by Ari Rhoge
Elizabeth lifted her head. She grinned, and stood on her tiptoes, moving her torso out beyond the railing. “Why, does it make you nervous?”
“Yes. And that's not funny.”
She apologized, and stepped back onto the balls of her feet, half-smirking. “Wow, it's like you care about me or something.”
Will was looking at her perceptively, the corners of his mouth tugged down into a frown. There was something accusatory and hard about his expression, and, when he looked back outward to the city skyline, his jaw snapped shut with a click. He glanced down at his hands again, just for a moment, and said nothing.
Lizzy was unpleasantly reminded that they couldn't be light and affable — not really. Was this still just wounded pride? Because, surely, he didn't still feel…
“I'll let you get some sleep,” murmured Will, suddenly. He had pushed away from the balcony railing, and brushed his hands against his shirt. Lizzy turned to face him, remorse obvious on her face. She had her arms folded tightly across her body, and Darcy regarded her awhile before shrugging out of his jacket. “You look cold,” he explained, reaching across to drape it over her shoulders — it was a worn, brown canvas jacket, and was entirely too big for her.
“Thanks,” said Lizzy, glancing back up at him. She pulled her arms through the sleeves — it was still warm from his body — and zipped it three quarters of the way up. “Much better,” she murmured, smiling to brighten the mood.
“Glad to hear it,” said Will. “I'll see you in the morning. —— Don't be shy.”
“You got it,” Lizzy chirped.
Darcy lingered a second longer after he had said goodbye, and Lizzy wondered if he was going to say anything more. But then he simply smiled — a formality more than anything else — and excused himself. When he finally left the room, Elizabeth felt her shoulders drop, and a tremendous weight lift from her chest, unaware she had been carrying such an overbearing thing in the first place.
She turned, and looked into the room to find Lydia, buried under the flowered, plush comforter, sleeping, oblivious. “We leave first thing tomorrow morning, baby doll.”
Lizzy leaned out across the balcony, and breathed in deeply for what seemed like the first time that evening. She felt a pin-prickle of anxiety at the nape of her neck, just at the tip of her spine, and clenched her hands in response. Her eyes fell shut. God, I'm such a fraud.
19
—
Dodging Bullets
Elizabeth felt the tension crackle in her neck and shoulders, and sat up groggily in bed. It was too, too bright, and she was seized with the sudden urge to fling herself out of bed, grab hold of the heavy curtains, and yank them forward, plunging the hotel room into cool, comfortable darkness again. Her fingers twitched, and then the phone rang.
It was sandwiched between ear and shoulder, and her own voice rasped, sounded to her own ear quite far away. “What?”
“Good morning, Miss Bennet. This is the eight o'clock wake-up call you requested.”
“Did I?” asked Lizzy, wincing as she unstuck her glittery tank top from her abdomen. A sequin had embedded itself in her skin overnight, leaving behind an intricate pattern. “Where am I again?” she muttered, half-serious.
There was a short pause. “The Ritz–Carlton hotel, ma'am. Battery Park, Manhattan, New York.”
“Thanks —oh! Are you guys serving breakfast?”
“Yes, the restaurant downstairs is open now.”
Lizzy thanked the concierge, and put the phone down without looking, so that it just missed its cradle and toppled on the nightstand. Then she flopped back down onto her pillows, grateful for the entirety of the bed for once. Lydia, bless her soul, had hogged about three quarters of it for the entire night. She was reminded why she had always bunked with Jane all those years. Sleep, sleep… blissful sleep.
She jolted upright in bed with a gasp, her hair strewn all over her face. “Lydia!”
15 minutes were spent combing every surface area of the hotel room. She even resorted to checking behind the shower curtain in case her little sister had fallen asleep in the tub. Lydia's phone, an iPhone 3G with hot-pink cover, sat untouched on the bureau. As Lizzy stared at it, she started to feel her chest constrict with nerves. She felt queasy. Babysitting was fucking not on this agenda.
There was only one thing to do — find Will and his friends, and check if they had seen her. Lizzy slung her purse over her shoulder and marched out. And then she returned to put on her pants.
