A Certain Age (17 page)

"Oh no. She came home yesterday. No, no, that's all fine. You know, it wasn't your fault. It could have happened to anybody."

"I still feel so terrible."

His face darkened and he scowled slightly. "Well, don't! I was far more surprised that you weren't angry with me. But you kind of put me in a position, you know: you locked me in that bedroom for at least an hour. I had no way of getting out! Anyway, finally somebody came down the hall—I don't even know why they were up there—and I was shouting, 'Let me out!' " He laughed uproariously. "For some reason they couldn't get the door open from the other side either, and by the time they got hold of a screwdriver, it was too late, everybody at the party was saying how you locked me in. I couldn't get into the whole thing without making things sound worse. I'm afraid Natalie is quite angry with you."

She went to the shower and he followed. "Listen, I have some good news," he said. "I told Derek you wanted to invest in his new place—he agreed you could buy a half share. How much did you say you had? Forty thousand?"

"It's only twenty-five."

"Did you bring your checkbook?" She shook her head. "Okay, don't worry about it: you can put it in the mail when you get a chance, or I'll stop by later to pick it up. I'll cover it for you in the meantime. So how do you feel? You should be very excited about being part owner of a place that's going to be extremely popular. I didn't tell you before, but as part owner you can call and get a table whenever you like. Anyway, Derek knew who you were. He said to tell you, 'Welcome aboard.' And of course we'll have a party in the place before it's opened."

"Really? Derek knows who I am?" She smiled.

"He thinks you're really hot."

"He's never said two words to me."

"Because he knows his wife would kill him." John grabbed a bar of soap from the sink and tried to come into the bath with her.

"Want me to help?" Now that she was really able to see him for the first time, she saw what a peculiar body he had: oddly large, feminine hips and a narrow chest, like the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh Amenhotep.

"No, thanks."

He began to laugh again, as if she had just said something hilarious. "You know, Florence, you're really something. I'll just wait until you're finished then, shall I?"

She rinsed and grabbed a towel from a rack on the wall. He was pacing restlessly, a sheet around his waist. "I've really got to get going," she said.

"Yes, me too," he said. "I'm going to have to reschedule everything. Things are getting a little out of hand."

"I'd better call the client," she said.

"The client? Is that what you call them? I like that."

"I should have been there by now. How am I going to get to Maspeth from here?"

"I don't know. I'm afraid I should get back to work, I'm running so far behind. You don't mind, do you, if I don't take you to Maspeth? It's really going to slow me down. Why don't I put you in a taxi? I'll pay for it."

He gave her fifty dollars and said he would say good-bye to her in the room; he had to run.

She couldn't understand why she had done it. It was just that since she had already slept with him, albeit against her will, it no longer seemed such a big deal—there was no awkwardness in taking off her clothes and getting into bed with him. Besides, he had seemed so nervous, he had so obviously wanted her, she couldn't help but be flattered. Or maybe, in retrospect, it was because
she
was so nervous and mad at herself, waiting all morning for Raffaello to call. By the time she bumped into John, she had given up hope of hearing from him; it was her way of getting even.

Anyway, it hadn't been a mistake, not if he could double her

money in a few months. She saw the twenty-five thousand becoming fifty. She could take out some and invest it in something else. If she could just not touch the income, in a few years she might really have something.

There was no problem in finding a cab to take her to Maspeth, but it took the driver quite some time to find Virginia Clary's address. The location was so bleak—burnt-out industrial warehouses, yards filled with ruined hulks of cars behind metal fences—that momentarily as the cab drove away she wondered if she had the right place, or was being lured to some kind of depraved stalker's home. The house was like an imitation of a house, ranch style, aluminum siding, tiny windows heavily barred, as if too much mascara had been applied to dirty eyes. On the sticky street she pressed the bell. A riotous clamoring rose up—the screaming yelps of what sounded like hundreds of dogs. A narrow, shifty face, missing a side tooth, nearly bald, pressed up against the bars on the front door before letting her in.

