by Meg Cabot
These symptoms are made worse by Dr. Jessup. Chagrined by Dr. Allington’s remarks, the assistant vice president has thrown caution and New York City health codes to the wind, and is smoking energetically, his rear end resting against the edge of Rachel’s desk. No one offers to open a window. This is because our office windows are on the ground floor, and every time you open them, some wit walks up to them and yells, “Can I have fries with that?” into our office.
It is right then that it occurs to me that Rachel is finished with her phone calls, and that I am no longer needed to be a comfort to her. There is nothing more I can do to help.
So I stand up and say, “I’m going to go home now.”
Everyone looks at me. Fortunately Dr. Allington has long since departed, as he and his wife have a house in the Hamptons and they head out there every chance they get.
Except that today Mrs. Allington wouldn’t leave through the front door—not with the coroner’s van parked out there on the sidewalk, behind the fire engine. I had to turn off the alarm so she could leave by the emergency exit off the side of the cafeteria, the same door through which the security guards usher the Allingtons’ more prestigious guests—like the Schwarzeneggers—when they have dinner parties so that they don’t have to be bothered by any students.
The Allingtons’ only child, Christopher—a very good-looking guy in his late twenties, who wears a lot of Brooks Brothers, and is living in graduate student housing while attending the college’s law school—was behind the wheel of their forest green Mercedes when they finally left. Dr. Allington solicitously placed his wife in the backseat, their overnight bags in the trunk, then hopped into the front seat beside his son.
Christopher Allington peeled out so fast that people attending the street fair—oh yes. The street fair went on, in spite of the fire engine and coroner’s wagon—jumped up onto the sidewalk, thinking someone was trying to run them down.
I’ll tell you something: If the Allingtons were my parents, I’d have tried to run people down, too.
Dr. Flynn recovers from my announcement that I’m leaving before anybody else. He says, “Of course, Heather. You go on home. We don’t need Heather anymore, do we, Stan?”
Dr. Jessup exhales a stream of blue-gray smoke.
“Go home,” he says to me. “Have a drink. A big one.”
“Oh, Heather,” Rachel cries. She leaps up from her swivel chair and, to my surprise, throws her arms around me. She has never been physically demonstrative with me before. “Thank you so much for coming over. I don’t know what we would have done without you. You keep such a level head in a crisis.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about. I hadn’t done a single thing. I certainly hadn’t bought her those flowers Dr. Jessup had recommended. I’d calmed the student workers down, maybe, and talked Sarah out of having her dance, but that’s it, really. Not exactly anything life-saving.
I look everywhere but at anyone else’s face as Rachel hugs me. Hugging Rachel is a lot like hugging—well, a stick. Because she’s so thin. I sort of feel bad for her. Because who wants to hug a stick? I know all those guys who go after models do. But I mean, what kind of normal person wants to hug, or be hugged by, a lot of pointy bones? It would be one thing if she were naturally pointy. But I happen to know that Rachel starves herself in order to be that way on purpose.
It’s just not right.
To my relief, Rachel lets go almost immediately, and as soon as she does, I hurry from the office without another word, mostly because I am afraid I will start crying if I speak. Not because of her boniness, but because it all just seems like such a waste. I mean, a girl is dead, her parents devastated. And for what? A thrill ride on top of an elevator?
It just doesn’t make any sense.
Since the alarm to the fire exit is still turned off, I leave the building through it, relieved that I don’t have to pass the reception desk. Because I seriously think I might lose it if anyone says a single word to me. I have to walk all the way down to Sixth Avenue and around the block to avoid running into anyone I know—passing right by Banana Republic, which does carry size 12 clothing, but rarely has any in stock, because, being that it’s the most common size, they can never keep enough of it on the racks for everyone—but it’s worth it. I am in no shape for small talk with anyone.
Sadly, however, when I get to my front door, I discover that small talk is exactly what I’m in for. Because lounging on my front stoop is my ex-fiancé, Jordan Cartwright.
