Chapter 8

Next, I got on the phone to Crystal. "Crystal, it's me."

"Omgod! What's up?"

"Desiree. You wouldn't believe what she did last night!"

"What?"

"She recorded us talking," I related, "and she went through my pants and got my ID and..."

"OMIGOD!"

"SHE knows who I am. And since we discussed our problem last night, she wants to know how it is I might go to jail."

"What are we gonna do?"

"I told her to hit your place at eight. I'll arrive a bit after. Then we've got to talk her down, somehow -- any ideas?"

"If she knows..."

"You were gonna, anyway, Babe. I'll arrive without a mask."

"I should have known," Crystal sighed. "Once she sinks her teeth into something..."

"This REALLY isn't her business!" I whined. "How can we convince her?"

"We won't. But we can sell her something less," Crystal sighed.

"Like what?"

"Tell her the truth, but water it down? No guns or knives, just that you went a bit far and were concerned that I might someday decide to have you brought up on charges. We can make it real gray."

"We've got to be real careful..."

"Yeah."

We spent probably twenty minutes synchronizing our stories before I hung up. Now all I had to do was wait...

I came in the front door, not the slider. Crystal took in my face, grim as it was, and smiled and flowed into my arms. I won't say that everything was all right, but it was certainly better... "Did she lay it all out for you or did she wait for me?"

"She waited," Crystal replied.

Desiree watched me warily. I put up my hands. Crystal and I sat on the couch and I said, "My name is Keith..."

Telling your life story tends not to take that long, if you're just doing the dossier version. It was less than five minutes before the two of us turned to the REAL problem ... Crystal lit into Desiree with both feet. "Des, I'm SHOCKED! Breaking and entering! Recording people's private conversations! There's probably a law against what you did without some kind of release! I just don't understand you!"

"I'm TRYING to protect you!" Desiree defended.

"From where I sit, you're horning in on things that are none of your business and ruining lives!" Crystal ranted back.

"He's got a secret..."

"WE have a secret -- and we would like for it to STAY secret!" Crystal barked.

"I need to know," Desiree insisted.

"You WANT to know -- you don't NEED to know! This isn't your issue to deal with! In fact, it would be a DEAD issue if it weren't for you!" Crystal ranted. She was letting Desiree have it, because we knew if we rolled over too quickly, Desiree would smell a rat.

"He said he could go to jail," Desiree insisted doggedly.

Crystal cocked her head. "Did you ever do something to someone -- something you weren't proud of -- and instead of pinning you to the wall, the person forgave you and just let it go? Besides this, I mean..."

Desiree looked mulish. "Maybe."

"This thing is between Keith and me. He feels really guilty about it and it has bothered him -- but I don't want it to go any further. Now YOU come along and want to open it up and make a mess with it."

"And jail?" Desiree pressed.

"He's exaggerating. It isn't that bad. Do you know why? Because I SAY it isn't, and MY opinion is the only one that counts!" Crystal snarled.

"Well..." Desiree ducked her head.

It was my turn. "The night Crystal and I met, I was drunk and angry and I did something reprehensible. If you were pushing things -- and I do, in my own mind, because I can't forgive myself, you could call it assault."

Crystal took it up. "Keith..." She stopped to savor my name. "Keith didn't hurt me or anything -- he was just a little pushy and grabby. We've both had worse. But that isn't Keith, so he was worried that I might decide that I'd been violated or something -- especially when I started looking for him."

"If you knew what he looked like..." Des started. I was happy that we'd gone over this.

"I didn't. It was VERY dark, outside that after-hours club on East Fourteenth," Crystal lied. "There were a bunch of people in that alley doing stuff they shouldn't have been and I wandered in because I was nosy. Keith had picked up a girl in the club and just discovered that she only wanted him to get her some coke and he was pissed and he thought I was there for the same thing..."

"I was stinking drunk and pissed off at women in general and I ran into her at random in the dark and shoved her against the wall and felt her up and called her fourteen kinds of bitch and kissed her ... And she didn't go nuts on me and so I slowed down and stopped being so rough and the next thing I knew I was blubbering on her..." I recited my lines.

"Why did you let him do that?" Desiree queried of Crystal.

"You KNOW why!" Crystal sneered. "I was nearly as drunk as he was and I wanted a man!"

"So she cuddled me to her and we were blind as bats and I went from abusive to doofy and somehow we found a way to fuck in the dark. Don't ask me how it happened..." ' ... because I'll have to make up an even bigger fairy tale than this one... ' I added to myself.

"Anyway, he promised to meet me in that restaurant downtown..." Crystal took over.

"So THAT's why you ate there every day for I don't know how long!" Desiree clapped her hands.

"Yeah, and I was there a couple of times but too chicken to just go up to her, so I slipped her a note and we started this silly stuff," I agreed. "At first, I was sure she was looking for me to turn me in to the cops or something, but that's gone away. Then I was scared we were fooling ourselves, and I figured it would be better if we could break it off clean if things just weren't working out. I don't know shit about women and all I hear are horror stories, you know?"

"So..."

"So the mask thing was all a safety net because I'm a big chicken," I finished.

"That's the damnedest story I've ever heard," Desiree mused, "but it checks out. So it was more rape than rape fantasy."

"You can't rape the willing -- and I was willing!" Crystal insisted.

"You need to stay out of those places!" Desiree admonished.