Bubbles All The Way (27 page)

I slinked past lifestyle and headed for my corner desk. The “lifestyle ladies,” as Mr. Salvo called them, were gathered about the food editor’s desk taste-testing an almond Christmas ring, the recipe for which would be featured in the Thursday food section. It looked delicious, buttery dough around an oozing almond filling with little green and red cherry pieces to make it Christmassy.

There were lots of “oohs” and “hmms” and “Let me have a small piece” emanating from their end of the newsroom. I listened a bit closer and found they were also discussing diets, specifically Weight Watchers and how many pounds they’d lost. All while helping themselves to “just one more slice.”

This is why women live longer than men—because we truly are the Queens of Denial.

I plunked down my own coffee and newspaper, turned on the special light that was needed because my computer was in such a dark area and booted up. Marty Finkleman, the obit writer, had left his stuff scattered about, faxes from funeral homes, a coffee cup and an empty packet of gum.

Tossing out the coffee cup and the gum wrapper, I held the faxes in my hand, unsure whether it was okay to throw them away, too. It was too much like discarding lives: FRAYN, CARL, 73, of Lehighton, of lung cancer Monday in St. Luke’s Hospital. BUDD, FRANCINE, 88, of natural causes in her Freemansburg home. SHATSKY, DEBORAH, 38, of a sudden illness in Lehigh.

I glanced over Debbie’s pathetically short obit. Wife of Philip, daughter of Marie and Pervical, both deceased. Graduate of Liberty High School and Shippensburg University, employee of Get Together Now! Travel, member of St. Dominic’s Roman Catholic church, the Northampton County Order of the Eastern Star, chapter #23, and the St. Dominic’s altar guild. Private funeral only. Donations sent to St. Dominic’s.

I found it even more tragic that Debbie’s obit was the rubber stamp of a million other Lehigh women. The schools, the churches, the organizations. Nothing out of the ordinary. I dumped it in the trash.

Then I got out the phone book and flipped to PHYSICIANS—ALLERGISTS in the yellow pages. Who’d have thunk there’d be so many? Must have been the damp Lehigh Valley air. All that mold.

I caught a whiff of old-fashioned rose perfume and turned to find Flossie Foreman in a leg cast, spying on me from her cubicle.

I waved and she ducked back. I think she was scared.

Back to the phonebook. I started with the A’s because, heck, where else was I going to start? The first office I called was Abramovitz, Abram; I got a receptionist named Marie. No Zora. The next, Arkin, Alan, was closed for the holidays already. Baum, Regina had a receptionist named Antonio, who had never heard of a receptionist named Zora. And so it went until Kuchner, Ralph.

“Excuse, me,” I said robotically, having repeated this line ten times already, “but I’m looking for a receptionist named Zora. I wonder—”

“This is Zora,” she said perkily.

I sat up.
The
Zora? The could’ve-murdered-Debbie Zora? But she sounded so . . . young! And so innocent. “Uhm.”

“Can I help you?”

I really hadn’t been prepared to find her so easily. “My name is Bubbles Yablonsky. I’m a reporter at the
News-Times
.”

“Oh, geesh,” she said. “The doctor is booked with patients today and—”

“I’m calling about Get Together Now! Travel and Debbie Shatsky’s so-called lust boat cruises. I just want to talk to you.”

There was a frozen silence.

“How did you find me?”

“Some well-meaning people said you’d had a bad experience.” I hesitated. People who’ve been scammed are reluctant to come forward out of fear that people will mark them as stupid for having been such suckers. I needed to assure Zora that she was not alone.

“There are other women,” I said. “Smart, successful, beautiful women who also suffered.”

“If I talk to you,” she said, “can it be off the record? That’s
if
I talk to you. I’m not saying I will.”

I hate when people ask this. There’s no way to answer them honestly without first knowing what they’re prepared to say. “How about we just meet first?” And then I zinged her with my clincher. “You don’t know how many lives you could save by coming forward.”

A second pause. I heard another phone ring in her office. I envisioned some whiny patient with a sinus infection seeking emergency assistance or a case of Christmas-stress hives.

Then Zora said, “You know the Laundromat on Third? Meet me there at noon. I’m picking up some dry cleaning on my lunch hour.” And she disconnected.

