Her Perfect Life

by Rebecca Taylor

  Simon turned away from the roiling ocean and felt the wind blow hard against his back as he headed up to the house. Clare’s personal pianist, Roberto, was halfway through the last song of his set, the same exact set of songs he always played, per Clare’s request. When Roberto left, that would be a good time to try to intercept Clare. He was hoping to pry her out of the house and into the city for the evening.

  By the time he was back inside, through the darkened living room, and up the marble staircase, Roberto had finished playing. Outside her door, Simon couldn’t hear anything; the pianist would be making his exit as soon as he’d gathered his music and packed it away in his satchel. The handle of the door turned, and a beam of light shot through the crack of the open door into the dark hallway, where Simon waited to see his wife.

  Roberto slipped out the door. Almost seventy, his back bent and fingers crooked from his lifetime devotion to classical piano, he pulled the door shut behind him.

  “Roberto,” Simon said.

  The old man startled and dropped his slim leather bag with a thud onto the hardwood floor.

  “Sorry,” Simon said and placed his hands on the man’s shoulders for reassurance. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  Roberto turned around, relief washing over his face as he pressed one hand to his heart. “You got me good, son.”

  Simon bent down to pick up the man’s bag. “I’m so sorry. I was just wanting to quietly slip in as you were leaving.” He motioned toward the still-open door and handed Roberto his satchel back. “How’s she doing?”

  Roberto adjusted his glasses and took a moment to think. “Quiet, I suppose. But she’s always quiet when I play. Today, though, I guess something felt a bit different, maybe a bit off,” he finished in a whisper. “Everything okay?”

  Simon bit the inside of his bottom lip then scratched his chin. He’d need to shave before they left, assuming he could get Clare to come with him. “She had some not great news this morning, a bad review from another author.”

  Roberto nodded. “Usually, she sits on the couch, looks out at the ocean when I play. Lost in her thoughts.” He shrugged. “Barely said hello when I came in today and was poring over some books most of the time, then on her computer for a bit. I imagine she’s pretty distracted by the news.”

  Simon furrowed his brow and nodded, suddenly worried Clare had gone back on her earlier promise to stay off of social media until the news about Donna’s review could blow over. He reached out to shake Roberto’s hand. “Thank you,” he said as the old man placed his gnarled, knuckled hand in his own. “Until next week?”

  Roberto smiled and nodded before he turned to leave. “Oh, one more thing. It’s probably getting about time to have Her Majesty tuned. She’s not too far gone just yet, but I can hear her starting to go wrong.”

  “I’ll call the piano tuner tomorrow, see if she can get out here in the next week or so.” The piano tuner and the pool guy. All Simon needed now was to find a leak in the damn roof. He thought again of how much he missed the simplicity of their two-bedroom New York apartment.

  “No rush, when she can get to it.” Roberto raised his hand once in goodbye and started his slow and careful descent down the wide staircase.

  Simon turned his attention back to the light streaming from the crack in Clare’s door. She wouldn’t want to be disturbed. She never did. He pushed the door in anyway, revealing her lavish white enclave, her sanctuary, as she called it. The designer had cautioned Clare, “Maybe, just one or two spots of color?” But Clare had been insistent. White walls, white couch, white shag rug.

  He hadn’t done it on purpose, but even the dog he picked out for her was snow white. Charlie, lying curled in a blanket on the couch, lifted his head when Simon came in. His tail wagged violently and thumped against the taut buttoned leather. Simon couldn’t help but smile at the always-happy dog, before turning his eyes to his wife. As Roberto had described, her back was to him, her entire focus and attention aimed at the wide, flat computer monitor in front of her. But on the coffee table, and strewn all over the rug and couch, hundreds of the journals from her shelves were stacked, open, resting on the arm of the couch. He could also see a pile of pens on the floor and new notebooks with Clare’s handwriting.

  She was writing a new book.

