Pog congratulated her. “Will you lookit this! You’re way over quota, Beth. You’ll get a bonus this month—in your first month!” When she added them all up, Beth realized she’d scored a lot better than she had imagined.
She didn’t quite know what to think of herself for this.
After supper, while Pog and Jee went over the contents of the under-sink liquor cabinet and threw away the dustiest bottles, Beth felt good enough to do what she’d been dreading. She called the home number of the director of the charity for homeless women where, as Beth Saunders, she had volunteered for ten years. Using her Beth Saunders persona, she begged a favor from the head of their Chicago office.
“Yes, a young friend of mine is interested in our organization. You’ll like her, Moira. She’s intelligent and presentable.” Beth wondered if she had any clothes that only whispered slut instead of screaming it. “Yes. Her name’s Beth Asucar. No, she’s white,” she assured the woman, cringing a little as she said it.
Jee was pulling the cork on a crusty bottle of pear brandy and giving it a cautious sniff. She didn’t flicker an eyelash, but Beth heard herself and suddenly felt that split down the middle that showed her clearly how Beth Saunders was falling away in chunks, like a warmed-over glacier.
“You will? That’s very kind of you,” Beth said, trying not to sound as grateful as she felt. “Her office skills are rusty, but I’ve found her very quick to pick things up. Of course. Oh, I’m fine. Of course. Gracious, yes. Enormous settlement. Well, I must rush, we’ll do lunch soon. Bye.”
She put the phone on the table with a trembling hand. Well, here goes.
“And you’re doing this why again?” Jee said.
“I want to know if Blake has been talking to Moira. I always did think they—were close, at one point. She might know where he is.”
And she wanted to dip into her old life, oh, so badly. The more comfortable she got with her new life, the more she missed the past. It was crazy. Seeing her old friends might soothe this ache. Maybe finding out that Blake and Moira still talked would cure it.
Next morning, her new friends descended on her room and dressed her with special care.
“Nothing slutty,” she protested. “I want them to keep me on until I’ve got what I want.”
“Are there any men in the office?” Amanda said.
“I doubt it,” she admitted.
“Just women? All like you were?” Jee said with that bright, eager, slipping-a-shell-into-her-shotgun note in her voice. “Wait here.” When she came back, her hands were full of sparkling jewelry. “Only diamonds. Nothing slutty,” she said wickedly, when Beth goggled at the fortune in her hands.
“What?”
“Now, don’t put them on until lunchtime. Give them the whole morning to get used to you like this. Then—frost yourself.”
“But what do I do with them until lunch?” Beth said, imagining carrying this treasure into the office in a paper bag.
“Purse. Do you have one big enough?”
“I do,” Amanda said and disappeared into her own room.
“But why on earth would I want to wear that at the office? It’s completely inappropriate for day wear.”
“Humor me,” Jee said.
Beth looked helplessly from face to face.
“Humor her,” Pog said. “Oh. Here.” She handed Beth a fistful of pristine hundred-dollar bills.
“What’s this?” Beth said, trying to hand it back.
Pog closed her fingers over it. “Mad money. In case these charity bitches try to kiss on the first date.”
So Monday morning, Beth put on one of Pog’s pastel blue, cut-down-to-Venezuela newscaster suits with a high-necked cami of her own under it, and a pair of her own shoes left over from Beth Saunders days, and carried half a million dollars in borrowed jewelry into the charity office in Amanda’s roomy dull-white Coach bag. She was determined to take it with her everywhere she went, even to the break room and the toilet. It would look awkward, but better than having its contents discovered or stolen.
Her old friend Moira was not warm. Moira gave Beth Asucar a searching look up and down, then turned her over to the receptionist. “Have her process checks for now, Elaine.” Moira wore diamonds, Beth noticed. Big ones. Were they inappropriate for day wear, but okay for squeezing five-figure donations out of other women wearing diamonds? She’d never noticed or wondered before.