Dry cleaning. That was a commitment. If she’d suggested meeting at a restaurant or a park, I’d have doubted her. But with dry cleaning there’s a ticket. She’d have to show.

Feeling victorious, I hung up and summoned the confidence to call Stiletto at his home. His housekeeper answered and seemed awfully surprised to hear me.

“Why, Bubbles, how are you? I never thought we’d see you again.”

I stifled the impulse to blurt that she’d be seeing a lot of me very, very soon.

“Is Steve there?”

“He’s almost out the door. Let me catch him.”

I twirled my hair, listening to his footsteps stomping across the hardwood floor, coming to the phone. I was so excited, I didn’t know how I was going to get through the hours until I saw him.

“Bubbles?” He said this sounding more confused than overjoyed. “Why are you calling me
here
?”

Here?
Was there some reason I couldn’t call him at home?

“If you want to discuss last night, there’s not much more to tell you. Tess didn’t talk about the Debbie Shatsky situation after that. She kind of, um, fell asleep.”

“I see.” And did that mean he stayed by her side the whole night?

“Listen, I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, suddenly feeling very awkward, “but I hoped we could meet this evening.”

“Actually, I have a prior—”

“Oh, stupid me.” I reflexively slapped my head, even though I was on the phone. “I forgot. I have a shiva to go to at seven. How about before that? Sixish?”

He hesitated. Why was he hesitating?

“You can just tell me now.”

“No. I really can’t.”

“Okay.” He sighed. This was a far cry from the flirtatious Stiletto who’d ambushed me behind the Christmas tree and lustfully attacked me in the storage room of the Masonic temple. “I’ve got some last-minute Christmas shopping to do. Meet me in front of the Moravian Bookstore at five thirty. If I’m late I’ll find you.”

Gee. Didn’t mean to put you out, buddy.

And then he added, “It’s probably good for us to get together, now that I think of it. I should clarify a few things before I go.”

My throat tightened. “Go?”

“We’ll talk about it this afternoon. See you then. I gotta run.”

And he was off.

I
tried not to obsess about Stiletto, but it was hard. He’d sounded so different from last night, changed, somewhat cold. I found myself replaying the evening. Had he been mad that I went back to Dan? Or was it something else? Perhaps he’d fallen in love with the soused Tess. It was all so perplexing that I got absolutely no work done on my Mahoken budget story.

No shock there. Anything or anyone can distract me from a Mahoken budget story. A squirrel eating a nut on the telephone wires outside my window can demand my full attention when the only other option is comparing fiscal-year increases for road maintenance and repair as outlined on a helpful diskette Gloria, the Mahoken clerk, had sent me.

The only positive thing to come out of the Mahoken budget story was the CD Gloria included with the budget proposal and minutes: the five best songs from
Styx Greatest Hits
. Gloria was a big Styx fan, as am I, natch. How could you not be when they were the authors of the incomparable “Show Me the Way.”

Back to Stiletto. What was it with this “go” business? He hadn’t mentioned going anywhere. On the contrary. At the Masonic temple he’d explained that he’d come
back
for me. He never said anything about
going
.

On reflex, I reached for the phone and automatically dialed the House of Beauty to run all this by Sandy. Then a recording came on, Martin’s voice stating somberly that the House of Beauty would be closed until further notice and would Sandy please call him. He was worried.

That was when I remembered. There were other, more pressing issues than the hidden meaning behind my conversation with Stiletto.

My best friend had disappeared.

I was grateful when noon rolled around so I could get out of the newsroom to meet Zora. How wise of her to pick the lunch hour. That way I didn’t have to justify to Mr. Salvo where I was going—nor was I obligated to lie that my travels had nothing to do with the Debbie Shatsky case. All I had to do was sign out with Veronica.

“And you’re going where?” she asked, holding a pen over the pink WHILE YOU WERE OUT tablet.

“Um, to get my dry cleaning.”

“
You
have dry cleaning?” She emphasized the “you” as if, in living in a moss-lined cave with trolls, I would have no need of well-starched, perfectly pressed formal wear.

“Of course.”

“But everything you wear is polyester.”

