Gossip (19 page)

T
HE PHONE DIDN’T RING
until two days later, when I stood at the receiving table sorting through invoices with Alec.

“Someone up here to see you,” Peter announced.

“Right there,” I replied, too distracted to ask who.

“Doodly doodly do-do-doo,” he said, and hung up.

I was tempted to call back, but didn’t. “Wonder what this is about,” I told Alec as I unrolled and buttoned my sleeves. I climbed the stairs toward the fake civility of Mozart on tape.

Nobody waited for me at Peter’s window. I looked in at Peter. On the phone with a customer, he lifted his eyebrows and aimed his finger like a pistol toward Fiction.

Standing with the padded shoulder of an open trench coat squashed against a shelf, a hard briefcase propped beside her running shoes, Nancy suspiciously examined a copy of
Can You Forgive Her?

I was overjoyed that it was her and not Bill, for a second. I cautiously approached. “Nancy?”

“Eck!” She broke into a grin and embraced me. Her coat was cold, her cheeks warm. She’d been by the store many times, but seeing her here today was as startling as a visit from the police.

“What’re you doing in town? You got my message?”

“Oh yeah. Sorry I didn’t call back. But I knew I was coming up for a bigwig lunch today. I thought I’d have time to visit, but the lunch thing dragged on and on.”

“I don’t get off until seven. You free for dinner?”

“Sorry. Kathleen and I are catching the “five o’clock shuttle. I only have an hour.”

“The Senator’s with you?” I worriedly scanned the browsers scattered among the blond woodwork and wallpaper of book spines.

“Nyah. She wanted to go to Saks, if you can believe that. I took a cab down to see if you were free for coffee. I should’ve called?” She sensed my unease and thought it was only her timing.

“Not at all. I can take my break early. Let me get my coat.”

“We can hang out in the basement, if that’s better for you.”

“No, no. Let’s get out of here. Right back.”

Peter produced a sort of shrug with one hand when I walked by, as if wearing a hand puppet who signaled that I had no cause for worry.

I took my coat from my locker and loaded a pocket with the bound galleys. I’d left the book here to avoid rereading and brooding on it at home.

The afternoon was cold but bright. West of the tall buildings and dense shadows along Broadway, the ice patches melted and glittered in the sun. I expected Nancy to drop her cheerful facade once we were outdoors, but she didn’t.

“Lunch at the Harvard Club,” she grumbled. “Miles of smiles and I’m the worst. My ego-petter goes on automatic pilot. I hate these in-and-out visits. I see just enough of New York to get a taste, then it’s back to the hamster wheel.”

Her confidence and energy made me feel that Peter must be right. The bomb in my pocket would only give her a good laugh.

“So how are you?” she asked. “You seem distracted.”

“Didn’t you get my message?”

“Oh yeah. You said you had some dirt?”

“It’s more than dirt.”

“Ralph? Oh.” Concern filled her eyes. “Are you okay? I’m sorry. I thought it was only news about someone else.”

“No, I’m fine. Quite fine,” I said. “It’s about you.”

“Me?” She laughed, relieved and only slightly nervous. “Who’s been bad-mouthing me now?”

“We should go somewhere where we can sit. You want coffee?”

“I don’t need coffee. What is it, Ralph? Just tell me.”

“Here. Let’s sit in the sun.” I led us to the wide sill of what had been the loading dock of a warehouse and was now the front of a pasta restaurant.

“Enough with the buildup,” she said, jerking her coat taut and sitting beside me. “Out with it. You’re getting me paranoid. Just tell me what you heard and who said it.”

“It’s not what someone said but what they wrote.” I unsheathed the galleys from my pocket and set them on the briefcase she held across her lap.

“William O’Connor,” she groaned.
“That
asshole.”

“You know him?”

“God yeah. An old fart who writes for
American Truths.
So he’s written a book. Whoop-de-do.
The Regiment of Women?
Ha! I can just bet what this is about.”

“You know about this book?”

“No, but I know about him. Last year he wrote a slimy piece about Hillary Clinton that
almost
called her a lesbian.”

“He does that here,” I said, amazed that he’d pulled it before and Nancy knew and I hadn’t guessed. But that meant she’d be prepared for what I was about to show her. “What you should see is on page one seventy-five. The footnote.”

