Size 12 and Ready to Rock (12 page)

All right, this is the way my employees look, but they’re in college. They sleep until noon whenever they can get away with it. They smoke weed (well, Gavin does, but he says he needs it medicinally for his ADHD) and build love dungeons in their rooms.

This is supposed to be my new boss. Yeah. Right.

“But you’re a real residence hall director, right?” I ask, drawing my hand away from Lisa’s like I’m afraid she might whip out a microphone and ask for a sound bite. “You didn’t audition for the job through Cartwright Records Television?”

“Heather!” Muffy cries, shocked.

Stephanie bursts out laughing. So does Sarah, but for different reasons. Dr. Jessup looks amused, as does Lisa Wu.

“No,” Lisa says, smiling. “I’m a real residence hall director. I have my master’s degree and everything. I’ll hang my diploma up in my new office as soon as they mail it. I’ll admit this is my first professional position—”

I don’t want to be rude by saying so out loud, but I can tell. Something in my expression must give it away, since Dr. Jessup exclaims, “Jesus Christ, Wells, can’t you see why I hired her?”

I glance at him, startled. “Um . . . no?”

“She seemed like she’d be a perfect fit with you!” he says. “You’ve been through such a hard time lately with bosses”—I notice how he tactfully avoids mentioning that all of my bosses have ended up dead, jailed for murder, and/or promoted—“I thought the department should throw you a bone. Lisa Wu’s
you
. . . well, except for the Asian part.”

I look back at Lisa Wu, thinking that it’s a shame about Dr. Jessup’s early onset Alzheimer’s.

Then I notice something. She
does
look a little like me, except younger and skinnier and Asian, of course.

I’m
wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Well, mine isn’t exactly a T-shirt, it’s a nice fitted black shirt made of cotton material with ruching around the front to give a delicate smocking effect where I need it.

I’ve
got on flip-flops (though mine are platforms with sequins). And my hair is in a ponytail (because it’s so hot out). And I have, upon occasion, been accused of having too much energy . . . even of being perky, though I resent this.

Lisa must notice my scrutiny, since she smiles and says, a little sheepishly, “When Dr. Jessup called to say I got the job a little while ago, I was so excited. I said I happened to be in the city, and he said to come on over. I told him I wasn’t exactly dressed properly, but he said it wouldn’t matter. I was actually just over at Kleinfeld’s, having my last fitting for my wedding gown—”

“You’re getting
married
?” This is too weird.

“Yeah,” Lisa says. “I never thought I’d go for the big wedding, but my parents are insisting, and so are Cory’s. I found the cutest fit-n-flare, it was a sample on sale for only five hundred bucks.” She reaches for a nearby tote bag. Unlike Stephanie’s, it isn’t designer. It’s one that looks like she got it free for donating to PBS. Or probably her parents did. “I have a picture of it here in my wedding binder if you want to see it—”

She has a wedding binder?
Maybe we don’t have that much in common after all. I begin to think there might be things I could learn from Lisa Wu.

“If I could interrupt the girl talk,” Stephanie says coldly, “scintillating as it is, could we get back to the subject at hand?”

I’d forgotten Stephanie was still in the room.

“Oh,” I say, a little disappointed.
What’s a wedding binder?
Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure there’s someone out there who’s tried to eat it. I would totally watch that. “Sure.”

“Shooting is going to start this weekend, when the girls come to check in, so I need to see what rooms they’re going to be put in.” Stephanie has drawn her own binder from her tote bag. It doesn’t look like it contains information about a wedding. “Some of them insist on bringing their mothers. This isn’t going to suit the show at all. We can’t have a bunch of stage moms running around, ruining things. So how can we get rid of these old biddies?”

“Legally,” Muffy hurries to explain, tactfully, “no one under eighteen is allowed to reside in New York College’s residence halls. So in order to facilitate the needs of your show, we were thinking we’d put in bunk beds—that’s the furniture delivery you saw out front—and assign three to four girls per room, plus one mom as their legal chaperone.”

