You and I, Me and You (13 page)

George sighed and plopped into his chair. In keeping with his Saturday dress-down-for-work tradition, he was wearing cargo pants (like Jesus!) and his navy blue
Manatee: The Ocean's Hamburger
T-shirt.

“Cadence, he's obviously into you. Shiro, too. I've got no idea about the other freak in your freak show.”

“I don't think so,” I said stiffly.

(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

“And it's irrelevant anyway.”

“Oh, sure, why would Edgy New Guy in Town be into you guys? You really don't have a clue, do you? Christ, look who I'm asking. I can't believe I have to have this conversation with you.” He tilted back his chair and stared at the ceiling for a long moment while I was transfixed and sort of terrified. Then he sat up straight, set his coffee on the desk with a definitive
plonk
, and proceeded to further scare the bejeezus out of me. “You're … not … hideous.”

“Okay.”

“In fact, you're kind of easy on the eyes. And hey! Some guys like long-legged pale hotties with long blond hair. And some guys even go for the big-eyed, eyelash-fluttering, can't-we-all-get-along-and-have-you-seen-how-this-sweater-accentuates-my-perky-tits type.”

I started rubbing my temples. “Please stop now.”

“So there's that, and how you're crazy—that's interesting, too. Guys who don't know better interpret that as ‘high-spirited' or ‘passionate' or some ignorant shit like that. And you're a cop and you get to carry a gun and do cool stuff like arrest Jesus. Also sexy. And Shiro's a card-carrying badass and she might think she's a teeny Asian-American chick, but she's walking around with your hair and face and boobs, so that's catnip to guys, too.”

“One of us will have to kill each other soon.” I couldn't look at him. I could count on one hand how many times I actively wished Shiro would pop out like a genie and save the day: this was absolutely one of those times. There had been times I'd been held at gunpoint and not wanted her to come out so much. “So you can stop now, okay?”

“All this to say
of course
Gallo wants to get into your Little Mermaid panties. And if you don't get that, you're dumber than I ever thought, which gives me such a headache to even contemplate. The massive amount of your dumbness. It hurts me,” he whined.

“But I said it's irrelevant. And it is—I'm with Patrick. Assuming all the stuff you just said doesn't lead him to dump me. Or that spillover from BOFFO doesn't get him hurt or killed. I can't believe he knows all that and he
still
made me waffles today.”

George was giving me a look I'd never seen before: sort of pitying amazement. “Is that why you're shacking up with him? You're all mystified that he wants to be in your life, ergo ‘Hey, I think we'll move in together!'?”

“Well.” Was this so extraordinary? Couldn't be. “Yeah.”

“My head, my head—you're killing my head.”

“Sooo sorry.”

“Thanks, but you're still killing me. Look, Aunt Jane knows an almost-good thing when he gropes it. Oh my God. It just occurred to me. That poor idiot has to put up with all your crazy and he's not even getting laid, is he?”

Shiro, will you wake up already?

 

chapter twenty-eight

Frankly, Cadence needs
to learn to stand up for herself more.

 

chapter twenty-nine

“Don't bother to
lie!” he barked, as if I'd so much as opened my mouth. Nuts. I was still here.

“My sex life—”

“Ha!”

“—is none of your business. And my point was, I'm grateful to have my baker in my life. Why wouldn't I be? He's gorgeous, smart, and rich, and he loves me. He knows about the crazy, as you so nastily put it, and knows the crazy could spill over and get him hurt or God forbid killed and he even…” I lowered my voice. “I told him about BOFFO losing its funding and he already had a plan in place to cure my MPD.”

George, who'd been leaning back in his chair and staring at the ceiling some more, jerked forward so hard he almost fell on the floor. “Sorry, what the
fuck
?”

“I know! He offered to pay for everything so I could just concentrate on therapy.”

“And you still didn't shoot him in the face?”

“Oh, very nice!” I snapped. “Yeah, it came off as a little ignorant and controlling, but he was thinking about me. He wants to help me.”

