The Gift Bag Chronicles (20 page)

The town car lurches out of the Midtown Tunnel, and rain lashes the windows. God, it’s really coming down. Noah might appreciate this deluge, but I can hardly see.

“I’m going up Third unless you got a better idea,” the driver says.

“No, that’s fine,” I say, leaning back in the seat. It’s freezing in here, and the air smells heavily of leather and cigarette smoke. Between that, the fact that my back has started to ache again, and this lurching, splashing commute in rush-hour traffic, I feel slightly nauseated. I had planned to go directly to the office, meet Charles there for a preliminary staff meeting before the lunch tomorrow. But given the rain, the delay in my flight, and now my back, I’ve bagged that idea. Charles was already in the meeting when I reached the office after we landed — “I’ll let him know you called,” Taryn said — so now I’m just heading for his apartment.
Our
apartment when I’m in town.

Actually, it’s his family’s apartment. They’ve owned it for years. His father used it as a pied-à-terre when he was commuting up to New York from D.C., where his law firm is based and where Charles grew up. It’s one of those stately two-bedrooms in a town house in the East Sixties with twelve-foot ceilings, wood floors, and a fireplace. There’s lots of leather, plaid, even a baby grand. I swear Ralph Lauren decorated it, but Charles says it’s been like that for years. Even when he moved in, five years ago, took over paying the maintenance in exchange for rent, he didn’t change a thing. His parents still come up occasionally, his sister too, staying in the other bedroom. I used to think if Charles and I got married, it would become our apartment, although we might want to rethink some of that plaid. God knows, in this real estate market, there are plenty of women who would marry Charles just to get their hands on it. Guys too.

Now I don’t think too much about that. At least not lately. Actually, given I can go weeks between visits to the city, the apartment seems more like a really great boutique hotel. There’s always something in the fridge and a fully stocked bar, and a year ago his dad had the fireplace converted to gas, so it’s about a five-minute journey to Edith Whartonville if you’re of a mind. A tumbler of scotch, the fire blazing, standing at the bow front window, a finger parting the sage green velvet curtains to gaze down on the masses, such as they are in the East Sixties.

Actually, given how nauseated I feel at the moment, dry land, a fire, and a glass of scotch sound fucking perfect.

“What’s the address again?” the driver says, pulling off Third and heading west toward the park.

“It’s another block down,” I say, giving him the address. We bounce across Lex, then Park. Finally we pull over. “You live here?” he says, turning around and handing me the clipboard with the company receipt for me to sign.

“No; well, yes, sort of. It belongs to a friend of mine,” I say, signing it and handing it back.

“A good friend, I hope, for your sake,” he says, reaching for the clipboard.

“So do I.”

By the time I stagger in the front door with my luggage and bags, I’m pretty much soaked. Not much good having packed an umbrella when it’s at the bottom of my suitcase. I shake the worst of the rain off, drop my coat in the entry-hall closet, and head straight for the bedroom. Actually, I head for the bathroom medicine chest. I down two ibuprofen, wipe the mascara from under my eyes, clip my hair, which is now in complete drowned-rat mode, up — just deal with that in the morning — and call Charles on my cell.

“Hey, I’m just wrapping up the meeting,” he says when Taryn puts me through to the conference room.

“Yeah, sorry I missed it,” I say, heading for my bag and fishing out my yoga pants and my black turtleneck sweater. After almost twelve hours in transit, I have got to lie down if my back is going to be in workable shape tomorrow. “So do you want to just meet here? I’m pretty wiped from the flight and all the rain.”

“Uh, sure,” he says. “Although I had reservations for us at Babbo.”

Oh, God. Under normal circumstances, I’d be more than happy to dine with the Italian deity, but the thought of pulling myself together, doing something with my hair, and heading back out in the rain is more than I can bear. Especially when I need to be at my brightest tomorrow. “Can I take a rain check?” I say, kicking off my shoes. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, sure,” he says quickly. “Give me an hour to wrap up here and I’ll be home.”

