In the Drink (19 page)

The first message was from John, asking if I wanted to go to Gus’s play with him on Friday. “He got Cecil’s mother’s building. I think your girl Frieda might have had something to do with that. See you tonight at William’s, I hope.”

“Well, Claudia,” Jackie said after the second beep; my heart exploded. “I’ve found a girl who’s going to come on Monday morning, so that’s taken care of. Her name is Goldie and I’m not quite sure I like her name, it sounds like a race horse or showgirl, but the agency said she’s very reliable. Thank you for those pages you left.” I fell bonelessly into my armchair, but then she went on, “I haven’t read them yet, I’ll do it first thing tomorrow. We must discuss the ending. If you
could come on Monday morning to help this girl get settled, it would be a great help, and then maybe you and I would have a chance to figure out how we’re going to work together on this next book. That would be just great.”

I held the phone, poised to dial Jackie’s number as soon as the messages finished playing.

“Claudia,” said Frieda in a rush. “Where are you? Call me the minute you get home. I’m in a major panic.”

Next came a studiedly neutral female voice as familiar to me in its way as all the others: “We have an important message for Miss Claudia Steiner. Please call the following number at your earliest convenience. It is very urgent that you return our call immediately.”

Then came my landlord’s voice, asking with thuglike politeness when he could expect this month’s rent, as well as the rent for last month and the month before. His name was Miller; he had no first name that I knew of. He had a big solid head and lizardy eyes. He was sinisterly well-groomed. He had feathered hair; he wore a gold chain around his neck; he lived in Saddle River, New Jersey. “Hello there, gorgeous. I hate to keep buggin’ you about the rent, don’t want to let a little thing like that spoil a beautiful friendship, but what can I say? We all gotta eat.” Under his unctuous affection, I sensed a capacity for physical violence that was as inappropriate and hot-breathed as his lovey-dovey veneer. “Give me a call, sweetheart, or page me, we’ll work something out. Love to hear your voice, any time, day or night.”

The sixth and final message was from William, who sounded self-conscious and muffled: “Hi, Claudia, I hope I’m not waking you up. Just kidding. Listen, could you come a little early tonight? Around nine would be great. Give me a call. Thanks.”

When Jackie answered, I made the necessary introductory
pleasantries, then asked in a trembling voice whether she’d read those new pages.

“Not yet,” she said.

“Jackie, I think maybe it would be a good idea if you didn’t look at them. I thought of a few things I want to change, and it would save you time if you read the second draft instead of having to read both.”

“Well,” she said, “of course I’m always dying to see every word you write. I meant to read it last night but I’ve been so hectic, finding that Goldie and getting everything ready for Lucia—”

“Jackie,” I burst out desperately, “please don’t read that scene. It’s so rough, I don’t want you to waste your time. You’re a writer, you know how it is with first drafts, you just want to burn them before anyone sees them.”

She made some inconclusive sounds, and I thought it might be wise to get off the topic to avoid making her suspicious, which would induce her to read the whole thing immediately. I told her I’d see her Monday morning and signed off, still a little queasy.

When I called Frieda, I learned that she’d gone out for dinner and a movie with Cecil and they’d ended up at her place and slept together. Frieda was distraught about this, or so she said. “I’m bad girlfriend material. I always freak out. Oh, God, I like him so much, Claudia. He’s so nice to me, in a way I really respect.” I could see her sitting hunched over her telephone, a paint-spattered old behemoth as black and heavy as an Underwood typewriter with a slow, wheezy rotary dial, her nervous coltish feet splayed in front of her, fending off anything that might come at her unexpectedly. She sounded suspiciously happy, underneath all her anxiety, as if she didn’t really want reassurance. I kept trying to comfort her, she kept deflecting me, and then finally I said good-bye and we hung
up. She hadn’t asked what had happened with John the other night, and I’d wanted to tell her about the latest fiasco with Jackie. She hadn’t seemed at all interested in me.

“I can’t go to Gus’s play with you,” I told John angrily when he answered. “I can’t believe you had the gall to ask me.”

“Why?”

“Listen, John, the other night was a big mistake.”

