Justin Kramon

by Finny (v5)

  When she came back, he was already dressed. He’d wiped the blood off his own face and had smoothed his hair. He was adjusting his belt, his shirt neatly tucked in. He was well aware of the fact that she wanted him to leave.

  “Thanks,” he said, coming over and kissing her on the cheek. “You were amazing.”

  He started toward the bedroom door. She knew she should have just let him go, but she couldn’t help saying, “You were a fucking asshole.”

  He stopped. He turned around and looked at her. She could see how easily his lust turned to anger, like a train switching tracks. He breathed deeply, and his eyes widened.

  But all he did was say to her, “You knew I didn’t have any business in Boston, right? When I saw you, I knew I could have my dick in you in ten minutes.”

  Then he turned back around and walked out the bedroom door. Finny heard him picking up his messenger bag in the hall, putting on his shoes, and then the slam of the front door as he left the apartment.

  Later that night, after she’d decided she couldn’t sleep, Finny went into her study and turned on the computer. She checked her email, and saw that she had a message from Earl Henckel in her inbox:

  Finny! I’m going to be in New York in September to do the reading for the book. It’s at the Barnes & Noble on St. Mark’s Place. I’ll give you details when it gets closer, but I know the date is the 19th. I’m bringing Mavis, and I hope you can bringBrad. Maybe we could all have dinner together afterward. Actually, it’ll be kind of a celebration, since I have some news: Mavis and I are planning to get married when we get back to Paris after the reading. I know this is kind of sudden, but we’ve just decided it ourselves. It’s going to be a courthouse wedding, no guests, since neither of us is into the idea of a big ceremony. Anyway, I’m really looking forward to seeing you, Finny, and will of course fill you in on all the details. And I’ll have your copy of the book all ready!

  She saw by the time on his email—8:17 A.M., six hours ahead of her—that he’d just written it. She knew that at this very moment he was sitting in Mona’s old apartment. She imagined him with his laptop and a cup of coffee at the breakfast table in the room Finny had shared with him all those years ago. It was Saturday morning, and sunlight was streaming through the little high window.

  Chapter36

  A Pleasant Evening

  Finny, her brother’s email began, what are you up to? How have you been? I feel like you dropped off the face of the earth. I haven’t talked to you in forever. Are you doing okay? Send me a smoke signal … … Sylvan

  She wrote back: I’m doing fine, Sylvan. Thanks for your concern. It’s been a tough summer since Mr. Henckel passed away. I just need some time to get moving again. I’ll call you soon.

  But he wouldn’t leave it at that. We have to get together before summer’s over, he wrote. I have two weeks with absolutely nothing to do. I was thinking I’d go up to New York one day. Why don’t you come down?

  After her evening with Brad, Finny hadn’t wanted to see anyone at all. She’d called Julie Fried and said thanks but she really couldn’t make the move now. Julie would see very soon how big a mistake Finny was, and then Finny would be out of a job in the most expensive city in the country. Brilliant.

  She couldn’t talk to anyone—especially the people she was closest to—about what had happened with Brad. That’s why she avoided Sylvan. And yet that evening occupied so much of her thoughts. Talking with Sylvan and not discussing it, she would have felt like she was lying. Plus, there was still the issue of Sylvan’s affair with Judith. A nagging itch.

  But when Finny didn’t respond right away to her brother’s email, he called her. And called her. And called her. Finally, in exasperation, she agreed to meet him one night for dinner in New York. He was bringing Mari, whom Finny hadn’t seen since college.

  In order to balance out the table, and so that Finny wouldn’t be subjected to her brother’s intense psychological scrutiny, she called Carter to ask if he’d be her date.

  “I won’t be expected to give you head, will I?” Carter asked.

  “Only if I buy you dessert,” Finny said, cringing at the memory of the untouched baked Alaska that had sat between her and Brad.

  “Well then,” Carter said, “in order to prevent such blatant exploitation, I propose we go to Garreth’s restaurant. We’ll be treated very well, and I’ll receive enough free food that I won’t be forced to compromise myself for a molten chocolate cake.”

  “Sounds good,” Finny said.

  “And by the way,” Carter said, “I bring news from the front.”

  “Which front?”

  “The silicone one.”

  “You really think Judith’s boobs are fake?” Finny said.

