The Borzoi Killings

31.

Central Park was absolutely black when Joan Richardson rose from the back seat of the car to the sheltering cone of the umbrella the doorman Frank held over her head. Streams of rain fell in rivulets from the eight points of the umbrella. A cold trickle struck the back of her neck. As he kept the umbrella above her on the short walk from the car to the awning, Frank said, “Nice to have you back, Mrs. Richardson.” Doormen, who knew everything, also liked to appear impervious to everything. She was certain that Frank had followed every word she said during the televised trial, yet his tone was the same as if he were welcoming her home from a vacation.

As soon as she reached the awning, Joan took out her cell phone, pressed the button for Hank Rawls’s number, and put the sleek instrument to her ear. This was the tenth call she had placed to him since leaving Riverhead. His cell was turned off. As she waited, she looked out from under the dripping awning into the massed black tree trunks and branches of Central Park. Cold rain blew through the street lights on Fifth Avenue. Yellow taxis created a constant hissing noise as they sped down the avenue, tossing wings of rain water from their tires.

At the seventh ring, just before his message was about to start, Hank Rawls answered. “Joan?”

She had been certain she’d lash out angrily at him, or treat him icily, because of his vanishing act. Instead, she was deeply relieved to hear his voice. “God, Hank, I’m so glad you answered.”

“Things suddenly got crazy for me.”

“Are you upstairs?” For months the doormen had just waved Senator Rawls in. He had his own key to the apartment. She added, “I’ll be right up.”

“Joan, I’m in Miami. I’ve been here a few days. I got a call out of nowhere for a role. Donald Sutherland cancelled a short part at the last minute, and, if you can believe it, they called me.”

She didn’t believe him. She sensed throughout her body an anxiety more profound than anything that had happened since the night she received the call from Bo Halsey. Even though she was actually trembling, she stepped out from under the awning, which had radiant heaters under the canopy that cast warming light down onto the sidewalk, into the sleety darkness. She didn’t want anyone to hear her. “I really need to lie down with you, to hug you,” she said.

“I saw pieces of the trial on TV, sweetie. You were a real trooper. But it must have been painful for you.”

“Hank, I really want you to come home.”

“We’re in the middle of this. Another two or three days.”

“I’ll fly down. I can leave tonight. Where are you staying?”

“Joan, I’m working my tail off. I’ll be on the set for the next two days. I won’t have time to see you.”

She stared into the alluring comfortable glow created by the lights from the awning. To her left the monumental Fifth Avenue building rose into the mist and sleet; the stone surface of the building was streaked with wet stains. When she focused on the conversation that was now unfolding, she remembered the very few times when a man had spoken so evasively to her. She had only been dumped twice in her life, once, twenty years earlier, by the young George Clooney. Two years before she had married Brad Richardson, the scary-looking Salman Rushdie had dumped her with his convoluted locutions. It sounded like a philosophy lecture. She had cut him off. “Just do it,” she had said.

But tonight, wanting not to hear what she imagined she was about to hear, she said, “I don’t mind staying in the hotel room while you’re out, Hank. I could read Trollope again.” This was painful to her. She felt desperate.

“Joan, I really need to concentrate on what I’m doing. For some reason, I really don’t want Fred Thompson to be the only ex-Senator to make millions on television.”

Joan thought of saying, “I can give you millions,” but she sensed that would be like a lash, one that would hurt her more than it would hurt Hank and might give him a reason to utter angry, decisive, irretrievable words. She asked, “Is there a woman with you?”

“That’d never happen, sweetie. All I need is a few days.”

“It’s all right,” she said, as quietly as she could in a world where there was noise all around her-the sibilant rain, the rushing tires on the pavement of Fifth Avenue, the sound of slamming taxi doors.

Joan closed the lid on her cell phone. She was crying. She wiped the rain from her forehead and cheeks. Smiling for the doormen, she walked under the awning and into the lobby.

Hank Rawls, who was in New York and not Miami, never had to tell Joan Richardson that Rain Chatterjee, a gorgeous, 32-year-old Pakistani woman educated at Oxford and now a weekend anchor at CNN, was in his apartment, as she had been for three days. Hank Rawls never had to tell Joan Richardson that because he never saw her again.