Another Thing To Fall

by Laura Lippman

  "She's kind of attractive," Flip said. "If I were single, I'd ask her out."

  Ah, good old Flip, always looking for a matrimonial noose to slip around Ben's neck, so they both could be monogamous and miserable.

  "She has a boyfriend," Greer said quickly. Flip, perhaps startled by the shrill tone in her voice, gave her a look, and she mumbled: "I remember from when the newspaper wrote about her. They live together."

  Flip had a finite amount of attention for nonwork matters, and it was now exhausted. "I'm going back to the writers' office, so you'll have to cover set for the rest of the day, Ben." It was an order. To the world at large, Flip pretended they were two equals, two longtime friends who never quarreled. But someone had to be in charge, as Flip often said, and that person happened to be, well, Flip.

  "You're the boss," Ben told his oldest friend.

  Chapter 11

  Tess had a secret recipe for cooling the flush brought on by humiliation — she went to the nearest Baskin-Robbins and got a double scoop, chocolate chip and orange sherbet. It was a homeopathic cure of sorts, for it reminded her of a night when she was eight, when she had taken a lick of this admittedly odd pairing only to see both scoops fall and go rolling across the floor. But the clerk had been kind, giving her a new cone for free, and it was this kindness, the acknowledgment that everyone made mistakes, that the flavors brought back to her. She drove one-handed to her office, where she spent an hour on bills, paying and sending. In the end, she was dead even — assuming her clients weren't deadbeats.

  Her nerves soothed, Tess raced home to walk the dogs. Her new assignment would be hardest on them, for they were used to tagging along to the office and even to some of her jobs. They were, in fact, great decoys on surveillance. A woman walking an unruly greyhound and a placid Doberman was so conspicuous as to be inconspicuous, Tess had discovered. If she struggled with her cell phone as leashes twisted around her like a maypole, no one would ever suspect she was actually snapping photographs. She should structure one of her classes around that concept, how to hide in plain sight.

  Stony Run, the park that bordered her backyard, was empty at this time of day, and she enjoyed having it to herself. She scuffed her feet through the leaves, wistful for a time when people had made huge piles of them and started bonfires, environmentally unfriendly as she now knew that practice to be. Now, in upscale neighborhoods such as hers, leaves were piled along the curbs and sucked up by a huge city machine on an appointed date. She scuffed harder, enjoying the rustling sound. She stopped. The rustle didn't, not quite.

  Glancing back over her shoulder, she saw what appeared to be an enormous mound of camouflage, tiptoeing from tree to tree. It was like something out of a cartoon, one where Wile E. Coyote dressed up as a cactus and attempted to blend into the landscape while stalking the Road Runner.

  "Mrs. Blossom?"

  The woman's considerable girth was visible from both sides of the tree she was using for cover, but she didn't acknowledge Tess, just stayed where she was.

  "Mrs. Blossom, I see you."

  The woman peered around the tree. "Does that mean I failed?"

  Now that Tess had a chance to inspect the full, head-to-toe effect of Mrs. Blossom's surveillance costume — no other word would do — she was impressed almost in spite of herself. It was camouflage, yes, but not the usual browns, grays, and greens. This was purple camouflage, popularized a few years ago by fans of the Ravens, and Mrs. Blossom had found oversize men's cargo pants that actually bagged on her. To finish off her look, she had chosen low-heeled brown pumps and — this detail was utterly endearing to Tess — a moss green hat. She had thought about her costume, perhaps even opened up her pocketbook to complete it.

  "We don't have grades. And you were on the honor system, right? You were to write up a report on how it went, good or bad. So how do you think you did?"

  Mrs. Blossom stubbed her toe in the dirt. "Not very well. You saw me."

  "Yes, but — not until we got to the park. Were you waiting here, or near my house? Did you follow me?"

  "From your office," Mrs. Blossom said. "I parked there the whole day and — I was so worried, I had to go to the bathroom, which I know isn't allowed, but I went to this bar, which looked a little scary from the outside, although the bathrooms were really clean. Nice, even."

  Tess knew the bar, an unofficial lesbian hangout, and its bathrooms were, in fact, impeccable.