“He’s famous for his footnotes. William ‘Footnote in His Mouth’ O’Connor,” she sneered as she shuffled pages. “Twelve?”

“That’s the one.”

I shyly turned away while she read, as if she were changing her clothes. Watching the backlit, steam-spouting pedestrians briskly file past, I waited for the defiant, scornful yelp that would show no harm had been done.

Her silence held. I turned to look.

Her straight cut nails were spread flat on both pages. Her face was full of pale sun, her eyes shut.

“Oh shit,” she whispered. “Shit. I can’t—” Her voice was reduced to a breath. She opened her eyes to read again, but the printed words hadn’t changed.

“It’s not true,” I said. “Is it? It isn’t. Right?”

She turned to me. The dark crinkles under her eyes italicized a wide empty stare.

“No,” she murmured. “No. But that doesn’t—” Her voice began to return as she flipped to the front of the book. “Is this out? Who’s publishing it? Some pissant right-wing press?”

“No, a major house. It’s listed for April, so it’ll be in stores in a couple of weeks. Then I was right to be worried? It can do damage?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Right now the damage is—shit! It’s so—shit, Ralph.” Her enormous eyes covered me like headlights. “Here was this thing in my head, this private, personal thing. And to see it in print, where the whole world can see it! Where Kathleen can see it and know the whole world is looking. It’s like I’ve been stripped in public!”

I laid an arm around her shoulder, wanting to provide cover. Her body had contracted to a tight tremble. My touch only helped her to focus her anger.

“Where the hell did he get this? Somebody in the office? Somebody in another senator’s office?” she snarled. “Or did he make it up? Hey, Freeman’s got a dyke speechwriter and we know how they can’t help themselves around straight women. Fat old bastard. What gives him the right to smear Kathleen like this?”

“You’ve never met him?” I withdrew my arm.

“I know his type from his Hillary article. A bitter, middle-aged oaf with a couple of divorces. One of those losers who hang out in bars telling people what’s wrong with America.”

“At least he doesn’t name names,” I said.

“But everyone will know. Even you knew, and you’re on Mars.” Her anger was like buckshot; a stray pellet struck me. “If he named names, maybe I could stop this. Threaten them with a lawsuit. Only that would still mean telling Kathleen, because a threat from me doesn’t mean shit. But he doesn’t name us, so it doesn’t matter, does it?”

“Shouldn’t you show it to Kathleen?”

“I guess. Only—” She squeezed her eyes shut.

“How will she react?”

“I don’t know,” she said in a baby voice. “She won’t be comfortable around me anymore. She might ask me to resign. Oh shit. Whatever happens, it’ll change everything between us.”

“Nancy. You’re not still in love with her?”

Her lips pulled taut against her teeth. “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. What difference does it make? I want her respect and trust, but after this”—she shook the book—“she’s going to be paranoid as hell, for good reason.”

“It’s a stupid book, Nancy. From beginning to end. Nobody’s going to take it seriously.”

“You don’t know Washington.”

“Maybe it’ll come and go without anyone hearing about it.”

“No way. And I’ll know it’s out there and be waiting for it to drop. Damnit, Ralph! Why did you hit me like this? Couldn’t you warn me that you were about to dump a ton of bricks?”

“I warned you. I left a message on your machine.”

“How was I to know it was anything real? You’re off on Mars with your little friends. You don’t know anything of value.”

I knew her anger wasn’t about me, but that hit hard and I lost my temper. “Goddamnit, Nancy! Don’t blame the fucking messenger. I wanted to help you.”

“How else do you expect me to react? Be happy? Grateful?”

“I didn’t expect to be called an idiot!”

“It’s just a show to you, Ralph, a silly show on the news. Beltway Bozos. This bastard shits on us and you proudly bring me his turd. You think it’s just a joke, but I’m in it to my neck.”

“I know it’s shit. That’s why I’m showing you! I don’t know where the bastard got it, but he didn’t get it from me!”

She stared.

I bit my lips together.

“You know this ass?” she said.

I was so stunned by my slip that I didn’t know what to say. My silence finished giving me away.

“Oh God, Ralph. You got this book from
him?”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Look. I didn’t know who he was at first. He’s not an old fart. He’s in his late twenties. And gay.”

“This misogynistic puke is gay?” Her eyes grew wide again. “And
you
slept with him?”

