Snowstorms in a Hot Climate (8 page)

BOOK: Snowstorms in a Hot Climate
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“Good,” I said with a firmness designed to impress.

“You sound like you really want to meet him.”

“After that buildup? I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I’m even looking forward to it.”

Boasting, of course, is a kind of hubris. In the still of the night such things are heard and visited upon you. Four in the morning. Almost two hours had passed since our good nights. My body was grumbling at me to sleep, but my mind was running the show. Elly’s story was everywhere. There was no place where I didn’t crash into it; a feeling, a fear. Twenty-four hours ago I had been obsessed by other things, expending energy sewing up the few loose ends of my life. None of it was there anymore. Elly had whitewashed it out.

I was fighting two quite separate emotions. The first was exhilaration at being plucked so suddenly out of my deliberate, controlled existence into the maelstrom of her life. That much was positive, full of warmth and color. The second emotion was fear, fear that I would not be strong enough to defeat him—or rather the him in her, because, of course, in every dragon myth half the problem is the princess. I knew her. I did not know him.
Still, after all those words, he remained incomplete. Her emotions garbled him, minced him into a strange hybrid of villain and hero, explained nothing. A man who wielded the weapon of self-containment. If that really was his secret, then he and I had something in common besides Elly. Would he recognize it? Had she?

In the eighteen years we had known each other, Elly and I had always operated differently. I turned somersaults in my head, walked across beds of nails, and spent too many years listening to my own heartbeat. I did not engage with the world. It was not my style. My act was perfected early, and it worked. People stayed clear of me. Even my parents had accepted the stranger in me. But not Elly. Elly had stayed. Right from the first moment outside the staff room, when I was the new girl, brainy and aloof, and she was the blithe spirit of the class, dropping a pile of textbooks in the path of the assistant headmistress and forcing me to laugh as she clowned about, trying to pick them up. I had expected to be lonely as an adolescent, had accepted it as my fate. Elly had marched straight through the Do Not Disturb signs and refused to go away when I tried to freeze her out. She had known that I needed someone. And she had decided that someone would be her.

We had things in common, had even shared a certain attitude to the world. Maybe it came from the fact that each of us was an only child and used to our own company. My mother had always been terrified of procreation, afraid she wouldn’t know how to cope. She was right. She didn’t. She was too much of a child herself. Since she needed a father more than I, and since there was not room enough for two children in the family, I became the adult. It suited me fine. The only person who took any interest in me was my grandmother, but she lived in Paris, so her parenting was reserved for holidays. As for Elly, well, she always said she had been conceived in an absence of mind,
which was not quite the same thing as an absence of contraception. Her father had wanted a son and had lost interest immediately. Elly had spent much of her childhood trying to win him back. A course of action which had, no doubt, alienated her mother. Certainly, by the time we met, the Cameron household was a battlefield, and Elly had started to enjoy the war. Finding me provided another outlet for her emotional energies, this time a positive one.

Her sense of fun brought another dimension to those early teenage years, and I owed her for times which would otherwise have been dismal. Aggressive timidity is hardly a social asset, particularly during the first mating seasons. Whereas school dances and dates tempted others into alternative forms of learning, I went underground. Boys did not interest me. Or that was my story. So, I cut my long blond hair and became a scholar. But Elly never stopped pestering me. And her methods were robust. Once, when the blackness was particularly dense, she marched into my room and announced that according to a book she had just read I was either gay or intellectually overdeveloped. Did I fancy any of the fourth-formers? If not, I would just have to sit it out and wait for my body to catch up with my mind. We found it very funny at the time, although looking back, I see she wasn’t so far from the truth. Certainly things got worse before they got better. And even if she couldn’t always help, she knew how to handle me. There are some things you can’t repay. Now, thanks to her and the occasional man persistent enough to brave the scorn, I have come through. True, I still enjoy work more than sex. But then how much pleasure does Kim Basinger get from reading Anglo-Saxon poetry? I am not so much strange as unfashionable. Yes, I have found a way through. And now I would help Elly to do the same.

