Dead is the New Black (33 page)

Then, she surprised herself by putting her arm around Stu’s waist and squeezing. His arm went around her shoulder, and the feeling was at once comforting and disconcerting. She had a date with Jeremy on Friday, and having her arm around Stu felt like cheating. Or was the Friday date cheating?

Ruby would tell her not to get ahead of herself, but she was busy trading breakup stories with Nadal.

“So,” Stu said, and Laura braced herself for some relationship talk she wasn’t ready for—not until Saturday morning. “Sheldon’s getting tried for murder, you broke up a counterfeiting ring, and you’re unemployed.”

“Marginally employed.”

“Any other plans for the week? Like taking down the mob? Or Middle East peace talks in your apartment? We’ll call it Camp Carnegie.”

“You’re too good for that joke.”

“I’ll let you take me out to dinner.”

“I might,” she said, her mouth running ahead of her morals. “Can it wait until after the show? Next week?”

She didn’t know what she would do if her dinner with Jeremy went well. She’d just have to cancel with Stu and tell him she was taken. But until then, for a few days, she’d have neither, and both.

CHAPTER 33.

Laura awoke early with a mouth full of cotton and a brain that felt like a lead weight. The night had ended only a few hours before. The four of them had hopped from bar, to diner, to bar, and she and Stu had made up a song called “Mainstream Dogs” as they ran down Fifth Avenue arm-in-arm. Ruby and Nadal had been in and out of the picture all night. Or she and Stu had dropped in and out. She couldn’t recall the details, only the tone, which for her was one of a last hurrah. A war cry before entering the breach. A held breath before the plunge.

So the hangover on Friday morning was kind of a letdown. She should have felt exhilarated. The show was happening because she had kept the office alive while Jeremy was gone. Pierre Sevion might have made a fake offer she didn’t know the source of, but he knew who she was, which was about ten steps above where she had been a month ago. And she had a date with Jeremy. And Stu wouldn’t wait forever, but he’d wait a few days.

She took two of something strong, chose an outfit slightly dressier than she might on a normal day, and got out the door.

Everything in the design room—desks, boxes, racks, bookshelves—was pushed against the walls except for the sewing machines, which clattered and buzzed like drills at a construction site. Garment racks hunched in the center of the room, each with a piece of paper taped to the end with a model’s name Sharpied across it. On each rack hung complete outfits zip-tied together at the necks of the hooks, with necklaces, purses, shoes and assorted doodads in a plastic bag looped onto the zip-tie—Jeremy’s special method to keep the bottoms and tops from separating in the chaos. The hangers were in order, with the hanger behind the giraffe’s name for the opening of the show, and the hanger at the other end for the finale. Each giraffe had about three outfits, and, on average, six minutes to change, have their makeup checked by a stylist, pout, act entitled, and get onto the runway.

Laura, Tiffany, Chilly, and a handful of interns swarmed around, moving outfits, accessorizing hangers, checking and double-checking, because one skirt out of order meant the wrong thing on the runway. Or, worse, an empty runway while a giraffe got out of her outfit and into the correct one.

Laura barely had a chance to finish half of her coffee. She put it on her desk, then didn’t take another sip. Every time she craved it, she was hanging or steaming or doing some other hand-intensive chore. The headache gathered like a thundercloud.

The racks were pushed out the wooden doors by Yoni’s desk, and into the freight elevator. Olly was having a busy day, but recognized Laura immediately, which perturbed her. She was certainly no more memorable a face than Sheldon. But the worry fled, as she watched a month of labor get wheeled into the back of a truck, to be driven two miles, up Seventh, into the guts of Central Park.

Laura went back up to gather her things. She was one of the last ones, and so the only one to see that André’s desk had been cleared of everything but a stapler and a box. She approached cautiously. The computer was off. The box was sealed poorly and hand-delivered, judging from the lack of stamps. Laura peeked and found about ten yards of Delphi green twill, enough for maybe five shirts. She slid open a drawer. Empty. Another drawer. Nothing but a handful of pattern hooks.

