Best Friends Forever (34 page)

remembering the shape of her face, her smel of sugar and lemons, her ful lips curving in-to a smile, her blond hair brushing her cheeks. He leaned back against the concrete wal , trying to find the place he went to in his mind, a place he thought of as a smal storage shed, like the one where he and Sam had kept their bikes and sleds and skateboards when they were kids. In his mind, he entered the shed and locked the door behind him, sat down in the darkness, and conjured Adelaide Downs.

Addie, he thought as her face floated before his eyes. What was Addie like? Fat, except she wasn’t anymore. Shy, he thought

…but that wasn’t quite right. Sick? Possibly

…which could mean that she’d decided she had nothing to lose. Scared, maybe. She’d been hurt when she was a teenager, picked on, laughed at, ostracized…and then, as an adult, she probably spent years unable to walk out the door without people staring or whispering. Now she had a new body; now she was a blonde, not a brunette, now she could slip into the tide of regular people and swim there, unremarkable and unremarked-swim there, unremarkable and unremarkedupon. And she swam. He pictured Addie in a swimsuit—a modest

black

one-piece,

because she would never be the bikini type, no matter how much weight she’d lost. He added a white bathing cap, a bottle of drugstore suntan lotion, and a towel. He imagined Valerie

Adler

by

her

side.

Val

would

definitely be the bikini type, the smal er the better, with maybe those big black sunglasses that made perfectly attractive women look like giant bugs. Two girls in swimsuits. Where would they go to escape the miserable Chicago winter, where the wind blew off Lake Michigan and slipped, knife-edged, under your coat?

“Key

West,”

he

said

out

loud,

remembering the inscription on the back of Valerie’s photograph. Through the wal , he heard Gary Ryderdahl let loose with a juicy string of expletives and slam his phone down.

Jordan went back to his desk, turned on his computer, and cal ed up a map of the United States, noting that St. Louis and Nashvil e were both on the way to Florida. Maybe they were there already, Addie and Val, the country mouse and the city mouse, sitting on the beach, each holding a frozen drink, something frothy and sweet with a wedge of pineapple perched on the rim, listening to the waves, feeling the breeze in their hair. Maybe it was a dying woman’s final wish, or maybe they’d done something terrible and decided to run. It made no difference to him. Either way, he’d do his job. He got to his feet, pul ed on his heavy coat, waved goodbye to Gary, and climbed back in his car.

FORTY-THREE

“Key West?” said Sasha. Her eyebrows arched skeptical y. Behind the open door, the house was quiet. Jordan wondered where her daughters were. Maybe at their father’s. Sasha’s hair was pul ed into its usual tidy knot, but her cheeks and forehead were shiny with some kind of face cream that she wiped at with her sleeve before leading him back to her office. “You think they’re in Key West?”

Jordan kept quiet. He’d decided, going in, that the less he said, the better. Besides, he didn’t trust his voice entirely. He worried that if he opened his mouth, what would come out would not be the right questions and answers but, instead, the words My wife and the dentist have a baby now.

“You’re basing this on what, exactly?”

“They went to Chicago together to find Addie’s brother. Addie took out a bunch of money in St. Louis. There was a charge at a gas station in Nashvil e, and I think the two of them are stil together, so it…”

“Cel phone records?” Sasha Devine interrupted, as if she hadn’t heard him.

“Airline

tickets?

Hotel

reservations?

Anything?” She wiped her sleeve against her cheek again and looked at Jordan.

“I…” said Jordan, and shut his mouth.

“Did she speak to you?” Sasha asked.

“Adelaide Downs? Did she find you in the smal storage shed in your mind? Or did you go sit in the handicapped cel to think it over?”

He swal owed hard, thinking he’d have to be a lot less chatty with any future one-night stands. This shit was embarrassing. “I know she’s down there.”

“You’re guessing,” she shot back.

“Look,” said Jordan, trying to sound reasonable. “I know she likes to swim. I think she went to the beach.”

Sasha raised her eyebrows, which were the same glossy brown as her hair. “So why Florida?” she asked. “Why not Nantucket? Why not Maine?”

“Because it’s freezing there.”

“So?” Sasha said, shrugging. “Some people like to go to the beach when it’s cold. You bundle up, sit by the fire. Watch the waves.” The subtext was clear: If you hadn’t been such an asshole, al this could have

been yours, the blanket and the fire and Sasha herself, warm and naked under the covers.

