Borrow-A-Bridesmaid (21 page)

Twenty-Five

A
rriving at Senator Collinsworth's mansion for the first time on Saturday afternoon, I hear voices in my head. Specifically, the voice of my mother, critiquing everything in sight. Not that it's not immaculate—quite the opposite. But my mother believes the best homes are the most welcoming, and nothing about the senator's mansion is welcoming. Everything seems to be indicating that one should pick up and run at a good clip in the opposite direction.

On the front step, stone lions with bared teeth stand guard. I press a fingertip-sized doorbell encased in an elaborate gold molding the length of my forearm. Moments later, a member of the household staff opens the door, raising an eyebrow in lieu of a greeting. Her bleached-blond hair is pulled into a taut bun, and she looks exhausted. As she pulls the door all the way open, a robotic voice announces, “Front. Door. Open!” I'm bumfuzzled until I realize it's the security system.

“You must be the bridesmaid,” she says in a thick Eastern European–sounding accent.

I nod. “Guilty as charged.”

“I'm Anna. Come on in,” she says, and I follow her blond bun into the massive foyer. As she shuts the door behind me, the robotic voice confirms, “Front. Door. Closed,” which sends an inexplicable zap of panic through my central nervous system. It's as if the closing door has confirmed my commitment to this Wedding Terminator scheme. My body protests. It's Saturday and my body craves a
Titanic
-length nap preceded by a carb-and-bacon binge. It is not amused at this attempt at productivity.

Anna sees my alarmed expression and smirks to herself. “You will have your little hands full,” she says, laughing a deep smoker's laugh. “Come on, come on.”

She motions for me to follow her. As she leads me deeper into the house, I can't help thinking it looks like a model home. Reclining of any sort seems to be strictly prohibited. You might get away with something akin to lounging on the hard-backed colorless chaises, but after about a half hour, you'd probably need a deep-tissue butt massage.

The mansion does seem fitting for a businesswoman/politician. Susan reminded me that Lena is the executive vice something at a major consulting company: Hence the funding for her endless campaigns. I remember the last campaign clearly—every other television spot was an attack ad. I didn't vote for her. God, I hope she can't smell that on me.

We walk through an elaborate hallway of statues (petrified nonvoters?) into a kitchen approximately the size of a football field. At a table by a bay window, a stack of unopened RSVP envelopes is accompanied by boxes of unassembled favors, spools of ribbon, and towers of votive candles. A laptop perches on one side of the table. On its screen is a massive RSVP spreadsheet. The only thing missing is Holly.

“So Holly's not here?” I ask Anna.

Anna shrugs. “I think she is at the spa.” She goes on to explain that Holly left a task list for me. I take a peek: It's outlined down to the lowercase number. Item 1, 1a, 1a.i., et cetera. Probably at the bottom of the list is a request that I spin straw into gold, with failure punishable by death, or at least several hours on one of the unforgiving chaises.

Figures. What did I think—that we were going to sit side-by-side, opening RSVPs and talking about our periods? I thank Anna, and I'm promptly left alone at my chore table in the capacious kitchen with its blinking ogre-sized appliances. A few minutes later, a vacuum comes on in another room. Out the bay window, the surface of a large pond flutters and sighs with the summer breeze.

On my dual quest for evidence and article material, I'm failing. I don't know exactly what I was planning, though it involved asking some subtle but leading questions about Holly's past with Charlie. It involved some great feats of investigative journalism, as practice for my would-be job at the paper.

It did not involve solitary confinement.

After four hours
of opening RSVPs and putting together favors, my fingers begin to rebel. They don't want the intricate labor of twelve-step favor creation. They itch to browse, to scroll, to double-click.

Unable to resist these urges any longer, I minimize the RSVP spreadsheets on the laptop and double-click the pink hard-drive icon. I was eyeing said icon during the opening of 226 RSVP envelopes, as if it were a virtual carrot being dangled in front of me. At last, I take a nibble. My appetite duly whetted, I nom-nom-nom the whole damn thing.

Against my better judgment and the thought that my mother would most certainly identify my behavior as “not Christian,” I start to search Holly's computer for evidence of illicit activity. I have probable cause, right? But after looking through her entire iPhoto album, I feel less investigative journalist than sniveling paparazzi.

Most of her pictures show her and Charlie as undergrads at UCLA. For several minutes, I stare at a picture of them on the beach, both in swimsuits, tanned and happy. He has his arm around her waist; her hair blows across his eyes, temporarily veiling them. I think of Susan's words at the Shoddy Wheelbarrow:
It wasn't all bad times. She was his first love.
In another picture, he perches his chin on her shoulder.

Unfortunately for my purposes, the only man who features prominently in her pictures is Charlie. I feel a strange mixture of disappointment and relief. Disappointment because I've failed in my mission so far, and relief because part of me doesn't want to find evidence of her betraying him.

I find not one juicy tidbit. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Even Zuckerberg has nothing for me—she's left her Facebook account open. Status:
So excited to be marrying my high school sweetheart in three weeks!
This is why Facebook makes me hate my life. No one ever posts pictures of a significant other leaving dirty socks on the kitchen counter or children making poo handprints on the walls.

Nothing else in Holly's files seems suspicious in any way. At one point I think I've found a sonogram in her “Misc” folder—OMG.jpg—but on closer examination, I realize it's a photo of Crater Lake. For that one moment, my stomach folded up like an accordion—ohmygodohmygodshe'shavinghisbabyomg—then whooshed out as the bellows released with a hopeful C-major chord. No baby.

