The Drifter

by Christine Lennon

  Her potential return to Gainesville, which would be the first time she’d spend more than twenty-four hours away from Remi, was still on her mind when she made it to her corner of the office—not the corner office, just an office near the corner—cutting through a center hall to avoid walking past the regal-looking women in the Jewelry department and the trendy, angular specialists in Asian Contemporary Art, with two nonfat lattes, one for herself and the other for the department assistant, Nina, who thanked her with a woozy smile.

  “Rough night?” Betsy asked, marveling at the way last night’s mascara and three hours of sleep could look so perfect on her twenty-five-year-old face. “You were here so late! Did you go out after?”

  “Is it that obvious?” Nina asked, without the apology that Betsy would have been compelled to offer back when she was in those shoes. Betsy felt that the twenty-five-year-olds owed a world of debt to the forty-year-olds who made showing up at work reeking of last night’s tequila shots without retribution possible.

  “Sadly, no. But I know you,” said Betsy, stashing her bag under her desk, feeling generous, considering that Nina was in early and obviously had been covering for her. “I used to be you,” she mumbled, under her breath.

  “Oh, Liz, I should tell you, Jessica came by to see if you might be free for lunch,” Nina said, eyebrows raised. Nina was the only one who called her Liz, and Betsy was weirdly OK with it. At work, officially, she was still dignified, aloof Elizabeth. Jessica had left to start her own highly lucrative business as an art consultant to aesthetically challenged tech entrepreneurs, but she still breezed down the halls like she ran the place.

  “Uh-huh,” said Betsy, trying out her best nonplussed expression, turning on her desktop, sorting through the marked-up catalogue copy before her. “What time?”

  “She was here to check out the pre-sale. I think she’s buying for a new client or something? I don’t know. She was here about a half hour ago,” said Nina, who straightened up in her chair, shoved the last bite of her bagel into a balled-up napkin, and tossed it into the trash. “And again now. She’s here now.”

  “Elizabeth! There you are. The scary preschool saga continues, huh?” Jessica breezed in wearing a black, belted Jil Sander shirtdress that might look plain on anyone with less confidence, or less prominent collarbones, a minimal but substantial gold ring, and towering Saint Laurent platform boots. Her hair, which was once lank and dishwatery, was now icy blonde, nearly platinum, and always pulled back in a sleek ponytail.

  Jessica Martin was now Betsy’s oldest friend. She had been there from the beginning, helping her navigate the complexities of the environment, letting her tag along to cocktail parties where she’d meet important collectors or potential clients. At first, Betsy could mask her anxiety with as many glasses of free champagne as she could swallow and still remain standing. Eventually, she and Jessica both accepted the fact that Betsy was better off behind the scenes, or dealing privately with loyal clients, gallery owners, and dealers she’d grown to trust. It had been over a year, though, since Betsy had brought in any significant business. Her department’s sales were being eclipsed by the competition. Her colleagues in London were starting to grumble that the New York office wasn’t pulling its weight. Perhaps her greatest shame was that most of her peers had long since moved on, establishing careers in public relations or consulting or anything more glamorous, and she felt stuck.

  SHE AND JESSICA had remained close, as close as Betsy would allow, for almost twenty years. She was a bridesmaid in Jess’s wedding, one of eight. She kept a photo of the bridal party in a frame at home and would always manage a laugh when she saw herself among the beaming smiles of Jessica’s aggressively highlighted high school friends and cousins. Around Jessica, Betsy would always be the girl in the grungy sweater.

  “Lunch at Nougatine?” Jessica asked.

  “God I wish,” Betsy said. “But I can’t, I’m so behind. Here, sit for a second.”

  Jessica sat in one of Betsy’s Sergio Rodrigues leather chairs, which was low slung and pouchy, like an oversized, glamorous baseball mitt, and made her friend seem even more angular and narrow than usual.

