Three-Day Town (4 page)

The exhibit of Madeleine Albright’s pins at the Museum of Arts and Design had so much historical documentation that Dwight almost forgot that they were costume jewelry and enjoyed the witty symbolism. Who knew that woman had such a sense of humor?

From there, we rode a bus down to Chinatown, where we turned into full-out gawking tourists. We bought toys for Cal and his cousins and lengths of exquisite red-and-gold silk for Kate and for Dwight’s mother, who both like to sew. I saw a charming tea set that was almost beautiful enough to convert me from iced tea, but reason prevailed, to Dwight’s relief. Both of us were already loaded down.

Lunch was dim sum at a place that wasn’t much bigger than a broom closet, but the shrimp dumplings were perfection. When we came out of the restaurant, the temperature had dropped even further, although the wind had died down a bit. The sky clouded over and a light rain began to fall. Mindful of our heavy paper shopping bags, we headed for the subway and arrived at our stop on the Upper West Side minutes before the rain began in earnest.

“As long as it’s not snow,” we told each other as we rode up in the elevator.

“Eighty-five percent chance of snow before midnight,” Antoine told us cheerfully. “Hope the weather doesn’t spoil your visit.”

Back in the apartment, I realized I had left my phone on the kitchen counter and discovered I had a voice message from that 212 number: “This is Sigrid Harald. I believe you have something of my grandmother’s for my mother? Please call me before four o’clock.”

I glanced at my watch. Ten till four. I hastily punched in the numbers and this time was answered on the first ring.

“Ms. Harald?”

“Yes?”

I explained who I was and that Mrs. Lattimore had sent something to her daughter.

“What is it?”

“I have no idea. It’s a small but rather heavy little box.”

Sounding clearly puzzled, Ms. Harald said, “I wonder why she sent it up now when she knew my mother was going to be away for six weeks?”

“I gather she didn’t want to trust FedEx or UPS and she knows my husband is a sheriff’s deputy.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“And you know my grandmother how?”

“I think we’re distantly related through her Stephenson kin,” I said, realizing how stereotypically Southern I must sound to this no-nonsense voice. “But we’re staying for a week in Kate Bryant’s apartment because she’s married to my husband’s brother and—”

“Oh yes. Now I remember. Kate said you’re a judge, right?”

“Right.” Jake Honeycutt, Kate’s first husband, was Mrs. Lattimore’s nephew, and Kate had kept in touch with his people for her young Jake’s sake.

“Look, my mother’s in New Zealand and I have an appointment down here in the Village in a half hour. Would you mind opening the package and telling me what it is?”

“No problem,” I assured her, happy to have permission to satisfy my own curiosity. “Hang on a minute.”

There were scissors in a pencil jar on the kitchen counter and a few snips revealed a sturdy cardboard box. Inside, something was swaddled in newsprint and bubble wrap, and inside that—

“Dear Lord in the morning!” I said before I could stop myself. I’m not a prude. I’ve leafed through the Kama Sutra and I’ve seen my share of naked men, but this was not something I would ever have expected from someone as proper as Mrs. Lattimore.

It was a bronze statuette, about six or seven inches tall, roughly cylindrical, and so intricately modeled that it took me a minute to sort out the intertwined arms and legs and other bodily appendages and to decide exactly where those appendages were and what they were doing. Dwight glanced up from our digital camera, where he was reviewing the pictures we’d taken that day, did a double take, and then grinned broadly as he snapped several shots of me turning that thing in my hand.

“What is it?” I heard Ms. Harald ask.

“Um… uh…” I examined it up, down, and sideways, and each view was more lascivious than the last.

Dwight took it from my hand and pointed out a particularly inventive position. “We should try that one,” he murmured with an exaggerated leer.

I put my hand over the mouthpiece to hide my laughter. “In your dreams.”

“Mrs. Bryant?” The woman’s voice was becoming impatient.

“It’s a little statuette,” I said. “Looks like bronze.”

“A statuette? Of what?”

“Well, I think it’s three men.” Even as I spoke, I discovered at least two more faces and another penis amid the tangle of arms and legs.

“You ‘
think
’? Is it abstract?”

