Lies She Told

by Cate Holahan

  “Well, I have to break this one. I can’t rearrange my work schedule on such short notice. I’ll make it up to you soon. We’ll go out someplace nice. In the meantime, you should get some rest. I mean, Vicky doesn’t let you really sleep. Think of it: without her and me bothering you, you can get a good eight hours for once.”

  I picture him delivering these lines, eyes flitting to the clock, trying to end the conversation with his wife so as not to be late for his lover. If only lies had substance. They would lodge in his esophagus, an indigestible wad of dirty gum. He would struggle to breathe, hands around his own throat, choking on the last of his untruths.

  He keeps blathering on about my need for sleep. Really, him working tonight is doing me a favor, he says. Rest is important for mental health. It’s important for my mood. We will have a more productive conversation if I’m no longer exhausted. “I’ll be there when you wake up in the morning,” he assures me.

  A scream curdles in my stomach. I hang up and hurl the phone at the wall. It lands on the floor, saved from smashing by the throw rug and the hard plastic case protecting its back. The lack of destruction frustrates me. I twist my diamond engagement ring off my finger and fling it at the wall. Then, for good measure, I take the wedding band and throw it too. Blood rushes to my head like a brain freeze. I’m going to be sick. I run to the bathroom and hang my head over the toilet. My stomach contracts. Bile and foam pour from my mouth into the bowl, staining the water a rusty orange.

  After I finish, I take stock in the mirror. The woman who looks back at me has aged five years. Circles from weeks of sleep deprivation darken beneath her eyes, hollowing out her appearance. A greenish tint mars her coloring. Her dress is splattered with sick. I peel it off and stumble into the shower, turning the dial to its hottest setting. My skin reddens in the water. I scrub myself clean, wash my hair, my face. When I again look in the mirror, I have the skin of a healthy young woman, flushed pink with fury.

  I grab my cosmetic bag. Makeup is war paint for women. Jake is about to be very sorry.

  LIZA

  David texts me good-bye Sunday. I receive the message while waiting for the ticket machine to spit out my boarding pass. “Have a good conference.” With a smoochy face. Not once did he call, despite my messages dangling the prospect of good news from Sergeant Perez and apologizing for our argument. He could have at least acknowledged my calls. Emojis don’t exist for what I’d like to write now.

  I’m in the midst of penning a passive-aggressive reply when the machine’s printer starts clicking. I slip my phone back into my purse. Writing a snitty e-mail to my spouse is no reason to miss a flight.

  Fortunately, few people travel so early on a Sunday. My lack of socks is a bigger issue than the line. I toss my sandals on the security conveyor belt and walk, barefoot, through a full body scanner. My feet sweat, mental images of plantar warts and fungus-stained toenails running through my head, as I wait for a hypervigilant TSA official to determine that the metal in my purse is loose change.

  I slip back on my sandals while trying to snatch my exposed laptop before another shoeless traveler mistakes it for theirs. Somehow, I stuff my electronics into the front pocket of my carry-on as it careens down the conveyor belt. I hoist it back onto checkered linoleum and wheel it behind me as I weave past a sock-footed family, proud of myself for splurging on a suitcase with multidirectional casters.

  When I reach the gate, I am surprised by Trevor’s profile. He sits in a chair, right leg crossed over the left, head bowed over a book. I can’t see the cover, though I can tell from the size it’s not one of mine.

  “Trev?” I say his name as a question, on the off chance that some other gorgeous black man with wire-rimmed glasses is reading a massive novel while waiting for a flight to take him to the destination of the world’s largest suspense writer’s conference. Dark eyes travel to my face. He smiles wide enough to show his top teeth and nods to the empty seat beside him. Judging from all the unoccupied chairs outside our gate, the early flight appears only a third full, though it’s possible my fellow travelers are still in the bookstore or braving the line at the single open coffee shop.

  I settle into the seat on Trevor’s right but move to the far side of the vinyl. Though we’re friends, his good looks require a professional distance. Incidental physical contact with a man this attractive always means more.

  “I didn’t realize we were on the same flight.”

