“Would you like to see the kitchen?”
When Samantha nodded, he went to the west side of the room and opened a door, exposing a narrow, dark stairway leading downward. “It’s the servants’ stairs,” he explained. “The house hasn’t been remodeled into apartments, so you and I will have to share a kitchen.”
She looked at him sharply.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” he said, annoyed that once again he was defending himself. Maybe he should give her a police statement that swore to his clean record, swore he wasn’t a rapist or a murderer or had ever had so much as a speeding ticket. “I know less about kitchens than I do about computers, so you won’t be running into me in there very often. I can work a refrigerator and that’s about it. Even toasters confuse me.”
Saying nothing, she continued to look at him, letting him know that she was far from convinced of his good intentions.
“Look, Sam, maybe the two of us got off on the wrong foot, but I can assure you that I’m not a…a whatever you seem to think I am. You’ll be perfectly safe here with me. Safe from me, that is. All your doors have good, sturdy locks on them, and I don’t have keys to the locks. Your father had the only set. As for sharing the kitchen, if you want, we can set a schedule for use. We can arrange our whole lives around a schedule if you want, so we don’t have to see each other at all. Your father paid me a year’s rent in advance, so I think you should stay here. Besides, I’ve already spent the rent money on that pile of metal downstairs, so I wouldn’t be able to refund your money.”
She wasn’t sure what to answer, whether to say she’d stay or not. Of course she shouldn’t stay, not after the way they’d met, but right now she could feel her father’s presence more strongly than she could remember this man’s touches. Maybe she shouldn’t stay here with him, but could she leave the second home her father had created? She had lost her home in Louisville with all those memories and all those ghosts, but here she could feel the beginning of new memories.
Reluctantly, she put the photo of her mother down and started walking down the stairs, all the way to the ground floor where the kitchen was. For all that this man said he knew nothing about cooking, someone did, for the pretty, spacious, blue and white kitchen looked to be well equipped and highly usable.
She started to ask questions, but then she looked toward the end of the kitchen across a charming little breakfast room and saw the double glass doors leading into the garden. Turning away from him, leaving the kitchen behind, she went out the doors and into the garden. As backyards go, the space wasn’t very large, but it was surrounded by an eight-foot-tall solid wooden fence, so the yard was private and secluded. Upon closer inspection, she could see that the garden was prettier than it had seemed from the fourth-floor balcony, with pink climbing roses just budding, growing over the fence. They were the old-fashioned full-blown fragrant roses that she had always loved, not the modern tight scentless roses.
Turning, she smiled at Mike. “You have done a beautiful job.”
“Thank you,” he said, seeming to be truly pleased by her praise.
As she inhaled the fragrance of the roses and thought about the rooms upstairs—her father’s rooms—she whispered, “I’ll stay.”
“Good. Maybe tomorrow I could show you a few places to buy furniture. I’m sure you’ll want to change the rooms, since they’re not exactly what a female would want. My sister is an interior designer, and I can get things wholesale through her so—”
Turning toward him, her face was stern. “Mr. Taggert, thank you so much for your offer, but I want to make myself clear from the start. I am not looking for a friend, a lover, or a tour guide. I have a job to do in this city and when it’s finished I’m leaving, and between now and then I have no desire to…start anything. Do you understand?”
Looking at her with one eyebrow raised, he let her know he did indeed understand. “I understand perfectly. You don’t want anything to do with me. Fine. Your keys are on the kitchen countertop, one for the front door, another for the deadbolts inside your apartment. Your father wanted the locks in his apartment keyed alike so he’d have only one key to bother with.”
“Thank you,” she said, walking past him toward the kitchen.
“Samantha,” he said as she passed him. “I have a request.”
She didn’t turn around. “What is it?” she asked, bracing herself.
“We’re going to be seeing each other now and then in passing, especially in the kitchen, and I’d like to ask you…” His voiced lowered. “If you should come downstairs at night or early in the morning, don’t wear one of those white lacy things. You know, the kind that floats around you. Red or black is okay, I can handle red or black, and blue would be easy, but I could not deal with white lace.”
Without a backward glance, Samantha ran into the house, grabbed the keys and ran up the stairs.
3
On her first night in New York, Samantha slept in a bed chosen by her father, and the trauma of the day was somewhat softened. But when she awoke, she felt worse than she had when she went to bed, because the full reality of her situation hit her. In Louisville, in her father’s house, she’d been all right, but now she was in a strange place, surrounded by strangers. Never in her life had she been alone before. Not really, truly alone, for she’d had her parents, her grandfather, then her husband.
Hearing a noise outside, she got out of bed and went to the window to look out into the little graden below. The man, her landlord, was watering his plants, and the moment Samantha moved the curtain, as though he’d heard her, he turned and waved, making Samantha jump away from the window, flinging the curtain back into place.
Not only was she alone, she thought, but she was surrounded by predators. The image came to her of being lost at sea, bobbing in the ocean with a life preserver about her waist, watching an ocean liner filled with happy, laughing people who were having too good a time to hear her cries for help—and sharks were circling her. At the moment, the sharks seemed to be in the form of one Michael Taggert.