  “I was talking about Prince,” Carter said.

  So they all decided to meet at the restaurant where Garreth was a manager, in the bottom floor of a building off Washington Square Park. Finny took the bus down to have dinner with everyone, and then she planned to sleep on Carter and Garreth’s couch, which Carter said was upholstered in a dog-hair fabric.

  The restaurant was below street level, and when Finny walked into the bar, she could see pedestrians’ legs scissoring across the large amber-tinted windows. The room had about a dozen small brass-topped tables in it, like in a French bistro. On the walls hung portraits of famous female movie stars—Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Carole Lombard—in an art deco style. There were also reproductions of famous paintings like Klimt’s “The Kiss,” made out of small tiles fit together into a mosaic. Only one table in the room was filled: two older women sharing a pot of tea. Carter had said it would be empty: summers were slow, and they were eating early. It was only six.

  She found Garreth behind the large brass-railed bar with a synthetic marble counter. “He’ll be here in one second,” Garreth said about Carter. He had a pleasant, laid-back, almost sleepy way of talking, as if he’d known Finny for years. “I think he’s buying cigarettes at the Duane Reade. He does that a lot since he quit smoking. By the way, I love your hair.”

  “I’m thinking of growing it out,” Finny said.

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure I like the guys it attracts. You excluded, of course.”

  Garreth smiled. “Well, let me grab you a drink while you’re waiting.”

  “I’m not much of a drinker,” Finny said.

  “Which means you like fruity drinks,” Garreth said. “Something you could get sitting under a beach umbrella in Tulum, right?”

  “Sounds about right,” Finny said, happy to see that Garreth had a sense of humor. She didn’t think anyone could live with Carter without a sense of humor.

  Garreth poured half a dozen ingredients into a shaker with ice, put the cap on, and then gave the whole thing a vigorous shake. He poured it into a chilled martini glass with a lime on the rim. The drink was a deep red, almost burgundy, color.

  “What is it?” Finny asked.

  “It’s a goddamn travesty,” Carter said from the doorway of the bar. The two women drinking tea looked in his direction, frowned, then went back to their tea. Carter was dressed in a bright yellow button-down shirt that reminded Finny of his yellow Ship Shape shirt. The color didn’t sit particularly well on Carter. It made him look sallow, and a little puffy. “I don’t even see how you can call that a martini,” he went on about the drink, walking into the room.

  “And what are you having?” Garreth asked Carter.

  “Cranberry and soda,” Carter grumbled.

  Garreth poured Carter’s drink into a martini glass, placing an inordinate amount of fruit—cherries and orange wedges, even a disk of green apple—on the rim. Then he passed the drink to Carter, who smelled richly of cigarette smoke.

  “Very funny,” Carter said. “I’m glad you take pleasure in the spectacle you’ve made of me. You’re carting me around like your goddamn lobotomized grandmother.”

  “Just eat your orange and I might let you play with the soda gun,” Garreth
said.

  Finny laughed, enjoying the coolheaded way Garreth responded to Carter’s bluster.

  In a few minutes Sylvan and Mari walked in. Carter got up from his bar stool and gave them both a kiss. Finny could tell her brother felt a little odd getting kissed by a man, but he bore it admirably. Only a slightly stiff expression on his face betrayed his discomfort. Mari, on the other hand, looked thrilled to see Carter.

  “You look great!” she said to him.

  “I look like Orson Welles at an all-you-can-eat buffet,” Carter said. “But thank you for the thought.”

  Finny got up, and there were more hugs and greetings. Everyone said how much they liked Finny’s short haircut. Carter introduced Garreth. The two women with the tea seemed irritated by all the commotion, and one of them began waving her finger for the check and calling, “Yoo-hoo, yoo-hoo,” to Garreth.

  “I love when they do that,” Garreth whispered to Finny. “Don’t ever get old.”

  She asked him how much she owed him for the drink, since it looked like Carter was heading to a table, and Garreth waved Finny off. “On me,” he said, and went to attend to the tea women. “What can I do for you ladies?” he asked them, grinning, suddenly cheerful, and Finny could see why he made a good manager.