And I’d truly been convinced my day couldn’t get any worse.
He straightens when he sees me, and hangs up the cell phone he’d been jawing into. The late-afternoon sunlight brings out the gold highlights in his blond hair, and I can’t help noticing that in spite of the Indian summer heat, the lines pressed into his white shirt and—yes, I’m sorry to have to say it—matching white pants look perfectly crisp.
With the white outfit, and the gold chain around his neck, he looks like he’s AWOL from a really bad boy band.
Which, sadly, is exactly what he is.
“Heather,” he says, when he sees me.
I can’t read his pale blue eyes because they’re hidden by the lenses of his Armani sunglasses. But I suppose they are, as always, filled with tender concern for my well-being. Jordan is good at making people think he actually cares about them. It’s one of the reasons his first solo effort, “Baby, Be Mine,” went double platinum. The video was number one on Total Request Live for weeks.
“There you are,” he says. “I’ve been trying to reach you. I guess Coop’s not home. Are you all right? I came down as soon as I heard.”
I just blink at him. What is he doing here? We broke up. Doesn’t he remember?
Maybe not. He’d obviously been working out. Like majorly. There’s actual definition to his biceps.
Maybe a dumbbell fell on his head or something.
“She lived in your building, didn’t she?” he goes on. “The girl on the radio? The one who died?”
It is totally unfair that someone who looks so hot can be so…well, lacking in anything remotely resembling human emotion.
I dig my keys out of the front pocket of my jeans.
“You shouldn’t have come down here, Jordan,” I say. People are staring—mostly just the drug dealers, though. There are a lot of them in my neighborhood, because the college, in order to clean up Washington Square Park for the students (and, more importantly, their parents), puts all this pressure on the local police precinct to scoot all the drug dealers and homeless people out of the park and onto the surrounding streets…like, for instance, the one I live on.
Of course when I’d accepted Jordan’s brother’s offer to move in with him, I didn’t know the neighborhood was so bad. I mean, come on, it’s Greenwich Village, which had long ago ceased to be a haven for starving artists, after the yuppies moved in and gentrified the place and the rents shot sky high. I figured it had to be on par with Park Avenue, where I’d been living with Jordan, and where “those kind of people,” as Jordan calls them, simply don’t hang out.
Which is a good thing, because “those kind of people” apparently can’t take their eyes off Jordan—and not just because of the prominently displayed gold chain.
“Hey!” one of them yells. “You that guy? Hey, are you that guy?”
Jordan, used to being harassed by paparazzi, doesn’t bat an eye.
“Heather,” he says, in his most soothing tone, the one he’d used during his duet with Jessica Simpson on their Get Funky tour last summer. “Come on. Be reasonable. Just because things didn’t work out between us romantically is no reason why we can’t still be friends. We’ve been through so much together. Grew up together, even.”
This part, anyway, is true. I’d met Jordan back when I’d first been signed by his father’s record label, Cartwright Records, when I’d been an impressionable fifteen years of age, and Jordan had been all of eighteen. Back then, I’d truly believed Jordan’s whole tortured ar
tist act. I’d believed him when he insisted that he, like me, hated the songs the label was giving him to sing. I’d believed him when he’d said he, like me, was going to quit singing them, and start singing the songs he’d written himself. I’d believed him right up to the point I’d told the label it was my songs or no songs, and the label had chosen no songs…and Jordan, instead of telling the label (also known as his dad) the same thing, had said, “Maybe we better talk about this, Heather.”
I glance around to make sure his current performance isn’t for the benefit of a hidden camera. I totally wouldn’t put it past him to have signed up with some reality show. He’s one of those people who wouldn’t mind watching his own life broadcast on national television.
That’s when I notice the silver convertible BMW parked by the hydrant in front of the brownstone.
“That’s new,” I say. “From your dad? A reward for taking up with Tania Trace?”
“Now, Heather,” Jordan says. “I told you. The thing with Tania—it’s not what you think.”
