“I’m not refusing to leave it,” Kendra said. “I’m just not leaving it at the moment. I will in a couple of weeks.”
“A couple of weeks could be too late. You know, nobody is trying to scare you here. We’re being absolutely honest with you. Local prosecutors have reputations to make, and prosecuting a Rhode for murder would make a reputation.”
“They’re not going to prosecute me for murder,” Kendra said. “They’ve got Arrow in jail. I asked Tom about it and he said it really was odd that she was still in there. He said any decent lawyer could have gotten her bail in a couple of hours. He said—”
“I know what he said. He said it to me, too. That doesn’t change the fact that you’re sitting there in the middle of everything, reminding people that you’re a part of that mess. That’s what I don’t like. Granted, given the way you live, you can’t seem to stop reminding people that you exist, although that would be the better course of action. Go out to Hawaii and stay at the place there. It’s the most secure one we’ve got; we can keep the reporters away indefnitely. Drop out of sight for a while and let events take their course.”
“I don’t want to drop out of sight for a while,” Kendra said. “I don’t want to drop out of sight at all. I know you’re not interested in taking me seriously, Daddy, but I really do want a career. A real career. And dropping out of sight won’t get me that.”
“No,” Kenneth said. Kendra made a face. She could practically see him rolling his eyes. “If you can’t drop out of sight, and I admit I didn’t expect you to, the least you could do is change the context. You’re just sitting out there, right where that man was killed, and people not only notice you, they put two and two together. Pack up your stuff and go back to California. Get your picture taken at clubs. Do whatever it is you have to do so that people will stop connecting you to—”
“They don’t connect me to it, Daddy,” Kendra said. “They don’t even connect me to Arrow anymore. They know we had a falling-out, weeks ago. It was in all the papers, and on MTV.”
“The district attorney may not read those particular pa-pers,” Kenneth said. “And I’ll bet you anything she doesn’t watch MTV. If you keep this up, I’m going to order the Point closed so that you have to get out of there.”
“If you do that, I’ll move into the Oscartown Inn, or rent a house. Or move in with Marcey. There’s always going to be something I can do. I’m not going to leave here until the movie is finished filming.”
“Why? You’re not in the movie.”
“I’ve been in movies,” Kendra said.
“You’ve been in two,” Kenneth said. “In one you had one line, in the other you had none. Oh, and that doesn’t count the tape, which—”
“Which was not my fault,” Kendra said, “and you know it. That was a private tape, it was just between the two of us—”
“Well, it’s not between the two of you anymore,” Kenneth said. “And how you failed to anticipate that would happen is beyond me. What was that guy anyway? He makes sex tapes. He calls them something else, but that’s what he does. Your tape was just a little harder core than his usual. You’re not in this movie. There’s no reason why you should hang around a murder scene until the movie is finished shooting, which I understand is a bit iffy anyway. With Arrow Normand in jail, they’re going to have a hard time getting it into the can.”
Kendra hated it when her father tried to use media slang. He got it wrong. He always got it wrong. She looked down at her bare feet. She had had little American flags painted on her toenails, she couldn’t remember why. American flags were for the Fourth of July. Usually, she was very careful about these things.
“If you close the Point, I’ll move into town,” she said again, because the easiest way out of any conversation with her father was to repeat things until he couldn’t stand to hear them anymore. “And I have to go. I’ve got things I’ve got to do.”
“What things?”
“Things,” Kendra said.
Then she put the phone back on the receiver and lay back across the bed, staring at the underside of her canopy. When she was growing up, all the girls at school had had canopies on their beds, and one or two of them had had bed curtains. Kendra hadn’t understood the idea of bed curtains at all. You closed them and then you were in a small space with no air where nobody could see you. Why was that supposed to be a good idea? Kendra had had the same problem with English literature, and biology, and especially mathematics. She hadn’t understood why anybody would want to know anything about them, never mind why she should be required to. She still didn’t understand why most people wanted the things they wanted, unless they were also the things she wanted.