by Elaine Fox
“Well, you know how she was after she found out about Celia.”
“Just because her daughter turned out to be gay doesn’t mean everyone who doesn’t happen to be dating is. Besides, who cares what Aunt Phyl thinks?”
“Well, I do, because I gotta listen to her talk. But the party’s Saturday, so you set about finding yourself someone to bring. They think they’re gonna be cooking out but I heard it’s gonna rain.”
Marcy sighed and pushed the candle into the stick. “What time?”
“Six. And bring a salad. You know, potato, macaroni, something like that. But if you get it at Giant make sure you put it in your own bowl. You know how Aunt Phyl hates store-bought food.”
“Sure, Mom.” She lit the other candle.
“Promise me you won’t forget to bring a date. I’m sicka standing up for you kids. Think of your poor old mother. What with Darren and everything I want something I can be proud of.”
“Can’t you be proud of what I do, Mom? I mean, I know it’s not childbearing, but…”
“I’m not talking about childbearing!” she protested over the clanking of what sounded like a pot and some silverware. “You know I’m proud of what you do.”
Marcy felt disproportionately pleased by this statement. Her mother’s praise was rare when it came to her career.
“But you know,” her mother added, and Marcy sighed. “A lot of men get scared off by career women, ’specially ones with a big high-powered job like yours. No, seeing my girl with a nice boy would suit me just fine.”
“I’ll see, Mom.” She dripped wax into the other candle holder.
Someone knocked on her door. Marcy’s heart leapt. Only one person she knew arrived at her door unannounced.
“Mom, listen, I’ve gotta go. Someone’s at the door.” She blew out the second candle and stuck it back in the holder, her heart racing.
“All right, but don’t forget Saturday! Bring a date! And a salad!”
“Bye…”
Marcy pushed the phone’s off button. If only a date were as easy to get as a salad, she thought, and started for the door. Passing by the powder room, she paused, and with only a slight second thought ducked in to check herself in the mirror.
Now remember, she told herself, don’t let him seduce you back into bed, not even if he has a really good excuse for not calling. Even if it’s dramatic, unarguable, and hopefully, believeable.
She pinched her cheeks and wiped a finger under each eye to get rid of mascara smudges, then moved to the door, smoothing her hands down her skirt.
The knocking sounded again. Heavy, insistent. She had the thought that something might be wrong and opened the door wide.
Her heart hit her stomach on the way to her feet.
Standing in the dimly lit burgundy hallway was Guido. Or rather, Arthur, she told herself. Thinking of him as Arthur made him much less intimidating.
“Uh, Miss Paggalousy,” he said in his thug accent. He gave a shallow bow. “I don’t know if you remember me, we met in the diner down on D Street. Guido. Guido Crumpton.”
Her brows shot up. Guido Crumpton? A guy with a neck like a watermelon and a head like a pea and she might not remember him?
She swallowed and looked at him warily. “Sure. Yeah, I remember you, Guido. Something I can do for you?”
Where the hell was Javier, anyway? It had been annoying enough when Truman slipped by him, but this was a serious security breach.
Guido moved forward, heedless of the fact that Marcy had closed the door to the width of her body. As he continued toward her she had no choice but to back up or hold her ground and see if he had a weapon to brandish.
She backed up.
He wore a black suit this time, with those wide, chalk-type pinstripes, and his cologne was so strong it nearly knocked her over. He stood in her foyer—an area designated by a square of parquet flooring instead of walls—and trailed his beady black eyes around her apartment. Unfortunately, it was all too obvious she was alone.
“I’m just, uh, checking in with you, Miss Paggalousy—”
“Paglinowski.” She tried to affect a cool air.
“Yeah, Miss P., that all right? So yeah, I’m just checking in with you. Just wanna make sure you ain’t been getting into any trouble or nothing.”
She inhaled slowly and shook her head. “I’m not looking for any trouble, Mr. Crumpton.”
“Please.” He held one hand up and graced her with a greasy smile. “Guido.”