“He wants to
fix
you,” George corrected. “Big diff. C'mon. We all get warned about this.”

I said nothing. George was right. There were people who were drawn to people like us. People with, um, problems. They didn't love us for ourselves, or in spite of our foibles. They loved us
for
them.

“He's not like that. He knew what he was getting into. He's not afraid—not of what I am, not of any of me. Do you know how many guys have been scared off by Shiro and Adrienne?”

George laughed again. “I never said Aunt Jane was scared. It's the one thing I gotta give him. Let me tell you something you don't know about your baker boy. He won't ever scare easily. He won't scare
off.
Someone like that? Who made himself rich and famous and skilled? That person, you threaten to bankrupt them, ruin them, they'll always think they can do it again. They can be eighty and hacking out their last breath and they'll think they can do it all again. You
can
scare someone like that, but not the way you think.”

I studied my partner for a minute. We weren't friends. Much of the time we weren't even friendly. But we were something. “What happened to you?” I finally asked, which was a sizeable no-no in BOFFO politics.

“Life. Same thing that happens to everyone.”

“I don't think so, George. Look, I appreciate what you said—”

“No you don't.”

“All right, you're right, but I know what you're trying to do. I think I know what you're trying to do. But I don't think you can understand the situation from my per—”

“Sure I can. You want to get married and settle down and ruin a family with him. Hey, I'm for that. It's so romantic! Your kids should just start seeing a shrink in the womb, by the way.”

“You're one to talk.”

“I'm mean, not crazy. Sociopathy is not insanity. Check your Dee-Sum, honey.” In his usual horrible manner, George was referring to the DSM, the
Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders
or, as we sanity-challenged liked to call it, the Bible. And he was right. He was not insane by technical definition.

“You could try,” I said patiently. “You could try and get well.”

George's laugh was so shrill and short he sounded like a small dog. “Then I really would be crazy. Have you ever seen the news? You know what? Forget the news. Never mind the stuff that happens to strangers; how about the stuff that happened to you? Who'd want to be back in the middle of that? Don't you know how often I thank God my remorse button was burned out by the time I was ten? Why would anybody trade freedom for nightmares and feeling shitty and crying because you can't do what you've got to because you'll
feel bad
?”

I said nothing. For once George wasn't showing me a sliver of light; he'd jerked open the whole window. It wasn't like him, and it made me both sympathetic and nervous.

I didn't answer and he dropped the topic. It was just as well, as I was too polite to say anything anyway. Maybe that was
my
superpower.

 

chapter thirty

It is not
her superpower.

 

chapter thirty-one

“Hello hello, hello
George and Cadence.”

“Morning, Paul.”

“God help us, it's Rain Man.”

I tried to kick George under the desk, but he avoided my foot with a cackle. He got to his feet, gave me a meaningful look and jerked his head toward Paul, then went bounding toward the kitchen for more coffee. I turned to my colleague, who was wearing the exact clothes he had yesterday, but clean—Paul must have had a closet full of khaki pants, pressed dress shirts, dark socks, and tan and blue penguin skimmers. “Paul, you never get me confused with Shiro or vice versa. Are we different colors?”

He gave me a look I usually got from George:
Duh, dumbass.
“Of course. You're pink; Shiro's red, like Dr. Gallo.”

Never mind what color Dr. Gallo is.

“Why don't you have a seat in George's chair?”

Paul gave the chair a glance of dark dislike, but he sat. I cleared my throat and said, “I wanted to give you a heads-up. Michaela let us know that BOFFO is … is undergoing … a fiscal restructuring.” That sounded unthreatening, right? “And you shouldn't worry, because she's working with some financial guys about the restructuring and things are gonna work out just fine, in the way that things do a lot. Sometimes. Work out just fine, I mean. So … just FYI.”

Paul's eyes, always magnified by the glasses, bulged like poached eggs. “BOFFO lost BOFFO lost funding?”

