Minutes pass while she thinks. But why? It’s Hell and Randi versus this last-minute chance.
And with a flourish, she tears the cheat sheet off the pad, crumples it up and pitches it into the basket. Score!
She dials the client on the landline. No need for a script at all.
She has this cold.
The restaurant is quietly grand. The food. The beauty of the food. The décor.
Fernanda’s impervious to it all.
André is caressing her arm as it rests by her untouched plate. His fingers release the faintest scent of her “My Sin” perfume.
“Tell me about yourself now,” he says. “I want to know everything about you. Where you live. What music you listen to. What books you like. I want to know what you did in college. What you were like at five.”
She’s flattered. Enchanted. But wary.
“I don’t want to sound like one of those dating sites, but when I look at you, I somehow know you don’t like fine wines or long walks on the beach. Still, I need to learn every last little thing about you, Fernanda. Even the cornball stuff.”
Baffled by her silence, he leans across the table, serious now.
“Forgive me,” he says quietly. “Am I scaring you away? This feels as strange to me as I can see it feels to you. Because, just so you know – and you don’t have to believe me – I’m not some kind of player. This isn’t some kind of con to get you into bed. It’s only – from the minute I left you that night and all the time I was away,”
Oh, he was away, she thinks.
“I haven’t stopped thinking of you … haven’t wanted to. And this – tonight – is so totally unlike anything I’ve ever done. Of course you don’t know me and might not believe me. I understand that.”
While he’s talking, he’s distractedly tearing her croissant into shreds and arranging the torn bits around the base of his water glass. Its flaky crumbs cling to the cuffs of his navy jacket and crisp white shirt. But his eyes are fixed on her face.
“I’m a level-headed man, I think,” he says. “Not often emotional. Kind of formal, at heart. I’m thirty-three, so I’ve been in love before. Several times. I’ve been hurt, of course. And I hurt someone so badly once, she never forgave me. And she was right to hate me, too.” He stares at the remnants of the croissant for a moment, and resumes. “And after that – I won’t say it was easy to love again. It wasn’t and I haven’t. More than that, the experience made me much more careful with women. More mistrustful of myself, to begin with. Except, for some reason, with you.”
He looks down at what he’s done, puts his own flaky roll on her butter plate and brushes the crumbs from his cuffs. “Over these past few years I’ve wished, sometimes, to be one of those men who can drink themselves out of rough spots. I can’t, though. I’m not a drinker. I’ve tried, for what it’s worth, but then I can’t write love sonnets, either,” he half smiles, “although a woman friend did suggest once that it might help. What I decided on instead was finding what I thought was a healthier life: working out, getting involved in politics for a while, a few other things not … so healthy.” He pauses again and Fernanda imagines he’s waiting for her to ask a question. She doesn’t.
“The thing is, when I saw you at that antiques show the other night,” he inhales deeply and hurries on, “well, I felt I wanted a drink all of a sudden. Champagne, though, only champagne.” He smiles. “And I wanted to write sonnets, do you believe that? I couldn’t believe it myself. Or a novel. Or a screenplay. With something really romantic in it. Something like: ‘Here’s looking at you, kid’.”
He narrows his eyes, tucks his upper lip in over his teeth and inhales an imaginary cigarette.
Not a bad imitation, Fernanda thinks.
He puts out the “cigarette” on his bread plate and starts to butter her croissant for her.
“Well, that was one long, dumb speech.”
Fernanda’s praying for objectivity. Praying. For the presence of mind to get through the rest of this make-believe meal.
Because she’s so distrustful of his exuberance. Because men don’t talk like this. Don’t leave themselves defenseless like this. Or admit to such feelings.
But.
Fernanda is drowning in joy.
She sits very still, only playing with her salmon tartare with its onion crème fraiche and deciding as she does so that this can’t be real and he can’t be real and she can’t fall in love with this man. Not tonight and never, maybe. Not because he’s too handsome and too kind and too attentive and too forthcoming.
No.