  "I was getting ready to go home — Oprah is on at four, and I like to make a little snack first — but then you finally showed up. So I waited to see where you would go."

  And, still in a self-castigating snit over my loutish behavior on set, I didn't notice a car tailing me for seven or so miles. Tess couldn't decide whether to be proud of her student, or appalled at her own obliviousness.

  "That's pretty good, actually. It's hard to follow someone in a car."

  The praise made Mrs. Blossom's cheeks flush pink.

  "Do you want to walk with me?" Tess asked, holding out the Doberman's leash. "Don't worry, Miata just looks scary. She's a sweetheart." Esskay, the greyhound, was the far more difficult dog to walk, lurching and bolting at every leaf, even the movement of the breeze through the grass, convinced that all motion was indicative of a smaller creature to be chased and eaten.

  Mrs. Blossom looked worriedly at her watch. "I don't know — there's the news, after Oprah. I like to watch that, be up on things. And then there's Wheel of Fortune and Access Hollywood."

  "Access Hollywood," Tess said. "That's what my life has become actually. I have all this access to Hollywood, and it doesn't interest me at all. I'm doing some work for that television show that's filming here."

  "Really?" Mrs. Blossom's voice rose to a fan-girl squeal. "Have you met Johnny Tampa?"

  Tess was surprised that Mrs. Blossom knew the details of the production.

  "I saw him from across a room," Tess said.

  "What does he look like in person?"

  She thought about this. "Broader."

  Mrs. Blossom took Miata's leash, fell into step beside Tess. They were coming up on the synagogue, the busy street beyond it, and the dogs recognized this as the point where they usually turned around.

  "But what's he like, Johnny Tampa? Nice. I bet he's nice."

  "I saw him for only ten minutes or so. You can't know anything about someone in such a short period of time."

  "I decided I wanted to marry Hamilton Blossom the moment I met him, and we got married four days later. The moment I saw him, I thought he was the nicest, kindest man I could ever find. We celebrated our forty-third anniversary last year."

  "And forty-three years later, do you still think he is the nicest, kindest man you've ever met?"

  "Oh, by then… well, by then, I realized that I didn't know the half of things. He was nicer than I ever suspected. He died this winter."

  Her matter-of-factness about her loss made it sadder somehow.

  "I'm sorry," Tess said.

  "Me, too," Mrs. Blossom said, sighing, not from self-pity but from the simple acknowledgment that she was sad, and likely to be so for some time.

  The dogs, sensing the nearness of home — and the implicit promise of a treat upon their arrival — picked up the pace. Mrs. Blossom had to trot to keep up with Miata. "What's Selene Waites like?"

  Self-centered to the point of idiocy, the walking punch line to every dumb-blonde joke ever told, but a pretty good actress. "About what you would expect, I think."

  "She looks so thin. She looks as if a good breeze would break her in two. Mr. Blossom always told me he liked a woman with some meat on her bones."

  A breeze eddied around them, fluttering the leaves, sending a few swirling to the ground. Both dogs perked their ears, as if they could pick up the scent of the changing season. The small shot of cool air reminded Tess that such golden autumn days were a short-term loan, and that winter would be here sooner rather than later, intent on being paid in full for all this loveliness. She would hav
e liked to linger on the path, in the surprisingly not-bad company of Mrs. Blossom. But she needed a nap so she would be fresh and alert for her first solo evening with Selene Waites.

  Chapter 12

  "Sorry about earlier today," Tess said.

  "About what?" Selene was standing in the living room of her rental condo, a place with the kind of sweeping harbor view that Tess had always coveted. Come to think of it, she had once enjoyed such a view, from the rooftop of her aunt's bookstore, when Tess had lived in the little apartment on the top floor. But with high-rise condos such as this one going up all over what was now billed as Harbor East, some longtime residents were living in shadowy canyons, barely capable of seeing the sun, much less the water.

  "My cell phone going off in the middle of your scene."

