A Certain Age (21 page)

she care? She pointed to the piles of stuff. "I think I'm throwing out most of it. I can't lug it all across town." There was a small electric clock-radio in the pile. She could see Marge eyeing it acquisitively. She moved it over into the heap of things she was going to keep.

"What will you do with the things you don't want?" "The stuff I don't want? I'll just put it in my wastebasket." "Really I wish you wouldn't. The staff gets very upset. If there are things you don't want, could you donate them to charity if they're useful, or take them home to throw out with your own rubbish? Hardly any of the cleaning staff is left; they've spoken to me several times about the garbage and recycling situation." Marge was standing in front of a large mirror that Florence had hung on the wall years before. She could see herself just over Marge's shoulder. No wonder Marge hated her and wanted her out. Marge looked like a cartoon character flattened beneath the weight of a falling anvil. Next to her Florence was an exotic flower: slanted, luminous gray eyes, lips permanently fixed in a bemused smile. But that was simply the way her face appeared in repose. Didn't Marge know that the tawny hair and skin, the head perched on the long stem of a neck, were as arbitrary a fact of nature as Marge's own appearance? Inside her were bitter seeds. She was not beautiful on the inside; her exterior was pure luck, and she didn't see why Marge was so determined to punish her for that.

"I'll just take a few things out now, then," Florence said. She picked up as much as she could—her hatboxes, the oversized shopping bags full of stockings, tape cassettes, a few books, some letters—and headed down the stairs. She hailed a taxi and got in. Let Marge or Sonia figure out what to do with the rest of the stuff. As far as she was concerned she was never going to go back. Or . . . perhaps one day, when she had millions and millions of dollars and a famous, rich husband, perhaps then she would tell her driver to stop, sweep upstairs dressed in a baby-blue Chanel suit, looking not a day older, greet Sonia and Marge patronizingly as if she could scarcely remember who they were. She would point to a page in the catalog, a pair of emerald ear clips costing fifty,

sixty thousand—the most expensive item probably ever to come Marge's way—and coolly tell Marge she might be interested. How Marge would scurry to get the item from the case, hover over her, offer her tea, coffee, a glass of wine, the little peppery cheese sticks (ten dollars a pound) that were presented only to the richest and best clients. Then she, Florence, would look at the jewelry, shrug, say, "Who's shooting your catalogs these days? They certainly looked much nicer in the picture." And making it clear that nowadays when buying jewelry she almost always went to Cartier, to Christie's, to Van Cleef's, she would smile, pick up her alligator handbag (the mildest, purest, beautifully glazed baby-blue to match the suit) and show herself out.

The perfectly crisp day had melted. The humidity was rising, the air growing sticky, as if it were a living organism that was aging and becoming irritable. Laden with possessions, crushed in the backseat of the sweaty cab, she stared out the open window at the dead buildings, stacked in the heat like some vast necropolis, while on the street pedestrians shrouded in wrinkled linen suits vanished as the cab passed in a cloud of hot air and exhaust.

7

She changedinto a
pair of tight knee-length exercise pants in gray cotton blend and a tight pink T-shirt. Her jogging shoes took her longer to find; she had kicked them under the sofa after her last run and forgotten where they were. She found her portable radio on the hall table; it was tuned to a black soul station, the music she always listened to while she jogged. She headed toward Central Park, stopping on the way from time to time to stretch. She put her foot at waist level on a lamppost and bent forward, feeling her tendons pull like taffy. For an hour she ran without stopping. It

was the only time she didn't have to think, didn't want to think or need to. It must have been how racehorses felt, simply moving without worry or anguish or reliving events of the past. Every step she took brought her closer to something, though what it was she could not be certain. As if there were something behind her, coming up fast, and her only job was to stay ahead of it or be caught. Maybe she should get a dog, a beast who would love her unconditionally, who would be at the door thrilled to greet her, anxious to hop into bed at night and fall asleep in her arms. The problem was, while she liked the idea, she didn't particularly like dogs— shedding fur, drooling, permanently dirty in a doggy way.

