Basket Case (3 page)

The door of 16-G is opened by a squat, bald, neckless man with two small platinum hoops in each earlobe. Straight from Bouncers-R-Us, this guy, down to the bomber jacket and the understated armpit bulge. Wordlessly he leads me through the hazily lit condo to the living room, where Mrs. Stomarti is standing before a wraparound bay window.

I have indeed seen her face before, on the cover of a couple tabloid-style celebrity magazines to which I subscribe for professional reasons. (I clip and file some of the juicier profile pieces in case the celebrity subject someday expires within our circulation area.)

"I'm Cleo," says Mrs. Stomarti. "Jimmy's wife."

She is maybe twenty-two years old; twenty-three, tops. Medium tall, thin but not skinny, and alarmingly tan. The hair is bleached snow white and cut in a mock pageboy. The lips are done cherry red and the cheekbones are heavily shadowed, like a pair of matching bruises. She's wearing a beige sleeveless shell and tight white slacks. Her toenails, also white, remind me of paint chips.

No wonder she quit calling herself Cynthia.

"I'm Jack Tagger," I say. "It's a pleasure to meet you. I only wish the circumstances were different." Implying I am aware of her blossoming fame, and would otherwise be delighted to interview her for the Arts & Music page.

We sit down; the widow on the end of a long cream-colored sofa, and me on a deacon's bench. Wasting no time, I tell Cleo Rio how much I liked her hit single, "Me."

She brightens. "You catch the video?"

"Who didn't!"

"What'd you think—too much?"

"Did Jimmy like it?"

"Loved it," Cleo says.

"I vote with Jimmy." I uncap a felt-tip pen and open the notebook on my lap.

"You're the first one to call," Mrs. Stomarti says.

"I was a fan."

A faint smile. "Next'll be the trades, I suppose."

"I'm sorry," I say. "I know you're trying to keep it low-key."

"That's what Jimmy wanted."

"I promise not to take much of your time."

The bald guy brings Cleo what looks like a screwdriver in a tall frosty glass. He doesn't so much as glance in my direction, which is fine with me.

"Want somethin'?" Cleo asks.

I should mention her eyes, which are rimmed pink from either crying or lack of sleep. She's wearing ice-blue contact lenses.

"A Coke? Beer?" asks Jimmy's wife.

"No, thanks."

To get the ball rolling, I start with the easy ones. How did you two first meet? A VH1 party. How long were you married? Not quite a year. Where was the ceremony? Sag Harbor. On a friend's boat. Oh? Who was that? I forget the name. Some sax player Jimmy knew. A session guy.

Here I pause longer than necessary to write down her answer. The interval is meant to give Mrs. Stomarti a moment to prepare. I still dread this part of the job, intruding so bluntly upon the grieving. Yet I've found that many people don't mind talking to a total stranger about their lost loved one. Maybe it's easier than commiserating with family members, who know all there is to know about the deceased, good and bad. A visit from an obituary writer, however, presents a golden opportunity to start from scratch and remake a person as you wish to have them remembered. An obituary is the ultimate last word.

I drop my voice from casual to somber. "Mrs. Stomarti, tell me about the Bahamas trip."

She sets her drink on a teak coffee table. "Jimmy loved it over there. We had a place down in Exuma."

Glancing down, I notice the toes on both her feet are curling and uncurling. Either it's some type of yoga routine, or Cleo Rio is nervous. I ask if they were on vacation when it happened.

She chuckles. "Jimmy was always on vacation when we went to the islands. He loved to dive—he was, like, obsessed. He used to say that being underwater was better than any dope he'd ever tried. 'The deeper I go, the higher I get,' is what he said."

Writing down every word, I'm thinking about how easily Mrs. Stomarti has settled into the past tense when speaking of Jimmy. Often a new widow will talk about her deceased husband as though he were still alive.

For example: He's always on vacation when we go to the islands. Or: He loves to dive. And so on.

