Just Friends

by Robyn Sisman

  CHAPTER 21

  Freya trudged toward the bus stop, her footsteps leaving alternate red smears on the tacky sidewalk. She’d stepped on a tube of Cadmium Red while paying a morale-boosting visit to one of her artists at his studio in Alphabet City. Normally, this was the part of her job she liked best. She loved the smell of turps and linseed oil, the stacked canvases, the clutter of spray cans and staple guns and old rags dabbed with pigment that gave off a heady sense of work in progress. She enjoyed the peculiar intimacy of her relationships with the artists themselves—coaxing them out of the doldrums, sympathizing with their struggles, steering them down new paths, getting them to trust her. Creativity was a mystery. It was like lighting a fire without matches. Sometimes, just sometimes, she was able to fan a glowing spark into flame. There was nothing to beat that moment when they yanked a sheet off an easel or turned a canvas face-out from the wall and revealed, to her privileged eyes, the fresh, raw product of their labors.

  But today she had been distracted. Matt Scardino was one of her young hopefuls, whose first solo exhibition was scheduled for the fall. He had called her this morning in a funk, telling her that he was stuck, blocked, washed up. He would never be ready; she must cancel the show. Freya had gone straight over, and spent half the day there talking through his problems and trying to offer solutions. But nothing she had said seemed to lift his gloom. She felt she had let him down, and she was angry and disappointed with herself.

  She blinked away a trickle of sweat as she watched the bus crawl toward her through the rush hour traffic. On days like this it seemed impossible to remember why anyone found New York glamorous. Dirt settled on her skin. She could feel her lungs silting up with every breath. Everyone looked hassled and bad-tempered. The city was the color of a dried scab, under a putrid bandage of smog.

  The bus was packed. Stray elbows jabbed her ribs. She could smell hot rubber and other people’s sweat. Her chic little work dress stuck to her back. Maneuvering her way to a square foot of standing room, Freya grabbed an overhead handle and stared at the ads that urged her to consider health insurance and cosmetic dentistry. She felt weary of the relentless demands of this city. Wear this. Don’t eat that. Sparkle. Bargain. Push. Win. Go, go, go! Sometimes she wanted to put her hands over her ears and yell, Wait! Slow down! I want to think. But there was never time.

  A sense of hopelessness and failure washed over her. She had built up her life in New York from scratch—dollar by dollar, job by job, friend by friend—and now it was crumbling to dust. Ever since the Michael episode she had experienced one humiliation after another—and she had a horrible feeling they were all her fault. Just when she needed a friend, Cat was too “busy” to see her—doing what, Freya couldn’t imagine. She was sick of camping in the corner of someone else’s study in someone else’s apartment. Living with Jack, whom she’d always got on with—always—had turned out to be a nightmare. But the real nightmare, her overriding obsession, the thought that made her prickle and snap with panic, squeezing out every other emotion, was the knowledge that in two days she was going home for Tash’s wedding.

  The apartment was silent, and almost as stifling as outdoors. Jack had done nothing about the ominous clanking of the air-conditioning; now, apparently, it had conked out. If only he were here, she could cheer herself up with a thundering good row. With a sigh, Freya pulled off her shoes, dumped her briefcase, and made straight for the kitchen, where she took a beer from the fridge, flipped off the lid, and drank from the bottle. She undid the top two buttons of her dress and rolled the bottle across her skin. It would almost be worth going to England for the pleasure of being positively cold in midsummer. Almost . . .

  Abruptly, Freya set down her beer bottle on the table and headed for the bathroom, unbuttoning her dress as she went. She stood under the cold, cascading water, forcing herself to concentrate on the things she had to do before she left town: bubblewrap Tash’s wedding present, buy her a card, decide what clothes to take, try to cash in the spare air ticket. For there was now no use pretending that she wasn’t going alone. Today was Monday; her flight left on Wednesday night; she had run out of time. Alone: the word lodged in her heart like a splinter.

  She’d told them all—boasted, if she was honest—about bringing a “friend” with her. Everyone knew what that meant: a lover certainly, possibly a long-term partner. She’d pictured herself swanning in from the States, cool and mysterious, with Michael in tow, protected by his mere presence from speculation or the need to explain herself. But Michael had let her down, and her efforts to find a replacement had ended in disaster. She was pathetic, ridiculous, a desperate old maid. And now she was going alone.

  She knew how it would be: the house in turmoil, full of strangers; her father preoccupied; her stepmother in organizational overdrive, treating her as a useful extra pair of hands; and Tash—spoiled little princess Tash—patronizing her at every turn. Poor old Freya, who couldn’t keep a man—a lonely career girl whose time was running out.

