Ella, shaken from the attack of the killer cockroach, spent the entire ride downtown standing up, watching her feet to make sure nothing with more than two legs walked over them. When she wasn’t staring at her shoes, she was darting anxious glances at our fellow travellers. Ella had never been on public transport in New York before. When her parents brought her in they went everywhere in cabs. The Gerards don’t take any chances.
“Do you think that man back there is crazy?” she whispered.
Pretending that I was reading an advertisement for a computer course, I looked towards the back.
“Which one?” I asked, my eyes now on the headline of the paper the woman sitting in front of us was reading. “The one who’s talking to himself, or the one holding up the snake so it can look out of the window?”
“Neither,” said Ella. “The one wearing the sombrero.”
We got off at Fourteenth Street. I knew my way from Fourteenth Street. At least, in dry weather and daylight I did.
“Aren’t we there yet?” grumbled Ella.
I got us to Soho OK, but I was having a little trouble finding the exact street we wanted. It was one of those little ones tucked behind a lot of other little streets with funny names. I’m better on the numbered streets and avenues.
Ella stopped and leaned gingerly against a building. She didn’t trust touching anything. “My feet are killing me,” she moaned.
“Maybe you should put your sneakers back on till we get there,” I suggested. Her heels weren’t as high as my mother’s but they were still significant.
Ella, however, wasn’t listening to me. She was looking around us as though she’d just landed on a planet with sixteen moons where everyone lived in glass bubbles and looked like trombones.
“Now what?” I asked.
It was pretty late and the streets were more or less deserted. The only people out were the kind your mother warns you never to talk to, huddled in doorways. It kind of reminded me of old photographs of war-torn Europe.
Ella finally turned back to me with a worried look on her face.
“Are you sure you know where we are?”
“Of course I know where we are,” I said with more confidence than I felt. Since I’m being totally honest, I have to admit that I wasn’t as knowledgeable about Soho as I could have been. I’d never actually been this far downtown at night by myself. Everything looked different with the shadows and the rain. But I didn’t tell Ella that. She was nervous enough.
“This is my city,” I assured her. “I know it as well as I know my own room.”
Ella gazed at the sodden avenue. “Your room isn’t this big,” she said, but she sounded relieved.
I pointed to the corner. “I think we go left down there.”
We went left, and then we went right, and then we went right, and then we went left, and then we doubled back and went right this time.
“Why aren’t there any policemen around to ask?” Ella complained as we staggered back again to where we’d started.
I was about to repeat my father’s joke about New York cops spending all their time in diners eating doughnuts and drinking coffee, but at that instant the gods blew the clouds of hopelessness away.
“Look!” I shouted. “Look what’s there!”
Ella looked to where I was pointing. “It’s a car stopped at the light.”
“No, it’s not,” I said, already yanking her forward. “It’s Mr Santini’s car stopped at the light.”
Keeping close to the buildings, and counting on the fact that Carla and Alma, who were sitting together in the back seat, would be looking in the mirror, touching up their make-up, and that Carla’s parents, if they did see us, wouldn’t recognize us in our new personae as flood victims, Ella and I started to run in the direction of the car.
We caught up with it at the next corner. It turned right. Ella and I went with it. Mr Santini obviously didn’t know Soho any better than I did, because he was going really slowly, his eyes on the street signs. We managed to keep up until he shot suddenly to the left down what looked like an alley. I gave a quick look both ways, just as Karen Kapok taught me to, then splashed into the road with Ella in tow.
We raced around the corner; just in time to see the Mercedes turn into the cross street.
“Come on,” I said, dragging her on. “He’s looking for the address. We must be pretty close.”
Ella flapped her arms in a gesture of despair. “So near, and yet so far…”
“So near, and yet so near,” I corrected.
We reached the end of the narrow road and peered cautiously around the corner building.
I squeezed Ella’s hand. “I told you!” I hissed. If by some cruel twist of fate I don’t become a great actor, I can always become a great detective instead.
Mr Santini had stopped at the curb in the middle of the next street. We were just in time to see Carla and Alma step out of the plush cocoon of the back seat and into the stormy night, an enormous silver umbrella held high. Carla was dressed to kill (or dressed to roast a turkey) in a short, tight dress – silver to match the umbrella – and silver stilettos. I glanced at my sodden clothes and muddy feet. I looked like someone had tried to kill me. With the umbrella quivering above them like a halo, Carla and Alma glided towards the black door with the number 63 painted on it in gold.
Mr Santini leaned across the passenger seat and said something. Ella and I ducked back. When we peeked out again, the Mercedes was pulling away, and Carla was showing her invitation to a very large man in black leather. He looked like the guy you’d find guarding the gates of hell.
“So all we have to do now is get past him,” whispered Ella.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ve gotten this far. From now on it’s a piece of cake.”
Ella gave me one of her looks. “Yeah,” she muttered. “Fruitcake.”
“Plan B isn’t going to work,” said Ella with new-found authority.
“You mean, unlike Plan A?” I asked sarcastically.
Plan A was Ella’s. Plan A entailed sitting in the doorway across from 63 to wait for our chance to crash the party. We’d pushed a few empty beer cans out of our way and sat. And waited. I guess we thought the guests would arrive more or less all at once, like they do for the Oscars and movie premières, but we were wrong. The guests arrived in dribs and drabs. A car would pull up, a couple of people would jump out and rush to the black door, and the car would vanish back into the night as its passengers vanished inside. Maybe if Stu Wolff’s friends really had been just regular guys, we would have been able to sneak in with them, but though he was a man of the people, most of those people drove Jaguars and Porsches and none of them shopped at K-Mart. There was no way we were going to be able to slip in without at least a dozen of them as camouflage.
