Wish Upon a Star
Olivia Goldsmith

For Millie Mohammad and her dear friend

Rose W. Ravid

…leaves all decisions up to us, including whether we wish to make any at all. It is up to us whether we wish to make any application to our life from a fairy tale, or simply enjoy the fantastic events it tells about. Our enjoyment is what induces us to respond in our own good time to hidden meanings as they may relate to our life experience and present state of personal development.

BRUNO BETTELHEIM

The Uses of Enchantment

The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Epigraph

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-THREE

THIRTY-FOUR

THIRTY-FIVE

THIRTY-SIX

THIRTY-SEVEN

THIRTY-EIGHT

THIRTY-NINE

FORTY

FORTY-ONE

FORTY-TWO

FORTY-THREE

FORTY-FOUR

FORTY-FIVE

FORTY-SIX

FORTY-SEVEN

FORTY-EIGHT

FORTY-NINE

FIFTY

FIFTY-ONE

FIFTY-TWO

FIFTY-THREE

FIFTY-FOUR

FIFTY-FIVE

FIFTY-SIX

FIFTY-SEVEN

FIFTY-EIGHT

FIFTY-NINE

SIXTY

SIXTY-ONE

SIXTY-TWO

SIXTY-THREE

SIXTY-FOUR

SIXTY-FIVE

SIXTY-SIX

SIXTY-SEVEN

SIXTY-EIGHT

SIXTY-NINE

SEVENTY

SEVENTY-ONE

SEVENTY-TWO

Acknowledgements

By the same author

Copyright

About the Publisher

ONE

Once upon a time in a magical city called New York a girl under a spell lived on an island.

It was Staten Island. And to get to work in Manhattan, Claire Amelia Bilsop had to commute almost two hours each way. She took a train from Tottenville, then a short walk to the ferry slip, then the ferry to Manhattan. She did it with her friend Tina and today was no different from most other days.

‘Oh, c’mon,’ Tina said. ‘Come with us. You never go anywhere and you’ve never done anything.’

Claire looked down at her knitting and frowned. When the ferry bumped against the pilings she had dropped a stitch. ‘That’s not true,’ she said, though in fact it pretty much was. She thought of her trips to the library, the video store, the wool department of Kelsey’s, all on Broad Street in Tottenville. ‘I have traveled broadly,’ Claire retorted, ‘and I come into Manhattan every day. Last summer I went to Long Beach Island.’

‘Long Beach, for god’s sake! In Jersey! And you went with your mother and that douchebag boyfriend of hers.’

Claire winced. Tina’s heart was in the right place but her mouth was in the gutter. ‘I prefer to think of him as a windbag,’ Claire said.

‘Douche, wind, whatever.’ Tina stuffed her magazine into her purse, fished out her sunglasses and stood up. Claire stood beside her. ‘Put that wool away, Granny,’ Tina told her and looked at her watch. Claire sighed. The ferry had docked and, as always, they had twenty minutes to walk up Water Street, get coffee and bagels from their regular street vendor, then be upstairs on the thirty-eighth floor of the Crayden Smithers Alliance Building. They had plenty of time but Tina always behaved like a child at a birthday party, afraid she wouldn’t get the last seat in musical chairs. As if anyone else would want their seats at Crayden Smithers. Claire picked up the dropped stitch, wrapped up her knitting, slipped into her coat and joined Tina and the crowd jostling to get off the boat.

As Tina pushed to the head of the line she pulled Claire in her wake. ‘Jersey, for Christ’s sake!’

‘I went to the Poconos,’ Claire murmured. People were looking at them angrily. Even in Manhattan, a city fabled for pushers, Tina stood out.

‘The Poconos!’ Tina almost spat as they stepped off the ferry. ‘That’s one step lower than Jersey.’ She shook her head and her big hair trembled. ‘And you went with that yutz. You didn’t even have sex with him.’

Claire colored. She looked around but the crowd paid no attention, busy dispersing to buses, subways, and a new day of boredom or aggravation. Claire’s sex life – or lack of it – meant nothing to them. ‘I slept with him,’ she protested. She wouldn’t admit to Tina that it had been mostly sleeping. Bob had not been an Italian stallion, as Tina always claimed her fiancé, Anthony, to be.

‘That’s even more pathetic,’ Tina said. ‘Sleeping with Bob. Fah!’ They stepped out of the terminal and the wind off the bay battered them. ‘Jesus, it’s cold,’ Tina complained. ‘It’s March, for god’s sake. When’s it gonna warm up?’ Claire knew Tina didn’t expect an answer so she didn’t venture one, letting Tina continue her ongoing monologue and possibly well-meaning harassment. ‘It’s warm in San Juan, Claire. Beaches. Casinos. Bars.’

The trouble was that Claire didn’t really like any of those things. She burned in the sun, she’d never gambled – not even on a Lotto ticket – and she hated bars. Though Tina had been her friend since they’d grown up on the same street in Tottenville, there wasn’t much that Tina enjoyed doing that didn’t make Claire bored or uncomfortable or both. People who lived in Manhattan referred to people like Tina as one of the ‘bridge and tunnel crowd’. Though they didn’t take a bridge or a tunnel to get to Manhattan from Staten Island, Claire felt this technicality wouldn’t affect Tina’s status. She was parochial, and not just because of her Catholic school upbringing. Claire hid a smile.

She often thought what a strange, ill-matched pair they made. Tina was tiny and dark, with big breasts she liked to be noticed and she wore bright, tight fitting tops. Her skin was olive and her make-up was dramatic. Claire was tall and, though fifteen pounds overweight, her chest was almost embarrassingly small – god must be a man because a woman god would not let all the weight she put on go to her hips. She had pale, fine skin and eyes that were somewhere between gray and green (but if she was honest – and she always was – closer to gray). Her light brown hair hung straight, cut below the chin in a simple bob. Aside from some pink lip gloss and an occasional (inept) wave of a brown mascara wand, she wore no make-up at all. Now the cold made her lick her lips and wish she’d brought the lip gloss with her.

The buildings on either side of them made a wind tunnel and Claire felt like Dorothy about to be battered by the tornado. Except, of course, there was no Oz. ‘If it’s about the money, hey, I got a few extra bucks,’ Tina offered. Claire blushed. She regretted telling Tina recently that her mother had begun charging rent. ‘Just for you to stay in the room you’ve slept in since you were four years old?’ Tina had demanded, outraged. Claire had nodded. Since Jerry had moved in, her mother seemed more short of cash than ever, though his contribution and the insurance money from her father’s death should have been more than enough for her mother to live on.

‘Ya know, it’s a sin the way your mom treats you. My uncle says if your dad left the house to you, you shouldn’t be payin’ no rent.’ Claire neither pointed out the double negative nor the fact that it was none of Tina’s uncle’s business. Of course, it sometimes seemed that Tina’s uncle – some of her other male relatives too – didn’t have a business. And their wives spent lots of cash and discussed everyone’s. But Claire never criticized – she knew what could happen to people who criticized Tony Brunetti. But if Tina was bossy, judgmental and a gossip, she did have a generous heart. ‘So, you want a loan?’ she asked.

‘No. It’s not that,’ Claire told Tina. They were only a block from the office but the chill was piercing. She tucked her chin down against the wind and tried to adjust her muffler – one she’d knit for herself – so that none of her throat was exposed. At least when they turned the corner, in sight of Sy’s pushcart, the wind abated.

‘Hello, ladies,’ Sy called out over the heads of the other customers on line for their morning caffeine and carbohydrate fix.

‘Hey, Sy!’ Tina replied. ‘Wanna go to Puerto Rico with me?’

‘Nah,’ Sy said. ‘I’d rather stand here in the cold, freezing my nuts off and doling out coffee to rich, cheap bastards.’

The rich cheap bastards on line were too busy reading the Journal headlines or talking on their cell phones to react, but Claire smiled.

‘Yeah. You got the life,’ Tina agreed. When she and Claire got to the front of the line Sy, without needing to be told, put their regular orders into two little bags. He handed them over to the girls with a flourish.

‘Tell ya what,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask my wife’s permission. But screw Puerto Rico. If she says yes we’re going to Aruba.’

‘If she says yes, I’ll buy Aruba,’ Tina wisecracked. ‘Then I’ll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.’

‘Been there, done that. That’s why I’m pushing this cart,’ Sy said. He turned to Claire. ‘But maybe a cutie like you could sell me the Williamsburg.’ He winked.

Tina was rooting around in her gigantic purse. She looked up. ‘Geez, I barely have enough money for Danish and coffee. Hey, Claire, can you lend me a twenty till Friday?’

Sy, still looking at Claire, shook his head. ‘Same shit, ‘nother day,’ he smiled.

Claire nodded, opened her backpack and handed the bill to Tina. ‘Thanks,’ Tina said, and handed the twenty to Sy. ‘My treat.’

Claire smiled. That was so Tina. Always there with her hand out but always willing to share. She’d give you the blouse off her back – but she’d probably already borrowed your money to buy the blouse. Claire was the kind of person who always had money saved to lend to Tina – who was the kind of person who always needed to borrow some. Claire wasn’t old or experienced enough to know the whole world was divided into those two kinds of people, one never happy with the other. She just smiled at her friend as Tina handed Claire the bag of black coffee and a buttered bagel. As they walked from the cart, though, Claire did idly wonder why she was more comfortable lending than borrowing. It certainly wasn’t her mother’s influence. Her mother owed money not only to Claire but also to most of Tottenville. But neither did Claire remember her late father being open-handed with money. Perhaps she didn’t take after either one of them. Despite genetics she had always seemed completely unlike her parents or her brother Fred.

‘My brothers and Anthony went out last night and got hammered,’ Tina said. ‘Boy, were they hung this morning. They said they missed Fred. How is he?’

The truth was Claire had no idea how her brother was. He had joined the Army and had been shipped off to Germany. Claire had written to him dutifully for the first six or eight months after he left but he had rarely responded and when he did it was only with a brief postcard (no picture). As her letters became more and more difficult to write, Claire had admitted to herself that she and Fred never had much in common. So her letters had petered out. That didn’t mean that her guilt did. Aside from Fred and her mom she had no relatives she associated with. There was an aunt on her father’s side, but Claire had been told that the Bilsops had disowned her forever.

Tina, on the contrary, lived amidst scores of complex ongoing relationships: cousins, second cousins, their wives or husbands, godmothers, goddaughters, and dozens of courtesy aunts and uncles where no blood relationship existed at all. Sometimes Claire was turned off by Tina and her boisterous clan, but now and then she was envious of their closeness and even their feuds. You had to care about somebody to bother to fight with them. Now Fred was away, she only had her mother and Jerry, her mom’s repulsive boyfriend.

‘I guess Fred’s okay,’ Claire told Tina. ‘My mother got a card from Dusseldorf.’

‘Dusseldorf? Who’s he?’

Claire just shrugged. She’d decided long ago that educating Tina was not her job.

They arrived at the enormous glass doors to their office building with the usual couple of minutes to get upstairs. The lobby was crowded and the elevator was, as usual, jammed. The ride in the elevator was Claire’s least favorite part of the day. She had told herself over and over that it was only ninety seconds but she still dreaded it. In the summer people’s sweaty bodies were oppressive and in the winter the smell of wet wool was equally unpleasant. But it probably wasn’t the smell as much as the crush. All those strangers’ bodies rubbing. At that very moment Claire felt the breasts and belly of a large woman pushing against her back while in front, inches from her, she faced the wall of a man’s black coat, almost touching it with her nose. Her coffee had to be cradled directly against the tall man’s back. She was waiting for the day when the bag broke.

She was always relieved when the doors opened on the thirty-eighth floor and she could make her way out of what she thought of as ‘the aluminum sauna’. But her relief was almost immediately replaced by dismay as she remembered her next challenge: Once she had said goodbye to Tina she would have to scuttle down the rows of secretarial desks lined up outside the windowed offices which were ranged around the edge of the floor. Then she would have to turn and make her way down the windowless hallway that led to an even deeper corridor. It, in turn, would bring her to the interior room she shared with half a dozen other ‘analysts’, lorded over by Joan, a woman who proved that a little authority could make one a petty tyrant. Another day, another ninety-two dollars take-home Claire thought.

