Vows, Vendettas and a Little Black Dress Page 7

  “Oh, right. That is a more logical way of doing things.” I chewed on my lower lip. I had been pestering Anatoly about opening up to me more about his childhood lately but maybe full disclosure wasn’t all it was cracked up to be after all. I had recently read an article that suggested the happiest married couples consisted of individuals who were skilled in the art of denial. Maybe not telling him about my plans to talk to Chrissie was just another way I could help Anatoly maintain some useful delusions about his life with me.

  He pulled out a long knife with a serrated edge and started slicing the baguette. “We need to make a list of possible suspects.”

  I winced. I had to tell him. How could I ask him to help me find Dena’s attacker and not tell him everything I knew? I would just make him understand that meeting with Chrissie was a good idea…and when I wasn’t able to do that, I’d let him think he had convinced me of the error of my ways and then I’d meet with her anyway. At least that way I could say I tried to be up-front. It’s the thought that counts, right?

  “Anatoly? Okay, um…as I was saying before, I was talking to Leah and—”

  His phone rang again. This time it was in his pocket and he took it out only long enough to dismiss the call for a second time.

  “Okay, seriously, who was that?”

  “I told you.” He yanked open the refrigerator and took out some mayonnaise.

  “You worked as a P.I. for an insurance company when you lived in New York,” I reminded him. It was one of the few things about Anatoly’s pre-Sophie years that I could remind him of. It was like he had given me an outline of his early life but only included all the parts one would number with roman numerals and left out everything that might be labeled with 1, 2, 3 or a, b, c.

  “I didn’t work for her in New York. That number is just her cell phone.” He scooped out a few tablespoons of mayonnaise and dumped it in a small bowl before going back to the refrigerator and taking out some fresh basil leaves. This was becoming a very complicated sandwich.

  “So you worked for her in San Francisco?”

  “Sophie, if a client doesn’t give me express permission to discuss their case with other people, I can’t. It’s confidential even if I don’t work for them anymore.”

  “You can’t even tell me if you worked for her in San Francisco?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Huh.”

  Mr. Katz finally abandoned the oven and hopped up on the counter next to me. I gently ushered him away from the marinating tomatoes.

  “We need to stay focused. Think about who might have it in for Dena. I’ll pick the brain of my contact and then we’ll compare notes,” he said. “Are you going to be spending tomorrow in the hospital again? Or do you have other plans?”

  “I’ll be seeing Leah but other than that no plans at all.”

  Fuck him. My plans were confidential.

  CHAPTER 7

  I never get jealous…unless some bitch steals my spotlight.

  –Fatally Yours

  I made up for the sleep I hadn’t gotten the night before by going to bed at a reasonable time and sleeping in. When I got to the hospital the next day it was well into the afternoon. I went straight for the gift shop. The clerk had told me the new issue of Rolling Stone was going to be in, and I had heard their cover story was on Johnny Depp, one of the very few mainstream actors Dena actually liked.

  But I never actually got inside the gift shop because standing about ten paces in front of it were Amelia and Jason. For the first time, I realized that Amelia hadn’t actually come to see Dena the day before as she had originally promised. Now she was clutching a small tin of roasted almonds to her chest as she stared up at one of the two men she shared with Dena.

  “It was too much,” she cried, neither of them seeing me as I approached. “I was hurt and jealous and—”

  “Jealous?” Jason thundered. Inside the gift shop I could see the cashier with his hand on the phone, ready to call someone if the argument got out of hand. “Dena is in a wheelchair and you let petty jealousy keep you away?”

  “For less than forty-eight hours!” Amelia protested. “Not even two days!”

  “But for at least six of those forty-eight hours we didn’t even know if she was going to live! She could have died in surgery and you couldn’t even pull it together enough to answer your cell phone!”

  Amelia shook her head wildly, causing her mass of long curls to whip across her back. “I had to process it,” Amelia said, her voice now coming out in a whimper. “I was already messed up when I got your e-mail—”

  “Petty!” Jason said again. “What happened to free love? What happened to going with the flow and all that hippie, pseudo-Buddhist shit you’re always spewing? I don’t think I know who you are right now and I’m not fucking sure that I want to.”

