Marooned in Manhattan (14 page)

Chapter 25

I
looked up from my Friday morning pan
cakes at the diner to see what had caught Scott’s attention outside. It was Joanna passing the window on the way to join us for breakfast. A minute later, she slipped into the booth beside me, said ‘good morning!’ without making eye contact, and buried herself in her menu. It was obvious why Scott had been staring. Joanna was dressed in a flirty, wispy, pale yellow summer dress with spaghetti straps.

‘What induced you to come out of regulation black?’ Scott asked. ‘We’ve just got used to seeing you without glasses.’

Joanna looked uncomfortable. She lowered her menu, raised her chin and sat up straighter insofar as you can sit up straight on the sagging, stained-red cushion covering on the booth bench.

‘I’m thirty-three. I have not worn anything but black in nearly fifteen years. I thought maybe it was time for a change.’

‘I like it,’ said Scott. ‘Colour suits you.’

‘You look fantastic,’ I added.

It was a slow morning at the clinic. Janet telephoned at lunchtime to find out what date I was heading back to Dublin.

‘I’ll check,’ I told her.

I hung around Scott all afternoon, waiting for, and dreading, the right opportunity. Finally, he got exasperated when he bumped into me because I was standing so close behind him.

‘That’s the third time I’ve nearly stood on your feet. What’s up, Evie? What are you doing following me around?’

I thought best just to come right out with it.

‘Janet wants to know when I am going back to Ireland.’

‘I bought your ticket,’ he said.

‘You did?’

‘Yes, it’s for September third,’ he said, curtly.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘You’re welcome. Could you go see if we have more Frontline on the second shelf in the waiting room, that’s the tick worm medication.’

‘Ok.’

We didn’t discuss my flight again. I sent a text to Kylie and Greg, explaining that I was leaving on September third, which left us just over a week to implement a plan to get rid of Leela.

As I was waiting for a response, I noticed an unpleasant, strong, musty urine smell in the waiting room and I looked around. A man with a little boy and a small, brown and white animal that looked a bit like a monkey wearing dark
sunglasses
, looked at me apologetically.

‘What is that?’ I asked.

‘A meerkat,’ the man said, ‘very smelly when they go to the bathroom.’

Scott came into the waiting room and shook hands with the man.

‘Hi Rob, how are you doing?’

‘How about those Mets?’ Rob answered and they launched into a baseball conversation.

I sat down beside the cute, curly haired little boy.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘Harry,’ he said. ‘My teacher says I am “Handsome Harry”. I have a brother, Toby, but he is called “Tobes”. He can’t talk. He’s just a baby.’

‘How old are you?’

He held up four fingers.

‘What’s your meerkat called?’

‘Spiderman,’ he answered.

His dad turned and looked at him.

‘Harry, you know his name is Zak.’ He explained to Scott, ‘he’s going through a real Spiderman stage. It’s been going on for over a year now. My wife and I get down on our knees every night and pray he will switch to Batman, just for a change.’

‘Who is our President?’ Scott asked Harry.

‘Spiderman,’ he said, confidently.

‘See what I mean,’ said his dad.

When Scott lifted Zak out of his cage, I noticed he had only four toes on each foot, or would you call it a paw? I’m not sure.

‘Where do meerkats come from?’ I asked.

‘The Kalahari Desert in Africa,’ Rob answered.

Scott sat Zak on the scales.

‘One and a half pounds,’ he noted, writing it into his chart. Rob showed Scott photographs of the large, special
enclosure
he and his brother-in-law had built in his big backyard in Long Island for Zak.

‘What made you buy a meerkat?’ I wondered.

‘Harry drove me and his mom crazy after he saw the
Lion King
movie. There’s a meerkat character in the movie called Timon. I suppose we’re lucky he didn’t want a Simba.’

Scott sighed.

‘The
Lion King
producers have a lot to answer for. I’ve had so many Manhattan parents buying meerkats and trying to keep them in their pokey little apartments. Then, of course, they want to dump them when they realise meerkats are completely unsuited for apartment living.’

‘Zak loves digging,’ Harry announced, ‘and he likes lying around all day sunbathing like Mommy.’

Rob and Scott laughed.

‘I wouldn’t let your mom hear you say that, buddy,’ said Rob.