As they filed out of the elevator Claire hunched her shoulders in her habitual way but Tina, beside her, was jaunty, queen of the floor. How could she be so cheery? Maybe it was because Tina worked for Michael Wainwright, otherwise known as ‘Mr Wonderful’. Claire repressed a sigh at the thought of him. All the girls in the office talked about him. He was thirty-one, single, gorgeous, successful, and deeply in love … with himself. He had a hot- and cold-running stream of women, all of them financial executives in size six Prada suits. That wasn’t mentioning the shoes they wore, which cost more than Claire earned in a week. Michael dated them serially, replacing an investment banker with a broker with a fund manager. Secretaries like Tina and analysts like Claire were not his style. Many of them hated him, many admired him, but Claire was the only one who was in love with him. Of course, she wasn’t stupid enough to betray that information to any of her coworkers, not even Tina.

Michael Wainwright had spoken to Claire exactly four times in the eighteen months she’d worked at Crayden Smithers. The first time he’d asked, ‘Would you make five copies of this right away, please?’ The second time he’d said, ‘I need these numbers crunched by this evening.’ The third time – Claire’s favorite – was when she’d delivered a report to his office and he’d said, ‘Thanks. Nice dress.’ The last time was a little over two weeks ago when he had brushed against her on his way out to lunch and said, ‘Oh, sorry.’

They got to Tina’s desk. Claire glanced at the office behind her but couldn’t see Michael Wainwright. ‘I’m meetin’ Anthony tonight,’ Tina said. ‘We’re goin’ to the bridal registry at Macy’s. You wanna go?’

Claire doubted that even Anthony wanted to go. Was the choice that or garroting (something Tina’s uncle might know about)? She just shook her head. ‘No. I want to get home. I have a book to finish.’

Tina shrugged. ‘You and the books.’

Claire shrugged back and refrained from saying ‘You and QVC.’ Then she began the unpleasant route which made her disappear down the corridor like Alice down the rabbit hole.

TWO

‘He ain’t gonna get away with it. Someone should tell him ta get ovah himself,’ Michelle D’annunzio said.

‘Yeah,’ Marie Two agreed, then laughed. ‘But he thinks he’s so big he’d need to mountain climb to get ovah Mr Michael Wainwright.’

Michelle, Joan and Marie Two giggled. Marie One shook her head.

There were three Maries in the office – four if you counted Marie LaPierre, but nobody counted her – so the Maries were called One, Two and Three to avoid confusion. Two of them, along with Joan, Michelle, Tina and Claire, were having their lunch together. It was interesting to Claire to watch how the secretaries’ status was a reflection of whom they worked for. Marie One worked for Mr Bataglia who was middle management – nothing much – and she didn’t get much attention or respect. Marie Two worked for Mr Crayden, Junior who was one of the Craydens of Crayden Smithers. That meant Marie Two was considered much more important than Marie One or almost anyone else. Tina’s work for Mr Wonderful, the golden boy of the firm for the last few years, made her number two or three with a bullet. Michelle worked for the semi-retired David Smithers who was more a phantom than a physical presence. Everyone, it seemed, was more important than Claire, who only worked for Joan. It was a race Claire didn’t mind losing. She actually enjoyed watching the sudden shifts in power that change at the top wreaked on those at the bottom.

‘I don’t think he’s goin’ to get away with it this time,’ Marie One said. She put down her salami and egg sandwich. Then she picked up her Diet Coke and took a slug right from the can. Why, Claire wondered, did people who ate two thousand calories for lunch bother with diet sodas? Marie was still as large as the day that Claire first entered this lunchroom.

‘No. He ain’t,’ Michelle said, then took a bite of her triple-decker sandwich, followed by a potato chip. She didn’t have a problem with weight – she always had all the carbohydrates she desired and never put on an ounce.

‘Sure he will,’ Tina told them. She pushed some of her dark hair back over one ear and took a bite of her turkey club. ‘Hey, his social life is as busy as Grand Central Station, but I’m a great conductor. I keep all the different trains on separate tracks. They never crash into each other.’

Claire didn’t bother to point out that that wasn’t a conductor’s job. Actually, she thought the conductor analogy was an apt one but she would have used the metaphor of a symphony orchestra, not a commuter station. Michael Wainwright had a complicated and splendid private life that, without his knowledge, was public to all of the clerical women on the thirty-eighth floor.

Marie Two gave Tina a sour look. ‘Hey. Tell Mike Engineer that someday two of those engines will crash. And we’ll all be readin’ about it in the Wall Street Journal.’

Joan, the head of the analysts and – aside from Claire – the only woman at the table who wasn’t either a secretary or Italian-American, shook her head. She was a divorced single mother in her mid-thirties and, in Claire’s opinion, justifiably bitter. ‘From your lips to god’s ears,’ Joan said. ‘The bastard deserves it.’

But Claire didn’t think that was fair. Though Michael Wainwright certainly played fast and loose, he could afford to. It wasn’t just the looks, brains and schooling. He was also socially connected. Claire, via Tina, had an almost daily update on whom he was seeing, whom he was about to drop, whom he was adding to his conquest list, and where he was taking his latest date. Claire’s mental calendar, empty of engagements, was full of Mr Wonderful’s life. She wasn’t sure if Tina’s ongoing conversation was good or bad for her private obsession, but she certainly couldn’t ask Tina to stop talking without raising Tina’s always-acute suspicions when it came to romance. And it wasn’t as if Claire even dreamed of any real connection to Michael Wainwright. She knew he traveled in a world of money, entitlement, and the natural aristocracy of beauty and that she didn’t belong in any of those categories. Michael Wainwright was not a romantic possibility and she had no illusions otherwise. But it didn’t mean that she didn’t have feelings. She just kept them to herself. Her interest, she thought, was a kind of hobby – like bird watching.

Tina put down her sandwich and angrily wiped her mouth with a Subway paper napkin. ‘Why does he deserve it?’ she demanded of Joan. ‘He never promises any of them anything. They’re big girls. They can take care of themselves.’ Claire smiled. In public Tina was loyal to Michael but Claire knew that she sometimes warned him of the dating Armageddon that she so nimbly put off.

‘It’s time to get back,’ Joan said primly and looked at Claire. Claire nodded and put her untouched apple back into her bag. Unlike the others, Claire didn’t work for an investment banker. And reporting to Joan didn’t always make life pleasant. She stood up and smiled at Tina, who flipped a bird behind Joan’s back.

Claire’s afternoon was spent doing what seemed like endless revisions to spreadsheets of figures. The worst part about her job was also the best. There were no changes, no surprises, no peaks and valleys. She knew that as soon as she completed an assignment, Joan would hand her another one. Unlike Tina and the three Maries, Claire didn’t get to glimpse the drama going on in and around the windowed offices: she didn’t see the clients arrive, the meetings held in the glass-enclosed conference rooms. She didn’t witness the hirings and firings. But she heard all about them. Sometimes Claire felt her imagination was a better place to view the dramas than in reality. Tina was a kind of human radio – all Tina, all the time – and Claire saw the wins and losses, the corporate coups and the promotions and demotions more vividly in her imagination than if she had seen them in reality.

The problem was that she had time to daydream – too much time – and too many of her daydreams centered around Mr Wonderful. She wondered uncomfortably if it was becoming closer to an obsession than she admitted to herself.

While Claire had the title of ‘analyst’ she wasn’t much more than an educated clerk. Of course none of the secretaries were called secretaries, either. They were ‘Administrative Assistants’ (though they all expected gifts and flowers on Secretaries’ Day). But the two groups had something important in common: there was nowhere for either analysts or administrative assistants to advance to within Crayden Smithers. After a decade of service you weren’t promoted to investment banker. At best, you might get Joan’s job. Not that Claire wanted it. Joan was the sphincter muscle in the bowels of Crayden Smithers.

That evening at five to five she was almost finished compiling a statistical table – she hated typing statistics – and stayed until a quarter after to get it done. It was unusual because, unlike the secretaries, the analysts had scheduled hours and usually left on the dot of five. Only Joan had to stay on to complete paperwork and arrange for temps or overtime work.

Now, as Joan put on her coat, she eyed Claire. ‘Don’t stay past six,’ she warned.

Claire smiled and nodded. The rule at Crayden Smithers was that an hour or more of overtime guaranteed a car service ride home. Of course, a ride to Tottenville meant going through Brooklyn, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and half of Staten Island. It was a two-hundred-and-ten-dollar fare in a chauffeured Mercedes. ‘We don’t have the budget for that,’ Joan told her as she walked out the door.

‘I know,’ Claire called after her. There, alone for the first time in more than eight hours, she took a deep breath. The commute this evening would be less brutal than at peak hours, though the wait would be longer. Getting to Tottenville after rush hour was the slow hour – or maybe two or three. Ferries, trains and buses didn’t run frequently. Everyone in Tottenville called Manhattan ‘The City’ – even though Staten Island was part of New York. Staten Islanders felt forgotten and inferior to the other boroughs. They were always coming up with new resentments and plans to secede. Her father had always said the place was too small to be a city but too large to be an asylum. Despite the four hours a day, lots of people made the long commute because they wanted to live in what seemed like – and what had once been – a small, waterside town within the New York City boundaries. But for Claire it was all tiresome, with nothing much waiting for her at either end.

Now she decided she would stop in a diner near the ferry terminal, have a salad for dinner, and then, she thought guiltily, maybe pie à la mode. Well, with or without dessert she wouldn’t go home until the rush was completely over. She was too tired to fight the crowd, for the long wait to board and perhaps having to stand for the whole ride. If she waited that would also mean she wouldn’t have to eat with Jerry and her mother. Now she’d be able to read while she ate, another guilty pleasure. She looked down into her bag. She had her knitting, and beside it was The Passion by Jeanette Winterson. Claire was almost halfway through, at that delicious place where she felt compelled to go on reading yet didn’t want the book to end. She felt herself looking forward to her modest evening, her little dinner, a special dessert (she would have the pie) and her book as company.

She sighed. She often wanted to read on the ferry but if she was with Tina – and she almost always was – it was impossible without offending her. That was one of the reasons she carried her knitting. Tina teased her, but it was something to do while Tina nattered on.

Claire finished the statistics, hit the print button and gathered up her belongings while the document rolled into the waiting basket. She was just putting on her new coat – a light green one that she thought complemented her eyes – when Mr Wonderful, Mr Michael Wonderful Wainwright himself, stepped into the room. It was a jolt because no matter how good he looked in her daydreams he was so much better in reality. He was slightly taller than Claire, his posture perfect, his chest broad and taut through his dress shirt. Mr Wonderful’s light blond hair was shiny in the fluorescent light of the office. As he surveyed the room with his hazel-colored eyes he almost looked through her. Claire froze then reminded herself to continue putting her arm into the sleeve of her coat. ‘Where’s Joan?’ he asked.

‘Joan’s left for the day,’ she told him, sounding more calm than she felt. She was afraid she’d begun to blush. She looked away from him, down at her bag. She picked it up and placed it carefully on her chair. Something to do. Keep busy and her eyes to herself. She also had to change into her sneakers but was embarrassed to do it in front of him.

She figured he’d leave then, but was startled by a loud thumping noise. She looked up to see Mr Wonderful had hit Joan’s desk with a thick document. ‘Shit!’ he said. Then he turned back to her and smiled. His smile was devastating, if not sincere. As irresistible as a frozen Mars bar in July and probably just as bad for her. ‘You don’t know where the Worthington numbers are, do you, Karen?’

‘Yes,’ she said. She went to the printer bin and held out the still-warm pages. ‘They’re here. And it’s Claire.’

‘Claire?’ he asked and looked down at the report in her hands as if she was talking about the document.

‘My name,’ she said. ‘Not Karen. It’s Claire.’

