Death By Chick Lit (8 page)

“Can’t stop thinking about Mimi, huh?”

“Can’t
start
thinking about Mimi,” Lola said. “I have to throw the wombat every three seconds.”

“Throw the wombat? Is that what the Brooklyn kids are calling vomiting?” asked Annabel.

“No,” laughed Lola, “it’s—”

“Wait wait wait. Are you
pregnant
?” asked Annabel.

Lola picked up the wombat chew toy and threw it. The dogs skidded across the kitchen, tripping over their ears. “No, I mean
throw the wombat
.”

Annabel was silent, stuck.

“I’m at Daphne’s.”

Gibson returned the wombat, head held high. Sidecar followed, ever hopeful. Lola sighed and scratched both their noses. The pair had already destroyed one of Lola’s flip-flops, a roll of paper towels, and any hope Lola had of having one productive thought until Daphne came back.

“Oh,” said Annabel. “Right.”

“This may have been a mistake.”

The bassets had spent the morning following Lola around Daphne’s fabulous Technicolor apartment, which was chockablock with groovy flea market finds, including a painting positioned to offer a permanent “view” of the Chrysler building, complete with full moon. Lola half-expected Tab Hunter to knock at the door.

When Lola looked away, the dogs barked. When she sat at her computer, they whimpered. When she peed, they stared.

“But you love dogs . . . ?” offered Annabel.

“Yeah, but I don’t want to marry them,” said Lola.

“Now we know why man and dog are just friends,” said Annabel.

Lola laughed wearily.

“Listen, Lo, while you’re distracted: I have news,” Annabel went on.

“What? About Mimi? What?”

“Well, obviously you know I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with myself since getting back from rock climbing?”

“Hey, did you get the job at the paintball foundation?”

“No, no, not that . . . you know my blog.”

Lola did indeed. Called
The Slackline
, it contained Annabel’s witty accounts of her time in Colorado doing volunteer work and dating outdoorsmen—the phase of life she called her “Junior League Abroad.” The blog had gained a following among climbers and acrophobes alike. Lola hadn’t read as much of it as she’d meant to, which made her feel like an ass.

“Well, I got a call from this editor person at Poncho Books.” Poncho was a hip downtown imprint of Disney-Seagram’s, the biggest media conglomerate in history.

“They want you to come work for them?”

“No, no—they want to turn the blog into a book.”

Lola threw the wombat.

“I think they’re calling that a blook now, but . . . I’m not,” said Annabel. “Anyway, also a sitcom.”

“Oh, my God.”

“And a feature film.”

Gibson dropped the wombat on Lola’s toe. She picked it up, put it in her own mouth, and bit down, hard.

Eleven

“Lola?”

“Sorry! Sorry. The dogs,” said Lola. “
Annabel.
That is
awesome
!”

“Thanks, Lo. I mean, it does kind of feel gross and corporate. But then again, so does what I’ve been doing: supporting the global domination plan of Cup O’Noodles.”

“Hah, right,” said Lola.

“Plus, it’s so weird,” Annabel went on. “I mean, it’s not like I was even
trying
to sell it. Or that I even think of myself as, like, an official writer.”

Don’t remind me, Lola thought.

She knew Annabel was doing her best to show that she hadn’t been trying to lap Lola. But her efforts were making things worse. No, she’s not an official writer! She’s not an official anything! Not to be mean. But come
on
.

Annabel had always succumbed to lust, wander- and otherwise, never staying in one place, or with one guy, for long—and never apologizing for it. She and Lola had met years ago, while both in their twenties, when serving on the volunteer staff at a community kids’ fair in a run-down Queens neighborhood. Lola was painting kids’ faces; next to her, Annabel, wrapped in scarves, was telling kids’ fortunes. “You vill meet a beautiful, eeenteresting stranger,” she’d say, inspecting a small palm. “Oh! Is
me
!”

During a lull in the fortune-telling action, Annabel had turned to Lola, bangles jingling.

“So, what’d you do?”

“That last one was Princess Jasmine. So were the nine before that, except for one Darth Maul,” sighed Lola, wiping her hands on a piece of musty brown accordion-folded paper towel that reminded her of elementary school. “No one will let me do anyone from Kiss.”

“Damn kids,” smiled Annabel. “But no, I mean, what’d you do to have to do this?”

