CHAPTER 11
THE HAPPY FACE
In the morning Tile gives me my foot massage. Even though it’s way too early for dessert, I eat the cookies. He acts like he’s a professional masseur. After he’s done with the left foot, he sighs. “Are you gonna marry Oliver from across the street?”
“Better. We’re going to elope. To Fiji.”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s an island.”
“Are there coconuts?”
“A ton.”
“Well, be careful because a thousand and nine people a year die from coconuts falling on their heads.” He starts doing this thing that I love, where he rolls his knuckles down my soles. I tip my head back and finish the cookie.
Before he leaves he turns around at my door and stands in this crooked way that means he’s going to get serious.
“Something about Mom’s death was fishy.”
I sit upright.
“What?”
“Don’t make me repeat it,” he says, and shuts the door.
Some kids are brought up on Nickelodeon and Dr. Seuss, but Tile started reading my dad’s scripts at age six and memorizing all the juiciest lines. In this case, he read my mind, ’cause ever since finding that cuff link it’s like this little seed I don’t know if I want to plant.
I go and find him in his room, throwing his dirty clothes into his hamper.
“Why do you think that?” I ask.
“Do the math,” he says.
Okay, he’s definitely been reading Dad’s scripts.
“Right,” I say, smiling as I turn away. That’s Tile trying to be dramatic, pretending he knows something.
Back in my room, I tell myself it’s now or never. Eventually I’m going to have to give Mom’s phone back, so I might as well continue. But slowly.
I lock my door, breathe in, and grab Mom’s phone.
I have been deleting them as I go, so as not to leave a trace, and there are four more.
“To listen to your messages, press one.”
“Hi, this is Angela, calling from Butter restaurant. I believe someone in your party left a personal item; please come by any time after four p.m. Tuesday through Sunday to retrieve it. Thank you.”
I immediately go online and look up the restaurant. It’s only three blocks from where my mother was hit. My heart rate speeds up. Did she go there the night she died?
I go into my father’s office and he puts down the script he’s reading when he sees the look on my face, which I try to erase.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, Moon, shoot.”
“I know you weren’t with Mom the night she died, and every time I asked you, you avoided the question. But I really have to know. What was she doing?”
He adjusts his glasses and looks out the window before turning to me.
“She had gone to dinner with Maria, her yoga teacher. Moon, we’ve been through this.…”
“You just kept saying the details didn’t matter, that she was gone. I only knew the intersection from the police report. I asked a lot and you never told me who she was with.”
“Well, I did now.”
My mother took yoga religiously, but only this particular class that was a combination of techniques. I went with her once and was embarrassed to run into Ms. Gray there. Something about seeing your teacher in real life is unnerving.
“So tell me, how does it feel to be fifteen?”
“Weird,” I say, and go back to my room.
I grab my hoodie, my keys, and my MetroCard and leave without telling anyone. On the subway down to Astor Place, I notice a Hispanic girl about my age looking at me intently, as if I have something she wants. My pink hoodie? I give her a wave and she smiles, embarrassed. Then I notice a woman at the end of the car, her back to me, reading while slightly curled around the silver pole. Her hair is the exact length and color of my mother’s. As we rumble through the tunnel I walk closer, losing my balance a few times. I feel a strange magnetism, and as I am pulled closer I can even smell her. The train pulls into the station and I reach out to touch her, slowly, and wonder if I’m going crazy. Suddenly she twists her long neck and it’s someone with the shape of my mother’s face but completely different features. She looks at me like she understands, then gazes at her own feet, walking away. Until the next stop I hold on to the pole exactly where she did and close my eyes. When I get out of the subway, the fresh air feels good.
Butter is closed but I can see someone mopping the floor, and I keep tapping on the window until he finally opens the big glass door just a crack.
“What is it?”
“I left something here, it’s really important,” I say.
He shuts the door and holds up his hand.
It starts to rain. Two guys whistle at me as they go by and I give them the finger. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. What’s happening to me?
A man with white hair in a crisp suit comes to the door and smiles, lets me in.
“Hi there, what is it you left behind?”
Shit. What am I supposed to say that won’t make me seem like a lunatic?
“I’m not sure.”
That pretty much did it.
“Excuse me?”
“Well, here’s the deal. My mother told me to get what she left here but she didn’t tell me what it was. If I could just …”
He walks over to the hostess stand and pulls out a black box with no top. I peek over the lid and see a watch, a pair of sunglasses, two sets of keys, and one more thing, glistening in the corner. I know immediately it’s what I am looking for. One cuff link, made to look like a theater mask. The happy face.
CHAPTER 12
AKA DIANE
I race to the subway to get uptown, then literally sprint across the park. When I get back to my room I frantically search for the other cuff link that I found in Mom’s studio, to make sure they’re a pair. Maria wouldn’t wear cuff links. Was someone else at dinner with them? Or … did my father just lie to me?
I’m staring in disbelief when my father peeks his head around the door. I close my fists around the cuff links and put my hands behind my back. For a second, I feel like a magician.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
No, no, it’s not okay. Was Mom having an affair?
