In the Drink (34 page)

I sat heavily in a chair, drained of all my excitement, beset by an uneasy, horrible dread. Here I was again at Jackie’s. I had nowhere to live. How could I ever face William again? What did I have to offer him, or anyone? Nothing had changed, nothing ever would.

The timer bell on the toaster oven went off, and automatically I went into the kitchen and ate steadily for ten or fifteen
minutes. The lasagna gave me an instantaneous resurgence of pure animal energy that translated itself into renewed optimism. I threw away the aluminum container and washed the fork and drank some more champagne, surprised by an unexpected sense of relief, an incongruous hopefulness that swelled until it resembled excitement. Jackie and I were even: sure, she’d forced me to look through all that garbage and treated me like a half-wit and made me write her books for a pittance, but I’d stood up to her and stolen her book and now we could start over with the slate wiped clean. She was going to have a difficult time of it over the next few months, and the least I could do was help her through it. Maybe this time around I’d try to knuckle down and concentrate on getting addresses right and remember to give her all her messages. It seemed worth a try, anyway. Some day I’d get a better job, some day I’d have a better life and be a better person. In the meantime, this was what I had to do.

I went into Jackie’s pantry and got out the laptop, plugged it in and turned it on. I rummaged around in the outer pocket of my backpack until I found the disk, put it into the drive, listed its files and copied the entire book back onto the hard drive.

While the machine clicked and whirred, I dialed William’s work number. Somebody answered briskly, “Cromwell Wharton Dunne.” Whoever it was sounded middle-aged and female and had an old-fashioned Brooklyn accent. For a brief joyful moment I thought it was Goldie.

“I’m trying to reach the office of William Snow,” I said.

“You got it, honey, but he’s out at the moment.”

“Who is this?”

“Oh, I’m just a temp. My name is Rita and I’ll be happy to tell him you’re on the line. Whom should I say is calling?”

“But where’s Elissa?”

“I couldn’t really say; all I can tell you is that he hired me indefinitely, until he finds someone permanent.”

“Please tell him Claudia called,” I said, and hung up, grinning like a jack-o’-lantern.

Then I remembered the phone call my machine had picked up as I fled from my apartment, and dialed my own number to see who it had been. I heard the phone ringing in my empty apartment, heard my own voice inform me that I wasn’t there. After the beep a familiar male voice said, “You can’t hide from me forever, you know. Listen, I’m taking the rest of the day off. No one’s here because it’s Easter week and they’re all playing golf. It’s spring, in case you haven’t noticed. Meet me in Central Park at three o’clock on the hill by the zoo, you know the one I mean. If you’re not there I’ll come and hunt you down, Claudia. If you think I’m kidding you’d better think again. See you there.”

I was light-headed. I wanted to race like a maniac around the whole apartment, knocking things off shelves and upending chairs and flinging around all the dresses I’d just hung up. Instead, I corked the remainder of the champagne and stuck it into a side pocket of my backpack, hid the cat box in Jackie’s shoe closet, whispered good-bye to Delilah and headed for the door.

Just then, it opened.

I froze, prepared to tell Jackie whatever she wanted to hear. I was here to open her mail. I’d thrown out the dead flowers and hung up her dresses. I’d—

Lucia gave a strangled scream when she saw me, then put a hand on her heart and leaned against the table in the foyer.

“Hi, Lucia,” I said effusively; I’d completely forgotten she was staying here. “I’m just on my way out. I’m so sorry I scared you.”

“It’s okay,” she said, recovering a little. I noticed that she
had a tiny diamond in her nostril; Jackie must have hit the roof. Other than that, though, she looked exactly the same: clean-scrubbed and lovely and self-assured. “Your hair! I like. Is very good.”

I touched the top of my head with my fingertips. “Jackie called me this morning,” I told her. “She asked me to come back to work for her, that’s why I’m here.”

“Yes, I know.” She smiled with just enough warmth to acknowledge her happiness at my reinstatement as her aunt’s secretary without inviting me to tell her any of the details. “I owe you for the taxi.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said firmly. “Really.”

She opened her wallet and handed me a five. “Thank you for the, those places you tell me to go. I am having a good time. Jackie doesn’t know where I go.”

“Well, I won’t tell her, don’t worry. Lucia, there’s a cat here. Under the couch. I need to leave her here for a few days. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said calmly, as if cats came to stay under Jackie’s couch all the time. “You want me to do something with her?”

“No, I’m coming in again tomorrow. I just wanted to let you know so you wouldn’t be scared if she jumps out at you.”

“I’m not scared of a cat.”

“You got your nose pierced,” I said.

She laughed. “It’s not real!” She took the diamond out and showed me. “I could never do that! My father would kill me. It’s just for fun.”

“Oh,” I said. I laughed. “All right, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

I rode down in the elevator with a gaunt silent old woman in a black suit and a bell-brimmed straw hat. She stared straight ahead, swallowing with dry effort. In the small descending box our two lives stood apart, not touching.

Ralph stopped me on my way out. “Louie just sent Miss Lucia up,” he said, not meeting my eye, carefully not registering the backpack I was still carrying, the frenzied grin on my face, the faint hint of champagne fumes. There was so much not to notice about me I wondered whether he would be able to manage. “He didn’t tell her that you were up there. He didn’t know.” He looked at me then, to tell me the rest with a glance: he was annoyed at me for putting him in this position, I had crossed the line, but he wasn’t going to rat me out to Jackie.

“Everything’s okay,” I said reassuringly. “I left my cat up there, but I’ll take her before Jackie comes back.”

Seven veils descended over his eyes: he didn’t want to know. He looked around the empty lobby. The mirrors and marble and European oil landscapes stared back at him. A fecund wind slid in from the courtyard and ruffled his ruler-straight bangs. “Okay,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said fervently. I wanted to hug him, which would have horrified both of us.

I departed down Park Avenue with a spring in my step. Tulips grew cheek by jowl in tight squares along the central island of the avenue, forming carpets of waxy petals a foot or so above the ground. Their mouths strained upward in mute, strangulated unison. I crossed the street and picked one and stuck it into my hair. Then I went along a westbound street to Central Park. I entered through a gap in the wall, followed a path through the trees, emerged into a clearing and collapsed in the sun on the hillock where William had told me to meet him. I took his tumbler from my backpack and filled it with champagne, then closed my eyes. I felt my life in pieces around me like an eggshell I’d pecked my way out of. The sunlight glowed rosily on my eyelids; I floated rootless as a milkweed pod
over the roaring grid. The air was alive with chlorophyll and insect wings. Miles away, a pneumatic drill blasted at the foundations of the city. It sounded to my drowsy ears like champagne bubbles against a glass, pop pop pop pop pop, celebrating nothing in particular.