Chapter Eight

“Mr. Evans. Your usual, sir?”

Red nodded as he headed toward a chair near a corner window. “Thanks, Bob. You’re well?”

The waiter placed a small bowl of cashews on the table beside him.

“Yes, sir. Nice to see you again.”

Red glanced around the room, emptied of its traditional standing ashtrays, and stopped patting his pockets for Marlboros. Smoking laws or not, he kept forgetting he’d quit three months ago. He moved the cashews closer.

It was four o’clock on a Monday afternoon, and cocktail hour at the Yale Club wouldn’t kick into high gear until six. Red watched the dust motes drift in the late-afternoon sun and looked down at his shoes. For heaven’s sake, when was the last time he’d bought a pair? The brown leather was cracked and worn beige in spots, and dried mud caked the grooves of the rubber soles. He put both feet flat on the floor, then yanked at the arms of his navy blazer to hide his fraying shirt cuffs.

“Cackie would kill you!” he could hear Ponce say.

She’d be right, of course. Then again, he hadn’t planned on being out in the world, back in the world, quite so abruptly as these last ten days. He’d thought that when he was ready to reemerge, he would take himself to Brooks Brothers, where he’d shopped since childhood, and spruce up a few details. Except for Cackie’s funeral, he hadn’t needed a suit in ages; for the two years before she died their only outings had been to the doctor’s office or the hospital. Not that he’d ever been much for clothes. He could still feel his mother’s grip on the back of his neck as she’d catch him and his brother, Tom, racing through the hulking racks of navy blazers in the middle of the boys’ department, the folded shirts gathered like Easter eggs along the walls, pale blue, yellow, and pink. His mother would release her hold, knowing that her warning look held him just as firmly in place, and the tape would loop around his neck while the tailor measured him and beamed at his mother to tell her how much he had grown.

And once the tailor finished sticking the pins directly into their wrists while shortening their new jackets—he smiled when he did it at these very good boys—they headed back across the street to Grand Central Terminal where their mother would collapse at the counter of the Oyster Bar with an ice-cold martini. Hers had a lemon peel curved delicately in its triangle of liquid, and he and Tom slurped raw oysters from their shells and scooped up oyster crackers by the handful. His mother ordered the same thing each time, a pan roast, and when she put the spoon to her mouth her eyes closed with bliss and Red would hold his mouth open for a spoonful of his own and for years he never thought of the city without smelling oysters, Worcestershire, and cream.

By the time they were back on the train to Greenwich, Mother would just shake her head and say how she couldn’t wait for tomorrow, when she’d take their sister, Mims, into the city to shop at Best & Co., then to Schrafft’s for hot fudge sundaes. “I need a reward after you boys,” she would say. But once the train was out of the tunnel and the late-summer sun made them shade their eyes against it, she would reach over to Red and smooth a cracker crumb from the corner of his mouth, pull him close, and whisper down into his ear so no one else could hear, “What a handsome boy you are.” She would do the same with Tom, and they would each be pleased—and a little embarrassed—and then they’d sit quietly until the train returned them home.

Red sipped his own martini now and wondered about his mother. What had she really wanted in her life? The three children she had? The perfectly pleasant husband who never seemed to say more than “Good morning” or “Good night”? She was certainly a productive woman, sitting on the boards of the Junior League and the Garden Club, and running the Library Committee. She read every book in that library and made sure her children did, too. Well, maybe not Mims. Mims had always been a pill, Red thought. She didn’t like books, and she didn’t like school, and she didn’t like church. She liked playing tennis at the club—she was great at it, the women’s champion—and she liked to sail. She gave that up, of course, once her husband drowned, leaving her to raise Skip and Shawsie alone.

Shawsie was so much like her grandmother, Red thought. Organized and at the ready, though when he remembered the frequency of his mother’s martinis and his father’s business trips, he recognized the turmoil that churned beneath her efficient veneer. The day he had published his first newspaper story, his mother read it in front of him, and her pride was fierce. “Damn good job,” she said, and there was something in the set of her jaw that made him wonder if that might have been a career she’d wanted herself, instead of waiting around for her sons to grow up and her husband to come home.

The way Shawsie had endured Robin’s infidelity all these years, similarly uncomplaining, tacitly accepting, hinted at something familiar in her that he was sad to see. Of course she deserved better. Now that the events of the past week or so had come to a head, Red wasn’t quite sure what would happen next.

“You’ve got to get down here.” That was Ponce’s greeting when he picked up the phone, past midnight, nowhere near sleep. She began filling him in on what had just happened at the Acorn, and he settled back to absorb the inevitable—he knew Shawsie would catch Robin red-handed one day. But once he learned that Shawsie was pregnant, the jolt of anger he felt mobilized him. He cut her off.

“I’ll deal with Skip. I’ll call you back.”

Red knew how much Ponce and Skip detested each other. As unpleasant as it would be for Skip to hear from Red, hearing from Ponce would have been worse.

