Leap Year (3 page)

“You mean you’re interested in representing me?”

“Well, of course I can’t promise that. What we’d like to do—both Anton and I—is to have another look at that fascinating portfolio. Would that be possible?”

“I don’t see why not,” said Heath.

“Super! We were thinking perhaps we would meet for lunch. Would that suit your schedule?”

“I think I have some free lunches,” said Heath.

“Well, let’s see…today’s Tuesday. How about Thursday next? At Raoul’s. Do you know Raoul’s? On Prince Street?”

“Of course,” said Heath. He had applied and been rejected for a waitering job there—he couldn’t fake a good enough French accent.

“Then we’ll see you there, on Thursday April fourteenth, about one o’clock?”

“Fine,” said Heath.

“Well, it’s been nice talking to you, and I look forward to lunch. See you then.” She hung up. So did Heath.

“I need a Tecate with lime,” said Tammi. “Who was that? El yuppie?”

“No,” said Heath.

“Who was it?”

“That was either the sickest woman in New York or my savior. I’ll find out next week.”

L
OREN WAS LYING IN BED
, listening to “Morning Edition,” watching Gregory’s head appear and disappear. Every time it appeared, his face was redder and more contorted: He was doing his sit-ups. She was supposed to be counting for him, but she had lost track. She was thinking about David and wondering if he was listening to “Morning Edition.” Throughout the day she would often find herself thinking of David, wondering what he was doing. It was funny, she thought, how the heart and the brain worked at different speeds when it came to forgetting someone. Some days she would be curious about David, some days she would desire him, and other days would pass without a thought of him. Those were the best days, when she felt entirely consumed in her new life and truly divorced. Today, apparently, was not going to be one of them.

Gregory collapsed on the floor, out of sight. “How many?” he gasped.

“Fifty,” Loren guessed.

“Are you sure?” Gregory asked.

“Yup,” said Loren. “On the button. Come here. Let me feel.”

Gregory stood up and fell, face down, beside her on the bed.

“Turn over,” Loren commanded.

Gregory turned over, and Loren looked down at his flushed, handsome face. His brow was sweating; his skin was hot and moist. She stroked his stomach, pinching for fat. “Not bad,” she said.

Gregory opened his mouth and beckoned her, downward, with his tongue. He had been back in town for a week, and she had not told him about spending the night with David. She wanted to. She felt maybe if she told Gregory, tried to explain it to him, she might herself better understand it: this incomprehensible, impossible, seemingly unwitherable need—or was it love?—for David.

Uptown at David’s, Kate was brushing her teeth. She had recently learned about the perils of cavities at daycare and vowed she would never have one. She brushed her teeth with a ferocity that David, who was supervising, found alarming in a four-year-old.

“Easy does it,” he suggested. “Nice and easy.”

“What?” asked Heath from behind the shower curtain.

“Nothing!” David shouted. “I was talking to Kate.” Heath turned the water off.

“Heath, are you bare naked?” Kate asked.

“No,” said Heath. “I have my swim suit on.”

“What color is it?”

“Flesh,” said Heath.

“We have to bring a potato to daycare,” said Kate.

“What for?” asked David.

“I don’t know,” said Kate. “For art.”

“I don’t think I have any potatoes,” said David. “We’ll have to stop at the store.”

“I want a big one,” said Kate. “Can I pick it out?”

“You may,” said David. “Enough brushing.” He unarmed her. “Now spit.”

Kate spat and studied the foamy design in the sink. This spit interpretation was a ritual step in her morning ablutions. “It looks like a fish eating popcorn,” she concluded.

Heath emerged from the shower, a towel around his waist. “It looks more like a Jackson Pollock to me,” he said.

“Go get dressed,” David said to Kate. “Your clothes are on your bed. If you need help, call me. What kind of juice do you want?”

Kate thought for a moment. “Cran-raspberry,” she said. She turned on the tap, washed her art down the drain, and departed.

David closed the bathroom door. “Was there enough hot water?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Heath.