“Are you coming?” Tiffany asked, holding a box of look books and programs. “They’re going to like, freak out if we’re not there.”

“What happened to André?”

Tiffany shrugged. “Maybe they moved him to a new desk?”

“Did you see him this morning?”

“Yes. Now, can we go before he kills me? I have his books.” She indicated the box in her arms.

Laura helped Tiffany to the elevators. With her arms full of look books, she’d forgotten she usually had something warm and comforting in them. “Dammit, I left my coffee on my desk.”

“Do you want to go back and get it?” It was a borderline rhetorical question. The elevator doors were closing, and Laura didn’t have a hand to spare. She huffed and did without.

Chaos.

People everywhere. Mink, fox, and sable coats. Cashmere. Supple leather and sparkly accessories. Laura muscled through the press of dead animals and lit cigarettes, phone pressed to her ear as she listened to Buchanan’s voice mail. She left a quick message about André and his pattern hooks before some cashmere-clad elbow found her cheek and made her hang up.

Tiffany stood at the front gate with her arms full of look books. Typically, André handed out the books, as he was on the front line between the store buyers and the design team. He took the orders and managed the relationships. Not Tiffany.

“Where’s André?” Laura shouted over the din, feeling as if she’d just asked that question. Tiffany shrugged and looked at her watch. The show started in an hour. The doors opened in forty minutes.

Backstage stank of hair spray, cigarettes, and steam. The stylists readied their boxes of makeup and hair slime. Jeremy was all about smooth and glossy this season, with every girl’s hair blackened and slicked back. Even the blondes were going brunette.

Mom was employed at a regular rate to do any hand-basting and alterations necessary at the last moment and, as Laura watched her manage a skirt hem with nimble fingers and a calm demeanor, she hoped she could be just like her when she grew up.

Jeremy was head model wrangler, as he called his contacts to find out what they had been doing the night before, and where they were at this very moment. They were all accounted for, working the afternoon shows, relatively sober and healthy. They drifted in, bringing their cigarette stench with them, and Jeremy gave them a double kiss and acted as though everything was already going smoothly, giving comments on the hair and nails they wore from the previous shows. He inspired confidence and security, and the giraffes, who generally felt that the success of the entire show rested on their shoulders, loved him for it. They swarmed around him tightly before dispersing to the makeup tables. Laura couldn’t look, because she found herself watching Thomasina a little too closely, even though nothing in what she or Jeremy did should have raised an ounce of suspicion. They were models. They gaggled. It’s what women did when their brains were disengaged from their work.

Noë was among the missing. She had called an hour earlier to assure Jeremy that, even though she would miss a couple of shows in the morning, possibly ruining her reputation, she would make his by hook or crook. She wouldn’t say where she was, or why she was missing one of the two most important mornings of the year. But she swore she’d be there.

“And none of the agencies have a girl who’s five-seven?” Laura asked.

Jeremy shook his head. “Have you ever seen a runway model that short besides Noë?” His patience ran as shallow as his breathing. And she had to agree that, in her five years, she had seen no such thing. Noë was borderline midget.

It took her a second of staring at Noë’s rack for a solution to come to her. It was a poor solution at best, and would create rumblings and fussing. There would be talk of how you couldn’t just pluck anyone out of the world and put them on a runway, because you needed to know how to walk, and how to look, and how to wear the clothes so that they didn’t wear you. And how one girl with the wrong stride could ruin a show. The word “attitude” would come up a thousand times.

Jeremy was at the opening to the runway, peeking out. Half the audience was seated already, and the first models due out were already lining up. Above them, a handwritten sign they all swore they obeyed, but never did, or forgot how to, read: SMILE!

And Laura knew someone who could smile, if nothing else.

“Jeremy!” He turned to her. He looked like hell. “I know someone who can take Noë’s rack.”