“I thought we both had a good time.” He sounded more amused than offended, as if this were all just a little game I was playing and he would humor me until I lost interest in it and got real. “All I did was ask you to see a bad play with me. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but seeing a play is not the same as—”

“Yes it is,” I said.

There was a silence, during which I fought a strong urge to inform him that I knew he didn’t really give a rat’s ass about me, no matter what he pretended to feel; he was patronizing and full of it, and nowhere near as good a writer or as good at sex as he fancied he was, but I managed to keep my trap shut by reminding myself that he hadn’t done anything to me that I hadn’t let him do.

“If that’s the way you feel about it, Claudia,” he said finally with a dry condescension that sent my features into manic but silent contortions, “I guess there’s nothing I can say.”

“You’re right,” I said, and hung up, still fuming.

I didn’t call Miller or the credit-card collection lady. Nothing about my current situation allowed for the kind of conversation they hoped to have with me, and I wasn’t sure how to break this to them without getting myself snarled in a lot of lies and excuses I had no interest in manufacturing.

William wasn’t home. I was relieved to get his machine. “It’s me,” I said, trying to sound confident and casual. “I’ll be
there as early as I can, around nine, unless you decide you want me to come even sooner. If you need me to bring anything besides a six-pack, let me know. Bye.” Ugh. What a wormy, pathetic message. I’d made it sound as if I would have held up a liquor store for him, or cut off my arm. I waited to hear Ruth Koswicki remind me passionately that letting people know how I felt about them was a good thing, but there was only silence.

I napped shallowly until early evening, then woke up and rubbed my eyes and stood in a fog before my closet door until I found the warm bottle of gin I’d stashed in there. The eyeliner and black minidress I put on gave me the hopeful sluttiness of a housewife playing a truck-stop waitress in a suburban community theater production. I considered changing back into my jeans and staying in for the night, but as I was putting on lipstick, the gin hit my brain, the lights went down and my costume settled onto my frame as if it belonged there. I shot from my apartment, hurtled down the stairs, burst onto the sidewalk, dropped down the subway stairs and onto a waiting train.

At Times Square I changed to the shuttle, took it to Grand Central and got an uptown local. As the train flew into Jackie’s stop and slowed, I watched “68th Street” slide by over and over in block letters in tiles along the walls. The station gleamed, as brightly lit as a public bathroom. The thought of those pages on her kitchen table made me close my eyes for a moment and breathe a prayer to anyone who might be listening.

Two stops beyond Jackie’s, I came up out of the ground into the familiar expensive hush of the Upper East Side. I stopped at a deli on the corner for a six-pack, then hiked the long blocks to William’s building, a vast glass-and-steel affair that looked like an office building but whose neighborhood
was so quiet I could hear the scrape of a dry leaf blowing slowly along the pavement behind me. In the gleaming mirrors-and-marble lobby, three doormen loitered officiously behind a vast desk and a bank of video monitors, fuzzy gray and blue squares that showed the curvilinear oblongs of shadowy, empty hallways. One of them spoke soundlessly into a phone, hardly moving his lips, then gestured me to the elevators.

William had left his door unlocked. I stepped into his tiny hallway and bolted it behind me. “Hey, William,” I called. There was no answer. I went into the dimly lit living room and was immediately engulfed in the wide, expansive view, skeletal bridges strung with light, the low-slung industrial glow of Queens. The East River below was streaked with shuddering reflections. The room, all shining blond-wood floor, glass-and-metal coffee table, plush black leather couch, elaborately mysterious stereo components stacked in metal shelves, had an edgy, vacant feeling, as if no one really lived here, like a furniture showroom or a movie set. “William,” I called again, then heard water running in the bathroom. I rounded the counter between living room and dining alcove and went into his tiny galley kitchen and stowed the beer in his crowded refrigerator.

He came out of the bathroom a few minutes later. “Hi,” he said. “Thanks for coming so early.”

“God, I’d forgotten how professional your place looks.” I opened a beer and offered it to him. He took it, and I opened one for myself.

He had just shaved. His face had a pale, vulnerable look and exuded a spicy, exciting mixture of chemicals and crushed plants. He rubbed one cheek. “Are you hungry? I’ve got four kinds of cheese and three pounds of sliced ham.”

“Do you have any pickles?”

