Dead is the New Black (10 page)

“No.” She smiled, liking him even though he went for the most obvious question. He made an earth-moving snarfle and marked her
Present
in his book.

The doorbell rang. Stu stood on the other side of the door with an armful of samples. David panicked, looking under the desk and drawers. “I don’t know how to open it.”

Laura went around and slid a small panel under the counter, revealing a white button. She pressed it, and the lock clicked.

Stu greeted Laura with a nod. He draped the samples over the reception counter and handed David his clipboard. He held it far from his body and looked from Laura to Stu. Laura saw Stu’s foot tapping, and she kicked him.

“You sign here, where he marked on the bottom,” Laura explained.

David took a pen from his shirt pocket. “What does it mean if I sign?”

Stu sighed, Laura gave him a nasty look before telling David, “It means that you received these samples. No more.”

David nodded, and then did what no one else did. He checked through the samples and made sure they were all there before signing. Afterward, Stu grabbed his clipboard and turned to leave.

She followed him to the door. “What’s your problem?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t ask for an apology.”

“They moved my route to downtown east.”

“And?”

“There aren’t any bike paths outside of Second Avenue. I’m going to get killed. And they moved Nadal to Fashion because his girlfriend works in five-fifty. They think he can generate business if she puts in a word. Like that ever happens. Now I have wall-to-wall rich assholes who’re too lazy to leave their apartments. Do you know how much breast milk Nadal moves? These Gramercy Park bitches have wet nurses. And then, listen to this, there was the Happy Meal lady and, believe me, he was delivering more than a meal in a box.”

So Nadal worked Gramercy Park, a hotbed of rich people, where Laura had delivered the Noelle gown the first time she altered it, in the first blushing week of her employment. It was such a long shot, really, to think he might have been anywhere near Gracie Pomerantz’s co-op the night before she was killed. It was worse than a long shot, almost a waste of time, actually.

“Look, I’m being an idiot. Have the cops bothered you again?” Stu asked.

“No.” Then, she added, “You should invite him to Serious tonight for a route-switching drink.”

“You know what I think bugs me the most?” he asked. “I won’t get to see you during the day anymore.”

There was a pause as he looked at her, and she glanced back at David to avoid the intensity of his gaze.

“I have to go. We’ll still see each other. Don’t worry.” She squeezed his arm. She did like him and, if she hadn’t been so invested in the inaccessible Jeremy St. James, she knew she would be emotionally available for Stu.

As she passed the reception desk, the buzzer went off again, and David smiled at her when he pressed the button. Such a simple thing, and she had earned his gratitude forever.

Laura flicked through the rack, counting garments against what was on her clipboard. Things were missing, the matte jersey in particular and, in general, without Jeremy’s guidance, a few more styles had fallen through the cracks. Mom was working on the crochet piece for the Amanda gown, and she’d bring it in when she was done.

“Ready?” Tiffany called from the fit room.

“Yeah.” Laura pushed the rack away from her table.

André strode in, glancing at computer screens as he passed. He intercepted her on the way to the fitting. “There’s ten yards of Bonnie Twill coming in Delphi Green.” He showed her some random piece of paper she had no time to look at. “Leave it by my desk.”

“Jeremy cancelled the Delphi Green,” Laura said.

“He put it back this morning when I saw him.” His tone was so threatening, Laura almost feared a physical assault, which made her more angry than scared.

“Do you have the paper on the Federated matte jersey order?”

“I don’t need to show you paper for you to do your job, do I?”

That silenced her. Remarks like that defined bullies, so she chose to be silent rather than tell him what she really thought.

“Thank you,” he said, and he was off in a cloud of aftershave and hair gel.

Carmella mumbled over Laura’s shoulder, “Inge’s mother must be in town.”

Tiffany chimed in, “And what’s with the twill? In Delphi green? We couldn’t get that to match anything. I mean, it was dropped for a reason. What does he want with it?”

