D
ENISE WONDERS ALOUD
on Henry's answering machine where he's been hiding and why they haven't talked in nearly two weeks. "Call me!" she chirps. "Lots to tell you. And by the way, is Jeffrey correct in assuming that you've given him the brushoff?" Her financial miseries and stepson backlash often make Henry pick up his remote and watch the news on mute as she rails. Immune to the insult inherent in Henry's not returning her calls, her follow-up messages don't scold. Her tone remains warm and animated, as if he's out of town and will play back a message marathon upon his return.
One detail, delivered as he's leaving the house for the Waldorf-Astoria, does make him pause at the front door: Denise is confiding that she extended an olive branch to Nanette, Glenn's first wife. Thanks to Henry's example, really—peace in our time and all that.
Thus Henry's list of relationships kept secret from Denise grows by one item. He knows Nanette in a way that is hardly worth mentioning: After Denise ran off with Glenn, his fellow injured party and cuckolded spouse called him. Hadn't both their marriages been ruined by absenteeism, Nanette home with flu symptoms and Henry stuck at work the night of the fateful dinner party? The hostess seated handsome solo Glenn next to adultery-prone Denise. Chemistry ensued.
The forsaken Mrs. Krouch called the office: Would Henry care to meet her for a drink some evening to toast their new freedom? She pronounced the last two words with such bitter sarcasm on his answering machine that he knew any time at all spent discussing their shared humiliation would be deeply unpleasant. He had his secretary deliver the brushoff, woman to woman, maternally and diplomatically: Mr. Archer isn't quite ready to toast his freedom but wishes you and your sons well. Perhaps another time.
Nanette waited until the respective divorces were final and tried again. She didn't want to step over any line ... oh, okay, yes she did, but she had a lovely friend, single, recently divorced, no children, applying to law school most admirably at thirty-six years of age, and perhaps they could meet for coffee and advice. He could hear in Nanette's voice the wink that meant, "Of course I'm positioning this as career advice but you and I both know it's a blind date."
This time he wrote the note himself. "I would most certainly be happy to meet your friend for coffee and discuss a career in the law. I wouldn't want her to have any social expectations, if that isn't presumptuous, because I have since my divorce made peace with my homosexuality. I hope that neither that fact nor my bluntness will offend you."
Nanette called immediately. At first, she reported, there was—to be completely honest—a letdown. But almost immediately she said what all women in New York City say upon receiving this social clarification: What could be better? Gay men make the most delightful companions. Would he like to join her for, well, anything at all? And she of course had other delightful gay male friends he might like to meet, some of them members of the bar.
With ground rules established, they finally met. Nanette was not unattractive but she was colorless. She reported on her comings and goings—swimming laps, signed up for driving lessons—as if that alone constituted interesting conversation. But as she spoke, and as he dutifully appeared to be listening, he was thinking,
Never again.
Now the taxi heading home from the Waldorf speeds up Park Avenue—a reminder of Denise's messages unreturned. His mediator instincts revived by negotiating with Estime, he asks the driver to pull over, which he does instantaneously with a swerve to the right and a screech of brakes. "If the party I'm calling is home, I might get out here," Henry explains. He dials Denise's landline, and she picks up on the second ring. "Thank goodness! I was starting to worry—although God knows there's a little irony in that."
Because the meter is running, Henry doesn't ask, "How so?" but, "I'm in a taxi, one block south of you on Park."
"Which means you're calling to say hello or you're about to ring my doorbell?"
"The latter. If it's not a bad time."
"Get out and come up," she commands.
"Have you eaten?"
"Pay first. Don't overtip. I'll tell the doorman to send you up. Nine B."
Denise is waiting in her open doorway, wearing a white terrycloth robe with a Ritz-Carlton crest on its breast pocket.
"Tell me you didn't steal that," he says.
"I most certainly did not. Don't you notice those little cards in the pocket that say, 'This robe is available for purchase in our gift shop'?"
Henry hands her his overcoat and kisses her cheek. "I always wondered who buys a hotel bathrobe. Didn't it take up an entire suitcase?"
"Didn't have a suitcase on
that
check-in," she says. "And not to worry: I'm fully dressed underneath. My choice was either get into something decent or call down to the doorman. By the way, did Rudy give you a look like
She's dating already?
"
"The doorman? I didn't notice. Not that I'd recognize such a thing."
"A little paternal?" She demonstrates. "As in 'Mrs. K's husband has only been in the ground for
X
weeks, so why is she entertaining a male visitor?'"
