Part 25 (1/2)

They decided to stick together by dint of the fact that there was a psychopath around, and both Laura and Stu had p.i.s.sed him off in the recent past.

”Everyone saw her last at Ricardo Ofenhelb,” Ruby said. ”It was in the same tent as we had ours.”

The tent was close by, and they stood outside, hearing the music thumpity-thump inside and seeing the security guard who was done checking tickets, but not done keeping people out.

They collectively decided, without speaking about it, to go around to the back.

Voices came from behind the fence. A woman said, ”You don't cross me, and you don't threaten me. You don't get in my G.o.dd.a.m.n way.”

Stu opened the gate, and the voice stopped. Just as she was about to head in, Laura rammed face first into Rowena, who was running like a bat out of h.e.l.l in one of Jeremy's calf-length dresses for Fall.

”Sorry, I have to go!” Rowena tried to move toward the bandsh.e.l.l, but Ruby got in her way. After they slammed together, they paused and seemed to wonder what the other knew about their intentions. Rowena snapped out of it first, trying to get around Ruby.

”No, you don't,” Ruby said and tackled the model with blunt force from her shoulder.

Rowena fell into the mud. Laura cringed at the soiling of Jeremy's seventy-seven dollar a yard (plus duty) fabric. ”You killed her.” Rowena was apparently not concerned with the fabric or with the accusation because she grabbed Ruby's ankle and twisted, sending her flying, then scrambled to her feet while her opponent was still stunned in shock at being felled so easily.

Laura was about to jump in when she heard Stu call her name from behind the gate.

She glanced at Ruby, who had Rowena down again and was using all the fighting skills she'd learned in the back alleys of h.e.l.l's Kitchen to keep the model down. Laura knew her cast made her useless, so she ran to check on Stu, who was picking Penelope Sidewinder up from a gra.s.sless patch behind the generator.

”She's not good,” he said.

Laura ran back to Ruby, who had wrestled Rowena to the ground, belly down, and had one arm at the small of her back. ”Why? Why did you kill her?” Ruby cried for her lost lover, twisting Rowena's elbow until she screamed.

The model saw Laura and said, ”Get her off me. Jeremy starts in seven minutes. Come on. I was calling the cops when I saw Penelope was sick.”

”Why?” Ruby twisted again.

”I didn't.”

”You did,” Laura said. ”She was just one peg above you and the same measurements, and when Penelope came after you for being underage, you had to take her out, too. You're just too ambitious, Rowena.”

”Like you're one to talk,” Rowena said.

Laura swung her cast around and clocked the model in the head.

CHAPTER 25.

Laura didn't put any distance between herself and the police until midnight. Apparently, the fact that Rowena ”allegedly” killed Thomasina and ”allegedly” almost killed Penelope Sidewinder didn't play into Laura's favor, nor did the fact that Rowena was sixteen, meaning she'd a.s.saulted a child. Cangemi read her her rights with no little relish. Then Uncle Graham had slowly (to her) and methodically (to him) secured her release.

She was approaching the train station and so very tired when Jeremy called.

”You didn't come,” he said. She heard noise and music on his end. Must be a party. Must be swell.

”I was keeping Rowena Churchill from your show. I'm sorry.”

”She was in a secondary set anyway. Where are you?”

”Outside the Times Square Station.”

”Meet me at my place, would you?”

Twenty-Fourth Street and Second Avenue used to be a haven for drug addicts and prost.i.tutes until the artists moved in during the 1970s with their plants and their handy habits and their eyes for making things pretty and nice. Jeremy had told her all about the place over five years of early-morning coffee. The building had been a chair factory until it went out of business for all the usual reasons and had been sold for fixture fees floor-by-floor over the next seven years. Jeremy moved in after Catherine Cayhill had departed, leaving paint blobs on the wood floor, a loft contraption that had to be dismantled, and windows so lovingly kept that light streamed in unfettered.

The lobby harkened back to the industrial roots of the building with exposed brick and aesthetically chipping paint, big lights hanging from the thirty-foot ceiling, and exposed vent work. The elevator was an automatic job, but the bra.s.s fixtures from the days of elevator men stayed, as well as the exposed wood frame of the freight lift. She thought it amazing that a perfectly functioning elevator could still be scary in the twenty-first century, but there it was, creaking as if the co-op board had paid more for that extra bit of tension in the ride, which Laura didn't need at all. Not even a little. Because she was going to see Jeremy St. James on a social call, which was enough to give her a heart attack. No one was ever invited to Jeremy's place. Business a.s.sociates who had known him for years complained they'd never seen his fabulous loft.

