ONLY YOU - REVELATIONS
PREVIOUSLY
Tea undressed slowly, stopping to stare at herself in the mirror. All in a day's work, huh Tea? She
shook it off. She needed this case, this would be the make or break. And Matt was counting on her.
This stuff was nothing compared to what she'd done in the past, anyway.
So why did she feel so empty?
She lay in bed restless, her mind working, going in a thousand directions. This is how it's done. You
have to be tough. You have to pull through, if you're not successful you're nothing. If you're
not a lawyer, you're nothing, and a lawyer's got to be tough as nails, if she's a woman, and if
she's going to really make it. I have to make it. Forget about the other stuff, that's not for
you. Everyone else can have their picket fences, it's a sacrifice I have to make. Better not to
risk it anyway. Not if.. not if it means being hurt like that again. Better not to have a heart.
Better not to have a heart..
Matthew Eagan slept fitfully.
He’s back in LA, months ago, before things got really bad. But not long before.Greg Stratton is lounging on his leather couch; he had let himself in, Matthew doesn’t know how. "Danny says hello," Greg tells him casually. That’s his brother, Daniel Stratton. Close personal friend of Matt’s, or so he tends to think. As close as he tends to get. "He’s wondering why we haven’t seen too much of you lately. He’s wondering if you’re having any, personal problems." Well, yes, Matthew thinks, I am having a personal problem with people wanting to kill me. But he told him no. "That’s good," said Greg, "because we miss having you around. And we’d hate for you to fall in with the wrong people." The wrong people, yes. That would be bad. "And we wanted to make sure there were no hard feelings, about your manuscript. You understand that had to go. It’s a shame about your publishing office, but I’m sure their fire insurance will cover it." Ah yes, that had settled any question of his publicizing his dabbling in the darker side. Greg slowly pulls himself up, slides shades over his eyes, smooths his hair. "Glad we have that settled. We’ll be seeing you soon, Matty. I’m sure we’ll all get along just fine now." I’m sure we will, Matthew tells him, and let him out the front door. It was bad, then, it was getting bad. But it wasn’t really bad, not yet, the worst was yet to come. But he still thought he had it all under control. After all, he was the smart one, he was the best-selling publisher and they were small-time hoodlums. Maybe not so small-time, but maybe the only difference was the streak of luck. Matthew can handle these guys. Matthew remembers thinking all of these things, and then he remembers that this was a week before he realized that all of his money was gone.
***
"Bail denied." The judge thumps the gavel, and Matthew slumps into his seat, failing to hear his lawyer’s commands to rise. This was lawyer #2, who would only last about a week. An elder man with a white beard, sent to him by his agent back in New York. He was a big-shot, well reputed. It was either the hopelessness of Matthew’s case, or the threats from Matthew’s old "friends" in LA that would send him on his way. Then there would come Tea, and as a relatively untested and unknown lawyer she would be left alone. Or maybe she got the threats and ignored them. It wouldn’t surprise Matt either way. But this Matt didn’t know any of that, only that he had just switched to a lawyer that couldn’t get him his bail, and that he was probably going to jail for the rest of his life. He sat dumbfounded in his chair, finally realizing that this was real, he was going to be taken in handcuffs back to his cell and it wasn’t happening on the TV screen or to one of his characters or to someone else but to HIM. He wanted to yell and scream, stomp through the floor in frustration and horror over the dawning notion of what was happening to him. But he could only meekly submit to the armed guards, who marched him in chains to the waiting car.
***
That night, in the hotel, waiting for the signal he had been told to wait for. The car horn outside, a single ring on the phone, and he would call downstairs to leave a message for the gentleman he was waiting to see. The FBI agent, who he had gotten in touch with before leaving LA. He has the evidence in his luggage, the money and the paper trail, though getting it had been a difficult experience he didn’t plan to repeat. The call was to make sure he was alone, the return call to answer that it was safe to come up. But no horn came, and no call. He could easily miss the horn on the busy street below, for he had gotten one of the higher floors by mistake. But the phone refuses to ring, and the clock keeps ticking. Every minute is another minute’s shave off of his head start. There are angry people coming after him, of that he was sure. Where WAS the guy? Jumpy, restless. Finally Matt goes downstairs for a drink. If his contact arrives, he’ll have to wait until he answers to come up. Matt needs the cover of a crowd. He heads for the Palace Bar.
***
The jail cell. Tea Delgado is pacing back and forth, looking thoughtful, and Matt stares alternately at the ceiling and her. He likes to imagine that they’re not really here, they’re in his apartment in Manhattan, and she’s deciding what to wear instead of how to save his life. He imagines what it would have been like, if he had met her then, if she were his girl. He would have taken her to his debut party, after the initial publishing of WITHOUT A SOUND, with all of those rich boring people, and she would have chatted them up like a pro. She would look stunning in a black cocktail dress. For a moment they are really there, surrounded by the rich and vapid in stiff formal wear and polite conversation, and she playfully sneaks her arm around his waist and pulls him in for a kiss.
***
And he’s drinking in the Palace Bar, knowing he can’t get drunk now but wanting somehow to tame the knawing fear in his stomach. Something isn’t right. They were going to kill him. They were going to catch up to him, and shoot him in the head, and that would be it. Because his contact hadn’t showed, wasn’t going to show. There was a woman there, and she smiled at him, briefly, a short dark haired beauty in a cocktail dress. He’s lonely and scared, and slides over to talk to her. For a second he thinks she looks surprised, but then it’s gone and she is friendly, flirty. It takes several minutes for him to notice the badge - just a flash, stowed in her purse. If he hadn’t been looking for it, he wouldn’t have known what it was.
