I'll Eat When I'm Dead Page 9

  Sincerely,

  Margot Villiers and the staff of RAGE Fashion Book

  Cat opened another folder comprising dozens of numbered photos of Hillary from Fashion Week events, celebratory weekends, photo shoots, her Photogram account, and, eventually, though she felt a little morbid about it, Cat’s own personal files. She couldn’t figure out what to choose. Caption as much as you can, she told herself, though hesitation tugged at the corners of her mind. You’re being too emotional, she finally decided, shoving her feelings into a cupboard under her stomach before starting at the top.

  1996: Hillary pulling her first racing scull from the boathouse at the Sawyer School for Girls in Farmington, Connecticut. Go Fighting Sunflowers!

  1998: Hillary Whitney, Catherine Ono, Bess Bonner, Sigrid Gunderson, Nora Bunting-Davis, and Olivia Dolman Fox shucking oysters on the beach at Menemsha, Massachusetts.

  1999: Y2K! Hillary rings in the millennium from a balcony on Central Park West in a black Halston kimono.

  2001: Hillary graduates from Parsons. Shown here with her longtime friend Oliver Delong.

  2002: Hillary modeling a pair of bumsters, the original Alexander McQueen low-rises, at an Oscars party in Los Angeles.

  Cat worked her way through another two dozen before she got to the past year. Hillary looked nearly the same as she had fifteen years earlier: still elegant, bone-thin and white-blonde, although her style had been updated from obviously gothic to pointedly ladylike, a look that Hillary herself referred to as “sophisticated villain.” The photos showed a pale woman with dramatic freckles, no makeup, and huge green eyes. Really huge green eyes.

  Cat found a close-up, a high-res shot taken front row at Fashion Week in 2014, and dragged it to compare with a Photogram from May. Hillary wasn’t wearing eyeliner in either photo—eye makeup always looked a little bit crude on her white lashes and brows—which made the comparison simple. By placing the images side by side and zooming in, Cat could see that Hillary’s eyes had nearly doubled in size in the later photograph, the pupils and irises enlarged to cartoonish proportions. The irises might be contacts, but the pupils were all Hillary’s. It looked like she was on mushrooms. What the hell?

  Cat googled “enlarge eye” and found only spambot articles from aggregators covering makeup tricks and tutorials on inexpensive colored contacts. She didn’t bother to click on any of the links, but typed bedford organics into the browser and found the shop they’d exchanged Photogram messages with the night before. Cat punched their number into her Cooper landline.

  “Bedford Organics.”

  “Hi, this is Catherine Ono. I’m a senior editor at RAGE. Is the owner available?”

  “Ohmigod. We loooove RAGE. Unfortunately Vittoria’s not here right now, but can I give you her cell?”

  “I’d prefer to stop by the store. Could she be there in an hour, do you think?”

  “I’ll make sure she’s here. Do you know how to find us?”

  “At 400 South Bedford?”

  “Yes! Ring the third floor any time after four and we’ll buzz you up.”

  Cat thanked her and hung up. A Williamsburg-based beauty company without a street-level storefront? Real estate was obviously expensive everywhere in the city, but a semiprivate upper floor was more suited to Madison Avenue. Aping the luxury business models of Manhattan might seem like a fine idea, but Cat was surprised that a start-up beauty business could survive without traditional retail traffic. They must wholesale, she thought. Maybe that explains why I’ve never heard of them.

  She grabbed a pen and made a to-do list on a plain white index card for the following morning:

  WEDNESDAY

  finish HW memorial

  Delvaux promo lunch at Per Se

  beet dyes in home upholstery—750 words (work with Lou)

  follow up with Delvaux rep and ask to see factory

  As soon as Cat set down her pen, a leathery, manicured claw reached through the crack in her office door and yanked it open. Lou stood in the doorway, wearing a gauzy tank dress made from multiple thin slips of cream silk. The tanks billowed in the slight breeze of the office air-conditioning, whipping softly around her Pilates-carved calves. Her veiny arms were coated in henna tattoos; fine gold bracelets cut into her biceps. An enormous crystal dangled on a brass chain from the spindle of her neck, and a streak of earthy red pigment had been painted across her left cheekbone.