But Cleo hasn't slipped once. No subconscious denial here; Jimmy Stoma's dead.

"Can you tell me what happened," I ask, "the day he died?"

She purses her lips and reaches for the drink. I wait. She slurps an ice cube out of the glass and says, "It was an accident."

I say nothing.

"He was diving on an airplane wreck. Fifty, sixty feet deep." Mrs. Stomarti is sucking the ice from cheek to cheek.

"Where?" I ask.

"Near Chub Cay. There's plane wrecks all over the islands," she adds, "from the bad old days."

"What kind of a plane?"

Cleo shrugs. "A DC-something. I don't remember," she says. "Anyway, I was up on the boat when it happened." Now she's crunching the ice in her teeth.

"You don't dive?"

"Not that day. I was working on my tan."

I nod and glance down meaningfully at my notebook. Scribble a couple words. Look up and nod again. The worst thing a reporter can do in a delicate interview is seem impatient. Cleo takes another slug of her drink. Then she rolls her shoulders and stiffens, like she's working out a kink in her spine.

"Jimmy went down same as always," she says, "but he didn't come up."

"Was he alone?" I ask.

"No, he never dove alone."

I'm thinking: Again with the past tense.

"Jay was down there, too," Jimmy's wife says, "only he was diving the tail section. Jimmy was up in the nose of the plane. See, it's in two pieces on the bottom."

"Jay Burns? From the Slut Puppies?"

She nods. "He and Jimmy were, like, best friends. He swum up off the wreck and starts climbing into the boat when all of a sudden he's like, 'Isn't Jimmy up yet?' And I'm like, 'No, he's still down.' See, I was reading a magazine. I wasn't watching the time."

Cleo lifts the empty glass and turns her head toward the kitchen doorway. In a flash, the neckless bouncer guy hustles forward with a fresh screwdriver. A bodyguard who knows how to mix a drink—every pop star should have at least one.

The widow takes a sip and continues:

"So Jay grabs a fresh tank and jumps back in the water and… no Jimmy. He wasn't anywhere on the wreck." Cleo rocks back on the sofa cushion. She's no longer looking at me; she's staring out the bay window that faces the Atlantic. Her eyes are locked on something far away and invisible to mine.

She says, "Jimmy was everything to me, you know? My husband, my best friend, my lover, my manager—"

I'm writing like crazy. Trying to slow Cleo down, I say, "Have you got a phone number for Jay?"

"He's still in the islands. He's bringing Jimmy's boat across tomorrow."

"It's nice they stayed so close after the band broke up."

"Jay was the only one," Cleo says, "the only one in the music business Jimmy would even talk to. Until he met me."

She pauses while I catch up on my notes. Obviously she's done interviews before.

"Anyway," she goes on, "we called for help. They found him about three hours later, like, half a mile away. He was already gone. His tank was empty."

I ask Mrs. Stomarti if an autopsy was performed in the Bahamas.

"Yeah, they said he drowned. I guess he just got wore out trying to find the boat. The currents get pretty strong out there, and all those years of smoking weed, Jimmy didn't exactly have the lungs of a teenager."

"But he'd been straight for some time, right?" I make the question sound casual.

Cleo says, "Totally."

I don't write that down because I don't want her to think I'm too interested in Jimmy's wild days.

"So what do you think happened," I ask, "on that last dive?"

"I think… " Jimmy's wife pauses to snatch a pack of Marlboros off the teak table. "I think my darling husband swam off and got lost—"

Now I'm jotting again.

"—simple as that," says Cleo Rio, lighting up. "Knowing Jimmy, he saw something way cool down there and went swimming off after it—a hammerhead or a big moray eel, who knows what—and got all turned around. It's easy to do." She gives a rueful smile. "When he went diving, he was like a little kid. Totally preoccupied."

"How were the seas?"

"Flat when we got there. But we'd had some wind the night before and Jay said visibility on the bottom was shitty."

