The Vanishing Year (7 page)

“She reminded me of something I forgot about.” I straighten the pillows, going for nonchalant. “When you and
I met, I had just started digging, trying to find Carolyn. I was striking out.” He is staring at me, his eyes wide, his expression a marble wall. I rush on. “I wonder if you can help me now. You're rich, powerful,
connected.
” Henry loves more than anything to be a hero, and a celebrated one. Nothing gets him going quite like
can you help me.

I expect this to work, to be the bridge between us, to bring him back to bed, his ankles over mine, his face in my neck as he brainstorms about who he knows that could help locate her, and how we could do it. Who he could pay,
We'll hire the best PI I can find.
I genuinely believe this.

Instead, his mouth is set, his jaw working.

“Why am I not enough, Zoe?” His hands hang down by his sides, but his fists are clenching and unclenching.

“Oh, honey no, I just meant—”

“I
know
what you meant.” He slaps the bed, hard, and I jump back. “In the course of one evening, you tell me you were almost killed, you've connected with an old friend—someone shady and who looks like a common criminal—and now you want to reach back into your past and find your birth mother, even though, by your own admission, your past is shrouded in secrecy and vague, and you have no living relatives. We've made a
goddamn
life, Zoe.”

I'm stung by his words, his assessment of our evening and how drastically different it is from mine.

“Henry, I'm telling you this because I feel close to you! Please, just listen—”

“I said you can do anything you want to do. I mean that. But you are restless. You are not content in our life. With everything we have, you want more. You bring up this
Carolyn
every time I turn around. She's the woman who
left you.
I am the man who is here. And it will
never be enough.
” His eyes flash with anger and he spits the words at me.

“Henry!
NO!
” I shout, I can't help it. He's not even lis
tening to me. This all seems ridiculous. He obviously doesn't understand what I'm talking about, what I'm asking.

“Don't you
dare raise your voice to me like that.”
He says it slowly, low and scary, and I shrink back. I've never been afraid of Henry before.

“Henry. I'm happy here. I will not be stagnant my whole life. You can't keep me in this marble box of an apartment.” I speak slowly and clearly. I smart at his words,
the woman who left you,
but I won't tell him that.

We stand off facing each other, both of us in identical poses, his hands on his hips, for several minutes. His nostrils flare. The pizza is cloying, greasy and sickening.

“I just want to be enough for you, Zoe. This is my biggest fear—that I'm not.” He drops his arms to his sides and turns his back to me. I cross the room and touch his bare back. His skin feels cold.

“You're enough for me.” I touch my nose to his spine and inhale.

“I'm not. I won't be. You'll leave. I'll be alone.”

“That's crazy.” I wrap my arms around his waist. “I won't leave you simply because I find her. That's crazy. I don't even know if she'll want to know me.”

“So this is Lydia, this is her idea. You've started mentioning Lydia and Carolyn at the same time. We've spent the last year in
this
world. It's different social circles, Zo. She'll drag you backward into her scene again.”

“What? I have no mind of my own?” I pull him closer. “I love you.”

He pats my hand, then pulls out of my embrace. He doesn't turn to look at me and instead sighs. “Now. You love me now.”

“Henry, love isn't conditional on growth. If I make a new friend or find my birth mother, it doesn't mean I'll move on or outgrow you.”

“You're an exotic bird, Zoe. You don't see that.”

“This is crazy, Henry. I'll love you no matter what.”

“I'm not ready, Zoe. I'm not ready for us to reach back into our pasts. We've been living in this bubble, living in the present. I've loved it. I spent the whole year before I met you completely living in the past. I can't look back. Not yet. Can you see that? Can you give me time?”

“Time.” I repeat. The word seems senseless.

“Yes. Time. Let me figure it out. Then maybe I'll even help you. We can do it together. But I just need to be ready. There's a lot you don't know about me. I know that and it's my fault. I've kept myself from you, parts that I haven't been ready to access. It hasn't been fair, but . . .” he shrugs. “It is what it is.”

“Okay.” I nod slowly. I don't really understand but I know that real love is about sacrifice, understanding, giving when you just want to take. “I guess I can give you time.”
Even though I have no idea what that means.

