So Pretty It Hurts (2 page)

“Tell me,” she urged.

“I’m just feeling a little weird about his trip to Sedona.”

“What do you mean? You don’t think . . . ?”

“That he went down there to hook up with some retiree? No, I don’t get any sense he’s cheating. I just worry that he’s not—I don’t know, not ready to fully commit, I guess. I keep sensing that he talked himself into a relationship because he’s attracted to me, and likes going to bed with me.”

“Do
you
feel ready?”

“For a relationship, yeah. And maybe even more at some point. I’m not staring thirty-five in the face just yet so I’m okay being single. But I care more about Beau than anyone I’ve met up until now, and in the back of my head is the thought that if I
were
going to get married again, I’d like it to be him.”

“This all sounds like David—remember him, the guy I told you about?” Jessie said ruefully. “He seemed to love me but then finally dumped me because he said he didn’t want to make a long-term commitment to anyone. A year later he married someone else. You know how the porn industry has fluffers, women who keep the male stars hot before they perform? I felt like I’d been a
husband
fluffer with this guy.”

I felt myself cringing as she spoke. Was that what I was for Beau—a husband fluffer?

We took the Taconic State Parkway north and after an hour and a half, exited onto rural roads. We stopped chatting while I focused on the GPS directions. Many of the scattered houses we passed had their doors and windows and even their roofs rimmed with Christmas lights. We found Scott’s driveway and turned onto it. Suddenly we were engulfed in darkness.

“He told me the driveway’s really more of a road,” Jessie said, “a mile and a half long.”

“Hold on,” I said, as I hit the brakes. Five or six deer bounded across the road directly in front of the Jeep, their eyes unblinking in the headlights.

“Gosh, they scared the hell out of me,” Jessie said. “Do you think there’s a lot of other animals around here? Like wolves?”

“No,” I said, laughing. “There aren’t wolves in this area. Just jaguars and cougars.”

“Very funny. Now you’ve really spooked me.”

It
was
kind of spooky, and I was relieved when finally a few lights twinkled through the massive fir trees. And then a few seconds later there were more lights. The house looked huge, like a cruise ship steaming across a jet-black ocean.

“Wow,” Jessie exclaimed. “Big.”

“All of this could be yours,” I said, “if you play your cards right.”

As we drew closer, we saw that it wasn’t a house at all, but rather a huge gray barn—or actually two large barns positioned parallel to each other. There was a scattering of small outbuildings just beyond.

“Not what I was expecting at all,” said Jessie. “I hope we’re not bunking down with a herd of cows.”

As we stepped out of the Jeep into the crisp, clear night, a woman came up behind us, dressed in a dark barn jacket, khaki pants, and short gum-bottomed shoe boots, the kind you see in an L.L.Bean catalogue. She was fiftyish, with cropped blond-gray hair and a doughy face. She smiled at us, but there was no crinkling by the eyes. It was the kind of expression you offered when you were forced to make nice.

“Sorry we’re so late,” Jessie announced. “We got a late start from the city. I’m Jessie, by the way. And this is Bailey.”

“Not a problem,” the woman said, revealing a huge snaggletooth. “I’m Sandy, Mr. Cohen’s housekeeper. Why don’t I show you to your rooms first, and then you can join Scott. Have you eaten dinner?”

“Not unless you count a bag of tortilla chips,” Jessie said.

“Well, there’s plenty of pork ragout left over.”

After we grabbed our duffel bags from the back of the Jeep, we followed Sandy in the direction of the smaller of the two barns, which she explained contained all the bedrooms—except Mr. Cohen’s. Although we were only two hours north of the city, we might as well have been at an Adirondack logging camp. The place was ringed entirely by thick, dark woods. I glanced up. A bright white half-moon hung in the sky, surrounded by a zillion twinkling stars and the haunting film of the Milky Way.

The silence was suddenly cut by a howling from deep within the woods. Jessie nearly jumped into my arms.

“I thought you said there were no wolves around here,” she whispered anxiously, grabbing my arm.

“That’s not a wolf. It’s a coyote. They’re pretty common in these parts. But unless you’re a chicken or a Pomeranian, you don’t have any reason to worry.”

