Overseas

by Beatriz Williams

  He cleared his throat. “I think you ought to sit down. Here,” he added, snatching the vase, “I’ll take that to the scullery.”

  “Oh, don’t…” I said, but it was too late. I tottered back to the sofa and sank down with my head in my hands. Everything seemed to be sliding into disaster; worse, I was wasting time, my most precious resource. Think, Kate. Think.

  The door opened, and Julian walked back in, having disposed of the vase. I straightened and tried to smile, tried to push aside my embarrassment. It was easier than I thought; for one thing, I felt much better now that I’d thrown up.

  “The doctor will be here soon,” he said.

  “Really, it’s not necessary. I…” I broke off, not quite sure what to say.

  “The landlady should be along shortly.” He paused and put his hands behind his back, standing there stiffly in the middle of the room, cap fixed to his head. As I watched, the faint shadow of his Adam’s apple rose and fell along the line of his throat, so fleeting I might have missed the movement with a single blink.

  Something like relief eased through my body at the sight of his nervousness, at the suggestion that, already, I had gained some small power over him. I positioned my hands modestly in my lap. “Thank you so much for your kindness, Captain Ashford,” I said, in a dulcet voice, angling my head. His eyes caught for an instant on my exposed throat. “You’ve been wonderful.”

  He hesitated. “I beg your pardon, but I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage. Have we perhaps met?”

  I felt my mouth turn up in a half-smile. “Met? Not exactly.”

  “And yet you know my name.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  He stood there expectantly, and I realized he was waiting for me to introduce myself. What was I going to say?

  Someone entered the room with a creak of stiff hinges and a heavy tread. I looked to the door and saw a burly woman in a long faded dress and apron, holding a battered tray before her. She did not look amused.

  “Une fille!” she scolded Julian. I could just make out the words, with my limited high school French. “You have brought a… a girl!” Words seemed to fail her. She crashed the tray onto the worn wooden table in the corner and glared at me balefully.

  “Ça suffit, madame,” he said. “She’s ill; the doctor will arrive in a few minutes. Thank you for the tea.”

  She left, grumbling, wiping her hands on her apron as though to brush away whatever illness I’d carried in with me.

  “Now I’ve got you in trouble with your landlady,” I said. “I’m awfully sorry.”

  “Quite all right. Would you like a bit of tea?”

  “I’d love tea. Thank you.”

  He poured me a cup. “Milk?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Are you certain? There’s no sugar, I’m afraid.” He removed the leaves in a practiced gesture and offered me the cup. “Rationing and all that.”

  “I don’t mind.” The china stung my cold fingers with divine heat; I raised it quickly to my lips.

  “And bread, perhaps?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  He sawed off a slice from the baguette and handed it to me. I tried to restrain myself, to eat calmly, but the nausea had been replaced by the most ravenous hunger, and I couldn’t disguise the eagerness with which I ripped into the bread.

  “There now,” he said, sitting down in the chair next to the sofa. “Better?”

  “I’m sorry. I must seem very mysterious to you.”

  He inclined his head. “Not at all.”

  “You want to know who I am, of course. You probably think I’m a spy, or worse.” I laughed hollowly. “Worse! I don’t see how it could possibly be worse. But I’m not a spy, Captain Ashford.” The teacup vibrated in my hands. “I’m…”

  A knock sounded on the door. “Come in,” Julian said, not taking his eyes from mine.

  I looked at the doorway. “Hello, Lieutenant Warwick,” I said. “Have you brought the doctor?”

  He stopped short, stunned. “How the devil does she know my name? Who is she?”

  “We haven’t got to that, yet,” Julian said, and turned to the other man, who’d followed Warwick through the door, right after the slight figure of Arthur Hamilton. “Vous êtes le medecin?”

  “Oui. C’est la fille, là?”

  “Oui.” Julian began explaining my symptoms, and the doctor came toward me, eyes narrowed in clinical concern.

  “Monsieur, it’s nothing,” I said, in my halting French. “I’m just tired and hungry.”