  “Is it the mom guilt again? Trust me. You’ll get over it,” said Jessica, who’d married a venture capitalist who was more than pleased to introduce his clients to his art-savvy wife for consultations, and had a six-year-old son, Cash, named without an ounce of self-awareness. She kept the job for the cachet, the occasional media profiles that included her as an “influencer,” and the excuse to buy $1,500 shoes. “Who is it serving, really? Remi is being raised by a competent woman, otherwise known as Flavia. Just get over it.”

  These days, Jessica always twirled her hands around when she talked to Betsy, like she was holding a martini, letting the tiny ice chips make faint clinking sounds against the glass. Frequently, she was.

  “Remi asked me why I wear makeup before I left this morning,” Betsy said, desperate to change the subject and get to the pile of work before her but unwilling to show it. “And I wanted to tell her that being a mom was like being president. Four years in and everybody looks like shit.”

  “Ha! So true. Speaking of, I had another Kim Gordon sighting at a gallery last night. You know that she paints now, right?” she said. Betsy was obsessed with Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth. She was the standard by which all other women were measured. “I know you’re desperate for her to get Botox so you can finally paralyze your face, too. But I must say she is still wrinkly and still fabulous.”

  “Uh-huh.” Betsy nodded, distracted, scanning the pages in front of her. “She’s always been an artist.”

  “Elizabeth?” Jessica was annoyed by anyone who didn’t grant her their full attention.

  “Yes? Oh, Kim Gordon, right. Sonic Youth is going out with Pavement on a reunion tour,” Betsy said. She thought of Gainesville. Her chest tightened. Reunion. “We should go and seek comfort in the presence of other elderly and infirm music fans.”

  “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think so. Jesus, are you even listening to me?”

  “Of course I am. You just reminded me of something, that’s all.” Betsy scribbled “reunion?” on a sticky note and tagged it on the bottom of her screen, next to the one from last week that said “Milk: Almond or hemp?”

  “Oh, hey, you know that I was over at Phillip’s last week, and their Prints department is killing it,” said Jessica. She turned and headed for the door.

  “Why? What do you mean?” asked Betsy. She looked up from her work, trying to look more inquisitive than defensive.

  “Well, they’ve just got some major stuff coming up.”

  “I see. More major than what we’re doing, obviously,” said Betsy.

  “I just thought you’d want to know what’s happening with the competition. I never see you out and around anymore. I just don’t want people to think you’re out of the game.”

  “Out of the game. Nice, Jess. That’s just what I need,” she said, coolly.

  “Look, I don’t know what is going on with you these days, but your head is not in the game. And not that it’s my business, really, but as a friend I have to tell you that I hear your approval rating around here is at an all-time low. I mean, you were never Miss Popularity, but it’s worse than ever.”

  “Well, I’m a little preoccupied, but I wouldn’t say I am loathed, exactly,” said Betsy, taking a swig of her latte with what seemed, immediately, like too much panache.

  “Hmm, actually, I might. I might almost say loathed. If you’re not going to do your job, trust me, there are a dozen people here who will. This isn’t France, Betsy. You’re not grandfathered into permanent semiretirement just because you’ve worked here for nineteen years,” said Jessica. She folded her arms, which were toned from boxing and Pilates and, Betsy often chuckled to herself, pushing away all of that food, across her chest. “I’m just worried you’re closing yourself off from the world. Name one actual friend you have in the building, now that I’m gone.”r />
  “Nina!” said Betsy. She could see from the corner of her eye that Nina was leaning far forward on her desk trying to hide behind the half wall of her cubicle.

  “That doesn’t count. You’re her boss. She has to pretend to like you.”

  “Oh, then I guess your former assistants didn’t get that memo, as they say. A couple of years ago, I was grabbing a yogurt out of the fridge one day and I heard one of them say that she was going to take the new Paul Smith shirts you made her order for your husband and have the letters ATM monogrammed on the pocket! That doesn’t sound like something a ‘friend’ would say, does it?”

  “Which assistant was it? Alexandra or Sam?”

  “Oh, please, why does that matter? They don’t even work for you anymore. What are you going to do, have them fired? I was just saying that to . . .”

