A Dress to Die For (24 page)

“What’s the matter? Can’t climb a fence anymore?”

“You’re going to get arrested,” he said.

“Wouldn’t be the first time.” She walked toward row B, hair soaked, mascara flowing, fingertips crinkled and cold. Behind her, the fence rattled, and she heard the splash of him running through a puddle.

“You’re a pain in the ass,” Jimmy said as he caught up to her. Laura smiled.

They slowed as they approached the van, then crouched behind a set of wide pilings. If she shifted her head a little, she could see the van between the pilings, two boats, and seemingly infinite diagonal ropes. The doors were open, and a man in a raincoat and construction boots spoke to a bald man wearing a big hood.

“That’s the waiter in the café,” she whispered. “The one in the loud prints.”

“Picking up the wine,” Jimmy said, looking around the side of the piling.

As if on cue, another man came out carrying a crate. He gave it to Poly Print, who slid it into the back of the van. Three guys. Were there more? How big a crew did one need to get a three-mast sailboat from Brunico to New York?

There was more discussion between the three shadowy men, then they looked into the back of the van.

Out of the corner of her eye, Laura saw a little light; Jimmy had his phone out. “What the hell are you doing? They’re going to see us.”

“I’m doing what you should be doing: texting Cangemi. His guys are either looking at the wrong berth, or they can’t see in the rain.”

She looked back at the three guys. Poly Print pointed in their general direction.

She crouched lower and peeked from a different spot. “Crap.”

All three of the guys stared in her direction, pieces of their faces covered by hoods and hats. Construction Boots shut the doors of the van. Poly Print ran around the side. The third man turned out to be a woman, and she ran back onto the boat.

“They’re getting away!” Laura shouted, standing.

“Oh no, you don’t,” Jimmy said, trying to grab her.

As she ran, she heard her own breath inside her scarf, which stuck to the bottom of her face like a mask. Her ruined leather boots splashed in the puddles, smacking on the pavement. They weren’t terribly high-heeled but high enough to make running in the rain rather treacherous. The surprise of her bolting away was going to wear off in half a second, and Jimmy would catch her very soon after that.

When the van exited, she slipped under a barrier. Jimmy couldn’t be that fast. He was in his sixties and out of shape. She felt a shot of fear that she was going to cause him a heart attack, like Mom. But before she could stop, the van turned left onto the West Side Highway and stopped at the light half a block away.

The highway was crowded, and visibility was crap. But the dress was in the back of that van. She’d bet her life on it. Closure for Mom. The bond money for Jeremy. A path to Dad.

She stepped into the street. The driver of the white Mercedes sedan didn’t see her at all, and she stepped back enough to have no more than the snaps of her jacket grazed. Of course, she was wearing a matte-black bomber jacket because that was what designers in New York wore that year, and that choice was going to get her killed. She pulled out her ponytail, hoping her blond hair was at least a little more visible, then remembered she was wearing a yellow damask shirt under the bomber. She pulled off the jacket, another nice thing that was about to end up in a greasy puddle. The yellow shirt practically glowed in the dark. She stepped into the street again, holding up her hands.

A Toyota of indiscriminate color skidded but stopped as she banged on its hood. A Ford SUV slowed and stopped. She stepped back for a two-ton projectile she couldn’t identify and bolted in the wet wake it left, making it to the concrete median amid the curses and blasphemies of people who had almost killed her. She ignored them, lining her sights on the white van with the green stripe, and took off down the median. She was going to have to cross more moving traffic if she waited, but the red light that stopped the van also stopped all the other cars.

Behind her, on the west side of the street, safely on the sidewalk, Jimmy called out something, probably “Stop” or “Don’t.” She dodged between stopped cars, knocking on hoods to let the drivers know she was there, turning sideways for people who meant it when they said “bumper to bumper” and, not even knowing what she intended to do when she got there, reached the van’s lane.

