Hardly Knew Her Read online

  Hardly Knew Her

  Stories

  Laura Lippman

  Contents

  Introduction by George Pelecanos

  Part I: Girls Gone Wild

  The Crack Cocaine Diet

  What He Needed

  Dear Penthouse Forum (A First Draft)

  The Babysitter’s Code

  Hardly Knew Her

  Femme Fatale

  One True Love

  Part II: Other Cities, Not My Own

  Pony Girl

  ARM and the Woman

  Honor Bar

  A Good Fuck Spoiled

  Part III: My Baby Walks the Streets of Baltimore

  Easy as A-B-C

  Black-Eyed Susan

  Ropa Vieja

  The Shoeshine Man’s Regrets

  The Accidental Detective

  Part IV: Scratch A Woman

  Scratch a Woman

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Other Books by Laura Lippman

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  INTRODUCTION

  By anyone’s estimation, Laura Lippman is doing all right. She’s a New York Times bestselling author, is highly respected by her peers and the critical establishment, and has carved out a nice life for herself in Baltimore, a city she loves and represents. Which begs the question: why a short story collection?

  It’s not like she needs to feed the pipeline with product. This isn’t a stopgap measure to appease the public while she struggles with her next book. She’s certainly not delinquent in the delivery of a novel to her publisher. Shoot, Laura has consistently published quality, challenging novels every year since she’s been at this. Plus, she’s found a large audience.

  So now, time to cash in. Right?

  That’s what you’d assume. Readers should be wary, having been burned in the past by writers who have exploited their success by publishing tossed-off collections of odds and ends and never-should-have-been short stories. But once you begin to read this anthology, you’ll find that Laura’s stories stand apart from her novels in revelatory and satisfying ways. Plus, they’re beautifully written and contain the kind of offbeat observations and insights that someday, no doubt, will come to be known as “Lippman moments.” Finally, these stories tell actual stories. Laura, thankfully, is not afraid of plot. (Can you hear me, writing school graduates? Lord, have mercy.)

  Do not expect the obvious. There are two Tess Monaghan stories included here, for the Monaghan faithful. One is the crowd-pleasing “The Shoeshine Man’s Regrets,” in which Tess gets an old shoeshine man off (not like that, and you ought to wash your mind out with soap for thinking it). As a bonus, there is a clever, revealing “interview” with Tess, “The Accidental Detective” (all respect to Baltimore’s own Anne Tyler), as well.

  The centerpiece of this book is a novella, “Scratch a Woman,” that was written for this collection. To say that it is about a suburban prostitute and her twisted sister does not do it justice. It has so much going on in it, in terms of ideas, that it could easily be expanded into a novel (and a very interesting film). It is one of the finest pieces of writing that Laura has done.

  The rest of the collection includes tales told from a variety of viewpoints. I count five first-person stories, and many others from the perspective of women ranging from teens to aged, two from men who have been less than faithful to their wives (spousal betrayal being somewhat of a recurring theme in these stories, and if you’re thinking of pulling the trigger yourself, rest uneasy that, in Laura’s world, cheating never ends well), and two from the POV of young black men. In all of them, I was completely convinced of the voices. And, in case anyone got the impression that Laura only knows Baltimore, there is an entire section devoted to stories set in places like Dublin (“Honor Bar”), Washington, D.C. (“ARM and the Woman”), and New Orleans (the harrowing “Pony Girl,” a mythic ode to the dark side of the party).

  There are many high moments, points when you stop reading and say, “Damn, she’s good,” but let me mention just a few. “Easy as A-B-C,” concerning a working-class contractor and his psychosexual relationship with one of the new breed of moneyed Locust Point residents, says more about the changing modern city, in its economical way, than most novelists manage in their latest door-stopper. “The Crack Cocaine Diet” hits like a bat to the temple, a “wacky” tour de force from Laura that is as funny as it is surprising. “Hardly Knew Her,” describing a Beth Steel family in 1975 Dundalk—a girl, Sofia, and her degenerate gambler father is stunning in its emotional nuance and period detail. In “Femme Fatale,” a woman of sixty-eight gets involved in senior citizen porn, with unexpected results. “Dear Penthouse Forum (A First Draft),” whose plot I will not describe, is inventive and somewhat twisted. Actually, it’s kinda sick (get help, Laura, but don’t stop writing).

  With each year, and each book, Laura Lippman’s work has gotten deeper, more intricate, and more ambitious. This collection makes a strong case for her range and talent. She got both, in spades.

  George Pelecanos

  SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND

  PART I

  GIRLS GONE WILD

  THE CRACK COCAINE DIET

  I had just broken up with Brandon and Molly had just broken up with Keith, so we needed new dresses to go to this party where we knew they were both going to be. But before we could buy the dresses, we needed to lose weight because we had to look fabulous, kiss-my-ass-fuck-you fabulous. Kiss-my-ass-fuck-you-and-your-dick-is-really-tiny fabulous. Because, after all, Brandon and Keith were going to be at this party, and if we couldn’t get new boyfriends in less than eight days, we could at least go down a dress size and look so good that Brandon and Keith and everybody else in the immediate vicinity would wonder how they ever let us go. I mean, yes, technically, they broke up with us, but we had been thinking about it, weighing the pros and cons. (Pro: they spent money on us. Con: they were childish. Pro: we had them. Con: tiny dicks, see above.) See, we were being methodical and they were just all impulsive, the way guys are. That would be another con—poor impulse control. Me, I never do anything without thinking it through very carefully. Anyway, I’m not sure what went down with Molly and Keith, but Brandon said if he wanted to be nagged all the time, he’d move back in with his mother, and I said, “Well, given that she still does your laundry and makes you food, it’s not as if you really moved out,” and that was that. No big loss.

