Part 3 (1/2)
CHAPTER 3.
Ruby was a perfect grouch when Laura met her outside the precinct. She could tell as soon as her sister grumbled a h.e.l.lo.
”You okay?”
”Yeah, I'm fine. I've been in the precinct for hours, and all they gave me to eat was donuts. They treated me like I was a criminal or something.” Ruby ran to the next subject like flipping through a magazine of things that bothered her. ”And Thomasina, she's dead. Oh, man, I really am going to miss her. She was such a good friend.” Ruby stopped walking as if grief took the coordination right out of her.
”I'm sorry, Ruby. I know what she meant to you.”
”No, you don't.” Ruby put her head down and walked faster, then abruptly stopped. ”She has a shoot with us tomorrow.”
”Rowena's doing it,” Laura said.
”You replaced her?”
”Yeah! Lucky thing because-”
”Who made you? Did you hatch?”
”What? It'd cost a fortune to cancel.”
”I'm going home.” Ruby stormed toward the subway.
Laura tried to follow, but found herself falling behind. ”You're going to Isosceles with Pierre and Bob,” she cried. ”Pierre needs you to be nice.”
”No.” Ruby stopped before descending the stairs. ”I cannot deal with meaningless talk right now. I can't talk about money and clothes and stuff that doesn't matter. So you go, okay? Can you go for me?” Laura caught up, and Ruby took her lapels, pulling down as if to drag her to the sidewalk. ”Please. Go for me. All you have to do is make sure Bob's wife stays out of it, okay? Just whatever he wants her to do, say no and you're good.”
Laura had never met Ivanah Schmiller face to face, so she'd never come upon that rule, and she had no idea how to enforce it.
”Please,” Ruby implored, ”I'll do something so nice for you.”
”You have to go. Pierre said.”
Ruby stopped talking as they went into the subway. Her face was dark and closed, lips pursed, eyes slightly scrunched. When they got past the turnstiles, Laura headed for the stairwell to the uptown platform, and Ruby went toward the downtown, where a train rumbled into the station.
”Ruby!”
”I'm going home.”
”You can't!” Laura shouted over the noise of the train. She followed Ruby and grabbed her sleeve, but her sister yanked herself free without even looking back and got onto the downtown R before the doors snapped shut. Laura watched the train pull out of the station.
Ruby sat in a window seat and put her head in her hands.
Laura returned to the showroom to find Corky in a huff.
”I need someone here,” he said. ”I'm not an octopus.” He held up the Rye and Rockland blouses, rocking them back and forth to ill.u.s.trate how hard it was to take things off and put them on the racks at the same time.
”I'm sorry. Is anyone else coming?”
”Unlikely.” He threw himself into a chair and took out a cigarette.
”You are not lighting that in here,” she said.
”Ruby and I had a whole shtick set up. I can't shtick by myself.”
”She'll be back tomorrow. She's just having drama time.” Laura looked around for something to do, but everything seemed in pretty good order. ”Where are the shoes?”
”Back behind.” He waved his cigaretted hand. ”I had no time.”
Back behind were the words used to describe the sliver of storage s.p.a.ce behind the display cubbies. It only held one rack and probably violated every safety code in the book. She went back behind and found hangers askew on the bar of the rack, tangled in waterfalls of grabby knots. She hated hangers. If she could reinvent them, she would, but had no better arrangement.
”Did you not show any of these styles?”
”Yeah, because when they came back late from the Ghetto, I had time to steam them, put them out, and pimp them by myself.”
”You're being a real snot.”
He got up and helped her yank out the rack from back behind. Hangers clacked, bent, dropped, and pulled the clothes out of shape. The shoes were tangled in boxes on the bottom two bars, and one box spilled rented Louboutins all over the floor. She bent to retrieve them.
”I have to get these back before dinner or they start dinging our deposit.” She paired them off and put them on the table.
Corky, for all his huffiness, was the picture of helpfulness, and they had the first box sorted in record time. He pulled the s...o...b..xes from the top of the cabinet and packed while she untangled the hangers.
A phone buzzed.
Laura and Corky sprang into action, rifling through bags and pockets for their personal devices. After checking her phone, she dropped it back in her bag, then saw Corky sliding his own back into his front pocket.
But a phone definitely buzzed. They looked at each other, then around the room as though they were in a haunted house and had just heard a phantom behind the picture frame.
”It's by the rack!” Corky exclaimed.
The buzz stopped a second after she located the source in a box of shoes under the rack. At the bottom of the box was a leather Lacroix tote with uptrending bellows pockets all over it.
”Cute,” he said. ”One of the girls, probably.”
”Should I open it?”
”No, you should leave it and let it draw the owner here by the power of Christian Lacroix.”
She rolled her eyes and opened the bag. It was spanking clean. Amazing. Not a dustball, wadded-up tissue, a hair, a crumb, or even a book of old, useless matches. In comparison, her bag looked like a repository of human detritus.
She located a jar of lavender face cream (no label), a worn leather wallet (no brand, oddly), a cellphone (the latest), a notebook, and a bag of makeup. ”It's the wallet or the cellphone. Which is less intrusive?”
”Oh, honey, be intrusive. The cellphone.”
She opened the wallet. It was old style, with a little folder for pictures and cards, a billfold, and a display for credit cards. She slipped a black American Express card out of the pocket. ”Sabine Fosh. Jewish? Did we have any Jewish girls?”
”Only Catholics,” he joked, bagging and boxing shoes like a factory worker.