“She’s heading south, and she likes to swim,” he repeated. Sasha was looking at him with that expression women have, like they can see exactly what you’re thinking, as if it’s a movie showing on the screen of your forehead, like she knew that the real mystery on his mind had nothing to do with Daniel Swansea’s disappearance and everything to do with his ex-wife and a baby.

“Not a pool?” Sasha final y asked, hands on her hips, eyebrows cocked.

“I think she wants to see the ocean.” This, too, was purest conjecture, but somehow it felt right. “And she might be sick.”

“Might be?” Her eyebrows edged even higher. Jordan shut his mouth and waited. Sasha stared at him, then sighed. “I’d send you if I could, but on this…I mean, it’s nothing, real y.

Just taking out money in one city and buying gas somewhere else doesn’t add up to Florida.”

“It’s fine,” he forced himself to say. “I understand.” He drove back to the station. Hol y was stil off at Dan’s Toyota dealership. Devin was stil home. Gary was stil on the telephone, working his way through a list of every hotel in Nashvil e. It took Jordan fifteen minutes online to book a place in Key West, an efficiency with the word “Budget” in its name and a kitchenette attached. He spent another ten minutes booking a flight for the next morning. He composed an email that he’d send from the airport and drove home to pack shirts and sports coats and an ancient, half-used bottle of sunblock that he suspected had been bought on his honeymoon. I am coming for you, Addie, he thought. Then he said it out loud, not a threat, more like a simple state-ment of his intentions. “I am coming to bring you home.”

FORTY-FOUR

I climbed out of the car, blinking in the sticky sunshine on Monday afternoon. White shel s crunched underneath my feet. Palm fronds rustled above my head. I smel ed salt in the humid air and could hear—or imagined I could—waves lapping at a nearby shore. In front of us, tucked behind a tidy garden of clipped hedges and spiky palms, was a white wooden cottage with a broad front porch and louvered windows, like an il ustration from

a

fairy

tale. SHELL

COTTAGES read a plaque beside the doorbel .

“Check it out,” Val said, and led me through the French doors. There was a living room with a tiled floor and a ceiling fan paddling at the humid air. Two bedrooms down a short hal , a bathroom in between them. A bowl of mangoes and papayas and limes sat next to the kitchen sink. In the back was a smal brick patio that was thick with the scents of jasmine and ja-caranda and fil ed with spiky-leaved palms and orchids. Val led me to the screened-in porch and reached for a glass pitcher ful of pale-green liquid. “Key limeade. The landlady leaves it for new tenants,” Val said, and poured us each a glass. I sipped mine, tentatively at first, then more deeply: I was thirsty, and this was delicious, the perfect balance between tart and sweet.

“Isn’t that good?” Val looked pleased.

“Have you been here before?”

“Twice.” She slipped off her shoes and settled into a chaise longue, stretching and sighing with pleasure. “With a friend.” She fanned her hair out against the cushions and looked at me sideways. I recognized my cue.

“Anyone I know?”

“Charlie Carstairs.” The name was pronounced reverently. Clearly, I was supposed to know who he was. Sadly, I didn’t.

“Isn’t he…”

“My station manager.”

“Ah.” I rummaged around in my brain for Val-iana. “Wait a minute. He’s the one who’s married to—”

“It’s a marriage in name only,” she said quickly.

“Ah.” Charles Carstairs’s wife, Bonnie, was herself a former newscaster turned ful -time fund-raiser for breast cancer research. You’d see her picture in the paper a few times a year, her head swathed in a hot-pink bandanna, beaming at the finish line of some bike event or swim or marathon. After my

mother’s

sickness,

I’d

started

contributing to breast cancer research and advocacy groups, and I’d ended up on her mailing list, which meant I got her hot-pink bandanna’ed face smiling up from my mailbox at least once a month, exhorting me to race for the cure, or dance for the cure, or shop or garden or dine out for the cure.

“You know her hair grew back,” Val said.

“She’s been in remission since 1993. She just wears that bandanna for show.”

“Wel , in that case, you go on and take her husband. If she’s got hair, she can get a new one.”

Val frowned faintly. I took a sip of my limeade. “You know,” I offered, “they don’t actual y leave their wives. Even if they say they want to…”

She shook her head, ice tinkling in her glass. “Oh, God, like I’d ever want him to leave his wife,” she said. “Please. Six a.m. tee times and stinky cigars after dinner!

