Lauren Takes Leave

by Gerstenblatt, Julie

  Kat is blinking her green eyes at me, shaking her head back and forth. She speaks very slowly. “So…you mean…we’re planning a stealth recovery operation involving the breaking and entering of Leslie’s home residence, while working under the alibi of having been at Dancing with the Stars of David?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying!”

  “Now, that’s what I’d call a Saturday night!” Kat tosses me the keys to my car. “Let’s collect your husband and commit some petty larceny!”

  “I was thinking more like, let’s help save our own asses.”

  “Yeah, that, too,” she says, the glow of her BlackBerry lighting up her face as she starts tapping. “Totally.”

  Chapter 33

  I leave Kat and the car idling while I run into Starbucks to (hopefully) retrieve my husband. My heart lifts at the sight of Doug seated at a round table in the corner, staring out a window.

  There’s hope, then.

  I quietly exhale, letting out air that I’d probably been holding in since he emerged from behind that fig tree at the temple.

  Don’t fuck this up, Lauren.

  He doesn’t notice me, so, before announcing my presence, I take a moment to study him in profile.

  His skin, usually a deep olive, looks washed out under this lighting. His eyes have developed creases in the corners, matching the wrinkles in his rolled-up shirtsleeves. He reaches up with one hand and rubs his stubble absentmindedly.

  Doug shaves twice a day with a four-blade razor, and still, it’s not enough.

  I love that I know that about him.

  I approach his table and say the first thing that comes to mind. “I’m an idiot.”

  Doug shakes his head in agreement. “True as that may be, it’s not an excuse.”

  “No, it’s not an excuse.” I pull out a chair and sit across from him. He lets me, which I take as a sign to continue. “I could say that I was drunk. Which is true, but, again, it’s not an excuse.”

  He continues to rub at the stubble on his jawline. “I hate that you kissed him. It disgusts me, and I’m not sure how or when I’ll ever get that image out of my head.”

  I nod. My eyes well up with tears, but I say nothing.

  “But I think…I hate more the fact that you deceived me. That you came back from Miami and told me everything but that. I have to wonder, if I hadn’t overheard you talking to Kat, would you ever had told me the truth?”

  I am not sure what to say to this.

  “And then I have to wonder, what else are you keeping from me?” His bloodshot eyes hold mine.

  I think about the position as chair of the English Department, that infamous job I did not get and now don’t even want.

  I think about how tired I am, keeping track of everyone’s schedules, of constantly buying ridiculous birthday presents for ridiculous birthday parties, of washing dishes and folding laundry that my hired help doesn’t.

  I think about the ways in which I sometimes ignore my children’s bad behavior, giving in to their whines and complaints just to shut them up.

  Just to make all the noise stop.

  These are among the few details I overlooked in my original confession to my husband.

  “There are a few things,” I begin. “Nothing as bad as the Lenny issue.” I can’t bring myself to say, “kiss” to Doug.

  “Things like…?” He arches his eyebrows.

  “I may have visited Georgie Parks.”

  “Professor Georgina Parks? At Harvard?” he asks. “When?”

  “Wednesday.” I shrug, a smile forming on my lips. I try to bite it back.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Because of a sweater.” I’m sort of laughing now, hearing how it sounds, remembering the week. I brush a tear away from my eye. “It’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got time,” Doug says, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back in the chair.

  “No, you don’t,” Kat says, materializing by our side. “Should we want to successfully rob Leslie’s house with any amount of grace, time is definitely one thing we haven’t got much of.”

  Doug stares at her, incredulous. He looks to me for an explanation.

  “Plus, you can’t just sit here and mope,” Kat argues. “Well, I mean, you can, but it will continue to suck.”

  “She’s right,” I say. “Come on. I’ll explain everything in the car.”

  “Everything?” he asks.

  “With Kat as my witness,” I say, holding my palm out flat, like I’m taking an oath.

  “You’re about to become one of us!” Kat grins.

