Been There, Done That Page 19

  I murmured my apologies and took my place in the half-circle. My stomach rumbled. I longed for a cup of coffee, a granola bar—anything. My harmony was off. I tried to sing softly.

  After rehearsal, I caught up to Vanessa and Penny. “I really am sorry,” I said. “I overslept. It won’t happen again.”

  Vanessa crossed her arms over her bony chest. “Out partying?”

  I blinked guiltily, thinking of Jeremy, then remembered Vanessa’s note on my message board. I’d never called her back. “I wish! I had to go into the city for this stupid baby shower. My, um, cousin’s pregnant.” I rolled my eyes. “It was totally lame.”

  “I know what you mean,” Vanessa said, suddenly softening and rolling her eyes in response. “Last year I went to my cousin’s wedding shower. Totally bogus.”

  “I would have much rather have had ice cream with you guys,” I said. “Was it fun?”

  Vanessa shrugged. “It was ice cream.”

  “It was fun,” Penny corrected.

  “You guys want to get lattés?” I asked.

  They traded glances, and then assented at the same moment. Vanessa and Penny seemed to read each other’s thoughts, which would have been cute if it weren’t so creepy. For a brief moment, I wondered if maybe they were lesbian lovers.

  “How well do you know Jeremy?” Penny asked the instant we left the lounge.

  “Are you, like, dating him?” Vanessa prodded.

  Okay. They were straight.

  “I wish!” I said. Something told me they would not buy the he’s-not-my-type line. “I think he’s still hung up on his ex-girlfriend.”

  “Ugh,” Vanessa said.

  “Is she as trampy as she looks?” I asked. Actually, Brynn didn’t look any trampier than most of the other girls at Mercer; she was simply prettier. I wasn’t trying to be mean. Okay, I was being mean, but I was doing it for a purpose. I had to prove myself to Tim for one last time. I was almost out of time, and the idea of failure was unbearable.

  “Total slut,” Penny said.

  “Major tart,” Vanessa concurred.

  Maybe they were just investigating, too.

  We strode along the concrete sidewalk in silence for a few moments. Just before we got to our destination, I asked, in a hushed tone, “How many guys do you think Brynn’s done it with?”

  Loud, tuneless alternative music hit us as we opened the door to the coffee shop, which was called Jitters. Jitters coffee wasn’t nearly as good as Starbucks, but its music was much louder and more offensive. As a result, it was always packed. We got in line behind two other jeans-clad, long-haired, slouching girls and squinted at the menu posted behind the counter. “Thirty,” Vanessa said, about a minute after I’d concluded that they were both ignoring my question.

  “No way,” Penny said. “At least fifty.”

  “Don’t forget she was going out with Jeremy for, like, three years,” Vanessa said.

  “And you think he’s the only guy she was sleeping with?” Penny asked.

  “Yeah, okay,” Vanessa said. “There was that whole rumor about how she was doing Troy while she was going out with Jeremy.” They both shuddered. I suddenly remembered the now-old saying: you never just sleep with one person. You sleep with everyone that person has slept with, and everyone that person has slept with, and so on and so forth. I pictured Troy and felt nauseated.

  “Ever since they broke up, though, she’s going through, like, every guy on campus,” Penny said. “She’s a total skank.”

  We ordered our coffees: nonfat latté for me, plain coffee for Vanessa, and for Penny, a banana coconut latté—whatever the hell that was—and an enormous slice of chocolate cake.

  After coffee, I headed farther off campus. I’d been longing to return Evelyn Archer’s dog book for as long as I’d had it, and now seemed like a reasonable time. Any sooner, and she’d suspect I hadn’t read it. I hadn’t, of course, except to check a quick description of a golden retriever. That way, if Evelyn asked what dog I’d be getting when I finally came to my senses and realized I needed one to complete my life, I’d have my answer ready. After all, if you had to get a dog, who wouldn’t want a golden retriever? I couldn’t think of a nicer animal to piss on my carpet and chew my shoes. Besides, they don’t live very long.

