Catch 26

by Carol Prisant

  “My baby ‘thing’?” Fernanda is gone and her body’s been left behind.

  “Baby thing!”

  Who is screaming like that, she wonders?

  “Baby thing! That’s why I did this at all.”

  Horror and rage are stuck in her chest and struggling to get out. And over there, the moms with their nestlings have returned.

  “Why on earth,” Fernanda shrieks into the air because she just doesn’t care anymore. “Why on earth would I have agreed to this, this … monstrous deal, you vicious bitch, if that – if having my baby – hadn’t been more important to me than anything else in the world?”

  “Well, ‘on earth’ has a little to do with it, Fernanda dear. But your memory, let me point out, is flawed. So I’ll remind you, first of all, that being a mother, like that” – Randi nods offhandedly in the direction of the strollers, and Fernanda sees the distant mothers recoil and bend protectively over their tots – “that being a mother didn’t seem to be the only important thing in your life, if it’s any comfort at this point. It shared that honor with – what did you call it? Ahh, yes. Your soulmate. You haven’t forgotten him, surely? Because, after all, you still have a few months left to find, um – what was it again? Mr. Right?”

  The tip of Randi’s pink tongue flicks out between her lips and with dainty gloved fingers, she picks off the merest shred of weed. Her tongue is so quickly retracted that Fernanda blinks, and thinks she’s only imagined the fork.

  “I don’t care”, she answers boldly, “Because as of now, you can tell your Mrs. A. – or Satan or whoever the Hell she is – our deal is off!”

  Wholly unruffled, Randi sniffs and grinds the hot stub of the joint into her palm.

  “Well, Fernanda …”

  And without warning, Randi gets to her feet and is suddenly towering above her.

  In terror, Fernanda falls to her knees on the pavement.

  “Fernanda, my dear.” The voice is flat, annihilating. “Our arrangement doesn’t work like that. You cannot simply say – Randi’s inflection is sneering, nasal – ‘I don’t feel like playing anymore.’ You and I signed a binding – should I say proper? – contract. Not unilateral in any way whatsoever. You have a year to knock yourself out in, we agreed. And after that, you lose. You do remember that?”

  And now, shockingly, she hikes her narrow skirt up to her waist and hip-swivels her way out of a purple silk thong with a small embroidered pitchfork at the crotch.

  “Actually, I happen to have our agreement – right here.”

  Reaching around behind her half-naked torso, she pulls a rolled parchment from between her buttocks. It steams just a little in the freezing air, and as Fernanda watches in disbelief, Randi shimmies back into her panties, readjusts her slim skirt and unrolls the document. Yawning daintily, she settles herself back on their bench and, sliding uncomfortably close to where Fernanda sits, flexes and stretches out her endless legs. The parchment lies curled on her lap and Randi smooths it fondly, almost lovingly, and brushes away some fecal matter clinging to one side. Although the edges of the parchment are browned, and it’s somewhat the worse for wear, the thing is the document Fernanda signed, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Randi shoves it toward her.

  Unmissable there, towards the bottom, is a bloody thumbprint, and in her best, Palmer, hand, her signature: . The document reeks of shit.

  “You remember this, don’t you, Frannie my dear? I’m sure you do. As you can see, no fine print.” Hastily, she snatches the thing from Fernanda’s shaky hands and holds it up before her eyes. The smell is overpowering.

  And there is no fine print.

  There used to be, though.

  Tenderly re-rolling the scroll, Randi tucks it under her buttocks, where, in a twinkling, it disappears. She clicks opens a snakeskin handbag and fastidiously removes a lacy handkerchief embroidered on one corner with a recumbent yellow dog and, deftly wipes her fingertips.

  “You know what …” Fernanda starts to say, but helplessly, fearfully, she stops, because she hears a grimly venomous whisper.

  “Oh, just don’t suppose there’s any way you can exit this deal, Frannie dear. And you too, Fernanda – I’m talking here to you. You’re so beautiful and strong now, you think. You have this Cinderella job where they trust you and admire you and respect your so-called ‘eye’. The ‘eye’ you imagine you’ve nailed that Botticelli with.”

  Fernanda is stunned.

