Bright, Precious Days

38

WHERE? WHAT?

She woke feeling anxious, as if she’d left some mundane but important task unfinished the day before, and it wasn’t until she turned on the news that she was reminded of the date. Outside, according to the local Eyewitness News team, it was once again sunny and clear, as it had been that brilliant, balmy day seven years ago, with its cleansing breeze from the west, which bent the plumes of smoke from the towers east toward Brooklyn and beyond, as if pointing toward the ultimate source of the destruction. Russell had already fed the children and taken them up to their new school.

She carried her coffee to the front of the loft, looking out the windows, which needed washing, past the fire escape at the brilliant slot of blue sky where the twin towers had once loomed. Her phone chirped as she sipped her coffee. The caller ID showed Luke’s number.

“Are you back in the city?”

“Indeed,” Luke said. “Would it be disrespectful to say ‘Happy Anniversary’?”

“Actually, we met on the twelfth,” she said.

This summer he’d been traveling in Europe with his daughter and winding things down at the winery in South Africa, which he was in the process of selling. They’d spoken frequently, but she hadn’t seen him since just before she’d moved out to the Hamptons, and he hadn’t bombarded her with proposals.

“Can we meet for a drink?”

“Is that a euphemism?”

“If you want it to be, it is.”

“Where?”

“You could come here, see my new place. I’ve sublet a loft in SoHo.”

“Well, that’s certainly convenient,” she said. “I can’t tonight, we’ve got a screening.”

“Tomorrow night, then.”

—

It would have been simpler, less nerve-racking, less fatal to her sense of the innocence of her intentions, to go to Luke directly from the office. She’d already told Russell that morning that she was having drinks with her colleague Sandy, preparing her excuse in advance. Yet here she was again in front of the vanity, having left work early, touching up her makeup and her hair. As she waited for Russell to get home, she gave herself a final check in the mirror and was startled when she saw Storey framed in the glass, behind her.

“Gosh, you scared me.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m having a drink with Sandy, from work. She’s getting married.”

Storey seemed on the verge of delivering some sort of challenge, but then she turned and disappeared.

When Corrine emerged from the bedroom, Russell was at the kitchen counter, pouring Maker’s Mark into a glass. It was not a festive cocktail, but a palliative one — such was clear from his drawn mouth and drooping posture.

“Are you going out?”

“Meeting Sandy for drinks. Remember?”

“Oh, right.”

“You’re awfully dressed up for just Sandy,” Storey said.

“I’ve had this dress for ages,” Corrine said, trying to control the timbre of her voice.

“Why are you wearing your black lace bra?” Storey said.

“What? How could you possibly know what bra I’m wearing?”

“I saw it laid out on your bed.”

She froze, trying to decide whether to deny the charge, but Russell seemed indifferent.

“You only wear that bra on date nights with Dad.”

“Sometimes it makes me feel better to wear something nice underneath. Especially when I don’t feel like going out. It’s a way of psyching myself up.”

That Storey’s suspicions were essentially correct only served to exasperate Corrine. Why was she so mistrustful and hostile to her own mother? So bitchy? She clearly sensed something was not as it should be. Corrine had always worried about Russell finding out, imagined the scenes and the possible outcomes, but the idea that one of her children might discover her secret had somehow never occurred to her. And had Russell just now turned and walked to the couch, plunking himself down in front of the news, because he was suspicious, or angry? Or was he utterly oblivious? The latter, she decided, when she walked over to check, ostensibly to bid him farewell. He was watching something on CNBC about Lehman Brothers — the company logo plastered at the top of the screen above a bunch of talking heads. Jeremy plopped down beside his father. She kissed them both on the top of the head.

Storey allowed herself to be kissed on the cheek. Corrine couldn’t think of anything to say to her; instead, she tried out an indulgent smile that was meant to indicate tolerant bemusement. If she thought she was going to shame Corrine into changing her course of action, she was entirely mistaken.

—

Decanted from the cab into the glistening street, contemplating the entrance of the building, she felt a weird frisson of recognition. She was almost certain she’d been here many years ago, visiting Jeff — thought she recognized the elaborately ornamented cast-iron facade and Corinthian columns framing the tall, arched windows, although the building she remembered had had a filthy, sooty facade, with rust showing through the peeling paint. But, of course, the neighborhood had been transformed, like the rest of the city. It sort of made her sad, how polished and prosperous and tasteful it had become, like the streets of SoHo, the real art galleries long ago replaced by shopping mall versions selling mass editions of Erté and Dalí and Chagall to the tourists — as if gentrification were a disservice to Jeff’s memory, as if everything should have stayed dirty and dangerous forever.

Beside the door, in place of the series of assorted buzzers and doorbells mounted on plywood that she thought she remembered was a sleek stainless-steel panel with five identical buttons, each with an apartment number engraved beside it. Pressing 5, as instructed, she remembered Jeff leaning out of a window four or five stories up, throwing down a piece of wood with a key attached by a chain.

Luke’s metallic voice on the intercom: “Come in. I’ll send the elevator down for you.”

