Dead is the New Black

by Christine Demaio-Rice

  By the time Sevion and the white-haired lady showed up, Laura was as tense as an expectant father. In the intervening ten minutes, she had run down four ways the conversation could go, but was sure they were all inadequate. Sevion wouldn’t give her the information she needed to corner Carmella. Worse, as he opened the door for the Romanian, Laura was sure he wouldn’t even recognize her. Surely, he thought she was someone else when she called, and she was about to get a quizzical look and an apology.

  “Ah, Miss Carnegie!” Sevion said when he saw her. “So glad you could come. You remember my wife, Hortensia?”

  “Nice to see you again,” Laura said.

  Hortensia nodded.

  “I didn’t know how big a table to save,” Laura said.

  “No need, it’s just us.”

  The hostess heard and got them a yellow gingham-covered table in the corner. Laura felt stiff, overly polite, tense—very adjective that would pinpoint her as a socially-stunted rube. But the Sevions didn’t seem to notice.

  “Pierre tells me you do the fit for Jeremy St. James,” Hortensia said, leaning forward on her elbows as if Laura was the most interesting person in the world.

  “Just the structured wovens and, really, Jeremy tells me how it should look, and I just do it. He’s the North Star of the fit.”

  “Because I want to tell you, his clothes, I feel perfect in them. I have some custom-made things, and his clothes fit just as good. Don’t you think, Pierre?”

  Sevion answered his wife by directing his attention to Laura. “His clothes are exquisite on the body; everyone knows it.”

  “I can’t wait to tell him you said so.” Laura beamed.

  Husband and wife looked at each other, then back to Laura. “So,” Sevion said, “where did you grow up?”

  Laura was so happy to have a direct question to answer, she forgot to not babble. Or maybe she was being entertaining. She had no way of knowing. But she started in Hell’s Kitchen, in the era where it earned the name, with her mother, her sister, their absent father, and a public school system that left the girls to their own devices until Mom had enough. “She had to get us into private school, but she had no money. So we were the first white kids at the Dalton School to get financial aid. See, Mom had sewn for every First Lady since Barbara Bush, so she promised couture suits to auction off for fundraisers.”

  “Ah! She was at Scaasi!” Sevion said. “You and your sister were born for this.”

  “I used to go to the stores on Fifth Avenue, like Chanel, and go into the dressing rooms to rip out the labels so I could sew them into my own stuff.” She paused for Pierre’s laugh. “That was to get into the really cool crowd at Dalton, which was run like a garrison by Caitlin Wenderspier, who wouldn’t hang out with anyone who shopped at Gap. So, I finally got her attention with this turquoise dupioni jacket that I put an Alexander McQueen label in, and she invited me to her birthday party at Windows on the World. I was so excited, I started sewing something else, a lace maxi dress, I think, and I asked my sister Ruby what label I should steal for it. Well, Ruby told Caitlin I put stolen labels into a home-sewn jacket.”

  “Terrible!” Sevion said.

  “And did you go to the party?” Hortensia asked.

  “Yeah, but no one talked to me the whole time. It was the last time I tried to counterfeit something.”

  Half an hour had gone by, and she was no closer to getting what she needed from Sevion. She was good at derailing conversations, not directing them.

  “Your sister is starting a bridal line?” Sevion asked. “And you wanted to ask me about it? Will you be working with her?”

  Laura was stymied for an answer. She wanted to stick to the truth, so that when she spoke to Ruby, her fibs wouldn’t seem so outlandish. And in the same breath, she had to ask them about Carmella.

  “Well, I told her about Carmella starting her own thing.” Laura paused, gauging their reactions. She couldn’t detect a flicker or change in either of them. Damn professionals. “And then we had this long conversation about how she always wanted to do bridal, and I thought I’d ask Carmella how she was managing, but she’s being real cagey about it, so I figured I’d ask you how you thought Ruby should go about it. I mean, should it be different than what Carmella’s doing?”

  “No one can emulate the methods of someone else’s success,” Sevion replied. “Though, to be honest, we haven’t seen her success yet. Not since her potential backer was killed.”