  “Kit-Ohhhhhhh!” Lou cried. “I have a new inspiration, and I think you’re going to like it.”

  “Desert priestess,” Cat threw out in reply, feeling kindly toward this motivated new Lou.

  “Close. Pre-Columbian jungle priestess, but with a twist: she’s the victim of a rift in space-time, wandering Fashion Week, discovering technology, using it for her own anachronistic witchcraft.”

  “Vaporwave Gaia,” Cat tried.

  “Yes? Maybe? Actually, no, I don’t think I know what that is. What’s vaporwave?”

  “It’s this thing that kids do where they put the Windows 95 logo over some computer-generated clouds and dance to remixes of Céline Dion.”

  “No. Not that.”

  “Hmm. Uh…cyberpunk Gaia?”

  “Better. Are we both talking about the same kind of cyberpunk?”

  “Cayce Pollard,” Cat and Lou said in unison.

  “I just think,” Lou opined, waving her hands around wildly, “that we could take all these earthy resort clothes, and style a kind of priestess figure out of it, a sort of first-century jungle witch—”

  “Because all the resort clothes for next season are just so natural, and logoless, and earthy, and how many fucking shoots can we do in Sedona? Totally. Let’s get Bess and Molly to pull everything together. I’m busy tomorrow, but how about Thursday or Friday?”

  “Friday I have to leave at noon. Let’s board everything on Monday and we can pitch it to Margot and Paula next week.”

  “Can we use your office, since it’s still empty?” Cat asked. “I don’t want to go in the workrooms anymore, to be honest.”

  “I know what you mean. Guns don’t kill people, workrooms do,” quipped Lou, before turning bright red. “That was awful, I don’t know why I said that, I’m so sorry—”

  “It’s fine,” Cat said. “We have to start joking about it sometime.”

  “I know, but that was tasteless. I’m sorry, I’m just still this stupid Englishwoman sometimes; we can be so rude. It’s because we repress all emotions, we forget that other people have them.” Her whole face contorted itself with regret.

  “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. And I’m not saying this because I’m offended, but I was actually just running out the door to check out a beauty company in Brooklyn. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Cat gave Lou a quick hug to lessen her embarrassment, grabbed her bag, and dashed for the elevators.

  When the M train resurfaced on the Williamsburg Bridge, Cat got a text.

  Mark Hutton here. Any chance you’d want to blow off work and get a drink?

  She responded immediately.

  Already left, heading to Williamsburg now.

  As the ellipses bubbles lit up on his side of the screen, Cat reached the Marcy Avenue stop. She shoved her phone into the pocket of her dress, hustled out the door, down the stairs, and through the turnstile onto Broadway, walking west toward the river until she turned left on Bedford.

  She paused outside 400 Bedford to check her phone one more time.

  Leicester?

  Leicester was right around the corner from where she stood. If she gave herself an hour at Bedford Organics, and another fifteen minutes to fix her makeup in their bathroom, maybe they could turn an early drink into dinner.

  Love that place. 6?

  See you there.

  She looked up at the facade of 400 South Bedford. A small neon light shone through the window of the third floor: the letter B placed inside the letter O. She hit the buzzer. Seconds later the door vibrated. Cat pushed through a small foyer into a da
rk stairwell that hadn’t been renovated or cleaned in years; no elevator in sight. She started climbing. When she reached the third floor, a short, dark-eyed Brazilian woman opened the only door on the landing and effusively kissed her on the cheeks.

  “You must be Cat-er-inne,” she trilled. “Meu nome é Vittoria. And this is my lab-or-a-tor-ee.”

  She waved Cat into a large formal parlor lined with custom floor-to-ceiling shelves. The room overflowed with merchandise packed into beautiful glass apothecary bottles nesting in matte paper boxes, wrapped with elaborate navy ribbons and handwritten labels. Cat didn’t recognize anything in the store—she’d never seen these products anywhere. And yet there was enough stock in this room to suggest a healthy, growing business, with a full product line and daily shipments out.

  “What beautiful packaging,” she said, gesturing at the shelves. “How long have you been in business?”

  “My family, we have been in bus-a-nees, oh, I think for fifty years, one way or the other, but in this space only three years. In Brazil it was my father’s company. In America, we are called Bedford, but in Brazil we are Brasília Órgãos. It’s, how you say, a play on words; it is both ‘organ’ like a kidney and ‘organic’ like bio. Everything we make, it’s for the whole body, for everything.”

