Death By Chick Lit (3 page)

“He got a name?”

“Quentin. Quentin Frye.” The detective scribbled in his notebook. Quentin can be more help than I can, Lola figured. He might know if Mimi had some sort of cyberstalker, had received any threats, that kind of thing.

“Thank you very much, Miss—”

“Ms.,” really, but anyway.
“Lola Somerville.”
Zero reaction from Wally. Unreal.

She gave Bobbsey her number. He offered a card in return. “Call us if you remember anything else. Why don’t we all go upstairs now.” It was not a question.

“Excuse me—” said Wally.

“You, too, c’mon up. We’ll give you something outside.” They were already halfway down the hall. It was too late for Wally to argue.

“Time to talk to the boyfriend,” Bobbsey said to the empty space ahead of him. Then he looked back at Lola, a flicker of sorrow behind his big square lenses. “It’s always the boyfriend.”

No way, thought Lola. No
way
. It can’t be. He can’t be.
Cannot
be. And not just because I was the one who set Quentin and Mimi up.

Three

Quentin wouldn’t hurt a mouse, this Lola knew for sure. He would attempt to
avoid
hurting a mouse by setting a glue trap, but he would also forget that he’d eventually have to find a way to
dispose
of sticky Mickey. Lola had learned this the first and last time she’d slept at Quentin’s place. They’d just
slept
slept, for the record—which, you see, is what happens sooner than you mean it to when you live in Brooklyn and your suitor lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Because while Brooklyn and Manhattan indeed share a mayor and are separated only by one narrow river, as far as cabdrivers and Manhattan dwellers are concerned—who, by the way, think it’s never-fail hilarious to ask if they need a passport to cross the bridge—the distance between the two boroughs might as well be, oh, 508 miles, which is the mathematical difference between Brooklyn’s underdog 718 area code and Manhattan’s coveted 212.

That morning, when Lola had been trying to clear out of Quentin’s apartment as quickly as possible, a yelp had brought her jogging into the kitchen, with only one contact lens in so far.

“What? Are you okay?” Lola squinted. She could barely make out the form of Quentin, handsome, scary-smart, well-meaning Quentin, Quentin with a bit of an old soul, Quentin who favored comfortable suede English teacher shoes and who accepted though didn’t quite understand Lola’s good-natured ribbing about how he’d worn a sweater vest on their first date, Quentin who wrote crossword puzzles for a syndication service and owned his own once-used rice cooker, Quentin who was losing a bit of his fine blond hair, but only from a bird’s-eye view, Quentin who was sitting on a kitchen stool, gripping its sides, staring at an open door beneath his sink.

“Quentin, what the dilly?”

“Lola? Can you do me a favor?” His voice was steady, but only with effort.

“Does it require binocular vision?” she asked.

“Can you get rid of the mouse under the sink?”

Lola winked her useless left eye closed, grabbed a piece of paper towel, picked up the poor creature—who, the trap’s “humane” intentions notwithstanding, had succumbed—dropped it into the blue plastic bag in which the
New York Times
had arrived, took out the trash, washed her hands, put in her left contact, found Quentin in the kitchen, and said, “You know what? I’m not sure this is going to work out.”

Quentin and Lola were indeed cut out to be friends, nothing more. She didn’t mind getting rid of the mouse; she just needed to be with someone who, you know,
could
get rid of a mouse. And now, friends was definitely all they were, their brief past the most non of nonissues. She’d still e-mail Quentin now and then to find a five-letter word for
Caspian tributary
, or at least a hint on the name of the second musketeer. He’d playfully refuse, and they’d e-mail back and forth nonetheless, trying to “coordinate” to get together, finally trailing off and falling back out of touch, until Lola needed an eleven-letter word for
expedient
.

Quentin was really not cut out to be a killer.

I’m sure the cops will figure that out on their own, Lola thought. I’d rather not embarrass him by telling them about the mouse.

She and Bobbsey, Wally trailing, made it back upstairs into the club, now brightly lit and nearly empty but for a couple of somber waitresses collecting their purses. Lola looked around. With a flick of the light switch, Cabin 9 had gone from dim and sleek to garish and clunky. The picnic benches looked beat-up and splintery, creating a heretofore unseen hazard to panty hose. The bunk beds, once funkily enticing, looked dingy and depressing. And the
mattresses
! Eew. You know what hides dirt? Lola thought.
Darkness
.

