The Receptionist Read online

  I never gave into cravings. I’d thought Doug was the same, in control. “But in AA, don’t you—”

  “I’m not in AA,” he said.

  I sat up. I could have sworn he’d said he was in AA.

  “I had a cocaine problem,” he said. “I told you this.”

  I studied him. He stared back at me, his face neutral, deflecting. His eyes were clear. I’d dated a lot of men in Los Angeles and had been lied to in the most astonishing ways. “Your meetings—”

  “What meetings?”

  “When you leave for work early, you say you have a meeting. When you have to be back late, you say it’s for a meeting.”

  Doug burst out laughing. “Em, I just bought a company.”

  “No.” I shook my head. He’d been sharing all the details of his business with me. “These other meetings you go to, you act all secretive.”

  “There’s no secret.” He sat up to face me with a sudden, serious expression. “Listen. The science behind the EEG helmet isn’t a slam dunk.” He put a hand on my arm and rubbed my bicep with his thumb. “We’re having issues getting the more fashionable versions to work. I didn’t want to stress you out.”

  This made sense. And I was reassured, relieved by his answer. But a small part of me registered this relief as disturbing. I didn’t want to admit I recognized the pattern: Guy lies. Woman confronts him. Guy laughs at her and comes up with a plausible explanation. Woman feels better and silly for doubting him.

  “You want all the minutiae?” he asked. “I can give you that.”

  I sighed. I’d become so cautious, isolating myself on a dating field obscured by row after row of red flags.

  I flashed to a memory of him ordering a Red Bull our first night together, of him holding up his fingers and saying he was sober.

  The world turned hazy, as if my mind were being wrapped in gauze. I didn’t want to argue. Doug and I made such a good team. I decided to believe him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Doug wanted to meet my family. I held off for as long as I could, after I’d already spent an evening with his parents, who’d driven up from La Jolla. They took us to a steak house in Beverly Hills, a contemporary one, with striated onyx tabletops and lace metal place mats.

  Doug’s father was broad shouldered with silver hair, like a senior Ken doll. He greeted me with a bear hug at the entrance to the restaurant. His mother had an anemic handshake and was thin, bordering on frail. During dinner, she pushed her veal medallions around her plate and kept a nervous watch on a pair of celebrities two tables over.

  “Do you know a lot of famous people in Hollywood?” asked Doug’s dad.

  I glanced at the couple. “I guess,” I said. “I don’t really think about it.”

  “Emily’s been doing this awhile,” said Doug.

  His mother raised a single string bean to her mouth and paused before taking a bite. Her lipstick was immaculate. “I doubt I’d ever get used to it,” she said. “We know Mitt, of course, from the club, but he blends in after a while.” She lowered the string bean back to her plate.

  “I must say,” said his dad, “fame is a form of capital, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” I said. “That’s what Doug helps us with. We have metrics for things like how familiar a celebrity is to the public, how much the audience trusts that person. It’s especially important for me, when one of my clients wants to license their name to a perfume company or whatever.”

  “Fascinating,” he said. He poured more zinfandel into my glass.

  “Easy, Dad,” said Doug. His father winked at him.

  My father and brother still lived in my hometown, a three-hour drive into the Mojave Desert. They never came to LA, at least not in the last decade.

  We arranged to fly up on a Saturday. Doug had his own Cessna. It was a small plane, a four-seater prop, which he’d been trying to get me into. I kept begging off, saying I was a nervous flier. He didn’t know this, but I’d dated two pilots before him and had suffered too many bumps and tosses and scary aborted landings. I hated small planes.

  But I agreed to fly for this trip. It would mean we could zip in and out in one day. We wouldn’t have to stay the night. Doug was so happy at the airport, bounding around with little-boy ebullience, introducing me to his flight-school buddies, showing me how to fill the gas tank on each wing. I helped him, hauling the heavy fuel hose over my shoulder.

  “Manual labor looks good on you,” he said. He climbed next to me on the wing and sucked a sample of gas from the tank into a syringe. “Purity check.” He held the fuel-filled syringe up to the light before climbing down the stepladder and putting it back in his tool case.

