Mandy straddled a kitchen chair the wrong way around and leaned her chin on the back of the chair. She pushed her bottom lip forward in a pout. Poses seemed to come naturally to her, and she didn’t feel self-conscious at all in her own home.
“Stop it!” Kramer Lamb yelled, snapping pictures. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!”
Mandy giggled. “You know, I don’t even like clothes very much. I just wear my husband’s old T-shirts.” She was wearing one right now, the plain black V-neck one that Stu always said looked sexy on her.
“Modeling isn’t about clothes. Or makeup. Or hair. It’s about the je ne sais quoi, and you have it.” Kramer Lamb pulled the camera away from his face and squinted at it. “You’re a goddess with a heart-shaped mouth and a heart-shaped face. Even your nose is sort of heart-shaped. So is your butt. And your cleavage. You’re insane!”
Who knew flattery could be so exhausting? Mandy flopped down on the bed. The streetlights came on outside, streaming white light through the kitchen windows. She hoped he wouldn’t notice the enormous stack of unopened bills beneath the bed.
“Oh my God,” Kramer Lamb exclaimed, snapping away. “Kim Kardashian is so going to want to use you for her new lingerie line. Stop it. Stop it, stop it, stop it.” He took a few steps back and looked around. “I love that you have a bed right here.”
“She has MS.”
Stuart stood in the kitchen doorway with Ted, watching them. He’d been trying to keep Ted entertained in his room, but Ted was hungry.
“We’re almost done here.” Kramer Lamb didn’t appear to have heard what Stuart said, or if he had, he didn’t care.
“So, what happens next?” Stuart demanded.
Kramer Lamb blew Mandy a kiss as if to say, “Your husband might be famous, but he’s a pushy dick.”
“Next, you let me do my job and send these pictures out and I call you with seventeen trillion offers and you buy yourselves a country house with a swimming pool!”
“And a dog,” Ted said.
“Okay.” Mandy wasn’t sure. “Can I see if I like it first? I mean, if someone wants me, then I’ll try it, and if I hate it, can I just stop?”
“Or if her MS gets worse,” Stuart said. He really was being sort of a dick. “Maybe we should check with her doctor first.”
“I already did,” Mandy lied. “He says it’s fine.”
Kramer Lamb held out his fist. Mandy made a fist and bumped it against his.
“No worries. Worry makes wrinkles,” he said. “From now on, I worry for you. Yes, my beautiful one?”
Mandy giggled and hugged her pudgy knees on the bed. “Don’t I need to go on a diet? Or like, do something different to my hair?”
“No! Please. Whatever you’re doing is working for you. Just keep doing it!”
It was Friday. The women who lived across the street always got meals with salmon and potatoes delivered from Grandma’s House on Fridays. Last week it was salmon moussaka—yum. Mandy just had to get Stuart and Ted out of the house so she could steal it.
“Can you go to the store for me, Stu?” She asked sweetly. “Take Teddy too, so he can pick out his snacks.”
* * *
Elizabeth’s eyes were closed. “Why are there so many English people in Brooklyn? I hear their voices everywhere. There was a whole pride of them in the liquor store.”
She lay full length on the couch, her bare size-twelve feet draped over the arm, Catsy curled comfortably between her protruding pelvic bones. Tupper was on the floor trying to straighten out his back. They’d been awake the entire night before, gathering more limbs from his warehouse in Red Hook. When Tupper had returned from scattering them in Cobble Hill Park, they’d made love and ordered sushi and shared a bottle of wine. Now they were both more relaxed than they’d been in years. Elizabeth never mentioned Iceland.
Tupper’s eyes were closed too. “Maybe they feel at home here,” he replied. “It’s not so different from London.”
“That English friend of yours, Roy Clarke,” Elizabeth went on. “His books are not as ‘important’ as everyone thinks. If a woman wrote them, they’d be considered chick lit, not absurdist masterpieces or astute social satire.”
“I keep meaning to read them,” Tupper said. “Well, it’s nice to hear they’re not full of testosterone and bullfights. Maybe it’s a good thing.”
