Complete Submission: (The Submission Series, Books 1-8) (73 page)

—Great. Thanks for the change. See you at ten?—

Robert and I walked up together. “You don’t know nothing about men. Sure, we might get a drink for a girl like you to get laid. But being seen with you? That’s what gets
other
girls. See what I’m sayin’?”

“No. I’m still buying my own drinks.”

“Whatever.”

I sat in the corner in the same spot Jonathan had been known to occupy and tried to arrange a car for the next morning. Darren had work the next day, but once he found out what I was doing, he refused to let me drop him off in the morning and borrow his car, texting me like he was my fucking therapist:

—You have a way of sabotaging your own happiness. I’m opting out—

A guy with glittering dark brown eyes, messy black hair, and a mouth like a movie star leaned on the bar next to me. “What are you drinking?”

“Piss and vinegar.” I was busy answering Darren’s accusation in a flurry.

“That a new thing?” he asked. “What’s in it?”

I pulled my eyes away from my phone for a second. “Piss. Also, vinegar.”

He laughed. Ignoring my bludgeon of a hint, he leaned toward me. “Let me get you your next one. I’ll piss in it myself.”

I slugged the dregs of my whiskey, letting the ice cube linger on my lips. I parted them to touch my tongue to it, reminding me of Jonathan, the master of melting ice. I slid the glass to Mister Eyes and said, “Piss your little heart out.”

He looked at the empty glass then back at me. I turned to my phone. I should have known better than to be a total bitch, because in L.A. you never knew who you were speaking to, but I missed Jonathan. I was angry at him and I was trying to avoid lashing out.

—Nice try with the car. I’m not Kevin. You can’t orchestrate my demise—

—Lil can take you anywhere you want to go—

“Someone break your heart today?” Mister Eyes asked.

“No, but really,” I said, “it’s not personal. I’m sure you’re awesome. But there are a hundred girls in here right now who are available. Okay?”

—Except where I want—

—Please wait until I get back. We can talk—

—I am officially done talking—

I slipped my phone into my pocket. When I looked up, Debbie was watching me. That alone was not abnormal, but I felt as if they were Jonathan’s eyes watching me talk to a handsome man, and I was suddenly uncomfortable.

I texted around and got some responses. A party in Koreatown. A show in Silver Lake. Nothing appealed. Fuck going out. I walked out to catch one of the cabs that usually waited outside the hotel. If I was seeing Jessica, I’d need a good night’s sleep.

JONATHAN

T
he machines beeped and sighed, blinking like the dashboard on a 747. The room smelled of rubbing alcohol and dying flesh, and in the darkness laid a once beautiful, intelligent woman who had been reduced, by me, to a pile of idly reproducing cells. I’d been driving that night. Drunk. Stoned. Stupid. Then I passively let my family cover it up while I sat in a padded room feeling sorry for myself.

Sixteen years, a dark room, and maybe she would finally get what she’d always wanted. She’d wanted to be free of her family, and by the time Jessica and I had found her, they were dead or missing. She’d wanted to be free of hunger and pain, and she’d gotten just that. But I didn’t think this was what she’d had in mind.

I’d gone from her lover to her guardian because no one else cared. She’d been forgotten, and I was the carrier of her memory. The man who broke her became her keeper. When she’d “died”, everyone felt sorry for me. Even though I had no memory of what happened, I knew something was wrong. I knew there was a debt to be paid. When Jessica and I found out she was alive and we’d sent a team of smart men and women to find her, I’d hoped she’d be in some suburban house with two kids and a dog. But the trail had led us to an expensive, secret facility for people who couldn’t move. Fuck, how I’d cried and thanked God and the saints for Jessica’s shoulder.

A million years before, we’d lain on our backs on the grass of Elysian Park, where my family would never find us. Rachel liked to wonder what it was like to be me. She thought I had not a worry in the world. Yes, my father was a fucking sociopath, but he didn’t stick his fingers inside me like hers had, and he didn’t scream and hit me and lock me in the house like her stepfather had. Whatever I endured would end when my trust fund spread its legs at twenty-one. For her, the light at the end of the tunnel had not appeared.

“Do you wish for things you can’t buy?” she’d asked.

