She woke up bright and early, feeling fully recharged despite the smooching till midnight.
Or because of it, more likely. She’d damn near forgotten how exciting two-party sex could be, even with Joe’s sensible and admirable limitations. Her first real contact with a man in . . . almost seven years her time, add twenty-seven for reality. Ye gods.
The Kiss didn’t count, of course.
She looked forward to New Year’s Eve with Joe.
Today was what—Thursday, the ninth? She’d have to speak to him. How long did it take to get checked out? And exactly how romantic did they have to be, time-wise?
Her New Year’s resolution would have to wait for its proper season; more important things came first, like helping make sure everyone got the Lighting right, time-wise.
Again, as whenever she gave more than passing thought to the event, the happening, its beauty and symbolic power thrilled her. She had only learned on Tuesday, during the schmoozing and taping, about the high-resolution satellite images that would be coming back to Earth as the candles were lighted, about the concert—the Boston Pops, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir—that would be broadcast live in worldwide stereo. Maybe Andy was no angel but he was certainly an artist, because that’s what his Lighting was: a major work of conceptual art, accessible and meaningful to all humanity.
He was nuts, of course—weren’t so many of them?—rubbing against her like that right out there among the dancers; a dozen people must have—Anywhere! He shouldn’t have done it anywhere! She really had to have another talk with him.
Opening the draperies, she got a golden sun smack in the eye; raised an arm against its brilliance above the Fifth Avenue cliff. Never saw the sun shining so bright!
Never saw so many joggers either. She squinted down under her forearm at two lanes of shorts and sweatsuits, jogging in both directions beyond the southbound taxis and cars on the Park Drive. Who’d have imagined there were so many health nuts crazy enough to be out running early on a cold December morning, under a blue sky, then going on to put in a full day’s work . . .
Never saw things going so right! In leotards and a sweatsuit, Garboed up in a muffler, a floppy-brimmed hat, and a big pair of shades—sunglasses till that very morning—she jogged with the health nuts, an incredibly attractive assortment of determined-looking New Yorkers, most of them sporting i ❤ andy buttons, a few in i ❤ andy sweatshirts, others declaring their ❤ for mozart, chocolate, and fire island.
Noticing the days hurrying by! When you’re in love—she segued into humming.
And saw, to her surprise—across the drive and beyond the park, on Central Park West—the Bram. Its peaked roof and upper turrets anyway, screened by tree branches. Or was it the Bram? The little she could see looked different somehow. Lighter.
She waited till the taxis and cars were checked by a traffic light farther north, and crossed the drive.
She followed a road that sloped up, curving rightward; walked its verge, cars passing close on her left. Nearing Central Park West, the road curved leftward and the whole of the Gothic brick building came into view. The Bramford, all right.
It had been cleaned up—sandblasted, or steamed, or whatever they were doing nowadays. Black Bramford had become Pale Peach Bramford. The gargoyles were gone; the stars and stripes waved atop the roof’s pinnacle.
Andy’s Boyhood Home.
Smiling, she shook her head. T-shirts were probably on sale in the courtyard—an assortment of Andy and one each of Theodore Dreiser and Isadora Duncan. Did they have any shirts with pictures of Adrian Marcato and his mementos of Satan? Of the Trench sisters sautéing sweet Daphne? Of Pearl Ames and her pets?
A woman sobbed behind her.
She turned, and saw, beyond a slatted snow fence and a span of shrubbery, a clearing lower down where a few people stood in a circle. The sobbing woman, young, in black, was being led away from the gathering by an older woman.
Rosemary shut her eyes. Sliding her fingertips in under her glasses, she pressed tight at her eyeballs, swaying.
The Unthinkable, the one thought she had stopped herself from even thinking of thinking about from the very first moment she’d seen Andy on TV exactly a month ago today—the Unthinkable tapped her on the shoulder.
She lifted her head, lowered her shades, brushed the Unthinkable’s hand away. Tugged her hat down snug, wound her muffler over her mouth, and went looking for a path to the clearing.
