The Lady Upstairs

by Halley Sutton

  I waited, parked at a gas station across the street, facing the entrance to Ellen’s garage, for nearly three hours. Wishing I’d brought something to drink, resisting the urge to go inside and pay for whatever six-dollar bottle of sweet red the gas station could serve me. Finally, Ellen’s blue Dodge rattled around the corner, pulling into her garage. I locked my car and crossed the street, creeping to the windows near the front foyer of the complex, lighting but not smoking a cigarette I’d nicked from Lou to give me cover.

  Ellen had picked her living quarters with an eye to stardom. Through the gray smog that hung like smoke on the hot days, you could still catch a glimpse of the Hollywood sign, the land, the last third of it, long since knocked down. A block and a half from the Alto Nido, an old hotel where Houdini’s widow had once held séances had been converted into an old folks’ home, though they still called it a hotel. You could check in any time you liked, but you were only leaving with the coroner.

  From Ellen’s lawn, I could peer into the hallway. She’d come up from the garage, pausing to grab her mail, and was staggering up the stairs to her floor under the weight of several purple-and-white department store bags. She hadn’t wasted any time spending that money.

  I crept to the back of the complex and watched Ellen’s light go on after a few minutes. She stopped in the kitchen and poured herself a glass of white wine. I squinted up at her face—no makeup. Hair tied back in a ponytail. I couldn’t be sure, but I didn’t think she’d been with Klein. For one thing, she was sipping, not bolting, the wine.

  Ellen disappeared into the back of her apartment, out of sight. I wondered how long to wait, but she reemerged almost immediately in her skivvies, a peach wedge of rayon barely covering her butt, matching skimpy triangles holstering her dark nipples. Still sipping the wine, she bent over and came up with a black dress. Even from the street, I could see the sparkle of it. Ellen held it up to herself, smoothing it down her front. Sucking in her nonexistent gut. She made a face and dropped it and picked up another—a hot-pink number. With feathers. It almost would have been worth breaking my surveillance to call her, tell her to return the pink monstrosity this minute, no way was the Lady’s money going to pay for that disaster of a dress.

  While I sat there and watched, Ellen tried on a few more outfits and, although I couldn’t see them, new shoes, too, judging by the way she changed heights. All party clothes.

  I tried to picture the new life she was filling with couture and spandex and sequins. Maybe she imagined cocktail parties on Klein’s arm—the memory of me, and the photographs, and what she’d done and who’d she been while doing it, long behind her. A stepping-stone, unpleasant but necessary, to this upgraded life.

  Ellen would be free once we’d closed Klein. Nothing tied her to us. She’d be free and clear to put it all aside and go back to her normal life. But it wouldn’t be stardom she’d be returning to. She’d spend more time telling people she was an actress than booking jobs, and instead of rich producers, she’d be half-heartedly screwing nice bag boys she met at the corner store. It would be a blessing when they never called her back—she’d never realize how boring all those nice boys were. But she’d be devastated anyway. That’s what waits for you on the other side, Ellen, without me, I thought. That’s what you’re so eager to rush back to.

  I stayed there until Ellen undressed for a final time, exchanging feathers for ratty gray sweatpants. The apartment went black except for the glow of Ellen’s television. I could see her silhouette lean forward every now and then to grab the wineglass, her naked arm long and thin and white in the dark. I waited until I was sure she wasn’t going anywhere that night, and then I crept back to my car.

  As I drove away, I could still see the impression of Ellen’s ghost-pale, near-naked body flickering behind my eyes every time I blinked. Somebody should tell her those pink feathers made her skin look sallow. But the smile on her face in that dress—it’d be like snapping a puppy’s neck.

  Every time I blinked, the feathers swished, like a curtain dropping on Ellen’s old life. At the first red light, I picked up my phone and made a call. “Come over. I need to see you. I need you. Now.”

