Count My Lies

Chapter 5

5

I race back to the spa, giddy, arrive out of breath. I’m late; I’ve been gone for an hour, well over my allotted thirty-minute break. Lena won’t be pleased. She despises tardiness.

I pause at the front door, wiping sweat from my brow. Through the glass, I can see Chloe at the reception desk, sipping a to-go coffee. When she notices me, she motions for me to come in. I inhale deeply, trying to slow my breathing, then step inside.

I’m distracted, scanning the spa for Lena, when Chloe stops me. “You have a deluxe pedicure waiting,” she says. “She was booked with Natasha, but Natasha had to squeeze in a walk-in, and she’s not done yet.” I catch the annoyance in her voice. I should have been here to cover the walk-in, she means; I am the wrench in the schedule.

“Sure, no problem.” A quick glance toward my station tells me the client is already seated, feet soaking. “Let me just grab my cart.”

I duck my head as I beeline toward the back of the spa, trying to keep a low profile. If I hadn’t been in such a hurry, maybe I would have taken a closer look at the woman in my chair. I should have.

I relax when I reach the break room and see that Lena’s office door is shut. She’s not here. She doesn’t close it when she is, leaving it open even if she’s on a personal call, her baritone voice audible throughout the spa. I deposit my purse in my cubby and take a minute to compose myself.

I redo my bun, smoothing my flyaways, then grab my tiered roller, push it over to my station. The waiting woman is reading, her head hidden behind an open hardcover book. A thin bracelet is looped around her right wrist, one delicate green gemstone dangling. I see it, but fail to place it.

“Do you have a color picked out?” I ask, smiling up at her. What happens next feels like it’s in slow motion.

As the woman lowers her book, the first thing I notice is her hair. A surprising flash of red, her ponytail draped over one shoulder, bright auburn. Goosebumps prickle the back of my neck. I know the color, that shade. It’s then, my stomach clenching, that I finally look at her face. High cheekbones; a heart-shaped mouth; a thin, sloped nose. It’s her. She looks exactly the same, even though over a year has passed. The blood drains from my cheeks. I feel like I might faint. If I wasn’t already seated, my knees would have buckled beneath me. What is Allison doing here?

She recognizes me at the same time I recognize her. My surprise is mirrored in her face, her mouth dropping open, her blue eyes wide, almost bulging.

She has the same thought as I do. She doesn’t have to say it for me to know; I can see it plain as day. What is she doing here?

I open my mouth—to say something, anything—but she springs into action before I have the chance to speak. She jerks her bare feet out of the basin, water sloshing over the sides. The surprise on her face has turned into something else, a mélange of anger and fear, a chocolate-and-vanilla swirl.

“I told you to stay away from me!” she says, high-pitched and shrieky. She’s scrambling for her purse, struggling to hook the strap over her shoulder.

I glance around desperately. Natasha is staring at me, other patrons craning their necks. It’s noisy in the spa—Chloe on the phone, the other line ringing, women chatting—but Allison’s voice rises above the din, hinging on hysteria.

I turn back toward her. “Please,” I hiss, holding my hands up in defense, hoping to somehow defuse the situation, dampen her anger. “Please, I didn’t know you were coming in, I swear, this isn’t what you—”

But she’s not listening. “You’re supposed to leave me alone!” she yells. She’s managed to put her shoes back on, a pair of strappy sandals, block heels, and has edged by me, started backing toward the entrance, strands of hair loose around her face, a phoenix rising in the sun.

Allison gets to the front door, then raises a finger, points it at me. It shakes, just slightly. The gemstone on her bracelet—the Bulgari I recognized but couldn’t place—dances. A pink flush stains her cream-colored cheeks. Her lips are sealed together tightly. She wants to scream, but her mouth won’t open. She stands there, finger outstretched, trembling, staring at me, and I can feel my heart pulse in my throat.

Then she’s gone. The door slams behind her, little bells on the handle jingling merrily. The room is silent. At least, it is to me, chatter and clatter no longer audible, as if someone pressed a mute button.

“What the—?” Natasha starts to say, but I’m already on my feet, headed toward the back, to the break room. I can feel everyone’s eyes on me, boring into the back of my head. My face is burning. There’s a steady rush of white noise in my ears, loud, deafening. Blindly, tears stinging my eyes, I grab my purse, turn, and rush back through the spa.

“I need some air,” I mumble to Chloe on my way out. I think I hear Natasha call out after me, but I don’t turn around. I have to get out of here. I wonder if I’ll ever come back. Maybe, if I’m lucky, a black hole will swallow me whole and I’ll disappear, poof, just like that. Vaporized into a million tiny atoms.

I fumble with the doorknob, my palms slick with sweat, then push out onto the busy sidewalk, gulping as if I’m coming up for air, lungs full of salt water.

I don’t stop walking until I’m three blocks away at the mouth of a narrow alley, flanked by two apartment buildings. It’s there my feet stop moving, refusing to take another step. I lean against the brick wall, cool from the shadows, then sink to the ground, staring blankly at the pavement in front of me—dirty asphalt, black splotches of gum. Eventually, my breathing returns to normal, my heartbeat slows.

