Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship (9781609417291)

by Verge Higgins, Lisa

  Of course, this gave Jo some time with Mr. Hunk, who’d fallen back to keep pace with her. She gave him a sidelong look. Southerners were so thin on the ground here in New Jersey that Jo could recognize one from about fifty paces “So… is it Tennessee?”

  “West Virginia.” He gifted her with a lopsided grin. “How ’bout you?”

  “Kentucky purebred.”

  “You’re a long way from home. Feel like taking a ride yourself?”

  “Oh, how you talk.”

  “I can give you a discount.”

  “Tell me you’re not talking about airplanes.” He had the grace to look sheepish. “You are talking about airplanes.” She tried to hide her disappointment. She supposed it was a tough way to make a living, convincing normally rational people to hurl themselves into the void. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll take my thrills on the ground.”

  Preferably on my back.

  “Maybe we can meet up later,” he said. “After work.”

  “That’d be nice.” But Jo knew that kind of “maybe.” That hopeful, sort of interested, can-we-do-this-without-me-making-any-effort kind of maybe. He was hot, but she couldn’t muster the effort right now. She had plans this afternoon, and, unfortunately, they didn’t involve a raucous roll with this hard-bodied adrenaline junkie.

  Inside the office, a guy still in his jumpsuit was busy editing a DVD. Kate wrestled herself out of the yellow suit, made a frantic trip to the bathroom, commandeered the schnapps, then raced back to watch a video of herself falling out of the sky.

  It was pretty incredible. No goggles could hide the fact that Kate had been terrified. Yet, as she leaned out of the airplane and the air pounded her cheeks, her expression shifted. She bloomed. The free-fall lasted less than sixty seconds; then the hunk hit her on the shoulder, and she deployed the chute, zooming high up, out of the range of the camera. Everyone applauded. The West Virginian handed her a certificate and a slim little DVD case, and Kate Jansen floated out of the hangar, her project completed.

  A-plus, as usual.

  Boy, Jo thought, it was really going to twist Kate’s britches when she found out that the letters from Rachel were all mixed up. That’s the only explanation Jo could come up with for what was written in hers.

  “What now?” Sarah asked, her eyes lighting up. “Are we going for lunch?”

  “Lunch—no.” Kate quivered with vestigial adrenaline. “I couldn’t eat. I can’t eat.”

  “Sex is what you need.” Jo tossed the empty bottle in the garbage. In the back of her car, “It’s Raining Men” kept up a constant chorus. “You should surprise Paul.”

  “Yes.” Kate beamed. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do. He’s at work. I’ll visit.”

  After a few hugs she was gone, zooming out of the parking lot faster than safety allowed.

  Jo swung an arm around Sarah’s shoulders. “I’ll have lunch with you, sugar. It ain’t going to be nearly as fun as Paul’s lunch hour, but I’m what you’re stuck with.” And lunch was as good a way as any to procrastinate a little more. “Besides, we have to talk about Rachel’s envelopes.”

  “I haven’t gotten mine,” Sarah said. “If Rachel sent it to Burundi, it’s lost forever. Can’t get a cow transported from Gatumba to Bujumbura without paying three times its worth in bribes.”

  “No, Rachel wouldn’t take that chance. She would have sent it to your parents’ house in Vermont. Where we used to send our letters, in the bad old days, before the blessings of e-mail. You haven’t checked with your parents yet?”

  “No. I suppose it’ll find me, sooner or later. Just as yours will find you.” Sarah’s clear gaze met hers. Sarah had an arresting gaze; it was the most striking thing about her. Those unwavering gray eyes, the clarity of her freckled skin, and the way she probed your face, as if trying to read whether you were one of the good guys or one of the bad. Jo figured it must come in useful when you’re a nurse among refugees.

  Jo shrugged her shoulders as if the envelope she hadn’t ’fessed up to wasn’t sitting right in her pocket. Yours will find you, too, Sarah, she thought. Kate and I will make sure of that.

