Name Dropping

by Jane Heller

  “But I got you by mistake?”

  “Yes. And instead of being honest with you by telling you that you had the wrong number, I pretended to be the other Nancy Stern. To keep the conversation going.”

  “Why would you do a thing like that?”

  Why indeed. “Well, you had a very friendly voice. A warm, soothing voice. I don’t know if anyone has ever complimented you on your voice, by the way, but if you decide you’ve had it with the jewelry business I bet you could move into radio.” I was rambling, sliding off the track, but I couldn’t help myself.

  “You did a lot more than keep the conversation going,” he said accusingly. “You went out with me—not once but three times—all the while assuming the identity of another woman.”

  “I did, but you see I was—”

  “You actually regaled me with stories about your oh-so-glamorous career.”

  “Her oh-so-glamorous career,” I corrected him.

  “Jimmy Carter. Mother Teresa. Morgan Fairchild.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “You’re not a celebrity journalist, are you? Admit it, dammit!”

  “I admit it. The only celebrity I’ve ever met is Miss Piggy.”

  Another filthy look. “You think this is one big joke, don’t you?”

  “No! I’m not joking. We took the class on a field trip to the local PBS station where Miss Piggy was taping a show. She’s much thinner in person, incidentally, but they say the camera does add ten pounds.”

  “What class are you talking about? The dog training course you and your friend send your Jack Russell terriers to? Or was that story total bullshit like the others?”

  “Total bullshit. I don’t have a dog, Bill. Neither does Victoria. She and I are both preschool teachers. We teach four-year-olds at a private school here in the city called Small Blessings.”

  He stared at me, shaking his head. “A preschool teacher. You had me completely fooled.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I mean, I really bought your act. You’re very good.”

  “Thanks. Well, thanks isn’t the appropriate word, because I’m not proud of what I did.”

  “Then why did you do it? Can you answer me that?”

  “I was lonely, I guess. And I was up for an adventure. My friend Janice had been after me to be less withholding, to start taking risks. She’s a Just-Do-It sort of person.”

  “How lucky for mankind.”

  “But mostly why I did what I did was because I had this notion that the other Nancy Stern had a more exciting life than I did, a more special life. I wanted a glimpse of that life, Bill, just a quick peek at it. And so I accepted the date with you and then I enjoyed myself so much I accepted another date with you and then I enjoyed myself even more and I accepted a third date with you. Everything kind of snowballed. Whenever I promised myself I’d tell you who I was, I’d chicken out; I knew how you felt about dishonesty, about people who misrepresent themselves, and I didn’t want to lose you.”

  “Lose me? Honey, you were the one who blew me off.”

  “I had to. I was falling in love with you.”

  “Falling in love with me?” He stopped grimacing and laughed. Laughed!

  “May I ask what’s so funny?” I said indignantly, taking a break from the mea culpa business, briefly.

  “You are. What makes you think I’d believe anything you say?”

  “Because you were falling in love with me too. You were, Bill. I could feel it.”

  “You could feel it?” He laughed some more. “Well, feel this, Nancy Stern—or whatever your name is.” In a flash, he was grabbing me by the shoulders and kissing me, kissing me hard on the mouth. At first, I was too stunned to react—obviously the last thing I expected him to do was display even a modicum of desire for me—but when the kissing went on for several seconds, progressing into actual “making out,” I reacted by moaning and murmuring and crying out an honest-to-goodness “Oh, yes.”

  I was really hitting my stride in the sound effects department when he pulled away abruptly. “You liked that, didn’t you?” he challenged.

  “I liked it,” I agreed breathlessly. I liked it so much that I was tempted to jump the guy.

  “How do you think you’d feel if you thought I’d been killed—murdered—and you’d never be able to kiss me again? Would you feel shocked? Sad? Haunted by a sense of what if?”

  “All of the above.”

