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Chapter 23.
I woke up with Connie’s cheek buried in the crook of my neck, her soft warm breath tickling the hairs on my chest. I was lying on my back, and she was lying on her side, curled up around me. She had one arm draped across my waist and one of her legs thrown over mine. My arm was numb.
Connie stirred tentatively, then moaned. Her eyes fluttered open and she did that thing that ladies sometimes do when they wake up in a strange bed in a strange house in the arms of a strange man.
She screamed.
“What the fuck?”
She sat bolt upright in the bed. The sheets fell down around her waist so that her breasts bounced. She stared at me, wide eyed with her mouth hanging open, slack in shock and horror.
Then glanced down at herself and realized she was naked.
Then she realized I was naked too.
She clutched at the sheets and heaved them up to modestly cover herself. Her face was pale and bloodless. She glared at me with a ferocious look.
“You… you… fucking…”
I yawned. “Good morning.”
Connie went ballistic. “Don’t you fucking good morning me, you bastard,” she hissed. She was trembling with rage. Beneath the clutch of the bed sheets I could see her breasts rising and falling with every angry breath.
“Don’t tell me we…” she began and then cut herself off as though the possibility was just too horrible to utter the words. “We didn’t – did we?”
I propped myself up onto one elbow and stared at her with a look of wide-eyed innocence. “Did what?”
“You know damn well what!” Connie snapped.
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean.”
There was a blaze of fire behind Connie’s eyes, yet her lips were drawn into an ice-cold grimace. “Sex,” she hissed. “Did you take advantage of me last night and use me for your sexual pleasure?”
“Sex?” I said the word like I’d never heard it before in my life.
She punched me – and it fucking hurt.
“Don’t fuck with me!” she raged.
“According to you, I already have.”
Connie shook her head like this was some horrible nightmare. Her dark tousled hair swished across her shoulders. “Oh, god no!”
I swung my legs off the bed and stood up. I was naked. I stared at Connie. “Relax,” I said gently. “You were drunk. I brought you home because I didn’t want you driving. I undressed you and put you into bed – and nothing happened.”
Connie huffed in disbelief. She was still simmering with rage. “You undressed me – or tore my clothes off to have your way with me?”
“I undressed you,” I said flatly. “And then carefully folded your clothes and put them at the foot of the bed. Not too many guys I know would rip off a woman’s clothes and then go to the trouble of folding them neatly for her.”
Connie lost a little of her bluster. “How do I know you didn’t take advantage of me?”
I smiled. “Stand up,” I said. “If you can walk – then we didn’t have sex.”
Chapter 24.
I burned eggs and then I burned toast before settling for a glass of bourbon. I switched on the television to catch the morning news. The announcer said, “And now to a developing story in Japan…” as Connie appeared in the hallway, dressed in the clothes she had worn the night before. Her hair looked more brown than black in the bright sunlight, and it was disheveled. She had washed her face of make-up and her face looked like a child’s, but her body language read otherwise. She strode across to the television. I had been sipping at my bourbon. The glass was almost empty.
“Are you watching this?” she asked softly.
I shook my head.
Connie switched the TV off and stood to position herself in my line of sight. “I’d like to talk to you.”
I nodded. “Go ahead.”
But she didn’t. She didn’t say anything for a long time. Instead she went to the kitchen, saw the mess I had made, and decided that breakfast was a meal she could skip. She came back into the living room and sat beside me on the sofa whilst smoke swirled in lingering tendrils below the ceiling.
Outside the morning had dawned warm and sunny. Through the windows I could see the haze of city smog turning the rim of the horizon soft and grey.
(Or it might have been smoke from the eggs and toast).
Connie sat pensive and thoughtful, her head bowed, kneading her fingers with some tension that lurked just below the surface. I glanced at her over the rim of my glass as I drank.
“Do you think you have enough for your article?” I asked. My voice was brisk and bright, like I didn’t know Connie had things on her mind.
She looked up at me, and it seemed to take a second for the question to register.
“Um… yes,” she said finally. “I think I have all that I need.”
“Last day here in L.A.,” I said like a warning. “So if there’s anything – anything at all that’s been left unanswered, now is the time to ask.”
That seemed to trigger another wave of dark brooding. Connie lapsed into silence and I sat waiting patiently.
“I’m sorry about this morning,” she said at last, her voice subdued. “I overreacted.”
This wasn’t it. This wasn’t what was on her mind, but at least she was talking.
I shrugged off her apology. “That’s okay,” I said. “I guess I can understand you feeling the way you felt and thinking what you thought, given what you have seen of me over the past few days.”
She shook her head. “No,” she said, “I’ve seen enough of you
so that I should have known better. I shouldn’t have jumped to the conclusion that I did and… and I’m grateful to you – for bringing me back here and not letting me drive.” She blushed as she spoke.
“How’s your head?”
“Pounding.”
“You drank a lot of champagne in a short amount of time.”
She smiled wryly – an expression of remorse and regret. “I don’t know how you do it,” she said, shaking her head slowly and looking into my eyes. “I don’t know how you can drink so much alcohol and never feel hung over.” She waved her hand in the air, gesturing at the bourbon I was nursing. “Even now,” her voice rose a little. “You’re drinking alcohol for breakfast.”
I leaned close to her as though to share a secret. Our shoulders brushed. “I have a technique,” I intimated. “The only way to drink as much as I do and not feel hung over is to stay drunk.”
Connie looked at me with one of those pained expressions I had seen on her face so many times before. It was the face she wore whenever I was sarcastic.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said dryly and then lapsed back into dark silence.
I pushed myself to my feet and went around the kitchen cleaning up. I threw the frying pan, the eggs and the toast into the trash bin, then stared down thoughtfully for a moment at my empty glass.
Was there a dishwasher somewhere?
I stood holding the glass for a moment, and then re-filled it.
Problem solved.
Connie was watching me closely – we made eye contact.
“Rick…” Connie said suddenly in the kind of voice that precedes an explosive question, “I have something to ask you, and it’s serious.”
I braced myself. “I thought all your questions had been serious.”
“They have,” she smiled thinly. “But this one is more serious… because it’s about us.”
“Us?” I was genuinely surprised. “I didn’t know there was an ‘us’.”
“I mean it’s not about your work. It’s a personal question.”
Now I was intrigued. I went back into the living room and sat down in the big leather chair near the front door.