“Skipper.”

Red heard the doom in his nephew’s voice from the minute he picked up the phone with a faint “Hey,” tempered not at all by relief to hear that it was his uncle ready to grill him and not his sister’s ferocious best friend.

“Jesus, Red, I tried to stop it! It happened so fast you couldn’t believe it, and—”

“Did you know this was going on between Robin and this girl?”

Skip dragged on his cigarette. “Shit, Red. This is a bar I’m running. People drink, they do crazy things. Occupational hazard. I’m not a cop.”

“That means yes, then.” Skip stayed silent. “Where’s the girl now?”

“Crying in my bathroom. She says her life is ruined, blah blah. Man, you know the whole story without my telling you.”

“And Robin?”

“I don’t know. I took Shawsie down to get a cab, she was screaming and crying and trying to get Ponce on her phone—who else?—and after I got her into the backseat, Robin tried to get in with her and she kicked him right in the balls.”

Red had smiled. “Go on.”

“Well, you know, he keeled over and I sat with him on the curb for a while, and then he got his own cab and left.”

“You know, Skipper, you’ve always had an incredible gift for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“All I did was go to work, Red. It’s not my fault!”

“Okay, get the girl into a cab and out of there. And, Skip? Why don’t you consider putting a lock on your door?”

“I’ve got one! But I unlocked it to let Shawsie in!”

Red held his temper. He had been having the same circular argument with this kid since he was ten years old. Nothing was ever his fault. Circumstances always conspired against him. The idea that his square big sister who was fast asleep by nine on weeknights had come looking for her husband right where he was most likely to show up drunk with a girl hadn’t sounded a single alarm bell. He could see about one inch in front of his own dopey face at any given moment. Then, when disaster struck, it was someone else’s responsibility to clean it up. Just like his mother.

“’Night, Skipper.”

Red arrived at Shawsie’s apartment early the next morning. Ponce was mercifully in charge, with coffee at the ready, but he went straight into the living room to find Shawsie on the couch, her back to him. She’d refused to get into the bed she shared with Robin, Ponce told him. He pulled up a chair.

“Hey, little girl,” he said softly, and he heard her start to cry. “I’m here now, Shawsie. And I’m going to stay here. Okay? Poncie and I are going to take care of you. So you don’t even have to say hi to me, if you don’t want to. I won’t mind.”

She turned and looked at his face. “Oh, Red.” She started to wail then, great heaving sounds. He moved onto the couch and pulled her toward him, and she hung on him and cried with a bottomless sorrow. He rocked her and murmured and shushed as she went on howling, and they stayed that way for the better part of an hour. Somewhere, in other rooms, the phone rang. Once or twice, the service door opened and closed. A television was turned on and off, then a radio. Eventually, Shawsie grew quiet, and Red kept his arms tight around her. She sniffled on his shoulder and, spent, slept.

When Ponce walked into the room she found them both asleep. Red’s head was thrown back, his clean-shaven face slack with exhaustion, mouth open, still holding his niece, who slumped against him like a child, impervious, finally, to the hurts of the world.

Ponce turned off a lamp that had stayed on overnight and went through the apartment switching off light after light. It was such a full place, she thought, like one of those antiques stores you see in Maine. Mismatched lamps, rocking chairs, hook rugs, polished wooden treasure chests. Somehow, they all fit together.

Funny, Ponce thought. Not a thing of Robin’s anywhere—not that she could see, at least. It was like that when she had been married to Lee, just the other way around. The only rooms that were really her own were her bedroom and bath. The others had been done by the decorator—supposedly under her supervision, though Lee was really in charge. She felt as much a guest in them as the people she invited to dinner.

Shawsie’s place was different—not formal or forbidding. Every seat beckoned, every cushion called out a welcome. But maybe Robin never felt that way there, Ponce thought. Maybe it was just crammed full of too much stuff, with no space left for him.

Around noon, Red walked into the kitchen, where Ponce was reading the paper. She poured him some coffee.

“Hell of a mess,” he said.

“More than you know,” she answered and told him about Chicago. Of course, Red knew about her affair with Neil. Red knew everything that happened in Ponce’s life, because that was the way she liked it. Red was smart and had unerring judgment, but he never judged her. “You’re an original,” he would chuckle when she refused to go to a big-deal party because it was thrown by someone she hated, or when she turned down impossible-to-get theater tickets because O’Neill bored the bejesus out of her. When Cackie was still alive, she and Ponce would discuss her romances and then Cackie would fill Red in over dinner. But in the past year, with its endless nighttime hours stretching toward ever reluctant dawns, he was so eager to hear Ponce’s voice on the other end of the phone that they talked about all that, too. It was as if Cackie were still there: Each heard her in the voice of the other, so it felt natural to them both.

“I don’t know if Babette saw something herself in Chicago, or someone else did, but she told Jacqueline Posner that she’s writing a piece about me,” Ponce told Red.

