by Jill G. Hall
“Righto. I have such great taste.” Fay guffawed.
“You do.” Fay had always believed in Anne’s work and kept putting it in front of Mr. Block, the former owner. He had disparaged Anne’s collages and called them kindergarten art. She had never been so embarrassed in all her life.
Fay had told him, “Running a gallery is not always about what a curator loves, but what others might.” After months he finally relented and let her show a few of Anne’s pieces. Soon they started to sell. Later, after much wrangling, he had agreed to let Fay mount a solo show of Anne’s work, to rave reviews and more sales.
“How is Mr. Blockhead?” Anne asked.
“Seems happier lately.”
“The financial strain of keeping the gallery going must have made him so mean.”
“I think there’s more to it. He’s been wearing a barmy grin. Something’s up.”
“What do you think it is?” Anne made her way back to the daybed.
“I have no bloody idea. What are you working on?”
“Nothing.”
“I’m not surprised with you flitting back and forth to visit Sergio all the time. You’ve been diverted by love.”
“That’s no excuse.” Since Sylvia’s death last year, Anne had been at a complete loss. She’d visited galleries, scrounged junk shops, and looked through vintage magazines, but nothing had called to her. With the “Sylvia Series,” the mojo had flowed so hot and fast she hadn’t even been able to get all of her ideas down.
“Stop beating yourself up, love. You’ve been in a fallow time, it happens. Now get back to it. I have wall space waiting. Remember, use your heart, not your brain.”
“Pep talk mania!” Anne laughed.
“Gotta run. Ta-ta! Call when you have some pieces for me.”
Anne stepped out onto the private rooftop garden. The recently renovated Victorian Painted Ladies across the street, each a different pastel shade, had been sold for a mint. It was only a matter of time until Mrs. Landenheim decided to fix up their building, too, and Anne got kicked out.
She studied her planter box with the seeds she’d sown—herbs, strawberries, tomatoes, carrots, and peppers. Sylvia up in heaven would have been pleased, and Anne had imagined her friend’s voice pontificate, “Choose nutritious. That’s delicious.” They should have sprouted by now but they hadn’t. Nothing had taken root except a jumble of weeds in the muddy soil. Anne knew she should pull them out but wasn’t in the mood.
Back inside, she made coffee and ate more cookies.
On her computer, she typed into Pinterest: 1920s rhinestone shoes. Scrolling through the photos, she perused the shoes: satin pumps with vamp edges, bead-embroidered heels from Harrods, and stunning brocade evening shoes. She almost clicked off but then froze on a pair of shoes identical to her own, T-strapped with tons of rhinestones. They were from the Met Collection, the frickin’ Metropolitan Museum of Art! She couldn’t believe it. She’d actually bought a pair of museum-quality shoes. She found her coat where she’d dropped it on a chair, grabbed the lucky key from the pocket, and kissed it.
8
Anne woke from a deep sleep. Raindrops exploded on the roof like a tap dancer’s feet, then tapered off into a soft consistent rhythm. Layers of a dream wavered in her brain, colors shifting into a blend of sparkling rhinestones. Perhaps a new series had started to reveal itself. She tried to return to the dream, but it eluded her.
In the kitchen, she opened a cupboard. Darn it! She was out of coffee. As she clattered down the stairs, Mrs. Landenheim’s door opened, the Siamese slipped out—and following it, a man.
Aghast, Anne blurted out, “Mr. Block!”
He turned and stared at her, his Andy Warhol–inspired hair a shambles, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open.
Mrs. Landenheim came out the door, blue peignoir set on, the usual dark circles gone from her droopy basset-hound eyes. “Dear, don’t forget your glasses.” She cooed at Mr. Block, slid them on his nose, and kissed his cheek. “Have a nice day, darling,” she said before he raised an umbrella and dashed out into the rain.
Anne suppressed a grin. An unlikely couple—they must have struck up a romance the night of Anne’s art reception. Anne had been a matchmaker without even realizing it and couldn’t wait to tell Fay she’d discovered the mystery to Mr. Block’s elated mood.
“Rent’s due.” Mrs. Landenheim picked up the cat and stroked its back.
