“I don’t know what makes you think Stu knows anything,” Laura mumbled.
“It’s not what he knows. It’s what he can find out, and what his brain can figure out.”
Under different circumstances, Stu would be her first stop any time something bothered her or didn’t seem right. But things had changed between them. Or they hadn’t changed in the way that had been expected, and the confusion led to a discomfort she took great pains to avoid experiencing.
After Gracie’s killer had been found, everyone knew she and Stu were going to be together. Nadal regularly called them boyfriend and girlfriend before they’d even held hands, and Ruby, having been released from her engagement to Michael the douchebag, passed all her wedding dress sketches to Laura. It was so ingrained that Laura immediately dove into seventy-hour workweeks, and Stu began research on a piece about the Pomerantz murder and her part in solving it. Their time together, which should have been spent in dimly-lit restaurants and locked rooms, was instead spent with Laura hunched over her work, answering pointed questions about the two weeks in February she had spent unraveling a counterfeiting ring and catching a killer. Then Stu went off to write his piece, which had been picked up by the New Yorker. They required another five thousand words and three months of research, and the pressure of a byline in the most prestigious magazine in the world—Stu’s words—turned him into a hermit. He even quit his bike messenger job, his sound mixing job, and his internship at Cultcha Bustas magazine.
Then, while she was pinning the rhombus-shaped crotch of the Parsippany pants and thinking about everything but him, he had called. After the usual niceties, he said, “I have to tell you something.”
Still too stupid to be worried, she said, “Good thing you have me on the phone.”
“Well,” he started, then stopped. It was the first time he had ever seemed uncomfortable saying anything at all, and though she noted it, she did not stop pinning the pants for one second.
“You could be talking instead of doing whatever it is that you’re doing now.” She said it with good humor, but he had been looking for an opening to the conversation, and she realized weeks later that she’d handed it to him on silver platter.
“We’re very efficient, you and I,” he said. “We go out to dinner, and I bring my notebook. We meet at your office for lunch so you don’t have to stop working.”
“Yeah.” She wrestled the pants off the form and turned them inside out, stuffing one leg inside the other so she could see the crotch. The shape that looked so bad when worn wasn’t immediately apparent on the pattern, but when the pants were twisted that way, she could see the shape had changed during sewing.
“We don’t actually act like two people who are dating,” he continued.
Her heart felt like a finger had reached out and poked it. Something was wrong, and her answer that they weren’t like everyone else wasn’t going to cut it. “We agreed to hold off until the article came out and I had my first show.”
“I met someone,” he blurted.
“What?”
“The last time I kissed you was outside a bar, and you told me to take it back. We’ve just been assuming we’re together ever since, and really, it’s not the same as actually doing it.”
“Is this about sex?”
“Don’t get petty on me. You’re too good for that.”
“How am I supposed to get? Who is she?”
“I wish I hadn’t said this on the phone.”
“Are you seriously avoiding the question? Who are you?” She had actually stopped working on the pants and looked out the window. It was night, and most of the office lights were off. She looked at the clock—nine thirty.
“I met her at a protest at City Hall that Nadal dragged me to. She’s nice, but it’s not about her.”
“Right,” Laura said, “it’s about the non-entity of us, right? Which only started bothering you when someone else came along?” He might have said something, but she didn’t give him a chance. “What’s her name?”
He said something. It wasn’t Mary or Jane or Stephanie, but something foreign and exotic sounding.
“Tofu?” she cried. “You’re dating someone named after pressed vegetable protein?”
“Laura, please, don’t let this be something it’s not. We should always have stayed friends.”
“A white square floating in stagnant water? That’s who you’re with?”
“I’m not letting this get ugly.”
“That is unbelievably passive-aggressive, even for you.” She had clutched the Parsippany pants so hard she creased them.
As she walked down Bedford with her sister, she thought of the few stilted conversations she’d had with Stu since then, conversations he’d initiated so that their falling-out would be mitigated. She cooked up a few hundred reasons why they should avoid seeing him or talking to him entirely.
