I’d almost asked her the same question. “Why?”
She waited for me to answer.
“I haven’t, but it’s possible he called me.” I told her about the phone messages Babe had delivered and the one I’d left him.
Rolanda asked if I’d checked the message board.
“I’ve been pretty busy today.”
Rolanda took me by the arm and led me to the up escalator. “Why are we doing this?” I asked.
“I saw something that might interest you.”
Upstairs, past the temporary bookstore, the press room, and the members’ lounge was a long corkboard on the wall between meeting rooms that would soon be filled with people learning wreath-making and bonsai techniques. Most of the notices were four-color promotional materials for products or services with the occasional “Mary Ellen, meet me at Herbaceous Perennials 101.” Good place for an ad. I made a note to print out a picture of one of Primo’s pieces and put it on the board with our booth number. Rolanda was searching. “I hope someone didn’t pin anything on top of it.” Then I saw what she’d been looking for.
Do you still have my bag?
Please call me. G.B.
Eighteen
“I don’t get it. If he was here, why didn’t he just find me? I left him my booth number.”
“’Cause he didn’t have no badge. Do we need to go over that again? Another guard gave him the boot yesterday afternoon. I’m just glad the kid was here. I had a premonition about him. My mother had the gift. In our old neighborhood, she knew who was gonna die right before it happened.”
Given Rolanda’s size and temperament, it occurred to me her mom might have been a hit woman, but I kept that thought to myself.
“I have a little of it, too,” she said. “The gift. You don’t believe me, right?”
“What is it?” I asked, hoping I didn’t look too skeptical and she didn’t see whatever woo woo glow she’d seen around the kid around me.
“Hard to define,” she said. “When I saw the accident this morning, I thought it might be the Happy Valley kid, but it was Otis Randolph, one of the overnight workers.”
“Is he all right?”
She shook her head. “Didn’t even make it to the hospital. Looks like he broke his neck. The escalator turns off automatically, so maybe he was on it and it jolted to a stop, throwing him down the stairs. The police aren’t sure what happened—I’m just guessing.”
“I’m sorry. That’s horrible. Were you friends?”
“I knew him. At first when I saw the jeans and boots, I thought it might be our boy who sneaked in after the kerfluffle yesterday.”
Kerfluffle. I liked that. And hadn’t she referred to herself as a martinet the other day? Between her psychic abilities and her colorful vocabulary, Rolanda was getting more interesting.
I dialed the number on the bulletin board. The same one Babe had given me. It kicked into voice mail, and I left a message, saying the bag was at booth 1142, if he could get in (Rolanda was still within earshot). Otherwise he should call me and I’d arrange to meet him. Out of habit I left my cell phone and my home phone numbers.
“Look at this—you’re a popular girl. Here’s another one.”
Rolanda plucked a pink index card from the board. It was from Connie.
Hi, Paula, Didn’t have your number but hope you see this. Meet me at the St. George at 7 p.m. Connie A.
The I’s were dotted with circles. Instead of periods, she made little daisy-shaped characters. Aaaay.
I checked my watch. “You could pretend you didn’t see it,” Rolanda said.
“She’d know I was lying. I’m a terrible liar.” The last thing I wanted to do was have drinks with a woman who made up her own punctuation marks, but it was a good hotel with a great bar and she was buying.
By that time the escalators had been turned off and Rolanda and I walked to the top of the staircase. The reception didn’t start until 5:30 P.M. the next day, and I considered going back onto the floor for the bag, but Rolanda stopped me.
“Don’t bother. These doors are locked.”
“All right, since you have all the answers, what do people wear to this shindig tomorrow night?”
“Last year we had an international theme. People had all sorts of getups. One woman wore a three-foot headdress that was supposed to be Brazilian. She had to sit in a chair and be carried in because she couldn’t fit through the doorway standing up.”
“Was she wearing her badge?”
“Damn skippy.”
Nineteen
The St. George had one of the best bars in the city. The murals; the low ceiling, which held in decades of New York life; the music; the fashionable cocktails of the time; and the cigarette and cigar smoke from bygone days that had yellowed the walls and given the room a warm, cavelike quality. It was the kind of place that made me want to order a sidecar or a sloe gin fizz, even though I had no idea what they were. And the St. George had the best mixed nuts of any establishment in the city. I loved the place, despite the fact that the house detective once took me for a hooker. That was the anecdote I used as an icebreaker when I joined Connie at her corner table.
“He thought you were a pro?” Connie asked, temporarily halting her low-key gum chewing.
Just out of school, I had been working as an assistant buyer for a catalog company. An older salesman invited me for a drink, and I arrived early. I wasn’t there five minutes when a portly, florid guy in a baggy gray suit asked if I was waiting for someone. I was too clueless to know what he was really asking. Luckily the friend showed up and rescued me.
“What a jerk,” Connie said. “Nowadays, you could sue for that.”
“Maybe it was the attire. Probably a Melrose Place suit with a teeny skirt.” I let the wardrobe conversation dry up when I remembered who I was talking to. Tonight’s package was wrapped in fluffy white Mongolian lamb that mercifully covered another scene of embroidered marine life. Clearly the dress code at the St. George had loosened up.
Connie had loosened up, too. Lubricated by two drinks, she gave me her life story in broad strokes—born in Brooklyn, she and Guy were neighborhood sweethearts who married when she was barely eighteen. She was quick to point out it was not a shotgun wedding; although I wouldn’t have cared. She and Guy had two kids, but they came later at regulation intervals. Guy was making good money in his father’s landscaping business and didn’t see the need for more than two years of accounting classes at Kingsborough Community College, so he dropped out. Then he started his own business.
“Interlocking tumbled blocks,” she said. “It’s the way of the future.”
As a gardener I had a love-hate relationship with them. Lately it had been swinging to love. Most were obvious and plastic, kind of like fake boobs. And they came preweathered (the stones, not the boobs), like prewashed jeans. But recently manufacturers had improved the products, so they looked almost as good as the natural stone they replaced in gardens, driveways, and walls. Was I going over to the dark side?
Connie wriggled out of her jacket, revealing a tight white blouse with an oyster-shell design on each melon-sized breast. I did my best not to stare. She waved at the young waiter, this time ordering a full bottle. He was putty in her hands—clearly the man was a seafood fan. I nursed my first drink but made short work of the nuts. She signaled for another bowl, and in an instant they appeared.
Underneath the fish garb Connie Anzalone was an attractive woman in her early thirties with the figure of a Xena: Warrior Princess doll. Her wide blue eyes and pouty mouth all but guaranteed that wiggling her fingers was all she’d have to do to get whatever she wanted. It was fascinating to watch. Don’t get me wrong, I like my looks, but really beautiful women were practically a different species. I think it was the casual power they wielded. And did they wake up that way every morning? Or did it, as a friend used to say, “take a village”? It took me twenty minutes just to dry my hair, and even then one side always looked better than the other, so I usually hid it all under a hat. The bottle arrived and was opened and poured in overtheatrical fashion, no doubt to impress Connie.