Will was only five rooms down the corridor, which he had helpfully pointed out the night before. It didn't occur to her that it was a little too early in the morning — she hammered on the door with her fists. It swung open.
The words tumbled out of Lizzy's mouth. “Have you seen my sister?”
Darcy blinked at her, blearily. “Pardon?” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes. His hair stuck up at one end, and he was wearing a gray T-shirt and boxers.
Lizzy paled when she realized she had woken him up. “Um, nothing. So sorry. Go back to sleep,” she rattled off, turning on her heel.
Will caught her hand with a short laugh. “Wait, what? Stay. What's wrong?”
“I woke up this morning and Lydia wasn't there. She didn't bother to take her cell phone either. —— Oh, God — I just hope it happened this morning and she didn't wander off shit-faced in the middle of the night.” Lizzy pulled a hand through her hair, antsy. “You know what — maybe she went off to find Gabe and the others. D'you think?”
“Could be.” Will stepped aside to let her through. “Come in. I'll call Georgie and see what she knows.”
• • •
Georgie had seen her. In fact, Lydia had stepped outside to walk with Gabe in the park, and the plan was that they would all meet for breakfast in about 15 minutes. Will was speaking into the phone, nodding. His voice was soft and gravelly, still thick with sleep. “All right. Yeah. Sure, I'll see you there. —— Thanks, Georgie.”
Sitting on the edge of his mattress, Lizzy exhaled through her nostrils, and rested her forehead against her knees. “I will kill her.”
Will, not awake enough to pick up on social cues, stood awkwardly in front of the bathroom door and said nothing.
Lizzy winced. “I'm sorry for waking you up. I just got so scared. I thought it was her early teenage years all over again. —— You know — no phone calls, late parties, strange city.” She was conscious of rambling, and snapped her jaw shut, reddening.
“She sounds like a handful,” Will summarized, helpfully.
“Yeah.”
“Um…” He frowned, gathering his thoughts. “I'm just gonna wash up and get changed. Do you wanna stick around? I assume you're going downstairs too. I'll be five minutes.”
“Yeah, that's fine. I'll wait,” said Lizzy, striving for nonchalance. “——Sorry for waking you up!” She called after him again.
“No, it's okay. I was already… up.” Darcy assured her, half-smiling. “Well, I was getting there.”
She didn't believe him.
The bathroom door creaked closed, and Lizzy sighed, embarrassment eating away at her. She looked straight ahead, and caught her reflection in the bureau mirror — messy hair, smudged eyeliner from last night. At least she had traded her heels in for her black ballet flats, which she sensibly had packed before leaving. Her arches still felt sore. She lifted her bare feet out of the shoes, and curled her toes.
Lizzy flopped backward onto the comforter, resting her head on folded hands and staring at the blades of the ceiling fan. She could hear the faucet running, and turned her head, noting that Will hadn't shut the door properly.
She could see his profile through the gap, saw him standing over the faucet with both hands resting against the marble counter as water filled the sink — watched the muscles of his arms flex and relax and tense up again. Darcy seemed pensive or sleepy or both, his brow furrowed, his jaw set. There was stubble on his chin. So, this is Will Darcy in the morning.
It suddenly occurred to her
that she could have seen him like this on that night a couple months ago, if there had been more wine involved, and less injured pride.
Lizzy felt her face get hot, and sat up.
Downstairs at the breakfast table, the coffee was strong and the bread rolls were hot. She would have spent more time chastising Lydia for giving her a panic attack if she hadn't been so mesmerized by a man in a white toque expertly flipping her omelet, and filling it with spinach and mozzarella cheese. “Can you live with me?” Lydia asked him, and he grinned, laughing.
• • •
An hour later, Lizzy was sad to go. Gabe had taught her the bass line to one of their songs, and her fingertips were sore and unpracticed from pressing strings (“this is where guitar-calluses come in handy!”) Shoshanna had invited her to her apartment in Brooklyn for a barbecue three weekends away. Nathan had given her his pick. It was an odd but warm initiation.
The only person she couldn't quite figure out was Georgie. Keen, perceptive little Georgie. She was perfectly nice, but there was a level of guardedness about her, a watchfulness — her brother had told her things, and Lizzy did and didn't want to know what had been said.