  A cry escaped Amelia’s lips and she shoved the almonds into Jason’s hands before running past him. She brushed past me but I wasn’t at all sure that she had recognized me as anything more than a blur.

  I watched her retreat and then caught Jason’s eye. “Jason, what the hell?”

  Jason’s hair was plastered back with some kind of gel and his pointed goatee was neatly trimmed, giving him the look of a hornless devil. “She was here all along,” he said, his voice strangled with emotion.

  “Where? The gift shop?”

  Jason blinked and then looked to the gift shop as if he had forgotten it was there. “I can’t believe she never went to Nicaragua,” he seethed. “I can’t fucking believe she was here the whole time! Right here in San Francisco the night Dena was shot!”

  “Yeah, I know. I stopped by O’Keefe’s yesterday morning and she was there. I’m the one who told her what happened to Dena.”

  “She told you that?” Jason stepped back, bumping his heel against the pale gray wall.

  “Told me what? Jason, seriously, what’s going on?”

  He reached into his torn army jacket, pulled out a BlackBerry and waved it in the air like it was the American flag. “I sent her e-mails that night! And texts and I left a voice mail, all on the off chance that she might check one of those things while in Nicaragua! I knew that if she got the messages she’d tell Kim and they’d be on the first flight back here. Amelia loves Dena.”

  His last sentence was weighted with a heavy dose of sarcasm. He was now gripping his BlackBerry so tight the tips of his fingers were turning white. I quickly tried to piece together what he was saying. “You’re upset that she didn’t return your e-mails?”

  “I’m upset because she didn’t get her ass to the hospital! I don’t care how fucking stoned she was! If anything the marijuana should have helped her be more clearheaded about what was going down!”

  “More clearheaded?” I repeated. “Jason, you’re either being facetious or your short-term memory is so messed up you’ve forgotten what happens when you inhale.”

  “It calms you!” Jason insisted. “We were all here freaking out and if Amelia was half the woman she says she is she would have come to us like a fucking mellow angel of ganja and soothed our fears! But she didn’t even come! I didn’t even know she was in the fucking country until today! We’re supposed to all be in a relationship and when Dena’s life was hanging in the balance she was fucking MIA!”

  “Maybe she was in shock, Jason.”

  “Bullshit. She even admitted that if you hadn’t come to O’Keefe’s yesterday she probably would have waited a few more days before contacting any of us! Can you believe that shit? She was jealous!”

  “Of what? She wanted to be the one to get shot?”

  “She thinks Kim and I both like Dena more than her. That she’s just the chick we do when Dena’s not around!”

  I hesitated. I had always suspected that was the case and, for the life of me, I could never figure out why the arrangement was acceptable for Amelia.

  If Jason had any sympathy for Amelia’s plight it wasn’t evident. “I should get this up to Dena,” he said, tapping the ro
asted almonds against his leg. “She loves almonds and the stuff they tried to feed her this morning sucked.”

  “Amelia bought her the almonds?”

  Jason grunted in assent.

  “That was nice of her, Jason.”

  “She wasn’t going to come today, Sophie. Almonds don’t make up for that.” He took off toward the elevator without waiting for me to respond. I briefly considered following him back up to Dena’s room but quickly changed my mind. Dena could easily handle Jason on her own.

  I walked out of the hospital and was hit by a cool gust of wind. I could see the dark mass of fog moving in from over the ocean, but at that moment the sky directly above me was still a muted shade of blue. I let my eyes scan over the busy sidewalk as I hooked my thumbs into the belt loops of my jeans. Sitting by the nearest bus stop was Amelia.

  There was no bench, so she was just hunched over on the curb, her rainbow tie-dyed skirt hanging in the gutter. I went over, gingerly sat down beside her and waited for her to acknowledge me. She eventually did, pushing her thick curls behind her shoulders so I could see her profile. Amelia was one of those rare individuals who didn’t wear makeup and usually didn’t need it. But today her complexion was puffy and red.

