Dead is the New Black

by Christine Demaio-Rice

  She didn’t cry because Cangemi had pretty much accused her of murder. No. She cried because she had so misread Jeremy. Everyone said he was gay, so she believed them. She thought they had a relationship, chaste though it was, and they didn’t. They had nothing together. The relationship was all in her mind, with a man who didn’t exist, the man she thought she knew was single because his impossibly high standards disqualified most of the men he met.

  But he had a woman, imperfect though she was, for reasons that didn’t have to be immediately apparent, because he was a regular human being, with a heart and soul and motives that could take a lifetime to unravel.

  She cried for herself, for her stupidity and immaturity. For only looking at the surface and believing there was a complete person there. For creating an image of a man that never existed, and then falling in love with it.

  CHAPTER 16.

  When she got home, she called Tinto.

  “I think I need a lawyer. They think I was in it with Jeremy. Which I’m not saying it as if he did it or anything.”

  Tinto sighed. “It can’t be me. I can’t represent both of you.”

  “Why not? Do you know the cops are saying Jeremy and I were in it together? What about when William Kunstler defended the whole Black Panthers?”

  There was a long pause before he said, “You need to stop talking. I’ll see if I can find a referral for you.”

  “Okay. Call me.”

  “Until then, I suggest that whenever you think you should talk, you shut up. Pretend you have strep throat.”

  “Can I go to work?”

  “Go about your business, and don’t forget—”

  “I know,” she interrupted. “Don’t talk.”

  Once she hung up, she knew she would cry again unless she did something, anything, to occupy her mind. She had played a little chess as a kid. She was terrible at it, but it’s what she thought about as she sat on the edge of her bed, staring at a loose floorboard. If you made a defensive move, there should be some offense in it. If you moved your king to avoid a check, you should be getting out of the way of another piece making a capture. Easier said than done, but it helped clear her head.

  She knew she didn’t kill Gracie. And for whatever it was worth, she didn’t believe Jeremy had either. So who did? Who was angry enough at Gracie to kill her? Sheldon, for sure, but the police had definitely barked up that tree because they knew about the fight the night before. What about the fight at Grotto? She was going to have to find out what happened herself, without talking.

  She called the one person she could count on to go to dinner with her. Even if there wasn’t going to be a dinner.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Ruby said. “You want to go to Grotto for dinner, without a reservation, and you think we’re just going to walk in?”

  “I only need to go to the bathroom.”

  “I don’t know what to say. They’re not going to let you just stroll into the bathroom at Grotto, okay? They’ll think you’re a paparazzi or something.”

  But Laura could hear her turning on the shower. “We’ll figure it out. Please. There was some sort of fight between Noë and Carmella there the night before the murder and, if they have a bathroom lady, I need to ask her what happened.”

  “Laura, okay… one, bathroom ladies are paid to not tell what happens there, okay? Two, I’m going over Michael’s, and we’re watching Tropic Thunder. And three, why do you care?”

  Because I’m in trouble.

  And I love Jeremy.

  “Because I love my job, and I don’t want to lose it because two bitches have a catfight in the bathroom the cops are too stupid to find out about. And he’s seen Tropic Thunder like fifteen times, and let me take care of the bathroom lady, if she’s even there, okay? Please?”

  “Why don’t you just ask Carmella what happened?” Ruby asked, sounding exasperated.

  “I don’t trust her, and I promise you she doesn’t trust me.”

  She could practically hear Ruby roll her eyes over the phone.

  Laura knew exactly what to wear to Grotto. She just didn’t own it.

  No, she did. She had a Jeremy St. James cocktail dress she had squirreled away two years ago, but never had the guts to wear. It had spaghetti straps, a sweet blue bodice that plunged, and a black handmade lace inset that started under the ribcage and ran an inch past the cocktail length hem. The leather belt was braided in a pattern to match the lace, and the buckle was Swarovski hematite. She told herself it was the buckle that always seemed inappropriate, but it wasn’t. It was the fact that she didn’t have a strapless bra that wasn’t too ugly or too plain to peek out when she moved. She knew it was a lame excuse; she could have bought a new bra, but she always thought of it too late. Like today. She was going to have to go braless and hope for the best.

