Emma's Table

by Philip Galanes

  “Is my friend here yet?” she asked. The shop looked as empty as a graveyard—a tidy one, at least—giving the place its due.

  Christina pointed to the back of the shop, to a massive globe that hung down from the ceiling. It was three or four feet in diameter, and made of woven rattan. Emma saw Mr. Tanaguchi then—his back, anyway—sitting inside the hanging chair, perched like a bird in a woven cage, his short legs dangling down.

  “He likes the Nana Ditzel,” Christina said, a sale blooming in her eyes.

  Emma began to cross the room, the shopkeeper at a barely respectable distance. She didn’t like being bird-dogged this way, but if anyone could help her, she suspected, it was going to be the senorita.

  Christina had an excellent eye; there was no doubt about that. Her shop was filled with exquisite things—a Santa’s workshop for the mid-century set. Any number of dealers could claim that much, Emma supposed, but Christina had more than inventory: she had a knack for moving it too. She sold every stick that came her way, and all at premium prices, her shop growing bigger and grander as the years wore on. Emma had seen the woman in action: making people hungry for the things she had, sprinkling them all with glittering appeal—the furniture and the shopkeep, the customer himself.

  People wanted to join Christina’s club; they couldn’t wait to whip their checkbooks out. Emma had done it herself.

  She knew you couldn’t fake that.

  Taste is easy, she thought, crossing the room—it’s selling that’s hard. Emma hoped she’d work her magic on Tanaguchi too.

  He turned to her in the suspended chair.

  He must have heard her shoes clacking hard against the lacquered floor. She planted her feet more gently down, smiling sweetly as she approached.

  Emma couldn’t help wondering if Christina had grown as tired of the grind as she had herself. She created this wave she’s riding, Emma thought—she’d built the shop up from scratch, inspiring the hunger for all that furniture, growing it ravenous through will and hard work, the same way that Emma incited her much larger audience: all those women watching at home, yearning for her cozy sitting nooks and the festive accessories that she sprinkled throughout. Emma tended their desires with the greenest of thumbs, selling them every ingredient they could possibly need—fanning a seedling interest into a forest of cash flow and desire.

  She felt dog-tired.

  “I’m glad you could meet me,” Emma said, extending her hand to him.

  “Please,” Mr. Tanaguchi said, wrestling himself free from the hanging chair, like an awkward boy on a jungle gym.

  She admired his trim custom suit.

  “It’s for me to thank you,” he said, “Ms. Sutton”—the hanging chair bumping softly against the back of his legs. His hand felt delicate in hers, like a sparrow she might inadvertently crush.

  “Call me Emma,” she said, smiling sweetly.

  She wanted to be gentle with him. And she wanted penance for herself: a furniture outing to clear the slate from her double-cross at the auction house.

  So unnecessary, she thought, begrudging her bad behavior.

  She was always going to win that table; there’d been no need for any high jinks at all.

  And if I hadn’t won, she considered then, growing harder on herself with every passing second, would that have been the end of the world?

  Emma felt a soft nudge of self-awareness. Small, but persistent, it had trailed her all day, flitting like a firefly on a summery lawn. She kept grabbing at it, over and over; she knew it was important, and here it was again, its faint light seeping from inside her cupped hands: she couldn’t afford to be the kind of person who won at any cost—not anymore, she decided. She saw the terrible toll it took, every stolen victory another excuse to run herself down. Just as it had been since she was a girl—running endless laps around a cul de sac of sabotage and shame.

  “Winning isn’t everything,” her father always told her. “It’s the only thing”—barely suppressing a chuckle as he laid his winning cards down, collecting the last of her allowance dimes and gloating victorious every time.

  Here’s to new leaves, she thought.

  Emma was determined to discredit her father once and for all. She was going to make amends to the man she’d wronged—or one of them, anyway. She thought of Bobby and his secret flat. On the surface, of course, it was she who was the injured party, but she wondered about that too, standing in the corner of Modern Edge.

  Emma turned to Christina, who was lingering nearby—a light switch just waiting to be turned on. “We’re looking for a Nakashima table,” she told her.