“Uh, I signed up,” answered Lola, puzzled. “What’d
you
do?”

“Drugs,” said Annabel. “After today I’ll be done with my six-week community service sentence.”

But Annabel had evidently seen an all-new future in her own palm that day. Having done her time, she dropped the drugs but kept up with the good deeds. She would later tell Lola that it was something about how Lola didn’t judge her that day—though secretly, silently, sheltered Lola had been shocked—that helped make drugs lose their appeal, helped her lose interest in proving her badassitude. Ever able to talk people into paying her enough to live on, Annabel had gone on to save sea turtles in Mexico, fight the death penalty in Alabama, and teach English to the Hmong in St. Paul (and to quite a few suitors as well).

But it was projects Annabel moved on from, not friends—not Lola. She’d remained loyal to Lola ever since that day at the fair, which they’d left with their faces painted, respectively, as Gene Simmons and The Hamburglar. They were joined at the hip, or, depending on where Annabel was, at the instant message, e-mail, and cell phone.

“Hang on, Lo, let me put you on speaker,” said Annabel. Her place in Chinatown was so tiny that she could use the speakerphone anywhere in the entire apartment. Though her kitchen consisted basically of a plug-in hot pot (plus pilsner glasses purloined from various dart-focused bars), and her door buzzer didn’t work, Annabel’s landlord had recently seen fit to practically double her rent. “Think what it’d cost if it had a closet,” he’d snarled.

Lola heard Annabel shout, “Heads up, Sparky!” Must be tossing her keys down to a visitor. Maybe the FedEx guy from last week? (“He absolutely, positively, had to be here overnight,” Annabel had explained.)

Lola looked at the computer, opened a new document, and typed, “BE HAPPY FOR HER.” She enlarged the letters to take up the whole page. Then bold, then italic. Then red. The dogs whimpered.

Phone cradled to her ear, Lola heard a new male voice. “Hey, Lola! Isn’t that the best?” It was Leo. “I know she’s been dying to tell you.”

Been
dying?

How long has she known? How long has
he
known? Annabel’s voice came quickly. “Yeah, I found out just before Mimi’s party. Then . . . you know. And last night when you were in the cab, I just didn’t . . .” In a rare moment of incertitude, Annabel trailed off.

Lola shoved aside, with all her might, a giant pile of angry thoughts. Gibson and Sidecar, play-snarling, locked their jaws onto the coolest toy around: Lola’s other flip-flop. Ignoring them, Lola forced herself to stare at the message on the computer screen.

“Whatever, Annabel, this is just so totally, amazingly excellent,” she said. “So what happens next?”

“I UPS all this stuff I sold last week on eBay,” said Annabel. “Leo came by on his lunch to help me schlep.” Which was the kind of thing Leo did. It was in his nature, and—being his own boss—he had the time. He ran a company called Concrete Jungle that did high-end interior terrarium-like installations for ultracool offices, stores, salons, and spas, often involving rare ferns, indoor marshes, and, depending on the client, live newts.

“Of course, now her eBay days are over!” came Leo’s voice.

She should totally go out with that guy.

“All right. Rock on, Bella. Call me later,” said Lola. “If it goes to voice mail, it means Sidecar swallowed my phone.”

And boy, would that bum Doug out. He’d proudly scored his wife the prototype of a superfancy Tungsten Bluetooth molded magnesium something something something complete with a contact manager, Web browser, a calendar, e-mail, an MP3 player, a wireless headset, a global positioning system, high-resolution still and video cameras, television channels, interactive restaurant listings, several elaborate games, and the capacity, if you held down the 3, Message, and # keys all at once, to emit a ray that would thwart a missile attack. Or so it seemed.

Lola resented the camera function most of all. “I just need a
telephone
, Doug,” she’d said when he insisted she take it. “No pictures. Yes, it’s adorable that your photo pops up when you call me. But don’t you get it? Generally, I use the phone so I don’t
have
to see people.” At this moment, Lola briefly considered coating the offending device with Alpo.

“Yep, I’ll call you,” said Annabel. Lola could hear the squeak of packing tape in the background. “Wait, so when’s Daphne coming home?”

“In
six hours and seventeen minutes
,” said Lola, finally shaking the dogs off her cuffs. Gibson ran for his metal bowl, Sidecar following, and nosed it along the floor. Not because he was hungry, but because he liked the noise.

