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WHEN WE LEFT, ROWE was still trying to collect himself before he also moved back into the crowd. Or perhaps he was going to go back into the restroom and check his face for bruising. I didn’t know, and I sure as hell didn’t care. All I wanted to do was get Alex away from him before something else was said or done that might cause another fight.
With my hand held tightly in his, we walked silently past the orchestra and the dance floor, which was alive with people swirling, dipping and dancing, twirling and whirling, until we were beyond them and firmly into a crowd that still had us in our sights—and that was quietly discussing us.
“Are you all right?” I asked him.
“Maybe you should ask Rowe that question.”
“I’m serious.”
“I’m fine.”
“You went too far.”
“Did I? Really? This coming from the woman who’s taken two bullets for me since we first met.”
Well, he’s got a point there.
I looked up at him, he looked down at me, and then we just stopped. I let go of his hand and placed my palm against the side of his troubled face. I could feel the heat coming off of him in waves, but when I reached up to kiss him, to hopefully calm him down, he responded with a meaningful kiss that felt fiercely protective of me, and those around us openly gawked at our public display of affection.
And then a photographer’s camera flashed multiple times before we could pull away.
“You can print that,” Alex said to the reporter who was standing at our right.
I recognized him on sight—it was the reporter from the Post, the same man who had photographed Audric Dufort plunging to his death instead of helping us stop his wheelchair before the inevitable happened. I couldn’t believe that Henri would allow him back into his home, but perhaps with all of the confusion that occurred when Audric went out the window, he wasn’t sure that this man was that man.
“This is my wife,” Alex said. “Let the world know what she means to me. Now, if you’ll excuse us, there’s someone we need to find.”
“Who are you looking for?” the reporter asked. “Maybe I can help.”
Help? You? Are you serious?
“Epifania Zapopa,” Alex said.
“The loose cannon of Park Avenue?”
Neither of us responded to that.
“She’s over there,” the man said, motioning to the front of the room, where the majority of people had entered. “Do you see her? Actually, you can’t miss her. I can hear her squawking from here. She’s wearing a red—”
“I see her,” I said. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Wenn.”
When he said that, all I could will myself to do was to nod at him before Alex and I moved toward Epifania—and went in for the kill.
* * *
EPIFANIA WAS WITH A group of three wide-eyed, bewildered-looking women of various ages. She was gesticulating wildly with her hands, and she was clearly mid-story.
“Heyzeus Cristo! Why you all look so the spooked?” Epifania said to the women. “All of us here been under the knife. So what if Epifania decide it time to see the doctor and ask him to make her little meow-meow tighter? It’s not as if my boobies are real—or any of yours, for that matter. Epifania stand proud in her truth. And when Epifania meet her new man—and por favor, Mary and Yoseph, make it happen soon!—Epifania gonna make him the luckiest guy in the world. And not just because I got Chuckie’s money. Epifania gonna have a snappin’ pussy again. And my man? My man is gonna want to stretch it out again.”
“Oh, my God,” one of the women said.
“Ah, dios mío. We all know you had your leeps done, Hilary. They been plumped up like a couple of inner tubes. Epifania is just gonna have her other lips done. My coochie is gonna be like a newborn bebé again. Just you watch. Soon, every one of you is gonna hear about Epifania’s new coño!”
“So, it’s true,” a pretty young blonde woman said. “You really don’t have a filter.”
“What, you mean like the water filter? The oil filter? I don’t know what you talking about. That don’t even make the sense to me.”
“No, no,” the woman said. “I just meant that it’s true that you really will say anything. That you really are the loose cannon of Park Avenue.”
“The loose cannon of what? I don’t know what that mean. Look, the cookie, I come over here on the rubber boat, okay? You wouldn’t believe the sheet I heard on the way over here while sharks were trying to bite off my ass. But the way people talked on that boat? It was amazing. I lived on that sheet because that sheet was good. It was like a goddamned soap opera, but at least what they were saying to each other was the truth. So, that how Epifania choose to live her life. No bullshit that way. I talk from the gut. You should try it.”
“What does this, uh, particular surgery involve?” an older woman asked.
“Sewing my puss-puss up tight, I guess. Something like that. I don’ know. Not that I care—my doctor is miracle worker. All I want is a snappin’ pussy. And then? Then, Epifania back in the game. Then, Epifania get a new man!”
