Slugfest Page 3

  “All I know is the exhibitors’ committee opened a Pandora’s box when they started allowing that element into the competition. This is the second year, and it’s changed the entire complexion of the event.” She dragged on her cigarette again, and her cheeks and the wizened, red scar that was her mouth were sucked into her skull.

  “You’d know,” the retrieverlike friend agreed. A perfect straight man.

  The smoke was getting to me, but I was nosy enough to want to know who they were discussing. I dried my hands and fished in my bag for an emery board I knew I didn’t have. I kept listening.

  “For one hundred years, this show has kept to the highest standards, and now…” Allegra didn’t finish her sentence but made a sweeping gesture with her right hand as if her friend and I could see the obvious destruction in our midst. Was it possible she’d been exhibiting that long? Could be.

  She squinted and tipped her helmet head back, trying to read the name on my badge to see if I was one of the interlopers. I abandoned my phony search and turned to face the tiny despot full-on. “Excuse me,” I said, “you seem to know so much about the show. This is my first time exhibiting.”

  “Oh, please don’t take anything Allegra said personally,” the friend said. “She didn’t mean you.”

  It hadn’t even occurred to me that they might be talking about me, but if she felt like apologizing, I’d accept it on behalf of whomever they were maligning.

  “It’s the public school exhibit,” the friend said, lowering her voice. “Allegra feels some of the students aren’t taking the show seriously.”

  That’s right, heaven forbid anyone have fun at a flower show. I had seen the teenagers near Connie’s beach garden but assumed they were volunteers or kids pressed into service as some sort of punishment, not fledgling gardeners. Apparently, they were exhibiting.

  “And if you ask me,” Allegra said, running the tap to douse her cigarette after a few more hearty puffs, “someone should talk to them about these little mishaps we’ve been having this year.”

  “Mishaps?” I asked.

  “The headless gnomes? The crew cut on Mrs. Hamilton’s dwarf bamboo?” They were stunned by my ignorance. “Ask anyone in the members’ lounge,” Allegra said, knowing full well I wasn’t a member. The door flapped as she strode out of the ladies’ room, her meek friend and the stench of stale smoke trailing behind her. On their way out they all but knocked down the young woman in overalls I’d seen earlier. She closed her eyes as if counting to ten.

  Ten

  “I tell my students high school is only four years—what’s happening now is just one brief chapter in their lives. Then I meet a woman like that and I’m beamed back to my own high school days. Mean girls. Even when they get old, they stay mean girls.”

  “True,” I said. “Although I doubt if anyone has referred to Allegra Douglas as a girl in quite some time.” I introduced myself.

  “Lauryn Peete. I’d shake but my hands are grubby.” She held them up as if it were a stickup. Other than that, she looked tidy in ironed overalls and a clean, long-sleeved T-shirt with the sleeves pushed up. Her hair was almost entirely covered by a wide headband; just a soft, lamblike fuzz escaped out the back.

  Lauryn told me she taught at High School 240 and still loved the job now as much as she had that first day when one of her students brought in a plant and pretended not to know it was a marijuana seedling. “They must have thought I was going to run crying to the principal,” she said. Instead the pot plant inspired her to start a garden project with her homeroom class.

  That year they grudgingly planted annuals in the front of the school, mostly bedraggled flats that Lauryn had wheedled out of a local supermarket. The following semester they started seeds on the windowsill. Easy stuff—basil, parsley, morning glories. Seeds almost guaranteed to germinate because Lauryn didn’t want her students’ early efforts not to bear fruit. “They’re good kids, despite what that Ms. Douglas thinks.”

  Of course, some kids couldn’t be bothered. This was real life, not some touchy-feely after-school movie. But every year four or five students got into it, enough to convince the principal and the school board to front them the money to enter a borough-wide contest that they ended up winning. Jamal Harrington was among them.

