Killer Summer

“Ah, Sage,” Vince said, his dark eyes roaming over her appreciatively. “Yes, I do believe we have spoken a few times. A pleasure to finally meet you.”

I couldn’t figure out what was bothering me more—the way Tom was practically groping Sage, the way Sage was letting him or the way Vince was gazing speculatively at Sage. I’d already pegged Tom as a wacko, but Sage? Hello? I mean, yeah, Vince was hot—dark-eyed, dark-haired, with rough-hewn yet exotic Italian looks, but this wasn’t some pickup spot in the meat-packing district. This was a fucking wake.

People grieve in different ways. If this was grieving, then maybe I should start attending more funerals. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do with my Saturday nights these days.

I felt relieved at the sight of Nick loping through the door, but whether it was because this happy little threesome had forgotten I was there, or because I didn’t exactly want to be remembered by them, I wasn’t sure. I slipped away—not that any of them noticed—and intercepted Nick at the door.

“Hey,” I said, looking up at him and noticing his dark brown hair looked a little more unkempt than usual, his eyes tired.

“Hey, Zoe. Did I miss anything?”

Oh brother. “Not much. I think there might be some supermodels left for you to hit on.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” I studied his dark eyes. “So how are you doing?” I knew at least Nick had experienced some of the shock I had, judging by the way he kept replaying his final conversation with Maggie about the ill-fated dinner plan. I understood what he was going through. I had played Maggie’s last voice mails back at least six times, listening to her cheerfully rattle off the ingredients she needed and trying to grasp how a woman could go from a clawing need for coriander to floating in the tide in the space of one evening. I wasn’t sure if it was guilt that drove me to it, or my own need to somehow grasp how she could be there one moment and gone the next.

“Not good,” he said, blowing out a breath.

I reached out, taking his hand. “Tell me about it.”

“Well, I just had a meeting with Lance—you know, my Web site developer? Anyway, it looks like he’s going to bail on me due to lack of funding.”

I dropped his hand, biting back a sigh. I guess life was made for the living. Clearly Nick had let go of whatever angst he had felt over Maggie’s sudden death.

“I thought you said you’d found a big investor.”

Nick dropped his eyes and nearly blushed. Actually, the tips of his ears turned red, which is what typically happened whenever he was embarrassed. Or angry. “Uh, she dropped out at the last minute.”

“She?” I asked, remembering that Nick’s forte was landing women, not investors. Like Bernadine, whom he still kept dangling on a thread. I wondered if maybe he’d pulled a little too hard on that thread and hit her up for a little funding. After all, she was reportedly a big shot out at a software firm in San Francisco now. “Anyone I know?”

His eyes widened, then he shook his head. “Uh, not really.” He glanced around, “Where’s Sage?”

“Over there applying for the role of wife number three,” I said, waving one hand blandly at the intimate grouping of Sage, Tom and Vince. I saw her lean in to whisper something in Tom’s ear, her gaze fastened on Vince as she did. Nah, not wife number three. If there was one thing I was sure about with Sage, marriage wasn’t her goal. I had a feeling, judging by the way she was looking at Vince, that she had just found her latest prey. I suppose I couldn’t blame her; he was good-looking. Though a bit older than she usually went for. Maybe things had gotten desperate even for Sage. I mean, here she was making flirt time at a wake for chrissakes.

Speaking of which…“So you want to go up and see Maggie?” I said.

Now Nick was grabbing my arm, looking around as if Maggie might step out from behind one of the tasteful drapes with a freshly baked Bundt cake in hand. “What?”

I rolled my eyes, gesturing with my chin toward the coffin at the front of the room, decked in flowers. As if he could miss it. “To pay your respects.” Clearly Nick hadn’t been to many wakes.

“Oh, right,” he said, nodding his head as if this made some sort of sense to him, though he didn’t let go of my arm.

“Come up with me?” he pleaded.

