by Sonya Cobb
“She just wanted to talk about her engravings. I don’t think she really got that I’m a ceramics guy.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. She did mention one thing.” On the television, a plump woman in a turtleneck was showing her cross-stitched sampler to a dealer. “Apparently Wilder didn’t just go to France to shop for art. She said it was an open secret that he had a girlfriend over there.”
“Aha.”
“Yeah. Who knows where that’ll lead…”
The woman on TV looked stricken. An animated treasure chest rolled across the bottom of the screen, trailing the words “Early American Sampler: $10,000–$15,000.”
“Jesus,” Brian breathed. Sophie blinked at the screen.
“It’s amazing what people have hidden away,” she murmured, her face warm. She twisted around to face Brian, her heart beating fast, seeking reassurance in the firm pressure of his chest against her chest, his hips against her hips. “Phone call?” she said softly. Brian reached around her shoulder, flicked off the TV, and let the remote fall to the floor.
***
Sophie felt lighter than air as she pushed through the heavy, brass-fitted doors of Thirtieth Street Station and hurried past the food stalls and newsstands that were already thronged with wingtip- and slingback-clad commuters. In the vast, marble-lined central hall, the clacking information board flipped its letters and numbers, stubbornly refusing to join the twenty-first century, while quaintly outfitted redcaps pushed carts of luggage and tipped their hats at ladies. At least they’d finally installed automated ticket kiosks, Sophie observed. She was less heartened to find that ticket prices had almost doubled since her last trip to New York. She’d just have to expense it when the job was over.
Once settled into the luxurious embrace of her seat on the Metroliner, Sophie pulled a warm paper bag out of her briefcase, holding it on her lap for a moment. There was a toasted sesame bagel inside, which she was going to be able to eat at her leisure without anyone’s chubby hands trying to tear it from her mouth. After that she could daydream, look out the window, close her eyes for a nap. She could visit the restroom and relax in its solitude, without a small person crowded against her knees, staring at her.
In the seat facing her, a woman in lavender houndstooth was maneuvering thick stacks of paper in and out of her rolling briefcase, periodically writing notes in a leather folio. Her companion, a man in his late twenties with shaggy hair and an ill-fitting suit, idly paged through a copy of People while holding a one-sided conversation.
“Could you believe that con call yesterday.
“I thought Jenkins was going to have a stroke.
“Those rookies in DC have screwed things up royally.”
Flip, flip.
“I hope they bring in lunch today.
“I like that place they order from…Donagans?
“The roast beef is off the hook.”
Sophie was impressed by the degree to which the woman was ignoring him, and by the man’s compulsion to keep talking anyway. Why didn’t he just shut up? Couldn’t he see how busy she was, doing the work he was probably supposed to be helping her with? At one point the woman looked up and met Sophie’s eye; Sophie gave her a little smirk, and a raised eyebrow; a sisterly moment of shared contempt. Then she turned to the window.
When she looked back, the woman was packing up her belongings. She gathered her trench coat and folio into her arms, pulled out the briefcase’s handle with a snap, and moved to another seat. Strangely, her companion stayed where he was. Even more strangely, he continued to talk.
“…heartburn sometimes…probably the horseradish.
“Whaddareya gonna do.
“Dude. I know.
“Yep. Yep. Okay. Later.”
Bluetooth. Sophie finally spotted the earpiece; it was an accessory she didn’t see much at playdates and Music for Me. She pulled out her bagel and started to eat, her pleasure now tinged with the discomfiting sense that the professional world was leaving her behind.
When the train finally heaved to a stop in the tunnel under Penn Station, the car’s collective stored energy exploded into a bustle of bag retrieval, tray table stowage, and tie straightening. Passengers crowded into the aisle, poised to sprint off the train, up the stairs, and into the mad rush of Manhattan. Sophie felt her pulse quickening to the pace. Here, hours and minutes were shot at you out of a gun. There were no aimless mornings or endless afternoons, no strolls to nowhere, no Tupperware housing developments being built up and torn down. There was work to be done.
