Traveling Light (3 page)

“Shit.” Maybe it was Christoff again, newly baptized as Mr. Micromanager.

Mashing the cigarette butt, she waved away the smell and shut the window. Her tight black cotton skirt bunched up around her hips; it was roomier a month ago in the fitting room at Bloomingdale’s. She yanked it back down to the tops of her knees. Her underwear felt like a girdle; a new roll of fat hung over the top elastic.

Paula picked up. “Queens County DHSS.” It was Celeste.

“Who died?” Paula’s pitch lowered on the last word.

“No one yet,” Celeste mimicked.

Paula’s best friend was nicknamed Heavenly by fifth-grade boys after a science class on astronomy, as she was the only girl with fully developed breasts—heavenly bodies. The name stuck, even with her parents and eventually Tony, her husband, too.

“You busy?” Heavenly asked.

Paula gave a nasty laugh. She glanced at the seventy unopened e-mails on the computer screen. “I should be.”

“Hey—take a long lunch,” Celeste coaxed. “I’m at the hospital. Sounds like you need a break anyway.”

Paula snorted. “Yeah, something like that.”

“They just brought in an elderly man speaking Greek,” Heavenly said. “Looks indigent, probably homeless.”

“Greek? Who?” Paula’s mind ticked off all of the old people in Eleni’s neighborhood in the vicinity of the hospital.

“Never seen him,” Heavenly said. “No ID. Can you come translate?”

Paula thought of all the old Greeks. She’d never once heard of anyone being homeless. Even if a Greek managed to get everyone to hate them over the course of a lifetime, someone still took them in. It was more shameful to leave them to the
kseni
than to face down a lifelong grudge. Surely she would have heard about it from Eleni.

Heavenly explained that the man had been walking with a large black dog before he’d collapsed. A Korean grocer on Northern Boulevard reported seeing him listing to the left as he walked the dog on a rope leash and carried several plastic grocery bags. The man first sat and then lay down on the sidewalk just under the storefront window. Thinking it bad for business, the owner called the police. Squad cars arrived. Next paramedics and Animal Control were on the scene. There was a commotion before they whisked him off to Queens County Hospital. He’d become agitated, calling to the dog as they struggled to lift him onto the gurney. The dog had bitten one of the officers and fought like a wild animal against the grab leash until Animal Control could subdue him. “How fast can you get here?” Celeste asked.

Paula hesitated. Curiously, her stomach burned with the old sickness, as she called it. An unease not felt in years, normally elicited by tense childhood family dinners and hurt feelings she’d have to hide or risk getting slapped. “Stop with the long face,
katsika
[goat face].” Vassili and Demos would sit elbow to elbow in white shirts so freshly starched they smelled like rice. Humid house aromas of lamb cooked with garlic and the oily cinnamon fragrance of moussaka. The brothers brooding as they shoveled down mouthfuls of
yemisis,
the rice mixture falling in flakes off their spoons. “Smile, goddamn it, for once. Fake it,” Vassili would come up for air to bark between mouthfuls. Paula’s stomach would fall to her knees. “Sit up straight,” Eleni would then correct. All forks would halt, eyes focusing on young Paula’s slouch. Once she inadvertently knocked over her milk, which loosed a flood of curses as to how she’d ruined yet another dinner, as if by that one mistake, a shaky little hand, their entire lives had become so miserably hard.

The unease emanated from somewhere. Perhaps a muscle she’d not used for millennia. “You there?” Heavenly asked. “He won’t make sundown.” she whispered. “I need a name—a relative.”

“Yeah.” Unease tickled inside Paula’s chest cavity.

“Time is critical,
miksa mou,
” Celeste said, calling her my little snot face in Greek, an old nickname from childhood.

“I’ll get a cab,” Paula said in a quiet voice.

“Thanks, kiddo. I owe you.” Celeste paused. “You okay with this?” Heavenly was surprised by Paula’s reluctance.

“I’ll call from the bridge.”

For months she’d dodged Heavenly’s “you look sad” observations.

Well, who the hell isn’t?
Paula had wanted to carp back.

“You know—it wouldn’t kill you to go talk to someone, Paula.”

No, but it wouldn’t help either. Nothing could help. Speaking of it would be disloyal to Roger. She’d felt sworn to secrecy; no one knew, not even Celeste, though Paula could tell she’d found something odd about how Paula and Roger lived. Celeste and Tony had always figured Roger for an oddball.

