Still Me Page 8

  As I watched, her eyes brimmed with tears.

  "I cry right there in the middle of the day on the street, with my friends watching. And I say, 'I can't tell you.' And then he gets mad. Wants to know if his wife was rude to me. Or whether something has happened at work. And then finally I tell him, 'I can't come because I like you. I like you very much. And this is very unprofessional. And I can lose my job.' And he looks at me for one moment and he says nothing. Nothing at all. And then he gets back in his car and his driver takes him away. And I think, Oh, no. Now I will never see this man again, and I have lost my job. And I go to work the next day and I am so nervous. So nervous, Louisa. My stomach hurts!"

  "Because you thought he'd tell your boss."

  "Exactly this. But you know what happened when I arrive?"

  "What?"

  "Enormous bouquet of red roses is waiting for me. Biggest I have ever seen, with beautiful velvet scented roses. So soft you want to touch them. No name on it. But I know immediately. And then every day a new bouquet of red roses. Our apartment is filled with roses. My friends say they are sick from the smell." She started to laugh. "And then on the last day he comes to my house again and I go down and he asks me to get in the car with him. And we sit in the back and he asks the driver to go for a walk and he tells me he is so unhappy and that from the moment we met he could not stop thinking about me and that all I have to say is one word and he will leave his wife and we will be together."

  "And you hadn't even kissed?"

  "Nothing. I have massaged his buttocks, sure, but is not the same." She breathed out, savoring the memory. "And I knew. I knew we must be together. And I said it. I said, 'Yes.'"

  I was transfixed.

  "That night he goes home and he tells his wife that he does not want to be married anymore. And she is mad. So mad. And she ask him why and he tells her he cannot live in marriage with no love. And that night he calls me up from hotel and asks me to come meet him and we are in this suite at the Ritz Carlton. You stayed at Ritz Carlton?"

  "Uh--no."

  "I walk in and he is standing by the door, like he is too nervous to sit down, and he tells me he knows he is stereotype and he is too old for me and his body is wrecked from this arthritis but if there is a chance I really do want to be with him he will do everything he can to make me happy. Because he just has feeling about us, you know? That we are soul mates. And then we hold each other and finally we kiss, and then we stay awake all night, talking, talking about our childhoods and our lives and our hopes and dreams."

  "This is the most romantic story I've ever heard."

  "And then we fuck, of course, and my God, I can feel that this man has been frozen for years, you know?"

  At this point I coughed a piece of ramen onto the table. When I looked up several people at nearby tables were watching us.

  Agnes's voice lifted. She gesticulated into the air. "You cannot believe it. It is like a hunger in him, like all this hunger from years and years is just pulsing through him. Pulsing! That first night he is insatiable."

  "Okay," I squeaked, wiping my mouth with a paper napkin.

  "It is magical, this meeting of our bodies. And afterward we just hold each other for hours and I wrap myself around him and he lays his head on my breasts and I promise him he will never be frozen again. You understand?"

  There was silence in the restaurant. Behind Agnes, a young man in a hooded top was staring at the back of her head, his spoon raised halfway to his mouth. When he saw me watching, he dropped it with a clatter.

  "That--that's a really lovely story."

  "And he keeps his promise. Everything he says is true. We are happy together. So happy." Her face fell a little. "But his daughter hates me. His ex-wife hates me. She blames me for everything, even though she did not love him. She tells everyone I am a bad person for stealing her husband."

  I didn't know what to say.

  "And every week I have to go to these fundraisers and cocktail evenings and smile and pretend I do not know what they are saying about me. The way these women look at me. I am not what they say I am. I speak four languages. I play piano. I did special diploma in therapeutic massage. You know what language she speaks? Hypocrisy. But it is hard to pretend you have no pain, you know? Like you do not care?"

  "People change," I said hopefully. "Over time."

  "No. I don't think is possible."

  Agnes's expression was briefly wistful. Then she shrugged. "But on bright side, they are quite old. Maybe some of them will die soon."

