Size 12 Is Not Fat (18 page)

Strangely enough, all I can think of at that moment is Cooper. Not, you know, how sad it is that I think he’s so hot, and he barely knows I’m alive…except, you know, for the fact that the pile of receipts on his desk keeps slowly disappearing.

No, I find myself actually praying that Cooper, wherever he is, doesn’t happen to pick up a copy of this morning’s
Post.
Because the last thing I want is him knowing I’d been making out with—and thank God this was all the
Post
had photographic evidence of—his brother on his front stoop…

I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been working in Fischer Hall for so long that I’ve sort of developed a sixth sense about these things or what. But it’s right about then that I feel something. A sudden rush of air, a shadow out of the corner of my eye, and I let go of Jordan’s hand fast and yell, “Look out!” before I’m even completely aware of what’s happening.

Then the next thing I know, there’s a sickening thudding sound, then a crash. Then dirt and sharp things are flying through the air.

When I take my arms away from my head and uncover my eyes, I’m horrified to see Jordan sprawled across the sidewalk next to his limo, a huge gash on the side of his head from which blood is pumping steadily, making a soup out of the fine layer of dirt, geraniums, and cement shards that litter the area.

I’m transfixed with shock for a second or two.

Then I’m on my knees at Jordan’s side.

“Ohmigod!” A girl who’d been standing a few feet away, trying to hail a taxi, comes running up. “Ohmigod, I saw the whole thing! It was a plant! A potted plant! It came flying down from that penthouse up there!”

“Go inside,” I say to her, in a calm voice I don’t recognize as my own, “and tell the security guard to call an ambulance and the police. Then ask the desk attendant for the first aid kit.”

The girl does as I say, wobbling on her high heels. She’s all dressed up for a job interview, but doesn’t seem to realize that she’s going to be very, very late for it.

What had that instructor said, way back when I’d first trained for this position, about CPR?

Oh, right. Stop. Look. And listen.

I stop and see with relief that Jordan’s chest is rising and falling. He’s still breathing. A pulse beats in his neck, hard and steady. He’s unconscious, but not near death—yet. The planter has struck a glancing blow, sliding down the side of his head, behind his ear, and causing a huge welt on his shoulder. His shirt is torn right through.

Blood is still coursing from the open wound on his head, though, and I’m considering whipping off my own shirt to use as a bandage—that wouldn’t make me
too
popular with the guys in the chess circle—when the limo driver comes running around the car, at the same time that Pete comes bursting through the front door of the residence hall.

“Here, Heather.” He thrusts the reception desk first aid kit at me, his dark eyes wide. “I got an ambulance on the way, too.”

“Is he dead?” the limo driver asks nervously, a cell phone to his ear. Undoubtedly he’s on with Jordan’s dad.

I hand over my envelope from Banking to Pete, then rum
mage through the first aid kit, find a rolled up Ace bandage, and shove that into the wound. It turns dark red almost immediately.

“Go get me a towel, or something,” I say to Pete, still in this strange, calm voice that sounds so unlike my own. Maybe it’s my future voice. You know, the voice I’m going to use in my medical practice, after I get my degree. “There are some linens left over from summer conference housing in the package room. Go get me a couple towels.”

Pete is off like a shot. People have started to gather around, Fischer Hall residents as well as people from the chess circle in the park. They all have plenty of medical advice to offer.

“Lift up his head,” one of the drug dealers urges me.

“No, lift up his feet,” someone else says. “If the face is red, raise the head. If the face is pale, raise the tail.”

“His face is red, mon.”

“That’s just from all the blood.”

“Hey, isn’t that Jordan Cartwright?”

Pete returns with several clean white towels. The first turns red after only a minute or so. The second seems to do the trick. Blood stops gushing out so alarmingly as I press the towel to Jordan’s head.

“How did it happen?” everyone keeps asking.

