Money Shot

13.

Although I was exhausted, I was way too jittery to really sleep. I dozed on and off on Malloy’s couch all night, flickering television inanity unable to compete with the jumbled emotions in my head. It didn’t help that I seemed to be on virtually every channel, more so on the flashy, shallow “entertainment” news shows than the supposedly legit outlets, but even the almighty CNN seemed to be unable to resist running a few carefully cropped clips from Double Dare and footage of me at the AVN awards with a very young Jenna Jameson. They also showed a ton of footage of the two cops who seemed to be in charge of bringing me to justice. One was black and a little nerdy-looking and tended to keep his mouth shut. The other was white, blond and athletic and looked like an actor playing a cop. The camera loved him.

But the footage that really got under my skin was a quick shot of Sam’s wife Georgie looking pale and numb as she was hustled from a car to some dull, official-looking building. Sweet, busty, hippy-dippy Georgie who wouldn’t hurt a fly and really honestly believed that love could change the world. I guess she had learned the hard way that the opposite number was much more efficient. Not hate of course, which is sort of like love’s twisted sibling, but cold, heartless disregard for human life.

Sam had told me that the man who set up the phony shoot “had Georgie” but he clearly didn’t have her anymore. Had he just let her go after he had her husband killed? I suddenly wanted desperately to find Georgie and talk to her, find out what she knew, what had really happened, but the fact that she probably believed I had killed Sam left a hollow ache under my ribs.

I searched around the channels for an old movie with no commercials. Something sweet and silly with no guns. I found a musical with Cyd Charisse and turned the sound down low, trying not to think. It didn’t work.

I couldn’t get a fix on how to feel about Malloy. I wanted to slug him and fuck him and get away from him and be rescued by him all at the same time. I felt surrounded by him, here in his place where everything smelled like he did. I wondered why he was going out of his way like this to help me—he didn’t know me that well and certainly didn’t owe me anything. I wondered if he was sleeping on the other side of the bedroom door, or lying awake like me. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to creep into his bedroom or sneak out the door, so I just stayed on the couch and pulled my knees up to my chin.

I didn’t know if I wanted Malloy or not, but I did know the one thing I really wanted. Sure, I wanted revenge and I wanted to clear my name, but more than anything else, I just wanted to go home.

If I had lost everything in a flood or an earthquake, I would be sad, but I could eventually let it all go and find a way to start over. But my things weren’t destroyed. They were sitting there in my house, just the way I left them. The coffee cup I hadn’t washed. Fruit from the farmer’s market that would just go bad. The book I was reading. My dirty laundry. My vibrator—God, did I leave it on the bed or put it back in the drawer? Would the cops staking out the place bother to water my plants?

Worse, what was going to happen to my little house on Morrison Street now that I was a fugitive, wanted for murder? I’d never had a relationship that lasted even a tenth as long as my relationship with my house, my own private sanctuary where everything was just the way I liked it. When I bought that house, it was a cheap 70s fixer-upper with ugly shag carpet and a leaky chimney. I gutted the place and redid everything from the ground up, made it my own. My mortgage was less than three years from being fully paid off. And didn’t the cops seize your property if you were involved in a criminal investigation? I wasn’t sure, but it killed me to think that after all the money and hard work I’d put into that place, those bastards could take it away just like that. Somehow, that hurt much more than what Jesse had done to me.

When the sun finally came up, Malloy came out of the bedroom. He was wearing gray sweatpants and a clean white t-shirt and he didn’t look tired or rumpled or like he had just woken up. He looked the same as ever. I must have looked awful with my hair all snarled and sticky black eyes squinting against the sun. I felt like deep-fried shit.

“Coffee?” he asked, unfazed as he ambled into the kitchen. “Sorry, I don’t have any Sweet’N Low.”

“Black is fine,” I said. “Do you mind if I jump in the shower?”

“Go right ahead,” Malloy said, his wide back to me as he filled the carafe of the coffeemaker with bottled water. “You’ll find clean towels in the cabinet to the left of the sink.”

Malloy’s bathroom was pristine and nearly empty. I carefully avoided looking into the mirror and concentrated on snooping around instead. You can tell a lot about a bachelor by his bathroom. Apparently Malloy was completely immune to the latest craze for marketing XXXTREME ultra-studly chick-magnet grooming products to insecure men. The last bachelor bathroom that I had been in had been cluttered with body spray and shower gel and crotch deodorant with names like JACKHAMMER, MAGMA FORCE, or BLAST OFF. Not here. Beside the faucet on the tiny sink was a bottle of store-brand antibacterial hand soap. Nothing else. Malloy’s medicine cabinet contained no surprises. There was nothing odd, unique or amusing anywhere to be found. No Viagra or Rogaine or Preparation H. No Vicodin or Prozac or AZT. He could have been anybody.

Inside the shower stall, the white tile looked as sterile as an operating theater. The stainless steel gleamed. On a narrow, built-in shelf sat a bottle of dandruff shampoo and a plain white soap dish containing a large green-and-white bar of Irish fucking Spring. I didn’t realize they still made that shit.

I stripped down and turned on the hot water in the shower. While I waited for it to warm up, I lost the battle to avoid looking in the mirror.

I guess you could say it was getting better, but it was still horrible. The swelling had gone down and my right eye, which had been swollen almost completely shut, was now open. The color palette of my bruises had shifted from lurid purple to more muted tones of ochre and bile. I wasn’t going to be winning any beauty contests any time soon.

The water was hot by then so I slipped in and goddamn, that was good. It was the first real shower I’d had since Jesse and it did wonders to improve my mood. By the time I was done, I almost felt like I could beat the bastards who did this to me. I felt like I could win. Must have been the Irish Spring.

When I got out I found a black mug of black coffee waiting for me on the coffee table. Malloy was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the paper.

“Hey,” I said softly, pulling the white towel tighter around my body and picking up the mug. “What should I wear? The dress or the jeans?”

I don’t know why I asked. I was a big girl and I’d been dressing myself without Malloy’s advice for more than 35 years. In spite of everything, it was still way too easy to cast Malloy in the hero/Daddy role. I really needed to watch that.

He looked up at me and the fact that I was only wearing a towel registered in his eyes. He looked back down at the paper. I scanned his face for any reaction at all, any tiny hint of a response to my near nakedness. He hid it well, but there was an undeniable tension in his jaw and shoulders. It could have been any number of things, but I desperately wanted it to be desire. It was as if I needed some kind of proof that I was still just a little bit sexy in spite of everything. Realizing that I had been fishing for a reaction, I felt suddenly pathetic, like a junkie combing the carpet for a dropped crumb of dope.

“For now just put the jeans and tank top from yesterday morning back on,” he said, sipping his coffee without looking up, giving away nothing. “I have an idea.”

That’s how I wound up dressed like a boy.