The First to Lie

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

“Ten minutes ago.” Meg took a sip from her cup, gave a weak smile. “Wine, I fear,” she said. “Wine at the end of the tunnel is the only thing that’s gotten me through this crazy day. Most of my stuff is already inside, thank goodness, but Jimmy just went down to…” She tucked a lock of escaped ponytail behind one ear, but it instantly came loose. “Wherever. To get another key. I should have gone inside before he left, but I didn’t. It’ll all be over soon. I’m so tired I’m not thinking straight.”

  “That makes two of us.’” Ellie had already unlocked her apartment door, swung it open. “Come in,” she offered, gesturing toward her almost familiar living room. As she flipped on the lights, she quickly assessed whether she’d moved the laundry from the couch or left any unwashed dishes on the coffee table—not that it would matter. Housekeeping wasn’t her biggest worry now, not as long as she had soggy clothes and dripping hair. Blinker padded to the door, her white tail on high alert, and entwined herself through Ellie’s legs and various bags. “Have a seat. You can wait for Jimmy here. Just let me, um, take off this hat. And dump my stuff. Hope you’re okay with the cat.”

  By the time Ellie retuned, Blinker was on Meg’s lap, one white-tipped paw extended to touch a tired throw pillow on the humdrum tweedy couch that came with this furnished apartment. Stupid cat barely registered Ellie’s arrival. So much for feline gratitude.

  “Sorry to take so long,” Ellie said. “I was soaked through and through, you know? And I needed to rip out my contacts and wash my face. But I see you’ve made a pal.” Ellie gestured at the two of them as she stood in front of the fireplace. She wished it actually worked, making her new place wood-smoky and cozy, but it was only for show. Pretending to be a fireplace. A fauxplace. “Blinker usually disdains newcomers. Except if they hate cats. My boyfriend is semi-allergic, so of course Blink won’t let him out of her sight.” She shrugged. “Cats.”

  “Boyfriend?” Meg stroked the cat head to tail as the fickle Blinker stretched to extend the pleasure. Then Meg craned her head to the left as if to look behind Ellie. “Is he here? I don’t want to interrupt—”

  “Out of town,” Ellie said. Then regretted it. She hadn’t meant to let that little exaggeration slip, but she was tired. In truth, he had never met Blinker, but he had told her he was allergic to cats. She glanced toward the door, though she understood it was probably rude. “You have a cell phone? Want to call to see what’s up? Or maybe Jimmy-with-the-key texted you?”

  Meg stood so quickly Blinker scrambled to the floor and scampered away. “I’m intruding, and it’s so late.” She put her fingertips against her mouth, then tilted her head, apologetic. “Fine way to meet your new neighbor.”

  “No, no, all good,” Ellie lied. “Can I offer you more wine? I’m getting some.”

  When Ellie returned with two glasses of malbec, Meg was on the couch again but looking at her cell phone. “I’m so ridiculous. He went to return the U-Haul. I never drive, so he did that for me. And he thought I had a key. But it’s fine, it’s late, the hallway is safe—I guess, isn’t it?—and I can wait out there. You’ve already been too kind.”

  The opportunistic Blinker was back at Ellie’s feet now. Almost midnight, and Ellie anticipated a big day tomorrow. She was on the verge, she knew it, of a big story. And now there was a stranger in her living room. She couldn’t kick Meg out, but she certainly couldn’t invite her to stay over. That’d be like some story her newsroom would headline: cray-cray stranger comes to town and dupe-woman welcomes her in. Why didn’t she realize? they’d wonder. How clueless could anyone be?

  “It’s fine,” Ellie lied again. Tried not to look at her watch. Doomed. As Meg accepted her red wine, Ellie plopped into the armchair by the not-fireplace, its hearth now home to a ceramic bowl of certain-to-die ferns and ivy, a welcome to Boston gift from the station. She’d checked to see if the plants were cat-friendly. “So. Long day. Sounds like we’re both pretty tapped out. Sit. Tell me about yourself. Why’d you move to Boston? Are you working?”

  “Broken heart, I suppose, short answer. Family stuff. Looking for a new opportunity.” Meg took a sip of wine, saluted approval with the glass. She set it on the coffee table by her Solo cup. “How about you? What brought you here?”

