Iwas coming down the stairs the next morning when the front door to the Solway’s apartment opened and Victor Solway stepped out. He was wearing a dark brown linen sport coat, almost the same color as his deeply-tanned face, and tasseled brown loafers.
‘Hey, the new neighbor,’ he said. He smelled very strongly of Armani aftershave, and there were dark circles under his eyes. ‘Victor Solway. Welcome to the madhouse.’
‘Gideon Lake. Hi. Doesn’t seem too mad so far.’
‘Oh-ho. You obviously haven’t met Pearl.’
‘No. I haven’t had the pleasure.’
Victor Solway put his arm around my shoulders as if he had known me for years, and said, in a confidential tone, ‘Jonathan Lugard used to live upstairs from you. Jonathan Lugard the artist? Pearl was his model.’
‘I never heard of Jonathan Lugard, sorry.’
‘Well, to tell you the truth, I hadn’t either, before we moved here. But apparently they revered him in art circles. He died about five years ago, and when he died Pearl inherited everything. The third-floor apartment, and all of his paintings. She’s worth millions. The trouble is, she’s going doolally, and she keeps forgetting that Lugard has shuffled off to Buffalo. She wanders around wearing nothing but this old pink bathrobe, expecting him to come back at any moment and ask her to pose for him.’
‘Wow,’ I said, for want of anything better to say. Victor’s breath smelled of hexachlorophene mouthwash, but there was an underlying odor of stale Shiraz, and I prayed that he would take his arm off my shoulders and give me some personal space.
But Victor gripped me even tighter, and glanced behind him as if he were making sure that nobody else could hear what he was saying. ‘I’m giving you a friendly warning, that’s all. If Pearl sees you coming up the stairs, she’s very likely to think that it’s her long-lost Lugard, and she’ll drop that bathrobe before you have time to scream.’
He laughed, three sharp barks like a German Shepherd, right in my face, but then he let me go. I tugged at my shirtsleeves to straighten them, and tried to smile.
‘But honestly, you’ll love living here,’ Victor told me. ‘And from the investment point of view, you couldn’t have made a better choice. I should know. Victor Solway International Realty, Inc. – that’s me. Top class property, all over the world. You keep this apartment for five years, you’ll get at least two-point-five when you sell it. Maybe three. In fact, I’ll sell it for you, myself, personally, with cut-price commission. Two-point-five million, plus, and I kid you not.’
‘Wow,’ I repeated. I wished that I would stop saying ‘wow’.
Victor said, ‘I hear that you write music for the movies. Well, I was told that you were a musician, and I made a point of checking, before you moved in. I didn’t want a heavy metal band living upstairs. Ha!’
‘No, no,’ I assured him. ‘I’ve scored some movies, yes. But I mainly write TV commercials, that kind of thing.’
‘Obviously you’re very successful at it. Written anything I should know?’
‘I doubt it.’ I wasn’t going to sing the Thom’s Tomato Soup song, not again, especially if Victor had never heard it either.
‘Well, muchacho … I guess we’ll be bumping into each other, from time to time. Come on down for a drink, why don’t you? How about Saturday morning, around eleven thirty?’
‘Sure. Sounds good. Thank you.’
Victor leaned very close to me again, and I found myself tilting backward.
‘By the way,’ he said. ‘I invite some of my friends back, now and again. If it ever gets a little too boisterous for you, don’t hesitate to knock on the floor. One knock for keep it down, two knocks for shut the fuck up.’
He let out three more barks, and slapped my shoulder.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m sure I won’t have to. Knock, I mean.’
I was just about to tell Victor that I had met Kate yesterday afternoon, and that she was supposed to be having lunch with me today, but for some reason I decided not to. I didn’t exactly know why, but I thought that maybe I should wait until I knew a little more about Victor and Kate’s relationship.
Victor opened the front door, and the morning sunlight flooded in. ‘I’ll see you Saturday, OK, if I don’t see you before?’
He bounded down the steps and hailed a passing cab. I stood in the porch for a few moments, watching his cab until it reached the end of St Luke’s Place and turned right into Hudson Street. When it had disappeared, I felt strangely relieved.
I looked across the street toward the park. Behind the high wire fencing, three small children were running around and around, their arms outspread, trying to make themselves giddy. Two men were perched on the back of a bench, with their feet on the seat, talking and smoking. And there, half hidden behind one of the trees, stood a young woman with a baby stroller. It was Kate.
I shaded my eyes with my hand. Maybe it was somebody who just looked like Kate. But, no – it was definitely her, wearing a charcoal-gray coat and a light gray woolly hat. In the bright sunlight, her face looked very pale, almost blurred. The baby in the stroller looked about five or six months old. I guessed he was a boy: he was wearing a blue knitted bonnet with ear flaps, and a little dark-blue duffel-coat. He was twisting around to catch Kate’s attention, but she seemed to be ignoring him.
I half raised my hand and gave Kate a wave, but she didn’t wave back. I didn’t even know if she had seen me. I thought about going across to her, but she seemed so lost in thought, and after the rumpus I had heard last night I wasn’t sure what I was going to say to her. ‘Have a good evening, did you – you and Victor and whatever-her-name-was?’ I waited for a moment longer, and then I went down the steps and started to walk east, toward Seventh Avenue. I was heading for The Two Brothers seafood market on Carmine Street for fresh tuna. Before I went around the bend in St Luke’s Place, however, I turned back, to see if Kate were still there, standing by the tree, but she had gone.
A ragged cloud passed over the sun, and the day suddenly turned chilly.