I must have slept, because the next thing I remember was opening my eyes on a room more defined by light. I was covered
in sweat and in need of a drink. I unglued my eyes and pulled myself out of bed, my cotton nightdress sticking to my skin. Outside in the corridor I was halfway to the kitchen when something made me stop.

Across the hall, through a half-open door, I glimpsed the living room, where a grainy dawn was creeping its way across the wood floor. At the other end of the room, one of the balcony doors was open. I remembered with an absolute clarity that the last thing Elly and I had done was to lock them, because it had occasioned a crack about New York paranoia reaching eight stories high. My stomach turned over. Don’t be foolish, Marla. There must be an explanation. Probably Elly, unable to sleep. I stepped forward with silent footfalls. On a chair I spotted a jacket, pale cotton, and a briefcase. Next to the briefcase a book, with half its cover showing. I registered a bold, black-and-white ink drawing of a hand holding a quill pen: firm powerful strokes like a Dürer woodcut. Stupid the details one’s brain records when it is concentrating hard on something else. Except that something rang a bell. I couldn’t connect what. One thing was clear. This was no burglar. In which case there was only one explanation. Lenny was home.

My curiosity was enormous. To see him without being seen, watch him in his lair. I edged across the room, bare feet on rug. The floorboards did not give me away. When the balcony was in sight, I stopped. The man sitting out there was in oblique profile to me. He was tall, slender, and very fair, with long legs splayed out in front of him. He was wearing smart leather boots and designer trousers. The storm of hair was almost white. His face, had he turned fully, would have been clean and chiseled and beautiful. Mr. Magnificence himself. There was no doubt about it. The man on the balcony was the man on the plane.

I stood transfixed, my heart beating so loudly that I was surprised it didn’t disturb him. When I felt more in control, I
turned and glided from the room. I needed no second glance at the book cover. I already knew that the artist was not Dürer but a fellow countryman who, centuries later, dabbled in the same art. The book was Günter Grass’s
Meeting at Telgte
, the novel he had been reading on the plane. What current obsession did this reflect? It took a sturdy mind indeed to find pleasures in the maze of the Thirty Years’ War.

I sacrificed the glass of water to the cause of security. Back inside my room, I lay awake for what seemed like a small eternity, hearing Elly’s voice in my head. “His other affair he conducts in greater and greater secrecy.” Chicago on shop business? Among his many sins, Lenny was also a liar. What should I tell Elly? Or him for that matter? Maybe I should wait until I met him face-to-face. I felt a certain confidence that I, in my role as St. George, should have been granted such an early advantage. It would be a pity if lack of sleep undermined it. I recited a few pages of Bede and felt better. New York was stirring as I fell asleep.

I woke buried in hot sand. The sheet was over my head, a torture presumably self-inflicted to protect me from the light, which was streaming in through half-closed blinds. The morning might have been the afternoon. There was no way of telling since my watch had stopped at 6:43
A.M
. I made a run for the bathroom, where I showered and dressed. I had no intention of risking formal introductions in a bathrobe. I needn’t have worried. The flat felt empty. In the living room the balcony doors were closed; both Lenny and Günter Grass had gone. Along the corridor their bedroom door was ajar. I tiptoed in. The bed was unmade, and the room was decorated with a pleasingly familiar hurricane of Elly’s clothes. But with no sign of tailored jacket or Gucci boots. I was heading for the kitchen, nursing the suspicion that maybe I had dreamt it all, when the phone rang somewhere
near the bed. It took me a while to find it, and when I did I couldn’t remember the number. Elly’s laughter danced over the wires.

“God, you’d make a lousy maid. Well, I needn’t ask how you slept.”

“Where are you?”

“At the store. Crisis management. The girl who works here woke to find a gas leak in her apartment. She’s watching the repairman while I’m waiting for a delivery. Didn’t you get my note? It was under the orange juice.”

“I haven’t made it as far as the kitchen. What time is it?”

“Put it this way, you’ve missed two meals already. It’s after three.” The sleep of the dead. Except for the interruption. “And guess what?”

“What?”

“Lenny’s home. Came in at dawn. What did I tell you? Perfect timing. As always.”

“Where is he now?” I said at exactly the same instant as my eyes registered the door across the room leading to the en suite bathroom.