  And shoes were always an issue. She had black do-me pumps, but they were too uncomfortable, and there was little else in her library that went with such a fancy dress.

  And there was still snow on the ground.

  And in this weather, the dress would be covered by a coat.

  And she didn’t have the right accessories.

  And she hadn’t gotten her hair done in months.

  And her fingernails were chewed all to hell.

  Women who wore this dress were not too busy to get their hair done. And they already had earrings that matched the crystals, like Ruby, who never missed a chance to buy a pair of shoes if she thought it might go with something, somewhere in her closet.

  Ruby, who lived upstairs.

  But that wasn’t the deal. The deal was, no borrowing of clothing, shoes, or accessories. Period. And the deal had been kept since junior high, when Ruby had borrowed one thing too many from Laura. Those shoes. The chintz floral printed low boots with the black grosgrain lace and silver runners from Trash and Vaudeville. Obnoxious shoes, really. But she told Ruby, ‘When I go into my side of the closet to look for something, I expect to find it.’

  To which Ruby had replied, ‘You’ve never worn them before. How was I supposed to know you cared? And besides, I had to go to Hank’s grandmother’s funeral, and how was I supposed to wear just a black dress? I’d have looked like his mother.’

  That brought up a slew of other emotional garbage, because Hank Dunbar wasn’t just some guy she was dating, but a guy whom Laura had kissed first in the storage room behind the gym. He had been a guy who seemed to like her well enough, and who lacked a certain ambition in the dating department, making him a perfect catch for her, because she lost the ambitious ones to her sister every time. But not this time. After she kissed Hank, she decided that she would not utter one word of the encounter to her sister, which would make him nonexistent to her, and thus, safe.

  But in addition to being a type-B he was also an idiot, because he had mistaken the girl he kissed in the gym storage room for Ruby, the girl he had admired from afar for months. When Ruby heard that he had been pining for her and not Laura, she got herself all flattered, which was a shortcut to more kissing behind the basketball hoops, but not for Laura.

  So the Trash and Vaudeville shoe argument wasn’t really about shoes, but about the last guy Ruby stole from Laura, who was actually Ruby’s in the first place, anyway. Not that it mattered. It was a blowout Mom had to break up with a crowbar. And when she went into their closets she found more cross-matching and borrowing than should be allowed between sisters. Everything was re-divided, and nothing was ever borrowed again.

  Not shoes. Not dresses. Not scarves. And not boys. Never. Laura never mentioned another guy to Ruby. Not Manny Tullis, who left her crying at Danceteria. Not Eugene Eanner, who never called back. Not Frank Yaris, who she dumped an hour after she saw him talking to Ruby in the park. Not Stu, who kissed her in ten-below weather, and not Jeremy St. James, who was at least partially straight, and in prison greens, and sick, and possibly the killer of his lover. To ask Ruby if she could borrow something would be like telling her about Jeremy, which would cause a tsu
nami of events ending in Laura being a bridesmaid at Ruby and Jeremy’s wedding, or worse—though she couldn’t think of one thing worse than that.

  But as she looked at herself in the mirror in bare feet, she knew she had to do it. For the first time, she imagined she could be with Jeremy. He saw her the way other men saw her. He had seen a woman this entire time, not a beard, or a sister, or an employee. All that time, she’d had a chance, and she didn’t even know it. He was far away, in jail, but she felt his eyes on her and, as terrifying as that was, it was exhilarating enough to make Laura minimize the damage that could be done by one pair of borrowed shoes.

  She tramped upstairs in her slippers, dress slung over her shoulder, and knocked on Ruby’s door.

  “Oh, good,” Ruby said. “You have to help me pick something out.” She grabbed Laura’s hand and pulled her into her bedroom, where three outfits stretched across her bed. Shoes on the floor. Bracelets and bangles placed at the bottom of the sleeves, like life-sized paper dolls. Laura sighed. They were all good enough, but Laura saw something better.

