Call Me Saffron (Greenpoint Pleasures)

by Talia Quinn

  I took shots from multiple angles, jotted down measurements, and got out of there. It wasn’t a suitable space anyway. Not enough light. Too narrow. Fine for a bookstore, where you could get lost in the stacks, but not good for a furniture store where the pieces had to glow with invitation and the promise of a good life.

  It was starting to drizzle as I walked to the subway. I hesitated before crossing Columbus. Dylan’s apartment was one block north. He wouldn’t be there, of course. He’d be at work.

  I walked to Central Park West in the rain and took the subway downtown. I didn’t get off at Thirty-Fourth Street to go back to the office, though. Instead, I stayed on the B all the way to Broadway-Lafayette. SoHo. Juniper Designs’ main office on West Broadway and Prince.

  I would show Dylan the photos in person. I wanted to see his face. Know where we stood. And maybe if I saw him, I’d know how I felt too.

  ~*~

  Juniper Designs was an open, airy space, with their signature furniture scattered around the large SoHo loft space. Dylan’s office was at the back, in the far right corner. Naturally.

  Dylan half-rose from his chair, then sat back down, making a sweeping gesture between me and the two other people in the room. “Beth, Fritz, this Sa—Samantha Lilly.” The stutter was so smoothly covered, nobody but me could possibly know he’d been about to say Saffron. “She’s a junior architect with Alvarez.”

  Beth, an elegant older woman perched on the low-slung modernist couch, gave me a look. Her narrow legs were tightly crossed and her gaze conveyed authority. “You’re working on the storefront?”

  “I just came from the Seventy-Second Street site. I thought you’d like to see.” I gestured with my pocket camera.

  Fritz held his hand out. He could have been Dylan’s older brother, with mussed dark hair and cheekbones so sharp they’d cut you if you came too close.

  I glanced at Dylan. He nodded, all business. So much for a tête-à-tête.

  “It would be better to view the images on the computer screen.” But I handed over the camera.

  Fritz thumbed through them fast, then handed the camera to Beth. Dylan came around the desk and looked over her shoulder. Nobody said a word.

  When they finished, Dylan handed the camera back to me. His fingers brushed against mine, sending a jolt of recognition through me. This touch. This man. Yes.

  His gaze caught mine briefly. The hunger was back but banked before he turned back to his colleagues with raised eyebrows. “Told you.” He crossed his arms and leaned back against the desk.

  Beth turned to me, her lips quirked. “I want to hear what our young architect thinks of the space.”

  Me? I looked at Dylan for help, but he wasn’t giving me anything. Some friend. “I’m only here dropping off the pictures.”

  “You don’t have an opinion?” Dylan’s voice was deceptively soft. “Unusual.” Yup, soft but with a hidden bite.

  You couldn’t get fired for having an unpopular opinion, could you?

  Of course you could. And though Fernando was currently amused with me, if I screwed things up with Juniper, I wouldn’t be so funny anymore.

  Still, I wasn’t going to prevaricate. “It would be a disaster. The light’s all wrong. It makes the space feel oppressive. And there’s no real freight entrance. To move furniture in and out, you’d have to reconfigure the back entirely, and I’m not sure you could get a variance for the freight entrance you’d need. The community board up there is prickly, I hear.”

  “So you’re saying it’s not a flexible space. It’s not open to change.” Dylan’s words definitely had a bite to them. Why? I thought we were friends. I thought Friday night brought us closer. What was this about? What did he expect from me? Open to change, what did that even mean?

  But I persevered as if we were talking about the potential storefront, not our personal lives. “There are better choices. Even if they’re not quite as convenient for you to roll out of bed and be in the showroom five minutes later.”

  Fritz and Beth gave me startled glances, and I realized my faux pas. There was no way some random underling at Alvarez would know where a top executive at Juniper lived.

  “I mean, I heard you live around there.”

  He gave me an approving look. “You heard right. But I wasn’t in favor of the site.”

  I exhaled, but quietly, so they couldn’t tell I’d felt my entire body go from DEFCON Five back to normal. Thank God. I hadn’t just killed my career.

  “So we find another space.” Beth turned to me. “Where do you suggest?”