“Don’t panic. You’re safe. He was up and out early. Business, no doubt. I didn’t catch the details. I arranged for us all to meet for dinner this evening. That is unless you want to change your mind and go to California today?”

Not for the world. I wanted to see the expression on his face when we met. “It can wait.”

“That’s what I hoped you’d say. Great. Why don’t you get dressed and meet me downtown?…”

I
n the underworld no one moved more than was absolutely necessary. The air, baked in the folds of the tunnels, was stale
and unprofitable, and the train when it arrived, roaring and screeching its way out of the darkness, was like the set of a Roger Corman movie, tacky and menacing.

I climbed in and sat down. New York. There is a different balance between madness and sanity in this city. Maybe that’s why so many gravitate here. More room for deviancy. But you have to have the stomach for it. I remember my first visit, when I had taken the subway late at night, riding a compartment that was totally empty. I had spent four stops staring at the thick black graffiti which saturated the ceiling, seats, and walls. I could almost see the madness seeping out of the spray paint, and crawling its way toward me. It was hard to know whose violence I was feeling, theirs or mine. In the end I got out of the train and took a taxi. Of course, I was younger then and my psyche a little less resilient. Graffiti is just graffiti now. Even in Manhattan.

Aboveground it was raging sunshine. Following instructions, I crossed into Washington Square. The place was swarming with people, sitting, striding, watching, playing. Two black kids body-popped to the roar of a ghetto blaster, while a small crowd gathered for the show. On the grass people were stretched out in the sun, and a middle-aged man was roller-skating along the paths.

I stood by an ice-cream stall and watched him. It was hard to know whether or not he was enjoying himself. There was something manic in his concentration, and after a while he made me uneasy. I left him traveling in circles.

From the square it was a five-minute walk to the store. Once you hit the right street you couldn’t miss it.
HERMOSA
, as it was now called, in bold gold lettering across the window, was altogether a fancier piece of work than I had anticipated. The front was all glass, dark and smoky, giving the bags and garments displayed a kind of instant exclusivity. In one respect at least it was
Elly who had taken Lenny upmarket, trading on memories of Biba mixed with Bauhaus.

Inside it was cool and luscious: summer shoppers must buy just to get away from the heat. No Elly. Instead, at the sales desk—a kind of mirrored altar—sat a High Priestess, dark and statuesque, eyes buried inch-deep in mascara. The man who had come to repair her gas leak must have thought he had been called out to visit Theda Bara. She was talking on the telephone but slid her hand over the mouthpiece as soon as she saw me come in.

“Hi there. Can I be of any assistance?”

She had one of those drawling voices which implies brain damage. I knew better than to be fooled by appearances: such lazy somnolence can hide unexpected sharpness. On the other hand, there was no immediate evidence to suggest that this girl was the Truman Capote of the rag trade. She seemed so languid that I feared the effort of raising her head in my direction might prove fatal. I had to admit it, though, she did suit the store. They might almost have been designed together.

“I’m just looking, thanks,” I said, loitering over some leather, pretending to browse.

“Sure thing.” She went back to the receiver. I fingered a few pieces and registered their price tags on the Richter scale. The stuff was a long way from the usual traveler’s magpie hoard. The sweaters, the rugs—even the leatherwork—looked more Manhattan than Bogotá. Elly had undersold herself. A lot of energy had gone into these four walls, and a good deal of commercial imagination. There was only one thing wrong with it. It didn’t feel like Elly.

“You know I will, I told you.” Her voice was breathy, for his ears only, but I happened to be en route to the jewelry, passing close by the desk. Maybe all salesgirls call their lovers when the store is empty. “Yeah, of course I’m sure. Listen, there are some
things she doesn’t—Hey, look, I have someone in the store. I’ll catch you later. I promise.”

Behind me the telephone tringed. This time the voice reached out to caress me. “Oh, that is just beautiful, isn’t it? You know, it’s the last one in the store. Perfect for day or evening wear.”

Perfect yes, for someone else. I laid the necklace back down on its black velvet.

BOOK: Snowstorms in a Hot Climate
5.07Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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