  “I suppose Courtney booked the whole New York crew on the earliest plane out of here.” He laughs. “If it goes down, that will be the end of the imprint.”

  We talk about what I have planned for the conference: when I’ll sign at our publisher’s booth, which panel I’m booked on, who will join me on the dais. Marketing only slotted me into one discussion group: “The First Bestseller: Unraveling the Mystery Behind a Debut Blockbuster.” I’ll need to talk about Drowned Secrets. I’m not looking forward to it.

  A few minutes into a conversation about a panel that Trevor is moderating—“The Long Run: How to Create Compelling Series Characters”—the stewardess begins “inviting” passengers on the plane. He stands when they announce priority boarding for business-class ticket holders. I remain seated. My ticket is in row 22. Business-class privileges dried up with my last novel’s sales.

  Trevor steps toward the gate door and then glances over his shoulder with raised eyebrows. “Courtney has you in coach?”

  “It’s no big deal. I’m narrow.” The phrase “beggars can’t be choosers” comes to mind, but I can’t utter such a hackneyed expression in my editor’s presence. I’m fortunate that the publishing house is footing the bill for the trip at all. Many writers pay their own way at these things.

  He rubs the back of his neck. “That’s too bad. Now I’m stuck finishing that waste of paper I was reading.”

  I frown out of fellowship for the unknown writer. Trevor never couches his criticism with favorable fluff. Books are either superb or they stink. There’s no in-between for him. “Whose is it?”

  “Greg Hall’s latest. The guy must have a deal where no one is allowed to touch his work. I’m not even halfway in and could have shaved twenty thousand words.”

  “Well, if you really need the excuse, I’m sure whomever is sitting next to me will gladly switch for your reclining seat with extra leg room.”

  Trevor doesn’t laugh at my joke. Instead, he eyes the queue. A handful of passengers are lined up, though probably not the number needed to fill the front cabin of the massive plane tethered to gate. He grabs his rolling suitcase and points at me with his free hand. “Look after that book for me. Be right back.”

  Trevor grabs an attendant’s attention. He points in my direction twice during the conversation, erasing any doubt as to what he’s doing. Embarrassment at my unintended role as an upgrade beggar encourages me to open a blank document on my laptop and pretend to work. I should think of something to say on my panel, though I have little idea what made my first book so much more “believable” and “gripping” than my others. Even after I wrote it, I’d largely faked my way through the bookstore tour. I’ve always felt as though another version of me penned the novel or that I’d been a conduit for some outside storytelling intelligence that had quickly moved on, leaving me with a bestseller and no concrete idea of how to repeat it.

  The story itself wasn’t that novel. Drowned Secrets told the tale of a young girl whose alcoholic father had been sexually molesting her. The mother finds out one summer and hits him in the back of the head with a shovel beside their pool. He falls in, concussed, and drowns. Later, the mom buries the murder weapon beneath the bushes. There aren’t too many twists and turns. No gotcha moments. The perspective, I think, was what hooked the readers. My narrator was Bitsy, the abused twelve-year-old. Reviewers crowed about how I’d really gotten into her head.

  Trevor’s step has added swagger as he returns. I pick up the Hall novel and hold it out to him, a lead weight in return for his trouble. For t
he first time I notice the cover: a Southern gothic image of a house with a child waiting on the porch. I wouldn’t have wanted to read it before Trevor’s scathing review.

  “Will you be needing this?”

  “I was able to upgrade you, sans charge.”

  “That never works for me. It’s the accent, isn’t it?”

  He winks. “Gets you Americans every time.”

  *

  The business-class seats are wide and deep. No one tells me not to recline before takeoff or to stow my electronic devices. Instead, the flight attendant assures us that the food service will start as soon as the cabin doors close and asks for cocktail orders.

  Remembering how violently three drinks had mixed with my medication, I am about to say, “Nothing for me,” when Trevor orders a red wine. I must look shocked by the hour because he clears his throat and says, “Conferences make me a bit nervous. So much selling.”

  His sentiments so agree with my own that I tell the flight attendant to “please make that two.”

