Somebody Else's Music(132)

When she heard the voices in the stairwell, she was drinking straight out of her Chanel No. 5 bottle. She capped it quickly and put it away in her bag, feeling guilty in the same way she had when she was a child and her mother almost caught her stealing cookies off the plate as they came out of the stove.

“I’m not sure she’s in the apartment,” Belinda said, sounding petulant and put out.

“I don’t see why you think you can just waltz in here and treat the place like your own. I do have a life, you know. I’m very busy.”

“I only need to talk to Maris for a moment if she’s in,” Betsy’s voice said, perfectly calm, perfectly reasonable. “If she isn’t, we’ll go right back downstairs.”

“What if she is? What then? Did you ever think that I might want to get some things done around the apartment? Did you ever think I might want a little private time?”

“It really will be just a minute,” Betsy said.

“I don’t even know who this person is,” Belinda said. “You’re bringing strangers into my house and you haven’t even been invited.”

I wonder who the stranger is, Maris thought. She had her feet stretched out on Belinda’s coffee table, which would make Belinda livid, but right now it wouldn’t matter. Belinda would never criticize her in front of Betsy Toliver. Belinda was sounding like a shrew. Maris suspected she often sounded like that, and that that had been one of the reasons her husband had left her. God, but that woman could shriek.

Behind her, the apartment’s door opened. There was a shuffle in the doorway. Maris did not turn around.

“Don’t think I’m going to offer you coffee,” Belinda said. “I don’t want you here any more than I wanted you at my lunch table in high school.”

“I think that’s Maris over there asleep on the couch,” Betsy said. “I won’t be but a moment. Keep your britches on, Belinda. You never were very good at self-control.”

“Why, you little bitch,” Belinda said.

“Oh, and by the way. The name is Liz, or Elizabeth, or Ms. Toliver. It has not been Betsy for many years, and you’re being a damned fool to go on calling me that. Between CNN and People magazine, aborigines in the Australian outback know that people who are friendly with me call me Liz.”

“Well, I call you Betsy,” Belinda said. “I’m not friendly with you. You’re nothing but a two-bit creepy little loser, and you’ll never be anything else.”

“My, my,” a voice Maris didn’t recognize said. It sounded a little like Katherine Hepburn’s. “Are people around here always this rude?”

“Habitually,” Betsy said. “They mistake it for a religion.”

“God, you’re such a little snot,” Belinda said. “Just listen to you. ‘Habitually.’ Don’t we know lots of great big words.”

The voices were closer now. There were footsteps coming across the kitchen. Maris sat up a little straighter and turned around. Belinda looked insane. She must have been out in the rain. Her hair was frizzed up like the Bride of Frankenstein’s. Betsy was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of those straight black linen pants she seemed to wear all summer and a blazer that looked old enough to have been worn in in every possible way. You could still tell it was expensive. Maris smiled at her slightly, because that was the kind of thing you did in situations like this. Maris had been in them before.

“Well,” Betsy said.

“Who’s this?” Maris asked, nodding toward the other woman, the small but perfect one with the black hair. “Have you started picking up women in bars?”

“This is Bennis Hannaford,” Betsy said. “She’s a friend of Gregor Demarkian’s. You’ve met Mr. Demarkian.”

“How do you do?” Bennis Hannaford said.

“Dennis?” Belinda said. “What kind of a name is that for a girl? Or is this one of your fancy schmantzy friends from college who went to one of those snob schools where all the girls have boys’ names?”

“It’s not Dennis with a D,” Bennis Hannaford said. “It’s Bennis. With a B. As in boy.”

Betsy came around the back of the couch and took a seat on the very edge of the ottoman. She leaned forward and clasped her hands. “I promised Belinda I wouldn’t be long, and I won’t be. I don’t want you coming back to the office after this trip. You’re fired, effective now. You’re owed a two-week severance check. I’ll call Debra and make sure she cuts you one immediately. She’ll pack up your desk and ship your things to you. Your mortgage account has enough money in it to cover your mortgage until the end of June. After that, it will be closed. If you give our office as a recommendation when you look for a new job, I will tell Debra to tell the truth about you as far as it is possible without sounding as if she’s exaggerating.”