A Dress to Die For (14 page)

“Welcome,” Poly Print said, indicating a table.

They sat.

“What the hell was that?” Laura asked.

“I’d forgotten about it until he said it,” Mom said. “It’s like a secret handshake, and just so you know, these people are weird about touching unless they know you.”

“That explains the thing about the interior of the dress, right?” Laura said.

Mom nodded and opened her menu.

“What the hell is this?” Jimmy asked, looking at his menu.

“I’ll just get drinks,” Mom said. She seemed on edge, and Laura didn’t know if it was Jimmy’s presence or her proximity to the cause of her twenty-year-old hurt.

Poly Print opened a back door a crack and said something into the back room in another language. Laura craned her neck to see what was in the room, but the door shut immediately.

Poly Print came back to them. “Anything?”

“We’ll have a liter of the Sandavo,” Mom said, handing the menu back.

“Milk?” Poly Print asked.

Mom glanced at Jimmy, then Laura. “Just one for me.”

Poly Print nodded and went to the bar. As Laura’s gaze followed him, she saw that they were being watched by just about everyone, surreptitiously and otherwise. Most of the patrons were middle-aged men, with a couple of women thrown in. Laura was the youngest person in the room, for sure.

“So,” Jimmy said, “now what, Miss Detective?” He wore a bemused expression, as if she were a student and he was a teacher wielding the Socratic method like a crowbar.

“Someone in the back room has been told we’re here. I hope we get to drink before whoever it is comes out to talk to us. I could use it.”

Poly Print returned with a tray containing a carafe of red liquid and three wine glasses, one of which had a splash of milk at the bottom. He laid them out and poured.

Mom’s turned pink. She held her glass up, saying, “Diversão.”

Laura and Jimmy toasted and sipped. The wine was sticky sweet and caramel-flavored, but rich, as though there was a protein in there somewhere.

“Can I try it with the milk?” Laura asked.

Mom handed over her glass.

“I want a beer,” Jimmy said.

“They drop a shot of wine in the beer, too. Milk is optional,” Mom said.

Laura tasted the milk concoction and slid the glass back to Mom. “I don’t even want to know why it’s better with the milk.” She raised her hand to hail Poly Print.

Instead, a man who looked to be about eight feet tall, in a brown leather jacket that dragged on the floor, sat down. He slouched, leaning his shoulders on the back of the chair and thrusting his feet forward. His boots were snakeskin, cowboy-style, in vicious angles. Leather pants clung to his calves. Laura noticed every inch of him was covered with some kind of animal. The coat had a fur collar. His jerkin, and that was the only way she could describe it, was of the same leather as the pants and had an eagle painted on the front. All the edges were whipstitched in darker leather, as if the maker hadn’t known how to finish it properly so he just edged everything like an amateur and owned the shoddy workmanship. The man removed his hat, which was the same brown leather with feathers on the crown, and put it on his lap, tapping it with a dirty-nailed thumb. His hair draped over the fur collar of his coat, just as luxuriant and shiny. Laura recognized him from Mom’s photos of the Brunican entourage. He hadn’t aged a minute.

“May the high prince reign,” he said in the middle of an unmotivated grin.

“From a high place,” Laura said before Mom could. “Nice hat.”

Mom sat back and pursed her lips in what for all the world looked like an attempt not to give her face away. Laura kicked her, but Fur Collar had already seen it.

“It’s made by hand. The artisans of Brunico are world famous, of course.”

“Of course,” Mom said.

Fur Collar tilted his head, pushing his jaw forward and narrowing his eyes. Mom met his gaze, and they sat like that for a minute. Jimmy swirled his wine as if he hadn’t noticed anything at all, but when Laura gave him a quick glance, she saw a man paying great attention.

“Jocelyn,” Fur Collar said.

“Hello, Soso. Been a long time.”

They sat diagonal from each other, but the whole table was now owned by them.

“You look radiant as a sunset.”

“A tip to my age, Soso? Or it would be sunrise.”

