Diane Vallere - Style & Error 03 - The Brim Reaper (2 page)

Before I decided to take—or not take—the phone, a voice came through. “Engle? You there?” Pause. “I want you and your stuff out of here by midnight tonight.”

The bald man grabbed the phone. “Midnight is too late for me. I’m out of here now.” He shoved the phone into his pocket without hanging up. He looked at me. “If you want to help, tell your friend to get as far away from this exhibit as he can.”

He left me standing by the locked front entrance and strode off in an angry path to the back door.

I counted to ten before realizing I had to approach the man in the office, and then I continued counting to twenty-seven. When no other angry people appeared, I click-clacked my way to the office and tapped on the door. There was no answer. The door was cracked and I pushed it open.

“Hello?” I called. The office was empty. “I’m Samantha Kidd and I’m here to help with the exhibit. Hello? I need a museum pass.”

I stepped inside and looked behind the door and behind the desk. As far as offices went, it was bigger than I would have imagined. A row of white bookshelves filled with hardback tomes about costume design, fashion history, famous designers, and art covered the back wall. A steel desk sat in front of the bookcases, and an olive green ergonomic chair was pushed away from it like someone had stood up quickly.

“What are you doing in here?” a voice behind me asked.

I spun around and faced a thin black man. He pushed past me to the desk. A silver plaque bearing the name Thad Thomas sat by the back of the computer monitor. Like the angry man earlier, this man was bald, though I could tell his was a style choice, not an inherited trait. His bright green eyes were trained on me. I’d never seen eyes so green before. My money was on colored contacts.

“I’m Samantha Kidd,” I said for the second time that morning. “I’m here to help with the exhibit.”

“The exhibit is upstairs.”

“I was told to check in with someone in this office.”

As he looked past me to the desk and around the office, presumably to see if I’d pocketed anything while in the office alone, I took in his outfit. Blue and white checkered shirt with a yellow bowtie. Dark denim jeans. Frye boots.

Frye boots?

“Why didn’t I hear you?” I asked.

“What?”

“Your boots. They should have made noise on the marble floor. Why didn’t I hear you?”

“Rubber soles.”

“Frye boots don’t come with rubber soles.” He stood straighter and focused on me. For the briefest second I regretted my black strapless jumpsuit, my silver leather blazer, and my lime green obi belt. The pink shoes I stood by.

“Tell me again why you’re here?” he asked once his full-body scan was complete.

“Eddie Adams asked me to help with the exhibit.”

“You’re here to help Eddie? He’s upstairs. I’ll get you a pass this afternoon.”

He pushed me backward and went behind the desk. I got the awkward feeling that I had been dismissed but wasn’t sure. After a couple of seconds, I left the office and climbed the concrete stairs.

The Ribbon Museum of Art had been part of the city’s history since the late twenties. As a child growing up in Ribbon, I’d been on more than one field trip to the imposing building during elementary school. I discovered “Jazz Under the Stars” during my teens and had a few dates at the planetarium across the parking lot.

The building was one of my favorite places in Ribbon. A spacious foyer, with admissions on the left and the gift shop on the right, gave way to a flight of wide marble stairs. Ten steps up was a landing, above which was a massive window that looked out over the impeccably groomed grounds. The staircase split into two additional flights, one to the left and one to the right, both leading to the upstairs gallery space where I found Eddie.

Eddie Adams, visual manager for the local retailer Tradava and the extender of the invitation to come to the museum to work for no pay, was knee-deep in Styrofoam peanuts and Bubble Wrap. His hands were wrapped around a white mannequin he was trying unsuccessfully to anchor on a brushed-chrome pole base. Behind him stood an army of similar mannequins in various poses, some missing arms or legs. At least two were headless.

“Hey, Dude,” Eddie called out to me. Beads of sweat had broken out on Eddie’s forehead. His bleached-blond hair, left uncut for the past several months, was tucked behind his ears. He planted his black and white checkered Vans on either side of the mannequin and tipped it to the side.

“Hey. This place smells like garlic and moth balls,” I said, wrinkling my nose.

“Can you help me out with this, please?”

