Postcards From Last Summer

by Roz Bailey

  “We want you to read it cold,” Noah Storm said, as if it were a challenge. “And I’m getting sick of fielding all these questions, aren’t you?” He swung toward Trish. “Who’s prepping these people, anyway?”

  “They’re being told what we expect,” Trish assured him.

  “That’s not true.” Darcy shook her head, realizing it was probably a mistake to point out the casting crew’s failure, but from the lackluster interest of this panel she was fairly sure she wasn’t getting a part anyway. “The instructions aren’t too clear out there, but I’ll do my best.”

  “Go talk to them, would you?” Noah groaned. With a heavy breath, Trish moved to the door, while the British guy, whom Darcy recognized from small parts on TV and film, seemed to be programming things into a PalmPilot.

  Although Darcy knew she should use this time to study the part finally in front of her, the words were a jumble when she looked down. Instead, she smiled awkwardly at Noah Storm, a beanpole of a man, wiry and gaunt. He could have been a soccer player except for his exquisite eyeware, thin rectangles with luminescent frames. Something about him shrieked intensity—his high, chiseled cheeks or his stark gray eyes. Or maybe it was his impatience.

  “Let’s just go on without her, so we don’t waste time,” he told Darcy. “We’re evaluating your raw qualities, not interpretation.”

  “I see.” Darcy took a deep breath, knowing that it was the death knell to read without the casting director present. “Okay, then . . .” She proceeded to read the monologue, a woman explaining her disappointment with men by describing one failed relationship after another. Just as she finished the two pages, Trish returned and settled back into her chair.

  “Would you like to hear something else?” she asked, trying to read their reactions. Noah’s hands were pressed to his face—good? bad? tired?—and Bancroft Hughes was smiling like a barfly hoping for her phone number.

  “Thank you,” Trish said, holding out her hand for Darcy to return the pages as she turned to Noah Storm. “The important question is, where should we order lunch from?”

  Darcy bit her lips together to keep from tearing into all three of them as she shot out of the room, heading for the familiar blocks of the theater district.

  It was not a good day for an audition.

  By the time she got home, she was making a mental list of things to pack for the train ride out to the Hamptons. She was unzipping the large duffel bag as she checked her voice mail—one beep and a woman’s voice, polished and smooth.

  It was Trish Sanchez. “The film is called Life After iPod,” her voice said, oozing restrained annoyance. “And we’d like to messenger a script over right away. You’re our Nia.”

  69

  Tara

  “The coast is clear, Mugsy. You’d better step on it and hightail it over here.”

  Tara laughed, despite the questions looming on her computer screen, the timer ticking off seconds that she should be using to finish this practice test instead of talking to her secret boyfriend on the phone. “I wish I could, but I’m immersed in this online review course. I shouldn’t have even answered the phone,” she said, selecting “C. Felonious Assault” for question thirty-eight. “I promised myself I wouldn’t leave the house till I aced the multistate practice test just once.”

  “Sounds like a bar review course for idiot savants,” Steve said. “Why do you make those bizarre goals for yourself? You know, if you pass the bar, no one’s going to know whether you got a 98 percent or 100.”

  “I know, but I just want to get it right.” She’d taken the summer off from work at Senator Wentworth’s office to knuckle down and study for the September bar exam.

  “Well, since it’s June and the exam isn’t till August, I’d say you’d better pace yourself. Don’t want to peak too soon.”

  “Actually,” she said, selecting an answer for question thirty-nine, “I know you’re just trying to tempt me, but that’s a genuine concern. Sort of like a pro athlete who blows all their energy in practice.”

  “I rest my case, Counselor.” Steve snorted. “Besides, Ma’s been gone to Kathleen’s in Poughkeepsie all week, and Lindsay has some banquet to attend in the city, though she’ll probably stay at Elle’s when she comes out. The place is ours, at least for tonight.”

  “As I said, I know you’re trying to tempt me . . .” And the thought of getting out of her parents’ house, sliding out from under these hefty law books, was truly sweet.

