Goodbye To All That

by Judith Arnold

  “If you got your hair done here, the time you would have spent driving to and from New York could be spent doing something interesting. Something new.”

  “Like what?” she challenged him.

  “Like . . . like helping Jill plan Thanksgiving. Or helping her with Abbie’s bat mitzvah. The place where it’s being held is putting her through the wringer. They’re hiking the dinner price, they’re hemming and hawing about how many hours the DJ can play—I don’t know. I got an earful the last time I talked to her.”

  “And I’m supposed to help her how?”

  “You’re good at parties,” he said. “You’re a pro when it comes to organizing them. You could be a party planner. Isn’t that what they’re called?”

  “A party planner?”

  “Remember the party you threw for my parents’ anniversary? The jukebox rock-and-roll party?”

  “And now look at them,” she said dryly. “They’re getting divorced.”

  “It was a great party, though.”

  She contemplated his statement, sipped some wine and apparently came up with no argument. “You’re right. It was.”

  The idea was so brilliant, Doug decided to pretend he hadn’t accidentally stumbled upon it in his effort to convince Brooke to have her hair done locally. “A party planner. You’d be your own boss, work only on parties you wanted to, get paid to be creative.”

  “Paid? You want me to get a job?” She narrowed her gaze. Fortunately, the pout didn’t return, but she was wearing an emphatic frown. “Is there something about our finances that you aren’t telling me?”

  “No. Our finances are fine.” He leaned forward, energized. “People are vain. They want their Lasik surgery. I’m booked solid until we leave for Nevis, and people are already scheduling for next spring.”

  “So why do you want me to do this? Why should I get paid to be creative?”

  “If you don’t want to get paid, do it for free.” He set his glass on the coffee table in front of the couch and reached for Brooke’s hand. Her skin was velvet-soft, her fingernails pale and oval, like slivered almonds. “Look at my parents. My mother left my father not because she didn’t love him, not because he betrayed her. Not even because he channel-surfs too much. She left him because she wanted her own life, her own identity. She wanted a job.”

  “I don’t want a job,” Brooke insisted.

  “A hobby, then. Do it as a hobby.” He sighed. “I’m being selfish, Brooke, I know. I’m asking you to consider this because I don’t want to wake up thirty-five years from now and hear you tell me you’re moving out and taking a job as a clerk at First-Rate.”

  “I would never take a job as a clerk at First-Rate.” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t even like entering those stores. The merchandise is so cheap.”

  One thing Brooke detested was buying anything that wasn’t overpriced, Doug thought with a wry smile. No wonder she preferred Colonel Ping to Lotus Garden: not because of Colonel Ping’s overreliance on salt and MSG but because its mu-shu pork cost a buck-fifty more than Lotus Garden’s.

  “I don’t want you to work at First-Rate,” he said gently. “I want you to do something that keeps you from getting so bored you think going to New York for a haircut is an exciting adventure. I want every day to be an adventure for you.”

  She ruminated, her hand unmoving in his clasp, her other hand slowly lifting her wine glass to her lips. Her perfectly shaped lips. Lips he loved, lips he hoped would still be meeting his in eager kisses thirty-five years from now.

  She drank, swallowed and smiled enigmatically. “You know what would be an adventure for me?”

  “What?”

  “Holding the remote while we watched TV so you couldn’t channel-surf.”

  He allowed himself a tentative smile, as well. Maybe, just maybe his marriage wasn’t doomed.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Tonight?” Melissa leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. She had her phone wedged between her ear and her shoulder, a definite no-no posture-wise, but she’d broken a fingernail and was smoothing it out with the emery board she kept stashed in her desk for just such emergencies. The manicure repair left no hand available to hold the phone.

  She ought to get a headset so she could talk on the phone hands-free. But those headsets were so dorky. Using one would make her resemble a telephone operator from the 1950’s. Every time she answered, she’d have the urge to say, “Your number please,” in a nasal singsong.