I’d looked over at her. Blades of grass sat in the foreground of my vision, slashing her face, which was turned to me. Her eyes were tobacco brown, wide and light with sun inside them. “You’re fascinated with money,” I said.

“I think I am.” She’d smiled. “It’s made you different, you know. You’re fearless. It’s exciting, kind of. Watching you is like watching someone who’s really, truly free.”

I’d laughed. I never felt free in my life. “What do you wish for? Besides money.”

“You make me sound like a gold digger.”

“You are, but you’re terrible at it. I think a few more years and you’ll be sleeping with the right guy.”

She’d flung herself on top of me and pinched my sides. I laughed and rolled her over until I had her pinned.

“Tell me what you wish for, and if it’s any part of my body, your wish will come true at the Regency Hotel in forty minutes.”

She’d giggled and turned her face to the sunlight. “Free, Jonathan. I wish to be free.”

I’d unpinned one of her shoulders to pluck a seeded dandelion out of the grass. “Blow.” I held the white puffball in front of her.

She’d blown hard, and the seeds went into my face. We laughed, and blew the rest of the seeds off together, wishing her free from the constraints of her family and her scarcity. They floated away on their sinuous parachutes, like little messengers to God, saying
take me, take me, take me. Set me free.

T
he bus. West on Sunset. South on La Cienega. Hour and a half. A cab ride from my house to Jessica’s studio was fifty bucks one way. I wished I could have taken the hundred for a round-trip cab out of Jonathan’s ass, but that would have to wait for another day.

I wore three-quarter sleeves and long pants. I wrapped a scarf with a spider web pattern around my neck to cover the bruises. I felt lucky it was getting cold, but I had no idea how I’d hide the roughness of my private life in the summer.

The walk was a quarter mile, but it was cool, and I’d worn comfortable shoes. Jonathan hadn’t texted me back the night before, nor had I received a nine a.m. ding. Was he angry? Was he shutting me out because I hadn’t fallen for the busted starter trick? Or was the emergency that pulled him away so dire he couldn’t answer me? Both concerned me. I had a gnawing anxiety that grew worse with every step toward Jessica’s studio.

Up ahead, a big white truck was parked and running outside a light industrial building. The building was painted west-side tasteful—charcoal, with white trim and a chartreuse door—and guys in bunny suits trotted in and out with six-inch diameter hoses. I checked the address, and I was sure I had the right one.

A guy in a polo shirt put orange cones on the sidewalk, stopping me. “Street’s closed.”

“Is that twelve thirty-eight?”

“Sure is.”

“I have an appointment here.”

“Not today, you don’t. Got a lead and asbestos removal team coming in. It’s a hazard, so you’re going to have to go around the block if you want to pass.”

I pulled out my phone. No message. Crossing the street, I craned my neck around the truck and saw Jessica in the side alley, arguing with a guy holding a clipboard. Her smooth veneer was slipping, just a little. It seemed to be as much of a surprise to her as it was to me.

Of course.

Jonathan.

Well. Didn’t that just suck ass.

I started calling him and thought better of it. I texted him and deleted the whole thing. I’d already thrown out one unfounded accusation and gotten no reply. A string of them would do no more than make me look psychotic.

I walked to Washington Boulevard, where I’d at least be able to find a café where I could sit down and blow my cab money. I found a purple building housing a tea shop called Yellow Threat. I got something hot and herbal and sat down on the outdoor patio.

She texted me soon after.

—So sorry. I’ll be held up 30 min—

I felt like her co-conspirator at that point. Jessica and me against Jonathan. I was determined to understand the situation so I could help him. His ex-wife, perfectly content with his broken heart until she saw him with me, was hell-bent on destroying him for money and spite. She wanted to meet so she could use me, and Jonathan wanted to prevent that so I didn’t hurt myself or him. Both of them underestimated me.

They forgot I was a musician, that I’d gone to a performing arts school and been the victim of manipulation and backstabbing. I’d already opened my case and found my strings cut and my staff notes swapped. I’d already been given the wrong time for auditions. I couldn’t come out of that world without learning a thing or two.

—I’ll be at Yellow Threat for an hour if you want to come by—

Jessica and I, working against Jonathan to see each other. Ridiculous, yet somehow inevitable.