  “You’ve vomited?” he asked. That, at least, was what I thought he said; he made a brief motion with his hand that seemed to be the universal sign for throwing up.

  “Yes, a little,” I replied. “It happens when I’m hungry.”

  He gave me a sharp, wise look. I cast my eyes downward, trying to look modest.

  “I will listen to your heart and lungs,” he announced, and removed a stethoscope from his black leather bag—a real leather doctor’s bag!—and did just that. I sat in my hollow of worn velvet, trying to breathe in a natural rhythm. He listened long and carefully, moving the cool metal of the stethoscope around my torso; he examined my eyes and throat and straightened to skewer Julian with a piercing stare.

  “She’s as well as can be expected,” he said.

  “Expected?” Julian asked.

  The doctor opened his mouth.

  “Because of hunger, isn’t it, monsieur?” I said.

  He turned back to me with both eyebrows raised and studied my expression. “Yes, hunger. How long has it been since madame has eaten?”

  “A day. I’ve been traveling.” I couldn’t remember the French word for travel, but I made walking motions with my fingers and the doctor nodded.

  “She must eat,” he said, turning back to Julian, “and rest.”

  “Fair enough,” said Geoff Warwick, in English. He looked at me. “Where are your friends in this town?”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m afraid I haven’t any. But I’m quite well now. It was only the strain of the journey, just now, and I thank you both very much for your concern. If I may, however, before I leave, have a private word with Captain Ashford?”

  They all looked at one another.

  “Yes, of course,” Julian said. “Perhaps… but you must eat…” He addressed Warwick. “Why don’t I run her over to the Chat for a bit of breakfast? It should be open by now.”

  “You’re serious, Ashford? She might be anyone, she might…”

  “I beg your pardon.” I stood up with as much dignity as I could manage: long neck, back straight, shoulders back. “I wouldn’t dream of imposing on your kindness. I only wish a short word with Captain Ashford, and I’ll be on my way.”

  “Warwick, you’re an ass,” Julian said, rising to his feet the instant my bottom had left the sofa cushion. “She’s a perfectly well-bred girl, as you can plainly see. The war’s imposed difficulties on us all, and I should think you’d show a little more humanity, of all people. I’m now going to see that she has a decent breakfast and decent lodging.”

  “Really, Warwick,” said Hamilton. He’d been standing there diffidently, raindrops rolling away from his coat, watching the exchange; his expression wary, perhaps, but sympathetic. “I don’t see any reason for suspicion. Ashford’s only trying to do the right thing by the poor girl.” His accent was stiff, nasal: pooah gel.

  “Very well,” Warwick said to Julian, ignoring me. “Don’t forget we’re engaged with McGregor and Collins from ten o’clock.”

  “I shan’t be that long, I assure you.” Julian turned to the doctor, who still stood there, looking expectant, and addressed some low-voiced question to him.

  “Please,” I said hastily, reaching for my coat, “I’m not at all destitute…”

  But Julian had already pressed something into the doctor’s hand, and was gathering our coats and ushering us through the door; past Hamilton, who stood back respectfully; past Warwick, who fixed me wi
th a spiteful glare. I returned it in full. I’d worked on Wall Street for three years; I could do the alpha stare.

  Plainly, Geoffrey Warwick didn’t like me.

  But then, he never had.

  3.

  Julian’s townhouse wasn’t quite what I was expecting. In the ruthless arithmetic of Manhattan real estate, you bought the finest you could possibly afford; the hierarchy of property aligned neatly with the hierarchy of wealth. A legendary Wall Street investor should inhabit the pinnacle of all: a wide pearl-white mansion just off Fifth Avenue, perhaps, with a ballroom inside and a service entrance below; or else a cavernous floor or two atop some monumental Park Avenue apartment building.

  This house was neither. It stood midway between Madison and Park, on a quiet street lined with trees, subdued and anonymous. It looked exactly like its neighbors on either side: twenty-odd feet wide; plain elegant Greek Revival lines; faced half with limestone, half with brick; entrance raised a few steps from street level. The number 52 was carved into the lintel above the front door.

