First Chapter

See Isabelle Run

Mysterious Press

Chapter One

She'd always found it perplexing: Why did she come off as relatively confident in the rest of her life, and as such a phenomenal loser in the professional world? Why did she keep screwing up so badly, even when she promised herself it would be different this time? And more important, how exactly was she going to pay her damn rent?

These and other questions were assaulting her brain as she rode the elevator up to the forty-third floor of the Belden Building on a humid Tuesday morning. She tried to focus, but it was no use. She knew she was going to make an idiot of herself. Again.

Frankly, she considered it a miracle that she'd had the guts to get past the reception desk. One look at the Belden Building-a deceptively sedate name for a glass office tower that looked to stretch from the sidewalk to the ozone layer-had made her want to run the thirty blocks back to her apartment. But she couldn't, and not just because she'd already swapped her sneakers for heels. She needed the money. Desperately.

So she'd signed in at the front desk, gotten her visitor's badge, and stepped into the sleek silver elevator. She tried to psych herself up for the interview, the thought of which sparked both a churning in her stomach and a sour taste at the back of her throat. Suddenly fearful of halitosis, she grappled in her oversize purse for an Altoid, dumping half its contents onto the wing tips of a man in a thousand-dollar suit.

She tried to apologize. He walked out.

By the time she got to the forty-third floor, she'd managed to compose herself-sort of. She'd jammed everything back into the purse, chewed a mint, checked her lipstick and hair. The latter was falling out of the bun she'd fashioned with umpteen bobby pins, but it was too late to do anything about it. The elevator doors opened, and she was faced with another reception desk. She hesitated, took a deep breath, and stepped forward just as the doors were about to close on her pocketbook.

"Hello," she said. "My name is Isabelle Leonard. I have a ten o'clock appointment for a-"

"Well, hello," said the receptionist, a fellow brunette whose hair was in no way untidy. "It's just so wonderful to have you here. Everyone's just so thrilled." Her voice was a three-hundred-watt bulb, and Isabelle couldn't tell if she was (a) a sarcastic bitch or (b) a very friendly mental patient. "I hope you found us okay. Did you? And has anyone offered you some coffee? Would you like some? The coffee here's the best. I'd be happy to-"

"Er ... no, thank you," Isabelle said, the lure of free coffee diminished by the prospect of dribbling it down her front. "I think I should probably just fill out my application."

"Oh, sure. Absolutely fine," she said, though she looked disappointed. "I'm just going to leave you in our Welcome Corner. You'll be snug as a bug." She handed Isabelle a clipboard and pointed her toward a small waiting area. When she came out from behind the desk, she proved to be wearing a flouncy floral skirt that matched her baby-pink sweater. "I'm just going to go get myself a little coffee," she said. "Just a little one. You sure you don't want any?"

"No, thanks. I'm fine."

"Super," the woman said. As she walked down the hall, Isabelle thought she was singing the title song from The Sound of Music.

Isabelle turned her attention to her application. Name, address, Social Security number ... Have you ever been convicted of a felony? Do you have any medical condition or disability which would prevent you from performing your duties? Blah, blah, blah ...

Filling in the blanks took her half an hour because she triple-checked her answers to make sure she hadn't misspelled anything. Then she sat there for another half hour until the receptionist returned, this time humming a tune Isabelle couldn't place.

"Oh, no," she said, eyes wide. "You're still here."

"I wasn't sure where I was supposed to go."

"Didn't I tell you?" Her well-plucked eyebrows came together. "I was sure I did ..."

"I'm afraid not," Isabelle said.

"Oopsie. Well, it's the eighth door on your left."

Isabelle walked down the hall, counting doors until she got to number 8. The man behind the desk waved her in.

"You get all your paperwork filled out?" She handed it to him. "All rightie. You got any questions?" She hesitated, long enough for him to decide she didn't. "All rightie," he said again. Then he shuffled papers, asked to see her ID, and told her to go to office number 57-264.

She got back into the elevator and rode up fourteen floors, then navigated her way to the office. The desk outside it was empty-other than a phone, it didn't have so much as a stapler-and Isabelle wasn't sure what to do. She poked her head inside, but there was no one there. Finally, a man pushing a mail cart took pity on her.

