Fiona Love (27 page)

Netty and Cleo were resting in the second bedroom, Mechante’s mother in the third. She would explore those rooms in her new home later. She’d already made her mind up not to sell. She couldn’t bare the idea of displacing Mechante’s things, and she could easily afford to keep two homes. Mechante didn’t carry a mortgage on the apartment, or the house in Chicago. The taxes had been paid for the year in both places. Netty and Cleo had been surprised to learn that Mechante had very few debts
, and those only recent bills.

Fiona and Gloria were not. Mechante, for all her
globetrotting, had always kept a very close eye on her business affairs. Frequently advising her two agents how to get the most money for her on jobs, she always knew the going rates and asked for more.

“I’m not the average bitch,” she’d told her European agent once in Fiona’s hearing. “Therefore, to have t
he best they need to pay more.”

She delivered too. Mechante was rarely late. Was consistently courteous and professional, never showed up drunk or high no matter how late she’d stayed up the night before, and she always looked beautiful. She offered tips to ease the work o
f photographers, dressers, makeup and hair artists, and was generally a pleasure to work with. She was the kind of person who brought Danish and coffee for everyone when she came to work.

“It’s half selfish, honey Love,
” she’d once laughed. “I mostly do it to make things easy for me.”

Even when that scandal Sugar had referred to broke and threw her in with the notorious, Mechante hadn’t been a victim, she’d just
been kicking it with the dude!

“I was spending his money,” she laughed to
Fiona. “Not giving him mine.”

She had advised Fiona over the years on investments and money. It was Mechante who had introduced her to her current business manager. Having grown up poor, Mechante logically equated money with comfort and freedom, and as she’d always maintained, she was prepared to do what she had to do to get it.

“You always need a few thousand in cash tucked away at home in case you haveta tella muh’fucka to go to hell,” she’d told Fiona on more than one occasion. Just as she’d say, “You’ve got too much shit, Feef,” while looking around Fiona’s home. “You need to purge some of this crap so you can be light on your feet and ready to maneuver.”

Fiona came to the last room, the laundry room, and found a small washer and dryer combo and a large white deep freezer. She frowned staring at the freezer. It didn’t fit somehow, though it was tucked neatly into a corner of the large, square room with its folding table, double sinks and crisp white wood cabinets. A round gold laundry basket sat on the floor beside the dryer holding some of
Mechante’s things.

Fiona’s eyes narrowed as they returned again to the freezer. Her mind floated back to the instructions in her friends’ letter: before the party clean out that freezer. I’m dead, not a slob, she’d written. Don’t forget how deep our frie
ndship goes.

The space
between Fiona’s shoulder blades began to itch when she opened the freezer. It was perfectly clean, empty except for a bottle of expensive Russian vodka – Mechante’s favorite brand – and a thick layer of frost. It was also much shallower than it looked from the outside. Fiona’s eyes examined the freezer for some minutes, wondering if she was crazy standing there looking at nothing. Then her gaze fell on a dip toward the far right side. It was almost invisible, but her finger probed and found a shallow indentation. She tugged, and felt a little give, but whatever was hidden, the gateway had been frozen shut.

She left the lid open and b
egan to open drawers until she found a screw driver. She began to chip away at the ice along the edges of the freezer around that mysterious dip. It took her a while, and by the time she threw the tool aside, her fingers had gone numb, and her heart was pounding. She yanked, the last of the ice broke away, and a long plank of plastic broke off in her hand.

Fiona reached down under its edge, lifted and the shallow bottom
lifted easily to reveal tight, neat rows of plastic wrapped Euros. They went all the way all the way across and all the way to the bottom of the freezer. There was a note on top wrapped in plastic and written in Mechante’s small neat handwriting. It said, “Shhhh! And remember - I told yo’ punk ass freedom ain’t free!”

“That crazy bitch,” Fiona whispered and spun around. She was still alone. She leaped to close the door, turned the lock and spun back to look at the freezer as though its conten
ts would jump up and bite her.

Slowly she reached in and began to count. Thirty odd minutes later when Daney knocked on th
e door, she was still counting.

“Fiona?” he asked, rattling the knob when he found it locked. “Are you all right? Let me
in!”

Fiona rose from the circle of money that surrounded her and pulled him through the door. She c
losed and locked it behind him.

“What the fuck?” he asked, shocked as he looked at the piles of money on the floor and the open freezer that had dropped the temperature in the room at least 15 degrees. Fiona hadn’t n
oticed. “What the hell’s this?”

“She said, ‘don’t forget how deep our friendship goes.’
She repeated it. When I came in here and saw this freezer, I opened it and,” Fiona shrugged.

“Jesus,” he whispered. He peered into the freezer, found it empty and closed the lid. “There’s gotta be a quar
ter of a million dollars here.”

“More,” Fiona
told him.

“Why the hell’d
she put it in the freezer?”

“To keep ‘em from gettin’ it
through death taxes, probably.”

He laughed. “Smart girl. She left her mother hooked up. Even set up a separate account to cover the death
tolls. And she left you this.”

“And this apartment.”

“She really loved you.”

They look
ed down at the piles of money.

“Help
me put it back in the freezer.”

“Aren’t you going to bank it?”

“Fuck no!” Fiona yelled. “How the fuck would I explain where I came up with nearly €500,000 euros all of a sudden? The man would have his paws on this cash so quick, our fuckin’ heads would spin. ‘Til I figure out what to do, it stays on ice.”

Daney grinned. “Well, there’s a shit load of people coming here tomorrow. I say we take some of the money and buy party favors and a new dress,” he kissed her cheek lightly.

Fiona grinned back, smiling deeply for the first time in days.