Henry says gently, "Denise? Is it possible that underneath these jokes there's a wife mourning the loss of her husband of twenty-five years?"
"Twenty-four! A major difference in this case, believe me."
"Do you want to invite me to sit down somewhere?"
Eyes welling, she presses an index finger against her lips and shakes her head.
"No, you don't want to sit? Or no, you aren't in mourning?"
She shakes her head again.
"Too much? Too many emotions to sort out?"
She nods and fishes a tissue out of her bathrobe pocket. She blows her nose, then asks, "Do you still like mushrooms? Because I have a pizza on the way."
Oddly, for a grand apartment that boasts ten rooms, its kitchen is cramped. A high round bistro table and two soda-fountain stools take up the entire breakfast nook, leading Henry to wonder where the full set of children used to sit.
"I'm going to tell you something now," she confides, filling two wineglasses to the rim. "It's the story behind the story of what got me into several people's doghouses."
"If it's about us—I mean, about why or how you took up with Glenn—"
"Oh, please. Ancient history. This is about Glenn's funeral. Correction:
me
at Glenn's funeral." She dangles a mushroom stem above her plate, pats it back in place, and takes a cleansing breath. "I botched it. I stood up at the microphone and gave a eulogy that was supposed to be honest and helpful—or so I thought—in a way that would remind my fellow mourners that Glenn could be ... well, not exactly an asshole—who isn't at times? But annoying. And who better than a wife to say, 'He was human. He had his idiosyncrasies and shortcomings'? Which, by the way, I was running through to make people smile through their tears. I was just trying to liven things up! Besides, all the speakers before me had covered every sterling quality he'd ever demonstrated or someday might potentially demonstrate."
Henry is making the most of one half of the small pizza and drinking red wine that tastes like grape juice. He asks, "And what was it that you said in your roast?"
Denise blots her mouth with a pizzeria-supplied napkin. "First, overall, it was a great event. He would have loved it. I stand by my comments. Sometimes, you just don't know how your message is going to get across."
"And your message was...?"
"That he was human! I thought I'd give a little balance. Fortunately or unfortunately I haven't been to a lot of funerals, and the ones I've attended have just been religious ceremonies with one forgettable eulogy by the guy in charge."
"Had you been medicated?" asks Henry.
"One little Ativan!"
"Do you remember what you said?"
"Not word for word. But I remember the highlights."
"Please," he prompts.
"All small stuff! He was being described up here"—her hand rises as high in the air as she can reach—"and I wanted to bring it down to here"—she pokes herself on the Ritz-Carlton crest, presumably indicating
heart.
"I wish you'd been there so I could have an objective reading. Okay, here's a perfect example of something that should have been well received: Glenn was the only person I knew who ate an apple from the top down, like there was no core, like it was a cupcake."
"Interesting," says Henry.
"And observant
and
affectionate
and
in no way a value judgment!"
"Was that all?"
"No. The next part was for anyone who'd ever been here for a dinner party: He thought he could cook—he couldn't—but he'd put on a chef's apron and get out the knife sharpener, big production, swish, slash, back and forth, steel on steel. But he had no palate! He thought salt should be added at the table, so everything he served was bland. It was a family joke! It wasn't a criticism! And in the same vein, whatever needed slicing or dicing or chopping he'd do it right on the Corian without a cutting board. He'd peel an onion and then chop the hell out of it like the host of an infomercial." She turns around and points. "See, I finally installed butcher block and said, 'Here, go to town.' I thought that painted a picture of his passion and joie de vivre."
"Okay. Not elegiac. But so far nothing horrible."
"I guess I started to ramble. My delivery may have been a little too stream-of-consciousness. And, I don't know..."
"Too much speaking ill of the dead?"
"I wasn't," she wails. "I knew things that no one else knew about him. But here's what no one else got: Glenn would
not
have liked being described as a saint." She takes a swig of wine and grimaces. "Ugh. Did I tell you that the sons carted away Glenn's wine cellar? Anyway, he would have been the only one in the pews with a smile on his face. But you know how it is when you're flopping and the hole you're digging just gets deeper and deeper?
Very
hard to change course."
Henry tests his new license to call Denise on her self-delusion. "You must have said something more offensive than how he ate his way through an apple."
"If I did—" she begins brusquely, but then her expression softens. "If I did ... okay, maybe I did. But isn't that some stage of grief? Anger? Festering resentments? Loss of judgment?"
"Go on," says Henry.
"I might have made a little fun of his thing for cars, that he couldn't just go through a car wash. It had to be brushless. He had to get them detailed. Which I know isn't funny, but it wasn't meant to be. It was a segue to something touching. And that was that he helped a guy who worked on his car by putting him in touch with a friend who was an immigration lawyer."
