All the Time in the World (15 page)

My heartbeat speeds up. It's too early for the grown-ups to be home, and if it were a kid, they would have called for me (Matthew) or banged on the wall (George) by now. Whatever is making the noise is between me and the sleeping kids, so I have to go and see what it is. I'm tempted to call out “Hello?” just to see what would happen, but I'm either not brave enough or unwilling to admit my fear if it turns out no one is there.

I step around the corner, and there stands Patrick, shaking out an umbrella, looking too confused about the dripping to figure out how to close it.

“Oh Lord, shit, holy shit, it's you.” My heart is pounding so hard I think he can probably see it through my T-shirt, but at least I remember to whisper. “How did you get in here?”

“Shel gave me the key,” he says, referring to the doorman, and I take the umbrella from him and close it. His Burberry raincoat is dripping; his hair is dripping. The weather must have taken quite a dive since I picked up Matt this afternoon.

“You scared me,” I say, and I put my hand on my chest where I can still feel my heart, and the post-adrenaline shakes start to ripple through me. “Scotty's not here. He, they, they're out. They didn't tell me I should expect you.”

“Where are they?” he asks, and I reach for his raincoat, on autopilot, watching my hands shake as they go. He notices, of course, and grabs them before I know what's happening. “Oh, Jesus. I really did scare you. I'm sorry. Jesus, your pulse, I can feel it.” He drops one of my hands and puts his own on my chest, over my heart, where mine was a moment ago.

I step back. He smells like bourbon.

“They went to a gallery opening in the village,” I say. “And then dinner with a bunch of people, or something. They won't be home for a while.” If he weren't completely shit-housed, he'd get the message.

“Sienna dumped me,” he says, looking me full in the face so that I can't possibly miss the effect of his watery, bloodshot eyes.

“I don't know who that is,” I say. I walk back into the kitchen and grab a couple of dish towels. When I come back out, he's still standing there with his coat on, dripping all over the floor.

“She was my, my—” he says.

“Your girlfriend?” I hand him one of the towels and toss the other to the floor, mopping up the water with my foot.

“I guess so. She hated that word,” he says, and to myself I think, perfect, perfect that he would find THAT girl, but I don't say that. He is standing there, with his wet coat on, holding the towel, red-nosed, red-eyed, not seeming to have any idea what he should do. “Are you, do you, can I stay?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say and take his coat as he shrugs it off. I look at the tag and decide it will be fine in the dryer.

“Does anything else need to go in the dryer?” I ask, and he says yes and proceeds to take off almost all of his clothes, down to his T-shirt and boxer briefs. He pats his face with the dish towel, then says, “The neck of this is wet.” He starts to pull the T-shirt up over his head.

I take the dish towel that dangles from his hand. “You can leave your shirt in the pile and go put on some of Scotty's clothes or something. Geez, man, the boys could wake up.”

“Charlotte, you're such a good friend, a good girl, woman,” he says, and before I can pick up his discarded clothes, he has his arms around me, and his head is on my shoulder. I freeze with my hands out, like they can ward off the advance that's already come upon me. He doesn't do anything else though, nothing improper, unless of course you count pressing his almost-naked body up against the body of his brother's kids' babysitter.

I pat his back while holding my arms away from his sides, lightly a few times, then harder in what I hope is a clear send-off gesture.

“Go get a sweatshirt or something; you're going to freeze,” I say, and he does.

I toss his clothes into the dryer and turn it on low, and it occurs to me that I ought to text Gretchen so she knows what awaits her at home, so there's no possibility that this could be misconstrued. My phone is in the living room, though (stupid—what if it really had been someone breaking in?), and I can't do it right away. On my way back out, I reevaluate. They won't be home for at least three hours. Maybe I can get him to leave, and no one ever has to know he was here. That option is the most appealing; then no one will have any seeds of anything in their brains, and Patrick won't have to explain himself. Patrick won't have to explain himself? Apparently, I give a shit, don't want him to be embarrassed or something. Curse my bleeding heart.

