But Levi didn’t have claws, not that I could see. Not yet. “I’ll go for walk, just the two of us,” I agreed.
“Good. Should I come to you or can you meet me? Do you have a car?”
“No, I sold it.” At first, I hadn’t been able to drive with my head injury, and then I’d wanted the money that I got for it more than I’d looked forward to going places. I hadn’t been looking forward to anything, not until lately.
“Then I’ll be at your house at eight.”
That seemed early, but I was so glad about having a plan that I didn’t argue. I’d be up anyway, since Coral liked to eat at six and got angry if I dallied too long in bed. “Sounds fine,” I said.
“How would a gangster in an old movie answer that?”
“Sure thing, doll,” I told him, and he laughed.
We kept talking all the way back to my apartment, not an interrogation but a conversation that made me laugh, too—maybe he was actually funny. The first time we’d met and Ava had offered me a ride, she’d told me that we didn’t live too far apart. She was right, and that meant the trip with Levi didn’t take nearly long enough.
Chapter 5
“Hello? Hello!” A lot of knocking accompanied the woman’s voice. My mind registered more of what I would have called pounding, but I kept on working. Whoever was at the front door of our apartment building wasn’t here to see or talk to me, so I ignored her.
But since my neighbor was a busybody, he did respond. The next thing I heard was his door open across the hall and he opened the front door, too. And then, a lot more clearly, I heard the woman speak.
“Are the apartment buzzers broken? What’s wrong with this place? Ew. Is this what’s called a slum?”
I recognized who she was, both from her tone (bored and arrogant) and her diction (rude and arrogant). I stood up from my makeshift desk and went right to the mirror to check myself over. I didn’t have nearly enough time to make all the fixes that Grant would have required, but I did take down my hair andsmooth it, and I did take a moment to be glad and grateful that I’d finally managed to exfoliate away the stripes on my body.
Then I went to the door of my apartment and opened it.
“Vivienne?” I asked blankly. I sounded shocked, which I was. After hearing her in the hallway, I knew that this visitor couldn’t have been anyone else…it was still difficult to accept her presence in my apartment building.
But there she was: Vivienne Piquer, the wife to Lance, a fashion exemplar for the masses, and the woman whom I’d aspired to be for five years of my life. Grant had aspired for me to be her, too, in a lot of ways. I’d frequently heard that “Vivi wouldn’t wear that” or “Vivi always drinks this” or “Vivi never eats so much.” Vivi was pretty much perfect, and who didn’t want perfection?
She looked practically perfect now, even as she frowned at both me and Hernán and also managed to convey, mostly in the way she was standing and the way her nostrils flared slightly, that this place was not an acceptable setting for her amazing self.
“Emerson,” she stated, and there was a total absence of discernable happiness to see me in her voice or in her attitude. “There you are. You live in this place?”
“Yes. Obviously,” I answered. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see you. Obviously,” she shot back. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have come to a slum.”
Hernán frowned and told her a few things in Spanish, and I emerged from my stunned stupor enough to invite her into my apartment. I held open my door and gestured, anyway, and sheaccepted by gliding past me in a gorgeous pair of sandals. Then the problem of not having anywhere to sit became clear and frankly, embarrassing. Vivienne looked around and took the chair, which left me to stand and stare at her.
I shook my head. “What are you doing here?” I repeated.
“As I said, I came to see you,” she said. Her nostrils flared more, suggesting that now she might have smelled Coral. As a confirmed misanthrope, my cat was presently in hiding.
“You have my number,” I pointed out. I’d been involved in several girlfriend group texts that had morphed into wives-plus-Emerson group texts as the years, all five of them, had slid past. “You have my email address, too.”
“I wanted to come in person. I wanted to check on what…” She turned her head and looked around the small room, taking in the beige walls, the grey floor, the small window with the plastic shade, and the lack of furniture.
“The splendor?” I filled in, and she looked at me blankly. She had so much: beauty, money, and a natural inclination to enjoy exercise. She’d never had a lot of humor, though, and the image of a chicken flashed through my mind.
“Can’t you sit down? This reminds me of being in elementary school,” Vivienne said. “You look exactly like my third-grade teacher.” She waved her long fingers near her face. “You have that same pinched, dried-up thing going. She was so old that she died midway through the year.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss. But there’s nowhere that I can sit,” I replied, my voice taut. “After breaking my hip in a bad carcrash, I have trouble moving too much.” Although, to be honest, it was a lot better now that Levi and I had started taking so many walks. In fact, I’d cancelled my next appointment at the orthopedic surgeon’s office.
Vivienne didn’t offer the chair that she occupied, the only one. “Fine. So, what are you doing right now?”
“I’m talking to you, but I don’t know why.”
