by Anne Wagener
As we stare at each other, I become painfully aware of the loud ticking of a nearby wall clock the size of Big Ben. Where do you buy clocks that big? And why?
What’s even more terrifying is that she doesn’t say a single word. After scanning me, she cruises up to the favor table, her heels making their own confident ticking on the tile. She picks up a favor box and holds it between her thumb and index finger. Rotates it 180 degrees. Examines it for a few more seconds. Says, “Hm.” Sets it back on the table and breezes out the other side of the kitchen, as if I’m less interesting than a stone lion.
A few moments later, the robot lady’s voice announces: “Conference. Room. Door. Open.”
The conference room: Likely the HQ of her lieutenant governor campaign. This is a telltale sign of conspicuous wealth: You have rooms designated for purposes other than eating, sleeping, pooping, and watching TV. Such lofty purposes as conferencing, breakfasting, and screening films.
Evidence. I need evidence. I text Lin and Susan for ideas. Susan doesn’t text back—she’s probably at rehearsal by now—but Lin’s response is almost immediate. House staff. Ten to one they’ve got dirt.
When the robot lady announces the patio door is open, I glance out the bay window to see a bleached-blond bun with a cloud of cigarette smoke floating above it like a thought bubble. I set down several mangled ribbon loops and join Anna on the patio, asking tentatively if I can bum a cigarette. We smoke in silence until I work up the nerve to ask how she likes her job at the mansion.
“It is like reality television.” She waves her hand to gesture at the scenery in front of us. The patio overlooks at least an acre of yard. An upper deck presides over a lower deck; the two are connected by a long staircase. Beyond the lower deck, a tree-lined kidney-bean-shaped pond fills out the rest of the yard.
“How do you mean?” I try to cough into my elbow inconspicuously. I haven’t smoked since Susan’s wedding.
She twirls her cigarette in the air before taking another drag. “People who look like models, scripted conversations, and a big helping of ego.”
After talking with Anna for a few more minutes, I get the distinct vibe that she Knows Things, so I venture a bit deeper with my questions. I ask what she knows about Holly and Charlie’s relationship.
She gives me a look like I’ve asked for hemlock tea. “You are dipping your toes into the Shit Creek.”
I swallow. “Okay, truth?”
She nods, blowing smoke out one side of her mouth. The other side of her mouth is smirking something wicked.
“I’m working for an unnamed third party whose interests lie in—investigating Holly and her fiancé’s relationship.” I lean closer to her and realize how ridiculous I am. I reject all the lines I was considering—a mishmash from various spy and legal shows—as I get the inkling that Anna has a bullshit detector more accurate than most space-based global navigation systems. So I say, “Help?”
The smoker’s laugh again. “Might as well wade in, the water is fine.”
“I’m wading in Shit Creek now?” I cough.
She gives me a little pat on my back. “Look, I try to mind my own business. This is where I work.”
“How about one question. Can I ask you one question?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether I like the question.”
“What do you think about her marrying Charlie?”
“Sweet boy. You could hang a Christmas ornament on his dimples.”
“I know, right!”
“Poor, poor bastard. It is none of my business, but I do not trust that girl any farther than I can throw her.” She frowns. “Though I could throw her pretty far, so never mind.” Deep inhale.
“Why don’t you trust her?”
Anna sighs, then shrugs as if to say, What the hell? She takes her time finishing her cigarette. “When Holly was home last summer, I was here on the evening shift. Her mother was at the state capitol. What is it they say about the cat being away? The mice are very naughty. I was cleaning the bathroom upstairs”—here she points to a window three stories up and overlooking the pond—“and I saw her outside, swimming in the raw. With a man.”
“In the raw what?”
Anna raises an eyebrow and grasps her bosom. “You know. The raw.”
“Oh!” I frown. “Was she with Charlie?”
“At first I thought, Yes, it is Charlie, so I went back to cleaning. Then I heard them on the back porch, and when they stood under the floodlight, I think it was another man. They stood out there for a long time, doing the making out, and then he left.”