"How do you do?" said the woman in a surprisingly babyish, little-girl voice. "Do come in. Please excuse the mess. No one will bite you. Candy, get back!" Florence looked down. At her feet were what appeared to be a half-dozen rodentlike animals, tiny dogs emitting furious squawks.

"You must be Virginia Clary; I'm Florence, from Quayle's, Estate Jewelry." She tried to hide the dismay from her face, but it was already apparent to her there was no way this woman would have anything of value.

"I think maybe it's a little cooler in the kitchen, if you don't mind. I've put all my nicest bits of jewelry in a box on the table in there. I have such pretty, special things, I know you'll love them. I'd never let them go, but I have to pay my mortgage. That bank has been writing nasty letters, and if I have to leave, what will happen to my baby doggies?"

"Why don't we take a look at what you've got and see what we can do?"

"You just rest for a minute, it's so hot outside. My air-conditioning doesn't work very well. I have to keep the windows closed

because of that plastic factory nearby; the dogs get asthma. You see, most of my dogs are rescue animals, they all have various handicaps—"

The voice reminded Florence of Shirley Temple's. It was hard to listen to what she was saying, that peculiar little voice was so mesmerizing. Virginia seemed determined to tell Florence every detail of the animals in the menagerie. "Little Bruno I found on the street. Can you believe it, they had fed him to pitbulls! And Betsy—where are you, Betsy?" While she spoke she went to the avocado-colored refrigerator and returned with item after item, one at a time—large bottles of grape soda and diet Pepsi and ginger ale, a bag of potato chips and a tin of rather uninteresting-looking Danish butter cookies. Apparently she was going to insist on a tea party, even though Florence looked nervously at the wall clock and muttered from time to time that she hoped to find a taxi someplace to take her into the city by five.

"I'm sure by now you've recognized me."

"Urn . . ." Florence didn't know what to say. "You do look familiar."

"Oh, I know I haven't aged all that well. Back in the fifties I was on the cover of just about every fashion magazine—I think I counted them once, there were at least fifty—and of course, Richard never does mention my name, but it's a well-known fact that I
made
his career—"

"Richard?"

"Avedon, of course. Well, nowadays, of course, modeling is a whole different business. If I ever went back to it—I'm talking now as an
older
model, of course—I would be a supermodel, the way these girls are now. Oh, they earn fortunes! Whereas, in my day, we got paid very little, by the hour, and there was none of the glamour associated with it; of course, I was one of the first, a John Powers girl—"

So this crone had once been a model. It seemed impossible to believe. Perhaps inside her was a great beauty, the way it was always said that inside every fat person was a thin person screaming to get out. But looking at the lined face, the wrinkled lips

barely concealing the missing, tooth and mouthful of other, grimy teeth, the gaps in her blond ponytail revealing her bald head, it seemed impossible to believe.

"Of course, I did get to travel, and have a lot of fun, though it wasn't for me. And it did provide me with my two husbands. The first was a businessman,
very
wealthy, we used to drink
soo
much, but back in those days we smoked and drank like there was no tomorrow—but when he left, all I had from the marriage was my little poodles. I used to make Ralph buy me the cutest little French poodles, which was before I knew better than to go to a pet shop and buy a dog. Of course, I should have gotten a large settlement; Ralph always said that I
made
his career. And then there was my second husband, the true love of my life, and it turned out he had been in love with me for
years,
when he used to see me on the covers of magazines. He was a jazz musician—such a tragedy when he died in the car crash. They said I was lucky to be alive, though at the time I didn't care, I thought he was
lucky
to have died and not me. I should have been rich from his royalties, but his contracts were so lousy I never did see a dime. All I had from either of them was the jewelry; I used to make sure they both gave me lots of jewelry." She pointed to the box on the table. "Not that I'm materialistic, but now I'm happy I did it, because my little baby boys and girls need so much love and attention!"

Someone had urinated on the floor. The place was sweltering. Florence wondered if she was going to be sick. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she could see what appeared to be cockroaches scuttling busily up and down the walls, alongside and over what must have been a photograph of Virginia in her modeling days. She really was stunning—the long white neck, the swanlike limbs protruding from a black fifties Dior evening gown—it was impossible that that Virginia and this were one and the same.