  Doug hesitates, still deciding what to do. “And what is that, exactly?” he asks, following us out onto the street and getting into the passenger side of the car. “Werewolves? Criminal masterminds? Complete freakazoids?”

  “A little bit of all of the above,” Kat decides, buckling herself into the back. “If you also add in the fun factor.”

  “Legally, you should sit in Becca’s car seat,” Doug says.

  “Original.” Kat extends one middle finger his way before answering her phone, which has just begun to ring.

  Am I wrong to love a series of diversions that momentarily take the focus off of my recent infidelity and compulsive need to fabricate and obfuscate?

  Definitely not wrong, I conclude, turning on the radio. I select an XM station with a heavy enough rap element to complicate Doug’s ability to think clearly.

  Kat listens intently to the voice on the other end of her phone as I pull out of the parking spot and make my way through the quiet streets of Elmwood. I decide to skip the traffic lights on the main road, preferring instead to take the highway three exits south to Hadley.

  “Excellent!” Kat says, disconnecting and dropping her phone back into her handbag. “Don’t be mad,” she says to me.

  “Okay,” I say, making eye contact with her in the rearview mirror.

  “Shay’s going to meet us there.”

  “Okay,” I say, trying to remain calm.

  “Shay Greene?” Doug asks. “Newly elected Hadley School Board president?”

  “That’d be the one,” I say.

  “You guys know her?” Doug asks.

  “Mmm-hmm,” Kat adds.

  “Part of the week’s festivities,” I say.

  I mean, how much truth does one really have to divulge to one’s husband?

  And then I decide: all of it.

  I exit the highway and pull onto the streets of Hadley. “Kat fooled around with Shay and it was caught on Leslie’s nanny cam, and also I swung around a pole and gashed a hole in Leslie’s face, plus I sort of got to third base with a toilet.” There. That should explain it.

  “Which was also caught on nanny cam,” Kat adds. “The face-gashing part, anyway. And Leslie’s threatening to blackmail us with it. And maybe sue Lauren. So we’re going to get the evidence and destroy it!”

  “Is that why Leslie had that bandage on and those huge sunglasses? It looked like she had cataracts removed after falling down a flight of stairs,” Doug says.

  “Nope,” Kat says. “Us happened.”

  “Though she’s totally lying about the black eye being my fault,” I add.

  “True, that,” Kat confirms. “Which is another reason why we need the videos.”

  “A regular Watergate,” Doug says, looking out the window. I am pretty sure the corners of his mouth turn upward when he says this.

  I cut the lights on my car as we pull onto Leslie’s street. Passing by her house, I park at a bend in the road a little ways down, which Kat refers to as the official rendezvous spot. Sure enough, there is a gold Mercedes S class waiting for us in the darkness.

  I flash my lights and Shay emerges, wearing skinny black cargos, platform booties and a wrap cardigan.

  Doug rolls down the window on his side. Shay leans in, enveloping the car in her flowery perfume. “I’ve got the security code for the alarm.” She grins. “Meet me by the basement entrance.” She
drapes one fold of her long sweater over her shoulder and hurries down the block.

  “Who are you people?” Doug wants to know.

  “We’re members of the elite Hadley Union Free School District,” Kat explains, once we’re all assembled by the French doors leading out onto Leslie’s terraced, overly landscaped backyard. “Merely welcoming our new school board president into the fold. Now someone hand me a credit card.”

  “This won’t work,” I say, digging through my wallet and handing her a plastic card.

  “Because you maxed it out this week?” Doug wants to know.

  “Good one, Mr. Worthing!” Kat says. “You just might prove to be better company that Lenny.”

  “Who’s Lenny?” Shay wants to know. “Kat, you don’t need that. Just pick up the mat. There’s a key underneath.”

  “A YouTube rapping sensation,” Kat jokes, pretending to swoon. She finds the key and hands me back my card. “This is going to be the easiest breaking and entering I’ve ever done.”

  “How many have you done?” I want to know.

  “Not MC Lenny Katzenberg?” Shay asks.

  “Yes, MC Lenny Katzenberg!” I say.

