Sliver

“Just a little?” he said.

  “Pete,” she said, “you know what’ll happen. . . .”

  They looked at each other.

  She said, “I don’t deny I’d like to. . . .”

  “They don’t know,” he said.

  She shook her head. “Jesus,” she said.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’ll set a reasonable time and we’ll really stick to it. I said I wasn’t going to quit cold turkey, didn’t I? One hour. But really. We’ll set the alarm.”

  She sighed. “All right,” she said. “But really. One hour.”

  They set the alarm.

  They worked up a sweat at the Vertical Club, battling the biceps machines side by side. Swam laps in the pool.

  Went with Roxie and Fletcher to an Off Broadway hit. Didn’t think much of it, though Roxie and Fletcher enjoyed it. Roxie invited them up for a nightcap; they passed.

  A five-year-old could have worked it. You touched the 10A top button, then the 1 button in the center bank—and presto, there was the 10A living room on 1. Anne Stangerson holding her ears, refusing to listen to an old woman reading from a sheet of paper—her mother reading her living will.

  They watched a few minutes, while on 2, the Gruens in 14B, naked on their bed with a book and a calculator, worked out the best time to get Daisy pregnant.

  She took the left-hand monitors and 1, he took the right-hand monitors and 2. They found contrasts and harmonies.

  Played duets on the people organ.

  She stood leaning by her office window with her arms folded, looking down at the shiny necklace of rainswept traffic far below. She sighed, looked ahead. A woman at a window across the street looked away. “Kay,” Sara said, “is anything wrong?”

  She turned, smiling. “Just the usual,” she said. “Homelessness, drug-related crime, the national debt . . .”

  She came down on an at-home day to have a look at Dr. Palme. Two black posture-back chairs stood before the console.

  “What do you know,” Pete said, “it divided.”

  They watched Dr. Palme and Nina.

  And Dick.

  And Joanna.

  Diadem had taken a table at a black-tie dinner dance for the Literacy Volunteers of America, in the Celeste Bartos Forum of the Forty-second Street Library. In the cab on the way down Fifth Avenue, in faux fur and beaded burgundy velvet, she said, “Really, be prepared for dirty looks, maybe remarks too. I’ve seen it before. Older men get nasty, especially when the woman’s not deformed. It’s an animal thing, the stags bumping antlers.”

  “Will you stop worrying?” he said. “Older women and younger men are all over the place. Look at Babette and Allan.”

  “That’s five years, for God’s sake,” she said.

  “Relax,” he said. “Everybody’s going to be nice. I’ll bet you a massage.”

  She turned to the window. “You’re on. . . .”

  Traffic crept—the tree in Rockefeller Center.

  Which was breathtaking, though, as they inched past it, the dazzle of lights at the end of the plaza, the lines of gauze angels lifting gilt trumpets . . .

  In the hall outside the forum, she took him by the hand—“Here we go”—and brought him to a gray-haired couple at the end of one of the coat-check lines. “Hi!” she said. “This is Peter Henderson! Pete, June del Vecchio, Norman del Vecchio.”

  “Hello!” June said, shaking Pete’s hand, smiling at him.

  “Hello,” Norman said, shaking Pete’s hand. Smiling at him.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said to them. “Kay told me you’re active in Civitas. My father was too; I wonder if you knew him. John Henderson?”

  Norman said, “Of U.S. Steel?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “We did, yes,” Norman said, smiling at him.

  “What a charmer he was!” June said. “You have his eyes, and his smile!”

  “And what a salesman!” Norman said. “He got us money from builders we’d fought against!”

  “You’d better watch out, Kay,” June said, “if Peter’s cut from the same cloth!”

  She smiled. “Thanks for the warning,” she said.

  “What field are you in, Peter?” Norman asked.

  “I’ve been doing some computer programming,” he said. “At the moment I’m sort of in flux.”

  “Maybe you could have a look at our billing system; God knows it could use overhauling. Oh Jim, come say hello to Peter Henderson, the son of an old friend. . . .”

  There were cocktails first in Astor Hall. Everybody was nice.

