Claudia Silver to the Rescue (9780547985602) (21 page)

Paul's eyes crinkled as he smiled, sadly. “‘I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now,'” he quoted. “Do you know that one?”

“Oh my God,” said Claudia.

Paul sat at the edge of his desk, bringing himself to eye level. He had done Outward Bound, twice, and was well familiar with the theory of “leave only footprints.” But he
liked
to leave a trace. “Let the adults do their job, Claudia,” he said. “Let them clean up their own mess.”

The place on Montauk. The rented sedan, askew in the pebbled driveway. The slam of the screen door as they brought their bags into the big yellow kitchen. A pair of stiff drinks. Placing the grocery order for delivery from town. Egg noodles and pork chops wrapped in butcher paper, a peach pie. Paul talks to his lawyer in low tones in the den, pacing in a cabled cardigan. Much later, a walk along the beach, huddled together against the wind. “But
we
are the mess, Paul,” Claudia insisted. She let the fucking tears crawl. There was only the distant hum of climate control. “I have a job interview,” she added, quietly.

“Claudia,” Paul said, with the tender awe of the deeply relieved. “It's over. You see that.”

“No,”
she growled.

Paul rose from the corner of his desk and dug for his wallet. He peeled off a pair of hundreds. “Here,” he said.

“You want to
pay
me?” she asked. Somehow, it was what she'd always wanted. But not like this.

“I want you to take a taxi,” he said. “And I want you to let me be the one to tell Bronwyn.” Two hundred dollars dangled from his fingers.

“I wish I could help you,” Claudia replied, as the bills lifted in the slight, manufactured breeze. “But you know how my big mouth gets me into trouble.”

 

Annie Tate rode the uptown 1 train to Paul's office. Finding her reflection in the dark oblong window across the aisle, she was surprised to discover that her sunglasses, pushed up on her head, made her blond bob look rather
triangular.
So Annie lowered them to cover her eyes, remembering full well that Paul disdained the wearing of sunglasses inside. She realized she could now grow her hair very, very,
very
long, like the partner's wife she'd met at one of those dinners, who'd removed herself to lower Westchester to devote herself full-time to Japanese ceramics. She'd had long, rough hair like a horse's tail, part schoolgirl, part crone, the roots utterly gray, the tips frayed honeyed vestiges, her tedious monthly appointments at Garren a memory.

That poor woman,
Annie had thought of her then. But now, with this morning's predawn turn of events, she seemed more like a role model, standing knee-deep on her South Salem property in Wellies, with all that hair pulled back unflatteringly in a tortoiseshell clip, tending to a fiery earthen kiln of some sort.

A woman might make art, Annie now realized, in lieu of burning the whole house down.

Despite her shawl and her coat, Annie was absolutely freezing. She glanced down and realized that while she had successfully brushed her teeth and hair, moisturized, and applied eight-hour cream to her eyelids and lips, she was still wearing her old sweatpants and her even older leather sandals.

Leather sandals, on the subway, in the dead of winter.

Scanning the car, Annie trusted that nobody noticed, and that those who did would take one look at her toes, frozen stiff but clean, pink, and groomed, and rest assured that she was not a homeless woman. The train rattled along under Fourteenth Street. She could get out at Twenty-Third, walk to Barneys, and buy a terrific pair of boots costing what other women spend on rent. But instead, Annie, having negotiated a multitude of cold, dirty puddles, flapped into the lobby of Golden Fenwick Tate Stein and Lowe with dirty feet, and the hem of her sweatpants soaked black in places. The receptionist was now fully installed and alert behind her battlement. Many times before she'd welcomed Annie, sweeping in on Ferragamos with baskets of muffins, but was now silenced by her glare as Annie stalked past. Moving quickly, the receptionist dialed Paul's direct line. He'd just pulled a fresh shirt from a tidy pastel pile, stacked in a drawer. “Your wife is on her way,” the receptionist announced from the intercom.

Paul shook the shirt loose from the French hand laundry's wrapping. “She called?” he asked.

“Now. Down the
hall,
” she clarified. Then: “I couldn't stop her, Mr. Tate.”