  He made a show of arguing with me—told me he had better things to do, he wasn’t exactly sitting at home waiting for my call, didn’t I think he had plans?—but I knew Robert Jackal would make it back to my apartment before I did. Some things never changed.

  Chapter 10

  So: the dirty stinking truth.

  Like Ellen, I used to be a little piggy, oinking for love. There was a man, the usual kind: tall, handsome, terrible. We’d worked together; he wasn’t my boss, but his pay grade was higher. I’d found something sexy even then in the art of the conquest. I’d wanted him so long, been waiting so long for him to notice me—trotting out all the obvious tricks, flouncing past his desk in my highest heels, the ones I could barely walk in, wiggling into tighter and shorter skirts every day—that when he did, I made it my mission to become exactly what he wanted me to be.

  One word of criticism, one night begged off from my company, even one lukewarm look, and I pretzeled myself to become better. I could laugh harder; I could crack dirtier jokes; I could play the lady, be meeker, sweeter, sexier; I could change and change and change and change. I could do it, I could be the dream girl. And I was proud of it, how good a chameleon I had learned to be. You could keep anyone if you tried, I thought. Most women just didn’t try hard enough.

  Did I love him?

  Oink.

  The day that Lou found me, after it had all gone bad, I was a different woman, one on intimate terms with tears. She found me sobbing inside an unlocked car. Later, I’d find out she’d been with a mark on that street: serendipity for us both. But I didn’t know any of that then.

  When he told me it was over, that it had been fun until it wasn’t anymore—and it was a real shame because I was a sweetheart and a helluva lay, but he had to be honest, even if it hurt him to say it, even though he knew it was the best thing for me—it hadn’t been only the end of our relationship. It had been the end of my career on the straight and narrow, too, although I didn’t know it at the time.

  I’d moped around the office for days, bursting into tears at my desk at the sight of him. Trying to imagine which coworker he was fucking now, what she had that was better than me. And the whole time, he never seemed bothered. After all, he’d known the score all along.

  Two weeks later, I got a summons to a conference room with him and the big boss.

  Everybody did it, so I’d never thought twice. A dip into the petty cash here and there, change from an errand that covered a drink or two at happy hour. I never thought of it as stealing, because no one ever checked. And there was no way my boss, a man with the wounded entitlement of family money he expected everyone to respect even though he didn’t, would have thought to look through the petty cash drawer on his own. That was clear to me immediately. He’d had guidance.

  “I’m so disappointed in you,” my boss kept saying, looking from me to my ex-lover and back again. “I’ve been so good to you. How could you do it?” When I hadn’t said anything, not trusting myself not to cry, disappointment had turned to rage. He told me I was fired, that he wanted me out of his sight, that I’d never work again in this town if he could help it. And he had the connections to help it.

  And the whole time, he’d sat there in the conference room, a little smile playing across his face. Letting me know that he knew he’d won, in every way possible.

  And I’d thought he had, too.

  I drove around for days. Being constantly on the road felt better than staying put. All I could do each morning was get behind the wheel and drive and drive, telling myself I was looking for Help Wanted signs, telling myself I didn’t mind serving jobs, fryer grease in my hair, as long as it paid the bills, when really all I was doing was driving in circles, passing by my old office too often even for my
own liking.

  I even saw him escorting a group of people to lunch, or, once, chatting outside the lobby with a fresh new penny of an intern. Probably some young girl who didn’t know any better than I had.

  So even though it was expensive and my bank account was turning from pink to crimson, I kept driving until I couldn’t anymore, until I was choking on the tears and I couldn’t see. Then I’d park the car on a street and put my head down on my steering wheel and sob for a few minutes.

  That was how Lou found me, shuddering all over and parked next to bushes sprouting tubed white flowers, beer cans clustered near the roots like mulch. Heaving sobs into the air like questions.

  Two fingernail taps on my window. “Everything okay in there?”

  “Go away,” I wailed. I waved my fingers in the direction of the Good Samaritan.

