After a quick stop at Frieda’s desk to offer my apologies (which she timidly and most kindly accepted), I darted into an open elevator, rode down to the ground floor, and exited the building as fast as I could. Scrambling down Madison toward the subway, I came across a Thom McAn shoe store and zipped inside. Plopping down in the first empty chair I came to, I kicked off my stilettos and moaned with relief. It was the first time I’d sat down since I left Sabrina’s.
A skinny young salesman with a buzz cut and a bad case of acne approached me and asked, “Is there something special you’d like to see?”
“Anything without heels,” I said, flexing my arches and wiggling my toes.
“We have some nice ballerina flats on sale.”
“How much?”
“Two ninety-nine. They come in black, white, red, blue, and pink.”
“Red,” I said, wanting my shoes to match my beret. “Six and a half narrow.”
Twelve minutes later, I was back on the pavement, headed for the downtown IND. I was three inches shorter and three dollars poorer, but at least I could walk without plotting suicide.
It was 2:05 PM. Still early in the afternoon, but it felt like midnight to me. I was drained, depressed, and downhearted. I wanted to go home, get into bed, and pull the covers over my head. I wanted to hide out from all the gardeners, gangsters, pimps, parents, bosses, politicians, millionaires, and murderers in the world-for the rest of my pitiful, insignificant, and sure-to-be-brief existence.
But first, I wanted to have a drink and a late lunch with Abby.
I hopped on a train at 42nd Street and hopped off at West 4th. (It’s easy to hop when you’re wearing ballerina slippers.) A short walk down Sixth Avenue, a right turn on Bleecker, and a block over to Cornelia brought me to my first destination: Zito’s bakery. I stepped inside the tiny store and bought a fresh-baked loaf of Italian bread, then continued toward my apartment, stopping at Faicco’s deli for a wedge of cheddar, a small salami, and a couple cans of tomato juice, and at Angelo’s for two limes and a green pepper.
I carried the sacks of groceries and the shopping bag with my stilettos upstairs, straining my ears for sounds of life in Abby’s apartment. But all was quiet. And her door was locked. And she didn’t answer her doorbell. Heart sinking like a lead balloon, I set my bags on the floor of the landing and started fishing in my purse for my keys. I felt so tired and lonely, I wasn’t even hungry anymore. I decided I really would go straight to bed and pull the covers over my head.
But just as I found my keys and leaned over to open the door to my apartment, the door from the street burst open, and Abby catapulted into the stairwell. Hallelujah! I shouted in silence, fresh energy surging into my veins. “Oh, hi,” I said out loud. “Where have you been?”
Abby bounced up the stairs with a mile-wide grin on her face. “Hey, babe,” she said, opening the door to her apartment. “Come on in. I’ve got something to tell you.” She charged inside, tore off her jacket, and tossed it on the loveseat. Then she flounced into the kitchen, took a bottle of vodka out of the cabinet, and set it down on the counter. “Want a drink?” There was a mischievous gleam in her eye. “I know it’s early, but what the hell? You only live once.”
I picked up my bags and carried them inside. “I bought some limes and tomato juice. Want to make Bloody Marys?”
“Great!” she said, cranking open a tray of ice. “What else have you got there? Anything to eat? I’m famished!”
“Bread, cheese, salami, green pepper.” I put the grocery bags down on the table and removed the contents. Then I took off my jacket and beret and put them on the loveseat. Catching a glimpse of the painting propped on the easel in Abby’s living room-cum-art studio, I went over for a closer look. A bosomy blonde in a skimpy pink bikini was tied spread-eagle to the large wheel of a covered wagon, and several bare-chested Indians with feathers in their hair and tomahawks in their hands were doing a war dance around her.
“Your new painting’s really far-out,” I said, returning to the kitchen to help get things ready. “I didn’t know pioneer women wore bikinis.”
Abby laughed. “In Men’s Wild Adventure magazine, all the women wear bikinis-unless they’re going swimming, of course, in which case they just wear seaweed or lily pads.”
I snickered and said, “What’s the cover line for this one? Wait, don’t tell me. It’s ‘Busty Blonde Gets a Hatchet Haircut!’ Am I right?”
“Close,” she teased. “It’s ‘Scalped Blondes Have More Fun!’ ”
We giggled while we prepared our lunch. Except for the tomato juice, everything I brought needed slicing. After stirring our drinks and assembling assorted slices of food on two plates, we sat down to eat.
“Here’s blood in your eye,” Abby said, raising her glass in a toast, then taking a big gulp of her Bloody Mary.
I did the same, and we were quiet for a while after that. (It’s not polite to talk with your mouth full.)
“SO, WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO?” I ASKED, AS soon as we finished our feast. “You said you had something to tell me.”
“Yeah, I do,” Abby murmured, “but you’re not gonna be very happy about it, so I think we’d better have another drink first.”
She took our glasses over to the counter and plunked in a few more ice cubes.
“Oh, no!” I said, stomach churning. “Why won’t I be happy? What have you done now?”
She measured out the vodka and poured in the tomato juice. “Nothing really bad, babe. And it was for your own good. But you’re still not gonna like it.” She squeezed a segment of lime into each glass, then added more than a few drops of Tabasco and brought them over to the table. “Stir it with your finger,” she said, setting one of the drinks in front of me. “All the hot stuff’s on top.”
Too upset to listen, I grabbed the glass and guzzled down a third of the fiery cocktail. It didn’t even faze me. My brain and tongue were already ablaze. “Stop stalling!” I screeched. “What the hell happened? What are you afraid to tell me?”
Abby sat down and lit a cigarette. Then she propped her feet up on an empty chair, blew a perfect smoke ring in my direction, and announced with an air of defiance, “I went to see Sabrina this afternoon.”
“What?” I thought my skull would explode. “Are you crazy? How could you do that to me? I told you it would be disastrous if you met Sabrina! Whatever made you-”
“Oh, hush, Paige,” she said, untying her ponytail and shaking her shiny black mane down her back. “You always make such a tsimmis.” (For those not familiar with Yiddish, that means stew, fuss, mess.)
“But there was no reason for you to go there!” I shrieked, making another tsimmis. “I spent the whole morning with Sabrina, and she answered every single one of my questions, and now I know she didn’t kill Virginia. You hear what I’m saying? She’s not a suspect anymore, and that’s all there is to it!”
“Well, now that I’ve met the woman, I agree with you. But I needed to see for myself.”
“But how did you know where to go? I never gave you her address.”
“No, but you told me she lived on Gramercy Park, and you gave me a very vivid description of her building. How many white castles with gargoyles and cherubs and knights in shining armor could there be? The minute I stepped onto the sidewalk surrounding the park, I spotted the right place.”
I took another swig of my drink. And then another. “So what did you do then?” I whimpered, wondering if she’d destroyed my credibility with Sabrina altogether. “Burst into her apartment and tell her that Paige Turner sent you? Claim that I had appointed you my deputy?”