“Am I?” The question had a cold ring to it, and the lingering look he gave her was even colder. It plainly showed years of repressed hard feelings towards her.
“Please Max,” Charlie said, her fingers clutching harder at his top. “I don’t understand why we’re even talking about this; especially now. You are faced with grave charges and––”
“—And I will face them all right.”
Charlie stared at him, disconcerted by his abnegation, and he went on:
“You know something, you’re just like Mom; she was always trying to control Dad. She drove him mad, I know it and so do you. Look where he ended up; looks like history is about to repeat itself, huh?”
“You won’t go to prison for something you didn’t do.”
Max said, “What makes you so damn sure I didn’t kill that man?”
“Because you’re my brother … and I know you.” She added, “And I love you.”
Max lowered his eyes. He kept them downcast for a minute or two. His coldness … his bitterness … all of that was dissolving to a blush.
“So you’re telling me,” he said, with renewed emotion, “that it hasn’t even crossed your mind.”
“Look at me.”
Charlie’s hands let go of his clothing and closed over his arms very gently.
Max raised his brow. In many ways, Charlie trivially thought, he was still a boy. He had not really outgrown that air of candid naiveté which is responsible for making children believe Santa Clause is real.
“Remember that little poem that was up on the wall above our beds?”
“You are me…” Max recited, recalling.
“And I am you…”
“I know your heart…”
“And all the treasures it hides,” Charlie said.
And they both concluded, “For I have found them in my own.”
They both subtly smiled afterward, at themselves and at the little brother and sister they had once been back in the days.
“Sorry, I hit you earlier,” Charlie said at last.
“Well, I guess I owe you one.”
Simon came back out from Charlie’s bedroom and called out, “Charlie, I got to talk to you.”
She didn’t immediately react to his call, her consciousness still connected to Max’s in ways which reminded her of a time in their childhood when their bond was still deep, still unbroken.
“Charlie, now!” Simon called out again and, as he strode past her, she glimpsed a chilly grumpiness in his facial expression. Simon went into the kitchen area and she followed him.
“You didn’t find your wallet?” she asked apprehensively.
“No, but I found this instead.” Simon slammed a pregnancy test box on the kitchen countertop. Charlie felt her heart throb. “What is this, Charlie?”
“Goodness!”
It was Jen who cried her surprise as she inadvertently entered the kitchen. The pregnancy test box fell right in her field of vision. She looked at Simon, then Charlie, and she grimaced. “Are you pregnant?”
“No,” Charlie said, “I’m not.”
Embarrassed to have an audience, Charlie signaled Jen with a nod to clear the space. Jen easily complied, saving all the questions flooding her mouth for later. She looked back at Charlie and felt a little strange as she returned to the living room. Once they were alone again, Simon asked, “Is there something that you’re not telling me?”
“Please, Simon. We can talk about it later––”
“—We can talk about it now; I want to know why you needed to take a pregnancy test, when, for one thing, we haven’t been together in a while, and even then we always took precautions.”
Charlie remained tight-lipped. She did not know what to tell him. She did not know how to tell him. Simon clenched his fist in anger, but she could see that the emotion which was coursing through him was pain. She couldn’t deal with this stuff now. She could not…
She said, “Please, let’s not do this now.”
“Christ!” he exploded.
Charlie didn’t need to say another word for Simon to have his answer. His body suddenly shifted as if he was going to swing on her. Instead, his hand came up and passed over his face like the hand of a very tired old man.
“Who was it?” he finally asked: “Do I know him?”
Charlie’s lips quivered with emotion. Her ability to speak, it seemed, had been torn away by an excruciating guilt trip. There was nothing left in her except the guilt. She reeked of it and it even seeped onto the clear surface of her face.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I messed up, alright?”
And a fixed expression of gloom took out whatever light was left in Simon’s eyes. He stepped forward, trembling with rage.
“Who was it, Charlie?”
Startled by his hostility, Charlie hesitated.
Simon said again, “Tell me!”
V
Moments later, Simon burst out of the kitchen and furiously lunged at Alvin. However, his forceful onslaught didn’t land on target for Dom and Max caught him on time and held him back.
“What’s going on?” Tara moaned. Her features were frayed in alarm.
Simon was fighting to free himself from Max and Dom’s restraining hold.
“Let go of me!” he barked. “Let go of me!”
“Take it easy,” Dom said, unclenching his arms slowly around Simon’s chest. “Just take it easy…”
Simon turned a raging eye on Alvin.
“You fucking bastard!” he said. “You had to stab me in the back. You’re supposed to be my friend. My friend, Alvin! I would’ve never done this to you.”
“I’m sorry, man,” Alvin said, wriggling a little right where he stood, his body shrunk down and very much cowed in expectation of a potential blow.
He added, “I’m sorry, it just happened, you know.”
Sure he felt sorry, but he was also relieved that the truth had come out. It’d been a heavy load on his shoulder, and now it was a load off. He had never thought Simon would find out about him and Charlie, but he figured it was just as well. He wasn’t the kind who, usually, did this sort of nasty thing, like cuckolding their best friend. He was of the kind who couldn’t look at themselves in the mirror after the fact.
