by Alex Witchel
“It is not. The guy who works for the Justice Department of the United States says it’s a legitimate way of getting evidence.”
“Against Nazis. Not ex-boyfriends.” He covered his eyes with his hand.
“Look, that’s his house,” I said, pointing through the window at the brownstone. I paid the driver and scrambled to the sidewalk, Paul sliding out after me.
“Now what?” he asked, distressed.
We stood across the street from the house, gazing up. The shades to Bucky’s apartment were drawn. The garbage cans were lined up behind a railing a few steps down from the street. We crossed. “Just stand there and make sure no one’s coming,” I said, heading toward the first can.
“It’s broad daylight, Sandra,” he wailed, poking at his shorn hair.
I turned my back on him and lifted the cover. Empty boxes of animal crackers. Disposable diapers. Damn. This garbage belonged to the Cohens, the people downstairs with kids.
I opened the next can, which was filled with tightly tied white plastic bags. I took off my black cashmere gloves. Somehow, in my master vision of espionage, I hadn’t planned on actually having to touch the garbage.
I turned to look at Paul. His face was a mask of disbelief. “You aren’t really doing this,” he muttered.
I untied a bag and saw an envelope addressed to Bucky. Bingo. Beneath it was an empty Ragú tomato sauce jar and a dented Ronzoni spaghetti box. Since Bucky didn’t cook, it must have been the designer. What a gourmet. Foil, balled up, that felt oily. Garlic bread, no doubt. Ah, here was something: a receipt from the bookstore down the street. It was stained with grease, but I held it up to the light: Ancient Evenings. Unbelievable!
“Are you done yet?” Paul whispered loudly from the pavement, where he was trying not to pace, trying not to stand still, trying to disappear into thin air.
“No,” I whispered back, struggling with the next bag, through which I could see the curly red and green ribbons and shiny wrapping paper I’d been hoping for. Inside were a few little envelopes, empty. Three chestnuts. A candy cane still in its plastic, broken. She must have done a stocking. But where was the real present? There were no boxes, nothing. The next bag was filled with canceled checks, but they were from the man who lived on the third floor.
I lifted the Cohens’ bag to get at what was underneath and it broke, spilling leaky boxes of apple juice onto my coat.
“Sandra!” Paul practically yelled. “Please stop this!”
“Shut up!” I yelled back, grabbing the wrapping paper. Bucky would never have folded it so neatly. The girl must have. I undid it, and a yellow slip fluttered out. I picked it up off the ground and read: “Deerfield Antiques Fair. One butter churn, c. 1690. Certificate of Authenticity not available.”
An ersatz butter churn. What the hell was he supposed to do with that? I threw the remains of the Cohen garbage back into the can and stuffed the wrapping paper on top of it.
“Watch out, watch out!” Paul called in a panic. I looked toward the corner and saw a mother leading her daughter away from a school bus. Jamming the cover back on, I rushed to join him on the sidewalk. “Just walk,” I ordered.
“That was a major mistake,” he said, looking at the juice dripping down the front of my coat.
“It was not,” I said excitedly. “Because now I know that the designer gave him an inauthentic butter churn for Christmas. And not only that, she wrapped it. And he gave her the only book he’s ever read. A phony intellectual and a phony butter churn, a match made in heaven. But he must have given her jewelry, too. Then again, he probably gave her the two-carat emerald-cut diamond ring.”
Paul’s face softened. “Yes, Sandy, he probably did,” he said, “since he is marrying her. And he is not marrying you.”
I drew my breath in. He was right, after all. Whether I wanted him to be or not.
We walked a few blocks; I could feel my heart gradually stop thumping. I could see from the gray cast of the sky that it was going to snow. We passed neat rows of brownstones, some with picture windows framing Christmas trees, others with curtains drawn in swoops. And just as if I were in a museum and had come to the end of an exhibition, I snapped back, suddenly, to the present. This was a place I did not belong.
I linked my arm through Paul’s. He had remained mercifully silent.
“Hey, handsome. Come here often?”
