by Lynn Harris
In short, Reading Guy freaked people out.
Including Lola, at that very moment. She’d never heard of a Reading Guy sighting anywhere but a bookstore, yet there he was right now, right there, looking particularly lurky.
I should tell the cops.
“Hang on, guys,” Lola said, turning quickly to look for Bobbsey. She heard a car door slam a short way back up the block. It was one of those unmarked cop sedans. Lola could make out Bobbsey in the passenger seat. The car revved and began to move away.
“Hey!” Lola called. “Hey!” Her hippocampus was firing hard again, and Lola was suddenly zinging with energy like a cartoon guy with his finger in a socket. “There’s something I should tell you!” Now she was jogging. “It’s Reading Guy! Reading Guy is here!” Just as she reached the back door of the car, it pulled onto the Bowery and sped away. All she saw was Quentin, sitting in the backseat.
Lola turned back toward her friends, only to see Reading Guy start to run the other way.
Four
“C’mon you guys, let’s go after him!” Lola wheeled on her heel and started sprinting back the way Reading Guy had run.
Did I just say, “Let’s go after him?”
The moment Lola reached her posse, they reached out and snared her like a bug in a web.
“Come on!” she protested, struggling. “It was Reading Guy!”
“Lola, are you high?” asked Annabel.
“A little,” she said, wiggling only weakly now. Yeah, she thought grimly. High on death.
“Reading Guy is beyond creepy,” said Annabel, who knew all about him from Lola. “But that doesn’t mean he killed Mimi, or that you can run in clogs.”
“Didn’t the detective give you his number?” asked Leo, ever helpful. “Why don’t you just call him right now with a description?”
At this point Lola had collapsed onto Doug, who was stroking her hair, or at least trying to organize it. She nodded and reached for her cell. The emergency coping hormones were fading for good, and so was she. It had been a long, vile night.
“And then let’s go home,” Doug said.
Lola and Doug lived farther out in Brooklyn than most Manhattanites would venture, even under terrorist threat. While the nearby up-and-came areas had charming brownstones, really famous authors, and beatific twins wearing CBGB’s onesies, Lola and Doug’s apartment was in a kind of no-man’s-land marked by vacant lots and vinyl siding. It hadn’t had a name until area Realtors, agents of gentrification doom, had invented one to make it sound more like the nicer neighborhood a short distance south, which was called Wayside. So now Lola and Doug’s neighborhood was called, at least in the real estate classifieds, North Wayside. Sounded inviting, but few were willing to make the trek, even for Doug’s cooking. Their Manhattan friends called it NoWay.
Still, Lola had realized her lifelong dream of having a garden and living near water. The water, it should be noted, was the diner-coffee-colored Lundy Canal, lined by the backs of warehouses and dotted here and there by the motorboats of the brave. Doug called it Rio Stinko. The canal, you see, had been used for centuries as a repository for waste both chemical and human, including bullet-riddled bodies. Urban legend told that the water was so polluted, it had once caught fire. But developers’ leering eyes had, of course, spotted the canal, which meant, first, good things for the environment (clean water) and, then, less good (the inevitable Cleanwater Canalside Café). A flushing and revitalization project was indeed under way, already touting great strides in water clarity and renewed populations of dinoflagellates, which, Lola imagined, was the scientific name for “big fish who smack themselves for living there.” Even they, one day, would likely be priced out.
Lola’s garden was, like tiny blue crabs in the canal, another minor urban miracle. Their apartment was a converted—barely—“industrial space,” and industrial spaces don’t have back-yards. So Lola’s green thumb—inherited from and nurtured by her father—had pointed out front. Certainly no one had ever planted anything there before in the nearly bare dirt between the front of the building and the sidewalk; when they’d moved in, the only vegetation was cigarette butts, Jolly Rancher wrappers, and the long, tapered, half-buried leg of a Barbie, which Doug had uprooted before it grew any taller.