  At least one of her fellow teachers thought Jamal was too much of a favorite and secretly suggested Lauryn’s botanical teachings were helping Jamal cultivate a garden less likely to result in an appearance on Martha Stewart and more likely an appearance before a judge—charged with growing and intending to distribute a controlled substance—but Lauryn took the high road and ignored them, even though Jamal had been in trouble in the past.

  Not all the Big Apple participants had appreciated the lifelike rubber rat Jamal had used to adorn his part of the school’s garden exhibit—a fire escape trellis. According to Lauryn, he had thrown himself into the project and had even confided his dreams of becoming an artist or set designer. But that wasn’t something he wanted spread around. In Jamal’s neighborhood that kind of talk could get the crap knocked out of you.

  I thought the fake rat sounded clever, but apparently it had been responsible for a few rapid heartbeats during setup, so the students were personae non gratae with some attendees, including Allegra Douglas.

  “To paraphrase Jamal, these other entrants think their manure smells better than ours does.” After my own encounter with Allegra, I tended to agree with Jamal. Forewarned about the rat, I promised to check on their exhibit the next day.

  On the way out, we bumped into a woman who was dressed like an extra from the film A League of Their Own—baseball cap with the bill worn high like a 1950s gas pump jockey and a peach-colored romper that suggested gym bloomers from the same time period. Maybe her own. She gave us a tired smile and kept walking.

  “What’s up with the retro baseball outfit?” Lauryn said, once the woman had passed.

  “She’s selling something. I’m sure she’d be happy to tell us at great length. Want to go back?” Neither of us did.

  Eleven

  The really huge New York conventions—the boat shows and the car shows—were held at the Javits Center. The Big Apple Flower Show had remained at the more intimate Wagner Center, and that was probably what had kept both alive. If the Javits Center was all glass and as much natural light as possible, the Wagner was a throwback, dark and stuccoed. Some considered it a landmark, one of the last vestiges of an early postmodern era. Others found it an eyesore, an unfortunate reminder of a bleak time in American architecture and a blight on its up-and-coming neighborhood now filled with as many galleries and event spaces as there were taxi companies, auto repair shops, and one-room Caribbean music studios. Lucy’s apartment was ten blocks south of the Wagner, and I looked forward to walking and people watching on the way back to her place.

  Every once in a while I felt the pull of the city—the excitement, the stores and the styles changing, the hot new show or restaurant. The newest thing in Springfield was a garden shop two friends were opening and the girls’ high school soccer team, which was faring pretty well considering their star player’s recent bout with bulimia. Soccer was the great equalizer in the suburbs. In the city it was still something foreigners did, except every few years when the World Cup was played and hipsters tried to show how cool they were by pretending to be interested.

  I returned to the booth for my laptop and before leaving, stopped at a concession stand for an afternoon caffeine fix. The octopus caught my eye instantly. Connie Anzalone stood in line ahead of me. Her body language screamed almost as loudly as she had that morning, only this time it was saying, Stay the hell away.

  The ancestors advised me to try anyway.

  “How are you doing?” I asked. No answer. I repeated it in case she hadn’t heard me.

  “Just peachy.” She barely turned her head to see who’d spoken.

  Last time I listen to a bunch of dead people. I’d overheard security guards saying the flower show
crowd was proving to be just as cutthroat as the dog show people had been the week before—“just two-legged b*tches not four-legged ones.” I stared straight ahead, studying the items on the blackboard menu as if there were going to be a quiz. When it was Connie’s turn, she placed her order in a small, childlike voice at odds with the snappish tone she’d just used with me. She thanked the cashier and left a bill in the cardboard tip cup. Moments later, on my way down the escalator to street level, someone touched my arm. I was startled and sloshed hot coffee on my gloved hand.

  “I’m so sorry. Are you okay? That was terribly rude of me, upstairs. I don’t know what’s come over me. I’m not usually like this. Most people think I’m nice. I am nice.” The tough-girl mask had fallen away, and Connie’s face had totally changed. For a minute she looked like a girl playing dress up in her mother’s clothes and makeup, much younger than the heavy paint job and cotton candy hair suggested.