Each time Florence moved toward the box, hoping to at least see the items Virginia Clary was talking about, Virginia put her hand out and held hers down. She had surprising strength for someone who looked so frail. "Oh, I've forgotten plates, and napkins!" She went to the yellow Formica counter and came back

with paper plates decorated with sheep, and matching napkins. "Go ahead and eat—have some chips—and then I'll show you the things. And maybe you'll pour me a little grape soda? I have trouble lifting heavy objects. I always worry, you know, that I may drop something, and some of these little babies—Constancia and Nanette—are completely blind. We think they were owned by a family with little children who poked out their eyes! Can you imagine? Oh, how thoughtless of me! I know it's a little warm, but perhaps you'd like a cup of coffee."

"Yes, thank you." She felt anxious, panicky, trapped in this grim house, as if what might be catching was not collecting stray animals but old age. How could this woman have ended up out here with a hundred crapping yowlers and a bag of crummy jewelry skimmed off men? It all seemed so pathetic. "May I use your bathroom?"

"It's down the hall, through the living room on the right." She walked past cages—it was too dark to see their shrieking occupants hurling themselves against the bars—and narrowly avoided a shelf of junk. (Were they Avon bottles?) Little kittens bobbed their heads. The curtains were pulled together, blocking out the hot sun but giving only an illusion of coolness. The living room housed a huge TV, built-in bookshelves that had never seen a book, a rocking chair with a rust-colored pillow; a square-shaped couch covered in glazed chintz, its pattern of cabbage roses in a truly bad shade of muddy mauve; a polyester braided rug in muddy pink and grayish-blue; a dying deffenbachia—or was it a corn plant—two spindly trunks topped with pathetic leaves; brown curtains with metal hooks on a rod over a picture window. The view was of another house exactly like this one. In the bathroom a crocheted clown sat on the toilet tank, obscenely housing a roll of toilet paper beneath the lavender skirt. The toilet, too, was dressed in a fuzzy puce snood. The tub was hidden behind a shower curtain with a pattern of flying umbrellas. Pink soap was in the shape of little shells in a dish by the sink. Every item in the room, in the house, represented a choice, a decision, an object pored over and debated at Wal-Mart or some discount department

store. She imagined taking pictures of each room and sending them in to a magazine for a make-over. There was nothing that could be done with such a place.

While the woman's back was to her as she turned on the stove, Florence began to unzip the jewelry bags. A diamond pendant surrounded by small diamonds, late Victorian, looked quite nice, but when she examined it more closely through her jeweler's loop, something wasn't quite right about the stone. "Oh, I had that appraised—years ago—and I was told it was worth ten to fifteen thousand, so I know it's gone up in value!" Virginia handed her a mug of coffee and snatched the pendant from her. "It's a canary diamond, I believe, and it's a very old piece, an antique. I imagine it's doubled in value. If I sell just the necklace, I'll have enough to pay the vet bills and build roofs on the cages of the dogs who live outside."

"You have more dogs outside?" Florence asked politely.

"Fifteen at the moment. My big babies. I can't keep them all in the house, but I'm already in trouble with the Board of Health and that lousy ASPCA, who say I can't operate a kennel without a license. I told them, 'I'm not operating a kennel! These are my babies!' They wanted to take them away. You know what they do when they get them: they put them to sleep. I have one or two that might suit you—I don't let just anybody adopt them. Would you like to come out and see them?"

"I'd love to, but maybe another time." Florence sipped the coffee. Her mouth filled with a horrible taste of something burnt and chemical—it was instant coffee. The diamond pendant would be lucky to get an estimate of fifteen hundred dollars. "I wonder if I could just go through the things quickly before giving you my opinion," she said, setting down the mug. There was a large sap-phire-and-diamond cocktail ring of platinum, from the fifties, with quite a nice large sapphire, though a bit dark in color, that might be worth two thousand. A pair of French enamel earrings, two hundred dollars at best; quite a sweet ruby-and-pearl bracelet