Sasha glanced my way. I frowned, confused, then realized I was supposed to be helping her make these momentous decisions. I shook my head. “Not the right feel,” I said. “Too intimidating. Besides, the water stain …” I shook my head sadly at its imperfection.
“The Johnstown flood.” Helena fingered her chain. “This was in the home of the banker when the waters rushed in. I consider it a historical marker, surely not a mere stain.”
“Interesting.” Hereafter I would think of all splits, tears, blemishes, and ravels that way. Nothing would ever wear out. It would instead become historically marked. A good philosophy for my impending impoverished life.
Helena looked from one of us to the other. “May I ask what the product is?”
“It’s actually … not so much a product shoot as a portrait,” Sasha said. “But the subject is rather an eccentric. Happily, she can afford to be however she pleases, although it makes certain things, like this portrait, more difficult than they need to be. She wants a definite feel to her setting, her style, more or less, while she doesn’t want any invasion of her privacy. We are shooting this in my studio because she does not want people—including me—trooping through her actual house. Her personal collection is quite distinctive, and much of it’s museum-quality, but she never opens her house for charity and is close to being a recluse. Doesn’t want anything she owns in photos, on record. Encourages thieves, I suppose. Odd, then, to want to do a portrait with props that simulate the look she loves, I know,” Sasha rambled as she held up a flowered china bowl. “But still and all, not as odd as some of my clients.”
Helena had no choice but to laugh along with Sasha, to act as if her client list were also chockablock with peculiar people. Both women were lying. Sasha had no stable of clients and barely scraped by—in fact, I’d have to ask her how she planned to stay alive in London before I considered sharing her flat—and Helena seemed the only member of humankind sincerely interested in the contents of her store.
I looked at the two financially struggling women and made another major occupational decision: nothing under the heading of self-employed. It might seem appealing to have no boss, no possible Havermeyer, but the downside was too frightening. With that thought, I felt as if I’d made great strides forward in one of the many upended segments of my life.
“Are you planning to buy or rent these items?” Helena asked.
“Buy them, of course,” Sasha said. “And then Man—my client will donate them to charity.”
I was intrigued by this imaginary eccentric, although Helena’s business wasn’t going to improve via a figment. How did her shop stay afloat? This was the vocation of a woman who existed in a different place than Helena did. This was the comfortable retreat of a comfortable woman, but for Helena this was a fantasy, projecting an image of financial security. It had nothing to do with reality, with paying actual bills. This was indeed a catastrophe waiting to happen.
Or what had precipitated a catastrophe in the library.
“Have you—Traditions!—been here long?” Sasha asked, lifting a piece of red Bohemian cut glass. She passed it to me. I loved the way even the feeble sunbeam that made its way past the looming furniture and around the porcelain shepherds slid through the ruby glass. But as one or the other of us was going to have to buy whatever we decided would make a good prop for our imaginary friend, I twirled the glass, squinted at it, then regretfully put it down.
“Six months,” Helena said.
“Where was the store before then?” I asked.
Helena looked taken aback and annoyed. “Traditions! was born six months ago.”
When her sister had loaned her the bulk of her share of their mother’s inheritance. And almost immediately needed it back. Had anybody believed that this hobby shop would support anyone?
I meanwhile stammered along, searching for the subtle way to ask, By the way, did you strangle your sister with your long scarf or necklace? “I’ve been thinking of opening my own place, being my own boss,” I said. “How do you do it? For example, have you always collected antiques?”
“I’ve always enjoyed fine things, craftsmanship, beautiful objects, classic design. For myself and others, whom I help with their interior design. And I’ve collected through auctions and travel for years, so once I had the capital and a location, setting up was quick, but it isn’t easy turning your passion into a business, no matter what anybody tells you. Of course, a great deal depends on what your merchandise is. Bagels aren’t the same as heirlooms. What sort of store do you have in mind?”