He pulls me into a fierce hug, his arms around me like a vise. I can't be sure, but I think I feel tears on my hair. “I won't let you go. Not again.”

CHAPTER
7

FEBRUARY 2013, NEW YORK CITY

“You have a date?” In my hands I clutched a fistful of wilting anthurium, with their veined, leathery leaf-like petals, a masculine flower. Phallic, really, the stamen popping out like a penis.

“It's a corporate banquet.” Lydia's eyes plead. “It's a big date. You'll be fine.”

“Elisa hates me. She's going to hate this,” I grumble, pouting, smoothing out the last of the bouquets. Elisa criticizes the way I change water buckets. I picture her smooth blonde-gray ponytail swinging as she shakes her head, her lined mouth bowed down, as she ticks off on slender fingers all the things I should have done differently in her clipped, efficient accent. Elisa is five feet tall and sixty years old and my hands shake at the thought.

Javi waits in the truck, honks twice impatiently.

“That's why you're not going to tell her.” Lydia kisses my cheek and pats my head. Like I'm a dog. “You were going to go with me anyway. Now you're just . . . in charge.”

“Elisa's going to flip shit and you know it. He better be worth it.”

“He's not. If I'm not home by midnight, I've been roofied, okay?” She waggles her fingers at me and is out the door, the tinkle of the bell signaling her exit.

As he steers the van, Javi talks a blue streak, gossiping about Elisa, Paula (his partner-slash-girlfriend), even Lydia. I hmmm-mmm in all the right places, but eventually he gives up and we sit in silence in hot, beeping traffic. Lydia's right, it's just a corporate event, but I'm jittery and I wipe my palms on my jeans. I think of all the things I'm going to do wrong. I've been working at La Fleur d'Elise for almost three years now, and I still don't have my footing. My job feels precarious, at best. Charitable, at worst. Most, if not all, of my suggestions are met with an outward sigh. I'm still the new kid, the apprentice.

The dinner is small: twenty-five people in a restaurant called Brûlée in Tribeca. All I have to do is place centerpieces and a podium potted plant and leave. The arrangements are all ugly, corporate and masculine: the rounded globes of hydrangeas, the long tapered gladiolus. Literally, all cock and balls, against deep bloodred table settings. I can almost smell the self-congratulatory sweat.

I position the last table setting, only four in all, and one hand bouquet, presumably a gift. White, lilting, and feminine, I guess it's for someone's assistant.

I turn to leave and crash directly into someone coming through the door. A flurry of gift bags scatters on the floor, their contents spreading a remarkable distance, flinging under tables and chairs.

“Oh my God, I'm so sorry.” I panic. This will be the thing that Elisa knows about, that she fires me for.

The man bends over, gathers up the flung silk scarves and pen boxes. His hair is shiny blond and when he looks up at me, he smiles, all teeth and dimples. My heart lurches.

“No worries. Nothing breakable. Help me rewrap?” He motions toward the long table where he stacks ten gift bags in
various states of crumpled. I hesitate. Since I've been working at Elisa's, I've been around some very rich people. Florists are hired help, as invisible as janitors, maids, and interns. Clients may respect the designers, temporarily treat them as equals, but never the drivers. I'm merely the one delivering the masterpieces of the designer. In this case, Lydia.

The man studies the centerpieces. “Did you design these?”

I shake my head. I can almost feel Lydia elbow my side. If I'm the lead here, I'm the designer. I handle the criticism, take the praise.

He grins. “Good. They're god-awful. What are these, black flowers?”

“Um, bat orchids. Yes, black flowers.” My tongue feels thick, unwieldy.

He reaches out, taps my arm. “Sit, help me. My assistant wrapped all these. I'm hopeless at wrapping things. You must be good at it?”

“Because I'm a woman?” I wrinkle my nose.

“Because you're in design?” he corrects, carefully. My neck flushes red.

He leans toward me, his long eyelashes lowered, dusting his cheeks. He smells spicy, full of oak and power and something musky, like the inside of a tree trunk. He passes me gift bags and I carefully wrap pens and silk scarves back into delicate tissue paper. Our fingers touch with each pen box, all ten, and then we're done. Too soon, it feels like.

I smooth my palms on my jeans and clap my hands together, too loudly, for some weird reason, as though he's a kindergartner. He gives me an odd look.