  I could hear the dogs barking before I got to my house. Yeah, that’s what I needed in my life. The other people in my apartment building would love it, too. I was hoping no one would be home so I could just leave the book on the front stoop, but when I was a house away, Dr. Archer’s Camry pulled into the driveway. I slowed momentarily. Had he seen me? I hadn’t run into him since our encounter at the Gray Gull; I’d hoped to avoid him entirely.

  He turned off the car and got out. The dogs’ barking grew even louder. Evelyn had told me that she put the two nicer dogs in the garage when she went out. She worried about being “a bad dog mommy,” but they had a habit of chewing furniture when left alone, and if she put the dogs in the backyard, Altoid might, well, eat them.

  I ducked behind the neighbor’s bush. The dean hadn’t seen me, I was quite sure. As soon as he went inside, I would stick the book by the door and scurry back to my dorm.

  To my surprise, a girl emerged from around the side of the house. I recognized her shiny, dark hair. Dean Archer hurried over to the garage, and they disappeared through the side door. The dogs’ barking grew wild for a moment, and then it was quiet.

  thirty

  Richard sent me an e-mail: “Tim’s in town. Let’s meet Monday.” As if I didn’t know Tim was in town. At least it meant I could avoid Jeremy, I told myself. And Tiffany, too. She was sitting at her desk when I got back from the Archers’ house. She didn’t turn around when I walked in, even though I said, “Hi,” very casually, as if I didn’t know she was a sinner. Tiffany’s side of the room was looking barren these days. Ethan said he didn’t like Clay Aiken “looking at them.” The posters came down immediately. Oddly, I missed Clay’s airbrushed face. It was always nice to have someone else in the room whenever Tiffany got into one of her snits.

  “Maybe we should redecorate the room,” I suggested to Tiffany’s pink back (she hadn’t changed her wardrobe to reflect her new sexual sophistication; this particular shirt sported a kitten on the front). “We could do something wild—paint it bright blue, maybe. Even a mural could be fun. Have you seen Katherine and Amelia’s room? It’s really cool.”

  Tiffany tapped at her keyboard. I dropped my backpack on my bed and turned on my computer (this is when I saw Richard’s e-mail; truly, he could have been more discreet). There was an e-mail from Jeremy, too: “Missed you this morning. J.” Ugh. I thanked God for technology; at least he hadn’t left the message on my memo board.

  I sent a message back to Richard, saying I’d be in the office at 9 A.M. Jeremy’s message I ignored.

  “I have to go to Boston tonight,” I said to the dead air. “I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.” A month earlier, I would have worried that Tiffany would try to pry my secret out of me. Now I doubted she cared—although I thought I should give her a heads-up in case she wanted to plan a sleepover with Ethan.

  “We didn’t have sex,” she said.

  “What?” I asked. Really, I wasn’t trying to draw out this conversation; I just wasn’t sure she’d said what I thought she’d said.

  “We didn’t do it. We didn’t have sex.” Her voice was flat.

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay.” Silence. “It’s not really any of my business,” I added, hoping to end the conversation.

  “He wanted to,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “He said he needs it. That if he doesn’t get it he gets all . . . backed up. And if I won’t do it, then he’ll have to find . . . I don’t know. So we did something different. I kissed him. You know, down there.”

  She removed her hands from the keyboard and placed them quietly in her lap. “So I’m still a virgin.” She turned halfway around in her chair. Her dull hair hung in her incredibl
y sad face. She looked up at me slowly. “Aren’t I?”

  “I guess so,” I said carefully. “But you know, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

  She rubbed her chair with her index finger. “He really likes it,” she mumbled. “He says it makes us closer.”

  “Because he’s getting what he wants,” I hissed. “Tiffany, don’t let him use you.”

  Her head snapped up. Her small eyes were hard in her puffy face. “He’s not using me. He loves me. I shouldn’t have told you. You don’t understand.” She spun back to face her computer and sat perfectly still, seething.

  “I’m not saying Ethan doesn’t love you,” I said carefully, although I didn’t for an instant think he did. “I just don’t think you should do anything that makes you uncomfortable. Anything that you’re not ready for.”