“Oh, I thought …” I hadn’t thought. I’d only spoken. I had nothing in my mind except a wish that, for once, I’d get things straight before I nattered on.
“Tchotchkes,” Sasha said. “That’s a scientific term for this and that. She adores stuff nobody needs.”
“Don’t make it sound tacky,” I said, instantly defensive about the merit of my nonexistent collection. “It’s … memorabilia. Letters, posters, the ephemera of popular culture.” I had it, and I was ready to roll now. “Old magazines, original movie posters—” I was getting into it, ready to phone up Mackenzie’s mother and ask if she’d like to sell her Hepburn-Grant posters. “And the prizes they used to give out, and—”
“I see,” Helena said, underwhelmed.
“Of course, you could have been open for years and I’m so oblivious.” Sasha to the rescue while I felt stung and sorry for myself—what was so bad about my things? “I’m not a collector myself,” Sasha said as her thousandth lie of the day. “I inherited my furniture.”
A thousand and one lies. Although who’s to say that acquiring one’s furniture and wardrobe from secondhand shops isn’t “inheriting” it?
“Mostly I work with art directors who choose everything, so I’m not really up to date with what’s around,” Sasha babbled on. “Mandy, this is quite nice, don’t you think?” She held up a gracefully shaped oil lamp.
I nodded, then caught a glimpse of the price tag, which had way too many digits. I said in a stage whisper, “Do you think your client wants to be identified with oil?” I kept my eyebrows up a ridiculously long time, miming my keen desire for Sasha to “get it”—or pretend there was something to get. Would Helena buy the suggestion that Pew family members would find a gilt-and-crystal lamp too symbolic of the Sun Oil foundation of their fortune, and therefore bad?
“You know what would be fabulous?” People into props and antiques, people with a good eye, used words like fabulous, I thought. “Something like that chain you’re wearing. Elegant, understated, but bold. I can just see—ah, the client in it, can’t you, Sasha? It isn’t old, is it? I mean, it’s a reproduction, isn’t it? We could probably get one for her—she’s not wearing her own jewels this time, is she?”
“Doubt it,” Sasha said. “You know how she is.”
Helena again touched the chain, as if to verify its reality. “This is old. Quite. A family heirloom. It was my mother’s and her mother’s before her. Made in Vienna, last century. What made you think it was a reproduction?”
“I …” I couldn’t think of another way to the truth except by using the truth. “I saw one like it last week. Admired it, is why I remember so vividly. At the library. Logan Square? I mean, the detail work—those black stones, framed in gold, the way they’re set and all …”
Sasha stared at me as if I were a foreign film without subtitles.
“But I must be mistaken, if it’s one of a kind.” I shook my head, miming a slow mind piecing things out, I hoped. “Unless it was you! It must have been you. I’m afraid I was looking more at the necklace than at its owner.”
Helena touched the chain and backed off a step. “I suppose there’s more than one, then,” she mumbled.
“Thinking about that necklace makes me remember everything that happened that day. Awful. A woman was murdered.”
Helena bowed her head slightly and straightened the scarf on her shoulder. I thought she might mention that the dead woman
was her sister, but perhaps she was simply being professional in keeping her silence.
“Was that you?” I asked. “In the library?”
She looked peeved. “Possibly,” she said. “I have a … a friend there. It’s a pleasant walk, a bit of exercise, so I frequently join … the friend for lunch. Or I look at old books of photos, prints for ideas …”
“This was Thursday morning.”
She looked at me sharply. “Thursday?” She shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She actually went in search of a date book and flipped pages. “No,” she said.
“Sorry, then. It was somebody else.” I made my voice and body language as perky as I dared, tossing out I’m-no-threat vibes like fairy dust to blind her. “And probably a different necklace design altogether. It’s just that look, maybe. The big scarf and the chain, but my memory stinks. Anyway, I was in the Rare Book Department, not the print department or cafeteria, where you’d be.”