I nodded.

“When?”

“Last weekend.”

Her eyes remained locked with mine.

“Then back in January. And in November. That’s when it began. When I was visiting you.” Once I started, I couldn’t stop unloading facts into her stony look.

“You went to bed with this sleaze?”

“I don’t believe it myself.”

Her gaze darted down, a corner of her mouth knotted in a bitter smile. “Wow. You’ll fuck anything. If it has a pretty face and penis, you’ll hop right in bed with it.”

“Nancy, I didn’t know who he was.”

“Don’t you have any brains? Are you nothing but dick? You can hump a right-wing shoveler of shit like he was just another dumb gay boy?” She suddenly caged her mouth with her fingers. “Oh my God. He got this from you? You oh-so-casually mentioned that your friend in the Senate was hot for her boss.”

“No! I told you. He didn’t get it from me! I may be on Mars but I’m not a complete idiot. He’d already finished his book when we met. I don’t go around telling strangers that my best friend’s in love with a married senator. Believe me, Nancy.”

“Why should I? You weren’t even going to tell me how you got this excrement.”

“If he got the story from me, wouldn’t he have said this speechwriter only had a crush?”

“I don’t know. Would he? You know him better than I do.”

“When I read his book, I realized I didn’t know him at all.”

“And I’m feeling like I don’t know
you,
Ralph. After all these years. Whether he got this from you or not. You could have sex with this worm? And not just once but repeatedly. Were you in love with him?” she sneered, twisting the phrase like a knife.

“It was only sex. Stupid, mindless sex.”

“Jesus, Ralph. Didn’t you have a clue?”

“I did and I didn’t. I’ve ended it. As soon as I read his book, I ended it.”

“Better late than never, huh?”

We sat there glaring at each other, breathing cold, dead air while pedestrians paraded past, politely averting their faces from what looked like any street squabble between lovers.

“I have to get to the airport,” said Nancy. “God, how am I going to sit with Kathleen on the flight back knowing what I know?” She thrust the book at me.

“You don’t want it?”

“And do what with it?”

“Show it to her. So you can prepare her. Wouldn’t you rather choose the time and place when she first sees it?”

“Great. I get to throw the shit in the fan myself.” But she opened her briefcase and tossed the book in. She wiped her hand against her coat and stood up. “Where can I catch a cab?”

“Let’s go back to Broadway.”

She started off in a clipped, hard, professional gait. I had to step quickly to catch up.

“Nancy, I fucked up. I’m sorry. But this had nothing to do with us. It was bad luck I tricked with a guy who smears you in a book. It might have been good luck if there was something we could do to stop it.”

“Ralph, I am so furious with you right now that I can’t think straight. I won’t say another word in case I say something I can’t unsay. I need time to sort this out.”

“But you will, won’t you? And you’ll call me?”

She turned away and raised a hand.

A cab pulled over. I stepped off the curb and opened the door for her. I held on to it when she tried to pull it shut.

“I’m sorry,” I told her again. “I love you.”

“I’m sorry too, because I don’t love
you
right now. That you could get involved with someone like that makes me feel like you just punched me in the stomach, whether you meant to or not.”

“It was dumb lust and had nothing to do with you, damnit!”

She shook her head. “We’ll continue this later, Ralph. Just let me go.” She yanked the door, I released and it slammed shut.

Watching the cab ease into the traffic, I waited for her to look back or raise a hand, something. She gave me nothing.

I returned to the store kicking myself for spilling the entire pile of bricks when I’d intended to hand her only a few bricks she could use. So she saw me not as an equal but a fool from Mars. I seemed to have blurted out the truth about me and Bill to get even with her. It was
her
fault that I’d made a bad situation worse.

But I was only trying out other emotions in a vain attempt to wiggle off the hook. Because I knew in my bones that I deserved her contempt. I remained afraid for Nancy, worried over the damage the book might do, yet I couldn’t help feeling someone had just died: the decent if occasionally foolish fellow I thought myself to be, at least in her eyes.

I gave Peter a shorthand account of the fiasco after work. He offered sympathy, although not in a manner to put my mind at ease. “Lesbians,” he muttered. “They take sex
so
seriously. I’m sorry she didn’t get a laugh out of it. But she’s a tough cookie. She’ll be okay.”