My eyes drifted down his starched shirt to his manicured fingernails.
“And you are from Vancouver,” he confirmed. “What a coincidence.” It turned out his wife had Canadian citizenship as well as German—her mother lived in Vancouver. “My wife is also perfectly bilingual.”
I didn’t know where to look for a moment. My wife.
Then he mentioned that his wife had just taken their two children to Vancouver. “They are there right now.”
My gaze moved to Petra, who casually sipped a martini, her expression inscrutable in the dim light.
I ordered another drink, deciding that I too would be impervious.
“Lila, my honey,” she said suddenly, “I have a proposal for you. Andrew and I, we will be making a trip the day after tomorrow and I am thinking it would be very nice for you to stay in our suite while we are gone.”
I stared and leaned in trying to hear better. “Did you just say that you’re leaving town?”
“Ya. It’s unexpected. And the suite will be empty for two days. Do you like to?”
I was disappointed and a little stunned. On the other hand, when would I ever get a chance to stay at the Waldorf again?
After dinner, the three of us went to The Campbell Apartment, a bar off the west balcony of Grand Central Station. The big room, once a financier’s private office, apparently looked just as it had in the ’30s and ’40s, like a room in a palace, furnished with Italian tables and chairs, a Persian rug on the floor, others on the walls, flowered vases, and a massive Florentine desk on which financier John Campbell once conducted his affairs.
When we arrived at the entrance, Ella Fitzgerald’s “I Got It Bad (and That Ain’t Good)” smoothed into our ears. The hostess gave us a blandly welcoming smile, her caramel-coloured mosquito-arms poking out of the capped sleeves of a blue jersey dress that advertised small hollows beside each hip and the pointy nubs of her shoulder bones. Her hair slicked back into the tight chignon of a ballet dancer, she breezily told Andrew his footwear would not be allowed into the establishment.
“These are Armani,” he said, lifting one sporty leather shoe as though the fine craftsmanship might change her mind.
“We don’t allow running shoes of any kind.”
“Let’s go,” Petra said. “We don’t need to be here.”
“No.” Andrew adjusted his shoulders. “You ladies get a table. I shall go back to the hotel and change. I won’t be long, it’s close.”
A career problem-solver, Andrew would not engage in any further debate, and he left.
“He likes rules,” Petra said after we had sat quietly a few moments. She gazed around the room, at the ceiling and eventually at me. “I am tiring of New York. It closes in and makes me suffocated.”
Andrew reappeared in only a few minutes, so few that I was startled. He sat down with a hearty hello as though to make clear that an insect in blue jersey could not possibly dampen his mood.
“Do you live in the centre of Vancouver?” he asked as another round of drinks hit the table. “My children love Stanley Park. My wife took them in a horse-drawn carriage through the park. Have you done that?”
“No.” I glanced down at the gloss of the brown oxfords on his feet now.
“I was in a horse carriage once. For New Year’s Eve,” Petra announced, her grin suddenly broad. “In Zurich! I was with Heinrich Vanderhoven. He’s—he’s a bit crazy.” Her tone was slightly malignant, but her pronunciation of kwazy mitigated my sense of peril.
“We came very late to a nightclub and he was wearing blue jeans and a tuxedo jacket. At this club it is very chic and you cannot ever wear blue jeans. But he was Heinrich Vanderhoven!”
Andrew nodded, expressionless.
Repetition of the man’s full name seemed to be an important feature of the story. “Who’s Heinrich Vanderhoven?” I asked.
“He owned half the magazines in Europe. He once owned the magazine I write for now, but he sold everything and went to make a meditation by the sea in California.” Her shoulders bounced with laughter as she tilted forward. I wasn’t sure if the memory of Heinrich Vanderhoven’s denim-clad self was what tickled her so much or if it was the thought of him sitting hours on end, cross-legged, ohm-ing in the sand.
I tried to understand the nuance of the picture she painted. “He was your boss?”
“No.” Her eyes glittered. “He was my lover.”
