Size 12 Is Not Fat (20 page)

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s a ball to honor the trustees and people who’ve been given Pansys. You know, for service to the college. Rachel’s getting one.”

It isn’t my imagination. At the sound of my boss’s name,
Cooper abruptly loses interest in the conversation. In fact, he walks over to the mail that has just slid through the drop slot—to Lucy’s intent interest—and, after wrestling it from her, starts sorting through it.

“Rachel, huh?” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. “The tickets are like two hundred bucks, though. To the ball. And God knows I can’t afford one. But I was thinking, your grandfather was an alumnus, right? So I bet you have access to some free ones. Tickets, I mean.”

“Probably,” Cooper says, giving Lucy, who is whining piteously, a J. Crew catalog to chew on.

“So could I, maybe, have one?” I ask. Subtle. That’s me. Miss Subtle.

“So you can spy on Christopher Allington?” Cooper doesn’t even look up from the mail. “Not a chance.”

My jaw drops.

“But—”

“Heather, didn’t you hear a word that detective said? He’s going to look into it. Subtly. In the meantime, stay out of it. At best, the only thing you’re going to get for your efforts is sued.”

“I swear I’m not gonna talk to him,” I insist, raising my right hand and making the Girl Scout’s honor symbol with three fingers. Except, of course, I never was a Girl Scout, so it doesn’t count. “I won’t go near him.”

“Correct me if I’m mistaken,” Cooper says, “but aren’t you convinced he tried to kill you today?”

“Well, that’s what I’m trying to find out,” I say. “C’mon, Cooper, what could possibly happen at the
Pansy Ball
, for God’s sake? He’s not going to try to do anything to me there, in front of everybody…”

“No, he isn’t,” Cooper says. “Because I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

I blink. Wait. What did he just say?

“You—you want to go with me?”

“Only because if I don’t keep an eye on you, who knows what’ll fall on your head next time.” Cooper puts down the mail. His blue-eyed gaze bores into me like a pair of headlights. “And because I can see by the look in your eyes that you’re going to get your hands on a ticket somehow, even if it means seducing some unsuspecting rube in the geology department.”

I’m stunned. Cooper is taking me to the Pansy Ball! Cooper Cartwright is taking me out! It was almost like a…

Well, a
date.

“Oh, Cooper!” I breathe. “Thank you so much! You don’t know how much this means to me—”

Cooper is already moving back toward his office, shaking his head. He keeps his thoughts to himself, but I have a pretty good idea that he isn’t, as I am, frantically trying to figure out what he’s going to wear.

Guys have it so easy.

I can’t get through the remainder of the workday fast enough.

Everyone asks after Jordan’s health, causing me to realize guiltily that I don’t even know how he’s doing, since I’ve been slightly distracted since leaving the hospital, what with meeting with detectives and getting asked out (sort of) by the man of my dreams, and having to figure out what I’m going to wear on our date to the Pansy Ball, and all.

So I call St. Vincent’s and after being transferred about a
half-dozen times because of privacy concerns, Jordan being a big star and all, finally get someone who tells me, after I assure them I am not a member of the press and even sing a few bars of “Sugar Rush” to convince them that I’m really me, that Jordan is currently listed as being in good condition, and that doctors expect him to make a full recovery.

When I relay this news to Rachel, she goes, “Oh, good! I was so worried. It’s so lucky, Heather, that the planter hit him and not you. You might so easily have been injured yourself.”

Magda is less pleased with Jordan’s prognosis.

“Too bad,” she says baldly. “I was hoping he’d die.”

“Magda!” I cry, horrified.

“Look at my byootiful movie stars,” Magda says to a group of students who’ve shown up for an early dinner, waving their dining cards. Taking the cards and running them through the scanner, Magda says, to me, “Well, he deserves a whack on the head, after the way he treated you.”

Magda’s so lucky. To her, everything is black and white. America is great, no matter what anybody else might say, and members of boy bands who cheat on their girlfriends? Well, they deserve to have planters dropped on their heads. No questions asked.

Patty is relieved to hear from me when I call her. I guess when she’d crossed the park and seen all the blood on the sidewalk in front of Fischer Hall, she’d gotten really freaked out. She’d been convinced something had happened to me. She’d had to sit down in the cafeteria with her head between her knees for twenty minutes—and eat two DoveBars Magda pressed on her—before she finally felt well enough to flag down a cab and go home.

“Are you really sure about this college degree thing, Heather?” she asks now, worriedly. “Because I’m sure Frank
could set up an appointment for you with people from his label—”

“That’d be nice,” I say. “Except, you know, I’m not sure how impressed Frank’s label would really be about the fact that most of my past performances took place in malls—”

“They wouldn’t care about that,” Patty cries. Which is really sweet of her, and all, but that’s exactly the kind of thing record labels
do
care about, I’ve discovered.

“Maybe we can get you a part in a musical, you know, like on Broadway,” Patty says. “Debbie Gibson’s doing it. Lot’s of stars are—”

“Operative word being star,” I point out. “Which I am not.”

