Nowhere Girl

by Susan Strecker

  I was sitting in the corner window with my laptop, trying to piece together a flashback scene, when I saw Gabby pull up on her 1968 Harley-Davidson—no helmet, her dyed-black hair pulled back with a Jolly Roger bandanna, and bright-orange earmuffs. She was probably the only head librarian in the United States who rode an eighty-two horsepower motorcycle. In the dead of winter.

  I watched her disappear into Cookies’ stairwell and reappear a moment later. She said hello to everyone, including Sassafrass, who was always inconsolably grumpy. Then she ordered and plopped down on the seat across from me with a cookie the size of a steering wheel and a hot chocolate with whipped cream.

  “Christ,” she said, picking up my chai and taking a sip. “I am so glad February was a short month.”

  “You’re going to die of hypothermia.” I took back my tea.

  Gabby snapped her gloves together and checked her short fingernails. “If I’m going to do the Hoka Hey, I have to ride all year round.” She licked whipped cream off the top of her drink.

  “I pitched it to National Geo Adventure,” I told her. “I thought it’d be a fun feature piece.” I had no time to write magazine articles, but for Gabby, I’d do anything.

  She quit licking the whipped cream. “No shit. What’d they say?”

  “They don’t want to run it because, Gab”—I leaned toward her—“people die. D-I-E.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s the American dream, Cades. Six hundred Harley-Davidsons riding across thirty-three Indian reservations, a couple dozen forests, eight deserts, and six national parks. And only one or two people bite the dust.” She twisted a new ring on her pinkie, a tiny silver cross. “Anyway, I’m riding it. And not for nothing, but Duncan thinks it’s the sexiest thing in the world. He can’t get enough of me. Speaking of which—”

  Victor was whistling to the music and feeding the fire, and everyone else in there was set off in twos, gossiping intimately, a Stanwich hobby that was one of the reasons I had no friends outside of our little circle. “Time to change partners.” Gabby sang the Crosby, Stills & Nash tune softly. “You must change partners.” She grinned at me. “I want an update.” Normally, we serenaded each other at grossly inappropriate times like when I sang “Another One Bites the Dust” at her great-uncle’s funeral.

  “He came over once,” I told her. “That doesn’t mean I am supposed to change partners.” I took a bite of my cupcake. It was pink with a little white princess face on it. Sassafrass was surprisingly cutesy given how grouchy she was.

  Gabby leaned back and crossed her arms. “You’d make a good couple.”

  I groaned. “He’s my research study, Gabs, a freaking prison guard.”

  “So what’s wrong with a guard? They make good money—not as much as psychiatrists, of course.” She grinned. Gabby had a beautiful space between her teeth that made her look tough and exotic all at once. “Or bestsellers. But you can make the money, and he can cuddle with you.”

  Besides babies, money was one of the reasons Greg and I were headed for splitsville. I definitely didn’t want to talk about money.

  “He’s got a serious girlfriend,” I said as if someone like Brady would ever be into me even if he didn’t. “And, uh, I’m married,” I added quickly. I’d actually thought it might be easier if my marriage suffered the quick death of an affair.

  “Chandler told me his girl is a loon.”

  I quit eating my princess. “How does he know?”

  “She comes in the store sometimes. He didn’t put it together that she was his girlfriend until you mentioned him at dinner. He says she talks about someone named Brady. It must be his girlfriend.”

  Her phone buzzed, and she madly texted someone. Gabby had a whole city of friends I didn’t know. Rather than making me feel left out, she was a safe lifeline to society if I ever needed one.

  “Totally and completely nuts,” she said while her thumbs went wild. “Every time he sees her, she’s goes on and on about her garden.” Her phone buzzed again, but she left it alone. “Chandler says he can’t get a word in. He just listens to her ramble about her flowers.”

  I took the last bite of my princess and immediately wanted another. “Why are you always trying to drag me away from Greg?”

  She put her phone down, and it buzzed again right away. “You only like him when I rag on him.” This was true. “He constantly puts down your career, but has no problem spending all your money. And he’s fucking his receptionist.”

