9

“I must see the Picasso,” Kathleen said.

“Then you shall,” I said.

“And the maître d’,” she said. “They have one, right?”

“They do indeed.”

“Is he stuffy? I hope he’s insufferably stuffy!”

“He will be if I don’t tip him,” I said. We were in the Seagram Building on East Fifty-Second, in the lobby of the Four Seasons restaurant.

She touched my arm. “Donovan, this is really sweet of you, but we don’t have to eat here. I don’t want you to spend this much on me. Let’s just have a drink, see the painting and maybe the marble pool. We can share a pizza at Angelo’s afterward.”

“Relax,” I said. “I’m rich.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

The Four Seasons is famous, timeless, and the only restaurant in New York designated as a landmark.

“Do you mean really, you’re rich,” she said, “or that you’re really rich?”

“I’m rich enough to buy you whatever you’d like to have tonight.”

She laughed. “In that case, I’ll have the Picasso!”

Did I mention I liked this lady?

I gave my name to the maître d’ and led Kathleen to the corridor where the Picasso tapestry had hung since the restaurant opened back in 1959. The twenty-two-foot-high Picasso was in fact the center square of a stage curtain that had been designed for the 1920 Paris production of The Three Cornered Hat. When the theater owner ran out of money, he cut the Picasso portion from the curtain and sold it. Now, with the economy in distress, Kathleen had heard the tapestry was about to be auctioned for an estimated eight million dollars. This might be her only chance to see it.

“Oh my God!” she said, her voice suddenly turning husky. “I love it!”

“Compared to his other work, the colors are muted,” I said. “But yeah, it’s pretty magnificent.”

“Tell me about it,” she said. “Impress me.”

“It’s a distemper on linen,” I said.

“Distemper? Like the disease a dog gets?”

“Exactly like that.”

She gave me a look. “Bullshit!”

“Well, it’s spelled the same way. Actually, it refers to using gum or glue as a binding element.”

She made a snoring sound. “Boring,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, “forget that part. Here’s what you want to know: Picasso laid the canvas on the floor and painted it with a brush attached to a broom handle. He used a toothbrush for the detailed work.”

Kathleen clapped her hands together. “More!” she said.

“It took three weeks to paint.”

She looked at me expectantly.

“He wore carpet slippers so he wouldn’t smudge the paint.”

I struggled to remember what else I’d read about the thing. I shrugged. “That’s all I’ve got,” I said.

Kathleen smiled and nudged up against me. “You did well,” she said.

We had a drink at the bar. Among the small crowd waiting for tables, Kathleen spotted Woody Allen, Barbara Streisand, and Billy Joel. I said, “See those two guys by the palm frond? That’s Millard Fillmore and Jackie Gleason!”

She sniffed. “At least the famous New Yorkers I’m lying about are still alive.”

A number of seasonal trees surrounded the white marble pool in the main dining room, and the head waiter sat us beneath one of them. Spun-metal curtains hung in rows against the walls, undulating softly as the air flow from the vents teased them.

“This is fantastic,” she said, looking around the room. “Everything is so elegant, especially the breathing curtains!”

“Especially those,” I said.

I tossed back a shot of bourbon and watched Kathleen sip her pomegranate martini. The waiter had brought us drinks and given us time to study the menus. Now he returned, ready to take our order.

“Of course I’ve never been here before,” Kathleen said, “so you’ll have to order for me.”

I nodded. “We’ll start with the crispy shrimp,” I said.

“Oops. No shellfish,” Kathleen said.

“Sorry,” I said. “How about the foie gras?”

“Goose liver pate?” she said. “Ugh!”

“Peppered quail?”

“Sorry,” she said. “Meat product.”

“Perhaps you should just pick something,” I said. She may have detected some annoyance in my voice.

Kathleen burst into a hearty laugh. “I’m just messing with you, Donny. I’d love some crispy shrimp.”

The waiter and I exchanged a glance.

“She might very possibly be insane,” I said, and Kathleen laughed some more.

