What I Did for Love

Chapter 15

Don’t make me ask twice,” Bram said when she didn’t react quickly enough.

His air of sexy menace sent a new frenzy of desire rushing through her. This was so blissfully uncomplicated. All he cared about was getting laid, and that was all she cared about, too. Her head was finally screwed on straight enough to enjoy every illicit moment.

“You’re on.” She pulled her top over her head. “Knock yourself out.”

He gazed at her breasts cupped in pale yellow lace, and the way he looked at her filled her with pleasure. She loved feeling desired, never mind that she was merely a convenience.

He snared her wrist. “This time I want a bed. So I can see every inch of you.”

She nearly dissolved, right there in the middle of his bedroom. As she gazed into his smoky lavender eyes, she reminded herself she didn’t care enough about him to ever be hurt. Then he kissed her, and she stopped thinking at all.

This time there was no slow striptease. They threw aside their clothes and fell on each other. Until yesterday, she’d never given herself without love, but now she offered up her body with abandon. He explored every inch, opening her legs, propping one of her ankles on his shoulder. She teased and tormented him in return, not to turn him on, but because she wanted to, because this affair was about her pleasure and not about trying to hold on to a man who didn’t love her.

He was earthy. Thorough. Demanding. Using his fingers, his mouth, his sex. She experienced a blissful, soaring freedom. The final explosion was cataclysmic.

Afterward, she lay limp beneath him, so drained she could barely muster the words. “Oh, well…I’m sure the next time will be better.”

He rolled over on his back, his skin as damp as hers, his mouth curling in a lazy smile. “Let’s face it, you’re a lot of woman for one man to handle.”

She grinned. The air-conditioning kicked on, blowing a cool breeze across their hot bodies. She felt…

She struggled to put a name to her emotions and finally came up with one.

She felt happy.

Bram was the only guy who’d ever been in Chaz’s apartment, but now Aaron was sitting on her couch, his headphones still around his neck, the jack dangling by his knee. He wore farmer jeans and a wrinkled green T-shirt that said all your base are belong to us, which made no frickin’ sense. His curly hair exploded around his round face, and his glasses were crooked. “You can’t stay here,” Chaz said. “You have to leave.”

“I told you. My car keys are in Georgie’s office.”

“Take my car.” Bram had bought her a shiny new Honda Odyssey, but she didn’t like leaving the house unless she had to, so she didn’t use it for much except household errands. Otherwise, she stayed mostly in her apartment. Bram had let her furnish it the way she wanted. She’d chosen modern pieces in chocolate and light brown along with a basic black shelving unit, an angular reading chair, and a couple of simple black-and-white abstract prints. No clutter. No mess. Everything neat and peaceful. Everything except Aaron.

He rubbed his chest through his T-shirt. “My driver’s license is in my wallet, and that’s in Georgie’s office, too.”

“So what? I drove without a license for years.” She’d taught herself to drive at thirteen, figuring she posed less of a danger on the road than her drunken stepmother.

She and Aaron both had door keys, but neither of them was anxious to go back in the house right now. At least her garage apartment was on the opposite side of the house from the master bedroom. She couldn’t imagine having to listen to Bram and Georgie getting it on. She hated Georgie. Hated watching Bram laugh at some stupid thing she said, hated listening to them talk about movies Chaz had never seen. Chaz wanted to be the one who came first with him. Which was stupid.

He’d better have remembered to turn off the stove.

“You’re not sleeping here,” she said.

“Who said I was? I’ll give them some time, then go back in and get my stuff.” He got up and wandered over to her bookcase, which held a TV, cookbooks, and some other books Bram had given her, including some by this important food writer named Ruth Reichl, who talked about how she got interested in food and everything. They were the best books Chaz had ever read.

“You should stop acting like such a bitch around Georgie.” Aaron took one of the Reichl books off the shelf and flipped it over to read what was on the back. “You might as well hang a sign around your neck saying that you’re in love with Bram.”

“I’m not in love with him!” Chaz shot up, grabbed the book from Aaron, and shoved it back on the shelf. “I care about him, and I don’t like the way she treats him.”

“Just because she doesn’t kiss his ass like you do.”

“I don’t kiss his ass! I always tell him exactly what I think.”

