In the Drink (21 page)

“Jane,” I said. “Hi.”

“Hello there,” she said huskily. She’d taken her hair down and fluffed it into a wild, predatory mane. Her eyes were halfslitted. “You haven’t seen William lately, have you?”

I gestured to the dining room. “At the table,” I said, “talking to Margot.”

“Thanks,” she said, brushing a soft hand over my cheek. I stayed close behind her. She sauntered over and held her hand out to him, her gaze confident and direct and just a bit menacing. “William,” she said. “Remember dancing to this song at the beach house?” The song was a decadent mid-tempo rock ballad sung by an androgynous Brit with a tuneless, raspy little voice. What beach house? I took a hard disk of salami and a couple of green olives from a plate on the table and chewed them, riveted.

William flapped his hand at her. “Go away, Jane, we’re discussing morality.”

“Come and dance,” she said. “I don’t know a thing about morality and neither do you.” I could see him wavering: the lady or the tiger? Then he stood up and took Jane’s hand and let her slink him a few feet away to an empty patch of floor by the speaker. She slid her arms around his neck and tilted her hips. He put his hands on her waist and they turned in slow circles. She leaned her forehead against his, and smiled at him, close up. I knew what he looked like from that perspective: his eyes turned into one long eye. She said something to him,
something quick and sly, and he laughed with his head down on her shoulder and said, “You’re so
bad
, Jane.” As she talked, she rocked her body back and forth against his and leaned her head back so her hair fell in a shining stream and caught the light like water. The arch of her throat matched the curve of her small hard stomach, pooching sexily out between her hipbones; she looked glossy and lithe, and I wondered how William could resist running his hands all over her.

“Look at that,” I said.

Margot looked up at me then, and I was startled by the coldness in her face. I realized then that I was standing right next to her chair. She held our gaze for a beat longer than necessary, then got up. I moved to let her by, then slid into her empty chair, feeling chilled. I looked down at my hands, folded on the tabletop.

A shiny shape to my right lowered itself to the chair next to mine and handed me a postcard, which I took and examined. The picture on the front showed a lantern-jawed transvestite in a jeweled turban and glittery platform shoes, holding what appeared to be a Tarot deck, opened like a fan, offered to the viewer. “Those are pearls that were his eyes …” read the caption. I turned it over, and saw a blur of information, time and place and whatnot.

“Speaking of death by water,” Gus said, “I heard about Jackie’s miraculous resurrection.”

“Who told you?”

“Oh, a little bird. A little golden bird.”

Something dawned on me: a memory that included the word “schmoozer.” “You told Margot what I said about her, didn’t you,” I said in disbelief.

He looked sly. “What did you say about Margot?”

“I said it in context, Gus,” I said with a flash of helpless anger. “You knew I didn’t really mean it the way it sounded.”

“Then you shouldn’t have said it. The context doesn’t matter if you mean what you say, and if you mean what you say you shouldn’t care if people repeat it. And if you don’t mean it, you should be prepared to take the consequences.” His eyes were glittery slits; his face was flat as a mask. He looked like a mean, louche, small-time gangster. “That’s how I operate,” he added.

“Not me,” I said, getting up.

Margot was buttoning her coat, peering down at the buttons in the dark, when I came into William’s bedroom. She must have known it was me when I came in, because she didn’t look up.

“Margot,” I said insistently to her bent head.

“What?” she said without inflection.

What was there to say? “Good night.”

“Good night,” she said back, and walked past me, out of the room. I lay down again on the pile of coats, just for a moment, I thought, but I must have dozed off for a while, because the next thing I knew, a crowd of people, among them Cecil and Frieda, were all rummaging around and laughing, and then I had my own coat on and was being shepherded out the door with them all, waving good-bye to the far end of the living room, where I caught a blurry glance of William, still dancing with Jane, or embracing her, I didn’t see.

