In the Drink (32 page)

I was sucked into the story within the first five minutes,
and remained wholly engrossed for almost two hours. When the lights came back up, I blinked and yawned and looked around, utterly surprised to find myself here in the theater. It had been so long since I’d seen a movie or read a novel; I’d forgotten the salubrious power of a good story. I walked home, grave but carefree.

The moment I woke up the next morning, I cleared my throat, brushed a kernel of sleep from my eye, sat up straight on the edge of my bed with my feet on the floor, then picked up the phone and called Jackie, my heart fluttering at the base of my throat. Just because I felt sorry for her didn’t mean I wasn’t still scared of her. But for the first time where Jackie was concerned, my sympathy overrode my terror: she deserved her book back, whatever good it would do her now. It certainly hadn’t done me any.

Her telephone rang a second time. I hoped she was awake; I wanted to get this over with. I was going to pretend that I’d forgotten to transfer the backup disk to the hard drive because I’d been so flustered when she fired me, which involved the further pretense that I’d been saving the new book to the disk rather than the hard drive all along, which actually was no more or less ludicrous than any of the fabrications I’d spun for her over the years.

“Claudia,” she said then. “My goodness, am I glad to hear your voice!”

I hadn’t expected this reaction. “How are you?” I said through a small but solid frog in my throat.

“Well, my dear. I have had just such a time.” She laughed. I heard a hollowness in her laughter, a hard bright empty undertone that could have meant anything. “That Goldie has left me in quite a state.”

“She left you,” I said, confused. “You mean she quit?”

“We decided not to continue,” said Jackie firmly. “We didn’t work together at all well, it was nothing like with you and Margot; we had no rapport at all.”

“She’s a tough cookie.”

“Well, she really is! Anyway, she’s not coming back, and I’m through with that agency that sent her; I spoke to some woman there who told me Goldie was the best they had, so they couldn’t send me someone better, and she was pretty rude about it. I was quite upset. I suppose by now you’ve found a job.”

I gaped into the receiver. Impossible. There was no way.

“Actually, not yet,” I said.

“Here’s the thing. I’m leaving today, I’ll be gone a week, that tedious Long Island thing with Mr. Blevins, and I must have someone to bring in my mail and answer anything urgent. You’re the only one I can count on to do it properly.”

“I am?”

“Well, you know, Claudia,” she said. “We’ve had our difficulties. But—I’ve been thinking about what you said as you left the other day.”

“You have?”

“You know,” she blurted, “maybe I have been too hard on you sometimes.”

“That’s true,” I said warmly. “I haven’t been the best secretary, though.”

“We could both try a little harder to understand each other.”

“Yes,” I said, absolutely amazed, “maybe we could.”

There was a pause, not uncomfortable. “I’ve been trying to work on the scene we discussed last Monday, do you know the one I mean?”

She had not been trying to work on that scene. Obviously
she hadn’t even tried to open the files. She had made no effort to continue the book on her own even though the deadline was coming up in three weeks, and she never missed a deadline, or rather, I didn’t. She hadn’t even known the book was gone.

I paused. “Look, Jackie,” I said, “I know you didn’t work on that scene.”

“I did, I spent an entire afternoon going over those notes we made,” she began, then abruptly cut herself off. I waited, feeling amused and sympathetic; poor Jackie, she hated to be caught in a lie, or rather a half-truth, more than anything. “I have some ideas for the ending,” she said defiantly.

“So do I,” I said.

“You do?” She sounded pathetically eager. “Oh, Claudia, that’s wonderful, I’m so excited to hear them. Could you meet with me this morning? I’m leaving at one o’clock, but I could see you any time before that.”

“I’m busy today, actually,” I lied, because I didn’t feel one bit like seeing her today, “but I’m free tomorrow; I could come in the morning and go through your mail, then take the laptop home and write.” I was going back to work for Jackie. Her stupid junk mail; the smell of her vestibule; all those awful, oppressive outfits I’d allowed myself to believe I’d never have to wear again.

She sighed. Instead of the snazzy new secretary she’d dreamed of, she was stuck with the same old unreliable one. “And you’ll call me with every single important letter or message I get? Every one; especially interesting invitations to dinner parties, or letters from important people. Don’t assume you know what’s important, I want to hear every one.”