“It’s too early,” she said.
Ruby, who knew the whole story inside and out, knew what she was doing and ignored her completely. Laura would have sworn Ruby walked faster, forcing her to trot to North Fourth Street and turn right before she could think of another excuse or wonder at Ruby’s real motivations. They stopped in front of Stu’s little brownstone, which looked like every other brownstone on the block and appreciated in value by the minute. She remembered telling him he was overpaying and that he was too classy to rub in how very wrong she was.
Ruby hit the doorbell before Laura could stall, and as the seconds ticked by, she saw herself in the window’s reflection. Monty had never finished her face. Her right eye was mascaraed and shadowed, and her left had some sort of base and a little of something else, but didn’t look made up at all.
“I look like a Merle Norman ad!” she cried, but it was too late. The front door opened, and there was Stu, fully dressed and showered. Laura suddenly felt tired and worn down.
“Hey, Ruby,” he said. His smile when he saw Laura was genuine enough and put her at ease. Whatever happened, he still liked her. That and a full MetroCard would get her a trip uptown.
“Stu,” Ruby said, “we need your brain.”
“You can have whatever’s left of it.” He glanced at Laura before he stepped aside and let them in the house.
The dark wood stairway was topped by a skylight that sent shafts of light into the foyer. The effect made Stu look angelic and mysterious, with his pale face cast in shadow and the light glowing in his yellow hair. That was not what Laura needed. She needed him to gain fifty pounds and smell like stale coffee and fresh garlic. Alas, he was still the same Stu she had thrown away. Or more accurately, the Stu she had let fall out of her pocket while she was running for the bus.
“What’s on your face?” he asked.
She spun to the mirror. The house was a hundred years old, and the wood trims were exactly as they’d been when it was built. The foyer had a wooden bench with a hat rack and coat hooks attached. A mirror served as the centerpiece, and Laura turned her face from side to side. Monty had gotten her whole face with the powder, thankfully.
“Looks nice,” Stu added.
“Which side?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Ruby giggled, but Laura didn’t think it was funny. His answer made her feel as though he didn’t care for either side, but she wasn’t about to morph into a crazy broad and press him for more.
“Come on up.” He led the way, his old man’s slippers chuff-chuffing on the wooden stairs. He wore skinny jeans, a cotton shirt, and a fine-gauge cardigan that was buttoned wrong, hipster-style. The wrongness of the buttoning seemed to improve the fit of the sweater, making it asymmetrical in a controlled way, and interesting. It was hard to not look at him twice because her mind wanted to correct the buttons, then it decided they were okay.
Oh, how she wanted to hate him.
As soon as she got into the apartment, she really did hate him. A fringed leather bag sat on the coffee table, along with banker boxes of files, a laptop, and a sleek little printer.
Stu was not a messy guy, as far as she knew, and he didn’t carry around fringed bags.
“What happened in here?” she asked.
Ruby punched her arm.
He headed for the kitchen. “I’ve been doing my piece. Do you want coffee?”
“Does the Pope crap in the woods?”
Ruby glanced down at the papers. “Why hasn’t your story come out yet?”
“Ruby!” Laura hissed.
Stu continued as if the question wasn’t rude. “It started out as amateur sleuth, your sister, hunts down rich woman’s killer. But I’m rooting out a lot of corruption. So it’s taking on a life of its own. The whole thing’s moving somewhere different. The editors are so cool. They advocate me taking it where it’s going to go. As long as it’s clean and on time and I loop them in, it’s no problem.”
“Cool. Hey, I need to use the ladies’,” Ruby said. Like a quick answer, a white noise they hadn’t noticed stopped, and the room got a little too quiet. It had been the shower, and whoever was in there was finished. Ruby cleared her throat and sat down. The silence was thicker than a down coat.
“You heard about Thomasina Wente dying during our show.” Laura despised thick silences.
