Shoe Addicts Anonymous (17 page)

“I do, too.”

Tod looked at her then with concern. “Look at you. You’re being so nice to me about my failed love life, and I haven’t even asked what happened to that guy you were dating.”

“George? George Manning?” She shook her head. “That was over like a month and a half ago.” Lord, she had such a stockpile of failed and unmemorable relationships. The thought of it struck her suddenly and made her profoundly sad.

It must have shown on her face because Tod looked concerned.

“God, I’m such a selfish prick.” Tod was back on his self-flagellation kick, thereby proving his point. “I didn’t even know.”

“It doesn’t matter. Really, there were no high hopes there.” The truth was, she hadn’t had high hopes, or even medium-high hopes, for a long, long time. She’d gone out with George Manning for like two months and just now it had taken her a moment to remember his last name. “But back to Mike.”

Tod scoffed.

“Are you absolutely sure he’s gay?”

“Honey, I’ve known plenty of men who claimed they were straight as they zipped up after a good time. Mike isn’t one of them. He’s as homo as they get.” He sighed. “And he’s really damn good at it, too.”

“Then what’s he doing with Sandra?” Lorna asked. “And more importantly, should I tell her?”

“She knows,” Tod said with a judicious nod. “Believe me, she knows.”

“What did you think of Mike?” Sandra asked eagerly at the next meeting. She was
dying
to know what Lorna, who seemed to have such excellent taste all around, thought of her boyfriend.

“He was really nice,” Lorna said quickly. She sounded really definite about it.

“And isn’t he cute?”

“Very cute. Yes.” Lorna glanced at Joss and Helene. “Really.”

Normally Sandra might have found Lorna’s clipped affirmatives odd, but not tonight. She was in too good a mood. “I’ve got to say, I wish the girls in high school could see me now!”

“Don’t we all,” Helene murmured.

Joss looked uncertain.

“Jeez, not me,” Lorna said. “The girls I went to high school with are all doctors or lawyers or Forbes 400 executives, or they’re married to doctors or lawyers or Forbes 400 executives.” She shook her head and revealed a secret she’d barely acknowledged to herself. “Sometimes I wonder if I was always subpar with them or if that happened somewhere after the time we all graduated.”

“Subpar?” Helene repeated, surprised. “You? How could you say such a thing?”

Lorna smiled a sad smile. “Well, maybe that wasn’t the best choice of words, but there was a time when I used to drive past those little ranch houses down River Road in Potomac, thinking I was going to do
way
better than that. Now they’re selling those places for one, two million, and I can barely make my rent.” Her face turned warm, but now that she’d put it out there, she didn’t know how to take it back.

She didn’t have to, though, because Sandra chirped up quickly, “God, I know what you mean. Everyone I went to high school with, even those mean bitchy girls I hoped would pay later, ended up married to great-looking guys and living in houses that were worthy of
Architectural Digest
.” She shook her head. “Honestly, it wasn’t that I was planning on being one of them, ever, but I was pretty sure that at least a few of them would be like
me.
You know, single and…” She frowned. “Struggling. Not financially so much, but just…” She shrugged. “…personally.”

“But you seem to have it all together,” Joss said, apparently amazed that Sandra didn’t.

Lorna looked at her in surprise. She had all the respect in the world for Sandra, but she was still surprised by Joss’s total shock that Sandra wanted more.

“Oh, my God, that is the best thing you could say to me,” Sandra said. “Because it’s totally not true. Well, it
wasn’t
true, but now it’s better. See, I went to see an acupuncturist a few weeks ago, and he put this metal bar thing in my ear.” She touched the ear that Lorna had noticed her fiddling with before. Not that it was that shocking; she only had two ears.

“Ouch!” Joss said. “They put, like, a
needle
in there?”

“Yeah, you can feel it. It’s like the post from an earring, only smaller, and it’s in a different place.” She let go and shrugged. “Look, I’m as skeptical as the next person but before he put it in, I was nervous about leaving the house and now I’m a
lot
better.”

“You were agorophobic?” Helene asked.

“Big-time.” Sandra nodded. “And I tried everything—Prozac, therapy, Xanax, hypnotherapy. Honestly, I really doubted anything could help, much less acupuncture, but I really think it has. It’s not like I was expecting it, too, you know? If anything, I went into it more cynical than most.”

“What’s agorophobic?” Joss asked. “Sorry, I don’t mean to sound dumb, but—”

“It’s okay,” Sandra said quickly. “I was nervous about leaving my apartment. I’d get nervous in a crowd. Even on the street or in the grocery store.”

Joss nodded, but it was clear from her expression that she’d never heard of such a thing.

“And this guy put a needle in your ear and you’re all better now?” Lorna asked skeptically. “Really?”

