“This is going to sound terrible,” he said. “But I just saw someone I thought I knew and it made me realize I’m just not in the right space to pursue anything here, Anita, so I should really pass on the Spanish place. I’m so sorry.”
“Is this because you think tapas are too small?” she said. “Sam told me you were cheap.”
What would Sugar be doing in Gramercy anyway? Theo thought, after he’d paid the check. Marlena was right. He needed to spend more time on Avenue B.
10TH
Tompkins Square Park did not quite have the polish of its uptown cousins like Madison Square or Washington Square, but it had an eclectic charm that appealed to Sugar nonetheless. The street frontages around the park housed a mixture of cafés, bars and convenience stores in varying stages of gentrification, a state that seemed to be reflected by the park’s occupants.
The dog owners congregated in one corner, the moms and playing children in another, the vocal but otherwise harmless homeless took up a line of bench seating over by Avenue A and a group of Hare Krishnas were generally found praying at the foot of a tree on the south side.
One clear morning not long after she’d moved onto Flores Street, Sugar was sitting on a sun-soaked bench listening to a blind saxophonist softly channeling Louis Armstrong by the temperance fountain in the middle. As she watched a trio of bees happily fly from leaf to flower to somewhere in the distance she thought that it was, indeed, a beautiful world.
“You go on and fill your boots now,” she told the bees, wondering if they were hers as they flew over her head. Lord knew she loved the creatures but she could still not tell hers from anyone else’s.
“You talking to me or the insects?” It was George Wainwright, wearing the same coat as he had the day she met him, though it looked as though it had been dry-cleaned. The buttons shone, as did his shoes, and he had a pair of near-new black trousers on too. Without the flotsam of the curb stuck to him, he looked a world away from the tattered souls arguing with each other or no one in particular on the other side of the park.
He was no more homeless than she was.
“Well hello, George. What a pleasure to see you again.”
“The pleasure is all mine, Miss Sugar. Mind if I join you?”
“It would save me from the pain of having everyone else think I’m crazy sitting here on my own talking to the bug world.”
“Oh, I don’t think too many people would mind that here,” said George. “This park is kind of known for its crazy.”
“It sure has a certain color to it,” Sugar said.
“Always has had. They say this used to be the most populated two square miles on the planet. First stop in the new world for most folk. Although by and large they couldn’t get away from it quickly enough.” He winced as he shifted his weight on the bench seat.
“That leg still giving you trouble?” Sugar asked.
George flapped his hand in front of his face. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just another sign of being old and decrepitated and at eighty-two years of age I’ve already had my fill of those. But who wants to hear about an old man getting older? Tell me something about yourself, Miss Sugar. Where are you from?”
“I’m from just around the corner on Flores Street,” she answered. “You know the building with the balloon shop in the basement?”
“No, Miss Sugar, that’s where you’re at,” George said, with great indignation. “I mean where are you from? You know, from.”
Sugar sighed, a sorry little flutter of air that she barely noticed but that told George more than she could have imagined. “I guess I’m not really from there anymore,” she said, watching another bee hover around George’s head as if something were about to bloom out of his ear. “I haven’t been from there for a long time.”
George’s eyes followed the bee to a pale yellow rosebush in the garden opposite them.
“Bees love yellow,” Sugar said. “And blue. But not red. Isn’t that strange?”
“I find red a little tacky myself,” said George. “Although yellow doesn’t do much for my complexion either, now I come to think on it.”
“Nothing worse than tacky,” Sugar said, and they smiled at each other. “And you, George? Where are you from?”
“The place you haven’t been from for such a long time, I think I haven’t been from somewhere nearby for even longer.”
Now that he said that, now that she recognized the rhythm of his words, Sugar realized she must have known that all along, although usually she steered clear of anyone with a southern twang, wary of treading too close to the deep roots of her past.
“Do you ever come to the greenmarket here on a Sunday?” she asked. “I’m hoping I can get a spot.”
“Occasionally I do.” George nodded. “It’s small but there’s a mighty fine baker and a cheese man from upstate and there’s ice cream too, I think. And lavender. Leastways, it always smells of lavender. And what would you be selling at a greenmarket, Miss Sugar?”
“Honey, mostly, which is why I was communing with the bees here. I need to keep on the right side of them.”
“You strike me as the type to keep on the right side of most things if you don’t mind me saying so.”
Sugar did not mind him saying so. He reminded her of her grandfather was the thing, so he could say just about whatever he wanted.
She felt tears collect in the corner of her mind, which was as far as she usually allowed them to go. “Do you miss it?” she asked, even though she hardly dared ask herself the same question. “The place you used to come from?”
“Oh, there’s no ‘used to’ about it, Miss Sugar. Where you’re from is where you’re from and a person will always miss it. There’s no getting away from that. But that’s not the end of the world. You just get familiar with the missing, is all.”
He was right, of course, although he said it like it was an easy thing to do when she knew that wasn’t the case. “Did you ever go back?” she asked.
“No, ma’am, I did not.”
“Did you ever want to?”
