In Bennis Hannaford's car, Liz Toliver's head seemed to be pounding out several beats at once, all from songs with titles that had the words “my life” in them somewhere. Bon Jovi. Billy Joel. Strong bass sessions. Lots of drums. It was true what she'd thought of back there during the day somewhere. This was the first generation in history in which every single person had a sound track for his life. They were all playing out their own particular screenplays to somebody else's music. For some reason, when she'd first said that, it had bothered her. Now it seemed entirely natural. It even seemed profound. She felt just a little drunk, and definitely giddy. She had never felt so free of Hollman in all her life.
She pulled the car around the last of the banking curves that led out to the manufactured flatland where the entrance to the Interstate was and the hotels were, too, all four of them. As soon as she did, she saw the cluster of cars standing in front of the reception door at the Radisson. There were so many of themâand they were so out of placeâthat if they'd had flashing lights she would have assumed there was a fire. Or a murder, she thought, although she didn't expect there to be another murder.
“Rats,” she said. Then, when Bennis turned her head, she nodded toward the Radisson ahead. “They've found out where we are. Really, they've found out where Jimmy is. They don't care about me, unless I've just been charged in the murder of Chris Inglerod. Do you think that's likely to have happened?”
“No,” Bennis said.
“I don't either. Let's just bull it out.”
If cell phones worked out here, Liz would have used hers to call up to Jimmy and warn him she was coming. Since they didn't, she pulled the tangerine-orange Mercedes into the nearest parking space she could find and got out. She waited for Bennis and then tossed Bennis the keys. Bennis did something that made all the doors lock.
“You really think I could get my car painted a color I like better,” Liz said. “I could just take it back to the dealership and have them do that.”
“Probably. You could take it to a decent body shop, if you know one. They'd be faster and they'd be cheaper and they'd probably be just as good. What color do you want to paint your car?”
“Lemon-yellow.” Liz looked up and through the big plate-glass windows that made up the wall that led to reception. “You ever done one of these before?”
“Not where they were interested in me,” Bennis said. “And they're still not interested in me, so that ought to be all right.”
“Unfortunately, they are interested in me and you're with me. Let me tell you what we do. We just walk in there, fast, looking straight ahead, and we don't say anything at all. Just keep moving. Get to the elevators. They won't usually follow you into the elevator because they're afraid of injunctions.”
“Injunctions?”
“Yeah. The hotels get injunctions on them. Some of the real bastards have dozens in every city they go to, but nobody's going to have any here because I can almost guarantee that none of them have ever been in Hollman before.
My God, what an awful place. Did I tell you that, that this is an awful place?”
“Several times, in the car.”
“Well, it's true. And I don't just mean because it's small. Don't let them feed you all that crap about the wholesome goodness of small-town America. Some of small-town America may be wholesomely good, but some of it is Hollman. Petty, spiteful, envious, small-minded, provincial, stultifyingâ”
“I don't know that you should be in the middle of this lecture when we hit the lobby and there are a lot of microphones around,” Bennis said.
“True,” Liz said, and they were at the lobby right this minute. They were in front of the glass doors and then inside them, out of the cold and wet and into the carefully climate-controlled atmosphere of a place that was trying very hard to be a real hotel, even if it was far out into the rural wilderness. Liz could see the reporters massed around the desk. None of them was looking in their direction. She thought there might be just a chance to make the elevators before they realized she'd come in. Then one of them turned around and made a grunt and they were all turned around, some of them shouldering cams, some of them carrying notebooks, as if anybody ever really used a notebook anymore.
“Liz,” one of them shouted.
Liz didn't turn around. She pushed her way to the reception desk and asked the shell-shocked young woman for her room key. The young woman handed it over as if it had been contaminated with the Ebola virus.
“Liz,” somebody behind her shouted. “What do you think about the arrest? Does it upset you that one of your childhood friends has just been arrested for murder?”
“Ms. Toliver,” somebody else shouted. “Can you give us your reaction to the arrest of Margaret Kennedy for the murder of Christine Barr?”
“Maiden names,” Liz said to Bennis, under her breath, without moving her lips. She marched determinedly to the
elevator, thinking about the old cliche', as if it were entirely new.
Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.
When she and Bennis got to the elevators, she stopped and pushed the call button. Of course, she didn't have the kind of luck that meant the elevator would already be right here at the proper floor.
People were still calling questions at her, and other people were photographing her. She could see the flashes as they went off behind her, reflected in the polished steel of the elevator doors. She ignored them all. There was no point in even saying “no comment.” When the elevator doors opened in front of her, she stepped inside the car and pulled Bennis after her. She turned around and punched the button for the fourth floor. She smiled. The elevator doors closed.
“Sheesh,” Bennis said. “Does that happen to you all the time? It would drive me crazy.”
“It's not me, it's Jimmy. And it doesn't even happen to him all the time anymore. I think it does happen to people who are more current. Like Madonna.”
“She can have it. This is all because of the murder?”
“The first time I got stuck in it, it was just after Jimmy and I started dating,” Liz said. “And then it was mostly because they wanted to know who it was who had Jimmy on a string. It calmed down after we did the interview for
People
magazine.”
“Right,” Bennis said.
The elevator doors opened on four. Liz stepped out and looked around. Nobody had made it upstairs yet. She went to the door to the west wing and poked her head inside. “Anthony? It's me. Us. It's okay.”
