Jake & Mimi

by Frank Baldwin

  • • •

  I step through the gate out onto the quiet sidewalk, the Brooklyn night tasting as clean and clear to me now as mountain air. I can see, a block up, the neon lights of a bodega and I head for it, feeling the way I always do just after I leave them. Emptied out. At peace. I could walk for miles, but it would be three rough ones, at least, to the Brooklyn Bridge and another four from there, so I go to the old pay phone just outside the bodega and call the car service. Then I buy a tall, freezing can of beer from the man of the place, who drops it into a paper bag and hands it over, and I cross the street with it and sit down on the steps of a brownstone to wait for my ride.

  The block is all brownstones, save one. Across the street from me sits a big yellow house straight out of a southern dream, with latticed windows and topped by a small tower served by a curving set of stairs. A widow’s walk, I think they call it. It’s easy to forget that this used to be a port town, that once Mrs. Captain could climb those stairs and look out over the sea. I take a long sip of beer, lean back, and look up at the dark sky.

  I’ve got buddies out of law school now, bringing down one twenty-five per, pre-bonus. Putting in hours that would shame a farmer, true, lucky to stagger back to their posh pads by midnight or to make it twice a summer to the shares they rent in the Hamptons. Still. Playing the game and winning. Getting ahead.

  I’ve got others going the romance route. Been with their girls two, three years now, and the spark’s still there. Some of them under the same roof, even. Sure, they switch channels when the wedding ads come on, and grit their teeth come Valentine’s Day, but even so. Best friends and all the rest of it. Happy.

  And if I had the chance to trade one of these nights for any part of their lives — forget it. Jesus, she was unbelievable. Clear outside herself. And her finish… I take another sip of cold beer. Down the line I may pay the piper for these nights, miss out on money, advancement — hell, on love — but at least I’ll know what I paid him for. The chance to feel, for a few minutes, completely, electrically alive. To feel a rush that no amount of money, and no girlfriend, will ever give you.

  The low lights of a limo turn the far corner and head up the block toward me. Diane Silio was incredible tonight. And two weeks ago Melissa Clay was just as good. But as I look up into the dark sky, the face that comes into my mind is a new one. The face of a girl I didn’t know before this morning. A girl with soft hair, gorgeous skin, and a body as tempting in her work suit as any model in lingerie.

  Mimi Lessing.

  I know her type. I could never get near them up at school. She grew up in Larchmont, I’ll bet, or New Canaan. Riding lessons, private school. Held herself apart from them, but even so, they shaped her. Thinks sex is a ballroom dance. Forget it, Jake. A coworker with a ring on her finger and the last girl on earth who would ever have that side to her. Still. I felt something this morning in the hall, and again tonight in the bar. And I saw something in her eyes when we talked, when she told me Diane Silio was watching me.

  The limo pulls to the curb in front of me. Through its open window I see the big arm of Rudy and then his sardonic smile as he shakes his head and gestures with his thumb toward the back. I stand, finish off my beer, and walk down the steps, pausing at the limo door to take in a last breath of spring night air, then climb inside.

  Yes, there was something in her eyes. A look I’ve learned to spot in women.

  Temptation.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I gained entry to Miss Lessing’s private world on a workday morning a year ago.

  At 8:30 I watched her descend into the subway at Eighty-sixth and Lexington. An hour later I caught the street door to her walkup on Eighty-third and York as another tenant was leaving. I checked the apartment directory, stepped inside, and climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. I stood for a few minutes in the deserted hallway, then walked to the door of apartment 4D. I knelt in front of it. From my coat pocket I took out the white cloth in which I’d wrapped the tools I would need. I laid the bundle on the hallway floor and spread it open.

  Sunlight from the landing behind me streamed over my shoulder. I picked up the tension wrench and inserted it carefully into the keyhole. Holding the wrench steady and applying firm counterclockwise pressure, I took the lifter pick and guided it, too, into the hole. Then I lifted the pins of the lock one by one, until I’d brought them all to shear. After the last one clicked softly, I drew out the lifter pick, took a slow breath, and turned the tension wrench. The lock gave cleanly. I pushed on her apartment door, and it opened without a sound.

