a minute. Was she being sarcastic?

A few moments later Kitty tromped up the stairs with my tray. She put it down next to my bed and arranged a napkin and spoon. It was a little spooky how much she catered to me. “All set,” she said, slipping back out of the room. “Enjoy!”

I didn't feel much like eating. I looked around my bedroom. The shades were closed and the lights were off. It was insanely dark. I guess Kitty thought I liked it that way. I got up and pulled open the shades and had a look around. It seemed to me that things looked a bit different than usual, though of course I couldn't put my finger on what it was. This time, the strange feeling didn't feel that strange. And it scared the hell out of me.

I stared down at the soup. This was some kind of cosmic joke. It had to be. I was clearly on a different wire. Mason wasn't in my life; Kitty was my best friend again. Yet I was still a miserable workaholic who never went out. Leonardo might have proved he was telling the truth and Mason was lying, but he'd also managed to saddle me with the worst parts of the last crappy reality.

I opened the closet and shifted the hangars back and forth. No dress, no negligee. I dropped to my knees. No shoebox, no gun, no bullets. Maybe I was
in the same old crappy reality because this
was
my reality. Maybe I'd always been and always would be the same and it was just the people around me and my environment that changed. But that couldn't be true, because I wouldn't know the me I was now, the one who didn't want to be a miserable workaholic who never went out.

Afraid of angering the soup mistress, I tiptoed carefully down the hall to my office and opened the door. A stack of papers sat on the desk, plastic bins full of hanging files stacked high on the floor. I glanced at the folders and the project labels. The labels made sense; they corresponded to projects I vaguely remembered working on, but none of them seemed unusual enough to be something Mason and Leonardo could be interested in.

I turned, my eye catching a slightly yellowed paper taped to the wall. An official document of some sort. I leaned in to catch the wording and shivered at what I read. It was a restraining order for one Mason Merrick, the same year as my graduation from college. My finger swept over his typed name as if I could erase it, and then I just stumbled back, nearly sick to my stomach.

“Kitty!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. I could hear her taking the steps two at a time and she was at the door in a flash. She looked at me, and I saw her body relax. “You scared the crap out of me.”

I swallowed, making a concerted effort to control my panic. “Kitty, what's this?”

She looked at the order. Then she looked at me, and when I saw the fear in her eyes I knew it was true. But I needed her to say it.

“That's your restraining order,” she said quietly.

“Mason . . . for the last four years . . .” I couldn't even finish the sentence out loud. “I mean, I've had a crush on him for four years, right? Haven't I been carrying a torch for him for four years?”

She looked totally confused. “Carrying a torch? For Mason Merrick?”

I just nodded.

She sat down in my office chair, shaking her head in disbelief. “Mason Merrick has been your worst nightmare for the last four years. The only torch I know of is the one
he
tried to snuff. You have the scar on your arm to prove it.” I slipped my hand under my shirt and ran my fingers over my arm. I felt an unmistakable—and sort of kick-ass, actually—knotted scar just below the shoulder. Poking and prodding the spot as if to make sure it wasn't easily removable stage makeup, I could tell it wasn't a scar from any injury sustained today. It had to be from one incurred long prior. As long ago as graduation day.

Kitty followed my gaze then looked up at me with sympathy. “Are you remembering?”

In a manner of speaking, I guess.

“Oh, god. Tell me you're not becoming—” She cut off her words, going pale, and I knew she thought she'd revealed something bad. But what?

“Becoming what?”

She stared at me wordlessly, fear clouding her eyes.

“Becoming
what
, Kitty?”

“If you don't remember, don't ask me to remind you.”

We stood there facing each other, silent.

“You have to tell me.” And even as I said those words, I realized just how much she probably had to tell. A lot more than she'd copped to. Kitty had answers for me. “You have to tell me everything. It's important.”

She raised her arms in surrender and let them fall. “Mason . . . Well, he . . .”

I wasn't sure I could bear it, but I had to know. I nodded for her to continue.