She picked up her pace. The ring around the reservoir was crowded with desperadoes, thudding laboriously in the heat. The obese, the anorexic, the muscle-bound, the inhumanly perfect gay and the soggy straight, dashing headlong in a frenzy. Blind as the mass migration of wildebeest or eland, their heads tossed, lips flecked with custard, eyes rolling as they thunderously pawed the ground. Only Florence ran with such an animal grace—a young lioness or a cheetah—it was impossible not to notice the predator among the herbivores, but somehow lost, charging erratically through the stampede as if she had misplaced her prey.

At last she gave up. It was as if she had temporarily beat herself into submission. She trudged toward home, praying the chant would not begin once again to echo in her head:
What is to become of me? Who was going to want her now?
There was a man standing on the corner of her block and he came eagerly toward her. She didn't have a clue who he was, though he obviously knew her. Just as his face began to crumple with injury, she realized it was John de Jongh. She couldn't imagine what it must be like, to be so amphibious, transmutable in appearance that even women who had slept with you didn't recognize who you were. "Hi, John," she said warily.

"Hello dere! I tried to call, but I think something's wrong with your phone. I was in your neighborhood and just wanted to drop by. It's about that stock that you bought—" He looked around

apprehensively. "Do you mind if I come up? With my luck, somebody I know will bump into us."

"I've just been for a run. I have to take a shower."

"I can see!" He was joking in a way that seemed lewd; it assumed intimacy. He looked her up and down with an assessing, hungry gaze. "I have a few minutes. I can wait. Or, I could join you!"

She could see he was determined to come in with her. Irritation swept over her. It was so rude to stop by without warning. She nearly always hated having people come into her apartment unless it was her own idea. She had no sense of being connected with this man in any way. He seemed to think something had passed between them; dressed in a business suit, navy-blue tropical wool, he slung his arm around her sweaty shoulders. It was all she could do not to kick him in the ankle or step on his instep, clad in its hideous little Gucci loafer of a rich brown color, capped with a snaffle bit. She ducked out from under the arm. "I'm all sweaty! You'll ruin your suit!"

"I don't mind."

The doorman gave her a sneering look. Since when had the doorman in her building begun to sneer? She ignored him as they got into the elevator. There was a message on the wall about a meeting that evening for co-op owners and tenants. "I never go to those dumb things."

John ignored this and slid his hand up under her shirt. "I've been thinking about you all day." He started to reach under her brassiere, but found it impossible—these exercise bras were stiff pieces of flexible rubber, Lycra really, and thank God he wasn't going to be able to get it off. She backed away. "I'm sorry, I can't help myself." He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and took off his glasses, wiping his ruddy face. "I think I'm going crazy. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Natalie has thrown me out of the house; I'm staying at the club. I'm like someone possessed. What have you done to me?"

"John, I—" The elevator stopped and she got out and started

down the hall. He really did seem to have gone crazy. She'd be damned if she slept with him now just to gratify his personal fiction. It had nothing to do with her. She was repulsed. "Listen, I'm really sorry—" she said as she began to unlock her door.

"I didn't want to tell you, I didn't feel you should be burdened with it," he said. He seemed to be waiting for some word of approval from her, or her insistence that he share everything with her, that she felt as he did.

"Well, I'm sorry you're having such a rough time of things now. You had to move into your club? Natalie's out in Bridge-hampton full-time over the summer, isn't she? You couldn't just stay in the apartment in the city?"

"I don't want to talk about myself. Let's talk about you. You know that Derek has so many people wanting to invest in his new restaurant he's not letting anybody else in?"

"Really?"

"Mmm. See, I'm taking care of you. Write me out a check, though, will you, for me to give to him? I want to get it over to him quickly, or you'll get shut out."