“It’s the kind of polyester you have to dry clean.” What the heck did I know from dry cleaning and how come Veronica cared, anyway?

“Okay.” She made a prudish tick on the pad. “But Mr. Notch is going to be suspicious. If you said you had to go out and get your nails done or your brows waxed or stock up on the Wednesday night Lotto tickets, that he might have bought.”

“Yeah, well, it’s dry cleaning.” I left debating what kind of bleached-blond bimbo Veronica took me for.

It wasn’t hard to spot Zora when I arrived at the Tip Top Laundromat. For one thing she was in a nurse’s outfit and in her hand were a bunch of other plastic-covered nurse’s outfits. She must have been picking up cleaning for the whole staff. Either that or she had a very limited view of her wardrobe potential.

Zora was a tiny woman with the unfortunate body of my Eastern European ancestors. Heavy on the bottom, heavy on the top with a smallish waist between. She made the most of the waist by choosing an A-line navy blue peacoat. Still, there was little she could do about that bottom aside from an ass transplant. Suffer through swimsuit season was all. Vow to find a man who was driven wild by the women in Gdansk.

“Zora?”

She smiled, fully expecting a chance run-in with a friend. When she saw it was me, however, her smile turned upside down. “You’re the reporter, aren’t you?”

“Yes. But I’m very nice. Honest.”

My weak attempt to appear harmless didn’t sway her. “I’ve been thinking about why you called and I’m not sure I have anything to say.”

“Maybe you don’t. All I’m asking for is five minutes of conversation.” I reached out and took the dry cleaning from her hand. It would be hard for her to run away when I had two hundred dollars’ worth of uniforms.

She flexed her arm. “Thanks. Those were heavy. I was going to hang them in my car, but I was afraid I’d miss you if I did. You know how it is. You wait for someone and wait for them and then as soon as you leave for just a minute they come and assume you stood them up.”

I slapped her shoulder in a friendly way. “That is so true. Come on. I’ll carry. You talk.”

She shoved her hands in her pockets as we shouldered our way down the sidewalk, against the flow of workers on their lunch break. It was a tough crowd. Everyone was laden with red-and-green bags of Christmas gifts and no one was full of merry cheer. I swear a kindly old lady tried to trip the Salvation Army Santa Claus standing by his little pot, ringing his bell. No, really.

This was the last minute “I have to get something for my pickle-puss boss” shopping. This was the kind of shopping that broke your budget. There were no sales, only desperate parents fearful of failing their beloved ones on Christmas morning. Husbands who felt guilty for waiting until the eleventh hour. Wives who felt guilty for running out the credit cards, tired from staying up to all hours wrapping and baking. Even the clerks were snappy as they snatched your cash.

This was the brutal, bitter end, and I was glad to have Zora’s story to keep my mind off my own shortcomings in buying everything on my family’s Christmas lists. This year I was woefully behind. I was also woefully broke. Coincidence? I think not.

Zora’s own woes began last summer when she received a thick invitation from what she had assumed was Lehigh Steel inviting her aboard a “Meet and Greet Cruise” off Atlantic City. The invitation specified that it was a way for the latest batch of “loopers” to become acquainted with Lehigh’s most desirable single women.

Okay, Zora might be nice and smart and funny and maybe for all I knew she was a tigress in bed. But she was hardly among Lehigh’s most desirable single women.

She read my thoughts. “I know. It struck me as odd, too. So I called Debbie at Get Together Now! Travel. Hers was the only number listed on the invitation.”

“And Debbie told you she’d picked your name from a social directory or that you’d been referred by a friend of a friend.”

“Right.” Zora stopped in her tracks. “How did you know?”

“I’ve been asking around. Go on.”

Like Tess, Zora had been intrigued by the impressive listing of impressive loopers. “I never knew they were of that caliber. All those degrees and income-earning potential, and they were gorgeous, too. To think they were looking for wives. Well, I was so curious, I had to go on that cruise.”

I was dying to get my hands on one of those invitations. We could run a photo of it next to the story. Though what was I talking about? Notch would never print a story about Debbie Shatsky suckering single women onto her “lust boat” cruises. I wasn’t even supposed to be asking questions. If he found out what I was up to, I’d be spending the afternoon clearing out my desk. Whichever desk that was.