Silver Lining

by Diana Simmonds

  “Take as long as you like, Amanda,” he said, smiling with a sad tic at the corner of his left eye. “But if you could clear your desk asap that would be real good.”

  Amanda smiled back, this time with real amusement at the contradiction of the two parts of what he’d just told her. But the smile vanished instantly at his next words.

  “Carmel Morrow will be collecting security passes and cell phones later and if you’d just sign a little release that would be cool.”

  Amanda instantly stopped twirling the note between her fingers and slipped it into the folder of papers that had already been on his desk when she walked into the room. The terms and conditions of her severance, entitlements and cash payout were detailed inside, on more sheets of thick eFrères issue paper. The zeroes told her immediately that it took into account a year’s salary, her next due bonus, vacation allowances and a further $100,000 that Dennis had described as “a token of our wish for privacy and respect for our staff.” The documents were signed by Godfrey Nielsen and witnessed by Carmel. That latter signature kick-started Amanda’s motor.

  “Right. Okay, well I better move. I have things to do. Can I take it the dollars will be electronically transferred today?”

  “Sure thing, Amanda.” Dennis swallowed and pulled at his collar. Amanda stuck out her right hand and Dennis peered at it as if it might bite or explode before tentatively taking it in his. They shook hands and Amanda was awfully aware of his cold and clammy palm. There were beads of sweat on his top lip and his watering eyes pleaded with her for understanding and forgiveness.

  Amanda grinned. “Cheer up, Dennis, it hasn’t happened to you. Yet!” And she left his office for the last time with her head high and an icy knot of humiliation in her gut.

  * * *

  Having surveyed the events of the morning to that moment to her satisfaction, Amanda fed the historic note through her shredder and watched the strands fall into the recycling bin. It was just after 7:30; if she moved she could be gone before the mob arrived and certainly before Carmel came calling; or before the phone started ringing and her media buddies began nosing around. She turned on the desk computer and downloaded her contacts onto a USB stick, along with a copy of her personal file and notes. She knew better than to start deleting files: any IT goon could retrieve them in five minutes, which was why she had always been careful to keep anything even vaguely tricky on her own MacBook Air and remote from the bank’s system.

  She looked about her office and registered, with only minimal surprise, that she had very little to take with her to represent virtually every waking moment of the past three years. It was an elegant but impersonal room. The two artworks on the walls were leased and would undoubtedly be returned to wherever anytime soon. She opened the desk drawers one by one and fed the contents through the shredder. In the top drawer was a box of pens of her preferred nib thickness and blue ink color, beside it was a manicure kit and bottle of frosty pink nail polish. She scooped both into the Alexander Wang tote along with a small clear plastic box of multi-colored paperclips alongside the ’Air and its power cord. Finally, she took up a pen and a sheet of house issue notepaper that bore her name and wrote, “I, Amanda C. McIntyre, have no further call on nor interest in Elleron Frères, its staff or clientele. September 29.” She smiled as she signed it and wondered whether Carmel would experience even the tiniest twinge at what she had written. Probably not, she’s hardly the sentimental type, said her infrequently consulted inner sensible self.

  Finally Amanda took her electronic staff security card on its lanyard from around her neck and laid it beside the note. She struggled for a moment with the back of the BlackBerry before it gave in and allowed itself to be opened. She managed to pry out the battery without chipping her nail polish and removed the SIM card. The Blackberry itself was clean of all personal numbers and text messages: a nightly habit she was pleased she had long ago adopted. She placed the phone on the note, put the SIM card through the shredder and got to her feet. It was 7:42 a.m. and she was ready to go. Indeed, she thought, I have been let go.

  “Let’s get outta here,” she said aloud and did.

  * * *

  Leaving the building with just her tote bag on her shoulder, her purse under her arm and a deliberately carefree step had been the ideal way to exit. She was able to pass even her closer acquaintances with a cheery greeting and some meaningless banter as if on the way to collect coffee and bagels. She headed for the subway in a delicious burst of pale lemony sunshine and wondered in passing who else would be getting their marching orders this morning. It was a helluva thing and she knew, intuitively, that it had yet to sink in.