  This both excited him, as Clare was his client and he always loved her work, and depressed him, as she was also his wife who always worked. When Clare was in the throes of a book, she rarely left the house, rarely left this room. The thought of her entrenching for the next several months made his own feelings of entrapment swell. Resisting the urge to go peek at what she was working on—it would make her angry—Simon instead headed over to Clare, who was still oblivious to his presence.

  The sound of his shoes on her marble floor could be heard, but she didn’t move a muscle to suggest she noticed. When he was only a few feet away, he could see she had her earbuds in. She always listened to music when she wrote.

  Except, she wasn’t writing.

  On the huge screen, he could clearly see that Clare was on Facebook; she had promised him. A nervous dread wormed its way around his spine. What damage had she already done? A public social media throw down was the last thing he felt like trying to clean up.

  “Clare?” he said, placing his hand on her shoulder.

  She screamed and jumped sideways in her chair. She whirled around, startled and angry. It took her a moment to register it was him. “Jesus, Simon!” Her voice echoed through her study. She yanked one of the earbuds from her ear. “You scared me to death.”

  “Sorry,” he said flatly, then pointed to the screen in front of her. “You promised.”

  She wrinkled her face, deciphering what he meant, and it dawned on her when she glanced back at her screen. “What, this?” She reached for her mouse, aimed her cursor, and with a single click, she shut the whole show down. “I didn’t break my promise. It has nothing to do with Donna Mehan.”

  He cocked his head. “Well, what does it have to do with?”

  “As if it’s any of your business,” she shot back. “I am still entitled to some privacy, yes? No? You tell me, Simon. Do I need to consult you before I look into the specifics of my high school reunion?”

  This. He wasn’t expecting this. “What? Reunion?” He shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s nothing. This year is my high school’s twenty-year reunion.”

  Dumbfounded, he stared at her. “And? You’re thinking about going?” It was impossible to hide his sarcasm.

  Clare shifted in her seat, her chin raised a fraction of an inch. “Maybe, I don’t know. I was just looking into it.”

  He closed his eyes and took a very long and deep breath. It occurred to him, and not for the first time, that he quite possibly didn’t know his wife, and most successful client, at all. He had no idea what to say to any of this, couldn’t find the words to explain to her something that seemed obvious to him and yet she, repeatedly, seemed to fail to understand. She was Clare fucking Collins. What exactly did she think was going to happen if she RSVP’d to her high school reunion?

  This wasn’t why he’d come in here.

  He opened his eyes and found her staring back at him. “I came to see if you’d come with me into the city. One of my other clients has a signing at City Lights Books.”

  “Which client?” she asked, something like jealousy coloring her tone.

  “William Cleary.”

  Clare rolled her eyes. “That wordy windbag?” She rotated her chair so she could get up from behind her desk. “Have fun.” She walked over to the couch, and Charlie, who was now standing on his hind legs, his head peeking over the back of the couch, was eagerly awaiting her attentions.

  “Yes, well, your personal opinions aside, I was hoping you’d come with me.”

  She picked Charlie up under his front
legs, his back legs squirming until she cradled him on his back. Bending her head low, she loudly kissed the side of his face. “Who’s the best dog ever?” she cooed. Charlie licked her cheek several times. “Charlie is. Charlie’s the best dog ever.”

  The dog, clearly in heaven, looked adoringly up into his mother’s face.

  “Clare,” Simon interrupted them. “Will you come with me? I thought we could make a night of it.” He moved in to pet Charlie’s belly and tried smiling at her. “I’m sure we could still get a last-minute table for Ms. Collins at a good restaurant.” He wanted to turn this around, be fun, convince her to come out with him, leave the house, enter into the world. “We can stay the night at the condo. We’ll take Charlie with us. And tomorrow, we can get up and have breakfast at that cafe on the corner you said you loved. They have that outdoor patio. We can walk Charlie to the dog park on Blake—he’d love that.” He was begging her. He wasn’t even trying to play it cool at this point.

  He needed to get off this desolate rock. They needed it.

  He was so goddamned lonely out here.