He reached for the print-out then looked into her face as he took the pages from her. ‘Of course. Claire,’ he said. ‘I was so panicked over this damn thing that I forgot. Excuse me.’ The closest Michael Wainwright had come to panic, Claire thought, was probably the day he feared he wouldn’t get into the right eating club at Yale. She just nodded and went back to her desk expecting him to go.

She picked up her tote bag, took out her sneakers and was about to sit down to put them on when she realized Mr Wonderful was still there. He was paging through the stats, then he looked right up at her. One of the shoes slipped out of Claire’s hand and bounced on the floor.

‘Look, Ka – uh, Claire,’ Michael Wainwright said. ‘I already know I’ve made a couple of mistakes in this thing. We’re meeting on it tomorrow morning and I’ll look like a total fuck-up if I don’t have it right.’ He paused. She was afraid to reach for her dropped shoe so she just stood there, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Michael Wainwright walked over to her, bent gracefully to the floor and, with the report in one hand and her sneaker in the other, offered her the shoe with a princely flourish. She reached for it and he, as if in return for the favor, raised his eyebrows in a faux pleading look. ‘Do you think you could stay just a little while longer and make a couple of corrections for me?’

Of course. Some prince. But her hand actually tingled, holding the old sneaker that his hand had touched. She told herself she was a very foolish girl, then nodded her head because her neck seemed to work, though her tongue didn’t.

‘You will?’ he said in a voice that sounded less than surprised. ‘That’s great.’ He turned and shuffled a few pages, scribbling with a red pen. Claire struggled out of her coat and stowed her purse – along with the errant shoe – under her desk. She glanced up at the clock. It was already five-forty and she doubted she’d be out by six but she wouldn’t forget Joan’s directive about the car service. Claire wondered if it had gotten a lot colder, and how often the buses from the ferry ran after seven.

‘Hey,’ Michael Wainwright said. ‘Take a look.’ She stood beside him and looked at the papers spread in front of her. ‘Here are my corrections,’ he said, pointing to more than a dozen pages slashed with red. ‘And could you check my tabulations and change this to a bar chart?’ To her concern the changes looked like the kind of statistical work which was painstakingly slow to correct. And if she changed the layout of the chart, it would need reformatting. And that would probably alter the pagination of the rest of the report. Then she’d have to page preview the entire thing before she printed it out, just to be sure there were no widows or orphans.

‘Can you do it?’ he asked, and it was, of course, impossible to say no. Unfortunately it was equally impossible to say yes, since she couldn’t speak. She was close enough to him to smell his scent – some kind of soap and perhaps just a hint of a clean cologne as well as something that smelled like … like fresh starch. How, she wondered, could he still smell fresh at six o’clock? He was pointing to one of the changes and she noticed that his cuff was whiter even than the printer paper. Yeah. And her sneakers smelled. ‘Will it take long?’ he asked, interrupting her self-loathing.

Claire shook her head and then managed to find her tongue. ‘About two hours, I think,’ she told him.

‘Great!’ he said. ‘You’re a lifesaver.’ He gathered up the pile of papers and handed them to her. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait in my office. And let me buy you dinner.’

THREE

Not counting the time Claire spent nearly fainting, then the dance she did around the room, it still took her a little longer to finish the Worthington revisions than it should have because she kept forgetting formatting codes and her fingers trembled for a long while after Michael Wainwright left the room. She also couldn’t stop herself from imagining what it would be like sitting across from that face for an hour. Would he ask her questions about herself or talk about his own life? What in the world would she say? Somehow she doubted he was interested in the kitchner stitch. Perhaps, she thought, Cinderella would get to go to the ball. Of course, she told herself, Michael Wainwright wasn’t interested in her, but even if the shoe didn’t fit she could wear it for one night.

She was hungry and tired by the time she was through, but she was also elated by the prospect of dinner with Mr Wonderful. She proofread the pages twice just to be sure that there wasn’t a single typo then printed the final draft out on high rag content bond. Ready to run it in to him she stopped her frantic activity, uncertain for a moment. Should she put on her coat and meet him ready to go out to eat, or just bring the document over then go back for her things? Perhaps she should call him. She knew his extension number was just one digit different than Tina’s, so she took a deep breath, sat down and dialed. He answered on the first ring. ‘It’s … it’s Claire,’ she said. ‘I’m finished.’

‘Terrific. Do you mind bringing it to my office?’

‘Not at all,’ Claire said and heard how stiff it sounded. ‘Sure,’ she added. ‘Right away.’

She emptied her bulky bag of her knitting, her sneakers, her book and her muffler. She put on her new green coat, smoothed it and checked the pocket for tissue since she was starting to get the sniffles. Then she quickly ran a brush through her hair and wished she’d remembered her lip gloss. But she was flushed with exhilaration, and as she glanced at herself in the mirror hidden behind the supply closet door, she was actually pleased with what she saw. She regretted not having the silk scarf she’d bought to go with the coat but it had been far too cold this morning to wear that. Oh well. Her muffler would do.

She walked out of the windowless maze and over to Tina’s desk. The office behind it had a single light on and in the shadowy room she could see Michael Wainwright at his PC, apparently still working. We’ve been working together, she thought and smiled. That and her new coat gave her the courage to enter his lair with a bit of confidence. ‘Here it is,’ she said, walking up to his desk. He continued working at his keyboard. She put the report down in front of him.

‘Thank god!’ a voice behind her said. Claire spun around. A slim, dark woman was sitting on the sofa behind her. Her legs, up on the coffee table, were crossed neatly at the ankles. Even though the light in that corner was dim, Claire could see the elegance of the cut of her hair and her gray suit. Claire didn’t know all the female investment bankers on the floor by name but she certainly would have noticed this chic woman. Was she a client from Worthington? ‘I’m absolutely famished,’ the woman said. Her voice was clear, her accent as polished as her obviously costly heels.

‘Me, too,’ Michael Wainwright agreed. Then he turned from the PC and looked up at Claire. For a panicked moment she thought he might invite the woman along for dinner. But perhaps Ms Chic just wanted the report and would be off to some elegant penthouse or spacious loft to study it overnight. Claire fervently hoped so. Mr Wonderful picked up the document, slipped it into his briefcase and stood up. ‘Ready to go?’ he asked.

Claire nodded, grateful she had worn her new coat. She could see that in comparison with the other woman’s clothes it was a cheap and shoddy thing but at least it was a hell of a lot better than her old one. ‘I’m all ready,’ she said.

Michael Wainwright and Ms Chic rose together. They both grabbed their own coats. Claire was ushered out the door in front of them and, to her dismay they walked as a trio to the elevator. In the fluorescent light of the hallway Claire could see the woman was about her age, with perfect skin, a size eight figure and the long legs of a fashion model. The shoes were spectacular, very sexy in contrast to the restraint of the suit. Claire hoped the woman would break a slender ankle.

‘Thanks a lot for doing this for me,’ Michael Wainwright said as they got into the elevator.

‘I can’t believe it took so long,’ Ms Chic complained.

‘I’m sorry,’ Claire apologized, then wanted to bite her tongue.

To make it worse the woman smiled at her. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s Michael’s,’ she said, dismissing Claire and focusing on Michael Wainwright’s face. She was not only much thinner but a little taller than Claire, and now she gave Mr Wonderful a look over Claire’s head. ‘You’re so inconsiderate,’ she told him.

Claire didn’t like her tone: it was provocative in the same way her shoes were.

‘Jesus, Kate, give it a rest,’ Michael Wainwright told her. When the elevator opened he allowed the two women to precede him into the deserted lobby, Ms Chic’s heels tap-tapping on the marble floor. At the huge glass doors of the building entrance a uniformed guard rushed up.

‘Let me unlock it for you, Mr Wainwright,’ he offered. Claire looked out into the dark. It was raining ferociously, but Claire was delighted to see a black sedan waiting at the curbside. She only realized the implication of a single car as the door was unlocked. Was this Kate going to go to dinner with them after all? Claire should have known not to get her hopes up or expect too much. She sighed.

Hearing her, Michael looked down at the top of her head. ‘You must be exhausted,’ he said. ‘Should I have Gus here call you a car?’

For a moment Claire was completely confused. He seemed to be looking at her but was he asking this Kate woman the question? Claire said nothing. Michael continued to look at her. Did he want to take two cars? Did he still have business to discuss with Kate before their dinner? What should she do? Now she felt both Gus’s and Kate’s eyes on her.

‘No, thank you,’ she said and hoped it was the right answer. What was going on?

Michael shrugged. ‘Okay. Well, thanks again.’ He turned then paused and put his hand into his pocket. He drew out his wallet and turned back to her. ‘I almost forgot,’ he told Claire. ‘I’m buying you dinner.’ He took out a crisp hundred-dollar bill and handed it to Claire. In her embarrassment and horror she accepted it. She felt tears rising, her throat closing.

‘Have a nice evening,’ Michael Wainwright said. ‘Good night, Gus.’ He took the chic Kate’s arm and the two of them stepped out the door, almost running through the freezing downpour to the warm waiting car.

‘What a great guy,’ Gus said.

‘He’s the best.’ Claire sighed and Gus missed her disappointment and sarcasm.

FOUR

‘Yeah,’ Tina said. ‘Katherine Rensselaer. She’s new. She works for the Ford Foundation.’ Claire wondered why only the rich worked for philanthropists. She doubted there was one Hispanic single mother from the Bronx in charge of giving out charity. ‘He hasn’t dropped Blaire, but Kate is moving up fast. And Courtney is over. She just doesn’t know it yet.’

Claire sneezed. The weather had turned warm again and the sunlight glanced off the water of New York harbor. But the beautiful light only hurt Claire’s watering eyes.

‘Want a tissue?’ Tina offered.

Claire shook her head. ‘I brought some. I knew I was coming down with this cold yesterday.’

She had left the lobby humiliated, too embarrassed to go back upstairs for her sneakers, knitting or book. She’d gone out into the downpour without an umbrella and her muffler was drenched before she got to the corner. It had been hideously dark, no cabs in sight and, despite her hunger, she’d been too sick to her stomach to consider eating. Anyway, eating alone with nothing to read was no treat. In fact, on her wet and lonely walk to the ferry it had struck her as pathetic to eat alone at all.

Now she fished in her purse, pulled out a tissue, and blew her nose. She pinched her nostrils hard, but it wasn’t just because they were streaming. She wanted to pinch herself, to remind herself not to be so stupid ever, ever again. Her watery eyes cleared a little as two tears ran down her cheeks.

‘That’s some cold! You know, a beach would bake it right out of you. I’m getting our tickets today. It’s your last chance,’ Tina coaxed.

‘No thanks.’ Despite Claire’s intentions, tears continued to rise in and then fall from her eyes. She blindly reached for another tissue and pulled out what she thought was a crumpled one only to find it was actually the damp hundred-dollar bill. She’d gripped it in her hand last night until, after more than an hour, she’d realized it was there. Then she’d thrown it angrily into her bag. Now, of course, Tina spotted it.

‘Where’d you get that, just before pay day?’ Tina asked. ‘Did your mother finally feel guilty and decide to do the right thing?’

Claire pushed the money into her pocket, though she would have preferred to throw it over the side of the ferry. She sniffed. Despite her lack of Kleenex, she couldn’t stop her nose from running or her tears from escaping. She felt as if her whole head was leaking. ‘I’m going to run to the ladies’ room before we get to Manhattan,’ Claire said, ignoring Tina’s question.

In the ferry’s dim, gray-painted head she had a long cry in a stall. For a few moments she wished she were under the hull, down at the bottom of the harbor. Was it possible to cry under water? The thought made her stop and she got up and began to clean herself up at the sink. But the dented metal mirror over it gave her something else to cry about. She looked awful. She was actually grateful to her cold for giving her an excuse for the swollen eyes, the pink nose, the pallor, and the chapped, cracked lips she’d been biting since last night. As she looked at her image, the memory of Katherine Rensselaer’s came to her unbidden: the perfect skin, the understated clothes that discreetly announced big money, the well-cut glossy hair. Even her name was distinguished. Wasn’t there a city named Rensselaer in Connecticut or Pennsylvania?