Elaine explained twice how to open each envelope carefully—”The last temp we had kept cutting checks in half”—and keypunch the vital statistics into the charity’s database. “Do not photocopy the check. We had a temp once who stole donor account numbers and identities.” Then Beth was to print out the list of her input and return it to Elaine, along with the stack of checks, “in the same order you input them, please,” and the stack of envelopes, ditto. Beth guessed that Elaine would then make sure none of the checks was missing.
When Beth finished that task, she was sent to wipe down the conference room table. The room was so familiar, it gave her intense feelings of homesickness and comfort. Low pink light from lamps and ceiling canisters. Mahogany table. Linen napkins. Photos on the walls of women’s shelters and bygone board members being kind to the inmates. The biggest donor of all, now deceased, stood wearing a hard-hat, her hand on a shovel. Beth had once wondered if there would ever be a photo of herself on these walls.
Moira reappeared and gave her another up-and-down look. “We’ll let Elaine stay on the front desk for now. You can help with the board meeting.”
Beth’s heart beat a little harder. Beth Saunders was still officially on that board, although she imagined it wouldn’t be long before they replaced her...but not with Beth Asucar. No, they didn’t seem to be warming up to the new Beth. Even supposing the new Beth would be acceptable to them, she couldn’t picture herself taking time out from her busy plumber-incentivizing schedule to come to meetings or run fund-raisers. And where would she give private dinners for donors and board members? At the Lair? Beth smiled, imagining Reg and his mouth serving champagne in a houseboy’s coat.
Chuckling to herself, she buffed the conference room and set it up from memory until it looked perfect. Moira didn’t comment. At nine-thirty, the board arrived: seven old friends of the old Beth Saunders. They floated past her desk without seeming to notice her.
“Coffee, Beth,” Moira called, and followed them into the conference room.
Beth felt weird carrying her bulky Coach purse into the conference room, so she shut it in the bottom drawer of her desk. Then she fetched the coffee pot. Without being told, she moved the cream and sugar nearer the hands of those old friends who she knew used it. She refilled cups. She plated pastries according to their tastes and delivered them without being asked. She felt their eyes on her.
“My goodness, she’s tall,” said her old tennis partner sotto voce, although not so sotto that Beth didn’t hear.
Beth glanced up and caught an unfriendly sidelong glance from an old kiddy-carpool buddy.
“That’s fine, Beth,” Moira said. “Start another pot. We’ll call for it.”
All conversation fell silent. Beth poured the last of the coffee. As she took the pot away, she heard someone say, “Where on earth did you get her?”
“Poor Beth Saunders called,” Moira began. Then the door closed.
Beth took the empty pot back to the break room and started another. She noticed her hands were trembling.
She retrieved her borrowed handbag full of borrowed diamonds and went to the one-holer bathroom and locked the door and sat on the commode and shook harder. She was cold with rage.
Why should they be friendly? You’re a total stranger. This board is a very tight-knit group. That’s why we’ve done such good work together over the years. Trust. For all they know, I’m an indigent identity thief who preyed on Beth Saunders’ good nature for a referral.
She could imagine Jee’s probable response to that line of reasoning. Yeah.
Well, she’
d come prepared for this, even though she hadn’t known it...thanks to Jee.
She frosted herself. With the pastel blue newscaster suit, the virginal cami, and the sensible designer pumps, the diamonds made her look like a First Lady of the United States. A hot one. She brushed her hair into an elongated helmet style, using succubus makeover hair magic. Now she looked too young to be First Lady, but much, much better bred than the Beth Asucar who’d walked in two hours ago.
Beth began to feel the steel return to her spine.
Good grief. Was that it? Was Jee right? It wasn’t what you did, it was how young, pretty, and expensive you looked, which bore directly on how you got respected—and paid?
She certainly felt more powerful in diamonds.
She sailed out of the restroom, parked her considerably-lighter handbag in her drawer, and checked her borrowed jeweled watch. In another five minutes, they would call for more coffee. She had time to freshen her lipstick.
The conference room door opened a crack. “Coffee!” Moira called.
How had she never noticed before that Moira treated her office staff like servants?