The light changed. The van was third from the light, and she was half a car length behind it. She saw Construction Boots’s face in the side mirror. He was a bald man with mocha skin and a thick black moustache. They made eye contact through the mirror as she headed straight for him. He must have known she was trouble, because when the light changed, he leaned on his horn and gunned ahead three feet, almost hitting the car in front of him. She got on the front bumper of the car behind the van. The driver leaned on his own horn, bellowing expletives, while Laura used his bumper to lean against so she could grab the handle on the van’s back door.

The van took off just as she heard a
clack
. The van swerved, attempting to make a right from the center lane, and the back door swung all the way open. Crates and boxes dumped out all over the highway. Cars drifted and veered, screeching their tires on the rain-slicked asphalt.

Laura rolled onto the icy wet street, her bicep smacking against the pavement. A cab barreled toward her. She closed her eyes. It was too late to move. She was frozen, thinking, “I’m going to die before Jeremy, and he’s going to be so pissed.” Water splashed on her as the cab skidded to a stop. The tire stopped half an inch from her face. The water coming from it was hot from friction.

She rolled to see the van skip on the curb and tip against a pole, scraping a few feet before settling against it. Cops appeared out of nowhere, lights flashing, as if they’d been watching the docks the entire time.

Laura scanned the casualties and saw she’d managed not to kill anyone. No one looked more than wet and mad. She ran for the van, tripping over broken bottles of Brunican wine, wooden shards, and the contents of the crate. In the crosswalk was a dress form on a wire base, with a pole in the middle, old-school canvas soaked. Stamped across the hips was PHILOMENA, and though the posture had a forward hip thrust usually associated with women’s forms of decades past, the body shape, in all its slim, breastless wonder, was definitely that of a man.

That had to be the original form.

Princess Philomena had been a man.

CHAPTER 17

Laura couldn’t hold a spoon, which felt as ridiculous as her chattering teeth. One, her hand was twisted under blankets, and two, she shivered so hard not a drop of soup would have made it to her mouth. Jeremy had bundled her as soon as he got her on his couch. Jimmy had wanted to take her home after Cangemi spoke to her, but she didn’t want to wait for more cops and paramedics to do their business. She’d called Jeremy, and when he arrived, he took her home in a cab while no one was looking. They never had a word of discussion about her going to Brooklyn for the night.

“Open,” he said, holding out a spoon.

She tried, but her teeth clacked, and she made a
rrrr
sound not conducive to soup-eating.

He pushed the spoon toward her again. “I slaved over this can of soup.”

She got a mouthful of unbelievably soothing, yet scalding chicken soup down her throat. “Hot.”

“Yes. I made it that way. On the stove. That was the slaving part. And opening the can. This part of my thumb will never be the same. Here.” He blew on the soup and put another spoonful in her mouth. “Did you call your mother? She might want to hear her husband didn’t leave her for another woman.”

She’d tried as soon as she was in the cab with Jeremy, but her hands were shaking so hard she nearly dropped it. “She’s sleeping anyway.”

“No one sleeps in the hospital. Trust me. It’s like Grand Central. Every shift change, someone comes to take your blood pressure.” He out held the spoon, and she opened her mouth. “You should go in the morning. First thing.”

She swallowed. “Now we know why the interior of the dress was constructed separately. It was for a man, and the whole form thing, of course, the Met had to use the form it came on because if anyone saw it, they’d know. Must be the hugest secret in the known universe. Princess Philomena was a man. I can’t even believe it when I say it. But Dad ran off with her, and you know what? I bet she was going to expose the truth, and he had half the court saying, ‘Yes, let’s do it! Let’s be modern.’ And the other half, which was the high prince’s half, saying, ‘No, we need to stay Brunican.’ Then they put Dad away and made him build stuff for them.”

“There are a hundred holes in that story. Why would your father get all the way there to cause trouble? Why wouldn’t he get a lawyer? Why wasn’t the princess thrown in jail?”

“She never traveled again.”