  “Yeah, tonight,” Aidan O’Leary’s voice rumbled through the line. “We’ve got everybody on board with the settlement. Case closed. We can have a dinner together without raising any ethical issues. We’re not adversaries anymore.”

  Just because the settlement had been accepted by their respective clients didn’t mean he wasn’t her adversary, she reminded herself as she ran her thumb over the damaged nail, searching for rough spots. Certainly he could still be her adversary, even if they were no longer on opposite sides of a suit.

  He must have interpreted her silence as resistance. “I’ll treat,” he added.

  “No, that’s all right.”

  “Then you can treat.”

  “No.”

  “Come on, let me treat,” he said in a cajoling voice. “We can go someplace cheap if it’ll make you feel better.”

  She laughed, then shook her head. He was her adversary because he was too damned enticing, that was why. Too clever. Too cute.

  “I’m supposed to meet my realtor at the apartment in Murray Hill at six,” she told him. “I want one last look before I decide whether to make an offer on it.”

  “Not a problem. I’ll meet you there and we can go out for dinner afterward.”

  “All right,” she said, then sighed. If he could get her to say yes over the phone, when she couldn’t even see his dimples, she was in big trouble.

  What the hell. She was in big trouble, anyway. She was going to torture herself by walking through the apartment one last time when she still hadn’t figured out how to cover the down payment. Her hope was that giving it one final viewing would convince her she wasn’t really in love with it, and that standing in its cozy second bedroom wouldn’t fill her with all sorts of wistful ovarian pangs. One more look might prove to her that the place wasn’t that special.

  She gave O’Leary the address and agreed to meet him outside the building at six twenty, at which time he could take her someplace cheap for dinner. She’d probably be bummed out after her farewell tour of the apartment—whether because she discovered she still loved it but couldn’t swing the financing or because she discovered she didn’t really love it and therefore couldn’t trust her instincts—so wherever he took her had better have a liquor license.

  She was able to leave her office by quarter to six—early for her. Usually she worked until about six-thirty. When she’d been with Luc, he’d complained about her late hours on the days when he didn’t have any evening appointments. She supposed O’Leary’s schedule was similar to hers—eight-thirty to six-thirty, or thereabouts.

  As if she cared whether O’Leary worked sixty hours a week like she did. They were having dinner together to celebrate the settlement, period. His career trajectory had no relevance to her. This was not a relationship. It was going nowhere. Plus, the last time she’d seen him, when they’d gone out for a drink after their marathon negotiating session, he’d made that flirty comment about how her hair turned him on. Her ex-boyfriend was her hair stylist. If she got involved with a guy who was turned on by what her ex-boyfriend did . . . well, it would be weird.

  She decided O’Leary truly was her adversary when she arrived at the building on East 38th. She’d expected to see her realtor there, and sure enough, Kathy was waiting under the entry’s nondescript awning, clad in a matronly blazer and pleated slacks that amplified her chubby physique. Standing beside her was a tall, dark-haired man in a business suit. The light from the lobby illuminated enough of his silhouette for Melissa to recognize him.<
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  She’d specifically told him six-twenty. What the hell was he doing here? Discussing the apartment—her apartment, if she could finagle a way to buy it—with her realtor? Was he planning to bid on the apartment, too? He already owned a place up in the boonies of northernmost Manhattan. Surely he couldn’t want this place, too.

  No, there was nothing surely about that. If she lived in Inwood, she’d want to move downtown, too, even if Murray Hill wasn’t the hottest neighborhood in the city. Maybe O’Leary was curious enough to want to check out the apartment for himself. Or maybe he just wanted to give her tsorris. She’d taught him a new word; now he wanted to make the concept come to life.

  What was he up to? Why was he still trying to game her?

  She approached the two, who were chattering away like old friends. No doubt O’Leary was treating Kathy to a double-barreled barrage of charm. Melissa suppressed the urge to kick him.

  “Hi,” she greeted him curtly, then turned to Kathy. “I told him to meet me here at six-twenty,” she explained. “I guess he can wait in the lobby.”

