“We didn’t think so,” offered Becca.
“The thing that trips me up,” said Sills, “is if they did know where we were, why do they bother posting a photographer outside the fake Moonery twenty-four/seven?”
The cogs in my head were churning. “Unless … could somebody in the club have done it?” The accusation hung in the air and I couldn’t look anyone in the eye.
Poppy stared at me like I was crazy. “Of course it’s the Helle Housers. Why would anybody who’s involved want to risk a leak—oh my God …” Her face twisted into a horrified expression. “What about Annika?”
“The airhead you kicked out for being in Teen Vogue?” I asked. “Now, that would make so much more sense!”
Becca’s face fell into her palms. “We‘re the airheads. She handed in her key, but she probably had it copied.”
“Wouldn’t Stinko have seen her come in?” I asked.
“Not if she came during the four a.m. airing of The Simpsons,” Poppy answered.
“What a clever little monkey,” Sills murmured, sounding sad enough to make all my previous anger at her evaporate.
I started pacing around the room. “Okay, say you’re right and she did swap the iPods for revenge, why don’t you just rewrite the script and go ahead with the plan?”
“Think again, Claire.” Poppy came over to take the iPod from me. “Even if we change some of the details, if we go through with the shoot, there’d still be hard evidence linking the power outage to a close tie between us to the mayor. And our families would be dragged through the coals for having daughters with all that clout.”
“In other words,” said Sills, “it would be the end of the Moons as we know it. We’d have to go back to being a stupid socialite club.”
“Did you tell her about the new cable’s consequences?” Sills asked Becca.
“Vaguely.” Becca inhaled and looked my way. “There’s a developer who has his eye on the waterfront area. He has his pet project all figured out. It’s called Bridge Towers. It’s pretty gnarly.”
Poppy pulled a manila folder out of a drawer and passed it to me. “See for yourself.”
I opened it up to find some newspaper clippings and computer-generated plans for the two proposed minicities, one at either end of the bridge. It looked like a cheap video game brought to life, with its neon color scheme and fluorescent signs affixed to the sides of every building. Then I looked at the New York Post story. The headline said Sink Swims and my gaze fixed on this sentence: “‘My motto is simple: “Ask and ye shall not receive. Do and ye shall prosper,’” Mr. Landon told the Post over lunch at Silty’s Steakhouse, the Midtown restaurant that doubles as his office.”
“Sinclair Landon?” I cried. “The one behind the new Stuy Town and the lofts at the Apollo Theater?”
Sills looked impressed. “His plan for this dream development of his keeps getting struck down, but given everything that’s going to happen, he’s in luck.”
“The complexes are going to be totally disgusting.” Diana smiled oddly.
“So depressing,” said Poppy. “We either let the mystery burglar scare us into inaction and Sink and the rest of the sleazebag developers do whatever damage they want to the city. Or we go ahead with our plan and risk whoever stole the iPod showing it to the media and exposing our connection to City Hall. And then we’ll be paralyzed forever.”
“Talk about bad publicity,” Becca said, pulling her shawl tighter around her shoulders.
Nobody said another word as the situation sank in. And not just the Moons’ situation. My situation. At the rate things were going, Becca was bound to be permanently worried and distracted. Hanging out like we used to, just her and me, was going to become as rare as a lunar eclipse.
Unless.
“One question.” My voice cut through the silence like a blade. “What if I was able to get the iPod back?”
Poppy looked at me with renewed interest. “You know where it is?”
“Not at the moment,” I said. “But what if I found it?”
Poppy’s frown told me she wasn’t going to hold out hope.
Becca, though, knew me better than that. She turned to me and lifted an eyebrow. “You think there’s a stone for you to turn?”
I took a moment to consider. “Maybe one or two.”
“Be my guest.” She looked impressed, as did the rest of the girls.
If only I knew where to start.