 

Claudia came around the corner and froze. A few feet away, freshly shampooed, with a knotted plaid scarf tucked neatly into the lapels of her princess-seamed car coat and her one plain cruller in a spotted paper bag, Kelly Welch was letting herself into her office. Kelly paused and took Claudia in. The strange layered outfit that seemed part pajama, the splotchy face with its emotional nose, the cockeyed hat. Kelly tilted her head, then narrowed her eyes.

“Do you want to come in?” Kelly asked.

Claudia most definitely did not. But it was then that she heard, from around a corner, on a determined wind, the flapping of old leather sandals, followed by Carter Kemp's unseen voice, garbled with a mouthful of old, cold sesame noodles. “Hey, Mrs. Tate,” Claudia was quite certain she heard Carter say. Suddenly, Kelly's office would do quite nicely.

Kelly's desk lamp was lit, casting her in an eerie spotlight and throwing her windowless territory into shadow. Despite the optimistic time of morning, the fresh sun had suddenly set behind the frisky debutante's eyes, leaving her zombified. “Close the door,” Kelly said, depositing her wraps on the coatrack.

Claudia acquiesced, but hit the wall switch in self-defense. It was an insulting light, but made the office less of an interrogation cell. “Can I ask what you're doing here?” Kelly demanded.

“Absolutely,” Claudia replied, then stood silently, one ear on the corridor, preparing to bolt.

“Well?” Kelly insisted.

“I said you can ask me,” Claudia qualified. “I didn't say I'd tell you.”

Kelly's expression darkened. “Sadly for you, you're not nearly as clever as you think you are.”

“That's a relief, actually,” said Claudia.

Kelly hooked a finger into the stretchy plastic spiral pushed high on the sleeve of her silk blouse. “He's done with you, isn't he?” she demanded, freeing the dangling key with the deliberate pace of a striptease. The key fit into a locked desk drawer, a file folder was removed. “That was fast,” Kelly remarked as she slid the folder across her desk.

Claudia hesitated. Did Kelly have incriminating images of her afternoon delights with Paul, hot from the one-hour place on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth Street? If that's what they were, Claudia didn't want to see them. They'd be crime scene photos, now.

Claudia approached the desk and opened the file.

Inside the folder were drawings, rendered in a familiar hand. Claudia glanced up at Kelly, letting a sigh escape. “Paul gave these to you?”

“No,” Kelly replied. “I took them. They used to be a consolation prize. But now they're ammunition.”

Claudia sighed.
Well,
that
fucking sucked.

Kelly in her half-slip, furtively stuffing sketches into her monogrammed tote bag while Paul hummed in the shower. Kelly thinking, as Claudia had, that she'd bagged a Paul Tate original. Claudia following in the trail of Kelly's flowered underpants.

“Someday,” Kelly was saying, “there'll be a class action lawsuit. If you actually think you're Paul Tate's first little trinket, then I feel even sorrier for you.”

“And if you think Paul made those sketches,” Claudia advised, “you're what my people call a
suckah.
”

The folder just sat there between them.

“What's
that
supposed to mean?” Kelly demanded.

Claudia considered Kelly, the heartbroken set of her mouth that would lead to a softening of the jowls over time. Of
course,
there had been more. There would be more,
even
now.
A Cecilia, or a Greta, or a Dale—a long trail of stale bread crumbs snaking around the city that Paul retraced each night to his corner bedroom in the Anselmo.

“Paul's
wife
is the painter,” Claudia explained. “He steals from her. It's kind of like wearing her underwear.”

“I don't understand,” Kelly doubted, returning the folder to the drawer and the key to her body. “Why would he lie about
that?
”

“Because
his
art form is pussy,” said Claudia, from the doorway. Then: “Door opened or closed?” She didn't linger for the answer.

 

Annie had hoped to storm Paul's inner sanctum, as he had sullied hers, perhaps sweeping the framed family photos from the mahogany shelves with a swipe of her forearm. Infuriatingly, Paul now emerged from his outer office just as Annie approached it, his greatcoat billowing grandly as he slid into its sleeves.

“Hi,” Paul said to his wife, his voice already lowered. He ducked toward her automatically, pecking her cheek. “Let's go for a walk, okay?” He set off immediately for the elevator as Kelly Welch passed by.