"And took care of the bill?"
"What bill?"
"The worker's? His lawyer's bill?"
Denise says, "No. Sorry. It was just meant to show that Glenn could appreciate someone else's legal problems, someone that would be beneath any other customer's radar screen. But he wasn't Santa Claus. The message was: He understood Spanish and he wasn't afraid to give an undocumented worker a friend's business card. And Henry—I was his wife. The spotlight was on me. What was I supposed to say? 'Twenty-four years ago we fell in love and cheated on our spouses and broke up two families'? 'He sometimes wore the same pair of socks two days running'? 'He didn't have erectile dysfunction'? I didn't want this to be about me."
Henry is irritated and still hungry, thinking about the half carton of pad thai in his refrigerator at home. Besides, what support can one offer to a widow who ruined her husband's funeral? Of course, there is for Henry a footnote to all things Krouch, if only he can broach it as the disinterested party he is pretending to be. "Is your eulogy the reason Thalia isn't speaking to you?" he ventures.
Denise raises her wineglass and through it he detects a sardonic glint. "Ask her yourself," she says.
T
HIRTY YEARS
of negotiating and lawyering have perfected Henry's poker face. He tests Denise's challenge with, "Ask her as what? A total stranger? After all these years? She'd be terrified."
"I thought maybe..." she begins, then shakes her head. Henry walks his plate and wineglass to the sink. When he turns on the water, Denise says, "Leave it. Maria comes tomorrow morning. Sit."
He returns to the table but stands behind his chair. "Did you think I went looking for your daughter?" he asks.
"It wouldn't be out of character! You crossed this one big divide—us—so I wouldn't be shocked if you took a leap with Thalia. Part of me would love to see the three of us sitting around a table some night."
"Because...?
"Because I think you're a peacemaker! Look what you've done for us, two old foes. You're a lawyer. A diplomat. You'd never stand up at a funeral and turn everyone against you. And let me say this: I think Thalia would adore you." She leans in closer. "Just don't tell her who sent you."
This could be the graceful juncture for Henry to announce, "Truthfully, we have been reunited. I was waiting for the right time to tell you"" But he doesn't. He's only human, he reminds himself. Cuckolded husbands have money in the bank, at least in the honesty account. This was between him, Thalia, and—less and less—Sheri Abrams, PhD. Even the most amicably divorced, scrupulous gay men can hold a surprising quantity of marital bitterness in their hearts. He does ask, "In terms of alienating a roomful of people, do you think that's what caused the rift with Thalia?"
"Not
caused
it. I think she'd say it was the straw that broke the camel's back."
He is tempted to spin the stranger angle further, to ask, "Is that how she talks? In aphorisms?" But he doesn't for fear his poker face will slip out of gear. He checks his watch rather ostentatiously. "Look what time it is already. I'm going to grab a cab and maybe catch a movie."
"Which movie?"
He names one, mayhem-filled, meant for teenage boys and meant to deter her.
"Alone?"
"No shame in that," he says. "And always easier to find a seat."
"If you wanted company, I could get dressed in five minutes and see something playing next door."
He doesn't want her company. He says with his newfound freedom to be less than tactful, "Actually, I lied. I wanted to make a graceful exit. No movie. I'm going home to catch up on some work."
"What work? I thought you were retired."
He answers solemnly: "I've taken on some pro-bono work that's pretty close to my heart."
Denise pats his wrist. Her eyes convey
heartbreaking gay cause.
When Henry ducks out his front door, bathrobed and barefoot, to retrieve his
Times
the next morning, he hears a high-heeled clacking from below. He leans over the railing to see a leather-jacketed blond peering in the barred windows of his downstairs maisonette.
"May I help you?" he calls down.
She doesn't startle or even turn around. "I need a key," she answers.
"And you are who?"
The woman frowns, reaches into a very large, red, reptilian-skinned pocketbook, and brings forth a BlackBerry. After thumbing a few buttons she asks, "Are you John Henry Archer?"
"I am."
"And this is where Thayleeah—did I say that right?—Archer is going to live? And you're her lawyer or next of kin, or something like that?"
Dear God. He has tempted the fates with his instant embrace of fatherhood and look what he has wrought. "Is Thalia okay?" he asks, both hands gripping the cold railing.
The woman smiles. "I haven't met her yet, but I've heard she's fab-u-lous."
"Jesus," he says. "You scared me. I thought you were here to break some horrible news."
"Of course not! I'm here on business."
