by Maggie Estep
It took close to an hour to get to The Crone’s neighborhood, and all Ruby wanted was to get out of the car and stay out. She found a spot on St. Nicholas Avenue. It took her a while to actually park the damned car though. She’d passed the parallel parking portion of her driving exam, but just barely. She was inching the car forward for the fifth time when she noticed a pack of kids on a stoop pointing and laughing at her. When she finally got out of the car, Ruby waved and smiled at them, and they laughed some more.
The Crone’s block wasn’t one of the more gentrified blocks of Harlem, and it seemed to Ruby that her white face was drawing attention as she walked slowly, looking at the building numbers. It reminded her of the time she and Ed had looked at a crumbling brownstone for sale in the heart of Bedford-Stuyvesant. It was a gorgeous old building with soaring ceilings, ornate moldings, and wide-plank floors. A little bit of hard work would have restored it to its former glory. But as Ruby and Ed walked down the block, everyone stared at their white faces. Ruby didn’t feel unsafe, but she didn’t want to live like that, sticking out as the white girl. That seemed a few lifetimes ago. A lifetime when Ruby had felt sure of Ed and of what was between them.
Ruby found The Crone’s building, a brownstone that had seen better decades and coincidentally resembled the one she and Ed had looked at in Bed-Stuy. The stoop’s steps were chipped, and weeds were sprouting from holes where a railing had once been. There were three old-fashioned doorbells. None marked. Ruby couldn’t decide which she wanted to do least, use the cell phone to call The Crone or ring all three doorbells and invoke ire from strangers. She opted for calling The Crone even though she thought it might give the woman a last-minute chance to back out.
The Crone grunted a hello, then grunted again when Ruby told her she was downstairs. A few moments later, a boxy woman lumbered to the door.
“Hiya,” she greeted Ruby.
“Hello, I’m Ruby.” Ruby tried to sound sweet.
“So I gathered.” The Crone emitted a short, sharp, barking sound that Ruby guessed was a laugh. “I’m Millie.”
Millie was about Ruby’s height, five-four, but considerably wider. Her dark, dense hair was cropped close to her head, her eyebrows were bushy, and she had no lips to speak of. Not that you’d want to speak of them if they’d been there. She was wearing a huge purple T-shirt over a pair of red sweatpants. The Crone’s enormous breasts hung down to her waist.
“What can I do for ya, Ruby?” The Crone asked as she ushered Ruby into a dark, narrow hallway.
“I want to talk to you about Jody.” Ruby followed The Crone up a set of stairs.
“Doesn’t everyone,” The Crone said.
“Really?”
“You and that fuckwad husband of hers. I guess that’s why he sent you. He knew he wasn’t getting nothin’ out of me.”
Ruby could hear Millie’s breath coming in quick gasps. Even the modest effort of climbing the stairs was winding her.
“And don’t tell Jody I used a double negative, will ya?”
Ruby laughed.
“She doesn’t like me coming off like a moron,” Millie said. “I always told her, if someone wants to pigeonhole me based on my using double negatives, that’s their business. I’m not big on appearances.”
They reached the top of the stairs where a door stood ajar. The Crone shuffled into the apartment ahead. The floors were lovely old wood parquet, and a chandelier hung from the ceiling. The walls were painted blood red, making the place seem vaguely threatening. Ruby followed The Crone into a living room crammed with droopy, expensive-looking furniture. Two old-fashioned French windows looked out over a large garden. The place was pretty but oppressive.
“Make yourself comfortable.” The Crone motioned toward a red couch that matched the walls, then sat down in an armchair opposite Ruby.
“So Jody’s on the lam?” The Crone said.
“Yeah. Tobias can’t find her,” Ruby said.
“What’d she do, take the kidnapping money and run?”
“Oh, so you know?”
“Sure. Jody tells me everything. Well, just about. She didn’t tell me she was gonna take off with the money. But I could have predicted it. She looked like she was well on her way to an episode.”
“Episode?”
“Fugue. Mental fugue. She gets a little lost sometimes. Little mini-breakdowns. She spirals and gets so low she can’t move. Hard to say what brings it on, though in this case probably the husband pulling this stunt.”