By the time I check on the boys, go to put the teakettle on, and come back out, Patrick is sitting on the couch in the family room, wearing a Harvard Law T-shirt and a pair of Northwestern sweatpants, a combination that I never would have expected to come from Scotty's closet. He has poured himself something clear that is too viscous to be water, and is balancing it on his open palm.

“Don't drink that. Seriously. Where did you even get it?”

“I know all his stashes, my bro. All my bro's stashes, hidden around my bro's house. I know where they are,” he says. I put out my hand, patiently, the way I do when one of the boys steals something from the other.

“Come on, dude. Aren't you pretty lit already?”

“Lit! Sure, I guess I'm
lit
, Charlotte, I guess you could call it that.” He relinquishes the glass, and I dump it down the drain in the kitchen and wash the glass. I have no idea where this particular glass came from, but I'll deal with that later.

“I'm making tea,” I say. “You can drink some of that, how about.”

He groans. “What the fuck, Charlotte! I'm such a fucking fuckup. Scotty is going to be so pissed at me.”

I am now officially dying to know what he's talking about, but it's probably better if I stay out of whatever it is. “Well, it's up to you if you want to tell him, I guess,” I say. The teakettle whistles in the other room, and I take my time fixing a tray. When I bring the tea out, Patrick is holding his phone, stabbing at the keyboard.

“What a fucking bitch,” he mutters. “Look at this! They're all bitches, not you, Charlotte, every one of
them
, such goddamn bitches. Goddamn it!” He throws his phone across the room, and I'm surprised it doesn't break. “Are you going to look? Look at it!”

I am still for a minute, deciding whether it's best to indulge him or to simply not participate, and after a moment, I get up, making no sound, as I did when I thought he was possibly a murderer, and I retrieve his phone.

“It needs a password,” I say, and I hand it to him. He types in the password and hands it back. The text message screen is up, and the text bubbles come from Patrick first.

“Hey. What's up?” Then, “Where are you?” Then, “I'll meet you. But you have to tell me where you are.”

One text bubble comes back. “Don't text me.”

Patrick does anyway, apparently. “You miss me?” Then, “Did you miss me when you woke up this morning?”

Another comes back. “I really mean it. Not a good idea.”

Patrick ignores her. “I have a lot of good ideas.” Then, “Want to see one?” Then a somewhat graphic picture of himself in the mirror. I hand the phone back to him as if it has lice.

“I don't know why you showed that to me,” I say.

“I didn't actually mean to traumatize you with that one,” he says, switching the shot. “Here, look at this,” he says, handing the phone back to me. I don't take it.

“Those weren't even to Sienna. That was to someone named Eliza,” I say, sitting down on the opposite end of the couch.

“I know!”

I hold out the mug of tea I made for him, but he doesn't take it. I rest both of them against my knees, hoping he'll calm down once he gets this agitation off his chest.

“I'm showing you the ones from Sienna.” He waves the phone at me. I trade it for his mug and take a look. The conversation is basically Patrick saying he's sorry, and it was meaningless, and Sienna telling him to go do something explicit with his mother.

“You cheated on her,” I say, handing it back.

“Technically,” he mutters.

“Did you sleep with someone else?”

“Yes.”

“So, technically, actually, any way you put it, you cheated.”

“With Scotty's assistant, I know.”

“Wait. Wait. Eliza is Scotty's secretary? That's who you cheated on your girlfriend with?” Now I can make sense of it, can see even more of a need for candor. “Oh man. Patrick.”

“Don't judge me,” he says.

“It's hard not to.” I sip my tea, but it's still too hot to drink properly. Patrick doesn't seem to notice; he's a third of the way through his.

“Compatibility-wise, I'm with Sienna, like, all the way. I think she might be the one,
the girl
, but fuck, I've always wanted to bang Eliza. And she just showed up; she made it so easy. Jesus,” he says.

“You can stop now,” I say. “You're making it worse.”

