Still Me, Page 7

  "She's still Gopnik," he said. "Aunt Nancy thinks she might have seen her over by the auction table." He ran a manicured finger down the list of names. "There. Table 144. I walked past to check and there's a woman who fits her description. Fifty-something, dark hair, shooting poison darts from a Chanel evening bag? They've put her about as far away from Agnes as they could."

  "Oh, thank God," I said. "She'll be so relieved."

  "They can be pretty scary, these New York matrons," he said. "I don't blame Agnes for wanting to watch her back. Is English society this cut-throat?"

  "English society? Oh, I don't--I'm not very big on society events," I said.

  "Me either. To be honest, I'm so worn out after work that most days it's all I can do to pick up a takeout menu. What is it you do, Louisa?"

  "Um . . ." I glanced abruptly at my phone. "Oh, gosh. I have to get back to Agnes."

  "Will I see you before you go? Which table are you at?"

  "Thirty-two," I said, before I could think about all the reasons I shouldn't.

  "Then I'll see you later." I was briefly transfixed by Josh's smile. "I meant to say, by the way, you look beautiful." He leaned forward, and lowered his voice so that it rumbled a little by my ear. "I actually prefer your dress to your friend's. Did you take a picture yet?"

  "A picture?"

  "Here." He held up his hand, and before I worked out what he was doing, he had taken a photograph of the two of us, our heads inches apart. "There. Give me your number and I'll send it to you."

  "You want to send me a picture of you and me together."

  "Are you sensing my ulterior motive?" He grinned. "Okay, then. I'll keep it for myself. A memento of the prettiest girl here. Unless you want to delete it. There you go. Yours to delete." He held out his phone.

  I peered at it, my finger hovering over the button before I withdrew it. "It seems rude to delete someone you've just met. But, um . . . thank you . . . and for the whole covert table-surveillance thing. Really kind of you."

  "My pleasure."

  We grinned at each other. And before I could say anything more I ran back to the table.

  --

  I gave Agnes the good news--at which she let out an audible sigh--then sat and ate a bit of my now-cold fish while waiting for my head to stop buzzing. He's not Will, I told myself. His voice was wrong. His eyebrows were wrong. He was American. And yet there was something in his manner--the confidence combined with sharp intelligence, the air that said he could cope with anything you threw at him, a way of looking at you that left me hollowed out. I glanced behind me, remembering I hadn't asked Josh where he was seated.

  "Louisa?"

  I glanced to my right. Agnes was looking intently at me.

  "I need to go to the bathroom."

  It took me a minute to recall that this meant I should go too.

  We walked slowly through the tables to the Ladies, me trying not to scan the room for Josh. All eyes were on Agnes as she went, not just because of the vivid color of her dress but because she had magnetism, an unconscious way of drawing the eye. She walked with her chin up, her shoulders back, a queen.

  The moment we got into the Ladies, she slumped onto the chaise longue in the corner and gestured to me to give her a cigarette. "My God. This evening. I may die if we don't leave soon."

  The attendant--a woman in her sixties--raised an eyebrow at the cigarette, then looked the other way.

  "Er--Agnes, I'm not sure you can smoke in here."

  She was going to do it anyway. Perhaps when you were rich you didn't care about other people's rules. What could they do to her after all--throw her out?

  She lit it, inhaled, and sighed with relief. "Ugh. This dress is so uncomfortable. And the G-string is cutting me like cheese-wire, you know?" She wriggled in front of the mirror, hauling up her dress and rummaging underneath it with a manicured hand. "I should have worn no underwear."

  "But you feel okay?" I said.

  She smiled at me. "I feel okay. Some people have been very nice this evening. This Josh is very nice, and Mr. Peterson on other side of me is very friendly. It's not so bad. Maybe finally some people are accepting that Leonard has a new wife."

  "They just need time."

  "Hold this. I need to pee-pee." She handed me the half-smoked cigarette and disappeared into a cubicle. I held it up between two fingers, as if it were a sparkler. The cloakroom attendant and I exchanged a look and she shrugged, as if to say, What can you do?

