That was the limit. Maize said, “Um, Jordan? Would you hold on just a second, please?” She got up and went to André’s office, a horrified look on her face, but when she knocked on the glass door André was talking into his headset and waved Maize away.
She had no choice but to go back to the phone. She had lied to an eight-year-old and left him waiting. On his birthday, no less. She prayed that when she hit the HOLD button again he’d be miraculously gone, but he wasn’t.
“Well?” Jordan said. “Swear it.”
“No. I’m afraid I can’t do that, Jordan.”
“Can too.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Can too! Can too! Can too! Swear!”
“Okay,” Maize said with a long exhalation like a moribund person feeling the last gasp of life drain from her. She could hear André’s partner still whispering something in the background. For a moment it felt like she was at a clandestine initiation rite. She said, “I swear, Jordan. I promise. Okay?”
She got an instant headache the second she pushed the END button. She felt queasy and her head was still spinning when André came up to her desk a few minutes later. “What—what already?” André said when he saw Maize’s expression.
“He sounded really upset,” Maize said.
“I’ll call him later. He’s always upset. This time it’s because I don’t feel like taking fifteen obnoxious third-graders to dinner at Chanterelle. I’m the big villain. It’s not like I forgot my son’s birthday. My boyfriend conveniently forgets that I gave Jordan a new laptop this morning and three thousand dollars’ worth of new games to play on it, not to mention a fabulous little suit from Marc Jacobs. But it’s never enough. Never.”
“I meant Jordan,” Maize said, hanging her head. “Jordan is upset.” Then she lifted her head and said, “Excuse me. You’re having an eight-year-old’s birthday party at Chanterelle?”
“My boyfriend’s bright idea. To introduce them to fine dining experiences. Don’t ask. Don’t get me started. Okay,” André said, waving his arm and turning his back. “I’m out of here.”
Maize checked André’s electronic appointment calendar. It said he was due on Mercer Street—at the loft of a pharmaceutical heiress named Vicky Heidegger, who lived with a much younger Caribbean woman named Edris, who had a totally shaved head. Vicky’s loft was in contract and she and her girlfriend were in Anguilla at the moment, but André was supposed to meet with an art dealer for them so the dealer could take a look at their collection of Nan Goldins. Vicky had decided the Nan Goldins wouldn’t go with the townhouse she was buying on Gramercy Park.
Maize knew she shouldn’t stalk André to Vicky’s loft—she should cool down—but she couldn’t help herself. Enough! She’d taken enough! Lying to a little boy about the whereabouts of his father on his birthday! On top of fetching André’s macchiatos and dropping off his dry cleaning and filling out his family’s health insurance forms and asking permission to leave her desk when she had to use the bathroom. She’d been letting André treat her shabbily for months and it was time to take a stand. She feared that if she didn’t do it right now she’d lose her ember of outrage.
So the next thing she knew she was in the lobby at Mercer Street, speaking to a doorman who informed her André had gone upstairs and who waved Maize toward the elevator that opened directly into Vicky’s loft. She stomped her foot like a racehorse as the elevator rose, steeling herself for a showdown, but she told herself not to say anything in front of the art dealer. She didn’t want André to accuse her of being unprofessional.
When she stepped off the elevator there was no one in the vast living room looking at the Nan Goldins. There was no one in the enormous open kitchen nor in the media room, which also had a billiard table. “Hello?” Maize said, but no sound came back except her shoes on the inlaid bamboo floor.
She headed deeper into the loft, toward the many bedrooms at the rear end. One after another was empty except for furnishings and art and sporting equipment—tennis rackets and skis and basketballs and a Ping-Pong table and ice hockey sticks—as if she were in a posh private recreation center. It reminded Maize of the time she’d said to André, “Manhattan’s sort of become a playground for rich people, hasn’t it?” and André had snapped, “Correction: a playground for rich people and their children.”
In the master bedroom there were several photos of naked women on the walls—gorgeous and exquisitely framed pictures—but no real people. Maize chortled. It figured that she would finally rev up the courage to take a stand with André and her boss would evade her.
