Alligators in the Trees (21 page)

When she exited the bank almost thirty minutes later, she was surprised to find his limousine still parked where they had left it. The chauffer sprang out of the driver’s seat like he was ejected as soon as she was within ten feet of the vehicle, opening the door without daring to make eye contact with her.

“I thought you’d have left by now,” Priscilla said as she climbed into the backseat. Tobias was positioned in the far corner, his body language conveying his intolerance for waiting.

“I told you I’d be waiting for you,” he said coldly.

“I’m sorry, it took a lot longer than I had anticipated.” Tobias seemed unmoved by this explanation.

“Any more stops?” he asked with sarcastic graciousness. Priscilla shook her head. “Back to that address on Church Street,” he instructed the driver, folding his arms across his chest, his gaze taking in the sights of passing traffic.

As Priscilla sat rigidly on the plush seat, she suddenly became annoyed—annoyed by the way he was now treating her, and annoyed that she found herself having to take it. How she managed to end up on the receiving end of Tobias Jordan’s bad humor, she’d never know. Why hadn’t she just told him to take a hike when he came snooping around her apartment building? And what the hell was he doing there in the first place?

She had been so stunned by what had taken place afterward, she neglected to pin him down on that point. She glared at him out of the corner of her eye, trying to figure out what had caused the abrupt change in him. Mercurial celebrities—who needs ‘em?

“I think I’ll get out here,” she said, as indignation took control. Tobias looked over in mild alarm. “You can tell your driver to pull over at the corner,” she said, watching their progress out her side window.

“It’s no problem to take you back to your place—”

“No… that’s way out of your way. Tell him to pull over,” Priscilla insisted. Tobias did as she instructed, though he hadn’t given up on persuading her to stay aboard.

“Really, it’s no trouble to take you back…I’ve got nothing better to do right now,” he said.

“Yeah, right. You’ve been more than accommodating. Besides, I don’t mind the walk.”

“You were practically dead on your feet when I picked you up,” he countered.

“Well, I feel surprisingly peppy now. Must be that fresh infusion of cold hard cash,” she said, moving toward the door as the car docked at the curb.

“Wait…” Tobias said, an inexplicable urgency entering his voice. Priscilla turned back to him, waiting. “It feels funny leaving things this way. Why don’t we go have a drink somewhere, or something?” Priscilla got a mental flash of Tobias struggling to maintain a low profile in a very public place like a bar, and passed on the offer.

“Thanks, but I’ve got a lot of things to take care of before five.”

“Then let me drop you somewhere,” Tobias argued.

“No, this is fine here,” she said, opening the door before the chauffer could get out of his seat. “Thanks for…relieving me of my lyrics,” Priscilla said with a strange laugh, the whole situation striking her as surreal. Tobias scooted over toward her as she pushed the door shut, blocking her attempt at closing it. Only his face and right arm were visible as he tried to stall her.

“You know, I was really hoping to have a chance to talk to you about your work,” he said, his tone a complete departure from five minutes earlier. Priscilla remained unmoved by his solicitation. She gave him a half-smile and shrugged as if to say “oh, well.” She looked up and down the avenue, obviously antsy to get going.

“Let me ask you one question, and then maybe we can get together some other time…to discuss your work.”

Priscilla didn’t bother to enlighten him on her imminent travel plans. She shifted her feet and clutched her purse tighter to her side.

“Are you a musician?” Tobias asked. Priscilla shook her head. “No musical background, then?”

“No,” Priscilla confirmed.

“Then, why is it that you refer to your work as lyrics instead of poetry?” Priscilla smiled wanly.

“Because I hear the music to every line I write,” she said.

“Really? But you don’t know how to read or write music?”

Priscilla shook her head again. “No, there’s the rub,” she said. “I hear the words and I hear the music, but the songs will never be played anywhere outside of my head.”

Tobias regarded her solemnly for a moment. “Have you ever thought of studying music? All that stuff can be learned, you know.”

Priscilla’s eyes darted back and forth over the top of the limousine. “I’m sorry, I’ve really got to get going.”

“Why were you going to burn your work?” Tobias asked. Priscilla tried to penetrate the dark lenses of Tobias’s glasses as he fixed her with an enigmatic gaze.

