Super in the City (17 page)

“Is it possible Roxana doesn’t know about the staircase?” she asked.

“If she doesn’t, don’t tell her. Can you imagine?” Mercedes shuddered.

“Maybe you should call the cops,” Tag suggested to me. “What if he was taping her secretly? Coming into her bedroom without her knowing? Extorting her? Keeping her as a sex slave?” Her eyes lit up.

“You sound like Zephyr,” Lucy muttered.

“Hey,” I said, “I don’t revel in other people’s misfortune! I just have an active imagination.”

“I wasn’t reveling,” Tag said defensively. “I was wondering whether Roxana needs our help.”

We looked at her in surprise.

“ Wha- aat? How cold do you guys think I am?” Tag actually sounded hurt.

Mercedes changed the subject. “Zeph, how’d you find this thing in the first place?” She hauled herself off the bed and poked her head into the stairwell.

I hesitated. The truth would involve telling them about Gregory. A lie would probably also involve telling them about Gregory, because I was a lousy liar.

“I was in the alley cleaning up, and just, you know, saw this brand- new staircase,” I hedged, licking my lips. “What was I gonna do, not check it out?” Tag and Mercedes shot me identical suspicious looks, but Lucy remained in her silent depression-fueled state. Just as Tag started to squint at me, the computer pinged and a message popped up from LinguaFrank. We all dove for the screen.

“I’d love to meet u. Where do u live?” it said.

“This man has a Ph.D. in linguistics,” I griped, “and can’t be bothered to type the ‘y’ and the ‘o’?”

“Civilization is in the crapper,” Mercedes said.

“Wait, he’s online right now?” Lucy asked. “He’s just sitting around waiting for women to e-mail him?” It was hard to tell whether she was deriding the practice or considering adopting it. I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to highlight the relative advantages of sitting on your comfy couch scanning a website full of potential dates against the glaring disadvantages of trolling a bridge in inclement weather amidst a sea of pedestrians who could be married, gay, homicidal, or otherwise unsuitable candidates for romance.

“What do we say?” Mercedes asked, her mini dreds bobbing around her face as she bounced on the bed. Her enthusiasm—rarely ignited for anything other than Messieurs Schubert, Handel, and Mendelssohn—validated our mission. Even Tag and Lucy perked up.

Tag wiggled her fingers over the keyboard, frowning.

“Did Abigail say where he lives?”

I shook my head.

“He’s an academic,” Lucy reasoned. “Anywhere on the West Side should be fine with him.”

“But not Starbucks,” I cautioned. “He won’t wanna go there.”

“How about that place?” Mercedes said vaguely. “That place we went once where that woman had the weird coat?” she prompted.

“Yes!” Lucy shouted. “That’s perfect! It’s cozy, hip, a little dark. We could easily eavesdrop on their conversation.” Lucy smiled for the first time in days.

“Luce,” Tag began gently, then stopped. There wasn’t any point in reminding her that there would be no conversation, because one half of this proposed tête- à- tête was imaginary. It would just be a tête.

“Okay, cozy, hip, dark, weird coats. Anyone remember the name?”

“It’s on Perry, near Washington,” I offered.

“A
name,
people.” Tag tapped the laptop.

“It’s not on Perry,” Mercedes said, shaking her head. “Zeph, that was the other place, the one where Abigail found the bank deposit slip on the bathroom floor with six hundred thousand dollars in the checking account.”

The thought crossed my mind that someone like a movie star, someone like, say, Dover Carter, might be bustling around town with over half a mil in his checking, but I said nothing.

Tag sighed loudly.

“Okay, okay,” I said, “what about Grounded on Jane Street?” It’s where I had hoped to take Gregory before we got sidetracked. I felt myself start to blush and tried to think of other things.

“How… about… Grounded… in … the … Vil… lage?” Tag dictated to herself as she typed. “This Saturday at 5
P.M
I’ll be wearing—” She looked up at us.

“A lace teddy and stilettos,” Mercedes said. “Carrying a whip and sucking on a banana.”

“A tight red dress?” I suggested.

“My favorite fitted
red dress,” Tag typed.

“Sounds like an L.L. Bean catalog.” I shook my head and turned the keyboard toward me, deleting the last bit. “You’ll know me when you see me,” I wrote.
“Believe
me.”

“Perfect,” Tag proclaimed, which apparently gave me the honor of hitting
SEND.
We all watched the screen in silence. In less than a minute, another message popped up.