“Yeah, and while you’re cussing at him, you’re running around making him special meals and ironing his T-shirts. Yesterday, I saw you jump up to brush some crumbs off a chair before he sat on it.”

“I take care of him because it’s my job, not because I’m in love with him.”

“It seems like more than a job. It seems like your whole life.”

“That’s bullshit. I just…owe him, that’s all.”

“For what?”

For everything.

She turned away from Aaron and went into her tiny galley kitchen. He was too stupid to know the difference between loving someone and being in love. Chaz loved Bram with all her heart, but it wasn’t sex-love. It was like he was the best brother in the universe, one she’d do anything for.

She rooted around in her refrigerator for a Mountain Dew. Aaron had told her he’d gotten addicted to Mountain Dew when he was in college, but she only poured a glass for herself. Chaz had wanted to go to culinary school, not college. After her stepmother died, she’d saved up enough money to come to L.A., but jobs were harder to find than she’d imagined for someone without a high school diploma, and her plan to earn tuition money by working at an expensive restaurant quickly disappeared. She ended up washing dishes and busing tables at a couple of cheap Mexican places, but L.A. was expensive, and even working sixteen-hour days, she still had to dip into her savings to get by.

One day she came home from work and discovered somebody had broken into her crappy rented room and stolen everything she had, including her savings. She told herself not to panic. She might have to cut out a meal here and there, and she wouldn’t be able to buy a car for a while, but she could still make the rent if she worked some extra hours.

She might have done it, too, if she hadn’t gotten struck by a hit-and-run driver as she was crossing the street to the Laundromat. She didn’t suffer anything more serious than some cracked ribs and a broken hand, but she lost both jobs because she couldn’t wash dishes with a cast on. Within a month she was living on the streets.

Aaron came into the kitchen behind her. “Do you have anything to eat? I haven’t had anything since lunch.”

She had a cabinet full of junk food she wasn’t going to tell him about. “Only cereal and some fruit.” She nudged her glass of Mountain Dew behind her toaster where he couldn’t see it, not because she was being mean, but because it wasn’t diet.

“I guess it’s better than nothing,” he said.

She pulled out the cereal box and shoved some fresh strawberries at him, but he started tossing them in the bowl without slicing them, so she pushed him out of the way and did the job herself. She wished she had Special K to give him instead of Frosted Flakes.

The kitchen had a tiny, built-in eating counter. She wiped out her silverware drawer while he ate. She’d already noticed he had good table manners, and she thought his neighbor Becky might like that if she ever noticed him. As he finished his last bite, she pulled the cereal bowl out from under him. “I’m going to cut your hair.”

“You are not. My hair’s fine.”

“It looks like a shrub. Do you want Becky to notice you or not?”

“If she’s so shallow that all she cares about is looks, then I’m not interested in her.” He took in her jeans and black T-shirt. “You’re not exactly an expert on fashion?”

“I have my own style.”

“Well, I have my own style, too.”

“Geek style.” She studied the slogan on his green T-shirt. all your base are belong to us. “What’s that about anyway?”

He rolled his eyes, as if she should know. “Zero Wing. A 1989 Japanese video game. It’s historic. Look it up.”

“Whatever.” She grabbed a pair of scissors from a drawer. “Let’s go in the bathroom. I don’t want your hair all over the place.”

“If you want to cut hair so bad, cut your own.” He snorted and gestured toward her choppy bob. “No, wait. You already did that.”

She liked her hair, and she slammed the scissors on the counter. “You might as well forget about Becky. Or any other woman…because they won’t look at you twice.”

“Why should I take advice from somebody who doesn’t have a life?”

“You think I don’t have a life?”

“I haven’t seen any guys hanging around.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t have a life.” She didn’t tell him she couldn’t stand the idea of being with a man. It hadn’t always been that way. In high school, she’d had two serious boyfriends, and she’d had sex with one of them. He’d turned out to be a jerk, but she’d liked the sex. Not now, though.

Aaron was looking at her like he thought he was her shrink, and that made her so mad, she charged toward him. “Take off those stupid headphones. You look stupid.”

“I’ll wait in my car.” He headed out her apartment door, then clomped down the stairs to the back entrance.

She rushed over and called down after him. “Fine! But I have potato chips and Mountain Dew!”

“Good for you.” The door slammed, and everything was quiet.

She went back to the couch and picked up the cookbook she’d been studying. She was glad he’d left. She hadn’t wanted him to stay anyway.