Claire pulled out a comb and tried to give her hair some order while she wondered what it would be like to have your name on a place. Claire Amelia Tottenville. Ha! Even considering the dump her hometown was the name sounded more important. At least more important than Claire Amelia Bilsop.

As she was putting the comb away she felt the ferry bump gently. They were docking. How long had she been in here? Tina would be furious, waiting on the other side of the gangplank for her, angrily tapping her foot as the hordes of other commuters barreled past. As if Sy would give away her buttered roll. Claire, in the hold, knew all of the top and main deck would have to clear before she had a chance to get off and Tina would berate her along Water Street. Claire began to tear up again. She wasn’t sure she could stand it, or stand Joan’s questions about the Worthington work, or stand to look through her wet, tired eyes at today’s page of meaningless numbers until they blurred. The enclosed space of the toilet was unpleasant, but Claire realized that she felt safer there than she would feel once she was out. She wasn’t sure how she would make it through the day. But since she didn’t have a choice she shouldered her purse and stepped out to find Tina, waiting in exactly the attitude that Claire had predicted.

Claire kept her head down, literally and figuratively, during the walk to work, the stop for coffee, the entry into the lobby, the more-than-usually ghastly ride up in the elevator, and her scurry to her desk. She stowed her bag and hung her coat, and continued to hang her head. She didn’t know whose gaze she was avoiding; she almost never saw Michael Wainwright, and the Kate woman certainly wouldn’t be around. Gus, the guard, must be on the night shift. Nobody else had witnessed the event. In fact, it had been a non-event to Mr Wonderful and his woman of the day.

Yet, as she signed on, Claire realized the non-event had caused some seismic activity within her psyche, some significant rift. And the exposed subterranean gap seemed so horrifically visible to Claire that, somehow, she thought it must be visible to everyone.

As she sat at her desk and opened the bag holding her coffee and bagel, she realized that a belief she’d always held about herself might not be true. She had always ascribed her lack of passion to her own nature – reserved, introverted, shy, whatever. And she had never taken the crush that she had on Mr Wonderful seriously. She looked at it as a kind of avocation, not something you made a life’s work or took too seriously. But when he – as she had mistakenly thought – invited her to dinner, something had happened. Some feeling had burst through the scrim of her emotional life and flooded her with an undeniable joy. It had felt so intense, so complete, that to deny it would be a kind of sin. It had filled her to her very borders. In that hour or two of anticipation she had felt all of herself alive and knew how big she was capable of being, how much larger her repertoire of feelings was. Now, her limited life, her few outlets restricted her and she felt pain. It was as if she was a brilliant concert pianist who had always been forced to play with only one hand. Last night, for a few precious hours, both of her hands had been freed. This morning, knowing that she had to go back to living with a single hand, the future didn’t seem bleak – it seemed impossible.

She looked down at the keyboard in front of her, placing her hands on the home keys. A tear dropped onto her thumb but she wiped it away quickly. She spread out the work Joan had already assigned her and began. But she had trouble. Each dull line of figures was followed by yet another dull line followed by yet another … it seemed as if reading them or typing them into her consciousness and then onto the screen was building her into a prison, line by line, number by number.

She couldn’t imagine how to recover from this. Perhaps if she went out, had lunch alone, got an ice cream sundae and licked the spoon while she licked her wounds, she’d feel better. Something sweet with butterscotch sauce would be so … so soothing. But Tina wouldn’t stand for it unless she came too and that would spoil everything.

The odd thing was that even without telling Tina, with no one at all – even chic Kate or Mr Wonderful – knowing about her foolish misconstrual, Claire was experiencing such deep shame that it felt unbearable. She realized she had never known what that word meant until now, for, bearing the shame, she could hardly lift her head or her shoulders. No beast should be asked to carry such a burden.

Her cold gave her the pretext for her pink eyes and her posture. Luckily, there was a lot of work and no time for anyone else to notice her, at least not until eleven when Marie Two came in and started some kind of argument with Joan. Marie Two worked for Mr Crayden, Junior, and she was very particular about the research done for him. She often asked specifically for Claire but that was against Joan’s policy. Not that Marie Two believed in any policy but her own. Claire ignored their conversation until the volume rose. And she heard her name. Then Joan and Marie were standing at her desk. ‘She’s already working on …’ Joan was saying.

‘I don’t give a shit what she’s working on. Mr Crayden needs this and Boynton’s stuff can wait.’

‘You can’t just come in here …’

‘Watch me.’ Claire lifted her head. Marie Two was standing before her with a thick sheaf of papers. ‘God, you look sick,’ Marie Two said.

‘I’ve caught a cold.’

‘No shit, Sherlock. You shouldn’t be here with that. A, you should be in bed. And B, you’ll get everyone else here sick, too.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Claire apologized.

‘Madonne! What’s wrong with you, Joan?’ Marie Two asked, glad to use any excuse against her enemy. ‘Can’t you see you should send her home?’

Suddenly the idea of her bed, her pillows and the puffy quilt over her seemed not only irresistible but imperative to Claire. Her mother and Jerry would be out of the house. There would be silence and comfort. A cup of hot, hot tea. Then a nap. And maybe, after that, some soup with buttered toast. She could eat and drink and read in bed without her mother accusing her of being antisocial. And if she used up an entire box of tissues from mopping her brimming eyes, she had an excuse: she was sick.

‘Do you think you have a fever?’ Marie Two asked and, like the practiced mother she was, placed a hand on Claire’s forehead. ‘You’re burning up,’ she said. ‘Joan, call the car service.’

‘She lives all the way in Staten Island. And I don’t have a client to charge it to. Boynton’s over budget,’ Joan protested.

‘Oh, charge it to Cigna. Mr Lymington puts his Cuban cigars on their expense sheet. What the hell will one taxi ride matter?’

Claire sat there passively as if they weren’t talking about her. She felt light-headed and distant, as if she was already slowly moving away from them in a vehicle. Donna, the apprehensive analyst who sat beside her, was looking from Marie Two to Joan. So, Claire finally noticed, were the rest of the analysts in the room. Her shame and misery would be complete, if she could feel anything. But she was beyond that.

‘She’ll get us all sick,’ Donna said. ‘There’s no air circulation in here.’

A buzz of conversation began but Joan put a stop to it by raising the phone to her ear. ‘I’m sending you home,’ she told Claire, as if the idea had come to her spontaneously.

The rest was a blur. A car was called. Marie Two bundled Claire into her coat, Donna carried her purse and knitting bag and they took her to the elevator. ‘Car number 317,’ Donna said. ‘That bitch Joan didn’t want to do it,’ she whispered. ‘Like it’s her money.’

The elevator arrived. Claire wobbled as she got into it. ‘You okay?’ Marie Two asked. ‘I gotta get back to Mr Crayden or he’ll pitch a fit. Just go outside. The car will be right there.’ Claire nodded as the doors slid closed. In the still moment before the elevator began its descent Claire began to cry again. Oddly, the unexpected kindness of people – in movies, on television or in books – always made her cry and now, as the actual recipient of the concern, she began to sob again. It wasn’t just about her cold, or the miserable scene the night before, or the collapse of her small hope. Her entire life, suddenly, felt pitiable. In that moment, in the elevator, she had a glimpse of herself as others probably saw her: a single, slightly overweight woman still living at home and working in a dead-end job. No profession, no romantic prospects, and nothing likely to change.

The elevator continued its downward trip as Claire’s feelings continued to sink. Why, she asked herself, didn’t she have an ambition, a goal? Why was this good enough for her? She had run out of energy. Worse, as the elevator reached the lobby she realized she’d run out of Kleenex again. There was no way she could be seen in this condition, but though she scrabbled through her purse and pockets she had nothing at all to absorb her tears and smears. All pride gone, just as the doors opened on the lobby, she wiped her nose and her eyes on the cuff of her new green coat, now so despised that it didn’t matter to her at all.

Then, as she stepped out onto the marble floor of the lobby she was almost pushed over by Michael Wonderful Wainwright. He grabbed her arm – the snot-free one – and steadied her. ‘Sorry,’ he said then looked at her for another moment. ‘Claire? Is that you?’ She was beyond face-saving, beyond artifice, beyond caring.

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sick?’

‘Yes,’ she repeated. He probably expected some sort of minimizing explanation, one that would make him feel better. That she was mildly flu-ish, not to worry, it was just allergies/sinus/pneumonia/SARS/plague and he shouldn’t be concerned. The cancer of hope was in remission.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. She wondered idly how many times he’d already said that word to her.

‘I’m going home,’ she told him and pulled her arm away.

‘Okay. Well, I hope you feel better. And thanks for that work last night. It really saved my ass.’

She just looked at him for another moment and told herself to remember forever that men like Mr Wonderful did not ask women like Claire out for dinner. They asked them for favors, for notice, for admiration. They asked them to balance their checkbook, to juggle their love life, to pick up their tuxedo from the dry cleaners, to shop for a gift for their client, mother, or lover. They had them order out, order flowers, order supplies. Then they gave them a hundred bucks. She’d been stupid and deluded and ridiculous to think otherwise.

‘I have to go,’ she said and tried to turn and walk away with a shred of dignity. Impossible when you were holding a knitting bag and had a runny nose.

It was only when she walked out of the lobby that she recalled she still had the hundred-dollar bill in her pocket. She wished she had remembered that before so she could have given it back to him. The car was waiting. Claire sank into the back, more grateful for the shelter than she ever had been for anything.

‘Tottenville?’ the driver asked. ‘Staten Island, yes?’ Claire nodded, put her head down and closed her swollen eyes.

Perhaps she slept. Perhaps she dreamed something. She wasn’t sure. When the car pulled up to her house she roused herself. The long ride was over. Claire, feverish and achy, reached into her purse, took out the hundred and handed the bill to the driver. ‘But is paid for,’ he protested.

‘It’s a tip.’

‘But tip is paid, too.’

‘Keep it,’ she said. ‘I don’t need it.’

Almost tipsy, she got out of the car and slammed the door. If only it was that easy to get Mr Wonderful out of her life.

FIVE

Claire was in bed for five days. It was, after the first twenty-four hours, only a mild cold. Once she managed to stop crying she only had to put up with a runny nose for another day or two. She felt weak all over and the indignity of a nose that glowed from chafing was unpleasant. But it was the pain in her chest, which wasn’t bronchitis, that took longer to heal.

After surprising the car service driver with the outrageous tip Claire slept away all of the afternoon and most of the night. The next day she napped fitfully and was up until the small hours. She didn’t eat or bathe. When she woke she, mercifully, couldn’t remember the exact details of her dreams but she knew that in each one she had been humiliated. Michael Wainwright’s face had appeared at least once, but it had been twisted in malicious laughter. The evening of the second day, her mother brought her up a plate of meatloaf and macaroni and cheese – two of Jerry’s favorites – but Claire merely shook her head and her mother took it away. The act of going down to the kitchen and making toast and tea felt overwhelmingly difficult, and swallowing it was impossible. She couldn’t even manage to hold a book up to read. Claire went back to sleep.

When Claire woke at three that morning she took out her knitting. She was just binding off a waistcoat she had made for Tina’s dad. Tina had picked the yarn and the pattern. It was a variegated worsted, Claire’s least favorite yarn, in a profusion of browns and oranges, colors that Claire didn’t much care for either. She was grateful that the pattern was a one-piece so she didn’t have to sew it together. Finishing it wasn’t particularly satisfying, but neither was Claire’s life, she reflected.

At a little before four she put down the circular needle and got out of bed to lay out the garment on her bureau. She felt light-headed and empty, but it was the middle of the night so she didn’t want to go downstairs to the kitchen. She’d once run into Jerry, standing nude in front of the open refrigerator, illuminated by its light. Instead of taking the chance of letting that happen she opened the bottom drawer of her bureau and looked at the treasures inside.

