Rita was whining. “I’m just not sure, Diane. It has to be exactly right. This is the first time the Johnsons have invited us to the opera.” The clothing stylist reassured her client with a steady stream of quiet patter. It was a familiar technique. The patter eventually eroded away at the objections and a choice was made.
“Charlotte, come in here, please,” Rita begged. “I want to know what you think.”
Charlotte entered the dressing room. “You look lovely, Rita!” she said, winking at the stylist.
“Really?”
“Absolutely. The blue is the same color as your eyes. And I love the ruching.”
“Alright, Diane. Tell Oscar I’ll take it. Just make sure the alterations are done by Wednesday.”
As Diane unzipped the gown and Rita stepped out from its cocoon of foamy azure satin, she looked at Charlotte’s reflection in the wall of full-length mirrors.
“Why have you got a pin in her hand, Charlotte?”
“I’m going to show you how to tell the fake from the real thing, Rita. I’ll meet you in the bedroom.”
Rita’s eyes lit up. This was the thing about obsessive compulsives; they weren’t just perfectionists; they were always right. “But the desk you bought is downstairs in the library,” she said.
“I know,” Charlotte said, turning and heading out of the dressing room. “But the fake is in your bedroom.”
She was hauling the Venetian Baroque chest of drawers out from against the wall when Rita jogged into the room.
“What are you doing?” she squawked. “Caroline picked that out for me, Charlotte. It was owned by the same Italian family for three centuries.”
“Maybe,” Charlotte said, pushing her straight pin into a wormhole in the diamond patterned marquetry. Rita came over and huddled over the chest as Charlotte pulled out the pin.
“Go ahead, Rita. You do it.”
Rita stuck the pin in and out. “What’s your point, Charlotte?”
“The point is, Rita, the only worm at work here is Caroline. That little tunnel shouldn’t be straight. It should be sort of irregular. That’s how nature creates those holes. And let me show you something else,” Charlotte said, moving around towards the back of the chest of drawers.
Rita was following her, more curious than angry.
“Look at the wood. It’s walnut, the same as the rest of the piece, right?”
“Obviously,” Rita replied, smirking.
“It shouldn’t be,” Charlotte said. “It should be a cheaper wood.”
“What are you talking about?” Rita pouted, peering at the back.
“If this were three centuries old, the guy who made it would have used a cheaper wood for the back. Something like pine. Same for the inside. That’s how they did it then.”
“Oh my God!” Rita said, lurching back and leaning against the wall. “What else?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Abe’ll murder me. That piece cost him more than the one you bought.”
Charlotte took Rita by the hand and circled towards the front of the chest.
“See these drawers?” she asked, kneeling down and pulling one of them out. “Feel the bottom.”
Rita ran her hands across the bottom.
“Smooth, right?”
Rita nodded.
“They should be rough. And again, the wood should be different than the outside. And cheaper.”
Rita pulled her hand away as if she had been burned. Which, of course, she had. By Caroline.
“Now check the keyhole.”
Rita’s whole body sagged.
“Do you see any trace of polish, any scrapes?”
“No.”
“After three centuries, don’t you think there should be some sign of somebody cleaning it?”
“Oh God, Charlotte! Don’t tell me any more, please!”
Sitting in a heap on the carpet, a mere shadow of her former know-it-all self, Charlotte almost felt sorry for Rita.
“How old do you think it really is?” she asked, glumly rising to her feet.
“You mean, how young?” Charlotte replied. “Some parts of it are probably very old. You wouldn’t believe what these craftsmen can do in England and China.”
“China?” Rita groaned.
“Yeah. There’s a repro guy on my block downtown. Until a month ago when he got thrown in jail for arms and drug dealing, he was bringing in stuff that even fooled the antique experts at H.M. Luther.”
Her mission accomplished, Charlotte patted Rita on the hand and passed her the straight pin. “Use it to test the piece I bought in the library, Rita.”
