Three Quarters Dead

by Richard Peck

  “I feel reasonably sure I won’t be able to walk a step in these shoes,” she remarked. “I should think I will sit down suddenly on the pavement and break my little—”

  “Mirror here,

  Mirror there,

  Mirror, mirror everywhere,”

  Natalie chanted, turning in the dressing space, seeing several thousand of herself merry-go-rounding around. She’d found shoes like Dorothy’s ruby slippers, but with platforms. They turned and turned and pointed in every direction on the snow-white rug. Aunt Lily’s underwear department was itself the size of Switzerland. Natalie had raided it for a totally crazed strapless black bra to wear under a 1950s off-the-shoulder red satin number. And long black satin gloves that reached up her arms, over her elbows. Her hair was perfect as it was. It was never not perfect, and blue-black in this light. She pinned a jewel or two in it, out of the plush drawer.

  My hair was a toxic area. “You have so let yourself go lately, Kerry. Honestly, you look like you teach math,” Tanya said, and everybody agreed, even me. What my hair needed was blow-drying and styling and anything to give it some life, some light, some lift. They did what they could. They performed an intervention. I wanted mine exactly like Natalie’s, absolutely as smooth as falling water. Though my hair wasn’t blue-black. My hair never could decide what color it was.

  We were all in the bathroom now, the one off the dressing area. Kind of a 1920s bathroom with a tub up on claw feet. They’d spent the afternoon, maybe longer, making themselves up. Now they started over. Tanya was working foundation or something into her face. “Botox and soon now,” she said.

  “So soon?” Natalie murmured behind her. “When?” This apartment was a house of mirrors, but we all four were bunched before this one, over the marble sink.

  Botox? I barely knew what it was. Wasn’t it needles full of stuff old ladies shoot into their foreheads to smooth out the lines? And into their withered old cheeks? Maybe even into their—

  “And how would we pay for Botox?” Tanya was saying. “Stick it on Aunt Lily’s bill? I don’t think so. There are limits. I suppose you still don’t have a credit card, Kerry? A debit card?”

  I didn’t, of course. Somehow I wasn’t ready for a world of charge-it and Botox. I didn’t know the difference between credit and debit. The only card in my backpack was a discount card from CVS Pharmacy. I was always a step behind. I lived back here.

  “See right there?” Tanya was showing Natalie a place on her forehead. “I don’t know if I can go another day.” She’d already worked wrinkle cream over all her skin that showed, and pancake makeup.

  Makenzie and Natalie both examined whatever was happening to Tanya’s skin. She was showing a certain amount because she’d found a vintage black leotard with scoop neck. Over this she’d added two flouncy short skirts that clashed with each other perfectly. And patterned stockings with strappy shoes. It didn’t matter what she wore. She was Tanya. You saw her first, whoever else was there.

  Then they turned back to me, remembered me. “Kerry’s the real problem,” they agreed. “She’s got to look eighteen at least, or we can’t take her anywhere.”

  I had to be refitted from the skin out. Tanya had whipped the sweatshirt from around my waist, carried it away in two fingers, and dropped it somewhere.

  I needed a look that said prom night now—that said senior year and then some. Sequin sleeveless top over black skirt that clung, then flared. Heels so high I was practically as tall as Natalie and practically towering over Makenzie. The shoes came to perfect points at the toe. Real instruments of torture—black lizard with ribbons that wound up my black-stockinged legs.

  Nothing about me said tenth grade. Nothing. Nothing.

  It was basically all about bras, as Natalie said. She had gone all through the bra bin and come back with one that had an underwire. Now when I looked down my sequined self, it seemed to be somebody else. And I couldn’t see my feet. And I didn’t look bad for somebody who was in a retainer fifteen months ago. Not bad at all.

  I wasn’t the only one who needed a bra intervention. They’d had to talk Makenzie out of her sports bra. But they did, and now she and I both had bosoms that could take us anywhere. Hers weren’t as spiky as her hair and heels, but they certainly made a couple of points. We looked at each other and screamed.

