by Lynn Harris
“Also,” Quentin went on, “I just don’t trust the police. One time my bike seat was stolen outside that bar, what’s it called, where they have the strip spelling bee? The cops, I am telling you, did not want to lift a finger!”
“They were probably more interested in watching to see if some hot girl had to spell chthonian.”
“You know, I’ve never heard that word actually pronounced before,” said Quentin.
“I have,” sighed Lola. “Doug’s a gamer.”
“So I don’t know, maybe you could at least nose around a little, somewhere, somehow?” asked Quentin.
“Quentin, I’m not a detective.” I really, really owe him one, but murder? For the life of me, I have no clue where to start. I would be insane to take this on.
“I know,” said Quentin. “Not officially. But come on. The whole thing at Ovum, those articles you’ve written—you’ve busted your share of bad guys.” He accepted some more Pellegrino. “And I’d just—I’d feel so much better if I knew you were looking into it. You just have such a good sense of, I don’t know, people. Their motives. I feel like you can really get inside people’s heads.”
Oh, man. He’s really not letting up. “Quentin,” Lola pulled her hair back into ponytail position and then let it drop. “You and I dated for like ten minutes. We e-mail every three months. All you really know about me is that I’m not scared of dead mice, I’m bad with the names of rivers in Eastern Europe and I fit under your bed. Where are you drawing all these conclusions?”
“I can just tell,” Quentin said. “You know, from all the characters you developed so brilliantly in your book.”
He read my book?
He used the word brilliant?
Lola caught herself. No, Quentin, no! she thought. Stop flattering me! If you continue, I may actually say yes! Quit it!
“Speaking of which,” said Quentin, “I don’t know, maybe if you find the guy first, you can write a book about it.”
Hold on. Lola’s mouth twitched, threatening to smile. Quentin Frye was no Jodie Foster. But he was, in effect, calling her with a book idea.
Lola looked down at the floor, then up at the ceiling. Her guilt and her ego did a high five. “Okay, Quentin,” said Lola. “I’ll see what I can do.”
When Quentin’s twin sister, Penny, arrived, Lola got ready to leave. Blond, with wire-framed glasses and maroon Dansko clogs, Penny was still in her white coat from work. Since when did we all get old enough to be doctors? Lola thought.
“Say, Lola, can I ask your advice sometime?” asked Penny.
“Sure,” said Lola. “Intubate.”
Penny laughed. “No, about writing. I’m working on a book proposal.”
Who the hell isn’t?
“Of course,” said Lola. “Anytime.”
Much as she felt surrounded, oppressed, by people with book ideas, Lola felt safe in the knowledge that Penny would never finish her proposal, much less publish the book. That was how the universe maintained literary equilibrium: everyone thought they had a book in them, but few realized what it took to get one down on paper. She looked back into the apartment. “Quentin, are you going to be okay?”
“Eventually,” he said. “And Lola, thanks for everything.” Lola hailed a cab. She rested a hand on her chin and watched Second Avenue’s trattorias and nail salons go by. Where was that muffin place? They had a solid apple-ginger, if she remembered correctly. Right around here, no? Yes, that kiosk definitely looked famliar. It was right—nope. The muffin place was now a cell phone store.
“Annabel? We’re old.”
“Not too old to be blabbing on the phone in the middle of the night,” said Annabel.
“Right! That’s exactly my point,” said Lola. She was now lying down, seat beltless, on the backseat of the cab. If an accident didn’t kill her, her mother would. “We are old, but we don’t act it. I didn’t pack away Giraffe until my wedding night, for God’s sake.” Giraffe had been Lola’s stuffed companion since childhood.
“You made air holes in the box, right?” asked Annabel.
“Yes, and I also put in some leaves,” said Lola. “But I mean, pretty much all my high school and college friends are, you know, grown-ups. Remember that party we went to when you came home with me at Christmas?”
“Yeah, at what’s-her-name’s,” said Annabel. “Their place was so grown-up I totally thought they were house-sitting.”
