Let’s face it, I wasn’t wearing my wig-scarf to impress my agent—Sylvia already knew who I was. And who I wasn’t. Today, I just wore it to keep me from being kicked out of this particular Panera. If I could make it through lunch without being recognized as the disaster who’d been banned from this establishment eight months ago, that would be enough.
I threw my knockoff designer diaper bag over my shoulder, took a deep breath, and got out of the van, praying Mindy the Manager had quit or been fired since the last time I’d been here, when Theresa had requested to talk out our differences over lunch.
I stepped into the restaurant, peering through the long blond locks of the wig I’d left hanging over my eyes. Sylvia was already in line, scrutinizing the menu on the wall behind the registers as if it was written in some strange foreign tongue. I stood beside her for a full minute and a half, then said her name before she finally gave me a double take. “Finlay? Is that you?” she asked.
I slipped behind her, shushing her as I peeked over her shoulder at the employees behind the counter. When I didn’t see Mindy the Manager among them, or any familiar cashiers, I tucked the loose strands behind my ear. “Sorry I couldn’t meet you downtown,” I said. “My morning sort of exploded.”
“I can see that.” Sylvia had gone from scrutinizing the menu to scrutinizing me. She drew her glasses lower over the bridge of her nose with a long red fingernail. “Why are you wearing that?”
“Long story.” My relationship with Panera was complicated. I liked their soup. Panera didn’t like that I’d poured it over another customer’s head. In my defense, Theresa had started it when she’d attempted to justify her reasons for sleeping with my husband.
“You have something on your pants,” Sylvia said, grimacing at a hairy patch of syrup.
I pressed my lips tight. Tried to smile. Sylvia was everything you’d imagine New Yorkers to be if you watched too much television. Probably because she was from Jersey. Her office was in Manhattan. Her shoes were from Milan. Her makeup looked like it had flown in on a DeLorean circa 1980, and her clothes might have been skinned from a large jungle cat.
“I can help you over here,” an attendant called from behind an open register. Sylvia stepped to the counter, interrogated the young man about the gluten-free options, and then proceeded to order a tuna baguette and a bowl of French onion.
When it was my turn, I found the cheapest thing on the menu—a cup of the day’s soup. Sylvia held out her credit card and said, “It’s on me,” so I added a ham and brie sandwich and a slice of cheesecake to go.
We carried our trays to the dining room to find a table. As we walked, I filled Sylvia in on the gory details of my morning. She’d had children once, a long time ago, so she wasn’t entirely without sympathy, but she wasn’t exactly moved by the trials of my single motherhood shit-show.
All the booths were full, so we aimed for the last empty table for two in the middle of the bustling dining room. On one side ofus, a college student wearing headphones stared at the screen of her MacBook. On the other side, a middle-aged woman picked at her bowl of macaroni and cheese alone. Sylvia squeezed between the tables and settled herself into a hardback chair, looking exasperated. I dropped my wallet in my diaper bag and set it down in the small gap on the floor beside me. The woman next to me glanced at it, then blinked up at me. I smiled blandly, sucking on my iced tea until she finally turned back to her lunch again.
Sylvia made a face at her sandwich. “Tell me again why we picked this place?”
“Because head wounds take forever to clean up. Sorry I was late.”
“Where are we with your deadline?” she asked around a mouthful of tuna. “Please tell me I took the train all the way down here for good news.”
“Not exactly.”
She glared at me as she chewed. “Tell me you at least have a plan in place.”
I slumped over my tray and picked at my food. “Sort of.”
“They paid you half up front for this job. Tell me you’re close.”
I leaned across the table, pitching my voice low, thankful the college student beside me was wearing headphones. “My last few murders were so formulaic. I’m becoming too predictable. I feel like I’m falling into a rut, Syl.”
“So change up your approach.” She waved her spoon in the air, like conjuring a novel was no big deal. “The contract doesn’t specify how the whole thing plays out, as long as you get it done by next month. You can do that, right?”
I stuffed in a bite of sandwich to keep from having to answerthat. If I really pushed it, I could finish a rough draft in eight weeks. Six tops.
“How hard can it be? You’ve done it before.”
“Yes, but this one’s going to be messy.” I tested a mouthful of soup. It tasted like cardboard. Like everything else had tasted since my divorce. “I could kill for some hot sauce,” I muttered, checking the table beside me. Salt, pepper, sugar, and napkins. No hot sauce. But the woman hardly noticed. She was staring at my open bag on the floor. I tucked my wallet farther inside and folded the handles down, concealing the contents from view. When she continued to stare, I threw her a frosty look.
“I don’t understand what’s so hard. You’ve got a beautiful, sweet, sympathetic woman who needs to be rescued from a really bad guy. The bad guy gets handled, our sympathetic woman reveals the depths of her gratitude, everyone lives happily ever after, and you get a big fat check.”
I tore the end off my baguette. “About the check—”
“Absolutely not.” Sylvia waved her spoon at me. “I can’t go back to them and ask for another advance.”
“I know. But there’s a lot of research involved in this one,” I said in a low voice. “We’re talking seedy nightclubs, instruments of torture, secret code words… This is completely outside my area of expertise. I’m usually very neat. You know, conservative. Nothing too far out there. But this…” I severed the end of my cheesecake. “This one’s different, Syl. If I pull this off, I could become the next big name in the business.”
“Whatever you do, make it quick. Let’s bury this one and move on to the next.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to rush this. I need this to be abig hit. These two- and three-thousand-dollar advances aren’t worth the time or the effort. Whatever deal comes next needs to kick-start my career, or I’m out,” I declared around a mouthful of cheesecake. “If this one goes well, I’m not taking a penny less than fifteen thousand for the next one.”