  “Oh, of course we know about the Botticelli. And it is a Botticelli, by the way. Not “school of”, or “circle of” or any of those irritatingly pedantic ambiguities. And after this little stunt, Fernanda, sweetheart, they’re going to think you’re the hottest thing since, well – I’m actually not authorized to discuss exceptionally hot things.”

  Fernanda sits there, sickened.

  “Besides, Frannie – really! – how do you even think you got this tidy little job? Your pathetic résumé? That glove strip-tease? And also, just because you’ve acquired a mini-bit of confidence now – however false that might be; just because you think you have some talent – however unjustified; don’t imagine that any of that, or actually, anything you decide to do at all, anything you decide to say, or think, can possibly get you out of this.’

  ‘Not the slightest chance, dear heart. Your soul is ours.” She laughs hoarsely. “Your ass is grass. Or however you put it.” She shrugs, and lays a scalding arm around Fernanda’s hunched shoulders, yanking the trembling woman to her. “So pay attention, Frannie Turner, and don’t tell me you’re not scared in there. And old in there, of course. No. Let’s not forget that. Old. You and I … we made a deal!”

  Randi comes to stand before her once more and all of a sudden, rears up, no longer a human at all. Instead, she’s that monstrous yellow hound.

  Fernanda has barely time to register the animal’s piss-yellow fur and the scarlet ribbon encircling its bristling neck before the creature turns and, stiff-legged, its rat-like tail gone rigid, moves a little closer. Its vicious snarl pins her to the earth.

  “Is it you, Randi? Is that you?” she cries.

  Now, skeins of liverish mucous swing from its retracted lips, and its eyes are pools of blackly molten tar. Daylight is blotted out and Fernanda freezes in the animal’s shadow and inhales its dark-brown breath. Raw sewage. Rot. Gasping, unable to breathe at all, anymore, Fernanda tries to turn her face away as the thing looms above her. It whines and thrusts its dripping muzzle toward her neck, revealing a double row of murderous teeth, grotesque and splendid like a shark’s. Now it touches her face, and black ice splinters Fernanda’s breast. Then, quite suddenly, the monster sits. It shakes its great head hard, sending whips of spittle out into the air. Its pendulous ears snap and click, and a freezing wind lashes the ribbon’s notched ends and hurls them, gaily, up in the air. The terrible … thing … grins.

  And the mothers, the strollers and their fretting, sweetly unattainable babies entirely disappear as the massive beast arcs its body high above Fernanda and twists to lick the back of her bare, numb hand with its rough, fiery tongue.

  She watches as a blister forms.

  And then it’s gone.

  On the sidewalk beside her shoe, a scarlet ribbon curls around a runny nugget of yellow shit.

  CHAPTER 19

  Fernanda makes her way home somehow and falls upon her unmade bed. Moments, or hours, later – she doesn’t know – she arises and goes to find her laptop, and carrying it back to bed, settles herself against the pillows and taps the thing to life.

  Oh, she knows her adversary now. She’d supposed it was Time, but it’s not. Now she really has to think about saving her soul. (She has a soul. How had she doubted her soul?) And if she hopes to find a soulmate soon, or even a decent man, she’ll need to sacrifice everything. (Can that Helldog tell the difference between the two?)

  She pulls up the first of the dating sites and, navigating to her online profile, clicks edit. Youth and beauty first, she decides. He no longer needs to be e
ither. He can just be Mr. Nice, like the man Marcia wants. Leaving her physical description exactly as it is, along with her political views, her last books read and her fast-disappearing “spirituality,” she makes a score of important revisions. Starting with no longer wanting to just meet men between the ages of twenty-five and forty.

  Her new parameters are fifty to eighty. Closer to her own real age, of course, which means that lots of them will have ear hair and prostate problems and jowls. But they’ll be thrilled to find a Fernanda Turner trawling their waters: looking exclusively – surprisingly – for them. For men who will fall all over themselves to take her out and show her off. Who’ll be delighted to be caught by a twenty-six-year-old seductress.

  Or is she twenty-seven?