The door swung wide. Liz pulled Bennis onto the floor. Jimmy and Mark were way up at the other end of the hall. Geoff was closer, and saw her first. He came barreling down the corridor and threw himself at her.
“Mom! Mom! You're alive!”
“You didn't think I was going to be alive?” Liz said.
“Mark saidâ” Geoff turned to look.
“I did not,” Mark said. “What do you take me for?”
“We'll discuss that later,” Liz said. “What's been going on around here? Who got arrested?”
“Margaret Smith Kennedy,” Jimmy said. “At least, that's what the news bulletin said. Gregor Demarkian called and said to tell you that if the name didn't ring a bell, I should tell you it was Peggy Smith. You know a Peggy Smith, right? She was on that list you gave me to give to Demarkian?”
“Yes, she was,” Liz said. “But that's all? They arrested Peggy? They didn't arrest anybody else?”
“Not as far as I know,” Jimmy said. “What did you expect, they'd arrest the whole lot of them? I'd be more than happy if they did, mind you, but I don't think anything you've got on them could be classified as a crime. You look odd. Are you sure you're all right?”
“I've been asking her that since we left here,” Bennis said. “She's been behaving very oddly the whole time.”
“That's just so odd, that they only arrested Peggy,” Liz said, and then she let it go, because it was none of her business now. It had been none of her business for years. “Look,” she said. “Does that proposal still stand? Do you still want me to marry you?”
“You mean have I changed my mind since I asked you again this morning?” Jimmy said. “No. I know I have a reputation for being easily distractable, but I usually am much better than that. Even about breakfast food. Never mind getting married.”
“Fine,” Liz said, ignoring all the rest of it. She ignored Mark and Geoff, too, who looked like they'd frozen in place. “Do me a favor. I want to get married three weeks from Sunday, in Paris. I want a suite for the four of us at the Georges V. It's the start of the high season. Is that possible?”
“It is if I spend enough money.”
“Do you mind spending a lot of money?”
“Hell, Liz. I'd take grocery bags full of cash and throw
the contents on the street if that's what it took. Are you serious?”
“I'm very serious. I want to have the reception at that place you took me to last year, the one with the mirrorsâ”
“Voltaire's.”
“That's the one. Make your side of the guest list good. Make it very good. Do you think you could get Paul McCartney to come?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent. I always wanted to meet a Beatle. And yes, I know I shouldn't say that to his face. I want that wedding on the cover of every tabloid from New York to Hong Kong and back around again. Can we manage that?”
“We can try,” Jimmy said. “Liz, for God's sake, I'm delighted, but what's gotten into you? Are you all right?”
“Shut up,” Mark said. “You go make reservations. I'll pack.”
“Don't tell me to shut up,” Jimmy said.
“You know what she's like,” Mark said. “She'll change her mind. Make reservations. Go now.”
“Does this mean Jimmy's going to be our stepdad for real now instead of for pretend?” Geoff said.
Liz thought she ought to pursue that oneâhow long had they been playing that Jimmy was their stepdad for pretend? âbut she didn't have the heart, and she didn't mind anyway. She ran her hands through her hair. It was wet.
“I've got to call Debra,” she said. “I just fired Maris in rather dramatic terms and she needs to know about it as soon as possible. Can we leave here now? If an arrest has been made, that means we're not under suspicion anymore, right? I want to pack up and get out as soon as possible. I don't care if it's the middle of the night. Can we do that, too?”
“Sure. We'll send one of the drivers to pack up at your mother's house,” Jimmy said.
“You
fired
the ultimate bitch goddess?” Mark said.
Liz ignored him and started to hike down the hallway to her room, or the room with her suitcase in it, anyway.
None of the rooms here had ever really been her room, any more than the bedroom at her mother's house had ever been her room. Brian Wilson sang about the joys of being in the safe haven of his room, but Liz's room at home had not been a safe haven. It had been a place where her mother could get to her, just as school had been a place where the girls could get to her, so that her entire childhood and adolescence had been one long resistance to a siege. Now she felt as if it had never happenedâno, that wasn't right. It had happened, but it hadn't meant what she'd thought it meant at the time. It had never been of any importance, even while it was going on. If she had been able to understand that, it would not have been so terrible. Most of it might never have happened. It was one thing to live your life to somebody else's music. It was something else to live it by somebody else's screenplay, especially when it was such a terrible screenplay, so badly written, and so trite.
She sat down on the bed, picked up the phone, and dialed the number of the office in New York. It wasn't quite five. Debra would still be in. The phone rang and rang, and on impulse Liz got up and went over to her suitcase to rummage around in the bottom of it. There was one thing she always had with her. Even in the wake of Jay's dying, when there had been no money, when she had had no career, when they had had nothing at all, she had this, the way somebody else might have had a talisman. That was her problem in a nutshell. Other people carried lucky charms. She carried the evil totem for a voodoo curse.
She found it just as the receptionist picked up in New York, the Hollman High School
Wildcat
for 1969. She flipped open to the first page with its picture of the yearbook staff under the outsized numbers for 1969: Nancy Quayde, Chris Inglerod, Emma Kenyon, Maris Coleman, some boys she didn't recognize. She tore out the page and then tore the page itself into quarters. She flipped to the next page and the page after that and did the same thing, methodically, page after page.
“Kathy,” she said, when she'd been bid a good afternoon
in Kathy's best professional voice. “This is Liz. I need to talk to Debra for a second.”