فصل 06

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 cancelled.

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 doppelg?ngers were walking around in different countries right now. Josh’s eyebrows were heavier, his eyes a different colour, and obviously his accent wasn’t Will’s. But still.

‘You know what I used to do with my friends when we were hungover?’ 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 any more, like me!’ Her voice grew wistful. ‘And then … then she didn’t want to see me any more. 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 learnt 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 tailed off.

We stood, watching the people passing us on the path: the roller-bladers and the kids on wobbling scooters, the couples arm in arm and the policemen 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 favourite 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 harbour 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 with.

‘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 – André, usually. He was very good. But André 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. André 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 afterwards 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 André he must go instead. I cannot go any more.’

‘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 André any more. I want you.” And, like a fool, I start to cry.’

As I watched, her eyes brimmed with tears.

‘I cry right there in the middle of the day on the street, with my friends watching. And I say, “I can’t tell you.” And then he gets mad. Wants to know if his wife was rude to me. Or whether something has happened at work. And then finally I tell him, “I can’t come because I like you. I like you very much. And this is very unprofessional. And I can lose my job.” And he looks at me for one moment and he says nothing. Nothing at all. And then he gets back in his car and his driver takes him away. And I think, Oh, no. Now I will never see this man again, and I have lost my job. And I go to work the next day and I am so nervous. So nervous, Louisa. My stomach hurts!’

‘Because you thought he’d tell your boss.’

‘Exactly this. But you know what happened when I arrive?’

‘What?’

‘Enormous bouquet of red roses is waiting for me. Biggest I have ever seen, with beautiful velvet scented roses. So soft you want to touch them. No name on it. But I know immediately. And then every day a new bouquet of red roses. Our apartment is filled with roses. My friends say they are sick from the smell.’ She started to laugh. ‘And then on the last day he comes to my house again and I go down and he asks me to get in the car with him. And we sit in the back and he asks the driver to go for a walk and he tells me he is so unhappy and that from the moment we met he could not stop thinking about me and that all I have to say is one word and he will leave his wife and we will be together.’

‘And you hadn’t even kissed?’

‘Nothing. I have massaged his buttocks, sure, but is not the same.’ She breathed out, savouring the memory. ‘And I knew. I knew we must be together. And I said it. I said, “Yes.” ’

I was transfixed.

‘That night he goes home and he tells his wife that he does not want to be married any more. And she is mad. So mad. And she ask him why and he tells her he cannot live in marriage with no love. And that night he calls me up from hotel and asks me to come meet him and we are in this suite at the Ritz Carlton. You stayed at Ritz Carlton?’

‘Uh – no.’

‘I walk in and he is standing by the door, like he is too nervous to sit down, and he tells me he knows he is stereotype and he is too old for me and his body is wrecked from this arthritis but if there is a chance I really do want to be with him he will do everything he can to make me happy. Because he just has feeling about us, you know? That we are soulmates. And then we hold each other and finally we kiss, and then we stay awake all night, talking, talking about our childhoods and our lives and our hopes and dreams.’

‘This is the most romantic story I’ve ever heard.’

‘And then we fuck, of course, and my God, I can feel that this man has been frozen for years, you know?’

At this point I coughed a piece of ramen onto the table. When I looked up several people at nearby tables were watching us.

Agnes’s voice lifted. She gesticulated into the air. ‘You cannot believe it. It is like a hunger in him, like all this hunger from years and years is just pulsing through him. Pulsing! That first night he is insatiable.’

‘Okay,’ I squeaked, wiping my mouth with a paper napkin.

‘It is magical, this meeting of our bodies. And afterwards we just hold each other for hours and I wrap myself around him and he lays his head on my breasts and I promise him he will never be frozen again. You understand?’

There was silence in the restaurant. Behind Agnes, a young man in a hooded top was staring at the back of her head, his spoon raised halfway to his mouth. When he saw me watching, he dropped it with a clatter.

‘That – that’s a really lovely story.’

