5

TAMAYO WAS OUT on the street smoking. A man either not in costume, or in costume as a seedy Times Square lowlife, was leaning on the wall next to her, trying to pick her up under a faded sign promising “Air Conditioned Comfort,” painted on the brick wall of the old Malabar building.

“Hey, Bob,” Tamayo said to me, in her deepest, most masculine voice, which she was able to pull off somewhat better than the lonely little men inside Joy II. Our friend Sally claimed this was due to Tamayo’s being someone called Ruby Helder, girl tenor, in her last life.

“Aw, c’mon, you’re not really men,” the guy said to me. “Are you?”

“We’re cops on undercover duty. No time for idle chitchat now,” I said, using my tough sailor voice and quickly flashing my NYPD press pass. “There’s a perp on 42nd.…”

The guy looked like he wasn’t sure, and these days you can’t be too sure, especially with a half-Asian in a blond wig and a tight sequined dress on Halloween. Then he said, “Sorry,” walking away a few steps casually before beating a retreat.

“You have to stop doing that,” I said. “One of these days we’ll get gay-bashed by one of these freaks.”

“There’s something about me that attracts these guys. I’m giving off a pheromone,” Tamayo said.

“That, or the fact that you’re gigged up as Marilyn Monroe and standing outside a strip joint.”

“I dunno. I’ve been hit on by a lot of guys in ratty brown shoes lately. So what did Candy say?”

After I filled her in, she said, “So, if this is a stunt, we don’t have to worry anymore, right? We can go down to Sam Chinita and grab a quick bite, then see some of the parade on our way downtown,” Tamayo said.

“A quick bite, sure. I’m starving. That vitamin hasn’t kicked in yet.”

“This Julie was a good friend of yours?” Tamayo asked.

“My best friend for years since just after she moved to Ferrous in fifth grade until the summer before I moved to New York. Haven’t seen her since 1979. We had a big falling out.”

“But why a murder mystery?”

“When we were kids, we used to do these mysteries,” I said. “My mom started it, as a party game for my twelfth birthday. We followed clues until we solved the mystery and got to a treasure. Julie and I did this a lot for birthdays, and whenever we had a falling out and needed to make up.”

“Instead of just saying you were sorry and talking it out or anything crazy like that,” Tamayo said.

“Well, this way you didn’t have to actually say you were sorry or admit out loud that you were in the wrong. It was also more fun.”

“It is pretty funny,” Tamayo said. “But you haven’t talked to her in all these years, and this is the way she gets back in touch with you, inviting you along on a charity-mystery thingie? She couldn’t pick up the phone and call you?” She sounded just like her Jewish grandmother on Long Island when she said that, which is just a bit jarring, hearing that voice coming out of her.

“Yeah, I thought that too. But this is Julie. And I think it must be like overdue-library-book syndrome. You leave something so long that you’re embarrassed to take the book back, or pick up the phone, whatever. She was always really good at these things.”

“You want to see her after all these years?” Tamayo asked.

“Yeah. She was a pistol. She’d laugh at a quality fart joke,” I said, growing suddenly sentimental. “Taught me a lot, Julie Goomey. She taught me how to draw a perfect three-dimensional horse head, taught me double dutch. She taught me how to pee standing up.”

“You can pee standing up?”

“Yeah. It’s easy, all you need is a simple kitchen funnel, in whatever size is appropriate for you.”

This is particularly handy if you’re on a camp out in the woods and want to avoid brambles, bugs, or embarrassing sneaker splatter. With a little funnel manipulation, you can even write your name in the snow.

“Damn. Julie Goomey, after all these years. It’ll be good to see her and catch up, give me a chance to thank her.”

“For what? Teaching you how to pee standing up?”

“If it wasn’t for Julie Goomey, I would never have moved to New York.”

For that reason alone, I owed her. I owed her for a few other things too.

