Thinking of her made him too restless to go home. He was meeting some people later, but a quick look at his watch confirmed that he had at least four hours to kill. He turned back around and headed uptown, to Minty’s, one of his favorite uptown watering holes. Stepping in from the spring sunshine, he was momentarily blinded; when his vision cleared, he scanned the sparsely filled space with its portraits of famous abolitionists hanging over the bar. For as long as he’d been coming here, crepe paper chains in faded red, blue, and yellowed white had been draped limply over the frames and a boldly defaced Confederate flag had held pride of place on the wall. At the far end of the bar, seated almost directly under an outsized photograph of Harriet Tubman seated regally in a chair, was his boss and the agency’s owner, Athena Neville. Minty’s was just around the corner from the office, and they often came here together for a quick one after work; had he wanted to run into her?
“I’m assuming One Hundred Seventeenth Street was not a slam dunk,” she said when he’d slid onto the stool beside her. “Or else I would have heard from you.”
“They have to think it over,” Jared said. The bartender had brought a mug, but he sipped his beer directly from the bottle.
She considered the wine in her half-full glass. “What’s your sense? Will they bite?”
“She’s primed; she’s ready,” said Jared. In more ways than one, he thought but did not say. “He’s the sticking point.”
“Uh-huh.” She took a sip from the glass. “How can we get him unstuck?”
Jared shook his head. “It just has to happen—or not—in its own time. You know that.”
Athena’s phone buzzed before she could reply. She was a good-looking woman, tall and full-bodied with hair that had been woven into an intricate series of narrow braids that articulated the shape of her skull. She wore a long, loose dress the color of a grasshopper, some chunky thing around her neck, and big gold hoops in her ears. His mother would have loved her. Don’t let this one get away, she’d have said. Smart, strong, and built for birthing babies. What more could you want?
Jared shifted on the stool. Athena was a prize. She’d grown up in a Bronx project, gotten herself first to Stuyvesant High School, then to Smith—scholarship kid, just like him; she had opened her own boutique real-estate firm before she turned thirty. And he knew she liked him; she’d made it clear enough, though not so clear that they couldn’t ignore the elephant in the room and carry on in a purely professional vein. There was nothing wrong with her, not one single thing, except she didn’t make his heart stop, not the way those white princesses did. All those impossibly pretty princess girls, with their smooth hair and straight teeth, their cashmere sweaters, their white-girl ease in the world, finally culminating in the prettiest white-girl princess of them all: Caroline Alexa Highsmith.
Athena finished her call and laid her phone down on the bar. “You’re right,” she said, as though they hadn’t been interrupted. “You’re right, and that’s what makes you such a good salesman. You know when to step back; you don’t push.”
“I was groomed by the best,” he said, lifting the bottle in her direction.
“Flattery will get you everywhere.” Athena signaled for the check. “What are you doing later?” She had taken out a small mirror and was using it to apply a deep, rich color—not unlike the wine she’d been drinking—to her generous lips.
“Meeting some people in Chelsea,” he said, taking the last swig of his beer.
“I’m having a little thing at my place. Feel free to drop by,” she said. “Your friends too. There’ll be plenty to eat and drink.”
“Thanks.” He pressed the cool bottle to his heated cheek. The air-conditioning had not been turned on, and the place felt stuffy. “Maybe I will,” he said, knowing full well he wouldn’t. No need to agitate that elephant. And then, to change the subject, he asked, “How’s it going with Diego and Tiffany?”
“Tiffany is terrific; great choice. But Diego . . .” She had put her lipstick away and was signing the bill.
“What’s going on?”
“Let’s just say he has an attitude problem.”
Jared thought about Diego, a handsome kid with black hair that was slicked back from his full, baby face and surprisingly light, hazel eyes. Those features could be door openers—if he bothered to try. Jared had seen the sullen looks, the slipshod work. Seen and tried to rationalize. “I’ll talk to him, okay?”