“Looks like I'll be leaving,” I say.

He closes the space between us. “Stay. Be my date for this horrible, boring, boorish dinner. Where everyone will talk about who they've fucked and fucked over. You can tell me about bat orchids.”

“I can't. Tonight? No. I don't have anything to wear. I have plans. I have a book to read. Just . . . no.” I back up, feeling the wall behind me for the door. “You don't even know my name?” It comes out like a question, or possibly an invitation.

He laughs, a deep yet light sound. “I'm Henry Whittaker. What's your name?”

“Henry Whittaker? I know who you are.” I swallow twice, the doorknob under my hand. Working with a high-end event florist means we know who's who in Manhattan. We gossip about the major traders and real estate moguls the way other millennials follow the Kardashians.

“I'm famous, then? Does that impress you?” He steps closer to me, his face cracked in a grin. He's joking, teasing me.

“No. You're a player. That doesn't impress me.” I turn the handle and back through the door. “Have fun, though, really. I don't need to be added to the list of women you've . . . fucked or fucked over or whatever you said.” I back through the banquet room door and into the main restaurant where wait staff are setting tables for dinner service. A few of them look up, startled. I rush through the dining room and from behind me, Henry calls, “Wait! I was kidding!”

I push through the doors and into the street, where Javi waits with the van, the bass thumping. I fling open the door and heave myself in the front seat. “Just drive.”

I look back to see Henry standing in front of Brûlée, watching the van peel away, his hand raised in a jaunty wave.

•  •  •

Back at La Fleur d'Elise, I clean up. Putter, wash buckets, rinse bins, inventory foam bricks, wire, beads, dusting spray. I have nowhere to go. I could go home, rattle around the apartment, wait for Lydia and her terrible date. The worst that could happen is that she'd come home, draw the curtain between our beds, and engage in raucous sex. No, thanks.

The bell clangs out front and I dump the last bucket be
fore wiping my hands on my apron and making my way out front. Henry Whittaker stands in the showroom, eyeing the refrigerator filled with arrangements. I stop and stare, unable to find the right words. The right tone. Haughty? Bitchy? Funny?

When he sees me, he smirks. “These are your plans?” He gently extends his hand, a large white box wrapped with a red bow.

“What is this?” I tilt my chin at him but I don't take the box.

“A book and a dress.” He bows slightly. “Zoe Swanson.”

I push my hair out of my eyes. “How did you . . . ?”

“I have connections.”

I can't tell if he's serious. He sighs, sets the box on the counter, and pushes it with one finger in my direction. “Go on. Open it.”

I do. On top of a pile of tissue paper, sits a book. I pick it up, turn it over in my hands.

“
Anna Karenina?”
I raise my eyebrows.

“What's not to love? Suburban unrest in nineteenth-­century Russia?”

I set the book aside. It's old. I wonder, briefly, what edition. I wonder if he somehow knew it was my favorite, or if it was just a guess. A guess.

The dress underneath is heavy, beaded and eggplant. The book was a hit, the dress, a miss.

“Eggplant is my least favorite color,” I tell him. Rude. Evelyn would be appalled.

“It's not eggplant. I prefer to think of it as bat orchid.”

I can't help but laugh at this. Truly, men in general are fairly bad at banter. I've spent many a night tossing out jokes to good-looking dates, only to have them fall flat on the two-top table between us, with a puzzled smile. Henry is surprising.

He elaborates. “I heard once that there's no such thing as black flowers. That if you were to breed a true black, you'd make a million dollars. That all flowers are really deep shades of purple. Some might say . . . dark eggplant. Is that true?”

He steps closer to me, his chest inches from my face. He doesn't seem to care about personal space or social acceptability or my not-so-subtle back-off signals. He doesn't know how much I loathe the touch of strangers.

“That's true.” I whisper. “But you already have a million.” I've turned into that girl. The one who plays it cool then gives in, much too quickly. The coy temptress turns giggly. I straighten my shoulders, try to get it back.

“I do.” He whispers back. “Come with me. Please?”

“I . . . I need to shower and do my hair, makeup. I live all the way in Hoboken,” I protest weakly.

“Come to my apartment. I'll give you all the privacy in the world. I promise. I have a car.”

