Ms America and the Brouhaha on Broadway (12 page)

I relay the
Dream Angel
411 to Trixie and Shanelle as I retake my seat in the audience.

“What do you want to bet,” Shanelle murmurs, “that Oliver will use this as an opportunity to raise ticket prices, too?”

We’re waiting for rehearsal to resume when I realize this is an excellent opportunity to review my photos of Lisette’s call log. Finally. I pull out my cell phone and what name do I quickly spy? That of Damian Paganos. It wouldn’t have meant much to me earlier today, but it sure does now.

So this is the man Lisette was seeing. I squint at his photo, wishing I could see it more clearly. All I can ascertain is that he’s got dark hair and looks to be about thirty. His phone number begins with the Manhattan area code 212.

I check my photos of Lisette’s texts, by now feeling a surge of sleuthing adrenaline. Yes, Damian’s name appears on that list, too, not surprisingly. It does not show up among her emails.

“What are you doing, Happy?” Trixie wants to know. She’s to my left, with Shanelle to her left, and I see she’s playing Blendoku on her phone. That sort of thing is common around here. A couple rows ahead of us, two actors are playing poker on their laptops. There’s a lot of waiting around putting together a Broadway show. You have to pack your patience.

I confess what I’m up to.

“Ooh, let me help.” Trixie sets her phone aside. “Who did Lisette call a lot?”

“Well, apart from the mysterious Damian, somebody named Wendy Jackson Rafferty.” Her photo reveals an African-American woman who looks to be in her fifties. Like Damian, she’s a Manhattan local whose name also appears on Lisette’s roster of texts. “Oh, good,” I add, “there’s email traffic, too.” Given that I have only a list of Lisette’s emails, though, all I can access is the beginning of the emails that were sent to her. “Wendy sent one twenty-four hours ago.”

“What does it say?”

“ ‘Lisette,’ ” I read out loud, “ ‘the waiting is almost over. The board will meet tomorrow to make their decision, probably around ...’ That’s all I’ve got.”

Trixie frowns. “That sounds serious, doesn’t it? I wonder what board Wendy is talking about.”

“Let’s see if I can find anything from googling Wendy’s name. Okay, here we go. She works for a Pettigrew Realty.”

“So Wendy is probably a real estate agent. Do you think maybe it’s the board of a homeowners’ association they’re talking about? Maybe Lisette needed to get approved before she could buy.” Trixie lowers her voice. “I hate to be mean, but I’m not sure I would’ve wanted Lisette for a neighbor.”

“What are you two whispering about?” Shanelle leans over to ask.

We’re bringing Shanelle up to speed when I realize that I have a few more photos of Lisette’s emails that I haven’t checked yet. And when I do, I discover another email from Wendy, from two days ago.

“The day Lisette went home sick to her stomach,” Trixie reminds us.

“Thanks to Oliver,” Shanelle mutters. “By the way, I heard that tech over there say that it’s taking so long to get rehearsal started again because Enzo has to lengthen the monologue. Oliver moved up a costume change.”

This is the sort of detail that never occurred to me before I was a Broadway aficionado. Or is it aficionada in my case? Anyway, everything has to time out perfectly. If a performer must make a costume change, the action must continue without him just long enough so he can get that done. All theater is an elaborately choreographed dance, often with as much going on backstage as onstage.

“What does the older email from Wendy say?” Trixie asks.

“ ‘Lisette,’ ” I read, “ ‘I can’t make any guarantees. The Belfer is notorious for board turndowns. That said …’ That’s all I’ve got. So now we need to find out what the Belfer is.”

“I’m on it,” Shanelle says, clicking madly on her cell phone.

I can’t help but smile. Shanelle and Trixie may think I needn’t bother sleuthing, but they’re game to play along.

“Okay,” Shanelle says, “the Belfer is a famous apartment building on Central Park West. It’s a co-op building.”

