by Sally Koslow
“I better answer that,” I said, squirming, shampoo stinging my eyes.
“Can’t you let the machine take it?” he said as he held me close.
“It might be about Annabel.” Or Barry.
“Ah,” he said as he released his embrace. “Of course.”
Leaving soapy footprints behind me, I flew into the bedroom, gently closed the door, and reached for the phone on the fifth ring.
“Good, you’re there,” Brie said. “I’m so sorry about today and was thinking. I could finish up here by two and we could still meet, at least for a movie. I feel like a bad friend standing you up.”
“Gee,” I said, “I already decided to meet Annabel and Kitty later.”
“Gee?” Brie said. “You’re spending your holy me-time with Kitty? And wasn’t today all about her having Annabel alone for Kitty boot camp? Gee, pardon me, but I’m confused.”
“Well, when you cancelled …”
“Never mind. I’ll just stay here,” Brie said, with her usual good nature. “And let me say, you are very weird.”
When I returned to the bathroom, Luke was toweling off. The mood of merry seduction had vanished, and putting my arms around his waist did nothing to restore it.
“Listen, honey, do you want me to leave?” he asked as he pushed away my hands and began to walk toward the living room. “Be honest.”
That might have been the best idea of the day. Yet as I followed Luke, who was skirted in a towel, the V of his torso trim and hard, I also considered how often I’d craved time with him in New York measured not in minutes but in hours. Perhaps that day was a grave miscalculation, but I wasn’t ready to kiss Luke Delaney goodbye.
“What I’d honestly like now is lunch,” I said, and tried to produce my most bewitching smile. “Together. Here.” It had to be here, because who knew where Kitty might be lurking, Annabel in tow? “But first I’m going to wash out this shampoo and throw on some clothes. Why don’t you look through the Netflix and see if there’s anything you’d like to watch? They’re near the TV in the living room.”
He shot me a skeptical look. “Are you absolutely sure?”
“Please stay,” I pleaded. “Please.” Before he could answer, I left the room.
With each piece of clothing I put on, a bit of apprehension slipped away. When I walked out of my bedroom I wasn’t sure if Luke would be there, but he was, barefoot, in jeans and a sweater.
“Notting Hill, Love Actually, and Sabrina, the 1954 and 1995 versions—I see a pattern here,” he said, studying the movies.
“You were expecting Smokey and the Bandit? Cannonball Run? Maybe you’d prefer a cooking show? If we’re lucky, a luscious babe will make osso bucco in her negligee.”
He shuddered. “Just bring out lunch, woman.”
Relieved to hear him laugh, I returned with the sandwiches he’d brought and basked in the mundane as we drank an eight-dollar Trader Joe’s merlot and huddled under a moth-eaten afghan knit by my mother. When the movie rolled, I cried where I always cried. Seems to me that love is everywhere, I lip-synched. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling that love actually is all around. This minute, for me, it was.
When the movie ended, I leaned against Luke’s shoulder as we began to watch the Audrey Hepburn Sabrina. Ninety minutes later I opened my eyes. My head was in his lap.
“You snore,” he said. That I also drooled was evident, but he was polite enough to ignore it.
“What time is it?”
“Time for me to go,” Luke said. “I believe you said Annabel’s due in the early evening.”
“She won’t be here for another hour at least.” Kitty had said seven, but to be on the safe side, I’d want Luke out of the apartment by five-forty-five. We had twenty-five minutes. I began to kiss him.
Within minutes, our chemistry had kicked back into gear—we were taking pictures and enjoying the silk of each other’s skin—when I heard a key in the lock. Bolting upright, I smoothed my hair, which had air-dried into a halo of frizz. I walked quickly to the foyer as Luke deftly disappeared in the direction of my bedroom and Kitty let herself in with a key Barry had apparently given her.
“Mommy!” Annabel said, running into my arms. “See! I got a manicure.” She displayed her nails, each twinkling like a turquoise rhinestone.
“You’re a princess,” I said.
“Me too,” Kitty said, and in an oddly girlish gesture presented her long, French-manicured gel tips.