{ 13 }
Hot Spaces, Hot Air
Thrashing about in bed that night, it struck me I might have oversold my abilities. Who was I to think I could find the iPod in time? Sure, I had a pretty good sense of who the culprit was and I could count on having a few more black-and-white dreams, but whether I’d be having them soon enough or they’d be leading me to the Moons’ enemy was open to question.
The following morning, Kiki didn’t seem to appreciate opening her door for somebody who wasn’t wearing a uniform and wheeling in her coffee and buttered toast. And I wasn’t in the best of spirits either. Even though Becca was home, more than twenty blocks away, I couldn’t shake the paranoid feeling that she could hear every word I was saying. Worse, when I was done briefing my grandmother on the Moons’ history of covert operations they’d worked on with City Hall, she had the nerve to laugh in my face. “Stop the presses! The Blue Moon Society isn’t just a grooming ground for feckless socialites.” Kiki rolled her eyes.
“What don’t you already know?” I muttered, feeling foolish.
“Duckling … I knew Gummy Salzman. She was a lovely woman, but … I don’t think I’d be alone in saying I think clothes and cocktails weren’t her strong suit. Still, she was deeply intelligent. Given her fondness for the club, there was never any question something substantial was afoot.”
“Well, now nothing’s afoot. The latest plan just got spoiled.” I leaned by the window and tugged at her red and yellow curtain’s silky tassel.
“I wouldn’t start planning a funeral.” Kiki gazed at me and her expression warmed. “Calm down, these things have a way of sorting themselves out.”
“How can you be so sure?” I walked over to Kiki’s bar and started fidgeting with her crystal coasters and decanters. “Time is running out.”
“You get used to it,” she said. “But I find as long as you maintain a youthful disposition and have a few interesting conversational tidbits, you’ll never be at a loss for admirers.”
“I’m not talking about aging,” I said, feeling dual stabs of amusement and frustration. “The city has this plan to take down a cable from the Brooklyn Bridge within months and replace it with a spanking-new reproduction. And then the laws will make it legal for developers to decorate the bridge with their ugly architecture. This developer Sink Landon plans on building a disgusting minicity at either base of the bridge. Imagine a complex of spaceships made out of stucco and scrap metal.”
Kiki looked startled. “If only good taste were half as contagious as the common cold. Can Becca and her sidekicks repair the bridge?”
Averting her gaze, I let her in on the missing movie script, and how it could be the undoing of all of the Moons’ deeds from this point on. “At least the deeds that really matter. If I don’t find the iPod, the girls won’t be able to go ahead with their plan. And the Brooklyn Bridge as we know it will be gone.”
“A grim possibility, that,” Kiki muttered.
“I know. And on top of that, Becca’s a total mess. If this doesn’t get cleared up I’m—” I cut myself off, realizing that my deepest fears had nothing to do with altruism.
“Going to be in need of a new bosom buddy,” Kiki offered as she wandered over to the window. “No, we don’t want that.”
I came up from behind to join her. The Park Avenue traffic was flowing below us like electric ribbons, and farther downtown, the Brooklyn Bridge stretched over the East River, looking majestic in the morning’s pale light.
“Will you look at that?” She gave a full-bodied sigh. “And
you say it might be mucked up.”
“Hard to imagine, isn’t it?”
Without turning to look at me, she gave my bottom a thwack. “Hop to it, kiddo.”
The solution came the next day during music appreciation, in the middle of a fascinating lesson on a time line of Beethoven’s symphonies (our teacher, Mr. Cezpka, believed that getting kids to memorize dates was a more effective musical education than actually playing music for them). As soon as school let out, I found Becca and got her to cough up Annika Gitter’s phone number, then rode up to Kiki’s and unveiled my plan to sneak into the naughty iPod-stealer’s house.
“I don’t think she’d have much reason to let some tenth grader she’s never heard of tramp through her bedroom,” I said, “but what if Saffron Scott, the queen of all home design, came calling?”
Kiki nodded slowly. “I like the way you think.”
“Care to fill me in?” Clem asked cluelessly from the couch. “If this Annika girl is such a bumblebrain, why are you so interested in visiting her?”
