Hex and the Single Girl (24 page)

“She didn’t,” said Emma of Natasha’s mother.

“That’s right. She didn’t. Mom is a marketing VP at NBC. I spit on the carpet and curse her for refusing to get me a job there. I’m five months out of college and stuck dabbing a carpet with tissue paper because of something you did.

But I’m grateful to you, Emma Hutch, for reminding me of the huge advances black people have made in America

today.”

“Where’d you go to college?” asked Emma, agreeing that Natasha was meant for better things.

“Columbia,” said Natasha.

“What was your major?”

“Bitter irony,” she said and hung up.

Natasha must have graduated with top honors.

Despite Natasha’s warning, Emma had to find Daphne. There was the small chance that William merely fired Daphne and didn’t reveal Emma’s breech of confidentiality. In which case Emma could plead for a small part of her fee. The situation was hopeless, but Emma had to try. No other choice.

Times Square was a long slog from the Village. Two miles. But she had an hour and didn’t want to pay for a cab. She started walking.

As she hoofed, she imagined Daphne’s expression when William said, “You’re fired.” She couldn’t help smiling. She would have loved to hear the whole conversation. She heard William’s voice. Saw his face. Touched his face. Licked his face. She pictured him on the phone, naked as usual, sitting in an executive desk chair, feet propped on his desk, saying, “And one more thing, Daphne. I never wanted you. There is only one woman I want.” He hung up, looked at Emma, breaking the fourth wall, and shouted, “You’d better apologize, or I might not forgive you.”

Honk.
A white stretch limo pulled up alongside her. The back door opened, and Sherman Hollow, Esq., Marcie’s lawyer and advisor, stepped out.

“Pleasure to see you again,” he remarked, strolling alongside her. The limo cruised along, keeping pace with the walkers. This was her third limo rendezvous in a week. Her neighbors must be getting suspicious.

“I changed my mind about the twenty thousand,” said Emma.

“Twenty thousand?” he asked.

“What you offered me for info on Daphne Wittfield.”

“That offer is off the table. If you please,” he said, gesturing toward the limo. She hesitated. He begged softly,

“You’ve got to get in there. I can’t be alone with them for another second.”

Curious, Emma peered inside the limo door.

Sprawled on the commodious backseat, Marcie looked strangely plebian. Her platinum hair flat and unbrushed, she wore a plain white T-shirt, a pair of cargo pants, and sneakers. No makeup that Emma could see, but then again, most of her face was eclipsed by the large dreadlocked head of sculptor Alfie Delado, also in a white T-shirt, cargo pants, and sneakers. They were sucking each other’s tonsils.

“They’ve been like this for two days. And I’ve had to listen to it,” whispered Sherman. “Marcie insisted I sit in a chair outside Mr. Delado’s Brooklyn hovel—on a decrepit landing—in case I was needed.”

“Needed for what?”

“Food,” he said scornfully. “I also had to arrange a clothing delivery from Old Navy.” He spat out the last two words with disgust.

“Emma!” trilled Marcie suddenly.

The two lovers disentangled.

Emma waved at them. “I see you found each other.”

“We have to be in Times Square in an hour for my billboard unveiling,” said Marcie. “Want to come?”

“You bet I do!” said Emma, getting in. Sherman joined her on the bench facing Alfie and Marcie. “I was headed that way myself.”

Alfie held out his hand. They shook. He said, “I have you to thank for sending Marcie to me?”

“Don’t thank me,” said Emma.

“We do,” said Marcie. “Without you, we never would have met.”

“But you had met,” said Emma. “At Alfie’s art exhibit.”

“How do you know that?” asked the blond. Emma stammered. She’d been in disguise that night, of course.

Thankfully, Marcie cut in. “It doesn’t matter. I wasn’t open to Alfie then. That was the old Marcie. The superficial, money-and appearance-obsessed Marcie. The one who didn’t understand anything. But now I do. Thanks to Alfie.”

The limo set a slow course uptown. Facing backward was making Emma slightly sick. She said, “What, exactly, is your new understanding?”

Sherman scoffed. Couldn’t help it. Marcie glared at him and said, “I understand that everything my life used to be about wasn’t real. Fashion. Jewelry. Fame. Money. None of it is real.”

Emma would love to disagree. Money
was
real. As real as eviction and homelessness.

“Neither is religion,” said Alfie, blasphemer sculptor. “Or physical beauty.”