  --

  That afternoon I called Sam when Agnes was taking a nap and Ilaria was busy downstairs. My head was still swimming with the previous evening's events, and with Agnes's confidences. I felt as if somehow I had moved into a new space. I feel like you are more my friend than my assistant, she had told me, as we walked back to the apartment. It is so good to have somebody I can trust.

  "I got your pictures," he said. It was evening there, and Jake, his nephew, was staying over. I could hear his music playing in the background. He moved his mouth closer to the phone. "You looked beautiful."

  "I'll never wear a dress like that again in my life. But the whole thing was amazing. The food and the music and the ballroom . . . and the weirdest thing is these people don't even notice it. They don't see what's around them! There was one entire wall made of gardenias and fairy lights. Like, a massive wall! And there was the most amazing chocolate pudding--a fondant square with white chocolate feathers on it and tiny truffles on the outside and not one woman ate hers. Not one! I walked the whole way around the tables counting, just to check. I was tempted to put some of the truffles in my clutch bag, but I thought they might melt. I bet they just threw the whole lot away. Oh, and every table had a different decoration--but they were all made of yellow feathers, and shaped like different birds. We had an owl."

  "Sounds like quite an evening."

  "There was this one barman who would make cocktails based on your character. You had to tell him three things about yourself and then he would create one."

  "Did he make one for you?"

  "No. The guy I was talking to got a Salty Dog and I was afraid I'd get a Corpse Reviver or a Slippery Nipple or something. So I just stuck with champagne. Stuck with champagne! What do I sound like?"

  "So who were you talking to?"

  There was just the slightest pause before he said it. And, to my annoyance, just the slightest pause before I responded. "Oh . . . just this guy . . . Josh. A suit. He was keeping me and Agnes company while we waited for Mr. Gopnik to come back."

  Another pause. "Sounds great."

  I started to gabble now. "And the best bit is, you never even have to worry about how to get home because there's always a car outside. Even when they just go to the shops. The driver just pulls up outside, then waits, or drives around the block, and you walk out and ta-daa! There's your big black shiny car. Climb in. Put all your bags in the boot. Except they call it a trunk. No night bus! No late-night tube with people puking on your shoes."

  "The high life, eh? You won't want to come home."

  "Oh. No. It's not like it's my life. I'm just a hanger-on. But it's quite something to see up close."

  "I have to go, Lou. Promised Jake I'd take him out for a pizza."

  "But--but we've hardly spoken. What's going on with you? Tell me your news."

  "Some other time. Jake's hungry."

  "Okay!" My voice was too high. "Say hi to him for me!"

  "Okay."

  "I love you," I said.

  "Me, too."

  "One more week! Counting the days."

  "Gotta go."

  I felt strangely wrongfooted when I put the phone down. I didn't quite understand what had just happened. I sat there motionless on the side of my bed. And then I looked at Josh's business card. He had handed it to me as we left, pressing it into my palm and closing my fingers around it.

  Give me a call. I'll show you some cool places.

  I had taken it
and smiled politely. Which, of course, could have meant anything at all.

  7

  Fox's Cottage

  Tuesday, 6 October

  Dear Louisa,

  I hope you are well and enjoying your time in New York. I believe Lily is writing to you, but I was thinking after our last conversation and I had a look in the loft and brought down some letters of Will's from his time in the city that I thought you might enjoy. You know what a great traveler he was and I thought you might enjoy retracing his footsteps.

  I read a couple myself; a rather bittersweet experience. You can keep hold of them until we next see each other.

  With fondest wishes,

  Camilla Traynor

  New York

  12.6.2004

  Dear Mum,

  I would have called but the time difference doesn't really fit around schedules here, so I thought I'd shock you by writing. First letter since that short-lived stint at Priory Manor, I think. I wasn't really cut out for boarding school, was I?

  New York is pretty amazing. It's impossible not to be infused by the energy of the place. I'm up and out by five thirty every morning. My firm is based on Stone Street down in the Financial District. Nigel fixed me up with an office (not corner but a good view across the water--apparently these are the things by which we are judged in NY) and the guys at work seem a good bunch. Tell Dad that on Saturday I went to the opera at the Met with my boss and his wife--(Der Rosenkavalier, bit overdone) and you'll be happy to hear I went to a performance of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Lot of client lunches, lot of company softball. Not so much in the evenings: my new colleagues are mostly married with young children so it's just me trawling the bars . . .

