Burn (Songs of Submission #5)(15)

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.”

I scanned the club. Larry poured drinks. Guys in suits laughed at the bar. I expected Eddie soon, and I wanted to be done with Santon before he arrived.

“The cameras?” I asked. “Anything?”

“We got taken off before we found out how it was done and who ordered the job. We did track the serial numbers though. Followed the money.”

He paused, and I rotated my hand at the wrist for him to continue. He didn’t. The guy was unflappable.

“Well? Where did it come from?”

“You.”

I snorted a laugh and drank the last mouthful of whiskey. “Fucking fantastic. Was it out of Ibiza?”

“Canary Islands. Someone’s got their fingers in your pie.”

“Apparently.” I held out my hand. “I appreciate you coming here to finish this off.”

Santon took it, and we shook. “Call me in a couple of weeks when things free up.”

“Will do.”

He left, and I went down to the locker room, chewing on what the f**k was happening with the Canary Island trust. Kevin certainly didn’t have the right kind of mind or connections. It was possible I was underestimating him. It was also possible I had latched onto him because I despised him.

The club’s huge lot had a driving range, tennis courts, batting cages, and a fake pitcher’s mound and home plate. The owner had owned a major league team or two, and he kept baseball in the club even if the facilities weren’t used much. Eddie and I used it more than any other two members. I’d set up the time with him to feel him out about Monica. Maybe I could convince him to try another marketing angle, any other angle, because I knew what he wanted to do was putting her through hell.