“So you think I create rules but ignore everyone else’s?” There is a word for that. An obvious word, one that I should be able to produce without an iota of effort. My mind clenches uselessly. Oh god. Is this the beginning of dying? How much worse will it get? If I can’t think of this word, this simple, obvious word… Mark turns right, and Kate is saying something about ticket prices being a crime in themselves. Mark swerves around a slow car and her bag bumps against my leg. It’s cold, enough so that I feel it through the thin flannel of my pants. I reach over and pull at the neck of her bag. “You have ice in there?” I can see in now, see the gallon-sized freezer bag full of ice cubes, two diet sodas peeking at me, one inside of a slightly squashed theater cup. “And a used cup?”
She flushes, pulling the bag away and pushing it into the floorboard, her jaw working at the M&Ms before she swallows. “It’s a plastic cup, Helena. They can be reused.” She says it the same way Simon used to speak. As if I’m the crazy one and her actions are perfectly normal.
“I’m not wearing shoes.” It the only response I think of, and it doesn’t really help my cause.
“We’ll get you shoes,” Kate beams, and I can tell right now they are going to try and make this experience FUN. I don’t want fun. I want to be back in my living room, in front of my fire. I could be rereading Mark’s pages. I could be outlining the next chapter, not that Mark will be writing tonight. He seems to have completely tossed aside our work, his focus switching to crap like this.
“The mall is open,” Mark points to the giant complex, one which has grown since my last visit, the movie theater squished somewhere in its depths. “I can run in and grab a pair of shoes.”
“I’ll run in.” Kate sounds offended, and I feel like a child, stuck between two parents. The fact that I don’t want to go to the movie seems to be lost on both of them.
“Mark can go.” I’ll have better luck with Kate in the car, alone. I can order her to cancel this stupid field trip and have her drive me back home before Mark figures out the difference between ballet flats and Toms. I point to the west entrance. “Park there.” He pulls into a spot and I try and remember the layout of the mall, in search of a store as far from us as possible. “I wear size nine. I want—”
“I’ll find a pair.” He turns the engine off and opens the door.
“You aren’t going to leave the truck on?” I overdo my tone of concern, and he cocks a suspicious head at me. “It’s cold out,” I add, sinking back against the seat, in an attempt to look as pitiful as possible. He can’t leave us in the cold. He won’t. It’ll go against every protective bone in that big body.
“I know what you’re thinking, Helena.”
I open my eyes wide, the innocent face one I haven’t used in years, not since I was last questioned by police. He shakes his head at me, shrugging out of his jacket, and passing it to me. “Keep the doors closed and you’ll be fine for the next ten minutes.” He swings the door shut on my reply. I growl against the leather of his coat.
“You guys have kidnapped me, you realize that?” I turn my anger on Kate, who is halfway through unwrapping a Starburst.
She pushes the yellow square into her mouth. “You did…” she ventures, speaking around the candy, “get into the car with us and scream at us to drive away. I don’t think you can call that kidnapping. Besides,” she brightens. “It’ll be fun! When’s the last time you went to a movie?”
KATE
She doesn’t know why, but it is the wrong thing to say. She always picks the wrong things to say. Last week, she made the horrific blunder of congratulating a pregnant woman who was, in fact, just a little chubby. And that was just one example. There have been a hundred more, all accompanied by the sinking feeling hitting her gut right now.
Helena deflates, her anger seeping into something else. Sadness? She looks away, toward the mall. Maybe she wishes that Kate had gone inside instead. There is a twist of jealousy at the easy relationship she seems to have with Mark, their interactions lacking the stiffness that Kate has always felt with the woman. It isn’t fair. She’s championed for Helena for thirteen years. She helped to make her famous and protected her against the publishers, the press, the readers.
Yet, Mark is the one who Helena has let in. When he argues with her, she doesn’t blink. When he touches her shoulder, she doesn’t move away. And this book… whatever it is… she is sharing it with him. Maybe that’s why their relationship has grown so quickly. Maybe it’s something between two artistic minds, the writing process a bonding one, a type of personal interaction that her contracts and deadlines can’t compare to.
She abandons the question about movies. Maybe Helena’s last movie was scary, some horrific slasher film that triggered a panic attack. Or it could have been one of those painful biopics, the kind that look great in trailers, and then end up boring the life out of you for a hundred and twenty painful minutes. She eases her hand into the space by the door and drops the Starbucks wrapper on the floor.
“I can’t believe he left us out in the cold.” Helena grumbles into the leather of Mark’s jacket.
“Me too.” Kate warms to the idea of an imperfect Mark. “What an asshole.” Bonding over a common enemy, that strategy might work. “I mean,” she continues, “why wouldn’t he leave the truck running? No one’s going to steal it with us inside.”
Helena turns to her, the word IDIOT written across her features. “He didn’t want me to steal it and drive myself home. Or for me to get you to drive me home.”
“Oh.” Kate shifts in the seat, Helena uncomfortably close, even though Mark’s seat is now vacant. “Was that your intention?”
“Of course.”
“You don’t want to go to the movie?” It just doesn’t make sense. It’s not like Helena has other plans. And this movie is supposed to be hilarious. She could stand to laugh a little. Kate would be willing to bet that she hasn’t laughed since… her mind instantly sobers. Since that little girl lived upstairs.
“No.” Helena says shortly, turning to face the mall, her eyes on a passing couple. The man puts his arm around the woman and Helena looks away.
“It’ll be funny,” Kate says quietly. “I read that it’s good, when writing, to clear your mind every once in a while.”
“Thanks for the writing advice,” Helena says tartly. “I’ve never done this before.”
She’s in rare form tonight. Kate knew they shouldn’t have gone by her house. She tried to tell Mark that it was a waste of time, that Helena—if she had already turned down the movie invite—wouldn’t change her mind. And now he is in the safety of the warm mall while she freezes her ass off with a possibly-kidnapped client. “How’s it going with Mark? The book, I mean.”
“It’s fine. He’s talented, which is a nice surprise.”
“How much have you guys gotten done?” She quietly moves her hand inside her purse, stealing out another Starburst.
“The rule isn’t against eating in the car, Kate.”
“I know that,” she says defensively. Except of course, that she sort of hadn’t. Not when Helena glared at the slightest bit of wrapper noise, or chewing noise, or each time the ice shifted in her purse and made noise. Maybe she shouldn’t have brought the ice. But no one had Diet Dr Pepper anymore. And she didn’t want to go through an entire movie without a drink. And she’d assumed, while filling up the bag at the hotel’s ice machine, that Helena wasn’t coming, so why would it matter? Mark wouldn’t care. Mark probably wouldn’t even notice.
Now, she feels stupid and fat, unable to stop herself from eating during a chance to have a real conversation with her client. There is no way, in the theater, she’ll be able to pull out the bag of ice and cup, assemble the contraband soda and pour in the first can. Not with Helena right next to her, all appalled and righteous, with her naturally thin body and—she stops herself. Helena is dying. If there is a pity party to be had, Kate is the wrong host.