  Carter picked out a table in the back corner, beneath the portrait of Marlene Dietrich. He and Sylvan sat on the cushioned bench that stretched all the way down the wall, and Finny and Mari took the chairs opposite them. They had the room to themselves. Soon the night bartender took over for Garreth, who had gone into the main dining room. Some rock music came on in the speakers above them, and a man’s voice began to sing. Several appetizers arrived at the table before they’d even ordered: fresh guacamole and chips, fried calamari, a baked flat bread with sausage and cheese on it.

  “He takes care of me,” Carter said to Finny.

  “I can tell,” Finny said.

  They all caught up for a few minutes about their lives. It was still bright outside the amber windows. Carter pointed out the flower arrangement he’d done for the window by the bar, which was full of sunflowers and purple lilacs, a cheerful summery look. The bartender was busy making drinks for the restaurant. The music cycled through a mix of eighties pop and jazz and soul. Finny noticed that Mari watched Sylvan when he talked, the way she’d watched Carter at Judith’s party, where Finny had first met her. Mari barely took her eyes off Finny’s brother, who seemed to enjoy the attention. When he talked about his work, she nodded and encouraged him. Finny thought it was sweet. And she knew her brother needed someone like that, who hung on his every word. Mari had grown into a plain-looking woman, with a wide, flat Midwestern face. She was, in fact, from Michigan, and she’d attended Columbia with Judith and Prince. She’d met Carter since he’d hung around the drama-and English-major crowd while he was acting and catering in the city. Mari had a straightforward, quiet, unadorned way of speaking about herself, and she wasn’t vain at all. What a difference from Judith, Finny thought, and she wondered if that could be the reason her brother liked her. Because she was safe.

  “So you’ll be interested to know, Finny,” Sylvan said as they were starting a bottle of wine, waiting for their entrées to come out, “that a friend of yours stopped by during my summer office hours.”

  “Who?” Finny said.

  “You remember Dorrie Kibler?” Sylvan said.

  “Really? Why did she come by?” Finny asked.

  “I didn’t even realize she was your roommate until we’d been talking for a minute, and I remembered you mentioning her. When I told her who I was, her mouth literally dropped open.”

  “Isn’t there some sort of patient confidentiality agreement?” Carter asked. Finny realized he must have been seeing a shrink.

  “Normally, yeah,” Sylvan said. “But she didn’t come in as a patient. She was just visiting the school, and she decided to drop by. She wanted to thank us. Or rather, to thank you, Finny.”

  “Thank me?” Finny said.

  “She said she had lunch with you when she was pregnant, in college, and she admitted to you how scared she was. She said you were really supportive, and you listened to her, and didn’t judge. It got her thinking that maybe that’s what she needed—someone to listen. So she started coming to psych services at Stradler, not telling anyone. As you know, she had the baby. But maybe what she didn’t tell you was that she ended up divorcing the guy she was with—Steven, I think—when she graduated. She’s bringing the kid up on her own now. She got another degree in chemistry or something, and she’s working on a big paper about proteins in mice. Anyway, she’s doing well. She just wanted to say what a difference it made to have people who listened to her. That her life is much bigger than it ever would have been without that.”

  “Wow,” Finny said. “Who would have thought? I assumed she’d be popping out little Steven Benches for the next twenty years.”

  “Those little moments can make a huge difference,” Sylvan said, and Mari nodded. The music in the bar had switched over to a French singer with a light, breathy voice. It was pleasant, though it reminded Finny of her time in Paris, which always brought some sadness. Two college-age boys had come in and were sitting at the bar, talking to the bartender. One of them wore a corduroy hat and jacket and had some scruffy facial hair, and the other was wearing a full tuxedo with a cummerbund. They seemed to be the bartender’s friends.

  “Well,” Carter said, “since we’re on the topic of people leaving people, I have some news that I think this crowd will appreciate.”

  The food runner arrived with their plates and set them down in front of everyone. Finny had ordered a short rib dish. The meat had been braised in wine, and it was tender and rich and brightly flavored, better than anything she’d had during her eighty-five-dollar dinner with Brad. It put her in mind of the sorts of dinners she hoped to have from now on, the people she wanted to enjoy them with. “This is amazing,” Finny said.

  “See why I’m so fat?” Carter said.

  “Anyway,” Finny said, “you were saying?”

  “Yes,” Carter said, “I was saying. To make a long story short, Judith left Prince.”

