He was so surprised that he let go of the railing. The merry-go-round flew on momentum then squeaked gradually to a halt as he yelled her name. The children whined, and the Russian man took over. Barry and Robert moved toward Sally as she stopped and turned to see who was calling her.
“Isn’t this a coincidence?” she asked, walking toward them.
“I already got my shoes ready for Monday,” Barry said.
“You’re going to Prudence Brothers? I thought you’ve been out of town.”
“Who told you that?” She wore baggy gray sweatpants and a pink sweatshirt half zipped over a red and white Phillies T-shirt. Her face was flushed and blotchy, her hair pulled back in a low ponytail, and she had a few small pimples on her forehead. Stripped of so much of her glamour, she looked like any girl from the neighborhood in need of bleaching her roots.
Gwen got off the ride and ran over, took his hand. “Who’s she, Dad?” she asked.
“My name’s Sally, honey, I’m a friend of your father’s.”
“Oh,” she said. “How come I don’t know you?”
“Good question,” she said, and bent over slightly, putting out her hand. “Nice to meet you. What’s your name?”
“Gwen,” she said.
“As in Gwendolyn?” Sally asked, showing no sign of recognition.
Gwen nodded then kicked at the dirt with her foot. “Are you gonna stay here a long time?” she asked Robert. “Talking?”
Barry offered to take her to the sandbox, remembering that there was a mermaid statue in the sand. Robert suggested that they all go, but he hung back a little with Sally.
“I don’t understand why you disappeared, and why the hell aren’t you listed?”
“I’m listed. But under my real name. Sally Jacobson,” she said. “I told you Johannson was a fake name, but you didn’t believe me.”
“You sure don’t look like a Sally Jacobson.”
“I was adopted,” she replied casually, “by a couple who barely reach my shoulder and wanted a daughter after a son but couldn’t have one. So here I am, a genuine dipped-in-the-mikvah Jacobson, signed, sealed, the whole thing.”
Robert looked for Gwen. She was up to her waist in sand, mugging shamelessly for her uncle, who now held a small camera and was snapping away.
“Anyway, there was another Sally Jacobson in Actors Equity,” she continued. “And I like having a secret name. Some jobs, you don’t want people to know who you are.”
“Aren’t there like forty-seven Johannsons in Actors Equity?” he asked.
“I guess not many Swedes go into acting.”
“So your number isn’t unlisted. It’s just in code.”
“No, Johannson is code. Jacobson is who I am.”
“But you disappear at will.”
“What do you have to complain about?” she said, as they sat down on a bench. “I pay my rent. You want to boot me out for someone who can pay more money?” She paused. “I know I said I’d be out in a few months. But I guess I’ve gotten used to it. You know, living in a big place? With a doorman? I’ll leave if you want me to.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I’ve missed you is all.” He knew now how Tracey had felt. She declared herself his friend and disappeared. And of course he refused to see her as a friend to begin with; that was half the problem. It had been Tracey’s, too. “I left messages for you with the doorman. Even came over one night and sat in that lobby. You know how valuable my time is?”
“I did it for your own good,” she said. “People were starting to talk.”
“No they weren’t.”
“You don’t hear what I hear.”
“So I won’t invite you to sit down in my office anymore,” he said. “I won’t bring in so many pairs for you to shine. If you won’t see me at the office, then see me outside it.”
“You don’t have any ‘outside’—you’re always at the office.”
“Just for a few more months,” he said. Even unglamorous as she was today, he wanted her. It was unfair to want the life he had with Crea, with its ease and luxury—and intact family for his daughter—and to want Sally, too. He knew that, but he couldn’t help himself. Sitting with her now, he wanted everything. “The reason I bought that apartment was to find some peace.”
“But then you rented it to me,” she said, “and gave up your peace.”
“Just the opposite,” he said. “And I’m not letting go so easily.”
Gwen screamed for him and he went to her, brushing the sand off her clothing. Sally lagged behind him and announced that there were swings nearby, and all three grown-ups walked with Gwen toward them. Gwen chatted to him about the mermaid, and Robert felt relieved that she was not complaining; this was supposed to be their day together, but luckily she liked Barry and didn’t get to see him very often.
A swing opened up on the end, and Gwen took Robert’s hand, leading him over. She wanted him to push and he obliged. Sally stood with Barry while Robert watched Gwen swing gleefully into the air. He pushed her for a few minutes more before she spotted the Russian boy from the merry-go-round and wanted to get off. The adults let her rush to the boy’s side, and then they all walked to some low rocks around the edge of the park. Barry tried to talk to the Russian man.
Robert’s brother kept giving him time with Sally; was it that Barry hated Crea? Or was he just in a generous mood from all the money he was making? Robert watched his daughter scamper onto a flat rock and told her to stay close to the ground. Sally stood sentry with him.
“Do you want to look for them?” he asked. “Your birth parents, I mean?”
“Looking at you with Gwen, well, you’d think I would want to, right? I mean, to see who exactly on this earth I look like. But no, I don’t. I know where I belong and who I belong to.”