"And this happened when?"

"Thursday afternoon. A police boat took Jimmy's body to Nassau and we didn't get him back until yesterday."

The way she's dragging on the cigarette, I can tell she's tired of talking.

"You've been very generous with your time," I say. "I'm almost finished."

"It's okay."

"You said Jimmy liked to keep a low profile. Is that why the death notice didn't mention the Slut Puppies, or even his Grammy?"

"Right."

"But he wrote some good songs. People will remember."

"Tell me about it. I was his numero uno fan." Cleo stubs out the butt. "But Jimmy always said it was another lifetime, and he was lucky to get out alive. He didn't want any reminders."

"Not even the music?"

"Especially the music," she says. "One of his songs came on the car radio, he'd turn it off right away. Didn't get mad or nothin', just changed the channel." Cleo sweeps a hand through the air. "Dig, in this whole place there's not one of his records. Not one! That's how he wanted it."

Out of the corner of my eye I see the neckless man, leaning against a wall; waiting, I assume, to escort me out.

I say to Jimmy's wife: "He was good."

"No, he was awesome."

Shamelessly I jot this down, too, knowing it's a word that Cleo uses probably fifty times a day to describe everything from bubble bath to frozen yogurt.

She says, "That's why I was so stoked about him producing my CD."

"Jimmy was producing? That must've been a blast, working together in the studio."

"For sure. We're almost finished," she says.

Finally, the present tense. Unless the "we" doesn't include her husband.

"You have a title? I'd like to mention it in the story."

Cleo Rio perks up, scooting to the edge of the sofa. "Shipwrecked Heart. But we've still got some mixing left, so it won't be out for a while."

I write it down: Shipwrecked Heart. Slightly mawkish, but it gives me a semi-ironic kicker for the story. Even Emma might get it.

Standing up, I flip the notebook shut and cap my pen. "Thank you," I tell Jimmy's widow. "I know this was difficult."

We shake hands. Hers is damp, the knuckles showing pink and raw.

"When will this be in the paper?" she asks me.

"Tomorrow."

"Will there be a picture of Jimmy?"

"Most likely," I say.

The bald guy has materialized at my side.

"Well, I hope they pick a good one," says Mrs. Stomarti.

"Don't worry. I'll talk to the photo editor." Like he'd give me the time of day.

No sooner has the door to 16-G closed behind me than I think of a dozen other questions I should have asked. But that's what always happens, and the truth is, I've got more than enough material for the obit. Plus I still need to talk with Jimmy's sister, Janet, and make some calls to the Bahamas.

I scan my notes as I'm waiting for the elevator, which is taking forever. Finally there's a double beep and the door opens, and I nearly walk smack into some tall guy who's on his way out. I don't see his face because he's carrying an armful of grocery bags from a gourmet deli. We both grunt apologetically and manage to sidestep each other. As he turns the corner, leaving me alone in the elevator to gag on his cologne, I see quite a lush mane of copper-red hair shimmering down past his shoulder blades.

The elevator door doesn't close immediately, which annoys me because I'm on deadline. Every pissant delay will annoy me until the Jimmy Stoma obit is finished.

Repeatedly I punch the elevator button. Nothing happens. From down the hall, I hear the guy knocking on a door to one of the apartments. I hear the door open. I hear the voice of Cleo Rio, and though I can't make out her words, the tone is clearly friendly and familiar.

Leading me to the brilliant conclusion that the shimmery-haired man who got out of the elevator was not a grocery-delivery guy, but an acquaintance of the bereaved.

And, as the elevator door finally closes in my face, I wonder: Why would anyone wear so much cologne to visit a widow?

3

Where is Janet Thrush?

I keep calling; no answer. I leave two messages on her machine.

Meanwhile, Emma hovers. She thinks I ought to be writing Jimmy Stoma's obituary by now, but she knows better than to nag. Emma dislikes being reminded that I haven't missed a deadline since she was in Huggies.