Because, at the back of her mind – or let’s be honest, the front of her mind – there’s this too-good-to-be-true thing. There’s vicious Randi and her Mrs. A, waiting somewhere in the dark. Waiting in here, perhaps? Fernanda turns hastily to scan the elegant room. Nothing.
What did she expect?
Still, she reasons calmly, sipping her third glass of perfectly chilled, perfectly dry white wine, this is precisely why levelheadedness, or skepticism, maybe or … let’s call it by its real name, fear … needs to prevail.
“All right, just say something,” he pleads. “I don’t really need to know it all.”
“I’m not interesting really, André.” She breaks her silence. “What you see is pretty much all there is.”
Pretty much.
But then, as course after elegant course arrives, is pushed around her plate and swept away, Fernanda allows herself to be teased into disclosing a patchwork sort-of-history. She salts her usual fabrications with a few of the minor details of Frannie’s actual self: her favorite current books and films; anecdotes about her parents; her growing up; her marvelous job; her favorite “colleagues” at work. Mostly, she’s telling her eager listener genuine truths. And it feels so amazingly good.
André, in his turn, discloses that he spends his days doing something complicated for Italian and Russian banks. Something risky and hedge-y and unreasonably well rewarded, he adds somewhat apologetically. That he owns a Great Dane and a calico cat, that he loves to dance and prefers non-fiction to fiction, and reads mainly biography and history – ancient history, particularly: the Romans and Greeks. That he doesn’t like football. That he was a serious buyer of early photographs and assembled a small, choice collection, of which he appears to be immoderately proud. Not so proud, however, that on hearing Fernanda admit her total ignorance of photography, he feels the usual male obligation to convert her. She’s grateful for that. And oh, yes, once, a while ago, he liked to gamble.
The restaurant has emptied. The waiters, no longer standing to attention, are clustered together and have been whispering and covertly consulting their phones for some time when Fernanda and André finally retrieve their coats and begin an easy, westward stroll towards the glimmer of the distant Hudson. They’ve talked themselves out and are companionably quiet now. Few other people are on the street tonight, although on one of the avenues, a dapper young man passes by, in seemingly deep conversation with the parrot on his shoulder. Turning together to watch him pass, they bump heads and laugh.
And ever so gradually – against calm prudence and all good sense –Fernanda begins to feel a bubble of buoyancy. Under her breath, she hums Richard Rodgers’ “Where or When.” Then André takes her gloved hand in his, and bending near to catch the tune, he hums along. Soon, they’re singing the words aloud, a magical, happy duet that rises, then slows at the old song’s wistful end.
“How do you know that?” Fernanda asks him, thrilled. “It’s ancient history. From the fifties, maybe. Maybe before.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised the old songs I know, Fernanda: “Alice Blue Gown”? “Aura Lee”? “The Golden Vanity”? That’s from the seventeenth century.” His breath on her cheek feels minty and warm. “I’ve sometimes thought I actually prefer the old.”
“Really?” She scans his shadowed face for hidden meaning there.
The perpetual glow of the nighttime sky surrounds them as they stroll and som
ehow keeps them warm. Now and then, the blurred toplight of a cruising cab illumines the quiet streets, and beyond the next intersection, a slice of the river winks. Hand in hand, they turn left onto an avenue, and at the first corner they come to, Fernanda stops, perches on the rough edge of a low windowsill and turns her face up to the stars she is certain are up there. Across the river to their right, New Jersey’s display could be some other world, but here … flakes of soft light glint in André’s silvered hair as, beside her, he casually leans against the wall and bends to her sky-struck face. She reaches up to take his head between her hands and, pulling him close, lightly kisses his lips. André pulls her to her feet and soundlessly draws her down the shadowed side street to where a narrow alley obligingly, even dangerously, cuts between exhausted buildings. A tumble of cardboard marks the impenetrable end.
