Who Killed Jenny Schecter? Ch. 02

Chapter 2 Awkward

Shane took the Powell Street cable car to the North Beach section of town and got off where the Mapquest directions told her to, at Chestnut Street. She stepped to the curb at the corner of the intersection where the cable car stopped, to get out of the street, and set down her small canvas duffel on the sidewalk. She turned to look downhill and out at San Francisco Bay. To her left the sun was a glowing orange Tootsie Roll pop ready to touch the horizon, and straight ahead the bay itself was on fire with sunset. Down at the bottom of the hill a few blocks away Powell Street's fabled cable car route came to an end near where the Embarcadero began. Fisherman's Wharf was down there two blocks to the left, and Pier 39 and the Hard Rock Café were a block and a half to the right. Directly ahead and to the right at the docks eight ferries embarked for Angel Island, Tiburon, Sausalito, Alcatraz, Oakland, and other points around the bay.

Shane had never been to San Francisco, and she took a moment to be a tourist. She admired the view, then hoisted the strap of her duffel onto her shoulder. She hadn't packed much, just enough for a day or two. With the sunset at her back she set off eastward on Chestnut, and two blocks later found the big row house where Carmen lived.

Shane stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the house and felt her heart beating fast. There were lights on, and the building gave a warm, friendly glow, which surprised Shane not at all. Carmen would light up any building she lived in. Shane drew a deep breath, climbed the few steps up to the small landing, and rang the doorbell. At first nothing happened, and she rang the buzzer again. She heard a woman's voice inside say, "Coming." Shane wondered if she was being observed through the security peephole in the door. A moment later she heard two locks being unlocked, and the door swung open. A woman in her mid thirties stood there. She had brown hair pulled back in a tight bun, and was dressed in a workout exercise outfit. She was neither attractive nor unattractive, and gave off the hints of butch to Shane's finely tuned gaydar. She looked trim but well-muscled. Shane got the feeling this woman could beat the shit out of her if she wanted to.

"Yes?" the woman asked, still blocking the door.

"Hi, I'm Shane McCutch-"

"I know who you are," the woman said. "What do you want?"

That threw Shane off, and her head buzzed with noise. She wondered if she knew this woman from somewhere, but decided no. Shane had fucked a thousand women, and although her memory wasn't perfect by any means, she was pretty sure this woman wasn't one of them.

"How do you know who I am? Have we met?"

"No. But I've seen photographs of you."

"Uh, er, I wanted to ... um ... is Carmen Morales here?"

"She lives here," the woman said. "What is it you want?"

"To talk to her."

"What about?"

Shane was growing irritated. "Look, if she's not home, I can come back later."

"She's home," the woman said, "but you haven't told me what it is you want to talk to her about."

"Can't it be just between me and her?" Shane asked.

"No, it can't," the woman said. "There's nothing between you and her."

It was like a punch in the gut, and Shane involuntarily took a step back. She expected hostility. She expected this to be difficult. She just had no idea it was going to be this painful. Or with somebody other than Carmen, with a complete, total stranger.

"Look," she said. "I've come all the way from Los Angeles just to talk to her for a few minutes. That's all I want. It's not about me and her. It's about our friend Alice. She's in a lot of trouble."

"We know about Alice," the woman said.

"Yeah, well, I just came from visiting Alice up at Humboldt. Alice is in prison for something she didn't do. She didn't kill Jenny."

"That's the first thing Carmen said when she heard about it, too," the woman said, her attitude softening slightly. "She said there was no way it was Alice."

"Well, then, can I come in and talk to Carmen about it? Or at least can she come to the door?"

The woman regarded her for a moment, and then they both heard from inside the house Carmen's voice.

"It's okay, Terri. Let her in."

***

Carmen was standing in the middle of the living room just off the foyer, her arms folded in front of her. Shane had no trouble reading the body language. Carmen was wearing a pair of khaki Dockers, and a dark blue polo shirt with the name of a cruise ship embroidered on the breast. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Carmen was one of those women who not only looked fabulous when dressed to the nines, but also looked just as wonderful in slacks and man's shirt. Or even just a man's shirt.

Carmen looked at Shane in the hallway and at the duffel bag on her shoulder. "Did you just get into town?" Her tone was civil but neutral.

"Uh, yeah," Shane said.

"Are you hungry? You look hungry."

"Uh, no, I'm okay," Shane said.

