“Fine,” I said, and left.
I wondered about that. At Dr. Dvorkin’s request, I’d been going over to the main house nearly every day after work, to water the orchids and feed the cats and gather up the mail. That evening my heart skipped: under the stacks of magazines and overseas correspondence I found an envelope with Dylan’s name on it, written in Angelica’s lovely handwriting with peacock blue ink. My hand shook a little as I picked it up, and the rest of the mail slid to the floor.
“You got a letter,” I said when I got back to the carriage house, trying to sound nonchalant as I handed it to him. Dylan glanced at the envelope and tossed it aside. I went out onto the patio to check the grill. When I came inside again, the letter was gone—I know, because I looked for it when Dylan was in the bathroom. It finally appeared again a few days before Dylan’s birthday, shoved beneath the kilim that covered the sofa. The envelope was still unopened. When I picked it up I could smell sandalwood, like incense clinging to the heavy paper—sandalwood and oranges and the odor of ground coriander seed.
Annie Harmon stared at the ranks of black and grey limousines lined up in front of the Javits Convention Center. Behind the soot-colored monolith, the Hudson moved sluggishly, streaked black and orange from where the sun was dipping behind the Jersey skyline. If she inhaled deeply enough, she could smell the river, rank with spilled gasoline and dead fish; but Annie didn’t want to smell it. She didn’t want to be there at all. The out-of-towners disgusted her, there wasn’t a decent place to eat within ten blocks, and she didn’t believe that Justine was going to show up in a limo with a very rich John.
Actually, Annie could believe that; she just preferred not to. If she looked closely at the vehicles pulled alongside the river, Annie could see heads bobbing up and down in most of them, TV and TS whores taking care of the tourists and bridge-and-tunnel regulars. But she didn’t want to see that any more than she wanted to smell the garbage barge drifting past, with its clouds of gulls and blowflies; any more than she wanted to think about the message Justine had left on her hotel room’s voice mail. So she sat on the convention center steps and tried not to think, that week’s unread Voice balanced on her knees. Tried not to think at all.
It had been three weeks since Baby Joe’s death. Pulmonary failure, said the coroner’s report. Not as uncommon as you’d think at places like Chumley Peckerwood’s; although at thirty-eight, José Malabar was still pretty young, even with the extra weight and cigarettes and peripatetic sleep habits. It made for a sordid little story nonetheless, a few inches of newsprint glorifying the death of a minor New York character in a strip club. The usual HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR kind of stuff, a few halfhearted attempts at suspecting foul play; then someone from Newsday took over Baby Joe’s column and that was the end of it. Annie had been afraid to go to the funeral in D.C. or even to call his family. Instead she’d had Helen send some flowers and a card with both their names on it. Later, after she’d gotten all this other screwed-up shit taken care of, she’d come up with a more fitting memorial for her murdered friend.
Because if Angelica di Rienzi didn’t have something to do with Baby Joe’s death, then she, Anne Marie Jeanne Harmon, was a Carmelite nun. And Carmelites don’t hang out on the Manhattan riverfront, waiting to meet transsexual prostitutes early of a torrid July evening.
“Annie! I’m he-ere—”
Annie turned, and grinned in spite of herself. Justine had, indeed, arrived by limo. She watched as her leggy friend flowed from the back of an endless silvery vehicle, patting demurely at her carefully arranged coif and then striding across the street, skirting steaming puddles and rubbish-filled potholes with her size-thirteen platform shoes.
“Hi, Justine,” said Annie. “Wanna go see Cats?”
“Uh.” Justine swept up beside her and looked around disdainfully, adjusting a pair of gold-framed sunglasses on her aquiline nose. “I hate this place—c’est a cochons.” She lifted her chin as someone on the other side of the street shouted her name and an epithet. “Eat moi, asshole! Girlfriend, you look terrible,” she added, looking down at Annie.
Annie shrugged. A streetlamp clicked on, showering the steps with violent light and making Justine’s shades glow taxi yellow. Annie could see herself in the lenses: her buzz cut growing out in sloppy tufts, her eyes shadowed and face blotched. No chance anyone would recognize her as last week’s Heavy Rotation. “Yeah, I know,” she sighed. “I look like shit. Pardon me—merde. So let’s cut to the car crash. What did you find out?”
“I found your friend.”
“You did.” Annie took a deep breath, forgetting about the toxic air, and closed her eyes very tight. “I wasn’t crazy. You really did.” For a moment she thought she’d cry, from relief or exhaustion or maybe joy.
“She is in London—” Justine rummaged in her Day-Glo vinyl purse, spilling a wad of bills and Technicolor condoms onto the steps. “Ooops, wait—here it is—”
Justine stooped to sweep up the money in one hand, in the other flourished a piece of paper. “Was in London. Her roommate said the last time he saw her was several months ago. This is where she was until then. Sorry—there’s no forwarding address.”
Annie took the paper from Justine’s enameled fingers and stared at it. A name she didn’t recognize, an address on the Camden High Street. For a long time she said nothing. Justine stood above her and smoked a cigarette. The sun disappeared behind the river’s western shore, the number of hired cars in front of the convention center dwindled to the occasional Yellow Cab or livery driver.
“Okay,” Annie said at last. She folded the paper and put it carefully into her filo-fax. “Was there—was there anything else? I mean, do you know what she’s been doing all this time?”
Justine took a final drag on her cigarette and tossed it away. She exhaled, then said, “She went to Southeast Asia. I think maybe Thailand, for a long time. No, wait—Taiwan, maybe? I don’t remember. Her roommate said she had some problems with junk for a little while but she’s clean now. Her doctor was there, Bangkok or someplace, that’s why it took me so long to come up with anything for you—everyone I know sees someone here, or maybe in Stockholm. Not Taiwan.”
“Bangkok’s not in Taiwan,” Annie said. “It’s in Thailand.”
Justine twisted her head and peered out above the rim of her sunglasses. Annie had a glimpse of kohl-rimmed eyes and pupils so dilated it was like staring into the empty sockets of a skull. “I will tell you something, chérie. Sometimes, people who do this don’t want to be found—”
“No shit,” Annie snapped, but Justine raised a hand warningly.
“I was going to say, sometimes they don’t want to be found; but I think your friend will find you, Annie. She found you once already. She will again—”
“But—”
“But I have to go now, chérie.” Justine stretched her arms and yawned loudly. “I have a date.”
“Wait—” Annie stumbled to her feet, yanking her knapsack after her. “Look, Justine. I know you’re a friend of Helen’s and all, but I thought—well, I feel bad, you going to all this trouble. So—can I write you a check or something—something to reimburse you for your time?”
Justine dropped her arms, staring at Annie with those huge black eyes, and burst into laughter. “Pay me! No way, girl—”