Jeremy shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re missing something.” He gave her the last of the soup and kissed her before he got up to put away the dish. “Those your shoes?” He pointed the spoon at the Jose Inuego stilettos.

“I guess. It’s a long story.”

“Wear them tomorrow.”

“I don’t like them.”

“You’re not wearing them for you. You’re wearing them for me.” He clacked around the kitchen, rinsing the pot and sliding it into the dishwasher. Slaving.

“The dress wasn’t in the van. I know it was dark and I couldn’t see everything, but it looked like a bunch of wine boxes.”

“That’s not good. It’s a lot of money to lose. We’re running on fumes, cash-flow wise. I can only take so much pay cut before we have to start letting people go.” He wiped his hands on a towel and came back to her.

“You can cut mine. I make too much.”

“Not according to Barry, you don’t.” He crawled onto the couch and pulled her and the blankets into his arms. His embrace felt firm and right. He fit her like a good jacket, custom made for her curves and slopes, his lips tucked into the bend of her neck.

“You want to fire Heidi,” she said.

His breath was hot on her jawbone as he dragged his mouth along it. “If they don’t find that dress, we can’t afford to keep her or Tiffany. It’s math. We’ll still be tight, but with two gone and me taking a cut, we can function.”

“Does this ever get easier?”

“No.” He kissed her. “Your lips are still cold.”

“Stop complaining and warm them up.”

They kissed again, and she tried to wiggle out of the blankets to hold him, but his arms held tight around her. The more she squirmed, the tighter he held on, until they were writhing so hard they tumbled onto the floor, laughing.

**

Laura brought Mom a stack of magazines and another cross-stitch of a Christmas tree. She realized on the way up in the elevator that she hadn’t done a lick of Christmas shopping in all the furious spinning over the dress, Mom’s heart, and the Brunican entourage. Jeremy had probably bought her a small building on Lexington Avenue, and she hadn’t even thought about his gift.

“Oh, look,” Mom said when she saw the magazines. “More advice on how to get a man to love me.” She indicated another stack on the table beside her.

“Did you hear?” Laura asked. “About the princess?”

“Jimmy called me last night. It makes more sense, if anything about this makes sense. He told me you jumped a fence and nearly got yourself killed running into traffic, and you ran off with Jeremy when the paramedic wanted to check you for hypothermia. So maybe you want to tell me what you were thinking?”

“I was thinking of a blanket and a hot shower. And I didn’t want to answer any questions.”

“Like about why you were running into traffic?”

“You sound like you’re getting well.” Laura straightened the sheets and fluffed the pillows. “You have some color. Did you put on makeup or something?”

“This pink in my cheeks is irritation. I want to get out of here and have my life again.”

Laura sat on the edge of the bed. “Did you have any idea about the princess? When you were working on the dress maybe?”

“We fit on the form, and I only did the skirt and the shell. There was an interior part that was pinned on and wasn’t to be removed. I feel stupid. It’s so obvious now, looking back. All the bust and hips were on the interior part, and she slipped into it.”

“Does it make you feel better? That he didn’t leave for another woman?”

Mom looked at her, seeming to think about it before she answered. “I want to say I’ve been over it for fifteen years already. But instead, I’ll be honest. When I got off the phone with Jimmy, I was so relieved, I cried.” She smiled and rubbed her eyes. “I feel like a child, but it was a weight off.”

“Tough week, Mom.” Laura put her hands on her mother’s and sat in silence until Jimmy arrived.

**

Laura and Ruby huddled over a machine folding the hem on linen gauze in such a way as to expose the raw edge while clean finishing at the same time. Laura’s phone buzzed. It was Barry. She didn’t pick it up but ran out for the lunch meeting she’d almost forgotten.

In the cab, she scribbled a list of contract requirements in her notebook. They were ridiculous. No one would agree. Her rent. First-class flights. A clothing allowance that would cover feeding a family of four. Five weeks of vacation, as if she’d use it. She looked out the window at Thomson Street when she couldn’t think of another demand that would get Barry to laugh in her face.