An Accidental Affair (39 page)

I clenched my teeth.

She whispered, “James, how did this watch end up in your pockets?”

I didn’t answer.

She went on, “You smelled of chlorine. Your skin was very cold. Like you’d been wet. And your eyes are bloodshot. Chlorine turns your eyes red. You know that and I know that.”

Ill at ease, I pulled my lips in and set free a hum of angst.

“Driver came up here and grabbed fresh clothing. I knew something was wrong. You didn’t answer my calls. I called you for hours. And when you came back, your hair was wet.”

I said, “Let it go, Regina.”

Then we were quiet again.

Her words almost incoherent, she said, “Bobby drowned. He drowned in his pool.”

She trembled and ran her hands through her hair, more unsettled, more uncomfortable.

She swallowed, then asked, “Did anyone see you?”

I didn’t reply.

She snapped, “Did anyone see you?”

“Not that I know of.”

“You murdered him and kept a souvenir.”

“That is not what happened.”

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”

She remained on edge. I didn’t know if she was my wife or my enemy.

But every other time, when a crisis appeared, she had vanished.

“Regina. Maybe you should leave. Put some distance between us.”

“I’m not leaving.”

I snapped, “I want you to leave.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“Leave. You can leave, walk away, and decide how you want to handle this.”

She yelled back, “I’m not leaving.”

“You run from everything else.”

“I’m not running anymore, James. I’m never running again.”

I leaned into the wall. She bounced her legs and let her tears fall on that damned watch. As a dozen emotions moved between us, the apartment shrank, became smaller than a jail cell.

She lowered her voice, “Did you leave any evidence?”

I paused and felt the tension rising. Clips from each video played in my brain. Beating Johnny. Regina and Johnny. Bobby giving her blow. Drowning Bobby. Shooting the Bergs.

She repeated, “Was any evidence left behind, James?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Not that you know of? What the hell does that mean, James?”

“Something is always left behind. A footprint. A handprint on the wall.”

“What did you leave, if you left anything?”

“Nothing that would connect it to you.”

She lowered her head and rocked. “Jesus, is that what you think I’m crying about? Me?”

“Or over Bobby Holland. The way you’re holding that watch, over Bobby Holland.”

She threw the watch at me, threw it hard. It hit the wall and landed near my feet.

I picked it up and tossed it back. It landed on the bed next to her.

“James, I’m worried about you.”

“And I’m fucking terrified.”

“What if they find the videos he had?”

I said, “What Bobby Holland had on you, I took. I took his computer. If he had backups, no idea. He had things on you. I saw a tape. And he had Johnny Bergs by the balls too.”

Saliva made her lips stick together when she managed to ask, “What did he want?”

The money, the cars, her talents, my script, Johnny Bergs, I told her what he had wanted. She listened without moving for a while; suddenly she shook her head in outrage and disbelief.

“Then what, James?”

I picked the watch up and stared at its face. “I baptized him and left.”

“Then what? Did you stop anywhere?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“I was being followed.”

“Who saw you, James? Who followed you?”

“Johnny Bergs’s father and brothers.”

“The Bergs?”

“I pulled over and killed them.”

Her head jerked up and her face twisted in a brand-new shock, her mouth wide open.

“Repeat that.”

I said, “They had come to kill me. It was self-defense. Bobby Holland was murder. The rest was self-defense. If you want to turn me in and save yourself, I’m not going to stop you.”

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”

“Actually, it was Moses.”

“What was that?”

Again I took out the phone I’d been given by Alice Ayres. I’d left it sitting on the dash when I had faced the Bergs. It had recorded Moses shooting at me. Threatening me.

Then with me off screen, Moses was shot. His boys froze. One by one they all died.

“I shot them all. I killed them all.”

“They had come to kill you because of me.”

“Because I beat Johnny Handsome’s ass.”

“You attacked him because of me.”

“He humiliated me and I humiliated him.”

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”

“Stop saying that. Will you please stop saying that?”

“I feel sick. I feel ashamed.”

I pulled on my pants and went and sat in the living room.

She came in after me and stood over me.

