“Um, hi,” my ex-fiancé says. “This message is for Heather. Heather, I’ve been trying to reach you on your cell as well as your work phone. I guess I keep missing you. Could you call me back as soon as you get this message? I have something really important I need to talk to you about.”
Wow. It really must be important, if he’s calling me on Cooper’s house line. Cooper’s family haven’t spoken to him for years—since they learned the family patriarch, Cartwright Records founder Arthur Cartwright, had left his black sheep grandson his West Village brownstone, a prime piece of New York City real estate (valued at eight million dollars). Relations hadn’t exactly been warm before that, though, thanks to Cooper’s refusal to enter the family business (specifically, Cooper refused to sing bass in Easy Street, the boy band his father was putting together).
In fact, if it wasn’t for me—and my best friend Patty and her husband Frank—Cooper would have spent Christmas and New Year’s by himself (not that the prospect of this seemed to have bothered him very much), instead of basking in the warm glow of family…well, Patty’s family, anyway, my own family being either incarcerated (Dad) or on the lam with my money (Mom. It’s actually probably good I’m an only child).
Still, I’d found during the years I’d dated Cooper’s brother that what was important to Jordan was rarely important to me. So I don’t exactly scoop up the phone and call him right back. Instead, I listen to the rest of the messages—a series of hang-ups: telemarketers, no doubt—and then head back out into the cold toward St. Vincent’s.
Now that I want one, of course I can’t find a cab, so I have to hoof it the five or six blocks (avenue blocks, not short street blocks) to the hospital. But that’s okay. We’re supposed to get a half hour of exercise a day, according to the government. Or is it an hour? Well, whatever it is, five blocks in bitter cold seem more than enough. By the time I get to the hospital, my nose and cheeks feel numb.
But it is warm in the waiting room—if chaotic…though not as much as it normally is: the weather forecast has apparently frightened most of the hypochondriacs into staying home—and I’m able to find a seat with ease. Some kindly nurse has turned the channel on the waiting room television set from Spanish soaps to New York One, so everyone can keep abreast of the coming storm. All I need to get comfy is a little hot cocoa—and I come by that easily enough, by slipping some coins into the coffee vending machine—and some breakfast.
Food, however, is less easy to come by in the St. Vincent’s ER waiting room, unless I’m willing to settle for Funyuns and Milk Duds from the candy machine. Which, under ordinary circumstances, I would be.
But in light of this morning’s events, my stomach is feeling a little queasy, and I’m not sure it can handle a sudden influx of salt and caramel with its usual ease.
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Plus, it’s five of the hour…the time when the security guards open the ER doors and allow each patient inside to have visitors. In the case of my student, that visitor would be me.
Of course, when I need it, I can’t find the slip of paper Tom had handed to me, the one with the student’s name and ID number on it. So I know I’ll have to wing it when I get into the ER. Hopefully there won’t be that many twenty-one-year-olds in there, sleeping off way too many birthday shots from the night before. I figure the nurses might be able to help me out….
But in the end, I don’t need any help. I recognize my student the minute I lay eyes on him, stretched out on a gurney beneath a white sheet.
“Gavin!”
He groans and buries his face in his pillow.
“Gavin.” I stand beside the gurney, glaring down at him. I should have known. Gavin McGoren, junior, filmmaking student, and the biggest pain-in-the-butt resident in Fischer Hall: Who else would keep my boss up all night?
“I know you’re not asleep, Gavin,” I say severely. “Open your eyes.”
Gavin’s lids fly open. “Jesus Christ, woman!” he cries. “Can’t you see I’m sick?” He points at the IV
sticking out of his arm.
“Oh, please,” I say disgustedly. “You’re not sick. You’re just stupid. Twenty-one shots, Gavin?”
“Whatever,” he mutters, folding his IV-free arm over his eyes, to block out the light from the fluorescents overhead. “I had my boys with me. I knew I’d be all right.”
“Your boys,” I say disparagingly. “Oh, yeah, your boys took great care of you.”
“Hey.” Gavin winces as if the sound of his own voice hurts. It probably does. “They brought me here, didn’t they?”
“Dumpedyou here,” I correct him. “And left. I don’t see any of them around anymore, do you?”
