She asks a cop passing by, What’s the number for the operator? Never in her life has she phoned an operator and she’s not actually sure that’s what it’s called anymore or if that’s from the Second World War when real human beings sat in rooms flicking switches and dialling dials, their legs firmly together, but she can’t ask an officer to Google M.F.N. Gallery and risk leaving a trail. She gets through to M.
‘We’re not comfortable that the artist hasn’t approved the placements,’ he says. ‘I’ve emailed you photos. This isn’t part of the service. If you don’t have time to come by, at least look at those.’
‘M.’ Gael presses her mouth close to the handset, so he can hear the smack of her lips. ‘Some parts of the service I’m interested in. Some, I’m not. I trust you with the hangings. You’re the exhibitionist. You handle it. If your eye is anything on your arms, you’ll manage just fine. Now, are you there, M?’
M grunts.
‘There is one placement I’d like to appraise.’ Gael looks around the room at the uniforms. All the law and order. ‘In case duty calls with a patron and I have to fuck off to some cocktail bar after the show, I’d like your address.’ There’s a scratching sound which, at first, she can’t place. Hardly a bad line. But then she remembers his thick ruddy beard. He’s worrying it. ‘Unless, of course, you’re on lockup at the gallery.’ She pauses. ‘That swing, M … If I slip off it, I won’t sue. But it’ll be your fault.’
‘65 Steinway Street. Queens.’
Gael sighs and presses her pelvis to check for bruising. ‘Get a pen and paper,’ she says.
M coughs, perhaps to bring himself to. She can hear he’s walking. ‘Is this about the prices? I emailed you about it,’ he says gruffly. ‘You’re supposed to sign off on them.’
‘Have you a pen?’
M mms.
‘Raise all the prices by twenty-five per cent. Round upwards to something tidy.’ M begins to speak but Gael cuts him off. ‘This is important, so write it down. This is the message, verbatim: “I said you turned up to the Occupy protest with a bunch of cash and insults. That’s all. Don’t get ideas. I don’t need anything from you.” Send that message to jay-eff-oh-ee-ess-ess at gmail as soon as possible. Right now would be good. Don’t send it from an M.F.N. address. I have to go, M. Thanks for doing that. I look forward to seeing how everything’s hung later.’ She slams the phone on the receiver, a little shocked by the cop standing at her side.
‘I been doin too much overtime, or was that a booty call?’ she asks.
‘Basically,’ Gael says, looking around for Derek. ‘Yeah.’
The cop scans her body rudely. ‘That wardrobe work good for hookin? Like a dirty-student kinda costume?’
‘Excuse me?’ Gael asks. It’s been a long time since she looked in a mirror. But she may have misheard – it feels as if hands are pressing against her ears and everything’s muffled.
‘Or cuz you got the face, you don’t gotta make a effort?’
Swallow your tongue, Gael. Swallow it. The cop fizzes in and out of focus. This is how you forfeit your choices. Swallow. When she gulps, her body decides not to play along and she has a fraction of a moment to seek out a wastepaper basket. The policewoman grabs her elbow, as if she’d been about to flee, and vomit splatters her boot and the carpet in a muddy Irish rainbow.
‘God dammit! A goddamn junkie.’
The cop that leads her back to the cell tells its sole remaining occupant – Nina – to have no fear. Gael’s bad belly shouldn’t be contagious. They see cases like this all the time. Noxious conscience. Nina pushes her eyeglass frames higher on her nose and says she’s not afraid of catching a stomach bug. She’s afraid of not being free to fight the pharmaceutical companies spraying stomach bugs across the nation’s delis so it can price-fix the treatment. Sensing no one at the other end of her sentence, like a kid whose friend abandons the other end of the yogurt cup radio, Nina yells that standing in the wrong place at the wrong time is not a crime. It’s coincidence. Everything she says sounds like performance poetry. Footsteps echo from the corridor. A voice: So’s my jock itch. A coincidence. Gael expels stomach acid into the toilet like an ironic rimshot, releasing a heinous pungent odour. Pinching her nose, she staggers around half-blinded.
