A bedroom, all to herself! She couldn’t wait. It seemed a lifetime since she’d slept alone, or just with Whoop. Not sharing a bed with at least two, sometimes three, other living creatures— she could barely remember what that was like.
She pulled out her Daytimer again and quickly filled it with move-related tasks and errands. She spent her day off from Edie’s at her table of yearning at the Korner, the one with AG + SW?? carved into it, making calls on her cell. She loved the feeling of crossing off the items as they were completed. The café was much busier now, so there wasn’t as much hanging out and talking with John. Her heart still lurched in her chest whenever she saw him. She thought that sensation would have gone away by now, but maybe it was one of those learned, Pavlovian responses. They smiled and waved to each other. She kept thinking she’d see him with Lila, but if she was there Pru couldn’t identify her. She thought John was looking tired and unhappy. Unless of course it was just her own wishful thinking.
Then, very suddenly, Edie arrived one morning and announced that she was closing up the shop. She had decided that her father needed a private-duty nurse, and the only way she could pay for that was to go back to practicing law, and her old firm was willing to hire her again.
Pru was working only part-time—in theory to supplement her nonexistent grant-writing income—but the news threw her. She was happy at Edie’s. She knew it wasn’t her whole life, of course, but she’d been enjoying the restful interlude.
After work, instead of going home, she went to the Korner. She wanted to sit and think about what to do next, and the one thing she could no longer do at her apartment was sit and think.
To her surprise, she found McKay and Patsy sitting together at a table.
“Great,” she said, joining them. “Are you two plotting my death?”
“Relax,” said Patsy. “We just ran into each other. I have to go get Annali, anyway. But I’ll see you in the morning, right?” she said, to McKay.
“I’m just taking her to meet our human resources person,” McKay said, when Patsy was gone. “Don’t be so suspicious.”
“Oh, honey, that’s nice. Thank you for doing that. Just don’t like her better than me. That is not allowed.”
When she told him about Edie, McKay said, “Why don’t you just buy her out?”
“Buy her out? What, and run the store myself?” She felt her skin prickle a little, and, sure enough, here came John.
“Sure. Why not? John, don’t you think Pru should buy Edie’s?” McKay said smoothly, when he was near.
“Better yet,” said John, seating himself at the table. “Buy her inventory, and open your shop here.”
“In Adams-Morgan?”
“Absolutely. I bet Edie’s spending a fortune to rent that space. You’d do better here, anyway. I’m telling you, another year from now, you won’t be able to buy your way into this neighborhood. Hey, the Chinese bakery is moving. It’d be perfect for a dress shop.”
“But I don’t know the first thing about running a business,” Pru said.
“I’m sure Edie would help you. And you’d have me. I didn’t know anything, either, when I bought this place.”
“But I don’t have that kind of money.”
“So, you take out a loan. Find investors. Do you have any savings?”
“Of course. But that’s what it is—savings. Besides . . . retail. It’s not exactly what I envisioned doing with my master’s degree.”
“What did you envision?”
A good question. “I don’t know. Read?”
She had to admit, she was intrigued with the idea. Afterward, instead of going straight home, she and McKay turned and went up Eighteenth to look at the Chinese bakery. It was an appealing site, an Adams-Morgan landmark that she’d always loved. The building was situated where Eighteenth curved around, so the building itself was actually rounded, too. It stood between an Ethiopian restaurant and a tiny electronics store, the kind where everything was all mumble-jumble and, one suspected, hot.
From the outside, it looked perfect for a small boutique. A dress shop, that’s what John had called it. There was a tall, narrow display window that, for the six years she’d lived in the neighborhood, had held the same giant, many-tiered plastic wedding cake. The window, she realized, had great visibility from three of the four corners of Eighteenth and Columbia, the busiest intersection in the neighborhood. Right away, she imagined replacing the cake with an artsy display of boots and shoes hanging from invisible strings. Already, she could see the sign: THE DRESS SHOP. Or PRU’S FROCKS. ALFRED J. PRU’S FROCKS, as a nod to her master’s in literature. No, that was goofy. Still, she felt a surge of excitement, as she headed home. She didn’t feel quite so annoyed when she got home to see the usual accumulation of daily mess, while Patsy sat on the couch with Annali, watching something on PBS and not making dinner.
