NEW YORK—October 2015
Kersti glances out the little egg-shaped window at the glistening tarmac where a steady drizzle has been falling since late afternoon. The sky is already dark as the plane begins to roll out. She’s always enjoyed flying at night, something about being cocooned in blackness, like soaring into space. She was able to book a last-minute flight and was out of the house before Jay got home from work. They haven’t spoken since their disastrous counseling session.
When the plane smooths out at its flying altitude, Kersti reaches into her purse for the stack of mail she grabbed from home and quickly shuffles through the magazines—Vanity Fair, British House & Gardens—finding the one letter in the pile. She recognizes the embossed emblem of Helvetia on the envelope and opens it.
Dear Kersti,
Our 100th birthday celebration is fast approaching on Saturday June 11th, 2016. This is a friendly reminder that we are still waiting for your RSVP both as a “One Hundred Women of the Lycée” speaker, and as an attendee of the festivities. If you are unable to make it, please inform us at your earliest convenience so that we may arrange our speaker schedule accordingly. We hope to see you in the spring!
Best,
M. Bueche
Kersti folds the letter and puts it back in her purse. She’s been mulling over whether or not to go for months; she can’t blame Bueche for wanting an answer. She’s still waiting to hear from Noa and Rafaella. Maybe she’ll ask Magnus if he’s planning to go. It will be a good opener since they haven’t spoken since the day of Cressida’s accident. They reconnected on Facebook about two years ago, but only to add each other as “friends.” They’ve never had an actual conversation. Once in a while she trolls through his pictures, but he rarely posts anything. He’s never commented on or “liked” any of hers. She messaged him as soon as she left the Estonian House this afternoon, asking him to meet with her. His response came quick: Kuusk! Quelle surprise. Text me when you arrive. With his number.
She couldn’t help smiling. She was relieved he remembered her, even called her Kuusk. She still thinks about him. The ego has a way of hanging on to unrequited love as though it’s some kind of personal failure, an irrevocable blight on past achievements. That’s how it’s been for Kersti, no matter how much time passes or how much she loves Jay.
Outside her hotel on Seventh and Fifty-Fourth the street buzzes and hums until the sun comes up. She lies awake most of the night, listening to the noises below, thinking about her marriage, babies, Cressida, Lille, the Lycée, what she would say if she spoke at the birthday celebration in Lausanne. It’s an honor to stand before you on the Lycée’s hundredth anniversary. I’m truly humbled.
She wonders if Harzenmoser is alive. What became of their beloved Mme. Hamidou? Mostly she wonders how Magnus Foley will look tomorrow. Will they reminisce about the night she lost her virginity? The beer fondue, the fighting raccoons? Cressida’s momentous fall?
By the time she arrives at his office on Thirty-Fourth, breathless from having walked too fast, she’s conjured him in her mind a dozen different ways—overweight and bald; silver-haired and debonair; openly gay with two earrings and a flamboyant lisp. She’s still got this dogged need to prove herself to him, so it would be a relief if he’s let himself go.
He’s got his own graphic design firm on the thirty-fourth floor, overlooking Gramercy Park. Kersti announces herself to the receptionist and is instructed to sit and wait on an uncomfortable orange couch—one of those pretentious, contemporary pieces that look more like a sculpture than furniture—and given a bottle of water with the orange and gray MAFD logo on it.
She waits about ten minutes before Magnus shows up, striding toward her with that cocky smile she’d almost forgotten. He’s wearing ripped jeans and a snug black T-shirt that looks like it would have to be peeled off. She realizes instantly that everything she imagined he would look like was wrong. He’s still gorgeous and youthful, a reminder that they’re still only in their thirties, even though most days she feels so much older. Or maybe weary is the better word. The truth is, there may still be plenty of time before thinning hair and paunchy middle sections, sagging body parts and reluctant surrender. Magnus’s skin is smooth and vibrant, he’s in good shape, and he has the same thick blond brush cut of two decades ago, which is somehow both a relief and demoralizing.
“Kuusk,” he says, still grinning, giving her an approving once-over.
“It’s Wax now.”
“How are you? Shit, it’s been, what? Like seventeen, eighteen years?” He hugs her and she smells soap in his skin, probably from a recent hand wash. “What the hell brings you here after all this time?”
“A couple of things, actually.”
“I get so many notes on Facebook from people from my past . . . I never expect anyone to actually show up.”
People from my past. Strange to realize that’s what she is, that they are this. He once fucked her on a rock in the woods and told her she was authentic and real. You sweet virgin.
“Anyway, you look great, Kuusk.”
She’s wearing skinny jeans with knee-high boots and a fitted leather jacket. Her hair is pulled back in a high ponytail, which also acts as a de facto facelift. She hopes she looks good. “You, too,” she says, trying not to stare at him for too long.
She’s fourteen again, seeing him for the first time. Her pulse is thumping, her palms are clammy. What is it about him? What was it back then about both of them—Magnus and Cressida—that so powerfully attracted her, beyond their obvious good looks? Some intangible magnetism or special charisma that she wanted to attach herself to and absorb by association? Or, more disturbing, was it closer to a sadomasochistic instinct, knowing on some unconscious level that they were both dangerous for her and she would get hurt over and over again and still not be able to walk away? She suddenly feels compelled to resolve that for herself.
“You still haven’t said why you’re here,” he says, and she wonders if he even remembers having sex with her. Devirginizing her. If he does, he isn’t acting the least bit sheepish or embarrassed about how he handled things afterward.