Oh, God, what was I thinking? “Don’t worry, Jackie, I know what to do.”

“Please fax me anything that looks urgent. And the pages you write; I want those at the end of each day so I can look them over, it’s terribly terribly important that we finish this book as soon as possible.”

“Okay,” I said, twisting the phone cord around my forearm, pressing it savagely into the skin so it made a mark. “Have a good trip, Jackie. See you when you get back.”

“Thank you, Claudia dear,” she said. “See you next Monday.”

When the phone rang again a few minutes later, I let the machine pick up, and was very glad I had when I heard my landlord’s voice. “Claudia, it’s Miller again. You haven’t returned any of the messages I’ve left you over the past few weeks, so I’m assuming you’ve decided not to resolve this in an amicable manner. So against my will I find that the time has come to play hardball. I need that rent money by this afternoon or I’ll have to initiate eviction proceedings. You leave me no alternative. I’ll be stopping by the building in a little while, so maybe we can have a chat then. Otherwise you’ll be hearing from my lawyers. All right, honey, sorry it has to be this way, I hate to do this to anyone, especially a sweet young lady like yourself.”

“I can’t pay the rent!” I cried out to the roaches like the heroine of a melodrama, but not one of them stepped forward heroically. The sound of Delilah’s determined crunching behind me was making me hungry enough to join her there at her bowl, but instead I got dressed and went to the deli on Broadway.

The air outside was alive. Above the sun-washed buildings the sky was a dense, plastic blue; directly over New Jersey a few clean white clouds lay in parallel ridges as thin as eels or ribs. The sun seemed to come from every direction at once so that
the whole street was drenched with light and there were no shadows anywhere. The wind held only a whisper of coldness, like one stream of basement air leaking into a warm room.

As I stood in line at the deli with my English muffins and orange juice, I saw Margot Spencer outside in old jeans and a baggy sweater, trying to tie a very large black Labrador puppy to a lamppost. She had her hair in a ponytail, and she looked almost plain for once, so plain I didn’t recognize her until I’d registered her small, impeccably shaped head. The puppy wasn’t cooperating. When he jumped up to lick her face, she dropped the leash to regain her balance and he almost got away and bolted into the traffic. She caught the end of the leash just in time to drag him back. I took my change and bag of groceries and went outside. “Hey, Margot,” I said, “can I give you a hand?”

“Please,” she called back; she didn’t see who I was until it was too late to retract her acceptance of my offer.

I knelt down, held the dog’s collar and looked him right in the eye. “Hold still, you big galoot,” I said firmly. I didn’t have much experience with dogs, but I’d read that they responded well to alpha behavior. The puppy cocked his head as if he were waiting for me to play, but he held still. Margot secured the leash with a good knot, then had to step back and acknowledge me. This she did with her usual grace.

“Well, thanks,” she said, wiping her hands on the seat of her jeans as if she’d got them dirty holding the leash. “I appreciate your help, Claudia. He was about to get run over.”

“You’re very welcome,” I said. “It was the least I could do.”

We looked at each other a moment. Were we going to acknowledge my recent mistakes and get past them, or were we going to say a curt good-bye and be enemies? I had thought all along that this was up to Margot, but the struggle with her puppy had leveled the playing field.

“I mean,” I went on, “after everything that’s happened lately.”

“What’s happened lately?” She brushed a shiny strand of dark hair away from her nose.

Good question. I wasn’t sure either. Had Gus told her I’d called her names, or was she still upset about the whole dead-Jackie thing, or both, or was there something else I didn’t know about? “I know you’re very loyal to Jackie,” I said slowly, hazarding a guess, watching her face for clues. “But she just called me and hired me again. I think she’s forgiven me.”

“Jackie always forgives everyone,” Margot said with a hint of a smile. “She can never remember anything long enough to hold a grudge.”

“I know,” I said. “Lucky for me.”

There was a silence. She seemed to be waiting for me to say something.

“What did I do?” I blurted, amazing myself.

“What do you mean?”

“We used to be friends. Well, friendly. Something’s changed. I think it’s because of something I said or did.”

