He glowered, shaking the trash at her. "Take trash. I will argue city with ticket. Lock is good. Elevator works, is for freight." She took the trash, unlocked her door and opened it—the lock so loose you could almost pull it open without turning the key—and stepped inside. She watched him skulk back into the building next door, then stepped back out and stuck the wad of trash back in the can and covered it with some appropriate "public" trash from the fast food joint up the block. She shook her head. The argument in its multiple variations had been going on ever since she moved in, and would continue, no doubt, until the day she moved out.
Back in and up she went, Claud unleashed and bounding ahead. She chased him up the stairs and went in. Her voicemail light was blinking. She had a listen. "Hallo Lucy long time no talk. Nina Randolph here." Such a fine British accent the lady had. "I know you've got another book coming out, but I've done six and I'm still here at SPACES, so don't think you can give up your magazine life so easily, my friend. That's not to discourage you, I simply want you to do something for me. There's a club opening tonight down in your neighborhood and I wondered if you might have a look for me. The designers are a pair of super-hip lads with an office up the block from you—maybe you know them, they're called Kremlin—and I hear this club they've done is too hot to touch. It’s called Parkistan, and its somewhere by Tompkins Square. Sounds like your territory to me. So ring me up and let me know if you can go. I can't possibly get down there and see it myself this week, but I simply must know if I need to publish it. I'll get you on the list of course. And naturally you can do the story, that is if you're not too busy with things bookish, darling. I'm still at 526-5500."
CHAPTER TWO
A GRUNGY NIGHT
By 8:30 that evening Lucy had dispensed with "things bookish," and now undertook the onerous task of readying herself for a night on the town. Ten hours of galley-proofing had her head spinning and her heart half-sick at the utter abomination that was her book, but she knew not to worry too much. Half-sick she could live with. The manuscript was beyond redemption now. Just fix the typos and move it off the lot. Still, as she showered, passages of her lame composition sang in her brain mockingly, reminding her that she couldn't write her way out of a sack. Or, as one critic had commented on her first book, “Colorful settings and interesting characters, but the prose is flat.” Flat! She got out, dried off, and put on clean underwear. Eating a few bites of cold brown rice from the pot she'd cooked it in two nights before, she lit up her sound system with a reggae mix, then cranked up the volume to drown out the terrors of the text.
Dealing with the book was easy compared to the task immediately ahead, of dressing: for dinner with Patty Moody and Zane Smithson at Cafe Bob, the latest addition to the trendy Tribeca bistro list; and following dinner, a late night at Parkistan, the supposedly hottest new club in town. A double dose of Thursday night downtown scene-making, and she hadn't shopped for clothes in three months! "Damn," she said, throwing open the closet for a first pass at her lame rack of threads. "Claud," she addressed the dog, who lay on the bed, watching. "What the hell am I going to wear?" Damn that Harry. If he hadn't been out of town, she could have taken him and worn something reasonable. But he was in Peru chasing bad guys and gals of one sort or another, and Rosa, her second choice, had worn herself out riding all morning and working in her studio all afternoon. When Patty had called at five pm to propose that she meet Zane over dinner that very night, Lucy had agreed, on the condition that Patty, sans Zane, later accompany her to Parkistan.
And so this wardrobe problem: how could a girl compete with Patricia Moody at dinner, and later still be cool at Parkistan, where the Wet Prophets were making their New York debut on this third night of the club's opening week. The Wet Prophets hailed from Spokane by way of a year in Seattle, and had been labelled in the Voice as "white boy Cascadian grunge-rappers," which sounded vaguely intriguing. Lucy wasn't sure what to expect, music-wise, but she figured with a northwest band on stage, at least part of the audience would be dressed down, in this year’s hip new version of fleeciness. Now if she could just find something that would get her through dinner with Patty and Zane and the mob of high fashion nightworld scenesters swarming the bars and dining rooms of the Tribeca bistro circuit, and yet be appropriate later, at Parkistan, where retro flannel-clad mosh pit maniacs might control the floor, she'd be fine.
