“How’s Mario taking it?”
“Honestly, I don’t care.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone? You’re talented, you don’t need to lie about where you’re from.”
Carmella poured more wine. “You know Gracie was ready to sign a check to me, and then I could stop working for that asshole.” The word didn’t sound so classy in a Staten Island accent, but it was ten times more descriptive. “Until she found out where I was from. Then, she literally made fun of me at Grotto, in front of everyone. She said no one wants fringed bags and shredded leggings and went on about the stonewashed denim graveyard in my mom’s basement. Oh, and everyone laughed. Ha ha freaking-ha.”
“You were crying in the bathroom. Not Noë?”
“We were both crying, and fighting. Gracie was on Noë, too. I don’t know what crawled up her ass, but Noë was really scared of her that night.” Carmella downed her wine, and Laura realized it wasn’t her first glass. “She said Gracie was trying to ruin everything she and her dad had worked for.”
“Her dad’s a banker.”
“I don’t even care.” She swept her arms over the expanse of the space. “Mario pays for this. Jeremy doesn’t pay me enough to live in Brooklyn, even. I have to move. And…” She paused to drain her glass. “These walls have to go back to white, or we lose the deposit. What do you think? Three coats of primer or four?”
Laura wanted to tell her that, sometimes, the only way to make things better is to make them worse. Sometimes you have to clean up your mess and accept downward mobility for a greater reward later. Maybe a life where you can be who you are. Maybe a life with a boyfriend who doesn’t have a wedding ring. Or a life with a boss who doesn’t degrade you in order to get you to produce.
Then, she saw a jacket draped inside out over the back of a chair. It was wrong in every way, starting with the overlocked seams and ending with the poorly set-in sleeve. Cheap, unevenly dyed buttons were sewn through a twisted half-lining. Laura picked it up and held it by the collar. The fabric was woven too tightly, and the collar rolled at the edge.
“That’s one of Mario’s,” Carmella said. “Can you imagine designing for them?”
Laura shook her head and wished her well on her trip to California.
When she got outside, her face hurt from her chin to the crown of her head. Her neck creaked and stiffened, and her back hurt where she’d been kicked. Whatever wonder drug she’d gotten at the hospital had worn off. She went home with the intention of polishing her resume and making phone calls but, instead, she headed straight for the bed and fell asleep for the next twelve hours.
CHAPTER 25.
The next morning, with every joint and muscle aching, Laura thought seriously about staying home, making coffee, and watching the snow fall out her window. It actually seemed pretty appealing. But then she remembered that she had fabric scissors, a rabbit, and a box of line-scoring supplies under her desk, which wasn’t her desk anymore. She figured, unless they’d changed her code already, she could sneak in while the office was empty, grab her stuff, and go, never to be seen again. On the train, she considered leaving a note, erasing her computer, or snatching some old design sketches for a portfolio. She worried if Mom was going to get paid, and she wondered if she should make a couple of corrections to the Amanda gown, just as an act of good faith for Jeremy.
The elevator door was open, and Laura stood in it, waiting, pushing a button that wouldn’t light. She peeked out into the lobby, looked right, then left, then stepped back again. It still didn’t move. She pressed “Door Close,” which never seemed to work anyway, and found today was no exception. She was just about to get out and take the stairs when André burst into the elevator, bringing a cocoon of cold and snow and the smell of coffee from HasBean.
“Good morning,” he said without cheer. “Nice weather, no?” He shifted his shoulders to secure the huge shoulder bag he always carried. It looked, today as all days, as though it held the Encyclopedia Britannica. One had to cut him a wide berth in the office, or his bag would knock you flat.
“The elevator’s not moving,” Laura reported. “I was about to take the stairs.”
“Oh, no.” André waved his coffee cup. “Follow me.”
They walked back into the blustery weather and turned onto 38th Street to skirt the edge of the building. He hooked a right and turned the corner. “This happened once, that time when it rained so hard Broadway was closed. Remember? The basement flooded. We had to take the freight.”
