What I Did for Love

by Tessa Dane

  It made my heart pound to hear him, and the chemistry of him affected me, but I also resented his backing out on Bredon, I didn’t care what pressure his family put on him.

  “Dray,” he said again, “please pick up. Just for a moment.”

  I picked up the receiver and held it to my ear. My body was warm, excited all on its own by his voice. I waited silently.

  “Dray, can I see you?”

  My mouth was dry. I said, “I can’t.”

  “Because of Bredon.”

  “Rand, the old saying not to mix business with pleasure, seems to be good advice. I can’t see you.”

  “But you’d see me if I’d said yes to Bredon and the deal.” His voice was hard and sad.

  “Rand, the situation is impossible. Please don’t ask. Monday night was wonderful. That’s why I picked up the phone at all. But I can’t…”

  He cut me off. “Just see me. For a little while. You know you’re attracted to me. You know I find you wildly exciting. I love what we had on Monday.”

  “Yes, it was wonderful, but I can’t, it’s not something I can do, Rand, I’m sorry.” But I wasn’t sorry. It was a lie. I make no apologies for putting my brother first. Still, Bredon said Rand promised to reconsider. I wondered. “Rand, I’m going to hang up now.”

  “I’ll call you later,” he said, his voice dispirited and angry and sad, all those.

  I was upset and restless, because the chemistry of his voice still affected me, and I pulled on nondescript “college student” clothes, jeans, t-shirt, light hoodie, walking shoes over white socks. I stuck my little phone in one pocket, and my flat wallet with its neatly slotted credit cards, cash, ID, and special house key, in another jeans pocket. I pulled a fragrant handkerchief from a small drawer. It had been a major joke among my friends, as it had been among my mother’s friends, that we used these rather than tissues. Only when I had a cold did I forgo them.

  I quickly tied my hair back, put on a baseball cap and dark glasses and slipped out the back entrance. I had a feeling that Rand would come here and try to see me. He had enough clout and power to get past most of the barriers in the lobby. Avoiding the possibility I exited through a service door to a short alley, onto the side street, and began making quick strides in the city rush hour, walking downtown at a brisk pace toward the Times Square area and St. Mary’s. As I blended into the crowds on the sidewalks and at the crosswalks, I looked so ordinary, like any other girl. It was wonderful to breathe easy, to be anonymous.

  The long walk calmed me, the passing crowds distracting my mind so that I had to concentrate on navigating among the flow of people. In the theatre district I walked past the oddly assorted souvenir shops, taverns, garages, side-street boutique hotels to the mid-street where St. Mary’s stood, the flag high on a flagpole in front. I ran up the few steps and through the main doors. Inside, all was peace and beauty. The organist must have been rehearsing for a concert or a sung Mass, along with a couple of choristers who were singing different lines in Latin. The effect was soothing, the world continuing, the business of worship being perfected.

  I moved quickly and with little footfall along the northern aisle of the church, its beauty as always inviting yet another discovery of its art, statuary, symbols, all candlelight and low electric lights, statues in their side-altars, marriage chapel, baptistry, to the Lady Chapel, my favorite. There I lighted some candles, symbols of things religious and holy, the light of Presence, and pulled neatly folded flat bills from my wallet to stuff in the offering box. I sat and thought of Bredon, saying a prayer for his safe arrival and successful bargaining, remembering our parents, letting my mind empty of everything but the feeling of being in a holy place. I stayed an hour, my mind clearing, calmer. I realized that I was very, very hungry. The evening prayer service was short, and when it was over I began my return walk, cautious whenever I saw one of the many black cars that carried Rand and so many of the people we knew as they came here for plays and restaurants.

  I stopped at a small convenience store that only stayed open this late because with summer, the many tourists made late hours worthwhile. Most delis and small food stores in commercial areas of the city specialized only in breakfast and lunch on weekdays, and did not open on weekends since there were no workers to patronize the stores. The mid-town area with theatres and hotels was different. Tourists might buy snacks, and hotel guests would stock up on munchies and snacks for their rooms. Many deli patrons were hotel guests wanting something light to eat that did not have the high hotel price tags attached. The counterman made up a sandwich for me, the inimitable New York hard roll holding thinly sliced cheeses and meats, lettuce for crunch, all wrapped in an envelope of heavy waxed paper. I took a can of seltzer from the refrigerator case and ate while I walked along Central Park West, sipping the seltzer through a straw poked into the tab hole. It felt wonderful to be eating and drinking at last.