Beth Saunders herself had never had servants, unless you counted caterers. And she was politer than this.
Beth fetched the pot into the conference room. As she poured for her old friends, she let those tennis bracelets slip down her wrist.
Someone gasped.
Murmurs started—quieter this time.
“Beth—it’s Beth, right?” Moira said, her voice all honey. “Where did you meet Mrs. Saunders?”
Beth straightened and looked her in the eye. “At a women’s shelter.” She was temped to add, We’d both been kicked in the face by our family and friends.
“Good for you,” said the carpool buddy warmly.
“Dedication,” commented the tennis partner.
“Well, Mrs. Saunders said you were presentable, and she spoke no less than the truth,” Moira said. “Have you ever done any event organizing?”
Flushing with surprise, outrage, and hurt, Beth felt her face shifting. Suddenly she remembered how she’d reverted to her fifty-year-old face in that restaurant with the detective. Oh, no. That won’t do.
She drew herself up and smiled Pog’s noncommittal smile. “Yes, lots.”
She watched glances pass from woman to woman around the conference table.
“Your last name again—” Moira said delicately.
“Asucar.” Beth smiled as the foreign-sounding name came out and the glances moved around the table again. “Spanish. My late husband was born in Barcelona.” Not Mexico. She didn’t have to reassure Moira, this time to her face, that Beth Asucar herself was Caucasian. She flexed imperceptibly under the dim conference room lights. Her diamonds glittered.
She could see their thoughts as if they were written in letters of fire on each forehead. Young, beautiful, rich. Looks presentable (translation: white) but she has that exotic name, which will spice up our masthead nicely. Experienced volunteer. That would be the very last consideration, of course. But it could be translated as, Accustomed to taking orders and doing the dirty work. Diamonds and submissive efficiency didn’t always come in the same package.
“Perfect,” said her old events committee co-chair. Exchanging another glance with Moira she said, “Would you be open to helping us organize the winter fundraiser? It’s rather elaborate.”
Beth smiled wider. “I’d be honored. More coffee?”
“Oh, never mind that. Elaine can get it,” Moira said.
“Elaine has to cover the front desk. And I promised to finish filing for her. I can’t renege on that now,” Beth said firmly. She poured the last coffee out, refreshed the cream, passed out the remaining pastries, and took the empty pot away, shutting the conference room door on a rising murmur of excited voices.
Beth sat at her desk, the empty coffeepot warm beside her shaking hands. Her heart thundered in her ears. They’re not like that. It’s just a way for them to know when someone is like them. They never meet anyone different. Except at the women’s shelters. And their servants. It’s really a compliment to Beth Saunders. They already think of me as Poor Beth Saunders. They’re not bad people.
But she knew better.
It’s the diamonds. It’s just the damned diamonds.
Jee wins again, she was forced to concede.
Further thought forced her to admit something else: I do that too. I see the markers of class first. Then I see the person. Maybe. She hadn’t gotten the plumber’s name. She hadn’t even bothered to find out if Nando wanted his ears scritched or his belly rubbed.
Now I’ll be watching myself all the time, she vowed, burning with shame.
After a few long calming breaths, she realized she wanted stimulants. Five or six thousand calories’ worth of surf and turf, deep-fried macaroni and cheese balls, asparagus with Hollandaise sauce, mashed potatoes with truffle oil, a pupusu platter of Asian-Latin fusion cuisine appetizers, death by chocolate, mango sorbet, tiramisu, two bottles of dry French red wine, a pitcher or more of margaritas, and, to start with, some ridiculously expensive cocktail involving dry ice, creme fraiche, gold dust, pink-pepper-infused quail-egg-white foam, forty-year-old brandy, and a paper umbrella. Two of those, please. Yes. Right away.
She’d settle for a two-pound bag of Fritos and a case of beer.
She made another pot of coffee instead.
Then, as her heartbeat calmed, she stripped off all the diamonds except for one four-carat solitaire and packed them away in her handbag again.
Then she began slitting envelopes on the next pile of donor checks.