Sandra shrugged. “I’m here, aren’t I? Six months ago I couldn’t have done this.” Her face went pink again. “I hope that doesn’t make you guys think I’m some huge loser or anything.”

“Oh, no!” everyone objected at once, and Lorna went on to say, “I just always thought I was the only person I knew with human foibles. It’s great to hear I’m not.”

“Okay, what are yours?” Sandra challenged, looking to Helene and Joss for support. Though Helene looked away and Joss looked so innocent, it was impossible to believe she could ever have anything to fess up to.

“All right.” Lorna straightened her back. “I had one good boyfriend when I was sixteen, but I screwed it up and I haven’t been able to find anyone to replace him since then.”

Helene sucked in a long breath. “Really?”

Lorna nodded. “Chris Erickson. I know it’s easy to glorify first love, but even when I think about it objectively now, I think he really was The One. Or at least someone I could have spent my life with.”

Sandra looked teary. “What happened to him?”

Lorna swallowed an old, inappropriate lump in her throat. “Oh, I screwed it up in a stupid, fickle, teenage way and we broke up and now he’s married and has a new baby and all is wonderful in his world.” She gave a short laugh. “I’m sure he’s better off without me.”

“I bet he still thinks about you,” Joss said, looking at her with big, sincere blue eyes. “Honest. My high school boyfriend, Robbie, still wants me to marry him.”

“And—?” Sandra asked, raising her eyebrows so her glasses slipped down her nose and made her look every inch the schoolmarm she sounded like. “You’re not thinking about going back, are you?”

“No,” Joss admitted. “It would feel like a compromise.”

Helene, who had been watching this exchange in thoughtful silence said, “Do you think it’s possible to meet your soul mate in high school and then be too stupid to know it and blow your life forever?”

All eyes turned to her.

Lorna wanted to ask
Did you do that?
but the answer seemed so obvious that the question would have been insulting. “I think things ultimately work out the way they’re supposed to,” she said, meaning it. “Even if it’s not always the most comfortable, cushy way.”

“I agree,” Sandra said quickly, and unlike Lorna, she didn’t have a trace of uncertainty in her eyes. “If someone’s right, they’ll come back to you eventually.” She nodded, so certain that what she was saying was true that one could almost feel her certainty as another entity in the room.

And even though Lorna privately wondered if Chris had been The One That Got Away, it was so patently wrong with Sandra and Mike that she had to believe Fate would take care of things in the end.

H
elene was definitely being followed.

She’d gone out for the afternoon, making a few runs to some of her charity organizations, and she’d noticed the fairly nondescript blue car following her between the second and third stops.

If Lorna hadn’t told her she thought Helene was being followed, Helene might never have noticed. Not that the guy was that slick. He was always within about three car lengths of her. But it still made her very uneasy.

She couldn’t tell for sure what he looked like. It
might
have been Gerald Parks. Then again, it could have been Pat Sajak. She just couldn’t get a close look at him.

It didn’t matter; she could see his car, and she’d been seeing entirely too much of it lately.

With one eye on the road and one hand on the steering wheel, she took out her cell phone and called 411 for the police nonemergency number. She didn’t want to call 911 because, here in traffic and in the safety of her locked car, it just didn’t feel like an emergency.

“Operator 4601, this line is being recorded.”

Helene glanced in the rearview mirror. The car was still there. “Hi,” she said awkwardly. “I’m calling because…well, it’s not necessarily an
emergency,
but…anyway, I’m on 270 heading north, and there’s a car following me.”

“Has the driver confronted you in any way?”

“No. But he’s definitely been following me for some time now.”

“Can you see the driver, ma’am? Is it someone you know?”

“I think so. But I’m not sure. I can’t really get a good look.”

Helene was beginning to feel really foolish, although it didn’t diminish her feelings of anxiety any.

The operator’s response made it clear that was exactly what she was thinking, too. “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but we can’t really send a car out to pull someone over for being on the same road with you. If someone physically threatens or harms you, dial 911
.
”

Nice, generic answer. Helene couldn’t blame her, though, so she thanked her and hung up, hoping the police nonemergency operators wouldn’t trace her number and note her as a crazy who shouldn’t be taken seriously if she called again.

She pulled off on an exit, with the blue car three cars back, and wound her way back to Route 355, which spanned from beyond northern Maryland all the way down to Georgetown, in Washington, D.C.

She thought at one point she’d lost him, but soon thereafter she noticed the blue car had reappeared and was now directly behind her. She looked at the driver, making mental notes for a police report, while simultaneously trying to keep an eye on the winding road in front of her. It was obviously Gerald Parks. He wore Jackie O. big round dark glasses, and his fingers clutched the steering wheel like long thin hot dogs.