  Lunch was a simple affair, a quick bite at a local diner. Sarah scarfed down a cheeseburger and two root beers, as well as half of the French fries off of Jo’s plate—explaining, as usual, that you can’t get a good cheeseburger outside the U.S. of A. It was just as well, because Jo for the first time in a long time was too nervous to eat. She dropped Sarah off at the train station with promises to get together in the city next week, before Sarah caught a plane back to Burundi. Sarah boarded the train, and Jo wished she had half the calm that Sarah carried around her like a perfume.

  Jo had turned off her cell phone during lunch. As soon as she turned it back on, it convulsed in her hand. She hooked up the Bluetooth and put the car in gear before she answered.

  “Geez, Jo, where have you been? I’ve been leaving messages on your cell for hours.”

  Hector. Frantic again. She took a deep breath and put on her vice-president voice. “What happened at the meeting?”

  “It was crazy, man, it was nuts. You wouldn’t believe what crap they were coming up with for the Artemis account.”

  “Hector, I’m sure you came up with something good.”

  “Oh, sure, loads of ideas. Like giving all the guests trench coats and fedoras, having fingerprint powder and magnifying glasses as swag—”

  “Oh, right. Gumshoe. That’s what I want to smell like: Hell’s Kitchen and stale cigarettes.” Jo shot the rental into third gear, flexing her palm over the phallic shift. “It’s a perfume called ‘Mystery,’ not a bad pulp novel. What else?”

  “Randy thought we could do some artsy black-and-white shots of girls bent over in the shape of a question mark, with, well, their skirts hiked up just enough to reveal everything except… the mystery.”

  “Typical Randy. What did he suggest we do at the launch? Dress the girls up in cheerleader outfits with question marks on them? How ‘Riddler.’ No, thank you.” Jo would close her eyes if she weren’t doing seventy-five in a fifty-five-mile-an-hour speed zone. “Tell me there were more ideas.”

  “Jo, you weren’t here. I did my best in your place.”

  “I know you did, Hector, and I appreciate how hard you’re working in my absence. But come on, I know that crowd, there must have been something crazy enough to work.”

  “Sophie had one.”

  A cold chill ran down her spine. Sophie was an up-and-coming publicist with an eye on Jo’s position. Jo’s boss had already noticed the ambitious Nordic beauty, and with reason: Sophie was young and energetic and full of half-baked ideas. Some of which were not that bad.

  “She wants to hire a model,” Hector said, “the one who just got busted with cocaine? Karin, Kate, Kathy something. We can get her cheap, and by the time the launch gets off the ground—”

  “Tell me you’re joking.”

  “Sophie’s idea,” he sang, “not mine.”

  “Right.”

  “She says for the ads we can do a photo of the model’s face, but mixed up like a puzzle. Mystery, get it? Who’s the face of Mystery?”

  Jo paused. The idea wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bad at all. She envisioned magazine advertising—Vogue, Maxim, Glamour—maybe even a bit more downscale. Repeated for a month or two to build up curiosity—although the idea of keeping the identity of the model under wraps was a logistical nightmare, full of nondisclosure forms and gags on the manicurist of the model’s publicist, etc. But then, at the launch, Artemis could reveal the model. Preferably not Miss Drug Addict of the Month, of course, but someone… exciting, exotic. Mysterious.

  “You like it.”

  “It has possibilities.”

  “Should I give her the go?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Hector was making noises on the other end of the phone, the kind of noises that went along with grimaces, eye rolling, covering of the phone receiver, general angst, and growing tension. S
he was sure he was sweating in his Brooklyn Industries T-shirt. “Jo, the meeting with the Artemis brass is looming.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ve been gone three days, and we don’t even have an idea, never mind a proposal.”

  “Better no proposal at all than a bad one. And we’ve put together proposals overnight before.”

  “Yeah, and gave me angina in the process.”

  “Hector, you’re twenty-eight years old, and you work out six days a week. It’ll be sixty years before you know what angina is.”

  “Angina? It’s you leaving me alone under deadline with these wolves.”

  “Howl away, Hector. See if you boys can come up with anything better—or at least a better runway model than what’s-her-white-powdered-face.”

  Jo listened to her messages—sixteen!—half of which were from Hector in increasing stages of hysteria as the creative meeting, in the background, burst into chaos. She erased the old messages from Sarah and Kate, arranging the gathering today at the small Fairfield airport. When she heard the raspy voice of a lawyer, however, she pulled over into the parking lot of a diner to write down the phone number. She punched it in immediately and waited an obnoxiously long time to get through.

