Sympathy for the Devil

Chapter 1-2

She snorted. “Oh, I’m sure he knows all about ‘phases.’ How’s your stepmom? Has she gone through all the Botox in Newport Beach yet?”

“I think they had to send out to Beverly Hills for a restock,” I replied with a grin.

If it hadn’t all happened to me, it would have been funny, in a clichéd sort of way. Successful psychologist has midlife crisis, dumps his wife, and trades up for a newer model. At least my stepmother wasn’t younger than I — I’d been spared that indignity — but Traci was still almost twenty years younger than my mother. Of course, that didn’t stop her from exploiting every cosmeceutical means necessary to prolong her late-thirties status for as long as possible. Maybe she was worried that my father would end up doing the same thing to her that he’d done to my mother. I think I read somewhere that off-loading wives got progressively easier as you moved down the food chain.

At any rate, I’d tried to play nice as much as I could. Luckily, I was already out of the house when my parents split up for good; my younger brother hadn’t fared so well, since he was almost eight years younger than I was. I had to say this for my father, though — he never tried to get out of paying alimony, and he continued to send my mother child support, even though Jeff was twenty-one at that point and well past dependent age as far as the courts were concerned. My father said he’d pay for Jeff as long as he was in school. Since my younger brother seemed to be on the ten-year plan at Irvine Valley College, I wasn’t going to hold my breath on the child support going away any time soon.

Lisa, my older sister, claimed that Jeff was just having a tough time because of the divorce, but seriously, when she first made that remark, it had been almost seven years since the final papers were signed, and five since Traci officially became our stepmother. After a while, things stopped being reasons and started becoming excuses.

Then again, Lisa had always babied Jeff because he was the youngest and the only boy. She and I squabbled a lot as kids, probably because we were barely two years apart, but as we got older, we didn’t so much make up and become friends as we just got on with our own lives. We never had much in common, since she was an über-organized mega-sales real estate agent in south Orange County, and I’d always done all right for myself but had never accomplished anything that extraordinary.

Frankly, I was the stereotypical middle child — never causing much trouble, never wanting to make waves. Pretty, but not the sort who would stop a guy in his tracks. Straight brown hair, brown eyes, a shade taller than average, slender but not thin, the girl next door. Boring, I thought for the millionth time, as I looked across the table and took in Nina’s perfect curls and five-foot-ten-inch frame. Even the damned busboy was loitering as he cleared the table next to ours so he could get an eyeful.

“Children of shrinks are always messed up,” Nina said. “You’re lucky you got out with just a few minor neuroses.”

“‘Lucky,’” I repeated, thinking of Danny, who seemed to care more about his computer and his online gaming than he did me, of my bleached stepmother and my stoner brother…and especially my mother. The breakup with my father had made her go all New Age-y and spiritual as some sort of Zen coping mechanism, and lately her airy-fairy outlook on life had been driving me nuts.

Giving me a stern look, Nina reached for her water glass. “I smell a pity party coming on,” she said after taking a drink. “Which I definitely will not allow. Especially with your birthday coming up next week. What do you want to do, anyway?”

“Nothing. It’s on a Tuesday — how much partying can I do on a Tuesday?”

“We could still go out to dinner or something.” Her eyes narrowed. “Unless Danny’s taking you out?”

“Danny?” I laughed, but I didn’t sound very amused, even to myself. “If he actually remembers that it’s my birthday, I’ll probably fall down dead of a heart attack.”

“Well, did you tell him it was?”

“I might have mentioned it once or twice.” And I had, even though the last comment had been almost a month ago. Still, the guy was practically glued to his iPhone. He could have written it down and put an alarm on the entry or something so he wouldn’t forget. Unfortunately, that assumed a level of concern I was pretty certain didn’t exist.

“So if he forgets, are you going to dump him?”

“I might,” I said evasively. “Look, something is better than nothing, isn’t it?”

Nina sighed. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. You were doing fine before Danny came along, and you’ll be fine when he’s gone. I think he’s more of a distraction than anything else. If you’ve got a relationship going on, even a half-assed one, you’re not going to work very hard to find someone else.”

“Maybe there isn’t anyone else,” I argued.

“There’s always someone else,” she said calmly. “All this stuff about there being only one perfect person for everybody is crap. Don’t tell me you’ve started reading romance novels in your spare time, ’cause that’s the only way I can see you starting to think that’s how the world works.”

“No romance novels.” That was true; I’d always been more of a mystery/thriller reader. I held up a hand in a mocking imitation of the Girl Scout salute. “I solemnly swear that there are no Nora Roberts or Barbara Michaels books lurking under my bed.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

The conversation drifted off onto other topics after that, and then it was time to head out and get in a little more shopping before the early dark of a January afternoon fell. Rather, I got to watch Nina create havoc with her platinum card as we wended our way down the Third Street Promenade. She’d landed a cushy gig as the manager of an extremely high-end art gallery in Santa Monica, and her paychecks were a lot fatter than mine. But I didn’t mind watching as she shopped; at least it kept me occupied and away from my apartment for a few more hours. I didn’t even have a cat to go home to. My building didn’t allow pets, and besides, I had a mortal fear of turning into the crazy cat lady. Anything but that.

Eventually, though, I had to return to my apartment. Once there, I connected my phone to my Bose sound system with Bluetooth and turned up the volume to drown out the silence. Then I got to work on laundry and bills and all the other fun stuff I inevitably put off until the weekend. It worked a little; I actually had stretches of a half-hour or so where I didn’t feel completely alone.

