“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.
She stepped into the restaurant five minutes early and chose a table by the window so she could look out it when he laughed at her. The place specialized in local food, which in New York meant Westchester, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and lots of cheating. Wheat couldn’t be grown in a hundred-mile radius, so the bread’s origin wasn’t mentioned on the intentionally crumpled, handwritten menu. The waitress looked too wholesome in her bandana to have been raised locally, either, and Laura found herself disgusted with the accepted falsehoods all around her, so much so that she scribbled, “at-will termination” at the bottom of her list. If she discovered a nest of vipers, she wanted the ability to walk without contractual repercussions.
As if she was ever going to leave Jeremy… she was just having an amusing lunch with a friend who enjoyed a professional flirtation.
She was putting the finishing touches on her list, literally dotting i’s and crossing t’s, when the chair in front of her moved, and someone sat down.
“Mouth.” Sheldon Pomerantz snapped a napkin into his lap. “I didn’t even recognize you. I thought you were your sister for a minute.” He was still seven feet of lightning in a five-and-a-half-foot bottle. His double-vented suit had the slightest bit of shine from a too-hard press, and his tie was an eighth of an inch too wide, but he didn’t care a damn, and that made her wary.
“Sheldon, it’s nice to see you.”
“You lie as well as ever.” The lawyer smiled like a cat thrilled at the challenge of an unexpectedly fat mouse. “Barry got held up with the bank. They actually want to see the clothes. Like they know what they’re looking at. Did you order?” He flashed his hand for the waitress, and she and her little yellow bandana approached. They ordered, and when she left, Sheldon put his elbows on the table and got down to business. “So, Barry gave you a number. This works? Or not?”
“It works. There are other things.” She slid him the paper with the stupid demands he’d never agree to.
He took out his reading glasses and perused the list, then put the page flat on the table. “This is it?”
“Yes. For now.”
He glanced over it again. “This clothing allowance. You taking it on retail or wholesale?”
“Wholesale.”
He looked at her over his glasses. “Retail. And stuff comes from the warehouse after orders are filled.”
Asking her to take her allowance at retail pricing effectively cut the amount in half. Still, it would keep most people clothed for a few years. “Agreed,” she said. “And it includes licensees.” That would put her in shoes and accessories, which were made and designed by outside factories. Licensed stuff was much more expensive to give away on an allowance voucher.
“Only items coming through the warehouse,” Sheldon said. “Drop-shipped you have to go buy yourself.”
“I have no idea what that excludes.”
“Perfume and underwear.”
“Fine.”
“How’s your boyfriend going to be with you trotting around in Barry’s stuff?”
“He’s a big boy. He can handle it.” She had no idea how much Jeremy would handle, if anything at all. It might be a moot point, but Sheldon didn’t have to know that.
He pushed the paper to the side. “I don’t see any clunkers.”
>
“Graham Smyrski will be reading the contract and negotiating on my behalf. So let’s be honest—”
“Let’s.”
“No tricks. No Trojan horses. No surprises.”
Sheldon took his glasses off and smiled to her, showing his big white teeth. “I wouldn’t dream of it, because Graham Smyrski is the one lawyer in this town I respect. And also because this is going to be the sweetest deal I ever wrote anybody.”
Her eyes flicked over his face, but she couldn’t read it. She detected only pleasure, happiness even, coexisting with a sharp cruelty he always exhibited when he was at his angriest. “How did I get so privileged?” she asked. “Is it my Uncle Graham or something else?”
“We have a history. Mouthing off about Barry sent me over there. New client. More money. I have warm feelings for you.”
“I appreciate that.” She considered her next move. “Are we still being honest?”
“Of course.”
“You tried to sue Jeremy for counterfeiting his own line and keeping the profits. You failed because Gracie separated JSJ from your corporate interests. This offended you, I’m sure, and I wouldn’t bring it up, except now you’re writing a contract for my employment, and I’m not sure if it’s going to be clean because poaching me hurts Jeremy or if it’s going to have trapdoors because you want to get back at him through his girlfriend.”
He leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs as if taking up more space in the room increased his dominance. He looked at her as though seeing her for the first time in that restaurant during a contract negotiation and not in a design room during a murder investigation. “He was nailing my wife for nine years. For her money. You given that much thought?”
“He was nineteen. She was the aggressor. You given that much thought?” She considered, mid-sentence, that it was unfair to antagonize him. He was there because Barry had sent him, sitting across from the woman who had replaced his wife in Jeremy’s bed a few months after his wife was murdered. He’d really gotten a raw deal, despite the fact that he seemed like such an unlovable prick.
He chuckled as if she were a seven-year-old who had just told the best knock-knock joke ever. “She made him what he is.” Despite the laughter that led into his reply, by the time he was done, his voice was sharp and serrated.
She leaned forward, into the blade. “This is how you close a deal, Sheldon?”
He nodded slightly, as if conceding the point in such a way that he could deny later. “This deal is closing itself. Because you keep saying no, but this list says something else. Look, let’s not spend too much time on the past. I brought it up, my fault. Seeing you brought it all back. I came to tell you one thing and futz around with details. You have your deal, and your uncle is going to be happy with it.”
She could still wiggle out of it up to the moment the pen hit the paper. Backing out wouldn’t help her reputation any, but what was a reputation for unless you could ruin it? “I need to see it before I agree to anything.”
Their food came, and Sheldon wiped his silverware with the cloth napkin to get it to a high shine before he let it touch his food.
Laura felt as powerful and competent as she ever had, and though Sheldon’s motivations and weaknesses were obvious, she’d gone toe-to-toe with him and not come out the worse for it. She wondered if she was still convincing herself she wasn’t moving to Barry or if she was only afraid to tell Jeremy she was leaving his business.