“Charlotte, thank God,” he says, and he crawls across the space between us. “Thank God, you're not beautiful. Scotty had to go and hire a beautiful secretary. Christ, what was he even thinking? Claims he tried to keep me from meeting her, but of course I met her. It's a good thing you're not, you know, that you don't look like Eliza, because if you did, man oh man. It's like toys, when we were kids, you know? He wanted mine. I always want his.”

I don't say anything. What is there to say to that? I get him to drink some more tea, then a glass of water, and then his clothes are dry, so I have the doorman call him a cab, and he goes.

When Gretchen texts to let me know they are on their way home, I remember the liquor glass. I look around, but I can't figure out where it came from, so I drop it into the bottom of my purse, and when I leave to go to my apartment, it comes with me, erasing the last of the evidence that he was ever there, that we ever talked, that he ever said those words. If I forget about it, it will be as if it never happened.

On the way into my building, I toss the phantom glass into the dumpster.

April, six weeks after

“And what is it that
you
do?” asks the nondescript, tuxedo-clad older gentleman as I sip my tequila on ice, pretending it's water, counting the minutes until I can blow this popsicle stand. It's 9:30, and I'm at Everett's postshow reception, but Everett is nowhere to be found.

“I'm a marine biologist,” I tell the well-mannered stranger. “I'm usually, you know, down below. Sea level, I mean. Underwater. In a submarine. But I had to come up for this. Everett and I go way back. I couldn't miss it.”

He nods at me, the picture of polite interest. I can't tell whether he believes me or simply can't come up with a follow-up question for an answer like that. He begs off soon enough, and I chastise myself for wearing the dress with the sparkly beads instead of something more suited for blending in with walls.

“More water?” says Colleen from behind me, handing me another glass of tequila over my shoulder. “Or have you seen enough lately, you know, being a marine biologist and all? We could switch you to something brown, if you'd rather.”

“Just don't give me another crab puff,” I say, pouring my current drink into my new one and handing the empty glass to Colleen's husband, Roger. “Poor things. One minute, they're scuttling around on the ocean floor, minding their own business, the next, boom. Hors d'oeuvres.”

“Must be a lonely life down there, with only the crabs for company,” says Roger, as our friend Snyder joins us, carrying three glasses of wine. “Is it a giant relief to be up here among the humans, even if only for a day?”

“Oh, the giantest,” I say. “Who is all that wine for?”

“I hate spending every minute of my time at these things in line for the bar,” Snyder says, sitting down on the floor and setting the glasses down next to him. He's wearing sneakers with his tux, and I wonder if that's an L.A. thing or if he really thinks he has to have a gimmick. “Wait, Charlotte, I thought you were a foreign correspondent tonight. Isn't that what you told that couple?”

“I was a foreign correspondent,” I say. “And then I got bored. Now I'm a marine biologist. Where the hell is Everett? I need to say good-bye.”

“Probably out smoking,” says Colleen. “You're not leaving. Just settle down.”

Across the room, there's a burst of laughter. I know without looking that it's Jess. She is standing with a large group of admirers, in front of a small stagelike platform at the front of the room that holds a microphone, and there's a baby grand piano to the left of her. I haven't spoken to her, but I have known where she is at all times, and I wonder if she knows the same about me. On the other side of the platform is an even larger group, gathered around two little kids in tiny formal wear. A man, most likely their father, stands slightly apart, holding up his phone, videotaping. Who in their right mind would bring little kids to an event like this?

I nod toward the platform and nudge Colleen. “I know. How about you get up there and entertain the crowd until the man of the hour gets back? You could sing ‘Begin the Beguine.'”

“Ha-ha,” says Colleen, crouching to try to find a way to sit down next to Snyder on the floor without giving the bystanders a show. She is unsuccessful, and she stands back up. “I hate being a girl. Dresses are terrible.”

“I disagree. Dresses are awesome,” says Roger. “Go ahead, baby. Sit down. No one's watching.”

Colleen makes a face at him. “Baby. You would think he'd mind if his wife flashed the entire musical elite of New York City, but apparently he doesn't give a shit.”

“I agree with Charlotte, Col,” says Snyder. “Why don't you just manic-pixie your way up onto that stage and get a little intimate with the microphone?”