My brain scans quickly through the information I’ve received from Susan. Supposedly, Holly and Charlie were together throughout most of college. “Maybe she and Charlie were on a break?” I wonder aloud.
Anna shakes her head. “Charlie came the next day to see her.”
I wince. “And you’re sure the pond guy wasn’t Charlie?”
Anna sighs again. “I do not think it was Charlie. It was a while ago. I try to mind my own business. I have enough drama in my life with a teenager at home.”
So Holly might have cheated on Charlie in college. Maybe Naked Pond Man is still in the picture. “So you don’t know if she cheated on him other times?”
She shrugs. “I cannot confirm or deny.”
“Well, what’s Holly like to be around on a daily basis?”
“I am not really around her—or she is not really around me, I guess, unless she is telling me to scrub the mirror harder, the better to see her face with.” Anna pauses to laugh at her joke. “Look, I’m not one to make judgments about other people. But she is . . . how can I describe? Something is wrong about her. Not that I blame her, having Medusa for a mother.” She gazes out at the pond. “Holly is like jack-in-the-box. The crank is always turning, and you never know when she is going to—” Anna holds her hands up in fists, then extends all her fingers at once. “POP!” This time she laughs so hard she makes herself cough. I reciprocate the back pat.
As she catches her breath, she gives me a long look. “If it was my son she was engaged to?” Anna shakes her head. “No way.”
She crushes a final cigarette under her shoe. “Back to work. Good luck to you and your unnamed third party,” she says before pulling open the sliding patio door and disappearing inside. A poof of air-conditioning sneaks onto the patio and dissipates instantly in the heat.
Holly returns to the mansion as I’m wrapping up task 15, item 5.a.iii. She’s sans makeup in a tight tank top and pink sporty shorts, but she looks just as amazing as she did on the lighted stage at Alfred Angelo. Her skin is glowing, her eyebrows are perfectly arched (though red underneath from a recent wax), and her nails are perfectly shaped and painted iridescent pink. She blows on them absently as she walks in.
“Piper, how are you?” she says, sounding almost, well, nice.
The niceness disarms me, as I’ve spent the past hour feeling angry on Charlie’s behalf. I blink at her. I’m thinking about you getting your jollies behind Charlie’s back, you no-good cheating— “I’m—I’m good. You?”
She flips her iron-straight hair over one shoulder. “I’m good. Really good.”
Jollies! She’s been out jollying!
I swallow. “Hey, I was wondering, if you have a minute, there’s something I was hoping to talk to you about.”
“Oh?” She smiles sweetly and perches her bum on the table next to the laptop. I edge the laptop away from her. Even though I’ve closed iPhoto and cleared the browser history, I’m terrified that my virtual evidence quest is somehow still visible. “What’s up?” she asks, blowing on her nails.
“I don’t know if Susan told you,” I continue, “but I always like to get to know my brides a little bit. I was hoping maybe you could tell me about how you met Charlie?”
She crosses one leg over the other and considers me, seemingly contemplating whether to upgrade my status from ribbon servant to bridesmaid.
“He asked you out in high school, right?” I persist.
“The prom.” She smiles again, and for a moment, I put myself in high school Charlie’s shoes. No question, she was the prettiest girl in school. “He asked me out by reading me a poem in front of the entire English class.” We both swoon a little. “I knew back then he was the guy I’d marry.”
I fidget with a ribbon spool, poking my index finger through the center and winding it absently around its finger spoke with my other hand. “Wow, so you’ve been together for how many years now?”
She rolls her eyes up toward her tanned forehead. “Let’s see, that would be almost six years.”
Being this close to her is making me physically uncomfortable: The ribbon wheel increases its speed. Even up close, she’s immaculate. Her hair super-shiny, her skin nearly poreless. I think of that tiny pigtailed incarnation of her on Susan’s phone screen. That hopeful missing-tooth smile. At the same time, I feel as if I’m being lured into a vision she’s presenting of herself. Nibbling up the bread crumbs she’s meted out along a glittering votive-candle-lined path. I’d almost forgotten Naked Pond Man.