She looked down at her outfit: striped maxi, black blouse, and a cast in a dark pink sling. It had been a long day.

The hall was short and had only two doors. She went to the one with the welcome mat. She stood at the door and waited. Breathed. Put her fist up to knock. Dropped it. Touched the red door. She steeled herself to knock, and Jeremy opened the door before her knuckles even touched it.

The top three b.u.t.tons of his s.h.i.+rt were undone, revealing a little black hair on his chest. He pressed a phone between his ear and shoulder, and the fact that he was distracted, yet still had his eyes on her rendered her speechless. He motioned her in, and she tried to smile when she walked past him because she thought she was going to stop breathing.

She saw immediately why she'd never known anyone who'd been to the loft. Yes, it was gorgeous in all the usual ways. It had a huge open s.p.a.ce with perfectly managed furniture, fat, full-color art books in the bookcases, and a fully functional kitchen that looked out into the bigger room. Just-right drapes in an inconsequential color because of the beauty of the texture hung over factory-sized windows. Exactly-as-they-should-be area rugs in the right plums and mosses lay on the cement floor. Not-too-warm-or-cool lighting illuminated the right knickknacks everywhere. Everything was so perfect that the thing that was wrong stuck out like a mutton chop sleeve on a dropped shoulder. Vents in ugly, flat white vinyl, horrible louvered things blasting white noise, marred the walls, so many she couldn't count them. Two were cut into the floors that she could see below, and above, she saw big vents ducting on the ceiling. By a doorway, she spotted a control panel with blinking lights and approached it cautiously.

”Look,” Jeremy said into the phone, ”every season you treat me right, and I'm grateful, but I think this way it would help both of us. It's where we can test new technologies. It fills out the high end side of the brand.”

Laura glanced back at him, and he held up a wine gla.s.s, giving her a quizzical look. He was asking her if she wanted wine. G.o.d, it was too much. She was going to hurl herself out the window, but she nodded instead.

The blinking control panel was about the size of a sheet of paper and had a label that read Aire-pur 2100. There were b.u.t.tons, dials, and little gauges with numbers she didn't understand.

”Yes, that's what I want. You let me know if you need any more information. I'm always here for you.” He clicked the phone and dropped it on the counter. ”Sorry about that. I couldn't be at the party another second. Too many people.”

She drifted over to the kitchen area, where he was rummaging around under the counters, wondering if he had to be there to be with her, or if it was the Aire-pur 2100 he needed.

”I don't have anything decent,” he said. ”I had no time this week.” He held out two bottles by the necks. The labels were a color, and they had words on them. And the humming of the machines drilled her brain and the salted smell of him was so close she wanted to close her eyes so she could breathe it in just a little deeper.

But she had to choose. Light label or dark. Smooth curve at the neck or not. Both blackened red. She looked at his hands on them and noticed the callous inside his right thumb where scissors rested as he cut thousands of yards of fabric. Before he was anyone. Before the shows. Before Gracie, probably. She reached out and touched his hand, looking for the place on his index finger where pins were pushed to cut, to drape, to sew, to bring dimension to flat fabric. And he let her. He let her touch his hand.

He put the bottles down, because who cared, really, which wine she wanted? And she didn't want wine. She wanted to look at his hands and touch the rough spots, and she did something that surprised her because one, she never imagined she'd be actually doing it. Two, she never made a conscious decision to lift his hand to her lips and kiss the cutting callous inside his thumb. But she did.

It was wildly forward for her, and it opened a floodgate. As her lips touched his hand, he grazed his face against her neck. Her knees went from under her, and he put his arm around her waist to hold her up. Was that why she had come? Yes, she knew it right away. It was what she came for and what he invited her for. It didn't feel ugly, but like the natural culmination of their friends.h.i.+p, finally.

They banged into furniture that had seemed so spa.r.s.e a minute ago, with him steering her toward a room behind a closed door. My G.o.d, she thought, the bedroom. It was happening. With Jeremy. Happening. She doubted she could stop, pause, or slow it, but she had to.

”Jeremy?”

”Don't worry.”

”No, Jeremy, really.”

He had her pressed up against the doorjamb with her legs around his waist and his face buried in her neck, when he whispered, ”I can't have kids, from the CF. Don't worry.”

She wasn't thinking about that at all, though she knew she should have been.