“Yeah, I guess,” she said, glancing all around us. “I grew up in Orange County, California, and I generally don’t
do
woods. I didn’t think it was going to be this creepy.”

We were almost at the barn, lagging a bit behind Sandy. I could see now that the two structures were connected by a simple one-story passageway, made totally of glass. And suddenly a heavyset woman in jeans and bulky sweater came barreling down that passageway, her curly black hair bouncing with each stride and her face pinched in annoyance.

“Someone’s in a hurry,” Jessie whispered.

“Maybe she didn’t like the ragout,” I said.

Sandy had reached the door to the building and turned around, her expression slightly impatient, as if we were naughty schoolgirls who’d fallen out of line. We hurried and caught up with her. We entered a foyer with a large wooden bench and brightly colored kilim rug. The walls and floors were all made of old, pumpkin-colored barn wood. On the floor above I heard a door slam. I figured the noise came from the young woman we’d spotted barreling down the passageway.

“There are a few guest rooms down here, but you’re both upstairs,” Sandy said, nodding her head toward the stairs. “I think you’ll find it nice and private.”

What was
that
supposed to mean? I wondered. By the hushed way she said it, you would have thought we were here to negotiate something top-secret with Scott, like a Journey reunion album. Jessie flashed me a mock grimace.

Our rooms, side by side, were extremely spacious. Mine was filled with quirky old antiques, black-and-white-checked fabric and splashes of lemon yellow. Sandy explained that if we needed anything during our stay and she wasn’t around, we should just dial extension seven on the landlines in our rooms. She added that when we were done freshening up, we should take the glass passageway to the main barn, where everyone was gathered.

I kicked off the shoes I’d been wearing in the car and tugged on a pair of gray suede boots over my jeans. I also swapped my top for a scoop-necked gray-blue sweater that matched my eyes. I’d been growing my blondish hair out for months, and it was long enough finally for me to put up on my head. I twisted it into a sloppy knot, adding a pair of dangling silver earrings. Tarty but not too tarty, I thought. Still, I felt a tiny twinge of guilt.

Jessie opened her door just as I was about to rap on it. She had changed too, into a tight, tight orange sweater that looked great with her eyes. After making our way along the glass passageway, we stepped into a warm, double-storied entrance space aglow in honey-colored light. There were old hayrack ladders and rusty farm tools mounted on the wall. Directly in front of us was a plank-wood staircase that rose to another level. Music, conversation, and the sound of clanging dishes all emanated from above.

Just as we headed over to mount the stairs, a man, dressed in black pants and a black V-neck sweater, came bounding down them. I knew it had to be Scott Cohen, and though there was a boyish quality to his face and he wore his dark hair longish, it was clear he was a good ten years older than Jessie—about forty, it looked.

“Hey, I’m so glad you finally made it,” he exclaimed.

“Hi there,” Jessie said, and accepted a kiss on the cheek. When she introduced me, Scott reached out and shook my hand, grasping it for an extra beat, like you’d expect from a politician or car salesman. His nearly coal black eyes held mine for an extra beat, too.

“You’ve got an amazing place,” Jessie said. “What were these barns doing back in the woods?”

“I actually had them transported on flatbed trucks from Vermont.”

“You didn’t shoot that moose, did you?” Jessie asked, looking up toward a huge stuffed head hanging above the double front doors.

“Yeah, right,” Scott said. “The only thing I’ve ever shot is a recording artist who didn’t go platinum. Come up and meet everyone.”

As we reached the top of the stairs, I got a better sense of the place. To the left of the landing was a great room—a combination kitchen, dining, and living area, with two couches, a bunch of chubby armchairs, a big round dining table, and another animal head mounted on the wall, this one an elk that had probably never set hoof east of the Rockies. Sandy was fussing with some things on the kitchen counter. Six other people were bunched directly behind her at a big wooden island, some standing, some sitting on barstools.

All conversation ceased as we stepped into the room. It felt as if we’d accidentally stumbled into a play midperformance and caught the actors totally by surprise.

