Page 93 of Dark Ugly Places

“What?” is the only thing she can think to say.

“I asked Lucita to order more beer, but she said Martha does all the shopping now. Who is Martha, Bambi?”

My helper. My savior. My guardian. My friend.

“She’s no one. Just a woman I hired to help me while you were gone.”

Jason smiles, his eyes narrowing. “What exactly do you need help with?”

Bambi swallows, her mind racing. With you. With what you’ve done. What you are.

“Just errands. No big deal.”

He slams his hand down on the desk, his face suddenly inches from hers. “Except it is. This is my house, too. Don’t you think I deserve to know who is working for my wife?”

Bambi smiles, but inside she is fuming. How dare he? With all the lies he’s told, all the mistrust he’s created. A wave of nausea pulses through her, and she pushes it down. If only she could run from the room, out into the fresh air. Escape this place. Escape him.

“That’s rich, coming from you,” she mutters.

Jason turns. “What did you say to me?”

“I said that’s rich coming from you! You’re on set after set sleeping with who knows how many actresses, and now you come home, all the scandal and lies taking over our life, Jason, and you want to try to tell me who I can and cannot hire?”

His chest heaves. His hand whips through the air so fast she cannot move. Her cheek blisters. Her eye explodes with pain. She gasps, unable to steady herself, and falls out of the chair to the ground.

He stands above her, breathing, watching her quiver.

“Don’t ever speak to me like that again.” Jason sniffs once and turns from her. “You’d better ice that face,” he sneers, “if you don’t want to make the Cancun directors throw up at the sight of you.”

She glares at him, her body pulsing, her face throbbing with pain. She longs to stand above him, to watch him cower, to see him suffer the way she has.

Sure, Jason Redfern was Jason Redfern before she found him. But every bit of his success had been encouraged by her, supported by her, helped along by her. When he failed, when the press hated him, when his phone didn’t ring, she was there to pick him back up again, keep him strong and going. Jason Redfern, with his flashy career and adoring fans, needing her, keeping her, drawing from her like an endless well. He’d become fat, suckling off her for over a decade. She is unable to even justify why anymore. And where would her career be now with what he’d done to her? The bones in her body suddenly ache all over.

“You think you can keep this up, but you’re wrong,” she says quietly. “You don’t deserve this life. And soon, it’s all going to fall to pieces.”

He sits back and folds his hands in front of his lips. “You’re wrong about that, Bambs. I deserve it all. And more.”

She holds silent as he leans toward her.

“Don’t you think I deserve it all?”

“I think you deserve everything you get.”

In one swift motion, he pulls her up, hands tight around her waist. He pulls her to him, his expression vacant, like he feels nothing much at all. “Don’t ever try to leave me, Bambs,” he says, his voice barely a whisper. “The only place you belong is right here with me.”

40

Martha

Pain is an emotion, a response to be controlled and nothing more. Once you find the switch, where it lurks inside you, you can simply turn it off. I’ve been trying to turn Nicola’s off for a long time, but she won’t let me. It’s almost as if she wants it, like the hurt is a feeding tube connecting her to an invisible life force. I wonder for a moment if Bambi’s is like that, too. Except that this pain is different. We sit in the upstairs guest room, Bambi in the bed. She hasn’t moved since the night before last when Jason returned for what Agnes termed “damage control.” She’s been listless, staring into space, eyes reddening and then filling with tears but never quite crying. It’s a funny, uncharacteristic mood that I welcome, knowing that beyond it lies a neat little opening into which only I can fit.

“What about Dr. Weis? You liked her last time, didn’t you?”

“Which one was she again?” asks Bambi, shifting the ice pack over her left eye to reveal part of the deep, purple bruising. Her other eye flickers open to stare at me. She’s reluctantly taking the methadone Dr. Allan gave her, this time for her face.

“She’s the one you were going to see for the cysts, remember? I made the appointment, but you had to cancel?”

Bambi lets her eyes fall closed. “Yeah, all right. Call her. Tell her I need to get in.”