The Emerald Light in the Air (16 page)

“The owner is the heir to a cosmetics fortune,” Sarah said, adding, “He's also a very good poet.”

At the end of the hall was a room, where about eight people were gathered on and around a big bed, talking and drinking.

“Come in!” a comfortably stretched-out man, who had taken off his shoes, cried. “We're having an argument about whether it's ethical to live on government disability in your twenties.”

Right away, Jonathan said, “It is if you're disabled. My ex-wife used to work with disabled kids.” Then, for Sarah's sake, he anxiously exclaimed, “I don't mean my ex-wife! I don't know why I said that!”

“We're not talking about
that
kind of disabled,” the man said.

“My friends and I were looking for a place to smoke,” Jonathan quickly replied.

“I think people were smoking on the terrace,” the man said.

“There's a terrace?” Jonathan asked.

“I know where it is,” William said.

It was William's turn to lead. They went back out and along the red hallway to the main room, and then squeezed and pushed their way diagonally through the crowd toward the terrace door. Now when Jonathan tried to touch Sarah's shoulder, or hold her hand, she pulled away. As they were about to reach the terrace, she spun around, shouting above the party noise, “Your ex-
wife
?”

“I'm sorry. That was a slip.”

“She was your
wife
? Are you out of your mind? She was never your wife!” Then Sarah asked him, “Do you still love her?” But she didn't wait for him to answer. She said, “I don't even want to know.”

“I'm sorry. I'm very sorry.”

“I'll think about it,” Sarah said.

William held the door, and she marched out onto the hot, humid terrace. Jonathan skulked behind her.

He and she and William sprawled on the patio furniture and waited for smokers, but none came. The terrace faced north, toward midtown. A large ascending moon, glowing in the sky over the Rockaways, was partly visible around the corner of the building.

“Ought I to light a joint?” Jonathan asked—now a trace of his Southern diction emerged—and William said, “Absolutely,” but Sarah, still angry, said, “Save it for later.”

He could feel a light breeze. He felt the joint in his shirt pocket. He'd known her in a distant way, through other people, mutual friends, for a long, long time—when had they first met? It had been at the wedding of his college classmate Kenneth—and they'd run into each other here and there in the ten or eleven years since, either at parties or in big groups at restaurants, that sort of thing; and, at any rate, this drawn-out, vague acquaintance had given them each the subtle feeling, once they'd begun seeing each other and sleeping together, that they somehow shared common origins, though in fact she'd grown up on the Upper East Side, the daughter of psychoanalysts, and showed a dedication to European fashion magazines—Rachel had rejected fashion as a malignant form of commercialism—that he would never, throughout their long life ahead, their marriage, come to fathom.

He overheard her whispering to William but couldn't make out what she was saying. She and William were on a pair of low lounge chairs, off a ways from his. Above the brick terrace wall, he could see the spire of the Empire State Building. Below that, on the terrace, was Sarah's back, turned to him. He had a view of her ass, wrapped in her cotton skirt. How much had she drunk?

Finally the terrace door opened and more people tumbled out, including William's friends.

“We came to find you!” Kathy exclaimed, and Deborah said, “Here you are! Where have you been?”

“Exploring!” William said, then went on, “Deborah, Kathy, this is Sarah, my new pal, and you met Jonathan earlier.”

“Hi, hi,” everyone said.

Jonathan had the feeling—he was drunk enough to feel this—that, though they were all just casually meeting, they were also, after a stretch of being apart, coming into one another's company
again
in a significant way: The encounter on the terrace was a homecoming.

“Is anyone smoking?” he asked, and Deborah felt about in her purse and said, “Where are my cigarettes? I just had them.”

The terrace was filling. Everywhere, people were gathering in groups of two and three and four.

Deborah practically screamed at him, “I'm sorry, I don't know where my pack went!” and Jonathan said, “We'll find some.”

He called, “Sarah, come sit with me,” but Sarah turned her head and said, “In a minute. I'm talking to William.”