Carmella waved Tiffany off. “If I see it, I’ll take care of it.”

They went into the fitting room for the next six hours.

CHAPTER 11.

Fittings were a very serious business.

Production fittings were somber enough, with the model making upwards of two hundred dollars per hour to stand still or move at the designer’s command. She was perfect, so average in her measurements, so unassuming, so bereft of any unique trait from her neck to her ankles that she represented the largest subset of women. It was so difficult to find such women that it was devastating to lose a model to weight gain, weight loss or, worse, pregnancy. The theory was, if something fit on the perfect body, it would fit on the greatest percentage of consumers. So the technicians worked on the shoulder slope, the armhole shape, and the pitch of the pattern pieces so that when the garment was first tried on, the customer would have the feeling that it was meant for her. For everything that happened to a style before it got to the store, the perfection of the fit was the most difficult.

Fittings for the runway show were another thing entirely. The style didn’t need to fit. It needed to
look
like it fit.
How long is this skirt on a giraffe? Can this jacket fit a skeleton? If we drape this vest over her this way, do we have to lengthen the shirt so it shows at the hem?
This is why the models so often kept their outfits; they only fit the freakishly tall, obscenely skinny girls that walked the runway. The fittings were fast and chaotic. There were multiple models and a ton if interns, some of whom had names, some of whom went by, “Hey, you.” There was cigarette smoke. There were flasks. There was nonstop talking. But it wasn’t a party atmosphere. It was dead serious, because the giraffes on the runway made ten times what the perfectly average girl did, and nothing stifled laughter like money.

Laura pinned and talked to the giraffes about their other accounts. Who was working where, who was fired, who was a drama queen, who was laid back. Models were the carrier pigeons of news. They saw everyone, gained trust, spoke openly—but not too openly—and gossiped like magpies. If you were looking for a job, you asked a fit model. If you were looking for a backer, you asked a runway model. If you’d been offered a job, but you didn’t know if the place was right for you, the models had enough anecdotes to give you the flavor of a company. And if she didn’t, she had a friend.

So they gossiped, and Laura found out that Calvin was looking for a patternmaker, that the place ran like a machine, and the austerity that marked their clothes marked the office as well. She made a mental note to polish her resume.

There were rumblings about Jeremy’s absence, and a few direct questions as she sat on the floor and worked on the knee dart in Thomasina Wente’s pants. She knew it would explode into gossip later, but at the moment was kept to clipped sentences and taut information about the contract, the arrest, as the giraffes tried to figure out if the show had any cachet left at all. Thomasina, one of the three “
ostalgie
heiresses” of the former East Germany, clicked her tongue when Laura noted that she’d seen Jeremy at Rikers, as if it were disgraceful to show your face in such a venue.

Tiffany worked on Noë, who stood a humble five eight and weighed a whopping hundred and twenty pounds. Her attitude and her skin made her a star. Her skin was the color of French Roast coffee, perfectly even from the top of her bald head to the bottoms of her feet. She had a thick accent, the product of half a life in Sudan, and half in Haiti when her father, a banker of some note, was transferred across the world to manage some financial disaster or another in Port-au-Prince. She had a sense of humor so dry it was assumed she didn’t have one. The rest of the girls didn’t like her because she didn’t look anything like them, and she was a threat to their genetic privilege. Also, she preferred the company of diplomats and business magnates to actors and celebrities. She didn’t drink, smoke, or use drugs. A proverbial stick in the mud. And worse, she was wearing the white Amanda gown at the show’s end, forty yards of fabric and a crochet trim that ran the length of the runway, with boning pin tucks on top. Half tuxedo, half lingerie. Totally Jeremy.

Carmella took one look at Noë in the final muslin of the Amanda gown and made for the door.

“Carmella!” Laura called through the pins in her mouth, “You have to fit the Amanda.”