  I've been out with a couple of girls--nothing serious (here they seem to "date" as a pastime)--but mostly I've just spent my spare hours at the gym or hanging out with old friends. Lot of people here from Shipmans, and a few I knew at school. Turns out it's a small world, after all . . . Most of them are quite changed here, though. They're tougher, hungrier than I remember. Think the city brings that out in you.

  Right! Off out with Henry Farnsworth's daughter this evening. Remember her? Leading light of the Stortfold Pony Club? Has reinvented herself as some sort of shopping guru. (Don't get your hopes up, I'm just doing it as a favor to Henry.) I'm taking her to my favorite steakhouse, on the Upper East Side: slabs of meat the size of a gaucho's blanket. I'm hoping she's not vegetarian. Everyone here seems to have some sort of food fad going on.

  Oh, and last Sunday I took the F train and got off on the far side of the Brooklyn Bridge just to walk back across the water, as you suggested. Best thing I've done so far. Felt like I'd stepped into an early Woody Allen movie--you know, the ones where there was only a ten-year age gap between him and his leading ladies . . .

  Tell Dad I'll call him next week, and give the dog a hug for me.

  Love, Will x

  With that bowl of cheap noodles, something had changed in my relationship with the Gopniks. I think I grasped a little better that I could bolster Agnes in her new role. She needed someone to lean on and to trust. This, and the strange osmotic energy of New York, meant that from then on I literally bounced out of bed in a way that I hadn't done since working for Will. It caused Ilaria to tut and roll her eyes and Nathan to view me sideways, as if I might have started taking drugs.

  But it was simple. I wanted to be good at my job. I wanted to get the absolute most out of my time in New York, working for these amazing people. I wanted to suck the marrow out of each day, as Will would have done. I read that first letter again and again, and once I'd got over the strangeness of hearing his voice, I felt a strange kinship with him, a newcomer to the city.

  I upped my game. I jogged with Agnes and George every morning, and some days I even managed to last the entire route without wanting to throw up. I got to know the places that Agnes's routines took her to, what she was likely to need to have with her, and wear, and bring home. I was ready in the hallway before she was there, and had water, cigarettes, or green juice ready for her almost before she knew she wanted them. When she had to go to a lunch where the Awful Matrons were likely to be, I would make jokes beforehand to shake her out of her nerves, and I would send her cell phone GIFs of farting pandas or people falling off trampolines to pick up during the meal. I was there in the car afterward and listened to her when she told me tearfully what they had said or not said to her, nodded sympathetically or agreed that, yes, they were impossible, mean creatures. Dried-up like sticks. No heart left in them.

  I became good at maintaining my poker face when Agnes told me slightly too much about Leonard's beautiful, beautiful body, and his many, many beeeyoootiful skills as a lover, and I tried not to laugh when she told me Polish words, such as cholernica, with which she insulted Ilaria without the housekeeper understanding.

  Agnes, I discovered quite quickly, had no filter. Dad always said I used to say the first thing that came into my head, but in my case it wasn't Bitter old whore! in Polish, or Can you imagine that horrible Susan Fitzwalter getting waxed? Would be like scraping the beard off a closed mussel. Brr.

  It wasn't that Agnes was mean per se. I think she felt under such pressure to behave in a certain way, to be seen and scrutinized and not found wanting, that I became a kind of safety valve. The moment she was out of their company she would swear and curse, and then by the time Garry had driven us home she would have recovered her equanimity in time to see her husband.

  I developed strategies to reintroduce a little fun into Agnes's life. Once a week, without putting it into the diary, we would disappear to the movie theater at Lincoln Square in the middle of the day to watch silly, gross-out comedies, snorting with laughter as we shoveled popcorn into our mouths. We would dare each other to go into the high-end boutiques of Madison Avenue and try on the worst designer outfits we could find, admiring each other straight-faced, and asking, Do you have this in a brighter green? while the sales assistants, one eye on Agnes's Hermes Birkin handbag, fluttered around, forcing compliments from the sides of their mouths. One lunchtime Agnes persuaded Mr. Gopnik to meet us, and I watched as, posing like a catwalk model, she paraded a series of clown-like trouser suits in front of him, daring him to laugh, while the sides of his mouth twitched with suppressed mirth. You are so naughty, he said to her afterward, shaking his head fondly.

