Killer Summer

by Lynda Curnyn

  “He’s supposed to be here by now,” she continued, her gaze moving to the door. “Holy shit.”

  I swung my head around, fully expecting to find Tom in a new tryst with some willing female—for a married man, he sure knew a lot of hot, young things judging by the crowd that had showed up—and I was surprised to see him enveloped in a hug with a man.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “Good question. He’s fucking hot,” Sage said. Then, running a hand over her tousled, blond-streaked hair, which she’d just barely tamed into a French twist, she said, “C’mon. Let’s go see how Tom is doing.”

  If I had wondered about my best friend before, I was positively dumbstruck when I found myself standing next to her as she smiled up at Tom, who immediately wrapped one arm around her slender shoulders, pulling her close.“Sage, sweetie, how are you doing? You know Vince Trifelli, right? Our VP of manufacturing?”

  I saw Sage’s eyes widen.“The Vince Trifelli? I think we must have spoken on the phone a few times, but I don’t think we’ve ever actually met.”

  “It was Vince here who convinced me to get into leather goods in the first place,” Tom told us all with a smile. “And then leather outerwear. But I can’t give him all the credit for being the brains behind Edge, because Sage here deserves some, too.” Tom waggled his brows at Sage.“Funny you guys haven’t met,” he said with a frown. “But I guess Vince has been on the road a lot. Poor guy has been suffering over in Italy for the past few weeks—all for the sake of Edge.”

  “I spend most of my time in China, Tom,” Vince said. “Let’s not forget that. And you know China is no picnic.”

  “Hey, if I could give you Italy all year round, buddy, you know I would,” Tom said. He turned to Sage. “Sage has been making her own kind of magic for Edge. She’s my best sales rep.” Tom gazed fondly down at her, pulling her in tighter. “I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

  “Ah, Sage,” Vince said, his dark eyes roaming over her appreciatively. “Yes, I do believe we have spoken a few times. A pleasure to finally meet you.”

  I couldn’t figure out what was bothering me more—the way Tom was practically groping Sage, the way Sage was letting him or the way Vince was gazing speculatively at Sage. I’d already pegged Tom as a wacko, but Sage? Hello? I mean, yeah, Vince was hot—dark-eyed, dark-haired, with rough-hewn yet exotic Italian looks, but this wasn’t some pickup spot in the meat-packing district. This was a fucking wake.

  People grieve in different ways. If this was grieving, then maybe I should start attending more funerals. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do with my Saturday nights these days.

  I felt relieved at the sight of Nick loping through the door, but whether it was because this happy little threesome had forgotten I was there, or because I didn’t exactly want to be remembered by them, I wasn’t sure. I slipped away—not that any of them noticed—and intercepted Nick at the door.

  “Hey,” I said, looking up at him and noticing his dark brown hair looked a little more unkempt than usual, his eyes tired.

  “Hey, Zoe. Did I miss anything?”

  Oh brother. “Not much. I think there might be some supermodels left for you to hit on.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind,” I studied his dark eyes. “So how are you doing?” I knew at least Nick had experienced some of the shock I had, judging by the way he kept replaying his final conversation with Maggie about the ill-fated dinner plan. I understood what he was going through. I had played Maggie’s last voice mails back at least six times, listening to her cheerfully rattle off the ingredients she needed and trying to grasp how a woman could go from a clawing need for coriander to floating in the tide in the space of one evening. I wasn’t sure if it was guilt that drove me to it, or my own need to somehow grasp how she could be there one moment and gone the next.

  “Not good,” he said, blowing out a breath.

  I reached out, taking his hand. “Tell me about it.”

  “Well, I just had a meeting with Lance—you know, my Web site developer? Anyway, it looks like he’s going to bail on me due to lack of funding.”

  I dropped his hand, biting back a sigh. I guess life was made for the living. Clearly Nick had let go of whatever angst he had felt over Maggie’s sudden death.

  “I thought you said you’d found a big investor.”

  Nick dropped his eyes and nearly blushed. Actually, the tips of his ears turned red, which is what typically happened whenever he was embarrassed. Or angry. “Uh, she dropped out at the last minute.”

