Laura Lippman - The Last Place

“Gunshot? Knife? Poison?” The teakettle sang, a muted whistle, and her hostess shook a basket of sweeteners at Tess, hundreds of white and blue and pink packets.

“I don’t have that information. There’s no information to have. You’re alive.”

“I once thought about being a private investigator. But I think I’m going to open my own flower shop instead.” She laughed as if this were uproarious. “Who am I kidding? If I don’t get my ass in gear, I’m never gonna accomplish anything.”

“I don’t know,” Tess said, assuming she was expected to object. “You have a nice house here.” It was neat and well-kept, even if the white walls had yellowed from cigarette smoke.

“A rental. I wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for this guy I once dated. He convinced me to move out here, then dumped my ass. The stories I could tell you. I sure can pick ‘em.”

It occurred to Tess that the error that had sent her to Julie Carter’s door might at least be rooted in fact.

“Bad boyfriends?”

“Nothing but.”

“Have you ever been… stalked?” Somehow, this seemed more acceptable than asking a stranger if she had been hit or assaulted. “Had to take out a restraining order?”

“Most of the men I get involved with can’t be restrained. That’s the problem. It’s gotten to the point where, when I start dating a guy, I feel like saying, ”Look, why don’t you just sleep with one of my friends now and get it over with?“ Honest. I figure if he did it in the beginning, he’d get it out of his system and I wouldn’t feel cheated on.”

“Oh.” That kind of restraint.

“They’re different, aren’t they?”

“Who?”

“Men. What else are we talking about? Although, I gotta say, when I find a good one, I get bored. The good ones can be so boring. Like the guy who wanted me to move up here. He paid the rent and all, so I thought, Why not? But he was so dull, never wanted to do anything, and got mad when my friends came by. He said I had to choose, them or him. Then he left, so I didn’t have to choose after all. What are you going to do? Go with boring and faithful, or exciting and jerky?” She fixed her eyes on Tess, as if she were some oracle.

“I think that changes, depending on where you are in your life.”

“No, I mean what do you do? You look like fun, you’ve got a hot job. You married? Or are you still running free?”

“I-why, neither. My boyfriend’s great.” Crow was great. Saying it out loud reminded her just how great he was, how lucky she was. “He’s warm and funny and spontaneous, loyal as a dog.”

“No such thing,” Julie said. Her incongruously deep voice gave her words an unearned authority.

“How old are you anyway?”

“Twenty-two.”

“You’re awfully young. You can’t have had that many boyfriends.”

“I’ve had enough. All ages, too, all the way up to thirty.”

“Thirty. Wow.”

Julie didn’t catch the sarcasm. “And that was when I was seventeen. But I don’t like old men. They’re boring. How old is your boyfriend?”

Tess did the math. “Twenty-five.”

“Oh, a younger man.” Julie Carter’s certitude on this fact stung a little. Tess liked to think she could pass for twenty-five, at least. “Well, maybe that’s the way to go. After thirty, I mean. But I like a guy who has spending money. Is that too much to ask? A nice guy, good sex, a little money so we can go out on the weekends, not count pennies. Last guy I went out with got mad when I ordered a third rum and Coke. You know what he said? He said, ”You’re already drunk enough to screw me.“ I said, ”You know what, honey? I’ll never be that drunk.“ Walked out of that bar and hitchhiked home. But that’s another story.”

“Yes,” Tess agreed, feeling a little dazed by all these words, all this information.

“A lot has happened to me. I mean-a lot. But I’m alive and never been anything but. In fact, I’ve never had stitches, even though I almost cut my toe off once.” She propped her bare foot on the table and grabbed her second toe, as if beginning a game of Little Piggy. The second toe was considerably longer than the big one. The foot was absurdly small, even for someone as tiny as Julie Carter, plump and white as a baby’s.

“See that?”

“See what?”

“My scar. I was walking in the surf at Ocean City after graduation- you know, we all drove down, got a motel room: six girls, six blow-dryers, blew the fuses every night-and I felt this little tug, like a fish nipped me. I said to my friend, ”I’m going up to my towel, there’s fish in this water.“ Then I saw my toe, hanging by, like, a thread, and I started to scream. There was a boy on the beach, said he was premed at Maryland, he wrapped his T-shirt around my foot. They took me to the clinic on Fifty-third Street, but they didn’t know what to do. But there was no-what did he call it?-no topical skin loss. The doctor in Salisbury just patted it back in place and I was fine. I was on crutches a whole week. You want to talk about a good way to meet boys, walk around on crutches.”

“It looks… good.” The story seemed confusing to Tess, implausible even. The thick skin at the base of the toe didn’t look like any scar she had ever seen. But the story also had made her queasy, and she didn’t want to ask questions lest Julie Carter provide more information.

“So, I’ve never had stitches, never been in a hospital at all. Except when I was born, I guess. I’ve never even had a near-death experience. That’s when your life passes before your eyes, right? I hope when I do, it’s not just me stacking cans at Mars. What a bummer that would be.”

Julie was rocking in her seat now, beating her hands on the kitchen table, ignoring her tea. She sniffed once, twice. The tip of her nose was pink as a rabbit’s. Tess finally put it together then: Julie’s need to get to Baltimore on a regular basis, the rapid-fire speech, the eyes that were all iris. It might be speed, it might be cocaine or even crack. But it was something that juiced you up, not down.

And now Julie was moving in to close the deal, as sure of her mark as any Fuller Brush guy, any tin man.

“Look,” she said. “I know I just met you, but you seem so nice. Not stuck up. There’s been this terrible computer mix-up at work. The checks are, like, frozen inside the computer because the bank’s computer crashed and we’re not going to get paid for another two days, after they make a wire transfer or something like that. Could you lend me a little money so I could get some food for the house? I’m good for it, you know. But I live check to check, and when the check is late I’m hosed.”

The easy thing would have been to hand over a twenty. The futile thing would have been to lecture, or even call attention to the bullshit. Tess chose to play Julie’s game, Julie’s way, piling lie on top of lie.

“Gosh, I wish I could. I don’t have any cash on me, or even my ATM card. I’m overdrawn myself. Got a little out of control, playing the Delaware slots last month. And the people I’m working for, they haven’t paid me a dime yet. I have to wait until the end of the month to see dollar one.”

Julie sniffed once, twice. “I guess that makes sense. Because whoever told you I’m dead doesn’t know their shit, do they? That is some weird-ass job you’ve got, going to people’s doors and telling them they’re dead.”

Tess thought so too.

“Be calm, be polite, play the game.”

Whitney’s advice, hissed in a whisper in the corridor of her family’s foundation offices, was undeniably good. Still, it infuriated Tess, who felt she had earned the right to her snit.

“Play the game? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize this was just a game. I thought I was working for a group of people who were sincerely interested in making a difference in the world.”