“I . . . no. I can't.” I smooth the back of my hair flat against my skull, a nervous tic.

“What do you want? What would make you come with me?”

His voice is so earnest and his eyes so pleading that I almost cave right there. I do cave, internally, it's over. Hook, line, sinker. My idea of dating is going home with the drummer of a band, tiptoeing past his roommate passed out on the sofa, and try to have quiet orgasms and, later, quieter escapes. I rarely proffer a phone number. I like this, my distant, detached life.

I slant my eyes at him, coquettish, for fun. “Convince me.”

He laughs, his head tipped back until I can see the inside of his mouth, behind his teeth. “You want me to woo you, then?”

I place my hand on my forehead, a mock swoon. “Exactly. Woo me.”

He leads me out into his car, which is waiting for my inevitable yes (I wonder if his driver has ever seen anyone say no). We drive to his apartment, which is appropriately spectacular, shiny and glossy with high ceilings and gleaming surfaces, modern furniture, tall windows, rooms as big as my entire apartment. I follow him to a guest room, complete with en suite bathroom. The shower I use would hold my entire bathroom. By the time I'm dressed and trussed and fluffed, I feel like Julia Roberts in
Pretty Woman,
minus the whole prostitution thing. An array of cosmetics, all new, waits for me to pick and choose. The whole setup leaves me baffled. Does he just keep all this, waiting for a woman? Is this his schtick? Then I figure, what do I care? I envision my dark apartment.

When I emerge into the hallway, he gasps. If there is a script for this movie, this moment in my life, it would have been written exactly as it played out. My heart hammers and my hands shake and I know in that instant, like the sappiest of romance movies, that this man will change my life.

At dinner, he is attentive. It's his dinner, I learn. He's the host. He barely pays attention to anyone else.
Do you need more water? More sorbet? Another glass of wine?
I laugh and wave him off.
You wanted me to woo you. So, I'm wooing you.
He hovers, this man, in his God-expensive suit and finely crafted leather shoes. His colleagues are curious, I imagine, about the defiant-looking girl with the pierced eyebrow and the spiky hair wearing an elegant dress. They are kind but dismissive. Henry doesn't tell them what I do for a living, that I'm practically hired help. His assistant is nice, in a self-serving way, as though he cast Henry as Daddy Warbucks and me as Annie, and maybe, just maybe, his good deed will make the paper. I catch his eye throughout the night, and he winks in a way I presume he means to be reassuring but does nothing to reassure me.

A woman in the group, blonde, coiffed, peaches-and-cream skin, simpers next to Henry. Her long red fingernails dance along his hairline as she shoots looks in my direction. He flirts back momentarily and then leans close to me, his breath curling around my ear:
Don't worry about Dianna. She's not nearly as attractive as she thinks she is.

After dinner, there are speeches and some mingling, but Henry peppers me with questions, rarely leaving my side. A man has never been so goddamned interested in everything I have to say. We take his car home and he sits in the back with me but doesn't make a move. I can't tell if I'm impressed or disappointed.

He never flinches at my little run-down Hoboken neighborhood with the exposed fire escapes and barred windows. He walks me to the door with a chaste, gentle kiss on the lips, quick and soft as a feather.

His pursuit after that night is relentless. Hungry, primal. He can't stop thinking about me, he says. He whisks me away: Madrid, London, Los Angeles. I accompany him on business trips and each time he presents me with a new glittering gown. Strappy sandals. Five-carat diamond necklaces. Teardrop sapphire earrings. Everything he can offer, on display. The
Wheel of Fortune
with your host Henry Whittaker.

All this doggedness wears me out. I say this to him, “Henry, I can't be the woman you want me to be. Who will fit in your circles, go to your parties, be your arm candy. This is not a relationship that can
work
.”

He says he's never loved anyone like this, so quickly, so intensely. He loves everything about me, he tells me. He comes to the flower shop sometimes, just to watch me work, late at night, working with a new bloom, willing new, thick stems to bend, not break. Trying to learn design, self-teaching, needing the elusive respect of Elisa. He takes home all my
creations, successful or not, and sets them on his glass dining room table, prominently displayed at dinner parties. He calls me brilliant to his friends. Sometimes I think he's lost his mind. They surely think that, too.