Riverside Park (7 page)

“Yeah. I guess.” Jason stuck his hand out. “Thanks again for dinner, Mr. Stewart.”

“You're welcome.”

“Congratulations again on your book,” Jason said politely as he backed away.

They turned back around on their stools to lean on the bar. “Seems like a good kid,” the writer said.

“He is. I think he's going to do very well.” For some reason this reminded him of the financial mess he was in and it made him feel sick inside. “I think I need a real drink,” Howard announced. “What are you drinking?”

“Irish Mist.”

“Sounds good to me.” He looked around. “Where's Celia?”

The bartender servicing the other end of the bar came down to Howard. “Can I get you fellas something?”

“Where's Celia?”

“On break. What can I get you?”

Howard ordered two Irish Mists. The writer drank his pretty fast while Howard nursed his. Celia reappeared behind the bar about ten minutes later.

“You're a little young for hot flashes,” the writer told her when Celia came over to see how they were doing. He had started slurring his words.

Celia blew the hair off her face. She did look hot. “Say that again?”

The writer repeated it.

“I think you've hit your limit,” Celia said, smoothly swiping his empty glass from the bar. “So what can I get you? On me. Water, soda or coffee?” She put a dish of pretzels in front of him.

“Fuck that, I wanna real drink,” he said, swatting the dish of pretzels off the bar. The pretzels went flying and the saucer clattered down on the floor behind the bar.

Celia looked at Howard. “Tell him I won't hold it against him tomorrow.” And then she walked down to the other end of the bar.

“Fuck her,” the writer growled, trying to get off the bar stool. Howard held his arm to steady him and the writer threw his hand off.

“Okay, okay,” Howard said, backing off.

Without another word the writer staggered out of the bar.

“He left his coat,” the woman with lots of makeup on said.

Celia came to wipe down the bar again and Howard apologized. He thought it had been that last drink that had done it. Celia agreed that had she been out here she probably would not have poured him that last drink. She said the writer got a certain look when he was on the verge of a blackout. “The cold will wake him up, though,” she said with a smile. “How about a turkey sandwich? They're really good.”

“Sounds good to me.” Howard switched back to beer and ate his sandwich. It was good. The football game on television got pretty good, too, and he stayed on, having another beer, doing his best to stay in the moment and not think about his problems.

At eleven Celia said she was going off her shift so Howard closed out his bill and asked if she wanted to share a cab home. She said she would prefer to walk. He said that sounded like a good idea.

It was freezing out but Celia seemed unaffected by it. She
asked him a few questions about what a literary agent did, asked where he had gone to school (Duke) and who some of his writers were. (The only author of his she had heard of was Gertrude Bristol.) He asked her what kind of books she liked to read and she said Anthony Trollope.

“Which ones?”

She looked at him. “All of them. He makes me laugh and I like that time period. A lot of cool stuff was made back then. You know, books, paintings, furniture.”

“Good evening, Miss Cavanaugh, Mr. Stewart,” the night concierge of their building said. They said hello, and while Howard pressed the button for the elevator, Celia took her bandana off and shook out her hair. When they got in Howard pushed
11
and by the time Celia asked him to push
6
they were already past it.

“Sorry about that,” he said, starting to get that sinking feeling again. He dreaded the ride out to the airport with his mother and dreaded going out to Woodbury to hang out with his in-laws in a house that might well get repossessed if he didn't think of something. He had to tell Amanda. And soon.

“It's okay,” Celia said, leaning back against the wall and covering a yawn with her hand.

He sniffed the air, unable to identify the smell. “Is that your perfume?”

She laughed. “Perfume? It's rose-scented Glade. We use it in the restaurant office.”

“Believe it or not,” he heard himself saying, “it almost smells good on you.”

A mysterious smile was playing on Celia's mouth and Howard felt a small shot of fear. He was afraid he was about to try to kiss Celia. She turned her head slightly toward him, as if she were reading his mind.

The elevator eased to a stop and he just stood there, looking at her.

“Your floor,” Celia said, stepping forward to punch her floor into the directory as the doors opened.