She was turning to leave when she heard a faint scrabbling sound in the corner of Vicky’s bedroom. She looked in the sound’s direction and noticed that the light was on in one of Vicky’s huge walk-in closets. She felt obliged to turn it off before she left, but she prayed the scrabbling she’d heard wasn’t a mouse or a neglected cat wanting to be petted for several minutes because its mistress was in the tropics. Although she liked cats well enough she wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. She approached the closet quietly, almost tiptoeing, so she could douse the light and scram.
When she got closer she did see a small animal—or what looked like a small animal with shiny chestnut fur. André was crouched on the floor of Vicky’s closet on all fours in his suit, with his back to Maize and his soles exposed, trying to shove a small animal into his briefcase and having trouble with it.
What on earth was he doing? And why wasn’t the creature in André’s grip screaming in protest—hissing or yapping or whatever was appropriate to its species? Had André killed Vicky’s cat and was he trying to dispose of the evidence?
It wasn’t until Maize heard André say, “Goddamnit, get in there already,” and saw André pull out the fur and stuff it in again, that she realized he wasn’t holding an animal at all. It was a small fur piece—a fur muff, it looked like—that was giving André so much resistance as he rearranged the files in his briefcase to accommodate it. A fur muff made of sable.
As Maize stood there watching André struggling on the floor, all she could think was how ludicrous it was that Vicky or any other adult had a sable muff these days, like a character in a Russian novel. A sable muff was—what?—as outdated as wearing a monocle or an ascot or carrying a walking stick to look jaunty.
She was so focused on that thought that she barely noticed André had turned around on all fours and was facing her. But when André yelled, “Hey—hey! What the fuck are you—” his voice bulleted through whatever haze was shrouding Maize and she reflexively shot off toward the loft’s front door.
“Hey! Wait!” André yelled as Maize raced over the bare floor and threw herself into the elevator—which was still, thank god, on Vicky’s floor—pushing the lobby button immediately and repeatedly like someone fleeing a serial killer.
When she got outside the building she raced to the end of the block and turned the corner and waved for a taxi she could ill afford. She asked the driver to take her back to the office, but when she looked at her watch and saw it was nearly quitting time she tapped the lucite barrier between them and said, “Sorry, excuse me, sorry sorry,” and asked him to take her home instead. By the time she arrived in Chelsea she’d already resolved to go to work the next day and pretend none of it had happened, except for reporting it all to Robbie. She prayed André would do the same.
So much for that bright idea.
“For the record, I’m not a trannie,” André said to Maize first thing the following morning, in lieu of hello.
Maize squinted in wonderment—what was André talking about?—but when she grasped the cracked logic behind André’s statement she couldn’t help grinning. Swiping a fur muff from a lesbian’s closet didn’t make someone a transsexual—or trannie, as André put it—any more than licking a fat person’s ice-cream cone automatically made someone obese. The notion was practically superstitious.
She glanced over André’s shoulder toward Eli’s desk but Eli wasn’t
there; it was one of his many days off.
“I’m not a trannie and I am not a thief,” André said.
“I don’t care, André,” Maize said, sighing with an air of forbearance she’d never been allowed to use around André before. She realized that what she said was true enough. But exactly why hadn’t she cared about André stealing from his clients? Did she secretly believe that overprivileged people like Vicky deserved to be rooked now and then, to redress some socioeconomic balance? It seemed curious to Maize now—curious and possibly amoral—that when she’d opened the steel box in André’s desk and discovered his cache of stolen trinkets, her reaction had been curiosity rather than repulsion, even hours and days after her surprise and fear abated. In recounting the moment to Robbie she’d even played it as something of a joke, which possibly meant she’d been rubbing up against André’s ruthlessness so long it’d become a part of her.
“I don’t really care about your—your quirks, André. Your peccadilloes,” Maize said primly. “I met all sorts of people at school, you know, so I’m quite open-minded.”
“Open-minded. How big of you. All sorts of people, natch,” André said. “People of color. People from ghettos. Freakoids and dykes with crew cuts in flannel shirts. I’m sure the Ivy League is very diverse, Maize, just like my kid’s private school, so long as everybody gets that they’re elitists who socialize only with themselves after they graduate.”
