Текст книги "Size 12 Is Not Fat"

Автор книги: Meg Cabot

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Meg Cabot
Size 12 Is Not Fat
A Heather Wells Mystery

For Benjamin

1

Every time I see you

I get a Sugar Rush

You’re like candy

You give me a Sugar Rush

Don’t tell me stay on my diet

You have simply got to try it

Sugar Rush

“Sugar Rush”

Performed by Heather Wells

Written by Valdez/Caputo

From the albumSugar Rush

Cartwright Records

“Um, hello. Is anyone out there?” The girl in the dressing room next to mine has a voice like a chipmunk. “Hello?”

Exactly like a chipmunk.

I hear a sales clerk come over, his key chain clinking musically. “Yes, ma’am? Can I help you?”

“Yeah.” The girl’s disembodied—but still chipmunk like—voice floats over the partition between our cubicles. “Do you guys have these jeans in anything smaller than a size zero?”

I pause, one leg in and one leg out of the jeans I am squeezing myself into. Whoa. Is it just me, or was that really existential? Because what’s smaller than a size zero? Negative something, right?

Okay, so it’s been a while since sixth grade math. But I do remember there was this number line, with a zero in the middle, and—

“Because,” Less Than Zero/Chipmunk Voice is explaining to the sales clerk, “normally I’m a size two. But these zeros are completely baggy on me. Which is weird. I know I didn’t lose weight since the last time I came in here.”

Less Than Zero has a point, I realize as I pull up the jeans I’m trying on. I can’t remember the last time I could fit into a size 8. Well, okay, Ican. But it’s not a period from my past that I particularly relish.

What gives? Normally I wear 12s… but I tried on the 12s, and I was swimming in them. Same with the 10s. Which is weird, because I haven’t exactly been on any kind of diet lately—unless you count the Splenda I had in my latte at breakfast this morning.

But I’m sure the bagel with cream cheese and bacon I had with it pretty much canceled out the Splenda.

And it’s not exactly like I’ve been to the gym recently. Not that I don’t exercise, of course. I just don’t do it, you know, in the gym. Because you can burn just as many calories walking as you can running. So why run? I figured out a long time ago that a walk to Murray’s Cheese Shop on Bleecker to see what kind of sandwich they have on special for lunch takes ten minutes.

And a walk from Murray’s over to Betsey Johnson on Wooster to see what’s on sale (love her stretch velvet!): another ten minutes.

And a walk from Betsey’s over to Dean & Deluca on Broadway for an after-lunch cappuccino and to see if they have those chocolate-covered orange peels I like so much: another ten minutes.

And so on, until before you know it, you’ve done a full sixty minutes of exercise. Who says it’s hard to comply with the government’s new fitness recommendations? If I can do it, anyone can.

But could all of that walking have caused me to drop two whole sizes since the last time I shopped for jeans? I know I’ve been cutting my daily fat intake by about half since I replaced the Hershey’s Kisses in the candy jar on my desk with free condoms from the student health center. But still.

“Well, ma’am,” the sales clerk is saying to Less Than Zero. “These jeans are stretch fit. That means that you’ve got to try two sizes lower than your true size.”

“What?” Less Than Zero sounds confused.

I don’t blame her. I feel the same way. It’s like number lines all over again.

“What I mean is,” the sales clerk says, patiently, “if you normally wear a size four, in stretch jeans, you would wear a size zero.”

“Why don’t you just put the real sizes on them, then?” Less Than Zero—quite sensibly, I think—asks. “Like if a zero is a really a four, why don’t you just label it a four?”

“It’s called vanity sizing,” the sales clerk says, dropping his voice.

“What sizing?” Less Than Zero asks, dropping her voice, too. At least, as much as a chipmunk can drop her voice.

“You know.” The sales clerk is whispering to Less Than Zero. But I can still hear him. “The larger customers like it when they can fit into an eight. But they’re really a twelve, of course. See?”

Wait.What?

I fling open the door to my dressing room before I stop to think.

“I’m a size twelve,” I hear myself saying to the sales clerk. Who looks startled. Understandably, I guess. But still. “What’s wrong with being a size twelve?”

“Nothing!” cries the sales clerk, looking panicky. “Nothing at all. I just meant—”

“Are you saying size twelve is fat?” I ask him.

“No,” the sales clerk insists. “You misunderstood me. I meant—”

“Because size twelve is the size of the average American woman,” I point out to him. I know this because I just read it in People magazine. “Are you saying that instead of being average, we’re all fat?”

