Losing Charlotte (8 page)

Jeb looked at him. “Hey,” he said, “I heard your mother died.”

Bruce inhaled audibly. It had been years and he still did that.

“Yeah. She did,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.”

“I really, really liked your mom.”

“Thanks, Jeb.”

Jeb picked up a fawn-colored petal from the table and rubbed it between his fingers. Bruce watched as it was crushed into a tiny ball that darkened with its own moisture and the condensation from Jeb’s glass. Jeb rolled it onto the white cloth with the tip of his index finger; it left a threading, sluglike trail. He brought his fingertips up to his face and smelled them, then offered his hand to Bruce.

“Rose,” he said. “Smells like perfume.”

Bruce smiled.

“Your dad doing okay?” Jeb asked.

“Yep,” Bruce said, relieved that Jeb hadn’t found it necessary or been bombed enough to get into the long-ago whats and hows of
his mother’s cancer (pancreatic) and length of treatment (nine and a half months). The details sounded too banal, too common, and he hated being asked about them. Unlike his father, who could still assume a grim expression, his eyes trained on the middle distance, and recite the events and progression of his wife’s illness as if they formed a litany, an epic poem, whose final lines he would only remember if he could speak it whole, start at the beginning and let rhythm and chronology guide him toward the elusive end.
In the Vale of Tawasentha, / In the green and silent valley…
He had moved out to the Springs, where he lived in a rented bungalow on a friend’s property and spent his days in a yurt he had erected himself, overlooking the rocky bay. Inside the yurt he typed at a manuscript that Bruce had never seen any part of and knew nothing about; he worked on his “art projects,” which were mostly red circles painted on board, painted as large as the turning circumference of his father’s body allowed. “It’s just what I feel like doing,” he told Bruce. “Making these circles. The world is too big to learn anything new. So I stand inside and draw a line around myself, over and over.”

“Wasn’t he a teacher,” Jeb asked.

“Adjunct mathematics professor. Up at Columbia. But he retired.”

“Ah.”

They drifted into silence. Bruce wanted a drink, thought of asking Jeb to go to the bar with him. But he feared that they would get separated if they moved from where they sat. It seemed the two of them should remain together until he found something real to love about his old classmate. That was it. It felt important, right now, to love something about Jeb Jackman. He signaled the waitress, who was stacking dessert plates at a nearby table. She frowned at him, then mouthed over the medium din of the electric bass, the wailing backup singers, “I’ll be right there.”

“Shit, brother, you’ve got the right idea,” Jeb said. “That girl is not to be believed.”

“Yeah, well. I’m just thirsty.”

“Sure,” said Jeb. He laughed once, an aggressive “pah” that
laced the inside corners of his lips with spittle, though the expression in his eyes remained grave. The girl made her way over to them.

“You wanted something,” she said to Bruce. It was a statement, not a question, and from the slight nasal inflection in her voice, the bemusement that played across her mouth, the way she stood over him, taller than he had realized, her shoulders set in a languid slope that seemed to curve down through her hips, he knew to regret calling her over. She didn’t match her surroundings, or the task of fetching drinks. She looked, truly, like she belonged in a bed, or stretched out by someone’s fire, blinking sleepily. Her hair was pulled back into two messy pigtails, and a silver and turquoise bracelet circled her arm just above the elbow. Bruce willed away the desire that began to snake through his body—desire that felt tainted and foolish because Jeb had claimed it first, because he couldn’t imagine it ever being returned, because he sat in a tuxedo, implicated in the mindless party that jumped all around them.

“That’s okay,” Bruce said, sounding more forceful than he’d meant to. “I changed my mind.”

“He wants a Dewar’s and water for himself and one for me,” Jeb said. “Christ, you’re a work of art.”

The girl ignored him.

“I just work for the caterer,” she said to Bruce. “So you’ll have to go to the bar yourself. Sorry.” She shifted her posture; Bruce perceived a mild bovine cast, a heaviness, in her lower body that only seemed to underscore her … grace. Grace was what it was.

“No problem,” Bruce said. “I’m sorry we bothered you.”

“We’ll pay you,” Jeb said. “I’ll pay you whatever you want.”

“You didn’t really bother me,” she said. “We’re about to set up coffee over there, if you’re interested in that. Maybe your friend could use some.”

“Okay.”

“Hello. Over
here
. What color underwear are you wearing?” Jeb said.

