Upright Piano Player (12 page)

“Jesus, the jerk didn’t even know how to open a till—you push a button, not chuck the bloody thing on the floor.”

“Even thieves aren’t what they used to be.”

There were four of them sitting round the table, Jack, Hector, Will, and Aldo. They met twice a week at 8:30 for a coffee and bagel before playing tennis. The break-in had ignited their morning. Like the loss of the ficus trees, the theft would become part of their folklore, one of those running stories, easily accessed.

“Need any change for the float, Jack?”

They were men with time to be amiable. They liked to laugh and had been around long enough to know that there are worse things in life than a till on the floor with its tongue out.

When Nessa came for lunch, Arlene was theatrically skirting around the two men from
BEN’S 2
-
HOUR GLASS
(“If it’s broke, we give you a break”). She held the plates high and stepped over their tool bags.

“If I fall, it’s gonna cost Ben plenty.”

One of the men was from Argentina—dark and good-looking with teeth from a Colgate ad.

“You fall, I catch you.”

Arlene laughed and hoped he had not noticed the bruises on her left thigh. What on earth had made her wear shorts today? On the other hand, maybe the bruises would give him ideas. She realized she would like him to have ideas.

Jack had made two chicken salad sandwiches on rye and had sat down to lunch with Nessa.

“You look tired.”

“It’s not tiredness, Jack, it’s cancer.”

She picked up her sandwich and smiled at him.

“I slept ten hours last night.”

He knew from her smile that his fussing had been forgiven. She was not always so lenient. She had dumped without explanation those friends who had displayed too openly their sympathy. “I can’t be doing with the soft voices and dewy eyes,” she had said. “It scares the shit out of me.”

Jack understood her feelings but found it hard not to show his concern. Back in the fifties, his father had died of cancer.

In those days cancer had been a voodoo disease. In his father’s case, diagnosis to death had taken eleven months and not once in that time did Jack or his mother utter the dreaded “C-word.” Indeed, the doctor had advised Jack’s mother not to tell her husband that he had cancer. It was felt that it would not be good for his morale. Aged nineteen, Jack had been drawn unwillingly into the conspiracy.

Towards the end, when his father weighed less than seventy pounds and they had to give him the morphine by mouth because there was not enough flesh on his body for injections, his mother’s concern for her husband’s morale had struck Jack as ever so slightly irrelevant.

His father had died with his eyes open. Jack had been in the room with him—on the night watch, but asleep in an armchair. Something had woken him. He liked to think it had been filial instinct, but it was more likely the dawn light filtering through the cheap, unlined curtains. No matter, he had missed the final moment. Perhaps only by seconds, for the spittle on his father’s chin was still glistening with air bubbles.

He had wiped it off with the edge of the sheet and closed his father’s eyes. Only then did he call his mother.

“Thank God. He slipped away peacefully in his sleep.”

“Yes,” he had said. One more lie did not seem to matter.

Nessa’s voice broke through his thoughts.

“I have to go—see you tomorrow.”

“Sure, look after yourself. Is it okay to say that—not too concerned?”

“Bye, Jack.”

Back at the house, Nessa put on a jacket and went out to the beach. She headed north, into a steady wind that slowed her pace. Usually she walked up to the Four Seasons before turning back, but today she had to settle for the Ritz-Carlton, dropping down thankfully onto one of the sunbeds lined up on the sand. Strictly speaking, they were for hotel guests, but the beach boys knew her and looked the other way. She could measure her growing weakness by this daily exercise. She had gone from jogging to power walking to walking—and now it seemed she was to become a stroller. How long before she was a shuffler? She closed her eyes and tried to think of happier times. As was happening more and more, she thought of Henry.

On the way to the airport, a crow had swooped low in front of the taxi and had been hit—the muffled thud like a door closing in a distant part of a house. Another day she might have thought it an omen, but not that day. She and Henry were on their way to New York for a delayed honeymoon—five whole days away from the office. They had stayed in a small hotel on 63rd Street between Madison and Park. The elevators had iron gates and the attendants were elderly men with white gloves. They always remembered your names: “Mr. and Mrs. Cage—11th floor. Good night, now.” She said it was like being in a Frank Capra movie.

Nessa had promised to show Henry her hometown but on their first full day it had been he who had set the agenda.

“How about lunch, a film, and then dinner, but shopping first,” he had suggested.

“I don’t need anything,” she had said.

“What’s that got to do with shopping?”

They had walked up Madison Avenue looking in all the shop windows and by some happy chance, some unconscious harmony, not once in twenty blocks did they have to wait for the traffic lights at an intersection. On subsequent trips she saw how aware he was of the lights, varying his pace to avoid the short delay at the curb, impatient, harried. For him
DON’T WALK
meant
START RUNNING
. But on that day, the gods were with them. They crisscrossed the street—from bookshop to bookshop—over to the Frick, then back for the Whitney. The spring weather had beguiled the city. For once, New Yorkers were taking it easy, hustlers turned boulevardiers. As they passed the Carlyle, she knew that on this particular day, the tables would be full for afternoon tea.

