“Friday I have to leave at noon. Let’s board everything on Monday and we can pitch it to Margot and Paula next week.”
“Can we use your office, since it’s still empty?” Cat asked. “I don’t want to go in the workrooms anymore, to be honest.”
“I know what you mean. Guns don’t kill people, workrooms do,” quipped Lou, before turning bright red. “That was awful, I don’t know why I said that, I’m so sorry—”
“It’s fine,” Cat said. “We have to start joking about it sometime.”
“I know, but that was tasteless. I’m sorry, I’m just still this stupid Englishwoman sometimes; we can be so rude. It’s because we repress all emotions, we forget that other people have them.” Her whole face contorted itself with regret.
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. And I’m not saying this because I’m offended, but I was actually just running out the door to check out a beauty company in Brooklyn. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Cat gave Lou a quick hug to lessen her embarrassment, grabbed her bag, and dashed for the elevators.
When the M train resurfaced on the Williamsburg Bridge, Cat got a text.
Mark Hutton here. Any chance you’d want to blow off work and get a drink?
She responded immediately.
Already left, heading to Williamsburg now.
As the ellipses bubbles lit up on his side of the screen, Cat reached the Marcy Avenue stop. She shoved her phone into the pocket of her dress, hustled out the door, down the stairs, and through the turnstile onto Broadway, walking west toward the river until she turned left on Bedford.
She paused outside 400 Bedford to check her phone one more time.
Leicester?
Leicester was right around the corner from where she stood. If she gave herself an hour at Bedford Organics, and another fifteen minutes to fix her makeup in their bathroom, maybe they could turn an early drink into dinner.
Love that place. 6?
See you there.
She looked up at the facade of 400 South Bedford. A small neon light shone through the window of the third floor: the letter B placed inside the letter O. She hit the buzzer. Seconds later the door vibrated. Cat pushed through a small foyer into a dark stairwell that hadn’t been renovated or cleaned in years; no elevator in sight. She started climbing. When she reached the third floor, a short, dark-eyed Brazilian woman opened the only door on the landing and effusively kissed her on the cheeks.
“You must be Cat-er-inne,” she trilled. “Meu nome é Vittoria. And this is my lab-or-a-tor-ee.”
She waved Cat into a large formal parlor lined with custom floor-to-ceiling shelves. The room overflowed with merchandise packed into beautiful glass apothecary bottles nesting in matte paper boxes, wrapped with elaborate navy ribbons and handwritten labels. Cat didn’t recognize anything in the store—she’d never seen these products anywhere. And yet there was enough stock in this room to suggest a healthy, growing business, with a full product line and daily shipments out.
“What beautiful packaging,” she said, gesturing at the shelves. “How long have you been in business?”
“My family, we have been in bus-a-nees, oh, I think for fifty years, one way or the other, but in this space only three years. In Brazil it was my father’s company. In America, we are called Bedford, but in Brazil we are Brasília órg?os. It’s, how you say, a play on words; it is both ‘organ’ like a kidney and ‘organic’ like bio. Everything we make, it’s for the whole body, for everything.”
“Who carries your line?” Cat picked up one of the amber glass bottles littered everywhere; the one in her hands was labeled “Beauty Sleep” in an elegant cursive. It had a surprising heft to it.
“Nobody! Nobody carries us.” Vittoria squinted at Cat. “We only do direct sale. We have our own customers. Everything is custom, special for each client.”
“That’s amazing,” Cat responded. “Manufacturing and direct sale. Good for you. Like Poppy King.”
Vittoria laughed, a throaty Portuguese vibrato. “Yes! Exactly. You understand. I’m an immigrant, you know? I’m cheap, I don’t want a middleman. It’s not good for us, it’s not good for our customers. For a long time we were just in Rio, but now, with the internet, we can move to America and make everything here; no more customs, no more bullshit, ship domestic, no problem.”
Vittoria certainly didn’t look cheap. The pant legs of her navy silk Jil Sander jumpsuit were rolled up above a pair of spotless Chanel saddle shoes, and her only accessory was the gigantic emerald on one finger of her left hand.
“That makes sense,” Cat said and nodded, pulling the bottle out of her purse. “I actually have a custom bottle right here. Can you tell me what it is?”
“Oh! You sent us a ’gram last night!” Cat passed her the plastic bottle, and Vittoria gave it a squeeze, pulling out the dropper and smelling the liquid. She shook her head.
“They are eyedrops, but everything is different for everybody. I might have to put the drops down, do some tests. Unless, do you know who is it made for?”
“Hillary Whitney, from RAGE,” said Cat. Vittoria looked surprised.
“Oh my gosh, that was so sad. I saw it on the Page Six when she died. She come here a lot, we make a lot of stuff for her. She was sad. She was in love. Everything we make for her was about love. So what, you cleaning out her desk?” Her voice grew thin, suspicious.
“Not exactly,” Cat replied carefully, seeing the trepidation on Vittoria’s face. “We worked together at RAGE but we were friends for a long, long time—she was one of my first friends when I moved to America. I found the drops in a handbag she gave me. We used to trade beauty products all the time—but I’d never seen your brand before, so I thought it was a good excuse to come check out the store. Hillary was so beautiful that I straight copied her style whenever I got the chance.”
Vittoria still looked suspicious. Cat pulled out her phone to show her old photos of Cat and Hillary, starting with the two girls side by side in their Sawyer School uniforms. Vittoria let out a few oohs and ahhs, then looked at Cat, satisfied.
“Okay, so if you her friend, then you gonna know who she was in love with.”
Cat sighed and eye-rolled at the same time. “Robert Reid. What an asshole.”
“He was never, never ever, never gonna leave his wife. Poor Hillary. She wanted to marry him, to have his babies. She always say to me, I’m gonna be so beautiful that he won’t want to live without me. And I tried to help! I give her everything with a little bit of love in it, with extra energy so she can sparkle. She was uptight, you know, but these drops, these are special. They are based on an old recipe from my great-grandmother.”
“What’s in them?”
“Family secret. Some special plants from both sides, from Portugal, from Brazil. There’s also natural preservatives, so this tiny bottle, it would last her forever. It looks like she must have spilled it, though. She didn’t use all of it.”