“Right,” I say with a laugh. “I suppose she fell down and just happened to land with her head in your crotch.”
Jordan does something surprising then. He whips off his sunglasses and looks down at me very intently. I’m reminded of the first time I ever met him—at the Mall of America. The label—namely Jordan’s dad—had arranged for Jordan’s band, Easy Street, and me to tour together, in an effort to bring out the maximum number of preteens—and their parents, and their parents’ wallets—possible.
Jordan had given me the same intent look then that he was giving me now. His “Baby, you got the bluest eyes” hadn’t sounded a bit like a pickup line then.
But what did I know? I’d been yanked out of high school my freshman year and had been on the road ever since, heavily chaperoned and making contact with guys my own age only when they came up to ask for my autograph. How was I supposed to know “Baby, you got the bluest eyes” was a pickup line?
I didn’t realize it until years later, when “Baby, you got the bluest eyes” showed up as a line from one of the singles off Jordan’s first solo album. It turns out he’d had a lot of practice saying it. With sincerity, even.
It had certainly worked on me.
“Heather,” Jordan says now, as the rays of the sun, filtering through the treetops and apartment buildings to the west, play over the even planes of his handsome, still slightly boyish face. “We had something, you and I. Are you sure you really just want to walk away from that? I mean, I know I’m not exactly blameless in all this. That thing with Tania…well, I know how that must have looked to you.”
I stare at him incredulously.
“You mean like she was giving you head? Because that’s how it looked to me.”
Jordan flinches as if I’d hit him.
“See?” He folds his arms across his chest. “See, that’s exactly what I mean. When we first met, Heather, you never said crass things like that. You’ve changed. Don’t you see? That’s part of the problem. You’re not the same girl I knew all those years ago—”
I decide that if he drops his gaze to my waistline, where I’ve changed the most since ten years ago, I was going to belt him.
But he doesn’t.
“You’ve gotten…I don’t know. Hard, I guess, is the word,” he goes on. “And after what you’ve been through with your mom and your manager, who can blame you? But Heather, not everyone is out to steal all your money and flee to Argentina with it like they did. You’ve got to believe me when I say that I never meant to hurt you. We just drifted apart, you and I. We want different things. You want to sing your own songs, and you apparently don’t care if doing so destroys your career—what’s left of it. While I…well, I want—”
“Hey!” yells the drug dealer. “You’re JORDAN CARTWRIGHT!”
I can’t believe this is happening. First Elizabeth, now this.
What does Jordan want from me, anyway? That’s what I can never figure out. The guy is thirty-one years old, six-two, and worth a lot of money—way more than the hundred thousand a year Rachel is looking for in her ideal mate. I mean, I know his parents weren’t exactly thrilled when the two of us moved in together. It hadn’t looked good, two of their most popular teen performers, shacking up…
But had our entire relationship just been an elaborate attempt to get back at Mr. and Mrs. Grant Cartwright for allowing their youngest son to audition for the Mickey Mouse Club, like he’d begged them to back when he was nine, to his everlasting shame? Because of course serious rockers don’t have photos of themselves in Mickey Mouse ears being shown in Teen People every other week…
“Jordan,” I say, cutting him off as he is listing the things he wants out of life, most of which have to do with bringing a little sunshine into people’s lives, and why is that so wrong? Except that I never said it was. “Could you please just go away?”
I jostle past him, my keys in my hand. I guess my plan was to unlock the door and get inside before he could stop me.
With three locks to undo, though, a quick escape is kind of tough.
“I know you don’t take me seriously as an artist, Heather,” Jordan goes on. And on and on. “But I can assure you that just because I don’t write the songs I sing, that doesn’t make me any less creative than you are. I do practically all my own choreography now. That move I did on the ‘Just Me and You Now’ video? You know, this one?” He does a quick step-ball-change, accompanied by a pelvic thrust, on the front stoop of the brownstone. “That’s all mine. I know to you that might not be much, but don’t you think it’s time you took a good look at your own life? I mean, what have you been doing that’s so artistically fulfilling lately? This stupid dorm thing—”
Two locks down. One to go.
