by Joy Fielding
“Your mother never taught you to cook?”
“We weren’t on the best of terms.” Alison smiled, although unlike her other smiles, this one seemed more forced than genuine. “Anyway, I’d love a piece of cake. Cranberries are one of my very favorite things in the whole world.”
Again, I laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who felt so passionately about cranberries. Could you hand me a knife?” I motioned toward a group of knives slid into the artfully arranged slots of a triangular chunk of wood that sat on the far end of the white tile countertop. Alison pulled out the top one, a foot-long monster with a tapered two-inch blade. “Whoa,” I said. “Overkill, don’t you think?”
She turned the knife over slowly in her hand, studying her reflection in the well-sharpened blade, gingerly running her finger along its side, temporarily lost in thought. Then she caught me looking at her and quickly replaced the knife with one of the smaller ones, watching intently as the knife sliced effortlessly through the large Bundt cake. Then it was my turn to watch as she wolfed it down, complimenting me all the while on its texture, its lightness, its taste. She finished it quickly, her entire focus on what she was doing, like a child.
Maybe I should have been more suspicious, or at the very least, more wary, especially after the experience with my last tenant. But likely it was precisely that experience that made me so susceptible to Alison’s girlish charm. I wanted, really wanted, to believe she was exactly as she presented herself: a somewhat naive, lovely, sweet young woman.
Sweet, I think now.
Sweet is not exactly the word I would use.
How could anything that sweet be destructive? she’d asked.
Why wasn’t I listening?
“You’ve obviously never had a problem with your weight,” I observed as her fingers pressed down on several errant crumbs scattered across her plate before lifting them to her mouth.
“If anything, I have trouble keeping pounds on,” she said. “I was always teased about it. Kids used to say things like, ‘Skinny Minny, she grows like a weed.’ And I was the last girl in my class to get boobs, such as they are, so I took a lot of flak for that. Now suddenly everybody wants to be thin, only I’m still catching flak. People accuse me of being anorexic. You should hear the things they say.”
“People can be very insensitive,” I agreed. “Where’d you go to school?”
“Nowhere special. I wasn’t a very good student. I dropped out of college in my first year.”
“To do what?”
“Let’s see. I worked in a bank for a while, sold men’s socks, was a hostess in a restaurant, a receptionist in a hair salon. Stuff like that. I never have any trouble finding a job. Do you think I could have some more coffee?”
I poured her a second cup, again adding cream and three heaping teaspoons of sugar. “Would you like to see the cottage?”
Instantly, she was on her feet, downing the coffee in one seamless gulp, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. “Can’t wait. I just know it’s going to be beautiful.” She followed me to the back door, an eager puppy nipping at my heels. “Your notice said six hundred a month, right?”
“Will that be a problem? I require first and last month’s rent up front.”
“No problem. I intend to start looking for a job as soon as I get settled, and even if I don’t find something right away, my grandmother left me some money when she died, so I’m actually in pretty good shape. Financially speaking,” she added softly, strawberry-blond hair curling softly around the long oval of her face.
I had hair like that once, I thought, tucking several wayward waves of auburn hair behind one ear. “My last tenant was several months behind in her rent when she took off, that’s why I have to ask …”
“Oh, I understand completely.”
We crossed the small patch of lawn that separated the tiny cottage from the main house. I fished inside my jean pocket for the key to the front door, the heat of her gaze on my back rendering me unusually clumsy, so that the key fell from my hand and bounced on the grass. Alison immediately bent to pick it up, her fingers grazing mine as she returned it to the palm of my hand. I pushed open the cottage door and stood back to let her come inside.
