Книга - Riverside Drive

Riverside Drive
Laura Van Wormer


At New York's most-sought-after address, passions and secrets collide, and love is destroyed, then found again in the most unlikely placeMichael and Cassie Cochran are television's perfect couple, but the veneer of their enviable marriage is starting to crack. And only one of them is trying to salvage it.Sam and Harriet Wyatt have spent a lifetime getting to where they are, but they could lose it all in the blink of an eye after Sam stumbles upon a corporate secret.Howard Stewart has the perfect job and the perfect wife–both of which are a perfect lie.Amanda Miller has wealth, fame and a lifetime of heartache. She's given up on men–until she meets the one she can't resist.Step onto Riverside Drive, where friends and neighbors determine each other's destinies.









Praise for LAURA VAN WORMER and RIVERSIDE DRIVE


“SHE IS A BORN STORYTELLER!”

—Esther Shapiro, cocreator of Dynasty

“STEAMY…You’ll never watch the TV evening news with such indifference again!”

—Los Angeles Times

“AMBITIOUS!”

—Newsday

“REALISTIC…from cocktail party to block party, through marital and job strife…her realistic characters…combined with occasional blasts of sensational sex, will keep her readers turning the pages.”

—Publishers Weekly

“LIVELY AND CONSISTENTLY ENTERTAINING…

With laugh-out-loud humor and fine appreciation for surprise, Van Wormer moves her characters’ stories briskly…. Well-drawn scenes, deft juggling of plots and subplots, and an ample supply of energetic and well-documented sex…Characters to care about and root for, long after the author’s last word.”

—Stamford Advocate

“SEXY!”

—Kirkus Reviews

“UNIQUE!”

—The Beacon (Macon, MS)




Also by LAURA VAN WORMER


WEST END* (#litres_trial_promo)

BENEDICT CANYON ANY GIVEN MOMENT* (#litres_trial_promo)

JURY DUTY TALK* (#litres_trial_promo)

JUST FOR THE SUMMER

The Sally Harrington Novels

EXPOSÉ* (#litres_trial_promo)

THE LAST LOVER* (#litres_trial_promo)

TROUBLE BECOMES HER* (#litres_trial_promo)

THE BAD WITNESS* (#litres_trial_promo)

THE KILL FEE* (#litres_trial_promo)

MR. MURDER* (#litres_trial_promo)

And look for RIVERSIDE PARK* (#litres_trial_promo),




Riverside Drive

Laura Van Wormer





www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)


In Memory of My Mother

Margaret Garner Van Wormer

And for My Father

Benjamin Francis Van Wormer

And My “New” Mother

Marjorie Law Ault Van Wormer


I would still be talking rather than writing had it not been for two extraordinary individuals named Loretta Barrett and Ann Douglas. Their wisdom, generosity and powers of reassurance are awe-inspiring. Their spirit is, too. I can only wonder at my good fortune in having met them in this life and say, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for all you have taught me.




CONTENTS


PART I (#uf8f45b15-0a1f-56eb-8d07-ca941f44faab)

CHAPTER 1 (#u3beef354-c50c-5b4c-8395-3e81bc764c01)

CHAPTER 2 (#u7e0c8062-a5a5-574b-b52f-d9a7f20ace4d)

CHAPTER 3 (#ub0bd6bcd-e972-5143-bc22-9a703dfa9dd0)

CHAPTER 4 (#u2014ea0d-5196-5812-833a-6548edc32c8f)

CHAPTER 5 (#ubccf3730-7723-5e89-9201-9603ac1690f7)

CHAPTER 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

PART II (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 23 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 24 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 25 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 26 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 27 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 28 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 29 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 30 (#litres_trial_promo)

PART III (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 31 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 32 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 33 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 34 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 35 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 36 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 37 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 38 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 39 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 40 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 41 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 42 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 43 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 44 (#litres_trial_promo)



PART I




1


The Cochrans have a party

Cassy Cochran was upset.

Michael, her husband, had gone to pick up ice four hours ago and hadn’t been seen since; Henry, her son, was supposed to be back from Shea Stadium but wasn’t; and Rosanne, the cleaning woman, was currently threatening the new bartender in the kitchen with deportation proceedings if he didn’t see her way of doing things.

Not a terrific beginning for a party that Cassy absolutely did not want to have.

“Hey, Mrs. C?” It was Rosanne, standing in the doorway to the living room.

Cassy turned.

“If Mr. C comes back, he’s gonna be pretty upset about how this guy’s settin’ up the bar. Could you—” She frowned suddenly and leaned her head back into the kitchen. “What?” she said. “Well, it’s about time.” Rosanne swung back around the doorway, waving her hand. “Never mind, Mrs. C, Mr. Moscow here suddenly understands English.”

Cassy smiled, shaking her head slightly, and then surveyed the living room. It was a very large, very airy room that, in truth, almost anything would look marvelous in. And Cassy’s taste for antiques (or “early attic,” as Michael described her preference) was especially fitting, seeing as every floorboard in the apartment creaked. But then, the apartment was really much more like a house, a big old country farmhouse, only with high ceilings. And windows. The three largest rooms—the living room, the master bedroom and Henry’s room—all had huge windows facing out on the Hudson River.

The windows had been washed this week. Before, shrouded in a misty gray, the view from the twelfth floor had been eerily reminiscent of London on what Henry called a Sherlock Holmes kind of day. But no, this was New York; and the winter’s soot had all been washed away and the late afternoon April sun, setting across the river in New Jersey, was, at this moment, flooding the living room with gentle light.

For a woman from the Midwest, the view from the Cochrans’ apartment never failed to slightly astonish Cassy. This was New York City? That steely, horrid, ugly place that her mother had warned her about? No, no…Mother had been wrong. Hmmm. Mother had been right about many things, but no, not about New York. Not here. Not the place the Cochrans had made their home.

Sometimes the view made Cassy long to cry. The feeling—whatever it was—would start deep in her chest, slowly rise to her throat and then catch there, hurting her, Cassy unable to bring it up or to press it back down from where it had come. She was feeling that now, holding on to the sash of the middle window, looking out, her forehead resting against the glass.

The Cochrans lived at 162 Riverside Drive, on the north corner of 88th Street. Looking down from the window, Cassy’s eyes crossed over the Drive to the promenade that marked the edge of Riverside Park. The promenade was arbored by maple, oak and elm trees, underneath which, across from the Cochrans’, were a line of cannons from the Revolutionary War, still aimed out toward unseen enemy ships. To the right, up a block, was the gigantic stone terrace around the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, a circular, pillared tower patterned after the monument of Lysicrates in Athens. But this part of Riverside Drive was built on a major bluff, and it was beneath it that lay the heart of the park’s glory.

Acre upon acre of the park was coming alive under the touch of spring, the trees bursting with new leaves, the dog-woods and magnolias flowering their most precious best. From here, too, Cassy could look down and see the community garden; in a month it would be one long sea of flowers, flowing down through a valley of green.

Traveling down the slope of the park, Cassy’s eyes, out of habit, skipped over the West Side Highway and down to the walkway by the river’s edge. It was green there, too. And then, down there, the Hudson River. Lord, she was beautiful.

It was the river that always played with Cassy’s heart. There were days when Cassy looked out and thought to herself, How does she know? She would be as dark and gray and cold as Cassy felt inside. But then there were those days when the river was as blue and as dazzling as Cassy’s own eyes were. Oh, how awful it was on those days when Cassy’s heart was cold and dark, and the river was so beautiful. Like now. How does she do it? Cassy wondered. The river had all of these crazy New Yorkers on one side of her, and all of these crazy New Jerseyites on the other, forever throwing rocks and trash at her, dumping things in her, and, sometimes, even throwing themselves into her in an effort to get this thing called life over with. And yet…her tides continued to ebb and flow, and the winds continued to blow across her, and her rhythms of regeneration went on, pulling, pulling downward, her glorious expanse gracing the urban landscape, pulling, pulling downward, spending herself, finally, totally, into the relentless mouth of New York Harbor.

Cassy sighed.

“You okay?”

Cassy pressed the bridge of her nose for a moment and then turned around. “I’m fine,” she said. And then she smiled at Rosanne. And then she laughed.

“What?” Rosanne said.

“Well,” Cassy began, pausing, touching at her earring.

Rosanne’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Cassy glanced at her watch and then back to Rosanne. Back to the “Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame” bandanna that was slipping down over Rosanne’s eyes. Back to Rosanne’s blue denim shirt, whose shirttail was hanging down to her knees. Back to her jeans, whose hem lay in folds around the top of her Adidases. Back to thin little Rosanne, all five feet of her, standing there, just waiting for Cassy to say it.

Cassy moved forward toward her. “It’s time for you to change,” she said, smiling.

Rosanne looked to the ceiling. “Here we go,” she said. “Ya know, Mrs. C,” she continued, as Cassy took her by the elbow and steered her toward the kitchen, “you never said nothin’ about me havin’ to play dress-up.”

They were in the kitchen now, and Cassy stopped, looking back at Rosanne. She smiled, yanked the bandanna down over Rosanne’s eyes and turned to the bartender. “Have everything you need, Ivor?”

“Yes, Madame Coch-ah-ren,” he replied, bowing slightly.

“Good,” she said, pulling Rosanne along through the kitchen to the back hall. Rosanne scooped up her bag from the counter along the way.

“And I never said I was a caterer,” Rosanne reminded her.

“Right,” Cassy said.

“So I don’t know why you get so picky about what I wear—it’s not as if you like any of these guys.”

They were in the master bedroom now, and Cassy headed toward her closet. “I think you’re going to like it,” she said, opening the doors.

“Mrs. C,” Rosanne said, throwing her bag on the bed, “ya know, if you’d just tell me, I’d bring one of the ones you already got me.”

“Well, I was in Macy’s and there it was, just hanging there, calling, ‘Rosanne, Rosanne, I was made for Rosanne.’”

Rosanne sighed, pulled off her bandanna and shook out her hair. Cassy turned around, holding a pretty blue and black print dress. “Hair,” she said, “good Lord, Rosanne, you have hair.”

“Come on, Mrs. C,” Rosanne said, turning away.

Cassy walked over and laid the dress out on the bed. She looked at Rosanne a moment and then smiled, gently. “Tell me the truth—do you really hate doing this?”

Rosanne shrugged and proceeded to pull some things out of her bag: a slip, some panty hose and a pair of shoes.

The doorbell rang.

“Uh-oh,” Cassy said, looking at her watch, “somebody’s here already. No, let Ivor get it, Rosanne. You go ahead and get changed.”

Rosanne shrugged again and started undoing the buttons of her shirt while Cassy walked back to stand in front of the closet door mirror. She scanned it. A few wisps of blond hair were already falling out of the clip. But her eyes were still blue. Her nose was still perfect. Her mouth still had lipstick. Body was still tall and slim. Bracelets, check. Earrings, check.

Cassy was still beautiful. Cassy was still forty-one. She would not stand closer to the mirror than she was; she would not care to see the reminders of her age showing around her eyes, mouth and neck.

“Don’t know how good Mr. Moscow’s gonna be at greetin’ guests,” Rosanne said.

“Hmmm,” Cassy said, raising her chin slightly, still looking at herself in the mirror.

“And you don’t want to scare him right off the bat,” Rosanne continued.

Cassy laughed.

“They said he was the last bartender they’d send us,” she reminded her.

“Oh, Lord, that’s right.” Cassy closed the closet door and sailed out of the bedroom, down the hall and through the kitchen to the front hall, where she found Ivor standing in front of the open door. “Who is it, Ivor?” When he gave her a vacant look, she stepped forward to peer around his shoulder. “Oh, Amos. Hi.”

“Hi,” Amos Franklin said. Both Ivor’s and Cassy’s eyes were fixed on the stuffed head of an unidentifiable animal that was snarling on top of Amos’ head.

“It’s okay, Ivor,” Cassy said, patting the arm with which Ivor was blocking the door.

Ivor did not seem convinced.

“He’s a guest,” Cassy told him. “We’re supposed to let him in.” Ivor’s eyes shifted to her. She nodded, smiling encouragement. He took one more look out the door, frowned, and slipped behind Cassy to return to the kitchen. “Sorry about that,” Cassy said, waving Amos in. “I have no idea what I’ve done to earn his protection.”

“Any man would want to protect you,” Amos whispered.

Here we go, Cassy thought. Amos was forever whispering little things like that—that is, when his wife wasn’t around. “Nice hat,” she said, snarling fangs sweeping in past her eyes.

“Michael gave it to me for my birthday,” Amos said. He reached up, groped around, and patted the animal on the nose. “I don’t think it’s real, though.”

Cassy led Amos into the living room, explaining that Michael was out getting some ice.

“Good,” Amos said, sitting on the couch and patting the seat next to him, “it will give me a chance to talk to you.”

Cassy sat down in one of the chairs.

“You’re beautiful.”

“What?”

“You’re beautiful,” Amos repeated.

“Ivor!” Cassy called out. He was there like a shot. “Ivor,” Cassy directed, “ask Mr. Franklin what he would like to drink.”

Ivor stared at him.

“Scotch on the rocks,” Amos said.

Ivor moved over to Cassy. Bowing, “Madame?”

“A Perrier with lime, please. Thank you, Ivor.”

Ivor took one more look at Amos and departed.

“So, Amos, tell me how you are.”

Amos was not good. As the head writer for Michael’s newsroom at WWKK, he never made a secret of his keen dislike for Michael Cochran. After a minilecture on the abuse and misuse of Amos Franklin at work, he would invariably end up with a pitch for Cassy to hire him at her station, WST. Cassy’s mind wandered, and as Amos progressed with his story about how “a certain egomaniac who will go unnamed” took credit for a job done by “a certain unsung hero who will go unnamed,” Cassy—not for the first time—thought about Michael’s parties.

Once a month Cassy’s husband wanted to have a party. Cassy had never, ever wanted any of these parties, but it wasn’t because she was antisocial. It was because Michael had this thing about only inviting people who seemed to despise him. And too, they—these people who despised Michael—were all professionally dependent on him. And so, whether it was Amos, or a technical director, or a character generator operator, they all came to Michael’s parties and drank with him and laughed with him and despised him. If Cassy made the mistake of trying to talk Michael out of one of these parties he would go ahead and invite the people anyway and then spring it on her the morning of the day it was being held. This was not the case this Sunday evening, however; this party had been announced Friday night. (“Cocktails.” “For how many?” “Ten, fifty maybe.”)

“Have you met the Kansas Kitten yet?” Amos was asking her, taking his drink from Ivor.

Cassy tried to think. “Oh, the new anchor. No, I haven’t. Thanks, Ivor.” He bowed again.

“Alexandra Waring—that wearing woman, we all call her,” Amos said, stirring his drink with his finger. He put the finger in his mouth for several moments and sent a meaningful look to Cassy—who chose to ignore it. Slightly annoyed, Amos continued. “But you know all about Michael’s private coaching lessons.” When she didn’t say anything, he laughed sharply, adding, “Day and night lessons.”

“If Michael brought Alexandra Waring here from Kansas,” Cassy said, rising out of her chair, “then she must be extraordinarily talented. Excuse me, Amos, I have to check on things in the kitchen.”

“Extraordinarily talented,” she heard Amos say. “Too bad we’re not talking about the newsroom.”

In the kitchen, Cassy told Ivor to listen for the doorbell. “And let whoever it is, Ivor, in. All right? Oh—” She retraced her steps. “Take that tray of hors d’oeuvres in, please. And if that animal tries to bite you, you have my permission to kill it.”

Cassy walked back to the bedroom, knocked, and let herself in. Rosanne was standing in front of the mirror—in the dress. She looked terrific and Cassy told her so, moving over to check the fit from a closer view.

“Did Mr. C lose his keys again?”

“No,” Cassy said, turning Rosanne and looking at the hem, “that was Amos.”

“The guy I threw the sponge at last time?”

“Yes. Rosanne, come here.” Cassy pulled her over to the dressing table and sat her down. She picked up her own brush and paused. To Rosanne’s reflection in the mirror she said, “I want to try something with your hair.” Rosanne shrugged. Cassy took it as consent and started to brush out Rosanne’s long hair.

“Too bad you didn’t have a daughter,” Rosanne said into the mirror.

“Hmmm.” Cassy had hairpins in her mouth. She was bringing the sides of Rosanne’s hair back up off her face. The doorbell rang; Rosanne started to rise; Cassy pushed her back down into the chair. “Not yet.”

Rosanne watched her work for a while and then said, “Who did you play dress-up with before me? Not the kid, I hope.” The kid was Henry, Cassy’s sixteen-year-old son.

“No one,” Cassy said. She looked down into the mirror, turning Rosanne’s head slightly. She considered their progress and then met Rosanne’s eyes. “You know, Rosanne,” she said, “the only reason I do this is because you’ll need it one day.” She paused, letting her hand fall on Rosanne’s shoulder. (The doorbell rang again.) “You’re not going to be cleaning houses forever.” Rosanne’s eyes lowered. “Maybe you don’t think so,” Cassy said, resuming brushing, “but I know so. And I want you to be ready.”

Silence.

It wasn’t a lie, what Cassy had said. But it certainly wasn’t the whole truth behind “playin’ dress-up.” The first time Cassy had coaxed Rosanne out of her usual cleaning garb and into a dress, Cassy had been quite taken aback. For some reason Cassy couldn’t understand, Rosanne seemed determined to conceal from the world not only her body but the basic truth of an attractive face. Here, right now, in the mirror, was a nice-looking young woman with long, wavy brown hair, large brown eyes (with lashes to die for) and a slightly Roman nose. And her skin! Twenty-six years of a difficult life, and yet not a mark was to be found on Rosanne’s complexion.

And so the whole truth had a lot to do with Cassy’s pleasure at performing a miracle make-over. And it did seem miraculous to Cassy, this transformation of Rosanne, because she herself always looked the same—at her best. And Cassy longed for a startling transformation for herself, but there was no transformation to be had. No, that was not true. There was one long, painful, startling transformation left to Cassy now—to lose her beauty to age. Others might not have noticed yet but, boy, she had. Every day. Every single day.

“I want you to enjoy what you have while you’ve got it,” Cassy murmured, picking up an eyeliner pencil.

Rosanne made a face in the mirror (decidedly on the demonic side) and then sighed. “Well, if I’m gonna lose it, maybe I don’t wanna get used to havin’ whatever it is you keep sayin’ I got.”

“Youth,” Cassy said, smiling slightly, tilting Rosanne’s face up. “Close your eyes, please.”

“Youth?” Rosanne said, complying with Cassy’s request. “Man, if this is youth, then middle age’ll kill me for sure.”

“I know what you mean,” Cassy said.

The doorbell rang again.

“So you’re on strike, or what?”

“Maybe,” Cassy said. “Hold still.”

Ten minutes later the doorbell rang again and Cassy hurried to reassess and touch up her work. There was a great deal of noise coming from the front of the apartment now, and Cassy hoped that Ivor hadn’t quit yet. “Okay,” she said, stepping back, “that’s it. If I do say so myself, you look wonderful. Here,” she added, handing Rosanne some earrings, “put those on and then come out and make your debut. I better get out there.”

As Cassy reached the door, Rosanne said, “Hey—Mrs. C.”

“Yes?”

Rosanne was admiring herself in the mirror. “Thanks.”

Cassy smiled. “The pleasure’s all mine.” She turned around and nearly collided with a young woman in the hall. Cassy stepped back, profusely excusing herself. The young woman merely laughed.

Who was this?

Looking at Cassy was the most exquisite set of blue-gray eyes she had ever seen. And the eyes were not alone—great eyebrows, good cheekbones, a wide, lovely mouth. And her hair…This wonderfully dark, wildly attractive hair about the woman’s face.

How young you are, Cassy thought.

“You must be Cassy,” the girl said. Her voice was deep, her diction perfect.

Cassy realized the girl was offering her hand to be shaken and so she took it, and did it, still fascinated with her eyes. “Yes,” she said, “and you’re…?”

“Alexandra Waring,” she said, baring a splendid smile.

Cassy apparently jerked her hand away, for the girl took hold of her arm and said, “I’m sorry, did I startle you?”

Oh, Lord, Cassy thought, you may be the one Michael will want to marry. “How old are you?” Cassy said, cringing inside at how ridiculous the question sounded.

“Twenty-eight,” Alexandra said, laughing.

“Well,” Cassy said, clasping her hands together in front of her and composing herself slightly, “Michael has told me a great deal about you.” When the girl merely continued to smile at her, Cassy shrugged and said, “So—don’t you want to ask me how old I am?”

The girl’s smile turned to confusion on that one, and the moment was saved by Rosanne’s head appearing over Cassy’s shoulder. “I saw you in the Daily News,” she said. “Liz Smith says they’re gonna can Boxby to make room for ya.”

“I really don’t know,” Alexandra said vaguely.

“Better read Liz Smith then,” Rosanne suggested.

“Oh, brother!” cried a booming voice. It was Michael, his six-foot-two frame looming from the other end of the hallway. Cassy could already tell that he was three—no, maybe only two—sheets to the wind. “What are you doing, Cassy, introducing Alexandra to the maid?”

“I was just about to.” Cassy made the appropriate gestures. “Rosanne, this is Alexandra Waring. Alexandra, Rosanne DiSantos.”

Michael laughed, lumbering down to the group. “Who is this?” he cried, reaching around Cassy to pull Rosanne out into view. “Wooo-weee, look at you! How did you get so gorgeous?”

“Hey, watch the merchandise,” Rosanne warned him.

Alexandra turned to Cassy, smiling slightly. “Has she worked for you long?”

Cassy glanced at her. “Three years.” Her eyes swung back to Michael. “Not to be nosy, but where have you been?”

“Out,” Michael said, yanking the skirt of Rosanne’s dress.

