I shook my head.
“Does he know that?”
“If he doesn’t, he’s a moron.”
“OK,” Harry said, nodding with confidence and submission. Whatever I wanted was what he would do.
I got into the front seat of Harry’s Chevy, and he started backing out just as Don came out of the house. He ran to my side of the car. I did not roll down the window.
“Evelyn!” he yelled.
I liked how the glass between us took the edge off his voice, how it muffled it enough to make him sound far away. I liked the control of being able to decide whether I listened to him at full volume.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It isn’t what you think.”
I stared straight ahead. “Let’s go.”
I was putting Harry in a tough spot, making him take sides. But to Harry’s credit, he didn’t bat an eyelash.
“Cameron, don’t you dare take my wife away from me!”
“Don, let’s discuss it in the morning,” Harry called through the window, and then he plowed out, into the roads of the canyon.
When we got to Sunset Boulevard and my pulse had slowed, I turned to Harry and started talking. When I told him that Don had been upstairs with a woman, he nodded as if he’d expected no less.
“Why don’t you seem surprised?” I asked as we sped through the intersection of Doheny and Sunset, the very spot where the beauty of Beverly Hills started to show. The streets widened and became lined with trees, and the lawns were immaculately manicured, the sidewalks clean.
“Don has always had a penchant for women he’s just met,” Harry says. “I wasn’t sure if you knew. Or if you cared.”
“I didn’t
know. And I do care.”
“Well, then, I’m sorry,” he said, looking at me briefly before putting his eyes back on the road. “In that case, I should have told you.”
“I suppose there are lots of things we don’t tell each other,” I said, looking out the window. There was a man walking his dog down the street.
I needed someone.
Right then, I needed a friend. Someone to tell my truths to, someone to accept me, someone to say that I was going to be OK.
“What if we really did it?” I said.
“Told each other the truth?”
“Told each other everything.”
Harry looked at me. “I’d say that’s a burden I don’t want to put on you.”
“It might be a burden for you, too,” I said. “I have skeletons.”
“You’re Cuban, and you’re a power-hungry, calculating bitch,” Harry said, smiling at me. “Those secrets aren’t so bad.”
I threw my head back and laughed.
“And you know what I am,” he said.
“I do.”