CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Chaz:
I think I always liked breaking the law. Even back before I got my magic Get-out-of-Jail-Free card, the tattoo that lets me break more laws than the mugs can invent. Sure, I wanted to be a musician, to spend my days and nights immersed in the jazz clubs that ring the city, to breathe in the smoke and the stench of liquor, to watch the world around me rot, even as it regenerates. I wanted to laugh and tell stories and philosophize about life with other burned-out, jive-sweet musicians on the street corners while the sun slid over the horizon. I wanted to watch the color bleed from society, drop by bloody drop, until there was nothing left.
Nothing left but the painful need for redemption.
But instead, the family wanted me to donate my musical ear, wanted me to sort through the myriad languages and dialects, from ancient to new, so I could converse with Newbies, until they adjusted to the newspeak of the day.
I wanted to run away, to live on dimes and nickels and drink in the pure music of jazz night and day. Instead I settled for a warm bed and a billion dollars and a saxophone that saw the light of day about once a month.
For all my tough talk, I sold out. Ia€?m no rebel.
But that Get-out-of-Jail-Free card still comes in handy from time to time.
Like when I was twenty-three and my fianc??, Jeannie, died in that car wreck and jumped to some obscure, unknown life. I went after her. I broke every code in the Right to Privacy Act. I hunted down her files, hacked through the firewall into her personal records, found her new identity and her new life. If Skellar or one his buddies ever finds out what I did, theya€?ll either cage me or kill me.
But I dona€?t care. Ia€?d do it again, if I had to.
In hindsight I guess you could say I stalked her. I found out where she lived, worked, shopped; who she hung out with; what she did in her free time. And then I found a way to meet her. Ita€?s not like I could just walk up to her and say, a€?Hi, remember me? That guy you were going to marry?a€? I had to be both discreet and romantic, I had to play it out like it was the first time.
It was great in the beginning. It had all the electricity of a first kiss, all the magic of falling in love at first sight. Almost.
But despite the faint promise of a renewed relationship, there was something missing. She had a strange, vacant look in her eyes. I kept thinking I would see some spark that said she remembered me. I mean, she loved me before, right? She had to remember. Thata€?s the way it works.
See, there are two memories we cana€?t erase. Death is one. As ugly as it is, all the terror and pain and finality of dying becomes part of you and it refuses to let go.
Love is the other. You can pretend like it didna€?t exist, you can try to reprogram it or cover it up by attaching other memories, but the down-and-dirty resurrection bottom line is: if youa€?ve ever loved someone, that love will follow you. Like a stray dog you accidentally fed on a street corner, it will hunt you down. It will sleep with you, wake up with you, walk down a dark alley with you.
But Jeannie didna€?t remember. She had wiped me from her memory banks on purpose, and there was only one reason why she didna€?t remember me now.
She had never really loved me.
So I walked away.
It wasna€?t pretty and I dona€?t regret it, even though I broke the law in the process. Believe it or not, there really are limits as to how far Ia€?ll go, what laws Ia€?ll break and which ones I wona€?t. The list is pretty long for a Babysitter. Almost anything is permissible.
But something was hanging over me right now, a venomous cloud of suspicion and doubt, forcing me to reevaluate everything.
Murder.
Had my brother really gone that far? Had Russell stepped into that treacherous territory where the rules didna€?t matter anymore?
I didna€?t know for sure if what Skellar had said was true or not, but I didna€?t want my world to change. I didna€?t want my own brother to become the enemy. Because if it came down to it, I didna€?t know who would I choose. Russ or Angelique? Someone I had known all my life or someone I had known for only a few days?
The boundaries in my little kingdom were shifting, that well-worn safe map that guided me was gone, and I couldna€?t see where I was supposed to put the next step.