“Yes, but, for him, not so good. Quite disappointing, when you think about it. A few years back and he would have brought in a thousand at least. I’m afraid the old guy’s slipping.”
Stiletto narrowed his eyes. “Like hell I’m slipping. I could have easily gone over a thousand if some crazed maniac hadn’t thrown herself on the high bidder, thanks to you . . . know . . . who.”
“Gotcha,” I said, my senses slowly returning.
“Well, I for one am grateful for your support,” Sabina said graciously. “I mean, with all that’s going on in your life, your daughter, your upcoming wedding, it was so thoughtful of you to think of my charity. It’s always a pleasure to meet another person who puts philanthropy first.”
“That’s Bubbles,” Stiletto said, his blue gaze boring into me as intently as ever. “Always philanthropic.”
Okay. What the heck did that mean? Would somebody please hand me a copy of the codebook? Mine must have gotten lost in the mail.
“Have you told her?” Sabina asked.
Stiletto cleared his throat. “Sabina has invited me to join her in Greece over the holidays.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t think. All brain activity ceased.
“I have a house there,” Sabina prattled. “I did a film a few years back,
Helen of Troy
. Maybe you saw it. I know. There are a million
Helens of Troy
. Anyway, I absolutely fell in love with Greece and the Aegean Sea. It’s so blue. Have you ever been there?”
Sabina might as well have been conversing in Martian. I had no idea what she was saying.
“No,” I said. “I’ve never been out of Pennsylvania.”
“Really?” She batted her eyes. “Anyway, we’re making a sequel,
Helen of Greece,
and start shooting next month with George Clooney. In the meantime, Steve and I will have my little house on Lesbos all to ourselves. Just the two of us.”
Did she just say Lesbos?
Stiletto said, “Don’t look so shocked, Bubbles. By that time you’ll be settling into your new role as Mrs. Dan Ritter. Or will it be Mrs. ‘Chip’ Ritter?”
I had to pull myself together, here. I couldn’t just let this woman walk off with him. I couldn’t let her kidnap him to an island of lesbians as if he were cast in some low-budget porn movie.
“I don’t know if it’s Dan or Chip. I don’t care. Listen, Stiletto. . . .”
The salesman returned with the wrapped package that Stiletto clearly was attempting to hide from Sabina, as if she had no idea. As for the salesman, I was going to have to sic Genevieve on him when I was done with this crisis. Either that or give him a speed lesson in tact.
When the two men went off to finish the transaction, Sabina reached out and touched my arm. This was probably some Californian gesture meant to convey a secret. “I know Steve feels so bad about not being here for your wedding. After all, he did come all the way back from England for it.”
“He won’t be here?” Not that I had invited him. I just didn’t know what else to say.
“I’m afraid we’re leaving on Friday night. The production company chartered a private plane for me and”—she shrugged—“it’s not like you can turn down a private plane. Or, rather, that you’d want to.” She giggled again.
I envisioned Stiletto and Sabina sitting on leather couches thirty-eight thousand feet above the ground, sipping champagne and playing footsie on their way to her bleached house on the bleached beach of the turquoise Aegean.
This gave me a splitting headache.
“We better go,” Stiletto said, his coat pocket now bulging with Sabina’s sapphire.
“Steve’s whisking me off to New York to see some show on Broadway. I have no idea what it is. Was he always so full of surprises?”
“Yes,” I said, though I hadn’t really considered him to be a Broadway musical kind of guy. “And the thing about it is, the surprises never stop.”
“Funny,” Stiletto said dryly, “I could have said the same about you.”
Sabina wrinkled her nose. “I can see now why it didn’t work out between you two. People so alike rarely stay together for very long.”
Shut up, Sabina,
I wanted to say.
Just, please, shut up.
Chapter Twenty-eight
I
could not afford to waste one minute being depressed. I had exactly forty-eight hours to somehow win Stiletto back before he hopped a private jet to Greece with twinkle toes. This got me to thinking bad thoughts, about how desperate times called for desperate Lithuanians.
Yes, I was referring to Genevieve.
No,
I scolded myself, remembering poor Flossie in her leg cast.
Never again
.
“What’s wrong with you? Why the long face?” Mama said when I showed up at her door to attend the shiva for Ernie Bender.