He smiled. “Every chance I get.” A cab turned the corner, and he held up his arm. “Though I think we’ve had enough Murray Hill for one day, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “Maybe even a lifetime.”
8
I almost honored the schedule I had presented to Paul. I bought tickets to an organ recital, said yes to holiday parties I never would have considered otherwise, even made dates for brunch, an activity I detested. In post-Depression America, I refused to stand on line to be fed, especially with people who had plenty of money and Cuisinarts they were just too lazy to use.
Another thing I hated about brunch was its unmistakable smell of post-Saturday-night defeat; women and men in separate packs, wielding the Times, the women bolstering one another by making plans—a new diet, a new lipstick, any piddling thing would do—the guys trapped in a fraternity-house time warp, talking sports and noisily hoisting watered-down Bloody Marys.
The only thing worse was the smell of envy when a happy couple appeared, the woman wearing the man’s sweater, he preening while she tore a croissant to bits and fed it to him. Those people should have the decency to lick each other’s fingers in the privacy of their own homes. Who wants to see that when all your own Sunday offers is an hour on the StairMaster and a well-meaning mother on the line wondering if by any chance you just happened to meet Prince Charming last night?
I filled one of the free evenings on my schedule by inviting Pimm and Coco to join me in my new office for dinner, drinks, and decoration. We each brought a bottle of holiday cheer—vodka, bourbon, and gin—and Coco presented me with chipped highball glasses from a home-design shoot that she said I could keep. We ordered in filet mignon from Between the Bread, where Jolie! had an account, and then we went through all the giveaway piles of newly published books and assembled a mini-library for my empty shelves. Pimm brought in a plant from our old office, and suddenly the room looked cozier.
“Here’s my housewarming gift,” Coco said, handing me an ashtray with a removable top, ingeniously designed so that I could dump the ashes into it and cut down on the telltale smell. “It’s Susie Schein–proof,” she said.
We sat around my desk, eating and drinking. Pimm said that her boyfriend was finally coming home from California, so they would spend the holidays together, and Coco said that she had a brand-new beau, a rock star famous enough that even I had heard of him, who wanted to take her to Anguilla for Christmas, but she wasn’t sure she should go.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Well, if you fall out of love with a rock star on an island over the holidays, I’m not sure you can get back to New York even if you want to,” she said sensibly. “And playing hard to get never hurt anyone.”
“I wish I was as smart as you are about all this stuff,” I said.
“You’re doing fine,” she said staunchly. “You just need to loosen up a little.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said.
But before we could say any more, Jean-Louis was at my door. “Ah, Coco!” he cried, coming in and kissing her on both cheeks. “Jean-Louis,” she crooned, pulling him over to the filet mignon and the booze, but he laughed and shook his head and chattered to her in rapid-fire French.
“There’s a fun party downtown that Jolie is giving, and Jean-Louis is going and thinks we should go with him,” Coco translated. I understood enough French to know that Jean-Louis had said no such thing. He had asked Coco to go, period, which was fine with me and with Pimm, who was signaling me wildly. Neither of us wanted to end up in a loft filled with models and the men who chased them. Those guys were a cr
eepy breed I’d seen at fashion shows, usually handsome themselves and well dressed. But they had a particularly demeaning way of looking at an exquisitely beautiful woman—as if she were a car and the only way to judge her beauty definitively was to see how good she would look with him driving.
“You go on without us, Coco,” I said, as Pimm nodded and Jean-Louis looked relieved. In his book, we were the office librarians.
“You don’t mind?” Coco asked, already swinging her bag up from the floor, her adrenaline pumping at the mention of a party the way mine did at the mention of a pizza.
Pimm and I cleaned up the remains of the dinner and left, walking up Fifth Avenue to Rockefeller Center, where we stopped to see the Christmas tree and the ice skaters. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Pimm asked, beaming.
“It really is,” I agreed. I felt that old childhood thrill at the notion of Christmas. No matter that it wasn’t mine to celebrate. Everything else was.
