Blood Is the New Black

by Valerie Stivers

  It might be my imagination, but Annabel sounds suspicious.

  “She’s at a good party.”

  Annabel has produced a long white cotton nightgown from the depths of her Gucci carryall. It wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Victorian era. She looks like a ghost.

  “That’s very spring 1882, isn’t it?” I joke, trying to change the subject.

  “I haven’t been around that long. It’s a reproduction.” She smiles a hard, cold smile at me, showing her fangy teeth.

  I dive into my twin bed and pull the covers up to my chin.

  She gets into the other one and turns off the light.

  No surprise that I don’t drift off right away. Baby Mac. KittyKat. StakeOut is texting me. And he/she/it knows my real name. I can’t see Rico outing James to all of Oldham, or sending me anonymous, threatening messages, unless I’ve really misjudged him. But still, it has to be someone who knows me and who is connected to work.

  The only thing I can be sure about is that it isn’t Annabel, since she’s lying right here. Equally worrisome is the message content. Who is about to blow her top? There are so many crazy people at work, it could be anyone. Lillian. Lexa. Beverly Grant.

  Even Annabel.

  Please let them not mean Annabel.

  A slow half hour later, I’m still wide awake. Worse, I have the feeling that Annabel, lying next to me in a twin bed in the dark, is awake, too. She hasn’t moved so much as a twitch, and I can’t hear her breathing. Nonetheless, I sense her unblinking gray eyes staring at me. It’s making my skin crawl.

  The communiqués from StakeOut, spreader of vampire rumors, and from Sylvia, aficionado of vampire pop culture, are having a bad effect on me. I know how unhinged it is to be considering this. And I wouldn’t be if the light were on. But I’m remembering that night when, overcome by hunger pangs, Annabel ditched me. What was she hungry for? And didn’t she look really weird when she saw those bleeding scrapes on my legs today? Please let her not get hungry while I’m lying here sleeping next to her.

  I tell myself I’m just worried about Beverly. For a person in the grips of a paranoid delusion, she seemed nice. I hate to think of her at home in New York feeling much more scared than I do right now. I should check up on her on Monday, find out how her weekend was and make sure she’s okay.

  The minutes click by slowly. After an hour, afraid to look in Annabel’s direction—because what if she really is lying there staring at me?—I quietly slip out of bed and creep from the room.

  I think I’ll research the “Clean Clothes” story after all.

  I’m in the thick of it, trying to understand what Bamboo’s claim that its cashmere “comes from sustainable forests” means, when a breeze brushes the back of my neck. With a muffled shriek, I leap in my chair.

  “Tense much?” Dan asks.

  “Dad! I’m so glad you’re home!” I whisper-cry.

  “Thanks, kiddo. Had a late-night winning streak.” He holds up a bag of wrapper candy, which is what they use instead of cash.

  “Looks like Halloween came early this year.”

  “So it’s two A.M.” Dan pulls up a chair. “What is my daughter doing up and working at the computer?”

  “I got a writing assignment for the magazine,” I say. “It’s about environmentally responsible fashion choices.”

  “That’s fantastic!”

  “Shh!” I roll my eyes toward the ceiling, reminding him of Annabel’s putatively sleeping presence. “It’s cool, I guess.”

  “I’ll bet they don’t let many interns write,” he says, beaming. “I’m proud of you.”

  “I’m well aware that one article isn’t going to change the world.”

  “Who said that it’s your job to change the whole world? If only everyone who wore cotton would switch to hemp, that polar ice cap would stop melting. Individuals can make a difference.”

  “The purpose of go-green articles in magazines isn’t to change people’s behavior,” I explain. “It’s to make them feel like they’ve changed their behavior. Twenty minutes of being concerned while reading about the environment and a person can, guilt-free, hop in their SUV and drive to the mall.”

  “So you hate what you’re doing? You’re having a bad time? You’re sitting here at two A.M. working on your story. Looks to me like you’re interested.”

  “That’s true,” I admit. I have been enjoying myself.