“No,” the sales clerk says. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. I—”

The door to the dressing room next to mine opens, and I see the owner of the chipmunk voice for the first time. She’s the same age as the kids I work with. She doesn’t just sound like a chipmunk, I realize. She kind of looks like one, too. You know. Cute. Perky. Small enough to fit in a normal-sized girl’s pocket.

“And what’s up with not even making her size?” I ask the sales clerk, jerking a thumb at Less Than Zero. “I mean, I’d rather be average than not even exist.”

Less Than Zero looks kind of taken aback. But then she goes, “Um. Yeah!” to the sales clerk.

The sales clerk swallows nervously. And audibly. You can tell he’s having a bad day. After work, he’ll probably go to some bar and be all “And then these women were just ON me about the vanity sizing…. It was awful!”

To us, he just says, “I, um, think I’ll just go, um, check and see if we have those jeans you were interested in the, um, back.”

Then he scurries away.

I look at Less Than Zero. She looks at me. She is maybe twenty-two, and very blond. I too am blond—with a little help from Lady Clairol—but I left my early twenties several years ago.

Still, it is clear that, age and size differences aside, Less Than Zero and I share a common bond that can never be broken:

We’ve both been dicked over by vanity sizing.

“Are you going to get those?” Less Than Zero asks, nodding at the jeans I have on.

“I guess,” I say. “I mean, I need a new pair. My last pair got barfed on at work.”

“God,” Less Than Zero says, wrinkling her chipmunk nose. “Where do you work?”

“Oh,” I say. “A dorm. I mean, residence hall. I’m the assistant director.”

“Rilly?” Less Than Zero looks interested. “At New York College?” When I nod, she cries, “I thought I knew you from somewhere! I graduated from New York College last year. Which dorm?”

“Um,” I say, awkwardly. “I just started there this summer.”

“Rilly?” Less Than Zero looks confused. “That’s weird. ’Cause you look so familiar… ”

Before I have a chance to explain to her why she thinks she knows me, my cell phone lets out the first few notes of the chorus of the Go-Go’s “Vacation” (chosen as a painful reminder that I don’t get any—vacation days, that is—until I’ve passed my six months’ probationary period at work, and that’s still another three months off). I see from the caller ID that it is my boss. Calling me on a Saturday.

Which means it has to be important. Right?

Except that it probably isn’t. I mean, I love my new job and all—working with college students is super fun because they’re so enthusiastic about stuff a lot of people don’t even think about, like freeing Tibet and getting paid maternity leave for sweatshop workers and all of that.

But a definite drawback about working at Fischer Hall is that I live right around the corner from it. Which makes me just a little more accessible to everyone there than I’m necessarily comfortable with. I mean, it is one thing to get calls at home from work because you are a doctor and one of your patients needs you.

But it is quite another thing to get calls at home from work because the soda machine ate someone’s change and no one can find the refund request forms and they want you to come over to help look for them.

Although I do realize to some people, that might sound like a dream come true. You know, living close enough to where you work to be able to drop by if there’s a small-change crisis. Especially in New York. Because my commute is two minutes long, and I do it on foot (four more minutes to add to my daily exercise quota).

But people should realize that, as far as dreams coming true, this one’s not the greatest, because I only get paid $23,500 a year (about $12,000 after city and state taxes), and in New York City, $12,000 buys you dinner, and maybe a pair of jeans like the ones I’m about to splurge on, vanity sized or not. I wouldn’t be able to live in Manhattan on that kind of salary if it weren’t for my second job, which pays my rent. I don’t get to “live in” because at New York College, only residence hall directors, not assistant directors, get the “benefit” of living in the dorm—I mean, residence hall—they work in.

Still, I live close enough to Fischer Hall that my boss feels like she can call me all the time, and ask me to “pop in” whenever she needs me.

Like on a bright sunny Saturday afternoon in September, when I am shopping for jeans, because the day before, a freshman who’d had a few too many hard lemonades at the Stoned Crow chose to roll over and barf them on me while I was crouching beside him, feeling for his pulse.

I’m weighing the pros and cons of answering my cell—pro: maybe Rachel’s calling to offer me a raise (unlikely); con: maybe Rachel’s calling to ask me to take some semicomatose drunk twenty-year-old to the hospital (likely)—when Less Than Zero suddenly shrieks, “Oh my God! I know why you look so familiar! Has anyone ever told you that you look exactly like Heather Wells? You know, that singer?”

