“The thieving age?”
“Little punk knows I would murder him in front of my sister.”
“I think if it were an inside job, he would have broken in through the front door. Keyed the lock open or something.”
“Exactly!” Matejo beamed.
Matejo had lived in the building the longest and thus was the de facto super, overly educated on what days of the week the garbage men hauled away cardboard boxes. The building was his spiritual responsibility.
“If it was him, he’s gonna replace everything he took. But it wasn’t him.”
“You keep saying that.” Victor couldn’t help himself.
“Because it wasn’t.” Matejo pressed his thumb into the defunct lock.
“Who else got hit?”
“The new people up top. Christina in the basement was home, I guess. She said she didn’t hear anything. Basically everyone on this side of the building. All through the windows.”
“Did you talk to the cops?”
This was easy for Victor to propose when he himself had already decided it was too much of a time-suck to go to the cops. A time-suck from what? From sleeping late and consuming white foods and brown liquids? Whatever. Depression took time, devotion. You had to feed it, keep it away from direct sunlight, let it take over the bed at night like a dog.
“I don’t talk to police,” Matejo said, as if declaring a nut allergy.
“Well, my shit is missing. So that sucks. And it’s hot and my window won’t close now, so that also sucks.”
“The super’s coming to repair my window. I can tell him you’re back and have him take a look at yours, too.”
“Thanks.”
A moment passed between them, each man balancing between accusation and defense. Matejo had knocked on Victor’s door within an hour of his coming home. He had already talked to everyone else in the building. That kid belonged in a juvenile detention facility. Him and his friends. Juvenile delinquents always had friends, someone to hold open the window.
“Hey, anyone ever tell you that you look like a busted Adrien Brody?”
“Some would argue that Adrien Brody is already busted.”
“Yeah, but think about how much pussy that guy gets.”
“I’ll give it some thought.”
“My stove is on,” Matejo said abruptly and turned down the hall.
Victor shut the door and twisted the deadbolt. He kicked his bag over to the couch, took off his shirt, and opened the bottle of Jameson. He was sweating from his belly button, undoing the good of a shower. The pants he wore on the plane were slumped on the floor of his closet. He remembered the delicate sketch of the necklace, of the life not his. It felt like weeks, not hours ago. He should get that thing out of there. In the heightened energy of a just-burglarized apartment, he felt anxious about its safety.
A wave of sadness, stronger than usual, came over him. It crested, and Victor saw that he owned nothing.
True, he had owned nothing before the robbery—nothing that warranted the level of protection Johanna had shown her jewelry. There was no history in his life, in his family (the trail went cold after his grandparents came over from Russia). But where were his totems and heirlooms? He was not materialistic. That would require materials. But perhaps an old pen or a shaving brush or something? Something passed down. He was a Jew, not a Buddhist. What pieces of this world were his?
He had a ratty quilt from his grandmother, but it wasn’t even hand-stitched. It was just an old quilt his grandmother had given him because she was getting a new quilt. The tag read “Ralph Lauren Home Collection.” You could tell it was made specifically for the outlet from which she had purchased it. But money was never the point. This was the silent principle of wealth that Victor had not understood or cared to understand for most of his life. Only having met Johanna was he forced to face the importance of object history. He could have a hundred computers and two hundred televisions stolen and it didn’t matter because he could just go to the store and replace them. Not him, not with his account balance, but somebody could. Accessibility made those things worthless. Whereas part of the necklace’s worth was that it was impossible to get.
Victor gulped down as much of the Jameson as he could and hissed. He studied the bottle. It was a strange size, not quite minibar size but not behind-the-bar size either. In a rectangle on the label were the words “Not for Resale.” Left over from the holidays, a promotional gift from Nancy the Temp, who had been given the bottle by people in the advertising department, people who liked her enough to give her things.
Victor emptied it into his face.
