Play Dates (31 page)

“On the contrary. No gentleman would
not
give up his coat to a damsel in that dress on a winter night.”

“You’re real funny.” We arrived at my apartment building. “It’s not fancy,” I warned him. “And get ready to climb a few flights.”

“Don’t worry. I work out.”

“But I love the neighborhood. And I’ve got exposed brick and a lot of sunlight, so it’s pretty homey for what is, basically, an apartment in a renovated tenement.”

“You don’t have to apologize for where you live, Mia. I’m not a judgmental person. And even if I were, it would be none of my damn business.”

I looked him in the eyes. “I like it that you’re direct.”

“Thanks. Here. Do you need help with this?” He lifted the slight train at the back of my dress. “Wait. There’s a loop here.”

He handed it to me. “Even though Claire got divorced, she probably would still be pissed at you if you dragged the hem of her wedding dress up four flights of stairs.”

We started climbing. “Where’d you learn this? You’re not . . . ?”

“I’m as straight as a yardstick. I’ve got three sisters. All married already.” He laughed. “They’d shit a brick if they could see
us
, now!”

“Why?”

“Look at us! We just met this morning and here we are, standing side by side, looking like two dolls on a wedding cake.”

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235

“Fuck. You’re right. It is pretty funny.” Something weird was going on. Something was off. Not with Owen, though that was weird enough. Something was wrong with my front door. I know I locked it. I always lock it. I live in the East Village, not in Kansas.

“Does that look jimmied to you?” I asked Owen.

He inspected the door, the handle, the locks, making muttering guy-noises. Then he gently pushed the door and it opened.

“Holy Christ, Mia! You told me not to think too much of your place, but you didn’t say you were such a lousy housekeeper!”

“I’m not! In fact I’m—”

Fuck. Fuck! FUCK! Someone had broken in. The hallway, the living room, the kitchen, my bedroom, bathroom, closets—everything had been trashed. It didn’t take more than a few seconds to realize that they’d gotten my stereo, my TV, VCR and DVD

player, my cameras, and my laptop—that has my whole fucking life on it.

Rice Krispies and Cocoa Puffs had been dumped all over the kitchen countertops, the eat-in island, and the floor.

“What the . . . !?” I began to tremble.

Owen drew me into his arms. Just being protective, not coming on to me. “They were looking for jewelry or cash. A lot of people hide stuff like that in cereal boxes.”

Shit! I went into the bedroom. Every drawer had been yanked out and overturned. My underwear was all over the floor in colorful heaps. At least it was clean. All my jewelry was gone, including some good costume stuff—vintage pieces, and things that belonged to my mom and grandmothers. All gone. I felt so violated.

My
underwear
, for fuck’s sake! And my laptop had everything on it. My appointment schedule for the next several weeks. My business plans for
Mi
♥
amore Makeup
. My banking information. Saved passwords for all sorts of websites. My Excel “eligibility” spreadsheets. Those contained a shitload of personal information.

Well, no point in looking for the CDs I was going to bring back to The Corner. Those had been taken, too. They must have

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thrown my things into big laundry bags. “We’ve got to go back to the bar and form a search party!” I said, hysterical. Owen was already on the phone with the cops. Taking charge. I was grateful and relieved for that, since I couldn’t think straight.

Some fucking thirtieth birthday. Someone had insured that it was one I’d never forget.

“The cops are on their way over to get a statement,” he told me.

“A fat lot of good it will do. Look, the best way to deal with this right now is to get everyone at the bar to come with me down to Astor Place. Fan out. Find my stuff before it’s sold or fenced.” Owen gave me a strange look. “The Thieves’ Market. That’s what they call that stretch across the street from Cooper Union. Most of the time stuff gets stolen in this neighborhood, it ends up there first. Trust me. I once went through this with someone.” Charles had been robbed a few years ago and we combed the Thieves’ Market for his possessions and ended up finding a lot of it. But you have to get there fast. These people don’t want your
stuff
. They want
cash
.

ASAP. For drugs mostly. One of the best times to burglarize my nabe is on a Saturday night because you’ve got a lot of young people, partygoers, clubbers, who won’t be home and the thieves need the darkness to provide cover. But the pawn shops aren’t open until Monday morning, and they need to ditch the loot and get a fix.