“You promise you won’t say anything to Abe, right?”
“Of course, I promise,” Charlotte said, as they walked, arm in arm, towards the stairs. Secrets were like money in the bank for Charlotte. They gave her a nice bit of leverage when clients got out of control.
“Not that I really care, Rita,” Charlotte said as the housekeeper helped her into her Searle parka. “But who told you my piece was a fake?”
Rita blushed. “It was the color consultant.”
“Tell her to stick to paint chips in the future, will you?” Charlotte said, making no attempt to disguise her ear-to-ear grin.
33
Charlotte sang to herself as she rubbed a pearl-sized dot of La Prairie moisturizer onto her face, a barely-there layer of bronze powder to her cheeks, and a bit of Arden Eight Hour Cream on her lips.
Thank God I’ve always avoided the sun, she thought, searching for nonexistent pores in the mirror. What was it Vicky had raved about before leaving for the safari? Collagens derived from human foreskins? Whose foreskins? She’d wondered. Where do you get human foreskins? From dead men? Did husbands pluck them off the penises of defeated rivals? Did they buy them from moyels, the people who performed ritual circumcisions? Just the idea of it made Charlotte sick. Tying her freshly-shampooed hair up in a velvet hair-band, she was still singing when she hit the sidewalk.
Before taking off on her power walk, Charlotte hurried over to West Broadway and slid a quarter into the payphone. She had already left three messages on Gina’s cell. When she heard an actual voice, she blanked for a moment.
“Gina?
Silence.
“Gina? It’s Kate, from Craigslist.”
“Ahhh, yes.” The high-pitched voice sounded like a child. “Listen, I think I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to sell the silver, after all.”
“I understand,” Charlotte replied, softly. “You’re probably as nervous as I am, right? I mean, I sold a St. Laurent last week and …”
“Oh My God!” the woman squealed. “Couture or ready-to-wear?”
Charlotte laughed. “Couture, of course. Fall 1977.”
“Tell me you’re joking, Kate! Wasn’t that the year of his Chinese Collection?”
“Yup. One of his best, I think. Anyway, I got $12,000 for it.”
“I’m swooning, I’m positively swooning. Couture is the one thing I just cannot talk Steve into buying for me. ‘It’s absurd, darling,’ he says to me. ‘$50,000 for a stupid dress.’ ”
“Ah well,” Charlotte giggled. “Men have a lot to learn, don’t they?”
“They sure do,” Gina sighed. “So. Would you be willing to pay cash, do you think?”
Charlotte grinned. Thank God for greed! “Oh definitely! I only take cash, myself. And if you’re anxious about letting me in, I could meet you at Starbucks or something. That story in the Post really spooked me.”
“No! No!” the girl said, back-tracking. “Don’t be silly. You don’t sound like a killer. I mean, how many killers wear couture St. Laurent, right?” She laughed. “But listen, Steve’s away and I’m going up to my ashram for a week. Could you come to the house next Tuesday? I’m done with yoga at noon.”
“Oh wow!” Charlotte exclaimed. “You’re into yoga, too? I think it saved my life. I mean, I’m so hooked I carry my mat around with me everywhere.”
“Me
, too! Me, too!” the girl echoed, delightedly. “This might actually be fun.”
Charlotte scribbled down the Tribeca address. “Is there a doorman, Gina?”
“He was fired last week. Turns out the guy was a convicted felon.” Of course, Gina wanted her to know that it was usually a doorman building, not some yet-unrenovated walk-up.
“Jesus!” Charlotte commiserated. “What a bore for you.”
“Yeah. But luckily there’s a new guy starting at the end of the month.”
Charlotte smiled.
34
How the hell the concierge at the Mandarin Oriental had confused Per Se with Pure, the vegan joint on Irving Place, was a question Charlotte would address later. The restaurant served no animal products and no food heated above 115 degrees—in other words, raw. For now, she sat back and surveyed the room. There was Jessica Davies Morton, too taut to talk, her skin stretched tighter than a jib in a gale. Her husband, Mort, had just succeeded in running some gigantic toy company into the ground and walking away with $300 million. “Failure is a great teacher,” he’d said to reporters with a wink, as he left the company’s corporate headquarters.