Whenever Claire was sad or bored or lonely she made her way to one of the many knitting stores she knew and let herself be tempted by the beautiful colors, the delicious textures, and the promises that all the seductive yarn whispered to her. Now, spread in front of her, were the spoils from those frequent jaunts. Despite her misery Claire was moved, as she always was, by the colorful chaos. She took out her favorite, a costly and luxurious cashmere, in a color that was somewhere between blush and the inside of a shell. It was a very fine ply, and Claire had decided long ago to knit a sweater of it for herself in a tiny and complex cable pattern. She laid the skeins on her bed, then – after long consideration – fetched a pair of size three wooden needles from her knitting basket. She had saved the directions for the sweater though she thought she could do it without following the pattern.

With a cable sweater she only had to resort to the pattern for the first full cable. Once she’d cast that on and knew the number of rows in between the cable twists she very seldom needed the pattern again. She got back into bed. It was windy, and she could hear the bare tree branches being whipped against the house by the wind. She felt cozy, tucked under her blankets, the cashmere on her lap. As she began to work she found that she would have to be certain to check the position of the twist and not forget to alternate between the front and back with the cable holder. With her state of mind now, she knew she’d welcome the concentration this project would require. As her fingers manipulated the needles she was especially attentive to what she was doing.

She spent the next couple of days knitting, reading, sleeping, watching a few television programs and licking her wounds. She wished she had her own VCR so she could watch tapes up in her room because she didn’t want to go downstairs to her mother’s TV in the evenings. When Jerry came in he wanted to watch Cops or Junkyard Wars. Instead she stayed upstairs and finished the Jeanette Winterson book. Crying over it helped put things into perspective. Her life could be worse.

Tina was concerned. When she came over for a visit, Claire pretended to be truly ill and kept the visits short. But she knew the retreat couldn’t last forever.

Finally, on Sunday, she was over it. She had decided her silly idea that a man like Michael Wainwright could possibly have been interested in her – even for a moment – was not painful as much as ridiculous. She forced herself to remember who she was, where she lived and the small pleasures that she had. She would find more of them, go to some theater, buy her own VCR. She’d register at a gym. Since graduation her size kept creeping up and the desk job had helped her waist and hips spread. But a benefit of her illness was that she’d lost weight. She’d work out. Not, of course, that that was a pleasure nor that it was easy – she wasn’t comfortable in the expensive, high class gyms in lower Manhattan and she was tired from her commute when she came back to Tottenville. But she would do it and, she decided, she’d let Tina’s mother – a hairdresser – streak her hair.

But those things wouldn’t change much and the Worthington incident – as she was now calling it – had showed her the sheer smallness of her life. And Claire knew that reading, knitting and watching television, no matter how uplifting the program, would alter nothing.

Yet she couldn’t think of an alteration she could make. She wasn’t a badly cut pair of trousers. She was simply a rather timid young woman with solitary interests. She didn’t know if she read and knit because she had never been social, or if her social failures had driven her to her isolated life. And what could she do to change it? Go out with Tina’s cousins and in-laws and the brothers of her friends, all men she had nothing in common with and who saw her as a plain brown wren? What was the point?

Go back to school? How would she pay for it? Travel? Alone? And to where? Join a club? A book circle? Go online to find friends, or even a soul mate?

Claire cringed at the thought of all of it. She simply wasn’t a joiner. She crawled back into her bed. Even if she did put herself ‘out there’ the same thing would happen as always had. If a local hitter approached her she’d be bored, and if someone intelligent and attractive (by a miracle) spoke to her she’d freeze tighter than a jammed photocopier. No one would notice her and she would stand – or sit – on the fringes with nothing to do or say. She even considered, but only briefly, taking Tina up on her invitation to go on vacation but quickly – really quickly – got over that. She might have had a fever but she wasn’t delirious. What she did instead was call Tina and ask if her mom would do her hair. ‘Come right the fuck over,’ Tina said.

‘Tonight?’ Claire asked. ‘It’s late.’

‘Hey, you’re only about five years late. My mom figured we’d have to wait until you went gray before she could do you.’

So Claire dressed and went over. Tina and Annamarie, her mom, fussed over her. ‘Worst haircut I ever saw,’ Annamarie said. ‘It’s like three cuts on one head.’ So, mostly out of wounded pride, Claire let them cut and streak her hair.

She was surprised by the result. Instead of the brassy colors that Annamarie – the queen of Big Hair – usually favored, she used subtle honey blondes that blended with Claire’s natural light brown. And the feathering gave her fine hair some body. ‘The secret to this cut is Product,’ Annamarie told her as she held up a mirror. ‘You need a conditioner, a thickener, and a finishing gel.’ Claire couldn’t imagine putting more things on her head than she had members in her family but, looking in the mirror, she was pleased.

Monday morning she was dressed and composed when Tina came by to go to work.

‘You look much better. The haircut, and I think you lost a little weight in your face from the flu,’ Tina reported.

It was an unseasonably warm day, and the two of them were sitting in the sun on the benches on the side of the ferry protected from the wind. Claire had her knitting out but it lay, untouched, on her lap. She felt as weak as a convalescent and held her face up to the sun as if she needed to drink in vitamins.

‘Though you sure could use a little color,’ Tina added. ‘Last chance for Puerto Rico.’

Claire couldn’t withhold a sigh. Gone for a week, but the conversation continued without a stitch dropped. She closed her eyes and remained silent wondering, not for the first time, why Tina wouldn’t want to be alone with Anthony. Claire couldn’t imagine wanting to take Tina away on a trip with a lover – if she ever had the chance to make such a trip. She wondered if that made her a less loyal friend or less co-dependent. Or, perhaps, both.

‘So guess what happened with my boss?’ Tina asked. Claire was grateful she had her eyes closed. It made it easier to keep her face blank.

‘He’s at that ultimatum stage again,’ Tina was saying. ‘He wants to keep Katherine around but she’s found out about the on-again-off-again with Blaire and she’s insisting he break it off with Blaire or else.’

‘And will he?’ Claire asked, her tone neutral.

‘Get a grip,’ Tina said and laughed. ‘And even if he did, he’s obstinate and doesn’t like to be told what to do. If it wasn’t Blaire it would be someone else. His big mistake is being honest with them when they ask and theirs is asking.’ She shook her head. ‘Courtney hung onto him for almost a year because she never asked him what he was doin’ on the nights and weekends he didn’t spend with her.’ Tina shrugged. ‘But he ditched her anyway, in the end.’

‘That’s the fate of all his women, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah,’ Tina agreed. ‘He’s the bomb. The only difference is how long they last and whether or not there’s a scene at the end.’

‘Speaking of the end, we’re about to dock,’ Claire said and rose.

‘God, I’m hungry!’ Tina said, as always moving like clockwork to the next item on the agenda. ‘I hope Sy saves the biggest Danish for me.’

Claire gave her a forced smile and filed down the gangplank with everyone else, and they made their walk up Water Street along with a portion of the crowd. A helicopter hovered overhead and Claire imagined from that height all of them must look like ants purposefully streaming into their anthills.

Claire sighed. After her week off, the commute and the job seemed more oppressive than ever. She thought again about going back to college, getting a BA in library science, but what was the point? Libraries were closing down every day in New York. Her own Staten Island branch was only open three days a week – and only in the mornings on Saturday. She simply had to face the fact that she was a caterpillar – albeit a thinner one than she had been – and wouldn’t even graduate to moth, much less butterfly. Claire Bilsop, the social caterpillar.

And now she no longer had her pathetic, secret little crush to dream about, to keep her from loneliness. Nor would she let herself take on a new one, not that she admired any of the other swaggering investment bankers. What was the point? She would deceive and distract herself no longer.

So in a way, the incident with Mr Wonderful had had a salutary effect. It had been a kind of vaccination. A little bit of deadly Mr Wonderful in her blood stream had had its toxic effect, but after a brief illness she had built up Mr Wonderful antibodies.

As they all sat over the lunch table later that day, the conversation drifted back and forth in its usual desultory way. When Tina contributed anything about her boss, Claire was relieved to find herself no longer hungrily grabbing at each syllable, filing it away for future contemplation. She blocked it.

‘Jeez, you look skinny,’ Marie One said to Claire. ‘It must be the new cut.’ They had, of course, focused on Claire’s new hairstyle and everybody approved, except Joan, which made Claire feel certain that it suited her. She didn’t welcome the attention, but she had expected it. She had borrowed a dress and matching jacket from her mother – a black knit with flecks of beige. She felt that after her absence she might as well look good, but Joan narrowed her eyes as if she suspected Claire had never been ill at all.

‘Hey. She was sick. Lay off,’ Tina said.

‘You want some liverwurst?’ Marie Two asked. ‘I got plenty.’

‘Now that would make her puke,’ Michelle said, to be rewarded with a look from Marie Two. Michelle always felt she was better than Marie Two because she had worked for Smithers longer than Marie had for Crayden.

‘Like you can cook,’ Tina replied.

The talk moved to recipes and Claire was glad she was no longer the focus. She was concentrating on chewing and swallowing her egg salad sandwich, though it tasted like sawdust.

‘Vic wants us to go to Vegas, but I said fagetaboutit,’ Marie One said. ‘Last time we went to Atlantic City he dropped six hundred bucks cash,’ she continued as she nervously twirled her diamond ring around her tiny finger. ‘I didn’t know it, but he also got cash advances on our Visa and MasterCard.’

‘I don’t believe in gambling,’ Joan said. ‘Not even the lottery.’

‘Then you won’t get a share of mine when I win,’ Michelle assured her.

‘The odds are better in a casino,’ Marie Two said.

‘They got casinos in Puerto Rico, but that’s not what me and Anthony are going there to do,’ Tina offered.

‘Me, I say Disney World,’ Michelle said. ‘The Magic Kingdom is great for the kids and Epcot is good for the grownups.’

‘Epcot sucks,’ said Marie One. ‘I was never so bored in my life.’

Speaking of bored, Claire could barely stand it. She was suddenly so tired of these tedious repetitions of the obvious that she was ready to throw down her sandwich – or possibly throw it up. Then, oddly, the conversation became riveting.

‘Mr Crayden, Senior is spending the next month in London doing some new business deal,’ Marie Two announced. ‘He may take Abigail with him.’ Abigail Samuels was Mr Crayden’s secretary of almost thirty years. Unmarried, tall and ultra-efficient, she was an office wife and handled every detail of Mr Crayden’s business, as well as a significant part of his social plans. She never lunched with any of the other secretaries. She was a haughty white-haired patrician with better things to do. Claire had seen her, once or twice, eating lunch alone in local coffee shops reading Balzac in the original French. Claire was impressed and awed by her.

‘Lucky Abigail,’ said Michelle sarcastically. ‘She gets to travel. Too bad she doesn’t have a husband or a life.’

Marie Two ignored Michelle, as she often did. ‘Well, Mr Crayden, Junior may also go for part of that time, and if he does, guess who’s invited?’ A series of surprised coos and ooohs circulated the table.

‘Your husband would shit a brick,’ Marie One said.

‘Like that matters,’ Marie Two said. ‘Crayden asks, I go. I never been there.’

Claire felt the hair on the back of her neck rise. She had never traveled much, but if she could go to London! If she had to go to London, so that she wouldn’t be nervous or tempted to cancel. If she were going there to work, so there would be some people she knew, some familiarity … well, she would never get the chance. Analysts were not invited to London.

Tina put down her pastrami sandwich and raised her heavily penciled brows. ‘Hey, maybe that’s got something to do with Michael Wainwright going,’ Tina said. ‘I just booked him a couple of tickets for next Thursday.’

‘You goin’ too?’ Marie One asked.

‘Nah. He’s only stayin’ till the end of the weekend. And he’s taking Katherine. His new one.’

Claire forced herself to take the last bite of her egg salad sandwich, wiped her mouth with a paper napkin and put it and the other trash in her lunch bag. ‘I have to run out to Duane Reade,’ she said. ‘Does anybody need anything?’ Nobody did, but Joan was quick to remind her she only had twenty minutes until she was due back in the department. Claire nodded, and freed herself.