Still, he stood there. They were only about ten inches apart. He knew she would let him kiss her. The doors started to close and Howard slammed them back, then took her in his arms to kiss her. When he tried to open her mouth the elevator doors tried to close again and knocked his mouth off hers. This time he let the doors close and Celia stepped back against the wall, putting her arms back to rest on the railing, as if to invite his eyes to run over her body while the elevator descended. He stepped forward to touch her but she twisted away. “I'm sorry, Howard, but I don't do married men. I don't think it's right.”

It was as if she had slapped him across the face. At once he was ashamed and embarrassed. “I'm sorry, Celia, I'm sorry,” he said quietly, turning away from her. “I guess I shouldn't have had that last drink, either.”

The elevator arrived at her floor and she stepped out. “Howard,” she said, waiting for him to look at her. “Forget about it. Because I already have.” And then the elevator doors closed. He slapped
11
and took off his glasses to rub his eyes.
What the hell am I doing?

“HOW GOOD OF
you to telephone,” Mrs. Emma Goldblum said to Cassy.

“I would have called before, Emma, but I only just got back in town and received your message.” Cassy was speaking more or less in the direction of the speakerphone in her dressing room. She was slipping on a skirt, running late for the office. “How was your Thanksgiving?”

“It was very nice. We went to the Stewarts', as you know. Amanda cooked a very nice dinner. Her parents were visiting. And Howard's mother. Rosanne made a pumpkin pie and a mince pie. And you?”

Cassy had zipped up the skirt and was pulling down a pair of matching blue low heels from the organized shelves. “We had a full house.”

“Yes, I know, you'll remember Henry brought over sweet William for me to see last week.”

“Did you say
sweet,
Emma?” Cassy said, searching through
her vanity for earrings, necklace and a bracelet. She also hastily put on her wedding rings. “I love my grandson dearly, Emma, but
please.
” The sound of Mrs. Goldblum's chuckle made Cassy smile as she scanned the upper rack for her new fitted blazer. Why she had waited so many years to get a personal shopper was beyond her. All she had to do was say, “I'd like a blazer that goes with this skirt,” and voilà, in a few days it appeared. (She knew why. Because they cost a fortune and she had not always had a fortune.)

“That is why animal crackers were invented, dear,” Mrs. Goldblum said. “It makes all children sweet for at least five minutes.”

Cassy laughed.

Scarf. She supposed she should wear a scarf. No, she hesitated, looking in the mirror, why start hiding her neck now with so many years to go? The sun did its work and that's all there was to it.

Cassy put on a scarf.

The outfit looked good, she thought, turning to view it in the three mirrors. She had always liked her clothes to be as perfectly in place as possible. It had annoyed her no end when a therapist once said that it was common for children of alcoholics to grow up that way, obsessed with external order in an attempt to contain the emotional chaos they felt inside.

“I know how terribly busy you are, Cassy,”Emma Goldblum was saying, “but I'm calling to ask your help. Normally Sam Wyatt keeps an eye on my affairs but at present he is occupied with other matters so I am turning to you.”

This got her attention. Cassy picked up the phone. “What may I do?” She walked into the master bedroom to look out the largest window. It was cloudy outside, making the Hudson look gray. It was windy, too, creating white caps on the water.
Directly below in Riverside Park the flag at the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument was flailing wildly.

“I have some legal matters to attend to and I wondered if you would be so kind as to accompany me to my lawyer's office. It is downtown. I know it's a great deal to ask, but I need someone I can rely on and I prefer not to have Rosanne with me because I don't want to upset her. And she will be, that's just the way she is when it comes to—” she hesitated “—wills and such.”

Emma meant death. Cassy imagined it was hard enough for Emma to face her mortality without Rosanne looking on.

“Did you have a specific day and time in mind?”

“I waited until I had spoken to you before making an appointment.”

“I should be in town this week,” Cassy said, “but let me get my calendar in front of me at the office and then I'll call you back. In, say, an hour?”