  I raised my hand to press the doorbell and paused. I thought I could hear the sound of a piano drifting through the walls, something lilting and complex and faintly melancholy. Chopin? I closed my eyes. When I was young, my father had played a lot of Chopin on the old turntable he’d refused to give up. I hadn’t heard it in years; I couldn’t even name the piece, but the notes were as familiar to me as my childhood bedroom.

  A dark-clad figure approached, shuffling down the sidewalk. I shook off my reverie and pressed my finger against the doorbell. The music cut off.

  I heard footsteps, growing louder, and the door opened in a rush of warm air against my cheeks. I was half-expecting to see a butler of some kind, but it was Julian himself, unmistakably and devastatingly Julian, wearing a dark-blue turtleneck sweater over a pair of tan corduroys.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hello, there,” he answered. “Come on in.”

  “Oh, that’s okay. I just wanted to hand this off to you.” I held out a copy of the revised pitch book, bound together by David Doyle half an hour ago.

  “Thanks,” he said, taking it. “I appreciate your taking the trouble to bring it round.” He hesitated.

  “Um, well, I’d better get going,” I said. “Let me know if you have any questions. I’ll be checking my e-mail.” I began to turn.

  “Wait,” he said. “Do you mind coming in a moment, while I look it over?” He unleashed his smile, flattening me. “I should hate to have to interrupt your Christmas with any tedious e-mails.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind that. Goes with the territory, right?” I tried to smile back. “But yes, I have a couple of minutes, if you want me to wait.”

  “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “Of course not.”

  He stood back, allowing me past him into the hallway. “Oh,” I said, under my breath. I’d expected to find the usual stripped-down bachelor interior, with all the walls knocked out and everything painted in bright stark white. But this was something else entirely. A flight of stairs stretched in front of me, at the end of an entrance hall tiled in worn checkerboard marble. To the right, a broad archway opened to the living room, a spacious high-ceilinged rectangle in which a fire burned invitingly beneath a pale marble mantel, flanked by two plump sofas. The walls, lit by a scattering of lamps, had been painted a warm goldenrod; the abundant trim work a creamy off-white. Books sat everywhere: on shelves, primarily, but also in haphazard stacks, on the floor, on the furniture. It was comfortable. Homelike.

  Julian stepped forward hastily and began removing the volumes from one of the sofas. “Sorry,” he said, setting them down on the floor. “I don’t know how they accumulate like that. They’re part rabbit, I think. Please sit down. Can I get you something? Let me take your coat.”

  He was nervous, I realized. The knowledge hit me like a bludgeon, shocking and rather paralyzing. Julian Laurence, nervous? Around me? I felt his hands on my arms, removing my coat; he laid it over the top of the sofa.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I didn’t mean to drop by like this. It was Banner’s suggestion. I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you.”

  “Not at all. Sit. You’re sure I can’t get you something?”

  “No, really. I can only stay a minute.”

  He smiled, a small faint smile, and picked up the pitch book from a side table. “Then let’s get to it, shall we?” he suggested, sitting down on the sofa opposite me. He wore soft old moccasin slippers, curving about his feet with well-worn comfort.

  We were quiet for a moment. He bent over the pitch book and began flipping through the pages, leaning against the back of the sofa. I glanced down at the stack of books at my feet and squinted, trying to make out the titles.

  “Oh, I see what you’ve done,” he said after a moment or two. “Interesting. So you’ve broken it down into two scenarios…”

  “Yes,” I said. “The assumptions are in the footnotes.”

  “But look here,” he said. “If sales are going to be growing that much in the best-case scenario… Hold on a moment; I’ll get my laptop.” He rose and padded to the rear of the room, sliding open a pair of pocket doors to reveal what looked like a library, lined with still more bookshelves. I craned my neck to watch him. He went to a desk near the rear window, unplugged a MacBook, and carried it back into the living room. “Do you mind?” he asked.

  “No, of course not,” I said.

