The Craigslist Murders (15 page)

“What’s a nitpicker?” Charlotte asked, fighting off a fit of giggles, and carefully moving toward a chair in the living room.

“It’s a person who charges $100 an hour, Charlotte, to comb through my child’s lice-ridden hair like one of those grooming monkeys, on a Channel 13 documentary!”

Rita collapsed on a chair. “I need something to drink, Charlotte. Please, get me some water or juice. I’m exhausted.”

Charlotte reached for the small, embroidered, crewel-work pouch on the coffee table. The words “Ring My Bell” were stitched on the outside of the pouch in yellow thread. The pouch concealed a small wireless device used to summon the help. Similar pouches were scattered casually all over the house. Charlotte pressed the unseen button and wondered, yet again, if the embroidered words were supposed to be funny.

“Lice are rather common these days, Rita,” she said, fanning her fire. “So are bedbugs.”

“Bedbugs!?” Rita’s wail brought the young Ecuadorian girl, the one Charlotte had last seen at the Vineyard, scurrying into the room.

“Yes, I read somewhere that there’s an epidemic of bedbugs in the city.”

Ignoring the detour on bedbugs, Rita continued haranguing Charlotte as the maid stood there, waiting for her orders.

“Rita, didn’t you say you wanted something to drink?”

“Oh! Yes,” Rita hurumphed, turning to look at the girl. “Alba, bring me some ap-ple juice. Ap-ple. And I want the ice cubes made from Fiji water. Comprende?”

“Si, Senora. Right away.”

Charlotte was in such a buoyant mood after seeing Pavel, it didn’t even annoy her that Rita hadn’t bothered to ask her if she, too, might enjoy a drink.

“Listen, Rita,” Charlotte said, sweetly. “I’d love to hear more about all this, but you said it was important I make time for you today.”

“You’re right, Charlotte,” Rita said, giving a tug to her Carolina Herrera skirt and standing up. “If you just give me one minute. I have something to show you.”

As Charlotte sipped Rita’s apple juice, a young man slipped into the living room and began knife-creasing, plumping, and rearranging the down pillows. Rita was one of many clients who hired a professional pillow person to come in once a week.
How ludicrous
, Charlotte thought. While the rest of the world worried about terrorists, tsunamis, wars, and deadly viruses, Rita worried about her pillows, lice, and nitpickers.

Bored and impatient, Charlotte skimmed through the titles of Rita’s newest “must reads” stacked on a Hepple-white side table.
The Angry Self, The Dance of Anger, Angry Kids, Anger Busting 101
. The truth was, Rita probably spent three hours a week talking to her shrink about feeling angry. When she wasn’t talking about it or just plain feeling it, she was reading about feeling it.
What a vicious circle
, she chuckled.

Charlotte picked up a glossy brochure. The shiny retro blue and white plaid cover featured a cute vintage logo with the word “COOKBOOK” floating in the center. When she saw the words “Whiting School Annual Report” printed beneath it, Charlotte snorted a laugh.

Had they never heard the expression “cooking the books?” she thought.

“Pretty funny, huh? Charlotte?” The unexpected sound of Abe’s deep, throaty voice startled her. The brochure dropped to the floor. “It’s okay. I laughed, too,” said Abe, as he came around her to shake hands.

“I guess they have a great sense of humor,” Charlotte said.

“No, Charlotte. The problem is, they have
no
sense of humor,” Abe replied. “Why do you suppose the world has become so tediously earnest? And you don’t have to answer that.”

Charlotte liked Abe. Bald, chunky, and dressed in a pair of beat-up old jeans and running shoes, he was delightfully unpretentious. Charlotte’s relationships with the husbands of her clients played a pivotal part in her success. After years watching her mother manipulate rich, powerful men, she had learned how to please them. Accustomed to subservience, she knew that they also enjoyed the occasional challenge—a woman who, far from appearing to be intimidated, came in close enough to puncture their thick skins; to make them laugh at themselves. Charlotte felt there was nothing more seductive in a woman than this ability to make a man laugh at himself.

Today, she watched him as he struggled for something to say. It touched her that he chose to make that effort.

“Are you here to talk about moving the pool?” he asked with a small smile.

“I sincerely hope not,” Charlotte answered, honestly.

“Good! It’s the Johnsons, you know. My wife wants them to put us up for membership at the Ocean Club. She thinks that moving the pool will, somehow, increase our chances.”