  I stood up and stepped into her living room. It was not at all what I had expected from a woman of twenty-five. Surrounding me were two solid walls of bookshelves. On them I could see complete sets of gold-embossed Shakespeare, Dickens, and Twain. Above those shelves were framed pictures of family on one wall, and alone on the other a beautifully clean and elegant lithograph of a horse in snow country.

  I stepped into her bedroom. It was immaculate, the bed made, the suits in her closet discreetly tailored and tasteful. Lying open on her nightstand was a hardcover book, open to page 247. Van Gogh: His Life and His Art.

  I thought for a second that I might have entered the wrong apartment. But looking back at me from the bureau was Miss Lessing, her beauty undimmed by a graduation cap and gown, her diploma held to her breast as she smiled into the camera. I walked to the photo and ran my fingers along it, feeling an excitement rising in me as I had never known. I set about my delicate work.

  The finest listening devices in the world were invented in Norway. Øres, they are called, after the Norwegian word for ear, and they can be purchased in either of two shops along Electric Row in Oslo. An Øre weighs five grams and is scarcely an inch in circumference. The device itself is encased in porous plastic, no part of its wiring visible to the naked eye, even on close inspection. If discovered, it looks like nothing; a piece of a curtain rod, maybe, or a part broken off a furniture joint. You would throw it away without a second thought. Yet with a speck of adhesive this tiny lump can be attached to almost anything; and once attached, it can pick up a sigh from ten feet away, a whisper from thirty. The Mossad have used them for years.

  My work required just ten minutes. In the kitchenette I took advantage of the quarter-inch gap between the stove and the cabinet, securing one Øre, out of sight, to the side of the latter. A second I tucked into her telephone receiver. In the living room I attached one to the bottom of the couch. In the bathroom one lies hidden in the top corner of her medicine cabinet. And then I stepped again into her bedroom.

  I walked to her bed and knelt beside it. I unscrewed the plastic plate of the electrical outlet, and with the aid of a hanger I ran an Øre up until it was level with her mattress. I pressed it firmly to the inside wall. A quarter inch of plaster would be no match for it, I knew. It would stay, silent and listening, not ten inches from her pillow.

  The Øre transmits any sound it captures to its mother unit receiver, a black box the size of an electric shaver. This box I positioned beneath the sill outside her bedroom window. It is visible only from across the way, and across the way is the bare wall of another building. This mother unit, in turn, beams what it receives out into the air along a dedicated frequency: a radio transmission, essentially. Its range is limited, no more than a mile, but that made no difference. It is only half a mile from Miss Lessing’s windowsill to my own.

  And on my sill sits my own mother unit, collecting input from its twin on Eighty-third Street and feeding that input through cable wire into my stereo, where it is directed through my amplifier and so, magically, out my speakers.

  Yes, I can sit in my living room at 1200 Sutton Place and listen to Miss Lessing. And listen efficiently, for each Øre in her apartment can be controlled from mine, activated or shut off by electrical impulses sent through the mother units. Thus I can follow her from room to room and not be held hostage to the sound of the dishwasher when in fact she has stepped into the bath. />
  The industrious Øres burn themselves out quickly. Every three months I must slip back inside to plant fresh ones. Five hundred dollars apiece, they are. Ten thousand dollars it has cost me to listen to Miss Lessing this past year. To hear her every spoken word, to drift off each night to the sound of her gentle breathing.

  Ten thousand dollars to reclaim what I thought I had lost forever.

  CHAPTER SIX

  We sin in the full knowledge that we are sinning.”

  Father Ryan used to say that in confession when I was a girl, anytime I pretended not to know if a lie or a mean comment counted as a sin.

  It is nine o’clock Thursday night, and I sit with Jake Teller at the polished oak table in the conference room. Through the open window come soft sounds from the street far below. We are alone in the firm.

  “The final piece,” he says, handing me a page still warm from the printer. “Derivatives — a crib sheet.”

  “Thanks,” I say. I three-hole-punch it and slide it into the presentation binder in front of me. I close the binder and look over at him. “We’re done, aren’t we?”

