Deja Who (15 page)

S
he was watching Archer staggering away from her car and realized she was panting, just a little, when her phone twitched again in her pocket, bleating, “No wire hangers, ever!” The noise was muffled due to placement, but no less unpleasant. Her lust instantly damped down and disappeared, ice water tossed on flames.

She fished the phone out and glared at it. Even Nellie couldn't be this dense. Not after the Fuck You medley phone chat. Something wrong? Trouble at the old mill? Something she needed Leah, and just Leah, to handle? Was it possible? Did she have the nerve?

But I need you to pick me up at the clinic after the procedure. And while you're there . . . I don't mean to be insensitive, darling, but neither of us is getting younger. Now don't worry, I already talked to Dr. Weinman and he'll be happy to discuss a few simple procedures with you. He's got your complete medical history and everything, so
don't eat anything the night before you pick me up . . . of course you don't have to have anything done but if you come to your senses, you'll be all set. Okay? Darling?

and

But the reporter won't talk to me unless you're there;
People
magazine is doing a “Where Are They Now” feature about celebrity moms. You can take the SATs next year . . . yes, it's wonderful that most fifteen-year-olds don't get invited to take it but that proves my point . . . there's always next year, and also the year after.

and

But they loved you, they just loved you, and all you'll need to do is diet down enough so you can play a young girl dying of anorexia and, yes, I know the part calls for a twelve-year-old and you're fourteen, but once you skip enough meals you can pull it off. And darling, really, the dieting alone will bring us—you—more opportunities to work.

Did she have the nerve? Why was Leah even asking herself such an obvious question? Of
course
It had the nerve! It was made up of fifty percent ambition and fifty percent nerve (and zero percent maternal instinct.) A month ago she never would have asked herself the question. Gah, interaction with Archer was making her soft.

Even as she was wondering why she was doing such a thing, Leah held the phone to her ear. “What.” She held her breath, waiting for that lovely shimmering voice, the sound of pain.

And . . . nothing. Nellie was either marshaling new arguments

It's not that I don't love you, darling, it's that you're not especially lovable.

or had misdialed

Sorry, darling, thought you were the colonic clinic. But while I've
got you, when was the last time you had a good cleansing? From the look of your complexion, I would guess it has been a while.

or was sucking in breath for a patented scolding. Most popular:
You Don't Know What I've Sacrificed for You.
Runner-up:
I Can't Believe You Would Deny Your Own Mother Although People Often Mistake Us for Sisters.

Nothing on the other end but careful, slow breathing. Was she nervous? Working up the nerve to ask for something else Leah could never give her? What could be worse than
Mother Daughter Fuck Fest
? So many, many things. The thought was staggering.

“No,” Leah said firmly. “Whatever it is, no.”

She shut off her phone for the night, which is why the police couldn't immediately reach her with the news.

M
orning, and for the first time in a long time, Leah could not wait to start the day. Positive note number one: she hadn't been stabbed to death. Positive note number two: it was Saturday, no clients. Positive note number three: Archer had proposed various silly, romantic interludes, all under the guise of researching her eventual murderer. She doubted their ability to get much work done while playing miniature golf

(I've driven past that place a hundred times and always thought it was a silly activity. But apparently the old saying is, one hundred and first time is the charm. And if you can get your ball to go into the whale's blow hole, you win a free game. Which I may actually play, as long as it's with Archer.)

or having a picnic at Cat's park

(that “pond” is nothing more than a glorified mud puddle riddled with duck feces and yet I'm intrigued at the thought of eating near it)

although she did not doubt that it would be fun—or at least interesting—to try.

Whatever they did, she had promised to call him around lunchtime with a plan. And she had promised under duress, since she would have said almost anything

(“I'm not sure I—”

“Oh please please please please please please please please please please please please please please call me or I'll diiiiiiiie! I'll just flop over and DIE.” Then, in his normal baritone, “What? Too needy?”)

to get him to stop making that horrible noise.

She was in the shower, cursing and trying to get shampoo out of her eye, when she remembered her phone was off. She almost never did that; Insighters got the occasional frantic call in the middle of the night, so she hurried through the rest of her shower, blotted herself dry, then retrieved her phone and turned it back on. While waiting for the thing to burp out various tones alerting her to voicemails and e-mails, she got dressed.