“Yeah,” Rosanne said, yanking her dress back. “Five hours gettin’ ice. Gettin’ iced is more like it.”

“Big bad Rosanne, huh?” Michael said, putting up his dukes.

“You two—” Cassy began.

“Hey, Mr. C,” Rosanne said, sparring as best she could in the confined space, “listen, we gotta go easy on Mr. Moscow tonight. He’s the last guy they’ll send over.”

“Mr. Moscow?” Alexandra asked.

“The bartender,” Cassy said, catching the sleeve of Michael’s sweat shirt. “You better get changed.”

He stopped sparring and looked at her. “I stopped by the station,” he said.

“May I throw my things in there?” Alexandra asked, nodding toward the bedroom. “Cassy?”

“What?”

“My things—may I put them in there?”

“Stop lookin’ at me like that,” Rosanne said, swatting Michael’s arm. “I’m not gonna be a cleanin’ houses forever, ya know.”

“Rosanne,” Cassy said, “will you please get out there and pass hors d’oeuvres? And be forewarned that Amos has an animal on his head.”

“Amos,” Michael sighed, leaning heavily into the wall. “What an asshole.”

“He claims you gave him that thing for his birthday.”

“Yeah,” Michael sighed. “It’s a hyena. Looks like him, doesn’t it?”

“I’m takin’ the sponge with me then,” Rosanne said, moving down the hall, “just so ya know.”

“Cassy—” Alexandra tried again.

“Yes?”

“My things?”

“Yes. In there. On the bed.”

“And I’ll help you,” Michael said, brightening.

Cassy snatched his arm and turned him around. “You, in the kitchen—now.”

“Wait,” Michael said, turning around. Cassy pushed him backward down the hall by his stomach. “No, wait, Cass, I just want to know what Alexandra wants to drink—ALEXANDRA. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DRINK?”

“Good Lord,” Cassy sighed.

“Perrier!” came the reply.

This did not make him happy. Cranky, “WHAT?”

“Michael,” Cassy said.

“I’d like a Perrier,” Alexandra said, emerging from the bedroom.

“Oh, man,” Michael whined, turning around and walking to the kitchen of his own volition. “What is it with you guys? Get within ten feet of Cassy and suddenly everybody’s drinking Perrier. Shit.”

Cassy waited to escort Alexandra out of the hall. “What do you usually drink?” she asked, letting Alexandra pass in front of her.

“Perrier,” Alexandra said.

A nice figure, too. This is not good. “Really?”

Alexandra turned and smiled. Ratings were made on smiles like these. “Really,” she said.

Cassy’s father, Henry Littlefield, had always told her that she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Cassy’s mother, Catherine, yelled every time he said it. “If you keep telling her that, you’re going to make her a very unhappy woman!”

Cassy was twelve when her father died. Afterward, Catherine—over and over again, year in, year out—strongly advised Cassy to forget everything her father had ever told her. Her explanation ran something like this:

Catherine had been quite a beauty herself, although you couldn’t tell that now. Years of slaving on Cassy’s behalf had destroyed her looks. But the point was, you see, Catherine had been a beauty. Everyone had always told her so and Catherine had believed them. She had also believed everyone when they said that her beauty would win her the best man alive and she would marry him and live happily ever after.

But instead of going for the Miss Iowa title in 1939 (which she won hands down, don’t you know), she should have gone to college and learned something. But she didn’t and she didn’t win the Miss America title, but she did win Henry Littlefield and life went steadily downhill after that.

It wasn’t that Henry had exactly been a bad man. No, no, far from it. It was just that he was so unlucky. Catherine had never seen anyone so unlucky. His career never got off the ground and they never did manage to move out of their starter house (or pay for it) and then Cassy came along and Catherine had to stay home all the time to take care of her and then Henry went off and died on her and Catherine had to work as a receptionist at Thompson Electronics to support Cassy and—

Sigh.

“You know, sweetie, life is tough and then you’re dead and if only they hadn’t all kept telling me how beautiful I was.”

But you’ll be different, honey lamb. I won’t let that happen to you. You’re going to make something of yourself and not end up like your poor old mother.

And Cassy was different, and she did listen to her mother. She was a good girl; she did graduate at the top of her class; she did receive a full scholarship to Northwestern. She didn’t keep bad company (she didn’t really keep any company at all, frankly) and she didn’t fill her head with silly notions about boys.

That is, until Michael Cochran. Oh, but he was handsome in those days. So darkly, devastatingly handsome. (He still was, with a suntan.) And Cassy fell in love with him, despite the fact that she did not want to fall in love with him. He was too wild, too untrustworthy. (She was never quite sure, but over the years Cassy had come to suspect that her falling in love with him may have had something to do with the fact that he had never openly appeared to be in love with her—unlike almost every other man.) But Michael was always laughing, always on top of the world, and was such a good-natured, warm, fun-loving bear of a man—much like Cassy’s father had been. And Michael was so worldly! After six years of working at his home-town paper in Indiana, twenty-four-year-old Michael Cochran was an awesome entity in the journalism school. (Cassy was the second.)

They dated throughout college and Cassy agreed to marry him shortly after graduation. Catherine was horrified and refused to have anything to do with the wedding. If Cassy wanted to marry that “good-time Charlie” and throw her life away, she could go ahead and consider herself an orphan. Cassy and Michael went ahead and got married.

The Cochrans were hired as a team in the news department at a network affiliate in Chicago, Michael as a writer and Cassy as some glorified term for a secretary. They both worked very hard and Michael also played very hard. The guys in management, big drinkers themselves, loved having Michael along on their city jaunts. Michael was a kick; Michael was smart; Michael Cochran was going places.

And so was Cassy—on his coattails. When Michael was offered a producer slot in documentary, he demanded and got Cassy as his assistant producer. They worked extremely well together, Michael with his grand visions and good writing, and Cassy with her sharp technical eye and awesome organizational skills. In short, Michael would get a great idea and Cassy would see that it was carried through to completion. Michael hated details and follow-through (“DETAILS!” he would roar. “FUCK ’EM—LET’S JUST DO IT!”).

Cassy got pregnant in 1968 and miscarried in her third month. But then in 1969 she conceived again and everyone (even her mother, who had deigned to speak to her again) was thrilled when Cassy’s term progressed without any problems. She continued working up to the week Henry was born, and did not return to work full time until two years later, when the biggest documentary of Michael’s life was falling apart—all because of those insidious DETAILS. She had not stopped working since.

They made the move to New York City in 1973 when Michael was offered the job of news director at WWKK. Cassy was hired as a feature segment producer in the news department at rival independent station WST. Both did very well, Michael earning more and more money, and Cassy, in 1976, becoming managing director of news operations at WST. But then, in 1978, Cassy started doing better-well than Michael. She was made managing director of news operations and coprogramming director for the station. But since Michael was a vice-president and she wasn’t, it was okay for a while. But then in 1980 she was made vice-president and managing director, news and programming, and the situation became sticky. And then in 1982, when Cassy was promoted to vice-president and general station manager, the Cochran marriage began to rock. As some sort of unspoken compromise—in terms of work—they spoke of news and only of news, and Michael was to remain the indisputable authority.

So here were the Cochrans of 1986, ensconced in the large West Side apartment on Riverside Drive they had owned for seven years now, both with careers they adored (most of the time) and a son they always adored. They were so lucky in that department, with Henry.

So why did Michael and she have so many problems? Cassy wondered. Problems that were never out in the open, problems that were tied into everything else in such nebulous ways that it was near impossible to even isolate them as such.

Fact (or Fact?): Michael may or may not have had anywhere between fourteen and thirty-seven affairs in the last ten years. (Cassy was always sure, but never really sure, and never wanted to know for sure.)

Fact: Their relationship as husband and wife had evolved into something suspiciously similar to that between an errant student and teacher.

Fact: Cassy and Michael rarely agreed on anything anymore, except a desire not to openly fight. Even on the subject of their son, their viewpoints were so far apart that it was amazing to think they had even known each other for twenty years, much less been married to each other. Michael cast his son as a jock and booming ladies’ man; Cassy knew him as a quiet, shy, gentle young man who was perhaps a bit too smart and too sensitive for his own good. As for the ladies’ man part of Michael’s perception, that only came up when Michael was drinking—when he would attribute all of his own sexual exploits and conquests to his son, going on and on in front of other people, daring to see how far he could go before Cassy showed visible signs of distress.

Looking in the powder-room mirror, tracing the hairs slipping from the clip with her fingers, Cassy considered the amount of gray she could distinguish from the ash blond. She was an expert at this by now. Would she…? No, not yet.

She leaned over the sink and sighed, slowly. She raised her head and again looked at her face. She touched her cheek, her chin, her mouth. Yes, she was still quite beautiful, but she looked like someone else now. Maybe she was a Catherine now, like her mother, too old to be a Cassy.

Good Lord, she was fading. That was it. Just fading. From radiance to glow. Like her eyesight, her face was fading. Reading glasses she had almost resigned herself to, but when it’s your face—what do you do, wear a mask?

Yes. But you call it makeup.

Was it worth it, this life? In love with Henry in the odd moment he expressed a need for her, in love with her television station, in love with her schedules, DETAILS, in love with ignoring the passing days of her life. When, exactly, was it that she had stopped insisting they drive out every weekend to the house in Connecticut? When was it she had decided to let the garden go, and not care if the house was painted or not? When had she stopped wishing they had a dog?

When had Cassy Cochran stopped wishing for anything?

Someone was knocking on the door. “Just a minute,” she called out. And what was this singsong in her voice? Why didn’t she just gently cast flowers from a basket as she walked?

It was Rosanne, balancing a tray of hors d’oeuvres on her hip. “Henry’s on the phone. The kid sounds funny so I thought I better get you.”

Cassy’s heart skipped a beat, for Henry never sounded “funny.”

“I’ll take it in the study.” Cassy walked down the hall and opened the door to the study. It was off limits at parties because it was here that the Cochrans harbored what they did best—sift and sort through work and projects. There were three television sets, two VCRs, tons of scripts, computer printouts and magazines. There were two solid walls of video tapes; the other two walls were covered with photographs of the Cochrans with various television greats over the years and, too, there were a number of awards: Emmys, Peabodys, a Christopher, a Silver Gavel, two Duponts, and even a Clio from a free-lance job of Michael’s years ago. What a lovely mess. Pictures and papers. What they both understood completely. His chair, his desk; her chair, her desk; the old sofa they couldn’t part with, where Henry had been conceived so many years before.

“Henry?”

“Hi, Mom.”

He does sound funny.

“What’s wrong?”

Pause. “Well, Mom, I’m sort of in a situation where I’m not really sure what to do.” Pause. “Mom?”

“Yes?”

He sighed and sounded old. “I’m over at Skipper’s and the Marshalls aren’t home yet.” Pause.

Let him explain.

“Skipper was drinking beer at Shea and then here…Mom, he’s kind of getting sick all over the place and I don’t know what to do.” He hurried on. “I tried to get him to go to bed but he threw up all over the place and then started running around.” Little voice. “He just got sick in the dining room. Mom—”

“Listen, sweetheart, don’t panic, I’m coming right over. But listen to me carefully. Stay with Skipper and make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.”

“He’s sort of out of it.”

“If he starts to get sick again, make sure he’s sitting up. Don’t let him choke. Okay, sweetheart? Just hang on, I’ll be right there.”

Cassy grabbed her coat and purse and went back into the party to find Michael. Easier said than done. Where had all these people come from anyway? Some woman was playing “Hey, Look Me Over” on the piano, while Elvis was belting “Blue Suede Shoes” on the stereo.

Where the hell is Michael?

Where the hell is Alexandra Waring?

Well, at least Cassy knew who was with whom.

The Marshalls lived on Park Avenue at 84th Street. Skipper was a classmate of Henry’s, a friendship sanctioned by Michael since Roderick Marshall was the longtime president of the Mainwright Club, of which Michael yearned to be a member. (He was turned down year after year.) As for Cassy, she thought the Marshalls were stupid people. Period. And because she felt that way, she had become rather fond of Skipper for openly airing all of the family secrets (his mother had had two face lifts; his father went away on weekends with his mistress; they had paid two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to marry off Skipper’s hopeless sister…).

While Cassy wouldn’t have chosen Skipper as Henry’s buddy, she did appreciate one of Skipper’s attributes—he absolutely worshiped the ground Henry walked on. And he was bright; he understood all of Henry’s complicated interests; and he was loyal, not only to Henry, but to all of the Cochrans. (Whenever Cassy told the boys it was time to go to bed, Skipper always made a point of thanking her for letting him stay over. “I really like it here,” he would declare. “I would really like it if you liked my liking it—do you, Mrs. C?”

“Yes, Skipper, I do,” Cassy would say, making him grin.)

The poor kids. Cassy found Henry sitting shell-shocked on the lid of the toilet seat in the front powder room while Skipper snored on the tile floor, his arm curled around the base of the john. Lord, what a mess. Henry held Skipper up so that Cassy could at least wash the vomit off his face and take off his shirt. They took him to his room, changed him into pajamas, and then put him to bed in one of the guest rooms since his own was such a mess. With Henry’s help she found the number of the maid and Cassy called. Would she come over since no one knew where the Marshalls were, or when they could come home? She would.

Cassy stripped the sheets in Skipper’s room and, with Henry, cleaned up the worst from the carpets around the house. Aside from answering her questions about where things were, Henry hadn’t volunteered anything. Cassy checked on Skipper again; he was long gone, in a peaceful sleep now.

They sat in the kitchen and shared a Coke.

“Are you sure the Marshalls didn’t leave a number?”

Glum. “Yes.”

“Henry,” Cassy asked after a moment, “do you like to drink?”

He glared at her. “Mom.”

“No, sweetheart, it’s okay. I mean, I know all kids experiment sometime. I just wondered about you. About how you felt about alcohol.”

He shook his head and looked down at the table, restlessly moving his glass.

“Henry—”

“I hate it.” His voice was so low, so hostile, Cassy wasn’t sure she’d heard it right.

“What, sweetheart?”

He looked up briefly, let go of his glass, and leaned back on the legs of the chair. He caught his mother’s look and came back down on the floor with a thump. Back to the old tried and true position. “I hate the stuff. It makes me sick.” A short pause. “Why do people have to drink that stuff? It just makes them act like jerks and it’s not good for your body, so what’s the point?”

Cassy’s mind raced with that one. After a moment she asked, “Does Skipper drink a lot?”

Henry gave her a does-he-look-like-he-does-silly-old-Mom look. “He tries to.”

“Has he ever said why?”

Another look, not dissimilar to the last. “No. He just does it whenever he’s pissed at his parents.”

“Angry.”

“What?”

“Angry at his parents.”

“Yeah, anyway—today his mother told him he couldn’t go to Colorado.”

“Why not?”

Henry shrugged. “Bad mood, probably. She’s like that.”

By the time the maid arrived, Cassy had changed her mind about what to do. She apologized to Angie for bringing her over, and explained that she had second thoughts about sticking her with the situation. Cassy would take Skipper home with her. She left a note by the front door:

Deidre,

Skipper is safe and sound at our house. He is not feeling very well and since I didn’t know where to reach you, I thought it best to bring him home with me. Call me when you get home and I’ll explain.

Cassy Cochran

Michael was bellowing “My Wild Irish Rose” down the hall for the benefit of departing guests. Cassy sighed, Henry’s back snapped to attention and Skipper, bless his heart, did his best to move along between them without letting his eyes roll back into his head.

“Hey, kid, nice to see you! Didn’t want to miss the fun with your old man, huh?” Michael said, holding his glass high. “Hey, Skip!”

“Skipper’s ill,” Cassy said, ushering Skipper by him. “I’m putting him to bed in the guest room.”

“Too bad, Skipperino,” Michael said. He got hold of Henry’s arm. “Come on,” he urged, pulling him along. “Kiddo, I want you to meet one hot cookie. Our new star.” He halted suddenly, pretending to whisper. “Kid, she’s so beautiful—I can’t tell you how beautiful she is, so hold onto your hat…”

Cassy was reluctant to leave Henry, but Skipper was fading fast. Rosanne, in the kitchen, took one look at him and followed them back to the guest room. While Cassy stripped Skipper down to the pajamas he was wearing under his clothes, Rosanne turned down the bed and set out a pail beside it. Cassy sat for a minute or two with Skipper, reassuring him that he would be feeling better after he slept, stroking his forehead all the while. She left the hall light on and the door open.

When Cassy went into the living room, she found Michael practically shoving Henry into Alexandra’s lap on the couch. When Henry saw his mother it apparently gave him courage, for he slapped his father’s hand away, excused himself to Alexandra, shot past Cassy without a word and headed for his room.

There were only six guests left—the die-hards, five of whom were in worse shape than Michael. Alexandra was stone cold sober and looked as though she wished she could go to her room too.

Hmmm.

Cassy went into the kitchen, where Ivor asked her what she would like to drink. She asked for a Perrier, changed her mind, and asked for a glass of white wine.

“That Waring chick is a strange one,” Rosanne said, rinsing a tray in the sink. Clang, clatter, into the rack.

Cassy accepted her glass of wine, sipped it, and moved across the kitchen to lean back against the counter. “Why, what did she do?”

Rosanne pulled off her rubber gloves, untied her apron and threw it on the dish rack. “She comes in here like the Queen of Sheba and so I look at her, and like Mr. C’s standin’ over there by the bar.”

“And?”

“And so she stands there,” Rosanne continued, pointing at the very spot on the floor, “and says”—Rosanne stood on her tiptoes to accurately re-enact the scene— “‘Where is Mrs. Cochran?’ So I said”—dropping down to her heels, plunking a hand on her hip— “‘If she’s got any sense, she’s hidin’ from the likes of you.’”

“Oh, Rosanne,” Cassy groaned, covering her face.

“Naw, naw,” Rosanne said, shaking her head. “I didn’t say that. I said, ‘She’s out.’ So she says—” back on her toes— “‘When is she coming back?’ So then Mr. C says”—holding her arms out to the side, implying largesse— “‘What do ya want Cassy for?’ And she says, ‘I’d like to know her better,’ and so then Mr. C starts gettin’ upset, and she says—cheez it, the cops.”

Cassy was about to say, “Alexandra Waring said, ‘Cheez it, the cops’?” when she realized that Michael and Alexandra had come into the kitchen. A look back at Rosanne found her busy at the sink, minding her own business of course.

“So what’s with Henry?” Michael said, shoving his glass into Ivor’s hand and then grunting.

“He’s had a rough afternoon.” Cassy glanced at Alexandra and added, “We’ll talk about it later.”

“Brooding kid sometimes,” Michael said to Alexandra. “Oh, thanks, Igor.”

“Ivor, Michael—the man’s name is Ivor,” Cassy sighed, sitting down on a stool.

“Igor, Ivor, you don’t care as long as you get paid, right?” he said, slapping Igor-Ivor on the arm.

Cassy noticed that Amos’ hat was leering down from on top of the refrigerator, a cigarette dangling from its jaws.

Michael turned to Alexandra. “You know where the kid gets it from?” He swallowed almost his entire drink and laughed. “We made the kid on the couch I showed you in the den—” He started cracking up.

“Michael—” Cassy said.

“And the whole time, Cass kept oooing and ahhhing and then all of a sudden she starts yelping about a spring stabbing her in the rear end—”

Cassy slumped over the counter.

“And the kid inherited it! He gets this look like—Jesus, something’s stabbing me in the rear end.” Michael fell back against the doorway, hysterical. “You saw him, Alexandra! Isn’t that what he looks like?”

Rosanne hurled a handful of clean silverware into the sink; Ivor examined the wallpaper; Michael continued laughing and Cassy left the room. She was halfway down the hall when she heard her name being called. It was Alexandra. Cassy turned around and stood there, waiting.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Why,” Cassy said, “what have you done?”

“No, that’s not what I meant, I—”

Cassy silenced her by raising her hand. “Look,” she said, “do me a favor, will you? Just please get out of here and take those drunken idiots with you. Michael included. All right?” And then she fled to the guest room, slamming the door behind her. Having awakened poor Skipper, Cassy stayed with him for a while until he fell back to sleep. When she emerged from the room, she found that Alexandra had granted her her favor; the party had departed for dinner at Caramba’s.

They didn’t say much while cleaning up and were done by ten-thirty. When Cassy paid Ivor and tipped him well (in the far-flung hope he might give the agency a favorable report), Rosanne whispered to offer him Amos’ hat. Cassy stared at her. She nodded. And so she did, and Ivor took Amos’ hat home with him in a Zabar’s bag.

“I had a hunch he liked it,” Rosanne said after he left. “He kept lookin’ at it.”

Cassy asked Rosanne if she wanted some hot chocolate; she was making some for Henry and herself. Rosanne declined, saying she had to get going—had to be at Howie and the Bitch’s early the next morning.

“Do you know how I cringe, Rosanne, when I think of how you must describe us to your other clients?” Cassy said, stirring Ovaltine into a saucepan of milk.

“I call ya the C’s, that’s all,” Rosanne said. “Honest.”

Cassy smiled slightly.

“Well,” Rosanne reconsidered, slipping on her coat, “maybe once I said that Mr. C stood for Mr. Crazy.”

Cassy wanted to say something but didn’t. She just stirred and stirred until the handle of the stainless steel spoon was too hot to hold. She put it down on the stove top. What was this? Tears? Yes, a tear, spilling down her cheek. And she wasn’t even crying. At least she didn’t feel as though she was crying. She wiped at her face with the back of her hand, sniffed, and said, “I’m sorry, I’m just so tired…”

“Mrs. C,” Rosanne said, moving to the doorway. Cassy didn’t look up. “Like it’s never easy, ya know?”

“No,” Cassy finally said, “I don’t suppose it is.”

Silence.

“Thanks a lot for the dress. I really like it.”