“Really?” he asked. “Lucky you.”
“I save the drama in my life for the stage. I’m not looking for some movie-of-the-week scenario in my private life.”
“Point noted,” he said.
“The people who raised me are my parents,” she continued. “They played endless rounds of checkers with me when I was sick, went to all my recitals, took out a second mortgage when I got into NYU. You start searching under rocks and mostly what you find is slime.”
“I had no idea you were so practical.”
“I wouldn’t name my kid after my dead fiancé, if that’s what you call practical,” she whispered. “No wonder you didn’t want me to tell your wife. Have you no shame?”
“I told you, no one knows that story.”
“So why’d you tell me?”
“I trust you,” he said softly, staring for a moment at the ground. He raised his head and called out to his daughter to be careful as she moved to a higher slope. She gave him an argument before moving to lower ground, and he took a few steps back to where Sally stood.
“How’s the slip-on?” she asked.
“The what?”
“I have nicknames for all of you. Saldana’s ‘the sleek Italian slip-on.’”
“He’s Venezuelan.”
“I know, but he only wears Italian shoes. And he’s sleek.”
“He’s fine,” he said. “Back at work, still a billing machine. It was meningitis.”
“Really?” she asked. “Because I hear things. Like you and Wilton Henry are in a dead heat for partner along with that woman, Liesel, the one with the thick glasses? And the firm is likely to make all three of you, which would be a record. Business is very good right now.”
“Jesus, you haven’t been at our place in months.”
“The real information, the good stuff,” she said, “comes from your competition. People talk in front of us. They think we’re illiterate, or idiots, or something.”
“Then the joke’s on them, isn’t it?” He called to his daughter and told her they were going home now. “What about me?” he asked, as Gwen went to say good-bye to her new friend. “You have nicknames for everyone. What do you call
me?”
She looked him in the eye. “You? I call you ‘dangerous.’”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Mario
The only lie Robert had told Sally that day at the playground was that Mario Saldana was as sleek as ever. He was far from that, but he was clever about his clothes. As a keen observer of people’s habits, Robert had watched Saldana’s metamorphosis with a combination of concern and admiration. Mario had always dressed with distinction, sparing no expense, but now he had everything made for him. When he’d been blocky and muscular, his suits thinned him down, made him look taller than his five foot eight inches. Now, he wore only double-breasted suits, the clothing staple of the narrow man, with wide lapels and broad shoulders creating the illusion of solidity. People at work seemed hardly to notice that Mario had gotten so much thinner. Or if they did, they did not talk about it in front of Robert. And as summer arrived and the office got cooler, Mario virtually never took off his jacket.
But no amount of careful tailoring could change the fact that Saldana, a meticulous craftsman in two languages, was beginning to screw up at work. Tiny things, issues of concentration, most likely. Robert had to be careful; Mario was his superior, and he could not be seen to double-check him. But Mario could not mess up now, not when Robert needed him.
The spring into summer was occupied, among other things, with work for Pascal, Inc. New York had one of the most complicated regulatory systems of any city in the world. It could take years, sometimes, for a developer to get his architectural plans approved by City Planning and draw down his financing. And at any point along the way, even when things looked optimistic, plans could be stopped, for instance, by the Buildings Department, if they did not have the electrical and highway approvals, or even by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, angry about the way the building might or might not fit into the local style.
But Mark Pascal was optimistic. His father had not been very good at making friends with the right city bureaucrats, greasing palms or patting backs, but somehow Mark had mastered this early, much to the amazement of his family and friends. And so he was aggressive, perhaps even overly confident, in selling off some property to raise capital in anticipation of the TriBeCa purchase, which he planned to go through within the next few months.
The first property he was selling off, at the end of June 1987, was in Queens, an abandoned power station and the surrounding small parcel of land originally bought by Pascal’s father in the early 1970s for a future project that never took place. The land had risen in value many times over and would now fetch about $15 million. Proceeds from the sale would be held in a 1031 exchange account so that it could be used toward future property without incurring taxes. The day before the closing, Robert approached Mario’s secretary, Inez, and asked to look over the paperwork. The first time this had happened, she’d been protective and refused, but this time, without explanation, she began handing him everything she was to photocopy for the meeting. “Be fast,” she said. “He’ll be in soon.”
Robert looked through the documents, and just as he became convinced that all was in order, he noticed that the direction letter instructed the buyer’s lawyers to wire their client’s money to the wrong accounts. The payee, Chicano Exchange, did not exist. He’d meant Chicago Exchange. Were these even the correct account numbers?
Mario had been known for his detail orientation, his accuracy; he did not make mistakes or let them slip past him. Inez claimed responsibility, but direction letters were the kind of thing an attorney looked over, or left very careful instructions on. If a mistake happened again, should Robert take it on himself? He looked over Inez’s shoulder as the two quickly corrected the errors, then Inez rushed off to the photocopier.
