FALLEN ANGELS

Kemi C. Amusan

CHAPTER 4: FATE OF CRYSTAL

 

Heaven has been at her desk for over an hour, the pages in front of her swimming slightly at the edges, a private pharmacology she has assembled herself in the two months since the divine decadence, since the hospital, since the chandelier came close enough to change the shape of her collarbone and the story of her life in the same instant.

She had meant it, that night. She still isn’t sure meaning it counts for anything now that four weeks of writing have worn the edges off until what’s left doesn’t look like conviction anymore, just habit. The plan had been simple. Write it all down. Every year of it, every performance of friendship, every knife dressed as concern. Finish Danielle publicly, completely, no survivors. Publish it. Then be done.

I did it. Here is why.

That had been the first line, four weeks ago, written in a single sitting with a clarity she hasn’t been able to locate since. She still has it. She hasn’t deleted it. She has simply kept writing past it, day after day, the pages accumulating around that first sentence, and somewhere in the accumulation the will for the last part, the final part, has gone quiet. Not healed. Not resolved. Just quiet. She still doesn’t know if that’s better.

An empty mug sits at the edge of the desk, the bottom coated thick, almost black, the sludge of coffee brewed strong enough to strip something rather than wake it, spoonfuls of grounds gone into it like she’d been making something closer to punishment than a drink. She has been like this for days. Maybe longer. The kind of high-strung, wire-taut awake that comes from a body that has stopped trusting sleep and started chasing something else instead, something that keeps every old wound close to the surface and every grievance loaded and ready.

She heard Terrence come in some time ago and didn’t stop writing, and he hasn’t announced himself. Terrence moves through the house slowly, deliberately, a man taking inventory of a place he used to own. She hears the railing at the top of the stairs take his weight, hears him pause there, longer than the stairs require. The sofas creak when he finally settles onto one of them. She doesn’t look up. She knows he’s studying the framed posters of old Hollywood faces she’s collected since before she could afford them.

Neither of them names it. That silence feels more honest than anything either of them said out loud in the divorce.

Lilith Media went public with the rebrand three weeks ago. Heaven watched the announcement, Constance Hawkeye’s face on every business feed, Crystal’s old name receding from headlines a little further each day, replaced by something newer and colder. She stopped checking by the second week.

The pages in front of her are not safe reading for anyone who doesn’t know her.

“Can you believe it, babe?” Terrence says, scrutinizing the upstairs living room. “The lawn actually said to the gravel, that is the jackass, as I walked up the stairs.”

Heaven doesn’t turn around. She is looking at the space beside her desk where the child was standing twenty minutes ago, amethyst eyes, her coils catching the light like something had touched them with silver, her hand extended toward Heaven’s face, her voice pitched just below ordinary hearing.

Aunty. What’s that song.

She has appeared twice already today.

Heaven sets down her pen. Only then does she turn to face him.

“Tough being here,” he says finally, and she understands he’s been sitting with the silence exactly as long as he can stand it. The ice in his glass has already melted enough to thin the drink. “Even the railing’s gossiping. The sofas are having a field day.” A pause, longer than the joke needs. “The stairs judged me on the way up. I thought you should know.”

“You didn’t knock,” she says.

“I never do.” He says it lightly, but something moves underneath it. Some part of him still walks through this house like it belongs to him, and neither of them is ready to say that plainly. “Force of habit.”

He crosses to the side table and pours another drink, easy, familiar, the ice already low.

“It’s hard, coming here, is all I’m saying.” He keeps going. “Even the railing broke out in gossip when I held it. Can you hear? The sofas are having the unofficial roast of Terrence King. Talk to them on my behalf, will you? Beg the walls to project the happy memories. Ask them to remember the lovemaking on the library floor, the glasses we clinked in toasts. Sure, these couches can recount the amusing tales they heard. And these creaky doors, they opened opportunities too, didn’t they.”

He notices the papers on the desk. She watches his eyes settle on them.

“Don’t,” she says as he reaches to pick them up.

He picks them up anyway.

She watches his face while he reads. It moves through several expressions, curiosity, something like amusement, and then it stops moving altogether. He reads a full page in silence. Then another. His jaw sets. His hand, holding the pages, goes very still.

“Heaven.” His voice has lost its lightness entirely. “What is this.”

“Give it back.”

“I did it. Here is why.” He looks up at her, and there’s no performance left in his face, none of the practiced charm, just something raw and frightened underneath it. “What did you do, Heaven. What are you planning to have done.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.” She holds out her hand for the pages. “I haven’t finished it.”

“What’s the last chapter, Heaven. Tell me there isn’t a last chapter.”

She says nothing, which is its own answer, and he reads it correctly.

