Traveling Light (43 page)

“Yeah, Heav told me. Strange how out in the street people seem perfectly normal. But there’s lotsa weird shit behind the walls of New York City. Behind any city for that matter.”

The three of them sat for a while before making their way down to the dinner party. “So what’s next for you and Roger?” Tony asked on the way downstairs.

Paula didn’t answer.

*   *   *

Roger slept right through until morning. He drank and ate so much at the dinner party that it was more like he’d passed out, and she was relieved to wake and find him still there.

CHAPTER 20

For the next few days Paula wandered around Manhattan like a lost child. She couldn’t settle into the brownstone and preferred a park bench or the McDonald’s around the corner.

And while Roger was home every night for dinner, more often than not she woke in the morning to find herself alone. One night, she awakened to find him pulling on his pants to leave.

“You’re going?” She yawned and sat up. He kissed her mouth before it was even closed and hurried off.

“I just got an idea; I’m going in while the lab is quiet.”

“Oh, Roger, again?”

“Sorry, sweetie, I’ll see you at lunch today. Sarbonne’s? Noon?”

She nodded and yawned again but couldn’t sleep after he left.

Later that evening they were rushing to get ready for a Friday dinner on the Island with some of his friends from the Foundation. She pressured him to commit to going shopping the next day for clothes.

“I don’t have time,” Roger dismissed. He walked back into the bathroom and lathered up his face with shaving cream in a hurried bid to get cleaned up and ready.

She stood in the doorway of the bathroom to watch. The words made sense, but he didn’t. Back to the old state of confusion—the old eggbeater in the brain school of personal relationships. No one else but Roger made her feel like this, the one person she wanted.

“How come you don’t work at home like you used to?”

He turned to her, his face covered with a white foam Santa’s beard. She would have laughed had it not been for the seriousness of the moment.

“I thought I told you, new security protocol.” He turned back to slice off part of Santa’s beard. “None of us can work from home anymore.” His voice echoed in the marble bathroom. “This photon project’s crazy.” He bent over and kissed her, leaving a drop of shaving cream on her cheek. She couldn’t tell if he was acting guilty or not. “It’ll be over soon.”

“I’ll say no more.” She threw up her hands. “Soon you’ll be leaving at the crack of dawn up to Columbia balls-ass naked,” she said.

“You about ready?” The keys jingled in his hand. They still needed to catch a cab to Lexington to fetch his car from the garage.

“Yeah,” she said halfheartedly.

*   *   *

Though Roger fell right asleep that night, Paula catnapped, keeping a watchful eye in case he got up to leave, determined to sneak out and follow him to see if he really was going uptown to Columbia. At one point he’d got up to go to the bathroom; she lay still, silent, holding her breath, listening for sounds of him preparing to leave. Instead he flopped back into bed, turned around and promptly fell asleep, snoring loudly. Reassured, she let herself surrender to sleep sometime after 2:00 am only to awaken and find him gone once again. “Shit, shit, shit.” She threw her bathrobe onto the floor, cursing herself for having dropped her guard.

*   *   *

The next evening they went to a movie and afterward Paula sat guzzling cups of restaurant coffee as their friends sipped aperitifs.

“Careful, sweetie,” Roger cautioned. “You’ll be up all night.”

Although her body was humming from the caffeine, she pretended to be asleep as Roger tossed and turned. He was having a restless night and she fully expected him to be up and out by midnight. She’d readied a pile of clothes—her clogs and purse were in the corner near her couch—primed for a quick exit. But Roger slept right through until morning.

*   *   *

She was up long before he was, a fresh pot of coffee sitting on the counter, the
Times
alongside it where Roger had taken to sitting in the morning.

“Morning, sweetie.” He reached over to kiss her. Paula poured him a cup of coffee as he sat on the stool in front of the newspaper. She poured herself one and left it sitting on the counter.

“So tell me where you go off to in the wee hours of the morn?” she asked again.

He sipped the coffee, looking at the headline. “And why does this bear repeating?” he said without looking up. “It’s a security violation to work online, I told you. I can’t even gain access from home. So I go into the lab while the ideas are coming.”

