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“Don't tempt me,” Lucy said.
“It's not fu
Before Lucy could respond, the door opened and David walked in. “Did you see the sign on the door?” he said. “I was thinking we should leave it up there for a while just to- Oh, hi. Who's this?”
“This is Ashley,” Lucy said. “She's the one who put the sign there.”
“Ah,” David said. “Is she also the one who's been dumping paint on James's car?”
“I’m guessing,” Lucy said. They both looked at Ashley. She folded her arms tightly across her chest and stared at the wall.
“It's not that I don't think James deserves it,” David said, sitting down at his desk. “For all sorts of reasons. Like-see that coffee cup over there? He left that, right on my papers and they're all stained now, thanks to him. A slob like that deserves to have some paint thrown on his car. But he doesn't deserve it because he does animal research. That's to his credit.”
“Are we done?” Ashley asked Lucy. “I’d like to get out of here. Can I have my bag back, please?”
Lucy appealed to David. “What do you think? If James were here-”
“He'd want her head on a platter,” he said. “But it's kind of a young head. And James can be a little… overreactive.”
“Yeah, I know.” Lucy turned back to Ashley. “Listen, if I let you go right now, will you promise to leave us all alone and go bother someone else?”
“Preferably in a different building,” David said.
Ashley scowled. “I haven't admitted to anything yet. Maybe I don't even know what you're talking about.”
“Okay,” Lucy said, pulling a pad of paper toward her. “Here's the deal, Ashley. I’m writing down your name and address. If I find more signs or any of our cars gets covered with paint again or if we receive any more nasty e-mails, I will call the university administration and the police and tell them who's responsible. Do you understand?”
“You don't have any proof,” Ashley said. “And even if you did, I’d have to do what's right, no matter what the risk.”
“Yeah, well, if I were you, I’d make sure vandalizing research labs really is what's right before I went and got myself arrested for it.” Lucy tossed everything that had fallen on the desk back in the bag, then bent down and picked up the can of spray paint off the floor. “This, I’m not giving back to you,” she said and threw it in the trash can. “No good can possibly come of your having a can of spray paint. But you can take the rest and go.”
Ashley warily darted forward, snatched at the bag, and ran to the door. “Think about what you're doing,” she said. “Think about the pain you're causing these animals just because you're bigger than they are. Think about how you'd like to be treated if-”
“Think about the police coming to your door,” David said.
She shot him one last look of pure hatred and then was gone, slamming the door behind her.
David raised his fist in the air. “Vive la résistance!” he said cheerfully.
“Yeah, right,” Lucy said. “Do you think she thinks she's some kind of hero?”
“Definitely.”
“Someone should tell her about rats and the bubonic plague.”
“Someone should give her the bubonic plague.” He stared at the closed door. “Although, it was kind of a relief meeting her-she wasn't exactly an angry mob, was she?”
“She could have friends.”
“Or just crazy nuts on the Internet who encourage her to do this shit.” David leaned comfortably back in his chair and crossed his ankles up on top of his desk. “So… do we tell James?”
“Better not,” Lucy said, feeling a little guilty even as she said it. “We can always tell him if she does something else.”
“Do you think she will?”
“Now that we have her name and know she goes to school here, she'd have to be pretty stupid to target us again.” Lucy bent down and opened up one of her desk drawers. “Want some dried cranberries?”
“Sure.” She carried the bag over and poured a bunch into his outstretched palm. “It must be nice,” he said, gazing absently at the berries in his hand.
“What?” She put a single cranberry in her mouth.
“To be like that girl. To feel like you're one hundred percent right and everyone else is wrong. To be willing to sacrifice yourself for a cause without ever questioning whether it's really worth sacrificing yourself for.” He tilted his hand and let the cranberries fall into a pile on his desktop. “Nothing ever seems that clear-cut to me.”
“I know,” she said. “To me, either.”
They chewed away in thoughtful silence and finished off the bag of cranberries before getting down to work.
IV
Kathleen settled on a cocktail-length, thin-strapped, body-hugging black dress for the fund-raising event that night. “Wow,” Kevin said when she slid into his car. “You look amazing.” He leaned over and kissed her hard on her open mouth. Lingered there a moment. He sat back and took a deep breath. “Maybe we should run upstairs. Think I could leave the car here?”
“Not without getting towed.” She pulled the seatbelt across her body.
He drove away from the curb with a good-natured sigh of acceptance. He glanced at her a couple of times as he drove along Wilshire. “You have truly beautiful breasts, you know that?”
“They do what they need to.”
“Except… something's missing.”
She looked down at herself. “One. Two. Same as always.”
“Dress like that needs a necklace. And I know where to get one.” And, with those words, Kevin Porter drove straight to Rodeo Drive and Tiffany & Co., where he bought Kathleen a beautiful and delicate necklace that was, admittedly, sterling silver and not diamond-encrusted, but still cost several hundred dollars and was, for a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing, a touching gesture.
Kathleen was pleased. The only tiny-minuscule really-jarring note for her was that Kevin had chosen to take her to Tiffany, which was where Jackson Porter bought all the gifts for his mistresses. The man actually kept a cache of filled small blue boxes in a locked drawer in his office for ready access.
And that nagged at her. Surely there were other decent jewelry stores in Los Angeles.
When they arrived at the fund-raiser-held in the biggest ballroom Kathleen had ever seen, in one of the swankiest hotels in Beverly Hills-Kevin led her to where his family stood in a knot. They all said hello and then ignored her.
Which left Kathleen free to sip some decent champagne and absorb everything that was going on around her. She and Kevin were among the youngest people at the event. No surprise there, since the honoree that evening was Jackson Porter, who was nearing seventy, and most of the guests were his contemporaries. Besides, a single ticket cost five hundred dollars, and a table went for five thousand, and Kathleen couldn't think of a lot of people her age who could afford to spring for something like that, even for a good cause.
Assuming tonight's charity was one, of course. She still didn't know what it was. The signs that hung around the room all read, “In a Parallel Universe…” which didn't enlighten her at all.
Kevin's two sisters-in-law were gorgeously turned out that evening, one in Armani black, the other in Prada crimson. Their dresses were almost severe in their simplicity, but tailored and draped beautifully, and the extravagance of the jewelry they wore complemented the spare lines of their dresses. In the past, Kathleen had thought both women were too thin-scrawny, really-but tonight their evening finery made the prominence of their bones seem elegant rather than sickly.
While she was standing there, she heard the sister-in-law in black say to the sister-in-law in red, “You are so brave to wear that color. You know-this year, when no one else is.”
The other narrowed her eyes and said, “Oh, I just grabbed what I could. The kids don't give me a second to get ready. I’m sure you'll understand someday. I mean, I hope so.” From this, Kathleen inferred the one in black was having fertility problems.