Ladies' Night (3 page)

Before the world and they grew old.

"What you missed," Susan was saying, "was the security strike."

Tom Braun looked at his wife and then at Elizabeth and thought,
I've probably got the two most attractive women in the building standing here — so why do I feel like I need a real drink?

"It was actually fun in a way," said Susan. "They had no other choice but to enlist the tenants so Tom and I sat desk-duty four nights running. You'd be amazed at what goes on around here."

Elizabeth smiled. "Tell."

Susan looked around to see if anyone was in listening range. She needn't have bothered. The party was winding down now, the food mostly gone and the wine running low, only twenty-five or thirty of them left up there on the rooftop, their laughter and conversation fading back into the noise from the street twenty-two stories below, into the warm evening breeze.

It was one of those amazing summer evenings where it almost would have taken an act of will to have kept him indoors. The day's humidity had finally given way. Had the Dorset Towers Tenants' Association decided to hold their party elsewhere — in the lobby or someone's apartment — he would have stayed home.

"Well, the
Landrus
feed their daughter Prozac, for one thing."

"You're kidding."

"
Risley
lives next door. It seems that little Carla has this habit of running away nights, nobody knows where. One night last month the police got involved, brought her home drunk at three in the morning.
Risley
says there was quite a commotion in the hall, with everybody hurling guilt at one another. Of course he listened carefully to the whole thing. And you know Sam Hardin, don't you?"

"The doctor? The old retired guy who hangs around the mailroom all day?"

"Uh-huh."

Elizabeth shuddered. "I know him. He stares at you," she said. "He's creepy."

"Okay, follow this. You know Dan, the doorman?"

She pointed to the rooftop entrance. Some of the security staff were standing there talking next to a starved potted plant. Dan — a tall, good-looking black man — was among them. Elizabeth nodded.

"Well, Dan has something going with Eleanor Snow — you didn't know that? Oh yeah, for quite a while now. Anyway according to Eleanor, Dan says old Sam apparently likes a good hard thrashing now and then — hires expensive hookers who bring along suitcases full of equipment. I guess the girls look okay, because management hasn't complained yet, but the whole desk staff knows who they are and why they're there. The problem is Sam's getting kind of loud about it. The neighbors are getting nervous."

"I love it," said Elizabeth. "Perversion!"

"
No, Crossfire
is perversion," said Tom. "Sam's just kinky."

"You two are turning into a pair of old gossips, you know that?"

"Yeah," said Tom. "It's good the strike didn't last much longer. Real-life neighborhood soaps can hook you."

He watched Susan sip her wine and thought how different these two women were. It wasn't just the disparity in their ages. His wife made even the plastic wineglass in her hand look elegant. She had that way about her. A cool natural WASP patrician style. This despite that fact that in reality the former Susan Ackerman ran the drama research department over at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts — a librarian — an important but distinctly unglamorous job where what counted was smarts and efficiency, not style.

Whereas Elizabeth looked exactly like what she was — a twenty-year-old singer-slash-dancer-slash-actress who would always be far more at home on a stage with a top hat and tails than standing around sipping sherry.

Maybe that was what he found so damned attractive about her. That straightforwardness.

Jesus
, he thought.
You're thirty-nine. She's twenty.

Grow up.

He had to admit, though, that having her home again after two months out in L.A. already was making him nervous.

He watched Mr. and Mrs. Daniels walk slowly by arm in arm and smile at them.

"You're not leaving?" Susan said.

"Oh yes, dear," said Mrs. Daniels. "It's well past our dinner time." Her husband patted one liver-spotted arm.

"Have a lovely evening," said Susan.

"I believe we will. You too, dear. All of you."

They disappeared through the doorway.

"You know what she told me?" Susan said.

"What?" said Elizabeth.

"Tonight's their thirtieth wedding anniversary. And can you believe it? She's cooking. ‘Something special', she said. ‘Just for him.'"

"That's sweet."

"They're nice people. I look at them and they always seem so happy together. They really still seem to be in love with one another."

"It happens," said Tom. Damned infrequently.

The crowd had thinned by now. He recognized most of them but knew only a few by name.
Risley
was still there. The dark sallow businessman was talking to a pretty blonde girl near the Broadway side of the rooftop. The girl was half his age.
Risley
did pretty well supposedly and Tom could never figure why. There was something unctuous about the man despite his apparent friendliness, something Tom disliked instinctively.

Maybe you're just jealous
, he thought.

He watched another girl move past them and for a moment caught her eye, a dark thin girl in a pale yellow dress who he recognized as another dancer — this close to Lincoln Center there were a lot of them in the building. He remembered her saying that she studied at ABT. He'd spoken to her once in the laundry room on the second floor. She'd been open and friendly.

Now she frosted him as though he were a stranger.

He felt rebuffed.

For what he didn't know.

"How was the flight?" he asked Elizabeth.

She sighed. "Grueling. We were two hours late out of LAX. I haven't even unpacked yet. But it was too nice an evening to stay indoors. I had a glass of flat ginger ale and sat staring at my bags for a few minutes and said to hell with it and came on up."

"It is a beautiful evening," said Susan.

He had to agree. The sun lay low on the horizon yet already the moon was out. Bright streaks of red and gold on one side and the grey-white moon on the other. It was going to be clear tonight. Even in New York you'd be able to see the stars.