She remembered the day. She’d walked up the stairs. She’d seen enough people in the stairwell that it hadn’t occurred to her to ask how everyone else in the office got up.
Making conversation, she asked, “Did you find a buyer for the co-op yet?”
“Not in a blizzard, no.” His answer was terse. It apparently wasn’t a comfortable subject. “And those buttons?” he asked, changing the subject.
“You’ll have to ask Jeremy. He’ll be back on Monday, too.”
They reentered the building on 38th, into the wide hallway with the dumpsters and boxes. Paint peeled and lights fizzled, and André showed her what she’d never seen, the freight elevator.
“Morning, Olly,” André said. Olly was a six-foot-tall black man who didn’t weigh more than one-fifty soaking wet. He had a moustache and wore a doorman’s uniform that had seen better days. He greeted André and nodded to Laura.
They got into the freight elevator, which had an opening as big as a barn door, or so Laura assumed, having never seen a barn, or its door, before. Quilted moving blankets covered the inside walls of the living room-sized space. Laura would have moved to the back, the custom in the passenger elevators, but felt that would have been rude.
Olly pulled an old steel mechanism on the door, and the huge contraption slid shut with a clank as the locking system slid into place. Then, he put his hand on a brass handle connected to another mechanism shaped like two slices of pizza, pulling it toward him. The elevator moved up, and Laura saw the floors as they zipped by with big red numbers painted on the inside of the passing elevator doors. She felt queasy.
“How long have you been in New York, and you’ve never been on a freight elevator before?” Olly asked.
“I was born here,” she said, “and I’ve been on them in loft spaces.”
Olly laughed. “They slow those down and put doors in the car.”
“And buttons,” Laura added.
“That ain’t the real thing.” Olly let the handle go and dropped the car perfectly on the floor marked ‘4.’ “Fourth floor,” he called, as if the car were full.
They stepped into the dank back hallway, then turned a corner to reach the hallway with the regular elevators.
Complaining about all the work he had to do for the Bergdorf’s order, André bid her good day and disappeared into the showroom. She walked into the design room, which she expected to be desolate enough for her to grab her stuff and go.
Jeremy stood by her table, pinning a boucle jacket on her mannequin. Two yards of the same black boucle were draped over the back of her chair. She saw the yellow laundry marks of the fabric testing service. They prewashed yards of fabric to exact standards to estimate how garments would behave once they were sold. They were the ones who advised companies to put hand wash or dry clean only on the care labels.
Watching him, back in the office, doing what he always did, gave her a little déjà vu, except for the fact that she knew he wasn’t gay, and was now a little accessible. She suddenly had a silver knife in her chest where her heart used to be, and it turned and spun and twisted her guts around until she thought she might giggle uncontrollably or choke on her own spit.
“Distorni failing shrink testing again?” she asked, fingering the fabric. The texture had turned mealy and stiff, and the loose fit and soft folds of the jacket now stood straight up in the most unflattering fashion.
“I thought it might be you when I heard the door click.” He didn’t look up from his work
as he smoothed the grain of the fabric along the line of the body. She thought she might die from loving him right there.
“That fabric’s not going to work on this style,” Laura said, calming words cracking out of her mouth like machine gun fire. “If you need to use it, we need a prewashed style and something more staid, like nineties Chanel-ley.”
“It won’t sell if it’s not sexy.” Jeremy put his hand on the mannequin’s chest to move it. She had a flash of herself as the mannequin and shook it off.
He squashed a handful of fullness from the back waist of the jacket and twisted around to look at the result from the front. “I ordered fifty yards of this crap, and I’m three minutes from shoving it up Terry Distorni’s ass.”
Laura snapped the belt off the jacket and, picking up the fabric scissors she had come in to retrieve, cut the sleeves off at the shoulder.
