The Craigslist Murders - Brenda Cullerton [55]
“Jesus!” Charlotte commiserated. “What a bore for you.”
“Yeah. But luckily there’s a new guy starting at the end of the month.”
Charlotte smiled.
34
How the hell the concierge at the Mandarin Oriental had confused Per Se with Pure, the vegan joint on Irving Place, was a question Charlotte would address later. The restaurant served no animal products and no food heated above 115 degrees—in other words, raw. For now, she sat back and surveyed the room. There was Jessica Davies Morton, too taut to talk, her skin stretched tighter than a jib in a gale. Her husband, Mort, had just succeeded in running some gigantic toy company into the ground and walking away with $300 million. “Failure is a great teacher,” he’d said to reporters with a wink, as he left the company’s corporate headquarters.
At the sound of Pavel’s voice, her focus quickly shifted back to her own table. He was bellowing at the Armani-clad waiter cowering behind her.
“Is my problem, you say? All I ask for is a piece of bread.”
The restaurant was so silent, even the din of cutlery had died.
“Sorry, sir. I told you. We don’t serve bread here. Our raw vegetables, nuts and seeds are—”
“HA!” Pavel shouted, wheezing with laughter. “Nuts and seeds? This is food for the fucking gulag.”
Charlotte smiled. How did one explain paying eighty bucks a plate for seeds and uncooked fruits and vegetables to a guy whose mother had probably spent thirty years waiting in line to buy a loaf of stale bread? In the meantime, Pavel had lowered his voice and reached for her hand.
“Listen, I apologize, Charlotte. Really. But the first time I came to America eight years ago, I borrowed a friend’s video camera. We went and shot thirty minutes of footage in the meat department at Gristedes. Because I had never seen so much meat. So you see, it is absurd to me, this idea of …”
“Pavel, it’s OK,” Charlotte replied, squeezing his hand, “I don’t really get it, either.”
“Who are these crazy peoples, anyways?” he asked, turning his head and staring at the packed room.
As the chatter in the restaurant resumed and Charlotte ordered tomato cucumber pâtés and truffle mushroom pasta made from coconut paste, she filled Pavel in with a fast and funny run-down of the local “purists.”
Oh Christ. There was Deena. Charlotte ducked as Pavel gulped from his glass of organic wine.
“See that woman over there, Pavel?” she said, sliding her eyes off towards a remote corner where a group of middle-aged “girls” pecked away at their plates. “The one in the middle of the banquette?”
“Yes …” he replied, taking another healthy gulp. “What about her?”
There was something crow-like about them, Charlotte thought, forgetting for a moment that she wasn’t alone. All sleek and beaky in black.
“Charlotte, hello, Charlotte!” Pavel was plucking at her sleeve.
“I am so, so sorry, Pavel,” she said. “Where was I?”
“You were telling me about that woman on the banquette,” he replied, looking at her curiously.
“Right. Well, she was a client of mine, wife of a hedge fund guy. She used to conduct meetings while doing laps in her pool. I would sit on the edge with my books of swatches and my photos, waiting, and she would be doing these breaststrokes, back and forth, gasping for air before she reached my end. Then I would flash the swatch and down she’d go, head in, head out.”
Pavel waved the waiters away with his hand.
Encouraged, Charlotte plunged ahead. “Anyway, one afternoon, her husband pulls me aside outside the pool room.
“ ‘I need you to do something for me, Charlotte,’ he says. He’s nervous, I can tell. There’d already been a hundred change orders on the job. ‘Sure, Anthony,’ I tell him. ‘What is it?’
“ ‘My wife, she farts,’ he says. ‘She farts all the time and the smell is unbearable.’ ”
Pavel grinned.
“This is a chic woman, Pavel. I mean, her face is all over the New York Times Styles Section every week. So I look at him and I say, ‘Well, listen, Anthony. That’s terrible. But I don’t know what you want