I’ve heard of co-ops, not that we have many in Cleveland, at least to my knowledge. “So it sounds like the board of the Belfer was going to decide today whether to approve Lisette as an owner. Or as a renter, I guess.”

“Not as a renter,” Shanelle says. “This article says the Belfer doesn’t allow owners to rent out their apartments. It’s very strict about renovations, too, and only last year did it start allowing pets.”

“May I join you?” Tonya asks. She sits down beside me and leans over. “Want to hear the latest?”

“We always want to hear the latest,” Trixie breathes.

“Not only are we resuming previews Sunday,” Tonya whispers, “but Oliver may move opening night up to
Wednesday
.”

Tonya appears astounded by that prospect, as am I. “Wednesday next week?” I say. “As in five days from today?”

“You got it. And I heard that Lisette’s father is making Oliver put Lisette’s photo on the playbill’s cover. I’m not thrilled about that, if it’s true.”

It must be rare for the book writer’s photo to land on the playbill’s cover. But I suppose that what Warren Longley wants, Warren Longley gets.

We gossip about
Dream Angel
for a while before we return to the co-op topic. “You can probably answer this question, Tonya,” Trixie says. “What’s the famous co-op building here in Manhattan where John Lennon lived?”

“Oh, that’s the Dakota.”

“I was just reading an article about the Dakota,” Shanelle says. “They describe it as the most famous co-op in the world. Get this. The least expensive apartment available right now is a two-bedroom duplex priced at five point nine five million dollars.”

“Wow,” Trixie and I say in unison.

“Yoko Ono still lives in that building,” Shanelle says. “And I bet not in the least expensive apartment, either.”

It’s hard to fathom sums of money that large. No wonder the lawyers thought my quarter-million-dollar titleholder prize was laughably small.

“The Belfer’s not as expensive as that, is it?” Trixie asks.

“Oh my God, the
Belfer
.” Tonya clutches my arm. “I would
kill
to live in the Belfer.”

“What’s so great about the Belfer?” Shanelle wants to know.

“Where do I begin?” Tonya cries, then has to hush when people twist around to give her a dirty look. “First of all, it’s pre-war.”

“Pre which war?” I ask.

“World War Two. Those buildings are so fabulous, so gracious and elegant. They’re made of limestone and all the apartments have high ceilings, like nine or ten feet high, really thick walls so you never hear your neighbors, handcrafted moldings, massive layouts—”

“I get the picture,” Shanelle says. “They’re not cookie-cutter boxes with no character.”

Like my house in the Cleveland suburbs, but I keep that factoid private.

“They have tons of character,” Tonya goes on. “They’re like the
grandes dames
of New York. They were built when construction was an art. And it’s so prestigious to be able to say that you live in the Dakota or the Belfer. Of course you have to be loaded.”

“They must be in the best neighborhoods,” Trixie says.

“The very best neighborhoods. Oh, they just have everything. Dramatic archways that frame a room, marble fireplaces, a huge number of windows, maybe a tin ceiling or herringbone wood floors—”

“But you have to be approved to buy one?” I interrupt to ask. Hearing this litany of features, I feel like I’m watching
Million Dollar Listing New York
. “It’s not enough just to be able to afford it?”

“If it’s a co-op, you definitely have to be approved,” Tonya says. “By the board of the building. That’s the difference between a condo and a co-op. A co-op doesn’t let just anybody in.”

“So for the top buildings like the Dakota or the Belfer,” Shanelle says, “people must be competing like crazy to get in.”

“People will go to insane lengths to live at a building like the Belfer,” Tonya says. A phone pings and it turns out to be hers. “I’m being summoned backstage,” she reports, and scuttles away.

We sit in silence for a moment. Then: “Life has so many strange twists and turns,” Trixie murmurs. “Lisette died only one day before the board of the Belfer had to decide whether or not she got the apartment.”

“Yes.” That realization hit me, too. “But in the end Lisette was out of the running by the time the board met. She was already dead.”

