Full Stop (7 page)

The fountains outside the Met were turned off, apparently for maintenance work. Loretta climbed the graceful stone steps, putting Tracey's problems out of her mind as she reached the top and went inside. In the lofty atrium she heard an eager buzz of conversation in several languages — tour guides briefing their charges, sleek women in gold jewellery discussing where to have lunch, tired children complaining and plucking at their mothers' sleeves. She was surprised by how familiar it all seemed, from the graceful pillars fronting the wide staircase to the great urns of fresh flowers whose sweet perfume floated on the artificially cool air. It was a relief just to escape the clammy late-morning heat, which had drawn out a film of sweat on her bare arms, and Loretta stood for a moment, enjoying the change. She put her hands in the pockets of her trousers and lifted her head, expecting to find Rosa Bonheur's flamboyant canvas of a horse fair, but saw in its place a florid picture which looked like a Tiepolo. A glance round the atrium revealed three others in the same style, a special display Loretta assumed, and she wasted no more time on them. She handed over the $7 entrance fee, clipped a metal badge on the collar of her shirt to show she'd paid, and went upstairs.

She had allowed herself an hour or so before lunch, knowing
from past experience that her senses gradually became exhausted before the visual richness of Ghirlandaio, Bronzino, Giovanni di Paolo. Looking at pictures was like gorging on chocolate, she thought, strolling from room to room, the appetite feeding on itself until quite suddenly it was sated, and nausea threatened. She hadn't quite reached that point when she stopped in front of a Filippo Lippi she hadn't seen before, an unconventional portrait of a couple in profile. The woman's elaborate dress and graceful figure filled most of the frame, literally relegating her husband to the margins, and Loretta wondered whether the unusual composition reflected the woman's superior wealth or rank. There was an unspoken intimacy between the sitters, a hint of a smile on the woman's face which suggested smothered amusement, and Loretta suddenly felt like an intruder on some intensely private moment. She stepped back, uncertain whether the sexual history she had conjectured was really present or had been prompted by her knowledge of the artist's own prodigious carnal appetites. The effect faded with distance, almost as if it cut the painting down to size, and Loretta noticed for the first time that the woman's hands were quite awkwardly depicted. She looked down at her watch, realised she was hungry and decided it was time for lunch.

To get to the ground floor restaurant she had to retrace her steps, a route which took her past a very small Sassetta, the
Journey of the Magi,
which had been almost completely obscured by a party of Japanese tourists when she passed it earlier. This time the room was almost empty and Loretta paused for a moment, entranced by the tiny figures and characteristic Sienese colours — limpid pinks, purplish blues and drab greens. One of the tiny horses carried a brown monkey, so brilliantly rendered that Loretta thought Sassetta must have painted it from life rather than copying it from a bestiary. Absorbed in the painting, she hardly registered soft footfalls until they stopped behind her, so close she could hear — she could
feel-
someone's breath over her right shoulder. She edged to the
left, aware that she had been blocking the approach to the painting and expecting whoever it was to respect the space she had put between them. Instead he moved with her, trapping her between his body and a glass case housing a processional crucifix. She could see his outline reflected in the glass, easily overlapping her own, and for an instant she was paralysed by a claustrophobic sensation of
déja vu
— the memory of a
frotteur
who had pushed up against her on the London Underground. She had been so shocked by the touch of his body on hers, the pressure of his penis pushing into her back on a crowded train, that she failed to react quickly enough and was left shaking and furious when he got off at the next station.

‘Leave me
alone?
,' she gasped, elbowing the stranger out of her way and hurrying into the next room. Once there she stopped short, flooded by a feeling of inadequacy because she hadn't actually confronted him. Wouldn't he just find another victim, some other woman to menace? She hesitated, gripped by indecision, and an attendant approached.

‘Something wrong, miss?'

‘Yes, there was a man –' She glanced back the way she had come, putting her hand up to her mouth. ‘He — I was looking at a picture when he –'

‘He touch you, miss? Is that what you're trying to say?'

‘He didn't — I don't
think
he touched me. But he was so close.'

‘Would you recognise him?'

