A Field Guide to Deception by Jill Malone Page B

again.
    â€œDo you like the tenderloin?” Bailey asked Claire.
    â€œIt’s all marvelous. I’ve never eaten anything quite like this dinner.”
    â€œOh good. I’m so pleased. You’ve earned it.”
    Claire set her wine down carefully. “How?”
    Bailey had turned to answer her neighbor.
    â€œHow?” Claire said, louder.
    Bailey looked back at Claire, nonplussed. “Sorry?”
    â€œHow have I earned it?” It was the clarity with which she asked this
question, rather than the volume, that silenced the table.
    â€œWell,” Bailey said, glancing at Claire’s neighbor and back at Claire. “The book. You wrote the book.”
    â€œI wrote the book.”
    â€œYes. And we’re all proud of you. Proud of your accomplishment.”
    â€œClaire,” Liv said, at her shoulder. “Will you give me a hand a moment?”
    â€œKeep her vulnerable,” Claire said to Bailey.
    â€œWhat?” Bailey stared from one to the other.
    â€œWill you give me a hand?” Liv asked again. “With the desserts?”
    Claire stood up, and followed her lover to the kitchen. Bailey, the consummate hostess, asked her neighbor about his new puppy.
    â€œWe’ll brew coffee,” Liv said, opening the appropriate cupboard and handing Claire coffee beans while she plugged in the grinder.
    â€œHow do you know where everything is?” Claire asked.
    â€œI used to room here.”
    â€œYou lived with her?” Claire hissed this.
    Liv stopped, turned slowly around, and told Claire: “You will get hold of yourself this moment. The melodrama is over.”
    A sullen child, Claire glared, swallowed her response, and crossed her arms. Liv returned to the grinder and its shrill mechanism. Before long, the coffee stoked, and the room changed perceptibly. Another scent, another road to another memory, and both women followed, one to a German restaurant with her aunt, the other to Seattle years before, at the end of a sorry weekend.
    Liv handed Claire the first mug, and took the second, sitting on the windowsill. The dinner party forgotten, Claire’s hostile buzz overthrown, she drank to keep from speaking, afraid she might attempt to explain. Sick of the confusion—the blur between the woman people interpreted her to be, and the woman she was. Claire wasn’t even certain, anymore, which was which. Did dead women have secretaries? What was she exactly? Not a writer; the book was finished. What was she supposed to do now? She held the mug to keep from reaching for Liv. Claire felt herself overboard, desperate, clinging to any object in the water, anything to keep from drowning.

    â€œKeep her vulnerable,” she said again. Drank the tepid coffee and wished it were scalding, that it could burn her tongue and the roof of her mouth and bring tears. Liv walked over, hooked her arm around Claire’s waist, and tipped her head to Claire’s.
    â€œWhat comes next?” Claire asked.
    â€œWe go back in there,” Liv said, “and eat until we’re sick.” She kissed Claire, and then let her go.
    Another road, then. Another road, and Claire, no longer in the water, near-drowning forgotten, followed obediently behind, with a torte and a mousse.

Sixteen
    Errand girl
    Her second trip to Home Depot in as many hours, Liv threw the tailgate closed like a dirty punch. Sweaty enough to be in an equatorial jungle, she slid into the truck, its windows already opened, and turned the engine over.
    â€œWhere you headed, stranger?” The girl was blond, in a white t-shirt and jeans, filthy and lank as a runaway.
    Liv started to reverse. The girl reached her arm out, and said, “Liv.”
    The truck idled and the girl leaned through the window. “You don’t remember me?” She sounded injured.
    â€œI remember. I have to be someplace.”
    â€œYou can’t give me a ride?” She smiled, reached her hand into the