The Clasp (13 page)

W
ill you shove this in your bag?”

Kezia handed him a hair dryer, which she had brought with her but that somehow refused to fit back into her bag. They had spent a few minutes alone together in the hotel room. During the night, housekeeping had unlocked the bathroom, revealing standard bathroom fare: lotion, shampoo, soap, no toothpaste. Victor took the soap, she took the shampoo. Now they sat in the back of a cab, her carry-on in a mound between them, Victor envious of the real-world to-do list tugging at her thoughts.

“What happened to the car service?” he asked, cranking down the window.

“I can fudge. I just can't fudge round-trip.”

“I ate too much this weekend.” She touched her stomach. “Hey, I'm sorry if I was mean before. You can tell me about your mystery necklace now. Really.”

“It's okay.” He rested his forearm in the sun. “Never mind.”

Once they were at the gate, Kezia's group number was announced before his. She slung her things over her shoulder and joined the strategically shuffling masses.

She smiled. “See you on the other side.”

He consulted his ticket: 39E. Last row, middle. Now God was just laughing at him. Kezia was next to a window, texting as he passed. Victor folded himself into his seat, putting in headphones and opening the in-flight magazine. He flipped to the airports-of-the-world page. They looked like robotic bugs. He shuffled his legs before takeoff, intentionally ramming his knees against the empty seat in front of him. As if warning his own body, saying, Here, knees, in case you get curious later, this is how far you can go. Above his head, a flight attendant punched his duffel bag into submission.

He looked across the aisle while the plane gathered speed, lolling his head toward the window as it gulped up the Miami coastline. He saw the long white tails of motorboats in the water. Daytime comets. His hearing got cloudy. A businessman next to him was engrossed in a combative typing streak. On his other side, a pimpled teenager in a Yankees cap crossed his arms and shut his eyes. Victor unlatched his tray table.

He leaned forward and slowly removed a piece of paper from his back pocket, gently unfolding it beneath the tray table. He tried to flatten the crease mark so that the white of the paper wouldn't break through to the blue in the middle.

This morning, Kezia had looked him in the eye and told him he was the only one of their friends who couldn't “figure it out,” that he was passively letting his life happen to him. Was that so? Well, this sketch didn't just
fall
into his pocket, did it?

While Johanna was lost in a photograph of her aunt, Victor, like the vial of slime he was, chose to act.
Pretend the object is something you have lost, that it was always yours. You lost it in error. You
are coming back to get it. You are not taking it, so much as taking it back. Then you walk out the same way you walked in.

“A4: Collier de saphir et diamant avec larme,”
read the wording at the bottom of the paper.

Larme
. Tear? This was all the wording he could read. The rest of it was cut-off or faded French script. He straightened his arms to take in the whole picture. He blurred his eyes until it was a bunch of dots with one big blue dot in the middle.

He had taken action. He had made a decision, albeit a probably terrible one. Many years ago, he had avoided being caught for his petty crime streak for no reason other than fate had taken pity on a first-time offender. No one in his life knew what he had done. But fate had done precious little for him since. So maybe it owed him this. Maybe it chose Victor and Victor alone to hear Johanna's story. Maybe this necklace had always been his.

H
e tripped over unanticipated luggage when he walked into his house. Fully tripped. He could hear Percy laughing in his room. Nathaniel got up and punched the door. He had just gotten off a plane, needed to sleep before his lunch meeting tomorrow, and was in no mood for one of Percy's surprise Friend in Town visits. Percy was, by far, the most popular not-actually famous person he knew. Lucky for Nathaniel in the abstract, but often inconvenient in the specific.

“Quit that racket, son!” Percy shouted. “Oh, hey! Okay if my buddy borrows your car tomorrow?”

Unlike Percy, Nathaniel worked from home. Which meant that Percy's surprise F.I.T.s felt closer to surprise arranged marriages. Nathaniel padded down the hall where he made out the outline of a body on the sofa, snoring under a blanket. He padded back.

“Fuck no.” He gave the door a bang. “I have a meeting.”

“
Fine.
Selfish. But keep it down. People are trying to sleep.”

“Asshole.”

“You love me long time,” Percy cackled.

“Blow me.”

