Claudia Silver to the Rescue (9780547985602) (27 page)

Edith willed herself to offer thanks for bread.
“Ha motzi lechem min ha'aretz.”

She reminded herself that the front door was
metal.
And that she could make her way down the stairs and out the garden door and over the wonky wall fairly quickly. That as Robbie broke it down, surely Mrs. Parker would take her in. At least to allow her to call the cops. Edith's desperate arrival at her sworn enemy's door would prove Mrs. Parker correct, after all.

Who has given us the fruit of the earth.
What Robbie once was to her.

But what if Mrs. Parker didn't take her in? What if she stood by, ignoring her screams, and allowed Edith's murder, à la Kitty Genovese? Edith tore off a bit of roll and let it dissolve on her tongue, sanctifying her blessing as the buzzer started. It was a terrible shriek, really, reflecting the condition of Edith's innards. She drained the melted puddle of ice from her glass, finding a trace of whiskey in the cool water. Again and again, Robbie bore down on the buzzer. She knew what would come next.

“Edith?”
Indeed, the pounding had begun. Robbie had been so insistent on being the keeper of the keys.
“Edith!”
he cried, as she took a deep breath and drifted from the dining room table, promising herself that she was safe. She crossed through the parlor and approached the window. Robbie's furious shadow danced across the lace curtain. “Edith,” he warned, leaning across the stoop to angle his face to the window. “I know you're the fuck in there, now open up.” There, on top of the mantel, she spotted Davy Locksmith's business card—
THE KEY TO YOUR SECURITY SINCE
1976—slipped it into the front pocket of her corduroy western shirt for strength, and pushed aside the police lock with a clatter. From the little table in the chilly foyer, she plucked the envelope she'd prepared. At the mail slot, she knelt to the tiled floor. Robbie rattled, pounded, and buzzed.

The slot yielded to the pressure of Edith's fingertips. “I . . . ,” she began, speaking through it, hearing the shake in her own voice. “I called Davy Locksmith.”

Robbie crouched before his own side of the mail slot and lowered his voice. “Edith,” he warned, as through the flap in the door, she caught glimpses of his wet teeth and tongue, “you need to open this door and cut the shit.”

“Here.” She slipped the envelope through the slot.

“I want to know what the fuck is going on, Edith. I need to piss, okay?”

“And do you see your bag?” Edith had packed Robbie's duffel bag—the same one he had arrived with, three years ago—with the chamois and denim shirts and work pants and thermals and bandannas and rag wool socks with cheery red toes she had bought for him. She had folded the clothes neatly and placed a few apples and Tiger's Milk bars in the hollows, as though she were sending him off on a school trip to Bear Mountain. She wanted to open the door. She would keep it on the chain, even though his large, lanky frame hurled against it could undo Davy Locksmith's efforts in an instant. She wanted to touch Robbie Burns one more time, just a fingertip. Edith sank on her haunches. Her face crumbled, but Robbie wouldn't see it, or taunt it, because she would not open the door.

“Two hundred fucking
bucks?
” Robbie cried. Edith had been glad the bills were crisp. The door shook as he pummeled it.

“A mother always speaks to her child,”
Annie Tate had said.
“No matter what. A mother speaks to her child her whole life, and then she speaks from the grave. If you don't believe that, down to your bones—if you don't know how to believe that, Edith—”

Edith didn't need every great therapist in New York City.

Just one would do.

She stood, wiped her face with her palms, and crossed from the chilly foyer back into her apartment, fastening the police lock behind her. At the front window, she pulled back the lace curtain. Robbie, frowning, a cigarette dangling, his aviator frames perched on his forehead, had taken a step back and was scanning the façade of the house as though preparing to scale it. “Do you have your bag?” Edith asked him through the crack in the window. He turned in the direction of the dark parlor, Edith's shadowed face a vague silhouette.

“No, Edith,” Robbie replied slowly. “I do not have my fucking bag.”

Ach,
Edith realized. Of course, the bag containing Robbie's Sunday best was gone. She should have known better than to leave a bag of
anything
on a stoop in a neighborhood like this, crawling as it was with unsavories like Benny Crackers. Which left Robbie Burns with the clothes on his back, two hundred dollars, and, of course, the memories.

