I'll Eat When I'm Dead

by Barbara Bourland

  Hutton reached up and grabbed her hand. Her heart stopped.

  He ran his fingers over hers and slid the cigarette into his own, then pulled his hand away, took a long drag, and held it up for her to take back.

  The heat, heavy and still, suspended a thin ribbon of smoke between them. His fingers were long and dexterous-looking. She felt a sudden urge to put them in her mouth.

  Instead she took the cigarette back and said—more aggressively than she meant to—“A runner who smokes?”

  “I run so I can smoke,” he replied. “I run so I can drink, so I can eat meat, so I can sit still and be lazy. It’s my sole concession to health. What’s your excuse?” Hutton, too, sounded sharper than he meant to.

  “I’m completely, helplessly addicted,” Cat said slowly, looking right into his eyes.

  The front door opened behind them. Helen swooped down to grab the cigarette out of Cat’s hand before dancing down the steps. Birdie and Sigrid followed, each carrying a bottle of red wine. Bess walked out with her helmet strapped on; she reached down and hugged Cat while Sigrid locked the door.

  “I have so much to do tomorrow. Love you, but I have to go home.” Bess unlocked her bike and rolled it out to the street.

  “Are you okay to bike?” asked Hutton, his voice stern.

  “I’m good. Watch.” With her helmet still on, Bess cartwheeled into a handstand and held steady.

  Hutton gave her a nod of approval. She climbed onto her bicycle and pedaled away toward the Manhattan Bridge, while Sigrid, Birdie, Cat, and Helen followed Hutton up the street.

  Chapter Four

  Cat stood on the escalator promptly at 9:00 a.m. She’d been awake since six, when the sound of her building’s fire alarm ripped her awake from the obscene dreams she’d been enjoying. After shuffling outside with the rest of the tenants while wearing an old pair of shorts that said “only $5 we write anything you want” on the butt and a heavily ink-stained men’s flannel shirt for what turned out to be a false alarm, she was unable to go back to sleep.

  She’d had a coffee before dressing carefully, trying to forget about the night before, to focus on her day, grateful for the chance to get to work early. Cat desperately needed to prep for the weekly editorial meeting that Paula Booth ran every Tuesday at eleven, and at today’s meeting Margot would be back from Paris to make one of her increasingly rare appearances.

  She smoothed her outfit, a red lace bodysuit topped with a starched and slightly oversized white Comme des Garçons shirtdress. Cat found herself imagining Detective Hutton reaching between her legs, unsnapping the gusset, and bending her over her desk; then she blushed so hard it looked like she was having an allergic reaction. Self-consciously she turned her face down to her white leather slip-on sneakers and let her mind run through the events of the night before for what already felt like the hundredth time.

  When Sigrid, Birdie, Helen, and Cat had walked into Hutton’s apartment, they had lost it. The apartment was indeed a true classic eight, but instead of the prewar medallions, crown moldings, and pocket doors that Sigrid had been expecting, they’d discovered the half-excavated remains of Lorelei Hutton’s sixties bachelorette paradise. No proper widow’s den this: the formal dining room had been transformed into two distinct areas of low seating on either side of a central river-rock fireplace, and of the five original bedrooms, only Hutton’s and the master still fit their intended purpose; he showed them his room briefly as he pulled on a T-shirt. The other three bedrooms had been converted into a library-slash-reading-room, an elaborate closet, and a bar. Boxes and power tools were scattered everywhere between piles of wood and plaster dust. Hutton had updated many of the light fixtures, but he was clearly working on stripping the wood and reincorporating more traditional details throughout.

  Most of the furniture had been removed and several of the walls were half destroyed, but the bar was pristine. It held a full bar top in polished elm, matching stools, and standing bronze ashtrays. Hutton led them directly in there.

  “Sorry—this is the only room I haven’t taken apart yet,” he said. “But it’s where everyone wants to be, anyway. Let’s have a drink, then maybe one of you can tell me what I should do with the place.”

  Birdie nodded in agreement. She opened both bottles of wine and lifted five exquisite lead crystal wineglasses down from one of the bar’s shelves, emptying the first bottle between them with a heavy pour.