Speaking of accidents that send one’s life spinning in an unexpected direction, my life would have been so different if it wasn’t for Julie Goomey. In 1979, Julie Goomey and I were in Ferrous, Minnesota, going to community college part-time and working full-time, me managing a Burger King, Julie in accounting at Groddeck Motors. Every Friday night, we put on our Calvin Kleins, so tight we had to lie down on the bed to get them on, and went with our boyfriends Chuck and Lance to Ye Olde Pizza Factory, then to a movie or the roller disco, where we drank Boone’s Farm strawberry wine in the parking lot because the disco was dry. I admit that I never liked disco, and even now the strains of “Stayin’ Alive” bring a green tinge to my skin, but it was fashionable then, so I went along with it, secretly listening to country rock on my eight-track player while obsessing over my Rubik’s Cube at home.

(Funny, but what I most remember about the period before we decided to go to New York is not Chuck, college, disco, or even the hostages in Tehran, but Rubik’s Cube. I was addicted to it. It got so bad I took my Cube with me everywhere, to parties, to work, to my boyfriend Chuck’s sporting events. When he looked up from the ice after scoring a game-winning goal in a pickup hockey game and saw me not watching him but clicking my Cube, he gave me a choice: him or the Cube. After that, I worked on it secretly, ducking into the john, taking it out of my purse, and giving it a few spins. I think one of the reasons I was so obsessed with it was that Julie had solved it pretty easily, whereas I was baffled. Only when my grades started to suffer did I finally drive my car over my Rubik’s Cube to remove the temptation. I never picked up another one.)

By this time, Julie Goomey and I had abandoned our adolescent dreams—I had wanted to be a television reporter (which had replaced crime-fighting cowgirl) and she had wanted to be a painter (which had replaced bandit queen)—and, spurred by the illusion of True Madness, we now dreamed the same dream, to marry our boyfriends, buy nice houses in Ferrous, and raise nice kids. Except for the part about marrying my then boyfriend, that dream still sounds pretty decent to me, though for me it is no longer achievable.

Then we went to New York, and it changed everything.

When Julie first suggested going to New York for spring break in 1979, I balked. Our boyfriends had been planning since fall to go to Florida to cheat on us, and naturally I wanted to go down there too and spy on them. But Chuck got wise to my spy plan and made it clear that not only was I forbidden to set foot in Florida, but he would look unkindly on my going to any warm-weather place. I know, I know. Hard to believe that I, Robin Hudson, was ever so docile, but I was going through a powerful conformity phase, so, rather than upset him, I agreed to stay off beaches.

That’s when Julie said, “Let’s go to New York and shop.”

The boys found this to be an inoffensive alternative. Better to have us shopping in parkas in chilly New York than dancing drunk in bikinis on a tropical beach somewhere. So, while they planned their “Daytona Drunk,” as they referred to it, Julie and I planned our trip to the Big City. I was still worried about Chuck’s trip to Florida, but Julie’s enthusiasm for New York helped motivate me. The New York trip was the first thing to excite me since I’d given up the Cube. I went to the library and photocopied whole chapters from guidebooks, clipped out magazine articles, wrote away for all sorts of brochures.

Back in the 1970s, New York boasted three bank robberies an hour and five murders a day. Affluent Manhattan parents gave their kids “mugger’s money” when they went out, so they had something to hand over in case they got held up. Clearly, Julie and I needed “street smarts.” We studied up on the rules, so we wouldn’t look like the complete rubes we were. Hold your purse close to you, the advice to out-of-towners went. Don’t make eye contact, don’t talk to strangers, don’t look up at the buildings.

We followed the “rules”—for about an hour. There was so much to gawk at. I mean, if you followed those rules you could visit New York, spend a week here, and leave without really seeing any of the sights or talking to anyone. Anyway, all the trouble we took to learn those rules, and people in New York instantly knew we were from out of town. Go figure.

On our agenda were the usual tourist things, Broadway shows, the Empire State Building, shopping at Saks, Macy’s, and Bloomingdale’s. We also wanted to eat at an automat (like Marlo Thomas did in “That Girl”), dance at Studio 54, go to an Andy Warhol party (after reading about such things in People magazine), and meet exciting, cultured men who would be dazzled by us, though we would remain loyal to our undeserving and morally inferior boyfriends, at least as far as I was concerned (after reading that newsmagazine cover story about “Herpes, the New Scarlet Letter,” and how it was cutting a swath through New York’s singles scene).