**
She got a call just as she was getting into a cab.
“Hi, Stu,” she said. “How did your date go?”
“Excellent, thank you. But I’m not calling about my sex life.”
“Oh, there was sex. Very—”
“I was doing a little backup research on Gracie Pomerantz,” he interrupted, “and I found out she and Jeremy tried to take the company public five years ago. They pulled the application, and it looks like it was because they couldn’t get around the health disclosure for the principals.”
She cleared her throat. “And?”
“And was she sick? Could this have contributed to her death? I’d think the autopsy would have found something.”
Laura didn’t know about the IPO. She only knew Gracie wouldn’t have permitted Jeremy to grow at the rate outside investors would have allowed. So it had been either Jeremy sneaking around his backer or some short-term weakness on her part. In any case, it was obvious what the health disclosure was about, and Stu finding out about it would be a disaster.
“Stu, honestly, I have no idea.”
“It’s her or Jeremy. Something you want to tell me?”
“Yeah,” she said. He waited like a good reporter. “You better be using condoms with all these girls, or you’re going to need a health disclosure.”
“Oh, Laura, you lie out the wrong side of your mouth.”
She felt a cold chill go up her spine. If word of Jeremy’s disease got out because of her, she’d never live it down. The cab stopped on 38th Street. “I have to go, Stuart. Don’t forget to wrap it up.” She clicked the phone off before she said something really stupid.
CHAPTER 18
Ruby had changed everything for the January delivery to orange. Their showroom was going to look like sunset on the Brunican flag. Laura felt good about the change. The line looked beautiful, and it let her know Dad’s reemergence affected her sister as much as it did her.
Laura still hadn’t embraced a move to Barry Tilden, but she thought seriously about how it would affect Ruby. Her sister was already paid more for Sartorial, a living wage as opposed to Laura’s token paycheck, which was offset by the embarrassingly large salary Jeremy paid her to work on JSJ. Of course, because their capacities for the job varied so widely, Laura worked as many hours per week as her sister, and if she moved, that wouldn’t change. She’d just have to juggle. She wouldn’t be the first to do it. It was almost easy, but she wasn’t worried about herself. She worried about Ruby, and then she started worrying about Jeremy.
As if on cue, he strode in and asked, “I’m walking over to 40th. You coming?”
The world outside the windows dimmed, and the lights of the building next door warmed the darkening office. She stopped moving little paper dolls of clothes over a foam-core board. “I can’t. We’re behind on Sartorial, and I can’t delegate this. I never realized how experimental Ruby is. I’m the one reining her in. It’s unexpected to say the least.”
He pulled her jacket off the back of her chair and put it over her shoulders. “That’s because you’re becoming the business side of the operation. Come on. You’ve been moving that skirt back and forth between deliveries for twenty minutes.”
She put the skirt, which was too short by far, into the first delivery and blurted something that had been on her mind for a long time. “Does it bother you that someone had to die for us to be together?”
“No. Never.”
She’d felt immediately that bringing it up was a mistake, and his answer confirmed it.
He touched her chin with his thumb. “That makes you uncomfortable?”
“It’s very cold.”
“All right. Then let me explain. We had a ten-year contract that was due to be renegotiated in a year, except she had the right to keep the current terms at her discretion. I couldn’t take another minute with her, but I had to be cool. I have assets, and the factory is mine. I could start another company, but she could take my name. My name, in the end, is all I have that’s worth anything. She made it clear she’d take it in a second. So…” He took a deep breath. “I had to arrange it so the contract would be negotiated at all, and then that I could pluck out the clause about trademarks and copyrights. And to do that, it just… I had to play her. That’s the only way I can say it.”
“And her dying meant you could avoid all of it.”
“I’m not coming off well no matter how I say it.”
“What were you going to have to do to make her comfortable enough to let you pull that clause?�
��
“Honestly?” He turned her around and buttoned the top button of her coat.
“Honestly.”
“Honestly,” he said, stroking the line of her jacket’s shoulders, “since none of it ever happened, I don’t think I have to say, and I’d rather run my thumb through a serger than talk about it.”
She accepted his answer, because sergers were beastly machines, and his thumbs were precious.
**
In the garment center, Laura and Jeremy were safe from the media. The streets were crowded with people running to the trains, hailing cabs, and waiting for buses. The end of the day for many people was midday for them, and they strolled to the factory arm in arm against the chill. He was recognized with nods and quick handshakes, and by dint of his presence, she was, too. They walked briskly enough to avoid being sidelined by conversations and long greetings, and as they headed farther west, the bumping and jostling reduced.
“Are you going to see your mother?” he asked.
“Not tonight. I called her, and she told me she was sick of me. I think she’s sick of me asking questions about Dad.”
“I hope you find him, Lala.”
She didn’t mind the name because he squeezed her shoulder when he said it. “Yeah. I feel like the harder I look, the more I have no idea where he is. I mean, I know he’s here somewhere. At least he was a few days ago. And the longer it takes to find him, the less likely he stuck around.”
“I think he’s going to find you.”
“If he wanted to see me, he would have left a number in the letter.”
“If he didn’t want to be found, he would have mailed it. With a stamp, and not dropped it off.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know what to say to him anyway. Except, ‘I hate you.’ And I’d ask where the dress is. Because he knows. I mean, I get hit over the head with Dad in the last week, the high prince shows up in New York. He’s involved.”
“You said the high prince had the dress.”
“He’s arranging to have it destroyed or transported. Come on, Jeremy. He’s not going to do it himself any more than you’re going to do your own laundry. But he’s probably here because of the screw-up last night, doing damage control. He doesn’t want anyone to know his wife was a man. He’d lose his crown and all the money that goes with it.”
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