“Do you know where she might have gone?”
“Probably,” said The Crone, slitting her eyes. “Remains to be seen if I tell you about it though.”
“Ah,” Ruby said. “What is it you do?” Ruby heard it pop out of her mouth. Sometimes she wished she had a few seconds’ warning before she found herself asking questions like this.
“Do?” The Crone looked peeved. “You mean what’s an old white lesbian doing living in a really nice apartment in the heart of a black neighborhood?”
“Something like that,” Ruby said, deciding she might actually like The Crone.
“I’ve done it all, darlin’,” The Crone said. “Right now, I work for the CF Foundation. Cystic fibrosis. I had a kid sister died of it way back when. As for Harlem, my girlfriend’s black. This is her place.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Ruby said, “about your sister I mean.”
“It’s okay. I’m over it,” The Crone said.
Ruby smiled benignly and was about to ask The Crone if she had Jody’s keys, when one of the most beautiful women Ruby had ever seen walked into the room. The woman moved fluidly, barely touching the ground. A pink cotton sundress exploded against her dark skin, and her black hair trailed in slender dreadlocks down her back. She came to perch on the arm of The Crone’s chair and smiled a small, curious smile.
“Babe, this is Ruby, friend of Jody’s. Ruby, this is Felicia, my wife,” The Crone said.
Felicia’s smile expanded, revealing a row of tiny, perfect teeth. She arched one eyebrow in Ruby’s direction.
“Nice to meet you,” Ruby said.
“How do you do?” Felicia said, coming over to Ruby to formally extend her hand.
Ruby shook the hand, taking a moment to marvel over exactly how stubby and white her own hand looked next to Felicia’s. Ruby glanced over at The Crone’s hands. They were tiny and puffy. She could almost imagine coarse black hairs sprouting from the palms.
“I’ll leave you two to talk,” Felicia said, turning and floating out of the room. She was presumably out of earshot when The Crone perked up. “How’d an old bag like me land a delicious piece of ass like that?” she asked, winking at Ruby. “I guess the gods like me,” she shrugged and laughed, making herself jiggle.
Ruby laughed back and decided she really did like this Crone, who reminded Ruby of a forlorn young woman she’d had a lesbian encounter with in her early twenties. The woman, Matilda, had been exactly as physically attractive as The Crone. Which is to say, not at all. To this day Ruby, who didn’t possess strong same-sex longings to begin with, had never figured out exactly what had possessed her to have sex with Matilda. But whatever it was, it probably went a long way in explaining how The Crone was doing very nicely for herself.
“So. You’re a detective?” The Crone asked.
“No. I just agreed to look for Jody.”
“What’s wrong with that fucking Toby?” Millie burst out. “He never does anything right. No offense, little girl, but you don’t look especially capable of going out to hunt someone’s stray wife. Particularly not this stray wife.”
“I can take care of myself,” Ruby shrugged.
“I don’t doubt that.” The Crone winked so violently Ruby wondered if she had an eye disorder. “But you’ll have to agree that Tobias should have hired someone who’s actually in the business of finding people who don’t want to be found.”
“I just want to know if you can point me in the right direction,” Ruby said, feeling very tired. �
�Tobias says you have keys to the brownstone. He’d like me to start by looking there.”
“She’s not there. I’m sure she’s in Pennsylvania,” The Crone said as if it ought to be obvious to anyone.
“Pennsylvania?”
“Trout Falls. She’s got a little cabin there. I guess she never told the husband about it just in case she needed an escape. She’s like that. Always keeping something secret. Part of why it didn’t work out with me and her.” The Crone’s voice had grown distant, coming at Ruby from a couple of decades earlier. “Though part of it was the woman just likes cock too much to make it as a dyke.”
Ruby winced.
“Sorry there, little girl.” The Crone winked again. “Definitely more information than you needed. But yeah. Trout Falls. Even money she’s there.”
“Is there a phone number there? She’s not answering her cell.”
“She probably threw it in the river. And no, no phone down there that I know of. The woman hates phones.”
“She does?”
“Sure does,” The Crone said.