  “It’s funny,” Laura said. “That night, when Gracie was killed, I was at a loft party, and you know, I feel like, I was two blocks away. I could have done something.”

  Her comment hadn’t drawn Sevion back in, but Hortensia was fully engaged. “On 36th?”

  “Yeah. I left a little early. Were you there?”

  “I was there fifteen minutes. I swear it was like being at a football game. And one bathroom was not long for this world.”

  “You told me,” Sevion said, waving his hand. “I avoid those things entirely.”

  “Yeah,” Laura said, “and Carmella was having it out with this guy in a white tracksuit, which was weird, because I’ve never seen him before.”

  Hortensia smirked. “That’s her boyfriend.” Laura’s emotions must have been all over her face, because Hortensia laughed a cruel, catty laugh. Laura made a mental note to never tell Hortensia anything at all, ever, about anything. Hortensia continued, “He owns a club on Staten Island, where she’s from.”

  “No, but, she’s from…” The word “Milan” almost came from Laura’s mouth, but she would have seemed like an idiot. Of course, Carmella wasn’t a disowned Italian countess. Of course, her accent was totally fake. She was a chronic liar, and everyone knew it but Laura.

  Sevion looked like he wanted to die of boredom, but Hortensia appeared to be loving it, heart and soul. “She had us all thinking she was something she isn’t. Do you know her father was a laborer? He’s on disability, and this boyfriend, Mario Olliveri is his name, pays him off the books to mop the floors of his nightclub.”

  Of course. Naturally. Who wanted to be the daughter of a disabled stevedore slash janitor? No one. Everyone wanted to be a disowned Italian countess and smoke Gitanes and do perfect euro-kisses near beautiful people’s cheeks. Carmella had just had the gonads to make it her reality. Or it was it cowardice? Both, maybe.

  “So,” Laura said. “Was she ever at LVMH?”

  Both Hortensia and Sevion laughed. Laura realized she knew nothing about Carmella at all. Nothing true, at least. She did know who Carmella wanted to be, and who she wasn’t. But the Italian countess was gone, replaced by a conniving liar protecting a secret life and pushing as hard as she could into the fantasy life she had built for herself. Laura had to find out how hard she was pushing and whether or not Gracie had gotten in her way.

  Laura was grateful Sevion paid, since the bill was about as much as dinner in a louder, bigger place in a better neighborhood. He turned to her while he guided Hortensia into a cab that had appeared like magic on the side street and stopped with minimal slush splashing. “Have you designed since Parsons?”

  “Not really.”

  Sevion leaned forward. “Young designers. Sisters. One in ready-to-wear. One making consumer-driven product. The children of an old-school couture sample-maker. It’s quite an attractive package.”

  “Sounds like a lot of fighting to me,” Laura said, realizing his words weren’t from a burst of inspiration, but the reason for the lunch in the first place.

  “It’s the kind of package I’d love to represent. I’ve actually been meaning to speak about it since you and I met yesterday.” He stepped into the back seat and, before he pulled both feet in, said, “Sportswear. Forget the bridal.” He slammed the door, and the cab took off, splashing Laura’s boots.

  Laura didn’t know whether to be excited or disappointed. It had been a conversation every Parsons grad wanted to have. Sevion could make or break careers. But all Laura wanted was to know what Carmella had
been up to the night before Gracie Pomerantz’s murder.

  She realized she was missing a piece of information.

  The light at the corner turned red. The cab stopped, and Laura ran for it. She slipped, almost fell, caught herself on a parking meter, and made it to the cab. She knocked on the back window, panting.

  Hortensia rolled down the window. “Are you all right?”

  “What’s the name of the boyfriend’s club?” Laura asked, too breathless to invent an excuse for the question. “Carmella’s boyfriend.”

  “Duomo. Why?”

  The cab took off before Laura had to tell another lie.

  Laura picked up Jeremy’s copy of Women’s Wear at the front desk. Rene was back at her post, and she nodded when Laura slipped it off the counter. Laura noticed the Help Wanted section had been ripped out. She didn’t care. She was saving this job, come Hell or high water.