  My father sighs. “You might want to listen to those feelings,” he says. “Sometimes I worry that this med school business is a reaction to what happened with your mother. I’d hate to see you play it safe that way.”

  I open my mouth to protest, but he forestalls me. “If med school is what you really want, I support you one hundred percent. But I’ve always felt that you might need a more creative outlet. Since—and please don’t get mad at me for saying this—I see so much of your mother in you, I think she’d be happy to see you exploring your options.”

  “Well, you saw where being creative got her,” I retort childishly.

  “That shouldn’t matter. You can’t let that hold you back. You can’t let an idea fixay, pardon my French, determine your future.” He lowers his voice even further. “That’s what your friend up there is doing. And she seems like a very troubled girl.”

  Dan sits down with me and provides a list of his contacts in the sustainable-clothing industry, then goes to bed. I stay up until dawn working on the story. I’ll just need to make a couple of phone calls during business hours on Monday and it will be finished. Since I still don’t relish getting into a bed next to Annabel, I curl up on our sofa under a knitted throw rug and fall asleep wondering what Eva would think if she could see me now. Would she be really be happy? That would be nice….

  12

  Fashion Victim

  MONDAY PASSES IN a blur. During the features meeting, Lexa announces that she’s chosen the contest finalists, and not a moment too soon: Giedra is set to shoot the following Monday. Shane approves of the location. Lauren comments that since it’s not a working farm, we may need a headline other than “Farm Fresh.” Lillian suggests “Babes in the Woods: Winners of Our Tasty Girl Contest,” to general acclaim.

  After the meeting, Rachel, Nin, Annabel, and I convene in Lexa’s office. We’re told to call all the Tasty Girls finalists and brief them on the where and when.

  “But Lexa, what if they have jobs and they have to work? Or they already have plans?” I ask, feeling that it’s unreasonable to give the girls six days to pick up and fly to New York City. I’ve known when the date of the shoot was, but hadn’t thought through what that would mean for the girls.

  “People will do anything to be in the magazine,” Lexa tells me dismissively.

  Annabel raises her hand. “Is Oldham corporate going to buy their plane tickets?”

  “And where are the girls going to stay?” I add. In my hazy imaginings of the process, they were all going to sleep on the farm. But clearly that’s out.

  Lexa stares at us, her face frozen in outrage and disbelief. “You haven’t made the bloody arrangements?”

  “I asked you last month. You told me not to worry about it,” Annabel says faintly.

  “And you didn’t think to follow up? Are you daft? Are you trying to sabotage me?” She picks up the daily folder of Internet-gossip printouts and throws it in our direction. Rachel and Nin remain quiet.

  “I’m sorry,” Annabel says, looking traumatized. “We’ll sort it out.”

  “Obviously I can’t trust you,” Lexa says. “I want to see backup materials for all the logistics on my desk by the end of the day. Plane tickets. Hotel reservations. What else do we need?”

  “Maybe a charter bus to take everyone from the city upstate?” I suggest.

  “Order a car service for me and Giedra. A bus is fine for the girls.”

  “What about us?” Annabel asks. “Are we going along to help out?”

  This is not the best time to ask. Lexa looks at her scathingly. �
�I think I’ve had quite enough of your help,” she snaps.

  “Is there a budget we should be sticking to?”

  “Don’t bother me with petty details. Just get it sorted!”

  We retreat to Annabel’s half-walled cubicle. I take two Coach bags, a hair dryer, and a box of Chocolates from the Bald Guy off of her guest chair and sit down, stress buzzing in the back of my neck. Giedra needs to shoot on Monday, July 2, and Tuesday, July 3. We agree that the girls will fly into New York, spend Sunday night in the city, and then take a charter bus upstate early Monday morning. For the night of July 2, I agree to get them accommodations at a motel in Jeffersonville.

  “Everyone’s going to have to stay at the motel on Monday night. There’s nothing else up there,” I say to Annabel. She’s on hold with the Oldham travel office, working on plane tickets.

  “You can’t find a nice B&B for Lexa and Giedra?”

  “I’m trying, but I’m not having any luck.”