He patted his pockets for cigarettes and ended up running his hands through his gray-streaked hair instead. “This is some piece of work, this girl,” he said. “She’s completely fixated on you. She’s sleeping with my niece’s husband. And working at my niece’s magazine.”

“Well, correction on that,” Ponce said, pouring more coffee. “I called Topher last night to tell him why he shouldn’t expect Shawsie today, and he went ballistic. He said that first thing this morning, he was firing Babette.”

Red raised his eyebrows. “Is that wise?”

Ponce shrugged. “He thinks it is,” she said. “She’s only worked there a few months, anyway.”

Red looked troubled. “Losing a job can make a desperate person more desperate,” he said. “Where’s Robin, by the way? Has he called?”

“He has. He’s downstairs in his office, begging to see Shawsie. He sounds like a wreck, but I’m not even the tiniest bit sorry for him.”

Red drained his coffee. “Does he know about the baby?”

Ponce looked surprised. “You know, I don’t think he does. I sort of forgot about him in all this.”

Red shook his head. “Too convenient, kiddo. What’s Topher’s number?”

She reached over to the phone on the wall and pressed a speed-dial button marked TOPHER.

“Red here. You didn’t go ahead and fire this girl, did you?” He listened. “Damn!” He listened some more to a litany of loyalty, a history of friendship. “No, no, I understand,” he said finally. And hung up. There was a reason Topher and Skip had been friends for so long, Red thought. Topher was another one who couldn’t see three inches in front of his own face.

“He told her not to come in today at all,” Red said, “to wait until tomorrow to clean out her desk, when no one is there. Keep a low profile. She was in tears, naturally. Pleading. He wouldn’t hear it.” He leaned toward Ponce. “You have got to get to the bottom of this,” he said. “Find out what this girl wants. And make her go away. Fast.”

She threw up her hands. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“You might start by going downstairs and having a conversation with Robin,” he said. She opened her mouth to speak, but he kept going. “I know you’re in a rage on your friend’s behalf, Mrs. Morris, but get past it. There’s only one of us who really knows Babette Steele, and it’s Robin. So be smart. For starters, you might think about Neil, and what he has to lose, eh?”

Ponce had called Neil that morning to tell him about Shawsie’s trauma, to make sure she’d be okay physically, but she hadn’t mentioned her conversation with Jacqueline.

“Do you think—?” she began anxiously, but Red cut her off.

“I don’t know. But you’ve got to find out.”

         

With Topher’s help, Ponce had been issued a temporary visitor’s pass into Rubinstein Publications, and by ten o’clock Saturday morning she was sitting at Babette’s desk. The girl was neat, Ponce would say that much for her. Besides a small bowl of wilting roses, the desk was bare except for a cup full of pens and a half-empty bottle of Poland Spring water. Pinned on the fabric wall next to the desk were a few leftover Christmas cards, a strip of black-and-white pictures of Babette and an unknown young man from one of those dime-store booths, and a wooden plaque that read, “Good Girls Stay Home. Bad Girls Go Everywhere.”

Ponce tried opening Babette’s desk drawers and found them all locked. Then she tried the top drawer of the nearest file cabinet. Locked. The one below it slid right open. She flipped through a few thin files: “Chicago Fashion,” “Carmen,” “Project PM.” Except for some clippings about the Jacqueline Posner party, that last was empty.

Ponce reached into the bottom drawer, so full it jammed, and started pulling out clothing—crumpled T-shirts, yoga pants, a sports bra. A small plastic jewelry bag with one rhinestone chandelier earring inside. And at the very bottom, a worn canvas envelope filled with papers.

This must be it, Ponce thought, what Robin had told her about.

As soon as Red said that Ponce needed to go to Robin’s office and talk to him, Ponce knew he was right. Robin opened the door right away, wild-eyed from crying and drinking, and his hand shook when he poured her a Diet Coke.

“Listen, Ponce, I know you hate me and—”

“I don’t hate you, Robin. Let’s just say we’ve had our differences and set that aside for now. What happened between you and Babette is for you and Shawsie to work out. That’s not my business. But I’ve got to ask you a few other things. Please. I think I might be in some trouble here myself.”

He seemed uneasy. “What do you mean?”

“Do you know anything about Babette writing a piece about me?”

In the moment he hesitated she saw that he did. He sighed. “There’s no point in lying about it, I guess. Yes, I do. She’s writing it on spec for Manhattan magazine.”

“And? That’s it?”

He slumped forward and hugged his knees. “You know what, Ponce, I’m fucked three ways from Sunday here, so what the hell? She saw you in Chicago with Neil. At the Four Seasons Hotel. In the lobby. Kissing.”

Ponce gasped. “Oh! She did? Well, did you deny it? Did you try to stop her?”

