“So there’s nothing to worry about.”
The look he gives me is almost pitying. “I wish that was how it worked. Ask if she can call you. We shouldn’t be texting this shit.”
Bridget says, There’s a cop watching me. Didn’t want me 2 answer phone.
A pause.
She tried 2 take it, but I asked if I was arrested, she said no, so I kept it. But text is better.
“Surprised she thought of that,” West says.
“She watches a lot of crime TV.”
After a few seconds, another text. They’re in Krish’s room.
West has his hand at my waist. He’s right behind me, right with me.
I don’t think I could stand it if he left.
They found something.
“Fucking hell,” he says. “That little wanker. I told him. I told him.”
“Told him what?”
“Not to keep weed in the apartment. Ever. Under any circumstances. But he’s a lazy little fuck, and he doesn’t think. God damn it.”
He takes the phone from my hand and starts typing with his thumbs.
“What are you saying?”
“Shh. I’m going to call her. I’m just telling her to listen to what I say when she picks up. She doesn’t have to talk.”
He must get Bridget’s okay, because after a second he taps a few times, puts my phone to his ear, and waits.
“Bridge, listen, I need you to do something for me. I need you to just do it, if you want to help Krish, and I know you do. In a few minutes it’s going to be too late, so this is the deal. I need you to barge in that bedroom and get right up in the middle of everything and tell the police the weed belongs to me. Act like you’re Krish’s girlfriend, like he’s being noble trying to take the blame and you hate me, you want me to go down for trying to pin it on him. Say whatever you have to. You might have to go to the station for questioning, but just keep acting like you don’t know shit—which you don’t—and keep saying that weed belongs to me. You’ll be fine, and so will Krish. They don’t want him. They want me. And if he gives you a hard time about it, you find a way to tell him, ‘West says to do this. He insists.’ You hear me?”
West glances at me, then looks up at the ceiling. “And after it’s all done and you get released, I want you to find Caroline and take care of her for me. Take good care of her. I know you can’t talk right now, but you promise me just the same. She’s gonna need you.”
A booming knock at the bakery door makes me jump. “Mr. Leavitt!”
They’re pronouncing his name wrong. Leave-it rather than lev-it.
For no reason at all, that’s the thing that makes me cry.
“Thanks, Bridge,” West says, and disconnects the call.
He taps open the address book on my phone.
Bang bang bang. “Mr. Leavitt!”
Bo, he types. And then a phone number with a 541 area code.
He hands me the phone. “I’m going to open that door,” he says. “I’m going to let them in here, because there’s nothing to find, and they’ll get a warrant and be back tomorrow bothering Bob, anyway. So they’re going to search, and we’re going to make bread, okay? It might take them ten minutes, it might take them three hours, but at some point they’re going to decide to take me to the station. You stay here and finish the shift. I don’t want Bob to get screwed over any worse than he has to. Then just lay low, Caro. They couldn’t have found more than half an ounce in Krishna’s room. Maybe a quarter. It’s a misdemeanor. It’s nothing.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“In the morning, you call Bo and tell him what happened. He’ll take care of whatever needs taken care of. Tell him I said if he’s got one more favor in him, I need him to keep an eye on Frankie until I get this all sorted out.”
“West—”
Bang bang bang. “Mr. Leavitt!”
They have his name wrong.
I can’t stand it. I can’t.
“I need you to do what I said,” West says. “I need it. Okay?”
“Okay.”
When he kisses me, his mouth is warm and alive, his arms tight around me, but something is over, something is dead already, I want to scream. I ball up his shirt in my fists.
“I love you,” I tell him, without planning to. It’s not the right time. It’s not the right thing. It’s only what happens when I open my mouth, when I try to say what has to be said, now, before it’s too late.
His eyes are so full of caring and regret. Such a beautiful color, such a beautiful face. I tell him again. “I love you.”
He kisses me one more time, but all he says is “I’m sorry.”
Then he opens the door.
I have to throw out the French. The yeast proofed before West finished the mixing, and the dough looks strange. But the rest of the bread is okay, and I carry on with the work, checking the clipboard, manning the mixers alone in the shrieking silence.
West is gone.
West got arrested.
West is lost, and I’m here, surrounded by a hundred jobs, objects, scents, tastes, that remind me of him.
I cry. A lot.
I stay, and I do the work.
At five-thirty, Bob comes in. He’s bewildered to meet me.
“West told me about you,” he says after he works out who I am. “Is he sick?”
“He got arrested.”
I don’t know—maybe I wasn’t supposed to tell him. But he’s going to find out, and I figure West would rather he find out from me.
The conversation takes thirty minutes. It’s unpleasant. I wish, after it’s over, that I’d handled it better. By the time we’re done, Bob looks sad and defeated, and I feel as though I’ve done a bad job of defending West.
Maybe when I go to law school, I’ll learn the right way to defend the man you love when he’s turned himself in for possession of drugs that weren’t his but may as well have been.