  But it wasn't just my job that had lifted my spirits. I had started to understand New York a little more and, in return, it had started to accommodate me. It wasn't hard in a city of immigrants--outside the rarefied stratosphere of Agnes's daily life, I was just another person from a few thousand miles away, running around town, working, ordering my takeout, and learning to specify at least three particular things I wanted in my coffee or sandwich, just to sound like a native.

  I watched, and I learned.

  This is what I learned about New Yorkers in my first month.

  1. Nobody in my building spoke to anyone else. The Gopniks didn't speak to anyone, other than Ashok, who spoke to everyone. The old woman on the second floor, Mrs. De Witt, didn't talk to the couple from California in the penthouse, and the power-suited couple on the third floor walked along the corridor with their noses pressed to their iPhones, barking instructions to the microphone or at each other. Even the children on the first floor--beautifully dressed little mannequins, shepherded by a harried young Filipina--didn't say hello but kept their eyes on the plush carpet as I walked past. When I smiled at the girl, her eyes widened as if I had done something deeply suspicious.

  The residents of the Lavery walked straight out and into identikit black cars that waited patiently at the curb. They always seemed to know whose was whose. Mrs. De Witt, as far as I could see, was the only person who spoke to anyone at all. She talked to Dean Martin constantly, muttering under her breath as she hobbled around the block about the "wretched Russians, those awful Chinese" from the building behind ours who kept their own drivers waiting outside twenty-four seven, clogging up the stree
t. She would complain noisily to Ashok or the building's management about Agnes playing the piano, and if we passed her in the corridor she would hurry by, occasionally letting slip a vaguely audible tut.

  2. In contrast, in shops everyone talked to you. The assistants followed you around, their heads tilted forward as if to hear you better, always checking to see whether there was any way they could serve you better or whether they could put this in a room for you. I hadn't had so much attention since Treena and I had been caught shoplifting a Mars Bar from the post office when I was eight and Mrs. Barker shadowed us, like an MI5 operative, every time we went in there for Sherbet Dib Dabs for the next three years.

  And all New York shop assistants wanted you to have a nice day. Even if you were just buying a carton of orange juice or a newspaper. At first, encouraged by their niceness, I responded, "Oh! Well, you have a nice day too!" and they were always a little taken aback, as if I simply didn't understand the rules of New York conversation.

  As for Ashok--nobody passed the threshold without exchanging a few words with him. But that was business. He knew his job. He was always checking you were okay, that you had everything you needed. "You can't go out in scuffed shoes, Miss Louisa!" He could pull an umbrella from his sleeve like a magician for the short walk to the curb, accepting tips with the discreet sleight of hand of a card huckster. He could pull dollars from his cuffs, discreetly thanking the traffic cop who smoothed the way of this grocery driver or that dry-cleaning delivery, and whistle a bright yellow taxi out of thin air with a sound only dogs could hear. He was not just the gatekeeper to our building but its heartbeat, keeping things moving in and out, ensuring that everything went smoothly, a blood supply, around it.

  3. New Yorkers--those who didn't take limos from our apartment building--walked really, really fast, striding along sidewalks and dipping in and out of crowds as if they had those sensors attached that automatically stop you bumping into other people. They held phones, or Styrofoam coffee cups, and before seven a.m. at least half of them would be in workout gear. Every time I slowed I heard a muttered curse in my ear, or felt someone's bag swing into my back. I stopped wearing my more decorative shoes--the ones that made me totter, my Japanese geisha flip-flops, or my seventies stripy platform boots--in favor of sneakers so that I could move with the current instead of being an obstacle that parted the waters. If you had seen me from above, I liked to think you would never have known that I didn't belong.