  Where were we by then? Not the bathroom. No, we were in Aunt Lily’s bedroom, her master suite on the other side of the dressing area. She had a bed in there like Cleopatra’s barge, except it was king-size, not queen. Big, swagging curtains kept out the night. The old disconnected ivory telephone at her bedside had a rotary dial. A strong scent of Aunt Lily’s perfume hung in the room, lily of the valley. There wasn’t a mirror on any wall, and that was better. There’d been thousands of us in the mirrored dressing room. Now it was just us four. Taller in our heels, swirlier in our skirts, bigger and bustier in our bras. I was the only one who didn’t need major makeup. Just a little something to make my eyes pop. Too much makeup too young is always a dead giveaway, Tanya always said. Too much makeup is always about being the most desperate girl in ninth grade.

  Though as Tanya also said, “A little lip gloss wouldn’t kill you, Kerry.”

  There we were in a room that had never changed, the four of us in a dangle of earrings, a wobble of heels, in a cloud of Arpège perfume out of a swag bag. The Arpège fought a little with the lily of the valley, and just under that, apple blossom.

  Jewels smoldered in Natalie’s hair. Tanya’s was simple and brushed back in that usual way of hers that could find all the lights in the room. Everything she did worked. Makenzie in glitter eyeliner was a whole different breed of Makenzie. Our skirts murmured against each other, urging us on. I suppose that was the moment when I was happiest.

  But I wondered. Were we really going out? Not that we needed to. We were our own music and the audience for each other.

  “How can you?” I dared to say.

  And they totally knew what I meant. How could they go out when everybody thought they were—

  “It’s New York, Kerry. It’s not Pondfield Podunk High School.” Tanya’s new eyebrows arched to the moon. “Kerry, it’s the world. Try really hard to keep up.”

  And now we were going, this minute. We’d slung the long cords of our little purses over our stunning shoulders. Tanya’s was a silver clutch. And we were staggering for the front door in our heels.

  The long hall to the front entry was a gallery of giant framed blowups of fashion models from some other time. It was the decade when models had only one name: Carmen. Dovima. All in plain little black dresses and white gloves like Jackie Kennedy or Audrey Hepburn. Dead ladies, and gorgeous, larger than life in full black-and-white.

  Except for the last poster. It wasn’t from a fashion shoot. It was for a Hollywood movie, in full color and then some. A Hollywood movie star with flame-colored hair in a movie with purple mountains in it. Blazing red hair, purple mountains, Kelly-green satin dress. “RHONDA RANDOLPH,” the poster proclaimed, “NOW IN VISTAVISION.” She was in a dress cut down to here. She was practically spilling out of the frame.

  You couldn’t just walk past her. She could have stopped traffic.

  “That’s Aunt Lily’s neighbor,” Tanya said. “Rhonda Randolph. At least she used to be. She doesn’t look anything like that now. Except for the hair.”

  “I saw her when I came in,” I said.

  Tanya turned that gaze of hers on me. “You rang the wrong bell?”

  “No. She was at the door to the back apartment when I got off the elevator. She was watching.”

  Makenzie and Natalie looked at Tanya. “Oh, that would have been her maid, Flossie.”

  “She had that red hair,” I said.

  “Flossie wears all of Rhonda Randolph’s stuff, even her wigs,” Tanya said. “It couldn’t have been Rhonda. She can’t get out of bed. She’s on, like, life support with oxygen tanks. She has to be ninety-five.” Then we were in the entry hall, multiplied by the m
irrored walls, under the tinkling crystals.

  “Did you say anything to her?” Tanya asked me. “The maid?”

  “No. She was just there. Then she was gone.” Tanya was looking out of the little peephole in the front door before she opened it. But there was nobody out there, nobody we saw.

  We filled up the elevator, and our skirts overlapped. We dropped through all the lighted floor numbers, and now a thought nagged me. A question. When we got down to the lobby and the world, might it be just me, alone when the doors parted? After all, who else had seen them but me? I’d been the one sent to the door to deal with the deliveryman when our dinner came.

  “How much money do you have?” Tanya said behind me, into my rhinestoned ear.