For the second time that evening, I found myself kneeling before Maggie Landon, Beloved Wife—as the flowery banner at the end of the coffin declared her. I glanced at Nick, who kneeled beside me, though he seemed to be looking at everything but the overly made-up face of Maggie. I couldn’t blame him. Dead people freaked me out, too. And Maggie especially, considering I had seen her dead before the makeup job. I followed Nick’s gaze, which now wandered over the line of flowers leading to the coffin, and took some heart. If the amount of money the local florists had collected on Maggie’s behalf was any indication, she clearly was loved, despite the jolly ruckus her dear husband was creating in the back of the funeral home. “Those are the flowers Sage ordered from us,” I said, pointing out the tall display of lilies, so huge it practically dwarfed the two baskets of mixed flowers it stood between.

Nick’s eyes widened. “It looks expensive,” he whispered and I knew the question of how much his share of the cost was going to be was floating through his mind. It had floated through my mind, too, as Sage pointed the flowers out when we arrived. I guess that’s the way Sage grieved—expensively. I would have preferred to shed a few more tears. There was a good chance I wouldn’t be eating next week after I forked over my share of the bill for that bouquet.

Oh, God, I was just as bad as the rest of them.

“We should probably say a prayer,” I whispered, but whether I was reminding myself or Nick of why we were here, I wasn’t sure.

I closed my eyes, only to open them again immediately. I never knew what to pray for in these situations. Eternal salvation? Yeah, I’d been raised a Catholic, but I wasn’t sure what I believed in anymore. Now, as I looked at Maggie’s dead face, the way her lips seemed pulled into the kind of smile I’d never seen on her face in real life—closed mouth, knowing and a bit too pink—I felt the same disturbing emotion as when I had found her on the beach. With a shiver, I looked up at the photos that had been placed in the casket. Maggie as a baby, with one too many ribbons in the short tuft of blond hair. Maggie standing next to Tom at some black-tie event, beaming at the camera. Maggie standing proudly before a berry tart. Maggie tossing a stick to Janis Joplin on the beach.

I closed my eyes again, expecting comfort to come, but instead a new reel of pictures flashed in my mind: Myles dressed in a dark suit standing stoically by his mother at his father’s funeral, his eyes damp with tears he refused to shed. Another of his face across the pillow from me, his eyes fixed on mine. “I don’t know what I would do without you in my life, Zoe,” he had said, pulling me close.

Apparently he did. Because I was no longer in his life.

Now I felt, for the first time since this whole tragedy, a sob rolling up. But there was no relief in it. Only deeper sadness.

I wasn’t crying for Maggie, I realized, once I opened my eyes and remembered where I was.

I was crying for myself.

“You done?” Nick asked, already beginning to stand.

“I guess I am,” I said, getting up, knowing that I was at heart no better than the rest of them. Wondering if anyone really cared about anyone more than they did about themselves.

Myself included.

7

Sage

It’s good to be the queen (again).

They say you can’t take it with you.

It was the first thing I thought when I walked into the offices of Edge the day after the funeral, my eyes roaming over the pale gold that Maggie had chosen for the walls, the frilly little pillows she’d tossed about the couches in the lobby, the hideously sentimental pastoral scene she’d hung above the reception desk.

I wish she could have at least taken that painting.

“Morning, Sage,” Yaz greeted me from her perch behind the reception desk. I felt her dark eyes study my face as I glanced at the painting above her, and when I looked at her pretty, exotic features, punctuated by a tiny jewel in her nose, I had a feeling she knew exactly what I had been thinking. Yaz had, after all, witnessed the argument between me and Maggie over that painting, which didn’t have the edge that I—or Yaz, for that matter—believed was the image Edge should try to project.

Not that Yaz brought it up. After all, it wouldn’t have been…appropriate.

“So how are you doing?” she said instead, still searching my face.

“I’m fine,” I replied a bit defensively.

One pierced eyebrow rose almost imperceptibly. “And Tom?”

Yaz hadn’t gone to the funeral, mostly because Tom had refused to close the office and Yaz had quickly agreed to stay and answer the phones so everyone else could attend the services. She hadn’t cared much for Maggie, and being a twenty-six-year-old Goth—if a woman as dark and exotic as Yaz was could be a Goth—she wasn’t one to stand on ceremony.

“Tom’s fine,” I said finally. “But you know Tom,” I said.