  Freya stepped out of the shower and toweled herself briskly. She was a tough New York cookie now. Of course she could cope with Tash’s wedding alone. She heard Cat’s bracing voice saying, “I don’t need a man.” Quite right. Wrapping herself in the towel, Freya picked up her clothes and was walking past Jack’s bedroom to her own when she was startled by a sound so familiar that she could have recognized it blindfold in the middle of a party. A-hem. The sound of Jack clearing his throat.

  She paused by his closed door and called out, “That you, Jack?”

  “Yep.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That sounds fun.”

  Silence.

  Freya cocked one arm on her hip. “Great job you did on the air-conditioning.”

  No answer. Had he slipped into the apartment while she was in the shower, or had he been here all along? She shrugged, and continued to her room. By the time she had changed into shorts and a faded blue cotton top she was hot again. She went to retrieve her beer and found Jack in the kitchen, a chair pulled up to the open refrigerator and his bare feet propped on the bottom shelf. He didn’t even look up.

  “Mind if I join you?” she asked.

  “Help yourself.”

  Freya put a chair alongside his. He moved his feet over to make room for hers on the fridge shelf, and they sat for a while in silence, staring at the random jars of mayonnaise and pickles and grape jelly.

  “It’s hot,” Freya offered.

  “Yeah.” Jack passed a hand over his face. He looked exhausted.

  “Weren’t you and Candace supposed to be having dinner with your dad tonight?”

  “Yep.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I didn’t go.”

  “Why not?”

  “Couldn’t face it.”

  “Ah.”

  Freya stole a look at Jack. What was the matter with him? She’d have said he was sulking, except Jack wasn’t a sulker.

  “So where’s Candace?” she fished.

  “I let her go by herself. Dad’s going to show her some of his old haunts.”

  “Lucky Candace.”

  Jack shrugged, as if he didn’t care what Candace did.

  Freya tried another tack. “How did your lunch with Ella go?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Ah.”

  So they sat, not speaking, in the stifling kitchen, until the refrigerator began to whine with strain. Jack’s black mood seeped out of him like poison gas. Freya was tempted to leave him to choke in it alone. But what if something really was wrong? She didn’t like to see him down.

  “Hey.” She nudged his foot. “I’m not doing anything tonight. You’re obviously not doing anything. Why don’t we go to the movies. At least we’ll get some decent air-conditioning.”

  “I don’t feel like it. You go.”

  “Don’t be so boring.”

  “I like being boring.”

 
“Oh, come on.” She stood up. “It’s no fun going alone.”

  He raised his head and gave her a baleful stare. “You just want to see some goofy chick flick.”

  “I do not.” She cocked her head.

  “I’ll buy the popcorn,” she offered.

  “Bet the butter’s rancid.”

  “Then we won’t eat it!” Freya gave his chair a shove. “Get up, you great lump. Let’s go see what’s on. You can cheer me up with your lively personality and sparkling repartee.”

  “Uh,” said Jack. He wriggled his bare toes. “I’d have to put some shoes on.” He made this sound on a par with climbing Everest.

  “So get them! Chop chop.”

  Jack kicked the refrigerator door shut and lumbered to his feet. “No one would call you bossy.”

  “Decisive, is the word.”

  “If I were your husband, I’d go crazy.”

  “If I were your wife, I’d be crazy already.”

  Freya went to get her own shoes and her purse, and waited outside for Jack to lock the front door. They walked down the street together, keeping to the shade of the tall sophora trees that were just coming into blossom. Halfway down the block, the old Italian man was sitting out on his stoop as usual, wearing his saggy gray undershirt and drinking beer; he gave a friendly nod as they passed.

  First stop was a big bookstore on Seventh Avenue that was blissfully air-conditioned. Jack went in search of the Voice, so they could check the listings, while Freya took her time picking out a suitable card for Tash. There might not be much sisterly affection between them, but Freya was determined that no one should find fault with her behavior. She made her purchase and went looking for Jack. Eventually she spotted him at one of the big tables near the front of the bookstore, apparently rearranging the display. It struck her that there was something furtive about his behavior, and she paused to watch him work his way through a tall stack of identical books. What on earth was he doing? First he picked up a book. Holding it by the spine in one hand, he flipped quickly through the pages with the other—far too quickly to read anything, more as if to check whether something was hidden inside. Then he put the book down, not back on the pile but underneath one of the adjacent piles of other titles. She watched him for a full minute as he repeated this procedure without variation, then maneuvered her way quietly to his side.

  “What are you doing, Jack?”

  “Nothing.” Jack snapped the book shut. She saw that it was Vanderbilt’s Thumb by Carson McGuire. Looking along the table, she noticed that each of the neat stacks of other titles contained a rogue copy of McGuire’s novel, usually near the bottom. The original McGuire pile had completely disappeared.

  “Let’s go,” he said, hustling her away.

  Freya followed him out, thinking of all the times she’d gone into a bookshop to put Big Sky on top of the “bestseller” piles. “That’s a bit mean, isn’t it?” she said, when they were back out on the street. “What’s Carson McGuire ever done to you that you want to hide his books?”

