The Season

by Jonah Lisa Dyer

  I tightened the belt on my trench coat, squared my shoulders, and marched to the front door, held open by a doorman. It shut behind me with a thud. Inside the light was dim, and the stone floors and walls felt cold and indifferent.

  “Megan McKnight for Andrew Gage, please,” I told the bald and muscle-bound man at the security desk.

  He looked me over long enough for me to know he knew Andrew’s type, which I was not, then reached for the phone. I turned away and dawdled, heard him speak something unintelligible in a low voice. A pause, and then he said, “Very good,” and the phone hit the cradle.

  “Ms. McKnight?”

  “Yes,” I said, turning ever so casually.

  “This way please.” I entered the elevator. He inserted a card key, and pressed the number ten—the penthouse.

  “Thank you.” The brief incline of his head was the last thing I saw before the doors shut and the car whooshed skyward. I sighed in relief—I’d bluffed my way into Buckingham Palace and was now moments from surprising the capricious queen.

  What will I say to her? You’re here for Julia; you’ll know what to say.

  The elevator doors opened and I stepped out, expecting to land in a hallway. Instead I found myself in the Gages’ foyer. They didn’t live in some tacky apartment with a number—they lived on the entire top floor!

  Directly opposite, a Van Gogh of violets in a vase hung on the wall. I took two steps forward for a better look and I could see globby swirls of paint curling off the canvas. Um, that’s not a print.

  I took a breath. In my world the Battles were rich, but they’d have to liquidate the oil business, pawn the houses and the ranch and the horses and the family silver to go halfsies on that painting. And that didn’t include the wall to hang it on.

  “Megan?” That couldn’t be Andrew’s mom—there was no way she sounded that young.

  A girl about my age raced down the hall toward me. In Levi’s and a white T-shirt, she was too shabbily dressed to be the help, but who was she? The answer would have to wait until after she released me from an enthusiastic hug.

  “I’m so glad to finally meet you!” Her eyes were bright and full of enthusiasm. I still had no idea who she was.

  “Me too,” I said automatically. Finally, she realized my conundrum.

  “Georgie. Georgie Gage.” This was Georgie the sultry psychopath? She must be absolutely deranged, because standing there she seemed like the most normal girl I had ever seen. Maybe more sociopath than psychopath, I thought.

  “Of course. So . . . nice to meet you.” Don’t set her off.

  “Come in, please, over here.” She led me down the hallway and into an open room. I followed her and stopped again—and gawked. Across the room, floor-to-ceiling windows created a living tableau of Central Park and the city beyond: the rolling hills of the park, all white; the zoo buildings; and there in the distance, the Plaza.

  “Sit down. Let me take your coat.”

  “Um . . .” I shrugged out of my coat while still looking out the window. Georgie paid it no mind. The Sistine Chapel probably gets old if you work at the Vatican every day.

  “Have we met?” I asked cautiously.

  “No, but I feel like we have. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “Really? How?”

  “From Andrew. He wrote me all about you—that you had the most amazing black eye at the first party, that you play soccer and ride horses and can shoot a shotgun and you lived on a cattle ranch—just everything!”

  “Oh,” I managed, still confused. “So . . . interesting. Well, that’s actually why I’m here. I wanted to see him. I went to his office, and they sent me here.”

  “He’s on his way. You can wait with me!”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

  Mrs. Gage stood in the doorway. Her presence, her voice, the shock of seeing her, lifted me to my feet. From afar at Lauren’s party I’d thought her attractive. Up close in the daylight she presented a much sterner, more formidable, and frankly frightening face. Her features were all slightly too pronounced, and I realized she had been under the knife and needle several times. Her folded arms told me she brooked no nonsense and I’d better get to the point.

  “Mrs. Gage, hello. I’m Megan McKnight.” I walked toward her. “I’m sorry to drop by unexpectedly, but my sister, Julia, and I—”

  “I know all about you and your sister and the whole sordid affair, and you have some nerve showing up here. Perhaps in Texas these things are done, but not here—not with my son and his friends.”

