The Kissing Game (16 page)

After I wash my hands, I grab the magazines off
the floor and walk out to the living room. Ted is standing there, his back
facing me. He’s watching the sliding glass window for the police officers.

“I think these are yours,” I say.

Ted turns around. Upon seeing the magazines in
my hands, his shadowy face seems to harden to stone. “Oh,” he says, taking them
from me and curling them into a fat tube.

“Like redheads, huh?”

“It’s just a little porn, Caroline. No big
deal.” He walks over to the kitchen and tosses them into the trash.

“They’re redheads.”

“So I have a thing for red-haired women. So
what? You have a thing for cruel lawyer bosses.”

“He’s not cruel.”

“No? And what makes you think he would do
anything other than use you? I know guys like him. Lawyers like him. They just
enjoy the power, the prestige, being hot shit. They’re not interested in anything
other than being worshipped and having a fan club. He would just use you, you
know. And besides, after what you’ve done to him, you think he’d ever really
want to be with you? Sure, you’re a hot piece, he’d enjoy it, but then you’d be
refuse to throw in the trash. He’s a narcissist, Caroline. He lives only for
himself. That’s the way narcissists think. And if he did want to keep you
around, you’ll just be stuck with a self-centered fat, old, bald asshole and
wonder why you ever fell for him in the first place.”

“You met him for ten seconds. How would you
know?” I raise my voice before realizing I should keep quiet in case the
policemen return to Ted’s sliding glass window. But even as I do, I know Ted
has a point. Ted’s making sense. The serial kisser with a brain.

“I met him long enough to know, and besides, I
hear you talking about him, like I said. I know the shit he pulls with you at
work. Making you wear that uniform every day, even when it’s ninety degrees
outside, making you cry about timesheets. What kind of an asshole makes someone
cry about timesheets?” Ted’s hands are exasperated and he raises his voice, too,
like a preacher on a soapbox. “Why is it that sweet women always fall for assholes?
It’s so textbook that it’s almost sickening. Could you be more of a cliché?”

“You heard me talking about timesheets?” I ask.
The walls must really be thin.

“Yes.”

I sit on the couch and reach for my bag,
thinking I should leave. But where do I go? What can I do now? And Ted is right
about Robert. He wouldn’t want me anyway. He just wants to get even, to use me.
He hates me now that he knows what I’ve done. I rub my face with my hands and
wish I could just take a hot bath and forget about everything, maybe just press
rewind on my life. Start over. Ted sits down next to me.

“I’m sorry for being so blunt. It’s just that
I’m a guy. I know how guys think. You don’t.”

“So you’re all villains basically?”

“Basically,” he says, smiling and rubbing my
back.

The hand on my back feels nice, and I wish it
were Robert’s hand, and wishing it were Robert’s makes me want to cry, but I
refuse to cry about Robert in front of Ted. I wait for the lump to subside
before I speak again.

“I need to get back up to my apartment to get
some things,” I say, referring to the clothes, my toothbrush, and the cash I
keep hidden in a zip lock baggie inside a cereal box. Maybe it’s time for a
little vacation. Maybe Ted is right. Maybe we could slip away to a bed and
breakfast in Fort Bragg. Who knows? Perhaps the inn could hire me as a maid or
a cook, and I could live in a tiny room in the basement, assume a new identity,
disappear. This idea begins to formulate into solid stone in my mind. Yes,
maybe I’ll run. Why not?

“So you think this Bed and Breakfast is nice,
huh?” I ask. Ted gingerly rubs my back but keeps his distance, as if I’m a bird
who might fly away at sudden moves.

“Yeah, it’s beautiful there, right by the sea.”

“We could go as friends, no expectations. I’ll
pay my own way,” I say.

“Absolutely.”

“Don’t you have law school classes to attend?”
I ask.

“We’re studying contracts now. It’s easy. I’m a
genius in case you didn’t know. A few missed classes won’t hurt me.”  He raises
his eyebrow as if he’s the master of sensibility.

With my bag in hand, I stand and slog over to
the sliding glass window and glance toward the grass and the street. Ted
follows me to the window. The fog has turned into a misty drizzle.

“Looks like the policeman have gone,” he says.