"Hey," he said on his third pass, "are you waiting for Lisa?"

"I'm not sure. I'm here for a job interview in office number 57-264."

"Well, this is it." The man was in his mid-twenties, no more than five-five, with tousled brown hair and the compact build of a high school wrestler. He was dressed in business casual, a bright blue shirt tucked into khakis. Isabelle thought she saw the outline of a belly-button ring above his belt buckle. "Lisa's at lunch probably."

"I guess I'll wait."

"Might be a while. She's the queen of the three-hour lunch."

Isabelle bit her lip, then cursed herself for smearing her lipstick. "Oh." "If you're gonna work here, you might as well read this." He pulled a magazine from a stack on the cart. The cover said Becky in big curly letters; beneath the name was a picture of the sexiest strawberry shortcake Isabelle had ever seen.

"Hey," said the guy, who was nothing if not perceptive. "You hungry?"

Hungry enough to kill you and eat you, she thought. But she just said, "Sort of."

"Wanna grab a sandwich?"

"Um, I don't think I should leave."

"You want me to bring you something?"

"I'm sorry ... What's your name?"

"Trevor."

She stuck out her hand. "I'm Isabelle. And the truth is, if you got me something, I couldn't pay you back."

He examined her outfit. "Do my eyes betray me, or is that an Ann Taylor suit?"

"Former life," she said. "Right now I'm ready to eat my shoes."

"Okay," he said with a grin. "In the name of saving those lovely Ferragamos, I'll make you a deal. I buy you a sandwich, and you tell me how a girl in an eight-hundred-dollar outfit ends up dead broke."

"Thanks," she said, "but I'd just as soon starve."

* * *

She waited outside the office for two hours, by the end of which she was so hungry she would gladly have traded her entire personal history for a single chicken nugget. Finally, a forty-something woman swept down the hall and into the office in a cloud of pricey perfume. Isabelle hung back for a few minutes, then knocked on the open door.

"Hello," she said. "My name is Isabelle Leonard. The personnel office said I was supposed to talk to you about a job."

"You're very late." The woman looked Isabelle up and down in a way that made her feel like she was being both scrutinized and ignored. Then she sighed, deep and aggrieved. "All right. Let's get started. What questions do you have?"

"Well ... I guess I'm wondering what sort of work I'd be doing."

"They didn't tell you?" Isabelle shook her head. "Typical. You'll be my assistant, obviously. The job's been open way too long, thanks to personnel. You can touch-type, can't you?"

"Yes," she lied. "I can touch-type."

"Phone? Photocopy? Fax? All that?"

"Definitely."

"Good, because this is a very demanding department. They told you that, didn't they?"

"I'm afraid not. No one even said what department I was applying for."

Another head shake. "Special projects, of course. I'm the director. We plan very important events all around the world- not the everyday things that could run themselves, but events that are very important to Becky. Personally. I'll expect you as my right-hand person to put in as many hours as necessary."

"That's not a problem. I'm really eager to do whatever I can for the good of the company." Even before she'd finished the sentence, Isabelle knew it sounded rehearsed, which it was. "Honestly," she said, "I promise, if you hire me, I'll do a good job."

Lisa looked at her like she had a two-digit I.Q. "What do you mean if I hire you?"

"Well, I assumed you'd be the one making the decision, and-"

"Obviously, nobody told you anything," she said. "You've already got the job."

* * *

Isabelle spent the rest of the day setting up her computer and filling up her desk, getting lost as she wandered the hallways in search of supplies. She introduced herself to the people she met in her travels, but since she'd never had much luck with names, she wasn't confident she'd remember them. She also wasn't sure how long she was supposed to stay; by five-thirty, with Lisa already gone and the phone barely having rung, she couldn't think of a reason to stick around.

Isabelle flirted with the idea of a subway ride, but she couldn't bear to part with the cash. So she walked the mile and a half to her apartment on East 88th Street, the aroma of the hot-dog carts making her light-headed. She waved to the doorman on her way through the lobby, and he gave her his usual sympathetic look; the doorman knew exactly what was going on, because as a rule doormen know everything.

She lived in apartment 5-D-a one-bedroom that, unfortunately, looked like it belonged to someone who could afford an Ann Taylor suit. The rent was astronomical, but she couldn't find someone to sublet-and even if she ran away from the lease, she didn't have anywhere to go.