“No, it’s not.”
“You’ve read them?”
“Yes, every color of his Rainbow. You know I read everything. What will be the title of the new one?”
“Gold,” Tupper said. “Or Red. He hasn’t decided. He seems very excited—”
Someone knocked loudly on the door. Elizabeth jumped to her feet. It was the MacArthur people, come to deliver the news in person.
“Who is it?” Tupper called out gaily, his eyes still closed. He imagined it was Roy, wanting to meet up for a quick drink. They could sit outside on the stoop. Elizabeth could nap.
“Police,” said the voice on the other side of the door.
* * *
It was Monday. Stuart was at work, but he wasn’t paying attention to anything he was supposed to be doing. He was supposed to be composing music for a “healthy” macaroni and cheese commercial featuring animated dinosaurs. Instead, he was obsessing over Mandy. Her recent energy and behavior were just so inconsistent.
Girl’s so hot her limbs are fired
My lazy lady used to be so tired
He decided to call Dr. Goldberg.
“Hi, it’s Stuart Little, Mandy Marzulli’s husband?”
“Mmm,” Dr. Goldberg said. “The man with the mouse tattoos. How can I help?”
Stuart immediately felt guilty for not going in for a checkup in at least three years. He probably had something dire like skin cancer or fatally high cholesterol.
“Yeah, well, I was just wondering if all the activity she’s been doing lately is okay. I know you have her on some kind of new medication and she’s like, so much better. Plus, and I don’t even know if I should say this, but I got her pot and she’s using it. We both are. Anyway, it’s like—and I don’t even know if this is possible—she’s cured. Maybe you want to do some more tests?”
“Tests for what exactly?”
“Like, to see if she still has MS. I mean, like a month ago she couldn’t get out of bed, and now she’s bouncing around and modeling again and cooking and carrying heavy boxes.”
Friday night, after Mandy had sent Stuart and Ted away to shop for food, they’d come home to find her hauling a huge, heavy box up the stairs.
“I totally forgot,” Mandy had said, “I signed us up for Grandma’s House!” And then she’d cooked them an incredible meal of salmon shepherd’s pie.
“I mean, I just don’t know if the modeling thing is such a great idea,” Stuart went on. “She’ll be traveling, not eating right, standing up all the time and putting her body in weird positions. I guess what I’m concerned about is, with her condition, and with her already being so exhausted—well, she was exhausted recently—shouldn’t she be resting more? Can you tell me what you recommend?”
He heard the sound of papers rustling and the beep and click and whir of a computer. The doctor cleared his throat.
“I have no record here of Mandy having any existing condition, certainly not MS. She had a sinus infection a year and a half ago. That was the last time I saw her and the last medication I prescribed.”
* * *
Ted’s parents had forgotten that the Brooklyn Strategizer had kicked him out. Used to be, Danner from the Strategizer picked him up in the schoolyard with the other boys who went there after school. Now no one picked him up. Now, two afternoons a week, after the nannies and mothers and fathers and grandparents had picked up his schoolmates, Ted messed around in the corners until the air got cold and smelled of fireplaces and the sky turned royal blue. Then he walked home by himself.
Except for today. Today, as he was kicking around in the corners of the schoolyard, foraging in the dr
ied leaves and garbage, he found, amongst other things, a lighter. The lighter was small and green. When he flicked it, a tall flame, taller than he’d expected, rose up and wavered, hot and glorious. The other things he found were a half-full bag of Lay’s potato chips, an unopened pack of watermelon gum, an almost-full water bottle, a pink-and-white polka-dotted lunch bag monogrammed with the name DAKOTA in lime green, and a paper subway map.
Ted sat down cross-legged on the ground, the weight of his full backpack pulling him down. He glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone was looking. One of the moms had brought her Great Dane puppy into the schoolyard, on the far side by the basketball hoops. Dogs were not allowed, but the three or four kids and one nanny who remained didn’t seem to mind. They pet the dog and talked to its owner. No one noticed Ted.