I think, though, it’s possible there is no right way.
When I leave the bakery, I call Bo, who is monosyllabic and a little bit scary. I think I woke him up. It’s not important.
Then I’m not sure where to go. I could walk to the police station, but what would I do there? West said to stay away. I want to do what I said I would, but I can’t stand this. I don’t know what it looks like where he is. I’ve seen a lot of cop shows, just like Bridget. I’ve read detective stories. All I can imagine is West in an impersonal room being interrogated by the blond cop. West being urged to name names.
West with that smart-ass mouth of his, saying the wrong thing. Getting himself in deeper trouble.
But then I think of Frankie, and I know I’ve got it wrong. There’s only so far he would go for Krishna, only so much he’ll give up.
He’ll be on a plane. This afternoon, tomorrow, the day after—nothing will stop him from going.
I wish I didn’t know that about him. I wish I weren’t so sure of him, so unshakable in my conviction that he’ll do exactly what he thinks is right, always.
I wish the right thing could be the thing that I want, but it’s not, and that leaves me here. Worried about West. Stuck with myself, alone, on the verge of tears because he’s going to go and I’m going to stay and I love him.
It’s not fair.
It’s just not.
I walk a few blocks to the police station and sit on the steps outside. No one’s around this early. Only the occasional car putters through the cold morning. It’s spring break as of tomorrow, but Iowa is stuck in winter, freezing and thawing only to freeze again.
I hate this place today. I hate Oregon, too—the ocean, the buttes I’ve never seen. I hate trailer parks. I hate West’s mom for being such a failure, for loving a man who doesn’t deserve to be loved and taking the man I love away from me.
So much hatred. But my hate doesn’t feel poisonous or toxic. It feels true, inevitable. I have to hate these things, because here they are, parked in the middle of my life. A giant metal box of Impossible, seams sealed, and when I kick it, it echoes. When I knock, no one answers.
Hating it is the only option I have.
I’m still sitting there on the steps an hour later when Nate’s friend Josh walks out of the station and pauses to light a cigarette.
“Caroline,” he says when he sees me. He’s inhaled, and he chokes on the smoke and takes a while to recover his voice. “Jeez.”
He doesn’t ask, What are you doing here?
He knows why I’m here.
Long-haired, loose-limbed, floppy Josh. I thought he was my friend. I thought he liked me.
He ratted out West.
“Is Nate in there?” I ask.
“What? No.”
“So it was just you snitching on him.”
He looks like I’ve smacked him in the forehead with a mallet. Totally unprepared for this conversation.
I stand up for the sole purpose of taking advantage of his surprise. Thinking of my dad in his office—the way he rises to pace when he wants to take a position of power over me—I even put myself a step above Josh. Why shouldn’t I use whatever advantages I have?
Why shouldn’t I prosecute? Haven’t I earned the right by now?
“What did he ever do to you?” I ask. “What did I ever do, for that matter, to make you hate me so much? I don’t get it. I need you to explain it.”
“Nothing. I mean, I don’t hate you.”
“You turned him in.”
“No, I didn’t, I swear. I—”
“What happened? Did you call in a tip, or did they pick you up?”
I watch his face with narrowed eyes, waiting for a sign. But I don’t need to be sharp to see it—it’s obvious. “They picked you up. What did you do?”
“I was smoking a blunt in my car.”
“Where, on campus?”
“In the Hy-Vee parking lot.”
“You’re kidding me.”
He shakes his head.
“You got picked up for smoking dope in your car at a grocery store? How stupid are you?”
Now he won’t look at me.
“So they asked you who sold you the pot, and you gave them West’s name. Even though it was a lie.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“You had a choice. You just chose what was easy. Why not pin it on West? Nate hates him, anyway. It’s not like West is your friend. He’s just a dealer. He’s expendable. He’s nobody. It’s not like anybody loves him or anyone will care when he’s kicked out of school, right? He’s not as important as you. No one is as important as you.”
And the longer I’m talking, the angrier I’m getting. Not even at Josh. At Nate.
I was never really human to him. Never fully a person. If I had been, he wouldn’t have treated me the way he did—not while we were going out, not in August, not now.
He’s behind this. I don’t care if it’s Josh who turned West in—it’s Nate who made it possible. Nate who convinced all our friends, Josh among them, that I was a psycho bitch. Nate who treated me like shit, hurt me, and assaulted me, and Nate who got away with it.
I’ve spent so many months not being angry with him.
Why the fuck have I not been angry?
“Where’s Nate?”
“I don’t know. Sleeping?”
“Is he home?”
“Huh?”
“Did he go home to Ankeny for break yet? Or is he still here?”
“He went home.”
“Thank you.”
I jog down the steps, leaving Josh there for … whatever. For the crows to pick at. For April’s rains to wash away.
I don’t give a shit. I’ve finally got force and velocity, a direction to point in, and as soon as I hit the sidewalk, I start to fly.