He was beaming as he pulled out her chair. “Close enough to the dais for you, Charlotte?” Unfolding her napkin, she prepared to endure another profoundly shallow, short, conversation with her host. There was grit in the arugula.
“You have no idea,” Philip said as she rootled through the salad in search of a sun-dried tomato or a pignolia nut, “but new money is ruining, just ruining, my Anguilla! I mean, we may have to go to Lyford after Christmas.”
Appearing suitably aghast, Charlotte buttered a roll. Poor Philip. Forced to book a $40,000 week at one of the most luxurious clubs in the Caribbean. But it amused her, how he used the possessive pronoun when referring to Anguilla. As if he owned the entire island. When he turned to his left to chat up some magnificent young Russian, she smirked. A titaness of downtown real estate, Charlotte had recently heard that the girl had bought the biggest piece of beachfront property left on “his” Anguilla.
She was admiring the pale pink fat and flesh of her tuna—it was so silky, so light, it seemed to evaporate in her mouth—when the man on her left burped into his napkin. Eyes nailed to his plate, he flushed with embarrassment.
“Not exactly Bumble Bee, is it?” she said, rescuing him with her most ravishing smile. He couldn’t be a day over 23, she thought.
“No, I guess not.” He shifted his gaze from his plate to somewhere near her neck. “I’ve never tasted anything like it.”
“Forgive me. I haven’t introduced myself,” she said, sticking out her hand. “I’m Charlotte Wolfe.” They shook.
“And I’m Peter Winthrop. Assistant curator in Islamic art.”
Passing him a generous spoonful of her own tuna, she asked herself how an assistant curator had landed so close to the dais. “It’s tuna belly,” she added as the boy forked up another mouthful. “I have a friend who buys it on online from the Philippines. Sixty bucks a can, if you can imagine.”
His eyes bulged. She didn’t mention that Vicky used to have her cook pack it up in sandwiches for her kid’s school lunches.
He grinned. “Nothing’s too good for our trustees.” Pausing for a moment, he picked up a corner of the tablecloth as Charlotte looked at him, curiously.
“I’m not sneaking a look at your legs,” he explained. “It’s your slippers. Everybody loves them.”
“Ah! Two different colored slippers. It’s one of my signatures,” she winked.
While Peter polished off his extra portion of fish and fingerling potatoes, Charlotte crossed her ankles beneath the table and wondered how Vicky was doing in Aspen. Friendships, like marriages, took years to fall apart. She knew that. But Charlotte liked being precise. She had to be precise. The business of interior design depended as much on precision as it did on the imagination. Measuring the exact dimensions of everything from furniture to oddly-shaped windows, selecting the perfect tint of alabaster white marble from hundreds of samples at the Cararra quarry in Italy, mixing and matching from thousands of different woods, tiles, and shades of paints and fabric. This is why she wished that she could pinpoint, precisely, when it had all started to go so disastrously wrong with Vicky; when her role had switched from that of trusted friend and confidante to something more along the lines of an unpaid personal assistant.
In college, Vicky had inspired an almost childlike sense of awe in Charlotte. Slender and exquisitely feminine (versus savagely female which is what she had now become), there had been a nonchalant grace, a sort of effortless splendor, about her that made her seem both innocent and seductive. Even her awkwardness was alluring.
Startled out of her reverie by a burst of prolonged applause, Charlotte rose to her feet with the crowd. They were cheering the gnome-like giant of finance at the podium. Charlotte could see his spittle as he stammered through the beginning of his speech. Returning, gratefully, to her own musings, she smiled. Vicky’s adoption of her as official best friend had been marked with the gift of two cashmere sweaters. They were hand-me-downs from her father. One was a pale shade of beige, “The color of a baby fawn,” Vicky had said. And the other, a deep emerald green, “To match your wonderful eyes.”
Charlotte still wore the green one around the house. The sleeves had unraveled and there were gaping holes beneath the armpits. As worn-out and frayed as their friendship, Charlotte had neither the heart nor the courage to throw it out. Throwing it out would imply that she had abandoned her youth; that she’d given up on the pleasures of being needed. This is what Vicky had taught her. That being needed was almost as good as being loved.