  “She?” I asked, remembering that Nick’s forte was landing women, not investors. Like Bernadine, whom he still kept dangling on a thread. I wondered if maybe he’d pulled a little too hard on that thread and hit her up for a little funding. After all, she was reportedly a big shot out at a software firm in San Francisco now. “Anyone I know?”

  His eyes widened, then he shook his head. “Uh, not really.” He glanced around, “Where’s Sage?”

  “Over there applying for the role of wife number three,” I said, waving one hand blandly at the intimate grouping of Sage, Tom and Vince. I saw her lean in to whisper something in Tom’s ear, her gaze fastened on Vince as she did. Nah, not wife number three. If there was one thing I was sure about with Sage, marriage wasn’t her goal. I had a feeling, judging by the way she was looking at Vince, that she had just found her latest prey. I suppose I couldn’t blame her; he was good-looking. Though a bit older than she usually went for. Maybe things had gotten desperate even for Sage. I mean, here she was making flirt time at a wake for chrissakes.

  Speaking of which… “So you want to go up and see Maggie?” I said.

  Now Nick was grabbing my arm, looking around as if Maggie might step out from behind one of the tasteful drapes with a freshly baked Bundt cake in hand. “What?”

  I rolled my eyes, gesturing with my chin toward the coffin at the front of the room, decked in flowers. As if he could miss it. “To pay your respects.” Clearly Nick hadn’t been to many wakes.

  “Oh, right,” he said, nodding his head as if this made some sort of sense to him, though he didn’t let go of my arm.

  “Come up with me?” he pleaded.

  For the second time that evening, I found myself kneeling before Maggie Landon, Beloved Wife—as the flowery banner at the end of the coffin declared her. I glanced at Nick, who kneeled beside me, though he seemed to be looking at everything but the overly made-up face of Maggie. I couldn’t blame him. Dead people freaked me out, too. And Maggie especially, considering I had seen her dead before the makeup job. I followed Nick’s gaze, which now wandered over the line of flowers leading to the coffin, and took some heart. If the amount of money the local florists had collected on Maggie’s behalf was any indication, she clearly was loved, despite the jolly ruckus her dear husband was creating in the back of the funeral home. “Those are the flowers Sage ordered from us,” I said, pointing out the tall display of lilies, so huge it practically dwarfed the two baskets of mixed flowers it stood between.

  Nick’s eyes widened. “It looks expensive,” he whispered and I knew the question of how much his share of the cost was going to be was floating through his mind. It had floated through my mind, too, as Sage pointed the flowers out when we arrived. I guess that’s the way Sage grieved—expensively. I would have preferred to shed a few more tears. There was a good chance I wouldn’t be eating next week after I forked over my share of the bill for that bouquet.

  Oh, God, I was just as bad as the rest of them.

  “We should probably say a prayer,” I whispered, but whether I was reminding myself or Nick of why we were here, I wasn’t sure.

  I closed my eyes, only to open them again immediately. I never knew what to pray for in these situations. Eternal salvation? Yeah, I’d been raised a Catholic, but I wasn’t sure what I believed in anymore. Now, as I looked at Maggie’s dead face, the way her lips seemed pulled into the kind of smile I’d never seen on her face in r
eal life—closed mouth, knowing and a bit too pink—I felt the same disturbing emotion as when I had found her on the beach. With a shiver, I looked up at the photos that had been placed in the casket. Maggie as a baby, with one too many ribbons in the short tuft of blond hair. Maggie standing next to Tom at some black-tie event, beaming at the camera. Maggie standing proudly before a berry tart. Maggie tossing a stick to Janis Joplin on the beach.

  I closed my eyes again, expecting comfort to come, but instead a new reel of pictures flashed in my mind: Myles dressed in a dark suit standing stoically by his mother at his father’s funeral, his eyes damp with tears he refused to shed. Another of his face across the pillow from me, his eyes fixed on mine. “I don’t know what I would do without you in my life, Zoe,” he had said, pulling me close.

  Apparently he did. Because I was no longer in his life.