She smiled tentatively. “Guido, then. I’ve never been looking for trouble. I’ve just been doing my job.”
He laid a hand on his chest and made as if to bow again, but stopped short. “Just as I am, Miss P. Doing my job.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Which is…?”
He stepped further into the apartment, reaching the white carpet and looking down the hallway. He turned back with a smile. “Making sure you ain’t getting into no trouble. Like I said.”
“Oh, sure. Well, no, I’m not. Getting into any trouble.” One of her hands still rested on the knob of the open door. No one passed by in the hall. Of course. No one ever passed by in the hall. She often felt as if she lived in the building all by herself. Guido could be revving up a chainsaw and no one would emerge.
After taking a few more steps into the room and looking into the dining area Guido finally turned back to her and jutted his chin out. “You got a boyfriend, Miss P.?”
She had the brief thought he could be moonlighting for her mother. “Yes, in fact, I do. I do have a boyfriend. In fact, he’s coming over tonight. I don’t know what’s keeping him. He’s bringing Chinese. Food. You know.” For a second she envisioned Truman showing up with an army of Chinese soldiers. Then, remembering she was upset with Truman, she asked more bluntly and bravely than she’d intended, “What is it you want, anyway?”
To her surprise, Guido appeared to blush. Or maybe flush with rage. “Just what I told you. Checkin’ in. Makin’ sure everything’s okay. Everything’s okay, right?”
She nodded.
“Then I guess I’ll just be going now. Since your boyfriend’s coming and all.” He came toward her, his bulk swaying slightly with his duck-footed walk.
She watched him nervously.
He passed close by her, then stopped in the doorway. “You have a nice night, Miss P.”
She nodded vaguely.
“All right?” he insisted, jutting his chin toward her.
“Yeah, okay. Sure.”
He put his hands in his jacket pockets. Now, Marcy thought, now’s the time he’s going to pull out his weapon. But he just left his hands in his pockets and sauntered down the hallway.
Marcy closed the door behind him, shot the bolt, attached the chain and leaned back against the door, exhaling hard. What in God’s name was that all about? Was this guy dangerous or what? His visit had turned out pretty innocuous, she told herself. Just makin’ sure everything’s okay. Then why was her heart thundering so wildly? And why were her palms sweating?
She waited a few minutes, regulated her breathing, then grabbed the phone and called the front desk.
“Javier? Did a big man in a black suit just leave the building?”
“Big man? Black suit?”
She rolled her eyes. What did he do down there? “Yes. Uh, dark, slicked-back hair. Lots of cologne.”
“Ah!” Javier laughed his strangely high-pitched laugh. “Big smelly man! Sí, he just left.”
“Thank you.” She exhaled and hung up the phone. Then she grabbed her jacket and purse.
She had to talk to Truman. The hell with being mad at him. She could deal with that later. Right now, only Truman would know what sort of threat this guy was.
The knock on the door, followed by Folly’s tongue all over his face, woke Truman from a nap. He’d been dreaming about Marcy, one of a series of disturbing dreams he’d had about her this week, which was why he was having to take a nap on a Tuesday evening. In all of them, she was telling hi
m that sleeping together had been a mistake—that she’d only done it because she’d never slept with a construction worker before. Try as he might to tell himself that these were just dreams, he couldn’t shake the idea that he’d tapped into the truth. Which was one reason he hadn’t contacted her. If she came to him, he’d been thinking, then maybe he could trust that the emotion he’d seen in her eyes last week was real. Then, maybe, just maybe, he’d believe the princess could fall for the pauper.
Folly licked him in the face then dashed for the door, coming back to lick him in the face again and run back to the door, her nails sliding and scratching on the wood floor. Truman wiped his face with one hand.
The dog was just calming down when the knocking commenced again and Truman rolled off the couch trying vainly to straighten his hair while shaking the grogginess from his head. It had to be her. Nobody else visited him. Nobody else knew where he was.
He stretched and stepped quickly across the living room to open the front door.