She stopped in her tracks like a child caught leaving the bathroom without washing her hands. “You’re busy,” she said, stepping back into the room. “This is your pattern, no?”

Laura picked the pins out of her mouth and moved on to the Devon pant waistband on Thomasina. “I can see what’s wrong with it,” she said. “But can you do a design-through? I have one ear on you.”

Carmella stood back from Noë, who wore the final muslin, and barked instructions to Tiffany. She didn’t look Noë in the face. The skirt was too long. The bust was too tight. The waist was too low. Those were not design comments, but things Laura could see for herself from a mile away.

“She looks like a sausage,” Carmella said, before she gathered her notes and cigarettes and walked out. A comment that would have been legitimately cried over in other circumstances was perfectly acceptable, getting not even a shrug from the model.

“Can you put the circle skirt on?” Laura asked Thomasina when she finished pinning.

“It’s not there. Your lady said it wasn’t ready yet,” she replied in a German-thickened voice. Laura glanced over to the rack. No skirt. A third of the line wasn’t even ready for fitting at lunch, and it was six o’clock already. She dismissed Thomasina and helped Tiffany pin the Amanda gown.

“Ah!” Noë said, “the great Ms. Carnegie.”

“How are you doing, Noë? Carmella says this is too tight?”

“It is.” She cupped her hands around her lower ribcage. “I heard your lady is dead?”

“Yes, she is.” Laura worked on the buttons and hooks that held up the gown. “Can you lean over? I can’t reach you.” She pinned and slashed per Carmella’s callouts.

“So sad,” Noë said, in a way that was completely sincere, yet loaded, as if she had more than a feeling or two about Gracie Pomerantz already. “Did you like her?”

Laura shrugged. “She didn’t like me much.”

“How do you know?”

“She told me.”

“This sounds like a good story.” She looked down at Laura, and added, “I will ask you another day.”

“I may tell you.”

“This is why I don’t see Jeremy here today?” Classy lady, that Noë, bringing up Jeremy’s absence without bringing up his arrest. “Maybe he heard she was looking for some new business?”

“I heard her in Grotto. She was sitting at our table, talking to a new designer. With Pierre Sevion, and as alive as any viper. Now, dead. Maybe Jeremy didn’t like the idea of sharing her.”

She was sure Jeremy had no clue about the sharing. “Who else was there?”

“Wait!” a voice called from the doorway. Mom had a piece of finest beaded crochet draped across her shoulder. “I’m so glad I caught you!” She handed it over. “You said you needed a picture?”

“Right,” Laura said, taking the crochet. She quickly repinned and rehooked the bodice on Noë and placed the crochet over her back. It was meant to be a solid-lined handmade lace that added depth to a plain back. It connected to a collar that crawled up the neck and dripped with crystals. It was borderline tacky, only brought to earth by the tuxedo details.

“It fits,” Laura said, photographing it. “Thanks, Mom.” But she couldn’t get a shot where the underlayer of the muslin stayed in place, and Noë’s black skin kept peeking at the corners, which gave Laura an idea.

She gave Mom the crochet and folded down the back layer of the bodice, then pinned out the armholes, so that the top became a halter. Then, she laid the crochet over Noë’s bare back. The contrast was delicate and sexy.

Mom nodded in approval, and Laura photographed that. The room got quiet, as if Dad had walked in on a party, and someone turned the stereo’s volume down.

“You,” Sheldon said, pointing at Laura. “Big Talker.” He said it as if it were her name.

“We’re in a fitting, Mister Pomerantz.” She answered matter-of-factly, forgetting that Sheldon didn’t know the rule—never disturb a fitting unless the building was on fire.

“Bully for you,” he said, striding over. “You got the biggest mouth in the company. No one else will tell me anything.” He held up a sheaf of papers. “Who orders fabric around here?”

“Sampling or production?”

“Don’t split hairs with me, Miss Mouth.” His words were so nasty, yet something in his voice made his sharpness and name-calling friendly.