Scarlett Fever (5 page)

Demo version limitation

ACT II

A
SPIES OF NEW YORK
EXCLUSIVE!

WHAT IS THIS WE ARE HEARING…from the set of
Crime and Punishment,
the police procedural/courtroom drama that has been an integral part of our lives since we were just tiny spies? Is there trouble in our favorite fictional police precinct?

RUMOR IS…Donald Purchase, who plays our beloved Detective Sonny Lavinski, is unhappy with the current story line and is restless for a change. A well-placed source tells us that Donald wants out.

“Donald is a great actor,” our source told us in confidence. “But he’s been playing Sonny Lavinski for fifteen seasons now. He’s had offers from Hollywood for years. This time, he’s ready to take them.”

The idea of Sonny Lavinski leaving
Crime and Punishment
is enough to make us drop our morning brandy. We have grown up with his dry witticisms and his sense of justice. His gravelly voice has nursed us through many a hangover. We have seen him fight terrorists, save children (and a seal) from an explosion at the Bronx Zoo, and singlehandedly prevent the poisoning of the Central Park reservoir. We were there when his wife died, and when he found new love in the form of Denise “Wow, she’s way too young and way too hot for him but because he’s Sonny Lavinski we will accept it” Shapiro. And though we have never seen his daughter, Daisy, born in the first episode, her mysterious school projects and much-discussed talents have never failed to amuse us.

Is Sonny really leaving us? Because we will have to book extra sessions with our therapists now.

“Completely untrue,” Donald’s rep told us. “I don’t know where you’re getting this information, but Donald isn’t going anywhere. He just signed on for three more seasons. Donald loves New York, and he loves
Crime and Punishment.”

We are reassured, somewhat. But we will never truly be content until we are sure Sonny is staying. We suggest locking him in a cage located on some prominent city landmark where we can go and visit him every day.

Sonny, you belong to New York. Our love is strong. And more than a little obsessive.

Demo version limitation

Demo version limitation

Demo version limitation

THE FEVER

Eric Hall was a nice Southern boy, from Winston-Salem, North Carolina—once the strapping, blond star of his high school theater department. He seemed to drag along puffy white clouds and blue skies from some other corner of the earth. He was the kind of guy who smiled easily, who you imagined smelled of fresh-cut grass and his grandma’s peach cobbler, who tanned on the first day of summer, who was liked by all who met him. You could easily picture him on a horse, something Scarlett did a little too frequently, and not always appropriately dressed in equestrian gear.

He’d gotten a haircut in the last few days. She liked it a little longer, but this was good. Cleaner. Crisper. With the sunned-out blondish end bits clipped off. Being a blonde herself, Scarlett was kind of bored of the color. The darkness was nice, and unfamiliar. She heard herself speaking, but there was a mumbled roar covering up the words in her mind. It must have been something about coming inside.

“She sent around business cards to the cast,” he said. “I thought I’d stop by. Just finished class. And when I saw you walking down the street with…”

“Murray,” Scarlett said, the name strangled in her throat.

“What?”

That was from Murray the doorman, who was watching them with ill-concealed disgust.

“Not, no…”

Scarlett was stuttering a little. She took a second to control her voice.

“Not you. The dog. The dog is Murray.”

“That dog’s name is
Murray
?” Murray asked.

Eric picked up on Scarlett’s signal that they should move quickly, quickly to the elevator. She tucked Murray the dog under her arm like a football. The elevator doors closed silently as velvet curtains, not like the great, end-of-the-world squawk that the gates of the Hopewell elevator made.

“He didn’t like that answer,” Eric said.

“He’s not a Murray fan,” Scarlett explained. “Also, his name is Murray.”

“Is that a coincidence?”

“No,” Scarlett said. “It’s just my boss making a statement.”

“Amy’s a piece of work.”

On that note of truth, the doors opened again, and the nineteenth floor hallway awaited them. Mrs. Amberson probably wasn’t even here. Scarlett knew she should mention this. Except that she had now lost the ability to speak, and all she could do was embark on the death march down the thick blue carpet to 19D, Eric sauntering just behind her, Murray stepping on her feet in his haste to get to shelter. She opened the door with her key, which Eric noted with a little tuck-up of the chin.

“Own key, huh? She couldn’t do anything without you.”

Scarlett scooped Murray from the ground, where he had been scratching an ineffective paw at the door. As gestures went, this was like throwing a rock at the moon in an attempt to knock it out of orbit. It was nice to have Murray in that respect—only he had less control over his situation than she did over hers.

Scarlett called out for Mrs. Amberson, just in case she was ensconced in her bedroom and maybe about to emerge half-undressed. There was total silence.