After breakfast, they set off to leave. They were parked outside the hotel's rotunda, Gabe helping Lydia load their bags into the trunk of the car. Lizzy turned the key in the ignition just as Darcy came round, leaning against her rolled-down window. She tugged his brown jacket free from the hook in the backseat, folded it, and handed it over.
Will raised a hand. “Nah, that's okay. Hang onto it for now. —— Leverage.” He smiled. “I still have something of yours that I need to return.”
Lizzy looked puzzled. “You do?”
“Yeah. You let me borrow an umbrella, months ago — the green one?”
“I did!” Elizabeth laughed. “I was wondering where that went. Okay, deal. We'll do an exchange at some point.”
“Deal,” Darcy said, grinning, and extending a hand through the window. She shook it.
Then Lizzy couldn't stop herself from blurting, “so, are we awkward friends now?” She felt the corners of her mouth stretch in a slow smile. “Bitter rivals who bonded over good music and delicious food?”
Will smirked, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. His blue eyes flickered to hers, and there was something there that was unreadable, something she didn't want to examine too closely. “I'll take it,” he murmured, shoving his hands in his pockets.
Lizzy chewed on her bottom lip, and looked out through the windshield. Lydia and Gabe stood on the curb now. Gabe leaned forward and plucked a feather out of Lydia's blond hair, and she blinked at him coquettishly.
“Lizzy!” Georgie had bumped her brother out of the way, and stood grinning at her through the open window. “Come visit us next weekend. It's my birthday on Sunday.”
“Is it, really? Okay.” Lizzy laughed. “Where?”
“Home. In Connecticut.” Georgie suddenly gasped, seizing Will by the elbow. “Nan has to cook for her! Oh, she'll die.” Darcy was smiling widely, boyishly — Georgie seemed to work this expression out of him a lot, and it was a side to him that Lizzy had never seen before.
“You should go.” He was nodding.
“Stop trying to feed me,” Lizzy mock-whined.
“Clear your weekend,” Georgie commanded, narrowing her eyes intimidatingly. “Bridgeport. The Pemberley Estate. Your sister can come, too. —— Here, give me your number.” She had already whipped out her iPhone, and was thumbing through her contacts. “I'll call you later this week.”
The passenger door slammed just as Lizzy and the youngest Darcy exchanged digits. Lydia strapped in her seatbelt, and propped her bare feet up over the dashboard. “Let's roll!” She clicked her tongue and pointed her fingers, as if wielding a gun.
“Will you come?” Will asked her, leaning down on his elbows.
Lizzy turned her head. In her mind, she already saw herself saying no — she saw the way her face would dip low apologetically, and how she would ramble off some half-believable excuse about lesson plans to create, or family dinners to attend — or perhaps an invented neighbor had asked her to help him move his sofa. But her lips moved of their own volition. “Yeah. I'll do my best.”
Will looked unbearably pleased. “Great!”
It wasn't until they had been driving for about an hour, wedged in bumper-to-bumper traffic, that Lydia decided to confront Lizzy. She thought she had been dozing for a few minutes, her blond head dipped low to the opposite shoulder, legs curled up to her chest. But then she twisted around, and Lydia saw the electric-blue earbuds in place, which Lizzy unhooked and wrapped around her iPod. “So,” the younger girl drawled. “You and Will, huh?”
“What?” Lizzy snorted, keeping her eyes trained on the road.
“Friend of a friend, my ass. Where do you know him from?”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head, bent on being good-humored. “Charlotte's wedding, if you must know.” Among other places.
Lydia laughed. “Man, it's so obvious that you slept with him —— or almost slept with him —— or could have slept with him. And, oh, my God, I didn't know your face could turn that shade of purple —— look how cute—!” Elizabeth had reached over to thwack her upside the head, but Lydia tore away, releasing peals of laughter. “Somebody's got a crush!”
“You're an idiot.”
“In all seriousness, thank you for whatever you said to Gabe,” Lydia said, waving her phone. “I got his number! How long should I wait to Facebook-friend him? Do you think he tweets?”