  Now I felt, for the first time since this whole tragedy, a sob rolling up. But there was no relief in it. Only deeper sadness.

  I wasn’t crying for Maggie, I realized, once I opened my eyes and remembered where I was.

  I was crying for myself.

  “You done?” Nick asked, already beginning to stand.

  “I guess I am,” I said, getting up, knowing that I was at heart no better than the rest of them. Wondering if anyone really cared about anyone more than they did about themselves.

  Myself included.

  * * *

  Chapter Seven

  Sage

  It’s good to be the queen (again).

  Thy say you can’t take it with you.

  It was the first thing I thought when I walked into the offices of Edge the day after the funeral, my eyes roaming over the pale gold that Maggie had chosen for the walls, the frilly little pillows she’d tossed about the couches in the lobby, the hideously sentimental pastoral scene she’d hung above the reception desk.

  I wish she could have at least taken that painting.

  “Morning, Sage,” Yaz greeted me from her perch behind the reception desk. I felt her dark eyes study my face as I glanced at the painting above her, and when I looked at her pretty, exotic features, punctuated by a tiny jewel in her nose, I had a feeling she knew exactly what I had been thinking. Yaz had, after all, witnessed the argument between me and Maggie over that painting, which didn’t have the edge that I—or Yaz, for that matter—believed was the image Edge should try to project.

  Not that Yaz brought it up. After all, it wouldn’t have been… appropriate.

  “So how are you doing?” she said instead, still searching my face.

  “I’m fine,” I replied a bit defensively.

  One pierced eyebrow rose almost imperceptibly. “And Tom?”

  Yaz hadn’t gone to the funeral, mostly because Tom had refused to close the office and Yaz had quickly agreed to stay and answer the phones so everyone else could attend the services. She hadn’t cared much for Maggie, and being a twenty-six-year-old Goth—if a woman as dark and exotic as Yaz was could be a Goth—she wasn’t one to stand on ceremony.

  “Tom’s fine,” I said finally. “But you know Tom,” I said.

  “Business as usual,” Yaz replied, still staring at me, waiting for what—tears? Shrieks of happiness? Because the truth was, business was back to usual. As in back to the way things were before. Pre-Maggie.

  “I’ll be in my office,” I said, needing an escape from the gleam in Yaz’s eyes.

  “Sure,” Yaz said with a shrug. Then, “Oh, Sage?”

  I stopped mid-escape.

  “The samples for the fall line came back yesterday,” she said, her gaze on me once more.

  I gave her a quick nod. “Thanks,” I said, then practically ran down the hall to my office.

  Once I closed the door behind me, relief washed over me. As I took in my sleek black leather chair, the cool jewel tones I’d chosen for the walls, the way the sun slanted in across my massive desk, I felt, for the first time, a shot of sadness for my former manager.

  Which was surprising, considering my office was the only bit of space at the offices of Edge that Maggie hadn’t mutilated with her “flair for decorating.”

  Dropping my bag on the desk, I headed for the tall window, gazed out onto the streets, alive with the rush of people scurrying to their offices, clutching coffees and newspapers, already scattering Seventh Avenue with the debris of life.

  Gone. She was really gone.

  I shivered, remembering how I had, barely one month ago, during a rage over the changes Maggie had requested on my samples, declared to Yaz and anyone else in earshot, “That woman should be shot.”

  A knock sounded on my door.

  I straightened. Never let them see you sweat. “Come in.”

  The door swung open on Shari Werner, my designer, who, standing before me in a black Betsey Johnson dress, was either displaying her usual flair for fashion or was the only one of us who was still in deep mourning. Knowing Shari, whose hands fluttered nervously to her soft auburn locks, it was the latter.

  “How are you doing?” she said, her gray eyes wide with sympathy and causing a sudden alarm to go off inside me. I’ll admit, I’m not too good with emotion—mine or anyone else’s.

  “I’m fine,” I insisted for the second time that morning.

  “Have you spoken to Tom?” Shari asked, making me realize why all this concern was pouring out toward me. Tom and I were friends. Had been even before he’d hired me away from The Bomb. I guess people like Shari assumed that Maggie and I were friends, too. But that was Shari. Always assuming the best of people. She might have been the only employee at Edge who actually got along with Maggie.