“Jesus.” He sets his drink down too hard. Some of it spills, dark, across the side table, and neither of them moves to wipe it. “You were going to publish this. And then.” He can’t finish the sentence. He tries again. “Have you talked to anyone? The girls. A doctor. Anyone.”

“The girls.” She hisses the words. “Women whose hugs are the embrace of death. Whose smiles are the Joker’s sneer?”

“Give it up already,” Terrence says.

“Give it up?” Heaven asks. “Did you just say give it up? Give what up, exactly? The truth? That those so-called friends don’t take pleasure in my misfortune? That we don’t wish each other ill?”

She lets out a bitter laugh.

“You know what I really want? I wish Danielle would get sick and die. No. That’s too…” She groans and kicks the chair away from under her. “Easy.”

She fumes for a moment.

“I mean, Silvia assured me she wasn’t going to sell her shares of Crystal to Danielle. It’s thanks to her betrayal, and yours, that I got ousted from my own company. Damn it.”

She turns on him.

“Then my own twin. Eden. Forty-year-old imbecile. She surrendered the business I helped her found to Danielle. Sacrificed her autonomy and her selfhood for Danielle’s proper micromanagement, all in the name of money, glitz, glamour, and fame.”

She laughs again, but there is nothing amused in it.

“And when I advised her to go back to grade two and find the brain she left in Mr. Chiamaka’s class, so she could learn to assert her independence, value herself beyond what Danielle demands of her, she decides to vent Danielle’s venom and badmouth me everywhere.”

She shakes her head.

““What’s worse, the gossip shows find her idiocy entertaining. And she is spreading it like a virus. Talking about…” She rolls her eyes and then mimics Eden, her voice suddenly soft and breathy. “‘I fear for Heaven’s mental state. She seems about to do something dangerous.’”

She drops the voice and snorts.

“Worried about me. Please.”

 

“Heaven, maybe you should just—”

“And don’t get me started on Jewel’s Stockholm syndrome, writing articles, cheering her abuser on like an insane moron. I just feel like laying her on the floor and feeding her my fists.”

“Heaven.”

“Pretending we are one another’s caring shadows, and we need never be invited to one another’s table before we draw a spoon. Pretending we delight in sharing our every crust when in truth we want to slam our plates in each other’s faces. Pretending we want to share the warmth of our fire when indeed we fear our so-called friends will watch with glee as we burn in it.”

She stops, breathes, then continues.

“No, ours isn’t a friendship that revels in trading secrets, that joyously invades one another’s privacy. Our hugs are the embrace of death, and our smiles the Joker’s sneer. Telling those clowns I’m sick would be the death of me. And when we fall, we ask, Are you my sister? Can I trust you?”

Her voice goes softer now. Introspective. A plea, really.

“Please, in this moment, keep up the appearance of our friendship. Assure me of safety in your presence. Because we know, without a word, without a sign, these friends of ours will kill us.”

 

She seethes. For a while, she says nothing.

Terrence waits.

Then the words come pouring out again.

“I threw myself on the fire for these friends, trying to free us from Danielle’s tyranny. Instead, the exposé didn’t just reignite old tensions between Danielle and me. Rather than applaud me for belling the cat, the rest of these bitches cast their stones, rallied around Danielle, and made me the enemy bent on covering her tracks. After all, the exposé on Jewel’s abortions was published under my Crystal account. I still can’t explain how. Or maybe I can. Maybe I already did. But no one fucking believed me.

“Eden waited until I was down to start venting all her animosity in my face. Who knew she’d been jealous this whole time, because I refused to play the script Danielle handed me, going on talk shows saying I never helped her career, and how in three months Danielle got her established. All I ever asked was that she be true to herself.

“And how ever so jealous I was, because one time, drunk, I kissed her husband while dressed in two yards of warning, my red dress fully prepared to break barriers and breach protocols.”

“But you responded to him,” Terrence says, teasing. “You owned up to it. I liked your husband holding me in his arms while you waddled around showing off your house. I liked him slipping his tongue in me. Those were your words. Everyone heard you at the ball.”

“Or so Eden says on the gossip shows, which I can now see you have been a fan of.” She looks at him. “And you call yourself a man. Do you know what she said to me before she left our table to go dance with Danielle?” Heaven snaps. “I knew your success wouldn’t last. Welcome back, Heaven. Rock bottom misses you. Now watch a winner walk away.”

 

“You could’ve been a grown-up and gone to join Danielle on the floor like the rest of them,” Terrence says, reasonably.

The reasonableness of it offends Heaven more than anything else. She opens her mouth, ready to explain exactly why his cold, rational suggestion is infuriating. Nothing comes out.

“But I didn’t.”

She looks away.

“And as punishment, I got a chandelier dropped on me. As if I hadn’t been humiliated enough.”

“You were too stoned to move.” He looks at the pills scattered around her. “Looking at all of these, I can understand why.”