At the sound of Pavel’s voice, her focus quickly shifted back to her own table. He was bellowing at the Armani-clad waiter cowering behind her.
“Is my problem, you say? All I ask for is a piece of bread.”
The restaurant was so silent, even the din of cutlery had died.
“Sorry, sir. I told you. We don’t serve bread here. Our raw vegetables, nuts and seeds are—”
“HA!” Pavel shouted, wheezing with laughter. “Nuts and seeds? This is food for the fucking gulag.”
Charlotte smiled. How did one explain paying eighty bucks a plate for seeds and uncooked fruits and vegetables to a guy whose mother had probably spent thirty years waiting in line to buy a loaf of stale bread? In the meantime, Pavel had lowered his voice and reached for her hand.
“Listen, I apologize, Charlotte. Really. But the first time I came to America eight years ago, I borrowed a friend’s video camera. We went and shot thirty minutes of footage in the meat department at Gristedes. Because I had never seen so much meat. So you see, it is absurd to me, this idea of …”
“Pavel, it’s OK,” Charlotte replied, squeezing his hand, “I don’t really get it, either.”
“Who are these crazy peoples, anyways?” he asked, turning his head and staring at the packed room.
As the chatter in the restaurant resumed and Charlotte ordered tomato cucumber pâtés and truffle mushroom pasta made from coconut paste, she filled Pavel in with a fast and funny run-down of the local “purists.”
Oh Christ. There was Deena. Charlotte ducked as Pavel gulped from his glass of organic wine.
“See that woman over there, Pavel?” she said, sliding her eyes off towards a remote corner where a group of middle-aged “girls” pecked away at their plates. “The one in the middle of the banquette?”
“Yes …” he replied, taking another healthy gulp. “What about her?”
There was something crow-like about them, Charlotte thought, forgetting for a moment that she wasn’t alone. All sleek and beaky in black.
“Charlotte, hello, Charlotte!” Pavel was plucking at her sleeve.
“I am so, so sorry, Pavel,” she said. “Where was I?”
“You were telling me about that woman on the banquette,” he replied, looking at her curiously.
“Right. Well, she was a client of mine, wife of a hedge fund guy. She used to conduct meetings while doing laps in her pool. I would sit on the edge with my books of swatches and my photos, waiting, and she would be doing these breaststrokes, back and forth, gasping for air before she reached my end. Then I would flash the swatch and down she’d go, head in, head out.”
Pavel waved the waiters away with his hand.
Encouraged, Charlotte plunged ahead. “Anyway, one afternoon, her husband pulls me aside outside the pool room.
“ ‘I need you to do something for me, Charlotte,’ he says. He’s nervous, I can tell. There’d already been a hundred change orders on the job. ‘Sure, Anthony,’ I tell him. ‘What is it?’
“ ‘My wife, she farts,’ he says. ‘She farts all the time and the smell is unbearable.’ ”
Pavel grinned.
“This is a chic woman, Pavel. I mean, her face is all over the New York Times Styles Section every week. So I look at him and I say, ‘Well, listen, Anthony. That’s terrible. But I don’t know what you want me to do about it.’
“ ‘I want you to build her a bathroom that is 100% soundproof and smell-proof,’ he says. ‘If you don’t, we’re going to end up divorced.’ ”
“And how on earth do you do such a thing?” Pavel asked, poking, suspiciously, at his “pâté.”
“We installed a spring-loaded drop seal at the bottom of the door. You close the door, a little pin gets hit by the jam, and down drops the seal. I’d like to say they lived happily ever after, but the husband had an affair with the carpenter and the wife took off with her daughter’s personal trainer.”