  “It’s just that”—the voice was soft and low, the way you speak to a startled pony—“you’ve blocked me in.”

  I looked up. I was blocking a driveway. The tubey little flowers belonged to someone’s garden. Amazing how fast even heartbreak gives way to embarrassment. I scrambled for my keys, spewing apologies and snot all over my dashboard.

  Another fingernail tick at the window. I looked up, finally. The Lou I didn’t know yet, coiled auburn hair and bright friendly eyes, smiled back at me, a pretty crooked grin, the unevenness making it all the more special since the rest of her face was so symmetrical. She bent down and leaned her folded arms against my side mirror, so we were face-to-face.

  “My name’s Lou. I think I could be a little late to work, if you wanted to grab breakfast or something. Maybe talk?”

  And then I was crying again for another reason, because there were still good people left in the world, because I was still a person in the world and someone had seen that. I unlocked the passenger door and she climbed in. Still crying, I let her guide me two miles down the road, left, right, right, parking lot, to a stop in front of a hot-pink neon sign that blinked Paulette’s Slices 24/7.

  “I hope you like pie,” Lou said. “It’s my favorite breakfast.”

  I did not. Especially for breakfast. “That sounds great,” I said, hiccuping.

  I followed Lou into the diner, smoothing out my jeans to have something to do with my hands. Lou looked fresh and cool in checked-plaid culottes and a swingy cashmere cardigan, no makeup on her face. She had a loop to her hips somewhere between a sashay and a hula dance. When I sat across from her in the booth, she smiled at me and darted a quick look up to my eyes before she pressed a menu into my hands.

  “Apple cheddar,” she said, like she was telling me a secret. “Can’t go wrong with it.” Then she swiped at her face, beneath her eyes. “A little smudge, there and there.”

  I dabbed at my face with the napkin. I’d had girlfriends back in high school. Girls on the spirit squad who invited me over to their houses after class to watch their older brothers’ friends flex muscles. I was on passing acquaintance with our school’s homecoming court, most of whom married those same muscle flexers. They sent me Christmas cards, with pictures of their fat naked babies tucked inside. I didn’t even throw away the pictures. I guess you could say we were close.

  But it had been a while since I’d been really seen by another person, and even longer since I’d felt anything like sisterhood. I opened my mouth to thank her and the whole sordid story tumbled out. A waitress came to take our order, but Lou waved her away, her eyes never wavering from my face. Around the time I was telling her about the way HR had called for security guards to escort me out, salt in the wound, she grabbed a cigarette from her purse and offered it to me with raised eyebrows.

  “No thanks,” I said, trying to catch my breath as the full spread of my misery unfurled before me.

  Lou lit the cigarette. “By the way,” she said, “I didn’t get your name.”

  And it was so ridiculous, so sad, that I lost it—laughing, whooping, donkey-braying laughs, until I snorted the tears trailing down my cheeks back up my nose. Lou sucked on her cigarette and watched me across the table, that big dopey smile on her face.

  “It’s A—” I said.

  Lou nodded. “You can think about that and tell me again later if you want.”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant, but then the waitress was back. I ordered a slice of cherry pie, à la mode, even though I didn’t like vanilla ice cream. Lou ordered two slices of apple cheddar—“one to go if I don’t finish them both”—and eyed me some more.

  “That’s a sad story,” she said finally. “I’m sorry to hear it. What an asshole. But they’re never the ones who pay, right?” She shook her head. “Asshole.”

  “Yeah,” I said, uncomfortable now that my volcanic spill was done and cooling between us. The waitress clunked three dishes down, and we sat and chewed our pie in silence. The whole time I was wishing I’d kept my big fat mouth shut and that I could leave, leave now, before I started crying again, but I’d driven her here and somehow, even in my embarrassment, the idea of going back to my car and the radio and no one else . . .

  So I stayed.