  “Maybe,” I said, straining my eyes to see if there were more pink cupcakes in the glass case.

  “Anyway,” Gabby said. “You are a star, and you deserve to be with someone who loves you completely.” She wiped her mouth with her napkin. “And celebrates you.”

  “Some things you shouldn’t get too good at. Like smiling, crying, and celebrity,” I sang.

  “Bono would be proud.”

  “Selling a few books hardly makes me a star.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re the only author—sorry, novelist—I know who gets followed by paparazzi.” Another side effect of a murdered sister. Gabby nibbled on her cookie. “Isn’t it weird we haven’t seen him?” Her eyes were green and pretty and familiar, and all of a sudden, I felt a wave of gratitude that she was in my life. “Has he been here since graduation, wasting his beautiful self at the clink?”

  “I’m not sure. We mostly talked about his job,” I told her, as if that explained everything. “But I do know he’s renting a place near Kingswood now.”

  She gestured toward her cookie. “Can you eat some of this? Because I feel like I’m going to throw up if I eat any more.”

  “You took one bite,” I told her. “Pass it over.”

  “I love a woman who eats,” Victor said approvingly, coming by to wipe down the table next to us.

  “Feel free to eavesdrop,” Gabby told him.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Victor was so thin I could see all his veins through the skin. It used to scare me when I was a child. “Everyone else does,” he said.

  When he was gone, Gabby said, “So?” She took a sip of her hot chocolate, and some of the cream stayed on her top lip.

  “So what?” The cookie I’d taken from her smelled like sugar-coated chocolate—not as good as a princess, but it would do.

  “You said you’d do it before winter was over. And it’s almost March, in case you don’t remember. I’ll come with you. I’ll wait in the parking lot.”

  “How?”

  “Bring him lunch,” Gabby said. “That’s when doctors screw their receptionists. But go early in case he’s taking her to the Westin to fuck her in a real bed.”

  “Nice,” I said.

  The cookie didn’t seem nearly as interesting when I thought about Greg at a hotel with Annika Lee, his receptionist.

  Gabby drank her hot chocolate. “At least then you’ll know.”

  On the street below, the people of Stanwich were hurrying from church to their cars to brunch. Sarah Bryson, one of Emma’s best friends from Kingswood, was standing next to her car with her husband and two people I didn’t know, and she was so pregnant she could have been hiding the moon under her coat. Why could Sarah Bryson keep a baby in her belly and I couldn’t? I knew it was mean to think that way, but I’d wanted to be a mother for as long as I could remember.

  “I’m not sure I want to,” I said.

  “That’s what they all say.” She licked the cream off her lip. “But what we don’t know eats us up inside, so you might as well get it over with.”

  I broke the cookie in half and dipped it in my chai. “I love you,” I told her.

  She smiled her gap-toothed smile. “I love you too.”

  “So don’t die in the Hoka Hey in July.”

  “Oh no,” she said. “I’m gonna win that bitch.”

  CHAPTER

  6

  I sat in the parking lot in front of Greg’s office waiting for the last car to pull out. His Mercedes was near the side door next to a Nissan S
UV I was pretty sure was Annika’s. “He’ll be a good provider,” my mother had told me. My parents had been up for Thanksgiving, and I’d announced we were getting married. We were in my kitchen cubing sourdough bread for stuffing. She hadn’t stopped what she was doing to hug me. She hadn’t been emotional at all. And for some reason, I had felt something go dead inside, like you do sometimes the day after Christmas. It hadn’t ever occurred to me that Greg would have an affair. He was too straight, too square. Yet maybe he wasn’t. The truth was, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but the brie was melting, and the homemade Caesar dressing I’d attempted was probably going sour, so finally, I opened the door.