“I just don’t think you should work in that dorm anymore, Heather,” Patty says worriedly. “It’s too dangerous. Girls dying. Flower pots falling down on people—”

“Oh, Patty,” I say, touched by her concern. “I’ll be all right.”

“I’m serious, Heather. Cooper and I discussed it, and we both feel—”

“You and Cooper discussed
me
?” I hope I don’t sound too eager. What had they talked about? I wonder. Had Cooper revealed to Patty that he has a deep and abiding love for me that he dares not show, since I’m his brother’s ex and sort of an employee of his?

But if he had, wouldn’t she have told me right away?

“Cooper and I just feel—and Frank agrees—that if—well, if it turns out this whole murder thing is true, you might be putting yourself in some kind of danger—”

This doesn’t sound to me like Cooper had said anything at all about harboring a deep and abiding love for me. No wonder Patty hadn’t called me right away to dish.

“Patty,” I say, “I’m fine. Really. I’ve got the best bodyguard in the world.” Then I tell her about the Pansy Ball, and Cooper’s escorting me there.

Patty doesn’t sound as excited about it as I expect her to, though. Oh, she says I can borrow her dress—the red Armani she’d worn to the Grammys when she’d been seven months’ pregnant with Indy, and which I hope will consequently fit me—and all, but she isn’t exactly shrieking, “Ooooh he asked you out!”

Because I guess he hasn’t, really. Maybe it isn’t a
real
date when the guy is just going out with you to make sure no one kills you.

God. When did Patty get so mature?

“Well, just promise me to be careful, okay, Heather?” Patty still sounds worried. “Cooper says he thinks the whole murder thing is kind of…unlikely. But I’m not so sure. And I don’t want you to be next.”

I do my best to reassure Patty that my safety is hardly in jeopardy—even though, of course, I’m pretty sure the exact opposite is true. Someone in Fischer Hall wants me dead.

Which means I am definitely on to something with my Elizabeth-Kellogg-and-Roberta-Pace-were-murdered theory.

It isn’t until I’ve hung up with Patty that I feel someone’s gaze on me. I look up and see that Sarah is sitting at her desk, stuffing Tootsie Rolls into little plastic bags as a surprise for each of the RAs, all of whom she feels need a pick-me-up after the rocky start their semester had gotten off to, given the dead girls and all.

Only I can’t help noticing that Sarah has stopped stuffing, and is instead staring at me owlishly through her thick glasses—she only wears her contacts on special occasions, such as check-in (potential to meet cute single dads) or poetry readings at St. Mark’s Church (potential to meet cute penniless poets).

“I didn’t mean to listen in on your conversation,” Sarah
says, “but did I just hear you say you think someone’s trying to
kill
you?”

“Um,” I say. How can I put this so as not to cause her undue alarm? After all, I get to go home every night, but Sarah has to live here. How comfortable is she going to feel knowing there’s a dangerous psychopath stalking the floors of Fischer Hall?

Then again, Sarah lost her virginity on an Israeli kibbutz the summer of her freshman year—or so she’d told me—so it isn’t like she’s a potential victim.

So I shrug and say, “Yes.”

Then—because Rachel is upstairs in her apartment getting ready for the ball (she’d managed to find something to wear, but wouldn’t show it to us on account of “not wanting to ruin the surprise”)—I tell her my theory about Chris Allington and the deaths of Elizabeth Kellogg and Roberta Pace.

“Have you told any of this to Rachel?” Sarah asks me, when I’m done.

“No,” I say. “Rachel has enough to worry about, don’t you think?” Besides—I don’t mention this part to Sarah—if it turns out I’m wrong, it won’t look so good at my six months’ employment review…you know, my suspecting the son of the president of the college of a double homicide.

“Good,” Sarah says. “Don’t. Because has it occurred to you that this whole thing—you know, with your thinking that Elizabeth and Roberta were murdered—might be a manifestation of your own insecurities over having been betrayed and abandoned by your mother?”

I just blink at her. “What?”

“Well,” Sarah says, pushing up her glasses. “Your mother stole all your money and fled the country with your manager.
That had to have been the most traumatic event in your life. I mean, you lost everything—all your savings, as well as the people on whom you thought you could most depend, your father having been absent most of your life to begin with due to his long-term incarceration for passing bad checks. And yet whenever anyone brings it up, you dismiss the whole thing as if it were nothing.”

“No, I don’t,” I say. Because I don’t. Or at least, I don’t think I do.

“Yes, you do,” Sarah says. “You even still speak to your mother. I heard you on the phone with her the other day. You were chatting with her about what to get your dad for his birthday. In
jail.
The woman who stole all your money and fled to Argentina!”

“Well,” I say, a little defensively. “She’s still my
mother
, no matter what she’s done.”

I’m never sure how to explain about my mom. Yes, when the going got tough—when I let Cartwright Records know I was only interested in singing my own lyrics, and Jordan’s dad, in response, unceremoniously dropped me from the label—not that my sales had been going gangbusters anymore anyway—my mom got going.

But that’s just how she is. I was mad at her for a while, of course.