“He stalked you. And then he shot you.”

I was numb. Other things were coming back to me, other memories. Horrible memories. Trying to put all the pieces together, I was just numb.

“Roxy? Don't you remember? He was dating Louise and then he . . . wasn't dating Louise. . . .” She had that look about her as if she were trying to draw the recollections out of me. “And then he wanted to be dating you.” She looked at me hopefully. “And then he
really
wanted to be dating you. . . .”

This was impossible. Insane. Laughable. Why wasn't I laughing? Because I did remember. Sort of.

“Roxy?”

“Of course I remember,” I said quickly, but the look on her face said she didn't believe me. “It's just very . . .”

“Upsetting,” Kitty finished.

I thought of Leonardo suggesting that Mason was some kind of stalker, and Mason saying that Leo always used that line. When exactly had Leo and Mason first started messing with time, with my mind?

“
When
did he shoot me?” I asked, angrily swiping at the tears slipping from my eyes. “Exactly when? And how?”

“I told you. Graduation day. Not long after I left to catch my plane. God, you really don't remember any of it, do you?”

Yes, Mason had really shot me. It wasn't just one of Leonardo's fabrications, and it wasn't just a what-if that ended with Mason out of my life and Kitty in it. On this wire, Mason wasn't in my life because I had a restraining order against him, and if my reality never spliced this big again, that's how it was going to stay. I put a hand out to the wall to steady myself.

If you didn't know about the wire crossers, Roxy, what would you think about all this? What would a normal, uninformed person think about this?

A normal, uninformed person might think they were losing their mind. They would probably take some drugs and go to sleep and, eventually, some reality would take hold and harden and reoriented memories would lock in; they'd never have to think about what could have been versus what actually was.

I'd be better off if I didn't resist, I realized. None of this would hurt so badly. But it mattered to me. I very desperately wanted to keep the possible versions of my life straight in my mind. I had a feeling I might need to compare them later. That, if I had to choose a reality, it would be important to be able to separate one wire from the other. Because when it came right down to it, I didn't want to be the girl who couldn't pick up the gun to save someone worth saving. I couldn't believe that was the girl I was.

Was I?

I stayed in my office for the next several days. As if leaving the room would force me to face a reality I didn't want, even if the truth was that the current reality I was living sounded better than the one I'd left behind.

But the inevitable came to be. Kitty knocked on my door. “Rox, it's Leo on the landline.” She spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to call. As if she knew exactly who he was, as if they were old pals.

“I don't want to talk to him,” I said.

Silence.

“He's asking very nicely.”

“Tell him to leave me alone.”

“He wants to know if you'll go to a
gala
with him.” The suggestive tone of her voice was unmistakable. I didn't know exactly what she was suggesting, but she sure as hell had the wrong idea about the two of us.

“Oh?” I asked, affecting an air of indifference.

“Champagne. Fancy hors d'oeuvres,” she hissed. “I asked him to be specific. Obviously, I told him you don't go to dinner or parties or any of that sort of thing,” Kitty went on, “but he says he knows that and refuses to take no for an answer.”

I leaped from my chair and opened the door on principle. Kitty lurched back in surprise. “Oh,” she said. “Hi.”

“Hi. I'll take it.” I took the phone. Kitty seemed oblivious to my nonverbal cues suggesting that she leave, and she leaned against the wall, her arms crossed, listening to my end of the conversation.

“I'm taking the week off,” I said into the phone, walking into my office and then walking back out again because the damn cordless handset was catching interference from my wireless Internet. The static was irritating, but not as irritating as the excessively rapturous look on Kitty's face. Somehow, this made me inclined to go to the gala even less. As some sort of statement. Although, I don't know if the statement was, “Yes, you are right, I never go out,” or “I wouldn't even deign to get excited about such a thing.”

The statement I said out loud to Leonardo was, “In fact, I'll be indefinitely unavailable. I'm no longer interested in the case.”