The Never Never Sisters (16 page)

THAT SUMMER I
was not so distracted by what my mother hadn’t divulged that I’d forgotten one of
the things she had: when you’re doing something bold, trick yourself into thinking
you’re doing something ordinary.

She had taught me this before my first day of first grade, when we’d moved neighborhoods
into a new school district and I didn’t know anyone. I don’t remember Sloane—she must
have been off somewhere stamping her fruit. What I remember is my mother turning around
from the front seat of our wood-paneled wagon. “This is very brave what you’re doing,”
she said. “New things are hard, but you want to know the secret to making them easy?
Act like starting school is just no big deal, and you’ll fake your brain into thinking
it’s true.”

No big deal is what I thought when I fished through Dave’s wallet, left out on the
counter in the kitchen, to lift his Duane Covington ID.

No big deal is what I thought when I knocked on the bathroom door a little before
seven thirty and told him I was heading out.

“Getting closer to cracking the case?”

I pulled on a cardigan to give myself time before asking, “What?”

“Why Sloane hates you all so much. You were wrong about the tension, by the way. From
what I saw at breakfast, things are not better.”

“I wasn’t wrong. She’s changing.”

“Granted, she doesn’t seem to hate you. But your parents”—he shivered—“you could cut
that with a knife. Maybe she’ll tell you why. Maybe you can ask her tonight at acupuncture.”

“I think we each get our own room.”

“Oh, Paige.” He whistled a song I immediately recognized—“My Lovin’ (You’re Never
Gonna Get It).” I was sure he was trying to be cute, but it made me want to give him
the finger.

The first time I broke into Duane Covington—with Dave’s permission—I worried through
the whole thing. What if I brought home the wrong document? What if the security guards
caught me and gave me a hard time? What if I bumped into someone who knew I didn’t
belong there? The worry was for naught—getting in was easy; I appeared to fit in so
much that the guard didn’t even raise his head when I passed through the turnstile.
I’d wandered through the spookily empty firm until I found Dave’s office, grabbed
the fifty-pound document and lugged the thing home, triumphant.

No big deal, I thought, as I walked down Madison to Fifty-ninth Street. Duane Covington’s
lobby cast a cool white glow through the glass wall of windows. From across the plaza,
fifty feet away, the dark-uniformed security guard looked like one character typed
on a blank sheet of paper—one ominous character. Dave was suspended, I remembered
right then; the magnetized ID card I’d lifted from his wallet earlier, which now sat
curled up in my sweaty palm, might not work. I could use it, and the light box lobby
would swarm with dark-uniformed guards—an alphabet soup. I almost turned around.

I was sure the security guard noticed that my smile was lopsided. I was sure he heard
my heart beating as I palmed Dave’s photo and held the card just so against the blinking
red light on the turnstile. Waiting. Waiting.

He rustled, and I shifted the card to the right a little.

Magic.

The turnstiles opened and I walked quickly, sighing, now cool enough to pretend to
be an overworked associate drawn into the office on a Saturday night. I was in, and
that’s when I thought,
No big deal
, and started to believe it.

I took the elevator up to the twentieth floor, to the office of Hedda Brynn, human
resources director, the one who had been in Dave’s meeting. It had been easy to find
out—a quick flip through the pages of Dave’s directory.

The double frosted-glass doors separating the elevator banks from the offices were
locked, so I pressed Dave’s key card against the black thing blinking with a stern
red light: Darth Vader’s mezuzah. There was a click, the red dot turned an inviting
green, and I was in the hall, the low fluorescent lights illuminating the corridor
to a dull shade of gray.

Hedda’s hallway was empty, and only one other office light was on, the occupant’s
jean jacket draped on the back of her chair. I pressed down on the long, matte silver
doorknob until I felt the gentle click of release and then pushed against Hedda’s
door with my shoulder, stepping into total darkness. My eyes adjusted in a few seconds,
helped by the skyscraper lights outside and a huge neon sign, its red light straining
through the closed shades. A mechanical whir, the sound of something starting up,
caused me to freeze. An alarm? Had I triggered something? Footsteps passed in front
of the door, and I heard paper shuffling. A printer.

I waited for silence, forcing myself to count to one hundred and eighty as my eyes
skirted around the office. The red light gave the room an Amsterdam feel, until I
saw the panda bears. Hedda Brynn was a fan, apparently; they were everywhere—smiling
from framed pictures on her wall and playfully posing on her calendar.

The file cabinet against her wall, dotted with panda magnets, was locked, as was the
top desk drawer. The bottom drawers were open but useless: multicolored files, blank
employment forms, rubber bands in a ball, staplers.

