Death By Chick Lit (6 page)

Lola heard footsteps but no voices. God, if they would just speak, I could gauge their whereabouts more precisely and plan my Lucy maneuver. The bedroom was at the far end of the living room, with the door open, so if she came out, she’d be visible.

They were coming closer. Lola held what was left of her breath.

Clonk
. The side of her head slammed into the floor, as the bottom of the bed had just slammed into her head.

Hold on.

“Quentin?”

Lola rolled out from under. Quentin was crouched at the head of his bed, pillow raised to strike.

“Lola?!”

“No, a giant mouse.”

“Not funny.”

“I’m sorry,” said Lola. Jeez, Somerville, this guy’s girlfriend was just murdered. Once in a while, would it kill you—er, once in a while, could you
not
make a joke?

Lola gave Quentin a giant hug. “I mean, I’m really sorry.”

“Thanks.” Quentin was stiff in her arms. Still shocked and numb, surely.

“So wait,” Lola said, sitting back. “After all that, they just dropped you off?”

“I guess,” shrugged Quentin. “Maybe they were just trying to intimidate me.”

“Probably,” said Lola. God
damn
. This Nervous Nellie totally eek-a-moused me again, thought Lola. Boy, should I have known.

“Lola, thanks,” said Quentin.

“Don’t mention it,” said Lola. Let it go, Somerville. “Listen, you really shouldn’t be alone. Do you want me to stay around, you know, wait until you fall asleep or whatever?” Oh, it’s so nice to be married. You can say stuff like that without sounding suspect.

“Thanks, Lola, I’m good,” Quentin said. “My sister’s on her way over right now from her shift at the ER.”

“I can wait.”

“No really, I’m fine,” said Quentin. “I’ll call you tomorrow. If you don’t mind.”

“Of course not,” said Lola. Genuine sadness and lingering guilt swirled inside her again. I really shouldn’t leave until his sister gets here, thought Lola, though she needed her bed badly. “Let me at least get you something to drink.”

Quentin accepted a glass of flat Pellegrino—the only thing in his fridge besides batteries and a crusty two-ounce jar of artisanal wasabi—and took a sip.

“I guess her parents will let me know about the funeral. I hope they will. Would be nice to have met them under better circumstances.”

“I know, Quentin,” Lola said, sincere sorrow in her voice.

“Lola,” Quentin asked, “who would want to do this to Mimi?”

“I don’t know, Quentin.”

“You don’t?”

“No, I really—wait, what do you mean?”

“I just thought
Lola Somerville
would have a bead on this somehow,” said Quentin. “You seem to always be in the middle of things.”

“Sure, if by
always
you mean that one time two years ago.”

“Well, you did find Mimi’s body.” Quentin’s voice caught.

Fair point. “But not on purpose,” said Lola. “And unfortunately, the killer wasn’t included.”

“I’ll bet you could find him,” said Quentin.

“Quentin, I—”

“I mean that as a compliment but also a statement of fact,” said Quentin. “And also, I guess, a request.”

“But—” Lola didn’t know where to start. “What about the police? The detective seemed on top of things.”

“Sure, until the next orange alert,” Quentin said. “They’ll be all over it tomorrow—and it’ll be all over the
Day
, naturally—but then they’ll be back to human-shielding the Statue of Liberty.”

Even earnest Quentin had reason to be cynical. These days, the blue line was stretched thinner than ever. And on top of it all, there was the Penelope effect. Penelope—one name was all she needed—was the omnipotent single-named domestic goddess/pop singer/movie actress/anti-land mine activist/talk show host with whom Lola had crossed paths quite closely during the Ovum incident. On her top-rated, drop-everything, taste-making TV show,
Penelope!,
authors regularly broke down in tears and admitted to substantial fabrications in their “memoirs.” Back in the day, one offhand comment by Penelope on the air had resulted in a nationwide shortage of vegetable peelers. Another, more significantly, had caused Internet stocks to plummet, leading directly to the dot-com bust. And, more recently, ever since Penelope had devoted a show to race differences in law enforcement and media attention to murder cases, the police and the papers had been making a big show of devoting fewer resources to the murders of pretty white girls.