Quietly, “You’re welcome.”

And Rosanne left.

Henry accepted his hot chocolate and put an issue of the Backpacker aside.

“I think Skipper will be fine,” Cassy reported, sipping from her mug. “When do you suppose the Marshalls will get home?”

“They won’t call, Mom, so don’t wait up for them.”

After a moment Cassy patted Henry’s knee and he scooted over so she could sit next to him on the twin bed. It was a tight fit, but a well-practiced maneuver. They drank their hot chocolate, both looking across the room at the window.

“Tug?” Cassy asked.

“Police boat,” he said. Henry knew all the boats on the river at night.

“Oh, yes.”

Silence.

“Mom,” Henry said, “do you ever get scared for no particular reason?”

She swallowed. “Sometimes. Usually when I’m wondering what’s going to happen. Life always seems like an unlikely proposition when I try to figure out how everything’s going to turn out.”

Pause.

“What are you going to do, Mom?”

“Talk to Mrs. Marshall.”

Long pause. “I meant about Dad. He’s really getting—you know, like that summer in Newport.”

Cassy looked at her son. How much did he know? “What do you mean?”

Henry was uncomfortable. “You know, that woman. He’s acting like that again.”

So he did know. Probably more than Cassy herself knew. If she hadn’t wanted to know for sure about Michael’s affairs, she supposed she was about to find out.

“Mom—why don’t you do something?” This was delivered in a whisper.

Where the energy came from she wasn’t sure. But it came. She put her cup down on the night table and put her arm around Henry. She sighed. “Sweetheart, Henry, your father and I, no matter what our troubles—we both love you more than anything else in the world.”

Silence.

“Mom, he humiliates you. He humiliates me. Is he sleeping with that woman who was here tonight? If he is, why doesn’t he do like other guys and at least hide it?”

Cassy felt nauseous.

“He just throws it in your face. Rosanne knows it, I know it, half the station knows it. Why don’t you do something?”

Cassy vowed not to cry. Quietly, “What do you think I should do?”

“I don’t know. Talk to him.” And then, blurting it out, “Make him love you again.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Cassy was close to breaking down. What to say, God, what to say? Did her son not think she had tried?

The pain was centered right there, right on that. I have not tried and we both know it.

Cassy raised her head and saw that Henry was not angry with her; he was trying to comfort her. Tell her he was on her side.

When did he start needing to shave? was her next thought. When did that happen?

The doorbell was ringing. Cassy kissed Henry on the cheek, got up and slipped on her shoes. The doorbell was persistent. She leaned over and kissed Henry again. “It’s probably Mrs. Marshall,” she said.

Cassy was hardly in any shape to deal with Deidre Marshall, but, she thought, anything was an improvement over continuing that talk with Henry. She swung open the front door just as she thought she should have peered through the peephole first.

It was Alexandra Waring.

Rubbing her eye, Cassy had to laugh to herself.

Alexandra shifted her stance slightly. “I told them I was tired,” she said.

“You came to the right place, then,” Cassy said. “We always are here.”

The brilliant eyes were asking for mercy and it threw Cassy. What was up?

“May I come in for five minutes? There was something I wanted to say to you.”

“To me?”

Alexandra nodded.

“Well,” Cassy said, stepping back and waving her in, “I suppose you’d better come in and say it then. Let’s go in the living room.”

It fascinated Cassy how nervous the girl was. Offered a chair, she declined, choosing instead to pace the floor with her hands jammed into the pockets of her raincoat. Cassy sat down on the couch and watched her. Alexandra looked over at her once or twice but continued to pace.

This was to be the woman to launch a thousand broadcasts? Tell of earthquakes? Assassinations? Terrorism? Fatal diseases? This was Michael’s Wonder Woman? Well, Cassy would be kind. She would assume that Alexandra could do better sitting behind a desk.

The girl finally said, “I want to apologize and I’m not exactly sure what I’m apologizing for, since I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Cassy lofted her eyebrows.

The girl started to pace again, stopped, and suddenly threw herself down on the end of the couch, to which Cassy reacted by crossing her legs in the opposite direction.

“There’s no other way to say it, so I’ll just say it. I’m terrified of your husband, of offending him, because I desperately want this assignment to work.” She ran her hand through her hair and dropped it in her lap. “Tonight was a nightmare and I couldn’t stand watching what was happening, but I couldn’t do anything either—can you understand that?”

Somewhere, perhaps between the words “terrified” and “desperately,” a gray veil had dropped over Cassy’s head, shielding her from any sense that this conversation was actually taking place.

Alexandra sighed, lowering her head for a moment. Cassy noted how gorgeous her hair was. No gray. Nothing but black, thick, wonderful young hair. How crazy it must make Michael.

“Are you having an affair with my husband?”

Alexandra’s head kicked up. “God, no,” she whispered. “Never. I wouldn’t do that—”

Cassy shrugged. “Thought I might as well ask.”

“I’m very fond of your husband,” the girl said. “I’m also very loyal to him. You of all people must realize the enormity of the opportunity he’s giving me.”

Cassy nodded. “Yes, I do.”

“So you can understand how difficult my situation is.”

Cassy sighed, looking past her to the window. A barge was making its way down the river.

“Tonight, when I saw you—” Alexandra said, voice hesitant. “I’ve heard about you, your career—people told me how beautiful you are—”

Cassy winced slightly. If you think I’m beautiful now, you should have seen me before.

“So when I saw you tonight,” Alexandra rushed on, “I knew at once that something had to be terribly wrong if he—” She cut herself off. “Oh, God, I’m sorry—this is coming out all wrong—”

Cassy held a hand up for her to stop. “Look, Alexandra, I appreciate what it is you’re trying to do—”

“But I can’t do anything, that’s the point—”

“Please, listen to me for a minute, will you?” The girl leaned back against the arm of the couch. It was a good move, Cassy noted, the way she had posed herself. The way Alexandra looked at this moment was enough to make Cassy want to slash her wrists to put an end to this curse of middle age once and for all. “In my day, if you got anywhere in news—really, anywhere in almost any profession, women were always accused of sleeping their way there.” She laughed slightly. “And I did—I was married to Michael and he was my boss. Did you know that?”

“He’s told me everything about you,” Alexandra said, faint smile emerging. “He talks about you a lot.”

Cassy nodded. “Okay. Well, the only point I want to make is that all women, particularly beautiful women, sooner or later have a Michael making their lives difficult. The fact that it is my husband, I can’t—I won’t—”

“Of course not. I can handle him—it—that,” Alexandra said. “What’s difficult is just what you said—about being accused of sleeping…” She sighed, running her hand through her hair again. She looked at Cassy. “Everyone thinks I’m sleeping with him—and that’s why he brought me to New York.”

Cassy rubbed her face, thinking, Lord, what must I look like? “If I were you,” she said, lowering her hands, “I would just go on doing what you’re doing and let them think whatever they want. Alexandra—they’re going to think whatever they want to think anyway. No matter what you do. I think you know that.”

Alexandra lowered her eyes. “I care what you think,” she said. “That’s why I came back.”

Michael, you’d be crazy not to want to marry this girl. Either she was a first-rate liar, or she was a nice girl from Kansas. “I think—” Cassy began, starting to smile.

Alexandra met her eyes.

“If you’re half the person on air that you are right now, you’re going to be just fine.”

“Thank you.” It was scarcely a whisper. They were still looking at each other and Alexandra suddenly pulled her eyes away.

“Alexandra—”

The girl started.

Either Cassy was seeing things, or the nice girl from Kansas was blushing.

“I was just going to say that a friend of my son’s is here, who’s sick, and I’m rather tired and I think you are too…”

“Yes, of course,” Alexandra said, rising.

In the kitchen they found Henry with his head in the refrigerator. He jerked back, first looking at Alexandra and then to his mother.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Cassy said.

“Henry,” Alexandra said, going over and shaking his hand, “I hope I see you again one day soon. When it’s a little less rowdy.” Pause. A gesture to Cassy. “Your mom and I were just talking—well, she’ll tell you.”

Henry looked to his mother and Cassy nodded, smiling.

“I’m just going to see Alexandra to the door.” Cassy led the way through the front hall. “Well, it’s been quite a day,” she said, opening the door.

“Yes,” Alexandra sighed, stepping outside the door and turning around.

Cassy held out her hand and Alexandra shook it. “Thank you, Alexandra. You’re a very courageous young lady.”

Alexandra smiled.

The ratings have just soared in the tri-state area.

“Thank you for being so nice,” Alexandra said. She let go of Cassy’s hand, walked down to the elevator and pressed the button. “Will I see you again soon, do you think?”

“Well,” Cassy said, hanging on the door, “I’ll be seeing a lot of you. We tend to watch a lot of news around here.”

“Great,” Alexandra said.

“Good night,” Cassy said, closing the door.

“Good night.”

Cassy locked the door and leaned against it. And then, after hesitating a moment, she ventured a look out the peephole.

He won’t give up on this one, she thought.




2


The Stewarts

Howard heard the front door of the apartment slam. “Hi, Rosanne,” he called, pouring the rest of the water into the coffee maker.

“Hi.” Swish, swish, swish; the familiar sound of Rosanne’s jeans.

Silence.

Howard looked over his shoulder and saw her leaning against the doorway. “You look very tired,” he said, moving over to the butcher-block table.

“You got it.” She let her bag slide down off her shoulder to thump on the floor. “Party at the C’s last night.”

“Okay,” Howard said, picking up a piece of paper and examining it, “I’ll strike ‘windows’ off of Melissa’s list.” He leaned over the table to pencil in “next week.”

Rosanne tossed her bag up onto the counter and adjusted her bandanna to a more pirate-y angle. “Been on the list for three years,” she said, “you’d think she’d catch on.”

Howard smiled, pushing his glasses up higher on his nose. “Melissa doesn’t like to admit defeat.”

Rosanne gave him a look and moved on to the refrigerator. “You oughtta get a medal or somethin’,” she said, opening the door.

Howard let the comment pass. “I got some half-and-half—it’s in the door.”

“Great, thanks.”

“And there’re some bran muffins in the breadbox.”

Rosanne closed the refrigerator door and walked over to the coffee maker. Tapping her fingers on it, trying to hurry it along, she said, “So how are ya?”

Howard tossed the pencil down on the table. “Good, I guess.”

“I brought that book back,” Rosanne said, reaching for her bag.

“What did you think?”

Rosanne pulled it out and handed it to him. “I liked it. I liked it a lot, only—”

Howard was looking down at the jacket of the hard-cover volume of a Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. “Only what?”

“I don’t know, Howie,” she sighed, swinging her weight to one leg. “Like I don’t know if it’s so good for me to be readin’ romances. Kinda gets me depressed after—it’s not like it’s like real life or nothin’.”

“Well,” Howard said, considering this.

“But I liked it okay,” she finished. “And I read another one in there about the family movin’ out West—gettin’ shot at and attacked and all.” She moved over to the sink. “Weird how it was like now back then.”

Howard laughed. “I’ll give you something a little different this week,” he promised.

Rosanne opened the cabinets under the sink and squatted down. “Yeah, okay,” she said, pulling out various cleaning agents and plunking them down on the floor. She shook the bathroom cleanser container. “We need some Comet, Howie,” she said. Howard wrote this down. “And you better tell her highness,” Rosanne added, whipping her head around in his direction, “that we don’t want any of that el cheapo cleaner she always gets. Brother,” she muttered, standing up and slamming the cabinets shut, “you’d think if she wanted a clean house she’d get some decent cleanin’ stuff.”

“I’ll get it,” Howard said, dropping the pencil.

Rosanne turned around to look at him.

“What?”

Her mouth twitched one way and then the other. “Nothin’,” she finally said, waving him away. “Go do your work. I wanna listen to the radio.”

As Howard walked through the living room he heard Rosanne whirling the radio dial. In a few minutes, he knew, every radio and television in the apartment, save in the master bedroom, would be on (9 a.m., Radios: Howard Stern (WXRK), John Gambling (WOR), Don Imus (WNBC); TVs: Leonard Philbin and “The Munsters.” 10 a.m., Radios: K-Rock, Sherre Henry (WOR) and WPLJ; TVs: Oprah Winfrey and Phil Donahue. At eleven, while Rosanne cleaned their bedroom to Joan Hamburg (WOR), Howard would move to the living room for a half hour and either turn off the TV or give in and watch “Father Knows Best.”

In the beginning, Howard had stayed home on Monday mornings to read manuscripts as an accommodation to Melissa to have someone home while Rosanne was there. Melissa was still under the impression—kept there, quite deliberately—that these mornings were of enormous inconvenience to Howard when, in fact, they were often the best times of his week.

Howard settled down into Melissa’s pink chaise longue and picked up the remaining unread part of a manuscript that had been submitted to him at the office. It was not holding his attention, however, and in a moment he was staring out the window at the Hudson River.

Howard Mills Stewart was thirty-three years old and in perfect health. He had been married for eight years, was living in a fabulous three-bedroom apartment, was an esteemed editor at Gardiner & Grayson, one of the most famous publishing houses in the world, and yet—

And yet…

Why, he wondered, did he feel so terribly unhappy? So lonely. So utterly lost.

When twenty-two-year-old Howard Stewart joined the training program at Gardiner & Grayson Publishers, Inc., in 1975, to say that he was unprepared for the world of book publishing is putting it mildly. Nothing he had studied at Duke, nothing he had imagined as a teenager in Columbus, Ohio, had seemed to be of use to him. No, that was not quite correct. There was one thing he had brought along with him that was of enormous value: to so love reading, to so love books, that not even book publishing could scare him into seeking another means of employment.

When he had arrived in New York City—at the Chelsea apartment he shared with no less than five other recent college graduates—Howard had no doubts that he would discover great writers and nurture them to staggering heights of critical success. It would take him about a year, he thought. He even had a list—in his head—of the kind of writers they would be: a Charles Dickens; an Edith Wharton; an F. Scott Fitzgerald; a John Cheever; and a John Updike. And so, when he arrived at Gardiner & Grayson for his first day of “training,” he was rather taken aback by being asked to type some three hundred mailing labels to send out review copies of books.

When the publisher, Harrison Dreiden, recruited Howard to work as an assistant in his office, everyone told Howard how lucky he was. Howard wondered. Could book publishing really be like this? As far as he could make out from the vantage point of his desk, no one in the office ever read or ever edited. All that seemed to go on were phone calls, typing and meetings, meetings, meetings and more meetings.

“What exactly is it that you do all day?” Howard once asked a senior editor. She had thrown her head back and laughed. “Okay, Howard,” she said, checking her watch, “I will give you a one-minute summary of an editor’s job. Ready?”

Howard nodded.

“The editor represents the house to the author, and the author to the house, right? Okay then, lesson number one: the editor is responsible for absolutely everything to absolutely everybody.”

“Got it,” Howard said, a trifle annoyed with this simplicity.

“And it means that the editor has to make sure that everyone working on the book in house does his or her job, even though the editor might be the only one who’s read it.”

Howard frowned.

“So the editor is in contact with everybody who is working on the book: the author, of course, and the agent on the outside, and on the inside, well”—a deep breath— “the managing editor, the business manager, production coordinator, design, copy editing, the art director, sub rights—reprint, book clubs, serial and foreign rights—marketing, publicity, advertising, the flap copy writer, the sales manager, royalty department, the sales reps”—breath— “and that’s when everything’s going smoothly. Otherwise there’s the legal department—”

“So you talk to them all the time?”

“That or we memo each other to death.” Pause. “And that’s only one book—I’m usually working on six to eight books at the same time, with a new list starting every six months. But I won’t have anything to work on unless I get out there”—a wide, sweeping gesture to the window— “and find good books to sign up.”

“Oh,” Howard said, his frown deepening. “So when do you edit? I mean, do you?”

Another burst of laughter. “Of course I do. Oh, Howard,” she said, patting his shoulder, “you’ll find out. Publishing isn’t a career, you know, it’s a calling. In this house it is, at any rate. But don’t worry—either you’ll get it or it will get you.”

Howard’s phone calls and letters back to Columbus did not paint an accurate picture of his life in New York. The truth, he felt, would only upset those who had taken an interest in him early in his life, who had done great favors for him, believed in him, and expected great things of him.

Howard’s dad, Raymond, was born the year the Stewarts lost the two-thousand-acre plantation in North Carolina that had been in the family for over a hundred and fifty years. The Depression was on, and the Stewarts moved to Ohio in search of work. When Ray was nineteen, working as a fence builder, he enticed a freshman at Ohio State by name of Allyson Mills to elope with him. Allyson was the daughter of a prominent Shaker Heights attorney. At her urging, Ray worked for his father-in-law as “the highest-paid filing clerk in the world” until he couldn’t stand it anymore, quit, and took his bride to the outskirts of Columbus to start a landscaping business. Howard’s dad was sort of, well—yes, he was at home with a shovel, but no, not with a necktie. And Howard’s mom, devoted to Ray, decided she was happy if he was happy and, since he seemed to be, learned how to function in the capacities of the servants she had grown up with.

This was not to say that Ray Stewart did not have high hopes for his eldest son. The trick was how to give Howard every opportunity without accepting any help from his father-in-law (Allyson, too, was eager to do this). The Stewarts had a lot to work with. People liked Howard, they always had. He was acutely bright, good-looking, athletic, and just—just such a great guy. The kind of guy who fit in anywhere, never claiming to be any better or worse than who he was with.

Ray’s friends were local small business owners like himself, forever involved in—and rallying together to protect their interests in—the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club. And all of Ray’s friends seemed to see something in Howard they wished to help along. When Howard proved to be good in Little League, he was given a job sweeping out a sporting goods store and got his pick of the best equipment available for any sport that interested him. When Howard was twelve, he was slipped in with the union caddies at a country club. When he was fourteen he earned high wages (under the table) building tennis courts. When he was sixteen, he bought himself a red Camaro (at cost, from yet another friend of his father’s) to drive himself around to the suburban estates where he gave private tennis lessons to wealthy ladies bemoaning their backhands. The ladies adored him. (“You are so kind, Howard,” Mrs. Lane said once, handing him a twenty-dollar tip. “You make me feel as though everything’s going to be all right, even my tennis.”) And the husbands trusted him. (“She hasn’t had a martini before five all summer,” Mr. Lane said, handing him a two-hundred-dollar bonus.) When one of his dad’s friends built an indoor tennis complex, Howard was hired part time and his summer clientele followed him.

When Howard won a partial scholarship to Duke, the Rotary Club bestowed another on him. That, with what money Ray could throw in, with the good deal of money Howard already had (and would continue to make over the summers), enabled Howard to arrive at Duke with no worries save academic and social success. And he achieved both, making the folks back home terribly, terribly proud—of his honors, of his editing the newspaper, of his fraternity, of how Ray could still take Howard down to Leo’s Bar for a “couple of cold ones” and show the boys how their investment was taking shape. (His first summer home, Howard’s parents had promptly sent him up to see Allyson’s family in Shaker Heights. “Make sure Father knows that Ray’s given you money so you don’t have to work at school,” his mother whispered to him. “And if he starts in about your cousin Alfred at Harvard, you tell him to go to hell and come straight home.”)

No, during those first two years in New York, Howard did not want to tell his parents that he made seven-thousand dollars a year, spent his days answering other people’s phones and typing their memos and letters, and spent his nights with cotton in his ears, trying to read manuscripts while his roommates partied around him. And no, not to this day had he ever told his parents that he had sold his car to support his courtship of Melissa.

Ah, yes, Melissa.

It’s important, at this point, to visualize the kind of figure Howard cut in those days. He was nearly six feet, had a strong, outdoorsy kind of build, and yet had this bookish air about him, fostered by the tweed jackets, baggy corduroy pants and horn-rimmed glasses he always wore. He had marvelously wavy, unruly brown hair. His face was imbued with serious lines—a strong nose and jaw—but was almost always seen in varying degrees of good humor. His blue eyes twinkled in any mood; his premature crow’s-feet invited trust; and his mouth held a kind of mysterious promise for many of the women at Gardiner & Grayson. “This mouth is wonderful in any romantic scenario you may care to imagine,” they thought it said.

Harrison Dreiden regularly took Howard to the Century Club for drinks. Harrison—in a way that reminded Howard very much of his dad’s friends in Rotary—had set his sights on Howard as a protégé. Which was fine with Howard, since he thought Harrison might well be God’s twin brother. After Howard started working on Harrison’s long list of bestselling authors, the two of them would have long talks that began with Howard’s quest for Dickens, Wharton, Fitzgerald & Gang, and ended with Harrison’s strong recommendation that Howard lower his sights and expand his horizons for the sake of some kind of future in the business.

Even though Howard was the captain of the company softball and squash teams, even though there wasn’t an employee at Gardiner & Grayson who did not like Howard, there was still a bit of a row when Harrison promoted him to associate editor. Apparently some of his colleagues did not seem to think Howard had done much to deserve it, and thus, at the age of twenty-four, Howard acquired a nickname around the house: Prince Charming. (“This is our head publicist, Harriet Wyatt,” one editor had said to an author at a cocktail party, “and this is Mr. Charming, who works in editorial.”)

The Friday night after his promotion, Howard had gone to Crawdaddy’s to meet an old college roommate for a drink. He did so with the first genuine enthusiasm he had felt since arriving in New York. Okay, so what if Teddy was making exactly twenty-three thousand dollars more than Howard at Manchester Hannonford Bank? Howard was an editor at the finest trade publishing house in the world. And so, over a million Heinekens (it seemed), Howard reveled in the feeling of having regained his place in the world.

Enter Melissa.

The noise in Crawdaddy’s was so loud, Howard did not hear her name when Teddy introduced them, and yet Howard felt as though he knew exactly who she was—his. It is true; it happened like that. Howard looked up and instantly felt that he would never find a finer woman to be his wife than the one standing before him. She was perfect. Everything about Melissa was slim, elegant, cool and classy. And it was in that moment, that very first moment, that Howard vowed he would try to win her as his own.