“And—you always knew he was the one?” I say, trying to shake myself out of the Holly spell.
“Mmm.” She seems to have found something either fascinating or concerning about one of her cuticles. She worries at it with another finger.
“And how did he propose? Another poem?”
A pause. One corner of her mouth pulls downward. She hops off the table, moving around to examine my handiwork with the favors. My unanswered question hops off the table with her in a whoosh of pleasant girly smells. She sets her smartphone next to the laptop and begins scrutinizing the favors. I hold my breath as my work is graded in front of me.
On an impulse, I begin fanning my face rapidly with one of the unassembled favor boxes. “Jeez, it’s hot today, right? I could really just—rip off my clothes and go for a dip in that pond.”
If she heard me, it doesn’t register. She’s plucking a favor from my neat rows and examining it. I was assembling navy-and-silver-striped boxes, stamping them with the “Holly and Charlie, August 1st” custom-made insignia stamp, filling the box with silk rose petals, tying a shiny ribbon bow around the votive candle, securing the bow with a rose-tipped pin, then nestling the candle into its bed of petals.
She frowns as she looks at one of my ribbon bows. “What is this?” She holds it up for my examination.
“A bow?” Is this a trick question?
She makes a harrumph. “No, no, no,” she says. “This is a fucking mess, is what it is. Look at that—it’s way off center! You’re going to need to redo these. This reflects on me, do you get that?”
I was hoping to meet Lin and Steve for dinner at six, but according to a sly glance at Big Ben, it’s already half past five. “I actually need to—”
She sets down the candle and stares at me. Her eyelids expand to reveal more of the white around her irises before retracting again: an ocular flare. “I’m sorry, did you think you were here for your own enjoyment and pleasure?”
My heart begins doing the Hustle. “I meant that—I don’t—”
An electronic sound makes me jump: Her phone is making a bird noise. Saved by the tweet. I’m just able to decipher “Call from: BVH” on the screen before she scoops it up.
I dig back into the rows of boxes and begin examining ribbons while trying to hear what BVH is saying.
“I can’t really talk right now, can I call you back later?” She presses the “end call” button with a manicured fingertip, then examines said fingertip to make sure the polish is still smooth.
“Anything important?” I ask, pretending my real focus lies on my negligent ribbon tying.
Once again, my question goes unanswered. Instead I get: “Finish these, and let yourself out.”
As she retreats deeper into the mansion, I want to shout: What about Naked Pond Man? WHAT ABOUT NAKED POND MAN? But she disappears, and a few minutes later the robot woman announces, “Powder. Room. Door. Open. Powder. Room. Door. Closed.”
I gaze out the bay window for several minutes, my heart still hopping. I project a Charlie montage onto the surface of the pond: I envision him getting measured for his suit, standing with his arms extended. Maybe the measuring tape glances his waist and he’s ticklish there. Oh, Charlie.
What does Anna’s tidbit mean? If it’s true, maybe Charlie already knows about it. At Alfred Angelo, he said, “There’s a lot you don’t know.” I consider running naked into the backyard and belly-flopping into the pond. Just giving up on this. There are too many unknowns. But my own internal jack-in-the-box has started cranking, and my gut tells me I’m working up to a pop. Happy people don’t bitch about ribbons. I shake my head. There’s more to the story, I know it. As my English professor would say, What’s the subtext?
I turn back to the rows of favor boxes and text Lin: Sorry, love, going to miss dinner. Stuck in votive candle hell.
He writes back: Is it garlic or holy water that repels bridezillas?
Hrm. Not sure.
Maybe a zombie horde would work?
After 200+ votive candle favors, I think I qualify. As a zombie.
I’ve been telling you all along to trust your own powers. Steve says zombies totally beat vampires. Go get ’em.
Braaaaains!
That’s the spirit! Keep calm and eat brains.
Twenty-Six
Blaine V. Harrison is timelessly attractive, with close-cropped blond hair, fifties-style thick-rimmed glasses, and a V-neck T-shirt revealing tanned, hairless man cleavage. The kind of “T-shirt” that costs seventy-five dollars. He’s lean but fit; you could probably play Parcheesi on his abs.