  My walking meal finished, I hailed a cab, carrying the food wrappers and soda can with me for recycling. I had the cab stop a block away from my building, and let myself in the back way, a quick wave to one of the janitors who thought all young people were sneaky-crazy but harmless, and so he ignored me.

  The message light blinked on my phone. I knew the number now. “Please, Dray, please meet me. Tonight if you can, or tomorrow. I miss you. Please let’s talk.” Rand’s voice was courting me, yet angry. It was one thing to negotiate in a business deal, but I was sure he was used to getting the women he wanted. Rich men become more “beautiful,” the richer they get. If after Monday Rand felt ill-used, well, so did I, on Bredon’s behalf. The phone rang as I finished hearing the message. It was Rand again. I picked up, saying nothing.

  “Dray, please say something.”

  “Rand, hello. I just got back in. And I’m very tired,” and realized as I said it that it was true, despite all the sleep I’d had today. I think my anxiety over Bredon was draining my energy, and I had prayed so intensely for him in church, I had felt light-headed between emotion and hunger when I was done.

  Amazingly, he understood. “You’re a sleepyhead, or so I’ve been told,” he said in a new voice. “So, get some rest. But I’ve been thinking about why you won’t see me. I have a thought that may change your mind.” And now Rand’s voice grew hard. “I want to talk to you about the deal with Bredon. Please see me.”

  “Rand, if word goes out that you’ve pulled out of the deal with Bredon, and then people see us together, I’d be – and feel like – the world’s biggest traitor. I won’t do that.”

  His voice was harder now. “Interestingly, I actually understand how you feel,” he said, a stripe of anger and irony in his voice. “That’s why I want to see you. I have some thoughts about the deal. And us.”

  “I’m seeing someone else,” I lied.

  “Really.” A sarcastic slash of a word, six letters like a knife. “Listen,” he said, “I just want to talk to you. Just meet with me, just once.”

  My silence was thick with my reluctance and conflict. I was wishing I could just cry or scream, I wanted him so much. But he heard only the reluctance, and I could almost feel his anger increasing. “Meet me,” he insisted, his voice now like steel. “Come to my private house. Tomorrow, two o’clock.” And after a slight pause he said, tauntingly, “Your brother will benefit.”

  His voice had turned cruel, maybe the voice his enemies heard, and my body was in collapse over his tone, and then my own anger rising, adding to the maelstrom of my emotions. I was feeling sick to my stomach, a headache starting to take hold like a vise. His indifference to my love for my brother, using that love to get me to talk to him, to benefit Bredon, how dare he. He wanted to play this game with me? All right, let’s see what cards he held.

  “Benefit my brother,” I said, repeating his words in a voice like ice. “How would that be possible, exactly?”

  “In a way that I will set out in detail exactly,” he answered, imitating my own arctic tone.

  “Isn’t there
somewhere else we can meet?” I said, wary. With cameras everywhere, with the many people who knew us by sight, I did not want to be seen entering his private park or his house. Word would surely get back to Bredon, and who knew how many other people. The professional gossips had ears on the streets, and the media would snake into our lives again.

  He seemed to realize my concerns but I realized that he had his own concern for privacy. If he was going to help Bredon, he was going to have to deal with his suddenly risk-averse family. “My house is the one place I can be absolutely sure we won’t be overheard,” he said.

  My mind explored other possibilities frantically – use one of our family cars, use a hired car, rent a car, take a train to some public place where I wasn’t known, but every one of those alternatives had its problems with being followed or seen or discovered. I decided to use a disguise such as Bredon and I had used to escape reporters after the air crash.

  “Are you going to stand by your commitment to Bredon?” I asked, stalling.

  “That’s what we’re going to discuss.” If his voice were any colder, I would be a cube of ice.