I checked my watch. I’d definitely lost a writing day. I wasn’t happy about it, but there was nothing I could do but warm my hands on my tea. The sidewalk made the block walkable, but it was empty. The light industrial street had been taken over by architects and production companies at the turn of the twenty-first century, and they’d painted everything in bright colors and edgy murals. I noticed one of Geraldine’s half a block away. She’d painted the side of the building to look as if I could see through it to the highway, as if she wanted to negate whatever happened inside.

I saw him walking across the crosswalk in a dark suit with a blue shirt open at the collar. His black hair caught the wind, and his eyes scanned every plane and surface.

“Mr. Santon,” I said when he reached me, “what a coincidence.”

“You believe in those?” He sat down.

“No. I’m assuming my lover sent you to talk me out of seeing his ex-wife?”

“Close. But no. I can’t tell you what he hired me to do, except I’m not supposed to be sitting at a table with you.”

“You must have put your own cameras in the house. If you know where I’ve been, I don’t know how. I haven’t seen you.”

“That was off the table, obviously. We’re not watching you. We’re watching the other one. And you’ll never see us, Ms. Faulkner. Any trace of us is gone before we even are.”

“Big scary ops guys. My dad always said he could take any of you in a brawl.”

“The idea is to avoid the brawl in the first place. Knowing what I know, which is too much, everyone involved wants to avoid a clusterfuck. Except you and Ms. Carnes. So I am going to sit here and enjoy a cup of tea, until night if necessary. If anyone joins you, I’ll be right here. Then I am going to drive you home.”

I leaned forward, elbows on the table. “How do I shake an ops guy?”

“Guys. Plural.” He glanced at a guy on a cell phone halfway down the block. He gestured and spoke loudly to make himself just another piece of furniture. Someone standing quietly with a phone to his ear would attract notice. Then Santon glanced at a black Toyota at the light and waved to the driver with a flick of his wrist. The driver flicked back and drove off when the light changed.

Great. Even if I ran away and jumped in a cab, I’d have to shake the other two. “He needs to trust my loyalty.”

“That’s between you and him.” He twisted around, hailing a waitress. “Personally, I don’t give a shit.”

The waitress came, and he ordered himself a cup of coffee and a muffin. She flirted with him, a nervous grin crossing her face. He was a nice-looking guy. I’d forgotten to notice.

“What’s with the pinkie ring?” I asked when the waitress left.

He held up the simple gold band always present on his pinkie, not an affectation or accessory as I’d assumed. “My wife’s.”

“She wearing yours?”

“Around her neck, with her dog tags. We swapped when we re-upped. Weren’t there four weeks when she took sniper fire half a mile from the Green Zone.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was messy. Death always is.”

“You understand, I’m just trying to protect him.”

“I’m just trying to do my job.”

I sipped my tea, and we sat in silence as his coffee was brought. A black Mercedes stopped at the light. A blonde driving. Jessica. The parking lot was around the corner, and her blinker flashed for the turn.

I looked at Santon, and though his eyes appeared to be on the scalding black coffee he was about to swallow in a single gulp, he gazed in the halfway point between the table and the street. Blank sidewalk, but Jessica and I would be in his peripheral vision.

Jessica saw me, and I shook my head. She nodded and turned off her blinker. Will Santon could take me home. Motherfucker.

I
knew Will wasn’t gone for good. I had a gig at Frontage that was well-attended, including a table of five guys in agent-gear by the warm speakers. I greeted them, played, and said goodbye with a stinker of a smile, but my heart felt made of lead. Jonathan hadn’t called, texted, written. No contact besides Will Santon’s unwelcome presence.

Could he be that mad?

Was that
how
he got mad? Falling off the face of the earth? How was I supposed to react?

Irrelevant questions. What I needed to ask myself was how I
wanted
to react. So I called him. It went to voice mail, which I didn’t want. There would be no angry, terse, or blustery messages. I texted.

—Are you shutting me out? WTF?—

I had friends who had given men their hearts only to find them turned to ice directly after. Or slept with them after declarations of indefinite amounts of attraction, but the indefinite amounts lasted no more than a week. I wondered if that was what I was dealing with. Had my commitment to him chased him away? Or did he expect my submission to be an abdication of control over my decisions? Was obedience required inside and outside the bedroom? Had I missed that point on the list?