  “You’ve been at it all day, right? It’s time to take a break.”

  “A convincing argument. Okay, I’ve got less than ten questions left on this practice test. Soon as I finish, I’m on my way over.”

  A lilting ocean breeze cooled the summer night, and she noticed Steve had all the windows open as she parked behind the shed and went in through the screen door without knocking. Years ago Mrs. McCorkle had instructed kids to just use the back door—“I can’t be running downstairs chasing after the likes of you every time the doorbell rings”—but back then Tara had never dreamed she’d be sneaking into the house to see Lindsay’s brother Steve.

  How long had it been now? For more than three years they’d been seeing each other on the sly. It had started with a phone call from Steve one day in October, just a few months after Tara had ended her relationship with John Sharkey. He’d said something about meeting at the Avalon, a bar at Union Square, and she’d gone there that night, thinking he just needed the familiar camaraderie of his kid sister’s best friend. He’d brought a friend, a coworker from the sports equipment company, and they’d talked and joked effortlessly. She’d just started law school, and Steve brought up the subject of liability issues on sports equipment—the bats and gloves, masks and helmets he tested—wondering where the line should be drawn between the vendor’s responsibility to consumers vs. the implied contract that the consumer would use equipment safely. “I love my job. I give this equipment a workout, violate it in dozens of ways to make sure it’ll stand the stress of extreme sports. But no amount of testing is going to make a football helmet safe for a biker or prohibit a baseball bat from being used in an assault. You’d be amazed at what people come after us for.” She’d never had a conversation on this level with Steve before. And when did he trim his shaggy brown hair so that it fell softly over the tops of his ears, a subtle wave over his forehead? Gone were all remnants of white zinc sunblock from his nose. And that stubble he used to scratch was now a strong pale jaw with just a hint of five o’clock shadow. She’d crushed on him when he was a shiftless surfer dude; now the attraction tugged at her like the undertow in a storm.

  “What?” he’d said, screwing up his face. “What are you staring at?”

  “You, Steve.” She’d always seen Steve and his friends as the Lost Boys, an irresistible gang of malcontents who would always defy authority and the aging process, but here before her was a mature man. “All these years, I never thought it would happen, but it did. You grew up.”

  He balled up a bar napkin and tossed it at her. “Get out! You were scaring me, staring at me like that. I was worried you were going to jump up and start singing a Celine Dion song or something.”

  “But you did, not in a bad way. You matured when I wasn’t looking,” she said. “Unlike the Fogarty twins, who are still stuck in adolescence.”

  “I think it’s called the junior high wormhole,” he said. “When thoughts of naked girls, surfing, and meatball heroes just keep spiraling through the brain.”

  Tara cocked her head. “Junior-high wormhole . . . Is that the clinical term?”

  He nodded sagely. “Textbook case.”

  That first night at the Avalon, they kept talking long after Steve’s friend headed out, Tara still sipping at seltzer when the bartender announced last call. “We’ll have to do this again,” Steve had said, and then he’d found her a cab and sent her home without any pretense of romance, leaving Tara more than a little miffed. She’d remained that way for the next year, as they’d get toge
ther for drinks nearly every two weeks at the Red Eye or Joe Allen’s, the Paramount or the Oak Room—bars that did not have pounding music and lines of celebrity hunters out the door, bars where they could sit and just talk. Tara enjoyed her “meetings” with Steve, the biweekly check-ins, but she didn’t mention him to Lindsay or the other girls, not sure what it all meant or where it might be going. After all, what did it mean when a guy met you twice a month for a drink and never touched your hand or even kissed hello? Having grown up with Steve, she doubted he was gay, and she didn’t think he was lonely, with all his surfer buddies, his friends from Brooklyn, and now his work colleagues whose anecdotes he shared. So . . . what was the deal?