  As we wait for the drinks, Trevor and I gush over the latest releases from mutual favorite crime writers who, in our humble opinions, deserve all the money they’ve made. My editor is the only man I’ve ever met that enjoys fiction as much, if not more, than I do. He’s the Calvin Johnson of literary references. It’s impossible to make a quote that he won’t catch. When the wine appears, conversation moves on from respected writers to overrated hacks. We trade names, hipster teens pitching pebbles at the popular kids. Trevor is mean in his straight-man British monotone. He’s always had an uncanny ability to cut with bluntness.

  Two minibottles of Barolo arrive that I am sure would never have made it to the back of the plane. As I sip my drink, Trevor turns the conversation to my book. “How is the writing coming?”

  He probably wants to hear that I’m a third done. But I can’t deliver that line with a straight face. A more responsible person would have declined her editor’s offer of first class and sequestered herself in steerage, laptop open on the dining tray. “The setup is taking me a bit longer than I thought.”

  I glance over Trevor’s shoulder into the aisle. The flight attendant’s backside sticks into the walkway as she passes a bag of chips to a passenger. If Trevor is going to grill me about my story, I need a clear head. Water not wine.

  “I wanted to apologize for being so negative about your idea before.”

  I stop trying to make eye contact with the airline employee. Trevor looks at me from beneath half-lowered lids. His dark gaze draws me in, like the mouth of a cave. “I think affairs are a sore spot for me after the divorce.”

  “I always meant to ask what happened with Kyra. But I wasn’t sure you wanted to talk about it.”

  I’ve already heard the story. Manhattan is a small town of eight million. A friend with a son in Trevor’s daughter’s pre-K class shared that there’d been a scandal with a mom trading her husband for another parent. The drama had coincided with Trevor’s separation.

  Trevor scratches his scalp and shifts in his chair. His wounds have not healed. “I’m not sure that I know what happened, really. Maybe she got bored. She started picking at everything, saying I didn’t do enough around the house, give her enough attention. My head was always buried in a book.” The hand that had fussed with his head falls to his tray table. “Anyway, not long after we separated, she shacked up with one of the dads at Olivia’s school.”

  I try to act surprised, dropping my jaw and shaking my head, mimicking how Trevor performs shock.

  “She swears nothing happened beforehand. Still, there’s emotional infidelity, isn’t there?”

  I squeeze Trevor’s hard shoulder. The gesture is a common platonic show of support. It’s supposed to be safe. But the truth is, I don’t feel safe around this man anymore. His confession—or maybe the show of vulnerability—stirs something in my subconscious. It’s as though he understands me in a way that no one else has or ever will. Part of me aches to tell him this. The other part of me knows that I’ve consumed too much wine, am pissed at David, and am on a cocktail of hormones.

  “Want me to kill her off in a book?”

  Trevor smirks, a devilish half smile that sets fire to his eyes. “Well,” he chuckles, “somebody always has to die.”

  *

  I don’t see Trevor after check-in. He has multiple panels to moderate, more famous authors to ply with alcohol. I, on the other hand, am not expected anywhere until my three o’clock slot at the signing table. How to kill the time?

  A check-in packet lies on my hotel bed. The spiral-bound book weighs as much as Trevor’s maligned novel and includes a twenty-page outline of the various author discussions happening every hour, on the hour, for the next several days. I don’t look at it. After a decade, the panel topics are all choppy remixes of the same ol’ tunes. Most veteran authors tour the city until called upon for their own promotional activities.

  I pull back the long blackout curtains and look outside. The view is of downtown New Orleans, though not the famous French Quarter. That section of town, with its painted buildings and wrought-iron balconies, is too small to host a gathering of MWO’s size. The convention hotel is on the waterfront, between the city’s main expo center and a warehouse selling Mardi Gras supplies. If I press my head to the glass and look left, I can almost see the Mississippi.

  The buildings beyond look far away. Foreboding. The king-sized mattress, on the other hand, appears inviting, made up with bleached-white linens and mint chocolates on the pillows, penned in by the four walls surrounding it and the door to the en suite bathroom. My laptop rests on the nightstand. A pink chaise sits to the right of the bed. I angle it toward the window and grab my computer.

