Revenge of the Cootie Girls

by Sparkle Hayter

  After that, Mary was pretty subdued around us. Getting Mary, and good, put the wind in Julie’s sails, and took it out of Mary’s. Mary started fucking up a bit, and Julie became more confident than I’d ever seen her.

  Knowing Mary was boffing the horse guy in the chapel makes me think more kindly of her now. The sexual revolution hadn’t really hit Ferrous by then, where it was the 1950s until the 1970s and then it was 1962 for about five years. Being older and wiser, etc., I now suspect everyone was having sex of some kind and pretending they weren’t. If they weren’t having sex, they wanted to awful badly.

  If Mary’s ex-husband could be believed, she had a thing for working-class guys, though it didn’t come out in the open until after her mother died.

  Mary’s mother—eee-yai—rats up both trouser legs. What a scary woman, in an unkindly kind way. When I was a kid, if she saw me in the street, she’d inquire, “Hello, dear, how is your poor mother? You poor, poor dears. Wouldn’t you like her to go to the hospital in Newton, get some rest?” Yeah, sure, what kid doesn’t want her mother carted off to the hospital in Newton, or, as it was also known, Nuttown, because it was home to the county psychiatric facility (now a major drug-and-alcohol rehab center).

  Mrs. MacCosham was Mrs. Perfect, and it upset her greatly that there were any unruly people living in her town, marring her vision of things. Now, older and wiser, etc., I know that she was nuts too.

  Oddly enough, Julie and Mary later became friends for a while. Shortly before Julie and I had our falling-out in July 1979, Mary had a huge falling-out with Sis Fanning. It must have been going around, like a virus, or maybe it was just that we were all at a particular crossroads in our lives, moving from minority to legal adulthood, casting off some things and taking up others, etc. But though Sis and I didn’t hit it off, Julie and Mary, united by their mutual hatred of me and Sis, became fast friends during my last summer in Ferrous. Mary and Julie even took a four-day shopping trip to New York in the late summer. But they too had a falling-out soon afterwards.

  Mary’s mother hated me, but she hated Julie even more. Probably that played a part in Julie and Mary’s brief friendship, that Mary was rebelling against her mother, taking a walk on the wild side with Julie.

  Here in Gotham, Mary wasn’t one of the cool kids. Even before her motherfucker of a midlife crisis, she was in a social rut, unable to advance to the upper echelons with Ivana and Blaine and disenfranchised European princesses from countries no longer on the map. She was like a toady to the cool kids, or the ones she thought were cool anyway. That had to be frustrating for someone who had grown up being the most popular. Or the most powerful. I sometimes get those two confused.

  Every now and then, I saw Mary in the New York social columns, you know, a minor boldface mention here and there, one name in a long list of names of people who put together the annual gala to benefit the peasants, that kind of thing. The pictures I’d seen of her in the social columns were kind of sad. It always looked like the photographer was taking a picture of someone else and Mary had jumped into the background.

  11

  A LARGE DOG came up and sat down next to me at the lunch counter.

  “Howdy, Miss Robin,” she said. That Southern “Miss Robin” thing threw me for a second. I thought it was Kathy. But she was too tall and the voice was too deep.

  “Claire, that’s your costume? Jojo the Health and Safety Dog?”

  “Cute, ain’t it?”

  To help satisfy the FCC rule on educational programming for children, one of ANN’s sister networks did kids’ news cut-ins during the Saturday-morning cartoons. The late-morning cut-ins were anchored by regular kids in the seven-to-twelve-year-old range, but the early cut-ins were anchored by people in animal costumes, and were designed to explain current events to three-year-olds. So, for example, Anchor Bear would read a story about the Middle Eastern peace process, Anchor Poodle would talk about the unemployment figures, and then they’d throw to Jojo the Health and Safety Dog in the field for a story about playground safety. I shouldn’t laugh. Their ratings were a little better than the grownup news on ANN at the same time, and their demographics—impressionable, spoiled, and affluent youngsters—were far more appealing to advertisers.

  “Why did you pick that costume?”