A typical New York dilemma, which she could have resolved with her black low rent combo with quilted jacket, except that she'd worn it earlier, and Patty had seen it. Lucy liked to think these vainglorious things didn't matter to her, and they didn't, not too much, but she was thirty-four years old and she'd lived in SoHo for eight years. During that time she had watched Tribeca evolve from Boho stomping ground to post-9/11 refuge to SoHo south. In spite of the disappearance of the authentically hip, Tribeca remained an outpost of attitude. Attitude required style. Implicit in having style was knowing how to dress. She stared into her closet.
She and Claud left forty-five minutes later. By the time she got back from the dog walk it would be nine-thirty, so she'd probably be ten minutes late for her date. Ten minutes was borderline rude, but Patty Moody could fend for herself at any bar in town. After half a dozen trial combinations culled from her tired and hateful wardrobe Lucy had finally chosen black leggings and a silk shirt of red leaves on a black background with pale pink Cupids woven in, and flat black shoes. She'd put on too much make-up, but it would work in the dimness of bistro and club.
Back from the dog walk, she stripped and put on a little black dress for one more mirrored whirl. No. Perfect for Cafe Bob, but way too uptownish for Parkistan. Dress off and leggings back on, she added a black tank top under the red and black shirt, left the shirt untucked and unbuttoned, and finished the ensemble off with a pair of red leather shoes with skinny black laces. Another last look in the mirror. It would have to do. She left Claud mournful amid a pile of discarded clothes on the bed, grabbed her little black bag and her little black jacket, and headed out, promising herself she'd find time to shop next week.
She arrived twenty minutes late at the Lucky Dog on lower Greenwich Street. Perched at the copper-topped bar she found Patty, in pink bellbottoms, black platform shoes, and a midriff-baring black top, surrounded by a trio of off-duty Wall Street guys, ties loosened, three of about half a dozen suits in the room in search of their weekly hipster fix. The rest of the crowd wore mostly black and affected the hollow-eyed, angst-ridden look of the afflicted European artiste. Appearances were deceiving—most of these people were more concerned about mortgages on summer houses than they were about art or the meaning of existence. In the din of loud conversation the recovering alcoholics drank black coffee, the recovering cocaine and heroin abusers drank wine, and everybody else drank everything in sight. "Hey, Hon," Lucy said, inserting herself between two of the Wallstreeters to continental kiss with Patty. "You look tres chic," she said.
"Yeah, yeah, I know—I’m a little too uptown. Hey, Lucy, meet—um, Dan, and John, and—"
"Phil," said the third. In a glance Lucy saw they were uniformly handsome, under thirty, and unnecessary. Two appeared visibly stupid, the third slightly deranged, with the kind of wacko Wall Street eyes one associated with the leading man in that eighties classic American Psycho. This was not the kind of crazy Lucy imagined, imagining crazy New York.
Youth in suits. Patty had zero judgement about anyone with a dick, a decent body, and a bank account.
"Hi," Lucy said. "Excuse me." She turned to the bar. "Yo, Frankie," she said. "You got any Pinot Noir open?"
"Sure Luce," said Frankie the bartender, coolly bleak in his new close-cropped Gulag beard and haircut. In the old days he dealt coke to regulars over the bar in the late hours. Now, AA and CA to the max, he had the look of a penitent. But this was Tribeca, where even the monks had a certain style. As he poured her glass of wine, he said, "How's the book going, Luce?"
"It's done," she said.
"That's good," he said.
"I guess," she said, taking a hearty sip of pinot. "Only now what do I do?" Frankie had moved down the bar, and missed her existential plea. She turned to face Patty, who looked, in a word, fuckable. The taut belly exposed, the red slash of her mouth under those haughty cheekbones and emerald cat eyes, the whole damned Patty package was too hot. Men for her were an energy source. They lit her up. "You about ready to make a move, toots?"
"Um, yeah, I guess." Patty smiled at Phil, or was it Dan? "Sorry, I have a..."
"You girls want some company? Buy you dinner?" said John or Dan.
"She's booked," Lucy said. "Got a boyfriend waiting, am I right, Patty?"
Patty smiled ruefully, whipping a card out of her little black disco bag. She scrawled a number on it. "Here," she said, handing the card to Dan or Phil. "My business card. The other number's my place."