  I write for several hours, sobering up from the plane ride all the while. A phone call interrupts me as I am cutting words from a scene where Beth is getting ready to go out. Readers, I’ve decided, will not care what color lipstick she chooses for her revenge date.

  I think David is finally getting back to me and am surprised when I don’t recognize the New York number. Likely, a telemarketer has obtained my information. I answer anyway. It could be my gynecologist. “Hello, this is Liza.”

  “Sergeant Perez. Sorry to phone on a Sunday, but a friend got back to me with some news, and you’d seemed so upset before . . .”

  A tingling sensation pricks my fingers, as though they were wet and touching the end of a battery. “Yes. Thank you for calling.”

  “Your husband reported Mr. Landau missing when he didn’t show up for work that Monday and he couldn’t get in touch with him. According to the detectives on the case, the last person to report seeing him was a bartender at a local cocktail bar near Mr. Landau’s apartment. Some fancy French-styled place.”

  A mental image of the bar Christine described flashes in my head. I can see the red-cushioned French chairs and gilded mirrors.

  “The bartender said that Nick came there that Saturday night with another man. They had several drinks. Apparently, shortly after they left, a woman asked about him. He remembered because she seemed angry and left before finishing her drink.”

  “Did the bartender see what this woman looked like?” I ask.

  “He said she was good-looking.”

  I think of Nick’s exes. They were all attractive women, albeit a bit severe in appearance. Did he break up with the wrong one? “Did she have short hair, by any chance?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Nick’s past girlfriends all had short hair.”

  “Oh.” The sergeant’s tone seems surprised.

  I realize that, if Nick had dumped this girl, she might have changed her look. Women did that after bad breakups. “Did she have blonde—”

  “Unfortunately, I can’t provide any more details without compromising the investigation.” Sergeant Perez clears his throat. “So as you already agreed to, none of this gets written up. I thought you and your husband would feel better knowing that detectives don’t suspect Mr. Landau�
�s disappearance had anything to do with a hate crime or that case against the city. They’re leaning toward some kind of romantic spat.”

  I thank Sergeant Perez and hang up. With the phone still in my hand, I consider calling David. Ultimately, I decide against it. If he can’t even deign to return my multiple messages, why should I rush to give him this new information?

  My first scheduled appearance is in forty minutes on the first floor. I shower, fix my hair, and change into a navy pencil dress that I hope will transition from day to the nighttime reception. When I examine the reflection in the mirror, I’m disappointed. I look like a side chair upon which someone has hung a promotional tote. The judgment sends me to my makeup bag for red lipstick. Painting my mouth helps. I may still be background furniture, but I now have a decorative pillow.

  The exhibition booths are identical long desks covered in printed tablecloths. Behind each are makeshift shelves featuring the latest titles. I notice a kiosk about a hundred feet away that has an electric coffeemaker and giveaway cups. Now that will draw a crowd.

  The cloth draped over our table is red and printed with this year’s book covers. The same curtain is pinned to the wall behind me. Painted milk crate shelves are stacked on either side of the fabric display, showing off the house’s latest hardcovers. My new book is there, bottom shelf, where liquor stores keep the rotgut spirits.

  In the center of the wall tapestry is the image for the latest from Brad Pickney, my publisher’s star author. I could have designed it. Basically, it’s a navy background with his name in bold, orange letters. A title is scrawled beneath, along with a tinier subscript announcing that the book is “the latest” in the Trent Cross series. Pickney needs nothing else to sell his work—no image of an attractive man or woman looking off into the distance, no bleakly rendered city or foreboding suburban landscape.

  Two gray chairs wait behind the dais. One is for me. The other is for the marketing chaperone who will accompany our house’s better known scribes. For me, the second chair will remain occupied by the ghost of sales past. I take a seat, drop my tote, and scan for the swag that my publisher always brings. What do we have? Coffee cups? Stress balls? Five months ago, someone in marketing had asked my opinion on giveaways. I’d suggested plastering a quote from the book on a T-shirt. The woman had thanked me in an unexcited manner. Whatever the team decided on, it wasn’t that.