Swimsuit Body (2 page)

“It'll be our secret,” I reply with a smile. She glances down at the basket that's tucked under my arm.
Am I forgiven?
her plaintive gaze seems to say. I relent as I had earlier with Mini Me when he licked my hand. I hand her the basket. “Enjoy.”

She beams as if I'd just awarded her an Oscar. “Thank you, I will.” She plucks the card from the basket, scribbles something on the back with a pen she produced from her teal Prada bag, and hands it to me. “My cell number,” she says casually, as though it hadn't been as tightly guarded by her assistant as the pin number for her bank account. “Call me if Brianna gives you a hard time. I pay her to be scary because I'm the world's biggest softie,” she adds in a hushed voice, eyes sparkling like those of a naughty but adorable child who pulled one over on the adults.

I walk away confused. Was that the spoiled creature who'd insisted on two-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets and who couldn't possibly drink coffee that wasn't brewed in a machine that cost more than what I make in a week? The woman I'd just encountered had seemed … sweet. A word I never thought I would use to describe Delilah Ward.

CHAPTER TWO

The Voakses' Spanish colonial sits high on a hill above the bay, a mile or so from the Roaring Brook Camp where I was a counselor the summer before my sophomore year of high school. Amid the serene woodland setting, I wage war on the ants that have invaded the kitchen. I strafe them with bug spray and set out traps, then do a sweep of the pantry searching for any open food containers, which are crack to critters small and large—I once chased a bear from one of my other properties—before I head over to the Russos' midcentury modern by the university to meet with Brandon, the tree trimmer.

The dead tree limb that hangs over their neighbors' garage is the proverbial sword of Damocles in more ways than one. The neighbors in question, the Hendersons, a retired couple in their sixties, offered to split the cost of having it removed, and while I like to think they're simply reasonable people, I can't help wondering if their friendly gesture has anything to do with the fact that my client, Victor Russo, owns a casino in Vegas. Maybe the Hendersons are afraid he'll have them whacked, along with the tree limb, if they don't play nice.

It's almost 1:30 by the time I break for lunch. Leaving Brandon to finish up, I climb back in my Ford Explorer, the green Eddie Bauer model with the red stripe that tells you how old it is—the speedometer has more miles on it than Bonnie and Clyde's getaway car—and head over to Ivy's. My best friend, Ivy Ladeaux, lives down the street from me, so when she's not pulling a shift at the Gilded Lily, the collectibles shop where she works part-time, we eat lunch together. On the way, I stop to pick up sandwiches at our favorite vegetarian eatery, McDharma's. The parking lot is full and I'm lucky to find a spot. I pull in as a circa 1970s Volkswagen bus, painted with peace symbols and plastered with political stickers, is pulling out. The driver, an old dude with graying shoulder-length hair, wearing sunglasses the same vintage as his vehicle, gives me a friendly wave.

Cypress Bay is the land of old hippies who didn't fade away. Take the owner of McDharma's for instance. Austin Atkins is a former sixties activist who burned his draft card back in the day. More recently, when the McDonald's corporation threatened to sue for copyright infringement, he took action and became a cause célèbre after he went to the press. McDonald's backed down within days of the story about the David-versus-Goliath battle going viral. Austin threw a party to celebrate, a meatless barbecue if you can imagine, and we all raised our glasses, business owners and counterculture types alike, in a toast to his victory over The Man.

When I pull into the driveway of Ivy's gingerbread house, I'm greeted by the sound of hammering. Jax, the handyman, is replacing a section of rotted railing on the front porch, his golden retriever, Buddy, stretched out alongside him. Jax's hair, tied back in its usual ponytail, is the same red-gold shade as his dog's fur. The two have become a fixture since Ivy inherited the house from her grandmother. There's always some repair going on. The two-story Victorian is a money pit and far too big for one person, but Ivy has lived in it since she was twelve and has a sentimental attachment to the house. I think she would sooner donate a kidney than sell it. I walk over to greet Jax and Buddy before making my way to the garage that Ivy converted into a studio.

I find her hunched over the workbench, peering into the retractable magnifying glass clamped to one end as she puts the finishing touches on the diorama she's been toiling over all week. She wears bib overalls and a smocked peasant blouse with puff sleeves, an outfit no one over the age of ten could pull off except her. Ivy resembles Meg Ryan in
When Harry Met Sally
with curly black hair instead of blond. You might find her unbearably cute, with her big blue eyes in a heart-shaped face, until you get to know her and discover she's a woman of substance with the heart of a warrior. She's also quirky, another thing I love about her. She doesn't just march to the beat of her own drummer, she dances the funky chicken and makes it seem cool. Which is why we've been best friends since we met in sixth grade.

