Myron tapped the wall as he walked slowly down the steps. “Yes, yes. I listen. I hear nothing. I go into the store next. You vanna come, then who can stop you?”
Amanda followed him as he tapped his way to the ground floor and then along the wall that backed up to the store. When he reached the back wall he tapped it up and down but heard nothing different. Then he followed the wall that was under the staircase until he was standing under the overhang of the first steps going up. Under the stairs, in front of where he stood, the wall was flat. He tapped at it and he and Amanda both heard a hollow sound.
“That doesn’t sound the same,” Amanda said.
“Oy, it’s only the stairvays up.”
“Oh,” Amanda stood next to him. He smelled a little like musty closet. The way her grandmother’s house smelled. She assumed it was an old person smell. “But why is there a flat wall here when the bottom of the staircase is at an angle?”
“I should know such a thing? Vaht am I, an engineer already?”
He tapped around and then dropped his arm. He looked tired.
*****
Amanda sat at the small desk in front of her window. It faced the street and she glanced down every once in a while as she did her own tapping.
Amanda’s Life in Hell (without The Foxtress) she wrote.
Sorry little blog, but I’ve been too busy to post. I’m taking a breath right now. And not sure what’s going on. Am I the only one who feels as if she’s living in another dimension? First there’s this house. My mother is gone (but not forgotten).
That little man is a riot. He didn’t hear anything with all that tapping. But he says he needs to get into Knot’s apartment. As if, right? There’s only one way Knot’s inviting anyone down there and I don’t think Standlish is his type. Hahaha.
We had quite the little chat while he was tapping all over the place like a doctor listening to a rattly chest. Turns out his name is not even Standlish. Get this . . . he gave himself that name because he wanted to sound more American. What a riot. He gave himself the wrong name. He meant Standish. Like Miles Standish. I told him, but he wasn’t fazed at all. Just shrugged. I asked how he got a passport if that wasn’t his real name, and he shrugged on that one, too. He just said – and I quote: “These things are easy to do if you have connections.” I wonder what connections he has. Doesn’t seem the power broker type to me.
He did say something, though; He said he’s running out of time. But he wouldn’t say about what or how much time he has left. Now I’m worried that maybe he’s sick. That would be awful.
I feel like texting Nick. But maybe I should wait until he contacts me. I don’t know what to do. Foxy comes home tomorrow. Knot says we should go out for dinner. I don’t know where. Maybe Nick can come with us.
Chapter Thirty-Six
At Ta-boo, the waiter brought them Mojitos garnished with lime wedges and sprigs of mint. They sipped through red straws and smiled in the dark bar, which, so far, was almost empty. Soon it would fill up with the early snowbirds. Ta-boo was the kind of place known to locals. Even the super-rich needed a hangout. The season hadn’t begun yet, officially. After Thanksgiving they’d arrive with their diamonds and chauffeurs and stylists. They’d ply the shops on Worth Avenue and attend charity parties night after excruciating night. Their photos would appear in the local society paper known on the island as The Shiny Sheet. They’d be smiling, painfully thin, dressed in the latest designer rags, jostling for position on the social ladder by supporting only the chicest causes. They’d come from New York and Chicago and Minneapolis, Texas, and Washington, D.C. Some of them might one day appear at Second Chances. But tonight none of that was on Foxy’s mind. Tonight she planned to have the date of her life. Tonight it was Foxy who would place her hand on Carter’s knee, giggle like a teen, flash her smile, while he would be more reticent, guarded.
“It will be sad to see you leave on Sunday,” said Carter, as he motioned for a second round of Mojitos. The waiter snapped to attention.
“We do have tonight,” Foxy sipped her straw, her lips caressing its tip. She wanted him to put his arm around her, to give her some signal that the evening would go as she hoped. But she remembered enough about the game not to seem eager. She sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. “Ah, it would be fabulous to stay for a whole week. Not to have to think about the store or the show or the dealers.” And then she had a brainstorm. “Who bought all your antiques? Your wife?”
“She had most of them when we met. She’d been a collector for years. Actually,” he paused while the waiter replaced their drinks with fresh ones, “that was only one of her collections. She was known for her taste in all things. It was one of her most notable qualities.”
“I suppose you miss her very much still,” Foxy smiled a sad little smile to let him know how much sympathy she felt for his situation.
“Yes.” He played with the ice in his glass, not looking Foxy in the eye. After stirring his drink briefly, he looked up and threw her a smile. “But I think I’m getting over that now.” And he touched her shoulder and moved closer to her and smiled that dazzling smile. Foxy felt elated. She’d moved the conversation in just the right direction. She reached up and placed her hand over his. As she slid her hand away, it was a kind of caress. And then he added, “You’re the first woman who has really moved me in a long time. Maybe it’s the connection with antiques.”
This disturbed Foxy. Couldn’t he see her other qualities? To feel something for her because she dealt in antiques seemed rather paltry. “Is that all?” she asked and the minute it was out of her mouth she realized it sounded as if she was fishing. “I mean . . .” she stumbled for the first time and bit her lip.