  “Miss Marcum? This is Barry Leibowitz. You wanted to speak to me about Miss Braun’s last will and testament?”

  “Yes, sir.” Kentucky ways can’t be bred out of a girl, and the man’s voice telegraphed authority. “I was wondering if you were the individual who handled the envelopes that Miss Braun instructed to be mailed after her death.”

  “I was.”

  “Oh.” Jo had figured that some secretary had dealt with that, not the five-hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyer himself. “Well, maybe you can help me. I believe there must have been some confusion after Miss Braun’s death.”

  “Confusion?”

  Jo mentally stepped back. “She died so quickly.”

  The lawyer paused. “I assure you, all her papers were in good order. Surprising, for such a young woman.”

  “I received one of those letters,” Jo said, pulling it out of her pocket, “and I am quite sure she…” Jo swallowed a sudden lump in her throat. “I mean, I think she meant to write it for one of the other two people.”

  “Two people?”

  “Kate Jansen, perhaps. Or Sarah Pollard.”

  “Miss Braun didn’t send just three envelopes,” he said. “She sent dozens.”

  Dozens.

  Jo stared at the huge clock over the doors of the diner, its hands fixed at nine. You’d think, if you had such a giant clock at a Jersey diner, you’d keep it working. Stuck forever at nine, it screamed, We can’t afford to fix it.

  You’d think, too, having known a woman for over twenty years, that you’d realize she’d made other friends. Dozens of them, even. Especially a woman like Rachel, who risked her life with every adventure and thus made deep, deep bonds with her fellow adrenaline junkies. Didn’t she collect people as a child might collect marbles? While training for this race, I met an amazing guy. He’s a sixty-one-year-old triathlete and a practicing Buddhist…. I met this waterman you wouldn’t believe, Jo. He’s like something carved out of limestone. He teaches surfing, and he lives in a bungalow in Maui…. She’s the first woman to attempt the big seven, but she’s not stuck in the ghetto of motivational speaking; no, she’s setting up an adventure travel company, and I’m thinking of joining….

  The fact that Rachel had sent dozens of letters suggested something even more alarming. Rachel had been thinking about this—planning for this—for a very long time. Which made Rachel’s request all the more mind-boggling.

  “We were careful with the sorting, Miss Marcum,” the lawyer said into the silence. “You’ll see that Miss Braun addressed all the envelopes herself.”

  Indeed, there was Rachel’s handwriting, surprisingly girlish and left-leaning: “Bobbie Jo Marcum, Mogul Extraordinaire, 196 East 82nd Street #5D, New York, New York 10028.” As intimate and personal as the letter itself. A fact Jo could no longer deny.

  It just didn’t make a lick of sense.

  “Miss Marcum?”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “Can we help you with anything else?”

  Can you help me strangle a dead woman? “No, you’ve been quite kind. I thank you for your time, Mr. Leibowitz.”

  Jo disconnected the call and told herself it didn’t matter. It wasn’t going to happen anyway. There was no way Rachel’s parents would allow her to interfere in the family like this. Kate Jansen had to jump out of a plane, sure, but all that required was two hours of training and about ten minutes of terror. Then it was over. What Rachel asked of Jo would last a lifetime.

  She put the car in gear and headed toward Teaneck. This would all be resolved within the hour. She would show the letter to Rachel’s parents. They’d be surprised and horrified, and then they’d all laugh about it. They’d laugh at how Rachel always tried to meddle in people’s lives—change them for the better, of course—even from the grave. And then Jo would be absolved.

  When Jo arrived, the windows of the neat colonial house were still shaded, as if the family was still sitting shiva. As she approached the door, Jo pulled down her clingy turquoise shirt and wondered if she should have worn something a little more respectful than a pair of low-slung jeans and slingback heels.

  The door opened before she could knock. Rachel’s cousin Jessie stood in the portal. “Oh, thank God, it’s you.” She moved aside so Jo could come in. “We’ve been waiting.”

  Jo stepped in. The house was in disarray; the black crepe was still hanging on the mirrors, and plastic packages of food were piled on the dining-room table.

