Through the door, now, she can see that Peregrine is cautiously returning a painting – could it possibly be a Correggio? – to its spot above the guest-room closet, while Clary Howell waits out on the landing, ruffling the spaniels’ ears. All of these books are his, of course. She edges nearer.
Yes, he’s very attractive. Seventy-four, tops. (She’s pretty expert at guessing old age, not all that good at guessing young.) It’s those muscular calves and forearms that make him seem youthful, she thinks. He’s got very sexy legs. Fernanda’s a fan of muscular legs. He has to be younger than Stanley, she thinks, but he did say his eldest boy was fifty. He’s a remarkably handsome man, in fact.
“I hope you’ll be staying for lunch.”
Clary Howell gets to his feet as Peregrine enters the hall. The spaniel attempts to welcome him again, but nervously, Peregrine steps away.
“Norah makes a wonderful cheese omelet. And the eggs are from our own hens.”
“We’d be delighted,” Peregrine replies, keeping an eye on the dog. “We have an afternoon’s work ahead of us, I think.”
By late afternoon, Peregrine has stripped off his jacket. The tongue of his Hermes tie is hanging wearily from his back trouser pocket and his French-cuffed sleeves are rolled up. Some two hours earlier, Fernanda’s ballpoint pen finally ran out of ink and Clary Howell had to forage for another in the servants’ dining room (the servants’ dining room!). But now, at long last, tidily wrapped in individual protective cardboard sleeves and either queued up on the faded runner in the front hall or leaning against the wall beside the door, thirteen of the smaller paintings are ready to go. Regretfully, he hadn’t let them have the Guardi or the might-be-a-Rembrandt. Just too much family there, he’d explained very politely. Nevertheless, there are other, larger, pictures, among them the Van Loo, a possible Raeburn and a Madonna and child, wannabe Botticelli. They’ve all been stickered and left where they hang to be professionally wrapped and trucked to Berger’s later in the week.
While Peregrine is carefully hauling their trophies two at a time to the car, Fernanda slides her notebook into her soft canvas tote and starts hunting for the suit jacket she’d neatly draped – years ago it seems – on some chair-back somewhere. Which one and where, though? As she heads toward the stairs, she smiles at Mr. Howell. He is leaning on the newel post there, looking bereft. With the toe of one grass-stained sneaker, he’s rucking up the runner’s tattered edge.
“You know,” she hears him say, almost to himself. “You know, this hurts. I’d no idea. Even early this morning, walking through the house before you all got here, I was thinking this might be fun: learning from you, you know. Finding out about the family’s things. What they were worth. All that.”
She stops on the bottom stair and turns.
He’s wistful and motionless, one tanned hand atop the other on the post’s mahogany ball.
“It’s been anything but fun.”
His eyes filled with sorrow, he glances her way.
“Though if I don’t do this, you know, well, when I’m gone, the boys’ll be fighting over who gets what.” He looks down at the rug again. “They know about what happened with my brother, and they don’t get along, I’m afraid.”
Fernanda is almost overcome by the urge to comfort him.
“But you’re so fit, Mr. Howell. So energetic. Those boys won’t have that problem for a very long time.”
He doesn’t answer, and his handsome house – except for the tall case clock on the landing that’s recording monotonous, muffled time – is correspondingly quiet as Clary Howell, the latest steward of Clifton, lowers himself stiffly to the bottom-most step. He studies his hands.
“Well, I’ve just had this sort of pacemaker thing put in, and now there’s talk of a bypass. My wife died two years ago, you know, so I’m alone. It seemed a good moment to call you in.”
Fernanda remembers Stanley’s sickening fall to the floor. He’d been alone, too and his wife was gone.
“Oh, Mr. Howell.” She drops her bag on the floor and sits on the step beside him. “You seem so vital. So strong. I just don’t see you dying of a heart attack. And you take care of yourself. Anyone can see that you do.” She longs to make him smile. “What sports do you play?” she asks.
He brightens a bit.