Maize took a step back from André. There was a lot to object to suddenly—a lot to judge—but the thing that flared brightest was André’s bigoted way of describing transsexuals and gay people. André was a homophobe, on top of his other vices! Which was flagrantly hypocritical, since André had a live-in partner, and a child he’d adopted with that same partner, and he’d been deep inside a lesbian’s closet stealing something rather pudendum-like only fifteen hours ago. Who was André to be intolerant?
“In fact my transsexual acquaintances look a lot like you, André,” she said, “and the lesbians look a lot like Vicky. Only they’re much younger and more attractive than both of you.”
“Is that so,” André said.
“Yes it is,” Maize said. “Not that I care either way.”
“So you’ve said, Maize,” André said. “Three times already.”
“Well I don’t,” Maize said. “I couldn’t care less. I don’t care what you or anyone does with his or her body. I don’t care that you have that little treasure chest of yours, or whatever you want to call it, at the bottom of your desk drawer. What I care about is that you turned me into your accomplice by making me lie to your partner and child about your whereabouts while you were”—she couldn’t bring herself to say the word stealing for some reason—“out taking things.”
Who knew how many times André had duped her into doing that?
“Granted. Out of bounds,” André said.
The words that came to Maize’s mind were sleazy and disgusting, but she didn’t say them. Instead she said, “I don’t care about out of bounds. Please—you’re talking to someone who screwed one of her college interviewers when she was seventeen.”
Maize grimaced. She couldn’t believe that had slipped out when she’d never told anyone else about it except Robbie. What did she think she was doing—flaunting a badge of brazenness to show André she could keep up with him? How was it that the Andrés of the world managed to extract things from people and give so little back in return? No wonder he was a terrific businessman!
André had bitten his top lip at Maize’s mention of his treasure chest, so hard that he left tooth marks on it. Now he paused for a moment and bit his top lip again, longer, narrowing his eyes. “So let me get this straight,” he finally said. “You’re telling me you would’ve felt better if you’d known you were lying to my family?”
“Huh?” Maize said. “What?”
“So lying or cheating is fine as long as you know you’re doing it and your ego doesn’t get bruised? I’ll try to remember that.”
“Excuse me?” Suddenly the conversation had gone off track, and Maize had a strong feeling she didn’t like at all where it was headed. In an effort to put on the brakes or reverse it a few yards she reverted to her earlier proclamation. “I don’t care what you do, André. Just leave me out of it. You don’t have to explain yourself to me. Could we please just drop it now?”
“Right,” André said. “You’re right. What the hell am I doing? I don’t have to explain myself to you. I’m the boss and you’re the employee, in case you’ve forgotten. It’s supposed to go the other way around.” He stood more erect. “Like, for instance, why don’t you explain what you were doing sneaking around Vicky’s apartment like a burglar when you were supposed to be here answering phones?”
“What?” Maize was surprised at how quickly André had switched gears, if not astonished.
“Like, while you’re at it, why don’t you explain why Vicky’s Cartier bracelet was missing when she checked her apartment two weeks ago.”
“Excuse me—what? Pardon me?” Maize sputtered.
“Excuse me? Pardon moi?” André said in a falsetto. “You heard me, Maize. Stop pretending you didn’t.” He cocked his hand on his hip and waited a few long seconds. Then a thin smile nestled on his lips and he said, “You’re fired. Get out of this office immediately.”
* * *
“What a joke. Look at that,” Maize said now, two hours into the drive with Robbie and Daniel. They had stopped at a diner for Cokes and French fries but mistimed any local movies and still couldn’t decide on what else to do. “We’re practically back where we started. Like we’re homing pigeons.” They were in their town again.
“So we are,” Robbie said. He turned onto his mother’s street.
“Such a wild evening,” Daniel said. “I may die from all the excitement.”
“Aww,” Robbie said. He glanced toward the backseat. “We’re not adventurous enough for you, Dr. Daniel? We haven’t done enough exploring? Okay then.” And with that he swerved the car suddenly to the narrow shoulder of the road and dashed the headlights and shifted into park. They were idling fifty yards from his mother’s new house, which was so brightly lit from within—as if hoarding the neighborhood’s electricity—it made the landscape surrounding it look all the more pitch dark. “Let’s get out,” Robbie said to them. “Let’s do a spy mission.” He turned off the ignition.
