And Now She's Gone(87)
Gray said, “Uh-huh,” even though she knew that Dominick Rader grew up in Santa Monica with his mom, dad, surfboard, skateboard, and a pit-boxer named Teeny. He’d been valedictorian of his senior class at Crossroads School, had earned his bachelor’s degree and JD from UCLA, had joined the FBI afterward, and now visited his parents, both alive and retired in Scottsdale, four times a year.
The Cosmopolitan was big and pretty. “Smooth” was the word Gray thought of. And “bright.” Chandeliers and more chandeliers—over bars, over slot machines. And the interior smelled like pastries and fields of flowers. And it all twinkled.
Clarissa’s five nonwork friends—Kylie, Haley, Kailey, Skylar, and Brianne—were waiting in the hotel lobby. Young women young and perfumed, high-pitched voices, “ohmigosh” and “literally” and “like” and selfies and fake eyelashes …
Gray and Jennifer shot each other looks and mouthed, Wow.
Each woman had booked separate rooms. “In case we have company,” Jennifer said with a wink. “In case. Listen to me. I will have company.”
Clarissa blushed and blinked at Jennifer. “Dude. You’re, like, married.”
Jennifer patted the young woman’s shoulder as the group wandered to the elevator bank. “And you’re, like, not. Which means you wouldn’t understand. How do you think I met Reynaldo? Sharing a hymnal at church after my second divorce?” She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Clarissa. Life isn’t Little House on the Prairie.”
Kylie, Skylar, and Brianne blinked and asked, “What’s Little House on the Prairie?”
As the group rode up to the ninth floor, Clarissa shared her vision of married life. Never going to bed angry. Fidelity until death. Open communication. Clean kitchen. Fifty-fifty everything, even in parenting. The young women said, “Aww” and “So romantic” and “It is possible if you try.”
The older women held back laughter. Zadie even added, “They’re so precious. Aren’t they precious, girls?”
Jennifer and Gray smiled, and said, “Oh yeah. Totally precious.”
They all gathered in Clarissa’s suite before breaking apart—to rest for Gray, Jen, and Zadie; to drink for the young’uns. Clarissa, phone in her hand, rattled off the evening’s itinerary. “We’re eating at Bardot Brasserie at the Aria at six. We’re going to the Cirque du Soleil show at eight, and then we come back here to dance at the Marquee. Okay?”
Gray, Jennifer, and Zadie gaped at her—the fuck?—and then said, “Okay,” and “Yeah.”
Clarissa clapped her hands. “And let’s meet back here, dressed and ready for dinner, in … three hours. Okay?”
Gray said, “Sure,” then trudged across the hall to room 911. After slipping the DO NOT DISTURB hangtag over the doorknob, she took in her surroundings. Marble floors in the bathroom. Soft queen-size bed. From the picture window, she had a view of the entire Strip. All of it took her breath away, and she hated the awe now filling her lungs.
Ten minutes later, she speed walked out of the hotel, caught a cab, then settled in for the twenty-minute drive to Fashion Show mall. There, she entered Sur La Table, a kitchenware mecca that boasted a wide selection of knives.
A sweet-faced brunette asked if Gray needed help.
Gray said, “No,” with her attention on the Miyabi cutlery. “I’m good, thanks.”
“If you do a lot of food prep,” the clerk said, ignoring the no, “this one…” She pointed to the Evolution slicing knife. “This one is perfect. Nine and a half inches of steel. Gives you smooth, even cuts every single time.”
Gray left Sur La Table without buying the knife. Instead, she sat outside the store and looked for the perfect mark. There. Her proxy buyer: a shabby-looking mom pushing a shabby-looking stroller filled with twin redheaded toddler boys. She looked like she needed fifty dollars to either buy a new stroller or to trim the damaged ends of her frizzy red hair.
“That’s it?” the woman asked Gray, bloodshot eyes big. “You’ll give me fifty dollars to buy the knife?”
“Yep.” Don’t ask me why. Please don’t ask me why. She had thought of a story—her mom was with her in the mall and she didn’t want her to see the knife because it was a surprise gift. Not a very compelling story, but the shabby-looking mom of twins didn’t ask.
Didn’t take long for Gray to possess the knife and the woman to collect fifty dollars.
47
It was 5:05, and Gray had an hour before the theater curtains opened again. She spent twenty of those minutes on a power nap, and as she lay in that wonderful bed, she refused to let her mind sprint from the thought of finding Sean to the thought of killing Sean. No, she let her mind take long strokes—Nick, freedom, Nick, food, freedom—until it tired itself out, and soon she felt herself slipping away.
At 5:25, the phone’s alarm clock beeped.
Gray popped up, refreshed and ready for a shower. She wanted to stand beneath that perfect blast of hot water forever, but she couldn’t. Face painted on, and dressed in black cigarette pants, an off-the-shoulder blouse, and heeled boots, Gray joined her coworkers and the young’uns in Clarissa’s room.
Zadie sparkled in her grandmother-of-the-bride sequined shirt and satin pants. Clarissa wore the tiara and veil Jennifer had gifted her, along with another tutu and pink Doc Martens boots. If Zadie looked like the grandmother of the bride, Jennifer could have been the stepmother of the bride in her cut-too-low-for-your-age wrap dress and platform stilettos.