Two of a Kind (8 page)

He walked into the living room. There was the bar-shaped-like-a-trunk that Christina had found for him; lined up on its shelves were the crystal glasses she'd urged him to buy. On the far wall hung that crazy mirror she'd found at the estate sale; they had thought it would work in the bedroom, but they both thought it looked better in here.

Andy drained the water from the glass. He'd decided to give it another chance with Jen, and that was what he would do. But he was now pricked by the desire to ask Gus to create a small yet stunning arrangement, of white—and only white—flowers, and when it was complete in its snowy perfection, send it to Brooklyn, to the home of Christina Connelly.

O
liver walked into the Dakota, a ginormous structure on the corner of Seventy-second Street and Central Park West that looked like a cross between a wedding cake and a castle; Delphine had just texted him that it was okay to come over and so here he was. He gave his name to a guy in a fancy uniform with gold buttons and gold braiding everywhere. He waited while Gold Buttons called upstairs and waited some more before he was directed to the elevator.

Delphine was at the door. “Hello,” she said. Except it sounded like
Allo
and it gave him an instant boner. She'd said her parents would be out; could that mean she was interested? On Sunday, she was leaving for the summer, so this would be his last chance for a while. “Hey,” he said, and leaned over for the kiss-kiss thing on either cheek that she'd taught him. But since she was taller, he ended up kissing her chin. As she led him through the apartment, he noticed a lot of paintings, statues of naked girls, and a bronze fountain filled with tiny, glittering stones instead of water.

“Your parents have some interesting stuff,” he commented.

“My dad's an art dealer,” Delphine said with a shrug of her perfect shoulders.

Finally, they reached her room and she invited him to sit down. He did not dare to join her on the bed—big, brass, and covered in a velvet spread the color of an eggplant—so he took the only chair there was, a carved, thronelike thing.

“You're headed back to France on Sunday, right?” he said.

Delphine nodded, her head bent in concentration over the joint she was rolling. Her clothes were the usual Delphine-ish jumble of things: a lacy white top under a shrunken T-shirt, a short polka-dot skirt revealing her pale, sculpted legs, and battered cowboy boots.

“I'll bet Paris is a way cool city,” he said. “I'd love to go to Paris.”

“We're not going to be in Paris,” she said.
Par-ee
was the way she pronounced it. “In the summer, we go to Provence.”

“Provence, right,” he said. “Provence is cool too.” Though how would he know? He'd never been to either place.

But Delphine just smiled and offered him the joint. As they smoked, Oliver cautiously permitted himself to relax. He wondered whether he could make his way—casually, of course—over to the bed. Not that he would dream of doing anything that she would in any way consider gross. Oliver, like all the guys he knew, was on good terms with Internet porn; he and Jake routinely sent each other links to new sites they found; SexyBabe and FuckBunnies were two of his current favorites, while Jake liked TitsOnParade and CumNow. But though the images of naked bodies doing, like,
everything
were certainly hot, they had nothing to do with how he felt about Delphine. Delphine was not a sexy babe or a fuck bunny. And she would never put any part of herself on parade. No, she was a goddess,
his
goddess, and he wanted to worship her body, not just get off on it. Her body was just a portal to her soul.

When she handed him back the joint, their fingers touched for a brief and, to Oliver, electrifying second, but if she felt it too, she gave no sign. She waited for him to take his toke, and then when it was her turn, she inhaled deeply, closing her eyes. Then she opened them again, and her smile reappeared, this time even wider and more welcoming.

“Come,” she said, patting the place beside her on the bed, “sit with me.”

Oliver actually tripped in his eagerness to comply. He could smell her now: crushed rose petals, rock candy, and maybe a little vanilla thrown in there too. He was high, and he was having yummy olfactory hallucinations. He laughed.

“What's funny?” she said. The joint was barely more than a glowing ember; she put it out in a water-filled wine goblet.

“Nothing,” he said, easing his way a little closer to her. “Or everything.”