“Oh my God,” I said beneath my breath to Alex. We were standing directly behind Epifania, who hadn’t seen us yet. “She’s amazing.”
“Well, she’s something...”
“Who that I hear?” Epifania said. “I know those voices.” When she turned around and saw us, her face brightened, and she enveloped each of us with a hug. To her credit, when she hugged me, she was careful with my arm.
“Finally,” she said. “The real friends.” She turned back to the group of three women, who were still standing there, and said only a few words to them: “Adios, muchachas! Remember—tighten your coños. It change your lives! Epifania promise!”
When the women stepped away from her, agape after what they’d just experienced in their exchange with Epifania, she turned back to us with the sort of elation that made me like Epifania. Nothing about her emotions were fake. She knew that, at one point, we were declared dead, and it was clear by the expression on her face that she was thrilled that we were here and alive, and that we’d taken the time to come over to say hello to her.
“Yennifer,” she said. “Alex. I so happy to see you. Epifania was out of her mind with the worry with all of that news of the gloom and the doom. Give me another hug. I prayed to God that you’d make it out alive, and you did!”
“It’s good to see you, Epifania,” I said.
“It’s good to see you too, the cookie! What that on your arm? It amazing! In fact, it’s starting to hypnotize Epifania. My god. If I keep staring into those black crystals, you could probably get all of Chuckie’s money out of me right now if you wanted to.”
“Keep the money,” I said. “From what I’ve heard, you deserve it.”
“Oh, lady, you have no idea. That man loco. I earned that sheet. No one has any idea about the kooky sheet he was into. So, what that thing on your arm, anyway?”
“It’s just a sling that’s been blinged out to the max so it won’t bring down the dress.”
“You always have the sparkle, Yennifer. And the light. You always so pretty. You never disappoint.” She cocked her thumb at Alex. “And neither does this one. Ai yai yai—he the most smokin’ hot man in the room. I think of you as the perfect couple. Always have. Always will. I want that for myself!”
“Epifania,” Alex said. “Could we ask you a few questions about someone you might know?”
“Sure, Epifania an open book. You know that—and those three broads who were just asking me about my coochie also found that out. Ask me anything.”
“Do you happen to know a person by the name of Janice Jones?”
“Yanis Yones? Sure, I know Yanis. We used to streep together. Yanis never could put the pasties on her own teets—they too huge. But Epifania have the speet like the glue. So in a lickety spleet, I used to put them on her teets.”
She looked around us. “You know, most people around here think that Epifania only clean the reech-people toilets after she first got off that rickety little rubber boat and come to the United States of the Americas. But oh no. When Epifania really cleaned up was at night, when she shook her boobies for reech men like Chuckie. That’s how I met him, you know—by shaking my titties in his face and bouncing up and down on his lap like a bobble-headed doll. That crazy motherfucker used to motorboat me in front of everyone. It wasn’t for me, but whatever—his money soften the blow. And believe me, as poor as I was, it was all about the money back then. After a few weeks, he hire me to clean his house. And then everything go to hell in a big way before Epifania fell into her big silver lining. His wife caught us doing it doggy-style on that big expensive rug of hers. Then they divorce, Chuckie and I marry, Chuckie blow up the tweens like a couple of over-stuffed piñatas, Chuckie motorboat me some more, then Chuckie die—and Epifania clean up like a pro. Yanis was a good friend of mine. She still a friend, I guess, but we don’t see each other much. She got some rich guy of her own these days. You know, on the side. I saw him here tonight—not with Yanis, mind you, but with his uppity wife, Meredith.”
At that point, my heart started to beat so hard in my throat, it was difficult for me to control my excitement. “When was the last time you saw Janis?” I asked.
Epifania shrugged. “Couple weeks ago? Something like that. Ran into her at Chanel. She was in big hurry. We didn’t talk much, but I gotta say, money look good on the Yanis! I tol’ her to do it with her new man in the doggy style like I did with Chuckie and get caught by Meredith, but she say her man won’t go for it. He won’t have her over to their penthouse. He some kind of pussy. Wants to keep everything on the down low. But she say she have the plans to fix that at some point. Just not yet, I guess. Whatever that means. She missing big opportunity. Yanis need to go for the money! And, hey, who knows? Maybe she will. Once a hustler, always a hustler, I say—and Epifania speak from experience!”
“You said she was in a hurry when you saw her?”
