Three-Day Town

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

Despite 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