  “I’ve been fired,” she said experimentally and aloud, and then more deliberately, “I—have—been—fired.” It didn’t make much impression on her sense of disbelief but she did recognize that she was, out of the blue, no longer concerned about being seen talking to herself. “And I still have a sense of humor, that’s the main thing,” she said to a fire hydrant. Yet sensations of nausea and barely contained panic rose and fell in her throat. Before descending to the subway she bought a copy of the Times. It had been years since she’d done that other than on the weekend. Skimming online at her desk while waiting for the digests to ping into her inbox from the media department had been her regular, spoon-fed method of news consumption.

  “Buying my own paper, wow!” Automatically she reached into her purse for her BlackBerry and rummaged for a minute before remembering it was no longer there.

  “Omigod, I’ll have to get a new cell phone and pay for it!”

  Natalie would be amused. She ran down the subway stairs and, while waiting for an uptown train, began to think of all the other things she would now have to do. The first being to get a job, of course. For a moment the idea didn’t concern her that much, but then a new thought came galloping over the horizon. Her heart dropped into her shoes at the mental picture of how many former hotshots all over New York were having the same sick feelings of disbelief and bewilderment. And as the train began its rattling journey uptown, she sat in a corner seat experiencing another new sensation: idly watching New Yorkers go about their business, preoccupied faces deep in magazines, books, papers, iPods or thought; all apparently with a sense of purpose that Amanda recognized but now did not share. Her stomach was performing somersaults as her mood swung back and forth between elation and fright. For the first time since grade school Amanda C. McIntyre (“middle C is for Charlotte but do not even think about calling me Charlie”) was without immediate and clear goals.

  And as the subway train rattled onward, awareness of this odd new state steadily seeped through the numbing fog of shock that had enveloped Amanda since her brief audience with Dennis. By the time the train reached Eighty-Sixth St. she was feeling more than slightly sick and light-headed and it occurred to her that food might be a good idea. By this time on a normal working day she would have had a large decaf soy latte and picked at a bran blueberry muffin. But today is not a normal day, she thought, today is—she chuckled aloud—the first day of the rest of my life, because every cloud has a silver lining. A stitch in time is what happens if you go jogging right after breakfast; many hands make a mess; a bird in the hand can be a bit sticky; and any number of other fridge magnets.

  She crossed Lexington and began strolling the one and a half blocks toward her building. First she would go home and change into something casual and comforting; next she would walk a further half block to the diner and have a proper breakfast for the first time in…who knows how long. It felt like a good plan, if unusually modest. Then I must call Mom, she thought. Oh God, what am I going to tell her? Maybe I’ll leave it a few days. But she’ll see it on TV. I have to talk to her. Oh God.

  Walking into the lobby of the apartment building at such an hour on a weekday felt unnatural. As she passed the doorman’s den this was confirmed as he caught sight of her and popped his head around the corner. Nothing escaped his attention in the building, especially peo
ple going in and out.

  “Hey, Miz McIntyre, you ’ailin or ’summin?” His bushy black brows knit a row of concern.

  “Nuh, I’m good Joe. Just uh…” Amanda grinned and shrugged as she moved on through the lobby to the inner doors and turned the corner out of his sight and walked toward the elevators. “Shit,” she said aloud as she waited for one of the two cars to creak and groan down from the upper floors. “I have to get my story together.”

  It would have to wait though, because from above came familiar sounds of strife between dog and owner. Amanda stepped back and lowered her tote bag protectively in front of her ankles, knowing what was coming. The gates opened and out of the car bounded an ancient, arthritic and ridiculously cantankerous King Charles spaniel. He lunged at Amanda and she took another backward step, accustomed as she was to the elderly attack pooch from across her landing.

  “Puppy, Puppy,” boomed his owner ineffectually. “Come here, Puppy. You naughty, naughty boy.” The handsome elderly woman batted at Puppy with her walking stick, but with little conviction.