‘And he keeps his promise. Everything he says is true. We are happy together. So happy.’ Her face fell a little. ‘But his daughter hates me. His ex-wife hates me. She blames me for everything, even though she did not love him. She tells everyone I am a bad person for stealing her husband.’

I didn’t know what to say.

‘And every week I have to go to these fundraisers and cocktail evenings and smile and pretend I do not know what they are saying about me. The way these women look at me. I am not what they say I am. I speak four languages. I play piano. I did special diploma in therapeutic massage. You know what language she speaks? Hypocrisy. But it is hard to pretend you have no pain, you know? Like you do not care?’

‘People change,’ I said hopefully. ‘Over time.’

‘No. I don’t think is possible.’

Agnes’s expression was briefly wistful. Then she shrugged. ‘But on bright side, they are quite old. Maybe some of them will die soon.’

That afternoon I called Sam when Agnes was taking a nap and Ilaria was busy downstairs. My head was still swimming with the previous evening’s events, and with Agnes’s confidences. I felt as if somehow I had moved into a new space. I feel like you are more my friend than my assistant, she had told me, as we walked back to the apartment. It is so good to have somebody I can trust.

‘I got your pictures,’ he said. It was evening there, and Jake, his nephew, was staying over. I could hear his music playing in the background. He moved his mouth closer to the phone. ‘You looked beautiful.’

‘I’ll never wear a dress like that again in my life. But the whole thing was amazing. The food and the music and the ballroom … and the weirdest thing is these people don’t even notice it. They don’t see what’s around them! There was one entire wall made of gardenias and fairy lights. Like, a massive wall! And there was the most amazing chocolate pudding – a fondant square with white chocolate feathers on it and tiny truffles on the outside and not one woman ate hers. Not one! I walked the whole way around the tables counting, just to check. I was tempted to put some of the truffles in my clutch bag, but I thought they might melt. I bet they just threw the whole lot away. Oh, and every table had a different decoration – but they were all made of yellow feathers, and shaped like different birds. We had an owl.’

‘Sounds like quite an evening.’

‘There was this one barman who would make cocktails based on your character. You had to tell him three things about yourself and then he would create one.’

‘Did he make one for you?’

‘No. The guy I was talking to got a Salty Dog and I was afraid I’d get a Corpse Reviver or a Slippery Nipple or something. So I just stuck with champagne. Stuck with champagne! What do I sound like?’

‘So who were you talking to?’

There was just the slightest pause before he said it. And, to my annoyance, just the slightest pause before I responded. ‘Oh … just this guy … Josh. A suit. He was keeping me and Agnes company while we waited for Mr Gopnik to come back.’

Another pause. ‘Sounds great.’

I started to gabble now. ‘And the best bit is, you never even have to worry about how to get home because there’s always a car outside. Even when they just go to the shops. The driver just pulls up outside, then waits, or drives around the block, and you walk out and ta-daa! There’s your big black shiny car. Climb in. Put all your bags in the boot. Except they call it a trunk. No night bus! No late-night tube with people puking on your shoes.’

‘The high life, eh? You won’t want to come home.’

‘Oh. No. It’s not like it’s my life. I’m just a hanger-on. But it’s quite something to see up close.’

‘I have to go, Lou. Promised Jake I’d take him out for a pizza.’

‘But – but we’ve hardly spoken. What’s going on with you? Tell me your news.’

‘Some other time. Jake’s hungry.’

‘Okay!’ My voice was too high. ‘Say hi to him for me!’

‘Okay.’

‘I love you,’ I said.

‘Me too.’

‘One more week! Counting the days.’

‘Gotta go.’

I felt strangely wrong-footed when I put the phone down. I didn’t quite understand what had just happened. I sat there motionless on the side of my bed. And then I looked at Josh’s business card. He had handed it to me as we left, pressing it into my palm and closing my fingers around it.

Give me a call. I’ll show you some cool places.

I had taken it and smiled politely. Which, of course, could have meant anything at all.