“That would be a good idea,” she said. “If he’s going to stick around, he really needs to get with the program.”
Outside, Jared said good-bye to Athena and hailed a taxi. The late-afternoon light was still rich and warm, but now he was eager to get home. He’d shower and rinse the disappointing day from his skin, and have a snack before heading out again. On the way up, he gathered his mail and took the elevator to the tenth floor. The apartment, tended to by his longtime housekeeper, was spotless. He left the mail on the table and did not look at it again until he was seated with a glass of cabernet, a wedge of Brie, and a handful of crackers in front of him.
Flipping through the new Metro magazine that was in the pile, he turned first to “Souls of a City,” that column written by Geneva Bales; it was his favorite part of the magazine. Once, she profiled a woman who had designed the costumes for Arthur Mitchell’s fledgling Dance Theatre of Harlem back in the 1970s; another time, she’d focused on a contemporary female rapper she’d discovered at an uptown club. This week’s column was called “You Were Meant for Me,” and it featured a white woman who’d found a black baby abandoned in a subway station and had decided to adopt her. Jared ate as he read the story. Then he checked out the photos. In one, the woman was shown holding the baby in front of the Park Slope house where she lived. The other was a close-up of the baby herself, her dark eyes wide for the camera, her expression unexpectedly serious. The caption said the baby had been found wrapped in a white towel and a blanket from the Cosmo Hotel.
Jared lit a cigarette. He knew the Cosmo quite well. It was in SoHo; he and Carrie used to party at the hotel’s posh rooftop bar and sometimes they’d even stayed over. They’d had some wild nights there. Wild. But that was before Carrie had gone off the deep end and he’d tried to break it off, before all the screaming and raging, the accusations that he was screwing around. When she had seen these tactics weren’t working, she’d switched gears: She was going blind. She had cancer. AIDS. Cancer and AIDS. She would kill herself without him. She would kill him. Jared grew weary of the threats, the scenes. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her. But she was too much for him and he wanted out.
The Cosmo was actually where he had last seen her. It was early on a summer evening, before the crowds descended, and he’d gotten them a discreetly situated booth in the almost empty bar. Her dress, he remembered, had been made of some iridescent blue-black material; it shimmered when she leaned forward to pick up her drink or to reach out to touch his face. In his innocence—read: stupidity—he had thought that meeting in a public place would prevent an outburst. Wrong, wrong, wrong. But he’d never imagined that he would be the one to hurl the opening salvo. When he’d told her that this was the very last time, that they were over, finished, done, she’d gone very still for several seconds.
“Why?” she finally asked.
“I think you know,” he said.
“Because I’m crazy, right?” She fumbled in her purse for a cigarette, which she held, unlit, in her trembling hand.
“Not crazy, not exactly, but—”
“Delusional. Paranoid. Manic. I know all the code words.”
“Carrie, I—”
“Don’t bother,” she said. “I’ve heard it all before. I know what you think, what everyone thinks—my family, my shrink. You’re no different.”
“What about your family? Can’t they help?” He was curious; he knew she came from somewhere in North Carolina and that her family had some m
oney. But that was all; she would not reveal details, and when he tried to press, she’d put him off.
“Never mind about them. It’s you that I care about. You, me—and the baby.”
“Baby?” he said. The glass of wine he was drinking tasted like poison. She couldn’t be telling the truth.
“Yes,” she said, with a small, triumphant smile. “Baby. Yours and mine. She’ll be so beautiful, with skin like café au lait and—”
“Goddamn it!” He stood and pushed the table away so sharply that his glass fell on its side, rolled to the floor, and shattered. Wine puddled around his feet. “You will not do this to me. You will not.”
“Jared? Aren’t you happy?” She blinked rapidly, but the tears were gathering and falling anyway. “I’m happy. So happy! We’ll be a family. Don’t you see? A real family.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said flatly. “It’s just another one of your tricks. And it won’t work.”