“I'm very grateful to you, dear.” Pause. “I fear time is slipping away.”

“Don't I know it,” Cassy murmured. “Listen, Emma, is there something going on at the Wyatts'? You said ‘concerned with other matters' in a rather ominous tone.”

“I'm afraid nothing that I am at liberty to discuss.”

After Cassy got off with Emma she went to the kitchen and flipped open the address book to check a number and make a call. “Good morning. Is Sam there, please? It's Cassy Cochran calling.”

After a few moments Sam Wyatt came on the line. “Hey, girl.”

“Girl, I
wish
.” She laughed, looking at her watch. She was late.

Sam had been a good friend to her. Their relationship had
been a baptism by fire in the final stages of her ex-husband's drinking. Cassy didn't know what would have happened had Sam not been there to help her through it. “I'm good, Sam, but I just got a call from Emma Goldblum. She asked me if I would take her to her lawyer's office, which I said I would.”

“I would have taken her if she asked.”

“She seems to think you have a lot on your plate right now and the way she said it—well, it made me wonder if everything was okay.”

Silence.

“Sam?” She imagined he was reading something on his desk and was distracted.

“So Rosanne goes home and tells Emma,” Sam said, “and then Emma calls you—is that how this works? I admire her restraint, it's been three whole days.”

Cassy hesitated. She'd known Sam for years and was well acquainted with the fact that he could be—well, scratchy on occasion. Irritable. She wasn't offended particularly; that's just the way he was when stressed out. “Sam, no one has told me anything. And if everything's fine then that's great, I'll just hang up and get to the office.”

“Now there's a plan,” he told her.

Well, that was an exercise in futility
, Cassy thought, hanging up and going back to the bedroom to retrieve her bag. She was using up so much energy living two lives to begin with she didn't need to nose into the affairs of her neighbors to expend any more.

“Mrs. Darenbrook?” she heard the housekeeper call.

“Good morning.”

“Ah, there you are,” the housekeeper said from the doorway. “You're usually gone by now.”

Nothing like feeling unwelcome in your own home. Cassy
knew the housekeeper was anxious for her to leave so she could turn all the TVs in the house on to begin her daily regime. Oh, for the days of Rosanne! When someone arrived who was interested in the house and the family in it!

 

Cassy's plan to slip unobtrusively into the DBS News conference room had clearly failed; whatever discussion had been taking place stopped dead the moment she came through the door. She took the only seat left at the long conference table, which was at the other end from where their SeniorVice President and Executive Producer of DBS News, Will Rafferty, was presiding. She felt self-conscious with all of these eyes on her because they belonged to younger people, many of whom made their careers in front of the camera, which is to say they were trained to view their appearance critically and tended to do the same with everyone else.

Alexandra Waring was there, of course, the symbolic head of the news division and around whom it had largely been built. Alexandra recently celebrated her four-thousandth on-air hour for DBS News and, at forty-one, was, Cassy thought, even better looking than when they had launched the network. Maturity suited her. Alexandra had exquisite blue-gray eyes (which all five children of Congressman Waring, the longtime Kansas politician, had), high cheekbones, a full mouth and nearly black hair that had only recently begun to show an occasional gray hair. She also had a brilliant smile that was said to be able to generate ratings by itself.

Alexandra was fiercely bright and well-liked at the network, if not somewhat adored. She was demanding but fair and anyone who was trying their best usually found favor with her. A few people had come and gone very quickly at DBS News because it became quickly evident who fit in and who did not.
If someone understood what Alexandra and Will were trying to do he or she would do fine; if he or she disagreed with their direction and had no constructive alternative to offer, he or she soon
wanted
out. (The chill factor could be unbearable.)

Many of their key players in the news group had been with DBS since the beginning, when there had only been
DBS News America Tonight with Alexandra Waring
, Monday through Friday, for one hour at nine.