“She’s going to sit shiva! She should be dancing, maybe?” Genevieve barked from the living room, where she was polishing some kind of machete.
I pushed past Mama and plunked my geranium on her tiny kitchen counter. My mother’s apartment in the senior citizen high-rise was a miniaturized version of a real house. The stove had only two burners. The refrigerator was half the size of a standard Amana and the counter was about the length of my arm.
Unfortunately, she’d brought along all the furniture from her prior home, giving the place a crowded, Keebler-elf feel. And it smelled of pot roast simmering in a Crock-Pot. Wherever my mother is, there is pot roast in a Crock-Pot.
“I got problems,” I said. “I talked to Dan and Stiletto.”
Genevieve lowered her machete. “And?”
“And it was exactly the reverse of what I expected. Dan took the news like a trouper, put up absolutely no fuss when I dropped the bomb that I didn’t want to get married.”
Mama crossed herself. “The god of Loehmann’s has smiled down upon me. I can still return the dress.”
“You mean you haven’t bought it yet?”
“I told them you were trying it on and hadn’t decided. Let’s just say I had my doubts.” She placed her hand over her heart. “A mother knows, Bubbles. A mother knows.”
I gave her a look. The only thing this mother knew was how to pilfer three thousand dollars’ worth of toile and satin under her plus-sized muumuu.
“That’s not the problem,” I continued. “The problem is Stiletto. He’s going off to Greece Friday night on a private jet with Sabina, the actress from Allentown. She’s taking him to the island of Lesbos.”
“My people,” Genevieve mused whimsically.
Mama waved both her hands in disgust. “You’re through. You blew it, Bubbles. Come on, let’s go sit shiva and mourn your lost life. We gotta get to your house and be there when Jane gets back from cheerleading.” She grabbed her honey cake.
“Hold on!” I placed my hand on her wrinkled little arm. “Aren’t you going to help me?”
“You didn’t need my help getting his attention. You didn’t need my help getting him into bed. You don’t need my help now. At this stage of the game, kiddo, Steve Stiletto, the gigolo, either loves you and is willing to do what it takes to win you or he’s a wimp who wants to give up and go to Greece with boop-boop-boopie-do. Hurry up, Genny.”
Boop-boop-boopie-do?
Genevieve put down the machete and waddled to the door. “You know I got a standing offer. It may be rusty, but it works.”
“Thanks, but no, thanks, Genevieve,” I said, closing the door behind us. “I think I’ll pass on the home castrator today.”
Mrs. Bender lived three floors up in apartment 1705. Miraculously, it too smelled of pot roast.
“Okay, now we’ll knock but no one will come to the door,” Genevieve said, taking a tissue out of her purse and wiping off her lipstick.
“What are you doing?” I asked in horror.
“Removing my makeup. I forgot to tell you. You shouldn’t wear makeup at a shiva.”
Mama and Genevieve busily set to rubbing off their rouge and coral lip color. I didn’t know what kind of strange ritual this was, but I refused to comply. I do not go out in public without makeup.
As Genevieve patted her cheeks, she went on to explain shiva protocol. “The mirrors will be covered so the mourners don’t have to look at themselves in grief. Also, that way people concentrate on what’s important, the deceased, not about their appearance.”
No mirrors. No makeup. Not concentrating on appearance. This was getting worse and worse.
“And it’s best not to talk about anything but the dearly departed. Then only in moderated, respectful terms.”
“How do you know so much about sitting shiva?” I asked.
Genevieve counted on her fingers. “My fourth. No, my fifth husband, Abe, was Jewish. We were married only six months before he dropped dead.”
“What happened to him?”
“Victim of bad timing. Made the mistake of walking in front of my bullet.” She crumpled her tissue. “I buried them all, you know, my husbands.”
“I’d keep your trap shut about that. It could be taken the wrong way by the wrong people,” Mama said.
Like the police,
I thought.
Genevieve knocked. She was right. No one came to the door. We just let ourselves in.
Mrs. Bender’s apartment was identical to Mama’s, only darker, if that was possible. The curtains were drawn, and as Genevieve had predicted, the mirrors were covered with scarves. Mrs. Bender must have been hard up for furniture because she and two other people were sitting on little, short children’s stools.
