I don’t blame him for being more worried about his own skin than mine. After all, he’s got kids. All I’ve got is a dog.
“Heather,” Dr. Jessup begins again. “I’m sure you under stand. This thing is a PR nightmare. We can’t have the public thinking our residence halls are out of control—”
To my surprise, it’s Detective Canavan who interrupts the assistant vice president. Noisily clearing his throat, then looking around unsuccessfully for a place to spit, Detective Canavan sighs, then swallows.
Then he says, “Hey. Hate to break this up, but the longer Ms. Wells here sticks around, the harder it’s gonna be for my boys to maintain crowd control out there.”
I feel an arm slip around my shoulders. Looking up, I’m surprised to see that the arm belongs to Cooper. He isn’t looking at me, though. He’s looking at the door.
“Come on, Heather,” he says. “Frank and Patty brought their car. They parked it down below, in the garage. They’ll give us a lift home.”
“Oh yes, let’s go,” Patty urges. Her beautiful face is filled with distaste. “I hate hospitals, and I hate reporters even more.” Her dark, almond-shaped eyes slide toward Dr. Jessup, and she looks as if she’s about to add,And I hate uptight bureaucrats most of all, but she refrains, entirely for my sake, I’m sure, since I choose that moment to step on her foot sort of hard, causing her to let out a little yelp of pain.
After I say good-bye to Pete and Magda—who promise to stick around the hospital until they get to see Julio—a hospital administrator gladly shows us the way down to the parking garage, as if any sacrifice she can make to get rid of us—and ergo, all the reporters—will be well worth it.
All I can think the whole way to the car is,Oh God. I am so fired. When I’m not thinking,Oh God, what’s with the arm? about Cooper, that is.
Except that once we’re safely in the car, Cooper removes his arm. So then I just have the one thing to worry about.
“Oh God,” I can’t help saying miserably, a catch in my throat, from the backseat. “I think Dr. Jessup is going to fire me.”
“Nobody’s going to fire you, Heather,” Cooper says. “The guy’s just looking out for his own interests.”
“That man even crosses his eyes at you, baby, he’s gonna hafta deal with me,” Patty growls, from behind the wheel. Patty is an assertive—one might almost say aggressive—driver, which is why she, instead of Frank, does all the driving when they’re in the city. She leans on the horn as a yellow cab cuts her off. “Nobody messes with my best girlfriend.”
Frank, looking back at me from the front passenger seat, says, “Cooper give you his jacket?”
I look down at the leather coat still wrapped around my shoulders. It smells of Cooper, like leather and soap. I never want to take it off, not ever again. But I know I’m going to have to, when we get home.
“No,” I say. “I mean, just to borrow.”
“Oh,” Frank say. “Because, you know, you’ve got your blood all over it.”
“Frank,” Patty says. “Shut up.”
“It’s all right,” Cooper says, as he studies the many weirdos out his window who make up the street life of the West Village.
It’s all right!My heart swells. Cooper had said it’s all right that I got my blood all over his leather jacket! Probably because, you know, we’ll be dating after this, and he’s just going to give the coat to me anyway. And I’ll have it—and Cooper—always, to keep me warm.
But then Cooper adds, “I know of a dry cleaner who’s good at getting bloodstains out.”
You know, it just isn’t my day.
25
Hello
Do I have the right number?
Hello
Yes, I’m looking for my lover
Hello
Can you get him
On the line for me?
Hello
I know he used to live there
Hello
I know he used to care
Hello
Please get my lover on the line
For me
“Hello”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by Jones/Ryder
From the album Magic
Cartwright Records
Patty drops us off at the brownstone, even though Frank insists it isn’t safe there, what with somebody wanting to kill me and all.
All I want to do is take a bath and crawl into my own bed and sleep for a thousand years. I don’t want to have a big long discussion about whether whoever is trying to kill me knows where I live. Frank wants me to go stay with him and Patty.
Until Cooper points out that that might put Indy at risk.
At first I’m kind of shocked, you know, that Cooper would say something so horrible. It’s only when I see how swiftly Frank says that he thinks it would be better if I just stay at Cooper’s, after all, what with Cooper being a trained crime fighter, that I realize what Cooper was up to. He knows I just want to go home. He knows I don’t want to stay in Frank and Patty’s guest room.
And because he’s Cooper, and he’s always doing nice things for me—giving me a free apartment when I have nowhere else to go, and no money for rent anyway; taking me to a party he doesn’t really want to go to, since he might run into a former flame, with whom things had ended badly; risking his own life to save mine; that kind of thing—he’d done his best to get me what he knew I wanted.
Except, of course, the one thing I want more than anything.
But apparently that, for reasons I’ll probably never know—and am pretty sure I don’t want to, anyway—he’s not prepared to give me.
Which is totally fine. I mean, I understand. I’ll just open my OWN doctor’s office/detective agency/jewelry shop, without his help.
Of course, having the kids on my own might be harder, but I’m sure I’ll manage somehow.
Fortunately, I have an unlisted number, so there aren’t any reporters lurking on my front stoop when we pull up. Just the usual drug dealers.
Lucy is wild with joy to see me—though I have to ask Cooper to walk her for the time being, since there’s no way I can hold a leash with my torn-up hands. Once the two of them are gone, I slip upstairs to my apartment, where I peel off my grimy clothes and slide, at long last, into the tub.
Although it turns out that bathing with stitches in your hands is no joke. I have to get out of the tub and go into the kitchen, pull out some rubber gloves, and put those on before I can wash my hair, because the doctor warned me that if I got the stitches wet, my hands might fall off, or something.
Once I get all the elevator grime and blood off me, let the bath refill, and I just lay there, soaking my sore shoulder for a while, wondering what I’m going to do now.
I mean, things aren’t exactly looking good. Someone is trying to kill me… probably the same someone who’d already killed two people, at least. The only common denominator between the dead girls appears to be the president of the college’s son.
But, at least according to the police, it’s unlikely that Chris Allington was the one who’d tried to blow me up, because he’d been out of town at the time.
Which means that someone besides Chris is trying to kill me. And maybe that someone, and not Chris, killed the two girls.
But who? And why? Why would someone have killed Elizabeth Kellogg and Roberta Pace in the first place? What could they have possibly done to deserve to die? I mean, besides move into Fischer Hall. Oh, and date—albeit briefly—Chris Allington.
Is that it? Is that what had caused their deaths? The fact that they’d dated Chris? Had Magda been right? Not about the girls having killed themselves because, after waiting so long to have sex, they’d found out it really isn’t the earth-shattering thing they’d been led to believe. But about the girls dying because of the sex—not at their own hand, but the hand of someone who didn’t approve of what they’d just done.
Someone like Mrs. Allington, maybe? What was it that Chris’s mother had said to me, just before the elevator incident? Something about “you girls.”