Robin’s eyes grew wide. “Did I deny it? How could I? I wasn’t there. It didn’t happen to me. For chrissakes, Ponce, why are you kissing someone you shouldn’t be fucking in public?”

“Robin, I’ve got to protect Neil. This is a disaster.”

“I know it. I mean, the thing is with Babette, I was trying to dump her, and then she turned up here and told me she saw what happened between you two and that it was a scoop—because Neil is so famous—and she needed to think about her career, especially since I was dumping her. So, you know, I had to say yes, I would help her! What else could I do? But I’ve been trying to stall her these last few weeks, slow her down and hope that maybe she’ll lose interest in it.”

“Is it written yet?”

He lit a cigarette. “Sort of. She showed me a draft. It’s not ready to publish, though Page Six would kill to break that news.”

Ponce grabbed one of his cigarettes from the coffee table, and he leaned in to light it. “I need to fix this, but how?” she asked, taking the first drag she’d had in ten years.

“I don’t know,” he said. “The worst part is that Topher already fired her. Phoned her first thing this morning and told her they’re having budget problems, nothing personal. She tried calling him on it, saying she knew the real reason, but he played it cool. Said he could understand her being so upset, and why didn’t she go in tomorrow to pack up her things? Make it easier for everyone. He knew she wouldn’t have the nerve to go in and face him today. So now she’s got no job and no money. She needs to publish this thing fast. She’s called me three times already.”

         

Ponce pulled open the canvas envelope. One piece of paper sat on top.

         

“THE SPARE WIFE”

by

Babette Steele

         

Ponce stopped. She’d heard that before. Where? She strained to remember. Rachel. She’d said it to her that day at lunch. Was she in on this too? Helping the new kid? No, she couldn’t be. Rachel didn’t even like Babette. Ponce knew that. She forced herself to calm down and keep reading:

It seems somehow fitting that our story begins with an ending. It was, as tout New York remembers, Jacqueline Posner’s poignant farewell to the Park Avenue home she had made so lovingly for Mike Posner. Jacqueline seemed fragile that night, her long face white against her cloud of dark hair. If not for Ponce Morris, whose cool blond beauty gave the evening its spine and her friend her courage, the guests would have left before dinner was even served. But Ponce, in her rhinestone pants and silver charmeuse top, sparkled as surely as the stars outside the windows in the inky velvet sky.

The rest of the page was empty. Ponce opened a manila folder of black-and-white photographs. Neil outside her apartment building, crisply attired in jacket and pants, then leaving it, no jacket, hair tousled. There were shots of Ponce leaving and entering her lobby, then two of her going into Neil’s office at night, hair pulled back, two more of her coming out, hair loose, clothes disheveled. There were none of them together.

She tried catching her breath as her heart pounded in her ears and she sorted through the pile, back and forth, unseeing. There was a notebook, some pages stained with coffee, the handwriting practically illegible. “B-12” was all she could decipher, although that was enough—Ponce knew what that scrap of information meant. This girl had done her homework.

Finally she folded the single page titled “The Spare Wife” into a tiny square and slid it into her wallet. She returned everything else to the canvas envelope and buried it under the dirty gym clothes. It was eleven o’clock, and there was still no sign of Babette.

         

When she arrived, a little before two, Babette found Ponce Morris at her desk, sitting with her feet up, reading a copy of Vogue.

“Oh, I get it, you’re Shawsie’s farewell committee, right?” Babette’s face was flushed red from the cold, and it grew even redder as she unwound a scarf from her neck.

“This has nothing to do with Shawsie, Babette.” Ponce put her feet on the floor. “I think you and I need to talk.”

“Are you going through my things?” Babette yanked at the locked desk drawers.

“Obviously not,” Ponce said.

Babette pulled open the file cabinet. “Well, how about this?” she demanded.

Ponce looked confused. “Is that one yours?”

Babette ignored her, diving into the bottom drawer and pawing through the contents of the canvas envelope. She wheeled around. “Did you take anything from here? I’m calling security!”

Ponce shook her head. “For heaven’s sake, here’s my purse. Look for yourself.”

Babette turned it upside down. Ponce’s wallet, a pack of Parliaments, matches, keys, and a packet of Kleenex fell onto the desk.

“Okay? Now listen, Babette. We have got to talk. Why do you have this vendetta against me?”

Babette snorted. “Me? You and your best friend just got me fired! You’re a fucking millionaire, and I’m on unemployment now. And it’s my vendetta against you?”

Ponce stayed calm. “Jacqueline Posner says you’re writing a story about me. But I find it strange that you’ve never asked to speak to me.”

Babette crossed her arms. “I tried having drinks with you. You weren’t interested. I’m not important enough. So I figured I’d do my own reporting and call you last. Not waste your precious time.”

Ponce kept her eyes on Babette’s face. “I understand you were in Chicago recently. How was your trip?”

Babette’s mouth tightened. “Fucking Robin. He told you.”