Scott dispelled the awkwardness by quickly introducing us to everyone present: Devon Barr’s agent, Cap Darby, a square-jawed, superconfident Clive Owen type who appeared to be in his mid- to late forties; his blond wife, Whitney, who couldn’t have been more than thirty and had a rock on her left hand the size of an iPod; Devon’s booker, Christian Hayes, a slim African American with a shaved head and cropped, curly beard; a girl named Tory Hartwick with short, jet-black hair and striking hooded eyes, who clearly was Devon’s model friend; and a tall, thin rocker type named Tommy Quinn, who had one of his bare, heavily tattooed arms draped over Tory. He must have been important, because I felt Jessie press her foot into mine when Scott introduced him.

And then there was Richard Parkin, whose name I recognized instantly. He was an award-winning journalist and author, hailing from the UK, who wrote profiles for magazines like
Vanity Fair
and
Track
, the music magazine that was part of the same media company as
Buzz
.

“So this is our house party,” Scott said. “Devon isn’t here at the moment. She went to her room after dinner, but she’s coming back.”

I caught Whitney shooting a look at her husband Cap, though I had no clue what it meant.

“And oh, Devon’s assistant Jane is missing too,” Scott added. “She slipped out to the deck to use the telescope.”

Jane must have been the girl Jessie and I had spotted charging down the glass passageway like a bull through the streets of Pamplona. Based on the land speed at which she’d been moving and the ticked-off expression on her face, I doubted she was out there right now studying the moons of Jupiter.

“You didn’t get lost, did you?” Christian asked us. “I accidentally ended up in the town of Traugersville, population fourteen.”

“I thought you didn’t drive, Christian?” Whitney said, revealing a strong southern accent. With her long, flowing hair, translucent blue eyes, and curvy figure she was attractive enough, but it was a standard-issue look that made her indistinguishable from millions of other women with big blond hair and hard, fake tits.

“I don’t—I used a car service,” he explained. “The driver clearly hadn’t been north of Westchester in his life, and he never took the car over fifty-nine miles an hour. I could have been in Montreal in less time.”

“How about some wine?” Scott asked us, interrupting. We both accepted a glass of red.

“Scott has quite the cellar up here,” Cap announced. “If you’re a wine lover, you’re in for a treat.”

“You just have to keep putting your hand over your glass,” Whitney said. “Or he’ll top it off endlessly.”

“Actually, I’m fine with you topping
mine
off,” Richard said in his posh British accent. He reached out his empty glass. From the ruddiness of his face, it appeared he might have already enjoyed several. “It’s absolutely splendid—saddlebags and a strong hint of black cherries, I’d say.”

“I thought wine was always made from grapes,” Tory said.

At first I thought she was kidding. But the look of befuddlement on her face said otherwise.

“You’re not
serious
, are you?” Tommy asked her, feigning horror.

A door slammed downstairs at that moment, saving all of us from any explanation on Tory’s part, and then we heard the sound of someone’s long strides across the wooden planks.

“
There’s
Devon,” Cap said with a hint of relief. I wondered how he knew it was she and not Jane.

We all turned expectantly, listening to the
clop-clop
of her boots as she mounted the stairs.

She was wearing a black pea coat over her jeans, and her long, perfectly straight blond hair, parted in the middle, was fanned out around the collar. She was tall, though not quite as tall as Tory. But then she didn’t need to be. Her
face
was her fortune, and it was as exquisite in person as in photos: big hazel eyes, shaped like almonds, a small, perfect nose, and a ripe mouth that was always slightly and sensuously parted, as if she were on the verge of telling someone softly that she’d like to fuck his brains out.

“Come meet our new arrivals,” Scott suggested.

She glanced toward us without really taking us in. She looked bored, as if she had just arrived at a three-day conference on treasury bonds. In her right hand she was holding both a water bottle and a nearly flattened cigarette pack, and after setting down the bottle and stuffing the cigarettes into her pocket, she shrugged off her pea coat onto an armchair.

We all stared at her wide-eyed. On top of her skintight jeans she was wearing a filmy black top with a deep plunge. Each side had shifted, and her small but perfect breasts were totally exposed.

Chapter 2

“Y
ou’ve had a slight wardrobe malfunction, darling,” Christian announced.