A man from the chess circle volunteers: “I saw the whole thing. You’re lucky you weren’t killed, lady. That thing was heading straight for you. If you hadn’t jumped outta the way—”

The police arrive before the ambulance, take one look at what I’m doing, and apparently approve, because the next thing I know, they’ve started shooing people away, telling them the show is over.

I say, urgently, “Take statements from the witnesses! This thing didn’t just fall, you know. Somebody pushed it!”

Everyone gathers eagerly around the policemen, wanting to tell their story. It’s right around then that Rachel comes running out of the building, her high heels clacking on the pavement.

“Oh, Heather!” she cries, picking her way through the shards of cement and clods of dirt and geranium. “Oh, Heather! I just heard. Is he—is he going to be—”

“He’s still breathing,” I say. I keep the towel pressed to the wound, which has finally stopped bleeding. “Where’s that ambulance?”

But right then it pulls up, and the EMS workers leap out and, thankfully, take over. I’m more than happy to get out of the way. Rachel puts an arm around my shoulders as we watch them take Jordan’s vital signs. One of the cops, meanwhile, goes inside, while the other one picks up one of the larger chunks of planter and looks at me.

“Who’s in charge here?” he wants to know.

Rachel says, “I guess that’d be me.”

“Any idea where this came from?” the cop asks, holding up the slab.

“Well, it looks like one of the cement planters from the Allingtons’ terrace,” Rachel replies. She turns and points up, toward Fischer Hall’s facade. “Up there,” she says, craning her neck. “Twentieth floor. The penthouse. There are planters like this lined all around the terrace.” She quits pointing and looks at me. “I can’t imagine how it could have happened. The wind, maybe?”

I feel really cold, but it isn’t from any wind. It’s as warm a day in fall as any.

Magda, who has joined us, seems to agree.

“There is no wind today,” she says. “On New York One they said it would be mild all day long.”

“None of those planters ever blew over before,” Pete says. “And I been here twenty years.”

“Well, you can’t be suggesting someone pushed it,” Rachel says, looking horrified. “I mean, the students don’t even have access to the terrace—”

“Students?” The cop squints at us. “This some kind of dorm, or something?”

“Residence hall,” both Rachel and I correct him automatically.

The EMS workers load Jordan onto a backboard, then onto a stretcher, and then into the back of the ambulance. As they are closing the doors, I glance at Rachel.

“I should go with him,” I say to her.

She gives me a little push toward the vehicle. “Of course, you should,” she says kindly. “You go. I’ll take care of things here. Call me and let me know how he is.”

I tell her I will, and hurry after the EMS guys, asking them if I can hitch a ride to the hospital with them. They’re totally cool about it, and let me take the passenger seat of the cab.

From the front seat, I can look back through this little door and see what the paramedic who isn’t driving is doing to Jordan. What he is doing to Jordan is asking him what day of the week it is. Apparently, Jordan’s regaining consciousness. He doesn’t know what day of the week it is, though, and only grunts in response, like someone who’d really like to go back to sleep.

I think about suggesting that they ask him who he’s engaged to, but then decide this would be too mean.

As we pull away from the hall, I notice that Rachel, Sarah, Pete, and Magda are all huddled on the sidewalk, gazing worriedly after me.

I realize then, with a kind of pang, that yeah, okay, maybe I don’t have a boyfriend.

But I do have a family.

A weird one, maybe.

But I’ve got one.

In the nearly four months since I started working at New York College, I’ve been to just about every emergency room in Manhattan with various sick or injured students. St. Vincent’s isn’t really one of my favorites. There’s a TV in the waiting room and everything, but it’s always turned to soap operas, and the candy machine is always out of Butterfingers.

Also, a lot of junkies go there to try to convince the triage nurse that they really need some morphine for these mysterious pains in their feet. The junkies are entertaining to watch for a while, but when they start withdrawing they get
hostile, and then the security guard has to throw them out and then they beat on the windows and in general make it very hard to concentrate on
Jane
magazine or whatever I happen to be reading.