She drove rapidly along the curving contours of Falls Road, half-hoping to get stopped by the police so she could point Gerald out and have them apprehend him. But she knew he’d probably just keep driving and she’d sound like a nut as well as a reckless driver.

When she got to Potomac Village, she ran through a yellow light to cross over River Road, where she’d normally turn.

In the rearview mirror, she could see that the blue car was stopped at the light. She turned into the shopping center parking lot and weaved through behind the shops to pick up River Road and head home. After a mile or two of driving without being followed, she began to relax a little, though her heart thumped to beat the band against her rib cage.

As she crossed over the D.C. line, she took a deep breath, feeling like she was at last home free, when he appeared again. He turned right off Little River Turnpike—a whole different route!—and ended up behind her
again
.

As bad as this guy was at staying undetected, he was a master at following his prey, and for the first time Helene felt real anger mingling with her fear. Part of her wanted to pull over and confront him, but she knew that would be extremely foolish.

As she turned onto Van Ness Street, where her house was, she wondered if she should pass her driveway so he wouldn’t know where she lived, but in the end it didn’t matter, because he turned off right before her block and disappeared into traffic.

She put her car in park and sat, locked in, for about fifteen minutes, trying to calm her breathing.

Then she did the thing her desperation drove her to. She called Jim.

“I think someone’s following me,” she said to him when he picked up the phone.

“What?”

She told him what Lorna had said about her being followed a couple of times from the parking lot, and about the fact that he’d been behind her today for forty-five minutes. She left out the part about calling the police, though. No sense in giving Jim an out by quoting the police. “I want private security,” she finished.

“That’s nuts,” Jim said immediately.

Hurt niggled at the pit of her stomach. “You think it’s nuts for me to want to be safe from wackos in a city that’s seen more weird abductions and political assasinations than any other?”

“It’s nuts that you’re worried about this. You said the guy didn’t follow you home, right?”

“Right.”

“So this is a crowded city. You can’t blame someone for being on the same road with you.”

“Even if they’re on the same
ten
roads, right behind me, for twenty-five miles?”

“It’s a coincidence. You’re being really egotistical, thinking this is all about you.”

That was incredibly insulting. “If someone is following
me
it
has
to be about me, doesn’t it?”

“No one’s following you, Helene. Don’t make a fool of yourself.”

“Make a fool of myself?” she echoed stupidly. “How?”

“Well, for one thing, don’t even think about calling the police.”

Good thing she hadn’t told him about that. “Why not?”

“Because the story will get around, and you’ll waste a bunch of city resources while they dig around into nothing. Reporters would have a field day blaming me for that.”

“But what about my safety?” she asked, hating how small and childlike and
weak
she sounded. But she felt really weird. She was obviously being followed; the police couldn’t do anything about it even if they did believe her, which they didn’t; and she couldn’t hire her own security, because Jim had completely cut off her financial access and
he
didn’t believe her. Or he didn’t care.

She was at his mercy, yet he was her only hope.

“If I have to open myself up to public criticism every time you have a bad dream, I’m politically fucked,” Jim said. “Don’t do that to me.”

“This isn’t about
you
!” How had the man she married become so cold? “I’m
scared,
Jim. I really am.”

He made a noise that was the verbal equivalent of rolling his eyes, then said, “I’ve got to go. Lock the doors and put in a movie. We’ll talk about this later tonight.”

“Later might be too late,” she said, recent headlines running through her mind like a scrolling marquee.

But Jim wasn’t listening. He was talking to someone else in the room, probably Pam. She’d probably come in with the whipped cream and G-string, ready for action.

“I gotta go,” Jim said to Helene. “I’ll be late tonight. Don’t wait up.”

Jerk.
We’ll talk about your concern for your safety tonight
—
oh, but I won’t be there, so go on to sleep
. It was so typical of him that it shouldn’t have hurt her feelings, but Helene hung up the phone feeling like she was going to cry.

Even more than that, though, she was overwhelmingly tired. Maybe it was the postadrenaline reaction to the chase, or maybe it was the fact that she was deeply unhappy with her life and couldn’t see a way out.

Or maybe something was seriously wrong with her.

Whatever it was, she had to go in and lie down for a little while. She didn’t wake up again until the next morning.

And when she did, she was alone.

It was easier having just Bart, without Colin there to influence him to do bad things.

The good news was that Colin had begun a two-week stint at day camp, allowing Joss times like now, to take just Bart to the park alone. The bad news, though, was that Deena interpreted this as being something less than what she was paying Joss for, and she felt all the more free to ask Joss to do little extra things.

As the grocery list in Joss’s pocket proved. Five items, five different stores.