For the first time (in a long time) she dressed for someone else as opposed to clinic wear, or her court suit. Administration preferred Insighters in professional attire—suit jackets, skirts or trousers, like that—while acknowledging that their job was messy, both literally and figuratively. Sometimes clients did not respond well to news that they used to be Mary Mallon, aka Typhoid Mary. Sometimes that meant going home to wash vomit out of her jacket. Many of her colleagues wore a lab coat over their clothing; Leah just tried to stick to wash-and-wear fabrics and a high-quality laundry soap. Insighters weren't doctors, and while many of her colleagues encouraged their clients'
dependence, Leah wanted no part of such things, and eschewed lab coats. And also touching.

Today was different;

(hooray! “different”! what a wonderful word!)

today she could dress as she liked, so she indulged herself with a pair of rose-colored capris, a cream-colored tank top trimmed at the neck with lace, and a cardigan a few shades darker than her pants. As her phone started chiming, she found her tan oxfords and slipped one on, then glanced down at her phone, which, judging from all the pings and chimes, was about to self-destruct.

What the hell is this? Four voicemails? Nellie just doesn't know when to quit.

But none of the voicemails were from her mother.

“Ms. Nazir, this is Detective Preston from the CPD. Please call us back immediately.”

Archer.

Oh, fuck. Archer!

The other voicemails were from the police as well, though she didn't hear the entirety of the second one, since for some reason the phone was falling away from her, turning over and over before it finally—how was it falling in slow motion?—hit the tile and she heard a faint “crack.”

Or would have, if she hadn't clawed for her keys and sprinted out the front door. The phone might be tumbling in slo-mo but she was in overdrive, and it still didn't seem fast enough.

S
he stood on the brakes hard enough to bang her head on the roof, and when the car had more or less stopped, she wrestled free of the seat belt and escaped its confines. She ran up the sidewalk to Archer's front door, barely registering the ting-ting-ting of the car as it chimed its warning that she'd left the keys in the ignition and the door open. And almost on top of a fire hydrant.

She hammered on the front door with her fists and, when that didn't bring an immediate response, started kicking the bottom of the wooden door. It hurt, but she didn't care. She imagined the neighbors would be concerned by the noise, and didn't care. They might call the police; she didn't. The police only called you
after
the unthinkable happened. She had a flash from her past, something about

(“But they cannot! The king is above the law. The king
is
the law.”)

things going bad just when it seemed the good times were back, and shook it off.

“Archer! Open up! Archer, be in there and be unmangled and safe and
open up
!” Part of her brain realized she was sobbing his name and her fists were going numb and her foot hurt but the rest of her brain didn't care, was focused on her worst thoughts being false, being untrue, because Archer was fine, he was fine last night and he would be fine now and all she had to do was keep knocking and he would eventually—

“Jeez, Leah?” The door had opened and he was blinking at her in surprise. “What's wrong?”

She fell into his arms, clutching at him and trying to tell him the CPD had played a terrible prank but she would forgive them because he was fine, he was completely fine and on second thought she would Insight the
shit
out of all of them beginning with Detective Preston, if he so much as jostled a shoplifter during an arrest she would delve into his past lives and tell everyone he used to be Pol Pot.

“Ohhhh you're okay you're okay you're okay oh thank God you're okay.” She was telling all that to Archer's neck, as once she'd thrown her arms around him she simply refused to let go. He had staggered, but submitted.

“What's wrong? Ouch, that tickles—what's—yeek!”

“Wait.” She stopped talking to his throat and stepped back, looking up at him. His hands went to the small of her back, pressing, and it was absurd, really, how comforting that was. “You're okay.”

“Yeah. Well, I went to bed with a chronic case of blue balls, which you've just made worse, but yeah, in general, I'm pretty okay.” His blue and green eyes gleamed with good humor. “Where's your other shoe?”

“My what?” She looked down. One tan oxford, neatly tied,
was on her left foot. Her right foot was bare. “I just—I don't recall. I must have . . .” Must have darted,
streaked
, out of her apartment in her rush to get to Archer. “The police.” It was hard to think. Relief, she was just now discovering, was as potent a drug as anything illegal. She was alternately giddily light-headed and crushed under the weight of stress. “They called. They said—they said I had to call them back right away and they left lots of messages and they never leave the bad news on a recording I thought something happened so I left and here I am.”

“And you thought . . . ah, Leah.” He snaked a hand around the back of her neck and pulled her forward for a quick kiss. “You thought I was hurt? Dead?”