The waiter came hurrying over. “Is everything all right?” he asked.
“Don’t ask me,” Jared spat. “Ask her.” Furious, he tossed some bills on the table and marched out.
She began stalking him after that—calls, texts, and e-mail. Once she’d left a rubber doll in a box by his office door; she’d taken a Sharpie and drawn fat, black tears on the doll’s face. Luckily, he’d found and disposed of the whole mess before Athena saw it. He was torn about what to do: confront her again, call the police, or seek some kind of help for her. And then it stopped. Just like that. No more calls, no more texts, no more dolls. Relief overcame worry; he was just so grateful that she was out of his life.
Months went by, months in which he tried not to think about her. To worry about her. In late March, a detective from a precinct in Brooklyn came to see him at home. A female corpse had turned up on a beach in Coney Island; the corpse was barefoot but wearing an oversized purple coat. In the pocket of that coat, sealed in a ziplock bag and reinforced by duct tape, was a piece of paper that read: Call Jared. His phone number was underneath.
Jared had to make a trip to the morgue to identify her, a horrible moment he’d never, ever forget. Then he’d been interviewed by the detective; he was in too great a state of shock to understand that the police thought he might have had something to do with Carrie’s death. It was only later, hours after he’d gotten home, that he realized he’d been under suspicion, even briefly.
But Carrie’s death was not the sole reason for Jared’s stunned condition during the questioning. The medical examiner had said there were indications that she might have recently given birth; she had been in the water for some time, so it was impossible to say for sure. But Jared knew. Knew and was devastated. She had been telling the truth that last night—she had. The baby, whose body had never washed up, had no doubt drowned with her. And it was his fault.
He thought about trying to contact her family, though he knew almost nothing about them—but to what end? Hey, I got your daughter/sister/niece pregnant, but I broke up with her and she drowned. No, he could not imagine a conversation like that. What good would it do, anyway? Caroline was gone, along with any baby she’d had. His mourning and his guilt? Those were private, not to be shared with—or expiated by—anyone else.
But now, staring at the magazine, he had to wonder. What if somehow the baby—his baby?—had not gone into the water with Carrie, but survived and somehow turned up in the subway station? What if? The thought was like a slap: sharp, startling, and once the shock had passed, galvanic. He ground out the cigarette and went into the small bedroom he used as a home office. After a few minutes of digging around on the top shelf of a closet, he found it—the scrapbook his mother had assembled, an encyclopedic and doting record of his earliest days. Here was the wristband he’d worn in the hospital, his baptismal certificate, and a list of every baby gift he’d received. And here was the photograph, with his own wide-eyed face staring out of the border. Jared looked from the photo in the scrapbook to the photo in the magazine and back again. Was he seeing what he thought he was seeing? Because in these two faces—dark, unsmiling, and separated by about three and a half decades—he could have sworn there was a resemblance.
He looked down at the bottom of the article. Comments? Questions? Contact me at [email protected]. Comments? He had a few of those. Questions too. Carrying the magazine in one hand, Jared went over to his laptop, sat down, and immediately began to type.
After the first couple of sentences, the words stopped. What was he doing, anyway? If this baby was his . . . then what? Was he prepared to claim her, to raise her? He never thought about having kids other than in that general maybe-if-I-met-the-right-girl sort of way. And the girls—women—he went for didn’t seem to be the marrying, baby-raising kind. He sat there for a few minutes; the minutes stretched into something closer to an hour. Then he looked at the photographs again. The faces still looked the same—at least to him. He put his fingers back on the keypad. Whatever happened, whatever came of it, he simply had to know.
EIGHT
Evan Zuckerbrot maneuvered his shopping cart through the crowded aisles at Fairway. He saw Audrey a few feet ahead, palpating the melons for ripeness. Tap, tap, tap, went her busy fingers. Tap, tap, tap. “Found a good one,” she said when he had caught up. “Catch.” She raised the heavy, round fruit as if to lob it in his direction.
