Blue Rose In Chelsea (26 page)

     “Why did you do that to Evan?” he asks pointedly.

     I assume he’s referring to the confrontation in the courtyard.  I’m speechless that Evan would share that with anyone, even Brandon.

     Brandon informs me that, after I fled the ball, Sinclair gave my bulky velvet bag of stories to Wanda Everhart Teely-Turpin to take home with her to evaluate.

     “She fired Evan.  She read some story that you wrote about you and Evan.  Wanda and Evan were involved; they were a couple, and apparently something that you wrote sent her over the edge.”

     I stand there in the snowy cold in my layers of wool: gray wool tights tucked into pink boots, a short black sweater dress and heavy black hooded cardigan—and wearing the furry earmuffs that Evan bought me.  I scrape my memory for what Brandon could possibly be referring to.  The saxophone player across the way drops notes into the lavender air.  And then I recall that my story,
Blue Rose In
Chelsea
, was in that bag, a novella of sorts that I’ve been working on since the day I met Evan because I felt the need to record every word, every look, every encounter with him.  It’s not so much a story, as one rambling journal entry, one long love letter to him.

     “She fired Evan?” I repeat helplessly.

     “She figured out that there was something between the two of you.  I always thought there was; we all did.  How could you do that to him, Haley?  You know he’s got a widowed mother and two younger sisters back home in Texas who rely on him for the money he sends home.”

     Have I been mowed over by a truck? 
There are people who fall
back on me
.  Evan’s words echo in the cavern of memory.  I had assumed Evan meant those who were earning money off him, like Wanda, or the producers of the television show.

     “But the television series,” I begin.    

     “It was cancelled.”

     “The show was cancelled?  So soon?  I don’t understand.”

     “The show was cancelled.  It didn’t get good ratings.  Then Wanda fired Evan.  He’s pretty low.  Evan is not the kind of person you worry about, but I’m worried now.”

     “I would never hurt Evan.  I would die first.”

     “Haley, I’ve known you since we were kids.  I think of you as my little sister, well, when I’m not thinking unholy thoughts about you.  I never would have thought you were capable of something like this.  I would defend you in a New York minute, but that whole night was so weird.  It’s as if it wasn’t you, like you were a different person or something.  First the dancing fruits in the suits to make Evan jealous, and then your boyfriend insults Evan, and then you have Sinclair give that story to Wanda.  It’s as if you had it in for him that night.”

     “None of that was planned!  None of that was my doing. I swear it!  I have to talk to Evan.”  I circle about, tamping down snow in my pink boots, not sure which way to turn, or where or how to begin to make restitution with Evan.

     “Leave him alone, Haley.  He’s gone away.”

     “Gone away?” I say weakly.  “Where?”  The city, without Evan, feels like a heaven without angels.

     “Just leave him alone.”