  It was more than a year after that date until things broke, and now, nearly four years later after that first meeting, Tara still hadn’t undertaken sharing this relationship with her friends or family. It was all a big secret. Tara had always considered herself a private person, perhaps more protective of her privacy because of her father’s visibility in the media whenever a scandalous case was breaking. Private, yes, but secretive . . . no. At least, not until Steve. She knew that someday, soon, she was going to have to let her friends in on this one. But for now, she was holding tight. For some reason she still felt the need to protect and coddle this relationship, afraid that too much attention would make Steve and her feel self-conscious or guilty, jinxing everything.

  The screen door gave its familiar creak as she stepped onto the screened-in porch, passing the metal glider that used to hold Tara and all three of her friends at once, swinging on a lazy afternoon, lamenting that there was nothing to do.

  “Hello, hello?” She saw him ahead in the kitchen, rinsing something in the sink. “I noticed the door open and thought I’d stop in and rob the place,” she said casually.

  “Nothing to rob. Ma cashed in the family jewels to fly off to Carnivale in Rio.” He handed her a martini glass with a sugared rim. “Lemon drops—tip number one in the Steve McCorkle guide to bar review.”

  “Lemon drops! I can’t drink these!” she said, but she took the frosted glass and let her lips sink over the cool, candied rim.

  “Just one. Relaxation is key. When your brain isn’t wrapping around torts and con law, you’ve got to give it a rest.” He picked up his own drink from the counter and led the way into the den off the dining room, where a cozy nook was filled by a sectional sofa that rivaled a small island and an entertainment center.

  Steve flopped onto the sofa while Tara put her glass on a side table and snuggled close. “So, where is your mother again?” She caught his scent, the smell of soap and fabric softener mixed with salty sweat, and she smoothed her palm over his flat chest, loving the feel of his abs under the worn cotton T-shirt. This was her life with Steve—stolen moments spent talking and laughing, holding each other as they watched a TV sitcom, great, screaming sex and sleeping close, their bodies spooning they shared their worries and fears, hopes and dreams for the world. At night, in bed, Steve was not the cynic he portrayed to the world, and she’d become inexorably attached to the kind, gentle person within.

  “Poughkeepsie. Kathleen went with her husband to the orthodontists’ convention in Atlantic City, so Ma’s been corralling the grandchildren all week.”

  “So you’re the king of the castle.” She smiled. “I don’t know what happened to our generation, none of us able to leave the nest. You, me, Lindsay—we’re all still living at home.”

  “It’s called the price of real estate in the New York metro area. You can’t save if you’re throwing a thousand bucks to rent every month.”

  “So we’re living in our parents’ pockets.” It had worked for her the past few years, going from work to law school at night, just checking in at home to sleep. Fortunately, her mother had eased up a bit, releasing her from household duties and allowing her nights away without torturing her to disclose her whereabouts. Of course, Tara always let her mother know when she wouldn’t be home, and she always manufactured some convenient lie, usually claiming to stay with Lindsay or Elle, just to alleviate her mother’s worries.

  “It’s a temporary thing.” Steve slid a hand over her thigh, cupping the inner muscle with affection. “But I’ve been saving, planning to buy a house in Brooklyn. Something small, maybe attached. Or even a condo. That old schoolhouse in the neighborhood is being converted to condominiums. Could be good.”

  “Really?” Tara blinked. This was the first she’d heard of this plan. “Do you have a down payment?”

  “Pretty much, though I hear the closing costs are a killer.” He sipped his drink, then put it aside and turned to her, a lock of dark hair crimped and falling over his eyes sexily. “You might want in on it. It’d be a great investment.”

  “Buy a house with you?” Her heart beat a little faster. This was like a proposal of fiscal marriage. “That’d be great, but what kind of money are we talking about? I mean, I’ve been saving, but look at me now, with the summer off. And it might take a while to find a job in my field, if I even pass the—”

  “I wouldn’t sweat the numbers; we could figure that out,” he said, catching her eye. “If you’re game.”

  “Well, sure, but . . .” She paused, somewhat overwhelmed. “Let’s talk about what it would really mean—the implied commitment.”

  Steve winced. “The C-word. Every guy’s buzz-kill.”

