The Love Book

by Nina Solomon

  “Give me your number,” he said. “Maybe we can hang out sometime.”

  Like she needed another son. Zach and Charles were enough.

  When she came out of the locker room, a man with dark shoulder-length wavy hair and a scruffy beard was doing squats on the Smith machine. He’d angled the bench in such a way that it was blocking the exit. Like most regulars, he had his never-ever-changing routine. First, he’d preen in front of the mirror; his daily adulations complete, he’d regretfully tear himself away for an hour of heavy lifting; thirty minutes on the recumbent bike with the newspaper; hit the mats for his own version of a Bulgarian stretching routine; then shower and change out of his singlet and back into his ubiquitous three-piece suit. She didn’t know what to make of him. In Manhattan, he could just as easily be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company or underemployed. She’d been to enough church sales to know that princes and beggars could be standing side by side, scouring the week’s inventory. More likely the latter, as she’d once overheard him haggling with the sales manager about an increase in his membership dues.

  When she squeezed past him, he stared right through her without blinking as if she weren’t even there.

  * * *

  The days were getting shorter. The sky was now the same slate gray as the sidewalks and it had turned chilly. Emily left the gym and walked down Broadway, past familiar stores like the Town Shop—a lingerie store that had been there for over a century, with its iconic pink sign—and various chain and box stores that seemed to have popped up overnight. With fewer and fewer exceptions, the whole neighborhood was beginning to look like a strip mall. The restaurants and bookstores that used to line this stretch of the Upper West Side when she was growing up were now as much memories as the places her grandparents used to wax nostalgic about: Gitlitz, Bloom’s Bakery, the Automat on Seventy-second Street, Schwartz Candy where women in white aprons and hats made homemade chocolates, nonpareils, and fudge. She was thinking how much she wished things didn’t have to change—she wanted there to be some continuity for Zach—when she realized she was standing in front of Barnes & Noble again, right where she and Zach’s math teacher had their run-in. Poor Zach. He said Kenneth had been picking on him all week. She dreaded going back to an empty apartment and the blank computer screen. Her editor was right: her article had no point of view.

  Her cell phone rang. As she was searching for it in her gym bag, an older couple passed by, arm in arm, laughing. They were probably in their early seventies, a little older than Beatrice. They stopped to look at the display of books. On the phone, Zach was telling her about the paintball party he’d gone to that morning. She probably wouldn’t have noticed the couple except that they were so colorfully and exquisitely and deliberately dressed, like a nineteenth-century painting. Though she couldn’t hear them speak, she knew they were definitely not American.

  The woman was tall and thin, with aristocratically stooped shoulders. She wore a knotted green turban, a lavender blouse with a huge collar under a fitted brocade jacket with a peplum, a long silk skirt with splashes of green and red and peacock blue, and blue suede ankle-strap shoes. Her fine gray hair had a hint of purple. She wore no makeup except for magenta lipstick and a dusting of powder on her translucent skin. Her companion was her complement, in pink trousers, a blue blazer, and an orange bow tie, with a shock of wavy white hair and a full beard.

  Standing next to this Technicolor couple, Emily felt as though she and the rest of the city were in black and white. It wasn’t just the couple’s artfully put together attire, or the way the woman smiled as the man pulled her close—the way Emily imagined they must have done hundreds of times—it was their vibrancy, their joyful spirit that eclipsed everything around them. Emily had been staring at their reflection so intently that she hadn’t noticed that her own reflection was superimposed on the poster of The Love Book in the window.

  Perhaps it was something about the sight of this perfectly in-sync couple, but whatever it was, she knew exactly what she needed to do to make her article work. It wasn’t a sudden epiphany. The solution just came to her as if it had been there all along. After she and Zach hung up, she turned back to the couple, but they were gone. The streets were once again dull and colorless, just shades of gray, and she felt a sense of loss, though for what, she didn’t know.

