The Never Never Sisters

by L. Alison Heller

  There’s a physical element to the worry, of course: the pounding heart, the sour, churning stomach, the hummingbird mind, unable to settle too long on any other topic. If you didn’t have these indicators, you’d be as adrift as those poor kids born without nerves—the ones who burn through layers of skin and smell it before feeling a thing.

  Sloane didn’t answer my call on Saturday night. She had said she would be available to discuss exchanging the VIP exhibit tickets I’d gotten her for Sunday, but she wasn’t. Then I couldn’t reach her on Sunday, and I started to feel the first twinges.

  I wasn’t overreacting; I’d dialed her twelve times. I went to the MoMA myself to see if she’d somehow gotten other tickets for the exhibit, unlikely as that seemed. (I’d had to pull quite a few strings for the exhibit, the Room Full of Rainbows apparently being the trend of the summer.) I waited outside the damn rainbow room for an hour. I finally went in and saw it. It was actually kind of neat. They’d reflected light through prisms, and you felt like you were traveling somewhere—to Oz, I guessed—over the rainbows. Then I waited outside some more, and then I went home.

  I’d braved far worse than a twenty-four-hour silence from Sloane, but for some reason I was done and toasted on this one, too distracted to be comforted by any of my usual cheap thrills. All I felt like doing was walking up and down the grid blocks in Manhattan with Sloane’s picture, asking strangers if they had seen her.

  The flip side of parental worry is that it works best on the small stuff. When you actually have something to sink your teeth into, you can’t turn off the indicators. Nobody can absorb that much frantic energy.

  I thought Sloane’s return was all I wanted, but the fact was, I’d functioned without her. I thought I needed her to enjoy my company, but I was able to handle being rebuffed. The worry, though—the ups and downs of fear—I couldn’t exist while being whipped around on those. My body had hit its limit.

  My system, as predicated by that awful Dr. Boogeyman, was finally going haywire from the cumulative effects. I hated that he was right.

  chapter thirty

  THIS TIME, I brought the coffee to Percy’s office. He smiled in thanks, appearing genuinely touched, and as he got up from his desk, I noticed he was again wearing those jeans.

  He wasn’t the only guy I’d been attracted to since meeting Dave—it was a common enough thing for me to see, and appreciate, a cute bartender, a good-looking stranger on the corner next to me, waiting for the light to change or, once, horrifyingly, an especially charismatic client. My reaction to those men had been harmless, I now realized. I’d notice them with a little more intensity; perhaps I’d have a brief moment of self-consciousness if I thought they noticed me too, and then I’d forget all about it.

  Intellectually, I knew the reason my attraction to Percy felt different was the crush of my current circumstances—it was less about how well his running shirt had outlined his abs (it had) than how confused I was about things at home. I thought this while watching his hand grip his coffee cup and wondering how it would feel on my skin.

  “Have you heard from your sister lately?” he asked.

  “No, not for a while actually.”

  “Me neither. I was supposed to see them last night.”

  My head felt light. “Is Giovanni . . . Does he . . . Are you worried about something?”

  “Giovanni’s never had a substance abuse problem”—he looked right at me—“if that’s what you’re asking. It’s a little strange, because he’s usually in pretty good touch, but I’m not worried.”

  “Okay.”

  “Really. Not worried,” he said.

  At the same time I said, “So! Let’s get to work!”

  Percy looked both startled and amused. “Alrighty.”

  “Full confession: I went into Dave’s office—and to the HR rep’s. On Saturday night.”

  He smiled slyly. “That’s what you got from our call? You should break into his firm?”

  “I know. But I found stuff.”

  “Is this standard for you to buck conventional wisdom? When you hear something is a bad idea, you interpret that as ���Go for it’?”

  “Not at all. I’m usually very obedient.”

  “Right.”

  “I swear, Sloane will provide verification. I won’t do it again. I trust your expertise, and I also especially appreciate that Annie isn’t here today.”