     Brandon stands and stubs out his cigarette.  He surrenders the borrowed novel to me as if he can’t bear the thought of contact with anything of mine.  I watch him walk away, hands plunged into his pockets, red wool beret bent into the wind, as he turns the corner of Columbus.  I look down at the book.  The spine is broken.

~~~~~

     There’s a message on my answering machine from Wanda, demanding that I meet her at Cooper’s Café at two p.m. prompt.  I deduce two things from her cryptic message; she lives in my neighborhood, and she is in the habit of telling people where and when to show up.  I feel suddenly light-headed, and sit on the bed near the open window, fanning myself with a postcard from the Three Lives bookstore.  It’s a watercolor rendering of the exterior of the bookshop, with the words
a novel is a garden carried in the pocket
.  Across the way, the mysterious saxophone player blows elegiac notes, like bubbles, into my bedroom.

     “You better show, or she’s likely to come here and get us.”  Sinclair’s eyes rake the room as if a machete-wielding Wanda may spring any moment from the shadows.  “She frightens me, frankly.  She’s one of those balls-on-the-chopping-block, take no prisoners, New York broads.”

     Sinclair has made a rare appearance at his apartment.  Wanda’s lunch date-on-demand has distracted him from the snow stains on the
Gigi
gown.

     “What do you think she wants?”  I settle onto a small cherry-red silk stool, surrounded by yards of silver shantung and velvet the color of grape jelly.  A pink lampshade throws a soft light over the balmy February afternoon.  The vanilla cupcake candles smell mouth-watering as they melt into bumpy clumps on the mantelpiece.

     “She wants a face-to-face confrontation with the other woman.”

     “Forget it!”

     Sinclair insists he will protect me by keeping guard outside Coopers.  “If she throws a punch, I’ll alert the authorities.”

     “Gee, thanks.”

     Sinclair rummages through his dress racks and retrieves a mohair coat in a brilliant red, with a matching cloche hat, and holds it up until I succumb to squeezing into it.  “The wistful ingénue, Libby, won’t do for today’s task, Viv.  Today you must be Madeline!” he proclaims in reference to Vivien Leigh’s role as a French spy in the movie
Dark Journey
.  “If Madeline Goddard could single-handedly take on the German High Command, you can take on Wanda Evil-heart Tiffy Turpentine,” he spits, scrambling her surnames in his distress.

     The bold red of my ensemble stokes my courage.  I’m hoping to possibly smooth things over with Wanda, and, in that way, make my amends to Evan.

     “Deny everything, Madeline!” he insists, shoving me into the hallway.

     Wanda Everhart Teely-Turpin occupies a window table at Cooper’s Café, smoking a Marlboro cigarette and drinking a steaming glass mug of coffee.  She dismisses smoke through her pronounced lips, and seems to review some paperwork before her.  I arrange my curls about the cloche hat for courage, smooth the mohair coat over my black knit dress, and spy a run in my tights, which seems to foreshadow defeat.

     I sink slowly into the chair opposite her, and confess, with feeling, that I never meant to give her that story, or any of my stories for that matter, that it was all a misunderstanding, an error of circumstances.

     “A comedy of errors,” Wanda states without emotion, stubbing out her cigarette as if she hopes to dislodge hidden treasure from its rolled paper, but she’s not laughing.  Her hair has a fashionable blonde flip, like a lethal Veronica Lake.

     That’s when I spy Sinclair strolling past—or what seems to be Sinclair—wearing Ray Ban sunglasses and a fedora hat with a yellow feather.  He’s walking or, rather, being walked, by a massive poodle with a purple gemstone collar.  It’s all I can do to keep from gaping at the parade of Sinclair, scooping up poop into a paper bag, as the dog relieves itself at the bustling curb of Columbus.

     “Do you know why I’m the best agent in the city?”  Wanda leans forward across the table toward me, perhaps to call attention back to her person; or, perhaps, in an attempt at one-upping me, by displaying her ample cleavage.

    
Because you sleep with your clients?
comes to mind, but I only wag my head No, as I yank off the cloche hat.

     “Because I’m not afraid of the truth.  The truth always comes out; it always wiggles up to the surface, as it should.  No, I don’t fear the truth, and neither should you.  I fancy myself a truth detector.  Are you in love with him?” the Truth Detector asks.

     I hesitate, but she injects me with her truth serum of a gaze.  “I—Don’t—Know.  Probably.  Yes,” I admit to the human polygraph.

     Through the window I see Sinclair holding the offending poop bag at arm’s length, before ducking out of view.

     “The way that you write about him—you seem to see him as surrounded with an aureole of light.  But I guess that would come with the love.  Funny, I don’t see him that way.  Don’t get me wrong.  He’s better than most people.”