Then she told the waiter, “Watch out for this one. He’s very grumpy in restaurants.”

The waiter left to place our order.

“Donny?” I said. I huffed a bit, and she placed her hand on mine.

“Okay, I won’t call you Donny,” she said. “But if we’re going to start seeing each other, I’m going to want a pet name for you.”

We looked at each other, and I rotated my palm so I could hold her hand. She cocked her head slightly and raised an eyebrow.

I said, “I have to admit there’s something special about you … Pablo!”

“Oh, God,” she said and laughed some more. “Okay then, no nicknames!”

I tried to remember the last time Janet and I shared a laugh.

“Something about me,” Kathleen repeated. Her eyes hinted amusement. She winked at me and sipped her cocktail. “Mmm,” she said. She touched the napkin to her mouth. You could add up all her looks and mannerisms and never total gorgeous, but you’d get to adorable pretty quick, and that was enough for me. Hell, I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Ask me.”

“Ask you what?”

“Something’s bothering you. I can see it in your eyes.”

She twitched her mouth to one side and held it there, a sort of half-frown. “I don’t want to ruin the moment,” she said.

“The moment will survive.”

“Okay then, brace yourself.”

I took my hand away from hers and grabbed both sides of the table and pretended to hold on tight. “Let ’er rip!” I said.

She took a deep breath. “Last night at Starbucks, you told me about Janet and Ken dating. You were worried about his temper, what he might do to her if they decide to get married.”

I kept quiet.

“Do you still love her?” she asked.

“No. But I don’t want my daughter’s mother to marry a wife beater.” She made a face, and I said, “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you.”

Kathleen was wearing the same cloth coat she’d worn the night before. She’d been cold and hadn’t wanted to surrender it to the coat check girl downstairs. But now she stood and removed it and folded it over the back of her chair, revealing a white blouse, a tan faux suede skirt, and a wide brown belt with two gold buckles. She wore very little makeup, or maybe it hadn’t been freshened up in a while, since she’d come straight from work. It didn’t seem to make her uncomfortable the way most women would be. She sat back down and surprised me by taking my hand in hers and kissing it.

“I don’t wish him dead or anything,” she said. “But Ken is …” She sighed. “Ken is not a part of my life anymore. I mean, there’s not a day goes by I don’t think about him or the terrible things he did to me. But.” She paused and showed a bittersweet smile as the memories danced across her face. “There were some good times, too. In the beginning.”

I nodded.

Then she said, “I’ve heard he’s gotten treatment, and I’m glad. I hope he’s okay. I hope he finds peace.”

I nodded again.

I had already finalized a plan for handling the Ken and Janet situation, and now I realized I’d been right all along not to involve her in it.

We had a wonderful dinner, and afterward, my driver took us to her place and she invited me in. Home for Kathleen was a modest duplex cottage with faded green siding. Her side of the duplex had three rooms: a kitchen, living room, bedroom—and a bath. A small stack of books sat on one end of a threadbare couch in the living room. She picked up the books and stacked them on the coffee table so we’d have room to sit.

“I’m sorry it’s not nicer,” she said.

“Don’t be silly.”

“It’s just, everything is so expensive here.”

“It’s wonderful,” I said.

And to me it was. When I’m in Virginia, I sleep in a prison cell. When I’m anywhere else for more than a day or two, I generally break into the homes of strangers and sleep in their attics. Sometimes I’ll live in an attic for weeks at a time. By comparison, Kathleen’s duplex was a palace.

“I can offer you a gin and tonic, bottled water, a hot chocolate with skim milk,” she said, “or a diet coke.”

I asked, “Do you have an attic?”

“What a strange question,” she said.

“No, I just meant, there’s not a lot of room for storage.”

“I have half an attic and half a basement,” she said. “Does that win me some kind of prize?”

I placed my hand to her cheek, and we looked at each other. “Don’t ask me to show them to you,” she said. “The attic is totally junked up, and the basement has rats, I think.”

I asked if I could kiss her. She said, “Okay, but just once. And not a movie kiss,” she added.