But being mad at my mom is kind of like being mad because it’s raining out. She can’t help what she does, any more than clouds can.

But I suppose Sarah, if she heard that, would just say I’m in denial, or worse.

“Isn’t it possible that you’re displacing the hostility you feel about what your mother did to you onto poor Chris Allington?” Sarah wants to know.

“Excuse me,” I say. I’m getting kind of tired of repeating
myself. “But that planter didn’t just fall out of the sky, you know. Well, okay, it did, but not by itself.”

“And could it be that you miss the attention you used to receive from your fans so much that you’ve latched on to any excuse to make yourself feel important by inventing this big important mystery for you to solve, where none actually exists?”

I remember, with a pang, what Cooper had said outside the service elevator. Hadn’t it been something along these same lines? About me wanting to relive the thrill of my glory days back at the Mall of America?

But wanting to find out who’s responsible for killing people in your place of work is totally different from singing in front of thousands of busy shoppers.

I mean, isn’t it?

“Um” is what I say in response to Sarah’s accusation. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

All I can think is, Sarah’s lucky she met Yael when she did. The kibbutz guy, I mean. Otherwise, she’s just the kind of girl Chris would go for next.

Well, except for that habit she has of psychoanalyzing people all the time. I could see how that might get annoying.

I haven’t been to a dressy party in ages, so when I finally get off work that night, I have a lot of preparations to make. First I have to go to Patty’s to get the dress—which fits, thank God, but barely.

Then I have to give myself a pedicure and manicure, since there isn’t time to have my nails done by professionals. Then I have to wash and condition my hair, shave my legs (and under my arms, since Patty’s dress is strapless), and, then, just to be on the safe side, I shave my bikini line as well, because, even though it’s highly unlikely I’m going to get lucky twice in two days, you never know. Then I have to apply a facial
mask, and moisturize all over. Then I have to shape my eyebrows, dry and style my hair, apply makeup, and layer fragrance.

Then, noticing that the heels of my red pumps have obviously met with an unfortunate accident involving a subway grate, I have to go over them with a red Magic Marker.

And of course, through all of that, I have to pause occasionally to snack on Double-Stuff Oreos so that I won’t get light-headed from not having had anything to eat since this afternoon, when Magda smuggled that Reuben from the caf for me.

By the time Cooper taps on my apartment door, I’m just struggling to zip up Patty’s dress and wondering why it had fit two hours ago in her loft but doesn’t fit now—

“Just a second,” I yell, trying to figure out what on earth I’m going to wear if I can’t get Patty’s dress to close properly….

Finally the zipper moves, though, and I grab my wrap and bag and clatter down the stairs, thinking it’s a shame there’s no one who can open the door for me and say, “She’ll be down in a minute,” so I can make a sweeping entrance, like Rory Gilmore or whoever. As it is, I have to knee Lucy out of the way just so I can get to the door.

I regret to say I don’t register Cooper’s reaction to my appearance—if he even had one, which I kind of doubt—because I’m so completely taken aback by his. Cooper does own a tuxedo, it turns out…a very nice one, in fact.

And he looks more than a little sexy in it.

What is it about men in tuxedos? Why do they always look so
good
in them? Maybe it’s the emphasis on the width of the chest and shoulders. Maybe it’s the startling contrast of crisp white shirt front and elegant black lapel.

Whatever it is, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a guy in a tux
who didn’t look great. But Cooper is the exception. He doesn’t look great.

He looks
fantastic.

I’m so busy admiring him that I nearly forget I’m attending this event to catch a killer. For a second—just one—I really do delude myself into thinking Cooper and I are on a date. Especially when he says, “You look great.”

Reality returns, though, when he looks at his watch and says distractedly, “Let’s go, all right? I’ve got to meet someone later, so if we’re going to do this, we need to get a move on.”

I feel a pang of disappointment. Meet someone? Who? Who does he have to meet? A client? A snitch?

Or a
girlfriend
?

“Heather?” Cooper raises his eyebrows. “You okay?”

“Fine,” I say, faintly.

“Good,” Cooper says, taking me by the elbow. “Let’s go.”

I follow him down the stairs and out the door, telling myself that I’m being an idiot. Again. So what if he has to meet someone later? What do I care? This isn’t a date. It
isn’t
. At least, not with him. If I have any kind of date at all tonight, it’s a date with the killer of Elizabeth Kellogg and Roberta Pace.

I repeat this to myself all the way through the park, past the Washington Square monument, and even as we cross the street to the library, where the event is being held and which has been transformed, by strategic placement of red carpets and colored lights and banners, into a ballroom for the occasion.

We have to dodge a few stretch limos and a bunch of uniformed campus security guards (Pete had been asked to pull a double for the occasion, but he’d said no, since his daugh
ter Nancy had a science fair that night), all of whom wear white gloves and have whistles in their mouths, just to approach the massive, clay-colored building. There are velvet ropes to keep out the riffraff…only there doesn’t seem to be either riff or raff expressing much interest in crashing the party, just some graduate students standing there, clutching their backpacks, looking angry that the party is preventing them from getting to their study carrels.