  Still, we had to look so great that other guys would be punching our exes in the arms and saying, “What, are you crazy?” Everything is about spin, even dating. It’s always better to be the dumper instead of the dumpee, and if you have to be the loser, then you need to find a way of being superior. And that was going to take about seven pounds for me, as many as ten for Molly, who doesn’t have my discipline and had been doing some serious breakup eating for the past three weeks. She went facedown in the Ding Dongs, danced with the Devil Dogs, became a Ho Ho ho. As for myself, I’m a salty girl, and I admit I had the Pringles Light can upended in my mouth for a couple of days.

  So, anyway, Molly said Atkins, and I said not fast enough, and then I said a fast-fast, and Molly said she saw little lights in front of her eyes the last time she tried to go no food, and she said cabbage soup and I said it gives me gas, and then she said pills, and I said all the doctors we knew were too tight with their scrips, even her dentist boss since she stopped blowing him. And, finally, Molly had a good idea and said: “Cocaine!”

  This merited consideration. Molly and I had never done more than a little recreational coke, always provided by boyfriends who were trying to impress us, but even my short-term experience indicated it would probably do the trick. The tiniest bit revved you
up for hours and you raced around and around, and it wasn’t that you weren’t hungry, more like you had never even heard of food, it was just some quaint custom from the olden days, like square dancing. I mean, you could do it in theory, but why would you?

  “Okay,” I said. “Only where do we get it?” After all, we’re girls, girly girls. I had been drinking and smoking pot since I was sixteen, but I certainly didn’t buy it. That’s what boyfriends were for. Pro: Brandon bought my drinks, and if you don’t have to lay out cash for alcohol, you can buy a lot more shoes.

  Molly thought hard, and Molly thinking was like a fat guy running—there was a lot of visible effort.

  “Well, like, the city.”

  “But where in the city?”

  “On, like, a corner.”

  “Right, Molly. I watch HBO, too. But I mean, what corner? It’s not like they list them in that crap Weekender Guide in the paper—movies, music, clubs, where to buy drugs.”

  So Molly asked a guy who asked a guy who talked to a guy, and it turned out there was a place just inside the city line, not too far from the interstate. Easy on, easy off, then easy off again. Get it? After a quick consultation on what to wear—jeans and T-shirts and sandals, although I changed into running shoes after I saw the condition of my pedicure—we were off. Very hush-hush because, as I explained to Molly, that was part of the adventure. I phoned my mom and said I was going for a run. Molly told her mom she was going into the city to shop for a dress, and we were off.

  The friend of Molly’s friend’s friend had given us directions to what turned out to be an apartment complex, which was kind of disappointing. I mean, we were expecting rowhouses, slumping picturesquely next to each other, but this was just a dirtier, more rundown version of where we lived, little clusters of two-story townhouses built around a courtyard. We drove around and around and around, trying to seem very savvy and willing, and it looked like any apartment complex on a hot July afternoon. Finally, on our third turn around the complex, a guy ambled over to the car.

  “What you want?”

  “What you got?” I asked, which I thought was pretty good. I mean, I sounded casual but kind of hip, and if he turned out to be a cop, I hadn’t implicated myself. See, I was always thinking, unlike some people I could name.

  “Got American Idol and Survivor. The first one will make you sing so pretty that Simon will be speechless. The second one will make you feel as if you’ve got immunity for life.”

  “O-kay.” Molly reached over me with a fistful of bills, but the guy backed away from the car.

  “Pay the guy up there. Then someone will bring you your package.”

  “Shouldn’t you give us the, um, stuff first and then get paid?”

  The guy gave Molly the kind of look that a schoolteacher gives you when you say something exceptionally stupid. We drove up to the next guy, gave him $40, then drove to a spot he pointed out to wait.

  “It’s like McDonald’s!” Molly said. “Drive-through!”

  “Shit, don’t say McDonald’s. I haven’t eaten all day. I would kill for a Big Mac.”

  “Have you ever had the Big N’ Tasty? It totally rocks.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a cheeseburger, but with like a special sauce.”

  “Like a Big Mac.”

  “Only the sauce is different.”

  “I liked the fries better when they made them in beef fat.”

  A third boy—it’s okay to say “boy,” because he was, like, thirteen, so I’m not being racist or anything—handed us a package and we drove away. But Molly immediately pulled into a convenience store parking lot. It wasn’t a real convenience store, though, not a 7-Eleven or a Royal Farms.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Pre-diet binge,” Molly said. “If I’m not going to eat for the next week, I want to enjoy myself now.”

