“What’s going on, Lorna?”
“Okay.” Lorna took a breath that hissed across the telephone line. “I’m just going to spit it out, even though I think it probably doesn’t mean anything.”
Helene was getting anxious now. “Lorna, what is it?”
“I think maybe…I think maybe someone’s following you. Do you have security or something?”
“No. Why?”
“Well, I thought maybe with your husband in the public eye, and being a politician and all, that maybe they gave you Secret Service—”
“I mean, why do you think someone’s following me?” Helene knew she sounded sharp, and she didn’t want to, but she’d had the same uncomfortable feeling, and it was nothing short of shocking to hear it from this person she’d only just met.
“Last week when you were here, there was this guy leaning against a beat-up old car in the parking lot, looking up in the direction of my apartment. That was why I was so nervous about who was coming.”
Helene remembered that. Lorna had looked out the window about twenty times. Helene had just figured she was waiting for a boyfriend or something after the meeting.
“Anyway,” Lorna went on. “I was sort of looking out there, keeping an eye on whether he was there or not—I don’t know why—and I noticed that when you drove away, he drove out, too. At first I thought it was Sandra—”
“And it wasn’t?”
“No, she forgot something and came back up to my apartment right after you left.”
Dread settled in the pit of Helene’s stomach. “Is that it?” She had a bad feeling it wasn’t.
And she was right. “Well, it happened tonight, too,” Lorna said. “Same car and everything. Of course, it could totally be a coincidence. In fact, maybe someone else in the building has some sort of Tuesday-night thing going on, and I’m just overreacting. Or maybe it wasn’t even the same car.”
Helene doubted it. “What did the guy look like?”
“Blond. Blah. Nondescript, really. Medium weight, medium height, medium build.
Gerald Parks. “Did he have a camera, as far as you could tell?”
“No.” On this point, Lorna was firm. “He just stood there at the trunk of his car with his arms crossed in front of him. You don’t have to worry about pictures, I don’t think.” She hesitated, then added, “Not that you were doing anything incriminating.”
Not this time. “Thanks for letting me know,” she said, thinking this had to be a coincidence. Gerald Parks was not shy; if he was following her, he’d probably just as soon confront her. After all, he still wanted money.
Her own paranoia was probably just contagious, and Lorna had picked up on it. Helene would keep an eye out, certainly, but she didn’t want her new friendship to be shadowed by any discomfort. “Sometimes local photographers have absolutely no other stories, so they’ll follow me looking for something.” And sometimes they found it. “It’s irritating, but nothing to worry about.”
Lorna let out a breath across the line. “That’s a relief. Look, I’m really sorry for bothering you. You must think I’m such a ninny.”
Helene laughed. “Of course not! I think you’re a friend who was concerned, and I really appreciate it.”
After they hung up, Helene lay in bed for a long time looking at the glow of the driveway lights on her ceiling. She was in her own room, her sanctuary. The only place she even came close to feeling like herself.
But having Jim there changed the feeling entirely.
Another bad sign about their marriage.
She got out of bed and padded quietly across the cold wood floor to the front window. She wanted to unlock it and let in the summer night air, maybe smell the jasmine that she knew was blooming outside because she herself had planted it.
But she couldn’t open the window or the alarm would go off.
Instead she leaned on the narrow sill and looked outside at the deep purple sky, the scattering of stars overhead, and the faint glow of the city reaching upward.
At times like this she longed for the big sky of her childhood, so filled with stars at night that it looked like sugar spilled on a dark tablecloth. She could almost smell the deep green scent of West Virginia, and she was half-tempted to get in her car and drive north for an hour and see it.
Of course she couldn’t. Helene had no real business there, and if she went—and if the wrong people found out about it—it would raise questions she didn’t want to answer.
So she went back to her bed, opened the bedside table to take out the bottle of sleeping pills her doctor had prescribed her during Jim’s last political race, and took two of them.
That way, for a few hours at least, she could block out the present, the future, and the past.
The woman on the box had long, gleaming, dark blond hair, with subtle highlights that added dimension and made her blue eyes look bright like colored glass. The color was called Deep Palomino.
What Sandra had ended up with was dark grayish green, with frayed and fuzzy ends.
Her blue eyes did look bright, however. They always did after a good cry. And so far Sandra had cried her way through Jeopardy!, Survivor, and Law & Order. She was headed for the evening news, and if the entire jar of mayonnaise—well, Miracle Whip—she had applied and sealed on with a plastic grocery bag didn’t work, she would probably make it all the way through The Tonight Show.
Calling the number included with the instructions had been of no use.
“Unfortunately, you’re going to have to wait a month before you can do anything,” the woman had said after Sandra had waited on hold, listening to one instrumental Henry Mancini song after another, for about half an hour. No doubt there had been hundreds of other green-haired callers before her, because she had followed the directions exactly.
“A month? Why would I have to wait a month?”
“Because you opened the cuticle by using the product and, from the condition you described your hair as being in, if you put another product on, the developer might burn right through the hair.”
