New Money

by Lorraine Zago Rosenthal

  “Have you told your dad how much you like your job?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she said with her eyes on the dishwasher. “He couldn’t be more proud.”

  *

  I was standing in the kitchen at work the next morning, pouring a cup of coffee, when someone poked my back and I turned around to face Ainsley. Her shiny hair was pulled off her face with a headband, and there were pearl studs in her ears.

  “Did you enjoy Kitty’s party?” she asked, but didn’t take a breath to let me answer. “My dad and I thought it was divine. Wasn’t that band terrific? Most people my age don’t even know what jazz is, but I’m wild about it … I’ve got a Duke Ellington collection at home in Indiana. Oh, and did you see Caroline’s friend? Or should I say girlfriend?”

  She giggled. I nearly dropped my mug. “Shhh,” I said in a scolding whisper as I glanced around the kitchen and into the hallway to make sure nobody was listening. “That’s Caroline’s personal business. How’d you know, anyway?”

  She crossed her arms and shrugged. “I didn’t.”

  I went cold. She’s not nearly as stupid as she seems. That’s what Caroline had told me, and I’d just been outsmarted by a soon-to-be college freshman.

  “Don’t look so serious,” Ainsley said with a disarming smile. “I won’t tell anybody. I’m sure Ned wouldn’t be happy if I did.”

  I want to work as an investigative TV news reporter or become a journalist who covers wars, she’d told me. She’d also bragged that Ned had promised to say the most glowing things about her when she started her job hunt after college. I didn’t worry about her spreading gossip; getting on the bad side of a media empire wouldn’t advance her lofty ambitions.

  “Make sure you don’t,” I said, and went back to my cubicle, where Kitty was waiting.

  “Do you need help with something?” I said as I sat down at my desk.

  She shook her head and adjusted her diamond circle on its chain. “I wanted to ask if you have lunch plans. I’m taking Darcelle to Michael’s since it’s her last day here, and I thought you might like to come along. She’s being transferred to Russia, if you can believe it.”

  I cleared my throat and crossed my legs and twirled my hair. “I actually do have plans,” I said, which wasn’t a complete lie. “I mean … I’m staying in, but I need to use the time to take care of a few personal things.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said. “You know … I was thinking that when I hired you, we discussed the idea of you submitting short fiction for Femme. I’ve kept you so busy that you probably haven’t had time to write … but I’d love to consider you for our October issue. The deadline is Friday.”

  I almost busted out in one of my high school cheers. “That’d be fantastic, Kitty,” I said. “Thank you so much.”

  She smiled and headed to her office. I worked all morning, scheduling and researching and updating social media sites, and after Kitty headed out to Michael’s I decided to devote my lunch hour to the short story that Alex had sent to my in-box.

  Thanks in advance,

  he’d written in his e-mail.

  Want to have dinner tonight at seven?

  I wrote back and accepted the invitation, adding that Tony could drop me off at his building after work. Then I started reading Alex’s story, and I’d just finished the first page when my phone rang and the caller ID said Tina Mae Brandt.

  “Want to grab lunch?” she asked. “I found a nice place near the shelter. I doubt it’s as good as the Hominy Grill … but we can give it a shot.”

  I kept my eyes on the computer screen. “I can’t. I’m editing a story for Alex, and I want to finish before we have dinner together tonight.”

  There was a pause. “You’re seeing him again? That’s three days in a row, you know.”

  I hadn’t been keeping track, but she obviously had. I sighed, pushing my chair away from my desk. “I’m sorry, Tina. I asked you to come up here, and I don’t mean to make you feel like—”

  She let out her throaty laugh. “Like what? I feel fine.”

  I couldn’t spend much time wondering if that was true. I had to finish Alex’s story and all my work, and I also wanted to buy a new lighting fixture online for Grandma Frances and have it anonymously shipped to her house.

  The day went by in a blur, and soon I was sitting beside Tony in the car, asking him to take me to wherever he lived, because I had a date with Alex.