  "Was that your cell phone?" Selene began pulling off the baggy sweater that she was wearing over tight, odd-looking jeans, along with a pair of freakishly furry boots. It was a fall night, barely in the fifties, and the actress was dressed for a hipster ski lodge. But then, given how thin she was, she was probably cold all the time.

  If the outfit was strange, Selene's decision to remove it in the middle of her living room seemed downright bizarre. In seconds, she was down to nothing but a pair of panties and the ridiculous boots, and Tess couldn't begin to imagine how she had gotten the jeans off over the boots. Perhaps the denim had some stretch to it.

  "Selene—"

  "Hmmmm?" She headed toward the kitchen, separated from the living and dining rooms by a breakfast bar, and briefly disappeared behind the door of a vast refrigerator whose veneer matched the cherrywood cabinets. She emerged with a Red Bull and the largest bottle of vodka that Tess had ever seen in her life. And Tess had seen some pretty large vodka bottles in her day.

  "You can't have that," she said firmly, removing the vodka bottle from Selene's grasp while letting her keep the Red Bull. "You're underage."

  The girl blinked once, twice, then burst into tears.

  "It's in private, not in a bar," she blubbered. "Why can't I do what I like in the sanctuary of my home?"

  Tess's lips twitched at the slight misstatement — Selene probably meant sanctity, although sanctuary wasn't necessarily incorrect — but she kept her tone stern.

  "You're twenty. If this were wine with dinner, or even a beer, I might be a little more permissive. But coming home at eight o'clock and going straight for a vodka-caffeine cocktail, when you haven't had a bite to eat — that's not a good idea. Also, would you put a top on? I've spent a lot of time in locker rooms, but I'm not really comfortable with sustained nudity in people I hardly know."

  Selene looked down at her shallow, almost concave chest. Her tears had ended as suddenly as they started, and Tess wondered if the tantrum had been a bit of stagecraft, a test to see if she was susceptible to Selene's pouting. The men in Selene's life probably fell apart at the first tiny blubber.

  "Do you think I should get a boob job?"

  "God, no."

  "Easy for you to say, walking around with what—" Selene curved her hand, as if she were going to feel Tess up, and Tess backed away so she was safely out of reach. "A C cup?"

  "D," Tess admitted.

  "Of course, they would be smaller if you took a little weight off, but still, a D cup. Would you trade that in for an A-minus? I'm built like a boy. My collarbone sticks out farther than my breasts."

  She smacked her clavicle, which was, in fact, more pronounced than the glands beneath it.

  "If there was an operation to change your height, would you get it?" Tess asked.

  "Is there?" Selene's eyes shone with excitement. The body may have verged on plucked chicken, but the face was almost inhuman in its beauty, a Botticelli come to life. Well, it was Botticellian in the coloring — the pink-and-gold glow in the cheeks, the masses of strawberry blond hair. The shape owed far more to the narrow visages of Modigliani, all cheekbones and almond eyes. "Can you choose where you gain the length? Because I would love to have longer legs."

  "I was trying to make a point," Tess said. "We accept our height, and we don't think it signifies anything about our character or discipline. We should accept our body types, too, not fight to be what we're not. I could live off dandelion greens and never be a stick figure. You don't have big breasts. So what?"

  "You don't understand," Selene said. She walked back to the pile of clothes she had left on the living room floor and fished out a tiny pink T-shirt. Tess couldn't help noticing it was printed with the slogan SPOILED BRAT. "My body affects my career. I'm not going to get certain parts without tits. I got this stupid shit show because women back then, fashionable ones, wore those Empire gowns, so my body type works for this."

  Tess noticed she pronounced it the French way — om-peer.

  "If your body is right for this, it will be right for other things."

  "I'll never be a Bond girl."

  "Why would you want to be a Bond girl? You should aspire to be James Bond."

  "Are they doing that?" Selene asked eagerly. "A female James Bond? Because that would totally rock."

  She threw herself down on the sofa, sloshing some Red Bull but making no move to clean it up. Like almost all the other furnishings here, the sofa was huge and oversize, which gave Tess the sense that she had climbed Jack's beanstalk to arrive at the giant's aerie. But she couldn't help noticing that the apartment, for all its high-end details — the view, the top-notch appliances, the velvety upholstery — could not quite transcend the blandness that marked it as a rental unit, a temporary place for those with money, but no roots. It lacked the touches that quotidian life bestows — a teakettle, framed photographs, objects collected on travels. It was nothing more than an enormous hotel suite, and the size only emphasized its sterility.