The word sultry kept ringing in my ears the next day as I tramped up Park Avenue, pulling my suitcase. July in New York can be so oppressively hot and damp that the word sultry should never be used to describe it. Sultry implies a sensuality, an underlying lust that one can barely contain, when in reality the stifling mug of it renders the thought of another body lying sticky against one’s own nauseating. Or at least that’s what occurred to me as I caught sight of a billboard featuring some oversexed nymphet hawking brassieres. Breathing the soupy air into my lungs, I wondered if I might be coming down with something or if I was fumbling toward an early menopause.
I negotiated my suitcase through the hotel’s revolving doors. At the top of the marble stairs, I looked from a crystal chandelier the size of a Volkswagon to the art deco floor mosaic, plucked my shirt away from my sticky flesh and felt immediately gauche for sweating. This was, after all, the Waldorf. As I wheeled my luggage down the expansive corridor, my eyes darted wall to wall, from paintings and sculptures to glass-encased dresses.
In the main lobby, I sighed the relief of the air-conditioned. I had been sleeping on Felicia’s sofa the last two nights and imagined now that those around me could tell how my last forty-eight hours had been just by looking, as though my skin were dented with the pattern of couch upholstery and the feet of the Holstein-coloured cat who had meandered up and down the length of me from midnight till dawn, enjoying the breeze of the nearby fan that seemed to hit my own skin only if I sat up.
I brushed the ghost of a cat hair from my nose and took in the other patrons: T-shirts, ball caps and designer jeans with deliberate and calculated fading. It appeared the wealthy had become an uncouth lot.
A long bank of black and gold marble reception desks was set into what I figured was a mahogany wall. Was I meant to feel pampered or intimidated as I looked up past the two-ton gold clock to the gold tiles overhead? My entire immediate family, both parents, my brother and me, could be stacked and still not reach the ceiling. If any of us still spoke to one another.
Glancing at my luggage, I wondered if it looked cheap to the educated eye. An editor once complimented the skirt I wore, remarking that I had expensive taste. I was compelled to tell her that my skirt had cost twelve dollars at a chain store. Her mouth spread into open-mouthed delight, but the pleasure in her eyes dimmed and I regretted having set her straight.
I lifted the receiver of the house phone and asked to be put through to Andrew Kinderhaus.
Andrew answered with his very British “Yes, hello.” He sounded calmer. I had called earlier, just before I left Felicia’s place, and he had been breathless when he picked up the phone. I imagined him taking calls compulsively, listening to his wife tell him all about Vancouver while he was in the midst of a New York sex act. One that would leave a free hand.
“It’s Lila,” I said now. “I’m in the lobby.” Anxiety started to rise in my chest like heartburn. I felt complicit in a way I hadn’t expected.
A couple days after Petra had arrived in New York, she left me a playfully frustrated message. “Ya, Lila, this is Petra and I would like for you to call me at the Waldorf, but my lover is out and I cannot answer because I am in here with a married man. Shit.” Her delivery tickled me—her Vs in place of Ws, her zis’s and zat’s—and the way she said what she’d said all in one breath: Marriedmanshit.
I turned to see them coming through the lobby toward me. Walking past a tall urn that held a massive bouquet of fresh flowers, Petra looked perfectly at home amidst the grandeur.
I hugged her. Andrew shook my hand.
; “So!” He clapped his hands. “Shall we register you?”
Petra held my suitcase while her lover and I went to the front desk.
The magazine’s sex survey wondered if a woman might need an excuse to cheat in a way a man would not. Down the list was: Who do you think is more faithful by nature?
“So the two of you will be going to Maine?”
“Connecticut for me,” he corrected. “And New Jersey for Petra.”
“Right.” I nodded as though I’d known all along that Petra and her lover were taking separate vacations from their vacation. “Where in Connecticut?”
He glanced at the desk clerk. “Near Massachusetts.”
The clerk excused herself to program a key.
“Can I receive calls?”
“Yes,” he said firmly. “No one will call me here this weekend.”
The clerk handed me the new plastic key. We rejoined Petra and headed to the elevator bank.
“This is really so kind of you,” I said, as Andrew pressed the call button. The words clanged falsely in my mouth even though I meant them.
Petra smiled.
“No,” he responded, “we thank you. For looking after our suite.”