  Chapter 9

  Clare

  Two years before her death

  When she turned, she had seen Simon holding up his hands, both sorry and surprised. Roberto had finished and left already, not wanting to disturb her. Now Simon was trying to coax her out of the house and into the city for the night. He was even using Charlie as bait.

  His desperation, it hung all over him—she found it nauseating.

  Clare looked at the stacks and stacks of journals littering the coffee table and floor, her notes—the beginning of her new book. “Why don’t you go ahead?” She placed her hand on his cheek for a moment before returning it to Charlie, cradled in her arms. “I’ve started something new. I don’t want to get distracted right now. I don’t want to lose this thread.” She turned away from him and stared out the glass wall, the sky darkening so that the lights of San Francisco to the south reflected off the Pacific in the distance.

  When she turned back around, he was staring at the piles of papers and books. “You’ve already started,” he said.

  Clare sighed. “Yes. It just hit me. You know how it is—creative feast or famine.”

  He turned to face her. She knew he wouldn’t press her to come with him. “You’ve never had a famine,” he said, trying his best to smile. “Don’t get me wrong, I love your books as much, probably more, than anyone. I just miss you when you’re working on them. I guess I thought we might have a bit more time, you know, before.” He gestured to the mess.

  “I’m sorry, Simon. Really.”

  He shook his head. “How ridiculous that my most lucrative client apologizes for making money.”

  Clare shrugged. “I guess that’s one of the problems that comes with shitting where you eat… Isn’t that what your mother warned you about?”

  Simon didn’t move a muscle; only his eyes shifted up to her face. He held her gaze for several long, uncomfortable seconds before turning to the glass wall himself. It was a low blow, dragging his mother in, but the impact was effective.

  When he had first started dating Clare, his mother, an editor who had married a writer, Simon’s father, had tried to warn him about falling for the client. “It’s hard, Simon. They’re temperamental, fragile…and, I’m sorry to say, downright infantile at times. You know the old adage about shitting where you eat—it isn’t pleasant.” Fifteen years ago, he’d made the mistake of joking about his mother’s warning with Clare—and she never let him forget it.

  “I’m going to get going, then. William’s signing is at eight; if I leave now, I’ll still have time to get some dinner in the city.”

  “You’ll be staying at the condo then?”

  He nodded and turned back to her and Charlie. “And I’m going to catch a flight to New York tomorrow.”

  Clare raised her eyebrows at this unexpected news. She tried to not look pleased. “New York? Okay.”

  “I have some meetings I’ve been putting off,” he explained as he closed the distance between them. “I’ve been out west too long.” He tried to smile, but Clare could see he was hoping she would ask him to stay, or take her with him. She would do neither.

  “It can’t be helped,” she said, knowing it wasn’t true but not caring. There wasn’t any reason Simon needed to be in New York for work. He handled everything over phone and email.

  “That face-to-face…editors,” he added lamely, not even believing it himself.

  “Well…” She kissed his cheek. “We’ll miss you. Be safe.”

  Simon stood there a moment longer, staring at her and her dog.

  “Do you want help packing some things?” she asked, hoping to hurry him along but also praying he’d say no.

  He shook his head, his mouth flattening into a line. He looked into her eyes. “I’ll miss you. I love you.”

  She smiled, but felt flat and emotionless. Her eyes rested on the top button of his white oxford shirt. “I love you, too,” she replied before letting him kiss her goodbye.

  Chapter 10

  Eileen

  In the San Francisco airport, Eileen stood with her bags and her sister’s book in her hand staring up at one of the overhead signs, unable to bring the words into focus.

  Dammit, she was really drunk.

  As other passengers pulling bags rushed past, she took a deep breath and held it as she squinted and forced her eyesight to untangle the blur of swimming words above her head. After several seconds she was finally able to make out Passenger Pickup and Lower-Level along with the direction of the arrow she needed to follow, right. Eileen hefted her tote back onto her shoulder and grasped the handle of her suitcase before heading off toward the escalator.