  Apparently, Mrs. Gage subscribed to the notion that if a fight is inescapable, it’s best to throw the first punch. I gathered myself.

  “With all due respect, Mrs. Gage, you don’t know what happened or anything about my sister, Julia. She is the kindest, most compassionate person I know, and—”

  “That’s a matter of opinion,” she said tartly.

  “Mom!” Georgie broke in, but Mrs. Gage silenced her with a look, then turned back to me. “Now, unless there was something else . . .”

  This was not a question but an invitation to leave. I was pissed—at her, at Andrew by proxy, at the whole bunch of them. They were such snobs, and it was so incredibly unfair to Julia. But I held it together, imagined Ann standing in front of me: what would I say to her?

  “Could you please tell Andrew I stopped by? I would very much like to speak with him.”

  “Of course,” she said. I scribbled my number on a piece of paper and handed it to her. She held it like a gob of toxic waste.

  “Really nice to meet you,” I said. She crinkled her mouth in reply.

  Waiting for the elevator I fumed about Andrew and his mother. The doors opened, I entered and pushed L. Just as the door began to close, Georgie slid in.

  “I am so, so sorry,” she said. “I’ll for sure tell Andrew you stopped by.”

  “Thanks. I just want a chance to explain things to him.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “The Plaza, but we’re going back to Dallas tomorrow.”

  She grabbed my phone and entered a number, pushed call. She handed it back, pulled her phone from her back pocket and made sure it rang.

  “Call me if you’re back in New York.”

  “I will.”

  In the lobby I stepped out, the doors closed, and she was gone.

  I spent fifteen minutes in ankle-deep slush trying to hail a cab going downtown, then gave it up as hopeless and decided to walk back to the hotel. It couldn’t be more than a mile, I reckoned—I’d seen the Plaza from the Gages’ living room window. So I pulled my coat tight, turned up the collar, crossed Central Park West, and entered the park at Seventy-Second Street past Strawberry Fields. I took the first path south, directly into the wind, and immediately found myself making feeble progress.

  My flimsy, sodden shoes slipped and sank in the snowy slush, and within a few hundred yards my feet were numb below the ankle. I leaned into the buffeting, hostile wind, but each two steps forward were accompanied by at least one sideways, or a stumble, if not an outright step backward. My eyes watered and my cheeks stung, and several times thick dollops of snow blew down on my uncovered head, soaking my hair and freezing my scalp. I bucked myself up by cursing Andrew Gage and remembering the staunch heroism of historic American marches in terrible conditions, like the ragtag Continental Army inching toward Valley Forge.

  Twenty minutes later, when I made the turn east, I was hobbled and shivering incessantly. I coaxed each step with a fantasy of indulgence I told myself was only minutes away—a hot soak in the tub, room service, dry socks, and a plush Plaza robe. Washington’s poor army again came to mind, and with horror I recalled they left bloody tracks and more than a few toes behind them in the wilds of Pennsylvania that December. Did I face a similar fate?

  Emerging from the park
at the corner of Fifth Avenue, I practically sobbed. A mere hundred yards to go. I winced and moaned and snuffled my way across Fifty-Ninth Street, and my lip trembled as I gingerly climbed the final ten steps. I’d made it. I closed my eyes and turned my face skyward to thank God for my salvation, and nearly fell into the arms of the doorman. He didn’t recognize me from this morning, but he tipped his hat as I passed. I could smell the warmth from the lobby as I entered the revolving door.

  Halfway around I saw Andrew Gage coming out through the same door.

  Our eyes met and our heads turned and we followed each other all the way around. It was like Minuet Performed with Revolving Door. Realizing that neither of us had stopped, we went around again, and this time I exited in the lobby, and he went outside. The third time, he stepped out in the lobby and I went all the way around, finally landing beside him.

  “Megan!”

