Love Is a Canoe: A Novel

by Schrank, Ben

  Stella, November 2011

  “You see, it’s a problem,” Melissa Kerrigan said, on Monday afternoon. She leaned in Stella’s doorway, pink sweater thrown over her shoulders, arms crossed over her chest. Stella was thinking it was Melissa’s inability to manage a direct report that was the problem. That was why Stella had come up with the Canoe contest and was also why she had gotten so close to Helena. Yeah, because she’d been too free. She wanted to scream, You’re the problem, Melissa! You … shouldn’t manage people. But she knew she’d demanded the freedom. She had wanted to gamble and win big. And so Melissa had left her alone.

  So she said, “I know. I agree with you.” She looked at Melissa’s shoulders, which were broad. Melissa had been captain of her water polo team in college. Why Stella knew this, she had no idea.

  “They won’t talk to you?” Melissa asked. “Not a word from any of them?”

  “Shroud of silence.” Stella raised her hand as if she were testifying.

  “Everybody is saying she left her husband for him. Is that true?”

  Stella shrugged. She had been asked this question several times a day for the last week. If it was true that made her some kind of engineer of disaster. All aboard the disaster train! I’m Stella Petrovic and I’ll be your conductor!

  Melissa frowned and said, “It’s all awfully public, that’s all.”

  “Which was the intention,” Stella said. “I mean, I don’t want to go on the defensive.”

  “No. You don’t.”

  “Look, I’ll see it through to the end. It might work out.” Stella smiled and told herself that Helena probably wouldn’t appreciate a manager torturing a potential rising star.

  “Yes.” Melissa smiled. “That’s a good point. Maybe you should make a list of ways in which it might work out.”

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  “Seen anything else on the backlist that looks hot?”

  “A few things.” But she was lying. She’d figured that Canoe was her ticket out of the backlist. She had not looked further.

  “Good! And new stuff?” Melissa’s arms were still folded.

  “Um. Yeah. There’s a new book on the value of supportive friendships for women that’s kind of interesting.”

  “That’s really good. If you see a diet book, we could use one. Don’t you have a friend at People? Can’t you find out who is thin lately and who we can still get for cheap?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “You do that. I’m here if you need me.” Melissa pivoted off the doorframe and disappeared.

  Stella lay her forehead down on her desk and hoped for an idea to pop out or just burp up, like they always did for Helena. She would even settle for spitting one up, right there on her skirt. But of course nothing happened save that she felt weird and a little head rushy.

  Her phone rang—an outside line.

  “This is Stella.”

  “Stella, this is Emily Babson.”

  Stella gasped. She needed Emily to tell her everything and then go on TV otherwise the contest was a failure and Stella wasn’t sure she could survive that. She said, “Emily? Hi.”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t returned your calls.”

  “No, no! That’s okay. How are you? How are you and Eli?”

  “That’s not why I’m calling.”

  “Okay,” Stella said.

  “I’m calling because I want to tell you that Peter Herman is coming to visit … me.”

  “Like for a date?” Stella bit down on her lip and shook her head in amazement at herself.

  “What? No.”

  “Sorry, sorry. Kidding. I’ve been so tense lately. So he’ll be here in New York?”

  “Yes. Anyway, I’m letting you know.”

  “So … Is there more you’d like to share, about how helpful Peter has been to you? That would in turn help me a lot, you know?”

  “Um. No.”

  “Please, can you tell me what happened up in Millerton?”

  But Stella could only hear Emily breathing into the phone.

  “Do you want to get together for a drink?” Stella asked.

  “I guess we could. I need to explain my situation to you,” Emily said, but she sounded like having a drink with Stella was about the last thing she wanted.

  “That’d be great. Let’s meet tomorrow night. I had plans but I’ll cancel them.”

  Stella named a bar in Brooklyn and was happy that, just this once, the name came to her in the moment, just when she needed it. She rested for a second with her eyes closed, and felt a smidgen of hope.

  And then her phone rang again. Lucy Brodsky. There was nothing to do but answer it.

