I'll Eat When I'm Dead
Barbara Bourland
To all my friends: I wrote this for you.
Prologue
It was not impossible for a thirty-seven-year-old woman to starve to death in Manhattan, less than a mile from the nearest Whole Foods, though it was unusual.
When the NYPD opened the locked workroom at the offices of RAGE Fashion Book, where Hillary Whitney’s body lay dead on the floor, most of the officers placed their bets on a cocaine overdose. The still-perfect hair and makeup, the bleach-white Dior pumps, the long, manicured red nails; it could all have been part of one of the magazine’s photo shoots, if not for the way her limbs sprang—unnatural, akimbo—from her mint-colored dress. It was the officers’ collective experience that women who died at work in clothing this expensive were partying themselves into eternity.
Yes, cocaine was a solid bet, but still: one optimist had chosen aneurysm. “She looked like a nice girl,” he’d said, “and her skin was in great shape.” Another risk-taker bet meningitis, “because you never know.”
Yet, in the end, Carol, Midtown South’s senior secretary and most enthusiastic bookmaker, was the sole profiteer: the coroner’s autopsy reported that Hillary Edith Whitney had experienced a fatal coronary as the end-stage event of starvation, which no one had thought to bet on. In a zip code where the average net worth topped a million dollars, starvation hadn’t been recorded as a cause of death for an able-bodied woman under sixty since the previous century.
The unmistakable signs of a lifetime of disordered eating, chronic malnutrition, and various muscle tears and strains from an intense daily exercise regimen—along with a clean standard toxicity screen—buttressed the coroner’s conclusion, and so the precinct’s detectives saw no reason to dispute his theory that with the right combination of stress and a diet of alkaline-only green juices, a fatal heart attack could’ve happened anytime.
Clues, too, were in short supply. The only things discovered in the workroom with her were one half-empty juice bottle, an oversized and overturned box filled with thirteen yards of “luxury” ribbon, a pile of blank index cards, and a pen. It appeared she’d suffered the heart attack before she had the opportunity to write anything down. An attorney for Cooper House, RAGE Fashion Book’s publisher, confirmed that Hillary Whitney was working on a shoot involving ribbon. He helpfully offered that she was probably taking notes on the texture and provenance, which he insisted was a “low-stress” activity—though Cooper’s reputation as a high-stakes workplace preceded his remarks, but that in and of itself wasn’t technically a crime—and so, the case was closed in eleven days.
Eventually, like all things do, the death of Hillary Edith Whitney faded out of public consciousness.
Two months later the odors of new paint and new carpet were almost gone from the workroom where she’d died. The funeral was long over, her ashes scattered in Old House Pond on Martha’s Vineyard, when her boyfriend went back to his wife and her parents stopped crying first thing in the morning. Her estate was processed, her apartment was put on the market, and an interim fashion director was hired to replace her. It seemed to everyone that the ripple of her death had run its course.
Naturally, they were wrong.
Part I
July
Chapter One
Every weekday morning, as the sun rose above Sixth Avenue, a peerless crop of women—frames poised, behavior polished, networks connected, and bodies generally buffed to a high sheen—were herded by the cattle prod of their own ambition to one particular building. They streamed as if by magic from all over Manhattan and Brooklyn, through streets and subways teeming with sweaty crowds and heavy traffic, to work at Cooper House, the only remaining major magazine publisher in New York.
Some, like Bess Bonner, a twenty-eight-year-old associate editor at RAGE Fashion Book, arrived earlier than others. Though her colleagues frequently staggered in around noon after long nights spent drinking fistfuls of sponsored celebrity vodka in yet another chartered barge or pop-up school bus, never Bess, who took pride in being punctual. Monday through Friday she stuck to the same routine: First, she walked her bike, a large Dutch commuter, through the West Village streets to pick up her coffee at Joe. Second, she stood on the sidewalk and drank half the cup, no matter the weather; finally, she took diligent mental notes on the outfits of pedestrians who were, like her, freshly pressed to meet the promise of the day.
One Monday in July, in attire that was stylish but functional (trousers clipped back with midnight-blue leather bands, her buttery navy kid-leather backpack stuffed in an orange milk crate affixed firmly to the back with neon cable ties, and a waterproof oilcloth bag that held an emergency poncho tucked beneath her seat), Bess drank her coffee, took her notes, and hopped on her bike, pedaling toward Cooper. After a few minutes of glorious, uninterrupted speed through Chelsea, a rush of adrenaline kicked in, and she smiled; that final mile of her morning commute both boosted her mood and set the tone for the long day ahead, working at the magazine she’d worshipped her entire life.
Today, that work meant sorting bracelets into velvet trays.
She hung a left on Thirty-Ninth Street, crossed Broadway, and pulled smoothly into the Cooper garage. Gina, the usual attendant, took her bicycle and wheeled it into the rectangle of her personal parking spot, a privilege for full-time employees, as Bess took off her helmet and shook out her tangled mess of dark blonde curls.
Shouldering her backpack, she walked up to the aluminum post outside the service elevator and waved her phone in front of it. A large blinking F appeared briefly on a previously invisible screen. Ten seconds later, the F disappeared and the post became a mere metal column once more.