She didn’t need to shop. She just needed some air. She walked up to City Hall and paced the small park in front of it. What was she doing? Why did she spend her days in a windowless room, and her nights at home alone reading? She had sequestered herself from life; she may as well have been cloistered. But the fact was she knew she was nothing like a nun. She wanted to travel. She wanted an exciting job. She wanted to do new things and meet new people. She just didn’t know how. She sat, for a moment, on a bench. It had turned cold, but in the sun, with her coat wrapped tightly around her, she managed not to shiver. The thought of going back to Crayden Smithers and Joan made her shudder. Even out here, wind from the harbor on her face, she felt as if she were jailed.

Manhattan was clearly the answer but it intimidated her. How could she manage to afford it and would she find a roommate? Other people did it, she reminded herself, but she didn’t feel like other people. In fact, she’d always felt different from everyone she had known. Worse yet, as best she could objectively see, everyone else agreed with her. No wonder she felt so lonely.

I could sign up for a trip, some kind of tour group she told herself. I could go to Europe, if I had a guide. Then the idea of traveling with a bunch of strangers, winding up with Marie One and Michelle – or their equivalent – traipsing through Paris seemed ridiculous.

Perhaps, she told herself, there might be an Abigail Samuels or even a well-read man. She had read all of The Human Comedy, and Jean Rhys and Collette. She felt as if she had already been to France and couldn’t bear to go for real as a stupid tourist, unable to speak the language, wearing the wrong clothes and going to the wrong places.

The fact was, she was not only a coward but she was also a snob. A secret snob, the worst kind. She sat at lunch and felt superior to and amused by everyone. But who was she to feel that way? At least Michelle and Tina and the Maries – and even Joan – went places and did things and slept with men. She would have to change, she decided, and stood up. She would have to change because not doing so, living as she was living, had become impossible.

Claire looked at her watch. She would be late getting back to work and Joan would punish her by giving her the most onerous jobs for the rest of the afternoon. She wouldn’t mind because she had decided something important. She wasn’t sure if she could transform into a butterfly, but she’d transform herself into something. She had a new resolve: despite the obstacles, she was going to change.

The problem was she didn’t know what she was going to change into.

SIX

The next day the women were sitting, as usual, at lunch and gossiping the usual gossip – the television of the night before, or the latest movie – when Tina came charging into the room all excited. ‘You’re not going to believe what just happened!’ She looked around the table to make sure she had everyone’s attention. ‘A minute ago, Katherine walks right past me into his office. I mean, I try to stop her but it’s like I’m totally invisible. He’s on the phone, but when he sees her, he’s like “gotta go”. Once he hangs up she says, “I don’t know who you think you are but I’m sure as hell not who you think I am!”’

‘She goes!’ said Marie One.

Tina nodded. ‘She goes, but she ain’t goin’.’

‘Goin’ where?’ Michelle asked.

‘To London. She blew the trip.’

‘No shit,’ Marie Two said. Then she paused. ‘Did she tell him to stuff the trip up his ass or did he tell her that?’

‘No ass-stuffing was involved,’ Tina sniffed. ‘They didn’t swear once. She called him “a narcissistic self-parody” and he …’ she narrowed her eyes as if trying to remember Mr Not-So-Wonderful’s exact phraseology. ‘I think he asked her to keep her psychological profiles to herself until he requested one. Then Michael came out to me and ordered me to hold the second airline ticket.’

Then without a beat, Tina moved on to drop a new conversational grenade about a confrontation – almost a scene – in the outer office, between two of the other traders.

‘Well, I think a “go fuck yourself” wouldn’t have been inappropriate,’ Michelle said. Just then Abigail Samuels walked in, in time to hear the vulgarity. Claire hung her head. She was in the company of these people and surely perceived as one of them by everyone but herself. Still, she wished she hadn’t been there when the remote, educated Abigail – who was probably a virgin – heard the conversation.

Abigail, however, moved serenely by them to the refrigerator, took out a yogurt and turned to go. At the door, as a kind of after-thought, she turned back to the now-silent group. ‘Claire,’ she said. ‘Would you be free to photocopy some important documents for me?’

Every eye at the table turned from Abigail Samuels to Claire. Claire looked first to Abigail, then to Joan. Joan shrugged and nodded. ‘She can do it,’ Joan said.

‘We know she can,’ Abigail Samuels said, and Claire, most probably, was the only one who realized Joan’s grammar was being corrected. ‘The question I asked was if she was available.’

‘She’s available,’ Joan said after a moment’s pause. Claire stood up and wordlessly followed Abigail out of the lunch room.

They were along the row of executive offices, almost to Michael Wainwright’s, when Abigail turned to Claire. ‘You seem like a girl who keeps herself to herself,’ she said. ‘This is a job that I want to be kept exactly where it belongs.’

Claire nodded, and Abigail seemed to feel that was enough. They reached her office outside of Mr Crayden’s. ‘You’ll use the photocopier in the executive supply room.’ She lifted a pile of documents and handed them to Claire. ‘I’d prefer you don’t read them, but I don’t insist.’

Claire was shown through a door she had never noticed. The room was small but paneled, and leather-jacketed pads of paper, engraved personal letterhead and all manner of high-end office supplies were carefully placed on shelves behind glass cabinet doors. A photocopier, a shredder and a fax were built into mahogany cabinetry as well.

‘Do you know how the machine works?’ Abigail asked. Claire nodded. ‘It doesn’t have a collator and I’ll need two copies of everything. Can you keep them in order?’

‘Yes,’ Claire managed.

‘I thought you could.’ Abigail smiled. ‘If you have any questions, just call.’

Claire began the work. It was dull, but it made a break in her usual day. Anything that kept her away from Joan was a good thing, but she had a feeling that, just like in high school, there would be a price to pay for being singled out.

Feeding the first page in, she only glanced at the contents to make sure she wasn’t going to be a participant in grand larceny or fraud. Crayden Smithers was one of the few firms that hadn’t been involved in a nineties stock scandal but you couldn’t be too careful. Once she realized that the work was only employment contracts, and sensitive because of the salaries and bonuses involved, she didn’t look any further and simply did the job.

There was a certain repetitive comfort in lifting the flap of the copier, placing each page just so and removing the two copies and separating them. It was a task that required no thinking, but after she had organized it and gotten used to the robotic rhythm she had set for herself, having time to think was not necessarily a good thing. She didn’t want to remember the conversation at lunch, nor think about Michael Wainwright’s business trips or the companions he took on them. She wanted to get her work done, look out at the skyline on her ferry ride home and then finish her cable sweater. That idea pleased her. It was going to be a lovely garment and, though the purchase of the cashmere had been extravagant, she was glad she had done it. She was also glad that she was going to keep it for herself.

The small room was getting warm. Claire tucked her hair behind her ears and bent over the machine. She felt her face flush from the heat. She wondered if there was a fan, though she doubted anyone often used the room for this volume of copying. The noise of the machine and her concentration on the task kept her from hearing the door open and close behind her.

SEVEN

‘Hi, Claire,’ Mr Wonderful said.

‘Hello.’ Claire jerked her head up, trying to keep her surprise from showing and her tone cordial but nothing more.

‘I didn’t know you were in here.’ He looked her up and down and gave her an oddly shy smile. She didn’t know how becoming the color in her face and the new haircut looked. She was glad she had worn her mother’s dress again today, and hoped it wasn’t too tight across her backside. Then she told herself sternly that it didn’t matter how she looked. If she had any pride at all she would be, if not nasty, at least abrupt with him.

‘Why would you?’ Claire asked.

Michael Wainwright paused for a moment then shrugged. ‘No reason, I guess.’ He looked down at the paper he was carrying. ‘I have to fax these to Catwallider, Wickersham, and Taft right away.’

Claire looked at him calmly and didn’t offer to help. Abigail’s work for Mr Crayden, Senior out-ranked Michael Wainwright’s work. Not offering gave Claire a tiny bit of satisfaction. He moved over to the fax and, in passing her, had to sidle around her. She steeled herself to feel nothing, but she couldn’t help listening to him as he fumbled with punching in the fax number before loading the document he wanted to send. The machine whistled, asking for the start button to be pushed but he didn’t push it. Claire, though she knew what he needed to do, didn’t offer any guidance.

‘God, I’m a complete idiot. How the hell do you do this?’ he asked her at last.

She knew that was malespeak for ‘Do this for me’. Jerry used that all the time on Claire’s mother: ‘How do you turn the washing machine on? How do you stack the dishes in the racks? How do you boil an egg? How the hell do you do this?’ Claire shrugged and was grateful for the three stacks of paper in front of her. ‘Where’s Tina?’ she asked, by way of answer.

‘That’s what I’d like to know.’

He didn’t sound really irritated, but the idea that Tina might be loafing somewhere and getting in trouble was enough to force Claire to place the two copies on the appropriate stacks and leave off her task. ‘Here,’ she said, taking the sheets of paper from his hand. She didn’t bother to show him where to place them, or explain that the paper should be face down, or that you had to hit the start button once the connection with the receiving fax was made. What was the point? The Michael Wainwrights of the world were not born to spend time in little rooms like this. And now, looking down, she fed another sheet into the fax machine and watched it slowly be devoured. She could see Mr Wonderful’s loafers and felt certain they would move away. He’d leave her in here and go back to his wall of windows. Perhaps she’d get a thank you, because he was always polite. But instead of walking away his shoes stayed in front of her own feet until she was forced to look up.

He narrowed his eyes. ‘Has something changed?’ he asked. And she wanted to answer ‘Yes. I hate you now.’ But of course she didn’t. ‘You’re really very pretty. Do you know that?’ he asked her. Claire couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d hit her in the face with a dead fish. She felt herself flush again, but it was with anger, not pleasure or embarrassment. Who did he think he was? Wainwright or not, he had no right to play with people’s feelings to no purpose but to kill a little time or gratify his overblown ego.

‘Do you want strangers to comment on your looks?’ she asked. ‘I’d be willing to if you want a summary.’ Her voice was steady, and there wasn’t a bit of the hurt or anger she felt in it. He blinked, then straightened up a little and looked at her, this time with something closer to real interest.

‘I’m sorry. Was that condescending?’ he asked.

She decided to ignore the question. She’d let him work out the math. ‘Is there something else you want me to do?’ she asked. ‘I’m working for Mr Crayden, Senior. It will take me another twenty minutes to finish this copying.’ She handed the originals to him and turned back to her job. ‘If you need help maybe you should ask Joan.’

He smiled. ‘Joan can’t help me. But maybe you will.’

She knew it. What grunt work was he going to grace her with? What tedious job was she to receive as if it were a land grant from a monarch? She fed another page into the copier then looked back at him, silent. She’d do the work, but she’d be damned if she’d be charmed or act grateful for it.

‘I wondered if you were free next Thursday?’ he asked.

She tried to register his question but couldn’t quite see what he was asking. ‘When on Thursday?’

‘All day, actually. Starting Wednesday night.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I just … I just wondered if you’d like to go to London with me for a long weekend. I have to leave Wednesday night and work Thursday and Friday, but there are the evenings and I’m staying the weekend.’

‘What?’ she asked. There seemed to be some kind of disconnect between her ears and her brain. She thought she’d heard him say …

Just then the regular sound of the copier stopped and it began to beep. Confused by what he was saying, she was determined there would be no further misunderstandings on her part when it came to Michael Wainwright. The beep continued and she looked down, saw the light that indicated a paper jam and bent to pull out the trapped page. She couldn’t manage. ‘Can I help?’ he asked. Her brain jammed and she felt as trapped as the paper seemed to be. She pulled at it ineffectively. Disbelief, embarrassment and confusion fought for supremacy in her completely overwhelmed consciousness.

‘Here. Let me.’ He leaned down and touched a button at the side of the copier. It released the entire top of the paper feed. If he touched her, Claire thought her whole head would pop off too. ‘I’ve fought this baby more nights than I like to remember,’ he said and, pushing another switch, freed the document. He handed the page to her and smiled. ‘So, would you like to go to London with me?’ he said.