The girl kept her eyes trained on Bruce, and smiled. She took her time with the smile, letting it spread over her face in degrees.
Bruce felt himself smiling back. She knows, he thought. She knows what kind of effect she has. She likes it. Well, good for her.

“Bye,” she said, and walked away. Her walk was heavy but sure. Bruce noticed that her long feet, in their flat, lace-up shoes, toed in a bit.

“That’s all right, baby,” Jeb said. “Your ass is a little too full figure for my taste anyway, now that I’ve seen it up close.”

Bruce sighed. “She can’t hear you.”

Jeb said nothing. He picked up a cloth napkin and wiped at his forehead with it, letting his eyes close.

They watched the dancers for a few minutes. Bruce drummed his fingers on the tablecloth through the whole of “Proud Mary.” As he watched the waitress setting out mugs next to a huge silver urn at the other end of the ballroom, he realized that a small happiness was taking hold somewhere within his chest, maybe his rib cage. It was opening, like a tiny flower.

“I’m sorry,” Jeb said during a pause between songs. “I drink too much.”

Bruce looked at him. It seemed unbelievable that he had forgotten Jeb’s presence for even a second.

“Champagne and Scotch—plus a couple beers before the ceremony. Bad combination. The champagne at these things always gets me.”

“Yes,” Bruce said.

Jeb watched him. His lashes, almost transparently blond, seemed to reflect light. The sheen of sweat on his face tinted his skin a pale, lambent green, and Bruce could see the pocks in his complexion up close, as if they’d been magnified. He fought to hold Jeb’s gaze.

“Do you ever talk to Toby Van Wyck?” Bruce asked suddenly.

“Naw,” Jeb said. “I lost touch with him.”

Bruce nodded.

“I do think about him, though,” Jeb said.

“Me too.”

“He still in Florida?”

“No idea.”

“I remember all that happening,” Jeb said. He leaned forward. “I remember the memorial service. We had those rubber bands that we were playing with and nobody minded.”

“Yeah.”

“They found her, you probably heard that. I’m sure you heard that.”

“I did.”

“Incredible,” Jeb said.

Stories, shared, could inspire love, Bruce thought after. Jeb Jackman, prematurely middle-aged, doughy, pickled, he was all right.

(When Bruce first told Charlotte Toby’s story, the parts he knew, he kept details to a minimum, and refused to fuel her pity with too many observations of his own, because by that time he knew that her pity, while extravagant at times, could be fleeting, that she could be distracted from it. The facts he included were as stark as he could make them: Toby’s mom had gone missing, there had been publicity, his father had remarried quickly, Toby had moved to Naples with his father and stepmother, though they occasionally returned to the Westchester house in the summers, and in Bruce’s junior year of high school Mrs. Van Wyck’s remains had been found. She had been buried at the edge of an abandoned car lot on Long Island, unearthed when the lot was cleared to make way for a senior-living condominium development. The forensics people who identified her had confirmed that she had died from blows to the head and chest, and the police had charged Viri Minetti after all, based on some evidence linked to the body that Bruce couldn’t quite remember. Confirmed, forensics, unearthed, blows. Newspeak was the language he had learned it in, and he doubted there was any other language to use that was any more comprehensible, so he stuck with it. Holy, Charlotte would say, her eyes filling so automatically with tears that Bruce thought her acting for a moment, then despised himself for the thought just as quickly as he’d had it, nodded, and looked back at her, half proud that something he described could move her so. Holy.)

Bruce reached—awkwardly, his elbow bent to avoid dipping his cuff into the flame of one of the candles—for Jeb’s hand, shook it
again. He didn’t feel surprised when Jeb tightened his fingers around his—a firm handshake would be rote to him and didn’t necessarily signal particular regard. Then the moment was over, and they both let go and faced forward again. Bruce rested his chin on his palm. He had never said anything to Toby about Mrs. Van Wyck, the disappearing into nothing. This was a pain that surfaced, from time to time. But what he would have said if he had known how—this he was never sure of.

Bruce’s fingertips curled around the lower part of his face and brushed against his top lip. He thought that they smelled strangely sweet.

“Good to see you,” he said to Jeb. “Really good.”

“Right back at you,” Jeb said.

They watched the girl together, until one or the other of them excused himself to make a trip to the bar.

