The hotel bar was walnut-paneled and dim, with burgundy chairs grouped around low glass tables. Marse ordered us whiskey sours, which was her drink of choice, and one I enjoyed when we were together but never once without her. “Julia is flirting with Dennis,” I said when I sat down.
“Ha!” said Marse. “Good for her.”
“Good for him,” I said. “She’s very pretty.”
“Kyle told me he was disappointed when I RSVP’d for one. That’s the word he used—he was disappointed.”
“Is he trying to prove that he can make a person bitter?”
“Apparently.” She drank a piece of ice, then spat it back into the glass. “Hey,” she said, “let’s swap outfits.”
We took our drinks into the powder room, which had an anteroom with chaise lounges and a wall-sized mirror, and she unzipped me, then pulled her dress over her head, revealing her lean torso and sheer, nude-colored bra. I could see the outline of her dark nipples through the fabric. I stepped out of my dress. On Marse, the bridesmaid dress had been floaty and flowing, but no matter how much thinner I’d become, I was still a good deal larger than she was, and though it zipped without a problem, it was not floaty. Where on her it had been a sort of princess dress, like something you’d find on a young girl’s doll, precious and not sexy, on me it was—well, it was showy. We faced the mirror. The neckline of my dress—the one Marse now wore—was low, but there was plenty of room inside it, whereas Marse’s dress fit snugly around my chest, lifting and cupping my breasts and deepening my cleavage. Marse and I both stared into the mirror at my chest; the cleavage was lovely, a style I could see adopting in the future, should my figure remain more or less the same, but I was still wearing a bra and the black straps showed. Marse helped me unhook it, then stuffed it into my purse. “There,” she said, “you’re in the wedding party. You owe me two hundred bucks for the inflatable kayak I gave them.”
When we returned to the bar, the bartender gave no sign of noticing that we’d swapped outfits, but he did glance briefly at my cleavage, I noticed, and seemed if not impressed then at least not appalled. Marse was ordering another round when I heard a deep voice from behind us. “Well, well.”
Marse and I both turned. Jack stood there with a wiry, gray-haired man who was familiar to me from the tennis club—another pro. “Who’s this?” said Marse, not rudely but with an air of not caring about the answer to the question—an air I assumed was affected.
“Marse, this is my tennis instructor, Jack. Jack, this is my dear friend Marse.” I gripped Jack’s outstretched hand. We shook hands in the way that you do with old friends, where you don’t pump so much as just hold tightly. Jack introduced his companion as Adam. They were both wearing navy button-down shirts with the hotel’s insignia on the pocket. “Are you working?” I said, motioning to the insignia.
“More or less. There was a dinner for the board.” He gestured upstairs, where the dining room overlooked the lobby, and I wondered if he’d seen me and Marse cross the lobby, and if that was what had drawn him downstairs. He said, “We thought we’d stop for a beer before heading out.”
“We were given drink tickets,” said Adam.
“Drink tickets?” said Marse.
“It’s a bribe,” said Jack. He sat on the stool next to mine. “They’re afraid we won’t come, or if we do, we won’t schmooze. Tennis is this club’s cash cow.”
“What about golf?” I said.
“Golfers,” said Adam, rolling his eyes. He sat on the far side of Marse.
“What are you drinking?”said Jack.
“Whiskey sour,” said Marse.
“How is it?”
“Delicious,” said Marse.
I tipped back so Marse and Jack could see each other. “So Marse,” said Jack, “how’s that spelled?” Marse spelled it for him. “What do you do, Marse?” he said, and she told him, and for a moment they spoke about a man they both knew—a partner at her firm—and when Adam joined the conversation, Jack turned back to me. “I have a confession,” he said. “I knew you were in here. I saw you from upstairs. But I believe you were wearing that.” He pointed discreetly to Marse. “Very nice, either way.”
“Thank you,” I said, and I realized from the way I said it—encouragingly—that I was fairly drunk. In the mirror behind the bar, I could see the entrance to the room and most of its occupants: if Dennis arrived, I would be prepared.
“You shouldn’t stay away,” Jack said. “You don’t need to do that.” He spoke softly, but I was aware of Marse sitting beside me, her uncanny ability to read my mind, and I thought of the first day we met, at Stiltsville, when she’d known even before I had that I’d won Dennis and she’d lost him. I turned toward her, to try to pull her into the conversation, but she wasn’t there. She’d stepped a few feet away and was intent on the television behind the bar. Adam was standing, too, chatting with another man who had come in. The bartender was watching the television, and he had—I realized this without having registered it at the time—turned up the volume a moment earlier. I had the thought that maybe Marse was going to flirt with the bartender, and that Adam was occupied, and Dennis was with Julia, many steps away. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll be there Wednesday, I promise.”
“Let’s not trash your tennis career over one afternoon at the beach.”
“No, of course. Of course not.”
“I’ve missed you,” he said.
“Frances?” said Marse. There was an edgy timbre in her voice, a shiver of hardness. I turned toward her, and she crooked her finger. “Come here,” she said.
“Excuse me,” I said to Jack. Had our flirting been so obvious, so terrible, that I was being scolded? When I reached her, Marse said, “Watch this,” and put her hands on my shoulders to turn me toward the television. On the screen was a newswoman in a yellow blazer with large gold buttons, and behind her was a white front door in a low brick building cordoned off by yellow police tape. There were officers milling around, and in the corner of the screen, an ambulance with its back doors open.
Did I recognize the building, in that instant? In the bottom third of the screen was the story ticker: GAINESVILLE STUDENTS SLAIN, it read, and then: TWO DEAD AT WILLIAMSBURG VILLAGE APARTMENTS.
I had no trouble placing the building’s name. The newswoman was saying, “We’re reporting that the victims were both women in their late teens or early twenties, students at the university, where the fall semester is currently under way. The bodies were discovered this afternoon at four p.m., after one of the girls’ mothers reported that she had not heard from her daughter. The killer appears to have entered through the apartment’s sliding glass doorway.”
“Dennis?” I said to Marse.
“Your friend’s getting him,” she said.
“When did I talk to her?” I said.
“I don’t know, but I’m sure she’s safe.”
“You’re sure?” I said.
“Yes.”
Dennis rushed into the bar with Jack as the newswoman closed her segment, saying, “For now, Gainesville students are being cautioned by police to stay alert, travel in pairs, and lock their doors.”
“Give me the phone,” said Dennis to the bartender, and after some maneuvering, the bartender was unable to pull the phone away from its spot beside the cash register, so Dennis went around the bar. He started dialing, then stopped and looked at me. “Is it 5269 or 6952?” he said, then without waiting for an answer turned back and finished dialing. Marse and I watched him. After a long moment, he spoke into the phone. “Call your parents,” he said urgently, then put the phone down and reached across the bar for my hands. “Just the machine,” he said. “She’s not in, that’s all.” My chest was tight. “We’re going home—we’ll be there in ten minutes—and she’ll have left a message. If I know Margo, she’s already on a bus.”