It was George’s turn to sigh now, but his flutter of air had a more resigned impression to it than Sugar’s; his reason for sighing had been around a lot longer. “Truth is, I did a terrible thing,” he said. “Hurt a lot of people back there, back then, so I was not welcome back. Wanting never came into it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, George.”
“Me too, sorrier than most anyone will ever know, but that doesn’t change things.”
“Well, I’m sorry about that too.”
“So what about you, Miss Sugar? You ever going back?”
“I did a terrible thing too,” she answered. “Just like you.”
“Whatever you did, I bet you it wasn’t just like me,” George said.
“I hurt people, just like you, and I’m not welcome back, just like you.”
George reared back and took a funny look at her. “You don’t look like you would hurt a flea.”
“And you look like the guy who drove Miss Daisy.”
He laughed. “Nice of you to say so,” he said. “I appreciate that. And that other business, well, that was a long time ago and the truth is, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“You don’t have to tell me any more,” said Sugar. “I understand secrets.”
“It’s not so much a secret, just something that doesn’t sound so good when you say it out loud. But I guess if you put it plainly, I stole my brother’s wife right out from under his nose. And while it was a terrible thing to do and caused more heartache than you could ever imagine, truth was, she was with the wrong man and she wasn’t going to get the happiness she deserved with him. And I knew she could get it with me, and as the good Lord knows, so indeed she did. I loved that sweet woman with all my heart and soul every moment of every day until she passed away three years ago this July.”
“Oh, George, I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you, Miss Sugar.”
They sat companionably in the sun giving their thoughts a little breathing space as they watched the bees zoom in and out of the elms.
“So where are you at, George?” Sugar eventually asked.
“I live with my great-nephew and his family up in Harlem,” he said. “They’re wonderful people and I’m very welcome there but his wife doesn’t need me getting in her hair all day long so I come down here, where Eliza and I, that’s my wife, had some of our happiest times. We lived over on Avenue C most our lives and I stayed there for a time after she passed but then I lost my job—replaced by a camera. Strange old world we live in. Slippery, as you said the day we met.”
“What was your job?”
“I’m a doorman,” he said. “Yes, ma’am, I have farewelled and welcomed some of the best this city has ever seen in my time. But modernization got me in the end and now I like to sit around down here, remembering better times.”
“I’ll bet you were the perfect doorman,” Sugar said. “Manners like yours are hard to come by.”
“Funny thing is, I always felt like the perfect doorman. Got interviewed for a magazine article once and the young fella writing the story asked me if it was demeaning, opening and closing doors for people, but I never felt that way about it at all. I felt honored to be in a position of such trust, to have people depend on me, even if it was only for little things. I liked that I could start someone’s morning in a way that might fix their mood a little better, or make them feel good about coming home at the end of a long day. That’s not demeaning where I come from. That’s the bread of life. And I miss it. In fact, too much of my day is spent missing things, which does a person’s spirit no good in the long run.”
He shook his head. “Listen to me, whining on like the world owes me a living. It’s a beautiful day and I’m sitting right here in it. I’m more blessed than most. And the pleasure of your company is a blessing on its own. But I’m going to head over to the river now, sit and look at the Williamsburg Bridge a little while before the wind comes up.”
He stood up, but almost buckled under his own weight.
“That leg of yours does not look like nothing to me,” Sugar said.
“It’s giving me trouble,” George admitted.
“You mind if I take a look?”
“Are you a doctor?”
“No, but I can sometimes fix things, just the same.”
“Nothing to lose.” George sat back down and lifted his trouser cuff to reveal the open sore on his shin.
“Did you do this falling on the curb the other day?”
“Reckon this is why I fell on the curb the other day. Been there for months. Just can’t get rid of the darn thing.”
“And you’ve been to the ER?”
George raised one distinguished eyebrow. “It might seem like I have nothing better to do than sit around a hospital all day but something always comes along.”
Sugar stood up. “I have a remedy at my apartment that’s going to clean this up real quick,” she said. “Want to come by and let me see what I can do?”
He smiled and held out his arm. “Miss Sugar Wallace, it would be rude not to.”
11TH
Lola tied a new balloon to the railing—a dinosaur, good sized but with a slightly surprised expression on its face and not quite the same shade of brilliant green she had imagined when she ordered it.
She looked up Flores Street and saw Mrs. Keschl scuttling like a crab down one side and Mr. McNally studiously ignoring her, dyed orange hair glinting in the sunlight, on the other.
The crazy guy who always dressed in a purple glittery cloak was crossing up at Avenue B and the actress converting an entire building at the other end of the street was being driven past in her limo.
None of them were balloon buyers.
Lola flicked at the dinosaur with her multicolored nails just as her phone vibrated in her pocket. It was another text from Rollo, a friend, sort of, from the bad old days before Ethan. She’d bumped into him in the square recently but he still ran with the old crowd and she was not interested in running with him.
U LOOKD SO GUD THE OTHER DAY, the text said. SURE U DONT WAN2 MAKE SUM $$? CALL ME.
She did not want to call him. She really did not. But she needed $$.