My only other bread crumb is another file in her “Misc” folder, Untitled.txt
.
I double-click to find a few lines of uncapitalized text: two different street addresses in Blacksburg, each underscored by a line of question marks. Southern Virginia—her dad or his family, maybe? I Google both addresses but don't find any affiliated names. Just a couple of apartment complexes in run-down parts of town.

I finally return to my favor-making after restoring her computer to the way it was prior to my snooping session, issuing a silent apology to my mother, whose voice is without fail broadcasted over my internal loudspeaker whenever I find myself in the midst of remotely illicit activity.

Speaking of mothers, as soon as I've returned to my one-woman favor assembly line, I hear a door slam elsewhere in the mansion. A raised voice alternates with Anna's in the adjacent breakfast room (eat lunch there and ye may also be petrified). I tiptoe closer to the doorway to catch a snippet of conversation. My heart thrums. The words are hard to parse, but Anna's accent sounds suspiciously thicker than before. Lena is incensed about something; Anna is backpedaling by feigning ignorance. I tiptoe back to my table so I can look like I'm hard at work before Lena emerges. When I risk a glance to check for her, she's right there in the kitchen doorway, giving me the hairy eyeball.

I literally jump; I'm caught so off guard to look up and find her scrutinizing me that I let out a combination of “fuck” and “yip” and inexplicably toss a candle and a bit of ribbon into the air. The ribbon drifts to the ground between us, the frayed end pointing accusingly at me. She doesn't blink.

Though I've seen her picture on any number of glossy mailers, seeing her in the flesh is something different altogether. She's elegantly dressed, tall, and has the same airbrushed look as Holly. Not a hair out of place.

As we stare at each other, I become painfully aware of the loud ticking of a nearby wall clock the size of Big Ben. Where do you buy clocks that big? And why?

What's even more terrifying is that she doesn't say a single word. After scanning me, she cruises up to the favor table, her heels making their own confident ticking on the tile. She picks up a favor box and holds it between her thumb and index finger. Rotates it 180 degrees. Examines it for a few more seconds. Says, “Hm.” Sets it back on the table and breezes out the other side of the kitchen, as if I'm less interesting than a stone lion.

A few moments later, the robot lady's voice announces: “Conference. Room. Door. Open.”

The conference room: Likely the HQ of her lieutenant governor campaign. This is a telltale sign of conspicuous wealth: You have rooms designated for purposes other than eating, sleeping, pooping, and watching TV. Such lofty purposes as conferencing, breakfasting, and screening films.

Evidence. I need evidence. I text Lin and Susan for ideas. Susan doesn't text back—she's probably at rehearsal by now—but Lin's response is almost immediate.
House staff. Ten to one they've got dirt.

When the robot lady announces the patio door is open, I glance out the bay window to see a bleached-blond bun with a cloud of cigarette smoke floating above it like a thought bubble. I set down several mangled ribbon loops and join Anna on the patio, asking tentatively if I can bum a cigarette. We smoke in silence until I work up the nerve to ask how she likes her job at the mansion.

“It is like reality television.” She waves her hand to gesture at the scenery in front of us. The patio overlooks at least an acre of yard. An upper deck presides over a lower deck; the two are connected by a long staircase. Beyond the lower deck, a tree-lined kidney-bean-shaped pond fills out the rest of the yard.

“How do you mean?” I try to cough into my elbow inconspicuously. I haven't smoked since Susan's wedding.

She twirls her cigarette in the air before taking another drag. “People who look like models, scripted conversations, and a big helping of ego.”

After talking with Anna for a few more minutes, I get the distinct vibe that she Knows Things, so I venture a bit deeper with my questions. I ask what she knows about Holly and Charlie's relationship.

She gives me a look like I've asked for hemlock tea. “You are dipping your toes into the Shit Creek.”

I swallow. “Okay, truth?”

She nods, blowing smoke out one side of her mouth. The other side of her mouth is smirking something wicked.

“I'm working for an unnamed third party whose interests lie in—investigating Holly and her fiancé's relationship.” I lean closer to her and realize how ridiculous I am. I reject all the lines I was considering—a mishmash from various spy and legal shows—as I get the inkling that Anna has a bullshit detector more accurate than most space-based global navigation systems. So I say, “Help?”

The smoker's laugh again. “Might as well wade in, the water is fine.”

“I'm wading in Shit Creek now?” I cough.

She gives me a little pat on my back. “Look, I try to mind my own business. This is where I work.”

“How about one question. Can I ask you one question?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“Whether I like the question.”

“What do you think about her marrying Charlie?”

“Sweet boy. You could hang a Christmas ornament on his dimples.”

“I know, right!”

“Poor, poor bastard. It is none of my business, but I do not trust that girl any farther than I can throw her.” She frowns. “Though I could throw her pretty far, so never mind.” Deep inhale.

“Why don't you trust her?”

Anna sighs, then shrugs as if to say,
What the hell?
She takes her time finishing her cigarette. “When Holly was home last summer, I was here on the evening shift. Her mother was at the state capitol. What is it they say about the cat being away? The mice are very naughty. I was cleaning the bathroom upstairs”—here she points to a window three stories up and overlooking the pond—“and I saw her outside, swimming in the raw. With a man.”