Rubbed Out (14 page)

T
he first thing I did when I got into the City was head over to Quintillo's place. I rang the buzzer to his apartment, but no one answered, which meant he was either still out for the evening or asleep. I was about to ring someone else's buzzer when a young couple came along and opened the inner door. I slipped in after them. They didn't seem to mind. I don't think they even noticed. They were too busy locking lips. I admired their skill as I followed them up the stairs. I'd always found it hard to do both those things at the same time.

No light was showing under the crack between the floor and the door of Quintillo's apartment. I rang the bell. No one answered. I stood very still and listened. I didn't hear any sounds. Either Quintillo was a deep sleeper or he was out. I turned and went down the steps and headed into the street.

The bare branches of the gingko tree in front of the building glowed under the street light. People were walking by, mostly couples out on dates. Dog-walkers urged their charges to do their business so they could go upstairs. I thought about Zsa Zsa. I wondered how long it would take her to forgive me for deserting her. Then I wondered what she'd think of New York City if I brought her down. I listened to the snippets of conversations floating in the air. In Syracuse, everyone would be inside and asleep by now.

I could have double-parked my vehicle and waited for Quintillo to return, but I decided I'd catch up with him in the morning. The nap I'd taken earlier hadn't been enough. I needed to sleep in the worst way. Otherwise, I'd begin making mistakes, and I didn't have time to do that right now.

The Gramercy Park Hotel is a shabby, aging queen of a building, and I love her. I love her partly because of the mix of people she gets, partly because she's still funky and hasn't been rehabbed to the point where every ounce of her character has been drained away, and partly because Murphy used to work there as a night clerk while he was taking courses at Hunter College during the day. I'd spent a fair amount of time with him hanging out behind the front desk, and coming here reminded me of him.

After I checked in, I unpacked, got out my flask, called down to the desk and got some ice, filled my glass half full with Scotch, turned on the TV, and lay down on the bed.

The room was shabby in a comforting kind of way. The dresser had nicks in the wood. The prints on the wall were generic landscape scenes. The white chenille cover on the bed reminded me of the ones on my bed when I'd been little. The curtains were a brown-and-white check. The mattress itself was old and had a few lumps in it, but it was serviceable for the time I was staying. I was halfway through
East of Eden
and was feeling pleasantly sloshed when my cell rang. I looked at the number. George. I could feel my mood evaporating as I heard his voice.

“Manuel asked me to call,” he told me. “He's worried about you.”

“He must be very worried to turn to you.”

“He is.”

“Funny. Last I heard, he was calling you an asshole.”

“I'm hurt.”

“You shouldn't be. He's right. If he's that worried, why isn't he calling himself? You're slipping,” I said when George didn't reply. “You're usually a better liar.”

“Okay,” George said. “You got me. I'm the one that's concerned. All he said was that you were down there again. Given everything that's happened, I got to wondering.”

“I have a ticket to the opera.”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously, why do you care?”

“That's not fair.”

I leaned over and took another sip of Scotch. Someone in the room next door must have turned on the shower. I could hear the water running.

“Yes, it is, George, but if you want to know, I'm helping Paul.”

“That certainly sets my mind at rest.”

“Too bad.”

I could hear the sound of George's television through the wire.

“Let him solve his own problems.”

“Maybe I don't want to.”

“What the hell has he gotten you involved in?”

“That is none of your business.”

On screen, James Dean was discovering that his mother was a prostitute. Seeing the expression on his face made me want to cry.

“I told you Paul was no good,” George continued.

“Funny. He says the same thing about you.”

It occurred to me they were fundamentally the same. Both players, both men who got off on the adrenaline rush.

“Robin, come home.”

“I will in a couple of days.”

“Do it now.”

“If you're so worried about me, why don't you get on a plane and come down here then?”

“I'd like to.” Here George hesitated.

I finished the sentence for him.

“But there's Natalie. Tell me, does she know you're speaking to me?”

“Robin . . .”

“Does she?”

“No.”

