A Certain Age (33 page)

She looked up, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. "Oh yes. He's always late. He said if he was late I should wait inside his place. I got so wet on the way, but I figured you'd let me in to dry off. He's going to be upset if I catch a cold."

"I'm sorry." The doorman was uneasy. "It's just that ... if he had left me a message, verbal, or written . . . Do you happen to know where he is now? You could give him a call and put me on, just to see if that's all right."

"I didn't bring the number with me. I never thought he'd be this late." She knew she should go-—that it was the most pathetic thing she had ever done—but somehow she could not. Determination had glued her to the seat. It was the same kind of compulsion that made fourteen-year-old girls harass some boy by calling him over and over.

At that moment she saw him coming in and she creakily rose to her feet. "Here he is." Relief crossed the doorman's face. They both realized at once that there was a girl with him. Still, that wasn't her problem. "Raffaello!" she called. She tried to sound as if he were of course expecting her.

"What—what are you doing here?"

She averted her gaze from the doorman's baffled expression. "I tried to call, but I think there's something wrong with your phone, and I . . . had to get something from you . . . something important. Didn't you tell me to drop by tonight?"

He didn't respond. She looked up and down at the elegant blonde he was with. The girl was a bit like her, only ten years younger, not overdressed, nor bedraggled and wet, but casually elegant. Still, the girl wasn't anywhere near as interesting-looking as she; she was completely bland, a manufactured android.

"I don't understand," he hissed at last. "What are you doing here, you have no business—"

"I thought . . . after last night . . . Goodness, Raffaello, you told me to come by! I would have been here much earlier, but I had plans I couldn't get out of . . ." She stared patronizingly at the other woman and smiled coyly. "I'm Florence Collins." She put out her hand. The other woman took it disdainfully, flaring her nostrils, and muttered something that might have been her name in return.

"I never told you to come here! You can't just come here, unannounced, and sit for me in wait!"

"You don't have to get so angry! There must have been a misunderstanding, that's all . . . Anyway, I can see you're . . . busy as usual, but I wondered, could I just have a quick word with you? I have to ask you something important."

"Not right now, I'm afraid." She could see he was almost having a nervous breakdown, acting as if she had come after him with a knife. It served him right. "If you like, you can call me—at my office—tomorrow. Now, if you'll excuse us." Raffaello took the

woman's arm and they swept past her and into the elevator. The woman had a triumphant look on her face; how sad and pathetic Florence appeared to her.

"Didn't work out like you expected, huh?" said the doorman in an overly familiar tone.

7

Labor Day weekend passed
neither slowly nor quickly. She could have gone somewhere, she wasn't exactly sure where, but no doubt something would have turned up if she had pursued it—but she didn't want to. She kept thinking about Claudia, wondering if she could have saved her. Can anyone be saved? she wondered. Darryl wanted to save her, but his love felt fabricated, a dream he made up and invested himself in. It had nothing to do with her, she told herself. But the thought failed to comfort her as she contemplated how to fill the long hours of a holiday weekend, stuck in the city.

She rented some videos, ordered in Chinese food, ran in the park and went to the gym. Her membership was due for renewal. She put the fifteen-hundred-dollar fee on her credit card.

New York could be this way sometimes. It was usually on the weekends, but there were times when she might have been living alone on top of a mountain: no one called, there was nothing to do; complete isolation. Then things would get busy again. By now she had learned to ride out the quiet times and not to panic when things suddenly became overwhelming. There was never just one guy she might be interested in: there were three or four, or else none.

On Tuesday morning the phone began ringing. She reached for the receiver. "Hello?" Her voice came out cracked—she hadn't even had a cup of coffee. But she felt vindicated; obviously things were going to begin happening for her now.

"Florence? It's Marge Crowninshield. Are you all right? What's wrong with your voice?"

"Nothing. It just comes out that way sometimes."

"Are you still asleep? Did I wake you?"