“No homo.”

The next morning, Nathaniel was awake with nerves. He had been practicing his pitch for weeks, engrossed in his notes over the weekend even. It had been a long time since
Dude Move
. He needed to get back into a writers' room.

He made himself coffee and walked down the hall, remembering that once he got to the end of it, a former fraternity brother of Percy's would be asleep on the couch. But lo and behold: The F.I.T.'s feet were dangling off the armrest—and they were long and dainty with polish on the toes. Which meant two things were true: First, she was a she. Second, she wasn't hooking up with Percy, because she was sleeping out here.

Minutes later the F.I.T. was standing on the patio, drinking the fresh pot of coffee he had made for himself, wearing only boy shorts and an open men's button-down. She was an aspiring model from Philadelphia. Nathaniel was barely tall enough for her. But he knew he had a shot. He was a handsome guy. Good hair. No belly. He had recently invested in facial toner.

“What do you call these?” The F.I.T. pointed at the cacti dangling from a beam.

Her shirt stretched up, exposing the majority of one breast, stopping just shy of the nipple. She studiously examined the cacti.

“Air plants.” Nathaniel tucked his lip between his teeth. “That's it?”

“I don't think there's another name for them.” He cleared his throat. “Succulents?”

“They are so cool,” she said. “I love them. I wish I could cover
my bedroom ceiling with them. I have one of those popcorn ceilings.”

“I wish
I
could cover your bedroom ceiling,” he said.

“I don't get it.” She smiled generously at him. “Do you guys have soy milk?”

“Maybe in the fridge?”

There was definitely not any soy milk in the fridge.

“Out here everyone's so mean to soy.” Her countenance collapsed. “It's like an almond invasion, where everything is made of almonds.”

“That's exactly how I imagine the almond invasion going down.”

“But soy's still gotta be better for you than
milk
milk, right? Have you ever had Brazil-nut milk? I made it myself once. It's so creamy. Better than hemp.”

“How do you make it?” He spoke to the back of her thighs as she leaned into the open fridge, describing the straining process in pointless detail.

This F.I.T. had two “go-sees” concurrent with Nathaniel's lunch, but she would be his “best friend forever” if she could borrow his car. She smelled like berries and sex. If this was the scent her pores emitted, her pussy probably tasted like pie.

“No problem,” he told the thighs.

I
can't breathe.” Rachel spun through the office, a whirling dervish in platform sandals. “It's hot as a scrotum out there.”

The temperature in New York had been steadily rising before Kezia left for Caroline's wedding. An official heat wave, more punishing than Miami and somehow worse in the open air of the Meatpacking District than anywhere else in Manhattan. Kezia could feel every stitch of her clothing, as if she had been slipped psychedelic drugs. And it wasn't even June. She told herself that this was just a cold day in Calcutta and fantasized about October, about pumpkin-flavored things.

“Look at this, it's disgusting.”

Rachel stopped in front of Kezia's desk. She tore off her blazer and lifted her arm. Bits of black fuzz were caught like Spanish moss on armpit stubble.

“Don't they know I don't have a shower at work?”

“They?”

“God.”

Rachel adjusted her strapless jumpsuit. She lifted her necklaces as if they were contributing to her oppression. Rachel's bulldog, Saul, sniffed at a heating pipe in the corner, exploring a new paint chip. The office was a loft space with painted-over pipes, crumbling exposed brick, and giant, old lead-paned windows—a health code violation at every turn. But the floors were blond and glossy, the desks Danish and cream. Saul's leash dragged behind him as he sniffed for paint chips like a pig digging for truffles.

Eat it
, Kezia thought.

“You want me to get him some water?” asked Marcus, the bookkeeper, crossing the loft and reaching for Saul's leash.

The dog was missing his bottom teeth and was in a perpetual state of panting. Even for Saul, this was a particularly low tongue day.

“No, the vet says Saul's supposed to have filtered water.”

“Your veterinarian told you that?” said Marcus.