I sank down in Hedda’s chair, my lower back supported by a chair pad with a panda
bear patch sewn onto it. Hedda obviously had not seen the nature documentary Dave
and I had watched that spring: pandas looked cute, we learned, but they were capable
of murder. Or maybe she knew that. Maybe Hedda selected panda collectibles instead
of, say, bunnies, as a threat to those rule breakers nervously bouncing their legs
in her guest chairs.

My momentum for the mission was obviously fading. I rested my hands on Hedda’s desk,
and my left one landed on something soft—a file folder that I’d mistaken for part
of the blotter.

I skimmed the handwritten notes inside—they were barely legible, all written in a
bubbly script in some sort of shorthand. About halfway through I saw it: one sheet.
June 30
,
DT/AP Annie P. DT. NS? Hour meeting, 3 x. notified corp. dept. (phone), Stuben (phone).
Implement handbook policy.

DT—Dave’s initials—and the date was one day before his breakdown, so I copied it into
the little notepad I had brought.

What else, what else? My eyes darted around for a minute. All I saw was an army of
thug pandas, eyes narrowed and claws bared at me.

I opened the door, peeked out and bolted toward the elevator bank, riding it down
to the lobby. When the doors opened, I was still charged with adrenaline, so I didn’t
get out. I pressed the button for twenty, and as I did, Dave called my cell phone.
I hit the
IGNORE
button and pressed twenty again.

I walked there quickly, just as he had twelve days before. I half expected yellow
police tape around his door, but his office looked like all the others, just a shade
neater. He had a magnifying glass on the desk (really, Dave?), clean legal pads stacked
on top and two photos, one of us from our wedding—our walk back down the aisle, fingers
entwined—and his favorite of me, the one from our Bermuda trip, where my sunglasses
sat atop my head and my hair had streaks of bright blond from the sun.

I opened the desk drawers. Blank notepads, everything neat in its place. In the top
desk drawer, there was a notepad, dated from last week, with Dave’s squared-off handwriting.

I was about to leave when I decided, for good measure, to go through the Redweld folders
leaned against his windowsill. They were labeled, typed italicized titles declaring
the matter on the back tab.
Messinger Co. Frederick Trust.
And then, three in a row:
Mission Bank. Mission Bank. Mission Bank
.

It took a moment to sink in.

And then, in a relentless
whoosh
, it did. My legs buckled at the knees and I flopped down to the floor, my legs splayed
in front of me like those of some six-year-old’s Barbie Doll. I sat for a moment staring
at the frayed beige carpet before forcing myself into frantic action. I opened the
folders, flipping past e-mail and binders and organizational flow charts and Dave’s
handwritten notes. I couldn’t have understood them if I’d had limitless time, and
I finally bolted, bumping into one person on the way back to the elevator bank, a
guy so riveted by something on his phone that he didn’t even look up.

I felt safe only when I was out on the plaza. I sat at one of the white metal tables
for a beat, looking for Sloane, who was supposed to meet me there. I checked my phone.
There was a text from an unknown number—
hi cab we
taincjek?
For a moment I tried to find some meaning: did I know anyone who spoke Serbian? Was
it a botched autocorrection? Clients sometimes sent late-night flares, but I had my
limits—tonight, if they couldn’t bother to self-identify, I wasn’t about to reply.
No,
I decided,
no “hi cab we taincjek
.” At least not right now.

I texted Sloane and waited for a moment, but she didn’t write back, which miffed me
a little, given how involved she’d made herself. Whatever. This was probably how Sloane
operated, either coming on strong or disappearing completely.

I called back Dave.

“How were the needles?” His voice was far away.

“The needles?”

“Isn’t that what they use in acupuncture?”

“Sorry. Little light-headed. I’ll be coming home soon.”

“Where are you guys?”

“Midtown.”

He chuckled. “No, I mean—where.”

“On Fifth Avenue. I got sidetracked a bit. Window-shopping.”

“Ahhh.”

“I didn’t buy anything. Do you need something?”

“Are you okay? You sound a little cranky.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Okay. I was about to order food. Are you guys eating?”

I was hungry. But the last thing I could imagine was sitting at our dining table,
forking dumplings into my mouth and pretending I’d been anywhere else. “No, thanks.”

“When will you be back?”

“In a little bit.” I hung up the phone abruptly. There was a restaurant across the
street with warm yellow lighting, tables on the sidewalk and people spilling out.
I had never been inside.