“You talk to the cops if you want,” I said. “I’m going down to The Corner. Tick-tock! The clock is running!” I hiked Claire’s wedding dress up to my knees and raced down the stairs.

I met a pair of them as I fled down the stoop. “Are you here for Mia Marsh? Apartment 4A that just got robbed tonight?”

They nodded. That was fast. I’m impressed. “Can we talk to you for a few minutes?”

I wanted to say yes; I wanted to say no. “Look. I’m going to get a posse of my friends and go down to Eighth Street. The Thieves Market. You’re welcome to join me. If you want to go upstairs, be my guest. There’s a guy named Owen Michaels up there. He’ll show you around.”

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237

“Is that your . . . ?”

“You authorized him to be in your apartment?” the other cop asks.

“Yes. He’s a Good Samaritan. That’s all.” I explained the situation; my birthday party, et cetera, and how we ended up dressed like a bridal couple, why we went back to my place—

probably way more information than they really needed, but I didn’t want them to think I was any weirder than I am. I ran through a quick list of the stuff that I knew off the bat was missing.

“We’ll need a statement from you, Ms. Marsh.”

“Then one of you can tag along with me.”

“We’re not allowed to split up,” they explained.

“Then meet me down by Astor Place in fifteen minutes. Believe me, I’ll be there!”
I
don’t really believe that there’s too much the cops can do for me. I’m pretty sure that participating in a search party goes beyond their job description. I need my stuff back
now
, if I can find it. I can always go down to the precinct tomorrow or Monday and give them a statement. They just want it for the record. It’s not like they really
do
anything with it. I’ll believe otherwise when they catch the perps.

I ran down to The Corner and announced to my guests that my place had been robbed and I needed their help. You should have seen the motley crew that raced over to Eighth Street with me. Lucky Sixpence and a handful of other cross-dressers, a bunch of more “normal” people I know from the fashion world, Charles, Celestia, my parents, Claire, Dennis, and Zoë; and finally, Jake, who locked up the bar and joined us.

We were met by Owen, who had gotten a written complaint number from the cops. Since he was as much an eyewitness as I was to the devastation in my apartment, he’d given his statement. “You’ll have to go in to the station with an itemized list of what’s missing. And photos of your stuff, if you have them. If you don’t, from now on, you should take Polaroids of all your valu-

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ables and keep them in a safe place. And on Monday, call your insurance company, too, to report the theft.”

“How can I take fucking Polaroids when they stole my fucking camera?!” I demanded. “And what do you suggest is a ‘safe place,’ since they turned my whole fucking apartment fucking upside down!?” I apologized to my mother, not for my language, but because they got her jewelry and trashed some of her best designs. The garments were one-offs, too. “By the way,” I said to Owen. “You don’t even know me. Why are you doing all this?”

“Because he’s a mensch,” Jake said. He was scouring the jumble of stolen stuff laid out on blankets along the sidewalk for anything that might be mine, asking me about an item when he thought he’d found something. “I’ve known him since we weren’t even old enough to drink and he always knew I wanted to own a bar. He’s an investment banker—that’s his background.”

“Sorry about that,” Owen said to me.

“Eek!” I stepped back and made the sign of the cross. “Shit, you
are
a grown-up!”

Jake laughed. “Yeah, but someone’s gotta be. Owen started up a nonprofit with a bunch of other dweeby men and women who wear suits on weekends. They’re called the Dream Makers.

They work with young entrepreneurs on start-ups. They help with business plans, five-year forecasts, venture capital, all that stuff.

He provided the venture capital for The Corner.”

Charles’s ears pricked up like a pointer’s. “Hey, Mia, maybe he can help you with
Mi
♥
amore Makeup
.”

“I can’t even think about it right now,” I told him. “Let’s just try to get back my stuff first.”

“Hey, Mia, is this you?” Owen was holding a fistful of 8x10

glossy prints.

“Oh, my God!” I snatched them from his hand.

“I guess that’s a yes.”

Luca’s photos. The prints he had given me way back when. If PLAY DATES

239

these were here, then chances are, we’d find some of the rest of my things.

“Wait!” Owen reached for the pics. “Mia, you’re amazing-looking.”