Giving up, she backed away slowly, then walked in the opposite direction of the traffic, disappearing around the corner before Tobias could act. He slid back against the seat, anxiously contemplating this encounter for a few seconds before telling his driver to circle the block.

Tobias’s eyes flitted nervously from side to side as he scanned the sidewalks for sight of her. When they had completed the loop, the driver requested further instructions. Without thinking, as if it were an involuntary reaction, Tobias gave Simone’s address.

As the driver maneuvered the long vehicle to the far left lane and turned back in the direction of uptown, Tobias acknowledged that sometimes the physical needs are easier to satisfy than the cerebral.

“How was school today, Pumpkin?” Philip asked as he lined up to exit the school parking lot.

“It was pretty good,” Caitlin replied as she rummaged through her backpack. “I got an A on my math test,” she added, producing the wrinkled evidence for her father’s praise.

“Good job, Tiger! See, I knew you could do it. Well, this is terrific news. I think we need to celebrate, don’t you?” Caitlin was all for this idea. She bobbed her head so enthusiastically, her entire body shook along with it. “What would you like to do, then? You name it—the sky’s the limit.”

“I want to go bowling,” she answered unequivocally. Philip looked at her askance.

“Bowling?”

“Yes, and I want Priscilla to come with us,” she said, with all the confidence of a child used to getting what she wants.

“Oh, I see. And what exactly makes you think Priscilla would like to go bowling with us?”

“She likes to go bowling. I heard her talking about it at the coffee shop one day.”

“Did you, now?” Philip devoted his attention to making a left hand turn, just squeaking past the oncoming traffic.

“Well, can we?”

“Can we what?”

“Can we call Priscilla and ask her to come bowling with us?”

Philip glanced over at his daughter’s determined face. “I don’t have her phone number.”

“How come? You went on a date with her.”

“It wasn’t really a date,” Philip hedged.

“Yeah, but you
went out
with her,” Caitlin insisted.

“We’re just friends,” Philip explained.

“I have all my friends’ phone numbers.”

Philip took a deep breath. “Well, I don’t have Priscilla’s.” He was hoping that would put an end to the matter. He should have known better.

“Let’s go by her house then.”

Philip was beginning to regret having kept his daughter abreast of his budding relationship. “I don’t know where she lives.”

Caitlin was clearly pained by this admission. She drew a deep sigh, as if to say her father was beyond hope. “Let’s go by the coffee shop then,” she suggested.

“It’s closed now. Besides, I already told you—she doesn’t work there anymore.”

“Why not?”

“She quit, remember.”

“How are we ever going to see her again?” she asked, distressed by their dilemma.

Philip had been pondering the same question all day. “She has my phone numbers. We’ll just have to wait for her to call us.” Caitlin settled back in her seat and turned her face toward the window. Her arms were crossed and her expression was dour. Philip felt guilty for letting her down.

“Okay, so, we need a backup plan,” Philip said, trying to get Caitlin’s mind off her disappointment. “If Priscilla doesn’t call us anytime soon, what would be your second choice?”

“I want to go somewhere and have pigs in blankets,” she said without hesitation.

“You really like those, don’t you? But it’s not really something served for dinner,” Philip said as he wondered where in the city he could find a place still serving breakfast.

“Yes it is. Randall Humpfries’ nanny makes him pancakes for dinner anytime he wants it. French toast, too,” Caitlin said, with more snippiness than Philip liked to hear.

“All right, then—we’ll find a place that’s serves pigs in blankets for dinner. Or I’ll make them myself.”

Caitlin regarded him skeptically. “You can’t make pigs in blankets. That’s restaurant food.”

“I can make pigs in blankets. There’s nothing to it,” Philip said. Somewhat appeased by this promise, Caitlin turned on the CD player and wagged her head back and forth to the music. Suddenly, Philip’s cell phone rang, startling them both. Caitlin was quick to reach for it, answering it before Philip could protest.

“Hi,” she said into the phone. “Who’s this?”

Priscilla had not expected to hear a child’s voice on the other end. An announcement came over the PA system and Priscilla had to press her finger to her ear to hear anything.

“Hi, this is Priscilla. Is this Caitlin?” Caitlin held her hand over the phone, her eyes bulging as she mouthed the caller’s identity to her father.

