And When She Was Good by Laura Lippman Page A

girls who work for her. Everything she can think of, but it turns out that no one can think of everything. She has failed one of her girls, which is one reason her accountant is here tonight.
    â€œSophie’s prescriptions now cost seventeen hundred dollars a month. Your health plan doesn’t even have a prescription component, and you’re paying that out of pocket. How long is she going to be on leave?”
    â€œI’m not sure, but I said I would pay it, so I am.”
    â€œBut why are you paying her cash, under the table? It’s the same as income, doesn’t matter if she uses the money for prescription drugs. Does she understand that? Is she reporting it?”
    â€œI think so.” Heloise doubts it.
    â€œLook, you can afford this kind of outlay—for now—but it can’t go on this way indefinitely.”
    â€œSophie’s on a paid medical leave.”
    â€œFor how long?”
    â€œFor as long as she needs to be.” Forever. For fucking forever.
    â€œSo you’re paying her base salary and you’re buying her drugs. Fine, that’s your choice. But as her medical bills start to rise, that will impact the group. You might see a big increase in premiums. If you don’t expect her to return to work, it actually would be better to let her go, then use your money to cover her COBRA costs for eighteen months. Then she’s guaranteed medical insurance through one of the big insurers and the group policy doesn’t take the hit.”
    â€œAnd what will she live on? How will she pay for those prescriptions?”
    â€œShe can work,” Leo says, but it’s really more of a question. “I mean, I don’t really know her, I don’t know what her skills are or what kind of education she has, but she might be able to work again, right?”
    â€œI promised to take care of her,” Heloise insists.
    â€œOkay, but you’re putting the cost of the plan at risk. Except for you and Scott, because you’re on your own family plan. Which, by the way, now costs seven hundred fifty a month.”
    â€œIf that’s what it costs, it’s what it costs.”
    â€œYou and Scott have to have more comprehensive coverage, because kids see doctors a lot oftener. But that’s all the more reason for you to find another way to help Sophie out.” Leo sighs. “All I can do is advise. I realize you feel sorry for the girl, but it’s not your fault she has HIV.”
    Except it is.
    Sophie, like most of Heloise’s employees, was recruited through an ad in a college newspaper. She was premed at Johns Hopkins, very beautiful, very brainy—and very bored. Like Leo, she’d been born old, but a different kind of old, the preternatural weariness of being desired from a very early age. Boys chased her. Girls chased her. Professors chased her. She had a wealth of sexual experience, but it had provided her no genuine pleasure.
    â€œI feel,” she told Heloise at their first meeting, “as if I have this really valuable commodity—myself—and yet I’m not supposed to do anything with it.”
    â€œAbsolutely,” Heloise said. “Beauty is a commodity in our world.”
    They were at One World Café, directly across from the Hopkins campus, eating vegetarian fare. Sophie had explained that she was very particular about what she put into her body. No meat, no soda, no alcohol. She said this with a young woman’s earnestness, as if no one else in the world had ever thought of such a thing.
    â€œThe way things work, I’m allowed to trade it to only one man, and then it’s on his terms, you know? And it’s totally a transaction. Like, if I find some rich guy, he might ask me to sign a prenup. At the very least, I’d have to live where he wants to live, have his kids. Whereas if I could sell it piecemeal, I’d make so much more. It’s like a really big diamond—sometimes