by David Gates
“That surprise you?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I guess it doesn’t, really. Except that he hates the city. Or he claimed to. Whereabouts was the truck?”
“Says here it was towed … let’s see. Okay, towed from East Houston Street”—he pronounces it like Houston, Texas—“and impounded. They assume it to be stolen or abandoned. I do have a number you can call down there to try and claim the vehicle, but from what I understand, it’s not currently in a drivable condition, due to lack of wheels. Now, New York, after they talked to us, they gave it a going-over, but they didn’t turn up much of anything. Couple road maps, coffee containers—well, I can read you what they found, but nothing any way unusual.”
“In New York.” She sits back down and looks at the picture of Mel and Roger. You can see that spot where Mel’s eyebrows almost meet. “But you say it could’ve been stolen?”
“Possible. There’s no report out on it. Equally possible, you have an older vehicle, it could have just died and somebody figured let New York City cart it off. Anyway, what I thought by telling you, if you had acquaintances in New York—you or your husband—then you might want to try getting in touch with them. An awful lot of these cases, it ends up being a personal matter and the parties work it out in their own way. Which I’m not saying the police shouldn’t be notified. But that would be my advice.”
“Right,” says Jean. God, who do they know anymore?
“Well, I better let you get back to work. Suppose you make some calls, see how you do and then get back to me in a couple days. Or I can get back to you. This is what—Thursday? If I don’t hear from you, I’ll give you a call early next week. Now, is this the best number to reach you?”
“Yes—please. If I can help it, I’d like my children not to be exposed to any more than they have to be.”
“I understand. Believe me. I have two daughters.”
“Look, I know it’s stupid,” she says. “They’re going to get it regardless, aren’t they? They’re just going to get—I don’t know—hammered. And on top of everything else, I have to get on a plane in a few minutes.”
“For?”
“Come again? Oh. For Atlanta.”
“You reachable there?”
“Well, it’s just overnight, really. I mean I can give you the hotel.”
“If you have it handy.”
“It’s the Airport Marriott,” says Jean. “In Atlanta. I think it’s four oh four? But Marriott should have an eight hundred number. So stupid—I had it right here.”
“We can get it if need be. You’re there under Willis?”
“Under Karnes, actually,” says Jean. “My maiden name. K-a-r-n-e-s?”
“And it’s Jean.”
“Right.”
“Tell me something,” he says. “When do you plan to be back in Preston Falls?”
“I didn’t. But if this goes on, you know, with him not—then I guess I’ll have to go up and try to get hold of a plumber to drain everything and close up the house.”
“Well, see, what I was thinking, if you do have to make the trip, why don’t I stop out to the house? Might be more useful than just talking on the phone. Hell, I’d be glad to help you drain your pipes and whatnot. That’s no big deal.”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to see. Listen, I think I better get going.” Jean looks at the clock in the corner of her screen: 10:14. “The car’s picking us up in a couple of minutes.”
“We’ll talk next week, then,” he says. “Let me give you a number.”
“I have to go. Just call me here, okay? Call here.”
“I got you,” he says.
Jean commands herself to breathe. If she could just shut the door for a few minutes and meditate and try to get herself … she hates to say centered. But they really will be here any second. She wants not to be getting on a plane for anywhere. Wants to get her children home and pull the phone and pile furniture against the doors. She looks at that awful picture of Mel and Roger.
This cannot be happening.
Her office. Her computer. Her fire-engine-red adjustable lamp clamped to the desk. Her bad print of that Flemish still life in the National Gallery: the flowers don’t explode at you the way they do in the real painting. Even her disappointment with the print is familiar, and, therefore, a comfort. She stands up and looks out the window again, down at all the little people on the street; could one be Willis, coming her way?
