“So what are you saying?” she finally asked. “That you’ve given up on your dreams?”
“Not given up. Adjusted. I’m good at what I do.”
“Doesn’t that just mean you’d be better at what you really want?”
Peter smiled as he lifted his wine glass. He gestured, with the glass and his eyes, to the surroundings. “You should see this place at night.”
Carolyn was sure it was beautiful. “I don’t understand.”
“You should.” He sipped the last of the wine and refilled the glass. “Because you’re the one who made me realize it. After all those years of dreaming about writing science fiction, and instead you got a fifty-thousand dollar advance on exactly the opposite.”
Carolyn could only remember what she’d thought. This isn’t what I really wanted.
Peter remembered her actual words. “You said it was time to recognize where your strengths lay. Dreams belong in the subconscious. They are seeking me out now, as much as I complain about temperamental models and deadlines. All to just sell a few more clothes.” He plucked the open collar of his white-on-white dress shirt. “It’s where the money is.”
Peter gestured around the patio with his wine glass again. “There’s no money in polar bears.”
Carolyn followed his gaze, for the first time seeing the topiaries hidden in the trees. Animals composed of leaves, trained around wires. She saw a unicorn. The necks of twin swans formed a heart of greenery. No polar bears.
* * *
Back at the Sherry, Carolyn changed into a tank top and tailored shorts, so at least her body felt more comfortable. The conversation over lunch nestled into her thoughts like a grain of sand in an oyster’s shell. She tried to coat it over with explanations, understanding. It only grew larger. She paced the living room, sat on the sofa, then stood and paced again.
The lease on her apartment was up, all her books in a box, waiting for her father and brother-in-law to haul to her parents’ house until she had time to look for something else. That piece on writer’s block hadn’t come from a years-old memory, but because she’d been perusing The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing when she should have been packing. Octavia Butler’s name in the table of contents jumped out at her, because she’d just passed on in February. Carolyn re-read the article she only found because she was still dreaming.
She hadn’t mentioned that to Peter. He was pretty quick to drop his own dreams.
Carolyn slipped on her Keds, stuffed her keycard into her back pocket and left. She shook her head to the doorman’s offer of a taxi and stared across the intersection for barely a second before she strode to the corner and crossed 59th Street with a crowd of tourists and shoppers. All going somewhere, and she blended right in. A woman with a purpose. She walked by Central Park and stopped across the street. The Park Lane Hotel was in full afternoon bustle. Carolyn hesitated.
She hadn’t said anything to Peter because he seemed so enamored with all that his success had brought. He’d named a restaurant where he’d made dinner reservations for tonight. It meant nothing to her. To him it meant success. That wasn’t bad.
She’d crossed the street without really thinking. A balding white man in a business suit said, “Excuse me,” and Carolyn realized she was so close to the revolving door that she was liable to be bowled over by someone riding its kinetic energy. When she moved, the businessman smiled apologetically at her, as if it were his fault she was in his way. Inside the lobby, someone saw her and held the elevator. She only hesitated a moment before answering the woman’s unasked question, her hand hovering over the buttons. Six.
Peter’s e-mails from the early days weren’t as frequent, but he’d always included small digital images. It’s what I love, he’d said. Catching the perfect shot, representing something so amazing that someone else feels it too. Today he’d waved it away in a sweep of his hand.
Maybe there was no money in polar bears. But there was money in hip-hop. Millions.
If she was this disappointed over Peter’s dismissal of his passion in the face of monetary success, she was damned if she was going to fall for a genuine problem only to discover she was completely deluded in believing that he cared about the art.
The elevator slid open to reveal the opulent corridor. She went the wrong way, backtracked and found the room. He’d left this number to connect a call if she needed rescued, not so she could barge in, but she thought of that after she heard her knuckles on the door, loud in the hallway. Maybe, she hoped, too soft inside.
The door swung open, and she jumped. Terrance. Who, judging by the look on his face, was as surprised to see her, as she was to see him. Carolyn’s frustration melted on the flow of Kanye West coming from inside. Terrance was easily six feet tall, broad and handsome. And for some reason, intimidating as hell.
“I — I’m Carolyn.”
His eyebrows lifted under a black do-rag. His mouth twitched as he opened the door wider. “I was on my way out.”
To the health club, most likely. In gray sweat pants, tank top and gym shoes, Terrance and workouts looked well acquainted. He was clean-shaven, with warm brown eyes she hadn’t noticed behind the Ed Sullivan Theater. She wondered how often he actually struck out.
Terrance raised his eyebrows again, because why was she still standing in the doorway?
She moved to the edge of the tiled entryway. “Is he … is Rick here?”
She turned to see him shut the door behind her, a wary expression on his face, but he nodded and led the way into a room the size of her entire apartment in Akron. Carolyn stopped at the edge of the plush carpet and took in the flat-screen TV, the wood-trimmed brocade sofa, the marble, the paintings.
It couldn’t possibly be about the money.
“He … ah … well. You better let me check.”
Carolyn glanced to his face, wondering what was wrong. He reached for a closed door.