  “Well, well…,” Tony said in an amused voice, swerving to avoid a bus. “Things are heating up.”

  Not long after that we were on Staten Island, where Tony parked in front of an unassuming brick building with ten floors and fire escapes painted yellow. Alex was waiting outside, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Tony and I got out of the car and surrounded him.

  “So where are we going?” I asked.

  “Upstairs,” Alex said.

  Tony gave him a shove. “It’s too soon for that, my friend.”

  Alex laughed. “Get it out of the gutter, buddy. I’m cooking dinner for her.”

  Jack had burned microwave popcorn. Jamie hadn’t even known how to properly fry an egg. But Alex was practically a gourmet of Italian cuisine that he served inside his apartment—a small one-bedroom without enough windows that was neat and very clean.

  “How’d you learn to cook?” I asked when we sat at a round table in his kitchen.

  “My mother’s parents were from Italy. They owned a restaurant in the Bronx. She learned how to cook from them, and she passed all of that on to me. She also insisted I make my bed every day and do my own laundry. I’m not raising a mama’s boy, she used to say.”

  I swallowed a bite of garlic bread. “I think I would’ve liked her.”

  “She would’ve liked you, too,” he said, raking his fingers through his hair. “By the way … my grandmother called a while ago. She said I don’t need to buy a new light for her bathroom because one showed up at her door via express delivery late this afternoon. She called the store, but they said there was no charge and wouldn’t tell her who’d paid for it. You don’t know anything about that, do you?”

  I played innocent, widening my eyes and shrugging my shoulders. “Why would I?”

  “Savannah,” he said with a tinge of reproach in his voice, “you can’t give me gifts.”

  I sighed. These Staten Island men were so prideful and stubborn. “You’re just like Tony. And I’ll tell you what I told him: The gift isn’t for you. Remember you said you’d share Grandma Frances with me? If she was really my mimaw, I’d buy her gifts non-stop. There’s no fun in having money if you can’t spread it around.”

  Alex lifted his arms and locked his fingers behind his head, and I wondered how much working out it took to get biceps that size. “All right,” he said after a moment. “And thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Oh, and I read your story. It’s really good.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You read it? I thought it’d take a few days for you to—”

  “Are you kidding? I know the unspeakable torture of anticipating a verdict, so I wouldn’t make a fellow writer wait for long. I have it in my purse … do you want to go over it now?”

  “Dessert first,” he said. “Will I also need a shot of whiskey to numb the pain?”

  He was too hard on himself, and I told him so after we’d cleared the table and discussed my editorial suggestions, all of which seemed to impress him. And that flattered me. It was nice to know someone valued my opinion, especially about something so important.

  “You think this character needs to be more sympathetic?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, squinting to see a page. It was still bright outside, but the apartment was dark and the one light in the kitchen ceiling seemed close to burning out.

  “I need to fix that,” he said, pointing above our heads. “The super here is hopeless.”

  I nodded. “You should develop this character’s background, and…” I stopped. Alex was staring at me, which made it hard to tal
k business. It made me linger on his perfect teeth and his thick hair and his ridiculously handsome face. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “How can I not?”

  Alex cradled my face in his hands, leaned forward, and pressed his lips against mine. His fingers slid from my cheeks to my hair, skimming my scalp and hastening my breath as our kiss deepened and our tongues intertwined. He shifted his hands to my hips and gently pulled me toward him, so close that I felt the warmth of his legs through his jeans. Then my calves were locked around his waist and we were in the same chair. He was at the edge, I was sitting on his thighs, and it couldn’t have felt better or sweeter or more right. It didn’t matter that we were in a tiny apartment with dishes in the sink, kissing beneath a flickering fluorescent bulb.

  *

  It was dark outside when Alex kissed me again, this time inside his Honda parked at 15 Central Park West. “I’m working for the next two nights,” he said afterward. “But can I see you on Thursday? I’ll make dinner again. Just tell me what you want.”

  Just tell me what you want. I almost said something dirty after that. But all we’d done tonight was kiss, and I was going to keep it that way for a while—as difficult as it might be.

