“I can fix them myself.”
“You know how to sew?” The blurted challenge puts me right up on my Some-Things-Girls-Can-Do-Better high horse, even though it is a totally sexist stereotype that only an idiot would lay claim to. Not to mention I can’t sew much more than a button.
“I’ve been hiking for over twenty years,” he answers.
“Hikers need to sew?” My sarcasm serves me well. “For what?”
“Head wounds, mostly.” He tries to take back the rucksack, thinking I’m going to be satisfied with leaving myself so miserably beholden to him.
I pull the pack even further away from him. “There’s no reason you should do the work when it’s my fault. I’ll fix your pants.”
“No, you won’t.” He reaches across me and jerks the pack back.
“Jack,” I bolt off the couch so we stand face to face. Man, he smells good. It’s so unfair. He used my shower and my soap, and
I
never smell this good. “Give them to me.”
“I’m not giving you my pants.”
Just then, I kind of hear what we’re saying to one another, and it gives me a different idea. “Do you want to have sex?”
“What?” He leaps backward to get away from me. “No! What? No,” he says again. “Are you crazy?” He pushes past me to go sit on the couch. But he immediately stands up again. He moves to the center of the living room where he paces like a tiger with ADD. “I can’t believe you just said that!”
“Sorry,” I say, wearing my petulance like a badge. Jeez. Does he have to act so repulsed? It’s not like I’m lusting after him, or anything. I mean, yeah, he’s got this incredible warrior kind of magnetism and this way of moving that makes me think…
But never mind! I don’t actually
like
him. Come on! He’s Jack Hawkins. I will not act like some geeky piccolo player drooling after the captain of the football team. And that’s exactly what it would be like if I were actually stupid enough to
want
Jack Hawkins. I mean, sure, I’d do him, but that doesn't mean—
Oh, my God! Does he think I actually
want
him? “It’s just that you’re so miserable,” I rush to explain.
He looks at me like I’ve just told him his duck is on fire.
“Seriously, Jack. Your mood is blasting into me like this dark beam of…of…like, dirty snow on the side of the road, you know? Yuck. And I can’t stand it. I’m so depressed.”
He slams his brows together. “That’s why you have sex? To get rid of depression?”
I’m thinking this doesn’t sound like such a crazy reason when I realize what he’s doing. “Oh, no you don’t!” I thrust my fists onto my hips so my elbows jut out in a really commanding way. “Where do you get off psychoanalyzing me? You don’t even know me!”
“No, I don’t,” he agrees. “But you said—”
“Forget what I said!” I take a deep breath, let it out. “Just forget everything I said. I was just trying…I was…I…I really ruined your day, and now your night, too. And you have to work tomorrow, but you’re stuck here all night. I was just trying to make things better. For both of us. That’s all.”
His eyes bug out of his head in true Odie-fashion. “By having sex with me?”
He says this like having sex with Lisa Flyte could NEVER improve ANY situation for ANYONE. I want to punch him. Hard. But I don’t.
Because I’m scared.
Not of punching him. I’m sure my hand would hurt for only a day or so if I tried. I mean, I’m too much of a chicken to tell him to get the hell out. I don’t want to spend the night alone in my apartment when some criminal has my keys along with my license telling him exactly where I live. What could I possibly do to defend myself? I have no weapons or fighting skills. I can’t even think under pressure. I’ve heard that in times of great stress people revert to doing whatever activities come most naturally to them. But how on earth would watching reruns of
Scarecrow and Mrs. King
help me in a home invasion situation?
I need Jack tonight, but in a strictly utilitarian sense.
“Never mind,” I finally say on a sigh, giving up trying to explain myself or salvage my dignity. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to have sex with you.”
Jack eyes me suspiciously.
“But I want the pants.”
Apparently, the threat of my having sex with him worked wonders. He hands the pants over without another word.
* * * * *
I am happy to say I have grown accustomed to spending time in my bed all by myself. Since Keith left, I’ve redecorated to my heart’s delight. My bedroom palace now fills me with a contented warmth that spreads from my toes to the tips of my hair.
Still, it rankles when a rough and ripped adventurer sits awake on my couch in the other room. Makes the beautiful bed seem like such a waste.
Plus, being alone makes it easier to think, and I don’t want to think. Reflecting on the day is making me restless. And not because I regret how I acted on the mountain. I’m sure that will come later. But something Jack said keeps pinging around in my mind like a pinball that just won’t quit. I’ve got to get to the bottom—
Sha-clink.
