"Do you like my costume?" he asked.
"Well, let's see." I checked him out, happy for the excuse to stare at him. He was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. "Um..."
Evan shook his head mournfully. "I thought you of all people would get it. Come on!" he said, adjusting a pair of thick horn-rimmed glasses. I shrugged apologetically.
"I'm Robert Downey Jr.," he said. "I've been passing out all night, and you're the first one to find me. My costume," he said. "My brilliant, brilliant costume."
"Poor you," I said, arranging myself cross-legged with my back against the wall. My bedroom, while tiny, was my favorite place in the apartment. It had everything I needed: a wide, low comfortable bed covered in the highest-thread-count sheets I could afford, a little table with my lamp and two photographs in silver frames: a head shot of my mother from the year I was born, all ivory skin, raven curls, and perfect profile, and a picture of the three of us at Tanglewood when I was five. Before we'd moved in, I'd planned on stacking my books on plywood and cinderblocks the way I had in college, but Janie had told me that Sy was redecorating and had given me three gorgeous six-foot-high mahogany bookcases with glass doors. My secondhand paperbacks and battered textbooks looked shabby inside of them, but my salary didn't permit me too many hardcovers.
Evan leaned over and lit the candles next to my bed, and the shadows flickered across his face. "You should've gone as Margot Kidder," I told him, leaning back against the headboard. He'd opened the window a crack, and I could feel cool night air on my cheeks. The glow of the moon filtered faintly through my curtains, and I could smell smoke from somebody kindling the first fire of the season in their hearth.
"Who do you think I was last year?" he asked. "I can't repeat myself, Katie!"
"Of course not," I said, savoring the warmth I felt when he said my name. He'd started calling me Katie a few weeks before, and it gave me a jolt of pleasure whenever he said it. I'd been a Kate and a Katerina, but never a Katie.
He shifted on the bed, and I could feel his breath against my cheek as he reached over and pulled my eyepatch over my head. Then he put it on, turning his head left and right for my inspection.
"Very nice," I said. I was surprised to hear how normal my voice sounded. "Piracy becomes you."
"So what are you doing in here?"
"The conversation was getting too intense," I said solemnly. "There's only so much talk of particle physics a girl can take."
He shook his head. "I know," he said. "They're awful, aren't they?"
"But highly decorative," I said, leaning back into the pillows.
"I used to like parties," he said. "My parents would have great ones. I'd pass out the drinks and then, when things were rolling, I'd go around picking up the empties, and if they weren't quite empty, I'd drink 'em. Scotch, rum and coke, white wine..." He shook his head. "My parents could never figure out why I was so grumpy the next day. Guess they'd never seen a nine-year-old with a hangover. How about you?"
"My parents went to parties," I said. "My mother used to drag me to these fund-raisers..." I sat up straight, indicating Reina's practiced gesture, the way her gaze would unerringly find me, even if I was hiding behind a cluster of battleship-sized basses, or a potted plant, the dramatic gesture she'd make. " 'Please say hello to my beautiful daughter, Katerina,' " I intoned in my best Reina voice.
"So what's wrong with that?"
I couldn't tell him what was most wrong with that--a few hundred pairs of eyeballs swinging toward me in unison when I was a pudgy eight-year-old, a gawky twelve-year-old, a slumping, sullen, zit-besmattered fourteen-year-old, and thinking, so hard I could practically hear it, beautiful? I pulled a pillow onto my lap and held on to it hard.
"Well, for starters, I can't sing, and everybody at these things wanted to know if I could. They expected me to be able to. And she'd sing..." I stopped for a moment, remembering a dozen parties in a dozen gilt and marble reception halls. "Reina, a song!" someone would call. My mother would do a few minutes of obligatory demurral, waving away requests with a plump, bejeweled hand. Then she'd sing for twenty minutes. Plus encores.
"But you can sing," Evan said.
"Oh, no. Not me. No."
"Yes, you can."
Now I was blushing so hard, I was sure I was glowing. "No, I don't sing."
"Yes, you do," he said. His voice was low and teasing. "I've heard you humming in the elevator."
I winced. "Well, humming. That's not singing."