  * * *

  Beatrice was at the Victory Café on North Pearl Street with Bob and Mary, two former colleagues who kept her up-to-date with the internecine goings-on at the DA’s office, and who also enjoyed a good single malt. Beatrice had retired last May with full benefits. She loved her job but it had begun to take its toll. She’d worked with victim advocates for thirty years and had prosecuted enough First Street Goonies, Second Avenue Goonies, Crips, Bloods, and SBOs for several lifetimes.

  Bob and Mary were making fun of her for bringing her own bike to Normandy and being, as the tour guide had referred to her, such a poule de luxe, which at the time she thought meant deluxe chicken, but later discovered was another name for a high-class prostitute. She wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or offended. She believed in the rights of sex workers, but knew Bob and Mary weren’t quite so enlightened.

  It was true; she hadn’t been the easiest of traveling companions—one thing Beatrice had never been called was easy. She’d tried to be a good sport, but after an entire day biking around Rouen and environs, when they arrived by van at the place they were supposed to stay for their last night of the tour, she’d pretty much lost it. She was tired and looking forward to a nice lunch, relaxing by the pool, and turning in early. So when she saw the tumbledown brick cottage with a trellis of bare branches on an overgrown patch of land, she knew it would have neither room service nor a heated swimming pool.

  “What exactly do you mean, self-catering?” she’d inquired of the tour guide. “We have to cook?”

  Because of a “small” miscommunication when the cottage, an old Norman farmhouse, had been rented, there was no cook or housekeeper as advertised, only two small bedrooms, a god-awful outhouse, and a “scenic” view of the largest hedge maze in the area, to which Beatrice said, “Oh great, we can get lost in some old bushes!”

  Bob and Mary were sitting on the opposite side of the booth. For some reason they weren’t finding her story about saving Emily, Max, and Cathy at the auberge during the deluge as amusing as she’d thought they would.

  “You should have seen the look on their faces when the aubergiste threatened to call the gendarmes,” Beatrice said. “They were shivering like sopping little mutts. It was très amusant!” She finished her scotch. “I guess you had to be there. Well, what are you waiting for? Isn’t anyone going to order another round?”

  Bob took a deep breath. “Beatrice, Mary and I—”

  “Oh, please, not again. Save your breath. We’ve been over this before. What do I always tell you?”

  “Bea—”

  “Come on, Bob, you should have this part down by now.”

  “You were the best DA in Albany, probably the state. No one’s disputing that. We just think it’s time for you to consider cutting down.”

  “Have you forgotten that I rarely lost a case and could argue circles around the other prosecutors? Still could. Loosen up, Buster Brown. You’re being a real downer. Are you going to drop this, or should I just get the check now?”

  “We’re your friends, Bea,” Bob said. “We care about you.”

  “If you really cared about me, you wouldn’t try to change me.”

  “Beatrice Callahan, you’re a stubborn old—”

  “Old?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I think I do.”

  “I’m sorry, that came out wrong.”

  “Words matter,” she said.

  “We’re just worried about you. You know it’s been a good ten years since Albert—”

  “If I were you I’d stop right there,” Beatrice said.

  Bob was about to continue, but Mary touched him lightly o
n the arm and he sat back. He always gave up too easily in court and in bed; surprising, since she’d trained him.

  “Okay, Bea, if you’re sure.”

  She laughed. “You know I always am,” she said, hoping it sounded convincing.

  They had their usual cheesecake and Irish coffee, but the conversation from then on was stiff.

  “Zut alors! Where did the time go? You kids should be heading home. It’s a school night,” Beatrice said, though it wasn’t even nine.

  Bob helped her on with her coat and offered to drive her home, but Beatrice told him the night air would do her good. She turned her cheek when he tried to kiss her. She wasn’t about to get in his car after he’d accused her of being a lush.