  Stuart had gotten to Sam’s material and thanked her for it. “It’s the kind of stuff I love,” he said. “He’s coming in next week. If we hit it off, I’m going to offer him a small advance.”

  “Oh good, I’m glad,” she said.

  “That’s great,” Pete said.

  “Do you know him too, Pete?” Stuart asked.

  “Just to say hello to in the elevator,” he said. “We’re all in the same building.”

  Wendy, smiling, said, “Would you perchance be the mysterious owner?”

  “No,” he said, smiling at Kay, “we haven’t figured out yet who it is. The leading candidates are a pair of lawyers.”

  The forum’s glass dome—ribbed with steel, rimmed with bulbs, a spaceship out of H. G. Wells—was lighted from above with pink shading into violet. The tables beneath it were purple and violet with white-and-gold settings, pink-and-violet floral arrangements, tall pink candles. A four-piece combo played Sondheim and Porter.

  The conversation at the Diadem table was about the traffic and the city’s crumbling infrastructure, Japanese investment strategies, health food, living wills.

  After the Cornish game hen, Norman said, “Kay?” She smiled at Pete as she followed Norman onto the dance floor. They said some hellos; danced to “Let’s Do It” with air between them.

  “He’s unusually perceptive,” Norman said. “Well informed too.”

  “Isn’t he?” she said.

  “I hope he’s more stable emotionally than his father. Married four times, I believe. Always actresses. I wonder if . . .”

  They danced, couples close around them.

  “What?” she asked.

  “One of them died in a fall,” Norman said. “Down the stairs of their duplex. I wonder if that was Peter’s mother.”

  “It was,” she said. “Thea Marshall.”

  “A curving marble staircase, according to the story.”

  “The story?” She smiled at Pete, winking at her over June’s gray curls a few couples away.

  “Hello there,” Norman said to someone. “Oh, a bit of gossip that went around at the time—what was it, twelve or thirteen years ago? There was a party in progress when it happened. She had suitcases with her, that’s why she lost her footing. She was rushing to catch a plane—going home for Christmas, a last-minute impulse. That’s what Henderson said afterwards. She was from someplace in Canada. Well, supposedly one of the suitcases popped a latch when it hit bottom and someone saw bathing suits and summer dresses.”

  “Do you think we can make a deal?” Pete asked, June smiling on his arm alongside them.

  “Oh yes, indeed,” Norman said, letting go of her, taking June. “An eminently fair deal all around.” Pete slipped an arm around her waist, smiling at her. June said, “Aren’t we gallant this evening,” as Norman danced her into the crowd.

  “What about bathing suits and summer dresses?” Pete asked, drawing her close, taking her hand, turning her with the music. She looked at him—handsome in his black tie, his blue eyes smiling at her. He said, “That’s what it sounded like.”

  She said, “I don’t know. I wasn’t listening.”

  He held her tight, pressed his cheek to hers, turned her. “Who owes who a massage?” he asked.

  They danced in the crowd of dancers, to “Easy to Love,” under the steel-ribbed glass dome lit with violet shading into purple.

  9

  SHE H
AD PICTURED IT in some work-related limbo; how awful that it had happened in the apartment, at a time when more than likely he had been there to see it—before Christmas, a party going on.

  She thought about it—again—watching Lisa packing a suitcase on 1 and Maggie, poor Maggie, unpacking a suitcase on 2. He was over in 13A waiting to pay the man from Jolly Chan’s, coming up in the number-one elevator along with Phil and the McAuliffs.

  The bathing suits and summer dresses, if they’d been real and not a mistake on someone’s part, suggested California.

  Which suggested Sam.

  Which suggested an assist down the stairs by John Henderson.

  She had edited dozens of Gothics and thrillers, she reminded herself. Fatal falls in real life were accidents more often than not. Even down curving marble staircases.

  They’d had a place in Palm Beach; maybe that was where Thea had been going, and John had said she’d been going home only because it sounded like a better reason for parting at Christmas.

  Though surely Thea had had bathing suits and summer dresses in Palm Beach. . . .