“You wouldn’t,” he said, immediately bringing his hands to his face. He felt like he’d spent his whole childhood in this defensive posture; he hated sports and viewed any oncoming balls as threats, not competitive opportunities.
“I would if you could actually catch it instead of cringing. You’re a wuss, Evan.” But she was smiling as she gently lowered the melon into his cart. “Now we should get some prosciutto.”
“Whatever you say.” Evan had planned a picnic with Miranda for the next day, and Audrey, his oldest and closest friend, was helping him put the whole thing together.
“Yeah, if she’s a foodie, she’ll be into the melon and prosciutto thing. We just have to clean and slice it beforehand, that’s all.” She started walking toward the deli counter and Evan dutifully followed. He wanted this picnic to go well. No, he wanted it to be perfect. Since their initial meeting at the coffee shop, he and Miranda had gone on three dates. Well, the first of these was not even a real date; he’d just accompanied her to the opening of a ridiculously twee popcorn shop—wasabi-laced popcorn, cinnamon-and-cardamom-dusted popcorn—on Van Brunt Street because it was minutes from where he lived in Red Hook. The second had more substance to it. They had gone to the Museum of Modern Art and he’d led her through the photography gallery, spending a long time in front of his favorites—Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand—explaining what it was he saw in those pictures, why they moved him. She’d seemed engaged and her reaction made him hopeful. The third, when they had gone to the movies, was the best of all; that was the night he’d first kissed her.
But all that was before her new daughter had arrived. Celeste. Now that she was here, Miranda did not want to leave her any more than she had to. So Evan suggested this picnic in Prospect Park as a way for them to all spend time together. He knew that most guys wouldn’t have been too thrilled to have a baby tag along on a date. But Evan had a soft spot for babies.
Audrey was considering the prosciutto selections at the deli counter now. “Imported costs about three times as much as domestic. But the imported is way better.”
“She’ll be able to taste the difference, won’t she?” asked Evan. When Audrey nodded, he added, “Imported, then. Definitely imported.”
“Next up: bread,” said Audrey.
Evan hurried to keep up. That was so Audrey: she had a plan and she stuck to it. Just like always.
* * *
Audrey Zelkowitz had had the seat next to Evan Zuckerbrot in homeroom on the first day of high school; she’d kept that same seat all four years.
Four years in which they had been best friends, confidants, soul mates—and for one brief night, lovers. It had happened after the prom. They had gone together, of course, and they had been deconstructing the evening in the apartment—conveniently empty at the time—that her parents had built over the garage. Splayed out on the double bed with a bottle of vodka and a box of Entenmann’s chocolate-frosted doughnuts, they talked and talked. Then had come a lull in the conversation. This had not bothered Evan; he and Audrey could be quiet together too. But when she turned to him and said, “Well, I guess we should do it,” he had to wonder whether he had missed some essential link in the conversation.
“What are you talking about?” She did not answer, but stood up and began to unzip the tight, electric blue dress she wore. “You’re kidding, right?” Evan knew that she—like him—was a virgin. “Or you’re drunk.” They had been sharing the vodka, and maybe she was more looped than he knew.
“No to both, actually.” The dress was off now; she stood before him in her strapless white bra and white panties, her strong, athletic body—she swam, played basketball, softball, and ran track—looking both unfamiliar and unbelievably exciting.
“But, Audrey, this isn’t us.” Confusion and lust were arm wrestling in his brain, making it pound. And the boner pressing against the front of his rented tux pants wasn’t making things any easier. “Is it?”
“It could be,” she said, coming closer to him now. “It should be. I mean, you’re my friend, Evan. My best friend. I love you and I trust you. And I don’t want to go to college a virgin—do you?” He shook his head. “So why not . . . initiate each other?” She reached over and slid her arms around his neck. “Come on. It’ll be good. I promise.”
You Were Meant For Me Page 8