The Bride Wore Size 12 (11 page)

12

N
o,” Lisa says. Her face has turned slightly green, as if the burrito she had for breakfast is coming back up. “It isn’t possible.”

“It’s right there on the monitor,” I say. “You can go down to Pete’s desk and see for yourself.”

“Oh,” Lisa says, swallowing hard. “I believe you. It’s just that—”

“Or Gavin can tell you about it. Can’t you, Gavin?”

I turn to Gavin, whom I’ve dragged to the hall director’s office, hanging a “Closed—Back in Five Minutes” sign on the front desk, and another one that says
please knock!
on the door to our office, which I’ve closed and locked so we won’t be disturbed, though it’s doubtful any residents will drop by so early in the morning.

Parents, on the other hand, are another story.

Gavin’s sitting in a chair across from Lisa’s, looking miserable. And not only because he’s been hauled into his boss’s office before ten in the morning, wearing only the Goofy slippers his mother gave him, a moth-eaten New York College T-shirt, and a pair of plaid flannel pajama bottoms, but because he’s been caught in a lie he can’t get out of.

Only he doesn’t consider it a lie.

“I told you before, I ain’t no narc,” he says, folding his arms across his chest. His protest, however, sounds weak.

“Gavin,” I say. “I am seconds—literally seconds—away from calling Detective Canavan down at the Sixth Precinct, and you know how disappointed he was in you the last time he was in this office. Do you really want to go through that again?”

Gavin looks sullenly down at his floppy-eared slippers. “No, ma’am.”

“Then tell Lisa what you know about all the RAs being so sick.”

“It wasn’t
all
of them,” he says, raising his tousle-haired head. “Mostly the new ones. Look, do I really have to—”

“Why were they sick, Gavin?” Lisa’s voice has gone cold as ice. “Are you saying it wasn’t the flu, like I had?”

“Uh, no, ma’am.” Gavin looks back down at his slippers. “They were just hungover.”

“Hungover?” Lisa’s eyes flare like firecrackers. “What do you mean they were hungover?”

“Because they’d been up partying all night in room fifteen-twelve with Sexy Sheikh,” Gavin explains. “I mean, Prince Rashid.”

Lisa’s face pales. She’s shaking her head the way Tricky does when he has a flea.
No. No, no, no.

“It has to have been the same party Ameera was talking about,” I say to her. “Remember, I told you. She said Jasmine seemed fine during the party. It must have been a party at Prince Rashid’s. Jasmine’s on the tape. I saw her in the hallway, going into the prince’s room with the others.”

Lisa is still shaking her head, not because she doesn’t believe me, but because she’s so angry. I can see the tips of her ears turning red, a sure sign that she’s upset.

Silence fills Lisa’s small office. Outside the two wide windows that look onto the street, I can hear the rapid footsteps on the sidewalk of people who are late to work, and the sound of a car pulling into that rarest of all commodities in Manhattan—a parking spot.

“Who . . .” Lisa says to Gavin, after she’s had a chance to control her breathing. “Who from the RA staff has been to the parties in Rashid’s room? I want names. All of them.”

She’s lifted a pen. Now she holds it poised over a New York College notepad on her desk.

“Oh, man,” Gavin says, lifting his gaze to the ceiling. “Come
on
. Don’t do this to me! This is
not
cool.”

“You want to know what’s not cool, Gavin,” Lisa says, sounding angrier than I’ve ever heard her. “A young woman on my staff was found dead yesterday morning, and last night when I asked her peers if any of them had seen her the night before, not a single one of them volunteered that they’d been to a party with her, a party in
my
building, information that might actually help the coroner determine the cause of her death. They sat there and lied to my face about it. So if you know anything about it, start talking, or by God, Gavin, you can start looking for a new place to live.”

Gavin’s eyes widen perceptibly. Without skipping another beat, he begins coughing up names. “Howard Chen. And both the other Jasmines.”

Lisa writes
Howard Chen, Jasmine Singh, Jasmine Tsai
on her notepad.