  Jake nods. “I’ll call for our rides.”

  I stare down at the binder and take a quiet breath. Play it safe, Mimi. All I have to do is let Jake Teller call the car service, and our time together will be done. Six nights it’s taken us, three of them late ones, but we’ve mastered the Brice account. Our report is ready for Mr. Stein, and because it’s ready, my work with Jake Teller is finished. I’ll see him only in the hallways. In the daytime.

  “Jake?”

  He looks up, phone in hand. I try to imagine what my fiancé is doing this very second. At his desk at the magazine, leaning over a sentence. Changing the passive voice to the active.

  “You’ve been a huge help,” I say. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  The night is cool and the streets busy as we walk down Lexington Avenue. I’m a fast walker, but even so, Jake slows his pace for me. He is tall, an athlete, and I knew when he shook my hand in Mr. Stein’s office that he wasn’t like the other associates. I’ve never had to “handle” any of the men in the firm. The partners are my father’s age, and they act it, and the other associates are… lost in their work. They come to my desk with account questions and with nothing, ever, in their tone or eyes. Jake is different. I shouldn’t be doing this.

  We turn onto Thirty-ninth Street and walk east, and two blocks later we reach the Gangway Pub. Music and light spill out the door as Jake holds it open for me. Earlier this evening Anne called me in the conference room, and I promised to meet her here at ten o’clock. Just forty minutes from now. My out, if I should need one.

  We walk across a floor covered with sawdust and peanut shells, past a long bar crowded with young grads. Guys with their ties pulled free of their collars buy drinks for girls who came for happy hour and haven’t left. We find a small wooden booth near the back and slide in across from each other. The wall beside us is covered with college pennants, two hundred of them at least, in all colors, and in among them are plastic busts of old rock stars. Buddy Holly, Elvis, Janis Joplin. I can hear Alanis singing from the jukebox about broken trust as a waitress in a Duke sweatshirt smiles at us and takes a pen from her hair.

  “I’ll take a Bass,” says Jake.

  “A glass of chardonnay, please.” She walks off to the bar.

  “The friend you’re meeting — she’s in the wedding?” Jake asks.

  “Anne’s my maid of honor. She’s in charge of the bridesmaids’ dresses, and I’ve had to put her off all week. She said if I don’t meet her tonight, they’ll all wear jeans.”

  He laughs. “Can I see?” he asks, looking at my ring.

  I lift my hand to show it to him. He takes it, his thumb resting on my pulse a second, then lets go as our waitress returns and places our drinks in front of us. Jake raises his pint and touches it gently to my thin-stemmed wineglass.

  “The outside world,” he says. “It’s good to see it again.”

  “Thanks for all your help, Jake — it made the difference.”

  “Sure.”

  I take a sip of wine. I’ve been drinking a full glass before bed for a week now. Since the send-off party last Friday.

  “This place reminds me of my frat house,” he says, looking around. “Except for the girls. Is your school up there?”

  I scan the colored pennants and find the familiar blue and white. “Between Duke and Syracuse.”

  He looks surprised. “You’re a UConn girl?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “It’s a party school.”

  “That’s an unfair rep.”

  “I meant it as a compliment.”

  “Where did you go?”

  He motions with his eyes. “Up at the top, in the middle.”

  “Hamilton?”

  He nods. “Thirty grand a year. Nonrefundable, it turns out.”

  I laugh. I can feel the wine starting to warm me. It’s 9:40. If I’d put off Anne and gone home, I’d be in the bath now, soaking away my thoughts, the steam rising from the water as I slide down into it. It’s time, Mimi.

  “Can I ask you something, Jake?”

  “Sure.”

  His green dress shirt sets off the blue of his eyes. There is something in them I can’t place. Something buried.

  “You got into Diane Silio’s car last Friday,” I say.

  He takes the pint from his lips, surprised. Wary. He places it carefully on the table.

  “She told you that?”

  “No. I couldn’t take the smoke in the bar. I went outside for air. You were speaking to the driver, and then you got inside.”