But first there was the overgrown preppy with her to contend with. “Stephen Manischell, Manchester Hannonford,” he said to Howard, shaking his hand. The four of them sat down together at a table, where Howard learned that Melissa Collins also worked at “Manny Hanny” and was currently seriously involved with the creep next to her. But Melissa was not immune to Howard’s intense fascination with her. In fact, within an hour she had moved her chair over to Howard and, with their heads looming closer and closer to each other, told him all about the important aspects of her training program at Manny Hanny (pausing only to tell Stephen to please be quiet, couldn’t he see that she was talking), and what it was like commuting every day from New Canaan, Connecticut. She told him about her parents’ guest house that she lived in. She told him that her mother had cancer and that her father, “Daddy,” imported more cocktail napkins, plastic toothpicks and swizzle sticks than anyone in the world. (She didn’t describe it like that, but even through the haze of alcohol and his fantasies of what her breasts might be like, Howard had figured out what “cocktail accouterments” were.)

Then it was Howard’s turn. Howard was an editor at Gardiner & Grayson, the youngest, he added, that they had ever had. Duke. Yes. Phi Beta Kappa. Columbus, Ohio. “Uh, well, Mom is a housewife…. Dad? Oh, Dad’s in real estate.”

Miracle upon miracle, Melissa whispered to Howard that if he left now she would meet him outside in five minutes and he could walk her to the train. If he wanted to, that is. Whether it was his heart or the Heinekens talking, Howard was never sure, but Melissa to this day swore that he said, “Want to? God, I would crawl if only to see you.”

And so Melissa had given Stephen the slip that night and Howard had walked her through Grand Central to her train. At the door of the train Melissa kissed Howard on the cheek and he tried to kiss her on the mouth and she stopped him. Her hand placed lightly over his mouth, she laughed (looking so beautiful, so right, so utterly glorious in a Town and Country kind of way) and said, “It would be so wonderful if you turned out to be the man I want to give myself to.”

And then Howard went slightly mad. He had never met a girl like Melissa before. There was something about her that drove him wild inside, a kind of craving, a kind of nameless longing that he had never experienced before. Oh yeah, there had been Debbie, at seventeen, with whom he had launched his sexual career in the back of his mother’s station wagon. (“Heh-heh,” his father had said, winking, when Howard requested to drive it instead of his Camaro one night. “Make sure you take a raincoat—it might rain, heh-heh.”) And there had been Susie the Senior his freshman year, and then Cornelia Fordyce the next three. And one or two quickies in New York, and always something with Debbie whenever he was home, and all of them, all of them, were very smart, very attractive women. But they weren’t anything like Melissa. God, Melissa. Walk into a room with her on your arm and, well—everything that could be said was said just by looking at her.

But then, as it has been said, Howard had gone slightly mad.

Melissa explained to him that while she knew it was terribly old-fashioned of her, she really couldn’t even think of engaging in any sexual activity until she was married to the man she loved.

Did that—did that mean Melissa was a…

“Oh, Howard,” she would whisper, shyly touching his hand, “wonder if you turn out to be the man I love? Wouldn’t you want me to be able to say to you, ‘Everything I have belongs to you and to you alone? Always and forever?’”

Oh, yes, but Howard wanted that, and Howard sold his car after Melissa dumped Stephen once and for all in favor of giving Howard his chance to win her heart. He learned to relish chaste kisses; he learned to meet her train in the morning and walk her to work. He took her to expensive restaurants for dinner, to the theater, the ballet, and he went out to New Canaan on Sundays to spend the day with the Collinses.

He hated “Daddy” Collins from the beginning, but—since Melissa was utterly devoted to him—Howard learned to let him beat him at golf, lecture him on the swizzle-stick business, and suffer his observations about publishing. (“Kind of a faggy way to make a living, if you ask me.”) Mr. Collins hated him too, Howard quickly realized, but things between them improved once Daddy found out that Howard—as a doubles partner—meant that he could finally “beat the shit out of those assholes at the club.”

Mrs. Collins, on the other hand, was wonderful. And it was from her that Melissa had inherited her regal looks. But Mrs. Collins was very quiet, very, very gentle, and by the time Howard met her, was bedridden with the cancer that was slowly killing her. She never complained of the constant pain she was in, and her eyes always lit up when Howard came in to see her. They spent a great deal of time together, actually. And once Howard started bringing her Anthony Trollope novels to read, even Melissa found it difficult to lure Howard away from their talks about them. (“Always see the mother before you commit,” Ray Stewart had told his son, “so you can see what you’re getting into.” Cancer or no cancer, Howard often wondered if he hadn’t fallen a bit in love with Mrs. Collins.)

It was clear to everyone in that mausoleum of a house that things were getting serious. Daddy Collins was getting ruder and ruder, Melissa started talking about how grand it was going to be when she was the president of Manchester Hannonford and Howard was the president of Gardiner & Grayson, and Mrs. Collins, well…

One Sunday afternoon Mrs. Collins took his hand (which she often did) and asked Howard if he was in love with her daughter. Howard said yes. And then Mrs. Collins had closed her eyes, thinking, and when she opened them again she said she hoped she would not offend Howard but…

But?

Did Howard realize that Melissa was—was rather special?

Yes, yes, he certainly did.

She had smiled, though her eyes had not smiled. Slowly, carefully, she said that Melissa was her only child, that she loved Melissa very, very much, but…

But?

Howard could see how spoiled Melissa was, yes?

Spoiled, nonsense!

A chuckle from the invalid lady. “Oh, Howard, she’s dreadfully spoiled, and she always will be. Her father has seen to that.”

Silence.

“My husband, and please, do understand, Howard—it is out of his love for Melissa that he did it—”

“Did—”

“Looked into your background. Your parents, your father’s—real estate business…”

Sigh. “Mrs. Collins, my father’s not in real estate, he’s in the landscaping business.”

“Yes. I know. Howard—listen to me, Howard.”

Silence.

“You must sit down and explain to Melissa. She—and I’m sure you did not misrepresent it to her—but Melissa led my husband to believe that your father owns half of Columbus.”

Oh, boy.

“And you must set my husband straight—now, Howard, before he…”

Mrs. Collins had started to cry.

“It’s okay, Mrs. Collins, it’s okay.”

“She so needs a man who understands her. She’s fragile in ways…Oh, Howard, promise me that you’ll help Melissa leave this house. She won’t be able to do it on her own and I’m too ill…”

Howard explained everything to Melissa that afternoon, prompting her to moan, “Oh, my God, what will I tell Daddy?” and flee to the guest house. And then Howard found Mr. Collins in the playroom and set him straight about the exact state of his finances and those of his family. Though he had readied himself for a fight, Howard was frankly a little scared when Mr. Collins grabbed the wrong end of a cue stick and smashed the sliding glass door with it. “Goddam carpetbagger!” he screamed, face turning purple. (Mr. Collins was from the South.) He broke the cue stick on the corner of the billiard table and slammed the remaining portion down on it, again and again, ruining the mahogany. “A fraud, a goddam fraud, strutting around here like the King of England!”

(Years later, Howard realized that it was not the state of his finances that had so enraged Mr. Collins, but that he—having volunteered the information before proposing to Melissa—had disarmed Mr. Collins of the weapon he had been planning to use to get rid of him with. Ill as she was, Mrs. Collins had been quite on the ball.)

Howard did not hear from Melissa for five days, and then she had called him at work. Could he come to New Canaan? Please, could he? Right now? They needed him, Daddy and she did, desperately. “Oh, Howard, Mother died this morning.”

Harrison gave him some time off and Howard went out to New Canaan. (Poor Harrison. It had been some time since he had got any real work out of Howard, what with this time-consuming business of courtship.) Mr. Collins didn’t say a word to him, but he did seem relieved that there was someone to look after Melissa as he went through the ordeal of funeral services. And then, after the burial, Mr. Collins disappeared to have some time to himself and Melissa became so hysterical that a doctor had to be called to sedate her.

“Why did he leave? Why?” she kept crying, Valium seeming to do very little but confuse her and slur her words. But after a few days she started to come around and soon she was not hysterical but furious with her father. She started cursing Daddy and endearing Howard. She started discounting Daddy (“He has no imagination, none”) and overpricing Howard (“No one is smarter than you, Howard, I’m sure of it”). And then she started tearing Daddy apart (“He is heartless and cruel and selfish”) and building Howard up to ever increasing heights (“You are the finest, greatest man I have ever known”).

(Howard didn’t know what the hell was going on, but he knew he liked it a good deal better than Melissa locking herself in the guest house and Mr. Collins calling him a carpetbagger.)

And then—and then, the night Howard came upstairs to check on Melissa and found her on her knees, crying next to her mother’s bed. Howard had knelt down beside her, held her close, and told her he loved her. He was not good enough for her, he knew, but he would do everything in his power to make her happy. He loved her, God, how he loved her, and he would take care of her. He would never ever leave her. No, never, and they would have each other, forever and ever and always. “Oh, Melissa, please let me take care of you so you’ll never be hurt again.”

“Hey, Howie?” Rosanne called from the hall.

“Yeah?”

“I want ya to come see Mrs. C on TV. She’s doin’ an editorial or somethin’ and I told her I’d watch.”

“Yeah, okay.” Mrs. C? What was her name? “Fridays” was how Rosanne usually referred to her.

Howard wrapped a thick elastic around the manuscript he had (not) been reading and dropped it to the floor. He certainly wasn’t getting much done this morning. But then, even when he was working full throttle these days, he still felt like he was spinning his wheels.

Howard went into the living room and sat down on the couch. “Turn to Channel 8, would’cha?” Rosanne said, coming in from the kitchen with a toasted bran muffin on a plate. He picked up the remote control from the coffee table and pushed 8. “Oh,” Rosanne said, sitting down cross-legged on the floor, “I found that envelope in the couch. It belongs to her highness.” Howard saw the envelope on the arm of the couch and picked it up while Rosanne hummed along with the theme song of the Mc-Donald’s commercial.

“138 East 77th Street” the return address said in thin black type.

Jackass, Howard thought, turning the envelope over.

“Melissa Collins.”

Melissa Collins Stewart, jackass.

“Oh, Howard,” Melissa had said to him when the first one arrived. “Stephen’s just lonely. The divorce really hit him hard.”

Yeah, right, Howard had thought. So hard that Stephen Manischell felt free to call and write his wife whenever he felt like it.

“Oh, Howard,” Melissa had said later, “it was entirely accidental. Stephen used to summer on Fishers Island and he rented the house this year not even knowing we’d be there.”

Yeah, right, Howard had thought.

“I thought you’d be pleased, Howard,” Melissa had wisely added. “You won’t have to play gin with Daddy.” (Daddy owned a house down the road.) “Stephen loves playing gin with Daddy.”

Hmmm, Howard had thought, brightening a little.

What the hell do I care anyway? Howard thought, tossing the envelope on the table. If he gets her in bed, I’ll pay him for the secret of how he did it.

“She’s on! She’s on!” Rosanne cried, pointing to the screen.

“Hey—I know her,” Howard said. “What’s her name again?”

“Mrs. C—now shut up, Howie.”

Mrs. C was the stunning blonde who lived on the other side of 88th, in 162. Howard had been watching her in passing for years. From the way Rosanne talked about her, Howard had always visualized “Mrs. C” as looking something like his mother (slightly plump, graying, matronly). Melissa knew her from the Block Association but had never introduced him to her. (“Oh, I suppose Cassy’s all right,” Melissa would say, “but not for us.”)

“How old is she?” Howard asked.

Rosanne held her hand out to shut him up and so he did.

“Using the Oval Office as his pulpit, President Reagan recently compared abortion rights to the institution of slavery,” Cassy was saying into the camera. “He also said that we cannot survive as a free nation until the constitutional right to abortion is overturned. Mr. Reagan did not, however, bother to explain that the views he expressed are his own personal opinions, and not the shared belief of the majority of Americans, to say nothing of the highest court in the land.”

I bet she has fun in bed, Howard thought.

Abusing the powers of the executive office…Injecting religious doctrine into the political process…Defiance of the Constitution…WST does not condone or condemn abortion policy…WST vehemently opposes the merging of church and state…

“Hi, I’m Howard Stewart. I saw you today on television. If I may say so, you were wonderful.”

The editorial was over and Cassy smiled in a way that made Howard smile back. Nice. “I’m Catherine Cochran, vice-president and general station manager of WST. Thank you.”

“Wowee kazow and go gettum, baby!” Rosanne cried, rolling backward into a somersault.

With their engagement official and documented in the New York Times, Howard took Melissa to Columbus to meet his family. It was not a great trip. The nice middle-class home in the nice middle-class neighborhood was not to Melissa’s liking. Nor was Howard’s father. Oh, Melissa was polite, but Howard knew her withdrawal into silence was a condemnation. And Howard noticed that his dad’s undershirts showed in the top of his open shirts, that he brought his beer bottle to the table, and that he did not notice Melissa swooning at the suggestion that she and Howard attend the dance at the VFW Hall. And then Howard’s younger brother had clomped in, bare-chested, from his construction job, and his sister announced she had to get ready for her date, which was fine, until her date arrived and explained to Melissa that he was an undertaker’s assistant.

On the plane, flying back, Howard had dared only to ask Melissa’s opinion of his mother. “I liked her,” she said. And then, gazing out the window, she added, “But it must be very difficult for her.”

“What do you mean?”

Melissa sighed slightly, turning to look at Howard. “Well, it’s rather like being stranded for her, isn’t it? Didn’t you tell me her parents were well off?”

Melissa had not gone over very well with the Stewarts, either. And it wasn’t her money, his father claimed over the phone in the kitchen. She was, well, kinda uppity, wasn’t she? “We mean, Howard,” his mother had said from the extension in the bedroom, “do you have fun with her? Do you—laugh?”

Howard and Melissa were married in a huge wedding outside on the grounds of the Collins house. It was the most god-awful wedding Howard had ever attended, though everyone said they had had the best time of their lives. Melissa’s mother’s family, the Hastingses, adored the Millses of Shaker Heights, and they had a grand time of it at the tables by the dance floor which Melissa had designated for them. The Al Capones who comprised Mr. Collins’ business associates had a ball in the house, filling the playroom with cigar smoke, playing billiards (“stupidest pool table I ever saw”) and making phone calls to Hong Kong about missing shipments of swizzle sticks. Ray and his friends were lured away to the swimming pool by a keg of ale and a box of fireworks that Melissa thoughtfully told them about. The Stewart contingents from Maleanderville, North Carolina, Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, and Teaneck, New Jersey, conducted their family reunion under the tent Melissa had set up for them by the gardens at the bottom of the hill. As for Mr. Collins’ family, apparently he had none (or, perhaps, had none he cared to acknowledge).

And then there had been the legion of Melissa’s “friends.” Hundreds and hundreds (it seemed) of perfectly coiffeured dainties—selected and collected at Ethel Walker, Bryn Mawr, Yale, God only knew where—escorted by an army of vaguely good-looking men, all appearing to be wearing the same suit. (“Harvard,” one said to Howard, flapping his school tie at him. “Princeton,” said the one next to him, flapping his. “Manchester Hannonford,” Stephen Manischell joked. “Merrill Lynch,” said the one with the Princeton tie. “House of Morgan,” Harvard said, stopping the other two dead in their tracks. “Bragging, dear?” Harvard’s wife then asked, coming up behind him. “Stephanie told me that Wiley made over four hundred thousand at Salomon Brothers last year.”)

Had they intimidated Howard? No. They had terrified him. Round and round the floor they had danced, talking of mergers and acquisitions and what stocks would give the Stewarts a brighter future. “The publisher of my life,” Melissa kept introducing him as. “His family is over there,” she said, pointing to the Millses of Shaker Heights. “Oh, Daddy? He gave us a beautiful apartment in the city, didn’t he, Howard? Howard’s just crazy about it. On Riverside Drive. Oh, I know, but Daddy didn’t know that and he spent a great deal of money on it and I just couldn’t hurt him that way. I mean, what would I say? No, Daddy’d never believe Howard wanted to live on the East Side. Daddy says Howard would be happiest in a log cabin.”

“I’m gonna put this letter on her highness’ dresser,” Rosanne said, placing it there.

“Oh, fine.”

“And here’s some coffee,” she added, walking over and handing him a cup.

“Thanks.”

Rosanne walked toward the door, stopped and turned around. “Mrs. C’s over twenty-nine,” she announced.

“Oh, yeah?” Howard said, smiling.

“Go back to work,” she said. “But remind me, Howie, before I leave I wanna talk to you about Tuesdays.”

Howard swallowed some coffee. “You want to switch days?”

“Naw,” she said. “I wanna talk to ya about Amanda, but I gotta finish the oven first.”

Howard leafed through the pile of short proposals in his lap, sighed, and let them fall back in his lap. His eyes were on Melissa’s dresser now. He rubbed his chin, thinking. It would be a low thing to do. And yet, knowing how meticulous Melissa was, he was sure the letter had been left in the couch for him to find. “Rosanne?” he called.

One second, two, three…

“Better make it short if you want an oven left!”

“Where was that envelope?” he called, rising from the chaise longue.

“The couch!” In a moment, she appeared at the door, wiping her forehead with the back of a rubber glove that was brown with gook.

“In it or on it?” Howard asked her.

“Sort of stickin’ up between the cushions.” She blew a strand of hair away from her eye. “Finished, Mr. Mason?”

Howard offered a half smile and slid his hands into his pockets. “Yes.” When Rosanne returned to the kitchen, he went over and read the letter.

Dear Melissa,

I don’t know what I would do without you these past months. No one told us it would be like this, did they? Forgive me when I say that I can’t help wondering what would have happened if we hadn’t met Howard that night. We’d both be a lot happier, I know. You told me Barbara wasn’t clever enough for me, and I told you that Howard would disappoint you—so I guess we both got what we deserved for not listening to each other.

I just wanted to thank you for listening to me the other day. My success at Beacon Dunlap would mean nothing without someone to share it with and, as always, you understand the importance of everything.

Not long until Fishers Island! (I’m seeing your father next week for lunch.)

Melissa, dear friend, you are all that is keeping me going.

Love,

Stephen

The first night of their honeymoon, spent at the Plaza, Howard had accepted that Melissa was too exhausted to have sex. So exhausted, in fact, he excused her when she pushed him away when he wanted to hold her as they fell asleep. Her excuses the next night, in London, and the next and the next and the next, were all quite reasonable. Melissa was of course shy; it would take time.

As it turned out, they did not consummate their marriage until they moved into the Riverside Drive apartment. Melissa had lain there, eyes closed, chin up, enduring Howard’s touch as though it were a prelude to being shot. When it came to actual penetration, Melissa cried and pleaded and begged Howard not to do it because it was killing her. Howard stopped, but then he thought of Mrs. Collins and Daddy Collins and the wedding and somehow he knew that if he didn’t just push ahead and do it, it might never happen. After he—ever so gently—managed to come inside of her, Melissa jumped out of bed, locked herself in the bathroom, and stayed in the bathtub for nearly an hour. Afterward, robe firmly knotted around her waist, she curled up with the telephone on the living-room couch and called, of course, Daddy. “Everything’s fine,” Howard overheard from the hallway. “Remember how you used to wake me up when you couldn’t sleep? It’s like that, Daddy.”

Howard racked his brain about how to help Melissa. (God, how to help himself.) When therapy was dismissed as ridiculous, Howard pledged his faith in time and gentle reassurance. The only problem was that Melissa seemed to hate reassurance more than she hated sex. (“Just please stop talking about it!” she would wail, clapping her hands over her ears.) But time did bring a change, a compromise, they had lived with since: Melissa used sex (a loose term, considering what it was like) to force Howard into doing whatever horrible thing she had her heart set on. If they spent the weekend in New Canaan with Daddy, if they went to Daddy’s reunion at Schnickle State College in Tennessee, or if Daddy came in and spent the weekend with them, then Howard could look forward to sex the first night after the ordeal was over. And summers! That was an interesting game, renting down the road from Daddy. The three or four weekends a summer that Daddy was not there were the weekends Melissa gave the signal, “I’ll be ready for you in twenty-five minutes, Howard.”

Howard had never cheated on Melissa. Amazing, but true. But then, life with Melissa was not all bad. No, far from it. The Stewarts enjoyed a way of life for which Howard never ceased to be grateful. They had this wonderful apartment (where Howard had the large library/study he had always dreamed of); they had their tennis and squash club memberships; they had their BMW (replaced biannually by Daddy); they had their annual three-week trip to Europe; they had their ballet and theater tickets and they had their big old rambling house in the summer (subsidized in part by Daddy).

Did anyone know what it was like for Howard to walk into Shakespeare & Company or Endicott Booksellers and buy four, five, eight hard-cover books? Did anyone know what it was like for Ray’s son to be greeted by name in Brooks Brothers? To give his family a VCR for Christmas? To quietly send his sister a thousand dollars when she got “in trouble” and tell her she never had to pay him back? Did anyone know how Howard had felt when he told Melissa of his mother’s admission of the terrible year Ray was having, and Melissa wrote out a check for ten thousand dollars, telling Howard exactly how to “invest” it in Stewart Landscaping in a way that his father could accept? Did anyone know what it was like to live like this and be an editor in trade book publishing?

Melissa was generous. The strings were long and complicated, but yes, Melissa was generous. “Just work on becoming publisher, Howard, and I’ll take care of the rest.” And she was. Melissa was now, in 1986, a junior vice-president at First Steel Citizen, pulling down some seventy-five thousand dollars a year (not counting bonuses, which, last year, had come to almost thirty thousand dollars—two thousand less than Howard’s entire salary).