“Yes, fine. I’m going to take my new camera out to the street.”
“Good idea,” he says. “Need help?”
I can’t remember the last time my father showed interest in what I was doing. After the accident he was the king of wallowing, living in a haze of his own grief. How has he made such a turnaround? Just from hanging out with the E-word? It’s like he’s another person altogether. “I can handle it, thanks.”
After he leaves, I decide I need to distract myself from the phone and the messages and whatever they might be revealing. I hide the cuff links in an old pair of shoes and call Daria. It takes me a whole horrifying minute to explain who I am.
“Yes! How’s the bra working out?”
“Great. Thank you again. But I have a non-bra-related question for you. I know you’re like, a big model and everything, but would you sit for me? I got this new vintage camera and I’ve been taking pictures my whole life but never of people, so I want to try. It may just be parts of you, not like, posing or anything.”
“Sure. I’m at the MoMA finishing up a coffee. Be there in twenty.”
“Now? Excellent.” I tell her which park entrance to meet at.
As I set my camera up on the cobblestone walkway bordering the park, people stop and look at it. I still can’t believe it’s mine—it’s so cool! I look around for any sketchy-looking people who might try to run off with it.
When Daria arrives, she sits down on a nearby bench and lights a cigarette. I leave the camera where it is and join her.
“Is that your real name, Daria?”
“No, it’s Diane. I had an agent once tell me that Diane doesn’t screw the camera, Daria does.
Total creep. I do like Daria, though.”
“Me too, but today you’re going to be Diane.”
She smiles. “I grew up total white trash, at least after we came to America. My mom used to make casseroles, the ones with crushed potato chips on top? We’d eat it for a week. Now I live in a five-thousand-square-foot Brooklyn loft and hardly ever fly commercial.”
“Wow.”
“My brother runs a landscaping company in Hackensack, where my parents live. He makes forty grand a year, and I make four hundred. When I try to get him something nice, all he ever wants is a case of beer—domestic, no less!”
“Are you Swedish?”
“Latvian.”
I feel naive for thinking I had pegged her. She seems to have a lot of layers. I’m glad I’m going to photograph her. She puts her cigarette out in her coffee cup.
“People think being a model is so glamorous, but it’s not. Have you read your mother’s book?”
“Only parts. I’m not supposed to till I’m eighteen.”
“It’s humiliating, really. You go in for like, some huge spread in VF, and you line up and they walk by and sniff you like animals, rape you with their eyes, tapping the ones they don’t want on the shoulder, until there’s like three of you left and you’re sweating, and—”
“Do they ever make you sleep with them?”
“That’s prostitution, honey, it’s illegal. But sometimes, girls do it to rise in the ranks. Then there are ones who don’t really take any crap. I think your mother was like that. I’m learning. I used to do sportswear and catalogues and now I’m doing Gucci and Calvin.”
“How did you first get into it?”
She looks off into the distance as if caught in a memory. Then a flash of shame washes over her face.
“I had a crush on this boy in seventh grade. He was like, half my height at the time.” She giggles and turns toward me, folding one of her lanky legs under the other. “He had one of those horrible ferret things. He called it Madge. I’m not sure why I loved him so much. I think it was because I saw him as this shapeless form that I could mold into something that would be only mine. He was so … malleable. Anyway, I was at his house one day and we were watching some supercheesy movie, and his father came in and started staring at me. It was kind of creepy.”
A homeless person walks by, having an argument with himself, while a mother pulls her pigtailed daughter out of his way.
“Then what happened?”
“He told me that I had elegant features. Can you imagine? Saying that to your twelve-year-old son’s girlfriend? But something about it was right, like his intentions were innocent. I’ve never felt more alive than at that moment. As it turned out, he was the super for the building that then housed the Click Agency. He got me a meeting and the rest is history.”
“What happened to the boy?”
Her skin blanches for a second and she frowns.
“Someone at school killed Madge and he never was the same. He ended up going to a special school. I hear he’s a veterinarian now, if you can believe it.”
“With a ferret specialty?”
She gives me a warm look, widening her eyes, and I notice her eyelashes seem to go on for miles.
“You … you’re really beautiful. Hang on. Stay there.”
I get the camera ready and shoot her, from the chin down, sitting on the bench in all black, knobby knees bare between her high socks and short skirt. I click and smile.
Next, I have her walk through the frame several times. I know the camera isn’t advanced enough to capture motion, but it might be an interesting blur. She has on a midnight blue satin jacket and I ask her to swing it around a few times. After I take the rest of the shots in the roll, I pack up the camera and we sit back down.
Daria puts out her hand and says, “That’ll be two thousand dollars, please.”
“How about an ice cream sandwich?”
“That works.”
As we walk toward the group of street vendors and bike cabs, I pull the cuff links out of my pocket and show them to her.
“Ever seen these?”
She looks at them quizzically and says, “No.”