  Lucy said, “I thought you’d want to know that Peter Herman is coming to New York for a few days. We’re putting him up on Helena’s expenses. He called her office by mistake. I guess he lost your number.”

  “Okay,” Stella said. “In fact, I’m aware of this visit, but thank you for calling me.”

  “I see. Helena said to tell you that she’s pleased. We’ll have a breakfast meeting on Thursday morning at ten. You’ll be there along with your contest winners. No reason to have sales and marketing in attendance until we know what’s what.”

  “Of course. Can you e-mail me the meeting details?”

  “Oh, definitely.”

  “Thanks, Lucy.” Stella smiled. “This could work out just fine, couldn’t it?”

  “Um. I can’t predict stuff like that.”

  “Hey, Lucy … How are you doing? Everything okay?”

  “What are you talking about? I’m still here, aren’t I? I’m fine.” Lucy hung up on her.

  Stella kicked back in her chair, put her heels on her desk, and smiled. Everybody was coming in. The smidgen of hope grew bigger. Big risks! That’s what it was all about. One minute you’re stuck in your office, being blabbed to death by your bore of a boss, and then a couple of phone calls later and a few good decisions, next thing you know you have to run a very important breakfast meeting and write a press release about a wildly successful contest. Next comes the sit-down with Helena where she reaches out to you with a three-year contract and a big bonus. Come Friday, you’re in a black car headed downtown to lunch at Locanda Verde with the handsome new CFO from Sweden who everybody gossips about and his girlfriend, the blond NYU cinema studies grad student. They both want to hear all about that wacky creative stuff you do in editorial. Yeah, let’s have a good bottle of wine. Hell, let’s have two! Awesome. Stuck in a thankless go-nowhere job? Fuck that! Stella was going to leapfrog right over Melissa Kerrigan, probably by late spring if not sooner. Stuck? I think not.

  Peter, November 2011

  “So now the answer is yes?” Henry laughed.

  “Yes. At the same numbers we talked over a few weeks back,” Peter said. They stood outside the door to Henry’s tiny office behind the reception area at the inn.

  “I get that you’re trying to do something. But I love you too much to take your money today. Have a smoothie?” Henry walked around Peter and began to make his way toward the restaurant.

  “A what?”

  “Oh, please, you know what a smoothie is.”

  It wasn’t quite noon. A little early for lunch. Peter stopped in the central hall and looked around. A couple came through the front doors with tense grins and wedding guest outfits in dry-cleaner bags slung over their shoulders. Peter quickly moved forward and held the door for them. Jenny was training a new girl on the front desk and he watched her observe as the trainee welcomed the couple. Henry had them all wearing name-tags now. Peter thought that was way too corporate looking. People ought to be able to introduce themselves by name and leave it there.

  “Come on out to the porch and let these people do their jobs,” Henry said. “We’ll get you a club sandwich. It’s not good for you but I know it’s what you want.”

  Once they were seated at a quiet table next to the emergency exit, Henry settled in and focused on Peter. He took off his glasses, dropped them
into his shirt pocket, and folded his hands.

  “So, let’s start again,” Peter said. “I’ve thought about it and I want you to buy me out.”

  “What about Maddie?”

  “What about her? We’re moving. Ironing out the details now. But she’s not relevant to this.”

  “All right then. But Peter, there’s no rush on the deal.”

  “I thought there was a rush. I thought you wanted my shares so you could build and expand back to Hudson and make good where I failed. Did I get you wrong?”

  “You’re not wrong, except for the failure part. But I’ve thought about all this, too. And I realize that old friends shouldn’t rush each other.”

  “Well, then,” Peter said. “It’s too early for me to eat. Is this alarmed?”

  Henry reached out and flicked a switch on the emergency door.

  “Nope.”

  They went outside to walk the grounds of the inn, starting in the parking lot, both of them stooping to pick up cigarette butts and gum wrappers. Then they went through the grass to the big wooden fence and began to walk the perimeter of the property.