A long sigh escaped her full lips. “It’s even more beautiful than I thought it was going to be. It’s like … magic.” Alison danced around the tiny room in small, graceful circles, head arched back, arms outstretched, as if she could somehow capture the magic, draw it to her. She doesn’t realize she is the magic, I thought, suddenly aware of how much I’d wanted her to like it, how much I wanted her to stay. “I’m so glad you kept the same colors as the main house,” she was saying, briefly alighting, like a butterfly, on the small love seat, the large chair, the bentwood rocker in the corner. She admired the rug—mauve and white flowers woven into a pale pink background—and the framed prints on the wall—a group of Degas dancers preening backstage before a recital, Monet’s cathedral at sunset, Mary Cassatt’s loving portrait of a mother and her child.
“The other rooms are back here.” I opened the double set of French doors to reveal a tidy arrangement of galley kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom.
“It’s perfect. It’s absolutely perfect.” She bounced up and down on the double bed, running eager palms across the antique white bedspread, before catching her reflection in the mirror above the white wicker dresser and instantly assuming a more ladylike demeanor. “I love everything. It’s exactly the way I would have decorated it. Exactly.”
“I used to live here,” I told her, not sure why. I hadn’t confided anything of the sort to my last tenant. “My mother lived in the main house. I lived back here.”
A little half-smile played nervously with the corners of Alison’s lips. “Does this mean we have a deal?”
“You can move in whenever you’re ready.”
She jumped to her feet. “I’m ready right now. All I have to do is go back to the motel and pack my suitcase. I can be back within the hour.”
I nodded, only now becoming aware of the speed at which things had progressed. There was so much I didn’t know about her. There were so many things we had yet to discuss. “We probably should talk about a few of the rules…,” I sidestepped.
“Rules?”
“No smoking, no loud parties, no roommates.”
“No problem,” she said eagerly. “I don’t smoke, I don’t party, I don’t know anyone.”
I dropped the key into her waiting palm, watched her fingers fold tightly over it.
“Thank you so much.” Still clutching the key, she reached into her purse and counted out twelve crisp $100 bills, proudly handing them over. “Printed them fresh this morning,” she said with a self-conscious smile.
I tried not to look shocked by the unexpected display of cash. “Would you like to come over for dinner after you get settled?” I heard myself ask, the invitation probably surprising me more than it did her.
“I’d like that very much.”
After she was gone, I sat in the living room of the main house, marveling at my actions. I, Terry Painter, supposedly mature adult, who had spent my entire forty years being sensible and organized and anything but impulsive, had just rented out the small cottage behind my house to a virtual stranger, a young woman with no references beyond an ingratiating manner and a goofy smile, with no job and a purse full of cash. What, really, did I know about her? Nothing. Not where she came from. Not what had brought her to Delray. Not how long she was planning to stay. Not even what she’d been doing at the hospital when she saw my notice. Nothing really except her name.
She said her name was Alison Simms.
At the time, of course, I had no reason to doubt her.
TWO
She arrived for dinner at exactly seven o’clock, wearing a pair of black cotton pants and a sleeveless black sweater, with her hair pulled dramatically back and twisted into a long braid, so that she looked like an extended exclamation point. She was carrying a bouquet o
f freshly cut flowers in one hand and a bottle of red wine in the other. “It’s an Italian Amarone, 1997,” Alison announced proudly, then rolled her eyes. “Not that I know anything about wine, but the man in the liquor store assured me it was a very good year.” She smiled, her lightly glossed lips overtaking the entire bottom half of her face, her mouth opening to reveal an acre of perfect teeth. My own lips immediately curled into a heartfelt smile of their own, although they stopped short of exposing the gentle overbite that not even years of expensive orthodontics had been able to correct completely. My mother had always claimed the overbite was the result of a stubborn childhood habit of sucking on the middle and fourth fingers of my left hand while simultaneously rubbing my nose with the tattered remains of a favorite baby blanket. But since my mother had virtually the same overbite, I’m inclined to believe this aesthetic deficiency is more genetic than willful.
Alison followed me through the living and dining rooms into the kitchen, where I unwrapped the flowers and filled a tall crystal vase with water. “Can I do anything to help?” Eager eyes ferreted into each corner of the room, as if memorizing each detail.