  “I just needed to wrap my head around it,” she whispered.

  I nodded. “I get that.”

  She turned and looked at me. “You do?”

  “Of course. This whole thing came out of nowhere. I seriously don’t know if I’ll ever wrap my head around it.”

  Amelia put her hand on my knee, her expression morphing from grieved to desperate. “You know I love Dena, right? She’s such a beautiful person. I love her energy and her aura is, like, totally amazing. Kim, who really isn’t all that into mysticism, even he knows Dena has an awesome aura.” Her face darkened and she turned from me again. “He says it’s sapphire blue but to me it looks purple.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Dena has a purple aura. Purple’s the color of royalty and Dena’s a queen. At least that’s what she is to Kim and Jason.”

  “What does that make you?”

  A large truck went by and I twisted my body away from the street to avoid the exhaust. When I turned back around Amelia had her hands over her face. She kept them there for a minute even though the truck was now several blocks away.

  “I think,” she said through her fingers, “it makes me the kings’ consort. I’m their whore.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath.

  “I never thought I’d use that word.” She allowed her hands to slip to her lap. “I don’t believe sex is something that should only be experienced within the confines of some state-approved union. Sex can be a beautiful way of expressing yourself. Maybe you want to express yourself with a guy you meet at Whole Foods with beautiful eyes and a passion for organic produce. If you care for him in that moment and you want to be with him…well, why shouldn’t you? Being unselfish with your affections doesn’t make a woman a whore. It just makes her generous.”

  I bit down on my lip. This is why Amelia and I could never be all that close. She was a nice enough person but this stuff about being unselfish with our affections sounded like the ramblings of a deluded nymphomaniac. Dena was a nympho, but at least she owned it. She didn’t try to justify her vice with an outdated flower-child philosophy. I tried to come up with a polite way of excusing myself but Amelia was still talking.

  “I almost didn’t agree to this whole polyamorous thing. I didn’t see why I should restrict myself to two men, and I know Dena felt the same way.”

  “I think Dena likes stability more than she lets on,” I said, glancing at my watch.

  “Yeah,” Amelia said quietly. She looked down at her Birkenstock-encased feet. Each toenail was painted a different color. “Being with lots of different guys doesn’t make you a whore but sleeping with guys who use you as a time-waster while they’re waiting for a chance to lie with the queen…” Amelia blinked rapidly and drew her knees further into her chest. “I told Kim I loved him,” she whispered. “I wasn’t asking for monogamy and I didn’t think I needed him to say it back. Love’s a wonderful thing even if it isn’t returned, but…”

  “But,” I prodded, hoping she would admit that she was full of shit so I wouldn’t have to call her on it.

  “But I have heard him say it to Dena. And I’ve heard Jason say it to Dena, too. But no one’s said it to me. And when Kim couldn’t even say it to me when it was just the two of us packing our things for Nicaragua…” She took a deep breath. “I said I love you and he said thank you.”

  “Ew.”

  “Yeah, but if you think about it he was just being honest. They love Dena but they don’t love me.” The wind picked up again and her skirt rustled in the filth. “What’s wrong with me?”

  “Nothing,” I assured her although I was tempted to point out the excessive pot smoking and her purple aura hallucinations. “What’s wrong is your relationship. You don’t need to settle for this. Go sleep with the Whole Foods guy or whatever. Try to find one guy who really digs you. Monogamy isn’t selfish, Amelia. It’s just…normal.”

  “But I don’t want to be normal!”

  “Do you want what you have now?”

  A sad smile played across her lips and she stared out at the passing traffic. There wasn’t much of it. Just an occasional car or scooter. The pedestrians paid us no attention and we returned the favor.

  “I wanted to come to the hospital as soon as I got the e-mail,” Amelia whispered. “I wanted to be there for Dena. But this jealousy…I couldn’t expose her to it. I couldn’t bring that energy into the hospital while she was being operated on. Jealousy…it’s poisonous, Sophie.”