Oh, God. “Wait!”
He looked back, his hand still on the doorknob.
“Don’t — I — I didn’t think … ” What didn’t she think? That Ricky Rain couldn’t possibly be occupied? Carolyn could remember only once in her life feeling more humiliated. “I should have called. Please don’t.”
His face slowly shifted into a grin. “I’m a go in there — ” he pointed to the door “ — and let him know you’re here.” The pointing switched to her, as slow as his words. “Because he’s been shut up in that room all day. With his papers and his headphones on.”
He waited for a moment, and Carolyn hoped he didn’t see the relief on her face.
“He don’t take well to interruptions,” Terrance said. “But I’m used to it.”
He raised his eyebrows again, and she nodded. Shut up all day, with his papers and his headphones. Which meant he was writing.
“Terrance, don’t!” He turned around again, and she didn’t think he looked quite so amused this time. “He’s working?”
He nodded, still with his hand on the doorknob.
“Then don’t,” Carolyn said. “It can wait.”
Terrance looked at her for a long moment, as if she wasn’t making any sense.
“I don’t want to bother him if he’s working. Please, don’t even tell him I came.”
He studied her for another moment. “Okay. Just stay there.”
“But — ”
“Don’t get me wrong, your idea’s fine. My way I get to keep all my anatomy intact.” He pointed once to the floor in front of her — stay — and disappeared into the bedroom.
He was gone less than a minute, barely enough for her stomach to get a good jump going, but long enough to register the song playing on the iPod. ‘Gold Digger.’
She’d thought that song was hilarious the first time she heard it.
Terrance reappeared. “Probably just a minute.” Then he, the iPod, and Kanye were out the front door.
She’d barely turned back around when Rick appeared in the doorway. Carolyn didn’t move from her spot at the e
dge of the carpet. He didn’t either; he stood with one hand on the doorframe. His hair looked like he’d run his hands through it a thousand times.
The physical parts of the man who’d left and the man who’d remained were only the most superficial of contrasts. Terrance was intimidating, not because of his size, but because he exuded confidence. Rick Ranière stood in the doorway of his hotel room looking like he’d woken up in Wonderland and nobody’d had the common decency to leave behind a fucking map.
“I’m really sorry,” she said.
He cocked his head.
“For interrupting you. I can’t believe I forgot you would have been … I never would have come, I swear.”
He nodded slowly, still looking like he didn’t know what to make of her.
“It was an impulse.” She felt the babble coming to fill the silence. “I thought of this — I wanted to ask you something — and I just … came over.”
Rick raised his eyebrows.
“It’s … ” She forced the words out. “Is it about the money?”
Rick’s eyes roamed away, around the room, then back to her. His lips pinched together, and he looked away again. Then back.
“I told him not to interrupt you,” she said, and a slight smile crossed his face.
She relaxed at his change of expression. He reached both hands to the top of the doorframe, the lighter skin under his arms straining as his muscles contracted. He was probably a lot stronger than she’d thought at first. Except for the barbed wire underneath, all the other tattoos were on the other side of his arms. The only other ink visible was whatever began at the side of his neck.
She could probably stand here across the living room and just look at him for a long time.
He seemed to be stretching and thinking at the same time, working out the map to Wonderland. Then he tilted his head. “You want to go for a walk?”
“What?”
He lowered his arms and shrugged.
“I shouldn’t have bothered you, really I — ”
“I heard there’s a place around here you can get a five-dollar hamburger.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “That seem likely to you?”
Carolyn smiled. “They cost twenty in my hotel.”
“That’s what I’m thinking. Somebody messing with the tourists.” He disappeared into the bedroom and returned with his sneakers.
“I really don’t want you to stop for me.”
He waved her off as he shoved on his shoes. “I been in there all day.” He looked around, but didn’t seem to find what he was looking for. “And I’m hungry.”
“There’s room service,” she said, and he flashed a quick grin at her as he went back to the bedroom. Carolyn cringed and waited for his comeback.
“I don’t want to disappoint you,” he called. “But this idea that there could be a five-dollar hamburger out there is getting to me.” He came out, tugging on what he’d apparently been looking for. Not his stocking cap, but the Yankees hat.
“You know what I’m saying?” he asked. “One of those things you just can’t get out your mind?”
The bill on the cap tipped down as he glanced from her face to her sneakers, not too slowly, and she wondered if every time he talked about beef products he was really talking about something else.
“I could probably be persuaded to reconsider,” he said, when his eyes returned to hers.
So could I. She put her hand on her hip.
Rick made a sound that was either a cough — or possibly the number ‘eight’ — and pointed his chin toward the front door.
Carolyn escaped into the hallway.
24: Burgers with a Side of Crack
Rick caught George’s caterpillar eyebrows on the uplift and shrugged. Oh, yeah. Don’t know how, but this the one I been trying to catch. George gave him a quick thumbs up, and Rick checked to see if Carolyn noticed, but her attention was somewhere else.