  “Put on the champagne blouse with the Rodarte vest and the crinkle skirt. Wear the brown thigh-high boots you wore the other day. That should do you.”

  Ruby pulled the outfits apart and put one back the way Laura had said. “Like that?”

  “I need shoes,” Laura blurted out.

  Ruby was still staring at the outfit, when she said, “The good ones are inside the closet door, in the plastic thingy,” as if it weren’t a huge deal. As if a cardinal rule wasn’t being broken right here in front of them. As if the world would continue to be the same. As if accessorizing the outfit was more important than this earth-shattering chain of events.

  Laura opened the closet door and found the good shoes in the plastic thingy. She chose a pair of lace Stella McCartney black pumps with rounded toes.

  “What are you wearing with that?” Ruby asked, moving a big clunky necklace to her outfit.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You can dress everyone but yourself, you know that?”

  Ruby snapped some things off her bed. Pretty things that clicked together. Sparkly things. Then, she went into her closet and found a black shrug that was affordable ten years ago, before the bottom fell out of the cashmere market, and a wool coat. She handed them to Laura, who had to open her arms to catch it all.

  “I bet we get a table,” she said.

  “Maybe if Pierre Sevion is there, we can sit with him,” Laura joked.

  “Oh, I’ve seen him out. He remembers me from Parsons. Have you seen him since?”

  “Today at the funeral. He thought I was you.”

  “Sweet. I went to one of his dinners once. The table took up the whole room. I can’t believe he remembered me.”

  “I can. No one forgets you, Rubes.”

  Ruby smiled. “What are you doing with your nails? They’re a mess.”

  “I’m thinking of putting Scooby-Doo band-aids over them.”

  “See you downstairs, Goober.”

  They took a cab because the train would overexpose their graces like reactive-dyed yarns in Bloomingdale’s windows. And when they emerged from it outside Grotto, Laura felt like she was being seen for the first time. She wished she could dress like this every day—except for the nails, which she had filed and glossed as best as she could. She smiled at the hostess behind her little lectern, the handwritten book lit by a single halogen bulb the size of a drop of water.

  “We have an eight,” Laura said.

  “Name?” the hostess asked, clotheslining her super-glossed hair behind her shoulder.

  “Carnegie.” Laura hid her nails inside the cuffs of her jacket.

  “I don’t have you for eight.”

  Laura glanced at Ruby.

  “Are you sure it was tonight?” Ruby asked.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Ruby looked at the hostess. “Can you check last night?”

  “How could I have mistaken it for last night? We went to Turbo last night.” A group had entered behind them, all wooly coats and cashmere accessories that never got a smudge of lipstick on them.

  “Oh, like you never made a mistake before,” Ruby teased.

  “How would it automatically be my mistake?”

  “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it,” Ruby mocked. “We’ll go to McDonald’s.”

  “You are such a bitch.”

  “Sorry, I don’t have a Carnegie for last night or tomorrow night.” The hostess looked behind them to help the cashmere crowd. She was just subtle enough.

  “Do you have anything for two for eight?” Laura asked.

  Ruby said under her breath, “Oh, you have got to be joking.”

  “I’m sorry; we’re booked.”

  “Can we eat at the bar?”

  “I’m sorry. We have no room at the bar. Here’s our card. You can call for a reservation between nine and five.” Her attention turned fully behind them. “Can I help you, Mister Rosenberg?”

  “Nice one, Laura,” Ruby muttered.

  Laura felt her eyes burn and her lip quiver. Her nose filled up with snot as if there were a spigot in her sinuses. Her breath hitched, and a little squeak came from her throat.

  “I’m sorry I’m not perfect,” she choked out the words. “From now on, you can do everything right, and I’ll just go along.” She was full-on bawling, and people were looking. A stranger handed her a tissue. Ruby put her fingers in her coat sleeves like a muff and said nothing.

  “I’m just a screw up, I know,” Laura said.

  Was she raising her voice?

  Was there a scene happening?