“Yeah, she said she was off to the airport, and she said it just like that. In that breezy kind of stuck-up Park Avenue kind of way, even though Yanis come from the gutter like me. ‘I’m off to the airport!’ she say. And I thought, ‘Whatever, lady—I remember you twirling around a pole before you spun off it, fell on your head, and lost that stupid tiara you were wearing at the time. She said she was getting out of the city for a while. Didn’t know when she be back, so we hugged and we kissed, and we said we’d call each other for lunch when she get back.”
“Did she say where she was going?”
“I think she said ‘Vegas’. And in her mind, she was probably even saying it like that, now that she got a little money. ‘I’m off to Vegas!’ Oh, Yanis—as if you’re some sort of big-shot whale or something....”
“So, she’s on the other side of the country. Do you know where she is in Vegas?”
“I don’t.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sorry, the cookie, but no crystal ball here, though Mama Guadalupe have one, and she pray into it every day to see if she can still view my soul. As far as I know, word’s out on that.” She furrowed her brow at us. “Why you so interested in Yanis, anyway? She done something wrong?”
“She might be able to help us, Epifania.”
“With what?”
“Let’s just say that we’re in a tight bind, and right now, Janice Jones is the only person who can potentially get us out of it.”
And Epifania’s voice lowered to a near whisper. “Now you creating the mystery,” she said. She leaned toward us to the point that I thought her piñatas were about to spill out of her low-cut gown. “But here’s the thing—Epifania won’t press. And you know why? Because it sounds like to me that if you find Yanis, it all going to be public soon anyway—and Epifania can wait. But what drives me nuts is that Yanis could be the one to help you when I’d rather be the one. It not fair!”
“Actually, you could help us,” Alex said. “You mentioned that you were going to call one another and get together for lunch when she returned. So, you must have her phone number...”
Her face brightened. “I do!”
“Would you mind calling her for us?”
“Sure, I call Yanis for you.”
“Here’s the thing, Epifania. At this point, when it comes to Janis, we also need to be on the down low. She can’t know that we’ve asked about her or I fear that she might say something to a certain person about that.”
“Epifania can read between the lines, Alex—you’re talking about that rat bastard Rowe.”
We just looked at her, and when we did, Epifania rolled her eyes at us and waved a hand in front of her face.
“Look, Epifania no idiot, okay? She may come from the booze and the barrio, but she get it. You need something from Yanis. Everyone know that Rowe now running Wenn. You obviously want the dirt on him. You hoping she give you the dirt. Am I right? Don’t answer, because I already know I am. So, what you need from me is to get you an address at where she’s staying now, right? Epifania thought so. Okay, look. Here’s what I need to know—will any of this hurt Yanis?”
“In fact, it could only benefit her,” Alex said. “Financially.”
“That’s what I thought, so here’s what Epifania gonna do. She gonna call the Yanis tonight, before she go to the bed. I’m just gonna act like I assume that she back in Manhattan and that she ready to have the lunch. Sure, we know she not here, but believe me, Epifania know how to play the make pretend to get what she want. Yanis will say she still in the Vegas. We’ll talk. I’ll ask her how she doing. How is the weather out there? Is it too hot? Where she staying? Is it nice? That kind of thing—you know, the full-on cheet-chat. Then I call you in the morning with the news. How does that work out for you two couple of the cookies?”
“Epifania,” Alex said, “if you would do that for us, we’d forever be in your debt.”
“Looky, Alex, unlike Stephen Rowe, who has called me a whore behind my own back, you have always treated me nice. With the kindness and with the respect. No one is kind to me in this crowd, but you two are. You know, here I’m always the butt of the joke. But the thing is that I know it, so I own it—and I turn the joke right back on them. So, Epifania gonna help you out. Epifania gonna have what you need by mañana. Okay? First thing tomorrow morning, you’ll hear from me.”
And with that said, both Alex and I gave her a meaningful hug, which Epifania warmed to in such a way that it stung me to feel just how much this misunderstood woman was starved for affection. My heart went out to her at that moment, and I became resolved to become closer to her, because despite how loose and unhinged Epifania could be, that also was part of her charm—right along with her big heart.
“Thank you,” I said to her.
“No problem, the Yennifer. Look, Epifania not exactly walking away from this with nada. Because you know why? Epifania just got a new skill—she now una sabuesa!”
“What’s that?” I asked.
She winked at us. “Epifania about to become a sleuth!”
