Dead is the New Black

by Christine Demaio-Rice

  Two Saturday ladies hunched over the machines. Twenty years ago, they would have been Italians with Our Lady of Carmel taped to their thread spool stands, but these ladies were Mexicans who liked to look up and see Our Lady of Guadalupe, instead. They pushed fabric through the feeders, then smoothed the seam, or shirred it, or dealt with a knotted thread, with a glance over to the clock, the clock, the clock, ticking to the next break when they could make a call or eat their tamal before it got cold.

  They were the lucky ones, the union workers, in New York. The last of a profession killed by a corrupt union that cost millions in kickbacks and bribes, a real estate boom that made floor space prohibitively expensive, and a consumer who expected fresh fashion every season, but didn’t want to pay for it.

  Ephraim, a nervous man by habit and birth, led Laura into the storage closet, even though he said he wouldn’t. She scanned the floor-to-ceiling plastic boxes filled with buttons, buckles, studs, and labels, reaching so high a library ladder with wheels and runner at the top had been attached to the upper shelf.

  “You need to look around here. I’m sorry I don’t know exactly where they are.” Ephraim indicated a spot in the middle distance. “How is Jeremy? He all right?”

  “He’s upset,” Laura said, in an attempt to draw him out. “He worked with Gracie nine years. And now, Sheldon wants to sell the whole thing to a Chinese company.”

  Ephraim looked like his heart had stopped. “What can we do?”

  “I don’t know. Sheldon owns fifty-five percent of the business, so I guess he can sell off his shares, or not. Look, I’m not an expert at these things. And having a murder charge against him doesn’t help at all.”

  “He wasn’t here,” Ephraim said, a little too defensively. “The skirt was perfect Friday when we left. There’s no reason he would have come here to fix anything.”

  “I’m not accusing—”

  “The police came and looked at this place up and down. Why, tell me, would I lie? To protect my job? Ridiculous. I lose my job and my reputation, and what good is my job now unless I move to China? You don’t understand. This is the last production facility in Manhattan. The last. If I lose this job, there’s not another one somewhere else. It was a miracle when I found this one a year ago. Now what do I do?”

  He was near tears and, though she was inclined to let it drop to protect his feelings, she also needed to pry information from him. “Don’t be upset. He’s working on figuring this out.”

  “He’s calling me a liar.”

  “No, Ephraim, you’re calling him a liar.” The truth of that statement seemed to calm him. His breathing slowed, and the tears that hovered in his eyes finally fell. He tried to back out of the closet with a wave, but Laura stopped him. “You said they were perfect on Saturday. So, they were ready to ship on Friday?”

  “Bagged and hanging. A day early, too. When I worked at Girl Starz, that was a bonus for me, but no more.” Girl Starz was a t-shirt maker that used to have a floor on 32nd. “I’m sorry, but do you know how much money I saved this company getting this done when I did?”

  She nodded. It wasn’t an inconsequential feat. “And the TOP?” she asked. “You sent it when?”

  “Friday night by Ketchum.”

  “Ephraim, I’m sorry about all this. But, the hems looked okay on the skirt when you left Friday? Really? I mean, it’s not like you have to worry about getting let go over a hem at this point, right?”

  “I swear to God, Laura. Those hems were perfect.” He drew his hand flat across the air.

  Despite everything, she believed him. He excused himself to catch up on some paperwork and she made a show of looking for the enamel zipper pull. She found a dozen in a plastic container and slipped into the adjacent closet, which held racks of history, sew-bys, and construction samples. She found the TOP of the Margaret dress from the previous year. It had the same skirt and hem, and had sold so well, it had begged to be redesigned into the Mardi.

  She pulled it out. The tag had REJECTED stamped across it and was signed by Yoni. She hung the dress on the end of the rack and found out what Jeremy had meant by a snowdrift hem. It drooped between the gores all around.