‘You do not look how I remember,’ Nina says, turning her mohawked profile. The sides of her head that had been shaved now boast an inch of hair. The long, centre section is held on the crown by a bulldog paper clip. ‘Except for the swooning part.’
Gael rests her palms against the wall and lets her aching head drop between her aching shoulders. She mumbles that the whole trajectory of our lives comes down to where we are, when, so Nina’s mistake was to let those coordinates be coincidental. If you can’t afford to control them, take out a loan, or rob someone. But all that’s audible is ‘the whole … comes down … ordinates … alone.’ Her body must weigh three hundred pounds. She can’t stay upright much longer. This is what happens when she loses discipline. Fatigue sets in and claws at her like a starving child. What she needs is red meat, a hilly half marathon and a solid week’s work. That, or crack. She feels her way around the cell walls until she reaches the plank of wood serving as a bed and, the moment she’s horizontal, falls promptly unconscious.
The ugly, inebriating need for water wakes her two hours on. ‘Nina?’ Her throat is sandpaper. ‘If that’s your …’ She draws her elbow from under her head mournfully as if from a mistakenly intimate embrace and waits for feeling to return. ‘Nina?’ After a while, she manages to prop herself up, though it takes enormous will. The cell is empty. No one is there. It’s quiet. Cold. Her hands are translucent white. She doesn’t have the energy to do jumping jacks or squats or lunges, which she always imagined she’d do lots of if she ever wound up imprisoned. ‘What time is it?’ she calls out. It doesn’t surprise her that Jarleth would have told his lawyer to give it a few hours. Give her something against which to contrast her privilege. Let the contrast settle, like a Guinness.
She can’t stop her body from shivering. She’s wearing her hoodie, coat and jeans, but her jeans are looser than they were a week ago and she has no socks on inside her trainers. She’d been intending to be gone already. Occupy had served its purpose. It had confirmed her suspicions. Today was for making final manoeuvres to ensure tonight’s success and for planning her next move, should the exhibition be a washout.
The calm is broken into by glass-shattering screams as a pair of new catches are rammed through the corridor. Gael swings her legs off the bed and hastily reties her hair, trying to smooth it with what spittle comes. Readying herself for Jarleth’s face between the bars, she tries to steady her heart rate. She feels somewhat better; muscles like fraying ropes, stomach punctured by a large-gauge needle, but fully awake, at least. She picks a point on the wall to squint at, then dislikes how that would look from outside – like she’s meditating on her actions – so she gets up and crosses her arms. Rests her back and the sole of her foot against the cold brick wall. Then, quiet returns and her adrenal gland stops pumping. It’s not him. No one’s come. Breathing is a slow, steady whistle. That phone call had been her last dollar and she had buried it. But maybe they’ll be reasonable. Not an adjective she has come to associate with American bureaucracy, but maybe … She needs to be out by five, at the very latest. ‘What time is it?’ She holds the bars numbly. ‘Excuse. Me.’ Only then does the plastic tray on the floor come into view, bearing a cheese sandwich on white bread and a peelback-lid fruit punch. A school-of-hard-knocks meal. Her mouth is full when Derek appears before her.
‘Three fifteen.’
Gael gulps down the toothaching juice. ‘This is wrong. I have somewhere to be.’
Derek looks left. ‘Same way turkeys feel come Thanksgiving.’
It surprises even Gael to hear a chirp emit from the next cell over. Or is it weeping?
‘Could I get some toilet paper?’ Gael asks. ‘And soap? And can I make another call? It’s urgent. I need my
own lawyer. The Occupy one’s taking forever. I don’t have–’
‘You can make up to three calls.’ Derek looks tired.
Gael stares at his yellow eyes. ‘And you tell me this now?’
‘We arranging a medical screening for you,’ he says, as an explanation. ‘Your daddy’s attorney’s one smooth son of a bitch.’ Still looking left, Gael can’t see who he’s assessing.
‘I don’t want a medical screening.’
‘Don’t want your daddy’s attorney. Don’t want–’
‘I do,’ Gael says. ‘I don’t have time not to.’
