by Devan Sipher
“Don’t give your life to this place,” she said, pointing a bony finger at me. “It will suck you dry and feast on your sinew.” She seemed less a scrappy newswoman than an Old Testament prophet as she rose unsteadily to her feet.
“Renée, do you want me to take you to a hospital?” I asked, alarmed by both her warning and her wobbling.
She shook her head slowly with a melancholy gaze. “The problem with loving a newspaper is it can’t love you back.”
With Renée’s words reverberating in my brain, I paid the taxi driver and dashed toward the columned portico of a beaux arts townhouse. I had one goal: to find Melinda. I had no idea what I was going to say to her, but doing my best Stuart Smalley imitation, I silently affirmed that I was good enough, I was smart enough and my best chance of winning her over was while I still had a job. An elderly security guard was standing in front of the massive carved door, nonchalantly smoking a cigar.
“Where’s the fire?” he asked as I ran up the front steps.
“I’m a little late,” I said, trying to get by him.
“The party started at eight,” he said. “At eight fifteen you were a little late. At nine thirty, you’re early for Thanksgiving.” A real character. Just my luck. And he wasn’t budging.
“I’m here as a reporter for The Paper,” I said, pulling out my notepad.
“I thought they did everything on computers these days,” he said, taking another puff on his cigar. “You sure you’re a real reporter?”
“That’s what it says on my paycheck.” I was impatient to get inside.
“Well, then, you can’t be working for The Paper. They don’t have any money left to pay people.” He grinned, enjoying himself at my expense while purposefully blocking the doorway. He looked to be in his seventies with an impressive thatch of white hair and the stance of a former prizefighter eager to prove he could still go mano a mano. “So is every fancy-shmancy party considered news these days?”
“Only the shmanciest,” was my flippant response as I considered crawling between his legs. He erupted in a fit of phlegmy coughs. I wasn’t sure if he was choking or laughing.
“You better get inside,” he said. “There could be a breaking story on the tortellini.”
He pushed open the door, revealing a grand expanse of limestone walls and marble floor, with society types sipping from crystal goblets and a jazz trio playing in a corner. I navigated through the sea of mingling guests, looking for Melinda, but my height was working against me as I tried to peek over padded shoulders and French twists. At the far end of the room, an ornate winding stairway swept upward, and I headed toward it for a bird’s-eye view.
“Gavin, we missed you at dinner.” It was Genevieve, descending like the plague. I pivoted my head from side to side, scanning the room for the one face I was seeking. “The mayor already left, but he said you can call him for a quote.”
“I’ll do that,” I said while maneuvering around her, but she hooked her arm through mine and guided me back down the stairs as she whispered forcefully in my ear.
“Now, you didn’t hear this from me, but the mayor has promised to endorse Alexander for city council next year.”
“Alexander’s running for councilman?” It was the first I had heard of it.
“He didn’t want to throw too much at Melinda all at once, but she’s going to be a wonderful asset for him.” I bristled, though Genevieve didn’t seem to notice. “Not only for the council race,” she continued. “You may not know this, but my great-grandfather was governor and two uncles were state senators. It’s sort of a family business.”
She was steering me toward a solitary socialite standing at the bar. I cranked my neck so far around, I feared I was going to pull a muscle. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flurry of activity among a group of people near the base of the stairs. The waters parted, so to speak. Melinda emerged and ascended in a red wrap dress that caressed each curve even more than the black strapless one I had imagined.
“Gavin.” Genevieve tugged impatiently on my arm. “I want to introduce you to Libby Rockefeller.”
At The Paper, the rule was there was no difference between a Rockefeller and a Rastafarian, but that didn’t mean it was ever advantageous to be rude to one of the former. Yet even saying hello would obligate me to endure chitchat while Melinda disappeared, so I deployed the strategy I learned from a foreign correspondent I had briefly dated.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I’m just getting over a tapeworm infestation and need to find a restroom.” While Genevieve shuddered, I fled.