  A circle skirt was cut into pizza slices and sewn together. It was on the grain at the seams, meaning the weaving threads were parallel to the stitching, and at the center of the pizza slices, the threads were on the bias, meaning the weaving threads were perpendicular to the seams. Bias stretched. It stretched across the body, and it stretched from gravity. If a shirt was cut on the bias, meaning the pattern piece was diagonal to the edges of the fabric, it would stretch. It would be comfortable, but it would also be unstable and difficult to work.

  What Laura saw in the Margaret dress was that the center of the slices, where the bias was most unstable, gravity had pulled the hems down half an inch, while at the six seams, the hem had retained its length. It looked ridiculous.

  Is that what the Mardi had looked like? Why?

  She turned over the card and saw another signature—Roberto, the floor manager before Ephraim. From the stamp below, she could see that he’d rejected it, too, but either sent it to Yoni for confirmation, or Yoni was in the factory, and they looked at it together. He’d moved to Honduras to run a textile mill. She could contact him, if she wanted to.

  She took the rejected TOP out to the front and asked Ephraim if she could bring it back to the design room. He agreed without even looking at it.

  In the hall, she met Yoni coming out of the elevator.

  “What’s that?” Yoni pointed at the sample.

  “It’s the Margaret from last year. Look at the hem.”

  Yoni sighed. “Floor managers.” She rolled her eyes like everyone knew the common problems a production manager had with a floor manager. “Always want to get an approval so they can ship early. Roberto sent the TOP before he hung it. I had his ass.” When Laura looked at her blankly, Yoni filled in the blanks. “Circle skirts must be hung for twenty-four hours before they’re hemmed, or you get this. We had to unpack all of them and retrim the hems.”

  Kind of like what Jeremy had done last Saturday night, because the skirts were done a day early, meaning the TOP had been perfect off the line and, in the hang time between, the hem had gone haywire.

  “You’re smiling,” Yoni said, interrupting Laura’s train of thought.

  “Nothing. Sorry. I have to go.”

  Yoni pointed to the sample. “Where are you taking that?”

  “I was stealing it for a party. I was just going to fix the hem. Please don’t tell.”

  Yoni smiled and patted her on the shoulder. “You should read that contract. There’s a nice clothing allowance in it.”

  Laura smiled and shrugged meekly, then went down the stairs before Yoni figured out that the rejected Margaret had the same problem as the missing TOP.

  When she got the dress home, she pulled out the hem and carefully trimmed one gore so that it was straight. Well, there it was. Repaired. At least for the time being.

  How was the Mardi different? A TOP with the same problem had made it to Jeremy, obviously because the new floor manager, Ephraim, wasn’t there for the Margaret and hadn’t learned the same lessons as Roberto. Starz Girl was a t-shirt factory, so even though Ephraim might be capable of setting up a sewing line for all of Jeremy’s businesses, if he had been in t-shirts and knits a long time, he would have holes in his knowledge with regard to wovens, like how a gored circle skirt worked.

  The snow slowed to a flaky mist, and the sun set on Laura’s little corner of Manhattan. She stared at the straight part of the Margaret hem. As she was considering rehemming or leaving it raw, she heard Ruby puttering upstairs, and Michael’s basso laughing at something on TV. The phone rang soon after.

  “It’s Saturday isn’t it?” Ruby asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do we have any plans?”

  “We could find something to do, I’m sure.” Laura looked into the flurries outside and wondered wha
t they were going to find to do.

  Ruby hung up. Fifteen minutes later there was a knock on the door. It was Ruby, with two thermoses of coffee and a Barneys bag of sandwiches. “It’s poker night!”

  CHAPTER 26.

  The idea that Sheldon would go to a poker night the week after his wife was murdered seemed crazy to Laura, but Ruby’s theory was sound. She said if Sheldon wanted to prove his alibi was good, he would make sure to be at poker night, especially if he had something to do with the murder, because people with guilt to disprove will work extra hard to look innocent. If he had nothing to do with it, he would do what any normal person would do and just stay home and be bummed out that his cheating wife was murdered.