IT TURNED OUT THAT JOHN KNEW THE OWNER OF THE bakery, Mr. Yao, from the neighborhood business association. He was able to get them in to see the space the next day. That morning, Pru stood in the middle of the store, watching the sunlight come through the tall front windows.
Mr. Yao and John chatted amiably while Pru looked around. Pru was embarrassed that she couldn’t understand much of what Mr. Yao was saying. John repeated what he’d said in a low whisper: the bakery had done so well on Columbia Road that they had bought a building on U Street, a part of town where Danish-modern furniture stores and bistros were beginning to replace the pawnshops and check-cashing places. Pru would be taking over the lease on a storefront that had already proved itself successful. Of course, John pointed out, she’d pay more for that.
But when Mr. Yao told John what the rent was, and John told Pru, she was shocked. It didn’t matter that Edie paid at least twice that for her shop on Connecticut. How many dresses would she have to unload to make that back? she wondered. Back at the Korner, John began running the numbers. He showed her how to make a cash-flow estimate. Their heads were bent together over the calculator as he punched in the numbers. She tried not to notice how close their noses were. He gave her the number of a loan officer at a downtown bank, who’d given John his start-up loan.
“Are you actually thinking seriously about this?” Patsy said later, as they ate Indian take-out at the kitchen table, surrounded by half-packed boxes. Patsy had spent the whole day getting ready for the move. They had less than two weeks now, and while Pru was wondering how on earth they would pull it off, Patsy was packing up boxes. She’d even thought to reserve a moving truck for the date of the move. Jenny and Whoop had figured out by now that something strange was happening in their habitat, and zipped frenetically between the jumbled-up rooms.
“I don’t know,” Pru said. “It’s so risky. I’d have to use everything Dad left me and get a loan. For something I’ve never done in my life. But the timing is lucky. Edie already ordered the fall inventory, and her current stock I could sell in my sleep. So, I don’t know. It’s tempting.”
To her surprise, Patsy said, “Well, I have money.”
“You do?”
“Of course. Dad loved me, too, you know.”
“But . . . is this what you’d want to do with it?”
“I’ve been looking for a good investment opportunity,” Patsy said.
“You have?” Since when did Patsy, who once spent four hundred dollars on a serpent-shaped wrist cuff, look for investment opportunities?
“Do you know how much a college education is going to cost in sixteen years?” Patsy said, sopping up the curry on her plate with a piece of garlic naan.
“No.”
“Forty thousand dollars.”
“So? That’s about what it cost us.”
“A year, my dear. For one year.”
“Jesus. Can’t she go to a public university?”
Patsy popped the naan into her mouth. “That is public. Private school is twice as much.”
“Can’t she go to secretarial school?”
“We can only hope.”
“What about Jimmy Roy? How much do nurse-midwives make?”
Patsy snorted and cast Pru a doleful look. “Please. You know this is not going to happen. He’s always talking about the things he’s going to do. I’ve never once known him to actually complete anything. I’m totally serious, by the way. If anyone could make this work, it’s you.”
Pru looked at her sister, feeling overcome with gratitude and affection. She was touched that Patsy would make such a commitment to her, to help with something that she cared about. She had never really regarded her sister as someone who could help her. It was always Pru—the older, wiser one—who helped Patsy. But that was before, when she thought that bad things happened to only certain types of good people. This was now, when practically everything she seemed to touch had fallen to pieces. Maybe she did need some help. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea, after all.
“So, okay,” Pru said. “Let’s do it.”
“Really? Wow, that was easy.”
“You got me in a weak moment,” Pru said. “But you know, I think I want to do this. I really think I want to.”
“I’m your backer,” Patsy said. “Your sugar daddy. This is going to be fun.”