Melissa’s energies and abilities—in Howard’s and everyone else’s eyes—bordered on the supernatural. (“It’s the Daddy in me,” she would say.) Dinner party for twenty—tonight? Billion-dollar loan to Madrid? Fifty pairs of tickets to the Cancer Ball? “I’d be delighted to handle it,” she would say without hesitation. And she would be delighted, moving and managing people, money and events in discreet euphoria.

But Melissa had a temper, too. And some nights Howard literally barricaded himself in his study against the sound of her tirades. “Layton Sinclair has been promoted past you!” she had recently screamed, pounding on the door. “He can’t even speak and he smells and he’s been promoted past you! God damn it, Howard, what is wrong with you?”

Nothing was wrong with him, he thought, except that he couldn’t bring himself to be the kind of editor Layton Sinclair was. Because, you see, after his marriage, Howard had truly become a good editor. No one, after 1980, after Gertrude Bristol, had ever called Howard Prince Charming again.

Gertrude Bristol had been writing bestselling romance suspense novels for thirty-five years. Her editor at G & G retired and Harrison, at an editorial meeting, queried the group as to who was interested in taking Gertrude on. To be more specific, Harrison was looking directly at his new young woman protégé, sending the kind of signal that Howard used to get from him (and foolishly ignore): Trust me, this is an author you should take on.

Howard—who had been floundering in terms of acquisitions—found himself cutting Harrison’s protégé off at the pass. “Harrison—I’d like to work with Gertrude Bristol.” The whole group had stared at him in amazement. Howard? Romance suspense? It’s-Not-as-Good-as-Cheever-So-It’s-Not-Good-Enough-for-Me Howard? “Uh,” Howard had added, “that is, if she wants to work with me.”

And so Howard had taken home ten of Gertrude’s books to read (“Hallelujah,” Melissa had said, picking one up, “someone I’ve finally heard of”) and received the first of many pleasant surprises to come. Since Howard had never read a romance suspense novel, he had always assumed they must be…well, not serious and certainly not literary. But Gertrude was both.

He flew up to Boston to meet the great lady and did so with great humility. Gertrude needed his editorial expertise about as much as Jessica Tandy needed acting lessons, and Howard was not foolish enough to make any promises to her other than that he would do his best to make sure she continued to be happily published by Gardiner & Grayson. Gertrude seemed rather bored by all this and was much more interested in whether Howard could stay over another day and speak to one of her classes at Radcliffe.

Howard stayed over another day and the single most important event of his career occurred—he listened to Gertrude’s fifteen-minute introduction to her class, in which she explained what editors do. “People working in the editorial process of book publishing today,” she said, “generally fall into two camps—the agents, who ‘discover’ new talent, and the editors, who introduce that talent in the best light possible.” But, she went on to say, the truly great editors would go mad if they did not, on occasion, make personal discoveries of their own. “How do they do this? Every newspaper they read, every magazine, every film they see, every person they meet, every short story, every poem, letter, billboard they read—everything an editor experiences in his or her life is unconsciously or quite consciously judged in terms of a possible book. Isn’t that right, Howard?”

Howard, pale, nodded.

“Editors looking for fiction attend writers’ conferences, read literary magazines, journals and short-story collections—or, if they are in the upper ranks of editorial, they make sure someone on their staff is. Editors looking for nonfiction habitually shoot off telegrams and letters in response to news stories. Editors often choose a particular city or part of the country to concentrate on, making themselves known there, getting to know the literary community. Some editors concentrate on the academic community, or the religious community, or the business community, professional sports or the recording industry…”

(Howard’s head was spinning.)

“It is the great editor’s job,” Gertrude had finished with, “to be on the cutting edge of contemporary culture, and to be on the cutting edge of discovering our past. It is an impossible job, but, as they say, someone’s got to do it, and with us today is someone who does. Class, Mr. Howard Stewart of Gardiner & Grayson.”

Oh, God. Howard had got up and fumbled and stumbled through a recitation of anything and everything he could remember Harrison having ever said to him. Gertrude’s little talk had completely thrown him; he had never done any of the things that she had talked about. Not one.

He returned to NewYork as Gertrude Bristol’s editor. And something clicked into place as he reported his trip to Harrison. A connection was made—as he stood there, watching Harrison’s smile grow wider and wider—between his old scorn for certain kinds of books and the fact that he had never read those kinds of books to find out what they were like in the first place. And so he started reading differently. And at lunch, with agents, he stopped saying he was looking for F. Scott Fitzgerald and started saying that he was looking for a new talent, someone with promise, someone whom he could work with, build with, over a period of years.

His first endeavor at “discovering” resulted in a bestseller. Driving home alone one night from Fishers Island, Howard was listening to a radio sex therapist, Dr. Ruth Hutchins. The topic was sexual dysfunction within a marriage, and Howard was (of course) listening with a great deal of interest. And then it hit him: If the radio show is so popular, and if I’m even interested in it…

He fired off a letter to Dr. Hutchins and learned that he was only one of many editors around town who had had the same idea. When Dr. Hutchins and her agent said it was not so much a question of money but which publisher best comprehended the nature of her professional goals, Howard sat down and wrote the table of contents of the book he himself would want to read. And so, on the strength of a good advance, a great marketing plan from Harriet Wyatt and the outline of Sex: How to Get What You Want and Need (with the jacket line: Without Hurting Anyone, Including Yourself), Dr. Hutchins chose Gardiner & Grayson. Sex climbed onto the Times bestseller list and stayed there for thirty-four weeks.

Howard started to experience joy. One morning he literally tore a page out of the Times and bolted from the breakfast table. “What’s wrong?” Melissa asked, running after him to the front door. “The MacArthur Foundation winners!” Howard yelled, taking the stairs down because it was faster. What fun it was writing “discovery” letters! What elation to receive a letter that said, “You have no idea what your letter meant to me. As a matter of fact, I’m in the process of expanding that short story into a novel now.” Howard was even thrilled when he got a phone call from Los Angeles that said, “Miss Margaret does not wish to write her memoirs at this time. However, she asked me to thank you for your kind letter, and to tell you that, should she decide to do so, she will certainly keep Gardiner & Grayson in mind.”

First novel! Literary biography! Collected short stories! Spy thriller! Victorian anthology! Investigative reporting! Editing Saturday and Sundays! Reading from seven until midnight! Gertrude breaks 100,000-copy mark! Sex sells for 600,000 reprint! Editorial meetings! Marketing meetings! Sales conferences! ABA! Howard was on cloud nine (exhausted, thin, bleary-eyed, but up there all the same).

And then the winds suddenly shifted at Gardiner & Grayson, marked by the arrival of a man named Mack Sperry in the business department, and the subsequent hiring of several MBAs. The old sails of power started to rend, and it was soon clear that Harrison, at sixty, was losing control of the ship. Memorandums started appearing:

7 OUT OF 10 BOOKS LOSE MONEY AT GARDINER & GRAYSON. PROFIT AND LOSS STATEMENTS ARE BEING RUN ON EACH BOOK AND EACH EDITOR.

Two editors were fired and two editors resigned. They were not replaced.

ALL EDITORS ARE TO SUPPLY THE BUSINESS DEPARTMENT WITH DATA FOR THE FORECAST.

The MBAs flew into editorial waving yellow legal pads. “Data for the forecast, data for the forecast!” The editors looked up the answers to their questions in their files and in a few weeks a bound report was circulated. THE FORECAST, it said, emblazoned in bold display type on the cover. Inside were pages and pages of graphs plotting the intricate lives of factors “Y” and “X” in “000’s.” The editors looked at it and then at each other, wondering who (or what) on earth “Y” and “X” were. And then a bulletin was hand-delivered—DISREGARD FORECAST—and all the MBAs were fired and twice as many were hired and back into editorial they flew, rousing the now familiar cry, “Data for the forecast!”

PUBLISHING PROPOSALS APPROVED BY HARRISON DREIDEN WILL BE FORWARDED TO THE BUSINESS DEPARTMENT. No editor can make an offer until he receives written approval from the Business Department.

Seven out of ten projects approved by Harrison were killed in the business department. (“Rejected,” the business department said about Howard’s proposal to publish a biography of William Carlos Williams. “William Carlos is not famous enough.”)

EDITORS ARE TO REPORT TO CONFERENCE ROOM 2 FOR GUIDELINES ON ACQUISITIONS. ATTENDANCE IS MANDATORY.

The guidelines issued by the business department were based on a simple premise: Gardiner & Grayson would become cost conscious and commercially aware. (In plain English, they wanted editors to do thinly disguised rip-offs of everything on the bestseller lists—for cheap.)

Layton Sinclair adapted beautifully to the new guidelines. When the business department expressed the urgent desire that someone “put together” an Iacocca pronto, Layton raced out of the gate. Now, the book the business department was referring to was a brilliantly conceived and executed business autobiography published by Bantam Books in 1985. The idea for the book had been “born” within Bantam, and they teamed the hero of Chrysler with a marvelous writer named William Novak, and so carefully orchestrated the book’s debut and afterlife that, to date, it was threatening to break the two-million hard-cover sales mark. Iacocca was precisely the kind of original, breakthrough publishing Howard longed to do.

So one can imagine Howard’s disgust when Layton—sensing a powerful ally for his career in Mack Sperry of the business department—claimed that, if promoted right, the illiterate manuscript of a man who had inherited a chain of motels could be the next Iacocca. “Layton,” Harrison said at the editorial meeting, “you are an editor, not an android. This, this, this—” “Lefty,” Layton said (referring to the title, taken from the author’s name of Lefty Lucerne). “Thing,” Harrison continued, “isn’t a book. Iacocca is a book, Layton. A good book. And a book is a body of work that reflects original human thought and experience. This,” he said, pushing the manuscript away from him, “is the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen let in the doors of Gardiner & Grayson.”

At the next marketing meeting, members of the business department asked how Layton’s version of Iacocca was coming and, on the strength of Layton’s verbal description, approved it on the spot. “It’s for the readers of Iacocca and The Search for Excellence.” (The latter had been a business blockbluster of a different sort.) The business department was elated and told Layton to “make the jacket look like Iacocca, but use the colors of The Search for Excellence in the background.” Harrison slammed his fist down on the table and said, “Not only is it unreadable, but I hasten to remind you that Lefty Lucerne was once imprisoned on racketeering charges, a fact that he neglects to mention in this so-called memoir.” (A murmur from the MBAs that this sounded like a good promotion angle.)And then, when Layton added that the author’s company would guarantee to buy fifty thousand copies of the book and that Gardiner & Grayson didn’t have to pay an advance if they didn’t want to, talk turned to making Lefty the lead book on the fall list.

“Promote him!” Harriet Wyatt angrily exclaimed at the next marketing meeting. “The man is brain-dead!” It was then explained that the author was so pleased to be published that he was giving a hundred thousand dollars to Gardiner & Grayson to promote the book. “Wonderful,” Harriet said, “I’ll find the best cart and coffin money can buy and launch him at Forest Lawn. Mr. Sperry,” she then said, rising from her chair, “I will be fired before I make my people work on a vanity press project. You’ll have to buy an outside publicist.”

The matter of Lefty then raged all the way to the office of G & G’s chairman of the board. There it was decided that Harriet would not be fired but an outside agency would be hired; that the book in question would not bear the Gardiner & Grayson name but would be distributed by them under a new imprint called Sperry Books; and that Layton Sinclair would receive the title of executive editor of the imprint but would remain a part of the G & G editorial staff.

And so Layton Sinclair had been promoted and Melissa was furious with Howard and Howard was sick at what was happening at Gardiner & Grayson. Oh, they were still putting up a valiant fight—encouraging one another, conspiring like members of the underground—but it was exhausting. (“Look, gang, we’ve got to get that first novel of Patricia’s through,” Harrison recently said in a closed-door meeting in his office, “so I want each of you to write a report that swears the author is the next Jacqueline Susann.” Fortunately no one in the business department liked to read. “Patricia, call it Valley of Desire, but once you get the contract signed, keep changing the title on the pub list so they’ll forget what it was supposed to have been.”)

Sigh.

It was all coming apart now for Howard. In the old days, he really had wanted to work toward becoming publisher of Gardiner & Grayson, to be on the “cutting edge” of the publishing frontier, and he had wanted to do it with the colleagues he had grown up with. The ones who had called him Prince Charming and then had rewarded him with camaraderie when he started being an editor. The people who had listened to his ideas and to his problems, and who had shared their ideas and their problems with him. The people who—over the course of ten-hour days, five days a week for eleven years—had become his family. But now, now…

“Then leave, Howard,” Melissa screamed, “find another job and leave!”

But Melissa didn’t understand and Howard didn’t think he could explain it to her. What would he say? “Melissa, you don’t seem to understand. My colleagues at Gardiner & Grayson have been filling the void of our marriage for years. If I leave them, then I have no one.”

No. Howard could not tell Melissa that.

“Amanda,” Rosanne was saying to Howard, “you know, Tuesdays.”

“And she’s writing a book?”

“Is she? It’s in boxes all over the apartment.”

Howard chuckled to himself, picking up a book from the window sill in his study.

“But like she’s really smart, Howie,” Rosanne said. But then she paused, debating a minute, and then admitted, “Well, sometimes she does get kinda loony—sort of like Esmeralda on ‘Bewitched’ or somethin’.”

Howard handed Rosanne the book. “Here. I haven’t even read it yet. A friend just sent it to me.”

Rosanne took it from him and looked at the cover. “Mickey Mantle! Oh, man, this is great, Howie. Frank’s gonna love this too.” She slid the jacket off and handed it back to him. “Better keep that to keep it lookin’ nice. Wow,” she sighed, smiling, putting the book in her bag.

Howard grinned, touching at his glasses. “So what’s Tuesday’s book about, do you know?”

“Oh, it’s about that queen—you know, the one that everybody says screwed horses.”

“Catherine the Great?”

“Yeah—”

“She didn’t, Rosanne.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Rosanne declared, hefting her bag onto her shoulder, “’cause Amanda kinda thinks she is Catherine the Great. The way she talks—sometimes I don’t know what the heck she’s sayin’. I mean, like she’s never mad or nothin’—she’s always ‘vexed’ or some numbnuts thing.”

Howard laughed.

“You’d love the way she talks,” Rosanne added, pointing a finger at him. “So, anyway,” she continued, backing out of the room, “the way I figure it, you’re just the guy to help her.”

“Help her?” Howard said.




3


Tea at Amanda Miller’s

“Darling heart,” Mrs. Goldblum said, “all women go a bit mad in their thirties. That’s why it’s so terribly important to marry well.”

The younger woman blinked.

“You see, dear,” Mrs. Goldblum continued, “in her twenties, every girl believes she knows what she wants out of life, and she settles into the life she is convinced will bring it to her. And no one can tell her differently.” She smiled into her teacup and took a discreet sip. “And then the thirties arrive and she suddenly realizes the world can say no to her, and she becomes convinced she has made all the wrong choices…and,” Mrs. Goldblum sighed, “she realizes that, instead of knowing everything, she knows very little.” Mrs. Goldblum smiled. “It is not an easy time.”

The younger woman nodded, thinking.

Mrs. Goldblum took a delicate bite from the small pepper jelly and cream cheese sandwich on her plate. The women were sitting across from each other at a round table in front of the largest of the living-room windows. The four corners of a white linen tablecloth hung nearly to the floor; the silver tea service sparkled in the afternoon sunlight; across the room a fire was burning in the fireplace, the brass fender set gleaming in the contrast of lights.

Both women wore black, but it was not in melancholy. Instead, it was fitting. The room in which they sat had furniture from an earlier century—dark, massive, gleaming products of English workmanship, settees and chairs covered in deep burgundy velvet. There was an enormous oriental rug, and the fringed edges highlighted the dark wood floors that were exposed around it. Old paintings of every size adorned the walls; the high ceiling was an intricate work of white panels and carved plaster. And there was clutter in the room. On every surface—table tops, shelves, even along the enormous mahogany mantel—there were bits and pieces of brass and hand-colored glass, and there were antique frames with pressed flowers and porcelain vases with dried flowers, and little leather Shakespeares and ivory elephants and all kinds of other small distractions.

The older woman sat perfectly erect. The black dress—whose era was anyone’s guess—though faded slightly, still draped from her shoulders in flattering folds. A small gold brooch rested on the left of her chest; a gold charm bracelet on one wrist occasionally made small tinkling sounds. Her breath was gentle and slow; her hands moved gracefully, unobtrusively, often finding rest in each other’s company on her lap. Her hair was pure white, the complexion beneath pale and sweet, and her face conveyed enduring strength of some seventy-seven years.

Her glasses were the only thing out of place. The lenses being thick, they distorted the woman’s languid brown eyes into something almost comical. But they weren’t comical. They were searching the face of her companion, looking for clues as to the younger woman’s thoughts.

“I never liked him, you know,” Mrs. Goldblum said.

The younger woman laughed. “You certainly deceived me there.”

“Of course I had to be polite. You seemed so keen on the young man, I vowed I would come to like him in time. I never did, however.”

The younger woman shook her head, looking down to her lap. Mrs. Goldblum reached across the table to cover her hand with her own. “Drink your tea, dear. You’ll feel better.”

The young lady raised her head. Her eyes, usually bright, were rather tired. A smile was pressed into use and her face changed considerably. It was a fascinating, striking face. But it was not beautiful. Every feature, though brilliantly conceived on an independent basis, was in contrast to the next. The large, hazel eyes competed with the strong, perfectly chiseled nose (that decidedly linked her to the portraits on the walls). The high cheekbones did not know the wide, full mouth, and the olive of her complexion was at odds with the light brown of her hair. And her hair, long and straight, parted in the middle and spilling down over her shoulders, certainly did not know what to make of the black dress and pearls. And the contrasts did not end there. Her ample breasts made no sense of her thinness; her hands, whose fingers were long but large, hinted at a line of heritage that once knew the fields—or service under the people from whom her nose had come.

Mrs. Goldblum watched Amanda Miller take her suggestion regarding the tea. She smiled, nodding slightly. “Better now?”

“Yes, thank you,” Amanda said. She cleared her throat. “I must apologize—I’m not quite myself today.”

On that note, Rosanne came in, wafting her arms in the air as though she were a loon in descent toward water. She came to a rest at Mrs. Goldblum’s side—with Mrs. Goldblum none the wiser as to how she had traveled there—and pulled down on the crisp black uniform dress she was wearing. Every Tuesday, Rosanne cleaned Amanda Miller’s apartment until early afternoon and then changed for the ritual of serving high tea at three. (“You gotta be kiddin’,” Rosanne had said when Amanda first suggested it. “Well, maybe,” she had reconsidered, once a generous offer of financial compensation for such an ordeal was discreetly tendered. “Ah, geez!” she had cried during her first “tea etiquette” lesson. “You make me do that [a curtsy] and I’m gonna go down like a house of cards.”) All in all, the arrangement had worked out fairly well. As for Rosanne’s etiquette, once she had latched onto Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz as a model for her demeanor, she had gained a rather peculiar but nonetheless pleasant form of grace.

“Would you care for some more sandwiches, Lady Goldblum?” Rosanne said.

“Lady,” Mrs. Goldblum chuckled, looking over at Amanda. “Oh, my, my.” She turned back to Rosanne, softly touching her wrist. “No, thank you, dear.”

“Very good,” Rosanne said, curtsying. She raised herself onto her tiptoes and teetered over to Amanda, waving her imaginary wand once in her face. “And you, Empress?” she asked.

“No, thank you, Rosanne,” Amanda said, laughing, covering her mouth with her napkin.

“Very good, ladies,” Rosanne said, curtsying. Once she was safely behind Mrs. Goldblum, she raised her wings and glided back into the kitchen.

Mrs. Goldblum turned to make sure that Rosanne had left the room, looked back to Amanda and said, softly, “There is a lesson to be learned, Amanda dear. She married the man she thought she wanted—and she will waste her life waiting for him to be the man she wants him to be.”

Something crashed in the kitchen.

“I realize it is difficult to understand, Mrs. Goldblum,” Amanda said, “but I never wanted him—” Her eyes settled on a silver napkin ring. “I was not, am not, in love with him.”

Mrs. Goldblum apparently did not hear the crash or Amanda. “To love and be loved in return is the greatest gift life has to offer. To love those who don’t love themselves is—” Mrs. Goldblum refolded her napkin in her lap and then smoothed it with the palm of her hand, over and over. “I was very fortunate,” she finally said. “Mr. Goldblum and I had a wonderful marriage.”

“Why?”

Mrs. Goldblum looked surprised. “Why, compromise. Every good marriage is one of compromise. Of acceptance. The pleasure and satisfaction of knowing that you both are willing to give up certain things in exchange for receiving much more than you could have alone.”

Amanda touched at her pearls. “What kind of compromises did you make?”

“Oh, gracious,” Mrs. Goldblum said, looking past Amanda to the window. Her voice grew faint. “It’s been so many years, I can hardly remember what I cared about before Mr. Goldblum. Dances, friends, pretty ribbons, I suppose. Isn’t it odd,” she said, bringing her eyes back to Amanda, “I can’t seem to remember anything of importance before I was married.”

Or afterward, Amanda thought.

“And once the children arrived”—she chuckled to herself, shaking her head— “there was no time to miss anything.”

Mrs. Goldblum’s attention seemed to have drifted to her charm bracelet. Amanda patiently waited for her to continue.

“And, of course, there was Mr. Goldblum to look after. He worked so very hard.” She looked up, smiling. “I used to bathe the children at five. With the children’s nanny, Muerta—a Swiss girl. We had help in those days. And when Mr. Goldblum came home, the children and I would be lined up at the door, as neat as tacks, waiting to welcome him home.”

“And after the children grew up?”