Inside the elevator, I glanced at the beige plastic card in my hand, The Waldorf-Astoria stamped in cursive script on one side. “I would have thought the Waldorf would have nice old-fashioned keys,” I mused aloud as we rose up the shaft.
Andrew’s smile was patient. “The hotel would have to change the locks each time a person left.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“It is true,” he stated. “This clientele needs to have computerized locks.”
Petra grinned as if this were all part of the Waldorf’s never-ending capacity to delight.
Standing at the door of room 2320, she dipped the slice of plastic into the lock’s slot, igniting a green light and setting off a soft click as the door unlocked. I watched her carefully as though the task were complicated and mystical.
Andrew suggested that Petra give me a tour of the suite while he finished packing.
She strolled with me past Andrew’s walk-in closet to his bathroom—“He only has a shower; I like a bathtub”—and then into a living area. There was a plump sofa and coffee table, which faced an armoire that held a large television and stereo. Beside the armoire was an oddly suburban choice: a push-button fireplace.
An office centre with each of their laptops sat against the far wall. A Waldorf catalogue lay on an end table. Petra picked it up. “Look in here.” She fanned it open. “You can order the Waldorf sheets and the Waldorf bed and take them home with you.”
“But I won’t have the Waldorf room service.”
“Ya.” She slapped it down. “That’s a problem.”
Off the bedroom was Petra’s walk-in closet and her bathroom with what she pointed out was her very deep marble tub. “I could drown in that bath,” she said, and then laughed her throaty, K-smattered laugh.
A king-sized bed stood with two of its four posts against the bedroom’s cream and moss striped wallpaper. The mattress was topped with a similarly striped duvet cover.
“You’re going to New Jersey.” I gazed out the window at the monstrosity of New York City. Directly across from us was a dismal-grey building, big enough to house a town full of people.
“Ya.” She sat on the bed. “Princeton. A friend of mine, she’s teaching there now, and since Andrew has decided to go …”
I turned and she looked up from her lap.
“Andrew has friends in Connecticut, I have a friend in Princeton, and so we go separate for the weekend.”
Andrew stepped into the room. I sat down on the bed near Petra. The two of us glanced at him, then at each other and we both laughed for some reason.
He looked at us, something close to worry in the tug of his brows. “What is so funny?”
Petra shrugged. “We are pleased with ourselves.”
She laughed again and I wished she weren’t about to leave town. There was something in the air now that relaxed us. Perhaps the sight of Andrew’s vulnerability.
He took one thorough breath through his nose and smiled back at us. “Petra likes to order breakfast in bed and I think you would like that too. So go ahead and sign it to the room.”
“Ya, you should!” Petra exclaimed. “Yesterday I felt sick and I lied in the bed all day long and had service. I love it.”
She’d been sick. Perhaps hungover. It was a small relief to know that. I had been a little worried when I didn’t hear from her the day after we’d all gone for dinner, concerned that perhaps I’d annoyed her somehow.
“Are you going to the train station together?” I asked them.
“No.” Andrew flipped his wrist for the time. “I have to get to Grand Central and Petra must get to Penn Station.”
“I thought we could have lunch before I leave,” Petra said, looking at me.
Andrew grabbed his jacket off the nearby chair. “If you like Japanese, you should go downstairs. It is said to be one of the finest restaurants in the city. Sign it to the room.”
“Wonderful!” Petra said and stood. “It’s too bad you cannot join us.” She walked to him, put her hands flat against his lapels and gazed up into his eyes.
He gave her a polite peck. “I will see you Sunday.”
Downstairs we stepped into the sudden cool of the over-air-conditioned restaurant and followed the stiff kimono of the hostess, her feet mincing on wooden shoes.
“It’s fun to be spoiled,” I burbled, deciding to stop the analysis for once.
“Sometimes.” Petra paused until the hostess was gone. “Other times I feel like a prostitute.” She looked at me for a response. “I’m sorry. Does this sound terrible of me?”
I shook my head.
“He’s an educated man,” she continued. “He knows how to behave. But these things … these manners are only manners. They are not tenderness and they are not love.”
We paused again as the waitress shuffled close, placed menus in front of us and then poured green tea before she bowed and disappeared.