  “Who carries your line?” Cat picked up one of the amber glass bottles littered everywhere; the one in her hands was labeled “Beauty Sleep” in an elegant cursive. It had a surprising heft to it.

  “Nobody! Nobody carries us.” Vittoria squinted at Cat. “We only do direct sale. We have our own customers. Everything is custom, special for each client.”

  “That’s amazing,” Cat responded. “Manufacturing and direct sale. Good for you. Like Poppy King.”

  Vittoria laughed, a throaty Portuguese vibrato. “Yes! Exactly. You understand. I’m an immigrant, you know? I’m cheap, I don’t want a middleman. It’s not good for us, it’s not good for our customers. For a long time we were just in Rio, but now, with the internet, we can move to America and make everything here; no more customs, no more bullshit, ship domestic, no problem.”

  Vittoria certainly didn’t look cheap. The pant legs of her navy silk Jil Sander jumpsuit were rolled up above a pair of spotless Chanel saddle shoes, and her only accessory was the gigantic emerald on one finger of her left hand.

  “That makes sense,” Cat said and nodded, pulling the bottle out of her purse. “I actually have a custom bottle right here. Can you tell me what it is?”

  “Oh! You sent us a ’gram last night!” Cat passed her the plastic bottle, and Vittoria gave it a squeeze, pulling out the dropper and smelling the liquid. She shook her head.

  “They are eyedrops, but everything is different for everybody. I might have to put the drops down, do some tests. Unless, do you know who is it made for?”

  “Hillary Whitney, from RAGE,” said Cat. Vittoria looked surprised.

  “Oh my gosh, that was so sad. I saw it on the Page Six when she died. She come here a lot, we make a lot of stuff for her. She was sad. She was in love. Everything we make for her was about love. So what, you cleaning out her desk?” Her voice grew thin, suspicious.

  “Not exactly,” Cat replied carefully, seeing the trepidation on Vittoria’s face. “We worked together at RAGE but we were friends for a long, long time—she was one of my first friends when I moved to America. I found the drops in a handbag she gave me. We used to trade beauty products all the time—but I’d never seen your brand before, so I thought it was a good excuse to come check out the store. Hillary was so beautiful that I straight copied her style whenever I got the chance.”

  Vittoria still looked suspicious. Cat pulled out her phone to show her old photos of Cat and Hillary, starting with the two girls side by side in their Sawyer School uniforms. Vittoria let out a few oohs and ahhs, then looked at Cat, satisfied.

  “Okay, so if you her friend, then you gonna know who she was in love with.”

  Cat sighed and eye-rolled at the same time. “Robert Reid. What an asshole.”

  “He was never, never ever, never gonna leave his wife. Poor Hillary. She wanted to marry him, to have his babies. She always say to me, I’m gonna be so beautiful that he won’t want to live without me. And I tried to help! I give her everything with a little bit of love in it, with extra energy so she can sparkle. She was uptight, you know, but these drops, these are special. They are based on an old recipe from my great-grandmother.”

  “What’s in them?”

  “Family secret. Some special plants from both sides, from Portugal, from Brazil. There’s also natural preservatives, so this tiny bottle, it would last her forever. It looks like she must have spilled it, though. She didn’t use all of it.”

  “What do you mean?” Cat was confused. Nearly half the bottle was gone.

  “These drops, they are for special nights. For the nights when the moon is full, when there is magic in the air, when you want your lover to gaze into your eyes and stay up late with you. They not for every day, not for every week. We had a long talk about it when I gave her these. I said, You can make him fall in love with you if you use these at the right time.”

  “Why is the bottle so big if the dosage is just a few drops?”

  “Well, it’s a liquid, so it does eva-porr-ate; like with an American whiskey barrel, the angels take their share. And we dilute it because these plants, they are very strong. It is very expensive to make, a long process, too, so it is easier just to make one bottle for one woman, for her whole life to have.”

  “How much are these?”

  “This leetle bottle is nine thousand dollars to buy.” Vittoria sighed. “I know, it is a lot, but it is a-hard to make!”