Her pale skin blanched even more. I plodded on, doing a dumb-blonde routine even though my hair is a fairly intense red-brown. “I remember where I was because … because that’s where the woman …” My voice was down to a whisper. “Where … you know. Later in the day, where it happened,” I finished lamely. “Right outside it.”
Helena tightened her lips and held them that way before she spoke. “A crazy person did it. They should lock them all up. They’re ruining the city. They ruin business—nobody wants to crawl over them to get into a store. And now they’re killing people.”
“Horrible, isn’t it?” Sasha held a leather box with straps for closures, one of those things that never had a possible function but looked stunning.
Sasha might keep having a good time with her imaginary assignment, but I’d reached a dead end. Helena had been at the library. She’d admit it, I bet, if asked again. I had nothing beyond a memory of her standing over that case—the visual equivalent of hearsay, so now what? I was desperate enough to try for the truth, or something akin to it. “My sister knew her. My sister was friends with the … victim.”
“Really?”
I nodded. “Good friends. She was even at a housewarming party for the … victim this past weekend.”
“Really?” Helena’s interest was honest and complete. “I was at that party, too. I might know your sister. Mind my asking what her name is?”
“Beth Wyman.” I saw the flash of recognition, thought I saw the irritation, too, but it was quickly stifled.
“Of course,” Helena said. “Then you must be the little sister. The schoolteacher. She mentioned she’d been to see you.”
“So you are … you were a friend of the woman who … of hers as well?”
After a long pause, Helena spoke. “I’m her sister,” she said.
“I’m so sorry! That’s …”
She half nodded and brushed away any further commiserations. “My sister was an unlucky woman.”
“My brother-in-law works with … I guess he’s your brother-in-law, then,” I said.
“Ray.” She managed to get five syllables’ worth of disdain into the short name, to make it sound like a curse.
“The boy who they think did it,” I said softly. “He’s my student. The one you called crazy.”
“That’s what the TV called him.”
I thought they’d used rather less inflammatory terms, but so be it. “I don’t think he did it. I think he’s innocent. What would his motive possibly be?”
“Crazy people do crazy things.” She fingered her necklace, then pulled her hand away, looking worried by her automatic gesture. We’d run out of discussion prospects.
I glanced at my watch. “Sasha, I’m going to have to get to that appointment. Maybe we could come back tomorrow?”
“Actually, I’m closing the store for the day tomorrow,” Helena said. “Family matters.”
“Then another time,” I murmured. “Thank you so much for letting us browse. Again, my condolences. And I’m sorry for the mix-up.”
She looked puzzled.
“About the library. Thinking I’d seen you up in the Rare Book Department.”
She nodded curtly, then looked at Sasha, who was running a finger over the intricate raised design on a high, narrow chest of drawers. “Anything?” she asked. “Anything you want to consider? Anything I could hold for you? You’d be under no obligation, of course, but this way it would be here, for a reasonable time, while you decide.”
It was so loud and clear, despite the soft voice trying to hide it. Her near desperation was deafening. I felt an unwanted pang of sympathy for Helena and her miserable business. Or maybe it was a pang of recognition—of that moment of terror when the future yawns in front of you, a fanged mouth whose bite can be softened only if filled with money.
I wonder what she’d originally thought—perhaps that Emily and Ray would bail her out, support her, keep her afloat, no matter what happened?
How desperate had she been to be out from under the weight of debt?
Sasha pointed at a silly chest of drawers, the sort of idiosyncratic piece that made no sense to me. Each drawer could hold three pairs of underpants, perhaps. A dozen handkerchiefs. One folded, finely woven T-shirt. Maybe that was its charm—furniture for people who already have all the furniture they need. “This is so interesting,” Sasha said. “And it would be just the right height. We’ll find something to put on top of it, too. I’ll let you know.”
Helena scribbled information on a tag, attached it to a drawer pull, and waved us off with renewed cheer.
“I like that nutty chest,” Sasha said when we were outside again.