“Oh, no,” I assured her. “It’s realistic.
Very
realistic. It appears to be several naked men who are”—I searched for an appropriate word—“who are… um…
pleasuring
each other.”

Dwight chuckled, but there was blank silence from the other end.

“Ms. Harald?”

“And my grandmother sent this to my mother? Perhaps I should come up this evening after all. Would ten or ten-thirty be too late?”

“Not at all,” I assured her. “But someone down the hall has invited us to a party at nine. You might ought to follow the noise and check for us there first. I’ll be wearing a red sweater.”

“Then I will see you at ten-thirty,” said Ms. Harald.

CHAPTER

3

They make quite an animated throng as they enter the vestibules or crowd the staircase, or foyer, bowing and chatting to each other, all smiling, all newly garbed, all on pleasure bent.

—
The New New York
, 1909

D
espite all the jokes about Chinese food never filling you up, I wasn’t hungry enough to go splashing out in the rain for dinner. It was coming down quite hard now, but Dwight volunteered to go get us something light from the market’s deli section and said that as long as he was going, he’d pick up a bottle of wine to take over to the party.

We had Googled Luna DiSimone and found some YouTube videos. In the first batch, she and three other kids sang along with Big Bird about the letter J and the number 6. (It was probably catty of me to notice that her hair was a rabbity brown back then.) After leaving
Sesame Street
, she had played bit parts in several short-lived television series, and three years ago had starred in a bad movie that went straight to DVD. There was a mention of voice-over commercials for a hotel chain and I realized that’s why her lilting voice sounded so familiar.

Kate had given me a key to her owner’s closet and told me to help myself to any of the clothes or supplies I found there. Most days, I just hop in and out of the shower, but with almost four hours till party time, I filled the tub, dumped in some of Kate’s bubble bath for a good long soak, then wrapped myself in her fleecy robe and took a short nap.

Luna DiSimone’s party was well cranked up by nine o’clock and even before we opened our door to join them, we heard laughter and loud talk. Two long metal coat racks now lined the hallway and people were chatting to each other as they hung up their outdoor winter wear. Most of them seemed to be wearing khaki shorts, short-sleeved Hawaiian print shirts, or, in the case of several women, brightly printed sarongs. I watched one woman kick off her boots and slip her bare feet into a pair of orange rubber flip-flops. The door to the third apartment on this floor stood open, too, and as we passed the elevator, it disgorged three ukulele players who strummed a corny Hawaiian tune. They were dressed in frayed straw hats and raggedy jeans.

I clutched Dwight’s arm. “Aren’t they with the Steffingtons?”

Dwight shrugged. He’s not into rock bands, but I’d gone to a Steffingtons concert last summer with some of my nieces and nephews and I was pretty certain that at least two of the ukulele players usually played guitars with that band.

“Keep an eye on them, and I’ll get the camera,” I said and darted back inside the apartment. Dwight had left it on the kitchen counter next to that obscene little statue, and a moment later I was following the flow on down to the end apartment.

Here in dreary, cold, and wet January, it was like stepping into a beach house, a very crowded beach house, even though I later learned that two walls had been knocked out to create the large main room. White rattan chairs and couches were piled deep with coral, hot pink, and lime green cushions. Airy white sheers fell to a whitewashed plank floor bare of rugs. A huge seascape, framed in what looked like bleached driftwood, hung over a white brick fireplace that was filled with a rainbow assortment of candles. Their citronella smell evoked summer evenings on a patio. The ukulele players had staked out that corner. One had a sandaled foot propped on a green Adirondack chair as he strummed and sang in a sweet tenor voice. I wasn’t the only one taking pictures. Several other people had their phones aimed at the group, too.

Dwight and I edged our way through animated clusters of guests and eventually found our hostess and two men lounging amid colorful soft cushions in an old-fashioned white wicker porch swing suspended from ceiling hooks. She was barefooted and wore a necklace of bright plastic flowers, a black bikini, and a soft pink terry beach jacket that swung open to reveal a well-toned body. A pink hibiscus was tangled in her long blonde hair. As soon as she saw us, she jumped up with happy little cries.