So he’s in New York. Or was. (Or wasn’t.) So she’s got to call Jeff and Jennifer, Dave and Karen, maybe Henry and Pamela, who she thinks might’ve moved to New Jersey. Jim Bruton: that’s an idea, if he still lives on Elizabeth Street, since they found the truck on East Houston. God, just the thought of these people. Back when they lived on 108th Street, Jean and Willis would actually have them over for dinner and vice versa. Inconceivable as it sounds. This was one of his big arguments for buying Preston Falls: friends up on the weekends! Like people who couldn’t deal with the thirty-five minutes to Chesterton were suddenly going to travel four and a half hours. Even the humiliation of having to ask if they know where her husband is doesn’t seem as bad as simply hearing their voices after all this time, and having to say, This is Jean.
“Hey,” Jerry Starger says from the doorway. “You about ready? Car’s downstairs.”
“Okay,” says Jean.
“You don’t sound raring.”
“I’ll let Anita do the raring for both of us.”
Jerry goes “Rrrroww” and makes a scratching motion.
“I can’t believe I said that,” Jean says.
“Oh, I like glimpses of the real you.” Jerry puts both palms up, as if warding her off. “Glimpses.”
“Get me drunk on the plane,” she says, “and I’ll probably let slip what I really think about HMOs.” She gets up and slings the duffel bag over her shoulder.
“Hmm. A frank exchange of views. Could be sick fun. But listen, let me ask you—and be honest, okay? Are you up to this? You look like shit, if that doesn’t come under the heading of an unwelcome personal comment.”
“Really, I’m fine. I just need to catch up on my sleep.”
“If you’re sure,” says Jerry. “Because the very fabulous Ms. Bruno is fully capable of handling whatever eyelash-batting might be called for.”
“I had to open my mouth,” Jean says.
“Shit, you should hear what she says about you.”
Jean has to think for a second: Jerry can always take the banter a move further than she can. Finally she says, “I would never ask you to betray a sister’s confidence.”
“Oh, I wasn’t going to,” says Jerry. “This is just my Attila the Hun management secret for keeping you broads in line. So what do you say? Let’s rock the party.”
Down in the lobby, Anita Bruno’s looking at her watch, a Bottega Veneta suitcase at her feet. Howard, his garment bag slung over his shoulder, is peering through the plate-glass door at a midnight-blue sedan parked at the curb, a placard with the number 24 in its window.
“Hey, the gang’s all here,” says Jerry. “Is that us?”
“That’s what they sent,” Howard says. “You think we can all fit?”
“Piece of cake,” says Jerry. “I like to sit up front with the guy anyway. And I hate those big-ass limos—remind me of prom night in Great Neck.”
That shuts Howard up.
“I see one of us was smart enough to travel light,” says Anita, looking at Jean’s duffel bag. “I feel like such a clotheshorse.”
“Oh, this is just my makeup,” Jean says. “I sent my bags on ahead.” The moment this is out of her mouth, she wonders if it’s remotely funny. Anita and Jerry both laugh, but that tells her nothing.
The driver takes the placard out of the window, pops the trunk and gets out to lift the bags in, slowly enough to let them know he doesn’t feel like it. So why didn’t he stay in Pakistan or wherever? God, she’s getting more right wing by the minute—one more little fringe benefit of bein
g married to Doug Willis. Mel’s already being liberal and open-hearted as a way of rebelling, so maybe Roger will eventually go that route. Sure.
Jean climbs into the back seat and scoots over to the far side, hoping Howard will be gentleman enough to take the middle. Instead he’s gentleman enough to motion Anita in ahead of him: ladies first. So now she gets to smell Anita’s Ysatis all the way to La Guardia.
If they ever make it. They’re trying to get east on Fiftieth Street, but traffic seems gridlocked; the light up ahead, at the corner of Park, has changed from green to red to green and they’re still not moving. Well, it’s out of her hands. Jerry’s talking to the driver about the Cadillac Something-or-other versus the Lincoln Town Car (which this is), and Anita’s talking to Howard about his son’s learning disability. Jean just looks out the window at the people pouring around them on foot, one of whom might be her husband.
9
She gets stuck next to Anita on the plane too. Jerry has stuff to go over with Howard, so it’s like Run along, girls. Jean’s dreading three hours of girl talk, but Anita, after standing there fussing around in the overhead long enough for every man on board to get a look at her, sits down with a copy of Waiting to Exhale and says Jean’s probably going to think this is really rude, but she’s so into this book. So now Jean gets to feel contempt for Anita because she’s reading such a pop thing as Waiting to Exhale. Does this make them even?