“Mommy, Mommy.” Annabel tugged at my sleeve. “Look what Kitty bought me!” She dumped a bag on the floor and pulled out a red feather boa, which she looped numerous times around her neck. It dragged to the floor. She resembled a very short Las Vegas showgirl.
“A lady needs accessories,” Kitty said. “I wanted her to come back with me for dinner, but when I mentioned lamb chops, she said absolutely not. What do you and Delfina feed this child?”
I noticed that she left out Barry.
A civil daughter-in-law would take her mother-in-law’s coat and insist that she settle in for coffee or wine and, in Kitty’s case, a cigarette, although I hated when she smoked in my apartment. But my first action was a prayer that Kitty would think the beat-up brown leather jacket prominently piled on the chair, which I saw her eyeball, was Barry’s. Fat chance. Not only could she recite a verbal inventory of his wardrobe, half of which she had purchased, but once a piece of clothing became the least bit worn she knew that Barry, like her, immediately abandoned it. By Marx standards, this jacket was ready for a thrift shop.
“Molly, do you have company?” She was a dog on a trail.
“Oh,” I said. “Yes, I do. One of my colleagues is here. But she’s in the bathroom—she’s not feeling well or I’d introduce you. Brie and Isadora cancelled, so I scheduled an impromptu meeting.”
As I rattled on, Kitty looked at me as if I was a bad liar, which I was. At least a minute of annotated, implausible explanation commenced.
“I wouldn’t dream of interrupting—you go back to your colleague,” she said, sweeping down in a cloud of Joy to kiss Annabel goodbye. Without so much as grazing my cheek with her lips, she turned and walked out the door. “Sorry to intrude” was all she said.
As I scooped my daughter into my arms, I could smell Kitty’s smoke in her hair. “What do you say to a bath, Annie-belle, and then we’ll have dinner, okay? But first, close your eyes tight. Very tight.”
“A surprise?” she shrieked.
Only if you don’t cheat, seemed like a poor choice of words. “Only if you keep your eyes closed,” I said, and carried Annabel to her bedroom, glancing at Luke, who’d emerged from the master bedroom, padding quietly in stocking feet. He shrugged and blew me a kiss as he put on his shoes, grabbed his jacket, and tiptoed out the door, leaving it ajar so Annabel wouldn’t hear a click. “Keep those eyes closed, Annabel,” I warned twice.
A gift was already waiting on her bed, left there a few hours ago. While Annabel tore open the wrapping, I madly straightened the living room. That was when I discovered that in the rush, Luke had forgotten his digital camera. I ran to my bedroom and shoved it in my underwear drawer.
Only late that night—after Annabel’s bath, chicken nuggets, reading her brand-new Fancy Nancy three times, and a five-minute chat with Barry—did I retrieve the camera to have a look before my normal deleting. There we were, shot after shot from today, each more compromising than the next. Guilty, guiltier, guiltiest.
Twenty-seven
WITNESS
ometimes you need a witness to ratify that in fact you do see and feel what you think you see and feel. That’s why I begged Bob to join me. We followed Hicks to a mom-and-pop coffee shop near his apartment. Over poached eggs, dry whole-wheat toast, and three cups of coffee (two sugars, plenty of milk—hold the hash browns) he’s reviewing his thickening file, scrutinizing stacks of cell phone call lists and credit card receipts—mine (did I really spend all that on leg waxing?) as well as those from Barry, Lucy, Luke, St
ephanie, Brie, Isadora, and even my parents. He hasn’t labeled the file “suspects,” but I gather that’s who these other people are. Here and there, he circles a date or a phone number or carefully pens in a question mark.
“Thanks, Louise,” Hicks says as he leaves a five-dollar tip.
“Solve that case, Detective,” the waitress says. “Get them bad guys.”
“I’m sure gonna try.” This may be my first case I’m handling as top dog, but I am not going to fuck it up like the Christina Rivera case. It’s not just about respect in the NYPD and my future, he thinks. I’m getting to like this Molly She reminds me of Franny, that white girl from college, the one I was afraid to ask out, the one who only now I realize was flirting with me full tilt, but I was too caught up in being one-down to notice. Franny, who got mowed by a truck while driving her decrepit Beetle. Franny, Molly, lovely lonely …
I beam at Bob.
