2

The omens began several weeks later.

Susan had forgotten her feeling of foreboding and had returned to her characteristic cheery self. Nothing had happened; nothing was likely to. She and Tara, both illustrating modern gothic stories (will women read absolutely anything?), planned to use their lunch break to cab it to the Village, to Tara’s apartment, where her new wallpaper was up and begging to be appreciated. But it was another taxi that troubled Susan. Her illustration, of a typically beautiful, typically distressed young woman getting out of a cab in front of a typically ominous manor house, was going badly. The woman and the house were no problem, but Susan struggled over the taxi all morning. One rendering had it vaguely thirties, almost to the running board. In another, it was more an elongated Volkswagen than a cab. She cursed all the years she had wasted in school being typically feminine and drawing women and clothes in her textbooks while the boys, more sensible, drew cars and planes. Finally, in desperation, she settled on a somewhat fifties Edsel look-alike and put a wash of yellow over it. It looked ridiculous, but then, her readers were no doubt as feminine as she and wouldn’t notice.

“On your mark, get set, go,” Tara announced over the partition, already snatching her purse and preparing to flee.

They hit the street, part of an army of midtown office workers with one thing on its collective mind: to get a cab by whatever means. They were no match for the men, who dodged traffic and caught their cabs in the middle of the gutter; nor were they any competition for the women from Bendel’s, who were used to getting their way. They eventually walked over to the Warwick and waited in line like ladies, and eventually were rewarded with a filthy yellow heap whose meter clicked like a frantic Geiger counter.

“. . . It’s a kind of taupe background,” Tara went on about her newest acquisition, “but not so taupe that you’d want to throw up. And the flowers are carnations and asters in coral and beige, and if you don’t like it, clam up. It cost a mint. . . .”

But Susan had ceased to listen; she was studying the back of the driver’s head, aware of a growing nostalgia, but for whom?

“. . . I found some material at Schumacher’s that’s kind of the same color and I was thinking of drowning my couch in throw pillows if it wouldn’t be too precious. . . .”

Brian Coleman, Susan realized. For some inexplicable reason the back of the driver’s head reminded her of Brian Coleman. He had been her friend, her best friend, in elementary school. But, of course, this was not to be a chance reunion. Brian had gone off to camp one summer, had contracted spinal meningitis and died. He was the first person Susan had known who’d died. Others had followed: her father, a cousin, an elderly neighbor—but they were anti-climaxes after Brian.

“. . . So what do you think?” Tara at last paused for breath.

“Huh? About what?”

“About blowing up the Coliseum.”

“Sorry, I was elsewhere.”

“You’re telling me?”

And so Susan, the dutiful friend, entered into a conversation about pillows and curtains that lasted until the cab pulled up in front of Tara’s brownstone. Then, quite by chance, she glanced at the driver’s picture (why do they always look like escapees from Attica?) and his name.

Brian Coleman.

She read it twice before she felt her adrenaline hit from within.

“Excuse me,” she said, “your name is Brian Coleman?”

“Yeah.” He turned around and presented a stranger’s face to her.

No possibility that she’d ever seen it before.

“Did you go to P.S. Six?”

“Nope.”

“My name is Susan Reed . . . Goodman . . . Susan Goodman,” she stammered, a little breathless from the adrenaline. “Did you ever know me?”

He raised an eyebrow at her and turned around. “Nope.”

Feeling enormously foolish, Susan insisted on paying for the cab, overtipped the driver to assuage her embarrassment, and followed Tara up the steps into the hallway of her building.

“God, Susan, he wasn’t even cute,” Tara said, with a wink.

The second time was a few days later.

It was Sunday, a gorgeous early-spring Sunday, and Lou had finally been dunned into taking Andrea off for the day, leaving Susan with that rarest gem in a wife/mother’s crown of jewels—an afternoon alone. She spent the first hour of it struggling with the Times crossword, finally giving in and consulting Mr. Webster, who was little help. Then, deciding her life was truly not directly proportional to how many little boxes she could fill in, she tossed the paper aside and wondered how she might best enjoy her afternoon.

What would she have done on a beautiful Sunday years ago? Before there were Lou and Andrea and Responsibilities and Duties and Expectations?

The Frick, of course.

She purposefully chose her oldest clothes, the ones she had owned when she was single, and dressed.

She opted to walk through Central Park to heighten the enjoyment of the day.