She found one bending back from the road she’d been on, an asphalt lane curving down past a sign, Strawberry Fields, to where six or seven people stood around a wide black-and-white-patterned disc set in the ground, a few flowers and folds of paper on it. Some of the men and women looked down, as if praying; others gazed mournfully ahead. Other people, farther away, aimed cameras at the gathering, came closer aiming their cameras at the disc, clicking at it.
A stately Mediterranean-looking woman spilled an armful of red roses onto the disc, her eyes closed, her red lips moving. She was all in black like the younger woman, who sat, still sobbing, with her mother or whoever, on one of the surrounding benches.
Rosemary tried to stay calm, sure she was having some kind of vision, as the Unthinkable chiseled itself into her head: andy is 33—the same age as jesus when he was nailed to the cross.
These people across from Andy’s boyhood home were gathered around a shrine that didn’t exist yet. But would someday.
She drew a deep breath and walked closer to it, hands clenching at her sides.
The disc was a mosaic of black and white tiles, its pattern a wheel with curiously jagged spokes. At its center a four-letter word lay inset in black capitals amid the mass of red roses; she raised the glasses to be sure of it—magi.
What it signified she couldn’t imagine, what wise men were being invoked or heralded and why. But did it matter? She lowered the glasses and walked on past the mourners, fixing her hat and muffler; walked faster down another path leading toward the drive, jogged down it seeing the top of the gold-glass tower half a mile away, bumping into someone, jogging on. She called back over her shoulder, “I’m sorry, excuse me!”
An oldster in a Yankees cap and an i ❤ symbols sweatshirt shook a fist after her. “Watch where you’re going, Greta Garbo!”
She slowed herself down at the drive, waited, and jogged across into the southbound lane.
Jogged in the stream of joggers toward Andy in the tower of blinding gold sunshine.
* * *
He had told her Tuesday that her card had been validated for the lobby entry to the private elevator; she hadn’t expected to make use of it. She touched 10, rocketed upward. It was still early, but he was usually at his desk by eight, he and the media said.
He was there this morning. When she was halfway through his quarter floor of empty cubicles with barren desks, she heard him speaking to someone doggedly, trying to get a word in. As she neared the open door to his anteroom, she heard him clearly. “Please? Please? Will you—Hey! Please! Just let me finish, okay? Half the billboards aren’t even up yet, more than half in China and South America, but they’re all going to be up by Friday the latest, everywhere.”
She went into the anteroom—Judy wasn’t at her desk yet—and went on across the anteroom toward the open door of Andy’s office. “We’re absolutely saturating TV from Monday the thirteenth right through to the end of the month with the two commercials you yourself said got the point across most clearly, the kid and his grandfather and—You did! Just the other day! Oh shit . . .”
She could see his hand raking through his tawny hair above the chair back as he sat facing the window behind his desk. She put hat and glasses into one hand, raised the other to the door—and paused, not wanting to interrupt him. Sniffed coffee.
“The numbers are going to get better, I promise you; I honestly don’t think it’s necessary or practical, and it just doesn’t seem like the right thing to—Well of course she’ll want to, I know that.” His chair turned around and he looked at her.
She stepped into the office, turning her hands out apologetically.
He smiled, beckoned. “René,” he said to the phone, standing up in a GC sweatshirt and jeans. “Excuse me. Excuse me. René, my mother just came in; could we cut it short, please?” He came around to the side of the desk as she came farther into the office. “Yes,” he said. “I will.” He said to her, “He says bonjour. The airport.”
“Oh,” she said, recalling the elderly Frenchman whose hand she had shaken. She waggled fingers.
“Mom says bonjour back,” he said, eye-smiling at her. “We’ll talk when you’re home, okay? Have a good flight. And please, thank Simone for the generous offer and tell her I wish there were time to schedule a dozen more concerts. Ciao to the lovely granddaughters.” He put the phone down. “Whew,” he said, coming to her, wiping his hands back over his brow and hair. “Thanks for rescuing me. He’s one of our main supporters and a sweet old guy but what a worrier!” He wiped his hands on his jeans. “And his wife is the world’s worst soprano.”
He held her shoulders, kissed her cheek.