"Which one might deduce is breaking and entering."
The woman strides to the bottom of Henry's front steps. "I love you already! I love your spirit." She fishes out a hot pink business card. "This should explain things," she says.
Henry stays put. She looks up, disappointed, a commuter at rush hour encountering a dead escalator. She takes the stairs, card in the lead.
Anne-Marie Albano, media coaching, strategic planning, and crisis communications,
Henry reads. He hands it back. "And you go door to door?"
She frowns, consults a fax in her purse. "You
are
John Henry Archer, the lawyer?"
"I am."
"Then it's my understanding we have an appointment."
For the second day in a row, the dormant lawyerly pulse throbs in his temple. "First, Ms. Albano, if we have an appointment, I don't know about it. Second, I'm not one of those people who genuflect at the words
media coach
"
Ms. Albano allows the kind of condescending smile one bestows on a belligerent idiot whose future cooperation is essential to a mission. "Let's start over," she says. She offers her right hand, shoulders straighter and head erect. "Anne-Marie Albano, consultant to Estime International. I do a lot of work with them. I was misinformed, and I apologize. Someone was supposed to set up an appointment. Is there any way you could spare some time now?"
"I can't," he says. "I have appointments all day. And you may have noticed that I'm wearing what my mother used to refer to as lounging clothes."
"One question, five seconds: Is there a back door? Or a door between your apartment and the one below?"
"Why?"
"Access!"
"Access for whom? Because this"—he elbows his front door—"is a private residence. Mine. With a security system. No one will be accessing these two residences except Miss Archer and me."
"I understand. Again, I'm very sorry."
"Apology accepted. Why don't you call and set up an appointment with me directly."
She nods once, briskly. "Is there a working landline downstairs?"
"No—"
"Will someone be home today between one and five?"
"Do you mean me?"
"Anyone. If not, I'll need a key."
He remembers anew the root cause of his contempt: Hollywood entitlement. When movie crews block off New York streets and impose crowd control on unsuspecting pedestrians, one is supposed to comply. He says, "I am not interested in being coached or packaged. I'm Thalia's legal adviser—"
"And her landlord! Look—there could be a dozen paps on your doorstep, if everything goes according to plan, by Monday morning. You might have to march right up to the cannon's mouth any minute."
"Paps?" he repeats.
"Paparazzi!" She leans over the railing to gaze down at the maisonette's entry. "I'm not the stylist," she says, "so I'm speaking off the cuff. But I think that this street and this house are going to be perfect. And with all the coffee shops this way and that, it's ideal for their waiting around."
Henry says, hand on the doorknob, "I have work to do. Good luck with the crisis management. My neighbors will appreciate your keeping the paps to a minimum."
She calls after him, "But paps are the whole point!"
He's forgotten his newspaper. One step back outside and he adds, "And these stone griffins? They're sculpture, not benches. I hope the press will respect my property."
Once inside, he spies on her from behind the library drapes. She is thumbing her BlackBerry. Because her expression is one of bewilderment rather than anger, Henry considers calling the 917 number on her card. But he doesn't. The other side has to understand that he is no fan of this arrangement and no pushover. Sunny and cooperative Thalia can be the good cop, but it's very much in her best interest for him to play the bad.
He resolves to be more compulsive about retrieving messages when he finds that Thalia tried to reach him the night before. "Hope it was okay to give Estime the address," her message says, restaurant noise in the background. "They want to check out West Seventy-fifth versus my block on Mott so they can decide which is better for my
i-mahj
— rags to riches or silver spoon in my mouth. You can call my cell. I'm with Leif, in public, in Chelsea. A dress rehearsal. He's in the bathroom. Again."
He calls her immediately but gets her voice mail. "They sent someone," he says. "I wasn't very cooperative. It's a little after nine. Are you working today?"
The second unclaimed message is from someone named Todd, who is merrily narrating, "The dreaded Denise gave me your number, but I'm calling anyway." The voice changes as if it's going off the record. "Were you two really married? I find that fascinating. She says you're a catch. Oh, sorry—that was crass. I didn't mean
catch
— I have better values than that. I meant
prince.
And if Denise says so, well, we all know what a foolproof judge of character
she
is. Oh, sorry. I forgot for a second that she's in mourning. If only one could edit one's messages." He ends with, "Yours truly, Todd Weinreb, and if I haven't offended you, here's my phone number..."
Henry waits until five to return the call. Todd is home. He, too, lives on the Upper West Side, does indeed like sushi, is free for dinner, and does have—despite wisecracks to the contrary—a soft spot for the appalling Denise.