They lose themselves in darkness there, and perfectly hidden from passing cars, André presses her against the roughened brick. A blurred luminescence touches his cheekbone as he finds and lifts her skirt. Fernanda fumbles at his zipper through her gloves, tearing them off with her teeth at last and whipping them into the dark. Neither one speaks, but she feels him within her, moving. “Oh my God. Oh my God.” There are soft, animal, whimpering sounds. Her? Is that her? She presses into him as he whispers against her hair:
“Don’t be afraid. I’ve waited all my life for you. You’re mine. You’ve always been mine. Love me, Fernanda. Love me. I’m yours.”
Her head whips from side to side and she clutches the shoulders of his jacket, his shirtfront, his tie. The juicy thwack of their bodies inflames her more and she groans, clasping his straining buttocks with both her hands and pulling him deeply into her. Tighter. Her body tenses. Stiffens. A universe disintegrates behind her eyes and she screams aloud as André groans. He covers her mouth with one warm hand and kisses her forehead.
“Shhh. Shhh, darling. I know. I know.” They lean against the wall, belly to belly, eye to eye. “Marry me?” he says.
“Of course,” Fernanda answers, drained, her heart thundering in her ears.
She has almost two months left.
CHAPTER 22
Hurrying, because she’s late for work next day, Fernanda is panicking about her decision.
What has she agreed to?
For openers, there’s the impossible coincidence of meeting him now.
Oh, much too last minute. Too neat. It has to be a trick. And he’s lived here all his life, he said. And his business is abroad, so what was he doing in St. Louis? Or was he in St. Louis?
The rancid aftertaste of Randi seems to linger in her throat. How easy it would be for her to create this too-perfect man. A man as imaginary as, a hellish dog, say. Or a creature out of Bosch. Or Satan himself. Herself.
Tense, she shoulders her way through Berger’s front door and strides across the almost-empty lobby. Danny glances up from his paper and waves. She barely returns it.
When was the last time she doubted herself like this?
After Randi disappeared at the casino.
And now, at her desk, as if her thoughts have summoned it up, there’s a message on her landline: a Mrs. Mann has called and left a number. It’s a St. Louis area code, a number that’s oddly familiar. Mrs. Mann?
Oh God, it’s Arlene.
Fernanda spends the rest of the morning in the ladies’ room, although her first two visits are all-too hasty: she vomits up her breakfast and ten minutes later, vomits once again, yet there’s nothing at all to heave up. The next few hours she spends in a toilet stall with her cell phone, tapping that St. Louis number in, and then, terrified, clicking off. By mid-afternoon, with her stomach still churning, she returns to her desk, unplugs her devices and her phone and, damp with panic, gives herself over to total misery.
She’s been discovered. It will be front-page news. (Science page news?) She’ll be committed to Bellevue. She’ll miss her last chance at the deadline. She’ll lose her immortal soul.
She won’t return this call.
What should she say to Arlene?
Pressing her temples to will the ache away, crossing and uncrossing her legs, Fernanda grasps a last, pathetic, straw. What if this is actually some other Mrs. Mann from St. Louis who has paintings to sell?
Sure, she thinks.
At 7:00, after everyone else has left, she finally decides she needs to know.
Arlene picks up on the fourth ring, mere moments before Fernanda, relieved, is about to drop the cell phone in her bag. She yanks it back and, trembling, puts it on speaker.
That dear, familiar voice. “Hello?”
“Hello?” She forces it out. “Is this Mrs. Mann? It’s Fernanda Turner from Berger’s, returning your call.”
“Oh, Fernanda Turner.” A pause. “Yes, this is Mrs. Mann.”
Fernanda can see Arlene in that little French armchair they found together in Clayton forty years ago. She’s crossed her legs at the ankles in that ladylike “Arlene” way and her manicured hand is curled around a napkin-wrapped glass of Diet Coke. Oddly, she can’t picture her face. Does Randi do her hair?
“Oh, Miss Turner. Thanks so much for getting back to me. I’ve called you as a shot in the dark, but already I know it’s a mistake. Your first name’s the wrong one and you sound much too young.”
Arlene’s voice, Fernanda thinks, sounds solemn, and deeper than she remembers. Of course, Arlene would hope to sound sophisticated to this, surely, very sophisticated person who works at a New York auction house. “A friend of mine has gone missing in St. Louis,” she goes on. “Oh. I’m in St. Louis …”
“I didn’t recognize the area code,” Fernanda lies.
