Slugfest

Six

When Babe wasn’t finding work for me, she was trying to fix me up. The jury was still out on her latest matchmaking effort: Hank Mossdale, a stable owner in Springfield. We had met over a mountain of manure he’d generously offered on Freecycle, an online bulletin board where people found takers for their unwanted stuff. I was the only nibble. Hank and I had shared a few diner meals but no actual dates until Babe donned her matchmaker hat and suggested he drive to New York on Monday, to help me deliver Primo’s unsold items to a library in Ridgewood, where she had arranged for a private showing the following week. Surprisingly, Hank said yes.

During the flower show, I would crash at Lucy Cavanaugh’s apartment. She was my oldest friend and one of my last real connections to my life in New York. I had no serious regrets about leaving the big city, just the occasional twinge when Lucy jetted off to some exotic place and I found myself shoveling compost or dining alone with my seed catalogs.

This time Lucy was somewhere in Central America for work. She was delighted to let me use her place and anything in her closets, since in her fashionista math it would bring down the cost per wear of any clothes I borrowed. Always happy to be of service, I arrived a few days early.

My booth neighbors at the flower show were David Heller, one half of a Brooklyn Heights couple who made light fixtures with botanical motifs, and Nikki Bingham, a chatty antiques dealer from upstate New York. Nikki and her much-mentioned but never-seen husband specialized in vintage and reproduction garden furniture.

Both she and David subscribed to the notion that food is love, and it was abundantly clear that every morning and afternoon would be punctuated with a platter of rich, breadlike substances in which we would all be encouraged to partake lest we be considered antisocial. She came over and held open a white cardboard box, and the smell of cinnamon filled my booth.

“Crumb cakes,” she said. “I made them myself.”

“I had a big breakfast,” I fibbed. I set down my things and pitched the gatecrasher’s bag in my booth under a standard trade-show rental, a six-foot table tastefully stapled with royal blue plastic. “Maybe later.”

David Heller didn’t have an ounce of fat on his rangy body and had no such reservations about the crumb cakes. He plucked a thick square from the box and a gust of brown powder escaped.

“Quite an outburst this morning. Anyone know what happened?” David licked cinnamon sugar from his fingers one at a time.

Nikki launched into a detailed re-creation of events, including a very good, if unkind imitation of Connie Anzalone’s hysterics. “I wasn’t there, but I heard about it in the ladies’ room. That’s where you get all the best info.”

“Her garden didn’t look that bad, but she was pretty upset,” I said. Why kick the woman when she was down? Connie Anzalone was an easy target. The Little Mermaid outfit didn’t help.

“She’ll recover,” Nikki said, mouth full. “And you watch, two guys named Paulie and Vito will be guarding her booth tonight.” She flicked her nose with her index finger, leaving a trail of cinnamon on her left nostril.

David’s eyebrows rose over hipster, tortoiseshell frames. “Do you know her?”

“A little bird told me. Her husband’s connected, if you know what I mean.” Nikki had already downed two pieces of cinnamon cake, so she settled for picking at the topping on her third. “Apparently you don’t get your lawn mowed in her neighborhood without Connie’s husband’s say-so.”