When the plane levels out after takeoff and she can read without getting sick, she opens Emma to the part where Mr. Elton starts quote making violent love to Emma in the carriage, which of course back then only meant pouring your heart out, but you still can’t help picturing him tearing at her antique clothes and her weeping and trying to push him off as he’s plunging his penis. After like two pages, she starts closing her eyes a little between sentences and sinking into the rushing noise of the airplane and mixing up what she’s reading with things in life, and then she’s asleep with the book open on her leg. When something’s said about lunch she wakes up enough to say no, thank you, and doesn’t come to again until the plane starts bumping and pitching and pointing nose-down, and someone announces that the captain has put on the fasten-seat-belts sign and they’re almost on the ground. She has to wipe drool from the corner of her mouth—not, thank God, the side turned to Anita, who’s sitting there reading away like one of those people who never get airsick. Jean wonders if she was snoring as well as drooling. She closes her eyes again and tries her meditation—she hates landing even worse than takeoff—but she can’t go deep because she’s worried that Anita will think she’s praying.
The car that picks them up takes them on superhighways right through the futuristic downtown. Anita’s oohing and aahing and pointing, which isn’t so brilliant if her idea is to come off as cosmopolitan; maybe she’s trying to seem spirited. Though in fairness, she could be genuinely interested. Eventually the buildings get lower, and they take an exit and go maybe half a mile along a kind of truck-route-looking street with a banged-up metal divider, then turn into a strip mall with a Staples (the anchor), a TCBY, and the two small empty stores The Paley Group is leasing side-by-side and making into a single space. The white stucco seems to pulsate in the sunlight; you can imagine it on a hundred-degree day in August.
Jerry turns to face the back seat. “Well, this is grim.”
“You saw the pictures, Jerry,” Howard says. “Nothing has been misrepresented.”
“Hey,” says Jerry, and holds up a hand. “It wasn’t your call.” They pull up in front of the empty stores, the windows covered with brown paper. “Or mine. I campaigned for the space in that tower until I made myself obnoxious—and no cracks out of you, Karnes.” He looks out his window. “Where the fuck is this bozo? He was supposed to—ah.” A golden-haired man in a brown leather jacket is walking toward them, eating with a spoon from a TCBY dish. Jerry pokes the button, and the window goes down.
“You got to be the folks from New York,” says the man, who has a sort of ex-con-looking face. “I’m Dan Lineberry? You have to excuse me—this is lunch and breakfast.”
They follow him into the left-hand storefront. There’s nothing to see: four people have flown a thousand miles to inspect freshly sheet-rocked walls, cables hanging down from an unfinished ceiling and two separate rectangles of dirty old carpeting, one gray, the other dark gray, that haven’t been ripped up yet. A strip of concrete floor in between. Jean looks for Anita, in hopes of making eye contact, hypocritical as it is to try to make her an ally at this late date. But Anita’s pacing around, brows knit, as if picturing desks and dividers. She takes Jerry’s sleeve and points at a blank sheetrock corner. Jerry nods, then follows her point as it sweeps along the wall. Just about now, Mel and Roger are getting out of school.
Jean hasn’t stayed in a hotel since she and Willis spent a night at the Tarrytown Hilton a year ago. One of their last attempts. What she mostly notices about her room at the Airport Marriott is its beigeness—carpeting, bedspread, draperies—and a big walnut-veneer piece of furniture that must have a television inside. She should take a shower before they regroup down in the lounge, and before that, she should call home. But even before that, she needs to zone out for a few minutes. She takes off her shoes, lies down on the bed and picks up Emma.
The telephone wakes her, and she gropes for it on the nightstand.
“Hi, it’s Anita. Jerry thought I’d better call. You okay? We’re all down here.”
“Oh, I fell asleep,” Jean says. “God, what time is it? Am I keeping everybody waiting?” And she’s got to take a shower, change clothes, do something about her hair … Crap.