The rattle of dinner plates as waiters cleared the table and refilled water glasses jolted her back into the present. Eyeing her nervously, the curator scribbled something on the back of his menu and slid it in her direction. She peered at the tiny, crabbed handwriting.
“May I ask you for a drink later?” it said.
She scribbled back, “Maybe next time!”
Charlotte would never have dreamed of taking the boy up on his offer. But at thirty-seven, she still appreciated the gesture. Waiting for Philip’s cue to leave, (she’d agreed to join him only if he promised that they’d escape before dessert) Charlotte tapped her foot. The cue came in the form of his hand, pawing her thigh. Placing her own hand gently on top of his, as if to stroke it, she proceeded to pinch the flesh so hard between her fingernails, he yelped.
“Ready to go?” Charlotte asked, sweetly.
As the curator stood up and gallantly handed over her sequin clutch, she caught Philip whispering into the ear of the Russian girl while pocketing her business card. Had the man no shame? She wanted to kick him. His secret was safe with Charlotte, of course. To tell Vicky would wound her pride. As bright and polished as the shiny shell of a ladybug, this thin veneer of pride was all that remained of the girl Charlotte had known in college. It had to be protected. And this was Charlotte’s job. Not just with Vicky but with clients, too. To protect and to serve, she muttered to herself as Philip glad-handed his way towards the exit. That’s my motto. Just like the L.A. cops.
3
It was 8:30 Monday morning and Charlotte was trawling through the List at a newscafe on Lower Broadway. The place was getting busy. Too busy. She didn’t like the idea of strangers seeing what was on her screen. Not that it was dangerous. Thousands, maybe millions, of New Yorkers, surfed through the List every day. She just preferred to hunt alone. A teenage boy with huge wooden plugs in his earlobes sat sprawled in the chair next to her. The skin of the lobe had stretched so much, the flesh seemed to drip, like clocks in a Dali painting.
“Hey, lady,” the boy said, tugging hard on his ear when he caught her staring. “You want the name of the guy put these in?”
Charlotte winced. “Sorry,” she said, shifting her eyes back to the screen.
The boy continued tapping at his keyboard as she clicked on a posting in the Collectibles section of the List and chuckled.
“Outta here! Every stick of his louzy, rotton furniture!”
With the exception of the atrocious spelling, Charlotte could relate. When she’d been dropped by her ex-boyfriend Paul, she’d felt that same urge to dump every item in her house that he’d touched. Every item but the Dustbuster and the ring that he’d given her in Venice. Paul was a passive aggressive, self-serving, pretty boy who had happily moved on from the pittance he’d earned at Christies to a new job as a “decorative-arts advisor.” They’d both had a good guffaw over that one. She clicked on a posting from Queens for a couch.
“Like new from the 17th century.” The seller’s mother (recently “deseized”) had covered the couch in Saran Wrap. “So it never gets dirty.” Earlier, she’d stumbled on a couple of other bizarre listings, too. One for a “Beautiful Clear Body Bag” and the other for a door that belonged to “Van Go!”
This is what had first attracted Charlotte to the List. Listening to all these voices, these stories that came from the hearts of the timid, the fearless, the rich, the poor, the misfits, the lying, the lonely. It was a kind of urban symphony. Like liste
ning to the sounds of salsa, hip hop, jazz, and rock and roll that blared out from various cars lined up at red lights. At first, she’d stay up half the night, browsing and clicking, and e-mailing back and forth. It wasn’t just the compulsive hunt for “victims” that drove her. It was her relationship with the List itself. It seemed almost human, the way it called out to her.
Then when the words became flesh; when she actually met the women who posted the listings, she grew even more addicted. Like those moments of intimacy shared by strangers on a long distance train ride, they opened themselves up to her, confessing to everything from abortions to cheating on and stalking their husbands. She felt like a Peeping Tom—an emotional voyeur.