  “Of course, querida.” Christina smiled. “Your office called ahead.”

  “It has to be spectacular,” Emma announced, just stating the ground rules for everyone to hear: only a table better than hers could erase the stain of her bad behavior. “Mr. Tanaguchi is making a present to his wife,” she said.

  “What a generous husband!” Christina cooed, turning to the man with blushing cheeks. “You wouldn’t like to marry me, would you?” she asked, with a flirty smile.

  Mr. Tanaguchi stared back at her blankly, Emma too; they didn’t like that kind of talk.

  “I’ve got two tables down here,” Christina said, recovering quickly—never one to keep a losing tack. “And one upstairs,” she added, almost like an afterthought.

  A phone rang inside Emma’s bag. It didn’t sound like hers.

  What on earth? she thought.

  But then she remembered: it was Benjamin’s phone. She’d forgotten to give it to her assistant. “Sorry about that,” she said, letting it ring through to voice mail.

  Christina led them around the shop.

  “Fantástico,” she’d cry, from time to time, landing hard on that second syllable, admiring some irrelevant table or chair—in Spanish, no less.

  Emma wished she’d get on with it already.

  “Here’s the first one,” she said, pointing to the most ordinary dining table Emma had ever seen: just a single plank of dark wood and four doweled legs beneath it. It didn’t look like Nakashima at all, not to Emma anyway.

  “It’s an early piece,” Christina sighed—as if that made its dreariness something to aspire to.

  Emma hoped their visit wouldn’t be a waste of time.

  “I have a client who’s desperate for it,” Christina whispered, with emphasis on the desperation. “But if you like it…,” she said, letting her voice trail off.

  She’ll screw the other client, Emma thought.

  Mr. Tanaguchi looked appalled.

  Don’t worry, Emma wanted to tell him, as reassuring as a pat on the shoulder—there’s no other client. It’s an imaginary footrace.

  “I don’t care for this one,” Mr. Tanaguchi announced.

  Emma agreed entirely.

  The second table was better, but not near enough: it had a gorgeous walnut top—no doubt about that, it stood gleaming before them. And it had the rosewood butterflies of Emma’s table, those elegant insets that joined the planks together, but it was awkwardly shaped—too short somehow for its substantial width.

  “It’s a little stunted,” Emma said. “Don’t you think?”

  Mr. Tanaguchi nodded quickly.

  Christina didn’t see it that way at all. “Oh no,” she said, pointing to the table, as if there must be some confusion about the one in question, her loose black sleeve dangling down. “This is one of my favorite shapes,” she said, with a gush in her voice, as if she were repairing an oily vinaigrette, adding as much balsamic as it took to make things right. “And the shorter length works like a charm in city apartments,” she said, balancing Emma’s criticism with an equal dose of praise.

  “Do you live in the city, Mr. Tanaguchi?” Christina asked.

  It was clear that he did—to Emma, anyway—from the frightened look on his face. Tanaguchi went mute, refusing to admit it, as if the wily shopkeeper might stick him with the table if she learned the hard truth.

  “Mr.
Tanaguchi lives at the Japanese embassy,” Emma said.

  She had no idea where the man lived, but she’d heard the bossy trap in Christina’s voice too. She wanted to take him off the hook.

  Mr. Tanaguchi’s eyes widened with gratitude.

  “We need something grander than this,” Emma said. “And more beautiful. I told you, Christina, we’re in the market for an exceptional table.” She didn’t want to hear another word about the squat little thing in front of them.

  Christina nodded thoughtfully, as if Emma had clarified an important point. “I may have just the thing,” she said—never one to hold a grudge, not in the middle of a sale anyway.

  Emma couldn’t blame her for trying.

  “It’s just upstairs,” she said.

  Benjamin’s cell phone rang again.

  Somebody really wants to get through, she thought. The phone hadn’t rung all day, and now it was ringing every five minutes.