“Yeah, I think I’ll run up to my place for a
minute. I’ll be right back. If we’re going to leave soon, I’ll need to grab my
stuff now.”

“Hurry, and keep the lights out,” he tells me.
“I promise you’ll enjoy it, and I’ll be the perfect gentleman, the best looking
and most benign vacation partner you ever had.” He puts his hands up as if he’s
being arrested.

“Fine,” I say, sliding open the glass and
slipping out into the drizzle. Hunched over, I take the steps to my apartment
two at a time. Once inside, I rush to my bathroom, where I flick on the
nightlight so I can see what I’m looking for. I grab my toothbrush and
toothpaste and shove it inside my bag. Then I hustle out of the bathroom toward
my bedroom, when some movement in my living room makes the tiny hairs on my
arms tickle. Feeling as though someone is watching me, I let me eyes adjust to
the darkness of my living room before panning across the space.

I hear him breathing quietly before I see him. A
dark figure sits on my couch. A man. In his hand is the shiny metallic of a
handgun.

“Hello, Caroline,” the Chairman says.

“A buen entendedor, pocas palabras bastan.”

To someone with good understanding, only a few
words are necessary.

Like a
freight train barreling at high speed down a track over which I have no
control, I stand in the tiny hallway between my bathroom and the living room,
realizing that my decisions put me on this track. They have brought me here to
this confrontation.

The nightlight from my bathroom barely affords
enough illumination to see the Chairman on my couch, but I can make out his
face clearly now. It bears the expression of mayhem, suicide, murder, arson. Or
any combination of those. He’s an outline leaning back into my couch,
uncomfortably relaxed. Not wearing his typical suit, he seems like a stranger in
his button-up shirt that’s partly unbuttoned at the top, a black windbreaker,
and a pair of old-man khakis—the pleated kind that some men wear because
they’re clueless about fashion. His thin comb-over has lost its shape and lilts
down the wrong side of his head.

Everything about his man on my couch is wrong,
so wrong that I feel as if thousands of arteries are hammering upstream in my
body, and, at any moment, they might reach my brain and explode. Rather than
speaking, I simply stand there, waiting for him. The person holding the gun
seems the rightful controller of the conversation. Like all affluent and
powerful men, he seems woefully out of place on my purple-flowered couch.

“In all my years,” he starts in a voice that
reminds me of nails, “I’ve never known someone with so much gall. An assistant
who thinks she can just waltz into my house as if she owns the place, rummage
through my mail, take what she likes, and gallivant around my private domain.
Whatever made you think you could do such a thing?”

Like a scolded child, I remain standing there
with my slightly head down, my eyes focused only on the shiny gun that rests on
his thigh as though a lifeless extension of his hand. Gun. Run. I just realized
that those words rhyme.

“This is exactly why I never got married,” he
continues. “I never wanted some bitch thinking she could rummage around in my
private affairs and tell me what to do and judge me and take my things. You are
the perfect example of the kind of woman I never wanted to have anything to do
with.” He sets his teeth in a hostile grin and points the gun loosely at me as
though it were a finger.

The air in the room feels harsh and bitter, and
no matter how I mentally wrangle with the situation, I can’t believe this is
happening. For a moment, he doesn’t speak. He seems to simply contemplate while
the rafters in my apartment age and creak and the rain starts to softly beat
the roof.

“See,” he says, still point the gun, “I thought
about our little the situation in detail before coming over here tonight. I’m
diligent. I always have been, even from the very beginning of this whole
endeavor. See, a few weeks ago I knew someone had taken my files on the
Children’s Refuge Project, but I couldn’t figure out why someone would want
them. Clearly I’d never allow damning information to be filed away in the firm
documents about me. I’m not that stupid. There’s nothing in the files to
connect me to this unsightly business of mine, so I couldn’t figure out why
anyone would have an interest in them. It’s just a charity project after all.
Who would want to take the files? And then I saw the tape of you in my house,
and I knew it had to be you. Clear as day. I knew you’d figured out about my
interests and decided to hunt for information you could use against me. You’re
like that, aren’t you? You like to use information against people. I see that
now. I just need to know … who told you something to get you all nosey and into
my business?  Hmm?”