“Fine.” It had only been a day.
“You haven’t signed the new lease yet, either.” Mrs. Landenheim went back inside her apartment.
Anne still had thirty days. Maybe Mrs. Landenheim would agree to let Anne go month-to-month without a lease. At the entrance door, Anne opened her umbrella, but raindrops as big as water balloons burst from the sky. El Niño must be here at last! Pulling her umbrella back in, she walked up the stairs to her apartment.
She grabbed the rest of her flat Diet Coke from the fridge and crawled back into bed. Her valet shift didn’t start until the afternoon, and she resolved to use her time wisely.
Sparkles from her dream flashed in her mind, and she tried to summon it up. If you write down your dreams, you have a better chance of remembering them. A little late now, but she’d try her best. She wrote in her journal: Colors, rhinestone sparkles. The Met. I smelled lemons looking into a glass display case at the shoes.
That’s all she could recall. She sipped her Coke from a cup and continued jotting stream of consciousness thoughts:
Moving to New York! Get to be with Sergio all the time! Wonderful to sleep with him every night, visit my favorite museums, and have tea at The Plaza whenever I wish. Lots of culture. More opportunities for doing and selling art. But what if I pack up and move there and he dumps me? He wouldn’t do that. He loves me.
She texted Sergio: Any luck returning the pearls?
Sergio wrote back: The shop was closed, in the middle of the day. I’ll try again.
Anne replied: Good luck and thanks!
Her phone buzzed with FaceTime. “Hello, Cousin Pootie.”
As a toddler, Anne couldn’t say “Trudy,” so she called her aunt “Tootie.” The nickname caught on with the whole family. Tootie’s daughter Prudence was born a year later, and everyone called her “Pootie” for consistency.
“How’s the California weather?” Her cousin’s blonde hair was pulled up in a ponytail. Without any makeup at all, she was cute.
Anne glanced out the window. “Rainy. How’s Michigan?”
“Getting spring snow!”
A baby’s wail could be heard behind Pootie. “Wait a sec.” She moved off-screen, allowing her Hummel figurine collection to come into view on her knickknack shelf. Anne had been with her when Pootie found most of them in thrift stores. Pootie returned and set her son on her lap.
“Baby Brian’s gotten so big!” Anne longed to hold him. He was adorable with his father’s quarterback body mass.
Pootie draped a blue knit cap over the baby’s peach-fuzz scalp. “Show Anne how sweet this looks on you!” The hat drooped down, covering his blue eyes. His angry lips scrunched up. Pootie pulled off the cap and bounced him up and down until he smiled.
“I didn’t know how big to make it. I had only knit for adults before,” Anne apologized.
“Don’t worry. He’ll grow into it.”
“How’s Brian?” Anne still couldn’t believe that the guy she’d had a crush on in high school had married her cousin.
“Wonderful. He’s watching the game.” Pootie glanced over her shoulder, picked up the baby’s hands, and moved them back and forth, saying in a deep voice, “Air conditioner broken down? Don’t start cryin’, just call Brian.”
The girls laughed at the imitation of Pootie’s husband’s TV commercial for the family business, the same script his own father had used.
“I can’t wait to see you at the christening.” Pootie rubbed Baby Brian’s back.
“Are you sure I should be his godmother? You know I’m not a tra
ditional Christian.”
“You’ll teach him how to fish, won’t you?”
Anne nodded. “Of course.”
“Then you’re it. Please, please, please bring Sergio with you when you come.”
“Maybe.” Anne pictured foodie Sergio eating meat and potatoes on TV trays watching Hoarders with her mom, Tootie, Pootie, and both Brians. She wouldn’t tell Pootie about her plans to move to New York yet. It would be all over Oscoda in no time. “If I bring him, do you promise not to give him the third degree?”
“I can promise, but I can’t guarantee our moms won’t grill him.”
“I’m not sure he’ll appreciate Michigan. He’s pretty cosmopolitan.”
“Like the drink?” Pootie grinned.
“Ha. Ha.”
Pootie held up her outstretched left hand. “I’m sure he’ll be smitten with the mitten.”
The baby began to cry. “Gotta go! Bye-bye!” Pootie waved Brian’s little hands.