  His office was locked, like I knew it would be, but I’d snatched the spare key from the hook in the kitchen, and I slid it into the keyhole, turned the knob, and walked into the waiting room. Annika wasn’t at the front desk, and Greg’s door was closed. The space was completely devoid of artwork or décor. He said it was because he wanted to let his patients project their own ideas onto the walls. He didn’t want them to be affected by his style, his influences. But I thought he was cheap. He had a separate bank account for his practice. Expenses, rent, and payroll were all paid out of the account for Gregory Bernard, M.D., Ph.D., LLC. It was easy for him to buy $20,000 persian rugs for our house and bid on Monet paintings for the great room, because those were paid for with our joint account.

  While I was standing there thinking mean thoughts, Greg’s door opened, and a girl the size of a twirling baton emerged. She quickly shut it behind her and jumped as if I’d walked through a wall like Houdini.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Dr. Bernard’s office is closed for lunch.” She was Asian, and her hair was as black as a record album and perfect. “Do you need to make an appointment?” She slipped behind the receptionist’s desk, somehow both seductive and prim in a translucent silk blouse buttoned to the top with a champagne cami underneath. Greg had told me she was working on her master’s in public health at Rutgers, and that suddenly seemed far more accomplished than a commercial fiction writer.

  “I’m Cady, Dr. Bernard’s wife.” I wanted badly to set the picnic basket down. I’d crammed it with so much food the muscles in the back of my neck had started to ache, but I wasn’t sure where to put it.

  “Oh.” She sized me up. “Annika. Pleased to meet you.” She smiled a curt, closed-mouth smile.

  Now having seen her, I knew she was exactly the kind of girl Greg would go for. I didn’t stand a chance against her. I only had one thing going for me: I was Greg’s cash cow. Emphasis on cash. And cow. Well, cow compared to all ninety pounds of Annika.

  “I’ll get Greg—I mean, Dr. Bernard.”

  But before she could slink back to his office, I said, “I’ll just go in.”

  He was sitting at his desk with a sandwich and a coconut water and a stack of files in front of him. “Cady.” He wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin. “What are you doing here?” A chair had been pulled up to the other side of the desk, and a salad was sitting in front of it.

  “I brought lunch.” I held up the picnic basket. “I guess I’m a little late.” I could feel Annika in back of me, and I suddenly felt fat and horrible standing there with my stupid homemade dressing that was too garlicky and the underripe strawberries I’d dipped in stove-top chocolate.

  Greg stood up. “Have you met Annika?” He gestured toward the open door where she was standing, so poised and slender, like a perfect doll.

  “Yes,” I said brightly. It was important that Greg see I wasn’t jealous, that I wasn’t feeling at that moment like I might sit down on his industrial gray carpet and cry. “She showed me in.” I tried to smile. “It’s good to finally meet you.” I stuck out my chubby hand, and we shook. “Greg has such nice things to say about you.” I set the massive picnic basket on the floor and pulled Greg in for a stiff hug. Her fruity perfume was not on his skin.

  “There’s plenty.” I faced Annika. “Would you like to join us?”

  “No, no, no.” She picked up her salad. “You two go ahead. I have some work to do at my desk.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, feeling like a dog peeing on a tree in its yard.

  Greg sat on the edge of his desk and eyed me as I unpacked sparkling water and the twelve-dollar-a-pound pecans that he liked, crabmeat salad, and asparagus tips I’d picked up at Olives.

  “Why are you here, Cady?” It sounded like a reprimand.

  “I think she likes you,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “That childlike creature you hired to answer your phones.” I set the french bread and brie on the desk.

  “Really, Cady, don’t be … Is that why you’re here? To spy on me?”

  “Yup.” I pulled a few grapes off the vine. “She’s pretty.”

  “So are you.”

  It unnerved me when he complimented me like that, and I found myself sitting down in front of all the food, startled and a little bit exhausted. “Don’t you ever wish you’d married someone more like you?”

  “Geeky and a workaholic?” He took off his glasses and placed them lopsidedly on me. He looked younger, softer without them. “I did.”

  If he’d turned me away at the door or ate lunch in silence, I would have been less suspicious. Greg wasn’t sweet or playful. He was a scientist. He studied facts, neurons, and numbers. Emotion was of no use in his world. And yet I saw the way he’d looked at Annika as she’d picked up her salad and left his office. It was exactly the way he’d never looked at me.