He flicked the lighter, causing it to spark but not light, and put it in the pocket of his Adidas track pants. Then he pulled it out and flicked it again, harder. The flame rose and swayed in the purpling light. When it died, he flicked it again. It was addictive.
His parents had matches lying around their house. His dad brought them home when he picked up takeout from restaurants and used them occasionally to light candles. A lighter was better. You could stare at the flame and it didn’t burn your fingers. When it went out, you could just light it again.
He wanted to hold the lighter to the corner of the subway map and watch it burn. He could put the fire out with the bottle of water. He wanted it so badly, his mouth hung open and he drooled a little. But the people admiring the huge puppy were still there, across the schoolyard, and the lame principal and strict lunch ladies and even stricter librarian were still inside, preparing for tomorrow. He pushed the lighter back into his pocket, its heat against the top of his thigh, and opened the subway map. Here was Brooklyn, there was Queens, there Manhattan, the Bronx. You couldn’t take the subway to Staten Island but it was on the map because it had its own subway that wasn’t connected to anything. He pretended to study it, waiting.
* * *
Halloween Hijinks
Call them pranksters, call them artists, call them Halloween devotees to a crazed degree. Someone went overboard this year. In the lead-up to Brooklyn’s favorite holiday, someone scattered the limbs of dolls, mannequins, stuffed animals, and porcelain figurines in parks and gardens around Cobble Hill, giving members of the community quite a fright.
“The ankles looked just like my husband’s,” said Plum Brenner of Amity Street. “He’s been dead for seven years.”
The fun of it is, no one knows who’s behind it. But we prefer it this way. Maybe it’ll become a yearly thing, like the spiders crawling up the houses on Verandah Place, the piano that plays itself on Clinton Street, or the tiny pumpkins stuck all around the prongs of the wrought-iron fence on Kane.
(Cue evil laugh).
Happy Halloween!
PART IV NOVEMBER 3
Chapter 21
Wendy said she would buy the firewood herself.
It was Friday. The party was Sunday night, which meant she had all weekend to prepare, but she’d taken the day off work to get a head start. She’d found the name of a woodcutter in Staten Island. Finding him would be an adventure. Wendy was excited. Parties were her specialty, and this was their first in Brooklyn. Roy couldn’t be bothered; he was too busy with his book.
She’d rented a U-Haul van to pick it up. A cord of wood, just over the Verrazano, which was the impressive-looking bridge over the whitecapped bay that you could see off the Belt Parkway on the way home from JFK. That was about all she knew. Wendy wasn’t big on driving. She’d quit altogether in England because they drove on the wrong side of the road and the roads were narrow and fast. The only time she’d tried, she’d sideswiped an entire hedge and made permanent fingernail gouges in the car door trying to find the gearshift.
The U-Haul place was a much longer walk than she’d expected, up Union Street, across the Gowanus Canal, up and up to Fourth Avenue and then over to Fourth Street. She could have taken a car service, but the staff at Enjoy! were encouraged to walk.
The U-Haul van was basic and raw and empty in back, modern and full of gizmos in front. A screen barked at her when she backed up, showing her a picture of what was behind her and the dangers therein. The GPS never shut up. The E-ZPass allowed her to zip through tolls. Wendy drove in a dutiful daze, following the GPS instructions.
She’d get the wood and maybe even some fireworks, she thought as she crossed the Verrazano Bridge.
The view was vast, with water everywhere. She rolled down the windows so she could taste the salty air, the blue sky, the brown beaches. Oh, Staten Island, here comes Wendy Clarke of Enjoy! magazine. Mrs. Roy Clarke. Mother of Shy, Chloe, and Anna Clarke. Seagulls hovered in the misty air, their beaks open in silent yawp. Below the bridge, the deep water tossed and sucked. Wendy’s tongue tingled with the rankness of it. Her nostrils flared.
Yes, fireworks. There had to be someplace that sold them. Staten Island had everything.