“Just pull up a chair, keep me company.” I quickly deposited the flowers in the vase of lukewarm water, sniffing at the small pink roses, the delicate white daisies, the sprays of purple wildflowers. “They’re beautiful. Thank you so much.”
“My pleasure. Dinner smells wonderful.”
“It’s nothing fancy,” I quickly demurred. “Just chicken. You eat chicken, don’t you?”
“I eat everything. Put food in front of me and it’s gone within seconds. I’m the world’s fastest eater.”
I smiled as I recalled the way she’d demolished the piece of cranberry-and-pumpkin cake I’d given her that afternoon. Had it only been a matter of hours ago that we’d met? For some reason, it seemed as if we’d known each other all our lives, that despite the difference in our ages, we’d been friends forever. I had to remind myself how little I actually knew about her. “So, tell me more about yourself,” I said casually, searching through the kitchen drawers for a corkscrew.
“Not much to tell.” She sank into one of the wicker chairs at the round glass kitchen table, although her posture remained erect, even alert, as if she were afraid of getting too comfortable.
“Where are you from?” I wasn’t trying to pry. I was just curious, the way one is usually curious about a new acquaintance. I sensed a certain wariness on her part to talk about herself. Or maybe I didn’t sense anything at all. Maybe the small talk we made in my kitchen that night before dinner was nothing more than it appeared to be, two people slowly and cautiously getting to know one another, asking normal questions, not overanalyzing the responses, moving from one topic to the next without any particular plan, no hidden agendas.
At least there were no hidden agendas on my part.
“Chicago,” Alison answered.
“Really? I love Chicago. Where exactly?”
“Suburbs,” she said vaguely. “How about you? Are you a native Floridian?”
I shook my head. “We moved here from Baltimore when I was fifteen. My father was in the waterproofing business. He thought Florida was the natural place to be, what with all the hurricanes and everything.”
Alison’s green eyes widened in alarm.
“Don’t worry. Hurricane season is over.” I laughed, finally locating the corkscrew at the back of the cutlery drawer. “That’s the thing about Florida,” I mused out loud. “On the surface, everything is so beautiful, so perfect. Paradise. But if you look a little closer, you’ll see the deadly alligator lurking just below the water’s smooth surface, you’ll see the poisonous snake slithering through the emerald green grass, you’ll hear the distant hurricane whispering through the leaves.”
Alison smiled, the warmth of that smile filling the room, like steam from a kettle. “I could listen to you talk all night.”
I waved the compliment aside, using my fingers as a fan, as if trying to protect myself from the heat. Knowing me, I probably blushed.
“Have you actually seen a hurricane?” Alison leaned forward in her chair.
“Several.” I struggled to open the bottle of Amarone without breaking the cork in two. It had been a long time since I’d had to open a bottle of wine. I rarely entertained, and I’d never been much of a drinker. All it took was one glass of wine to start my head spinning. “Hurricane Andrew was the worst, of course. That one was something else. Makes you really respect Mother Nature when you witness something like that up close.”
“What words would you use to describe it?” she asked, picking up the thread of our earlier game.
“Terrifying,” I answered quickly. “Ferocious.” I paused, twisting the corkscrew gently to the right, gradually feeling the cork surrender, begin its slow slide up the neck of the dark green bottle. I admit to being suffused with an almost childish sense of pride and accomplishment as I lifted the vanquished cork into the air. “Magnificent.”
“I’ll get the glasses.” Alison was on her feet and in the dining room before I had time to tell her where the glasses were.
“They’re in the cabinet,” I called after her unnecessarily. It was almost as if she already knew where to look.
“Found them.” She returned with two long-stemmed crystal goblets, holding out first one, then the other, as I filled each about a quarter of the way. “They’re beautiful. Everything you have is so beautiful.”
“Cheers,” I said, clicking my glass gently against hers, marveling at the deep red of the wine.
“What are we drinking to?”
“Good health,” the nurse in me responded immediately.
