A loud bam! sounded. I turned. “Nooooooo,” I shrieked. A city bus had plowed into the suitcase I had momentarily abandoned in the middle of Fourteenth Street, causing it to explode (the suitcase, not the bus). My clothes and makeup and shoes were raining from the sky, only to get smashed by moving taxis, cars, and minivans. The suitcase was demolished on impact.
It seemed surreal, as though it were a dream. Everything was happening in slow motion. I watched my wedding gown float through the air like an errant plastic grocery bag until it hit the ground just as the street cleaner rolled by. “Hhhhhhh,” I gasped. In a matter of seconds, my exquisite Carolina Herrera discount wedding dress was reduced to a wet, muddy blob of netting, satin, and lace. There was no way Kleinfeld would take it back now.
It felt like I’d gotten whacked in the solar plexus. “Pops, keep looking for Kitty!” I yelled. “I’ll be right there!” I took a deep breath, and attempted to channel my anguish into saving what clothes I could. When the light turned red and there was a temporary lull in the traffic, I rushed into the street and grabbed the ravaged bits of fabric and leather lying in my reach.
It had taken me years of secondhand trolling to find each treasured article, painstakingly collected from the best charity thrift stores and private school rummage sales in the city, bought for a fraction of its original price. Many I had redesigned and updated myself. I’d never had much in the way of possessions, but I had my clothes, and each piece said something about me. I started back into traffic to rescue more when Pops grabbed me. “Forget it. They’re just possessions.”
“But…I’ll be destitute.”
“Better that than road kill,” he said tenderly. “C’mon, Holly.”
“Did you find Kitty?” I said.
“Not yet, but we will.”
I glanced back at the street, sick over my loss. There was the canary-yellow Diane von Furstenberg I’d bought at the Nightingale-Bamford rummage sale for six dollars. Six dollars for a dress that originally retailed for six hundred dollars! Now it had black tire marks running down the center. My Christian Lacroix armadillo handbag with its armor of rhinestones, chain link, and crystals lay pulverized on the road, like a carcass on a busy Texas highway. I’d found it at a rummage sale benefiting the Metropolitan Opera. Some society matron had to die for it to be donated. A rainbow of flouncy blouses, slim pants, and tailored jackets were being whooshed up Fourteenth Street by the cars to which they were affixed. Shoes were scattered, many thoroughly crushed, none with its mate. My vintage Venetian lace demi-bra was flying like a flag on the antenna of a shiny black Cadillac speeding west on Fourteenth.
“I can’t look,” I said, covering my eyes, collapsing on my hands and knees. The artifacts of my world were gone. How could I possibly start my search over—secondhand stores, flea markets, charity sales, eBay—I wasn’t sure I had it in me. “I am strong,” I muttered. “I can do this.”
My father helped me up and led me away, shielding me from the crash site. Then he gasped. “It’s a miracle!”
I opened my eyes. “Kitty?”
“No,” he said, pointing to my priceless, one-of-a-kind cherry tree Choos that lay strewn on the sidewalk, no worse for wear. It was like a tornado victim finding one treasured photograph, completely unharmed, in the pile of lumber, bricks, and rubble that used to be her home. Seeing them gave me hope.
“Thank you, Lord,” I cried. “Now please, help us find Kitty.”
We searched everywhere, behind trash cans, inside courtyards, under parked cars, in every nook and cranny within a five-block radius. I prayed he was curled up in some tiny space somewhere, which was his favorite thing to do. Pops led me back to the stoop. “Oh, my God, he’s go-o-one,” I cried. Salty tears spilled down my cheeks and into my mouth. My whole life was unraveling before my eyes and there was nothing I could say or do to stop it. I wasn’t sure which was worse—losing Alessandro or my precious Kitty.
Pick Yourself Up
POPS TOOK ME INSIDE Muttropolis, offering a place to stay as long as I needed it. I could have called Nigel or BL, but no friend could take the place of my father. “Here you go, Holly,” he said, gesturing to his bed. “It’s all yours. Make yourself comfortable.” BL had set aside a previously barren space for Pops, with an AeroBed next to a small night table and shadeless lamp. (Her paying canine guests slept in custom-made wrought-iron beds with Duxiana mattresses.) There was a small TV, but no rug, plant, or picture to make his little corner of the basement feel like home. The room smelled like dog, but after a few minutes you didn’t notice it.
Two Chocolate Labs, a poodle, and a Chihuahua kept us company that night, all resting in their “suites” near a couple of newly rescued cats.
“I’ll ask BL to make lost signs for Kitty,” I said. “She has his picture on her database from when I first found him.”
“’Course,” Pops said. “I’ll post them around the neighborhood while you’re at work. Don’t worry, he’ll come home.”
Practically everything I had left in the world was in that basement—the ratty sweat suit I was wearing, my quasi-stolen Jimmy Choos, a rhinestone tiara, my headgear, and my engagement ring.
“Do you want to call someone?” Pops said, offering his cell phone. “A girlfriend, maybe?”
“No,” I murmured. “Thanks for taking me in.”
“That’s what fathers are for, baby.”
I crawled onto Pops’ mattress, under his sheets. He made his blanket into a sleeping bag and set up camp at the foot of my bed. When we lived in Queens, Pops had