He looks at me as if silence will not be an
acceptable answer this time, so I use the poverty of working brain cells to
come up with an answer. Honesty seems the only solution.

“I promise you, I wasn’t interested in your
project. I just wanted to get the tape of Robert and me back. That’s all. I
swear to you.”

Briefly, he just gazes at me as though he makes
a regular pastime of tossing bodies into a river and watching them float
downstream. “And then you saw the images in my mailbox and started to snoop?
That’s why you took my files? I hardly think you’re smart enough to put it
together so easily. Someone must have told you something. You must have
discovered something else.”

I wonder who he thinks could have told me
anything about his proclivity for children. His accusation suggests that more
people know about this nasty business than I realize. Who though? Who else
could be involved? The concept of some larger and more ominous group of people makes
me feel drunk with fear, but I stand there attempting to remain unaffected.

“I swear to you, Collin,” I say, making the
mistake of calling him by his first name, which no one does. “I didn’t hear
anything. Whatever you do in your own personal life is your business. I don’t
care. I just wanted the tape back so you wouldn’t fire Robert. You’re right.
I’m not that smart. I mean, the file clerks probably just lost your files, like
they always lose files. You should check with them.”

His expression looks wholly unmoved.

“Then please, if you don’t mind, be a Good
Samaritan and elaborate for me why your computer’s internet history shows you
researching my Children’s Refuge Project?” he asks, his voice approaching
murderous. “In particular, a unique email address.”

Holy crap. I forgot about that. Cory, Henry,
and I researched the project on my computer as soon as we found the files in
Robert’s office. I hear myself quietly whimper. Glancing toward my front door,
I recall that I didn’t lock it when I came in, but the rectangular exit seems
miles away. Logic tells me that maybe four lunges could get me there, but can I
get out before he points and shoots?

This is the moment when it starts to settle on
me that I’m going to die. The end result seems fair, though, doesn’t it? A life
for a life. I ruined Robert’s life, and now, in old-western style, I’m going
down. I should call myself lucky that I’m not being tarred and feathered or dragged
down a rock-strewn road by a wild horse. It’s just that I’m pretty sure a
gunshot is going to hurt. Just how much I don’t know. Will it be a burning
sensation or more like a piercing? To be honest, death doesn’t scare me, but
the pain of death does. If I’m lucky, maybe he’s an expert marksman and I won’t
feel a thing.

Of course, I know there is no way to respond to
him truthfully without revealing that I
do
know he’s up to no good. I
know he’s a pedophile. I know what he deserves, and I
did
want to find
out his business so I could get Robert’s job back and then report the Chairman
to the authorities. It all seems so asinine now. I should’ve just called the
police at my first suspicion. The back of my neck begins to steam with
perspiration.

“You’ve really put me in a bind, Caroline. A
measly little assistant has put me in a bind. I’ve got to know. Does Henry know
about this?”

I shake my head.

“How about anyone else?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I
stole the key and code from Henry’s drawer to get inside your house. I got the
tape from your mailbox and then the security people showed up, so I jumped off
your balcony. I left the tape on the grass because it dropped when I jumped and
the security guard got to it before I did...”

“Yes, but that still doesn’t explain why you’re
researching on your computer and why my files are missing. Let’s start with my
files. Where are they?”

“I told you. I don’t have them. I think the
file clerks must’ve gotten them mixed up with Robert’s files. Look in the file
room. I’m sure you’ll find them somewhere. Misfiled, misplaced.” Of course, I
know exactly where his files are. Cory has them.

The Chairman chuckles like a triumphant general
after he’s seized the enemy. “You think that our little problem is as tiny as
that? As tiny as finding files? No. It can’t be fixed, and I’ve considered what
to do with you. For one, I thought of buying you off and sending you away, but
frankly I don’t like the thought of you out there in the world with damning information
about me. And there’s just too much at stake here. It’s not just my life you’d
ruin. There’re so many others.”

The atmosphere of hostility prevails like hot
coals and I wonder why he hasn’t shot me yet, and then he answers my question.