  One advantage is that she won’t need to have “baby sex” anymore. Because that older demographic won’t want to. They won’t be on the lookout for second (third?) families, these guys. And she can decide, case by case, whether she wants to have any sex at all. It will be less exhausting, although it was fun when she combined it with her goals. Which it doesn’t anymore, she thinks. The tears start again. She closes her eyes.

  Wiping her cheeks, she opens them and scrolls down to the “income” section and ticks the box for $200,000-plus per year. Which will unquestionably make this harder, she understands that, but there’ll no more feeling guilty that her dates can only afford a movie instead of Broadway. There’ll be fewer free concerts and diner meals, too, which hasn’t been a hardship, actually, but she might like to go with a man to the Philharmonic now and then, she thinks.

  Finally, she types in her new username: Rita Hayworth. She kind of loves that. Not only is it faithful to Frannie – and her own flaming hair – but older men will get it. It might even give them what they’ll imagine is a clever opening, although it already makes her cringe a little, too. And, of course, some of them will lie about the money thing. But then, “perfect” is never perfect. Randi is teaching her that.

  She slips out of bed, tiptoes over to her ruined bathroom and its disgusting smells and finds some Tylenol. She swallows two before padding to the kitchen and making herself a cup of tea. Warming her hands on the mug as she carries it back, she returns to the personal essay part.

  So. She’ll describe herself now as a woman who enjoys the company of older men because they’re more experienced, more comfortable with themselves, not to mention less narcissistic and (probably) far more thoughtful in bed than men her “own age.” She knows they’ll like that. And then she’ll drop a single honest crumb: she has money of her own. Because they’ll be leery of gold-diggers, won’t they?

  Do they still call them gold-diggers?

  She eases Rita Hayworth out onto the web.

  And yes, she thinks, carrying the tea over to her dressing table, sitting down and starting to brush her hair, this will serve a double purpose. Because now that she no longer needs a man to father her child (the hairbrush goes still for a moment, her hand falls to her lap, then she starts again), now that her goal has been … revised, she might as well exact a small revenge on behalf of all those women who’ve lost a husband to someone younger.

  So – she puts down the brush and raises her mug to the mirror and toasts her reflection – this is for all her friends in St. Louis, and everywhere else, and for Courtney, right here, right now. It’s for every woman “of a certain age” who’s ever become redundant, who’s been left high and dry. And if the men she meets now aren’t Mr. Nice, Mr. Really Decent, they’ll be – what’s that word? – history. Fast.

  Hollowed-out, Fernanda sits on the edge of her bed. It’s still daylight, but she’s desperate for sleep. Was Dr. Korin only yesterday? Was Randi today? Through the bedroom door, she gazes at her living room.

  What a lovely room it is, she thinks. The paintings she’s purchased with the Poussin windfall almost fill the walls there now. She has mahogany tables and down-filled plump chairs. A little bit of everything she’s ever longed for: enameled snuff boxes, finely worked silver, porcelain figures, colored engravings and all that art. Especially the art. Except for those paintings on the floor, facing the wall, it could be in a magazine, she thinks.

  Sitting here, admiring her things, Fernanda understands that unless she finds Him very soon, her “things” will certainly be – aside from her work – all that she’ll miss in Hell.

  Since her windfall, her wealth has allowed Fernanda several philanthropies. Early on, she simply sent in checks, but now – because she doesn’t have the time, anymore, to sit back and see who shows up on dating sites – she’s begun the second phase of her campaign: buying tickets to $500 parties at the Waldorf that benefit research into intractable, worthy diseases; to $1000 fundraisers for the city’s museums; to evenings that begin with private dinner parties at the seldom-seen duplexes of the deeply private rich and end in the Temple of Dendur or at the garden court at the Frick; to $1500 events that support the hospitals or the arts at Lincoln Center.

  At first, she attended events alone, with no companions other than her shiny tiny bags, dressy satin shoes and (somewhat) revealing dresses. Because she’d absolutely love to find Mr. Nice-Right at one of these parties. She needs to. And that’s why she sometimes rearranges place cards, and makes it a point to return the smile of any man who smiles at her. And there are a lot of these, of course. So if she doesn’t meet Him – and she hasn’t so far – at least, there are a few cheaters to pass the time with. There seem to be plenty of these, as well, and with them, she really flirts. Flirts with sexual implications. Denies them sex. Breaks it off (so regretfully.) And done. Her disappointed bedmates end up just as baffled, she hopes, as their spouses once were. Some of those men never stop calling, though. Too bad, Fernanda thinks. She’s untouchable now.