  “Is it hard for you to get your girlfriend to come to this side of Prospect Park?” she asked sincerely, dumping the other bottle into a decanter.

  Hutton laughed. “Maybe that’s why I don’t have one. But my grandmother didn’t seem to have a problem, so I don’t know, maybe it’s just my personality.”

  “Did you spend a lot of time with her?” Birdie, a bartender, was highly practiced at ferreting out potential murderers, mama’s boys, narcissists, and dilettantes. The other women sat quietly while he lobbed back the correct answer.

  “Not until I was out of college. She wasn’t hugely interested in children. When she died last year she left this apartment to me, and I moved in a few months ago. I meant to finish renovating before I got here, but…it didn’t work out that way.”

  Cat was looking at the framed linear prints on the wall of the bar—all signed lithographs, she thought. There was a series of curvy lines that looked like a Lichtenstein; another, with straight lines, looked like the work of Donald Judd; and a series of triangles drawn in the signature style of Sol LeWitt.

  “Are these genuine?” she asked Hutton. He handed her a glass of wine.

  “I think so,” he said. As he turned toward the LeWitt, Cat allowed herself to look at him again, to really stare at the muscles in his arms and legs, and she felt an urge to run her fingers across his skin. He looked back to catch her staring at him, openmouthed, for the second time that day—but this time he smiled.

  “Cheers,” he said, touching his wineglass to hers. “Nice to meet you.”

  An hour later the group was settled in the living room, nursing Calvados out of oversized brandy snifters. They all fit on the enormous sectional he’d wedged into the conversation pit, a tiny amphitheater that looked as though it had originally housed dozens of floor pillows.

  Cat hadn’t sat down right away. Instead, she’d wandered into every room, looking in closets and at light fixtures and asking about his plans for each space. Hutton had followed her around as she explored, eventually pulling on an old Hampshire College hooded sweatshirt.

  “Bess went there,” she said. “Did you know her?”

  “Oh,” he said, looking surprised. “No, sorry, I don’t remember her.”

  She did learn that he’d been a member of the Peace Corps in Mauritania before going into Columbia’s journalism program. Then, after five years working the night shift at CBS, trying to “make violence go viral” as he put it, he’d given up journalism and joined the NYPD.

  “What prompted that?” she asked when they finally settled into the sofa with the others. “I mean, I get leaving journalism; it sucks, there’s no money. It’s a giant pyramid scheme where we make the Coopers and Martins richer by using our half-million-dollar educations to distill meaningful human experiences into regrams. But joining the NYPD seems like something a Scared Straight kid from Queens would do, not someone like…you.”

  “I’m a New Yorker,” he explained. “This is my home. It’s the biggest cliché there is, but I genuinely wanted to make a difference. I honestly think that law enforcement does that, makes a difference, keeps us safe,” he said.

  Oh no. He’s a total idiot, she thought.

  “Stop-and-frisk isn’t keeping us fucking safe, it’s putting another generation of young black men behind bars for loitering.” She couldn’t help herself. “And writing parking tickets is an important part of the municipal revenue structure, I’ll give you that, but it’s not exactly noble.”

  “Stop-and-frisk isn’t technically still legal, but yes, it sucks,” he said, agreeing
with her. “Writing tickets is what robots are for, but that’s not what I do all day.”

  “Not all day. Sometimes you flirt with girls,” Cat pointed out.

  “Okay, fine.” He threw up his hands. “I’ll give you an example. Look at the Boston Marathon bombing. Five days after it happened, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was linked to a triple homicide in Waltham that happened two years prior. The Times, the Journal, CNN, CBS, everybody, asked the same question: Would the marathon bombing have happened if he’d been arrested, tried, convicted, imprisoned? No. Of course it wouldn’t have. In that case, dragnet federal surveillance didn’t keep us safe—good police work, two years beforehand, is what would have kept us safe.”

