Spygirl (34 page)

Sol was handing out twenties to all of us for shots, since the bar didn't have credit tabs. “Can I have some dough?” I asked him. He was ho-ho-hoing as he pulled a wad of sticky twenties from his pocket and gave one to me, to Evan, to Wendy. Another sweaty fist pushed its way into the fray.

It was Dan. He pulled his ubiquitous headphones off his head.

“Dude,” he said with a salute.

“Hey,” I said sadly.

“I hope you don't mind me coming, but your e-mail said there'd be all your foxy female coworkers—”

“Wait—I said that?”

“Yeah.” He pulled a crumpled e-mail printout and handed it to me. “No, I'm joking. Just to bring light to the whole Renora thing. I wasn't hitting on her—”

“Don't worry about it,” I interrupted. “It was stupid, really.”

But he wouldn't let it go. “I just—I felt like you completely cut me out, for no reason. I was guilty before being proven innocent. And then I didn't even get a chance for a defense.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I guess I'm trigger-happy. Or gun-shy. Or once bitten, twice shy. Some shit like that.”

He laughed. “I didn't want things to end …” He hesitated.

“I know.” Out of the corner of my vision I saw Cassie coming toward me. “It's hard to start over in these situations, but I have a friend who I think you could really fall in love with, and she's a lot saner than me. Plus she makes more money—when she's working.”

“She doesn't work?”

“She got laid off.”

Dan grinned. “So did I. My dot-com went under.”

I quickly introduced Cassie to Dan. I was brusque. “Dan, meet Cassie. Cassie, Dan. You guys should date each other, and you both just got fired, so you'll have plenty of time.”

While Cassie and Dan got to know each other I overheard George and Sol having a rhetorical tussle about Froot Loops.

“See, ‘Froot’ “s not a word,” Sol was explaining. “It doesn't mean anything.”

“It
is
a word, you're saying it. It's their legal loophole.” George giggled. “No pun intended.”

“But it's not if you see it spelled. When deaf people buy Froot
Loops they can't read the word ‘Froot,’ they just hear it. It's a direct attempt to misguide consumers. The
Oxford English Dictionary
should file a class action suit for trademark infringement and defaming their product.”

“Fruit doesn't belong to anybody.”

“I don't know, looking at Noah I would beg to differ. Ha-ha-ha!” Sol had a breakfast-size box of cereal on him, and the next thing I knew my bosses were closing their eyes and tossing back some Loops as part of a taste test to see if Froot, like fruit, came in different flavors, or was just different colors.

A few beers later I found myself immersed in conversation with Evan about the breakup.

“Don't laugh,” I warned, “but I think he could have been the one.” The Guinness had lubricated me well. I was foaming at the mouth.

“Yah, you blew it, big time!”

“Evan! You're not supposed to say that!”

“But it's true,” he said. “I'm telling it like it is. You can't let this make you think everyone is an enemy. This job isn't the real world, A. Gray.”

“What am I supposed to think when every folder that crosses my desk is a lunatic? Ahhhh!” I yelled in frustration and dropped my beer accidentally on Evan's steel-toed shoe.

“Jesus effing Christ. You need a reality check, A. Gray. It's not the job, it's you.” He hobbled away, cursing.

“Whatever,” I called after him. “I don't need to take advice from a guy—”

Before something irreversible escaped me I pointed over to the coin-operated bronco-riding machine along the side of the bar.

“Look!” I said pointing. Leaning against the harness, their heads tilted together like two contemplative cowboys, were Renora and Linus. Kissing.

“Whoa.” Suddenly Gus and George and Sol and everyone were crowded together cooing and yelping to embarrass them. Renora looked up from their embrace and started laughing.

“This is not pay-per-view,” she said.

“I'm not paying,” George countered.

“But you're cheating on your one and only Assman.”

“I'm not doing anything of the sort,” Renora explained, before giving me a shrug and announcing,
“Amy
was hot for Assman, not me,” at which point the bar devolved into whoops and cries and chants of “Amy and Assman sitting in a tree.” I was laughing so hard I almost forgot my broken heart.

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

I turned around.

It was Peter. His hair sparkled with moisture. “Hi,” I said, startled.

“Ho-ho,” Sol was chortling. “Who the hell are you?” he said, pointing at Peter. “I don't know you.”