But Lola had rolled up her sleeves and gone to work, taking cabs home from garden stores and ordering eco-friendly squirrel repellent online. And now, when you walked the ten minutes to Lola and Doug’s place from the nearest subway, past the casket company whose doors, offering dubious welcome, were always open, past the one bodega with the sun-faded cans of motor oil and Pringles in the window, past the funny new store that sold only doorknobs—which always made Lola feel bad for not being a regular, but then again, really, how much doorknob turnover do you have?—then, just as you spotted the creaky metal bridge over Rio Stinko in the near distance and wondered why the heck you ever left Manhattan, you’d see it.
Is that a sunflower?
Actually, that would be five sunflowers. At the height of the season, that would also be morning glories, nasturtiums, honeysuckle, jasmine, and five kinds of basil. Plus hollyhocks, foxglove, lilies, lupine. Portulaca, clematis, lavender. Any herb you’d ever want in an omelet. Hot chili peppers, too. And tomatoes. Ignoring all instructions to “plant seedlings twenty-four inches apart,” Lola had filled two roughly seven-by-seven rectangles on either side of the front steps—plus two other small stretches between the sidewalk and the street—with tall, jungly tangles of all the sun-loving plants she’d never been able to grow indoors, even with enough Gro-Lites to make her apartment look like it was set up for a photo shoot (specifically, a photo shoot of ailing plants). She had suffered for years with just a couple of coleuses, the requisite bathroom fern, and one desultory philodendron with whom she was never quite on speaking terms, waiting all the while for a knight in shining armor to carry her off into the full sun.
And in rode her geek-hottie hybrid dreamboat Doug, who would have done so on a Segway if he hadn’t instead been saving for a down payment with someone like Lola. Doug of the thick, dark hair Lola loved to put a hand in and just hold, Doug who could build a computer out of a coconut and a website out of thin air, Doug who was still in touch with his friends from his D&D days, Doug who could sort of play the banjo. Their love was the phoenix that had risen, two years before, and faster than anyone had expected, from the ashes of their dot-com glory days at Ovum, Inc.
So Lola had Doug, and because of Doug, she had her garden. It was her pride, her joy, her most beloved procrastination. Having returned to freelance journalism, Lola worked at home. Whenever she got sick of no one calling about her novel, she’d step out and deadhead the marigolds.
The night of Mimi’s murder, Doug bundled Lola into a cab—a $30 splurge for them, plus a twenty-five minute ride with a glowering driver sure he’d never pick up a fare for the way back—and stroked her hair with her head on his lap, which was her second-favoritest thing ever in the whole wide world, but she was too spent at that moment to reposition for him to scratch her back.
“See?” said Lola drowsily. “If we had kids, or even a dog, we’d never be able to go out on the town like this.”
“And find dead bodies?” asked Doug.
“Well, you know.”
Oh, how she loved him. How did she know? Because she loved hanging out with him. They always had a good time. They liked each other. They were fine apart, of course—they’d always drift away from each other at parties to allow each other more airtime—but their druthers were to be together. So many people forget that, Lola thought. That in addition to any lightning-strike love, there also has to be like. You actually have to like each other, want to be together, feel like you need to be in the same place at the same time, even if one of you is lost in a book and the other is scrambling an egg.
Now that she and Doug were married, though, something had shifted a bit—not in Lola’s devotion, but in her intentions. Lola was highly determined not to
become one of those married women who, due to their “lifestyle change,” stop seeing their single friends. She hung out constantly with Annabel, dutifully did the requisite girl brunches, made sure she went to media parties, “kept herself out there,” and so forth. With or without Doug. They’d never actually talked about it, but she knew he understood; that’s how closely and intuitively connected they were. And it’s not like he didn’t go without her to Burning Man.
I am so damn lucky, Lola thought woozily, feeling soothing heat from Doug’s hand. She was floating on a cloud of exhaustion so thick she couldn’t even feel the bumps on the road. I have Doug, and I’m not dead.
As the cab slowed to a stop, Lola began to calculate the number of feet remaining between the car and her bed.
