Free Another Thing to Fall by Laura Lippman Page A

setting a trend. “Could we design an outfit for her, a uniform, something like Angelina Jolie in the Lara Croft movies, only by Prada?” She regarded Tess. “You would look a little like Angelina if you had longer hair with a completely different face. And if you dropped some weight, of course, and got your lips plumped up.”
    “Of course,” said Tess, feeling a pang for the long braid she had worn most of her life. Her hair fell to her shoulders now, and she kept it loose most of the time, or pulled back in a ponytail when rowing. She realized these styles were more suitable, perhaps even more flattering, to a woman in her thirties. But she missed her braid. “Only this isn’t a part, and I’m not going to lose weight for it, or wear a uniform, or do my hair a certain way. I’m going to be
working
for you, and I take my work seriously.”
    “As do I,” Selene said, a little heatedly.
    “Then you both should get along great,” Flip said. “No fights, no feuds, no egos.”
    “Amigos!” Selene sang, although Tess was pretty sure that Flip had slightly mangled the lyrics to the old show tune. “I was Baby June at summer camp, which is funny that I then became Baby Jane. I wanted to be Louise, though. Stupid old June, she disappears by act two.”
    Now that was more what Tess expected in an actress.
    “Well, Betsy has plenty to do in our production, more than we planned,” Flip said, buttering a piece of bread and actually trying to press it into Selene’s hand, as if he were her mother. Or nanny. “You know we’ve been rewriting the last three episodes of the season, because that was the only note the network gave us — more Selene, keep her story open-ended. More, more, more. They love you, and they’re willing to spend extra money to keep you safe.”
    Flip might seem overly solicitous of Selene, Tess realized, but he was smooth, too, steering her toward what he wanted. Was he manipulating Tess in the same way? But no, she had decided to take the job only for Lloyd’s sake, and Flip couldn’t have foreseen that. She was calling her own shots.
    The main courses arrived and Tess dug in, happy for the cover of chewing. Selene sliced and cut her steak into ever smaller pieces, spread pâté on the saltines provided, and twirled her frites in the mayonnaise she had demanded that the waiter bring, much to his barely concealed disgust. But Tess never observed a morsel of food going
in
.
    Meanwhile, Flip was studying Tess, and less covertly.
    “I’ve never seen a woman eat like that,” he said, caught staring at her quickly cleaned plate. “It’s…impressive.”
    “I eat like that,” Selene said. “I have a really high metabolism.”
    “Of course you do,” Flip said, buttering another roll and handing it to the young woman, who placed it on the bread plate with the other roll she had ignored.
    What kind of weird family am I joining?
Tess decided to focus on the money she was going to be paid, twice her usual rate. In the fine tradition of private detectives, she told herself that she would believe the money, not the story.
    She then spent the rest of lunch trying to forget the kind of terms used for those who did things just for the money.
     
     
    “You a midget?” the homeless man asked Lottie MacKenzie. Or maybe he was a vagrant. She couldn’t know that he was homeless, just that he was dirty. Lottie MacKenzie always tried to stick to the facts, things that could be quantified, even in her private thoughts.
    “No,” she said. “I’m not a midget.”
    “Then you a dwarf? There’s a difference, ain’t there? Whatever you are, you probably prefer to be called a
little person,
right?”
    “What I am,” Lottie said, “is
short
. That’s all. Just short. If you must put a word to it, that’s the one.”
    “Sheeeeeeeeeeeit.
Short
don’t cover it. You pocket-size.”
    “Depends on the pocket, I suppose.”
    He laughed and used her rejoinder as a cue to pull his own pocket inside out,