“I know you’re having a wonderful time playing like you’re the great detective,” Maris said, “but I don’t know anything of the sort. I don’t think Peggy Smith did kill Michael Houseman, and I don’t think she killed Chris Inglerod, either. I think you’re just speculating to give yourself an excuse to trash me.”
“An excuse?” Betsy said. “Do I need an excuse? After you’ve spent the last two years planting stories in the tabloids that make it sound as if I were the one who had killed Michael Houseman? And that even though you knew perfectly well that I could not possibly have done it? You nailed me into that damned outhouse yourself.”
“Not all by herself, she didn’t,” Belinda said. “It wasn’t just Maris. It was everybody who hated you.”
Betsy didn’t look as if she’d heard. Maris took a long swig on the Chanel No. 5 bottle. “If you do fire me,” she said, “I might find it necessary to fight back a little. I might find it necessary to sell my story to the National Enquirer, for instance. How Elizabeth Toliver used me like a slave and then dismissed me like a servant and left me to starve. Or something along those lines. I think I did lay them out that day at the Sycamore, didn’t I?”
“Well, yes,” Betsy said, “you did. But at the time I saw no reason to respond. So let me respond now. If you try anything of the kind, I will make sure that Debra releases the detective files we have on you from the last two times we’ve kept you out of jail. The first time when you forged my signature on a check for two thousand dollars on September third last year. The second time when you forged Debra’s signature on a check for five thousand on this past January seventeenth. Did you really think we hadn’t noticed? Why do you imagine it suddenly got so hard for you to lay your hands on the checkbooks?”
“You had detectives follow me?” Maris said.
“Debra was worried you might be abusing drugs. It turns out you were only paying bills, and buying very expensive crystal at Steuben glass. I’m going to go now, Maris. Bennis probably wants to get back and Jimmy’s probably frantic that I’ve been set upon by reporters, but I only care that I never lay eyes on you again. Don’t come back. Don’t even try to come back. And don’t do anything stupid. If you try any more crap with the National Enquirer, I’ll have you prosecuted.”
Betsy stood up. Maris didn’t move. She didn’t think it was possible to move. Betsy didn’t look anything at all like somebody who would be called “Betsy” now. And it was so cold. Maris had never been so cold. The woman Betsy had brought with her looked stunned. Liz, Maris thought. She’d have to remember to call that little creep Liz. It wasn’t any fun to call her Betsy when calling her Betsy didn’t bother her.
“Sorry to have taken up so much of your time,” Liz said to Belinda.
Then she swept out of the apartment with Bennis Hannaford trailing behind her. Belinda slammed the door after them as they went.
“I can’t believe that,” Belinda said. “Betsy Wetsy. What a stuck-up little bitch. What a stupid little loser creep. Don’t listen to a word she says. You can get her. You just go right ahead and do it.”
Maris Coleman burst out laughing.
2
Emma Kenyon Bligh was awake when Kyle Borden came into her room with that man he’d been going around town with all day, but she didn’t feel up to talking, and they didn’t seem interested in asking questions, and finally they’d gone away. George was there, too, of course. As soon as he’d heard, he’d come running down from whatever real estate showing he’d had to see how she was. He was there watching her when she woke up, and he was there watching her still, except for going out for cigarettes every few minutes. George should quit smoking, he really should, but it was a lot like her resolves to quit eating. Somehow, there never seemed to be anything else to do with her time. When she tried to diet, she got hungry, but that wasn’t what drove her back to food. Not eating caused a terrible void in the day. Not eating meant looking down at her hands every half hour or so and thinking: Is this it? Is this all? What exactly happened here? The worst thing was that Emma thought she knew the answer. What had happened here was exactly what was supposed to have happened here. It was exactly what she had been trying to make happen for as long as she could remember. This was what it was like, the life she had wanted when she was seventeen. Some of it was good, like watching the children grow. Some of it was bad, like the times when the store hadn’t been doing well and they’d been afraid of losing the building or having to declare bankruptcy. Mostly it was just dull, and repetitious, and strangely hopeless, as if in this life she had lived the future had ceased to exist. Except that it hadn’t ceased to exist. She got fatter. She got older. The face in her mirror got paler, as if she’d been painted out of watercolors and somebody had left her out in the rain. She hadn’t minded any of it until recently. Every part of her was floating. She remembered the sensation vaguely from when she and George used to smoke marijuana in his car up at Mountain Lookout the year after she graduated from high school. That was the year that it had begun to occur to her that she had made a mistake. Maris was coming back from Vassar on vacations. A few of the boys nobody had noticed were coming back, too, and really, suddenly, there was nothing to do in town, nobody to talk to, nothing to see. She’d thought she’d hated school, but she missed it, then. She wanted some kind of structure in her life. That was why she had decided to marry George as soon as she had. She already knew she loved him. They’d been going out forever. She already knew she liked sex with him. They’d started doing that on the night of her senior prom, which was what she had expected them to do. All the girls she knew lost their virginities at their senior prom parties, except for one or two, like Peggy, who couldn’t wait, and did it the year before after the junior-senior semiformal. Peggy. Emma was finding it very hard to think about Peggy. Peggy had ruined everything. If it hadn’t been for Peggy, Emma thought, she would never have started to feel as if there was no point in going on with life.