Devon seemed to totally ignore him, but then, without a trace of self-consciousness, she slowly teased the fabric back over her breasts with long, slender fingers. I’d seen modeling shots of her almost totally nude before, and I wouldn’t have expected her to feel awkward, but the languidness of her movement suggested something else: that it had all been intentional—for someone’s benefit. Another thought shot through my brain. How thin she was. When Devon was first starting out, she was known for the heroin chic look, but she had filled out as she grew older, to something you could have described simply as “model thin.” Her appearance tonight suggested a worrisome drop in pounds.

“There—better?” she asked blasély to no one in particular. And then, “I’d like some fresh water,” before anyone could weigh in with an answer to the first question.

“Absolutely,” Scott said, reaching inside the fridge for a bottle. “This is Jessie, by the way, and her friend Bailey.”

“Hello,” she said, without much enthusiasm, but she came forward and shook our hands. Her hand was slim and felt as fragile as a seashell. She held my gaze just a moment. For a split second I saw a flash of cunning in her eyes.

“Congratulations on your album,” Jessie said. “It must be a very exciting time for you.”

“Scott’s the one who deserves the congratulations,” she said. “He’s the one who made it all happen.”

“And Cap, of course,” said Scott, a little forced. “He’s the one who brought you to me to begin with.”

“Have you been writing music long?” Jessie asked her.

“I wrote little songs, when I was young. Then I learned how to do it from watching Tommy.”

She looked at him slyly, as if there was a secret between them.

“Scott tells us we’re going to have a preview this weekend,” Tommy said. “I can hardly wait.”

Next to him, Tory formed her wide mouth into a pout, clearly not appreciating the way Tommy was taking in Devon—or maybe she was still pondering how you turned cherries into wine.

“Did you bump into Jane?” Cap asked Devon. “I sent her to look for you.”

Devon shrugged as if she didn’t remember and could care less where Jane had gone. “You know what I’m in the mood for?” she said. “Pool. Who wants to take me on?”

“I’d love a game, actually,” Tommy said. “But you’ll have to play fair and keep your clothes on.”

The two of them walked across a large wooden plankway to the other side of the barn’s upper level, where there was a billiard table and a small bar. Tory hesitated a moment and then followed after them, her strides as wide as an ostrich’s. At the same time, Sandy announced that dinner for Jessie and me was ready. I glanced back at the island and discovered that she had set out two dinner plates heaped with the ragout and separate plates with a simple salad. There was also a basket overflowing with corn muffins.

“You don’t mind eating here, do you?” Scott asked us. “We already spent two hours at the dining table, and I’m afraid if I sat down there again, I’d never get up.”

“Not at all,” Jessie said. “It looks wonderful.”

“Whitney has given it her full blessing,” Scott said.

“Do you like to cook?” Jessie asked.

“I’ve just finished a cookbook, actually,” she said. “Texas food—but not the whole Tex-Mex or barbeque-and-chicken-fried-steak sort of thing. I’m focusing on the kind of
elegant
Texas food you’re served in the best homes there.”

“Oh, describe a few dishes to me, will you?” Christian demanded. “At First Models we’re never allowed to talk about food during the day.”

“Why not?” I asked, my fork poised.

“There are always models dropping by the agency, and they can’t
bear
it if you mention food,” he said, slowly sweeping his fingers back and forth along the collar of his shirt. “They’re always hungry. They’d eat the blotter on the desk if you turned your back.”

“I can’t imagine how they resist indulging,” Jessie said. “I’m too weak to say no to anything yummy.”

“They use all these crazy ways to deal with it,” Christian said. He glanced over toward the pool table, obviously making sure Devon was out of hearing range. “There’s this girl we signed lately, and every day she buys one of those little bags of Wise potato chips, empties all the chips in the garbage, and then all day long she just sniffs the inside of the empty bag for a rush. You know how coke addicts have powder on their noses? She has potato-chip crumbs.”

“Well, at least, as we learned tonight, some models appreciate good wine,” Richard added sarcastically.

“But models weren’t always as thin as they are today, were they?” Jessie asked.

“Good God, no,” Christian said. “Just look at shots from the seventies. Christie Brinkley? I kid you not—at the height of her career, she was the size of a water buffalo.”