I decide, under the circumstances, to let my boss go to voice mail. I mean, things are going badly enough, considering the size 12 stuff, and now this. I totally should have just stayed home and bought new jeans online.

“You really think so?” I ask Less Than Zero, not very enthusiastically. Only she doesn’t notice my lack of enthusiasm.

“Oh my God!” Less Than Zero shrieks again. “You even sound like her. That is so random. But,” she adds, with a laugh, “what would Heather Wells be doing, working in a dorm, right?”

“Residence hall,” I correct her automatically. Because that’s what we’re supposed to call them, since calling it a residence hall allegedly fosters a feeling of warmth and unity among the residents, who might otherwise find living in something called a dorm too cold and institutional-like.

As if the fact that their refrigerators are bolted to the floor isn’t a dead giveaway.

“Oh, hey,” Less Than Zero says, sobering suddenly. “Not that there’s anything wrong with it. Being assistant director of a dorm. And you’re not, like, offended I said that you look like Heather Wells, are you? I mean, I totally had all her albums. And a big poster of her on my wall. When I was eleven.”

“I am not,” I say, “the least bit offended.”

Less Than Zero looks relieved. “Good,” she says. “Well, I guess I better go and find a store that actually carries my size.”

“Yeah,” I say, wanting to suggest Gap Kids, but restraining myself. Because it isn’t her fault she’s tiny. Any more than it is my fault that I am the size of the average American woman.

It isn’t until I’m standing at the register that I check my voice mail to see what my boss, Rachel, wanted. I hear her voice, always so carefully controlled, saying in tones of barely repressed hysteria, “Heather, I’m calling to let you know that there has been a death in the building. When you get this message, please contact me as soon as possible.”

I leave the size 8 jeans on the counter and use up another fifteen minutes of my recommended daily exercise by running—yes,running – from the store, and toward Fischer Hall.

2

I saw you two

Kissin’ and huggin’

You told me

She’s just your cousin

You Wish

You Wish

You Wish

If you want me

You gotta be true

So what does that mean

About me and you?

You Wish

You Wish

You Wish

“You Wish”

Performed by Heather Wells

Written by Valdez/Caputo

From the albumSugar Rush

Cartwright Records

The first thing I see when I turn the corner onto Washington Square West is a fire engine pulled up on the sidewalk. The fire engine is on the sidewalk instead of in the street because there’s this booth selling tiger-print thongs for five dollars each—a bargain, actually, except that when you look closer, you can see that the thongs are trimmed with this black lace that looks as if it might be itchy if it gets, well, you-know-where—blocking the street.

The city hardly ever closes down Washington Square West, the street where Fischer Hall is located. But this particular Saturday, the neighborhood association must have called in a favor with a city councilman or something, since they managed to get that whole side of the park shut down in order to throw a street fair. You know the kind I mean: with the incense guys and the sock man and the cartoon portrait artists and the circus-clown wire-sculpture people?

The first time I went to a Manhattan street fair, I’d been around the same age as the kids I work with. Back then I’d been all “Ooooh, street fair! How fun!” I didn’t know then that you can get socks at Macy’s for even less than the sock man charges.

But the truth is, it turns out if you’ve been to one Manhattan street fair, you really have been to them all.

Nothing could have looked more out of place than a booth selling thongs in front of Fischer Hall. It just isn’t a thong kind of building. Towering majestically over Washington Square Park, it had been built of red bricks around 1850. I’d learned from some files I’d found in my desk on my first day at my new job that every five years, the city makes the college hire a company to come and drill out all the old mortar and replace it with new, so that Fischer Hall’s bricks don’t fall out and conk people on the head.

Which is a good idea, I guess. Except that in spite of the city’s efforts, things are always falling out of Fischer Hall and conking people on the head anyway. And I’m not talking about bricks. I’ve had reports of falling bottles, cans, clothing, books, CDs, vegetables, Good & Plentys, and once even a whole roasted chicken.

I’m telling you, when I walk by Fischer Hall, I always look up, just to be on the safe side.

Not today, however. Today my gaze is glued to the front door of the building. I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to get through it, considering the huge crowd—and New York City cop—in front of it. It looks as if, along with dozens of tourists who are milling around the street fair, about half the student population of the building is standing outside, waiting to be let back into the building. They have no idea what’s going on. I can tell from the questions they keep shouting to one another in an attempt to be heard over the pan flute music coming from another booth in front of the building, this one selling, um, cassettes of pan flute music:

“What’s going on?”