  “Andrew! I’ve been looking for you all day!” On a different day this might have seemed funny—I had been up and down Manhattan in a blizzard looking for this guy all day, and found him in my hotel lobby. But at this point, I was exasperated and on the verge of tears.

  “I know—I’m so sorry.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you! When you were at the office, I was up in the Bronx. Then I was on my way to my mom’s, but the traffic, with the snow, it was terrible, and by the time I got there I had just missed you. But Georgie told me you were staying here, so I came down, and I’ve been waiting. What took you so long?”

  “I couldn’t get a cab. So I walked.”

  He looked me over. My hair had caked in long brown icicles. My eyes streamed, my nose glowed cherry red, and my coat, sheathed in ice, crackled when I unbuttoned it like the frozen sails of a clipper ship in the Antarctic. I was pretty sure my shoes were about to crack open, and when they did my raw bleeding feet would ruin the hotel’s very expensive carpet.

  “Are you . . . okay?” he asked carefully.

  “NO! I AM NOT OKAY!” Was I shouting? I couldn’t hear very well because my ears were frozen, but my voice sounded really loud. “I am cold and wet and I look like roadkill!”

  The douche bag laughed.

  “You’re the best-looking roadkill I’ve ever seen.”

  “Are you fucking with me?” I asked. “Because I am so not in the mood to be fucked with. Your mother just fucked with me and the weather has fucked with me and—”

  “I’m really sorry about my mother—Georgie told me what happened. She just acted that way because she feels threatened by you.”

  Mrs. Gage, threatened by me? My hearing is messed up.

  Our last exchange caused a few people in the lobby to look our way.

  “You better start making some sense, buddy,” I said, staring hard at him.

  He shuffled around, and I wondered what he’d say next. Based on the past two minutes, it was sure to be a doozy.

  “Look, ever since I . . . parked your bike,” he said, “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. And then at that first party, you showed up with that black eye and so much attitude, and I thought—”

  “I was a lesbian!”

  “I apologized for that!” True. “You gotta understand, everything in my life, from day one, it’s just so . . . expected. And nothing about you—nothing you do, nothing you say—is expected. I have no idea what you are going to say or do next and I love that. Then at the pool you knew who Gibbon was, and you were right, I did follow you to the barn that night—I had to see you. And then today, you were looking for me, and I thought that’s great, so I came looking for you, and here you are. And I guess I was wondering if, maybe if you . . . change clothes—if you want to have dinner with me, because I’d really like to get to know you better.”

  “Are you demented?”

  “You seem upset,” he said.

  “I AM!”

  “Why?” he asked innocently.

  “Because after my sister was arrested and slandered, you convinced Zach to ghost her, to never even give her a chance to explain, and that’s just so, so typical of you—nobody is allowed any faults or flaws, and any whiff of scandal makes them a pariah. Do you have any idea how much misery you’ve caused her? She was inconsolable—she cried herself to sleep for weeks because she couldn’t reach him, couldn’t tell him what happened. All because of you. And don’t bother denying it, because Lauren told me all about it.”

  If the first salvos had attracted glances, this one drew a small gathering, and at least two of the onlookers recognized Andrew and took out their cell phones and started snapping pictures. Andrew glanced their way, realized what this meant. He turned back to me.

  “When Zach found out about Julia,” he said, his voice much calmer than mine, “he asked me what to do, because he’s my best friend. We talked it all out—the guy, the . . . circumstances. I said I think there’s a good chance she’s still in love with this guy. They’d been together a long time—much longer than she had known Zach.”

  “But that’s not true! She’s not in love with Tyler—and she’s crazy about Zach!”

  “That’s not the way it looked,” he said. “She was with him that day; they clearly had a . . . history. I said this guy Tyler seems unstable, dangerous, so let things cool off, get some distance. He agreed, so I suggested he come back to New York, give her some space to figure things out.”

  “But why not call her? He could have explained this to her. It’s exactly what you did to Hank at Harvard.”