“Hey, monkey, don’t forget your ba—” Doug started, but he didn’t have to. Right then, her cell phone vibrated so hard her giant bag jumped.
Lola dug for it madly, hoping to find it before the actual ringing kicked in. She really wasn’t up for any shrill noises right now, especially not the theme from Mork & Mindy. Note to self, thought Lola: no more “ironic” ring tones.
She flipped open the phone, assuming it was Annabel. But her caller ID read “Unknown.”
Hmm. Must be Detective Bobbsey, calling to say he nabbed Reading Guy and got a full confession and Quentin is free to go.
“Hello?”
“Lola?” Hmm. A detective would call her Ms. Somerville.
“Mmmhmm?” She started to get out of the cab. Doug was paying.
“It’s Quentin.”
“Oh, Quentin!” Lola dropped her bag and switched ears. “Quentin. I am so sorry. I don’t even know what to—”
“Me neither, Lola, me neither.” Lola heard voices and a metallic clang.
“Quentin, where are you?”
Doug closed the door and the cab sped off, its Available light fading futilely over the canal bridge and into the distance. He folded his arms and listened. The hazy half moon seemed to be tilting down and listening, too.
“On a pay phone at the police station.”
“Really? God, they should let you go home! They really think you can help them?”
“Sort of.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I feel like they really think I did it.”
“You are fucking kidding me.” I know it’s “always the boyfriend,” Lola thought. But not this boyfriend.
“What!?” Doug mouthed.
“Hang on.” Lola put a hand over the receiver and said, “They think he did it!”
“Who, Reading Guy?” asked Doug.
“No no no, Quentin!” said Lola.
“No way,” said Doug.
“I know!” said Lola. “It just doesn’t—” Doug motioned to her phone.
“Sorry, Quentin,” she said. “So what’s the deal? Is this, like, your one phone call or something?” Lola asked.
“Lola, I need your help.”
“Well, of course, Quentin.” Of course. If I hadn’t set you up with Mimi, you wouldn’t be miserable or under suspicion right now. I owe you. Big time. “Do you need help finding a lawyer? I have my Palm right here.” Lola reached for her bag, which sat between a peony and some lemon verbena. Oh wait, my Palm is in my phone. Forgot. Technology.
“No, yeah, I called a lawyer, thanks. Guy from my biking club,” said Quentin. “But what I want you to do”—his voice dropped to a whisper—“might not be legal.”
“Might not be legal?” asked Lola. “You want me to marry a woman?”
“Heh, no,” said Quentin.
“You know I’d do just about anything for you right now, but—”
Doug smiled slightly, perhaps feeling a tad superior. He knew about the mouse.
“—but I have to tell you, my crime-fighting—not to mention my crime-committing days—are over,” said Lola.
Before she and Doug had started dating, they had bent a few laws in the process of helping expose what had turned out to be a bigger-than-Hallmark conspiracy involving their former employer. Through that experience, Lola had learned, first and foremost, that Doug was the kind of guy who both calls himself a feminist and enjoys a good high-speed car chase: just her type. She had also confirmed beyond a doubt that her childhood obsessions with Harriet the Spy and Encyclopedia Brown—and, yes, the Hardys, the Bobbseys, and of course Miss Drew—to the exclusion of most other preadolescent literature, had paid off; she, like her young adult literary idols, was actually pretty good at blowing covers and solving whodunits. That type of skill showed not only in Pink Slip but also in the investigative journalism pieces she didn’t feel editors assigned her often enough, even though she’d won a lefty media watchdog award for her article proving that the leak about the guy who totally didn’t kill JonBenét Ramsey had come from inside the Beltway.
“What I need you to do, well, I don’t think it’s a giant deal, crime-wise,” Quentin was saying. “But it might be a big deal to me. And Lola, I’m barely holding it together as it is.” He was clearly near tears.