“What happened?” I asked. “Why the pressure to be so thin these days?”

“Runway,” he declared definitively, as if we would know exactly what he meant.

“I’m not following,” Jessie said.

“Years ago, the supermodels never did fashion shows,” Cap interjected. “There were two totally different types of models then: runway and photographic. The runway girls had to fit into the sample sizes and were supposed to be nothing more than hangers for the clothes. The photographic girls didn’t have to be that small. When they put on a size four for a photo shoot and it didn’t fit, you just slit it up the back and no one was any wiser. But then runway work started to really pay well, and the agencies pushed the photo girls to do it. Suddenly they needed to fit perfectly into the sample sizes, which by the way are even smaller today than they were ten years ago.”

“So come on, Whitney,” Christian said. “Tell us about your favorite dishes.”

As she began to elaborate on a few of the so-called standouts in her upcoming cookbook, I enjoyed the pork ragout and only half listened to the descriptions of things like oyster soufflé and brownies with praline topping. I soon became aware that Richard had angled his body so that he’d boxed me out from the rest of the group and had me more or less to himself.

“So I finally get to meet Bailey Weggins,” he said as the others chatted behind us. “Famous true crime writer.” His eyes, I noticed, were heavily hooded but a nice, deep shade of blue. Whatever benefit they offered his face was unfortunately undercut by his rough, ruddy skin. He was the kind of guy you pegged for fifty but found out later was only thirty-six.

“I’m flattered you know of me,” I said, genuinely.

“And not only as a writer. You figured out who killed the lovely Mona.” He was referring to Mona Hodges, the she-devil editor in chief of
Buzz
who had been murdered this past summer.

“Am I to surmise that you knew Mona personally?”

“Just one encounter. After she went to
Buzz
and did the whole scorched-earth thing with the staff, she invited me to lunch at Michael’s—said she wanted me to write for the magazine. I’ve churned out my fair share of celebrity profiles, but as I told her, I don’t do gossip, and I certainly have no interest in issues like, ‘Is It a Bump—or Just Belly Fat?’ kinds of stories.”

“I don’t blame you,” I said. “I’m sure it’s
sooo
much more intellectually invigorating to profile celebrities for magazines like
Vanity Fair
and coax out their views on how to bring an end to world hunger or global warming.”

“Touché,” he said, tossing his head back in laughter. “I sounded like a pompous ass just then. What I was actually going to add is that I think what
you’re
doing with the crime stuff is interesting. What led you to it?”

“I was a newspaper reporter for a few years, covering the police beat, and then moved to Manhattan to work in magazines. I never had any particular interest in celebrity crime, but this part-time gig at
Buzz
came up and I loved the idea of a regular income. You’re totally freelance, right?”

“Yes, though I did my stint on Fleet Street in my twenties.”

“I’ve read
your
books and thought they were terrific,” I said. “Especially the one on Hollywood agents.”

“Thank you. So how do you know Scott?”

“I don’t, actually. I’m just a tag-along with Jessie this weekend. You?”

“I’ve known him a little over the years. Then I bumped into him lately and he lured me up here to meet Devon. He’s angling for a
Vanity Fair
piece when her album hits.”

“You’re hogging Bailey, for God’s sake, Richard,” Scott called over to us, perhaps having overheard his name.

“She demanded I explain the thesis of my last book,” he said. “I had to oblige.”

Sandy cleared our plates and set down a wooden tray with coffee cups and a large cake iced thickly with white frosting. At the same time, the other three guests drifted back to our area.

“You
have
to have a slice of Sandy’s red velvet cake,” Scott announced to the group. “It’s to die for.”

Sandy pulled a large knife from a drawer and slid it silently into the cake. The four layers inside, separated by the creamy frosting, were as red as garnets. After lifting each piece onto a plate, Sandy passed them around the island. Everyone accepted a slice except Tory and Devon. Tory’s sad, sullen “No, thank you” seemed to emanate from the lips of someone whose kitty had just been crushed by a car. Devon just shook her head as if she couldn’t have cared less.

“You really wouldn’t like a piece, Miss Barr?” Sandy asked her. “You didn’t eat any dinner.”

Devon’s face formed into an expression of pure disdain. “If I wanted one, I’d say so.”