“Right? They had those little brass lamps over their art.”
“They had a fucking den.”
Lola and Annabel paused, letting the full weight of that memory—and that word—sink in.
“Part of that is having money,” said Lola. “But God, people our age are doctors. Lawyers. Mayors. Hockey moms.”
“Corpses.”
“Right.”
“Just trying to lighten things up,” said Annabel.
Lola gave a grim chuckle, then went on. “Even though I’m married, I sometimes still feel like we’re really just playing house. Dress-up. Like I’m walking around in my Mom’s smeared lipstick and too-big shoes.”
“Lo, I’m the one who can’t even commit to address labels. Not that I necessarily want things to be different. I’m just saying. I relate.”
“I know you do, Bella.”
What would I do without Annabel? Annabel who actually knew current band names, who carried a Leatherman, who ate only food that was round: Garden Burgers, Krispy Kremes, beer (which counted, she said, if you looked at the bottle from the bottom). Annabel said Lola kept her grounded. Lola said Annabel made sure she reached.
“But seriously, Lo, you’re not exactly complaining either, are you?” Annabel asked. “I mean, first of all, you are a writer. Your job is a job job. You’re the first one to tell everyone else that,” she said. “Nicely, of course.”
“No no, I know. I guess I’m just more … marveling. Whether or not we feel like adults—”
“—or act like—”
“—or act like adults, I guess … it’s just amazing that we’ve gotten to the place in life where what we do is who we are.”
Annabel said nothing.
Oof. Lola squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she could take that back. She’d remembered—too late—that, actually, Annabel did not have a defining what-she-does that made her who she was. And the last thing Annabel needed was for Lola to point that out.
“All right, listen,” Lola said quickly. “I gotta start giving the driver directions.” She could no longer see the tops of buildings from her vantage point, so she must be in Brooklyn. “Bella, thanks. You totally make me feel normal.”
“Me, too, Lo,” said Annabel. Lola hoped so. “Now get some sleep.”
“You, too!” said Lola.
“Naw, I’m good,” said Annabel. “I slept last year.”
It was alarmingly close to the time Lola usually got up. She’d seen the delivery trucks already making the rounds of soon-to-open coffee shops, leaving paper-bagged bundles of fresh baked goods leaning outside the locked doors. (This was also a sight she hadn’t seen since her single days, except for that one time she and Doug had waited in line until 4:30 AM to buy the thirteenth Harry Potter.) It had never ceased to amaze Lola that these bags of sweet treats never got stolen. War, murder, all manner of pain: your world could fall apart at any moment, and yet? Day after day, there were the muffins. The café owners could rely on two things every morning: one, that the sun would rise, and two, that those sweet-smelling sacks of croissants and scones would be waiting for them when they got to work. What, Lola wondered, could possibly be more reassuring?
“You know what, just drop me at this corner, please,” she said to the driver. The newspaper trucks were out already, too—and one was pulling up to Lola’s local bodega. Though she could barely keep her eyes open, Lola was curious at least to see if Mimi’s murder had made the cover of the Day.
Lola knew full well, by the way, that she could have checked the Day, not to mention Royalty, twenty minutes
ago using the Web browser on her cell phone, but doing so would have put some holes in her argument with Doug that no one needed a freaking Web browser on their cell phone.
“Thanks,” she said, shelling out twenties for the driver. With what they’d spent on transportation that night, she and Doug could buy two more cheese knives.
The New York Day truck driver dropped a twine-wrapped stack by the blue wire racks outside the bodega door. Lola looked down at the five-inch-tall headline.
Murder-Tini
Oh, for God’s sake.
As Lola stared down, two feet stepped into her view. Two feet wearing ratty black sneakers. Two feet she’d recently seen running.
Without raising her head, Lola looked up through her lashes.
It was Reading Guy.