“You can go to hell,” Simon said, turning away from him, but not letting up his rage.
He saw Charlie standing near the kitchen and loathed her.
He added, “Both of you.”
He moved off to a corner, intent on creating as much physical distance as he could between him and the two people who had wronged him. To his regret, the apartment, however large, could not offer enough distance. And so, Simon turned his back and decided to look anywhere but in their direction.
VI
“I’m telling you,” Carol casually said to Jen while running both hands through the golden mass of her hair. “We’re all going to go crazy in here if we keep this up.”
Jen heaved a sigh at the comment, looked over to see how Charlie was holding out. Max was with her presently. And next to them, Tara looked very perturbed, very lost, like a child for whom you must always draw a picture for them to understand anything.
Jen sighed again and segued back to entertaining herself with the newspaper. And as she absently leafed through it, she thought, First Peter, then Charlie and Alvin. Another surprise like that and I may come to question a lot of things about a lot of people.
Suddenly, she froze:
“Oh my God!”
“What?” asked Carol.
“It’s him.”
“Who?”
“The man,” Jen said, her hands shaking. “The victim––there’s a photo of him in the paper.”
“What––”
The photo showed the man fitted out in a jersey jacket. He looked very plain and casual standing in front of a government building, a cigarette wedged in the corner of his mouth. The photo was pro
bably dated because he was heavier then, especially in the jowls. A whole article had been written on him.
Charlie reasserted herself in light of the tidings. She asked, “What does that say?”
“Wait––” Jen quickly skimmed the paper. “His name is Georges Borges and it says here that he works for the county law’s enforcement agency.”
“Wait––he’s a cop?” Carol said with a shudder. “We have the head of a dead cop in here? This is crazy. I mean this is bad, guys!”
Max shifted uneasily. The gruesome killing and dismembering of a police officer was something else entirely, certainly in the eyes of the law. His face grew rather white as he eyeballed the cardboard box.
“This is it, guys,” Carol intoned. “When the news hits the fan, it’ll spew right back on us. A cop––”
“—Okay,” Dom said, “let’s not give into panic now.”
He came over and took the newspaper from Jen. His eyes went slowly over it.
Charlie then turned to Max. “You have to remember. Does the name sound familiar? Anything––”
“—No, it doesn’t.”
“Where did you go when you left the party? Did you meet other people?”
“Yeah, I think so. But it’s all a blur right now.” Max’s brow furrowed in concentration. He said, “I can see many faces … I see many lights too … and a street.”
“What street?”
“I don’t know…”
Still reading the paper, Dom cut in.
“There’s something else in there. Listen…” He cleared his throat and read aloud, “According to an insider, a special investigation should soon be open to determine whether former district attorney Phillip Blythe, who now practices as an associate judge in the state supreme court, hid evidence in the trial that sent Larry Borges possibly wrongly convicted to prison for nearly two decades for a string of illegal activities including embezzlement and money laundering.”
Carol’s face collapsed. Her breath came fast.
She sat up frantically, hissing, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’ll … ahem… I’ll just cut to the chase––” Dom read out. “Georges H. Borges, assistant chief of Community Affairs, has always contended that the now-judge Mr. Blythe, who then prosecuted the case, was bribed into tampering with evidence that could’ve supported his brother’s claims of innocence on charges of criminal conspiracy, even though he’d previously admitted to a separate instance of wire fraud while serving as treasurer for the city. According to sources, Borges has allegedly dug up the proof that will see their name cleared and the judge’s dragged in the mud.”
Dom paused and looked at the publication date. He added, “This is yesterday’s issue.”
Saying this, he glanced at Carol. Her mouth was set in a tense gnarl. Everybody in the room was looking at her; wondering...
VII
Carol leaped up and snatched the newspaper from Dom’s hand in the same brisk motion.
“None of this is true,” she said, scrutinizing the article in the paper. “It’s all a lie! A goddamned lie!”
“What are the odds?” Tara said to her. “Your father and the victim had a history.”
“So what?” Carol snapped.
Dom said, “I mean, that Georges Borges guy was going to bring him down, according to that article.”
Carol’s face contorted into a mask of solemn anger. It was a direct insult… The fact that Dom, or anyone else in the room for that matter, could easily buy that groundless story about her father. Now his honor, just like hers, was in peril because of it. In an about-face, Carol turned to her audience and straight-out declared:
“My father is a very respectable man! Anyone who’s ever met him would agree on that. He doesn’t have any part whatsoever in what is printed on this…wrapping paper. A bribe… it is simply preposterous. It’s a lie… a sick fabrication. His entire career he’s done nothing but put the corrupt and the criminals away. Now the attack dogs want to make him out to be just as rotten!” She started twisting the newspaper with both hands. “I bet you ten thousand dollars that this Larry Borges did really deserve to go to jail. I’m telling you this is an outrageous lie! A sabotage to his name, his work… He’s not a culprit. Hell,” Carol said, slamming the ruffled paper on the central table, “that’s not my father.”
Jen softly touched her hand.
“Hey… no one thinks what’s in the paper is true.”
Carol sank down on her seat, despondent from her emotional outburst. Her eyes were nearly moist with tears.
