Where It Began

pologuy: wish i could break out of my house and come get u, do a bo

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, GF. GF GF GF GF GF!!!!!!!!!!!!

gabs123: the crips down at rooster shack would no doubt rush right up to mulholland and break u out if they just knew how bad u need a chicken and gf fix.

pologuy: that would be bloods. did u miss the red bandanas?

gabs123: whatever.

pologuy: just don’t mix them up when ur down at the courthouse

gabs123: don’t even remind me. i have no idea what to even say at the courthouse. i just have a list of honchos to make appointments with. no idea what to SAY to them.

pologuy: nobody told u what to say?

gabs123: i think i’m just supposed to tell the truth and look sorry.

pologuy: no!!!! ur lawyer was supposed to tell u what to say. what an elephant turd

gabs123: I just have to convince a bunch of people that i’m perfect.

pologuy: that should go well

gabs123: u don’t think i’m perfect?

pologuy: ok this is not good. shit. r u home alone?

gabs123: yes. no. i mean, john’s here, but he NEVER comes out of the den so it’s the same thing. and the door to the laundry room would really work. think about it. you’d come in through the canyon and no one could see.

pologuy: shit, i shouldn’t do this. ok. i’ll call when i get there and you’ll pick up the phone on the first ring but it won’t be me ok? i’ll be picking up a book from kaplan

gabs123: what do u mean?

pologuy: IT WON’T BE ME. the phone will ring, but it won’t be me out there ok?

gabs123: whatever u say.

pologuy: i don’t think u get what kind of shit i could be in

gabs123: whatever.

XXX

HE CALLS ME ON HIS CELL FROM THE LANDING JUST outside the laundry room door. There are leaves in his clothes from climbing through the canyon, his hair is flopped down over his forehead in a golden wedge. Black T-shirt and his pupils dilating black as he steps into the dark room and stands between the washing machine and the utility closet and I hold him and he holds me back.

I can feel his skin heating up, his face hot under the stubble, his mouth soft and salty as ever, our breathing matched as ever, synchronized, my head nestled on his shoulder for a minute and then tipped back and kissing him and him kissing my eyelids and my eyebrows and my nose and my cheeks and my lips.

“Okay,” he says. “We can’t do this now. I have to teach you this stuff fast and cut out.”

It’s hard to stop. “Billy,” I say, catching my breath and trying to sound casual. “The police aren’t patrolling my laundry room. I think we’re safe.”

Billy shakes his head. “I said I was getting Andy’s Spanish book. You have no idea how screwed I am. I might have to convince my PO I was trying to leave the bad evil party but I couldn’t find my car. I might have to take a freaking acting class to pull this off.”

“Okay, I get it. Everyone is screwed. Teach me the stuff.”

So Billy sits down on the washer and I sit down on the dryer.

“Okay,” he says. “It’s not that hard. The way you’re going to get out of this is you’re going to have a drinking problem and they’re going to cure it.”

“Oh, please. Do we have to go there? My lawyer won’t shut up about my drinking problem. Can’t I have some other problem they can cure?”

“Uh, no. You’re naturally perfect for this because the only way people believe you have a drinking problem is if you deny it. If you wise up and figure out you have a drinking problem too soon, they think you’re scamming them. Just remember, you’re dealing with fools and deny your head off.”

“That shouldn’t be too much of a stretch. Except that I got plowed and ran your car into a tree.”

“Yeah, there’s that. Try it anyway.”

“What?”

“You know. Right now. Boo hoo!” he says in a squeaky voice I can only assume is supposed to be me. “How can you say I drink too much? Boo hoo.” He pats my leg. “Now you try it.”

“Jesus, Billy. You should start an improv troupe. Okay, here goes. Boo hoo! How can you say I drink too much?”

“Boo hoo! I never drink too much!”

“Boo hoo! I never drink at all. The car just happened to crash with my unlucky self in it.”

Billy grins, oh my God, the grin. “That would be with your unlucky, sober self in it.”

“My unlucky, sober self.”

“Excellent. Okay, then you keep it up for maybe a month, maybe shorter if they’re doing your probation report sooner. You have to stay on top of the timing. Then you fake your big moment of insight.”

“Let me guess. Boo hoo. I have a drinking problem.”

“You have to get a little enthusiastic about this, Gardiner. You have to sell it. Boo hoo!!!! I have a drinking problem and I’m so upset—how did I miss it?????” He slaps his forehead. “Thank you, wise, helping professionals!!!!!!! A hearty thanks to all you whores for opening my eyes!!!!”

“Boo hoo.”

“Then you lean back and let them cure you.”

“And people buy this?”

“Babe, you sell it and they buy it. That’s what they do for a living.”

“Even the lawyer? What am I supposed to say to him?”

“Whatever he wants to hear. Just answer his questions succinctly and look cute.”

“Succinctly, Nash?”

“SAT word.”

“How cute?”

“So cute he can parade you in front of punk-ass chump cops and probation and they’ll be able to tell just by looking at you that it would be a big mistake to try and mess with you.”

You can tell that he knows all this from personal experience, which is both reassuring and somewhat less than reassuring.

The reassuring part is: I can more or less do this.

I just can’t talk about any of it with anyone else, ever, because the Three B’s are a tiny little gossip-riddled world and it could come back to bite me in an anything-you-say-to-friends-or-random-strangers-can-be-used-against-you-in-a-court-of-law kind of way. The whole plan will involve some serious sneakiness, but after seven months of ru

Billy, with his vast bad boy experience, has given me this whole routine, and now it’s my turn to dance in well-choreographed circles around the truth.

And then his phone starts to vibrate. “Shit,” he says. “Agnes.”

“Just turn it off. Tell her you were in a canyon. Sorry, no reception.”

He just stares at it. It stops vibrating and then it starts again. I reach for it and he pulls it back out of my reach, not even looking up at me. The phone flashes “Agnes B. Nash.”

“You’re sure you can do this?” he says, setting the phone on his lap. “You get it, right? You stick to the plan and you don’t talk to anyone but me?”

“Completely.” I am looking at the stairs that lead to the middle floor where my bedroom is. I am thinking about how close my room is and how John might as well be in Greenland and Vivian isn’t going to leave the sale at Neiman Marcus until she’s escorted to the door by security because they want to clock out for the night. I am thinking about how I want to feel and who can make me feel those particular feelings.

But Billy is looking at his vibrating phone and then at his Swiss precision underwater watch. He kisses me all along my collarbone, gentle where it is still bruised, holding the vibrating phone against my back. “I want you,” he says, as I tilt my head toward the staircase. “You know I do. But I can’t do this anymore. I have to bounce.”

And he bounces.

Leaving me with the new, improved Billy Nash plan to lie my way out of the whole mess, a hickey that means I am going to have to extend the opaque makeup all the way down the left side of my neck, and no boyfriend.