“I see,” she replied, wondering what Abe thought of Birkin Bag Syndrome.

“Ah! Here she is,” Abe said, hurrying over to give his wife a kiss.

Rita was carrying a large manila envelope. “I hope the wrist feels a bit better, dear?”

“Don’t mention it, please, Abe,” Rita said. “I was just going to show Charlotte the paint chips for the new house on Dyer’s Lane.”

“What
new house on Dyer’s Lane?” Charlotte felt as if she’d been ambushed.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Abe said, sensing the possibility of an unpleasant scene.

“We’ve bought another little place on the Vineyard, Charlotte,” Rita said, “on Lake Tashmoo.”

“What for, Rita? The place in Gay Head is so beautiful.”

“Yes, but it’s on the ocean. I like the idea of having a place on a lake, too. It’s so much more tranquil. I’m going to use it to meditate,” Rita added, opening the manila envelope and spilling a pile of paint chips onto a $100,000 Chinese rug that Charlotte had finally found at auction in London.

“Talk to me, Rita, please talk to me,” Charlotte said, trying to remain absolutely calm.

“Don’t get upset, Charlotte. I know how busy you’ve been. So I decided to just go ahead and hire a professional colorist.”

“Rita, this is nothing but white paint,” she said, forcing herself to smile while rifling through the pile.

“It’s thirty-two different shades of white paint, Charlotte. The colorist thinks that the shade has to be exactly right. Because of the light, you see? The light up there changes all the time.”

“You’re not Picasso or de Kooning, Rita. What do you care about the changes in light?”

Charlotte could see that Rita was annoyed. Her nose was twitching. “Just take these home with you, Charlotte. And call me when you’ve calmed down, alright?”

“Fine, no problem,” said Charlotte, gathering up her coat and gloves from the chair.

“We’re not doing any work on the place till the spring. So you have plenty of time,” Rita said, bussing her on the left cheek. “It’s going to be great fun, I promise.”

Charlotte snatched the paint chips and shoved them into the side of her bag before slowly walking out of the apartment. She took careful, measured steps, like a drunk pretending to be sober. The only thing that improved her mood was the text message from Pavel. “Thank you, Charlotte, for such a wonderful New York evening. I will call you later about dinner on Tuesday and the visit to Max.” That and the fact Rita hadn’t even mentioned moving the pool.

Sunday morning was blissful. She’d taken a three mile speedwalk up from Battery Park to the piers before breakfast. Stopping to stretch and drink a cappuccino, she stood beneath the rusted, old White Star Liner gates on 14
^th
Street. This was where the Titanic had been scheduled to arrive before it hit the iceberg. Charlotte was not a traveler, not in the real sense of the word, but twice a year, she flew the same migratory route as the rich and restless nomads she so religiously served: Paris, London, St. Barth’s, Rome,
Aspen. Last year, she’d even been to Morocco and the year before, to Rajasthan.

Charlotte’s travel was like reading Page 6 in the
Post
. It gave her something to talk about with clients. It made them feel more comfortable, imagining that their decorator shared the same “taste” in travel. It was like sharing her visits with her shrink. The shrink proved that Charlotte wasn’t perfect. It made her clients feel less inadequate. But Pavel and his fairytales, the story of the dacha, the silent, snow-filled forests, and even Moscow, had spurred a sudden longing to get away. Far away. And to go by sea on a private yacht. To be surrounded by nothing but water and sky. To be unmoored …

A gust of freezing wind tossed bits of litter into the air as Charlotte turned around to jog back home. She’d take her time reading the papers and look at the “brand” profile that had been e-mailed to her from Darryl’s handlers. Their letter explained that it was important for Darryl’s home—and therefore Charlotte’s work—to reflect Darryl’s overall brand image. “Handlers!” Charlotte sneered.
What a perfect word
, she thought. After all, it is what they call people who train circus animals.

As she turned the corner onto North Moore Street, she noticed a white van parked in front of her building. “Nothing dull here!” read the sign on the side of the van. The license plate read: BSHARP. It was Leo. Every year, he drove up from Florida and circled the neighborhood, stopping to sharpen kitchen knives and garden tools.

“Hey, Leo. It’s me, Charlotte!” she said, running up to shake hands with the wizened old white man leaning up
against the van. His skin was as brown and wrinkled as an alligator.

“How’s business?” she asked.

