Like everybody else at the diner counter, Squatty was staring at the TV the same way I once stared at him. He seemed mesmerized by footage of Briana in different designer clothes, at different fashion shows. An offscreen male voice identified each place, each designer, each season—“Paris, for Yves St. Laurent, the 2008 spring collection; Rome, the 2010 fall show, for Chanel; Vienna, for Versace…”
I walked on by, wondering at which show Briana had met a Serbian gangster who’d gone to prison for smuggling heroin in a shipment of fake Gucci watches. Aside from the fact that drug dealing and counterfeiting were crimes, they were crass acts, not the kind of thing a discriminating woman would admire.
I spruced up in the ladies’ room, and when I left, Squatty was still engrossed in the TV screen, this time showing footage of Cupcake in action on the football field. All the other people perched on stools at the counter seemed equally fascinated. They seemed to be attached to the screen by invisible IV lines, getting infusions of painkillers by watching images of people whose lives seemed more interesting or more rewarding or more bizarre than their own.
At my regular booth, Judy had already put my coffee on the table. As I slid onto the bench seat, she appeared beside me with my regular breakfast along with the not-regular special plate of bacon. For a second there, inhaling the siren scent of fried hog fat, I drifted off to my own personal nirvana. Some people escape pain through watching TV, some through smelling bacon.
Judy said, “Everybody’s talking about the killing at that football player’s house.”
She waited a moment to see if I’d take the bait, then raised an eyebrow a fraction when I got busy buttering my biscuit.
She said, “You’re not talking, huh?”
“I don’t know any more about it than you do.”
“Except you were there when it happened.”
“I was outside the house. I didn’t see a thing.”
She studied my face and got a worried look. “Well, that’s good. Maybe now that the hunk is gone you won’t be getting mixed up in murders anymore. I sure hope so.”
I sipped coffee. She topped off the mug and waited. I salted and peppered my eggs. She sighed and went away. For some odd reason, I felt like crying. When an old friend pumps you for information and at the same time is concerned about you, it’s a little bit like having a caring mother quiz you about the questionable kids you’re hanging out with. Not that I ever had a mother who did that.
The bacon helped calm me. I nibbled its salty, crispy, tranquilizing, artery-clogging goodness and considered all the weird things that had happened, especially the weird thing that had turned me into a helpless victim of violence. It isn’t in my nature to be a victim. I fight back, I stand up for myself, I don’t let myself be used—but violent men had got away with disabling me while they ransacked my apartment. Instead of fighting back, I had lain there helpless as a dead snake, and I was still helpless because I didn’t know who they were. Standing up for myself against those unknown men would be like fighting fog. If I hadn’t had the bacon, I would have got really depressed.
I was so blissed out on bacon that I didn’t see Ethan until he was standing by my booth.
“Are you expecting another homicide investigator?”
I laughed. “No, not today.”
He slid into the booth and waved to Judy, who trotted like a pony to bring him coffee.
She said, “Tanisha’s scrambling your eggs. I’ll bring them right out.”
This time I knew he had planned his breakfast time to coincide with mine. It made me feel proud and scared at the same time. Ethan wasn’t the kind of man to indulge in casual flings. If he went after a woman, he was serious about it. He also wasn’t the kind of man to let a woman jerk him around. If I made a commitment to him, I’d damn well have to keep it or there’d be some high drama. Not that I didn’t keep commitments, but I wasn’t sure anymore how long I could promise anything to anybody.
He gestured toward the TV over the counter, where voices still gushed the same old words, and diners still hung off their stools absorbing every stale word as if it were new and fresh.
“The murder in the Trillin house seems to have taken over every minute of the news.”
I shrugged. “A famous model broke into a famous athlete’s house, and then some mystery woman was killed in the house. If you were a reporter and you had a choice of talking about that or talking about a new downtown parking lot, which would you choose?”
He grinned. “I can’t imagine myself a reporter.”
“That’s because you make things happen. Reporters tell about things somebody else has made happen.”
“That’s probably an oversimplification, but true.”
“I know a psychologist who says we’re all addicted to drugs our bodies manufacture in response to experiences we have. Even our thoughts create drugs we get addicted to.”
“Psychoneuroimmunology.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s what it’s called. Means that chemicals infuse every cell in our bodies in response to our emotions, and those chemicals affect our health. Happy thoughts create healing chemicals, hateful thoughts create toxic chemicals.”
Judy whirled to the booth and settled his plate in front of him. She poured more coffee in both our mugs, waggled her eyebrows at me, and whirled away.
It doesn’t take a man long to eat scrambled eggs and dry toast. While he ate, I watched him and felt stupider by the moment.
I said, “Am I the only person who doesn’t know about psycho-whatever?”
He laughed. “No, and you’ll be glad to know that it was a woman who discovered there’s no time lapse between emotions and the chemicals they produce. Dr. Candace Pert, very brilliant woman. She says our bodies are our subconscious minds.”
I sighed. “You’re too smart for me, Ethan. I’m a pet sitter. I only have two years of community college.”
He ate the last bite of tomato and tossed his paper napkin into his plate. “Nobody in the world knows everything. You’re ignorant about some things I know about. I’m ignorant about some things you know about. Being ignorant about particular things doesn’t mean we’re stupid. Stupid people can’t learn anything new. You and I can learn if we’re exposed to the things we’re ignorant about.”
“Do you want to go out with me?”
I hadn’t expected to say that, it just came out.
Ethan reached across the table and touched my hand. “You know I do.”
“I have to tell Guidry. I’d feel dishonest to see you and not tell him.”
“I understand that.”
I said, “I think all my cells are being flooded with nice chemicals right now.”
He laughed and got to his feet. “Let me know when you’re ready to move forward.”
He left money on the table for Judy and left the diner. Judy came and stood beside me with curiosity radiating from her like heat from a stove, but she didn’t ask any questions and I didn’t volunteer any information.
I was too dazed by what had just happened to be able to talk. Without planning to, I had in one quick instant made a decision about my future with Guidry and acted on it. It was a decision I didn’t like, a decision that I didn’t want to make, but one that had to be made. In a way, I was grateful to Guidry for letting me be the one to make it.
I said, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” and slid out of the booth.
In the parking lot, ignorance of car repair had finally won out, and a cluster of men watched other men load the red Porsche onto a flatbed tow truck. The owner of the Porsche had the anguished face of a man watching his child go off to war. Nobody noticed me get in the Bronco, nobody saw me drive away. I was invisible in plain sight, the way Tom Hale had said Briana’s criminal friend had been until he was arrested.