Perfect on Paper (31 page)

Hirsute Man excused himself and went over to peruse the titles on the jukebox.

“Dana, what in the
world
are you talking about?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you okay?”

I sighed. “Not exactly.”

Where the hell was Ray Devine?

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I GUESS I’M LOSING MY MIND

I
completed two more crosswords and drained the drink Hirsute Man had provided before scrounging around in my purse for something to write on. All I could find was the stub from my guest pass to last week’s Outsider Art Fair, but at least the back of it was blank.

Ray,
I wrote,
Hope nothing serious has happened (even though something serious
better
have happened for you to stand me up). Call when/if you get this—D.

I caught the eye of the bartender. “What do I owe you?”

“Four and a quarter.”

I handed him a ten, along with the note. “If a good-looking older man comes in tonight, would you make sure he gets this?”

“I’ll keep it in the register. If he shows up, he’ll get it.”

“But—don’t you need more of a description?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll know him.”

“But—”

“Take a look around, lady—you see any good-lookin’ men in this dump?”

A bitter wind hampered my progress home, buffeting the portrait of Dinner I’d carefully wrapped for Ray. End-of-week revelers crowded the
sidewalks, darkening my mood even further. How dare they enjoy themselves in the face of my humiliation?

I unlocked my apartment door and raced to the nightstand. The red light was blinking on the answering machine. I had one new message.

From my dentist’s office, reminding me of my Tuesday cleaning at ten forty-five.

I had one sleeve of my coat off when the phone rang. “Thank god,” I said, lunging for it.

“What
happened 
?”

Click.

“I’m sure Ray didn’t intend to stand you up,” Elinor Ann said. “Maybe that was him on his cell, but he’s stuck in the subway and the call couldn’t get through.”

“Then his hang-up wouldn’t have gotten through, either.”

“Oh. Good point.”

I’d logged on to the MTA’s Web site just after she answered her phone. “Hang on a second,” I said, accessing the link for current service status. Every subway line was running smoothly, with the exception of the R. “Oh my god! The Transit Authority’s reporting major delays on his train line!”

“Yay!”

“I know! Yay!”

“I mean, that’s a shame, of course, but—”

“I know exactly what you mean.”

“Yay!” we chorused.

“You realize we’re not being very nice,” Elinor Ann said.

“Are you kidding? We’re assholes. Yay, anyway.”

“See? I told you there’d be a perfectly logical explanation. I wonder what happened to the train.”

“I’m way ahead of you,” I replied, typing in the address for News Four
Online. “ ‘One Dead in Canal Street Shooting—R Service Suspended—Passengers Stranded Underground,’ ” I read aloud from the headline.

“Oh, jeez. I hope Ray’s not the one who got shot. Then we really would be a-holes.”

“Don’t worry. They’re saying it’s gang related. He’s probably stuck between stations.” And would be for hours. Meaning I was on my own tonight.

“Well, the important thing is that he’s okay. I’m sure he’ll get in touch with you as soon as he can.”

“He’d better.”

“You could see him tomorrow.”

“I guess.”

“So… what are you going to do tonight?”

“No idea.”

“Oh, come on, Dana. It’s been—what? Twenty-one years? You can manage to hold out for another twenty-four hours, can’t you?”

“Looks like I have no choice.”

While I appreciated Elinor Ann’s attempt to put things in perspective—especially since I knew she was far from enthused about my reunion with Ray—my dark mood refused to dissipate. I’d been so looking forward to finally spending time with him, to telling him about Hank and Billy, to having him unravel all my romantic entanglements. But mainly I just wanted to tell him how much he’d meant to me when I was young and scared and far from certain I could survive in this town. If Ray hadn’t loved me, I might not have believed in myself long enough to stick around. Who knows what would have become of me?

Oh,
why
had I waited twenty-one years to see him? And why couldn’t the Chinatown gangs have declared a truce for just one night?

I hung up my coat and assessed the situation. If I had the evening to myself, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to finish the painting sitting on my
easel—the last of the bartered Hannahs owed to Vivian. The freesias in the cowboy boot were already beginning to wilt.

But I didn’t want to paint. I wanted to be sitting in a dive bar with Ray.

I really should eat something. Lunch had been hours ago, and I felt the effect of my two scotches.

But I didn’t want to eat—unless Ray was my dinner partner.

Hank was probably free. He hadn’t mentioned any plans when I’d left the brownstone that morning.

But I didn’t want to see Hank. Not until I saw Ray.

Well, at least I could leave Ray a message.

But when I dialed his number, the phone just rang and rang.

I crawled into bed with Puny and
Remembrance of Things Past
, which had proven to be a surefire cure for insomnia. In fact, I’d started it well over a year ago and only just made it to page seventeen.

The Proust must have worked, because when the telephone jarred me awake, sunlight was streaming through the bedroom window.

“Hello?”

“Is this Dana Mayo?”

The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. “Who is this?”

“Uh—it’s Renée Devine.”

“Uh…”

“Uh… listen. There’s no good way to tell you this. My father’s dead.”

“What?”

“My father—Ray. He’s dead.”

This couldn’t be happening. I had to be having a dream—or more accurately, a nightmare. But there was Puny, and there was Proust, and here I was, sitting on the side of my bed with my feet on the floor and a telephone in my hand.