“Why not just jot them down on a notepad? Take it with you in the morning?”

He picked up the main section of the newspaper in a way that said,
Drop it.

“Why not?”

He didn’t answer and instead opened the first page, scanning the articles.

“Is it so top secret that if terrorists break in you’d have to wad up the paper and swallow it?” she said sarcastically.

He gave her a
stop busting my balls
look and turned the page, her cue that the conversation was over.

“You take the subway all the way uptown to Columbia in the middle of the night?”

“Cab.”

“Must be tough to find a cab that time of night,” she said. Maybe he’d met someone overseas. There’d been no overt signs such as unexplained fragrance, lipstick and whatnot. His underwear was as dingy and depressing as ever—you’d have thought the “personal organizer” would have culled them along with everything else. It was easy to picture someone else in his arms. Nothing would surprise her, and the idea didn’t even elicit the usual scorch of jealousy.

“Okay, what?” He lowered the newspaper.

“What do you mean, ‘What?’” she asked, lifting her hand.

“You have the strangest look on your face,” he said.

“I was just wondering if you’re having an affair,” came flying out before she could squelch it.

He dropped back his head and sighed with relieved disgust. “Why do women always think their husbands are cheating?”

“Because, darling, statistics show that ninety-nine percent of the time they are.”

The paper rustled as he set it aside and patted his thigh, motioning for her to come over and sit. “Now why would I go and do that when I have you?” She let him take her in his arms as she straddled his thigh. “Paula, I love you.” He kissed her deeply and she responded. “There’s no one else; there’s never been.”

She believed him about that but not much else. “I know.”

“‘I know’?” he said, laughing. “That’s all you can say is ‘I know’?”

She looked at him mysteriously;
mysterioudis,
they say in Greek.

“Anything else you want to ask while you’re at it?” he asked in a sardonic way.

“Yeah.” She paused and stood. “What happened to all of your stuff, Roger? Let’s face it: for ten years you wouldn’t let me throw out the garbage, much less allow ‘organizers’”—she used her fingers as quotation marks—“to come in to touch and throw out your stuff.”

His face hardened.

“Where is it? I’m curious,” she continued. “It’s like someone’s lifted up the brownstone, turned it over and shaken everything out.”

He laughed darkly at her imagery.

“It’s not funny,” she said.

“You have this way of putting things.”

She rose and stepped away. Folding her arms, she felt a torrent of anger that took her by surprise. “It would have taken an army of cleaners weeks to have gone through everything with you.” She fought to keep calm.

“Is that all you care about?” he asked quietly.

“You were in France until last weekend, Roger. Did you Skype with the personal organizer while underground in the collider?” She crossed her arms and studied his face like the eagle had studied hers that first day in the raptor ICU, and she could tell Roger didn’t like it.

He squirmed under her scrutiny and stood. “What’s happened to you?” he asked in the condescending tone she hadn’t heard since she’d left. “You got what you wanted, you’re still not happy.”

It was more emotion than she’d ever seen from him.

“What more do you want from me?” he said, and left the room. She’d never seen him angry in such a naked, exposed way. But she didn’t go running after him blubbering an apology like she might have months ago.

Moments later he came bounding downstairs with his keys jingling. The front door shut hard, though there was too much new weather stripping around it to give the satisfaction of a good slam.

CHAPTER 21

Paula felt surprisingly calm after Roger stormed out of the house. He’d never done it before and she was blasé, almost removed. She walked upstairs with a cup of coffee of which she hadn’t yet taken a sip and headed toward her couch to watch the Sunday morning news shows; it wasn’t even eight. Carrying her phone, she thought he might call to apologize.

She moved her pile of “hot pursuit” clothes onto the floor and sat, putting up her feet as she flipped on the TV. Her phone beeped. She knew it, a text: “Sorry for acting like a jerk. Lunch? 11 am? Make it up to you at Sarbonne’s. Love, R.” She texted back: “Of course.” She smiled, not in victory but ready for answers.

Then something under the chair caught her attention. A crumpled piece of paper where he’d tossed his pants the night before. She tumbled off the couch and crawled over. It was a schedule for the Staten Island Ferry; early-morning departure times were marked with a pen.

