The Other Life (4 page)

“What else?” she asked.

“Those tickets!” he said, smacking his forehead. He was referring to the Lufthansa flight a German radio station had arranged so that Eugene could meet with their on-air talent for an idea exchange. “They were first class, goddamn it.”

“I know,” she said evenly.

Eugene Ray was a prominent New York radio personality, usually referred to as a shock jock, though he despised the term.

“Relax,” Quinn said to him. “I’ll call the airline, work something out.”

“You’re going to work something out with the Germans? Who are you—Mussolini?” He sank into the couch next to her and put his head in his hands. “Fuck. I think my Xanax was in there.”

Eugene wasn’t allowed to curse on the air, and made up for it at home.

“I just refilled it,” she said, patting his knee. “You need one?” She rose.

“No,” he said sarcastically, “I’ll just sit here quietly and have a stroke from anxiety.”

“People don’t have strokes from anxiety,” she said, walking toward the bathroom.

“They do if their blood pressure gets too high!” he called after her.

She got a pill from the bottle in the medicine cabinet and brought it to him. “You have
low
blood pressure.”

“The universe is conspiring to change that.”

“The universe didn’t leave your briefcase in a cab.”

“You’re trying to kill me, right?”

“Don’t be silly. I’m not even in your will yet.”

The phone rang and Quinn answered it. The man on the other end said he was from Star Maintenance Taxis, and that one of his cabs just pulled back into the garage with a briefcase inside. He was wondering if he had reached the owner.

“Who is that?” Eugene asked. “Did someone find it? Is everything inside?”

Quinn nodded to him while she took down the address from the fleet owner, and assured him she would be right there. Then she reminded Eugene he was meeting his agent for dinner in an hour, kissed him good-bye, and took a subway to an industrial part of Queens she had never seen.

It was just after rush hour, and as she walked from the subway stop to the address she was given, Quinn noticed that once she turned the corner past the el tracks, the wide sidewalks were nearly deserted. The businesses, which seemed to be mostly body shops or odd little factories, were closed or closing, their metal garage doors pulled shut and padlocked.

Quinn appreciated that the fleet owner offered to stay and wait for her, but she understood it was probably Eugene’s celebrity status that made him go out of his way. If he had opened the briefcase to discover it belonged to an anonymous businessman instead of one of New York’s famous personalities, he might not have phoned so quickly, and almost definitely wouldn’t have made the call himself.

It was such an unglamorous part of town that Quinn expected Lewis Braverman to be the kind of man her mother would refer to as a schlub—overweight and badly dressed, with questionable hygiene. So she was shocked when she rang the security bell and a trim, good-looking man opened the door. He was young—about her age—and had a messy mop of dark hair and black-brown eyes that looked from her to the horizon in a way that suggested he was trying hard not to seem distracted. He looked back at her face.

“Lewis?” She felt off-kilter, even a little annoyed, as if this guy had no right to be so attractive.

“Quinn?” He looked as if he were experiencing similar awkwardness.

She smiled and extended her hand. “Thanks so much for calling . . . and for waiting for me.”

He hesitated before responding, and then didn’t speak, but simply shrugged, as if it were nothing. It was such a small, humble gesture that her annoyance dissolved. His eye contact remained direct and warm, and she figured he was the type of guy who was a little quiet until he got to know you. She found it endearing. Guys with too much charm made her suspicious.

He looked past her again at the sky and she turned to see what he was looking at. Thin gray clouds lined the horizon.

“You think it’s going to rain?” she asked.

“Not today,” he said, and invited her in. She followed him up a narrow flight of stairs.

“You’re nothing like I pictured you,” she said, hoping to make the conversation flow a little easier.

They reached the offices upstairs, which were also a surprise. The late-day sun streamed in through large windows, lighting a warm and modern space.

He turned to face her. “You’re almost exactly as I pictured you,” he said.

