Brad Parks - The Girl Next Door

Two days later, he went to the wake. He went to keep up appearances, because people would expect to see him there. But he also wanted to monitor the conversations. If people were still buzzing about the accident, talking about it like it was a suspicious event, then he’d know he had to keep his guard up.

He was momentarily concerned when he became aware there was a reporter at the wake, interviewing seemingly everyone. But no. The reporter didn’t suspect anything. And neither did any of the other attendees. They were trading in all the same empty aphorisms people always did when they were around death. It didn’t seem to occur to anyone that this might have been anything other than a tragic, stupid accident, no different than if she died in a plane crash or a head-on collision or any of the other capricious ways a life can suddenly end. Soon her body would be in the ground and her death would be forgotten by all but a small handful of friends and family.

By Monday afternoon, he finally allowed himself to relax completely. By early Monday evening, he was celebrating with a stiff drink. He had gotten away with it.

In the forty minutes I had to write the remaining three hundred words of my feature obit on Nancy, I mostly ignored the thought that I ought to be writing a story about a homicide instead.

I told myself that, in all likelihood, wacky old Jeanne was just letting her imagination get the best of her. Sure, Nancy was having “problems at work.” News flash: we all have problems at work. The only people who don’t are the unemployed.

If Nancy was still among the aspirating, Jeanne wouldn’t have given that late-night phone call another thought. Death has this tendency to take ordinary words and mundane conversations and magnify them ten-thousandfold, because it makes them the last words and the last conversation. Really, how many times have you heard someone say, with utmost gravity, “That was the last thing she ever said to me.”

So Jeanne was just taking those final utterances-which Nancy never intended to be profound-and blowing them out of proportion, letting them lead her mind to some frightening place. Grief does strange things to people’s heads. And hippies are notorious for being predisposed toward conspiracy theories.

Then again, so are newspaper reporters. So, yes, I was a little curious what made Jeanne think Nancy’s death was something other than what it seemed.

I studied that 510 number in my phone for a few seconds, debating whether I should call it. In my younger days, I was the kind of hard-charging reporter who probably would have. But now, in the dotage of my early thirties, I had finally gained the wisdom necessary to let it rest for a while. Wooing sources is not unlike Friday night at the bar. Sometimes you have to play a little hard to get.

So I mentally shelved Jeanne Nygard and concentrated on writing Nancy the send-off she deserved. Naturally, it ended up being a bit long, but I had a reputation for overwriting to uphold. With exactly three minutes to spare, I hit the button that sent it over to the copy desk, where my elegant prose would have to withstand the ritualistic assault known as “editing.”

Then I stood and quickly surveyed the newsroom. Unlike most workplaces in America, newspapers have eschewed cubicles, partitions, walls, or any other attempts to divide space into discrete units. The Eagle-Examiner newsroom-sometimes called “the nest,” because of the whole, you know, eagle thing-is just a great plane of desks. It’s set up that way so we can yell at each other, unhindered by any barriers that might break up the sound.

Only a handful of editors get actual offices, and even those are walled-in glass for maximum transparency. I selected the fourth office from the left and ambled over to find the assistant managing editor for local news sitting in her chair, tucked in a convoluted ball, engrossed in her computer screen.

“Hey, I’m filed,” I said.

“I’m overjoyed,” Tina replied. And although she didn’t appear to remove her attention from the screen long enough to look at me, she added, “It’s a good thing you’re wearing that suit.”

“And why is that?”

She finally lifted her eyes.

“I got free tickets to the symphony tonight and you’re my date.”

“I am?”

“Yes. You may now express your pleasure.”

“I’m … so pleased?” I said, raising my pitch at the end so she wouldn’t miss the question mark.

“Next time, you will express more pleasure than that,” she said, then unwrapped herself with a series of quick, sumptuous little stretches.

When Tina isn’t doing yoga, she’s jogging. She couples those twin obsessions with an aversion to carbohydrates. It’s not a lifestyle I would recommend for everyone, but she seems to enjoy the discipline. It certainly had rather admirable effects on her physique, which she showed off with a wardrobe that tended toward the form-fitting, sleeveless, and short-hemmed side of the fashion spectrum. It led to complications in my life that didn’t exist when my editor was a pear-shaped, middle-aged Italian guy.

“Who says I don’t already have plans tonight?” I asked.

“What, like a hot date? Come on, I already heard you struck out with Sweet Thang.”

“Sweet Thang” was the nickname bestowed on a former intern at the paper. She and I had engaged in a brief flirtation that never went anywhere, and it was now an entirely moot point-she had departed newspapering in favor of a job at a nonprofit in New York City, which was probably a better fit for her philanthropically oriented soul.

I held my chin high and said, “I’ll have you know I happen to be highly sought after by a great variety of women.”

“Who … the cougars from Montclair?”

“Well, them, yes,” I said. “But I also happen to have caught the eye of a rather fetching younger woman.”

Tina reached around to the back of her head and released a hair clasp, allowing a cascade of thick, brown curls to fall on her shoulders.

“One, you’re lying,” she said. “Two, do we really have to play this game?”

“What game?”

“The one where you pretend you actually have a love life.”

She had me there. My last serious relationship was now several years in my rearview mirror, and it had ended rather poorly. The lady and I had been living together at my house in Nutley-the house also ended poorly, but that’s another story-and we were entering that period in our late twenties when we spent a lot of time going to friends’ weddings. I thought we were heading in the same direction, even thought I was happy about it. Then she explained to me I wasn’t, then explicated all the reasons. The short version: she didn’t like anything about me, after all. I’m not even sure I had digested the long version by the time she was off shacking up with someone new.

And now? I seemed to have become a rather committed bachelor. I had sporadic and nonrecurring dalliances with the opposite sex, though nothing that stuck. My life pretty much consisted of deadline (the job) and Deadline (the cat).

“Well, okay, fair point,” I said. “I’m just not a big symphony guy.”

“Come on, I’ll wear a dress and pretend not to notice when you stare at my legs all night.”

“Tempting offer.”

“Perhaps you missed the point earlier,” she said. “It’s not an offer. It’s an order.”

* * *

As promised, Tina changed into a regulation-issue Little Black Dress, one that stopped several inches above the knee. She coupled it with a dash of perfume, a thin gold choker, and four-inch heels. And it was a good thing we were leaving the building because she was starting to set off all the smoke detectors.