  She turned back to me and looked me full in the face. “You don’t know anything about me,” she hissed. “You’ve always been cute and popular. You don’t know anything.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I kept quiet—although a twisted part of me wanted to say, “If you think I’m cute now, you should have seen me when I was eighteen.” Instead, I shut off my computer and pulled a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from my drawers and stuffed them into my backpack. I almost threw in a couple of textbooks—I had two papers due this week—but then reminded myself that I wasn’t really a college student, after all. The essays were the least of my problems.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, holding my voice steady but shutting the door just a bit more firmly than was necessary.

  thirty-one

  For once, Jennifer was sitting at her desk rather than mine. Tim arrived a few minutes later. Very discreet—as if this were the first time they’d seen each other all morning. They both avoided my eyes. Then again, I avoided theirs, too, so it was hard to say whose effort at floor-gazing was more sincere. My throat hurt from withholding a sob. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t cry. Tim mumbled something about caffeine and went in search of the coffeepot. Had he worked at Salad, he would have known better. Richard supplied only the cheapest grounds available, resulting in a watery brew that somehow managed to be both harsh and flavorless.

  Even beyond the love triangle, it felt weird to be at the office—like going back to elementary school after summer vacation, when you wonder if your friends will still like you and whether your teacher will give you too much homework.

  I wore jeans and platform sneakers that I’d picked up at a TJ Maxx on the way home the night before. Assorted sparkly clips held my hair off my face. I wasn’t trying to make some kind of a statement; I’d just become so accustomed to teeny-bopper wear that it was easier than putting together something more sophisticated. Okay, maybe I was trying to throw my new persona in Tim’s face: You want young? I can do young! But, surely, I wasn’t that pathetic. Besides, this way I wouldn’t have to stop off at home to change clothes before heading back to campus.

  Sheila, carrying two cardboard cups of designer coffee, gave me one of her big, bleached, ultra-fake smiles as she hurried past my cubicle on her way to Richard’s office. “Kathy! I hardly recognized you! You look darling! And so thin!”

  Five minutes into the meeting, and it was clear: my friends no longer liked me, and my teacher thought I was not working up to potential. Or, even worse, that I was working up to potential, and this was as good as it got.

  Tim announced that his boss was willing to extend the project as needed. “Clearly, I need to be more involved,” he said without looking at me. “I’m going to start hanging out at the bars in Mercer, pretending to be a lonely guy looking for some company.” The Snake Pit was the only bar in town, as Tim knew perfectly well. And Gerry had proved useless so far. “I’ll base myself in Boston,” he continued. “The drive’s pretty manageable.” The shit! Jennifer maintained a blank expression. Did Chrisanna know she was getting a new roommate?

  “One week,” Richard snapped. “If I don’t have a final story on my desk by then, I’m pulling the plug. You can do whatever the hell you want after that, but Kathy’s out of it.” Sheila clasped her coffee cup between two hands and gazed at the sloshing liquid inside, while Tim pretended to take notes and Jennifer chomped on her hair.

  “I know it seems slow,” I whimpered, “but I’ve been making contacts, building credibility—”

  “I cannot believe,” Richard boomed, “the money that has gone into this! The clothes, the bedding, the, the”—he grabbed my expense report—“the alternative music!”

  “It’s not like I could bring along my Air Supply CD’s!” I squeaked.

  “And then there’s the issue of your salary,” Richard said crisply.

  Jennifer stopped chewing on her hair and wrinkled her nose. “You have Air Supply CD’s?”

  “A month and a half ’s salary—for what? We’re paying you to go to keggers and sing with a bunch of little girls!”

  “First of all,” I said, trying to sound calm even though my voice was shaking. “I’ll have three lifestyle articles for Sheila by Friday.”

  She perked up. “Terrific!” she beamed, before checking Richard’s still-cranky face and setting her attention back to the coffee.

  “Second,” I continued. “I have not been going to keggers. I mean, hardly at all. And the singing group is part of my research. It’s not like I’m doing it for fun.” It was quiet for a moment. Richard’s nostrils twitched. I turned my head partway toward Jennifer. “The Air Supply CD’s were a gift.” I shot Tim a poisonous look. “I never listen to them.”