The night we went out with George and Billy to Table Bas, the Malabar, and points south was the second night we were in New York, our first real night out, since we’d arrived late the previous evening. We were on a budget, so, instead of taking a cab when we arrived in New York, we took the JFK express subway train, only to get off at the wrong stop and get caught in a torrential rain. Unable to hail a cab, we walked, dragging our suitcases, stopping en route in a coffee shop called Two Joes to warm up and dry off a bit. I remember I had a moment of déjà vu there, which is strange, having a déjà vu in a city you’ve never been to before. When we finally got to the hotel, we changed into our jammies, blew-dry our hair, and ordered the cheapest things we could from room service. We were exhausted from the trip and a bit too intimidated by the city to go back out into it on our first night. While we watched a TV with terrible reception (even New York didn’t have cable then), Julie Goomey marked a map with red pen, highlighting all the places we wanted to go.

I could still see her sitting on her bed, smiling so sweetly, chewing on her red pen while very conscientiously considering our route. I had a photo of that somewhere.

On our second night, after an all-day Grayline bus tour, we went down to the hotel bar, Paddy Fitzgerald’s, and there met Billy and George as they were coming out of the men’s room together. George grabbed Julie’s arm and said, “You are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. You look just like Marie Osmond, only better.” Something like that. It was a long time ago, we drank a lot that night, and the details are kind of a blur.

This I do remember clearly: George’s friend Billy wasn’t very friendly at first and said, “We really should be going.”

“Whaddya talkin’ about? We’ll have a drink with the girls,” George said. “You’re not going to walk out on two beautiful girls like this, are you?” He had a strong accent, I now recall. He said beautiful girls, “buhyootiful goils.”

Though I was a bit leery, Julie, who had a nose for money, took note of the gold cufflinks, the Rolex watch, and the expensive suits, and cheerfully accepted his invitation.

“You’re models, right?” George said.

We did not yet know that this was an already old pickup line in places like New York, and we were incredibly flattered. That’s when our lies began. We sat in a booth and told these sophisticated New York businessmen that we were heiresses from Minnesota, and though this was our first real trip to New York, we’d traveled “the Continent” a fair bit and so “of course” we’d flown through New York.

George found us absolutely fascinating, and wanted to know about everything we’d seen so far, and all the things we were planning to do while in Gotham. We told him we had tickets for Annie and I Love My Wife. But primarily, Julie said, “We want to shop.”

Well, it turned out to be our lucky day, because George was an investor in a number of different fashion-related businesses, and promised to help us out during our trip.

When George offered to take us out for dinner, Billy again tried to get out of it. George and Julie were getting quite cozy, but Billy seemed so repelled by me that my first instinct was to check myself for open running sores. I would have been happy if he’d just split, but George, and now Julie, insisted he accompany us. That’s how we ended up at the French restaurant. Then at the disco. I couldn’t remember all the places we’d gone after that, but Julie and I got back to the hotel really late, snoshed to the gills, fell asleep in our clothes, and slept until about four, when George called us.

Just as he said, George was well connected in the fashion and jewelry industries, and on subsequent days he took us in a limo to a bunch of designer showrooms in the garment district. When we walked in with him, people smiled and fell all over themselves to help us out. We were treated like princesses, given all kinds of great free stuff—clothes, jewelry, perfume—even had our pictures taken with two moderately famous designers, one of whom we recognized from the fashion credits in the back of Mademoiselle magazine. There were drinks at the Top of the Sixes, the Rainbow Room, and Windows on the World, jazz at Jimmy Ryan’s, rides in carriages around Central Park, and so on.

You can imagine how dazzling this was to a couple of girls from a small town, sipping cocktails with swells in the Rainbow Room at the top of the RCA building, for instance, with the glittering jewel box of Manhattan out the window. The tallest building in Ferrous, at six stories, was the Hotel Grand (which also boasted the best restaurant, Filbert’s), followed by the four-story MacCosham Professional Center, where most of the area doctors, dentists, plumbers, and chiropractors practiced. The main department store, MacCosham’s, still called itself a dry-goods store, and though it was a good place to buy sheets, lawn-mowers, and licorice allsorts, the fashions sucked. People who cared about fashion bought their clothes in Duluth or Minneapolis-St. Paul.