Carmen sighed. "Shane, I know you're hungry. And you know you could never lie to me, so don't even try."

Shane seemed to blush. "I wasn't trying to lie. I just-"

"I know. You just didn't know how to respond." Carmen walked to a door at the side of the room. "C'mon, you want some pizza?"

"You're not gonna throw it at me, are you?"

Carmen laughed, a deep, hearty laugh that Shane loved the sound of. More important, it was a laugh she trusted, an icebreaker laugh. "No, I'm not gonna throw it at you." She pulled a jacket out of the closet and put it on. "Pizza's hard to throw, and I missed last time I tried."

"Where we going?" Shane asked.

"There's a pizza place not far from here that I like. I just got home myself a little while ago, and I haven't had any dinner, so I'm hungry, too. Actually, I lied. There's no less than three really terrific pizza shops slash Italian restaurants right near here on Grant and Kearney streets, just up Stockton. It's a wonder I don't weigh three hundred pounds."

"You look-" Shane started to say but stopped.

Carmen looked at her, and saw Shane was blushing.

"What were you going to say?"

"Something that would probably get me in trouble."

"Oh. Well, suppose I give you a free pass."

Shane grinned. "I was just going to say how great you look. How great you've always looked."

"Uh, thanks."

"There was never ... uh, never mind."

"What?"

"I was gonna say ... back then ... there was never a day when I didn't think ... you know. That you didn't take my breath away."

Shane blushed and hung her head, and Carmen flushed, too. "Well. Ah. Gee. Okay."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gone there. Hey, doesn't the pizza place deliver?" she asked, obviously changing the subject.

"They do, but I feel like a walk. And they have a liquor license, so we can get a beer. They carry Dos Equis. You can leave your duffel here."

Shane grinned. Dos Equis had been "their" beer, the one they always drank when they lived together.

"Terri," Carmen called up the stairwell, "we're going to Vito's. You want anything?"

Shane heard Terri walk down the hall and come halfway down the stairs. She knew it was to be checked out. "No, Babe, I'm good," Terri said, looking over the pair of them carefully, like the prison guards at Humboldt had done. Terri's attitude was the same as the prison guards: Okay, mothafucka, make just one false move. "Thanks for asking."

Shane could tell there was unspoken communication going on between them, Terri's glance asking, Are you sure you're okay with her? and Carmen's equally unspoken reply, Yes, it's okay. Terri nodded thoughtfully, and went back upstairs, saying, "Okay, Sweetie, don't stay out too late."

"Yes, Mommy," Carmen called back, laughing, and they heard Terri hoot upstairs as she led Shane to the front door and down the steps to the sidewalk.

"She's pretty protective," Shane said as they walked to the corner and turned south on Stockton.

"Yes, she is," Carmen said.

"Uh, are you-"

"No, we're not," Carmen said briskly.

"Sorry," Shane said, just as fast, trying to stay on Carmen's good side. "She called you 'Babe.'" Shane found herself having to keep a tight rein on her emotions. She remembered how she'd felt when Carmen had been going with Jenny, dating Jenny ... fucking Jenny, not to put too fine a point on it. And the all-time second dumbest thing Shane had ever done was to put herself into an insane jealous panic over Carmen flirting with a couple of Russell Simmon's staff guys - guys, yet, guys with penises. How ridiculous was that? - that led Shane to go out and fuck fucking Cheri Peroni (she was Cheri Jaffe, back then, before the divorce) to get even. So even though there was nothing between them now, Shane still felt some sort of quivers at the pit of her stomach whenever she thought about Carmen with ... anyone else.

"That's just Terri's thing," Carmen said. "She calls me Babe, Honey, Sweetie Pie, Sweet Cheeks, Toots, Pica, La Pica, El Spicy, pretty much whatever comes into her head. And not just me. She does it to everybody. It saves her from having to remember people's names."

"I get it. I had just, you know, heard that you were seeing someone."

Carmen sighed. "Yeah, well, don't believe everything you hear."

"Oh," Shane said, unsure now of her information. "They told me ... you were seeing a schoolteacher."

"Well, that was basically right," Carmen said. "I was. Maybe I still am. Or maybe not, I don't know."

"Oh," Shane said again, totally lost. "I'm sorry. I hope it works out." She ignored the tiny voice way deep in her head who murmured, "Not."

Carmen glanced over at her, then looked down, still walking up Stockton. "I don't know."

Shane suddenly decided to push it. "Problems?"