"Oh, no, no." She looked at the clock. It was after nine.

"Good. I have to say, I'm afraid I'm extremely upset with you, Florence. I'm going to send a messenger over for the jewelry. He should be there shortly, and I wanted to tell you so you didn't go out. Will you be there?"

"For a little while."

"I've been out of town—I was in Morea for most of August—"

So what? she wanted to say. Even now Marge couldn't resist trying to brag, Florence thought. It was an ingrained habit. Was she supposed to be impressed? And say "wow" or "golly." She was surprised Marge didn't feel it necessary to add that she was going to have lunch at the Four Seasons, or whatever . . . "Well, I should be around for a while. If I have to go out before the messenger comes, I'll leave the stuff with the doorman."

"Please don't leave it with the doorman! Have you always been this irresponsible, or are you just feeling angry with me for having had to let you go? I'm certainly willing to write you a

recommendation, if you like. You must realize there were plenty of reasons why Quayle's couldn't keep you. I did try to give you ample warning to shape up. And now, this! I can't believe you didn't send the jewelry over before now. That poor woman has been calling and calling."

"Well . . . I've been out of town too. The next estate jewelry sale doesn't come up until late October. I assumed if it was needed you would have sent someone to collect it by now." She hung up, none too gently. It wasn't until after she had gone into the kitchenette to make a cup of tea that she remembered some of the jewelry was missing. Maybe no one would notice, after all. The things weren't on her list; she could always say she had never seen them. She didn't know what else to do. The few valuable brooches and rings certainly weren't in the apartment. Anybody could have walked out with them: the cleaning woman, Raffaello, Gideon, the doorman leaving a package.

She felt no guilt—after all, she hadn't done anything, had she?—only fear that it would be discovered, she would be caught, blamed, humiliated and punished. Perhaps there was something wrong with her for not feeling guilty. It wasn't as if she had stolen the stuff, or lost it deliberately. In this instance Marge was the one who should be feeling guilty. If Marge hadn't fired her, she would have brought the jewelry in to work long ago.

She cleared a stack of mail off the table, throwing it on the floor in a pile. Bills, bills—she really had to do something about them, or the next thing she knew her gas and electricity would be cut off. She sipped her mug of tea and honey, trying to shake loose from her headache. She should probably make an appointment with the dentist—maybe she was grinding her teeth in her sleep.

For an hour she searched once more for the missing pieces of jewelry, turning everything upside down in the apartment—although everything already was upside down; she had been through everything a hundred times. It was awful, she was aware of that, stealing from a handicapped widow. It was probably breaking one

of the Ten Commandments. On the other hand, it wasn't her fault. The pendulum of panic swung back and forth.

Finally the doorman buzzed to tell her the messenger had arrived; she had him come up and at the front door handed him the bag. He was a young kid, dressed in baggy jeans and some kind of dumb cap, who peered—it seemed to her—too inquisitively past her for a glimpse of the apartment. If Marge was so concerned, she should have come to collect the things herself, or Sonia.

She was shutting the door when the telephone rang again. It seemed to ring so rarely now, she was startled. "Hello?" Her voice was still a creak.

"Good morning! It's Max Coho calling!"

". . . Hi, Max." She wished she hadn't picked up the phone.

". . . So how are you?" It wasn't just a polite question—he was probing.

"Fine."

"That's good. What's been happening?" It was too early in the morning to hear his sing-song voice, boyish and bubbly. She was almost positive he had heard about the scene with Natalie last night and wanted the details.

"Not much." She'd be damned if she'd confide in him out of the blue.

His disbelief was practically audible. "Actually, I was calling to invite you to be my date tonight at a little dinner for Mike Grunlop—you know Mike, don't you? The painter, and his wife, Peony? It's at their loft. I could pick you up at, say, seven, seven-fifteen. We can go to the opening and go on from there."

"Okay." She didn't want to sound too excited. "How many people are going to be at the dinner?"