She looked at him carefully, as if trying to decide something. “Oliver”—
Ah-lee-Vair
—she began. “Do you know why I invited you over?”

“To say good-bye before you went to Paris? I mean Provence,” he ventured.

“Well, yes and no.” She had reached for the embroidered silk pouch where she kept her weed. “I wanted to say good-bye. But not just because I'm going to Provence.”

“Huh?” He was not following her.

“I'm saying good-bye, Oliver. Good-bye to you. Good-bye to us.”

“Oh,” he said. She might as well have dropped a refrigerator on his head; that was how flattened he felt.

“I do like you,” she went on. “I like you
so
much. But I don't want to go out with you. You're like my brother.” As she spoke, her fingers delved into the little pouch and began rolling another joint. When it was done, she lit it and handed it to him. “You first.”

Oliver accepted the joint and took a deep hit. He wanted to . . . what? Start sobbing and beating his fists on the floor? But he just sat rigidly on her bed, smoking her dope and saying stupid shit like,
Yeah, I understand
, and
It's cool
, and stupidest, shittiest of all,
Sure, we can be friends. I'll always be your friend
. They listened to some music—all in French; he couldn't tell what the words meant—and she told him some more about Provence. He kept nodding his head, all the
while thinking,
When can I go—please, can I go
now?

When the second joint had fizzled out next to the first one in the goblet, Oliver finally saw a moment to make his escape. He got up, stretched, and let Delphine escort him back through the series of rooms that led to the front door. This time he noticed that one of those mammoth paintings had a big gash—shaped like an evil grin—at the bottom left corner and the statues were headless. Inside the fountain, the stones looked vicious, like broken glass.

He had a brief, fleeting impulse to walk over to one of the large windows, open it, and calmly step out. But the moment passed. He miserably endured the kiss-kiss on either cheek again, the light brushing of her lips against his skin a small agony, and then went down in the same elevator that had brought him up.

When Oliver reached the street again, he had no idea of what to do or where to go. He started walking uptown, just to be moving. Jake. Yeah, Jake would talk him down. Jake was a friend, a
real
friend. Would Jake be home, though? He could have texted him, but he didn't want to give Jake a chance to say no—that is, if he was in fact home. So Oliver continued up Central Park West, passing the San Remo, the Beresford, and the Eldorado. Had he not been so upset, he would have stopped to check them out. He liked old buildings, liked them a lot better than the tacky tower his dad had chosen as their home. His mom hadn't liked it either, but because it was so near the hospital, his dad won that round. Now his mom wasn't even here anymore and Oliver supposed he'd be stuck in that sterile box until he left for college.
If
he even got into college.

When he reached Jake's house on West Ninety-seventh Street, Oliver texted:
U there? Got to c u. Urgent.
He waited for a few seconds and then the reply came.
Yeah. No weed tho. My mom is getting nosy.
Oliver was so relieved he started trembling a little. Weed or no weed, Jake would know what to say. Jake let him in and they went up to his big bedroom on the top floor. It was as messy as Oliver's. Funny how his mess didn't bother him but Jake's grossed him out. Books, papers, empty cups from Starbucks—Jake was an iced cappuccino hound; he practically mainlined the stuff—greasy food wrappers, balled-up napkins. How about that pile of laundry? It was pretty rank. Still, he flopped down in Jake's beanbag chair and stretched out his legs; he had a feeling he would be here for a while.

“Delphine dumped me,” he began.

“No shit,” Jake said. “When?” He was sprawled on the couch that opened into a futon; Oliver had spent plenty of nights on that thing, getting high, talking, watching movies.

“Like, an hour ago.”

“Dude, that sucks.”

“You can say that again.”

“Here,” Jake said, springing up. His nickname at school was “Jake-in-the-box.” He opened the small fridge that was on the far wall, producing two bottles of beer. “Good for what ails you. And my mom won't ever have to know.” Popping the tops, he handed one to Oliver. Oliver took a serious swig and then burped.

“Gross,” said Jake, but he was grinning.

“Like you're not,” Oliver said. “Look at this place. It's a fucking sty.”