“Noon couldn’t compete. My God, twenty years.”

As their conversation progressed, Laura scanned Mom’s photographs in her mind. She’d been so focused on Mom and Dad, and so drawn by the gravitational pull of the princess, that she hadn’t given much thought to the other members of the entourage. She definitely remembered a very tall man wearing leather pants and a vest. She could remember little else besides that and pickle-shaped eyebrows, which he raised when he turned to Laura.

“No,” Soso said. He looked back at Mom. “Can’t be.”

“It is.”

“Lala?”

“She prefers Laura.”

“Laura,” he said, “I am Soso Oseigh. I knew you when you were six years old. You told me my pants were too tight in the thigh.”

“They still are.”

“Laura!” Mom scolded.

But Soso laughed loudly enough to give her a start.

“Sorry,” Laura said. “It was too easy. It’s nice to meet you again. This is Jimmy. He’s a friend of ours.”

Jimmy nodded and tipped his glass.

Soso leaned toward Mom as if sharing gossip. “You’ve heard about the dress?
Her
dress? They put it up in a museum with the story right under it on a plaque. It’s disgusting.”

“Yes,” Mom said, raising her glass to her lips.

“We all thought it perished with her. I want to know who did this.”

Trying to keep Mom’s nose clean, Laura interjected, “I heard she took home an American man? And she continued to live with him? Maybe he had the dress?”

Soso tsked. “No. There was no American. Barnabas came back a month later. The only American to come back with us was...” He drifted off.

“Joseph,” Mom finished.

“A shame. A woman like you,” Soso said to Mom, and Laura caught Jimmy rolling his eyes. “We all felt sorry about what happened.”

Mom shrugged. “It was for the best.”

“So,” Laura said, “after you all got back, a couple of weeks later was the inauguration and this, like, bloodless coup attempt or whatever. I mean, no one really knows what happened.”

“Nothing more than a ruined party. Everyone got a little rowdy. Knives were drawn, naturally, on the second day, but we all laughed on the third. And our prince maybe overreacted for a while.”

Mom interjected. “Soso, really. The island’s been closed for twenty years already.”

“Officially, yes. Unofficially, Brunico is always in business.”

“That was twenty years ago,” Laura said. “And the princess has been dead, what? Six, seven months? I don’t understand why the truth can’t come out after all that time. It’s not like anyone can do anything to her now.”

Soso looked her up and down, as if sizing her up for a fistfight, and she felt a moment of fear before she remembered Jimmy sat across from her.

Then a smile spread across Soso’s face, and he slapped his hand on the table. “Lala! You are the same! A very serious girl. Of course the secrets Brunico has held to her breast for twenty years can be discussed over wine in a café. Right?”

“You can’t blame a girl for trying,” Laura said. “So did the princess fall in love while she was here or not?”

“She did.”

“But not with an American,” Laura said.

“No, with an American.”

“But you said yourself the only American to go back with you was Joseph Carnegie.”

Soso looked at Laura, then back to Mom. Jimmy made a noise deep in his throat that preceded him saying, “Oh, you are kidding.” Mom gathered her things and ran out, with Jimmy right behind, and Laura, who always felt ten steps behind and who had lived with the mythology of her father as far back as she could remember, stared at Soso until it dawned on her.

“But it was Barnabas...” she whispered.

Soso swallowed his wine and slowly shook his head, lips pursed as if he was the sorriest man on earth.

“Princess Philomena and my father were in love?”

“Yes.”

She found a bunch of crunched-up bills in her bag and dropped them on the table before running out after her mother.

**

There were no cabs. Mom was obviously making Herculean efforts to keep herself from some sort of ugly emotional outburst. Laura assumed her mother was keeping it together for Jimmy’s sake. Or her sake. Or just because it was unbecoming to freak out on a Friday night in the Meatpacking District.