  “I heard the big pharmacy on Eighty-Sixth is shutting its doors. There was some talk of Banana Republic moving in, but I don’t think it came to anything.”

  “Get up there, take some shots for us. Report back.” She turned to Dylan. “Now, about the Jurgen chair, here’s a mock-up, but I think it’s not going to work with the wood.” She tapped on her tablet screen and turned it to face him.

  Clearly dismissed, I turned to go, feeling perversely disappointed.

  ~*~

  I didn’t go back uptown to take more pictures. Dylan’s bossy compatriot could wait until tomorrow. I had other work to do, after all, and a job that didn’t involve all Dylan, all the time.

  Which didn’t make it easier to block the man from my thoughts. Back at my station at Alvarez and Associates, I chewed on the end of my mechanical pencil and stared at the Newark building drawings one more time. I’d managed to put in bathrooms and even doors this time, but it was flat and boring. An office complex like thousands of others. It needed curved wood, track lighting, warmth.

  I opened my email and wrote a note to Dylan. Are you angry at me?

  Two minutes later, my mail program chimed. Why would I be? You presented a clear case against the site.

  I responded. That crack about not being open to change.

  The response came sooner this time. This would be easier if I had your phone number.

  After everything, it seemed ridiculous that he didn’t have it. Who was I kidding? I gave him my phone number.

  My cell phone rang immediately. Rudy shot me a glance. I set my pencil down and answered, heading down the row of drafting tables toward the exit and that quiet spot by the elevator bank. “I just didn’t understand all the digs. I guess I don’t know where we stand now. Friend.”

  “Are we friends, then?”

  “You thought so Friday night. Or do you not remember?”

  “I’m a maudlin drunk. Completely untrustworthy. Friendship, as I know it, is an equal proposition. I spill, you spill. You comfort, I comfort. But you won’t allow that, or if you do, it’s for such a short moment, and then you pull back. You won’t let anyone in.”

  I leaned against the wall for support. Fernando walked past with a group of senior architects. They didn’t see me.

  I used to like to be invisible. I used to prefer it that way. What was happening to me?

  My phone beeped. Another call. I pulled the phone away from my ear to check. My aunt. She never called me. It must be important.

  “Can you hold on a second?”

  “Samantha.” He sounded exasperated.

  “I’ll be right back. I swear. I’m not running away.”

  I clicked over. “Aunt Margaret?”

  “He’s gone.”

  I blinked in confusion. Her five-year-old son, Colin? “When did you last see him? Did his school call you?”

  “School? What? No. Papa. Gramps.”

  I shook my head even though she couldn’t see me. “But he’s not that mobile, is he? Didn’t his nurse notice?”

  Her breath caught. “No. Gone. An hour ago. He had a stroke last night, and we brought him to the hospital. I was going to call you this morning, but…” She choked. “He’s gone. He’s just…gone.”

  I held the phone against my ear. Stood on pale blue tile, leaned against a cream-painted semigloss wall. Breathed.

  “But I talked to him a few days ago.” The night I didn’t meet
Dylan. The night I saw him at the Greenpoint Pleasures party. “A week and a half ago. He sounded fine.” Except that he didn’t. Confused, disoriented, distant.

  “I know. I know.”

  Oh God, I’d left Dylan hanging on the other line. “I have to go. I’ll call you later. I’ll come down tonight.”

  I switched back to Dylan. “I’m sorry. Where were we?”

  He was gone.

  I cradled the phone in my hand, staring at the elevator bank. Lit numbers ticking off floors. The closest elevator was stuck on the fourth floor. Maybe someone was having trouble getting on. Maybe an old person, someone who moved slowly.

  I pictured my grandfather’s wrinkled face, his thin lips, his eyebrows and the way they tilted up at the edges. Gone.

  ~*~

  Jeanine offered to drive down for the weekend with me. I told her I’d take Amtrak to Philadelphia on Tuesday and a bus out to my aunt’s house. Besides, I was fine. I hadn’t cried once.

  I was fine, by all objective measures. I ate, I slept, I took regular showers. My aunt Margaret put me to work writing Gramps’s obituary, calling the people she hadn’t yet told, and arranging for flowers and a buffet.