  “I was trying to put together a proper model. I don’t usually do them anymore, frankly don’t find it that useful except as an exercise, but I thought… Let me just…” His voice drifted off. He frowned into the computer screen, tapping away at his model. He was so deep in concentration I felt, at last, it was safe to study him. I indulged shamelessly, staring at the squared-off tip of his chin, at the elegant line of his nose, at the full arc of his lips, all glowing in the light from the computer screen. His cheeks wore a faint pink stain, starting high on his cheekbones and then fading away into the tiny pinpricks of his beard. I wanted to reach out my hand and touch it.

  “Look here a moment.” He motioned to me. “This is what I’ve done.”

  I got up slowly, almost trancelike, and stepped to the other sofa. He didn’t look up. “Look.” He pointed at the screen. “Don’t you think that’s more reasonable? Here, sit down. Hold the book a moment. Now if we look at year four…”

  I eased myself down next to him on the cushion, trying not to place myself too close, but it was no use. I could feel the slight warmth drifting from his body, smell the clean scent of his skin, hear the faint rush of his breath into the intimacy of the air between us. He was still holding out the presentation; I took it, folding back the previous pages with deliberate care.

  “Just a moment,” he said, “pardon me,” and reached across my lap to the lamp table next to the sofa. He opened a drawer at the top and withdrew a pen. “Now,” he went on, taking the book from me and scribbling something into the margin, “I think we need to shift this assumption…”

  “You’re left-handed,” I murmured. I thought I said it to myself, but it must have come out aloud.

  “No, right,” he said absently, and then closed his eyes. “I mean, yes, left.”

  I forced out a laugh. “I’m confused. Ambidextrous?”

  “No. Just some nerve damage a while back. I learned to write with my left hand.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry,” I said, and then added, after a pause, “But wasn’t that you playing the piano, when I came up?”

  He looked surprised, and then embarrassed. “And here I thought the walls were soundproof. Sorry about that.”

  “No, it was lovely.”

  “It was execrable. But to answer your question, it doesn’t affect my dexterity so much, or at least not anymore. It’s just the grip that’s painful.” He held up his right hand to demonstrate.

  “Wow. How did it happen?”

  The color in his cheeks intensified. “Car accident.”


  “Oh no!” I couldn’t help myself. I could almost hear the horrifying crunch of glass and metal. I only just stopped my hand before it reached up to grasp his.

  “Oh, it wasn’t as bad as that,” he said easily, wiggling his fingers. “Still whole, after all.”

  “You should be more careful,” I said.

  “You’re assuming it was my fault.”

  “Wasn’t it? I can just picture you driving your brand-new Porsche at a hundred miles an hour down the freeway, celebrating your first big bonus.”

  “Hmm.” His expression turned speculative. “And what did you do with your first bonus?”

  I laughed. “I’m just an analyst, remember? My share of the bonus pool amounts to about a shot-glass-full. I think I went out and got a new pair of shoes, last time, and socked the rest away in the apartment fund.”

  “Apartment fund?” He seemed amused.

  “My roommate’s wearing a little thin,” I said. “I’d like to buy my own place. Which at this rate will be a hall closet in Washington Heights, but that’s why I’m going to business school.”

  “Business school! You’re joking, surely.”

  “No, I’m serious. Why would I be joking?”

  “Because you’re too good for this. Come now, you don’t really want to be an investment banker all your life, do you?”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s the wrong question. Not why not, but rather why? Why waste your life around chaps like that Banner idiot?” He looked genuinely concerned.

  I shifted my gaze downward and fingered the edge of the presentation. “Look, I’m from Wisconsin. Typical suburban environment. I left to make something of myself, and Wall Street seemed the obvious place to start. Where the action was.”

  “From Wisconsin,” he said. “I’d never have guessed Wisconsin.”

  “Well, we don’t all sound like we’ve just stepped off the set of Fargo.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I…” He checked himself. “In any case, I never went to business school, and it hasn’t done me any harm.”

  “Yes, but you’re…” I waved my hand at him.

  A phone rang, somewhere behind us: the library, probably.