  His gaze narrowed at the mention of Hank.

  “First, Zach’s decision to come to New York, and how or when he did or did not contact Julia—that’s on him. I only told him I thought it wise to take a step back. And if he asked me again today, I’d tell him the same thing. He’s my friend, and I told him what I thought was right, and prudent.” Now his gaze grew, if possible, even more measured. “And as for Hank—whatever he told you, it’s something less than the truth.”

  The way he said Hank, so dismissive, so pompous—it sent me over the edge.

  “He told me exactly what happened. Let’s hear your version.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

  “Well, guess what, Andrew Gage. I believe him. It fits. Neatly. You iced him out then, and you told your friend to do the same thing to Julia.”

  “I had no idea you thought this way about me.”

  At least twenty people had now gathered, including staff from the hotel, uncertain what to do. After all, this was Andrew Gage. Dozens of pictures had been snapped. Andrew paid them no heed but looked at me with anger.

  “I’m sorry I took up your time,” was all he said.

  “Well, you’re not forgiven!” I shouted at his back.

  He went through the revolving door one last time, lit in a blaze of camera flashes, then strode down the steps, hands shoved in his jacket pockets, and into the night. The cameras now turned toward me, and I ducked and ran for the elevator as the hotel staff kept the curious from following. Once inside, with the doors firmly closed, I shook.

  What the hell just happened?

  In the shower I stood under a waterfall of piping-hot water until I felt warm inside. I washed my hair and scrubbed myself and wrapped up in the ten-pound hotel robe. I curled up in a chair and ran through everything I had said to him about Julia and Hank. I had skewered him with the truth, but somehow it didn’t feel like victory. I studiously ignored the fact that Andrew Gage had just stood in a crowded hotel lobby and confessed his feelings for me. I couldn’t even go there yet.

  When Aunt Camille and Abby returned I met them in the lobby restaurant for a quick bite. They asked about my day and I lied and told them I’d stayed in my room and watched old movies on TV. I picked at my fish and chips and then went back to my room, got under the covers, and turned out the light. But my mind hummed and I couldn’t get comfo
rtable, no matter how many different ways I arranged the pillows.

  I finally drifted off, but I slept badly and woke grumpy the next morning. I dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and a ball cap for the ride to the airport, and once in the sleek Suburban, slouched in my seat and stared out the window. Yesterday’s lovely white snow had turned to a thick and dingy stew overnight. Traffic poked along and the people, faceless under dark hats and mufflers and giant coats, tramped through the grimy slop.

  This whole city is just a giant catbox, I thought. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the window.

  Ding!

  Abby’s phone chimed and she read her message.

  “Oh my God! Great, great news—all the charges have been dropped.”

  Aunt Camille and I looked over.

  “Really?” I asked, sitting up.

  “Hunter says the hearing went just as they hoped,” she said, still reading through the message. “Julia is fully cleared. Nothing more to do and nothing on her record.”

  “That is just fantastic,” Aunt Camille said.

  “He said Dad was great!” Abby added, smiling at her mother.

  “Wow, that’s amazing!” I said.

  “And he’s meeting us at the airport!”

  “Why did you get the news from that ass instead of straight from Uncle Dan?”

  Abby looked like I had slapped her, and Aunt Camille bristled.

  “For your information, Megan, Hunter’s been a huge help to Dad on Julia’s case. He gathered the police reports and delivered filings and helped in a hundred different ways.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because he’s sweet and he likes me. He was at the hearing this morning because I asked him to be—I wanted to know as soon as there was news.”

  “Oh,” I said in reply.

  “We’ve spent loads of time together the past month and . . . he’s genuinely nice to me and I really like him too.”

  “I’m so sorry. I had no idea,” I managed.

  “You might have if you’d bothered to ask,” Abby retorted. “I know you’ve got a lot on your mind, with Julia and everything, but we’ve just spent the past week together and you never even once asked about my life.”