  Sheldon was gone. David sat at Jeremy’s computer in the fancy office, poking around where he didn’t belong. They greeted each other, then David went back to his nosy snooping. She wanted to call him on it, to tell him he wasn’t entitled to be looking in the books, but she knew she didn’t have a leg to stand on. Sheldon would have covered his bases. As she was about to walk away, he said, “Feeling better?”

  “Yes, thank you. What are you doing?” That was as much of an accusation as she could muster.

  “My boss, Sheldon Pomerantz, owns fifty-five percent of this company, and we’re making some changes. I’m compiling a list of assets. Sit down, would you? I can’t talk to you in a doorway.” She sat and he continued, “Assets include properties owned, inventory. Other tangibles. As well as some intangibles, like relationships, branding, and talent.”

  “Is this why you’ve been looking at Carmella’s work?”

  He smirked. “That’s complicated. But I’m concerned about a couple of other people, like Yoni. I need to put her under contract to keep the company’s value up. And you.”

  “You need me to sign a contract?”

  “If you want to stay.”

  “Will Jeremy be back?”

  David stared at her. “You are loyal, aren’t you?”

  “I know what I like doing all day, and I know who I like doing it with.”

  David raised an eyebrow, which she ignored. She wasn’t in the mood for lighthearted, blue banter.

  “So you have a buyer?” she asked.

  “Of course. The brand is stronger than one man.”

  “And have you told that man you’re selling the store?”

  “Gracie Pomerantz’s estate has the right to sell her shares to anyone, at any time. And if you were her husband, wouldn’t you want to get rid of them?” David leaned back in his chair as Laura considered, but she came up with no answer. What was logical for Sheldon was insignificant to her.

  As if reading her mind, David continued, “Laura, I don’t understand why it matters to you. We’ll make you a good offer. Jeremy will land on his feet. He’s a survivor.”

  “I’ll tell you why it matters to me. Because I was happy with my job. So happy I came to work early just to be here. And now, I know, someone’s dead, which is awful, but they arrested Jeremy for zippo reason besides a missing TOP and some silk fibers. Meanwhile, she had a fight with your boss the night before, Carmella was in and out of the building at the time of the murder, and Gracie was pissing off models all over town. So what’s going on here? Do you think I can be comfortable staying here and working for people who sent Jeremy up the river?”

  “No one sent anyone up any rivers.”

  “Who do you think killed her?” It was a bomb of a question she hadn’t bothered asking anyone, even herself, and David was struck into silence. “Well?” she pressed. “The papers and the DA are hanging Jeremy. What do you think? He did it?”

  “No, I don’t, actually.”

  “So who did?”

  “I don’t care.” David laced his spindly fingers together and leaned forward. “My job here is to watch this office during the transition. I don’t care who killed Gracie Pomerantz. It’s not my business.” He was hinting at something, something that sounded like butt out.

  Unfortunately, Laura was terrible at taking hints. “Something’s going on, I don’t know what, but until someone clears it all up, I can’t make any commitments. Now, I have a lot of work to do.” She stood to leave.

  “I’m sorry, but you need to be under contract.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means we need people in this office committed to making this company work. If you’re not one of those people, and I wish you were, then we need to let you go.” He seemed as sorry as Laura was stunned. “You’ll receive severance of one week for every year of service. We’re writing up a release; it’ll have a non-disclosure clause, so you might want to honor it starting immediately.”

  Everyone wanted her to shut up. It was getting on her nerves. “You don’t have the right to do this. Only Jeremy can fire me.”

  He shook his head. “Could Gracie have, if she was here?”

  She knew he was right. Sheldon took over when Gracie died, and David was his agent. “I need some time to think about it.”

  “That’s fine. We’ll draw up a deal memo. Until then, since we’re not sure if you will continue, please don’t return to your desk unaccompanied.”

  She had gone from valued employee to potential thief of intellectual property in the blink of an eye. She felt surprised at her surprise. After that millisecond, the floor fell from under her. Then, she walked out before David could even begin his next sentence.