He nearly slammed it shut again, out of disbelief mixed with a healthy dose of disappointment. But he didn’t. He wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t.
Not to his own mother.
She stood, regal and silver-haired, clothed in navy blue Chanel and clouded in Joy perfume. She was flanked by her chauffeur, Kenneth, who held two brown paper grocery bags, out of which everything from celery to bread protruded.
“Truman.” Her voice held a familiar note of disapproval, which she always managed to tinge with surprise so he could feel he’d disappointed her in some new and unexpected way. “You look awful.” She turned to her chauffeur. “He looks awful, doesn’t he, Kenneth?”
Kenneth gave Truman a sympathetic look and said, “Yes, ma’am.”
Folly sniffed at his mother’s hem, then turned to Kenneth and jumped up, sniffing the bottom of a grocery bag.
“Folly, no.” Truman leaned forward and grabbed the dog’s collar, hauling her back into the apartment.
His mother cast a jaundiced eye on the animal.
“What the devil is that?”
“It’s a dog, Mother. Hang on, let me get her out of the way.” He and Folly tripped and stumbled to the bedroom—Folly doing her best to return to the door and Truman doing his best to prevent her—and shut her in. She whined, scratching pitifully at the door, and Truman rolled his eyes. Women.
He returned to find his mother still standing at the door, like a newspaper subscription collector.
She glared at him as he came back into view. “What on earth is the matter with you? Why do you persist in living this wretched life?”
These were not questions and he was not expected to answer, he knew.
“Kenneth,” she continued, “take the bags to the kitchen. If there is one.” She peered around Truman as if an army of rats might jump her if she stepped into the room.
“You’re looking well, Mother,” he said, leaning forward to kiss her on the cheek. “This is a surprise.”
She looked at him skeptically but allowed the kiss. “I imagine it is. I had Reginald looking for you for weeks and now I understand why he had such a time of it. Nobody would look in this place except as a last resort.”
Reginald was his mother’s butler. She’d hired him a few years ago after the death of Truman’s father, saying she needed a man around the house, and Reginald fit the bill perfectly. He was a jack-of-all trades while maintaining the highest standards of decorum, this last being the most important skill in his repertoire, according to Mrs. Fleming.
Behind the door across the hall a shouting match in Spanish erupted. The voices rose quickly, a man and a woman, and then a baby began to cry. Truman’s mother looked over her shoulder in distaste.
“Care to come in?” he asked mildly.
She stepped over the threshold, her shoes dipping into the apartment as slowly as a timid swimmer’s feet.
She looked around the room slowly. Truman didn’t need to watch her to know what she felt, so he simply stood there, trying to wake up.
After a moment Kenneth emerged from the kitchen and went wordlessly out the front door.
“Honestly, Truman. What are you doing?” His mother turned to him with an expression of profound sadness. “Couldn’t you have looked for the meaning of life on a trip through Europe, or South America? Even the Australian outback? Why does it take this?” She fanned a hand out, palm up, and displayed the room for him.
“Because I’m not looking for the meaning of life, Mother.” He sighed and walked toward the couch, but he didn’t sit down. He couldn’t, much as he wanted to show the distance he had found between them. Remaining standing until a lady was seated had been ingrained in him since birth by this very lady.
“Then what are you looking for? If it’s anything other than cockroaches there has to be a better place than this.” She shook her head.
Kenneth came through the door with three more bags of groceries and disappeared into the kitchen. They were quiet for the few minutes it took him to deposit them and come back through the living room. He slipped back out the door.
Truman wondered if the limo was sitting out there open between trips, and if so, how many bags of groceries disappeared every time Kenneth came back into the apartment.
“Mother, I told you when I left what I was doing.”
“No, you didn’t. You said you didn’t know what you were doing. And now I see how completely true that was.”
“Actually, I said I didn’t know what I was looking for. Not specifically. But I told you I wanted a different experience, a new perspective.”