She came to him — to ask about the damn money? Then told Terrance not to interrupt — and he did anyway. Because the real danger would have been Rick finding out later that Terrance let her leave. He knew his head was getting fucked up over this girl, but the last thing he wanted was Terrance in on that secret.
Carolyn glanced to him, and Rick nodded toward the deserted Plaza driveway. The middle of the afternoon and about fifty million people crowded Fifth Avenue. Running in and out of stores full of shit he couldn’t afford. Christ.
“It’s just a couple blocks,” he said, when Carolyn looked at him.
Money. In a few minutes, they stood outside more evidence of it. Rick glanced at the glowing blue letters set in the stone sides of the entrance of the Parker Meridien. Le Parker Meridien.
He shrugged. “So we either be embarrassed or lucky. Your call.”
“Actually, I’m not hungry.”
He believed her, one more sign he was in deep shit.
“So I guess it’s your call,” she said.
Rick pulled the door open, and Carolyn went through with her amazing sense of space — didn’t come within a foot of him. She glanced at the French restaurant off the left of the lobby.
He repeated his directions. “Down two pillars and turn before the green curtains.”
Jesse, on his way to the Cleveland Institute of Art, would call it moss green. When they turned, Carolyn pointed to the neon burger at the end of the hall, laughed, and Rick couldn’t remember what he was so annoyed about before.
“It’s called the Burger Joint.” She bumped an elbow against his. “Not very original. Don’t you hate that?” Then she nodded at a whiteboard on the counter. “Five-fifty.”
“Close enough.”
She only wanted a milkshake, and the five-dollar hamburger turned into sixteen plus tax, with cheese, fries and the two vanilla shakes the black man behind the counter mixed up right in front of them. Two white guys got in line behind them, both with strong New York accents. One asked the other if they had any chicken.
The Burger Joint man traded a look with Carolyn as he passed her a shake while Rick dropped change from a twenty in an empty mayo jar beside the register. He’d been thinking grab it and go, but Carolyn started reading bumper stickers pasted on the walls. She showed him the Christmas wreath hanging over one booth as she slid in. His seat faced the door. And her.
She pointed to a sticker on the wall above her. “I didn’t claw my way to the top of the food chain to become a vegetarian.”
Rick tilted his milkshake. “Me either.”
Breakfast, lunch and dinner with her, not in that order, not on the same day, either, and the only one they both ate so far was dinner. If overpriced hotdogs at a stadium counted as dinner. With five bucks worth of Cracker Jacks.
He studied her in the dim light as she read another sticker on the wall. What was next? Was he going to drive through a goddamn Wendy’s and wonder why the hell she wasn’t in the passenger seat?
She looked up, and he glanced down at the wooden table with names all over, but still plenty of space left. He reached into his pocket for his pen. Carolyn’s eyes widened.
“What?”
He finished carving his name as she watched. Ballpoint on wood, he had to run it across a napkin between each stroke. He held the pen out to Carolyn. Even wider eyes.
“Oh, come on, you telling me you never … ” Of course she hadn’t. Rick put the pen in her hand. “Now’s your chance.”
She still hesitated, and Rick tried not to laugh.
“Probably won’t stay very long,” he said. “Shoulda brought a Sharpie.” The counter man called his name, and he stood up. “So dig it down in there deep.”
When he got back to the table with the food, she was working on her own ‘R’ in block letters, spaced under his, upside down so the names were back to back. She looked at him like she couldn’t believe she was doing it.
“’Fore you know it, you gonna be hauled in for carrying around spray paint after dark.”
She grinned and went back to her name, one s
troke at a time, in between sips of her shake. He was halfway through the burger and Sonny and Cher were on the Muzak singing “I Got You Babe” of all the goddamn songs when she finished.
Rick nodded. “Nice technique.”
“Thanks.” Then she looked at the burger. “How is it?”
It was pretty damn good. He hadn’t known he was starving until Carolyn showed up.
He caught her watching his next bite. Rick swallowed. “Are you kidding me?”
“It looks really good.”
“I asked you three times, you said you didn’t want one.”
“I know, I know.” She pulled some more shake up the straw, her eyes still on the burger in his hand, looking like Jesse used to when his half of the Skittles bag was gone first. Rick tossed the burger on the paper and pushed it over. Same look there, too. Like it was diamonds.
She pushed it back after one bite, said that was enough. He took her word for it and pulled a napkin out of the holder. When he passed it across the table, Carolyn wiped her hands.
He grinned and grabbed another napkin, reaching over to collect the mayonnaise that had slipped to the corner of her mouth. She started to back away.
“Hold up.” He transferred the mayo onto the napkin. “Terrance’s mom would say you got no home training.”
Carolyn eyebrows went up.
“’Course she say that about me a lot.”
“You hold doors.”
“That’s Trisha’s fault. Kale’s wife.” He could do her pretty good. “I’m sorry, Ricky, were you expecting me to open that door for you?”
Even though she didn’t know how close the imitation was, she laughed and he felt like he’d just downed a double shot of Wild Turkey on an empty stomach.
What the hell was wrong with him? “Hear that a hundred times, you do about anything to make it stop.”
Nobody's Hero Page 17
