Mask Market

“That’s exactly it!” she said, excitedly. “I bought that apartment ages ago—well, not ages, of course,” she interrupted herself, not being old enough to have done anything too long ago, right?—“but it feels like that, the way the market keeps rising and rising.”

“I still don’t see a problem.”

“Well, I do,” she said, emphatically. “I could get…well, a lot of money for that place, if I was to sell it now. In two or three years, it could be worth a lot more…but it could also be worth a lot less. If I sold now, I’d have a big pot of cash.”

“You’d need a big pot of cash if you wanted to keep living in this town.”

“That’s just it,” she said, regretfully. “But if I had a place to stay, I could do it. I’d only need a couple, three years here, working, then I could go back home…with enough to live on forever, I bet.”

“Where’s home, Wyoming?”

“No, silly. I’m from a little town in North Carolina. I haven’t been back since—oh, I don’t even remember—but my daddy left me a little place when he passed on. There’s people living there now. Renters, I mean. It’s not a big house, but it’s got some land around it. I could be happy there…especially after this city. I know I could.”

“I never picked up an accent,” I said.

“Well, you better not, all the voice lessons I paid for,” she said, turning her bruised-peach lips into a practiced pout. “When I came to the city, I was just a girl, not even old enough to vote. I was going to be an actress. Everyone back home told me I was a dead ringer for Barbara Eden—when she was Jeannie, I mean—and I was dumb enough to listen.”

“You do favor her,” I said, gamely.

“You’re sweet, Lew,” she said, not diverted. “But I know that’s not going to be for me, not now.”

“Things didn’t work out?”

“I didn’t have any talent,” she said, soft and blunt at the same time. “This so-called agent I had told me to change my name—the only part I was ever going to get with a name like Loyal Lee Jenkins was if they remade The Beverly Hillbillies—so I did. A little. But that didn’t make any difference. Casting directors would see my pictures—oh, did I have to work to pay for those—and I’d get calls, but as soon as I opened my mouth, that was it.”

“Your accent?”

“Well, I thought it was my accent, but I ground that rock into powder…and that still didn’t change anything. I tried and tried for years until I got the message. You know what it comes down to, baby? I’m not fashionable anymore.”

“You? Come on!”

“You’re thinking of the shoes, aren’t you? There’s a lot more to being fashionable than buying things, Lew. You know those jeans everybody’s wearing now? They’re not built for girls like me. I work out like a fiend, but I can’t change my shape.”

“Why would you want to?”

She turned her big eyes into searchlights, scanning the terrain of my face for a few seconds. Whatever she found must have satisfied her, because she nodded as if agreeing with something. “I remember, once, this man who wanted me to pose for him,” she said. “He told me I had the classic American hourglass figure. I was thinking about that just this morning, looking in the mirror. And you know what, Lew? No matter how tiny the waist of an hourglass, the sand still drops through it. Running out. I have to start thinking about my future.”

“Your apartment.”

“My apartment,” she agreed. “Now, I told you some truth about myself, even if it was embarrassing. So can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Are you married?”

I had been expecting that one for weeks. “No,” I told her. “Well, I guess that’s not a hundred percent. I’ve been separated for years, waiting for her damn lawyers and mine to get together on some financial issues.”

“You have kids?”

“No.”

“And that one is a hundred percent?”

“Oh yeah,” I said, shrugging my shoulders to show she was being absurd.

“When you say ‘separated,’ you mean physically, too, don’t you?”

“Well,” I said, seeing where she was headed, to block the exit before she got there, “it’s not that simple. I own a brownstone. That is, we own a brownstone. The lawyers made it clear that the one who moves out is the one who gets the short end of the stick, so we’re both still there. We live on separate floors, so we’re not even roommates. Sometimes I don’t even catch sight of her for weeks. But I’ve got so much of my money tied up in that place, I’m not leaving. And neither is she.”

“So you sleep there?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And that’s why you can’t bring me to your place? Because that would be, like, adultery, right? And that would make your wife’s case better.”

“That’s right,” I said, wondering how Loyal was such an expert on the topic…for about a second.

“But if you had a friend who let you stay at their place anytime you wanted, for as long as you wanted, I’ll bet you’d like that just fine.”

“I guess.”

“I mean, a friend who’d just clear out and disappear. So, say, if your girlfriend wanted to spend some time with you…”

“I guess I never really thought about it.”

“Well, you should. Because it could solve both our problems in one jump,” Loyal said. Breathlessly, because all her breath had dropped into her cleavage.

“I’m not following you,” I said. Stalling, because I was.

“You wouldn’t want to rent an apartment in your name,” she said, leaning forward and licking a trace of something off her lips. “But I could rent one, couldn’t I? Then I could rent out my co-op, have a place to stay while I keep my eye on the market, and you’d have the best setup in the world, too.”

For three grand a month, I could have a lot of things, I thought, but kept it off my face. “That could get tricky,” I said, still looking for an opening.

“You mean you would have to go back to your place and spend the nights? That’s no big deal, honey. That’s what you do now, anyway. If I had my own place, like we’re talking about, I could be ready for you anytime you wanted.”

Like you’re talking about, I thought. “There might be a way,” I said aloud. “But it would depend on some things working out.”

“I’ll do anything,” Loyal said, lips slightly parted in abject sincerity.

I met Pepper the next morning, in the lobby of an “I’m cool, but are you?” hotel on West Fifty-second. It’s perfect for a man in my line of work. The people who hang out there put in so much mirror time that their observational skills have atrophied from disuse. And the doorman doesn’t come on duty until after dark, when his outfit works better.

“What?” Pepper said, as she sat down on one of the quasi-sofas artfully scattered near the revolving door. Mick stood behind her right shoulder.

“Daniel Parks…?” I began. Got a blank stare for my efforts, kept going: “He was gunned down a little while back. Made the papers. First he wasn’t ID’ed. When they released his name, there was nothing else, except for the usual filler. Then I read in a gossip column that his wife had sued him for divorce just before it happened. Named another woman.”

Pepper turned and shot Mick a look that would have terrorized a gorilla.

“The gossip columns have trollers,” I said. “They root through the bins in Supreme Court, looking for celebrities’ names. Lawsuits, restraining orders, divorce filings—stuff like that. This guy’s name wouldn’t be on their hit list until he got hit, which is probably why it didn’t make the columns before now.”