She reached for the notebook she kept on the end table so she could make a list of everything she needed to do before the party tomorrow. Screw him. Now her apartment was just the way she liked it. All hers.

But the notebook slipped from her fingers, and the cookbook dropped to the carpet. She began to cry.

All morning Bram couldn’t seem to keep his clothes on, and by lunchtime, Georgie wanted to hit him in his delectable bare chest. He was either wandering around the backyard in nothing but his swim trunks sipping from one of his bottomless tumblers of scotch or-and this was the kicker-climbing an extension ladder half naked to clean out some gutters he said were clogged, as if anyone in Hollywood cleaned out their own gutters.

He was punishing her for slipping out of bed to spend the rest of the night in her own room. Tough. Their relationship was about debauchery, not the intimacy of nighttime cuddling.

She tried to escape to the kitchen, but Chaz was a total pain, refusing help and ignoring all of Georgie’s suggestions. And Meg was no better. When she saw Georgie carrying around her video camera, she draped a scarf over her head and pretended to be one of Michael Jackson’s kids, which was funny but not exactly what Georgie had in mind to record. She finally shut herself in her room to reread Tree House and think about Helene.

In the afternoon she set the table. Despite the possibility of rain, they were eating on the veranda, which managed to stay dry during all but the biggest storms. She arranged a centerpiece of artichokes, lemons, and eucalyptus leaves in a blue pottery bowl. It was a little lopsided, but she liked the way it accented the bright yellow place mats and cobalt plates. Once she added a couple of chunky candles, it would be perfect.

She sensed Bram coming up behind her just before his hand curled around her bottom. “Why’s the table set for seven?”

“Seven?” The time had come to deliver the news, but she acted as though she’d never heard the number before. “Let’s see. You, me, Dad, RoryandTrev, Laura, Meg…Yes, that’s right.”

His hand, which had been exploring her bottom, came to a dead stop. “Did you say…Rory?”

“Uhm…”

“Rory Keene is coming to dinner tonight?”

“You never listen when I tell you things. I swear, my voice is just white noise to you. It’s like we’ve been married forever.”

“Rory?” He abandoned her bottom.

“I’m positive I mentioned it.”

“I’m positive you didn’t! Are you crazy? Your father hates my guts. I only have two and a half weeks left until that option expires, and I don’t want him anyplace near Rory.”

“I’ll take care of him.”

“Like you’ve done such a good job taking care of him so far.”

“I thought you’d be happy.” She attempted a pout and wasn’t surprised when she couldn’t pull it off.

“Rory loves that script,” he said more to himself than to her. “If I could just get her to trust me.”

“From what she told me, that’s probably a lost cause.” As he paced the veranda, she replayed her conversation with Rory. When she finished, she said, “Why did you bring those cretins out to L.A. with you?”

The bitterness he kept tucked away escaped. “Because I was a stupid kid. I didn’t have a family, and I thought-I don’t know what I thought.”

Georgie had a fairly good idea.

He hunched his shoulders and looked away. “The guys told me Rory made the whole thing up. I wanted to believe them, so I did, and when I finally wised up, she was long gone. By the time I found her, my career was in the tank, and let’s just say she doubted the sincerity of my apology.”

“And now she has her revenge.”

“It’s not over till it’s over. She wants that script, and she can get it a lot cheaper working with me than trying to snatch it up after my option expires.” The same guy who’d once blown off three days’ shooting to go deep-sea fishing was suddenly all-business. “We need to be on top of our game tonight. She likes you, and I’m fully prepared to take advantage of that. Lots of touching. Affection. Not a single wisecrack.”

“Everybody will think we’re sick.”

“I’m counting on you to help make sure I get some time alone with her.” He took in her lemon and artichoke centerpiece. “See if you can find a florist. I’ll hire a bartender and someone to wait tables. And we need to get a real chef in here.”

She held up her hand. “Stop right there. No florist, no bartender, and Chaz is making do-it-yourself kebabs. Chicken, beef, and scallops.”

“Are you crazy? We can’t serve Rory Keene kebabs.”

“You’ll have to trust me. Remember, I have a purely selfish interest in convincing Rory to back your project. If you screw this up for me…”

“Georgie, I told you. Helene has to be cast-”

“Leave me alone. I have things to do.” Mainly she had to help him convince Rory that he was the person to make the film. If Rory saw how well he could behave these days, she might forget his past idiocy.