But though the waiting room at St. Vincent’s sucks, the medical staff is excellent. They ask me all sorts of questions about Jordan that I can’t answer. But as soon as I say his full name, they whoosh him into the emergency room ahead of everybody, because, you know, even doctors have heard of Easy Street.

Visitors aren’t allowed in the ER except during the first five minutes of every hour, so I’m banished to the waiting room. But I employ my time there wisely by calling Jordan’s dad to give him the details about the accident.

Mr. Cartwright is understandably upset by the news that his most popular male solo artist—oh, and son—has been felled by a geranium planter, so I don’t take it personally when he is very curt on the phone with me. Our most recent conversation before that hadn’t gone very smoothly, either—the one where he’d told me that he’d get Jordan to dump Tania and “fly right” if I’d just quit demanding to sing my own songs on my next album.

Mr. Cartwright is kind of a jerk. Which might be why Cooper hasn’t spoken to him in almost a year.

After I hang up with Jordan and Cooper’s dad, I can’t think of anyone else to call. I guess I could let Cooper know his brother’s been hurt.

But Cooper is bound to ask what Jordan was doing at Fischer Hall in the first place. And the truth is, I’m not the world’s greatest liar. I just have this feeling Cooper will see right through any attempt on my part to pull the wool over his eyes.

So I sink into a plastic chair in one corner of the waiting
room and have fun watching other emergency patients being carted in instead of making any more phone calls. It’s just like
Trauma in the ER
, on the Learning Channel, only, you know, live. I see a jovial drunk with a bleeding hand, a frazzled mom with a baby she’s spilled her cappuccino on, a kid in a school uniform with a big cut on his chin being steered around by a nun, a construction worker with a broken foot, and a bunch of Spanish women with no visible problems who talk very loudly and get yelled at by the triage nurse.

I sit for twenty more minutes, and then the security guard announces that everyone waiting has five minutes to see their loved ones in the ER. So I herd along with the nun and the nervous mom and the Spanish ladies through the double doors and look around for Jordan.

He is unconscious again, or at least his eyes are closed, the white bandage around his head contrasting startlingly with the deep tan of his skin. (His parents have a really nice summer place in the Hamptons. The pool has a waterfall and everything.) They’d put his gurney in a pretty secluded, quiet section of the ER, and when I ask, the nurse tells me a bed is being prepared for him upstairs. They’re still waiting for his X-rays, but it looks as though a concussion is likely.

I guess I must look really worried or something since the nurse smiles at me and puts her hand on my arm and says, “Don’t worry. I’m sure he’s going to be back to doing dance moves in no time.”

In spite of the nurse’s assertion, I can’t bring myself to leave him there all alone. I can’t believe no one from his family has shown up yet! So when my five minutes of standing there and staring at Jordan are up, I go back to my plastic seat in the waiting room. I’ll stay, I decide, until he’s moved upstairs, or until a member of his family arrives. I’ll just hang out till they get here. And then—

And then I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m convinced—one hundred percent convinced, surer than I’ve ever been about anything, which I realize isn’t saying much, but whatever—that someone has just tried to kill me.

Right? I mean, hadn’t that been what the guy from the chess circle had said? “Good thing you moved, lady, or you’d have been the one it hit,” or something like that?

And the someone who pushed that planter over could only have been Christopher Allington. Who else had access to his parents’ terrace? Who else had reason to knock geranium planters onto my head? It wasn’t a premeditated attempt at murder—it couldn’t have been. How could he have known I’d be on my way back into the building right then?

No, he must have just looked down and decided fate was on his side and given that planter the heave-ho. If I hadn’t ducked, it would have hit me, and not Jordan. And it probably would have killed me, because, you know, my head isn’t anywhere near as hard as an ex-member of Easy Street’s.

But why does Chris want to kill me? Just because I suspect him of being a murderer? Suspecting someone of being a murderer and actually having proof of someone being a murderer are two entirely different things. What possible proof could Chris think I have? I mean, aside from the condom—which only proves he’s randy, not a killer—I have nothing on him. I don’t even have proof that there’ve actually
been
any murders.