  “Try harder,” Annabel says. “This is Lexa we’re dealing with.”

  BETWEEN ORGANIZING the contest and making phone calls for the “Clean Clothes” story, it’s Tuesday before I have a chance to go check on Beverly Grant the way I promised myself I would. And on the way over to her side of the office—Research, Copy, and Production are all on the opposite side of the floor, closer to Shane Lincoln-Shane—I stop by Lauren’s office to thank her for suggesting to Lillian and Lexa that I write something.

  Our managing editor barely looks up when I come in. “Can I help you?” Lauren’s tone is tense. Looking at her, I see that her eyes are bloodshot and weary. Lauren is usually the nicest person on the thirty-seventh floor. I add her to my list of people “SO” might have meant when she (or he) said someone is cracking up.

  “You sound stressed out,” I say.

  “I’ve just had a shock, but I’m fine.”

  I wait for a second. If she doesn’t volunteer anything else, I’ll have to leave.

  Lauren drops the galley she was reading. “I don’t even know what I’m looking at here.” She’s blinking back tears. “One of our researchers died this weekend.”

  My stomach plummets through the floor. “Who?” I whisper. The free-form anxiety I felt over the weekend returns with a vengeance.

  “Her name was Beverly Grant. You wouldn’t have known her.”

  I sink into Lauren’s guest chair, tears filling my own eyes. “I talked to her at the Carnivoré party. How did she die?”

  “She was found in a Nolita dressing room on Sunday morning. Her sister just called to say she’d be picking up her things later on today.”

  Nolita is a fancy shopping neighborhood in downtown Manhattan. It doesn’t seem very Beverly to me.

  “But how did she die? Was there a suggestion of foul play?” I ask, hearing how TV-show-cheesy I sound.

  “Not that I know of. Why would you think that?”

  “You know, the fashion murders…”

  Lauren sighs wearily. “You’re too new to this business to have seen much of the real dark side. The drugs. Beverly probably OD’d.”

  “Would she be getting high by herself in a dressing room on a Sunday morning?”

  “You would be surprised. That particular neighborhood is notorious. Some stores have one-person-per-room policies because of it.”

  Beverly knew. She knew she was going to die.

  One of my professors liked to say that the biggest mistake in medicine is not listening to the patient. This professor claimed that the patient often knows what’s wrong with him and his intuitions should be our guide.

  So to follow that logic…Beverly Grant was killed by a vampire.

  I offer my condolences and stumble back to my desk without ever thanking Lauren for her help with the column. What if my coworkers actually are vampires? Their movements are inhumanly swift and silent (Oh, hello, Lexa, I didn’t see you standing there), they’re fiendishly strong (Annabel pinning Bambi to the wall by the throat). It would explain the sharp teeth, the cold hands, the blinds always being shut, the not eating, and even, I realize with a shudder, the beet juice. What if those drinks are actually blood? And then: Oh my God, whose blood is it and why is Shane’s assistant the one distributing it?

  I’ve had such a strong sense of things not being right around here….

  I slouch down in my chair and cradle my head in my hands.

  “Are you okay?” Rachel asks me. Maybe she really does have an instinct for news.

  “PMS,” I say.

  Calm down, I tell myself. People here go outside during the day. Vampires can’t do that. But Lillian carries a parasol. And when Annabel came home with me she was all wrapped up in that shawl. Maybe they can tolerate sunlight it if they have to? And working in Midtown, with its tall buildings, shady streets, and plentiful awning coverage, would be ideal. My coworkers fit the profile in other ways as well. They stay out all night with ease. They like to sleep during the day. And what about those Bloody Marys with the “real blood” at Carnivoré? I drank some of those! I don’t know if they can turn into wolves or bats, or if they have any of the powers of mind control Sylvia mentioned, but then it occurs to me:

  Perhaps fashion is mind control.

  Nin walks in and Rachel asks, “Do you have an Advil for Kate? She has PMS.”

  “I don’t take that,” I say automatically. “It’s much worse for your liver than the pharmaceutical industry would have you believe.”