“Oh,” Ruby said. She felt slightly cheated. She was pretty sure she’d complained to Jody about her own hatred of telephones. But The Psychiatrist had never let on that she felt the same way. Of course, at this point it was clear that there was a whole lot Ruby didn’t know about Jody Ray. Hatred of telephones was definitely the least of it.
The Crone fished through the drawer of a writing desk, found an address book, and gave Ruby the address of Jody’s Trout Falls hideaway.
“Got no idea where in Pennsylvania the place is though, girl. You’re on your own. And here,” she added, producing a key ring from a pocket in her sweatpants, “here’s the key to Jody’s apartment. Be my guest—go on over. You ain’t gonna find her there though.”
“Thanks,” Ruby said, a little surprised. She’d expected a little more fight from Millie before surrendering the information and the key.
“I’d love to chat with you all day,” Millie said, “but I gotta go to work soon.”
“Of course.” Ruby got to her feet. “Thanks, Millie.”
“I guess this will be one more reason for Jody to be pissed at me.” Millie sighed. “I don’t like that creepy husband one bit, but Jody’s gotta stop running at some point. And she could be in trouble,” The Crone said a little ominously. “You seem like a nice enough girl. Go find her. Make her face reality.”
Ruby wanted to remind The Crone that, as Jody’s patient, it wasn’t really Ruby’s job to make her psychiatrist face reality. Instead, she smiled.
“It was nice to meet you, toots,” The Crone said. “Good luck with this.”
“You too,” Ruby said. “And thanks for all your help.”
“Not a problem.” The Crone winked one last time, then closed the door after Ruby.
Ruby went down the stairs two at a time. She needed air. Badly.
It was humid outside and low-slung gray clouds crowded the sky. Ruby stood at the top of the stoop for a few seconds, gulping in air, but there really wasn’t anything to gulp. She felt woozy. She debated between a cigarette and a Fireball, decided on the latter, and fished one from her pocket. She popped the candy into her mouth and started walking toward her car. And then felt something. A little shiver down her back. She turned around and saw a black-haired man walking a few feet behind her. Ruby looked right at the guy and registered something intensely familiar. Not good familiar. She stopped in her tracks. The guy kept his eyes down as he walked right past her. Ruby watched him disappear around a corner. She slowly walked to her car. She looked left and right then unlocked the Mustang and got in.
It took her a good five minutes, but Ruby was finally pulling out of the parking spot when she heard a squealing sound and her car lurched unnaturally forward. Ruby’s chest banged into the steering wheel, winding her. She gasped for air then looked into her rearview mirror, where she saw a blue Honda with a dark-haired man at the wheel. Ruby opened her door to get out, saw the Honda backing up, and realized it was going to try running her over. She jumped onto the sidewalk in time to see the Honda plow into the spot where she’d been standing, nicking her car door in the process.
“Hey, motherfucker!” some girl yelled on Ruby’s behalf.
Ruby glanced at the license plate as the blue Honda sped away, but her eyesight wasn’t the greatest and all she saw were the first two letters, BK.
“Did you see that shit?” A young woman, the one who’d called Ruby’s attacker a motherfucker, had rushed over to Ruby’s side. “That fucking guy was trying to hit you!”
Ruby was flooded with adrenaline. She collapsed onto the lip of the sidewalk, held her head between her hands for a moment, and took a few deep breaths.
“You okay?” The girl had come to sit next to Ruby.
She glanced at the tough-looking young girl. The girl was wearing a muscle-T showing skinny arms.
“Yeah, I’m all right,” Ruby said. She put one hand to her breastbone. She still felt a little funny there, but not as though anything was broken or pierced.
“I’m calling the cops.” The girl had fished a cell phone from her pocket and was dialing.
“Thanks,” Ruby said.
As Ruby listened to the girl reporting the incident, she tried to make sense of what had happened.
“I’m Victoria,” the girl said after she’d closed her phone.
“Ruby. Thanks for calling the cops.” She shook Victoria’s hand.
“They should get here sometime next week.” Victoria smirked. “What was that all about? Someone trying to take you out?”