***
And he’s standing over her body, having come upstairs to find the door wide open. He’s just standing there, he can’t move or think, just wonders dully which one of them had finally caught up to him, why he hadn’t come upstairs with the woman instead of sending her up first, and if he was about to be shot as well. But instead, he is being grabbed by a bearded man, shouting instructions to the people suddenly flooding the room. They were dragging him out of the room when the tall man, who he would later learn was the commanding officer, punched him in the gut. "You B@STARD!" Matthew sinks to one knee, and falls into the floor that is suddenly rushing up into him.
***
Matthew wakes up, and sits up in his bed in LA. Oh, God, he thinks, what a horrible dream. He stands up, and walks across his polished wood floor, shaking his head to clear the muddled thoughts. He dreamed he was in jail on a murder rap. And it was his good pals here in La-La that did him in. Silly. He draws the curtains aside, and stares at a yellow sky. What? He turns to find a faceless man behind him, squeezing the trigger of a gun.
BANG!!!!
And he wakes up again, in a jail cell, and he could have cried if it wasn’t so horrificly funny.
*********************************************************************************
Tea sleeps deeply, tangled in the sheets, and dreams hard and true:
She is lost in a fog so thick she can’t even make herself out properly. Her hands are there; she can feel them, but they wave uselessly in the air. She stumbles forward determinedly, waving her arms around like a blind man’s cane, but she can’t even tell if it’s the right direction. But she has to get there. She has to get there soon, or it will be too late. Too late for what? She stumbles and almost falls, and when she looks up she can see him, Matthew, clear as day right beside her. She reaches her invisible hands towards him. Matt, what are you doing here, she tries to say, but the fog dives into her mouth and chokes her words. "I’m sorry Tea," Matt says, "I would cut my heart out if it would help, but I can’t. You have to hurry, babe, or you’ll lose him." Who? But he’s gone. The fog isn’t fog anymore - it’s water, sucking her down, in a maelstrom of invisible hands. There’s someone else, up above her, struggling towards the surface. It’s not Matt. He reaches a hand towards her, to pull her up. In the dream, she knows who it is, and she kicks strenuously forward, straining to reach him. Their hands almost touch, strain in vain to clasp each other. The name dies away on her lips as she realizes she is too late, and they both fall away and down and down and down, into the darkness below.
Tea moaned in her sleep but did not wake; she only fell into another and quieter dream.
***********************************************************************************
Todd Manning did not sleep at all, and had given up trying hours ago. He sat on the floor, back against the wall, watching a lousy movie on the television. He had not left his hotel room all day. Several empty bottles of scotch were piled in a corner, and he would have to go out for more.
He was going down again.
He had gone to see Star the day before, but had stopped just short of revealing his presence. She had looked so happy, so innocent, playing on the swings and yelping with glee the higher she went. He just watched her. Star’s mother sat on the bench nearby, watching her daughter, shouting warnings to her every few moments to let her know she was watching. Starr shouted back, pleading for more and more time for play. He wanted to run over to her, push her on the swings, pick her up in his arms. But he was thinking, more and more, the longer he was away from her, that she was better off without him. Today he would just watch. She wouldn’t know the difference.
It had been a few days since Todd had spoken to anyone at all, actually. He had skipped his last appointment with Dr. Black. There was no point, really. Nothing on TV. He threw his remote across the room, which bounced harmlessly across the TV screen, denying him even the pleasure of hearing it break.
It was just like before, when he had been wandering from city to city, finally ending up in Chicago. That had been the worst, the taxi ride from the airport, going through this city that he had not seen since he had left his home all those years ago. Somewhere in the city was that house, and he would have to see it, to remind himself.. of what? That it was there. That it had all happened. It was after he saw that house that he went on that last binge, and everything after that was a long blur.. He remembered the bars, one after another, whiskey and smoke, and empty hotel rooms with empty bottles (just like this one), and more bars and more bottles, and then walking into traffic sober enough to know what he was doing and drunk enough not to care..
He stood up quickly, banishing the memories. He felt the sudden and unusual (for him) urge to hear someone’s voice. But who? Sam had given up on him, just like everyone else had given up on him. Vicki had given up on him.. well, she had that stubborn and unending hope, but she also wasn’t going to be taking any chances on him anymore. Not after what he did. And Tea.. he couldn’t think about her without that stab through the heart, the one that murdered him a thousand times a day whenever he thought of how he’d lost her. He HAD her, he really really had her, and he LOST her. It killed him, it really did.
But he had done it all for her, in his twisted way. All of his lies and manipulations, and now his slow steps towards redemption. He had thought of her, finally, after waking from his drunken haze in the hospital. They didn’t want to release him, not with his willful self-destruction on their minds.. They wanted him to receive a psychiactric evaluation. They wanted him to see a shrink! That was thing that in all the world he LEAST wanted to do. But he thought of her, and of the phone number that he still had in his wallet, the one that Vicki had given him. She would have liked him to do that, if she still cared. He could almost see her, standing beside his bed as he had once stood beside hers, willing him to get better. He couldn’t understand it then, why he had given them Black’s number and let them call him in, but he was starting to see it now. He had done it for her, and Vicki who seemed to want it so badly, and Sam who had stood by him, and little Starr who he had lost.
But he couldn’t explain that to Black, and he couldn’t explain the other stuff either. It all got tangled up in his head, even if he WANTED to explain it, which he didn’t. He didn’t want to explain anything, dammit, he just wanted everyone to leave him alone. And now he was alone, and there was noone to call.
So he finally laid down on the bed, letting sleep slowly take him. There was no nightmare that could be worse than the wreckage that was his life. At least, that's what he told himself, to escape into dreams, which in actuality could be far, far worse. But he was much too tired to care.
End part 15
Next: Wonderland
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