“Let me have the phone,” Philip said, letting his attention wander away from the road, eliciting strenuous horn blaring as he strayed out of his lane.

“Where are you? It sounds very noisy,” Caitlin managed to ask before her father wrenched the phone away from her.

“Priscilla? Hi, it’s Philip
.”

“Hi Phil,” Priscilla said, instantly regretting not leaving him a voicemail message on his business phone. It would have been so easy, yet she found herself unable to speak once the beep sounded. She owed him more than a one-sided goodbye; after all, he had been her ticket to a new life.

“What a coincidence that you should call now. We were just talking about you.”

“Is that right?”

“Yep, Caitlin got an A on her math test today and she wanted to celebrate by going bowling with you. Isn’t that funny?”

“Yeah, that is funny,” Priscilla agreed, though she wasn’t in the right frame of mind to appreciate the humor of it. Another departure was announced, making communication temporarily impossible.

“It sounds like you’re at Grand Central,” Philip said once they were able to converse again.

“Penn Station, actually.”

“Oh.”

“The reason I called is to tell you I’m going to Florida tonight and I won’t be coming back.” Priscilla couldn’t tell if he was still there or if they had been disconnected. “Can you hear me?” she asked.

“Yes, I can hear you.” Philip’s voice was clear, but at the same time, it sounded very remote.

“I just wanted to call and say goodbye and let you know how much I enjoyed having met you.”

“Why Florida? Why are you moving away? Is it because you lost your job here? I can make some calls and find you something much better. Let me help you. It’s really my fault you’re not working there anymore,” Philip said, speaking low in a futile effort to escape Caitlin’s keen interest.

“It’s not the job issue. I need a change of scenery, that’s all. I’ve been in the city too long,” Priscilla said.

“Wait a second—don’t hang up! I need to pull over,” Philip said, dropping the phone to his lap as he maneuvered his SUV across three lanes of traffic to secure a parking place.

“Daddy, those cars are honking at us,” Caitlin said, excited by her father’s reckless conduct.

“Stay here,” he said to Caitlin, as he hopped out into the street. “Are you still there?” Philip said anxiously into his cell phone.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Priscilla assured him.

“Look, you stay right where you are. We’ll come to you.”

“No, Phil, don’t do that. My train leaves in forty-five minutes.”

“You can’t get on it. You can’t leave until we’ve had a chance to talk.”

Priscilla hung her head, silently cursing herself for making this call. She could’ve just as easily boarded her train and sidestepped this whole scene altogether. But no, she had a flaw in her personality that compelled her to do what was decidedly not in her best interest.

“Phil, please. I’m getting on the train and I’m going to Florida.”

“Priscilla, you can’t. I need to see you again.”

Despite her irritation, Priscilla was moved by the plaintive tone in his voice. After all, how many people did she have in her life who felt so strongly about her? It wasn’t a question she had to ponder for long. She let her mind wander to the external white noise surrounding her. The chaos of it comforted her.

“Priscilla…listen… I’ve got a proposal for you. If you wait one week, just one week, I’ll reimburse you your train fare and fly you to Florida, first class, if you still want to go. But you’ve got to let me see you again. I…I care about you very much. I care what happens to you, and I’m not going to be all right with your leaving without the opportunity of trying to talk you out of it. You’ve got to listen to me, just for a little while. I’ve got some pretty persuasive arguments for why you need to stay here in the city. Just give me one week to change your mind.”

“No. I can’t stay in the city another week. I’m ready to go and I want to get out of here. As much as I like you, Phil, I doubt there is anything you can say or do to change my mind about leaving.”

“All right, three days then. Surely you can postpone your departure that long. It’ll take you almost that long to get to Florida by train, so you’re not really losing any time,” Philip said, turning on the hard sell. Priscilla hesitated, just long enough for Philip to go in for the close.

“What do you say? Let us pick you up at Penn Station. I’ll be your personal chauffer, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. Out to dinner, or… maybe go bowling,” Philip said, as he got back behind the wheel. “Or we could go have pizza—”

“Pizza!” Caitlin enthusiastically endorsed.

“and beer. Whatever you want.”

“Beer, yuck!” Caitlin said, earning a swipe from her father.