The guy with the loony eyes snatched the card from the other. "Thanks. Great talking to you, Patricia," he said, shamelessly looking her over.
"Let's go, Patty," Lucy said, as the boisterous lads playfully fought over the card. Lucy took her by the arm and pushed through the crowd. They got outside. "Jesus, Patty, you don't even know those guys."
"They were nice," she said. "And you never know when you might need a date."
"What about Zane?"
"Zane? Zane's fantastic. I'm sure he's not at Bob yet, though. He said he was working on a major deal and might be late."
"Well, let's get a table and wait. I don't want to hang out here." Lucy gestured dismissively at the street swarming with bar-hopping hipsters. They crossed Greenwich Street and approached Cafe Bob, the current place to see and be seen in Tribeca.
In the bar at Bob, the Velvet Underground played on the sound system, Lou Reed's cool funereal drone evoking the New York late sixties—as did the 57 varieties of babe that flitted among the bistro chairs and tiny, crowded tables. Tall and Hampton tan and Manhattan young and carefully, casually lovely in their low-rise retro flares and long, flat hair, the girls of the moment had gathered, in the bar at Bob, to be seen. There were dozens in the room, and Lucy, poised at the door, knew she was older than them all.
She shook off the slight surge of dread—even Patty was older than most of these girls—and headed in. "There's Zane," Patty said. Lucy had a look.
He stood with a foot on the foot rail and an elbow on the bar, chatting with two girls, body English presenting to the room, watchable and watching. He was everything Patty had said: in this crowd of beautiful people, he stood out. He looked like a commercial actor or a male model, actually—a little bit too ruggedly goodlooking to be quite real, poised just so in the softly glowing lamplight of his own self-regard. He spotted Patty, and murmured something to the two girls. Laughing, the girls glanced at Lucy and Patty as they drifted away. Contoured streaks of grey in the temples, elegant creases flaring from the eyes, precision-tooled teeth, golden tan, Armani casual. Effortlessly urbane, but well-traveled in faraway, possibly dangerous places. That was the intended impression. He smiled as they approached, displaying the symmetrical crow's feet to greatest effect. "Hello Patricia," he said, and kissed her. "You look great—but then, she always does, doesn't she?" he said, turning to Lucy. "Hi, you must be Lucy. I'm Zane. Zane Smithson. Patty's told me all about you." His voice, too, was perfectly modulated, balanced exquisitely between British and American English, with the faintest undercurrent of a French accent.
"Likewise," Lucy said as they shook hands.
"Hello, love," Patty said. "I thought you were going to be late."
"Well, I'm not," he said abruptly. "Lucy, I love your shirt." He smiled. The smile was perfect, as empty as the teeth were white. Lucy gave one back, equally empty. He looked not at either of them but just past, reading the room like a hovering hawk. Patty didn't see it. But then, she wasn't paid to notice things like that.
"Thanks," she said. "Actually, it's—"
"Did you get us a table, Z?" Patty said.
"Maurizio is a good friend of mine," he said. "He's one of the owners," he added to Lucy. "When we want a table we'll get one."
After the preliminary cocktail, Maurizio, a fussy little balding Italian with a greasy one-inch long ponytail and manicured facial stubble, showed them to their table in the prime time section of the dining room. Lucy recognized the fashion editor from the New York Times at the table on their right—at the moment, she appeared to be the only woman in the room older than Lucy—and a delicately handsome young designer, famous for nihilistic gestures such as wearing jeans and white t-shirts to tuxedo-clad events, on their left; tonight the lovely long-haired boy wore an unbuttoned plaid flannel shirt over his t-shirt, boldly signalling his indifference to all the judges in the room. To Lucy he looked like a city-pretty version of a backwoods hippie circa 1975, but nobody else in the place saw it that way. In this room full of Milano mints, Lucy was likely the only person from Portland, Oregon.
Zane ordered wine and Patty went to freshen up. "Well, Lucy," he said, "I hear you're something of a photographer—and a writer too."
Lucy was trying not to dislike him the way her every instinct told her she should. "More a writer these days," she said. "At least that's where the money's coming from."
"Yes, my good friend Billy Ritz—do you know Billy, he's..."
