Ashley Bell: A Novel (28 page)

Whether Chubb Coy and Dr. St. Croix were Wrong People or were compatriots of another kind, conspiring for their own purposes, the professor seemed to regard Norm’s with the disdain that Bibi imagined Terezin and his pals would hold toward any restaurant lacking white tablecloths and designer china. Before her stood only an untouched glass of water. Her expression was more sour than usual, and she sat with the shoulders-back rigidity and lifted chin of a stern advocate of temperance who found herself unaccountably in a tavern. Her apparent contempt was not directed at Coy, as he plowed through his pancakes, for the two of them were engaged in animated conversation that seemed to amuse rather than offend him.

Before they might take notice of her, Bibi turned away from them, sat down, and fished enough money out of her purse to pay the entire bill, which she left on the table with the tip. At the back of the room were double portholed doors to the kitchen, and she headed for them as though she had legitimate business with someone on the staff, her face averted from Chubb Coy and his date.

Cooks and other staffers looked up in surprise, less because she didn’t belong there than because she had slammed through the doors with the energy of someone bent on lodging a loud complaint. When she started to make her way through prep aisles, past the griddles and grills and ovens, someone asked what she wanted, and someone else tried to give her directions to the women’s restroom. She saw the distant back door and waved them away, saying, “Air, need some air,” as though the dining room behind her had abruptly become a vacuum.

In the parking lot, after she moved the Honda to have a clear view of the entrance to the restaurant, Bibi slouched behind the steering wheel and wished that she had a baseball cap. Twenty minutes later, Coy and the professor came outside and stood talking for a minute before shaking hands and parting. He went to his black Lexus, and she got into a Mercedes.

Starting the engine, Bibi figured she should follow one or the other, but then decided not to bother with either. Being a former cop, Chubb Coy would spot a tail in minutes. Wherever the professor was going, it was unlikely to be as revelatory as finding her here with this man. That they knew each other was enough to convince Bibi that they were in league against her and that she had been a topic—if not
the
topic—of their meeting. If later she needed to have a few words with Solange St. Croix, she knew where to find the bitch.

After the Lexus and the Mercedes were out of sight, Bibi sat for a while, thinking about coincidences. She didn’t believe in them. Could they have known where to find her? Could they have wanted to be seen? Could they be all-knowing masters of the universe in human form? “For God’s sake, Beebs,” she said, “you’re losing it.” Even if they knew what kind of car she was driving now, which they didn’t, they couldn’t have known she would be going to Norm’s until she got there. Anyway, she was certain she hadn’t been followed. But she still didn’t believe in coincidences.

From Norm’s, she went to three different branches of her bank and withdrew two hundred dollars from each ATM, bringing her supply of cash to $814. At a big-box store, she purchased a disposable cell phone and an electronic map with GPS. She also bought a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses in case she again needed to disguise herself a little.

In the parking lot, as she unlocked the Honda and put her purchases on the front passenger seat, she began to feel like a sly operator, slipping off the grid with the ease of a senior CIA agent.

Which was when someone behind her said, “Is that you, Bibi? Bibi Blair?”

Bibi swung around to confront a woman who was vaguely familiar, but no name came to mind. Maybe thirty. Lots of tumbling blond hair. Face as smooth and unlined as raw chicken flesh with the pebbly skin stripped off. Pert nose, porn-star lips. Teeth white enough to blind. A projecting bosom on which a line of crows could perch.

“Hope you haven’t gone too big-time literary to remember us little people, Gidget. It’s not even been six years.”

“Miss Hoffline,” Bibi said, not because she could confirm the woman’s identity from the visual clues, but because no one other than her eleventh-grade English teacher had ever called her Gidget.

“These days, it’s Marissa Hoffline-Vorshack. Married right at the top two years ago. His name’s Leopold. Real-estate development.”

Bibi almost said,
If that’s his name, why aren’t you Marissa Hoffline-Development?
Miss Hoffline, however, had been a world-class mistress of mean, capable of eviscerating you with such finesse that, if you were hurt by her sharp tongue, she could successfully argue that you had misunderstood either her intention or every word she’d said. Better not to get into a pissing contest with her. Instead, Bibi said, “You look…really good.”

“Four years ago, I refreshed myself a little. Nice of you to notice.”

Before she had refreshed herself, Miss Hoffline had been a thirty-five-year-old brunette of the mouse-brown variety with crooked teeth and the chest of a sixteen-year-old boy. This transformation involved industrial plastic surgery, at least a quart of Botox, and more than a little voodoo.

“Of course I don’t teach anymore. Don’t have to. That’s my café-au-lait Bentley over there. But I always tell people,” said Mrs. Hoffline-Vorshack, “I was the first to recognize your talent.”

That was a crock and a half. She had focused more criticism on Bibi than she had on any of the other kids in the class, especially when the subject was her writing. Bibi had benefited from many good teachers in high school, but it was for one like this that kids had long ago invented spitballs.