“Are you crazy?” Daniel said. “What if they have a dog?”
“I don’t think they have a dog,” Robbie said.
“It’s trespassing,” Daniel said. “Keep driving.”
“It’s practically my mother’s house, anyway,” Robbie said.
“Not for another week. Knock it off,” Daniel said.
“Maize?” Robbie’s door was already open and he got out to stand on the side of the road. “Shall we?”
“Get back in the goddamned car,” Daniel said.
“Okay, I guess.” Maize shrugged, then turned to Daniel. “You sure you don’t want to join us? It should be all right.”
“Absolutely not,” Daniel said.
“We’ll be back in a minute, then,” Maize said. “Promise. Guard the car for us. You might want to get in the driver’s seat just in case, you know, we have to make a quick getaway.”
“You’re a pair of fools,” Daniel said as she closed the door behind her as quietly as she could.
Maize and Robbie scrambled over the low fence separating the property from the road. The sky was so starless that Maize could barely see Robbie a few feet in front of her. Robbie headed straight for the backyard, where no one from the road would notice them, moving swiftly as if he already knew this property as well as his own, yet making sure to stay beyond the light from the interior.
Maize wondered if this was what the burglars had done when they’d cased their apartment some weeks ago. But of course not. The burglary had happened in broad daylight and there was no lawn. Just a scuzzy alleyway too narrow for anybody to fit through except a c
hild or an emaciated crackhead.
Robbie sat on the grass outside the house now, as if taking in a show, but Maize kept standing. Inside she counted four—no, five—people moving about from room to room. A young couple and their three small children, two boys and one girl. From a distance the parents looked tall to her, the man a redhead in an untucked blue dress shirt, the dark-haired woman wearing a short white dress and white sneakers, as if she hadn’t bothered to change after a tennis match. Was that a terry-cloth wristband on her arm? No, maybe it was a piece of silver jewelry.
Maize found herself fixated on the father before she realized he had Eli’s coloring.
The two boys clearly favored him—both of them fair and one of them also a redhead—and they raced in and out of the kitchen where their parents were stationed. At one point the older boy stood before the two adults announcing something and they both nodded at him as if paying serious attention before they spoke. First the father and then the mother. The woman touched the father on his arm when she answered as if in a show of solidarity. Then suddenly she left the room and the father and son kept talking. She came back a few moments later with the younger boy in her arms, stroking his head as though soothing him, drawing so close to the father as she cradled the boy that he could have been held by either of them. From the distance it looked like he was half supported against one parent and half against the other.
“Nice,” Maize heard herself saying. They were a perfect nuclear family or at least the picture of it. “What do you suppose they’re saying to each other?”
“Sorry, honey, I want a divorce.” Robbie chuckled. Then he said, “I wonder where the little girl’s gotten to.”
She had been wondering that herself. Suddenly she imagined that the dark-haired little girl was locked in her room upstairs, writing in a pink diary with red hearts on its cover. Then she imagined the girl outside her room on the stair landing, looking down at her parents and her brothers from a distance. She imagined the girl did this frequently, often the outsider, always the observer, waves of attention rolling unnoticed from her toward the others, and that it’d be the same in whatever new house they were moving to, as it had been for Maize when she’d shown all those properties for André. She would look at the furniture and the art and the mail lying on the tables and she’d fantasize about the life that took place in those apartments and lofts and penthouses and townhouses and, fleetingly, about the life she’d have there too if it magically became hers. In that alternative universe she’d possess many things she didn’t yet have (furniture that wasn’t secondhand, great clothes, shiny gadgets), and more important, the career that went with those accoutrements. On certain days she was an advertising executive in a nip-waisted suit coming home after giving a dazzling presentation, laying her expensive kid gloves and briefcase on the console table and plopping onto a down sofa. On other days she was an actress between location shoots, subletting a furnished loft for an astronomical price, pouring herself a glass of pinot and admiring the skyline view before going to bed because she had an early call the next morning. On others still, more and more frequently, she was a writer with intelligent-looking eyewear come home late at night from a newsroom where she’d filed a column or an article or from a magazine where she’d done a strenuous edit on a short story, with a kindly editor who prodded her gently and gave her brilliant ideas for revision.
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