The sidewalk in front of the club was still clotted with partygoers, every one of whom was talking on a cell phone. The spinning yellow lights of three parked cop cars tiddlywinked off the slick, just-rained-on street. A cluster of women dressed in black, soggy signs leaning against their shins, lingered half a block up the Bowery. One was talking to a cop.

Oh, them.

The Jane Austen Liberation Front. The JALF could be counted on to protest every single chick lit reading or party, insisting that the genre cheapened both literature and women. Their leader, Wilma Vouch, who’d chained herself to Barnes & Noble the day
Bridget Jones
hit American stores, was not someone you’d want on your bad side. So, as far as the low JALF turnout at her own book party was concerned, Lola had never complained.

Lola looked back around the crowd. “I don’t see Quentin,” she said to Bobbsey. Good.

“It’s okay, we’ll get ahold of him.”

“Lola!”

Finally.

It was Lola’s newly minted husband, Doug, her best friend, Annabel, and Annabel’s friend Leo, whom Lola was secretly much happier to see than any of Annabel’s various other consorts. Leo served as Annabel’s gentleman walker to most parties, as she openly admitted that most of her suitors didn’t “get along that well with humans.”

“Are you okay?” Doug kissed Lola just to the left of her still-bright lipstick.

“Yeah, I think so,” said Lola. It was really, really good to see him. “I found the body, you know.”

“What?!”

“Hang on.” She gestured at Bobbsey. “Well, here’s my card,” she said, feeling silly, as she’d already given him her number—but this particular card bore the title of her book. Who knew? Maybe
Pink Slip
would wind up in his wife’s beach bag.

“Lola, seriously.” Lola had turned back to face her friends, arms dangling limp at her sides. Annabel, concern showing in her nearly violet eyes, took hold of Lola’s elbows. “
Are
you okay?”

Lola looked at her. It was really, really good to see Annabel, too. What was that study she’d read about? The one where husbands said their wives were their best friends, but wives said their best friends were their best friends?

“I mean, Lo, you look worse than that night we . . . did that thing Doug doesn’t know about,” Annabel said, a sly smile curving her lips to the left. Lola couldn’t help but laugh. Doug, accustomed to being double-teamed, smiled and shook his head. Leo, Lola noticed, looked fleetingly peeved.

“No no, yeah, I’m fine,” said Lola. She took a breath and started to tell the whole story. By the time she got to the Wally Seaport part, though, she was really flagging. The survival dose of adrenaline served up by her hippocampus was dissipating, and she was starting to feel foggy and twitchy. Distracted, she watched two of the cop cars pull away.

“Holy moly, Lola,” said Leo, filling the silence. He looked cute in his white shirt and jeans, the outfit Lola was always trying to get Doug to wear. It made Lola forgive Leo the goatee. “What an experience. I bet you could use a drink.”

“Oh, no thanks, Leo, I’m good.”

“No thanks?
You?
Wait, are you pregnant?”

Doug blushed.

“Leo, I just
fainted
.”

“Oh yeah. Sorry.” He reddened. Annabel’s purple-streaked braids swung as she fished a bottle of Poland Springs out of her threadbare knapsack and handed it to Lola.

“I know your contract says Evian, but it’s the best I can do,” said Annabel. She had a wee silver stud in her nose, rings on thumbs and toes, and a tiny black-and-white tattoo of Bettie Page’s head on her hip. Bettie’s famous black bangs, matching Annabel’s, were visible just above the waistband of her low-slung fatigues.

“Thanks,” said Lola. She gulped down the entire bottle while her friends watched. Except Leo, who was watching Annabel. Even amid other distractions, the ladies, they notice such things.

“Where were you guys, anyway?” asked Lola.

“Subway hell,” said Doug, taking off his clunky glasses—Lola loved it when he skipped his contacts—and rubbing his army-green eyes. “Report of a suspicious package at Bleecker Street. Turned out Mayor Bloomberg had left his briefcase on the train.”

“But they shut down
everything
, so these guys were trapped downtown, and I was stuck coming from uptown,” added Leo.

“Anyway, this is totally insane and gross and terrifying,” said Annabel, sticking her hands in the pockets of her worn hoodie. No makeup, as usual. Upper East Side women always stopped Annabel at her schmancy gym—a single date with the owner had yielded Annabel a lifetime membership—to ask her where she got her eyelashes perma-dyed. She didn’t, of course; they were just that long and dark. “Who would have anything against Mimi?” Annabel asked. “I mean, besides you?”

“Hey. I wanted to kill her, but I didn’t want to
kill
her,” said Lola. “And don’t forget, it could have been just a stranger, some random crazy person, I don’t know.”