Carmen made a sound, not a laugh, exactly. "Problems? Yeah, we got problems."

"Like what?"

"You're pretty nosy," Carmen said.

"I'm sorry," Shane said. "I didn't mean to pry. I just thought ... you know ... sometimes talking helps. And I thought-"

"I know what you thought," Carmen said. "You thought that with your vast experience of lesbians and womankind, that you might have some helpful insight into the Carmen Morales heart."

"No," Shane said. "All I thought was ... I could listen."

Carmen looked over at her sharply. Her attitude softened. "Okay, I apologize." She walked a dozen steps. "We have problems, like I said. Number one. She's in San Diego, and I'm in San Francisco."

"Okay, that's a big one," Shane said.

"A 500-mile one. Tough to drive home after a date. Number two. Schedules. She's a schoolteacher, so she works nine months a year, and has summers off, except like a lot of teachers she does all this extra stuff in the summer. Me, I work on a cruise ship, I go on cruises, sometimes I'm gone eight or ten weeks at a clip. My cruise contracts tend to be six or eight months long, and then I get a month or two off. You'd think maybe my breaks and hers would overlap, but they haven't yet. So we get to see each other maybe three weekends a year. A healthy gal like me with a healthy libido, I gotta get laid more than three times a year."

"I guess so," Shane said. They both knew Shane had to get laid about three or four times a week. Three times a year was inconceivable. She'd go bat-shit crazy.

"Problem number three," Carmen continued. "She's still in the closet, and she won't come out. She lives at home, and won't tell her parents, who will flip out and go ballistic if she did, so she says. Very strict military family, no dykes allowed. And worse, she's afraid for her job, afraid the school board would fire her."

"Would they? I thought they couldn't."

"It doesn't matter," Carmen said. "It's about fear. If you're terrified of the school board, you're terrified. It doesn't matter what the school board would do or wouldn't do, or the law in the state of California. She's terrified of coming out, and that's all there is to it. And then there's all the parents of her students, and what they'd think or say."

"So she's never coming out?"

"Apparently not."

"You didn't come out to your mother for a long time," Shane said.

"That was different. I was way, way out to everybody else, and Mom was in denial. I was even openly living with my lover, if you remember. It didn't affect my ability to have relationships, whether casual or serious, much less a job."

"I remember," Shane said. "By the way, how is your family? You know how much I loved them."

"They're fine."

"I'm guessing it wouldn't be a good idea for me to ask you to tell them I asked after them."

"No, it wouldn't."

They came to the pizza shop, and went in. It wasn't what Shane had expected. It was no mom-and-pop hole-in-the-wall, and it was no high-production, low-quality chain. It was large and modern, and had a large eat-in restaurant section. There was a lot of glass and stainless steel, and decorated with large neon beer advertisements. The architect took the neon beer signs and made them a design element, adding more neon, mostly blue and red. All that neon gave the place a blue tinge that was nevertheless inviting and intimate.

"They have really good stromboli here," Carmen said as they were seated. It was the after-dinner lull, too late for the usual dinner crowd and still too early for the post-movie or post theater/concert crowd, so the restaurant was half empty. "And they have a lot more than just pizza. They have pretty good lasagna and pasta dishes, too, and pretty good salad."

"Cool," Shane said. "But I think I'll just stick to pizza."

"Okay, you want to split one? The usual?" Back in the day, Carmen and Shane both liked theirs with pepperoni, onion, olives and extra cheese. Shane felt a wave of - what was it? regret? nostalgia? - pass over her, as it was brought home to her how many things she had shared with Carmen that were still so familiar and endearing. They knew each other's drink preferences, pizza preferences, coffee preferences. Clothes preferences. Sleep preferences. Sex preferences. How each other kissed, and sighed, and moaned. And came. Don't go there.

"Uh, yeah, the usual," Shane said.

When the waitress came Carmen ordered the pizza and two Dos Equis. When the waitress went away Carmen folded her arms on the table in front of her, and leaned forward slightly. She faced Shane squarely and looked her in the eyes. "Okay. What's going on?"

***

Shane's antennae, sharp as ever, were in extreme sensitivity mode. She had picked up on Carmen's body language - a blind, stoned hermit could have picked up on it - which was formal, civil, businesslike ... and cold. But it was time to man up, as they say.

"Before we talk about the thing I came to talk to you about, there's a couple things I'd like to get out of the way first."

