What's a Girl Gotta Do (8 page)

“We may have to ask you some other
questions,” Tewfik said. “My door is always open to men with badges
and/or warrants,” I replied.

Claire was waiting for me outside in the
hallway, staring at herself in a window, and she didn’t see me when
I came out. If you ask her she’ll deny it, but looking at herself
is kind of a hobby of hers. Compliment Claire on what she’s wearing
and she looks down with some surprise, as though she never really
gave a single thought to what to wear while she was dressing, she
just “threw this on.” She likes people to think her beauty is
effortless, like if she really worked at it, really applied
herself, look out—she’d be dangerous. But I know the truth. When
she walks past any vaguely reflective surface—a mirror, a window, a
polished piece of granite—she can’t resist looking at herself. Not
only does she look at herself but, liking what she sees, she smiles
at her reflection, like she shares a secret joke with it or
something. Claire, a one-woman mutual admiration society.

“God, you’re ugly,” I said. She jumped a
little in her skin. “I didn’t see you come up. How did it go? Do
they have a case against you? Should I bring you an éclair with a
file in it?”

“I’m not a suspect. Just a witness.” When we
walked out the door into the street, lights flashed in our faces,
blinding me temporarily. I heard voices shouting at me as the
shadowy figures before me filled out and regained detail.

“Did you kill Larry Griff?” someone called
out. Another voice called, “Why did the police want you, Robin?” It
was a New York Post reporter I knew vaguely. There were a bunch of
them. Christ, I was in the middle of a gang bang, the vulgar term
the news media uses to describe a mob of journalists descending
upon an unsuspecting victim. I’d been part of the mob before, but
never the object of its affections. It was frightening.

Claire pushed me back into the building. We
said nothing. I was willing to spill a lot of stuff for the cops,
but I wasn’t fool enough to speak with the news media. Inside, a
uniformed cop, drooling over Claire, directed us to a little-known
exit.

Murphy’s Law. One step out the door and we
ran right into my devoted husband, who was staked out with his crew
on the sidewalk.

“Burke,” I said.

“Robin! What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Where’s your crew?

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Are you here on the story?” he said,
guarded.

“What story?”

“What story are you here on?” he asked. A
dialogue between reporters, all questions and no answers.

“You’re here about the Marfeles Hotel murder,
aren’t you?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I can’t believe you’re on
this story too. Kind of a funny coincidence, isn’t it?”

“Or an accident of nature, like when
masochists marry each other.”

“Robin, can’t we please be friends, or
colleagues?” he said. “Do we have to fight?”

“I’m sorry. I always mean to make nice, Burke
. . .”

“I know you do . . .”

“. . . but then I remember what a slimy piece
of shit you are and I can’t help myself.”

“For Christ’s sake, Robin, it happens,” he
said.

“Yeah yeah yeah. Life’s a bitch and then you
die.”

He took a deep breath. His eyes looked glazed
and unholy in the blue-white of the streetlight. “Yes,” he said.
“Life’s a bitch and people fall out of love with some people and
into love with other people. Quit making a federal case out of
it.”

His camera crew was watching us, amused.
Claire acted as if she wasn’t listening and pretended to be
engrossed in her reflection in a car window. We were in public and
I should have held my tongue at that point, but I didn’t.

“So, what?” I said. So just because people
have been falling out of love for centuries, just because people
have been cheating on their mates and lying to their mates since
the beginning of time, that makes it all right? Yes, it is a
federal case, in the United State of Robin and Burke. Fucking
right, it’s a federal case. It’s treason.”

“I can see there’s no reasoning with you,”
Burke said. He changed the subject. “I heard they had a suspect up
there. D’you see him go in?”

“No,” I answered truthfully. The suspect
Burke had heard about was me, and I loved that he didn’t know
it.

“Well, there was that tall guy . . . ,”
Claire interrupted, then stopped, acting as though she’d almost let
the cat out of the bag. Burke smiled, thinking he had weaseled this
out of her with his masterful reportorial technique.

“White guy?”