  I gave in. “All right, two o’clock tomorrow, at your house. Your security camera won’t recognize me, but it will be me. Whoever you think it is, just open the gate.”

  Now he was wary. “Are you going to send someone else?”

  “No. It will be me.”

  After spending the next couple of hours fretting over Bredon and the whole crazy situation with Rand, I finally fell asleep. It was like the way I slept after our parents were killed, when the doctors had given me powerful sedatives to get me to sleep and to keep me asleep. My body had fought the drugs, which were supposed to suppress some REM sleep and dreams. Instead, more often than not, I would waken from nightmares. The doctors finally figured out a sleeping pill regimen, and a drug cocktail, that could give me about seven hours’ rest. Finally. It took them a couple of weeks to get to that solution, Bredon beside himself with his own grief and worry over me. Tonight I had dreams, not nightmares, my unconscious playing out a surreal and lopsided world, absurd, skewed, cryptic, elements of Balthus puzzles in them, and the saints consoling me.

  VII

  Bredon wakened me on Thursday with an early call. He sounded upbeat. His first meetings had gone well, though no firm commitments were in place yet. I could not tell if he was deceiving me, or himself, or if there really was hope in these investors. But his voice was strong, and he was getting ready to go to sleep himself. He was over nine thousand miles away, and on the Equator, and I felt so lonely for him.

  “What are your plans for the day?” he asked.

  “I’m going to hit the museums, I think. I’m still enjoying the novelty of being on vacation from school, and Robin isn’t back yet, so I’ll do city exploring on my own.” I often did this, no surprises, and no mention of Rand.

  “What about your other friends?” he asked offhandedly, a pretended lightness.

  “I may call Dina to see if she’s back in Westchester. She went away with her parents right after school closed. She’s probably looking for down time too.” My voice was chatty, girl talk-y, avoiding seriousness. But my heart was still troubled over my brother. I sighed, quietly, and thought I heard him sigh too. We two children, each other’s beacon. “Oh, Bredon, I can’t wait for you to get home!”

  He laughed, relieved, interpreting my sigh as missing him, which it was, and more. “Sunday night, Sis, but I’ll be flying in late.”

  “However late, call me.”

  “Okay. But fair warning. The following Tuesday morning I go out again, this time for a week.”

  “More investors on this deal?” What was he doing, I wondered.

  “No, they’ll be site inspections, making sure all the offices and support staff are in place.” He was positive, reassuring. But he did not say he had the money commitments he needed.

  “Okay,” I said, keeping my voice light. “Sunday night.” I hung up and said a dozen fervent prayers for my brother, begging my parents to watch over him.

  Returning to the everyday, hungry, I checked in the refrigerator; butter and eggs were there along with the heavy cream I loved in my coffee. Happily, Marilisa had left some fresh rolls on the counter, so breakfast was an easy task. I ate and thought and planned, and when I finished, I turned on the “don’t come in” light, then engaged the special door locks, front and back entrances, that even Marilisa did not know about. Bredon had had these installed when no one was about on my floor, using skilled men who owed him favors. Bredon did not elaborate on who the men were, or what favors had been done. I knew not to ask.

  Safely locked away from the world, I went to the back of my bedroom closet, which held yet another room behind its back wall. What had been an “owner’s closet” to store things if the apartment was sublet, had been made to disappear. It just looked like a back wall now, but it was actually a pocket door, beautifully designed to be unnoticeable. Unhooking the latch, I rolled the wall to one side. There was a clothes pole at the front of the closet, a low set of drawers against one side, and boxes of shoes on the floor.

  I moved aside the clothes, each outfit in its own plastic bag, and stepped over the boxes into the tiny dressing room that held a diminutive vanity table and cushioned stool. The walls held shelves with different wigs in their round shiny black boxes, and rectangular clear plastic boxes with various hats and caps. All of the clothing was from department and chain stores, ordered on line and sent to our postal drop. Bredon had a matching room hidden in his penthouse. Before he moved from his old apartment where he had also had a closet like this, he had it removed, opening up the area to make it look like a part of the deep walk-in closet, no traces of the secret storage remaining. The new tenants would never know.