“She’s doing her mother’s client a favor,” Kiki helped me out as she handed me the phone. “Never hurts to have an IOU in the bank with Priscilla Voyante.”
I thanked Kiki with a quick nod and dialed the number Becca had given me.
As I’d hoped, Annika’s wariness gave way to excitement when she heard me say I was a unit producer for Style with Saffron Scott.
“We saw the spread in Teen Vogue,” I said, deepening my already-husky voice. “We’re so impressed with your, um … visual voice.”
Kiki grinned and used a coaster to fan her face.
“Are you serious?” Annika gurgled. “Saffron Scott is, like, my idol!”
“Well, let’s just say the feeling is pretty mutual.”
Next, I called home and asked Mom for Saffron, who was predictably right by her side. “Remember the ‘My Crib’ pictures I was showing you the other day? You wouldn’t be interested in filming in her place instead of mine?”
I heard Saffron glug her water. “You know that girl?” She sounded startled, which I didn’t take as a compliment.
“She’s a friend of a friend,” I said. “The only thing is, the girl has security issues, so I promised her I’d come as a producer.”
“Even better,” Saffron said jubilantly “You can be my teen-speak translator.”
“You’ll have better luck understanding Swahili,” I heard my mom say in the background.
When it was all settled, Kiki found me an outfit to wear for my day as a fake producer—a pale yellow ruched satin cocktail dress that she promised would make me look a generation older. “Now why don’t you get an early start on your job? Produce us a couple of martinis, why don’t you?”
Clem chuckled and ran his hand through his long white beard.
“Where is Jon-Jon, anyway?” I asked when I brought two martinis with extra olives over on a vintage Planters peanuts tray that showed Mr. and Mrs. Peanut in the throes of peanut love, strolling down the beach in 1940s swimwear.
“Your grandmother hasn’t boasted of her anti-houseguest-infestation ploy?” Clem asked.
“She’s hinted at some plan.” I glanced at Kiki. “What’s the latest?”
“Let’s just say he’ll be at the theater for quite some time,” Kiki said.
“You got him a ticket to the Ring Cycle or something?” I asked.
“Even better.” Kiki grinned. “I’ve commissioned him to design the sets for my birthday party.”
“The sets? I thought you were renting one of those murder-mystery express trains.”
“Turns out they don’t have those anymore,” she told me in a pouty tone. “Security concerns about people running amok with pistols and whatnot.”
“The world’s a different place after nine-eleven.” Clem gave his silver skull ring a mournful twist.
“Be that as it may,” Kiki continued, “I’ve rented a performance space on West Forty-seventh Street and I asked Jon-Jon to paint the scenery. Clem will be setting up some of his disco blobs.”
In the seventies, after he left Andy Warhol’s Factory, Clem got into interior decorating. His original disco blobs—more organically shaped than the typical disco ball—were a huge hit with the Studio 54 set and financed his luxurious lifestyle of lying around and getting wistful about everything under the sun.
“And you, my dear,” Kiki elbowed me in the rib cage, “will be helping out with the casting.”
My look must have told her it was the first I’d heard of it.
“Filling out a room isn’t exactly a cinch when most of your friends have departed,” she said dryly.
“All the more reason to invite my parents.” I tossed her a pleading look.
“I’ll see if I can find any more invitations.” She sounded mildly put out.
“Good. And if you want I can invite the Moons.”
She frowned. “Becca can come. But maybe another occasion would be better for the whole lot of them. I was hoping you could bring some extra men to round things out—Louis and that culinary boy you mention from time to time.”
Culinary boy? It took me a second to realize who she was talking about. “Ian Kitchen?”
Kiki wagged her head affirmatively. “And I don’t need to tell you to bring Andy.”
Just when I was starting to get excited, she had to remind me of the Andy situation. I felt my face drop.
“You might need to drag him by the ears,” I grumbled.
“He’s still stuck in the library?”
I shrugged. “No idea. He hasn’t called since he kissed me, and that was a week ago. He must be over me.”
