Cheating at Solitaire(46)

“Understood,” Carl said. “But you’ve got others, don’t you? You went to Vegas?”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t matter. I got that one picture, you know, of the bunch of them together, but I sold it, and that was that. It’s one of those places, you know. I don’t have any advantage there. I don’t know the place, or how it works. Here, I can find things nobody else can because I know things nobody else knows. At least, nobody from outside. With that one, I got a shot and that was all there was to it. They ran around town, they did things, and mostly I could never get there in time to get anything interesting. And there were always those other guys.”

“Photographers.”

“Paparazzi,” Jack said. “I hate that name.”

“Yes,” Carl said.

Then he reached into the back of his pants and came out with his wallet.

2

Here was the odd thing: Arrow Normand didn’t really mind being in jail. She minded not having access to her prescriptions, and not being able to get anything to drink more serious than Diet Coke, but jail itself was something she found it surprisingly easy to take. It might have been different if she had been in an actual prison, or in one of those big-city jails where she would have been locked up with a couple of dozen people. The Margaret’s Harbor jail was not like any of that. There were only three serious cells, and neither of the other two was occupied. The police here didn’t seem to have watched any of the shows on Court TV about life behind bars. She was never handcuffed, and the night guard had gotten so embarrassed by coming in on her at a private moment that he’d brought her a standing screen to shield herself when she was on the toilet. It was less like jail than like being involuntarily committed to rehab. She even had a pack of lawyers to talk to if she needed therapy.

Actually, Arrow had tried rehab once, years ago, and it hadn’t worked out. They kept wanting her to talk about herself, which was fine—she’d probably spent more time talking about herself in the last ten years than she’d spent talking about anything else—but the things they wanted her to say didn’t make any sense to her. She was supposed to have “insight.” She didn’t know what that meant. When other people in group had “insight,” they talked about Their Addiction and Their Cycle of Codependency. Or something. Arrow had never been able to figure it all out. In the end, she had just let herself drift through a couple of weeks of beautiful sunsets and group meals in the big cafeteria that seemed to serve nothing but seafood and fruit, and then one morning she’d woken up and decided to leave. People said they were changed in rehab, but Arrow had not been. She still wasn’t able to see the point.

You were supposed to talk about the really important things, she thought now, but she brushed that away. Jail made her calm, and part of the reason it made her calm was that she never had to face the public. Photographers were not allowed in this place. Neither were reporters, although she could talk to one of them if she wanted to meet him in the visitors’ area. She could also get visits from friends, and for the first day or two she had expected those. Every time the door at the end of the hall had opened up, she’d been sure it was because Kendra was waiting in the visiting area, or Marcey was, or… She couldn’t think of who else would come. Her mother might, although she barely spoke to her mother anymore. Her father might come, but she didn’t “barely” speak to him, she didn’t speak to him at all. Her brothers might come, and probably would, because they were still hoping she would set them up with something they’d like better than the jobs they had at home.

The more she thought about it, the more Arrow realized that she had nobody in her life who would like her no matter what. Even Mark wouldn’t have liked her no matter what. If she’d suddenly been poor or not famous anymore, he would have gone off in search of somebody who was rich and in the public eye, and if he couldn’t find that he would find a girlfriend who could help him pay his rent. Stewart Gordon had told her once that she would be better off, and understand more about life, if she read books, but Arrow did read books. She read Nora Roberts, and some other people whose names she couldn’t remember—not crime or horror, because it bothered her, but stories about love, and about what love was. Love in the real world, though, was nothing like love in books. Men were not strong and protective. They weren’t even dedicated and faithful. Love in the real world was like buying a CD, or even clothes. You got what you paid for. When you were sick of it, you lost it in the house and never found it again.