Chapter 7: Final Dress

Ward pulled over outside Joanie's building and looked at my face.

"What is it?"

I turned the phone toward him.

He looked at the photo for a long second. His jaw moved.

"I'll call her," he said.

"No, you won't."

"Cleo."

"You decided something for me once tonight already," I said. "That's your limit for the week."

He put both hands on the wheel and held it.

"Then what are you going to do?"

"Go to bed," I said. "And go to work."

At ten to ten on Thursday morning, I knocked on dressing room two.

Lenore was at her mirror in her robe, gluing a lash on.

She saw me in the glass and smiled with half her face.

"Morning, sis."

"Send it," I said.

The lash stopped halfway to her eye.

"The photo. Send it to the press. Send it to the investor. Post it. I'm not going to beg you not to."

"You'd be ruined."

"I've been ruined since Sunday. It's going fine."

"Fifteen minutes to places," I said, and closed the door.

She didn't send it.

Not Thursday. Not Friday. Not over the weekend.

On Sunday I moved back into the top floor on Bank Street. I told Joanie it was the cat.

"The cat loves you," Joanie said.

"The cat sat on my face at four a.m."

"That's love in Astoria."

I left a dollar on Ward's kitchen table every morning. He never mentioned it.

On Monday Lenore still hadn't sent it.

On Tuesday she hadn't.

On Tuesday night I found my dollars clipped together in an envelope by the door, labeled "RENT" in his block capitals.

That scared me more than if she had. Lenore never sat on anything. She was saving it.

Wednesday, March 11, final dress.

And Ward, in the last row, where he'd sat every day of tech.

"Standby the storm," I said into the headset. "Standby deck, standby rail, standby rain."

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