Laura Lippman - To The Power Of Three

Mrs. Patel answered the door. Not exactly a hot mom, not like Mrs. Hartigan, but pretty in a worn way.

“Mrs. Patel? I’m Peter Lasko. I know Josie through Kat, and…well, I wanted to pay her a visit.”

“What beautiful irises,” she said. Peter, used to compliments, thought for a moment that she was referencing his eyes. Then he remembered the purple flowers that his mother had chosen. So that’s what they were, irises.

“I wasn’t sure if it was right to bring flowers-she’s not sick, exactly. But everyone likes flowers, right?”

“And Josie loves purple. Let me get a vase for those while you go up to her room.”

The Patels’ home was in one of the older sections of Glendale, built almost thirty years ago, and it looked a little tired to Peter. The stairwell was scuffed in places, the carpet dingy from foot traffic, and there were lots of boy toys scattered about, trucks and cars. He knew instinctively that Josie’s room would be to the right of the staircase, at the opposite end of the hall from the master bedroom. The door was ajar, but he knocked anyway, waiting for Josie to look up from her computer. Her crutches were leaning against the desk, and her right foot, the injured one, was propped up on a pillow on another chair.

“Hey,” he said. “You online?”

She turned quickly, her right arm knocking her crutches to the floor, then poked a key, losing what was on her screen. But that was instinctive. Peter always closed whatever was on his computer when someone walked into the room, even Colin, even if it was innocuous as the Television Without Pity boards or ESPN.com. Being caught at your computer was like hearing someone rattle the stall door in a public bathroom. Even if the door was latched, even if you were dressed, it spooked you a little.

“It’s you,” she said, not particularly surprised to see him. Not surprised and not happy either.

Peter took a seat on the bed, which was covered with a pink plaid spread. Girls’ bedrooms always struck him as odd and a little overdone, with so much emphasis on self-expression. It was as if every object, every decorating touch, had to convey some deeper meaning. Sure, guys stuck up posters, too, but it wasn’t like the announcement of a personal philosophy.

“I wanted to see you,” Peter said, offering the explanation that seemed expected of him, “because you’re probably one of the few people around here who feels worse than I do these days.”

“Why do you feel bad? Because you never apologized to Kat for the way you dumped her that summer and now you never can?”

“I didn’t -” It was automatic to defend oneself, but not productive, not in this situation. He was supposed to be winning Josie over, gaining her trust. He sighed so his shoulders sagged. “I never meant to be a jerk.”

“Well, you were. You broke her heart.”

“Really?” He had never known that. Kat had never reproached him in any way after he stopped calling.

“The way you did it. No call, no explanation.”

“I went back to college. I really shouldn’t have been messing around with her at all, if you think about it.”

“She never really got over you just dropping her. She was in love with you.”

No she wasn’t, he wanted to protest. No one at fifteen was ever in love, outside Romeo and Juliet, and maybe not even them. Old Giff used to argue that the star-crossed lovers simply were buzzed on the fumes of forbidden lust. Give them thirty years of togetherness, Old Giff always said, and Juliet would be plunging the dagger into Romeo.

“I was in love with her, too. That was the problem.” The lie, once offered, felt true. After all, why had he let Kat torture him so long when there were so many willing girls? He must have cared about her.

“How is that a problem, loving someone who loves you?”

“She was fifteen. I was nineteen. What were we going to do, get married? Start a long-distance relationship that would have had to last a minimum of three years before we could live in the same city? And that’s assuming her dad would let her go to school in New York, when we all know he was pretty much pushing Stanford from the day she was born.”

“She never dated in high school, not seriously. She had friends, guys she would go to dances with, but no true boyfriends.”

“Friends with benefits?” His voice was casual, joking even, his use of the now passé term deliberately arch. Yet he cared more about the answer than he wished to let on.

“No, not like that. Kat wasn’t into hooking up. If anyone got, like, serious, she shut them down. She said it was because of her parents’ divorce, but I think it was you. Once burned, twice shy.”

Peter, who had not thought about Kat Hartigan outside of occasional jerking-off sessions, when she usually morphed into someone riper and far more willing, couldn’t help being flattered.

Josie’s computer trilled.

“Someone’s trying to IM you.”

She shrugged, turning quickly and clicking her “away” message. “Just my mom. She messages me from the kitchen so I don’t have to hop up and down the stairs. Probably wants to know what I want for dinner. Kat was the only person I really talked to on the computer. Kat and Perri.”

“Yeah, you three used to be tight. What happened? How could Perri do what she did?”

The question was too direct, and Josie’s face clouded over. Peter had always thought of her as monkeyish, but maybe she had changed, or was changing. Her skin was the color of pale tea, her features strong and compelling.

“I mean, that’s something people did talk about. The Big Three, busted up. It’s all I heard about when I came home last Christmas.”

Another lie, but a plausible one. Hadn’t Old Giff mentioned some sort of fallout over the school musical?

“What can I say? Perri got weird.”

“Well, yeah . I always thought she was jealous of Kat.” But he was being too obvious. He needed to be at once more provocative and subtle to get Josie talking. “Jealous of Kat’s preference for you, actually.”

“They were friends longer…” Josie spoke in the wistful way of someone who wants to seize a compliment but can’t quite believe she deserves it.

“They were friends first. But you and Kat were the ones who lasted. You were probably going to be friends for life. Be each other’s bridesmaids, you know.” He tried to think of other things that girls did for one another. “Be, like, godparents to each other’s kids.”

“I don’t want to have kids.” Said fiercely, as if he had insulted her. “Not everyone wants to be a mom.”

“Kat did.” He was bullshitting like crazy now. What did he really know about Kat Hartigan? That she was beautiful in a way that made him ache all over. That she had the tenderest heart, so soft and vulnerable that she wept at movies like Meatballs because she couldn’t bear the early scenes where the kid was a misfit. He would tell her that it was part of the essential arc, that the kid had to be an outsider in order to make his triumph all the sweeter, but Kat still found it heartbreaking.

“It was really all she wanted,” he insisted. “She said she’d go to Stanford because her dad cared so much, maybe even study architecture and take a job with his company, just to make him happy. But all she wanted to do was get married and have kids. Lots and lots of kids. Like, three or four.”

“Yeah.” Josie was starting to tear up. Peter worked up a few tears himself, using a sense-memory exercise, remembering how his dog had been killed by a hit-and-run driver when he was eight. Soon, however, his tears were as sincere as Josie’s. How does someone like Kat disappear? A week ago, five days ago, she had existed, and now she didn’t.