She was surprised by the admission and waited for him to elaborate, but he was done. Quinn felt a little disappointed, as it would have been a small, sweet ego boost to hear this toothsome guy pay her a compliment.
I could tell you were pretty by the sound of your voice,
he might have said. Just as well he hadn’t, though. She didn’t want to be tempted to flirt with him. Flirting was just out of the question.

Wasn’t it?

“When you called and said you ran a taxi fleet, my subconscious immediately plugged in an image of—” She paused, trying to remember the name of the actor who played Louie, the dispatcher, on the TV show
Taxi.

“Danny DeVito?” he offered.

She laughed. “That’s it!”

He smiled at her then, and something happened. It was as if they each sensed and acknowledged a connection simultaneously. Quinn experienced it as a small electrical charge emanating from her heart outward. Later, she would try to convince herself it was nothing more than a mutual physical attraction. But a sexual current is blood hot, and while this thing may have been bubbling at its core, it was surrounded in a bright white fiber-optic glow. It felt . . . happy.

Lewis led her from the bullpen to his private office, where she saw Eugene’s briefcase flat on his desk.

“I hope you don’t mind that I looked through some of the papers,” he said. “Had to find a phone number to call.”

“Not at all,” she said.

“You work for him?”

It was the moment of truth, the opportunity for her to say,
No, he’s my boyfriend.
Then Lewis Braverman would say,
I see,
and that would be that. Instead, she flushed and pretended she thought he was asking what she did for a living. “No, I uh . . . I’m a special-events coordinator for Baston’s Books. It’s on the West Side?”

She said the last part as a question, which Lewis Braverman seemed to think was funny. “I know Baston’s,” he said. “I do get out of Queens once in a while.”

“I didn’t mean—”

He waved off an apology, smiling to let her know he’d been teasing. He picked up Eugene’s briefcase but held it out of her reach, a hostage. “Are you in a hurry to get back?”

She paused and swallowed. She wasn’t. She wasn’t in a hurry at all. Eugene was having dinner with his agent and she had been planning to nuke a Lean Cuisine.

“Well . . .” she began, trying to buy time to think of a response.

“Ever seen a real taxi garage?”

It was the perfect thing for him to say. If he had asked her out to dinner, she’d have to say no. But a tour of the garage was perfectly innocent.

“Is it that different from the TV show?” she asked.

“The TV show doesn’t smell like body odor and gasoline.”

“When you put it like that, how could a girl resist?”

 

 

IN BED THAT NIGHT, when Eugene pressed her about her evening, she admitted that she had “grabbed a bite” with the taxi fleet owner. She hadn’t told him that she and Lewis had hit if off so well that going out for dinner after touring the garage felt less like a decision than the continuation of a conversation that wouldn’t be stopped. Nevertheless, Eugene went on the offense immediately, as she knew he would. He was always paranoid that she would leave him, and in fact every time a big-name male author appeared at her store he would cross-examine her. She and Eugene had met when he did a signing of his memoir at Baston’s, and he was always certain some Hollywood version of a dashing author—a John Irving type, complete with good hair and a healthy build—would swoop in and run off with her. She was always able to roll her eyes and tell him to shut up and stop being stupid. This time, however, she bit at her cuticle and tried to change the subject.

“How old is he?” Eugene said.

“You didn’t tell me what happened with Andrew,” she said, referring to his agent. “What about that offer?” There had been some discussion of a cable network interested in giving Eugene his own talk show, and while his agent had cautioned that these talks don’t usually pan out, there was enough momentum for it to warrant a serious meeting.

“I bet he’s young. Is he young?” Eugene was fifteen years older than Quinn and, depending upon which particular neurosis he was indulging at any given moment, was sure it was either the reason she was with him or the reason she would leave him.

She looked at Eugene’s profile. His lower lip naturally protruded just a bit so that it was hard to tell if he was pouting. It didn’t matter, though. Quinn found it sexy. She loved that fleshy lip. She pulled off her nightgown and kissed him there.