Enjoyment was hardly the word. Ecstasy was more like it. The park was filled with celebrants, and Susan felt, if not exactly twenty again, nowhere near thirty-­seven, thirty-­eight, thirty-­nine, bingo!

She strolled among the revelers, choosing a path that wound beside the lake, near the ball fields that would, she knew, be filled with baseball and soccer fanatics—the people who loved the city as she did. She felt great comradery with them all, and wished them all well.

And then, near the end of the lake, a rustling of the winter’s remnants of leaves up ahead, and a squirrel, more Walt Disney than real, approached her. She regretted having been so selfish in her happiness that she forgot to pack a handout.

“Sorry, sweetie,” she said and walked on.

And the squirrel followed, circling her, stopping in front of her to beg.

“Would you accept a promissory note?” Susan said, utterly charmed by it.

It cocked its head.

And followed.

She was almost out of the park at the Metropolitan Museum with its hordes when she saw it again: hanging back, sadly, it seemed to her, afraid of the crowds and traffic.

She waved to it and felt silly and wonderful.

Then down Fifth she strolled, enjoying the people, not enjoying the teenagers with their blaring transistor radios, wondering how much the grand buildings across the street were charging for rent these days, noticing the shoes on the smarter women, the jeans on nearly everybody, the plethora of mustaches on the incredibly sexy young men. Would Lou look good in a mustache? Go away, Lou, she thought. This is my afternoon. Grow your mustache on your own time.

And then she saw the squirrel again; at least, she assumed it was the same squirrel. It was running along the stone wall directly beside her.

Looking at her.

She stopped. It stopped.

She walked on. It scampered along after her.

“Such loyalty must not go unrewarded,” Susan said aloud, and that also amused her. She looked around and happily saw a vendor not half a block away. As she approached it, her squirrel, for now she felt it was her squirrel, hesitated, sat upright on the wall, and waited.

She bought it a pretzel, unsalted, lest it make Hobeau thirsty (that was its name, Hobeau) and approached it. It held its arms out to her and took the pretzel, transferred it to its mouth, blinked in gratitude and leaped from the wall to the bushes and obscurity, leaving Susan thrilled with the encounter.

The smell of the Frick was as she remembered it: a mixture of flowers and lemon oil, a grand, reminiscent fragrance that never failed to make her feel that special joy of the connoisseur. For though Susan could not reproduce the beauty of the paintings around her, no one in her acquaintance appreciated them more than she. She had an almost visceral reaction to a fine painting; conversely, gallery hopping in Soho invariably brought on a head­ache.

It was the former feeling that filled her as she stood before a Delacroix in the study of the house, trying to blank out the lecture going on beside her. A young man, impressing the girl he was with, was busily misinterpreting the intentions of the painting. There was a time he would have amused Susan; now she merely wished he’d go away and grow up.

She strolled over to a Sargent, one of her favorite favorites and floated on its grace for a moment. And then into the main gallery and the Goyas. In a very few minutes she experienced that timeless, serene sensation that always accompanied a visit to a great museum. She was an art freak, no doubt about that.

But art freak or not, time was running out. Lou and Andrea might at that moment be on their way back to the apartment, filled with needs. Susan hurried through some portraits, not minding, spent all too brief a moment before a Vermeer, and strolled into the atrium with its reflecting pool. It was several degrees cooler in there and damp. She wandered along the pool’s edge, enjoying the cool, the silence, the change in the feeling of the air.

And then she saw something in the pool.

Floating.

She didn’t want to look at it, but she did, and, recognizing it, she left the museum, hailed a cab and went home, depressed and out of sorts.

It was a squirrel.

The third and final omen.

Lou was inside her.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I love you,” she answered.

A breeze from the open window blew across them, cooling them momentarily. The blinds were half up, and a mixture of moon and city lights illuminated the room. Susan made love with her eyes closed, but had she looked at the window, she would have seen the woman on the roof of the building across the street, standing there by the ledge, watching them.

“I love you,” Lou whispered again and Susan clasped her hands behind his back and pulled him closer and deeper.

And the woman watched.

They made love for a long time. Lou was considerate always and tonight especially so; their lovemaking, usually good, was brilliant.

And the woman climbed up onto the ledge.

“Sweetheart . . .” Susan moaned, approaching orgasm.

“Baby . . . do it for me . . .”

Susan’s cries could not possibly have carried out to the woman, who stood there at the edge of the precipice, waiting. But as they reached a crescendo, she leaped.

Later, when the police arrived and the sirens broke the silence, Susan stirred briefly and went back to sleep, still glowing.