“It’s hard to not hear about it,” he replied, his tone implying that there were bigger injustices in the world that might take up more space in the newspaper. “Another rich woman dies, and we’re all supposed to drop everything.”
“Oh, my God!” Ruby exclaimed. “Are you doing that thing again?”
“You mean standing up for the little guy?”
“No,” Laura said. “I think she means complaining about the coverage of rich ladies dying while you write a book-length article for the New Yorker about exactly that thing.”
She knew that was not what Ruby meant at all. Ruby had just been annoyed and probably hadn’t even noticed the duplicity. And though Laura had no intention of raking Stu too far over the coals for it, the rustling sound from the bathroom kept her from dragging out the issue even another five seconds. She didn’t want Tofu to hear her breaking Stu’s balls over that or anything. For some reason, she wanted the new girlfriend to worry about her, which ran totally counter to her own interests, but she had no control over the perverse impulse.
Stu helped her out by looking at Ruby and saying, “Touché.”
“Okay, we all have to get on with our day,” Laura said, still worrying about the person about to emerge from the bathroom. “Can I ask you for a favor? Because I know you know everything and everyone.”
“Naturally.” He sat down next to Ruby on the couch.
“I looked through Thomasina’s things by accident.”
Stu nearly spit out a mouthful of coffee laughing. Ruby elbowed him. “Sorry,” he said. “Go ahead.”
“All the stuff in her wallet was made out to Sabine Fosh. Credit cards. EU driver’s license.”
“Library card?” he asked.
She ignored his joke. “Her brother said this was kind of a persona she put on so she could travel and go to the grocery store and whatever without people knowing who she was. But you know, she was so rich that she probably had her maid go to the store. And she wasn’t ashamed one bit of who she was. So, can you find out the deal with this person?”
“Sabine Fosh?”
“No, the brother.”
He looked at her as if he was trying to read the book of her intentions. “What else? I’ll need all the details. Where and how you came upon this information and exactly what Rolf said.”
He already knew Thomasina’s brother’s name. Very impressive. Yet she didn’t want to go too far into how she’d inspected the bag after she knew whose it was, not in front of Ruby at least. She told the story without the one o’clock in the morning visit to the office and the photocopies of the receipts while he poured her a cup of coffee and Ruby a juice. Ruby interjected where she could, telling him what a really awesome friend Thomasina was, how the whole runway thing had just been an unfortunate incident, and how even her beast of a sister had grown to like the German heiress.
As the bathroom door opened, Stu said, “Same deal. I get you whatever you need, if I can. My sources are an open book. But it’s my story. I have exclusive first rights to everything you guys do or say regarding what happens with the Thomasina Wente case.”
“You’re becoming quite mercenary, Stuart.” The woman’s lilting voice had an accent so slight it only seemed to add music to the perfect speech. Five-nine and not a hair over a size six, she was radiant and clean in jeans and a white shirt. When she smiled warmly and genuinely, Laura felt guilty for hating her so completely.
She held out her hand to Ruby. “I’m Tofu,” she said, except that wasn’t what she said at all. What she said sounded like an exotic fruit of subtle sweetness. Tah-fuh.
Ruby shook Tofu’s hand, and Laura realized that Tofu thought Ruby was her, because if someone were to describe her and her sister without pictures, he or she might use the same words. And if one felt threatened by someone, and there were two people in the room, well, one might assume the more attractive of the two was the problem one. One might think the competition was an equal. But no, it was a woman three inches shorter and fifteen pounds heavier. And with half a face made up, as if she were starring in A Clockwork Orange. All she needed was to be leaning out of a triangle with a knife. She shook her head a little so her hair covered her eye.
Ruby looked at her pointedly. If she could shoot thoughts out of her eyes and into Laura’s brain, her look would have said, “Wear it like you mean it.”
Laura brushed the hair away, exposing the overdone eye. “I’m Laura.”