“You crazy fucking bitch.” No longer yelling, he directed himself matter-of-factly to the dark window, behind which indeed she was frozen, telling herself that Robbie Burns not only was no longer her lover, but he was no longer her problem. “You sad crazy bag of old fucking bones. You think anyone else is ever going to love you?”

Edith knew there may have been another way to go. A conversation of some sort. An accusation, a decision, an explanation. The involvement of the authorities, however one went about that sort of thing. But none of those were among Edith's fortes.

“
I
didn't even fucking love you,” Robbie said.

What Edith knew were endings. This knack for the finite was, currently, her solution.

“I just loved the way you sucked my
dick,
” Robbie said.

Edith closed the window.

She turned on the light.

She walked over to the poster of John Lennon, sagging inside its dusty plastic frame on the exposed brick wall. Taking it down and turning the dead man's face to the wall seemed like the next right thing to do.

 

There were naked girls painted on the walls. Enthusiastic white girls, all of them, kind of sporty, with boobs bigger than Phoebe's own but definitely smaller than Claudia's, playing tag among the vines, drizzling water on themselves in golden light, and generally behaving like a bunch of freaks, as a roomful of rich guys ate their stew, or whatever it was, and ignored them. Phoebe stood in the restaurant's entrance, not exactly sure of what had happened that afternoon, or of what she was doing at Café des Artistes now. She guessed it was probably true what Bronwyn and Holly had said—she was the new face of
Moxy
—but what it all meant, and what she was supposed to do next, and whether she still needed working papers or not, remained unclear. She was
definitely
sure she had no memory what Bronwyn Tate's parents even
looked
like.

“Good evening,” the maitre d' said, scanning the room. “Can I help you find your parents?”

“Actually, I'm looking for somebody else's,” Phoebe replied. “I'm supposed to be meeting the, um, Tates? For dinner? At, I think, eight?”

The maitre d' smiled and nodded. “Yes, of course. Mr. Tate is in the Christy Room.” Phoebe followed him past chatty two-tops that flanked the long, softly lit wooden table at the restaurant's center, decorated richly with tiered pastry platters, potted flowering plants, a brass urn, piles of fresh fruit, and pots of chutney stuck with little spoons. Christmas Eve at the Tates' came back to Phoebe in a rush.
Of course,
the Tates liked this place, because it reminded them of their apartment. If Phoebe ever ate in restaurants a lot, she decided then and there, she'd eat in places that looked
nothing
like where she lived, so she could feel like she'd actually
gone
somewhere. If, she reminded herself, she ever actually
lived
anywhere.

The maitre d' paused at the entrance to the little bar. More naked girls were on the walls in here, too, but the intimate space seemed to calm their wriggling energy. In the center of the small room, an exclusive table for six had been set among the ferns, while at the bar a lone man in a tweed sports coat and jeans peeled a speckled egg, his cuff links glinting. He glanced up, slowly set the egg on a cocktail napkin, and rose from his stool.

“Phoebe.” The warm way he said it, like it was the answer to a question, made her skip directly over whether or not he was Bronwyn's father and go straight to wondering what the hell Claudia had said to Bronwyn's parents about her. She had no idea what his name was, other than Mr. Tate, or whether she was supposed to shake his hand or what. Easily, she gave him a grin. Her smile, as she had now learned, seemed to change people. It did one thing to her face, and something else entirely to the face of the person looking.

“Paul Tate,” he said, taking Phoebe's hand in both of his own.

“Yeah,” said Phoebe. “Hey.”

“But please call me Paul.”

“Okay,” Phoebe agreed, doubting she would ever do that. She figured she'd avoid calling him anything at all.

“We're the first ones here,” Paul said to Phoebe. Using just his fingertips against the small of her back, he steered her, lightly, to the bar. Phoebe found herself on a bar stool, with her peacoat unbuttoned, facing her host. “What would you like?” Paul asked. Scanning the display of gemlike bottles, she wondered briefly if she should remind him she was sixteen.

“How about a kir royale?” Paul suggested before Phoebe could answer, effortlessly securing the bartender's attention. “It's the perfect first cocktail of young ladies everywhere.” If you counted Colt 45, Boone's Apple Farm, Coors Light, Violet Crumble, Owsley blotter and pretty much endless Baggies of dusty shake, then this was most definitely
not
Phoebe's first cocktail. Didn't Mr. Tate remember serving minors in his own living room?