NINETEEN
Kezia
The low buildings and wide streets of the neighborhood meant that the sun poured through the windows earlier here than it did in midtown, where most of her friends worked. They had irresponsibly glorious central air-conditioning as well. Elevators that weren’t freight elevators. They opened their company refrigerators to more than expired milk and Brasso. Even Victor worked for a proper company. Kezia checked her phone. She had texted Victor several times since they got back but had heard nothing in return, which was unusual. When they did communicate, she was the one who felt guilty for not getting back to him fast enough.
“Is everything okay?”
Sophie, the assistant in cowboy boots, had manifested, blinking at Kezia like a fawn. A fawn with tennis-ball thighs. Sophie wanted Kezia’s job. Goal attained, she could then crawl up Rachel’s vagina, curl up in her uterus, and go to sleep forever.
“Things seem tense. Is everything okay with the Starlight Express?”
Office antics with her fellow fawns had left Sophie with a metallic sticker on her forehead, a bindi fixed to the exact spot where a hunter might shoot her.
“Yeah, it’s nothing.” Kezia minimized her in-box.
“Do you need me to call anyone?” Sophie pressed her bindi.
She wore a Lucite ring that spanned four fingers, one of Rachel’s favorites.
“I think I have it covered,” Kezia said.
To soften the blow, she added: “I can’t believe I have to make another round of calls where I have to say ‘Starlight Express’ with a straight face.”
“I think it’s the most fabulous necklace Rachel’s ever created,” said Sophie, as if they were being bugged.
“Really? The most fabulous?”
“Totes gorge. I love the contrasting philosophies and materials, you know? Like, the way the colors of the enamel stars work in reverse juxtaposition with the crystal?”
Were they making the Kool-Aid in breathable form these days?
“Well, it’s broken.”
“Awww, it’s the clasp, isn’t it?” Sophie touched a prototype of the necklace, laid out like a corpse on Kezia’s desk. “Poor thingy. What happened to you?”
Sophie was a notorious over anthropomorphizer.
“Okay.” Kezia gestured at the corpse with a pencil. “It’s two things. It’s the weight that’s pulling on the jump rings on either side of the clasp. So the mechanism inside the clasp is shifting at an angle and getting stuck. Like a frozen seesaw. And to top it off, whole sections of the cloisonné sky are chipping like nail polish.”
“Oh.” Sophie ran her fingers over it. “She’s trying to hold hands and she can’t.”
Kezia could read her thoughts: This belongs in a doll hospital. I want your job! Bubbles!
“If you need me to research new vendors for you, I can,” she whispered, so as not to wake the necklace.
“Sophie, I’m not trying to be rude but we have access to the same database, do we not?”
Kezia was the one with the institutional knowledge here. She didn’t ask for it but she had it. She was the most senior employee and with great seniority came great encyclopedic knowledge of the database.
“Yeeeeah.” Sophie smiled with a passive aggressivity that was downright evil. “But relying on that is what got you here in the first place.”
“We should proba
bly let her rest,” Kezia whispered.
“Totally,” Sophie whispered and skipped back to her desk.
She was only five years younger, but in these transient times, that was enough to be raised on an entirely different planet. She did not, for instance, know why saying “Starlight Express” a dozen times a day should induce embarrassment. She had never touched a roller skate. Not even a rollerblade. She had probably never seen a Broadway show. Kezia tried to focus. She had two weeks to locate a new vendor on this continent, factoring in shipping, approval, and Rachel calling from Tokyo at time-zone abhorrent hours to complain about bean paste. It was impossible. There were four factories in the world that made cloisonné jewelry and out of those four, three were on the same side of the same street in Paris and the fourth was on the opposite side.