Petra set her fingertips on the teacup and repeated, “They are not love.”
“No.”
“He’s wonderful in bed, but this is not tenderness either. His shoes are always shined and I am like his shoes.”
I told her that Felicia had asked me what Petra’s man was like. Was he handsome? Kind? “Does he take her hand?” Felicia had asked longingly. “Does he look at her adoringly?” Felicia hungers after the romance of others. She wants to believe.
Did he look at her adoringly? Andrew opened doors, he stood when a woman approached the table, walked on the outside of the sidewalk and always picked up the cheque. Andrew took care. I didn’t know if he was kind. And I hadn’t known how to describe his looks either. Pleasant enough. He was tall-ish, grey-ish, stoic. I doubted I would recognize him in the street were we to pass each other.
“He doesn’t seem to let his emotions get out of control,” I told Petra finally.
Petra set her elbows on the table. “You noticed this too. He does not act like a lover. Not any more. Something has changed.”
My gaze flicked to the Japanese screens nearby. Red-crowned cranes stood on fragile legs, their long dark throats bared to the world. I looked back at Petra.
“I thought maybe I am being critical, but it’s true,” she said. “You have seen it.”
“I figured it was his doctor side. Clinical.”
She rolled her eyes. “You asked him about his medicine at the restaurant. He said to me later that I should be careful in lying to my friends or I would get myself in trouble. ‘It is not my trouble,’ I said to him. ‘It is you who gets in trouble.’”
The other night, when Petra had been away from the table I’d tried to make small talk with Andrew. “What sort of medicine do you practise?”
Confusion crossed his eyes. Then he said, “I don’t actually have a degree in medicine. You co
uld say I am a corporate therapist.”
“He is a lawyer,” Petra told me now. “I wanted to protect him. He is very famous in Germany because he represents many magazines. American businesses sometimes threatened to sue over my dark travel articles. This is how we met.”
She didn’t apologize for her dishonesty and I was slightly impressed by that.
“Andrew represented Heinrich Vanderhoven’s business. Of course Heinrich Vanderhoven sold everything and he does not know that Andrew and I are now together in this way. Nobody in Germany knows this. I can be honest with you. You’re not in that world.”
After Petra had gone, I sat on the bed and stared into space. Even twenty-three floors up, you could still hear the impatient ranting of the city. It was only three in the afternoon and I wondered what I would do with myself now.
I gazed at the crown moulding, at the draperies and the armoire, and tried to feel decadent and special. Lying back, I kicked the mules off my feet, wiggled my toes at the ceiling and noticed the city’s dirt dusted over them in broad stripes.
I had suggested to Felicia that we might go swimming, so I riffled through the guest services menu before phoning the front desk.
“No, Mrs. Kinderhaus. There is no swimming pool, but we do have a large fitness centre with spa facilities on the nineteenth floor.”
I called Felicia’s apartment, got her voice mail, and left a message lamenting the lack of a pool. The fact there was no pool made me oddly forlorn. I stood at the window and watched life moving so far below.
I took the subway down to Broadway and Astor Place, wandered along the baking concrete through the sweating crowds and choked traffic, hoping the heat might cook the blue feeling from my guts.
Petra’s voice tripped around in my head. “Clinical,” she had said. “This is a good word for him. He is not a doctor, but he is clinical. He does not look at me the way he once did. I asked him if he had another mistress, and he said, ‘I don’t have time for that. Between my work and my family and you, I don’t have time for myself any more.’”
Along the sidewalks of New York that summer, women flip-flopped around with Chinese net slippers on their feet. Women of all shapes and sizes wore them with skirts, shorts or jeans. The slippers came in peacock, canary, silver—any shade you could think of—and were adorned with coloured beads and tinselly flowers. I ducked into a shop where stacks of them were displayed in the windows, and picked gold ones for myself. Since they were only $2.99 a shot, I grabbed a few pairs for the friends who had questioned why I would take off on a four-day trip to New York when I had debt and a pending deadline. People forgive you your foibles, I reasoned, when you can prove you were thinking of them all the while.
Greedy Little Eyes Page 4
