The Ghost of Greenwich Village: A Novel (34 page)

“What?”
he asked. “You haven’t even begun to look?”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’ve been lying to me.”

“No, I haven’t. It just slipped my mind. Believe it or not, you are not the center of my universe. I’ve had a rough few weeks.”

“You’ve been playing me for a fool.” Donald’s pulse through her mind burned like a tiny electric snake.

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

“You’ve let me down in the worst possible way! You have all the power here; I cannot go into the world and verify what you tell me. I am completely dependent on you and you betrayed me.”

“I have the power?
I
? You must be joking. You completely control my life.” How could he not see he was the cause of her isolation? He was the looming scandal, the ex-con in the family, the bones in the backyard. Vadis and Mrs. Swan both had good reason to think she was nuts because of him. And if she could have invited Alex up, they might be together to this day. Eve stood and began to pace around the room in a tight circle, the only kind this claustrophobic apartment would allow. “Why do I put up with this? Why? So you can finish this useless work that no one wants.”

“You little horror! Can you not see that these stories are the inheritors of the great ideas and themes of my most important work? It may be too much for your ordinary little brain, and only I know how truly ordinary it is, but—”

“You’re fooling yourself!” Eve felt her stream of words slice through Donald’s, stopping them cold. “You might once have been ahead of your time. You might have pushed boundaries and ‘remade the short story’ if you’d lived. Maybe. But from what I hear, you were never really talented. Your friends were, but not you!”

“From what you hear? What have you heard, you insolent—”

“And even if you did have a modicum of talent, you’d have to come up with a whole new approach to get published now. You can’t hide behind these stupid metaphors anymore. Others have trodden this path since you died. You’re going to have to produce something different to get anybody’s attention now. Something real.”

“Real? What the hell do you mean by that?”

“You really want to know? Your work is soulless. There’s no emotion, no guts, no you. There are pretty words but it’s cold; it’s boring. And self-indulgent. You refuse to put anything of yourself out there. To be vulnerable. To be true. You may have something to say but you never say it!”

There was a terrible hush, which became more and more ominous as Eve contemplated the various ways Donald might respond. He’d triggered more than a few headaches, even when he was in a good mood, but when angry he might—

“I refuse to be true?
I
?” he boomed, a crack of thunder across her cerebellum. Eve had to steady herself on the doorframe of the kitchen.

“Yes,” she whispered against the headache that threatened to break her mind in half.

“What about you? I’ve never met anyone so inauthentic. Such
a needy little people-pleaser. You spend years slaving for a father who doesn’t respect you, get a job writing things for other people to say, which they ignore. Understandably, too. You moon for weeks over insipid, spineless boys. You fret because that carnivore Vadis is annoyed at you. And you let everyone else—Mark, Giles, even De Fief—walk all over you.”

“What are you talking about? I captured the Stiletto! And then went on national TV and stood up for my colleagues and myself. I spoke up—and paid the price.”

“Only because you’re such a nervous Nellie! So concerned about what other people will think. After you were fired, you should have gone to the tabloids. You should have screamed bloody murder about what they did to you! But you didn’t do any of that. And why? Because you’re weak. Just like that poor mother of yours.”

“Don’t you
dare
talk about my mother!” Eve was free-falling into the blackness of anger. “And may I remind you that this nervous Nellie is the only prayer you have of your work ever being published? So how’s this for bloody murder?” She took a breath. “I’m moving out.”

Eve fetched her suitcase from the closet and threw it open on the bed. “To think I’ve been worrying about how to scrape together the rent for this place so I could stay with you.” She began stuffing clothes and dog toys into the case. The toys were grimy and belonged nowhere near her silks and wools, but she didn’t care. Highball wove around the floor in little figure eights, whimpering. “To think of all the times you kept me from doing work or getting sleep. To think of all the friends I haven’t been able to have over because of you. Not to mention the dates. How many people think I’m just plain weird because of you!” She threw in some books and her toothbrush. “You’re the strange one, you know. There’s something wrong with you. Something happened, I don’t know what. But I bet it was in 1964.” At this she felt something like a little whip of surprise inside her left temple. She
pressed it hard, trying to make the pain go away. “I’m right, aren’t I? And whatever it was ruined you as an artist. And as a man.”

Eve put Highball’s food in a shopping bag and grabbed her coat.

“It’s time for me to live my own life—finally. To do what I want to do. To find an apartment that feels like a home, where I don’t have to tiptoe around some bully. I’ll be okay, you know. I have all the time in the world! But you—”

She found she couldn’t finish the sentence. She stood in the doorway with Highball, breathing hard, waiting for Donald to respond. She took in the apartment: the crown moldings, the tall, narrow windows, the black lacquer bar with its bottle of Kentucky Pride bourbon on top. The room seemed to shimmer in the fading light. She trembled, her eyes watering.

Why wasn’t he saying anything? Didn’t he realize this was it?

Oh, hell
, she thought. She stepped into the hall and slammed the door.

E
ve used the pay phone at the laundromat to avoid the cold. She wanted to call Gwendolyn, but she’d gone upstate to spend Christmas with her parents and Eve didn’t have the number. She fumbled with shaking hands for the address book in her purse and flicked through the sparsely filled-in pages.

“Hello?”

“Vadis, great, you’re there.”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Eve.” Vadis didn’t hang up, which was encouraging. “I know we’re not on the best of terms, but I was wondering if I could ask you a favor,” said Eve. Silence. “I’ve had a problem in my apartment. The wiring blew and there’s no light. Or—heat.” More silence. “Could I possibly stay with you for a day or two? Just till I figure out something else.”