With Rachel, all his pent-up urges to make a home and a family had begun to declare themselves—in his last year with her he'd felt a strong desire to have a child. At times this desire had come on him fiercely. He'd felt it as a pleasurable shock that rose from his knees up through his chest to the top of his head, causing him to tremble and sometimes visibly shudder. He recalled that Rachel, early in their relationship, had had an intuition that, were they to have a child, it would be a daughter. This idea of a girl had settled in him, and after a while he couldn't conceive of a son. When Rachel left him for Richard Bishop, he'd felt bereft not only of her, of his never-to-be wife, but of the daughter that they had not had, would not have; and now a year had passed, during which he'd often felt that his chances at fatherhood had gone with her, with Rachel. Of course, this wasn't true, he knew that, but the feeling was convincing, and much of the time he went about in a state of grief over it.

He had to take action. He would go hunting and bring back a cigarette for Sarah. He got up from the chaise and said, “Deborah, come on, let's go find cigarettes.” He held the door for her, and she went inside ahead of him.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

She had dyed red hair and pale skin. She was about Rachel's height and size. He hadn't looked closely at her earlier, when William had first introduced them.

“I'm not sure,” he said. What was he doing with this woman? “We're going to the bar,” he said.

“Lead the way,” Deborah said, and he squeezed by her and got in front, where he set to work. At one point, he got them stuck—the crowd was thick indeed—and he heard a man near him say, “You can't just drop a bunch of rocks in a pile to make a stone wall. There's a way to do it. It isn't random.”

They backtracked. Now Jonathan was following. Deborah found a path and got them to the bar. She was drinking vodka.

“What do you do?” he asked.

“I'm an architect.”

“Really? What kinds of things do you build?”

“I mostly work on apartment renovations. I've done some house additions. How about you?”

“I'm a lawyer,” he said.

“What kind?”

“I do litigation.”

“I like your jacket,” she said, and reached out and felt the sleeve.

“Oh, thanks, thank you,” he said.

Behind her, he saw Fletcher, gazing over at them. Jonathan turned his body away from Deborah's. He spoke to the bartender. “Is there a back stairwell somewhere, or a fire exit?”

“Try the kitchen,” the bartender said.

Jonathan could see the tops of two swinging doors opening and closing about twenty feet away. He could see Fletcher approaching.

He grabbed Deborah's hand and pulled her forcibly toward the kitchen doors. “I think it's over in this direction,” he said.

Deborah exclaimed, “I'm right here!”

“Sorry, I was trying to avoid someone,” he said.

They waited for a man carrying a tray to pass, and then went into the kitchen.

“Can I help you, sir?” a waiter asked.

“We're looking for the stairs.”

The waiter pointed past a long kitchen island lined with trays and overhung with copper and steel pots.

“Make room, make room, please,” a waitress called as she walked by. There was a smell of baking bread.

Jonathan said, “Let's go,” and he and Deborah rounded the kitchen island. He opened the heavy steel door at the back, near the freezer.

“Aw, fuck,” he said.

The gray stairwell was empty. The door closed behind them and they stood face-to-face under the dim light. Peering at Deborah in the dark put him in mind of Rachel; suddenly he wanted to call her, a bad idea.

Deborah was holding his sleeve again. “Hey,” she said. “How are you doing?”

“All right.”

“I like you,” she said then.

“I like you, too,” he said, and she announced, “I want you to know that if we sleep together and get pregnant I'm keeping the baby.”

He frantically wrenched the door open.

“I don't know what to say! It used to be that people always smoked in the fire exit!” he blurted.

Where was Sarah? He needed to put things right with her. He stormed out of the kitchen and through to the terrace. On his way, he noticed that a few people at the center of the room had begun subtly dancing to the music playing on the stereo. Sarah was no longer on the terrace. The moon was higher in the sky now. Instead of a dying sunset, he saw in the west a bright metropolis of oil tanks, freeways, and planes taking off or landing at Newark. He'd lost Deborah—abandoned her, really—along the way. Back into the party he went. Then, at a loss over how the evening was going, he made for the front door and the antique cage elevator, which he rode to the lobby with a couple who were leaving the party—but what was
he
doing? Was he also leaving?

