Red Blooded Murder

Red Blooded Murder Laura Caldwell For the first time in my adult life I was flying without a net.Fear was nibbling at my insides, creeping its way into my brain. I was buzzing with apprehension. But the job offer from Jane was a bolt of calm, clean sunshine breaking through the murky depths of my nerves. Chicago is the Windy City, and these days the winds of change are whipping Izzy McNeil’s life all over the map.A high-profile job on Trial TV lands her in the hot seat. After a shocking end to her engagement, she finds herself juggling not only her ex-fianc?, but a guy she never expected. And a moonlighting undercover gig has her digging deep into worlds she barely knew existed. But all of this takes a backseat when Izzy’s friend winds up brutally murdered.Suddenly, Izzy must balance the demands of a voracious media and the knowledge that she didn’t know her friend as well as she thought. When red-blooded lust leads to cold-blooded murder, corpus delicti takes on a whole new meaning Praise for the novels of Laura Caldwell Red Hot Lies “Chicago is brilliantly illuminated in Red Hot Lies, a book bursting with scandals and secrets.” —David Ellis, Edgar Award-winning author of Line of Vision and Eye of the Beholder “A legal lioness—Caldwell has written a gripping, edge-of-the-seat thriller that will not disappoint.” —Steve Martini, New York Times bestselling author of Shadow of Power and Compelling Evidence The Good Liar “The Good Liar strikes like an assassin’s bullet: sudden, swift, precise, deadly. Not to be missed.” —New York Times bestselling author James Rollins “Laura Caldwell’s The Good Liar is a massive achievement in one novel, launching a woman right up there with the top thriller writers around.” —International bestselling author Ken Bruen The Rome Affair “A fabulous, hypnotic psychological thriller … Laura Caldwell is a force we can’t ignore.” —New York Times bestselling author Stella Cameron “This is [Caldwell’s] most exciting book yet … a summer must-read.” —Chicago Sun-Times Look Closely “A haunting story of suspense and family secrets … you won’t want to put it down.” —New York Times bestselling author Mary Jane Clark The Night I Got Lucky “Caldwell is one of the most talented and inventive chick-lit writers around, and her latest features a likable heroine in an unusual situation and ends with a clever resolution.” —Booklist The Year of Living Famously “Snazzy, gripping … an exciting taste of life in the fast lane.” —Booklist A Clean Slate “A page-turner about a woman with a chance to reinvent herself, something most of us have imagined from time to time.” —Chicago Tribune Burning the Map “Exotic locales (Rome and Greece), strong portrayal of the bonds between girlfriends, cast of sexy foreign guys and, most of all, its touching story of a young woman at a crossroads in her life.” —Barnes & Noble.com, selected as one of “The Best of 2002” Also by Laura Caldwell RED HOT LIES THE GOOD LIAR THE ROME AFFAIR LOOK CLOSELY THE NIGHT I GOT LUCKY THE YEAR OF LIVING FAMOUSLY A CLEAN SLATE Dear Reader, The Izzy McNeil series is fiction. But it’s personal, too. Much of Izzy’s world is my world. She’s proud to be a lawyer (although she can’t always find her exact footing in the legal world), and she’s even more proud to be a Chicagoan. The Windy City has never been more alive for me than it was during the writing of these books—Red Hot Lies, Red Blooded Murder and Red, White & Dead. Nearly all the places I’ve written about are as true-blue Chicago as Lake Michigan on a crisp October day. Occasionally I’ve taken licence with a few locales, but I hope you’ll enjoy visiting them. If you’re not a Chicagoan, I hope you’ll visit the city, too, particularly if you haven’t recently. Chicago is humming right now—it’s a city whose surging vibrancy is at once surprising and yet, to those of us who’ve lived here a while, inevitable. The Izzy McNeil books can be read in any order, although Izzy does age throughout, just like the rest of us. Please e-mail me at [email protected] to let me know what you think about the books, especially what you think Izzy and her crew should be doing next. And thank you, thank you, for reading. Laura Caldwell Red Blooded Murder Laura Caldwell www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you, thank you, thank you to Margaret O’Neill Marbury, Amy Moore-Benson and Maureen Walters. Thanks also to everyone at MIRA Books, including Valerie Gray, Donna Hayes, Dianne Moggy, Loriana Sacilotto, Craig Swinwood, Pete McMahon, Stacy Widdrington, Andrew Wright, Pamela Laycock, Katherine Orr, Marleah Stout, Alex Osuszek, Margie Miller, Adam Wilson, Don Lucey, Gordy Goihl, Dave Carley, Ken Foy, Erica Mohr, Darren Lizotte, Andi Richman, Reka Rubin, Margie Mullin, Sam Smith, Kathy Lodge, Carolyn Flear, Maureen Stead, Emily Ohanjanians, Michelle Renaud, Linda McFall, Stephen Miles, Jennifer Watters, Amy Jones, Malle Vallik, Tracey Langmuir and Anne Fontanesi. Thanks to all the TV and broadcast people who offered their insights, especially Jeff Flock and everyone at Fox Business News, as well as Steve Cochran, Anna Devlantes, Amy Jacobson, Elizabeth Flock, Jim Lichtenstein, Pamela Jones and Bond Lee. Much gratitude to my experts—Detective Peter Koconis and Chicago Police Officer Jeremy Schultz; Janet Girtsen, Deputy Laboratory Director of the Forensic Science Center at Chicago; criminal defence lawyers Catharine O’Daniel and Sarah Toney; private investigators Paul Ciolino and Sam Andreano; and physicians Dr Richard Feely, Dr Roman Voytsek-hovskiy and Dr Doug Lyle. Thanks also to everyone who read the book or offered advice or suggestions, especially Dustin O’Regan, Jason Billups, Liza Jaine, Rob Kovell, Beth Kaveny, Pam Carroll, Katie Caldwell Kuhn, Margaret Caldwell, Christi Smith, William Caldwell and Les Klinger. The hands that grabbed her were greedy. They shoved her, pushed her, not caring when she cried out. And although she wanted more—more now, more later—she felt the need, even in this faraway moment, to say the truth. “We shouldn’t be doing this again. At least I shouldn’t. This is the last time, just so you know.” “Shut up,” came the reply. “I’m not kidding. I want you to know that this is it. It’s over after today.” “Shut up.” Those hands moved lower, clawing and probing as though they’d been waiting for this, lying in wait until she was vulnerable, when they could strip her bare and plunge her into oblivion. She threw her head back and clutched at the bed sheets, holding herself down until the moment when she would step into the void that she so craved. A breeze trickled in the window, enticing after the biting winds that had battered Chicago for months. Yet nothing could touch the heat that boiled inside, carried her in small but growing crests, reaching her in places she always forgot until moments like this. The hands stopped suddenly, startling her. “Why?” she said, desperate. A mouth crushed against hers, bit her. “I said shut up.” And she did. Later, when she was alone, she slipped into her clothes for the evening—white, ironically. Tonight, she would smile, and she would be engaging. After all these years, she knew how to do that—how to shine her eyes at someone, how to direct her energy so they felt seen and heard and touched. No one at this event would know what she’d just done. She would carry the last two hours in her head, like little packages whose pretty wrappings hid the shame and the pleasure. Those thoughts would please her when she mentally unwrapped them; they would send pangs of delight throughout her body. But they would remove her from everyone, too. Secrets were always like that. They put a film between you and the rest of the world, so that you could see everyone else, but no one could see the whole of you. Searching for her bag, she walked through her place and found it by the door. She remembered now that she’d dropped it there in the heat of that first moment, when she had let herself be devoured by her wants. She sighed and picked up the bag. She took it into her bedroom, where she transferred a few essential items into a smaller bag more appropriate for the evening. She brushed her hair. For a second, she studied herself in the mirror. She didn’t look any different than she had that afternoon. There wasn’t a blush to her cheeks or a shine to her eyes. She’d gotten so good at hiding the evidence. Her gaze dropped. It was hard to look at herself these days. She walked to the front door, trying to clear her mind of the last few hours, of everything. She stretched out her arm for the doorknob, but suddenly it turned on its own, surprising her, making her gasp. The door opened. “You scared the hell out of me,” she said, when she saw who was there. She stopped short, looking into those eyes—eyes that saw her, knew what she was really like. She opened her mouth to say something sexy, but when she looked again, she saw those eyes shift into an expression of cold anger. She turned away for a moment while she collected words in her head and shaped them so that they would be earnest, pacifying. But before she could form the sentences, she felt something strike her on the back of the head. She heard herself cry out—a cry so different from those she’d made earlier, a cry of shock and of pain. Instinctively, she began to raise her hands to her head, but then she felt another blow. Her mind splintered into shards of light, the pain searing into pink streaks. She felt her knees buckle, her body hit the floor. Something tightened around her neck, squeezing her larynx with more and more force, stealing the breath from her. The light in her brain exploded then, filling it with tiny spots. Strangely, it seemed as if each of those spots encased the different moments of her life. She could see all of them at once, feel all of them. It was a beautiful trick of the mind, a state of enlightenment the likes of which she hadn’t known possible. She felt more alive than she ever had before. 1 Three days earlier The bar, on the seventh floor of the Park Hyatt hotel, had its doors propped wide, as if boasting about the suddenly dazzling April weather. We stepped onto the bar’s patio—an urban garden illuminated by the surrounding city lights. “Spring is officially here,” I said. “And God, am I ready for it.” The thing about spring in Chicago is that it’s fast and fickle. A balmy, sixty-eight-degree Friday like tonight could easily turn into a brittle, thirty-five-degree Saturday. Which is why Chicagoans always clutch at those spring nights. Which is why a night like that can make you do crazy things. The ma?tre d’, a European type in a slim black suit, spotted the woman I was with, Jane Augustine, and came hustling over. “Ms. Augustine,” he said, “welcome.” He looked at me. “And Miss …” “Miss Izzy McNeil,” Jane said, beaming her perfect newscaster smile. “The best entertainment lawyer in the city.” The ma?tre d’ laughed, gave me a quick once-over. A little smile played at the corner of his mouth. “A lawyer. So you’re smart, too?” “If so, I’m a smart person who’s out of a job.” I’d been looking for six months. “Maybe not for long,” Jane said. “Meaning?” Jane shrugged coquettishly as the ma?tre d’ led us over the slate floor to a table at the edge of the patio. “Our best spot,” he said, “for the best.” He put two leather-bound menus on the table and left. We sat. “Do you always get this kind of treatment?” I asked. Jane swung her shiny black hair over her shoulder and looked at me with her famous mauve-blue eyes. “The treatment was all about Izzy McNeil. He’s hot for you.” I turned and glanced. The ma?tre d’ was watching us. Okay, I admit, he did seem to be watching me. “I think I’m giving off some sort of scent now that I’m single again.” Jane scoffed. “I can’t stop giving off that scent, and I’m married.” I studied Jane as the waiter took our drink orders. With her long, perfect body tucked into her perfect red suit, she looked every inch the tough journalist she was, but the more I got to know her, the more I listened to her, the more I was intrigued by the many facets of Jane. When I was lead counsel for Pickett Enterprises, the Midwest media conglomerate that owned the station where Jane worked, I’d negotiated her contract. And while she was definitely the wisecracking, tough-talking, shoot-straight journalist I’d heard about, I had also seen some surprising cracks in the veneer of her confidence. And on top of that was the sexiness. The more I knew her, the more I noticed she simply steeped in it. “Seriously,” Jane said. “I know you’re bummed that you and Sam had that little problem—” “Yeah, that little problem,” I interrupted her. “We’re seeing each other occasionally, but it’s just not the same.” Six months ago, my fianc?, Sam, disappeared with thirty million dollars’ worth of property owned by my client, Forester Pickett, the CEO of Pickett Enterprises, and it happened on precisely the same night Forester suddenly died. After nearly two agonizing weeks that seemed like two years—weeks in which my world had not only been turned upside down, but also shaken and twisted and battered and bruised; weeks during which I learned so many secrets about the people in my life I thought I’d been dropped into someone else’s life—the matter had been resolved and Sam was back in town. But I’d lost all my legal work in the process and essentially had been ushered out the back door of my law firm. As for Sam and me, the wedding was off, and we weren’t exactly back together. “Whatever,” Jane said. “You should enjoy being single. You’re dating other people, right?” “A little.” I rubbed the spot on my left hand where my engagement ring used to rest. It felt as if the skin were slightly dented, holding a spot in case I decided to put it on again. “There’s a guy named Grady, who I’m friends with, and we go out occasionally, but he wants to get serious, and I really don’t. So mostly, I’ve been licking my wounds.” “Enough of that! Let someone do the licking for you. With that red hair and that ass, you could get anyone you want.” I laughed. “A guy at the coffee shop asked me out the other day.” “How old was he?” “About forty.” “That’ll work. As long as he’s eighteen, he’s doable.” The waiter stepped up to our table with two glasses of wine. “Would you go out with her?” Jane asked him. “Uh …” he said, clearly embarrassed. “Jane, stop.” But the truth was I was thrilled with the randomly warm night, with the hint that the world was somehow turning faster than usual. “No, honestly.” Jane looked him up and down like a breeder sizing up a horse for stud. “Are you single?” The waiter was a Hispanic guy with big, black eyes. “Yeah.” “And would you go out with her?” Jane pointed at me. He grinned. “Oh, yeah.” “Perfect!” Jane patted him on the hip. “She’ll get your number before we leave.” I dropped my head in my hands as the waiter walked away, chuckling. “What?” she said. “Now you’ve got three dates when you want them—the waiter, the coffee shop dude and that Grady guy. We’re working on the ma?tre d’next. I want you to have a whole stable of men.” A few women walked by. One of them gasped. “Jane Augustine!” She rushed over. “I’m so sorry to bother you, but I have to tell you that I love you. We watch you every night.” “Thank you!” Jane extended her hand. “What’s your name?” The woman introduced her friends, and then the compliments poured from her mouth in an unending stream. “Wow, Jane, you’re attractive on TV but you’re even more gorgeous in person …. You’re beautiful …. You’re so smart …. You’re amazing.” “Oh, gosh, thank you,” Jane said to each compliment, giving an earnest bob of the head. “You’ve made my day.” She asked what the woman did for a living, then graciously accepted more compliments when the woman turned the conversation back to Jane. “How do you do that?” I asked when they left. “Do what?” “Act like you’re so flattered? I know you’ve heard that stuff before.” Jane studied me. “How old are you, Izzy?” “Thirty this summer.” I shook my head. “I can’t believe I’m going to be thirty.” “Well, I’m two years away from forty, and let me tell you something—when someone tells you you’re beautiful, you act like it’s the first time you’ve heard that.” She looked at me pointedly. “Because you never know when it’ll be the last.” I sipped my wine. It was French, kind of floral and lemony. “How’s your new agent?” “Fantastic. He got me a great contract with Trial TV.” “I’ve seen the billboards.” Trial TV was a new legal network based in Chicago that was tapping into the old Court TV audience. The billboards, with Jane’s smiling face, had been plastered up and down the Kennedy for months. “It’s amazing to be on the ground floor,” Jane said. “They’ve got a reality show on prosecutors that’s wild. It’s gotten great advance reviews. And we’re juicing up trial coverage and making it more exciting. You know, more background on the lawyers and judges, more aggressive commentary on their moves.” “And you’ll be anchoring the flagship broadcast each morning.” I raised my glass. “It’s perfect for you.” Jane had always had a penchant for the legal stories. When she was a reporter, she was known for courting judges and attorneys, so that she was the one they came to whenever there was news. She got her spot as an anchor after she broke a big story about a U.S. Senator from Illinois who was funneling millions of dollars of work to one particular law firm in Chicago. It was Jane who figured out that the head partner at the firm was the senator’s mistress. Jane clinked my glass. “Thanks, Iz.” She looked heavenward for a second, her eyes big and excited. “It’s like a dream come true, because if I was going to keep climbing the nightly news ladder, I’d have to try and go to New York and land the national news. But Zac and I want to stay here. I love this city so much.” Jane looked around, as if taking in the whole town with her gaze. This particular part of Chicago—the Gold Coast and the Mag Mile—had grown like a weed lately as a plethora of luxury hotel-condo buildings sprang into the skyline. “Plus, aside from getting up early, it’s going to be great hours,” Jane continued. “I don’t have to work nights anymore, and trials stop for the weekends. They even stop for holidays.” “Is C.J. going with you?” Jane’s current producer was a talented, no-nonsense woman who had worked closely with Jane for years. She shook her head. “She’s staying at Chicagoland TV. That station has been so good to me I didn’t want to steal all their top people. Plus, I wanted to step out on my own, start writing more of my own stuff.” She gave a chagrined shake of her head. “You know how I got all this?” “Your new agent?” “Nope. He only negotiated the contract. It was Forester.” Just like that, my heart sagged. I missed him. Forester had not only been a client, he’d been a mentor, the person who’d given me my start in entertainment law, the person who’d trusted me to represent his beloved company. Eventually, Forester became like a father to me, and his death was still on my mind. “I miss him, too,” Jane said, seeing the look on my face. “Remember how