Slugfest

experience told me would deliver a thirty-second sound bite before moving on to the next small story of the day.

A canvas tent had been installed outside the Wagner Center as a checkpoint, where security guards made sure everyone’s papers were in order and gatecrashers weren’t trying to worm their way inside. Luckily I’d remembered to stash my badge in my borrowed clutch purse.

Lucy’s jacket with its gold buttons and geegaws set off the metal detectors, which continued to sound even after I’d removed it. That sent up a flare to the rest of the security staff, who were on high alert for protesters hoping to disrupt the proceedings.

I spotted Kristi Reynolds in the distance, but she ignored my efforts to catch her eye. She was welcoming a group of well-heeled attendees, including a sour-faced Allegra Douglas and the other woman I’d met in the ladies’ room. From the look of pained resignation on Kristi’s face, Allegra was giving her an earful. But if Kristi wanted to escape, she wasn’t rushing to my aid.

I tried another approach with the security guards. “Rolanda Knox will vouch for me. Call her. What could I possibly have hidden under this dress? There’s barely room for me.” One guard in particular looked like he wanted to pat me down to find out.

“Touche. She makes an excellent point, young man.” I recognized the voice and smiled. It was Mrs. Moffitt, trailed by her entourage. Apparently Mrs. Moffitt and company went anywhere they pleased. Her tacit endorsement of my character was enough for the bouncer at the door, and the four of us—Mrs. Moffitt, Rick, and a man I assumed was Jensen, her gardener—swept in as a group. Our entrance registered with Kristi Reynolds, who finally deigned to look my way now that I was with someone important. Rick and Mr. Jensen escorted us into the members’ prefunction area, where the earliest arrivals enjoyed cocktails before the floor was opened and the reception officially began.

“I adore your jacket, dear. It’s Balenciaga, isn’t it?” The building seemed twenty degrees cooler than it had been during setup, so I quickly put the jacket back on but not before checking the label. Mrs. M., as Rick called her, knew her stuff.

“They keep the room cold for the plants,” Jensen explained, “keeps them at attention, otherwise they’ll wilt.” A certain part of my anatomy was responding the same way.

Jensen snapped pictures with a digital single-lens reflex camera as he spoke. He was attentive to his employer, but she brushed off his efforts to retrieve a gray cashmere shawl from a bag hanging on the handles of her wheelchair.

“May I get you a cup of tea, Mrs. M.?”

“Jensen, you must stop making me old before my time. I’m wearing a long velvet skirt and underneath it a pair of silk long johns.” She turned to me. “Now I’ve done it. I’ve made them both blush. I dearly love to do that. If you want to get me something, Jensen, fetch me a vodka gimlet and one for yourself. You need to relax. And if none of those young pups knows how to make one, I’ll settle for a martini. Very dry.”

Jensen hurried off, pleased to be of service. It was clear Mrs. Moffitt had good relationships with her staff. “I believe Jensen has a crush on me, but he’s far too old. From the age of forty on, women should start looking for younger men.” She patted Rick’s hand and promised to stop at my booth within the hour after she had made the obligatory rounds. I repeated the number and aisle twice to make sure they remembered.

I strode toward my area of the exhibit floor, careful not to let Lucy’s higher-than-I-normally-wore heels get caught on any of the carpet seams. David was resplendent in a tuxedo that fit too well to be rented. He kissed me on both cheeks. The usually chatty Nikki barely nodded, ignoring me and pouring all her attention into a triangle of baklava and a plastic glass of wine from a nearby bar cart.

When she finally spoke, it was to shove a piece of paper in my direction. “Here. I saw this note on the message board—it’s about that bag. I copied the number for you.”

“That was thoughtful. I saw it, too. I’ve tried him twice, but there’s been no answer. Maybe I should leave a note for him.”

I grabbed one of my business cards from the Plexiglas container on the table and started writing the kid a note, but quickly outgrew the space on the tiny rectangle.

“Use this,” Nikki said. She handed me a five-by-seven postcard that had thumbnail pictures of her most treasured antiques on one side.

“Thanks.” I scribbled a longer message and my coordinates, and planned to post it later. Nikki looked pouty and her two-word answers told me something was wrong. She attacked another wedge of baklava. I looked to David for an explanation.

“What’s going on?” He was as clueless as I.

“Whatever it is, you have five minutes to move on. I don’t want to be stuck between two harridans all weekend. I’ve already got one on the other side.” His light touch broke the strained silence.

“Nothing. Everything’s fine,” Nikki said, breaking off another honeyed chunk of pastry and shoving it into her mouth. Whatever was bothering her had generated a classic case of anger eating.

She swallowed hard and washed it down with a big gulp of white wine. Uh-oh.

“Go like this,” I said, rubbing the front of my borrowed Balenciaga.

Nikki looked down and saw a shiny glob of honey slowly moving down the front of her dress. She foolishly rubbed at the spot with a cocktail napkin, which turned the small sticky spot into a larger one covered with flecks of white paper.

“That’s just great. First I have another fight with Russ and he says he’s not coming, then I start to feel the beginnings of a cold sore, and now Mrs. Moffitt is going to see me and think I’m a slob.” Something akin to a whimper came out of Nikki’s mouth.

David volunteered to fetch a glass of water, but the dress was silk and water would only make things worse. Nikki’s eyes welled up and her artfully applied smoky eyes were in danger of becoming Pagliacci eyes. I risked goose bumps for the next three hours and peeled off Lucy’s jacket. “Here, put this on.”

She looked me up and down. “Like that’s going to fit me?” she said. One lone tear spilled down her face. I could almost hear Pavarotti—it was Pagliacci time.

I unpinned the red silk flower I’d fastened to the deep V of my neckline. “Try this.”

She still looked like the sad clown in a velvet painting, but her watery eyes now held a spark of hope. I fastened a piece of folded napkin to the stickiest spot and pinned the red flower on top of it. It covered the stain and even added to the look of Nikki’s simple black sheath. She sniffled and tried to collect herself.

“For cold sores? I have a friend who swears by lysine. Take handfuls before you go to bed tonight. No nuts, no chocolate, and go easy on the alcohol.”

“You’re being so nice to me.” She was instantly contrite. “You know, my ego’s not that fragile.”

“Nikki, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“If you didn’t like my arrangement, you could have just told me. You didn’t need to sneak back and change things.”

I stood ten feet back and squinted at Primo’s booth trying to see what Nikki was fussed about, while she produced a pocket mirror to fix her face and check out the flower pin.

“The pin looks great, but I look awful.”

To the naked eye, the arrangement was the same as we had left it the previous night. Except perhaps that Pink Flamingo, the tall thin birdlike sculpture, was a little farther to the left than it was yesterday. And maybe Kelly, a hunk of hammered metal contorted into an elaborate, abstract spiral, was slightly farther to the back of the booth.

“It is different. What a good eye you have,” I said, hoping to patch things up. “But I didn’t change a thing, I swear. Maybe it was the staff, maybe I was too close to the flow of traffic or the electrical outlets. Who knows? Help me fix it?”

She brightened visibly, then launched into rearranging Primo’s creations. “The workmen usually know better than to move things, even before the curious incidents in the night started happening. Which reminds me, there was another one early this morning. Dog poop. In the Gramercy Park exhibit.”

“Well, at least that you can pick up. Nasty but not really damaging.”

“It is when you throw it down a recirculating well. I don’t know what smelled worse, the poop or the bleach they used to clean it out. It was reeking when I got here at four P.M.”