  We reached the street level and stepped over to a counter, where I peeled off the wet glove, turned it inside out, and shoved it in my pocket.

  “I’ll replace those.”

  “No need. Three dollars from any street vendor except when it’s really cold. Then the price goes up to five.”

  “This is my first time. Some of the others have been, well, mean to me. One of the exhibitors even made a comment about seeing too much when I bent down. Muffin top.”

  It was a more personal remark than I expected. “If you’ve got muffin top, it’s a low-fat minimuffin,” I said. “It’s not you. There seems to be an acceptable level of hostility toward the newbies. Some sort of horticultural hazing ritual.”

  Connie looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language.

  “Gardeners can be compulsive. Everyone gets so crazed about their booths and their entries. It’s business, not personal.” Did I really say that to a woman who looked like a Mafia princess? She burst out laughing, and so did I. Maybe in the city, The Godfather was the great equalizer.

  “Let me make it up to you,” she said. “How about something stronger than coffee? Can I buy you a glass of champagne? My husband, Guy, says it’s the only thing I can drink without getting loopy.” Loopy? Not a word you hear every day in that context.

  Perhaps I should listen to the dead relatives more often. Five minutes ago, I thought she was going to hand me a smackdown. Now she wanted to buy me a drink, and I rarely say no to champagne—especially when someone else is buying.

  “I’d like that,” I said, “but I can’t tonight. I’m just settling in at my friend’s apartment. Can I get a rain check?”

  Most people would have recognized the gentle brush-off, but Connie pressed the issue and I found myself agreeing to meet her for a drink the following night.

  Twelve

  The cool early evening air off the river gave me more of a second wind than the coffee. Even at that hour I could see a dusting of electric-green buds in some of the trees, specks of pink or white in others. It was that time of year when changes in the cityscape were evident every day, sometimes every few hours.

  I walked across the street from the park. New York was one of the safest big cities in the world and had been for as long as I could remember, as long as you didn’t do anything stupid. And I prided myself on not doing too many stupid things. I resurrected my New York walk—fast, no sightseeing or window shopping, don’t smile too much lest someone think you’re drunk or stupid, which would make you easy prey. New Yorkers could navigate a crowd of tourists like sea lions, slipping in and out quickly but never touching one another.

  I couldn’t remember a time before Korean groceries dotted every available corner in New York City with canned goods, salad bars, precut fruit, extensive selections of energy drinks, and fresh flowers twelve months of the year. No doubt there are names on leases and health department certificates, but to most people they are just the Koreans on Twenty-eighth or the Koreans on Seventeenth, et cetera. I headed for the Koreans on Eighth Avenue about three blocks from Lucy’s. The outside flower stand was shielded by heavy plastic sheets to protect the merchandise, and I brushed aside the cold, clear panels to get to the front door. I sensed someone behind me, so I held the flaps open for an extra second but, seeing no one, I let them go. Inside the small market, I stocked up on provisions for the weekend.

  When I’d arrived, Lucy’s nearly empty kitchen had reminded me she was a single woman who generally ate out and probably hadn’t stocked her pantry since a world-class Mardi Gras party thrown two years earlier attended by members of the Preservation Hall Band and half the New Orleans Saints bench. She still had foil packets of Pat O’Brien’s Hurricane mix on the refrigerator door. Inexplicably, she also had ten or twelve envelopes of Orville Redenbacher’s. I wasn’t a good enough cook to turn sweet pink powder and popcorn into a meal, so I’d been replenishing at the Koreans one or two bags at a time.

  After less than a block, the plastic I Love NY bag handles were stretched thin and cutting off the circulation in my fingers. I walked carefully, hoping the bags wouldn’t break and I wouldn’t have wasted forty dollars on chickpea and tuna salads the pigeons would be feasting on the next morning. I regrouped and changed hands while waiting for the traffic light to change.