I waved my hand in front of my nose to dull the smell and walked to where he stood. I picked up a long white leg and snapped it onto the torso and then tipped the chrome pole and poked around under the butt of the mannequin until the pole slid into the opening. All in all, it was an embarrassing display of, well, visual display.

As the base slid into the figure, Eddie shifted the weight of the mannequin toward me. I wrapped my arms around her slight waist, and my strapless jumpsuit dropped a couple of inches, threatening to expose my chest. I dropped the mannequin and hoisted up my neckline.

Eddie grabbed the torso and staggered backward under the weight of the prop. He then pushed it back to a standing position.

“Dude?” he asked.

“I had to adjust.”

He scanned my outfit. “I told you to dress appropriately.”

“What’s inappropriate about my outfit?” I turned away and faced the mirror that was propped against the wall. Any regrets I’d momentarily thought when the man downstairs had given me the once over had vanished. The jumpsuit had been left over from my J.Lo phase in the early millennium. I’d cinched it all with a lime green belt, buckled into pink, patent-leather ankle-wrap sandals, popped a wide silver cuff on my left wrist, and topped it all with a silver leather jacket. Every piece had been rediscovered through a recent attempted closet purge, which resulted more in a rediscovery of treasures I’d forgotten about than any actual purging.

I grabbed the base of the column, helped Eddie move it a few feet to the left, and then backed away as he righted it and lined the straight edge of the base to a perfect parallel with the wall behind him.

“How’s the job search going?” he asked.

“How much do you think I could get for a dozen satin cargo pants from the mid nineties?”

“That well, huh?” Eddie flopped down on a pile of Bubble Wrap. A burst of popping sounds shot from under his tush while he rearranged his legs in front of him. He let out an exaggerated sigh.

“The main problem is my recent work history. I was a buyer at Bentley’s for ten years, which was great, but it feels like another lifetime ago. After that I moved here and worked at Tradava for a week. Six months later I worked at Heist for something like that too. So basically my resume makes me look like a flake.”

“I might have a lead for you. That’s why I wanted your help. I can’t pay you, but I thought I could be a reference. Give you something to fill in the gap in your employment until you find a job.” He kicked his feet out in front of him. “But it doesn’t really matter, I guess. This whole project has been trouble from the start. You showing up looking like an extra in a hip-hop video is just the icing on the cake.”

I ignored his dig. “Why would my outfit have anything to do with your project?”

“Because my project could very easily become your project.”

“I’m not following.”

“Your major was the history of fashion, right? This exhibit encompasses that. We’re getting loans from some of the best private collections of clothing in the tri-state area, along with a couple of local hat stores and one designer from Hollywood.”

I leaned forward. “The museum’s putting on an exhibit on the history of fashion? Here, in Ribbon? You’re in charge of it? The whole thing? I would
love
to be involved with something like this, but my experience is in retail buying, not visual.”

“That’s where the opportunity comes in. I’m in charge of the installation. I’m giving you a foot back inside the door.”

“So why’s my outfit a problem?”

“I need you to be my liaison with the sponsor.”

“Who’s the sponsor?”

“Tradava.”

Tradava. The local department store that had promised me a job but delivered a homicide investigation—and then sent me a very polite letter that said they were dismantling the very department I’d been hired to work in.

As soon as I heard the name of the store, I tensed. I turned away from Eddie and pushed my fingers into my long brown hair, boosting the roots, while delivering a mental pep talk at the same time.
Tradava would be lucky to get me back.

“You’re the curator?”

“Guest curator. More like exhibit merchandiser. Last year the museum sponsored a visual competition between a few different retailers. Tradava won. The prize was the chance to guest curate an exhibit. It took a while for the board of directors to agree on the exhibit concept and for the director to obtain loans from collectors, but once they green-lighted it, I’ve been on an almost impossible deadline. If you’re looking for something to tear you away from your job search, I could use your help coordinating the exhibit.”

 “Maybe I should forget about Tradava. Maybe what happened is a sign that I shouldn’t work for them.”

“Sign-schmign. You need a job. They’re hiring. Sounds like a match to me.”

“You don’t believe in signs?”

