At 4:45 p.m., I was starting to fantasize deeply about getting on my scooter and getting out of there. I was supposed to meet Mayburn tonight to tell him about the day, and the thought of a beer and a chat was appealing.
Josie joined me at the front of the store with an armful of what looked like white camisoles. “Bridal wear,” she said. “We’re getting lots of it.” She looked at her watch, then gestured toward one of the sleepwear tables. “Make some room here for these, will you? After we close the door, you can head back and start unpacking the shipments that came in today.”
I tried not to let my disappointment show. The back room was exactly where Mayburn wanted me-peering into the operations of the store, keeping my eye out for anything amiss. It was just that I was starting to fade.
“No problem.” I took the camisoles from her. They felt silky smooth, almost like water, on my hands.
The door dinged, and a couple walked in, laughing and shoving each other playfully.
“Hello, Nina!” Josie trilled.
The woman was a wisp of a girl dressed in fitted jeans, a long powder-blue T-shirt that matched her eyes and an ivory leather jacket. Her hair was twisted into two braids on either side of her face, a hairstyle few women over the age of fourteen could pull off. But this woman not only pulled it off, she rocked it.
Nina waved at Josie with a slender hand, gold bangle bracelets on her wrists jangling like a wind chime.
The man she was with waved, too, although he could barely take his eyes off his girlfriend.
Josie shot me a glance. I nodded and turned away. Obviously, regular customers.
I moved to the round table to make way for the bridal wear.
“I’m looking for something to wear under a white dress,” Nina said.
“And don’t forget…” the guy said, laughing.
Nina laughed, too. “He wants me to get one of the pearl thongs.”
I looked at them. The guy was raising his eyebrows in a salacious but cute way.
“Oh, sure,” Josie said. “I’ve got them in the back.” She turned and headed for the storerooms. She looked at me. “Lexi, can you help Nina find a nude bra?”
“Sure.” Josie must have thought I was half-capable if she was letting me at her regulars. I felt a shot of pride that woke me up and propelled me across the store.
Nina shook hands with me as if we were meeting at a dinner party, as if I weren’t a store clerk. “This is James.”
James, who was rubbing his five-o’clock shadow, smiled and shook hands with me, too.
Josie came out of the back a minute later, holding a flat, black box with a white ribbon. She opened it and presented a piece of lingerie so beautiful, it looked like a piece of art. “We only have the black right now in your size.” She raised the lingerie higher-an intricate black lace panty, from which hung two strands of white pearls.
I peered at it. “Do the pearls…?”
Nina laughed, a sweet, burbling laugh. “Yeah, the pearls are the thong part.”
“Wow.” Dumbfounded, I couldn’t say anything else. Though I’d wear just about anything to look sexy, I couldn’t imagine having small pebbles running along my ass.
“Lexi is new.” Josie gave me a withering look. She took the bras out of my hand, pulled out a few different ones. She told me to go to the storerooms and steam a box of robes.
In the back, I poked around the farthest rooms, which seemed to serve as storage for display equipment, hangers and signs. To me, it all seemed like standard retail stuff. I was flipping through some of the signs when I heard a sound behind me and I jumped.
“Oh, hi, Josie!”
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for the steamer.”
“I showed you where the steamer was. You already used it.”
This was an excellent point. “I thought maybe there was a smaller one for the bra straps.”
She considered this. “That’s not a bad idea, but we just have the one steamer.” She peered around the room. She looked me up and down. “You can go now.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded.
“You know,” I said, wanting to make her like me, wanting to chase away any suspicion. “I think I’d like to buy one of those pearl thongs, so that I’m aware of all the merchandise and how it fits.”
She said nothing for a second. She looked me up and down. “You’re a medium?”
“Yes.”
“They’re extremely hard to find, and we’re out of the kind that Nina just bought, but I do have another brand in your size.”
“Great.”
“They’re seventy dollars.”
“Oh.” I definitely didn’t have seventy bucks for a pair of undies, even to get me on my boss’s good side.
“But you do get your discount, and I could take it out of your first paycheck.”
“Great!” I’d chalk it up to research. Maybe I could get Mayburn to pay for it.
“Stay here.” She left for a few moments and returned with a silver-gray box tied with a silver ribbon. She handed it to me. “There you go. I’ll see you in a few days.” As a part-timer, I’d be working weekends and one or two nights a week.
“You’re sure you don’t want me to finish the robes?”
She gave me a curt shake of her head, then took my elbow and propelled me to the front room.
My first day on the job was over.
17
I love a good dive bar-the dusty golden lighting, the rickety stools, the scarred wood bar top, the white wine served from a jug (or sometimes a box or tiny airplane bottles), the lingering smell of wood smoke (though there’s no fireplace in sight), the cranky but kind bartenders, and, if you’re really, really lucky, the hard kernels of popcorn from a machine that hasn’t been cleaned since 1971.