     There it is, the ‘most people’ phrase.  I’m wondering if she picked up the saying from Evan, or if he annexed it from her.  Then it hits me—the reason that Evan has always held back from me--the explanation for why he has kept this opaque distance between us all these months-- is sitting right before me.  They’ve been together from the beginning, long before I stepped over the threshold of his Chelsea apartment that sunny September day in my bargain basement shoes.

     “He’s just a guy, like any other guy.  He sleeps too late.  He doesn’t pick up his crap.  He leaves his socks hanging on the little rungs of the coffee table.  He gets terrible gas from eating oysters.”  She shakes back a nuisance of a diamond bracelet, with each suck of her cigarette.

     I giggle at this, my guard momentarily dropped, and Wanda comes in for the kill.  “But we women will put up with anything for fabulous sex, now, won’t we?  When you’re my age—not that you’re that far from the mark,“ she says with a tone that makes me shake my curls defiantly as if to display my youthfulness, “I recommend you get yourself a man under the age of twenty-five.  They’re insatiable, although they take a definite nose dive after the age of twenty-eight, and by thirty-five, well, you need a crane to get them off the couch.”

     “I feel terrible that you dumped him as a client, because of me.”

     “No, you don’t.  If you’re sorry to see his association with me end, then you can’t be very much in love.”

     There is truth in this, and so I say nothing.  I’m thankful for the distraction of the waiter setting my tea before me.  I could swear that I see a yellow feather entangled in the traffic of Columbus Avenue.  I pray Sinclair hasn’t taken a tumble over the pushy poodle and onto his bad knee.

     “I dropped him as a client because he did a lousy job on the television series.  I don’t think I could find him work again, based on that performance.  What did you think of it?”

     “I didn’t watch it,” I say softly.

     Wanda grins like the Cheshire Cat, and nods.  “Ah, you
are
very much in love.”

     I’m not sure if I buy her reasons for dumping Evan.  Wanda snaps open a makeup compact and touches up her bulletproof lipstick, blotting the shine from her cheeks with a sheet of rice paper.  I study the pillowed lips, and try to distract myself from the thought of Evan’s pressed against them.

     Wanda astounds me with the news that she has shown
Blue Rose In
Chelsea
to an editor friend at a major publishing house who would be interested in publishing it, if I can expand it into a novel.  If that weren’t earth-shattering enough, she dangles this bait: there is the possibility of it being excerpted in
The New Yorker.
  Wanda rattles off a list of successful books that began as short stories,
The
Outsiders
, or ones penned in record time like Jay McInerney’s quintessential New York novel,
Bright Lights, Big City.

     “
I hadn’t considered that,” I manage weakly.

     Wanda wants to know how long it would take me to flesh it out into a full-length book.

     “Three months,” I say, though it comes off sounding like a question.  I’m so relieved for the change of subject that it doesn’t register yet what Wanda is offering.

     “Jay did it in six weeks.”

     “Eight weeks, if I had no distractions.”

     She informs me that publication of the book is practically guaranteed, if I can maintain the particular magic of the short version.  Vogue magazine is planning a spread of the new young literary set, and with my good looks and style, I’d be perfect, she says; publicity like that could catapult sales.  It’s not enough to be a good writer these days, she informs me, but a bit of glamour is required as well.  She glances at the red hat and coat, as if it gave testimony to my selling potential.  I cross my leg beneath the table, to attempt to hide the run in my tights.

     “It’s a very New York story, with all the references to the pace and places in the city, and yet it’s very universal in that you’ve captured how it feels to want someone you cannot have.  I think every woman, any woman anywhere, will relate to that.”

     “I find it hard to believe that you’d be familiar with that emotion.”  This elicits a belly laugh from her.

     “Hard to believe, yes, but there was once someone I wanted very much, my second husband.  No matter what I did, no matter how many hoops I jumped through, I couldn’t make him happy, although I think his unhappiness bubbled up from some toxic spring buried deep inside him.  Sometimes you just can’t save someone.  It’s a terrible thing to have to say goodbye to someone you love.  I don’t mean the big goodbye, the wrenching final farewell—sometimes that is a relief.  I mean the small, excruciating goodbyes, when you know you are losing your hold on someone slowly, as you watch their interest dwindling bit by bit by bit.”  She drips out the last words.