  “Hey Gloria, stop whacking the damn dog,” Amanda laughed as she dodged the partially sighted but wildly determined predator. “Put him on his leash for heaven’s sake, that’ll fix him.”

  “Ah! Of course, dear—so sorry—Puppy! Come here. Come here at once!”

  Puppy paid no attention but growled and charged again at Amanda, his unclipped claws snicketing on the marble floor as he skidded about her in what he imagined was hot pursuit. Amanda dropped her tote and purse, sidestepped another lunge and grabbed the smelly little beast and whisked him into the air where he wriggled and snuffled in shock and disbelief.

  “There you are, Gloria. God, he needs a bath. Phew!”

  She held out the growling, almost toothless fiend while his owner struggled with the catch of the leash.

  “I’m so sorry, dear, he’s never usually like this, as you know. I can’t imagine what’s got into him.” The catch was finally attached to the collar ring and Amanda set down the struggling, snapping dog on his madly paddling paws.

  “Nonsense Gloria, who’re you kidding? You know damn well he’s a killer attack menace,” said Amanda, hefting her tote onto her shoulder, her purse under her arm as she stepped around the aged pair. “One day that nasty old mutt will gum someone to death, then you’ll be in trouble.”

  “Oh! Don’t say that, Amanda. Oh dear me, I know you’re right, but he is so sweet, and I do love him.”

  “Yes Gloria, if you say so. Now have a lovely walk, both of you.”

  Amanda kept a close eye on Puppy and stepped into the elevator car, pressed the button for the fifth floor and relaxed as the gates creaked slowly toward each other. “Bye Gloria, bye Puppy. Have a great day. Go maul a giant mastiff why don’t you,” she called merrily as the elevator jerked into life and began its unhurried ascent.

  The sounds of rabid growling and gentle remonstration slowly faded as the elevator car passed the second, then third and fourth floors. It gathered itself with a squeak and a jerk for the serious business of stopping at the fifth floor and managed the maneuver quite well. The elevator was the same vintage as the building: solid, well made and beautifully proportioned. Just like her grandmother, whose apartment it had once been. Amanda liked its old-fashioned, reassuring qualities for all those reasons even though Natalie was forever angling for something edgier and downtown.

  “When I get out of work the last thing I want is edgy,” Amanda had said the last time they’d argued about the Upper East Side. “I sit on a knife-edge all day. Edgy at home is not where I want to be.”

  And gusty sighs had irritated her as Natalie wandered disconsolately from room to room before settling back into begrudgingly enjoying the space and honky comforts of Amanda’s home. Even Natalie had once admitted that a cute apartment downtown would definitely not include her very own studio with natural north light. But she did find the building and the area rather embarrassing and almost never invited her art crowd friends home.

  Today, Amanda remembered, Natalie had a project happening. Not—in Natalie’s words—“out in bourgie-land” which was her description of how, once a week during each academic semester, she grumpily dressed semi-appropriately for work as an art history lecturer in a nearby private girls’ college. Amanda encouraged it because it gave Natalie independence and her own cash in her wallet and meant, Natalie agreed, that she didn’t feel so bad about Amanda paying all the bills and supporting her nascent career as a mixed media performance artist.

  Some of this flitted through Amanda’s mind as she rummaged in her purse for the keys. It was a relief to know the apartment would be empty and she could begin to work out what was happening to her world in peace and without interruption. Amanda needed to know what the peculiar numbness in her head and stomach really meant before she could start describing her state of mind to anyone else, let alone Natalie. Her girlfriend’s relentless fascination with the inner mind and its allegedly subconscious motivations was hard to take at the best of times. Amanda slid the key into the deadlock and turned it.