  Gramercy Park, the park the neighborhood was named after, was locked. Laura could never figure out who got a key or why; she only knew she didn’t have one. As she and Ruby stood outside the red brick townhouse with the white stone cornices, their lack of cover became apparent. They had a locked park on one side and tony townhouses on the other. They couldn’t hang out on the brick and cement rococo stoop next door, nor did they have a car to sit inside. Ruby scanned the street from sidewalk to rooftop, but a brilliant idea didn’t appear.

  “This was not great planning,” Laura said, shivering, feet dry but freezing in her pink Wellies, “and what if he drives somewhere? It’s snowing. Do you know how hard it’s going to be to get a cab?” Ruby’s face darkened. She obviously hadn’t thought of that.

  Laura glanced at the warm glow of Sheldon’s windows. “Let’s walk.” And they did, huddling close for warmth, and so their voices wouldn’t be heard above the street noise. Back and forth, crossing the street sometimes and sometimes not, they watched Sheldon and Gracie’s house while moving up and down the block. Laura found herself trapped in the last conversation she ever wanted to be having with Ruby.

  “So,” Ruby said, once they found their pace, “when did you start liking your boss?”

  “This is absolutely inappropriate. I won’t even discuss it.”

  “Why? We could be hours on a stakeout. We have to talk about something.”

  “Let’s talk about the wedding.”

  “Okay.” Then, after a pause, “Are you bringing Jeremy or Stu?”

  “Stop it.”

  “Then, tell me when.”

  “The minute I met him.”

  “Five years ago?” Ruby asked, as if clarification were necessary. “Way to hold a candle. Did you know he wasn’t gay?”

  Traffic was terrible and, each time they reached the corner, they had to stop and make eye contact with the driver, or they’d stand at the curb forever. It was a good thing they were moving. It couldn’t have been warmer than twenty-five degrees. Laura huffed, and a cloud of condensation made it five feet before it dissipated.

  On the corner, scuttling in front of an Audi, Ruby asked her again how long she’d had feelings for Jeremy, only this time she was more demanding. It was going to be a long night, anyway. Jeremy was three words from knowing, if he didn’t already, and her life had been so corked up for so long, she stopped caring who knew what about when or where or why.

  So, she told her. She told her sister about the day she and Jeremy met, about how he corrected her pattern, about the way he smelled and moved and spoke. She told her about the coffee and the stories and how he defended Laura to Gracie. She told her about how she made sure to look pretty in the mornings for their time together, and the disappointment when she didn’t get in soon enough. And finding out he wasn’t gay, and the way it recolored their whole relationship in her mind. And how Jeremy was keeping her from having any feelings for Stu, as if it were his fault, but maybe it was. Maybe he had led her on all this time. Maybe he had no business buying her coffee or being nice to her. He should have known, should have seen. Yet, he kept it up so he could feel more like a man. Laura got angrier when she thought of it, her voice rising in pitch and sharpness. He had shined her on to make himself feel good. Jeremy was a jerk for not seeing how she felt. A real first-class, Grade-A asshole.

  “I’ll tell you what I know about men,” Ruby said. “It’s the only thing I know, actually. When a man tells you he’s not interested, nine times out of ten, he’s not. And when they seem to like you, most times, they really do.”

  “That’s you, Ruby. It’s not me.”

  “No, the rule is good for anyone. He likes you, Laura. After all this time, it’s probably a little more than that.”

  Laura mulled it over. That hadn’t even occurred to her. Just as she was about to admit it might be possible, the lights went out in Sheldon’s front foyer, and the door opened. She grabbed Ruby’s arm, and her sister froze, too.

  “What do we do?” Ruby whispered.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  He locked up his house and skipped down his stoop.

  “Follow,” Laura said. “Far behind. He can’t see me, or he’ll know.”

  They kept half a block behind his camel coat, because the sidewalks were dead. If he turned onto Third, they were going to have to get on top of him to follow him.

  But he didn’t. He stepped past the gate of a large white stone building and slipped past a crevice and into a door.

  “It’s a synagogue,” Laura said. “The funeral was Catholic or something.”

