Lion's Share (9 page)

“Aha! The perfect example of the young executive climbing the corporate ladder,” Jana teased. “Working so hard you don't even mind that you're working.”

“I wouldn't go quite that far,” Ed said. “I'm just happy doing what I'm doing.”

“You don't sometimes think about moving up in the company? Taking over Frank's job, for instance? Come on, confess. You can trust me.”

“I never doubted you for a moment. But seriously, Frank sits behind a desk most of the day. The only people he meets are CEOs and the board of directors. If I had to go to all those fancy luncheons, I'd gain weight again. It might be nice to be making Frank's salary, but I'm not wanting for anything.” Ed heard himself talking and did a mental double-take. How many women had he met in the past few years who could tease him about “climbing the corporate ladder”? More to the point, could he have admitted the truth to any of the others? He wasn't interested in those women for the same reason he wasn't interested in Frank's job: they insisted on being part of the social scene, going to all the chic places. Look at Frank running off to the Hamptons every weekend; contrast that with Jana's telling him that growing up in Lakewood had been beach enough for her.

“When I graduated college, I thought I'd become a journalist and write articles that would change the way people look at the world.” Ed laughed to think of his younger self and how easily he could share that with Jana; something about her seemed to encourage openness. “After two or three years in the work force, I realized that even political columnists can't bring about such changes. Working as community coordinator for APL lets me at least affect the way a handful of people think.”

“It took you two or three years to lose your innocence, did it? You should have been an artist. I moved to New York and spent my first three days here taking a portfolio of drawings around, not making appointments, just footing it from one gallery to the next. I didn't even think to make slides. I lugged around the whole batch, assuming the galleries would be waiting with open arms to receive me. It was a shock to my whole system, not to mention my feet.” In a moment of giddiness, Jana let her leg brush lightly against Ed's.

The conversation continued effortlessly until Jana had to go. Ed helped her into a cab, making her promise to call and let him know she'd arrived safely. She climbed aboard the three o'clock bus a split second before it left, and settled next to a thin young man already absorbed in a book. His presence seemed innocuous. After this morning, Ed's was the only body she could imagine getting close to hers.

Jana spent Sunday and Monday working on the three-screen panel she'd been describing to Ed over brunch. It juxtaposed three park scenes—Bryant Park filled with winos, a black-and-white imitation of Seurat's
Sunday Afternoon Along the Thames
, and lunch-hour businessmen in City Hall Park. This, along with
Mulberry Street
and a few other paintings, was becoming an unplanned series depicting vanishing neighborhoods. She was filling in the details on the City Hall Park panel when she caught herself copying the ridged gray buttons on the suit Ed had worn to Friday's meeting, three buttons on one sleeve, two on the other. “Good thing I'm not painting the winos,” she told herself, though Ed might make an interesting wino. He'd be a little thinner, his face would become drawn, giving him a more serious look. He'd still look damn good. “No he wouldn't,” she mumbled, trying to push him from her mind and get back to work. If he were a wino, he'd probably have cigarette holes in that jacket and be wearing a pair of lopsided glasses taped together in ten places, since his contacts would be permanently lost. He'd also be almost totally bald now. “He's not that interesting,” she muttered, laughing. But she couldn't convince herself.

She'd talked to Ed Saturday night, and already she was hungering to hear his voice again. She tried to think up some excuse for calling, all the while hating the woman she was turning into. Why couldn't she simply pick up the phone, tell him again she'd enjoyed spending time with him Saturday, say she'd been thinking about him? Because she couldn't. For all she knew, he might have another woman with him; Kathe might be with him, and they might be laughing about her the way they'd laughed about Kathe Saturday morning. She might
hope
that Ed had been thinking about her today, but she had no way of knowing. And she couldn't take the chance of rejection.

The only time she found it easy to reach out to people was when she was functioning as a curator. Then, she could distance her own thoughts and feelings. If a person didn't recall her name, she simply reminded them: name, rank, and serial number. No chance of being hurt. In her curator role, she could call Ed to see if Phyllis had any reactions to the bios she'd given him to bring in. It was safer that way, one professional to another …

Ed started by saying he'd just walked in from a good dinner, “And more than that, a good drink.”

“Hard day?”

“Among other things, my air conditioner here is broken.”

“I thought you never used it. You said you only put it on for my benefit.”

“Well, I want to use it now. Today's been one of the most humid days of the summer.”

“It's cool here,” Jana said without thinking.

“That doesn't help me any.”

“Well, you can come up here. I'll sneak you into my room.”

“I want you to come back to the city. We'll have dinner tomorrow night, my treat. This restaurant tonight had one of the best pianists I've heard in a long time. I think you'd enjoy him.”

“But you said your air conditioner's broken.”

“The air conditioner in my bedroom still works.”

The conversation went back and forth for twenty minutes, the two of them laughing, hinting, flirting. By that time, she no longer needed an excuse for calling, but used it anyway.

“I left them with Phyllis' secretary,” Ed said, sounding somewhat cool all of the sudden. “If I know Phyllis, she's already begun contacting the various local newspapers, but she seldom has any visible reaction other than to say ‘thank you.'”

The minute she hung up the phone, Jana panicked. She'd wanted to feel loose, but not
that
loose. If Ed had been within a hundred miles of her, if there had been the slightest chance he would take her up on it, she'd never have suggested sneaking him into her room. How had the conversation gone off in that direction? There'd been the perfect opportunity to get into a discussion about music when he'd mentioned that pianist, but she'd been too busy thinking about herself to pick up on it. Maybe she ought to quit while she was ahead. She wasn't cut out for this, this, whatever you wanted to call it, this caring about others, this loving.