“She loved me,” she said.

He nodded.

She scooped up a thick stack of cash and looped her arm through his. “Right! Mechante said BYOB, and if I know her friends, they will, but we’re gonna need some food to soak up all the booze. And thanks to her, at her last party we’ll be serving caviar.”

Netty and Cleo were still sleeping, so she and Daney took a cab to a fancy grocery store and deli ostensibly to buy lunch but really so Daney could ask the owner if they catered. No, she answered, but conversation revealed the name of a reputable catering service that would come in, cook, bartend, serve and clean up. Daney called them from the shop while Fiona let the woman assemble a traditional French lunch for the house.

F
iona caught a word here and there. He was arranging to meet the caterer to look at menus. He explained that it was a rush job while she looked out the cab windows at Paris.

“We should get some flowers,” he said to her bef
ore turning back to the phone.

He asked the cabbie to drive them the long way
, and they passed the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Sacre Coeur. In her mind she heard her friend’s boisterous belly laughter clearly.

“Snobby male pricks and know it all bitches,” Mechante would have said fondly, looking out on the same scene. “Parisians can be assholes,
but I fuckin’ love this town.”

The next morning the apartment was bustling with florists and caterers. Gloria pulled Fiona aside to thank her for everything she’d done, and to say that she would be leaving the party around 10 to go to a hotel. She planned to spend the next few days revisiting places Mechante had taken her to over t
he years before she went home.

“She’s everywhere in this apartment,” she said. “I need to get out and walk. I thought I’d go smell some flowers in the 14
th
Garden District, and sit outside and eat some of those flaky little pastries she loved. I’ma walk around and maybe make my way up to the top of that Tower, then I’m going home. I’m tired, Fiona, and I’d like to sit and miss my girl on my own ground.”

Fiona pulled the older woman close, and they squeezed each other
with sad but genuine affection.

“I’ll have Netty or Daney call and book you a room.” A suite. She’d use Mechante’s freezer money to pay for it. “Mechante’s friends will fall in love with you,” she teased. “They’ll see the more seasoned
version of her, the original.”

Gloria was a few inches shorter than her daughter and no longer as lean. She was also darker and had brown eyes, but no one would dou
bt Mechante had been her child.

“Go on, girl. They ain’t gon’ p
ay no attention to my old ass!”

******

“Did you bring your guitar?” Fiona asked Natty after Gloria had gone to pack. He’d shown up late morning and would be taking her room after she left.

“Always. Why? You feel
like workin’?”

“Sort of. I wrote this to sing at Mechante’s party, and I was wondering if you’d accompany me.” S
he handed him a piece of paper.

Natty scanned the lyrics and rough melody, grunting here and there. “Pen.” She handed him the pencil she’d used, and watched him scratch and scribble for about ten minutes before he said, “This is dope.” He handed the paper back and p
icked up his guitar. “Sing it.”

Fiona sang, and while the caterers and florists floated around doing their thing, they wrote a song
for Mechante.

“We’re recording this when we
get home,” he told her. “Yeah?”

Fiona nodded. “It will be my memorial to her,” and her voice broke. Natty would have taken her in his arms, but Fiona shook her head and held up a hand. She wasn’t taking
any chances Daney would come in, see them and misunderstand.

Natty laughed softly and cuffed her on t
he shoulder. “You’re learning.”

F
iona coiled her whole self around that song. Each note sounded like she’d pushed it through a train wreck, and many in the audience were holding their breath. Daney had never seen Fiona look more beautiful, and no one in the world, Natty later said, had ever heard her sound like that.

Tears flowed as Fiona sang, “Sometimes, I can’t help it. I’m searching helplessly for love. Freedom’s a deposit you make to keep from goin’ crazy. Oh, I know it’s not smart, but I loved you. I loved you.”

When the last note from Natty’s guitar had faded into the hush, there was a pregnant pause before the party erupted with applause. The caterer’s had been busy distributing champagne on Netty’s orders, so when Fiona brushed the tears from her face and held up her hand for silence, the crowd hushed instantly.

“I’d like to propose a toast to my very best friend, Mechante. She was gorgeous and funny, and –” Her voice faltered, and Daney came over to hold her hand. “She had a, a huge
heart,” she dashed away tears impatiently. “I wish I could share with you how much fun we used to have. The jokes, the laughs. She was so smart and sweet, so generous.

“
Mechante was one of those rare women men and women love. She was a beautiful, wildly successful model and business woman, and utterly real. I’ve known her since we were four years old, and in all these years, never once did I call on her in need and have her deny me. She meant the world to me, and I’m sure she meant a lot to all of you.” Fiona felt her heart lighten at the tearful smiles and nods. “I loved that girl,” she said quietly but with so much heart several people around the room began to sob.

Fiona held
a glass filled with vintage champagne high. “To my beautiful Mechante. She will be truly missed.”

******

They packed to leave the next afternoon. The caterer’s had returned the apartment to its original pristine condition, happily collected their gratuity, and left Fiona to look through Mechante’s closet. Most of her friend’s clothes wouldn’t fit. Mechante had had very little bosom and practically no hips, but Fiona wanted some things to take with her in remembrance.

She didn’t want to leave, but her grace period was running out fast. Andrea and the rest of her publicity posse were beginning to chirp about her going back to work.

“Look at this,” she said suddenly.

Daney came over and whistled. “Good Lord, that girl was somethin
g.”

Off to one side of the closet
Mechante had at least three gifts for each of them hanging on hangers or waiting on shelves in boxes marked with their names and addresses. She’d marked everything carefully with the date things should be sent so that her assistant Marni could handle things if she was away.