  She decided not to check and walked straight into the dining room, pressing the tissue to her cheeks. A man in a suit tried to stop her, but when she looked at him with her mascara-smudged eyes, he paused long enough for her to get by. The rest of the trip was a maze, winding between tables, people, dining rooms, until she got to the exact right corner, and a door with a silhouette of a lady in a dress. By then, the tears were gone, and Laura walked tall in Ruby’s pumps. She walked into the bathroom as though she belonged there.

  Cherry wood. Waterfall sinks. Indirect lighting. And a lady with towels. Perfect.

  Laura leaned into the mirror and dabbed her eyes, sniffling a little. She smiled at the towel lady, who smiled back. She was youngish and plain, the bathroom being one place an employee wasn’t expected to get attention.

  “Hi,” Laura said, as she used a wet wipe to finish off her makeup.

  The lady nodded and handed her a cotton towel. Laura looked at her in the mirror, noting the brass nametag that said Codruta, which Laura had no idea how to pronounce.

  “Were you working here the other night? On Friday? I think I left a scarf by the sink.”

  “What did it look like?” The lady spoke with a thick Romanian accent, as she pulled a wicker bin from under the sink.

  “It was… um, silk. Bright colors. It had carousels on it,” Laura replied, describing a Hermès scarf she had seen in Bergdorf’s the previous week. The lost and found basket was intense. The bathroom lady kept flipping it over, and new things kept appearing. “I think it was Friday. Two ladies were in here fighting, and I just wanted to leave before they started hitting each other.”

  “This was Saturday,” the lady said, holding up a magenta pashmina job with rhinestones.

  Laura shook her head. “No, that’s not it.”

  “Two ladies fighting was Saturday.”

  “Tall woman with dark skin?”

  “Yes. Black lady telling white lady off. White lady cries. Her nose uses seven napkins. I have to pay to launder these.” Codruta held up a yellow silk Hermès knockoff with horses on it. Not a carousel.

  Laura shook her head again. “I caught some of it in the dining room. It was really bad, but I think it was over a man. Usually is.”

  Codruta tisked. “It was over a woman. Kept saying ‘Gracie, Gracie,’ which is a woman’s name in America,
no?”

  “They were gay?” Laura expressed mock shock.

  “I don’t know. I see the black one plenty, with men.” Codruta pulled a blue scarf from the bottom of the basket. “No, the one with the nose must have been gay. Because the black one kept saying, ‘She don’t want you, she don’t want you, she screw you, big time and everyone knows,’ then bitch this, bitch that. Oh, these rich ladies have no idea how to behave.” Codruta looked at Laura meekly over the blue scarf. It was Hermès, and it had carousels. It was a different colorway of the pattern she’d seen in Bergdorf’s.

  “Mine was pink,” Laura said. “I guess you don’t have it.”

  “Take it,” Codruta said, pushing it into Laura’s hands, “it sits in here for three weeks already. No one takes it. No one cares. These bitches think everything is garbage.”

  Laura took umbrage for a second. Wasn’t she, in theory, one of the rich ladies? Apparently not. Apparently, Codruta could tell the difference between the rich bitches and the poor bitches. Codruta slapped the basket shut and slid it back under the sink.

  “Thank you,” Laura said, deciding not to make a scene over a beautiful scarf no one wanted.

  Codruta pulled a card from her little vest. “My sister does nails and hair. Private in your house. Cheap. Some time, you see her. She rescued me from much trouble when I left my country, so I try to get her some business. Okay?”

  Laura took the card as a gaggle of girls, drunk, not a minute past their nineteenth birthday, bounced in. They were perfect in that Dalton School way, moving through space like they owned it. Codruta sat in her chair. Laura thanked her and left a ten in the silver bowl.

  When she went out to the dining room, she found Ruby sitting at a deuce, buttering her bread. There were two cucumber mojitos dripping condensation onto the tablecloth.

  “How did you get a table?”

  “Just sit down, would you? I ordered you the ahi tartar. Nice scarf.”

  Laura told her the story of the scarf and Codruta, and Ruby got right to the point. “So Gracie screwed Carmella out of what?”