The same beauty he was apparently transfixed by in Marcie’s fresh-scrubbed face. Emma preferred her this way, natural, approachable. She looked like any (dumbfoundingly) pretty girl on the street.

Alfie said, “Marcie can’t help being beautiful. But true beauty comes from inside.”

At that, Marcie opened her lips for Alfie, all the better to appreciate her inner loveliness. He responded with fervor, and the two started making out again. They seemed oblivious to their spectators.

Emma looked at Sherman. He said, “Two days.”

Marcie came up for air around 14th Street. “I admit, I sought out Alfie for the wrong reasons.” She gave Emma a knowing stare. “I admit, at first, I wasn’t attracted to him.” They laughed nostalgically, remembering the earlier hours of their love. “But then we started talking. And I started to think about what I was doing with my life. The influence I have on people, on women. Gaining and losing weight for money is wrong. To be the reason women take diet pills…

Did you know that the active ingredient in SlimBurn is some tree bark that thousands of acres of rain forest are destroyed for each year? I didn’t. Alfie showed me how to research on the web. Did you know that fourteen people have overdosed on SlimBurn? The pills aren’t even FTA approved.”

“FDA, Marcie,” said Alfie.

“You see?” she said. “He corrects me. He wants me to learn. The men I knew before would just nod and tug on my gstring. It was like they weren’t even listening to what I said. This love is real. And I’m going to prove it to Alfie and the world.”

Sherman droned, “As your lawyer, I advise you not to do anything that’ll jeopardize your contract with SlimBurn.

They can sue, Marcie.”

“They won’t,” said Alfie.

“What do you know?”

“Don’t you want them to sue, Sherman?” asked Marcie sharply. “You can head the legal defense team. Surely, you went to Harvard Law School for that!”

Emma asked, “So what’s the plan?”

“Alfie has a brilliant idea for a new collection of sculptures,” said Marcie.

“The theme is how major corporations suppress feminine power and identity,” said Alfie.

“Corporate logos with breasts attached?” asked Emma.

“No,” said Alfie. “Clitorises.”

Marcie said, “There’s a press conference in Times Square today. At the unveiling of my billboard. I’m going to give a speech that will knock them dead. Will you stay and watch?”

“Definitely.”

“Daphne’ll be there,” said Marcie.

“Nervous to see her?” asked Emma, who was.

“Can I tell you a secret?”

“If you dare. I haven’t been very trustworthy of late,” muttered Emma.

“Daphne and I have a competitive friendship,” said Marcie. “I’ve stolen one or two of her boyfriends. And she…well, the jealousy between us goes deep. Alfie has made me realize that I should end the friendship. I’m through with her.

Today will sever our connection forever.”

“Do you have your index cards ready?” asked Alfie.

Marcie patted a cargo pants pocket. “Right here.”

Sherman said, “We’re on 42nd Street.”

“Emma, will you stand by me?” asked Marcie. “For emotional support?”

“If you want,” she said. “But you’ve got Sherman and Alfie.”

“I’ll be right next to you the entire time,” promised Alfie.

Sherman said, “Permission to speak freely, Marcie.”

“Granted.”

“You’ve known this man for two days,” started Sherman. “You’ve been working on this ad campaign for a year. With another year left in the extremely lucrative contract.”

“You see?” said Marcie to Emma. “Another man who thinks I’m a moron.”

Sherman said, “Has it occurred to you that Mr. Delado might be using you? That he’s an opportunist, seeking publicity for his own purposes, and once you’ve done all you can for him, he’ll move on to use someone else?”

Emma expected Alfie to defend himself. But he merely smiled serenely at Sherman while holding Marcie’s hand. She said, “I know you’re trying to protect me, Sherman, and I appreciate it. But you can’t understand. Your weren’t in bed with us.”

“I was close enough,” muttered Sherman.

Emma wondered if sex could be that transformative. Was it possible that two days in bed with a man could completely change one’s outlook, goals, perspective? Perhaps it wasn’t so inconceivable if the woman was, like Marcie, a deep, empty well that desperately needed to be filled. Emma thought of sex with William. How he’d shown her colors, made her look different (everyone noticed). The leap from “looking different” to “a different way of looking” was small.

Only three words. Perhaps Emma, too, was a deep, empty well, thirsty and dry?

She’d been in bed with William for one hour. Imagine what he could do to her in two days. It was useless theorizing, Emma chided herself. He’d never come near her again.

