Beautiful Lies

twenty-three

Was he smirking? It was hard to tell in the darkened room, which smelled faintly of beer and garbage. Ace hadn’t been happy to see me when I showed up at his door.

“What are you doing here?” he’d asked through the same crack I’d spoken to Ruby through a couple of days ago. I’d just stood there, not knowing how to answer, not having an answer, anyway. Where else could I have gone? Not to my parents, certainly. It was only a matter of time before the police got in touch with them, if they hadn’t already. Not to Alexander Harriman. He was scary, and there was something about him I didn’t trust (and hadn’t even before he ratted me out to my parents). Part of me had the urge to go to Zack but I quashed it. It was selfish to go running to him when I was in trouble, especially after everything that had passed between us over the last few days. Finally, after an uncomfortable thirty seconds of silence, Ace had opened the door. I’d followed him inside. It was as filthy and awful as you would imagine it to be. Ruby lay akimbo on a tattered old chair with a faded floral pattern and its stuffing coming out. I’d have thought she was dead if I’d seen her on the street. The tiniest line of drool traveled from the corner of her mouth down her chin.

“Is she all right?” I asked.

“As right as she could be,” he answered coldly. “Now tell me what’s going on.”

I had butterflies in my stomach and my throat was dry.

“Why are you always such an asshole?” I asked him. “Do you think I’d come here if I didn’t need to?” I started to cry then. Not that same sobbing I experienced after Christian Luna died, but close. I sat on the bed and he sat beside me, let me have it out with his hand on my back. When I was calmer, wiping tears and snot on a deli napkin he happened to find on a nearby pile of junk, he said, “Just tell me what’s going on, Ridley. I’ll do what I can for you.” Which isn’t much, he didn’t say, but was the implied ending to his sentence. I told him everything that had happened since we last saw each other.

“Ben and Grace must be wigging out,” he said with a light laugh. “Perfect little Ridley on the run from the law. They’re probably having a conference with Zack and Esme right now about what to do about it.”

There was so much bitterness in his voice, it would have hurt less if he’d slapped me. I could see it now, the jealousy, the resentment. I’d never really seen it uncloaked like that before. I thought about what my father had said, and what Jake had implied, that maybe Ace had something to do with this. I saw my brother for a second the way everyone else in my life seemed to see him: low, untrustworthy, someone willing to hurt me. It made me so sad. How can I tell you? So, so sad.

“I saw you,” I said. “Waiting outside my building a little while ago. What were you doing there?”

He shrugged, leaned back on his elbows. Looked at the wall behind me.

When I first moved to New York and started seeing my brother, I used to have this fantasy about him, that he was secretly watching out for me, shadowing me, in case I ever got into any trouble. I had these elaborate daydreams about my being mugged in some alley somewhere and my brother leaping out from behind garbage cans to save me. He’d take me back to my dorm room and take care of me until I felt better. Then he’d go back to his life and I could go on with mine, secure in the knowledge that he’d always have my back, always be watching out for me. In another daydream, we’d go home to our parents and there would be this tearful reunion and everyone would live happily ever after. Pretty sad, I know. But little girls are raised on fairy tales. Is it any wonder we all crave the happy endings to the dark things in our lives? No one ever tells you that sad things stay sad, some people die angry and unforgiven, and some things are lost and never found.

“Are you going to answer me?” I asked.

“I was waiting for you. I needed money. But your goon came down after me. I bolted.”

“My goon?”

“Your new boyfriend or whatever. You better watch out for that guy. I bet he’s not who you think he is.”

He looked at me, smug and unkind. I wanted to slap his stupid face.

“What do you know about him? What do you know about anything?”

He shrugged again, didn’t answer me.

“You didn’t always hate me, did you?” I asked him. “I remember you loving me when we were kids.”

The smirk (yes, he was smirking) fell from his face and he looked at me with surprise. “I don’t hate you, Rid. I’ve never hated you.”

I held his eyes until he looked away.