So why is he trying to kill me? Isn’t he putting himself more at risk by trying to kill me than by just laying low? Especially since foul play isn’t suspected in the deaths of Elizabeth and Roberta—

By anyone but me, anyway.

A deep, familiar voice breaks in on my meditations. I look
away from the snoring junkie I’ve been staring at unseeingly, and up into Cooper’s calm, smiling face…and suddenly feel like throwing up.

“Heather,” he says, with friendly nonchalance, as he folds himself into the plastic chair beside me.

“Um.” That’s all I can think of to say. Swift, huh? After a lot of mental turmoil, I finally add, “Hi.”

Cooper gazes with mild interest at the snoring junkie. He looks, in his scruffy but form-fitting jeans and black leather jacket, good enough to eat. Better than Ho Hos, even. Cooper, I mean. Not the junkie.

“So,” he says, in the same conversational tone. “What’s new with you?”

I go cold all over, then hot. It’s totally unfair, the hold this guy has over me. And he’s never so much as asked me out! Okay, he asked me to move in with him, but, hello, that was out of pity. And I live on a whole separate floor. With a whole separate set of locks on the door. Which I’ve never actually used, but has he ever bothered to find that out? No!

“Nothing much,” I say to him, hoping he can’t see how my heart is leaping around inside my T-shirt. “Did, um, your dad call you?”

“No,” Cooper says. “Your friend Patty did. When she came to your office to pick you up for lunch, Magda told her what happened. Patty had the baby with her, or she’d have come herself.”

“Oh,” I say. I’d forgotten all about my lunch appointment with Patty. Glancing at the waiting room clock, I see that it’s after two. “Well.”

“What she couldn’t quite explain,” Cooper says, “is what, precisely, happened.”

Which is when it all comes spilling out.

I don’t want for it to. I don’t mean for it to. It’s just…
well, I guess that’s why Cooper’s such a good detective. There’s something in his deep voice that just makes you blurt out everything you know…

Well, okay, not
everything.
I did manage to keep the whole part about what Jordan and I had done on Cooper’s hallway runner under wraps. Wild horses aren’t going to drag
that
information out of me.

Oh, and the part about me wanting to, you know, peel off Cooper’s clothes with my teeth, of course.

But the rest of it just comes out in this giant gush, the way the hot chocolate in the dorm cafeteria does sometimes, right after Magda’s poured the mix in but before anybody’s stirred it…

I tell him, starting with the lip-synch the night before, when I’d first begun to suspect that Christopher Allington was Elizabeth and Roberta’s killer, and ending with the geraniums cracking Jordan’s head open, skipping over the part in between where his brother and I made the beast with two backs in his foyer.

I’ve overheard Cooper in action with his clients a couple of times. The washer/dryer is on the same floor as his office, just off the kitchen, and I’ve been in there washing my control top underwear (I only wear it on special occasions, like customer service training seminars or cultural diversity awareness workshops) when he’s met with people who’ve hired him. He talks to them in this totally calm, careful voice…

…a completely different voice, it turns out, than he uses on his nonpaying clientele.

“Heather, are you insane?” He looks really mad. He
sounds
really mad. “You went and
talked
to the guy?”

It would be nice to think that the reason he’s so angry with me is because my near brush with death has finally made him realize his true feelings for me.

But I think all it did was reinforce his suspicions that I’m a complete and total whacko.

“Why are you yelling at
me
?” I demand. “I’m the victim here!”

“No, you’re not. Jordan is. And if you’d just listened to me—”

“But if I’d listened to you, I wouldn’t know that Chris Allington is the dangerous psychopath we’ve been looking for!”

“A fact of which you still don’t have any proof.” Cooper shakes his head. He has dark, thick hair that he hardly ever gets cut and that is always growing past his collar, giving him a distinctly nonconformist air, even without the whole private eye thing. “That planter could have been knocked over by anyone. How do you know the Allingtons’ gardener wasn’t watering the plants and accidentally knocked the thing over?”