Now her mind beeped a warning more frantic than the copier had. All of the gossip she’d tried to ignore replayed in Claire’s head: The working trip Marie Two might be going on, the new business activity in the UK, Tina’s blow-by-blow about Michael Wainwright’s difficulties in lining up a woman for this latest escapade. She tried to see where the trap was, where humiliation was waiting. Perhaps he needed secretarial help. That must be it. She sighed with relief. Of course …

‘Can’t Tina help you?’ she asked.

‘Help me what?’ he asked in return.

‘With typing or …’

He laughed and Claire felt herself blush. He was laughing at her, and she had tried so hard to avoid that, to forget him, dismiss him, and yet …

‘Claire, I’d like you to spend a long weekend with me in London. Not for work. For fun. As my … guest.’

And then he put his left arm around her. She felt his hand warm – almost hot – through the clothes on her back and then he was pulling her toward him and he lifted her chin with his other hand and put his mouth on hers.

Claire was so surprised she didn’t have time to stiffen or think. It all had a dream-like quality, as if she was in some story she had read long ago – Snow White or Sleeping Beauty – one of those passive young women who waited for years for a kiss to awaken them. She could feel every tiny place of contact she had with him – each finger between her shoulder blades, his palm against her cheek, and his lips against her lips – as if her skin there had never been touched before. Her surprise fought with a surge of feeling both sensual and emotional.

When he moved away from her Claire was struck speechless. In a hundred fantasies she’d imagined – well, nothing as good as this. She literally held her breath and couldn’t – wouldn’t – say a word.

But after a brief pause, he wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. She remained silent because she couldn’t make a sound. He took a step back and she could see that for a moment doubt rearranged his face. ‘I’d certainly understand if you thought that was inappropriate of me …’ He seemed to stumble for a moment, ‘… or if you feel it’s politically incorrect. Or even harassment. Please don’t. I mean we don’t actually work together. Just in the same place.’

Claire still couldn’t speak. By chance, her silence had allowed her to see a moment of Michael Wainwright’s uncertainty, a rare bit of, well, insecurity, or something that looked like it. Somehow it made him more alive, more accessible. Her eyes actually clouded. She had to blink.

‘Okay. Sorry. It just occurred to me that we might enjoy it. But whatever.’

Claire held onto the photocopy machine and tried to remember how to make her tongue capable of speech and her eyes capable of focusing. She was looking at Mr Wonderful, but she was having trouble seeing him. Still, what she was most afraid of was that she wasn’t hearing him properly.

He had turned and was going to leave. Do something, she told herself. But where had this invitation come from? Why her? She remembered the conversation at lunch, the one she had tried not to listen to, and realized he had most likely run out of women available at short notice. ‘Wait,’ Claire heard herself say. He turned. ‘I’d really like to go,’ she told him.

EIGHT

‘Are you out of your friggin’ mind?’ Tina asked Claire the next morning, her voice shrill enough to be heard above the engine of the ferry and not only by Claire but by another dozen people sitting nearby.

Claire moved the yarn from the back of the needle to the front so that she could knit the next three stitches, then slipped them off her cable holder and onto the main needle. She knit those stitches to finish the back twist of the cable while calmly shaking her head at Tina. She would wear this lovely sweater in London.

‘For god’s sake, Claire. You don’t even know him.’ Tina crossed her arms in front of her chest. ‘And it’s not as if you don’t know what he’s like with women. If Katherine Rensselaer couldn’t handle him, how do you expect …’

Claire carefully put the knitting into her bag. Even Katherine Rensselaer couldn’t have a cashmere sweater this lovely, this fine. ‘I don’t expect anything,’ she admitted calmly.

‘Well he will! You think he’ll just take you across the Atlantic because he wants a roommate?’ Tina shook her head and it occurred to Claire that she was more angry than concerned. ‘You think this is the start of some love affair? Sometimes you’re like a kid.’

‘No, I’m not!’ Claire protested. ‘I’m planning to sleep with him. I want to. But I don’t expect anything else.’

Tina laughed but it was one of her sarcastic ones. ‘Yeah, right. I know you. Claire, I’m warning you. You think you’ll come back and start going around New York with Michael Wainwright and you can fagetaboutit.’

‘I don’t have to forget about it because I’m not even thinking of it,’ Claire told Tina. Then, to her relief, the ferry gently bumped against the pilings and the motor reversed. Soon they’d be off.

But there was no respite. ‘So what are you thinkin’ of?’ Tina asked, putting her hand on the damp rail of the ferry and tossing her hair back. ‘You thinkin’ about how to make yourself more miserable? You thinkin’ about how you can become the laughin’ stock of the office?’

And all at once Claire realized she didn’t like Tina’s attitude or tone. And that she didn’t have to listen to it. She stood up. ‘I’m thinking that I’ve never been further away from Staten Island than to Boston. That I’ve read about London since Mary Poppins and I’ve never been there. That no man ever invited me anywhere.’ She paused and reined in her temper. She looked Tina directly in the eye. ‘I’m also thinking that I don’t need any more advice.’

Tina’s face tightened. Then she shrugged. ‘Suit yourself,’ she said and they didn’t speak on the walk to the office.

‘Do you have a good suitcase?’ Marie Two asked. ‘You can’t travel with a backpack, you know.’ Claire hadn’t thought about it. The news of her trip had, via Tina, moved through the human circuits faster than e-mail on electronic ones. She’d already received everything from a high-five from Marie One to a congratulatory note from Michelle, passed surreptitiously to her folded up like a note passed in study hall. It seemed to Claire as if the working class had risen up and were proud; as if their team had scored some kind of touchdown. The irony was that while Claire knew she wasn’t patrician, she had never felt at one with the ‘girls’. Perhaps that was why she didn’t react to Joan’s fish-eye response. In fact the odd thing was that Claire realized that she didn’t care about what the others might think. A sea-change had taken place in her own emotional landscape since Michael Wainwright’s invitation. She simultaneously felt more a part of the business harem while more detached. Now, over the lunch table, where even Marie Three had joined them, her trip was the major topic of discussion yet Claire didn’t feel the slightest bit self-conscious.

‘And you aren’t goin’ to use one of those little wheelie things? Dufus bags,’ Marie Two continued. ‘These guys fly First Class. The hotel porters will sneer if you don’t have decent luggage.’

‘Oh, fuck the porters,’ Marie One said. ‘It isn’t about the luggage. I mean, what’s going to happen at the hotel?’

‘I think we all know the answer to that,’ Joan said.

No one responded to her judgmental tone. ‘What hotel?’ Michelle asked.

‘He’s booked a suite at the Berkeley,’ Tina announced. She’d been angry all morning and still didn’t look at Claire. ‘Ya know. It’s not like he isn’t a gentleman. He is. And the suite’s got three rooms. The sofa in the living room is right there, waiting for her, if Claire doesn’t like what’s goin’ down in the bedroom.’

‘Goin’ down?’ Marie Three said, being her usual obnoxious self. Claire, for once, didn’t blush and no one laughed.

‘She’s got a round-trip ticket,’ Tina added. ‘If she can afford the taxi fare she can come back whenevah she wants to.’

‘I’d never come back,’ Marie One said.

‘What about Vic?’ Marie Three asked.

‘Screw Vic. Then I wouldn’t have to,’ Marie One said and they all laughed.

‘Look, ya don’t hafta do anything ya don’t wanna do,’ Marie Two reminded Claire. ‘And what goes on in the bedroom is none of our business,’ she told the rest of the table, though Claire knew Marie Two was always eager to listen to stories of sexual dysfunction, romps and betrayals.

The truth was, Claire was just as curious to find out what might go on in the bedroom as she was to see London. The idea of Michael Wainwright choosing her, actually wanting her, even if only by default, was astonishing as well as exciting. She could hardly believe she was going to get on an airplane with a man she’d only been kissed by once, fly to London and sleep with him. She thought again of his hand on hers and had to close her eyes for a moment to contain the thrill. If such a small gesture, such minimal contact, had that effect on her how would she react to his body on hers? Claire shivered.

‘What will you take to wear?’ Michelle asked. ‘Do they wear hats, like Princess Di used to?’ She sighed. ‘I loved her hats.’

‘Forget hats and bags,’ Tina said. ‘Claire, do you even have a passport? You can’t go to Europe without one.’

For the first time since she’d made her decision Claire felt her optimism and hope begin to disappear as slowly but surely as the Cheshire Cat did – but leaving no smile behind. In fact, her vision got blurry with tears. She didn’t have a passport and – worse – she didn’t even know how to get one. She looked at Tina, trying to keep the panic out of her eyes. ‘I can get one.’

‘Ha! You’re screwed,’ said Joan. ‘And not in a good way. I’ve been to the passport office. Forget it. You hafta get your birth certificate and photos and go to the post office, fill in a form and wait six weeks.’

Claire felt the walls suddenly contract, as if she was on the morning’s elevator ride. She should have realized that escape, that a real adventure, couldn’t happen to her. She wasn’t the kind of person who had a passport sitting in her top bureau drawer. No. She had knitting needles. She wouldn’t be able to go. She clenched her fist hard, so that the physical pain of her nails biting into her soft palm distracted her from the other agony she was experiencing.

‘Six weeks?’ Michelle asked. ‘Always?’

‘Always,’ Joan said.

‘Nonsense.’ They all turned to see Abigail Samuels in the doorway. She ignored everyone but Claire. ‘You can get it in a few hours. You just bring your birth certificate, your application and a letter on our letterhead saying you must go for business.’ Abigail smiled at Claire. ‘And bring your ticket. Or do what our executives do. For fifty dollars an expediting service will take care of it all. And in two hours. You should know that, Tina.’ They all turned to Tina, who said nothing.

‘Thank you,’ Claire told Abigail Samuels, her voice shaky.

‘You’re welcome.’ She smiled at Claire again, her small, even teeth as white as her hair. Then her mouth snapped into a thin, straight line. She looked at Joan but continued speaking to Claire. ‘If you have any difficulty getting a letter from the firm, come to me and I’ll give you one signed by Mr Crayden, Senior.’ She eyed them all, then turned to go. But before she moved down the hall she looked at Claire. ‘And if you need to borrow a trunk, I’d be happy to lend you one of mine.’

The table was silent for at least a moment after Abigail Samuels left. Then ‘Holy shit!’ Marie One whispered.

‘She family?’ Marie Three asked.

‘Fagetabout family,’ Marie Two said. ‘Has she got this table bugged? Because if she does, we’re all in deep yogurt.’

Tina looked over at Claire. ‘You tell her?’ she asked. ‘Because if word gets out among the executives about this … I mean they might not like it.’

Claire shook her head. Before the day Abigail Samuels had specifically requested her help, Claire had never spoken to the woman. And in helping her she hadn’t spoken much either. There was a social order at Crayden Smithers that was as unbreachable as Fort Sumter had been. Secretaries, administrative assistants, analysts, bookkeepers and all the so-called ‘support staff’ were working-class people. They lived in far-flown suburbs – never in Manhattan. They all said ‘the city’ when they meant Manhattan, even if they lived in Queens or Brooklyn or Staten Island – all a part of the city. They wore clothes from discount stores, cheap chains and factory outlets. Their hair never looked right, not the way hair looked in fashion magazines or on the heads of women professionals. And the inside of their heads had been educated in public schools, never the tony private ones. If they’d gone to college they hadn’t graduated, or if they’d graduated it had been from a junior college or a state school, never from the Ivy Leagues. They were an underclass and, though none of them would admit it, they either resented the elite professionals (as Joan did) or – worse to Claire’s way of thinking – basked in the reflected glory of the professional they worked for.

The one exception was Abigail Samuels. She’d probably been a secretary for fifty years. She’d gone to the best schools, dressed in the best conservative clothes and looked like a wife of one of the elderly partners. But Abigail Samuels had ‘gone to business’ back in the days when secretaries wore hats and gloves and women didn’t even think of law or business school. Her class separated her from the secretaries and her job separated her from the professional staff. Claire had always thought she must be the loneliest person at Crayden Smithers.