Unlike Georgie, who couldn’t forget a thing.

After he left, she busied herself setting candles around the veranda, but eventually she couldn’t resist grabbing her video camera. Today of all days, she should leave Chaz alone, but what had begun as a whim was turning into an obsession. In addition to her fascination with Chaz, she was also falling in love with the whole process of recording other people’s lives. She’d never imagined how absorbing standing behind a camera instead of in front of one could be.

She found Chaz in the kitchen making a ginger-garlic marinade. When she spotted Georgie, she slammed her chef’s knife down on some garlic cloves. “Get that camera out of here.”

“You won’t let me help. I’m bored.” She panned around the kitchen, taking in the well-organized chaos.

“Go film the cleaning people. You seem to have all kinds of fun doing that.”

Did Georgie hear a note of jealousy? “I like talking to them. Soledad-she’s the tall, pretty one-sends most of her money back to her mother in Mexico, so she has to live with her sister. There are six of them in a one-bedroom apartment. Can you imagine?”

Chaz rocked the blade over the garlic. “Big deal. At least she’s not sleeping on the streets.”

Georgie’s skin prickled. “Like you did?”

Chaz dipped her head. “I never told you that.”

“You told me about the accident and that you got fired after you broke your hand.” Georgie zoomed in. “I know your money was stolen. It’s a fairly obvious conclusion.”

“There are a lot of kids on the streets. It wasn’t a big deal.”

“Still…It had to be especially hard for you. All that mess and no way to clean it up.”

“I handled it. Now get out. I mean it, Georgie. I have to concentrate.”

Georgie should leave, but the turbulent emotions bubbling behind Chaz’s tough facade had drawn her in from the beginning, and somehow the camera demanded she record it. She shifted her questioning. “Does fixing dinner for more than one person make you nervous?”

“I fix dinner for more than one person practically every night.” She tossed the chopped garlic in a bowl with some peeled ginger. “I feed you, don’t I?”

“But you don’t put your heart into it. I swear, Chaz, even your desserts taste bitter.”

Chaz’s head shot up. “That’s a crappy thing to say.”

“Just a personal observation. Bram loves your cooking, and so does Meg. But then you seem to like Meg.”

Chaz pressed her lips tight. Her blade moved faster.

Georgie stepped to the end of the counter. “You’d better watch yourself. Great cooks know that extraordinary food is about more than mixing ingredients. Who you are as a person-how you feel about other people-shows up in what you create.”

The rhythm of Chaz’s chopping slowed. “I don’t believe that.”

Georgie told herself to let it go, but she couldn’t, not with the camera in her hands, not when this seemed so right. A wave of compassion overcame her, along with an odd sense of understanding. She and Chaz had each found her own way of coping with a world over which they seemed to have little control. “Then why do your desserts taste so bitter?” she said softly. “Is it really me you hate…or is it yourself?”

Chaz dropped her knife and stared into the camera, her black-rimmed eyes wide.

“Leave her alone, Georgie.” Bram spoke sharply from the doorway. “Take your camera and leave her alone.”

Chaz turned on him. “You told her!”

Bram came into the room. “I haven’t told her anything.”

“She knows! You told her!”

Chaz’s anger and self-hatred were visceral, and Georgie wanted to understand it. She wanted to film it as a testament to all the young girls consumed by their own pain. Except she had no right to invade her privacy like this, and she made herself-forced herself-to lower the camera.

“She doesn’t know anything you haven’t told her with your big mouth,” Bram said.

Once again Georgie ordered herself to leave, but her feet weren’t moving. Instead, she said, “I know you’re not the only girl who’s come to L.A. and done what she had to so she could survive.”

Chaz’s hands curled into fists. “I wasn’t a whore. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? I was some kind of crack whore!”

Bram shot Georgie a death glare and moved to Chaz’s side. “Let it go. You don’t have to defend yourself to anyone.”

But something seemed to have broken open inside her. She focused only on Georgie. Her lips pulled tight over her teeth and her voice became a snarl. “I wasn’t doing drugs! Never! I just wanted a place to live and some decent food.”

Georgie turned off the camera.

“No!” Chaz cried. “Turn it back on. You wanted to hear this so bad…Turn it on.”