She must have fallen asleep for when she opened her eyes the sun was low in the sky and the beach was in shade. It felt chilly. A small yellow airplane flew by at the water’s edge, trailing a banner advertising a bar in Delray Beach. She walked home, the wind now at her back. Inside the house, she went straight to the fridge. It was 6:00. In the bar at Delray Beach they would just be kicking off their happy hour. She poured vodka into a kitchen tumbler, pleased to know that she was not drinking alone.

Detective Sergeant Cummings had rung just before 8:00.

“Ah, glad to catch you before you go out. I presume, since we haven’t heard from you, that things have settled down. No more trouble?”

Henry immediately thought of the three Polaroids tucked between the pages of
The Collected Poems of James Laughlin
—a volume he had judged unlikely to interest the browsing instincts of Mrs. Abraham.

“No, nothing, I’m pleased to say.” His hesitation had been imperceptible; or so he had thought.

“You’re sure, are you, sir?”

“Why—do you think he’ll come back?”

There was a long pause before the policeman answered. Down the line Henry could hear the scratch of a match.

“That’s the second time you’ve made that assumption, Mr. Cage. Well, let’s say that you’re right and it is a man—though I don’t know what the evidence for that is—but let’s say it is a man, then I wonder what’s made him stop. You haven’t paid him off, have you, sir?”

The question was asked with a chuckle and Henry took the cue and let it hang there, unanswered.

“You see, Mr. Cage—this is what worries me; there’s someone out there with a bee in their bonnet about you. They wish you harm, sir. One way or the other. I wouldn’t want you not to take it seriously.”

“I’ll call you if anything happens.” Henry recognized the routine insincerity of his response. “I promise, I really do.”

It was too late. In mid-sentence, the detective had put down the phone.

Walking to the brasserie, Henry had felt uneasy about their conversation; not about its conclusion, but about its timing. Why had Cummings rung so early? And what was it that he had said? “Glad to catch you before you go out.” It was as though he had known Henry’s timetable, the precise moment that he left for breakfast. Henry pushed the thought away. He was being paranoid; the remark had no special significance; it was what anyone might have said at the beginning of a working day. He quickened his step, eager to see Maude.

A week had passed since their first encounter and he had begun to look forward to their conversations. She had still not told him why she had left Henry Cage & Partners, but yesterday she had said in reply to his repeated inquiry, “I’m not working this Sunday—buy me lunch and I’ll tell you.”

When he got to the brasserie, the nonsmoking section was full. He had to sit among the puffers and coughers in the back room. He was irritated that Maude would not be serving him.
He had hoped to talk to her about Sunday lunch. She had seen him and indicated that she would come over later. He ordered his usual decaffeinated black coffee and plain croissant (no butter, no jam) and opened his book.

On Sunday he dressed carefully, several times. He was increasingly disheartened by the images thrown back by the wardrobe mirror. In a sports jacket and tie he felt stuffy and saw himself sitting across from Maude like an uncle up from the country. In a suit, he was her bank manager. He took off his tie and opened the top button of his shirt. It was more casual, but when he lowered his chin a vertical fold of skin appeared. His head seemed to be perched on the neck of a turkey. Finally, he settled for a polo-necked sweater and a pair of cords. What did it matter? It wasn’t exactly a date. Or was it?

He had arranged to meet her at the restaurant, a small Italian place where they knew him well. She had declined his offer to pick her up at her flat.

“Believe me, you don’t want to see me on Sunday mornings until you have to. I’ll be at the restaurant at 1:30.”

Henry arrived early to make sure they had given him the table he wanted. It was at the rear of the room by two windows that overlooked a courtyard garden. He asked the waiter to change one of the place settings so that when Maude arrived they would both be looking into the room. He was never comfortable with his back to the action and avoided restaurants that could not offer him a round table and reasonable privacy. He opened his book. He was rereading
A Game of Hide and Seek
by Elizabeth Taylor, a particularly English love story, he had always thought, and one of the best. He looked at his watch—good, he had fifteen minutes before she was due.

And that was how Maude saw him from the door. Head bowed, deep in his book. She noticed the long arch of his back, his shoulders frail without a jacket. It was the first time she had really looked at him.

“Hello, I see you’ve brought some insurance against a boring lunch.”

He stood up and held her chair.

“It was only insurance against a boring wait.”

When the menus came, Maude was decisive: gnocchi to start with, followed by lamb. She accepted with enthusiasm the offer of potatoes and spinach. Henry was amused. For years at business lunches he had sat opposite ladies who had ordered grilled vegetables with monkfish—and an espresso, thank you.