generous he was? He actually introduced me to Ari Adler.” “Wow, and so Ari brought you in.” Ari Adler was a media mogul, like Forester, but instead of owning TV and radio stations, newspapers and publishing companies all over the Midwest, as Forester did, Ari Adler was global. His company was the one behind Trial TV. “Forester knew I loved the law,” she said, “so he brought me to dinner with the two of them when Ari was in town.” “Even though he knew it meant he might lose you.” “Exactly.” Jane put her glass down and leaned forward on her elbows. “And now I’m bringing you to dinner because I want you.” I blinked. “Excuse me?” “The launch is Monday. We’ve been in rehearsals for the last few weeks.” She paused, leaned forward some more. “And I want you to start on Monday, too.” “What do you mean?” “I want you to be a legal analyst.” “Like a reporter?” “Yeah.” “Are you kidding? I’ve never worked in the news business. Just on the periphery.” And yet as logical as my words sounded, I got a spark of excitement for something new, something totally different. “We had someone quit today,” Jane said. “A female reporter who used to be a lawyer.” “And?” “Well, let me backtrack. Trial TV has tried to put together a staff that has legal backgrounds in some way, including many of the reporters and producers. We have reporters in each major city to keep their eye on the local trial scenes. You know, interview the lawyers and witnesses, prepare short stories to run on the broadcasts. But one of our Chicago reporters hit the road today.” “Why?” Jane waved her perfectly manicured hand. “Oh, she’s a prima donna who wants everything PC. She couldn’t handle our dinosaur deputy news director.” Her eyes zeroed in on mine. “But you could. After working with Forester and his crew, you know how to hang with the old-boys network.” “Are you talking an on-air position?” “Not right away. We’ll give you a contributor’s contract, and you’ll do a little of everything. You’ll assist in writing the stories and help with questions when we have guests. But eventually, yeah, I see you on-air.” “Jane, I don’t have any media experience.” “You used to give statements on behalf of Pickett Enterprises, and you were good. Either way, the trend in the news is real people with real experience in the areas they’re reporting on. Think Nancy Grace—she was a prosecutor before she started at CNN. Or Greta Van Susteren. She practiced law, too.” The spark of excitement I’d felt earlier now flamed into something bigger, brighter. If you’d asked me six months ago what the spring held for me, I would have told you I’d be finishing my thank-you notes after my holiday wedding, and I’d be settling into contented downtime with my husband, Sam. But now Sam wasn’t my husband, and things with him—things with my future—were decidedly unclear. “What would it pay?” She told me. “A month?” I blurted. She laughed. “No, sweetheart, that’s a year. TV pays crap. You should know that. You’ve negotiated the contracts.” “But I’m a lawyer,” I said. “You’d be an analyst and a reporter now.” Just out of principle, I considered saying no. I was a lawyer; I was worth more than that. But the fact was, unless I could find entertainment law work, I was worth almost nothing. I knew nothing else, understood no other legal specialties. I’d been job hunting for months, and trying to make the best of the downtime—visiting the Art Institute, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Science and Industry and just about every other museum or landmark Chicago had to offer. But, depressingly, there was no entertainment work up for grabs in the city. Though most Chicago actors and artists started with local lawyers, when they hit it big, they often took their legal work to the coasts. The lawyers who’d had it for years wisely hoarded the business that remained. And, months ago, after the dust had settled after the scandal with Sam, Forester’s company had decided to use attorneys from another firm, saying they needed a fresh start and a chance to work with someone new. I couldn’t blame them, but it had left me in the cold. My bank statement had an ever-decreasing balance, teetering toward nothing. I hadn’t minded the lack of funds so badly when I couldn’t buy new spring clothes, but soon I wouldn’t be able to pay my mortgage, and that would be something else altogether. For the first time in my adult life I was flying without a net. Fear nibbled at my insides, crept its way into my brain. I was buzzing with apprehension. But the job offer from Jane was a ray of calm, clean sunshine breaking through the murky depths of my nerves. I knew, as the negotiator I used to be, that I should ask Jane a lot of other questions—What would the hours be? What was the insurance like? But in addition to needing the money, I needed—desperately needed—something new in my life. So I leaned forward, meeting Jane’s gaze and those mauve-blue eyes, and said, “I’ll do it.” 2 When we left the Park Hyatt, Jane told the waiter where to meet us, and three hours later, when he walked in the club, Jane and I were surrounded by five other guys. I was talking to one in particular, a tattooed twenty-one-year-old with shiny, light brown hair that fell halfway to his shoulders. He knew Jane—they’d met at a party a year ago—and he strolled up to us within moments of arriving. But it was me he was talking to, and although he was way too young for me, he was so pretty in such a big, strong kind of way, I couldn’t tell him to beat it. “Theo Jameson,” he said, when we first met. He reached for my hand, shook it, squeezed it, then held it … and held it. He smiled at me as if he had been waiting to see me for a long, long time. “Great hair.” His chin—strong and tanned—jutted toward the top of my head. But his eyes didn’t move from mine. “Thanks.” I pulled my hand away, patted my head idiotically. My hair had a life of its own. When the gods smiled, which was infrequent, it corkscrewed into perfect spirals. Most of the time, like now, it twisted prettily in some places and frizzed about in others, and the result was a long tangle of orange-red curls. The club was on Damen—lounge-ish and made to look like a French salon. Apparently Jane went there frequently and knew the manager, and even though we’d had too many celebratory glasses of wine earlier, she’d convinced me to stop in with her and “say hello.” She needed to cut loose, she said. She’d been working for a month straight, and she’d be in rehearsals all weekend. In days of yore, I would have declined, and then I would have skidded over to Sam’s place and crawled in bed with him. I would have woken him up with a few select kisses up his thighs—I loved those thighs, dusted with gold-blond hair. Back when I was with Sam, I would never have known such lounge-ish salons existed. But now was a different time, and there was something about Jane that made it very, very hard to say no. Theo and I started talking. When he told me his favorite meal was champagne and mussels, I was mildly interested. When he told me he ran a company that made Web design software, and that his clients included a bunch of Fortune 500 companies, I was intrigued, but not sure I bought it. Two of his friends were standing nearby at the time. From the very few words they spoke, they seemed younger than Theo. One wore a T-shirt that read Objects Are SMALLER Than They Appear. I stared at that shirt. Being a decade older than him, was I somehow missing the joke? Or was the slogan what I thought it was—an odd, thinly veiled reference to the kid’s small penis? “Come sit,” Jane said, herding Theo and me to a large, round powder-blue booth. Two guys were already sitting there. Jane gestured at them. “Writers,” she said. “They write books.” She mentioned their names, but with the jazzy, club music pumping loud, I couldn’t make them out. We all shook hands. One of the writers was an attractive guy with thick, prematurely gray hair that contrasted with his youthful, tanned face. “How are you?” he asked me, after all the hand shaking. He had the kind of eyes that looked right into yours, not necessarily in a romantic way, just a way that was truly interested, that was keen to other people. “I’m great. Jane just offered me a job at Trial TV.” “Really?” His eyebrows rose. “Congrats.” “Yeah, congrats,” the other writer said. He had blond hair and a shy smile. Theo slid into the booth and began talking to the writers, but Jane held me back. “Theo is the real deal,” she said. “Started this software company while he was in high school. Went to Stanford on a full-ride scholarship but he dropped out after a year. Making millions upon millions now.” I looked over my shoulder at him. “He’s so young.” “Who cares?” I changed the topic. “How do you know the writers?” Jane shrugged. “I’ve met the one with the tan once before. Something about him intrigues me.” She playfully shoved me into the booth. “Someone needs to buy me a drink,” she said loudly to the group. Ten minutes after we sat down, Theo’s buddies joined us, and ten minutes after that, the waiter walked in, looking unsure in his black jeans, his hair newly wet and combed back. He saw Jane and me packed into that leather banquette with five men and shook his head as if to say, Nooooooo. “Jane!” I called toward the end of the banquette, gesturing at the waiter as he began to walk away, but she was engrossed in a conversation with the two writers. I tried to move around Theo, but he glanced from me to the waiter and then put his arms on the table, blocking me. “If you think I’m letting you get up to talk to some other guy, you’re wrong.” He leaned closer, his sleek hair brushing my cheek. “Sorry. I don’t want to be pushy, but I’m into you.” His last few words hushed themselves into my ear. And just like that, I forgot about the waiter. Vodka bottles came and left the table, wine bottles disappeared even faster. I went to check my watch at one point. I thought I caught a glimpse of well past midnight, but Theo covered the watch with his hand. “It’s Friday, remember? There’s all sorts of time on Friday night.” “You’re right. I have lots of time,” I said, quite tipsy by then and thinking I might be philosophical. “And I used to have no time. I mean, I used to be inundated. Work and billable hours and an assistant and clients and a wedding and—” I thought of Sam “—and people. But now, I have all sorts of time. My time is empty, my time is …” I died away, trying to come up with something profound and falling short. I closed my mouth. If there was one thing I’d learned as a lawyer it was when to shut up. But then I remembered my time wasn’t empty anymore. Monday morning, I’d start as an analyst for Jane. Even sooner, tomorrow afternoon, I’d meet with John Mayburn to consider working another case with him. Mayburn was a private investigator who had helped me out when Sam disappeared. In return for the huge fee I couldn’t pay, I’d worked for him on a case where he needed a North Side Chicago female type to blend in and conduct surveillance. He’d practically gotten me killed, and I vowed never to take another job with him, but I needed the cash in a fierce way. With luck, he could get me something that could minimally bridge the cavernous salary gap between my profitable days of yesteryear and my intriguing, but nonetheless impoverished, future in TV. I tried to catch Jane’s eye to thank her for that opportunity. Despite the miserable salary she’d told me I’d be making, I was thrilled in a way I hadn’t been in a long time. There was nothing like a wedge of opportunity to make the whole sky open up. But Jane was leaning in close to the writer. His gray hair looked whiter than it really was because of the smooth tan of his skin. His brown eyes were decorated with lashes longer than normally seen on a man. He had one of those overly handsome indents in the center of his chin, but that, combined with the gray hair, somehow gave him the look of an intellectual. The other guy had disappeared. Neither Jane nor the writer seemed to care. They were completely intent on their conversation. And clearly flirting. Right then, Jane unbuttoned her suit coat and slipped it off. It seemed that all the men in the bar paused to look at her at that moment. The black blouse she wore underneath was held by only a thin velvet band around her neck. The fabric was gauzy and fell in soft folds around her breasts. Jane seemed too entranced by her conversation with the writer to notice the attention, but then she glanced up and swept the room with her eyes, drinking in all those gazes. She looked at me, and she winked. I laughed, tossing my head back. It was as if I could feel the laughter burbling up inside me, and by releasing it I was letting go of all the tension of the last six months—all the deep, troubled talks with Sam about why he hadn’t trusted me to tell me what he’d done, why he’d taken off from the city, leaving me blinking like a newborn, unattached and unsure. When I looked back at Jane, she and the writer were talking low, staring at each other’s mouths. As I watched them, Theo bent toward me and kissed my neck. Just like that. Instead of pulling back and saying, Hey, excuse me, what are you doing? I tilted my head to let him do it again. His tongue flicked gently against my skin. I let my head fall back farther. It didn’t occur to me to care that a strange man (a child, really) was kissing me in public. Nothing mattered but that moment. I turned my head to him and met his mouth with mine. I expected rough; I expected insistent; I expected demanding. But Theo was nothing like that. He kissed patiently, like someone with lots of time to get where he wants, and very sure he’s going to get there. My cell phone vibrated in my purse, but I ignored it. I shifted my body in the booth, touched Theo’s silky hair. It fell on my cheeks as he leaned over me. A minute later, the phone vibrated again. Our bodies were so close by that time, the sensation traveled from me to him. “Want to get that?” he said into my mouth. “No.” His tongue flicked against my lips and he put his arms around me, scooping me, as if I were a small and tiny creature, even closer into him. Once again, that phone. “Hold on,” I mumbled. I extricated myself and opened my bag. Sam, cell, the display read. I clicked Ignore, then looked at the caller ID list. He’d called three times. Despite the fact that Sam and I were just dating now and it was legal for me to be kissing a total stranger, a little guilt sparked inside me. Then paranoia hit. Was Sam here? Had he seen me somehow? Was that why he was calling? I swiveled my head around. “What’s up?” Theo asked. The place was packed now—lots of guys with gelled hair, lots of women in dresses and stiltlike sandals. No Sam. “Nothing,” I said. “You sure?” “I’m sure.” I stuck the phone in my purse, annoyed that everything in my world had been focused on Sam lately. I wanted tonight to be about fun, about celebrating a new job (and maybe another one tomorrow when I met with Mayburn). I looked at Theo’s mouth—deeply curved at the top, sloped low at the bottom, wide and yet masculine. I licked my lips, glanced up into his eyes. They were on my mouth. I leaned forward and bit his bottom lip. He pulled me back into him, and soon we were making out once more. The phone buzzed again. And again. And again. I groaned, pulled away and yanked the phone from my purse. Sam, cell. I felt a pang of panic. What if it was an emergency? “Hello?” “Hey, Red Hot.” Sam said, his nickname for me. The sound of it softened me, made everything disappear—the bar, Theo, the bottles, the people. They all vanished as if pulled into a hole, deep and black. “Hey,” I said. “Where are you?” It all filled back in then—the booth, the crowd. Suddenly the music’s bass seemed to pump louder, harder. “Some place on Damen.” “Who are you with?” “Jane. You know, Jane Augustine?” I looked over to the end of the booth, but Jane was gone. Probably in the bathroom. From behind, I felt my hair being lifted up, then replaced with a mouth, wet and questioning on my nape. I almost moaned. “Come over,” Sam said. “I can’t.” “Why?” “It’s late.” “Exactly, so come over.” A pause. “I miss you.” Theo was suckling the skin on the back of my neck now. I thought to warn him that I was a redhead, and redheads acquired hickeys very, very easily, but I couldn’t exactly say anything while I was on the phone with Sam, and the fact was I didn’t want Theo to stop. Not even a little bit. For a moment, I was suspended there, hearing Sam say sweet things—how he missed me, how he loved me. And at the same time, I was feeling those persistent lips on my neck, sucking something of me into the room, some part of me that had been veiled until now—a part that enjoyed a dark lounge in the wee hours of a Saturday morning, a part whose whole body responded to the boy with long hair and tattoos, a part that reveled in the off-kilter and the fresh and the surreal. “Iz?” Sam said. He’d stopped talking, I realized, and I hadn’t said anything. “Yeah, sorry, I’m here.” “Come over.” I was torn in two then. One part leaned toward my old life, toward Sam, the other pushed back into Theo, thrilled with the new. The truth was, the new was a stronger pull, if only because I’d been living in the past for so long and I was tiring of it. Sam and I spent hours and hours trying to piece together what had happened between us. Once a week, we talked to a therapist about our “communication patterns.” Now I wanted, just for a moment, levity and life, fun and frolic. “Sam, I told you earlier that we couldn’t get together. I told you I had plans.” Theo’s arms slid around my waist. He whispered in my free ear, “Get off the phone.” “Sam, I’ll call you tomorrow.” “Don’t bother.” “Excuse me?” “I’m sorry, but I’m sick of this, Iz.” “So am I!” Exasperation crept in, messing with my levity. “I know I caused you a lot of pain. But it’s in the past, and at this point, it’s your hang-up.” “What are you talking about?” “I’ve been talking, and I’ve been explaining, and I’ve been telling you how much I adore you, but you just won’t let it go.” “Are you kidding? It’s kind of a big thing to just let go—” “Have fun, Izzy.” And he hung up. I stared at the phone in dismay. Sam had never hung up on me. At first, I was scared—scared I’d lose him, scared I’d already lost him, scared that if I didn’t patch things up, and right now, he’d be gone forever. Then anger swept in. How dare he blame this on me? And then at last, calm entered my mind. It said, Leave it alone. Just for now. You want frolic? Then frolic. Theo was kissing my ear. I stared at my phone. One finger itched to call Sam back, but that voice spoke again. Leave it alone. For now. In that instant, I wanted so badly to forget everything, to forget even myself. I put the phone back in my purse, turned around and placed my arms around Theo. 3 Jane Augustine opened her eyes and let her gaze sweep over the strange bedroom. A small skylight, drawing in the morning sun, illuminated the otherwise dark room. She could make out an antique shelf packed with books in a meticulous way—the