Big Boned

5

I consider ducking beneath the cashier’s desk and hiding under Magda’s feet, but this seems unprofessional.

Instead, I stand my ground, while President Allington—as always inexplicably attired in a New York College letter jacket, white painter’s pants (although it’s not yet Memorial Day), and running shoes—enters the cafeteria, flanked on one side by the housing director Dr. Jessup, and on the other by Dr. Flynn, the department’s on-staff psychologist. All three men are listening in what appears to be a semistupefied manner to Muffy Fowler, the public relations guru the college has hired to help deal with press involving the graduate student union negotiations.

Now, however, Muffy appears to be doing damage control on Dr. Veatch’s murder.

“Well, you just have to get them out of here, Phil,” Muffy is saying, in her strong Southern accent, as the four of them walk in. “This is private property, after all.”

“Actually,” Dr. Flynn says, his voice completely toneless. “New York City sidewalks are not private property.”

“Well, you know what I mean,” Muffy says. I can’t help noticing that every male eye in the room is on her. The thirty-something-year-old former beauty queen (no, really. It said so on her CV in The Pansy, the newsletter that is distributed to all New York College administrators once a month) wears her chestnut brown hair in a large poufy helmet around her head—known in a previous decade as a bouffant, in this one as… I don’t even know—and shows off her slim figure to an advantage by sporting a pencil skirt and high heels.

I guess I can see why every guy in the vicinity is so attracted to the vivacious, well-coiffed Ms. Fowler—at least until she opens her mouth.

“We don’t want to send one of those rent-a-cops ya’ll like to call security, either, to just shoo them away,” Muffy says. “Freedom of the press, and all. We need to take a more delicate approach to this. I think we should send a woman. Someone from the administrative staff.”

I can feel my spine going cold. I have no idea what she’s talking about, but all I can think is No. For the love of all that is holy.

“We’ve arranged for a grief counselor for any Fischer Hall residents who might feel they need to talk to one,” Dr. Jessup is trying to tell the president. “Dr. Kilgore is on her way. And since news of the murder’s already been all over the local radio stations and New York One, we’re encouraging students to call their parents to let them know they’re all right… ”

We are? Wow, you miss a lot when you’re an actual suspect in a murder, as opposed to an innocent bystander, like I usually am.

But President Allington isn’t listening to Dr. Jessup. Maybe that’s because all of his attention is focused on Muffy—possibly because she’s managed to snag her ginormous diamond cocktail ring on a loose thread attached to the gold letters NY stitched onto one side of his jacket.

“Oh my goodness,” Muffy laughs. “I gotcha good, didn’t I, Phil? Don’t move an inch now, we’re dealin’ with a three-carat canary diamond here… ”

Dr. Allington stands there looking down at the top of Muffy’s helmet head and laughs in a manner that can only be called foolish. I glance at Magda and see that she is staring at the president and public relations manager as if they’ve just beamed down from another planet. I sort of understand her astonishment. It’s true that ever since an attempt on her life in this very building, Mrs. Allington spends most of her time at the couple’s Hamptons home.

Still, you’d think her husband would be a little less obviously delighted to be receiving so much attention from a member of the opposite sex. Even one as attractive as Muffy Fowler.

“Wasn’t that funny?” Muffy asks the room in general, when she finally manages to disentangle herself from the president. Not that anyone seems to have been laughing. Except her and “Phil.” Although, to be truthful, everyone is staring at her now—even all the women. “Now, where were we? Oh, right. Do you have someone you can send outside to deal with the press, Stan? Someone who can act caring?”

“Well,” Dr. Jessup begins. “We can always send Gillian, when she gets here. But wouldn’t that be something you, Ms. Fowler, might want to do, seeing as how the university hired you to—”

But before Dr. Jessup can finish, President Allington’s gaze falls upon me… just as, deep down inside, I’d known it would, somehow. I mean, really. Isn’t that the story of my life? Got a really unsavory task? Why not send Heather Wells to do it? She lost her uterus in the park this morning, after all. It’s not like she’s of any use to society anymore anyway.

“Oh, Jessica,” Dr. Allington says, coming momentarily out of his Muffy-induced stupor and recognizing me as the girl who once saved his wife’s life. Or something like that. “Jessica’s here. Why can’t Jessica do it?”

For reasons that will never be clear to me, President Allington thinks I’m Jessica Simpson.

No. Really. No matter how many times people (including me) tell him I’m not.