“Well, when I’m not teaching, I play racquetball in summer and then there’s hockey in the winter. Or there was, till recently. He touches his chest. “Though, actually,” she sees his cheeks flush through his tan, “I’m the national senior court tennis champion. It’s not nice to brag, though, is it?”
Rising, he walks to the front door and stares out. The two men had managed to force it open so Peregrine could load the car in front. From where she is sitting now, Fernanda can see him pushing things around in the trunk, making more room. There isn’t a screen door here, so the insects have found their way in and are panicking noisily on the narrow glass sidelights.
Fernanda is ready to ask him what “court tennis” is, but her attention is caught by his mention of teaching.
She addresses his back.
“I didn’t know you were a teacher, Mr. Howell. Do you still teach? What? What do you teach?”
His hands in the pockets of his shorts, he turns. Backlit, his face is invisible in the afternoon light.
“I’m pretty much retired these days, Miss Turner, but I still give graduate courses in philosophy over at Post.”
Fernanda has been enjoying that “Miss.” A whole day of “miss”, not “Ms.”
“Philosophy? Gosh. That’s definitely not what I’d expect an athlete to teach.”
“Oh? And what do you think would be more appropriate?”
Lord, now she’s made him angry. He’s a client, she’s overstepped.
As he walks back toward her, she scrambles for a response, but as the light hits his face, she sees she’s being teased.
“Well. Oh. Let me think,” she replies, relieved. “Riding sidesaddle? Library science? Dance?”
His guffaw – more of a hoot, really – rouses the napping dogs outside. They amble over to the door, no further, and stare.
“You’re laughing at me, Miss Turner. But when I ride, it’s plain old English. I guess you’ve seen my books. I like my books to be organized, that’s all. And I don’t dance. Or haven’t in years.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. You look like you’d be good.”
She’s flirting, Fernanda realizes happily. And of course, she knows now how to make men happy, how to really cheer them up. Young men and, she’s pretty certain, old. It may not be court tennis – whatever that is – but in her own modest way, Fernanda’s a champion, too.
And there, after all, is her jacket, on that nice old settee in the hall all this time. She plucks it up, turns to face Clary Howell, and sliding a sleeve over one bare arm, she reaches behind her, ostensibly to find the other, and makes her breasts – her world-class breasts – press taut against her strappy summer tee.
She watches his face. Nothing at all.
“Well, it’s been just wonderful seeing your things, Mr. Howell,” she says, embarrassed.
“Here, let me help you with that,” he says.
As he steps behind her and slides her jacket on her shoulders, Fernanda turns, and for a second or two, fits herself perfectly into his body. Wordlessly, instantly, Clary steps away.
And Peregrine, sweating and flailing, sails damply through the door.
“I’m ready if you are, Ms. Turner,” Peregrine says. “And we’re lucky. That car really couldn’t hold one thing more, and if we leave right now – right now,” he’s pointedly emphatic, “we might be able to avoid the traffic back to the city.”
He addresses their host. He’s finished with him now.
“Thanks so much for the delightful lunch, and should you need to reach us for any reason, Mr. Howell, here’s my card. Don’t hesitate to call with any questions. ”
To Fernanda, he adds, “Give Mr. Howell your card, too,
Ms. Turner. In case I’m not available. Ms. Turner is my assistant in this, of course, and she’ll be more than happy to handle any of your questions if you find you can’t reach me.”
Which means that, if all goes well, Peregrine and Clary Howell will never speak again.
Fernanda slides a card from her wallet and, mortified by her foolish display, smiles a quick goodbye. He doesn’t look at her again, but nodding and bending to adjust the crumpled rug, he slips her card into his pocket. He watches from the open door as she and Peregrine cross the gravel to the car and ease their way into its furnace to start the long drive home.
At the end of the driveway, Fernanda turns to see Clary Howell alone on the overgrown front path. She sees him walk back to the house and try to slam the swollen door, but it sticks and won’t close. Fingering the plastic dog whistle and limping very slightly, he starts down the driveway toward the shadowed back door of his suddenly diminished old house.
