“Yeah, she said his name was like Mark, or something,” Marnie says, breaking in on my thoughts on sizeism in the entertainment industry. “But I never saw him. I mean, they started going out just a week or so before she died. He took her to the movies. Some foreign film at the Angelika. That’s why I thought it was so strange—”
“What?” I shake my head. “That what was so strange?”
“Well, I mean, that a guy who liked, you know, foreign films would be into elevator surfing. That’s so…juvenile. The freshmen guys are into it. You know, the ones with the baggy pants, who look about twelve years old? But this guy was older. You know. Sophisticated. According to Beth. So what was he doing, encouraging her to jump around on top of an elevator?”
I sit down next to Marnie on the enormous bed.
“Did she tell you that?” I ask. “Did she tell you he wanted her to go elevator surfing with him?”
“No,” Marnie says. “But he had to have, right? I mean, she’d never have gone alone. I doubt she even knew what it was.”
“Maybe she went with some of those freshmen guys you mentioned,” Cooper suggests.
Marnie makes a face. “No way,” she says. “Those guys’d never have invited her along with them. They’re too cool—or think they are—to be interested in someone like her. Besides, if she’d been with them, she wouldn’t have fallen. Those guys wouldn’t have let her. They’re good at it.”
“You weren’t here, were you, the night she died?” I ask.
“Me? No, I had an audition. We aren’t supposed to audition as freshmen, you know”—she looks sly—“but I figured I had a good shot. I mean, come on. It’s Broadway. If I got into a Broadway show, I’d quit this place in a New York minute.”
“So Elizabeth had the room to herself that night?” I ask.
“Yeah. She was having him over. The guy. She was real excited about it. You know, she was making a romantic dinner for two on the hot plate.” Marnie looks suspicious. “Hey—you’re not going to tell, are you? That we have a hot plate? I know it’s a fire hazard, but—”
“The guy, Mark,” I interrupt. “Or whatever his name was. Did he show? That night?”
“Yeah,” Marnie says. “At least, I assume he did. They were gone by the time I got home, but they left the dinner plates in the sink. I had to do them, to keep them from attracting bugs. You know, you would think for what we’re paying to live here, you guys would have regular exterminators—”
“Did anyone else meet him?” Cooper interrupts. “This Mark guy? Any of your mutual friends?”
“Beth and I didn’t have any mutual friends,” Marnie says, a bit scathingly. “I told you, she was a loser. I mean, I was her roommate, but I wouldn’t have hung out with her. I didn’t even find out she was dead until, like twenty-four hours after the fact. She never came back to the room that night. I just figured, you know, she was over at the guy’s place.”
“Did you tell this to the police?” Cooper asks. “About Elizabeth having the guy over the night she died?”
“Yeah,” Marnie says, with a shrug. “They didn’t seem to care. I mean, it’s not like the guy murdered her. She died because of her own stupidity. I mean, I don’t care how much wine you’ve had, you don’t jump around on top of an elevator—”
I suck in my breath. “They were drinking? Mark and your roommate?”
“Yeah,” Marnie says. “I found the bottles in the trash. Two of them. Pretty expensive, too. Mark must have brought them. They were, like, twenty bucks each. The guy’s a big spender, for someone who lives in a hellhole like this.”
I catch my breath.
“Wait—he lives in Fischer Hall?”
“Yeah. I mean, he’d have to, wouldn’t he? ’Cause she never had to sign him in.”
Good grief! I’d never thought of this! That Beth might actually have had a boy in her room, but that there was no record of her having signed one in, because he hadn’t had to be signed in. He lives in the building! He’s a resident of Fischer Hall, too!
I look up at Cooper. I’m not sure where all this was leading, but I have a pretty good idea that it’s leading somewhere…somewhere important. I can’t tell if he feels the same, though.
“Marnie,” I say. “Is there anything, anything else at all that you can tell us about this guy your roommate was seeing?”
“All I can tell you,” Marnie says, sounding annoyed, “is what I already said—that his name is Mark or something, he likes foreign films, has expensive taste in wine, and that I’m pretty sure he lives here. Oh, and Beth kept saying how cute he was. But how cute could he be? I mean, why would a cute guy be interested in Beth? She was a dog.”
The student-run newspaper, the Washington Square Reporter, had run a photo of Elizabeth the Monday after her death, a photo from the freshmen class yearbook, and Marnie, I’m sorry to say, wasn’t exaggerating. Elizabeth hadn’t been a pretty girl. No makeup, thick glasses, outdated, Farrah Fawcett–style hair, and a smile that was mostly gums.
Still, photos by school-hired photographers are never all that flattering, and I had assumed that Elizabeth was actually prettier than this photo indicated.
But maybe my assumption was wrong.