“You want to talk about Sheldon?” Jeremy asked, picking up the sleeve and pinning it back on closer to the neck as if he had read her mind
She pinned darts into the fullness at the waist. “I just came for my supplies.”
Jeremy pointed his scissors at Carmella’s desk, which was uncharacteristically clean. “What’s the story over there? The drawers are empty.”
“Did you know where she was from?”
“Tottenville, Staten Island. Father’s a concrete truck driver. Mom owns a dry cleaner. Why?”
“Does she know you knew?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, everyone knows now, and she’s not coping well.”
Jeremy put down his scissors and smoothed the sleeve. “How about we talk about you running out of the room after I told you what I have?”
“You think that’s why I ran out?” She shortened the front of the jacket, slipping the pins in, checking for accuracy. Getting the feel from what she was doing, Laura balanced the back of the jacket with the same dexterity.
“I have no idea anymore why anyone does anything, so why don’t you just tell me and get it over with.”
They pinned without talking, changing the raglan sleeves to set-in, keeping the style the same otherwise, and touching and pulling the washed boucle. They didn’t need to talk about the jacket. They knew what they were thinking.
Then, Laura stood back and looked at the new style. “This mannequin can’t hail a cab without ripping her fifteen-hundred-dollar St. James.”
“This fabric is crap.”
“That kills the whole group. Between that, the matte jersey dying, and the staff you’re losing, you can sell your Friday slot to Zac Posen.”
“I’d rather stick a fork in my eye.”
“That’ll make the cover of Women’s Wear.”
“It’s better than going out of business, which is what’s going to happen if we don’t have a show.”
They pinned in silence, then Jeremy asked, “Why did you walk out?”
“I don’t want to tell you. I’m not ready.” It was the most honest answer she could come up with. It wasn’t Stu honest, but it was close.
“Once Gracie’s murder goes away or kills me, you and I have a lot to talk about.” He slipped the ruined jacket off the mannequin’s shoulders.
She looked at him as he held the jacket with one finger at the collar, staring at her intently as if he wanted to say what needed saying now rather than later. She joined him in wanting to say it all right now. What stopped her was the specter of his former backer and her widower.
He continued, “I need you to know I’m not a murderer.”
“I know you’re not.”
“No, you don’t.”
He was right. She hadn’t let herself think it, but there was always a spark at the back of her mind that suggested he might have done it, that she could be wrong, or that there was something the police knew that she didn’t.
“He’s going to get away with it,” Laura said. “And that’s what’s really burning my ass.”
“I keep thinking about that TOP, Laura. The one you got from Yoni. It was perfect, right?” She nodded. “That was from the shipment I fixed. I brought it back and put it on the desk for Yoni to pick up. I thought the bad one was still behind Renee’s desk.”
“Well, it’s gone. Are you sure you didn’t bring it back to 40th street?”
He nodded and turned back to the jacket. “This is a dead issue. We have to resurrect the matte jersey group, or it’s going to be a three-minute show.”
André came in and said Jeremy’s name. Laura’s former boss put the pins down and excused himself, shuffling toward the head of sales with purpose. She grabbed her rabbit and her metal rulers, scraping them on the desk as she moved them.
The sound drew Jeremy’s attention, and he turned back around. “We need you.”
“I’m not signing a contract.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I’m not working for Sheldon, either.”
“Work for me on an hourly basis until this gets sorted out. Name your price.”
“I’m expensive.”
He spun and walked out with André.
Laura stayed. Tiffany showed up, with Chilly right behind. The sewers and cutters followed. She drafted a pattern and left it on the cutter’s table with a cut ticket. She logged her start and finish times and decided she needed some lunch.
As she headed for the west side, she wondered if she should have told Jeremy how she felt when the opportunity presented itself. He was right in front of her, asking. It wasn’t going to get any easier than that.
The blizzard had stopped, and she decided to walk a block for a burrito. She deserved it for kind of getting back her job or maybe because her tooth was chipped. But she put on a sense of gastronomic entitlement and headed down to the Mexican joint.
