What Goes With Blood Red, Anyway?. Stevi Mittman

like any sort of date, Howard Rosen has called twice.

      Bobbie picks up my phone and tells Dana, who of course is talking on it, to hang up and go to bed. A short argument ensues, with Bobbie telling her to for God’s sake, pretend to go to bed and use her cell phone, then hands the receiver to me.

      “Call him right now,” she orders. Bobbie has been trying to get me to date since the morning I came out of the lawyer’s office an almost-free woman. “Men who can take you to The Polo Grill don’t come along every day, Ted.”

      I don’t want to ask what kind of man needs his sister to fix him up, so I don’t say anything.

      Bobbie raises her hands like two scales. “Christiano’s…” She lowers her left hand slightly. “Polo Grill…” Her right hand plummets down and hits the table.

      I put my hands up to weigh my options in response. “A sexy detective with very long fingers,” I say, letting my left hand drift slowly down while Bobbie giggles. “An unknown quantity with an unlimited expense account.” My right hand begins to lower. “Being responsible for myself and not having a man mucking up my life—” I raise both hands toward the ceiling “—priceless!”

      Bobbie reminds me that every man is not Rio. She has completely forgiven and forgotten when it comes to Mike, and it only serves to remind me how important it is that I find Elise’s damn notebooks before they wind up on the front page of Newsday. And she warns me that I am beginning to sound cynical when it comes to men.

      I’m afraid that she is right, and so I reach for the phone to call Howard Rosen, meal ticket extraordinaire. This is supposed to prove I’m not cynical, but I’m not sure how.

      You might think that my dialing a potential date would mean that Bobbie would leave, but then you wouldn’t know Bobbie. She sits, her short, L’Oréal Féria–red hair framing her little girl face, her dark eyes sparkling, her chin perched on her folded hands, and she smiles while she waits for me to dial.

      Howard answers on the first ring, before I’ve figured out what I want to say. He is funny and pleasant. I am morose and finally admit that it’s been a bad day, which he apparently knows from talking to Helene. While he tries to convince me that the only way we are going to get her off our case is to go out once and report that it was awful, Bobbie gets up, kisses me on the top of my head and slips out the back door.

      He tells me to get some sleep and that he’ll call again in a few days. If that’s all right, he adds. I want to tell him it’s not, but I can’t think of any reason why not and it just seems simpler to agree. I picture myself at the altar next to a man with no face, saying “I don’t have any reason not to.”

      I also imagine facing Helene after Howard lets her know that he called and I blew him off.

      I tell him he can call and then kick myself up to bed, where I sleep more soundly than I expect to and wake only when the phone rings. Gayle Weiss, the neighbor who hooked me up with Elise to begin with, is calling to give me the details about Elise’s funeral, which is scheduled for tomorrow.

      “I just can’t believe it,” she says four or five times. “Elise Meyers! So what do the police say? Was it murder?” Gayle has one of those thick Long Island accents everyone likes to imitate, and she leaves the r off murder, making it murdah.

      “I really can’t say,” I reply, knowing that isn’t going to wash. “I mean, I don’t think they’ve made an official determination yet. It only happened yesterday, Gayle.”

      “So they don’t know the murdahrah,” she says, as if using r’s costs extra. “She was hit over the head, right?”

      I tell her that I think that was what happened. I am cradling the phone between my ear and my shoulder while I wander down the hall to make sure that my kids have got themselves up and off to school.

      “And you and I know it was Jack, right?” Gayle says, without waiting for me to answer. “Listen. My David and her Jack are friends, so I can’t really get involved, but—”

      In the kitchen I find a note on the table written by Dana and signed by Jesse as well, telling me that they put Alyssa on the bus, that they hope I’m all right, that they let me sleep because of “you know” and that they’ll come right home from school in case I need anything. I am so grateful my genes outweighed their father’s that I send a kiss skyward while I give half my attention to Gayle.

      “You know Marvin Katzmann? The jeweler?” she asks.

      I stop fussing with the coffeepot to listen.

      “The police should talk to him.” I wait, my French vanilla decaf in hand. She says nothing more, which is so uncharacteristic I fear for her life.

      “Gayle?” I say. “Why should the police talk to him?”

      “I’m just saying,” she says, “that they should.”

      “But—”

      “I’m just saying,” she repeats. “You wanna go to the funeral together? We could go to the diner for some coffee before the service.”

      I tell her that Bobbie is coming with me and she suddenly remembers an errand she has to run on her way to the funeral home because she and Bobbie are like two shades of green. Separately they are each fine but together they inevitably clash.

      I call Bobbie’s and get no answer. I guess I’m on my own.

      I slip into what I suppose a cat burglar in Woodbury would wear at midmorning: a Ralph Lauren skirt I scored at T.J. Maxx and crisp white blouse, something no one would notice on Remsen Court. I rehearse my excuse if Jack is there. I’m just coming to see if there is anything I can do to help? The man doesn’t like me or my decorating so I’m not too confident that would work. I think I left something in the kitchen? What if he tells the police I came back? They’ll think I’m trying to cover my tracks or whatever it is that criminals do when they return to the scene of the crime.