The elevator was lined with mirrors; it looked like there was a whole crowd in here although there were only five or six of us. Outside, I followed Cecil and Frieda to a big boat of a car parked along the curb and got into the front seat with them. Maybe they had offered me a ride, or maybe I had simply imposed myself on them; in any case, I watched the streets roll by and leaned my head against Frieda’s shoulder. I noticed admiringly that Cecil drove with elaborate, almost exaggerated courtesy. Instead of honking madly at people who meandered into
the path of his car while he gunned the engine and tried to hit them, he slowed down and waited for them to cross. He calmly let a taxi swerve in front of him at a yellow light, cutting him off and stranding him at the red light. It didn’t seem to be out of meekness, it seemed as if he had studied some kind of martial art of driving where you used the other guy’s strength against him.

“You’re not from New York, are you,” I said.

“How can you tell?”

“You don’t drive like you’re from here.”

For some reason he took offense at this. “I’m just a firm believer in staying out of trouble,” he said with a slight bristle in his voice. “I wouldn’t say one way or the other that that’s a function of where I’m from; I like to think I drive the way I drive because of who I am.”

“I meant it as a compliment,” I said. “I’m sorry. New York drivers are usually so aggressive.”

“Not that I don’t stick my neck out when called upon,” he said. “I simply believe that everyone’s got a right to politeness. Do unto others, like the man said.”

“Right,” I said fatuously. “That’s a very gracious attitude.”

“Claudia,” said Frieda.

“Well, it is,” I said.

“Don’t listen to her,” Frieda said to Cecil.

I tried to think whether
I
should take offense now, but it was too complicated, so I simply abandoned the whole exercise and fell asleep before we even made it to the park. I awoke at dawn to the wet, raspy sound of Delilah licking herself under the bed. I still had my coat on. In the pocket I found a crystal tumbler and a postcard. I hoped Frieda hadn’t had to help me up to bed, but I thought I remembered hearing her say, “I never knew you had such a cute cat,” then raising my head from my pillow, where it had fallen automatically the moment
I’d come in the door, to see Delilah purring thunderously, traitorously, in Frieda’s arms. I hoped Cecil hadn’t thought it was his duty to help Frieda escort me upstairs, then suffered a corollary memory of a very dark hand against Delilah’s fur, stroking Frieda’s very white hand, the three of them having a cross-racial, intra-species love-in. “Delilah,” I said forlornly; the licking sound immediately ceased.

I read so much poetry that day my thoughts marched in metrical lockstep by nightfall. I didn’t touch the remainder of the gin even though a nice cozy nip or two on a bleak, lonesome Sunday evening was just the sort of ritual I most highly prized. I didn’t watch any TV, and I tried all day not to think about William. I didn’t call him the way I normally would have, to confer about the party; he didn’t call me either, and I didn’t want to think about what that might mean. No one called me. I spent the day alone with my invisible cat. I should have just drunk myself into another stupor and passed out cold around three in the morning, but instead I went to bed early and slept deeply for an hour or two, then snapped awake and stayed that way for hours, seeing with the pure clarity of the darkest part of the night that everything I’d said and done my entire life had been completely worthless, and everything that had ever happened to me had been part of one big tragic joke on me.

At eight o’clock the next morning, I crept from my bed and drank coffee at my table. It was time to go and face Jackie. That she hadn’t called me to convey her shocked incredulity was not necessarily a good sign. Long after I should have left my apartment, I hovered over my table with a butter knife, slashing open all the envelopes heaped there like a haul of slippery fish. As I gutted them, I thought about the money I’d given the cabdriver, a stupid, spiteful, pointless, empty gesture I’d made out of a sense of nettled pride. It was ironic, I thought without any amusement whatsoever, that love brought out my basest qualities, whereas indifference made me noble. Or did it? Was I ever noble? Well, I’d ended my affair with John, for example, which I couldn’t have done if I weren’t indifferent to him. But I obviously wasn’t the least bit indifferent to him, and ending an adulterous affair couldn’t really be considered noble because it only righted an imbalance. God, I made myself weary with endless quibbles and justifications and regrets. My moral terrain was an unnavigable swamp.

