The Crasher (39 page)

Johnny hadn’t blinked, let alone hesitated or even made much of an apology to her. He’d literally dropped everything, including
her, to rush right over to the Century where, as he’d said with a mock bow, “The eagle has landed.”

Since then, they’d hardly seen each other, although with increasing reluctance, she’d acted as his stand-in at some events,
delivering her notes over quick coffees in midtown cafés near his
Next!
office, because he said he was too busy to do it any other way.

Was he trying to avoid meeting her anywhere where they could be alone? Was he fighting an ardent love for her, or at the very
least, an attraction he feared could grow into something stronger? If so, he appeared to be winning the battle, she thought;
and she moped.

On a brilliant, sunny, bird-singing spring day, he phoned to say he had to go out of town for a few days on a special assignment
for the magazine.

“Nothing to do with the column. Something I’ve been following for the past few weeks, which might turn into the kind of story
I’ve been looking for.”

She wasn’t comforted by the fact he’d taken the trouble to
tell her. His voice had lost the laugh. He sounded distant, distracted.

“Where are you going?”

“San Juan.”

San Juan. The name hit her like a shower of ice water. Hadn’t Dolores, the Latina bombshell Quentin Peet had so thoroughly
disapproved of, hailed from San Juan? No, no, no, of course not. Dolores was Bolivian.

“Something I’ve been following for the past few weeks,” he’d said. Or did he mean “someone”? Ginny immediately thought of
someone just like Dolores, a voluptuous beauty in an itsy-bitsy bikini, exotic, hot-blooded, hiding her passion beneath a
lily-white skin, sheltered on a golden beach by a giant parasol. Or perhaps, now that Johnny professed to hate his ex-wife
so much, he was into deeply tanned Latinas?

San Juan? Bolivia? What difference did it make? Both places were full of scorching women. “I’ll miss you,” he was saying.
“Sorry we haven’t seen much of each other. I’ll call as soon as I get back, probably in about a week.”

How she managed to stop asking, “Can I come with you?” she didn’t know.

There was a painful pause. She dug her again half-bitten nails into her palm, not yet giving up, praying he might still say,
“Oh, what the hell, why don’t you come, too,” but he didn’t.

She’d hardly put the phone down before she started waiting for his return. She tried to stop thinking the worst—that he might
be taking somebody to the golden beaches with him (the somebody he’d once said he was “tied up” with?)… tried to stop thinking
of who might be waiting for him down there… tried to stop thinking, period.

But everywhere she went she was reminded of Johnny.
Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda
taunted her as she went to get her shoes soled, while in her mailbox came a leaflet announcing
Women Acting Up,
“A dark comedy soon arriving on West 17th Street, which explores friends and family through bedtime prayers, dark secrets
and lies…” She needed every
prayer she could get for the dark and dirty secret she was still being forced to live with.

The day after Johnny’s departure, locking the loft door in the afternoon, shuddering with every move, Ginny took the gems
out of the toilet to give them a shower. None seemed any the worse for their watery incarceration. On hitting the light, they
emitted the same spectacular flashes of fire in her pathetic little bathroom as they had at 834 Fifth. When she returned them
to their hiding place, her hands were shaking so much, she had to go out to the nearest bar and drink a brandy and soda.

Slumped in a corner of the bar, she reflected that all of February, March, and half of April had gone by since she’d first
discovered the jewels. She started to count. Seventy-four days! She could hardly believe she’d managed to live through one
day, let alone seventy-four, but then so much had happened in her life, so much—meaning Johnny-had happened.

“You need cheering up,” Esme insisted. On returning home from the bar, with Johnny only gone for twenty-four hours, Ginny
had called her best friend to admit she’d fallen into a deep, dark depression.

Esme had an antidote. “A wonderful new flea market I’ve just heard about, loaded with incredible fabric bargains.”

Ginny had to laugh. “Es, you certainly know the right buttons to push.”

Esme picked Ginny up early the next morning, hoping to have breakfast or at least coffee at the loft before they set out.
Not for the first time Ginny had forgotten to restock her kitchen, so instead on the way across town they stopped off at a
café not too far from Gosman’s old factory.