  “Wow,” said Cat, shock written all over her face. A glamorous South American woman selling unregulated love potions for six times my rent. So that’s who can afford to live on Bedford Avenue these days. I’m in the wrong business.

  Vittoria still held the bottle in her hands. Cat definitely needed to get it back. She softened her expression.

  “Can you really make someone fall in love?” Cat asked, pretending to telegraph lovesickness of her own. Vittoria responded by placing the bottle in Cat’s hands and folding her fingers around it.

  “Yes. You keep them. You put two drops—just two—in each eye, when it is night, where there is candlelight, moonlight, music. You dance, you look into his eyes. You will shine; you will be at your best. Just a little polish is all you need. These are gonna help you.”

  “What exactly do they do?”

  “They gonna make your eyes big, you gonna see him better, you will laugh easier. They’re gonna make you more beautiful.”

  Cat looked around the store. Every single product was labeled only with the intended effects—no cutesy product names and certainly no ingredients. Stacked behind Vittoria she could see bottles that read “Happiness,” “Clarity,” “Long hair growth,” “Nice hair texture,” “Strong nails,” “Fertility,” and, most sensationally, “Bigger breasts.”

  “I actually have a sort-of date after this,” she said. “I feel like I need all the help I can get. What else should I do?”

  Vittoria squealed. “Oh, that’s perfect. Kate already make samples for you, but now we try to find something better. Come here”—she pointed to an oversized peach velvet settee—“and sit down. You wanna tea? Let’s get you a tea. Kattteee!”

  Vittoria spent the next forty-five minutes fussing over Cat, brushing out her hair and massaging her face while she applied lotions, powders, and serums, all with a specific goal, some of them from beautiful amber jars. For happiness. For the nerves. For the regeneration of the cells. For the glow. To soften the wrinkles. To fatten the hair follicle. To thin the fat on the neck. She talked the entire time, her voice a melodic stream of stories about each product, about her family, about her own degree in botany from the University of São Paulo, about the natural fragrances she was so careful to mix—lily of the valley, rosemary, balsam, jasmine,
juniper, honeysuckle, eucalyptus, apple blossom, lavender, tangerine, and rose water, among others.

  Cat felt soothed and pampered. She’d walked into Bedford Organics red-faced and anxious as a fussy baby, but when Vittoria held up a hand mirror at a quarter to six, a radiant, breathtakingly beautiful woman stared back at her instead. Cat’s skin glowed; her hair floated around her face, glossy and voluminous. Even her fingernails looked healthier—she could have sworn they were ragged and dry this morning, but now her nail beds were tidy and clean.

  “You want to add the mulher bonita drops?” asked Vittoria. “It’s gonna be a beautiful night. It could be a good night for these.” Cat nodded. Vittoria gently tilted her head back, placing two drops in each of Cat’s eyes.

  She wrapped up Cat’s dozen or so samples and a few full-size products in thick brown butcher paper, tying them together with a heavy grosgrain ribbon. Kate brought her a small Provencal-style woven basket with leather handles and placed the products gently inside, fastening the handles together with more ribbon.

  “All of this, it’s a gift for you. You try these out. And share! Make sure you share, okay?”

  Cat nodded and ducked into the powder room, which was lined in Dupioni silk curtains, to apply some deodorant and a flamingo-pink lipstick. She felt incredible. The floor-length bathroom mirror confirmed it: Cat could see that she now looked more beautiful than she ever had in her entire life, almost as bewitching and ethereal as Hillary Whitney. When she stepped out to pick up her packages and say good-bye, Vittoria pressed her little body into Cat’s to give her a warm, friendly hug.

  “I’m so glad you come by today. Hillary was a lovely girl. You come by any time. You share these with all your friends, you give them my number; I make more, custom.” She winked.

  Cat thanked her as she took her bag of product, then floated down the staircase out to Bedford. The sidewalk pavement sparkled in the summer sun. Instead of the usual polka-dot pattern of old gum stains, she noticed the glimmering flecks of mica and granite embedded in the slabs; instead of tasting garbage in the air, she smelled the lavender and lily traces wafting off her own skin. Her sneakers felt unexpectedly light as she wove her way through the after-work crowd of pedestrians, all of whom seemed to notice her, to happily bask—just for a moment—in her glow.