“They had to go to class,” Gavin says blearily. “Anyway, how would you know? You weren’t here. It was that other tool from the hall office—where’d he go?”
“If you mean Tom, the hall director,” I say, “he had to go deal with another emergency. You’re not our only resident, you know, Gavin.”
“What are you riding on me for?” Gavin wants to know. “It’s my birthday.”
“What a way to celebrate,” I say.
“Whatevs. Not for nothing, but I was filming it for a class project.”
“You’re always filming yourself doing something stupid for a class project,” I say. “Remember the reenactment you did of the scene fromHannibal ? The one with the cow brain?”
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He lifts his arm to glare at me. “How was I supposed to know I’m allergic to fava beans?”
“It might surprise you to know, Gavin,” I say, as my cell phone vibrates in my coat pocket, “that Tom and I actually have better things to do than hold your hand every time you pull some stunt that ends up with you in the emergency room.”
“Like what?” Gavin asks, with a snort. “Let those ass-kissing RAs suck up to you some more?”
It is very hard for me not to tell Gavin about Lindsay. How can he lie there, feeling so sorry for himself—especially after having done something so incredibly stupid to get himself into this position in the first place—when back in the building a girl is dead, and we can’t even find her body?
“Look, can you just find out when I can get out of here?” Gavin asks, with a moan. “And spare me the lectures, for once?”
“I can,” I say, only too happy to leave him to himself. Among other things, he doesn’t smell too good.
“Do you want me to call your parents?”
“God, no,” he groans. “Why would I want you to dothat ?”
“Maybe to let them know how you celebrated your birthday? I’m sure they’ll be very proud….”
Gavin pulls the pillow over his head. I smile and go over to one of the nurses to discuss the possibility of his being released. She tells me she’ll see what the doctor says. I thank her and go back out into the waiting room, pulling out my cell phone to see who called me…
…and am thrilled to see the wordsCartwright, Cooper on my cell phone’s screen.
I’m even more thrilled when, a second later, a voice says, “Heather.”
And I look up and find myself staring into the eyes of the man himself.
4
I remember when there was a time That what I needed didn’t cost a dime But now I’m older, what can I say? If it’s not Gap, then there’s no way.
Untitled
Written by Heather Wells
Oh, whatever. So I’m in love with him, and he has shown absolutely zero interest in reciprocating my feelings. So what? A girl can dream, right?
And at least I’m dreaming about someone age-appropriate, since Cooper’s over thirty—a decade older than Barista Boy.
And it’s not like Cooper’s earning minimum wage in some coffee shop. He owns his own business.
And, okay, he won’t actually TELL me what it is he does all day, because he seems to think it’s not fitting for someone of my tender sensibilities to know….
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But that just means he cares, right?
Except that I know he cares. Why else would he have asked me to move in with him (well, into the top-floor apartment of his brownstone, anyway) after Jordan kicked me out (even though Jordan maintains he did no such thing, that I’m the one who left. But, I’m sorry, he was the one who let Tania Trace fall face first into his crotch—in our own apartment, no less. Who wouldn’t interpret something like that as an invitation to leave)?
But Cooper’s made it VASTLY clear that he only cares about me as a friend. Well, insofar as he has never hit on me, anyway.
And, okay, Cooperdid sort of mention once—when I was in a state of severe shock from having been nearly murdered, and was only semiconscious—that he thinks I’m a nice girl.
But am I really supposed to think of that as a good thing? I mean,nice ? Guys never go for nice girls.
They go for girls like Tania Trace, who, in the video for her last single, “Bitch Slap,” was rolling around in an oil slick wearing nothing but leather panties and a wife-beater.
They don’t MAKE leather panties in my size. I’m pretty sure.
Still, there’s always a chance Cooper isn’t the leather panties type. I mean, he’s already proved he’s nothing like the rest of the family by being so nice to me. Maybe there’s hope. Maybe that’s why he’s here at the hospital right now, to tell me that he can’t stand to be without me a second more, and that his car is waiting outside to whisk us to the airport for a Vegas wedding and a Hawaiian honeymoon—
“Hey,” Cooper says, holding up a paper bag. “I figured you hadn’t eaten. I brought you a sandwich from Joe’s.”