  I studied her for a minute without talking. With the exception of their liberal ideas about sex, Amelia and Dena had nothing in common. Amelia had an innocence that Dena had lacked even when she was a girl. And while Dena continued to be one of the strongest women I knew, Amelia was weak. It was a harsh reality but that didn’t make it any less true. If they were plants, Dena would be a flowering cactus: beautifully commanding, unique and difficult to get close to. But Amelia would be a poppy. Bright and bold, but if you didn’t handle her in exactly the right way, she’d fall apart. I don’t usually like weak people, but in that moment I felt moved to take care of Amelia. I wanted this eccentric, purple-aura-seeing woman with the mismatched toenails to thrive and not wilt.

  I sighed and tapped my foot against the pavement. “When I was in school I took an astronomy class,” I started. “I was really into it. I thought all the star formations were kind of comparable to human relationships. For instance…well, do you know what an open cluster of stars is?”

  Amelia nodded. “It’s a group of stars that starts off clumped together but then they spread out until eventually they’re not a cluster at all. But what does that have to do with my relationship with… Oh…right. Jason, Kim, Dena and me…we’re the open cluster?”

  I nodded.

  A baby was crying somewhere amongst the pedestrians behind us and Amelia turned slightly toward the sound before bringing her attention back to me. “But it’s not really the best metaphor, is it?” she said. “Dena, Kim and Jason are still very much a cluster. I’m just the one star they left behind. Maybe I was never part of the cluster at all. Maybe I’m just the star they paused to play with before continuing their journey across the universe.” She lifted her eyes up to the graying sky. “I’m alone, Sophie. I think maybe I’ve always been alone. It’s just that I never realized it before. I…I miss my illusions.”

  “Kim, Jason and Dena are not a permanent cluster,” I said with a quick shake of my head. “I’m not even sure any of them believe there is such a thing as permanence. And as for Kim loving Dena, well, the guy has been gone for days and he hasn’t even called to check in with her! Does anyone even know where he’s staying?”

  “He doesn’t have a strict itinerary and he’s taking a break from technology. He wants an authentic Nicaraguan e
xperience.”

  “Yeah, well, last I checked an authentic Nicaraguan experience included authentic Nicaraguan phones. The country’s not in the Stone Age. And he’s not in North Korea. He’s allowed to make an international call.”

  “He’ll call Dena before his trip is over,” she said with assurance. “He won’t call me, though. Maybe he’ll never call me again.”

  I took in a long shaky breath. “Amelia—”

  “No, don’t say anything. I’m cool. I just need to go home, roll a joint and meditate on this for a while.” She lowered her eyes back to earth and graced me with a fragile smile. “Call it medical marijuana. I need it to take some of the pain away.”

  The bus came shortly after that and Amelia left me so she could fall into the arms of her herbal remedies. I felt as if I should have said something different. I even thought about tracking down Jason and convincing him to go to her. But that would have been a false gesture on his part and therefore completely useless. Besides, I had so much else to deal with. I just had to trust that Amelia would find a way to work herself through this. With luck that way wouldn’t involve smoking more than one joint a day.

  CHAPTER 8

  Conflicts are solved with words, not violence. Punching your rival in the face won’t solve anything…but it will feel bloody fantastic!

  –Fatally Yours

  I never did get to Dena’s room that afternoon, though I did check in with her over the phone. With Jason there it seemed more appropriate that I give them some alone time…or at least as much alone time as you could get in a hospital room. Besides, I wanted to mentally prepare myself for my upcoming meeting with Chrissie.

  I also checked in with Anatoly. He didn’t have a lot of time to talk since he was following around a man in a back brace in hopes he might break into an impromptu series of cartwheels and thereby undermine his workman’s comp claim. But Anatoly did listen when I told him about Amelia’s predicament. In fact, he listened rather intently. Normally he wasn’t all that interested in the trials and tribulations that accompanied my friends’ love lives, but this time he peppered me with questions and sounded genuinely concerned. Not necessarily concerned for Amelia though, just more concerned in general. It was kind of weird.