“Hey,” her husband, Tony, always the detective even when off duty, would break Roger’s balls on their way to dinner, “you guys got illegals up there, meth cooking in the bathtub?” to which Celeste would shoot him a
don’t spoil dinner again or I’ll kill you
face.

At dinner Paula and Roger would each pay separately. So many times they’d swing by the brownstone to pick up the couple for an evening of seafood out on the Island, and it would be Paula, standing alone out on the front stoop. “Hey, Roger can’t make it, so I’m your date.” There was Paula alone again. Even when Roger would join them, Paula looked alone.

Over time Paula had become masterful at hiding. “Roger prefers to meet people out for dinner,” she’d explain. “How about
we
take you guys out since you had
us
over last time?”

But Paula’s composure had begun to unravel three weeks ago in the ladies’ room. She looked into the mirror to enjoy the reflection of her beloved and most precious of cameo pins, the carving of Psyche, the Greek goddess of the soul. To Paula’s horror, there was an empty oval in the gold setting where the cameo had been. Her jaw dropped. She’d stood staring under the unflattering fluorescent bathroom lighting, which makes even eighteen-year-olds look like hags. The emptiness bore past her collarbone and deep into soft tissue. She’d not been able to move, her mouth open, lips slack, like a stretched-out piece of elastic.

She’d dashed into action, searching around the toilet area behind sweaty metal pipes. Flinging open doors, she retraced her steps, asking at the Welcome to NYU Center if anyone had turned in a cameo. An elderly white-haired woman patted Paula’s hand, saying, “Relax, dearie. Give it time. It’ll probably turn up.”

She ventured out to McDonald’s on Fifth and then back to their brownstone—as if anything could be found there. The cameo had probably fallen down a sidewalk grate or been crushed unceremoniously under the wheels of a city bus. As Paula bent over, scouring the pavement, her insides gnawed, like she’d lost a finger. And though she’d unpinned the empty frame of the brooch and tucked it into her purse, she felt Psyche’s absence on her chest.

Passersby paused at her posture, looking on the ground, too. “Lose something?” they asked, but she was too stricken to answer. Such was the fate of the carved piece of Italian helmet shell complete with the classic butterfly hovering just atop Psyche’s head—which had survived innumerable births, deaths, not to mention wars. The first piece of antique jewelry Paula had ever purchased. It had been on a six-month layaway in a junk shop in Berkeley, her reward for finishing the set of twelve-hour Ph.D. prelims. And while not her most expensive piece, it was the only one she’d have grabbed in the event of a house fire.

She hung up the phone with Celeste. With newfound purpose Paula stuffed twenty-three conference submission papers into her bag, vowing that later she’d find a quiet bench in one of Manhattan’s hidden Victorian parks to review them. They’d been printed months ago and hauled around until their edges were bent and ratty. The shoulder strap rocked into its familiar groove as she rushed downstairs. She kept an eye peeled for Psyche on the gray cement stairs. Her bag tapped against her hip as if to hasten her along.

Pushing open the front door of the building, Paula clutched her torso as she looked up to the sky. Explosive bursts of wind signaled an incoming rainstorm. It had gotten so gloomy that the park lights flipped on, twinkling through maple branches that seemed to bow toward their breaking point. Their leafy arms waved like lantern-carrying roadmen advising travelers to seek shelter.

A red dragon-shaped kite swirled in arcs against the slate clouds just above one of the taller oaks in Washington Square. Its long tail streamed a flight path. Paula traced the string. It stopped at the higher branches. No desperate kid dancing to untangle or scramble up the tree trunk to get a leg up on the lower limbs. No telling how long the kite had lain in the upper branches of the oak’s canopy, waiting for the arrival of a storm front to trigger its flight.

CHAPTER 2

In bumper-to-bumper traffic, it took the cab almost an hour to reach the hospital. Paula lowered her head and scooted through the entrance of revolving doors, thinking she could sneak past a young security cop and a heavyset woman attendant encased in a bulletproof Plexiglas cube.

“Ma’am,” the attendant called.

Paula rushed toward the double doors in the ward where Celeste had an office.

“Ma’am.” The woman rose from her chair, signaling the cop.

By his unsure, modulated swagger Paula guessed he was new to playing cop, relegated to patting down chubby, frizzy-haired middle-aged women in a hurry. She darted a furtive
you gotta be kidding me
glance, feigning the well-practiced disdain that longtime NYU faculty use when asked to produce university ID in the entry lobby.