“Do you recall that this is all make-believe? We have no rich client who wants to simulate her own home for a portrait. So why on earth did you put that monstrosity on hold?”
“I consider it my job and duty to spread hope where I can.”
“Really?”
She nodded gravely. I invited her for dinner, practically begged her. I needed all the hope she was willing to spread.
Fifteen
FOR ONCE MACKENZIE WAS AT HOME WHEN I ARRIVED. THANK goodness he and Sasha were at peace with each other, because I didn’t need to be a camel to believe my back could be broken with a feather’s weight more of stress.
Happily, she served as a buffer zone and made the evening ahead feel more comfortable.
Pork stew was in the freezer, and I could fake the rest. This was Sasha, not somebody who provoked my Og-woman dazzle-instincts.
The man’s attention was again on a screen—not the small one this time, but the tiny one. “Off in a sec,” he said. His ability to focus intently and give something his total attention is incredibly sexy when applied to me, infuriating when applied to electronics. I put the frosty containers in the microwave and pressed the necessary controls. As the food heated I watched C.K. highlight and copy something into a file. I managed to make my table setting involve passing by him, and I saw the word schizophrenia at the top of a solid block of text. He was studying up on Adam. Learning what to do when he found him. I couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.
I listened to Sasha decide whether she liked our painting of the window looking onto the bucolic scene. “Cows in space,” she said, walking back and forth in the middle of the loft across from it. “Airborne bovines. Cowstronauts.”
“We think it’s funny. Doubly so because we’re up here in the city air.”
Her expression—now she was being the nonpro with the good eye—made me fear our senses of humor needed tuning. Then she shrugged. “I like it. I don’t think I should, but I do.” She looked around the loft’s walls.
“No use searching for it,” I said. “The space is reserved, though. Right over here above the table.” She’d done a photograph of fruit that was anything but a still life. It breathed; it was so sensuous it was almost obscene, inviting the touch of fingers, lips. And it still awaited Sasha’s attention. I’d offered to have it enlarged elsewhere, but she took that as a personal insult.
/> “I’ve been busy,” she said. “Having your armpits sniffed takes time.”
Mackenzie swiveled around. It was more a matter of having turned off the computer than of Sasha’s armpits, but he nonetheless seemed intrigued as he walked over, accepted a glass of wine, and settled in next to me.
“Sasha’s been a guinea pig,” I said. “At the Chemical Senses Center.”
C.K. lifted his glass in a mock toast to her. “To a thrilling-sounding life experience.”
“A paid guinea pig,” Sasha said. “That’s the thrill of it. All I had to do is sweat. Long time back, right here in River City, they found these chemicals that produce odor. Underarm variety. And they also found, separately, that underarm chemicals can influence the menstrual cycle—hope you don’t mind this talk of female things, mister. You asked, you know. So anyway, they had a bunch of us involved in three overlapping experiments for a month. Easy money, but not the way to keep friends and influence people. I had to work out—several times—and stay dirty. Other times I had to sit in the third circle of hell and sweat.”
I chose not to question why that fragrant month wouldn’t therefore have been the perfect time to spend alone in a darkroom, printing the photo. I questioned, instead, the researchers. “So they, ah, actually sniff you?”
Unfortunate timing. Mackenzie had just lifted his glass and was in the very act of inhaling the pale fragrance of the wine. He paused, looked at me, and grinned. “Good thing I’m not big on power of suggestion,” he said.
“They sniffed us,” Sasha said. “Except when we sweated onto cotton pads under the arm. Then they sniffed them, or put them through tests. Sometimes we worked on getting up a sweat, sometimes they just made us hotter than hell, and sometimes they made us nervous. That was about the antiperspirant component. So don’t think there wasn’t variety, challenge, and excitement on the job.”
“Nervous? Like how?” Mackenzie leaned forward, toward Sasha, who sat in the oversized easy chair at right angles to the sofa.
I had the feeling Mackenzie was hoping for tips for the interrogation room.
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