Slugfest

Forty-two

The last time most of us had seen Nikki had been early Friday evening, before the reception started. She’d been fretting about the stain on her dress and had left for the members’ lounge to make sure the flower pin I’d lent her covered it sufficiently and would not impede her ability to sell garden ephemera.

“As I was leaving,” she said, “I saw my husband, Russ, coming in at another gate. I knew he’d look after things if I took a little long, so I didn’t worry about hurrying back.” Maybe that was the reason she had obsessed about the stain—she wanted to look good for the husband she complained about but still wanted to seduce.

“Go on.”

“It took me a while to wade through the crowd waiting to come in. When I reached the members’ lounge, it was empty. You haven’t been in the lounge have you?”

She described one large room with upholstered chairs and small tables arranged in conversational groupings. At either end were the restrooms. There were no doors, just large alcoves with console tables and floral arrangements, leading inside to the sinks and stalls.

“It’s not as if you can see in.” Rolanda said, clarifying for me. “It’s almost like an old-fashioned movie theater.”

“But you can hear,” I said, prompting her.

Nikki nodded her head. “Yes, if the person speaks loudly enough.”

She heard a man and a woman. The woman’s voice stayed even, but the man’s grew louder and more agitated. At one point, the female voice developed an edge. She said everything was under control and the man was overreacting.

“Don’t give me that ‘you always’ crap and don’t tell me to relax. There’s a lot of money at stake here. My future.”

“I couldn’t hear how the woman answered,” Nikki said, “but the man sounded like he was losing it. They either got much louder or had moved closer to the entrance of the restroom, so I slipped into one of the stalls. The comments got nastier and I heard scuffling and the sound of someone being pushed. During our worst arguments, Russ would never have followed me into a public restroom to yell at me, much less push me.” What a turnaround; Nikki’s husband was starting to look better.

“The woman said, ‘You look good in a tux. They cover a multitude of sins. They can deflect attention from a weak chin, a few extra pounds, and the absence of … well, you know.’ That’s when I got nervous. I thought, what if he hits her?”

I don’t know what I would have done in that instance if I thought another woman was in trouble. I like to think I would have announced my presence by opening the door and acting as a peacemaker—maybe shame the feuding couple by being a witness before one of them landed the first punch.

That’s not what Nikki Bingham did. She balanced precariously on the edges of the toilet seat and braced herself in a half crouch against the walls of the stall praying she wouldn’t be seen or heard while the row outside escalated.

“The woman said their plan was working and the man should just shut up and execute it. Especially tonight. He’d been dumb enough to bring a kid into their arrangement—and that other poor bastard who worked here—and once again she’d had to clean up after him.”

“She called him a loser and he called her a bitch.”

“Must be love,” I said.

“I couldn’t see,” Nikki said, “but it sounded as if one of them pushed the other up against the wall or the edge of the sink. They both grunted, and instead of shouting they spit their words at each other. That was scarier. The woman said she’d gotten very good at manufacturing things and could manufacture an accident if he didn’t watch his step. She even laughed and said they’d attribute it to the Javits Curse.

“They struggled. Something fell and spilled onto the floor. I saw a lipstick rolling under the door into the stall where I was hiding. I was petrified they’d find me there. Then the lights went out.”

It was pitch-black. Nikki heard the others run out and, as she tried to get down, her foot slid off the rim and into the toilet. She twisted her ankle in the bowl, fell over, and cracked her head—first on the lock, then on the tile floor, a trickle of blood sinking into the grout.

“They don’t know how long I was out, but no one found me until well after the lights came back on, so what was that, twenty-five minutes?”

“Man,” Rolanda said, shaking her head. “I will never say another bad word about those cat and dog people.”

“The woman in the lounge said, ‘once again.’ Do you think the people who were arguing were married or a couple?” I asked.

“If they were, they’re headed for divorce court,” Nikki said.

“I don’t suppose you recognized any voices.”

She hadn’t. The absence of slang or a hipster vernacular made Nikki think they were aged thirty to fifty with no particular accents or speech patterns to help identify them. Nikki closed her eyes, trying to re-create the experience.

“The woman was wearing heels. I could hear them when she moved from the carpeted lounge area to the tile floor of the restroom. While they were arguing I heard something unzip.

“At first, I worried that it was—you know—his pants, but it must have been the makeup case. That was probably what drove the guy crazy—the fact that he was going apeshit and she was touching up her makeup.”

The hospital had kept Nikki overnight and released her early Saturday morning, when she came directly to the show.

“Did I tell you Russ came to pick me up? Wasn’t that thoughtful? He brought me clothing and this darling hat.”

“That’s a little bitty thing,” Rolanda said, looking it over. “There were some serious hats at Otis’s service this morning. Hats that would need their own cars if they were going on to the cemetery.”

“Anyway, they gave me my belongings in a white plastic bag.”

Included among her possessions were the stained black sheath, Lucy’s now-flattened silk flower, one pair of high heels (right one broken and still soggy), and two makeup bags—only one belonging to Nikki Bingham. She was aching to show us the other, but it didn’t seem wise to whip it out right on the show floor. Nikki went to her booth and came back with an English-style trug filled with scented drawer sachets. She placed the basket on the floor of my booth and bent down ostensibly to look for something. Instead she fished out a plastic bag from underneath the fragrant packets and shoved it under the table in Primo’s booth.

“I don’t want some crazy lady coming after me looking for her lip gloss. I can’t think when I’ve heard a woman sound so driven—and so violent.” Nikki, Rolanda, and I agreed to meet later at El Quixote to search the bag for clues.

Was Garland Bleimeister “the kid” and Otis Randolph the “poor bastard” who’d stumbled into something? Or was this just another happily married couple having the kind of knock-down, drag-out fight most people are fortunate enough not to witness except on daytime television?

If I was right that the intended recipient of Garland’s note was someone listed on one of the dog-eared pages, I’d met or heard about most of them, most recently Cindy Gustafson, Connie Anzalone, and Lauryn Peete and her high school students. I had about an hour before we were all ejected; maybe it was time to visit the others.

But what was I looking for? An emasculated man? A woman needing to freshen her makeup? I didn’t know what I hoped to learn, but my instincts had served me well in the past and I was willing to give it a shot—for Garland and Otis, and for Jamal—but also if someone had broken into Lucy’s apartment looking for that damn bag and scaring the crap out of me and J. C., I wanted them to pay. No greed, no lust, but maybe a little revenge. As J. C. had advised, I’d watch my back.