“And your room is any better?”

“A sty,” Oliver chanted. “A piggy, piggy sty.”

“Oink,” said Jake, “oink, oink.”

Jake made a very convincing pig and despite his massive heartbreak, Oliver let out a little snort that might have been construed as laughter.

“Good to hear you laugh, dude,” said Jake, swigging his own beer. “You're getting too upset. It's not like you were fucking her or anything.”

Oliver's smile calcified and he had to restrain himself from flinging what was left of his beer in Jake's face. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Well, that would be, like, different.” Jake seemed oblivious to the change in Oliver's mood.

“Says who? You? And who are
you
anyway? Some dumbass douche bag? Some clueless dickwad?” And he had thought Jake was a
friend
.

“Whoa, dude, settle down.” Jake set his beer on the floor and reached over to touch Oliver's arm.

“Keep your hands to yourself,” Oliver said, flinching like he'd been burned.

“All right.” Jake pulled back. “Whatever.” He ambled over to the fridge and pulled out another couple of beers. “Why don't you have another beer and chill?”

“Why don't you fuck off?” Oliver stood up. That was when he saw it, the book, splayed and facedown on the wreck of Jake's floor. He picked it up by the dog-eared corner, as if it were contaminated.
“Toujours Provence,”
he read.

“Give me that,” Jake said.

Oliver ignored him and started leafing through it. Whole sections were underlined in neon green highlighter, and there were scrawled notes—all illegible; Jake had the penmanship of a chimp—in the margins. “Since when do you read anything when you're not in school? Excuse me—like, when do you read anything at all?”

“I told you—give it back!” Jake lunged, but Oliver swiveled and held the book high above his own head, where Jake could not reach.

“Why can't I see it?” Oliver said. “What's the big deal?”

“You just can't,” Jake said. He stared at the floor.

Suddenly, Oliver understood. Delphine. “She invited you to visit, didn't she?” he said. “Her parents have a place. She told me they weren't going to
Par-ee
; they were going to Provence.” He dropped the book on the floor.

“I didn't want to tell you, dude.” Jake looked at him then; there was pity in his eyes.

“I'll bet you didn't,” said Oliver. Jake's expression made him seethe; not only had Oliver been dumped, but he had officially been rendered pathetic in the eyes of his former friend, and now rival. “So, like, are
you
fucking her?” Jake's slow pink flush, from his neck up to his forehead, told Oliver all he needed to know. “Traitor,” he spit. “Scumbag, cocksucker, ass wipe.” Jake did not attempt to defend himself; he just stood there while Oliver fumed and swore. This made Oliver even angrier. “I thought I could trust you,” he said. “My buddy, my pal, my homey.”

“Sorry, Ollie,” was all Jake said. Now, when had Jake ever called him that? Only his father used that nickname. And his mother, but she was dead. She was dead last year and she'd be dead next year. She'd be dead forever. His heart was ready to combust with sorrow. And although he no longer felt the least bit drunk or high, the next few seconds, seconds in which he drew back his arm and clenched his fist, seemed suspended in that slow-motion-high-as-a-kite kind of way. But the punch, when it landed, happened in real time and the impact was so startling that he felt that he, not Jake, was the one who'd been hit.

There was an awful sound, flesh and bone hitting flesh and bone. Jake crumpled instantly to the floor, hands flying up to cradle his face. His nose was bleeding, thin, bright trails from each nostril; blood dripped down his chin and onto his pale green shirt. One dot, two, and then a third. Soon the shirt would be covered in them. “Son of a bitch,” he murmured. “Son of a fucking bitch.”

“Shit, are you okay?” Oliver had never hit anyone in the face in his entire life; his fist and his whole body were shaking. It was horrible.
Horrible.
His hand was like this foreign thing. This
weapon
. He thought he might puke and he pressed his splayed fingers over his mouth just in case.

“Go,” Jake croaked. “Go now, before I hit you back.”