Once a week’s about al I’d want of Charlie.”

She stretched back in her chair, reaching her arms up over her head. Her eyes were hidden under the dark glasses she’d bought in St. Louis, her arms and shoulders bared in the red halter top she’d picked up in Atlanta. I wondered if Val missed her old clothes—the boys’

jeans and T-shirts, the laceless sneakers she’d wear until the soles peeled away from the uppers. Maybe she pined for the days when she would cut her bangs with the craft scissors she’d swiped from school and ride a too-big boy’s bike, helmetless, through town. Now there wasn’t an inch of her that hadn’t been worked on, improved somehow, from the tips of her polished toes to her tanned legs, lasered hairless and painted brown in the privacy of a spray-tan booth. Her bel y was prairie-flat. There were acrylic fingernails glued to her fingertips, and hair extensions (for volume, not length, she’d taken pains to tel me) cleverly braided and knot-ted onto her scalp. She had, she confessed, done some “finetuning” on her nose and chin out in California, where she’d gotten her first job on-air. Stil , I could catch glimpses of my old friend underneath the polished facade; like a coin or a shel glimmering underneath shal ow water. She stil bit her nails when she was nervous, stil tucked her hair behind her ears as a conversational placeholder, stil preferred snack foods to actual meals, and was, as ever, stil ful of plans, adventures I would never dream of, up to and including running from the law for a tropical vacation.

I went inside to use the bathroom. “Don’t take a bath!” she cal ed. “There’s an outdoor shower!” Val led me to the backyard,

where,

sure

enough,

a

showerhead sprouted from the wal . It curved over a square of wooden planks with a drain set in the middle. A white fence surrounded it and there was a built-in shelf with an oversized bar of creamy pink soap, bottles of shampoo and conditioner and body wash made of raspberry and avocado oil. “It’s real y just so you can rinse off after the beach,” Val said. “But I use it al the time.” She gave me a slanting smile. “A couple of times, Charlie and I used it together.”

“Just tel me you cleaned it after.”

“Addie. It’s a shower. Showers are clean by definition.” She tossed me a towel. “We can go shopping later, pick up some more clothes.”

“And then what?”

“Shower first. Then we’l talk.”

It felt strange, taking my clothes off outside, in the middle of the day, exposing my poor imperfect body to the sunshine. But after a few minutes under the warm spray, I started enjoying myself. I could feel the breeze, scented with salt and jasmine, moving across my skin.

When I tilted my head back to rinse my hair, I opened my eyes and saw the blue sky above me.

Final y, the water turned cold. Inside the bedroom closet, I found a white robe, plush and thick as a comforter. I tied the sash around my waist and walked barefoot back to the porch and sat on the chaise longue opposite Val’s. I thought she was sleeping

—her eyes were closed—but as soon as I sat down, she started to talk.

“Have you ever been in love?”

“I…” I stared at the bumps of my knees and pressed the heel of my palm gently against the bump in my bel y. Tel her more about Vijay? Keep the details my secret? Before I could decide, Val plunged ahead.

“Listen, al I’m saying is that we’re going to have to go home eventual y, and while we’re here, you should take advantage. Do everything you always wanted! Get drunk!

Get high! Have sex with the pool boy!”

I looked around. “There’s a pool?”

“Out back,” said Val, pointing. “Behind the hedges. We share with the other cottages.”

She leaned back, eyes narrowed at the horizon. “I bet I could get you a guy.”

“I appreciate the thought, but I’m okay. How about this,” I said. “We rent bikes and pack a picnic and go to the beach?”

She frowned. “That’s not very exciting.”

Reaching underneath her chair, she pul ed out a blue-and-white plastic bag. “Pork rind?

” She waved one at me. “Low carb!” I shook my head. She shrugged and popped one in her mouth. I listened to the crunch, frowning. Something was teasing at the edge of my mind, and when I final y figured out what it was, I gasped.

Val looked up at me, mouth ful , blue eyes wide, freckles dotting her cheeks. “What?”

“Val,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even. “Where’d you get those?”

She popped another pork rind in her mouth. “Nashvil e? Wherever we stopped for gas yesterday morning.” I remembered. I’d gone to use the bathroom, and when I’d come back to the car, she’d had a plastic bag of snack food at her feet and a jumbosized fountain drink in her hand, and was complaining about the car’s lack of cup holders, and I hadn’t thought anything about it at the time, but now…