“Not as white as you,” I said. Let him harass
big, swarthy guys all night. I was tired and wanted to go. Before I
left he extended the olive branch. “It was nice seeing you again,
Robin.” he said. He almost got me with that voice of his, that
great damn, deep, slightly gravelly voice that made me want to
cross my legs and bounce my foot. But then I realized his motives.
Sure, he wants us to be friends, I thought. It’d make his life so
much simpler. There’s nothing Burke hates more than a loose wire,
especially one that carries high voltage, like me. Why the hell
should I go out of my way to make his life easier when he’s made
mine so crummy? So I said nothing. I smirked and turned and left
with Claire.

“Do you feel like you need to be alone, or
would you like to go somewhere and talk?” Claire said, as we hailed
a cab.

“To tell you the truth, Claire, I’m starved.
Do you want to grab something to eat?”

“Sure. I know a great vegetarian restaurant
near here.”

“How about Old Homestead? Expand your
horizons.” Old Homestead was a minor New York landmark, an old
steak house off Fourteenth Street. She just laughed. Claire and I
were friends and colleagues who liked and respected each other and
agreed on almost everything. But food was one of those areas where
Claire and I just didn’t agree. I still ate red meat, although not
more than once a week, but Claire had opted out of the food chain
and ate only fruits and vegetables, which included large quantities
of green leafy things, lots of seaweed stews, and whole platters of
cooked grain.

The restaurant she took me to, Tatiana’s, was
one of those converted diners so popular among the Unrepentant
Yuppies of New York City. It gleamed of chrome and neon and looked
like an art deco railway car that might break loose from its
moorings at any moment and go careening down First Avenue. It was
upscale vegetarian—no leftover hippies with ponytails, jeans, and
acoustic guitars in this joint. They knew Claire at the door, but
then she never took me anywhere where they didn’t know her.

“You’ll like the food,” Claire said as we
opened our menus. “Besides, they have eggs and dairy so you can
have a cheese omelet if you like.”

Frankly, I find vegetarian restaurants are to
a gourmet dining experience what Christian them parks are to
Amsterdam nightlife, but I try to stay open-minded. A waiter came
over and reeled off the nights specials, which included tofu
fritters served in a pool of sorrel essence and a ground millet
mousse in a light orange sauce, which is what Claire ordered. I
ordered the cheese omelet.

“Are you worried?” she asked me.

“Naturally. Whoever killed that guy is still
out there, and might have some information about me I’d rather
people didn’t know.”

“Think maybe it’s just that fan of yours,
Elroy?”

“Nah. He’s been my fan for five years now.
God, come to think of it, that’s one of my longest relationships
with a man. Anyway, he doesn’t want to hurt me, he wants me to hurt
him. Now, Christine Muke, she’s got a whole harem of disturbed
fans.” Christine, was one of our prime-time anchors, an
aristocratic-looking black woman with a voice so sultry “men in the
deep arctic instinctively mop their brows when they hear it” (TV
Guide).

“Remember that guy in brown polyester pants
with rubber bands around the cuffs?” I asked. “The one who claimed
if he and Christine didn’t merge--”

“Fuse. He said they had to fuse together or
else the planet would blow up.”

“Yeah. I dunno, maybe Elroy did hire Griff.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but then who else would be so
interested in my past? And was it just me this guy Griff was on
to?”

While we waited for our food, I played the
tape of my interrogation for her.

“You think someone at ANN killed the guy,
don’t you?” she asked.

“I don’t know. But I think he had the goods
on someone else and that’s why he picked the Marfeles Palace that
night.”

“Well, like you told the cops, he could have
been investigating anybody, or everybody. But why?”

“And why me? It’s not like I have power or
money—or influence for that matter, not while I’m in Special
Reports.” “

Well, you’re off the hook with the cops,
anyway,” she said. “Too bad the news media was there. .. .”

“Enough about my petty problems. They’re too
depressing,” I said. “You wanted to talk about that reporter
spot?”

“It can wait. The Browner job may not come to
pass anyway. I would like to get away from Jerry, but I like
working with you. We’re a good team.”

