She fled, scrambling with her dog to catch the elevator, the doors of which had opened with a ding.
Jared looked at me and said, a little mournfully, “We’re not monsters, you know. We don’t bite.”
I shrugged. “It’s nothing personal. None of us signed up to be on a TV show, that’s all.”
“You think any of us wants to be here?” Jared lowered himself into the visitor’s chair next to my desk. I know the seat looks inviting, but I really wish people wouldn’t sit there unless asked. How am I supposed to get any of my homework from Psych 101 (or actual work-work) done if someone is always sitting next to my desk, wanting to chat? “I went to this school, you know. I graduated from the film department. All of us did.” He nodded at Marcos, who’d lowered the boom and whipped out his cell phone, and at the camera operator, who’d started zooming in on the candy jar on my desk, which I keep stocked with condoms instead of candy. I guessed he was filming it for practice. I was pretty sure they weren’t going to use footage of a jar of condoms for Jordan Loves Tania. “Except Stephanie, of course. I suppose she told you about her MBA from Harvard.”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to encourage this idea Jared had that we were buddies. Maybe Cooper was right about my inspiring trust in people. Maybe I should consider a psych minor.
“I want to make documentaries,” Jared said, stabbing his thumb at his own chest. “Important documentaries about people who are wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit. I want my films to help people, make a difference, you know? Maybe get someone’s conviction overturned.” I knew exactly what kind of films he was talking about. I’d seen them on HBO. “Can I get a single studio to fund that idea? No. But Stephanie got Cartwright Television to fund her piece of crap, no problem. You know what they’re calling Jordan Loves Tania?”
I shook my head. “No . . .”
“A docu-reality series. Can you believe that?”
“Is that not what it is?” I asked.
“Wait until you see the final product,” Jared said ominously.
“Why?” I asked.
“I’m guessing you’re going to be amazed,” he said, “at how little actual reality is in it.”
Before I had a chance to ask what he meant, the camera guy lowered his lens.
“Let’s go, Jare,” he said. “I’m hungry. You promised you’d get the network to reimburse us for Ray’s.”
Jared sighed. “See?” he said, smiling. “See what I have to deal with?” He said good-bye, then left.
I suppose, given all that, I should have been expecting what occurs the morning the girls from Tania Trace Rock Camp check in. Instead, I’m blindsided.
It’s hard to believe anything bad can happen on such a glorious summer day, especially when, on my way to work, my phone rings and I answer it to hear Cooper say: “I can’t find my pants.”
“And a good morning to you too, honey,” I sing.
“I’m serious,” he says. “Did you put them somewhere?”
“Where would I have put your pants?” I ask, all wide-eyed innocence.
“Like in the laundry basket or something?”
“Cooper,” I say, with a laugh. “I value this relationship. I’m not doing your laundry anymore. I know how you are about your clothes. That time I accidentally—because despite what you seem to think, it was an accident—shrunk your Knicks T-shirt? I thought you were going to have an embolism. I told you, we need a skilled professional whom we pay to handle our household chores. And I know the perfect person, Magda’s cousin, the one who—”
Cooper interrupts. “I was wearing them yesterday. They were right by the bed when I took them off last night.”
“I remember,” I say with a meaningful leer, which of course he can’t see, since he’s back home, pantless.
A man going through the garbage cans at the bottom of a nearby stoop does see my leer, however, and shouts an obscenity at me, somewhat spoiling the mood.
“Cooper, you’re a private investigator,” I say, turning the corner onto Washington Square West, leaving the homeless man and his desire for me to do something unspeakable to his private parts behind. “Shouldn’t you be able to find your own pants?”
“Not when someone in my own home is deliberately hiding them from me,” Cooper points out. I can’t believe he’s caught on to me. “Did someone just shout what I think they did at you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I reply. “And why would I do something as childish as hide your pants?”
“I don’t know,” Cooper says. “You’re a complicated woman. But you’re right. I didn’t mean to accuse you. The thing is, I really need those pants today. I can’t think where they could have disappeared to.”
“You have plenty of other pants,” I say. “Why do you have to wear the cargo pants? What about those nice flat-front khakis I got you? Or those jeans you had on the other day. You looked very sexy in those.” I’m leering again. I can’t help it.
“I need my cargo pants, Heather,” Cooper says. “For work. I like to keep things in the pockets.”
I don’t understand this.
“Jeans have pockets too,” I remind him, noticing there are quite a few cars parked outside Fischer Hall, which is unusual for so early on a Saturday morning, especially since parking on Washington Square West is illegal.
“Not enough of them,” Cooper says. “And they aren’t deep enough.”
“Deep enough for what? Next thing I know,” I say lightly, “you’re going to start wearing a fanny pack.”
Cooper doesn’t say anything.
In addition to the cars, I notice there is a larger than usual number of people milling around in front of Fischer Hall. They aren’t students, because they’re the wrong age and dressed much too nicely. I’ve gotten used to seeing groups of tourists being led around the Village by guides wearing funny hats and holding signs, but these people don’t seem like tourists. There’s no real cohesion to the group. Some of them are leaning against their cars, and others are standing together in small clusters, eyeing the front door to Fischer Hall suspiciously—almost with hostility.