The City of Your Final Destination (32 page)

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Authors: Peter Cameron

BOOK: The City of Your Final Destination
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A girl at the Lancôme counter asked Caroline if she would like to be made up. No, Caroline said, and pushed herself out the doors and back onto the street. She sat on a bench in the park, beside a child and her mother. The child dispiritedly ate some sort of pink ice cream thing on a stick. Caroline closed her eyes and let the sun fall on her. She could feel the city around her, hear it thrumming. She had supposed she would never come back here. She had gotten Jules and Margot had gotten New York. It had seemed fair enough. Now, suddenly, she owned an apartment here. She could go back downtown and bolt the door and stand in the room and no one would know she was there or what she was doing. She could paint
the walls. She could buy flowers from the market on the corner: she had seem them there, buckets of peonies, cosmos, phlox.
She was hot when she got back to the apartment so she showered again with the lilac-scented soap and pinned her damp hair up high on her head. She had bought the peonies, an expensive armful of them, their beautiful creamy fists nodding and unfurling in a Waterford vase in the living room. She had also bought a bottle of Gavi and cherries and pistachio nuts.
He knocked a little after six o'clock. She opened the door. He was wearing a white dress shirt and pale blue linen pants and had the dog on a leash. His blond hair was combed back from his face.
“Hello,” she said. “Won't you come in?”
She stepped aside and he and the dog walked into the apartment.
“So this is Hugo,” she said, closing the door. It was a medium-size dog, fawn-colored, with an ugly smashed face and bat ears. It gazed up at her with its imploring dog eyes. She bent down and touched its brow. It slobbered.
“Yes,” said Tom. “This is Hugo. Poor Hugo. He doesn't much like the heat.”
“I shall get him a bowl of water,” she said. “Come!” she said, to both man and dog, and walked toward the kitchen. She filled a glass bowl with cold water and placed it on the floor. Tom unsnapped the leash. Hugo sat down and panted.
“Well, I would like a drink,” said Caroline. “Will you join me?”
“Sure,” said Tom.
“I'm afraid all I have is white wine,” she said. “Will that be okay?”
“That will be fine,” he said.
She took the wine out of the now empty refrigerator and
opened it. Margot had very nice wineglasses; she filled two of them and handed one to Tom. “Let's go sit in the living room,” she said. “I think it's cooler.”
Hugo had lain down on the kitchen floor. They left him there and went into the other room. Tom sat in a chair that was covered in old chintz; she sat on the sofa. She pushed the bowl of nuts toward him. “How long have you lived here?” she asked.
“Almost ten years,” he said. “The whole time I've been in New York.”
“And where were you before that?”
“I grew up in Maine,” he said.
He stood up, and looked around the room. He went over to the window and looked out. Then he sat back down. “It feels so odd,” he said. “To be in here, without Margot.”
Caroline said nothing. She sipped her wine.
“What brought you to Uruguay?” he asked, after a moment.
“I married a Uruguayan,” she said.
“Oh,” he said. “Do you like it there?”
“Yes,” she said. “Very much. It's beautiful and peaceful. I lived here, you know, with Margot. In this apartment. Years and years ago. In 1959.”
“Wow,” he said.
“You said you knew her fairly well?”
“I liked Margot. We got along. But we weren't exactly close.”
“Was she happy, do you think?”
He thought for a moment, studying his wine. Then he looked up at her. “Sometimes I would see her at night, if she didn't close her drapes—my apartment is directly across the way.” He pointed out the window. “I'd come home late at night sometimes, and see her in here, sitting where you are, on the couch, reading. She wore glasses to read. I never saw her wear them in public. Sometimes, I'd come over. We'd just talk for a little while. She'd make some tea, and we'd sit here and talk. She had very good tea; she brought it back from Paris with her. She gave me some. I still have it.”
“Do you think she was happy?” Caroline asked.
“Yes,” he said. “In a way. She always seemed composed and gracious, content. I think she liked her life. You got that feeling.”
“Good,” said Caroline. “Did she—do you know if she had friends? Romances?”
“Of course she had friends,” said Tom. “She had many friends. She had dinner parties often—she was a terrific cook—and a big party every year at Christmastime. She'd use my refrigerator for her big party.”
Caroline was touching her finger to the thin rim of her wineglass.
“Every time she went away, when I would take care of Hugo, she would bring me back something. Not something stupid, like most people would. Something nice. A beautiful tie, or a bowl, or antique cufflinks. She once had a shirt made for me, in Italy, from fabric she had found in a flea market. She was very generous. Some of the nicest things I have are from Margot.”
Caroline put her glass of wine down on the table. She wiped at the tears on her cheeks.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to upset you.”
“No,” she said. “Please—I want to hear, I know so little about her.”
“Why?” he asked. “You seem so like her. I would have thought you would be friends.”
“We were,” she said. “We lived here together, as I said—”
“And what happened?”
She picked up her glass and sipped the wine. He reached forward and took a pistachio from the bowl. “I fell in love with her boyfriend,” Caroline said. “I married him.”
“The Uruguayan?”
“Yes,” she said, and smiled a little: Jules, the Uruguayan.
“Oh,” he said.
“It was an awful thing to do,” she said. “The worst thing, I suppose, a sister can do.”