  “I fired her. When you complained.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Yes, I’m kidding. She has a thing.”

  “A fashion thing? Like a show?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  “What kind of friend are you, Percy?”

  “Good enough to provide employment that fits her schedule, but apparently not good enough to care about the details of her time outside the office. Please. Continue rationalizing your break-in.”

  “I trust your expertise generally, but specifically, I was right to go. I found stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  I told him about the file folders and gave him the copy of Hedda’s undecipherable notes, adding that I thought the presence of the Mission Fund files pretty much crossed everything else off the list.

  “Not necessarily,” Percy said.

  “Really?”

  “Aren’t they one of the largest hedge funds? They probably do a lot of work with lawyers at big firms.”

  “I don’t know. It’s just sort of like . . .”

  “A gut hunch?”

  “I feel like that’s the phrase of the summer, but yeah. A gut hunch.”

  He was about to say something, but his phone rang before he could, and he fumbled for it in those jeans pockets. “Sorry. It’s Giovanni. Hey,” he said into his phone. “I’m in the office. With Paige. Really? No, I had a meeting, but it’s fine. Let me—I’ll call you back in one second.” He muttered, “Sorry,” dialed one number and held the phone to his ear.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Fine. They’re fine.” I could hear the phone ringing endlessly until a voice mail message picked up. Percy sighed and punched in another number. “Mrs. Fitz?” he shouted. “Yes, it’s Percy. Percy Stahl, 3B. Yes, can you buzz in my friend and give him the key? The one on the green chain.” He nodded. “That’s right! The green one. His name is Giovanni. Yes, Gio-van-ni. Thank you!”

  It sounded lovely and neighborly, having a Mrs. Fitz. She probably watched over her young neighbors’ spare keys with bespectacled blue eyes and knit them afghan cozies. In return, they—what?—split her firewood? Unlikely, but possible, I supposed, in a prewar building.

  Percy dialed Giovanni back. “Buzz 5C, Fitz. Go up there and ask for my key. It’s the green one. I’ll meet you there.”

  Percy stood up and then stopped, looked behind as if wondering why I was taking so long to get off the couch. “You coming?”

  “Sure.”

  I bit back a grin when Percy told the cabdriver to take us to the East Village. Of course he lived downtown. The model employee, the offbeat job, his styled-to-look-disheveled hair—he was one of those king-of-the-scene New Yorkers. My tone a tad challenging, I said, “Why do you run in the park if you live in the East Village?”

  “It’s not that far from the office,” he said. “Plus, have you seen Central Park? It’s a marvel.”

  I snapped into my seat belt. “Can’t argue with that.”

  “Thank the lord for small miracles.”

  “I really am not the argumentative type, Percy, but the more you claim I am, the more I think you are. Classic projection.”

  “It must be nice to be a therapist and have such terms at your fingertips. When you’re debating something and your argument veers toward the fantastical, as it tends to do, you can hide that behind terminology.”

/>   “It’s handy. For instance, when someone is using misdirection in such a textbook fashion, I know to ask something like this.” I cleared my throat and leaned in, in full eye-contact mode. “Percy, if your parents described you, would they perhaps say you buck conventional wisdom? That you do the opposite of what’s expected?”

  “Wow.” He closed his eyes. “It’s like my father is right here in this cab. Thank you for that. I feel . . . What’s the technical term for the opposite of affirmed?”

  “Maligned?”

  “Of course. I feel so maligned.”

  “What’s the deal with your dad?”

  “He thinks being a private detective is a duck and cover from real life.”

  “So, it’s not a family business?”

  “Partially. My aunt was a detective and I inherited her shop. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, and he’s only ever been disappointed.”

  “If you introduced him to Annie, he might change his mind. He might think you’re an impressive little rapscallion.”

  “I assure you, he wouldn’t.”

  “He’s told you that he’s disappointed?”