  “Excuse me,” a woman said as she touched Eileen’s elbow. When Eileen turned to face the heavyset, middle-aged woman with a mass of unruly curls that didn’t look to have done battle with a comb in quite some time, she was surprised to see a copy of A Perfect Life raised from the woman’s purse like it was a coded communication between them. The woman smiled and pointed to Eileen’s copy of the same book cradled in the crook of her arm. “I couldn’t help but notice a fellow fan.”

  “Oh.” Eileen managed to find her voice. It sounded slow and too drunk in her head. “Yes.” She nodded.

  “Isn’t it just the most horrific news?” The woman’s expression suddenly turned sad, like a poor actor in a community play. She shook her head and furrowed her brow. “You have heard, haven’t you? About Clare Collins? I’m just devastated. I’ve read every single one of her books, some more than once. I just can’t believe this will be her last.”

  Eileen’s mouth went dry. It was impossible to think of what words to say. Should she admit Clare was her sister? Would that make this more or less horrible? She couldn’t decide, mostly because her brain was drowning in gallons of wine. She stared blankly at the woman and waited for whatever came next in this surreal moment.

  “Oh God!” the woman exclaimed as she reached out and grasped Eileen’s arm. “You do know, don’t you? That Clare Collins died last night?” She had the decency to whisper her last sentence. The woman removed her hand from Eileen’s arm and placed it over her heart. “I hope I’m not the first one to break the news.”

  Eileen shook her head. No, she had heard.

  “I was this close.” The woman pinched the ends of her pink manicured fingertips together. “This close to going to see the movie last night. I couldn’t believe they were releasing the movie and book at the same time! But no.” She held up her hand like a stop sign. “I always, always read the books first, just in case, you know, they get it all wrong and the movie’s terrible.”

  Eileen swallowed. “Clare…wen to the premi lasss nigh…t,” she slurred.

  The woman recoiled a fraction of an inch, her smile turned uncomfortable. “I’m sorry. What was that?” Sh
e tilted her head.

  Eileen bit both her lips between her teeth. She hadn’t meant to say anything at all, and now had zero confidence in her ability to execute a whole new sentence, especially since her last one had just tumbled from her loose and drunken mouth. She shook her head, her hand haphazardly waving in front of her, as if this could somehow wipe away what was now clear to this woman with her Oh, oh I see expression.

  “She’sss my siiiisster,” Eileen explained.

  The woman took half a step back. “Well, I hope you enjoy it.” She pointed her index finger to Eileen’s copy, took another step away, then turned and left.

  Eileen watched the woman retreat. “Bissch,” she breathed. It was not like Eileen was the one bothering strangers in airports.

  She had sipped glass after glass of cabernet from Denver all the way to San Francisco, never waving off the generosity of the first-class flight attendants, who were always ready with the bottle when she needed a refill. As she cut a weavy, uneven path for the escalators, it became embarrassingly obvious that drinking large quantities of wine while trying to process soul-crushing life events was a huge mistake. Especially since once the flow stopped, it wasn’t like she could simply climb the familiar staircase in her own home and pass out on top of her bed. No, she actually needed her brain to be working here. It needed to function and navigate her through this airport, find a taxi willing to transport an obviously inebriated passenger, and somehow communicate her sister’s address without slurring and drooling all down the front of her shirt.

  Why on earth had those flight attendants allowed her to drink so much?

  How could she have been so stupid?

  As she stepped onto the descending escalator, she nearly lost her rolling case behind her when it got hung up on something and refused to follow her. Thankfully, she was saved by the irritable man boarding the stairs behind her with reflexes quick enough to shove her bag into alignment with his foot.

  “Thank…you,” she said to him, raising her hand in apology before turning back to face the ride down. Everything about her, words, gestures, facial expressions, moved in a painful and obvious slow motion. This is how people went missing, their bodies discovered weeks later dead in a back alley or beheaded and floating in with the tide. Drunk beyond belief, one stupid choice after another, accepting the kindness of a serial killer who knew an easy target when it came along.