  The heavy door sighed open and she stepped into the spacious entryway with an immediate sense of relief. The perfume of beeswax and lavender still lingered from Manuelita’s weekly visit. Each Friday she came to hum and sometimes sing actual songs for a couple of hours while she sprayed the furniture with polish and occasionally rubbed it in. Mainly she lightly mopped the timber floors and made herself many cups of coffee and sandwiches. She called it “Me cleaning” but, for some mysterious reason, it rarely included doing anything to the kitchen or bathroom and never both in the same visit.

  Amanda checked her reflection in the cheval mirror and grinned experimentally at the almost beautiful, freckled nose in the almost beautiful face that looked back at her. Pretty good for a fired person, she thought. She raked her fingers through her shaggy blond hair and shook her head to reassert the tousled look. Then she heard a sound and froze, hands in midair, and stared hard at herself in the mirror, dark brown eyes widening. After a few seconds’ silence when she had just begun the thought—No, I’m imagining it—there it was again. And it was unmistakable and not imagined.

  Omigod, Amanda’s already icy stomach lurched and turned upside down. This is not happening to me. This is so not happening to me and surely not at this time of the morning. A long, keening yet dramatic moan, answered her. It was coming, quite distinctly, from the direction of Natalie’s “studio” and it was the sound of sexual ecstasy; there was no mistaking it. Like an automaton, Amanda began to walk slowly across the parquet floor of the hallway, through the archway and into the living room. It was an elegant and uncluttered space with two comfortable cream leather sofas facing each other across a low, travertine-topped coffee table. Paintings and books filled the wall spaces between long windows that faced onto Lexington Avenue. At the far end of the room the door to Natalie’s room was slightly ajar and Amanda walked toward it as if propelled by an unseen hand at her back. At the door, she paused and listened, simultaneously fascinated and horrified at the rhythmic moans emanating from the room. Then there came a squeal and a fey, little-girl voice Amanda did not recognize.

  “Oh, do it to me! Do it harder with your great big cock! Come on! Fuck me harder, you great big bad wolf. Fuck me harder!” In answer there was a throaty roar and grunt that Amanda did recognize, if only marginally. She stood stock-still, staring at the door, momentarily unwilling—and unable—to picture what might be happening on the other side. She was mesmerized and appalled as the moans continued, growing louder and wilder with each answering animal grunt. Finally, she could stand it no longer and, with her blood hissing in her ears and her mouth dry with rising anger and dread, she reached out and pushed at the door. It swung silently inward and the tableau that opened up in front of her was instantly burned into her retinas like a flash snapshot.

  The blinds on the room’s two large windows were down but nevertheless the room was brightly lit. In the center of the f
loor was an extravagantly furry white rug that she had never seen before. On either side of the rug were photographic studio lights on spindly tripods. Between her and the rug was a video camera on its own tripod, its red LED winking. And on the rug, seemingly arranged so that the camera had the best possible view, was a pair of women, one atop the other. The one beneath was naked but for a blue floral tattoo on her thigh; she also had long peroxide-blond hair strewn wildly across the white fur; her pale plump legs were clasped high around the waist of the woman above her; her eyes were closed and her red painted mouth was open in an unmistakable “oh” of rapture.

  The woman on top, contrastingly darker skinned and sinewy, was Natalie. Amanda knew the body too well to be distracted by the peculiar leather wolf-like mask that all but covered her face. Natalie too was naked but for a black leather harness strapped around her hips. It culminated in a large bright purple dildo that she was thrusting hard and rhythmically between the blond woman’s raised legs. Natalie’s thigh muscles were straining as her neat, tight, creamy-white buttocks lunged in and out; and her back was arched so that her gleaming chestnut, beaded extensions spread across it from her dramatically thrown back head. Behind the camera, occasionally peering into the viewfinder screen and adjusting the picture, was yet another woman Amanda had never seen before. Sitting in the room’s one easy chair was a balding, buzz-cut man whose right hand was busy on his erection while in his left hand was a cell phone into which he was muttering. In one disbelieving flash Amanda realized what she was looking at and before she could stop herself she had spoken. Except her words came out as a strangled croak and what she said was embarrassingly mundane.

  “Jesus Christ, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”