  Ellie stared into her own wine, the fatigue of the day hitting harder now, her eyes burning and the last shred of adrenaline sapped. Every moment of every day was a juggle, remembering who knew what, and whom to tell what, and what to do after that. Being a reporter wasn’t only about digging up information. It was about balancing it. Hoarding it. Using it. About understanding what to let out and what to keep in and who’d be helped by it. And who’d be harmed. Sometimes her brain felt too full, as if there were too many puzzle pieces, some old, some brand-new, and they wouldn’t all fit together. Not in a picture that made sense, anyway.

  “Yours is as good an answer as any,” Ellie admitted. “Broken heart. Family stuff. Anyway, now, I’m a reporter at Channel Eleven. The all-new Channel Eleven, I’m instructed to say. Our first day on the air is in three weeks, so until then it’s all prep and promo. I was hired a couple months ago, from a smaller market where I worked for a few years, and then, like many of my fellow worker bees, started at the station three weeks ago. They’ll give me full-time, they say, if the story I’m working on gets the go-ahead. I live on pizza, I’m embarrassed to reveal. Plus the occasional guilt salad. As you said, same old same old.”

  Meg laughed, a short little maybe rueful laugh. “We’re quite the team.” She swirled her wine in the stemmed goblet. “Two thirtysomething women who—that’s right, isn’t it? You’re thirtysomething? If I’m not being pushy?”

  Ellie nodded. “Thirty-one coming up in April.”

  “Me too! Around that, at least. April. So funny.” Meg toasted her. “Here’s to us, the boring sisters.”

  Ellie laughed along with her, then Meg looked at the screen of her phone.

  “Jimmy. Finally.” Meg chugged the last of her wine. “Thanks, Ellie. You’re very kind. Don’t have to see me out, I’ll be fine. And glad to be in the neighborhood. Thanks for the welcome. My turn next time, okay? I owe you.”

  CHAPTER 3

  NORA

  Nora burrowed into her pillows, punching the white-satin-cased feathers into place and trying to settle her mind. After they’d finished their crème brûlées, she’d dispatched the boozy Douglas with a chaste hug and a silky promise. Thank goodness for the existence of a Mrs. Hawkins, the doctor’s wife. The hovering specter of humiliation was always valuable, and she’d used the what-if-she-finds-out weapon with the skill of a practiced surgeon. Would they meet again? Oh, yeah. Nora had made sure of that. Of course, there were limits to how far Nora would go, but the good doctor didn’t need to know that.

  She’d lull herself to sleep, as she did when she was revved up like this, by replaying her roles in college theater productions.

  Her mother had explained how acting was the best con of all—people paid you to be someone else, and the more you hid your true self, the more successful you’d be. “Lord Olivier always said he had forgotten who he really was, honey,” her mother had instructed her only daughter. “And after all those acting years, he was simply a vessel. He’d wait for a role and whoever that was became his true self. For as long as he needed to be. That’s why he was so good at it, dear. Remember that.”

  Her mother had performed in the theater too, in college, before she got married and played the lifetime role of mother—played being the operative word.

  Nora’s pillow would not cooperate, and though all the wine and complications of the evening should have made her brain grateful to turn off the day, it continued to churn, looping as if on instant replay.

  Her first day at Pharminex, three weeks ago. She’d shown up, as requested, on the ninth floor of the mirror-walled building in Boston’s financial district. Two weeks before, she’d passed the first hurdle there, a gut-churning interview that was more frightening in reality than in her imagination. S
he’d still aced that screening, knew she’d impressed them. Nevertheless, life being one big audition, it was a relief when they’d called her back.

  “Nora Quinn? I’m Maren.” The haughty chignoned receptionist, hair belligerently silver and a smile like ice, had clipped out her name, then made Nora trot behind her long strides down a carpeted hallway. Photos on the walls showed shiny porcelain laboratories with white-coated scientists hunched over microscopes and watching incomprehensible digital readouts. One extreme close-up showed a purple and pink capsule so detailed Nora could see thousands of tiny multicolored spheres of medication within.