“Also,” Quentin went on, “I just don’t trust the police. One time my bike seat was stolen outside that bar, what’s it called, where they have the strip spelling bee? The cops, I am telling you, did not want to lift a finger!”

“They were probably more interested in watching to see if some hot girl had to spell
chthonian
.”

“You know, I’ve never heard that word actually pronounced before,” said Quentin.

“I have,” sighed Lola. “Doug’s a gamer.”

“So I don’t know, maybe you could at least nose around a little, somewhere, somehow?” asked Quentin.

“Quentin, I’m not a detective.” I really,
really
owe him one, but murder? For the life of me, I have no clue where to start. I would be insane to take this on.

“I know,” said Quentin. “Not officially. But come on. The whole thing at Ovum, those articles you’ve written—you’ve busted your share of bad guys.” He accepted some more Pellegrino. “And I’d just—I’d feel so much better if I knew you were looking into it. You just have such a good sense of, I don’t know, people. Their motives. I feel like you can really get inside people’s heads.”

Oh, man. He’s really not letting up. “Quentin,” Lola pulled her hair back into ponytail position and then let it drop. “You and I dated for like ten minutes. We e-mail every three months. All you really know about me is that I’m not scared of dead mice, I’m bad with the names of rivers in Eastern Europe and I fit under your bed. Where are you drawing all these conclusions?”

“I can just tell,” Quentin said. “You know, from all the characters you developed so brilliantly in your book.”

He read my book?

He used the word
brilliant
?

Lola caught herself. No, Quentin, no! she thought. Stop flattering me! If you continue, I may actually say yes! Quit it!

“Speaking of which,” said Quentin, “I don’t know, maybe if you find the guy first, you can write a book about it.”

Hold on. Lola’s mouth twitched, threatening to smile. Quentin Frye was no Jodie Foster. But he was, in effect,
calling her with a book idea.

Lola looked down at the floor, then up at the ceiling. Her guilt and her ego did a high five. “Okay, Quentin,” said Lola. “I’ll see what I can do.”

 
 
When Quentin’s twin sister, Penny, arrived, Lola got ready to leave. Blond, with wire-framed glasses and maroon Dansko clogs, Penny was still in her white coat from work. Since when did we all get old enough to be doctors? Lola thought.

“Say, Lola, can I ask your advice sometime?” asked Penny.

“Sure,” said Lola. “Intubate.”

Penny laughed. “No, about writing. I’m working on a book proposal.”

Who the hell isn’t?

“Of course,” said Lola. “Anytime.”

Much as she felt surrounded, oppressed, by people with book ideas, Lola felt safe in the knowledge that Penny would never finish her proposal, much less publish the book. That was how the universe maintained literary equilibrium: everyone
thought
they had a book in them, but few realized what it took to get one down on paper. She looked back into the apartment. “Quentin, are you going to be okay?”

“Eventually,” he said. “And Lola, thanks for everything.” Lola hailed a cab. She rested a hand on her chin and watched Second Avenue’s trattorias and nail salons go by. Where was that muffin place? They had a solid apple-ginger, if she remembered correctly. Right around here, no? Yes, that kiosk definitely looked famliar. It was right—nope. The muffin place was now a cell phone store.

 
 
“Annabel? We’re old.”

“Not too old to be blabbing on the phone in the middle of the night,” said Annabel.

“Right! That’s exactly my point,” said Lola. She was now lying down, seat beltless, on the backseat of the cab. If an accident didn’t kill her, her mother would. “We are old, but we don’t act it. I didn’t pack away Giraffe until my wedding night, for God’s sake.” Giraffe had been Lola’s stuffed companion since childhood.

“You made air holes in the box, right?” asked Annabel.

“Yes, and I also put in some leaves,” said Lola. “But I mean, pretty much all my high school and college friends are, you know, grown-ups. Remember that party we went to when you came home with me at Christmas?”

“Yeah, at what’s-her-name’s,” said Annabel. “Their place was so grown-up I totally thought they were house-sitting.”

“Right? They had those little brass lamps over their art.”

“They had a fucking
den
.”

Lola and Annabel paused, letting the full weight of that memory—and that word—sink in.