  “Absolutely. I can make one phone call and have them fired by someone else. And by the way, if the assistants find out that you were the one who shared that little story, that wouldn’t be the fast track to likability and redemption around here.”

  “Whoa. Is that a threat?” Betsy asked. “Fine, Jessica, you’re right. I have no friends. I have no friends because . . .”

  “Because why? What is wrong, Betsy? All these years and sometimes I feel like I hardly know you.”

  Betsy sighed. “Jessica, the truth is I am a terrible, terrible friend.”

  Jessica, for once, was speechless.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. I don’t want to slip even further out of the game, right? Miss the second half? Insert your favorite sports metaphor here.”

  Betsy stood up to emphasize her point. She watched Jessica walk out of the door and down the hall, listening to the hollow knocking footsteps of her platforms get softer as she strode away. She glanced back at the sticky note again.

  “The last thing I need is to go to a reunion,” she said to no one in particular, suddenly mystified, remembering her bitter fights with Caroline, the ruthlessness of her sorority. “It’s like I never left.”

  “Have you got a reunion coming up?” asked Nina, desperate to change the subject, as she picked through her garbage to see if she could salvage the remains of her breakfast. “Man, those are tough. But you don’t have anything to worry about. I swear, Liz, from some angles you don’t look a day over thirty-seven.”

  CHAPTER 22

  KUMQUAT TREE

  September 24, 2010

  Betsy saw Ginny sitting on the porch, barefoot, in the same beat-up Levi’s she’d had since college. Her hair was shorter now. It grazed the tops of her shoulders and was a duller shade of brown with a few grays sprouting up from the top, coarse as electrical wire. She’d heard voices coming from inside the house. Boys, two of them, ran through the open doorway and into the yard with a wiry, black-and-white terrier trailing behind them. The dog came up to inspect Betsy’s shoes, barking to announce the presence of a stranger.

  “Fletch? Is that you?” said Betsy, crouching to scratch the chin of the tiny stray dog Ginny found in high school and gave to Nana Jean. “How are you still around?” When she got closer, she could see the accordion lines around Ginny’s eyes, the same high, angular bone structure, but speckled with a spray of faint age spots the crept up from her cheeks. She was watching the children play and she was laughing, that same, short, sharp laugh, head thrown back, mouth gaping. Catching flies, as always.

  “Come here, you little scruff,” she called to the dog, scratching his bony head. Ginny started peeling oranges for the boys’ snack, wiping the juice on her T-shirt.

  “Remember the time,” Betsy said, the words lazy, drawn out, “when we climbed that kumquat tree? It was spring break, right? What year was that?”

  Key West. The two of them had rented bikes and circled that tiny, overstuffed island at least five times. They’d made it to the southernmost point. Ninety Miles to Cuba, read the sign, but all they could see in the distance was a couple of catamarans and a few drifting cotton ball clouds. They’d found a tiny hammock shop and climbed into the display, strung between two banana palms, listening to the sound of the birds and loving that they’d managed to sneak away from the crowd of drunks they’d arrived with. Later, they pedaled down to Duval Street for the sunset and a guy who Ginny recognized from her Statistics class offered them a pot brownie, which they split without much hesitation. He wandered off to buy a beer and when he returned to the spot where the three of them had been standing, Betsy and Ginny had slipped away. A few blocks down the road, the two friends met some old queens on Harleys who said they liked their smiles, and then invited them to join in a round of Rum Runners at a sidewalk bar, which they did. And just before the light disappeared completely, they found the biggest kumquat tree either of them had ever seen. Not that they’d seen many kumquat trees. And they climbed to the highest branches that would support their weight. Why the kumquat tree was so hilarious was hard to say. But they stayed up there until Betsy had to pee. It was always Betsy who broke first.

  The wind blew Ginny’s hair into her mouth and she brushed it away. “I miss you,” Betsy said. Ginny looked her in the eye, holding her gaze longer than Betsy could bear. She looked away and thought, “Just say it. Say you’re sorry. Say that it should have been you. Say that you should have spoken up before it was too late.”