Derek freezes in a look of accusation and eventually unhooks the key ring from his belt and unlocks the cell. As he does this, he mutters that they let the attorney clock up some wait time. He glances narrowly at Gael. ‘Brought in a statement from your daddy that explains a whole lot.’ He’s leading Gael down the corridor without holding her arm. The lawyer is bent over the reception desk, filling in forms. Leaning across the counter, her skirt is snug against her round buttocks and her hair – worn in a neat chignon – is auburn glitter. Her lip gloss winks as she looks up, after Gael has been standing there for several seconds.
‘The spitting image,’ she says, saccharine-smiled.
Gael exchanges glances with Derek.
‘Before I forget,’ he calls from the threshold of the room she spewed up in. ‘Your frenemy came back. Bout an hour ago. Lady Schiada. We keeping her note on file. Statement of sorts. But she said to tell you that Art says the house has the edge. Not to bet against the house.’ Derek’s brows are an umbrella over his expression, keeping it dry. ‘Since you’re a tourist, maybe you don’t know. But less you’re touring a Indian reservation, gambling’s illegal in New York State.’
‘Tell that to Wall Street,’ Gael says.
The lawyer holds out a slim rose-gold pen.
‘Initial every page and sign wherever there’s an asterisk.’
The attorney never introduces herself. Only advises Gael to count her cash when her belongings are returned and, as they leave the building, informs her that there have been no consequences. The citation’s been dismissed. No fine? Gael asks. No violation. No record whatsoever. ‘Hang on.’ The front door swings shut behind them. ‘Hang on.’
The lawyer stops walking and squints at Gael as if to say, How long till you catch up?
‘Are you my father’s personal lawyer, or do you work for Barclays?’
The lawyer checks her watch. ‘Personal.’
Gael massages her forehead. ‘Are you on a salary or retainer or is it a by-the-hour gig?’
‘I bill in six-minute intervals.’
Gael digests this, as slowly as possible, and goes to sit on the kerb by the station’s parking lot. ‘I appreciate the efficacy of your six minutes in hell with me there, but I feel very weak all of a sudden. Very weak. So if you have a spare eighteen, twenty-four, thirty-six minutes, I think Jarleth would want you to see me through to the other side–’
‘He wants me to drop you off at his office. He couldn’t leave early.’
‘Well, that sounds like such cosy family time … but as I say, I’m not feeling strong. I’m actually not able to stand up. It might be shock. It might be low blood sugar. Might be my period. So what I’d ask you to do is to get me a drink.’
The lawyer heaves a sigh and goes to step inside for water.
‘No,’ Gael says. ‘I asked already. They don’t have what I need.’
‘I’ve got a flask of scotch in my car.’ She points to a low-slung rose-gold Lexus.
‘Sometimes there’s nothing for it but electrolytes,’ Gael says. ‘You know? I simply can’t get up till my tongue is blue with isotonic pick-me-up.’ She goes on like this, insisting that the lawyer walk around the block to find a 7-Eleven until she does, finally, walk to the end of the parking lot to call Jarleth in private.
It’s a twelve-to-eighteen-second phone conversation, presumably rounded up. Gael imagines that long auburn hair tumbling down the shoulders of her cream suit and something about her neatness makes Gael feel she should go the opposite way, so she pulls a strand of hair from her own head and begins to floss her teeth with it. The lawyer keeps a straight face, lowers herself into her sports car and calls from the open door: ‘He made a dinner reservation for eight. You’ll get a text with the address. He suggests you follow the advice he supposedly gave you already. To take a shower.’ She smiles and shuts the door.
Gael goes to shrug but finds she can’t manage with her pack on. ‘Only if he wears his shining armour,’ she says. The lawyer puts her seat belt on. Growls the engine. Gael smacks her forehead and shouts: ‘Shit, I forgot I have way more important plans.’
The lawyer reaches into her glove compartment and takes a long pull on an e-cigarette. She blows the simulated smoke out the window. Just as she’s about to take off, for reasons she can’t quite grasp, Gael calls: ‘Five o’clock. At the Plaza.’
The car lingers. The lawyer’s lips move but her words don’t reach Gael. Her earpiece must be built into her hairdo.
‘Seven,’ the lawyer eventually responds.
‘Five thirty or never,’ Gael says.