Suddenly she remembered the property Roger owned on Staten Island. He never spoke of it; the only time she’d been there was just after they were married. A police officer phoned about a neighbor’s complaint that a loose shutter was banging against the side of the house after a bad storm. Roger had been in France, so Paula had fielded the call, contacting the property management company who saw to it that Roger’s Staten Island house met all the city codes. She’d taken the ferry and a cab to the address, watched as the shutter was reattached, and as far as she knew assumed that it was the end of the story.

She stood up, looking at the rumpled schedule and then in the mirror at herself, wearing the periwinkle silk nightshirt he’d brought her from France. Why would he go to Staten Island? Running up to his office with the ferry schedule in hand, she rummaged through files, his desk drawers, looking for property tax bills, something indicating he still owned the place. She came up empty except for a key ring with three keys, none of which she recognized.

She sat down at the desk, thinking. Trying to remember the street, anything, but it was so long ago and she hadn’t paid much attention at the time.

“Tony,” she said out loud, and phoned Heavenly.

“You killed him,” Heavenly answered.

“Not yet. Is Tony there?”

“Yeah. But I’ll warn you he hasn’t had coffee.”

“Neither have I.”

“Hey, doll, what’s up?” Tony said.

“Sorry for bugging you so early, but think you could find an address for me?”

“You got a name?”

“It’s Roger.”

She sprang into motion. Pulling off the nightshirt, she slipped into the ready pile of clothes she’d set on the floor. Grabbed her clogs, purse and phone and the piece of paper with the address Tony had found in the police database. Running downstairs, she locked the door and raced almost into the middle of the street to flag down a cab. The driver looked frightened.

“Ferry terminal, Battery Park.”

It was a quick ride. She hurried through Battery Park toward the stainless-steel edifice and letters—Staten Island Ferry. As she walked up the incline, police with bomb-sniffing dogs were everywhere. Everyone entering the terminal was closely studied as they walked through the doors; yellow Labradors stood ready for duty and clusters of police stood watching.

Bright overhead letters indicated: Next Ferry: 6 minutes. Some people had just gotten off from work, dressed in their heath-care attire, others in uniforms and almost all checking their phone messages. The group was subdued, people alone with their thoughts and phones as they looked out to the water.

She stood, hands clasped, wondering. Last time she’d taken the ferry was to Roger’s house. A vague recollection surfaced about it not being a long ride from St. George’s Terminal and that she could see the harbor from the street.

The minutes counted down and then the doors opened. She followed the flow up the passenger ramp onto the ferry past thick, hoary braided ropes and chains that secured the ferry to the dock. The water was calm, the sky still hushed with morning colors. People sat around her, some slumped over with exhaustion, others leaning back to doze. It was a quiet time. A few young couples were still dressed in their Saturday night finery, falling asleep and leaning on each other for the thirty-minute ride. Police quickly walked through, checking everyone out before the ferry departed.

She felt the vessel pull away from the dock, and as it did, a million thoughts passed through her mind. Her heart started beating in her throat; she had a sick feeling. She kept flashing back to the crumpled ferry schedule just slightly under the chair. Pulling it out of her pocket, she looked at the times he had marked: midnight, 2:00 am, and 3:00 am. In his anger he must have thrown on his pants, letting the schedule slip out. How unlike Roger to be so careless.

Several cargo ships in the harbor were loaded with brightly colored containers. A barge steamed by, pushed by a tugboat. Hamilton Street. It rang a bell but also didn’t. She’d get a cab there. The ferry ride was over after thirty minutes, the boat slowed and snugged up to the dock at St. George’s Terminal. People were already huddled up to the doors, waiting for the final docking, eager to get out, get home and get to bed—to join their loved ones and lose the weariness of the night shift.

Once the doors opened, people surged in one motion. Paula followed into a terminal that looked identical to the one in Manhattan. Her stomach fluttered. She didn’t know which way to go, so she followed the crowd. They walked out to a long line of city busses parked by the curb. She had no idea what to do and doubled back into the terminal, asking a man sweeping the floor, “Excuse me, where can I catch a cab?” He pointed down a staircase without saying a word.