Oliver took a last look at his best friend, maybe his
only
friend, curled up on the floor like a shrimp. Then he clattered down the stairs, flung open the front door, and got the hell out of there.

T
he intercom in Andy's apartment sounded with an insistent buzz. “Maybe that's Jordan,” Christina called out as Andy went to answer it. “I told her to come up if I wasn't down by six thirty.” She was crouched on the floor of Andy's study, straightening the new rug. It had just arrived today and its sophisticated colors—grays and black enlivened by unexpected bursts of citron and teal—really warmed this austere room. Andy did not reply, but when he walked back into the room, he said. “No, it's not Jordan.”

Christina did not ask anything else; it wasn't her business. She got up and began to experiment with the placement of the lamp. The buzzer sounded again. “Now,
that
must be Jordan.” It was getting late and she needed to be going. She and Jordan were going to have a quick dinner—never mind that all Jordan's dinners were quick—before they headed downtown to see an off-off-Broadway production for which Misha had gotten tickets. Once more, Andy went to answer the intercom. When he returned, he said, “Jordan's on her way up.”

“Good.” Christina straightened up. Now the door to the apartment buzzed and Lucy, Andy's housekeeper, went to answer it. Christina heard Jordan's voice saying hello, but there was another voice too. Had Jordan brought a friend? She hoped not; Misha had only given them two tickets.

Then Jordan herself came into the room, bun crowning her head, long skirt swishing around her delicate ankles. But who was with her? The woman was blond, and looked to be in her thirties. She was attractive in a predictable sort of way. She wore a low-cut magenta dress and high-heeled black pumps. Glitzy jewelry exploded from her wrists and throat. “Jennifer Baum, Christina Connelly,” Andy said. “And this”—he turned—“is Christina's daughter, Jordan.” Jennifer walked over to Andy, letting her fingers, with their shiny pink nails, rest lightly on Andy's wrist.
Mine,
the gesture seemed to say.
Don't touch.

“I'm wrapping things up here,” Andy said to Jennifer.

“We were just leaving now anyway,” Christina added. She did not want it to seem like she was intruding on their date—because it clearly
was
a date.

“Nice to have met you both,” said Jennifer without any enthusiasm whatsoever.

“Nice to meet you too,” Christina lied.

When they were in the elevator going down, Jordan shifted her bag—it looked so heavy, Christina fretted she'd hurt her back from lugging it around all the time—from one shoulder to the other and said, “I don't like her.”

“Why not?” Christina asked.

“You don't like her either,” said Jordan.

“I didn't say that. You did.”

“I can tell, though, Mom. You didn't like her and I want to know why.”

“I don't dislike her,” she said when they reached the lobby. “I just thought she seemed a bit cold. Also—overdone, if you know what I mean. All that . . . pink.” Even though she had no claim to Andy herself—nor did she want one, she told herself—Jennifer's possessive gesture had riled her.

“She's perfect for him, though.”

“What makes you say that?” Christina asked. They had walked through the lobby and left the building, heading toward the subway station on Lexington Avenue.

“Isn't it obvious? He's obnoxious; they deserve each other.”

“Oh, he's not so bad . . . ,” Christina said.

“Mom! He's
awful
.”

“Well, right now, Mr. Awful is helping to pay the bills.” She still had not heard back from the Haversticks and was now feeling like she was not going to get the job after all. The knowledge gnawed at her late at night and early in the morning, when she should have been sleeping.

Throughout dinner—a macrobiotic place of Jordan's choosing that offered five kinds of seaweed—and during the performance, Christina's thoughts kept wandering back to Jennifer. How old was she anyway? She had that well-tended Upper East Side look: expensive highlights, bleached teeth, an even, applied-by-spray-bottle tan. Added to that were the nails, the clothes, the whole glossy package. Christina discreetly looked down at her well-cut dark linen skirt and silk shell; she'd thought the outfit looked understated and tasteful when she'd put it on this morning. But right now she felt rumpled and drab. Then she chided herself for devoting this much time to a subject so superfluous. Misha had gone out of his way to get these seats; the play, a new work by an up-and-coming Irish playwright, was interesting and provocative. Christina willed herself to pay attention. Still, the image of Jennifer's arm on Andy's was stubbornly etched somewhere in her consciousness and it would not be easily erased.