He was. The heat on the street had made a soup of the air. He felt his hair sticking to his forehead. He looked at his phone. He was on the verge of being quite drunk. He put the phone back in his pocket. This was his way of not calling Rachel.

He began walking. There was nothing much to look at on the street: bagged trash and a few brightly lit entryways. He came to a broad artery. Church Street? He was sweating. A couple passed him.

He and Sarah made a couple, didn't they? Was it too late to phone Rachel? He crossed Church. After another few blocks, he had a feeling that the street was sloping downward.

There was the river. He leaned heavily against a building and dialed, and Rachel answered. “Jonathan?”

“Hey. Is it all right that I called?”

“Not really.”

“Can you talk?”

“Maybe for a minute.”

“I've been missing you.”

Rachel said, “You shouldn't be calling me, Jonathan.”

“I know.” The buildings around him were massive and dark.

“Have you been drinking?” she asked.

“Some.”

“Oh, Jonathan.”

“What?”

“Jonathan, we've been over everything. We don't have anything to talk about anymore.”

“You're right.”

“I was ready to marry you,” she said.

“Why are you bringing that up?”

“Because you were never going to ask.”

“You don't know that,” he said. Then he said, angrily, “Hang on, a truck is going by; I can't hear you.”

“Can you hear me now?”

“Yes,” he said, and she asked, “Where are you?”

He said, “Downtown, near the Hudson,” and she said, “Jonathan, I think I should tell you that Richard and I are moving.”

“Moving? You're moving? Where?”

“Los Angeles. He has some friends who can hook him up with teaching work at one of the art colleges.”

“Oh.”

“I thought you might have heard from Irena or Paul.”

“What?”

“I said, I thought you might have heard from Irena or Paul.”

“I haven't talked to either of them.”

“Let's not fight,” she said.

“I'm not fighting!” he said with a raised voice, and she said, “I heard that you've been seeing someone.”

“Oh, God, Rachel,” he whimpered. He was suddenly near tears.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

Then he began to weep. He tried to keep the sound from her. She said, again, “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Jonathan.”

Jonathan put his phone back in his pocket. He wiped his wet eyes with his jacket sleeve and thought of Sarah.

By the time he got back up the street to the building, he had pulled himself together. The loft was a mess. The author's books had disappeared or been scattered. The music was loud; dancing was taking over. A woman in the crowd held her arms high, shaking them in time with the beat.

Rachel, dancing, had always put her head down and tucked herself over and whirled her arms like threshers.

“Sarah!” he called into the mass of people, because he thought he saw her, jumping up and down in the crowd. But it wasn't her.

Then he glimpsed, in a far corner of the room, what looked like a green shirt. It was William, talking to Sarah and Fletcher. Jonathan saw her look his way; she gave him a weak smile and a little wave, and then Fletcher and William turned and saw him.

“Jonathan,” William called out.

“Jonathan,” Fletcher said.

“Hey, guys,” Jonathan said, and came forward to join them. “I was just looking for you all.”

“We've been wondering where you were,” William said.

Jonathan explained, “I went in search of cigarettes. Well, Deborah and I went in search of cigarettes.”

Sarah spoke in a harsh voice. “Did you have any luck?”

“Not a bit,” he said to her.

“I'm surprised,” she said.

“Apparently no one smokes anymore,” he said.

She said, “Lots of people smoke.”

“I guess I've been looking in the wrong places,” he told her, and she said, “That sounds right.”

William finally broke in. “We were just talking about how much we hate these kinds of parties.”

“Who's ready to dance?” Sarah said.

“Let's go,” William said, and she and he went off together toward the center of the room.