After she showered and dressed, she pulled her hair back from her face and waited until she heard the front door open and close before venturing down the stairs. Pausing at the front door of the town house, she dawdled, not wanting to go outside. In fact, she wished she didn’t have to leave the house at all, but she had to buy food and open an account at a bank so she could have money transferred from Kentucky.
Quite honestly, New York terrified her. Now, peeking out the curtains, there wasn’t a story she had ever read or heard about the city that didn’t enter her head the moment she stepped outside. All over the world New York was used as a bogeyman for adults. When something dreadful happened in any other town in America, people said things like, “This place is getting as bad as New York,” or “At least this isn’t New York.” Well this was New York and she had to go out into it all alone.
What happened when one walked alone in the city? she wondered. Through the door glass she could see women walking past the town house, some of them with dogs on leashes, some of them in long, tight black suit jackets with tiny skirts below. None of them seemed to be terrified.
Taking a deep, fortifying breath, she finally opened the door, closed and locked it behind her, then went down the stairs, walked to the end of the block, and took a left. Reading the green street sign, she saw she was now on Lexington Avenue. As she walked north along the block, she saw a grocery with outdoor bins of fruit and vegetables, a shoe store, a dry cleaners, a branch of the Bank of New York, a tiny video rental store, a delicatessen that had freshly baked breads and pastries in the window, and a bookstore.
Within two hours she had opened her account at the bank and bought groceries, fresh flowers, and a paperback novel—and she’d done it all without so much as crossing a street. She went back to the corner, took a right, and went straight back to the town house where she put her key in the front door lock, opened it, closed the door behind her, then leaned against the door
, giving a great sigh of relief. She had just made a foray into the city of New York all alone and she had returned safely. She hadn’t had a knife held to her throat, hadn’t had her purse snatched, nor had anyone tried to sell her drugs. Right now she felt as though she’d climbed a mountain, planted a flag on top, and returned home to tell the story.
After putting the groceries away, she made herself a bowl of cereal and a pot of herbal tea, took a cranberry muffin from the bakery bag, put it all on a tray, and took it into the garden.
As she sat in the garden, lounging on one of the chaises, she stretched and wiggled her toes. Perhaps she should have felt lonely, but instead of feeling lonely, she thought how wonderful it was to have no duties or responsibilities. Sometimes it seemed to her that she had been taking care of people all her life. When she had been married, there had never been a minute to herself, for her husband was always needing something. If he wasn’t hungry, he was asking her to help him find something, or he needed clean clothes or someone to listen to him describe how miserable his life was.
At that thought Samantha tightened her mouth. Altogether, it was better not to think about her ex-husband and his “writing.”
“I see you made it to the grocery.”
At the sound of the voice, Samantha nearly jumped out of her skin, then immediately went from lounging in the chair to sitting upright, her feet on the ground, her hands in her lap. She did not look up at him.
“Did you have any trouble?” Mike asked, looking down at her, annoyed that she seemed convinced that he was an ax murderer with uncontrollable sexual urges.
“No, none,” she said, standing, then starting back into the house.
“You don’t have to leave because I’m here.” His annoyance was evident.
She didn’t look at him. “No, of course I don’t have to leave. I have things to do, that’s all.”
Frowning, Mike watched her go back into the house, knowing that she was leaving to avoid being near him.
Samantha went to the rooms her father had chosen, the rooms that reminded her of him, the rooms that made her feel safe, settled down in a dark green chair, and began to read her book. She had all day in which to do exactly what she wanted to do, in fact, she had a whole lifetime before her in which to do what she wanted to do. All she really had to do was serve her sentence in New York, then she’d be free.
For the next few weeks Samantha enjoyed her freedom with the delight that only one who has not had freedom can enjoy it. Not since her mother died had she had time to sit and read or to just be still and daydream. When she was a child, she used to take long bubble baths, but she had only had time for showers since her mother’s death. Looking down the road at her future life, she saw that she’d at last have time to read all the books she’d ever wanted to read and time to take up a hobby as soon as she found one she liked. Time to do anything and everything.
Each morning she awoke and looked about her father’s room and smiled, craving the feeling of his being so close and having the prospect of a long, empty day before her. She made a list of books she wanted to read. There were many biographies in her father’s library, and she started on a biography of Queen Victoria that must have weighed four pounds.
She didn’t leave the town house unless she had to go to the grocery, otherwise, she had everything she needed right in the house. There was a washer and dryer off the kitchen; there was the garden; she had a VCR and exercise videos; she had books; she had a television with cable; she had time. There was no reason to leave the house unless she had to.