“Shhh,” Philip said, covering the phone with his hand. “Anyway, the point is I think this is a rash decision and I think you need someone to talk it over with before you just pick up and leave your entire life behind.”

Priscilla closed her eyes and counted to ten. She was doomed to a circuitous hell, where she chased herself in circles as she tried to prevent the inevitable. She no more felt like bowling at that particular moment than she felt like hitchhiking all the way to Florida. Nor did she particularly feel like company. All she wanted was to cocoon herself away in her reserved sleeper compartment and chug off into the sunset. But all of that didn’t stop her from caving in to Philip’s pleas.

“Look, you and Caitlin can come and get me and we’ll hang out for while, but I fully intend to get on a train at some point tonight.” She vaguely remembered seeing a departure around 9:00, and cavalierly assumed she could get on it. In any event, she had to leave that evening since she had no place to stay. She had turned her keys over to her landlady, giving her a month’s rent in lieu of a thirty-day notice, which seemed extravagant in retrospect. Now she was officially homeless. It was Florida or bust.

Priscilla’s plan may have been a compromise on her end, but it was the prayed-for reprieve for Philip. He high-fived his daughter, and with his free hand, shifted out of park and assimilated into the flow of traffic.

“We’re on our way. Can you meet us at the main entrance on Seventh? We should be there in a few minutes.”

“All right. I’ll be there,” Priscilla said with heavy heart.

“Thank you. You won’t regret it.”

Priscilla replaced the receiver, the reality of what she had just done slowly sinking in. She felt like a prisoner who spends years tunneling to freedom, only to turn around and walk back through the prison gates. Would there ever come a day when she put her own desires ahead of others’?

“Dad, can I have one of your pepperonis?” Caitlin asked after she had picked off all of her own. Philip extracted all the pieces remaining on his plate and placed them on top of her ravaged slice of pizza.

“But why did you pick Florida, if you’ve never even been there? How do you know you’d like it there? It doesn’t strike me as your kind of place at all,” he said to Priscilla, who was taking methodical sips of her beer.

“It’s warmer there,” she said with a shrug, as if no other explanation was necessary.

“True, but winter’s over now, and you’ve got all of spring, summer and fall to enjoy here. Besides, you’ve been a New Yorker too long to not to miss the changing of the seasons. Sure, Florida has good weather, when it’s not having hurricanes, but all that sunshine would become monotonous after a while,” he said, topping both their beer mugs from the plastic pitcher.

“Spoken like a true city snob,” Priscilla commented, mildly amused by Phil’s anti-Florida campaign.

“And anyway, you’d miss the people. New Yorkers are a special breed. Where else can you find such open honesty? New Yorkers don’t mince their words. I think you’d really miss that.”

“You mean the special brand of rudeness that passes for communication here? I don’t think so. Besides, from what I understand, there is no shortage of former New Yorkers in the Sunshine State,” Priscilla reminded him, as she ate her pizza in the same fashion as Caitlin, one pepperoni at a time.

“It’s not the same thing. The people who move from New York to Florida do so because they’re giving up on life.” Priscilla grunted at this shameful tactic. “No, it’s true—think about it. When they lived here, they were accountants, firemen, schoolteachers, businessmen, doctors, nurses—you name it. But when they move to Florida, all they seem to care about is playing golf and getting melanoma.”

Priscilla smiled, despite herself. “That’s because they’re retired,” she said, defusing his argument.

“That’s my point exactly. Do you really want to hang out with a bunch of retirees?” Priscilla arched her brows but otherwise let that question go unanswered.

“Daddy, can I have some money for a video game?” Caitlin asked. She had abandoned all pretense of eating now and had been practicing dubious tricks with her straw.

“You haven’t eaten all your pizza yet,” Philip said, instantly recognizing the old ploy of dismembering one’s food to make it look insignificant.

“I ate all the good bits.”

“Eat it all,” Philip said.

“I’m too full,” Caitlin claimed, groaning at the sight of her mangled pizza.

“Here, eat this much, then you can go play videos,” he said, dividing the remains of her slice in two. “You know, it’s very unsafe on the streets in Florida—no, I’m serious. All those aging retirees driving about all willy-nilly, barely able to see out of those huge dark glasses they have to wear because of the cataracts caused by all that relentless sunshine.”