“I’ve already erased your hard drive at the
office. All I need is any other damning information you have about me. I need
to know who knows about this. You have to give me all the names Caroline,
because if you don’t, there’s always your brother in college. And don’t forget there’s
your mother to contend with. Once you’re gone, you’ll want to make sure they’re
well taken care of, won’t you? I’ll even throw in a little bonus to your
brother, to help him finish college, since you’re the caring older sister and
all.”

What’s he asking of me? That I implicate my
friends? Cory? Henry? I won’t. I refuse. And what will he do to them? It’s not
like we have damning proof anyway, not yet. Just an inclination, an idea of
what the Chairman’s sexual predilections might be.

“See, it’s easy,” he continues “I just have to
make you disappear. That way the law will think you decided to run after you
knew I had the tape of you breaking into my house. Your family would think so,
too, or at least I could convince them. The bigger problem is that I need to do
this quickly. I had to call the police, you see, to make sure that you’d have a
reason to run, and although policemen have left, they could be back.” He pulls
a round cylinder out from his pocket and begins to screw it onto the end of his
gun. Several seconds pass while I watch before I realize he’s attaching a
silencer to his gun. “Who else knows, Caroline?” he asks again.

And then I hear the very loud thumping of
footsteps on the staircase outside my front door, heavy and determined. But
they sound singular, like one person, not two. I wonder if Ted has come looking
for me. The Chairman’s lips tighten into a mean pucker, and my feet congeal to
the floor. He slips the gun inside his jacket.

“Don’t you dare open that door,” he whispers to
me. “Don’t say a word.”

Three loud thumps. “Caroline?” I hear Robert’s
voice—Robert, of all people. What would he be doing here? The rain pounds the
roof as Robert pounds again.  “Caroline, I know you’re home. I need to talk to
you. Open the door.” His voice suggests that he’s driven a long way, and during
that ride, he has contemplated all the ways he wants to yell at me. I predict a
speech of some sort. Pound-pound-pound, Robert continues to give the door a
small beating. I stand there unmoving, as if unable to walk, but my nervousness
makes the floor beneath my foot creak, and the cool night air in my apartment is
instantly a sauna.

“I hear you in there. Jesus Christ, why are you
so stubborn? Just open the goddamned door or I swear to you, I’ll wait out here
until you do.” Typical Robert. Wants his way. Demands his way. Worst possible
time to be demanding.

I look at the Chairman with innocent wide eyes.
He whispers, “Tell him to go away.”

My heart wrenches a little at the thought of
sending Robert away, but I shout nonetheless. “Go away. I don’t want to talk to
you.”

I know that if Robert steps inside my apartment
door, he will become entangled in this web of tumult, and Collin will likely kill
him too. No need for other innocent people to suffer. I’ve made Robert suffer
enough. With dread becoming a lead weight in my gut, I wait for Robert to
leave. Meanwhile I watch a bead of sweat form on the Chairman’s forehead, roll
down over his nose, and drop onto his shirt. It reminds me of a bomb ticking, a
volcano about to erupt, a terrible earthquake that threatens to shake the earth
apart.

No noise from outside indicates that Robert
still stands there, unmoving. I hear no sound of footsteps descending the
stairs. Just the rain pattering. The guy can be unbearably controlling, even at
his own peril.  

“Do you hear me? Go away. I don’t want to hear
anything you have to say,” I state loudly, my hands in tightening into nervous
fists.

And then I hear Robert lean against the door,
mumble some cusswords breathily. I can picture him outside, the rain pelting
his face, his clothes. He must be soaking wet by now. The man is too prideful,
so he rarely bothers with necessities like umbrellas or raincoats. I hear him
exhale loudly, exactly the way he does when junior lawyers don’t do their jobs
correctly or when they try to befriend him.

“Goddamn it, Caroline. I’m sorry,” he says as
if the words are unnatural, painful even, to utter. “I don’t know what’s wrong
with me. I can be such an asshole.” He pounds on the door again. “I drove all
the way over here to talk to you, not to stand outside your door and yell.”

“I get it. You’re sorry. Now go,” I say
sternly, praying the Chairman won’t decide to rise from his spot on my
purple-flowered couch.

“That’s not all I came to say,” Robert adds. I
can tell his face must be close to the door because I can hear him clearly only
he isn’t yelling. He’s quiet now. “I came to say something I should’ve said a
long time ago…”