taller books at the beginning of each shelf. Next to it was a dresser, which also looked antique. Above that hung an oil painting, which showed a single green apple on a table. The brush stroke was heavy, the painting textured contemporarily. The place looked as if it had some cash behind it. And then there was the address—Goethe Street, right off State. Impressive, Jane thought. Writers usually made so little money. Not that she cared. It wasn’t as if she was looking for a husband; it was simply that she’d woken up in more than one strange bedroom, and they weren’t all this nice. She turned her head, trying not to shift the bed, and glanced at the writer in question. Last night, he had seemed worldly, but now, as she listened to his light snore, he looked like a little boy despite his gray hair. But he was a little boy who knew how to fuck. She could tell that even before she went home with him. She could tell that with any man. She had gotten exactly what she wanted from the writer—Mick was his name. She’d needed her fix last night, and he had been her black tar heroin. That was how she thought of what she did—like an addiction—but in all honesty, it was inaccurate to say that she was addicted to sex. She’d once visited a sex addict Web site, and what she found there wasn’t her. She didn’t search the net for porn. She hadn’t been arrested for voyeurism, exhibitionism, prostitution, sex with minors or indecent phone calls. What she was addicted to, though, was the rush of someone new, the smell of a body so unlike her husband’s, the feeling of instant intimacy with a stranger. She was addicted to the way an evening with someone like the writer would walk her right into a world so dissimilar from hers. She had always been able to see, even as a child, that there were so many different lives to be had. Sex with someone other than her husband gave her a key to those other lives, let her crawl right into them and look around with awed eyes. She and Zac loved each other with a ferocious loyalty and an ever-present tenderness, but she and Zac were different when it came to sex. She liked it more than he did, required it more than he did. And so her dalliances—she liked calling them that, thought there was something Virginia Woolf-ish about that word—had been a constant in their life. She knew it sounded like a cop-out, but she was happier with Zac because of what she had outside of him. She was better to him, more devoted to their life together. He always understood that. But like any addiction, the morning after was never pretty. As she stared around the new bedroom, guilt crept in like smoke. It inhabited the room. It filled her lungs until she found it hard to breathe. Always this guilt, this judgment of herself. She was a bad person, she knew. Anyone who cheated on their spouse was bad, wasn’t that right? But she didn’t believe in her bones that she was a terrible person. She stood from the bed and stretched her long limbs. The writer groaned, rolled over. With that groan, flashes of last night flooded in. She could still feel his mouth, his teeth on her breasts. She looked at her body, searching for bruises, any marks that would give her away when Zac got home. But even without a telltale sign, Zac would know. He always did. There was something wonderful about that knowing. Zac saw everything about her—all her flaws—and he still loved her. It was amazing to have a love like that. And so these dalliances, in their own way, brought her that deep part of their relationship, too. She went into the bathroom and closed the door, then flipped on the light and sat on the toilet. The bathroom was rather large, with a small, round table across from the toilet. On top was an oval, silver dish. She lifted it and poked her finger at the contents—matches from Cog Hill, a local country club, a small pair of silver scissors, a few Euro coins depicting Mozart. She finished using the toilet and opened the cabinet under the sink. Typical male collection of crap—shaving cream, gel, a box of condoms. When she came out of the bathroom, he was still asleep. She cleared her throat to see if he would roll over again. Nothing. She padded softly on the Oriental rug and left the bedroom, closing the door behind her. The hallway was dark. She stood still a moment, letting her eyes fine-tune to the dimness. When she stayed with someone, this was her favorite part, this nosing around, because she got to walk around in a life that wasn’t her own. The first room on the right was bigger than Mick’s bedroom. It was, she realized, the master, but he used it as his office. A large teak desk dominated the room, nearly covering the window that was set into the wall behind it. The blinds were half-closed, and through them, a gray, early-morning light striped the room. She went to the desk, looked at the four stacks of paper there. Two were made of typed sheets of paper; another was made up of tiny, handwritten notes. The last was a stack of cut-out magazine pages. She flinched. On top of that pile was a photo of a woman in a black suit with tan piping and gold buttons. Her suit. It was a picture of her. She blinked a few times, confusion clouding her brain. She leaned close, her hands behind her back. The photo had run with an article which had appeared just last week in Chicago Magazine, discussing the soon-to-be launch of Trial TV and her position as anchor. In the photo, she also wore her signature red scarf. It had become a thing, that scarf, something that signaled to loyal viewers that there was a big story or that it was a momentous news day. On the picture, a black arrow had been drawn toward the scarf with a marker. A note in the margin read, How did scarf get started? Intentional PR schlock or the real deal? She recoiled. What was going on here? Her eyes shot to the other stacks. She tried to read the notes, but they were mostly illegible. One of the other piles had typewritten pages about a CNN news reporter who’d recently been caught sleeping with a Southern governor whom the newscaster had been covering for years. The final stack … She leaned closer. She froze. Jane Augustine, was typed on the top of the sheet. Below that was a list: Gym—East Bank Grocery store—Whole Foods on Huron or Fox & Obel. Hair salon—Roberto Puig on Rush Sports—Bulls occasionally, but only courtside. Bears but only club level. Her breath caught in her lungs. She literally felt unable to breathe. What the hell was all this? Was he covering her for a story? If so, why wouldn’t her publicist or the station know about it? They told her of every tiny story they landed about her. And if he was covering her, why the notes about what gym she went to, where she got her hair cut? She looked closer at the list, scanning it. She cringed when she saw one of the last items there. Gynecologist—Dr. C. Wiseman on Wabash She raised the paper and read the item under it. Guys, it said. Two names were listed below—Nathan Vatalli, Ben Houston. Both men she’d slept with. Right then, she got a whoosh of air into her lungs. She turned and stormed from the room into his bedroom. She pushed open the door. It banged against the wall. He started, raising himself up on his elbows. “Mornin’, gorgeous,” he said when he saw her standing there, naked. She walked to the bed. She put her hand on his chest and shoved him. He smiled. “Yeah. Get back in here.” He threw off the covers. She glared. She pulled the blanket back over his body. “Just so you can get your information straight, that scarf was given to me by Barbara Brewer, the famous journalist and my first mentor. It was not some ‘PR schlock—’” She made air quotes with her hands “—and if you don’t stop following me, I’ll have you arrested.” She turned and began searching for her clothes, suddenly teary and fluttery instead of angry. The threat was a lame one. If she called the cops and accused this guy of stalking her, he might tell them about her affairs, her dalliances, which he clearly had learned about. And she knew the Chicago cops well enough to know that such information would hit the streets—accidentally of course, but fast. She couldn’t risk that kind of bad press, certainly not with Trial TV about to launch. She retrieved an earring from the floor. Her hands trembled as she tried to get the post through her lobe. She found her skirt, then her jacket, and put them on, trying to steady the shake that was not only in her hands but quivering through her organs, crawling on her skin. She glanced back, expecting to see him with a guilty expression, maybe a scared one now that she’d busted him, but he was just stroking that cleft in his chin that she’d found so sexy last night. And it was he who was studying her. “What exactly is that?” She gestured toward the hall. “What are you talking about?” “Those notes on your desk. The article. The lists.” “So you’re a snooper, huh? Wouldn’t have pegged you for a snooper.” She finished dressing and put a hand on her hip, willing herself not to show her nerves. She wanted to say something smart in return, she wanted to ask him so many questions, but his cold, assessing stare frightened her, draining away the shock and the anger, leaving only a hyperawareness that screamed that she was alone with this man. Anything could happen. Why had she thought for so long that she was immune to danger? That she could screw around with strangers without consequence? She had to get out of there. She grabbed her purse from a brown velvet chair in the corner and tucked it under her arm. She wished he would say something normal, something that would explain all this—maybe even something that would make her laugh, because she wanted very much to cry. But all he said was, “You were even better than I thought.” 4 When I woke up, I reached for Sam, feeling for that blond fuzz on his thighs. Instead, the legs I touched were smooth, longer than Sam’s, so muscled they felt like bone. I opened my eyes, and there was that child. His brown hair spun out from his head like a Chinese fan. His face was white, his lips a pillowy pink. He was sleeping soundly. He looked like one of those people who could sleep anywhere—a plane, a crowded bus, the bed of a strange woman he’d only met the night before. My first one-night stand. I’d never thought I’d have one. I was supposed to be a married woman by now. A twisted sheet had fallen to the floor. I picked it up and wrapped it around me. Then I sat against the headboard and drew my knees up, staring at him. The tattoos on his arms—a gold-and-black serpent on one, twisting ribbons of red on the other—fascinated me. The people I knew with tattoos had tiny ones. My best friend, Maggie, had a shamrock on her ankle, for example. But Theo’s covered his entire forearms, his round biceps. High on his left pectoral was an Asian-looking symbol. A buzzing sound split the silence. Startled, I dashed out of bed and grabbed my cell phone from the dresser. Sam, cell. I hit the off button for the ringer and glanced over my shoulder. Theo moaned, happily it seemed, and curled into a ball. I took the phone in the hall and shut the bedroom door. Sam, cell, the phone kept flashing. I felt an irrational guilt about the boy in my bed. I reminded myself that there was nothing to feel guilty about. I was an adult, Theo was an adult—legally anyway—and Sam was decidedly an adult. It was Sam who’d made our lives so crazy months ago; it was Sam who had hung up on me. But still he was hard to resist. I answered. “Hello?” “Sorry about last night, Red Hot.” I leaned my back against the wall. I twisted a strand of my hair around my fingers. “How are you?” “Feeling like a jerk. I’m sorry. This whole thing just gets me crazy, this being apart. I really miss you.” “I miss you, too.” “So what are we doing? Let’s just get back together.” “I don’t know, Sam. It’s not that easy.” I grabbed a larger strand of hair, my hand twirling, twirling as I twisted it tighter onto my finger. If Sam were here, he’d gently take my hand; he would untwist my hair and kiss me on the head, just the way he’d always done. “Yes, it is that easy,” he said. “You’re the one making it hard.” “I’m the one?” “Well, yeah, now you are. We’ve gone over and over everything. I had to do what I’d promised to do.” “You promised you’d marry me.” “And I still want to do that!” His voice was raised, and the tenderness was gone. We were back to where we’d been many times since Sam had returned to town. Suddenly, a tall band of light moved into the hallway, and there was Theo. His nude body took up nearly the whole doorway. He crossed his arms, the red ribbons stretching tighter across his biceps, and gave me a lazy grin that was so sexy I felt my mouth hanging open. What was this kid doing in my hallway? How did I get him back to my bed? “You got any eggs?” Theo asked. I put my finger to my lips and pointed toward the kitchen. He walked toward me, slow and steady until he towered over me. Last night I was wearing heels and he hadn’t seemed so big. Now, he was a large, strange man. Seeing him like this, naked and in daylight, made everything surreal, as if my world had been shaken like a snow globe. “What’s going on over there?” Sam said. “Nothing.” Just that there’s a molten-hot boy in my condo. Theo leaned over me, that silky hair brushing my cheeks again. “I’m gonna make you breakfast,” he whispered in my ear. Mundane words, but the way he’d said them made my stomach flip. “Iz?” It was Sam. “Can we talk later?” A pause. “Let’s get it out now.” But his voice was flat. We were both weary of talking. I watched Theo’s ass as he walked toward my kitchen. I’d never seen such a perfect ass—two smooth orbs at the top of those long legs. The other line rang. The display showed a number I didn’t recognize. Maybe Mayburn? “Sam, hold on a sec.” I switched to the other line and heard an unfamiliar man’s voice say my name. “Yes?” I said. “It’s Zac Ellis.” “Who?” “Jane Augustine’s husband.” “Oh, hi, Zac.” Jane had told me that her husband, a photographer, was in New York for an exhibit. “I got your number from Jane’s book. Can I talk to you for a second?” “Yeah, sure. Hold on please.” I clicked to the other line. “I have to call you back, Sam. I’m sorry, okay?” A beat, then, “All right.” I could hear the patience Sam was trying very hard to foster. “Love you.” “Love you, too.” That was one thing that was still certain in our lives. I switched over to Zac. “Hi, I’m back.” “Thanks. Look, Izzy, I have to ask you something—did you go out with Jane last night?” “Yes.” A pause. “Oh. I guess I thought …” His words fell away. Then, “Were there any guys there last night?” Theo stepped into the hallway and held up a box of green tea in a silent question. How had he known that green tea was what I drank every morning, what I needed right at this very moment? I smiled and nodded at him. “What do you mean?” I said to Zac. “I mean, was it just you and Jane or did you talk to any guys?” “Uh … um …” It was a loaded question if I’d ever heard one. I had no idea what the right answer was. “We talked to a few people.” And one of those people is naked in my kitchen. He said nothing. “Is something wrong, Zac?” “I got an early flight home last night. I waited up for Jane.” “That’s nice,” I said, still unsure how he wanted me to respond. “Yeah. It was. Except she never came home.” 5 I was still on the phone with Zac a few minutes later, spinning out possible hypotheses for where Jane had spent the night. I didn’t really believe any of them. What I was really doing was taking up time, trying to let myself piece together the end of the evening. After Sam had hung up on me last night, I’d continued making out with Theo, partly out of spite and partly out of booze and partly out of the fact that he was so unbelievably hot. Before I knew it, he and I were in a cab on our way to my house. Before I knew it … Those were the words of someone who had done something wrong. Someone who should feel ashamed. That wasn’t me, I reminded myself. As for Jane, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed quite possible that she’d gone home with the writer. She believed her husband was out of town, and she and Mick had been flirting madly. I hadn’t given it much thought last night. I’d assumed that flirting was all it was, but maybe it had gone further than that. Shortly before I left, Jane had been there, slipping off her jacket, drinking in the visual praise of the men in the room, and then later when I looked up from my conversation with Sam, she was gone. I left ten minutes after Sam hung up on me, so I assumed Jane was just in the bathroom or at the back of the crowded lounge, somewhere I couldn’t see her. I’d searched around, and when I couldn’t find her, I’d texted her saying I was leaving and I’d talk to her tomorrow. And then, before I knew it, I was in the cab. To Zac, I dished out more lame-sounding excuses—maybe she’d gone to a friend’s house, maybe she’d gotten a lead on a story and she was following that—while I tried to figure out what to do. Should I tell my friend’s husband that she’d been flirting with someone else? “Was Jane talking to any guy in particular?” Zac asked. “Uh …” “Look, Izzy,” he said. “I shouldn’t have called you.” Silence. Then, “It’s not the first time this has happened, okay?” “What do you mean?” I was in a robe by then. I went into my living room and sat on my favorite piece of furniture—a wingback chair Sam and I found at an antique store on Lincoln and reupholstered in a whimsical yellow-and-white fabric. The chair was unbelievably comfortable, and sitting there usually made me feel better. It wasn’t working today. Behind me in the kitchen, Theo was oblivious, whistling while he cooked. “How close are you and Jane?” Zac asked. “We’re friends from work. I used to be the lawyer for the company that owns Jane’s old station.” “Yeah, I know, and she wants you to work for Trial TV.” “Right. I accepted. But what did you mean that this has happened before?” He exhaled, said nothing. “Do you think you should call the cops?” This was all way too familiar. I could remember with crystal clarity the night Sam disappeared and that next morning when he still wasn’t around. “Or have you called the TV station?” “I checked.” “Have you talked to her family?” “They live in Michigan. Plus, I think I know exactly what happened.” “What?” “I asked you before if you talked to any guys last night. Tell me the truth.” I wrapped my robe tighter around me. “I did tell you. We spoke to a few people.” “Who were they?” Zac asked. “Um … let’s see.” I glanced over my shoulder, stalling for time. Over the breakfast bar, I could see Theo as he shook a small frying pan and flipped a perfect yellow omelet into the air, catching it again. “You don’t remember who you spoke to?” Zac said. Something cold had crept into his voice. “No, I do. I just …” “What time did you leave?” “One o’clock, I guess. Maybe two.” “Who were you talking to?” “Well, this one guy.” A guy who was in my kitchen right now. “What’s his name?” “Um …” I knew it was Theo, but I had to think about his last name, which mortified me. Jameson! That was