I quickly handed them off to my mother, who stuffed them into her large purse. “No way. We don’t know each other well enough for you to see me naked yet.”

“Well, that’s a first,” Claire teased, whispering into my ear.

“Fuck you, Clairey.”

“I told you, you’d never know where those photos would end up. That they’d come back to haunt you.”

“Yeah, but Luca has nothing to do with it. Unless these aren’t
my
copies of the prints. There’s always that possibility.” I turned to one of the “vendors,” sitting on his blanket, smoking a joint, totally confident that there wasn’t a cop in sight. “How much were you charging for those photos, by the way?”

The guy was so stoned he didn’t even seem to process that I was the model or that we had just reclaimed them from his array of contraband. “One dollar each one.”

“That’s all?! Fuck!”

“You’re worth much more than that,” Owen assured me.

“Gee, thanks.”

“Although they do a better job of capturing your body than your essence.”

“My essence? How good a look did you
get
at them?!”

“Hey, don’t pick a fight with me. I’m just trying to cheer you up.”

“Well, don’t think I’m ungrateful or anything, but the best way to do it would be to find my laptop, for starters.” How did such a non-techie as me become so totally dependent on a computer within a matter of months? There’s a good argument for being a Luddite.

“Oooh, this is pretty, MiMi!” Zoë was on her hands and knees, picking through things. She held up a sparkly object. “This is yours! You let me play dress-up with it when we were at your house.”

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She’s right. “Keep going, Zoë. Great job! Find some more stuff.”

Claire kept an eagle eye on her. After a minute or so, she knelt down beside Zoë. “We’ve got some more pieces, Mia!”

The “proprietor” clasped his hand over Claire’s. “Hey—you can’t just take that. You’ve got to buy it.”

“I’m not paying you for my sister’s stolen jewelry, you jerk.

Now, let go of me.”

In a moment, Dennis had materialized, stepping across the blanket to face the guy. “I think you’re going to want to let the lady alone.” He drew back his fist.

“Don’t hit me!” the guy pled.

“Then you let us find her stuff,” he said, pointing to me. “And maybe you’ll want to tell me where the rest of it might be.”

By now, Claire and Zoë had found a few more pieces of my jewelry. A fawn-colored sedan, the kind that looks like an un-marked cop car, pulled up to the curb.

Two guys got out, but they didn’t look like detectives, even the undercover kind. They opened the trunk and started to unpack its contents. I screamed. “That’s my TV set!” The guy holding it started to run. Owen and Dennis gave chase. Half a block east, the guy dropped the TV—
bang, crash, tinkle
—and kept running, pursued by our impromptu vigilantes.

My father and Charles approached the other guy, but he pulled a knife and held them at bay. Claire whipped out her cell phone to dial 911. I hoped I wasn’t telegraphing my surprise to the kid with the knife. Lucky Sixpence and our other cross-dressing and trans-gendered pals had used their ability to blend in (believe me!) with the local crowd and had come up behind him, surrounding him in a semi-circle.

Then, as though she’d hopped off a springboard, Lucky jumped the kid, landing on his back like they were playing chicken. She yanked the kid’s hair and reached, with her long, manicured talons, for the kid’s eyes.

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The kid screamed bloody murder and dropped the knife. Jake grabbed it, flipped it shut, and stuck it in his pocket. Lucky stood there, in the middle of Astor Place in her size twelve pumps, with her stiletto heel firmly placed on the back of the kid’s neck.

A police car skidded to a stop, turning off its siren. The two uniforms who got out were the same guys who had come over to my place almost an hour ago. They cuffed the kid and Jake turned over the blade. We went through the stuff in the trunk of the sedan, finding most of my electronic equipment. Two of my cameras were still missing, but my laptop was there. I opened it and proved to the cops that it was mine, but they said I couldn’t have my other items back until they had been taken to the precinct and inventoried. And I’d have to show them that they were mine as well.

By now, Dennis and Owen had returned, empty-handed, from their pursuit of the other perp. “From now on, you should write down the serial numbers of all your equipment and store it someplace safe, so that if this ever happens again you’ll be able to go right to your list and it’ll be a cinch to prove the stuff is really yours,” Owen counseled.