She didn't answer, just nodded. Her relief was a palpable force, an enormous thing.

Oh I am in so much trouble with this boy who I keep forgetting is older than I am. I want to tumble him into bed and divest him of his clothes and find out what he likes, all the things he likes. And then I want to do it again, and again, for fifty years.

“And you just . . . you quit putting on your shoes and hopped in your car—which you've parked in the middle of the street, by the way, but it's all right, I'm not judging—and came over?”

“Oh my God. I never even—I didn't stop to think. I just assumed . . . you're right, I'm a fool.”

“Whoa!” He held his hands up and then—much better—put them back around her and gave her a slight squeeze. “I didn't use that particular F word, so simmer. I'd never use that particular F word in reference to you.” He squeezed her again, which was lovely. She was amazed at how quickly he was calming her down. “And now this is the part where I pretend I'm not wildly flattered by your panic. Because I absolutely, totally
am. Instead, I'll play it cool. Like the way I'm playing it now: coooooool.”

She giggled in spite of herself and had a quick thought

(you've laughed more in the last week than you have in the last year)

that was gone before she could grasp it. “But the police did call. And they don't leave voicemails like that unless it's personal.”

“They call you a lot?”

“For Insighter business, yes.” She nodded and realized they were still standing on Archer's front step. “This was an entirely different voicemail. Personal, you know? I just assumed—but why would they even call me about you? They don't know how—”
Important you are to me.
That was the rest of the sentence, the sentence it was much too early to say. The sentence she might never say. “They don't know we're, ah, dating.”

“We're, ah, dating?” He grinned at her, which was a great relief. Yes, let Archer think this was all very cute and very funny, when it was neither. That was fine. It would make things easier, later.

“Yes.”

“The cops left you a personal voicemail?”

“Three, actually. At least.”

“Okay, let's listen to them.”

She stood on the step, perfectly silent, as she realized, and then uttered a sentence she had never before said: “I dropped my phone and ran out of my apartment in my haste to get to you.”

“Oh my God.” Archer actually staggered, right there on the stoop. “That is so hot. Oh my God.”

“And I think it broke. I can't be sure. But I heard something break but was in such a rush I didn't go back to see.”

“Oh. My.
God
.” He groaned and clutched at her. “You always have your phone, fucking
always
. You're one of those. I can't believe . . . Jesus, that's hot.”

“Shut up,” she grumped, feeling horribly exposed, like the entire street could see she cared for this idiot. “Just . . . shut up.”

“Ohhhh, you're so cute.” He clutched her to him and gave her a hearty smack on the lips. She wriggled, but not very hard. “And so hot.” Smack! “And so cute.” Smack! “I said that already.” Smack! “But it's true.” Smack! “I can't believe you rushed out of the house.” Smack! “And dropped your phone.” Smack! “And left a shoe behind.” Smack! “In your rush to get here.” Smack! “And show me your cuteness.” Smack! “And parked too close to a fire hydrant.” Smack!

“Get off.” She gave him a light shove (not—she was careful!—on a stab wound) and he backed off, his wide mouth twisting in a good-natured grumble. “I suppose I could call Detective Preston from here, if you'll . . . oh.”

Archer, too, had gone quiet. Had obviously realized the only person the police would be calling Leah about.

“Oh.” She stood there a moment, thinking. “It's . . . it's her. It's my mother. Isn't it?”

“Well, unless you've got a dad I don't know about . . .”

“She went to a sperm bank,” Leah replied absently. She tapped her bare foot as she thought. “The whole thing was for publicity. My birth. My childhood. It was to boost her career. I have no idea who my father is.”

“Okay.” Archer's fingers, rubbing at the knots in her neck she didn't realize were there. “Okay, so let's call—”

“No.” Now that she could think again, she took him in at a glance and was relieved he was fully dressed. He was wearing
knee-length navy shorts, a crisp, clean T-shirt with the slogan “Home is where the Wi-Fi connects automatically,” and the de rigueur loafers without socks. “Come on.”

He held up a finger, ducked back inside for his wallet, then shut and locked the front door and followed her amiably enough. “I assume you have a plan? Which involves fixing your awful middle-of-the-street parking?”

“It's McMansion.” No need to even open her door; she'd obligingly left it open for herself. They both climbed in and buckled. “We're going to her McMansion. It's where the police are.”

“Oh. You sure?”

“No.”

But they went anyway.