There were several people standing on the second-floor landing, but Melinda wasn’t one of them. I poked my head into the nearest room. It was the kind of oak-paneled library I had only seen in movies, with antique leather club chairs, Tiffany lamps and thousands of hardcover books.
“Thinking of buying the place?” Alexander thumped me on the back, startling me.
“Your parents have a beautiful home,” I jabbered.
“Thanks, but my parents’ brownstone is a fisherman’s shack compared to this place. No, this is Melinda’s home.”
I had been to Melinda’s home and still had the bruises to prove it. “I thought she lived on the Upper West Side,” I said.
“You know how some kids put up tents in their backyard to feel like they’re roughing it? Melinda’s apartment sort of serves the same purpose. This is where she grew up. Her bedroom’s down the hall, and she hasn’t changed it since she was in high school.”
I was a little dizzy. I flopped into one of the chairs, wondering how much I didn’t know about her.
“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” Alexander sat opposite me. “When I realized who she was, I almost shit in my pants. There I was on this plane to Madrid, sitting next to the Altman department store heiress. Beautiful and loaded.” I knew I was focusing on the wrong point, but my first thought was that Altman was a Jewish name.
“You asked me how I decided to blow off my conference and drive to Barcelona.” Alexander leaned in toward me. “The only question for me was whether I should drive or take a plane. I wasn’t going to let her have a chance to meet any other man. Ever. I mean, only an idiot would let a woman like Melinda get away. Right?”
“There he is!” A thickish thirtysomething guy with an anorexic twentysomething spouse burst into the room. “Alexander, we have to take off.”
Alexander jumped to his feet, and the two men pounded each other’s backs. “You’re not staying for dessert?”
“Do I look like I need dessert?”
I wandered out of the room and down the hall, my mind reeling. Melinda was an heiress, and I was a fool. Not because she was an heiress. Because I let her get away. I should have grabbed hold of her on that rooftop and vowed eternal devotion. No, I should have just kissed her. How could one mistake keep boomeranging back to haunt me? Oh, that’s right—because I chose to put myself in a situation where I’d be forced to deal with it over and over. I could hear Hope’s voice in my head, berating me.
I passed a half-open doorway and caught a glimpse of a pink coverlet on a canopied bed. I leaned against the door, and it swung open. I told myself I didn’t belong there. I vowed to start making better choices—as soon as I took a quick look around. There were volleyball trophies, a poster for a school play and two framed pictures on a white bureau: a young girl on a man’s shoulders, and the same girl sharing a milk shake with a woman who looked a lot like a darker-haired version of Melinda. I heard a floorboard creak and hastily turned round with a guilty expression on my face.
Melinda was standing in the doorway, her Bacall-esque silhouette backlit by a hallway chandelier. “I’m on to you,” she said.
There were so many problematic ways she could have meant that. I was at a loss for how to respond. She flipped on a light switch and eased into the room. I could swear I heard her shimmering dress gliding along her skin.
“I saw Gawker today,” she said, reminding me of one of the day’s man
y events I was attempting to forget. “You’ve gone to the dark side, and I don’t mean Fox News.” Her dimples made a brief appearance. “Here I thought you were the last romantic.”
Was she flirting?
“I am,” I assured her, launching a charm offensive with what I hoped was an irresistibly disarming smile. “Well, not the last, I hope.”
She laughed. “Then what’s with the divorce blog?”
“It’s not a divorce blog.”
“Whatever it is, it sounds ghoulish. Like ambulance chasing. Where are you going to find people willing to talk on the record about their marriages breaking up?”
“Some people belong together and some people don’t,” I said meaningfully. “For those who belong together, getting married is an amazing experience, but for others, going their separate ways can also be a happy event.”
“That’s not what most brides want to hear.” Her face flushed, and she turned away from me.