“I dunno. Is there a fire?”

“Someone prolly let their potpourri boil over again.”

“Naw, it was Jeff. He dropped his bhang again.”

“Jeff, you suck!”

“It wasn’t me this time, I swear!”

They couldn’t know there’d been a death in the building. If they’d known, they wouldn’t be joking about bhangs. I think.

Okay, I hope.

Then I spy a face I recognize, belonging to someone who DEFINITELY knows what’s going on. I can tell by her expression. She isn’t merely upset because the fire department won’t let her back in the building. She’s upset because she KNOWS.

“Heather!” Magda, seeing me in the crowd, flings a heavily manicured hand toward me. “Oh, Heather! Is terrible!”

Magda is standing there in her pink cafeteria smock and leopard-print leggings, shaking her frosted curls and taking long, nervous drags on the Virginia Slim she’s got tucked between her two-inch-long nails. Each nail bears a mini replica of the American flag. Because even though Magda goes back to her native Dominican Republic every chance she gets, she is still very patriotic about her adopted country, and expresses her affection for it through nail art.

That’s how I met her, actually. Almost four months ago, at the manicurist. That’s also how I heard about the job in the dorm (I mean, residence hall) in the first place. The last assistant director before me—Justine—had just gotten fired for embezzling seven thousand dollars from the building’s petty cash, a fact which had enraged Magda, the dorm—I mean, residence hall—cafeteria’s cashier.

“Can you believe it?” Magda had been complaining to anyone who would listen, as I was having my toes done in Hot Tamale Red—because, you know, even if the rest of your life is going down the toilet, like mine was back then, at least your toes can still look pretty.

Magda, a few tables away, had been having mini Statues of Liberty air-brushed onto her thumbnails, in honor of Memorial Day, and was waxing eloquent about Justine, my predecessor.

“She order twenty-seven ceramic heaters from Office Supply and give them to her friends as wedding presents!”

I still have no idea what a ceramic heater is, or why anyone would want one as a wedding gift. But when I’d heard someone had been fired from Magda’s place of work, where one of the job benefits—besides twenty vacation days a year and full health and dental—is free tuition, I’d jumped on the information.

I owe Magda a lot, actually. And not just because she helped me with the job thing, either (or because she lets me eat free in the caf anytime I want—which might be part of the reason why I’m no longer a size 8, except in vanity sizing), but because Magda’s become one of my best friends.

“Mag,” I say, sidling up to her. “Who is it? Who died?”

Because I can’t help worrying it’s someone I know, like one of the maintenance workers who are always so sweet about cleaning up spilled bodily fluids, even though it’s not in their job description. Or one of the student workers I’m supposed to supervise—supposed tobeing the operative words, since in the three months I’ve worked at Fischer Hall, only a handful of my student employees have ever actually done what I’ve told them to (a lot of them remain loyal to the sticky-fingered Justine).

And when any of them actually do what I ask, it’s only because it involves something like checking every single room after the previous residents have moved out and cleaning out whatever they’ve left behind, generally half-full bottles of Jägermeister.

So then when I get to work the next day, I can’t get a single one of them to come downstairs and sort the mail, because they’re all too hung over.

But there are a couple kids I’ve genuinely come to love, scholarship students who didn’t come to school equipped with a Visa that Mom and Dad are only too happy to pay off every month, and who actually need to work in order to pay for books and fees, and so will take the 4 P.M. – midnight shift at the reception desk on a Saturday night with a minimum of begging on my part.

“Oh, Heather,” Magda whispers. Only she pronounces it Haythar. She is whispering because she doesn’t want the kids to know what’s really going on. Whatever it is. “One of my little movie stars!”

“A student?” I can see people in the crowd eyeing Magda curiously. Not because she’s weird-looking—well, she IS kind of weird-looking, since she wears enough makeup to make Christina Aguilera look as if she’s going au naturel, and she’s got those really long nails and all.

But since it’s the Village, Magda’s outfits could actually be considered kind of tame.

It’s the “movie star” thing people don’t get. Every time a student enters the Fischer Hall cafeteria, Magda takes his or her dining card, runs it through the scanner, and sings, “Look at all the byootiful movie stars who come to eat here. We are so lucky to have so many byootiful movie stars in Fischer Hall!”