  She didn’t pack her things, because she simply wasn’t ready. Her mind was still on her job, on her place in the world, and she still thought of Jeremy and the people she worked with as her responsibility. She sat on one of the lobby’s cold wooden benches and made some calls. She told Tony how to manage her styles. He groused and complained, but he hadn’t been offered a contract, so he had few choices. She spoke to Mom and told her to continue crocheting her heart out, without Laura, Carmella, or Jeremy.

  She opened her WWD to the center-page spread about Jeremy. The biggest article speculated about the future of his business, and mentioned possible buyers from China. Next, speculation about his time in jail: how long, why, and the effects on his business. The smallest article was no bigger than a sidebar: Did he do it? It had no new information and was woefully short on point-of-view. Quite a time for WWD to don journalistic clothing. Seemingly, the Industry didn’t care any more than David did.

  Then, she walked out into the wall of cold that was Broadway.

  Laura bought another WWD, but didn’t have the heart for the want ads. She jostled through the crowd to a telephone pole, to the beat up flyers stapled one on top of the other, written in Sharpie and ballpoint, their bottoms sliced into tabs with phone numbers. She took a tab and pocketed it, knowing she’d never call. But it felt good to do something.

  At two o’clock, the street traffic diminished by forty percent, and the energy went from lunchtime rushing to business rushing, where the crowd bolted from the office, to the button guy, to the findings lady, to the thread supplier, to my slow-as-shit marker and grader, to the best buttonhole guy in town. The bike messengers were out in force with oblong pattern paper rolls sticking two feet out of their packs, making the same trip so someone else wouldn’t have to.

  But Laura had nowhere to be. She crossed Seventh Avenue four times for no reason, jumping the light as if she were in a rush to go back to wherever it was going. She went down another block, avoiding 38th, losing herself, looking at the ground, noticing for the first time just how many spots of spit-out chewing gum dotted the sidewalk.

  She bumped into a rolling rack being navigated across Broadway, tipping the bathing suits on their hangers and getting a “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” from the delivery guy as he rescued it. The breaths of each “whoa!” puffed past a woolen burgundy scarf he had wrapped around the bottom half of his face. S
he mumbled apologies, but it had been the only proof that she actually existed.

  Laura had gone home in the middle of a weekday. Suddenly, her day was hers, and she had no idea what to do with it. She hand-hemmed a pair of pants she’d gotten at a vintage store and fantasized about Jeremy. She imagined his gratitude when she got him out of jail, his regret that he had spent time with Gracie when he could have been with her, his rage that David had let her go, and her relief that he didn’t hire her back because he wanted a clean relationship with her that would be unsullied by their working together.

  She almost stuck herself with the needle when her buzzer went off. She looked out the window and was surprised to see the top of Yoni’s head catching the light snowfall. She buzzed her in.

  Yoni looked like an Avenger with her snow-dotted black leather jacket and boots. She carried a portfolio case under her arm. Laura offered her tea and a seat on the couch.

  “You asked me about the contract,” Yoni said. “It made me curious.” She put the portfolio on the coffee table, but didn’t unlace the ties. “I underestimated you. I apologize.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Laura said, trying to hide her pleasure.

  Yoni untied the ends of the portfolio and slipped out two pieces of taped-together illustration board. “You alerted me that the contract was an important piece of the puzzle with Jeremy, which, as you know, I’m less concerned with than you. But, I saw David putting papers into the shredder late the other night, copies that didn’t come out right, and I thought, you know, I always told Jeremy to get a shredder that cuts this way and this way.” She made vertical and horizontal slashes in the air. “But he didn’t listen, as always. So�” She opened the illustration board. “I did a little trick my father taught me when he worked for Mossad.” Lines of shredded paper were taped to the board, close enough to read. The bottom was blackened as if the page had been removed from the copier glass before the whole copy had been made. “Which is to say, he never told me where he worked, but what kind of father knows how to tape together shredded documents? Hmm? Okay, so here’s what we have. St. James was in quite a hole. One, you can see here in paragraph seven.” Laura couldn’t see anything, it was a shredded nightmare, and half the letters were inside paper seams. “He cannot speak ill of her publicly, nor call anything she says is a falsehood. Was she the one who said he was gay when Women’s Wear profiled him?”