Scott had finished his examination. I could tell he didn’t have a clue what was ailing Zak.

‘Give me a minute,’ he asked Rob and he went off to make a telephone call. He was back a few minutes later.

‘Rob, I’m not an expert in meerkats. I can’t figure out what’s wrong with the little guy. I want you to take Zak to my friend, Dr Shin in New Jersey, who specialises in meerkats and other exotic pets. Karen will give you her address.’

‘Thanks,’ said Rob. ‘What do I owe you?’

Scott shook his head.

‘No charge. I couldn’t help. Give me a call and let me know how it goes with Dr Shin.’

‘Sure,’ said Rob, lifting Zak back in his cage.

‘Phewsh, phewsh,’ said Harry, putting out both his upturned wrists towards Scott and shooting him with imaginary webs.

‘Phewsh, phewsh,’ said Scott, spinning around and getting him back.

Karen walked in, holding a clipboard.

‘I’ve got a Mr Garvey with a giant Schnauzer for you, Dr Brooks, and he says he cannot wait any longer.’

‘Send him in,’ said Scott, and we said goodbye to Rob, Harry and Zak.

‘Rob is the attorney I used when I leased this place,’ Scott told me, ‘a good guy’.

Mr Garvey was about fifty years old. He was dressed in a dark pinstriped suit and he strode into the examining room as if he owned the place, talking on his BlackBerry.

‘Excuse me,’ he said to whoever he was talking to, and he said to Scott, ‘This is Hooter,’ pointing at the dog. ‘He is driving me and my girlfriend and all our neighbours crazy with his barking. The building Coop is sending me nasty letters. I need you to debark him,’ and he began talking into his BlackBerry again, before Scott had a chance to speak.

Scott looked at Mr Garvey as if he were an axe murderer.

‘We don’t do debarking here,’ he said shortly, opening the door pointedly for Mr Garvey to leave. I felt so sorry for
Hooter, who looked like a really nice dog. Mr Garvey paused his telephone conversation.

‘I’ve just waited for nearly twenty minutes. I don’t have time to go to another vet. What’s the big deal? It’s my dog and if I want it debarked, that’s my right, so just do your job and we can all get on with our lives.’

‘We don’t believe in robbing dogs of their voices for their owners’ convenience,’ said Scott, in his deadly, quiet, low voice. ‘Now, you’re wasting my time as well as your own, so I suggest you get moving.’

Mr Garvey slung the BlackBerry into a pouch at the side of his waist.

‘Tell me what vet around here does debarking.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Scott.

‘Yeah, right, I bet you don’t,’ the man sneered. ‘Who do you think you are, Doctor Doolittle or something?’

Scott said, ‘I will give
you
five seconds to get out of here but you can leave Hooter here and I will find a good home for him and his bark.’

Mr Garvey looked like he was going to say something, but thought better of it. Even wearing his professional white coat, Scott looks like the kind of guy who knows how to throw a punch. Mr Garvey strode out of the examining room, muttering under his breath and dragging a very reluctant Hooter with him.

‘Can you call the police, Scott, to rescue Hooter so that man does not get his voice box removed?’ I asked.

‘I wish I could, Evie, but debarking is not illegal. He will
find a vet to do the job.’

‘But that’s terrible,’ I said. ‘We have to stop it.’

‘Evie, we can’t do anything. Let’s concentrate on the animals we can help, ok?’

‘Ok,’ I said. But it was not okay as far as I was concerned. I can imagine how Ben would feel if his bark was taken away. He would be miserable. Poor Hooter.

I saw Kylie and Camille in the evening because Camille’s mom took us to watch an outdoor opera at the Great Lawn in Central Park. People and blankets and picnic baskets took up every inch of the lawn. Camille’s mom forced her way through the crowds and shamelessly opened up her lawn chair on top of a teenage couple’s blanket. She ignored their outraged faces, beckoning to us to sit on the grass beside her. We were so far from the stage that I couldn’t make out the individual faces of the members of the orchestra, just their shadowy outlines. They started to tune up and a hush of anticipation fell over the crowd.

‘I can’t believe all these thousands of New Yorkers are keeping quiet,’ said Kylie.

‘Sssh,’ said Camille’s mom.

We talked in whispers after that.