Charlie then said to her:
“Even though everything in it points to the contrary.”
Carol looked at length at her and then at Max. She looked at them as if an obscuring veil covering her face had been pulled away, and that now she could see clearly. She looked at them and said nothing because it was useless to speak; she now understood on a very personal level what it meant to have a reasonable doubt based on nothing but faith. Her natural color slowly returned to her cheeks and, mechanically, she crossed her legs.
A long moment of heavy silence then befell the apartment. It filled the huge gap that had formed right in the midst of the young people in the living room, dividing them from themselves and, to some extent, from each other. With no one stirring or speaking, it merely looked as if everyone was somehow reflecting on the string of events of the last hour which, in a rather queer way, had brought some unexpected facts to light. And it was only then, when silence began to deepen about the room, that Max’s quiet voice—a whisper really—tore through it, solemnly.
“Now I remember…”
VIII
The announcement grabbed everyone’s attention and brought them back into the moment.
Max gathered his memories, as best he could, then, with painful serenity, he said:
“When I left the party here, I went off to meet with a couple of friends at a tavern somewhere. A bunch of models I was going to use for a portfolio project. Anyway, after the tavern we decided to hit a dance club before calling it a night. I don’t remember much of what happened next because next thing I knew I was with a different group of people, at a different binge, you know. And don’t even ask because I don’t know how I found myself there.”
He paused for a moment and then went on.
“I hit it off with this girl and … I remember drinking a lot. I also remember getting physical with her, but I can’t be sure. I must have blacked out after all that, because when I opened my eyes, it’s like time had skipped and I was lying on the blacktop of this empty road… I had blood on my hands; there was blood everywhere … blood and cardboard boxes. And I could feel someone agonizing, drawing his last breath right under me. I waited till the breathing stopped. And that’s when I saw a police light approaching in the distance. I ran away…”
Everyone could tell it was not easy for Max to recollect all of this. And it was even harder to sit there and hear it, especially when his tone fell into a sob.
“I think I did something horrible. I’m sorry, Charlie… I’m so sorry.”
On the brink of tears herself, Charlie took his hand in hers.
“It’s alright … keep going.”
“I would’ve called you, you know,” Max said. “But in my foggy state, I think I lost my cell phone. I wandered about for an hour or two and somehow found my way back into the complex. I was so out of it that I went up past this floor and ended up on the floor above.”
“It’s the attic’s floor,” said Charlie. “It’s usually closed.”
“Someone else was there though.”
“Someone else?”
“Yeah––some guy, I believe. He wore eyeglasses. He was just hanging there in the dark. I realized I was on the wrong floor, came back down and––well, I guess you all know the rest.”
With half-closed eyes, Max looked around the room at everyone. They were speechless. But he did not
hold it against them. As it were, they seemed too emotionally jaded to react to his confession in an expressive manner, or maybe had they not realized he was finished.
“Well, that’s all,” he said again, his chest rising and falling with relief. It was doing him some good to remember and to talk about this stuff.
At last, he held his hand out to Charlie and, before he spoke, she understood what he was asking her.
“Your cell phone,” Max said. A certain peace of mind exuded from him, like he was all right with his life being shorted out by the sentencing to come. He was unclouded as to what needed to be done.
“I’ll turn myself in to the police,” he said.
Charlie didn’t move one inch though. She just looked at him, her brother, soon to be taken away, soon to go down as a murderer. Distress started mounting up in her throat and she opened her mouth to release it.
“I have to do it,” Max said before Charlie could say anything. “You’ve been through a lot already because of this.”
Charlie’s cell phone was bulging her pants at the thigh. However, her inner struggle to reach her hand inside that pocket, take it out and hand it over to Max didn’t escape the rest of the group.
“Here, you can take mine.”
It was Simon who came to the rescue. Max took his cell phone and moved away to make the call. Completely dejected and worn out, Charlie silently retired from the group’s company. She went into the kitchen, reeling a little as if she had forgotten how to walk straight.
In the kitchen, she clenched the countertop lest she would collapse, and, free of prying eyes, started to mourn.
II
With nothing left to argue about, another gap rapidly grew back in the midst of the group. As for Alvin, he sat on the couch, where was propped the folding stairs for Tara’s kitty cat, and started spinning his rubber ball on the cushion. Soon he looked over to the kitchen and imagined Charlie going through phases of weeping hopelessness. No-one had thought of checking in on her, though it was plain she wanted to be by herself. His heart was faltering.
Yes, he had slept with her in a moment of weakness. And he kept telling himself that it was just one of those things that just happen and, really, it was nobody’s fault. Sure, at the time, it’d felt awkward afterwards because they’d always been close friends. But it was the wrong thing to do altogether because of Simon. And it didn’t matter that he and Charlie had split then. Alvin knew he’d broken some code of honor by crossing over that boundary. But damn it, right now he wanted to go inside that kitchen, grab Charlie in his arms and take a little of that mournful pain off her chest. However, too many things disallowed him, one of them being Simon and his justified hard feelings towards him. His head was turned to a window and yet Alvin could swear Simon was watching him when he wasn’t looking.