  CHAPTER

  7

  I accidentally on purpose ran into Brady at the Market Fair Starbucks. He’d told me he stopped in for coffee almost every day on his way to work. I’d been there to write a few times when I needed dialogue and couldn’t stand that stupid house anymore, and now as I went to pick up a vanilla latte I probably wouldn’t drink, I wondered if I’d ever stood behind him or if we’d both been in the comfy chairs on opposite sides of the front door at the same time.

  Slipping the cardboard sleeve on my cup, I pretended I didn’t see him.

  “Hey,” he said, touching my shoulder. He was wearing his DOC jacket, and his hair was still wet.

  “Oh, Brady.” His hand felt hot through my sweater. “What are you doing here?” I tried to sound surprised to see him.

  “I come here for a double grande something or other on my way to work.” He grinned, glancing at the wall clock. “And I’m late, as usual.”

  The barista, a pretty girl with a pierced nose, handed him a drink, and when he took a sip, foam stuck to his lip. I had a sudden urge to wipe it away. He licked it off and then wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

  “How’s the book?” he asked.

  “Good.” I watched the line get longer. “It’s fine.” In truth, I’d been avoiding it, and Deanna was probably going to be on the next train to Jersey to rip off my head. I needed Brady again, but I didn’t know how to ask without feeling like I was hitting on him. “Thanks so much for helping me with it.”

  He held up his drink as if to toast. “Glad to.” He glanced at the clock again, and I realized I was holding him up. “Anything I can do.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks so much.”

  He put his hand up in a kind of salute, stepped backward once, his eyes somehow sad again, and turned to leave. But when he got to the door, his hand on the metal bar, a plain gold band on his right ring finger reflecting the sun, I caught up to him. “Actually,” I said quickly. “I have a few more questions.”

  “You free for lunch tomorrow?” It felt like he’d been waiting.

  I nodded, relieved.

  “There’s a great little deli near Marquand Park.” He touched my arm as if emphasizing a point. “Their honey mustard is amazing.”

  I hated mustard, but I knew the deli. It was famous for it. In the summer, I sometimes ate my lunch in the nearby park under the corkscrew branches of a threadleaf Japanese maple.

  �
��Sounds great. What time do you want to meet?”

  He lowered his voice as if suddenly aware that people might have noticed us. “I could pick up something there and come to your house so you don’t have to interrupt your workday.”

  The thought of having him in my home again made me ridiculously happy. “Are you sure?”

  “I love talking about my job.” That deep, calm voice, I could have listened to it all day. “Anything I can do to help.”

  “That would be fantastic,” I said. “Thank you.”

  * * *

  It was odd how much I thought about Brady when he wasn’t around. I knew I was being unfair to Greg, questioning his loyalty and spying on him and his office sprite while I’d been thinking about another man, but I couldn’t stop myself. All through my evenings with Greg, revising scenes and picking up Thai for dinner, I thought about Brady. I owed Deanna a chapter I hadn’t written yet, but I was going to have to clean. I shouldn’t have cared if Brady saw dishes in the sink and Greg’s moccasins on the kitchen floor, but I did.

  The next morning, I finished vacuuming, skipped mopping, and stuffed two days’ worth of coffee mugs and plates in the dishwasher. I’d been dodging Deanna, and I saw her number flashing on my cell, vibrating wildly on the counter. I didn’t pick it up. Time was ticking. I put the vacuum away.

  I had the music on high and didn’t hear Brady come up the driveway or let himself in the front door. He was ten minutes early again. “Sorry the music is up so loud!” I shouted at him when I saw him watching me dancing across the kitchen.

  He picked a pen off the counter and sang, keeping one arm awkwardly behind his back. “Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night.” It made me like him even more that he was so off-key.

  I laughed and clicked the volume on the remote. “You ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re all right,” I sang back to him. “What was Springsteen thinking? That’s not exactly going to win over a girl’s heart.” I stealthily looked around my house, hoping it was clean enough.