“You have to decide what you want: to be in my life or out of it. You can't have it both ways.”

“I told you. I care about you. I always will. I want to be your friend.”

“That's not going to happen.”

I hung up, drained my glass, and poured myself another drink.

I went back to watching
East of Eden.
But it wasn't the same. Finally, I clicked the television off and closed my eyes. A fire engine went by. Someone's car alarm went off. Two men started fighting underneath my window. I heard glass shatter. Someone shrieked. Then there was silence. I didn't bother getting up to look. I really didn't care if they bled to death on the sidewalk as long as they did it quietly. What was even worse was that I didn't care that I didn't care.

Instead, I turned on my side and pulled the covers over my head. I was in my early forties. I didn't have a husband. I didn't have children. I didn't even have health insurance, for God's sake. I had a business that was on the verge of going under. I was in debt. I hadn't spoken to my mother in—how many years? Maybe my mother had been right.

Maybe I shouldn't have married Murphy. Maybe I should have married the Park Avenue lawyer and joined the country club and hosted dinner parties and done charity work. Volunteered at the temple. Become chairman of a committee or two. Had a child. Maybe even two. Eventually get a job as an editor somewhere. Or work as a receptionist in an art gallery. Even if I got divorced, I'd still be in better shape than I was now.

But I hadn't loved the Park Avenue lawyer. I'd loved Murphy. I pulled the covers back down and clicked the television back on. That was the problem. That had always been the problem. I always went with my emotions.

Maybe love was an overrated commodity. In the Middle Ages, people had considered it a form of insanity. Maybe it was. Look at what it had done for Wilcox. He'd been going along—not great, but okay—and he'd met Alima and his life had spun out of control. He'd done things he'd probably never considered doing. And for who? A girl who made her living rubbing herself on men's crotches, a girl whose main goal in life was to separate men from their money.

And on that edifying note, I drifted off to sleep.

I
got up in a better mood than I'd gone to bed in. There's something about the anonymity of hotel rooms, with their promise of possibilities, that always cheers me up. I don't know what that says about me, but it's probably not good.

I took a long, hot shower, got dressed in my snazzy clothes, took the elevator downstairs, and had a big breakfast consisting of fresh-squeezed orange juice, two fried eggs, a toasted English muffin, home fries, bacon, and three cups of coffee with cream while I read the
New York Times
in a coffee shop not too far away from the hotel. I was finishing my last cup when Paul called me on my cell.

“How's it going?”

“It's not.” I took a last sip and pushed the cup away. “I'm just about to get started.”

“Do you know what time . . . ,” he began before I cut him off.

“Hey, feel free to jump in whenever you want.”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“I'll call you when I have some news.” I pressed the off button and motioned for my check.

The sun was out and the temperature was in the high thirties. I whistled as I drove uptown. Third Avenue looked good. Traffic was moving. Sun glinted off the tops of the skyscrapers. The mica embedded in the pavement sparkled. Waiters were out in front of their restaurants hosing down their part of the sidewalk. Clusters of people stood outside office buildings taking early cigarette breaks. I automatically reached for my pack and lit up. Solidarity in all things.

I noticed a street vendor on the corner. They were all over the place. This one was doing a brisk business selling coffee and doughnuts to people coming out of the subway. I wasn't certain, but I didn't think we'd had so many of those when I lived here. Shop windows sported expensive merchandise. People on the streets were walking with their heads held higher than they were yesterday.

I double-parked in front of Quintillo's building, trotted up the steps, and buzzed Quintillo's apartment. No one answered. I hoped he hadn't taken off with Janet. I checked my watch. It was a little after nine. Maybe he'd gone off to work. I called the work number Paul had given me and asked.

“Mr. Quintillo,” a woman with a snotty British accent told me, “never arrives before ten-thirty in the morning.”

“Really? How lovely for him.”

The woman's accent became a little more North Country and a little less Sloane Ranger.

“I believe he works out at the health club every morning. May I tell him who's calling when he comes in?”

“Dr. Ozma's office manager.”

“Dr. Who?”