  And then came the funeral. I still didn’t cry, but I wasn’t okay anymore.

  The minister’s speech was short and to the point. Gramps would have liked it.

  As people got up and spoke about Gramps, they painted a portrait of a man I would have liked to have known. A man I caught glimpses of over the years. They said he loved woodworking. And yes, I remembered the way the power saw would shake the small house at seven a.m. on Saturday morning. They said he was passionate about current events. Yes, I remembered him cursing at the news every night religiously at eleven p.m. They said he was a devoted husband and father. I didn’t know what they meant by that.

  My eyes felt sandy. Dry.

  My aunt stood. Solemn in her ill-cut black suit, she made her way to the podium. “Pops was a good man who lost too much. When my mother died ten years ago, he withstood that like the stoic he was. But my sister’s death five years before that, it changed him. Made him pull into his shell like a turtle. He rarely laughed after Laura’s death, and hugged the rest of us less often. Still, though, he loved us in his way. As best as he was able. And he took my sister’s daughter into his home to raise.” She gestured toward me. “A kindness.”

  A kindness. She made me sound like some random waif, not family.

  I stood. I guess she assumed I was coming up to the podium to say a few words about the dearly departed, because she stepped away from the mic, making room. But I shook my head, feeling a buzzing in my ears. I felt dizzy.

  I walked down the aisle toward the door. People watched me go, then looked away as I caught their gazes.

  I opened the door to the vestibule, walked through, opened the outer door, and emerged outside. The cold air smacked my cheeks. I wrapped my arms around my torso and stared across the parking lot toward the bare fingers of the trees along the highway.

  I breathed deep of the cold air, sucked it in. It wasn’t enough. It didn’t clear my head, didn’t ease my heart.

  Without consciously thinking it through, I fished my phone out of my coat pocket.

  Dylan answered on the first ring.“Samantha. Do you have shots of the Eighty-Sixth Street location? You can email them to me.” He sounded curt. As cold as the sharp breeze now toying with my hair.

  “I’m not at work.”

  “Then why…?”

  “I didn’t call you back Monday because…” I exhaled a cloud of steam into the cold air. “Because my aunt was on the other line. She called to tell me my grandfather had died. And I thought about calling you after that, to let you know, but…”

  I could hear his breath catch. “I see. Yes. I do see.” He paused. “Are you—where are you from, anyway? Are you there?”

  “Pennsylvania. Half an hour west of Philadelphia.” I don’t know why I added that part. Next, I was going to give him directions. “The funeral is this morning. Now, in fact.”

  “You’re at the funeral?” His voice was a rumble in my ear. In my chest. A comfort.

  “It’s in the church. I’m on the front steps. They’re super white, like someone bleaches them once a week. The church is ultramodern, very clean. I don’t think my grandfather came here. He wasn’t into organized religion. That was more my grandmother’s thing. He said it was a lot of fuss and bother.”

  Dylan was quiet. I felt like I was talking to myself. “I should go.”

  “Back inside?”

  “I might miss the exciting part.” A coloratura’s ethereal aria rose from inside the church. “Too late.”

  “How are you doing with this? I mean, obviously you’re fine, because you always are. You were born that way.” The smile in his voice warmed me. “But this is not an easy thing. It would be okay not to be fine.”

  There was a huge pile of brown leaves along the nearest edge of the parking lot, the only evidence of anything organic in this immaculate setting. On impulse, I walked over to it. “I didn’t cry in there.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” It should have been a mean thing to say, but his tone was affectionate.

  “I shouldn’t have called. I’m sorry I interrupted your Saturday.”

  “I’m glad you did.” He hesitated. I could hear the almost-words. Then he said, “Why did you call me? And not your roommate, I mean. Or did you call her too?”

  I hadn’t even thought about calling her. “Just you.” When I reached the leaf pile, I stomped my foot down. The leaves crackled and settled underfoot. “I wanted you to know why I disappeared like that.” I kicked the pile, and a few leaves scattered. “Besides, we’re friends, aren’t we?”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Yes. We are.”