  “Okay. I’ll give you that.” She sighed, swirling her brandy. “My experience is more that guys like you join the NSA, CIA, or DIA, whatever is federal—they don’t go civil. I feel like there’s a—”

  “Gigantic class division between federal, state, and local law enforcement? Yes.” He nodded slowly. “But it doesn’t change unless you change it,” he said, gesturing at himself. “I believe in justice. I genuinely believe that we’re all responsible for the parts we play in this great democratic republic of ours. Mine is law enforcement.” He drained his brandy and leaned in toward her conspiratorially. “I might be getting the sense that you don’t find the police to be totally effective,” he said a bit archly.

  Cat laughed. “You’re the only policeman I’ve ever met who’s impressed me, and let’s be honest—you have the instincts of a journalist. Police work is just bloated, macho bureaucracy. People who can think critically are probably just as qualified as the police to solve crimes, if not more so.”

  “You think you could solve a crime?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Cat said. “I’m a good researcher.”

  “It’s not really about critical thinking, though; that’s what I’m saying. It’s about drudgery, just drilling down on cases, grinding down on every piece of evidence without accidentally shooting someone along the way. It’s about patience. It’s not enough to know who did it—you have to be able to send them to jail and keep them there.”

  “You need to be able to prosecute, you mean.”

  He nodded. “That’s the magic word. The people I work with may not have gone to graduate school—hell, half of them didn’t even go to college—but most are smart enough to know how important the rules are.” He reached over and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Beautiful girls like to take shortcuts.”

  Cat swatted his hand away. “I don’t take shortcuts,” she insisted, pointing to herself. “I could be very good at being a cop. I’m very detail-oriented; I love to waste time; I love drinking coffee and filling out paperwork. I just happen to do something else, which I don’t think you understand.”

  Hutton didn’t give up. “So explain it to me,” he flirted.

  “You know what? No!” Cat laughed. “No. We were talking about you. Don’t change the subject.”

  “Okay, okay. You want to know something else?”

  “What?” Cat bit her lip.

  Before he could respond, Birdie and Helen crashed on the floor next to them, crying “Timber!” Birdie’s giggles were verging on turning into sobs.

  “I think we’re too drunk to drive,” said Helen. “Can you take us home, Mr. Officer?”

  “We’re bad girls. We need a police escort,” Birdie chimed in.

  Sigrid stepped in. “Don’t listen to these idiots. We can walk home just fine, it’s all of one block.”

  “No, I’d be happy to,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  “I’ve got to order a car,” Cat said. “It’s almost two—I have to be in at ten.” She pulled out her phone and summoned a car service. He looked incredulous.

  “Ten? Man, you magazine girls really have the gravy hours.”

  “I’m not a magazine girl, thank you.” Cat’s tone came out a little bit defensive and sharp.

  “Oh boy,” he replied. “My bad.”

  “I…” Cat stammered, trying to be nice. “RAGE is more than that. It’s…important.”

  Sigrid, halfway out the door and towing Birdie and Helen behind her, yelled, “We’re walking now! Thanks, neighbor. Byeee!”

  The elevator doors opened and they piled inside, leaving Cat abruptly behind in the apartment. Hutton waved good-bye and shut the front door.

  “How long until your car gets here?” he asked, moving closer.

  “Three minutes,” she said. “I should head out front, I guess.”

  “I’ll walk you.”

  She retrieved her handbag from the bar. Hutton had turned off most of the apartment’s lights and was waiting for her in half-shadow, keys in hand. He held open the door, and they took the elevator down to the elaborate art deco lobby in silence, where the car was waiting outside. Cat climbed into its cavernous backseat. After closing the door, she rolled down the window to say good night. He crouched down and leaned on the door, refusing to let the driver pull away. Cat’s heartbeat picked up.

  “You’re interesting,” he said decisively, his face just an inch or two away from hers. “And your friends are nice.”

  “I like to think so.”

  The driver coughed loudly and shifted into gear.

  “Okay, honey, where we going?” he asked in a thick Puerto Rican accent.

  “Can I call you?” Hutton asked. “I have some more questions, but I won’t come to your office again, I promise. We can make it very unofficial.”