Tired, disgusted with herself, she settled down on top of the bed. So much for artists being coddled at the colonies, she thought bitterly. A little coddling would help right now, something in the form of a soft down comforter. The blankets here were only slightly better than army blankets, like the ones they used when she went away to camp. She thought about how much she'd hated those scratchy camp blankets—the kids in her bunk had rejected her, she'd felt uncomfortable to begin with, and those blankets had accentuated her discomfort. That's why she'd spent most of that summer in the infirmary. She recalled lying on top of a blanket, watching as the doctor moved slowly toward her. “Doesn't that feel better?” he asked, his lips brushing her newly sprouting hair.

She could feel all the tension in her body. This wasn't camp, it was Yaddo. The people here were friends, they were close associates, they respected each other. Not one person was out there laughing behind her back. There was no reason not to be comfortable here, she told herself, closing her eyes again.

When she was here five years ago, the main source of gossip had been some guy who'd been in residence for six weeks and had brought anywhere from six to ten different women into his room, depending upon who was telling the story. Not very subtle about it either, people said. All the more reason not to tease Ed about sneaking him into her room. She shouldn't have risked it, even in jest. “Kibitzing,” as her parents called it, was a throwback to childhood. Since she'd moved to New York, she'd thrust herself into work with a passion that usually didn't allow time for such trivialities.

She crawled under the covers—maybe she could at least dream of Ed. Instead, it was Kathe she dreamt about. Tall, thin Kathe assumed her own small stature. Ed's air conditioner was broken; she kept screaming that her dogs were going to die of heatstroke and it was his fault. She must have had thirty huge, filthy dogs living uncaged in his apartment. At least ten slept in the bed with her. She kept petting them, telling him to brush out their fur so they wouldn't die so fast. Ed tried calming her down by telling her he'd find her a nice apartment with French doors and plenty of light, only Jana knew it was going to be a thousand miles away, far enough that he'd never have to see her. He promised it would be large enough to paint in, but it was a tiny shack with a leaky roof and tar paper walls. “I understand what you're going through,” he told her. “But believe me, you'll like it here once you get settled in.” And he fondled her hand as he said that.

“YOUR EMOTIONS are strong and sensitive,” the fortune cookie prophesied. Jana stared at Marilyn sitting across from her. Marilyn's Indian cotton blouse was cut low—you could see the top of her large breasts over the neck and the outline of her bra beneath the thin fabric. And here I am, prim in my Ship and Shore shirt, as if I'm trying to repress those strong emotions, Jana thought. She ought to take lessons from her outgoing if somewhat disheveled friend. Marilyn looked comfortable and relaxed, no matter what she was wearing; that was one of the things which had attracted Jana to her in the beginning.

Reading the fortune aloud, Jana savored the sweet, broken pieces. “See that,” she said. “The baker had foresight to know I'm seeing Ed tomorrow night.”

“I thought you came to town because of the DCA commission,” Marilyn chided her. The Department of Cultural Affairs was sponsoring an open competition for art in the subways, and Jana was one of the five finalists for the Lex and 86th Street station. If she got the commission, she'd work with a foundry, producing metal cutout figures, sculptures with a painting's one-dimensional surface. Those long underground tunnels would provide the perfect backdrop for her streetwise figures—it was precisely the filthy, changing environment she'd give anything to capture on canvas. The program coordinator called last week, telling her she was a finalist and asking for slides of recent work. As luck would have it, one of the guys she'd gotten friendly with this summer, a photographer, was willing to take the slides for her. The paint wasn't even dry yet when he'd photographed one. She got the slides developed, labeled them, and brought them into town just ahead of the August 27 deadline.

“You know me,” Jana said. “Dropping off those slides will be the easy part.”

“I used to know you pretty well. Lately, I'm not so sure. I've been trying for weeks to get you to talk about Ed, and you've carefully sidestepped the issue. Now you stand a good chance of getting your work in the subways, and all you talk about is Ed.” Marilyn focused her dark brown eyes intently, as if taking a closer look. “Don't forget, this subway commission might come at just the right time to convince Nancy Hoffman to give you a show.”

“I wish to hell I could forget,” Jana remarked in her obsessive, humorless tone. “It would be much easier if nothing else were riding on the commission.” She was coming close to succeeding as an artist: she'd had one-woman shows in major galleries in Philadelphia, Buffalo, Albany, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Haven; she'd shown in small, out-of-the-way galleries in New York City. Nancy Hoffman had included her in four group shows over the past six years and had several of Jana's paintings in the back room, but sold an average of less than two paintings per year. Reviewing those sales figures, Nancy had told her the work “wasn't quite ready for a show yet.” There had been interest in the other paintings, but art buyers, particularly those who could afford Nancy's prices, made their purchases following reviews and other signs that a new artist was becoming a solid investment. Gut feelings counted, reviews tipped the balance. If her work were installed in the subway station, if Jana could get enough publicity …

“I'm nervous about that commission, I guess,” she continued. “Thinking about Ed helps take my mind off it. It's depressing, though. Suddenly I'm starting to find fault with him again: he's educated, corporate, polished. He wanted to be a jazz pianist as a kid, and I'm unreasonably annoyed that he didn't stick to it.”