“It looked that way, didn’t it?” Ruby said. “But I don’t know why. I didn’t realize anyone had it in for me.”
“You piss off an ex-boyfriend or something?” Victoria asked. “I had one come after me in a car one time,” she added without waiting for Ruby’s answer. “Motherfucker didn’t even know how to drive. Got his auntie’s car and tried to run me down but hit a parked car instead. And all I’d done was tell him he wasn’t getting no pussy no more.”
“Some men don’t take that well,” Ruby said.
“No shit.” Victoria shook her head. Her long silky dreadlocks moved.
Normally, Ruby thought dreadlocks looked stupid on white people. In spite of being blond, Victoria somehow pulled it off.
Victoria didn’t seem to have anything better to do, and she hung around as Ruby inspected the Mustang. It had a serious dent but seemed structurally intact, as far as Ruby could tell.
The cops showed up after about fifteen minutes, by which time Ruby had heard most of Victoria’s sexual history. And it wasn’t pretty.
Ruby popped a Fireball, and one of the cops, a young Spanish guy with a spindly mustache, stared at Ruby’s mouth as she sucked the candy. Ruby spit the Fireball out. Both she and the cop watched it roll away into the gutter.
It was a long half hour while Ruby answered the cops’ questions and filled out forms. She knew she should mention that this wasn’t the first time she’d seen the blue Honda, but she didn’t. It would have led to too many additional questions she didn’t want to answer. When the police were done with her, they left her there, alone with Victoria, who didn’t seem to have anything better to do than hang around rubbernecking. Other passersby had come and gone, but Victoria hadn’t found a reason to leave and was sitting on the sidewalk near Ruby’s car.
“I guess I’m gonna get going,” Ruby told her.
Victoria shrugged. “Yeah. Well. Watch yourself, girl.”
“I will. Thanks for your help,” Ruby said. “You need a ride somewhere?” Ruby added, not expecting to be taken up on it.
“I wouldn’t mind,” Victoria said. “I’m late for work.”
“Oh.” Ruby couldn’t help expressing her surprise. “Where should I drop you?”
Victoria gave Ruby an address in the West Fifties. “I’m a stripper,” she added.
This was basically the last occupation Ruby would have pegged on the skin
ny, flat-chested woman.
“Good money,” Ruby said.
“You done it?”
“For about five minutes. I’m not much of an exhibitionist. I just felt naked.”
Victoria laughed.
“Yeah. Well I like it,” she said. “Gets me off taking those shit-heels’ money.”
They were in the car now, Ruby marveling over the fact that she was about to drive into the hideousness of Midtown traffic.
Victoria prattled on about men, stripping, and drinking, apparently her three favorite topics. This successfully kept Ruby from worrying so much about traffic. In twenty minutes, she was dropping Victoria outside the strip club.
“You ever want to come in, just ask for me. I’ll give you a free lap dance,” Victoria said.
“Oh,” Ruby said. “Thank you.” She wasn’t really sure how to interpret that one.
“My dancing name is Dazzle,” Victoria added before shutting the Mustang’s passenger door.
Ruby took a deep breath, then drove downtown.
Ruby circled Jody’s block on Charles Street for twenty minutes before finally getting a parking spot. She was tired, her head was throbbing, and she felt right at the edge of hysterics. She closed her eyes, rubbed her eyelids, then got out and locked the car.
Jody’s block was tree lined and packed with good-looking brownstones. It was very quiet, expensive quiet.
Ruby took out the keys The Crone had given her then tried two before getting the front door open. Jody occupied the two bottom floors, with a tenant at the top. Ruby entered through the garden-level door. The huge apartment was as beautiful as Ruby had expected. The ceilings were high, even on the lower floor. The dark wood floors were gorgeous; the furniture was tasteful and timeless. Even the carefully selected antique light fixtures were perfect. Ruby wanted to move in. To assume the lovely life that went with it. Only that life didn’t appear to be quite as lovely as Ruby had once thought.
Ruby went into the bathroom, threw water on her face, and peed. She still felt horrible, and when her explorations of the apartment led her to the bedroom, she sprawled out on the immense bed. It was soft, very soft.