“I didn’t realize it was a beach party,” I said, feeling more than a little overdressed.

She laughed. “And I didn’t think you’d come if I asked you to wear a bathing suit in January. This is my To Hell With Winter party.” She pulled one of the men to his feet beside her. “And this is Cam. Cameron Broughton. Now tell me your names so we can start figuring out if you’re kin to each other.”

“Don’t be tiresome, Luna,” the man said.

He appeared to be about thirty. Black hair curled around his ears and halfway down his neck. He wore baggy red-plaid shorts, red flip-flops, a green tank top, and blue swim goggles around his neck. Gold wire-rimmed glasses with round lenses of pale blue made him seem young and vulnerable despite the light age lines around his eyes. I always notice eyes and there was something slightly familiar about his, but I couldn’t quite place him.

Dwight and I introduced ourselves.

“Sorry, Luna,” he said. “No Bryants or Knotts in my family tree.”

“And no Broughtons in mine,” said Dwight.

“Mine either,” I said. “Are you related to the Raleigh Broughtons?”

“Not that I know of,” he said, looking down into his empty glass. “All of my people come from Wilmington.”

Before we could pursue it, he excused himself and melted into the crowd. Luna accepted the wine we’d brought and escorted us to the bar, where she left us in the hands of a hired bartender while she went to see what was holding up the caterers and the hors d’oeuvres.

Neither Dwight nor I have ever had trouble talking to strangers, and soon he was in a deep discussion with two bearded men about brewing one’s own beer, while I found myself discussing Madeleine Albright’s pins with two white-haired women, old-line feminists who, after all this time, were still disappointed that Hillary Clinton had wound up as secretary of state instead of president. “I mean, I like the man we got, but damn it all, this was probably our best chance to see a woman president before we die.”

“Speak for yourself, Celia,” said the older of the two. “I’m good for another three election cycles.”

“And you never know but what a woman may head up the other ticket,” I said.

“Oh please!” she exclaimed.

A waiter in a starched white jacket and red-striped bathing trunks offered a tray of shrimp and pineapple chunks on skewers. I took one and moved on, overhearing snatches of conversation I would never hear back in Colleton County.

“—almost landed the role of the roommate in that new ABC sitcom.”

“Forget about getting an eight o’clock reservation before April.”

“He’ll be curating the show at the Arnheim but—”

“—looked all over the Biennale for you. Where the hell did you go?”

“—three bedrooms and still rent-controlled!”

“When she was on
Sixty Minutes
last week—”

“—paid three million and will be lucky to get a million-five unless—”

Our fellow guests were an eclectic assortment of old and young and most appeared to be connected to the arts. Although Dwight and I were not the only ones wearing seasonally appropriate wool and fleece, most were dressed as if this were indeed a beach house in the middle of summer.

A girl who turned out to be in the chorus of
Mamma Mia!
suggested that I get tickets for an off-Broadway show that was getting a good buzz, and when a pleasant-faced man heard that Dwight and I were here on our honeymoon, he produced a pair of tickets to a Wednesday matinee of a Gilbert and Sullivan show that he couldn’t attend and insisted that we use them.

Another tray passed by loaded with colorful fruit. I put a toothpick into a cube of melon that was at its peak of sweetness.

By 10:30, the spacious apartment was so crowded that I had lost sight of Dwight altogether. I had also lost count of how many glasses of wine I’d plucked from various passing trays when I found myself shoved into a trio of art enthusiasts who were trashing a new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. I apologized for the bump, but one of the men gave me a friendly smile and moved over so I could join them. Late forties, he was tall and angular and wore hiking shoes, pipestem jeans, and a gray tweed jacket over a blue sweatshirt that advertised Yamaha motorcycles.

Before we could introduce ourselves, his eyes lit up and his smile broadened for someone behind me. “Sigrid? What the hell are you doing here?”

“Hello, Elliott. I could ask you the same thing. Actually I’m looking for—”

I turned and there was a tall thin woman, perhaps three or four years older than me, with soft dark curls and wide eyes that were an unusual smoky gray. She smiled as she took in my red cowl-neck sweater. “Judge Bryant?”