  “That’d be nice,” I said, “but I can’t let you go to all that trouble again. Why don’t we eat out? I can make a reservation at Le Bernardin.”

  The car behind us honked, because we weren’t supposed to be parked there. The noise woke me up and made me remember that Alex had to take care of rent and utilities and probably a car payment and maybe even a student loan on a bartender’s salary. Had just a couple of weeks with money made me forget what that was like?

  “I mean,” I said, “it’ll be my treat.”

  He hung his arm over the frame of the open window. “When I go out with a girl,” he said in a taut voice, “I pay. I’m not a pauper … and I’m not a gigolo, either.”

  I stared at him, listening to the angry honking behind us. Being mysterious had caused problems with Jack, and now my honesty might ruin everything with Alex. I was so unused to being wealthy that I hadn’t realized it could drive a wedge between me and a man who wasn’t.

  “I never said you were, Alex.”

  He sighed and wiped his hand from his forehead to his chin. Then he turned his key in the ignition, pulled away from the curb, and parked down the street. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment, staring through the windshield at a group of passing joggers. “I know you didn’t say that. But some of the women I’ve met through my job … that’s the way they see me … or it’s what they’ve wanted to turn me into.”

  I cupped his chin in my hand and turned his face toward me. “Who’s done that?” I asked.

  “A few women here in the city … I’ve worked at their parties, and they’ve made some disgusting offers. But last year I was bartending at a wedding in the Hamptons, and I met a girl … she was a bridesmaid … and I thought we had something good going.”

  “You mean the girl Fabian Spader mentioned?” I asked. “The one from the Upper East Side?”

  Alex nodded. “She was sort of spoiled and demanding … which I overlooked because of how I felt about her. But all along she was engaged to someone else. She was lying, just playing me the whole time. When I found out, she laughed in my face and told me she’d just been having fun.”

  I’d always known that women could be as mean as men, but until now I’d never seen the effect they could have. I felt as sorry for him as I did for Tina when she got stood up and put down and treated like she wasn’t worth anything.

  “Alex,” I said. “I’m not that kind of girl. And I’ll always be honest with you.”

  He nodded slowly before he took my hands in his. “I will, too.”

  Seventeen

  When I opened my apartment door, I remembered I’d forgotten to hire a maid. Cigarette butts floated in a bowl of melted Cherry Garcia on the coffee table, dust covered the TV, and yesterday’s Daily News was scattered on the carpet. Tina was in the middle of everything, fast asleep on the couch with her face buried in a cushion.

  I couldn’t deal with it. I didn’t feel like waking her up to tell her off for smoking in the apartment, or breaking out the Windex and a pair of latex cleaning gloves. I just wanted to think about Alex, and I wanted to write. I wanted to write something that would dazzle Kitty and get my name in the October issue of Femme. So I went into my office and sat in front of the computer, where I typed until I heard footsteps and Tina yawning in the doorway.

  “What time is it?” she asked groggily.

  “Midnight,” I answered.

  She walked into the room and peered over my shoulder at the computer screen. “A new story,” she said with a spark of excitement in her tired voice. “When can I read it and give you my brilliant feedback?”

  “When it’s done,” I said.

  I finished it on Thursday during my lunch hour. That night, Tony drove me to Staten Island and Alex took me to dinner at a Chinese place two blocks from his apartment where I cracked open a fortune cookie with a slip of paper inside that said: To the world you might be just one person, but to one person you might be the world.

  I tucked it into a compartment inside my wallet. Then Alex and I held hands while we walked to his building, passing a bakery where we peered through a window at cannoli and tiramisu and rainbow cookies iced with chocolate. “Let’s get some,” I said, pointing to the cookies, and after a man in the store put them in a box and tied a string around it, I stopped Alex from taking out his money.

  He frowned at me. “Savannah,” he said, “you know how I feel about—”

  “I know how you feel, Alex. And I think it’s nice. But I hope you’re not too proud to take a gift once in a while … because that wouldn’t be nice at all.”

