Laura Lippman - Another Thing to Fall

“Don’t abuse him, Greer,” Ben said, popping out of nowhere. He was a sneaky one, although not quite as sneaky as he thought. “There’s enough scut work. You don’t have to create more for him.”

“He works for the writers’ office and Flip is one of the writers, is he not?” She had a troubling thought. “Hey, will he get a credit?”

Ben sighed. “Jesus, Greer. You worry about the tiniest things.”

“Well, I could worry about some pretty big things, but I think you would prefer that I not do that.”

“Flip wants you on set,” Ben said. “He wants you to give the lady dick a tour, show her where the magic happens, give her the lay of the land. More clichés to come, as they occur to me. In fact, I think I’ll just plug that in the minipub for episode seven – more clichés TK. She’s going to meet you over there in an hour.”

“Are you heading over to the soundstage eventually?” she asked. “I’ll drive you.”

“I was going to check in later, see how the new scenes are working.”

“We should go together,” she said. “Then we can… catch up.”

“Yeah,” he said, rubbing his chin. Flip liked to tease Ben that the mannerism was a holdover from their college days, when Ben had sported a Vandyke for a while. Ben rubs his chin like that to apologize to it for the years of pretentious stupidity . Flip could tease Ben, and Ben could tease Flip, but no one else was allowed to speak about them the way they spoke of each other. “Okay, if that’s what you want to do.”

“Yes, it is what I want to do. Let the new kid answer the phones.”

“He’s barely been briefed on Lottie’s system-”

“It’s not exactly rocket science.”

“Speaking of clichés.”

She shot him a look. “I’m going to set. Flip likes to have me around. Do you want to come or not?”

She could tell that Ben longed to say something snarky, but he remained silent, bobbing his head slightly. Greer felt a strange surge of emotion – a rush of blood to her cheeks, a flip in her stomach. She wasn’t sure what to call it, but power was as good a word as any.

He stopped at an ATM, making sure it was affiliated with his own bank to save the two-dollar user fee. Even before his money worries had become chronic, he had kept track of such fees, calling the bank each month to argue over ATM charges and point-of-service fees. The bank always backed down, too, refunding him the ten or twenty dollars on his statement. More things could be negotiated than people realized. The key was to have the stamina, the willingness to fight, and that was one thing he did have.

The drawback to using his own bank was that it always showed him the balance in his account, a number he preferred not to see, much less think about. He took out twenty dollars. How much time did he have to resolve things? Six months? Nine? It was the COBRA that was killing him, an apt bureaucratic acronym if ever there was one. He was being poisoned, oh so slowly, by that monthly nut for medical insurance, a breathtaking two thousand dollars, as much as all their other bills combined, even the mortgage, which was five years from being paid off. But the only thing worse than making COBRA payments for eighteen months would be not making them, because no other medical plan would touch them if they had to go through an underwriting period. If they exhausted COBRA, then someone would have to take them. That was the law, the very rules and policies he had explained to so many others, over the years, with patience and, in his opinion, compassion. Yet people had yelled at him, and cursed, as if he were the arbitrary power denying them what they needed. In hindsight, he had to admit that he was a bad fit for human resources. He was a scientist by nature. He never should have left the classroom for a job in administration.

Was there any way he could save money? He could pack a bag lunch, but Marie would find that odd. When he started working at North Avenue, he had always maintained that eating lunch out was the one reward in his dull gray day. Perhaps he could say he was putting himself on a diet? But she would find that strange, too, possibly suspicious. Sometimes, when her moods sunk to their lowest, Marie would accuse him of having an affair. No, accuse wasn’t the right word. It was more like an invitation, a concession. She would enumerate all her inadequacies and issues, making the case for him to find another woman, and he would be forced to argue the other side – death till do us part, for better for worse, in sickness and in health. Secretly, he had wondered over the last few months whether he was still obligated to stay with her. Whose enmity would he risk if he left? Who would care now?

He had hated that glimpse into himself, however. He hadn’t married Marie because she was his best friend’s sister, and he wasn’t staying with her for that reason, either. He remained because he loved her, strange and surprising as that fact might be to everyone, including Marie. Marie needed him. He wouldn’t let her down. He was going to make sure they were set for life.

Let’s see – according to his source, they were on the set today. Of course, that didn’t mean she would be on the set. She wasn’t, not every day. Still, he decided to drive over there, take his position, as he thought of it. He never parked in the part of the lot directly in front of the soundstage. That might be noticed. Instead, he chose the far end, near a run-down Chinese takeout. The people who owned the restaurant were wonderfully incurious, indifferent to his on-again, off-again presence. Only once, when he had been writing in his notebook, had anyone approached him. The owner, Mr. Chen, had questioned him nervously, and he realized that he had been mistaken for some sort of official, probably from immigration. He had shown Mr. Chen his legal pad, and said the first thing that came into his mind: “Poetry. I’m a poet and I find this a peaceful place to write.”

Mr. Chen had been happy to accept the idea that the parking lot of a derelict strip center on Eastern Avenue was a suitable place to write poetry. But then, people often were quick to hear what they wanted to hear. Wasn’t he the same way himself?

He glanced toward the far end of the parking lot. He wished he could buy some expensive surveillance equipment, but he was stuck with the old camcorder, which he didn’t dare bring up to his eye here. From this distance, it wasn’t really possible to make out the people coming and going. Of course, she was somewhat distinctive, and he knew her vehicle, too, but she had a way of slipping in and out that made her easy to miss. Not that he could always stay until the end – the later they started, the later they went – which was frustrating. It was very hard for him to come up with plausible cover stories for any late-night shenanigans, although he sometimes found a way to sneak out after Marie was asleep, especially if she had been hitting the Xanax a little harder than usual. But there was almost no way he could justify being out regularly between the hours of eight and twelve, not without sending her into shrill lamentations about how she would wander, too, if placed in his situation.

He saw a car pull in, not the usual one, and he wondered if they were onto him, trying to trip him up. He watched the driver help her out of the car, as if she were fragile. Ah, she was anything but, he was sure of that. If only he could get to her, talk to her. Then she would be on his side, he was sure of it. Once they met, face-to-face, she would be his.

Places in Baltimore often have many lives. Tess recognized the soundstage on Eastern Avenue as a former department store, one of the better ones – Hochschild Kohn, she thought, but maybe Hecht’s – that had then been demoted to bargain chain status before settling into life as a members-only big lots store. It anchored the end of a sad and lonely strip mall, where at least half the stores were vacant. A small band of protesters – ah, the disgruntled steelworkers – marched along a grassy strip, earning a few halfhearted honks of support for their cause, but they looked pretty harmless to Tess. She parked and walked the perimeter of the freestanding building, noting the entrances. There was a fire door in the rear, but otherwise no way in and out of the building. That was good.