“Business as usual,” Yaz replied, still staring at me, waiting for what—tears? Shrieks of happiness? Because the truth was, business was back to usual. As in back to the way things were before. Pre-Maggie.

“I’ll be in my office,” I said, needing an escape from the gleam in Yaz’s eyes.

“Sure,” Yaz said with a shrug. Then, “Oh, Sage?”

I stopped mid-escape.

“The samples for the fall line came back yesterday,” she said, her gaze on me once more.

I gave her a quick nod. “Thanks,” I said, then practically ran down the hall to my office.

Once I closed the door behind me, relief washed over me. As I took in my sleek black leather chair, the cool jewel tones I’d chosen for the walls, the way the sun slanted in across my massive desk, I felt, for the first time, a shot of sadness for my former manager.

Which was surprising, considering my office was the only bit of space at the offices of Edge that Maggie hadn’t mutilated with her “flair for decorating.”

Dropping my bag on the desk, I headed for the tall window, gazed out onto the streets, alive with the rush of people scurrying to their offices, clutching coffees and newspapers, already scattering Seventh Avenue with the debris of life.

Gone. She was really gone.

I shivered, remembering how I had, barely one month ago, during a rage over the changes Maggie had requested on my samples, declared to Yaz and anyone else in earshot, “That woman should be shot.”

A knock sounded on my door.

I straightened. Never let them see you sweat. “Come in.”

The door swung open on Shari Werner, my designer, who, standing before me in a black Betsey Johnson dress, was either displaying her usual flair for fashion or was the only one of us who was still in deep mourning. Knowing Shari, whose hands fluttered nervously to her soft auburn locks, it was the latter.

“How are you doing?” she said, her gray eyes wide with sympathy and causing a sudden alarm to go off inside me. I’ll admit, I’m not too good with emotion—mine or anyone else’s.

“I’m fine,” I insisted for the second time that morning.

“Have you spoken to Tom?” Shari asked, making me realize why all this concern was pouring out toward me. Tom and I were friends. Had been even before he’d hired me away from The Bomb. I guess people like Shari assumed that Maggie and I were friends, too. But that was Shari. Always assuming the best of people. She might have been the only employee at Edge who actually got along with Maggie.

“Poor Tom,” she said now, her eyes welling up.

I reached for my coffee, carefully removing the lid and focusing on the fragrant black brew as Shari went on about “the tragedy” and “how young Maggie was, how much life she had ahead of her.”

I swallowed a gulp of coffee, nodding in the appropriate places as I stepped behind my desk, fingering the fat file of orders I had let languish during my absence and even rearranging the pencils in my holder in order to avoid her gaze. When she finally paused in her eulogy, I looked up at her.

“So I understand the samples came back from production?”

Shari’s brow furrowed, as if she suddenly remembered we were no longer at the funeral but back at work, where there were a million more things to do now that everything had nearly come to a standstill over the past few weeks. “Right,” she said, nodding. Then, as if she couldn’t let go of all that Maggie had left behind, she said, “Oh, these are the samples that Maggie redid the merchandising on.”

“Yes they are,” I said, studying her anew. It amazed me that Shari, who had spent months designing the fall/winter line only to have Maggie decide at the last minute to change the details on at least fifty percent of the bodies we had had cut, could feel such a generosity of spirit toward Maggie. But then, I guess one of Shari’s biggest assets as a designer was that she followed orders well. After all, those bodies she had sketched were based on leather jackets and skirts and pants I had bought from the bigger designers and ordered her to knock off, adding, of course, the edge that made Edge unique. But I guess that was why I’d persuaded Tom to hire her. She was easily led. “Could you have Jamal hang them in the first showroom? I’d like to see how they turned out.”

“Of course,” Shari said, nodding fervently. Then she frowned. “Um, they’re all still in the shipping boxes.”

I sighed. “What has Jamal been doing?” Our stock boy was one of the few people who hadn’t attended more than one night of Maggie’s wake, due to claims of college workload and classes. And, as he said to Tom the one night he had shown up, someone had to tend to shipments while we were all gone. But Jamal had never been the most industrious of workers. Mostly because his idea of being in the fashion world was pretending to be P. Diddy. As in gold jewelry, glamorous lifestyle and nothing to do but be his hip-hop self.

