someone’s trying to kill you?”
“Um,” I say. How can I put this so as not to cause her undue alarm? After all, I get to go home every night, but Sarah has to live here. How comfortable is she going to feel knowing there’s a dangerous psychopath stalking the floors of Fischer Hall?
Then again, Sarah lost her virginity on an Israeli kibbutz the summer of her freshman year—or so she’d told me—so it isn’t like she’s a potential victim.
So I shrug and say, “Yes.”
Then—because Rachel is upstairs in her apartment getting ready for the ball (she’d managed to find something to wear, but wouldn’t show it to us on account of “not wanting to ruin the surprise”)—I tell her my theory about Chris Allington and the deaths of Elizabeth Kellogg and Roberta Pace.
“Have you told any of this to Rachel?” Sarah asks me, when I’m done.
“No,” I say. “Rachel has enough to worry about, don’t you think?” Besides—I don’t mention this part to Sarah—if it turns out I’m wrong, it won’t look so good at my six months’ employment review… you know, my suspecting the son of the president of the college of a double homicide.
“Good,” Sarah says. “Don’t. Because has it occurred to you that this whole thing—you know, with your thinking that Elizabeth and Roberta were murdered—might be a manifestation of your own insecurities over having been betrayed and abandoned by your mother?”
I just blink at her. “What?”
“Well,” Sarah says, pushing up her glasses. “Your mother stole all your money and fled the country with your manager. That had to have been the most traumatic event in your life. I mean, you lost everything—all your savings, as well as the people on whom you thought you could most depend, your father having been absent most of your life to begin with due to his long-term incarceration for passing bad checks. And yet whenever anyone brings it up, you dismiss the whole thing as if it were nothing.”
“No, I don’t,” I say. Because I don’t. Or at least, I don’t think I do.
“Yes, you do,” Sarah says. “You even still speak to your mother. I heard you on the phone with her the other day. You were chatting with her about what to get your dad for his birthday. In jail. The woman who stole all your money and fled to Argentina!”
“Well,” I say, a little defensively. “She’s still my mother, no matter what she’s done.”
I’m never sure how to explain about my mom. Yes, when the going got tough—when I let Cartwright Records know I was only interested in singing my own lyrics, and Jordan’s dad, in response, unceremoniously dropped me from the label—not that my sales had been going gangbusters anymore anyway—my mom got going.
But that’s just how she is. I was mad at her for a while, of course.
But being mad at my mom is kind of like being mad because it’s raining out. She can’t help what she does, any more than clouds can.
But I suppose Sarah, if she heard that, would just say I’m in denial, or worse.
“Isn’t it possible that you’re displacing the hostility you feel about what your mother did to you onto poor Chris Allington?” Sarah wants to know.
“Excuse me,” I say. I’m getting kind of tired of repeating myself. “But that planter didn’t just fall out of the sky, you know. Well, okay, it did, but not by itself.”
“And could it be that you miss the attention you used to receive from your fans so much that you’ve latched on to any excuse to make yourself feel important by inventing this big important mystery for you to solve, where none actually exists?”
I remember, with a pang, what Cooper had said outside the service elevator. Hadn’t it been something along these same lines? About me wanting to relive the thrill of my glory days back at the Mall of America?
But wanting to find out who’s responsible for killing people in your place of work is totally different from singing in front of thousands of busy shoppers.
I mean, isn’t it?
“Um” is what I say in response to Sarah’s accusation. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
All I can think is, Sarah’s lucky she met Yael when she did. The kibbutz guy, I mean. Otherwise, she’s just the kind of girl Chris would go for next.
Well, except for that habit she has of psychoanalyzing people all the time. I could see how that might get annoying.
I haven’t been to a dressy party in ages, so when I finally get off work that night, I have a lot of preparations to make. First I have to go to Patty’s to get the dress—which fits, thank God, but barely.
Then I have to give myself a pedicure and manicure, since there isn’t time to have my nails done by professionals. Then I have to wash and condition my hair, shave my legs (and under my arms, since Patty’s dress is strapless), and, then, just to be on the safe side, I shave my bikini line as well, because, even though it’s highly unlikely I’m going to get lucky twice in two days, you never know. Then I have to apply a facial mask, and moisturize all over. Then I have to shape my eyebrows, dry and style my hair, apply makeup, and layer fragrance.
Then, noticing that the heels of my red pumps have obviously met with an unfortunate accident involving a subway grate, I have to go over them with a red Magic Marker.
And of course, through all of that, I have to pause occasionally to snack on Double-Stuff Oreos so that I won’t get light-headed from not having had anything to eat since this afternoon, when Magda smuggled that Reuben from the café for me.
By the time Cooper taps on my apartment door, I’m just struggling to zip up Patty’s dress and wondering why it had fit two hours ago in her loft but doesn’t fit now—
“Just a second,” I yell, trying to figure out what on earth I’m going to wear if I can’t get Patty’s dress to close properly….
Finally the zipper moves, though, and I grab my wrap and bag and clatter down the stairs, thinking it’s a shame there’s no one who can open the door for me and say, “She’ll be down in a minute,” so I can make a sweeping entrance, like Rory Gilmore or whoever. As it is, I have to knee Lucy out of the way just so I can get to the door.
I regret to say I don’t register Cooper’s reaction to my appearance—if he even had one, which I kind of doubt—because I’m so completely taken aback by his. Cooper does own a tuxedo, it turns out… a very nice one, in fact.
And he looks more than a little sexy in it.
What is it about men in tuxedos? Why do they always look so good in them? Maybe it’s the emphasis on the width of the chest and shoulders. Maybe it’s the startling contrast of crisp white shirt front and elegant black lapel.
Whatever it is, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a guy in a tux who didn’t look great. But Cooper is the exception. He doesn’t look great.
He looks fantastic.
I’m so busy admiring him that I nearly forget I’m attending this event to catch a killer. For a second—just one—I really do delude myself into thinking Cooper and I are on a date. Especially when he says, “You look great.”
Reality returns, though, when he looks at his watch and says distractedly, “Let’s go, all right? I’ve got to meet someone later, so if we’re going to do this, we need to get a move on.”
I feel a pang of disappointment. Meet someone? Who? Who does he have to meet? A client? A snitch?
Or a girlfriend?
“Heather?” Cooper raises his eyebrows. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I say, faintly.
“Good,” Cooper says, taking me by the elbow. “Let’s go.”
I follow him down the stairs and out the door, telling myself that I’m being an idiot. Again. So what if he has to meet someone later? What do I care? This isn’t a date. It isn’t. At least, not with him. If I have any kind of date at all tonight, it’s a date with the killer of Elizabeth Kellogg and Roberta Pace.
I repeat this to myself all the way through the park, past the Washington Square monument, and even as we cross the street to the library, where the event is being held and which has been transformed, by strategic