Nineteen
Both John and Patsy accompanied Pru to the closing of the loan, for moral support. Pru took the pen the loan officer handed her, and with trembling hands, as Patsy whispered “Breathe!” in her ear, signed away her entire life in exchange for sixty thousand dollars, due with interest in seven years. Her hand wrote out her name, then was seized and pumped by the loan officer. John popped the cork on a bottle of champagne he’d brought along, and that was it.
The loan took up its place in Pru’s life. It was like another new housemate, sitting on the couch all day long, unchanging and unmoving, using up most of the air in the room and asserting its massive presence. It dwarfed the little student loans she’d struggled to pay off after college. It was dismaying to think she’d be going back to those days, eating cheap food at home, getting her shopping fixes at secondhand stores and flea markets.
John and Edie, true to their words, were with her every step of the way. They made sure she made the right decisions, gave her encouragement, and more advice—often conflicting—than she could handle. John had the names of painters, plumbers, and contractors, all of them dolefully taciturn and usurious. The amount of things she bought from Edie, and had yet to buy, was staggering, yet thrilling. The clothes, of course, and mannequins. Wooden hangers, mirrors, display racks. A glass jewelry case. A sound system. All manner of hooks and washers and screws and bolts and nuts. And incandescent lights, and floor lamps, and a bazillion lightbulbs—she absolutely refused to torment her customers with bad lighting. She also added some things that Edie didn’t have in her shop: pretty antique soap dishes and vanity trays, high-end hairbrushes and French milled soaps. Girly things. In the future, she wanted to add more accessories, and makeup, for when customers didn’t feel like trying on clothes. She wanted to have vintage items, too, and made up a little sign for the counter that read: NOW ACCEPTING CONSIGNMENTS. At night, she and Big Whoop sat together in her new, private bedroom, on a bed littered with paint chips, flooring chips, linoleum chips, and her ever-present Daytimer, stuffed to bursting with pages and pages of lists and plans.
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE SHOP’S GRAND OPENING, PRU jumped off a ladder, where she was hanging a display of purses, and sliced open her foot.
It happened during a fight with Patsy. They were still in the shop after midnight, trying to finish up the billion little things that weren’t yet done. Pru was in a rotten mood. It suddenly seemed like lunacy, the whole idea of the shop. She couldn’t imagine what she’d been thinking. They hadn’t even finished moving into the new apartment. Every morning, she pulled something to wear out of a cardboard box, sniffing it for wearability. For the past six weeks, it seemed that she’d done little else besides plan, fret, pack and unpack, and fret some more.
The day before the opening, she was in a panic. Patsy opted out of one of her temp assignments to come and help. “These aren’t even last-minute things,” Pru complained, throwing down the manual for the new, complex, digital cash register she’d been foolish enough to buy on eBay. “These are first-minute things. We can’t possibly open tomorrow. Not possibly.”
“We’ll be fine,” Patsy said, stepping back to admire her work. She’d dressed three “Brazilian butt” half-mannequins Pru had gotten from eBay in hundred-dollar jeans and hung them in the front display window. From where Pru stood, they looked like very pert, recently executed bodies swaying in the breeze.
“Are you going to put up nooses and cheering peasants, too?”
“You don’t like it? I thought it was kind of funny.”
“No, I don’t,” Pru said. “Take it down, please.”
“Fine,” Patsy grumbled. “Testy Testerson.”
They’d been working since early morning. Annali was at Fiona’s for the night. At dinnertime, John showed up with sandwiches and coffee. After he left, Pru climbed back up the ladder, barefoot, to finish the display of evening bags, which had already taken way too long. She was so nervous that she accidentally ripped the lining of a very expensive evening bag, and in frustration she threw the purse across the room. Its long, heavy shoulder chain flew out and wrapped itself like a whip around a glass vase full of blue pebbles, some mystical thing of Patsy’s which was supposed to bestow good luck. The glass vase wobbled, then fell to the floor and shattered.
Patsy put her hands on her hips and said, “God, Pru, you are such a moody fucking nightmare lately.”