Shari’s eyes widened, and I knew her assumption was that Jamal had been properly mourning, just as she had been. “I’ll get him right on it,” she declared. “Shouldn’t take him more than twenty minutes or so.” Then she smiled. “That’ll give you some time anyway. To adjust.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “Adjust?”

She blushed, making me feel more and more like a beast. “You know, to being back. After everything…”

“Right,” I said, looking down at my file of sales orders. “A lot of catch-up,” I said, nearly cringing as I did.

Shari had the good grace to make her exit, shutting the door firmly behind her.

I sank down in my chair, shoved the file away and put my face in my hands.

The truth was, I didn’t feel like doing anything.

Fortunately, before I could fall into a heap of something that felt vaguely like pity—though I wasn’t clear on what I had to feel sorry about—the phone rang. Assuming it was a client, I picked up, prepared to placate whoever hadn’t received their order this week, and was surprised to find my mother on the other end.

But I shouldn’t have been surprised, knowing my mother.

“Sage, I didn’t think you’d be in today.…”

“Why wouldn’t I be in?”

“Well, wasn’t the funeral yesterday?”

The operative word being yesterday. But my mother was of the school where mourning required at least a lifetime to be done properly. She’d been putting up memorials to Hope ever since my sister had died seventeen years ago. There was the annual “Keep Hope Alive” theater festival in my hometown to raise money for a children’s theater fund in Hope’s name. Though Hope had only been eleven when she died, she had shared my mother’s love of acting. The “Keep Hope Alive” theater fund was a nice gesture, but my mother—and my father, who did lights for the show every year—should have been concentrating their efforts on keeping themselves alive. Between my mother’s nonpaying gig at the repertory theater and my father’s sporadic sales—he was a painter, the kind who made a meager living selling beach scenes in the local gifts shops—they were barely surviving. Which reminded me…

“Did you make that doctor’s appointment?”

“Doctor’s appointment?”

“To have those tests done?”

“Oh, right. Well, Sage, you’ll never believe it, but the pain just went away. It was like a miracle.”

What was really a miracle was that my mother had lived this long, considering she and my father had forsaken all the necessities of life—like health insurance—in the name of living the same life they had when they met in a commune in the sixties. They had left the commune shortly after I was born, even gave in to bourgeois life enough to marry some time after my second birthday and settle down—as much as two bohemians who still thought it was the sixties could settle down—in a small house in Babylon, Long Island. The house was the only thing that saved them, really. They’d bought it for a song when Babylon was more undesirable marina than valuable waterfront real estate.

I sighed, long and deep. “Mom, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have it checked out. I sent you a check over a month ago to pay for the exam.”

“Oh, Sage, I really did appreciate your gift. We put that money to good use,” she said happily. “We had the floors fixed in Charlie’s apartment. After the laundry room flooded, they were all warped, and you know Charlie’s got that bum leg.…”

I wanted to argue that Charlie, their longtime tenant who lived in the basement, should perhaps pay for his own new floors, considering that he hadn’t paid his rent in the three months since he lost his job. But it was pointless. My parents were of the belief that what goes around comes around. The problem was, it seemed there was often more going than coming.

As if she picked the thought out of my head, my mother continued, “Don’t worry, Sage. We only paid for the materials. Charlie did the work himself. He’s so handy that way. We’re lucky to have him. Do you know he’s going to repaint the living room for us with some of his friends? We’re going to have a little paint party. Barbecue. You should come out for it.”

No thanks. I generally avoided the frequent parties my parents threw, mostly because I found them stressful. The last time I had given in and attended, one of their hippie friends—after one too many bong hits—had gotten it into his head to start a bonfire in the yard and nearly set the tool shed on fire in the process. It was too much work to be around my parents and their friends because someone had to be the sane one, and in their circle of hippie artist (read: jobless) friends, somehow it always wound up being me.

“Oh, but you’ll probably be out at Fire Island,” she continued, her tone going pensive. The fact that I had, for the past three summers, foregone quality time with my parents in favor of a share with my friends at Fire Island was the only point of contention between me and my otherwise “live and let live” mother. Mostly because it made her “baby girl’s” visits less frequent during the summer months, and since I was my parents’ last remaining child, it was my duty to keep up the family front.