“But you did it—I'm sure you did not do it maliciously,” he said.
“No,” she said. “I was very young, and it happened so quickly. We got married,” said Caroline. “Secretly, at City Hall, and left that same night for Uruguay. We wrote Margot letters, begging her to forgive us. Of course, she did not. She could not. I never heard from her again.”
“Wow,” said Tom. “And you've been in Uruguay ever since then?”
“Yes,” said Caroline. “I've been back to Paris, a few times, to see my mother. But never back here. Not until now.”
Hugo appeared in the open doorway. He whined quietly, and looked from one of them to the other.
“Are you ready for your walk, Hugo?” Tom asked. “He usually gets walked now,” he said to Caroline.
“How many times a day does he get walked?”
“Three, usually. In the morning, about now, and then before bed. Why don't we go out, and I can show you where he likes to go.”
At the corner, Tom handed Caroline the leash. “Here,” he said. “You take him, he should get used to you. He gets a long walk now, over to the river. In the morning and at night you can just go around the block. He doesn't need much exercise.”
Caroline took the leash and they crossed the street.
“Do you like dogs?” Tom asked.
“I don't know,” said Caroline. “I've never had a dog.”
“Hugo is a very sweet dog. He's very good, well-trained.”
“Are you sure you can't take him? It would be so nice if you could.”
Tom shook his head. “I can't,” he said. “I go out to L.A. almost every month.”
“What do you do?” asked Caroline.
“I write screenplays. Actually, I rewrite screenplays.”
“For movies, you mean?”
“Yes,” said Tom.
“I haven't seen a movie in ages,” said Caroline.
“You're not missing much,” said Tom.
“I don't remember that we were so close to the river,” said Caroline. They had paused to cross the West Side Highway.
“You probably didn't come over here before,” said Tom. “It wasn't so nice.”
They crossed and began walking south along the river. “This is very nice,” said Caroline. “How far can you walk?”
“All the way down.” Tom pointed ahead of them. “To Battery Park.”
Caroline looked out across the river. “May I ask you another question about Margot?”
“Of course,” said Tom.
“Did she have—was she romantically engaged?”
“Not recently,” said Tom. “When I first met her she was seeing a man. He was an attorney. He lived in San Francisco. He was married, I think. But he was in New York often, staying with her. And I think they traveled together.”
“What happened?”
“I don't really know. It just ended. She didn't talk about it. I saw her going out with other men, after that, sometimes. She went out a lot—to the opera and ballet. She had subscriptions to both. She took me sometimes. She did not seem lonely. She was very independent. I think she liked being alone. She had another dog before Hugo—a dachshund. Named Fritz. He was a nasty dog.”
“I'd like you to have something of hers,” said Caroline. “Something—or things—from the apartment, that you like. Is there something you'd want?”
Suddenly Hugo stopped walking. He squatted like an anchor at the end of the leash.
“Hugo lets you know when he's had enough,” said Tom.
“So we must turn around?”
“Sometimes he can be coaxed. But I should be getting back.”
“Of course,” said Caroline. They turned around, and retraced their steps. “Is there? Something you'd like from the apartment?” asked Caroline. “Anything.”
“Really?” said Tom.
“Yes,” said Caroline.
“There are a few things I'd love.”
“What?”
“I'm afraid they're valuable.”
“Good,” said Caroline.
“There's the clock in the living room. I have always loved it. And the Rudy Burkhardt photographs in the hallway. I love those too.”
“Good,” said Caroline, “I want you to have them, then.”
“What are you going to do with everything?” said Tom.
“I don't know. Sell it, I suppose.”
“Be very careful,” said Tom. “It's not junk. None of it. Margot had wonderful things.”
“Don't worry,” said Caroline. “I will be very careful.”
On their way home they passed a little restaurant called Chez Stadium. Two tables were on the street, set with silverware and linen, but unoccupied. The sun was low over the river and shone directly up the street. “Is this a good restaurant?” Caroline asked.
“It's not bad,” said Tom.
They parted in the hallway outside the elevator. In the apartment, Hugo seemed to be at home, to know what to do. Caroline did not. She looked at the photographs Tom wanted, and at the clock. He had a very good eye: they were lovely. But then the apartment was filled with lovely things.
She ate dinner by herself at the restaurant they had passed, sitting at one of the tables outside on the street. She was exhausted,
both emotionally and physically, but it felt good, sitting at the little table on the street. People walked by and smiled at her. She drank two glasses of wine with the meal, and had a coffee afterward, just to prolong the pleasure of sitting there, on the quiet urban street, beneath the trees, in the lamplight. She felt very far away from Ochos Rios. She had thought that was her life but perhaps it was not. It was hard to know, and she was too tired to figure it all out now. She paid the check and went back to the apartment.
She was sitting in the living room, looking through the magazines that Margot had left behind, when Hugo appeared in the doorway. He stood there, looking at her.
“Is it time for your walk?” she asked.
He cocked his head a little.
She looked at her watch: it was 11:00. “Let's go,” she said. They walked around the block. She wondered if he missed Margot. He seemed very self-possessed. She was beginning to like him. Two youngish women, a couple, Caroline felt, entered the building and rode up in the elevator with them.
The women both clutched some sort of program. One of them bent down and patted Hugo. “Hello, Hugo,” she said. She stood up. “Are you a friend of Margot's?” she asked Caroline.

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