I step boldly onto the nondescript carpeting and lift a finger to poke at the doorbell to the Allingtons’ apartment. I can hear a strange whistling sound beyond the door, and realize that this must be Mrs. Allington’s birds, the cockatoos about whom she worries so incessantly when she’s had too much to drink. When I press on the doorbell, the whistling turns into maniacal shrieking, and for a minute, I panic. Really. I forget all about being a detective slash novelist slash physician slash jewelry designer, and want to run back to the elevator…
But before I have a chance to ding and ditch, the door swings open, and Mrs. Allington, bleary-eyed and dressed in a green velour caftan, blinks at me.
“Yes?” she demands, in a remarkably unfriendly manner, considering the fact that just two weeks or so ago, I’d held her hand while she barfed into one of the lobby planters. Behind her, I catch a glimpse of a six-foot-tall wicker cage, within which two large white birds scream at me.
“Uh, hi,” I say brightly. “Is Christopher here?”
Mrs. Allington’s puffy eyelids widen a little, then go back to normal. “What?”
“Chris,” I repeat. “Your son, Christopher. Is he here?”
Mrs. Allington looks truly pissed off. At first I think it’s because I’ve woken her up, but it turns out that’s only part of it.
No, what I’ve really done is outrage Mrs. Allington’s sense of propriety.
I know! Who even knew she had one? But it turns out she does.
She says, enunciating as carefully as if I were a foreigner, “No, Chris is not here, Justine. And if you had been raised properly, you’d know that it is considered highly inappropriate for young women to pursue boys so avidly.”
Then she slams the door very hard, causing her birds to shriek even more loudly in surprise.
I stand staring at the closed door for a minute or so. I have to admit, my feelings are kind of hurt. I mean, I’d thought Mrs. Allington and I were close.
And yet she’s still calling me Justine.
I probably should have just gone away. But, you know. I still needed to know where Chris was.
So I reach out and ring the bell again. The birds’ screaming rises to fever-pitch, and when Mrs. Allington pulls open the door this time, she looks not only pissed off, but practically homicidal.
“What?” she demands.
“Sorry,” I say, as politely as I can. “I really don’t mean to bother you. But could you just tell me where I might find Chris?”
Mrs. Allington has a lot of loose skin on her face. A lift here and there might have done the trick, but she really isn’t the nip-and-tuck type. She’s more the never-move-your-mouth-when-you-speak old money New England type. Kind of like Mrs. Cartwright. Only scarier.
Anyway, some of that loose skin beneath her chin trembles a little as she glares at me.
Finally she says, “Can’t you girls just leave him alone? You’re always chasing after him, causing him trouble. Can’t you just go after some other boy? Aren’t there plenty in this dorm?”
“Residence hall,” I correct her.
“What?”
“It’s a residence hall,” I remind her. “You said dorm. But it’s actually a—”
“Go to hell,” Mrs. Allington says, and she slams the door in my face again.
Wow. Talk about hostile. Instead of psychoanalyzing me all day, Sarah should maybe turn her attention to the Allingtons. They have way more problems.
Sighing, I turn around and press the down button for the elevator. I can’t be sure, but I think Mrs. Allington has maybe already been at the bottle…and it isn’t even ten o’clock in the morning yet! I wonder if she’s always soused this early, or if this is a special occasion. Like to celebrate Rachel’s Pansy Award, maybe.
When I get back downstairs, I nearly ram into this skinny girl in the hallway. She’s headed into Rachel’s office, so I start to ask if I can help her, but when she turns around, I see that it’s Amber.
That’s right.
Chris Allington’s Amber, from Idaho. The one I just woke up.
“Oh,” she says, recognizing me. “Hi.” Her hi is less than enthusiastic. That’s on account of her still being half asleep. She’s even in her pajamas. “You’re not—you’re not the hall director, are you?”
“No,” I say. “I’m her assistant. Why?”
“ ’Cause I just got a call saying I have to come down here this mornin’ for a mandatory meeting with Rachel Walcott—”
At that moment, Rachel comes click-clacking out of our office, clutching a file folder to her chest.
“Oh, Heather, there you are,” she says, brightly. “Cooper’s here.”
I think I must have made some sort of disbelieving noise, because Rachel peers at me curiously and says, “Yes, he is.” Then her attention turns to the girl next to me. “Amber?” Rachel asks.
“Yes, ma’am.” Amber sounds subdued. Well, and what eighteen-year-old freshman who’d been forced to wake up at ten o’clock in the morning for a meeting with the residence hall director wouldn’t sound subdued?
“This way, Amber,” Rachel says, laying hold of Amber’s elbow. “Heather, if you could just hold all my calls for a few minutes—“
“Sure,” I say, and go into our office. Where, sure enough, I find Cooper shaking his head at the jar of condoms on my desk.
“Hi, Cooper,” I say, a little warily. Which I think is understandable, given, you know, that the last time he’d shown up in my office, it had been to tell me that my ex-boyfriend was engaged to someone else. What could have happened now?
Then I feel a stab of panic, remembering Marian Braithwaite. Oh God. She and Cooper have made up. They’ve made up, and are getting married, and Cooper is here to tell me he needs the apartment back because they’re going to put the nanny in there—
“Hi, Heather,” Cooper says, looking much more like his normal self in jeans and his leather jacket than he had in that tux. “Got a minute?”
Hi, Heather, got a minute? Hi, Heather, got a minute? What kind of way is THAT to start a conversation? Could there be three other words in the English language more effective at striking terror deep within the heart than Got a minute? No. No, I do NOT have a minute! Not if you’re going to tell me what I think you’re going to tell me. Why her? WHY? Just because she’s smart and accomplished and pretty and thin—