  I had something like two twenties and a bunch of ones and my return train ticket to . . . wherever.

  They all sighed. “We better walk,” Tanya said.

  “Will it cost to get in?” Makenzie wondered.

  “Not for us,” Tanya said. “But not everybody gets in.”

  “How will we?” Makenzie asked.

  “Because I always get what I want,” Tanya said, and the doors opened.

  We four were chattering and clattering across the lobby now. And I was not alone. I was so not alone. We were there, all of us, making unnecessary noise. It was a spring night outside. It ought to have been five in the morning, but it wasn’t. Seventy-second Street was bumper-to-bumper with limos and buses. The doormen were all out by the curb, talking to each other in no known language, cupping cigarettes in their hands. Another shift, the graveyard shift. I didn’t see the young guy who’d let me in.

  Then we were on the corner of Third Avenue by that river of yellow cabs flowing north in the city that never sleeps. While we waited for the light, Tanya explained about the place we were going. It was called Fabian’s, the hot spot of the season. The place with all the vibe and the right mix of uptown and downtown, of private school, art school, FIT, and funk. And not too fussy about checking girls’ IDs.

  Getting past the guards on the door, the bouncer guys, was all about confidence and the right look. And timing.

  “Have you been there before?” Makenzie asked Tanya.

  “No, but I read ‘Page Six’ online in The Post,” Tanya said. “What else is there to do in Contemporary Crisis?”

  Then somehow we were there. Second Avenue? Around there, a darker avenue in the petal-soft night. A line of people stretched down to the corner, waiting to get in—on their phones, checking themselves out, hoping to make the cut.

  Tanya was striding past them, up to the dim door of Fabian’s. She glowed in the night, and her heels rang on the sidewalk. She glanced back, and her gaze gathered us up. Then she reached around the others for me. She took my hand and held it, made that contact. I supposed it was because I was the youngest. The guy at the door, huge in a muscle shirt with tattoos on his neck, was saying, “Well, well, what have we here?” So yes, he could definitely see them. He sure saw Tanya. I was so not standing there by myself.

  The next thing I knew, we were just inside the door. Another muscle guy was doing a quick bag check and pat-down. It was all darkness and pulsing sound in here and a curtain to part. “Remember,” Tanya said, letting me go, leading the way, “we’re only here to try out the outfits to see if they really work. We’re test-driving these dresses. They need to say ‘Queens of the Prom and Then Some.’ Otherwise, none of this is any big deal. Stay cool, don’t drool. Look like you live it.”

  So, Look like you live it became our motto as the curtain parted and we were in a huge cube like a big blue velvet jewel box with stars on the ceiling. It was a big box throbbing with music and seething with people. Cube after cube, with glass stairways from one level to another, and more people than the subway. Pale preppies and downtown divas and the bridge-and-tunnel crowd—everything. And a certain amount of facial hardware. Everybody working overtime at being eighteen at least.

  The DJ was famous, sitting up in a big neon box hanging in space. The bar ran for a block, with spotlighted bartenders. This must be what vibe means—the sound pounding your feet, the hands pointing at the ceiling, the snapping credit cards, the drinks in all colors. And how sure everybody was.

  We were holding glasses now. We hadn’t bought drinks. Who knew what they cost? We’d just picked up empties that people had left around. “Don’t touch them with your lips,” Natalie hissed. “You don’t know where they’ve been.”

  How long were we there? Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. It was wall-to-wall people, and the floor danced under us, and the guys circled. We moved together and apart. Then when we were on the glass stairs, lighted from below, it was the catwalk from Fashion Week or something. Or Paris. Yes, our outfits were working. They were so working. We were layered and lovely and looked like we lived it.

  Makenzie’s glitter lids sank in a sea of strangers. There was nothing left of her but the swirly spikes of her hair. Then a little later I found her again. Unknown hands had set her up on a bar. Now she was all crossed legs and leg warmers and spike heels. She seemed to be leading a sudden sing-along with a bunch of people—guys. I couldn’t hear the song.