  “I thought you’d be here earlier,” Jessie said. “My aunt waited. I finally sent her out to run errands. She was nothing but tears, and I think we’ve had enough of that in this house.”

  “Jessie, sugar,” Jo said, pulling out the envelope and waving it at her, “are you absolutely sure this is real?”

  “Yes. Yes. I was there when Rachel made the decision.”

  Jo started. “You were?”

  “Yes. I called the lawyer. I helped Rachel write it out. If you accept, it’s a hundred percent legal.” Jessie gave Jo an exasperated look as the young woman scraped a hand through bangs that badly needed cutting. “Rachel even told me that you’d try to weasel out of it.”

  Jo bristled. Jessie was about twenty-two years old and as full of herself as only a freshly minted college graduate could be. “I’m not ‘weaseling’ out of anything. It’s just a big shock and a darn huge responsibility.”

  “I know. It’s been mine these past few weeks. That’s why Rachel specifically gave it to you.”

  “Frankly, I didn’t think your aunt and uncle would allow it.”

  “Don’t you know our situation at all?” Jessie’s ponytail swung as she planted her hands on her hips. “My uncle broke his hip four months ago—”

  “I know—”

  “—and he’s still upstairs in bed. He hasn’t been downstairs in all that time. My aunt is looking at three or four more months of waiting on him, hand and foot. And she herself has diabetes. Why don’t you think they’d allow this? They welcome it. And if my aunt walks through that door right now, you’d better act as if this is the greatest gift Rachel could ever give you. Because it is.”

  Jo straightened her spine. She hadn’t come here to be lectured by some twenty-something. She got enough of that at work, from the bright young things wanting to take her place. “Why don’t you do this, then? I hear you’re not yet employed.”

  Jessie flushed. She dropped her gaze. “I would. I offered. But for some reason, Rachel chose you.”

  Just then, the back door squealed open, and the screen slapped shut. Through the kitchen rushed a scrawny little girl wearing a pair of flood pants, with her hair wild over her face.

  “Grace, sweetie.” Jessie caught the girl before she could fly out of the room. “Stay here for a minute.
”

  The girl stuck a finger in her mouth. She had a dirty crust around her lips. She had Rachel’s limpid brown eyes.

  Jessie crouched beside her. “Do you remember we talked about Aunt Jo?”

  Jo felt the impact of four anxious eyes.

  “Well, sweetie, Aunt Jo is going to be your new mommy.”

  chapter three

  Sarah hesitated before the computer. The monitor filled the battered desk. A layer of dust blanketed the top. An old friend of hers, now stationed in Bangkok, had given Sarah permission to crash in his New York apartment and make use of its few amenities. It had taken her a good half-hour to figure out that the outdated computer did have a modem, but it still used dial-up, at a very slow speed. Following the faded instructions taped to the monitor, she’d been dialing for another half-hour. Finally, she’d gotten a slow but steady connection.

  Damn.

  She backed away from the blue glow of the screen. The edge of the couch bumped her legs. She gathered the folds of her skirt and sank into the couch’s perfect hollow, formed by a broken spring underneath.

  In the camp outside Gatumba, such a steady stream of power would send her and Dr. Mwami scrambling. They’d charge the defibrillators, put the portable ultrasound scanner to good use, and find that woman who needed gallbladder surgery while the electrocardiogram was still working—all before a fuse blew, rain shorted out the cables, or a herd of migrating elephants crushed the generator.

  But here, faced with such wretchedly reliable power, she wished for a thunderstorm. The screen blinked at her. Relentlessly. And despite the heaping piles of paper on the desk, Rachel’s little white envelope shone bright like the moon in a Burundi night.

  What are you afraid of, Sarah?

  The truth, Rachel. The ugly, ugly truth.

  Sarah seized her cup of orange-blossom tea. She corralled its warmth in her palms. For fourteen years, she’d avoided this situation. Fourteen years of living in blessed—and willing—ignorance. Not a darn bit of good could ever come of Rachel’s last request: that Sarah track down Dr. Colin O’Rourke, Peace Corps volunteer, surgical wizard, passionate activist—and the only man that Sarah ever loved.