“And he for you!” she points a finger at me and then slaps the steering wheel. “He keeps coming back! Damn it Olivia, he keeps finding you and you have the right to know why. He’s messed up your life at least four times now. I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE DON’T USE THEIR TURN SIGNALS!” She bares her middle finger at a Mercedes as we speed past. “Besides, let’s not forget that Leah did a little of her own breaking and entering back in the day, when she went all
Fatal Attraction
on your apartment.”
That was oh-so-true.
“I know their house alarm code,” I say weakly.
“How?” her eyes are wide with admiration.
“Something set it off once while Caleb, Leah, and I were in a briefing and the alarm company called his cell to verify the code before they would deactivate it.”
“Now all we need is a key,” she smiles at me and turns off the Parkland exit.
“They keep a spare in a birdfeeder in the backyard.”
“How do you know
that?
”
“I heard him telling the maid on the phone when she locked herself out.”
She swears at me, uses the “f” word and calls me creepy.
“Yes, and you’re a trashy bitch.”
We are standing in the foyer of Leah and Caleb’s mammoth house. I, guiltily, while biting my nails, and Cammie without concern is strolling around touching their things. I watch her and wonder who would win if she and Leah were to get into a fight.
“Look at this?” she says, lifting a filigree egg from an ornate gold table. “This is worth at least a hundred Cartier purses.”
“Put it down,” I hiss at her, spitting a piece of acrylic from the corner of my mouth. Their house was a museum and Leah was its main attraction. Everywhere I looked there were paintings and photographs of the red-headed beast, some of them gracious enough to include Caleb. I shimmied out from under her gaze and went to stand under an alcove.
“We’ve already broken in, we might as well make the best of it,” she chirps at me.
I follow her to the kitchen, where we look inside their fridge. It is stocked with everything from Bulga caviar, to Jell-O chocolate pudding. Cammie extracts a grape from a bunch and pops it into her mouth.
“Seedless,” she mumbles. Juice squirts from her lips and onto the refrigerator door. I wipe the smudge off with a paper towel and toss it into the trash.
We make our way up a winding flight of stairs, our heels clicking against the butter colored marble.
Cammie pauses at what appears to be the master bedroom door.
“Uh, uh I’m not going in there,” I say, backing up a few steps. I would rather sever a hand than see
their
bedroom.
“Well, I’m looking,” and with that she pushes the door open and disappears inside. I stroll in the opposite direction. I walk down a long hallway that is lined with 8x10 black and white photographs. Caleb and Leah cutting their wedding cake, Caleb and Leah standing on a beach, Leah smoking a cigarette in front of the Eiffel tower—I turn away disgusted. I don’t want to be here anymore, this is their place; where they laugh and eat and have sex. I can’t believe how things have changed. I feel slightly left behind; like I am waking from a coma and finding out the world moved on without me. Why do I still feel the same when everyone else is different?
I head back downstairs to wait for Cammie. And then I see it—a door, an oval door. Caleb always told me that one day when he built a house he wanted to have the door to his office resemble one of those heavy medieval things you see in movies. I edge toward it and reach out to lift the circular handle that is almost as big as my head. It swings open and the sigh of new house and cologne hits me in the face.
It doesn’t even smell like him. In the last four years he has changed his cologne, I get that coma feeling again.
There are walnut bookshelves lining every wall, filled with novels and textbooks and the occasional knick-knack. I veer toward the desk and seat myself in his enormous swivel chair. I take it for a spin and wheel myself around. This is his favorite room in the house. I can tell. Everything he loves and likes and hates is in here. Autographed baseballs in a wall rack. I can almost see him extracting one from its display and tossing it into the air a few times before he lovingly puts it back. A very diverse music selection sits in a messy pile next to his computer monitor. I notice in mild delight that the CD from the music store is among them and then there’s the model Trojan horse that his father gave him when he missed his 21
st
birthday party. It was made out of solid bronze and needless to say, it was very heavy. Caleb hated the thing, but he always kept it on display because he said it reminded him to be a man of his word. I pick it up and turn it over until the horse’s belly is facing up. There is a small trapdoor there that nobody knows about. Caleb once told me that he stored memories inside of it—memories that he didn’t want anyone else seeing. I bite my lip before pulling it open. What was one more crime right? My spreadsheet was already extended past ‘far gone’.
My fingers grab onto something thin and papery. I tug it out gently and unroll a vellum script of some sort. It is a drawing done with the snubbed tip of a charcoal pencil. At the bottom of the page the artist signed his name: C. Price Carrol in large, flowing letters. The artwork is of a woman’s face. She is smirking and there is a slight smudge of a dimple on her cheek. I stare at the face I recognize, but can’t quite place—not because it is bad artwork, but because it has been a long, long time since I have last seen it.
“Jessica Alexander,” I say outloud, studying her wide eyes, “another person who trusted me and I screwed over.” I re-roll the paper and set it to the side. I wonder how often Caleb still thinks of her. Does he picture what his life would have been like with her? Does he picture what it would have been like with me? Does he even think of me? I reach in again and this time I pull out something metal and round. Caleb’s thumb ring: the one with the star and the diamond that I gave him for a birthday. I sigh as I put it to my lips. So, he hides it away? At least he kept it, right? Maybe some nights when he is alone and listening to that CD, he pulls it out and thinks about me. A girl can only hope. I pull out a miniature hourglass after that, in which the tiny grains of sand are silver, and then a small booklet, whose colored pages of: black, red, white, gold and green have no words. I don’t know what memories these trinkets come from, after me, I guess. I place the ornament upright on his desk and small tinkling catches my ear.