“Over and out.”
Anne took another sip of her Coke and lounged back on a pillow. She should call Sylvia’s husband, Paul, today and schedule a visit to Bay Breeze soon. But she didn’t want to tell Paul yet she was going to move to New York. It would be hard to live so far away from him. They’d grown close over the past few years. Past eighty, it was difficult to know how many years he had left. And she’d heard when a partner passed away, many times the other did soon after.
She got up and dumped Scrabble tiles on the table and sorted through them in search of the perfect word. She picked a letter, B, then another. B-E-G-I-N. “Yes, that’s it!” she said aloud and placed the word on the wooden holder. She needed to start. She carried the word to her altar, lit the gardenia candle, and rang her Tibetan chimes.
Maybe she had been using her brain too much, as Fay had said.
The shoes displayed on the counter sparkled. She picked them up, and they warmed to her touch again for a second. She felt the urge to paint them, so she put them back on the counter and set a canvas on her easel. It was all about faith. She needed to let go of the inner voice that nagged that no one would like the result.
Sure, she could paint round fruit, but could she recreate these shoes with their ins and outs and all those brilliant faceted rhinestones? She’d need to figure out how to get them to sparkle and shine on the canvas. Shading and shadows would be important. She usually preferred collage and assemblage, but maybe painting would be a good direction.
Her acrylics dumped on the counter, she shuffled through them in search of the right colors. She squished a blob of Graphite and another of Titanium White directly on the canvas from the tubes. Then she filled a jar with water, found her favorite big brush, put it in the water, and swirled the colors together, covering the entire canvas for a unifying background, clean and fresh. She’d forgotten how good it felt to paint.
With the rain, it would take ages for the canvas to dry. She tossed her cup in the sink, picked up her clothes from the floor, and finally unpacked her rolling bag, cramming all the dirty clothes into the hamper. No way would she go up the street to the Laundromat in this weather.
Straightening the coffee table, she stared at the dang shoebox and regretted her promise not to throw it away. Oh well, it might be good to store found objects in. She pulled all the tissue paper out and glimpsed at something hidden in the bottom of the box. Her fingers gently picked up the photo, brittle as a fall leaf, yellow and curled with age.
Two girls dolled up like flappers, smiling brightly, their arms hooked together. The full-figured girl wore an outrageous feather hat and a beaded dress. The tall, slim one wore a fringed number and a string of pearls. Could that necklace be the same one sitting in the bowl on Sergio’s counter? Last time he went by the shop, it was still closed. Maybe one of the girls had owned the shoes, too. Anne peered closely at the photo but couldn’t quite make out what they had on their feet.
What an era! Anne had always found the Roaring Twenties fascinating—speakeasies, bootlegged booze, the Charleston. What would it have been like to live back then? The man in the shop told her he had more items from the same estate sale. She wished she’d paid more attention to what he had to offer. What else had been on that table? She closed her eyes, as if playing the concentration game. Shoes, pearls, a statue . . .
Anne propped the photo up against a book on the coffee table, then sat back and studied the photo. Were the girls at a costume party, or could they have been real flappers?
9
“There you are!” Winnie waved from in front of the clock outside the Waldorf’s Peacock Court. Her beaded chemise was so sheer, her slip showed through. An extraordinarily tall ostrich feather stuck straight up out of her turban.
“Sorry I’m late. I had to wait until Father had left.” Clair grimaced.
Beside Winnie, Clair felt like a fuddy-duddy in her pastel Sunday dress and lace evening cap. What concert were they going to that Winnie would wear such an outfit and all that makeup? Even so, she looked smashing.
“I almost gave up.” Winnie kissed her on the cheek. “That man over there keeps glancing at me. I think he has a crush.”
Clair glanced at Mr. O’Shaughnessy. A big, strapping man with a kind heart, he’d probably wondered why flamboyant Winnie was there. The hotel manager had worked at the Waldorf for many years. Clair knew his wife and his children, all ten of them. “I’m sure he meant nothing by it. Let’s go.” She grabbed Winnie’s arm and steered her toward the exit. If Mr. O’Shaughnessy spotted them, he’d certainly tell Clair’s father.