It must be the flight or the rain or, okay, the finger of scotch, but the minute I finally get comfortable — which turns out to be flat on my back on the living room floor in front of the fire, my legs propped at a ninety-degree angle on the ottoman, Headline News on mute, I pretty much pass out. The next thing I know, I hear a key in the front door.

“I’m in here,” I say, or rather croak, too tired to sit up.

“Alex?
I didn’t know you were here.”

I scrabble around on the floor. Oh, God. It’s Charles’s mother, Catherine, dripping all over the Oriental in her Burberry raincoat.

“Oh, Mrs. Evers,” I say, pushing stiffly to my knees. “Charles didn’t tell me you were coming by.”

“That’s because he doesn’t know,” she says, glancing at me, the ottoman, and the glass of scotch. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” I say, struggling to my feet, trying not to wince. “Actually, no, I pulled a muscle in my back. I was just trying to rest it after the flight.” I might be able to lie to her son, but Mrs. Evers has the practiced eye of a full-time mother.

“Oh, I am sorry,” she says, dropping her bags and unbuttoning her coat. “Can I get you anything? An aspirin? Or something stronger?” she adds, eyeing the scotch glass again.

“No, I’ve taken something. I just need to rest it, which is pretty much impossible when you’re traveling across the country,” I say, clicking off the TV and gathering up the glass. My little Whartonian respite is now clearly at an end. “So, Charles should be here any minute,” I add. “He didn’t tell me you would be here. I would have —”

“Well, I didn’t know myself until just a few minutes ago,” she says, heading down the hall for the other bedroom. “I flew up this morning for a board meeting, but with all this rain, flights are backed up,” she calls out. “So I just decided to spend the night and go home in the morning.”

“Great, well, it’s nice to see you again,” I call after her. Yeah, great. I like Catherine. The few times I’ve seen her. She’s one of those spare, elegant mothers, in flats and heirloom diamonds and with a firm sense of her own exalted place within the family walls. I suppose I would be too if I was in her Ferragamos. Still, trying to live up to my own mother’s expectations was enough to cure me of the need to curry favor with older women. Besides, I don’t think she’s ever gotten over the fact that her only son is divorced and that, no matter how long he and I have been together, I fall under the heading of “girlfriend” — dispensable, disposable, fungible — rather than “wife.”

I’m just deciding what’s the best course of action, retreat for Charles’s bedroom or stand my ground in the living room — in all the time we’ve been together, I’ve never once spent a night in this apartment with his parents here — when I hear the front door open. Oh, thank God; Charles is home.

There’s a commotion in the hallway, the sound of laughter. “Careful on the marble,” I hear Charles say, “it’s slippery.” Then a woman’s voice. What the hell? I turn.

“Hullo, Alec.” Patrice in jeans, pearls, short black trench, and triumphant smile.

“So, Patrice, what part of England is your family from?” Catherine says, forking a gingered scallop from the take-out container. “We have very good friends in Kent.”

Oh yes, Patrice, please tell us all about your bloody family. The four of us are in the living room, fire blazing, Chinese takeout, beer bottles scattered on the coffee table. I’m hunkered on the sofa, pillows wedged behind my back, nursing a Heineken, a container of fried rice, and a good case of what-the-hell-is-going-on? I can be as social as the next guy when it comes to clients — I mean, I’m a professional publicist, which means I can talk to anybody about anything — but two hours of chitchat with Patrice
about
Patrice — not the magazine, not the party, not anything work-related — is not what I had in mind when I asked Charles to meet me here for a quiet evening in.

“High Wycombe,” Patrice purrs from her perch on the ottoman, where she’s poking at her container of tofu and pea pods. “It’s out toward Windsor. Very dull suburbia, I’m afraid, despite the allure of the castle.”