it. Before I could answer, Zac jumped in. “Did Jane leave with him?” “No.” I did. “Look, Izzy, seriously. Don’t try to cover up for her.” “I’m not. I know she didn’t go home with the person I was talking to.” “Then who? Who was she talking to?” I tried to think of the writer’s name. “I’m not sure.” I was relieved to be telling the truth. If I had thought it awkward to wake up with my first one-night stand, it was even worse to have a morning-after conversation with a friend’s husband. Then he laughed. A caustic, short laugh. “Look, don’t worry about it. She just walked in.” Zac hung up on me, the second man in twenty-four hours to do so. Theo walked into the room, still naked, still so sizzling hot. He was holding out a white plate, on which was a yellow omelet with two red pepper slices crisscrossed on top. “Hungry?” he said. I nodded. But I wasn’t exactly looking at the omelet. I took the plate. My thoughts crisscrossed too, calling out different directions. Call Sam back and make nice. Call Jane and find out where she was last night. Save the omelet for later and take Theo back to bed. I opted for the last one. 6 Minutes after Theo said goodbye—a goodbye that involved a fair amount of groping—Jane called. “I’m sorry Zac phoned you,” she said. “Don’t be. Are you all right?” “Can you meet me for coffee in an hour? I want to prep you on some Trial TV stuff, and I want to talk to you about something else.” “Sure.” I had to meet Mayburn an hour after that, but I could fit it in. Jane gave me the address of a coffee shop near her house in River North. Before I got in the shower, I called my old assistant, Q, short for Quentin. “How was girls’ night?” he said, answering. “I slept with someone.” Q and I used to be the busiest lawyer-assistant duo at the law firm of Baltimore & Brown, and we never had time for the usual Hi, Hello, How are you this morning? kind of stuff. Even though we had both been out of work for six months now—me because the firm had all but ousted me, and Q because he never really wanted to be a legal assistant anyway—we still continued to eschew common pleasantries when we talked and got right to the point. “Thank, God. Who was it? Sam?” “No.” “Grady.” “No.” “Someone new?” “Yes.” “How many dates have you had with this person?” I paused. “None.” “A one-night stand?” His voice rose a few decibels. “Yep.” “Your first one-night stand?” “Yep.” “I’ll be right over.” Although Q had been in a relationship with a man named Max for most of the years I’d known him, at the end of our tenure at Baltimore & Brown, he’d gotten involved in an illicit affair. I call it illicit because not only was Q living with Max at the time, but he’d fallen for someone who wasn’t even out of the closet. But now he was official with the new boyfriend and living up the street from me at North and Dearborn. True to his word, Q was banging on my door in less than ten minutes, which gave me just enough time to shower and toss on a dress that had been itching to get out of the closet since last fall. Q sat on my bed, the overhead lights gleaming on his bald, black head, while I dashed around my bedroom putting on makeup and jewelry. When we worked at the law firm, Q’s uniform was crisp khakis and a stylish blazer. Now that he wasn’t working, he’d kept the blazer, but switched to jeans. “Cute,” I said, pointing to the jacket, which was black. “It’s too tight.” He tugged at the sleeves. “Everything is too tight. I thought being in love would give me the motivation to lose ten pounds, but it’s been the opposite.” Q worked out religiously and attempted every diet he heard about, but so far the flawless gay-man physique evaded him. “You look great.” This was true. Happiness, even if it hadn’t translated into weight loss, made Q’s gray eyes sparkle and his skin gleam. “Thanks. Is this new?” He fingered my waffle-cotton duvet cover. “It’s old, actually.” I had been using a beautiful ivory spread that Sam and I had registered for and gotten as an early wedding gift. But once everything with Sam blew up, I tucked it in the closet for the time being. “Is this where the magic happened?” Q patted the bed. “Here and in the kitchen.” “Tell me.” “His name is Theo.” “Nice. What’s he do?” “Owns a Web design software company.” “Like a real company? Or is he one of those guys who says he has a company, but it’s really him in his pajamas in his studio apartment?” “From what I hear, it’s a real company, with some big profits.” “Where did you hear that?” “Jane.” “How is she?” I almost said, In deep shit with her husband. But I held my tongue, since I’d been on a stop-swearing campaign for a while now. The other reason I didn’t say it was because I didn’t believe in telling one friend another’s business. “She’s great. She’s the new anchor at Trial TV, that start-up legal network that launches Monday.” “It’s perfect for her.” “I know. And she’s taking me with her.” “What?” “She asked me to be a legal analyst, kind of a reporter. What do you think? Ridiculous?” He sat back and crossed his arms. “I think it’s brilliant. You’re TV pretty. You’ve got that great red hair and that crazy big smile. And you could talk your way out of a Turkish prison.” “But I’m a lawyer, not a journalist.” Q held up a palm in protest. “Are you kidding? Hardly anyone is a journalist anymore. Trust me, the business news stations are always on at our house, and they’ve got these sweet little children broadcasting from the trading floors. Don’t tell me any of those kidlets are journalists. Besides, you’re a lawyer, which means you know how to talk and to think on your feet. That’s what they want.” “I guess.” Now that I was away from the drinks Jane was buying and the enthusiasm she projected, I was a little unsure. “God knows I need the money. Unlike you.” Q smiled. “Yes, I am a kept man, and I love it.” “So everything is sunshine and roses with you two?” “I have to wear sunscreen all the time, and there are no thorns.” “Wow. It sounds different than it was with Max.” “It is different.” “But you were in love with Max.” “I was. At one point. In the only way I knew how to be at that time. And then somewhere it turned into me loving Max like a family member. I still love him, even though he won’t return my phone calls. But what I have now is that I’m intensely, absolutely in love, Iz. It’s like … It’s like …” He trailed off, and I glanced over at him. He was staring into the distance, at the back wall of my bedroom, but it was as if he was watching a sunset fall over the Aegean Sea; he looked that ecstatically happy. I felt a shiver of envy run through me. Because that’s how I used to look when I thought about Sam. “Anyway,” Q said, coming out of his dreamy fog, “enough shoptalk, enough about me. Tell me about this Theo guy. How old? With a name like Theodore and his own company, I’d say forties, but since it’s software, I’m going with thirty-six.” I purposely didn’t meet Q’s eyes in the mirror as I fastened my silver hoop earrings. “Bit younger than that.” “Thirty?” “Little younger.” “Twenty-five?” Q said, surprised. “Not exactly.” “Twenty-three?” His voice was incredulous now. “Um … Twenty-one?” He whistled and clapped. “Damn, girl. That’s illegal in some states.” I turned and leaned against my dresser, facing Q now. “You would not believe how sexy this kid is.” “Oh, this is going to be trouble.” “No, it’s not. It’s not going to be anything. It was just a … a thing.” Q laughed, his gray eyes glinting. “Believe me, I think it’s about time you unleashed your inner slut. I applaud you for it. But this thing is going to be a train wreck.” “No, it’s not. I might not even see him again.” He laughed harder, throwing his head back. “Who are you kidding? You’re hooked.” “No, I’m not.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “And why would it be a train wreck?” “The young ones always are.” “But he’s older than his years. He’s been working since he was in high school. He went to college for a year. Stanford, I think. He has his own company.” “Train wreck. In the best way. Believe me, I think you need this kid. He’s going to get you all hot and bothered and loosen you up. It’s exactly what you require after all this seriousness with Sam.” We grinned at each other, and I had to admit, I kind of agreed with him. And despite the wisecracks, it was nice to have Q back the way we used to be. “And I want to thank you,” Q continued. “I have been so bored lately, and now I’ve got a front-row seat for this show.” “Why have you been bored?” He sighed. “You know how it is. I was miserable when I was working, but …” “Excuse me?” I put my hands on my hips. “You were miserable when you were working with me?” “No, no. You know I loved working with you. I just didn’t love the work I was doing. I wasn’t meant to be a legal secretary.” “But you’ve been taking acting classes again since we left the firm.” “I quit. I’m too old for it now.” “You’re in your early thirties!” “And you should see everyone in these acting classes—they’re in their early twenties. Like your boyfriend.” “Shut up.” “I am so going to love this show.” I moved away from the dresser. “There’s no show, and there’s no train wreck.” Q swung his feet over the side of the bed and stood. “Yes, there is, and, honey, I’m going to be here until the last curtain call and the last crash.” 7 I looked at Jane across the table. “Jane, I’m … Well, I’m kind of shocked.” She blew on her half-full mug of coffee, clearly annoyed, then pushed it away. We were at a coffee shop on Chicago Avenue. And after Jane gave me a bunch of details about Trial TV—the mission of the network, what I’d be doing there, instruction on landing news stories and writing them—she just announced that yes, she’d gone home with that writer last night, and no, as Zac had said, it wasn’t the first time something like that had happened. “Why are you shocked?” she asked. “I don’t know.” I stirred a few Splendas into my second green tea. “I guess because I thought you were on top of it.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” “Don’t get mad at me. I’ve seen you get dragged around by your agent on occasion, but generally you seem like someone who’s got it together.” “Izzy, nobody has everything together.” She shook her head and glanced away from me. When she turned back, she looked suddenly exhausted. “Nobody’s perfect. Didn’t you find that out when Sam disappeared?” “Yeah, but I know why Sam did what he did.” “And if you’re so fine with that, then why aren’t you back together?” A good question. One Sam had been asking me, one I’d been asking myself for months. A few years ago, when Sam and I discussed getting married, I had journaled about it, I had visualized it and debated the pros and cons. I talked to Sam about it, and I talked to my friends about it. And the conclusion I came to in my heart was … Yes. I wanted to be married, and I wanted to be married to Sam. But the big wedding Sam desired and my mother supported entirely had completely overwhelmed me. I was just about to talk to Sam about scaling it back, maybe even cancelling it, when he disappeared. So much had happened since then, and now something felt stuck in our wheel, dragging Sam and me slower and slower. “I guess we’re not back together,” I said to Jane, “because it would have to be a hundred percent. I wouldn’t be dating anyone else. I wouldn’t be sleeping with anyone else.” “Don’t judge me because I had sex with that writer last night.” “Actually, I’m not judging you at all. When Sam was gone and I had no idea where he was, I kissed someone else. My friend Grady.” “See? And a lot of times I don’t sleep with these people, by the way.” She picked up the mug and took a sip. “A lot of times it’s just a make-out thing.” “Does it matter, though? I’m really not judging you, I swear. God knows I’m spinning around, trying to figure out my life, so I’m the last person to judge anyone. I just think that cheating is cheating.” “Oh God, are you one of those people who think that even kissing someone else is cheating?” “Yeah.” “So you cheated on Sam when you kissed that other guy?” “I’m not proud of it, but yes, it was technically cheating.” Jane’s expression was now one of disappointment. “Izzy McNeil, I wouldn’t have thought you were such an innocent.” The word innocent had a bite; it wasn’t meant as a compliment. I was quiet, watching Jane, processing these new bits of information about her. Jane was right—no one was perfect. But she was wrong to say I was an innocent, because I’d learned the hard lesson that no one in my life was exactly who I’d thought they were, a fact that had unsettled me at first. And yet, with distance and time, the altered images I now had of those people delighted me in a strange way. They made me realize that there was no end to the random flotsam of traits, beliefs, habits and secrets that were hidden under the controlled exteriors people wore. Which meant that the world was a mystery and always would be. Although this fact had initially depressed me, had nearly taken me down and left me there, I’d finally decided to see the wonder in it and be amazed. I knew that Jane prized honesty, so I said, “Here’s my thinking on the topic. Maybe it’s old-fashioned, but I think if you’re fooling around with someone other than the person you’re committed to, then cheating is cheating. Whether it’s kissing or rolling around or sex.” Jane leaned forward, her eyes lighting again. “Okay, so go with me for a second. Let’s say you and Sam are together, let’s say you’ve already gotten married, but you need a break, and you decide to take a vacation with a friend. Who’s your best girlfriend?” “Maggie Bristol. You might know her. She’s a criminal defense lawyer.” “Martin Bristol’s kid?” “Grandkid.” “We should get both of them on Trial TV. But anyway, let’s say you and Maggie decide to go to South Beach, okay? You head down there with some other girls for a weekend. You’re just gonna tear up the town, drink too much, dance your asses off, have bloodies by the pool in the morning.” “Sounds great.” “Exactly. It’s just you and the girls. But of course, you’re going to talk to guys at the pool. I mean, you can do that, even if you’ve got a boyfriend or a husband, right? That’s not cheating.” “Sure.” “Okay, and when you see the same group of guys out that night, you’re going to talk to them again, aren’t you?” “Yes, Jane, I talk to men. What’s the point?” “Stay with me. So there’s one guy in particular who thinks you’re incredible. You know how you can tell when a guy thinks you’re sexy?” I laughed. “I guess.” “You know. Like Theo last night. There was no question about that, was there?” I blushed. Nope, there had been no misunderstanding with Theo last night. None this morning, either. “Okay, so your girlfriend Maggie, is she single?” “Not really. She recently got back together with a guy named Wyatt.” “Well, imagine this is right before they got back together.” “Sure.” Maggie was perennially single, so it wasn’t hard to imagine. “So Maggie is flirting with one of this guy’s buddies, and you and this guy who has the hots for you, you’re just talking, and he buys you a drink. You’d accept that drink, wouldn’t you?” “Sure, and I’d buy him one, too. I’d probably buy for the whole group.” “Definitely.” Jane was talking faster now, her voice excited. “And you think this guy is cool. I mean, he’s definitely good-looking, and he’s super smart. He’s got this great job, doing … I don’t know … something that takes brains like running a hedge fund. You’re having an amazing conversation. Nothing wrong with that, right?” “No, there’s nothing wrong with talking to someone.” I took a couple sips of my tea. I was suddenly exhausted. The night with Theo hadn’t allowed more than three hours of sleep. Not that I was complaining. “You really have a great connection with this guy,” Jane continued. “You start to think about how attached you feel to him, just from your conversation, and you realize you haven’t felt that connected to Sam, not in the same way, for a while. Not that you don’t love Sam, but you don’t always feel in sync with him.” I blinked a few times. I knew what she was talking about. “But you can’t feel connected to anyone a hundred percent of the time, so of course you’re going to feel connected to other people sometimes. Other guys.” “Absolutely. So you’re feeling this connection, and it’s exhilarating. It’s literally making you feel more alive to have this conversation. The drinks are flowing, and your Maggie is gone for the moment, but you don’t care, because you feel safe with this guy. He’s married, you’re married. The bottom line is you just think he’s wonderful. You’re thinking that maybe you could introduce him to Sam and they could be friends, or maybe you could set him up with one of your other girlfriends. He’s that great of a guy.” “Okay, Jane, I got it. What’s your point?” “My point …” She scooted forward in her seat, her long torso stretching toward mine. Her black hair swung over her shoulders and hung in two gleaming sheets along the sides of her face. “You want to know my point, Izzy?” She leaned closer. She smelled warm, like a cinnamon apple. I could see a few delicate lines that cut through the puff of her bottom lip. Her voice was hypnotic; I was waiting to find out where she was taking me. “Yeah,” I said. “My point is …” She leaned even closer so that our faces were only an inch apart. “What if …” I could feel her soft breath near my mouth. “What if he moved toward you, just like this? What if you could feel the heat from his body and his mouth when he spoke to you? You know what I mean?” “Yeah.” I didn’t move. I felt as if I was holding my breath, waiting for the end of the story. “No one is around.” Jane was now speaking her words in my ear. “It’s loud and it’s buzzing in that bar, and the more you talk, it just seems like the two of you, no one else. You know what I mean?” “Yeah.” In my peripheral vision, I saw the front window of the coffee shop over Jane’s shoulder, but I wasn’t truly seeing. I was in South Beach at that bar. “So what if … what if right at that moment, he stopped talking …” Jane halted for a second, turned her head a fraction of an inch. Her mouth was near mine. “And what if he kissed you?” We stayed there, Jane’s lips close to mine, and for a second I wondered if she was going to kiss me, just to prove her point. And though I had never thought of kissing a woman before, it didn’t seem a terrible prospect. In fact … I let myself drift, far away from my mind, which had been so sure of what it wanted and how it would act only minutes before. I closed my eyes. I parted my lips for just a second. “See?” Jane said. “See? You would have done it!” My eyes bolted open. “No, I wouldn’t.” She sat back and slapped her knee. “Yes, you would. You would have kissed me.” “Bullshack,” I said, trying out one of my swear word replacements. Then to really make my point, “Bullshit.” I picked up my mug and drank a few gulps of tea. “Fine, then you would have kissed that guy in South Beach.” “No.” But the way she’d told the story, she might have been right. In a moment like that, I might have slipped. “If I did,” I said, “I would have felt awful. It would have been cheating to me.” “No, that’s not cheating. Kissing or making out, especially in a situation like that, is not cheating.” “It is.” She sighed. “You know how many of your friends who are in relationships do stuff like that?” “None that I know of.” “None that tell you.” I laughed. “Maybe you’re right.” But the truth was I felt like a farm girl led into town for the first time. Was she right? Was this one of those things that everyone believed except for me? Was I some innocent, as Jane said? Someone behind the times? “You won’t tell anyone about me … you know, about me being red-blooded, will you?” She smiled then dropped it. “No way. I’m a vault.” “Good. You’ll be the only one in the news business.” She glanced at her watch. “I should get going.” I felt as if I had missed some amorphous opportunity, one that would have allowed me to connect with Jane, and I regretted it. “Hey, Jane. I’m sorry.” She shook her head, silent. She picked her phone off the table, looked at it, then bent down and tossed it in her bag. She straightened up and smiled. “That’s your anchorwoman smile,” I said. “I’ve seen it.” She laughed, her own personal smile returning, one that was natural and made the sides of her eyes crease just a little. She reached across the table and lifted my hand, giving me a little squeeze. Her fingers were smooth but firm. “I’m glad we’re going to be working together.” “Me, too. Hey, Jane, don’t I need to do something this weekend, like rehearsals?” She shook her head. “Just the on-air people. But be ready for trial-by-fire on Monday.” She took a silver cigarette case out of her purse. Opening it, she pulled out some bills and put them on the table. “I’ve got to get out of here. Zac has had enough time to cool off. Time for damage control, and then I have to get to the station.” “Will you and Zac be okay?” She gave a hard, short laugh. “A few months ago, I would have said ‘yeah.’ Zac knows I’m red-blooded. And he still loves me.” “What’s happened over the last few months?” She gathered her wrap made of taupe-colored cashmere, her eyes downcast. “He’s been getting sick of it. I mean, who can blame him? It’s just that we had an understanding before, and now he’s not … Well, he’s not so understanding anymore.” Elegantly, Jane swung the wrap around her shoulders, then released her deep black hair, letting it fall around her like a shiny shawl. She stood. “I forgot to ask you—what happened with Theo last night?” I said nothing, and in that moment, Jane must have read my face. She laughed. She leaned over me. “Was it hot?” In that instant, I saw Theo leaning over me, moving into me, his hair brushing the sides of my face. I blushed with the memory. “Yeah.” “Did it feel like anything you’d ever had before?” When I paused, she said, “C’mon. You’ve had sex before, Izzy, but this was something different, right? Something more electrifying than you’ve felt.” I could feel his lips biting mine; I could feel his fingers everywhere. I flushed more deeply. “Yeah.” “Was it so good it felt like your whole body filled up with heat? The kind of heat that you didn’t know if you could bear, but yet somehow you loved it?” “Yeah.” “And you felt like your mind was going to explode?” I saw Theo and me then, slick with sweat, coming together, setting off explosions. “Yeah.” She stood up, taking the heat of the moment, the heat of the memories with her. “That’s how I felt last night, too,” she said. “That’s how I always feel. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve had such a hard time giving it up.” “What are the other reasons?” Her eyes went thoughtful. She looked past me for a moment. “There isn’t one person who can be everything to me. I think it’s unfair to try and make Zac my best friend, my lover, my business partner, the co-owner of our houses, my accountant, the person I cut loose with, the person whose shoulder I cry on.” She looked at me. I said nothing, sensing more. “Different people inspire me in different ways,” she continued. “They fascinate me in different ways. I like to be let into someone else’s life, to see what other people are doing with their days.” She stopped and shook her head. “I just look at my own life differently after I’ve gotten a taste of someone else’s.” I nodded. I understood a little, I suppose. “Anyway, I’ve got lots of other reasons,” Jane said. “Those are just some of them.” Before I could respond, she turned, and then Jane Augustine was gone. 8 Jane sat in Zac’s studio in their basement. They always did their best talking while he worked. Her husband’s back was to her. Years ago, he used to be hunched over the wet tray in the dark room. Now he hunched in front of the computer or over his printer, searching for the blackest of blacks, switching papers from Portfolio to Silver Rag to Maestro. “You want to tell me who it was?” He didn’t turn, his eyes firmly on the screen. The image there was one of a pink balcony hanging precariously over an orange brick alleyway just off Belden Avenue in Chicago. Back Alleys was the title of Zac’s photographic exhibit at an art gallery here in town. He’d been successful with these photos of alleys in New York and D.C., and he’d finally felt it was time to feature the town he had called home for almost a decade. The show had been so successful, selling hundreds of photos in the three weeks since the opening, that Zac had been working constantly to fill the orders. He’d been on a roll and had been happy lately. But then he’d returned early from meeting his agent in New York and found Jane missing. It wasn’t that such a thing hadn’t happened before. In days past, sometimes, Zac actually wanted to know a few details—what they did to her, what she did to them. Sometimes the details got him excited. Other times, he was only putting up with her and her dalliances because he loved her. Today was definitely one of the latter. She could tell this from the way Zac’s lat muscles tensed under his stylishly worn T-shirt, originally black but grayed from so much washing. She could tell from the way his movements were fast and sharp, rather than relaxed, almost dreamy, the way he usually worked when he was happy. “Just some—” she started to say. “Just some guy?” he interrupted, his voice edged with impatience. “Something like that.” Although that wasn’t true. He was some guy who’d been following her. Some creep who’d been making notations about the most minute, private things in her life. Despite her public job, Jane hated for her life to be made public. And she’d been lucky because her affairs had always existed in a void for her. Zac cleared his throat, a habit of his that sprang up when he had something to say which he didn’t feel confident about, but something he’d thought about for a long time. It was so strange how well she knew him. In many ways, she knew him better than she knew herself; she understood the reasons for his behavior so much better than she did her own. For example, she was a wife who cheated, and according to most people she was wanton, immoral and wrong. And although she had her reasons for it, ninety percent of the time she agreed with those people. It was the ten percent she had told Izzy about. The ten percent that got her into trouble. She’d promised Zac recently that she wouldn’t do it anymore, that she would be a proper wife who never strayed. She meant it, too, but it was harder than she thought. And yet, she had expected him to forgive her. But now there was this edge to his back, this fuming energy that poured off him. “Are you all right?” she said. He turned to face her. He rarely looked at her during these types of discussions. Usually he kept working, as if he were more comfortable to let his words rise from a blank canvas rather than let her see his expression. But now he was definitely looking, and there was nothing resembling forgiveness there. What she saw was anger, along with something she hadn’t ever seen before. Something like disgust. 9 John Mayburn walked in ten minutes late. I pointed at my watch as he strolled to the table. “Sorry,” he mouthed, a smile on his face. It was the smile that threw me. At his job during the week, when he met with lawyers like me (the lawyer I used to be) who wanted him to dig up dirt on a plaintiff, Mayburn wore a boring navy-blue suit or slacks and a jacket, a button-down shirt underneath that was starched so stiff it could stand on its own. When I got to know him better, I learned that on the nights and weekends, he was rather relaxed. So the stylish jeans, Ramones T-shirt and beat-up brown boots he wore now didn’t throw me. It was definitely the smile. “What’s with you?” I said, as he slipped into the seat opposite me. “What do you mean?” He picked up a large, laminated menu. We were at a caf? on Webster, named John’s Place. “You’re chipper.” “I’ve barely said two words. Why would you think I’m chipper?” He glanced at the menu. “The Cobb sounds good, doesn’t it?” He glanced back up at me, then shook his head. “Jesus, that did sound chipper.” “So, what’s the deal?” He shrugged. “Sorry I was late. I had to drop someone off.” “You had to drop someone off? Did you have someone spend the night?” Like I did, I almost added. “Shut it.” He kept looking at the menu. “I took someone to the hardware store this morning.” It sounded innocuous, but he still had a faint smile on his lips. The waiter came over then. Mayburn ordered a club sandwich. I asked for an omelet with red peppers, since I hadn’t gotten to eat the one Theo made that morning. “Are you dating someone?” I asked. He shrugged. “Maybe.” “Who is it?” “Someone I’ve known for a while … well, kind of.” “Is it Meredith?” Mayburn had told me that he’d once dated a gallery owner named Meredith Saga, a woman who lived for art and sex and little else. “No Sagas for me.” “So who?” “Why are you so nosy?” “Why won’t you tell me?” Mayburn seemed to be looking at anything but me now. He studied the family at the next table. He frowned at their baby, who was in a stroller as big as an RV and blocking the aisle. All the while, I stayed silent. It was one of the smartest things I’d learned from being a lawyer—the best way to make someone tell you something is not to badger them with questions but to confront them with silence. And then there were the things Mayburn himself had taught me—when you’re surveying someone, listen to everything, look at everything. Especially look at what people do as much as what they say. Look at what they don’t say, too. A few seconds ticked by. Then a few more. Finally, Mayburn met my eyes. “You want to know who it is?” “Yeah.” “Lucy.” One of the other things the law had taught me was to never show shock. But it was impossible at that moment. “Lucy DeSanto?” I blurted so loud that the baby in the stroller began to cry. “Yeah.” “The same Lucy DeSanto whose husband you and I caught laundering money for the mafia?” “Yep.” Lucy DeSanto was a tiny, lovely, elegant blonde who lived in Lincoln Park. She was married and had two children. Her husband, Michael DeSanto, was not living at home, however. Rather, he was living at a maximum-security holding cell, awaiting his federal trial for racketeering, fraud and money laundering. Due to the nature of the people DeSanto worked with—mafia people who tended to run for parts unknown if they got even a glimpse of sunlight—bail had been denied. Mayburn had been hired by the bank where Michael DeSanto worked and he’d pulled me into it when he hit a brick wall with the case. As payback for aiding me in my search for my missing fianc?, Mayburn asked for my help because I could fit in the upscale North Side neighborhood where Lucy lived. He trained me on surveillance techniques and had me pose as a neighborhood mom to get close to Lucy and get inside their house. When Michael DeSanto had come home one day and found me in his office fiddling with his computer, I thought that my time on earth had come to an end. But I managed to get out of it, and the evidence I got out of Michael’s computer had sent him away, at least for now. Although Mayburn had never met Lucy during the investigation, he’d spent plenty of hours watching her come and go from the house, and I’d always suspected he had a long-distance crush on her. “I didn’t think you were supposed to meet your subjects,” I said. “You’re not. But you know Lucy.” The waitress delivered our food. The omelet didn’t look as delicious as the one Theo had created. But then again, if Theo had put a pile of dirt on a plate and handed it to me while naked, it would’ve looked good. “I do know Lucy,” I said, taking a bite. “She’s probably the sweetest person on the planet.” “Isn’t she?” Mayburn’s voice carried something like awe. “She is such a good person.” I blinked. I’d never, ever heard Mayburn talk this way. He sounded more like one of my girlfriends than the sarcastic, seen-everything P.I. he was. “How did this get to the point where you know Lucy DeSanto personally, and you’re taking her to the hardware store?” “You know how bad we felt for her after they took Michael away?” “Yes. I even called her to tell her that.” “Well, I did, too.” “So you admitted that you were the investigator who was hired to watch her husband?” “Yeah.” “Did you tell her that you’d been spying on her for months, trailing behind her when she took the kids for a walk and following her when she drove to the grocery store?” “I did.” “That’s not the typical pickup line. How did she take it?” “You know Lucy.” He smiled with one side of his mouth and then pushed his plate away, as if the thoughts of Lucy had fed him enough. “She was kind about it. She was actually happy that it all happened. She had no idea Michael was into something dirty. She’s filed for divorce.” “And now she’s got you, apparently.” That one-sided smile again. “This is it, Izzy.” “It, like you’re in love?” “Yeah.” “It, like you want to marry this girl?” “Yeah.” “Wow. I’m jealous. I can’t seem to decide if I want Sam or …” Or Theo. Or Grady. Or someone else altogether. Or no one at all. “Anyway, does Lucy feel the same way?” “Not sure. It’s a lot more complicated for her.” He pushed his chair back. “All right, enough about me. I need you to eat that omelet fast, because we have to go to the lingerie store.” He turned and pointed through the front windows at a store across the street. “The Fig Leaf? Don’t tell me you want me to model lingerie so you can pick out something for your girlfriend.” “Nope. Have you ever worked in retail?” “No.” “Well, I want you to work there.” “You want me to fold panties?” “And I want you to sell them and ring them up, and mostly, I want you to watch Josie, the manager. My client, Marie, the owner of the store, doesn’t trust her lately, but technically the store is running great, so she doesn’t want to fire her.” “This doesn’t sound like your usual case.” Mayburn worked for big law firms, monster corporations and international banks. “It’s not. Marie is a family friend. Maybe she’s being paranoid about her manager. Who knows? But I’m not treating it different from any other investigation.” “Okay, so what’s Josie up to? Skimming money off the top?” He shrugged. “The books seem like they’re up-to-date. Inventory seems well-handled. They’re just getting a lot more traffic, which obviously is a good thing, but they haven’t increased marketing efforts or their PR. Marie can’t figure out exactly how it happened. She wants to make sure everything is on the up-and-up, especially since she spends most of her time in Palm Beach now. If there’s nothing to find, everyone’s happy.” I stared at the Fig Leaf. It was an upscale place I’d been once. The merchandise had been ludicrously expensive, but still I had purchased a white nightie, very short and very sexy, for my wedding night. The nightie still hung at the back of my closet, tags on. “Since Marie started spending more time out of town, Josie has been telling her they need to hire a clerk,” Mayburn said. “This morning, Marie told Josie she’d found someone—her family friend Lexi, who is attending law school during the day.” “Does Lexi have red hair?” “Yes.” “Lexi,” I said, trying the name out. “Lexi what?” “Lexi Hammond.” “Lexi Hammond,” I repeated. “I like it. But wait a minute, what about filling out IRS forms and stuff? Won’t I need a social security number?” “They’re paying you cash under the table. And then I’m paying you a freelance investigator fee.” “Shouldn’t I be getting an investigator license if I’m going to keep doing this?” “Nah. It’s a pain in the ass to get a license in Illinois. And expensive. Plus, I just need your help to get intel. I don’t want you to testify or anything like that.” I thought of something else. I told Mayburn about my job at Trial TV. “But Jane says I won’t be going on-air right away.” “Should be fine. I need you to start tomorrow, Sunday, and if we’re lucky I won’t need you more than a few weeks. So, what do you think, Lexi?” “Does Lexi get a discount?” “I knew you were going to ask that. Thirty percent.” I clapped my hands and pushed the omelet away. “Let’s go.” 10 Zac Ellis opened their weekend house in Long Beach, Indiana, the way he always did. He walked through the place, turning on lights, dialing the thermostat up or down, opening windows just to get some fresh air in the place. Often, he would be followed by Jane when she was done with a broadcast, and the fresh air would twist its way though the house and into their lungs and even into their relationship, and they almost always felt much better within hours of arriving. But he could tell today would be different. The fresh air, colder today on this side of Lake Michigan, seemed too harsh. And so was the news of Jane’s latest bit of messing around. How had he ever thought he could handle it? He stopped for a moment in their kitchen. It was narrow and crammed with old, kitschy appliances they’d picked up at antique malls and flea markets—so different from their vast, metropolitan kitchen in Chicago. Standing there, he thought about his history with Jane. Before they’d met, he dated deep, brooding women. Artists like his ex Zoey, who were dark and moody, who wore funky clothes and who painted in a studio for days at a time. Jane was so different from those women—tall and flashy and up-front about everything. He hadn’t been mesmerized with the whole TV world, or even really that interested. Which had given him the mistaken impression that he would never fall for Jane. How very, very, very wrong he had been. He left the kitchen and walked down the narrow hallway toward their bedroom. The house was built in 1927, and so, like the kitchen, the room was small, and their antique brass bed had to be pushed into the far corner. He leaned against the wall, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans, imagining Jane there. Almost ten years ago, about a year and a half after they’d met, they got married on the beach two blocks from here, and they spent their first night as a married couple in that bed. It felt good to picture Jane this way, with him. Lately, his mind only held pictures of her with other