Robert walked back to his desk. If he didn’t know better, he’d think Mario was trying to steal. This would be an easy way to do it, diverting money to an account that existed offshore, an account for a company with a name close to the name of the exchange corporation. In law school, Robert had taken an ethics class—they became mandatory after Watergate—and the professor had started the class by saying that they would, as attorneys, likely have access to enormous amounts of money, and that the amazing thing was not how many lawyers embezzled but how few did, considering the temptations.
Mario didn’t need the money; he had his own fortune. Robert, who didn’t, had thought of theft himself, on those nights when he was at the office until midnight, slaving away for the glory of Phillip Healey and Jack Alexander. Take the money and run. Start over with total freedom. Sitting down at his desk, he imagined Sally coming with him, like a white-collar Bonnie and Clyde; they would go to some tropical paradise, a place with lousy extradition and liberal banking laws. Or there was Paris, the next best thing. He’d gone with Crea, in ’83, for the opening of the Pompidou Center, and the architecture of the city had moved him, if the Pompidou—which looked like a bunch of giant pipes in a tangle—had not. Sally would love Paris. They could get an apartment in the student quarter, the area he remembered liking, though maybe he wouldn’t like it as much now, being no student. But they could live in quiet, understated luxury among the handsome seventeenth-century buildings, in the city whose neighborhoods are preserved in time, not ripped apart and rezoned, sold off piece by piece every decade or so, as they were in New York. He expanded on the idea, like a game, and felt his mood lift. Sally could transform herself yet again; she seemed good at that, and so was he. Then, suddenly, Sally was standing in front of him, for real, with her shoe-shine box resting on her hip.
“I knocked but you didn’t seem to hear me.”
“I was daydreaming.”
“About what?” she asked. She was back in uniform. The tight T-shirt and jeans, the makeup, the hair, sans roots.
“Oh, the usual,” he said, “embezzling money, running away with you to another country.”
“I left home for another country, and once is enough. I’ll never leave New York. You bother to shine your shoes while I was away? Because they sure don’t look it.” She put down her shoe-shine box at his feet.
“I avoided cleaning them in protest,” he replied. “And you are a disturbingly practical girl, as I’ve already pointed out. But at least you’re back. For good, I hope.”
She sat down on the low red seat, took out the flannel rags and other equipment. He hiked up his pants leg and she put his shoe in the metal stirrup. Then she reached in her apron and took out another flyer. “Another show,” she said.
“You get cast a lot.”
“And paid a little,” she replied. “But this is a good part. A good show.” She looked away from him suddenly, at the door, as if embarrassed. “So be there, okay?”
“Is that an order?”
“Yup,” she said, once again focused on his shoe.
“What about your boyfriend?” he asked, changing feet. “Still on the road?”
“You said you trust me, which meant something to me, so I’m going to trust you: There is no boyfriend. I mean, there’ve been lots of boyfriends, but no one special now. I say I have one because it’s easier that way, you know, with customers.”
“That makes sense,” he said, smiling. There was no one.
“You mean I look like a girl who has no boyfriend?” She took out her brushes and ran them back and forth over the leather of his shoe, then buffed it with the rag.
“No, you look like a girl whom every man wants but no man will approach seriously.” He watched her color vaguely. “So I guess it’s not working. The mythical boyfriend?”
“Hard to tell. Don’t spread the info around.” She had finished his shoes now and was putting her equipment back in the box.
“I’m not giving home court advantage to anyone else,” he said, as they stood. Her hiatus had jolted him; so had seeing her that day in the park. He had feared she would go away again. “So are you busy all the time with rehearsals?”
“Most of the time.”
He walked closer to her, slipped the money in
to her apron. “I can’t persuade you to have dinner with me?” he asked. “A very good dinner at a very good restaurant?” He missed that smell, the oily polish and watermelon lip gloss.
“You’re always tempting me, aren’t you?”
“It’s just dinner.”
She told him she was booked, but her voice was softer. Was he wearing her down? Or had she changed toward him? He would make her change. He would not back down this time. Her face was flushed and he put his palm to her cheek.
“Someone’s standing in the doorway,” she said softly.
“The door’s closed.”
“I can see a reflection in the glass.”
Robert stepped away from her and yelled, “Come in!” but whoever it was had gone. If they had even been there to begin with.
CHAPTER FIFTY
The summer before the storm
Crea should have been making preparations to go to Tuxedo for June and some of July, but she was late in leaving this year. Gwen’s school ended the first week in June, but their daughter had birthday parties and activities and lessons that had to be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. He understood this, but in the past Crea had always been able to get everything organized and together before June 1. He had the feeling she was stalling, that somehow she did not trust him alone. And she was right to feel that way.
He had a reason now not to pick fights with her or get irritated. He had a goal. They did not fight, rarely even made love, and he never asked anymore, never bothered, only accommodated when necessary. Even with all this smooth civility—such a new experience for him, like living with a roommate, really, but an easier one than Barry, a better-smelling one—he still felt himself to be in a strange, unspoken tug-of-war. They walked around each other, did as the other asked, and waited for something to happen.
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