“I think she’s out,” Scarlett said, gripping Murray tight. She mustered the courage to look at Eric now. Maybe he would just leave. That would make sense, since the apartment’s occupant wasn’t there. But he didn’t. He walked right inside, making appreciative noises as he took in the airy living room with its white furniture, and straight to the windows that looked out over the park.

“Don’t these kinds of apartments cost, like, millions?” he said.

There was something in his manner that made Scarlett feel like it was somehow her fault that Mrs. Amberson lived in a very nice apartment, and that she had to make excuses for it.

“It’s actually her friend’s,” Scarlett said. “She’s subletting it for cheap.”

“When you say cheap, you probably don’t mean the kind of cheap I go for. Because I go for
cheap.
Where I come from, a car on the lawn is considered landscaping.”

He wandered past the desk, pausing to look at the photo array, which now included five pictures of Chelsea. He lingered on the photograph he was in for just a moment, then sat on one of the silver bar stools and swiveled. He slipped into one of those slow smiles of his—the ones that said, “I’m so irresistible and harmless.”

Scarlett sat down on the sofa, holding a quivering Murray firmly on her lap. She told herself that if she could just calm Murray, she would be calm. But Murray would never be calm. He was an exposed, throbbing nerve, set loose into the world in the form of a dog.

“Things getting back to normal at home?” Eric asked.

“We don’t really know what that means,” she replied.

This resulted in an even slower, more dangerously charming smile. Murray vibrated like a cell phone in a box, impossible to ignore.

“Spencer still complaining about that day with the sock?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, unable to keep herself from smiling—a queasy, wracked smile that hurt her face from the inside. “He’s mentioned it once or twice. A day.”

“God, I’ve never seen him so mad. Well, actually, I have, but…”

He laughed a quick, terse laugh and looked down.
Of course
he had seen Spencer angrier. Like right before Spencer’s fist “accidentally” hit his face. Because of Scarlett.

Tension took over her body. Murray could feel what she suppressed. In protest, he broke free from her grip in terror, rocketing across the sofa. Unfortunately, a nervous Murray was a tinkling Murray, and he dribbled an erratic, golden trail across the white fabric before making a heroic leap from the armrest and splatting on the ground. Scarlett didn’t want to bring attention to the fact that there was dog pee next to her, because that is considered unsexy in most cultures, but it was impossible to hide against the snowy whiteness of the sofa. It didn’t help that Murray was making rapid, insane circuits of the room, his little nails acting like ice skates against the polished floor, sending him speeding and sliding and skidding into every single piece of furniture. Every blow just propelled him faster, bouncing him from kitchen bar to end table to desk to chair to potted plant, around and around.

Eric watched this with a detached, clinical interest.

“When did Amy get a dog?” he asked.

“He’s borrowed,” Scarlett said. “And he has issues. He has
every
issue.”

“Yeah, I can see that. We should get that out before it sets in.”

He was pointing at the yellow pee road next to Scarlett. He got off the bar stool and went into Mrs. Amberson’s tiny kitchen. Scarlett could hear him rummaging around, and a moment later he returned with a bottle of sparkling mineral water and a roll of unbleached paper towels. He calmly started drizzling the water on the spots and blotting them up with a paper towel.

“I should be doing that,” Scarlett said.

“I have four dogs back home,” he said. “I’m used to this. You city people, living in your fancy hotels, you don’t have to deal with animals like we country folks do.”

“You should see some of the things we
do
have to deal with,” Scarlett said. “Hotel guests make dogs seem really clean.”

He laughed a little.

Scarlett grabbed some towels and started on the opposite end of the sofa. She tried to work long and hard on her spot, holding her ground, but Eric was clipping along. Soon, he was next to her. His arm rubbed against hers. He didn’t seem to notice this, but it went on for almost a minute, this gentle brushing.

When she was trying to forget about Eric, she had to make an extra effort to erase the mental image of his arms. They were extraordinary arms—not gross, steroid big, but full and solid, just large enough to slightly strain the fabric of his shirt. They were even developed on the lower half, from the elbow to the hand, so that he had to have a really big watchband to make it all the way around his sturdy wrist. One day in a hot, empty theater, those arms had lifted her up like she was nothing at all.

Scarlett had to steady herself, even though she was kneeling. Eric stopped moving, but his arm was still touching hers. Just barely, but it was, maybe just a millimeter of contact she could feel through her whole body. He turned, his face just inches from hers, looking her right in the eye. They were alone in an empty apartment (except for Murray, who had calmed down and was meditatively chewing on the inside of his own thigh).

“Come here often?” he said, slipping into a leer.

Scarlett tried not to smile. A smile would be giving in—to what, she didn’t know. But he kept the face up until she cracked. The wall was down completely.