Sandra pictured herself with half her hair short and shaggy and the rest breaking off slowly.
She could definitely see why they’d recommend against that.
“What if I put on some of that gray coverage color, like maybe in dark brown or something. Wouldn’t that cover it?”
“No, because your hair was highlighted, some of it will grab the color more than the rest, and you could end up with a calico pattern.”
Sandra mentally weighed that image against the long green she had now and wasn’t immediately sure which was worse.
“What if I go to a salon?” she asked, though the whole point of buying the box and doing it at home was that she hadn’t had to go to a salon. “Could they fix it?”
“They might say they can, honey, but their products are just as capable of burning your hair off as something you might buy yourself. I wouldn’t chance it. If you wait a month for the cuticle to lie flat again and the condition of your hair to improve, then you can go to a salon for color correction.”
“That’s it? That’s all you can suggest?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“I bought your product in good faith. How can you get away with turning people’s hair green and telling them they have to live with it?”
“The directions do say not to use it on highlighted hair.”
“Where? Where does it say that?” Sandra had read instructions one through four word for word.
“Check the small print at the bottom.”
Sandra was exasperated. “No one reads that!”
“Unfortunately, lawyers do,” the woman said, sounding sympathetic for a moment.
This was devastating. She was finally starting to get out again, and this happened. “Well, thanks anyway. I guess.”
“Certainly, ma’am. And as a gesture of goodwill, we’d be glad to send you a coupon for a new box if you could give me your address.”
Were they
kidding? A coupon for a new box? Sandra supposed she’d need it in the unlikely event that she was able to get her hair to return to a normal color and found herself with the urge to go Grinch again.
She’d hung up in disgust and trolled the Internet for home remedies. One of the most popular was to apply a strong dandruff shampoo and let it sit for an hour to lift the color. But that would require not only going out to the store, but doing it with hair that looked like something that had been plucked out of sewage and placed atop her head.
Mayonnaise seemed like the better option tonight. Something about the vinegar lifting the color and the egg conditioning her hair. Hopefully Miracle Whip Light had the same magical hair-mending properties. She’d used the last carefully measured tablespoon of her mayonnaise on a turkey breast sandwich for lunch.
It was so stupid, really. She could have afforded to go to a salon; it was just her damn phobia getting in her way again. After a really good week—kicked off by her meeting with the Shoe Addicts—she’d suddenly, out of the blue, had a panic attack this afternoon as she was getting ready to go to Lorna’s.
It was weird because up until then she had thought the auricular therapy was going so well. The panic had felt like a major setback. Instead of going out to Lorna’s, she’d stayed in her apartment twisting her hands, trying to catch her breath, and wishing to God she were someone else.
That’s where the hair coloring had come in. She’d bought it a few months back when she was in a similar mood, but the mood had passed—a fortunate thing, she realized now—and she’d never used the color. But tonight, as she watched Wheel of Fortune and admired Vanna White’s hair, she remembered the two boxes of Deep Palomino in her linen closet (she’d bought them previously in a bad mood) and decided to change her look, and therefore her life, for the better.
It never occurred to her to examine the bottles inside to make sure they both said “Palomino” and not “Dark Ash Blond,” and even if it had, she wouldn’t have realized that dark ash blond would grab her previously highlighted hair and turn it the color of rotten asparagus.
It was perfectly fitting for her to top it with salad dressing.
The question was, what was she going to do next? Giving green hair to a person who didn’t want to leave the house on a good day seemed unusually cruel. But Sandra was one who was always looking for signs, and she had to wonder if this was one.
Maybe she needed to do the very thing she didn’t want to—maybe she needed to go out and just…submerge herself in the embarrassment.
In psychology they called it flooding.
She thought about it for a moment. It was Thursday night, a little after eleven. The streets would be crowded—they always were in the Adams Morgan area—but not quite so crowded as they’d be tomorrow night. Not that that mattered, because if she told herself she’d wait and do it tomorrow, then tomorrow would always be a day away.
She was going to do it.
It was impossible to say just what possessed her, or where she got the nerve to go out—hatless—and be seen, but twenty minutes later, she was glad she had.
“Sandra?”
For a moment, it seemed like this was going to be the realization of a nightmare.
She turned to see a great-looking guy with a slight build, perfect wavy brown hair, chocolate brown eyes, and skin so smooth, it screamed exfoliation!
“Sandra Vanderslice?” Her name was formed by beautiful, movie-star-quality lips.
The voice, however, was a little bit high. A little short of masculine. Not that that meant anything. He was just a high talker.
What was strange was the fact that he knew her name.
How?
“I’m sorry….” She reflexively raised a hand to her head, remembered the green, and felt a contrasting red fill her cheeks.
This had been a bad idea.
“It’s me,” the guy said, raising his eyebrows and looking at her expectantly.
No idea. She was drawing a complete blank, and she could feel it written all over her face. “I—”
He rolled his eyes. “Mike Lemmington?” Pause. “From high school?”