I love all those things about dive bars. Tragically, there are few left in the city. Chicago, once the land of a million dives, had gotten glitzy since the years of my childhood. When I first turned twenty-one and was home from college, I was full of disdain for the old neighborhood bars, the ones with the tiny windows that showed nothing from the street, the ones with the sign out front that read only Pabst, when everyone in the neighborhood called it Nick’s. Back then, I wanted the nightclubs, the glamour, the sleek. And I was glad when the neighborhood bars started closing up, replaced with fake Irish pubs boasting Crab Louie salads. But now, nearing my thirties and carrying a dogged tiredness from the weight of the last six months, I’d fallen in love with the dying breed that was the dive bar. I appreciated the casual and the quiet, punctuated occasionally with a few selections from an old jukebox. I loved the history of them. After so many people in my life had come and gone, I liked that a good dive bar had survived for decades and gave the impression that it would last another fifty years.
Which was why I picked the Old Town Ale House to meet Mayburn on Sunday night.
“How did it go?” he answered without any other greeting when I’d called after leaving the store.
That was one thing I liked about Mayburn-little bullshit and the ability to cut to the chase. “Fine. I guess. I mean, I didn’t find anything crazy or suspicious.”
“When are you working again at the store?”
“Tuesday.”
“Good. We’ll talk about it all tonight. Where are we meeting?”
“The Ale House?”
“Fine. Do you mind if Lucy comes?”
I thought about the last time I’d seen Lucy DeSanto-I’d posed as her friend so I could make a copy of her husband’s hard drive. The thing was, somewhere along the way my posing had turned into actual friendship. But I hadn’t seen her since. “I’d love to see her, but is she okay with me?”
“I told you. She’s glad of everything that went down with her ex.”
“All right. But this is business, right? Can we talk in front of her?”
“Lucy knows everything.” I had never heard Mayburn sound so proud.
“Why do you
get to talk about investigations when I don’t?”
“A couple of reasons. One, I’m an investigator, and everyone knows that. Two, we’ve gone over this before.”
Mayburn’s stipulation was that if I worked with him I couldn’t tell anyone. He said I’d be no help if word got around I was a part-time P.I.
“You’ll swear them to secrecy,” I remember him saying, “but they might let it slip to one person, and that person slips to just one person, and then another and another. The whole reason I need you is because you’re a typical, normal North Side Chicago woman. If there’s any inkling that’s not the case, if anyone knows you do P.I. stuff on the side, it won’t work.”
“And three,” he added, “I’m not working some cover.”
“Cover? Do I have a cover? I love that.”
“Don’t get too excited. P.I. work is grunt work, and you’re doing mine. See you at the Ale House.”
Now I pulled open the bar door and poked my head inside. A typical night at the Ale House. A guy in his seventies sat near an antique lamp, reading one of the dusty books from the shelf. A pretty woman, probably a mom looking to escape her family, gabbed with the bartender and socked away red wine. A couple about my age, who appeared deep in discussion, sat in the back.
I took a seat at the bar.
“White wine,” I said when the bartender reached me. There was no perusing a wine list at the Ale House. White or red, and that was it.
After he gave me the wine, which tasted a little like fermented lemonade, I studied the artwork on the walls-a bizarre mix of Halloween masks, drawings of Second City alumni and paintings of a guy, reputedly the owner, in various compromising positions with some bawdy-looking women.
Ten minutes later the door opened, and in walked Lucy DeSanto, a wispy blonde with a huge smile.
“Izzy!” She launched herself into my arms, squeezing me around the neck. If there were any hard feelings about how we’d left things, Lucy didn’t show it. Over her shoulder I saw Mayburn beaming. Love had definitely softened the guy.
“Hey,” he said when we finally pulled apart. He gave me a pat on the arm.
“Hey,” I said back. With Mayburn, I was definitely one of the guys.
Lucy and Mayburn pulled up bar stools near mine, both of them somehow managing to continually touch each other in the process. A brief discussion about what kind of beer to order ensued. In that little conversation, taking all of twenty seconds, Mayburn and Lucy lost themselves in each other, the warm circle around them almost palpable.
Hon, look, Mayburn said, pointing at the taps, they have a Hefeweizen.
Do I like that? Lucy’s eyes didn’t leave his.
Yes, you know. You had an orange in it one time. The other time you tried a lemon.
And I liked them both.
You liked them both.
This innocuous exchange led to more meaningful gazes and finally a kiss.
And God, did it make me lonely. Theo was sexy. It was fun to date Grady. It was even fun to date Sam after I thought I had lost him. But what I’d really lost was what these two had, the kind of love, infatuation, intimacy-whatever you want to call it, maybe all of the above-that made discussion about fruit in beer seem somehow beautiful.
“Hello!” I waved an arm in front of them.
They smiled, at me, then each other again. “Sorry.”
“Izzy, what’s been going on with you?” Lucy ran a hand through her blond pixie hair and beamed me a radiant smile.
I told her about my new jobs, the new guys. She told me about her kids, skipped over the topic of Michael and started asking questions about Theo.
Mayburn stopped her when she asked if Theo was a good kisser. “All right, Izzy,” he said. “I need to hear about today, and we have to let the sitter go in twenty minutes.”
Never had I heard Mayburn utter such a thing. But I decided to let it slide. I gave him the rundown about my day at the Fig Leaf. “So that’s it really. I’m not sure what you want me to look for or to do.”