She didn’t always kill. Far from it. Sometimes, Charlotte simply used the List to satisfy her curiosity. It was fascinating, the journey through other people’s homes. Especially when she was just a tourist; when it wasn’t for work. The young woman with the Shabby Chic couch, for instance. Her husband had left her and she’d sat, weeping, beneath a gilt-leafed mirror in a ten-room apartment on 68th Street while Charlotte spring-tested the down pillows.
As the girl abandoned herself to convulsive waves of sobbing, her shoulders shuddering, her nose all red and veiny, Charlotte had reached out, impulsively, to touch her hand. There’s something almost voluptuous about her surrender, she’d thought. Giving into grief was an extravagance—an extravagance that cost so little. And yet she knew so few who indulged in it. They took pills or got collagen shots, or shopped and jumped on a jet instead.
This was the other thing she’d learned after entering the life of the List. Even if many of these women had been deserted by their spouses or lovers or fired from their jobs, Charlotte discovered that she envied them in their despair. Broke, desperate, and ditching their possessions, they were gripped by the terror of new beginnings.
Years ago, every time she’d walked through the virgin stillness of a raw space, a space not yet born, she’d felt that same sweet terror, that exhilarating sense of expectation, of hope. For months, she’d carry the vision of its possibilities deep down inside her, bringing it slowly to life, feeling it kick, as she did her sketches, saturating walls with bright splashes of vivid color and accumulating the objects that gave her interiors such intimacy and warmth. But those years were long gone.
Charlotte’s phone vibrated. Damn! She’d lost all sense of time. She always did when she browsed through the List. It was 9:30. Maybe she’d come back after dinner. There hadn’t been a single posting from the Upper East Side, anyway. No one selling any of the high-end, logo’ed merchandise that made her eyes light up. Unloading expensive merchandise on Craigslist indicated a certain carelessness with money. The sort of carelessness that implied someone else had paid for it. Someone like a rich husband. Charlotte suddenly realized she was hungry.
As she logged off and shut down the computer, the guy with the wooden plugs winked at her. After paying at the counter and replacing her credit card in her wallet, she thought, again, of those years long gone. Years when the future had beckoned her with all of the feverish intensity and promise of a new lover. She was trapped now. Trapped in a space that felt as suffocatingly small and airless as the steel-clad, soundproofed panic rooms in which so many of the women she knew retreated to let off steam.
“It’s the only place I feel safe enough to lose control,” Vicky had explained. “To let go and really scream.” They’d been having tea at the Four Seasons. The hair on Charlotte’s neck had stood on end. She’d shivered. After climbing into the cocoon of her jet black Mercedes, Vicky had lowered the back seat window.
“I can’t feel anything, Charlotte,” she’d moaned. “Nothing ever happens to me.”
Charlotte had made vague, reassuring noises while biting her tongue. Nothing ever happens to the rich, Vicky, a voice inside had wanted to shout. Haven’t you heard? It’s like driving with air bags. There’s always something to cushion the blows.
4
“It’s ridiculous, Anna. These women, they have everything, but they envy me.”
Anna laughed. “Envy is all they know, my dear.”
Setting out a single Porthault placemat, Charlotte rifled through the kitchen drawer, pulling out her favorite old hotel silver. It was a ritual. Just like these late Monday morning calls from Anna. She would gossip while Charlotte wolfed down an enormous breakfast. (Her appetite was another thing about Charlotte that drove her starving female clients crazy.)
“I’m single. I’m in debt up to my eyeballs,” she said, her voice trailing off.
“Who isn’t?” Anna replied, briskly. “Aside from your clients? Living beyond one’s means is an art in New York. As for being single … please do not let’s go there.”
“It’s please don’t go there, no let’s.” Charlotte said, gently correcting the slip. Anna’s English was fluent. The occasional idiomatic mistake only added to her charms. And she was right. She was better off without Paul.
“You forget the most important thing, Charlotte. You have confidence.”
Slathering a piece of toast with imported Dutch butter and jam, Charlotte sighed. “Not really. I just pretend.”