“Directly onto me? Isn’t that just a bit of a coincidence? Considering the fact that I was just questioning Chris Allington the night before?”

I swear I see the corners of Cooper’s mouth twitch at this.

“I’m sorry, Heather, but I doubt your interrogation skills are such as to goad Chris Allington into a murderous frenzy.”

Okay, Miss Marple I may not be. But he doesn’t have to rub it in.

“I’m telling you, he tried to kill me. Why don’t you believe me?” I hear myself cry, before I can shut my mouth. “Can’t you see that I’m not a stupid little teen pop star anymore, and that I might just know what I’m talking about?”

Even as the words are coming out, I’m wishing them unsaid. What am I doing?
What am I doing
? This is the guy who, without my even asking, offered me a place to live when I had nowhere to go…well, okay, except the guest room in Patty and Frank’s loft.

But, you know. Besides that. How ungrateful can I be?

“I’m so sorry,” I say, feeling dry-mouthed with panic. “I didn’t mean it. I don’t know where that came from. I’m just—I think maybe I’m just upset. You know. From the stress.”

Cooper is just sitting there, looking at me with a totally unreadable expression.

“I don’t think of you as a stupid little teen pop star” is all he says, in a tone suggesting mild surprise.

“I know,” I say quickly. Oh God, why can’t I ever seem to keep my mouth shut? WHY?

“I just worry about you sometimes,” Cooper goes on, before I can say anything else. “I mean, you get yourself into things…. That whole thing with my brother—”

What whole thing? Did he mean…my
relationship
with his brother? Or last night? Oh please, don’t let him have seen the
Post
….

“And it’s not like you have anyone.” He shakes his head again. “Any family, or anyone to look after you.”

“But neither do you,” I remind him.

“That’s different,” he says.

“I don’t see how,” I say. “I mean, except that I’m younger than you.” But what’s seven years, really? Prince Charles and Lady Diana were twelve years apart…and okay, that didn’t turn out so well, but how likely are we to repeat their mistakes as a couple? If Cooper and I ever were to become one, I mean. Neither of us even likes polo.

“Besides,” I say, remembering what I’d seen out of the ambulance window. “I do have a family. Sort of. I mean, there’s Rachel and Magda and Pete and Patty and you—”

I didn’t mean to add that last word. But there it is, floating in the air between us. You. You’re part of my family, Cooper. My new family, now that my real family members are all incarcerated or on the lam. Congratulations!

Cooper just looks at me like I’m crazy (how unusual). So I add lamely, “And Lucy, too.”

Cooper exhales slowly.

“If you really feel strongly that what happened wasn’t an accident,” he says at last, pointedly ignoring the We Are Family speech (don’t think I don’t notice), “and you really think someone is trying to kill you, then I suggest we go to the police.”

“I tried that,” I remind him. “Remember?”

“Yes. But this time I’m going with you, and I’m going to make sure—”

His voice trails off as a petite, attractive brunette comes rushing up to the waiting room desk, all breathless and leather-skirted, her left hand weighted down by a massive diamond ring.

Okay, so I can’t actually see the ring from where I’m sitting. I still know who she is. I’ve seen her with her mouth around my ex’s you-know-what. Her image will be forever burned onto my retina.

“Excuse me,” she breathes to the stony-faced receptionist. “But I believe my fiancé is here. Jordan Cartwright. When can I see him?”

Tania Trace, the woman who’d taken my place in Jordan’s heart and penthouse—not to mention my position on the music charts.

“Funny,” Cooper observes. “She looks as if she’s handling the pain quite well.”

I glance at him curiously, then remember that he’s referring to something I’d told him some time ago, after I’d first moved in.

“Oh sure,” I say. “Because she’s strung out on painkillers. But I’m telling you, Coop, you can’t have that much plastic surgery and expect to live a pain-free life. I mean, she’s been
almost completely reconstructed. In reality, she’s a size eighteen.”