“Sorry, he's with me,” I said, dragging him over to the side of the bar. “What are you doing here?”

“I don't know.”

We stood looking at each other silently.

“Anyway, it looks like you've moved on pretty quickly with this Assman character.”

My right lip curled. “Are you serious?”

Peter was tired-looking. A patina of sweat gave him a greenish mother-of-pearl veneer.

“I just hope you vetted that guy, “cause it sounds like he must have a lot to hide, with a name like that.” He was shaking now.

“Peter, I'm so sorry.”

“You don't know where that Ass has been,” he said, getting nasty.

“Stop it, please.” I didn't know Peter could get angry like this.

Maybe I'd figured if he liked me there must have been something wrong with him. But now he was ripshit, and there was something animating and vital about it. He was telling it like it was, and I respected him for it.

“Please, listen to me,” I said. “I think I've gotten confused over the last twelve months about what I expect from people. Taking this job, I wanted to make myself completely safe from disappointment. The truth is, you're never totally safe, and by not trusting you I put myself in the way of much greater harm, the harm of not recognizing something great if it kicks me in the ass.”

Peter was stone-faced.

“You're right to be angry with me, and if you never talk to me again I'll always be sorry and I'll always miss you and I'll never begrudge you for it. I messed up.”

Peter was looking distracted. Suddenly he walked away from me, and I stood there stunned. He came back a minute later, with a double shot glass in each hand.

“What are these?” I asked. He pointed to Sol, standing away from us. Sol pointed at me and winked. Peter said that Sol had told him to tell me we needed liquor and he'd advised us to make love, not war.

“What is it?” I asked sniffing it.

“Just drink it, Miss Marple,” he said, and with that the smoky alloy went down my hatch and my frozen-over vascular system felt melted around the edges.

“Come outside,” Peter said, leading me outside the bar and under a streetlamp. His hair was electric and yellow. He looked like he was on fire with the tawny glow from above.

“You totally betrayed me,” he said. I nodded my hanging head in agreement. “And you also did a shitty job of investigating.” I looked up. “The subway sign was a project I did at SVA. There was no woman on the F line. There was nothing. The project was
to find people like you, people who imagined clues where there were none, who saw themselves as players in other people's fantasy lives. This wasn't about me, it was about you.”

We were silent for a minute. “What about Skye?” I asked.

“What about her?!” he bellowed. “There was a time when I thought I had more feelings for her. It lasted about a day. That was four and half years ago. Don't you think if I had wanted to act on it I would have?!”

I absorbed his fury solemnly.

“You think you're so fucking clever, we'll you PI-ed yourself into quite a fucking situation here.” For what felt like the longest time we stood unspeaking, and I waited for the ax to fall.

“But, for whatever reason, probably because I, like you, am a fucking romantic, and you're smart and beautiful and funny and fun and I think I see something in you I want, I can't turn away.”

I looked up at him.

“I want to forget this and I want you to never do this again.”

He pulled me close and rubbed his eyes on my shoulder, and we stood outside the bar for the longest time, kissing and whispering “Never” a lot. At one point Sol ran out with a cymbal and banged it in my ear, and Evan shuffled out holding Skye's hand. Otherwise, as I stood there with Peter I put my trust not in facts, and not in dreams, but in the pure, true feeling that siphoned from my gut and drove all the way to my fingertips and beyond me onto the light. Soon the ringing cheers of the revelers within spilled outside, at first muffled and then thunderous: eight … seven … six … five …

And then it started to snow.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS             

The author wishes to thank the following people: Jessica Power, Charlotte Herscher, Amber Smith, Rob Haskell, Deborah Rubin, Lauren Redniss, Abigail Gray, Nick Harder, Robert Grover, Sylvie Rabineau, Keri Selig, Ed Redlick, Becky Hartman-Edwards, Jill and David Adler, Barbara Hart, Bernice Gray, and everyone at the Agency

Particular thanks to my supremely clever editor, Bruce Tracy, and my fabulous and unwavering agent, Betsy Lerner, as well as Katie Zug and Erin Hosier. Most of all, thanks to my parents.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR             

A
MY
G
RAY
spent three years working as a private investigator in New York City. She previously worked in book publishing. She has been profiled in
W
magazine,
The New York Times
, and
Glamour
, among other places. She graduated from Brown University and lives in New York.