CHAPTER 13
Fernanda’s pretty much convinced she’ll never marry anyone she takes home from a bar. Not even an upscale bar like this. Which may be why, toying with her Malpec now while half-watching a turned-low football game, but also – when she remembers to – pretending to be having the best time of anyone in the place, she’s feeling particularly slutty.
Yes, her glorious body has powerful demands – surprising demands that, in the arms of the recently departed Ben and the scores of men she’s been meeting online who weren’t marriage material either, she’s learned precisely how to satisfy. And where Frannie might once have been shocked and repelled – and certainly judgmental – Fernanda’s entitled and free. But not meeting Mr. Right isn’t nearly as unsettling and incredible as the fact that she isn’t pregnant yet.
She’s been trying. Trying hard. In truth, the people-watching she seems to be engaging in here is merely a stake-out for hopeful swordsmen, one of whom appears every few minutes or so. After working up the nerve. Which Fernanda thoroughly understands. And has learned to love. After all, the major redhead with the magnificent body is formidable: the sort of woman who requires men who have deep reserves of self-confidence. Or a couple of drinks, at least. Or balls.
Though Fernanda herself has developed balls. Ladyballs. She can feel them slip into their silken sacks whenever she’s casing an art-gallery opening or walking into a party, or when, like now, she’s commanding this throne-like stool in a bar.
Because online is really isolating. There are so many men to pick through. But there are bodies in bars. Male voices. Good humor. Bad music. And still, picking up men like this feels more used than using. And why is she still doing bars? Because this body is clamoring for use. But her heart wants, what? Warmth. That hand that is searching for hers.
If only she could get pregnant, she thinks for the hundredth time. Then she could stop all this. But the baby part – the part that should have been easy, seems not to be easy at all. And now, she drinks up her wine – now, it’s almost September, five months left, and she’s still sitting here, knowing that these bar types aren’t looking for her. Or any real woman. What they want is vagina.
Bars are hard.
“Do you come here often?”
Oh, no. Fernanda doesn’t even look up. Not that dreaded phrase “Do you come here often?”
A pair of grass-green sneakers topped by sharp-creased dark jeans are touching the toe of her pump.
It’s the sneakers that get her.
“Hi, there,” he says. “I’m Sam.”
All the “Sams” Fernanda ever knew as Franny were meager Jewish men in bobby-pinned skullcaps, but the Sams she’s meeting lately? They all seem to work out for hours each day and live in Chelsea or Williamsburg in loft-like spaces with seven-foot stereo speakers. Most of them have tattooed shoulder blades as well, and usually, much better pick-up lines than “Do you come here often?”
This Sam looks to be older than most of the Sams she’s met. Late thirties, perhaps. His head is shaved – meaning he’s losing his hair – and he’s wearing a gray tweed sport jacket that he’s hoping looks sculpted, but is, in fact, too tight. His jaw – kind of manly, in an underslung way – is darkly peppered with the stubble that Marcia, alone among the women she knows, finds erotic. Where his jaw meets his diamond-studded ear, she notices a tic. Now that, that’s sexy.
“You’ve been waiting for me all night. I can tell,” he says.
“Maybe.”
“What’s your name?”
“Barbara.”
“Barbara what?”
“Stanwyck.”
“Wow. Wasn’t that the name of some old movie star?”
Did he just wink at her? Please, no.
“I’ve been asked that before.”
“So Barb, do you really like sports,” Sam says cheerfully, glancing at the screen behind the bar, “or would you rather go somewhere without four TVs?”
“Mmmm, I like some sports.”
She’s appalling sometimes.
“Well, listen, I have right here …” He pulls out his wallet and intentionally flashes its substantial contents while neatly extracting a shiny black business card on which, in a bold copperplate typeface, she reads: Totum Dependeat.
“This is my membership card to this very private club where we can be totally alone, if we like. Or not.” His eyes hold hers. “What do you say? Barb? Or do you like to be called Barbara?”
She ignores him and points to the card.
“That’s Latin, isn’t it? What does that mean?”
Holding the card at arm’s length, he squints. He turns it over, turns it back.
“Truth? Damned if I know!”
