Chloe was outside the club, smoking a cigarette four feet away from the building as California law (and, more importantly, Nicky) required. Chloe was one of those people who only smoked when she was upset. So I knew she was angry even before I got within hearing distance.
Her sweet face hardened when she saw me. “I’ve been trying to call you all night. This private investigator stopped by here earlier today and he was asking me and Nicky some questions. Then he told us some things . . .”
I didn’t hear the rest because I kept on walking past her without even pausing, I was already most of the way up the stairs by the time she dropped the private investigator bomb. And I let the landing door close on the rest of her words before she could tell me anything else.
. . .
Nicky was knocking on my door not even ten minutes later, but by then I was in bed, curled up in the fetal position, and I had no intention of getting up. High School Davie was back in charge. And the absolute silence she demanded slipped over me like a welcome friend.
“C’mon, Davie girl, I know you’re in there,” he said from outside my door. “Your ass better let me in.”
Then when those nice words didn’t work, he said, “Don’t make me go all the way back to my house to get my spare keys.”
Baldwin Hills was about sixteen miles south of Hollywood. It was late at night, so the traffic wouldn’t be too bad, but it would be inconvenient, and Nicky couldn’t abide being inconvenienced. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to get up out of bed and answer the door.
“I know you’re sad or whatever, but if you make my ass go all the way to Baldwin Hills to get them keys, then you fired.”
It was a good sally as far as threats went, but I felt exhausted and hopeless throughout every bone of my body, and I didn’t have the strength to move, much less walk across the floor and face Nicky’s angry questions, and much, much less fight High School Davie’s desire to just not talk anymore or ever again.
After five more minutes of threats and knocking, he went away, only to let himself in with his landlord key about forty-five minutes later.
“This is some bullshit,” he said, standing above me. Then: “You hungry?”
I didn’t answer. Whatever desperate magic had transformed me from an ugly mute fifteen years ago was gone. I was once again High School Davie. Without words, and the kind of girl a boy like James could easily not know existed.
Nicky made me some soup anyway. I didn’t eat it, didn’t even respond to the spoon being thrust in my face.
“This is some bullshit,” he said again.
Then he took away the soup, turned off all the lights, and got into bed with me, wrapping me up in his large arms.
He was taller and broader than James. I had known that technically before, but I understood it physically now that I had lain with both of them.
I didn’t fight off his embrace, but I didn’t come out of the fetal position, either.
And the next morning, Nicky woke up to find me still curled up in a little ball, still staring at the wall, still not talking, and still not eating.
He made a call, and twelve hours later Mama Jane came through the door.
. . .
I could feel her large hand stroking my hair as Nicky explained to her what happened.
This is when I found out that my accepting money for those pictures was what had led Veronica’s investigator to what all I’d done. He had somehow gotten ahold of my bank statements and had taken interest in the two large sums of money that I deposited into my account in August 2002 and April 2003.