Annabel laughed. “Where was she, St. Louis?”

“Yeah,” said Lola. “After Atlanta, Miami, Austin, Phoenix, and Chicago.”

“Jeez, I thought people said authors don’t really do tours anymore,” said Annabel.

“Correct. If by people, you mean my ex-publicist,” said Lola. Annabel laughed sympathetically.

Quit it, Somerville. Don’t let her hear you sweat.

“So you’re calculating what, flight in around six, then half an hour in a cab?”

“Yep,” said Lola.

The dogs skidded to a stop in the middle of the kitchen floor. “We’re bored!” they barked.

“Okay, then. Only like six hours and sixteen minutes to go,” said Annabel, switching back to the receiver. “I’ll be off in a sec,” she said to Leo.

“Take your time!” Lola heard him say.

“How great is Leo?” Lola asked. Earth to Annabel!

“Pretty!” said Annabel. “Look, Lo, I just wanted to say, and I don’t know how to do it without sounding patronizing, but I know you may not be a hundred percent happy to hear this kind of thing, about my book and stuff, and I’m just—what can I say? I’m sorry.”

“Annabel, it’s really fine,” said Lola. “But thanks for saying something.”

At least she’s single.

And I am a total beeyotch.

“Guys! Shhh!” Lola said to the dogs, resorting again to tossing the wombat. She looked at her computer screen.

BE HAPPY FOR HER.

“Annabel, wanna get a drink tonight to celebrate, slash, get our minds off Mimi?” she asked.

Hell’s bells. First of all, if she were ever to come through for Quentin, she’d have to get her mind on Mimi the second Daphne came back. And in the middle of her own sentence, Lola also remembered that she’d promised Doug to spend a quiet, romantic evening with him curled up together eating salt-and-peppered popcorn and watching the director’s cut DVD of
Evil Dead
.

But you know what? Doug will understand. I have to do this for Annabel. I have to show her how happy I am. And, as always, I have to take this opportunity to prove, especially to Annabel, that I haven’t become a married pod person. It’s not like I’d be able to stay awake through the whole movie, anyway.

“To celebrate your deal, I mean, not my freedom from bassets,” said Lola.

“Well, both. Totally. Call me when Daphne’s home,” said Annabel. “Thanks, Lo. You rock.”

 
 
BE HAPPY FOR HER.

Lola hung up the phone and looked at the screen.

Fucking hell.

She opened the fridge, poured herself some of Daphne’s Perrier—see, this is why there’s only one seltzer guy left—and sat back down, feeling simultaneously listless and vicious. Her eyes wandered around Daphne’s computer desktop. Hmm. Wonder what’s in
her
Documents folder?

Lola clicked. Now that everyone and her sister and her sister’s dry cleaner is writing a book, Daphne must be at work on her second, just like I should be but am not, unless you consider my ceaseless sleuthing-as-research, which is evidently not so ceaseless, as this is really not the kind of sleuthing I’m supposed to be doing.

But I’m just curious. Just a peek. It’s not snooping if it’s not marked “personal,” or “diary.”

Lola clicked again.

That’s weird.

She looked around again, this time searching the whole computer.

Nope, nothing.

Lola found a ton of Daphne’s old etiquette columns—which, she had to admit, were pretty good—but no new book. Not only that, no old book. No drafts, no nothing.

Okay, it’s not that weird. Either her first book sprang fully formed from the goddess Daphne’s forehead, or all
that
work stuff is on whatever laptop she took with her on tour. Either way, my fantasies about strangling her—just a little!—with that damn pink scarf of hers are really not very sporting.

Or at all appropriate, given last night.

I am going to hell.

Defeated, Lola took the dogs out again. By that point, she was too tired to feel as upset as she really was, which helped. While the dogs gamboled, Lola’s thoughts limped along. Okay, if I solve this case—that is, if I ever actually start working on it to begin with—something will break for me, she thought. It has to. Feels like it’s all I’ve got. But jeez, am I going to have to start freaking
blogging
about it?

Back at Daphne’s, Lola flopped on the faux-fur couch. She was so tired her vision was blurring; the entire world seemed to have shifted three inches to the left. The dogs clambered up with her, sat down, one on each side, and stared at her with their sad eyes.