“It’s all right. I don’t-”

“Turn it on!” Chaz said fiercely. “This is important. Make it important.”

Georgie’s hands had begun to shake, but she understood, and she did as Chaz asked.

“I was dirty and living out of a backpack.” Through the lens Georgie watched tears spill over the inky dam of Chaz’s bottom lashes. “I went a day without eating and then another day. I heard about this soup kitchen, but I couldn’t make myself go in. I was feeling crazy from not eating and it seemed better to sell my body than take charity.”

Bram tried to rub her back, but she pushed him away. “I told myself it would be just once, and I’d charge enough so I could get by until the cast came off my hand.” Her words pummeled the camera. “He was an old guy. He was going to pay me two hundred bucks. But after it was over, he pushed me out of his car instead and drove away without giving me anything. I threw up in the gutter.” Her mouth tightened with bitterness. “After that I learned to get my money first. Mostly twenty bucks, but I wasn’t using-I never used drugs-and I made them wear condoms, so I wasn’t like the other girls who were using and didn’t care about anything. I cared, and I wasn’t a whore!”

Once again, Georgie tried to shut off the camera, but Chaz was having none of it. “This is what you wanted. Don’t you dare stop now.”

“All right,” Georgie said softly.

“I hated sleeping on the street.” Muddy tears dripped down her cheeks. “And I hated trying to keep clean in public bathrooms most of all. I hated it so much I wanted to die, but killing yourself is a lot harder than you think.” She grabbed a tissue from a box on the counter. “I met this guy not too long before Christmas, and I got some pills from him. Not to get high. Pills so I could…stop everything.” She blew her nose. “I was going to save them for Christmas Eve, like this present to myself where I would take the pills, then just curl up in somebody’s doorway and fall asleep forever.”

“Oh, Chaz…” Georgie’s heart ached. Bram drew Chaz’s spine against his chest and rubbed her shoulders.

“All I had to do was wait until Christmas Eve, but I got too hungry.” She balled the tissue in her hand. “One night I saw this guy coming out of a club. He was by himself, and he looked really clean. When I went up to talk to him, he asked me how old I was. A lot of them asked that, and I would answer depending on what they wanted to hear, like sometimes I’d say fourteen or even twelve. But he didn’t seem like one of those creeps, so I told him the truth. He pulled out some money, gave it to me, and walked away. It was a hundred dollars, and I should have just said thank you, but I was sort of crazy from not eating, and I yelled that I didn’t need his charity. And when he turned to look at me, I sort of threw it at him.”

She pulled away from Bram and dropped the tissue in the trash. “He came back and picked up the money and asked how long since I’d had anything to eat. I told him I didn’t remember, and he took me into the bar and ordered hamburgers and stuff. He wouldn’t let me go wash my hands because he said I’d try to duck out the back, but I wouldn’t have. I was too hungry. I wrapped a paper napkin around the food and ate it that way, so my hands didn’t touch anything.”

She went to the sink and turned on the water. Keeping her back to them, she washed her hands. “He waited until I was done, and then he said he’d take me to this place, like this homeless shelter where they had social workers, and I told him I didn’t need any social workers, what I needed was a job in a restaurant, but even though my cast was off, I couldn’t get a job because I didn’t have an address, and I couldn’t keep myself clean.”

Georgie lowered the camera and licked her lips. “So he gave you a job himself. He invited a street kid he didn’t know into his house and gave her a job.”

Chaz spun back to face her-proud, defiant, sneering. “And he thinks he’s so smart about everything. I could have stuck a knife in him. He doesn’t understand how bad people can be. Do you see why I have to watch him so close?”

“I do,” Georgie said. “I didn’t before, but now I do.”

“I’m sure I could have held my own against a runt like you,” Bram said.

Chaz grabbed a paper towel and stalked toward Georgie, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Now that you’ve got all that in your camera, maybe you’ll leave me alone.”

“Maybe,” Georgie said. “Probably not.”

Chaz whipped around to confront Bram. “Do you see how weird she is? Now do you see?”

He slipped his hand in his pocket. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“Just-I don’t know. Just tell her she’s fucking weird.”

“You’re weird,” he said to Georgie. “Chaz is right.”

“I know. I appreciate the two of you putting up with me.”

Feeling as though she’d done something good, she left them alone.