As if Mrs. Hoffline-Vorshack saw a flash of resentment in her former student’s eyes, she said, “I was always a little hard on you, dear, just a little, because you needed some prodding now and then to reach your full potential.”

Bibi managed a smile that must have looked like that on a ventriloquist’s dummy. “I appreciate that. Well, nice to have seen you again.”

Leaning closer, so that her heroic bosom seemed about to topple her off balance, the woman said, “May I ask one question?”

Bibi wanted only to be gone from there and off the grid, which would probably happen quicker if she allowed the question. “Sure, of course,” she said, expecting a nasty crack about the ancient Honda.

Instead, Mrs. Hoffline-Vorshack asked, “Has your novel made enemies for you? Why are you packing heat?”

For a moment, Bibi blanked on the word
heat,
but then she said, “A gun? But I’m not.”

“Now, really, Gidget, my Leo gets threats, a man of his position, so he has a concealed-carry license. If you’ve got a trained eye, as I have, a very sharp eye, no tailoring is good enough to entirely conceal the telltale bulge.”

There was no telltale bulge. The shoulder rig held the pistol at Bibi’s side, in the roomiest part of her blazer.

“Well, sorry to say, your eye has misled you this time. I’ve no reason to carry a gun.”

As Bibi started to turn away, the woman gripped her by one arm. With concern that was no more real than her bosom, the refreshed ex-teacher said, “Oh, damn, you don’t have a concealed-carry permit, do you? Bibi, really, you can get in a lot of trouble, you really can. Carrying without a license, you could go to prison.”

The parking lot was busy with shoppers going to and from the store, and Mrs. Hoffline-Vorshack had the volume, although not the graceful cadences, of an auctioneer. People were looking at them, curious, frowning.

With through-clenched-teeth intensity, Bibi said, “I have no gun. Now let go of me.”

The woman let go of Bibi’s arm, only to grab her left lapel and pull aside her blazer, revealing the holster and pistol. “You always were a bit of a rule-breaker, girl. Always. But being the first to recognize your talent, I don’t want to see you ruin your career.”

Bibi clawed Mrs. Hoffline-Vorshack’s hand off her blazer. “Lady, what is
wrong
with you? Get away from me.”

“If you don’t have a concealed-carry permit, you should take that off right now, this very minute, and put it in the trunk.”

A few passersby stopped to watch the altercation. They must have been people who never saw TV news. These days, in situations like this, if you didn’t keep moving, you became part of the body count.

“I
have
a concealed-carry license,” Bibi hissed, and she started around the Honda to the driver’s door.

The former English teacher caught up with her between the headlights. “If you really, truly had one, then why didn’t you say so already? Why didn’t you?”

Turning a withering glare on her assailant, Bibi bit off each word of her reply. “Because. I. Don’t. Want. Every. Idiot. To. Know.”

Mrs. Hoffline-Vorshack’s resistance to withering was equal to that of granite. “Don’t you snap at me, young lady. If you have a license, show it, and I won’t worry you’ll ruin your life. Otherwise, I’ll have to call your parents.”

“I’m twenty-two years old, for God’s sake.”

“Not to me, you’re not.”

As Bibi reached the driver’s door with the former teacher close behind, one of the onlookers stepped forward. Tall, muscular, with a weathered face and a walrus mustache, wearing a bandana around his head and a tank top unsuited to the cool morning, arms and shoulders and neck crawling with tattoos of reptiles and spiders, he looked as if he’d stepped out of a version of Ray Bradbury’s
The Illustrated Man
written in an alternate universe where Bradbury had dropped acid while at the keyboard. “Excuse me, ladies. Maybe I can negotiate a little peace here.”

Bibi seized the moment. “This woman insists she knows me, I’ve never seen her before in my life, she’s a mental case.”

Wounded by the accusation, Mrs. Hoffline-Vorshack turned to the hulking would-be arbitrator to defend herself against Bibi’s slander, stepping away from the Honda and pointing to her car in the facing row of vehicles. “Do you see that Bentley over there,
my
Bentley? Mental cases do not drive café-au-lait Bentleys.”

As the woman made her case to be judged sane, Bibi got into the Honda and started the engine. When she gave the car too much gas as she pulled out of her parking space, Mrs. Hoffline-Vorshack reeled back as if in danger of being run down, but the illustrated man did not flinch, as though he had no doubt that his pumped physique would prevail undamaged in a collision with a mere sedan.

Driving away from the big-box store and into the street, Bibi raised her voice as she had not done during the bizarre encounter: “What the blazing hell was
that
about?” The confrontation seemed to have been more than a chance interaction with a former teacher. She sensed in the incident a suggestion of design, a prefiguring of an event to come, some elusive meaning that she needed to pin down and examine.