As it turned out, my birthday ended up sucking even more than I thought it would. Not only did Danny completely forget that Tuesday, January twenty-third, held any special significance, but Nina came down with a nasty cold that was making the rounds and couldn’t possibly have been expected to go anywhere, except maybe the local drugstore to pick up more tissues and NyQuil.

“Sorry,” she told me. I winced as a particularly piercing sneeze came through the earpiece of the hands-free unit on my cell phone. “I’ve been sucking zinc lozenges like there’s no tomorrow, but I haven’t noticed much of a difference.”

“It’s all right,” I said miserably. Someone behind me honked, and I realized the light I’d been sitting at had finally turned green. I took my foot off the brake and slowly moved forward. “I’ll figure out something.”

“What about Jennifer or Micaela?” Nina asked, naming the only two from our group of friends at UCLA that we’d continued to hang out with after graduation.

“Jennifer’s up skiing in Mammoth, and Micaela’s production schedule just got bumped ten days. She’ll be lucky if she gets home before midnight.” A film major, Micaela was actually doing what so many people only dreamed of — she was a production assistant at Warner Brothers. Unfortunately, her dream job meant her schedule was beyond screwy. I repressed the urge to heave a world-weary sigh and said, “It’s all right. My dad sent me a huge check — guilt money for being in Hawaii on my birthday, I guess — so I’m going shopping.”

“Good girl.” Nina sneezed again. “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

“I won’t,” I promised. “You go lie down. You sound terrible.”

“You should see how I look. It’s even worse.”

Somehow I doubted that, since even with a head cold, Nina always managed to look fabulous, but I didn’t argue. I just made some more sympathetic noises into the phone, assured her I was fine, and hung up.

My father really had sent me a birthday card with a check for five hundred dollars in it. While I had no intention of blowing even a third of the money that particular night, I thought a little shopping at The Grove might make me feel better about being completely abandoned on my birthday. Oh, I supposed if I had really wanted to, I could have driven down to Orange County to see my mother, but the traffic was so bad that by the time I got off work at five, it would have taken me at least two hours to get there. Besides, my mother and I already had plans to get together on Saturday. No doubt she’d take me to some “fabulous” new organic place she’d found in Laguna Beach, and I’d have to pretend I was happy eating something covered in sprouts and suspiciously lacking in meat. But if it made her happy, I’d survive. I figured I could always get a burger on the way home if I felt particularly starved afterward.

The Grove was located near the Farmer’s Market at the corner of Third and Fairfax. Although my company’s offices were a scant mile and a half from the shopping center, it took me almost fifteen minutes to get there, crawl up to the top level of the parking structure, and finally drag myself out of my Mercedes C-class, feeling vaguely homicidal. I reflected it was a good thing I didn’t have to do much driving. For some reason, being in a car really brought home to me how overpopulated Southern California actually was. When you started to sympathize with serial killers because at least they were reducing the surplus population, you probably had a problem.

By the way, the car was a graduation present from my father. I sure as hell couldn’t have afforded it on my salary. I had to give him that — he definitely wasn’t stingy. And in L.A., where what you drove was almost as important as what you did for a living, having something better than the tired Honda Accord I’d been piloting since tenth grade was a definite relief.

Intellectually, I knew that I shouldn’t have my identity wrapped up in my car, and I didn’t…mostly…but the change in people’s attitudes after I started driving the Mercedes told me there was a very good reason why people in this town were so car-obsessed. Besides, I felt safe in the car, the gas mileage was fairly decent, and it hadn’t given me a moment’s trouble in the almost four years that I’d been driving it. I couldn’t say that much for my Honda, which by the end was making piteous groaning noises and leaking oil. It had practically been begging to be taken out behind the barn and shot. Not knowing what else to do with it, I’d donated it to charity. The tax write-off was helpful at least, although I came out of the transaction feeling as if I’d done something vaguely illegal.

I pulled my coat more closely around me as I hurried over to the elevator and pushed the button. Some people might have tried to claim that Southern California didn’t have seasons, but they must not have ever lived there. Sure, it didn’t snow in L.A., but it could get pretty darn cold during the winter. Okay, maybe not cold compared to say, Quebec or something, but certainly cold enough to require a warm coat if you were going to spend any more time outdoors than simply walking to your car.

It had rained the night before, but at least by the time I got to The Grove, the weather was dry. Shoving my chilled fingers into my pockets, I stepped out of the elevator and moved into the open plaza in the center of the mall. The Grove was always fairly crowded, but that night it was more maneuverable than usual. January was sort of a dead season for retail sales, and the cold weather probably wasn’t helping much.

I didn’t have a real game plan; I just wandered in and out of several stores, thinking something would catch my eye. Having that much spare money burning a hole in my pocket certainly wasn’t my normal experience. Usually I had to budget and figure out if I’d really have enough extra cash to buy that great pair of shoes I’d been lusting after, or whether it would be better to put it away in case of any real financial emergencies. I’d say my better nature won out only about half the time, but at least I had some killer shoes.

Eventually, I came to Victoria’s Secret. Part of my brain tried to instruct me in the futility of buying fancy underwear when I didn’t have anyone around to give a damn about how I looked in it, but I’d always had a weakness for girly stuff. Besides, they were having a sale, and damn it, it was my birthday.

It was probably my musing over the matching red satin bra and panties I’d just purchased that made me a little absentminded. Then again, maybe that was just what he wanted me to think.

Whatever the reason, I was peering into the bag as I left the store — I tended to get paranoid about dropping a*****e receipt and having someone somehow steal my identity from the four digits of my Visa number printed on it — and I walked right into him.

“Sorry!” I said automatically. Then I looked up to see who I had collided with.

It was him.

He smiled at me.

“Hello, Christa,” he said.