  “No, but I know.”

  “How?”

  “The sighs when I talk about my clients. The mailed clippings of articles about classmates who are doing well working for banks and ad agencies and law firms. It’s all very subtle. Oh, up here on the right.” We got out of the cab, and I followed him into the lobby of one of the new high-rises that filled an entire city block with its too-clean red brick and large windows reflecting light blue sky. Percy paused in the lobby before the unmanned front desk. “Thank you, Lou, for giving my friends the key.”

  “Yeah,” I said, pretending to tip my hat. “Thanks a lot, Lou.” I followed him onto the elevator. “Have you lived here long?”

  “About four years,” he said, pressing the button for the fifth floor. “Lou is the seventh concierge, but there’s a rumor that he moved to Estonia last month.”

  The hallways were painted white, and each door was black, for a starkly disorienting effect. I followed Percy down the hall until we reached a studio apartment tucked next to the corner. It wasn’t decorated much differently than the hall: nearly empty except for a queen bed (with gray sheets), a small black architect’s table with one chair and a small, gray, low couch on which Sloane and Giovanni now sat. There were no photos or art, except for an ancient-looking map hung in the corner. I knew if I opened the tall silver Sub-Zero, there’d be chilled water, a bottle or two of something expensive, but no food.

  Who lived like this? It was good, though. It was a wake-up call. I had two solid reasons why Percy was not to be taken seriously: the jeans (which could, in all fairness, also be on the other, more dangerous list that I was not about to catalog) and his home environment. Hipster monochromatic minimalism.

  Sloane and Giovanni had launched into a comedic retelling of how difficult it had been to get the spare key from poor Mrs. Fitz—who turned out to be a guy named Fipps. That I had misheard his name was also for the best. My Mrs. Fitz did not belong here, walking through those stark halls in her Christmas sweaters, asking sweetly for a hot cocoa at the wheatgrass-shot bar on the corner and being perpetually disappointed.

  Sloane and Giovanni were utterly, breezily unaware that anyone might have worried about them, and when they stopped talking, I couldn’t help but say, “You just disappeared.” Embarrassingly, my voice wavered a little, which of course made everyone turn around.

  “Sorry,” Giovanni said. “Christophe came back. And he’s in love. But they fight.”

  “Again?” Percy shook his head.

  “We had to get out of there last night,” said Sloane. “They were noisy.”

  “Who is Christophe?” I said.

  “We scrambled a bit and wound up at the Lincoln,” said Giovanni. “It’s very affordable.”

  “You should’ve called,” Percy said.

  “Who is Christophe?”

  “The friend they were staying with,” said Percy. “You really should have called,” he repeated to Giovanni.

  “But you said we shouldn’t bother you on Sunday or Monday, that you had big jobs all day. And I did call Paige.”

  “No, you didn’t,” I said.

  “I meant I texted you.”

  “I never got a text.”

  “Yes, on Saturday, when Sloane was supposed to meet you. Her phone fell in the toilet.” Giovanni started to laugh and then stopped. “It’s not funny. Well, it was kind of funny. Have you guys ever done that? Apparently it’s quite common, not that you would know that from how much of a pain in the ass it is to remedy the situation, but anyway. That’s a whole other story. Luckily, she remembered most of your number, so we tried a few and—”

  “Were you the one who texted cab we taincjek?”

  “I don’t know what that means.” Giovanni smiled helpfully. “But I texted you that we needed to change our plans.”

  “Is this your number?” I pulled out my phone.

  He peered close and slapped his forehead with his palm. “I’m so sorry. I meant that Sloane needed a rain check.”

  “Oh.” I looked again. Can we take a rain check?

  Giovanni flashed his teeth in a bashful grin. “Oops?”

  Sloane gave him an incredulous look. “What is wrong with your brain?”

  “I will say”—I slipped my phone back in my bag—“that as a heads-up it was kind of lacking.”