  It was a half-mile walk down Sheridan Avenue to Lark Street in Center Square, where she lived on the first and parlor floors of a nineteenth-century row house. She’d lived in the landmarked Albany neighborhood since getting her first job out of law school. But tonight she was distracted and got a little disoriented, eventually finding herself in an area she didn’t recognize. The streets were deserted. The further she went, the more unfamiliar the area became. She thought of the hedge maze at that ramshackle farmhouse and getting lost in the thicket of branches past nightfall. Beatrice had stayed with Cathy, who’d grown more anxious the deeper into the maze they went. Beatrice had thought the maze would be a snap, child’s play, like the corn mazes she and her cousins used to run through on Halloween when they were children. The first one out got a hayride.

  But the hedges on either side of them on that last night in Normandy were ten feet high and impenetrable. Every route, every path, brought them to another dead end, but she’d never let on that she didn’t know the way. She was the brave one. The one everyone leaned on. The one who never admitted she was hurt, or lonely, or afraid, or had had too much to drink.

  In the distance, she heard a series of pops. Gangbangers. Why hadn’t she taken Bob’s offer to drive her home?

  * * *

  Emily held out until 9 p.m. before giving in to her craving for black-and-white cookies. The deli guy recognized her voice and all he asked was, “How many?” She ordered two fewer than she really wanted, along with a quart of soy milk, as though that could make it seem like she was a health-minded person. The subterfuge to hide her cookie habit was getting expensive. She didn’t need any more soy milk; she didn’t even like soy milk. Charles would have a fit if he knew she was planning on pouring it down the drain.

  Her friend the editor had been very enthusiastic when she’d called and told him the new angle for her article, a soul mate experiment. She’d be the guinea pig and “do” The Love Book, apply the soul mate–seeking techniques in her own life, record every encounter with anyone of the male species, and then report on her findings, e.g., after eleven weeks, did she find The One? How much more personal could it get?

  The buzzer rang and Kalman, the doorman, escorted the delivery guy upstairs. Emily handed him a fifty but he didn’t have change.

  “I think I can break it,” Kalman said. He reached into his wallet and pulled out some bills along with a business card. “Did I tell you I work at a martial arts school?”

  Last week Dominic, the other part-time doorman, had given her a coupon for salsa lessons at the dance studio where he taught. They must think she was the loneliest tenant in the building.

  When she called to say goodnight to Zach, Clarissa answered his cell phone.

  “Can I talk to Zach, please?”

  “Zach’s busy.”

  “Tell him to call me before he goes to bed.”

  “You already spoke to him twice today. Give the kid a break, Emily. I studied social work. He doesn’t need to talk to you every five minutes.”

  “He’s my son,” she said, but Clarissa had already hung up.

  A little after midnight, she was reading the introduction to The Love Book when her phone beeped. It was Christophe. With more cookies. She closed the book. Tonight was off the record.

  * * *

  Getting lost in a neighborhood she’d lived in for over forty years had sobered Beatrice up, but not enough that, without taking off her coat, she didn’t immediately pour herself a snifter of brandy when she got home. She’d been an insomniac for ages, probably since Albert had died ten years ago, though things were getting a little blurry these days. She reread the email she’d gotten from Cathy that morning. Poor kid, she thought. A blue chat box suddenly appeared on the side of her computer screen accompanied by what sounded like air bubbles.

  It was Emily: Did you get Cathy’s invite?

  This instant-messaging stuff wasn’t Beatrice’s thing. She’d rather pick up the phone. They were both up, after all.

  Yes, got the book too.

  I was hoping we could beg off.

  Beatrice was surprised by Emily’s insensitivity. Well, she supposed on the Upper West Side it wasn’t fashionable to extend yourself to those in need, unless it came with a tax deduction.

  It wouldn’t be nice, Emily. After everything Cathy’s been through, first with her father in the hospital and now the fire.

  Fire???

  Beatrice had passed on the news to the other women on the bike trip right after she’d heard. Hadn’t she? She checked her sent mail. Oops! Well, she’d certainly meant to.

  Cathy’s house burned down yesterday morning.

  To the ground?

  Well, maybe not to the ground, but enough for her to have to move in with her old man.

