I was all too aware that there hadn’t been any messages from Peter on my Blackberry, so the blinking message light on the phone in my room took me by surprise. I listened to the message as I kicked off my heels and eased my throbbing feet into flats. It was Peter, speaking quickly and in a harried tone.
Hey. Rach. It’s me. I seem to be having a hard time tracking you down, so I thought I’d leave a message here. Anyhow, I’ve got some great news. The client’s made a decision-they’ve turned down Hamilton Tech’s off-I mean, their pitch, and they’re definitely going with us. We don’t want to lose the momentum, so we agreed to stay here until we hammer out every detail. The final negotiations will probably take a while. It looks unlikely that I’ll make it to Jane’s. In fact, there’s a chance I might not make it back tonight at all. Anyhow, I’ll explain it all when I see you, okay?
Oh. And I hope you’re having a good time at the reunion. Say hello to everyone for me, and tell them I wish I could be there. Miss you.
Humph. With a message like that, why even bother leaving one at all? Flimsy excuses, lame apologies-left in the last place I’d look for them and in the one place where he’d be relatively sure not to have to talk to me in person. Who needed it? I tried to work myself up into a healthy rage as the elevator took me back down to the second floor. Surely rage was more productive than giving way to the acrid taste of rejection and its favorite dance partner, loneliness.
A fresh drink was waiting for me when I returned to my friends, and it was a welcome sight. I was already well along the path to mild inebriation, and I’d made an executive decision in the elevator that I was going to take the path to its logical end. Anything would be better than to feel the way I was feeling. Hilary was enumerating O’Connell’s many merits to a less than rapt audience, and Sean and Matthew were deep in conversation in their corner, probably talking about woodworking or something similarly manly. “Anything?” asked Emma in a low voice as I picked up my glass.
“A stupid message,” I told her, more loudly than I’d intended.
“What?” asked Hilary, her monologue interrupted.
“Stupid Peter. He left a stupid message. Saying he’d be locked in stupid negotiations potentially all night.” I held up two fingers of each hand, indicating quotation marks around the word negotiations.
“Maybe he is locked in negotiations,” said Jane, ever the optimist.
“With Abigail?” I said, bitterness getting the best of me. “All night?”
“It’s possible,” she said.
“Even after what we saw?”
“Rach, there could be an explanation that actually does explain it all,” Jane persisted. “You haven’t even had the chance to talk to him about it.”
“Like that would help.” I sighed and took a large gulp of my drink.
“I’m going to kill this Abigail person,” said Hilary.
“You’re just looking for ways to spend more time with O’Connell,” joked Luisa. “You want him to haul you up on murder charges.”
“It could be fun,” she replied.
“Let’s talk about something else,” suggested Emma.
“Yes, Rach. Why don’t you tell us again about kicking Grant Crocker in the balls?”
“I’ve already told you.”
“I know, but it has all the makings of a classic.”
“If you insist,” I said, draining the last of my drink and signaling the waiter for another round.
Thirty-Two
T he phone ringing the next morning felt like a dentist inserting his drill directly into my ear. I fumbled for the receiver, grunted into it and unceremoniously slammed it back down before pulling the covers up over my head. A few minutes later it rang again, insistent and shrill. “What?” I demanded, sitting up and ripping the receiver off its cradle.
“Good morning!” announced a cheery recording. “This is your wake-up call! Today’s weather forecast calls for heavy snowstorms and a temperature of twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit with a blistering windchill. Have a great day!”
Swearing at a recording was useless, but I swore at it anyway. Which was a bad idea, because if the ringing phone had seemed loud, my own voice was intolerable. Somebody must have come into the room while I was asleep and pounded on my skull with an iron mallet, because that was the only possible explanation for the thudding pain that occupied the space where my brain used to be.
I moaned, but that made it hurt even more. I sat still for a moment, waiting for the pain to recede but nothing happened. I cracked one eye open, careful not to move my head. The clothes I’d been wearing the previous evening were neatly folded over the back of the bedside chair. An open bottle of Advil and an empty glass stood on the nightstand. Dimly, I could remember my friends getting me up to my room, and Jane and Emma insisting that I take the tried and true preventative measures of Advil and water before bed. However, even the best preventative measures couldn’t erase the toll that my dedicated drinking had taken. I didn’t want to begin to think about how much worse I would have felt if they hadn’t forced me to take the painkillers. Anything that could feel worse would have probably been fatal.
Gingerly, I propelled myself to a standing position. Grasping the Advil bottle in an unsteady hand, I tottered into the bathroom and refilled the glass from the tap. I shook out two pills, reconsidered, shook out two more, and then washed all four down with a long drink of water. I could feel the cool liquid tracing its course down my throat and into my stomach, every desiccated cell in my body sucking up the moisture in gratitude. I refilled the glass again and drank until it was empty. Then I tottered back out into the suite’s living room and opened the minibar in order to embark on the next part of the cure.
I reached into the refrigerator with confidence and then retracted my arm in horror.
As if the Jinxing Gods hadn’t had enough fun with me this weekend. There was no more Diet Coke.
I would have cried, but I was too dehydrated.
An hour later, I’d managed to take a shower and brush my teeth. I’d considered drying my hair, but the very thought of the noise the hairdryer would make had been too much to bear, so I sat in a chair waiting for my thick curls to dry themselves. Of course, that hadn’t happened, so I eventually just yanked them back into a wet knot and struggled into my clothes. Not the jeans I’d brought for my nice relaxed weekend. Oh no, lucky me had to go see Barbara Barnett this morning, to talk business while battling the hangover that ate Cincinnati, and I had to look like a grown-up, even if I drank like a fraternity pledge. At least I didn’t have to worry that she was violent, now that I knew that Jonathan Beasley had been responsible for the attacks on Sara. But that thought offered little consolation as I pulled on the black pantsuit I’d already worn on Friday. I grimaced as I stuffed my still-sore feet into the high-heeled pumps that went with it.
The effort to do all this left me sufficiently exhausted that I had to sit back down to recover. Then I checked my watch. “Crap, crap, quadruple crap.”
I was late. And if I had no love life, I really couldn’t afford to mess up on the professional front.
My cab driver seemed to sense my delicate condition and take a cruel delight in exacerbating it by alternately slamming on the accelerator and slamming on the brakes. Despite the below-zero windchill, I had the window wide-open. The air was fresh, if frozen, and I let it wash over my face in a vain attempt to quell the nausea.
The taxi screeched to a halt in front of the Barnetts’ town house in Beacon Hill. I paid the Driver de Sade, and stumbled up the front stoop to ring the bell.
The click-clack of Barbara’s heels preceded her. She threw the door open. At ten-thirty on a Sunday morning she was decked out in a lime-green Christian Lacroix suit that probably matched my complexion exactly. “Rachel, honey, come on in out of the cold.”