* * *
Elizabeth had been arrested for serving and selling alcohol without a license, a misdemeanor criminal offense with up to one year of prison time. It hadn’t even occurred to her that Monte was a real bar serving liquor to the public and that bars had certain rules. She’d received notices with threats of fines when she’d taken over the site months ago, but she’d thrown the notices away without even opening them. The police had ransacked the bar and confiscated the liquor. The odor of dead fish in the basement and “evidence of foul play” down there made them even more suspicious. They put a dead bolt on Monte’s door and sealed it with yellow police tape.
Tupper tried to be helpful.
“It’s art,” he protested. “She’s an artist.” He supplied the authorities with video footage from the Macaw—proof that her unusual behavior was all in the name of the work.
Elizabeth was kept in a holding cell on State Street until the police had taken their statements and reviewed the video. In the end, the fact that she was a renowned artist and Tupper a respected industrial designer helped quite a bit. The New York City Police Department wanted to appear open-minded. Elizabeth was sentenced to only five days prison time and fined thirty thousand dollars—more than twice the cost of a New York State liquor license.
Due to overcrowding at the holding prison, Elizabeth was transferred to Rikers Island for the last three days of her detainment. Tupper visited her the first morning, traveling from Cobble Hill to Pier One by Citi Bike, Pier One to Wall Street, and then on to Queens by NYC Ferry, and the rest of the way by kayak. As he paddled across the murky, swiftly moving water, barely escaping death by ferry collision, trash floe, or the charge of a barge, he saw how easily one could deposit a body, or anything else, in the cold New York–area waters. There were so many islands, so many marshes and canals and inlets. Determined to continue his and Elizabeth’s work despite this little hiccup, he’d taken a wooden arm with him in the kayak. He released it in a ferry’s wake and paddled on.
How wonderful that he knew just where to find her. She was locked in a cell, right where she’d been deposited the night before. He knew it was wrong, but he’d even been a bit coy with the lawyers, not returning their calls right away, giving them only limited information, because he’d really almost rather she stayed in jail than leave him again.
* * *
Bettina had read The Handmaid’s Tale. She knew about having babies against your will.
“I just got accosted by some kind of weather specialist,” Isabel announced. “He asked me all these really bizarre questions like, ‘Did I feel any fragmentation?’ And then he put his hand on my stomach. Scientists are so creepy.”
* * *
Much to Tupper’s disappointment, Elizabeth’s jail time was cut short. Her concerned patrons, including the CEO of Apple, the Italian politician who’d funded her last show at the Venice Biennale, some rich art collector in Iceland, and Roy Clarke himself, bailed her out early. They also wrot
e letters, lauding her work and clearing her of all malintent, that were published in the New York Times, Artforum, the Wall Street Journal, and Italian Vogue.
Tupper brought her home from Rikers that very day. He cooked a late lunch of fish and noodles and demonstrated his latest prototype.
“It’s the Money Pit,” he explained. “Sort of a cross between a peach pit and a sea sponge.”
Elizabeth stared at it and hugged her bowl. She forked a pile of noodles and fish into her mouth.
The Money Pit was a wallet made from a spongy material that literally absorbed your bills and change into its pores and then flattened in your pocket. It was revolutionary. He’d gotten the idea while trying to conceal a Barbie arm in the bark of a dead, rain-dampened tree.
“Look.” Tupper stuffed a few quarters and one-dollar bills into it and then flattened it with his fist. “It’ll come in colors like pink or green or red or briefcase brown. I developed the material myself. It’s one hundred percent biodegradable and compostable.”
Elizabeth grabbed it and tucked it into the front of her orange prison jumpsuit, which she’d asked Tupper to purchase from the jail so she could wear it home.
Tupper laughed. “That won’t work. You don’t even wear a bra.”
Elizabeth let the Money Pit drop into her jumpsuit and continued to eat her noodles. It fell through to the crotch area, where it bulged masculinely. Tupper wondered how long this prison behavior would go on. She’d only been “inside” for three days. Every time Elizabeth went away and came back, he felt like she was experimenting with a new persona—affectionate Elizabeth, distant Elizabeth, hungry Elizabeth, surly prisoner Elizabeth. He had news, but he didn’t want to deliver it until she appeared to be paying attention.
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