  "Oh, my God," Agnes said, from inside the cubicle. "I will need to take whole thing off. Is impossible to pull it up. You will need to help me with zipper afterward."

  "Okay," I said. The attendant raised her eyebrows. We both tried not to giggle.

  Two middle-aged women entered the cloakroom. They looked at my cigarette with disapproval.

  "The thing is, Jane, it's like a madness takes hold of them," one said, stopping in front of the mirror to check her hair. I wasn't sure why she needed to: it was so heavily lacquered I'm not sure a force-ten hurricane would have dislodged it.

  "I know. We've seen it a million times."

  "But normally at least they've got the decency just to handle it discreetly. And that's what's been so disappointing for Kathryn. The lack of discretion."

  "Yes. It would be so much easier for her if it had at least been someone with a little class."

  "Quite. He's behaved like a cliche."

  At this both women's heads swiveled to me.

  "Louisa?" came a muffled voice from inside the cubicle. "Can you come here?"

  I knew then who they were talking about. I knew just from looking at their faces.

  There was a short silence.

  "You do realize this is a nonsmoking venue," one of the women said pointedly.

  "Is it? So sorry." I stubbed it out in the sink then ran some water over the end.

  "You can help me, Louisa? My zipper is stuck."

  They knew. They put two and two together and I saw their faces harden.

  I walked past them, knocked twice on the cubicle door, and she let me in.

  Agnes was standing in her bra, the tubular yellow dress stalled around her waist.

  "What--" she began.

  I put my fingers to my lips and gestured silently outside. She looked over, as if she could see through the door, and pulled a face. I turned her around. The zipper, two-thirds down, was lodged at her waist. I tried it two, three times then pulled my phone from my evening bag and turned on the torch, trying to work out what was stopping it.

  "You can fix this?" she whispered.

  "I'm trying."

  "You must. I can't go out like this in front of those women."

  Agnes stood inches from me in a tiny bra, her pale flesh giving off warm waves of expensive perfume. I tried to maneuver around her, squinting at the zipper, but it was impossible. She needed room to take the thing off so I could work on the zipper or I couldn't do it up. I looked at her and shrugged. She looked briefly anguished.

  "I don't think I can do it in here, Agnes. There's no room. And I can't see."

  "I can't go out like this. They will say I am whore." Her hands flew to her face, despairing.

  The oppressive silence outside told me the women were waiting on our next move. Nobody was even pretending to go to the loo. We were stuck. I stood back and shook my head, thinking. And then it came to me.

  "Giant finger," I whispered.

  Her eyes widened.

  I gazed at her steadily, and gave a small nod. She frowned, and then her face cleared.

  I opened the cubicle door and stood back. Agnes took a breath, straightened her spine, then strolled out past the two women, like a backstage supermodel, the top of the dress around her waist, her bra two delicate triangles that barely obscured the pale breasts underneath. She stopped in the middle of the room and leaned forward so that I could ease the dress carefully over her head. Then she straightened up, now naked except for her two scraps of lace, a study in apparent insouciance
. I dared not look at the women's faces, but as I draped the yellow dress over my arm I heard the dramatic intake of breath, felt the reverberations in the air.

  "Well, I--" one began.

  "Would you like a sewing kit, ma'am?" The attendant appeared at my side. She worked the little packet open while Agnes sat daintily on the chaise longue, her long pale legs stretched demurely out to the side.

  Two more women walked in, and their conversation stopped abruptly at the sight of Agnes in her lingerie. One coughed, and they looked studiedly away from her, stumbling over some new conversational platitude. Agnes rested on the chair, apparently blissfully unaware.

  The attendant handed me a pin, and using its point I caught the tiny scrap of thread that had entangled itself, tugging gently until I had freed it and the zipper moved again. "Got it!"

  Agnes stood, held the attendant's proffered hand and stepped elegantly back into the yellow dress, which the two of us raised around her body. When it was in place I pulled the zipper smoothly up until she was clad, every inch of the dress flush against her skin. She smoothed it down around her endless legs.

  The attendant proffered a can of hairspray. "Here," she whispered. "Allow me." She leaned forward and gave the fastening a quick spray from the can. "That'll help it stay up."

  I beamed at her.