  He scrunched up his mouth for a moment, like he was turning over my words in his mind. “Okay,” he said finally. “I guess I can forget my rules every now and then.”

  A few minutes later, we were at the entrance to Alex’s building, where Tony was sitting on the front steps with Allison beside him and Marjorie on his lap. They were people-watching as they ate Italian ice with tiny wooden spoons. We chatted with them for a while, and then Alex and I went inside and stepped into an elevator.

  “Tony’s such a nice guy,” I said. “Smart, too. He’s like a walking encyclopedia about the history of this city.”

  Alex nodded as the elevator doors closed. “I know. Did he tell you he used to go to Columbia? He had a full scholarship there, but he didn’t graduate.”

  “No,” I said, surprised. “He’s never mentioned it.”

  Alex hit a button to take us to the fourth floor. “Well, he’s not one to brag. And the reason he didn’t finish college is that Allison got pregnant with Marjorie and he had to drop out during his sophomore year so he could work full-time. He and his mother pitched in so Allison could finish her nursing degree after the baby was born. He’s had it rough … but he seems happy anyway.”

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking that Tony was an even nicer guy than I’d thought.

  A few minutes later, I was sitting beside Alex on his yellow fire escape with our legs dangling between its metal slats while we nibbled rainbow cookies on paper napkins. We gazed across the street at another brick building where a Siamese cat was trying to scratch through a screen and a man in a turban was watering a jungle of plants on his windowsill. The setting sun washed over the building, turning its bricks into a fiery shade of red.

  “How was work today?” Alex asked as he brushed crumbs from his hands.

  “Fine,” I said, listening to a TV blare in the apartment above us and thinking about the story I’d folded and put inside my purse after lunch. I wanted to show it to Alex, to get his opinion like I’d given mine, but sharing my writing seemed even more personal than kissing at his kitchen table. Still, it was due on Kitty’s desk tomorrow, and I valued his opinion. “I finished a new story,” I said. “Kitty’s going to co
nsider it for the October issue of Femme.”

  “Really?” he said. “I’d love to read it.”

  I went into the apartment and walked toward my purse, which I’d left in the living room on a black futon that doubled as a couch. I grabbed a pen from atop a sudoku book on the coffee table, and then rested the pen and my story on Alex’s lap as he sat on the fire escape.

  “This makes me nervous,” I told him. “I’ll wait inside.”

  I took a seat on the futon and nibbled my nails for what felt like hours while Alex flipped pages and scribbled notes. When he was done, he sat beside me and said my story was definitely magazine worthy, aside from a few minor things.

  We talked about it until the sun disappeared and the sky filled with stars. The story was on a flash drive in my purse, so Alex took out his laptop and I perfected my work while I sat on the futon and he stretched out beside me, watching TV. It was late by the time I finished, but I was in no rush to leave. I curled up next to him, and we watched Letterman and a repeat of Showbiz Tonight until we dozed off.

  When I woke up, the TV was still on, Alex’s right arm was around me, and his left arm was dangling limply off the futon. His T-shirt rode up, exposing the scar that ran straight down his stomach and below the waist of his jeans. I reached over him to grab the remote control and shut off the TV, and he stirred and opened his eyes.

  I gently ran my finger down his scar. It was light purple and fading into the same color as his skin. “Does it still hurt?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Always.”

  I pulled his shirt back down. “It’s two in the morning. I’ll call a cab to take me home.”

  “You don’t have to go home,” he said, his voice velvety smooth. “You can sleep here.”

  I hesitated. That was a tempting offer, but it was too soon.

  He gave me a crooked, knowing grin. “Take my bed and I’ll sleep here.”

  I rested my cheek against his chest, listening to his heart beat beneath his soft shirt with Pace University printed across the front. As much as I wanted his face to be the first thing I saw when I woke up in the morning, I couldn’t let him spend the rest of the night on this flimsy futon. I told him that, and repeated that I was going to call a cab, but he wouldn’t let me. He drove me home and kissed me when we sat beneath a streetlight in his Honda.