She leaned against him, her cheek against his shoulder, held him; listened to his heart beating as his arms enclosed her. He said, “You’re cold; were you running outside?”
“Mm-hmm,” she said, staying close against him.
“With Joe?”
“Alone.”
“And nobody bothered you?”
She raised the hand with the hat and glasses.
He drew back, looked down at her. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
She said, “I’ve been worrying about you.” Looked up at him. “I’m afraid—something awful might happen to you . . .”
He sighed, nodded. “It’s possible,” he said. “Awful things happen to awful people all the time. Look at Stan Shand. Kersplat.”
“Oh don’t,” she said, hitting his arm.
He said, “Did you have something particular in mind?”
“No,” she said. “I just got scared. Up across from the Bram . . .” She looked at him.
“Did you see what they did to it?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I feel guilty about it,” he said. “That isn’t what scared you; what did? I can see you’re upset . . .” He stroked her back.
She said, “I saw . . .”
“What?” he asked, stroking, looking down at her.
She shrugged, sighed. “Just a man with an anti-Andy sign . . .”
“An ‘Original Son of Liberty’?” he said. “They’re a joke, like the Ayn Rand Brigade. Don’t worry, I’m as safe or unsafe as the next guy. Safer. Everybody loves me, remember?”
“If people found out . . .” She looked at him.
“Don’t tell,” he said, “I won’t. Want some coffee? I just got a pot. Nice and fresh.”
She sighed and said, “I’d love some.”
He kissed her head and they let go of each other. She unwound her muffler as he went to the side table by the desk. “Go with Joe next time,” he said. “Or me; I keep meaning to jog. Or with security. If someone recognized you, you could have been mobbed.”
“Okay,” she said, sitting on the sofa. She rubbed her hands.
He brought her a GC mug of coffee lightened to the right shade, with a spoon and a packet of sweetener. “Actually, I was going to call you in a few minutes,” he said, sitting down in a side chair with a mug of his own. “Before René,” he said, nodding toward the desk, “I was talking with Diane. She’s had one of her theatrical brain-storms, but it’s nothing essential and you shouldn’t feel any pressure to do it, I really mean that. If you want to get right onto your own plans next week, I can have Judy set up appointments for you with the networks or you could—”
“Cut to the chase, Andy,” she said.
“We go to Ireland,” he said. “Next week for a few days. Dublin and Belfast. Because of your Irish roots and my lightening up the IRA. The idea is, they’ll go more ape over us there than anywhere else and it’ll get maximum coverage worldwide, maybe GCUK can get the King to move up his visit, and we’ll mention the time-zone thing every five minutes. I can see this is going to be a hard sell.”
She sat back, blinked a few times, and squinted at him, putting her mug down. “Of course I want to do it,” she said. “Andy, I don’t understand you.” She leaned close to him, took his hands. “You act as if we’re selling cigarettes,” she said. “We’re promoting a wonderful, beautiful event that’s going to stir and excite the entire world! Don’t minimize it; the Lighting is a work of art. I mean that. We had lots of artist friends, Guy and I, and some of them created ‘happenings,’ public events that people participated in and were enriched by, so I know what I’m talking about. The Lighting is going to be the greatest happening ever.”
Andy sighed. “Okay, Mom,” he said, “I’ll stop minimizing it.”
“Of course we’ll go to Ireland,” she said. “I always meant to someday.” She shook her head. “How I wish Brian and Dodie weren’t on that cruise . . .”
“It’ll just be the two of us,” he said.
She looked at him.
He smiled at her. “That was the champagne last night,” he said. “Otherwise I never would have rubbed against you like that. I’ll behave. Really.” He tiger-flashed.
“My angel Andy,” she said, and thought a moment while he waited, watching her. “No,” she said, “I’m definitely going to need a secretary at my side. Preferably someone I know and have a rapport with. Any suggestions?”
He sighed and said, “Not off the top of my head, but I’ll try to think of someone.”
“Good,” she said. “And my boyfriend comes too.”
He looked at her. Said, “Your boyfriend?”
She nodded. “That’s the way we big stars travel.” She smiled, batting her lashes at him.
He didn’t seem amused.