“And good friends,” she added shyly.
“To new friends,” I amended slightly, lifting my glass to my mouth, the rich aroma filling my head before I’d tasted a single drop.
“New beginnings,” Alison whispered, her face disappearing into the roundness of the glass as she took a long, slow sip of the wine. “Mmm, this is yummy. What do you think?”
I quickly mulled over the adjectives experts generally employed when describing fine wine—full-bodied, buttery, fruity, occasionally even whimsical. Never yummy. What did they know? I thought, rolling the wine around in my mouth, the way I’d seen men do in fancy restaurants, feeling the flavor burst against my tongue. “Yummy is the perfect word,” I agreed after swallowing. “Perfectly yummy.”
Again the grin that transformed her face, engulfing her cheeks and swallowing her nose, so that it looked as if her eyes themselves were smiling. She took another long sip, then another. I followed her lead, and before long, it was time to refill our glasses. This time, I filled them almost halfway.
“So, what brought you from Chicago to Delray?” I asked.
“I was looking for a change.” She might have stopped had it not been for the obvious questions on my face. “I don’t know exactly.” She stared absently at the rows of ladies’ head vases on the shelves. “I guess I didn’t particularly feel like going through another Chicago winter, and I had this friend who’d moved to Delray a few years back. I thought I could come down here and look her up.”
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Look her up.”
Alison looked confused, as if unsure exactly what her answer should be.
That’s the problem with lying.
A good liar is always one step ahead. She’s always anticipating, answering one question with an ear to the next. She’s on constant alert, always ready with a facile reply.
Of course, all a bad liar needs is an easy mark.
“I tried finding her,” Alison said after a pause that lasted perhaps a beat too long. “That’s what I was doing at the hospital when I saw your notice.” The words flowed easier now. “She’d written that she was working at this private hospital called Mission Care in Delray, so I figured I’d surprise her, maybe take her to lunch, see if she was looking for a roommate. But personnel said she left a lon
g time ago.” Alison shrugged. Beautifully carved shoulders lifted up, then down. “Luckily I saw your notice.”
“What’s your friend’s name? If she’s a nurse, maybe I can find out where she went.”
“She’s not a nurse,” Alison said quickly. “She was a secretary or something.”
“What’s her name?” I repeated. “I can ask around when I get to work tomorrow, see if anyone knows where she went.”
“Don’t bother.” Alison ran a distracted finger along the rim of her wineglass. The glass made a slight purring sound, as if responding to a lover’s gentle caress. “We weren’t that close.”
“And yet you left your home and traveled halfway across the country …”
Alison shrugged. “Her name is Rita Bishop. You know her?”
“Doesn’t sound familiar.”
She took a deep breath. Her shoulders relaxed. “I never liked the name Rita. Do you like it?”
“It’s not one of my favorites,” I admitted, allowing myself to be steered gently off-course.
“What are your favorites?”
“I don’t think I ever really thought about it.”
“I like Kelly,” Alison said. “And Samantha. I think if I ever have a daughter, I’ll name her one of those. And Joseph if I have a boy. Or maybe Max.”
“You have it all planned out.”
She stared thoughtfully into her goblet for several long seconds before taking another sip. “Do you have any children?” The question echoed against the side of the glass, barely escaped into the surrounding air.
“No. I’m afraid I never married.”
“You don’t have to get married to have babies.”
“Maybe not today,” I agreed. “But when I was growing up in Baltimore, trust me, it wasn’t done.” I opened the oven door, felt a warm rush of fragrant steam in my face. “Anyway, I hope you’re hungry, because this chicken is ready to be devoured.”
“Let’s eat,” Alison said with a wide smile.
ALISON WAS RIGHT. She was the fastest eater I’d ever seen. Within minutes, everything on her plate—roast chicken, mashed potatoes, pureed carrots, multiple stalks of asparagus—had disappeared. I’d barely swallowed my first forkful of chicken and she was already helping herself to seconds.