There hadn’t been an elevator then, had there? Or if there had been, it was broken, like practically everything else in the city back then. She recalled a long, ramshackle staircase, rising and receding toward the back of the building.

Luke was waiting at the elevator door, which opened directly into the loft. “Welcome.”

She wasn’t sure how it would feel to see him, but once she kissed him, everything came back to her.

He beckoned her inside with a broad sweep with his left arm to encompass the wide-open space, the high ceilings supported by a central colonnade of Corinthian columns with tall, arched windows on either end. Unlikely as it was, it might have been the same apartment, but she couldn’t be certain. The furniture was haute loft — two chrome and leather Corbusier sofas, Marcel Breuer chairs. Big colorful Frank Stella geometric prints on the far wall, along with an Andy Warhol flower series litho and a big abstract color-field painting she couldn’t identify. This could be any loft in SoHo, she thought, or, for that matter, in any city in the country.

“It came furnished,” he said, observing her scrutiny. “Though the owner removed the expensive artwork and put it in storage. Apparently, he had a Bacon. All in all, not particularly original, I admit.”

“No, it’s nice,” she said. “It’s just, for a minute I thought I’d been here before.”

“It does have what the realtor called a ‘state-of-the art kitchen,’ complete with a cappuccino machine and a wine cooler. Could I offer you a glass of champagne?”

“Yes, please.” It was something to do, a way of postponing serious conversation or action. She didn’t really know what she wanted and yet felt drawn to him, if only, perhaps, out of a long-standing habit, a Pavlovian reflex, whereby opportunity, rarely as it came, was inevitably seized. Given so little time together, they could hardly afford to waste any.

She followed him into the kitchen area and watched him unwrap the foil and untwist the wire.

“Don’t you have a friend who works at Lehman Brothers?” he asked, grabbing the bottle with one hand and the cork with the other.

“Veronica Lee.”

“Has she said anything? You know they’re on the verge of going under.” The pop of the cork seemed inappropriately festive.

“Oh God, I heard something about that, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to her lately.”

“The stock’s cratering and they can’t find a buyer. Unless they get a bailout, I’d say she’s about to be unemployed — along with thousands of other people.” He poured two glasses of bubbly and carried them over to a nearly invisible coffee table in front of one of the sofas, motioning for her to sit. “Do you own any stock?”

“Not Lehman, but I own some others.”

She did have a secret little portfolio, a rainy day fund she’d never told Russell about, at first because it didn’t seem worth mentioning, and, later, because it had grown just enough that she felt guilty about it, though not quite substantial enough for the down payment on the house in Harlem.

“I’m liquidating a lot of my portfolio, and you should, too. Financials especially. This will be the biggest man-made disaster since 9/11.”

“That sounds alarmist.”

“Let’s hope.” He sat down beside her on the couch.

She felt her pulse picking up, a flush rising on her face. “So what’s happened with the foundation?” she asked. “Will you keep it going?”

“I’ve hired a new exec director. And I’ll stay involved.”

As he was pouring her another glass of champagne, he leaned over and kissed her, catching her by surprise, hooking his arm behind her on the couch and pulling her shoulder toward him, kissing her gently as she gradually eased into the kiss. She wasn’t quite prepared for this and yet her body was responding without reference to her scruples, reacting to his familiar earthy scent as much as to the pressure of his hands and his lips. As he parted her lips with his tongue, she felt herself surrendering, leaning into him and pressing her breast into his hand, kissing him back, her body moving heedlessly forward along the rails of habit, unbuckling his belt and undoing the little clip in the front of his chinos, unzipping him without breaking her lock on his lips, while he, in turn, undressed her.

—

“That was amazing,” Luke said, afterward.

“It was. I keep hoping it will go away.”

“What?”

“This…desire bordering on compulsion.”

“Why would you want it to go away?”

“Because it’s complicating my life.”

“So uncomplicate it. Move in with me.”

“Yeah, that would simplify everything. But where, exactly, would I put the kids?”

He looked around. “It’s only a sublet. I don’t plan to stay here long.”

“That would be a real aphrodisiac — you and me and my two children.”

“You’ve got to make a choice sooner or later.”

“Why? Isn’t this enough?”

“You were the one who said it was complicated.”

She sat up and started to gather her clothing. “If you’d stayed married, it would’ve been much simpler.”

“Let’s go back to the Berkshires next weekend,” he said.

“We just got back from the Hamptons,” she said, pulling on her dress.

“Then the weekend after.”

She kissed his forehead. Suddenly, she realized, she couldn’t wait to get home to her husband and children.

—

She hoofed it down Mercer Street, regretting her choice of heels, dodging her way through the drunken Friday night malingerers, pausing for breath at Kate Spade and setting off again before landing a clueless cabbie, who took her east on Canal toward Broadway, as opposed to West Broadway.

She half-expected to be greeted at home by an accusatory daughter and husband, but in fact, the household was asleep: Storey in her bed, wheezing softly; Jeremy silent in the boy-funky dark of his own room; and Russell snoring in bed, manuscript pages splayed on his chest — a sight that struck her as almost unbearably poignant and blessedly familiar.