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“Thanks,” Tess said, waving as she stepped backward. “I’m going to run over to my office, but I’ll be back when Selene’s finished for the day. Give me a thirty-minute heads-up, so I can be here when she’s ready to go.”
Still moving backward, she gave what she hoped was a nonchalant wave, only to trip over a mass of cables. Righting herself, she fought the urge to run from the soundstage, settling for a brisk walk. It was only when she was in her car that she realized she had, in fact, fled with the headset that Greer had explicitly told her to leave behind. Poor Greer, she’d probably be blamed for that as well.
“Great hire,” Ben said to Flip a little later as they were preparing the setup for another scene, a di
Flip nodded absently, not catching the tone – a habit of Flip’s, not catching the tone of things in real life. Then, on a double take: “Hey, don’t be an asshole. She’s okay.”
“You really think this is going to solve anything, assigning her to Selene?”
Flip gave him a measuring kind of look. Ben wondered if his old friend guessed that Ben’s real concern was how he could continue seeing Selene if she was watched every minute she was off set. But how could Flip know? How could anyone know? Selene was as intent on keeping their secret as he was. Or so she had said.
But all Flip said was: “I think it’s going to solve a lot of our problems. You’ll see.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
Flip shook his head, as if refusing to acknowledge this possibility. Greer – nearby, always nearby, always hovering, always spying, God, how Ben hated her – looked defensive, as if her work, her decision, had been challenged. Ever since she had started working for Flip, she seemed increasingly confused about her role in things, apparently believing that the orders she carried out were her orders. Ben wished that she would make a fatal mistake – insult Flip’s wife, or confess to a profound admiration for Flip Senior. She was an operator, this one, although not as smooth as she thought she was, not nearly as smooth.
“She’s kind of attractive,” Flip said. “If I were single, I’d ask her out.”
Ah, good old Flip, always looking for a matrimonial noose to slip around Ben’s neck, so they both could be monogamous and miserable.
“She has a boyfriend,” Greer said quickly. Flip, perhaps startled by the shrill tone in her voice, gave her a look, and she mumbled: “I remember from when the newspaper wrote about her. They live together.”
Flip had a finite amount of attention for nonwork matters, and it was now exhausted. “I’m going back to the writers’ office, so you’ll have to cover set for the rest of the day, Ben.” It was an order. To the world at large, Flip pretended they were two equals, two longtime friends who never quarreled. But someone had to be in charge, as Flip often said, and that person happened to be, well, Flip.
“You’re the boss,” Ben told his oldest friend.
Chapter 11
Tess had a secret recipe for cooling the flush brought on by humiliation – she went to the nearest Baskin-Robbins and got a double scoop, chocolate chip and orange sherbet. It was a homeopathic cure of sorts, for it reminded her of a night when she was eight, when she had taken a lick of this admittedly odd pairing only to see both scoops fall and go rolling across the floor. But the clerk had been kind, giving her a new cone for free, and it was this kindness, the acknowledgment that everyone made mistakes, that the flavors brought back to her. She drove one-handed to her office, where she spent an hour on bills, paying and sending. In the end, she was dead even – assuming her clients weren’t deadbeats.
Her nerves soothed, Tess raced home to walk the dogs. Her new assignment would be hardest on them, for they were used to tagging along to the office and even to some of her jobs. They were, in fact, great decoys on surveillance. A woman walking an unruly greyhound and a placid Doberman was so conspicuous as to be inconspicuous, Tess had discovered. If she struggled with her cell phone as leashes twisted around her like a maypole, no one would ever suspect she was actually snapping photographs. She should structure one of her classes around that concept, how to hide in plain sight.
Stony Run, the park that bordered her backyard, was empty at this time of day, and she enjoyed having it to herself. She scuffed her feet through the leaves, wistful for a time when people had made huge piles of them and started bonfires, environmentally unfriendly as she now knew that practice to be. Now, in upscale neighborhoods such as hers, leaves were piled along the curbs and sucked up by a huge city machine on an appointed date. She scuffed harder, enjoying the rustling sound. She stopped. The rustle didn’t, not quite.
Glancing back over her shoulder, she saw what appeared to be an enormous mound of camouflage, tiptoeing from tree to tree. It was like something out of a cartoon, one where Wile E. Coyote dressed up as a cactus and attempted to blend into the landscape while stalking the Road Ru
“Mrs. Blossom?”
The woman’s considerable girth was visible from both sides of the tree she was using for cover, but she didn’t acknowledge Tess, just stayed where she was.
“Mrs. Blossom, I see you.”
The woman peered around the tree. “Does that mean I failed?”
Now that Tess had a chance to inspect the full, head-to-toe effect of Mrs. Blossom’s surveillance costume – no other word would do – she was impressed almost in spite of herself. It was camouflage, yes, but not the usual browns, grays, and greens. This was purple camouflage, popularized a few years ago by fans of the Ravens, and Mrs. Blossom had found oversize men’s cargo pants that actually bagged on her. To finish off her look, she had chosen low-heeled brown pumps and – this detail was utterly endearing to Tess – a moss green hat. She had thought about her costume, perhaps even opened up her pocketbook to complete it.
“We don’t have grades. And you were on the honor system, right? You were to write up a report on how it went, good or bad. So how do you think you did?”
Mrs. Blossom stubbed her toe in the dirt. “Not very well. You saw me.”
“Yes, but – not until we got to the park. Were you waiting here, or near my house? Did you follow me?”
“From your office,” Mrs. Blossom said. “I parked there the whole day and – I was so worried, I had to go to the bathroom, which I know isn’t allowed, but I went to this bar, which looked a little scary from the outside, although the bathrooms were really clean. Nice, even.”
Tess knew the bar, an unofficial lesbian hangout, and its bathrooms were, in fact, impeccable.
“I was getting ready to go home – Oprah is on at four, and I like to make a little snack first – but then you finally showed up. So I waited to see where you would go.”
And, still in a self-castigating snit over my loutish behavior on set, I didn’t notice a car tailing me for seven or so miles. Tess couldn’t decide whether to be proud of her student, or appalled at her own obliviousness.
“That’s pretty good, actually. It’s hard to follow someone in a car.”
The praise made Mrs. Blossom’s cheeks flush pink.
“Do you want to walk with me?” Tess asked, holding out the Doberman’s leash. “Don’t worry, Miata just looks scary. She’s a sweetheart.” Esskay, the greyhound, was the far more difficult dog to walk, lurching and bolting at every leaf, even the movement of the breeze through the grass, convinced that all motion was indicative of a smaller creature to be chased and eaten.