  I picked up a leaf. It was brittle. When I crumpled it in my palm, it turned to dust. “My grandfather liked woodworking. Like you, except he wasn’t as inventive. He made a violin once, though.”

  Dylan whistled. “That takes some skill. Did he play?”

  “Badly.” I smiled. I couldn’t help it. I could picture my grandfather, his white head bowed, perched on a stool in the den, running the bow against the violin strings in more of a caterwaul than a sustained musical note.

  “My grandfather played the accordion.”

  “Was he good?”

  “It sounds like a cat fight. No, more like cat gang warfare. Roving bands of cat bandits duking it out with the cops. So no. He wasn’t.” Dylan’s tone was intimate, amused. I relaxed for the first time since I’d gotten here.

  We kept talking, his voice a soothing anchor in this foreign yet familiar territory. I crushed leaves and walked the perimeter of the parking lot as we shared stories about our grandparents. Dylan told me about his father too. He’d learned woodcraft from him. They’d never talked much, but they’d worked side by side in the converted garage that served as his dad’s workshop, trading tools. When his father showed him how to hold the saw blade so it wouldn’t hurt him, or showed him the proper way to level a board, Dylan had felt closer to him than any other time.

  I thought about my grandfather, about his silences. He’d given me books. Old, dusty tomes with red leather binding, Robinson Crusoe and 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Adventure stories. I’d thought he was tacitly saying he wished I was a boy, but maybe not. Maybe that was his way of saying he loved me.

  I didn’t remember much about my father at all. I told Dylan this.

  “How old were you when he died?”

  “Seven. Old enough to have some memories, you’d think.”

  “Memory’s a funny thing.”

  We talked until the mourners started filing out of the church. I caught my aunt’s glare, visible across the large parking lot. I felt caught, like a schoolgirl ditching gym class to smoke in the recess yard.

  “I have to go. Funeral’s over. Thanks for listening.”

  “Any time. I’m…” He hesitated. “I’m glad you called.�
�

  “Me too.” And I was. Maybe Dylan could be my friend after all.

  I slipped the phone into my jacket pocket and smiled at my young cousin, Colin, who tackled my legs with great enthusiasm. “That was the boringest ceremony ever. How do we even know Gramps is in that box, anyway? Maybe they put another body in there instead of his, to fool us. Maybe he escaped and ran away.”

  I squeezed him. “Maybe so. Come on, let’s go give the unknown stranger a proper burial, shall we?”

  ~*~

  After a simple ceremony in a verdant cemetery, we returned to the house for a reception. My aunt put on classical music with a heavy violin section. Gramps would have approved.

  After everyone left, Margaret disappeared into the garage and came back with a cardboard box, not much larger than a shoe box. “If it’s too big to carry on the train, I’ll mail it to you. I kept some things, but as Laura’s daughter, I felt you should have some too.”

  When I got to the guest room, I opened the box. Then immediately closed it again.

  Then opened it to peek inside again.

  The box was filled with memorabilia. In that brief moment, I saw the handle of a carefully wrapped porcelain teacup I remembered her using. Letters written in spidery script on yellowed pages with embossed curlicues at the corners. A photo of me at age two curled in my mother’s lap. One of her at five, bare-assed as she ran along a narrow strip of beach.

  I closed it again and hugged it to my chest.

  The room felt claustrophobic. Dresser, nightstand, framed photograph of trees, white bedspread. It could have been a hotel room, it was so impersonal.

  There was a night train back to New York. I could be in Penn Station before midnight. Back to my funky patchwork quilt and my funky patchwork living room and my funky unconventional roommate. And if I thought of Dylan, imagined seeing him, that wasn’t the whole thing or the only thing or even a realistic thing. Mostly, I wanted to leave. To go back to my own life.

  I called a cab and left a note on the kitchen counter apologizing to Margaret. Telling her I’d call in a few days. Telling her to give the kids hugs for me.

  She’d been in college when I came to live with her parents. We’d never gotten to know each other, not really. Our lives were so different. She and Brian probably only did it in the missionary position. In the dark. Under the covers. With the door locked. She didn’t take risks, not ever. And she had no sense of humor.