Over cappuccino, with all the poise of an experienced married woman, Esme asked, “D’you think you and Johnny have any kind
of a future?”

Ginny sighed. Esme could always be relied upon to aim straight for the solar plexus, no matter how much one tried to deflect
her. Except when it came to Ted, with whom, perhaps
from some innate sense of insecurity, Esme usually took a circuitous route.

“A future? Sure,” Ginny lied. “If I want one.” She tossed her head optimistically. “I just have to become as indispensable
to Johnny as I once was to Everard Gosman—in a totally different way, of course.”

“Of course,” said Esme, pouting, showing she didn’t believe a word of it. “If he’ll let you.” Ginny couldn’t remember Esme
ever irritating her more.

“He’ll let me, you’ll see.”

“Well, you should always have some food in the house, Ginny. You know the old saying… the way to a man’s heart is through—”

“Esme, shut up!” They glowered at each other and hardly spoke until, after being at the flea market for about thirty minutes,
Ginny stumbled across a stunning find, a wide brocade border, heavily embroidered with fat gold bumblebees and laurel leaves,
tacked onto the skirt of a decrepit, badly sagging sofa.

“Just look at this, Es.” In her enthusiasm, she forgot how maddening Esme had been. “I must have it.”

“That! Surely you’re not that hard up. It will cost a fortune to repair and who knows where it’s been.”

“Not the sofa, dopey. The skirt, the border. Look at that embroidery, that work. It’s special. How much?” Ginny asked a shriveled
little woman who appeared to be the owner.

“Hundred and fifty.”

“No way!” screeched Esme. They started to walk away.

“Okay, okay. What’s your offer, miss?”

Ginny bent down to examine the gold stitching more closely. It really was amazing. She lifted up the skirt. Good. It would
be a cinch to remove. She had to have it. She would get it cleaned, then use it to border a magnificent velvet cloak, the
Napoleonic kind, in which to sweep up—and down—a staircase, the kind in which to make a grand entrance.

She knew just where to get a bolt of exactly the right color
velvet, burnished copper chestnut, against which the fat gold bees would glisten even in the dark.

“Well, missr

“I only want the border.”

“Well, then, but that’s the beauty of it, isn’t it, then. That’s what makes it different…”

“You can say that again.” Ginny blinked hard, startled by sudden tears as she thought of Alex. Whenever she used that expression
with him, he would smile his wonderful sardonic smile and repeat whatever he’d just said. “Fifty dollars…” she offered.

“Oh, don’t waste my time, miss.”

It started to rain. “Oh, do come on, Ginny,” Esme moaned.

“Sixty.”

Esme saw a passing taxi. “Taxi!” she cried. It sped by, but the sofa owner saw she was about to lose her customer.

“Seventy-five. That’s final.” She put a dirty hand out

Ginny hadn’t planned to spend anything like seventy-five dollars in the flea market, but she knew nothing like this border
would come her way again. “Okay, if I can take it now.” Much to Esme’s disapproval Ginny paid by check and, with the help
of the woman’s sharp knife, stripped the border carefully away.

When she got back to the loft, Johnny had called. “It’s rainy and gray and as hot and humid as hell here. Where are you, Ginny
Walker, Inc. Get back to your drawing board at once.”

He didn’t leave a number, and to take her mind off his absence Ginny went out to the wholesaler to buy the velvet. She started
work on the cloak as soon as she returned.

As usual, she’d acted on impulse, and okay, so now she had to admit it: She was making the cloak for the Literary Lions dinner
only two weeks away. Once she’d spotted the imperial bees, she’d immediately thought of making a cloak, the kind of protective
armor she would need to bolster her courage on the night of the Lions.

Designing a cloak, rather than a dress, to wear to such an important event was peculiar, she knew that; putting the horse
before the cart, but that was the kind of designer she was. She
got carried away when a piece of fabric “said something,” and generally it lived up to her expectations.

She held the velvet against her skin, in love with its deep rich color. She had an idea. The copper chestnut would enhance
the color of a dress she already owned. Not just any dress. The only one endowed with ecstatically happy memories, her “blushing”
bridesmaid’s dress.