“Now, Phil,” Dr. Flynn says. Dr. Flynn has always been a stand-up guy. Possibly because he doesn’t live on campus, but manages to keep a sense of perspective by commuting in every day from the suburbs. “That’s Heather. Remember? And Heather’s had a hard day. She’s the one who found Owen—”

“She did? You.” Muffy looks at me and snaps her fingers. “You’re the one who found him?”

I exchange wild-eyed glances with Magda. “Um. Yes?”

“Perfect.” Muffy grabs me by the arm. “Come with me.”

“Muffy.” Dr. Flynn looks alarmed. “I really don’t think—”

“Oh, hush,” Muffy says.

No, really. She actually says this.

“Ms. Fowler.” Dr. Jessup seems wearier than usual. He looks slightly pale beneath his Aspen tan. “I’m not sure—”

“Oh, why, I never in my life saw such a bunch of fussbudgets,” Muffy declares, in a mockly scandalized tone. “Jessica and I are just going to have ourselves a little bit of girl talk, nothing you need to worry your little heads about. Ya’ll get yourselves some coffee and I’ll be back in just a little bit. Come on, Jessica.”

The next thing I know, she’s leading me out of the cafeteria and out into the lobby, one arm around my shoulders, the other around my wrist.

That’s right. She has me in a sorority girl death grip.

“Listen, Jessica,” she’s saying, as we head outside, her eyes glittering with a brighter intensity than any of the gemstones on her fingers and earlobes. “I just want you to say a few words to the reporters we’ve got hanging around out here. Just a few words about how devastatin’ it was findin’ Owen’s body, and all. Do you think you can do that for me, Jessica?”

“Um,” I say. Her breath smells like she just swallowed an entire Listerine Pocket Pak. “My name’s Heather.”

Outside, the spring sky is still as blue as it had been when I’d lost my uterus, just a few hours earlier. It’s unseasonably warm—a hard morning for anyone to spend in an office, or slouched in front of a chalkboard, or, you know, at a crime scene. True, the drug dealers have scattered thanks to the strong police presence over by Fischer Hall.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of people milling around, staring at all the news vans that are parked illegally along the west side of the park, crowding the sidewalk and blocking traffic.

It’s toward these news vans that Muffy begins steering me—even though I put on the brakes, pronto.

“Uh,” I say. “I don’t think this is the best idea… ”

“Are you kidding me?” Muffy demands. For such a skinny little thing, she’s pretty strong. Obviously, she works out. That’s always the way with these Southern belles. They look like a puff of wind could blow them away, but in reality, they can bench-press more than your boyfriend. “What could get their minds off this strike thing faster than the teary-eyed blond who found her boss with a bullet through his skull? Do you think you could—”

“OW!” I shriek, as she wrenches some of the fat on my upper arm, hard, between her thumb and forefinger. “What’d you do that for? That really hurt!”

“Good, now your eyes are waterin’,” Muffy says. “Keep it up. Boys! Oh, boys! Over here! This gal here found the body!”

The next thing I know, fifty microphones are being thrust into my face, and I find myself explaining tearfully—because, yes, that pinch really did hurt. I’ll be lucky if it doesn’t leave a bruise—that though I didn’t really work with Owen Veatch all that long, or know him that well, he is going to be missed, and that, whatever his stand on the graduate student compensation package, he didn’t deserve to die that way, or any way. And, yes, I am that Heather Wells.

It isn’t until I notice, holding court in the center of the chess circle, a familiar frizzy-haired girl in overalls that I realize what’s behind Muffy Fowler’s feeding me to the wolves in this fashion: Sarah had been out here, using Dr. Veatch’s death and the publicity around it as an opportunity to promote the GSC’s agenda.

Now that I’ve stolen her limelight, Sarah’s consulting with some equally scruffy-looking individuals—not including the ones who are there actually to play chess, and who are looking extremely annoyed at having their territory invaded by all these long-haired, hippie types—including Sebastian. He keeps sending me dark looks that I try not to take personally, but that clearly peg me as The Man… although I barely make a living wage myself. AndI certainly wasn’t the one who decided to cut the grad students’ compensation package.

Then again, maybe he’s just still sore at me for not agreeing to sing “Kumbaya” at his rally.

“So you can’t think of anyone who’d have reason to kill your boss?” a reporter from Channel 4 wants to know.

