“I hope you’re ready to make something of this afternoon,” Carter went on. “I’ve been assigned to entertain you while Judith is in class, and my call time isn’t till four-thirty, so you better be ready to enjoy this goddamn beautiful day.”
“How’s it going, Carter?”
“Lovely, darling,” he said, bending over to smack a kiss on Finny’s cheek. “By the way, that’s a nasty bruise you’ve got.”
“It’s from a nasty bruiser, as you might have heard.”
“Bits and pieces.”
“Can you give me a few minutes to make some calls and brush my teeth?” Finny asked.
“Well,” Carter said, with an exaggerated air of frustration, “if you must. Then I suppose I could be persuaded to investigate the contents of the Turngates’ well-stocked liquor cabinet. But just know that you are responsible for driving me to such extremes of behavior.”
“You’re going to drink at eleven in the morning?”
“New York is a tough, tough city,” Carter said, and then left in search of the liquor cabinet.
Finny found her phone card in her backpack. She was delighted to see that her headache wasn’t as bad when she read the instructions on the back. The first call she made was to Sylvan. The machine picked up, so she left a message. “Hey, Syl, it’s your sister. I decided to stay at Judith’s an extra night because my head was bothering me yesterday, but I’m feeling better today and will probably head back tonight or tomorrow. Judith told me that you and she are talking, and you have my, uh, blessing, I guess. Take care. Bye.”
The next call was to Dorrie. She told her roommate that her flights had been delayed but that she’d be back soon and not to worry.
The third call was a bit longer distance. She knew she shouldn’t be making a bunch of overseas phone calls to a man who wasn’t even her boyfriend; but still, Earl would appreciate knowing she’d gotten in safely. And she needed some kind of closure to her trip. She figured a phone call might put the proper seal on it. She decided not to mention anything about Prince and the black eye, because what would be the point? Angry as she was, it would be impossible to explain to Earl that she also felt bad for Prince. Luckily, Earl picked up.
“Earl, it’s Finny.”
“Hey!” Earl said, in the excited way he always greeted Finny’s voice. “How was your trip?”
“Good,” Finny said. “Listen, I’m on a phone card and can’t talk long. But everything’s fine. I ended up staying at Judith’s an extra night and couldn’t get away to call you. The main thing is, I want to tell you I read your story and I loved it. It’s so good, Earl.”
“I can’t tell you how great that is to hear, Finny.”
There was a pause, as if neither of them knew where to go from here. Then Earl said, “I guess I have one other piece of news, which is that I sent the story to a literary magazine in the States and they accepted it. They’re going to publish it in their next issue.”
“Oh my God!” Finny screamed. “That’s amazing! Congratulations!” She was astonished. A publication! Earl was only twenty years old.
“I’m glad you’re excited, too,” Earl said.
“Earl, you’re really talented. I always had a feeling. But it’s great to see it. What’s the magazine called?”
“You’ve probably never heard of it. It’s called Aftershock. But it’s a pretty good one. They sell it at Barnes & Noble. I’m even getting a check.”
“The first of many, I’m sure,” Finny said.
“Well, thanks. I hope so.”
Another pause. Like a little wall, an obstacle they had to hop over every time they spoke to each other. Why had Earl placed this barrier there?
She was about to tell Earl how sad it made her, when he said, “I know you have to head off, but I wanted to tell you that this stuff with the publication made me think about some things. And there’s something else I want to talk to you about, when you have—”
But here the line clicked off. The phone card was out of minutes.
“Damn,” Finny said. She picked up the phone and began to dial Earl’s number again, breathless for his news. But then she hesitated. She wasn’t sure what Judith’s parents would think of getting a call to France on their phone bill—even if they could have afforded several thousand calls to France. She decided she’d get a phone card while she was out with Carter, and call Earl back as soon as she returned to the apartment. She’d have to wait to call her mother, too, but Finny wasn’t so worried about that, since Laura hadn’t even asked the exact day when Finny was coming home.