“You would ruin someone else’s life—not mine, certainly, but Neil’s—for this? You would destroy his family and hurt his career for the chance to write a story? You’re so young, Babette. There are hundreds of other stories. Why do you have to write this one?” Ponce heard the note of pleading in her voice and felt ashamed.

Babette savored her moment. “Gee, Ponce, this is even better than the drink. We skip all the niceties and go straight to laying bare our souls. Awesome. Well, let’s see. I’m not going to stop, so what are you going to do to try and make me? You could call Page Six and tell them yourself. Head me off at the pass and ruin my chances of getting published—though no magazine has reason to pass up an eyewitness account as a follow-up. So go ahead. I have all their home phone numbers. Lovely people, the folks at Page Six. Very accommodating. They’d be happy to hear from you, I’m sure.”

They were both quiet for a while.

“What is it you want?” Ponce asked, at last.

“Well, how about my job back, for starters?”

Ponce shook her head. “You don’t want this job back. You’re going to come in here and see Shawsie every day? Report to her? And expect her to promote you on your merits, just like any other assistant? Come on, Babette. You’ve closed this door all by yourself. Even I can’t open it back up for you.”

Babette sighed. “I guess you’re right,” she said. “I guess that just leaves my article. So if you’d like to cooperate, that would be great.”

Ponce snorted her derision.

“No? Well, other than that, I’m pretty well set, thank you.”

“Is it money? Do you want enough money to not worry about finding another job? Because I can give that to you.”

Babette seemed to consider. “No, I’m good,” she said. “I’ve waitressed before. I can do it again.”

The door of the freight elevator opened, and a uniformed man walked toward them with some boxes. “Here you go, Babette,” he said. He looked at Ponce. “Who are you?”

“A friend who came to say goodbye,” Babette said. “She was just leaving.”

“Want a lift down?” the guard asked.

“Yes, thank you.” Ponce stood.

“Thanks so much for stopping in,” Babette said. “That was just so nice of you. Next time we must have that drink.”

Ponce didn’t answer.

When Babette heard the elevator door slide shut, she turned her back and started packing her boxes.

         

Shawsie stepped out of the shower and peered down at her stomach. She certainly didn’t look pregnant. Was Neil right? Had she imagined the whole thing? It felt as if a year had passed since he’d called her on Thursday. She could have delivered by now.

She climbed into a pair of sweatpants, pulled on a T-shirt, and started running a comb through her hair, before tossing it aside. Who cared? She had already seen Robin and couldn’t tell which one of them looked worse. He had come to the apartment late Saturday night, when Red was already asleep in the guest room. Ponce had left early that morning, Red said, though Shawsie hadn’t woken up herself until almost four. She had never slept that long in her life, though once she remembered what happened, she wished she could have kept on sleeping. But Red forced her to eat some soup and half a turkey sandwich from the corner deli. He had also gone out and bought her a gallon of organic milk. “It’s good for you,” he insisted, and she thought it so sweet of him that she downed two glasses.

Robin had cried. Shawsie, still on the couch, joined him. He said that maybe he needed to stop drinking.

“I agree,” she said, passing the tissue box. “I don’t want my child to have a father who drinks.”

Robin picked his head up. “What? Wait a minute. Really?”

She turned away, sobbing. “No!” she yelled. “It was not supposed to be like this!” She bawled into her pillow.

“Wait, babe, how long have you known?” Robin circled his arms around her, nuzzling his face near hers.

She pushed backward with all her might. “Get off me!” she screamed, and within seconds she heard Red start down the hallway. He stopped, then retreated. Robin had also backed away, and crouched in a nearby chair.

“If you want to live to see tomorrow, do not call me ‘babe.’” Shawsie’s voice was low, and her eyes blazed with anger. Robin held his trembling hands up in the air. Shawsie caught her breath. “Good. That’s where you should be. Away from me. Stay there.” She moved to the far end of the couch. “I found out Thursday night. I called you, you never answered. I had no idea where you were, but you told me that morning you were going to the Acorn for the hip-hop party. So I went. The only thing you forgot to mention was that you already had a date.”

“No! I didn’t. I mean, that was an accident.”

Shawsie pulled at her hair. “Is that what they call that now? An accident? Get out.”

“No.” Robin found himself, suddenly. “No. I will not get out. Shawsie, we’re having a baby. I mean, after all that time and worry and trying. It worked.” He looked stunned. “It worked.”

They sat awhile longer. “I’ll do anything you want,” he said. “I’ll stop drinking. We can get couples therapy. Jeez, now that we don’t have to keep running to Neil, we’ll have nothing but time on our hands.”

He saw her face soften.

“Would you do that with me?” he asked quietly. “Would you give me a chance?”

She kept her head down. “Yes,” she said, finally meeting his eye. “I’ve always known that you lied to me, and I’ve let you. I was wrong. So it’s my fault, too.” He seemed to brighten at that, and she threw the tissue box at him. “Don’t get so excited,” she choked out. “It’s still more your fault.”