David watched Heath dry himself. Heath’s body was slight and white and, to David, always surprisingly beautiful. The first time he had felt this unexpected attraction to Heath had been last December. The offices of
Altitude
were miserably overheated, and Heath had worn a loose-fitting, short-sleeved bowling shirt that had slid up his arm as he pointed to something—a man dancing with a small Christmas tree—on the roof of the opposite building. David looked at the dancing man, and for a brief perplexing moment he realized he wanted to be looking in the other direction: at Heath’s bare upper arm, at the shadow of hair he had glimpsed beneath it, at the whole elegant, upraised limb, but by the time he turned his head Heath had lowered his arm, the sleeve had descended, the hand was hidden in Heath’s pants pocket. So David had looked at Heath’s face, and Heath had looked at him.

“What time is your lunch?” David asked.

“One,” said Heath, who was finally having his lunch with Amanda Paine and Anton Shawangunk of the Gallery Shawangunk. “What do you think I should wear?”

“I don’t know,” said David. “I don’t eat lunch in SoHo. Something black and groovy. Wear your sunglasses.”

“I wish I smoked,” said Heath.

“Daddy,” Kate called from her bedroom.

“What?”

“Are there boy potatoes and girl potatoes?”

Lydia Aronso, David’s assistant, was the director of South Americans for Jesse Jackson (SAJEJA), a position that of late seemed to occupy most of her energies during the working day. She assured David that after the primary things would return to normal.

“Hello, baby,” she said to David, when he arrived at his office. “If you want coffee, I have to send out. The coffee machine exploded.”

“You know I don’t drink coffee,” said David. “I never drink coffee.”

“You could have changed,” said Lydia. “There is a capacity inside each of us to change. And that’s how we’re going to change this country. And the only way this country will change is if Jesse Jackson is elected president…”

“Please, Lydia, save it.”

“But you’re uncommitted. You’ve said as much. You are an uncommitted Democratic voter. And therefore it is in your power to change this country.”

The phone rang. Lydia picked it up. “Hi,
Altitude
,” she said. She had to—it was a rule.

David went into his office and opened his briefcase. Inside it was a large Idaho spud. “Shit,” he said. He picked up the potato.

Lydia came into his office. “It’s the cartographer,” she said. “What’s with the potato?”

“It’s Kate’s, for daycare.”

“Aren’t you carrying this healthy snack thing a little too far?”

“It’s for arts and crafts. I forgot to give it to her. Call for a messenger. We’ll messenger it over.”

Heath had left his portfolio at home so he took the subway from David’s to Brooklyn. Gerard, his roommate, had returned from tour and was lying on the couch watching “Jeopardy,” drinking a Diet Cherry Coke, and smoking. Like most dancers, he had a very strong love-hate relationship with his body. He was always either admiring or poisoning himself.

“Hi,” said Heath. “When did you get home?”

Gerard just smiled cryptically. He seldom spoke before dusk.

“I’m going out to lunch with a gallery owner,” said Heath. He couldn’t help boasting. He and Gerard had always been competitive.

“Is it a boy gallery owner?” asked Gerard.

“Yes,” said Heath.

“He probably just wants to fuck you.”

“I don’t think so,” said Heath.

“Of course you don’t think so,” said Gerard. “You’re Mr. Naivete 1988. Where were you last night?”

“Out,” said Heath, who hadn’t yet told Gerard about David. For some reason he was embarrassed about his relationship with David. It was just a little weird to be dating an older, divorced, short in-flight magazine editor. It was certainly a change from Gerard.

“I haven’t heard of Club Out before,” said Gerard. “Is it for people who are out of it?”

“I’m going to take a shower,” said Heath, ignoring Gerard’s remark. He had gotten sweaty on the subway.

“What’s the Yukon Time Zone,” Gerard said to the TV.

Heath went into the bathroom and took his second shower of the morning, shaved the patches under his jaw he had missed earlier, and put aftershave on his face and chest. He thought he smelled too strongly of Aramis so he got back in the shower. Then he dressed as groovily as he knew how.

Gerard had moved from the couch to the floor. He was still smoking, but he had begun stretching. “Jeopardy” had been replaced by “Charlie’s Angels.” Kate Jackson was holding a gun on a fat man in a walk-in freezer. “Your lunch date called,” he said.

“She did?” asked Heath. “Amanda Paine?”

“That’s the one,” said Gerard.

“What did she say?”

“She said it was an April Fool’s joke and that you should give it up and move back to Charlottesville.”

For a second Heath believed him. He sat down because he felt faint. He could feel the life drop out of his head, swoosh. For a second he hated Gerard with a pureness that amazed him, and this hatred help bring him back to his senses.