Now Hicks is walking to his car, a Honda Civic so stripped it might as well wear DETECTIVE vanity plates. He drives downtown to the Sixties, curses the fact that when Mr. Trump and his cronies put up all those buildings they made it virtually impossible for visitors to park nearby, and finds a spot on West End Avenue. He begins to walk toward the cookie-cutter towers shadowing the Hudson.
“Your Hicks,” Bob says, “gives good aura.”
“You can see auras?” I wonder what one looks like. Cloud cover that stops rays that cause premature aging? A classic mist of blue ozone? Maybe Bob is using the term metaphorically and an aura is a Kierkegaard mind-twister, like “Life must be understood backward but lived forward.”
“It’s all around him,” Bob says. “One of these days you may be able to pick up on auras yourself. It’s an upgrade some of us get.”
“If my powers continue?”
“Do you really have to ask?” Nothing lasts forever, Bob finds a way to say or imply every time we meet, as if anyone in the Duration needs to be reminded of this. Fond as I am of Bob, the guy could use irony supplements.
Since I first laid eyes on Hicks, he’s grown at least two inches in confidence. He strides through Stephanie’s lobby as if he’s wearing a virtual tuxedo custom-tailored to his physique. What a pair of shoulders. Today Hicks looks ready to present an OSCAR. The concierge treats him accordingly and sends him straight up to the thirty-first floor, where Stephanie Joseph stands in her doorway. Her eyeteeth are as lupine as I remember, although I now know that, unlike her sister wolves, she has more than one mating season per year. Stephanie is dressed in the sweet spot between accountant and trollop. Unbuttoned to create a plunging neckline, her snug cardigan is the peach of a blushing bride. A tweedy knee-length wool skirt shows off her narrow-arrow hips, and red peep-toe stilettos reveal a pedicure in a shade that recalls vampires. A silver and crystal pendant dangles between her breasts.
The audition for Law and Order was yesterday, I hear Hicks think as they shake hands.
“Detective,” Stephanie says as she cocks her head to the side and motions him into the apartment. With the afternoon sun streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows, you can squint all the way to New Jersey.
I’m tempted to try to pick out Serenity Haven, my final earthly resting place, but Bob pokes me. “You’re a decorating specialist, Molly,” he says, scanning the room. “What do you make of this place?”
My eyes do a quick 360. “Early model apartment,” I bounce back. “Perfect as a snow globe.”
Every piece of furniture is plug-and-play pristine, perhaps selected from a catalog for high-tax-bracket transients. There are stiff leather couches, the kind you see in a boutique hotel lobby people wander through on the way to the cigar bar. I pick up a whirl of glass, right angles, black, white, taupe, a tall vase filled with branches, and another with one lonely calla lily, but notice no magazines or piles of mail, no personal photographs, only the variety numbered in a series. I can’t bring myself to venture into Stephanie’s bedroom, where I might find a remnant of Barry’s last moment in flagrante delicto, so instead, leaving Hicks behind, I check out Jordan’s room. There is an orderly abundance of toys, stuffed animals, blocks, and books, to which I am always drawn first. Many appear to be well read. I would find this easier if she had the mothering skills of a mascara wand.
“A drink, Detective?” Stephanie says. “Fiji water? Espresso? Something stronger?”
Does she think this is a date? “I’m okay,” he replies.
Stephanie points to a fawn suede couch across from a gas fireplace, which she flicks on. In an instant, flames hop and pop. Hicks sits and she faces him, crossing her excellent legs. “I’m going to ask you a few questions about your relationship with Dr. Marx,” he says. “How would you describe it?”
“I’m his support team right now,” she replies, glad she chose that response yesterday when this meeting was arranged. “He needs a friend.” She answers the question with a practiced laugh that glissandos from high to low, and I imagine mermaids luring sailors to their death. One more reason to loathe this woman. I turn to Bob but see he’s heading for the rocks.
“The Stephanies of the world intrigue me,” he says.
“You too?” I sigh. I’d taken Bob for a guy who’d go more for a vet or a dental hygienist, like the fiancée he left behind.