  “Maddie is packing up her house,” Peter said. “Jim Stevenson will handle the sale. He’s pretty good.”

  “He’ll make her real country-house money, I’m sure. With his connection to Sotheby’s Great Estates, he’s got huge reach. He could bring her two million or more. Two and a half. You haven’t thought about your place in quite the same way, I imagine.”

  “Not quite ready for that, am I? No rush, like you say. Plus my place is worth about a third of that. Maybe half on the kind of good day the market hasn’t seen for years.”

  Henry looked away and smiled.

  “Need anything in New York?” Peter asked. “I’m going down tomorrow or the next day.”

  “What could I need from New York?”

  They went through a gap in the fence and stopped in an adjoining field that the inn used for tented weddings. The sun slipped behind a cloud and Peter shoved his hands in his pockets and turned away from the wind. Henry motioned that they should head back.

  “Let’s at least have a cup of coffee. You … know much about San Francisco?” Henry asked.

  “The food is supposed to be good. Fresh-food movement, I think it’s called.”

  “No, it’s slow food that you’re talking about,” Henry said. “I taught the staff a joke about that; seems we’ve come into fashion. Our kitchen was already pretty slow!”

  “Ha,” Peter said. “There’s a line that’ll get you nowhere with the sophisticates in Hudson.”

  They went back through the parking lot. The sky had begun to turn gray. Peter had been in Millerton for nearly forty years and had never gotten used to the quiet that came with the wind.

  “What changed, Henry? You wanted me out of your business and into a new life. What changed?”

  Henry scratched his nose.

  Peter said, “And I have in fact been reading my goddamned book so don’t say that line.”

  “I suppose—”

  “You suppose what?”

  “Cool down now.” Henry laughed. “Don’t yell at your old friend Henry. I suppose that if you’re lucky enough, you’ll get it figured out for you all over again. You say you’re headed west with Maddie. And that’s fine. But you better be sure that’s what you want.”

  “It is.”

  “Well, I’m not your therapist.” Henry waved at a driver in a linens delivery truck who was pulling into the inn’s back driveway. “And I won’t go further with you than we’ve just gone.”

  “But what about the deal?”

  “I guess we won’t make a deal today. That’s all. When I find the courage to open in Hudson you’ll be among the first dozen people I call.” Henry laughed and clapped Peter on the back. But Peter could tell that Henry was holding something back. Henry wasn’t a meddlesome person. And Henry loved Peter. Peter knew that.

  “No deal today,” Peter said. “I don’t get it.”

  “Shoot, Peter. It’s been a hard year. We all miss Lisa. She is a part of us.”

  “We all miss her,” Peter said. “Yes we do. Now what is it that you’re not telling me?”

  “For goodness’ sake.” Henry opened the emergency door to the dining room and then slammed it shut so they were still outside. Now they were staring at each other.

  “You never did curse, did you?” Peter asked.

  “Nope, never did. Okay! I can’t stand it. I was listening to Maddie, not you. She was telling me what to do. That’s why I set up the deal. And it’s kind of a stupid deal when you think about it for two minutes. But I was acting on what she wanted. You know I listen to women first.”

  “You did with Lisa.” Peter nodded and finally broke into a smile.

  “Especially with her.”

  Peter looked away, out at the parking lot. He said, “What else?”

  “Since I’ve betrayed Maddie’s trust and I feel lousy enough about that, I’ll add something of my own. You better be in love with Maddie if you’re going to go any further with her. That’s what else.”

  “I think I’m going to go with her,” Peter said. “It’s what she wants.” He motioned for Henry to take them inside. Peter watched his old friend frown as he wrestled with the door.

  Henry said, “Well, now I’ve talked too much after I promised myself I wouldn’t. I’ll look after your interests here. And if you come back, you come back.”

  Peter breathed in the good smell of the dining room. He smiled. “Thank you.”

  “Fine, then.” Henry looked away. “You got the truth out of me. Now you’ll do me the favor of having an early lunch with me. I keep saying you want a club sandwich. The fact of the matter is that I want a club sandwich. You can order whatever you like. It doesn’t matter to me.”