“Okay!” Finny called to Carter after she’d washed up and gotten dressed. “Let’s go!” She’d found the cover-up and applied it again over her bruise.
“Yoorall better,” Carter said when he saw her. She smelled what she thought was gin on his breath.
“You on the other hand.”
But Carter didn’t pay attention. “I’m ship shop,” he said. “Shape soap.” He shook his head. “Shipshape. There we go.”
And they went.
“You’re probably starving,” Carter said when they were on the street. “If you were subjected to Bonnie Turngate’s cooking last night.”
“So you’ve tried her food?”
“Murder. Absolute murder. She could sap the flavor out of a bottle of hot sauce.”
It was a bright, cold afternoon, the branches of the trees along Central Park clacking in a gusty wind. The fresh air seemed to have diminished the effect of the alcohol on Carter. A man in a spandex running suit trotted past them, his breath clouding. Sunlight glittered on the cars. Finny could smell nuts roasting in a cart sitting at the entrance to the park.
“I guess I am kind of hungry,” Finny admitted.
“Then there’s only one solution,” Carter said. “Chinatown.”
They took the train to Canal Street, then walked down the Bowery. Finny had never been to this part of the city before, with the roasted ducks hanging in the windows, the bags of Asian sweets lined up in the grocery stores, the smell of fish and frying oil in the alleyways. She recognized a number of products from the cache of Asian food Poplan had kept in her room at Thorndon. Though now Finny could see what the fresh fruits looked like: pods of jackfruit in their bumpy cases, lychees, soursops, and kumquats. A man ran out from one of the restaurants and dumped a bucket of fish heads into a drainage grate by Finny’s feet.
“Brunch, anyone?” Finny said.
Carter took Finny to a Vietnamese restaurant he knew in a little horseshoe street off the Bowery. The restaurant was in the windowless basement of a somewhat run-down building, a festive shade of red paint flaking off the walls, and when they walked in, they were the only customers. A bored-looking staff eyed them as they made their way to a table. When the waiter came, he nodded to Carter, as if he knew him, and Carter told him the dishes they wanted in Vietnamese.
“No banh xeo,” the waiter said, shaking his head.
“Come on,” Carter said. “Just one.”
“Let me check,” the waiter said.
“We go through this every time,” Carter said when the waiter had left. “I ordered this Vietnamese crêpe, which is the best thing on the menu, but they hate to make the batter, so they only serve it to Vietnamese people and tell everyone else they’re out of it.”
The waiter came back. “One order,” he said to Carter. “All we have.”
“That’s great,” Carter said, and the waiter left again.
The crêpe turned out to be delicious. It was a thin, crisp pancake made from coconut milk and eggs, folded like an omelet around pork, shrimp, and bean sprouts. You wrapped lettuce leaves and fresh herbs around it and dipped the pieces in a salty translucent sauce.
Over the crêpe Finny said to Carter, “I feel bad intruding on Judith’s parents.”
“Why?” Carter said. “I’d do it if I could. In fact, since your little run-in, I’ve been considering getting punched by Prince just so I could live it up in the Turngate apartment fo
r a week.”
“Yeah, but I feel like I’m in the way. Judith used to tell me, when we were at school together, that her father lived a certain kind of lifestyle.”
“You mean like cranberry juice and bridge games?”
“No, I mean like extramarital affairs. She said he liked to bring his girlfriend home in the middle of the day.”
For a second Carter stared blankly at Finny, his mouth open, displaying a half-chewed bite of banh xeo. Then he erupted in laughter. He laughed so hard he nearly slid out of his chair, and the waiter who had served them shook his head, as if he’d wasted the crêpe on someone who obviously wasn’t fit to eat it. Finny wasn’t sure what was so funny about this—she actually found the situation with Judith’s parents a little sad—but by the time Carter had seated himself again, he was gripping his stomach as if in pain.