“Ma’am.” The boyish cop caught up and positioned himself in front so as to body-block in case she made a move.

Okay. She stopped and massaged her forehead as an act of surrender. Turning back, she approached the security desk.

“I dare you to say you missed these
huge
signs about checking in,” the woman quizzed without looking up, making circling motions with a blue plastic Bic pen to direct Paula’s attention.

To save face, though God only knows why, Paula craned her head as if she were shocked.

“How can I help you?” There was nothing helpful in her tone.

Paula held up her phone like a bidder at an auction.

“Celeste de la Rosa. It’s urgent. I’ve got her on the line,” though Heavenly’s voice mail had kicked in.

“I don’t care if Obama’s on the line.” The woman glared over the top of her reading glasses, pointing at Paula like she was a car going the wrong way down a street. “You’re required to check in.”

“Photo ID in the divot please.” The woman tapped the metal tray with her pen. “Tell Barack Angie says ‘hi,’” she said without changing her tone.

Paula wrangled out her driver’s license and checked the expiration date before complying. She rarely drove, except out to a Long Island beach in Roger’s car. He housed it in a private garage over on Lexington Avenue that cost more than most people paid in six months for rent. The attendant snatched up the license, examined it briefly and without looking up tucked it into a slot behind her.

“You get it back when you surrender this.” She held up a temporary ID pass in a clear plastic holder on a long string.

“Great,” Paula muttered. She glanced around for Celeste.

“Spell the name.” Fingers poised on the keyboard, the woman waited and sighed.

Paula sighed, too. Each for reasons that had nothing to do with the other.

She spelled her name twice. This time she hadn’t changed it; Roger hadn’t cared. His Polish “eye-chart name” would have been worse anyway. As she studied the pink jeweled butterfly appliqué positioned near the outside corner of the woman’s eye, it looked out of character. Something belonging more on a twelve-year-old, though it matched the color and sparkle of the woman’s nails.

“Wait here for your escort.” The woman rolled her chair toward the printer and snatched a temporary ID card. “Wear it with the front side out at all times,” she said in scripted cadence. “Check in at this desk after your business has concluded. Now step off to the side.”

Paula slipped the string over her head as if it were some sort of perverse lobster bib and waited for Celeste. Her tote weighed a ton. When she nudged off the shoulder strap, it dropped like a boat anchor. She rotated her shoulder joint and watched the attendant tangle with the next person in line.

“Photo ID. Your picture,” the attendant annunciated to a couple. The man smiled and shrugged. As the attendant pantomimed, pointing to her face with the pen, the couple kept shaking their heads, waving their hands with that universal gesture of “no speakie.”

“Picture,” the woman said louder, still pointing at her face.

Paula ran her hand over the crown of her head, massaging it with her fingers. Everything was such a struggle. Suddenly her purse felt heavy, too, and she lowered it on top of the tote. What she’d give for a cigarette, but the cop would probably use his Taser.

“Paula.” Heavenly waved in the doorway and mouthed,
Hurry up.
Tucked under Celeste’s arm was a file.

“Sorry.” Paula slung the bag of papers back over her shoulder along with her purse. “Traffic was murder.” They hurried down the polished green granite floor toward the elevators, their heels clacking as they rushed.

The hallway lights made the diamonds in Paula’s platinum pendant shimmer.

“Hey, ni-i-ice.” Celeste pointed. “Another new one, huh?”

Paula touched it, embarrassed she’d not thought to tuck it under her neckline or, better yet, take it off and stuff it into the coin part of her wallet. Unhappiness buying. It was elating but made her feel foolish and indulgent. Aware of a salesperson’s eyes, Paula would chat on lightheartedly, making up this or that about a birthday or Christmas present, how her husband hates to go shopping. She’d cringe at the hollow sound of her fabrications, yet she persisted. Her Visa card would beep in approval, signaling a quick end to the pretense and the sweat that triggered the scent of her deodorant.

The initial rush from each purchase wore off quickly. Even when she forced herself to wear a piece, the underlying sadness was amplified. Because all she’d wanted was Roger and not a collection of metal and rocks. And while no substitute for affection, necklaces, bracelets and rings were all she had to show for ten years of sleeping on a couch. It was only by pretending to be encircled in the arms of an imaginary lover that she could fall asleep. The whole thing was insane: a grown woman living in this fantasy world, sleeping alone while her husband lay snoring upstairs in a locked bedroom. How pathetic, and how grateful she was that no one knew.