“Not bad.” Leo replied, nodding towards the bright red SUV parked behind him. “These are all his,” he added, holding up a bouquet of lethal-looking silver scissors.

A very large bald black man sat inside the SUV, pounding on the steering wheel. The throaty bass from his woofers shook the vehicle. The word “BREATHE” was written in white script across his windshield. The letters were so big, Charlotte couldn’t imagine how the guy could even see the road. Splinters of sunlight reflected off the floating gold “rims” or “dubs” as Charlotte now called hub caps after her midnight rambles through the Auto Parts section of the List. Charlotte breathed. Deeply.

“I’ll bring you some coffee in an hour or so, Leo,” she said, fleeing inside the building.

An hour later, she was lying on the couch and skimming through “The Hunt,” her favorite new column in the
New York Times
Real Estate Section. These stories about poor, struggling yuppies, students launching careers, and middle-class families searching for somewhere to lay their heads in Manhattan always made Charlotte feel richer. The funniest piece this week was in the Metro section. Some architect had cut a hole in the wall above a bedroom door and stuffed a mattress in it. It was supposed to be a joke. When he posted an ad on Craigslist for “an elevated, mattress-sized space between rooms,” he got over a dozen requests to rent it.

Charlotte had drunk too many cups of coffee. Her hands
were jittery. Squeezing her eyes shut, she massaged her temples. Silvery spears of light flickered as a series of wildly dissonant, dizzying images sped through the darkness. First she saw the trustees’ dinner at the museum, the Brickmans’ fifteen-room duplex, their two houses at the Vineyard, and Rita’s $78,000 Birkin bag. Then she caught a glimpse of the women in that Russian village, still hauling pails of water around on wooden poles; of Amy Webb’s mansion and $350 silk underpants. Opening her eyes, she remembered Vicky’s $14,000 cocktail suitcase and Darryl’s 12,000-square-foot apartment. Finally, she thought about John, the homeless man, commuting to a street corner from his shelter every day, and the hulking black man pounding on his steering wheel while he waited for his scissors.

For more than thirty years, Charlotte had gone out of her way to avoid thinking. Thinking implied that something might be thawing inside, like the tingling that she’d felt in her toes when Pavel was talking. Thinking triggered questions and doubts. Charlotte couldn’t afford the luxury of either. Pavel had been furious on Friday night when she had implied that there might be similarities between life in Russia and New York.

There were similarities. It wasn’t just the chasm that separated the unimaginably rich from everyone else; “the haves from the have yachts” as Vicky snidely put it. It was the murderous, suffocating rage that had inspired the black guy to write the word “BREATHE” on his windshield. Nobody could breathe anymore.

Last summer, she’d had to deal with this one woman who literally couldn’t breathe; who was so allergic, so
“sensitive,” to everything on the face of the earth, Charlotte had to hire an environmental consultant just to choose the freakin’ fabrics. Then she’d brought in an acoustician, too. The woman was so “sensitive” to noise, she insisted that the sound of slamming car doors, fourteen floors below on Park Avenue, was giving her migraines. Lowering the ceilings and installing duct work for the air-conditioning system had been another nightmare. “I don’t want any insulation, no fibers, nothing that might get into my lungs!” the woman had shouted. When she’d also demanded that they find a way to pump pure oxygen into the apartment, it was the engineer who’d finally shut her up. “You wanna blow this whole fuckin’ dump sky-high, lady? Go ahead and put in your oxygen.”

Tom, the masseuse, had a theory that the allergies were part of what made these women feel special—that they were fragile and needed to be handled with as much care as their precious antique furnishings. Charlotte suspected that the allergies were just another symptom of rage. “Rage isn’t an emotion,” her shrink had once claimed. “It’s an attempt to hide from emotion. To avoid sadness issues.” Charlotte herself had no time for sadness. Sadness was for the weak. For “victims” who blamed everyone but themselves for their unhappiness.

But in July, an old client had told her about a visit to the shrine of some Sufi saint in Iran. “Please do not worry yourself,” the guide had gently warned her client before ushering her towards the silent chamber. “Everyone who enters this room cries.” Her client had laughed until she sat down on the bare stone floor, closed her eyes, and began to sob,
uncontrollably. “It was the strangest sensation,” she’d said to Charlotte wistfully. “Like being embraced by this aura of absolute goodness. I couldn’t help myself.”