"I don't know. Thirty or forty, I should think. The gallery's having it catered. It's for his show. He's got a huge loft. If it doesn't rain, he'll probably have it up on the roof. It's really a fabulous space. See you later!"

How nice of him, that he was going to pick her up and take

her out—it sounded like a pretty good event. Finally somebody was coming through for her. Maybe there would be a single, straight male artist at the party; if he was successful, that was practically the best status symbol a woman in this city could have.

She knew she should have spent the day working on her resume, making phone calls, getting the word out that she was looking for a job. She should have started doing all that long ago. But it was still only the day after Labor Day; nothing would have been happening, no one would be hiring until now. Some people were still getting back from the country. There was no real rush. Anyway, it was all too depressing. If she was really going to have to go out and search for a job, it would help to look her best—for tonight too.

Fortunately, she was able to get an appointment with Enrique. The receptionist of course kept saying he was completely booked, but she insisted she put him on the phone and he agreed to squeeze her in.

The unfortunate part was that although he said he could take her, he had also said the same thing to everyone else. She arrived at the salon at eleven, but by the time she got her color and conditioner and cut, it was almost five. It was unbelievable. This wasn't the first time it had happened, either. Still, they always brought around good sandwiches for lunch, and she was charged only half price—a hundred fifty dollars for the color, the same for the cut—which would have come out to six hundred, not three, so she really couldn't complain. Then she raced home to change.

In one of the bedroom closets she found a short, tight black skirt, crumpled up at the back, and she put this on along with a tight black top that looked more like an exercise bra than a shirt. Then she decided it was too trashy, and panicked until she remembered a really cute dress she hadn't worn in years, sleeveless, a cotton print of black curlicues on white. It was vaguely fifties in style, but tight enough so that it was sexy in a demure way. Nice and girlie, she thought, admiring herself in the mirror. At seven

o'clock the phone rang. "Would you mind terribly if you just met me at the gallery?"

She looked around the room for Max. The gallery was a huge fourth-story space on Fifty-seventh Street off Fifth Avenue, with shiny bleached-white floors, a bartender pouring sweet white wine into plastic cups in front of a crowd of shabby thirty-year-olds dressed mostly in thrift-store finds. The real collectors had seen the work earlier; they didn't come to the opening but would probably be at the dinner. She spotted the little enclave—three demented men in their sixties, known as Mo, Curly and Larry. They were dressed in cheap suits, shoulders covered with dander. Not a single art exhibit in New York took place that they did not attend. They somehow knew about every opening; they were a ubiquitous presence. But whether they came to drink the cheap wine or to continue their endless, futile pursuit of trying to pick up women, no one could be certain.

Curly—the one with the bald head ringed with a frizzy bush of hair at least eight inches long that stuck straight out—spotted her first and headed in her direction like a steer who sees the farmer with a bag of molasses-sweetened grain. She quickly sped past him and into the main room.

There was Alonso Butts—her heart sank and she slunk into a corner to avoid having to speak to him. There had been a going-away party for him when he went to Bali, and another when he came back. That was five years ago. He had conned his way into getting free airfare and the fanciest hotels by claiming he was writing a book. It was doubtful the book had ever been written. Even if it had been, he didn't have a publisher. Now he went every year. If she said hi to him now, he would tell her that he had just gotten back, or was just going. He would once again tell her how beautiful his house was—he rented or had bought a place there— and his vegetarian diet. No animal products: this included sea-life, eggs and dairy. He was particularly suited to a vegetarian diet. He had become purer, calmer. People who consumed milk

and cheese stank of butterfat. In Indonesia, it was easy to be a strict vegan. There was coconut milk, rice and noodles, the diet of the people. Of course, he couldn't tolerate any spices, his stomach was too sensitive, and in Bali that could be a problem, but he was able to afford his own Balinese cook. Bali, Bali, Bali.