“Well,” Stephanie says baldly, “that sucks.”

“Not really,” I say. “We could use suites. That way we can put the girls in the back room and the moms in the outer rooms. Then the girls can’t sneak out without waking the moms up.”

“That sucks even more,” Stephanie says.

“Good call, Heather,” Muffy says, ignoring Stephanie. “That’s the first thing I’d try to do if I were fourteen and staying in New York City for the summer. Get a fake ID and hit the bars.”

“Actually,” Stephanie says, pulling out her BlackBerry, “one of the things the network would like is if the girls
did
sneak out. That would add a lot more drama to the show.”

“Really?” Lisa Wu says. “If an underage girl snuck out of this building and into a bar and something terrible happened to her in downtown New York City, it
would
add more drama to your show. But I don’t think it would reflect very well on New York College, or on Tania Trace, and then ultimately on your network—do you, Stephanie?”

Oh my God. Lisa Wu just said out loud exactly what I was thinking in my head. Maybe Dr. Jessup was right after all.

“What?” Stephanie looks confused.

“I agree with Lisa,” I say. “
Jordan Loves Tania
is supposed to be a husband-and-wife-themed reality show, not
Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.
”

This Stephanie seems to understand. Her eyebrows rise. “It was only an idea,” she says scathingly. “It’s called brainstorming.”

“Of course,” Lisa says, smiling back at her. “You’re in the TV business. We’re in the business of providing students with a safe and healthy community in which to live and develop while they achieve their academic goals. I’m sure we’ll find a common meeting ground.”

Impressed, I swing my gaze toward Dr. Jessup. Where did he find Lisa Wu? If our department had ten more like her and ten less like Simon Hague, we might actually stop being the laughingstock of higher education.

Dr. Jessup’s too busy texting on his cell phone even to look my way.

“Ladies, shall we go check out those rooms?” he asks. “I hate to rush this, but Personnel would like me to bring Lisa over so they can get started on her paperwork—”

“Of course,” I say. “But I have one question.” I look at Stephanie. “Why does Tania feel so unsafe? I thought what happened to Bear was totally random. You
assured
us of that,” I add, “over and over again, the other night.”

“It was,” Stephanie says quickly. “It was
completely
random. But you know how pop stars can be.” She rolls her eyes. “Such divas.”

There’s a little bit of an uncomfortable silence. Maybe I’m only imagining it.

Or maybe everyone is thinking, the way I am,
Gee, Heather used to be a pop star. Was
she
a diva?

Evidently Stephanie isn’t thinking this, since she goes on: “Tania’s convinced she needs to keep close to the city, where she plans on having the baby, and to the doctor who’s delivering it, until it’s born. And of course, since that’s what Tania wants, Cartwright Records is only too happy to oblige. Even the Catskills is too far now for Tania. And she thinks having the camp moved to a nice, familiar,
containable
location like the New York College campus, as opposed to the woods—let’s face it, Tania is
not
a country girl—will be more comfortable for her.”

I’m not sure how any of this makes sense, especially considering that Bear was shot in the city not more than twenty blocks from the New York College campus.

“Tania’s barely in her second trimester,” I say. “It seems a little extreme for her to be sticking so close to her doctor. When she visited her ob-gyn, like the EMTs told her to, she didn’t get a health scare or anything?”

Maybe I’m projecting again, because of my own health scare. Not that I got a scare. I have nothing to be
scared
about. Not even anything to be concerned about. Just—

“No,” Stephanie says, glancing at Dr. Jessup and Muffy with a laugh. Is it my imagination, or does her laugh sound nervous? “She’s in perfect health, except for being a little anemic, which you already know about. Do you think we’d let her go on filming if she wasn’t?”

Yes, I want to say. Instead, I say only, “Of course not. I want to make sure there’s nothing . . . well, nothing you aren’t telling us.”

“What on earth would I not be telling you?” Stephanie asks.