She changed her IM status to “invisible” and opened up the database. She called a manufacturing company in Rhode Island but they weren’t sophisticated enough to handle this. There was a company in California, in Sacramento, a contact she thought was old. This was confirmed when an automated voice informed her the number was no longer in service. There was a company in Evanston, Illinois, that kept her on hold to the Empire of the Sun soundtrack for so long, she thought she might burst into tears. She put down the phone and took out supply catalogs from her desk drawer—pages upon pages of bezels and tubing. None of this would work. She leaned her hand on her palm and pressed the zit on her chin. She played with a paper clip, unbending it into a tiny weapon. Maybe she could just hand-paper-clip all 150 necklaces back together again.
Her phone beeped and she looked enthusiastically at it. She had given up on texting and called Victor, asking how much she owed him for the hotel room, which she was sure would force a response. But it was only Rachel: “Why is there no middle-finger emoji?”
In the far corner of the loft, Sophie was speaking brightly with their advertising coordinator, Hannah. Sophie and Hannah were both twenty-four. Did they ever wonder what would happen to their friendship ten years down the road? Would they lose each other’s phone numbers? If Caroline hadn’t invited Kezia to the wedding, she wouldn’t have flinched. Caroline was always prickly. She used to make snide comments about Kezia’s slender build, throwing in Grey as well. She did this as if it were mandatory punishment for having a decent metabolism. All the money in the world couldn’t buy you that and, in fact, bought you the reverse: Ladurée macaroons, salami from Italy, smoked fish from Barney Greengrass. Kezia’s stomach growled at the thought of those macaroons. The Marksons would bring them back from Paris with a note tucked under the green ribbon, instructing Caroline to eat them “right away.” This was one of Kezia’s fondest memories of Caroline, and it wasn’t even about her—it was about cookies.
“God, this thing’s been acting up lately.” Hannah yanked at the door to the freight elevator.
“Haven’t ya, big fella?” Sophie addressed the door directly.
The metal latch finally gave, the sound of it reverberating across the loft.
“Peace out, Special K!” said Hannah.
“Night,” Kezia mumbled.
At long last: silence. Kezia went to the bathroom, trained a can of air freshener directly on Saul’s butthole, and settled back into her chair. The company’s homepage featured a quote from Rachel. It appeared as the website loaded, before a customer was granted permission to “Enter the World of Rachel Simone.”
1% Loaded: SOME PEOPLE ARE THE THREADS,
35% Loaded: RUNNING THROUGH OUR HEARTS.
70% Loaded: THEY WILL ALWAYS BE THERE.
75% Loaded: OTHER PEOPLE ARE JUST BEADS ON THE THREAD . . .
98% Loaded: LIFE IS ABOUT SEPARATING THE THREADS FROM THE BEADS.
Then the text faded and in its place, in all its rock-crystal-and-cloisonné glory, was the piece on which the company’s reputation rode: The Starlight Express.
With a violent click, she exited the World of Rachel Simone.
TWENTY
Kezia
Kezia found the manner in which she heard about Victor’s break-in almost as distressing as the news itself. Olivia told her. She was running out to get salads for her and Marcus when she ran into Olivia en route to a haircut. Or maybe en route from a haircut. Olivia was one of those women who could pinch her hair, hold it like a frayed rope, say “Look, how disgusting!” and you’d just have to take her word for it. She was also one of those women who got haircuts on Twelfth Street in the middle of a Thursday. What did she do all day long, anyway? It was way too late for Kezia to ask. Something to do with events? Every job had something to do with events. Brain surgery was an event.
“How’s work?” Kezia asked.
“Busy,” said Olivia, “but it’s always busy this time of year.”
“I can imagine.”
She couldn’t.
“Plus, I’m always swimming in red tape, you know?”
She didn’t.
Anesthesiologist or barista, Olivia kept the hours of a vampire. The few times Kezia ran into her, she felt as if she had stepped into the golden mist of Olivialand, where people woke guiltlessly at eleven o’clock, having slept in negligees.
“You got color down there,” Olivia said.
“Freckles.” Kezia covered her face.