  Richard concluded the matter by announcing that Salad was done covering my college expenses and that he’d continue my salary only on the condition that I coughed up the three articles I’d just (impulsively) promised to deliver by the end of the week. “Our advertisers are coming disproportionately from the lifestyle sector—furniture stores, flooring companies and the like. We need more editorial content to help support the ads.” Then he praised Jennifer on her “marvelous” articles (Richard never called anything marvelous unless it came from Sheila) and hinted that we might “expand her role” in the future.

  I was in big trouble.

  I had planned to accomplish many important tasks during my day in the office, all of which I immediately forgot upon being humiliated in the meeting. Instead, I gave in to my impulse to run and hide.

  “We’ve got to talk,” Tim mumbled as I shoved my papers into my bag. “About the investigation, I mean,” he added hurriedly.

  “The investigation?” I spat. “Isn’t there something else we need to talk about?”

  “No,” he said evenly. “There’s nothing left to say.”

  “How about, I’m sorry for misleading you? I’m sorry for making you look like a fool?”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them slowly. “Let’s try to be professional. To just focus on the investigation. We need to sit down and review the facts. We need to see if we missed any angle, any lead.”

  “It’ll have to wait,” I snapped. “I’ve got a full day of interviews scheduled.”

  “Don’t back out now, Kathy,” he said. “This isn’t about you and me.”

  “You’ve made that perfectly clear.” Backing out seemed like a wonderful idea.

  “I talked to Gerry,” Tim said.

  “Who’s Gerry?”

  “The bartender, you know, at that pub.”

  “The Snake Pit.”

  “Right. Anyway, he said there’s this kid. Troy. He didn’t know his last name. But he said to watch him.”

  “I already have been.”

  He took a deep breath as if to gather strength and spoke again. “I’ll finish this story without you if I have to, but I’d rather have you on my side.”

  “I’ve got the inside track,” I said as if I believed it. “You couldn’t possibly do it without me.”

  “Just see what you can find out,” he said.

  My “full day of interviews” was utter crap, o
f course, but it sounded feasible—especially since I’d promised Sheila three nonexistent articles by Friday.

  I fled to my apartment. It looked unusually large and luxurious. Framed pictures! Built-in bookshelves! Curtains! On the coffee table there was a plate of fossilized toast crusts and a rotting apple core, which kind of took away from the overall effect and made the room smell a bit. The carpet was littered with lint and crumbs. Once I moved back home, I vowed, I would keep fresh flowers on my coffee table. I would vacuum more often and stop eating my frozen dinners on the couch.

  I carried my plate to the kitchen sink and dropped the apple core into the trash. So it wasn’t just the apple that smelled: I’d take the trash out later. Then I went into my bedroom (Look at the size of the bed! And the bedding: no synthetic fibers!) to fetch the vacuum, which wasn’t in my closet. I lay down on my bed to try to remember where I’d stashed it and promptly fell asleep.

  I awoke disoriented. The shadows in my room told me that it was almost evening. So much for getting anything done. It all came back to me in a rush: Tim and Jennifer, my precarious job situation, the need for three quick articles. I only knew one person who could throw that many topics my way. I checked the glowing numbers on my digital clock: 5:20 P.M. With any luck, he’d still be in the office.

  “Kathy!” He sounded far too pleased to hear from me. “I’ve called your office a couple of times, but they keep saying you’re out on assignment.”

  I cringed. Not that I really wanted to know that Dennis had been calling me—but it would be nice if Jennifer would pass on my messages every now and again.

  I asked him if he was free for a “professional dinner,” which sounded entirely dopey, as if we would be paid to eat, but which I figured would at least let him know that I wasn’t asking him out. We agreed to meet at seven-thirty at a trendy place in the South End.

  Next, on impulse, I called Marcy and asked if she could join us. I needed to tell her about my night with Jeremy, needed her assurances that I wasn’t a bad person. I didn’t want to go into details over the phone, but maybe we could catch some time alone before or after dinner.