And the major reason for that was a jerk named Laurence.

Isabelle had met him back home in Vermont. He was on a ski vacation, she was temping at UVM and trying to figure out what to do with her life. He answered the question for her: marry him, move to New York, change everything about herself. Being a lovesick fool, she agreed to all three. Then, precisely twenty-two minutes before the ceremony, he changed his mind.

Sweaty sneakers off, she sat on the edge of her futon and slathered peanut butter on Wonder bread, which had been on sale for eighty-nine cents at the bodega down the block. She washed it down with the one can of Diet Coke left in the fridge; she'd been saving it to celebrate when she got a real job.

"When I get my first paycheck," she told the can, "I'm buying more of you. And eventually, cable TV."

Not being able to afford cable television was, for Isabelle, its own circle of hell. Isabelle loved TV, from cop dramas to sitcoms to silly romances. Now all she had was whatever snowy images she could pull in on the rabbit ears. Sometimes, at night, she'd hear Jeopardy! or a Law & Order rerun coming from someone's apartment, and it was all she could do not to climb down the fire escape and watch through the window.

The prospect of being able to sign up for digital cable inspired her to drag herself over to her trusty Mac laptop, which was perched on a milk crate on the floor; her dad, who had been into ergonomics, would have been mortified.

He would have been equally mortified to know that the reason it was so situated was that she didn't own a desk-or, for that matter, much else in the way of furniture beyond the futon. For this, however, Isabelle had no one to blame but herself. All the furniture in the apartment had been bought to suit Laurence's taste; the day after he dumped her, she had called the Salvation Army and had it hauled away. The day after that, when she realized that she didn't even have a chair to sit in, she allowed that it hadn't been such a great idea.

So there she was, sitting on a pillow in front of a milk crate, trying to use her only skill to get herself out of financial purgatory. People had always told her she had talent, that she ought to write the Great American Novel. Now she just wanted to write something that'd pay for groceries. So far, her efforts hadn't been worth printing out.

She worked for half an hour on a novel she'd tentatively entitled The Vampire's Deadly Kiss. After reading the result out loud, she announced to the empty room that it stank, deleted it, and changed into the shortest skirt she had. Then she went downstairs and around the corner to a bar called Stella's.

She installed herself on a stool at the far end. It was turning into a bad habit.

By this time, the bartender knew better than to ask her if she wanted a drink-Isabelle never ordered for herself, because she was in no position to pay for an eight-dollar gin and tonic. She just sat there, knowing that if she looked waifish and lonely, some man would offer to buy her one.

The guy was buttoned-down and cocky as hell-as far as Isabelle was concerned, yet another Wall Street prick unwinding from a long day of breaking federal securities laws. He told her that no girl as pretty as her should be sitting at a bar all by her lonesome-he actually said it that way, verbatim-and before she'd seen the bottom of her first screwdriver, he was inviting her back to his place.

Isabelle made sure the man had a clear view down the front of her silk tank top as she leaned in toward him. Then she ran a finger along his dark-suited thigh and talked softly into his ear. "I'd love to," she said, "but there's one little problem."

The investment banker, or whoever he was, tilted his head down so his mouth was a millimeter from her ear. "It's okay, gorgeous. Of course, you've got a boyfriend." He laid his palm against the curve of her waist. "I won't tell."

She pulled back, just slightly, and dropped her voice to a whisper. "That's not it."

"I don't see a wedding ring." He laughed, oozing confidence along with cologne. "Don't tell me you like girls." From the tone in his voice, Isabelle thought he'd like it very much if she told him exactly that.

"No," she said. "I like boys."

He was starting to get annoyed. "Then what is it?"

"The problem," she said, "is that I don't go to bed with assholes."

Back up in her apartment, after she'd changed into an old T-shirt that had belonged to her dad, she turned on the TV and fiddled with the rabbit ears. Then she crawled into bed and tried to watch an episode of Friends.

"My behavior," she told a snowy Lisa Kudrow, "is getting increasingly bizarre."

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from See Isabelle Run by Elizabeth Bloom Copyright © 2005 by Beth Saulnier. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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