  "Thank you. So kind of you," Agnes said. She pulled a fifty-dollar bill from her evening bag and handed it to the woman. Then she turned to me with a smile. "Louisa, darling, shall we go back to our table?" And, with an imperious nod to the two women, Agnes lifted her chin and walked slowly toward the door.

  There was silence. Then the attendant turned to me, and pocketed the money with a wide grin. "Now that," she said, her voice suddenly audible, "is class."

  6

  The following morning, George didn't come. Nobody told me. I sat in the hall in my shorts, bleary and gritty-eyed, and at half seven grasped that he must have been canceled.

  Agnes did not get up until after nine, a fact that had Ilaria tutting disapprovingly at the clock. She had sent a text asking me to cancel the rest of her day's appointments. Instead, some time around mid-morning, she said she'd like to walk around the Reservoir. It was a breezy day and we walked with scarves pulled up around our chins and our hands thrust into our pockets. All night I had thought about Josh's face. I still felt unbalanced by it, found myself wondering how many of Will's doppelgangers were walking around in different countries right now. Josh's eyebrows were heavier, his eyes a different color, and obviously his accent wasn't Will's. But still.

  "You know what I used to do with my friends when we were hung-over?" said Agnes, breaking into my thoughts. "We would go to this Japanese place near Gramercy Park and we would eat noodles and talk and talk and talk."

  "Let's go, then."

  "Where?"

  "To the noodle place. We can pick up your friends on the way."

  She looked briefly hopeful, then kicked a stone. "I can't now. Is different."

  "You don't have to turn up in Garry's car. We could get a taxi. I mean, you could dress down, just turn up. It would be fine."

  "I told you. Is different." She turned to me. "I tried these things, Louisa. For a while. But my friends are curious. They want to know everything about my life now. And then when I tell them the truth it makes them . . . weird."

  "Weird?"

  "Once we were all the same, you know? Now they say I can never know what their problems are. Because I am rich. Somehow I am not allowed to have problems. Or they are strange around me, like I am somehow different person. Like the good things in my life are an insult to theirs. You think I can moan about housekeeper to someone with no house?"

  She stopped on the path. "When I first marry Leonard, he gave me money for my own. A wedding present, so that I don't have to ask him for money all the time. And I give my best friend, Paula, some of this money. I give her ten thousand dollars to clear her debts, to make fresh start. At first she was so happy. I was happy too! To do this for my friend! So she doesn't have to worry anymore, like me!" Her voice grew wistful. "And then . . . then she didn't want to see me anymore. She was different, was always too busy to meet me. And slowly I see she resents me for helping her. She didn't mean to, but when she sees me now all she can think is that she owes me. And she is proud, very proud. She does not want to live with this feeling. So"--she shrugged--"she won't have lunch with me or take my calls. I lost my friend because of money."

  "Problems are problems," I said when it became clear she was expecting me to say something. "Doesn't matter whose they are."

  She stepped sideways to avoid a toddler on a scooter. She gazed after it, thinking, then turned to me. "You have cigarettes?"

  I had learned now. I pulled the packet from my backpack and handed it to her. I wasn't sure I should be encouraging her to smoke, but she was my boss. She inhaled and blew out a long plume of smoke.

  "Problems are problems," she repeated slowly. "You have problems, Louisa Clark?"

  "I miss my boyfriend." I said it as much as anything to reassure myself. "Apart from that, not really. This is . . . great. I'm happy here."

  She nodded. "I used to feel like this. New York! Always something to see new. Always exciting. Now I just . . . I miss . . ." She tailed off.

  For a moment I thought her eyes had filled with tears. But then her face stilled.

  "You know she hates me?"

  "Who?"

  "Ilaria. The witch. She was the other one's housekeeper and Leonard will not sack her. So I am stuck with her."

  "She might grow to like you."

  "She might grow to put arsenic in my food. I see the way she looks at me. She wishes me dead. You know how it feels to live with someone who wishes you dead?"

  I was pretty scared of Ilaria myself. But I didn't want to say so. We walked on. "I used to work for someone who I was pretty sure hated me at first," I said. "Gradually I worked out that it was nothing to do with me. He just hated his life. And as we got to know each other we started to get along just fine."