“Ozma.” I spelled it out. “O-Z-M-A. The famous Park Avenue plastic surgeon.”

“Of course.”

Sometimes you just have to amuse yourself.

“I'll be in touch.”

And I clicked the off button on my cell phone at the same time I looked at my watch. It was nine-thirty. I had a little over an hour to kill. I decided to spend it at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When I was a kid, I'd loved the Egyptian Wing. No one ever went there. It was quiet and dim—my private world.

The guards hadn't cared when I'd perched on the foot of the statues made of marble. I would go there on Saturday mornings and dream I was Nefertiti, Queen of Egypt, or scare myself by making myself believe a mummy was going to chase me.

But the exhibition had changed over the years. It had upscaled just like the rest of Manhattan had. Now, the wing was bright and busy, full of tourists and swarms of chattering schoolchildren. Now, it cost way more than it should to get in, given that the Metropolitan Museum of Art is supposed to be a public institution. The suggested entrance fee was $10.25. I slid a dollar toward the volunteer. She gave me a scathing look. I smiled back. Scathing looks don't do much to me anymore.

“I'm one of the poor huddled masses,” I explained.

She wasn't appeased. Reluctantly, she handed me my button. I put it on the lapel of my jacket and walked by the guards.

Everything in the Egyptian Wing was clearly labeled and arranged in chronological order. It's true you could learn more. But it lacked the mystery it had before. Or maybe it was just that I was older. But it was still a pleasant place to be, and I whiled away a little under an hour drifting through the rooms looking at the jewelry and the drawings on the papyrus.

When I was done, I made my way out to my car and drove over to the gallery Quintillo housed his business in. Even though it was located in the low nineties instead of down on Gallery Row, the place still looked posh. A still life from a relatively minor French seventeenth-century painter was displayed in the window with the lavishness that a Delacroix would have deserved.

The gallery itself was carpeted in light green. A slightly grayer shade of green was on the walls. Pictures of more second-rate seventeenth- and eighteenth-century painters in extremely expensive, ornate frames hung on the walls. Toward the middle of the room sat the woman who I assumed was the one I'd previously spoken to. The desk she was sitting behind was Georgian, and there was an enormous bouquet of fancy tropical flowers in the middle of it.

The woman herself was slim and blond and dressed in the usual New York City black pants and a black sweater. What a surprise. She measured me as I approached, and from the expression on her face I could tell that she found my shoes, pants, and jacket acceptable. I wondered if she would have frozen me with her disdain if she hadn't. She folded her hands in front of her and smiled.

“May I help you?”

“I certainly hope so. I called earlier.”

“Oh, yes.”

She looked at her watch. It was thin, just as she was, and gold and probably cost more than my car. Somehow I didn't think she'd earned the money for it working here.

“Mr. Quintillo is running a little late,” she informed me. “I'm expecting him in at any moment.”

“That's all right. I'll wait.” And I moved off to study the paintings on the walls.

Fifteen minutes later, Quintillo barged in. He was carrying a take-out container of coffee in one hand and a briefcase in the other. He looked shorter than I remembered, and as I watched him I realized that his arms were longer than average. He was going bald on top. He'd had what hair he had left cut close to his head under the misconception that it made him look hip, instead of like a man trying to hide the fact that he was going bald. His eyes were close set and looked puffy, as if he hadn't been getting a lot of sleep. His face was clean shaven.

He was wearing fancy clothes—a cashmere coat and, from what I could see, an expensive blue suit, striped shirt, and paisley tie—but his walk didn't match his clothes and I got the distinct impression he would have been happier in jeans, a sweatshirt, work boots, and a baseball cap.

The receptionist nodded at me and explained who I was. I watched Quintillo's forehead furrow as he tried to place me. I wouldn't have been surprised if he recognized me from the night I spoke to him—people in his line of work usually have a good memory for faces. But he didn't. Maybe it was because I was dressed differently now and my hair was up and pulled away from my face.

I smiled and moved toward him. We shook hands.

Here we go, I thought.