She’d timed her trip perfectly; she walked into the Whirlygig offices at eleven on the dot. There was some confusion when she told the receptionist she was there for the briefing with Dan. Calls were made; coffee was offered. The girl promised Sophie someone would be right out. For the next hour and fifteen minutes, however, nobody came. Sophie stared at the lobby TV, which was showing a special about the Iraqi insurgency, and tried to hang on to her buoyant mood. A caterer brought in lunch for a meeting in the glass-walled conference room just off the lobby; Sophie’s stomach growled.
Finally, she was greeted by a thick-necked man in his twenties wearing a khaki jacket and a chunky class ring. “I’m Craig,” he said, half to his BlackBerry and half to Sophie. “Come on back.” He led her to a windowless, cubelike conference room that was too small for its six Aeron chairs. “Sorry about the confusion,” he said. “Dan just moved to a different team, and he didn’t tell us you were coming in. I think he was going to use you on the Intactin project?”
“He didn’t actually say… Um, I was referred by Carly Gregorio? Does that help?”
Craig shrugged. “I guess. I think she worked on Intactin before. Well, let’s see whatcha got.”
Sophie wasn’t sure what he meant at first, but after an embarrassing pause she realized that her briefing had just turned into an interview. She pulled out her laptop and started it up. While she was waiting for it to boot, she rummaged in her bag. No résumés, of course. She found a slightly creased business card and slid it across the table to Craig.
“Philadelphia?” he said. “Wow. I guess you’ll be working off-site.”
“Dan said it wouldn’t be a problem.”
“Huh.”
“Anyway, here are a few things I’ve done recently. Here’s a Flash intro I did last year… It just takes a moment to load.”
“Did you develop the rest of the site as well?”
“Not really—they kind of brought me in at the end for the animation.”
“Can we see something a little more robust? We’re looking for dynamic content, mobile development, SEO…” He leaned back and smoothed his tie over his belly.
“Well, I don’t consider myself an SEO expert… I’ve usually worked with partners on that.”
“Fair enough.”
“Here’s an e-commerce site I did with a 360 product viewer.”
“Have you done any custom CRM platforms?”
“Well, let me see…” Sophie moused through the files on her laptop, opening windows and closing them. Craig looked down at his BlackBerry.
“Here’s a site for a packaging company. I built them a back-end data management tool, for storing client files.”
“’Kay. Any CMS? I assume you’re up on all the new platforms out there.” His thick thumbs danced across his tiny keypad.
Sophie snapped her laptop shut. “You know, I didn’t actually bring all my files with me. I didn’t realize—”
“Can’t you just show me your live stuff?”
“If you tell me exactly what you’re looking for, I’ll be able to pull together the right examples and talk about how they apply. I just didn’t know that’s what we were doing today. Dan didn’t say anything about—”
Craig sighed elaborately and put his BlackBerry on the table. “Dan left his shit in a mess. I’m sorry
he didn’t tell you the deal. Can you just email me some links? We need CRM, CMS, and SEO would be a major bonus. Oh, and we’ll need a mobile version of everything, of course, so I’ll need some small-screen samples.”
“Well, of course—”
“Awesome. Hey—thanks for coming in. Sorry about the wait.”
“Oh, no problem. I’m sorry. Thank you.”
***
Sophie stood out on the sidewalk, trying to get her bearings in the humid, noisy air. She squinted up and down the avenue; was she facing north or south? She wandered for a bit, her slow pace clearly annoying the people who were actually trying to get somewhere. For the first time that day she felt like an impostor. All around her, people were rushing toward real responsibilities, whereas she was merely playing at it, in her outdated shoes and too-small skirt. She walked into a deli and, feeling overwhelmed by the vast menu hanging over the counter, ordered the first thing she saw.