A
T THE END
of that night, Bruce approached the waitress. He told himself that he meant to apologize to her, in case she’d felt harassed. He came upon her standing at the bottom of a back staircase, outside the kitchen. She was talking to a man and a woman, who were leaning into each other, passing a cigarette back and forth. The waitress had one elbow hooked around the newel post of the banister and held a mug of something steaming in her other hand. She stood with her back to him. She laughed at whatever the man had said—a low, gravelly laugh that she was too ready with. He felt he knew that this wasn’t her real laugh, though he had no idea what her real laugh would sound like.

“Hi,” he said. He tried to step out of the shadow he was standing in, so as not to appear to be lurking.

The man and the woman looked at him, then gestured to the waitress, who turned almost completely around to face him.

“Yeah?” she said. Her tone wasn’t as friendly, somehow, as Bruce had expected it to be.

“I, uh, I’m sorry if you were offended before. I wanted to say something before I left.”

“Offended before what?”

“Well, when the guy I was talking to came on to you like that.” Bruce grimaced. This had been a bad idea.

“Umm,” the waitress said, remembering. She swung forward a bit from the post, letting herself dangle, letting whatever she was drinking rock toward the edge of her cup. The man and woman watched her. Bruce could tell from their expressions that they were waiting for her to make them laugh. “You mean your golfing buddy with the panty fetish?”

“I guess—”

“This guy was classic,” she said, turning to her friends. “You know, the kind who doesn’t even seem to be into it? Like he’s posing as a pig, but he barely has the energy? Sad, really.”

The other woman nodded, looking appreciative. The man said, “What did he do?”

The waitress looked at Bruce. Her eyes were cold. But just as Bruce was about to retreat and let her role-play Jebbie’s indiscretions without him, something in her face softened. She’s decided to be kind, Bruce thought. Interesting, that she had to decide that.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You’re nice to apologize.”

At this, the man and the woman did laugh.

“Scamper,” the waitress said to them. “You have work to do.” Then, to Bruce: “You’re not my type. That’s why they’re laughing at me.”

Bruce hoped that his smile looked convincing. He had a sense of wanting to cheer this person for the way she fascinated him, for the lightness she had sparked in his chest, and a sense of wanting to walk quickly away from her. Watching her from some safe distance—that would be ideal. And yet he stayed where he was, the smile creasing his face.

“I’m Charlotte,” she said to him. “Would you like some tea?” She held her mug out to him. “Loving cup. It’s green tea, I think.”

“No, thanks.”

“I don’t drink anymore, so …” She raised the mug to her lips and slurped from it, her eyes popping at him as she did so, punctuating her sentence.

“I’m Bruce.”

“Hold on—” She turned away from him and stuck her head through the swinging door that led into the kitchen, yelled something Bruce couldn’t quite understand. Bruce found himself staring at the place her black T-shirt gapped open over the waistband of her skirt, at the crescent of white flesh that was revealed as she stretched away from him. “Sorry,” she said. “I thought I heard somebody calling me.”

“Well,” Bruce said. “I should go.”

“No. Okay. It was nice meeting you.”

She looked at him. “Hey, do you want to come hear some music with me?” she said. The question had a plaintive quality that seemed to belie other things about her.

“Now?” Bruce smiled.

“It’s a friend’s band. They’re playing on the Lower East Side. Where do you live?”

“Lower West.”

“Close enough,” Charlotte said. “Great. I’ll just get my stuff and we’ll go.”

I
NCREDIBLY
, they shared a cab downtown. Bruce slumped against the seat leather, Charlotte having given the driver directions to a club, shouting them through the Plexiglas safety shield. He could hardly believe his luck as they sped down Fifth Avenue, the lights of the city bleeding past their windows, reaching into the darkness inside the car just far enough to touch the edges of their clothes and faces before bouncing and sliding away. The spiky ends of Charlotte’s hair went red, then white, before she caught his eye and he looked away from her.

“You’ve been kidnapped,” she said.

“I know,” he answered.

She laughed. Bruce knew that she was making fun of him, at the nonchalance he tried to affect, but he felt himself not caring. He was too glad to be in motion, to let this girl carry him where she wanted to go. Charlotte. The Flatiron District blazed before
them, and they veered left. The cabbie’s cell phone rang. He raised it to his ear, began jabbering angrily in … Urdu? Bruce looked: the name on the medallion was Jinkha Birywani. Bless you, Jinkha, Bruce thought. Keep driving. Drive us to wherever it is from whence you came. I would like to see the sun rise over the wet streets of Delhi.