  "Did he ever scorch your best shirt 'accidentally'? Or put detergent in your underwear that he knew would make your vajajay itch?"

  "Uh--no."

  "Or serve food that you tell him fifty times you do not like so you will look like you are complaining all the time? Or tell stories about you to make you seem like prostitute?"

  My mouth had opened like that of a goldfish. I closed it and shook my head.

  She pushed her hair off her face. "I love him, Louisa. But living in his life is impossible. My life is impossible . . ." Again she trailed off.

  We stood, watching the people passing us on the path: the Roller-bladers and the kids on training wheels, the couples arm in arm, and the police officers in their shades. The temperature had dropped and I gave an involuntary shiver in my tracksuit top.

  She sighed. "Okay. We go back. Let's see which piece of my favorite clothing the Witch has ruined today."

  "No," I said. "Let's get your noodles. We can do that much at least."

  --

  We took a taxi to Gramercy Park, to a place in a brownstone on a shady side street that looked grubby enough to harbor some terrible intestinal bug. But Agnes seemed lighter almost as soon as we arrived. As I paid the taxi she bounded up the stairs and into the darkened interior, and when the young Japanese woman emerged from the kitchen she threw her arms round Agnes and hugged her, as if they were old friends. Then, holding Agnes by the elbow, she kept demanding to know where she had been. Agnes pulled off her beanie and muttered vaguely that she had been busy, got married, moved house, never once giving any clue to the true level of change in her circumstances. I noticed she was wearing her wedding ring but not the diamond engagement ring that was large enough to ensure a triceps workout.

  And when we slid into the Formica booth, it was like I had a different woman opposite me. Agnes was funny, animated, and loud, with an abrupt, cackling laugh, and I could see who Mr. Gopnik had fallen in love wi
th.

  "So how did you meet?" I asked, as we slurped our way through scalding bowls of ramen.

  "Leonard? I was his masseuse." She paused, as if waiting for my scandalized reaction, and when it didn't come she put her head down and continued, "I worked at the St. Regis. And they would send masseur to his home every week--Andre, usually. He was very good. But Andre was sick this day and they ask me to go instead. And I think, Oh, no, another Wall Street guy. They are, so many of them, full of bullshit, you know? They don't even think of you as human. Don't bother saying hello, don't speak . . . Some, they ask for . . ." she lowered her voice ". . . happy finish. You know 'happy finish'? Like you are prostitute. Ugh. But Leonard, he was kind. He shake my hand, ask me if I want English tea as soon as I come in. He was so happy when I massage him. And I could tell."

  "Tell what?"

  "That she never touch him. His wife. You can tell, touching a body. She was cold, cold woman." She looked down. "And he is in a lot of pain some days. His joints hurt him. This is before Nathan came. Nathan was my idea. To keep Leonard fit and healthy? But anyway. I really try hard to make this good massage for him. I go over my hour. I listen to what his body is telling me. And he was so grateful after. And then he asks for me the next week. Andre was not so happy about this, but what can I do? So then I am going twice a week to his apartment. And some days he would ask me if I would like English tea afterward and we talk. And then . . . Well, it is hard. Because I know I am falling in love with him. And this is something we cannot do."

  "Like doctors and patients. Or teachers."

  "Exactly." Agnes paused to put a dumpling into her mouth. It was the most I had ever seen her eat. She chewed for a moment. "But I cannot stop thinking about this man. So sad. And so tender. And so lonely! In the end I tell Andre he must go instead. I cannot go anymore."

  "And what happened?" I'd stopped eating.

  "Leonard comes to my home! In Queens! He somehow gets my address and his big car comes to my home. My friends and I, we are sitting on the fire escape having cigarette and I see him get out and he says, 'I want to talk to you.'"

  "Like Pretty Woman."

  "Yes! It is! And I go down to the sidewalk and he is so mad. He say, 'Did I offend you in some way? Did I treat you inappropriately?' And I just shake my head. And then he walks up and down and he say, 'Why won't you come? I don't want Andre anymore. I want you.' And, like a fool, I start to cry."