Kezia looked forward, forcing her cheeks to stay level. Marcus was approximately twenty years Kezia's senior, father of two girls, homeowner in Queens, recent installer of a Zen waterfall. In an office full of young women who seemed to get off on making panicked phone calls about missing samples (actually, Kezia knew they got off on it because she used to be one of them), Kezia liked Marcus the best. Sometimes she saw him as the embodiment of her former, kinder self, the last thread between her and her idealized version of herself. Which was a lot of pressure to put on a bookkeeper.

Rachel stood there, aerating her chest by snapping the jumpsuit elastic against it. Marcus went to pet Saul and the dog growled at him, a growl that sounded like a gurgle because of the missing-teeth issue.

“We had a wild dog break in through the back fence last
summer and my youngest chased it away by screaming and waving her doll at him.”

“That's ah-mazing,” Rachel said, widening her eyes at Kezia.

“They eat dog meat in Vietnam.” Marcus returned to his desk. “Chinese, cats. Vietnamese, dogs.”

Marcus had been working at the company seven months longer than Kezia. They were workforce Irish twins. But once Rachel picked up on the fact that Kezia would not burn her business to the ground if left to fill out order forms, she saw no reason to interact with both of them. Even in the face of a legitimate financial emergency, Rachel avoided calling Marcus. Kezia suspected Rachel was put off by the sound of banging screen doors, of oil in frying pans, of Marcus's daughters playing in the background. Or of calling Queens period, her voice touching down in a borough that didn't quite care enough about her.

“I should grab some water too,” said Rachel. “All my water is on the outside of me right now.”

On cue, an eavesdropping assistant in cowboy boots came skipping over with a freshly cracked bottle.

“You're a lifesaver, Sarah.”

The assistant, Sophie, beamed. “Sarah” was close enough.

Then she skipped back from whence she came. Kezia attempted to stealthily peel back the tin on the yogurt she had brought from home. Liquefied, it spat up on her shirt like a baby. Her stomach jiggled a little as she wiped.

She knew she was thin for all of America, but she was an ogre compared with the girls who worked in this neighborhood. She had to actively resist staring at other women's thighs as she walked to work each morning. Her test for body dismorphia went as follows: If she could lob a golf ball between the thighs of the woman walking in front of her, she felt jealous. If she could lob a bowling ball, she felt superior. A magazine had once told her she was
supposed to say nice things to her body, to brush her self-esteem before bed. “Stand naked in front of a full-length mirror and tell yourself: ‘I have a good butt' or ‘I have nice breasts.'”

“How was your vacation?” Rachel said, pulling her lips fiercely from the bottle.

“It was a wedding. It was only Miami and it rained the whole time.”

“Did you go to the thing at the Shore Club?”

“What thing?”

“Never mind. You should have told me you were going. I could have called Reginald and gotten you a rate at the Setai.”

Kezia didn't know who Reginald was, nor had she heard of the Setai until the day after the wedding. And only then because it was located near the wedding brunch. Furthermore, Rachel knew
exactly
where she was going because Kezia had, in fact, told her and they had, in fact, spoken while she was there.

“Next time tell me where you're going.”

Her boss had a way of deftly racking up conversational credit, offering to pull strings long after all the puppets had been put away.

“I don't know why I didn't say anything,” Kezia said, Saul panting at her feet.

The dog's dry tongue scraped against her skin, hoping her foot was a giant paint chip. She moved her toes behind her ankle to protect them.

“Do you have a napkin on you?”

“In the kitchen.”

Rachel made the same face as Kezia did upon hearing of Reginald. The kitchen was a room she was supposed to have heard of, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. She cautiously opened the fridge and poured something into her coffee.

She frowned into her cup. “I hate it when soy does that.”

The milk separated into algae-like blooms. It looked undrinkable.

“My phone is ringing.” Rachel dug in her bag and held up the chiming device.

She marched into her glass office. Saul trotted along after her, his abbreviated tail twitching, flaunting his white asshole. Marcus filled a bowl with tap water, set it down, and got back to work. They listened, along with the other employees and interns scattered around the loft, as Rachel attempted to defend the engineering behind a faulty necklace to a boutique in Chicago. It was a conversation Kezia had heard a lot of recently.

Most of Rachel's pieces were manufactured on the other side of the loft, a straight shot from Kezia's desk. But the more major pieces, especially those with semiprecious stones or vintage milk-glass shards, were produced off-site. And something about the production of one of Rachel's necklaces was causing the clasp to snap. A customer would idly touch her neck and poof: her necklace had vanished.