“Why don’t I go down to Mama’s apartment and get her kitchen chairs?” I whispered to Genevieve.
“They’re supposed to be low to the ground,” Genevieve said. “It’s symbolic.”
Symbolic for what? Bad knees?
Mama stood awkwardly with her honey cake, unsure what to do since Mrs. Bender and her offspring hadn’t even so much as looked up to greet us. They were awfully haggard, hunched over in their low chairs. There was a big box of Kleenex on the floor near them and a woman who appeared to be in her early forties kept sniffling.
If Detective Burge could have seen them, maybe he wouldn’t have been so cavalier about Ern being a drug addict. People are people, no matter how they live their lives or how they die. Most have someone somewhere who grieves for them when they go. It’s easy to forget that when drugs and alcohol and crime are involved.
Mama found a spot for her honey cake on the kitchen table, where other people had brought casseroles and fruit. Then we sat on folding metal chairs. Genevieve’s bent slightly, I noticed, when she put her full weight on it.
I crossed my legs, uncertain what to do next. No one was talking. No one was drinking. No one was punching someone out in the parking lot. It was unlike all the Polish/ Lithuanian wakes I was used to.
Genevieve broke the ice. “Shoot, Arlene, that was a bummer of a thing to have happened to Ernie, OD’ing on crystal meth like that.”
Mama kicked her.
Arlene dabbed at her eyes. “He was a good son. A good son I had to bury today.”
“It would never have happened,” the younger woman next to her mumbled, “if he hadn’t married that slut.”
“She’s the one who caused all his trouble,” Mrs. Bender added. “She was the one who made up those lies and sent him to jail.”
Now we were getting somewhere. That was more like the Polish/Lithuanian wakes I knew. As Grandmother Saladunas used to say, it’s not until the accusations are thrown and the fists follow that the healing begins. There was also a line about slugging back shots of vodka, but seeing as this was a nonalcoholic affair, I figured it didn’t apply.
There was another knock on the door. I resisted the natural instinct to hop up and get it. A woman opened and entered. She was dressed entirely in black with a sheer black veil.
She was familiar. And not in a good way.
She passed slowly behind me, the edge of her large leather purse brushing my hair as she found a seat next to Mama. Saying nothing, she crossed her hefty ankles, folded her hands in her lap and proceeded to stare straight at me.
It gave me the willies.
“Who’s the angel of death?” Genevieve asked out the side of her mouth.
“I have no idea.”
“She can’t take her eyes off you.”
Indeed, the more I shifted in my seat and tried to focus on the covered mirrors, the one candle lit on the table in the center of the room and the bowl of pickled eggs, the more her eyes followed me behind her black veil.
Who was she? Why was she here?
“This is my daughter, Bubbles,” blurted Mama, who was incapable of enduring pauses in conversation. “She knew Ernie, too—say, Bubbles?”
Oh, crap. I wished she hadn’t brought that up.
Arlene turned to me with a questioning expression. “How?”
“I, um, interviewed him twice and, uh, well, there was that bit in the end when he was found comatose in my car last night.”
Arlene burst out in a fresh round of tears.
Thanks, Mom.
Ern’s sister said, “I didn’t know you were her. Thanks for getting him to the hospital so fast.”
There was no way to respond to that. Any half-witted human would have gotten him to the hospital. “No problem,” I replied, wincing as I said it.
Arlene kept crying. This was the worst. I had to get out of here. I was breaking out into a full-body sweat. Possibly because the apartment was no cooler than a hot sauna in an Arizona desert in July.
Finally, Mama said, “Does anyone watch
Survivor
? I love that show. Except for the nights when they eat bugs. It’s the slugs that make me wanna barf.”
That was when I decided I couldn’t take another second.
I got up and felt the woman in the veil following me with her eyes. Then there was Arlene acting expectant. I knew I was supposed to say something good about Ern, but all I could think of was to tell Arlene that he made a “terrific Santa Claus.”
“What?” she asked in a pained voice.
“Selling Christmas trees,” I explained, confused as to why this compliment had prompted Arlene to sob even more. “Dressed up as Santa Claus on the corner of Union. He made a great Santa Claus.”