“Do I ever know. Let’s talk tomorrow, same time? And sooner, if you need to? Love you.”
“Love you, too, mom. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. And YOU call ME if you need me, too. Or call Darcy or someone!”
I was so touched by her concern for me, the tears prickled in my eyes again. “I’m not alone,” I told myself. “I have plenty of friends but I’ve been too busy to talk to them. And I have neighbors. Plenty of people to call on if needed.”
Then I swore to myself I would not cry or even mope, I would do something useful. My fingers pushed the phone number still up on my screen, Rick’s girlfriend with the provocative license plate.
The answering machine told me I’d reached Wanda. Good. Her voice told me she was a Brooklyn girl. Good again. I didn’t leave a message. I already knew I was going to see her first thing tomorrow and didn’t need or want an invitation.
The phone rang with an unknown local number. Not work, not Chris’ cell, not Darcy from Maine, not my dad from Phoenix. It was no one I wanted to talk to and I was done talking, or doing anything productive whatever, for this too-full day. I let it go to the machine.
I was astonished to hear Steven Richmond, responding to my message about being unavailable for work this week. He didn’t sound angry so I picked up.
“You are there after all. Excellent. I was hoping to say it in person. I’m sorry to hear of your loss and don’t worry about getting your information to us.”
“Well, uh, thank you. I’m happy to know it won’t be a problem.” Right. His project was the least of my current worries, even with the generous fee.
“Not at all. We are working on other aspects of the project and have plenty to keep us busy for now. Too busy, in fact. However…”
There was a pause, and then he continued.
“However, I am giving myself an evening off for a Central Park concert. Any chance you would like to come along? I thought—well, I happened to talk to Darcy—maybe you could use a night off too?”
I was too tired to go anywhere. I was too tired to talk. Or even think.
“I…it’s late…too late…dinner…”
“I have a picnic.” He sounded amused. “And I’m not far. I could pick you up in a few minutes. If you’d like to play hooky for an evening?”
Suddenly I saw myself under the stars, with nothing to do but let the music wash over me. An evening of respite from my entire life looked like a wonderful idea.
“Ten minutes?”
“I’ll see you then.”
Energized, I jumped into a one-minute shower and subjected my pathetic wardrobe to an increasingly frenzied search mission. I pretty much wear the same clothes, casual pants and tops, for school, for work, for daily life. I hardly ever need anything else and my limited time and budget for fashion is dedicated to Chris. But tonight, I was going out. To an event. I didn’t want to be a slob.
Finally I settled on an old print sundress that—maybe—didn’t look old, and sandals with heels to dress it up. No, not heels for walking on the park lawn. Espadrilles. Chris had a nice pair. I raided her jewelry collection for earrings. A necklace? Yes, no, maybe. I was out of practice with this girl stuff and wished she were here to help me with my hair. I looked for her curling iron and then remembered she had packed it. A curling iron for camp? Not like my Girl Scout days, that’s for sure.
I fumbled with my mascara and was wiping it off my cheek when the doorbell rang. I flew downstairs still barefoot.
“Two more minutes. That’s all I need. And I have something for you, for my assignment, right there on the coffee table. I have old photo albums of this very block. Take a look.” I flew back upstairs, wincing at how unsmooth I had been.
I took a deep breath before I went down again, now with make up on my face, shoes on my feet, purse in hand, calm and composed.
He was so absorbed in the albums he didn’t look up until I was in front of him. Then he stood up quickly, refocused and smiled at me. “Let’s go.”
He looked great. Why had I not noticed that before? I had an impression of a crisp haircut, highly polished shoes, and a blue shirt that went way too well with his blue eyes. It was unnerving and I was already a little unnerved.
“Thank you for helping me turn my life off for tonight.” We were walking down my stoop. “It was strange enough to have Chris away and now….I’m barely functioning.”
“I know. Maybe a pleasant night out will be just what the doctor ordered.” He helped me into his car, a pale beige convertible of some kind. I sank into pale beige soft leather seats and air conditioning. Not much like my decrepit Civic.
Even on the rough local streets, the car glided smoothly ahead. With the radio pouring out even smoother classical music, and the top down, I started to feel a bit like Cinderella in her coach.
We went over the magnificent arch of the Brooklyn Bridge, with all of New York harbor, the Statue of Liberty and the whole ocean beyond, spread out below to the left; the East River, dotted with sailboats and barges, stretching north to our right; and the downtown skyline straight ahead, beginning to turn pale gold from the low sun. I never got tired of that view.
Traffic was light and we chatted about nothing much. He thanked me for the look at the album and asked me to have copies made, at his cost of course. I told him about my eccentric new source, Leary, and what I had been learning from him. He laughed at my description, and I assured him if anything came up that was relevant to his project, I would include it. He asked me about my house. “Being a historian, have you ever been tempted to find the story of your own house?”
“Funny that you should ask. I’m toying with the idea now.” I wasn’t going to tell him why I was tempted, though. I still wasn’t about to turn that lost young girl into a social anecdote for this suave stranger
.
“I suppose it could be risky. You never know if you will like what you learn.”
I changed the
subject, asking him where he lived. “A big, old apartment building, no place special. It’s near here.”
We were on the upper East Side by then, where the avenues are lined with massive apartment buildings; the side streets with elegant Edith Wharton-era town houses, many of them now sporting diplomatic flags; and the shop windows held shoes that cost more than I earn in a month.
I did not know what to say next to someone who lived this life so I was glad we had arrived at Central Park. He drove right in, handed a note to the first park officer who stopped us, and parked where there was no parking.
“What? How can you?”
“Ah. I have friends in the right places.”
