The Kissing Game Page 13

  And so I sit there, sipping raspberry bubbles, wallowing.

  Chapter 11

  “El infierno está empedrado de buenas intenciones.”

  Hell is paved with good intentions.

  The next two weeks roll by in cloud of my own misery. At my job, I’m assigned to two new attorneys, Anne and Doug. Anne is a short, dark haired, dark-eyed voluptuous woman who spends most of her time crying in her office (over what I don’t know, but I suspect a man). She constantly blows her nose and wipes her eyes. “I have allergies,” she says. Doug is a tall blond balding man who deems that giving me work is a human rights violation, so I barely see him other than when he exits his office to meet his new wife for lunch. She’s a nurse who greets him in the lobby by nearly jumping into his arms. Newlyweds. Watching them is like watching cats regurgitate.

  Most days I spend forcing Doug to give me work or editing Anne’s documents. She insists on making changes to sentences and then revising them back to their original condition, as if she fears her edits are wrong. Then she edits them again, and we go round and round like this indefinitely, sometimes all day, until the document eventually returns to its original condition and she returns to crying in her office.

  On most days I visit Todd’s desk, but I have to pass Robert’s empty office, which is totally devoid of life, a great barren desk across from empty bookshelves, lacking any evidence that he ever worked here. Whenever I walk by, I feel like a murderer.

  After my second week of hell at work, I’m striding past Robert’s empty office when I notice a box sitting on his desk. Curious, I step inside to read the label: “555 California.” Wondering whether one of the file clerks misplaced yet another set of files, I open the box. Inside I find documents for a children’s home in the Philippines called Children’s Refuge Project, along with a purchase agreement for a property and pictures of a large house. Of course, the file clerks misplaced it; they were likely in a hurry to get out of the office on this Friday afternoon. I thumb through more files and notice a name with an email address: favlove@hotmail.com. I stand there in the unlit office, the sun sparking off cars crossing the Bay Bridge outside the window, and I wonder where I’ve read that email address before. It’s familiar. I just can’t remember. Just when I’m about to take the file and find a better home for it, Cory and Henry walk by. They catch sight of me, lunge inside Robert’s deserted office, and close the door, looking as if bandits have stolen their underwear.

  “What?” I ask, the file in my hand.

  Henry’s blue plaid sweater vest bunches around his waist. “The Chairman has security footage of the night you broke into his place. The footage is grainy and dark, but definitely...you.” His sweater vest is hyperventilating.

  “Oh no.” I half expect police officers to barge in behind them and arrest me on the spot.

  “I’ve seen the tape, too, sweetie. It’s you, for sure.” Cory looks at me as if I’m about to die.

  “What am I gonna do?” Prison time. It’s inevitable at this point.

  “Thing is,” Henry begins. “I overheard my boss on the phone talking to the security company. He seemed really worried about someone being in his house, as if he might get in trouble himself. I couldn’t figure out why he would be so worried. Did you see anything while you were inside his house?”

  “Like what?” I ask.

  Henry shakes his head, as if searching for ideas. “Insider trading documents? Anything that looked shady lying around his house?”

  “No.”

  Cory shrugs and his pink and yellow tie-dye shirt shrugs too. He adds, “I checked the Chairman’s internet usage. Only thing I could find was the occasional visit to a porn website. It was always brief. Always late at night, but that’s pretty standard stuff around here,” Cory says. We stand there in the empty office, three partners in crime, except I’m the only one going to jail.

  “I’m going to jail.” I feel a prickly chill.

  “You sure, you saw nothing shady?” Henry asks me again.

  I plunk down into Robert’s old chair and put my face in my hands, rubbing until my cheeks feel hot and red. Meanwhile Henry and Cory stand there over me, like husbands waiting for me to deliver some nonexistent baby. “I don’t know anything. I didn’t see anything … But, now that I think about it, while I was in his house, I first grabbed the wrong envelope out of the mailbox. A bunch of photos of young women fell out. It was weird.”