“Looking forward,” was all it said. I opened my mouth to protest LinguaFrank’s lazy shorthand.

“Zeph, control yourself.” Mercedes cut me off.

“Is this too mean?” Lucy said suddenly, sitting up on the bed.

“Oh, Jesus.” Tag went back into the closet to rifle through dildoes and condoms.

“Abigail was heartbroken,” I reminded her.

“C’mon,
heartbroken?”
Lucy said bitterly. “I know heartbroken and I know Abigail. She decides a few months ago it’s time to get serious, and after one bad date, she’s heartbroken?”

“You should have heard her,” I said cautiously. This disagreement felt like a substitute for another conversation Lucy and I were not having. “Luce, she was hurt. He was cruel to her.”

Lucy shrugged and I felt myself grow angry. Just because she couldn’t land a date with a guy didn’t mean she was allowed to pull everyone else down with her. I silently pushed the computer toward Lucy and followed Tag into the closet. Let Mercedes deal with the pity party.

Tag shook a box of batteries and whispered, “Cut her some slack. Mercedes snagged a movie star, and that guy, George or whatever, didn’t call her. She’s bummed out.”

“Gregory,” I blurted.

“What?”

“Not George,” I said, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut, “Gregory.”

Tag looked up from the box she was holding. “Oh, no. No, no.”

“What?” I tried to look innocent.

“He called you, didn’t he?” she hissed.

“It’s not my fault!” I hissed back, relieved that she’d only guessed as far as a phone call.

“Did you go out with him?”

I hesitated for a split second before settling on the literal truth.

“No, I did not go
out
with him. Can we talk about this some other time?” I nodded toward the bed.

“Did you find the key, Tag?” Mercedes called out.

“To what?”

“Um, those pretty bracelets you’re wearing?”

“Oh, it’s around,” Tag said dismissively

“Around?” I said, alarmed. “You don’t have it?”

“It’s
around,”
she repeated, though her forehead creased slightly. We emerged from the closet and started scouring the coarse gray carpet for a handcuff key, which Tag could only describe as a piece of metal that didn’t really look like a key at all. Mercedes and Lucy peered under the bed.

“Girls?” came my mother’s singsong voice from James’s front door.

“Shit!” I hissed, and we all jumped up. Tag grabbed the various plastic penises that she’d used earlier to choreograph a shadow dance and threw them into the closet. I tossed in a few other unseemly items that had migrated out—a bag of feathers, a tube of glittery lubricant—and Mercedes slammed the door shut.

I hadn’t mentioned the staircase to my parents. I told myself it was because I didn’t want them to tell Roxana, on the grounds that it might traumatize her forever if she didn’t yet know about it. The truth was that I needed to have a secret right now. It made up for the fact that my brother was going to present a movie in Tribeca next month. It eased the reality of sitting on the floor of a convict’s apartment sorting out water and sewer bills, contemplating the meaning of ten jars of Marmite, and reassuring a fractious widow that I was investigating her imaginary intruders.

I hadn’t told the Sterling Girls that the staircase was unknown to Bella and Ollie, and I was pleased to see the parent radar that had served us so well in high school still fully functioning and able to kick into gear at the drop of a dildo.

“Making progress?” My mother’s expectant face appeared at the door of the bedroom, glistening above the various Lycra contraptions encasing her lithe body. Sweat and rain streaked her French braids. We all stood around awkwardly, turgid little clouds of guilt filling the room.

Lucy, bless her tidy heart, grabbed a garbage bag and said, “Yep, we’re getting there, but boy… !” And then she actually brought her arm to her forehead and said, “Whew!” which I thought was going a bit overboard, but Bella Zuckerman, no stranger to melodrama, didn’t appear to notice this false gesture.

“It’s disgusting in here, isn’t it?” My mother wrinkled her nose. “Who would have thought? You know, with that cute British accent?” She raised her eyebrows and wiggled her head from side to side to suggest clipped Anglo tones.

“Thanks so much for helping Zephy,” she chirped. “You know, the sooner it’s cleaned up, the sooner she can get it rented out!”

“Mom,” I said sharply. “We know. I know.” My hackles went
up as my mother surveyed my friends, smiling. I knew she was wondering how she, one of
Newsweek’s
Fifty Women to Watch (seventeen years ago, I comforted myself), wound up with a daughter whom she couldn’t even categorize as “opting out” because said daughter didn’t actually have a career out of which to opt. Didn’t she know I was doing everything I could to make that apartment profitable? I shifted my weight nervously and tried not to think about the past three days, during which I had not cleaned, had not called a broker, had not done anything, in fact, but moon over Gregory.