I sit bolt upright on the bed. That’s the key in the door! Someone is trying my key in the door! I run out of the bedroom to find Jack standing still, silent and alert, like a crocodile waiting out its prey. Why isn’t he taking action? Doesn’t he realize this is the perfect time to strike? I run through the hallway-like kitchen to the front door. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jack lunge to stop me, but the breakfast bar separating the kitchen from the living room blocks him. I get to the front door and wrench it open!
“AAAAHHH!” What am I doing!?!?
A guy wearing black jeans and a dark blue sweat shirt jerks up from where he’s bent to the keyhole. We stare at each other for a millisecond, then using my hands on each jamb to brace myself, I do the first thing I think of.
I head butt him.
Smack!
White light! White light! White light! THAT REALLY HURT! I thought it wasn’t supposed to hurt the butter! I collapse. As I go down, someone steps on me.
When my vision clears somewhat, I see the criminal guy sprawled unconscious on the cement walkway outside my door. His chin sports a round, red mark about the diameter of a coffee mug.
I guess I missed.
I squint at Jack. He’s curls one fist into the other palm, rubbing his knuckles. Wow. Did he punch the guy out and save my ass? “Are you hurt?” I ask him.
“What the hell did you think you were doing?”
I wrinkle my forehead and look down at the passed-out guy. “Trying to get him,” I say. I look more closely. “His clothes don’t match.”
* * * * *
The cops listen to Jack. Hell, by now they’re probably all canasta partners. Then the cops take the bad guy away. I get back my wallet but Sugar is already history.
Jack spends another ten minutes rubbing a clear goo on my forehead and asking me to count his fingers. Then he starts asking me state capitols.
“Carson Freaking City. Okay? Jack, I’m fine. Really. You can go.”
“Okay,” he says and gets up.
As he heads for the door, I can scarcely believe it’s all over. I pick up his tube of arnica and lope across the living room. “You forgot your goo.”
Jack turns to look at me. He looks at my forehead, then back to my eyes. “Just take it, Lisa. You’ll need it more than I will.”
Then I watch as he walks out the front door and closes it behind him. Just like that, he’s gone and I’m by myself. I go back to my bedroom, collapse onto my snowy-white comforter, and fall asleep.
When I wake up, I know I’ve got to get the hell out of Dodge.
Traffic has been oozing like drain sludge since Greenwich, but still it’s too fast for me. I’ve been almost at Norwalk for forty-five minutes, and every second has been as precious as that last cigarette before they jerk the black hood over your head and take you out back to shoot you. Exit 16 off the I-95 looms ahead of me like the Black Gates of Mordor. It’s still at least ten minutes away, but I can feel its dark pull. Why couldn’t getting through Stamford have taken longer? Is an hour or two in Friday morning Connecticut traffic too much to ask?
Ten million dollars.
My stomach seizes up. Again. Jack said Burger Barn settled ten million dollars on me. I did some research on the net, and sure enough, ten million is the figure everyone reports. Why had I been so determined NEVER to look up anything about my story once I woke up? Okay, the initial tabloid exposé was so embarrassing it almost put me back into another coma. But I should have been strong enough to get over it. So they called me a cow. And seriously, who cares that my mom told the world that I wet the bed after seeing
C.H.U.D.
?
When I was 11.
Had she done it on purpose? Embarrassed me so much that I would hide away and never realize that Burger Barn gave me ten million dollars, as opposed to the six million I actually got?
Ten million.
Who am I kidding? Who? Didn’t I know, all the damn time, that something was wrong? But I was too spineless to do anything about it. To even
say
anything about it.
I’d been so mad the day I found out about the money. Mad because Keith still hadn’t been to see me since I’d woken up, mad about that stupid magazine with the horrible picture of me on the cover. Mad, mad, mad!
* * * * *
“I don’t think you look like a smock.” That was Mom’s best defense when I glared at her across my hospital bed, pointing at the cover of
People
. A picture of comatose me—greasy hair, double chin, drool. “You don’t look that messy,” she insisted.
“Not a smock, Mom. SHHHH-muck. I look like a schmuck!”
“Lisa.” Dad was looking down his nose at me, getting ready to Tell Me How It Is. “People will forget about this. Soon, some crazy lady will murder her family and put them in the mulcher.” He slid a glance toward my mother, an avid gardener. “Your story will be history. But you get keep the six million dollars. Just remember that.”