Right then, a reflection caught her eye, along with a familiar face behind it. She turned. The light had caught a pair of big square glasses, like Detective Bobbsey’s, only they were not on Bobbsey’s face. And this grouper, this guy lurking twenty yards away near a scaffold, Lola recognized: it was Reading Guy.

Reading Guy! Reading Guy came to pretty much every single chick lit reading, ever. Everyone knew who he was. He’d been sighted at the downtown Borders, the uptown Y, and everywhere in between. Fortyish and pasty, he wore suspenders on brown acrylic pants, his top shirt button buttoned, the bottom two not, and ancient black sneakers with black laces. His glasses were so large that the bottom edges rested on his cheeks. Every book reading, he’d come and sit in the back, listen intently, and lurk, sweating slightly even in winter. He never bought a book or had one signed, but there he’d stand, next to a shelf, upright and silent, until the last guest left. Reading Guy never crossed a line, but everyone wished he would so they could actually ask him to leave. You know, so he could go home and work on his “wallpaper”—Scotch-taped collages of creased chick lit covers and yellowed reviews and grimy authors’ photos marked with runic grease pencil. At least that’s what everyone imagined.

In short, Reading Guy freaked people out.

Including Lola, at that very moment. She’d never heard of a Reading Guy sighting anywhere but a bookstore, yet there he was right now, right there, looking particularly lurky.

I should tell the cops.

“Hang on, guys,” Lola said, turning quickly to look for Bobbsey. She heard a car door slam a short way back up the block. It was one of those unmarked cop sedans. Lola could make out Bobbsey in the passenger seat. The car revved and began to move away.

“Hey!” Lola called. “Hey!” Her hippocampus was firing hard again, and Lola was suddenly zinging with energy like a cartoon guy with his finger in a socket. “There’s something I should tell you!” Now she was jogging. “It’s Reading Guy! Reading Guy is here!” Just as she reached the back door of the car, it pulled onto the Bowery and sped away. All she saw was Quentin, sitting in the backseat.

Lola turned back toward her friends, only to see Reading Guy start to run the other way.

Four

“C’mon you guys, let’s go after him!” Lola wheeled on her heel and started sprinting back the way Reading Guy had run.

Did I just say, “Let’s go after him?”

The moment Lola reached her posse, they reached out and snared her like a bug in a web.

“Come on!” she protested, struggling. “It was Reading Guy!”

“Lola, are you high?” asked Annabel.

“A little,” she said, wiggling only weakly now. Yeah, she thought grimly. High on death.

“Reading Guy is beyond creepy,” said Annabel, who knew all about him from Lola. “But that doesn’t mean he killed Mimi, or that you can run in clogs.”

“Didn’t the detective give you his number?” asked Leo, ever helpful. “Why don’t you just call him right now with a description?”

At this point Lola had collapsed onto Doug, who was stroking her hair, or at least trying to organize it. She nodded and reached for her cell. The emergency coping hormones were fading for good, and so was she. It had been a long, vile night.

“And then let’s go home,” Doug said.

Lola and Doug lived farther out in Brooklyn than most Manhattanites would venture, even under terrorist threat. While the nearby up-and-came areas had charming brownstones,
really
famous authors, and beatific twins wearing CBGB’s onesies, Lola and Doug’s apartment was in a kind of no-man’s-land marked by vacant lots and vinyl siding. It hadn’t had a name until area Realtors, agents of gentrification doom, had invented one to make it sound more like the nicer neighborhood a short distance south, which was called Wayside. So now Lola and Doug’s neighborhood was called, at least in the real estate classifieds, North Wayside. Sounded inviting, but few were willing to make the trek, even for Doug’s cooking. Their Manhattan friends called it NoWay.

Still, Lola had realized her lifelong dream of having a garden and living near water. The water, it should be noted, was the diner-coffee-colored Lundy Canal, lined by the backs of warehouses and dotted here and there by the motorboats of the brave. Doug called it Rio Stinko. The canal, you see, had been used for centuries as a repository for waste both chemical and human, including bullet-riddled bodies. Urban legend told that the water was so polluted, it had once caught fire. But developers’ leering eyes had, of course, spotted the canal, which meant, first, good things for the environment (clean water) and, then, less good (the inevitable Cleanwater Canalside Café). A flushing and revitalization project was indeed under way, already touting great strides in water clarity and renewed populations of dinoflagellates, which, Lola imagined, was the scientific name for “big fish who smack themselves for living there.” Even they, one day, would likely be priced out.