“I believe in stop signs and sale signs. Everything else is woo-woo.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked, turning to face him, my hands on my hips.

His eyes went wide. I looked down to make sure I hadn’t accidentally lowered my neckline with my stance.

“Dude! Move!” he cried out. He jumped out of the chair and came at me with the force of a cannon, catching me off guard and knocking us into a shipping container of Styrofoam peanuts. A crash sounded behind him. I lifted my head and looked at where I’d stood. A beam of track lighting had fallen from the ceiling, landing on the white mannequin Eddie and I had assembled. She lay crushed on the floor, a pile of broken limbs.

2

The box collapsed under our weight. Eddie rolled off me to the floor and looked behind him. I yanked up the top of my jumpsuit.

The thin black man from the office scaled the staircase. “What happened?” he asked. His eyes went from the light fixture in the middle of the room, to me in the middle of a shipping container of Styrofoam peanuts, to Eddie.

I struggled to get out of the box with little success and even less decorum. “The light fixture fell.”

Eddie and Frye Boots looked at the ceiling. Eddie’s arms dangled by his sides. Frye Boots crossed his over his chest. They studied the mess on the floor. The track sat, bent at an unfortunate angle, on the exact space where I’d been standing. The head of the mannequin rolled back and forth. Eddie put his sneaker against its cheek to make it stop.

With a little momentum I flipped the box onto its side and rolled out. I got on all fours and pushed myself up to a standing position, dusting residual Styrofoam bits off my tush.

“I’m okay, thanks for asking,” I said.

“Let’s try a formal introduction here,” Eddie said. “Thad Thomas, meet Samantha Kidd. Samantha’s here to help with the exhibit. Sam, Thad’s the assistant to the museum director.”

“We met downstairs,” he said, ignoring my outstretched hand.

Thad turned to Eddie. Afternoon light from the museum windows glistened off his almond-colored, clean-shaven cheeks. “Milo Delaney is on his way with the collection. You’ll have time to unpack everything and start setting up today.”

He handed Eddie a janitor-sized key ring on a lime green D-clamp, which Eddie fastened to the waistband of his already-low jeans. “Keep working as long as you like. Drop the keys off in my office before you go.” He turned his back to us and left down the grand staircase without saying goodbye.

“Is everybody around here so rude?” I asked.

“Never mind him. Are you okay?”

“I think so.” I looked at the lamp and then up. “Has that ever happened before? A light fixture falling from the ceiling?”

“Not as far as I know.”

We stared at the ceiling for a few more seconds.

He tapped the ring of keys so they bounced against the palm of his hand. “Remind me to put these in the admissions office before we leave tonight.”

“I don’t think there’s much of a chance of you forgetting, considering they’re compromising the waistband of your pants.”

He looked down. A band of elastic with Joe Boxer stamped on it rested under his washboard stomach, his loose pants a good two inches below on the right-hand side thanks to the weight of the keys. He tucked his index fingers into the belt loops and hiked them back up. As soon as he let go, they fell again.

“Who’s the extra in a hip hop video now?” I asked under my breath.

He made a face at me and let the keys dangle. “The engineers were trying to figure out a way to remove the track lighting yesterday. Maybe they started the job and nobody told me, which is possible since I’m not even supposed to be here right now. Either way, until somebody moves this thing, I’m at a standstill.”

I bent down, wrapped my hands under the steel track of the light fixture, and then lifted with my back the way most chiropractors tell you not to do. The beam lifted a few inches, but I was able to do little more than move it to the left.

“This is not good.” He leaned down with his head between his knees. His hands were on his head, and after sitting there for upward of a minute, he mussed up his hair and pushed his hands out front. I joined him on the pile of Bubble Wrap.

“I get the feeling the light fixture is only part of the problem,” I said. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“What’s there to talk about, really? Tradava has been trying to build their reputation as an affordable fashion retailer. Somebody on the board thought it would be a good idea to start hosting events every market week, to give the city of Ribbon something ‘fashiony’ to participate in and connect back to the store. I’m working with the head of the history of fashion curriculum at I-FAD and the director of the Ribbon Museum of Art to put together an exhibit that Tradava’s sponsoring.”