“I want you to pay attention to everything. Pay attention to anything that seems off. Even a little bit. I just need you to collect the pieces. Remember what I’ve told you?”
“Yeah, yeah. The way investigations work,” I said as if I was reading the words from a blackboard, “is that you put lots of little pieces together. It’s like a puzzle. You have to be patient.” He had told me this over and over.
“Right. And I got another bit of advice for you. Like I said, don’t plan. Improvise.”
“Meaning?”
“Since we don’t know what we’re looking for, don’t hold tight to any set course of action. Don’t get freaked out if the way you’re doing something doesn’t work. Don’t plan. Improvise.”
Lucy gazed at him with something approaching wonder. “Wise words for life,” she said.
He kissed her.
“Okay, you two.” I put money on the bar. “I’ve got the beers, you get out of here and go get the sitter.”
They stood and pulled on their coats. Lucy hugged me again. “It was wonderful to see you, Izzy.”
“You, too.” I squeezed her thin frame.
I watched them through the bar window as they stopped in front and kissed again. For a long, long time.
I turned back to the bar and called Sam from my cell. “I’m at the Ale House. Can you meet me?”
“Mmmph,” he said.
“Are you sleeping?”
“Yeah. Exhausted from this morning. I went to bed an hour ago.” He breathed in, then moaned the way he did when he rolled over. “Sorry, Red Hot. I’m cashed.” He moaned again, and I could almost feel him, the way his body moved under the covers. “Our timing has been bad lately, huh?”
He wasn’t just talking about tonight or last night, and we both knew it.
“Yeah,” I said simply.
“Good luck at work tomorrow.”
“Thanks.”
I was about to hang up when I heard, “Hey, Iz?”
I raised the phone to my head. “Yeah?”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
In the air hung the words, No matter what happens to us.
I clicked the phone off.
Sipping my wine, I stared at my left hand. I missed my engagement ring. It had been an antique art-deco affair. An emerald-cut diamond surrounded by a frame made of smaller diamonds.
The phone rang again. I smiled, thinking it was Sam. The display read, Grady, cell.
“It has come to this,” I said as I answered the phone. “I am drinking alone.”
He laughed. “Where are you?”
“Old Town Ale House.”
“Nice. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” And he hung up. Because despite the fact that Grady and I were sort of dating now, we had been buddies for years, buddies who didn’t have to make small talk.
While I waited, I called Jane. She answered on the first ring.
“How are you?” I asked. “Ready for tomorrow?”
She sighed. “We’ve been shooting promos all day. But I’m still so freaked out about last night. I threw the flowers and the box away, but I’m jumping out of my skin. I feel like my house isn’t mine or something. I keep thinking someone is here.”
“Where’s Zac?”
Another sigh. “He went back to our house in Long Beach. He’s so pissed off at me. More than pissed off. He’s furious, and at the same time, he’s so detached.”
“Do you want me to come over?”
“No. Thanks. I’m going to bed. I have to be at the station at four-thirty. Are you ready?”
“I’ll be there at seven.” My real new job was about to start.
“See you then, Iz. And thanks for calling.”
I hung up with her feeling a distinct unease, a sense of anxiety.
A few minutes later, Grady walked in, edging his wide shoulders through the front door, running his hands through his brown hair. “I’m glad you called.” He slipped onto
a bar stool next to me.
“You called me.”
“Only because I knew you wanted me to.” Grady ordered a Miller Light from the bartender. “So, what’s up?”
I told Grady about my job at the Fig Leaf.
“Are you kidding me?” He gulped his beer. “Stop now. You just gave me enough material to fantasize about for the next four years.”
I laughed, then we fell into silence. A heaviness filled the air. After being buddies for years, we’d made out a few times, gone out on a few dates, but nothing between Grady and me was official. We hadn’t settled into any kind of pattern, and so the question always floated there-would we or wouldn’t we? Would we fool around again? Would we sleep together eventually? Would we keep dating? If we didn’t, would we return to the friendship we’d had?
It was the friendship I needed more than anything, and so I forced another laugh. “Tomorrow I’ve got another new job.”
“About time. What is it?”
I told him about Trial TV.
“Nice!” Grady broke into cheers, clapping me on the back. The older man reading a book looked up at us and glared as if he’d just found us in his living room.
“Good for you, Iz.” Grady kept thumping me on the shoulder.
“Thanks. You’re always such a good friend.”
“And I always will be a good friend.” But then his grin fell away. “I got to tell you, though, Iz, I’m hanging in there right now, but in terms of me and you…” He motioned between us. “I won’t wait forever.”
I looked at my wineglass. Empty. I looked back at Grady. “I know that.” But I felt a wave of sadness. I’d known, somehow, that Grady wouldn’t put up with my waffling forever. Sam probably wouldn’t, either. But I didn’t want to choose.
I felt another tickle of understanding for Jane. I heard Jane’s words from yesterday. There isn’t just one person who can be everything to me. Different people inspire me in different ways, fascinate me in different ways…I just look at my own life differently after I’ve gotten a taste of someone else’s.
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