“Are you still there?” A note of impatience had crept into Renée’s tone.

I couldn’t think of anything to say. The only words that came to mind were
Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.

But hold on a minute. This wasn’t the first time Renée had told me her father was dead. “How do I know you’re—”

“He had a heart attack. Yesterday morning. He managed to call 911, but…” She caught her breath. “I just saw in his datebook that he was supposed to meet you in the city last night.”

“He was, but—”

But what? I knew she’d never believe me if I told her we’d only recently reestablished contact; that I hadn’t seen Ray in more than two decades.

“Anyway,” Renée continued, “I just thought—you know, that you should… know.”

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.
“But—”

“Listen—I knew that was you at my open house last year. I recognized you as soon as you walked in. The only reason I’m calling is because I think Dad would have wanted you to know what happened, okay?”

I could hardly blame her for trying to end the conversation as quickly as possible. And, of course, seeing my name in his datebook couldn’t have made her happy. “Your father was a wonderful man,” I finally managed. “And I’m very, very sorry for your loss. For… everything.”

She hung up.

I tried to stand, but my legs started to buckle, and I sat back down on the mattress, too shocked to cry or scream or—thank god—laugh, and too numb to do anything but let the words
Oh no, oh no, oh no
echo inside my head.

I had to reach Elinor Ann.

“Aunt Dana!” Eddie said when I called the house. “You’re a day too early. My birthday isn’t until tomorrow.”

Oh god. His birthday. I’d forgotten all about it. “I know. I was planning on calling you then. But I need to talk to your mother right now.”
Right
now. Immediately. Get. Her. To. The. Phone.

“She and Dad went out.”

“Any idea where?”
Please, please, please let it be someplace near a cell phone tower.

“Well, if you promise not to tell Mom…”

“I promise.”
I promise, I promise, I promise. Only please, please, please stop torturing me and tell me where she is.

“I’m pretty sure they went to Phillipsburg. Guess why?”

Oh god. Now I had to guess. “Eddie, I have absolutely no idea what they’re doing in New Jersey. Just tell me, okay?”

“Okay. Don’t say anything to Mom, but… Well, you know how long I’ve wanted a bulldog, right?”

Yes, you little sadist. Ray Devine is dead. The hell with bulldogs. The hell with everything.
“Of course I do. Practically forever.”

“Since I was like, four, right? So, I saw her and Dad whispering to each other a couple of days ago, and I checked the history on her browser that night—Aunt Dana, you can
not
tell her that or I will get into
so
much trouble—and she’d been on the home page of a bulldog breeder in Phillipsburg!”

“That’s fantastic!” I was going to keel over and expire, right in the middle of this conversation. “Listen, Eddie—I promise not to say anything, but only if you send tons of pictures when you get him, okay?”

“And you’ll come out and see him, right?”

“Of course I will. But I’ve really got to get hold of your mother now—don’t worry, I swear I won’t say a word—so I’ll call back on your birthday tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay. Talk to you then.”

The instant I heard Elinor Ann’s voice, the tears came. Streams of tears, with so many more behind them, I could have wound up crying forever.

“Dana, what in the world happened?”

Between sobs, I somehow got out the words “Ray” and “is” and “dead.”

“Oh no. That’s—oh no. Oh, Dana. But—why would a gang member want to kill Ray?”

I was so perplexed I stopped crying. “What are you talking about?”

“The shooting on the subway last night. What are
you
talking about?”

I’d forgotten all about that, as well as everything else in the universe. “That’s not how it happened. He had a heart attack—yesterday morning.”

“Oh, Dana. That’s terrible.” She paused. “How’d you find out?”

“Renée Devine just called and told me.”

“She did? Oh my god. What did she say to you?”

“Nothing worth repeating, other than her father was dead.”

I could overhear Elinor Ann giving Cal a quick summary of our conversation. The phone connection began to crackle ominously.

“Dana, listen—I am so, so sorry. And I hate to tell you this, but I forgot to charge my cell last night, and Cal left his home with the boys. If we get cut off, do you think you’ll be okay until we get back to Kutztown?”

I didn’t have time to respond before the line went dead.

All right,
I told myself.
At least she knows. She’ll call you back as soon as she can. You just have to hang on until she does.
I’d finally stopped sobbing, but tears continued to roll down my face.

I needed to do something. Commemorate Ray in some way, even if it set me off all over again.

Of course.

I went over to the CD rack and searched the titles until I found the
disc with the song I was looking for—the one he’d played for me on our first official date, two days after he’d declared his love for me and made everything shockingly, deliriously perfect.

“There’s a bar on the corner of Twenty-Fifth and Third,” he’d said. “I’ll meet you there at four.”

“Which corner?”

He’d laughed. “I guarantee you’ll figure that out.”

I’d laughed, too, when I walked up Third Avenue the following afternoon and spotted the bar with the words “Sepret Tables” written on its awning. I’d entered the dark, nearly deserted room and come up behind Ray, who was bent over the jukebox.

“Sepret?”

He’d turned around and kissed me for a long time—maybe an hour, maybe five minutes. “I know you love a good typo.”

Pulling some coins out of his pocket, he’d fed all the quarters into the Rock-Ola’s coin slot. “So, which song should we play for our first dance?”

I’d scanned the titles. “Wow. It looks like every single one of these is by Frank Sinatra.”