“Yeah, true,” Heaven says. “Jewel promised those pills would make my meek and lowly heart content with the goodness of suffering. Now they have me seeing ghosts and hearing voices. Super. Ecstatic. As Danielle swallows my dream, just like she promised she would.”

“Did I also imagine you selling your shares to Danielle?”

“You have to get over this. This childishness.”

“You ask for my silence because you can’t stand the anger you stirred up?” she cries. “As if you haven’t hurt me enough.”

“Do you really want to carry on like you’re the angel here?”

“Of course not. You’re the big man about town. The one with the shiny new wife and new connections. Congratulations, by the way, on transcendence. That crap of a movie may just win an Oscar.”

“Congratulations to you too,” he replies. “You wrote the book. Remember? Or is this you persecuting my privilege of creative freedom?”

“Freedom to turn a work of art into consciousness-dousing propaganda?” she asks, hurt and condemnation in her voice. “Bravo, Terrence. We had a mission. Crystal and star power were built for soulful stories. You abdicated your throne for money, power, and sex.”

“Yes, I was a star. I gave light and guidance. I worshipped on the hills of Neptune and the waters of Aquaria, till the rulers of Pluto robbed me of my virtues, till their snakes and scorpions plundered my garden. Stop already. I didn’t come here for a fight.” He reaches for a bottle.

“Don’t touch that.”

“Saving it for a special purpose? That requires accumulated dust. Is your housekeeper on sabbatical?”

“She comes in about once a week,” Heaven says.

“To keep the dirt in place? It’s lousy in here, Heaven. Why do this to yourself?”

“I could repaint, I could clean, I could remodel, but the memories would still condemn me. You can’t just waltz in and expect to be spared. Don’t blame the dust on the old bricks for your guilt.”

“How about the ones soaking the pills by the fridge? Or did your doctor recommend that touch of dirt? Are the cobwebs helping you heal, Heaven?” he taunts. “Anyway, like I said, I’m not here to fight.”

“Then why waste the caffeine,” Heaven says.

“I see you chew on coffee as a meal now, judging by the thickness of the dregs in your unwashed mugs,” Terrence replies. “Oh, and while we’re on the subject of your failures…”

“Yes. Your failures. I told you to partner with other studios. Co-produce with them. Let the streaming platforms finance and distribute some of your projects. Take Crystal beyond your little circle and actually compete for audiences. But you wouldn’t. You wanted to own everything, control everything, decide everything.” He gestures at the pages. “And now you’re sitting here writing four pages of confession and calling it the preface to a book.”

He shakes his head.

“The real problem is you refuse to adapt. You built something extraordinary and then refused to let it grow, because growing it would have meant letting other people touch it. Other studios. Other producers. Other platforms. And you don’t let people touch things.”

“Yet here you are, smudging my things with your sin-stained fingers,” she hisses. “You want me to be more like her, don’t you? You left me because I was weak. You sold to her because you respect her and think nothing of me. Then you lied to me. Yet when I tried to be like her, you felt threatened. You wouldn’t be with a woman who wanted you to worship her. Literally.”

“We were talking business strategy. How to help Crystal grow. To get you back in the business instead of swallowing pills and conjuring murder.”

“Were we? Because it seems to me we were venerating Danielle. A woman who…” She laughs bitterly. “Wait. Do you even know how she got MBSV?”

She doesn’t wait for an answer.

“Blackmail. Dirt on all seven of them, and it doesn’t wash out. She paid the ones the dirt wasn’t enough for, using money from the cosmetics sale. She’s been planning it for years. The cosmetics company, the broadband, MacUniversal. It wasn’t a series of acquisitions. It was a sequence. Every move positioned for the next one.”

She leans forward.

“And now she’s selling their studios. Converting them into hotels and resorts. Studios from the thirties. The sixties. Gone.”

She shakes her head.

“Who does that? Someone who doesn’t need them to mean something, that’s who. Someone who only needs them to be worth something. Or prove she can mess with people, and dreams, and businesses, and lives.”

Heaven shakes her head slowly. The old Hollywood faces on the walls look down. She loved those faces since she was a child. They taught her that stories could be bigger than the people who told them, that something made in one room could reach into another room, in another decade, find a person it had never met, and change the quality of their life.

That was what Crystal was supposed to do.

And Danielle is turning the rooms where that had been done into hotel lobbies.

“She’s a genius,” Heaven says, despite herself. “I’ll give her that. How impressive, to just ruin things. Including our love and our dream. Serving shiny Mya up in your face. I should really just be like Danielle. You’re right. I really should be more like her, so you can love and respect me again, and I can ruin you.”

“You tried, babe,” he answers. “You just didn’t have what it takes.”

“I never did,” she says. “I actually have morals.”