The whites of her eyes were perfectly clear, so purely white they had the bluish undertone of flat white latex paint. Her skin was equally flawless, a uniform cream color with a tinge of rose on her cheeks and lips: she had not one blemish or scar, not even a freckle. I had never realized it before, but she had the same sinless, slightly mocking air as my mother’s shepherdess figurine, that purse-lipped maid in dirndl and frock eternally leading her snow-white fluffballs to some Edenic pasture.

“You haven’t done anything,” she said.

“Really?” I said dubiously. “Then it’s just my imagination?”

“Well.” She paused, then added with obvious reluctance, “No, actually, not entirely.”

“Then what?”

She looked out at the traffic, which moved along smoothly, as if the snarling, honking, fist-raising winter had never happened, as if those rock-hard banks of sooty snow, those clouds of reeking steam that came boiling up from underground to envelop windshields, had never caused one suburban mother to shriek bloody murder at a single cabdriver: it was springtime in Manhattan. It was clear that she didn’t want to have to accuse me of anything; she didn’t want to be having this conversation at all. She wanted to go about her business and never think about me again.

I would have let her, but the sky was as blue and shiny as a tarp, and the air was so surreally bright I got the idea that nothing could hurt me right now. Cheerfully I waited, prepared to stand there all day. She was going to have to tell me, because I wasn’t going anywhere until she did.

“To be perfectly honest,” she went on after a moment, still avoiding my eye, “it’s just that I think you’re—I can’t believe I’m saying this, you’re going to hate me—”

“Say it,” I commanded, using the same alpha technique I’d used on her dog.

“It’s because you’re a drunk,” she said apologetically.

“A what?” I gasped. “I’m a
what
?”

“Honestly, Claudia,” she said. “It’s not personal, it’s just that people who drink upset me. I can’t be around them. I have to keep my distance, for personal reasons that have nothing to do with you at all. My own stuff.” She looked small and contrite, a little frightened, as if I were about to clobber her with a bottle of hooch.

“Well,” I stammered, “I drink, sure, I drink, but so does everyone, and anyway, it’s recreational drinking, I mean it’s not like I’m an—”

“Really, I swear,” she said. “I’m not accusing you or judging you. I just have to protect myself.”

“Against
me
?”

We looked at each other mutely for a moment. I recalled then that her memoir had contained numerous scenes in which her British expatriate parents and their friends drove off in Jags and Mercedeses after cocktail hour to dine at the club. Gin-and-tonics in the summer, Scotch in the winters—it had all sounded so romantic, all those sexy, glamorous, decadent grownups going off into the night in a cloud of laughter and cigarettes, leaving Margot alone with the nanny. But now it dawned on me for the first time that Margot might not have liked her own upbringing any more than I’d liked mine. And that she had been avoiding me not because of something I had done, which would have given me cause for regret and apology, but because of who I was, which was beyond my control. All right, now I knew. It was time to be on my way.

I made myself smile at her. “That’s a great dog, by the way.”

“I just got him,” she said. “He terrifies me.”

“You just have to show him who’s boss,” I said encouragingly. “He wants you to.”

“Maybe,” she replied faintly.

I turned and headed for home, my cheeks burning in the brisk wind. A drunk was someone to be reckoned with, someone interesting and far-gone. I should have been alarmed and ashamed, should have considered joining all those chain-smokers in church basements—I knew what I was supposed to feel. But the sunlight covered the street with the clear healthy gold of ale, the brownstone faces were burnished the toast-warm color of bourbon in candlelight, the air was clear and lively as gin, and something leapt in me, a persistent little flame of self. Drunks didn’t set themselves apart, didn’t look down on anyone—they sat shoulder-to-shoulder with everyone in the bar, awash in fellow-feeling, the roar of the surf in their
heads so loud it made time stop, washed away everything except whatever was right here, everyone bobbing together on a sweet, warm flood of oceanic feeling. It could either drown or sustain you, depending. As I burbled along the sidewalk, filled with the liquidity of life, a line or two by a fellow drunk blew in on the breeze like a yellow butterfly, darting into view then out—“O world, I cannot hold thee close enough! Thy winds, thy wide grey skies—” that was enough; the sky was blue, it was spring, so the rest of it didn’t fit. But I felt a sudden love for the whole shining fragile globe; I would have hugged it hard enough to deflate it if it had been the size of a beach ball.