“I expected you to arrive with Bronwyn,” Paul continued. “She said the two of you are going to be working together.”

“I guess.” Phoebe shrugged. “I think it's more like I'm going to be working
for
her, but I'm not really sure, you know, how it all works.”

“Either way,” Paul affirmed, “congratulations are in order.” The champagne cork popped on cue, and the flute was filled.

“Bronwyn had some stuff to do after the shoot,” Phoebe said. “So I came up on my own.”

“I'm impressed,” Paul remarked. “Navigating Manhattan on your own. Given that your family lives in Brooklyn.”

“You know they let us out, right?” said Phoebe.

Paul chuckled.

 

“I'm looking for my sister,” Claudia explained to the approaching maitre d' before he had the chance to inquire. “She's meeting the Tates.” Claudia knew better than to include herself in the coterie, and headed for the Christy Room. “Don't you worry your pretty little head,” she said over her shoulder. “I know where they live.”

Paul sipped his Manhattan as the bartender set down Phoebe's kir, with its snaking ribbon of pink, and plunked in a fresh raspberry. “Bronwyn tells me you're very talented,” Paul was saying to Phoebe, “and that you're going to be the face of her new magazine.”

“I guess.” Phoebe shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Are you looking forward to it?”

“I . . . I'm not sure,” she admitted. “I think I probably have to
do
it first, and then see how I feel.”

“Wise approach,” Paul praised, as Claudia took a tight turn around the prominent wooden table staged with abundant fresh fruit displays in the middle of the main dining room. She grabbed a Bosc pear. She knew she'd never eat at this restaurant again.

The freckled bridge of Phoebe's nose banged against the rim of her glass as she took an awkward sip of her kir. “There's paperwork stuff that isn't really worked out yet,” she admitted to Paul.

Paul leaned in to Phoebe and lowered his voice. “Tilt your chin as you lift the glass,” he instructed. Phoebe did, and things went better. “
There
you go,” he encouraged softly. Then: “Are they giving you a contract?”

“Yeah, um . . . I don't know. But I think I need working papers, and I don't have those yet, so. I need to get my mom to sign, and she's not that psyched on it.” Phoebe sighed. “It's kind of complicated.”

“Yes,” Paul said. “You know, I may be able to help you. Sort out this business with the working papers.”

“Right on.”

“I'm an attorney at Golden Fenwick Tate.” He shifted on his stool, fishing a slim leather case from the inside pocket of his blazer, and removed a business card. “A senior partner.” He held out the card in his fingertips. “I want you to call me.”

It was then that Phoebe's champagne glass exploded. It shot off the side of the bar, having been nailed by the pear Claudia hurled from the doorway of the Christy Room. The pear continued on its reckless, bobbling trajectory to take down a bottle of Goldschlager's. “Jesus!” the bartender cried.

Fuck,
thought Claudia, noticing the Valentine's Day menu handwritten on the mirror as she calmly approached the bar. She'd been aiming for Paul, and briefly regretted never having let Darleen Parker coach her in stickball.

“Hello, Paul, Phoebe.” Claudia glanced at the bartender, now dashing about with a wet rag and a betrayed expression. “Those flakes are actual gold, you know,” she remarked of the glinting cinnamon schnapps, studded with broken glass and spreading everywhere.

“Claudia,” Paul warned, unruffled. The alarmed maitre d' now appeared in the doorway with Annie, Martha, and Agnes Tate. Paul raised a hand to both welcome and halt the group's advance. “I've got this,” he declared. His announcement seemed unlikely to all.

Annie, who'd freshened up, downed a quick vodka, and changed into a belted wool-jersey turtleneck dress, to flaunt the new, million-dollar boots, certainly had no desire to see her husband now, or perhaps ever. She had no interest in enduring a last supper at their former neighborhood haunt. But it would be unfair for Paul's gross mishandling—or,
handling,
more like, HA!—to deprive their youngest girl her due. She took one look at Claudia and closed her eyes. Agnes fixated on her mother's pained expression.