“Six million dollars?” It was the first I’d heard of it. “What? Like the Bionic Man?”
Even then, I knew it wasn’t right. Steve Austin got hurt in the 1970’s, so that figure of six million needed some serious inflation. I began to splutter, making my pulse jump and machines beep. “You mean it’s all settled? What about me? Don’t I get a say? I’m thirty-four years old. I should have a say. They really messed up. Big time. I could have been killed!”
Dad clearly Didn’t Want to Hear It. “You signed the papers. Six million dollars, plus all your medical bills taken care of, plus free health insurance from Burger Barn for life.” He said it in his End of Discussion voice.
“What?!” My fury detonated across the room. “This isn’t fair! This—hey!”
Mom came to my bedside and actually pressed her hands into my shoulders, pinning me to the bed. Dad covered me with more blankets and tucked them around me so tightly that I couldn’t move my legs. A nurse who looked an awful lot like Frau Blücher came in and threatened to give me a shot. Ever-present Rick shook his head dolefully at me as he stood at attention by the door. I felt like the hysterical passenger on
Airplane!
, about to be socked by anyone who wanted a go.
“I could have been killed,” I repeated mutinously once the nurse was out of the room.
“That would have been more money,” Dad agreed.
“No!” I protested. “I mean, I’m awake now! I can deal with this myself!”
“You were out a long time,” he explained. “We had to get things settled.” He made it sound as if I had been so thoughtless to be in a coma for so long.
“But six million? They were negligent. Don’t they at least go to jail?”
“Lisa. They acted responsibly and rectified matters. They’ve taken good care of us.”
I looked from Dad to Mom and back again. “How much money did they give
you
?”
“And don’t forget,” Mom said, ignoring my question completely, “you’re famous.”
I pointed at her with the force of a South American dictator. “That is NOT a good thing.”
“You know you love this,” she said smugly. “This is better than when you set up that big stage show in the living room so you could sing ‘You Light Up My Life’ in front of all the relatives.” She giggled. “You didn’t even know all the words.”
“That was in third grade! I’m thirty-four now!”
She raised her eyebrows and slanted me a look down her nose. “You’re still you.”
* * * * *
Didn’t I know then that my parents had taken some of my money? Deep down, didn’t I know? But I had been wallowing in tears of hopeless frustration. How long would it be before everyone in my family stopped judging me according to the stupid things I’d done as a kid? Wasn’t there any statute of limitations on growing up?
As I pull to the curb in front of the two-story colonial I grew up in, autumn leaves crunch under the tires of my aquamarine rental. I step out into the stony morning and shiver as the chill manages to line my coat. Sucking in damp air to brace myself, I take a minute. Then another minute. I have to do this. I have to go in there. I want to hear them admit it. I do. So, I lift my chin, straighten my spine, and head down the driveway. Without knocking, I open the back door and walk right in, as if I still belong there.
The kitchen smells like warm caramel. I don’t remember it smelling that way when I was growing up. The post-my-daughter’s-coma kitchen looks so different from the linoleum-and-paneling way it did back in ‘89. Now there are dark wooden beams across the ceiling. Wow. I didn’t know you could get those installed. Shiny copper pots hang above the sink, flowers and herbs dance all over the wallpaper, and dusky lighting makes the room feel cozy. I notice the curtains are new since Christmas. The fridge, too. I’m looking at its stainless steel surface littered with pictures of Billy’s kids when I hear voices and feet coming down the stairs.
“Get Maggie’s—” She stops when she sees me.
“Hi, Mom,” I say, and put my hands in my coat pockets.
“Lisa.” My mother goes to the sink to take a sip from her cup of tea sitting under the spider plant. She looks at me over her shoulder then takes a kind of gulp. “This is a surprise. I didn’t even know you knew Maggie would be here for her birthday.”
Damn! I forgot about Maggie’s birthday.
“Lisa!” Rick rushes into the kitchen.
He comes at me then stops, as if he was going to hug me but thought better of it. He stands about a foot from me and looks me up and down. “You look different,” he says, his sparkling smile as radiant as ever. “Kind of.” He sounds as if he thinks I could have tried a little harder. “Is that a big bruise on your forehead?”