“I’m sorry,” Carter said. “It’s just—I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous. Could you imagine Linus Turngate conducting an affair?” Then Carter launched into a brief imitation of one of Mr. Turngate’s polite litanies: “Yes, thank you, please only lick my left testicle, yes, very nice, do you want it harder? Good, good, very nice to see you, do I make you horny? Very good, bye.”
Finny laughed, but she couldn’t help feeling a little hurt, too, as if Carter were making fun of Finny’s credulity as much as Mr. Turngate’s trains of courtesies. “Where did she get that idea, then?” Finny asked Carter. “Why would she say all those things?”
Here Carter stopped laughing. He watched Finny for a moment, the way a doctor might before delivering a poor prognosis to a patient. “There’s something you have to understand, Finny,” Carter said. “About Judith.”
Finny recalled the talk she’d had with Poplan about Judith, way back at Thorndon, a talk that had begun similarly. And the discussion with her brother, only a few weeks ago, where Finny had seemed to be the expert on Judith.
“Sometimes she says things she doesn’t really mean,” Carter went on. “It’s not that she’s lying, exactly. It’s that she likes a certain kind of attention. So she’ll tell you things to get that attention. I can imagine that when she was fifteen, and just learning how a penis fits into a vagina—excuse the language—she would be coming up with all kinds of theories about whose was fitting into whose. But I can tell you for a fact that your brother was the first guy she slept with, and that Prince Hollibrand was the second. There was one other, once, as a payback to Prince. But that’s the whole sexual history of Madame Turngate, whatever else she might lead you to believe.”
Just as Carter was finishing his speech, the waiter arrived with their entrées, a steamy beef noodle soup and a plate of panfried beef cubes with lettuce and tomato and a sauce that had flecks of pepper floating in it. The waiter removed the plate that had held the crêpe, still shaking his head, as if over the loss of a close friend. Both Carter and Finny stared at the new food without moving.
“This is delicious,” Carter said, pointing at the beef cubes. “You dip them in that sauce, which has lemon juice, salt, and pepper. You’re going to go crazy over how it tastes.”
Finny looked at the food for a few seconds. She knew that Carter was bringing attention to it to save Finny from the embarrassment of her mistaken assumptions about Judith. How many people could Finny get wrong? Suddenly she wasn’t hungry anymore.
“Do you think we could take some of this home?” she said.
“Look,” Carter said, “I love Judith, Finny. The same way you do. She’s magnetic. She’s big and beautiful and smart. And even though I’m as gay as a poodle in a peacoat, I’d still probably bone her once, the same way I would Judy Garland or Andrew Lloyd Webber—just to say I did it.
“But I don’t trust a word that comes out of her mouth. That’s why I’m always on her case. Especially around you. Because I know she’s playing it up for you. She thinks you see her as some gorgeous, vivacious, cosmopolitan woman, and she likes to think of herself that way.”
“I suppose I am taken in by some of that,” Finny admitted.
“As you damn well should be,” Carter said. “Just know it for what it is.”
“Okay,” Finny said. “Thanks.”
“Now eat some of this bo luc lac before I smack you.” Carter smiled. “As a friend.”
Finny called Earl when she got back to the Beresford, but there was no answer. What had he wanted to say? What could be so important that he hadn’t told her while she was in France? She decided to hang up before the machine came on, so she wouldn’t waste her phone card minutes. She was considering calling her mom but instead decided to pack. It was only four. She could still get back to Stradler at a reasonable hour.
Carter had left for his catering job, which he’d described as “seven hours of getting fucked in the ass in a way even I can’t enjoy.” Finny liked Carter more and more the better she got to know him. He was dramatic, she was aware, but he really was very good at knowing people for what they were, as he’d put it. It was like he couldn’t help saying what he thought, no matter how discordant. Which reminded Finny of the way she used to be.
When she was done packing, Finny tried Earl again. It was almost eleven o’clock Paris time, and she couldn’t imagine where he would be at that hour. The phone rang once, twice, three times.
