My life had taken a dramatic leap, I decided, from antique-filled, four-story vertical townhouses of the old moneyed to cavernous spaces with high ceilings and air-conditioning bills that must hit at least a grand a month.
An hour earlier, Misty had grabbed a pitcher of iced raspberry tea and two salads in plastic containers from the near-empty refrigerator. I glimpsed milk, Dijon mustard, and a six-pack of Evian on the shelves before she shut the door. She ushered me to a sunlight-flooded room off the kitchen and we sat Japanese-style on the floor at a low dark-wood table. We leaned companionably against bright square cushions. Lunch had been filled with easy, shallow conversation. No jumping into emotional or intellectual depth.
I learned that her husband, currently on a trip to Japan, handled international real estate and roamed the world. They moved here from California after her husband’s company headquarters relocated to Dallas. She tried to give the impression that she happily played the role of corporate wife, but I didn’t buy it. Misty seemed too intelligent and purposeful for that. I didn’t feel comfortable enough with her to pursue the truth.
However, I did want to finagle a few more details about Caroline. I adjusted the tilt on my lounge chair and tried again.
“What’s La Warwick’s story?”
Something flashed in Misty’s eyes. “It’s too late for me. But you… you should run the other way.” Seeing my bewildered look, she said, “Caroline gets off on trying to fix other people’s pain. She worms her way in, figures out where you’re most vulnerable, how you can be useful. Your husband, for example. He could be useful.” It was a much blunter answer than I expected and it chilled me. My second warning. First Gretchen, now Misty.
“You’ve only known Caroline for a few months, right? Surely she’s not that bad. For the most part, these women appear harmless. Rich and bitchy, but harmless.”
“One of those rich and bitchy women told me that Caroline got her drunk and then recorded her blabbing about an affair she was having with her kid’s soccer coach. On video.”
“You’re telling me Caroline blackmails people?”
Misty shrugged. “Call it what you want. The next day, when the woman sobered up, Caroline emailed her the iPhone video with a warning to stop having the affair, that it was immoral and potentially devastating to her children. So she did.”
Misty took another swig of water while I thought about that. I wasn’t seriously bothered. A father’s affair wrecked one of my childhood friends. Took a chunk out of her forever. My friend was now on her fourth marriage. Caroline’s videotaping was sneaky, but apparently in a gray moral area for me.
“The women in that club aren’t harmless,” Misty said abruptly. “You weren’t so far off with the cult idea. Caroline is their little Hitler. They need to belong. At whatever cost.”
I opened my mouth to respond, then thought better of it. For the third time since we’d settled outside, Misty tugged down the bottom of her white, conservative one-piece, cut low on her bottom and high around the neck, like a competitive swimmer’s suit. It reminded me of something my mother used to wear. Misty wore a flimsy black coverup with sheer sleeves over it.
“I burn,” she said. From what I could see, Misty owned the body of a sixteen-year-old, without a dimple of fat or cellulite on her, so the modesty confused me. Especially since I was all out there, with my basketball belly, in a yellow-polka-dotted bikini. Especially since I knew Misty had funky taste in high heels. As Misty repositioned herself, I noticed faded scars on the insides of her thighs. So Mary Ann wasn’t making that up.
“Car accident as a kid,” she said, seeing where my eyes landed. Her legs closed up tight. Embarrassed.
“I can barely see them,” I lied.
The conversation had veered sharply into dark and uncomfortable territory, derailing my single-minded purpose in coming here: to make a friend. I watched goose bumps prick up under a streak of rosy sunburn on my arm, where I missed a spot with the sunscreen. I lathered on more sunscreen and decided to ease us back the other way. “How did you find this house? I love it.”
“An… acquaintance told me about it. The previous owner invents high-tech alarm systems for museums. Started messing around in his barn in Edna, Texas, at thirteen. One of his devices is now used in the Louvre.”
That explained the house’s top-of-the-line security system. The artist in me liked the idea that the Mona Lisa was protected by a device born in a barn, like Jesus.
“Tell me about you,” Misty said. “You ran an art gallery? And what’s the story with your husband? The word is that he’s a good-looking version of Michael Chiklis.”
I laughed. “For his already giant ego’s sake, I won’t share that. Mike led an ATF team on special ops all over the United States, and he’s still here. Alive, I mean. And all of his guys. Every one of them.” A little pride leaked into my voice.
“What made him take this job in Clairmont? Everybody’s wondering.” Misty rose to splash water on her legs and then stretched out again beside me. “Seems like this place would drive him out of his mind after all that excitement.”
“Frankly, we’d both like a lot less excitement. Mike’s thirty-five. I’m thirty-two. New York saps you. It’s a very hard place to live. And we never knew when he’d be assigned to a case and have to take off.”
I laid a hand on my stomach.
“This baby is a reason to change. Even if it’s just for a few years, this is a good break for us.” I was glad the sunglasses hid tears stinging behind my eyes. Damn hormones. I wasn’t going to open up to this reticent new friend about the miscarriages.
“It seems like it would be hard to give up everything that you’ve both worked for.” Misty’s voice sounded wistful.
“Don’t get me wrong. I loved my job. Helping people pick out beautiful things to live with. Giving a break every now and then to a young artist. But I could easily slip into a seventy-hour work week before an opening, especially if Mike was working and I had nothing to go home to. I had no time or space in our apartment to paint. What about you?”
“I’m in an in-between phase,” Misty replied vaguely. “Trying to figure out what’s next.”
She said earlier over our salads that she attended USC but she didn’t say when or claim a degree or say what she studied. She’d managed to sidestep all of my questions about her family or her childhood. She didn’t spare any goopy emotion on her husband. I couldn’t put my finger on her accent, blunted, an accent from nowhere.
Still, I liked her. I understood the layers of the private soul.
The house, oddly silent, felt empty of spirits other than Misty’s. The stillness wasn’t even disturbed by the friendly rumble of a refrigerator, but then hers was a sleek machine and not the ten-year-old Maytag that came with our home.
“When will Todd be back?” I asked.
“He’s overseeing the building of a corporate headquarters in Osaka right now. I’d guess three months. Maybe four.” Alone in a grand house, lots of windows, no man. Turn on that cowboy’s alarm, girl.
Misty tilted the Evian bottle toward her lips even though it was empty.
I had detected an edge in her voice, but before I could say anything she got up, murmuring about a kink in the pool sweeper.
I lay back and drifted, letting the sun soak my brain like crack cocaine.
She returned five minutes later and our talk grew superficial and drowsy, with longer and longer pauses in between. We fell quiet. When my eyes opened again, the sun had started its descent and the chair beside me was empty, Misty’s towel tossed over the edge.