“Rick.” It feels so surreal. He’s still just as lady-killer gorgeous, but he’s not wearing his bogus scrubs. Rick the Bodyguard. What a colossal joke. He didn’t protect me from the Media. Let alone from my own family. Too busy getting it on with Mags. Now it’s like he’s a different person. The kind who no longer has to work for a living because his girlfriend stole a bunch of money from her comatose sister.
“We’re here for Maggie’s birthday.” He looks around. “She’s getting a pedicure.”
They’re still together. It’s hard to process that anyone could put up with Mags for that long. But then again, if what I suspect about the money is true, and it’s not just my parents, but Mags too…
I don’t want Maggot-Face to have any of my Burger Barn money! She doesn’t even like me!!! I decide to count to ten. But I feel stupid by six, so I say, “You’re spending her birthday here, in Norwalk?”
Note: If I had a guy who looked like Jude Law, I wouldn’t be spending my birthday down the hall from my parents.
“They leave for Paris on Sunday,” my mother chimes in.
Of course they do. Regardless, I head back to L.A. tonight, so I have to get my answers today. Mags will complicate things with distracting static, but I’ve been putting up with that my entire life. I’ll cope. The material point is that Mags isn’t here now, so I have to strike.
“Mom,” I say, “what happened to Burger Barn’s ten million dollar settlement?”
Rick freezes like a possum, but Mom hones in on me like a rattlesnake. “Lisa, you don’t deserve all that money.”
“Mom,” I say, “there are lots of things I don’t deserve, present company being no exception. I just want to know what happened to it.”
“And as soon as you find out, you’ll throw a big tantrum and go ranting all over Connecticut until you get what you want.”
Just then Dad comes in and sees me. His eyebrows shoot up. “Lisa?”
“Dad, where’s all the money? The other four million from Burger Barn?”
Dad darts my mother a look. “That’s none of your business,” he tells me.
“None of my business?”
The back door flies open and smacks hard against the fridge. “Aaah!” Mags stands there, theatrically backlit by the morning light. “What are
you
doing here?” She marches toward me, sneering like a Scooby-Doo villain. “You’re trying to ruin my party. You want everyone to talk about you all night instead of me. Well, think again!” She moves to Rick’s side and hooks her arm into his. “You’re not invited!”
“Lisa,” Mom scolds, “that is so childish.”
I roll my eyes. “Thanks, Mom. But I don’t care about her party. I’m here to find out what happened to all the money from Burger Barn.”
Maggot-Face tosses her hair. “Oh, and I guess you think
you
should have it?”
“Maggie,” my mother interjects, “we aren’t talking to her about this without a lawyer.”
I stiffen. “A lawyer?”
Mags snorts. “It’s no big deal, Mom. She can’t do anything to us. She signed all the papers.”
My inner ears pulse and the floor seems to tilt. I grab onto the edge of the granite counter. “I just came out of a thirteen-week coma and all you cared about was the money.” I try to catch my breath. “You made sure I was miserable and humiliated and then you pounced.”
My father throws up his hands. “You said you trusted us and you signed. What the hell, Lisa! Six million dollars isn’t good enough? You don’t do anything with your life, anyway.”
I blink at him, trying to get my eyes to stop rattling in their sockets.
“At least
I’m
starting a fashion business,” Mags brags. “You’re almost forty and you don’t even have kids like Billy.”
So Billy got a cut, too.
Billy, the guy who didn’t even show up to my graduation. High school or college. “Billy didn’t have Megan until he was thirty-five,” I point out. “And I’m only thirty-four.”
“But he was going out with Amy for years already by the time they got married,” she hoots triumphantly. “You’re not even close to getting married. Your fiancé dumped you the second you woke up. Now you’ll never have time to meet some loser, convince him to marry you, and have kids in the next few months.”
“I didn’t realize having kids was a race.” I turn to include my parents in my line of sight. “
Or
criteria for not getting bamboozled by your family.”
“Take us to court for the rest of the money if you want.” My father shrugs. “But you’ll just end up looking like—”
“I DON’T CARE ABOUT THE MONEY!” This gets me a split second of shocked silence, long enough for me to take the floor. “Don’t you get it? I almost
died
, and when I didn’t, you tricked me!”
“We had to make sure everything was fair.” My father speaks in Mandate Tone.
“Well, you screwed up,” I say.
“Lisa,” he warns.
“Being this mean isn’t fair.” I storm my way across the kitchen, whip open the screen door, then turn back to them. “And you’re wrong about something else, too. I
am
going to do something with my life.”