“Well hello, Mrs. Tate!” Kelly chirped as she approached Annie. Annie, who'd never in her life made a rude gesture to a living soul, experimented quietly by extending her middle finger—in her pocket—to this sunny little chipmunk. “To what do we owe the honor this morning?”

“I'm sure you've fucked him, too,” Annie muttered to the girl as they passed each other. She heard an anxious, musical sound and realized she was giggling. Whatever her midnight rendezvous with Claudia had stripped from her, Annie recognized, with due respect, that the girl had bestowed something as well. It turned out, Annie realized, that she had a sharp wit, after all. It was
in
there—she'd simply mistaken it for
worrying about being a bitch.

Annie stood her ground and waited until Paul reached the elevator bank. “So there I was at your love shack,” she began, loudly. She didn't care who heard. “I mean, my studio.”

When the elevator arrived Paul thrust his arm in to hold open the doors, glaring at Annie with hurt. She hesitated, then approached. His wife looked very short today. He couldn't stand when she wore her sunglasses inside. The elevator was thankfully empty. Paul stared straight ahead as the doors closed.

Annie considered the side of Paul's face as he set his jaw. From this angle, she could see not just the young man with whom she'd gotten pregnant at the Head of the Charles, but the demanding toddler. “I had a visit in the middle of the night,” she continued. “From your little friend.”

“And who would that be?” Paul asked.

“Claudia Silver.”

Paul seemed to be methodically scrolling through every class picture Annie had ever dutifully organized in leather storage boxes. She watched her husband in deep concentration and had to marvel at his ability to pretend he didn't remember something he was actually
fucking.
The elevator arrived in the lobby of Hudson Plaza, and they stepped into the sunny atrium. Paul spotted someone he knew, and his face brightened as he raised his hand in greeting. Then, just as quickly, the hand dropped and the eyes settled into shadow.

“Bronwyn's
roommate?
” he finally asked, disbelievingly.

Paul, Annie recognized in this instant, was truly
incredible.
There was not a flinch, not a flush. Just the coolest pause, the gentlest of hesitations, then a lone sigh. “She says you're in love,” Annie said.

Paul looked around the lobby, bidding an ineffable adieu. “Then she is a very deluded young lady.”

“She's not a young lady.” Annie's purse slid from her shoulder and she let it. “Any more than you are a gentleman.”

Paul brought his eyes back. They traveled his wife of three decades and landed at her horrifying feet. “What are you
wearing?
” he asked.

Annie's incredulity was gaining momentum. “How could you be such an
idiot?
”

“I called my car,” Paul said, gesturing to the world outside. “We should continue this conversation at home.”

“Home,” Annie sniffed, shaking her head with disbelief, “has officially been wrecked.”

Moments later, having cordially greeted Tony, his driver, Paul leaned forward, and with the press of a gloved finger, slid shut the smoked window to the town car's front seat. Annie had quickly dispensed with her tight smile, removing her cold, dirty feet from their sandals and folding them under herself, Indian-style, then pivoting in her seat to face her husband matter-of-factly.

“And why have you been pretending my artwork is yours?” she asked as the car set sail up Eighth Avenue. “Why don't you make your own goddamned pictures? I can't
think
of anything so, so—” Here, she paused to consider. “No, scratch that. I can. I absolutely can.”

Paul seemed absorbed by the view of the passing street. “I hear that you have questions,” he said slowly. “And there has clearly been some confusion. But I can only answer them one at a time.”

“
Listen
to you,” Annie said. She wondered when Paul had stopped seeing her, for clearly he was tracking the passing storefronts where once her face had been.

Paul shifted tracks. “Has Bronwyn told you the story of what's gone on over there? What Claudia and her little sister have been through? It's a terrible situation. The mother has a man living there in the house who's very bad news. The younger one.”

“Phoebe?”

Paul nodded. “Phoebe. Yes. She's basically had to run for her life. She's been living with Claudia and Bronwyn. Sleeping on their
futon.
Did you know that?”

Annie shook her head. “No,” she replied, sick with the pileup of extreme situations to which she'd been oblivious.