"I know...of him," Lucy said. Only one of the three hottest fashion photographers in New York City.
"Yes, well, he's...I was up at his studio the other day, he was shooting an ad for Calvin—do you know my friend Calvin?"
"Not really, no." Klein no doubt. What other Calvin is universally known by his first name? Coolidge maybe? What a shameless namedropper! Apparently this was going to be one of those nightmarish New York conversations where she got to nod her head dumbly, in awe at an array of famous and fabulous "good friends." There were too many such conversations around Patty. Why was that? Where was that bitch! Poor baby, sucker for a man like this.
"Anyways, Billy and Calvin and I and Monika, Calvin's favorite model, were—Oh, Patricia," he said, as she swept into her seat. "I was just going to describe to Lucy that scene I told you about at Billy Ritz's studio the other day."
"I saw Harvey Keitel by the bathroom." Patty said. "God, what a palooka face!"
"Let's order some food," Lucy said. "I'm starved."
After a bottle of red wine and bowls of Caesar salad and steamed mussels, Patty excused herself to go freshen up again before the main courses and another bottle of wine arrived. By then, Zane Smithson, senior partner/venture capital at Fitch Abend, an exclusive Wall Street banking firm that specialized in hedge funds, had mentioned about 47 other good friends with names Lucy would recognize, ranging from tennis stars to celebrity chefs. Now, with Patty gone, once again he homed in on Lucy. Was he really a banker? She was sure she'd seen him or his clone in a tv ad for some high tech German electric razor, shaving in slow motion with a smirk on his perfectly sculpted face. What was it about New York City that bred people like this, she wondered. "So what do you think, Lucy? Should we get married or what?"
"You and Patty?" She sipped her wine and looked him in the eye. She had given up on certain social graces a couple of years back. There wasn't time for them any more. "I don't know why you would. You don't appear to care much for her."
"What? What are you talking about?" Why was he grinning?
"I don't know much about you, Zane, and your business is none of mine, but Patty is a friend and I hate to see her get used by people like you.'
"Used?" He was incredulous. "Ha! How dare you..."
"Let me finish." High on wine, she plunged in. "We've been sitting here for an hour and you've asked me half-a-dozen questions about my life and not listened to a single answer. You don't know the first thing about me, but I know about all the famous people you know—like I could give a shit. And it's not just me—you don't listen to Patty either. So naturally I wonder what you know about her, or think about her life. And what you want from her. Just keep this in mind, Za
ne: I don't give a damn if you're a big bad vet and a billion dollar banker with a great forehand and lots of marquee friends and houses in all the right places." She emptied her glass, and planted it firmly on the table. "So thanks for buying dinner, and you do know how to pick a great bottle of wine, but let's not pretend we're pals."
"Well." He grinned on, entirely unruffled. "The oracle hath spoken." He went on, "So that's the way it is, eh? No approval from Lucy, the wise and final arbiter of Patricia's life. I suppose you'd like to see her marry that old fart from Rio instead?"
Lucy felt a crack in the facade of her alcohol-driven confidence. "She told you about—"
"She loves me, Lucy. She trusts me. Of course she did. And I told her to take his money for as long as she wanted. What difference does it make to me?"
"Hello darlings," said Patty, sweeping into her seat, lips lusciously aglow once again. "I hope you're entertaining Lucy properly, Zane."
"Oh, yes," he said. "We're having a lovely time."
"And here's the meat course," Lucy said as the plates landed on the table, followed by another bottle of the excellent two hundred dollar burgundy Zane Smithson had so assiduously selected on her behalf. Digging into her once-a-month slab of sirloin, Lucy wondered if she had him figured right, or if she had simply become the ingrate bitch her mother and time in New York had taught her to be. Maybe there was a higher, or lower, truth operating here, and Zane Smithson was the perfect man for Patty Moody. Lucy persisted in seeing her friends as incorruptible, virtuous beings. But Patty had never displayed even the faintest interest in either incorruptibility or virtue. Smithson had money, looks, connections; he seemed willing to put up with Patty's questionable financial arrangements, her—courtesan status—for the moment.
Lost in New York: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 5) Page 2