Her voice trembled as she said, “I don’t care how many people you killed, I don’t care if you ran over babies in your car. I don’t care. I’m your alibi. Understand that. We’ve been together all evening. We’ve been together for as long as you say. I’m your fucking alibi, James.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. And if you go against me, I’ll kill you with my own hands. I swear I will.”

Regina Baptiste stood over me, shaking her head, palming a dead man’s watch. Then she went into the kitchen. Pots banged. The refrigerator opened. A chicken was taken out. So was a chopping board. Chicken was cut up. A big pot of water was put on the stove. Potatoes were cut up. Carrots. Yellow onions. Allspice, garlic, salt, dried red pepper, and lime juice were added. When the pot started to boil, Regina walked by me, that watch in her hand, and went back into the bedroom. She went into the bedroom and slammed the door.

There was a knock at the front door and my heart sped up.

I wondered how many Bergs there were. And how many knew where I lived.

I stood and opened the door without asking who it was. If they had come for me, I’d go. I’d go and leave my wife where she was, safe and in the bedroom. I’d go quietly.

But it was Mrs. Patrice Evans, dressed in her workout gear with a big smile on her face. She winked and brushed right by me taking her clothes off as she hurried toward my bedroom.

“I have thirty minutes. Come fuck me, Varg.”

The bedroom door opened and Patrice screamed and ran back into the living room gathering her clothing. Jaw tight, Regina entered and stood where the hallway touched the living room. She looked at Mrs. Patrice Evans as if they were the only ones in the room.

Patrice stared at my wife for a moment, stared at her as if she looked familiar, as if she was trying to place her face, then she backed away from Regina. When she made it to the hallway, she took off jogging. I watched her as she ran by oblivious neighbors. After I closed the door, I looked at Regina. She shook her head and bit her bottom lip. What had just happened mattered to her. It looked like it mattered to her more than the death of Bobby Holland. Or the death of Johnny Handsome. A new devastation had been added.

I sat down on the sofa. James Thicke took a seat in Varg Veum’s complex world.

Regina said, “We have bigger issues.”

Regina went to the kitchen to check on the food, she saw that it was done, and she turned the stove off.

She came back and stood over me. She sat down at first, then she lay down on her side, put her head in my lap and closed her eyes. I listened to the sirens in the distance.

She cried soft tears again. “It wasn’t a revenge fuck, James. It was accidental. It was an accidental fuck. It wasn’t a luck fuck. It wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t adultery. It was accidental.”

While she shook her foot, I rubbed her hair and massaged her temples.

She said, “Mine wasn’t an affair. It wasn’t. I swear that it wasn’t.”

“It was still broken trust. Broken trust makes it easy to embrace temptation.”

“It wasn’t me. I was lost. It was Sasha.”

“You didn’t tell me that Bobby Holland was there.”

She stopped shaking her foot.

Johnny Handsome was dead. I didn’t want him dead, but his death gave me no sorrow just as killing Bobby Holland would never give me any grief. That said a lot about me. About the man I was. I didn’t like my wife crying over men who had been inside of her, accidentally or not. I’d killed a handful of people in the last few hours, and that was what troubled me the most.

I had killed all of those people and not one of those deaths bothered me.

She set the table and we pulled up the barstools and sat down.

No matter who died, no matter the loss, the living had to continue feeding.

She said, “We have to throw away the watch. No souvenirs. We
break it and toss it. It’s registered. We can’t chance anyone finding it and trying to pawn it. Best to have it vanish.”

I nodded and ate a piece of chicken.

A thousand moments went by before I said, “Dinner tastes good.”

“Thanks.”

Din rose up around us, the din that came with this world. I had grown used to the noise. I could tell that it grated on Regina’s nerves.

I put the dishes in the sink and heard a loud noise coming from outside the bedroom window. I went and looked, saw a U-haul had pulled up outside and stopped near the entry to this building. The police didn’t travel in U-Hauls. On edge, I went back to the sofa. Regina came over and lay down, put her head in my lap again, her breathing as disturbed as mine.

She whispered, “I wish I had been there to help drown him too.”