They made love, and Eugene, always tender and caring, was almost obsequious in his attentions. She knew he was trying hard to prove himself to her, to be the best possible lover, and it made her feel guilty. Eugene loved her so desperately. It was, of course, part of the whole appeal of the relationship. Other women might feel smothered by that level of adoration, but to Quinn it felt like sinking into a feather bed, comfortable and protected. The fact that Eugene needed her so urgently made the whole package feel complete. She did her job by taking care of him. He repaid her with worship.

The next morning she had decided she would put Lewis Braverman out of her mind completely, but when he showed up for the Tom Perrotta reading at her bookstore that night, a buzz of joy lit through her.

 

 

HER MOTHER WAS Still alive back then, and the next day, Quinn called to ask how the preparations for her gallery show were going. Quinn had no intention of bringing up the whole business with Lewis, as her mother had become close to Eugene. He was the only person who teased Nan about her bipolar disorder, and she adored him for it. Eugene appreciated that there was someone else in Quinn’s life who had a personality bigger than his. Their banter had a life of its own.

“What’d you think of the Pamela Anderson segment today?” Eugene had once asked Nan. He knew she listened to his show religiously.

“That Mark Schaeffer made you sound like an idiot,” she said, referring to an outspoken guest on the show.

“Are you kidding? I wiped the floor with him.”

“Keep telling yourself that, Eugene.”

“You know, with you it’s hard to know where mental illness ends and just being a plain pain in the ass begins.”

Nan laughed and laughed. She loved Eugene for remarks like that. So no, Quinn wasn’t going to bring up the fact that she had met a guy who had, in the words her brother might have used, “rocked her world.”

“Just wanted to see how your setup was going,” Quinn said over the phone to her mother. “You need any help?”

“What’s the matter?” Nan asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I can hear it in your voice. Something’s wrong.”

Quinn poured herself a cup of coffee and lowered the radio in the kitchen. It was broadcasting Eugene’s show, which was on five days a week during morning drive time. She could hear it in the background at her mother’s house, too.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she insisted.

“Fine, so don’t tell me.”

Quinn sighed. “Okay,” she said, taking a seat at the kitchen table. “I met this guy.”

“Ah.”

“Don’t say ‘ah’ like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you knew this day would come.” Sometimes it was comforting to know that her mother understood her so well, but when she acted as if every decision Quinn made was easier to anticipate than getting wet in a rainstorm, it made her crazy.

“I’m not judging you,” Nan said.

“I didn’t say you were judging me.”

“Because even if you’re fucking this guy—”

“What did I say?”

Quinn blew on her coffee. “Never mind.”

Nan wore her bluntness like a badge. Growing up, Quinn assumed all adult women spoke like that and figured she, too, would one day care more about directness than people’s feelings. Then puberty hit, and Quinn, like most teens, learned to be acutely embarrassed by her mother. And while she outgrew the mortification, she embraced the notion that she would never be so ungentle with her words.

“So you’re not sleeping with him?” Nan asked.

“No.”

“But you want to.”

“I guess. I don’t know.”

“What’s he like?”

Quinn took a careful sip of her coffee and considered the question. “He’s . . . smart, sweet. And get this: he’s a weather geek. Meteorology is his
hobby
. He has equipment on his roof.”

“You always had a weakness for nerdy guys,” Nan said. “What does he do?”

“He has his own business.”

“Successful?”

“I guess. He’s not showy about it. And he’s intense, but not in the same way as Eugene. More . . . introspective.”

“And not neurotic, I’ll bet.”

“How did you know?”

“What else?” Nan asked. “What’s his family like?”

“Not really sure. I know his parents were divorced when he was small. He was the man of the house by the time he was five.”

“I see.”

“What do you see?”

Quinn listened to her mother breathing and knew she was considering how to phrase her response for maximum impact.

Nan cleared her throat and spoke. “Kiddo, who does this man remind you of?”

Quinn hesitated. What was her mother getting at? “I have no idea.”