“Oh, gracious,” Mrs. Goldblum laughed, “I missed them terribly. So did Mr. Goldblum. We always believed Sarah would be with us for a few years longer, but then, Ben was such a catch!” A long pause. “Can it be twelve years?” she wondered aloud. “It must be. She died in 1974.”

After a moment, Amanda said, “When the children left home…”

Mrs. Goldblum smiled again. She drew out a white hankie that was discreetly tucked in the underside of one sleeve, patted her nose with it and replaced it. “Mr. Goldblum and I didn’t know quite what to do with each other.” She laughed quietly. “Sometimes,” she said, leaning forward, “I would look at him across the dinner table and think, Who is this man? It was as if I had never seen him before. The man I married had black hair. The man sitting across from me had gray hair.” She eased back in her chair. “But then,” she sighed, “there were still those moments when I felt as though he and I shared the same body, the same life, the very same thoughts. And in those moments I was the happiest woman on earth.”

The clock on the mantel struck the half hour.

“Dear me, I’ve overstayed my welcome,” Mrs. Goldblum said.

“Nonsense,” Amanda said, rising from the table. “I would be deeply offended if you left so soon.” She lifted the teapot. “We will have some freshly made tea, perhaps by the fire.”

“No, I’m fine, thank you, right where I am,” Mrs. Goldblum said. She looked at the teapot. “I do so love a cup of good hot tea.”

“And good and hot it shall be,” Amanda said. “Excuse me.” She carried the teapot out to the kitchen. Rosanne was banging candlesticks in the sink, apparently in some effort meant to clean them. “Rosanne,” Amanda began.

“It’s not fair,” Rosanne said, throwing down the sponge.

“What’s not fair?”

Rosanne rested the back of one rubber glove against her forehead for a moment and then whipped around to face Amanda. “She shouldn’t talk about Frank behind my back,” she said, clearly upset.

“Oh, Rosanne,” Amanda said softly, putting the teapot down on the counter. “Rosanne, no, no. It was not meant as a criticism—”

“I heard what she said.” Rosanne’s eyes fell, and she swallowed. “She just shouldn’t talk about him, that’s all.”

Amanda considered this, absently toying with her pearls. “No,” she finally said, “you’re right. But you know, Rosanne, Mrs. Goldblum is getting on in years…She would never intentionally say or do anything to hurt you. She was only trying to comfort me.”

Rosanne sighed, pulling off the rubber gloves. “Yeah, I know,” she muttered, reaching for the teapot. “You want another?”

“I’ll make it,” Amanda offered.

Rosanne looked at her. “Ah, geez, don’t start playin’ Mother of Mercy on me. Go back and play the-good-ol’-days with Mrs. G.”

“All right,” Amanda said, walking to the door. She turned around then, hand resting on the doorway. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Rosanne said, moving to the stove.

When Amanda returned to the living room, Mrs. Goldblum asked if she had told her that Daniel called.

“Oh?” Amanda walked over to take a small log out of the woodbox and place it on the fire.

“Yes. He said he’ll be coming for a visit soon.”

“That’s nice.” Poke, poke, sparks fly.

Pause. “He has suffered a minor reversal in business recently,” Mrs. Goldblum said slowly.

Amanda remained silent. Her frank opinion of Mrs. Goldblum’s only living child was less than complimentary; she thought he was a self-centered, worthless rogue. For the life of her, Amanda could not understand how Daniel could shut his mother out of his life—that is, when Daniel did not require money. Mrs. Goldblum was a fine, amazing lady. How could he ignore her? She was loving, warm, cheerful…and very, very lonely.

The first time Amanda ever laid eyes on Mrs. Goldblum was in line at the Food Emporium in 1983. Amanda had sailed up behind her with a shopping cart of liquid staples: a case of seltzer, coffee, milk, tea, Tab, and cranberry, apple, orange, grape and grapefruit juice. After loading them on the counter, Amanda had reached ahead for the delivery pad. Mrs. Goldblum had smiled at her; Amanda had smiled back; and then Amanda noticed Mrs. Goldblum’s purchases: two potatoes in a plastic bag, one orange, a can of tuna fish, a pint of milk, a box of butter biscuits and six cans of cat food. For some reason the nice old lady’s purchases hurt Amanda. (For some reason, all nice old ladies’ purchases hurt Amanda.)

After filling out the delivery slip, Amanda had yanked a copy of the Enquirer out of the rack to look at it. Over the top of the page—over a picture of Hepburn caught walking on the streets of New York—Amanda watched Mrs. Goldblum’s change purse come out. Inwardly, Amanda had drawn a sigh of relief at the sight of two twenties in it. Good, she had thought at the time, I don’t have to worry about her.

The older women on the West Side of New York always unnerved Amanda. There they were—when the sun came out—strolling, sometimes inching their way, on the sidewalk, sometimes arm in arm, sometimes on a walker, almost always with a fiercely determined expression that said to the world, “Nope! I’m not dead yet!” It made Amanda want to scream, “Please! Why can’t we give them whatever they want?”

When Amanda left the store, she had found Mrs. Goldblum sitting on the fire hydrant that came out of the side of the building. Her pocketbook and precious purchases were lying on the ground at her feet. She was a little dizzy, she said. It would pass in a minute. Wasn’t Amanda kind to pick up her belongings?

Amanda had ended up walking Mrs. Goldblum back to her apartment on Riverside Drive at the south corner of 91st Street. Mrs. Goldblum described to her how all the doormen up and down the Drive, in the old days, had polished the brass buttons on their uniforms and had taken pride in the white gloves they had worn.

Mrs. Goldblum’s apartment was enormous but vacuous. And rather dusty. Amanda had stayed for tea and a tour of the apartment, receiving a history of the remaining furniture and a description of all the pieces that had since been shipped to her son in Chicago. Amanda learned that Mrs. Goldblum had been a widow for sixteen years, that her daughter had died of leukemia. That Mrs. Goldblum used the one bedroom, that the other two were empty. That she didn’t live alone—she had her cat, Missy, whom she had recently adopted from the ASPCA. And that, before Missy, her cat’s name had been Abigail.

Amanda had learned that Mrs. Goldblum was one wonderful older lady whose friendship meant the world to her. While Amanda fought the urge to shower money on her—an urge that, if Mrs. Goldblum ever suspected, would undoubtedly raise her wrath—she did manage to hatch two plots that did much to cheer her older friend’s life: a cleaning woman (Rosanne) who would come once a week for twenty-five dollars (supplemented in secret by a twenty-five-dollar increase on Amanda’s tab); and a formal tea served at Amanda’s every Tuesday afternoon.

“Don’t drop it, Rosanne,” Mrs. Goldblum was saying, “place it on the table.”

Rosanne was looking dangerous. She yanked on the hem of her uniform but said nothing.

“I’m sure the tea is lovely,” Mrs. Goldblum added. “You always make it perfectly.”

Rosanne’s mouth twitched. “Thanks,” she finally said.

Amanda walked back to the table from the fireplace. “I quite agree with Mrs. Goldblum,” she said, smiling. “You know, Rosanne, we are very, very fortunate to have you.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Mrs. Goldblum said, taking Rosanne’s hand. “You know, dear,” she said, “I often wish you could have been with us when the children were small.”

Rosanne squinted at this declaration.

Mrs. Goldblum looked at Amanda. “I’m quite sure Mr. Goldblum would have been every bit as fond of her as I am. And,” she said, eyes turning up toward Rosanne, “we had all of our lovely things then, things I would have liked very much for you to see.”

“What, like the bone china?” Rosanne asked her.

A small, wistful sigh. “Yes,” she said, eyes moving down to her bracelet, “my lovely china.”

“Well, you still got that plate,” Rosanne said. To Amanda: “You should see it. It’s really nice. Sort of pink, with flowers.”

“Painted by hand,” Mrs. Goldblum said.

Rosanne gave Mrs. Goldblum’s hand a little shake. “I can just see how it looked at Sunday dinner, Mrs. G. All I have to do is look at that plate and I can see the whole thing.”

Mrs. Goldblum smiled.

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” Rosanne said, gently disengaging her hand from Mrs. Goldblum’s and heading for the double doors that opened on to the hall.

“Thank you, Rosanne,” Amanda said. “I can’t imagine who that might be,” she added, frowning slightly.

“Perhaps it is a neighbor,” Mrs. Goldblum suggested.

But Amanda didn’t have any neighbors on this floor of the building. That is, unless Mrs. Goldblum was taking into consideration the ghost who was said to be living in the south tower.

“No!” they heard from the foyer. “You wait right there. Don’t move an inch until I find out what Ms. Miller has to say—if she’s at home.” Silence. “Hey! I told you not to move and I mean, don’t move.”

Amanda and Mrs. Goldblum looked at each other.

Rosanne came in and closed the double doors behind her. “Oh, boy,” she sighed, slumping against the doors, “it’s Mr. Computer Head and he’s got flowers.”

Amanda’s back went ramrod straight.

“Yeah,” Rosanne confirmed, “and I don’t think they’re for your word processor.”

“Is it your young man?” Mrs. Goldblum asked Amanda.

“Yeah,” Rosanne said, “the guy we just finished trashin’.” Amanda seemed disoriented. Mrs. Goldblum didn’t say a word; she merely looked down at her napkin.

“I—” Amanda started, and then stopped.

Mrs. Goldblum placed her napkin on the table. “Of course you must see him, dear,” Mrs. Goldblum said. “It’s time for me to leave on any account.”

“Take him into the writing room and tell him I’ll be with him momentarily,” Amanda told Rosanne.

Rosanne sighed and did as she was told, closing the doors behind her. “Ms. Miller has guests,” they heard her say, “but she’ll see ya for a minute. Follow me.”

Amanda saw Mrs. Goldblum to the front door, where she assisted her with the pinning of her hat in place, with her coat and with her walking stick. “It was lovely, darling Amanda, and I so enjoyed myself,” Mrs. Goldblum said. She turned her face to allow Amanda to kiss her cheek, adding, “Just remember, dear, if you feel pain, it’s because you’ve left the road for a thicket.”

Amanda smiled and kissed her again. Closing the door, she paused there a moment. Straighten UP; shoulders

BACK; WALK.

Roger was sifting through a pile of discs by her word processor when she walked in. He looked up and smiled. “Hi,” he said.

“Hello,” Amanda said, standing there.

Rosanne pushed past Amanda in the doorway to plunk down a vase of white roses on the table. On her way out, she said loudly, “I’ll offer Mr. Smith some more tea.”

“The flowers are lovely, thank you,” Amanda said, closing the door.

Roger sighed and ran his hand through his hair. He was a good-looking man in his early forties. Well, Amanda reconsidered, pleasant-looking, but it was never for his looks that she had got involved with him.

He gestured to the word processor. “I see you’ve been working on Catherine.” He laughed to himself, hitting one of the keys. “If nothing else, at least you can run this baby by yourself now.”

“Yes,” Amanda said.

That was how Amanda had met Roger. He had sold her the machine and delivered it himself. And then he had tried to teach her how to work it. And then he had tried to teach her how to work him. Amanda had been eminently more successful at her first attempt at one than the other.

Grinning at her, he plunged his hand in his pants pocket and furiously jingled the change in it.

“Roger,” Amanda said, moving to sit in the easy chair, “what do you want?”

He cocked his head. “I’m not sure, exactly.” His eyes trailed down, to there. To Amanda’s breasts.

She must be flat-chested, Amanda thought, crossing her legs.

He moved closer to her, coins still jingling. “Maybe I thought I was making a mistake,” he said. Amanda didn’t say anything. “Maybe I thought I had to be sure.”

Amanda sighed, looking down at the armrest. “I don’t think so,” she said finally, looking up. “There was never any pretense between us. That there was any more to it than…”

“Yeah,” he said, eyes narrowing. Jingle. Jingle. Jingle.

“Good grief,” Amanda said, shaking her head. She was surprised—was she really?—at the erection apparent in his pants. It was coming closer into view. Jingle. Jingle. Jingle. Amanda lunged out of the chair. “Roger—” she said again, whirling around, “what on earth do you think you’re doing?” She walked to the window, held onto the cross pane, and looked out at the river. “What about your girl? The one who adores you?”

“Cooking dinner, probably,” came the answer.

Amanda turned around and leaned back against the sill. “But she’s not enough for you, I presume.”

Jingle, jingle, jingle. He was on the move again.

“I was under the impression that you were going to marry this girl.”

“I might,” he said, smiling, moving toward her.

“This is a marvelous start for a marriage,” Amanda observed, folding her arms across her chest.

“Hmmm,” he said, placing his hands on her shoulders. Amanda dropped her head. He kissed the top of it. “What do you care?” he murmured. “You never pretended to care for me.” He lifted the hair away and pressed his lips against her neck.

Amanda’s mind raced. It was undeniable, what she felt. What she felt like doing. What she always felt like doing with Roger, and it wasn’t conversing. This unbearable, insufferable computer salesman also possessed an unbearable, insufferable member that was, at this moment, pressing against her. Only the words weren’t really “unbearable” and “insufferable”; they were “unbelievable” and “insatiable.” Like the compatible parts of her own body.

He had his hand on her breast and in a few moments Amanda was reaching down to feel the length and breadth of his excitement. He moaned into her neck, dropping his hand to press between her legs. “I am aching to get inside you,” he whispered in her ear.

The phone started ringing. Both of them froze. It rang and rang and rang. “Rosanne will get it,” Amanda whispered, their palms still pressed against each other.

But she didn’t. On the eighth ring, Amanda sighed, pulled away from Roger and smoothed her hair. “Hello?”

“I just wanted to remind you that Mr. Smith’s out here,” Rosanne’s voice said.

Amanda closed her eyes.

“You know, like he’s out here if you need him,” Rosanne was saying. Amanda also heard the sound of a zipper. She opened her eyes to see Roger lifting himself out of his pants. “I can knock on the door—” Roger moved in close and pulled Amanda’s hand down to hold him. She did. “Or maybe Mr. Smith could even yell for ya, ya never know. Or maybe he could break somethin’ in the kitchen ’cause he’s jealous or somethin’.” Roger slid Amanda’s dress up to her waist and managed to work her panty hose down. And her underwear. “Too bad there’s no gun around. A couple shots would do the trick.” Roger parted her legs with one hand, eased himself out of Amanda’s hand, and moved behind her. “How ’bout a light bulb? Sounds just like a gun sometimes.” He pushed her forward over the desk. “Amanda,” she finally said, “if you need some help you’re gonna have to say somethin’.” Roger felt for, and found, the right place and brought himself up into position.

And then Amanda cried, “No!” and tried to twist away.

And then Rosanne started pounding on the door.

She had been divorced for six years. Six years. Could it be? Six years since she had been Mrs. Christopher Gain? It was hard to believe.

If it had been six years since her marriage, then Catherine the Great had been living in her head for ten years, and existing on paper for—let’s see…five years. Could that be right?

That was right.

Amanda Miller was thirty-two years old. Thirty-two? That would make her mother—fifty-eight, her father…seventy?

Yes.

Yes, that was right.

In 1946 a WASP-y rich girl from Baltimore entered Syracuse University as a freshman. Tinker Fowles was her name. Tinker Fowles fell head over heels with her dreamy-eyed English teacher, and scandal ensued. Not only was this Associate Professor Reuben Miller twelve years older, but he was Jewish as well. (“His mother does not even speak English!” Nana Fowles had shrieked in Baltimore, pulling her hair out.) The Fowleses filed an official protest with the university, but to no avail. Tinker went ahead and married Reuben and, to her parents’ fury, Tinker transferred the million-dollar trust fund left to her from her grandmother to a Syracuse bank.

The year 1950 brought Tinker a degree in English; 1952 brought a master’s degree; 1954 brought baby Amanda; 1955 brought a doctorate in English literature; and 1957 found Professor and Associate Professor Miller both working in the English department. They were, as everyone on campus noted, the most ridiculously romantic couple ever seen in this century. The Professors Miller left poetry in each other’s office mailboxes; La Professora (as Reuben often called his wife) received flowers often; My Darling Own (as Tinker often called her husband) found silk ties and handkerchiefs hidden in his office; and every evening at six the two could be seen strolling out of the Hall of Languages, crossing the lawn, listening to the music students play the bells of Crouse Tower. They would stand there, hand in hand, smiling at each other. My Darling Own would, as he would describe, “dare to slip his hand around his dearest’s waist.”

Amanda, everyone agreed, was adorable, but certainly the oddest child around. To begin with, she was forever floating about in costume. One afternoon it would be as a princess, the next as a prince. Fridays usually found her streaking around the campus, laughing to herself, trailing multicolored layers of capes and scarves. She was reading by four and, by special arrangement, received her education at the hands of the students in the School of Education.

The Millers lived in a hundred-year-old Victorian house in Jamesville. Amanda had the entire third floor as her own. She spent hours up there by herself, reading and writing, playing music on her record player, and acting out plays that had no beginnings and no endings. She sang too (though terribly off key), and had a passion for what she considered dramatic dance (anything between ballet and the twist, or combinations thereof).

Adults were fascinated (and ultimately won over) by Amanda; children were decidedly leery of her. Upon introduction, Amanda was prone to break into merry song of her own composition and do a little dance—taking little leaps this way and that—to the usual response of her new acquaintances skedaddling but quick. But Amanda did not seem to mind; it was the attention of adults that made her happiest.

By age fifteen Amanda—strange as ever—took her SATs. And there was a bit of a problem. She scored a perfect 800 on the English part and 200 in the math (the 200 one receives for merely signing one’s name). Nana Fowles (now the widow dowager of Baltimore) pleaded with Tinker to give Amanda to her for a year—to get Amanda “stabilized,” to get this math problem straightened away and to prepare Amanda for something other than reciting poetry at the top of her lungs in the stairwells of the Hall of Languages.

Amanda begged to go. By this time Nana had made her year-round residence the Fowles Farm, a source of wonder and enchantment to Amanda all of her young life. And so Amanda traveled to Baltimore in Nana’s limousine to get stabilized.

While Nana was otherwise rather forbidding in nature, she was helpless against the charms of her granddaughter. For the next fourteen months Amanda could be seen daily riding across the expanse of Fowles Farm, scarves trailing in the wind behind her. It had not been Nana’s intention to put Amanda’s fantasy world on four legs, but the girl was growing so quickly, so alarmingly, that even Nana had to admit that adulthood and labors of the heart would be arriving soon enough.

However, every afternoon at four, Monday through Friday, poor old Mr. Hammer would arrive, shouldering the burden of trying to teach Amanda mathematics. Amanda was cheerful, amiable, and even stopped touching Mr. Hammer’s ears when he asked her to (“They are ever so remarkably red,” Amanda would say), but she seemed to go into some kind of autistic trance when his lesson began. She watched as hard as she could but heard nothing. It was a language that her brain did not understand.

“Amanda,” Mr. Hammer would say, marking a big red X by every question on the test sheet, “you have outdone yourself. Now, not only can you not do algebra, but you appear to have lost the ability to add.”

Amanda would slide down in her chair and examine her hair at close range. “Nana will be most grievously vexed,” she would sigh.

Poor Nana was also suffering grievous vexation over the bodily changes that had descended on her granddaughter. The slight girl who had arrived was blossoming in ways that Fowles women did not. “You must do something,” Nana would direct the seamstress, “about that—about her—” The movement of her hand would indicate that the seamstress was to do something about concealing Amanda’s ever expanding chest.

Amanda, Nana noted, was the only one oblivious to her new body. The gardener had taken to trailing around after her; the groom smiled in a most inappropriate way when he insisted on giving Amanda a leg up on her horse; even Randolph, the butler—who was at least as old as Nana—could be seen gazing elsewhere than at the gravy he was supposed to be serving.

If Amanda gained any permanent knowledge from her “stabilization” at Fowles Farm, it was Nana’s opinion of the saving graces and potential downfalls of her heritage. Amanda loved Fowles Farm because, Nana said, her Fowles blood responded to it. Amanda’s thinness, her five-eight height, her light brown hair (and its straightness), her nose, her straight white teeth, her strong jaw line and her long arms and legs were all Fowles. As for the shape of her eyes, their strange shade of hazel, those long lashes, that mouth, and the “overendowment” (referring to her chest), they all—sigh—clearly came from the Millers (said with the same emphasis as murderers).

Mr. Hammer pounded enough mathematics into Amanda’s head—right up to the door of the examination room in Baltimore—for her to score a 560 on the SAT. As for the English part, if the examiners had taken her essay on “What George Orwell Would Think of the Design of This Test” into consideration, surely Amanda would have scored higher than her 800.

Amanda went to Amherst on the strength of her desire to attend school with Emily Dickinson’s ghost. She enjoyed school very much and felt at home around the English department. She also made great friends with the curator of the Dickinson house. As for her contemporaries, everyone liked her—and some even admired her—but always from a distance. She was, in their words, “just sooo weird.”

In her senior year Nana died. It became campus news that Amanda had inherited some four million dollars. And it was right around then that Christopher Gain appeared on her doorstep—literally. She was dressed in billowing white, just departing from her cottage to visit the curator. Christopher was dressed like Zorro. He bowed, deeply, his hat in hand, swept his cape to the side and offered her his hand. The girls roared from the windows above, but after Amanda smiled pleasantly at them, she turned to Christopher and took his hand.

Christopher had graduated some years before from Dartmouth. Since that time he had been hanging out at Amherst, discussing his future as a brilliant writer with various gorgeous coeds. He himself had gorgeous blond looks, tremendous charm and appeal, and a three-hundred-year-old pedigree.

Amanda found Christopher slightly magical. Sitting on the grass outside Emily’s house, in the dark of the night, he cited poem after poem that the great lady had written. While Amanda noticed that he kept bending the emphasis to imply that Emily had been writing to some lover hiding beneath her bed, rather than to her universal lover in the heavens above, she enjoyed the performance immensely. And then, offering his hand to her again, he had led her behind some trees. He spread his cloak, gently helped her down, and then gracefully, gently, laid himself down on top of her.