Normally, these complaints would not be handled by the designer herself but things had come to a boiling point. The returns were becoming increasingly plural. As Kezia saw it, Rachel had three options:

The necklace was Rachel's baby—her design—but she left the production details to Kezia. This put Kezia in the role of foster parent: She couldn't take credit for the necklace's creation, but she could be blamed for its destruction.

An upbeat electronic noise came from her computer.

What are u wearing?
said an instant message bubble.

Kezia concentrated on the pixels, unsure if there was more where that came from.

This is Judson.

Rachel was pacing intently around her office. Another bubble appeared.

xo
, bubble,
Judson
.

Kezia assessed herself. Today she had put on a silk tank, pajama-looking pants, a series of toggle-clasped bracelets, and a long necklace of ribbons and nickel-cast squid tentacles from Rachel's first line. Though not required to wear Rachel Simone jewelry, she was encouraged.

Pants
. Kezia pressed send.

U mean only pants?
haha
, Judson shot back instantly.

I'm at work, so . . .

In actuality, “only pants” was not a terrible guess. Kezia could see a dark bra through a junior designer's crop top. Another girl wore an outfit that had seemingly been shredded by rival wolf packs. Meanwhile, inside Rachel's office, the debate with the Chicago store was heating up. Rachel invoked her full name, preceded by the word “the” and followed by the word “brand.”

“I am sorry you feel that way,” she said insincerely.

Kezia caught a commiserate eye roll through the glass wall.

“. . . but to imply faulty manufacturing over such a small percentage of . . . of course I stand by everything we produce but I hope you can understand why I don't wholly share in your . . . True, but you're not calling Cartier. These are one-of-a-kind pieces. Look, have you ever had an heirloom tomato?”

There was a silence.

“Well, it looks deformed but you still eat it.”

The upbeat noise was back:
Catch you on the flip side, beautiful.

The flip side of what?

“Overpriced?” Rachel shouted into the phone. “Overpriced!”

Marcus looked at Kezia and shrugged. The girl in the ravaged outfit clicked her pen.

Rachel's jewelry was, on the whole, overpriced. Especially this particular line. Huge silk necklaces with uncut crystals dangling from them, each one more expensive than the next, culminating in the exorbitant Starlight Express necklace. But the line was receiving a deluge of accolades from the press. The trade magazines quoted Rachel saying things like “I like to draw my inspiration from the minutiae of large-scale structure.” One photo shoot featured Saul, shot from behind with a pile of necklaces hooked over his tail. Rachel liked it so much she had the photo blown up and framed behind the toilet. Marcus had to pee into the barrel of Saul's butthole. If word got out that the Starlight Express was breaking, it would be bad for everyone.

Kezia would be removing the Chicago store from the database by day's end.

“Special K!” Rachel opened her office door and Kezia scurried in.

“That's my most favorite name in the world.”

Rachel shut the door behind them and looked out through the glass.

“I'm pretty sure I wasn't followed,” Kezia whispered.

Rachel put her hands over her face and dragged her fingers down as she spoke.

“How many of these things are fucked up?”

“The Starlight Express? I wouldn't say they were ‘fucked up.'”

“There's no need to defend their honor to me. My name's on them. I'm allowed to be mean to them.”

“In that case . . . somewhere in the range of all?”

“All?”

“Well, yeah. Cassie came in to shoot them for the line sheets
last week and we couldn't even get the clasps to lie flat in order to photograph them. I think all of them have the same problem from the same vendor—Claude Bouissou in Paris—it's endemic to the clasp itself.”

“Endemic.” Rachel rolled the word in her mouth like a marble. “It's the weight, isn't it? I knew this would happen with the big crystals, but they look like nineties prom jewelry when they're small. I'd have Sarah run up to Forty-seventh Street to just get the clasps fixed if I thought that would work.”

“That won't work.”

“You know what? Cloisonné was a bad choice.”

She drew the word out as she pronounced it. The clasp of the necklace was too good for the rest of the necklace. Kezia had tried to stop Rachel, but Rachel had refused to listen.