The Lions of Fifth Avenue: A Novel

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

New York City, 1993

A few weeks after Sadie’s successful sting downtown, she was still giddy. Dr. Hooper had personally brought the books to the Berg Collection and handed them over, thanking her and Nick for their detective work. Nick had kept his eyes on the books through the whole speech, as if he was scared they’d escape from their clutches again if he glanced away. After Dr. Hooper left, Nick had watched as Sadie secured them in the small safe that was lodged in the wall of her office. It was too small to hold much, but until the exhibit was up, she didn’t want to risk their being out of her purview.

Then she’d turned and given Nick a hug.

She hadn’t meant to; it was just he was standing right behind her and she was so happy and his bulk seemed so huggable. He’d patted her back a couple of times and then disengaged, and she’d looked up expecting to see horror in his eyes. But it wasn’t that. He seemed sort of stunned, blinking hard, like he’d been hit upside the head instead of given a friendly squeeze.

Since then, he’d stopped in to check on the Berg every couple of days and give her an update on the investigation. When she heard his confident knock on the door—a very different sound from the discreet rap of the regular scholars—she had to stop herself from rushing to open it. It was nice to have a friend.

After her divorce, most of Sadie and Phillip’s friends had stayed close with Phillip, who was much more a social animal than Sadie; he was the life of the party. She had to admit she’d turned maudlin after being dumped, not much fun to be around and unapologetic about that fact, before Valentina’s birth had provided a welcome distraction. Until now, though, she hadn’t realized how isolated from her few friends she’d become. Maybe it was just because she and Nick had a common enemy in the book thief, or a mutual distrust of Claude, but she liked the camaraderie.

If Claude was the thief, he showed no sign of concern at the turn of events. Whenever a knock on the Berg Collection door revealed Nick, Claude muttered under his breath something about Inspector Clouseau having arrived. Claude’s impertinence galled her, not the least because he wasn’t out of the clear. The thefts had stopped after his key was revoked, which, to her, meant all signs pointed to him as the culprit. Today, Nick came by while Claude was out at a dentist appointment, and she took the opportunity to ask him about it point-blank.

“What if he is the thief and we never find out the truth?” She spoke quietly, as two patrons were in the room and she needed to stay put and keep watch over them.

“We may not. Not if our boy Chuck keeps his mouth shut. He’s hired an expensive attorney to fight the charges.”

“Can’t Chuck go to jail for having stolen property?”

“Eventually, but his lawyer is going to play this out very slowly. In the big, bad world of New York, a couple of stolen books is at the bottom of the court’s to-do list.”

“That’s not right.” She hadn’t meant to raise her voice. The two scholars looked up from their work, and she nodded serenely back at them, just as Claude entered, whistling the theme from The Pink Panther under his breath.

The Lincoln Center concert hall where the New York Philharmonic performed wasn’t Sadie’s favorite venue in the city—Carnegie Hall was more beautiful and had better acoustics—but there was nothing that compared to the trio of buildings that made up the heart of the Lincoln Center campus. Alone, each one might have seemed stark, but arranged in a horseshoe shape around a burbling fountain, they became a kind of Brutalist town center, reminding Sadie of the Italian village plazas that she and Phillip had visited on their honeymoon.

She perched on the lip of the fountain, watching the zigzag of audience members heading home after an evening of Wagner at the Metropolitan Opera House, or having caught the latest Wendy Wasserstein play. She’d just spent a blissful evening listening to an Elgar concerto at Avery Fisher Hall, and wasn’t ready to leave.

The blast of a trumpet caught her attention, then another joining the first in harmony. A set of drums kicked in, and finally an entire orchestra erupted in a swinging beat. Curious, she followed the sound to an open plaza just to the south of the opera house, where an outdoor stage had been set up. A hundred people were gathered on the dance floor, doing some kind of step that Sadie didn’t recognize. A fox-trot? Not a tango—she knew that much. She watched in amazement at the mix of music and motion, hypnotized, the orchestra performance forgotten.

“Sadie?”

She turned to see Nick beside her, an amused smile on his face. Unsure, she gave a little wave just as he held out his hand to shake hers, which meant he only grasped the tips of her fingers, like one would greet the queen of England. All the connection from their bond over Whitman and the stolen artifacts seemed to have disappeared, replaced by discomfort.

“You a dancer?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No. I just got out of the Philharmonic. But isn’t this incredible?”

“Sure is.”

“What are you here to see?” He didn’t seem like an opera-lover type. Then again, he did enjoy poetry.

“I’m not here to see anything, I’m here to swing.” He gestured to the dance floor.

“You?” She hadn’t meant to sound so dubious.

He shrugged. “My wife made me take lessons for our wedding, and after we divorced, I thought I’d take it up again.”

He had a hobby. Just as her Surviving Spinsterhood book advised. The thought made her smile.

The band finished, followed by applause from the crowd. A red-haired woman, with matching lipstick and a short pink skirt, took the microphone. She was all sharp angles from her nose to her knees, like a spindly coral reef. She called for everyone’s attention in a raspy voice that was gritty and overly sweet at the same time, as if fueled by strawberry Quik.

“It’s salsa time! Beginners, welcome. Take the floor, my dancers.”

Nick, to Sadie’s horror, held out his hand. “Shall we?”