“Part of that is having money,” said Lola. “But God, people our age are doctors. Lawyers. Mayors. Hockey moms.”

“Corpses.”

“Right.”

“Just trying to lighten things up,” said Annabel.

Lola gave a grim chuckle, then went on. “Even though I’m married, I sometimes still feel like we’re really just playing house. Dress-up. Like I’m walking around in my Mom’s smeared lipstick and too-big shoes.”

“Lo,
I’m
the one who can’t even commit to address labels. Not that I necessarily want things to be different. I’m just saying. I relate.”

“I know you do, Bella.”

What would I do without Annabel? Annabel who actually knew current band names, who carried a Leatherman, who ate only food that was round: Garden Burgers, Krispy Kremes, beer (which counted, she said, if you looked at the bottle from the bottom). Annabel said Lola kept her grounded. Lola said Annabel made sure she reached.

“But seriously, Lo, you’re not exactly complaining either, are you?” Annabel asked. “I mean, first of all, you
are
a writer. Your job
is
a
job
job. You’re the first one to tell everyone else that,” she said. “Nicely, of course.”

“No no, I know. I guess I’m just more . . . marveling. Whether or not we feel like adults—”

“—or act like—”

“—or act like adults, I guess . . . it’s just amazing that we’ve gotten to the place in life where what we do is who we are.”

Annabel said nothing.

Oof. Lola squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she could take that back. She’d remembered—too late—that, actually, Annabel did not have a defining what-she-does that made her who she was. And the last thing Annabel needed was for Lola to point that out.

“All right, listen,” Lola said quickly. “I gotta start giving the driver directions.” She could no longer see the tops of buildings from her vantage point, so she must be in Brooklyn. “Bella, thanks. You totally make me feel normal.”

“Me, too, Lo,” said Annabel. Lola hoped so. “Now get some sleep.”

“You, too!” said Lola.

“Naw, I’m good,” said Annabel. “I slept last year.”

 
 
It was alarmingly close to the time Lola usually got up. She’d seen the delivery trucks already making the rounds of soon-to-open coffee shops, leaving paper-bagged bundles of fresh baked goods leaning outside the locked doors. (This was also a sight she hadn’t seen since her single days, except for that one time she and Doug had waited in line until 4:30 AM to buy the thirteenth Harry Potter.) It had never ceased to amaze Lola that these bags of sweet treats never got stolen. War, murder, all manner of pain: your world could fall apart at any moment, and yet? Day after day, there were the muffins. The café owners could rely on two things every morning: one, that the sun would rise, and two, that those sweet-smelling sacks of croissants and scones would be waiting for them when they got to work. What, Lola wondered, could possibly be more reassuring?

“You know what, just drop me at this corner, please,” she said to the driver. The newspaper trucks were out already, too—and one was pulling up to Lola’s local bodega. Though she could barely keep her eyes open, Lola was curious at least to see if Mimi’s murder had made the cover of the
Day.

Lola knew full well, by the way, that she could have checked the
Day
, not to mention
Royalty
, twenty minutes ago using the Web browser on her cell phone, but doing so would have put some holes in her argument with Doug that no one needed a freaking Web browser on their cell phone.

“Thanks,” she said, shelling out twenties for the driver. With what they’d spent on transportation that night, she and Doug could buy two more cheese knives.

The
New York Day
truck driver dropped a twine-wrapped stack by the blue wire racks outside the bodega door. Lola looked down at the five-inch-tall headline.

 
Oh, for God’s sake.

As Lola stared down, two feet stepped into her view. Two feet wearing ratty black sneakers. Two feet she’d recently seen running.

Without raising her head, Lola looked up through her lashes.

It was Reading Guy.

Eight

Lola thought immediately of those signs at Yosemite at which she and Doug had once laughed nervously: “If confronted by a mountain lion, do not run, as this may trigger its instinct to attack. Instead, back off slowly.” Or something like that. Lola backed away from the sneakers without making eye contact and set off briskly toward home, deliberately jingling her keys as if to say, “Back off, Reading Guy! My mom just forwarded me an e-mail about someone who saved her own life by using her mailbox key to gouge an attacker’s Adam’s apple.”