  The door opened; she swiveled in her chair. Watched Pete come into the foyer with a brown paper shopping bag. He smiled—John Henderson’s smile. John’s son. “What do you want first?” he asked, closing the door.

  “Whatever, darling,” she said. Smiled at him.

  He smiled in the pale blue-white, looking beyond her. “Nice,” he said. “A Tale of Two Suitcases. Did I say she’d be back?” He went into the kitchen. Light flooded from the pass-through.

  She swiveled. Watched Lisa trying to close her suitcase, Maggie putting hers in the closet.

  She swiveled, got up, went to the kitchen. He turned from unloading the bag onto the counter. “I’ll do it, honey,” he said.

  “I want to move around a little,” she said. Took plates from the dish rack, put them on the counter by him. “Mmm, smells good,” she said.

  “Why don’t they mark these things . . .” He lifted along the metal rim of a circular container.

  She took forks and soup spoons from the drawer, put the spoons by him. “The suitcases reminded me,” she said, “Norman told me about your mother’s fall.”

  He turned and looked at her. “Was he there?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, “he heard about it. I knew that was how she died, Sam told me, but I didn’t know it was at home.” She touched his arm, looking at him. “Were you there?” she asked.

  He nodded. “She’d just said good-bye to me,” he said. “About two minutes before.”

  She winced, squeezed his arm.

  “I didn’t see it happen,” he said. “I was in my room.” He smiled. “Watching Charlie’s Angels.” The smile went. “All of a sudden it got quiet downstairs. There were a lot of people there, thirty or forty, and it got real quiet. . . .” He drew a breath and looked to the container, lifted along its rim with both thumbs. “I think this is the curried shrimp,” he said.

  She stood close beside him, holding his arm, watching his hands. “Where was she going?” she asked.

  “To my grandparents’,” he said. “In Nova Scotia. Have you ever been there?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Neither have I,” he said. “She made it sound pretty grim. They visited us a few times, we didn’t go there.”

  She kissed his ear, let go his arm, took a pinch of napkins from the box while he spooned shrimp and rice onto the plates. “What would you like to drink?” she asked.

  He squinted, pursed his lips. “Beer,” he said.

  “Good idea,” she said, putting the forks and napkins on the tray. She went to the refrigerator, opened it. “What did your father die of?” she asked.

  “Bone marrow cancer,” he said. “When did Norman tell you? The other night?”

  She got out two cans of beer, elbowed the door closed. “No,” she said. “Yesterday, in the office. He’s impressed as all get-out with you, you know that?”

  “Come on,” he said, “he’s impressed with my money.”

  “Both,” she said.

  She got glasses and brought everything in on the tray. He brought in the two filled plates.

  It was Saturday night. They watched till after two.

  “Some night,” she said, turning around on his lap and hugging him. He swiveled his chair while they kissed, swiveled full circle, twice. “Your average Saturday,” he said.

  She got up and stretched, yawning. He caressed her back, turned, opened a drawer. “I’m going to tape the Steins,” he said, “just in case Springsteen shows up.”

  “He isn’t going to,” she said, buttoning her shirt. “Mark’s full of shit, can’t you tell?”

  “Vladimir Horowitz was there once,” he said, peeling plastic from a videocassette. “I’ve got it. Lesley did all the talking though.”

  “Do you tape much?” she asked, gathering plates and napkins from the console.

  “No,” he said, crumpling the plastic, drawing the cassette from the slipcase. “I did the first year or so—those two drawers are full—but there was always so much new stuff going on that I never got around to watching.” He put the cassette into the right-hand VCR, homed it. “Now I only bother when there’s a major event.” He pressed buttons.

  “Like us,” she said, using a wadded napkin to brush bits of rice and chocolate cake from the console onto the plates.

  “Right,” he said, smiling. “And Springsteen maybe.”

  He shut down everything except the VCR and the input from the Steins’ living room.

  They straightened up in the kitchen. He took out the garbage when they left.