Next to her, I look like the giantess in
Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman
. I'm five foot ten with dirty-blond hair, cut shoulder-length, gray-green eyes and dusky skin of my Cherokee ancestors—if there's any truth to the Ballard family lore about the raid that resulted in the birth of my great-great-grandfather. My grandma used to say I had an hourglass figure, which, in modern-day parlance, means you could stand to lose a few pounds. You'd think it wouldn't be hard with all the running around I do in my line of work, except that for every calorie I burn, there's always another one lying in wait ready to pounce. I think guiltily of the party leftovers that I ate for supper last night, after they were pressed on me by one of my clients. I don't want to know how many calories are in a gougère.

Ivy looks up, blinking, at my approach. “Don't tell me it's lunchtime already?”

“Past.”

She peers at her diver's watch, which looks cartoonish on her dainty wrist, and makes a surprised noise when she sees what time it is—a quarter past two—before remarking, “Well, that explains it.”

“What?”

“I suddenly realized I was starving.”

“I left you a message. Which you'd know if you checked your voicemail.”

I bend to examine her latest creation. Ivy's dioramas are one of a kind in that they're made from dead insects, which she buys from an honest-to-God insect emporium in L.A. It sounds gross, but it's not. Her dioramas are works of art. The one before me is of a shoe store, featuring a daddy longlegs spider and a longhorn beetle as customer and clerk, detailed with dollhouse miniature-size furniture and objects. I watch as she bends a spider leg no thicker than an eyelash, using tweezers and a moistened Q-tip. When she finally sits back, all eight of the spider's appendages are perfectly positioned and shod in teeny-weeny sneakers. I smile at the whimsy.

“Sweet. But my favorite is still the ladybug picnic.”

“That's because ladybugs aren't on your hit list.” She can smell Eau de Raid on me.

“Ladybugs eat aphids. They can live.”

With a tired sigh, I sink into the chintz armchair, a castoff from the house, whose seat is permanently molded to the shape of Grandmother Ladeaux's bottom.

“Rough day?” Ivy turns her swivel chair around to face me.

I tell her about my diva in residence, Delilah Ward. “I'll have to put the number for FEMA on my contact list if she destroys anything else,” I say after I've described the scene I encountered at the house. “Though the weird thing was, I liked her. She seemed … I don't know, like a real person.”

“As opposed to what—a raving bitch?”

“Or a bereaved widow.”

“People have different ways of showing grief.”

“True. Also, it's been a while.” She lost her husband a year ago in August.

Ivy fetches the TV tray that she decoupaged with vintage photos from the flea market, and I set out our lunch: hummus and avocado sandwiches, a large bag of Terra Chips, and bottled iced teas.

“What bothers me most is that she was doing coke. Or one of her guests was. Either way, it doesn't bode well for someone fresh out rehab.” I add, in a subdued voice, “It brought back memories.”

“You were never that bad.” Ivy tears open the bag of chips and crams a handful into her mouth.

“True, I never did coke.”

“And you got sober.”

“Only after I burned all my bridges.” That was when I was a real-estate broker and wore nice clothes to work. I fooled myself into thinking no one could see through my disguise. I ignored the funny looks I used to get, the conversations that broke off when I entered a room, the buyers who were all smiles one day and not returning my calls the next. I hit bottom when a seller pulled her listing due to my “erratic behavior,” and I went ballistic. I showed up at her house that night, stinking drunk, and proceeded to tell her exactly what I thought of her, a tirade that culminated in my hurling her keys, along with the remote control device to her gated community, into her koi pond. In front of her little girl no less. I was so ashamed the next morning when I realized what I'd done, I attended my first AA meeting. I've been going ever since.

“Not all. I stuck by you,” Ivy reminds me.

“Yeah, so you could kick my butt.”

We exchange a grin. I uncap my peach-flavored iced tea and take a swig. Ivy brushes chip crumbs from the bib of her overalls and unwraps her sandwich. I think about the night I showed up drunk at her house for a dinner party and she sent me packing. I was mad at the time, but a year later, when I was making my AA amends, I thanked her for being a hard-ass.
That's what
friends are for
,
she'd said.