“Please,” he says. “Not my type. But I’m perennially fascinated by tenacity and nerve. Stephanie is out for Stephanie.” He frowns. “But she’s wasting this performance on Hicks.”
Stephanie with her unearned air of superiority. “I hate her,” I say.
“You should,” he says, and his frown deepens.
I have never heard him fling one swear word. “Bob!” I say, delighted.
He shrugs. “I call it as it comes.”
“When did your relationship with Dr. Marx begin?” Hicks asks, the slightest of smiles curving the corners of his lower lip. I already know, he thinks, but it’s more fun to hear it from you.
“You mean our professional relationship?” This woman is bulletproof. Flinty. Hicks is definitely into me, she decides.
“Mrs. Joseph, let’s not mess around.”
“Ms.,” she says in a practiced, sultry voice. “Mr. Joseph was my ex.”
“Ms. Joseph, we’re both busy people. Let’s get on with this.” Yesterday morning Hicks had another session with Barry, and last week round two in Chicago plus, one by one over the last month, interviews with two dozen coworkers—mine, Barry’s, Lucy’s. He doesn’t need his chain yanked. He wants a break in the case, and his gut tells him Stephanie’s got something he can use. What, he doesn’t know. Each morning, his first thought is, Intuition, call home. “When did you and Barry Marx hook up?” Hicks takes out his black notebook and his pen.
When indeed? “It began after Dr. Marx’s wife died.”
My bullshit meter comes alive—bleep, bleep, bleep!—but I don’t want to miss Hicks’ reaction. This broad is smiling too damn much, he thinks. “You and Dr. Marx made regular calls beginning last fall,” he says. A tickertape of calls. Why would a smart woman like this think I wouldn’t know about them? he wonders.
“He’s my doctor,” Stephanie says, and in a practiced swish pushes away her shiny brown hair with its tortoiseshell streaks. “Those were professional conversations.”
“Why did they generally take place at night or on the weekend?”
“I don’t know about your physicians, Detective, but I’m happy to get a call back from mine anytime he feels like making one.”
“What kind of condition required seven or nine phone calls a week?” Hicks says, allowing his impatience to show. “There’s no record of his treating you.”
“Treating her?” I say to Bob.
“Shhh,” Bob says. “Listen.”
“Okay, we started seeing each other last year,” Stephanie admits.
A buzz saw slices through to the place where my heart used to be.
“Very casually,” she adds, and sends Hicks a defiant look as she stretches out those words. “A
fter his mother introduced us, I saw Barry in a restaurant, and one thing led to another. It took him months to admit he was married.” Faster than some, I hear her think.
“Has he asked you to marry him?”
“Absurd.” She laughs, although I hear her small prayer that someday he will.
“So at this point you’d call this primarily a physical relationship?” Hicks decides to switch to not-so-good cop.
“He’s single and I’m single. Do you have any idea how hard it is to meet someone decent in New York?”
Tell me about it, Hicks thinks. I haven’t had a real relationship in two years.
“I saw an opportunity and I took it,” Stephanie says. “I’m not especially proud of it, but I’m not going to do a guilt trip, either. Barry and I were attracted to each other. I’m not the first woman to hook up with a married man and I won’t be the last. The last time I checked, this was still legal. It started before Mrs. Marx died, but”—she regrets that she gave up smoking, because a cigarette would add a certain vodka-and-caviar drama now—“so what?”
“Now, was that so hard?” Hicks asks.
It was for me. Any woman who suspects her husband is cheating always hopes hubby really did have seven business trips to Long Boat Key. The woman from high school he met for drinks is as big as an Aga stove. That copy of Adultery for Beginners belongs to his partner. Then the evidence plops on her head like pigeon poop. “I can’t take this,” I say to Bob.
“Buck up,” he whispers. Nothing pretty about self-pity, he always says, along with Coulda, shoulda, woulda—where does that get anyone? In the Duration you learn that festering with regret changes not one thing. Had I reacted to Barry in life, I would have another story to tell, considering that the evidence of his infidelity was hiding in plain sight. I could go on and on with this line of reasoning, but Hicks has asked a question that’s gotten my attention. “Tell me when you first met Mrs. Marx,” he says.
“I can’t—we never met.”