Winnie stopped. “Wait! Aren’t you going to show me around?”
“Another time.” Clair quickly led her across the lobby’s mosaic floor. She ducked down the steps while the doorman had his back turned.
“Where’s your driver?” she asked.
“Driver?” Winnie laughed. “We’re taking a cab.”
“A cab?” Clair had never ridden in one before.
Winnie raised her arm and whistled shrilly. A checkered cab pulled over. As she climbed in, her feather got stuck, and she had to draw back and reenter. Clair slid in behind her.
“Ninth Avenue and Forty-fourth,” Winnie ordered.
The driver nodded and raced away from the curb going north. Clair peered out the back window as the doorman turned with arms akimbo and a confused expression. Clair doubted he could recognize her at this distance. She sat back while an unexpected rush of freedom surged through her body.
“Winnie, how do your parents feel about you going out unescorted?”
Winnie gazed down at her gloved hands. “My folks? I don’t have any.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Pa might still be alive back in Mississippi. I left there a long time ago.”
Clair couldn’t imagine ever abandoning her father. “Whom do you live with?”
“I’m at a women’s boardinghouse.”
“That sounds fun.” It wouldn’t be as boring as the hotel.
Winnie shook her head. “Yeah. If having fun is living with a bunch of old geese.”
Clair nodded. The sky had darkened to a faded lavender blue. Streetlights flickered on as they drove uptown. People dressed for an evening out walked along the sidewalks. Bicyclists and a packed electric bus whizzed by. Clair looked forward to hearing some good music. It had been ages since she’d been to a concert. The girls continued to converse as the moonless sky grew darker.
Finally, the driver pulled over, then turned and studied them. “Are you sure this is it?”
“Yep.” Winnie giggled.
Clair stared at the two-story brick building with the windows boarded up. A fire escape cascaded down its side. “This can’t be it!”
“Sure is.” Winnie winked at the cab driver.
He held out a hand. “That’ll be two smackeroos.”
Winnie dug in her bag and paid him. They got out of the taxi, and it drove off. No other cars were on the street. An assortment of deserted structures surrounded them. Shadow
s shifted at the sky’s edge, and from overhead came a shrill scream. Clair yelped and grabbed Winnie’s arm.
Winnie laughed. “It’s only a crow, silly.”
The almost-invisible bird swirled in a circle above them and landed on a spindly pine tree. If Clair had stayed home, she’d be safe in bed by now.
“Don’t worry, honey. Come on.” Winnie led a trembling Clair along the gritty sidewalk toward the building.
A bum carrying his bindle on a stick turned a corner and staggered toward them, his filthy clothes reeking. “Hey, girlie.” He slurred his words and started to reach for Winnie’s feather.
“Go away!” Winnie shoved him.
He tottered back and fell on his behind. “You’re one tough broad,” he slurred.
“You’re right, mister!” Winnie yelled, as he scrambled up and scuttled away.
Clair would never have the nerve to defend herself so bravely. In the distance, she heard the shattering of glass and a dog’s howl. Clair hadn’t ever been anywhere so dark before, except maybe at the beach cottage in the summer. Nights there could be jet black, though stars dotted the heavens. Here in Manhattan, the dark, sooty air was suffocating.
“It’s right here.” Winnie guided Clair down the few short steps below street level and knocked on a large wooden door. What on earth kind of music would be played here?
A slit opened, a cacophony of noise escaped, and a pair of eyes peered out. “Password!” the man yelled.
“Rudy Moody,” Winnie drawled.
The slit slammed shut. Clair’s eyes opened wide.
“Oops!” Winnie giggled and rapped on the door again.
The slat reopened. “Yeah?”
“I meant Moody Rudy.”
This time, the door swung open. The girls stepped inside the low-ceilinged space, and the door closed behind them. Clair’s eyes soon adjusted to the dark, smoky haze, but she still felt disoriented. What was this place, and who were all these people?
Men in dapper suits and women in short fringed attire with glasses and cigarettes in their hands talked and laughed. Two women wearing tuxedos, with short black hair shining bright as shoe polish, strode by arm in arm. Clair knew she looked out of place.