“Of course there are your other obvious attributes,” he smiled and reached for her hand. kissed her palm, then moved his index finger up to her pouting lip and brushed it free of her teeth. “Shall we eat here? The food is good. Not great, but good. And they have a good selection of wines. Yes?”
Foxy nodded and they moved to a table.
“Tell me about your daughter,” Carter said after they ordered. Foxy would have preferred he’d take her hand again, touch her bottom lip again. There was little romance in discussing the problems of mothering a teenaged girl. “And this house of yours. It’s so interesting that you chose to solve your problems in this way.”
“I had very few choices,” said Foxy. “You can’t live on interest when there’s no capital.”
“Oh, but you could have sold the house, no? And then you would have had some money.”
“Not enough to live on. And one still has to live somewhere. Not like you, staying at Four Seasons all over the world. That sounds like absolute heaven to me.”
“You’d be surprised. It can get very lonely. I rarely meet anyone. People in hotels tend to keep to themselves. And the women who do approach are not often the kind I would want to know better. I’ve decided that this may be my last stop. I like it here, and I do need to settle somewhere.”
Their first course arrived and they were busy eating, discussing the food, approving the wine, exchanging pleasantries about nothing in particular. Foxy enjoyed the meal but worried that she’d lost the thread. After three glasses of wine she relaxed and stopped trying to control the situation. Que serà, serà, and all of that.
As they waited for coffee, Carter brought up Amanda again. “I truly admire you raising your daughter on your own. Do you enjoy motherhood?”
Foxy laughed out loud. “It just happened. When I was very young. I never gave enjoyment a thought. My mother raised her for the first four years while I went to college. And then, when I married, I took Amanda back to live with us. He was not her father. He said he didn’t mind raising her as his own, but I did all the work. Do you know what the life of a professional athlete is like?”
Carter shook his head. He was listening carefully, though.
“He was never home, and when he was, he might as well have been in another house. Am
anda has turned out all right, I think. She and I are very different. She tolerates me. And I try to change her. We’re stalemated. Do you have children?” This was an attempt to get back on track but Foxy felt as if she’d lost her momentum and the evening might end with a whimper.
Carter shook his head and signaled to the waiter for their check. When it arrived, Foxy said, “Let me pay at least for my portion. I feel bad that you treated me at the hotel last night, too. It’s only fair to let me pick up some.”
Carter opened his wallet and pulled out an American Express Platinum card and slid it into the leather sleeve for the waiter. He leaned over to Foxy and ran his hand up her arm, which gave her a chill down to her toes. “I wouldn’t think of it, cara mia,” he said softly, close to her ear. “This is only our second date. We’re just getting acquainted.” He brushed her cheek with his lips and they sat so close to each other that Foxy could feel the heat from his body. His hand was now around the back of her neck, fondling her skin, his fingers rifling strands of her hair. All her misgivings about the evening faded, and she felt tingly. For a man who claimed to be out of practice, Foxy felt he was doing pretty well.
She happened to glance down at his open wallet and there, staring up at her, was a picture of an older woman with elegantly wavy, white, hair and blue eyes. A handsome woman – maybe seventy-five or eighty years old, if Foxy had to take a guess. The photo neatly cropped just under a diamond necklace the likes of which Foxy would cheerfully kill to have been wearing herself.
“Oh,” she said, pointing to the photo, “is that your . . .” the waiter arrived with the receipt at that moment and the end of Foxy’s question – “mother?” – hung in the air with the last word unspoken.
“My wife,” Carter finished it for her and took the receipt, slipped it into the wallet, and shut it with a soft snap.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Knot suggested a Korean place on Eighteenth Street in the neighborhood. After all his raving about French food, Amanda was surprised by this. She wondered what Koreans ate but thought maybe it was better not to confront Knot about it. Unlike Foxy, who didn’t seem to realize when Amanda was challenging her authority, Knot didn’t handle confrontation well. Better to just get there and see what she could order, especially since she wanted to invite Nick. Better not to throw too many things into the mixing bowl at one time.
“Of course you can invite that cute boy,” said Knot. “When the Foxy’s away, as it were. God, I hope he didn’t stay over. If you got pregnant on my watch Foxy would kill me.” He laughed at this and faked a gun with his index finger and thumb at his temple. “By the way,” he drew out the word wayyyy. “That man tapped all over the store today. He is absolutely resolute. But I couldn’t get a thing out of him about what he’s looking for. Did you?”
Amanda shook her head. She considered telling Knot her suspicions about Myron’s health but decided against it. What would there be to gain from sharing her concern that Myron may be dying? Just thinking this made her feel uncomfortable, like she knew something she shouldn’t. Maybe that was why he had all that blood. Maybe he was giving himself transfusions or something. Maybe that business card was just a cover up. Her mind raced ahead with such thoughts. She couldn’t stop them now that they’d begun. She wanted to leave the store, run up to her room and post it on her blog. She needed to release this tension somehow. She felt as if she was about to lose a grandfather.
“What is the matter with you?” Knot broke the spell. “You look like you’ve – for lack of a more enlightened phrase – seen a ghost. I think you need to hike your fanny up those stairs and take a load off before we go out. Call your boyfriend. Maybe that will make you feel better. It always works for me when I get that way.”