Susan corkscrews a curl around one finger. “Who uses a middle initial on a Facebook profile? Seems a little over the top. What does the V stand for, do you reckon?”
“Vernon?”
“Vermilion.”
“Vincent.”
“Vendetta!”
We read his Facebook profile to the soundtrack of Susan’s husband, Brandon, practicing trumpet in the next room. With a symphony concert the next evening, Susan should be practicing, too, but after hearing what I found out at the mansion, she insisted I come to her apartment pronto for a quick confab. She almost instantly identified BVH as Blaine V. Harrison, Holly’s adoring neighbor. And the interweb stalking commenced.
Interests: Future Politicians of America, Blues Traveler, Avett Brothers, Republicans for Sustainable Farming, CrossFit
We exchange looks. He doesn’t seem like a covert skinny-dipper or girlfriend-stealer. I imagine putting on super-spy glasses that will reveal the real Blaine underneath the profile, like a painting hidden underneath another painting. Scratch away at that chiseled chin and find a devil’s beard.
Interests: Stealing girlfriends from honest men, eating other people’s hearts, dancing naked under the moon, skinny-dipping and letting the water drip seductively off my Parcheesi-board abs. *Cue evil laughter*
What I see instead is:
Favorite Quotes: “Don’t judge each day by the harvest that you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” —Robert Louis Stevenson
Susan shakes her head. “I bet I know what seed he’d like to plant. Huh, Blaine? All I know is, Charlie’s always had his eye on this guy. He used to complain how Blaine was always around, finding excuses to be at Holly’s, sucking up to her mom. Bet you anything he’s the skinny-dipping culprit. And that’s definitely who was calling her. The middle initial’s a dead giveaway. Probably calling to schedule another naked water rendezvous.”
I rub my eyes. “Why would she cheat on Charlie now, though? Right before their wedding?”
Susan shr
ugs. “She has an insatiable appetite for attention.”
We turn back to the profile as Susan scrolls through Blaine’s friends. “Nora Fillmore,” she says, pointing to a blonde whose profile photo looks like a glamour shot. “I remember her. She used to help Lena with campaigns. Holly hated Nora, probably because Nora had the hots for BVH. What is that, a love rhombus? Anyway, we used to call her Nora the Nose, because she had such a nasally voice. Not my best hour.”
“Um, that’s— Yeah, so what do we do now?” I lean back in her desk chair and almost tip over onto a pile of sheet music stacked several feet high. Susan catches me with glissando-speed reflex.
The trumpet goes silent. Brandon pops in, frowning. He’s wearing plaid pajama pants and a T-shirt that says, “Can You Handel It?” A teddy-bear gut pushes the T-shirt outward. Brandon has a lovable but mischievous Seth Rogen look. Susan informed me when I arrived that he’s unofficially on Team Wedding Terminator.
“Now, here are two ladies who are up to no good,” he says, reclining against the doorframe. As he folds his arms across his chest, his gut winks at us from under the T-shirt. “All this scheming got you parched? You gals need a refreshing beverage?”
“No, thanks,” I say.
Brandon turns to his wife. “Honey? When’s the last time you had something to eat?”
She shakes her head again. “Shh! I’m trying to figure something out.”
I turn to Brandon, who’s making a Well, excuuuuuuse me! face at Susan. “There’s a possibility Holly might have cheated—might be cheating, I guess—on Charlie. With her irritatingly perfect neighbor.”
Brandon thumps into the room, setting his trumpet on a crooked bookcase, and begins reading the profile, making various indignant sniffing noises. “Look at this guy. What a fancy motherlover.”
Meanwhile, Susan is making the kind of face that begs to be accompanied by the Chariots of Fire theme song. “I’ve got it!”
“What?” Brandon and I ask in unison.
“We invite Blaine to Holly and Charlie’s co-ed shower without telling him it’s a shower. We tell him, ‘Hey, it would be a fun surprise if you showed up at this party Holly’s having.’ ”