"Okay," Carmen said. They both knew Shane was working through a script she'd rehearsed. Carmen let her.

"First off, I just want to say thank you for even agreeing to talk to me, for even letting me in the door of your house, and, you know-"

"For not shooting you dead with a .45 or stabbing you with a pitchfork, or running you down with a truck. Dumping your body in the bay with an anchor duct-taped around your head."

"Uh, yeah. For that. For ... uh-"

"Okay, I get it," Carmen said. "You're welcome. Cross that one off your list. What's next?"

"Mmm. I guess next is the really big one." She watched Carmen close her eyes briefly then open them again. "I want to say how very, truly, sincerely sorry I am about what happened, and how awful I felt and still feel, and how sorry I am that I hurt you. There's ... there's no excuse for what I did, and I know how completely unforgivable it was."

"Yes," Carmen said. "It was. No excuse. Unforgiveable. Nailed it. Good job. Next?"

Shane looked up at her from her hands, which were twisting each other. "Look, I know this is hard for you, but it's hard for me, too. I'm the one fucked up, and I'm the one hurt people, you most of all, and that's just the very last thing I ever wanted to do, was to hurt anybody, but I did, I know it, and if there was anything I could do-"

Carmen had reached out her hand and put it on Shane's forearm to stop her. "Shane, I get it. You're sorry. I'm sorry I was snarky."

Shane was taken aback. "I ... I really mean it, Carmen! I'm not bullshitting-"

"No, no, Shane, you misunderstand me. I know you're sorry. I wasn't being sarcastic. I know you're sorry for what you did and what happened. I've always known it. I even knew it back then. I knew what you did, and why, and about your father and what he did, and how he swindled Helena. I know the tailspin you went into afterward, and how you just totally fucked yourself up with drugs and booze and everything-"

The phrase "and everything" meant fucking Cheri Peroni yet again, both verb and adjective, and even after these several years she was too sore a subject for either of them to mention by name.

"-in order to forget. Everyone told me, afterward. And I thank you for the apology, and I accept it, and I've moved on. I really have."

"I ... I never ... I never thought you'd ever forgive me-"

"I haven't forgiven you. I anticipate never forgiving you. What I said was, I accept your apology, which is a different thing altogether, and I've moved on, also different. I'm past it, I'm over it. It's history. That's all I'm saying."

"Oh." Shane had to process that for a bit. The waitress arrived with their Dos Equis. Carmen picked hers up and tipped it toward Shane. Shane, still processing, looked up and said "Huh?" and then picked up her beer and clinked it against Carmen's.

"Cheers," Carmen said, and drank.

"Cheers," Shane said.

Carmen knew it was going to take Shane a minute to catch up, so she sat quietly. It dawned on her how quickly and easily she had slipped back into her old relationship with Shane, knowing how Shane's mind worked and giving Shane the space and time to work things out. There were - there had been, past tense - so many things about Shane she had admired, had ... loved ... such as Shane's good heart, her loyalty, her compassion, her lack of competitiveness, lack of bitchiness, lack of pretense and duplicity and game-playing. In so many good ways, Shane was straight-forward and honest and what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Some of her many good parts. Shane was, in almost every way that mattered (except one), a good person.

The pizza came, and the waitress gave them plates. They each helped themselves to a slice and took big bites, blowing out fiercely because the slices were so hot. After a few cooler bites, Carmen paused in her chewing long enough to ask, "You ready now?"

"Ready?" Shane asked, her mouth full.

"Ready to tell me why you're here. Why you came to see me."

"Oh. Right. I just came from Humboldt. I talked to Alice this morning. She didn't kill Jenny."

"I know she didn't."

"How do you know that?"

"I know Alice, same as you. You may have been her friend a lot longer than me, but I know her well enough to know she didn't do it, no matter how mad she was at Jenny. I love Alice, but she's a total drama queen, and if she'd done it, you'd have heard it all over West Hollywood. There would have been yelling and screaming, and the whole neighborhood would have heard every word of it. And then if she had killed Jenny, she'd have completely fallen apart afterward, and you'd all have known that, too. She's the second-to-the-last person on earth who would have composed herself and gone in and sat down with all of you and eaten popcorn while watching that goodbye video. Alice a silent, stealthy, clever, sneaky murderer with a great poker face? That's just not possible, not in this lifetime."

"No, I guess not. Uh, if she's second to last, who's last?"

"You, of course. So what did Alice say?

"You're not gonna believe this."