So we ate New York up. I don’t think we got more than four hours of sleep a night. We were, after all, in the city that never sleeps, where you can buy a saxophone at three in the morning. You can eat, drink, bowl, work out, buy groceries, pray in a church, hire a PI, mail a parcel to Bulgaria, get your windows cleaned, your pipes cleared, your spine aligned, your aquarium cleaned, an ancient Latin document translated, buy oxygen, and be tried and convicted twenty-four hours a day in this town. You used to be able to get your hair coiffed twenty-four hours a day too, but that place cut back its hours.

During that week, Julie went out with George every night, and I went out with them, and whichever of his handsome young friends he could dredge up for me, almost every night. What really struck us, or me at least, was how friendly everyone was to us. We were so popular. Men were constantly mistaking us for models.

Chuck and Lance came back from Florida tanned and swaggering with a few cheap souvenirs and a few more notches on their studly belts. Julie and I came back from New York with an extra suitcase each, bought at a Going Out of Business store in midtown just to carry all our free stuff home. But more than that, we came back changed.

After that trip, any glimpse of New York would set my heart soaring, from the opening credits of “All in the Family,” “Rhoda,” or “Taxi” to an on-location shoot-out scene between cops and drug dealers on “Kojak” reruns. Julie and I began to wonder if we couldn’t be like the young Manhattan career women in Mademoiselle and Vogue who had glamorous jobs, furnished their tiny apartment kitchens in French provincial on an editorial assistant’s salary, and transformed themselves effortlessly from Tailored Professional to Boldly Dressed Party Girl, against various Manhattan backdrops. We imagined a dynamic love life, different men every night, play openings, dinner with dashing ambassadors and princes. You too, Robin Hudson, can be an INTERNATIONAL BON VIVANT!

It had been such a great time, and seeing Chuck again was so anticlimactic. The men we met in New York were so exciting, and Chuck didn’t seem to get my enthusiasm about New York. My visions of being married to and redeemed by him started fading, though they seemed to infect Chuck, who was suddenly saying he thought we should get married, and as soon as possible. Lance, though, was still intransigent on the marriage-to-Julie question, which confused her, because he had chased her for a long time before she finally went out with him. I figured he was playing hard to get. “But no matter,” I said to her. “You don’t need Lance.”

When we did marry, the new daydream went, we would marry handsome big-city men (who would be completely supportive of our glamorous careers), live on Park Avenue, and have citified daughters whom we would take to revivals of Annie, followed by ice cream at Rumpelmayer’s or Serendipity.

I can’t have kids, so there was no Serafina Hudson-Whatever to eat ice cream at Serendipity with Ramona Goomey-Whatever. It made me wonder. I knew Julie had finally married Lance at the beginning of 1980 and moved to Ohio, only to get divorced a couple of years later. When her family packed up and left Ferrous for good, I lost track of Julie completely. Not that I hadn’t thought about her a lot, and heard rumors. She was remarried and living in Canada. She was working as a stripper in Vegas. She was in a mental institution in Florida. She was in jail for forgery in Texas, which seemed really unlikely, given her horrible handwriting. Something about Julie had always inspired a lot of gossip.

Was Julie remarried? Did she have kids? Even though she always talked about having kids, I had never pictured her with them. As a child, she was always forgetting her dolls at the playground, where they’d be scavenged by other kids, or torn apart by packs of wild dogs. Oh, wait. That was me.

And what about Billy and George? I’d thought about looking them up when I moved to New York but, remembering all the lies I’d told them, I didn’t bother. By that time, disco was dead or dying and I was in J-school at NYU, hanging out with snotty bohos, filmmakers, actors, and so forth, interning in local television, smoking joints with my profs in Washington Square.

So much had happened to me since I’d last seen Julie. My God, I’d completely forgotten that I’d once dreamed of being a Park Avenue trophy wife. Gag. How differently my life turned out. What had happened to Julie? And what brought her back to New York?