“Just shut up,” Pru said, from the top of the ladder.
“What is with you?” Patsy said, going to the closet for the broom and dustpan. “Is it all really just the store? Or is there something else going on?”
“Isn’t the store enough?” Pru said. “I mean, look at this place. It’s a disaster.” And of course, she’d just made it worse, breaking the damn vase. Why did Patsy have to bring such a ridiculous thing into the shop, to begin with?
“I think it’s that John Owen,” Patsy said, beginning to sweep up the glass. “Every time you see him, I swear, you go absolutely haywire. He sure is around often enough, too. Why don’t the two of you just get it over with, and fuck?” She said it absently, as she worked. She even looked up at Pru and grinned.
“I’m not the one who fucks married men,” Pru said, before she could stop herself.
Patsy stopped grinning. A look of pain crossed her face. Pru felt as if she’d slapped a small child.
“No, you’re not that stupid, are you?” Patsy said tightly. “I didn’t know John was married,” she added. “You could have said something. Ever.”
That was when Pru jumped off the ladder. She jumped because she was so angry with herself. She couldn’t believe she’d been so awful. She meant to go to Patsy and say she was sorry, but she didn’t look before she jumped, and her bare feet landed on the pile of glass shards Patsy had just made.
As she hit the ground, a white-hot pain seared the bottom of one foot. She tried to stand on the other foot, but fell. The bottom of her right foot had been split open. Patsy came over and looked at the gash. She pulled a length of paper towels from a roll, and wrapped up Pru’s foot in it. Soon it was soaked in blood.
“You have to go to the hospital,” Patsy said, firmly. “No— don’t even argue with me.”
Patsy grabbed her purse and the roll of paper towels. They hobbled outside and flagged down a passing cab. Pru’s foot throbbed and bled through the second paper towel. Patsy said, “The nearest hospital, please,” and the driver hit the accelerator. When they arrived, Patsy threw a twenty at him, and helped Pru inside. While they were in the waiting room, someone came with more gauze, to hold her until she could be seen by one of the doctors.
The waiting room was packed with people, many of them much worse off than Pru. One guy held a wad of gauze over an eye, and Pru was afraid there was nothing behind it
. Everyone looked up at the TV screen, which was showing old reruns. Patsy went to find the cafeteria. Pru watched an episode of Three’s Company. God, that Furley was a creep. She tried not to think about all the things that needed to be done at the shop before the opening. Her foot throbbed, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at it. Her threshold for pain, as with fear, was down around dirt level.
As the program ended, Patsy came back with two cups of herbal tea. She handed one to Pru, who said, “I’m sorry, Patsy. I shouldn’t have said that. And I don’t think you’re stupid.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I guess John Owen is a sore spot. I mean, you were right. Well, you were wrong. We’ve already . . . had sex.” She couldn’t bring herself to say “fucked.”
The truth was, she still felt like they were sleeping together, behind his wife’s back. She felt every bit as if she were having an affair. It was all done without any physical contact, of course, but they found reasons to see each other every day. It was because of the shop—always, ostensibly, because of the shop. It was too easy for Pru to pop around the corner, to see if he had any spackle. Or he would stop by, with another idea for her. Each day, she felt more and more guilty and confused, on account of the way they’d looked at each other. It was almost worse than if they were merely sleeping together. Were it just sex, at least she’d know how to define it. But what was this? Was she preventing him from working on his marriage? She worried that it was true.
Pru took a sip of her tea, and suddenly realized that she wanted to tell Patsy everything. She told her about the night they spent out at Shenandoah, then sleeping together, and the night Lila asked him to come back. She tried to emphasize the noble aspects, how she believed that John was doing the right thing. How, in fact, she’d encouraged him to, because it was the only honorable way . . .
“I can’t believe this,” Patsy interrupted. “This was all going on while we were living together? While I was right there, in the same apartment?” Her eyes filled with tears. “That makes me feel like absolute shit,” she said. “We’re going through the exact same thing, and you don’t once mention it?”
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