While Lonnie had inherited the quick coordination of their father—something Valentina shared—Sadie had missed out on that particular family trait and was about as flexible as an eighty-year-old man. She preferred walks in the park to anything active. Once, after a New Year’s resolution, she’d joined a neighborhood gym and tried out a step class. Her foot had slipped after only five minutes and she’d landed with a thud on the floor. The instructor kept on shouting instructions as Sadie quickly collected her things and scrambled out the door, embarrassed and bruised.

“I don’t dance.”

“Neither do half the people here.”

“Maybe we can just grab a drink instead?”

But it was too late. He gently pulled her to the middle of the dance floor. Sadie looked around, her heart pounding with fear, like she was about to jump out of an airplane. All the women were wearing dance shoes with a heel, while Sadie was in beat-up leather ballet flats, which, on her size-ten feet, resembled black flippers.

“It’s easier to follow up near the front,” he said. She pretended she hadn’t heard him.

The music began, and she watched as the woman onstage—working with a partner—demonstrated the basic step and then encouraged them to give it a try. That part wasn’t so difficult, moving on every count but four and eight, backward first and then forward. Nick held Sadie’s hand in his, lightly, while the other rested on her shoulder blade. Not her waist, but up higher, and she liked that as he wouldn’t be anywhere near the roll of flesh right above her waistband. Then the band began to play. To her surprise, she picked it up quickly, partly because the music made it so clear—beat, beat, beat, pause; beat, beat, beat, pause—and also because Nick signaled with the lightest of touches which side she was to focus on. A squeeze of the fingers for the right, a push of his hand on her shoulder for the left.

But when they moved on to turns and cross-body leads, she grew frustrated, confused about which way to go, and so for the rest of the song they simply did the basic steps, as he moved her across the floor and then back the other way, gently, smoothly.

It felt nice to be in someone’s arms.

Nick offered up an encouraging smile and laughed when they stepped on each other’s toes. He was comfortable, in his element, which helped her to relax and enjoy the music and the sensation of gliding across the floor together. They continued on for three more songs, and as the final notes sounded, she couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to kiss him. Reaching over, touching his chin, and bringing her face to his. She wondered what his lips would feel like, what his tongue might feel like.

The fact that they stood less than a foot apart, without ever touching torsos, made it even more agonizing. It was as if an invisible force ran between their chests, their stomachs, keeping them tantalizingly apart from each other. She hadn’t felt this fiercely about a man in a while. Hadn’t known she still had it in her.

After, he suggested they hit a nearby diner for coffee and pie. They slid into opposite sides of a booth and she was glad they had a table between them so she could pull herself back together. Her equilibrium had shifted out of whack as they danced—she felt like one of those levels used to hang pictures on a wall, the bubble drifting outside of its marks.

“You like music, then?” he asked.

“My father was a musician, a session musician, played bass. So we always had music playing in the apartment. I love finding it wherever I can.”

“Lots of opportunities in this city.”

“Where you least expect it, like today.”

“It’s neat that your dad was a musician. Is he still around?”

She took a deep breath. “My father passed away when I was eight. That was a tough year.”

“I’m sorry.” He rubbed his chin with his hand. “I know all about tough years. In the span of twelve months, Sue and I separated, then she got swindled, and then my spaniel died.”

“So many S’s.”

He began to laugh, his eyes watering. “That’s amazing.”

“What?”

“My dog, what do you think his name was?”

“Oh no.” She started to giggle as well.

“Sebastian.”

“No!”

“Yes. Leave it to a librarian to point out the alliteration in my life’s tragedies.”

They talked of everything but the thefts, about his children and Sadie’s niece. Nick asked where she liked to go to hear music, and she rattled off her favorites, relishing the shock on his face when she mentioned CBGB. Then the waitress came with the check, and there was the pulling out of wallets and Nick saying that he’d cover it and figuring out the tip.

A giant wave of uncertainty washed over Sadie. What next? What if she’d said too much and made a fool of herself? She sat frozen, unsure. She looked out the window, down at the table, anywhere but at Nick’s face. She had no confidence anymore, and wasn’t sure what to do or say.

Outside on the street, they parted with a hug, like two friends. Perhaps she was overthinking all this and they were just colleagues. Or maybe he still considered her a suspect. It was all too draining.

Which was why the next day she found herself in the stacks, waiting until there were no pages around, to reread some of the Spinster book. Fortify herself with its timelessness.

“Sadie?”

Nick’s voice rang out. She slid the book into her tote bag and stepped outside the cage, locking the door behind her.

“Yes? What are you doing down here?”

“Claude said you were here. I came to find you.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “Um, did you just put a book in your bag?”

“A book?”

The rules for anyone working in the stacks were clear. No placing books from the stacks into outside containers or bags. They were supposed to stay in plain sight at all times.

“What’s inside your tote bag?”

She took a deep breath. This was awful. She hadn’t meant to take the book, just gotten distracted when she’d heard his voice and tucked it away, out of sight.

She pulled it out and handed it to him, looking off to the side as she did.

He read the title out loud. “Surviving Spinsterhood: The Joys of Living Alone. Oh.”

She squirmed as the words hung in the air. It might as well have been a pair of her underwear, out there for everyone to see. All because she was stupid enough to think that an old book could fix what was wrong with her life.

“I accidentally put it inside my bag. So silly. I’ll put it back.”

She grabbed the book from him and turned back to the cage, fumbling with the lock.

Maybe he had been watching her, following her. Maybe this whole charade was just a way to catch her in the act.

And she’d fallen right into it.