  Christina led them up a flight of stairs to a loft apartment above the shop. Everything was even whiter and cleaner up there. She walked them straight to the third Nakashima table, set off in a small anteroom. She made no introduction or preliminary comment. Just looked down at the table, then grinned up at them both.

  It’s perfect, Emma thought, the moment she saw it, like Goldilocks laying eyes on that third bowl of porridge: just the right size, and piping hot too! It was exactly what she’d been hoping for, every bit as elegant as the table from the auction house, its edges curving as gently as a coastline. The book-matched planks were perfectly symmetrical, and she counted four ebony butterflies joining them at the hip. Plus, this one had an extra feature—a gap at the center where the tree itself seemed to grow apart. So dramatic! And it looks to be the right size, she thought: ten feet long and four feet wide, just like the one she’d stolen at FitzCoopers.

  Emma looked at Tanaguchi. He was no poker player.

  She suspected then—thinking back—that Christina might have choreographed the entire affair: showing them the ordinary tables first only to heighten the thrill of this last one, claiming even greater victory after the prospect of so much defeat. She might have had it moved upstairs, for all Emma knew, keeping it out of sight until the perfect moment.

  Mr. Tanaguchi nodded his head in brisk little strokes.

  “How much do you want for it?” Emma asked.

  “Seventy-five thousand,” Christina said, her Latin charm gone south of the border. She was all business now.

  “That must be list,” Emma replied, with a curt note in her voice. “How much for me?” she asked.

  “I suppose,” Christina warbled, ever so reluctantly—like a little bird peeking out from its nest—“that I could go to sixty-five,” she said, “for you.”

  Emma looked at Tanaguchi one last time.

  She saw the eyes of a birthday wish, flickering like waxy candles atop a chocolate cake. “We’ll take it for sixty,” Emma announced—her penance complete, or so she hoped.

  “BOBBY?” HIS SECRETARY CALLED—THE WAY SHE did all day long—in through the open door that separated her desk from his.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  He didn’t care for the shouting back and forth. When he wanted to speak with her, he walked to the doorway.

  Bobby was one of the named partners at an expensive law firm that specialized in real estate transactions. They made money hand over fist during those times of year when sunlight shone through glassy windows—at the height of spring and the beginning of fall—but it was February now, and things were decidedly slow. He had the corner office there, like Emma had hers, and his secretary, Susan, sat right outside, in a cluster of secretaries who worked for the higher-ups.

  It was just after five o’clock on Monday afternoon.

  “That was Emma’s office,” Susan called in. “She’s not going to make it home tonight until seven.” Emma’s office phoned him all day long with little updates on her shifting whereabouts, and pointed inquiries—it seemed to him—regarding his. He found it mildly annoying.

  “Thank you, Susan.”

  Bobby never asked his secretary to stop her shouting—to phone him on the intercom or walk to his doorway instead. He wasn’t the sort of person who needed to express every last one of his preferences. He’d never said anything to Emma either, about her constant checking-in. She’d only get defensive, and he supposed she’d have every right to be. His determination to reconcile had caught him by surprise almost as much as it had her; he could hardly blame her for a little healthy skepticism. She probably thought he was leaving for good every time he walked out the front door.

  Bobby had a capacity for taking the long view.

  He laid down the document he’d been skimming, for the condo-ization of an old veterinary hospital. He was only too happy to set it aside.

  The smell, he thought, wrinkling his nose as he pictured the putrid apartments that would result from his work.

  He may have had the corner office, but he didn’t take the proceedings there near as seriously as Emma took hers. Sometimes he wondered if his desire to reconcile with her was attributable, in part anyway, to professional boredom.

  Could be, he thought, a little indecisively.

  He knew that a much greater share of it had to do with Emma’s fall from grace, the vulnerability he saw in all those newspaper photos, and on every channel of his television set. That was the woman he knew, looking out from all those pictures—the woman he loved. Bobby had been deeply moved by the backlash against Emma. It was so inevitable, he thought. Just when you get the taste for it—the power and the glory—they come after you with guns blazing. And it was just as inevitable, it seemed to him, that Emma would never have seen it coming.