  We lived in a kind of paranoia, a lifestyle more like spies than normal siblings after the air crash. We did all we could to hide from the ghoulish curiosity of reporters, from brash, intrusive people we did not know, who saw themselves as well-meaning, who proffered sympathy and banalities and sometimes “religious” consolations that drove us crazy. After the bombing a torrent of newspaper reporters had clustered at the survivors’ houses. For days there were programs streamed and on television, with panels of experts discussing the terrorists, the flight, the passengers, whether one or more passengers had been targeted. The newspapers, and some commentators, milked every detail for its possible shock factor. There were constant attempts to reach families of the lost passengers by phone, twitter, text when a cell number could be found.

  I was in such a shaken condition that after a short hospital stay, I was sequestered in our great-aunts’ house in Riverdale, while Bredon worked to keep the media craziness from reaching me. He hired his own technical wizard to block every digital attempt to access us.

  Then it was a matter of not being bothered when we left home to go outside, to walk or take a car or a cab. When we appeared on the street there were “death stalkers,” those perverse freaks who were fascinated with the deaths and grief of the famous. Hating their eager, vulgar attempts to engage us in conversation, we had devised our plans for disguises, inspired by our parents’ friendships with several actors, and our own school plays.

  We had the help of “Toro” Tomàs, now a character actor in movies and television dramas, who had been Bredon’s prep school classmate. He had been bullied for his size, and declared stupid, clumsy, inferior, by the dreadful snobbish older students who seemed to lack conscience or compassion. Tomàs’ parents were rich, and had sent him to the U.S. to give him the best private education possible. Unknowingly, they had consigned their son to the misery of difference and foreignness.

  The heartlessness of some of the boys, raised in rich entitlement, led them to mock anyone who somehow provoked their dislike. It had enraged Bredon, who had come to Tomàs’ defense. Our parents’ wealth, and my brother’s own tall, handsome elegance became a protective shield for his tormented friend. Tomàs had never forgotten. When Bredon
had contacted him after the bombing and the assaults by the press, he found his way to us by one of the unseen entrances to our building, and spent an evening teaching us about disguises, telling us what things to buy and how to use them. He had brought some make-up with him, and made Bredon’s face look like that of an old and nondescript man, showing us how to “age” or “de-beautify” ourselves. I was so grateful for his genuine concern for us, and I adored his great size and the gentleness he showed us. His gratitude and friendship for Bredon were obvious, never spoken, touching my heart forever. When he was leaving I kissed him with a peck on the cheek, having to climb on top of the sofa cushion to do so, to his delighted laughter, catching me so that I could slide down his arm back to the floor. It was the first time since the bombing that Bredon and I had actually been able to laugh, and then to hug this man, a stranger to me, but someone whom I realized would always be devoted to Bredon.

  The clothing and make-up along with back doors became the way we avoided notice when we wanted to go out alone. The wigs were another matter. Those were ordered through Ren, Bredon’s friend and our doctor. The wigmakers assumed Ren was filling orders on behalf of his patients who had lost their hair to cancer or other illnesses, and Ren knew how to do the measurements for the under-nettings and the wigs. The good human hair wigs were very expensive and they did their work well. Once the wig was on, it was indistinguishable from natural hair.

  For Bredon there had been a variety of men’s wigs. Ren had even gone to a costume shop to purchase a bald man’s mask, a fringe of “hair” around the bottom of the large bald spot, and he worked with Bredon to incorporate that into one of the wigs. For me, the wigs were short and long, blonde and black and brown and red. Two were purposely purchased for the ability to make them into “hair” that was messy and unkempt. If we looked poor, or old, or hollow-eyed, wearing shapeless clothes, people would avert their eyes from us when passing. We could travel quickly and quietly, simply walking freely, no one bothering to notice us. I did this a couple of times when I needed to roam about the city, just to cope with my own restlessness, and it gave me a rare and blessed anonymity. In the early days after the bombing, disguise became my defiant answer to the sickening curiosity, and presumption, of “sympathizers.”