Pavel looked perplexed. “The carpenter? Was a man?” he asked.
“Yeah, ends up the husband was gay.”
“Well, at least this story proves your clients are human, Charlotte.”
“Almost human,” she answered.
“So how do you deal with them?” Pavel asked, as he played with the little that was left of his pâté. “Most of the rich I have met here in America are not just wealthy, they are also beautiful and famous.”
Putting down her knife and fork, Charlotte stared into the distance. “A long time ago,” she said, “I empathized with very rich women. Having too much money, like being too beautiful, can be atrociously lonely.”
Pavel snorted.
“It’s true. Some of my clients … hell, lots of the women in this room, go for days touched only by people who are paid to touch them: hairdressers, personal trainers, masseurs, doctors. They never cook a meal, or wash a dish, or bathe a baby. They’ve forgotten there’s no such thing as easy money, Pavel. And they’re paying for it!”
Pavel squirmed in his chair. “Surely, there are worse problems than this, Charlotte?” he asked. “Should I pity them? These people you talk about are why we had a revolution in Russia. They are despicable, selfish. So again, I must ask you. How do you deal with them?”
Charlotte sat there, at a sudden loss for words. I murder them! She wanted to blurt out.
“I treat them fearlessly,” she said. “I make fun of them. I show them that I’m not the slightest bit intimated. Or at least that’s what I used to do when I was younger and stronger and less angry. And it worked like a charm,” Charlotte said, touching the tiny Eiffel Tower on her Craigslist bracelet and digging into her coconut paste pasta. “They were completely seduced.”
“Is this what you do with me?” Pavel asked, tasting his dish, and sitting back in his chair eyeing her.
“I don’t know enough about you to make fun of you,” she replied.
“What would you like to know?” he asked.
Do you kill people? flashed through her mind. “You scare me,” she said.
“I scare many people, Charlotte. It is a trick I use to survive. But you have no reason to feel that way.”
“Feeling has nothing to do with reason, Pavel. Surely, you realize that?”
“So what else do you feel about me?” he asked, taking a last delicate bite of his mushroom squash. She didn’t know a big man could be so delicate.
“Listen, this is a relationship about work,” she replied. “And I’m very rigid when it comes to my boundaries.” She could feel the flush of heat rising up her neck, thinking of her original plan to seduce and use him. “But I would like to know why your family is safer in Jersey.”
“Ahh, Yes!” said Pavel, pushing his plate away. “It must seem strange. But I am one of six men I know who boards the same Delta flight from Moscow every month. The answer to your question is simple: fami
ly makes me an easy target. And I cannot afford to put them at risk. What is it, you say? Better safe than sorry?”
“Yes! So how come they can’t live at the dacha? In the country?”
“I bought my house from the family of a man who was killed on a Moscow street corner. I was smart enough not to ask why. We Russians can be as pitiless to one another as we are to the earth we once cherished.”
As if to distract her, he reached down into his pocket and pulled out a color photograph. “This is the latest picture of the dacha,” he said, sliding it across the table.
Charlotte picked it up and exhaled. “Whew!” she said. “I bet astronauts can see your wall from space …”
“Russians love walls, Charlotte. When I move into my village, I gave the priest some money for his church. The church was a mess. The peasants had been using it to store feed for their cows and horses. It stank. But the very the first thing the priest built was a wall …”
“If there’s one thing I know all about, Pavel. It’s walls.”
“Yes, Charlotte. I realize that. Now, let me get the bill and you can tell me all about them.”
As Pavel eyed the head waiter, Charlotte wrapped herself up in her velvet shawl. She thought, I can’t believe I’m talking. Like John, the homeless man, if she wasn’t talking to clients, Charlotte spent most of her time talking to herself. But tonight, she felt as if Pavel had cast a spell again; as if she were, somehow, enchanted. Pulling the shawl around her like a shroud, she shivered. Talking was dangerous.
35
The Craigslist Murders Page 13