  “Great. You have an idea of how I felt when I opened the morning paper and saw an obituary for Nancy Stern, celebrity journalist, who lived on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. I felt shocked, sad, haunted by a sense of what if? I thought, I’ll never be able to kiss that woman again because she’s gone forever.”

  I reached out to touch his arm. He waved me off.

  “And then—poof!—Nancy Stern wasn’t dead after all,” he went on. “At least, not the Nancy Stern I’d remembered kissing. It turned out that another newspaper ran a longer article about the murder, with a photograph of the victim, and I was so relieved that she wasn’t you that I didn’t know what to do with myself.”

  “Relieved? Really?” I said, my eyes brimming with tears. “That’s so sweet, Bill.”

  “Oh, it was sweet all right—for about ten seconds. Then I got mad. I’m talking as mad as I’ve ever been. I realized that I’d been taken in, toyed with, treated as if I were an idiot—by you, the mystery woman in 6J. God, when I think back on all those whoppers you put over on me.” He shook his head again. “You’re either a terrific con artist or a complete sociopath.”

  “I’m not a sociopath,” I declared, desperate not to be lumped together with Gary, the nutritionist. “And I’m not a con artist. I’m just a nursery school teacher who hadn’t had a date in a while. People do strange things when they haven’t had a date in a while.”

  “Apparently.”

  “It’s true. You should be a fly on the wall at one of Janice’s reading groups. You’d get an earful.”

  “I’ll pass.” He didn’t speak for a minute. I assumed he was weighing his next move. I hoped it would be another grab for my lips. “The point is,” he said after clearing his throat, “I didn’t know what—or who—I was dealing with after reading about the murder, and so I came here to confront you, to get to the bottom of this.”

  “And boy, am I glad you did come here, Bill. It’s wonderful to see you. You look—”

  “I look like a man who’s leaving.”

  He started for the door.

  “Wait! There’s a lot more I want to say to you.” I hurried after him. When he didn’t seem the least bit inclined to change direction, I blocked the door, splaying my arms and legs across it. “I’m sure that once you’ve simmered down and had a chance to see my side of the argument, you’ll conclude that I meant you no harm, that I have the highest regard for you, and that I didn’t set out to trick you—well, not in a bad way. In short, I’d like another crack at our relationship.”

  “Our relationship? We don’t have a relationship. ‘I can’t get involved at this stage of my life,’” he said in a high nasal tone meant to mimic me, mock me. “‘It would interfere with my career.’ Isn’t that what you said the night you dumped me?”

  “Yes, but that night doesn’t count,” I protested. “I was still pretending to be the other Nancy Stern.”

  “Right, and now I’ve had it with your pretending,” he barked. “Find yourself another sucker.”

  He literally picked me up, plunked me down a few feet away from the door, and walked out of my apartment, without even so much as a merry Christmas.

  Well, what did I expect? The scene had gone exactly the way I’d feared it would—heavy on the melodrama, light on the forgiveness.

  Although he did kiss me. And it wasn’t one of those dry, tight-lipped pecks on the cheek, either.

  Yes, Bill was angry, and yes, he indicated that he had no interest in even contemplating another go-round with me, but that kiss—well—that kiss hinted that th
ere might be a slight window of opportunity. After all, men don’t kiss women they detest, do they?

  I was about to pick up the phone to call Janice, my expert on generalities relating to men, then remembered that she had probably left for Linda Franzione’s Christmas party.

  You’re on your own, kid, I thought, feeling oddly optimistic for the first time in months. You’ll find a way to win Bill back, and you’ll forge a new relationship based on respect and honesty and trust. And once you do, nothing will come between you.

  Chapter Fourteen

  On Christmas morning, I awoke to find that my positive outlook from the night before was still intact. As I scrambled a couple of eggs and toasted an English muffin, I flashed back to Bill’s kiss and how he’d said he felt relieved when he realized I hadn’t been murdered, and I began to whistle while I worked.