What the hell was I doing talking to her about divorce at her engagement party? I changed the subject. “So, this house is where you grew up?” I asked.
“Hardly,” she said, still facing away. “I grew up in a six-hundred-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side. My father was what one could call a very stubborn man.” Her fingers lightly grazed the top of the picture frame. “My grandfather took me in after he died.”
Good one, Gavin. Take the conversation from divorce to death. “I think this bedroom might be six hundred square feet.”
She laughed again. “I think you’re right. It’s a bit much. When I was young, I used to think my grandparents lived in a foreign kingdom. Even though it was only a few miles away. We would visit for holidays, and I felt like a fairy-tale princess with velvet dresses and silk pajamas.” She curled her fingers around a bedpost and swung girlishly from it for a moment. “You’re very easy to talk to.”
“I hope that’s a good thing,” I said, meeting her gaze with brazen longing.
“It’s like talking to my therapist.” Maybe I was barking up the wrong bedpost. “Why aren’t you married?” she abruptly asked me.
“Is that something you ask your therapist?”
“My therapist is married.”
I would have loved to have had an epiphany about my life at that moment. Something I could have shared with her, but epiphanies are hard to come by.
“I wish I knew why I wasn’t married,” I said. “It seems like something I should know.” There were the obvious reasons. Poor choices. Heartbreaks. I thought of Laurel and how it felt watching her pack her tea infuser and her dental floss in a recyclable Whole Foods grocery bag. It felt like I had failed. That was the part I couldn’t get over. That and the fear of not knowing how to prevent it from happening again.
Melinda crossed her arms and scrutinized my face, like an artist deliberating how she wanted to paint me. “I think you know the answer, but you’re keeping it a secret from yourself.”
I only wished. “That sounds highly unlikely.”
“You’re just going to have to trust me,” she said with a playful tilt of her head.
She seemed to be flirting again, so I flirted right back. “Oh, now I’m supposed to trust you, but a week ago you wouldn’t tell me where you really live.”
“I never tell anyone where I live,” she said.
That wasn’t true. “You told Alexander.”
“Are you kidding? I didn’t even tell him my last name until after he proposed. I’m a little paranoid.” Her caution was endearing, but completely contradictory to what he had told me. “The first time Alexander came here to meet my grandfather, he nearly had a coronary. He was very upset with me for not coming clean with him.”
Either she was lying to me for some reason, or Alexander was lying to her.
“Speaking of coming clean, there’s something else I should admit to you.” Her voice dropped an octave. She was lying about something, and I dreaded finding out what. “I should have told you this before, and I guess I’m a little nervous how you’re going to react.” That made two of us.
“The truth is that when we were introduced at Balthazar, it wasn’t the first time we met.” My mouth opened but words didn’t come out. “You probably don’t remember with all the people you meet, but we were at a party together on New Year’s Day. Well, not together, but we were both there, and we spoke. Not much. Just small talk about travel and Thomas Mann. I don’t know why I didn’t say something sooner. I think I was just embarrassed that I remembered and you didn’t.”
I was such an idiot.
Waves of desire pelted my nervous system. Nothing had changed, yet everything had changed. Or at least changed enough for me to take a gamble and tell her how I felt about her. It was like everything I wanted was right in front of me, and all I had to do was seize the moment. “Melinda, I—”
“Melinda, your husband is looking for you.” It was the security guard, once again standing in a doorway and blocking my progress.
“He’s not my husband yet,” Melinda corrected him.
“Well, he acts like he is.” The old guy must have been some kind of butler rather than a guard. A crusty family retainer who liked to put his nose in everyone’s business.
“Gavin,” Melinda said, “have you met my incorrigible grandfather?”
Oh, God.
“We met,” he harrumphed before quickly changing the topic. “Alexander wants to make a toast before dessert.” He followed this announcement with another spate of coughing. Melinda put a protective arm around his shoulders.
“Did you take your medication?” she asked.