•   •   •

First
thing the next morning, Christina was at the Sarnells' to oversee the delivery of eight dining room chairs. “Just put them over there, please,” she instructed the men carrying them into the house. She tore the protective paper away from the first chair. The fabric was pulled taut across the seat and finished nicely underneath. She had never worked with this particular upholsterer before, but Tara Sarnell had insisted on using him. Well, so far, so good. She continued unwrapping all eight chairs, lining them up on the far side of the dining room as she went. Then she saw it. The pattern—gold fleurs-de-lis on a maroon background—was not consistent; on six of the chairs the fleurs-de-lis faced up, but on the remaining two, it faced down. “The fabric hasn't been put on right,” she said, trying to control her annoyance, and, yes, panic.

“What are you talking about?” said the man; he was young with heavily tattooed arms and a bushy black beard.

“Can't you see?” She pointed. “Here the design element faces one way, but on these chairs, it faces the other.”

“I don't know anything about that. I'm just delivering them.” He crossed his arms over his chest.

“Just a minute,” said Christina, and she pulled out her phone to call the upholsterer. She was just leaving him a message when Tara Sarnell came home.

“I don't understand,” she said. “He came so well recommended.” Christina said nothing but prayed the upholsterer would call her back—and soon. “There must be a reason,” Tara was saying. “Maybe you didn't tell him that all the flowers needed to be going in the same direction.”

“Any decent upholsterer would know that,” Christina said. “It's so obvious it doesn't require an explanation.”

“Evidently it
does
.” Tara's voice was frosty.

Christina fumed all the way home. The upholsterer called when she was halfway there, and said he would send someone to pick up the chairs the next day. Fortunately there was enough fabric left, but he couldn't guarantee that he would have them done in time for the big party the Sarnells were hosting at the end of the month. Given how long he had taken to get these done, Christina highly doubted it. And Tara Sarnell was blaming
her
, as if this whole mess were her fault. Just as she was putting the key in the lock, she got a call from yet
another
client, who said she would have to delay an upcoming job. And there was still that client who was behind on her payments.

She dropped her bag, and went straight to her desk where a pile of bills seemed to reproach her mutely. How was she going to pay them? Without telling anyone, she had begun pulling things from her own collection—her stash, as she liked to think of it—and selling them. There were a few pieces of sterling silver hollowware, quite ornate, she'd stumbled on during a buying trip to Canada, a small but beautifully rendered Art Nouveau bronze figurine, a Wedgwood vase in a haunting shade of blue. One by one, she brought these treasures to a dealer she knew in Manhattan; he always gave her fair prices. It hurt her to pillage her own rich storehouse, cannily and patiently accumulated in the nearly two decades she'd been reclaiming the artifacts of other lives and weaving them into her own. There was no choice, though; she needed the money.

In her flush of enthusiasm about Andy Stern's job and the one she'd hoped to get from the Haversticks, she'd turned down the offer in Greenwich. Now, staring at the pile of bills, she wondered whether she'd made a mistake. “We're sorry you won't be joining us,” Alice McEvoy, the head of the firm, had said. “Let me know if you change your mind.” If nothing new came through by the end of the month, she just might do that.

She got up, too anxious to sit. Rubbing the knot of tension at the base of her neck, she began the familiar ritual, the one she thought of as
taking inventory
. This consisted of a walk through her house to both check its present condition and see what needed repairing or freshening. Her office, with its one pink lacquer wall, zebra-print armchair, and tightly packed shelves with hundreds of books—art, design, fashion—from which she sought inspiration, was looking a bit overstuffed. She would set aside a couple of hours to edit and prune. In the kitchen, she saw a loose tile near the stove; in the dining room, she decided she could use a new centerpiece for her table. As she walked, her tension slowly dissipated; she liked to reacquaint herself with these rooms on a regular basis; she had lived in them all her life.