  “But it’s real. If we buy a place together, it implies some commitment, that we’re going to live there together.”

  “Well, duh. Of course.” He squeezed her thigh.

  “But long term, Steve? Are you really thinking about this?” He seemed so cavalier, she didn’t think he was getting the full picture. “That you’d be involved with an African American woman?”

  “Tara . . .” He squinted at her as if she were speaking an indecipherable language. “I am involved with you. That part’s a done deal. What do you not get about buying a house together?”

  “It’s a huge step.” She bit her lower lip, thrilled and a little concerned. A house—their own place where they could be together without having to make complicated arrangements or explanations. It was hardly a romantic proposal of love, but from Steve this was a raving declaration of commitment. And despite his fortitude, she worried that he didn’t know what he was getting himself into.

  70

  Lindsay

  All right already, just open the damned envelope. My neck was stiff from turning from the large banquet table to stare at the podium, but I didn’t want to move my gilded gold chair and turn my back on Susan Bamford, the author I’d come to support at the annual Mystery After Dark Guild Inc. Awards Banquet. Susan was up for a MADGI award for her second mystery novel, a book that was already edging up the extended Times best-seller list, and receiving an award like a MADGI could help the publicity department get Susan more national attention: review quotes, maybe even syndicated radio spots or—the publicity plum—a segment on a TV talk show like Today or Good Morning America or, heart be still, Oprah!

  “This is a very special award, not only our top honor, but it also often gives a mystery the ‘push’ in the market to make it a best-seller,” the emcee said with grave importance.

  Okay, okay, on with the show. I had been hoping to catch the last train out to the Hamptons. We’d made it through salads, entrees, cheesecake, and twenty-some awards, but, checking my watch, I wasn’t going to make it if this woman said one more word to inflate the importance of the mighty Mystery Guild.

  I straightened my neck and shrugged expectantly at Susan, who bit her lower lip, a bundle of nerves. She’d been a joy to work with, earnest and full of good humor, unlike the first author I had seen rise to the best-seller list with an increasing list of demands that ranged from audits of the publisher’s accounting department to first-class tickets when she went on tour. Pain in the ass. Diana Hargrove always delivered her manuscripts late, then spent weeks rewriting her page proofs, changing “lavender” to “lilac” and “simpering” to “sni
veling.” She drove everyone crazy, but now that she was a best-seller we needed to keep the sniveling lilac bitch happy.

  “And the winnner is . . .”

  I crossed my fingers, hoping to see success come to one not so wicked.

  “The MADGI goes to Susan Bamford!” The emcee’s voice rose three octaves. “For A Clue for All Seasons . . .”

  Susan popped out of her seat with a squeak, and I stood up to hug her.

  “Gift of the MADGI,” I joked before she went running toward the stage. This was an author who deserved the accolades, her mystery a tight, compelling story that had made me laugh aloud the first time I’d read it. I was happy for her, pleased that A Clue for All Seasons would probably rise up the best-seller lists now. Susan was supporting three teenaged kids and a dog and working per diem as a nurse in a depressed mining town of western Pennsylvania; she could use the dough.

  Best-seller status would also mean another bonus for me—a tradition at Island Books to reward the editors of best-sellers. (The staff joked that Allessandra Beckett was probably a secret millionaire; she could afford to move from tuna salad to sushi, if she so desired.) Applauding madly with the audience, I took mental inventory of the upcoming weekend. If I missed the last train to Southampton—and I probably would, since there’d undoubtedly be a MADGI afterparty—I could return to the office and go through some of the manuscripts stacked on my windowsill. The security guard would let me in, and working in the office late at night could be productive, without the ringing phone, cavorting colleagues, and meetings to distract me. Although I already had two manuscripts in my bag under the table, which I’d planned to take home and edit over the weekend . . .

  “I want to thank my editor, Lindsay McCorkle, who is a walking lifesaver,” Susan was saying. “The day she called to buy my first manuscript, that very morning I had posted flyers on all the local community bulletin boards to sell my car because I just couldn’t afford the insurance anymore . . .”