  There was silence. A long silence. The cursor blinked in waiting. A very pregnant pause. Had Emily fallen asleep? Some people can’t deal with the ups and downs of life. They hide their heads in the sand instead of facing reality. Emily needed a wake-up call. There was no reason for her to punish herself forever. So she fudged her way out of her marriage. That wasn’t an actionable offense. Not that Beatrice would wish unhappiness on anyone, but if anyone could use a real tragedy to put things in perspective, it was Emily.

  Finally a ping. Emily was alive!

  That’s awful. Gotta run! I’m getting another call.

  Hmmph. Isn’t that rich!

  * * *

  The next morning, Emily was in the kitchen making two cups of coffee in the French press when the front door opened and Zach walked in. He was wearing his blue-and-white soccer uniform.

  “Zach!” she said surprised. “What are you doing here?” She glanced at the closed bedroom door then gave him a hug.

  He wriggled out of her arms and went to the closet. “I need my cleats. Dad’s waiting.”

  She’d forgotten all about Zach’s Sunday-morning soccer league. “I’m sorry, I should have packed them.”

  “They’re not here.”

  “They should be in there somewhere,” she told him. “Let me help.”

  “Zach, are you coming?” Charles called out, opening the door and surveying the apartment, to his obvious dismay. “Nice housekeeping.”

  “Here they are,” she said. When she closed the closet door, Christophe’s gym jacket fell off its hanger.

  “You have to be kidding,” Charles said. “Clarissa was right: you have a revolving-door policy.”

  “Charles, please, not in front of Zach.”

  “Come on, Zach, we’re going to be late for your game.”

  “What time will you be dropping him off?” she asked.

  “We’ll see.”

  “Next time it would be nice if you called to tell me you’re coming over.”

  “Next time don’t forget his cleats.”

  She gave Zach a quick kiss. “Have a good game, sweetie. I’m making chicken strips for dinner.”

  “I had chicken yesterday,” he said, sounding a little bit like Charles.

  “I love you.”

  “Bye, Mom.”

  “Bye . . . I love you.”

  She watched from the window as Zach and Charles crossed the street and headed toward the park. She’d forgotten to give him a juice box. The next weekend Zach
was with Charles, she’d ignore any calls from Christophe . . . or from anyone, for that matter.

  CHAPTER SIX

  INCREDIBLE OEDIPAL

  BEATRICE WAS ON THE PETER PAN BUS wearing a floppy blue hat with polka dots, a short black knit dress, and sandals, on her way to the Black River Wildlife Preserve. Libby, her roommate from Holyoke, had arranged for them to have horseback riding lessons. She’d specifically told Beatrice to wear boots with a heel, but sandals were Beatrice’s footwear of choice all year long—she hated to be constrained—and if the horse knew what was good for it, they’d be just fine.

  Beatrice was not a horse person, by any stretch. But next month she and Libby were going to Montana to celebrate mutual friend Rob Roy’s seventieth birthday. At a dude ranch of all places! And Libby thought they should at least know how to get on a horse. Luckily, Beatrice had planned ahead and brought provisions for a picnic lunch: duck confit, crusty bread, and a half bottle of Merlot, so all would not be lost. No creamed corn and American cheese sandwiches from the concession stand for her.

  She reached into her straw tote bag for the latest Stephanie Plum novel. She had a friend in publishing who kept her well supplied with advance copies. She’d been chomping at the bit to read this latest installment of the Jersey girl turned super sleuth, but instead of the juicy mystery novel, she’d mistakenly packed The Love Book, which fell out of her hands when she touched it, like a hot potato.

  A man in the seat across from her, a not unfriendly looking man, dressed all in khaki and wearing a large-brimmed mesh hat as if about to embark on a safari, leaned over, picked up the book, glanced at the title, and handed it to her. He smiled, obviously wanting to engage her, but Beatrice ignored him, opening the book and pretending to read. Unfortunately, the book opened right to the chapter entitled “Clitorally Speaking.” She quickly flipped to a more innocuous section on forgiveness called “Pardonnez-Moi.” A moment later, Safari Man leaned across the aisle and tapped her on the shoulder.