  This holiday might not be a dud after all, I thought, and continued to whistle such seasonal favorites as “Jingle Bells,” which less than twenty-four hours earlier I wouldn’t have whistled for anything. Yes, this will be a jolly old holiday, I clucked to myself. Janice and I will take in a few movies, troll the department stores for after-Christmas sales, even drop in at the open house that Fran Golden, our drippy colleague at Small Blessings, is having. I’ll get through it, I thought. In a matter of days, the New Year will dawn, Bill will be returning his kids to their faithless mother, and I’ll have another shot at winning back his affection.

  I knew I’d have to come up with a plan, of course, an excuse to thrust myself in his path yet again. Simply walking into Denham and Villier and begging for his forgiveness wouldn’t be empowering or effective, judging by the fact that I’d already gone the begging route and he had marched out of my apartment anyway. No, there had to be a better strategy, one that would put us on a level playing field.

  I had the rest of my school vacation to come up with it, I figured, and, by God, I would come up with it—or die trying.

  Speaking of dying, I had just swallowed my first forkful of eggs when I opened the newspaper and there, staring me in the face, ruining my appetite, temporarily, was the other Nancy Stern. The photo accompanied a story involving the progress of the police’s investigation.

  I pushed my plate aside and read.

  According to the article, Detective Burt Reynolds, while not ruling out the possibility of a burglary-gone-wrong, had conducted a preliminary interview with Nancy’s daughter, who was not a suspect in the murder, per se, but was under “an umbrella of suspicion.”

  Nancy’s daughter?

  I put down the paper.

  Nancy’s daughter?

  She’d told me she wasn’t a child person. She’d told me that she would never tie herself down to some dreary domestic scene when she could be out gallivanting around the world, interviewing colorful characters of international renown. She’d told me she wouldn’t dream of letting motherhood cramp her style. So how come she had a daughter?

  I picked up the paper and read on.

  Apparently, this daughter had stepped forward upon hearing the tragic news of her mother’s death. Apparently, this daughter had been camped out in New York, hoping to make contact with her mother. Apparently, the reason this daughter had been camped out in New York, hoping to make contact with her mother, was that she had been given up for adoption the day she was born, was raised in Mississippi by abusive, alcoholic parents, and now wanted to confront the heartless woman who had handed her over to such monsters and, with any luck, extort money from her. Apparently, this daughter was maintaining her innocence in the murder but was not denying her long-held wish to make mommy pay.

  I put down the paper again.

  A daughter! I said out loud. A daughter from Mississippi!

  She must have been the young woman with the southern accent, I realized, the one who kept calling my number but never left her name. Perhaps, she had been trying to stake out her mother, intending to shake her down. Perhaps, on the night of the murder, she snuck past one of the building’s crack doormen, rode up to 24A, and announced her existence to the other Nancy Stern. Perhaps an argument ensued when the subject of money came up. Perhaps one thing led to another as they so often do. Perhaps the miss from Mississippi was packin’ a pistol along with her hostility and ended up shootin’ and killin’ her very own ma! (Perhaps I was getting a little carried away.)

  Boy, people are full of surprises, I thought as I resumed eating my breakfast. Who would have guessed that the other Nancy Stern had a daughter, for instance? And what other secrets had she been keeping?

  On the day of Fran Golden’s open house, there was more news about my murdered neighbor. I was dressing for the party and half watching TV when the local station reported an update in the investigation. The police were questioning Helen Quigley, the wife of Henry Quigley, who, it turned out, was not only the Henry I’d mentioned to the police—the adulterous lover desperate to spend an illicit weekend with Nancy—but the highly respected CEO of Span Publications, the international magazine group that had employed her from time to time. According to the report, Mrs. Quigley had learned of her husband’s affair with Nancy—had caught the two of them in flagrante delicto!—and was now, along with Nancy’s daughter, standing under that big golf umbrella of suspicion. The report’s final note on the matter was that Henry Quigley was taking a leave of absence from Span Publications in order to put his personal life in order and assist in his wife’s vigorous defense. (The family had retained Gerry Spence.)