“It’s only six-thirty,” says Anita. “Take your time. You must be exhausted—you slept the whole way down. Are you sure you’re all right?”
Jean can hear music and chattering voices on the other end. “I’m fine. It’s just a combination of not enough sleep and also getting my period.” A totally weird thing to come out with, since she’s not getting her period.
“Oh, I hate that,” says Anita. “And if I take anything, then I’m like—uhh.”
“Well, that’s actually what happened. I took a couple of Advils, and the next thing I knew …” This is so odd: the last thing she is, ordinarily, is a liar. She must be more desperate than she knows to establish some bogus woman-to-woman thing.
“Listen,” says Anita, “I’ll just tell them—God, what should I say? You want me to say you were working on something? And the time just got away from you?”
“No, just tell them I fell asleep and I’ll be down in a minute, okay? So what are we doing tonight—do we know yet?”
“Anybody’s guess. But I think it could be a long one. Listen, could I ask you? Do you have any idea what we’re doing down here? I just think this is bizarre.”
“Well, it hasn’t exactly been action-packed. But it does make a difference to actually see the space. And the thing tomorrow morning, it probably makes sense for Jerry and Howard to get on a personal footing with someone from the bank.”
Dead air.
“Okay,” says Anita. “So we’ll see you in a few.”
Jean says, “Okay,” but Anita’s already hung up. Brilliant: you mope around wishing you had a woman ally, and now you keep her at arms’ length because of some stupid paranoia. What, she’s going to betray you if you agree this is bizarre? So no wonder your marriage fell apart.
She decides to skip the shower and use the time to call home. On the fourth ring, she gets the machine: “This is five five five, one five three six,” says Willis’s voice. “You know what to do.”
“Hi, dear hearts,” she says. “I guess you guys must’ve gone out. I’m just calling to say hi and that I miss you”—now don’t you start weeping—“and I’m doing fine. It’s warmer down here, but not real warm, so if you’re picturing me lying out by the pool or something, forget about it. Anyway, I’m just about to go out to dinner, and I’ll try you again later. I know you already have the number here,
but just in case.” She actually gives them the stupid number again.
It would be self-dramatizing to sit here on the edge of the bed staring forlornly, so she goes into the bathroom and paws around in her travel kit for a toothbrush—which she evidently forgot to pack. There’s a little thing of blue mouthwash in a basket on the countertop, along with little bottles of shampoo and conditioner, so she sloshes some of that around in her mouth, running her tongue over her teeth, then tips back her head and gargles. This will have to do. She makes some quick repairs on her hair and makeup so she looks a little less like shit—it hurt when Jerry said that, even if it was meant to be some double-reverse irony.
Down in the lounge, Jerry and Howard and Anita are perched on tall stools around a tiny table on a chrome stalk.
“All right.” Jerry pats the seat of an empty stool. “Sit down and what’s your pleasure? Miss Bruno—Mizz Bruno—is drinking white wine, like the lady she is. I’m drinking Wild Turkey so nobody’ll know I’m a New York Jew, and our friend Howard here is drinking—what are you drinking again, Howard?”
“J & B,” Howard says.
“Howard is drinking J & B,” says Jerry. “Which I have to say is extremely judicious. Nobody’s going to figure out what the hell he is.”
Jean can see why Anita predicted a long night. “Maybe some white wine too,” she says. Now that she’s kicked away the chance of forming any other bond.
Jerry’s hand shoots into the air and begins waving. “Yo. Garson. Garsonette.” A waitress comes their way, tottering in the high heels and short, tight leather skirt they make her wear; you can practically hear her net stockings scraping together at the knees. “Uno more-o vino white-o,” says Jerry, touching the rim of Anita’s glass.
The waitress nods, then gives Jean just the quickest look: Better you than me, honey. She must be about Jean’s age, sort of country hard-faced.
“So in your absence,” says Jerry, “we’ve arrived at a decision.” He takes a pull at his whiskey. “First we chow down at whatever the hell the name is, some place our friend and colleague Howard here says is acceptable, which we’ll see.” The waitress sets a glass of wine in front of Jean. “What time again, Howard?”