  Maren stopped at an unmarked door, knocked, waited a beat, then opened it. Nora saw a fiftysomething woman standing in front of a sleek glass desk. Delicate half-open lavender roses, arranged in a crystal vase placed on a white lacquer console behind her, looked real. So did the Bearden watercolor centered on an earth-toned grass-cloth wall. So did a discreetly silver fur coat—lynx? chinchilla?—tossed casually across the back of a wing chair in the corner.

  “Ms. Fiddler?” Maren spoke it as a question, though there was no one else in the room. “This is Nora Quinn, your nine thirty.”

  Dettalinda Fiddler, because of course Nora had researched her, was the powerful head of human resources for Pharminex, had been climbing the ladder for ten years. In the early 2000s, and continuing its storied history of market-crushing success, the company had claimed a major market share in women’s antianxiety meds. Now a new drug was their star player. Pharminex loves women, a gushing online article in Pharma News had assured its readers. And Dettalinda Fiddler, who’d come to big pharma by way of humble beginnings in St. Maarten, was the poster woman for the company’s outreach and opportunity. Or so Nora had read.

  “Please call me Detta,” the woman said, holding out a welcoming hand. “Maren, could you stash that coat? Haven’t had time to…” She looked at Nora, assessing. “Faux,” she explained, as the receptionist whisked it away.

  It wasn’t. “Of course,” Nora agreed. She’d remembered to sit up straight, behave like she was supposed to behave. Become a job applicant. For that morning, at least, that’s what she truly was.

  Detta swiveled into the chair behind her desk, crossed black-stockinged legs and jiggled a conservative black patent pump. Flipped through a manila folder, which Nora assumed held her carefully written application. “Your first pharma sales job, I see.”

  Nora had been ready for that, prepared herself with a whole patter about sales experience and retail experience and the similarities of persuasion, but Detta had raised a hand.

  “You’re gorgeous, let’s get that out of the way. And I’m told your pre-interview ticked all the other boxes. I’m sure your references and identification will continue to check out…” She’d looked up at Nora under long dark lashes, and Nora’s heart had lurched with anxiety at that hard-fought hurdle, just a beat, until Detta went back to the file. “You understand you’ll be on your own most of the time, correct? Work from your home or the car we can loan you if need be, set your appointments, check in via our sales-reporting system. You’ll have to know your stuff, Ms. Quinn. One training week, and if you last through the P-X tryouts, you’re in.”

  That was fast, Nora thought. But she wasn’t about to question success. Or fret about auditions. P-X, Nora knew, was what insiders called Pharminex.

  “Great. Thank you so much.” Nora had been so keyed up, so ready to joust and persuade and sell herself, that she’d almost not gotten the words out. This wasn’t a done deal. Just another audition. Nora was used to those.

  “This is life and death, Ms. Quinn.” Detta stood with the air of a commander delivering a go-to-battle speech. “I’m not talking about for you, although your job is on the line every day. We’re here to provide groundbreaking alternatives to people’s lives; it’s no less than that,” she said. “You are the conduit between this company and the medical profession, to convince them, inform them, reassure them, that what we’re producing can change their patients’ medical futures. Am I clear? Do you care enough to do this?”

  Nora almost laughed out loud as she punched her pillow yet another way. There was one streetlight outside her apartment window, persistent and annoying, that apparently was trying to keep her awake no matter how she adjusted the thin-louvered blinds. Nora flipped over, kept her eyes closed, trying to see herself as Detta Fiddler had seen her. Young enough, smart enough, attractive enough. Eager, clueless, malleable. Four out of six correct was a pretty good score.

  The training session had been a breeze. Nora had filled her brain with drug names and pharmaceutical formularies, with side effects and off-label uses, with the laws on distribution and accounting and reporting. The class spent about ten seconds, seemed like, on ethics.

  After each session, she’d approached her fellow novices individually, casually, getting to know them, making sure she’d be remembered as supportive. Enthusiastic. A team player. She’d written their names and emails in her notebook as soon as they weren’t looking: Gerri Munroe, Lydia Frost, Jenn Wahl, Christine O’Shea. Each one more attractive than the last. Could any of them be useful to her? No way to know until the time came. She crossed her fingers it would. It had to.