“—and living down here with drug addicts at your doorstep…and with Cooper! With Cooper, of all people! You know how my family feels about Cooper, Heather.”
I do know how his family feels about Cooper. The same way they feel about Cooper’s grandfather, who came out of the closet at the age of sixty-five, bought a bright pink stucco brownstone in the Village, then willed it to his black sheep grandson, who’d moved into the garden apartment, turned the middle floor into a detective agency, and offered the top floor to me, rent-free (in exchange for doing his billing), when he’d found out about my walking in on Jordan and Tania.
“I mean, I know there isn’t anything going on between you two,” Jordan is saying. “That’s not what I’m worried about. You aren’t Cooper’s type.”
He can say that again. Sadly.
“But I wonder if you’re aware that Coop has a criminal record. Vandalism. And yeah, he was a juvenile, but still, for God’s sake, Heather, he has no respect for public property. That was an Easy Street marquee he defaced, you know. I’m aware that he always resented my talent, but it’s not my fault I was born with such a gift—”
The third lock springs open. I’m free!
“Good-bye, Jordan,” I say, and slip inside, shutting the door carefully behind me. Because, you know, I don’t want to slam it in his face and hurt him, or anything. Not because I still care, but because that would be rude.
Plus his dad might sue me, or something. You never know.
6
* * *
Secret Admirer
I’m your
Secret Admirer
I know how
Much you love
And desire her
And I think
What would you do
If you knew that
I loved you?
If you knew it was true
That I’m your
Secret Admirer?
“Secret Admirer”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by Valdez/Caputo
From the album Sugar Rush
Cartwright Records
* * *
Jordan is pounding on the door, but I’m ignoring him.
It’s cool inside the brownsto
ne, and smells vaguely of toner from the photocopier in Coop’s office. I start up the stairs to my apartment, thinking Lucy—have I mentioned her? She’s my dog—will want to be let out, when I happen to glance down the hall and see that the French doors to the back terrace are open.
Instead of going upstairs, I go down the hallway—Cooper’s grandfather had it papered in black and white stripes, which was apparently all the rage in the seventies gay community—and find the man of the house sitting in a lawn chair on the back terrace, a bottle of beer in his hand, my dog at his feet, and a red mini-Igloo at his side.
He’s listening—as he usually is, when he’s home—to a jazz station on the radio. Cooper is the only member of his family who eschews the screeching of Easy Street and Tania Trace for the more dulcet tones of Coleman-Hawkins and Sarah Vaughn.
“Is he gone yet?” Cooper wants to know, when he notices me standing in the doorway.
“He will be soon,” I say. Then it hits me. “Are you hiding back here?”
“You got that right,” Cooper says. He opens the Igloo and takes a beer from it. “Here,” he says, offering it to me. “I figured you’d need one of these.”
I take the cold bottle gratefully, and sink down onto the green padded seat cushion of a nearby wrought-iron chair. Lucy immediately darts over and thrusts her head between my thighs, snuffling happily at me. I rub her ears.
That’s the nice thing about having a dog. They’re always so happy to see you. Plus, you know, there are health benefits. People’s blood pressure goes down when they pet a dog. Or even a cat. It’s a documented fact. I read it in People magazine.
Of course, pets aren’t the only thing that can help keep your blood pressure down. Sitting in a really tranquil place can do it, too. Like, for instance, Cooper’s grandfather’s terrace and the garden below, which are totally two of the best-kept secrets in Manhattan. Leafy and green, surrounded by high, ivy-covered walls, the place is this tiny oasis carved from a former eighteenth-century stable yard. There’s even this little fountain in the garden, which Cooper, I see, has turned on. It gurgles comfortingly in the late-afternoon stillness. As I stroke Lucy’s ears, I can feel my heart rate returning to normal.