We were manufacturing hearty, bluff versions of our normal selves while the tension simmered between us like an ignored
child. William busily got out pickles, sliced ham and cheese, a jar of mustard and a loaf of cocktail rye, plunking everything down on the counter. I pounced on the food and filled a plate, then sat at the gleaming black table in the dining alcove. He slid a coaster under my beer bottle. I ate. I couldn’t read anything in his expression. It struck me how deceptive faces were, how little they revealed of all the weather that went on behind them.

“So,” I said finally with my mouth full. “Why did you ask me to come early? Do you need me to pass around canapés and take coats?”

“Moral support,” he said tersely. “What made me think I wanted to have a party? Why do people have parties?”

“It’s just a bunch of your friends getting drunk in your apartment and using your bathroom.”

“It’ll be fine,” he said, waving it all away.

“Of course it will.”

“I meant to ask you,” he said then, “what happened with Jackie?”

I swallowed. “She wasn’t pleased.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

“What happened when you talked to Margot? Did she get my message?”

“She sounded a little put out about it, actually.”

“Margot sounded put out?
Margot
was put out?”

By the time the guests started arriving, I felt nicely removed from everything and everyone; I didn’t care, particularly, what I said or did. Harmless, invisible jazz drifted from the speakers like fresh air. People milled about, holding plastic cups. A girl with black curly hair laughed up through her lashes at William: the olive-skinned and bewitching Devorah. I watched her through narrowed eyes. Her date was an innocuous brown-haired fellow who looked like a park ranger. She
wore a little dress with a plunging neckline; her cleavage was displayed like deli fruit, so I felt free to stare. She was violently edible. I could see why William had no interest in corporate law or anything else when she was nearby, and why her date kept one woodsmanlike hand hovering near her back.

Rima came over to where I was perched on the heater by the living room window. She crossed the room with her lopsided gait, her head tilted, her eyes fixed on me. She wore black leather pants and an untucked man’s button-down Oxford shirt; her body looked bulky and oddly shapeless, not fat, but strong and unwieldy. Her bobbed hair looked different, blonder, not as gray. She had dyed it. She looked good. “Hi, Rima,” I said calmly. My conscience was clear, despite what her husband and I had done in her house two nights ago. I had canceled all that out on the phone with him today. “You look good.”

“Oh, well.” She ran a hand through her bangs to fluff them, looking sideways down at her feet. Smoke crossed her face. She waved it away and took the cigarette from her mouth. “I can’t stand that girl over there; who is she?”

I reassembled what she’d said in my mind until the blurry, accented syllables metamorphosed into words that made sense. I looked over at the person she’d jerked her head at. “Jane Herman,” I said, speaking unnaturally clearly. “Why don’t you like her?”

She exhaled smoke with a twist of her mouth. She was having trouble staying upright; I knew the feeling. “Oh, Jane. I like Jane. I thought it was somebody else.” She leaned on the heater next to me. The two of us sat there in silence for a moment, watching everyone. I caught John’s eye; he looked away, no doubt unsettled to see his wife and me sitting amicably together.

“Can I have a cigarette?” I asked her. I hadn’t smoked in
years, but I wanted one now. Without a word, she shook her pack and offered it to me; I took a cigarette, then let her light it for me. It tasted awful but wonderful, and seared my lungs as if they had needed a little searing to work properly. The lighter flame illuminated Rima’s hands, square and strong, her nails clean and blunt-cut.

I saw Frieda and Cecil then, still with their coats on, newly arrived. Frieda looked gawky and shy. Her big head hung forward on her frail, sinewy neck, and her spiky hair looked vulnerable and half-grown, like the down on an adolescent bird. Cecil stood by her side. He came up to her shoulder. His skin was as burnished and dark as hers was pale; he looked like a cocky little grackle who’d alit next to a skittish loon. He took her coat and headed toward the bedroom, down the hall. I waved at her; she made a beeline for me. “What’s wrong?” I asked her.

She looked as if she were about to cry, then to my horror she burst into manic laughter and put her head on my shoulder.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“I don’t know what I am!” she said intensely into my ear. “He came over right after I talked to you and we spent the whole afternoon in bed. Oh my God, Claudia, fuck all that Canadian stoicism! Fuck Canada! I feel like myself for the first time in my whole stupid life.”