The lively scat and roar of the diners’ conversations swept me up as soon as I opened
the door. It was an Italian place, big jars of olives and curly dried pasta lining
shelves against the wall, the enveloping smell of garlic. I wanted—needed—something
warm to eat, so I found a seat at the bar and ordered some penne and a glass of wine.

I took out my steno pad and stared at Hedda’s notes. Now, in the bright glow of the
restaurant, I saw them for what they were: a collection of meaningless letters. My
eyes blurred until everything was fuzzy, as if I were straining to see the tiniest
line of the eye chart.

The real news was Mission Bank.

I HAD SLIPPED
out of bed early and was pulling on a sports bra when Dave started to stir.

“You are the earliest freaking early bird of all the early birds.” Dave grabbed one
of the pillows from my side of the bed and plopped it down on his head as if suffocating
himself. “Why are you out of bed at”—he reemerged and looked at the clock—“six forty-five?”

“Beat the heat.”

“Great idea.” He jumped out of bed and stretched his arms over his head.

“Wait. You’re coming?” We hadn’t been running together in almost a year. “Will you
be able to keep up?”

He threw the pillow at me. “Will
you
be able to keep up?”

“Um, given that I exercise almost daily and your rate is about”—I squinted—“once a
month, I think I can match any sputtering pace you manage.”

“I accept.”

“You accept what?”

“I accept the gauntlet that you just threw down.”

I hadn’t been trash-talking, but it was easier to pretend that I had, so I briefly
shadowboxed and left to brush my teeth. He walked into the bathroom a minute later,
his shoes tied. “Whenever you’re ready.” He leaned against the wall, watching me pull
on my socks. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to avoid me. You
come in late; you get up early.”

“Are you kidding me? You’ve been holed up in your office for the past week and a half.
No, for the past four months. What am I supposed to do? Wait around?”

“Paige, calm down.” He put both his hands on my shoulders. “I was just joking.”

“Oh. Right.” We walked down the hall to the elevator, where we stood silently, watching
the LED panel broadcasting the floors we passed.

It was not a good day for a run; the humidity was so strong that I could feel my hair
bunch and curl immediately. I clipped off at a pace faster than usual, though, as
soon as my feet touched the sidewalk. Dave matched my stride, but I could tell from
his breathing and the way he grimaced that it was a struggle. “You okay?”

“Great.” He pushed out the word like a grunt.

We got into the park, our feet clopping in unison. I was annoyed not to have my solitude;
the plan for this run had been for me to think about the night before.

I barely registered that when we got to the hill at Ninety-sixth Street, Dave picked
up the pace.

I turned toward him, eyebrows raised. “Really?”

“What’s the matter?” he said. “Too fast?”

“Kamikaze mission.” We ran in silence after that, working too hard for speech, accelerating
through the hills of the upper loop even as the sogginess of the air made us work
harder than normal. By the time we got to the reservoir, we were all-out sprinting.
I wasn’t about to quit, even though I wanted to, but when we traversed up to the reservoir
gate, Dave stopped abruptly, pulling my shirt so I’d stop too.

“Holy shit,” he said, gasping for breath and bending over his knees. “Holy shit. That
was fast.”

Even though my heart was racing and I wanted to collapse, I shrugged.

“Come on,” he said. “You’re kidding.”

I just smiled. “I usually do five miles. That was only three.”

“Just give me a moment.”

I laughed, patting Dave’s back when I saw it from the other direction: a flash of
familiar blond hair, a slice of cheekbones. Percy. Swear to god, the man was shimmering,
the sunlight tripping all over itself to illuminate him. Perhaps it was my lost footing
with Dave, perhaps it was my light-headedness because my lungs were still recovering
from our mad sprint, but I couldn’t turn my gaze away.

Something made Percy recognize me, slow down and glance past me to Dave, who was standing
upright, pressing his index finger deep into his side cramp.

I blushed beneath my already reddened cheeks, but managed to meet Percy’s eye and
shake my head subtly.
No
.

“What?” Dave looked around and caught Percy, who sped up and was about ten feet away,
watching us. “Who’s that guy?”

“I don’t know.”

He draped an arm, warm with sweat, around my shoulder. “He was totally checking you
out.”

“I don’t think so.” I didn’t correct him and point out that I’d been the one doing
the ogling. “I think he was wondering if you were okay, or if you needed medical attention
from running too fast for your own good.”

“No, he was admiring my form and how in shape I am.” He removed his arm, and then
it was safe to turn around, so we both did, watching Percy’s retreating back.

Dave wasn’t acting like someone with a secret. Maybe there was nothing untoward about
his workload. Maybe he hadn’t lied to me at all. Maybe my gut sense was broken.

Regardless, I was now lying to him.