men. Yes, Jane was the love of his life. He never doubted that—still didn’t—but he was starting to wonder if his love, his passion, his intensity for her could survive these affairs. She’d said she would stop, but she hadn’t. And after coming home from New York and discovering her gone again, he saw that fidelity was a lofty goal in Jane’s eyes, one she was never going to be able to achieve on a regular basis. He walked over to the bed and scratched at the brass with his thumbnail. It was starting to blacken, losing its luster. He would have to polish it. He was always the one who had to do these tasks around the beach house—cleaning up the yard, splitting the wood, retouching the crumbling paint. Jane disliked such chores, and it pleased him to take care of them for her, for them. He kept scratching at the brass. The chalky black wouldn’t seem to budge. He wondered if it could be removed at all, or whether it had spread too far. He wondered the same thing about Jane’s affairs. The thing was they weren’t even affairs. They were one-night stands mostly. She loved only him, she said, wanted to be married only to him. But damn it, what did it say about them that she needed such experiences, that she couldn’t give them up? Suddenly, taken by a rage that exploded in his belly and shot into his hands, he grabbed the rail of the headboard and rattled it violently, as if he might shake away the tarnish. The headboard banged against the wall, which only made him think of Jane, rattling someone else’s headboard. He shook it harder, the pounding increasing, the bam, bam, bam getting louder and louder. He liked the violence of it, the feeling that energy trapped inside him was coming out, and so he kept shaking the bed, kept hammering it against the wall, until it sounded like the staccato of gunfire. And then he pictured himself, acting like a teenager, unable to control his emotions. He stopped. He calmed down. “Enough,” he muttered out loud, to no one, his voice forlorn in the empty house. He turned and kept walking through the rooms, inching open a few windows, wiping the dust from the end tables in the living room, embarrassed at his solitary display of rage. Zac liked to consider himself a strong person. Jealousy had rarely been a problem before this. When Jane told him about the first guy, a year after they were married, she was so nervous, he almost thought it funny. He had never been possessive, and he had never thought he could possess someone like Jane. And so he told her to be careful and to not make it too much of a habit, but that he understood. Of course, he added, if she was going to do that, then he could sleep with the occasional woman if he wanted. But the thing was he never wanted to. Jane was enough for him. He had ventured outside their marriage only once, with Zoey, mostly because he felt it would somehow even the score, but all he could think about was Jane. And now he was tired of being her fool. Check that. Judging from his tantrum with the bed, he wasn’t just tired, he was pissed off. Truth was, he was starting to despise her a little bit. And he hated that. How could he love her so much and hate her at the same time? It was a sadistic circle. Strangely he had seen the same pattern play out in his parents’ relationship. His mother, Martina Ellis, was an artist, a flamboyant woman who hit her stride in the seventies when she changed her fine arts perspective to one of “super realism.” His dad, after their marriage, followed her to different places around the world—sometimes Manhattan, sometimes the South of France or London—so she could paint. His father often sat in the background, supporting his wife. When Zac was born, it was no different. He loved his mother, but she intimidated him with her talent and her unapologetic exuberance. That was true even to this day. It was his father he was close to. And so when his dad finally grew weary of taking the backseat, Zac understood perfectly why he had to divorce his mother. His dad understood Zac well, too. He understood why Zac would be attracted to someone like Jane, and he had been very empathetic lately when Zac called him, asking vague questions about marriage and how his dad handled it. His father answered all such questions with his usual blend of patience and candor. He spoke to Zac of how he “managed” Martina when she needed it, how he propped her up when the critics were ruthless, how he held her arm proudly when they walked through a glittering gallery showcasing her work. But in a recent conversation, his father paused and spoke a few words that haunted Zac. “Remember one thing,” he said. “It was a battle, and I didn’t win it. I had to leave.” Those words blazed through Zac’s mind now as he walked through their house one more time, then outside and onto the deck. In the summer, the deck would hold chairs with big padded cushions, a chaise, a hammock, two umbrellas. But now only an iron patio table stood alone, stark and lonely in a cool patch of light. Usually, he would be relaxing now that the house was open, maybe starting to think about a bottle of wine to uncork for Jane. But Jane would not be coming today. He’d told her to stay the hell away from the beach house, from him. Without her, the house seemed only half-full of its usual vitality, but he couldn’t stand the sight of her right now. Her bullshit dalliances were causing his mind to swirl, to wonder—Was it him? Or was it them? And how could he get his mind around it? Because he didn’t want to lose the love of his life. And then there was another persistent question—why should he be the one who had to ask these questions, to ponder new versions of right and wrong?—Why was it Jane who got to do whatever she wanted while he had to wade through the muck left behind? He stormed from the deck back into the house. He would focus on something else, on some work around here. That was what always calmed him. He hurried down the old, slanted staircase into their basement. On the workbench that was original to the house, amid the house paint and the tools, he found the brass cleaner he had used on the bed when they bought it. He grabbed a few rags from the bin under the bench and took the stairs back up two at a time. In the bedroom, he chose a spot on Jane’s side and furiously scrubbed at it with the polisher. The black started to lift, but the brass remained dull. He grabbed a clean rag and ran it back and forth, hard, over the spot. Still, it wouldn’t shine. The brass appeared slightly greenish, as if it had been inhabited by a mold that had simply taken over the bed. He squirted more tarnish remover on the rag, scrubbed again and again and again. He tried a clean rag. The tarnish couldn’t be removed. “Goddamn it,” he said. “Goddamn it.” His voice, low as it was, cut through the crisp, spring coolness of the house, and he heard the anguish there. For some reason, it was that sound, that tone, which overwhelmed him. He sank to his knees and grief washed over him. He couldn’t go on like this. They couldn’t go on like this. He began to sob. He hadn’t cried in eight years, not since his grandmother, his dad’s mom, passed away. But the tears were different now. They weren’t the soothing sobs to mourn the passing of a life lived well. These were angry sobs, full of despair. And mostly, full of fear. Because he had no idea how he would handle this grief. He had no idea how to move on from here. 11 “Have you ever cheated?” Sam shot a sideways glance at me. His green eyes sparkled like olives in a martini. “Not on you.” “On anyone?” His eyes moved away, looking toward the empty stage. As he did so, the overhead lights glinted in his cropped blond hair, making him look like the California boy he was. We were no longer engaged or exclusive, but now, as we tried to figure out what to do with our lives and ourselves, Sam and I dated. Which meant that instead of spending our nights making dinner at home or watching the Cubs on TV, we went out for nights like this. We were at Wise Fools, a bar on Lincoln Avenue, where we often went when we first met. Like a lot of the other bars on Lincoln, it was wood-clad and beer-soaked, the kind of place that brought out the twenty-somethings searching for Bud Light specials. But Wise Fools booked great bands, too, and since Sam was a guitar player and an all-around music lover, we’d been finding ourselves there every few weeks. The band tonight was Mutha Goose, which I thought was just about the stupidest name I’d ever heard, but Sam’s friend R.T. was the lead guitarist. R.T. and Sam often played together, but Sam never had the time to be in a real band. He was always too busy with business school and then work. Sam, who had been Forester Pickett’s financial advisor at a wealth management firm, had lost his job, too, after taking off temporarily with Forester’s property, but unlike me, he’d landed on his feet. The fact that the whole mess had been in the news hadn’t helped me one bit. Lawyers don’t like even a whiff of a scandal associated with their law firm. The same was true with Sam’s business. None of the wealth management firms would take him on, but a friend gave him a job on the trading side of the business. He didn’t seem entirely happy, but I couldn’t tell if that was because of the new job or because we had broken up. Or maybe because he didn’t have the time to play much music lately, something which made him a little irritable. R.T. came on stage. By day, R.T. sold computer software, but his passion was his music, and nights like tonight, he looked like a musician—jeans that appeared not to have been washed for weeks, leather flip-flops, brown bangs that fell in his eyes instead of being gelled into submission. Sam waved hi to his friend, then turned back to me. I could see some kind of struggle in his eyes, but whether it was because he wished he were on that stage or he wished he didn’t have to answer my question, I didn’t know. I used to be able to read him so well. “I’ve cheated.” He said it simply, almost resignedly, as if it were something he’d wrestled and come to terms with. I felt a well of disappointment. Sam was a cheater. At that moment, I wanted to look at anything but him. I picked up my BlackBerry from the table and scrolled through the texts and e-mails. There was a time when my in-boxes would have been choked with cries for help, when someone always needed me or my opinion. Now they were fairly empty, save a text from my brother, Charlie, saying he might stop by the bar to say hello. I could feel Sam watching me, gauging my reaction to his statement. I put the phone back on the table and thought of his ex-girlfriend Alyssa, a woman who was beautiful and reed-thin. She and Sam had dated at the end of high school and into college. She was an angelic blonde who worked in geriatric research, making the world better for the elderly. In short, she made me feel like a shallow devil—the brassy, redheaded entertainment lawyer. I didn’t necessarily like Alyssa, but I felt pain for her now because she must have been the one Sam was talking about. Finally, I looked at him. “You cheated on Alyssa?” Sam shook his head. “Carrie.” “Carrie, your first girlfriend ever?” “Yeah.” He lifted his Blue Moon beer from the table and poked at the orange slice with his finger. “Sam, you were like a freshman in high school.” I thought of the monumentally idiotic things I’d done during high school. Once, when my mother was out of town and trusted me enough to babysit my brother, Charlie, I forced him to be the bartender for the monster bash I threw. He was twelve at the time. Charlie ended up drinking beer as he poured it from the keg and later threw up violently over our balcony and into the alley behind our apartment, one of the most scary and heartbreaking things I’d ever witnessed. Doing stupid things made you smarter, I figured. I’d certainly never treated my brother like that again. If anything, I had cherished and babied him after that. Oddly, he remembered the incident fondly. “Does that really count?” I asked Sam. “Hell, yeah. She was my first love.” He grimaced, as if what he’d done still tortured him. And that made my heart fill with love, like a balloon given a shot of air from an inflator. “You were so young,” I pointed out. “You didn’t know what you were doing.” “Yeah, I did.” He looked straight into my eyes. “You want to know why I did it?” I nodded, almost afraid to say anything. This was one of the things I liked about our breakup—despite the drama and the uncertainty, we were completely honest with each other now. Sure, we were honest before all this, too, but now it was different. Now, it was microscopic, as if we were both laying all our cards on the table and saying, If we’re going to do this, here’s the truth. The real, deep-down, not-so-tidy, sometimes-it-will-make-you-flinch truth. “You know what my dad is like?” Sam asked. “A drunken, selfish bastard.” I had never met Sam’s dad. Neither he nor his sisters had any consistent contact with him, but I’d heard the stories. R.T. and his band began playing. Their first number was a cover of a song by The Killers called, appropriately enough, “All These Things That I’ve Done.” The lights in the bar dimmed. The stage lights, orange and bold, grew stronger, while the music grew louder until it seemed the stage pulsed like a heart. Sam pulled his chair closer so I could hear him. “This was a few years before my mom finally got rid of him,” he said. “Then I kind of wanted to be like him. I thought the way he acted—tough and swaggering and hard-partying—was how guys were supposed to be. So I acted like that, you know? My mom was mortified, and she tried to stop me, but I didn’t care. I just …” His words died away for a second. “You wanted him to love you.” I watched his face for a reaction, hoping he wouldn’t close down the conversation because it was too uncomfortable, something that might have happened before our breakup. Sam blinked slowly a few times, his brown lashes hitting his cheeks, already tan from playing rugby outside. “Yeah. Exactly. I could tell he wasn’t going to be around for long, and even though I knew he was a jerk, I was terrified of having to take care of my sisters and my mom, even though no one ever said I had to. So I drank a lot and smoked pot and just kind of pretended I was like him. And then one day … man, I can remember it exactly … I came home from school early because I wasn’t feeling good or something. And he had this girl in the house. I knew her. She was a waitress at one of the pancake houses he owned, and she was the one I’d always had a crush on.” Sam shook his head. “They didn’t hear me come in. She was on the counter and they were …” “Going at it,” I finished for him, feeling the bewilderment and shock Sam must have experienced. “Yeah.” He laughed, a brittle sound. “Like, right there on my mom’s countertop. I just turned around and left. I went down the street to this park and I sat there for four hours. The next night, I went to a party and picked a fight with Carrie, and as soon as she left, I walked up to this girl by the pool. We ended up making out behind the pool house for an hour.” “And you think that’s cheating?” “Yes,” he said without hesitation. “Don’t you?” “Yes,” I said, relieved to be on the same page with Sam about this, about anything. Sam moved his chair even closer. He put his arm around my back and nuzzled my neck. “Red Hot.” Sam whispered my nickname in my ear. “I miss you.” I turned my head to nestle into him. But then I remembered Theo. Guilt ripped through me. I hadn’t cheated, I reminded myself. I hadn’t, I hadn’t. But I felt as if I had. Sam kissed me, and the room seemed to disappear. In the distance, I heard the band play a slow, hard version of “Tempted” by Squeeze. Tempted by the fruit of another … Alarmed by the seduction … I wish that it would stop. Except that I had no interest in stopping Sam now, or whatever would happen with us later that night. Suddenly, I didn’t care about the technicalities of dating two men, of whether that made me a bad girl, a temptress or a slut, when before I’d always been the pillar of fidelity, the poster child of monogamy. “Hey, what am I interrupting?” Sam and I pulled apart. I blinked at the figure that stood in front of our table, backlit by the stage lights. It took me a moment to make out my brother, Charlie, who wore a bemused expression on his face. “Hey, man!” Sam jumped up to give Charlie a hug. The two of them loved each other. Charlie returned the hug, thumping Sam on the back. Charlie had chestnut-brown hair but in the stage lights, you could see a tinge of red. He had spiral curls like mine, which he let grow a little longer than most men’s hair. He was one of the sweetest guys I knew. Also one of the laziest. Charlie had been living off a worker’s comp settlement for a few years now, and all his friends called him “Sheets” because he spent so much time in bed. I stood, and Charlie made his way around the table. He hugged me tight, lifting me off the floor. “How are you doing, sister?” He set me down, and we smiled at each other, saying nothing. “Good,” he said, reading in my eyes that I was just fine. At least at that moment. Sam found another chair for Charlie, and as he sat, my phone lit up. A new text message. I picked it up. Somehow I’d gotten three texts in the time Sam and I were kissing. All of them from Jane Augustine. Are you doing anything tonight? the first said. Would you be able to come over to my house? Hi, Izzy, the next said, I’m so sorry to bother you but not sure who to call. I’m kind of freaking out here, and I wondered if you were out and could stop by. Izzy, the last said. I need some help. I looked at the call log and saw she’d called twice but hadn’t left a message. I went into the front room of the bar, where it was quieter, and called Jane. “Thank God,” she said, answering. “I’m so sorry to interrupt your night, but can you come over?” “What’s going on?” “Someone has been in my house.” “What? Is Zac there?” “No, he took off today for our weekend place.” She exhaled hard. “I came home, and I found some … well, some stuff in my house.” She was talking fast, her voice distressed. “Someone has been in here.” “Have you called the cops?” “No!” Her voice was alarmed now, anxious. She sounded as if she were bordering on tears. “Izzy, you know how it is. If I call the cops, then this is all over the news. The network is launching Monday. A legal network. This is not the kind of PR we need.” “But are you safe?” “I’ve been through the whole house. There’s no one here now.” She sighed. “I didn’t know who to call, and you were always the one we went to when there was any problem with work. I don’t know … Is there any way you could come over?” “What’s your address?” I asked. She told me. “I’ll be right there.” 