When the conference room door opened at eleven-forty-five and the board trooped out, it was a pageant of silent comedy.
Everyone looked at Beth eagerly. Everyone did a double-take. Beth bet herself that they were looking for the diamonds, not seeing them, and wondering if they’d imagined them. Had they been victims of a hoax? The eager looks turned to frowns.
She stood at her desk and shook hands with each one as she passed, flashing that solitaire. Each woman relaxed again. Four of them gave her their cards. Moira shooed them out, promising to hold a winter fundraiser meeting very soon so they could all get to know Beth better. Then she asked Beth to lunch.
“I’m sorry, I have a commitment,” Beth said with finality in her best socialite voice.
Moira’s eyes narrowed. “Of course. Perhaps tomorrow.”
Beth gave a tiny smile. “Of course. That would be delightful.” She glanced at the clock. “I was told I may take lunch at twelve-thirty?”
With a smile just as false and tight, Moira disappeared into her office.
Not as dumb as the rest of them, Beth concluded. Probably smells a rat. She realized that she would not be working here another day. Still, she couldn’t regret having made the experiment. Next pink-collar McJob she took, she would leave her old identity out of it. But she’d wear some nice jewelry.
As it happened, she didn’t even get lunch.
Beth went back to her donor check data entry. She had lots to think about.
It troubled her that Moira’s manner had iced over when she refused lunch. She began to feel uneasy. At noon, Elaine the receptionist went on lunch break and Moira still hadn’t come out of her office.
“When she asks for them, here’s her messages,” Elaine said, casting a startled look at the diamond solitaire on Beth’s finger.
Beth smiled warmly at her. When she was out of sight, she quickly read through Moira’s messages.
Darleen Bobak. The hairs rose on Beth’s nape.
Why would her daughter be calling Moira this morning?
Darleen Bobak rtd yr call The little “returned your call” box had been checked off. When was this? She checked the time on the slip of paper. She’d called a bare twenty minutes ago! That meant that Moira had contacted Darleen after Beth refused to have lunch with her. Why on earth should that have made her suspicious?
This couldn’t be good.
<
br /> Had Darleen asked Moira to call if she, Beth Saunders, contacted her? If so, maybe Darleen was in contact with a lot of Beth’s old friends. That thought would have warmed her heart if she hadn’t already told Darleen to stop calling her or trying to find her. She re-examined the little While You Were Out form, thinking furiously.
Maybe Darleen had called earlier in the day, say, during the board meeting. But if so, when had Moira had time to call her back? Maybe those calls all took place yesterday, after Beth Saunders asked for a job for Beth Asucar. Unnerving, if true. That meant that Moira would have said all those things, and blown cold, then hot, then cold on Beth, having already finked on her to Darleen. Was that possible?
Thinking of what she knew of Moira, Beth was forced to conclude that it was entirely possible.
She couldn’t trust anyone from her old life. How had she not realized that, when she was Poor Beth Saunders?
Very simply: because she had been living with someone she couldn’t trust. And rather than make herself miserable, wondering how he was lying to her every minute of every day, she chose to believe that he wasn’t.
And if after that titanic effort she could switch off her bullshit detector, as Pog would call it, for the man she lived with, then she had to keep it switched off with everyone else. She’d made herself stupid.
Street smarts, as Jee called them, were a survival trait. Beth had muzzled her own survival trait. She deserved to get flung out of her security.
At that moment the door to Moira’s office opened a crack, and Moira’s voice came. “Any messages, Elaine?”
“She went to lunch,” Beth called. “You heard back from, um,” she riffled through the slips of paper quickly. “Morgenstern, CPD, and Darleen Bobak.”
“Call Morgenstern and move my appointment up to three o’clock,” Moira commanded from out of sight. “Never mind the others.” Beth heard a clink from inside, unmistakably the sound of the neck of a bottle touching the rim of a glass.
The door shut.
Beth drew a deep breath. She found the message from Darleen and dialed. “Mrs. Bobak’s home,” came a man’s voice.
Beth froze.
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