“I’m kidding,” said Gerard. “Talk about Mr. Gullible. She just changed the place. You’re supposed to meet her at Shawangunk’s apartment. Seven twenty-one Fifth Avenue.”

“Where’s that?” asked Heath.

“It’s the Trump Tower, baby,” said Gerard. “The big TT.”

S
INCE IT WAS SUCH A
gorgeous spring day Judith decided to sit in the park for a while. She wasn’t due at the clinic until one o’clock. She found a sunny bench and sat reading
The Odd Women
by George Gissing. Presently she looked up to find a man sitting on the opposite bench, gazing at her through binoculars. She gave him what she hoped was a discouraging frown and returned to her book.

But the man persisted. She looked up again. He was slight, middle-aged, and Asian. This time she scowled in a way that could not be misinterpreted, but of course it was. It seemed to attract rather than repel him, for suddenly he was sitting beside her on the bench.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I see I have annoyed you. But it was the birds, not you, at which I was looking.”

Judith nodded and continued reading.

“And now I have insulted you, I fear,” he continued. “I did not wish to imply that you are less attractive than the birds.”

Judith gave him a weak smile.

“It is a beautiful day,” he said.

She knew better than to respond.

“Would you like to see?” he asked, offering his binoculars.

“No thank you,” Judith said. She stood up, with the purpose of looking for another, quieter locale.

“Don’t go,” the man said. “I will go if I am bothering you. I am so very sorry. This is your bench, and you must stay.”

“Oh, no,” said Judith. “I’m leaving. I deed the bench to you.”

The man smiled. He had extraordinarily white teeth. They were the whitest thing around for miles. Judith stood for a moment, hoping he would smile again.

“It is a beautiful day,” she said. You should leave, she thought. But she knew suddenly that she would not: It was the day. It was the sunlight in the air, the trees full of blossoms and birds. It was all so benevolent. No harm can come of this, Judith thought, not today.

“May I have a look?” she asked.

She was rewarded with another smile and the binoculars. She held them to her eyes. She was not sure what she was seeing: It was all out of focus. But she was sure it was beautiful, this mess of sky and leaves and windows glittering in the sun.

The lobby of the Trump Tower was all marble and mirror, and Heath had to concentrate hard not to walk into any walls. He had a phobia concerning mirrored walls ever since he had walked into one at Bendel’s and broken his nose.

He maneuvered his way safely across the dim lobby and announced himself at the desk. He was told he was expected and directed to an elevator that rose with NASA-like speed. Amanda Paine was waiting for him in the corridor, smoking a cigarette.

“Ah, so you got my message,” she said.

“Yes,” said Heath. “Hello.” He tried to shake her hand but she had extended it for another purpose—to give her cigarette to the elevator attendant.

“Would you dispose of this for me?” she asked him. He nodded and disappeared behind the closing doors. Amanda turned to Heath. “Anton doesn’t allow smoking in his apartment,” she explained. She looked different to Heath—taller and more imperial. The dress she was wearing seemed to have been pasted to her body in many little scraps, and her hair was piled high on her head in a manner that suggested the casual but upon closer inspection proved quite intricate. Heath followed her down the corridor.

“I’m sorry we had to change the plan, but at the last minute Anton decided he didn’t want to venture downtown. People who live uptown think downtown is so hopelessly far away, I’ve realized. Do you live downtown?”

“I live in Brooklyn,” said Heath.

Amanda laughed, as if this were a joke. “That’s right,” she said. “I had to dial seven-one-eight. Don’t you just hate seven-one-eight? It was much nicer when we were all two-one-two, don’t you think? One big happy family.”

She opened the door and they entered the apartment. It was smaller than Heath had imagined. Two walls were floor-to-ceiling smoked glass. Heath felt as if he were suddenly wearing sunglasses.

“Anton’s showering,” said Amanda. “Could I get you a drink?”

“Maybe just some water,” said Heath.

“Still or gazeuse?”

“Whatever,” Heath said.

Amanda disappeared into a galley-sized kitchen. Heath looked around. He was afraid to get too close to the glass walls for fear of tripping and crashing out. There was no art in the apartment. The floors were pickled wood, and the furniture seemed to be an eclectic mix of Louis XIV and Native American. The walls that weren’t glass were hand-painted with very small mauve- and raspberry-colored freckles.