There was no sound for several moments save for the whirring of the dryers all around her.

“Gee, I’d love to help you out but I’ve got a problem in
my
apartment.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Eve.

“They’re fumigating. Yeah. And sanding the floors. And caulking the tile in the bathroom.” There was a pause. “Sorry.”

Someone came into the laundromat, and a shock of cold air hit Eve full in the face. She pulled her coat around her and looked down at Highball, who was licking something on her boot. So it had come to this. What had she been thinking? Donald was right: Everyone will disappoint you. And in the end, we’re all alone.

Eve pressed the phone very close to her mouth. “You know something?” she said. “When I got here, I was so lonely. I envied you so much: You could talk to anybody, you knew everybody. But you know what I think now? I think
you’re
the lonely one. You just don’t know it yet.” She hung up and rooted in her coin purse for another quarter.

   • • •

Quirine lived in a tenement building on the Lower East Side. A narrow staircase led past landings with cracked, frosted-glass windows and metal doors painted green. Her apartment, on the third floor, was small but charming. There was no central lighting in any of the rooms, but floor lamps dotted the corners, throwing discs of light upon the sponged ruby-colored walls.

Victor had moved in, making things a bit tight, but Quirine said since she would soon be taking Victor to Paris to meet her family for the holidays, Eve could have the place to herself for a couple of weeks.

Waking up on the couch the first morning, she sighed and stretched. The house was quiet; Quirine and Victor were out Christmas shopping. Eve thought contentedly of her night’s sleep. It had been deep and full, with no one peeking at her dreams. The kind of sleep possible only in a place without ghosts.

She tensed, reflexively bracing for retaliation. But none came. Her head remained tranquil and completely her own, like her childhood playhouse at the back of the garden. She exhaled with relief, threw on her kimono, and looked around for Highball, who was sprawled contentedly across an orange cashmere pillow on the living room floor.

She found a note on the coffee table, next to the morning papers.
“
Coffee in kitchen
.—Q.” Eve smiled. A roommate who could write for herself—a definite improvement. A roommate who made the coffee—absolute decadence.

Eve poured herself a mug and settled on the couch with the papers, flipping straight to the job and apartment listings. She ran her finger down the pages, but the paucity of work in which she could make use of her interview and writing skills was shocking. The only thing more upsetting was the price of apartments. She should have known this, of course; New Yorkers talked about it all the time. It was just that, until you needed one, you didn’t really pay attention. Finally she gave up and turned to the news pages.

A
Daily News
headline on page 3 leapt out at her immediately:
EXCLUSIVE: STILETTO’S SHARP PAIN
. Eve put down the coffee. She hadn’t thought much about the Stiletto since their fateful encounter. Somehow the drama of what had happened with Bliss and her subsequent firing had drowned out everything else. Now her breath came fast, bringing back all the fear and fury of the attack. She scanned the piece, her eyes moving so quickly they tripped over the words.

Eve inhaled sharply. Highball stirred, left her pillow and nuzzled Eve’s knee. Eve had never thought of the Stiletto having a real name before, let alone a childhood. But of course, everyone had one.

Even Donald, probably.

   • • •

In the late afternoon of Christmas Eve, she ventured out for something to eat. On the sidewalk, parents carried presents and bottles of wine to family gatherings, young children skipping several yards in front. Laughter and music and cooking smells filled the streets. Eve ducked into the gourmet market, where she ordered a single serving of turkey, sweet potatoes, and green beans. The total came to more than fifteen dollars and she winced.

She trudged back to the apartment, body clenched against the gathering storm. Her hat blew off her head and danced away but she couldn’t summon the energy to chase it.

Back at Quirine’s, she stood at the counter, making unappetizing track marks through the potatoes with her fork, and thought for the thousandth time of Gin, the simplicity of home, and her easy job.

“Merry Christmas, Dad,” she said when he picked up the phone.

“It’s my girl,” said Gin. “Wish you were here today.”

“I know. Me, too,” said Eve. It was the truth. She had very much wanted to go home. But after De Fief’s letter, she needed to save every dollar. And she was too proud to ask her father to pay for the plane tickets, even though he’d have agreed without question.
She was too old for such a thing, surely. So she’d told him she had plans. “What are you doing today?”

“Leaving to pick up Jennifer in about an hour.” Jennifer was Gin’s girlfriend. She was a divorcée, and a realtor. It had taken him years after Penelope’s death to begin dating, and even then he’d only attempted it sporadically, always keeping the women at arm’s length. But over the last few months, he seemed to be growing close to Jennifer, and Eve wondered if this might be because he no longer had his daughter to lean on. “We’re going over to Bryce’s. His new sweetie is supposed to be some cook.”

“That sounds really nice.”

“And you?”

“Going to be with my friends. All my friends,” said Eve. “Well, look at you. That’s terrific. And maybe at Easter we’ll see you back here?”

“Definitely,” she said. “If not sooner.”

She went back to her meal, lost in thought about what Klieg had said about interrupted narratives. Penelope’s story line, the one about the young girl finding herself in New York City, had been cut short, and she’d sunken into a state of distraction and melancholy that lasted until she died. Would Penelope be glad Eve was here, trying to carry on her New York story? Why had she abandoned her own in the first place? Eve wasn’t any closer to the answer than when she’d arrived, and could only speculate that it was something truly awful. Like being fired and lonely and exhausted.

She looked out the window at the couple fixing dinner across the airshaft and wondered whether Donald was as forlorn as she was. Of course, he had no idea it was Christmas. Dates, holidays, rituals—all irrelevant to him now. He was probably, as he’d once explained to her, in the limbo-like state that he was powerless to comprehend or control.