Tofu was the picture of social grace as she redirected her attention and shook Laura’s hand, firmly and dryly. Like a total bitch. “Nice to finally meet you,” she said. Finally. As if Laura were Stu’s long lost sister or Canadian ex. “Honey,” she said to him, showing ownership, “did you get the tent down from the hall closet?”
“It’s by the door.” Then he turned to Laura. “Tofu’s doing an action at the I.I. building today.”
International Insurance had been busted for evading taxes and selling fancy financial products that amounted to legalized gambling to investors, hedge fund managers, and the federal government’s pension fund. The CEO got a nine-figure bonus, and the pensioners had gone broke. Oldest story in the book. It bored Laura into a coma. Ruby was already picking her nails.
“Our dear should be going, too.” Apparently, our dear was Stu. Tofu must have had a streak of old lady in her. “But he’s too busy using his talents to support big publishing.”
“The New Yorker is not big publishing.” But by the look on his face, Laura could tell he was conflicted, and by the faux-light tone of the conversation, she knew that had been discussed until the issue was raw at the edges.
“Darling…” Tofu touched the side of his face. “A hundred small, struggling papers that support our cause would have your story. Even the Village Voice. Not that that’s perfect, but at least they put a left polish on the issues.”
“Of magazines with any kind of circulation, the New Yorker is considered the most progressive magazine in the country, bar none.”
She rolled her eyes. “Is there any coffee?”
“Oh, sorry.” He pointed at Laura, who clutched the cup that apparently contained Tofu’s coffee.
“Do you want more?” Tofu asked.
Laura put down the mug. “I was just going. It was really nice to meet you.”
“You, too!”
Ruby said good-bye, but from Tofu’s bare-bones reaction, the enthusiasm in her salutations had been based not on warmth, but on the perception of the threat to her territory.
At the bottom of the stairs, Stu opened the door for them. “I’ll call you when I have something.”
“She’ll nag you if you take too long,” Ruby interjected.
Laura ignored her. “She’s nice, Stu. And pretty.”
“Glad you approve.”
She heard a touch of annoyance in his voice, as if he either thought she was being disingenuous or she was focused on the wrong thing. So she had to do something to impress him, and the only way to impress that particular hipster was to be honest to the point of pain. “I didn’t say I approved.”
“I like that you never change,” he said.
But she didn’t like it. Not at all.
They stood in line for coffee at the hipster place. Her fourth cup of the day. She needed some kind of drug to get her through the next hours, and the medication of choice was caffeine. Ruby tagged along, even though Laura knew she had someplace to be.
“You coming to the showroom?” Ruby asked.
“No, I have to bring Yoni some fabric approvals, or she’s going to give birth to a squid.”
“Not nice. You shouldn’t wish that on her.”
“Why? You think I’m so powerful that Thomasina bit it because I wished her dead when she pushed you?”
“You didn’t!”
“God, you are such a little sentiment fascist. What’s your deal?” Laura turned away, making mental notes of what she saw: striped jeans with voluminous geometric tops and old lady glasses, tiny floral prints, muted colors. Teased hair was apparently making a comeback. She dubbed it Geriatric Nouvelle and filed it.
“Bringing you to Stu was a mistake,” Ruby said. “I should have dragged you to Jeremy’s. That would have cheered you up.”
“Anything would have been better, actually.”
“He’s your friend. You shouldn’t cut him out.”
“I know,” she said, her voice barely audible under the white noise of the coffee place.
“I know it’s hard, but—”
She couldn’t listen to a platitude, so she interrupted, “You know what is hard? That he was it? He was my chance to be with someone who wasn’t interested in you, and to have someone you couldn’t steal.”
“I don’t want—”
“Exactly. I liked him, and he was safe, and he was a sure thing, and I blew it. Do you know how hard it is to listen to you talk about real relationships, and I have zero experience? I’m so tired of wondering what it’s all like. I can’t even read books anymore without getting jealous of the characters who are actually… you know.” She lowered her voice too late. The guy behind them had heard, even if he pretended he didn’t.
2 Death of a Supermodel Page 8