  “Like what?” Cory asks happily.

  “Like professional photos, like the kind actors or models get, only these were clearly young women… you know… showing off their bodies, wearing weird outfits, ball in the mouth, stuff like that. And I remember there was an email address pasted to one of the photos.”

  “An email address?” Henry perks.

  “Yeah, like a contact. Now what kind of porn pictures send an email contact?” I ask excitedly.

  “The kind soliciting prostitutes?” Cory suggests blissfully. “Do you remember the address?”

  “I don’t know.” Then, as if by instinct, I yank out the document from the file and hold it out like a gift to Cory and Henry. “This. The address was like this, only different… favfun, I think.” I point to document. “But this is a Children’s Refuge Project in the Philippines. What would this document have to do with prostitution?”

  Henry grabs the document and stares at the page for several seconds, his eyes scanning as though he’s reading a foreign language. “That’s my boss’s charity. He’s purchased the house for victims of human trafficking in the Philippines. It’s mostly for young women, children, who live there. It’s supposed to help get children out of prostitution, give them an education, and help them find jobs. The place is a charity project meant to stop human trafficking. My boss has spent millions on it.”

  Cory and I eye the document over Henry’s shoulders. I can feel the revelation quaking over us as if we should shield our eyes from the possibility.

  “You don’t think…?” I ask Henry.

  Henry stares at the document.

  “He’s into child prostitution?” Cory looks a little too happy at the prospect of finding dirt against the Chairman.

  “Are you sure this was the same email address as the one on the photographs you saw in the Chairman’s house?” Henry wants to know.

  “No, it was similar. This one is favlove, but that one was favmore.”

  “Let me keep this,” Cory suggests, taking the file box into his arms like a baby. Henry puts the folder back into the box. “I’ll look into it and see what I can find out about those email addresses. Meanwhile, you two act like the pretty little tramps you are and head back to your desks.”

  “We’ve got a little time,” Henry tells me. “The security company just sent the footage to my boss’s office. I’ll hide it for as long as I can, which won’t be long.”

  I feel my face turn hot with fear. “Oh god, this is karma,” I say, “for being a bad person and getting Robert fired. It’s like justice in those old western films, when the bad guy ends up being shot between the eyes at the end. I’m the bad guy.”

  Cory and Henry eye me.

  “You need to calm down,” Henry says.

  “I’m telling you. It’s karma.”

  “Let’s go to your computer for a minute,” Cory suggests. We follow him out of my office and down the hall and take the stairs to my new desk. When we arrive, Cory sets the box down and begins searching the favfun email address on my computer, obviously too excited about this new information to wait to search on his own computer. His fingers smoke across the keyboard while Henry and I lean over his shoulders watching the screen. Cory lands on a website, which leads him to another with an email address, and then another, and finally he lands on a website displaying pictures of scantily clad girls ducking their heads provocatively, their positions labored but ready for sex, their clothes nearly nonexistent. They look like children.

  “Those are just the kinds of pictures I saw in the Chairman’s mailbox,
” I say. “Only these girls look really young.”

  Under each picture, their ages appear: Maxine, 14 years old; Sylvie, 17 years old; Maggie, 16 years old.

  “Child prostitution,” Cory whispers. “Shit.”

  Just then two partners stride around my partition heading somewhere. We remain motionless like opossums until they’re out of earshot.

  “Holy shitcakes,” Henry whispers. “My boss is a pedophile.”

  “Indeedio,” Cory interjects. “You might be able to use this against him before we send him to jail.” Cory smiles. “Sick bastard.”

  “I mean, couldn’t the Chairman just be trying to help these women? Why do we assume this means he’s a pedophile?” I ask.

  “Why would he be so freaked out that someone was in his house then? I knew something was up. I knew he was hiding something,” Henry replies.