Oh. Well, okay. It’s not a Vegas wedding and a Hawaiian honeymoon.
But it’s a sandwich from Joe’s Dairy, my favorite cheese shop! And if you’ve ever tried Joe’s smoked mozzarella, you know it’s just as good as a Hawaiian honeymoon. Possibly better.
“How’d you know I was here?” I ask dazedly, taking the bag.
“Sarah told me,” Cooper says. “I called your office when I heard what happened. It was on the police scanner.”
“Oh.” Of course. Cooper listens to a police scanner while he’s on stakeouts. That or jazz. He’s a nut for Ella Fitzgerald. If Ella wasn’t dead, I’d be jealous.
“Aren’t your clients going to wonder where you are?” I ask. I can’t believe he’s blowing off a case for me.
“It’s okay,” Cooper says with a shrug. “My client’s husband is occupied for the moment.” I don’t even bother asking what he means, since I know he won’t tell me. “I was going for lunch, anyway, and I figured you hadn’t eaten,” he says.
My stomach rumbles hungrily at the wordlunch . “I’m famished,” I confess. “You’re a lifesaver.”
“So.” Cooper leads me to an empty set of orange plastic seats in the waiting room. “What’s the kid in
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for?”
I glance at the emergency room doors. “Who, Gavin? Chronic stupidity.”
“Gavin again, huh?” Cooper produces two Yoo-Hoos from his parka pockets and hands me one. My heart lurches. YOO-HOOS! God, I love this man. Who wouldn’t? “If that kid lives to graduation, I’ll be surprised. So. How you hanging in there? I mean, with the dead girl.”
I’ve sunk my teeth into the crunchy baguette—filled with freshly made smoked mozzarella, garlicky roasted peppers, and sun-dried tomatoes. It is impossible to speak after that, of course, because the inside of my mouth is having an orgasm.
“I actually put in a call,” Cooper goes on, seeing that my mouth is full (though ignorant, hopefully, of all the fireworks going on inside of it), “to a friend at the coroner’s office. They got over there pretty quickly, you know, on account of business being slow, thanks to this storm we’re supposed to get. Anyway, they’re pretty sure she was dead well before she was…well, you know.”
Decapitated. I nod, still chewing.
“I just thought you’d want to know,” Cooper goes on. He’s unwrapping a sandwich of his own.
Prosciutto, I think. “I mean, that she didn’t…suffer. They’re pretty sure she was strangled.”
I swallow. “How can they tell?” I ask. “Considering…well, there’s no neck?”
Cooper has just taken a bite of his own sandwich as I ask this. He chokes a little, but manages to get it down.
“Discoloration,” he says, between coughs. “Around the eyes. It means she quit breathing before death occurred, due to strangulation. They call it vagal inhibition.”
“Oh,” I say. “Sorry.” I mean about making him choke.
He swills some Yoo-Hoo. As he does, I have a chance to observe him without his noticing. He hasn’t shaved this morning…not that it matters. He’s still one of the hottest-looking guys I’ve ever seen. His five o’clock—more like noon—shadow just makes the angular planes of his face more defined, bringing into even more definition his lean jaw and high cheekbones. Some people—like his father, Grant Cartwright—might think Cooper needs a haircut.
But I like a guy with hair you can run your fingers through.
You know, if he’d let you.
Still, though to me that slightly overlong dark hair gives him the appearance of a friendly sheepdog, Cooper must strike an imposing figure to others. This becomes obvious when a homeless guy carrying a bottle in a paper bag, coming into the hospital to get out of the cold for a little while, spies an empty chair next to me and wanders toward it…
…only to change his mind when he gets a look at Cooper’s wide shoulders—made even more intimidating-looking by the puffiness of his anorak—and massive Timberlands.
Cooper doesn’t even notice.
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“They think she’d been there awhile,” he says, having successfully forced down whatever it was he’d been choking on. “On the, er, stove. Since before dawn, at least.”
“God,” I say.
But though back in the dorm—I mean, residence hall—I couldn’t think about what had happened to Lindsay without feeling a wave of nausea, I have no trouble finishing my sandwich. Maybe it’s because I reallywas starving.