“Two seconds, cara. Someone’s on the other line …”
The toast was burnt. Punching the speaker button so that she could hear her friend when she returned to the line, Charlotte swept up a pile of charred crumbs. “The happiest cynics on earth.” This is how Fellini described his fellow Italians. Anna fit that description to a tee. The Wop Wasp, which is what the designer, Bill Blass, had affectionately called her, was equally apt. An extraordinarily elegant Venetian antique dealer, Anna was the kind of woman other women dressed for. Charlotte was as enamored of her restraint, her perfect manners and quiet chic, as she was of her baroque-like outpourings of opinion and emotion. At sixty-seven years old, nothing surprised her.
She was also the only woman who seemed to appreciate Charlotte’s gestures. Cutting off another slice of bread and sliding it in the toaster, Charlotte realized how much she looked forward to finding the small gifts at flea markets and Tepper auctions: gifts like old marbles, vintage Christmas ornaments, crystal-studded compacts from the ’20s and gold-flecked beeswax candles. Anna was infatuated with all things that sparkled, things that caught the light and dazzled the eye. “Italy is defined by gestures,” she would announce, giving Charlotte a quick kiss. “And you are a master of the grand gesture.” Gazing at her reflection in the silvery surface of the toaster, Charlotte knew that the gifts were also a form of courtship; part of her timid but determined efforts to create a connection with Anna. It was complicated, making a new friend at her age. There were no reference points, no common history.
The pop of the toaster shattered the silence as Anna’s voice returned to the line.
“Charlotte? I’m back. And just so you know … All real confidence begins with pretending.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Anna. So what’s new?”
“Cara! I cannot wait to tell you the latest story about Caroline. You are going to scream!”
“Lunch then?” Charlotte asked, steaming the milk beneath the nozzle of her new $1,000 coffee machine. “I’m looking for some Murano glass for my Russian client.”
“Certo! We will meet at Boulud, eh? And ti giuro, my news will make the whole trip uptown worth it!”
“I doubt it, Anna. But I’ll see you at noon.”
“Bacione, bella. See you then.”
Sitting at her kitchen table and soaking up the splendid river view, Charlotte took another sip from her cappuccino. The coffee machine had come “free” with her purchase of a ridiculously overpriced 19th century French commode. She’d recently acquired it from a young dealer for Pavel, her Russian client. After she’d admired it—the machine not the commode—in his shop, the dealer had sent it over as a “surprise” with a lovely note, complimenting her on her taste. “My taste for coffee?” she’d asked, smirking when she called to thank him. The piece itself had been so mercilessl
y restored only rappers and Russians like Pavel could love it.
Piling her dishes in the old Italian marble sink, Charlotte slowly ran her hands over its scarred, pitted surface. She’d bought the sink in Padua, probably the only time in her life she hadn’t haggled like hell. The Italian dealer was so astounded, he’d asked her why.
“Because I like to imagine a mother washing dishes in it,” she’d blushed. She was picturing the Italian farmhouse that she’d visited in the spring. This was after traveling over to check on a shipment of marble.
It was the sturdiness of the house that had nearly moved her to tears. There was no flash, nothing flimsy. Just thick plaster walls, heavy oak chairs, a great hearth, and smoothly worn tiled floors. Seated by her host at a long, wooden table, she’d sipped from a glass of rough red wine and watched his wife make the pasta. It was mesmerizing, the rhythm: cracking and separating the egg yolks, dropping them into peaks of soft white flour, folding and rolling the dough. It was a rhythm born of ritual, tradition and memory, Charlotte had thought wistfully.
Pointing towards the wall with her chin at the photographs of her three children, the woman seemed so infectiously happy, Charlotte was almost embarrassed. But this is why she’d forked over such an absurd price for the sink and even paid to have it shipped by air. She’d needed to have it near her, to be in touch with that kind of love.
The metamorphosis of Charlotte’s loft from a nondescript white space into a tiny jewel box of extravagant color and texture had been her own labor of love. She’d lacquered the floors in a high gloss eggshell white and scattered them with bright sapphire, ruby and emerald threaded tribal rugs. The walls were painted in deep shades of Prince purple and amethyst, poppy red and black, and lapis. There were also floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in both the living room and bedroom.
The Craigslist Murders Page 2