‘I — yes, no. I didn't really see ... Maybe he's still there.' She plucked at the sleeve of the attendant's uniform, pulling her back the way she had come.

‘There he is,' she said in an agitated whisper, and they both stopped just inside the room.

‘The same guy?'

Loretta peered through the glass case, not entirely sure. The man was leaning forward, bending towards the painting as though he was short-sighted. His height was about right, she thought, or would be when he straightened, but what about the rest: age, clothes, hair colour? She could summon only the
vaguest outline, an impression of someone taller and certainly heavier than herself. There was one way to find out and, pushing aside her doubts, she approached him.

‘Excuse
me.'

He turned to look at her, his eyes screwed up as though he had trouble focusing. Loretta stepped back, registering with shock the disfiguring blotches on his face, Kaposi's Sarcoma, the way he leaned heavily on a stick.

‘This the guy?' The attendant was beside her.

‘No. I'm sorry, I've made a mistake.' She gestured helplessly towards him, not knowing how to make amends.

In a cultured, slightly foreign accent he asked: ‘Is there a problem?'

‘Did you see –' Loretta stopped, appalled by her tactlessness, certain there was something wrong with his eyes. She knew the disease could do that, in its later stages.

The attendant said: ‘You wanna make an official complaint?'

‘God, no,' Loretta said quickly, feeling her cheeks grow red. ‘I'm sorry,' she said again and turned towards the doorway, aware that the museum attendant and the man with the stick were joined together in a tableau of bewilderment. ‘I'm sorry,' she said again, backing towards the exit.

When she got to the stairs she hurried down them, wanting to put as much space as possible between herself and the scene of her embarrassment. She could not imagine how she had come to make such a terrible mistake. It was obvious now that the man's sight was affected and he had only been trying to get a better view of the painting ... She crossed the lobby and entered the Roman section of the museum, hardly noticing wall paintings in eidetic colours over which, in normal circumstances, she would have lingered and exclaimed. In the restaurant she joined a short queue, was shown downstairs to a table and ordered the lightest dish on the menu, pasta with a simple sauce, her appetite deserting her even though she'd only had a cup of tea for breakfast. She couldn't stop thinking about her narrow escape, what would have happened if she'd actually
accused
him —
always assuming, of course, that the thickset figure whose reflection she had seen looming behind her in the glass and the sick man were one and the same. Doubts set in: wouldn't she have noticed the marks on his face, even subliminally? The fact that he needed a stick? Loretta leaned back in her chair, wondering if she'd somehow been fooled ...

After a moment she leaned down and reached inside her bag, pulling out a paperback, the American edition of her biography of Edith Wharton. She had brought it with her because she was due to meet a journalist from
New York
magazine that afternoon. The woman had been vague on the phone but she seemed to be writing an article on Edith Wharton, Martin Scorsese,
The Age of Innocence,
literary adaptations in general ... It seemed a bit late in the day to tackle the subject, the film had been out for months, but Loretta opened the book at the introduction and read the first few lines, taking comfort in their familiarity.

Her food arrived and she ate it mechanically, refusing pudding and asking for a cup of hot tea. She rarely ordered it in American restaurants, they were brilliant at coffee but had a tendency to produce a tea bag dunked in a cup of stale hot water from an
espresso
machine instead of a properly warmed pot of Earl Grey or Darjeeling. Today was no exception and she stirred the teabag violently, still preoccupied by what had happened upstairs. Someone, she was sure, had done research into minor sexual offences like flashing and dirty phone calls; the consensus was that they didn't move on to other, more threatening activities like — well, like following their victims or harassing them in public places. Loretta moved uneasily in her chair, thinking there was always an exception to every rule and if Michael actually knew Toni, rather than dialling her number at random, he would also know her address and where Loretta was staying. She wished she'd brought Donelly's number with her, she had passed a couple of payphones on her way in to the museum, but she had left her notebook at the flat, not thinking for a moment that she might need it.

She had been turning the pages of the introduction with her left hand, not really seeing them, and now she came to the end and read her own name, followed by the date and place she had been living when she revised it for this edition: ‘Oxford, 1991'. She was still clutching the teaspoon in the fingers of her other hand even though she had long ago given up stirring.