My elation lasted until I got home. Our super had made a dismal show of decorating the lobby, hanging red velvet bows near the part-time doorman’s station and parking a few poinsettias on the floor. The doorman, however, was nowhere to be found, and there were already dead leaves surrounding the foil-wrapped pots. I got my mail and went upstairs, yet again, to an empty apartment.
Sharon had been out a lot lately, and when I’d finally seen her one recent morning, it had occurred to me to ask if she was avoiding me as well as her mother. She seemed uncomfortable. “Sort of,” she said, hastily explaining that her mother’s lawyer had determined that the time was right to invest in real estate. Sharon’s mother was buying a co-op for Sharon to live in.
“Will she have the key?” I asked.
Sharon looked panicked. “Over my dead body,” she said, adding that she felt ready to live on her own. As if with that mother she ever would.
There was another year left on our lease, so I would have to find a new roommate. That would mean living with a stranger, placing an ad in The Village Voice, starting over with someone else’s bathroom habits. But I couldn’t be angry at Sharon; if my life had gone the way I’d hoped, I would be moving out, too.
Christmas Eve came at the end of my schedule’s first week, and unbeknownst to Paul, I hadn’t booked it. Or Christmas Day. I was all for mental health, but there was something to be said for learning the fine art of enjoying one’s own company instead of merely tolerating it, and that is what I intended to do. No parties, no families, no Baby Jesus. I deserved a chance to loll in bed, order in, and watch videos. I had even saved a Judith Krantz book, spunky heroine guaranteed. I looked forward to her succeeding against all odds. I planned to take notes.
Christmas Eve day, I left the office and walked all the way home, feeling remarkably serene. The traffic jam in front of Rockefeller Center was reassuringly familiar; at Lord & Taylor, there were still kids on line, bundled up, watching the carousels in the windows. Down toward the Village, families loaded their cars for trips out of town, and I managed to take none of it personally. I had my own treats to look forward to.
Once home, I poured myself a Scotch and settled into bed, flipping channels. The Yule log. I was not nearly drunk enough for that. I kept going until I found Midnight Mass at the Vatican. Oh! My parents were there! My father knew someone who had gotten them a deal to go to Italy for two weeks, and one of my mother’s rat cronies knew someone who had gotten them into Midnight Mass.
For the first time that day, I felt wobbly. These holidays were downright subversive, lying in wait for the tiniest crack in my Up with People mind-set. Yes, I had taken charge and defined my own good time, but in this moment, I felt completely out of sync with the norm, that my selected activities were the wrong ones. All these years later and here I was, still alone with my book on Christmas, while other people joined together, celebrating.
Don’t do this, Sandra, I warned myself. Think of a year from now. Your life will be totally different. Think of a month from now. Yeah? What then? Well, it would be January. An automatic improvement on December.
I studied the TV screen. There were lengthy close-ups of frescoes and crucifixes and the Pope in his white robes, but none of the audience. Still, I kept watching. There were two people there in that other time zone, looking up at that soaring architecture, who knew my middle name and where the scars from my chicken pox were. That was about the closest I could come to feeling connected to anyone.
My holiday celebration could wait. I moved my pillow nearer to the set and fell asleep.
Christmas Day was better. All About Eve and The Philadelphia Story, punctuated by naps. An entire package of Stella D’oro Swiss Fudge Cookies devoured, and a Chinese feast delivered to my door. I found myself grinning at regular intervals. Pure sloth.
Then I was back on my Paul schedule, with a Boxing Day cocktail party at Pimm’s parents’ house. It was lovely, an urban version of my suburban fantasy, with passed hors d’oeuvres, a catered coulibiac of salmon, and a rare, imported Russian vodka. The parents’ friends and the children’s friends all mingled. There were worn leather chairs in the den, Bing Crosby sang on the stereo, and snow fell gently outside the window. Neither Pascal nor Coco came—he was in London; she was, indeed, in Anguilla. Hard-to-get could wait.