  Sloane slapped her palm against her forehead. “You work with computers, for crying out loud.”

  “Different skill set,” Giovanni said, and to me, “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “When I said I was busy,” Percy continued, “I meant that I wasn’t free to eat dinner with you guys, not that you couldn’t crash here in an emergency. The Lincoln? Seriously?”

  “It’s very affordable,” Giovanni said.

  “You have to relax your standard in New York,” Percy said. “It’s almost impossible to find a decent room on short notice under one hundred fifty bucks.”

  “We found two,” Giovanni said with triumph. “The Staten Island Garden View and the Lincoln. They’re all the same, you know—four walls, a bed. I refuse to pay—why should we have to pay—”

  “I know,” Percy said, and Sloane added tiredly, “It’s the principle of the thing.”

  “Exactly.” Giovanni looked very pleased.

  “The Lincoln was still preferable to the sounds of Christophe’s love gone wrong.”

  “Screechy,” said Giovanni. “Love gone wrong is a very screechy sound.”

  “What’s the Lincoln?” I said.

  “It’s near Hell’s Kitchen. Between a hostel and a fleabag motel,” said Sloane. “Way beneath your grade of luxury. Water bugs. Communal showers. Creepy pale men who sit in the lobby, drooling and watching the news really loud.”

  “The news?” I felt as lost as Mrs. Fitz. Who were these people? Where were the gingersnaps?

  “The TV—there’s only one in the place, in the lounge—is up high, like a hospital TV, without a remote, and set to the news. The residents seem more like the type who’d prefer porn or greyhound racing.”

  “Hence no remote,” Giovanni pointed out.

  “You guys are not staying at the Lincoln.” Percy looked around the room, trying to figure out how it could fit three people. “I have a job tonight and after that I’m away—”

  “I don’t know why you guys don’t go to Mom and Dad’s,” I said. “You’d have your own wing.”

  “No.” You could have sharpened an entire block of knives on Sloane’s voice.

  “Then ask them to get you a hotel room somewhere. They’re not tightwads anymore.”

  “No.”

  “Stay
with me.” It could work—Sloane and Giovanni off doing their art-tourism thing; Dave busy working. No one explicitly acknowledged my invitation, although Sloane oscillated her head rather noncommittally when I added, “You’d have your own room.”

  “Where are you going away to?” Giovanni asked Percy.

  “The Hamptons,” Percy said. “Short job. Last minute.”

  “I’ve always wanted to go there. It sounds so . . . sea grassy.”

  “It is,” said Percy. “Come along. I’m taking the train out on Thursday.”

  Giovanni looked at Sloane, eyebrows raised. Why not?

  “I have a place out there. For the summer.” I was happy to see Sloane and Giovanni, I realized. I wanted to fill in Sloane on the Duane Covington break-in. I wanted to spare them staying at the Lincoln. In a way that was weirdly—I assumed—sisterish, I wanted to protect her. I wanted her advice. “I mean it. A genuine offer. You could stay here tonight, then come to the Upper East Side with me for a night, and then go out to the Hamptons and stay as long as you like. I’d be so happy if you guys used the house. It’s been sitting there empty. Just make sure you’re back for boat day.” Sloane rolled her eyes at the mention of boat day, but she and Giovanni stared at each other in silent, one-couple-brain telepathy.

  After a second, she said, “Okay.”

  “Really?” I clapped my hands together.

  “Yeah. Thanks,” she said, and Giovanni gave me a sweet, if dorky, thumbs-up.

  After a pause, I got the sense that I was an obstacle to a more natural conversation between the three of them. When I excused myself, Percy walked me the three feet to the door. “We never finished our meeting.”

  “Was there anything else?”

  “Just”—he patted the doorframe near me—“keep an open mind.”

  “To?”

  “Anything.”

  “My mind is open. I will be pleasantly surprised by anything that doesn’t involve a felony charge.”