He came up behind her and cupped his hands over her breasts. It was all she could do not to turn around and belt him in the face. She shut her eyes for a moment as a wave of pure nausea and hatred swept over her. It wasn't his fault; but she couldn't remember when she had felt so inanimate, as if she were a melon at a market or a silver Victorian cigarette case containing an obscene enamel picture under the lid, an object both coveted and sneered at. "Let me go get my checkbook." She scuttled from his fleshy grasp and grabbed her bag. Quickly she wrote out a check. "So if I wanted, I could sell my share in the restaurant and make a profit?"

"No, no, honestly—he's only doing me a favor because we're old friends. Anyway, you'll be holding on to it for a bit—you want to make some money."

"So who do I make it out to?"

"I guess you should just make it out to me, since I'm business partners with him on this."

"What's the restaurant going to be called anyway?"

"I don't know. I forgot to tell you—if you have a good idea, let me know. Derek's open to suggestions. Maybe we'll call it
Flor
ence!"

She scribbled on the check and began to back away. "I just want to see what came in the mail, John. Help yourself to something to drink!" she called to him from the hall. "I think there's some beer in the refrigerator—or I could make us some ice tea."

"Actually, I'd love a gin and tonic."

"Whatever you can find," she muttered. She hadn't opened her mail in months and she carried it to the coffee table in the living room. At least it would buy her some time—maybe he would get the hint and go away when he saw how much mail there was. He came in the living room and lingered by the door. "So, John, let's say I could come up with some other money—sell some jewelry or something." She separated the items into three piles as she spoke, an excuse not to look at him. "What would be another good thing to invest in?" She didn't really have any decent jewelry, but it was always nice to know in case she unexpectedly won the lottery or found a diamond ring on the street.

"You have some jewelry? You should definitely sell it and invest. There's a small family business I know of—I have it on reasonably good authority it's about to go public. If you can come up with the cash, I can buy some for you on the first day. It will probably triple almost immediately. Back in the mid eighties I bought Bermese Pythion at—I think I paid twelve hundred a share. It's worth thirty-five thousand a share today. But, you understand, I can afford to be a little more daring on these personal investments than I can at the office. Say, ah, where do you keep the gin?"

"Look in the cabinet just opposite the stove." She waved vaguely down the hall. Every envelope she opened seemed to have something from the management—threatening notes about her maintenance payments being overdue. But the maintenance was supposed to be paid automatically through the new program at the bank. Envelope after envelope—"Maintenance Due." "Overdue."

Penalties. Warnings. Letters from lawyers. It looked as if it hadn't been paid in six months—which was about the time she had kind of stopped bothering with the mail, and about the same time she had signed up to have her maintenance and mortgage bills paid electronically. Sickened, she put the mail on the floor. It wasn't her problem, was it? It was the bank's problem: she would go in there tomorrow and let them deal with the situation. She knew she had something left in her savings account, even after writing out the check—perhaps she had thirty. She did the math in her head, mostly by guessing, since she didn't bother to keep a record of checks she wrote out, let alone balance her account.

John came back into the living room holding up a bottle. "There doesn't seem to be a heck of a lot in that cabinet," he said. "A bottle of aquavit? Who drinks that stuff? Obviously nobody, since this and some kind of Peruvian firewater are the only two bottles with anything in them left. I think you had an eighth of an inch in the gin. You have to call up and get these things delivered; they don't just refill themselves!" He laughed uproariously. "Why don't I call up now and order some gin and—what would you like?—shall I tell them to send up a couple of bottles of champagne for you?"

"No." She put her feet up on the coffee table and immediately John circled around and lunged forward, his hand attaching itself between her legs like a suction cup on an octopus's tentacle.

"I could get a restaurant to send up a pitcher of frozen margaritas and some Mexican food," he said. "Would you like that?"

"No!" If there had been a knife handy, she would have picked it up and plunged it into his white button-down shirt. "Get your hands off me! Get out of my house, do you hear me? Get out!"