Then someone picked up. “Allo?” It was Earl.
“Hey,” Finny said. “I’m sorry I lost you before. My phone card ran out of minutes.”
“It’s okay. I figured.”
“I tried you before, but you weren’t around. You said you wanted to talk to me about something?”
“Yeah. It’s actually why I wasn’t in my room. I’ve been discussing it with my mom all evening.”
“What is it?”
There was a pause. “I think I’m ready to leave Paris,” Earl said.
“What do you mean?” Finny asked.
“I mean, I think it’s time for me to move away. When I was in New York, I realized I could do it. Live there. And getting this story published was a huge thing for me. It gave me confidence that I’m on the right track. I’ve been thinking about what we talked about the other night. About how things would be with us. And you’re right. I don’t want to be apart either. I want to be with you, Finny. Completely with you. I want to move to the States for you.
“I told my mom tonight, and actually she took it surprisingly well. She’s really happy for me. She loves you. She said she would come visit us. I think she’d be okay. I know this is the right thing. I mean, if you’re still up for it.”
It was all coming so quickly, Finny thought. She didn’t know what to say. Happiness wasn’t the word to describe what she was feeling. More like shock.
“Finny?” Earl said.
“Yeah.”
“Well? What do you think? I thought you might have a response.”
“I think it’s the best news I’ve ever gotten.”
She could hear Earl exhale on the other end of the line. She wanted, as she had many times before, to reach across the phone wire and touch his face. “I’m so happy to hear you say that,” he said. “I just have this whole idea of how our life can be. I’ll rent an apartment near your school. I can get a job somewhere close by, at a restaurant or something. I’ll write in the mornings. We’ll have every night together. I’m really ready for this.”
“It sounds like a dream,” Finny said. “I couldn’t imagine anything better.”
“You don’t have to imagine,” Earl said. “This is real.”
The rest of the afternoon, though, passed somewhat like a dream in that Finny had the sense she was floating through it, or maybe above it, not totally there. When Judith returned, Finny told her she was going to head back to Stradler that evening. She said she’d love to spend the night with Judith but that she wanted to get to school and see her grades before her mom got them. And Finny was still deciding between two English classes, so she wanted a chance to sit in on both. She told Judith to thank her parents again for letting her
stay, and she hoped she hadn’t been too much of a disturbance.
To Finny’s surprise, Judith didn’t protest. She said she understood. She said it was probably time for her to get down to work, too, but that she’d call Finny over the weekend. She said that Finny’s face looked much better, not puffy at all, almost completely healed.
At Penn Station, Finny decided she’d take the Amtrak back to Philadelphia. She didn’t think she could stay focused enough to make all the transfers on the New Jersey Transit. She was reeling. Visions of her new life kept flashing in her mind: roasting in bed with Earl; the two of them reading together at night; meals at their little kitchen table; Earl coming back from work, exhausted but happy, falling into her arms. She was giddy with the possibility of it.
On the train she opened her bag to find some reading material, something to slow her spinning thoughts. She pulled out a magazine, and realized it was The New Yorker she’d been reading at Judith’s parents’ apartment. She must have packed it with her things by mistake, she’d been so absentminded.
She opened the magazine back to the article she’d been reading about spices, deciding she’d give it one more go. She was still having trouble focusing on anything, but she got the gist of the first page, about how spice importers grind up all kinds of things and try to pass them off as rare spices. How they set up phony identities and business records. How they pull in gullible investors.
Finny flipped the page and began to read about a man named Gregory P. Mark, who went by various pseudonyms and who owned a company called Futurecook. The company sold extremely rare spices that you could buy only in very small quantities. As she read, she felt a twitchy uneasiness in her chest. She knew she was going to have to ask her mother some questions.
Dorrie wasn’t in the room when Finny got back. Finny dialed Laura’s number the minute she put down her bags. She’d read the article from start to finish on the train. She knew what she had to say.
“Hello?” Laura said when she picked up.
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