Size 12 and Ready to Rock (Heather Wells 4)

“It was,” Stephanie says quickly. “It was completely random. But you know how pop stars can be.” She rolls her eyes. “Such divas.”

There’s a little bit of an uncomfortable silence. Maybe I’m only imagining it.

Or maybe everyone is thinking, the way I am, Gee, Heather used to be a pop star. Was she a diva?

Evidently Stephanie isn’t thinking this, since she goes on: “Tania’s convinced she needs to keep close to the city, where she plans on having the baby, and to the doctor who’s delivering it, until it’s born. And of course, since that’s what Tania wants, Cartwright Records is only too happy to oblige. Even the Catskills is too far now for Tania. And she thinks having the camp moved to a nice, familiar, containable location like the New York College campus, as opposed to the woods—let’s face it, Tania is not a country girl—will be more comfortable for her.”

I’m not sure how any of this makes sense, especially considering that Bear was shot in the city not more than twenty blocks from the New York College campus.

“Tania’s barely in her second trimester,” I say. “It seems a little extreme for her to be sticking so close to her doctor. When she visited her ob-gyn, like the EMTs told her to, she didn’t get a health scare or anything?”

Maybe I’m projecting again, because of my own health scare. Not that I got a scare. I have nothing to be scared about. Not even anything to be concerned about. Just—

“No,” Stephanie says, glancing at Dr. Jessup and Muffy with a laugh. Is it my imagination, or does her laugh sound nervous? “She’s in perfect health, except for being a little anemic, which you already know about. Do you think we’d let her go on filming if she wasn’t?”

Yes, I want to say. Instead, I say only, “Of course not. I want to make sure there’s nothing . . . well, nothing you aren’t telling us.”

“What on earth would I not be telling you?” Stephanie asks.

“I don’t know,” I say, truthfully. “But I do know that my staff has been through a lot this year, and the last thing they need is any more”—I realize I have to choose my next words carefully—“drama. So if there is something going on with Tania that you’re not telling us, I wish you’d do so now.”

“Drama?” Stephanie’s smile is brittle. “You don’t need to worry, Heather. Because I can assure you, what we’ll be filming here in your building won’t be a drama. It will be pure, unscripted reality.”

The problem, of course, is that I know Jordan too well to find any comfort in that assurance. His reality has never been anything but drama. And it’s hard to shake the feeling—especially given what I know about her—that Tania’s isn’t any different.

Chapter 9

Too Many Strollers at Starbucks

Oh, I can’t decide

If I want to abide

By the age-old decree

To use my ovaries

“You’d make such a good mama!”

But I don’t know if I wanna

I feel trapped, I feel smothered

Want to run for cover

I don’t even know

If I’m going to stay or go

So for now just want to say

Get your stroller out of my way

“Too Many Strollers at Starbucks”

Written by Heather Wells

It’s getting harder and harder to find a bar to hang out in after work. All the good ones have either closed, owing to the soaring rents in downtown Manhattan, or been taken over by students, although of course this isn’t as big an issue in the summertime.

I don’t have a problem frequenting places popular with people younger than I am, but lately I have a hard time drinking comfortably around New York College students. According to my Psych 101 textbook, this is called hypervigilance.

“Hypervigilance, my ass,” says Tom Snelling.

Tom’s one of the few people who’ve been my boss at Fischer Hall and been promoted, which is great for him but sucks for me, since I really liked working with him.

At least we still get to sit next to each other at endless staff meetings, then meet for drinks in bars afterward.

I’ve met him and his boyfriend, Steven, for a badly needed after-work drink in a bar the two of them have discovered that is tucked so deeply into the heart of the West Village, it seems unlikely to attract students. It helps that the drinks at Tom and Steven’s new favorite bar are overpriced and that there’s a slightly bizarre nautical theme to the decor, which I find quirkily charming.

“When a kid plunges face-first off a bar stool from doing too many tequila shots and you know he attends the fine institute of higher learning where you work,” Tom goes on, “that’s called a buzzkill, not hypervigilance.”

“Amen to that, brother,” I say and tap the rim of his eight-dollar draft with my own.

We’re sitting at a booth—built to resemble a ship’s galley—in the front window of the bar. Outside, people are hurrying home from the office, their heads bowed over their cell phones as they make their own after-work plans, some nearly crashing into one another or the many trees that line the still sunlit street in their eagerness to send off their texts. There are dogs of every variety at the ends of leashes, ceaselessly lifting their legs against the trunks of the trees, though little signs beg their masters to curb them.

I’d feel guilty about not having rushed home to walk my own dog, but ever since Cooper installed a pet door, I know Lucy can get out into the brownstone’s backyard if she needs to. Not as good as a walk, but according to a text I received prior to leaving my own office, Cooper took her out earlier, before he had to attend some mysterious meeting.

This isn’t unusual. Cooper rarely talks about his work. As a private investigator, he’s very sensitive to the private part of his clients’ investigative needs. I’ve always admired this about him, even though as the person who sorts, organizes, files, and mails his clients’ bills, I’m aware of a lot of what he does. I think he doesn’t like talking about it because many of his cases are bitter divorce disputes in which he has been hired to acquire photographic proof of the soon-to-be ex-spouse’s marital infidelities, and he’s afraid my delicate feminine sensibilities will be offended.

We all have our little secrets. It’s nice to know there are people who’ll keep them.

“Although it’s a lot more than a buzzkill when it’s a fourteen-year-old girl,” I continue to complain to Tom and Steven, “and she’s been set loose on the city while attending Tania Trace Rock Camp, which is in the building where you work and, P.S., is being filmed by a reality show television crew for the new television network your boyfriend’s parents own.”