When she was a little girl, she lived on the lower floors with her parents; her maternal grandmother had lived above them. Christina remembered nothing of this time. Her mother had died when she was barely a year old and her grandmother shortly after. Then her aunt Barb had moved into the upstairs apartment; that was where her memories began. Barb had never married, but she had rarely been alone either. She'd cycled through a series of roommates, and the occasional boyfriend had moved in too; Christina remembered a policeman named Frank who had a bristling, black crew cut and a barking laugh. Her father hadn't liked the idea of Frank's living there—
You're not married; it's not setting a good example
—but he hadn't liked much about the way Barb lived. Her collection of teapots—all of which Christina now owned—her bed covered in its explosion of frilly pillows, the dozens of framed photographs that hung on the walls or clustered on the surfaces.
It's like a goddamn gift shop up there,
her father would fume. But he needed Barb and so he had put up with all of it. Eventually the policeman moved on and her father's irritation simmered down.

Christina had bathed in Barb's excess—of spirit, of things. She knew she had developed her own love of objects at Barb's side. They had spent weekends at flea markets and yard sales on Long Island, in New Jersey and Connecticut. Barb taught Christina how to collect: furniture for her dollhouse (also found at a sale), old perfume bottles, printed handkerchiefs, compacts, and evening purses.

After Christina's father died and Christina went off to Vassar on scholarship, Aunt Barb moved downstairs and rented out the apartment above to an ever-changing cast of friends. Sometimes the friends were behind on the rent; Barb always let it go, though Christina knew this would have driven her father not so quietly mad. Good thing he did not live to see it, or to see Barb's indifferent approach to home maintenance and repair. The roof developed a leak; she simply placed pots strategically around the top-floor rooms to catch the drips; the backyard had gone wild, lush with crazy, sprouting weeds she considered flowers. Neighborhood cats strolled by, drawn by the dishes of food she regularly set out.

When Christina married Will, they both thought that the move into her family home was a temporary one; Christina was anxious to escape so much about her working-class upbringing, including the house where it had taken place. But when Jordan was born, she had a change of heart. If they stayed on Carroll Street, Barb, now retired but still brimming with energy, could take care of the baby. Christina began to put her own stamp on the house, redoing the kitchen, reconfiguring the space. Then Barb had died and Will too, and how glad she was that she had hung on to the house. It was her anchor, her shelter, her past, and her future. She would never leave it. Never.

Christina left the bills in a neat pile and went outside to bring the trash barrels to the curb. The sun was setting and there were wild streaks of pink and gold when she looked west. When she turned back, she was startled by the elegant, dark-skinned man standing by the stoop to her house. Where had he come from?

“Ms. Harris?” he asked in a British-inflected accent. He wore an expensive-looking suit and his black hair, shining with gel, was combed back from his face.

“Actually, it's Connelly.” To her father's unending irritation, she had never taken Will's last name.

“My apologies.” The man inclined his head. “I hope I'm not intruding.”

“That depends,” she said cautiously. He did not look like he would ask her for money, but his appearance, like his cultivated manner, could just be part of whatever scam he was running.

“I'm here about your house.” He made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “It's a lovely house, a fine house. The finest on the block.”

“Thank you,” she said, softening a little. The steps still needed work, but the house
did
look good, with the carefully tended planters, now filled with zinnias and marigolds, and the fresh coat of shiny bottle green paint she'd applied to the doors. The brass mail slot and doorknobs, both flea market finds, were polished to a hectic gleam; the glass in the windows sparkled.

“I'm actually interested in purchasing it,” he said. “Or rather, not me, but my clients. You may have seen them—the Sharmas? I know they've been by a couple of times.”

“I think I have,” she said. “He wears a turban and they have a little girl?”

The man nodded. “They said they had seen you and were afraid that they might have offended you. That's why they didn't introduce themselves.”

Christina remembered the way they hustled into the waiting car. “The house is not for sale.”