Oh, God. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. It’s bad enough I had to get dragged to New York to accommodate her schedule, but now Patrice seems to be going for more than “demanding client.” Much more, unless I miss my guess. Supposedly she has some rich boyfriend back in London, some banker or something, but given her appearance at Jennifer’s wedding with Mickey and now the unctuous way she’s cozying up to Catherine and how very,
very
comfortable she seems in this apartment, any boyfriend would seem to be irrelevant.

I look over at Charles in the wing chair, scraping the bottom of his General Ming’s beef container, oblivious to the game being played under his nose. “Mother, I think the last time I saw Windsor was that trip we took when I was in high school,” he says.

Hello, am I even
here?
What is it about the English? Put one in a room of otherwise jaded Americans, and it’s like the queen landed. I toss my container to the coffee table and check my watch. Heading toward 9:00. “I’m going to check in with the office in L.A.,” I say, pushing gingerly off the couch and heading for the bedroom.

“Oh, sure,” Charles says, looking at me slightly startled. As if he suddenly remembered I was here. “Whatever you need.”

I head to the bedroom, close the door, fish my cell out of my bag. I check my messages and then call the office. Caitlin’s already gone for the day. Some doctor’s appointment or something. I get my messages from reception and then ask them to put me through to Steven.

“I thought you might have drowned,” he says when he picks up. “I’m watching the Weather Channel, and there’s severe weather warnings all over New York.”

“And that doesn’t include the severe turbulence I’m encountering inside,” I say, crawling onto the bed.

“Ooh, do tell.”

I lay it out — the rain, my back, Catherine’s arrival, and then how Patrice finagled her way into tagging along.

“That bitch is there now, eating Chinese food and cozying up to your boyfriend?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘eating,’ actually. And she’s doing much more cozying up to the mother than to the boyfriend.”

“Oh, really,” he says, and I can tell he’s mulling this over. “Well, my real question is, what the fuck is Charles thinking?”

“I think he thinks he’s just being nice to the client,” I say, trying to decide how upset I am and with whom exactly.

“He can’t be that stupid,” he says. “You can read Patrice a mile away. Everyone is on to her. Except for Andrew, of course, who decided to give her a real job. Let’s see, she can’t book and she can’t write. Great. Let’s make her the entertainment editor!”

“Yeah, well, I think Charles just sees her as ‘the client’ and
goes into his work mode, where he’s just very into being the savvy publicist who has the clients in the palm of his hand.”

“Careful there, girlfriend,” Steven says. “You don’t want to get your villains mixed up.”

“I’m not,” I say, suddenly reaching for my tote bag and fishing out my laptop. Google, my old pal. “I know exactly who I’m dealing with.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s nothing.”

It’s after eleven, and Charles and I are in bed debriefing each other about the evening. I prefer to do my debriefing with the lights out — much easier to dissemble to loved ones when they can’t read your face. Besides, between my back and his mother in the next room, any jump-your-bones sex is out.

“Seriously, just tell me.”

“If you can’t figure it out, I’m not going to tell you.”

There’s a rustle as Charles rolls over and turns on the light.

“Don’t,” I say, shielding my eyes. “Seriously, let’s just forget it. I’m tired and in pain and we’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

“Okay, okay,” Charles says, dimming the light. “Look, I’ll work on your back, but you have to tell me what’s eating you.”

“Oh, please, how can you not
know?”
I say, rocketing upright and immediately regretting it. “Ow, ow,” I say, tipping to my side.

“Look, you’re in no position to argue,” he says, propping himself on his elbow and starting to massage my lower back.

“Stop talking,” I say, my face all but muffled by the pillow. “The patient needs rest and quiet.”

“Liar,” he says, his hands working harder now.

“No, it’s fine right where you are.”

“I said ‘liar,’ not ‘lower.’ You’re mad that I brought Patrice here.”

“If you know so much, why even ask?”

He sighs and rolls onto his back. “Look, she was at the staff meeting, I said I was meeting you, and she asked if she could come along, as a way for all of us to get together before the meeting tomorrow. It sounded like a good idea at the time. Look, I didn’t know you were in so much pain. I would never have done it if I’d known.”