Blue smoke plumes from the car’s rear tyres as a rather stagey way of saying Check.
Her phone is dead, so she has to go back inside to ask a cop for directions to the closest cheap hotel. The cop who took her for a sex worker earlier suggests she try an expensive hotel. ‘Might be able to afford a cuter costume. Then again, New York Encounters do rooms by the hour and it’s only a block north.’ Her tone is sardonic. Oblivious the suggestion might actually be taken.
That a hotel room could be dirtier than a holding cell Gael had not thought possible. She drapes her coat on the bed before lying down on its multicoloured hides-all-sins quilt. The red carpet looks new, as if the cheapest thing was to swap it out every month rather than prise off the condoms like chewing gum. One could only presume they were all under the furniture, along with the after-fuck fag butts responsible for the frowst. A framed image of Michelangelo’s David hangs above the bed – its low pixel count acting as censorship. It must’ve been printed off at the reception, where Gael negotiated forty-five dollars for an hour and a half. She can barely afford to take a forty-five-minute nap, nor can she afford not to. After what feels like five minutes, the phone blares and Gael shoots up as a born-again from a baptismal lake.
‘This is your courtesy call,’ the voice drones.
Charming. Her guts ringlet as she tries to straighten up. There’s no door to the bathroom. Just an arc cut out of the wall. Sink in front. Toilet left. Shower right. All of which she does her best not to touch. It’s discomforting to see herself in the mirror. She knew she’d been losing weight but she’d lost muscle tone too, leaving her bony and shadowy and drawn. The resemblance with Guthrie would be keener, at least, if M.F.N. uses his portrait. A lilac bruise accompanies a bump on the uppermost corner of her forehead from the headbutt. She’d have to change her parting. Just as well she had makeup with her. And the outfit. Astonishingly, a tiny fire-starting hair dryer is stashed in the drawer. As she gets ready, unproductive thoughts keep tobogganing in on the mental grooming that needs to be taking place. That Harper must have dropped out of her master’s programme to look after Kendra and where was the husband and, if she dies, would Harper’s grief be tinged with resentment? That walking to the subway stop would be dangerous and the criminal would be pardoned because of his victim’s insalubrious outfit. That Guthrie’s outfit wouldn’t have featured in such a story, even though his outfit would have been a vestment.
She hurries out as fast as one can on decorative stilts while carrying a hitchhiker’s pack.
There’s time on the subway to get what she wanted to say to him straight in her mind – she had to take the C line downtown to 50th and then switch to the E to cross town to 51st and then take the 4 uptown to 59th – but she wastes that time thinking about logistics and how, given that her MetroCard had been empty,
it probably would have been wiser to take a cab.
‘Can you not shake your leg like that, right by my leg?’ a passenger asks her. ‘You’re making me nervous.’
She looks up, thumbnail between her teeth.
‘Some bad vibrations,’ the passenger says to herself, and proceeds to mutter for the rest of the journey.
Under the fluorescent lights, the brown lipstick on her thumbnail looks like dried blood.
The Plaza’s luggage handler is new to Gael, but he accepts her ticket and fetches her rolling bag with a smile that tersens when she says she’s not yet ready to collect it; she just needs something from it. Oh and also, can he take this bag too? The filthy backpack might as well be a sack of coal and the handler looks baffled that someone so chic would be its owner. But his reproach is no price to pay at all. She swaps her coat for a black blazer and pashmina and transfers her laptop and essentials to a handbag. To be willing to let these belongings go is her goal. The total lack of attachments. The feeling she gets from this notion prompts her to discard the luggage ticket in the first bin she passes. Howsoever she can spike her endorphins.
It’s five forty-five p.m. Jarleth would have had to figure out which area to go to. The Palm Court. The Champagne Bar. The Rose Club. The Oak Room. She’s switched off her phone. He’ll assume she wanted the iconic setting. He’ll assume she’s his daughter, still. She slips a note to a concierge and gives him Jarleth’s description. Says to approach him in the Palm Court in a moment and to inform him that Ms Foess is in the Rose Club. Twenty is too much, but never underestimate the edge lent to the unstinting.
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