Lucy's Launderette. Betsy Burke
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with Connie, though, Jeremy’s last live-in.
Connie was at the funeral, too, standing a little apart from everyone, but still close to the grave. I just couldn’t like her. Maybe it was because she was only four years older than me. Jeremy was over seventy when he died. I thought Connie was a gold digger. A gold digger who’d made a mistake because Jeremy wasn’t rich. Her hair was big and platinum and when Jeremy wasn’t looking at her, her face became haggard and hard. Her fashion sense was Las Vegas pro. That day she was wearing a red leather pantsuit, and frankly, she shouldn’t have been because those tight pants made her look fat. She’d been with Jeremy for the last six years but she was rarely around when I got together with him. I guess he sensed my discomfort, as well as hers.
It would probably all go to Connie, whatever Jeremy had left. The big ramshackle Victorian house near Commercial Drive, his other bikes and the launderette. The building the launderette was in had five apartments. The rents from four of them would go to Connie. But there’d be no rent from the ground-floor apartment. And if Jeremy had arranged things the way he’d intended, she wouldn’t be able to sell the launderette. Not in Bob’s lifetime.
Bob was the tenant in the ground-floor apartment. He’d lost the use of his legs in a motorcycle accident and Jeremy had given him a lifelong rent-free lease. Bob managed the launderette and overhauled the washers and dryers when they needed it. I’d heard Jeremy promise Bob that the launderette would always be there for him.
When the funeral was over, the gang invited me to join them for a farewell brew to Jeremy at the Eldorado Hotel, a charming place where the cockroaches have running tabs. But I declined. I had to get back to work. Snake, the gang’s leader, gave me a bear hug that nearly crushed my ribs and said, “Luce, he wanted you to have this.” He thrust a paper bag into my hand. The thing inside was about the size and shape of a soup tin.
I thanked Snake and walked toward the cemetery gates. There were a few cabs idling nearby. I waved brightly to my parents and got into one, clutching the paper bag tightly. Once we were moving, I opened the bag. Inside, there was a small brass container with tape sealing the lid. I knew what it contained, but to be sure, I peeked, then closed the top quickly. Jeremy’s ashes. I put the urn back in the bag.
When I got to the gallery, nobody was around but there were men’s and women’s voices coming from Nadine’s office. A man was saying something and the women were laughing uproariously. I hung up my coat, took the urn out of the bag and set it on my desk, then entered Nadine’s office. I couldn’t believe it. My mother was right about princes showing up. There he was.
2
It was my idol from university days. The man who was making them all laugh. Paul Bleeker, THE Paul Bleeker, the British-born artist who worked in all sorts of different mediums. I’d read about the clamorous success of his show at New York’s Hard Edge Gallery. It was called The Breadwinners and featured figures in business suits, the bodies sculpted in shellacked loaves of bread; rye, whole-wheat, raisin, seven-grain, sourdough. In another show, he’d used the wax from votive candles stolen from churches all over North America and Europe to sculpt figures of famous martyrs, each martyr with huge chemically-treated wicks sticking out of all their orifices. On the last night of the show the wicks were lit and the sculptures went off like fireworks, eventually melting to the floor. Nothing remained but waxy puddles and the photos documenting the event. He’d also done some very interesting things with other foodstuffs: nuts, dried pasta, legumes, squashes.
A few years back, he’d come to the art department as a guest lecturer for the 400 seminar and everybody fought for his attention, and I mean everybody, including the large contingent of girls with steel-toed boots and buzz cuts. I have a particularly glowing memory of Paul Bleeker cornering me at a party and asking me all about myself in a tone that suggested delicious things for later. I started to tell him, concentrating on the exciting and rebellious moments of my life, and banishing the Cedar Narrows parts to amnesiac oblivion. But then he was whisked away by the hostess (married, but canoodling him just the same) and I was spared having to embellish any further. Since then I’ve spent years imagining the end to that evening in all its lascivious detail.
And here he was—white teeth and black leather jacket, satanic beard and tousled hair, fitted jeans displaying his endowments. And there were Nadine and her cronies. Nadine’s best friend was Felicity, a hefty blonde who filled her days getting manicures, pedicures, facials, massages, electrolysis and meeting others for lunch. I’d nicknamed her Mae West. She toted pounds of jewelry and wore suede and silk under her chinchilla coat even for minor occasions. The man who accompanied her was not her husband but an expensive ornament who looked frequently at his platinum Rolex with an air of smug boredom. Among the others in this odd social circle, there was a man I called Onassis, a short fat Greek fast-food tycoon who wore heavy gold knuckle-dusting rings and always had a wet nub of unlit cigar in his mouth. Then there was the critic for one of the local newspapers—a tall, soap-white cadaverous type always ready to pronounce a DOA verdict for any exhibition. I called him the Mortician. The other women were limp clones of Nadine and Felicity.
Usually, the gallery was deserted during the day except for a few tourists. Normal people showed up for evening openings when they could scarf free food and drink.
Here was this little crowd of society men and women with nothing better to do on a winter’s afternoon than coo and fawn over Paul Bleeker. Somebody had brought a case of champagne and they were all drinking it out of plastic cups. Nadine pretended not to notice me for a while and then, when she decided to, she sidled over and hissed, “Lucy, where the hell have you been?”
“You knew. I told you. A funeral.”
She huffed impatiently and jingled an armful of eighteen-karat gold bracelets at me. “You have to go to the deli and get something for people to nibble on. And don’t stint.” Nadine liked to nibble. Her tastes sometimes extended to the human species. By the way she was eyeballing Paul Bleeker, I figured he was going to be dinner.
“What are we celebrating?” I asked.
“Paul’s upcoming show.”
“Where?”
“Well, here of course, you little idiot.”
I didn’t let it get to me.
Nadine was another of those towering women, but then I’m only five foot two, so a lot of women tower over me. And she was disgustingly thin, with Cleopatra hair and black almond-shaped eyes. And an attitude. And that terrible accent. A recent infusion of royal blood in a Swiss clinic? As far as Nadine was concerned, there was no one smarter, more beautiful or as important as she. I was almost certain she’d shelled out a fortune for face-lifts and tummy tucks. Too bad they can’t invent the ego tuck. I did the only thing I could in that moment and whispered, “You’ve got something black stuck between your front teeth.”
As I headed out into the cold to buy lox, she was furtively trying to catch her reflection in the glass of one of the exhibits.
When I got back to the gallery, everyone was getting a little sloppy. They’d finished four bottles of champagne and were starting in on another. I set the food trays down on a table in the main part of the gallery. They moved toward the trays with all the grace of a pack of jackals. Paul Bleeker looked over at me several times between mouthfuls of cream cheese and caviar, a queasy expression on his face, as though he had an ulcer that had just started acting up. No light of recognition dawned though, and he turned back to his little claque, munching canapés and beaming hundred-watt smiles. He didn’t remember me.
I poured myself a large glass of bubbly. Nadine would never notice. She had just draped herself all over Paul, as close to being a human overcoat as anyone ever got. I watched him extract himself delicately from her grip, reach into his pocket and pull out a small square black box. He was still smoking those silly Sobranies. But I forgave him when he lit up. I wanted to be that cigarette, stroked by those eloquent fingers, moistened by those sensuous lips, thrust in and out of his mouth…and then he looked around, spied Jeremy’s urn, removed the lid and flicked his ashes into it.
I was there in a second to snatch