The journalist was waiting when Loretta arrived at the Café Noir, rising from a corner by the window and waving to attract her attention. ‘Dr Lawson? Over here.'

Loretta skirted her way between the circular tables, accidentally hooking her bag over a chair back so she had to stop and disentangle it. She shook the journalist's outstretched hand, thinking she looked quite a lot younger than she sounded on the phone. ‘Carole Coryat? How did you recognise me?'

The woman picked up a copy of the book Loretta had been looking at in the museum restaurant. ‘From your cover photo,' she said, even though the picture of Loretta was not a particularly good likeness. She smiled shyly. ‘I can't tell you how pleased I am to meet you. Do you mind sitting alongside me? I usually tape interviews ... Can I get you a drink?'

Loretta glanced at the menu, taking in little more than the fact that it was handwritten in black ink with the day's date at the top. ‘Just a Perrier, please.'

She settled back in her chair, lifting her head so she could see over the lace curtain which obscured the bottom section of the window. The café was on a cross street between Fifth Avenue and Madison, the traffic not as heavy as on the avenues but still busy enough for short queues to form. A woman was getting out of a taxi which had stopped at an awkward angle, blocking two lanes, and there was an instantaneous angry blaring of horns.

‘That's New York for you,' Carole Coryat said, smiling ruefully, and Loretta looked at her. ‘Sorry?'

She gave her head a slight shake, almost as if by doing so she could dislodge her preoccupation with what was going on
outside. Carole Coryat's smile faded, giving way to a puzzled expression, and Loretta tried to look reassuring. The journalist was fair and big-boned, with springy hair held back from her wide forehead by a hairband — the kind Hillary Clinton used to wear before she became First Lady, Loretta thought, and just as unflattering. Her face and neck had the reddish tint of someone who habitually worked outdoors, as though she'd stepped off a farm somewhere in the Mid-West — not at all Loretta's idea of a sophisticated city journalist.

‘How long have you worked for
New York?'
she asked curiously, trying to guess Carole's age. Twenty-one? Certainly not more than a couple of years older than that.

‘I'm not exactly on staff,' Carole said in a rush, ‘but they've used two or three of my pieces since I left college last year and they're very interested in this idea ...' She stopped with obvious relief as a waiter approached, giving her a chance to order an
espresso
for herself and Loretta's mineral water. ‘How do you like New York?' she asked, changing the subject as soon as he returned to the bar. ‘Have you been here before?'

‘Yes, but not for a long time. I only arrived yesterday afternoon so I haven't really had time to look around.' She surveyed the other customers as she spoke, becoming aware that several were speaking French. At a table next to the bar, overlooked by an industrial-sized
espresso
machine, two men had their heads bent over a chess board. An ashtray piled with untipped cigarette butts was testimony to how long they'd been absorbed in the game.

Carole Coryat said: ‘I live on East 62nd Street and I eat lunch here most days ...' She grinned. ‘Some days I help out waiting tables — the owner, Yves, he's a friend of mine, it's a shame he isn't in today or I could introduce you. Sure you aren't hungry? I can recommend the
Salade Niçoise.'

‘No thanks, I had lunch at the Met.' Loretta pushed her hair back from her forehead, feeling a bit sorry for the girl, for her gaucheness and undirected enthusiasm, and guessing there was a very good chance the interview, feature, whatever it was,
wouldn't get printed. It was too late to back out now and she said tiredly: ‘What can I tell you about Edith Wharton?'

Carole reached for a roomy kitbag, all shiny zips and buckles, which she'd dumped on a nearby chair. ‘Let me get this set up,' she said, taking out a Walkman-sized tape recorder and placing it on the table in front of her. She pressed a couple of buttons, picked it up and examined it anxiously. ‘One two three ... testing ... I have a terror of this thing not working, I only just bought it.' She fiddled about some more, played back her own voice, set it on the table again. ‘Are you ready? Um — I don't know how you feel about Scorsese? Did you see the movie?'