Her jaw dropped. Mike Lemmington! How was that possible? Mike Lemmington was the one person in high school who she could stand next to and feel, if not slender exactly, at least comparatively less fat.
“Mike!” Her own self-consciousness disappeared in the face of his incredible transformation. “Are you serious? Oh, my God, what—?” She shook her head. “I’ve got to ask, what did you do?”
He smiled, revealing perfectly even white teeth. “I just lost a little weight.”
“Mike.” If anyone could avoid the bullshit about weight, it should have been these two. “You lost a lot of weight. How?”
He shrugged. “Weight Watchers.”
“Really?” She thought of her own Weight Watchers membership and wondered if a little more attention to it could result in as amazing a change as his.
“Every Thursday afternoon.” He smiled. “But look at you! Look at your hair!”
How she’d forgotten for a few moments, she couldn’t imagine, but the embarrassment was back. “Oh, it’s—”
“It’s green!” He reached over and fluffed it.
“Yes, that’s because—”
“That is so bold,” he went on, looking at her with what seemed like admiration. “Honey, I thought you’d never come out of your shell.”
She frowned. Had she had a shell for that long?
Who was she kidding? She’d been born in a shell. She was practically Botticelli’s Venus only without the curvaceous body or angelic Renaissance face.
“Good for you for expressing yourself that way. And it makes your eyes look so blue!”
“Really?” She needed this. She really needed this.
“Totally.”
Sandra decided to go ahead and be the girl who had dyed her hair green out of confidence instead of the kind of insecurity that’s drawn to boxes of blond hair coloring on a bad day. “Thanks, Mike. So,” she continued on in the role of the kind of woman who would purposely dye her hair green to make some sort of bold and confident statement. “What are you doing in this part of town? Visiting? Or do you live here?”
“I’ve got a place right over in Dupont Circle,” he said, smiling that glorious smile again. Had he had work done on that, too, or did it change that much with the diminished body weight? “But I come over here to Stetson’s a lot. My pal tends bar there.”
“Oh. I’ve heard great things about that place.” She’d never been there. It had a reputation as a gay bar, though she wasn’t entirely sure that was true. Either way, it was supposed to be nice.
Mike pursed his lips and looked her over. “I’m on my way there right now—why don’t you come with me?”
Her heart leapt. Was this gorgeous guy actually asking her to go out for drinks with him? Maybe this green hair was the luckiest thing to happen to her this year.
Then again, it was green. And it was on her head. And no matter how much she might want to be at ease with that, she really wasn’t. “Gosh, Mike, I don’t want to intrude on your evening.”
“Are you kidding? I’d love it. Besides, there are some interesting people there. You might meet someone. Unless—” He looked like he’d just stepped in something. “—you’re already involved with someone?…I can’t believe I didn’t already ask.”
“It’s okay,” she assured him. “And I’m not. So—sure, yeah, it looks like we’re a go.”
“Great! You are going to love Stetson’s. And I can’t wait for you to meet my friend Debbie. I think you guys will really hit it off.”
Friend Debbie. Okay. If she was his girlfriend, he wouldn’t be asking Sandra out. “I can’t wait to hear everything you’ve been up to for the past—” She calculated. “—thirteen years. Jeez, has it really been that long?”
“Seems like a lifetime to me,” Mike said breezily, putting his arm around Sandra’s back. “I’ll tell you what, my mothe
r would have loved it if we’d hooked up a long time ago. She hates my lifestyle now, of course.”
Sandra wished she were a little Twiggy-ish waif, so he could put his arm all the way around her and draw her close, the way the hero always did at the end of a romantic movie, but she wasn’t going to quibble with that kind of detail right now. “Swinging bachelor?” she asked, hoping his response would help her gauge his current romantic situation.
“Right.” He gave a laugh, then stopped and looked at Sandra again. “It is just so good to see you. I’ve thought about you so much over the years.”
“You have?” She wished she could say the same, but the truth was, she’d tried pretty hard to block high school out of her mind entirely. “That’s so nice of you to say.”
“It’s the truth.” They began walking again. “From now on, we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other, I just know it.”
Sandra beamed. This was, officially, a great night. She’d remember this the next time things seemed to be going badly. You just never knew what was right around the corner.
Come to think of it, maybe you never really knew what was in your past. She’d definitely never seen this gorgeous hunk of man in Mike Lemmington.
She hadn’t even seen the potential.
Maybe it was like that with life, too. Sometimes you just didn’t see the potential in an ugly day.
Three hours ago, she’d been despondent, sure she was such a neurotic fat mess that she’d never really be thin or happy. Hell, she’d been afraid she might never leave the apartment again, becoming instead one of those weird stories that shows up in the Post every now and then about someone who was found two weeks after death when the neighbors finally realized the smell wasn’t the awful Hunan restaurant down the street.
Now here she was, arm in arm with a man so gorgeous that heads were turning—both men’s and women’s—as they walked down the street together. She was on a date, though admittedly it was to what might well be a gay bar, with a great-looking guy. A guy who knew her from her past and accepted her anyway.
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