  Cory soon slides the box under his arm. He deems that keeping the files in his office is the best scenario. “Don’t say a word of this to anyone. No one will look for them in my office,” Cory explains, carrying the boxes as he strolls toward the elevators. Henry strides away looking as though his world has turned aslant. Perhaps picturing his boss as a pedophile is taking its toll. Now that I think about it, the idea isn’t so surprising.

  Other thoughts, however, propagate like tufted stalks in my mind. I begin to wonder if I could actually use this information as leverage to get Robert’s job back and perhaps protect myself from unemployment or jail time. More importantly, if the Chairman is a pedophile, we can get him locked up where he belongs. I feel as though I might be able to right some wrongs. Right a lot of wrongs, actually. And really, for the past two weeks, the desire to right wrongs has been my primary prayer. The ideas shimmers like a grassy valley on a spring day.

  That night after work, I decide to avoid doing my laundry and to take care of something much more important instead.

  After riding the bus over to the Marina District, I step off, my mental compass telling me exactly where I’m headed. The address became amalgamated in my head years ago. I memorized it during the first few weeks on the job because I didn’t want to accidentally end up in this neighborhood and be forced to interact with him on my off days. My plan was to keep a wide berth around the Marina District at all times.

  I glide past an organic grocery store busy with Friday-night shoppers carrying bags or pushing carts. Then, I cross the street and pass a liquor store, a hamburger place, the Marina Green where a few homeless people sit around in the dark waiting for life to begin. Another block, I cross a busy intersection and see the house across the street. It’s a modest-looking Spanish-style house with a red-tiled roof. For several moments, I stand on the corner, feeling indecision hammering at me. Should I go to his house and knock on the door? What am I going to say? Have I planned this out? Do I ever plan anything out?

  Briefly, I scan the neighborhood, which consists of charming Spanish-style houses standing shoulder to shoulder. I can still smell the hamburger joint. Unable to move towards the house, I contemplate food instead, and then turn around and head back toward the smell. Inside the small white-walled diner, I order fries and a Coke. Behind my table, two women sit talking and eating. I hear their plates clank but can’t see them. I tune them out, as if they’re suddenly speaking silently. Instead I watch the slow-moving people outside the window.

  The place buzzes and cackles with the dinner-hour crowd filling in. I take a few more bites of my French fries and sip down my Coke. Then, I slide my bag over my shoulder and walk out of the restaurant. Jaywalking, I cross the street, which is narrow and full of slow moving cars. Soon, I arrive back at his block, where I see his house unchanged. This time, I stride all the way to his door and knock three times and stand back. The creak of footsteps. The door swings open.

  Robert stands there wearing a grey t-shirt, jeans. Bare feet. His hair looks as if he’s just run from madmen.

  “Hi,” I say, the only word of which I’m capable because I have the urge to jump on a horse and ride away into the night. “Can I come in for a minute?”

  His hand still holds the doorknob and for a second he just looks at me. Then he makes a sweeping gesture, which causes queasy swirls in my stomach. Even so, I stride inside his house, my flats clacking on his stone floors. He closes the door. Only one black sofa sits against the wall under the window. In front of it is a small glass coffee table. One long blood-colored rug lies on the floor. It looks Persian, exotic. On the left, the kitchen looks darkly lit and empty, full of sharp metallic corners. Off to the right is, I assume, his bedroom, maybe an office. Nearby is a long black rectangular dining table under a modern chandelier that looks like sharp knives dangling.

  “What do you want?” he asks, his blue eyes looking bloodshot. His biceps under his short sleeves look as though they could hurt someone. I smell the faint scent of alcohol.

  Robert’s eyes travel down to my legs to my feet. Suddenly I realize what I’m wearing. A sweater over a pencil skirt and flats—a choice that suddenly feels like a mistake. Robert hated when I wore skirts. He strictly forbade it. Why? I have no idea. Because he’s Robert.

  “Could we sit down and talk a minute?”

  His lips start to move, but then he doesn’t answer my question. He just walks over toward the couch and points for me to sit down. I assume this action amounts to a silent request for me to join him, so I take the few terrifying paces to the couch and sit. He sits, too.