“Thank you, Sandy,” Scott said. “I can finish up here.”

I didn’t blame Scott for dismissing her. There had been something challenging about her comment to Devon. If Sandy was embarrassed about being banished, she didn’t show it. She set the knife in the sink, wiped her hands on a dishrag, and quietly made her way down the stairs.

It took a moment or two to recover from the awkward lull, but then conversation started up again with Whitney describing the origins of red velvet cake. Cap and Devon went off to shoot pool, with Tommy and Tory watching. Christian and Richard—who’d refilled his wine glass twice since I’d been there—dragged out a backgammon board. Scott, Jessie, Whitney, and I continued to hang by the island, where we lobbed questions at our host about how he’d found the property and managed to haul two different barns here. I excused myself at one point to use the powder room on the ground floor, and when I emerged a couple of minutes later, Jessie was waiting in ambush for me.

“So what do you think?” she whispered devilishly.

“Interesting crowd,” I said. “Should we plan on flashing our boobs tomorrow just to keep up?”

“What about Scott? What do you think of
him
?”

“Older than I’d pictured, but hunky—and very charming.”

“Yeah, I know. Oh, by the way, you know who Tommy is, right?”

“A tattoo aficionado?”

“The lead guitarist for the band Tough Love.”

“Oh, right, I thought the name was familiar, but I’m not much of a heavy metal fan.”

“He’s something else too—Devon’s ex-lover. They broke up about four months ago.”

She was about to elaborate, but Whitney suddenly descended the stairs, announcing she was heading to bed.

“My asthma acts up in cold weather,” she said. “And I need to get plenty of sleep.”

We returned upstairs. Cap, who was now absentmindedly watching the backgammon game, yawned and announced he was going to take a quick walk around the premises and then turn in. Devon was the next to retire, offering only a desultory good-night. Richard staggered off about twenty minutes later, followed by Christian, Tommy, and Tory, and then it was just Jessie, Scott, and I standing at the island. I suddenly realized that I’d better beat it before Jessie strangled me. I made a point of glancing at my watch, yawning, and announcing my need to hit the sack.

“If you’re interested, Sandy’s husband Ralph is leading a couple of hikes tomorrow,” Scott said as I slid off the stool. “There’s one at eight thirty, and if that’s too beastly an hour, there’ll be another in the afternoon.”

“I actually think I’ll do the early one,” I said.

“And if you’re up for a massage at any point, there’s a sign-up sheet by the door on the lower level of the guest barn. I have a local masseuse coming in for the day.”

I wished them good night and scurried out of there. Jessie bit her lip and shot me an amused look, as if she wasn’t sure what was in store, but she was game to see how it unfolded.

Before heading up to my room, I decided to pop outside for a blast of fresh air. Partly it was because I was feeling restless, but I also wanted a good look at the night sky, so far from the ambient light of Manhattan. My father, who died when I was twelve, had been a real naturalist and often took my brothers and me on walks through woods all over Massachusetts, teaching us about things like birds and turtles and where you could find the planets in the sky. Being out in the country always brought him close to mind.

The night seemed even more dazzling now than it had earlier, probably because most of the lights in the barns had been turned off. Once again my eyes were drawn toward the moon. It was still gleaming in the sky, higher than earlier, but now I noticed a filmy ring of ice crystals around it. Though some people assumed it was an old wives’ tale, a ring like that really
was
a harbinger of rain—or if the weather was as cold as it was tonight, snow. When moisture gathers high in the atmosphere, you can see it reflecting the light of the moon.

Staring at the moon made me suddenly recall Scott’s mention of a telescope on the deck. Wrapping my arms around myself for warmth, I made my way toward the rear of the barn. The coyotes were obviously sated; the only night sounds now were the snap of frozen twigs under my footfall.

But then there was another sound, a woman speaking—and it was coming from where the deck must be. Curious, I tried to step gently so I wouldn’t be heard. As I neared the end of the barn wall, I spotted the edge of the deck. Cautiously I leaned forward and peered around the corner of the barn. Devon was standing there in her pea coat, talking to Cap. Though they weren’t that near me, their voices carried clearly in the crisp night air.