Doug was gesturing. Can we go inside? Lola had practically forgotten they were on the sidewalk, under a dark gray sky—it’s never quite night in New York—and the wan glow of the streetlights.
Lola nodded, walking and talking. She and Doug climbed the metal-grate steps to the front door. “Okay, Quentin,” she said warily. “I’m listening.”
Five
Doug was adamant. “I’m not letting you go in there alone,” he insisted.
“Into Quentin’s apartment?” Lola asked, frowning.
“No, into his Mac.”
They were leaning on their kitchen counter, knocking around what Quentin had explained to Lola.
“Want some?” Lola was firing up the stainless steel coffeemaker with a timer and built-in grinder. (Wedding present.) “Wait, what am I saying? No Peet’s for you,” she said. “You’re going to bed.”
It was well after midnight. Lola would have loved Doug’s company on her mission, but she truly thought it unnecessary. While Doug was the night owl, Quentin was her friend. Plus, it’s always nice to be needed, and to take any chance to prove that you and your husband aren’t joined at the hip. Besides, at least one of them should get some sleep.
While the coffee began burbling, Lola got out the travel mug and sat down on a barstool. Since their three parents had generously helped with the down payment on the apartment—Doug’s dad, a widower in Los Alamos, held a lucrative patent on something having to do with solar cars—the couple had opted to put their remaining wedding gift cash toward what they’d agreed was the most important room: the kitchen. (Doug had honed his amateur chef skills at the side of his big sister, who ran a country restaurant near Glacier National Park that had its own cookbook. Lola had honed her eating skills in their apartment.)
The kitchen’s best features, other than the refrigerated leftovers, were the granite countertops, wooden cabinets painted in a purple and lime patchwork, and a light fixture Lola had fashioned from a colander in a brief fit of crafting. A smaller one made with a cheese grater hung over the flea market diner-style breakfast table. A counter, with barstools, separated the kitchen from the L-shaped area that served as living and dining room; this allowed Doug—in theory—to simmer his famous gnocchi while chatting with guests on the couch. In theory, that is, because if guests actually made the trek to NoWay, they always hung out in the kitchen to begin with. Which was partly because their living room was still a little bit “grad student,” as Lola called it: steamer-trunk coffee table, bulging bookcases—Lola had never been able to achieve that spare “intersperse your artfully displayed books with framed photos and interesting objets from your travels” look—and a vaguely funky floor lamp from Target whose on/off knob had been missing since the day after they bought it.
Lola and Doug did their own second-best hanging out in their shared office, decorated with vintage photos of their shared idols, Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton, though more often than not, D
oug was out with clients doing his mysterious “strategic new media consulting.” Some of their most memorable conversations took place with the two of them seated back-to-back at their desks, not even turning their heads from their work while they bantered. Many of said conversations took place over instant messenger.
Doug took some seltzer out of the stainless steel fridge, which Lola still couldn’t believe she was grown-up enough to own. The seltzer, they got delivered; every two weeks the guy—last guy in the borough still in the business—rattled up in his truck filled with wooden crates of siphon-topped blue glass bottles. When Lola had mentioned the Last Seltzer Man to her dad, his eyes had misted over with childhood memories of a Canarsie much changed. The guy with the umbrellaed cart holding a block of ice and jouncing bottles of flavored syrups: he, she assured her father, still came around during the summer.
Doug poured himself and Lola each a glass of seltzer. Lola felt the chilly fizz land on her hand. “Listen, Lo, at least take backup,” he said.
“C’mon, hon, I’ll really be okay.”
“No, I mean my mini-hard drive. You shouldn’t go around deleting willy-nilly without backing up.”
“Good idea. Will do,” said Lola. “Bedtime snack?” Lola gestured toward a white bakery bag and the dedicated bagel toaster. (Wedding present.) “There’s garlic and rye.”
Doug sighed. “Just be careful, okay?” He took some Gruyere out of the fridge and grabbed a $75 cheese knife with a special pointy nose like a spiny lobster. (They had each brought one to the marriage. Kismet.)