“Gotcha,” Eric said, clearly very satisfied with himself. He stood, taking the wad of used paper towels into the kitchen to dispose of them. Scarlett grabbed the water and the roll. They shuffled for position at the sink, sharing the soap and the flow of water, washing their hands. But the current passing between them was impossible to ignore. He moved back to make room for her but didn’t leave the small room. He just leaned against the refrigerator until she was done.

“So,” he asked, “you’re good?”

“Yeah,” Scarlett said, picking up an empty ice cube tray and twisting it. “I’m…good.”

“And school?”

“Same crap, new year. But, good. I guess.”

“NYU is scary,” he said. “I guess I knew when I moved to New York that I wouldn’t be the big kid on the block anymore, the guy who got all the leads in the school show…but I didn’t know
how
much better everyone would be.”

He pushed his hands into the pockets of his shorts and let out a long sigh—the song of insecurity.

“You’re good,” Scarlett said before she could help herself.

The speed of the compliment seemed to ruin whatever feeling was in the room.

“I guess I should get back,” he said. “I have a rehearsal in an hour. But I just wanted to drop by. Say hi to your boss for me?”

“Sure,” Scarlett said. She tried to sound casual, but her voice had gone all croaky. He looked at the granite floor for a moment, black and twinkling with golden flecks of mica.

“Okay,” he said, “so…”

Some decision was being made. Something was being considered. They were so close. Scarlett had the mad urge to step forward and grab him around the waist, hug him close. He would be, at the very least, too polite to push her away. He would hug her back, and he would look down into her face, and then they would…

No. You can’t go flinging yourself at people. Especially people
you are trying not to think about
even if they are standing in a tiny kitchen with you and even if you have just cleaned up dog pee with them.

Eric didn’t know what words should come next, either, so he held up a hand of good-bye and retreat, backing up out of the kitchen, the apartment, and Scarlett’s life in general.

It took her almost forty-five minutes to calm back down, most of which was spent on the phone to Dakota.

“Let’s have him killed!” Dakota suggested cheerfully.

“I’m serious,” Scarlett said. “Help me. I’m under a table.”

“Is that a Shakespeare expression? Like, ‘Gadzooks! I am under a table, milord! Prithee, handeth me the pointy stick for to stab the cad!’ Is that what you mean?”

“I mean I’m under a table.”

This was true. Scarlett was crouching on the fluffy white rug under the unused dining table on the side of the living room. She had no idea why she was doing this, except that it seemed kind of safe there.

“He came to see me,” Scarlett said, getting back to the matter at hand. “Why did he come to see me?”

There was a long pause on Dakota’s end of the line.

“He didn’t actually come to see you,” she finally said. “Think about it. Where do you work now?”

“For Mrs. Amberson.”

“Who is an…”

“Agent,” Scarlett said. How had she been so stupid? Eric wasn’t standing around in front of Mrs. Amberson’s apartment building hoping to see Scarlett—he wanted to see her boss. He wanted to see
an agent.
The fact that he had run into Scarlett was purely accidental. Her brain was so hopped-up on hormones and adrenaline that she couldn’t see what was going on.

“You okay?” Dakota asked after a long pause.

“Fine,” Scarlett replied. “I’d better go.”

“Call me if you need me, okay?”

“Thanks.”

She hung up and dropped her phone into the thickly piled rug and willed herself to think. So he had come here. So they had spoken. So he really just wanted to talk to her boss. Big deal. So what if she had to wrap her arms around herself to make the quivering feeling stop, or that she wanted to run out and find him, follow him, see where he went and who he talked to and if the girls in his class were as pretty as they were in Scarlett’s nightmares. She had seen him, and she had lived. That made her strong, right? You didn’t win the war until you faced your foe, and she had just done some full-on foe-facing, which was both brave and alliterative.

The intercom buzzed, startling Scarlett so much that she popped up her head and whacked it on the underside of the table. Downstairs, Murray had to be holding his finger down on the buzzer on purpose, because it was a solid, unbroken sound, one that could rip any thought in two. No wonder Dog Murray looked the way he did.

Scarlett crawled out of her hiding space rubbing her head and answered.

“Messenger,” Murray growled. “You gotta come sign. I’m not sendin’ him up. He’s got a motorbike runnin’ outside. Can’t have that bike outside.”

When she got to the lobby, she found a motorcycle courier in a white helmet waiting for her with a clipboard. He tipped up the visor on her approach.

“AAA?”

“Yeah,” Scarlett said, taking the clipboard and signing. She was passed a thick envelope.

“Can’t idle that bike outside my door…” Murray was saying, as Scarlett crept off to take the package upstairs. She carelessly ripped it open in the elevator, remembering her last ride upstairs one hour before, when Eric had been by her side. So this was how her brain was going to be—constant replay.

She yanked out some papers as she reached the nineteenth floor and looked at them ruefully. Some other dumb script to file somewhere on Mrs. Amberson’s desk.