  “Don’t you need to check the other tank?” I asked.

  “Nope,” he said. “I just filled it.”

  I knew, without a doubt, that he was supposed to check the tank on the other wing. Pilots had to do the same inspection every single time they flew. Doug reached up, motioning for me to slide into his arms. I stayed put.

  “Why don’t you check it?” I asked.

  He looked at me a moment before saying, “Okay.” There was tenderness in his voice, like he was doing it to placate me. It was my first inkling that this man was dangerous, that his carelessness could hurt me. And then I had the strangest thought.

  He’s going to die in a plane crash.

  The idea contained a fleeting sense of certainty that disappeared as quickly as it took to flit through my mind. The only reason I remember it at all is because of what happened later.

  We landed at the small airport outside town. I pulled up Uber on my phone. The nearest car was ninety minutes away. There was a card for a taxi company pinned to an empty bulletin board. I called it and braced myself for the ride.

  The route to my dad’s house was through the poor section, a desolate stretch of scrub and low-slung houses peeling paint in varied shades of human flesh. All the curtains were makeshift: dark blankets and cartoon-patterned sheets. And there were no yards, only the occasional chain link marking off a section of desert from the rest of the landscape.

  Doug turned to look out the back window. “Whoa,” he said. He’d never understand this. He was from a more benevolent California, from a coastal town carpeted in bougainvillea petals and Spanish tile. He started singing the “Dueling Banjos” song from Deliverance just as we passed Destiny Stimpson’s old house.

  “Stop,” I said. “I used to know these people.”

  “Seriously?”

  I swallowed back a sour taste and scanned for signs of Destiny or her family. The place looked empty, with bare, dirty windows and cinder block steps up to the raised front door. Destiny had been a tiny girl with an overbite and bangs that came down to her nose. In elementary school, we’d spent almost every afternoon together. Her mother would make us sandwiches, standing at the sink with her bra straps flopping down her arms, slopping mayonnaise and bologna onto white bread. She’d then send us out, unsupervised, to hike up the wash with red bandanas tied to our glitter batons.

  I dared Destiny to do things. I’d tell her to give me half her sandwich or make a wild leap from the top of the riverbank onto the soft sand below. She always lowered her face before she did my bidding, peeking at me from under her uncombed hair. One time I got her to yell, “Druggies!” at the teenage boys smoking pot behind the gravel pits. They chased us. We ran.

  By fourth grade, we were allowed to ride our bikes into town, and I dared her to steal from the dollar store. I hid behind the lone tree in the parking lot as she shoplifted candy and Beanie Babies, shoving them up the bottoms of her sleeves like I’d shown her how to do.

  She smiled at me as she exited, just before the manager grabbed her arm. I held my breath as he ushered her back into the store. Then I left. I went home.

  Destiny and her mom had to go to family court afterward, and my parents forbade me to play with her. I tried to make it up to her. Her desk in science was across from mine. I offered to let her cheat off me, but
she could never manage it without calling attention to herself. By middle school, I was tired of feeling bad whenever I saw her. By then I’d assumed a spot within the elite of the school, the popular girls. Whenever Destiny said hi or smiled at me in the hallway, I’d ignore her. My friends caught on. They positioned themselves between Destiny and me. They called her Dirt Devil and asked in syrupy voices why her clothes never fit. I knew I was supposed to stop them, but I didn’t. Destiny stared at me once in the middle of it all. Her expression was stoic, accepting.

  I turned to Doug. “There was a girl in my class, Destiny. She gave birth by herself in a bathtub our freshman year.”

  He rubbed his palm over his chin. “Jesus,” he said. “And you grew up here?”

  “Not here!” I said. “On the hill.”

  The road divided, and we snaked into the foothills, through the ranches and subdivisions of Figblossom Valley’s middle-class aristocracy, blanketed in unsustainable green. “The jewel of the jewel of the high desert,” we used to call our front lawn. We were the first family in town to install Bermuda grass.