“Talked to Bradley lately?” she asks before she bites into her sandwich.

I groan. My boyfriend is another sore subject. Bradley, a cameraman for CNN, is currently on assignment in Afghanistan. Last night while we were Skyping, I decided to surprise him with a striptease. We haven't had sex in a while, and I was feeling frisky. It wasn't until after I'd bared my boobs that I noticed the blurred figure in the background. To my mortification, I saw that it was Bradley's Afghani driver, Yusef, when his bearded face swam into view.

“Bet you made his day,” Ivy comments with a laugh, after I've relayed the incident.

“Who, Bradley or his driver? If you're referring to Yusef, I very much doubt it. He looked pretty shocked. In fact, I may have set back peace in the Middle East another hundred years.”

“Sure, if it had been Hillary Clinton doing the striptease.”

“Over there women are stoned to death for less.”

I make light of it, but I can't speak of death without a chill going through me, recalling my close call, the previous summer, at the hands of a gun-wielding psycho while I was investigating my mom's murder case. I vowed to stick to my day job from then on. I started my own business, Rest Easy Property Management, after I got sober. I tend to other people's homes as I do my own. I see to repairs and ensure that my clients aren't getting ripped off by their pool or gardening service and that any domestics in their employ possess green cards. For the vacation rentals, I screen potential renters. I'm also the soul of discretion. Recently, after I'd noticed several tampons missing from a previously sealed box of Tampax at the Millers' house while the wife was out of town, I replaced it with an unopened box so she wouldn't find out her husband was cheating on her.

“What did Bradley have to say?” Ivy brings me back into the moment.

“He wanted to know what I was doing for an encore.”

She chuckles. “My kind of guy.”

“He'd feel differently if a
fatwa
was issued against me. On the other hand, we're talking about a guy who isn't bothered by the fact that his parents hate me.” I take a swig of my iced tea, washing away the bitter taste in my mouth at the mention of Joan and Douglas Trousdale.

“There are worse things.” Ivy's tone is light, but I can see something is troubling her. Hers is the kind of face that shows emotion like a barometer shows changes in atmospheric pressure. “I had dinner with Rajeev's parents last night,” she explains in response to the questioning look I give her. “Remember I told you they were coming for a visit?” Her boyfriend's parents live in Mumbai.

“Right. So how'd it go?”

“Good,” she reports in a flat voice. “They were nice.”

“You don't sound very happy about it,” I comment before remembering who I'm talking to. “Let me guess. They don't have their hearts set on their son marrying a suitable bride of their choosing.”

She makes a wry face that tells me I guessed correctly. “They were totally modern, not at all what I expected. They
adored
me, to quote Rajeev.” She looks panicked all of a sudden. “Oh, God, what am I going to do if he asks me to marry him?” Which to my mind isn't a matter of
if
but
when
.

Rajeev is crazy about her. He's also a catch. He could be a Bollywood star with his looks. More importantly, he's sweet natured, funny, smart, and successful—he earns a six-figure income as a software designer. None of which I point out because Ivy has no desire to marry. She's turned down two marriage proposals already. One from the fellow artist she dated a couple years ago, and another before that from her boyfriend in college. I temper my response. “I think you should be open to the possibility that it's not the worst thing that could happen.”

She groans. “It's not as if we haven't talked about it. He knows how I feel.”

“Exactly. You're in love with him.”

She doesn't dispute this, though you'd never guess to look at her she was a woman in love. She lapses into silence, winding a stray curl around her finger as she stares out the window. When she brings her gaze back to me, her expression is weighted with the doubts and fears I know she's feeling. “You think I should marry him.” It's an accusation rather than a statement.

“I didn't say that. But I think you should keep an open mind.”

It all goes back to her mother, in my opinion. Dr. Ladeaux sold her medical practice in Seattle and ended her marriage to Ivy's father to move to Malawi, where she runs a free clinic in a remote village. Ivy, who was twelve at the time, was left in the care of her dad and grandmother. She's always acted like she was totally fine with her mom's decision.
She's doing important work saving lives
, Ivy would always say in her defense. But I know from having lost my own mom at an early age how a thing like that can shape you. Or warp you.

She nods slowly, saying, “I'll try.”

“Just promise not to pick a bridesmaid's dress that makes me look fat.”