  "Do you like having a place this large, when you're all alone?"

  "I needed space in case my family visits," Selene said. "But they're schoolteachers, it's hard for them to get away."

  Tess had learned that much on her first Google pass. Selene was the youngest of five children from a relentlessly normal Utah family. When their youngest daughter decided she wanted to be in the movies, the Waites hadn't objected, but they also had refused to uproot the rest of the family. She had gone to live with her mother's sister in Orange County and sought emancipation as a minor at the first opportunity. It was curious to Tess that Selene's parents, who seemed sensible and solid, would essentially give their daughter license to be a wild child, but maybe people got tired by kid number five. "Selene knows her own mind," her mother had said in one of the few interviews to which she had ever consented. Asked if she was proud of Selene, she had said: "I'm proud of all my children." Selene might as well have been parentless Aphrodite, rising from the sea on a clamshell.

  "Let's get dinner," Tess suggested.

  Selene made a face. "I haven't found a single decent place to eat in this town."

  That stung a little. Tess thought that Baltimore, whatever its limitations, could put on a pretty good feed. "There's Charleston, right here in the neighborhood."

  "Too much fish."

  "Do you like pizza—"

  "I love it, but" — Selene patted her nonexistent belly — "I can't risk it. I'll be all bloated tomorrow. It's got to be protein. Sushi is best, although I have to go easy on the soy sauce. Puffy eyes."

  "Well, I could do sushi," said Tess, a little uncertainly. Hadn't Selene just vetoed fish? Besides, Tess wasn't big on raw things.

  "Can I pick the restaurant?" Selene's manner was coy and wheedling, her default mode.

  "Sure."

  "And wherever I pick, you'll go?"

  "Yes."

  "Wherever I want to go?"

  "Wherever you want to go," Tess promised.

  Which is how they ended up, not even thirty minutes later, in Selene's driver-equipped car, headed for New York.

  They were just about to enter the Holland Tunnel when Selene pulled out her iPhone and, with a quick glance at Tess, bega
n sending what appeared to be the War and Peace of text messages. Lloyd could do the same thing with his cell phone, whereas Tess was reduced to playing a virtual Gary Cooper when she texted, laboriously tapping out yes and no.

  "Change of plans," Selene announced. "Nobu is mobbed. We're doing Mexican instead of sushi."

  But when the Town Car stopped in front of what appeared to be a very ordinary diner, Tess was dubious.

  "This? We had to drive two hundred miles so you could eat here?"

  Selene laughed at her. "You'll see."

  Selene pulled on her hoodie and donned a pair of oversize sunglasses, despite the fact that it was now 11:30 P.M. They went inside, passing through the bright, quiet diner and into a concealed staircase that led to a very different establishment beneath, a truly subterranean lair of cavernlike rooms. The bar was jammed with people waiting for tables, but the bored-looking hostess raised one eyebrow at the sight of Selene and said: "Of course." The hostess, a ravishing creature in her own right, did not acknowledge Tess at all; she might have been a piece of toilet paper stuck to Selene's boots which, now that she noticed, weren't actual boots but spiked Mary Janes with knitted tops that reached just to her knees, worn with a skirt that barely covered her silky underwear. At least Selene was wearing underwear.

  Come to think of it, Tess decided as she followed Selene's twitching bottom, a piece of toilet paper might get more attention. After all, someone might have felt obligated to point out that trailing tissue to Selene, however discreetly, while Tess was invisible to this young, chic crowd. How could they decide so quickly that she was a person of no consequence? There was nothing outrageously wrong with what she wore. In fact, her black trousers and sweater, paired with flat-heeled boots, weren't that different from what many of the diners here wore. Granted, most of the people dressed like her were men, but still, she was carrying the look. No, there must be something indefinably off about her, an unshakable whiff of hoi polloi.