  He smiled at the notion of the New York Post bringing her back to him.

  Bobby surveyed his cluttered desk, but nothing leaped out at him. He supposed he was finished for the day.

  He checked his wristwatch. He had a couple of hours still.

  Bobby was in no rush to head back to Emma’s place, to wait by himself in those palatial rooms. So he ambled over to his briefcase instead, on the nearer of the lounge chairs in the corner, and unzipped the small compartment.

  Bobby was headed back to the secret flat. He’d have a glass of wine and some All Things Considered on the radio. He’d make it back to Park Avenue in plenty of time for dinner with Emma.

  He hadn’t expected their reconciliation to be easy, not by any means, but he hadn’t expected it to be quite so difficult either. Emma had begun to close herself off again as soon as he moved into the apartment with her, and he hadn’t helped matters, he knew, by renting the place on Seventy-eight Street.

  Something has to give, he supposed, but he knew full well that it wouldn’t be Emma.

  Bobby kept poking around the bag’s small compartment, but to no avail: the keys weren’t there. He felt himself snapping to attention, as if that silky lining were a live electrical outlet, and he was shocking himself, again and again, jamming his fingers in like that.

  “Hang on,” he mumbled, keeping calm.

  He prided himself on his even temper in the face of small annoyances and terrible calamities, but he felt seriously challenged this time out. He kept running his finger all around that pocket, closing his eyes, as if to enhance his sense of touch; but it didn’t matter how long he swirled his index finger, those keys were not to be found.

  Bobby began to lose his nerve.

  He walked straight to the coat closet in the corner, a little faster than usual, frisking his topcoat like a detective on TV, patting down the navy cashmere as if it were armed and dangerous. He didn’t feel them. So he pushed his hands into those navy pockets—all the way down deep—the two at hip level first, lined in chamois. They were meant to keep his fingers warm on chilly days, but that wasn’t his problem now: his palms felt clammy to the touch as he pulled them out again—empty. He checked the pocket up high—the one at his breast, where he kept his wallet sometimes, but never, o
nce, his keys.

  No one in the world had ever kept his keys up there.

  Bobby rushed back to his desk and seized on the briefcase—his first hope and his last. He snatched out every folder and every single pad, shaking them as he did, just to be sure. He took the pencils out and the pens, the small roll of mints at the bottom of the bag, as if his keys might have wormed their way inside the silver foil. But no luck. He upended the bag, listening for the music of jangling keys, the metal rods clanging as they clattered to his desk, but Bobby wasn’t much of a musician, it turned out. All he produced was a fair bit of dirt and three silver paper clips, a pile of white paper scraps that come from ripping sheets of paper from spiral-bound notebooks.

  Where can they be? he wondered.

  He ran his hands around the suede lining of the bag.

  “Susan!” he called, as helpless as a child, nothing like the way he usually sounded. He didn’t walk to the doorway either. He felt relieved when she appeared: a sensible woman of fifty or so, average in most every respect—save her extravagantly dyed hair. She’d turned sun-kissed blond a few years back, and was meticulous about keeping it up.

  “I’ve lost my keys,” he told her.

  She looked back at him as if she weren’t quite sure what he wanted her to do about it; she looked down at the pile of rubble on his desk.

  “I’m sure they were here,” he said, pointing into the bag. “But I can’t find them now.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, a little uncertain still. “I haven’t seen any keys.”

  Bobby kept looking at her, waiting for something more.

  This was a job for Emma, he suspected. She’d have found those keys already; she’d have found them before he knew they were missing—the thought of which made him more nervous than before. Emma must never, ever find those keys.

  It would be curtains for him if she did.

  Susan walked to the desk and took the bag from his hands, like a mother who saw, at very long last, that there was no alternative to stepping in: her little boy would never do up those buttons all by himself. Bobby let her take it willingly. She made a thorough search of the bag, her eyes peering in. Then she sorted through the contents lying in a heap on top of his desk: there were no keys. She swept the dust and the paper clips into her open palm, the scraps of paper; she threw them all into the trash can beside his desk.