  “Should we go in?” Ruby whispered, though the white noise of the traffic made the sotto voce redundant.

  “And what? I don’t even know if we have to dress some weird way. Like wear a wig or something.”

  “What if poker night was at the synagogue?”

  Ruby dragged her to the black sign in front of the large entry doors. White letters announced the next holiday, the name of the Rabbi leading the service the following Saturday, and Men’s Poker Night (Members Only).

  “Unbelievable,” Laura said.

  “He really has an alibi.”

  “I don’t believe it.” She’d been counting on Sheldon’s guilt, or at least his duplicity, and there he was, playing poker when he was supposed to be, like clockwork. No, she didn’t believe it. He should have been home, packing Gracie’s clothes or whatever, not playing cards. He was trying to prove something, and if Laura didn’t find out what it was tonight, it would be another week before she knew.

  She grabbed Ruby’s hand and pulled her into the small side door where Sheldon had entered. Her sister seemed to read her mind, and kept quiet when they entered the hallway with its dark, mossy carpet, shining hardwood moldings and stairs, and an empty desk. There were doors and stairs and choices everywhere. They stood silent a foot inside the doors, ears perked, until they heard the sound of a man laughing and chips clinking. Then, they listened again. Ruby pointed up the hall, and Laura followed her down the stairs to a handwritten sign that read, “Men’s Poker.” They scuttled down, boots swooshing on the carpet.

  The basement hall was less fancy, with linoleum floors and wooden chairs in odd spots. A photo gallery of a rabbi receiving an award hung on the white walls. Brass plates told the story. Laura pulled Ruby past a half-open door and, looking in with eyes wide open so she could absorb whatever was in the room, she caught sight of the poker game.

  One man spoke on a phone, shuffling red chips from one hand to the other.

  He wasn’t Sheldon. He wasn’t anyone she recognized. And he was definitely the only one in the room.

  “He has to be in there,” Ruby whispered.

  “Should we go by again?”

  Ruby nodded, but in the pause between decision and action, they heard voices coming toward them. They looked at each other. The voices got louder—men’s voices. Footsteps scuffled on the linoleum. They could be around the corner or on top of them, but they were surely getting closer. Laura pulled Ruby down the hall, a risky proposition, considering they could have been walking into those men’s laps, where they would be called out as interlopers by their incorrect dress, or simple strangeness. She pulled Ruby into the men’s room, hoping the gu
ys coming down the hall didn’t have to use the facilities. Laura kept the door open a crack with her foot and watched as two men, who looked exactly as she expected, with beards, grey suits, and hats, passed by, followed by a short woman in a long navy skirt. They opened a heavy door by pushing the clacking metal bar. On the other side were the dim fluorescents and flat greyness of an underground parking lot. And in that second of open door, they saw a red Mercedes convertible flash by.

  “That’s his car!” Laura shouted, not caring about the guy with the chips or the three people that had just walked down the hall. She pulled Ruby out of the restroom. They ran out of the men’s room, down the hall, up the stairs, into the courtyard, and out into the street, where the red Mercedes was pulling out onto Third Avenue, half a block away, heading north.

  Laura scanned the street for cabs, but the snow on the street and in the air, coupled with the time and location, guaranteed none would be available. They decided to walk with Laura’s eyes on the Mercedes, and Ruby’s looking out for a cab. Locking arms, they dodged and wove around families, tourists, and Saturday-evening partiers. They scuttled faster when the Mercedes got a lead and, once, at a red light, they had to pretend to go into a Korean market. But traffic was atrocious, and the snow piles at the side of the street didn’t help any more than the ice patches hidden under stickier snow. Caution slowed everyone down, creating an avenue more like a bread line for cars as they inched forward, some slipping on the ice, some blocking the crosswalks, creating a gridlock that allowed Laura and Ruby to keep up with traffic.

  Laura and Sheldon’s eyes met, and she was sure she was busted, but he turned away and looked at a lady in a striped scarf as she crossed.

  “He saw me,” she said to Ruby.