Where had I heard that sound before? My gaze sweeps the desk, and then the floor around it, looking for the culprit. Where…where? There! My hands scoop it up and a bleat escapes my throat. I don’t know if I am surprised or if I knew that he would find it all along, but my mouth feels dry as I turn the object over in my palm. The penny,
our
penny. Had he gone to my apartment after I left, to find me? Had he seen it lying there on my abused coffee table? My eyes tear up as I imagine how confused he must have felt. How had he known to take the one thing that symbolized the start of our romance? Leah must have told him, I realize bitterly. Despite her promise to me, she must have dished up the truth with a sick satisfaction. To keep him away from me, because she must have known he would try to find me. I am sulking, slouched, and nauseated when I hear my name being called. It echoes across the big house like it is being sung by a backup singer.
“Olivia!” Cammie comes careening into his office, snapping me out of my daze. She is waving something in her hands, her blonde hair bouncing every which way in her excitement.
“Olivia,” she says again, her eyes wide. “There is something you need to see.”
She holds up a manila envelope, which she then tosses towards me on the desk.
“Where did you find this?” I don’t want to touch it.
“Just shut your mouth and open it,” she folds her arms across her chest and I can’t help but notice how worried she looks. I reach out to grab it and gently push open the top allowing its contents to spill onto Caleb’s desk. Letter’s, pictures……I study them for a minute, before I feel shock waves pass through my body.
“Oh my gosh! Cammie?” I look at her shaking my head. I am so utterly confused.
“I told you so,” she says. “Read them.”
“Lying on the desk are pictures of me…and Turner. There is the engagement shot, the one that we had professionally taken after he proposed and a shot of us at the zoo together during our first year of dating.
“I don’t understand—” I say blankly and Cammie, dear, detective Cammie, points to the pile of letters.
“Am I going to be upset?” I ask biting my lower lip.
“Very.”
I pull at the first letter. It is written by hand on plain white sheet of paper.
Hello Jo,
I know you hate it when I call you that, but I can’t resist.
It’s a strange request that you’ve propositioned me with,
and I must admit my curiosity is peaked. I don’t know what
trouble you’ve gotten yourself into now, but if its anything
like high school…..I’m in!
Joking aside, I do owe you one. Superbowl tickets are worth
my firstborn, so if you want me to take a pretty girl out on a
date, I’m not going to complain.
Anyway, gorgeous I’ll keep you updated on the
status. She better be smokin!
Turner
My wail of anger starts out as a groan and gradually escalates until I sound like a fire truck’s siren. Cammie looks worried, so I calm myself and stop.
“Next one.” I hold my hand out to her, and she places another sheet of paper between my fingers.
Jo-Jo,
Can’t believe this is happening! I mean what the Hell?
I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear that we are
getting married. I finally took your advice and asked her.
Wow! I guess I should say thanks. Thanks!
I’ll be in Florida visiting her next month, maybe we can all
do lunch; your man and O and I. Won’t kill you to talk to her!
I know there’s some kind of sordid past between the two
of you, but whatever it is, she’ll get over it. You are the
force that brought us together after all. Let’s talk
soon.
The Engaged,
Turner
“Fuck,” I say.
“That’s an understatement,” Cammie walks around to where I’m sitting and flips open Caleb’s copy machine.
“She set me up! She somehow knew I went to Texas and she had one of her friends make moves on me—to keep me away from Caleb!” my voice is getting louder now and Cammie pats me on the shoulder sympathetically.
“Turner is Leah’s friend. She used him and he didn’t even know.”
“Well, she gave him Superbowl tickets. Those aren’t easy to come by you know,” Cammie pushes the start button and a whirring noise fills the room.
“I am engaged to Leah’s stogy.”
I feel like balling my eyes out and breaking her filigree egg at the same time. How could I have been so stupid? No, I wasn’t stupid. There is no way I could have known that Turner and Leah were connected. But, I should have known that she wouldn’t trust me to stay out of Caleb’s life and that she would take extra precautions. I was planning a wedding with
her
precaution!
“Let’s burn her house down,” I say standing up.
“Now, now, Lucy, this is Caleb’s house, too. No need to punish him for what Leah’s done.” Despite the fact she’s supposed to be Ethel, she uses a Ricky Ricardo accent.
“I just saved her from a twenty- year jail sentence,” I moan. “I defended that disgusting, evil, treacherous little bitch.”
“Yes. Too bad you’re such a kick ass lawyer huh? Anyway, there’s more bad news…”
“More? How could there be more?”
She pulls a stick out of her back pocket and places it in my palm.
“What is it?” I choke, blinking back my tears. Cammie rolls her eyes.
“A fertility monitor.”
“Huh?”
“It’s a test stick used to monitor hormone levels present in your urine…so you can get preggers…”
I flip my hand over and drop it.
“They’re trying to have a baby?” I gasp. Why hadn’t he told me that?
“
She
is trying to have a baby. I found that little sucker hiding out in a ‘secret’ shoebox with those letters,” she nods to Turner’s correspondence, “and a fertility chart. If they were both trying to have a baby, don’t you think her baby gadgets would be in the bathroom cabinet?”
I stare at her blankly.
“O-livia! She is trying to get pregnant because you are back on the scene She’s scared of losing him. Caleb doesn’t know! You have to stop them before he is trapped forever.”
“Why? I can’t—” I say, miserably slipping into the chair.
“A fertility chart,” I repeat and I have no idea what that is.
“Yes, it tells her the days she will be most likely to be able to conceive. What century are you from?”
“Did the fertility chart say this weekend?” I feel the breath sucked out of me now, like someone just punched me in the stomach.
Cammie nods.