Yes, we were, but I harbored few illusions
about it lasting very long. Claire assisted me, but she was looking
far beyond me and one day would cheerfully and politely leapfrog
over me. Claire was great at finding the story, the right people to
interview, those proverbial pictures worth a thousand words. She
was fantastic in the edit room, putting sound and pictures
together, and she had two important attributes I lacked, confidence
and poise.

Our food came. “Mmm, little chicken embryos
whipped into a froth and fried,” I said. “Speaking of Spurdle, you
know what McGravy told me today? Jerry wants me in Special
Reports.”

“McGravy’s right. Jerry’s not doing you a
favor by letting you live out your exile there. He’s got personal
reasons,” she said wickedly. “He likes you.”

“That’s what I don’t understand. I give him
shit all day long.”

“He’s in love with you,” Claire said,
matter-of-factly.

“Give me a fucking break.”

Claire smiled. I think she was enjoying my
discomfort with this idea.

“He’s in love with you, Robin,” she said. “He
thinks he can bring you around, like in some Tracy-Hepburn flick
where the spunky career woman at war with her boss realizes she’s
really in love with him and falls into his arms and French kisses
him in the last scene and . . .”

“Oh! Stop! That’s so gross. Don’t say French
kiss and Jerry in the same sentence when a girl’s trying to
eat!”

“Sorry.”

“Ugh, ugh,” I said, trying to spit the very
idea out before it attached itself to my subconscious.

“Well, anyway, they live happily ever after
and have sex every night and breed little Spurdles,” Claire
continued.

“Stop!”

“What do you think Jerry’s like in bed?” she
went on mercilessly.

“Oh jeez. Oh God. Ick. What’s he like in bed?
Ugh. Like chiggers, maybe.”

“Okay,” Claire said. “What about this? If you
had to either have sex with Jerry Spurdle or else do a really gross
thing, what’s the worst thing you’d do before you’d have sex with
Jerry?” Claire often came up with peculiar riddles involving a
choice between two or three hellish options. Another of her riddles
was, would you rather look good and smell bad, or smell good and
look bad?

“I’d rather eat live insects by the handful,”
I said. “Of course, unlike you, I am a meat eater.”

Claire shrugged. “I think it’s kind of sweet
that someone as disgusting and venal as Jerry Spurdle can still
entertain a romantic fantasy.”

“Oh God. It really bugs me to think that I am
in Jerry’s fantasies. I wonder what I do in them. Ugh. Something
truly foul, I’m sure.” I put down my fork, my appetite
irretrievably spoiled. “If I have a sex dream about Jerry tonight,
Claire, I am going to blame you.”

She leaned back and laughed. I have romantic
fantasies too—in fact I think a minimum of four are required just
to get through the average day—but mine do not include Jerry. I
have to admit a bit of inverted sexism, in that I often look on men
as sex objects. I can’t help it. When I meet an interesting man, I
automatically wonder what it would be like to have sex with him.
Men are not only sex objects, but they are sex objects also. The
thing is, I still sort of believed in love. I was kind of agnostic
about love, actually, but I hadn’t lost hope completely. I was
waiting for the feminist wet dream, Spencer Tracy. And while I was
waiting, great looks and a great bod could tide me over nicely. But
Spurdle was not Spencer Tracy and I’d be hard-pressed to find any
Hollywood counterpart for Jerry that walked on two legs and had
opposable thumbs.

Later, as I rode home from Tatiana’s in a
creaky taxicab with bad shocks, I thought about how I’d married the
wrong man, which meant maybe the right man was still out there
somewhere.

So was the killer.

When I got home, I turned ANN on to keep me
company while I brushed Louise Bryant. The Greg Browner Show was
on—the Hawaii version, a taped repeat of the evening show that
played during prime time in Hawaii. It made good white noise.

“Topeka, Kansas, on the line. What’s your
question for Jack Kemp, Topeka?” Greg said in his warm way.

“Greg, my husband and I think you should run
for office in ninety-six.” Browner got several calls like this
every night. Some of the Perotist carpetbaggers, who had wandered
in the wilderness for many months since their man’s defeat in ’92,
had tried to get Browner to pick up the Independence banner. But
Browner refused to run, elevating himself above the fray and giving
his show-ender commentaries greater credibility.

But for every call of support he got, he got
one like his next call.