I was doing and spray her head with a mixture of moisturizer and Evian
water. She says regular water leaves a 'residue." Then everyone had
to sit there and wait while I scrunched her hair with my fingers until
it dried, to lock in what she says are natural curls.
"So, during a break, when I was touching her up, I mentioned in passing
that shooting schedules can be hard on the hair. You know, all that
blow drying, crimping, curling, and whatnot really takes its toll.
Truth is, her hair's toast, beyond saving. I pulled her hair up around
her shoulders and told her she'd look just as beautiful with a short
cut if she wanted a change after this movie's done. The girl
wigged."
Grace lifted her head and affected a slight southern accent. " "I'm
not some house frau who needs a frumpy easy-to-manage hairdo. With all
due respect, you're not being paid to think. You're being paid to make
sure I look good. And this hair is what looks good, what has put me on
the cover of hundreds of magazines, and what makes me worth twenty
million dollars a film." It was all I could do not to cut that shit
right off her head. Add the fact that she picks her teeth and reeks of
garlic, and I don't see her as America's little sweetheart anymore."
People judge others by their professions, but the reality is that
Grace, in addition to being funny and extremely good at what she does,
is incredibly smart. She always has been. In high school, the two of
us were always neck and neck at the top of the class. Although we
started to lose touch a few years into college, she was the first
person I called when I moved back to Portland, and we picked up the
friendship right where we'd left off.
As much as I was enjoying Grace's comic relief, I couldn't get the
Derringer case out of my mind. I laid out everything I knew so far.
She shook her head. "I don't know how you handle a job where you have
to think about that kind of stuff. There must be some happy medium
between those sick subjects and the superficial junk I have to deal
with all day."
"Maybe we should both hang it up and become account-ants.
"Nah, too boring," she said. "We'll just have to keep trying to
balance each other out."
"Seriously, it's not just that it's hard, Grace. I've gotten used to
dealing with unpleasant subjects at work. I'm scared I'm going to
lose. These are the most serious charges I've ever filed against
anyone, and part of me's excited about it. But if it falls apart, I
won't just look bad at work, I'll feel like shit for letting this
dirtbag go free."
"Sam, you've got to put it in perspective. If it weren't for you, this
guy would already have won. Tim O'Donnell would've issued that chippy
assault charge against him. What could he get for that?"
"With his record, maybe two years at most after conviction. He'd be
out in eighteen months, maybe even nine if he pled guilty," I said.
"See? And, even in a worst-case scenario, you'll still get that,
right?"
"I think so. Even if the case falls apart, I think Lopez would plead
Derringer out to assault to avoid going to verdict on the attempted
murder."
"So what are you worrying about? Sounds to me like you saved the day
just by getting involved, no matter what happens. This way, the police
are still working on the case, so they might even catch the second guy.
You need to look at it from that perspective. You may win. But even
if you don't, you haven't really lost anything."
She was right. I should feel good about what I did today. It was time
to put aside the serious stuff and talk to her about the personal side
of this case.
"Oh, and I may have neglected to fill you in on the identity of one of
the main investigators."
"Why would I care? Is he a cutey?" She feigned enthusiastic curiosity
and gave me a wink.
"Um .. . No! Well, I mean, yeah. I don't really know. Look, what I
mean is that for once this man actually has something to do with me and
not you."
"Excuse me for assuming. I've gotten used to you never being
interested. It's been two years since your divorce, and you still act
like men don't get to you anymore, except.. . oh, lord, Sam, you're
not actually going to try working with Lucky Chucky, are you?"
It's been more than fifteen years since Chuck Forbes's football buddies
had come up with that nickname. Two of them had barged into Chuck's
house carrying a keg one weekend when his parents were out of town. I
guess we didn't hear them over "Avalon." For the rest of high school,
Chuck was Lucky Chucky. They finally stopped calling me Been-laid
Kincaid at the end of senior year.
"Can't we move a little bit past that, Grace?"
"It's not that there's anything wrong with Chuck. It's what's wrong
with the two of you. When are you going to realize that he makes you
crazy? You either need to write each other off or lock yourselves in a
room together until you get it out of your systems. You have this
twisted love-hate, only-happy-when-you're-not-getting-together kind of
relationship. And every time you see him, you dwell on it for the next
two weeks but won't let yourself follow through. I am driven crazy by
osmosis. Please don't do this to me. Is that why you took this
case?"
"Oh, please. No, I swear, Grace. I would've taken it anyway, for all
the reasons we talked about. But I don't know how I'm going to handle
this. Just reading the police reports, I find myself poring over every
word of his, admiring what a good cop he's become. I guess I'm just
going to have to deal with it."
"Deal with it? You've only ever had one way of dealing with Chuck
Forbes. You decide you can keep the relationship platonic. You start
hanging out, kidding around, watching games on the weekends, all the
things that friends do. But then the chemistry kicks in and the next
thing you know you get scared and back off, he gets mad, and you both
go off into your separate corners and pout until you once again trick
yourselves into believing that you can make the friendship thing work
and the whole damn cycle begins again. Did it ever dawn on you that
Roger might have felt a little left out?"
I stared at her. Roger's my ex-husband. We met at Stan ford Law
School. Dad thought Roger was too much of a blue blood but Mom and I
thought he was perfect: a grownup who knew what he wanted and how he
was going to get it. Smart, good-looking, and ambitious, Roger had
wanted to marry me right out of law school so we could start our
perfect life together back in New York. We moved into the Upper East
Side apartment his family bought us as a wedding present, him working
toward partnership at one of the country's biggest firms, me working as