While sirens wailed and the neighbor over me finished a round of sex, we stayed just like that. Then we watched the news on my laptop, read RSS feeds, read comments on Facebook and Twitter, moved from there to at least fifteen other social networking sites, took in comments that were a combination of sorrow and meanness, jokes and laughter at the expense of the dead. The bloggers were roaring like the many-headed beasts they had become. People were killed every day, but when it involved the famous, it was actually treated as if it were a crime. There was video of neighbors being interviewed outside of Bobby Holland’s home, neighbors that cried and said how he was a wonderful man, a great father to his kids, and a leader of their community.

There was also a video of a police tow truck taking the Bergs’ car away from the scene of the crime up at Skirball Center Drive. Banners read:
WHY DID JOHNNY BERGS KILL HIMSELF? WAS THE MAFIA INVOLVED? DID ZOLOFT CAUSE JOHNNY BERGS TO BECOME SUICIDAL? TWO OF REGINA BAPTISTE’S LOVERS FOUND DEAD. REGINA BAPTISTE: IS SEX WITH THAT DIVA A DEATH-JINX?
Computers were being seized
from Johnny Bergs’s home. There were prayer vigils, pointless interviews with his publicist, and candid words from his grief-stricken fans. We endured that bullshit as long as we could, watched until we couldn’t stand the news. Then we forced ourselves to disconnect, went into the bedroom and undressed. Regina Baptiste. Here. Undressing. Stripping until she was naked. It struck me as odd for a few moments. Very surreal and distant. I was afraid to go to sleep. She looked overtired, too exhausted to rest.

The furniture was familiar to her, but the environment was a foreign country.

She rubbed my chest. “James.”

“Yeah.”

“I need to feel good, James.”

“Now’s not the right time.”

“I need to feel good.”

I was angry with her. But I looked at her, saw how desperate she was to reconnect with me. Saw how she needed my acceptance right now. Then I looked at her as she rolled over on her belly and reached for me. I stared at the woman whom many had died over in the last few hours. She was a queen who could start a war that could ruin a nation. A man had killed himself because of her powers and I had killed another man to save her. She had set Hollywood on fire and the fire would burn the way Chicago did back in 1871. I touched her much-desired figure and the rise of her round backside. I touched all things that men and women desired, all the things that were marketable. She looked at me, and with her expressive face and eyes that held her emotions, she seduced me as Hollywood had seduced her. I lay on her back and moved against her. I entered my wife again.

“I’ve missed you, James.”

Tears rolled from her eyes. But not enough to wash this day clean.

Despite the drowning, despite the killings, my mind couldn’t process the concept of an accidental fuck. Maybe one day it would. Today,
as numbness and anxiety danced, I was liberal, but my mind just wasn’t that open. Intentional, yes. Rape, yes. Accidental, no.

She stopped me. “Not so rough, James.”

She hadn’t told Johnny Handsome to slow down. She had moaned for him the same way. Now I was the one drowning. Drowning in a memory that I’d never escape.

“James, James, not so rough.”

I slowed down, slowed time down, and listened to her breathing. I had to not see Regina Baptiste. I had to pretend that she was someone else. Hazel had rejected me. Patrice would never be good enough. I needed a better woman. I pretended that she was Isabel. I pretended that she was the mature woman with the beautiful body. The mature woman who loved books. The beautiful woman with the British accent and wicked sense of humor. Isabel with the long beautiful hair.

My orgasm was immense and her body went into spasms. My orgasm was voluminous, as if I had never orgasmed once in my life and had saved it all up for this moment. It was embarrassing the way I took her, the desperate way I pounded her, the way I held onto her to get resentment out of my body, the way I showed her how fucking angry I’d been with her for days on end. And it was equally embarrassing the way she came, the way her orgasm came in waves.

When it ended, I rolled away from her as if I had been with a whore, my chest heaving.

I was a new man now. Not Varg. Not James. Someone in between. I looked at Regina Baptiste. She looked as strange to me now as she had the first night we’d been together.

She asked, “Why are you looking at me like that, James?”

I turned my head away, took control of myself, purged evil thoughts.

A moment went by.

As I sweated, I said, “I need to tell you something. Something that I did.”