  Jake looks down at the table, then back at me. These past six nights, working side by side in the conference room, there’s been something in the silence between us. Something rich. Narcotic. He understands it now.

  “You watched her leave?” he says.

  “Through the bar window. She opened the car door and hesitated.”

  “For just a second.”

  “Yes.”

  “Two more here?” asks the waitress, appearing again. My glass is empty, and I see that my fingers, gripping the stem, are white. I let go.

  “Red this time, please,” I say.

  “The house cab?”

  “Fine.”

  Jake nods yes to another pint, and the waitress walks off. I look down at the old wooden table. People have cut their initials into it. LN. JB. TR loves BN. We’re quiet until she returns with our drinks, sets them down, and leaves. Under the table my free hand finds my stocking.

  “What do you want to ask me, Mimi?”

  I try to meet his eyes, but I can’t. My legs feel light.

  “Why were you in her car?”

  “That’s not what you want to know.” His voice is different — harder. My face is crimson, and he sees it. “You want to know what we did.”

  The wine in my glass is so dark that it’s black. I look up and see something new in his eyes — flint. “I’m going to tell you a story my grandfather told me,” he says, his voice low but all I hear now. The clink of glasses, the music, the hum of the bar — all gone. “And then, if you still want to, you can ask your question.”

  I manage to nod.

  “Grandpa married his wife at nineteen, and six months later he shipped out to Europe to fight in World War Two. She was pregnant when he left, and he was stone in love with her. She wrote him every day he was gone. And he wrote back. Even from the front, he wrote back. Wrote on anything he could find. Newspaper, and when that was gone, toilet paper. If the guys in the foxhole had found out, it wouldn’t have been a German trying to shoot him.”

  Jake takes a sip of beer. His eyes stay on mine, measuring me.

  “Her letters came in bunches, during breaks in the fighting. Two weeks would pass with no mail, and then ten would come in a day. He read them over and over. In trenches, by moonlight, by the light of artillery fire. Read about his new son. ‘He’s crawling now, he’s standi
ng up, he’s got his first tooth.’ Through all the fighting, he carried those letters pressed against his skin. Mud, blood, sweat, rain, everything got on them. Most dissolved away to nothing.

  “One day he opened a letter to find a picture of her in a cotton dress, standing on the porch at sunset. I’ve seen the picture — she was beautiful.”

  Jake looks away a second.

  “Grandpa used medical tape to tape that picture over his heart. Late in the war, his unit gets pinned down in a ditch at Saint-Mihiel, in France. Surrounded, nowhere to go. Getting it from all sides. They lose twenty-six of thirty men. Night comes, and they run out of ammo. Start throwing rocks. They run out of rocks. They lie still and wait for dawn, when the Germans will come to the mouth of the ditch and kill them. They draw their knives, hoping that between the four of them they might take one German with them. When the first rays of light come, Grandpa takes the picture from his chest and holds it to his face. He wants it to be the last thing he sees.

  “Dawn breaks — no Germans. They wait — still no Germans. They crawl out of the ditch — no Germans. They left during the night.

  “The war ended a month later. Grandpa spent his last night over there in Paris. Lying in a bunk, staring at the picture of the beautiful wife he’s going home to in six hours. Rereading the few of her letters that had survived. At two A.M., he gives up on trying to sleep and goes for a walk through the streets. Paris is newly liberated — a carnival, right? He walks through the different quarters packed with revelers. Soldiers, British and American. Civilians. He keeps walking, and after a while the streets thin out. They are cobblestone now. Passing a small church, something in the doorway catches his eye. It is a woman. A young Gypsy beauty, standing alone, the light of a streetlamp falling on her black hair, her flashing eyes.

  “They stand looking at each other. And then she beckons him, and he steps into the doorway. She’s eighteen, maybe, and smells as clean as the spring rain. She speaks softly to him in French. He doesn’t understand, but her hands are on him now, touching his face, his chest. She feels the weight in his shirt pocket and pulls out the picture. She holds it to the light. ‘Elle est très jolie,’ she says. She’s very pretty. Then she takes his hand and puts it under her dress, right on her thigh. He’s never felt anything that smooth. That warm.”