‘I’m really,
really
sorry,’ he said quietly, and then he walked towards her and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘I had no idea they would want me for so long … there were some people we had to show around, prospective clients, and they had three hundred yards of questions. Jesus, I was furious.’
He pulled her close and hugged her.
Annie let him overwhelm her with his presence, with his person, and for a moment she could think of nothing to say.
‘It’s alright,’ she said eventually. ‘I had some lunch, went out for a walk. I even bought a book.’
David was shaking his head. ‘I really didn’t mean to leave you here all day,’ he said, and then he let her go, and without taking his hands from around her he looked right at her.
There was something in his eyes, something that suggested
exhaustion, and when he moved to the edge of the bed and seemed to drop she asked him if he was okay.
He shook his head, smiled as best he could, and said he was fine.
Just fine Annie
.
‘I think we should go out,’ he suggested. ‘Go take a look around, have a drink or something. What d’you reckon?’
‘A good idea,’ Annie said. Her eagerness was obvious. She felt like she’d been trapped inside all day. The world beckoned.
She gathered her coat and purse, and together they left the hotel. They walked, she held on to his arm, and everything seemed back to rights to her – the sounds and smells of this place, the faces of people walking by, the muted colors of early winter invading this territory.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ David said at some point.
Annie glanced sideways at his worn-out face.
‘I’ve been thinking that we should do something different.’
‘Kind of different?’
He smiled, put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. ‘I don’t know, something spontaneous … like pack everything up and go somewhere for six months, maybe Europe or someplace.’
She laughed suddenly, a little awkwardly. ‘And how the hell could we afford to do something like that?’
David slowed but didn’t stop walking. ‘I’ve got a little money saved, you know? I mean, maybe we could put whatever money we have together and do something like that.’
‘You might have a little money, but I’ve got about enough to pay the rent and eat for the next three weeks. I don’t exactly make a great deal from the store.’
David frowned and shook his head. ‘You haven’t managed to save any money at all?’
‘This is real life,’ Annie said. ‘I am fortunate to have bought the lease on the store from the sale of my parents’ house, and thankfully the apartment I live in is in a rent-control area. The money I make from the store is just about enough to get me through from one month to the next.’
David nodded understandingly, but his disappointment was palpable. There was little he could have done to disguise the expression he wore. ‘So no six months wandering around Europe then?’
She smiled and shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not David. Six months away from the store and I’d come back to nothing at all.’
‘So maybe I should sort out my apartment, decorate it, perhaps look for some other line of work. I feel I should stay put for now, that I should get used to being in one place for more than a week at a time.’
His voice trailed away.
She knew he didn’t wish her to say anything; he wasn’t done with his line of thought.
She glanced at him again. He was smiling. He turned towards her. She smiled back.
‘I was thinking that when we get back to New York you could help me … if you wanted, of course.’
She nodded. ‘I would like to help,’ she said.
‘Good,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s good.’
They didn’t speak again, and after crossing a junction at the end of the street David pointed to a bar on the facing side. The place was jammed with people, the sound deafening, but there was great warmth in that sound, an overwhelming feeling of life, of
being alive
.
They jostled with people – people laughing, people shouting orders – and only when she stood there, the counter-top ahead of her, David to her right, strangers all around, did she think
Why am I here? Why have I come out here when what I really want to do is stay behind in the hotel with David?
Then a woman was asking Annie what she wanted, what she wanted to drink, and Annie was caught for words, for thoughts perhaps, and she hesitated.
A man pushed past her, his elbow jamming into her side and causing her some degree of pain.
She turned suddenly. ‘Hey!’ she said.
‘You gonna make up your mind or what?’ the man snapped.
‘Patience … have patience,’ Annie replied.
‘Aah, get a life why don’tcha?’ the man sneered.
Suddenly David was beside her, there between herself and the man.
‘You know this woman?’ David was asking him.
The man frowned, decided not to answer, and at the same time didn’t know where to look.
‘Hey!’ David said. ‘Do you know this woman?’
Annie felt immediately uncomfortable; confrontations did not suit her, especially those connected to herself.
The man shook his head.
‘Well, let me tell you something –’ David started.
‘What the fuck is this?’ the man interjected.
Annie wanted to shrink back into the crowd and slip silently into the street. She was tense, scared even, and she wanted to pull David’s arm, to tell him
Never mind, it doesn’t matter
, but there was something in his face, something about the way he was standing that told her not to interrupt. That something was passion, the passion with which he’d first spoken to her in his apartment.
David seemed to tower over the man even though they were of the same height. Annie could feel people watching them.
‘What is it? I’ll tell you what the fuck it is,’ David continued, his voice getting louder. ‘You tell her to get a life … get a life? What the fuck d’you know? Tell me what the fuck you know?’
David seemed to round on the guy, seemed to corner him mentally, and the guy just stood there wishing to hell he hadn’t said a word.
‘You come here thinking that because she gets in your way then she owes you something … that you gotta say something, you gotta be the big man. And now you feel bad because I have something to say about it, and maybe you feel a little guilty, a little embarrassed, right?’
The man stood expressionless, lost for words.
‘You tell me that, and then you tell me that your life means something more than anyone else’s.’
The man stood immobile, rooted to the spot.
David leaned close to him, whispered right to his face. ‘Sorry to the lady?’
The man glanced at Annie, a weak smile playing at the corners of his lips.
Sorry
, he mouthed.
Annie smiled, nodded in acknowledgement, at the same time feeling sympathy as well as a strange sense of satisfaction. She couldn’t remember anyone ever coming to her defence in such a forceful and challenging manner.
David gripped the man’s shoulder. ‘Now you,’ he whispered, his voice cold and direct. ‘You go get a life.’