  Sylvan’s knife slipped out of his hand, clattering on his plate. They all turned toward him, and his cheeks flushed. “Sorry,” he muttered. Mari patted his arm.

  “Are you serious?” Finny said.

  “She’s camped out at the beach house,” Carter went on. “Prince is at the apartment in the city. I think she’s really serious about it. She says she’s getting her stuff together to go back to school for English. She wants to get her Ph.D.”

  “I really can’t believe it,” Finny said. “I figured she’d be taking his abuse as long as Dorrie was having Steven Bench’s babies.” She noticed Sylvan had stopped chewing and was staring at Carter. Mari had a polite smile on her face. “What do Judith’s parents think?” Finny asked.

  “They’re not happy,” Carter said. “According to Judith, her mom isn’t talking to her. And her dad is useless. He’s always been. He tells Judith he’ll talk to her mom, and then he promises her mom he won’t talk to Judith. He’s about as effective as a glass of cranberry juice.”

  Finny smiled at that. “So what was it? What made the change?”

  “It was that weekend,” Carter said. He turned to Mari and explained, “We witnessed the newest season of Guiding Light at Judith’s house over Memorial Day weekend.”

  “I heard from Sylvan,” Mari said, and Finny wondered exactly how much her brother had told her. She saw how dedicated Mari was to Sylvan, and she couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for her, for the disappointments she was sure to face. Finny heard the boy in the tuxedo at the bar saying, “You really fucked me over,” and the boy in the corduroy cackling at him, then coughing a rattly smoker’s cough.

  “Anyway,” Carter said, “that fight and then the thing with the photos just pushed it over the top. They didn’t talk to each other the rest of the weekend. Judith stayed in the room wi
th me. By the way, thank you for leaving me in such comfortable circumstances, Finny Short.”

  “Finny had a lot to attend to,” Sylvan said.

  “I know, I know,” Carter said. “I’m just joking. I’m really sorry about your friend, by the way.”

  “Thanks,” Finny said.

  “The whole weekend kind of opened her eyes,” Carter said. “She told me she saw what she’d been missing in her life with Prince.”

  Sylvan looked at the table. He had the same stiff expression on his face as when Carter had kissed him.

  “You should call her,” Carter said to Finny. “I think it would mean a lot. I get the sense she’s really trying to make amends. I can feel for her on that one. She wants to see you and Sylvan when she’s back on her feet.”

  “Did you know any of this?” Finny asked Sylvan.

  Sylvan shook his head. “It’s new to me,” he said.

  Later, when they were finishing dinner and the light was fading outside the amber windows, Carter went into the dining room to talk to Garreth. Mari got up to use the bathroom. The boys had left the bartender alone again, and the music had switched back to some piano jazz.

  “Sylvan,” Finny said when she and her brother were alone. She knew she was a little drunk, but she also knew she had to talk to Sylvan now about Judith. “I saw Judith coming out of your room that night. It was late and I heard something in the hall—”

  But her brother started shaking his head. “I had a feeling,” he said. “Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?”

  “No—” Finny started to say. But she couldn’t say any more. Because of course he was right. He knew her too well.

  “Listen,” Sylvan said, and reached across the table to grab Finny’s arm. He pulled her toward him, a little forcefully, and Finny almost yelled at him to stop. She could tell he was drunk, too, and she worried he would say something he’d regret. But when she leaned forward to speak, he cut her off. “You’re totally wrong about what you think happened,” he whispered. “I’m going to tell you the truth very quickly, before everyone gets back, and I don’t want to say anything more about it. Judith came into my room and took off her clothes. She figured I’d jump in bed with her the second I saw her naked. And trust me, Finny, I wanted to. I know you don’t want to hear this from your brother, but you don’t know what it’s like for a man to have a woman like Judith standing naked in front of him. It’s painful. She started telling me all the kinky things she did with Prince, trying to get me excited. I could tell it was a power thing, like she wanted to prove the hold she still had over me. But I started to feel sorry for her, Finny. I saw how sad and desperate she was, and how much Prince had hurt her. And that’s what kept me from sleeping with her. I just felt sad. I told her to leave. So she wrapped herself up and went. I didn’t know she saw you. She wouldn’t have told me that.”