“No, honey,” he replies. “You’re just a coward. You could never go through with it. Remember when you asked me to literally worship you?”

“That was Danielle’s idea.”

“My point exactly. When it comes to wielding power, you’re more like a pawn in other people’s games. You want power. You want to climb that chess ladder and be a queen. But you can’t. Not without me fighting alongside you.”

He pauses.

“But listening to Danielle’s advice, letting her meddle in our marriage, that ruined our marriage. She was on the opposing team, and you privileged her advice over what we had built together. Now you blame me.”

“You’re the kind of person who lies about not enjoying it. You project your own shadows. Kissing Eden’s husband, that wasn’t nothing. You enjoyed it. And watching you do it probably fueled my own desire to climb the totem pole too. To stop being the ugly duckling. You wanted it to frighten your friends, to show them how far you could reach, to shock them. Let the ugly sister become an item with the great Terry King,” Terrence says.

“Are you repeating Danielle word for word right now?” Heaven asks. “Because it sounds like you are.”

“Say what you want about women like Danielle. Call her evil if you like, but she owns it. She wields her power unabashedly and turns things around, while you continue to stew in victimhood and self-righteousness. Like, how stupid were you to sell your shares and give the money away? What were you hoping to achieve? Sainthood? Good luck. Especially when you’re no better than me or Danielle. You’re just not as smart. So quit the conspiracy brewery you call a head. The martyr-philanthropist image is getting you nowhere. Your virtue isn’t cutting shit.

“Oh, and she also wanted me to know the whole praying to you thing was her idea too. And that’s the thing with Danielle. She owns it.”

“How about doing me one more favor? This one will be good, I swear it,” Terrence says.

 

“You cheated on me,” Heaven says. “With my protégée. At Danielle’s urging.”

He doesn’t answer. He picks up his glass instead, turns it once in his hand like he’s deciding whether it’s worth finishing, and for three full seconds the only sound in the house is the ice settling.

Heaven waits.

Nothing.

She wipes her face with the heel of her hand. “That’s what you do,” she says, her voice colder now. “You cheat. You get lured by shiny things. When the chips are down and I need you most, you leave for the next shiny, powerful thing. If it’s not Mya or Danielle, it’s the Richies’ network and every deal you can pull from them. You forget we had a vision when we set up Crystal.”

Her voice catches.

“Everyone talks about what a fantastic leader you were in the NBA, but they’re wrong. You’re a self-hating champion who can’t take real responsibility. You make life hard for everyone else just to win.”

She breaks down. The sobs come quietly, her shoulders shaking as she tries to hold them back.

Terrence watches her.

After a while, he stands, crosses to the side table, and pours himself another drink. He carries it to the window and looks out at the lawn that called him a jackass on the way in.

He stays there for a moment.

Then he turns and walks slowly back to the table. He sets the wine glass down carefully on the dusty surface.

“Again, speaking of your failures. Check this out.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a photograph.

Heaven takes it.

Her eyes fall on the image, and the color drains from her face.

She knows the night immediately. She had buried it so completely she’d almost convinced herself it hadn’t happened exactly the way it happened. There she is, years younger, her face half-hidden behind an ornate mask, caught in the particular velvet-and-shadow world of a place built for desires no one was supposed to carry back into daylight.

She looks like someone else.

Someone she had worked very hard to forget.

Terrence watches her face. “Danielle couldn’t find dirt on me,” He says, his voice quieter now, the anger burned through to something underneath it. “So, she came after you. She threatened to publish this. I sold the shares to keep it buried. To keep you safe.”

He lets that sit. “So, tell me. Was the sailor’s wife putting out all over the place before we met? Why so quiet, Heaven? Not so saintly after all.”

““This was before we met,” Heaven says.

“I know.” His mouth twists into something that isn’t quite a smile. “But imagine what it would do to your image anyway. Oh, how the angels have fallen.”

Heaven stands there, still holding the photograph.

“I’m not judging,” Terrence says. “I’m a sinner with smudgy, sin-stained fingers afterall.”

Outside the window, the afternoon moves at its own indifferent pace, unconcerned with what’s happening in the room.

“The anger of the phoenix,” Terrence says softly, almost to himself, looking at her face. “It suits you, my darling.”

He moves toward the door, then pauses with his hand on the frame. The pages are still stacked on the side table where he left them, deliberately, out of her reach.

“Call me if you need help with Danielle. Soulmates, remember? Even now, I don’t leave a woman alone with a loaded gun.”

The door closes behind him.

Heaven stands in the middle of the room with the photograph in one hand and the empty space on the desk where the pages used to be.

On the chair across from her, Crystal sits, feet up on the table. Two different shoes. On the wrong feet. One pink, one purple. Amethyst eyes. Silvery afro hair. Aunty, what’s that song? she asks.