Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

crowd. Nature had been stingy with her, given her tiny features, including a pointy little chin, sallow skin, and thin hair. But she had good taste. “Oooh. Great car,” she said before we were even parked. “Jason’s car was such an old wreck.” Which made us both sigh with relief— Rob hadn’t been sure she’d really known him, that she wasn’t just some nut who read the paper.
    Introductions over, she led us into a pleasant enough room, furnished with Pier One wicker and dhurrie rugs. A cheap white desk shone pristine, as if it was never used. An overhead light was only a paper lantern covering a bare bulb. A poster of the Golden Gate Bridge, one I’d seen at a thousand tourist shops, was tacked to a wall. The stark effect would have benefited by a few plants, but Hilary seemed to favor fauna instead. There was a small animal in a cage, a hamster, I thought, and a handsome golden Lab curled up on one of the rugs.
    “Do you mind dogs? Jason hated them.”
    “Of course not,” I said, and dropped to my knees to pet the Lab. “Hi, fella; what a lovely boy! What a nice boy! What’s your name?” The usual baby talk.
    “She’s called Goldie Hawn, actually. But it’s nice of you to notice her.” She sighed. “Jason made me lock her up or he wouldn’t come over.”
    “He sounds difficult.”
    “Oh, no. He was really fun. He could make me laugh all night. I mean all evening— he never stayed the night.” She sat down, gesturing for us to do the same.
    “The two of you dated?”
    “I thought we were dating, but now that I think of it, we didn’t go out much. He’d just come over and”— she stared out the window, avoiding eye contact— “fuck me.”
    Everything she said indicated she was furious with him. Rob and I exchanged glances: Maybe we were onto something. It seemed best to go slow.
    Rob put on his friendly reporter smile. “How’d you meet him?”
    “Well, I’m a nurse. He came to the hospital to visit a sick friend.” She had tied her thin hair into a sort of low ponytail, which she pulled over her shoulder and stroked as she spoke. The impression was of someone not used to having the spotlight, nervous at being interviewed. You couldn’t help wondering what had attracted a man like Jason McKendrick to her— what, in fact, had even made him notice her.
    “He sort of started kind of blatantly flirting with me, and I thought he was just another asshole. Married, like all of them. So I didn’t respond except to be kind of rude, if you want to know the truth, I guess, and finally he said, ‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’ And I was really afraid I should, like he was somebody that everybody knew but me, and I was really dumb. So I said, ‘Hey, you’re that guy on Channel Four,’ and he and his friend laughed their heads off. I felt so stupid . His friend said, ‘Hey, Hillie,’— he called me Hillie— ‘This is Jason McKendrick you’re talking to.’ I just said, ‘Uh, hello,’ and left without even shaking hands I was so embarrassed. Because I’d never even heard of him.” She hung her head as if it were the deepest shame of the culture. But when the pointy chin came up, she was angry again.
    “How was I supposed to know about somebody like that? I can’t afford to go to plays or anything. He thought he was so damned important. Anyway, I was at the nurses’ station after that, and I guess he felt bad— that he made me feel bad— so he asked me to have coffee in the cafeteria. And then, the funny thing was we really, really hit it off. He was so funny . I mean, he was just so funny . I never met anybody like that in my whole life. And then it turned out he was this big-deal columnist or whatever he was.”
    “So you started seeing each other.”
    “Um-hm. The first time he asked me for a drink and then we came back here. The second time, he said why didn’t he come over and we’d get some Chinese food. And then after that, he’d just kind of call and wait for me to ask him to come over. And then I was supposed to buy this damned expensive Scotch that was all he’d drink. And fuck him. Always on a Monday or a Tuesday night or something. Never a weekend. And stupid me. I didn’t even catch on to what was happening.” She addressed Rob. “You were his friend, right? I bet you had no idea what a shit he was.”
    Rob turned to me, silently appealing for help; I wondered what he did when I wasn’t there.
    “It certainly sounds like he took