“Is your boss even going to open the house?” my mother asked now.

“I don’t know what Tom’s plans are,” I said. She had voiced the question that had been sitting in the back of my mind all this time. I know it was wrong to wonder about such things in light of recent events, but the truth was, the beach was all I had to look forward to in the summer. And now, I thought, eyeing the stack of work that had built up during my absence, I wondered if I had anything to look forward to this weekend.

“Look, Mom, I’ve got to go,” I said, knowing it was better at the moment to immerse myself in Edge rather than to ponder if I was going to have a life outside of it. “I’ll call you next week. And please make that appointment. I’ll send another check.”

“No, Sage, not necessary. You’ve already done enough. We’re fine.”

Since I was in no mood to argue with my mother over her definition of fine, I said my goodbyes and hung up.

I felt the fight drain right out of me. In the wake of my conversation with my mother, the idea of tackling that folder of sales orders exhausted me. And come the end of the week, there was no hope of relief from it all. I sighed, turning on my computer. Well, maybe I wasn’t missing much anyway, I consoled myself, remembering my ill-fated seduction of Chad. As the song says, you can’t always get what you want. But now I was starting to wonder if I would even get what I clearly needed. Because in my book, there is nothing like a good piece of beach and a fine piece of booty to take my mind off more serious matters.

I clicked on my in-box and was about to murmur an expletive at the seventy-five e-mails that greeted me when my eye fell upon one with a subject heading that piqued my interest almost as much as the man himself had.

Re: Announcement—Manufacturing VP Vince Trifelli relocates to Bohemia offices

Well, well, well. Clicking on the e-mail, I opened it up and read.

After the successful management of our overseas manufacturing operations in China and Italy, Vince Trifelli is returning to New York to resume his duties overseeing production. All inquiries and correspondence should be sent to Mr. Trifelli at his new office in Bohemia, New York. For further information, please contact Mr. Trifelli’s assistant, Cindy Perkins, at 631-555-1400.

I smiled, suddenly realizing I did have something to look forward to, now that our hot manufacturing VP was back in the States and a mere train ride away.

In fact, it might be time for the head sales rep at Edge to get a personal tour of the production department, by the man in charge of making sure my skins were of the finest quality.

And maybe, while I was at it, I could get a little skin myself.

A knock sounded on my door, interrupting my thoughts. I clicked the e-mail closed, as if someone might guess, by a glance at its contents, that I had set my sights on Vince Trifelli. Office romance was generally frowned upon at Edge. Or at the very least, gossiped about. And if I hoped to take over Edge someday, the last thing I needed was to be accused of sleeping my way to the top. I could do it on my own. Especially now.

“Come in,” I said.

The door opened, revealing Jamal, looking sullen in a do-rag, an oversized T-shirt and a pair of jeans hanging so low I thought they might hit the floor. “The new samples are in the first showroom,” he said without any preamble, then disappeared.

“Nice to see you, too, Jamal,” I said, biting back a smile as I got up from my desk and followed his ambling figure down the hall to the showroom.

Shari was already there, rearranging the six samples on the display hooks we had on the walls, as if by putting them in a certain order they might look better.

But nothing was going to help these samples, I thought, studying the details Maggie had added—a buckle on one model, shoulder lapels on another. And the most ridiculously gaudy buttons—ridiculous because these bodies had been designed for urban youth and those buttons looked more Madison Avenue Ladies Who Lunch—on the lot of them.

Details were everything in this business. Which was why I felt a flicker of irritation as I remembered how Maggie had insisted that very same thing, just as she added the very details that had nearly destroyed the look of these jackets.

I turned to Shari, who was regarding me anxiously now that she had finished her fiddling. “The buckle’s not bad,” she began.

Not bad? How could she even think that? I shook my head, wondering once again whether Shari was the right designer for Edge.

Then I remembered Maggie, stepping in and ordering up all these changes, though she was the last person to be making design decisions.

“Take them off,” I said, with a wave of my hand. “Everything. The buckles, the lapels, those buttons—everything.”