“Her bad news turned out to be somebody else’s good news,” Shanelle observes. “I wonder who got the apartment Lisette was up for.”

I do, too. I bet Wendy Jackson Rafferty knows.

I would
kill
to live in the Belfer
, Tonya said. Of course, that’s merely a figure of speech. What else did she say?
People will go to insane lengths to live at a building like the Belfer.

Another phone pings and this time it’s mine. The caller is Mario Suave. That causes a skip or two in the old heartbeat. “I’ll be right back,” I tell Shanelle and Trixie and hoof it to the theater lobby. I’m breathless by the time I get there and not because I’ve gotten lazy lately about my cardio.

Since Mario is a gentleman, even though what he really wants to know is whether I spilled the beans to Mr. Cantwell’s lawyers about his F.B.I. sideline, he inquires first how I am.

I reply honestly. “Not great. The lawyers weren’t thrilled with my character evidence. I am not looking forward to Mr. Cantwell’s reaction. But don’t you worry. I didn’t say a peep about you.”

“I knew you wouldn’t, Happy. I trust you.”

We share a moment of silence. I bask in those three little words. Then I force myself to say something. “
You
were sure in a tight spot.”

“I felt really boxed in when Cantwell asked me to speak to his attorneys. But I had to do it.”

“How did it go?”

“I did a lot of dodging and weaving. And I kept it very general. I basically said I like the guy, which is true, but that it’s not up to him to decide what is and isn’t tax fraud.”

“Do you think they’ll call you if there’s a trial?”

“I hope not. Anyway, enough about Cantwell. How’s the rest of your life?”

If I were being honest on all fronts, I’d give it the same assessment I gave my botched get-together with Mr. Cantwell’s lawyers.
Not great.
But instead I fib. “Oh, fine. Rachel is loving her senior year and my mom is, well, you can guess how my mom is.”

He chuckles. “How about your dad? Still seeing Maggie?”

“Unfortunately. But he’s fine.”

That leaves only one family member we haven’t discussed. The one who, when it comes to Mario and me, looms largest. “And how is Jason?” Mario asks.

“He’s doing great. It’s only early days with the new job, but he’s super excited about it. For the next few months until Rachel graduates, we’ll fly back and forth to see each other every three weeks or so.”

Of course, I say nothing about the tension between my husband and me. I don’t touch the topic of how he and I are often awkward with each other now when we’re alone. I don’t breathe a word about how I sense my life changing, in ways I can’t predict and feel I can’t control.

“I know we said we wouldn’t do this,” Mario says, “and it’s very short notice, but how about dinner? Of course with Shanelle and Trixie, too.”

I lean against the theater lobby’s wall. “You don’t have plans?” Which is my way of asking whether Esperanza Esposito will be joining us.

“It just so happens I don’t. And I hate to eat alone.”

“Oh, I do, too.” Of course
I
wouldn’t be eating alone because Shanelle and Trixie are here in New York with me, not to mention my mom and Bennie. But in the excitement of the moment, I ignore all that. “So, yes. Let’s do it.”

We agree when and where to meet. I return to my fellow beauty queens to drop this dinner bombshell. They react predictably.

Shanelle shakes her head. “Girl, you are not good at staying away from that man.”

“I have to wonder if Mario is trying to stay away from her, too,” Trixie says. “And what about Esperanza?”

“Apparently she’s out of the picture tonight,” I say. “Anyway, this is all completely proper. Just old friends getting together.”

Shanelle rolls her eyes. “Keep telling yourself that.”

“What about your mother?” Trixie wants to know.

“She left a voicemail that Bennie is taking her to Tavern on the Green.” I envy my mom that because I’d love to go myself. The restaurant right in the middle of Central Park went bankrupt and closed but then reopened again and got even more famous. “Plus, there’s no way she can wait until nine o’clock to eat dinner.”

“It is fashionably late,” Trixie says. “I hope we get out of here with enough time to change.”