  “My liver’s got more serious concerns,” Nin drawls.

  I take a deep breath. Not everyone in this office is a vampire. Nin isn’t and neither is Rachel. They don’t drink the Kool-Aid. They get here early. Usually. And Lauren probably isn’t. Vampires can’t procreate, right? And Beverly wasn’t. And the non-fashion people like James…

  James. At the party he said there were things I didn’t want to know. And he made a big deal about being older. What if he meant really older?

  At this moment, I do not care that being seen talking to him will spark rumors. I head down the hall to the photo department.

  JAMES IS at his desk with headphones on and doesn’t hear me when I approach. I poke him in the shoulder. He looks up, unsmiling, and takes the headphones off.

  “Hi,” I say quietly. “I need to talk to you. I have questions about some things you said on Wednesday night.”

  He looks transparently nervous. It’s obvious that he doesn’t want his coworkers to overhear this exchange.

  “There’s a deli around the corner on Fifty-ninth Street,” he says. “It’s on the northwest corner. There’s seating in the back. Meet me there in fifteen minutes. Just buy something and sit down.”

  Ah, the Plaza Gourmet III. I know it well. It’s where people go to hide.

  I SIT down in back, bathed in greenish glow. Crazy-quilt mirrors reflect my own moon-faced image. James walks back a few minutes later. He doesn’t sit down.

  “Did you hear about Beverly Grant?” I ask him.

  “It’s so sad what people do to themselves,” he says.

  If he were a vampire, of course that’s what he would say.

  “You think she did it to herself?”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “But, you know, a lot of mysterious things have been happening lately. What happened to Beverly might not be as simple as it appears.”

  He looks irritated. “I came down here because you said you had something to say to me about Wednesday night. If you just want to talk about Beverly, I have to go back to work.”

  I wish he would sit down.

  “You…said that there were some things I don’t know,” I say, hating how tentative my voice sounds. “What if I do know them?”

  “What? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You said there was a serious age difference between us. I get that now. I get it.”

  I feel like an idiot.

  James gives me a very weird look. “Listen, Kate,” he says stiffly. “Let’s forget about the
other night. I’d had a lot to drink and…” He trails off and then finishes with, “I’m sorry if I misled you.”

  Shouldn’t he be jumping at the chance to confess? That’s where this conversation went in my imagination. But he’s being stone-faced and uncooperative. He can sure turn off the charm when he wants to. I try one last time. “So there’s nothing you want to tell me? Like perhaps you know a bit more about what’s going on in this office than I do? Fashion murders? Mysterious deaths?”

  “If you’re accusing me of something, I really don’t appreciate it.”

  “No! I’m not. I just…Forget it. I’m sorry.”

  He softens, slightly. “You’re taking what Rico said and what you’ve read on the Internet too seriously,” he says. “StakeOut is a joke. The whole idea of fashion murders is intended to get people excited. It doesn’t mean anything. Half of it is made up.”

  Someone we know has died, I want to yell at him. But I don’t want this encounter to get ugly. I’m already embarrassed by how far I’ve gone.

  “Okay,” I say. “Sorry to bother you.”

  He looks piqued but then shrugs. He stares at me for a long moment, as if he’s about to say something else. I stare right back at him and then his face clouds over, he mumbles, “See you around, Kate,” and walks off.

  I slump over the table on my elbows.

  James Truax may or may not be a vampire, but he’s definitely a player and an asshole. I leave the Plaza Gourmet III and immediately call Sylvia.

  “You remember that researcher I told you about? She’s dead.”

  “Are you serious? Because I’m taking you seriously. If this is a joke it’s not funny.”

  “Would it be like me to joke about something like this?”

  “Wow. No. You’re serious?”

  “Beverly Grant was found dead in a shop in Nolita on Sunday morning. They say it looked like an overdose, which could mean she had a heart attack, which is something that happens when the blood is suddenly sucked out of your veins and the poor heart tries pumping and pumping but there’s nothing left to pump.”

  “You’re freaking me out. Stop it. Take a deep breath.”