“Can we go somewhere and talk?” she asks him, glancing over at the receptionist. “I can come back—”
“Not necessary,” he says, leading her out of the office and back to the elevators. “Let’s grab coffee.”
He calls for the elevator and they wait for it in awkward silence. When it finally arrives, they look at each other with relief. “So how have you been?” he asks her, as soon as the doors close, trapping them inside together. “You’re still living in . . . ?”
“Toronto.”
“Right. What do you do there?”
“I’m a writer.”
“What do you write?” Most people assume when she says she’s a writer that she’s a copywriter, a dabbler in poetry, or someone who sits in Starbucks all day working on a screenplay that will never be finished.
“Novels,” she tells him. “Historical women’s fiction. Nothing you’d know.”
“Published?”
“Three so far.”
“Wow. Very cool.”
“You seem to be doing pretty well,” she returns, thinking of his view of Gramercy Park.
“I’m good at design,” he says, not elaborating.
Between uncomfortable stabs at small talk, they both stare up at the floor numbers as they descend to the lobby. She notices he’s not wearing a ring on his wedding finger. His status isn’t posted on Facebook, so she isn’t sure if there’s a Mrs. Foley.
“Kids?” he asks her.
“Not yet,” she says, avoiding the longer version of that answer. “You?”
“Divorced. No kids.”
Her eyes are still fixed on those numbers. Nine, eight, seven. Why is she so happy to hear he’s divorced? When they reach the lobby, he extends his arm to let her out first. “Madame,” he says.
The coffee shop is one of those standard New York institutions you always find in the lobby of these art deco buildings—a long counter with stools, straight-up coffee percolating in glass pots—no lattes and cappuccinos here—and a queue of suits out the door.
“The usual, Jahmir,” Magnus says. Kersti orders a black coffee. Magnus treats.
They settle side by side on a lone bench by the elevators. “Did you get your invitation to the Lycée’s hundredth anniversary celebration?” she asks him, as per the speech she rehearsed all night.
“They don’t know where to find me,” he says, fiddling with the sleeve of his cup.
“I found you.”
“The Lycée probably hasn’t figured out Facebook yet. You going?”
Kersti shrugs. “I don’t know.” She doesn’t mention that she’s been chosen one of their Hundred Women. “I’m still debating.”
“It’s too hard to go back there,” he says, and she figures he means it both literally and figuratively.
“Remember Lille Robertson?” she says, lifting the lid off her cup to let the coffee cool.
“The little weirdo with the white hair and the black nose?”
“She died.”
“How?”
“Breast cancer.”
“Shit. That’s too bad.”
“Have you kept in touch with anyone?” she asks him.
“Me? No. No one.” He’s staring into his tea, distant. “You?”
“Noa and Rafaella. Mostly on Facebook. Noa and I Skype sometimes.”
“What are they up to?”
“Raf lives in Paris. She’s divorced. As far as I know, she doesn’t work. Noa’s still in Rotterdam. She’s got a lot of kids. She’s an environmentalist. She posts a lot of anti–Royal Dutch Shell messages. That’s about it. Well, and Cressida.”
“Cressida?”
“Yes. I was just in Boston visiting her. She’s living with her mother.”
He nods, his expression clouded. She wonders what he’s thinking. He doesn’t ask how she is.
“Anyway, Lille wrote me a letter before she died,” Kersti continues. “And it . . . I brought it, actually. If you want to read it.”
He looks at her as though to say: “What the hell has this got to do with me?”
She hands him the letter. “Her mother sent it to me. She found it unfinished on Lille’s computer.”
“You never spoke to Lille after graduation?” he says. “Weren’t the three of you best friends?”
“I didn’t even graduate. I left right after . . .” She leaves it unspoken. The accident. The fall. “Lille sort of vanished. I was never able to find her on any of the usual social media.”
Magnus unfolds the letter and reads it. When he’s done, he hands it back to Kersti without saying a word.
“Lille didn’t think Cressida fell by accident,” Kersti says.
“I see that.”
“I didn’t know you were there that night.”
“Why would you?” he says. “I snuck in.”
“Why?”
“Does it really matter anymore?”
“I think so.”
“Why?”
“You were the last person to see Cressida that night.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Weren’t you?” A thick man in an overcoat bumps Kersti as he brushes past. “I just want to find out what really happened to her,” she says. “What she was like before she fell—”
“Why? Why now?”
“Timing, I guess,” she tells him. “First I got the invitation from the Lycée, then the letter from Lille. I figured the universe was trying to tell me something, like maybe I need some closure on this. Or maybe I didn’t do enough when it first happened.”
“We were kids,” he says. “What could any of us have done?”
“I know, but now I feel like I can at least ask some questions,” she says, thinking about her conversation with Deirdre the other day. “And frankly, the more I do the more my curiosity is snowballing. I may even write about it for my next book.”
“Cressida was an alcoholic, Kersti. We both know that. You want to know what she was like the last time I saw her? She was wasted.”
“I know she dumped you.”
Magnus looks at her for a moment and breaks into a smile. “This isn’t the place for a real conversation,” he says, checking his watch. “Do you want to have dinner tonight?”
“Sure,” she says, trying to sound nonchalant but secretly feeling like he’s just invited her to the school dance. Do you remember fucking me? She has to bite her tongue in order not to ask him.
“To be continued,” he says, getting up and disappearing inside the elevator.