But despite the wink and the bad pick-up line, she does like the shoes, that tic, and the shape of his head. Not every man can carry off bald.
“Barb is fine, Sam, and yes, might as well.”
With a backward glance at the basketball game – the Knicks are losing, she sees – Fernanda glides off the stool, takes this current Sam’s hand and heads to the street.
Beyond its unmarked doors, Totum Dependeat opens into a square-ish, smoke-filled room. A black-clad Asian woman ushers them into an interior so dim that Fernanda doesn’t even see the huge, almost-empty, mirrored bar until they’re there. Reflected in its smoky mirror she can see an entrance to what looks like – she can’t be certain – a locker room? Another wall appears to be lined with a dozen or so narrow doors.
Sam takes her hand and pulls open his jacket pocket to show her the mini-bottles he’s hiding there.
“I like to bring my own here.” He points to his other pocket. “And there’s more, when we need it.”
He flashes his square, brilliantly whitened teeth as they settle onto unusually cushy bar stools. The cigarette smoke smells delicious, Fernanda thinks: it’s been ages since she smoked. She was forty-seven, maybe. Or did she give it up for her fiftieth? The subdued noise level here is nice, too, as is that old – really old – R and B. “Sixty-Minute Man?” Couldn’t be, she thinks.
In the mirror, she tracks two really well-dressed arriving couples: neckties on the men. And the women? Blonde wraiths in form-fitting, bombshell black. The men are uniformly older; the women, dangerously young. Although there’s a glittery scatter of middle-aged singles, all sexes. The first group has disappeared into the “locker room.” Sam orders set-ups and fills Fernanda’s glass.
“So what do you do?”
“I’m in the art business.”
“I knew it.” He beams. “You work in some fancy gallery in Chelsea. Right? You got the job after you graduated from – um – Brown, and your parents help out with the rent.”
He kisses the tip of her little finger and startlingly, licks her cheek. Fernanda’s repelled and aroused.
“How did you manage to guess that, Sam? Although you didn’t get the Brown part right. I went to Yale. Art history major. Phi Beta Kappa.”
“Hey, I’m impressed!”
He looks impressed, in fact, so she’s pleased n
ot to have had to go the whole route to the doctorate in molecular biophysics and biochemistry.
“Gorgeous and smart. Sweet!”
“Sweet?” Hmm. But maybe that’s what she needs tonight: a jerk.
“Because I know you won’t believe this,” he goes on, “but I make a point of only sleeping with women who are either drop-dead gorgeous or incredibly smart.”
Oh God, Fernanda thinks. Is there a woman on earth who would fall for that? Even Frannie would have balked.
He’s a pretty mixed bag, this Sam. A sexy-ish, sort of plastic, bag. Not “the one”, most definitely. But a likely sperm donor, for sure.
“I think I’m flattered.”
Fernanda reaches for a third mini-bottle, adding it to her almost empty drink.
“So let’s go, then,” Sam says.
Go? They just got here. Where?
Picking up both glasses, he nudges Fernanda toward the room across the way.
Which turns out to be a locker room after all, and once they’re inside, he sets their drinks on a long wooden bench and uses his card to open the grilled metal door.
“Just hang your clothes in there.”
Peeling off his jacket, he kicks the memorable sneakers under a bench. His bare feet are shapely, clean-looking, she notices, the toenails well kept.
Fernanda stares around her and sees the other occupants of the room in various stages of undress. The men are all stripping in expectant haste, but the women are removing their garments deliberately, painstakingly folding each piece while anxiously angling their bodies to display the commendable parts. And while their partners do take notice, she can see their eyes skittering off to the rest of the room, for what? Better breasts or butts or opera-length gloves?
But Fernanda’s disrobing slowly as well. She isn’t certain, but she may be shy in public. She knows she used to be.
Sam’s whisper interrupts.
“The robes are over there. Those hooks by the john.”
She sits to pull off her boots, slides her jeans down her legs, pulls down her blue-lace panties and unhooks the matching bra. This is really extraordinary, she thinks, rising from the bench. But possibly no more so than selling her immortal soul. It’s got to be more fun.
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