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine. She does look a little like Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca with her clear blue eyes, sharp cheekbones. Of course, though, it’s not such a coincidence. She lives only a few neighborhoods from here, in one of those newer buildings, fifty-seven stories tall, her apartment high enough to see across the water to Manhattan. I loved that view, loved leaning against the floor-to-ceiling glass wall in her living room, watching the sun set and the lights brighten throughout the cityscape until everything glittered like an endless sea of stars. If the windows were on the other side of the room, you’d have been able to see the roof of our apartment. Only a sixteen-minute walk from my front door to hers. Twenty, maybe, if you counted the steps across the marbled lobby, the time it took the elevator to carry you to the thirty-sixth floor.

So it wouldn’t have been strange if our paths had crossed earlier, if today wasn’t the first time I’d seen her since late last fall. Almost eighteen months have gone by. Has it really been that long? Some days it feels longer; others, like it was yesterday.

I used to look for her. I scanned the faces on the sidewalk, searching for hers, wondering if she’d appear, if I’d catch a glimpse. But I never did. It was like she vanished. Eventually, I stopped looking. Stopped wondering. Instead, I pushed her out of my mind. I packed her up tightly in a cardboard box and shoved her into the corner of a cobwebbed attic.

Until today. Until there she was, right in front of me. I’d almost touched her, taken her foot in my hand.

There’s a dull ache in my chest. I wish I had a chance to explain. If she’d just been willing to listen, maybe things would have been different. I think maybe I should have followed her out, run down the sidewalk after her, but it probably would have only made things worse. If that’s possible.

The chime of my phone startles me, its chirping shrill in the noiseless alley. My eyes flutter closed, and I brace myself, sure it’s Lena calling to fire me. Who would have been the one to tell her? Chloe? Natasha? One of the other manicurists that I’m friendly—but not friends—with? I reach into my purse, my stomach heavy. But it isn’t a call from Lena. It’s a text from Violet. Immediately, the weight lifts. I smile. A ray of sunshine peeking through the clouds.

I wipe my face with my sleeve, sniff. The message lights up my screen. Here’s our address! See you at six!

I click on the link. Google Maps drops a pin in the heart of Cobble Hill, and I touch my finger to the thumbnail image of the street view. It’s a beautiful brownstone, two stories instead of the traditional three, but wider than most, a steep set of stairs leading to a black front door.

I copy the address, then plug it into Redfin. The same image of the brownstone pops up with a small tag in the upper left corner that reads OFF MARKET . I thumb down the page and see that it sold last April for three-point-two-five million. Three-point-two-five million . My smile broadens. Tonight, I’m going to a three-point-two-five-million-dollar home for dinner. Me.

I close out of Redfin, look up from my phone. The alleyway is filthy, littered with flattened cardboard boxes, a dumpster against the opposite building. It smells dank, of wet, rotting leaves. I stand up, straighten my shoulders. I need to get out of here.

When I step onto the sidewalk, out of the shadows back into the light, I turn left. Away from the spa, toward home. I’m not going back to work. It’s a risk—if Lena isn’t pissed about the commotion, she will be about me skipping out—but I can’t face my coworkers, their uneasiness, how they’ll look at me, but not really, their eyes flicking around nervously before catching each other’s. No, I can’t go back. And, I realize, looking at the time, I need to get ready, out of these scrubs and into something nicer.

I won’t let Allison ruin my evening. She’s taken enough from me as it is.

I pack up what happened and put it back in its box. I unhinge the attic door and hoist it up, slide it back into the shadowy darkness, out of sight, out of reach. Everything is fine. Everything is fine , I repeat to myself, over and over until it is true. By the time I reach my apartment building, I’m no longer thinking about Allison. I’m thinking about Violet. And about Jay.

At home, I make a quick veggie scramble for my mom and bring it to her with a tall glass of iced tea with a mint garnish, cubes of ice clinking against the cup.

“You’re not eating?” she asks, glancing up at me.

“I’m going out for dinner.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

I nod. “I met someone. A friend, maybe. At the park. She invited me over tonight, to their house.”

“That’s nice,” my mom says. She looks like she might say more, her lips slightly parted as if she’s waiting for the right words to form. But she just smiles and turns her attention back to her show. An old Dateline episode about a home invasion gone wrong. I watch for a moment—one of the victims is recounting the night—then leave the room to get ready.

In the bathroom, I trade my glasses for contacts, blinking rapidly as they go in. I rarely wear them. When I do, they dry out my eyes, leaving them red-rimmed and itchy by the end of the day. I’d get used to it if I wore them more, but I’m usually running late or out of contact solution. I look better without my glasses, though; some people look great in them, but the lenses make my eyes small and beady—so I’ll grin and bear the dry eyes, at least for tonight. Carefully, I apply some mascara, then run a brush through my hair, pulling it into a high ponytail, wet my hands to smooth down the frizz.

I try on three different shirts, finally settling on a high-necked black tank, then tie my flannel around my waist. Even though the days are getting warmer, the nights are still cool. I take my scrub pants off and pull on a pair of jeans, ones without holes, then zip on some black boots.

“Don’t wait up,” I say to my mom as I leave, dropping a kiss on her forehead. She snorts, then smirks. We both know she’ll be asleep in her chair by eight thirty. I’ll come home and the living room will be dark, the TV flickering, volume still cranked high.

“Have fun,” she says.

I smile. I will. I know I will. I’ve never been so sure of anything.