  She took a deep, calming breath, settled into her pillow, stared at her ceiling and imagined a stage. The one back in her junior year, when she’d snagged the lead in A Doll’s House. She saw herself as if in the audience: a younger Nora, the real Nora this time. She could still recite every line.

  She closed her eyes, letting her brain float back in time. A younger Nora. But not a happier one.

  I have been performing tricks for you, Torvald. She heard her high-school self reciting Ibsen’s line, her voice studied and self-assured. Hair in upswept curls, her waist cinched impossibly small. That’s how I’ve survived.

  CHAPTER 4

  ELLIE

  Ellie beeped her entry card through the security reader, amused, yet again, by the blue-uniformed “guard” Channel 11 had posted at the reception desk. An array of green lights silently blinked on his phone console, ignored, while the guard usually watched soap operas through half-closed eyes. Today he seemed to be asleep.

  “Tough night?” Ellie asked out loud, though softly, so as not to wake the guy up. She’d had a tough night too, what with her unexpected visitor. This morning Ellie had found a cellophane-wrapped package of chocolate chip cookies outside her apartment door, tied with a curly pink ribbon. Thank you from Meg, also in pink, was scrawled on an attached white card, followed by three exclamation marks. Ellie winced at the enthusiastic punctuation, though she would never turn down chocolate chips. They looked homemade, but that was impossible unless Meg had stayed up all night making them. Or brought them from home. Ellie realized she hadn’t asked the newcomer where home was. She’d brought the cookies with her to work, though, idly wondering what Meg expected in return. Ellie wished she had time and space for friends again. Someday, maybe.

  The guard didn’t budge as Ellie clicked the door open. Ellie was no threat, not unless she was targeting a bad guy for her next story. Like she was now.

  Two flights of stairs down to the newsroom, where the door was open to the news director’s office. She winced, walking quickly. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to talk to Warren Zalkind, it was simply that, yeah, she didn’t want to talk to him. Not quite yet. He wanted blockbuster stories. Demanded them. And had made it clear to Ellie that her job at Channel 11 depended on getting this one. The Pharminex investigation.

  At least he’d understood the need for her to have flexible hours. And that she didn’t have to report her whereabouts to anyone every single minute of the day.

  “We usually make reporters check in, day to day, keep me up to date,” Warren had said. “But, Ellie, if you want autonomy, go for it. I’m all about out of the box. Besides, it’s your potential career on the line. Not mine.”

  “I understand.” She’d agreed, appropriately grateful. And honestly so. Her suc
cess depended on her freedom.

  Now she scooted past his open door and headed upstairs for the privacy of her office cranny. No window, her one tired desk, one computer, a black metal coatrack. She swore the place had been a janitor’s closet in a former life, but in TV you took what you could get. There wasn’t room in this makeshift cubby for any memorabilia or family photos, but she’d kept none of those anyway. She was in it for this one story. This one life-changing story. Pharminex.

  Sometimes the universe provided, Ellie believed, and when this job opening appeared in the online listings, she’d pounced.

  She’d paid for her own ticket to Boston, presented herself to the news director as a crusader. It’s all about health care, she’d told him. What could be more important to every single human being? She’d pleaded her case, ticking off the ratings-magnet topics on her fingers: measles, vaccinations, maternal mortality, autism, allergies, the latest mutation of the flu. Opioids, marijuana. Fertility.

  She’d told him personal stories, how kids in her college class had sneaked Darvon from their parents’ medicine cabinets. How one of her journalism school classmates had swiped her roommate’s Palladone and slugged a few down with half a bottle of tequila—then almost died from the combination.

  “And all those opioids,” she went on. “Sure, they did what they were designed to do. But so many people, craving relief from chronic pain, became addicted. The companies who’d made those drugs totally knew the risks, and were well aware of the side effects.” She let the words sink in. “Side effects! Even the term is absurd, right?

  “But what if we’d been able to warn people before their loved ones died?” Ellie hoped she was getting through to him. “No matter how much money those companies pay in settlements, it will never bring those people back.”

  “You’re persuasive, Ms. Berensen,” the news director had said. “But do viewers really care? Do they want to hear—”