They both laughed then, and Robin got up and succeeded in putting his arms around her, and he leaned his face against her shoulder and told her how much he loved her and how glad he was about the baby. “I can’t tell you how sick it makes me, what happened—” he said, but she pushed him away again.

“I can’t do that now,” she said. “And I think you can’t be here for a while. I can’t sleep in the same bed with you, I can’t trust you. I mean, I could never trust you, but this! I, I almost wish I wasn’t having a baby, so I could throw you out for good.” She sniffled. “Things happen for a reason. I just have to figure out what this reason is.”

Robin moved toward her, but she held up her hand. That brief respite of laughter was over. She was angry again. He knew it was desperate, but he wanted her back on his side.

“I had a long talk with Ponce yesterday,” he said casually.

She frowned. “Why?”

“Well.” He felt himself warm to the subject. “Ponce is having her own troubles.”

“With?” Shawsie looked suspicious.

“Neil.” Robin looked at her face. Nothing.

“What do you mean?”

“I just assumed you knew about this and didn’t tell me. Which is fine. I understand your keeping a confidence.”

Shawsie looked baffled.

“You know,” he said slowly, “about their affair.”

“Affair? They’re not having an affair!”

So he told her. About Babette seeing them in Chicago. About the piece she’d started writing. About how he tried to slow her down, throw her off track. To protect his wife’s closest friend and her secret.

Shawsie stood up. “You’ve really got to go now,” she said. “I’m beginning to believe I’m losing my mind.”

He murmured an apology. He repeated how much he loved her, how glad he was about the baby, how sorry he was about the other night. Afterward, she lay on the couch for hours, awake, thinking about her husband, who lied to her, and her best friend, who…lied to her? Could it be true? Why wouldn’t Ponce have told her? They told each other everything. Without Ponce, Shawsie would feel she had no family at all. And Ponce felt the same about her. At least that’s what she’d always said.

Shawsie wrapped a blanket around herself and moved to an easy chair by the window, looking down on the empty Chelsea block with its row of tidy townhouses. There were lights on in two windows. Was someone else awake? What were they doing? As a teenager in Greenwich she used to walk through her neighborhood in the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep. She would look into windows and see people passed out in front of their televisions. Or people like her, who couldn’t sleep themselves, eating ice cream over the sink. She remembered one woman—whose husband had recently left her—emptying all the kitchen cabinets and washing the shelves one by one. She had gone up and down a stepladder, back and forth. Shawsie must have watched her for an hour.

She drew the blanket closer. Lost. She felt completely lost. For maybe the millionth time, she thought about her father. She had always sorted her life into two pieces—before his death, then after—and became convinced that if he had lived, she would have been happier, because she would have been smarter. For all her adult industry, at her core she had remained a child. It was as if at the moment he died she had been frozen in place, never learning, never growing. She was so easy to fool, because she was still the child who could be counted on to do the right thing. She believed anything she was told, because she was a good girl. No matter what happened, Shawsie would fix it. Shawsie would forgive. She had to. Because something really bad could change your life. It could stop your life. But if you fixed it, your life could mend and you would be happy. Everyone else would be happy. The brighter the light grew at the window the angrier she felt.

At nine o’clock on Sunday morning she left a message on Ponce’s machine asking her to call. It was important. She knew they wouldn’t speak until early afternoon, when Ponce woke up. That was okay, she thought, hearing Red start the coffee out in the kitchen. She had waited this long. She could wait some more.

         

After Ponce left Babette at Boothby’s, she spent the rest of the day trying to find Neil. He wasn’t answering his cell, his service couldn’t locate him, and no one picked up at home. Although they rarely spoke on weekends, she always knew his plans. But when all hell broke loose with Shawsie, she’d forgotten to ask.

She’d gone straight through the pack of Parliaments she’d bought that morning, then bought a carton. All that money on hypnosis, down the drain, along with Neil’s reputation, she thought darkly, opening a second bottle of wine. He’d had nothing but success for so long; he was probably due to take some kind of hit. That’s how it worked. But this one could impact on every level. Disgruntled patients, jealous peers, spurned wife, all having a field day. Sure, it would blow over. But while it lasted, it would hurt.

She drank another glass and shivered, suddenly freezing. She squeezed herself into a corner of the couch, wrapping her legs with a throw—it was actually an old mink coat she’d always loved, now bordered in satin—and lit another cigarette. On the other hand, she was assuming the worst, and who could say what would happen? Neil had had an affair. He hadn’t murdered anyone. He hadn’t hurt his patients. He had fallen in love with another woman while he was married, that’s all. He wasn’t the first man to do it, and he wouldn’t be the last. Everyone makes a mistake. And everyone loves someone who admits making a mistake. In court, you could sway any jury with real remorse. It just had to be real, that’s all.