The man lowered his head and backed away. The crowd that had gathered dispersed in silence, some watching the man, some watching David.
Annie looked up. A woman, leaning against the bar was watching David, her face intent; Annie sensed the woman’s attraction, her interest in David.
Mine
, Annie heard herself think.
He’s mine
. And then:
What is this? Jealousy?
She surprised herself with the intensity of this emotion, an emotion that was new, another sensation, another viewpoint.
She shrugged it off, gripped David’s arm, and then they were walking through the crowd, walking towards the door, out into the street, the cool air, the space, the sound of life, unaffected by what had happened here.
It was only as they reached the junction that she realized David was laughing to himself.
She nudged him with her elbow. He turned, still laughing, and this became contagious, virulently contagious, and she was laughing with him … these two people, these strange people, standing there at the junction while the cars waited for them to cross.
*
Back at the hotel, after they’d eaten, after they’d once again made love and there was nothing but silence, she’d asked him why he’d reacted the way he had in the bar.
‘Because people are sometimes so blind and self-centered,’ he said. ‘Sometimes you look at someone and there is just nothing in their eyes … like they’re hollow, you know? Sometimes you see someone like that and you want to do something to wake them up.’
Like what you did to me in your apartment? Annie wanted to ask, but she didn’t
.
And then Is there something else going on here David? Is there something else you’re not telling me about? Were you really mad at that guy, or is there something else you’re fighting?
But she didn’t say a word.
She just pulled herself against him and closed her eyes.
Tomorrow would be another day.
He saw her home. Drove all the way from the airport with her, had the cab wait while he walked her up to her apartment, and then he kissed her, held her for a while, and he left. He had work to do he said, reports to prepare for the clients he’d seen in Boston. He needed a day or so, that was all, but unless he was alone he would never get it done. And besides, he’d added, Annie should perhaps go back to the store or her regulars might give up on her.
From the front window overlooking the street Annie watched the cab pull away, and then she turned and walked through her apartment as if this was some place new. Some place she’d never been before. She touched her things – her books, the ornaments lined up like soldiers on the chest of drawers, and from the front she stepped into the bathroom, opened the cabinet above the sink and looked at the jars of anti-ageing cream, moisturiser, herbal shampoo, the
Have A Hollywood Smile
toothpaste, other such things that really seemed to mean nothing at all the way she felt now. And how did she feel now? A little disturbed perhaps, a little ill-at-ease after the scene in the bar the night before? No, that wasn’t it. David had not mentioned it, not another word about why he had turned on the man the way he did. Perhaps he didn’t feel there was any need to justify or rationalize his behavior. And Annie, wanting to say something, had restrained herself. She hadn’t wanted to grant it any more importance than it deserved. And was it important? Perhaps, in a way, it was. It had meant something to her, that someone had stepped forward to defend her, to place her well-being above their own.
The man could so easily have become violent, abusive, could have justifiably attacked David for what he said. But he had not. He had backed down. And for that and that alone Annie had been immeasurably relieved. Weeks ago, days even, such a scene would have horrified her. She would have walked from the place terrified, trembling, and it would have been hours before she would have returned to battery. But no, she had walked half a block and laughed with David about the situation.
Something had changed. So many things had changed. And they had all come from within.
Annie smiled to herself and walked into the kitchen. Looking to her right, she opened the cupboard door above the counter and reached for the tea. Her hand went left a few inches, back again. She looked up, frowned. The tea wasn’t there. She moved aside a box of packet soups, and there – beside them and to the rear – was the container in which she stored tea-leaves. She reached it down, set it on the counter. She shook her head.
A place for everything, and everything in its place
, her mother would say. That was one particular characteristic she had inherited from Madeline. Annie O’Neill was neat and predictable beyond reproach. She always knew where everything was, and everything went right back there when she was done.
She shrugged.
The male influence
, she thought, and switched on the kettle.
Sitting at the table in the front she looked through the pages that Forrester had brought. She was ready to know more, and once again a vague thought started to nag at the edges of her mind. It was Thursday, Forrester wouldn’t come again until Monday: disappointment and frustration seemed to lie ahead in the gap between.
And then she remembered.
Sullivan.
Her father.
She got up, left her apartment, and knocked on Sullivan’s door. Nothing.
She glanced at her watch, it was a little after ten, and she tried to remember if Sullivan had anything arranged for Thursday mornings.
She returned to her front room, sat once again at the table, and began to leaf through the manuscript. It all came back – Jozef Kolzac and Elena Kruszwica, the horrors of Dachau and Wilhelm Kiel; Sergeant Daniel Rosen carrying this ghost of a child back through liberated Europe and onto a boat bound for New York; Rebecca McCready accepting the child into her home, the child becoming a teenager, leaving after Rosen’s death and disappearing into New York. From there the rest unfolded like a Martin Scorsese movie: the gambling and the drinking, the killings and robberies, all of it filling her mind with the images and sounds and colors of an age past. She thought of Johnnie Redbird holed up in Rikers Island for Olson’s murder, and how Harry Rose had left him there, left him to pay the penalty for something they both had done.
And when she turned the last page she really wanted to know,
really
wanted to find out what had happened seven years later.
Annie fetched the telephone book, searched until she found listings for
Forrester … A, B, G, K, O, P
… and then dozens of
R. Forresters
scrolling down the page like a taunt. There was no way she would find him. Not this way. Such an idea was hopeless.
She turned and looked at her door. Where the hell was Sullivan?
As if in answer to her thoughts she heard the street door open and close.
She got up, hurried out onto the landing and called down.
‘Jack?’
From the bottom she heard his voice. ‘Jesus Mary Mother of God you gave me a fright Annie O’Neill … what the hell are you doing?’