  Cat nodded. “Unofficial works for me,” she said with a smile.

  Hutton winked, let go of the car, and strode back to the curb. Cat waved good-bye, then hit the button to roll up the tinted glass.

  “It’s 239 Moore Street in Bushwick, please, between Bogart and White. You can take Bedford to—”

  “To Flushing. I know, I know. I’m gonna get you there, don’t worry. So you gonna go out with him or what?” He hit the gas. “I think you should. He looks like a nice guy.”

  She looked out the back window and saw Hutton standing on the curb, watching them drive away.

  “He is nice, but he’s a cop,” she replied. The car veered around the corner. Hutton disappeared from her view. “What do you think about cops?”

  “It’s a good man who does a job like that. They make a nice living, too, but it can be dangerous,” he said. “You make sure when you get married that he gets a desk job. Better than FDNY, they never get the desk jobs. But good for retirement.”

  Cat suddenly remembered Hillary’s drops sitting at the bottom of her purse. Shit. Maybe she should’ve told Hutton about the bottle. They’d been too busy flirting and talking about him, about his life. Sigrid hadn’t even mentioned that Hillary had lived at 170 Ocean, but then again, she wouldn’t have—Sig was in full wingman mode all night, dragging them over to his place, bringing booze, leaving Cat alone with Hutton at the right moment. You’ve got the best group of friends, Cat, she thought to herself. Hillary deserves your loyalty. Even if the police won’t really do anything…don’t let this go.

  She fell into a deep sleep as soon as she got home, dreaming about Hutton in flashes throughout the night. Now, as she walked toward her office through the maze of RAGE’s black cubicles, all she could remember of the dream’s plot was an impression that he’d tied her up against a wall, somehow immobilizing both her ankles and her wrists. She had fleeting memories of a man’s leather belt tightening around her arms; of Hutton’s face floating over her; of his skin, so close to her when they’d sat on Sigrid’s stoop. How will I possibly get any work done today?

  She opened her phone and composed a text to the number from his business card before coming to her senses and deleting it totally.

  When Margot Villiers entered Cooper, the building changed, deference rippling out in military precision as she passed through the lobby. Employees lowered their heads and sucked in their stomachs. Only the interns were dumb enough to look directly at her. Even the custodians, who’d been fully imm
unized to celebrity by ten thousand trash cans, paused as they cleaned, feeling gravity’s tug toward the black hole of her particular type of power.

  Margot was seventy-two years old and had stood at the helm of RAGE Fashion Book since its founding in 1985. A former personal shopper at Bergdorf Goodman, she’d happened upon the opportunity through her first husband, a cocaine-addled Wall Streeter who was a close friend of George Cooper, onetime CEO of Cooper House.

  The apocryphal story went like this: George Cooper spent so many nights on the balcony of the Villierses’ apartment in the early eighties, drinking scotch and complaining about the downward trend of his women’s titles, that Margot stole his Filofax and penciled in a meeting for herself two weeks later, which his secretary found, confirmed, and added to his calendar.

  She walked into that meeting with a full written assessment of the last year’s issues for four of his titles, chronicling their faults and successes down to the final detail, along with an elaborate proposal for a magazine of her own: RAGE Fashion Book, a publication that would work with American manufacturers and retailers to reinvigorate an ailing industry in a way that the new workingwoman would recognize. RAGE would contain no recipes, table settings, or money-saving household tips; it would instead serve the women of the eighties, power-suited careerists who paid for their own thousand-dollar briefcases. Let their housekeepers read about housekeeping. Margot anticipated that the college-educated women of 1985 would want more from their magazines, and by narrowing RAGE’s demographic to educated women, breadwinners with money to burn and families to feed, their ad rates could skyrocket. She argued that guaranteeing exclusive product for the magazine from companies who, with their guidance, wouldn’t be going out of business anytime soon, would in turn guarantee a natural advertising base and that the American-only angle would anchor their editorial stance in the otherwise rocky shoals of the cold war era’s media landscape. “Women are the new men,” Margot had declared to George Cooper, “with one big difference: they fucking love to shop.”