“Heavens, Truman, you could have gotten that any number of ways without resorting to this. And now where are you? Have you learned anything? Is your career any further along? Has your life”—she cast a majestically skeptical look around the room—“improved at all from this venture?”
Truman sighed. “My life has broadened. So yes, in that sense it has improved.”
“Broadened,” she scoffed.
“Mother, I’ve spent my entire life meeting the same kinds of people, going to the same kinds of parties, having the same conversations year in and year out. Don’t you understand why I might want to do something different?”
“Of course I do!” She strode into the room, affronted, and cast a wary eye at the couch before deciding to sit down on the sagging armchair.
Truman sat opposite her on the couch, forward in the seat with his arms on his knees. At least she seemed to be listening to him this time. When he’d first told her of his plan to ditch everything and see how “the other half lived,” as she put it, she’d gone off on a tirade that had brooked no interruption. She was against the idea and had no desire to understand anything about it.
Now she held up a bejeweled hand and wagged a coral red–tipped finger at him. “I lived in Italy and Greece for several years, traveled all over Europe, I’ve been to India and Egypt and Kenya and Japan. Lebanon, even! Oh, you should have seen Beirut. It breaks my heart what they’ve done to it.”
Tru smiled gently. “I know, Mother.”
Her hawk-gray eyes were back on him in a flash. “No, you don’t, or you wouldn’t be living in this hovel. My point is that to truly get perspective you should see how other peoples live, experience other cultures—”
“But what about our ‘peoples,’ Mother? This country is teeming with lives we’ll never understand, never even see. Hell, you probably don’t even know how your chauffeur lives. And yet people like Dad were running the country and making laws affecting these people.”
“Your father was an excellent senator, God rest his soul. He took into consideration every single one of his constituents when he voted on bills. By God, some campaign years I thought he tried to personally meet and shake hands with every single one of his constituents.”
Truman raised a brow. “Shaking hands with someone doesn’t show you how they live.”
Kenneth came back through the room with another armload of groceries. Against his wi
ll, Truman’s stomach growled.
His mother glared at Truman and waited for Kenneth to pass through before continuing. “Truman, no matter what you say, I will never think living here is good for you. Your career should be skyrocketing right now, and what are you doing? Working in some filthy low-paying profession. Did you know that Palmer Roe just bought his third vacation home?”
Truman laughed. “Where’s this one? On the tenth fairway at Augusta?”
Palmer couldn’t have had a more apt name. Or rather, more apt initials. His middle name was Aaron, and “PAR” Roe was well known for spending more time on the golf course than in the office.
“You’ve become quite the snob, haven’t you?” his mother accused.
Truman could only issue a breathless, incredulous laugh.
“Don’t you think those people you work with now would give their eyeteeth to have what you have?” she continued. “Wouldn’t they drop their shovels in a second, and take your desk for even a fraction of the salary you used to make?”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what they would do in my place. I’m doing something for myself. For my own edification.”
But she didn’t want to hear it. She waived a hand, erasing everything he’d had to say. “A man your age should be looking for a suitable woman and settling down. People your age should have children, for goodness’ sake! Who are you going to meet in a place like this?”
Tru thought of Marcy and smiled slightly. “Oh, you’d be surprised.”
His mother snorted delicately. “I’d be horrified, more likely. This place is probably teeming with gold diggers. It would have to be!”
“She can’t be a gold digger if she doesn’t know I’ve got any gold, Mother. Unlike the women I used to meet.” He thought about Laura, a woman he’d been temporarily fooled by several years back. She had said all the right things, had all the right opinions, but when Truman had started looking to join the Peace Corps, and had suggested they enlist together, she’d dropped him like a hot potato. Shortly thereafter, she’d gotten married to Christopher Hildreth Higgins IV, and the last Truman had heard of her she was president of the Kalorama Garden Club, spearheading an effort to put window boxes on the “ugly, rundown houses in Southeast.” She called the program “Petunias for the Poor” and apparently ousted from the group a woman who suggested they replace petunias with potatoes in the hope of feeding a few of the poor.