  The taxi pulled into my dad’s driveway. Our neighbor, Mrs. Gibbs, was taking out the garbage next door. Her hair was fully gray now, and she wore a housedress under her open bathrobe. She watched, expressionless, as we got out of the cab. I felt myself hardening in an LA kind of way, my sunglasses and lack of body fat radiating outward like a force field.

  “Hi, Mrs. Gibbs!” I said. Cheer with an edge. The woman never forgave me for dumping her son. She hated me, actually. Everyone in this town did.

  “You took a taxi from LA?” she asked.

  “We flew,” I said. Doug joined me at my side. “This is my boyfriend, Doug.”

  She hugged the front of her robe closed. “Your father doesn’t need dinner, then,” she said.

  “Oh? No. Thank you for helping out, though,” I said. “Say hi to George for me.”

  She looked Doug up and down. “George is vice president now. They just had another baby.”

  “I dusted,” said my dad as I opened the door. He was sitting up, bright, on the living room couch, like he’d hoped somehow to spring to his feet. I went to him.

  “This is Doug,” I said. “This is my dad, Charles.”

  My dad gripped the end table and rose slowly. He smelled like shaving cream and mint and looked like he’d had a trim, no gray fuzz creeping down the back of his neck. I touched my cheek to his soft jowls. He patted my shoulder before collapsing back onto the couch, coughing.

  Doug looked concerned. “Can I get you something?”

  “He’s fine,” I said. My dad had COPD. He was always coughing.

  I dug my foot into the carpet. It felt spongy. Floral slipcovers had been added to the couch and love seat. My mother had hated flower patterns. This was the work of Mrs. Gibbs? My sister-in-law?

  My dad started breathing normally again. He looked up and crinkled his eyebrows at Doug. “What do you do again?”

  “He owns a market research firm,” I said.

  “Ah,” he said.

  “We help companies get to know their customers,” Doug said. “What they like about a product, that kind of thing.”

  “Can you get a job with them?”

  Doug looked between my dad and me, confused. “With who?”

  “With the company,” said my dad.

  “No, Dad, he has his own company. He’s very successful.”

  I showed Doug the house, stopping in my childhood bedroom, now a storage space littered with my mother’s old crafting supplies. I stood near a pile of boxes across from the closet.

  “My bed was here. I had a canopy.” I pointed toward the window, painted shut. “I used to sneak out to the roof at night and look up at the stars.”

  Doug lifted his head in surprise. “I can’t really see you doing that.”

  “What?”

  “Gazing up at the sky, contemplating the universe.”

  I shrugged. “It was a nice view. I wasn’t precious about it.”

  I heard my brother Wally’s voice coming up the path to the front door. I went to greet him and his family. Wally looked different, redistributed somehow and uneven, his bone structure still struggling for dominance, refusing to yield to the doughier parts of his face. My nephews, the eight-year-old twins, Asher and Jayden, were sporting identical buzz cuts. I bent to hug them. They each gave me a quick “Hi, Aunt Emily” and rushed into the kitchen.

  My sister-in-law, Jessica, swept in last, all harried and laden with grocery bags. She’d updated her look, though. Her hair was blown out, less frizzy. “I like your eyebrows,” I said.

  She dropped the bags on the kitchen table and touched her face. “Oh yeah? There’s a new salon on Main.”

  Wally called the boys into the living room. “Come on, kids,” he said. “Let’s meet Aunt Emily’s latest.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “Nothing, Em. I’m happy you have a new lover.” He brought up his fingers for air quotes. Asher and Jayden laughed. Doug did, too, with his head thrown back, hard-dee-harring with a joviality so forced it almost seemed genuine.

  “What’s everyone drinking?” I asked.

  “I’ll have a beer,” said Wally.

  “Beer,” said my dad.

  “Nothing for me,” said Doug.

  “Oh, come on,” said Wally.

  “I have to fly later.”

  Wally pointed at him appreciatively. “I’m glad you watch it. You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff we have to deal with.”

  “That’s right, you’re a policeman?” asked Doug.

  “Dispatcher.”

  Doug gave him a solemn nod and held out his hand. “Thank you for your service.”