“Impossible! He adores you.”
I sighed. “Trust me, he just likes playing with me. Practically the only time I hear from him is when he sends me random e-mails complaining about his homework and asking if I like seltzer or pickled beets or whatever.”
“Pickles, you say?” Clem sounded interested. “Could he be trying to figure out if you’re pregnant?”
Kiki glared at him before turning to me. “Do you really need him to slobber all over you like some ruffian? Bring him to my party.”
“I’m telling you,” I said, “he won’t come. He’ll say he’s got too much schoolwork.”
“Well, isn’t it lucky that Andre Rabinowitz is on the guest list?” Clem piped in.
“Who?” I said.
Kiki’s eyes twinkled. “My old friend has taken the post as Columbia’s dean of students. By the sound of things, your pal certainly could stand to rub shoulders with Andre. So enough of this flapdoodle about his not coming.” She reached for the newspaper in front of her and started to shake it section by section. “Now, where did I put my TV Guide?”
Whatever they say about trick lighting and airbrushing and special angles making a place look more palatial than it is in real life—it’s just not true.
Annika Gitter’s corner of her family’s West Village town house was every bit the plane hangar that it appeared to be in the Teen Vogue spread. Even with all the vintage trunks and animal skins and tropical trees, there was still ample space to host the White House Christmas party.
“God, this is just perfect,” Saffron was saying as she swooped through the room, taking in every insane detail, the camera and sound guys trailing her. “These lights are to die for.” Her voice rang loud.
I’d modeled my outfit after the so-called busiest production designer in New York, who had been the subject of a recent Style Network special, and thrown rain boots and a huge beige scarf over Kiki’s dress. And remembering an article in Allure about how wearing too much makeup makes you look ten years older, I’d slathered on a half bottle of Mom’s Silly Putty–like La Mer foundation—for once there was a bright side to Mom’s Voyante-family-bankrupting quest to be French.
“It’s so funny you guys called,” Annika chirped while I conducted our “presegment interview” (my invention). We were sitting on the edge of her bed, which she’d told me was draped i
n vintage Finnish fabrics.
“I’m actually thinking about starting a design show of my own, and it’s so educational to see how it actually works,” she said, moving a tower of enamel bracelets from one arm to the other. “My dad says I should just go ahead and do it, but it kind of gets in the way of my other plan. Did I tell you I want to be a contemporary American actress?”
“You seem more like the medieval Chinese actress type,” I wanted to say, but I just smiled and kept looking around for anything I’d seen in my dreams.
“I totally think it’s the right move for me. I’d actually love to talk to Saffron about how she juggles all her careers. I remember how there was one month a few years ago when she was on the cover of Italian Vogue and American Glamour! Isn’t that crazy?”
“The craziest.” I nodded. This was getting more bizarre by the second.
Interviewing Annika was as easy as napping in the sun. The only thing I was having trouble with was figuring out whether she was putting on an act. If she was really this daffy, I doubted she could have engineered a break-in at the Moonery But if she was pretending, I wouldn’t put Scriptgate past her.
And then, just as Saffron was telling us that the B roll was shot and it was time for Annika to get into place, I saw something that made my heart thump. Hanging above her bed between a vintage poster for The Man Who Knew Too Much and Psycho was one for Vertigo. As in, the movie Vertigo Girl was named after.
“Annika,” I said, focusing on my notepad. “Can you tell me about those Hitchcock posters?”
“Huh? Those old movie posters?” she said, a bit too quickly for my comfort. “My dad got them at some art fair in London.”
“Are you a Hitchcock fan?”
She laughed nervously. “It’s okay. I liked Men in Black better.”
Was she playing me? Did she really think I was talking about the Will Smith movie Hitch?
“Right,” I said, and I couldn’t resist adding: “I wouldn’t have taken you for a … Vertigo girl.”
The second I mentioned Sills’s screenplay by name, my throat constricted. When I drummed up the courage to meet her eye, she was looking as untroubled as a child being handed an ice cream cone.
Dream Life Page 15