"And you sing in the shower."
"What?"
"The walls are thin," he said. "Don't be ashamed! I like Bon Jovi too!"
Oh, God. "That was Janie," I lied.
"Was not," he said. He rolled over onto his side, propping up his head in his hand and staring at me with his unpatched eye. There was one hair sticking up from his right eyebrow, and my fingertips wanted desperately to smooth it. "Sing me something," he said.
If the room hadn't been so dimly lit, if he hadn't been in my bed, if there hadn't been rum in the cider, I would have said no, forget it, and found a way to change the subject. But what did it matter? He would never be mine, I thought, staring at his face in the rosy glow of the candles, and I could make a fool of myself or impress him completely, and he'd still be going home to sleep with Michelle at the end of the night.
"I'll make you a deal," I said. "I'll sing you something if you tell me what you do for a living."
He plumped the pillow. "You really want to know?"
"You really don't want to tell me?"
"Fine," he said, and grinned at me. "Deal. But you have to go first."
I sat up, straightening my spine and adjusting the red silk scarf I'd tied across my head. Then I thought, Why not? I'd never have a chance like this again. I pulled off the scarf and unpinned my hair, letting the damp curls tumble over my cheeks and down my back. I could hear Mrs. Minheizer's gentle voice in my head, telling me how to use my core, how to use my mouth and tongue to shape the air that would carry the sound, how to let the music come not from me but through me.
I held the parrot in my hands like a microphone. "Welcome to the Stuffed Parrot Lounge," I intoned. "My name is Katie Klein, and I'll be here all week. Tip your waitresses. They work hard." Then I took a deep breath and started to sing.
"My funny Valentine," I sang softly. "Sweet comic Valentine. You make me smile with my heart..." I could see Evan, out of the corner of my eye, gazing at me raptly, with his total attention, holding himself perfectly still as my alto--a little reedy, but clear and sweet--rang through the room.
"Is your figure less than Greek? Is your mouth a little weak? When you open it to speak, are you smart? Don't change a hair for me. Not if you care for me. Stay, little valentine, stay. Each day is Valentine's Day." I let the last note hang in the air. Adequate, my mother would have said, if she was feeling generous. Evan tugged me back beside him by the hem of my loose white blouse. Then he started to clap.
"Wow," he said. "Wow wow. You're amazing, do you know that?"
I shook my head, blushing again. "I'm not amazing."
"You're just full of shit, is what you are," Evan said. "Why don't you go on auditions, or sing with a band or something? Did you study music in college?"
"I'm not that good."
He wasn't listening. "I can't believe you can sing like that. I can't believe you're"--he reached over and tapped my chest, right above my heart--"carrying that around with you."
"Okay," I said, hoping he couldn't see me blushing. "Your turn. Spill."
He suddenly got very interested in toying with the horn-rimmed glasses he'd pulled off to make room for my eyepatch. "Well, it's kind of a secret."
"Not drugs?"
"No, no, nothing illegal. I work part-time. I do freelance investigations. Like if someone files a workmen's comp claim, and the company thinks they're faking, I trail them for a few days, see what they're doing, see if they're really wearing a neck brace all day long or if they're meeting ladies a
t a merengue club. Or marital work. Pre-nups, custody arrangements, stuff like that."
"Really?" That would certainly explain the strange absences and the hush-hush phone calls.
"I also manage a small investment portfolio," he said.
"So you do have a trust fund!"
"Not exactly," he began. "I won some money on TV."
"Doing what?"
He mumbled his response toward my comforter. "America's Funniest Home Videos." Then he lifted his head. "But don't tell Michelle I told you. She thinks it's declasse. She wants me to pretend I was on Wheel of Fortune."
I started laughing. I couldn't help it. "America's Funniest Home Videos? Is that the show where somebody's always getting hit in the crotch with a golf club?"
"Katie, Kate, Kate," he said, shaking his head. "You're being very unfair. Sometimes it's somebody getting hit in the crotch with a Wiffle ball bat."
"But there's usually a crotch involved, right?" He didn't say yes, but he didn't say no either. "So were you the hitter or the hittee?"