  My dad started coughing again, covering his mouth with one hand and clutching the arm of the sofa with the other. Jessica hurried into the living room with a mug of water and bowed in front of him. “Easy, Chuck,” she said. She spoke in loud, deliberate tones. “Remember what the doctor said? Use your stomach muscles. Hold your breath for two seconds . . . get under it . . . now cough.”

  I went to the kitchen as my dad let loose a series of productive barks and stood between the sink and the stove, the spot my mother had always occupied when she cooked. I hadn’t been back since she died. I leaned on the counter. I hadn’t known there was a proper way for my dad to cough.

  I opened the fridge and took out two bottles of Amstel Light. Jessica swooped in behind me. “I can do that,” she said. She took the bottles, delivered them to the men in the living room, and returned to unpack the appetizers with the efficiency of a professional cook. She pointed above the microwave. “Would you get the green bowl down?” I reached to one of the lower cabinets. “Actually, I rearranged some things,” Jessica said with a tight smile. “The serving bowls are up there now.”

  I pressed my molars together and let her delegate. The house was now Jessica’s domain. It demanded a nurturer, the sort of woman I wasn’t. Sometimes I felt like the only one of my kind: the rare female born without the gene for caretaking. I’d always nursed a grudge against these mothering types, forever noticing, tending to the people around them, forever in everyone’s service. They made me look selfish, unfeminine even, by comparison.

  I opened a bottle of cabernet at the dinner table. Doug poured some for himself. “I love you folks up here,” Doug said. “Just living your lives, thinking about dinner.” He nudged me. “Kind of makes me wonder if we’re doing it wrong.”

  Jessica and Wally traded looks. They glanced at me the next two times Doug topped off his drink.

  “We decided to fly back tomorrow morning,” I said.

  Doug squinted at me. “We did?”

  “Yes,” I said with a gritted smile. “Remember? That’s why it’s okay for you to drink right now.”

  The table was silent for the next minute until Wally perked up. “Destiny Stimpson’s out of jail,” he said.

  I gasped and threw my brother my m
eanest look, the one that had scared him when he was ten. My dad began coughing quietly, with his mouth closed, trying not to call attention to himself. Doug turned to me. “Was that the girl you knew?”

  Jessica stood and started clearing the dishes. I moved to help her.

  “Why was she in jail?” Doug asked.

  “Oh, you know,” said Wally, with a wave of his hand. “She’s troubled.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Doug and I had been together almost a year when the Dr. Maryn Store was ready to go live. My agency cosponsored the launch party. I was chair of the planning committee. We took over the Hollywood Athletic Club, tenting the inside so that the rooms were uniformly white and billowing.

  I gave the event a wellness theme and styled it like a Goop conference, with motivational speakers and swag bags full of CBD oil and singing meditation bowls. I was most proud of our aromatherapy motif. I’d had the party planners infuse each room with a different scent: eucalyptus for the reflexology space, cinnamon ginger for the bar, tea tree for the pop-up B12 clinic.

  I chose lemongrass for Doug’s wearable-EEG demonstration. His project was behind schedule. He’d blown through his first capital investment and was using the event to build buzz, attract more investors. Showing people their brain waves would be a novelty, a highlight of the party. We’d distributed a VIP sign-up sheet online, and it had filled up immediately.

  An hour before the doors opened, I stopped to check on him. The atmosphere in the space was festive, with his team of hip, young workaholics clustered around a white pool table, pregaming their big perk of a night out. Doug stood apart from everyone, in a modal black T-shirt and jeans, gripping the back of a club chair.

  I started toward him, but he didn’t see me. He was focused on Sanjay, his biomedical engineer, as he snapped open a gray Pelican case. I stood close to a pillar and watched them. Sanjay adjusted his Buddy Holly glasses and lifted the new, portable EEG from its foam casing.

  “Careful,” said Doug. This version was even smaller than the last design, with a circular black headband and just three sensors reaching up toward the center. Sanjay called two brunettes over from the entourage near the pool table. They looked like models, twins almost, with pencil-straight hair and matching tailored lab coats over hot pants. They were both showing cleavage.