As she chewed a dry turkey wrap (when was it decided that sandwiches would be better rolled up in something with the texture of a commercial paper towel?), she tried jotting down old websites she could send Craig to show how “robust” her portfolio was. Her best work was from before Lucy’s birth, and she knew none of it would interest him. She doodled on her napkin, leaning her cheek on her fist, despair bearing down fast through a fog of dumb disbelief. Nothing was working, and she was trying, goddamn it, she was trying as hard as she knew how. Her mortgage payment was going to reset in fifteen days, and while she might be able to pull together enough to pay the first one, there was no way she could do it a second time, and a third, and a fourth. At least then her mortgage company might come out of hiding, she thought ruefully. But by that time it would be too late to undo the damage.
They were underwater, Ron had said, and that’s exactly how it felt. She recalled the feeling, when she was a child, of being tumbled by a wave at the beach: the roiling, watery confusion of not being able to get her legs under her, not knowing which way was up; the roar in her ears, the scrape of salt inside of her nose and down the back of her throat. She was going to lose her house, one way or another. The smart way would be sell it now, get out quick. The painful way would be to have it pried out of her grasp by a series of threatening letters and legal notices, and eventually, she supposed, the sheriff. For a moment her mind lingered on the scene: their belongings piled high on the sidewalk under the ginkgo tree, the kids weeping, her neighbors standing around shaking their heads, feigning concern but secretly relishing the spectacle.
She needed a walk. She left the deli and headed south, toward the less-hectic blocks of Murray Hill. She strolled slowly down Second Avenue, through a dull blur of drugstores and dry cleaners, sweating into her silk blouse. Something about the city’s midsummer smells—exhaust, urine, impatience—brought back memories of her first visit to New York, when she was ten years old. Randall had brought her on one of his trips to visit his editor and go to a trade show. Maeve must have been out of town, and somehow it was decided that leaving Sophie alone at home for three days, while completely acceptable to her parents, might be frowned upon by the neighbors.
So Sophie was left, instead, in a New York City hotel room, along with ten dollars and a subway map. Randall suggested a few places she could visit while he was in his meetings: the Met, the Empire State Building, Bloomingdales. Sophie got lost on her first day, ending up in the Bermuda Triangle of Times Square, and had to take a cab back to the hotel. After that she’d stayed inside, watching TV and feeling the excitement of the trip drain away. She’d been looking forward to spending time with her father, thrilled to accompany him on one of the many trips that normally took him away from her. But she was embarrassed to tell him about her reluctance to leave the hotel room, so at the end of each day she didn’t have much to offer in terms of conversation. Randall would take her to a bar down the street, where she drank soda while he explained the vagaries of the consumer electronics industry. Then they’d get broad slices of pizza draped over flimsy paper plates and eat them, folded in half, on the way back to their room, where Sophie would fall asleep in the flickering light of the evening news. How she hated that hotel room, with its musty smell, textured wallpaper, and thick windows that wouldn’t open. It was a feeling that stayed with her for the rest of her life: a deep dislike for hotels and their halfhearted attempts at hominess, as if a cheap floral bedspread and bolted-down brass lamp could supply what a traveler was missing.
All of New York, in fact, had seemed stingy and unsatisfying on that visit, especially compared with Seattle, where she was free to ride her bike for miles, having memorized the orderly lay of the suburban land. She had her favorite hangouts there: the cat-draped bookstore, the coffee-scented diner, the mall. She’d figured out which parking lots harbored the kinds of aimless, cigarette-puffing kids who would eagerly home in on a small girl on a ten-speed. She also knew which underpasses to avoid.
On subsequent visits to New York, though, she’d developed a grudging respect for the city’s hard edges, the anonymous remove of the high-rise apartment buildings, the brittle slap of fast-moving feet. There was a lonesome toughness about New York that felt very familiar to her.
Crossing Fifty-Sixth Street, Sophie was about to turn onto one of the tree-lined blocks to the east, when she stopped in front of a low shoe box of a building: the Manhattan Art & Antiques Center. The large plate glass windows were stacked high with armoires, marble busts, and regency chandeliers. Through the double doors she could see richly carpeted corridors lined with individual shops; a group of Japanese tourists mingled in the lobby, dwarfed by a pair of grandfather clocks.
