have to be considerate of someone else’s schedule or expectations.
That was my trade-off.
But there were times-when twelve-year-old Molly Seabright came to me and began to rely on me, for instance; and then with Lisbeth, who was in many ways younger than Molly ever was- that the old longing crept up on me and I wondered how differently I would have turned out if only. I never allowed it to last very long. It hurt too much and served no purpose.
I put a bowl of soup on a tray and took it to the guest room, tapping on the door before I let myself in.
Her curly hair was a wet tangle but clean at least. She had put on the clothes I left out for her and had assumed her favorite position of the day-sitting backed up against the head of the bed with her knees drawn up to her chin. Her fingers worried at the little medallion she wore.
“Eat a little bit of this if you can,” I said, setting the tray on the bedside table. “It’ll soothe your throat. I was choked myself just the other day, so I know.”
She looked at me, not sure what to make of what I’d said.
I shrugged and took a seat on the bed. “The world is going to hell on a sled. What can I say?”
Lisbeth closed her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t know how any of this happened,” she whispered. “I don’t understand.”
“I guess people don’t get murdered and beat up and treated like shit where you come from.”
She wasn’t listening to me. She put her hands on her head, as if to hold it together.
“It’s all my fault,” she murmured.
“You must think highly of yourself,” I said.
Confused and offended, she opened her eyes and looked at me for an explanation.
“To think you have the power to control the universe and everyone in it,” I said. “You think if only you could have convinced Irina not to go to that party… You and I both know there was no stopping Irina from doing anything.”
“I begged her not to go.”
“Then you did all you could.”
She looked away and stared out the window. “I wish… I wish…”
“If you’re going to say you wish you’d died instead, save your breath. It wasn’t your call, and that’s just how it works sometimes. Take your breaks when you get them, Lisbeth. Life will turn on you soon enough.
“I made a bad choice once and a man died who shouldn’t have,” I said. “I stood right there and watched him get shot in the face. He had a family, and now they don’t have him, because of me.”
“Don’t you feel guilty?” she asked.
“Yes, terribly. But it hasn’t brought him back, so what good is it? I’ve wasted a lot of time punishing myself. No one’s given me a gold star for it. The world isn’t a better place.
“Nobody likes a martyr, Lisbeth,” I told her. “Now I try to get up in the morning and be a decent human being, do something good with myself, help somebody. I figure that’s the best I can do to make up for my mistake.
“Save yourself the years of self-loathing and substance abuse, and just get on with it.”
Lisbeth stared at me, not knowing what to say.
“What a hell of a mother I would have made,” I said sarcastically. “Donna Reed would be rolling in her grave.”
“Who’s Donna Reed?”
I gave her a look. “You will go to hell for that.”
She didn’t ask me why. Trying to avoid another sermon from the crazy middle-aged lady.
“What I’m saying, Lisbeth, is work off your guilt. Don’t wallow in it.
“How?”
“Help me find out what happened to Irina.”
“But I didn’t go to the after-party,” she said, looking away, staring at the wall as if the memory of that night was playing there on a movie screen visible only to her.
“Where was the party?” I asked firmly. “And don’t tell me you don’t know.”
A big fat tear rolled down her cheek.
“At Bennett’s,” she whispered.
I wasn’t surprised, but still, that hard, electric jolt hit me in the stomach. A conditioned response to the sound of his name. Or the weight of boxed-up bad emotional memories banging into me. And even though it was essentially what I wanted to hear, I felt sick inside.
“Just how involved with Bennett was she?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Was she in love with him?” I asked bluntly.
Another big fat tear.
“No,” she said, but there was a note of uncertainty in her voice. “She didn’t love him.”
“They were lovers,” I stated without any care for Lisbeth’s feelings. Cold hard fact.
She nodded. Two more tears.
“Did she have an agenda?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she repeated.
“I’ve heard from more than one person that Irina was angling for a wealthy husband.”
She inhaled a trembling breath. Through all of this she wouldn’t look at me.
“Lisbeth, I know Irina was seen recently by a doctor at a women’s clinic. Could she have been pregnant?”
More tears.
“Was she?”
The nod was almost imperceptible.
“She didn’t love him,” she said again.
“Are you trying to convince me, Lisbeth?” I asked gently. The change-up pitch meant to throw her off balance: “Or are you trying to convince yourself?”
She didn’t answer. I sighed and waited, letting the emotional pressure build inside her. I played back the memories of the photographs I had looked at over the past couple of days. Lisbeth in the pained smile and the purple bikini, standing next to Jim Brody in his swim trunks. Lisbeth and Irina sitting shoulder to shoulder, cheek to cheek on a poolside chaise, each with an umbrella drink in hand, toasting the photographer, all smiles.
“You miss her a lot,” I said softly.
Her shoulders were shaking as she tried to contain the emotions.
I thought about the vodka in her freezer. Out of place. The snapshots on her refrigerator. Too many of Irina.
“She was your best friend.”
She squeezed her eyes shut tight.
“Lisbeth?” I asked, then paused. “Was Irina more than just your friend?”
“I don’t know w-what you m-mean.”
“Were you in love with her?”
Now she looked at me, shocked, offended… guilty. “I’m not a lesbian! Irina wasn’t a lesbian!”
I had put together enough of a profile to know that Irina was whatever she wanted to be at any given time. There was no doubt she was into guys, but it wouldn’t have surprised me to hear she swung the other way when it suited her. It certainly wasn’t hard to imagine that at those Bacchanalian orgies of the Alibi Club, girl-on-girl action would have been a popular spectator sport-and Irina had loved the limelight.
“You’ve had a rough go of it, haven’t you?” I said softly. “You came down here thinking you were going to get a job, make some good money, meet people, have fun. Maybe you thought you’d meet the love of your life, I don’t know. But you got something very different from what you bargained for.
“You got sucked in with Brody’s crowd, you got overwhelmed. You’re a good kid, Lisbeth. You didn’t know anything about that world. Fast, shallow, amoral. In a way, you had the clearest vision of what it was, and how wrong it was. You come from a normal place populated with normal people. There’s nothing normal about how these people live. Everything is a game, and they’re entitled to have whatever they want until they don’t want it anymore. And then they just throw it away, like it never meant anything to them.”
From the outside looking in, to people who have to worry about paying their mortgage and their electric bill,