Eight
Lola thought immediately of those signs at Yosemite at which she and Doug had once laughed nervously: “If confronted by a mountain lion, do not run, as this may trigger its instinct to attack. Instead, back off slowly.” Or something like that. Lola backed away from the sneakers without making eye contact and set off briskly toward home, deliberately jingling her keys as if to say, “Back off, Reading Guy! My mom just forwarded me an e-mail about someone who saved her own life by using her mailbox key to gouge an attacker’s Adam’s apple.”
Or, wait. Shit. Was that it? Or were you supposed to run toward the mountain lion?
Lola glanced behind her, covering the move by pretending to scratch her ear with her shoulder. No one. Too late.
Should I call Bobbsey? And tell him what? That I happened to see the same oddball in two places, and at no point did he move toward or threaten me in any way?
Lola reached her garden. A clematis vine had sprung from its trellis, reaching across her way like a bony arm.
No, she thought, I’m gonna keep this to myself. Remember, I’m supposed to be helping Quentin by knowing stuff the cops don’t, and remember, I’m supposed to be solving the mystery and turning it into a book. Kind of the way that woman did, the one who talked her kidnapper out of kidnapping her by reading him the Zone Diet, or some such? Or did we later find out that she was saved not so much by the soothing words of Barry Sears but by the fact that she gave her attacker crystal meth? Anyway. That lady was plucky. And, of course, she’s now totally writing a book.
Lola wrapped the stray vine back around a stake and tiptoed inside.
Uch, of course. My brave “escape” from the guy who was clearly not chasing me made me come home without the damn paper.
There’s always the online, she thought.
No. It’s so freaking late. Get to bed, Somerville. Whatever you do, do not turn on the computer.
Lola fired up her Mac.
Publishing Biz to Perp: We Meant “Cutthroat” As a Metaphor
Sadly, Not Your Usual Royalty Party Report
Posted by Page Proof
Acclaimed and adorable chick lit author Mimi McKee, 31, was found mysteriously murdered at her own party, a celebration of the publication of her novel Gay Best Friend at the ultratrendy Bowery watering hole, Cabin 9. Coquettish and comely even in death, she lay in a rarely used basement storage closet, her stylish wrap dress revealing just hints of ivory thigh and décolletage. Ms. McKee’s throat had been viciously slashed with a broken cocktail glass.
Could the weapon of choice be a nod to the beverage of choice of the typical chick in McKee’s genre of lit? Police declined to say, noting that the killer was still at large. “I assure you, we’ll get the guy. And by ‘get’ I mean ‘nab,’ not marry,” said police detective Bradley Bobbsey, who admitted to being an aficionado of the promising young writer’s work.
Reached at home late at night in Mexico, Maine, Ms. McKee’s distraught parents declined to be interviewed. A relative said only that the burial would be private.
Others who knew McKee were shocked to hear that she fell victim to a violent crime. “She’s was just such a sweet all-American girl,” said McKee’s third-grade teacher, Priscilla Wren, roused from slumber by the shocking news. “I still have the note she wrote me about how much she loved the hot dog stands everywhere in New York, because they made it so easy to buy food for homeless people.”
McKee’s seemingly unthreatening boyfriend, Quentin Frye, was questioned and later released.
The body of Ms. McKee was discovered—too late—by partygoer Lila Summerville, who appeared to have been wandering, confused, in the basement. Ms. Summerville claimed to be a fellow “writer,” but her “books” did not appear on a search of Amazon.com.
What the—?
Told you you should have gone to bed, thought Lola.
Ping! Instant message from Annabel. She was still up, too?
“Oy, SORRY,” Annabel typed. “Saw the article. At least he got your name wrong?”
“SLEEP!” typed Lola.
“XOXOXO!” typed Annabel.
“ZZZZZZZ!” typed Lola.