Which was closed because of the weather.
She looked around and traced her steps down 39th, searching her mind for all the eateries down that way, and west, and a block east where she’d never normally go, and she thought about how one traces one’s steps and wondered again how Jeremy had lost that bad TOP and failed to mention it until just recently.
Because when you lose something that important, don’t you usually retrace your steps?
She found herself heading out for Japanese, which happened to be on 39th and Eighth, and then when she found that, yes, they were open, but she had forgotten how expensive they were. She headed over to Tenth. It was turning into an epic walk, but there was another Mexican place over that way, which she decided not to go to, in favor of the Deli on 39th and Eleventh.
All of that took about forty minutes and, in the end, she bought a bag of peanuts from the Korean grocery and went where she had wanted to go in the first place—the last production floor in New York, on 40th Street and Eleventh Avenue.
The factory floor was more than a floor—five stories and storage in the basement on a fifty-year lease, signed back when it seemed like the garment industry would be the center of New York’s financial life forever. Showrooms and offices occupied the other floors, tolerating the bzzt bzzt of sewing machines from upstairs or down.
Laura saw dust bunnies in every corner, hairy with multicolored threads, peeking out from under tables and clinging to chair casters. She saw the grime in the door grooves, and the worn part of the brass buttons where the hands of all the other elevator riders had rubbed the metal away. How a child with cystic fibrosis had survived his afternoons there, with its ancient wool and silk in every corner, was a miracle. The factory floor had made him sick, and he’d stayed home from school, learning patterns and sewing and pressing, making himself sicker as the fibers of the years of fashion built up, until he could stand it no more.
At least that was what she let herself think as she walked up to the glass door. The reception area on the third floor was little more than a front room with an empty metal desk. There might have been someone sitting there when the St. James’s ran their uniform business exclusively from the factory but, when Laura looked in, it was no mo
re than a way station to the sewing floor. She rang the bell and waited a good three minutes before Ephraim shuffled out, waving an apology as he cracked open the door. He was in his fifties, hunched from decades sitting over industrial machines, and sallow from a life under fluorescents.
“I’m sorry. I was at the other side.” He touched his face where the mirror image of her bruised cheek was, and asked, “What happened?”
“Had to take Mike Tyson down, and he got one in.” She rolled her eyes. Ephraim smiled noncommittally. “Jeremy sent me over for some enamel logo zipper pulls we used last October delivery. We thought you might have some leftovers?”
“Come, come.” He opened the door all the way. “I don’t know if they put them on the fourth yet.” He meant the fourth floor, which was exclusively for storage and inaccessible without code and key. “But you can check back here.”
He guided her onto the sewing floor, with its rows of green industrial machines, pressers, irons, finishing tables, and boxes of garment pieces on pallets, toward a wall of thread colors, another of fabric bolts, and a window-walled office.
It looked like a dump, like a third-world charnel house of debris and forgotten detritus. It worked, day and night, through time-and-a-half and double-time hours, an island of regulations on the Wild West Side. Steam hissed from the irons all weekend long, while the plastic water jugs hanging above cultivated a brown patina that would eventually clog the valves. The iron pads needed new muslin, and the tubes were sealed with duct tape, not because no one would pay for parts, but because replacing parts on ancient things took time. The iron would have had to be shut down for a day to make the replacement, and someone released for a day to search eBay or some other schmatta guy’s basement for the discontinued part. No one had a minute to spare because, once the sewing line was moving, there was no stopping it—not for sickness, and barely for death.
A graveyard of machines huddled behind the racks of fabric rolls, waiting for the golden days to return. Sergers with busted timers, pleating machines waiting for styles to change, braiders that were too slow, snap fastening machines from a denim line Jeremy had killed after one season. They all waited for the war of attrition to end, when they would be pulled out, dusted off, oiled, and used, only to be put back again, when pleats and braids and snaps died another death of consumer boredom.
Dead is the New Black Page 19