  Although, if anyone asked – and it’s just as well they don’t – she really misses the sex. Quite a lot.

  At work, her glamorous nightlife is thoroughly sub rosa. She’s still coming in on time, still making her calls, rewriting catalogue entries, discussing consignments with Courtney or Peregrine and trying to avoid the Frick, despite the fact that, strangely, her fascination with Hell and those images seems to have disappeared. As have those “accidental” paintings.

  But not long after the Randi episode in the park, Richard Sinclair catches her in the employee’s dining room at lunch. Their relationship has blossomed.

  “Are you alone, Fernanda? Can I join you?”

  “Hi, Richard. Sure.”

  Making space at the table for him, she slides her book on Claude Lorrain (a gift from Charles Raff) to one side of her untouched plate.

  She’d bumped into Charles around lunchtime one day and, alas, he’d suggested she come to his office. Fernanda is through and done with the glove thing, though, and begging off – she invented a client appointment – he’d pressed this book on her instead. She’d hoped it was his parting gift, and she hasn’t read it until now simply because, well, because Charles recommended it. Truth is, she’s only opened the book at all because she desperately needs not to think.

  She indicates an empty chair.

  “Sit here.”

  Pleased, Richard sits. He reaches across the table and hefts the book, angling it to check the spine.

  “You know, I can’t believe how incredibly fast you’ve come up to speed. A freshman with us here, pretty much, and you’ve already picked so much of it up. But now I see why: Claude. At lunch.” He treats her to his nicest smile, and as he lays the heavy volume flat, its pages fall open to a beautiful color illustration. He studies it for a moment. “Next thing we know,” he looks up at her, “you’ll be finding us one of these.” He widens his eyes in playful surprise, and Fernanda has to laugh. Richard joins in. She’d have loved to have his baby, but damn. Richard likes guys.

  “You do have such a gift for Old Masters, though,” he goes on. “You’re like a doctor who has a genius for diagnosis.” He scratches his head and looks wistful. “I wish I had some of that.”


  “You don’t?”

  “I’m afraid I’m a researcher, basically. All about history and numbers, that’s me. Not much of a feel for the art.”

  Fernanda considers him fondly.

  “You mean you’ll never be Bernard Berenson?”

  “And I won’t be Duveen, either,” he adds, sighing theatrically.

  “But listen, Fernanda.” He turns serious. “I hope you don’t mind my saying so?’ Around them, the room has gotten buzzy and she has to strain to hear, ‘But lately you’ve been so … subdued, I guess I’d call it. Or upset. Is Peregrine down on you? He can be a pain sometimes.”

  “Not really. Or no more than usual.”

  How is it, Fernanda wonders, that Richard’s so perceptive? She hopes he has someone to love.

  ‘It’s not Peregrine,” she says. “It’s only some personal things. It will pass. I’m fine. Really.”

  “I’m glad. But you know, if you ever need someone to talk to …”

  The cap seems to be stuck on his bottle of juice and he pretends not to be able to get it off.

  “Oh, Richard, I know that.” Fernanda reaches across to touch his hand, so much smaller and warmer than her own. “And you can’t imagine how appreciative I am.” She looks away to hide her tears.

  Relieved, Richard returns to his lunchtime habit of cutting his sandwich into perfect equal triangles. After a single fastidious bite, he launches into a detailed description of the illegible signature on a painting he’s working on.

  Fernanda’s half-listening, though. She hadn’t known her misery was visible to the people around her. That the people she works with – her friends – might be wondering what is wrong. And she doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want to stand out in any way, anymore. So what, if she’s childless and loveless again. She’s done this before, and made it work. So what, that if something doesn’t happen soon, she’ll be childless and loveless in Hell. Oh, and let’s not forget that before that, before “eternity” arrives, she’ll be feeble and fragile and sick. There’s nothing exceptional about Fernanda Turner at all.