“No,” I say. “I really can’t. He was a nice guy.” Well, except for the Garfield thing, which, really, bordered on a sickness. So you can’t actually blame him for it. “Quiet. But nice.”

“And you don’t think the GSC could be in any way responsible?”

“I really don’t have a comment about that.” Although my personal feeling is that the GSC couldn’t organize a bake sale, let alone a murder.

“All right,” Muffy says, reaching through the crowd of reporters to take my arm. “That’s enough questions for now. Miss, er, Wells is exhausted from her horrifying and gruesome discovery—”

“One last question,” the Fox News reporter cries. “Heather, anything you want to say to your ex-boyfriend, former Easy Street band member Jordan Cartwright, now that he and his wife, superstar Tania Trace, are expecting?”

“Miss Wells is done,” Muffy says, pulling me off the rickety wooden platform one of the news stations had generously rigged for me to stand on. “I’d appreciate it if ya’ll would pack up and go on home now and let the police do their work and these students get on to class—”

I wrench my arm from her grasp. “Wait a minute.” To the reporter, I say, “Tania’s pregnant?”

“You didn’t see the announcement?” The reporter looks bored. “Posted it on her website this morning. Got a statement? Congratulations? Best wishes? Anything like that?”

Jordan’s going to be a father? My God.

My dog would make a better father than he would.

And she’s a girl. And a dog.

“Uh,” I say. “Yeah. Both. Congratulations. Best wishes. Mazel tov. All that.”

It seems like I should say something more meaningful than that, though. After all, Jordan and I dated for nearly ten years. He was my first kiss, my first love, my first… yeah, that, too. Maybe I should say something, I don’t know. About the circle of life and death? Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. “Um. It just goes to show when one life is snuffed out, another—”

“Come on,” Muffy says, hauling ass. My ass, to be exact.

“God,” I murmur, as she pulls me along. “I can’t believe it. My ex is having a baby.”

“Welcome to my world,” Muffy says. “Mine just had twins.”

I look at her in surprise. “Really? That’s—that’s weird, right? I mean, wasn’t it weird? Am I wrong to think that’s weird? Is your ex a loser? Because mine’s a huge loser. And it’s weird to think of him being responsible for another human life.”

“Mine’s the CEO of a major investment firm back in Atlanta,” Muffy says, keeping her face turned straight ahead, “who left me for my maid of honor the night before our wedding. So yeah, I guess you could say I think it’s weird. In the same way I think it’s weird that millions of little tiny babies in Africa starve to death every year while I freak out if my barista uses full fat instead of nonfat foam in my morning latte. Why didn’t you tell me you were Heather Wells, the former teen pop sensation?”

“I tried,” I say lamely.

“No.” Muffy skids to a stop in her Manolos just outside the building’s front door and stabs an accusing index finger at me. “All you said was that your name wasn’t Jessica. I do not appreciate bein’ kept in the dark. Now, what else are you not tellin’ me? Do you know who killed that man?”

I gape down at her. I have a good five inches on her, but she makes me feel as if I’m the one who has to look up at her.

“No!” I cry. “Of course not! Don’t you think that if I did, I’d have told the police?”

“I don’t know,” Muffy says. “Maybe ya’ll were havin’ an affair.”

“EW!” I yell. “DID YOU EVEN KNOW OWEN?”

“I did,” Muffy replies, calmly. “Simmer down. I was just askin’.”

“And you think I was sleeping with him.Me.”

“Stranger things have happened,” Muffy points out. “This is New York City, after all.”

And suddenly a lot of things become clear: how Muffy’s ring became “accidentally” attached to President Allington’s jacket; why she’d ever think I might have been after Owen Veatch; what the pencil skirt and high heels were all about; what she’s doing in New York City in the first place, so far from her native Atlanta.

Look, I’m not here to make judgments. To each his (or her) own, and all of that.

But the idea of any woman moving to New York and entering the workforce with the express purpose of snagging a husband is sort of… well. Gross.

Who knows what I might have said to Ms. Muffy Fowler if at that very moment something hadn’t happened to distract me? Something so momentous (to me, anyway) that all further thought of conversation with her flees my brain, and I forget I’m standing in front of Fischer Hall, the sight of another major crime scene, and the place in which I regularly consume way more than my governmentally advised daily calorie allowance.

And that’s the sight of my landlord, semi-employer, and love of my life, Cooper Cartwright, hurrying up to me, panting, “I came as soon as I heard. Are you okay?”