  Once again, I felt someone walking just a little too close behind me. There wasn’t much traffic; a Lincoln Town Car idled on the other side of the street. That was good. I wasn’t alone. In the same way flight attendants and fire drill captains always know their exit strategies, women who occasionally have to walk in New York at night develop a survival strategy. It was second nature.

  We knew when to cross the street to avoid an unsavory character. We knew not to recite our telephone or credit card numbers out loud in a crowded bar, not to flash cash at an ATM, and not to leave half a drink on a table and then come back and drink it. These are in the collective New York memories, the way farm kids automatically know cow stuff and children in seaside towns know about the tides. At least we do most of the time.

  In addition to two salads, which wouldn’t make very effective weapons, I was packing heat—four twelve-ounce cans of diet Red Bull that could put a sizeable dent in someone’s Adam’s apple if he messed with me. I’d taken a self-defense class once, and it was one of the few things I remembered. Go for the vulnerable spots—throat, groin, shins, eyes. I doubt the manufacturers had that in mind when they introduced the new, larger cans, but it was reassuring as I walked the rest of the way home.

  Thirteen

  Lucy’s building was a five-story limestone next door to a church that housed a soup kitchen in its basement. Two mornings in a row I’d seen men lined up as early as six A.M.

  There were a few steps down to the vestibule, where the mailboxes were, and then a locked glass front door that led to the lobby and to the apartments upstairs. Lucy lived on the fifth floor, in two studio apartments bought and combined a few years back when prices were down and she’d gotten a bonus for doing a highly rated story on the unscrupulous owners of a Long Island puppy mill. I had talked her out of adopting the three Havanese she fell in love with and now I regretted it; they’d have been good company in her absence.

  My fingers were numb from the heavy bags, so I took a quick break on the third floor to switch hands and get the circulation back. That’s when I heard someone jiggling the doorknob on the inside door, downstairs. I stopped to listen. There was a frustrated push against the door, all the glass panes shaking, then the sound of a person ringing all the doorbells in an attempt to get someone, anyone, to let him in. No one took the bait. I hurried up to the next landing, banging the bag that held the cans against my right shin. One of the vulnerable parts. Ouch, that would leave a mark.

  On four, I caught a glimpse of a woman through the one-inch opening between her door and the chain that held it closed. She eyed me suspiciously.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m Lucy’s friend.” Then I remembered where I was. In large cities people didn’t always know their neighbors’ names. Maybe i
t wasn’t a geographical thing, just the times. You could have eight thousand Facebook friends but not know the name of the person living right on top of you. And as much as Lucy traveled, it was no surprise that her downstairs neighbor barely recognized her name.

  “Lucy Cavanaugh, the woman on five. I’m apartment sitting while she’s away. I’m here for the flower show.” That struck a chord. The woman undid the chain and opened the door a bit more to take a closer look. She had a few decades on me, with straight blunt-cut hair, flecked with gray, that said, I’m too serious to color my hair or have it styled.

  She wore a black sweatshirt and sweatpants and held a long metal rod that could have inflicted serious damage. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought she was an aging ninja warrior with an iron pugil stick, but I recognized the bar as part of an old-fashioned door lock, the kind where one end slips into a hole in the floor and the other into a bolt on the door. Only the oldest apartments in New York still had them.

  A white Persian cat slipped out of her apartment and crept around her bare ankles to see what was going on.

  “Get back inside, Tommy.” She nudged the cat with her bare toes, but he didn’t budge. “Technically this is three and your friend is on four. They don’t count the first floor in this building for some reason. Absentee Italian owners, some European thing. Did you ring my bell?”

  “No, ma’am.” I dangled Lucy’s keys so she could see I wasn’t the culprit. As long as she held that iron bar I wasn’t taking any chances. The cat hissed.