Sophie pushed through the doors into the hushed coolness. The Japanese murmured quietly; the clocks ticked; Sophie’s heels sank into the carpet. The low ceilings and recessed lights provided a humble backdrop for the piles of jade carvings, Russian icons, eighteenth-century paintings, and heavily gilded furnishings behind the floor-to-ceiling storefront windows. She wandered the halls, taking in the plunder of centuries, grateful for a retreat from the bland midtown heat. She climbed a wide, curving staircase to a second floor of galleries, which were smaller and more specialized: antique books, estate jewelry, coins. At the end of one corridor she paused in front of a cluttered shop whose door was propped open. A sign in the window read “McGeorge & Fils, Antique Silver.”
Sophie peered inside, her eyes struggling to take in the scintillating jumble. Mirror-lined mahogany-and-glass cases shone with candlesticks, coffee sets, and elaborately decorated urns. Antique occasional tables, their inlaid wood surfaces polished to a high gloss, held large silver candelabras and coveys of life-size partridges and quail. Mirrored trays displayed mother-of-pearl-handled butter knives, tortoiseshell combs, and silver-and-ivory napkin rings. The air clanged with reflected light.
Toward the back of the shop she spotted a slender man seated at a delicate wooden secretary, his forearms resting on the desk, the tips of his fingers pressed together. His reddish hair, brushed back from his forehead, came to his shoulders, framing a boyish alabaster face. He was the most beautiful thing in the shop, Sophie thought. She gave him a quick, embarrassed smile, then turned to head back down the corridor. She had no business walking into any of these places.
“Oh, come on!” came the man’s voice, exasperated and British. “Don’t go!”
Sophie turned back; the man was hurrying toward her. “You don’t have to buy anything. But dear God, you’re the first friendly face I’ve seen in a week. Come on, then.”
Sophie stepped into the shop, holding her laptop bag close against her hip so as not to bang any of the spindly tables.
“D’you like silver?” the man asked. “Need a wedding gift? I’ve got all kinds of stuff. If I don’t have it, I can get it.” He had a quick, worried smile, and his pale cheeks were spattered with freckles.
“Just window-shopping today,” said Sophie.
“You know, i
n France they call it ‘window licking,’” he said. “Normally things sound better in French, but not really in that case, eh?” He cracked his knuckles: first the left hand, then the right.
Sophie smiled, allowing herself to be entertained. She’d met plenty of these dealers, whenever Brian dragged her to the Antiques Show at the Armory, or to museum parties. They were usually stiff, defensive, humorless; worn down by years of catering to wealthy clients who treated them like shopkeepers. She liked this one, though.
“What d’you think of this?” he asked, holding up a large drinking horn whose tip was capped with a long, curling tail of silver, and whose midsection was held aloft by a pair of silver chicken feet. Sophie laughed.
“That’s…wacky.”
“Vikings. Everyone thinks they had no sense of humor.” He set it down. “So what brings you here?” He gestured toward the laptop bag. “Sneak out of the office, did you?”
“I came up from Philadelphia for a meeting.”
His eyebrows popped upward. “I’ve got a few clients in Philadelphia. Great town. Good museum. Reeeeally good. Not a bad restaurant scene either, eh? Buddakan, Le Bec-Fin. What d’you do there?”
“I’m a web developer.”
“Computer stuff? Don’t know much about that, myself. You like it?”
“Mmm.” Sophie pointed to a two-handled tray that was rimmed with an elaborate border of grapevines, leaves, insects, and snails. “So how much is something like this?”
“You like that?”
“It’s incredible,” she said truthfully.
“You’ve got expensive taste. This here is an exceptional English Sterling silver tray with a cast border, and here—” He picked it up and showed her a tiny mark on the back. “You’ve got the maker’s mark, that’s Vander.” He set it down. “Nineteen grand.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, but look.” He crossed the store to another table, where he picked up a round, footed tray. “This one’s nice; you’ve got some beautiful vines, trees, also English, also marked. Nine hundred.” He held it out to her. “Have a look.”