"The moon's full," said Tom. "Summer madness."

"Sure," said Elizabeth.

"It's true. I did a piece on it for
Parade
once. Years ago. While I was still — you know — writing. Twice a day the ocean rises and falls about four feet I think it is, pulled by the moon's gravity. We're seventy-five percent water so it pulls us too. The pull's greatest at full moon and new moon. And so is emergency room activity. Assaults, rapes, suicides. That kind of thing. They've computerized the police statistics and there really is a correspondence. Plus any nurse will tell you that there are a lot more babies born when the moon's full. Stirs the hormones or something."

"I remember that piece," said Susan. "Aren't we supposed to lose about a 100th of a gram of weight, something like that?"

"The full-moon diet!" said Elizabeth. They laughed.

"Hey" said Tom. "The moon's a woman. And women do like their diets."

They ignored that.

"I never thought it was fair," said Susan. "The sun's always a man and the moon's always a woman, in just about every culture. Take Diana. She's goddess of the hunt and the moon. Why that combination I don't know. Maybe because we were
nighthunters
first, skulking around the savannahs by moonlight. Or men were, anyhow, I
dunno
. But it's Apollo — her brother — who brings light and prosperity. You ever hear of a man bringing light and prosperity?"

"Edison. But not recently," Tom agreed.

"I really do think there's something to this tidal pull business, though," said Elizabeth. "I'm not much for the bars, God knows, but it seems like every time I sort of get restless at night and want to go out, I look up at the sky and there it is. A full moon."

"Same here," said Tom.

Susan gave him a look. She didn't like him hitting the bars, moon or no moon. And she certainly didn't appreciate his mentioning this particular form of recreation to Elizabeth.

Fuck it
, he thought.
I do what I do. Damned if I'm hiding anything
. "How's Andy?" said Elizabeth. Changing the subject. Susan's early frost had not been lost on her. A bright young lady.

"Andy's fine," she said. "His head cold's gone and neither of us caught it for a change. He and Matt Donovan are off to see some ridiculous horror movie called
Coven
. I think he missed you, though. You should drop by and see him tomorrow."

"I will."

It was then that he saw the dancer again.

And heard the strange low moan all the way across the rooftop. Heads were turning.

He saw her crouched against the four-foot concrete retaining wall. There was something in her hands but
Risley
and the blonde were in the way so that at first he couldn't see. Then what remained of the crowd parted — he could almost feel a wave of shocked revulsion coming off them as they moved away — and then he could see, and instantly wished he hadn't.

She had a half-empty liter bottle of wine. She was holding it in both hands and moving it back and forth beneath the light yellow dress.

Moving it inside her.

Her eyes were rolling, her teeth clenched and she trembled, moaning.

Her lips pulled away from grinding teeth, sweat poured off her face, her long hair thrashing.

The hem of the dress was stained with blood.

"Jesus!"

"Let me by," somebody said behind him. "I'm a doctor."

Tom watched the old man move through the crowd. He was aware of Dan and another security man, Gonzales, standing next to him and Susan.

The girl was pushing deeper. Blood was running down both her legs.

The old man reached for the bottle.

"It's all right," he said gently. "Easy now. Give me the bottle. Come on."

Her eyes flashed open.

Her mouth twisted.

The doctor had a single sudden moment to recognize his danger and Tom saw him stagger, unbelieving, as the base of the bottle slammed against his chin, its force enormous, the bottle shattering and continuing upward in a bloody arc across his face and forehead.

Dan was already moving. Gonzales a step behind him.

The dancer dropped the broken bottleneck and turned to face the retaining wall.

Raised one leg and began to climb.

Dan lunged at her low, wrenched her off the wall, wrapped his arms around her legs while Gonzales grabbed her waist from the other side. The girl struggled, screaming, a high-pitched furious wail as she pounded Dan's head and shoulders. The black man kept his head down low, in what was almost a boxer's stance, and held on.

They hauled her flailing toward the door.

The doctor lay on his side trying to stop the pulse of blood with his hands and then his handkerchief. A wide flap of flesh depended from his chin. He kept trying to hold it in place. Residents were coming to his aid.

Now that she was out of there
.

At the doorway the girl grabbed hold of the casing trim, resisting with all her might.
Two big men
, he thought,
and they can barely move her
. Her mouth spewed foam, spittle flying as she struggled. Two more security guards appeared on either side, began to pry her fingers off the trim one by one. She screamed and tried to bite, lurching like a snapping dog.

The fingers lost their purchase.

Stumbling on the staircase they hauled her down.

The door slammed shut behind them.

The screams from below faded. They had got her into the elevator and were on their way down.

Drugs
, someone murmured.

Crazy.

She always seemed like such a nice girl
.

Risley
and Bob Hobart were helping the doctor to the door. The doctor had all he could do to keep his blood-soaked handkerchief pressed against his face and keep from fainting.
Risley
and Hobart practically had to carry him.

Guests were leaving. Among those who stayed behind a hush had fallen and the cheap wine was suddenly popular again.

"What the hell was that?" said Elizabeth.

"Damned if I know."

"Let's go," said Susan.

They walked out the exit door, down the short flight of stairs and through the hall to the bank of elevators. Tom pressed the call button. They stood together waiting in a strange vivified silence.