The limo pulled to a stop. Sherman dialed his cell phone. “We’re here,” he said into it. “No, Marcie wants to stay in the limo until it’s time to go on stage. We’re parked underneath the grandstand. No, Ms. Wittfield. Absolutely not.

Marcie will leave the vicinity immediately otherwise. Okay, then.”

He hung up. “We can wait here. Daphne will call me five minutes before you’re supposed to speak. Someone will wait outside the limo to escort you up. She asked me twice if you’ve practiced the speech she wrote for you.”

“How much longer?” asked Marcie.

“Twenty minutes,” said Sherman.

“I’m getting nervous,” she said.

“You need a distraction,” suggested Alfie. He cupped her perfect chin, raised her mouth to meet his, and then kissed her. Emma watched, not repulsed, but in awe of the beauty of it. Marcie’s face, tilted just so, and Alfie’s lips, which were red and full. With his dreadlocks pushed back, his profile was sublime, with a prominent nose and strong jaw.

Emma hadn’t noticed how handsome he was before. Perhaps sex was transformative for men, too.

Emma wished she could be William’s mirror. To see him as he saw himself.

Sherman said, “I need air.” He stepped out, and Emma followed him. She could use air, too. As soon as her boots hit pavement, she got a skin prickle. Daphne was near. She could smell her, even in the miasma of Times Square odor.

Boiled hot dogs, roasted pralines, cigarette smoke, burning light bulbs, horses, peppermint gum, paint, wet cement, newsprint, hurried bodies, anticipation, dread, excitement, fear. Broadway was business as usual.

Emma looked up, up, on the riser. There was Daphne, twenty feet away, atop the grandstand, seating reporters and photographers in metal chairs. The stage itself was built on scaffolding against the uptown side of One Times Square, the sole building on the tiny island of pavement where Broadway and Seventh Avenue intersect at 42nd Street. Above the stage, twenty stories high on the side of the building, hung a white sheet covering the billboard with its historically huge Marcie. A single breast would span two stories.

Police circled the stage, some on horseback. Emma waited until one was giving directions to a tourist and then slipped by, walking quickly but casually toward the stairs that would take her to the top of the stage. She emerged onto the platform and practically tripped over Daphne at the top of the stairs.

“Out of my way,” said her former client.

Emma followed her back down. “We have to talk,” she said.

“Not now,” said Daphne. “I have nothing to say to you.”

“You canceled my check!”

At the bottom again, Daphne plowed into the doors of One Times Square and barked instructions at a couple of guys with walkie-talkies. Something about ropes and pulleys and a live broadcast on New York One.

“Are you still here?” growled Daphne, speeding back up the stairs to the stage. “I don’t owe you anything.”

“But you got what you wanted,” said Emma, breathing heavily behind her.

Daphne stopped, spun around, and pushed Emma against the metal railing of the stairs. “William Dearborn called me this morning and fired me. So I didn’t get what I wanted.”

“Did he give a reason?” asked Emma, trying to sound shocked and horrified.

“He said he didn’t trust me,” answered Daphne. “That he’d had a vision. Of me, prying into his brain with a crowbar.

He said this vision ’popped’ into his head. Out of nowhere. As if it’d been put there. By magic.”

Emma said, “Sounds like he’s having a nervous breakdown. He should seek help.”

“Perhaps that’s what I’ll tell my bosses when they want to know why Crusher Advertising lost a twenty million dollar account,” said Daphne.

Twenty million? William hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d called Daphne’s fifteen thousand dollar payout a drop in the bucket. It was less than a drop. A droplet. “Okay, forget about the bonus,” said Emma. “I’ll swing by your office later, pick up a check for five thousand.”

Daphne dug her fingers into Emma’s shoulders. “You’ll get nothing from me and like it.”

“I can work on Dearborn some more. I can fix things,” said Emma. She could beg William to rehire Daphne.

But the blond didn’t want to hear it. “Being fired by William Dearborn is the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

“This can’t be the absolute worst,” said Emma. “What about that time you killed a guy?”

Daphne had the lightning reflexes of a leopard. She didn’t hesitate for a second before slapping Emma across the face.

Emma rubbed her cheek said, “I guess a reference is out of the question.”

Daphne, crazy eyed, would have thrown Emma off the stage stairs, but a cowering techie behind them said, “Ms.