  Lou was halfway through her first piece of pie when she cleared her throat and put her fork down. I thought she was going to make some excuse, say she had to leave, and I’d know that I’d embarrassed myself beyond measure, that I’d ruined any chance I had of being her friend. Instead, she told me a sad story of her own.

  The details don’t matter much—they’re always the same. A big town and a well, he’s not so bad man and too much love that he didn’t want, a hard fall from grace. When she was done, she finished eating her slice, and I ignored the fork quivering as it came up to her mouth. Some hurts don’t let you go.

  Later, with the girls, she’d coach me how to win trust. “Use her own story in a pinch,” she’d say. “Change the details but give her something she can relate to. Then think of your saddest birthday. Tears, right away.” And it was true. Not one of my girls noticed when I spoon-fed her own story back to her, if I did it right. If I smiled, if I touched her hand gently and told her, without words, I hear you, I care. And by the time they left our business, they had a new story—a better story—to tell. I’d helped give them that.

  I surprised us both by reaching out and touching her wrist. She nodded at me, fast, like we’d established something. Lou rubbed her wrist, then held my gaze for a beat too long, long enough for me to wonder if I’d done the wrong thing by touching her.

  “You know,” she said, tapping the ash from the cigarette onto her gooey, empty plate, “you seem really sad about it.”

  “Are you going to tell me I’m better off without him?” My voice was more of a squeak than I wanted it to be. It sounded like the sort of thing my mother would’ve said, all well-meaning sugar in her voice, ignoring the fact that I couldn’t stop crying.

  “I’m saying I think you’ve got a lot to be pissed off about,” she said, her eyes very green through the plume of smoke drifting toward me. “It seems to me like you should be angry, not sad. You’ve got nothing left to lose here, y’know? That makes you dangerous. Especially if you’re angry.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I shrugged and dipped back down into my pie. But I couldn’t get those words out of my head. Dangerous? Me? To who?

  When the bill came, I fumbled in my purse for my wallet. My share was four dollars, but I was down to my last ten. Lou must have seen the panic on my face, weighing the half-uneaten piece of pie on my plate with the last few dollars I had and the prospect of rent in a few weeks, and all the meals until then.

  “Let it be my treat,” she said, smiling again, like it was no imposition, like it was nothing. But I liked her. I wanted to be her friend. That meant equal.

  I slid the bill out of my wallet, watching it all the way down onto the counter. The cards were nearly maxed out; the cash was running thin. Part of me said I needed that ten dollars more than
I needed a friend. Part of me said I should grab her money and run.

  But I was different then, so I passed her the ten dollars and tried not to stare at the fifty she laid down. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have nothing smaller, to have to pay for pie with Grant’s face.

  Lou asked me questions, but my eyes kept flicking down to the tab. I couldn’t help it. It was a crawly panic at the back of my neck, the idea that I’d wasted something I needed. I could feel tears pricking my eyes. She had to keep repeating her questions before I answered. All I could see was the little tear in the top right corner of her bill and the faded red scribble over Alexander Hamilton’s left eyebrow on my own. Like someone had used it as a coloring book.

  The waitress swung by, reached for the tab. But Lou was quicker. She trapped the bills between her nail and the table.

  “One more minute,” she told the waitress, flashing a high-wattage smile. “We might not be done yet.”

  A stone dragged down the pit of my stomach. I opened my mouth, about to say that I was full, thanks, when Lou stopped me.

  “What are you,” she said, “about a 34D?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m pretty good at this,” she said. “Am I right?”

  I could feel color creeping into my face, but more than that, I was disappointed. This was it, the reason she’d been so nice to me out of nowhere. People aren’t just nice; they always want something. I should’ve known better. I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “Tell you what,” Lou said. “How about neither one of us pays for breakfast.”

  I shivered, and my nipples got hard against my elbows. “You mean leave? Without paying the bill?”

  Lou snorted. “No way, this is my favorite diner.” She jerked her head toward a booth on the other side of the diner. “You see that guy over there? Glasses, too much forehead.”