  “Four or so,” Kat says. “If you don’t count college.”

  “He’s so cute!” Shay gushes. “I love his videos. Especially that one about Obama, did you see that one?”

  “Great,” I concur. “One of his all-time best.”

  “Can everyone just shut the fuck up about Lenny Katzenberg, please?” Doug shouts. “And is that a cat I see, on the other side of the door?”

  “Oh no,” I say. “Here we go with the cats.”

  Kat opens the door, and Shay slides in to quickly turn off the beeping alarm. We follow her to the front hall, where she opens a closet and deftly punches in a series of numbers.

  “I house-sit sometimes.” Shay shrugs, noticing our silence. “It comes in handy.”

  “I’ll bet,” Doug says. Turning to me, he adds, “Let’s move out of district. On Monday.” A gray tabby mews from the corner archway leading into the kitchen. “And someone lock that thing in a bathroom.”

  Shay does.

  “Yes, my husband is afraid of house pets,” I confirm to Shay and Kat as we plan out a strategy for canvassing the house.

  Doug, scratching his legs furiously even though the cat is now securely out of the way, volunteers to be our watchman.

  I turn to him and sigh, reaching up to kiss him on the forehead. “You’re not allergic. We had you tested, remember?”

  He shrugs and goes out the front door, hiding behind one of the huge columns. “I’ll alert you with a bird call if I see someone approaching,” he says.

  “I can really see MC Lenny’s appeal,” Shay says. “Now, let’s get cracking, shall we?”

  Eight minutes later, the entire house has been canvassed for hidden cameras, with most of our search focusing on the living room and the guest bedrooms.

  “I found one in an air purifier,” Shay says, calling down from upstairs. “From the room we were in, Kat.”

  “Score,” Kat says, simultaneously finding and removing a small camera from the back of an air freshener that was plugged into a socket in the living room.

  “That’s going to be mine!” I say.

  “Good,” Kat says. “Then we located the most incriminating two. Let’s get out of here.”

  ”Wait.” I say. “I need to check Leslie’s bathroom before we go.”

  I pass Shay on the curved staircase. “Try a mirror!” she suggests. “Or, like, a clock radio? But hurry!”

  I enter the oversized bathroom and begin to look around. I notice a small Renuzit room freshener and grab it. For good measure, I also take the goose-necked vanity mirror sitting on the counter next to the sink. And one of those plug-in night-lights.

  “We good?” Kat asks as I hurry down the plushly carpeted stairs.

  “I guess,” I say, surveying my armload of random items. I don’t know whether to hope that I’ve got a recording of my actions or to hope that Leslie doesn’t put hidden surveillance in her bathrooms.

  “Then, off with the lights…” Shay says, hitting a switch in the corner. “And I’m going to reset the alarm…and…go!”

  We head en masse back through the dining room and out the French doors. Kat locks them and slips the key back under the mat while I reshuffle the items cradled in my arms.

  My silk shirt sticks to my back and I realize that I’m sweating.

  “Well done, everyone,” Shay says, always the leader. “I’ll upload the video at home and let you know what we’ve got.”

  From the other side of the glass, I can just barely hear Leslie’s cat meowing loudly in protest from his powder-room prison.

  “Back to temple, people!” Kat says as we head through some bushes and around to the front of Leslie’s property line. We signal to Doug, who meets us at the curb.

  Kat stops at our car and turns to say good-bye to Shay, kissing her chastely on both cheeks. “You’re the balls, Shay. Thanks a million.”

  “Lotsa fun,” she says, closing the trunk of her luxury automobile on all the stolen goods. “Hey, we should all hang some time. Go for drinks?”

  “Um…maybe!” I say, pushing Kat into the backseat and slamming the door before she can respond.

  Chapter 34

  “Well, that went off without a hitch,” Kat says, settling into her seat. She checks her phone. “Jodi says not to worry and that she’s praying for us.”

  “Might have gone off without a hitch,” Doug says. “Conditional tense.”