Amanda marveled aloud at the way Christopher touched her. What he was doing, what it felt like—what she did not know it felt like. But it felt wonderful, she said, over and over. Amanda said a lot of things. In fact, she rendered a verbal narrative description of everything Christopher was doing to her—as he did it to her—as if it would help her to remember it all.

Amanda had never been touched that way before. Amanda had never been so much as kissed on the mouth before. Amanda was introduced to earthly delights beyond her comprehension. It wasn’t like Mr. Hammer’s mathematics—but it was very much like reading, she thought. It was taking her somewhere quite far away, somewhere quite different from the places she had been—inside of her? outside of her? where?—and she had the feeling that, yes, like reading, she would not fully understand it until she reached the end of what Christopher had to share with her.

They married three weeks after her graduation and moved to Florence. For two years Amanda and Christopher read and played and talked and dressed and drifted and reveled in Italy. They also spent hours making love.

At night, Christopher would go off alone to the cafés to think about his novel. Amanda preferred to stay home, reading and writing, playing records on the stereo, and acting out plays that had no beginnings and no endings….

Amanda’s first brush with reality struck when Christopher said he couldn’t have sex with her because he had herpes. Had what? Christopher took her to the doctor with him, where it was carefully explained to her that she was lucky not to have caught it. But what was it? How did one catch such a dreadful thing? Did it have something to do with the water here?

The doctor explained.

Christopher said it happened one night, late, when he was so drunk he didn’t know what he was doing. It would never happen again. And soon he would be well, he was sure, and then— “oh, darling, do you know what I’m going to do to you?”

On Christopher’s inspiration, the couple moved to New York City in 1978, renting an apartment on 73rd Street between Fifth and Madison avenues. Two weeks after they arrived, Amanda came home from registration at Columbia University to find a young man named Marco wandering around in her kitchen with a towel around his waist.

It took almost six months for it to penetrate, but Reality Part II visited Amanda. Christopher, by his own admission, was bisexual. For Amanda, this information did seem like Mr. Hammer’s mathematics. Not until Christopher persistently pounded it into her head was she able to glean what it was he was talking about. (“But I don’t understand, how can this be?” “It just is, Amanda.” “Is what?” “Like it is between you and me.” “But he’s not like me—how could it be like us?”)

Amanda took her furrowed brow to Columbia to concentrate on an MFA in their creative writing program. It didn’t work. With each passing day she and Christopher were splitting apart. Their sex life broke down completely and Amanda, for the first time in her life, felt terribly lonely. She stopped writing, she could scarcely read, she could not act out plays of any kind. After a while, not even the huge mirror of the wardrobe could evoke a line from her. Her costumes hung in the closets; her attire died into jeans, the denim growing looser, her blouses growing baggier. She dropped out of graduate school.

In 1979, Tinker and Reuben surprised the Gainses by arriving in New York to see them. (It was the first time they had actually made it.) The Millers were frightened by the change in their daughter. They were also stunned by Christopher, who, last time they had seen him, had not being sailing in and out of the house in silk pajamas. And there was something else—something Tinker had to talk about in private with Amanda.

Tinker didn’t mean to pry, but Nana’s lawyer, Mr. Osborne—did Amanda remember Mr. Osborne at the reading of the will? Amanda did—told her that the Gainses had spent some four hundred thousand dollars in the last eight months. Mr. Osborne—who only had Amanda’s best interests at heart—said three hundred and forty thousand of that money had flowed through Christopher. Did Amanda know that? Was, perhaps, Christopher starting a business?

When Amanda sank down in her chair and started playing with her hair, Tinker had called her husband in. Together, standing before her, holding hands, the Millers gently suggested to their daughter that she might want to see a doctor…perhaps she and Christopher together.

Christopher, no…but yes, Amanda would see the doctor.

Amanda had been in therapy for five months when she flew up to Syracuse for a visit. Her parents were encouraged by the change in her. (Though, they sighed in secret, she was not their Amanda anymore, was she?) There were papers to be signed with Mr. Osborne, money matters to be rearranged. Amanda wasn’t sure what all the papers meant (a Mr. Osborne was not of much value without a Mr. Hammer), but she agreed that it would be a good idea to curtail Christopher’s access to her money.

When Amanda came home—on that fateful Saturday evening—she found her home in a full-swing party, the majority of the guests being what are sometimes described as “screaming queens.” Her husband, Christopher, was the loudest. Wearing a little fig leaf. And in the dining room, among the bottles of booze and piles of joints, Amanda saw an array of pills and powders and needles and razors and a mirror, and a burner was scorching the finish off of Nana’s table and—

Amanda moved into the Plaza Hotel—where, she remembered, her earliest literary heroine, Eloise, lived—and asked Mr. Osborne to handle her divorce.

Amanda settled fifty thousand dollars on Christopher, though Mr. Osborne told her she certainly didn’t owe him a thing. Amanda thought she did though.

She bought the apartment on Riverside Drive at once. From the ground looking up, she thought her building looked like a castle. And her apartment, on the top floor, came complete with a tower room. She flew down to Baltimore, tagged furniture that was in storage from Fowles Farm, and had it shipped to her new home. In time, Amanda started riding in Central Park, and then her reading resumed, and her writing resumed, and then her talking to herself resumed. But the plays never came back, nor did her costumes ever leave the closet.

The idea of writing a novel from the perspective of Catherine the Great had originated in Florence. After having read and digested some three hundred tomes of Russian and European history over the years, in the fall of 1981 Amanda finally sat down and wrote the first line of the book. “I, Catherine, Imperial Empress of Russia, answer to no man.”

“He’s gone,” Rosanne said, coming back into the writing room. She stared at Amanda for a moment and then abruptly turned away. “Uh, ya better…”

Amanda was confused. But then she looked down at herself and saw the state of her dress, of her undress, of her half undress. She pulled the dress down over her thighs and smoothed it. She brushed back her hair with her hands and felt the absence of an earring. Amanda rubbed her face, dropped her hands and sat back against the window. She sighed. “I am utterly at a loss as to what to say to you—except, thank you.”

Exhibiting caution, Rosanne slowly brought her eyes back around. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. She swung her weight onto one leg and brought up her hand to the opposite hip. “Look, Amanda,” she said, looking down at the floor, “it’s none of my business—and it’s not none of Mrs. G’s either—” She looked up.

Amanda covered her mouth and coughed.

“Don’t get mad—”

Amanda crossed her arms over her chest, sighing.

“I think you’re great,” Rosanne said.

Amanda was looking confused again.

“And Mrs. G thinks so too, and we just kinda worry about ya. I mean, it’s not like we think anything’s wrong with that guy or nothin’,” she rushed on, “it’s just we wish you were a little happier.”

Amanda nodded slightly, lowering her eyes. “Thank you for your concern, Rosanne,” she murmured.

“You’re not mad or nothin’—vexed, are ya?”

Amanda raised her eyes, shaking her head. “Of course not,” she said.

“Okay then. Well, I better be goin’,” Rosanne said, moving toward the door. “Oh, man, I almost forgot to tell ya.” She spun around. “Amanda, I think Howie wants to read your book.”

Amanda blinked.

“Howie—you know, Mondays, Howard Stewart. The editor.” Rosanne waved her arm in the air to make sure Amanda was paying attention. “Listen, okay?”

“I’m listening,” Amanda said.

“Now don’t go gettin’ freaky, but he was really interested in your book. I told him it wasn’t finished or nothin’, and I told him it was kinda long—”

“Long,” Amanda repeated, looking at the shelves that were Catherine.

“So is it okay if he calls you or somethin’?”

Amanda looked at her, hesitating.

“He’s really the greatest guy,” Rosanne said. “Just talk to him, will ya? You know, like he’s an editor. And he won’t push ya about it, he isn’t pushy at all.” She nodded her head vigorously. “Just say yes, Amanda.”

Amanda lowered her arms to her sides, sighed and said, “Yes.”

“Great!” Rosanne said, leaving the room. “See ya next week!”

Amanda covered her face with her hands. I nearly had sex in front of the cleaning woman, she imagined herself saying to Dr. Vanderkeaton.

It had started with the apartment on Riverside Drive. This sex thing had. One man on Mondays and never one that she could even remotely like. For the last eight months it had been Roger, and Rosanne and Mrs. Goldblum had known about him only because Roger had forever been stopping in to try his luck. (“Mondays,” Amanda would hiss at the door, with Rosanne lurking dangerously close by, “I have told you repeatedly. Every other Monday at one o’clock.”

“Yesterday was Monday,” Roger would hiss back, trying to grab hold of her, “and I came back to finish up.” “Mrs. G told me to tell ya,” Rosanne would say, coming out into the foyer, “that she hopes you’ll invite your visitor to join you guys for tea.” And the confounded dolt had said, “Love to!” no less than six times.)

In the beginning, five years ago, it had worked. Sex had pushed something back into place for Amanda. After one of those Monday afternoons something would temporarily subside inside of her—that awful, gnawing sensation that her moorings were fraying to the snapping point. But, over time, it had stopped working that way, leaving Amanda only to agonize over what seemed like some sort of curse on her body. On her.

She still ran into Christopher on occasion. Once at F.A.O. Schwarz, once at Lincoln Center, twice on the terrace outside the Stanhope and, most recently, in the Whitney Museum. She had been alone; Christopher was never alone.

Each time she saw him—and most strongly this last time—Amanda felt weak at the sight of how unattractive he had become. His hair was thinning almost too fast to be normal; he had lost far too much weight; his muscle tone was gone; and his teeth showed nicotine stains when he smiled at her. His eyes, too, had lost their luster. And Christopher was losing his—his maleness, too.

Looking at him made Amanda feel queasy and disoriented. This was the man who had commanded such love and desire from her? This was her Christopher?

Amanda lowered her hands from her face and looked at the shelves of Catherine that made up one wall of the writing room. There was her work, yes. There was that. And maybe…maybe it was time to do something about it. What had Rosanne said? Something about an editor wanting to read it?

The thought made her feel cold and scared and so she banished it.

She walked over to the desk, sat down, and pulled the telephone toward her. She looked at it a moment, lifted the receiver, and pushed the button marked “in house.”

“Yes, Peter, is that you? It is Amanda Miller calling…. Fine, thank you, and you?…I’m very glad to hear it. Peter, the reason why I am calling is to say that under no circumstances is Mr. Slats to be granted entry into this building…. That is correct—don’t let him in…. Exactly. Not now, not ever.”




4


The Wyatts

“You are different, Althea, and I’ll tell you how,” Sam Wyatt said to his daughter, voice rising. “You’ve got a nice home, a family that loves you and the best damn education money can buy. The question is, are you going to do anything with it?”

“Mom,” Althea said, looking to her mother.

Sam slammed the Times down on the breakfast table.

“Don’t,” his wife said softly, placing a hand on his arm.

“You talk to her,” Sam said, jerking the paper back up.

Harriet lowered her head slightly, took a long breath, and then looked at her daughter. Althea was standing there, arms rigid with anger. “Honey,” she said, “if you had the money to go on your own, it would be a different matter. But you don’t, and since your father doesn’t agree with you that it’s a good trip to make, you can hardly be furious with him for not giving you the money.”

“I’m eighteen,” Althea began.

The Times came crashing down. “Yeah,” her father said, “so maybe if you’re old enough to want to go palling around with Muffy, Scruffy and Whupsie—the Honky Sisters—you’re old enough to support yourself.”

“Oh, Dad,” Althea said, storming into the kitchen.

The Times was thrown to the floor. “What is it with that girl?” he said, yanking first one shirt cuff down over his wrist and then the other.

Harriet was eating her scrambled eggs.

“If I had the advantages she has—”

“You didn’t,” Harriet said.

“You better believe it.”

“I know, Sam.”

It was even odds whether the man named Sam Wyatt would explode or deflate at this point. His wife, sitting next to him, chewing, watched to see which it would be. When he fell back into his chair with a sigh, a faint smile passed over her lips and she moved on to her English muffin.

Sam took a deep breath, straightened his tie and then paid serious attention to his tie clip. “I don’t want her to get hurt,” he said quietly.

“I know, honey,” his wife said.

He let go of his tie clip, plunked his arms down on the arms of the chair, and looked at himself in the dining-room mirror. He straightened his tie again.

At fifty, Sam Wyatt possessed a handsomeness that was not easily defined. He was one of those men whose looks came alive with expression, animation, and since he was forever—as his eldest daughter would say—”intense,” he was most often rather striking. He was tall, nearly six foot one, and squarely made across the shoulders. His skin was a deep, ebony black, and his closely cut hair had gray coming in fast at the sides. His mouth—perfectly fine when still—had a curious habit of lifting to the right side when in use. (Four years ago, when Sam brought home a publicity photograph of himself from the office, three year-old Samantha had burst into tears. “That’s not Daddy!” The Wyatts had finally pieced together that what was scaring Samantha was the absence of “Daddy’s cook-ked smile.”) Sam’s nose was long and a tad sharp (“Where do you suppose that came from?” Althea would ask, pulling on it). And his eyes were large and bright, veiled by long lashes.

“Sam,” his wife said, lowering her English muffin, “is there something else? Something other than Althea, I mean.”

Sam thought for a moment and then sat back up to the table. “Would you want to go to Southampton with a bunch of white girls?”

“Not particularly,” Harriet said, pulling the bit of muffin into small pieces on her plate, “but then, I’m not Althea. And they’re nice girls, Sam, and I know she wouldn’t have been invited unless they really wanted her to go. And it’s preseason—” She frowned as Sam started humming “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”; she picked up a piece of the muffin and bounced it off his nose. “You’re worse than a weather vane,” she said. “Make up your mind, are you in a good mood or a bad mood?”

“Yeah, I’d like that—weather reports,” Rosanne said, swinging in from the kitchen with a coffeepot. “Nobody told me hurricane Althea was gonna tear up the kitchen this mornin’.”

“What is she doing?” Harriet asked.

“Aw, nothin’,” Rosanne said, putting the coffee down on the table, “she’s okay. Killed the last muffin, though. I think it’s behind the refrigerator.”

Harriet giggled and the sound of it made both Sam and Rosanne smile. Harriet Wyatt was one of those lucky women who in her forties had gained ten pounds and a rather astonishing new voluptuousness. But her black hair—straightened and coiffed in a stunning sleek cut around her neck—her spring suit and silk blouse and her gold hoop earrings and bracelets did nothing by way of indicating that she could be a woman who giggled. But that was Harriet, forever coming forth with warm and happy surprises. That is, unless she thought one was wrong, and then she would grow ten feet tall (it would seem to Sam) and everything about Harriet would turn hard with the warning, “Just try and mess with me.”

“Can’t imagine where she gets her temper from,” Harriet said.

“Yeah,” Rosanne said, going around Sam’s chair to pick up the newspaper from the floor. “Here, Mr. W, let’s set an example,” she said, refolding it and placing it at his side.

Sam gave her a look out of the corner of his eye (with the side of his mouth rising accordingly) and then reached for the coffee.

“I wanted to ask ya somethin’, Mrs. W,” Rosanne said, moving back around the table.

“Coffee, Harriet?” Sam asked.

She nodded and turned to Rosanne. “Shoot.”

“Like, well,” Rosanne said, rolling up her sleeves, “Howie’s a good editor, isn’t he?”

Both Harriet and Sam burst out laughing.

“What? What?” Rosanne wanted to know, looking at one and then the other.

“I knew it!” Sam cried. “Harriet, I told you she’s going to write a book about us. Remember?”

“I’m not writin’ a book,” Rosanne declared, stamping her foot. “But let me tell ya, if I was”—she poked Sam in the shoulder— “I wouldn’t waste it on the likes of you. I got a lot more interestin’ things to write about than you two spoonies.”

“Hear that, Harriet?” Sam said. “She says we’re too boring.”

“Then thank God for boring,” Harriet said to the skies above. She looked back at Rosanne, smiling. “Howard is a very good editor.”

“I thought so,” Rosanne said, starting to clear the dishes. “He’s gonna read a friend of mine’s book.”

Sam’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t say anything.

“Sam,” Harriet said, sipping her coffee, “I’m supposed to have a meeting this morning with Harrison.”

He nodded, but then, after hesitating a moment, said, “I wanted to talk some more about that job offer.”

“Aw, no,” Rosanne said, balancing the pile of dirty dishes, “you’re not gonna leave, are ya?”

Harriet reached out to touch Rosanne’s arm. “I’m only thinking about it, Rosanne, so please don’t mention it to Howard.”

“Naw, I won’t,” Rosanne promised, going out to the kitchen. “He’s down in the dumps enough as it is.”

“We all are,” Harriet sighed. “The place is a battlefield.”

Sam was sitting there, stirring his coffee. “How long do you have before you have to give them a decision?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A couple of weeks, I guess.” She looked at him. “Why?”

“Well,” Sam said, slowly putting his spoon down on the saucer, “I wish you could put it off for a little while.”

“Why?” she said again, clearly puzzled.

“Well, with summer coming—I don’t know,” he mumbled, shaking his head.

Harriet was frowning. “I don’t understand. On Sunday you were all for it. As I recall, your exact words were, ‘It’s time one of us took a risk—go for it.’”

He sighed, sitting back in his chair. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m not so sure you want to leave—”

“What are you talking about, Sam? Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said to you for the last year? It’s—”

Seven-year-old Samantha chose that moment to come in and announce a crisis concerning a missing blue sock.

“I’ll help you, honey,” Harriet said, rising from her chair. “Sam,” she added on her way by him, “I want to talk about this some more tonight.”

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Sam mumbled.

Harriet stopped in her tracks and turned around. Finally, her husband looked at her. She started to say something, stopped, squinted slightly, and then said, “We do have to talk, Sam. We do.”

“I don’t know where it is!” Samantha wailed from the hall.

“Did you hear me, Sam?”

He nodded, tossing his napkin on the table.

“Honey,” Harriet said, coming back to him.

“I know, I know,” he said, lifting the jacket of his suit from the back of the chair. “We’ll talk tonight.”

As Harriet went in one direction, Althea came in from the other. She avoided her father’s eyes, intending to pass him by, but he caught hold of her arm. “Hey,” he said, pulling her back to face him.

Althea was not going to cooperate.

“Look,” he said, tilting her chin up, “Althea, in a couple of years, you’re going to be able to do whatever you want. You can run for mayor of Southampton if you want to, and I won’t care. But for right now, while you’re in school, while you’re living here with us, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to pacify your old man.”

Althea rolled her eyes.

Very slowly, very deliberately, he said, “I love you, you know. And I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“I don’t see how going to Southampton is going to hurt me,” Althea sulked.

Sam slid his arm around his daughter and made her walk him to the front door. “Look, I think it’s nice that your friends invited you, but I don’t think they understand—”

“Understand what?” Althea persisted, twisting away.

“That I don’t want anyone looking at my daughter like she’s a second-class citizen and, Althea, that’s what you’ll get out there.” He shook his head. “You know, you act as though your mother and I don’t know anything about how this world works. Well, let me tell you something, we didn’t get where we are by hanging out—” He raised his hand and then dropped it, shaking his head again. “Did it ever occur to you that there was a reason why we decided to raise you kids here and not in the suburbs?”

“‘Cause you work here.”

Sam closed his eyes and then, slowly, reopened them.

“You’re so uptight, Daddy,” Althea said, turning away. “You’re so uptight about everything.”

Sam looked at his daughter’s back and sighed. And then he left for work.

Sam regretted almost every decision they had made concerning how to bring up Althea. For one, they never should have enrolled her in the Gregory School. Yes, it was true, at the time Sam had been extremely proud that Althea had been accepted at one of the best private schools in the city. And yes, he had been very proud that he and Harriet had been able to send her there at a cost of nearly five thousand dollars a year.

And, actually, the Gregory School had been fine until Althea hit her teens. Looking back, Sam and Harriet wondered at their naiveté. After putting their daughter in a nearly all-white school, how had they expected Althea to maintain many black friends? The one black boy in her class Althea didn’t even like. (“He’s a jerk!” Althea had exclaimed, when her parents asked why she wasn’t going to the dance with him instead of John Schwartz. “Just because his father plays for the Jets, he thinks he’s God’s gift.”) And when they talked about pulling her out of Gregory, Althea’s counselor had made a very good point: Althea was happy there, and her grades and popularity showed it. And so the Wyatts had tried to compensate by pushing Althea into extracurricular activities—a plan that failed as well. (“I don’t want to go out for the team at the Y—I want to swim for Gregory!”)

Althea graduated from Gregory with a 3.8 average and the Wyatts were relieved when she expressed a desire to stay in New York and attend Columbia. (“Smith!” Sam had yelled during Althea’s time of uncertainty. “Harriet! Your daughter wants to go to Smith with a friend named Poo!”) And again, Sam had been very, very proud of Althea. And of him and Harriet. How many blacks, he wondered, how many kids anywhere, were smart enough to get into an Ivy League school and had parents who could afford to send them there? (“The way I figure it,” Sam had said to Harriet as they sat down to plan out Althea’s tuition for the next four years, “we can send Althea through school, or we can buy Mexico.”)

Althea, thus far in her freshman year, had done extremely well, but Sam was still nervous about her. Of all the different students, Althea still undeniably gravitated toward those affluent whites she had grown up with at Gregory. She did have some black friends, and her last boyfriend too (thank God) had been black, but still…

It wasn’t that Althea disregarded her heritage. On the contrary, Althea made being black seem like an asset in the world. An asset because to know Althea Wyatt was to associate a young black woman with all the things all people everywhere coveted: brains, beauty and the brightest of futures. Did that bother Sam? No, not really. What gnawed at him was how self-centered Althea seemed to be. That everything Althea sought was for her own benefit, hers alone, with apparently no thought of rechanneling some of her good fortune back into the black community.