  “I came here to talk to you about … everything,” I say, putting my bag on the floor next to me, instantly feeling as though I’m trying to outrun a cheetah even though I’m not moving. Robert gives the same expression one would give a tax auditor while the lamplight from the small end table shines on his cheek, on his long eyelashes. I twist internally.

  “I just don’t know how to start,” I confess.

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning.” He’s so logical that it’s really annoying.

  “It was all a big mistake. I tried to fix it,” I blurt and then wait for him to speak. Why hadn’t I planned this better? Why did I just show up at his door like an imbecile without a plan?

  “You mean destroying my life was a big mistake?” he clarifies. “Because that’s what you did.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For ruining my life?” His voice is cool, the smell of alcohol more pronounced. “There’s nothing your apology can fix, so no need to apologize. Actually, what you can do is tell me whether you came up with it all on your own, or whether your friends schemed with you?” He glares fiery eyes at me. “Was it Henry? Cory? Your little tie-dyed buddy in I.T. Did he get hold of the elevator’s security tape?”

  I don’t answer. No need to implicate my friends.

  Then Robert stands and cups the back of his neck while pacing across the tiled floor, first away from me, and then back, like a caged cheetah in the zoo. Whatever he might want to do to me, I’m sure I deserve it. He points at me, his head shaking slightly. “I just can’t figure out how you could have done this. In the Chairman’s office, it crossed my mind, briefly, but I dismissed it. There’s no way Caroline could do that, I told myself. Her little friends, maybe, but not Caroline… No, no, I said. She must realize how hard it was for me to get that job, how hard I had to work to make partner at such a young age. Do you? Do you realize?”

  I shake my head.

  “Let me elucidate for you then. Let’s start with undergraduate school.” He wobbles a little while he talks, his voice calm. “I graduated cumma sum laude. Scored near perfect on the LSAT. Worked like a dog as a summer intern, cradling idiotic clients who would have just as well shot me as soon as they were done with me. Umm, let’s see. Oh yes, I lived without a personal life for many years. All to become partner so a little evil redhead could ruin it in one second in an elevator.” He zigzags, trips over the edge of the Persian rug, and nearly falls.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, watching him with concern.

  “And that’s what you cam
e here for? To apologize?” His bloodshot blue eyes look disgustedly at me.

  “Sort of.”

  He takes two paces to me and reaches out his hand like a claw, which he then uses to clutch the top of my head, as if I were in an electric chair and his hand could shoot jolts of electricity. “I’d really like to know what goes on in there.” He squeezes. “We worked together for two years. I counted on you. I knew you. And here you’re just a massive question mark!” He roughly removes his hand from the top of my head as if he were removing an invisible hat.

  “Have you been drink--?”

  In the middle of my question, he swings around and wags his finger at me, his face muscles tightening. “Don’t you dare come to my house, uninvited, mind you, and have the gall, the sheer audacity, the limitless nerve, to ask me such a question, after, after ruining my life!”

  While he fumes over me, my mind conjures up what I want to say to him. That I came here to tell him that I’m going to help him get his job back. That I’m sorry I acted foolishly. That I thought he hated me. That it seemed his sole purpose in life was to make me miserable. That I was tired of his cruelty, fed up with his constant scowling, his dictator attitude, the ludicrous dress code, the nitpicking about perfume smells and timesheets. That I was tired of feeling like a peasant holding my hand out for the crumb of his kindness every day. That I had acted rashly, unforgivably, and before I had the chance to think about my rashness, I’d already dropped the tape into the mailbox. That I risked life and limb to get it back but failed. He should know how hard I tried, right? Instead, my mouth is barren, a fruitless plane. I just watch as he scowls at me, looking like a devil ready to erupt in angry flames. Even in his anger, in his inebriated state, I find looking at him a visceral experience. From my sitting position, his tall, wild haired, flush-faced beauty is akin to standing over the abyss and feeling the wind whipping up at you and still wanting to jump.