We strolled toward the Sheep Meadow where the concert would be. He carried nifty collapsible chairs that folded into their own canvas carriers and an elegant tote bag from a caterer.
He walked with purpose and soon settled us on a slight hill, with a view of the stage, and plenty of grass.
“Did you know this was the perfect place?”
“Pretty much. The whole park seems like my own backyard. I grew up right across the street, a bit uptown.”
I was a long way from home now.
His bag produced two bottles of wine with glasses, dips with vegetables, sliced beef filet, with cutlery and china, French bread, French mustard, French cheese. Oh, and English horseradish sauce.
For a little while, conversation stopped as we ate and watched the sky turn to gold, then pink, then deep blue, and the surrounding park grew dark and mysterious.
Steven said, “Better than a movie, isn’t it? One of the finest shows in the city.”
Then, perhaps it was the wine, but we were telling each other little pieces about our lives, like any first date. Was I, Erica Donato, hard-working mother of a teen, on a first date tonight? For the first time in a long time? I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t even sure I liked him.
I barely knew him, but I was telling him why I am a Mets fan and a little about growing up in the far reaches of Brooklyn. I kind of skipped over my father, though, and I wasn’t at all ready to talk about Jeff.
He told me about his sailing camp summers and skiing winters, the father who faded out of this life, and his uncle, James Hoyt, a mover and shaker and a front page name in New York even I recognized.
“He taught me everything a boy needs to know, like how to tie a tie, how to survive boarding school, how to drive a stick shift, how to dress for an interview.”
“How to ask a girl to dance?”
He laughed. “No, they sent me to dancing school for that, but he did teach me how to mix a martini.”
“I so get it because that’s who Rick was to me. He taught me to how to play poker and how to turn down a pushy guy. And I filled in for him as the kid he never had. Chris too, like you did with James.”
Steven looked away. “Not exactly. James did have one of his own, my cousin JJ. James, Jr. of course. He was much older, and, well, I idolized him, at least for a time. His life didn’t turn out so well. So in essence, I’m all James has to follow in his footsteps. Not that I ever could.”
Across the park the tall buildings were slowly disappearing into the night sky, and then reappearing, outlined by the changing patterns on the lit-up windows. Bands of lights lit up, went dark, lit up again somewhere else.
The orchestra was tuning up by then, and so we stopped talking and lost ourselves to the Philharmonic. I don’t know much about classical music but the conductor told us it was Beethoven. It worked for me.
At intermission we stood and stretched and he pointed to some of the buildings just visible on both park perimeters.
“Did you know, over there on the west, it was once considered the edge of civilization, the frontier?”
“Of course I do. That’s why there’s a famous apartment building named the Dakota. It was considered as far away as the Wild West.”
Soon we were talking and laughing again about what it takes these days to get anything built in the city. He was contending, not very seriously, that payoffs and graft were more efficient than proper channels.
“Now Uncle James is someone who knows how to get things done. He lives right over there.” He turned me away from the park, out toward the Fifth Avenue, and pointed to one of the grand buildings that loomed up above the trees.
The warming up for the second half of the concert began, and we settled down for something I did not know by Strauss and ended with familiar music by Tchaikovsky and fireworks, and a nightcap from a bottle of cognac. I pretended to like it.
We flowed with the crowd along the park paths, found the car, and park officers motioned us out to an exit. The car was smooth and silent, the cognac was unfamiliar and strong, and I was exhausted from a hard week. I embarrassed myself by falling asleep.
Steven woke me with a gentle tap on my shoulder. I was startled awake, apologized incoherently, straightened my clothes, hoped I wasn’t a mess, blamed it on the wine and brandy.
He put a gentle hand over my mouth and said “Shh. Shh. It’s fine. You looked cute.”
Cute? Chris is cute. I am too grown-up to be cute. He helped me out of the car, walked me to my door, helped me unlock it. He was smiling. “You still look pretty foggy. Will you be all right?”
“Yes, of course.” I was not so sure but too confused to know what I wanted to say. “It was lovely evening. Thank you.”
“I’m glad Darcy introduced us, Ms. Donato. We’ll do it again.” He leaned in for what turned out to be
a friendly
kiss, and then he was gone.
Apparently it was a date.
***
I was wide-awake as soon as the first light came through my window. Eye-makeup smears were on my pillow, my dress was on the floor. Had I collapsed the moment I saw my bed? My first thought was of Chris, wondering how she was dealing with yesterday’s heartbreaking news. Was she was tossing and turning, or crying, and was it too early to call her? I told myself sternly that I should not hover.
My second thought was of my evening with Steven. I didn’t know what it meant, or if it meant anything or nothing at all. I didn’t even know what I wanted it to mean. When I sorted it all out, I might call Darcy, but for now I decided the solution was to think about something else. The problem of Ms. FOXX was right there at the top of the list. I could be in Bay Ridge in fifteen minutes.
Bay Ridge is a big neighborhood, sprawled out at one end of the gigantic Verrazano Bridge, with a mix of spacious old homes with harbor views, aging apartment buildings, and cramped rows of attached houses
.
How odd that Rick had never mentioned he knew someone there, a much different Brooklyn from mine but not far as the pigeon flies. I wondered what I was going to find there.
It turned out to be a small house on a street of ugly attached brick homes with garages squeezed under a raised first floor and chain link fences around the minute front garden. I thought I could linger, double-parked, letting people think I was waiting for a parking spot. I slumped down in the car seat and moved the window visor to make me harder to be seen.
There was a red Miata in the driveway but the license plate was the ordinary mix of numbers and letters, nothing special. I jotted it down. No one came in or out, and the house revealed nothing except that someone was home. There were lights on and an enormous set of matching flowered luggage was piled up on the front steps. It looked like my impulsive visit was in the nick of time.