“It’s just allergies,” he said, waving her off. “Now, if you put off dessert any longer, they’re going to be serving the gelato with straws.”
She hurried out of the bedroom. In a daze, I followed down the stairs and through a limestone archway into an immense candlelit dining room where everyone was gathering. I was uncomfortably aware her grandfather was just a few feet behind me while I tried to process everything that had happened. I must have had an odd expression on my face, because the fellow standing next to me kept staring at me. He looked vaguely familiar, with acne scars and unruly dark hair.
“Aren’t you the bloke from New Year’s?” he inquired. The Australian accent was the giveaway. The evening was becoming an excruciating trip down memory lane.
I halfheartedly extended my hand to Jamie, my once imagined rival for Melinda’s affection. If only things had been that simple.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, seeming perplexed by my continued existence on the planet. I explained my job at The Paper, but he remained mystified. “Blimey! What are the odds?” I couldn’t answer that one for him. “You know she totally had a thing for you.”
“Excuse me?” I said, unwilling to believe I heard right.
“Melinda,” he said like I was daft. “Did you guys ever hook up?” All I could do was shake my head. “Too bad. Have to admit, I was a wee bit jealous. I never got anywhere with her, and not due to a lack of trying. But if a chick doesn’t fall for you when she’s pissed on plonk on a beach in Goa, it’s never going to happen.” He looked at me for confirmation. I was still too stunned to speak. “You must have the magic mojo, because I could barely get her out the door of that party on New Year’s, and then I had to stop her from going back inside.”
I had to stop myself from throttling him. “She wanted to go back to the party?”
“I had to drag her into a taxi. Don’t know what she was thinking. Was a lame party if you ask me, but she thought you were quite the Jackaroo. She couldn’t stop yabbering about you until, well, until she met Alexander.”
There was a bell-like ringing in my ears. I saw Alexander clinking his champagne flute with a small spoon. “I just have a few words I want to say,” he said with a Cheshire cat grin, dramatically unfurling his prepared speech.
The room was spinning. On more than one axis. Like a gyroscope. Like I was inside a giant gyroscope. I
was sweating. My breathing was shallow. I was afraid I was hyperventilating.
“I’m the luckiest man on the planet,” Alexander exalted.
The luck-a-luck. The luck-a-luck. The words reverberated in my head. Round and round. She totally had a thing for you. Just small talk about travel and Thomas Mann. Only an idiot would let a woman like Melinda get away. Faces mixed and matched and blurred together with the candles and the champagne. And Melinda’s smile. Melinda’s lips spreading apart. Alexander’s lips drawing toward them. The luck-a-luck. The luck-a-luck.
“When you meet the woman of your dreams, you don’t waste a moment,” Alexander said as their profiles merged and the crowd cheered.
I turned around. I couldn’t watch anymore. But it was even worse seeing the beaming reactions of the other guests. There were tears in her grandfather’s eyes, and he was holding his hands to his heart.
No, he was clutching his chest. Shit.
I ran toward him while calling 911 on my cell phone. His legs seemed to collapse, and I scrambled to catch him before he hit the ground. As I held him in my arms, he whispered hoarsely, “Promise me you’ll take care of Melinda.”
Then he passed out.
The sliding doors opened and closed, and another bloodstained gurney was wheeled into the emergency room. Still no sign of Melinda.
I had been pacing for twenty-five minutes. I didn’t know if I should stay or go. I wasn’t sure she remembered I was there. I was even less sure that I should have been. It all happened very quickly. One minute I was checking her grandfather’s pulse, the next I was jumping into the ambulance with her while Alexander was offering to stay behind and take care of their guests. But when we had arrived at the hospital, she was escorted by the paramedics into the ER, and I was left to fend for myself in the waiting room. A place that made the Port Authority bus terminal look inviting. The harsh lighting, uncomfortable seating and proximity to mortal ailments made me jittery. The two cups of coffee also weren’t helping.