The only disturbing element in her lovely, peaceful life was her landlord. He was true to his word in that he didn’t bother her. In fact, for the first two weeks of her stay, she might have been living in the house alone, but of course Samantha went to great lengths to avoid him. She would have liked to get to know his habits so she could avoid seeing him at all, but as far as she could tell, he had no set schedule to his life. Sometimes he left the house early in the morning, sometimes he didn’t leave until afternoon, and sometimes he didn’t leave at all. On the days when he didn’t leave, Samantha had difficulty avoiding him, for he always seemed to decide to come to the kitchen whenever she went downstairs for food, so she had to run up the stairs to keep from seeing him.
On the days when he was out, she sometimes walked through his rooms, for there was no door shutting them off from the rest of the house. She didn’t touch anything of his, she just looked, reading the titles of his books about gangsters, but nothing interested her. He wasn’t a very tidy person, for he seemed to leave his clothes on the floor where he took them off, but on Wednesdays a rather pretty young woman came to the house to clean. She picked up all his clothes, washed them, and put them away. On one Wednesday, Samantha heard the telephone ring then the front door slam, and she knew the young woman had left early.
Going downstairs, Samantha saw that the dryer was full of clothes and the dinning room table was littered with dirty dishes. Without conscious thought of what she was doing, she began to clean the room. When the dryer buzzer went off, she folded his clothes, took them to his bedroom, and put them away, telling herself all the while that she was free and if she wanted to do this she could. Besides, her landlord would never know who had done the work.
It was at the beginning of the third week that Samantha found out about New York delivery services. As she was carrying three bags of groceries out of the store, one of the employees suggested that she have them delivered; after all, the delivery was free. All she had to do was tip the delivery boy a couple of dollars. For that matter, if she was very busy, she could call the store and tell them what she wanted, and they’d deliver her order. Samantha thought this was a marvelous idea, because now she wouldn’t have to leave the apartment at all. First thing the next morning, she went to the bank and withdrew five hundred dollars in cash, knowing that the money would enable her to stay in the house for a long time.
When she returned to the town house, glad as always that it was empty, she breathed a sigh of relief and thought about what she wanted to do. Reminding herself that she was free, she knew she could do anything. With that thought, she popped herself some popcorn, went back to bed, and watched videos. But the videos her father had were all intellectual treatises on the lives of various bugs and birds, so after a while she fell asleep. How wonderful to be able to sleep in the afternoon, she thought, for surely a nap was one of life’s great luxuries.
When the sound of laughter awakened her at twilight, she got out of bed, went to the window, and looked into the garden, where her landlord seemed to be having a party. He was cooking steaks on an outdoor grill—and Samantha could see he was doing it incorrectly, piercing the meat as he turned it—and drinking beer with a half dozen nicely dressed people.
As always, he seemed to sense when she was watching him, for abruptly, he turned and waved his arm, beckoning to her to come down and join them, but Samantha stepped back into the room and drew the curtain closed. Putting a CD on the player, she sat on her father’s chair and picked up a book—she was now reading a five-pound biography of Catherine the Great. When the laughter from downstairs became louder, she turned up the music. All of her father’s CDs were of old blues singers, music from the twenties and thirties, mournful songs sung by people like Bessie Smith and Robert Johnson. It wasn’t music that Samantha would have chosen, but she was beginning to like it since it was what her father liked.
As the third week ran into the fourth, Samantha found that what she really wanted to do most was sleep. It had always seemed to her that since she was twelve and her mother had died, she had never had enough time for sleep. There had always been school and household chores and other people’s needs to see to. Then, after she’d married, she’d had to prepare three meals a day and work eight to twelve hours a day six days a week. Now it seemed perfectly feasible that her tiredness would be catching up with her, and she was glad for the time to rest.
When she was in Louisville, she hadn
’t been able to bear giving all of her father’s clothes away, so she’d boxed some of them and mailed them to New York. She found that it made her feel closer to him to wear his shirts over her jeans; she liked sleeping in his pajamas, and she especially liked his heavy flannel bathrobe.
By her fourth week in New York, Samantha was feeling very relaxed. It was amazing how much she could sleep; sometimes she didn’t wake until ten in the morning, when she’d go downstairs to get a bowl of cereal, but sometimes she didn’t eat anything. When she did eat, instead of cleaning up after herself, she discovered that she could leave her dirty dishes in the sink and the young woman who came on Wednesdays would clean them. Samantha was glad of that because, quite honestly, she felt too tired to do much cleaning.
Every day by noon she was feeling sleepy again, so she didn’t bother to take off her father’s pajamas. In fact, it began to seem like too much effort to bathe and put on clean clothes, after all, she couldn’t be too dirty since she did little more than sleep. When she tried to read a book about Elizabeth I, she could hardly keep her eyes open.
Several times over the weeks she heard laughter in the garden, but she no longer got up to see what was going on. And her landlord no longer disturbed her. A few times she’d seen him in the kitchen, but she just smiled sleepily at him and went back upstairs, no longer running to get away from him.
Putting the book on the bedside table, she turned off the light. It was only seven in the evening and it was full daylight outside, but she was too sleepy to stay awake. As she fell asleep, she thought that as soon as she was rested, she’d finish the book and all the others in the apartment, but right now she wanted to sleep.