  I had planned to be pure starting that morning, but it sounded like a good idea. I did a little math. An ounce of Pringles has, like, 120 calories, so I could eat an entire can and not gain even half a pound, and a half pound doesn’t even register on a scale, so it wouldn’t count. Molly bought a pound of Peanut M&M’s, and let me tell you, the girl was not overachieving. I’d seen her eat that much on many an occasion. Molly has big appetites. We had a picnic, right there in the parking lot, washing down our food with diet cream soda. Then Molly began to open our “package.”

  “Not here!” I warned her, looking around.

  “What if it’s no good? What if they cut it with, like, something, so it’s weak?”

  Molly was beginning to piss me off a little, but maybe it was just all the salt, which was making my fingers swell and my head pound a little. “So how are you going to know if it’s any good?”

  “You put it on your gums.” She opened up the package. It didn’t look quite right. It was more off-white than I remembered, not as finely cut. But Molly dove right in, licking her finger, sticking it in, and then spreading it around her gum line.

  “Shit,” she said. “I don’t feel a thing.”

  “Well, you don’t feel it right away.”

  “No, they like totally robbed us. It’s bullshit. I’m going back.”

  “Molly, I don’t think they do exchanges. It’s not like Nordstrom, where you can con them into taking the shoes back even after you wore them once. You stuck your wet finger in it.”

  “We were ripped off. They think just because we’re white suburban girls they can sell us this weak-ass shit.” She was beginning to sound more and more like someone on HBO, although I’d have to say the effect was closer to Ali G than Sopranos. “I’m going to demand a refund.”

  This was my first inkling that things might go a little wrong.

  So Molly went storming back to the parking lot and finds our guy, and she began bitching and moaning, but he didn’t seem that upset. He seemed kind of, I don’t know, amused by her. He let her rant and rave, just nodding his head, and when she finally ran out of steam, he says:

  “Honey, darling, you bought heroin. Not cocaine. That’s why you didn’t get a jolt. It’s not supposed to jolt you. It’s supposed to slow you down, not that it seems to be doing that, either.”

  Molly had worked up so much outrage that she still saw herself as the wronged party. “Well how was I supposed to know that?”

  “Because we sell cocaine by vial color. Red tops, blue tops, yellow tops. I just had you figured for heroin girls. You looked like you knew your way around, got tired of OxyContin, wanted the real thing.”

  Molly preened a little, as if she had been complimented. It’s interesting about Molly. Objectively, I’m prettier, but she has always done better with guys. I think it’s because she has this kind of sexy vibe, by which I mean she manages to communicate that she’ll pretty much do anyone.

  “Two pretty girls like you, just this once, I’ll make an exception. You go hand that package back to my man Gordy, and he’ll give you some nice blue tops.”

  We did, and he did, but this time Molly made a big show of driving only a few feet away and inspecting our purchase, holding the blue-capped vial up to the light.

  “It’s, like, rock candy.”

  It did look like a piece of rock candy, which made me think of the divinity my grandmother used to make, which made me think of all the other treats from childhood that I couldn’t imagine eating now—Pixy Stix and Now and Laters and Mary Janes and Dots and Black Crows and Necco Wafers and those pastel buttons that came on sheets of wax paper. Chocolate never did it for me, but I loved sugary treats when I was young.

  And now Molly was out of the car and on her feet, steaming toward our guy, who looked around, very nervous, as if this five-foot-five, size 10 dental hygienist—size 8 when she’s being good—could do some serious damage. And I wanted to say, “Dude, don’t worry! All she can do is scrape your gums until they bleed.” (I go to Molly’s dentist and Molly cleans my teeth and she is seriously rough. I think she gets a little kick out of it, truthfully.) />
  “What the fuck is this?” she yelled, getting all gangster on his ass—I think I’m saying that right—holding the vial up to the guy’s face, while he looked around nervously. Finally he grabbed her wrist and said: “Look, just shut up or you’re going to bring some serious trouble to bear. You smoke it, I’ll show you how, don’t you know anything? Trust me, you’ll like it.”

  Molly motioned to me and I got out of the car, although a little reluctantly. It was, like, you know that scene in Star Wars where the little red eyes are watching from the caves and suddenly those weird sand people just up and attack? I’m not being racist, just saying we were outsiders and I definitely had a feeling all sorts of eyes were on us, taking note.

  “We’ll go to my place,” the guy said, all super suave, like he was some international man of mystery inviting us to see his etchings.

  “A shooting gallery?” Molly squealed, all excited. “Ohmigod!”

  He seemed a little offended. “I don’t let dope fiends in my house.”

  He led us to one of the townhouses and I don’t know what I expected, but it certainly wasn’t someplace with doilies and old overstuffed furniture and pictures of Jesus and some black guy on the wall. (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I figured out later, but I was really distracted at the time and thought it was the guy’s dad or something.) But the most surprising thing was this little old lady sitting in the middle of the sofa, hands folded in her lap. She had a short, all-white Afro and wore a pink T-shirt and flowery ski pants, which bagged on her stick-thin legs. Ski pants. I hadn’t seen them in, like, forever.