She checked her watch, which was sliding down her wrist, lubricated with sweat. Burning time out of Rachel’s sight during a production crisis was ill-advised. She hadn’t had any luck figuring out how to fix the clasp in America and she had been turned down by the two other cloisonné manufacturers in Paris, under the guise of “short notice.” She suspected Claude Bouissou of blackballing Rachel. The independent European enameling scene was, unsurprisingly, not large. She needed to find a new clasp or a new job. Not because Rachel would fire her, but precisely because she wouldn’t. She would opt for casual torture, for piling on the work, for making Kezia a contestant on a little game show called That’s Not My Job! Tell her what she’s won! Why, it’s a coach-class ticket to a resin manufacturing plant in Guangdong!
“Oh!” Olivia had already begun to walk away but came rushing back. “And can you believe it about Victor?”
“Yeah, he’s not very bright, that one.”
Kezia assumed she was referring to the game of musical beds Victor had played with Felix’s mother.
“Do you know how it happened? Did he leave his apartment unlocked?”
“What?”
“Sam told me they got in through the window.”
“Felix’s mom crawled in through his window?”
“Victor got robbed.”
“Of what?”
Kezia thought perhaps he had lost an election or sporting match.
“No, no.” Olivia was annoyed, which was frightening because most people turned passive-aggressive when annoyed but you got the feeling that Olivia might actually hit you. “His apartment.”
“Oh. Shit. That’s . . . really?”
And by “really” Kezia meant: Sam? Victor had told Sam but not her?
“Really.” She crammed her purse into her armpit. “Okay. Bye, chica!”
Walking back to the office, plastic bag of salads twisting around her thumb, Kezia called Victor again. When she got his voice mail, she wondered if maybe his phone had been stolen as well. She hung up and the phone rang in her hand.
“Hey. Sorry, I couldn’t find my phone.”
Kezia imagined Victor’s apartment ransacked, couch cushions gutted, lamps she was pretty sure he didn’t own smashed on the floor. What if something had actually happened to him? What if he had been robbed after they got back to New York? She felt an unexpected weight in her chest. He could have been killed.
“Thieves and murderers aren’t on the same spectrum,” said Victor.
“You could have been stabbed in the face!”
“Anyone can be stabbed in the face at any time.”
“But these people broke and entered into your apartment.”
“You know how redundant breaking a
nd entering is? Who breaks and doesn’t enter? Besides the KKK? Think about it.”
She knew what he was doing, taking credit for being brave when it was easy to take credit. When it had already happened and he had been thousands of miles away. “Why haven’t you been responding to my texts?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re being weird.”
“I am not.”
“Is this about what you were trying to tell me on the beach, about some Nazi necklace? Just tell me.”
“No, I told you—forget it. I’m fine. I didn’t realize you cared so much.”
“Did you call your parents?”
Victor’s parents sent their son to college as if they were sending him to Thai prison. They were unproductive worriers, pure suburbanites, anti-city and anti-country, equally dubious of underground transportation and pickup trucks. Kezia had met them several times over the years when they came to take Victor out to dinner, convinced he was eating gruel at the dining hall. They reintroduced themselves every time. It’s lovely to meet you, Kesha, are you a sophomore as well? They were so different from Kezia’s parents, who were thrilled by everything college had to offer their daughter. When she moved in, her father pointed at the pavement outside and said, “Is this where people park? Fantastic!”
Kezia rang the buzzer for the Rachel Simone loft. A homeless teenager sat on the pavement next to her; the lettering of his cardboard started out strong but faded. Maybe they do all share the same Sharpie, she thought. She put a dollar into his hat and pressed the button again. Hannah let her in.
“I was thinking of calling them,” Victor concluded. “But they’ve already convinced themselves this neighborhood is dangerous.”
“It’s obviously dangerous.”
“The streets are littered with diaper boxes. And I don’t have much left to steal.”
“Your phone.”
“I’m using it as we speak. Hey, do you go to the DMV to get your passport renewed?”
“Really? To the Department of Motor Vehicles? No. You can do it online.”
The Clasp Page 13