12 Jane’s place in River North was one of eight town houses, all clearly built at the same time, probably by the same developer, but hers was the nicest—an elegant graystone, nearly white. It was new construction but built to appear old with iron streetlamps with electrical flame that flickered like real fire and a black iron fence with twisted posts. French balconies surrounded the tall upstairs windows. The house was lit up—all the lights must have been on—but the shades on the first floor, tasseled at the edges, were drawn, hiding whatever was happening there. I hurried up the front steps, trailed by Sam and Charlie. The brass knocker was shaped like a lion’s head. I used it to pound on the door. Jane answered right away, as if she’d been standing behind the door, waiting for us. She wore workout clothes—black pants that hugged her long legs and a tight pink T-shirt that proclaimed the name of a local jewelry store and said, Simply the Best for 20 Years. Her hair was in a high, swinging ponytail. She seemed younger somehow, almost like a girl barely into her teens who looks like an adult from far away but seems so vulnerable and coltish up close. Or maybe it was the scared look on Jane’s face. “Izzy!” She launched herself into my arms with a fierce, tight hug. We’d never really embraced before, but I could tell she needed it, and I squeezed her back just as tight. “Thanks so much for coming.” She drew back. “You look cute,” she said, distractedly. “Thanks.” I was wearing a red, patterned skirt and tall black heels for my date with Sam. “Jane, this is Sam, my …” I still didn’t know what to call him. My ex-fianc? wasn’t right, and boyfriend wasn’t, either. I decided to just skip it. “And my brother, Charlie.” She shook their hands. “Hi, guys, c’mon in.” Jane looked nervously up and down the street before leading us into her house. Inside was a wide living room with polished wood floors. The walls were a soothing fawn color; the moldings along the high ceilings were painted a creamy ivory. Jane, or her very talented decorator, had filled the place with plump, coconut-brown couches and overstuffed chairs on either side of the five-foot marble fireplace. There were colorful touches everywhere—still-life oil paintings that hung side by side, an Aztec vase which stood on a pedestal, throw pillows with an African print. “Wow.” Charlie looked around in wonder. “Great place.” Charlie found everything fascinating. He would have been awed by an eight-by-eight prison cell. But he was right, Jane’s place was unique—somehow both chic and welcoming. “Thanks.” Jane glanced around, as if suddenly seeing it through someone else’s eyes. “My husband and I have been here for almost ten years.” “You won an Emmy?” Charlie pointed to a built-in bookshelf next to the fireplace. On it was a gold statue of a winged woman holding aloft a globe. Jane smiled. “Yes. Last year.” “Can I touch it?” Jane laughed. “Sure. Pick it up.” Charlie walked over to the shelf and lifted the statue. “Wow.” He curled it a few times as if it were a barbell. “This thing is heavy.” “Charlie!” I said. “Be careful.” “What? It’s cool.” Jane laughed again. “Don’t worry about it.” She looked at me. “Izzy, can I show you something?” “Of course.” “We’ll be right back,” she said to Sam and Charlie. “Take your time,” Sam said. He shot me a smile. If Sam was upset that our date had been interrupted, first by my brother and then by Jane’s SOS call, he didn’t show it. And that made me love him all the more. If only, I thought for a second. If only we could base our decisions about who to love (and how to spend our lives) solely on a feeling we have at a given moment. If that was the case, I wouldn’t care what Sam had done months before or why he hadn’t confided in me about it. Jane led me from the living room into a massive kitchen with a center granite island marbled in colors of sand and black. On the island sat a tall vase of flowers. She pointed at them. “When I got home, they were here.” “The flowers?” It was a mixed bouquet, clearly expensive, in orange and red—passionate colors. “I have no idea who left them. Zac took off this morning for our other house.” A pained expression moved into her face. “He left after I got back from coffee with you. He said he couldn’t be around me. He went to our house in Long Beach on the other side of the lake. I went to rehearsals and then worked here in my office for a while—there’s so much to do to get ready for the launch on Monday—and Zac called me from the lake house when he got there. I finally took a break and went to the gym before it closed. I was gone for an hour and a half, and when I came home, this was here.” She crossed her arms and looked at the vase as if it were filled with rotting food. “Is it possible Zac left it before he went to Long Beach, and you didn’t notice?” “No, I’m telling you, the flowers weren’t here before I went to the gym. And there was no card. Someone came into the house while I was out and left them.” “Any clue who that is?” She shook her head again. I stared at the flowers, the kitchen feeling cooler all of a sudden. “Who has keys to your house?” “Zac and I. Our cleaning lady. Zac’s mom, but she’s still in London for the winter.” “Was the house locked?” She nodded. “I always lock it before I go anywhere, even if I’m just walking up the street for the paper. The thing is, we’ve got a key hidden outside, near the garage, just in case.” “How many people know about that?” She exhaled. “A fair number. I have this little problem of losing my keys, so all my friends know about it, and some of the …” She raised her eyes to me, asking me to understand. “Some of the guys.” I said this plainly, with no judgment. And the truth was, I really didn’t judge Jane for having affairs. It wasn’t for me, but I had never believed that the rest of the world needed to conform to my ways. “So you bring people like that here?” “Occasionally. Very occasionally.” “Did you check to see if the key was still there?” She turned to the counter behind her and lifted up a magnetic box. “I got it after I found the flowers. It was in the same place. I couldn’t tell if the key had been used or not.” “Do you have an alarm?” “Yeah, but I only turn it on at night or when I’m leaving for more than a day.” “Could Zac have driven back from Long Beach and left the flowers?” She looked at the vase, thinking, chewing the inside of her mouth. “I don’t think so. I mean, I guess it’s possible. Long Beach is an hour and a half away, and that’s about how long I was at the gym.” “Are you sure he called you from Long Beach?” Her eyebrows drew closer together. “He called from his cell phone, and he said he was there. I guess it’s possible, technically, that he wasn’t. But they don’t look like something he’d buy.” “Have you called him since you found the flowers?” “Yeah, but he didn’t answer. I left a message.” I looked at the bouquet. “Maybe it was a friend, someone trying to be nice? Maybe they just forgot the card.” I looked at my watch. It was getting late. And Sam had plans with his rugby team tomorrow. If I didn’t get to spend time with him tonight, it might be a few days before I saw him again with my new work schedule. Jane bit the inside of her mouth again. I could tell she was mulling something over. “There’s more.” “What do you mean?” “Can you come upstairs?” I followed her from the kitchen back through the living room, where Sam and Charlie were sitting on the couch, laughing about something. They looked at us expectantly. “Just give us a second,” I said. Upstairs, we passed a guest room and a home office, both decorated to the hilt, and like the living room downstairs, accented colorfully with artwork, sculptures and rugs. “This is our bedroom,” Jane said. I walked in and looked up. The ceiling was at least thirty feet high and vaulted. French doors led to a balcony, where I could see two chaise lounges and a host of plants and trees. A stone fireplace was against one wall with a stack of birch inside. A massive bed with twirled posts stood against the far wall, so high that small steps had been installed on either side. It was made up in a sumptuous way with white linens, plump pillows and a salmon-colored, tufted duvet. “Great bed,” I said. “Isn’t it? This is my favorite room of the house. Or at least it was.” Jane pointed to the leather bench at the foot of the bed. On it sat a black box, about the size of a shoe box, but square-shaped. “That was here, too, when I came home.” Even visually, the box seemed to have a weight to it, a presence. “What is it?” She walked over and lifted the lid of the box, which opened on one side. She held out the box. There was something red inside, something shaped in a circle. “Is that your scarf?” Jane had a red scarf that she wore during important broadcasts. “Yeah,” Jane said, her voice brittle. “Look closer.” I stepped toward the box. I felt off-kilter, infused with an irrational fear that she might slam the lid closed on my hand. I peered into the box. “Jane, is that …?” “Yeah,” she said. “It’s a noose.” 13 I put my hands behind my back and looked down at the scarf. “Do you always keep it in this box?” “No, I have it hanging inside my closet door with my other scarves. I mean, it’s become my thing, right? And I’m supposed to wear it on Monday when the station launches. But it’s not like it’s some precious fabric. I just toss it in my closet with the rest of my stuff.” “But you came home and it was here, in this box?” “Yeah. I was so freaked by the flowers that I came running up here, and this was sitting on the bench. And inside the scarf was tied like that.” She dropped the box back on the bench. The scarf flew out and landed softly on the wood floor. “Who would do that?” Her voice was full of pain and panic. I stared at the scarf. “Do you tie it like that when you hang it up?” “No! I just hang my scarves over a peg.” She was talking faster, her tone more anxious now. “And look at it. I mean, I’m not crazy, right? That’s a noose.” There was no mistaking the hangman’s knot, tied under a seven-inch loop, just big enough for someone to put their head through. “You’re not crazy. But I’ve got to ask again, could it be Zac? You said he was angry. Maybe he’s really angry.” With one hand, Jane nervously tugged her ponytail with her fingers. She reminded me again of a young girl, a scared girl. “I just can’t imagine Zac would do this. Why not just tell me to stop it or he’ll leave me?” “Has he ever said that?” “No. He’s said he could never give me up, no matter what I’ve done.” We both stared at the noose. The scarf was made of a shiny deep red silk. I’d always thought of Jane’s scarf as competent, in-charge, bold. Now, it seemed sinister. Her eyes cut to my own. The mauve-blue of her irises seemed to stand out against the pale of her skin. “I can’t believe this.” Her look bordered on terror. Fear emanated from her, cutting into the room, filling it, so that everything seemed to hum with intensity. “There’s something else.” “What?” She looked at the scarf again. She gave a little moan. “I don’t know how to say this. I mean, I don’t talk about this with my friends. And the truth is I think I need a lawyer right now as much as I need a friend. Can you be my lawyer?” “You want me to tell you I won’t tell anyone? That whatever you tell me is private?” She nodded. “Jane, that’s true whether I’m your lawyer or your friend. But if it makes you feel better, I’ll put my lawyer hat on. Say anything.” Jane breathed out hard. “I have this thing I like to do. Sexually. It’s … well … have you heard of scarfing?” I shook my head no. “Sometimes it’s called erotic asphyxiation.” I remembered hearing something on the news. “It’s like self-strangulation during masturbation? Something about intensifying the experience?” She nodded, her eyes on mine, looking for the judgment she seemed sure would come. I kept a bland expression on my face. “So it’s something you like to do?” “Not on my own. I do it with other people. You’re basically choking someone. Gently. It could be with a scarf or with your hands, and you don’t do it to the point of them passing out, or even close. You just do it a little, and believe me, it makes it incredibly powerful.” “You do it to other people or you have them do it to you?” I felt like a complete sexual neophyte. “Both.” Jane slumped farther against the bed, her arms crossed in front of her chest. “Usually I have them do it to me.” I said nothing. “You’ve never done anything like that?” she asked. I almost laughed. I thought I’d tried just about every position, and I thought that had made me sexually progressive. “I’m not even sure I get it, Jane. Is it dangerous?” She blew out a puff of air. “If you’re stupid about it, yes, or if you’re with someone you can’t trust, but it’s safe when you do it right.” “And what happens?” “It cuts off some of the blood flow to the brain, and you have these intense …” “Orgasms.” At least I had one word to contribute to the conversation. “Amazing. Like you’ve never had before.” She exhaled. Her gaze slid to the scarf on the floor, a red ring, like a circle of blood. “But you want to know something? I don’t think I figured this out until right now, but the scarf thing? I think it’s something I like to do because it’s punishing. Don’t get me wrong. I do love sex and the asphyxiation thing does get me going. But it’s also like I’m taking a penalty for cheating.” We stared at each other. “Boy, I’m messed up,” she said. “You could probably use a little therapy.” We both broke into nervous laughter that seemed to make the room lighter. But then our eyes fell again on that red noose. “How many people have you done that with?” I vaguely pointed to it. She shrugged. “More than a few.” A shrill bleat cut through the air, making both Jane and me jump. “Jesus,” she said, a hand on her chest. “It’s my cell.” She scampered in her bare feet to the nightstand, where she looked at the display on the phone. “Zac.” She sounded nervous. She threw a look at me over her shoulder, and I saw that fear again. She answered. “Hey, hon,” she said. “Yeah, I’m all right. What happened? Well, we had a break-in. Sort of. No, nothing was taken. Not a thing. Whoever it was left something.” She quickly told him the story, leaving nothing out. She really did tell Zac everything. “Okay,” Jane said, “I’ll see you soon.” She turned around with a sigh. “He’s coming home. He’ll be here in an hour and a half.” “We’ll stay until he gets here.” She smiled, and it made her face light up. “Thanks,” she said simply. I hugged her. I could think of little else to do to make her feel better, to feel safe. “Please don’t tell Sam,” she said, her words muffled by my shoulder. “You know, about the scarf thing.” “I told you, I won’t say anything to anyone.” We pulled apart and went downstairs. Sam was standing by the unlit fireplace. He and Charlie were talking about rugby, but I could tell by the way Sam looked at me—eyebrows expectantly up, asking a silent, Are we ready to go?—that he’d had enough family and friends for the night. I gave him an apologetic look. “If it’s okay, we’re going to stay until Jane’s husband gets home. They had a break-in.” “Are you serious?” Sam looked alarmed. His arms tensed. He had a bulldog’s way of wanting to protect people that I’d always adored. “It’s okay,” Jane said. “It wasn’t like a robbery. In fact, they didn’t even really break in. Someone came in the house using a key, as far as I can tell, and they left some flowers and … well, a gift.” Sam’s face registered confusion. He frowned at me. There was more to the story, and he knew it. And I knew that he knew it. And yet here I was doing the same thing to him as he’d done to me—promising someone I wouldn’t tell anyone about a secret. And keeping that promise. All of a sudden, I felt both closer to Sam, and yet more distant, than ever before. Jane brought glasses of water for us into the living room. We all sat on her couches for an hour, during which Charlie, who was oblivious to even a hint of social awkwardness, quizzed Jane about her broadcasting career, as if he were meeting her at a local pub. Jane answered him openly, laughing at stories she must have told a thousand times, but seeming to enjoy them just the same. It reminded me of when I’d seen her with fans at the restaurant—Jane honestly appreciated the attention people gave her. At 11:30 p.m., we heard a door opening at the back of the house. Jane flinched at the sound. Then said, simply, “Zac.” Aside from the phone call the other day, I’d never met Zac Ellis before. But I’d seen recent spreads on him and his work in the New York Times and Michigan Avenue magazine. He came into the living room. He was a short man, definitely shorter than Jane, with wavy, light brown hair. And he was sexy. You could see that from across the room. He wore gray jeans and a leather jacket that probably cost thousands, but was somehow beat-up and tough-looking on him. “Hi.” He threw a glance at us before turning to Jane. “You okay?” “I am now that you’re home.” Jane introduced us. He shook our hands, but in a terse way. He glanced at Jane. “Can I talk to you in the kitchen?” He left. “Be right back.” Jane followed after him. I looked at Charlie and Sam. “Sorry about this, guys.” Sam picked up my hand and rubbed it. “Don’t be. You had to be here for your friend.” We sat in silence for a while, the only sound the ticking of the mantel clock which looked like a miniature grandfather clock. When ten minutes had gone by, I stood. “I’m going to tell Jane we’re leaving.” I walked to the kitchen, but stopped when I reached a pair of pocket doors that were closed most of the way. Through the six-inch crack I saw Jane and Zac standing close together. Her back was to the countertop on the left side of the room. With a wide-legged stance, he stood in front of her. She had her arms crossed, her head bowed. Her face looked splotched, as if she’d been crying, but now it was expressionless, almost devoid of emotion. I must have made a sound, because both of them looked at me. “Sorry,” I said. “Sorry, I was just coming to tell you—” Zac stormed to the pocket doors and pushed them open. Surprised, I backed up. He strode past me, the leather of his coat brushing me, and marched into the living room. He looked at Charlie and Sam, then over his shoulder at me as I trailed after him. “Thanks for coming,” he said. “I appreciate you being here for Jane. But it’s time for you to leave.” 