All right, I thought, let’s get it over with. I marched grimly across the park with my eyes on my shoes, oblivious of the birdsong, the sweet, sun-filled air. I didn’t get to her building until nearly a quarter to ten.

“Claudia!” she said when I came in and found her in the foyer, as if she had been lying in wait for me. “Am I glad to see you! I was afraid you’d misunderstood me and you weren’t coming.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t come right at nine, but I thought you might want to—”

“Come and meet Goldie,” she said, taking my arm and leading me into the dining room as if I’d never been in there before. “Goldie, this is Claudia. She’ll help with anything you need to know. She knows everything and she’s invaluable, this girl.”

She hadn’t read a word, I thought with a profound relief as heady as a swallow of cognac.

“Hello, Claudia,” said Goldie, striding over the carpet toward me, giving me a robust handshake. She looked like an apple. She was just over five feet tall and wore a bright red suit with matching pumps. Her torso in its neat blouse and jacket was a solid squat cylinder, her chest and stomach clocking in at about the same circumference; her calf muscles, encased in beige panty hose, were wide and round. Her hair was cut in a saucy, hennaed shag. She had set up the desk in a different spot from the one where I always put it. I could smell her perfume.

“Hi, Goldie,” I said with a brilliant smile. “How’s it going?”

“Yes, you two figure everything out,” said Jackie, and backed out of the room as awkwardly as I’d ever seen her do anything. “I’ll be in my room if you need me.”

Jackie’s whole apartment seemed different today, both brighter and shabbier. Goldie generated a mood of hard-nosed reality, a bright, commonsensical cheer that made the hand-painted wallpaper look dreary, the peeling gilt chairs spindly and impractical. The catchpenny effrontery of her perfume made the atmosphere in here seem slumbrous and old-ladyish. “Have you been able to find everything you need?” I asked her.

“This is not exactly rocket science,” she answered with a quick sideways flip of her hand. “Jackie told me she wanted some new chair cushions, I called around and ordered her some. She wanted me to straighten up the supplies, I straightened them up. She doesn’t like me and I don’t like her, don’t get me started, but as far as the job goes, it’s a breeze.”

“Good,” I said. “I’m glad you think so.”

“She’s a fruitcake, isn’t she? I know I’m not telling you
anything you don’t already know. And I’ve worked for some real whack jobs, I could tell you stories.”

I laughed.

“Let’s see. Her accounts, I just glanced at them, they’re all falsified, am I right? You make it all up? I need to meet with her accountant. His number’s in the little red book here?”

“It’s a she,” I said. “Her name is Doris Loewenstein.”

“Get out! Doris Loewenstein from Canarsie?”

“I think she lives in Westchester.”

“I don’t care where she lives now, she’s from Canarsie if she’s the Doris I’m thinking of. About my age, forty-five, with a nose like a vacuum-cleaner attachment?”

“Could be her,” I allowed.

“I’m gonna call her right now. Thanks for your help, Claudia, nice to meet you.”

What help? She needed no help. In her first forty-five minutes on the job, Goldie had come in, sized Jackie up and taken over. My naive dim-wittedness on my first day struck me now as insufferably anemic.

I headed down the hall to Jackie’s bedroom, inhaled deeply, squared my shoulders and sailed in. She was at her vanity table with her hands poised in midair, one holding a small porcelain pot, the other brandishing a tiny brush. Her face was frozen in the careful, alert amusement of a mime.

“Oh, hello, Claudia,” she said, meeting my eyes in the mirror. “How is that girl working out?”

“Fine,” I said. I sat down on the very chair I’d sat in on Friday to contemplate the potential fallout from murdering her. It was strange to remember that now; I was a whole other person today than the one who’d stolen her watch and sweater and guzzled her whiskey.

Jackie leaned back, examined herself carefully from every angle. She rubbed her lips together, then opened her mouth wide and carefully removed a stray fleck with her pinky nail from the corner of her mouth. “Well, we’ve certainly had a difficult time of it lately, haven’t we?”