At least she got to use the car when she was on official duty. The one time Deena had asked her to “pick up a few things” on her way home from the ski club meeting one Sunday—a bust, by the way, don’t even ask—she’d ended up wrestling with two large, heavy paper bags on the Metro.

Still, on a glorious sunny summer day like this, it was almost possible to forget the bad stuff. Unlike most of the other nannies and moms, she ran with Bart on the playground and went up and down the sliding boards with him about twenty-five times.

“This is fun!” Bart squealed as he reached the bottom again. “What should I do next?”

“Whatever you want.” She looked around. “The swings?”

Bart looked excited; then doubt crossed his eyes. “Colin says swings are for sissy girls.”

Oh, that Colin. She could throttle him. He was a bad influence on Bart. She was more and more convinced of it. “Do you see any sissy girls on the swings?” she aked. The only kid on them was a boy who looked to be a couple of years older than Bart.

“No,” Bart admitted.

“Maybe Colin just says that kind of thing to make himself look cool for
not
going on the swings,” she suggested. “Not that he has to or anything. But, heck, maybe he’s even
afraid
of the swings.” It was probably unfair, calling Colin out like that when he wasn’t there to defend himself, but she was sick and tired of how Colin’s dos and dont’s colored everything Bart did.

Because, frankly, Colin was a jerk.

“I
do
like the swings,” Bart said, eyeing them.

“Me, too—let’s go.” She took him by the hand and led him to the swings, helping him onto one and then getting behind and pushing him as he laughed and laughed and yelled, “Look how high I’m going, Joss!” over and over again.

So maybe she’d defamed Colin’s meager character. At least she’d made sure Bart had a good time.

“You keep going,” she told Bart after a while, laughing and catching her breath. “I’ve got to take a little break.”

“Keep watching me!” Bart called. “My feet are touching the sky!”

“Cool!” Joss waved, and he swung off into the wild blue yonder again.

“Jocelyn?”

Startled, Joss turned to see a tall woman with blue-black hair and startling light blue eyes. “Y-yes?”

“You’re Jocelyn who works for the Olivers, right?” She gestured at Bart, who was swinging past, calling that he was going up again.

Joss smiled and waved at him and turned back to the woman. “Yes. Who are you?”

“Felicia Parsons. That’s my son, Zach, over there.” She pointed to a dark-haired kid, about seven, who appeared to be bullying a smaller boy while a heavyset young woman tried to separate the two. “I need a nanny, and I want to know how much you charge.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Parsons. I’ve already got a job.” A job she hated, admittedly. A job she’d do almost anything to shrug off.

But she couldn’t.

Felicia Parsons looked at Joss as if she were a moron. “I know that. I just asked if you worked for the Olivers. What I want to know is how much will it cost me to trump their offer.”

Joss couldn’t believe that this was the second time someone was approaching her for a job even knowing that she was contracted to work for the Olivers. A contract was a contract, and these women should understand that. It wasn’t like Joss could just jump ship at a better offer, even if she wanted to.

“I’m really sorry,” she said, keeping her eye on Bart, who was climbing on the rope knots now. The woman’s son was, at the same time, being physically held back by the girl who’d been trying to keep him away from the other boy a moment earlier. “I can’t break my contract.” She gestured toward the child. “It looks like your son might need you.”

The woman glanced in his direction, then waved the scene off. “Oh, she’ll take care of it.”

Because a nanny is a nanny, even if she isn’t your nanny?
Joss wanted to ask. But she didn’t.

“Please keep me in mind if you change your mind,” Mrs. Parsons said. “Do you have something I can write on?”

“No, sorry.”

The woman sighed dramatically and dug through her own purse to come up with a pen and a torn piece of an envelope, the back of which bore the return address of an attorney. “This is my cell phone number.
Only
call this number. Do
not
look up my home phone number and call me there under
any
circumstances.”

No danger of that. Joss didn’t reach for the paper. “Mrs. Parsons, I really don’t want you to think there’s any chance of hearing from me, because I honestly am occupied with the Oliver family through next June.”

“You say that now.” Mrs. Parson’s physically grabbed her hand and pressed the paper into it. “But you may change your mind.” She went off in the direction of her son, bellowing something either to him or to the girl who was trying to help with him.

Joss shuddered at the thought of working for a person like that.

She returned to Bart, but at this point he was playing with a little red-haired girl named Kate, and he didn’t seem to want anything to do with Joss on this date, so she told him she’d be sitting on the bench waiting for him. She went and joined the other nannies, keeping a keen eye on the youthful boy–girl drama between Bart and Kate.

“Did Felicia Parsons ask you to work for her?” a young African-American girl asked.