  “I just grabbed something from JBS props and costumes when I was at work. It was either this, Anchor Bear, or Washington Walrus.”

  Claire was in New York to fill in on the anchor desk for Sawyer Lash, who was on parental leave looking after his new baby.

  She took the head off and kissed my cheek. “It’s good to see you. What are you supposed to be?”

  “A freshly undead person. See the bat biting my neck? But thanks to my frizzy hair I look more like an electrocution victim, I know.”

  “Did you bring the Godiva box?” I asked.

  She kept talking over my question. These days, she needed to talk about herself a lot, and she’s a tad self-absorbed at the best of times. But since I had often bent her ear with my problems, it was the least I could do to do the good-friend thing and put her needs ahead of mine for a spell.

  “I was going to wear a glamorous costume, then I thought, Why not be goofy for a change? I need more fun. The costume has to be back in props by 4:30 A.M. or else Dr. Solange Stevenson is in trouble,” Claire said.

  “Why Solange?”

  “I signed it out in her name,” Claire said.

  “A prank? That isn’t like you.”

  “As I told you, I’m pissed at Solange, and not just because of her damned book. Yesterday, her new flunky producer called me up to see if I’d take part in a show about the children of mixed-race unions called ‘Black on the Outside, White on the Inside.’”

  “You should do what Louis Levin does. Whenever he runs into Solange, he just calls her ‘massuh,’ and that shuts her right up,” I said. “You know, because of the slave labor in the Chinese prisons.”

  “I’m not white on the inside, whatever the hell that means,” Claire snapped. “I’m half African-American, through and through, and I’m proud of it. I’m not going to say ‘massuh’ to some white woman with an impacted colon, even as a joke. Slavery isn’t funny.”

  “Jeez. Okay, then. Call Susan Brave, get some other dirt on her.”

  “I’m not going to stoop to Solange’s level.”

  “Well, do what Tamayo does. When Solange says anything to you, just think, ‘I’m rubber, you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.’”

  “Thank you,” she said sarcastically.

  “I …” I began, and stopped, not sure what to say, since I couldn’t seem to say anything to her tonight without touching a nerve. I’ve been there yadda yadda yadda, but it still felt lousy to get snapped at when my intentions were good. I didn’t know how to make her feel better. If I was too nurturing, she snapped at me; if I suggested she get into therapy to help her with her compulsive spending, she accused me of meddling and assured me she could afford to be a spendthrift. If I tried to reassure her, she jumped down my throat. Laughing one minute, snapping or bursting into tears the next—these tricky emotional waters of hers were hard to navigate.

  “I’m dreading this book coming out, even if she has thinly disguised me as an African-American actress who ditched a prominent black philanthropist in favor of doing a T&A sitcom. Everyone who has read it so far knew it was me,” Claire said. “On the other hand, Tamayo’s proud of being in her book. Free publicity, she says.” Thinking about Tamayo made her laugh. “Oh, forget about Solange. Fuck Solange,” she said.

  “You’re cussing a lot lately.”

  “It’s from hanging out with bad companions,” she said, and smiled at me. “Speaking of which, Tamayo called me while I was on my way to your place. She’s at a party in the Flatiron District with three of the 52 Sons of Ramses, whatever the hell that means.”

  “How come she called you and not me?”

  “She couldn’t remember your cell-ph
one number.”

  “But she remembers yours?”

  “You’ve been out of town, so she’s called mine more often lately. You know how she is about things like phone numbers and birthdays. She never remembers those things.”

  “Did you give her my number?”

  “She would have just forgotten it. But I got the address for the party. I thought we could swing by and get her. I could use some of that Tamayo magic tonight.”

  “Did you get the stuff I asked for?”

  “Yeah,” she said, whipping out her Reporter’s Notebook. “This is what the library found on Julie Goomey, which is old. She had one phone number and one address from 1985 to 1990, and it was in New York City, on York Avenue in the upper 80s.”

  Boy, that hit me hard, that we’d lived in the same city for so many years and she’d never tried to contact me before now.

  What happened to her after 1990?