“Wouldn't it be nice to live in an era where people still sent each other letters?” asked Lizzy, sentimentally. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as they crawled to a stop. “They would see each other a few times a year, and sustain their love through words — poetic, enduring words — not, you know, sexting or Twitter.”
Lydia was staring at her with one eyebrow cocked, and her lips twisted into a derisive smirk. “I swear, sometimes I just want to swathe you in a cardigan and bunny slippers, and stick you next to a heater and a rerun of The Price is Right —— ouch!” She pouted, and rubbed her arm furiously. “Don't pinch me.”
“You annoy me,” said Lizzy, coolly. “Also, that was for this morning.”
• • •
The trails in Oakham Park were deceptive and winding, and much more suited to Jane's tastes than those of Lizzy. The younger sister practically flung her arms around the nearest tree, wincing at the kink in her side. “I thought you hated hiking!” she said, scowling, lifting her water bottle to her lips. Jane beamed from the hill up ahead, her strawberry-blond ponytail streaming like a banner behind her. She looked so lean and athletic and sun-kissed — she could have been a model for a trail-mix commercial, or Nike sneakers.
“This isn't hiking — this is walking.”
“Uphill. For three hours. In the wilderness,” Elizabeth reasoned. Her hair was starting to frizz in the heat, and she mopped her bangs back impatiently.
“I'm practicing, okay? Brian wants to go on a camping trip next weekend.” Jane stopped to wipe the sweat off her brow with the back of her hand. “I don't want him to think I'm some sheltered, indoorsy girl.”
“But you are a sheltered, indoorsy girl,” said Lizzy, dryly. She swatted at a mosquito on her ankle.
Her sister sighed gravely, and waved her hand, as if certain things were simply beyond the means of her comprehension — they probably were.
Brian Kilworth II — that was his name. “What a cute little serial-killer name for your monogrammed towels!” Elizabeth had sniggered when she heard it first, before Jane pursed her lips in disappointment. They had been dating for three and a half weeks, after meeting at the conference in Newark. He was an occupational therapist.
She didn't like him, but assured Jane that she did.
He was nice — very, very nice. But there was something about him that was chilly and pretentious — it slipped into his words sometimes. Also, he liked the Yankees. Al
so, he wore Top-Siders and smelled a little too strongly of Bulgari cologne. Also, he wasn't Charles Bingley.
Lizzy slid down the tree, and took a seat, brushing the dirt from her shorts. She could feel her thighs physically vibrating from the hike, and stretched out her hamstrings, gripping the toes of her sneakers. Jane met her shortly, leaning her weight on one hip. “I wonder how many miles we've gone so far,” she said, conversationally, her eyes flickering up.
Elizabeth let her head fall backward, and glanced up as well, at the cracks of dusky gray–blue sky peeping between leafy green treetops. “Well, we passed civilization like an hour ago, and there's no horse poop from the park rangers nearby. Good for our noses, bad for survival.”
Jane nudged her with her foot, but she was smirking. “Hey, you never told me about last weekend. —— How was the concert in New York?”
“Oh.” Lizzy took a sip of water again, holding it for a moment before she swallowed. “It was fun.”
“Mom told me Lydia got to meet some band,” Jane said, lightly, flicking a bug off her elbow. “Of course, the girl's pretty much grounded now. Our mother practically had a conniption. Did you know that she dropped out of school before you took her up there?”
“No,” said Lizzy, automatically.
Jane shook her head disapprovingly, and sighed. “Wildcard.”
Lizzy watched a frighteningly large ant burrow its way into the dirt, emerging on the other side. She was becoming shockingly apt at lying lately. Little lies, of course — nothing that concerned the location of concealed nuclear arms, or the paternity of a child. But what worried her the most was how little it actually worried her. Wasn't her conscience meant to be morally devastated by now?
Jane was sitting next to her now, and had pulled an orange from the depths of her knapsack. She peeled it in silence, and Lizzy checked for text messages on her phone. Jane bumped her knee against hers. “What are you doing this weekend? Maybe you can come with us. —— We'll have a little picnic, or something — swim in the creek.”
Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder, at the murky sheet of brown water several feet away, wedged between a dotting of green trees. She turned back, with a grin. “Sweetie, they found a body in there last summer.”