Ridley Pearson - The Body of David Hayes

“The Sarge is a genius,” LaMoia told Daphne. He pressed his hand to his ear to isolate the voice in the ear bud. “The flying nun just entered the ticket holders’ line behind us. Reece is about to blow a valve.”

Daphne said, “Get seats near the back. I’ll tell her to look for your hat.”

“You be careful.”

“It’s not me they want,” Daphne said.

“That’s what worries me,” he said. “Nothing stupid.”

“Agreed.”

LaMoia couldn’t see over a couple of Nazis ahead of them. So when they made it inside and Daphne split off toward the women’s room, he lost sight of her. Liz Boldt pushed past in her nun’s outfit, close enough for him to reach out and touch her.

LaMoia kept his hands to himself.

Liz loitered by a trash bin in front of the women’s room where a line had formed. The theater’s lobby teemed with costumed moviegoers hungry for popcorn and to be seen by friends. The din made it hard to think. Bumped from behind, she turned to face Daphne Matthews, who looked strikingly beautiful in her Maria outfit. She felt her face flare behind the emotions of looking at her husband’s former lover, an identity kept secret all these years. The sickening combination of disinfectant, perfume, and hairspray overcame her as they moved into the rest room. A strong waft of marijuana overcame the other odors. She hadn’t seen a bathroom so crowded since her high school prom, and all the women dressed as one of three or four characters. She rubbed up against the Baroness, only to see the stubble of beard through the cosmetics. Somewhere in heaven the Von Trapps were as nauseated as she.

Wall-to-wall costumed freaks, Liz realized. Some were on drugs, or boozed up, anything to lower their inhibitions and allow them to croon through the three-hour film, thinking they were Pavarotti or Sills. The volume of talk in the tiled room proved deafening, the air thick with too many conflicting odors.

Again Daphne bumped her from behind. Adrenalized, and mildly claustrophobic, she felt tempted to scream out at the woman. Instead the two pushed into a toilet stall together, and Daphne turned quickly to lock the metal door.

“You,” Liz said, not sure why it came out this way.

“He briefed you, didn’t he?” Daphne asked.

“Oh, he briefed me all right,” Liz said, finding the opportunity impossible to pass up.

Reaching behind for her own zipper, Daphne looked back at Liz curiously. “We should get started.”

Liz made no effort to undress, embarrassed beyond belief to have to show her body to “the other woman.” She said, “He told me it was you. The affair. The one-night stand.”

Daphne looked as if she’d been punched, as if she needed to lean past Liz into the toilet bowl. She said, “Yes… well… this isn’t the time.”

“All these years,” she said. “Your coming to our house. Always playing so sweet and considerate. How did I miss it?”

“Liz, whatever you two are working through, I’m not part of that. We’ve got enough going on here without this. Okay? This is designed to buy you time. We’re wasting that time.”

“It’s more insidious than what I went through with David,” she said. “You see him every day. Interact with him every single day. How can you do that without thinking about it? I don’t think you can. You don’t, do you? So you think about it, and you both share it, even though it’s years behind you. That’s kind of sick for a psychologist, don’t you think?” She didn’t understand why she clung to this, except that the last thing she wanted to do was disrobe in front of this woman, and engaging her seemed a way to stall. Daphne pulled the dress off her shoulders, revealing first her substantial cleavage and then a white bra and finally the smooth tummy of a woman who had not given birth. Flawless, like something from a magazine, and only then did Liz glimpse the depth of what Lou had gone through to suffer her own affair with David Hayes.

Liz felt herself an awful combination of humiliation, regret, and anger. Her emotions bubbled to the surface. The stall was so small that Daphne switched places with her, passing closely enough that their chests touched. Daphne sat down on the toilet in order to keep the dress from touching the floor, pulled down past her underwear to her knees. A waxed bikini line.

Liz asked that she be allowed to undress in private. Daphne looked at her as if she were crazy and said, “There are fifty women out there, all waiting for a stall. Liz, please… now.”

“I can’t do this.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

She wanted to say: You slept with him. You were naked with him. I’ve had cancer. I’ve had two children . But she understood how petty and trite that would sound-especially aimed at a woman offering to take her place in a dangerous situation and one in which Daphne was to go unmonitored; Daphne was preparing to trick her own colleagues, risking all kinds of future discipline. She said nothing, but stood paralyzed by the situation.

“Undress. Now!” Daphne said sharply.

“That’a girl!” a stranger’s voice shouted from an adjacent stall.

Daphne sat down on the toilet in bra, tights, and shoes, working to get the tights off.

Liz turned around and asked Daphne to help with the Velcro to the various pieces that made up the nun’s habit, which Daphne did.

Daphne said, “You can bunch the top of your dress at the waist. The skirt is longer than yours, so you can wear the LBD under it.” Little Black Dress.

Liz got the habit off. She felt cold fingers as Daphne unzipped the cocktail dress for her, and helped her half out of it. She would need the dress for the reception. Lou had chosen it in part because it would hide underneath the Maria dress.

“Bras,” Daphne reminded.

Liz felt nauseated. She was being asked to bare her chest in front of Daphne as they switched bras in order to move the concealed tracking device. There was nothing left to her chest, wizened by nursing two children, flattened by gravity, corrupted by the starvation of cancer treatment. She turned her back on Daphne and then passed the bra back, wiggling her arm until Daphne claimed it. The one that was handed her was a bigger cup size. She swam in it, and she found this humiliating. Liz reached for some toilet paper mumbling, “This is embarrassing.”

Daphne struggled to adjust Liz’s bra straps. The undergarment barely contained her breasts, fitting uncomfortably. “Hand me the rest of the habit,” she requested.

“I get two dresses. You get none,” Liz said, turning now as she stepped into the Maria dress.

“That’s about right.”

“That thing-a couple Velcros is all to close it. You’re going to fall out left and right.”

“Luckily, it’s dark,” Daphne said.

“How can this possibly work?” Liz asked, having trouble with the zipper and once again needing Daphne’s help.

“We switch purses-the one thing that identifies you-and I find a seat and watch the movie. The hook is baited. Everyone, our own people included, are watching for a nun leaving the bathroom with your purse. I hide the purse and they’ll never confuse me with you. You’ll fail to show.” Daphne pulled a red-headed wig from her own bag. “We get you into this. You join John near the back. The two of you leave together at intermission. Two people leaving together, not a single. A Maria, not a nun. He walks you out, by which point you’re headed for the reception-better late than never. You’re in the bank while Special Ops continues sorting through nuns trying to find you. Lou looked at this thing from every way possible. It’s not perfect, but it’s as close as we’re going to get.”

“How do I get in the bank? We’re assuming the bank is being watched, aren’t we?”