  She hadn’t done more than glance at two of the manuscripts up for discussion Wednesday afternoon but she made it through the conference handily. Had in fact been more cogent in her comments, she told herself riding down to the forty-eighth floor, for having seen the woods and not the trees.

  Sam sat reading in the reception area, a coat on the couch beside him. He looked at her over half-glasses, smiled and got up—in brown corduroy, plaid shirt, black tie, his gray hair looking freshly cut. “Hello!” he said, taking the glasses off, putting a Publishers Weekly down.

  “Hi, Sam!” she said, going to him. “Stuart told me you were coming in.”

  “Congratulate me,” he rasped, shaking her hand, smiling. “I’m a Diadem author.”

  “Oh, that’s great!” she said. “I do, congratulations!” She hugged him. “I congratulate us too,” she said.

  He grinned at her. Pale scars webbed his flushed cheek and skewed nose. “He’s drawing up a contract,” he said. “An advance now and another when I get to the halfway mark.”

  “I knew he would like it,” she said.

  “I wanted to thank you.”

  She took him into her office, had Sara bring two coffees. They sat by the window in catty-cornered armchairs.

  He scanned the glass-walled offices across the street. “Voyeur’s heaven,” he said.

  She smiled, stirred her cup.

  He sipped from his. “Stuart couldn’t be more simpatico,” he said. “He grew up in the movie business.”

  “That’s why I gave it to him,” she said. “Partly—the other part being that he’s a good editor with substantial clout here.”

  “I really am grateful to you,” he said. “This has made a significant difference for me. I think in the long run it was a mistake taking the grant. From the foundation. You know.” He sipped from the white cup with the blue three-jeweled crown on it. “You can get awfully lazy and self-indulgent,” he said, “when the grocery money is coming in regardless. Now, aside from being into the writing, and feeling that I’m getting better at it, I’m teaching more than before too.” He smiled at her. “I’m beginning to have visions of getting on the talk shows and winding up directing again.”

  She smiled. “That’s great,” she said. “I hope it comes to pass.”

  They sipped.

  “We’re aiming for next spring,” he said
. “I’ve got about eighty pages now.”

  She said, “Would you give me something in return?”

  “Name it,” he said, looking at her.

  “An answer to a personal question,” she said.

  He smiled. “Why not? I’m being godawful frank in the book. Go ahead.”

  “When Thea Marshall died,” she said, “was she on her way to you?”

  He drew back, his dark-ringed eyes squinting at her. “What in God’s name gave you that idea?”

  “Or to work out there?”

  “No,” he said. “Definitely not. I asked her just a few weeks before and the conversation ended with her hanging up on me.” He sighed, studying his cup. “We were on-again-off-again for over twenty years,” he said. “She was married for most of them, to a filthy-rich husband she wouldn’t let go of. She was honest about it, at least. She grew up poor and was paranoid about dying that way. She felt there was a good chance of it with me, I was already drinking too much. Whereas her husband was the chairman of U.S. Steel and hardly drank at all. It hadn’t been a bad career move either.” He sat straighter, shook his head. “No, she wasn’t a risk-taker,” he said. “She was going home, that’s what the papers said. She was from Nova Scotia. Her folks were fishermen.” He sipped his coffee.

  Watching him, she said, “There was a rumor at the time that she’d packed for warm weather.”

  He looked at her.

  “One of her suitcases opened when she fell.”

  He said, “Where’d you hear that?”

  “From someone in their circle, or close to it.”

  He lowered the cup, holding it with both hands. Put it down.

  Sat looking ahead.

  “Son of a gun . . .” he said. Scratched his ear. Looked at her. “You know, it would fit,” he said. “He put out a contract on me. I thought he had found some of my letters, or maybe she told him about us at the end.”

  “A contract?” she said.

  He nodded. “Someone I knew who had mob connections warned me about it. I didn’t believe him. Then I got this.” He pointed at his nose and cheek. “I decided it was a good time to do some traveling. That’s why the career ended. Mainly.” He gazed ahead. “Son of a gun,” he said. “I thought he had overreacted, but if she was leaving him, coming to me . . .”