Pimm’s boyfriend, Chris, stood up on a footstool and announced that they were engaged. Everyone applauded and cheered, and Pimm cried while her mother blinded her with a flash camera. I spent the rest of the party consoling Pimm’s sister, Breezy, whose boyfriend had dumped her on Christmas Eve. She had expected a ring; he had expected her to realize that he was too young to get married. And now, not only did she not have a date for New Year’s but she would have to be her sister’s maid of honor without any prospects of her own. Had I ever heard of a crueler breakup?, she demanded, blowing her nose. I lit a cigarette and assured her I had not.
The next morning, the phone rang.
“Sandy? Did I wake you?” Susie Schein asked, not even trying to mask her disgust. I saw from the bedside clock that it was 11:27. So what? I was on vacation.
“No, that’s okay,” I said, pulling myself up. “Is something wrong?”
“Well,” she said urgently, “we have a real problem.”
“How can we have a real problem when the magazine’s closed?”
“I got a call this morning from Kathy Sinclair,” she said. “She can’t do the Mexico piece. She has a terrible flu and a 104-degree temperature.”
That was a real problem. Kathy Sinclair was one of our most dependable writers, and she could be sent anywhere at a moment’s notice. She would willingly hang around a film set for days, waiting until a star was ready to see her, because she’d sleep with the rest of the cast in the meantime—and save the star for last. The stories she wrote for the magazine were good, but the stories she told about sex with the stars were great.
Kathy had agreed to go to the Acapulco set of a new action movie this week to interview Idina Lhasa, the leading lady already being touted as next summer’s It girl, for a major fashion spread.
“Well, we can wait till Lhasa’s back from the shoot and have Kathy do it then,” I said.
Susie cleared her throat. I could tell that she had planned this next part and that I wasn’t going to like it.
“I want you to go,” she said.
“What?” I almost shouted.
“Sandy, listen,” Susie said. “Idina Lhasa is eighteen years old. What kind of preparation do you need? Get a description of the set and her costumes and ask her an hour’s worth of questions, most of which her manager will answer anyway. End of story.”
“Is this really necessary?” I asked.
“Of course it is,” she snapped. “They’re only at this location until the end of the weekend and I don’t want to lose it. You know that. You’re the one who told me.”
True enough. “Are you sure there’s no one else?”
“Everyone else is gone for the holiday,” Susie said.
I thought quickly. W
hy was I fighting her? Would it kill me to go to Acapulco? I thought of the Judith Krantz book. That girl would go in a heartbeat, probably fall in love the minute she stepped on the plane. What was wrong with me? This was an adventure, it was exciting. To hell with the chafing dish. Bring on the maracas.
“Okay, Susie. I’ll go.”
“Great.” She had already arranged for a messenger to pick up Kathy Sinclair’s ticket and bring it to my apartment, along with press clips on the film. What a bitch. She knew all along she would get me to go. I was to leave at seven the following morning and could come back whenever I was done. It was an open ticket.
“Obviously, you’ll be done by Monday, when the office reopens,” she added.
“Obviously,” I answered dryly. We certainly wouldn’t want to have any fun.
“Listen, Sandy,” Susie said, mustering an ounce of sincerity. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
Well, that was a first. I got out of bed and headed to the shower, peeling off layers of flannel. I glimpsed my white body in the mirror and cringed. I would go to Acapulco, but my bathing suit was staying home.
Apparently no one in the Mexican government has given any consideration to its highway system, I thought as the car jostled over potholes that made New York’s look amateur. Groups of men huddled on the roadside every hundred yards or so, watching the cars go by. A few called out curses. Mattresses, bedsprings, and gasoline cans all lay in piles near where the men stood. As we got closer to town, the roads smoothed out and the men disappeared, the sense of menace with them.
We passed Las Brisas, the famous resort, which looked pretty from the outside, and went on to the high-rise hotel where I was booked.
“You can drink the water on the premises,” the woman at the front desk advised me, unprompted, “but if you drink it when you leave the hotel, you take your own responsibility.”
Take it where?, I wondered, following the porter and my bag up to a thoroughly nondescript room. I called over to the film set and found the publicist, who said I could meet Idina for dinner that evening at six, with her manager. The following day they would be on location, where I could gather my descriptions. So, she suggested, why didn’t I take this afternoon off and just lie by the pool?