“Christopher Mintz,” Gavin goes on. “And that Josh guy, the one who always wears a Yankees baseball cap.”

Joshua Dungarden,
Lisa writes. I notice her hand trembling, but she keeps a firm grip on the pen.

“Stephanie, from the fourth floor.”

Stephanie Moody,
Lisa writes.

“That Ryan guy. Oh, and that one with the long nose and glasses.”

Lisa stops writing and glares at Gavin. “Excuse me?”

“You know.” Gavin points at his nose. “The girl with the glasses.”

“Megan Malarty?”

“Yeah, that one. Oh, and the guy with the Justin Bieber hair.”

“I saw him on the tape too,” I say. “Kyle.”

Lisa writes down
Megan Malarty
and
Kyle Cheeseman
on the notepad.

“Is that all?” I ask Gavin.

He nods, then hesitates. “Oh, well, except Jasmine. Jasmine—well, Dead Jasmine. She was there too.” He looks from Lisa to me and then back again, apologetic. “Sorry to call her Dead Jasmine, but I can’t remember her last name. There are so many Jasmines. I guess it was a popular name the year they were all born, or something.”

“It’s all right, Gavin,” Lisa says, distracted. “Albright. Her last name was Albright.”

Lisa runs her pen quickly down the list. I know what she’s doing.

Counting.

“Gavin,” I say while Lisa is occupied. “How do you know all these RAs were at the party the night Jasmine died? I didn’t recognize this many on the video. Were you there?”

Gavin hesitates, looking out Lisa’s windows as if he’s contemplating throwing himself from them.

Unfortunately for him, the windows are covered in wrought-iron bars. Not to keep people in but, since we’re on the first floor and this is New York City, to keep thieves out.

“Gavin, it’s okay, you’re not going to get in trouble,” I explain. “You’re over twenty-one, and so is the prince. He didn’t do anything illegal serving
you
alcohol, or the RAs who were twenty-one and older.”

Though for the ones who were drinking while on duty, it’s a different story. And since Ameera—who is a freshman and only eighteen—was apparently at the party, the presence of
any
of the RAs in Rashid’s room while he was serving alcohol is problematic. In New York College residence halls, it’s a violation of the student code of conduct for anyone under the age of twenty-one to be found in possession of alcohol, and a further violation of policy for those over the age of twenty-one to serve alcohol to residents under the legal drinking age.

It’s no wonder none of the RAs admitted the truth to Lisa. Their mere presence in room 1512 the night before Jasmine’s death was a violation of their employment contract with New York College.

“Of course I wasn’t there,” Gavin says, his arms still folded across his chest, but now more out of disgust than defensiveness. “He invited me, but how could I go? Somebody’s got to man the front desk, am I right, and make sure folks are getting their toilet paper and trash bags and billiard cues? Jamie and I have been splitting the night shifts to make a little extra cash. Besides, we don’t go in for that kind of stuff. Alcohol’s not my thing.
You
of all people should know that, Heather.”

I do, actually. To commemorate his twenty-first birthday, Gavin had gotten it into his head to consume twenty-one shots. This decision had landed him—and me, beside him, as his appointed administrative hand-holder—in the emergency room.

“I haven’t touched a drop since then,” he says, with a touch of sanctimoniousness. “Well, except the occasional beer now and then,” he adds, when I raise an eyebrow. “You know I love my PBR.” Pabst Blue Ribbon, official beer of the screenplay-writing hipster. “Mostly I only smoke weed.”

When Lisa sends him a chastising look over her notepad, he cries, raising both hands, “It’s medicinal, honest, for my ADHD! From California. It’s completely legal there.”

“So how do you know the prince’s guest list so intimately,” I ask, thinking it’s a good time to change the subject, “if you’ve never attended any of his little soirees?”

“Because people keep bragging about how bangin’ they are,” Gavin says. “What do you think I do when I’m sitting up there at that desk?”

“You’re supposed to be sorting and distributing the mail,” I say. “Not to mention handing out the toilet paper and trash bags and billiard cues.”