  “There was a mention of her in Fortune magazine in 1988 as a rising young star in the international-finance division of Peyser & Peyser, and then another mention in Business Week in 1990, when she was fired because of some account irregularities. Then nothing. She vanished from New York.

  “The library also checked out Help for Kids. The office is on Park Avenue in the 60s. It’s a nonprofit corporation, as opposed to a charitable organization. I’m not clear on the distinction there, but I think it has something to do with less stringent regulations.”

  “They can’t make a profit, but they aren’t required to give away money. Something like that,” I said.

  “It’s about six months old and its main work is distributing money to other charities. The members of the board are all low-grade prominent people and their involvement seems to be largely honorary, you know, something nice for an executive who’s thinking of running for City Council to have on his resume.”

  “Headed by Anne Winston.”

  “Right. There are a zillion Winstons in the directory—I couldn’t find anything more. New York State offices are closed.”

  “And my Godiva box?”

  “Oh yeah.” She dug in her leather backpack and pushed it across the counter at me and ordered a coffee. A regular coffee. Drinking coffee, cussing, spending, playing pranks, being goofy. She was going to hell in a handbasket.

  The Godiva box was kind of crushed, and the gilt had worn off the edges. Almost reverentially, I opened it. I hadn’t looked at this stuff in probably ten years. In it was a stack of square snapshots with white borders, a bunch of matchbooks, ticket stubs, swizzle sticks, cocktail napkins, an old subway token, a Macy’s receipt, etc.

  Claire still had a lot she needed to talk about, so I listened to her with half my brain, while studying my souvenirs with the other half, trying to balance her immediate need to talk with mine to figure out where to go next. I went through all the mementos, looking for something that would help me decipher the neon-hand clue, since I hadn’t a hope in hell of finding that old fortune-teller.

  The problem was, I remembered going to all these places, but I didn’t always remember when or with whom I’d gone to them. A MOMA pin—I was fairly certain I’d gone there one afternoon with Julie, just Julie. A Macy’s receipt, with Julie. Cocktail napkins from the Sirocco Club, the Rainbow Room, and the Brass Rail, a matchbook from Jimmy Ryan’s jazz joint, swizzle sticks from various discos—all places I’d gone with George, Julie, and one or another of his unmemorable friends. Maybe it was a place without mementos, though we’d managed to find some scrap of something in most of the places we’d gone.

  “… and I think I said something stupid to Matt Dillon after our interview segment,” Claire said.

  “What? Matt Dillon? What did you say to him?”

  “I don’t remember! I was so … Two or three nights ago, I had this very erotic dream involving Matt Dillon on a dark field full of glowing white weather balloons. It is unnerving to meet someone you’ve recently had a sex dream about.”

  “I doubt you said anything stupid.…”

  “Robin, please don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Whatever you’re doing.”

  “I’m not being sympathetic, I’m giving you my opinion. Jeez.”

  “You … just assume I didn’t say anything stupid.… I don’t know. I appreciate your faith in me, but I feel like I’m not living up to it right now and …” she stuttered.

  “Well, sorry for whatever. Jesus.”

  “No, I’m sorry. It’s all this shit. The Jess business, my thirtieth birthday is coming up, things have been going wrong for me lately, and I am having a hard time articulating how I feel.”

  “It’s okay.… Oh, I don’t mean to be sympathetic when I say it’s okay. I just mean, fugedaboudit.”

  She smiled.

  “Were you wearing that costume when you said something stupid to Matt Dillon?” I asked.

  She laughed. “No. That would have been funny.”

  I didn’t hear the rest of what she said. I’d reached the bottom of the Godiva box, and found the other half of the dollar bill.

  “de me tuer,” it said in French. To kill me.

  I had to check it twice, put it together with the first part of the dollar to make sure the serial numbers matched. “Il essaie de me tuer.” There was no mistake. The message George had written on the dollar bill was, He is trying … to kill me. What was it, some kind of joke?

  “This is really bizarre,” I said to Claire.

  “You sure this is a PR stunt?”

  “The charity checks out, right? But this seems tailor-made for me. And Kathy called from the charity’s phone number.… It’s weird—‘He is trying to kill me.’”

