Laura Lippman - To The Power Of Three

“Peter Pringle,” Simone suggested.

“Peter Piper Picked a Pickled Pepper,” Colin said, his diction theater-school perfect.

“Peter Paul,” Simone said. “Tell everyone you invented the Mounds Bar.”

“I was thinking”-Peter paused, not so much because he was shy about his real choice but because he wanted to make sure they understood he was no longer joking-“of Peter Lennox.”

“Like the china?” Simone wrinkled her nose.

“It was my father’s mother’s maiden name. I’d use my mom’s, but it would throw people off. I mean, you know, Sandoval. I wouldn’t get calls for anything but gangbangers and gardeners. So…Peter Lennox?”

Colin and Simone nodded judiciously, although Colin had to add, “It will look great on the cover of Vanity Fair .”

This was Colin’s way of saying that he knew Peter entertained such fantasies. Well, Colin probably did, too.

The difference was that magazine covers weren’t quite so theoretical in Peter’s case, not anymore. He was going to play Guy Pearce’s younger brother in a period piece, a film that was being described as L.A. Confidential meets Memento, and not just because Pearce had appeared in both of those movies. “Oh, the other Australian,” Colin had said, and it was true that Pearce was not the star that Russell Crowe was. But Peter would take Pearce’s career any day-and Colin would, too.

Ah, well, he could afford to be magnanimous. Rent may have seemed cutting edge a decade ago, but now it was about as daring as those shows you saw at places like Hershey Park. Ladies and gentle men, welcome the Lower East Side Singers! Perky, perky, perky, Pulitzer Prize or no. A boy-band singer had played the same part that was now Colin’s.

Simone squeezed Peter’s knee under the table, her way of saying she was happy to sleep with him tonight, another last -last time. Simone’s favorite film, or so she always said, was Jules and Jim; Colin and Peter had been accommodating her Truffaut-inspired fantasy for two years now, a setup that all three had found practical, as it left their emotions relatively free. But since Peter had landed the role of the self-destructive Chick Webster in Susquehanna Falls -younger brother of Guy Pearce! totally Best Supporting Actor material!-Simone had seemed to be focusing exclusively on him, trying to get something more traditional going. Peter was having none of it, and not just because he didn’t want Colin to feel shitty. This was not the time to have a girlfriend. So when Simone squeezed, Peter didn’t squeeze back.

“Have you told your folks yet?” she asked, removing her hand.

“I’m going to surprise them, take the train home Sunday, crash there for a little while. The apartment is sublet as of next week anyway, and I can let my mom feed me.” He patted his nonexistent belly. “Although I have to be careful. They hired me for my lean and hungry look.”

“And for your resemblance to Pearce,” Colin said. “That was what clinched it, right?”

“Yep,” Peter said. “Luckiest accident of genetics ever, my Jewish dad and my Cuban mom.”

Not to mention the growth spurt that had come so late that he had almost despaired of ever cresting six feet, only to zoom up six inches his first year at NYU, when girls like Simone were going with seniors or sneaking around with professors. Peter had come into NYU cute-cuddly cute, with a big personality to compensate for his lack of literal stature. But now he was six foot one and super lean, with his father’s dark hair and pale skin, his mother’s green eyes and sharp cheekbones. Yet he still had a short boy’s personality, charming and eager to please. It was, Peter had discovered, a good combination.

Their glasses, the second beers in their first twofer happy-hour round, were almost empty, and they had to decide whether to stay for another round or go someplace else. Colin and Simone were restless, in need of novelty. But Peter was content with the familiar, and they were deferring to Peter more and more these days. He signaled the waitress for refills.

“Another school shooting,” Simone said, glancing at the television over the bar, which was always tuned to CNN or the Yankees network.

“There was almost a shooting at my junior high,” Colin said. “But the kid showed the gun to someone who ratted him out before he had a chance to do anything. Too bad-we could have used a little drama.”

“Where’s this one?” Peter asked.

Simone squinted, which was funny because she was wearing glasses. But they were plastic, just for show, picked up from one of the sidewalk vendors in SoHo.

“ Glendale…”

“ Glendale, Maryland?” Peter looked up. “That’s where I’m from.”

“I thought you grew up in Baltimore,” Simone said.

“ Glendale is just outside the city limits.” At that exact moment, a chroma-key map popped up on the screen, showing Glendale in relationship to Baltimore. More exacting eyes might have noticed it was far from just outside, but neither Simone nor Colin was petty enough to call him on that discrepancy, not when Peter was watching a video of students standing around his former high school. The school was the only thing he recognized, of course. He had graduated four years ago, so the students were unknown to him, although he thought he saw his old drama teacher, Ted Gifford, hovering on the edges.

The text superimposed on the screen said ONE DEAD, TWO INJURED.

“That’s not so bad,” Colin said. “Relatively. Barely national news.”

“I wonder why they don’t give the names,” Peter said, more to himself than his friends. “Everyone I know has graduated, but a lot of my friends have brothers and sisters there.”

“The names aren’t going to mean anything to most people,” Colin said. “Besides, they’re probably minors, or their families might not have been notified yet. Don’t be a drama king, dude. We leave that kind of narcissism to Simone.”

“Hey.” She mock-punched Colin with her tiny beringed fist.

“Right,” Peter said. “Yeah.”

And just as he was availing himself of that very reasonable assurance, the video jumped to a shot of Dale Hartigan, rushing from what looked like Deerfield Middle, his arm around a woman whose only visible feature was the part in her blond hair. That would be Mrs. Hartigan, whom Peter knew better, the Hartigans having already separated when Peter and Kat were dating. Peter had often wondered that summer how things might have gone otherwise if Mr. Hartigan were still in the house. Peter probably never would have gotten started with Kat if Mr. Hartigan had anything to say about it.

But it was hard for Mr. Hartigan to put his foot down about a fifteen-year-old girl dating a nineteen-year-old boy when he was shacking up with a woman sixteen years younger than himself. “You don’t exactly have any moral authority on this subject, Dale,” Peter had overheard Mrs. Hartigan say on the phone one night, when he was waiting for Kat to get ready. Yeah, Mr. Hartigan had been out to get rid of him from the start.

Of course, Kat’s parents could be on the video just because they were prominent local residents. Mr. Hartigan’s dad practically invented Glendale, as Peter understood it. Or Kat might be among the injured. Don’t be a drama king, Lasko, which was how he always addressed himself in his head. He wondered if that would change over the years, as he grew into the skin of this new person called Peter Lennox. Don’t be a drama king, Lennox. No, it didn’t have the same ring.

He could call home, ask his folks, but that would take some of the steam out of his surprise visit Sunday. Besides, he had no regular minutes. All he had left were night and weekend minutes, and it wasn’t either yet, not according to his wireless contract.