  “You’re going to miss me, aren’t you?”

  “That’s a part of it,” Henry said. “That is a part of it.”

  Stella, November 2011

  On Tuesday evening, Stella met Emily at Stanislaw & Daughters, a restaurant that was nowhere near where either of them lived.

  Stella came in and immediately recognized Emily, who was the lone woman at the bar. She already had her coat off and a glass of water in front of her. In person, Emily was even more perfect than in the pictures Stella had found. She was actually wearing pearls with a black cardigan and jeans. Her hair was in a ponytail and her face looked soft, if guarded. She really was the right person to win, Stella thought. She could imagine Emily on a stage, perhaps even at a sales conference, in conversation with Peter Herman. That was all Stella needed to do, just convince Emily that she had an obligation to play this thing through with LRB. Maybe Stella could just figure out a way to leave the seemingly absent husband out of it entirely. The brooding husband happily married but disdainful of publicity. There was precedent for that. That’d work. Focus, Stella told herself. This could still work out just fine.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Stella,” Emily said, once she’d settled onto her stool. “And thanks for suggesting this place. I don’t spend enough time in Bushwick.”

  “Did you find it okay?”

  “No, but I was grateful for the challenge.”

  “I’m sorry about that.” Stella gave her guiltiest smile. They were at the short end of the L-shaped bar, near the great front windows that looked out on the industrial gray of Moore Street. She chose a stool between Emily and the exit.

  “It was the first place I thought of. I should’ve researched better.”

  Emily nodded. “That’s okay. I always get lost on the letter trains. I’ve learned to accept that.”

  “You’re lucky. I live on them,” Stella said. She watched Emily check her out. And she gave her time to do that. Though checking her out was possibly making Emily dislike her even more. Stella was at least five years younger, in her tiger-print scarf and pointy black boots. She’d found a long black skirt in her closet that was really old and now she was wearing it as ofte
n as she thought she could without being accused of wearing the same thing every day. Emily was staring at her so hard that Stella began to wonder if she could see whatever was left of the Virginia hippie underneath the Bonnie and Clyde outfit.

  “Shall we let the bartender choose something for us?” Stella asked, with the hope that Emily would let her be bossy from go. Emily shrugged a yes.

  They began with a half carafe of a white recommended by the bartender—a plaid shirt–wearing young man whom Stella dimly recognized from just after college when she had gone to a lot of parties. It tasted kind of bad, and there was an awful lot of it. Stella thought it was a horrifying amount of wine.

  Emily raised a hand and got Plaid Shirt’s attention.

  “This is nice but it’s maybe a little sweet for me?” Emily asked. “Do you have anything with a little more acidity? It took me so long to get here and I realize now that red wine was what I was really looking forward to. So, let’s make it red and let’s keep it simple. Merlot.”

  “For me, too,” Stella said, nodding hard. “I want the same thing as her.” She was surprised at the way Emily sounded, how she was both tentative and a little manipulative. But at the same time, Stella realized, Emily sounded just like her letter.

  Emily’s phone buzzed.

  “Excuse me,” Emily said. “It’s work. I need to respond.” She hunched over and began to type.

  Stella looked around. The bar was so new that it still smelled clean, like fresh paint and fruit soap. A waft of cooking pig fat came from behind a kitchen door. That made Stella feel better. She thought, The thing that doesn’t fit in this picture is Emily. There was a table in the back filling up with what appeared to be German models. The men sitting at the bar were all good-looking carpenter-types. Everyone Stella knew seemed to want to marry guys like that. The kinds of guys who dressed in stiff denim that wore like tin and weren’t ironic about it. Stella figured Eli Corelli would fit in at a place like this. Maybe at the end of their drink, once she loosened up, Emily would thank her for discovering it. She’d say that even though it wasn’t her kind of place, she’d take her husband here. Yeah, Stella thought, they could eat here once everything was all better. Stella would get LRB to pay.