  “Maybe that was his joke, once he realized you didn’t really speak French. His way of confirming that.”

  “A joke, like the one about me being an ironworks heiress. Yeah. ‘He’s killing me.’ Like the way people come up to Tamayo after a show and tell her, You kill me. But that the dollar says this, and Julie set this up as a charity murder mystery—”

  “She probably doesn’t know what it says, seeing as you’ve had the half that referred to killing and haven’t seen her in all these years.”

  “Yeah. It’s probably just an amazing coincidence.” I have a tendency to leap to extreme conclusions. Same thing happened when I started seeing Mike. Mike has a dark, Irish side, and the blood of twenty-seven kamikaze pariah dogs on his soul, all mowed down on the unlit back roads of the Northwest Frontier of Pakistan, and because of it, I pushed him away. Then my super, Phil, gave me some good advice. Don’t turn this into one of your plots, Robin, he said. Just listen, and he’ll reveal himself.

  “But after the shit you’ve been through because of murders, you’d think she’d do something else, a scavenger hunt or something, if she wanted to play a good-natured joke and pull your nostalgia strings,” Claire said.

  “That wouldn’t be Julie, to be good-natured and soft and squishy like that. She knew of my unhealthy interest in homicide, so she probably thought this would be a treat for me. I haven’t seen her in a loooong time; maybe she isn’t up on my unfortunate involvement in those two murder cases. Maybe she doesn’t know that’s all behind me now.”

  “How strange this is happening on a Girls’ Night Out.”

  “Well, obviously, she didn’t know about that,” I said. “She planned this around Halloween.”

  “How did she know you’d be in town?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Claire’s reporter instincts were kicking in. She was interviewing me.

  “How did she know you’d follow the clues?”

  “She knows my curiosity. We did this as kids, sent each other all over the place to pick up clues.”

  “What did you get at the end of the quest?”

  “Candy, Tiger Beat magazines, that kind of thing when we were little. Jewelry, perfume, books, concert tickets when we were older. Or information sometimes. One time she sent me all the way to Duluth to a drugstor
e clerk to find the answer to the question: Who is Sis Fanning going to the Greaser Days Dance with? Sometimes it took me weeks to solve her puzzles, thanks to her false leads.”

  Claire had a light in her eyes.

  “Let’s approach this from a reporter’s standpoint, not an unobjective old-friend standpoint,” she said. “Kathy obviously did. She got to the charity office. That’s got to be the last stop. Why don’t we just go to the charity office, since Kathy called from there?”

  “But I called there several times and no one was there. I got the answering machine, so I figured they went to wherever we were going to party later.”

  “All that means is that the answering machine was on. Your pal Julie wanted you to go through all this rigmarole, take you down memory lane, so she wasn’t going to pick up on your voice.”

  “You could be right. But that sounds too easy for something Julie plotted.…”

  “We go to the source, cut out all the steps in between, and find your old friend and your intern. You’ve been out of the field too long, Robin. You gotta get out from under that administrative crap you do and get back on a story. Let’s go.”

  I hadn’t seen a free cab all night, but Claire has this talent, among others—she can almost always get a cab.

  “I think she’s fucking with you, Robin,” Claire said of Julie as we rode uptown to the Flatiron District to pick up Tamayo.

  “Claire, you have to know Julie,” I said. “A perverse sense of humor and love of a good girlish prank was something we shared. When I think of what she did to Mrs. Hobbins—or Old Hobnail, as we knew her—I still laugh, a little guiltily.”

  “Old Hobnail?”

  “The sewing teacher from hell, a Waffen-SS type with Queen Elizabeth’s wardrobe, back in seventh and eighth grades, when sewing and cooking classes (home ec) were still mandatory for girls at my school.”

  God, I hated sewing class. The machine scared me, with its razor-sharp needle going a hundred miles an hour. I was afraid I was going to accidentally stitch my thumb to a piece of stretch terry. But Julie was even worse at it than me. She was almost failing the course when we came to the Corduroy Unit of our sewing curriculum. A daunting material, corduroy, the Viet Cong of fashion fabric. It was to be her Dien Bien Phu.