Kathleen O'Brien - The Sinner

Her mother laughed merrily. “Oh, Lara, you never listen to me. I must have talked to you about it ten times, and you said it was fine. You’ve been needing to do something with this place, and now that you’re—”

Maxim came over, wearing an olive-green suit with gold braids at the shoulders. He had redecorated Karla’s apartment last year, while Lara was in England filming The Highwayman. Lara had met him once or twice on visits home, and he’d scared her to death. With his black eyes and black moustache, he looked like some sadistic headmaster at a horror-movie military school.

“You must change. You must change everything.” He drew his imposing black brows together. In spite of his outrageous clothes, Maxim defied every stereotype about the effeminate interior decorator. He didn’t just redecorate your rooms, he went to war with them. “Everything.”

“Hi, Maxim.” Lara tried not to resent his presence. But the timing couldn’t have been worse. And it certainly pointed out that her mother, at least, wasn’t trapped in a mental maze of guilt and bloody memories, trying to make sense of Kenny Boggs’s death. Her mother was moving on, picking out paint and fabric and furniture.

Of course, she hadn’t been on the dais that day. She hadn’t seen Kenny’s body.

Lara forced a smile. She was always pretending these days, trying to be like other people. “Maxim…I think maybe we should put the redecorating off a little while. I need to talk to my mother—”

Maxim growled. “You cannot put this off a minute. Not a second.” He let his black gaze sweep the room angrily. “There is no style here, there is no ambiance. There is no you. Not the real you.”

If only he knew how true that was. The real Lara hadn’t ever set foot in this apartment. The real Lara hadn’t been seen for years. In fact, in some ways, she felt that the real Lara hadn’t yet been born.

“Maxim has such wonderful things planned, Lara. All white, very modern. With little explosions of color, like…” Karla put a pale pink fingertip against her dazzlingly white teeth. “Oh, show her the lamp, Maxim.”

“Yes. The lamp is the masterpiece.” Maxim picked up a long, cherry-red, twisted-glass thing from behind the sofa and held it out like a javelin. It was at least six feet long. It looked like…Lara searched her memory for what it reminded her of….

It looked like a Twizzler.

Maxim ran his hand along the twisted, ropy surface lovingly.

“Picture,” he commanded. “It glows, top to bottom. Very red. Dramatic. It stands behind a virginal white sofa. The sofa has purple pillows. Perhaps one is yellow, to startle the eye. And then…” He held the Twizzler erect. “Fire!”

Lara hesitated, wondering whether Maxim might be insane.

“Oh.” Without warning, his face crumpled. Even his moustache seemed to wilt. “You don’t like it?”

“Yes, of course,” she assured him, though it shocked her to see how vulnerable he was under that military surface. How could she have forgotten the one immutable truth of Hollywood? Everyone in this town was playing a role, apparently even Maxim. “It’s…unforgettable.” He frowned, unconvinced, so she went on. “I love it, honestly. It’s just that I really need to talk to—”

She suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked over to see Karla plucking at the cotton sleeve of Lara’s T-shirt and frowning.

“My God, Lara,” her mother said. “Please. Tell me you didn’t wear this out shopping.”

Lara stiffened, but she kept her voice calm. “Yes, I did.”

“Oh, honey, noooo.” Her mother sounded as distressed as if Lara had confessed to walking naked down Rodeo Drive. “And no makeup? No mousse?” She fingered Lara’s hair desperately, as if she could salvage her after the fact. “Oh, honey, honey. Not even any lipstick?”

Lara tried to keep smiling. “It’s okay, Mom.” She held up the shoe bag. “As you can see, they were willing to take my money, anyhow.”

“But what if people had seen you?”

“People did see me. Lots of people. No one turned to stone.”

“But I mean, someone important? God, what about the paparazzi?”

“Mom. I’m not that big a deal. I went, I shopped, I came home. I’m not Elizabeth Taylor. I don’t exactly stop traffic.”

“Not dressed like that, you don’t.” Her mother sighed. “But when you try, when you do something with yourself, then you’re—” She turned to Maxim. “Did you see The Highwayman?”

Maxim nodded. “Yes. It was a foolish movie, but her beauty there, it was amazing. When she shot herself to warn her lover, the audience wept. Everyone. I swear this.”

Karla turned back to Lara. “You see? It’s all in the presentation.” She grabbed her purse off the sofa and began rummaging through it. “I know I have a lipstick somewhere.”

“Mom, please—”

Karla held out a small, elegant gold tube. “Here. It’s a coral, which is really my color, not yours, but it’ll be better than nothing.”

Lara’s jaw tightened, and she felt her heart beating in her ears. “I’m in my own house. Surely it’s safe to be ugly in my own house.”

“It’s not safe to be ugly anywhere,” Karla said firmly, clearly not catching the sarcasm in Lara’s voice. Karla never joked about beauty and grooming. They were a religion with her. “Not when you’re a star. Not when you’re Lara Lynmore.”

“I’m not Lara Lynmore, Mom. I’m Lara Gilbert. And I’m serious. We need to talk.”

“But—” For the first time, Karla’s lovely brown eyes registered an uncomfortable awareness. “Can’t it wait until after the redecorating?”

“No.” Lara gave Maxim a short, apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, but it’s important.”

Karla bit her lower lip. “But— Wait, that’s right, I almost forgot, you need to call Sylvia. She has some scripts she wants you to look at. She thinks one of them may be the one.” She shrugged as if to say, oh, well, it can’t be helped. “I promised you’d call as soon as you got back.”

“Please, don’t keep brushing me off.” Lara touched her mother’s arm. Though they hadn’t talked about what came next, surely her mother had sensed something. Surely she knew that Kenny Boggs’s death had been a turning point.

“It is very important,” she repeated slowly.

Karla frowned. For a split second, Lara thought her mother looked frightened, but she blinked, and the illusion was gone. Irrationally, as if she hadn’t heard her daughter, Karla turned her back to Lara. She picked up a card full of fabric swatches and began to flip them with a jerky urgency.

“Nothing’s more important than calling your agent.” She didn’t look up, didn’t turn around. “Honestly, Lara, I’ve told you a million times, if you want to make it to the big time, you’re going to have to—”

“But I don’t.”

“What?”

“I don’t.” Lara hadn’t meant to break it this way, but apparently her mother’s instinctive defenses weren’t going to allow for a cushioned preparation. And the words were desperate, fighting to come out before guilt and fear and pity smothered them in her chest.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Mom. I don’t.”

Karla still didn’t turn around, but her hands had frozen on the fabric swatches. When she spoke, her voice sounded tight. “Don’t what?”

“I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m quitting. I’m getting out.”

“You’re…you—”

The fabric fell to the carpet with a ruffling flutter of color. And then, with a soft exhale of the breath she must have been holding far too long, maybe for eight whole weeks, Karla Gilbert slid to the floor, too.

Maxim jumped, trying in vain to catch her, assuming the faint was genuine. The Twizzler lamp dropped from his hands. It must have been a delicate glass because, even though the carpet was soft and expensive, the lamp shattered into a hundred red pieces, which sprayed out like jagged icicles of blood.