  “Have you heard the latest?” Janice asked as we huddled together in the corner of Fran Golden’s living room while the others were locked in a fierce battle of Christmas charades.

  “You mean, about Henry Quigley’s wife?” I said.

  She shook her head. “About Bo, the one who wanted to roll around in the sheets with Nancy.”

  My eyes widened. “What about him?”

  “I heard it on the radio in the cab coming over here. He’s a drug dealer. ‘Coke supplier to the stars,’ the reporter called him.”

  “Whoa. So Nancy used, as they say?”

  “The police found traces of coke and booze in her body. Poor thing.”

  I pondered this new information and found myself feeling sorry for the other Nancy Stern. From afar, it had seemed that I was the one leading the lesser life when it was she who was. All that bizarre behavior, the furtive phone calls, the secrets. “Is this Bo a suspect?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Janice. “Joan Rivers interrupted the radio reporter to remind me to take my belongings.”

  “I hate those recorded messages they have in taxis now,” I said.

  Janice was about to respond when Fran Golden poked her head in. “What are you two doing over here by yourselves?” she asked in her syrupy sweet voice, the kind of voice that instantly made you feel as if you were one of the three-year-olds in her class—one of the slowest three-year-olds. Maybe it was the way she drew each word out that inspired a feeling of being talked down to, drew every single syllable out so you wanted to tear your hair out, wondering if she’d ever get to the point. Or maybe it was the high pitch of her voice that did it—that sort of sing-songy, baby-talky, icky-yucky simper I swore I’d never adopt. Of course, it could have been the combo of the voice and the smile—a “There, There” smile you’d bestow on a kid with a boo-boo.

  “We’re not doing anything,” Janice told Fran. “Really.”

  You see? Fran made even Janice feel like a child. A guilty child.

  “Good,” said Fran, clutching each of our hands and shepherding us back to the rest of the group. “Now come and take your turns at Christmas charades.”

  As you might imagine, Fran’s annual Christmas charades were charades where the title of each book or movie or song had a Christmas reference. Janice and I hung in there as long as we could stomach it—I, for example, acted out “Silent Night” by standing up in front of everybody and simply not speaking for several seconds—and then went home.

  By New Year’s Ev
e, the police had yet another suspect in Nancy’s murder: Jacques, her sometime boyfriend, the one who’d sent her roses. Kiss kiss.

  His full name was Jacques Devallier, he was a Eurotrash type who had family money but no particular interests (other than women), and he was the last person to see Nancy alive—or so it was surmised. According to the latest newspaper article I read, he had the key to her apartment and showed up unexpectedly on the night of the murder, only to find her in the middle of writing him a “Dear Jacques” letter. He admitted to police that he was enraged that she was breaking off their relationship, but insisted that a Frenchman would shoot himself before he’d ever shoot a lady, as chivalry was alive and well in France unlike in America, where there was only lawlessness and impeachment hearings and salads served before main courses.

  “Now I don’t know which of them did it,” I told Janice after I arrived for our New Year’s Eve date.

  “Neither do I,” she said. “What I know is that the other Nancy Stern wasn’t as popular as we thought. I told you to be careful what you wished for.”

  I stared at her. “You told me the exact opposite, Janice. You told me to wish for whatever the hell I wanted.”

  “Did I?”

  “You certainly did.”

  “Oh. Then I gave you bad advice. What I should have told you is to be grateful for small blessings—and I’m not talking about our little cherubs at school. I’m talking about the other parts of your life—the fact that you may be disappointed after what happened between you and Bill Harris, but you have your health and a roof over your head and a family who loves you. Be grateful for those, Nance. Not everybody has them.”

  “Janice, no offense but have you started the party without me?” It wasn’t like her to get gooey or sentimental unless she’d been drinking. Even one sip could get her going.

  “No, I have not,” she said. “I waited for you.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “What you just heard was my New Year’s Eve speech,” she said. “Whenever I think about one year ending and another beginning, I become very philosophical, very Chicken Soup for the Soul.”