Why did they decide I should be the one to break bad news to a genius? “That's another way to look at it.”

“That's not that's not
that's not
—” Paul was on his feet, turning back and forth so fast his arms were flailing out like those inflatable tube guys at car lots. “Things don't work out fine sometimes things don't work out most times, sometimes is more than zero but less than fifty percent and that is not sometimes!”

This. This was why Shiro had left me a terse note and fled yesterday. Yes, I was a coward who hated confrontation, who had trouble standing up for myself. And Shiro never let me forget that failing in me. But who was the coward this time? Who fled from Paul and left me with it because she knew she not only lacked the skill set to deal with a delicately unbalanced genius we badly needed to hold together, she didn't have the courage to even try. Not just a slut, thank you very much, but also a cowardly bitch.

What is wrong with me this week?

Moving Day and fallout from same. That's what's wrong.

Focus!

“Paul,” I said carefully, “you'll still come to this building.” I hoped. “You'll still do your work here.” I hoped. “We'll still be here, too.” I prayed. “There might be different smells, or colors you're not used to, but that happens when good things are on the way, too, right?”

He was visibly calming down.
Thanks, Jesus, wherever you are in the system.

“You'll still you'll still be pink?”

“Sure.”

“And Shiro will still be red and and and Adrienne will still be orange?”

“You bet.” Seemed likely, right?

“And George—”

“George will be black forever. BOFFO could blow up tonight and George would be black. George could live a zillion years and he would be black for every single one of them. That's gotta be comforting, right?”

Paul slumped, visibly relieved. “I heard that,” the poster boy for black said as he ambled back to his desk. “You gonna be okay, Paul? For you, I mean? And by ‘okay' I mean ‘fucked up.'”

“You could have just said lost lost funding,” Paul said reproachfully, leaping out of George's chair like it had gotten hot. “I don't need to come to a blue building to feed HOAP.2 crime stats even after I need to feed HOAP.3. My house is blue; I can do it there. My computer, too. And I've almost caught the man disappearing all the ladies of the black. Fiscal restructuring—”

“Let me guess: wrong color? Paul, has anything ever been the right color? Have you ever thought how much easier your life would be if you were color-blind? Maybe there's an operation you could look into.”

As George passed me, yawning (though how he could be sleepy with so much black coffee in his black system I had no clue), I reached out and smacked the back of his head.

“Ow!” I don't think it hurt so much as startled the shit out of him. He grabbed the back of his head, spun, juggled madly so as not to douse himself with scalding black sugary liquid, and stared at me.

“Antagonizing Paul just makes everything take longer, idiot. Now leave him alone.”

“
What the hell is wrong with you this week
?”

“Dunno.”

“Are you Shiro pretending to be Cadence?”

“You wish.”

He nodded glumly. “I do wish. I'm not a fan of change.” Yeah, him and every other BOFFO employee.

“Tough shit.” It felt so fine, I said it again. “Tough shit, Black George.”

 

chapter thirty-two

“I. Have had.
Enough!”

Hours later, Paul was skulking around doing whatever he did when he wasn't freaking George out, and George, Emma Jan, and I were in one of the conference rooms, hip deep in files. Nothing like a morning of reading autopsy reports to make you want to skip lunch.

George shoved away the pizza box (autopsy reports had no effect on his appetite) and began drumming his hands and feet up and down like a toddler trapped in the body of a grown man. I sighed in relief.

“We've got photos and stats and reports coming out the ass and we're no further with this fuck! And I'm getting a headache because we're out of coffee!”

“Tell the truth,” Emma Jan teased, “which one bothers you more?”

“The headache, for Christ's sake!”

Black George was on his feet and pacing around the conference table, which was fine with us. Emma Jan even got comfy, leaning back and lacing her fingers behind her head as she watched. Her jeans, tan flats, and comfy Tar Heels sweatshirt made her look less like a banker and more like a banker on a Saturday.