At first I just thought Magda was trying to flatter the many drama students—and there are tons, way more than pre-med or business majors—that go to New York College.

Then one Fix Your Own Sundae day, Magda dropped the bomb that Fischer Hall is actually quite famous. Not for the reasons you’d think, like because it’s on historic Washington Square, where Henry James once lived, or because it’s across the street from the famous Hanging Tree, where they used to execute people in the eighteenth century. Not even because the park was once a cemetery for the indigent, so basically all those benches and hot dog stands? Yeah, they’re sitting on dead people.

No. According to Magda, Fischer Hall is famous because they shot a scene from the movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles there. Donatello or Raphael or one of the turtles—I can’t actually remember which one—swung from the Fischer Hall penthouse to the building next door, and the kids in the building all acted as extras, looking up and pointing amazedly at the stunt turtle’s feat.

Seriously. Fischer Hall has quite an exciting history.

Except that the kids who acted in the movie as extras have long since graduated and moved from Fischer Hall.

So I guess people think it’s weird that Magda is still bringing it up, all these years later.

But really, you can see how the fact that a scene from a major motion picture was shot at her place of work would be, to someone like Magda, just another of the many things that make America great.

But you can also see how, to someone who doesn’t know the story behind it, the whole “my little movie star” thing might seem a little… well, wacko.

Which probably explained why so many people were looking curiously our way, having overheard her outburst.

Not wanting the kids to catch on that something was seriously wrong, I take Magda by the arm and steer her toward one of the potted pines that sits outside the building—and which the students unfortunately tend to use as their own personal ashtray—so we can have a little privacy.

“What happened?” I ask her, in a low voice. “Rachel left a message that there’d been a death in the building, but that’s all she said. Do you know who? And how?”

“I don’t know,” Magda whispers, shaking her head. “I am sitting at my register, and I hear screaming, and someone says that a girl is lying at the bottom of the elevator shaft, and that she’s dead.”

“Oh my God!” I’m shocked. I’d been expecting to hear about a death from a drug overdose or violent crime—there are security guards on duty twenty-four hours a day in the building, but that doesn’t mean the occasional unsavory character doesn’t manage to slip inside anyway. It is New York City, after all.

But death by elevator?

Magda, moist-eyed, but trying valiantly not to cry—since that would tip off the students, who are prone to dramatics anyway, that something is REALLY wrong (it also wouldn’t do anything much for Magda’s many layers of mascara)—adds, “They say she was—what do you call it? Riding on top of the elevator?”

“Surfing?” I am even more shocked now. “Elevator surfing?”

“Yes.” Magda carefully inserts the tip of a finely crafted nail at the corner of her eye, and dashes away a tear. “That is why they are not letting anyone inside. The little movie stars need the elevator to get up to their dressing rooms, but they have to move the—”

Magda breaks off with a sob. I put my arm around her and quickly turn her toward me, as much to comfort her as to smother the sound of her crying. Students are glancing curiously our way. I don’t want them to catch on that anything is seriously wrong. They’ll find out, soon enough.

Only they probably won’t have as hard a time believing it as I was.

The thing is, I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Elevator surfing is a problem campus-wide—and not just at New York College, but at universities and colleges all over the country. Teenagers with nothing better to do than get high and dare each other to jump onto the roofs of elevator cabs as they glide up and down the dark, dangerous shafts. There’d been account after account of kids getting themselves decapitated in drunken dares.

I guess it was bound to happen at Fischer Hall sometime.

Except.

Except that Magda kept saying “she.” That a girl had died.

Which is weird, because I’ve never once heard of a girl elevator surfing. At least not in Fischer Hall.

Then Magda lifts her head from my shoulder and says, “Uh-oh.”

I turn to see what she’s talking about and suck in my breath real fast. Because Mrs. Allington, the wife of Phillip Allington—who last spring was inaugurated as the college’s sixteenth president—is coming down the sidewalk toward us.

I know a lot about the Allingtons because another thing I found in Justine’s files—right before I threw them all away—was an article clipped from the New York Times, making this big deal out of the fact that the newly appointed president had chosen to live in a residence hall rather than in one of the luxury buildings owned by the school.

“Phillip Allington,” the article said, “is an academician who does not wish to lose touch with the student population. When he comes home from his office, he rides the same elevator as the undergraduates next to whom he resides—”

What the Times totally neglected to mention is that the president and his family live in Fischer Hall’s penthouse, which takes up the entire twentieth floor, and that they complained so much about the elevators stopping on every floor on their way up to let the students out that Justine finally issued them override keys.