But Neil’s remorse would be. To Sari. Because he was in love with Ponce, she had known that from the beginning. Look how he’d pursued her, as if his life depended on it. And his reaction in Chicago when she’d told him how she felt about him (she’d almost died when she’d heard those words coming out of her mouth, so unlike her), how he assured her he felt the same. On their first night together he’d been ready to leave Sari, and she’d discouraged him. That was three years ago. Well, Ponce thought now, maybe it was time for her to let him leave Sari. He could find an apartment and still see his kids, and Ponce could put the separate pieces of her life together and live the way everyone else did: be in love and in the world, all at the same time. Stop getting slammed into walls at midnight under the guise of conference calls to Australia. She was too old for that. And it was hell on her evening clothes.

She was halfway through that second bottle of wine when, around ten p.m., her phone rang. The sound of rock music on the other end was deafening.

“Jesus, Neil, where are you?”

“In Cambridge. Nephew’s bar mitzvah. Is Shawsie okay? Did something go wrong?”

The music receded as he walked.

“No, Shawsie’s fine. But we may have trouble.”

“What does that mean?”

She told him. It was finally quiet on the other end. She heard a horn honk. He was outside. Breathing hard.

“Did you hear what I said?” she asked.

“No. I’m not sure I did. You’d better tell me again.”

She repeated herself, then listened as he breathlessly repeated the word “fuck.” She could practically see him pacing the parking lot. “I’m fucked,” he finally concluded. “My marriage is over. My practice is over. My fucking life is over.”

Ponce used her courtroom voice. “Neil, I know you’re upset, but I think we can work through this thing. If we don’t panic, we’ll be fine. We need to make a plan, that’s all.”

His tone was frantic. “Dammit! I knew this would happen. I knew it! This was wrong from the beginning.”

“What?” So much for the courtroom. “Don’t you dare tell me that! You wanted to leave your wife for me! And you know what? I think you should. You’re upset now, you’re not thinking clearly. But I’m thinking quite clearly, and this is the time for you to do it. So we can stop sneaking around. You’re hysterical, is all. When you calm down, you’ll see I’m right.”

She heard a child crying then, some muffled talking on the other end. Someone was leaving, and Neil was saying good night. She heard him say the word “emergency.” Then he said to her, in official doctor mode, “I’ll be in the office on Tuesday. We can follow up then.” He hung up.

She felt her heart clench. His life was over? What was he saying? Neil loved her. Surely he would recognize that once he collected himself. She reached for the wine bottle. It was empty. She paced and forced herself not to think about the potential mess of it all—having to duck her calls, not to mention the photographers outside the courthouse, Shawsie. Oh God. Shawsie. This was the only secret Ponce had ever kept from her. Well, hell. That was the least of her worries now. She took a hot shower and two pills and passed out.

         

It was almost two o’clock on Sunday afternoon when she awoke. Next to her bed was a large bouquet of flowers. Big and stiff, the kind you see in hospitals. Pink. In the middle one tulip drooped forward, its big head down. That’s a mistake, Ponce thought drowsily. Bad florist. She closed her eyes, then opened them. There’d been no flowers there when she’d gone to sleep. Hell, had she overdosed? Was she actually in a hospital? She bolted upright. Shawsie sat in the recliner in the corner, arms folded, watching her.

“Oh! Shawsie! My God, you scared me half to death. What are you doing here?”

Shawsie’s arms stayed folded. “You tell me, Ponce.”

Ponce frowned. “I, I’m not sure. Did I forget something? I mean, I took a pill, two pills, last night and—” She stopped. Shawsie knew.

“Give me a minute.” Ponce climbed out of bed and went into the bathroom, washed her face, brushed her teeth, and pulled on a pair of sweatpants. When she emerged she asked, “Okay, why the flowers?”

“Skip sent me those,” Shawsie said. “The day after the Acorn. The card read, ‘Sorry and congratulations,’ which is some kind of poetry, don’t you think? Anyway, you know how I feel about getting flowers, Ponce. That’s why I wanted you to have them.”

It was Ponce’s turn to fold her arms. Shawsie hated being sent flowers. They were insulting, she said. One swipe of a credit card and all is forgiven. Cheating husband, idiot brother, anyone who won’t sit down face-to-face and have a real conversation, come clean. The peonies can do it instead.

“I do know how you feel about flowers,” Ponce said. “But I still don’t get it.”

Shawsie glared. “Don’t you? I don’t care how much you drank last night. I think you do.”

Ponce sat at the foot of her bed and faced her friend. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Neil,” she said. “You have every right to be angry.”

“And you didn’t because?” Shawsie’s face was set.

Ponce hesitated, but Shawsie didn’t budge.

“First of all,” Ponce said, trying to focus, “he’s your doctor and that made me uncomfortable. I mean, he’s all about having children and he has this exemplary family—which seemed like the kind of thing you’d need to aspire to when your own husband wasn’t coming home nights.”