She put her hands on her hips and spun around to Mercedes, focusing her attention like a prison searchlight. “Mercedes, sweetie, I came down because Ollie and I have tickets for this Saturday—will you be onstage that night? We’d love to take you for a late dinner afterward.”

Mercedes scanned the ceiling for a moment. “I-I’m not sure. If I am—I have to check—I’d love to. That’s really sweet of you, Bella.”

I glanced over at Mercedes at the same time Tag did. Mercedes was bald- faced lying. Unless she was on tour, she knew her Byzantine, erratic schedule down to the minute. She was a human Palm Pilot. I smelled Dover Carter.

“Merce, I’m pretty sure you told me you were on that night,” Tag said evilly.

“Like I said,” Mercedes enunciated stonily to Tag, “I’ll have to check.”

“But—”

“Tag,” Mercedes interrupted, “I believe you’re the one who’s got some
constraints
right now, yes?”

Tag was holding her hands behind her back, assuming a ponderous pose to hide the handcuffs that, I now realized, were still encircling her wrists. A snort escaped me as I tried to keep from laughing. Lucy heard me and looked over. When she
saw Tag trying to look innocent, she quickly turned away from my mother, her shoulders convulsing. Mercedes made a weird coughing sound. Tag just raised her eyebrows at us and smiled. My mother noticed nothing.

“A big trip lined up?” my mom asked eagerly. “South America? Asia?” I shot Tag a warning look in case she was suddenly struck with an urge to reveal her current state of bondage.

“Well,” Tag said thoughtfully, “a conference in Spain and then Bora Bora this summer, but that’s about it.”

“Oh, how I envy you!” my mother trilled. “You know what I’m going to do for you girls? I’m going to whip up a batch of energy drink.”

“No!” Mercedes cried out.

“Please don’t,” Tag said quickly.

Bella dismissed their protests with a wave of her hand and headed out of the room, a little bounce in her step at the thought of nourishing us. She paused and looked back.

“Oh, Zeph?”

“Hmm?” I said, looking up from my garbage bag with feigned distraction.

“Did you guys ever figure out the problem with the dryer? Can I use it?”

My breath caught.

“Didn’t quite finish,” I squeaked.

My mom nodded and shrugged. “Back in a minute.”

I followed her to the front door. The moment I double-locked it behind her, I heard an explosion of laughter from the bedroom. I hurried back to find my friends in a tangle on the bare mattress, tears running down their faces, gasping for breath. I was just about to yell at them to pull it together before my mother returned, when I noticed a thin metal key sticking out of Tag’s back pocket. I pointed at it and tried to tell them,
but I was laughing so hard that all I could do was flop down next to them and try to catch my breath. The room stank of underpants, the closet was filled with a convict’s trove of sex toys, and the heel of someone’s clog was digging into my back, but it was, maybe because of all those things, a first- world moment.

L
UCY, TAG, AND MERCEDES HELPED ME FILL UP GARBAGE BAGS
and boxes for another three hours, energized not at all by my mother’s viscous mauve drink (which we tossed down the sink, and which took an unnaturally long time to drain), but by the sheer delight of finding three packages of cookie dough in James’s freezer. We worked our way through two of them—Tag and Mercedes washed theirs down with Brooklyn Lager—in the spirit of cleaning out the kitchen.

While we tossed condiments into the trash and condoms into storage boxes (it seemed wasteful to throw them out), four things happened. Tag discovered two keys hidden inside a picture frame. Mercedes confessed that she had a date with Dover Carter next week. I came clean about Gregory. And Lucy decided to throw a death party for herself.

My mother, when she returned with the energy drink, had pressed Mercedes again about her plans for Saturday night, as if Mercedes had had the inclination to check her schedule in the intervening ten minutes. Mercedes, knowing she wouldn’t be able to fend off my mother for very long, admitted she already had a post- performance date. My mother accepted that with minimal disappointment, but after she left, Tag slipped over to Mercedes and quietly snapped handcuffs on her.

“What the fu- freak!” Mercedes yelled. She looked so panicked, I almost felt sorry for her. “My wrists, don’t hurt my wrists!”