“There’s so much you don’t understand,” he said, shaking his head slowly.

“I think I do understand,” I said. A terrible anger was simmering in my chest. “It’s about Max, right?”

He looked at me, startled. “What do you think you know, Ridley?”

“About the money he left us.”

He released a breath and rolled his eyes. “You mean left you.”

“To you, too, if you’d pull yourself together, Ace.” I didn’t like the way that sounded, as if it was so easy, but I guess a part of me believed that Ace had chosen this life. Maybe the drugs had their claws in him now. But if it’s a choice to start using, then it’s a choice to stop. The road is long and hard, riven with obstacles both internal and external, but the first step is a choice, isn’t it? He had the resources. The help was waiting for him.

“Who told you that? Dad?” he said, rising.

“What difference does it make? It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Per usual, you have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re just living in your own little world. Ridley World, where everything is black and white, right and wrong. It’s all about choices, right? Making the right choices?”

Did you think you were the only one who had been subjected to my lecture on choices? As you can see, Ace totally missed the point. I got up and moved toward the door. I was shaking from anger and sadness, my stomach was in full revolt. I’d come for help and for some solace, but I could see he had neither to offer and might have even withheld it, if he did. I wanted to get away from him. I wanted to run to him and throw my arms around him, hold him as tightly as I could. I hated him. I loved him.

“Life’s not that simple, Ridley.”

I didn’t know how to answer him; I didn’t trust my voice. And before I could stop them, the tears started to fall again. I’d never said life was simple. I’ve never believed that.

“Go turn yourself in, Ridley. Call Mom and Dad. It’ll all turn out all right for you. It always does.”

Such vitriol from this man I’ve loved since he was a boy and I was a little girl. My brother. I’d just loved him so long without question, I’d never realized he hated me. But maybe he just hated himself. Esme’s words about Max came back to me. You can’t squeeze blood from a stone. You can try, but you do all the bleeding.

I left then and slammed the door behind me, feeling its vibration in the floor beneath my feet. I ran down the stairs and out onto the deserted street. I didn’t know which way to turn or where to go. I took a seat on a bench inside Tompkins Square by the band-shell. The universe was trying to tell me something. You’re on your own, kid.

I went to the West Village. I did something kind of weird first. I took the train uptown to Ninety-sixth Street and then went out onto the street and hailed a cab. I took the cab to the Barnes & Noble kitty-corner from the Met, walked in the entrance on Broadway, and then exited another door. I went to a cash machine and took out a few hundred, as much as the machine would let me. Then I hopped another cab. All the while, I kept watch for the skinhead, the cops, or anyone else who looked suspicious. I don’t think anyone followed me. But I was new at this. Jake’s warning before he fled the police was ringing in my ears, and I don’t mind telling you that I was scared, scared to the verge of tears.

I checked into a crappy hotel I’d passed a couple of times off Washington Square, one of those places that in spite of attempts to renovate still looks like what it is, a place for transients, people who want to pay for their rooms with cash in advance. The clerk was an old man wearing a denim shirt with a stain on the breast pocket that looked like ketchup. His face, as wrinkled and clenched as a fist, looked like he was wearing a rubber mask. He never even glanced at me, just took my cash and handed me a key.

“Room 203. Elevator to your right. Stairs to your left.”

He couldn’t have picked me out of a lineup, I’m sure. This was probably a job requirement, I thought. Strangely, I wanted him to look at me. I wanted him to acknowledge that I wasn’t a ghost in this world.

“Have a nice night,” I said, lingering at the desk. He didn’t say a word. Just turned his back and walked into an office.

The room was reasonably clean, but there were chipped tiles in the bathroom, water marks on the ceiling, drapes stained yellow with cigarette smoke. Lying on the bed that night, looking out the window at the streetlight’s orange glow and listening to the outside noise, with no one knowing where I was or what was happening to me, I had never been so completely alone. I felt like someone had neatly punched a hole through my chest and the wind whistled through it, making a hollow, mournful sound that kept me up the whole night.