When I got back to Echo Park, Darren was out. My face was a little swollen. I made myself an ice pack and went to the couch. I lay there with the TV muted, remembering him. The kiss we shared. His touch, the heat. I slid my hand under my cotton panties, shuddering in anticipation. I wanted to come. I wanted to want to come. I wanted to fall into my filthiest imagination and wrap myself in sexual desire.
But when I touched my opening, I found it unprepared for attention. A little fiddling got me nowhere, and I felt as though I was trying to get music from an instrument I’d never heard of. I pulled my hand away and went into an uneasy sleep.
CHAPTER 9.
JONATHAN
I’d walked her to the car with few words, but not because I had nothing to say. I had plenty to say. In the time it had taken for her to forgive me for destroying her career, I’d thrown a dozen mental balls in the air, and if I spoke, I would have dropped them.
I didn’t have compassion for her situation. I had a raw empathy that made me want to hold her and whisper lies of comfort. But it wasn’t going to be all right. Things weren’t going to go back to normal. The only one way the whole thing would blow over was if she lived a life of obscurity. The recognition and success she’d earned and deserved promised to exacerbate her situation. There was absolutely no chance of people unknowing what they knew, and there was even less chance she’d drop her ambitions to protect her privacy.
If I let her go, the most likely scenario was that she’d swear off men until another dominant appeared. Then she’d fall right back into her submissive role with him.
That was not acceptable.
I had calls to Asia until well into the night. In the morning, after what felt like thirty minutes of sleep, I had Kristin find out when Eddie Milpas would be at the Loft Club. I needed to feel him out. I didn’t want to take action based only on Monica’s exploding imagination.
CHAPTER 10.
MONICA
I woke at half past eight and stared at Darren’s popcorn stucco ceiling. The vertical blinds cast stripes across it, and only when my eyes hurt from looking at their odd symmetry did I get up.
I had an email from Kevin. I was tempted to delete it without reading it, but I was curious. I read on my phone while bleary-eyed and in the bathroom.
Dear Monica,
You’re not going to pick up my calls. I know you.
I feel like such a f**kup. I don’t care. I’ll put it all in writing.
I never knew what I did wrong. I should have damned my pride and waited on your porch until you told me why you left me. Really why. Not because of Tuesday nights. That could only be a symptom of some other disease.
I didn’t know what I was doing making the coalmine piece. I just did it, and it took a year. I wasn’t going to invite you. I thought if you saw it, you’d be pissed but you’d know how I felt. I figured it was the equivalent of me waiting on your porch, twenty months later.
Everyone said you were single, but you weren’t were you? When I saw you go in there with another man I wanted to eat my face off. And then you were in the garden crying on his shoulder. I can only imagine it was over the piece.
Remember how we read Blake sometimes? I thought of this one—
I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart,
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears—
Ah, she doth depart.
I went a little crazy. I knew I wanted to do cooperative work before Eclipse, and you were the first person I thought of. I was just going to mention it to you later. After we talked. But the crazy took over.
We did good work together, but you wouldn’t talk about what happened with us, even though it was all over the piece. I heard about your new boyfriend and the kind of shit you were into. I thought maybe that was what you needed from me and you couldn’t say.
Wasn’t that easy, was it?
Last night, after you left, I was pissed. And hurt. And I said a lot of shit to that dickhead about you I shouldn’t have. I’m sure he repeated it to you. In the moment I meant it because my face was busted. But now I’m too embarrassed to wait on your porch. Once we get back from Vancouver, I will.
—Kev.
I sat on the bowl and read it again. Then the Blake poem. Then the letter in full.
I was a heartless bitch, hiding behind silence and self-righteous indignation that stayed unchallenged. I thought I was taking control of my life, but I’d left a mess behind me. How many people had I done that to? My mother? She never failed to hurl some innocent-sounding cruelty at me, but I’d cut her off and call it independence.
Everything hurt. I’d woken up with no more than a dark spot under my eye, but it weighed down half my face. My back felt twisted and weak, aching as if I’d lifted a piano up the stairs. I didn’t know what to do about my pain, or even if anything needed doing.
My phone blooped at nine a.m. exactly.
—How’s the eye?—
I’d never answered a nine a.m. text, but after the night before, and Kevin’s email, I thought I ought to.
—You should see the other guy—
There was a longer pause than usual. I imagined him reading my text, so surprised I answered he had to take a second to organize himself.
—I feel your hands on the phone—
I caressed the little plastic and metal box like a lover, feeling a warmth and tingle between my legs that had been missing the night before.
—I have to go to work. Lunch shift—
—I know—
Asshole. Gorgeous ass**le.
CHAPTER 11.
JONATHAN
“I really could have used you guys last night,” I said, blaming Will for something that wasn’t his fault. Margie, the money source, had moved his whole team onto a divorce case with triangulations from Flintridge, to Santa Monica, to Monterey Park, and back. I could have deduced who was splitting up if I cared.
Santon seemed unperturbed by what had happened to Monica. We sat at a table at the Loft Club. Santon didn’t seem impressed by the club at all. A mark in his favor.
He slid his hand over his glass in a way that looked like a threat. “I can’t get into the house, so even if one of my guys was there, I make no guarantee it wouldn’t have gone down that way.”
“Do you have anything on this guy? Or are my hands tied?”
“We found some warrants in Idaho. He led an anti-war protest outside Boise city hall and got picked up for inciting a riot. He dropped out of sight a month after he did his thirty days and no one up there actually gave a shit when he showed up down here. Parole officer my guy talked to never thought of him as a criminal. Then we found two open. One battery charge. A DUI. Different parole officers.”