Lola closed her computer and tiptoed into the bedroom, stopping on the way to peel her contact lenses out of her sore eyes. The room was perfectly still, with not so much as a breeze whispering through the curtains that Lola had paid a nice Italian lady to make, which was the kind of business you could still, if you knew where to look, get done in Brooklyn. She tossed her clothes on the floor and climbed into bed with Doug. He was sleeping on his back with his knees up, which Lola found bizarre and adorable, though it made her have to trade spooning for a sleeping still life more like fish knifing.
I don’t know how to solve a murder, thought Lola. I can’t dust for fingerprints. I’m not even like Doug, who figures out the ending of CSI: Dead Model in the first ten minutes. What was I thinking? What have I done?
She rolled over. Her eye caught the stack of books on her nightstand, bathed in the faint yellowish glow of her family hand-me-down clock radio, a clunky vintage model with an analog face.
I am never going to finish Anna Karenina.
But you know what? Books. That’s what I’ve got that they don’t. They know blood spatter patterns, but I know Mimi’s world. That’s gotta count for something. Plus, I recall very clearly from Encyclopedia Brown that a person’s reflection appears upside down in a spoon. You never know when that could come up.
Anyway. Tomorrow.
Lola shifted onto her back, her left shoulder touching Doug’s right. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Just. Need. To. Sleep. On. This.
Her alarm went off.
Nine
Hell’s Bells.
“… and with a $1000 pledge, Garrison Keillor will leave the outgoing message on your answering machine,” said NPR.
“Grplnah,” said Doug.
That wasn’t even a catnap, thought Lola. Not even a bird nap. Not even an ant nap.
Doug rolled over. “Sweetie, go back to sleep,” he said, eyes closed.
Catnap.
Dogs.
Lola leapt out of bed.
“Wish I could,” she said, kissing Doug on the nose. “Looks like you’re sleeping for two.”
Fifteen minutes later, after prodding her contact lenses from their own brief rest, wrestling her hair into a ponytail, and giving her garden a quick bare-minimum spritz, Lola was sipping a blue-and-white paper cup of crappy bodega coffee—whole milk, one sugar—as she crossed the girdered bridge over the canal. An orange sun, pale and round as a canned peach, was just beginning to cast its muted light. The air still carried a bit of a damp chill; Lola was glad she had grabbed her light cotton jacket and also that she, a big believer in breakfast, had thought to stick in its pocket a couple of Fig Newtons.
Lola shot an appreciative glance at one of her favorite features of the canal: a rickety red caboose-shaped structure topped with a huge bin full of stones, perched on the bank like a giant square pelican. The faded sign read Lundy Crushers, which, not coincidentally, was also the name of the borough’s women’s roller derby team. Ever wonder where rocks come to get crushed into gravel? Here’s where. T
here are whole worlds out there—out here—that most of us never think about, Lola mused.
Her only company was one seagull, who landed on the railing and stared at her sideways as she passed. This is why I am a morning person, thought Lola. Even if I haven’t slept. Now’s when I can think.
Thank goodness she had remembered: today was the day she’d promised to dog-sit for Daphne Duplex. Thirty seconds of sleep notwithstanding, Lola was trying—with measured success—to convince herself that having to dog-sit today was a good thing.
Daphne, successful author of So Many Men, So Little Taste, lived about ten blocks away, on the “good” side of the canal. She’d been wise enough to buy her apartment several years earlier, so she was now sitting pretty in a renovated row house at the end of the kind of street that was called a Place. An abandoned warehouse nearby was set to become an Organic Depot. There was talk of moving the New York Giants into a stadium complex to be built over toward Brooklyn Navy Yard, but the plan was being viciously protested by neighborhood activists who had nobler notions of community development (but whose sports experience, frankly, was limited to hot yoga). These people were particularly angry—and fair enough, given that many of them had been driven out of Manhattan when Hamilton Fish Town, the East Village’s storied affordable housing complex, had been razed to make way for a Wal-Mart.
Daphne had called Lola just yesterday morning—which now seemed like an eon ago—with an emergency on her hands.
“Hallo, Lola, it’s Daphne Duplex. Got your cell from your book publicist, hope to death you’re not sore.”