Camille told us that she spends every weekend at her parents’ summer home on the beach in the Hamptons. When she found out that neither Kylie nor I had summer homes in the Hamptons, she raised her eyebrows so high that they disappeared beneath her hair.

‘That’s so weird,’ she said, wrinkling her button nose and
giving a little laugh. ‘We had such fun last weekend. My cousins, Tamara and Coltan, came to hang out by our pool on Sunday. Tamara brought her boyfriend, Finn. You guys know him, right?’

‘A little,’ I said.

‘Oh, I think he knows you more than a little,’ Camille snickered. ‘He said he doesn’t like girls like you who think too much.’

I felt like she had stabbed me in the stomach with a giant pair of rusty scissors. There was no way that Camille could be lying.
You think a lot
, I remember Finn had said to me.

Camille continued.

‘You can tell Finn is so crazy about Tamara – she is a goddess and so intelligent, she gets straight As all the time.’

‘There’s a very big difference between being intelligent and “thinking too much”,’ she added.

Kylie, looking at my face, interjected.

‘I think too much!’ she said loudly. ‘Way too much. I think too much all the time. In fact, I am thinking too much right now and, Camille, can you guess what I am thinking too much about this very second?’

Rising to a kneeling position, she stared down at Camille with withering contempt gleaming in her eyes. Camille turned her head away and began to apply lip-gloss.

‘Whatever. I’m not going to be one of those girls that bores boys to death by thinking too much.’

I felt like crawling under the teenage couple’s blanket in shame and embarrassment.

Chapter 26

T
he forecast for Saturday predicted
thunderstorms, but I woke to a cloudless sky. Angela and her new boyfriend, Leonard, had hired a minivan to take me, Kylie, Greg, Finn, Tamara, her twin brother Coltan and Finn’s friend, Akono, to Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey – an amazing amusement park with tons of roller coasters and rides. I sat wedged between Kylie and Akono during the long drive, very glad that I did not have to sit beside Finn or Coltan. I intensely disliked Coltan as soon as I met him. He looks like Tamara, but has a floppy fringe and none of her sweetness. Everyone bores him. I can’t understand why Kylie likes him. When I got the chance to ask her, she shrugged and said, ‘Everyone wants to hang out with Coltan.’

‘Not me,’ I said.

Akono is one of Finn’s best friends. He is tall with very black skin. He told me that both his parents are doctors who immigrated to New York from Lagos in Nigeria before he was born. Akono has visited Nigeria five times to see his grandparents and other relatives. He listened very attentively to the ‘Hooter’ story and said that he was thinking about
becoming a vet and would like to meet Scott.

I said, ‘Sure, I’ll ask Scott.’

Finn said, ‘Someone should take a hockey stick to Hooter’s owner’s head.’

I ignored him. I have no space in my head for Finn Winters, particularly because my head is obviously already too full of thoughts.

‘No, man,’ protested Akono. ‘That is not the solution. Some people are always too quick to fight.’

‘And some people are never quick enough,’ responded Finn, but in a teasing tone. Akono laughed.

Greg doesn’t like Leonard because he is still in his late thirties and Greg thinks he is far too young to be dating his mom. Greg told me that Angela has been forty-nine for five years in a row now. Leonard works as a stand-up comic in a little club downtown. He is trying to break into the big clubs and into television. During the drive on the New Jersey turnpike, he tried out some of his new material on us, but none of it was funny. It was almost embarrassing. Kylie was the only one who laughed now and again. This was not because she is stupid; Kylie is one of the smartest people I know, but she laughed at Leonard’s jokes because she has a big heart.

Leonard said, ‘You guys are not getting the material because it’s adult stuff.’

‘Yes, that’s the reason,’ Greg whispered from behind me.

Leonard told a lot of jokes about how he feels being a fat guy, but his comedy routine had a major glitch because
although he had a little beer belly, you couldn’t say he was overweight.

Great
Adventure
was not nearly as much fun as I had hoped because all of the best rides have a height requirement. When you get to the top of the line, you have to stand in front of a measuring tree picture and if you don’t reach the red mark, then no matter how much pleading you do, they won’t let you on the ride. This kept happening over and over to Greg and me. He seemed to take it more personally. Kylie hit the mark without even standing on her tippy toes.

