“A fanny pack?” I snort, my eyebrows headed toward the ceiling. “A fanny pack? Oh, Franko, not a chance.” I burst out laughing, and realize it’s the first time today anything has seemed funny. “Next you’ll want me to wear gaucho pants. Or tube socks with my strappy sandals.”
Franklin winds the cord back around the lens card with a little more flourish than necessary, not amused.
“Oh, I’m not making fun of you,” I hurry to apologize. “And the camera is great. Much better than the ones I’ve used before. Much smaller. It’s just that, you know, I’m going to a place where the focus is fashion. I can’t slog in looking like a refugee from Geekland.” I raise a one finger. “Wait a second.”
Getting down on all fours, I peer under my desk, moving aside a recycled gift bag full of plastic silverware I keep just in case there’s a spoon emergency, three pairs of rubber rain boots and about six umbrellas. With a yank that topples the boots, I pull out a black canvas purse, covered with D-rings and flap pockets on both sides, vintage 1995 or so. I figured I would need it someday. Right again.
I swipe the dust from my knees as I sit back in my chair, holding up my under-desk find. “This’ll work. We’ll put the guts of the camera in this bag, make a hole in one of the pockets.”
I open the bag and confirm my hidden-camera hiding plan will work. I put the bag over one shoulder, and stand up, posing casually, one hand covering the place where the hole would be.
“See?” I lift my hand, demonstrating. “When I do this, the camera lens is open. I put my hand down, it’s covered. Open, covered. Open, covered. See?”
Franklin shrugs. “Sure, that’ll work. You just can’t ever put your purse down.”
I hand him back the high-tech contraption. “Just make sure I have tapes and batteries. Charged batteries. Remember when the batts failed in the middle of that drug bust? Disaster.”
“Not as bad as when you got caught with the camera at the cult church. When that phony minister hauled off and tried to hit you? And grab the camera? Now, that was unpleasant.”
“Yeah, well, we got it all on tape,” I reply. “Great video. All that matters.”
Franklin puts the camera back in the case and snaps it closed. He puts it on his desk, not mine. “You sure you don’t want me to go with you tomorrow?” he says. “I could be your cute gay purse consultant. Totally believable.”
“You just want some new purses,” I say, teasing. “Seriously Franko, I’ll be fine.”
The message machine is empty. No flashing message light, not even one. Maybe it’s broken, I think when I get home that evening. I punch in my code, hoping.
“You have…” the mechanical voice pauses “…no new messages, and-”
I hit the off button, disappointed. But maybe Josh called and didn’t leave a message. Maybe I should call him.
I plop down on my bed, and pick up the receiver from the phone on my nightstand. Or maybe not.
I put the receiver back and lean into my pillows, stretched out on the puffy down comforter, not caring if I wrinkle my silk shirt, not caring if I wrinkle my just-dry-cleaned skirt. I kick off my suede slingbacks. One shoe tumbles, toe over heels, into the wastebasket. And there’s the metaphor for the day.
Sighing in defeat, I get up to retrieve my shoe. I’ll get through this, one step at a time. Wearily, my thoughts flailing and random, I peel off my work clothes and cuddle into my sweats.
My apartment has never felt so empty. My flip-flops echo down the hall toward the kitchen, where I pour a glass of Australian Shiraz. “Josh’s favorite,” pops into mind before I can prevent it. With Botox trailing after me into the dining room, I decide to torture myself.
Picking up Mom’s wedding album from the dining room table, I curl up on the living room couch. “Where Josh and I sat” pops into mind.
The handsomely textured black album, thick metal-edged pages bound together, is the size of a Manhattan phone book. It opens with a creak, fragrant of leather, showing Mom and Ethan, smiling as only newlyweds can, on the first page. Her gossamer dove-gray dress, elegantly couture; Ethan, blissed out, one arm around his new bride. I turn the page, knowing what’s next. Steeling myself to see it. Unable to resist.
An August breeze had lifted my layers of ice-pink chiffon, not as Pepto-Bismol as I’d feared, into a graceful flutter, and the photographer had caught just the moment when Josh and I had locked eyes, laughing.
I turn the heavy page with a sigh. Penny, her first time as flower girl, showing off the pearlized Mary Janes she’d refused to take off for days. My best friend Maysie, five months pregnant, watching her husband, Max, and the kids lead a rambunctious conga line at the reception.
Me, catching the bouquet.
The photograph taunts me. I look happy. Which suddenly now is the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.
Maybe this is payback from the universe. Maybe I’ve already gotten my happiness in my career and it’s greedy to want more. A confident and blazingly attractive man, who respected my work and couldn’t keep his hands off me. An adorable daughter, part of life I thought I’d missed. Instant family.
Maybe I wanted it too much. And so I misjudged Josh. Focused on fantasy instead of reality. Mom knew what she wanted. And Maysie.
I slam the album-and all it represents-closed. How do you know it’s the real thing? Maybe if you have to ask, it isn’t.
The last word I said to Josh was “whatever.”
I feel one tear straggle down my cheek. And then, the doorbell rings.
I slide back the chain and open my front door. Slowly. With each click of a link, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. Detective Christopher Yens of the Massachusetts State Police had introduced himself through the still-chained door. He keeps holding up his gold statie badge and ID card as he eases his lanky frame into my entryway. He’s wearing a leather jacket, jeans, a tiny radio clipped to his shoulder, and what I read as an apologetic smile.
“Sorry, Miz McNally, to bother you so late,” he says. He flips his badge wallet closed and tucks it into an inside pocket, then pulls out a tattered spiral notebook. He pats a pocket with his palm, then another, then brushes back a shock of almost-auburn hair. Another apologetic look. Adorable schoolboy who needs another hall pass and knows he’ll get it. “May I bother you for a pen?”
“Sit here, I’ll get one,” I say. I turn down my CD of Puccini for Lovers and wave him to a dining room chair, pushing today’s pile of mail to the other end of the table.
“May I bring you a glass of water?” I ask. I can get one for myself at the same time. It’s probably more my fraying emotions than the glass of Shiraz that’s making my brain fuzzy, but whatever. I’m uncomfortably aware I’m not at the top of my game. I sneak a peek at myself in the microwave glass, but it’s impossible to tell the extent of the damage. Maybe it’s better not to know how tear-stained I am.
I search the fridge for two unopened bottles of Poland Spring. It’s possible I shouldn’t have let this Detective Yens inside, but there’s an iconic, unfakeable navy-and-gray car with Mass State Police decals on the top and sides parked on the street below. So I’m certain he’s a real statie. I’m considering whether I should call Toni DuShane, the station’s legal Amazon. Maybe I ought to get her over here before I say anything.
But it’s late. And I’m too curious to be that time-consumingly careful. Yens told me over the intercom it was about an investigation. Is someone dead? Or hurt? I’d blurted the question through the speaker, fearing a calamity of the worst kind. Josh killed. And our last words had been a battle. The whole bleak soap opera played out in my mind before the cop could even answer. But then he’d said no. So, it’s nothing terrible. Plus, I can always end the interview if I get uncomfortable. Or I can lawyer up.