“I don’t know,” I say, truthfully. “But I do know that my staff has been through a lot this year, and the last thing they need is any more”—I realize I have to choose my next words carefully—“drama. So if there
is
something going on with Tania that you’re not telling us, I wish you’d do so now.”

“Drama?” Stephanie’s smile is brittle. “You don’t need to worry, Heather. Because I can assure you, what we’ll be filming here in your building won’t be a
drama.
It will be pure, unscripted reality.”

The problem, of course, is that I know Jordan too well to find any comfort in that assurance. His reality has never been anything
but
drama. And it’s hard to shake the feeling—especially given what I know about her—that Tania’s isn’t any different.

Chapter 9

Too Many Strollers at Starbucks

Oh, I can’t decide

If I want to abide

By the age-old decree

To use my ovaries

“You’d make such a good mama!”

But I don’t know if I wanna

I feel trapped, I feel smothered

Want to run for cover

I don’t even know

If I’m going to stay or go

So for now just want to say

Get your stroller out of my way

“Too Many Strollers at Starbucks”

Written by Heather Wells

It’s getting harder and harder to find a bar to hang out in after work. All the good ones have either closed, owing to the soaring rents in downtown Manhattan, or been taken over by students, although of course this isn’t as big an issue in the summertime.

I don’t have a problem frequenting places popular with people younger than I am, but lately I have a hard time drinking comfortably around New York College students. According to my Psych 101 textbook, this is called hypervigilance.

“Hypervigilance, my ass,” says Tom Snelling.

Tom’s one of the few people who’ve been my boss at Fischer Hall and been promoted, which is great for him but sucks for me, since I really liked working with him.

At least we still get to sit next to each other at endless staff meetings, then meet for drinks in bars afterward.

I’ve met him and his boyfriend, Steven, for a badly needed after-work drink in a bar the two of them have discovered that is tucked so deeply into the heart of the West Village, it seems unlikely to attract students. It helps that the drinks at Tom and Steven’s new favorite bar are overpriced and that there’s a slightly bizarre nautical theme to the decor, which I find quirkily charming.

“When a kid plunges face-first off a bar stool from doing too many tequila shots and you know he attends the fine institute of higher learning where you work,” Tom goes on, “that’s called a buzzkill, not hypervigilance.”

“Amen to that, brother,” I say and tap the rim of his eight-dollar draft with my own.

We’re sitting at a booth—built to resemble a ship’s galley—in the front window of the bar. Outside, people are hurrying home from the office, their heads bowed over their cell phones as they make their own after-work plans, some nearly crashing into one another or the many trees that line the still sunlit street in their eagerness to send off their texts. There are dogs of every variety at the ends of leashes, ceaselessly lifting their legs against the trunks of the trees, though little signs beg their masters to curb them.

I’d feel guilty about not having rushed home to walk my own dog, but ever since Cooper installed a pet door, I know Lucy can get out into the brownstone’s backyard if she needs to. Not as good as a walk, but according to a text I received prior to leaving my own office, Cooper took her out earlier, before he had to attend some mysterious meeting.

This isn’t unusual. Cooper rarely talks about his work. As a private investigator, he’s very sensitive to the
private
part of his clients’ investigative needs. I’ve always admired this about him, even though as the person who sorts, organizes, files, and mails his clients’ bills, I’m aware of a lot of what he does. I think he doesn’t like talking about it because many of his cases are bitter divorce disputes in which he has been hired to acquire photographic proof of the soon-to-be ex-spouse’s marital infidelities, and he’s afraid my delicate feminine sensibilities will be offended.

We all have our little secrets. It’s nice to know there are people who’ll keep them.

“Although it’s a lot more than a buzzkill when it’s a fourteen-year-old girl,” I continue to complain to Tom and Steven, “and she’s been set loose on the city while attending Tania Trace Rock Camp, which is in the building where you work and, P.S., is being filmed by a reality show television crew for the new television network your boyfriend’s parents own.”