  The boys ran back inside the house until their laughter grew faint and Ginny followed them.

  “Wait,” Betsy thought. “It isn’t over yet.” In the background, she heard a man’s voice, the sound of a radio coming from inside.

  “It’s been over for a while now,” said Ginny, standing in the doorframe, letting the screen slam loudly behind her.

  She shot awake and her knee slammed against the tray, knocking her plastic cup and a single round ice cube onto the royal blue carpet of the plane. She could feel her heart thumping through her shirt, electricity shooting from her spine to the beds of her fingernails. Her mind raced to remember where she was.

  “We’ve begun our descent into the Tampa airport,” continued the pilot’s voice over the intercom. “Flight attendants, prepare for arrival.”

  The air was heavy with clouds, of course, since it was September and the Florida fall was still at least a month away, which made for a rough landing. Off the plane, in the pastel-drenched Tampa airport, she stared at the manatee mosaic on the wall as she descended on the escalator to ground transportation. She felt an odd connection to the gentle but doomed creatures, floating along the stream in all of their passive awkwardness, defenseless to the speedboats that sliced their flesh with their angry props.

  CHAPTER 23

  REUNION

  September 25, 2010

  In a cracked and weedy parking lot next to a Starbucks, attached to a church or a school or some other unremarkable single-story brick structure identical to hundreds of others that dotted the Tampa landscape, Betsy stood with her coffee in hand. It was 9:15, fifteen minutes before the scheduled meeting time to board the bus and make the two-hour trek to Gainesville, and she stood alone near the center of the lot. She’d forgotten how small the city was and left the hotel with too much time to spare. The taxi driver dropped her in the empty lot, but not before he asked her to check the address twice.

  “This is it,” she said. “I think. I’m starting to believe this is all a bad dream. I’ll call you if it turns out I’m right.”

  Convinced the others were hiding in their cars, sizing her up through deeply tinted windows, Betsy was feeling self-conscious, which always led to second thoughts about her outfit. She wore a cotton summer dress in a too-cheery plaid and simple leather sandals that later, when her feet were swollen from standing for hours in the heat, she’d regret. Her hair, which had a memory for the humidity and sprang into odd angles when it topped 80 percent, was smoothed back into a stubby ponytail, wrested into order for the moment. Her hair wasn’t the only thing that had its recall triggered by the familiar surroundings. She suddenly realized that she might be
the only person she’d see that day who didn’t have writing on her clothing. Her dress and shoes bore no swoosh or logo, and neither item was made of fiber that employed the word “micro” to describe it. She missed Gavin.

  “Gooooo Gators,” he said, answering after the first ring.

  “Yeah right, go Gators,” she said. “I’m standing in some sad parking lot waiting to be ripped limb from limb.”

  “Hold on,” he said. “Hey, Rem, no climbing in the fountain.”

  “You’re off to an early start,” she said, wondering where all of this parental energy was coming from.

  “Up and at ’em,” he said, with a kind of forced brightness. “We had pancakes. We hopped the bus to Central Park. It’s not even ten and I’ve accomplished more today than I did in all of 1994.”

  That was sixteen years ago, Betsy thought. I was an adult sixteen years ago.

  “I’m starting to regret this,” she said, as her Ray-Bans slowly fogged.

  “Which part? There are so many things we could regret, you’ll have to be more specific,” he said. Betsy paused. She was determined not to let anyone see her cry that day. She didn’t have an answer.

  “Can you at least remember to laugh?” he said. “If not with them, then at them? It’s just a tailgate party at a football game. It’s just one day.”

  She could call a taxi. She could tell the driver to take her to the airport and she could go home, or rent a car and drive to the beach in Venice or Sarasota to spend the day on the long, sandy, empty expanse of shoreline where she’d wasted countless hours in high school, drifting silently in bathtub-warm water, plotting her escape.