  Jack flipped back his hair. “I’m simply checking to see if his book is really selling, or if it’s all some publicity stunt. See, whenever I find a big pile like that, I take the top copy and turn down a teeny corner of one of the pages—page 313, in fact. Then the next time I go into that bookstore I can see if the copy has sold, or if it’s the same old pile.”

  “And was page 313 turned down?”

  “No,” Jack conceded.

  “But you hid all of the books anyway.”

  “People can always ask for a copy if they really want one.”

  Freya snorted with laughter at this pathetic behavior. “You’re jealous!”

  Jack swiveled his big shoulders. “Stop telling me what I am!” he snapped. “You don’t know me. Nobody does.”

  Freya drew away in shock. She opened her mouth to shout back at him, but she could see he was really upset. Instead she gently touched the folded newspaper under his arm and asked in a neutral voice, “So what shall we see?”

  They stopped under a store awning and huddled close, scanning the listings. Suddenly Freya exclaimed and stabbed the page. “Look! High Society.”

  “Fluffy,” objected Jack.

  “Romantic,” Freya corrected.

  “Bing Crosby?” Jack’s eyebrows rose incredulously.

  “Frank Sinatra,” she reminded him. “Cole Porter. Grace Kelly . . . in a bathing suit.”

  “Okay, you win.”

  It was the perfect choice. They sat in the back row of the half-empty cinema, legs propped up on the seats in front, fingers absently picking popcorn out of a carton wedged between them in a special elbow-lock they had perfected over the years. Their crabbiness melted as the film spun its magic out of the darkness, enveloping them in the sunny, madcap dottiness of a 1950s society wedding. Crosby sang about what a swell party it was. Sinatra told Grace Kelly that he didn’t care if she was called “the fair Miss Frigidaire,” because she was sensational. Kelly herself drifted across the screen, ravishing and impossible, trying to decide whether to marry the stuffed shirt to whom she was engaged, or the tabloid journalist who gave her the facts of life straight-up, or the man she had loved all along, only she couldn’t admit it. It was pure, irresistible hokum. When the credits rolled, they stumbled to their feet with foolish, faraway grins and wandered outside to stand on the sidewalk, taking time to readjust to the heat and rush of the city.

  Jack took off his glasses and folded them away. He smiled down at her. “Hungry?”

  Freya gave a languorous, Grace Kelly shrug. “Maybe an ice cream at that Italian place on Broome Street?”

  “Café Pisa? That’s on Mulberry, not Broome.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Eventually they found the narrow entrance, marked by a browning evergreen in a tub. There was a plastic replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in the window.

  “Ha! Broome Street,” said Jack.

  Freya waved airily. “It must have moved.”

  They pushed past the narrow bar where old men sat on stools drinking grappa, through the noisy, crowded dining room, and out into a courtyard festooned with colored lights. They ordered ice cream and coffee and sat in companionable silence under a martini umbrella. Jack twiddled the ashtray around and around. Freya leaned her head in one hand and drew patterns in the dusty tabletop, waiting for him to tell her what was bothering him.

  Finally he turned to her. “My publishers want to cancel my book contract,” he said.

  “What?” She straightened with a jerk.

  “That’s why Ella wanted to see me. There’s some new broom in the company whose mission is to sweep away the old inefficiencies—of which I am apparently one.”

  “God, Jack. Can they do that?”

  It seemed that they most certainly could, despite the pleas and protestations of his loyal editor. Jack had missed his deadline. The new regime was not only canceling the contract for “nonperformance”; they were also demanding the return of the money Jack had already received—and spent.

  “The real bummer,” said Jack, “is that my dad has chosen this moment to cut off my allowance.”

  “He hasn’t!”

  “So I can’t pay back the money. Nor can I afford to live while I finish my book. I’m completely fucked.”

  “That’s awful, Jack. I’m sorry.” Privately Freya reflected that if he hadn’t wasted so much time going to book parties and fooling around with dimbo girlfriends, he could have finished long ago, but Jack looked so stricken that she hadn’t the heart to tell him so. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What does Candace think?”

  “Uh, I haven’t told her yet.”

  “I see.”

  “I’ll have to give up the apartment, maybe leave New York for good. Get a job.” He raked his fingernails through his hair, pushing back the thick, unkempt swathes. For the first time Freya noticed two
faint lines scored across his forehead. “I don’t know,” he repeated.

  “At least you don’t have to worry about me,” said Freya. “I’ve found a sublet.”

  “You’re moving out?” He sounded surprised.

  “Yep. I’ll take all my stuff away on Wednesday and dump it in the new place, ready for when I get back from England.”

  “Oh yeah . . . England.” Jack frowned. “I forgot about that.” He scraped up the last of his ice cream and dropped his spoon into the bowl with a clang. “Well, that’s my life down the drain. What’s your excuse?”