Amanda looked sideways at him. “What way?” She wondered how he could tell she was getting herself into a state.
“Just look at yourself,” Knot held up a silver framed mirror with ornate carvings of birds and flowers around the glass. “Oh my God, this thing weighs a ton. I have to raise the price on it just for sheer heft.” He pulled off the price tag and rubbed out the glue spot, before rummaging around in Foxy’s desk. This was a task all by itself. Foxy had no storage or filing system. Knot could barely get the drawer open for all the stuff crammed inside it. “Will you just look at this mess? Your mother,” he breathed dramatically as if he was running, “should never be operating a business. She’s a menace to commerce. If I had the money I would buy it from her, and everything in it. But sadly, I never seem to have any money. And all the men I attract never have any either. Leonard is another one. High position but depends entirely on the kindness of lobbyists and other snakes. Ah here.” He pulled out a sheet of price tags for smaller items.
“Now in my humble opinion, you take everything much too seriously. For instance, that boy. He’s cute, I grant you. But what is going on with him? I mean why the long face all the time?” He stuck the price tag on the mirror handle and held it up to Amanda’s face, but she looked away so he put it down.
“What do you mean? You only met him once – last night.” This seemed to Amanda a paltry amount of time to make a judgment about anyone.
“I could tell. Something is troubling that boy. He has the look about him. Like he’s hiding something. Is it possible he’s in the closet?” Knot pursed his lips and wagged his head flirtatiously.
“No.” She blushed just thinking about the night before. The amazing kiss. Even if it didn’t last as long as she would have liked. “He’s not gay, Kuh-not. Why do all gay people think everyone else is closeted? He has a lot on his mind, is all.” Amanda wished she knew exactly what was on Nick’s mind. She also wished he would come back home with her tonight.
“What for instance?”
“I don’t know for sure. I think it’s something about his father. Or maybe some friend of his father’s.” She hadn’t meant to tell him any of this. But it felt better just to say it out loud.
“What kind of a friend?” Knot asked. Now he was pulling out the desk drawers and poking at file folders. “A male friend or a female friend?”
Amanda hesitated. Knot could take this and make a real mess of it at dinner tonight. She had to cut the discussion off before it went any farther. “I don’t know,” she said. “I do feel kind of tired. Can you come upstairs when you close the store and wake me if I’m asleep?”
*****
Upstairs, Amanda pulled out her laptop.
Amanda’s Life in Hell (will things ever get better?) she wrote.
Worry. It’s a killer. I don’t know, but it seems as if things have gotten worse. I wish I knew the answers to all the things that are worrying me. I wish people would just tell me what’s happening. But they won’t and they don’t and that makes me imagine things. I don’t see why we have an imagination if it just makes us crazy. I think it would be better just to go through life like a machine and not have emotions and imagination and scary dreams and thoughts of all kinds of stuff going wrong. What good is that anyway? Maybe if I could write a symphony or a novel or something, that would be a good use of my imagination. But I can’t. Just this crazed out blog. Hardly a great gift to the world. Sigh . . . when the only person who seems normal is the gay guy who has no control at all over his life, you know you’re in trouble. That’s me. My name is Amanda and I am in trouble. I just don’t know what kind.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Where did you and your wife live?” Foxy asked in the car. She wished the Worth Avenue stores were open, but all she could do was ogle the window displays. She made a mental note to get Carter to bring her back here. Before he had a chance to answer her first question she said, “Would you be an absolute darling and bring me back here tomorrow morning? I don’t have to be at the airport until three. And I would love to peek at a few things in the stores.” Peek was a gross understatement. She’d really like to back a truck up to each store and clean it out.
“That would be my plan exactly.” Carter smiled broadly a
nd patted her knee. “I was hoping to buy you something wonderful. Maybe at Ferragamo or perhaps . . . tell me do you like shoes?”
Foxy giggled. She was a little drunk and a little giddy and a little high on the promise of this new man. “Do I like shoes? That’s like asking a tightrope walker if she likes heights.”
Carter laughed with her. “Most of the stores are open from noon to five on Sundays,” he told her. “Is that enough time for you?”
They rounded a corner and there was the ocean right in front of them. “Let’s park and go down to the beach. Look at that moon coming up.” He pulled into a spot along the sidewalk that ran parallel to the downtown beach. He stopped but left the motor on. “Or we could walk on the beach back at the hotel. Yes, maybe that would be better.” He pulled out onto the road again. There was almost no traffic. The evening air was soft and the moon was bright, illuminating the gentle rolls of surf. They drove in silence until Foxy remembered her first question.
“So, where did you live before . . .” she didn’t want to say ‘before your wife died’ but that was the reality of it. She left it alone and waited.
“Before she died?” Carter finished it for her again. “We lived in Madrid. And we had a cottage in Mallorca on the sea. It was lovely, but all that is gone now.”
“Madrid? But why Spain? I mean you’re American. Was she Spanish?” Foxy felt a little foolish, but the Mojitos and then a bottle of wine had loosened her tongue and she’d lost the control she had at the beginning of the evening.
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