  “Oh, I thought . . .” Kathy’s quizzical gaze shuttled between O’Leary and Melissa.

  “It’s all right,” O’Leary said smoothly. “I’d like to see the apartment, too. Considering.”

  Considering what? He was definitely gaming Melissa, pulling something on her, and she didn’t like it. She didn’t like it even more when he touched his hand to the small of her back and escorted her into the building, as if he were her boyfriend or something.

  Kathy conferred with the doorman for a minute. The lobby was nothing special, and the doorman, who wore an ill-fitting brown suit, looked peevish, as if Kathy had awakened him from a nap. But given that the cost of the apartment upstairs was more than Melissa could afford, she wasn’t about to waste time looking at apartments in swankier buildings. She was already paying an exorbitant rent for her studio apartment uptown, and a significant chunk of that rent was probably subsidizing the building’s three doormen, who dressed in spiffy livery with gold-braid trim and stood in a lobby graced with black marble flooring and smoky veined mirrors, which actually seemed kind of dated to Melissa but were still more elegant than the plain cream-hued walls of this building’s lobby.

  “Why are you here?” Melissa whispered to O’Leary.

  He was spared from having to answer when Kathy returned and gestured toward the elevator. “Nice place,” he said, as much to Kathy as to Melissa as they stepped inside the elevator. “It doesn’t smell like onions.”

  “Is it supposed to smell like onions?” Melissa asked, her voice icy enough to freeze whisky.

  “My building’s elevator usually does. I’m not sure what the source is. I’ve complained to the super, but he says he doesn’t notice it. I guess it’s the sort of thing you get used to after a while.”

  “There’s such a thing as an air freshener,” Kathy pointed out. “Perhaps your super could plug one in.”

  “I don’t think there’s an electrical socket in the elevator,” he mused. “What would he plug it into?”

  “There’s got to be an electrical source,” Kathy said. “It’s an elevator. It runs on electricity.”

  Melissa gritted her teeth as they yakked amiably about elevators, electricity and onions. After a sluggish ascent—this particular elevator didn’t run, it trudged—they reached the fourth floor and exited into a hall that smelled blessedly like nothing at all.

  “Have you crunched the numbers?” Kathy asked Melissa as they strolled down the hall to the unit. “Is this going to be doable for you?”

  “I’m still crunching,” Melissa assured her, although the numbers had so far proven themselves crunch-resistant. She smiled placidly, ignoring the light pressure of O’Leary’s hand at the small of her back again as they waited for Kathy to unlock the door.

  “The unit is empty,” Kathy explained to O’Leary as the door swung in. “The owner is an elderly woman who’s having some health issues, so her son moved her down to the Atlanta area, where he lives. From what I hear, she hates it there. She says the place is full of southerners.”

  “New Yorkers can be so provincial,” O’Leary joked.

  Kathy took him seriously. “Indeed we can be. But the move is a done deal, and her son wants this place sold ASAP. There’s some kind of arrangement where the money she makes on the sale will go to the senior community where she’s living down there. She told her broker her new residence is like a cruise ship, only on land. They’ve got activities all day long. Movies, lectures, crafts. Shuffleboard, she said. She hates shuffleboard.”

  Kathy switched on the ceiling light in the entry, then hurried ahead of them to turn on the few lamps that had been left behind in the otherwise barren apartment. The rooms looked small to Melissa, as if the naked walls were leaning inward, but that didn’t concern her. Rooms always looked smaller when they were empty.

  O’Leary abandoned her side and ducked into the kitchen. She wondered if he was an amateur chef; he surveyed the tiny work space with more intensity than she ever had.

  She scrutinized the kitchen, trying to figure out what he saw that she might have missed. The cabinets were some enameled compound material, but the cooking range was gas, which she considered an asset. The fridge stood open, its bulb unscrewed and its dark, vacant shelves forlorn. O’Leary rapped a fist gently against the laminate countertop, then exited into the dining nook off the living room. “You could fit a full-size table here,” he said.

  “I doubt I’ll be hosting any banquets.”