“… and I’ve been trying to track her down for almost a year now. The police haven’t been much help, I can tell you. At least they haven’t been able to find any sign of her, and neither have I or any of her other friends. Been able to find her. We haven’t turned anything up at all. It’s been awful.”
Fernanda picks at the corner of an eraser in her desk drawer. She puts a rubbery crumb in her mouth and chews. Arlene’s sorrow is genuine and upsetting. How could she have thought Arlene was Randi’s pawn? And can it be true that people actually searched for her? She’d never dreamed. She clamps the phone to her ear with her shoulder and brushes at tears.
“So after all this time,” Arlene continues (she sounds so far away) “the police have given up. Everyone else has given up, I think. So I’m the only one left now who still thinks my friend may not be dead. Because I don’t. I don’t know why, don’t ask me. I don’t. So what I’ve done – to explain this call – what I’ve done is ask my son to go online for me and Google all the F. Turners here in the United States. There were thousands, did you know? And, oh, my friend’s name was Frannie Turner, I didn’t mention that, did I? – just on the off-chance that if she’s out there somewhere, that she hasn’t changed it. And that’s how I come to be calling you, Miss Turner. So I might as well ask, although I know you’re not my Frannie – because you’ve said you’re Fernanda – but maybe you know of her? Do you know any Frannie Turners? If she’s alive and I can find her, there’s something I need to tell her.”
That Stanley is dead, Fernanda thinks. That she’s a shit for leaving. That her hairdresser is the gatekeeper to Hell.
She spits the piece of eraser into her palm and summons her Berger’s voice. All she can do here is lie. Yet again.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Mann. I don’t know anyone by that name. But it is a fairly common name. No one knows that better than I do.” Her chuckle cracks and falls apart. “So I can certainly understand why you’re having such a hard time finding your friend.”
“Forgive me for having bothered you, then. I’ll say goodbye. And thank you for your time.”
Her friend’s disappointment feels like her own.
“Wait, Mrs. Mann. Mrs. Mann?” Oh God, Fernanda can’t bear to let her go. Should she warn her?
She can’t, but still.
“What if I ask my
family – my mother and her sisters.” (Where did that come from?) “Maybe they know a Frannie Turner. Maybe we’re related in some way and they know her or have heard of her or something. After all, it is such a common name. And wait. Was the name Frances or Francesca or always Frannie? I have your number right here, of course, so if I come up with anything, I can get back to you. Will that be all right?”
She’s babbling.
“That’s so kind of you.” Arlene is so pathetically pleased. “Her name was Frances,” she says. “We just knew her as Frannie.”
Fernanda gasps at the pain.
She can envision those ankles unlocking – one leg sliding on top of the other knee and swinging there, like a hinge. Arlene’s “happy” leg, they called it in sixth grade.
“Not at all. Not at all. Well, goodbye, Mrs. Mann. And good luck with your search.”
And oh God, please don’t say I’m kind. I’m not kind at all, thinks Fernanda, clicking off and compulsively straightening the folders on her desk.
But still. It means they don’t know at home, then. Don’t suspect. So she’s safe. Or as safe as anyone six and a half weeks from damnation can be.
She can’t stop remembering all that she’s given up. Not just Arlene, her lifelong best friend, but her husband, her home, her friends, her past, her place on this earth.
For childlessness and lovelessness and fear.
Dear God, what has she done?
Staring at the phone she silently implores: Call back, Arlene. Know it was me.
No. I’ll call you.
She’s reaching for the phone when there’s a buzz.
It’s André.
“Is that you, Fernanda? Really you?” he asks. I thought I’d dreamed last night.”
And Arlene hurts the smallest fraction less. She can’t go back. She has to accept that.
“I did too,” she replies, her pain starting to merge with her joy.
“Marry me?”
She’d been thinking she’d imagined that too.
“Can we pick out a ring? On Saturday? Are you free? Which do you prefer, geology or design?”
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