“And anyway,” I continued, “it is going to work. It’s perfect.”
I was tired of waiting for a stretch limo with fifteen passengers who’d just been in a boating accident to turn up. I gazed at the black door, shining in the rain, then raised my eyes to the lighted windows of the loft above it. I could see people talking and drinking and having a good time. Music and laughter seeped into the quiet street. I didn’t want to sit in the deluge. I wanted to be inside with all the famous people, talking and laughing and dancing the night away. All the women we’d seen enter the building were stunningly beautiful and wearing stunningly beautiful clothes. Stu Wolff would never notice Carla amongst them. She’d look ordinary in that crowd. But not Ella and I. Stu might think we were homeless runaways, but he’d notice us for sure.
I grabbed Ella’s arm. “Don’t argue,” I ordered. “Let’s do it now, before anyone else arrives.” I tugged her to her feet. “Plan B, here we come.”
Plan B was simple. I’d pretend to be ill, and Ella would ask to use the phone to call my mother to pick us up.
Ella rang the bell. She did it so gently, you’d think she was hoping there was no one home.
“Harder,” I whispered. “You want to sound urgent.”
She rang it again.
“Ding dong, ding dong,” I mimicked. “What are you, the Avon Lady?” I’d been putting myself into the part of someone in intense and unbearable pain, but now I rallied. “Let me do it.” I pushed her aside.
“I thought you were supposed to be dying.” She pushed me back.
“I’ll start dying again after he opens up.” I put my finger on the bell and kept it there.
“Stop upstaging me,” said Ella, trying to pry my finger off the black button. We were so engrossed in how to ring the bell and who should ring it, that we didn’t hear anyone coming down the stairs.
The door swung open so suddenly that we almost fell in. That is, we would have fallen in if our way hadn’t been blocked by six feet of leather and a face like a wall. The doorman looked a lot bigger up close, and not nearly as charming.
He didn’t say anything, he just stood there staring at us in a sullen and inhospitable way.
I groaned and clung to Ella, holding her tightly.
“I … I … I’m sorry to bother you,” Ella stammered, “but I was wondering if we could—”
“There’s a party on,” he informed us shortly. He had the soft, polite, reasonable voice of a thriller killer. “Invitation only.”
“Please,” I gasped. “We just want to use the phone.”
No flicker of compassion showed in those steel-blue eyes.
“This is a private residence, not Grand Central Station. Use a public phone.”
“But we have no money,” cried Ella. “And my friend’s very ill.”
Mr Charm put his hand in his pocket and pulled out some change. “Here,” he said. “My treat.”
I groaned. “I think I’m going to be sick,” I whispered. “Quick! I’m going to be sick.”
A slight look of doubt appeared in the granite of his eyes.
“You can’t leave us out here!” Ella half commanded, half begged. “My friend’s going to throw up on the street.”
He hesitated for a second, obviously weakening. “Look, I don’t know … I’m really not supposed to let anybody in…” He glanced behind him, as though the answer to his problem might be coming down the stairs.
Ella and I looked, too. Something was coming down the stairs. We could hear a lot of angry shouting and the pounding of hurrying feet. The only words I could make out were ones I can’t repeat. All three of us moved to one side as two men came charging down the staircase. Neither of them seemed too steady on his feet.
“Come back here, you idiot!” screamed the one who was behind. Ella gave me a nudge. It was Steve Maya, Sidartha’s lead guitarist. “You can’t leave like this. You’re making a fool of yourself again.”
The man in the lead didn’t slow down.
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do!” he screamed back. “It’s all over, remember? I’ll do what I want!”
“Haven’t you always?” screamed Steve Maya. And then, seeing the three of us gaping up at him, he started yelling at the doorman. “Grab him, Mick! Don’t let him out!”
The man being pursued stopped at the bottom of the stairs, pointing at the doorman. “You touch me, you loser, and your wife’s a widow!” he roared.
Mick wasn’t sure who to take his orders from. He’d moved to block the door, but now he hesitated, frozen with indecision. Ella and I didn’t so much as breathe. We couldn’t. We were frozen with awe. All three of us kind of leaned backwards as Stu Wolff thundered past us and hurled himself into the stormy night.
Ella looked at me. “Now what?” she whispered.
Life is full of ironies, isn’t it? Ella and I had been desperately trying to get into the party, and now the gods had made it possible for us to do just that. Steve Maya had reached the door, and he and Mick were standing there, discussing what they should do next. Paying no attention at all to Ella and me. All we had to do was walk up the stairs and we were in. But the main reason we wanted to be inside was now outside, staggering down the street in the wind.
“Maybe one of us should go after him,” Mick was saying. “He could hurt himself.”
“I don’t care if he hangs himself,” said the man who, according to the magazines, has been Stu Wolff’s best friend since elementary school.
“OK,” said Mick. “Then he could hurt somebody else. Remember what happened in LA?”
Steve Maya laughed unhappily. “I remember. And I remember Chicago, Frisco, Albany, Tokyo, London and Manchester, too…” He laughed again. “There’s hardly a city in the world where something hasn’t happened because of him.”
I took hold of Ella.
“You know,” I said loudly, “I think I’m feeling better. I don’t think we have to call my mom after all.”
I gave Ella a squeeze.
“Well,” she said, picking up her cue. “I guess we’ll be going now. My friend’s OK.”
I nodded. “Yeah, we’ll be going now.”
We could have saved our breath. Neither of them acted as though we’d spoken.
Mick’s eyes were still on the street. “You sure you don’t want me to follow him? Just in case?”
“Nah,” said Steve Maya. “Maybe we’ll get really lucky and he won’t come back this time.”