Harriet did not worry about it as much as he did. But then, Harriet was forever clouding the issue (for Sam) by claiming that Althea, as a black woman, couldn’t afford to give anything away until she reached that almost nonexistent place called power. “For you it’s a white man’s world,” Harriet would storm on occasion. “But for me, Sam, for Althea, and for our little Samantha in there, it’s a man’s world first, Sam, and then it’s a white man’s world.” And then Harriet would burst into tears and Sam would feel terrible as Harriet would say, “You make me so furious sometimes. You always say you understand and you never have. You just don’t know, Sam, you just don’t.” Sniff. “And I’ll tell you something else, Sam Wyatt, why should our daughter do a darn thing for all those groups of yours? Look at them, Sam—they’re all men. And who do you men help? Young men. You have two daughters, Sam—don’t you think you could give one scholarship to one woman? Can’t you guys even pretend that women matter?” (Sam, incidentally, no longer participated in any group that did not include women.)

But the issue of race and of sex and of Althea’s upbringing had another all-encompassing issue attached to it. It was the issue of addiction. From the day she was born, Althea had clearly been her father’s daughter. She looked like him, she talked like him, and her attitudes were just like his—in the old days, that is. Would Althea inherit it? they wondered. Had Althea been given it when she was little? What does one do when scared of the onslaught of it? It that has raged through half of your child’s heritage, it that is waiting out there, on every street corner, in every school-yard, in every place where people are—what could the Wyatts do about it? They could—and did—watch over their baby, try to safeguard her in ways that caused these other problems. Like the Gregory School. Had they really sent Althea there to educate her, or had they sent her there to keep her safe?

Hmmm…

No, it was true. They had sent her there to keep her safe.

And Columbia? Living at home?

They had kept her there to keep her safe.

Safe from it?

Yes, safe from getting sick like her father.

Sam Wyatt was the youngest of six children. His father had been an “army man,” which sounded a good deal better than “a cook.” Private Wyatt and his family moved from camp to camp in the United States, living in the colored housing where all the other indentured servants in the guise of privates had lived in the late 1930s and early ‘40s.

Sam was seven when his father went off on a drunken spree from which he never returned. They had been living in Texas then, at a camp that was frantically processing young men for shipment to the South Pacific. The army lost the trail of AWOL Private Wyatt in Nogales, Mexico, where he had apparently taken up with a barmaid named Juanita. Penniless, Sam’s mother Clowie had no choice but to parcel her children out to her siblings. Sam landed in Philadelphia at his aunt Jessima’s.

Aunt Jessima had the fear of God in her and she did her best to instill it in Sam. Sam’s childhood and teenage years seemed like one long prayer meeting, with Aunt Jessima’s particular friend, Reverend Hope, officiating. Sam behaved, he did as he was told, and vowed that when he grew up he would never enter a church again.

By the time Sam enlisted in the army in 1956 the Wyatt family was sadly depleted. His mother had died of pneumonia in Milwaukee; his brother John had died in a car crash in Arizona; his brother Matthew, in the army, had shot himself through the mouth in Germany; and Sam’s sister Bernice, only two years older than he, had been stabbed to death by her boyfriend in Los Angeles. His eldest sister, Ruth, had not been heard from in years; and his brother Isiah was preaching the gospel somewhere in the Everglades of Florida.

Sam spent four years in the army, was honorably discharged as a sergeant and went to Howard University on the GI Bill. He was smart, he was cocky and he was known for his way with women and having a good time. With his business degree in hand, he landed in New York City in 1965 and was hired in the personnel department of Electronika International. He was very well paid to assist a Mr. Pratt in all phases of personnel operations, and since Mr. Pratt did nothing Sam assisted him in all phases of nothing and enjoyed a pretty footloose and fancy-free time of it.

And then he met Penn graduate Harriet Morris, another Philadelphia expatriate, who was working as a secretary in the publicity department of Turner Lyman Publishers. Harriet was the first woman Sam had ever felt inclined to be faithful to. She was very pretty and very smart, and was the product of a middle-class Methodist family that was so happy it used to make Sam sick. In fact, if it had been anyone but Harriet, Sam wouldn’t have gone within ten miles of a person like her. Harriet was a devout churchgoer. Harriet read the Bible every night before going to sleep (she still did). Harriet didn’t drink. Harriet was forever saying things like, “Look on the bright side.” And Harriet was very critical, very hard on anyone she didn’t think was living up to his potential—namely, Sam.

On their fifth date Harriet ventured to tell Sam that he was a fool to be in personnel. Sam, drinking a martini, dressed in a very expensive suit, asked her how much she made at Turner Lyman and, when she told him, he pointed out that he made five times what she did. So what the hell did she know?

“Did you major in personnel at Howard?” Harriet asked him, smiling over her Coke.

Of course he hadn’t.

“Did you interview with Electronika to work in personnel?” she asked.

No. He had interviewed for their training program.

“And they offered you more money to go into personnel, didn’t they?”

Well, yes, they had.

“And you never wondered why?” she asked him.

“Well—”

“Sam,” she said, tapping a swizzle stick against her lower lip, “show me in the Wall Street Journal where it announces power changes in personnel.”

“What?”

“They’re putting you in the ghetto,” she said.

Now just what the hell was she—

“The government says, ‘Hire blacks.’ Okay, they say, we will. And where is the safest place to put them? Think, Sam. Where can they pay a good salary, call blacks executives, and never ever have to worry about them getting any power?”

Well, needless to say, had Harriet not been quite as attractive as she had been that night, had she not followed her criticism of Sam’s career by an utterly disarming seduction of him emotionally, he never would have seen her again.

Instead, six months later, he married her. Right after he took a pay cut to move into the marketing department at Electronika.

Sam worked like a demon—mostly because he loved his work and loved what he was learning (including that he was very good at it), and partly because he wanted to leave the sea of white faces around him back in the wash. He was under enormous pressure—real and self-induced—and a twelve-hour day was nothing unusual for him. When Harriet got pregnant in 1967, he worked even harder—pushing, pushing, pushing himself—and by the time Althea was born (the day after Martin Luther King was shot), Sam was supervising a department of ten in the new-product division.

Although Harriet did not drink at all, Sam customarily had two scotches before dinner and a beer with. In the few years following Althea’s birth Sam and Harriet joined a group of other black professional couples who met once a week for dinner. It was more of an encounter group on the state of black America than it was a social event, and they usually talked into the wee hours of the morning, sitting around on the living-room floor, with Sam and a few of the others drinking throughout. Something happened to the group after a while—around 1972—and the dynamics of it began to shift. The wives grew reluctant to come; Sam and two other men were drinking more and more and once even a fistfight broke out. The women stopped participating altogether and the talk of the men started to change, and suddenly it was no longer about “them,” the white establishment, but about “them,” the wives and children who chained them to jobs they hated and to a lifestyle that was smothering them.

The men moved to bars and Sam went with them. And then it was just Sam in the bars, with whoever was around. And then there were terrible fights between Sam and Harriet, always around the issue of his drinking. And then there were terrible fights over Sam’s drinking and Sam’s women.

Harriet went to work in the publicity department of Gardiner & Grayson at the end of 1972. In 1973 she started warning Sam that if he did not do something about his drinking she was going to leave him. And then, in November, Sam passed out in his chair and his lighted cigarette started a small fire. Harriet told him he was on his last chance. The very next night Sam did not come home at all, and Harriet took Althea and moved in with her aunt in Harlem.

Sam cried and pleaded and did everything he could to get Harriet back—except stop drinking. Then he said to hell with her and started hitting the bars straight after work, finding sympathetic women to tell his sad story to, to buy drinks for, and to sleep with that night. It was amazing how much he was still able to function at work in those days—particularly since he had taken to martinis at lunchtime—but word began to get around the office about the caution needed to make sure Wyatt was in the right “mood” when he made a decision.

By 1975 it was anyone’s guess whom Sam might wake up with in the morning. His blackouts were unpredictable, coming anywhere after two to ten drinks. At his company physical, he was told his liver was enlarged, his blood pressure was far too high and that he was running the risk of becoming diabetic. As for Harriet, she was so sick of Sam’s middle-of-the-night assaults on her aunt’s apartment (that he never remembered), she started calling the police and having Sam hauled away to the precinct.

And then Sam’s boss called him in one day, sat him down, and gently, quietly offered Sam a choice: take a leave of absence and sign himself in for treatment or be fired.

To this day Sam does not know why he agreed to go to a rehab. At the time he didn’t think he had a drinking problem. He thought he had a lousy wife and a lousy job problem. But somewhere, somewhere very deep inside of him, a little voice told him that maybe…maybe he would be better off it he stopped drinking for a while. And so, very quietly, very confidentially, Electronika flew him out to Minnesota for treatment.

Two months free of drinking, Sam went back to work. Four months free of drinking, Althea stopped hiding when he came to visit. Eight months free of drinking, Sam and Harriet went out on a date. Fifteen months free of drinking, Harriet and Althea came home to live with Sam. Thirty-nine months free of drinking, the Wyatts gave birth to a second daughter, Samantha, and Sam quit smoking. Sixty-two months free of drinking, Sam was made a vice-president of Electronika. Sixty-four months free of drinking, Harriet was made director of promotion, publicity and advertising at Gardiner & Grayson. Seventy months free of drinking, the Wyatts were profiled in the New York Times Magazine as examples of Manhattan’s black upper middle class. Seventy-eight months free of drinking, the Wyatts bought a four-bedroom apartment on Riverside Drive.

Sam and his family were now one hundred and thirty-five months free of drinking. Of it.

Samuel J. Wyatt, Vice-President, New Product Development, sat in his office on the forty-seventh floor and wondered what the hell to do.

He sighed, turning his chair away from the window and back around to his desk. He looked up at his wall, covered with plaques and certificates of recognition, and of pictures of him at various functions. Sam, it should be said, was a doer. He didn’t just talk the talk, he walked the walk. The Urban League, the United Negro College Fund, the Howard University Trustees Board, Junior Achievement…Sam sat on so many boards he had lost count, but he had never lost his energy or his willingness to do what he could for any organization he thought was effective.

But now…

Sam had recently pulled off a coup at Electronika. He had swung the deal for Electronika to take over a small British company called Trinity Electronics, which had developed a gem of a copying machine that no one had ever seen the likes of. The ZT 5000 could be used to reproduce originals; it could be hooked up to computer systems; it could be hooked up to wire services; and it could copy images of any size—from a postage stamp to the center fold of a city newspaper—and automatically cut the paper to size. In seconds. And at a cost that was leaving the competition agape.

Trial machines had been placed in key accounts across the country, and when the ZT started shipping five months from now, in October, it was already guaranteed some forty thousand placements and promised to move into every good library, telecommunications center and computer graphics room in the country before the end of the decade. On the strength of the machine’s early reviews, Electronika’s stock had climbed eleven points on the New York Stock Exchange.

Sam had been dancing in the aisles. With a hit like this, with Electronika miles ahead (in a product line they had always been sorely lagging in), it meant a huge promotion for him, vaulting him out of the divisional and into the corporate vice-presidential ranks.

But now there was a problem.

Oh, man, was there a problem.

And Sam was hoping against hope that today it would turn out that it had all been some terrible misunderstanding.

It has to be, he thought, pressing his temples.

Yesterday afternoon the new president of Electronika had summoned Sam to his office. There had not been any of the pleasantries that Sam had been accustomed to for the last six months from Walter Brennan. Brennan had scarcely greeted him, pointed to a chair and then had let him have it. “We’re in one hell of a mess with the ZT 5000.”

Immediately Sam’s stomach had lurched. I knew it was too good to be true, he had thought.

“And I’m not very happy about it,” Brennan had continued, pacing back and forth behind his desk. “Now, technically speaking, you’re not responsible for the production end of the machines—”

“No,” Sam had said, “Chet Canley handled that part of it.” Chet Canley was the senior executive vice-president who had come to Electronika with Walter Brennan.

“But you are responsible for Electronika acquiring Trinity Electronics in the first place.”

“Yes,” Sam had conceded, “that’s true.”

“So I thought you might be able to shed some light on the problem we’ve discovered,” Brennan said. Pause. He laughed suddenly, kicking his head back. “Christ!” he cried, looking at Sam. “The irony of it.”

“Of what?”

“Asking my black executive if he can shed some light on why we’re assembling machines in Pretoria, South Africa.”

“What?” Sam was up and out of his chair. “What?” he repeated, leaning over Brennan’s desk.

“Yeah,” Brennan said, nodding his head. “You got it. Chet has informed me that the ZT is being assembled in a plant in Pretoria.”

“That’s impossible,” Sam said, dropping back in his chair. “It’s just impossible. The components ship from Tokyo, San Francisco and London for assembly in Nairobi, Kenya.”

Brennan scratched his ear. “So you don’t know anything about the Pretoria plant?”

Sam snorted, jerking his head to the side. He looked back at Brennan. “I know I don’t do business with South Africa, I can tell you that. And I can tell you that nobody I dealt with at Trinity does either.”

“Well, somebody sure as hell does,” Brennan observed.

And so Sam had not slept very well last night. The whole thing had kept spinning around in his head and in his stomach. On the first level, he was furious. On the second level, he was furious because he didn’t know who to be furious at—Trinity Electronics or—or…himself. Could it be possible that he had prompted Electronika to take over a company producing in South Africa? South Africa? Sam Wyatt’s ZT 5000 was being assembled in South Africa? His big coup was with the inventors of apartheid?

Oh, God, his stomach hurt.

No, he had decided, he was not at fault. And Brennan knew that; he had only been looking for answers to a problem. But man, oh, man, if word got out on this—that Electronika was selling to institutional accounts machines that were being produced in South Africa—the ZT 5000 would be killed. It was just the year before that Sam had applauded the student demonstration at Columbia to protest the school’s stock-holdings in companies doing business in South Africa. And Columbia had divested itself of those stocks—and Columbia was a major institutional account for the ZT 5000! (Suddenly, visions of Althea conducting a sit-in in front of the Wyatts’ apartment building swam past Sam’s eyes. Suddenly, visions of protests across the country against Electronika swam past Sam’s eyes. Suddenly, visions of his own photograph accompanied by the headline BLACK EXEC BREAKS BOYCOTT IN SOUTH AFRICA swam past Sam’s eyes.)

Would he be fired? Sam had wondered. What was Electronika going to do? Sam had wondered. What was he going to do? he had wondered. Sit back, let them handle it, or try to find out more about what had happened, how it had happened?

He had decided not to panic, and he had decided to make some calls to Trinity in London to find out what or how this had happened. Sam looked at his watch. His secretary had been on the phone to London for over fifteen minutes. Was no one in? He looked at his watch again. It was only three-thirty in the afternoon there.

Finally his secretary, Mabel, appeared in the doorway of Sam’s office. Sam looked at his phone, saw no lights on, and frowned. “Didn’t you get Lane Smith?”

Mabel shook her head.

“Well, did you try George?”

“Yes, but he’s not—”

“Well then, get Alice on the phone,” Sam said.

“Mr. Wyatt,” Mabel said, gesturing futility with her hands, “there’s no one there.”

“What is it, a holiday or something?”

Mabel looked down at the paper in her hand. “I tried every single name in the Trinity file—Lane Smith, George O’Shea, Alice Tilly, Ian Claremont, John Sawyer—”

“How about that guy in manufacturing,” Sam said, “Peter, Peter—”

“Johnson. I tried him too.” Pause. “Mr. Wyatt, none of them work there anymore.”

“What?” Sam sat back in his chair, thinking a moment. “Were they fired or did they quit?”

“They wouldn’t tell me,” Mabel said, “They just said, ‘He is no longer with the company.’”




5


Mrs. Goldblum at home

Dear Mrs. Goldblum [the letter said], After repeated telephone conversations with you regarding your late husband’s employment with Horowitz & Sons, I am forced to reiterate the facts in letter form in the hope that the matter can be put to rest.

You informed us that from the time of your husband’s death in 1970, until February of 1984, Bernard Horowitz issued certain sums of money to you. You informed us that these payments were from your late husband’s pension plan.

If Mr. Horowitz did indeed make these payments, he did so out of his personal funds. Nowhere—and I have personally gone through every file—is there any record of a pension fund being set up for your husband. In fact, no employee at Horowitz & Sons had a pension fund with the company.

In conclusion, Charger Industries has absolutely no obligation to the estate of the late Robert Goldblum. I hope this answers your questions.

Sincerely,

Phillip S. Robin

“Hey, Mrs. G,” Rosanne said, coming into the kitchen, “Amanda gave me—Mrs. G, are you okay?”

Mrs. Goldblum lowered the letter onto the table. “I’m quite fine, thank you.”

“You don’t look so hot.” Rosanne edged closer. “Bad news?” she asked, nodding toward the letter.

“No,” Mrs. Goldblum said softly, slipping the letter back into the envelope it arrived in. “There is some lovely chicken salad for your luncheon. It’s in the refrigerator.”

“Thanks,” Rosanne said. She looked at Mrs. Goldblum a moment longer and then went over to the refrigerator. “Are you gonna want yours on lettuce or in a sandwich?”

“No, thank you, dear. I’ve already eaten.”

Rosanne frowned slightly. “Well, you sure eat fast then, since I’ve been here all morning.”

“No, thank you, dear.” Mrs. Goldblum rose from her chair and, taking the letter with her, made her way toward the living room. Her hip was quite stiff today and she wondered if she shouldn’t be using her cane. And she wondered if she shouldn’t get over her keen dislike of having such a thing in the house.

Carefully, she sat herself down at her secretary.

Now then. The letter.

Mr. Robin is wrong, Mrs. Goldblum thought. She pulled out the tissue in her sleeve and dabbed at her nose. Oh, why do one’s friends have to die? If dear Bernie was still alive, none of this confusion would have ever taken place.

No pension plan—indeed!

Does this Mr. Robin think Robert hadn’t planned for his retirement? Of course he had! Bernie told me that he had—right in this very room. Why, every month like clockwork, a check arrived from Horowitz & Sons for 416. And right on the check it said, “Pension Benefit—Estate of Robert Goldblum.” What is wrong with this Mr. Robin?

What was she going to do now? Should she go to a lawyer? But how to find one? How to pay for one? Right now she had a little over 600 left in the bank. The rent would be due in two weeks. That would leave 320. There was the doctor’s bill that was overdue and Mrs. Goldblum was supposed to go back to see him this week. Well, that was out of the question. How could she face him with an overdue bill? And the dentist. Oh, dear. Such a jumble; how much was it she owed him? Eighteen hundred dollars?

She would have to call Daniel. If she could locate him. The last time she had tried to call him, a recording said that the number had been changed. Did he give her his number last weekend?

No, he hadn’t.

Mrs. Goldblum’s cat, Missy, came sauntering in. Missy purred, arched her back and rubbed against Mrs. Goldblum’s leg. “Hello, Miss-Miss,” Mrs. Goldblum said, dropping her hand beneath the desk of the secretary. Missy rubbed her face in Mrs. Goldblum’s hand. “Yes, you are my good girl.”

There was no point in calling Daniel, Mrs. Goldblum realized. Her son wouldn’t be able to help her. But maybe he could. Maybe he could come and straighten all of this out—

She didn’t even have enough money to send him a ticket.

Well.

She would go to the bank and look in the safety deposit box again. There must be some bond or stock certificates left. Just to tide her over until this pension business was cleared up.

“Oh, my,” Mrs. Goldblum sighed out loud. It seemed impossible that there was no money left. Where could it have gone?

Oh, dear. This was a painful question she really hadn’t meant to raise.

—50,000 for Daniel’s video business.

—25,000 for Daniel’s video business to stay afloat.

—10,000 for Daniel after the business failed.

—16,000 for Daniel’s credit card problem.

—20,000 for Daniel’s late child-support payments.

—4,000 for Mrs. Goldblum’s lower plate.

—5,000 after Daniel’s ex-wife’s and children’s pleas for help.

And that was only the last year and a half.

Mrs. Goldblum closed her eyes, choosing not to think back any further than that.

Mrs. Goldblum flexed her hands. It was becoming a little more difficult to ignore these days, the arthritis. Particularly on humid days. It made one think in different terms. That is when they want you to go into a home, Mrs. Goldblum thought. When you speak of it taking sixteen and a half twists to open a six-ounce can of cat food.

“What are you talking about, Mother?” Daniel had yelled on the phone.

“About using the can opener, dear. About feeding Missy.”

“Do you think I called all the way from Chicago to talk about a cat?”

“I am simply answering your question, Daniel. You asked me how I am and I’m telling you how I am.”

“You’re talking about can openers and cats!” he had cried.

Rosanne breezed into the living room, breaking Mrs. Goldblum’s train of thought. “Before I forget again,” she said, holding out a large Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag, “Amanda bought the wrong kind of shower curtain and can’t return it and wondered if you’d like it.” She pulled it out of the bag for Mrs. Goldblum to see.

It was a pale pink. Mrs. Goldblum liked it very much indeed and reached out to touch it. “Wasn’t that thoughtful of her.”

“Well, I don’t know, Mrs. G. Seems to me if Amanda was thoughtful she wouldn’t always be buyin’ the wrong stuff. ‘Member when she gave me the watch? ‘Member?”

“I’m not sure that I do,” Mrs. Goldblum said.

“Aw, sure ya do, Mrs. G,” Rosanne said. “When I told her to get some Windex and she came back with a watch? This one?” She held up her wrist.

“Oh, my, yes, now I recall,” Mrs. Goldblum chuckled.

Rosanne listened to her watch for a moment and then shrugged. “So, ya want me to hang this up?”

“Would you, dear? Is that too much to ask? I do think it would look lovely in the bathroom. Don’t you agree?”





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