  “What are you talking about?” I say. “We were brilliant in there! Like the A-Team or something.” Doug’s always such a glass half-empty to my glass half-full.

  I accelerate as we get on the ramp to the highway, slightly annoyed and buzzkilled by my husband’s underwhelming response to what is clearly a coup for Team Lauren.

  “I agree that you got some of what we came for, and that that part of the mission was a complete success,” Doug starts. “But…” He trails off.

  “Out with it,” Kat says.

  “First. Why did you steal all that stuff? When Leslie notices that her mirror is missing, won’t she become suspicious? Won’t that make her want to look at the footage that was recorded there earlier? Or, perhaps, other footage?”

  “But see, my dear Watson,” I explain, using my Sherlock Holmes voice, “Leslie won’t be able to see the footage because we stole the cameras and the recording devices that held it!”

  “But while you were inside Leslie’s house, I started thinking. Doesn’t all the information get backed up?” he asks.

  “That’s why I took her iBook laptop!” Kat exclaims. I reach my hand up from the steering wheel so that Kat can give me a high five from the backseat.

  “See, we’ve thought of everything.” I say.

  “The Cloud,” Doug says, shaking his head. “The Cloud.”

  “Oh. My. God. The Cloud.” Kat echoes. I have no idea what they’re mumbling about. Then Kat starts moving her hands in sweeping, circular motions, like she’s conjuring a phantom from the air. I watch for a second in the rear view mirror and begin to understand.

  “You mean…all the data in Leslie’s house is automatically backed up to some server in cyberspace?” I ask slowly.

  “Instantly, probably,” Doug says. “And what about the rest of the nanny cams?” he asks into the silence. “The ones we didn’t take? The ones that probably recorded you running around Leslie’s house just now?”

  His words hang in the air as Kat and I consider this. It’s lucky that I know where I’m going, because I need to do it on autopilot; my mind is completely transfixed with an image of several nanny cams recording my removal of several other nanny cams. I’m sure we didn’t get them all; we weren’t even trying to.

  As I pull into the parking lot of Temple Beth El for the second time tonight, I have to wonder: Just how brainless are we?

  Kat pulls out her BlackBerry and
begins tapping away.

  “I hope you have a direct line to God,” I joke, handing my car keys to Moses.

  “Trust me,” she says. “Shay’s Godlike.”

  “At this point, do we have any other choice but to trust Kat?” Doug says, taking my hand and leading me back up the temple steps. “And Shay?”

  I squeeze his hand tightly, smiling at his use of the plural pronoun. “Not really,” I admit. “But it doesn’t bode well that our fate rests in the power of their texting.”

  Big-band music echoes through the temple hallways as we enter the building. “Perfect timing! It must be the dinner and dancing portion of the evening,” Doug says.

  “Act nonchalant,” Kat says, air-kissing us good-bye as she pushes through one of the sets of double doors. Doug and I wait a beat before doing the same. We try to get to our table, but are immediately engulfed by partygoers boogying across the parquet floor.

  “Wanna dance?” Doug asks shyly.

  Our phone conversation in Miami comes rushing back to me. He remembers.

  I nod eagerly. We embrace and sway together slowly, not caring that the upbeat tune calls for something more like a Lindy than a waltz.

  When the song ends, we take our seats for dessert.

  “So?” Jodi asks, sliding her petite tush onto my chair with me. I scoot over to make room. She looks from me to Doug. “How’d it go?”

  “Great! Good,” Doug says, clearly trying to make up for his sobering, rational point of view in the car. “No problems. It went off without a hitch, to use Kat’s words.”

  “Excellent!” Jodi purrs. “And,” she asks, looking from me to Doug and back again, “are you two co-pathetic?”

  “Copasetic?” Doug asks aloud.

  “Great!” Jodi concludes. “Now if only my night could run as smoothly.” She scans the room, appraising the competition one final time. “That trustee over there with the toupee and the cane is surprisingly light on his feet.”

  “I have a feeling you’ll be happy with the outcome, Jo,” I say, smiling inwardly.