  “Still, it’s a nice size. The kitchen, though . . .” He glanced behind him, then ventured into the living room. “Southern exposure. How’s the air conditioning in this unit?”

  “Nobody’s turned it on in a couple of months,” Kathy informed him. “If there’s a problem, management will cover the repair costs. We can write that into the contract.”

  “I’m just saying, with all these windows facing south, you want to make sure the room isn’t going to be hard to cool in the summer. These are double-panes, right?” Before Kathy could answer, he was striding down the hall to the bedrooms.

  Kathy and Melissa shared a look. Kathy was smiling one of those aww-he’s-adorable smiles. Melissa didn’t smile back. She was thinking not that he was adorable but that he was asking questions she’d never thought to ask. She was a lawyer, for God’s sake. She should have been thinking like a lawyer. But she’d been thinking like a woman desperate to find a halfway decent apartment that wouldn’t ultimately land her in debtor’s prison.

  “The master bath could use some updating,” O’Leary called from deep within the master bedroom.

  What did he care? If he didn’t have to pee right this minute, he’d never have an opportunity to use that bathroom.

  What she’d noticed when she’d inspected the master bedroom was the closet. It was a walk-in—small enough that “step-in” would be a more accurate description, but bigger than what she currently had. The bathroom could be updated after she’d paid down the mortgage a bit. Like maybe fifteen years from now. As long as the toilet flushed and the shower didn’t spray too hot or too cold, she was satisfied.

  He emerged from the bathroom as she emerged from the closet. “Hardwood floor in a bedroom?” he said. “You’d need to put down a rug. Who wants to get out of bed and have your bare feet touch a cold, hard floor?”

  “Who wants to get out of bed, period?” she retorted, then realized, from his mischievous grin, that he’d misinterpreted her words. “I’m usually so tired when the alarm goes off,” she clarified. “The cold hard floor wakes me up. Wood isn’t that cold, anyway. And the bathroom is clean. I don’t need fancy.”

  “If you say so.” He winked again, and she wondered if she was going to be hearing about how she didn’t want to get out of bed for the rest of her life, or at least for as long as it took to eat dinner with him.

  She told herself she didn’t care. His criticisms of the apartment implied that he wasn’t going
to enter into a bidding war with her over it. Maybe his place up in Inwood had a marble sunken tub and granite counters in the master bath. Maybe his kitchen featured a six-burner Viking range. Maybe such things mattered to him.

  In any case, she didn’t have to worry about his vying with her for this unit. Which was a good thing, because walking through it, wrapping herself in the atmosphere of its dowdy kitchen and its potentially steamy living room and its antiquated master bath, only reinforced her love of the place. She couldn’t pinpoint why this apartment felt so right to her. All she knew was that it did feel right.

  He peered into the walk-in closet, then headed for the door, where Kathy stood on the threshold watching them, her “aww” smile still plastered across her face. She stepped aside so he and Melissa could exit. Melissa braced herself for the second bedroom.

  Yes, it was compact. Yes, its window overlooked an air shaft, not the street. But the instant she entered the room, which was lit only by a cheap tabletop lamp standing on the floor in one corner, throwing knee-high parabolas of light onto the walls, she felt that same maternal stirring she’d felt the first time she’d seen this room.

  “This would make a nice nursery,” O’Leary said.

  Melissa flinched. Why would he say that? Did he feel the same vibe she felt? If the room had ever been a nursery, it hadn’t been one recently, given the advanced age of the current owner. Most childless people considering the purchase of this apartment would turn this room into a den or an office.

  But O’Leary saw it as a nursery. Just like her.

  “All right,” she said briskly, brushing past him as she bolted toward the doorway. She couldn’t stand in this room, this would-be nursery, with a man who saw it the way she did. She had no idea what O’Leary’s agenda was, but she was unnerved. If he hadn’t already riled her suspicions, his ability to identify the room as a nursery spooked her.

  She had to get back into the living room—someplace where the yearning to have a baby could fade away. No one wanted a baby in a living room.