"Neither," he said. "I was the lucky guy in the front row of my sister's wedding when her bulldog started humping the priest's leg."
I stared at him. "I know you're kidding."
"Not kidding," he said. "Look it up. It was called 'Ringbearer Bulldog Goes Berserk.' And just for the record, the priest completely deserved it. He gave my sister a really hard time just because she was a lesbian in college."
"Was that her official minor or something?" I asked. The door swung open, admitting a wedge of unwelcome light.
"Evan?"
I squinted until I could make out the peaked point of Michelle's witch hat.
"Oh, hey, babe," he said, so warmly that I felt my heart shrivel into a chunk of the wadded-up tinfoil.
She shook her finger at him and pouted. "What are you doing hiding in here? People are dancing."
"I'll be out in a minute."
"Bye, then." She closed the door, leaving us in semidarkness.
"Well," said Evan.
"Well," I repeated. "Back to particle physics. And don't worry," I said, "your secret is safe with me."
"I'll bring you some snacks," he said, swinging his legs out of the bed. "Or a study guide."
He pulled my eyepatch back over my head and settled it over one eye. "Have fun," I told him.
"You too," he said, and closed the door gently behind him.
Twelve
"It's...devastating," said Philip Cavanaugh. He was sunk into an armchair in his living room, which was full of white-on-white flower arrangements and thick with the cloying scent of lilies. As I watched, he lifted one hand slowly and touched his index finger to the center of his lips. Then his hand drifted back down past his coffee cup and landed in his lap.
I'd called Janie as soon as I'd gotten outside the coffee shop to tell her of my misadventures with Lisa DeAngelis.
"Shtupping the sitter," Janie had said, over the sounds of Sam, Jack, and Sophie singing "Five Little Monkeys." "How revoltingly cliche. So what now?"
"Call the police?" I guessed.
"Why not have a chat with the merry widower first?" said Janie.
I looked down at my outfit. "I don't think I'm really dressed for a sympathy call."
"Au contraire! You'll lift his spirits! Go on. I've got everything under control here." She paused. "The kids still take naps, right?"
"Right."
I figured that it wouldn't do to show up at the widower's house empty-handed, so I cruised to the Super Shopper on Route 9 and bought an apple pie and a gingham-checked tea towel. Back in the van I liberated the pie from its plastic clamshell, wrapped it in a towel and drove to the scene of the crime. I would have swung home to heat it up and make it look even more authentically homemade, but someone--probably me--had left a plastic cutting board in the oven. The month before I'd set the oven to preheat and didn't realize what had happened until the smoke alarm went off and I opened the oven door to reveal a smoking, dripping, gooey mess. I'd run the self-clean cycle twice since then, but still, everything I baked tasted faintly of burnt plastic, including the roast I'd prepared when my brother-in-law and his girlfriend came for dinner.
My knees shook as I lifted the Cavanaughs' brass knocker. I'd had a whole song and dance ready to get me through the front door--I just wanted to convey my sympathies in person, such a tragedy, such a terrible thing--but I found myself so lost in my memories of what had happened the last time that door had swung open, that when Philip Cavanaugh answered my knocks, I couldn't say anything at all. No matter: he'd merely nodded, taken the pie, and led me into the living room.
"Devastating," he said again, and blinked his pale watery eyes, a motion that seemed to sap his energy entirely.
I nodded, looking around the living room, a twin of my own that Kitty had transformed into a warm, clean, welcoming space, the kind of room you'd want to spend time in. Her walls were painted a creamy cappuccino brown, and she'd chosen chocolate brown leather sofas, accent tables painted buttery yellow, and burnished wicker baskets for the toys and books and magazines. There was an Oriental rug in crimson and gold that even my untrained eye could recognize as the real item, not one of the mass-produced department store numbers that graced my own floors, and big gold-framed paintings on the walls, seascapes in a primitive style, where the sun was lemon yellow, the sea was turquoise blue, and the beach was dotted with red umbrellas that bloomed like poppies.
Philip followed my gaze. "Kitty's mother did those."
"They're beautiful."
