Read Online Super in the City by Daphne Uviller - Free Book Online Page B

legitimate reason for traipsing around a crime scene, damn it. “And also, I needed to look for the keys to the garbage hold.” I nodded my head toward the window and wrinkled my nose for emphasis.
    “What happeent last night?” She furrowed her pretty little brow, scanning the living room nervously.
    I shrugged, feeling, as I always did with her, inexplicably eager for some sign that she liked me.
    “James was arrested.”
    She nodded, waiting for more.
    “Uh, it turns out he was embezzling? From the oil delivery company?”
    She shook her head slightly and raised her eyebrows as if to say, And?
    I racked my brain, wanting to appear knowledgeable. “Well, we’re going to look into whether he was stealing from the building,” I added, realizing at that moment that we should look into whether he was stealing from the building.
    “Do you sink I could … ?” She gestured at the apartment, and a shock of adrenaline jerked through me.
    “No ! I mean …” Although I was entirely comfortable with my own nosiness, I held others to higher standards. I was the co- heir to these four stories, and now the overseer of them, but Roxana had no business poking around a crime scene. I was disappointed in her.
    My disapproval must have shown, because she stepped back and said, “Naw, naw, of course nut. I was jus kewriaus.” Her instant demurral made me feel like I had the upper hand at something.
    Mercedes appeared from behind me, triumphantly brandishing an enormous ring of keys.
    “Roxana, Mercedes. Mercedes, Roxana,” I said.
    “We’ve met before.” Mercedes nodded agreeably.
    Mercedes and Tag and Lucy and Abigail had only ever encountered Roxana while passing her on the stairs, but the Gaul Gal, as Abigail had dubbed her, was a never- ending source of fascination for the Sterling Girls. She exuded a smoky, husky aura that we could only ever hope to achieve via a DNA transplant. We wanted the gravelly voice without having to smoke. The lissome figure without having to forgo Oreos. The cheekbones without getting implants.
    But more than her looks, we wanted her air of mystery. She was reserved, private, and, therefore, sophisticated. In contrast, the five of us couldn’t keep a secret from one another for more than the time it took to think “I’m going to keep this to myself.” We were open books, and nothing was off- limits. Not the unrequited crush Abigail had nursed for her married thesis advisor. Not the gruesome details of Lucy’s father’s fatal cancer. Not the description of the stomach virus Tag acquired during a twenty- four- hour journey to the east coast of Africa. Not the blow- by- blow accounts of the shedding of our respective virginities.
    We also never hesitated, with Lucy’s embryonic expertise at the helm, to analyze anyone’s relationship with her mother, or her approach to dating, or to make sweeping declarations about how each of us ought to approach life.
    “Abigail, you spend a lot of unnecessary energy trying to be the academic star your mother is. Just be good to yourself.”
    “Mercedes, you spend a lot of unnecessary energy trying to be someone your father wouldn’t have left, but it was his fault, not yours. Be good to yourself.”
    “Lucy, you spend a lot of unnecessary energy telling people to be good to themselves. Some of your clients really are homicidal criminals who don’t deserve to be good to themselves.”
    To anyone else, we would be deathly repetitive and unforgivably self- involved. But we never tired of ourselves. I was pretty sure, on the other hand, that Roxana and her friends didn’t analyze one another ad nauseam and without a license. Come to think of it, I’d never seen her in the company of anyone else, Mrs. Hannaham’s accusations of promiscuity notwithstanding. Did you have to drop all your friends to be sophisticated?
Was
it immature to have so many people to keep track of, as though you weren’t discerning enough? Was I guilty of quantity and not