Greg and I got totally fed up of waiting on lines only to face rejection and so we spent most of the day swimming in the tidal wave pool. Leonard was more excited about the rides than anyone else. He had highlighted a route to the best rides, based on an assessment of the lines on the park map and took charge of herding all the normal-sized people in our group along the route. Angela lay under an enormous blue and white striped umbrella on a lounger beside the tidal pool, and when we swam near her, she yelled over to us that she was sure we would be tall enough to get on the rides next summer. Greg said there wasn’t a single kid in the pool that didn’t hear her. I won’t be around next year, but I didn’t bother reminding her of that.

I forgot to be careful when getting back into the car that evening, so I wound up sitting between Finn and the window. I stared out of the window instead of talking to him, although he didn’t seem to notice. We all fell asleep on the ride back, except for Leonard who was driving. When I
woke up as we crossed the George Washington Bridge into the city, I realised my head was on Finn’s shoulder, which was warm, and that I had drooled a little on his t-shirt. I have had many embarrassing moments in my life and this was one of the worst. I said, ‘sorry’ and he smiled down at me and I smiled back until I remembered I hated him. We reached the Upper West Side first so I got out and Greg came out after me to say goodbye.

‘We’re running out of time!’ he said. ‘When did you plan to confront Leela?’

‘Soon,’ I promised.

Sitting on the floor of my bedroom on Monday morning, I dialled carefully. A bored-sounding, sing-song, female voice answered, ‘Lansing, Drucker and Wallis LLP, good morning.’

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I would like …’ and then I panicked and hung up.

My voice sounded so babyish. It would never do. I gritted my teeth. Mum had been a talented actress and I was her daughter. I could impersonate an adult voice. I dialled the number again. A different, robotic female voice answered. ‘Lansing, Drucker and Wallis, good morning.’

‘Good morning,’ I said, smoothly. ‘I would like to schedule an appointment with Miss Leela Patel. It is for …’ but the voice at the other end cut me off abruptly, sounding uninterested.

‘Transferring you now,’ she said.

Panic coursed through me.

‘Good morning. Greta Anderson speaking. How may I assist?’

I felt a rush of relief. I knew who Greta was. Leela had been whining only two weeks ago about having to take her out to lunch for Administrative Assistants’ Day. She was Leela’s secretary.

‘Good morning,’ I repeated. ‘I would like to schedule an appointment with Miss Patel.’

‘You want a consultation?’ Greta asked.

‘Yes, a consultation, please,’ I answered.

‘Ms Patel’s billing rate for consultations is five hundred and fifty-five dollars per hour.’

There was a pause. Was I supposed to say something?

‘Ok,’ I said.

‘Why are you coming to see Ms Patel?’ she asked.

‘It’s … it’s a child-related matter,’ I answered. ‘About a girl.’

‘Custody?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Has litigation started?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I mean … yes, it just began.’

‘If you decide to retain Ms Patel, we will need a signed retainer agreement. The initial retainer fee will be thirty-five thousand dollars. Ms Patel will bring our retainer agreement with her to the consultation.’

Again, there was a pause.

‘That works,’ I said.

‘What’s your name and address for our conflict check?’

‘Lucy Pensevie,’ I answered, saying the first name that came into my head, ‘Fifty-four, East 88
^th
Street, Apartment 5L, New York, New York 1024.’

‘You are missing a digit in the zip code,’ she said.

‘Oh yes, sorry, em… 10124.’

‘Your telephone number?’

I gave Kylie’s cell phone number to her.

‘What’s the name of the opposing party?’

‘Excuse me?’ I said.

‘Who are you fighting with over the child?’

‘Em, the father.’

‘What’s his name?’ she asked in a tone that implied I was a dunce.

‘John Donaghy,’ I said.

‘Can you spell the last name?’

‘Sure,’ I said and spelled it out. ‘The little girl’s name is …’

‘We don’t need the child’s name. Ms Patel is free tomorrow morning at 10am. Would that suit?’ she asked.

‘Yes, fine, thank you.’

‘I will call you if there are any problems with the conflict check. Otherwise, we will see you here tomorrow at ten. Our reception is on the forty-first floor. Please remember to bring your chequebook. Goodbye.’

‘Bye,’ I said, but she had already hung up.

I leaned back against the bed and scratched Ben’s ears, feeling both elated and scared. I think I understood why adults are always saying they are stressed.