Sitting next to Alexandra was half of the anchor team for DBS's new 6:00–7:00 a.m. national news hour, Emmett Phelps. He was formerly a professor of law at USC and looked every inch the part, only younger. He was in his middle forties, had a nice head of hair, insisted on wearing horn-rimmed glasses and, regardless of the climate or season, a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows. Emmett was well-spoken and deliberate in his speech; he had the gift of being able to concisely summarize the complicated details of news stories that broadcast news could not stop to explain.

Across the table from Emmett was his more outgoing and outspoken coanchor, Sally Harrington, whose edge it was part of Emmett's job to smooth while Sally's was to make Emmett have one. She was almost thirty-five and possessed elocution no voice coach could ever teach. Sally was very pretty, with blue eyes and light brown hair streaked with blond. She had formerly served as a special producer for Alexandra, but also belonged to the Writers' Guild because she could write almost as well as (some said better than) her boss, the latter of whom notoriously believed a newscast was only as good as the writing behind it.

The jury was still largely out on Sally and Emmett and
DBS News America This Morning
but the November sweeps had been promising. Their biggest hurdle was making viewers want to
forego their local news to tune in to DBS before the Big Three network morning shows began at 7:00 a.m., which meant
DBS Morning
going great lengths to cut back and forth to their affiliates to update local weather and traffic. Sally and Emmett had very high TVQs (the TV quotient of that ineffable “something” that made television viewers want to watch them), and while their ratings were slightly higher than anticipated it was still anyone's guess what would happen after the novelty of the news hour had worn off.

There were several other on-air talents and producers in this meeting. With the nightly news, the morning news, the half-hour daily newscast they produced for INS in the United Kingdom, the two magazine shows, the Internet newscast and the new podcast programming, the weekly meeting was an attempt to get the whole team on the same page of Alexandra and Will's playbook.

Cassy smiled at the expectant faces around the table who were evidently waiting for her to say something. “Good morning. I apologize for being late.”

Instantly there were groans and people started throwing dollar bills down on the table, all except for Will Rafferty, who was picking out quarters from his change and shooting them down the table to Sally Harrington.

“You
always
win, Sally,” Emmett grumbled, thumbing through his wallet. He took out a dollar bill and dropped it in front of her. He looked at Cassy. “I bet that your first words would be ‘
Sorry I'm late
.'”

“You'll never make it in curling,” Sally told Will, lunging to catch a rolling quarter.

Alexandra was making change for a five from the pile of singles. “I bet you'd say, ‘And what earthshaking events have I missed?'”

“I bet, ‘Hi, everybody,'” the meteorologist said, pushing a small pile of bills down from his end of the table. “I could have sworn that's what you always say.”

The producer for the morning news leaned over the table to look down at Cassy. “I guess you're really not a ‘Hey' kind of person.”

“You thought Cassy would come in and say,
‘Hey'?”
Will said incredulously.

“Better than what he thought,” the producer said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the twenty-two-year-old they'd hired straight out of Rochester Institute of Technology for the podcast. The producer laughed. “He said,
‘Yo.'”

“‘Yo?'”
Will repeated. He frowned at the young man. “You thought the president of DBS Television would come in here and say,
‘Yo'? ”
Everybody laughed.

The RIT rookie looked to Cassy. “Isn't that what your generation used to say?”

“Thank you for the compliment,” Cassy said. “But I'm afraid my generation said,
‘Peace'
—” she flashed the peace sign “
‘ Love'
she made an
L
with her right hand “—and
‘Woodstock.'”
She put two peace signs together to make a
W
.

“This goes straight into the Feed the Starving Interns Fund,” Sally announced, raking the pile of cash into her lap.

Sally was big on helping certain interns get by because she herself had once been a starving one. She shared something with Cassy on that score. Both of them had grown up, as Sally called it, “without money.” (Sally was always quick to explain that “without money” denoted someone in a temporary phase with prospects for the future, as opposed to someone stuck in a permanent economic status that made them “poor.”) Both Cassy and Sally had lost their fathers as children and both had put themselves through college. But where Cassy's fears about
her future had led her to the altar with Michael, Sally, as younger women seemed to do these days, simply flung herself into the universe and made ends meet until she could support herself as a journalist.