Though Laura could say with some certitude that if she married Jeremy and had two children with him only to find out he really
was
gay, then found out twenty years later that no, he wasn’t gay, he’d just run off with a princess, well, that might put her over the edge. Because then it wouldn’t have been about the cruel things she said or about the fact that she had the wrong parts. It would have been about
her
and her failure to please him, her failure to keep him, a failure so deep he had to lie about it.

She assumed Mom was thinking all that, but it didn’t add up to Laura. “Mom, there’s something missing here. Some political reason. Some other motivation. How was the high prince involved? I mean—”

“You need to shut up,” Jimmy said.

“I’m sorry?”

“You need to just go back to your boyfriend’s apartment tonight and leave her alone.”

Laura planted her fists on her hips. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“You two!” Mom shouted, then softened. “Laura, are you okay? I know this is hard for you.”

“I’m fine, Mom. I’m just mad for you.”

Mom put her hands on Laura’s shoulders. “You’re a good girl. Don’t be mad on my account. Honestly, I’m surprised at how little I really care.”

“Really, Mom?”

She shrugged. “Really. It’s twenty years already. I’m tired, and I want to go home. That’s all. Are you coming with us or staying in the city?”

“I’ll just walk.” It was a bit far, but a brisk December walk in the middle of the night wasn’t unheard of.

Mom held out her hand for Jimmy. “Come on. There’s not going to be a cab anywhere. Let’s walk to the train and see if we get a lucky break on the way.”

Mom and Jimmy went down Gansevoort, holding hands. Laura enjoyed seeing that. Jimmy turned and waved once, then again half a block later, as if he didn’t believe she was actually going to just walk up to 24th Street, and he was right on the money. When they turned a corner, Laura spun on her heel and went back to the café.

Her intention was to get more information from Soso about her father. He loved the princess? Were they married? Did they have children? Did she have more beautiful sisters running around somewhere? Where was he?

Laura considered the front door, then went to the back of the restaurant. She was going to sneak up on those rat bastards and get herself arrested—or worse—and she wasn’t going to care. As a matter of fact, she was going to take the trouble she was about to get into and eat it for dinner.

Like any old building in the city, the café was heated with vapor radiators, and on a relatively warm December night, it was pretty likely that an open window was the only defense against the people inside getting steamed like a basket of broccoli. So she snuck up to the back door, one of those security ghetto jobs—a bullet-busting steel mesh—despite the value of the real estate. When she got close, she decided to take a second to peek inside before going in and hurting any fleshy thing that got in her way.

Soso paced what looked to be a back office, his long legs getting him from wall to wall in three strides. It was difficult to see through the mesh, but she caught a desk and a lamp with a red shade—cliché, along with the painting of the lady on the black background with the cleaved bust and hoop earrings.

“I don’t know what she knows,” Soso said. “If she wanted to talk to me, she could have done it twenty years ago.” He paused, then said, “I’d arrange it if I could find him. He’s like a puff of smoke, and you have no idea how big this city is.” He sat down, kicked off his shoes, and rubbed his toes through his socks. “Yes, Your Highness. I’ll take care of it.” He hung up as Poly Print came in with a glass of milky wine.

“What did he say?” Poly Print asked.

Soso just shook his head and put his feet up on the desk. Laura lingered for what seemed like an eternity, but Soso never answered, and once Poly Print gave up and left, she slipped away. It didn’t seem like a good time to ask a bunch of questions about her father.

CHAPTER 10

Friday night, Laura tried to sleep but couldn’t. Jeremy’s place seemed bigger than it had the previous nights. Emptier. Less friendly. At midnight, she moved to the couch and tried calling him but got his voice mail. She opened her work email and found a shitstorm. An email from Wendy revealed that Tiffany, their assistant who had moved from design to tech, was supposed to instruct the factory to lengthen a T-shirt sleeve three quarters of an inch, but had told them to shorten it instead. The fabric was cut and bundled for sewing. The long-sleeved top had become a three-quarter sleeve, and Wendy warned in no uncertain terms that the stores would likely take a twenty percent discount on all sizes.