She looked up and down Flores Street again. It was empty. She punched the dinosaur in the head and stomped down the stairs to the store, slamming the door closed behind her without flipping the CLOSED sign to OPEN.
Moments later, Sugar and George came around the corner. The dinosaur was still looking surprised and bobbing from Lola’s punch but it was far perkier than the other balloons. The world globe now looked like a peach pit, and the superhero had aged a further decade.
“I’d buy some balloons to help her out if I could ever get in the place,” Sugar said. “Or at least help her blow them up a little better. But she keeps closing the store.”
“Some folk just don’t want helping,” George said.
“Speaking of which, we have four flights of stairs to climb. Are you going to be all right with that?”
“My leg will do fine but my head might suffer,” he said examining the building’s entrance. “I’m not much of a one for heights. This door is an original, did you know that? It sticks, I bet, and it’ll be heavy to push too, but still, that’s one fine-looking door.”
Sugar thought this through as George opened the second door and then slowly followed her up the stairs.
Once they reached her apartment he stuck to the wall like a limpet and Sugar had to prize him away and lead him, eyes closed, to the sofa.
“Up off the ground and in a lady’s boudoir,” he said. “This does not feel right.”
“It’s my kitchen and my living room as well,” Sugar assured him. “And if you open your eyes and look outside, it’s my rooftop terrace too.”
George opened one eye enough to confirm that he was too high off the ground.
“Just let me look at that leg of yours and I’ll have you on your way back down to ground level in no time,” Sugar assured him.
His eyes stayed closed while she bathed the wound but he opened them to watch her apply pure honey with a drop of tea tree oil in it.
“You think honey can really fix this?” he asked.
“I think honey can fix anything,” she said. “I know most people just want to eat it but there’s a heck of a lot more you can do with a little honey. It’s practically magic.”
“Is that so?”
“It’s all antiseptic,” she said. “Every last drop. But there’s a type of tree over in New Zealand called manuka. It’s not so pretty to look at, kind of dark and scraggy with a tiny white flower. Anyway, the bees love it like nothing else and the ones who feed on it make the best healing honey in the whole world. I tasted it once; it’s real strong and woody, with a hint of lemon.” She showed him the label on the jar of honey she’d used on his leg. “This New Hampshire amber is pretty good too, but it might take a week or so. Still, you’ll be opening and closing doors before you know it.”
“If only I had any doors to open and close.”
“About that,” Sugar said. “I was wondering . . . You know, it seems to me that you are a doorman without a door and that is not a good state of affairs, yet right here at 33 Flores Street we have a door—and, as you have already pointed out, a very unobliging one at that—which seems to me to be seriously short of a doorman.”
“Indeed you do and indeed it is,” said George.
“I would even go as far as saying that opening and closing that door all day long is just wearing me and the other tenants of this building out. They’re for the most part not in the best shape to begin with, it has to be said. So what I was thinking was maybe you could act as an honorary doorman for a while. Then you’d be helping us all out and you’d be handy for me to keep an eye on while your leg heals too.”
“You think that would be all right with the others?”
“Who in their right mind would complain ab
out having a free doorman?”
“I knew it the moment I laid eyes on you,” George said. “You are an angel.”
“I most certainly am not,” Sugar said, “and I think you’ll find that neither is anyone else who lives here. I’ve met all but one of them and I’m sure they are sweethearts, really, deep down. But on the surface . . .”
“Manners are somewhat lacking?”
“Yes,” Sugar agreed. “Manners are somewhat lacking. But I’m sure we can do something about that. Just give me a chance to run you up the flagpole, so to speak. Come back Monday and hopefully we can put you to work.”
12TH
Marlena bought Theo a cupcake, which had never happened before. He was more of a shortbread person, as it happened, but he would rather face three inches of putrid pale pink frosting than risk hurting her feelings. He would rather face three feet of it.
Plus it was truly difficult for a Scotsman to look a gift horse in the mouth. It hardly ever happened.
“I see from the time of night you’ve been sending e-mails this week that your dating has come to a standstill,” Marlena said. “What’s up with that?”
“I thought I saw her,” Theo said. “Sugar, I mean. The one I told you about. And even though it turned out not to be her, it got me thinking.”
“Oh, thinking,” Marlena said. “Yeah, sure, like you haven’t done enough of that since your divorce.”
“As you’re clearly taking such a close interest, you might like to know then that I’m also doing a wee bit of stalking.”
“OK,” said Marlena. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Marlena had worked within eyeshot of Theo ever since he first arrived in New York so knew all about his meteoric rise in fortune, his catastrophic marriage to a society blonde and his subsequent descent into misery. She’d also played a bigger role than she knew in his salvation.
Theo had been fully aware how much his mother would have despised the person he turned into after marrying Carolyn. And the one he turned into after Carolyn left him for their Amagansett gardener, Joe. But every time Marlena brought him an aspirin after a big night out or walked in on an unsavory phone conversation or laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder just when he most ached for a gentle touch, he was reminded how much he once wanted to be a man of whom his mother would be proud.