  “Poor Tom,” she said now, her eyes welling up.

  I reached for my coffee, carefully removing the lid and focusing on the fragrant black brew as Shari went on about “the tragedy” and “how young Maggie was, how much life she had ahead of her.”

  I swallowed a gulp of coffee, nodding in the appropriate places as I stepped behind my desk, fingering the fat file of orders I had let languish during my absence and even rearranging the pencils in my holder in order to avoid her gaze. When she finally paused in her eulogy, I looked up at her.

  “So I understand the samples came back from production?”

  Shari’s brow furrowed, as if she suddenly remembered we were no longer at the funeral but back at work, where there were a million more things to do now that everything had nearly come to a standstill over the past few weeks. “Right,” she said, nodding. Then, as if she couldn’t let go of all that Maggie had left behind, she said, “Oh, these are the samples that Maggie redid the merchandising on.”

  “Yes they are,” I said, studying her anew. It amazed me that Shari, who had spent months designing the fall/winter line only to have Maggie decide at the last minute to change the details on at least fifty percent of the bodies we had had cut, could feel such a generosity of spirit toward Maggie. But then, I guess one of Shari’s biggest assets as a designer was that she followed orders well. After all, those bodies she had sketched were based on leather jackets and skirts and pants I had bought from the bigger designers and ordered her to knock off, adding, of course, the edge that made Edge unique. But I guess that was why I’d persuaded Tom to hire her. She was easily led. “Could you have Jamal hang them in the first showroom? I’d like to see how they turned out.”

  “Of course,” Shari said, nodding fervently. Then she frowned. “Um, they’re all still in the shipping boxes.”

  I sighed. “What has Jamal been doing?” Our stock boy was one of the few people who hadn’t attended more than one night of Maggie’s wake, due to claims of college workload and classes. And, as he said to Tom the one night he had shown up, someone had to tend to shipments while we were all gone. But Jamal had never been the most industrious of workers. Mostly because his idea of being in the fashion world was pretending to be P. Diddy. As in gold jewelry, glamorous lifestyle and nothing to do but be his hip-hop self.

  Shari’s eyes widened, and I knew
her assumption was that Jamal had been properly mourning, just as she had been. “I’ll get him right on it,” she declared. “Shouldn’t take him more than twenty minutes or so.” Then she smiled.“That’ll give you some time anyway. To adjust.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “Adjust?”

  She blushed, making me feel more and more like a beast. “You know, to being back. After everything.

  “Right,” I said, looking down at my file of sales orders. “A lot of catch-up,” I said, nearly cringing as I did.

  Shari had the good grace to make her exit, shutting the door firmly behind her.

  I sank down in my chair, shoved the file away and put my face in my hands.

  The truth was, I didn’t feel like doing anything.

  Fortunately, before I could fall into a heap of something that felt vaguely like pity—though I wasn’t clear on what /had to feel sorry about—the phone rang. Assuming it was a client, I picked up, prepared to placate whoever hadn’t received their order this week, and was surprised to find my mother on the other end.

  But I shouldn’t have been surprised, knowing my mother.

  “Sage, I didn’t think you’d be in today…”

  “Why wouldn’t I be in?”

  “Well, wasn’t the funeral yesterday?”

  The operative word being yesterday. But my mother was of the school where mourning required at least a lifetime to be done properly. She’d been putting up memorials to Hope ever since my sister had died seventeen years ago. There was the annual “Keep Hope Alive” theater festival in my hometown to raise money for a children’s theater fund in Hope’s name. Though Hope had only been eleven when she died, she had shared my mother’s love of acting. The “Keep Hope Alive” theater fund was a nice gesture, but my mother—and my father, who did lights for the show every year—should have been concentrating their efforts on keeping themselves alive. Between my mother’s nonpaying gig at the repertory theater and my father’s sporadic sales—he was a painter, the kind who made a meager living selling beach scenes in the local gifts shops—they were barely surviving. Which reminded me…