"They're Cape Cod. Where she's from," he said hoarsely. "We'd take the girls back there for two weeks every summer. I can't..." His voice caught, and he blinked again. "I can't...believe..." Nor could he muster the energy to complete the sentence. I looked away as he wiped his eyes, focusing on the photographs in painted wooden frames that lined the mantel. There was one of Kitty and the girls, each of them holding a wedge of watermelon and grinning, and a wedding picture, with Kitty cool and lovely behind her veil and Philip beaming beside her.
My plan--such as it was--was simple: pretend that Kitty and I had actually been friends. Pretend that she'd opened up to me, and maybe Philip would do the same.
"I've always loved that picture," I murmured, pointing at the mantel, realizing that while I'd been staring at the walls and the pictures, Philip Cavanaugh had been staring at me. More specifically, he'd been staring at my chest, shown off to eye-popping advantage in Janie's too-small sweater. I crossed my legs, wishing for Lisa's sweatpants. When I looked up, Philip's watery gaze had drifted down to my thighs. His jaw hung open, and I could hear him breathing through his mouth. Ick. Philip wasn't a bad-looking guy. All of the elements were there: the blue gray eyes, the silvery blond hair, the solid cheekbones and the height, the narrow hips and broad shoulders, but it was all a little soft, a touch unfocused, a little blurred around the edges. He'd probably spent his whole life hearing Oh, you look just like Robert Redford! But up close, he didn't. He looked like Robert Redford's younger, not-terribly-bright second cousin, the one who'd have a few too many cocktails at your grandfather's birthday party and think it the height of hilarity to slip an ice cube down your back when it was time to dance.
Could I imagine him pawing the sitter in the car on the way home? Indeed I could. Could I imagine him whispering in the sitter's ear, If Kitty wasn't around, we could be together, and asking whether she knew anyone with free time and low morals who'd do the deed? Possibly. What I couldn't figure out was why someone as cool and collected and lovely as Kitty had married this mouth-breather in the first place.
Philip cleared his throat noisily, and I settled on another tactic--flirting my heart out. I licked my lips and tried to remember what it was like to look enticing to a man who hadn't seen you splayed on a table, sweating and cursing and attempting to push out an eight-pound baby. It was like asking someone who'd spent the last five years defrosting fish sticks to whip up a salmon en pa-pillote.
"Have you heard a
nything from the police?" I asked in my softest, most come-hither voice.
He shook his head.
"When I was at the police station"--I smoothed my pants and toyed with a lock of hair, dropping my already low voice half an octave--"you said...that is, I overheard you saying that it was all your fault."
He blinked his watery eyes at me again. "Content," he croaked. "That columnist Kitty worked with got hate mail...death threats. There are unbalanced people. Crazies." He shook his head. "She said nobody knew her. Ghost...writer. Nobody knew." Tears splashed down his stubbly cheeks. "She liked it. Liked...flying under the radar. Being...invisible. But I think..." He rubbed his hands up and down the sides of his face, filling the room with a rasping, sand-papery sound. "Somebody found out."
Which, of course, was what I thought he would say if he was trying to throw me--or the cops--off his trail.
"Any somebody in particular?" I asked.
He stared at me, mouth slack, trying to decipher the sentence. I tried again, leaning forward, touching his hand with mine. "Was there anyone who'd bothered her, or called the house, or come here before?"
He shook his head.
"My fault..." he said. "I should...have insisted."
I pulled a Starbucks napkin out of my pocket and handed it to him. In slow motion, he folded it, then dragged it across his eyes.
"I'm so sorry," I murmured. "So sorry for your loss." I wanted to ask him a dozen things: What was your wife doing in New York? Was it work or something else? Was Kitty having an affair? Were you shtupping the sitter? Instead I leaned forward and tugged at the hem of my sweater, putting the already-straining fabric tight against my breasts. "Remind me again how you met Kitty."
"At...the office," he said. "She walked in..." His eyes filled with tears even as they stayed locked on my bosom. "She was so..."
Beautiful, I filled in.
"Alive," he said. "Curious about everything. Asking questions...looking around."
Asking questions, I repeated in my head. Looking around.
"I loved her," he said. His eyes were slipping shut again.
Goodnight Nobody Page 10