Here She Lies

room and seemed to press back the darkness and shadows into the circumscribed space above. From the beams on down, everything was painted white, but the furniture, in stark contrast, was black. Instead of paintings or drawings or anything prettily decorative on Julie’s walls, there were mirrors of varying shapes. The bright lights bouncing off the mirrors gave the space a kind of sparkle.
    Her loftlike room in the country sky had two more surprises: an enormous bathroom, the kind you could fit a couch into, and an office that was even higher-tech than the kitchen. It was spacious, with four large windows facing the back and side of the house, and I imagined that in the daytime it was bright. A long countertop desk against a red wall was covered with her characteristically neat piles of work along with a desktop computer whose 3-D ball-shaped screen saver pinged across the sleeping screen. A wide bookcase against the opposite wall was full of marketing books, collated industry magazines, the biographies she loved to read, and even a few professional awards. There was one I hadn’t seen before, a gold figure with raised arms holding aloft a clear glass triangle.
    “Is this your Stevie?” I asked. But my question wasanswered when I saw her name etched in the small gold plaque on the base. The Stevie Award was one of the industry biggies, given annually to a woman who had excelled as a marketing entrepreneur.
    “Congratulations, Jules.” I hugged her. “I’m so proud of you.”
    “Thanks.” She tried to hold a poker face but soon unleashed a grin.
    Across the room was a small desk that looked unused except for a laptop that was closed and unplugged. Julie read my mind.
    “That was for an assistant,” she said, “but I never got around to hiring one.”
    “How do you manage?” In her old office in Connecticut, she had employed someone full-time.
    “I don’t like distractions. And I’ve discovered Pete and Sue in India.”
    “Pete and Sue? In India ?”
    “Those aren’t their real names; they take pseudonyms to make it easier for us. They’re called ‘outsourced online assistants.’ It’s the new thing. They do most of what a real assistant does but in about half the time, plus they’re cheaper and you don’t have to ask them how their weekend was.”
    “Sounds ruthless.”
    “It’s efficient. Did you know you can even hire an outsourced personal assistant for gift buying and stuff like that?”
    “You’re joking. So, did you hire one?”
    “What for? My whole personal life is pretty much you guys, and I enjoy choosing your gifts.”
    “I know.” I took her arm and led her out of her office,where the culprit work had consumed so much of her. I would make it my business, this visit, to distract her from work as much as possible, to fill her up emotionally. Lexy would definitely help with that.
    I steered her to the corner of her bedroom next to a window where she had made a sitting area with two plush black armchairs and a small steel and glass table. Up close, I saw it was a curio table with a removable top. Inside the display were Julie’s own glass cats along with some of her other memorabilia and miscellany: our mother’s wedding ring (I had Dad’s), a tiny enamel box containing our mingled baby teeth and identical locks of our baby hair, an opal ring whose provenance was a mystery to me, three antique miniature toy cars from an abandoned urge to collect, a few hair elastics, and a small glass dish of earrings, mingled among which I saw her pair of diamonds that matched my own. Zircons, actually, fake diamonds, but no less twinkly when we turned our heads in the light. They had been a new-baby gift, from her to both of us, a few months after Lexy was born.
    “Isn’t it inconvenient keeping your jewelry in there?” I asked.
    “Sometimes at night I sit here and read and, you know...”
    I did know. We had always shared a habit of removing our accessories, and sometimes elements of our clothing, when we wanted to relax.
    Julie set my glass cats on top of the table so they seemed to hover in space above hers. “Want to mix them?” she asked. “Like when we were kids?”
    I smiled. “Good idea.”
    She lifted the top of the table and together we arranged my cats with hers. Then she sat back in one of the black chairs, kicking off one of her cowboy boots and then the other, revealing hot pink socks. I sat in the matching chair and pried off my shoes, peeled off my socks, and