All the giraffes pretended they weren’t listening.

“Get her.”

“Don’t you want to know who it is?”

“No,” he said, peeking out again. “Just get her.”

Laura looked for Ruby in the crowd. She entered the press of flesh, noise, and tanning creams while texting furiously:

—
Need u in back
—

The response came in less than a second —
why?
—

—
Where are u?
—

—
nosebleeds
— Laura looked up. Her phone vibrated again. —
why?
—

She spotted Ruby, typing on her cell phone and glad-handing someone at the same time. Laura waved and, when Ruby saw her, she apologized to whomever she was talking to and headed down.

Laura grabbed her by the upper arm and pulled her to the back.

“Ow!”

“This is the best thing that ever happened to you,” Laura said. “I dare you to complain.”

“What am I complaining about? Besides the bruises on my arm?”

Laura loosened her grip. The Amanda gown was sleeveless. “You’re walking, that’s what.” When Laura looked back at Ruby, she realized her sister had no idea what she was talking about. “We’re short a model, and you’re it, skinny bones.”

“No way!” Ruby said, yanking herself from Laura.

“Are you saying you can’t do it? Because I have never heard that out of your mouth.”

“I can’t just do something without being prepared. I mean, there have to be a hundred models in the audience, why can’t you—”

“Negotiate a contract in fifteen minutes? Forget it. This is you. You owe me.”

“For what?”

Laura heard her name and knew the voice—Detective Cangemi. She had no time for him now. “For Frank Yaris, Bennet Mattewich, Hank Dunbar, and the other five or six I can’t even remember right now.”

Ruby’s face darkened, and Laura knew there were at least three thefts of ex-boyfriends, dates, and crushes Ruby had kept to herself over the years. Laura heard Cangemi again and saw his tuft of sandy hair between two shoulders. She had to stay ahead of him. He’d likely want to drag her to the precinct again. Laura and Ruby looked at each other and knew what to do.

Ruby pushed Laura to the back. They dodged behind a mink coat, a pashmina wrap, a pink poodle, and leather “it” bags the size of Thanksgiving turkeys. Laura pulled Ruby behind sometimes, and sometimes Ruby pulled her. Then, they came to a blockage, a group huddled in secrets and silicone. Botoxed faces shiny with makeup and stretched skin. Hair primped to perfection. Five of them, and their entitled posture told Laura they weren’t moving for the likes of her.

The only clear way to the back was on the runway. Laura stepped up to the stage and ran the rest of the way, returning a wave from Pierre Sevion a second before she made it to the changing room.

Ruby slammed into Jeremy.

Laura took a breath. “We need to measure her.”

Jeremy looked Ruby up and down as though kicking her tires. The giraffes within earshot did much the same. Thomasina giggled derisively.

“She’s half an inch big in the bust,” Jeremy said. “Could be worse. Dress her and get her in line.”

Laura pulled Ruby into a makeup chair and told the assistant stylist, a quiet, skinny guy in his forties named Manny, “Go.”

Manny went, dragging a brush across Ruby’s head without so much as a how-do-you-do. Ruby cried out, and Laura stood in front of her.

“I don’t know how to walk!” Ruby shrieked. “This is crazy.”

“Ruby, you are gorgeous. Just being you, you’ll knock them dead from contrast alone. You’re the normal girl in the lineup, even though you’re not. Around these women, you are. So I need you to do this. You go out. Walk to the end. Pause—”

Ruby cut her off. “I’ve seen shows before.”

“I’m in charge of your rack. So you come right to me, and I’ll help you change. Mom’s here, so if you don’t want me, she can help you. You have six minutes between walks. And you have three exits.”

Ruby still looked confused as Manny put the black in her hair.

“And,” Laura said, taking a deep breath, “you have the big finale in Mom’s gown. It’s all you. So put a smile on your kisser.”

Ruby looked at herself in the mirror, as Manny did the best he could in the short time he had. Behind them, the music started.