Aside from complaining about the elevators, President Allington’s wife, Eleanor, seems to have very little to do. Whenever I see her, she’s always just returning from, or heading off to, Saks Fifth Avenue. She is uncannily committed to shopping—like an Olympic track athlete is dedicated to her training.

Only Mrs. Allington’s sport of choice—besides shopping—seems to be consuming vast amounts of vodka. When she and Dr. Allington return from late-night dinners with the trustees, Mrs. Allington inevitably kicks up a ruckus in the lobby, usually concerning her pet cockatoos—or so I’ve heard from Pete, my favorite university security officer.

“The birds,” she’d once told him. “The birds hate your guts, fatty.”

Which is kind of mean-spirited, if you think about it. Also inaccurate, since Pete isn’t a bit fat. He’s just, you know. Average.

Mrs. Allington’s drunken verbal assaults are a source of much amusement at the hall’s reception desk, which is staffed round the clock by student employees—the ones I’m supposed to supervise. Late at night, if Dr. Allington isn’t home, Mrs. Allington sometimes calls down to the desk to report all sorts of startling facts: that someone has eaten all her stuffed artichokes; that there are coyotes on her terrace; that tiny invisible dwarfs are hammering on her headboard.

According to Pete, the students were at first confused by these reports, and would beep the resident assistants, the upperclassmen who, in exchange for free room and board, are expected to act as sort of house mothers, one per floor. The RAs in turn would notify the building director, who would board the elevator for the twentieth floor to investigate.

But when Mrs. Allington answered her door, bleary-eyed and robed in velour—I know! Velour! Almost as good as stretch velvet—she’d just say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, fatty.”

While behind her (according to various RAs who’ve repeated this story), the cockatoos whistled maniacally.

Spooky stuff.

But apparently not as spooky to Mrs. Allington as it is to the rest of us, probably because she never seems to remember any of it the next day, and heads off to Saks as if she were a queen—the Queen of Fischer Hall.

Like now, for instance. Loaded down with shopping bags, Mrs. Allington is looking scathingly at the cop who is blocking Fischer Hall’s front door, and going, “Excuse me. I live here.”

“Sorry, lady,” the cop says. “Emergency personnel only. No residents allowed back in the building yet.”

“I am not a resident. “ Mrs. Allington seems to swell amid her bags. “I’m… I’m… ” Mrs. Allington can’t seem to quite figure out what she is. But it’s not like the cop cares.

“Sorry, lady,” he says. “Go enjoy the street fair for a while, why dontcha? Or there’re some nice benches over in the park there. Whyn’t you go relax on one till we get the all-clear to start lettin’ people in again, okay?”

Mrs. Allington is looking a bit peaked as I come hurrying up to her. I’ve abandoned Magda because Mrs. Allington looks as if she needs me more. She’s just standing there in a pair of too-tight designer jeans, a silk top, and tons of gold jewelry, the shopping bags drooping in her hands, her mouth opening and closing in confusion. She is definitely a little green around the gills.

“Did you hear me, ma’am?” the cop is saying. “No one’s allowed in. See all these kids here? They’re waiting, too. So either wait with them or move along.”

Only Mrs. Allington seems to have lost the ability to move along. She doesn’t look too steady on her feet, if you ask me. I step over and take her arm. She doesn’t even acknowledge my presence. I doubt she even knows who I am. Though she nods to me every single weekday when she gets off the elevator across from my office door on her way out to her latest binge—I mean, shopping expedition—and says, “Good morning, Justine” (despite my frequently correcting her), I suppose seeing me on a weekend, and out of doors, has thrown her.

“Her husband’s the president of the college, Officer,” I say, nodding toward Mrs. Allington, who appears to be staring very hard at a nearby student with purple hair and an eyebrow ring. “Phillip Allington? He lives in the penthouse. I don’t think she’s feeling too well. Can I… can I just help her get inside?”

The cop gives me the eye.

“I know you from somewhere?” the cop asks. It’s not a come-on. With me, this line never is.

“Probably from the neighborhood,” I say, with excessive cheer. “I work in this building.” I flash him my college staff ID card, the one with the photo where I look drunk, even though I wasn’t. Until after I saw the photo. “See? I’m the assistant residence hall director.”