14 “Chilly,” Charlie said when we were on the street. He tilted his head at Jane’s house. He meant Zac. But that was about as negative as Charlie could get. “Weird night,” he said simply. “See ya, guys.” He kissed me on the cheek, clapped Sam on the back and loped off down the street. Sam and I stood on a now deserted street next to my silver Vespa. “What was with the husband?” Sam said. “Just worked up about the break-in?” “I guess.” And probably worked up about his wife’s stepping out. The whole thing made me wonder about Zac and why he had put up with her behavior for so long. I stared at Sam, thinking how incredibly complicated relationships were. Such complications had never been so plain to me until the last six months. “Why were you asking me earlier about cheating?” Sam said. “Is it because of Jane?” Surprised, I hesitated. Then, “Why would you say that?” He shrugged. “Just a feeling I got in there.” I darted my eyes lower. “I don’t want to break a confidence.” “You shouldn’t. I definitely don’t want you to do that.” I met his eyes again. “Thanks.” I thought about Jane and Zac for a second. “What do you think about open relationships?” “You mean where you’re together but you can date other people?” “I guess. Or sleep with other people.” He looked up toward the sky, as if he was thinking hard about this. His green eyes returned to mine again. “I don’t think they can work. I mean, monogamy is hard. It’s a major sacrifice, but I think that’s the only way marriage or a long-term relationship can work.” “But what about all those long-term relationships that fail, even though both people are faithful?” He said nothing for a second. I knew we were both thinking, Like our relationship. “I think there’s a better chance of things working out if you’re monogamous,” Sam said. “But there’s no guarantee.” I glanced over his shoulder at the outline of the Sears Tower, its top lit with pink lights. It made me think of last spring, only a year ago, an uncomplicated time when we were happy, in love, almost boring in our contentedness. We would sit on my rooftop deck, Blue Moon beers on the table in front of us, and Sam would play guitar, the lights of the skyline behind him. As much as I missed that, and as much as I was afraid of the lack of guarantees in the world of love, there was something about this new complexity that I liked, that made me feel alive. Sam kissed my forehead. “Let’s go to my place.” I was about to say yes, but then I remembered, after I’d met the Fig Leaf manager, Josie, today, she’d “hired” me immediately, but we both knew she was only giving me the gig because her boss said she had to. I started the next morning. At 7:00 a.m., and I’d been told to wear only black or white. “I can’t.” I told Sam about the store job. I’d already told him about the Trial TV gig earlier. He raised his eyebrows. “Lingerie, huh? I just don’t want you to lose your drive for the law. I mean, the Trial TV thing is fun, and at least you’re still in the legal field in some way, but c’mon, Iz, you’re a lawyer, and you’re amazing at it.” “Thanks, but no one is paying me to be an amazing lawyer right now.” I wanted to tell Sam that aside from the money that I needed to make, the other reason I was about to specialize in bras was because Mayburn would also be paying me. I would, essentially, be conducting surveillance on Josie and the Fig Leaf. I’d be studying how she ran the business, how the store was handled while the owner wasn’t there—keeping my eye out for, as Mayburn had told me, “anything that smells even a little bad.” But I also remembered his cautions about telling no one, and although I’d told Sam before when I’d worked for Mayburn as a freelancer, Mayburn hadn’t been happy about it, and he was insistent I not tell anyone this time. And so there I was, standing in front of Sam, another secret in the tiny space between us. “Come to my place?” I said. He shook his head. “I told a guy I’d run sprints with him early. I don’t have any of my gear with me.” Sam privately coached some high-school rugby players, often at the crack of ass on Sunday mornings. “Call you after practice tomorrow?” he said. “Please.” He kissed me hard. He kissed me in a way that told me how much he loved me. I kissed him back exactly the same way. And then we split apart, that space between us widening even more. The air felt cool and cleansing on my skin as I drove my Vespa home. I’d driven a scooter since my mother bought me one in high school, too nervous to have me waiting at city bus stops. I had thought that when I started practicing law, I’d get rid of it, but there was something about driving the Vespa that invigorated me, had never allowed me to let it go. Ten minutes later, I was back at my Old Town condo on Eugenie Street. The building was a converted brick three-flat. Mine was the top unit, which I loved because of the rooftop deck where Sam and I used to spend so much time. The downside of my place was the three flights of stairs. By the time I reached my condo and let myself in, I was exhausted—from the lack of sleep last night, from Jane’s confessions and the creepy break-in, from the weight of having to keep things from Sam. The small living room had pine floors and a turn-of-the-century marble fireplace with a swirling bronze grate. I slumped into my yellow chair and tried to let the whirlwind of the last few days drain away. My phone dinged, telling me I had a new text. I picked it up, expecting something from Sam, something about how he was missing me already. But it was a number I didn’t recognize, one with a 773 area code. It’s Theo, the text read. I’ve stopped myself 300 times from texting you today. I give. I smiled. I’ve thought about you a few times today too, I wrote. It was the truth. I was aware, distantly, of how quickly I had swung from Theo to Sam and back again. What are you doing? he wrote. Just got home. Weird night. Meet me out? There’s a great band playing in Bucktown. I looked at my watch. It’s almost midnight. So? Can’t, I wrote. Have to get up early tomorrow. Then let me come over, he wrote. I laughed, then typed, Nothing like cutting to the chase. You’ve taken over my head. Let me see you. I thought of Jane saying, I get different things from different people … When I’m with them, I get to see myself in a different way than I do every other day. Now I knew what she meant. Being with Theo, with someone younger and edgy and tattooed, was, quite simply, different than being with Sam, a blond, rugby-playing financial guy. And it was captivating to get a chance to see myself differently, to see myself through someone else’s eyes. I ignored the memory of Q saying, This thing is going to be a train wreck. Instead, I sat forward on my yellow chair now, holding my phone, and I let that captivation sing through my body. I lifted the phone. I texted, I’ll open the front door. 15 He walked into my apartment, and the atmosphere shifted. He wore a green Seagram’s T-shirt. The gold-and-black serpent on his left arm seemed to slither out of his sleeve. His hair looked newly washed. Oddly, he looked a little nervous, which surprised me. He was a wunderkind from what Jane had told me. And he was hot enough to get anyone he wanted, male or female. “Can I get you something to drink?” I asked. It sounded so awkward. I didn’t know how to date anymore. He held up a brown paper bag. “I brought refreshments.” He walked into my kitchen. I trailed behind. He reached into my cabinet and took out two highball glasses, as if he’d been there fifty times. “I’m glad I got to see you,” he said over his shoulder. “I’m leaving on Monday for Isla Natividad.” “Where’s that?” “Mexico. Little island. You can only get there by boat or plane. My partner and I go once a year for a few days to surf.” “You’re a surfer?” For some reason, this made me want to have sex with him. “Oh, yeah.” He crossed the kitchen to my freezer. “And this island is amazing. No cell service, no hotels. Just the sand and the surf.” “Sounds a little remote for me.” He laughed, pulling ice cubes from the freezer and dropping them into the glasses. “It’s a little remote for most people.” Out of the brown bag, Theo took out three oranges, round and vibrantly stained in a crimson color. He pointed at them. “Blood oranges. No seeds. They make excellent screwdrivers.” I said nothing. I couldn’t. He seemed to take over my kitchen with his tall frame—so different from Sam’s solid, shorter body. What was I doing asking him to come here after I’d just seen Sam? It was something I wouldn’t have considered before. I felt different from any other Izzy McNeil I had been in my life. Theo selected a knife from the butcher block and quickly sectioned the oranges. With the practiced movement of a bartender, he held a hand over each slice as he squeezed and juiced them into the glasses. He took a bottle of Belvedere Vodka from the bag and poured some into each glass. The kitchen was silent. I stood behind him, staring at his ass, at the red ribbons trailing from his other arm. He must have felt my eyes on him, but he didn’t seem to care. Or maybe he liked it. He picked up one of the oranges again, squeezed more juice into the glass. He turned around, a crimson orange in his hand. His eyes flicked over my body, and I felt as if those eyes were licking me. He walked toward me, took my hand and turned my arm over. He raised the orange and squeezed a few drops of juice on the white flesh of my wrist. Then he lifted my wrist slowly to his mouth and sucked lightly on my skin. “Good to see you,” he said. “Sorry about your weird day.” I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. He turned and picked up one of the glasses, handing it to me. “Try it.” It seemed as though he was talking about more than the drink. I took a sip. The vodka bit; the blood orange soothed it over. “Delicious.” I didn’t take my eyes from him. “How was your day?” “You still want to make small talk?” My heart tripped around, my body temp went higher. What was this kid doing in my kitchen at midnight sipping blood orange juice and vodka? “Isn’t that what civilized people do?” I asked. “Make small talk?” He put his glass on the counter. He took my glass from me and placed it next to his. “What I’m going to do to you is not civilized. Not even a little bit.” 16 The Fig Leaf was a little jewel of a store. From the front window, you could see silk slips hanging from pink, padded hangers. Delicate panties in dazzling colors overflowed from open wood chests, like piles of jewels. Nightgowns and bustiers were stacked on white cushioned benches. From the ceiling hung billowing ivory fabric, giving the place the look of a sumptuous little harem. I was about to push open the front door when it opened for me. “You’re late,” Josie said. She looked down on me at the street level, her body blocking me from entering the store. Josie was on the tall side. She seemed to tower above me in a white blouse and a long black skirt that hugged her curvy body. Her severe bobbed hair was deep brown with a cherry-cola red tint, and it was sleek, as if it had just been washed and blow-dried professionally. “I apologize.” I decided not to offer any excuses. I had none, except that it had been hard, near impossible, to boot Theo out of my bed. She jutted one leg out and crossed her arms. Through thin silver glasses that looked like lines of ice around her eyes, she gave me a formidable stare. “Look, Lexi, let’s get something really clear, okay?” I shivered a little and nodded. It was still cold in the mornings in Chicago, but optimistically, I’d shoved my wool coat to the back of my closet. My ivory-colored spring coat with the tulip sleeves was doing little to keep away the chill. “I know your parents are friends with Marie,” Josie continued, mentioning the owner, “and I love Marie for opening this store and for hiring me, but I run it, got that?” “Sure.” “I run this store, and I run it well. In fact, I run it exceptionally.” She looked down her nose at me. “Now it’s true that I cannot run it alone, and I need assistance, but if I had it my way, I would have conducted interviews, and I would have decided who my clerk should be. Please don’t think that because you know Marie that you’ll be treated any differently. I need you to work. Really work, do you understand that?” “Absolutely. Marie said you’re the captain of the ship here.” That drew a little smile. “And I’m very sorry I’m late.” She crossed her arms tighter, but she seemed to have softened. “Let’s get going.” She turned and made her way quickly through the store, weaving past a round table piled high with sleek pajamas. For the next two hours, Josie lectured me. First, she taught me the front of the store—the workings of the faux-antique cash register, the location of the two little girly dressing rooms, the placement of the stock. She told me where she wanted me to stand and greet customers. Always, she said, greet each customer individually, and don’t say the same thing to each one. She made me stand there and practice. Hi, welcome to the Fig Leaf … Good morning … Hey, how are you? … Great day out, isn’t it? As I rehearsed my lines, I pretended I was standing in court, stepping in front of a judge. Suddenly, I missed practicing law. Very, very much. When Josie was finally satisfied, she declared me ready for the back of the store. I followed her, taking my first big breath of the day. But then Josie suddenly stopped and spun around. “Oh!” I said, practically colliding with her. “Sorry.” “I forgot to tell you something. I have regular customers.” Her eyes peered at me through her silver glasses. “I won’t have your inexperience causing them to migrate to another store. When my regular customers come in, I wait on them. Understand?” My friend Maggie had worked at a clothing store during our second year in law school, and she told me about the competitiveness that sometimes arose between salespeople over regular clients. “No problem,” I said. “You do make commissions,” Josie said, seeming to feel momentarily chagrined. She lectured for ten minutes on how the commissions were tallied and paid. “But not on my customers. I wait on my regular customers.” “Got it.” I gave an affirmative, nonargumentative bob of my head. She took me in the back, a chaotic and yet somehow organized warren of rooms piled with heaps of panties and mountains of pajamas. She also showed me the big black door where stock was delivered from the side alley. Josie instructed me on how to open boxes when they arrived, how to steam the contents and then how to hang them or fold them gently so they were ready for the “front of the house” when needed. She watched as I practiced opening and preparing three boxes of merchandise. The bras were the trickiest. Each strap came wrapped in plastic, which had to be removed, and then the strap had to be attached to the bra. Steaming the bras was challenging, too. If you blasted the steam too powerfully it permanently stained the fabric (a loss which Josie told me no less than fifteen times would have to be deducted from my paycheck), but if you didn’t steam enough, the cups would retain an unsightly crease. It was monotonous work. Finally, Josie tapped her watch. “Eleven o’clock!” She smiled for the first time that day. “Open the front door, please, and start greeting customers.” “Sure,” I said, grateful for the change in task. I charged to the front with a burst of energy and unlocked the door. I took a position near the table of pajamas. Josie told me that you had to look busy when customers came in. You didn’t want them to feel that you were going to jump down their throats or were desperate for the business. So I refolded the pajamas, most of which were made of satin in various spring colors. I had refolded the table three times before I decided to move on. When, exactly, did the customers start arriving? The next table, also sleepwear, held cashmere short-shorts in whites and yellows and matching cotton tank tops. Once again, I refolded the merchandise to perfection, about four times, and still no customers. As I was moving to the rack of slips on the right side of the store, the front door dinged and two women walked in. “Hi, guys,” I called over my shoulder, before I darted a glance at Josie. She nodded at me to go ahead. Not her regular customers. One woman was looking for a strapless bra. I remembered the section where Josie kept them. I found three for the woman and showed her to the dressing rooms. When she bought one of the bras ten minutes later, I was proud of myself. But Josie wasn’t. “You should have showed them the spring panties,” she said when they left. “And the lounge-wear. We make money in this business not just giving people what they want, but also by showing them what they don’t yet know they want. Now, while we’ve got some time, let me show you how to handle returns.” I came around the desk to stand with her. She rang up a pair of lavender cotton panties with a white branch pattern on them. “Now …” She held the panties aloft. “First thing, check to make sure the tags are on and ask them if they’ve been worn.” She then started to rattle off a series of complicated steps to return the panties. She gave me more information than I had needed to take the bar exam. I struggled to memorize it all, watching her hands fly across the register, as if she were operating the Space Shuttle. “Then,” she said dramatically, “sniff.” “Excuse me?” She pointed to the crotch of the panties. “Make sure you sniff.” I had to be misunderstanding something. “Do you mean …” No, she couldn’t mean. “Yes,” she said in an irritated voice. “We have to ensure that the merchandise wasn’t worn before it was returned.” “Would someone do that?” She gave me a look that made it clear she thought I had reached new levels of stupidity. “So we have to smell the underwear to make sure they didn’t do that?” I said, just to make sure I was hearing her right. “Yes.” No hiding her irritation. “Well, isn’t it rude to the customers to smell the panties right in front of them?” She actually rolled her eyes this time. “You do it surreptitiously, of course. Like this.” She turned her body away from the register and grabbed one of the return forms behind the desk. As she did so, she casually and quickly lifted the panties and waved them in front of her face, taking a clandestine inhale. “Got it?” she said. “Sure.” Despite myself, I giggled a little. “What’s so funny?” “Nothing.” Another small laugh escaped my mouth. God, I wished Q was here. The fact that I was sniffing undies for a living would slay him. “Lexi …” Josie said in a stern voice, not bothering to complete the sentence. “I’m sorry. Really.” I squelched down a laugh and gave the panties a practice sniff. From the vantage point of the watcher in the crowd, Jane Augustine looked stunning. She stood in front of the Daley Center, the sunlight glinting off the Picasso sculpture and giving her face a luminescent glow. Her hair and her smile gleamed as she spoke into the camera. “Welcome to Trial TV,” she said, flashing a vivacious grin, “where we bring you gavel-to-gavel coverage of the courtrooms topping the news. From New York to L.A., from Chicago to Miami and from every city in between, we’ll bring you up-to-the-minute reporting, but we’ll also give you the real stories of what’s happening behind the scenes. We’ve got the best news team in the business. We’ve got our ears to the ground. If there’s breaking legal news, you’ll hear it on Trial TV first.” She paused. She flashed that smile again. “Cut!” her director yelled. The crowd that had gathered to watch broke into a smattering of applause. Jane gave a half bow to the onlookers. “Thanks!” she called out. She began to discuss something with her director, pointing at the courthouse behind her, then at the light. They glanced at their watches. They moved a few inches to the right and seemed to be preparing to try another promo shot. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». 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