“I
listen,
” Gavin says. “Only by listening to people’s speech patterns can a writer ever hope to craft truly convincing dialogue. That’s how Tarantino does it. So that’s what I do while I’m sorting the mail. I
listen
. You know how those RAs are always hanging out behind the desk—even though they aren’t supposed to? Well, that stupid sheikh and his parties are all they ever talk about. It’s Midnight at the Oasis up there in his room, man. They all know his daddy’s a sultan . . . a nomad known to all . . . fifty girls to attend him.”

“So they jump to his beck and call,” I murmur before I can stop myself.

“Exactly,”
Gavin says, leaning forward in his chair to point at me excitedly. “God, I
love
you!
No one
my age gets that reference! Why aren’t you marrying
me
?”

Lisa taps the list she’s made with her pen, drawing our attention. “What are you two talking about?”

“Nothing,” I say quickly. “Gavin, no one
my
age gets that reference. And I told you before, it’s too late. I’m in love with Cooper Cartwright.”

“It’s not too late,” Gavin insists. “You can still call it off. When
Teen Zombie Apocalypse
is a hit, I’ll be able to support you.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I like my job, as well as my current choice of husband.”

Gavin looks sulkily down at his slippers. “Your loss,” he mumbles.

“This is more than half the RA staff,” Lisa says, gazing down at the list in front of her. “And it’s not
mostly
the new staff. It’s
all
the new staff. The only ones who aren’t here, if Gavin is correct, are Davinia, Rajiv, Tina, and Jean, the RAs who worked here over the summer.”

“Yeah,” Gavin says, with a nod. “They’re cool. They’re not going to fall under the spell of some foreign prince tennis champ smooth talker who knows how to mix a caipirinha and wears skinny jeans.”

“Gavin.” Lisa blinks at him. “Thanks for the help. You should probably get back to the front desk now.”

“Oh, thank God,” he says, leaping from the chair and hurrying from the office. After he’s pulled open the door, he pauses uncertainly, his Goofy-slippered foot on the stop. “You want this open or closed?”

The outside door to the hall director’s office—leading to the main office, where my desk sits, along with Sarah’s desk, the RAs’ staff mailboxes, and the photocopier—is never closed, except after five.

But we can’t run the risk of anyone overhearing us, especially anyone from the prince’s surveillance team, who are stationed down the hall.

“Closed,” Lisa and I say in unison.

Gavin nods and releases the doorstop, allowing the door to swing shut behind him.

I glance at Lisa, who’s lost any appearance of health. She looks almost as ill as she had yesterday.

“I wish I could fire all of them,” she says through gritted teeth, staring down at the list of names on her notepad.

“Oh, Lisa.” I can’t think of anything else to say.

“I can’t, of course,” she says bitterly. “There are proper channels you have to go through, even to terminate the employment of a student worker. But I wish I could. It’s not like I’m the one who hired any of them.”

This is true. The new RAs were selected over the summer by Simon Hague, the hall director assigned to supervise Fischer Hall during the interim before Lisa was hired. Simon had made a lot of questionable choices during that time, so I’m not particularly surprised the students he hired have turned out to be less than reliable.

“Heather, they lied to me,” Lisa goes on miserably. “They sat at that meeting last night—which was about Jasmine, who
died
—and lied to my face, commiserating with me about having the flu, pretending they had the same thing I did. None of them had the same thing I did. They were freaking hungover because they’d been out all night partying with a resident,
in my hall.
My hall.
”

“Lisa,” I begin, but she isn’t finished.

“After one of them died—
died—
those stupid little shits still chose to save their own skins rather than tell me the truth. I wouldn’t have punished them if they’d come clean. Everyone makes mistakes. But they didn’t have the common decency to tell me the truth about something this important? Heather, we have an entire academic year ahead of us. How am I supposed to trust them? They lied about a
dead girl,
someone who was supposed to be their friend. They all lied, straight to my face.”

When Lisa looks up, not only are the tips of her ears red, but her eyes are filled with tears. I instantly recognize the look of hurt and betrayal on her face.