Shawsie’s face grew red and she clamped her mouth shut and held it there, as if it might be the one part of her body she could force into holding up the rest.

Ponce plowed on. “I thought if you knew he was having an affair, even if it was with me, it would make you feel you couldn’t trust him. I thought that if you knew he was cheating—like Robin—you might not go back to him if you didn’t get pregnant, even though he’s clearly the best one out there. And then you’d be spiting yourself, because no one else would do as good a job.”

Shawsie still said nothing.

“And,” Ponce continued awkwardly, “there is my role in this. I mean, I’ve spent years disapproving of your cheating husband, and then I sort of did the same thing. Though, when you look at it, it’s not really the same thing at all. Neil and I are actually in love—”

Shawsie snorted. “Sure you are. That’s why he’s still married.”

“Neil is still married because I’ve wanted him to be. He wanted to leave Sari, and I wouldn’t allow it.”

“Really.” Shawsie’s tone turned mocking. “And why is that?”

“You know I hated being married. I don’t want to be married to anyone.”

Finally Shawsie’s mouth unglued. “No, you don’t. You prefer your emotions by appointment. Then the other person can disappear and leave you alone. No fuss, no mess.” She stood. “You’ve never been in love with Neil, not for one day. He’s like every other man in your life—someone to adore you, pine for you, compete for you. For your great beauty to shine upon. For the two minutes of attention you finally bestow, because when it comes down to it, that’s all you’re good for. Because your bottom line is that you don’t want anyone. You don’t care any more about Neil than you did about Lee. You don’t want a man, really. Men are messes. You don’t like messes. You’re a middle-aged woman who’d still rather be on a date. Because it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Not to mention the competition thing, which you love, mainly because you don’t have any.

“No one is more beautiful than you, no one is thinner than you. You like knowing that. No, you love it. You’re in love with it. You didn’t try telling me that you were in love with Neil because you knew you weren’t. Have you ever realized that all your affairs have been with married men? Which ensures your always being alone. Goal! Score! You win. It’s ingenious, really. You manage to cheat the person who’s cheating to be with you. Bravo, Ponce. But that’s the part you should be ashamed of. Someone else put so much at stake, and you didn’t give a damn!”

Ponce’s face was white. “Not one word of that is true,” she said, her voice hollow. “Neil isn’t a game to me. This is a three-year relationship. A real relationship. I am in love with him.” She burst into tears, which moved Shawsie not at all.

“I didn’t plan it,” Ponce sobbed. “It just happened. And I thought he felt the same way about me, but on the phone last night, he was so, so awful. He was furious when I told him about Babette. Furious at me. And it was no more my fault than his that that stupid girl happened to be in the same hotel lobby as we were at the exact same moment!”

She dropped her head, engulfed by despair. Her voice was so low that Shawsie could barely hear her. “This man is so dear to me,” she said. “He’s nothing like Lee. He is so loving. Genuinely loving.” She groped for a tissue. “How could you say such hateful things to me? I’ve been a great friend to you. For years.”

Shawsie held her gaze. “Yes, you have. You’ve been a great friend to a great many people for years. That’s not the point. When you’re being a friend, you’re behaving like yourself, not a beauty queen. The beauty queen thing is for men only. It’s calculated artifice, like a carnival game that’s fixed so you always win. It’s actually so fake, so outmoded, and so silly that it’s the closest you get to ugly. And I’ve seen you do it with every man you’ve been with, including Lee. Because you’ve never figured out how to be yourself and be a woman at the same time. But that’s okay, and you know why? You’re forty-two. That flawless face of yours is officially on the endangered-species list. You’ll have to figure out what to do next soon enough.”

Ponce kept sobbing.

Shawsie threw a key threaded on a red ribbon onto the seat of the easy chair. “When I leave, by the way, please do not console yourself by thinking I’m jealous of you—because I’m not. Yes, my adolescence would have been a lot less painful if I looked like you, but you know what? I actually grew up. Not completely, not perfectly, but some. And as imperfect as I am, in every way, I have still felt more things—good, bad, high, low—than you ever have. And that’s enough for me. Actually, it’s everything.”

Ponce didn’t lift her head.

Shawsie pulled on her coat and caught her breath. “I know I just attacked you,” she said. “And the truth is, if these last few days hadn’t happened the way they did, I probably would never have said any of this. I’m not sure I’m sorry I said it, because it’s true—yes, it is—and at some point you’re going to have to deal with it. I know you’re upset now about what’s happening with Neil, and I sympathize. Normally, I’d stay and hug and cry and listen. But you know, at this particular moment, I’m all tapped out.” Her voice was flat. “My husband, the father of my child, is a cheater. He drinks. He lies. And I’ve got to decide if I’m going forward with him or without him. You have been my best friend for twenty years. You’re a cheater. You drink. You lie. I somehow can’t find it in my heart to feel your pain at this very moment. I’m too busy feeling my own.”

And she was gone.