I am not totally convinced by her answer.
“Do you think Benjamin—”
“Where’d you get those?”
“Two different places.”
“Did you steal them?”
“Not exactly.”
We get our ice cream sandwiches and continue walking. I slip the cuff links back into my pocket. “Do you know if Benjamin and my mom ever, you know …”
She laughs. “No, I don’t know.”
“Forget it.”
“Benjamin’s gay, sweetheart.”
“Oh.” So that rules him out.
We make it to my stoop and I ask her if she wants to come in.
“No. I’ve got to get home to pack for Paris. I’ve been spending a lot of time there because of my Elle contract. But you should come back and visit sometime. I’m across the hall from Benjamin, number four. Bring the photographs. I’m back Thursday.”
“Okay, thanks again … you rock,” I add, immediately regretting it. I watch her walk away and try to picture myself with her gait, her easy stare, her way of pushing herself through the world, as if nothing could stop her.
CHAPTER 13
DIGGING FOR COLE
I gather the film and materials and head down to the basement. Tile tries to follow me but I remind him that there are too many chemicals.
“What, it’s PG-13 down there or something?”
“You could say that, yes. Well, it’s R, but Dad lets me ’cause I know what I’m doing.”
“Who was that lady?”
“A model. Actually, a friend.”
“A friend of Mom’s?”
“No. Don’t you have homework?”
“Yeah, math tables I can do in my sleep. Whose phone is that?”
Oh my god, he’s seen Mom’s phone.
“It’s my friend’s. She left it.”
“No it’s not, she had an iPhone. I saw it.”
“Tile, it’s my other friend’s.”
“Something’s not adding up,” he says.
I roll my eyes. “Why don’t you go read another one of Dad’s scripts.”
“Okay, but tell me who—”
I shut the door and descend the stairs.
As the pictures develop, I crouch outside the darkroom and realize that though Tile is clueless, he may be right. It’s not adding up. Now that I know the cuff link is not Benjamin’s, it could be anyone’s, and I really need to find out whose. I take out Mom’s phone and hope the next message will shed some light.
Beep.
Clearly someone called her without knowing it, ’cause it’s a long message of people talking in what seems to be a bar. Clinking glasses, some laughter, and what sounds like stools scraping across a floor. There’s a male voice toward the end. He’s mumbling and shaking a glass of ice. Then another voice that’s amplified by a microphone, greeting the crowd, some applause. It sounds like he says, “Welcome to the Laugh House.”
I save this one, ’cause I may need to hear more. I take the photographs out of the solution and hang them to dry. Back in my room I Google Laugh House and nothing in Manhattan comes up. I listen to the message again and try Laugh Lounge instead. It shows up on the Lower East Side.
I go back to the basement and look at the pictures. Obviously, I still need to get the hang of the camera. Everything’s manual, so I was really just guessing. But there are two pictures that stand out: the silhouette of Oliver in his window, and the one of Daria sitting on the bench. Oliver looks like a ghost and Daria looks like someone dangerous. I decide to give Oliver the picture, the first one taken by my camera.
I walk across the street with the photograph turned toward my chest, protecting it from the natural elements. His housekeeper answers again. She doesn’t look as happy this time, so I give her an extra-bright smile. She points upstairs a
nd shakes her head, indicating that Oliver isn’t there. I hand her the photograph.
“Could you give that to him?”
She nods, takes the picture, and shuts the door. I look at Mom’s phone: 3:30. It takes me two trains to find the F, which I take to Second Avenue, near Ludlow. People have this fear of New York being a dangerous city, but I’ve never felt unsafe. Today it’s all hipsters and slackers, smoking and slapping each other on the back, and African nannies with pale babies in designer strollers. Ludlow Street used to be rough, I do know that. My mom told me she once went to an up-and-coming designer’s place on Stanton, to see about doing a Milan show, and heard shots fired next door. But that was twenty years ago, when the KFC had bulletproof glass.
The place looks like it just opened, and there’s a bartender in her thirties, from Korea or maybe Japan. She smiles at me and I smile back, trying to act nonchalant.
“I have a … strange request. I think someone accidentally called me from here and I wondered if you could—”
The phone rings behind the bar and she keeps looking at me as she answers it. I suddenly feel misguided and out of place. What am I doing here?
She puts down the phone and sighs, walks over to me and waits for me to go on.
“Could you maybe listen to the voice on this message and just tell me if you recognize it?”
“Why don’t you sit,” she says, and starts wiping the counter with a dingy towel. Something in her sees my desperation, even though I’m trying to hide it. She pours me a Sprite.
“Wait a minute,” she says. “How do you know they called from here?”
“A comic gets introduced and says welcome to the Laugh Lounge.”
She looks at me like I’m really clever.
“Okay, give it to me.”
I find the message and hand the phone over. As she listens, I study her face. She smiles a little, and then opens her mouth like she’s going to sing.
“That’s Cole, one of our regulars. You’re right! Go, Nancy Drew.”
You Have Seven Messages Page 5