Excited, she took the dress out of the art deco wardrobe and carried it with the velvet to the window. She was right. It enriched
and showed off the blush dramatically. She would have to change the dress’s shape—drastically—it was far too
jeune fille.
She already knew what she had to do, but she would work on the cloak first.

Preparing the paper pattern, she thought about Esme’s tactless question and her reaction to it. If Johnny wasn’t “tied up”
with anyone, and despite her insecurity, she couldn’t really believe after their weekend together he was, there was nothing
to stand in the way of a future together.

Except his father.

She daydreamed, staring into space. She would set out to prove to the formidable Quentin Peet what a thoughtful, caring, home-loving,
nurturing, undemanding, thrifty daughter-in-law she could be. Or, if he was looking for something else, what a money-producing,
street-savvy, articulate, dazzling hostess; in other words, the perfect woman for Johnny.

In any case she
had
to meet the great man in order to ask for his help with the jewels. Her mind was made up about that. She’d set a deadline
as far as Alex was concerned and nothing was going to lessen her determination.

Despite the fact Poppy still referred to it as a “do,” Ginny knew from Lee that there was a grandeur, a special sense of importance
about the Literary Lions dinner, presided over by Mrs. Vincent Astor, the Chairman Emeritus of the New York Public Library,
and the city’s most revered citizen.

Perhaps this was one time when arriving early could be to her advantage. On the other hand, crashing early was always a more
difficult proposition.

It depended on the weather. Rain would be helpful, with a lot going on in the cloakroom area. On the other hand, she didn’t
want her wonderful cloak to get wet.

What was the best time to arrive? It was an impossible question to answer. There was no “best time” for crashers in a city
like New York, where unpunctuality was the rule rather than the exception, and “fashionably late” could mean anything from
fifteen to sixty or more minutes later than the stated time.

Other people’s lateness had helped her crash in the past, when she’d attached herself to the tail end of a late crowd, rolling
in with them like an unexpected giant wave, engulfing any checkers left at the point of entry. Should she try the same approach
for the Lions dinner?

She was too tired to think about it anymore; too tired to go on working. She packed up the velvet and went to bed, but she
couldn’t sleep. She took a sleeping pill and dreamed she was surfing with Alex through the mighty halls of the library. As
the waves grew bigger, Alex effortlessly sailed across them, leaving her farther and farther behind. She couldn’t stay up
much longer, but Alex obviously didn’t care. “Alex! Help! Alex!” She woke up screaming, on the floor.

No wonder she’d dreamed Alex didn’t care. She hadn’t heard one word from her thieving cousin, while night and day the gems
glittered like evil reptiles in her toilet tank.

As she lay tossing and turning, she remembered the decision she’d come to in Johnny’s apartment: She would give Alex one more
month to redeem himself and rescue her, and not a second more.

She got up, agitated, and went into the kitchen where the 1995 fashion calendar Lee had sent over in March was hanging beside
the stove. Ringed in red was the April “wedding weekend.” By the time the Literary Lions dinner arrived, the month would just
about be up.

Ginny started pacing around the loft. If she hadn’t heard from Alex by then, whether she succeeded in crashing and meeting
the mighty Peet or not, she would go ahead with her
plan and put on the greatest act of her life: She would pretend to Johnny that she had discovered the jewels for the first
time.

Having made this decision, she again felt a sense of enormous relief, just as she had in Johnny’s apartment, and slept like
a baby until almost eight o’clock.

She was at the sewing machine, finishing Poppy’s georgette dress so that she could give her full attention to the cloak, when
the doorbell rang.

“Yes?”

“Delivery.”

Her heart thumped in her chest. From Angus? From Alex? Oh, please God let it be a word, any word from Alex about collecting,
not delivering.

“Who is it?”

There was a long agonizing pause, then an irritated voice said, “Grace’s Marketplace. Is this, eh, Ginny Walker?”

“Yes, but I haven’t ordered anything.”

“Well, somebody has. It’s paid for. D’you want me to leave it or not?”

“Wait there.” She was sure it was a trick or maybe a message from Alex buried in a basket of fruit. Half praying, half dreading
what she’d find, Ginny rushed downstairs to discover Esme had sent her a food parcel with crackers, cheeses, herbal tea, and
three different kinds of coffee “for when Johnny comes home.” Darling Esme.