  Later, I was leaning over a glass railing, looking down on a revolving dance floor. Tanya and Natalie were dancing down there in a space the crowds had cleared for them. Dancing together and apart. There was some strobe lighting, working with the turn of Tanya’s mismatching skirts, Natalie’s red satin. And the hair, always her hair tossing blue-black in the blue velvet room, and the black-gloved hands in the artificial air. Oh it all so worked. Guys circled, not knowing what move to make. Not so sure now.

  Then I was on my own, drifting, looking for a restroom. Up one glowing staircase, down another. Along a row of private rooms now, VIP rooms in a hall with walls carpeted to muffle the noise.

  I was by myself, but not long enough for doubts. Somebody walked out of a room and nearly ran me down. I was none too steady on these heels. It was this guy in a blue blazer, blond even in the dimness.

  It was Spence Myers. Spence. Again.

  We might as well be back at Pondfield Podunk High School. We were everywhere we turned.

  He looked me over before he knew me. We were almost in each other’s arms. “Sorry.” He stepped back. “Kerry? That’s not you, is it? Is it?”

  I’d parked the wineglass somewhere by then, so I put out my hands, presenting me. All my sequins winked at him. My skirt sizzled. I didn’t know if he could see the shoes, but I was definitely taller. And would you look at the figure? He wasn’t sure it was me. Neither was I.

  He grinned. “They say everybody turns up at this place. Though I’m guessing your dad’s not here.”

  “No,” I said. “Dad . . . couldn’t make it.”

  “It really is you, isn’t it?” He couldn’t get over me. I’d so lost the backpack and the sweatshirt around the waist. I felt my head give a little move, a toss, the way Natalie worked her hair.

  “I changed,” I said, and he probably thought I meant the clothes.

  It was just the two of us for a moment. Then it was over.

  “I’ve been to a party.” He nodded at the door he’d come out of, the VIP door. “It’s the cast party for Family Divided. It opened tonight at the Broadhurst Theater.”

  I didn’t know about plays on Broadway. Tanya would. She probably read the reviews online, during Contemporary Crisis, after she read “Page Six.”

  “A friend in the cast invited me to the party,” Spence was saying. “Here she is now.” He put out a hand to a girl coming out of the party room.

  Did I know her? She was tall, dark hair, a little older, not really dressed for Fabian’s. She’d just been on a stage. In a play. Was she a star? Did I know her?

  “Alyssa, this is Kerry Williamson,” Spence said. “Kerry, this is Alyssa Stark.”

  The world wobbled. The cat had my tongue. I remembered her picture on the living room wall of her house. Halloween. I remembered her bedroom and the jumble
of things on top of the chest of drawers.

  But I surely didn’t look like anybody she’d ever seen before, even if she—

  “You remember Kerry,” Spence said, prompting her.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “I think our mothers know each other.”

  And what was that supposed to mean? I almost looked at her. I tried. “I was wondering where the restroom is,” I said.

  “Me too,” Alyssa said. “Let’s go together. It’s better to go in pairs in a place like this.”

  A lot was going on in the restroom, and some of it could have been drugs. There was some money moving back and forth.

  “They don’t call it the powder room for nothing,” Alyssa muttered in my ear.

  When we got a stall, she stood guard for me. Then I stood guard for her. It was smoky chaos around the mirrors, which doubled everything and everybody. Downtown divas and Chapin girls. Dalton and Performing Arts. Everybody working over their faces, their hair, at the top of their lungs. And some of those tattoos were here to stay.

  “This room is so New York,” Alyssa said when we were at the sinks, “deafening, dirty, falling apart, jammed, nothing to breathe, and bring your own toilet paper. I love it.”

  She didn’t have anything on her face. She must have washed off her theater makeup. Her voice was probably excellent for the stage—low, but you could hear, even in this place.

  “How do you happen to be here?” she asked me.

  “I’m with a bunch of people,” I said—fast. “What’s it like to be in a play on Broadway?”

  “For me?” Alyssa said. “Actually, it’s a lot like the first day of high school. You’re the youngest, the newest, and everybody knows everybody but you. It’s another language. And great. It’s starting over.”