Chapter 11: Busted
Dana insisted that the limo take Carmen, Jenny and Shane back to Jenny and Shane's house before it dropped them off. The girls thanked Dana profusely for a great vacation cruise, and then went inside. They found Mark standing on a stepladder in a corner of the living room, taking down one of his spy cameras, only they didn't know that's what it was.
"Hey," Shane said to Mark, setting her suitcase down by the couch.
"Hey," Mark replied with a sheepish grin. He climbed down off the stepladder as Carmen came in the door.
"Um, I'm just gonna get my keys," she said.
"What are you doing?" Jenny asked Mark.
Shane walked to the dining room table where she saw a handful of small objects that looked like industrial cameras and a pile of video tapes.
"What are those?" Shane asked, pointing to the cameras.
"They're cameras," Mark said.
"What are all the tapes?" Carmen asked.
"There's something that I need to show you, and, um ... and then, after that, I don't know," Mark said.
Jenny walked into the dining room and looked at the pile of tapes.
"You'll probably want me out of here," Mark said. "It's going to take me a day or two to get my stuff, but ---"
"What's going on, Mark?" Shane asked sharply, which was unusual for her.
"I just finished taking down the last of the cameras. I pretty much had them all over the house. Um. Jenny saw ... a tape I'd made of the two of you--" He spoke to Shane and glanced at Carmen.
Jenny looked up at him, anger on her face.
Carmen began to understand. She put a hand on her forehead and stared at the floor, thinking about what might have been on those tapes. "Oh, shit," she murmured. How many times and places had she and Jenny fucked in the kitchen, dining room, living room? And then the conversation with Shane ... . Double oh shit.
Shane stared at the tapes and cameras in disbelief.
"--but she didn't want to tell you because she didn't want to ruin your vacation," he said lamely, trying to defend Jenny with the indefensible.
Jenny looked over the tapes briefly until she found the one she wanted. She took it to Carmen, who took it but couldn't look Jenny in the eye. Jenny walked down the hall to her room.
Carmen read the tape label. It said "SHANE/CARMEN LOVE CONFESSION." Carmen looked at Mark. She walked up to him and smashed the tape into his chest, then walked off to find Jenny.
Shane stood still, fighting the roaring noise in her head. She stared at the tapes and cameras, still processing the ten thousand implications and pieces of data streaming in from her past, her present and her future. Mark hung his head, and set down the love confession tape Carmen had slammed into his chest.
***
Carmen entered Jenny's room without knocking. She couldn't read Jenny's expression, but it seemed to contain elements of anger and hurt. She glared at Carmen and then glanced away.
"Jenny, wait a minute," Carmen pleaded. "Listen to me. If you ... if you heard this tape, this conversation, then you know
exactly
what I said, and I said that it is fun and easy to be with you, that I want to make it work with you."
Jenny suddenly seemed to relent. "It's okay ... that we're not meant to be together. And I know that the only reason why you're with me is because you wanted to be near Shane."
"That is bullshit, Jenny," Carmen said forcefully, but it had no effect. For once, it was Carmen who was deluding only herself. It was Jenny, for once, who saw things clearly. She walked up to Carmen with a sad smile, took Carmen's hands and clasped them to her own chest.
"Shane is my best friend. And I don't wanna fuck it up. Okay?"
"I ... what ... what does that mean?"
"It means that she loves you and you love her, and the two of you need to be together. And it means that if she's my best friend, then I want her happiness to come before anything else. That's why I want her to have you. I know you tried your very best, and I thank you for that. But I know where your hearts lie, even if you and Shane don't."
***
Shane sorted through the pile of tapes, picking up one here and there and reading the labels. Some of the labels read "CARMEN ON THE PHONE," "SHANE WITH FLOWER GIRL," "SHANE LATE EVENING," and "CARMEN COOKING," but most of the tapes seemed to be of Shane and only a few were of Jenny or Carmen. The more tapes she examined, the angrier she got.
She heard someone coming down the hall and turned to see Carmen, who stopped and stared at Shane, anger and pain in her eyes. Then Carmen turned away, picked up her suitcase, and left the house without looking back. Shane watched her go, feeling her heart sink even further. She turned back to the table full of tapes and saw Mark still standing in his corner, looking guilty. Shane picked up one of the tiny cameras and looked at it, then looked at Mark. He stared back with a pleading look. The heartbroken expression on Shane's face crushed him, and when he saw a tear run down her cheek and heard her sniffle, he nearly lost it himself.
She came over to him slowly, and he'd never seen anyone so sad, so hurt. He started to blink back his own tears, missing Shane's sudden movement as she cocked her right arm, and he finally saw the fist coming at him, too, too late. Shane clocked him one on the side of the chin, and he staggered and reeled. Shane turned, threw the tiny camera against the far wall, and bent over, sobbing. She collapsed onto the floor, crying her heart out.
***
Carmen's sweet face was on the TV monitor Shane had set up in her room, hooked to one of Mark's tape players.
"Hi. Me right here."
Carmen cleared her throat.
"I ... would make out with --"
Shane hit the fast-forward button.
Carmen again.
"-- They can sometimes be a little sexy--"
Fast-forward. Shane watched her own face.
"They're not scary, they're just stupid."
Carmen:
"That's right, and stupid, Shane --"
Shane hit fast-forward. She saw her own face again as Mark's voice-over said,
"Let me ask you this question, 'What are you looking for in a woman?' and Shane's response, "What are you looking for?"
***
It was a bad week for tears.
Jenny sat at the dining room table, cutting photos of herself out of old family photos as tears streamed down her face. She took one of the cut-out photos of her younger self and set it on a terrifying pencil rendering she'd drawn of a clown with its jaws open wide. The clown had huge, pointed teeth surrounding an opening slot in the paper where the mouth was. Jenny pushed the photo of her younger self through the opening so that it disappeared into the horror clown's gullet.
Jenny took a cut-out photo of two middle-aged Jews in Orthodox clothing, a man and woman, and put them in another pencil rendering of another horrific scene. This was a carnival at night, with a Ferris wheel looming in the distance. There was a large tent in the foreground. The tent was lit inside; there was a long table set with food. Jenny put the couple in the tent, by the table. She began to whisper the Sabbath blessing for the wine, in Hebrew.
"Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu Melech ha'olam. Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu Melech ha'olam."
(Blessed are you, oh Lord our God, King of the universe.)
Jenny pushed a photo of herself into the open center of a crayoned drawing of a black body of water, ripples fanning out from the middle. The young Jenny sank from sight, drowned in a metaphorical Milton Bradley darkness.
"... Eloheinu ha'olam ... "
Jenny rocked back and forth, lost in the moment, in some black interior space inside herself.
" ... Borei pri hagafen."
(... who creates the fruit of the vine.)
"Jen?" Shane stood in the dining room doorway.
Jenny stopped, looked up, wiped her tears away and smiled. "Hi."
Shane leaned against the doorway, watching her, looking worried. "What are you doing?"
Jenny looked at the table and started gathering the photos and drawings.
"Um ... I just keep on having ... these nightmares, and ... I'm just trying to work it all out."