Claire had no idea how Abigail knew about the trip. She was also surprised that, knowing, she didn’t seem to disapprove. The thought that Abigail Samuels would be interested in anything that Claire did – besides photocopying – was as surprising to Claire as it was to the rest of the table. That Abigail knew about her trip, that she’d volunteered not only the information about the passport expeditor but actually threatened Joan on Claire’s behalf and then offered to lend Claire a bag was …

‘Fuckin’ amazin’,’ said Marie One.

Claire saw all the faces turn to her, and recognized the faint tinge of suspicion on each face. In this hen house, when anyone changed the pecking order feathers were ruffled.

‘She must like you,’ Marie Two said.

Curious and curiouser, Claire thought, but was wise enough not to quote Lewis Carroll at that table.

NINE

After work on Friday, Claire decided she’d better go get money for her trip. She had a little over nine hundred dollars in her account. A pathetic amount to travel with, but it was highly unlikely that her mother would be paying back her ‘loans’ anytime soon. She carefully counted the bills, then put them in an envelope and hid the envelope inside a beach bag in the bottom drawer of her bureau. And what exactly could Claire say to her mother as an excuse for going away? It was too early for a bachelorette party for Tina and it certainly wouldn’t require that many days. Claire would just come up with a plan at the last minute. Now she had more important things to worry about.

She began to sort through her closet. In less than half an hour she had a big pile of garments on her bed. Way too much stuff. It was only four days, she reminded herself sternly, but somehow it felt as if she needed everything she had and yet none of it was right. She was a little thinner than usual – not much – so while the size twelve tops fit, size fourteen slacks and skirts were a little looser than usual. But not loose enough. She sighed. Perhaps her problem wasn’t that her butt was too big, but that her tits were too small. She wondered if there was a scientific ratio to determine that. She thought of Katherine Rensselaer and her perfect body in her perfectly cut clothes. Claire’s best jacket came from Ann Taylor. Katherine Rensselaer had probably never been in there, just as Claire had never been in Prada. She would definitely have to shop, not that she had the money for that. She looked at the pile of clothes on the bed, shrugged and then smiled. She might have fat thighs and second-rate clothes, but it was she, not Katherine Rensselaer, who was going to London with Mr Wonderful.

Claire spent Saturday morning trying on almost every decent garment she owned. By lunchtime she was exhausted. She had decided on a pair of black slacks from a pantsuit (but not the jacket), a beige sweater set from BCBG, a black and tan tweed A-line skirt and not much else. There was also the possibility of a navy dress she’d worn to a wedding, but it was floor length, which wouldn’t work.

‘Where you been all morning?’ her mother asked when Claire, rumpled and tired, walked down the stairs and into the kitchen. ‘You’ve been so quiet. More knitting?’

‘No. I finished the sweater.’ And she had. It had come out beautifully and Claire would definitely take it with her. The thought made her smile.

‘So what were you up to?’

‘Just doing some spring cleaning,’ Claire told her mother. ‘Do you have any navy thread? I have to fix a hem.’

‘Look in the bottom drawer. I think so.’

Claire rummaged in the kitchen drawer full of old ice cream scoops and dull knives. She found thread, all of it in a tangle, and pinking shears that might or might not cut. Meanwhile, her mother got a can of beer and a diet Pepsi from the fridge and wandered out. Claire was hungry, but she wanted the skirt and pants to fit. So she made herself a tuna salad, poured an iced tea (without sugar) and took them back upstairs.

She ate lunch then tried on the navy dress. It was a sleeveless boat neck, a simple full-length sheath. If she cut it short, above knee-length, it might look nice. But before she began cutting she took out a pad, sat at her desk and began a list. Despite the piles of things she’d tried she really had no other clothes up to the mark. She’d need a nice black T-shirt and a good blouse – white or beige silk – along with a pair of shoes; maybe strappy heels. She had comfortable shoes for walking, but – she almost blushed – she’d definitely need some nicer underwear and a good nightgown.

Claire didn’t really enjoy shopping. Perhaps if she was a size ten she might, but she always found it dispiriting to hopefully pick out a size twelve, have trouble getting her thighs into it, go back for a fourteen and just barely fit. And then her taste was so different from everyone she knew. Claire didn’t read women’s fashion magazines and she was too modest to realize that she possessed style, though it was a simple, classic one. She just thought, as Tina so often told her, that ‘she dressed boring’. That reminded her that Tina would be over in an hour. She would prefer not to do the shopping with Tina, but that was absolutely impossible.

When Tina arrived, she was apparently over her sulking and was now acting as if the whole plan was her idea. ‘Victoria’s Secret, here we come!’ she yelled as they stepped out of the door.

‘I’m not sure I want to go there,’ Claire said.

‘But you said you need panties and a bra. And a sexy nightgown. I saw a red lace robe and nightie that …’

‘I want to go up to Saks.’

‘Saks Fifth Avenue? You’re crazy! It’s so expensive.’ The wind whipped the two of them as they stood out on the street.

‘But I have a Saks card,’ Claire said. It actually was her mother’s, but at this point she owed Claire something over a couple of thousand dollars. And Claire would pay the bill when it came in.

‘Well, that’s different!’ Tina said. She lived on her credit cards. ‘Let’s go.’

Two hours later, after cruising the third and fourth floors at Saks, Claire had on a cream silk blouse she was at last ready to buy, despite the price tag of two hundred and ten dollars. ‘You’re nuts!’ Tina told her. ‘This was thirty-nine dollars. On sale at Banana Republic.’ She pointed to her own top and Claire looked at the two of them in the three-way mirror. That decided her. The blouse she had on looked as if it cost five hundred dollars more than Tina’s. It was something Katherine Rensselaer might wear.

Getting the black T-shirt, thank god, was easy and so were shoes. In fact, two pairs. It was pleasant in the shoe department, a relief to be sitting down, to be served by a polite older man and easy to give him her size without blushing. She didn’t have to fight a zipper to get into a high heel. She selected backless black ones with beige stitching that were comfortable enough for walking and a pair of navy courts with a little leather bow – in the back. ‘They are something,’ Tina admitted. ‘And everyone’s wearing heels with pants now.’

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely!’ Tina assured her. Though Claire didn’t totally trust Tina’s taste, a mannequin near the shoe department was dressed in narrow slacks and four-inch spikes. That inspired her to go back to the fourth floor and get a pair of navy pants with side slits to show off the shoes. To her delight, she fit into an eight.

‘They run a little big,’ the saleswoman told them.

‘So does her ass,’ Tina said.

Claire ignored the laughter and bought the slacks, though the wisecrack made her think about getting undressed in front of Mr Wonderful.

Next, Claire and Tina went to the lingerie department. As Claire had feared, Tina kept managing to find the few things that were trampy or in bad taste or both. ‘I can’t picture myself in that,’ Claire told her as she held up a black lace bodysuit with underwire cups and a minuscule thong string.

‘It’s not what you picture,’ Tina said. ‘It’s what he pictures. And sees.’ She waggled her fingers through the crotch of the transparent lace.

After the remark about her butt, Claire certainly wasn’t wearing a thong. She just shook her head and finally selected a blush pink satin nightgown with lace across the bodice. It could be seen through but only just. ‘And you might want the matching robe,’ the saleslady suggested. Claire did.

It was only when they got to the raincoats that she had a crisis. Most of them were six or seven hundred dollars. She looked at her mother’s card and simply couldn’t do it. She’d have to wear her green coat, though now it seemed tacky and wrong. She sighed. ‘These are ugly anyway,’ Tina said.

On the ground floor, on the way out, Claire’s eye was caught by a string of irregularly shaped pearls. They weren’t real, but the luster was beautiful and they were strung on a gold cord with space in between each one. ‘Oh no!’ Tina said. ‘Why don’t we just go to Tiffany’s?’

‘Because they sell real pearls and these are just fakes.’

‘What’s the diff? You can’t afford this stuff either,’ Tina told her. But though they were a hundred and five dollars, Claire decided she could, along with the matching earrings.

‘But they’re so plain,’ Tina complained. ‘Everything you got is beige. Are you a beige person?’

‘I guess so,’ Claire said as she took the cute little bag from the sales clerk.

‘They do look lovely against your skin,’ the clerk said. ‘Enjoy them.’ Claire promised her she would.

As she and Tina walked through the thinning crowd on their way to the subway Claire refused to think about the total she’d spent. ‘What will you wear on the plane?’ Tina asked.

‘I guess whatever I wear to work on Wednesday. I’ll dress up.’

Tina shook her head. ‘People dress down for the redeye. You know, you sleep on it, so you don’t want to wear your best outfit.’

Claire hadn’t known that. ‘What does …’ she couldn’t bring herself to call him Michael, though she would have to try. ‘What does he wear?’

‘Jeans, usually. Sometimes with a T-shirt and blazer. Sometimes just a sweater. He changes at the office.’

Claire was surprised and mentally began revising her plan. She’d bring her Levi’s to work and she’d wear them along with the sweater she’d knit. ‘I still need a raincoat,’ Claire told Tina.

‘Century Twenty-one,’ Tina suggested. ‘You can go on your lunch hour, Monday.’

‘No. I have to get my passport.’ Claire shivered. It wasn’t just the March wind. If her passport didn’t come through, all this preparation, all the excitement and money spent was wasted and foolish.

‘Well, you only have to go and drop off your documents at Rockefeller Center. After that I can send up a messenger for it,’ Tina said airily. ‘We do it all the time. So I say after your drop-off we meet at Century Twenty-one.’

Claire knew all the women from Crayden Smithers shopped at the discount store but she could never stand the hustle or the hassle. Still, she knew the green coat simply wouldn’t do. She doubted that the classy, perfect, sophisticated raincoat she pictured would be hanging on the seventy per cent off rack in Century Twenty-one. But she might as well give it a try. She shrugged. She couldn’t spin straw into gold but maybe she could find a needle in a haystack! ‘Meet you there,’ she promised.

TEN

On Monday Claire took the morning off work, went straight up to the passport expeditor, dropped off her documents and took the subway back downtown for shopping with Tina. The store was as jammed as it always was at lunch hour and just walking in made Claire feel dizzy. But she had forgotten that she was with a pro. Before Claire even had a chance to register the racks and racks of men’s sports jackets, the display of dozens of scarves, bins with hundreds of sweaters – all at sixty per cent off – Tina had put a clamp on her shoulder and directed Claire ‘to the back, up the stairs, and to the right on the mezzanine’.

Claire pushed her way up the steps through the crowd of women with bags, umbrellas, purses, and other armor.

They were in a section with two rows – at least a hundred feet long – all lined with coats. ‘What size are you?’ Tina asked. ‘A ten? A twelve? Or bigger?’ Claire thought she heard contempt in Tina’s size-eight voice. ‘Will you wear a sweater under it?’

Before Claire could answer, Tina had turned away and, with an expression of intense concentration, began to click through the rack in front of her, the extra inch or two between garments used to push the rejected coats further away and give the next candidate a moment of breath. Tina surveyed each, then, heartlessly, clicked it beside the previous reject before Claire could even get a look. Soon, Tina had gone through ten feet of coats and had pulled three out. ‘Here. Want a slicka?’

It was a yellow plastic, exactly the color police wore when they directed traffic. Claire didn’t even respond. ‘I didn’t think so,’ Tina laughed. ‘How about this?’

It was black, with more straps, buckles, epaulettes, and pockets than any uniform the French Legionnaires had ever imagined. ‘No, I want …’

‘… beige,’ they said simultaneously and to Claire’s complete amazement Tina flourished a decent-looking light tan raincoat.

‘Ta-da!’ Tina said. ‘Looks like your style. Really boring.’

But when Claire began to unbutton it she saw the label and the lining. It was Aquascutum. And though Claire didn’t know anything about fashion she knew it was a label on the coats that the people with the windowed offices wore.

She slipped into it. The lining was soft and the color was more a light gray than a tan. ‘Hey. That looks good,’ Tina said as if truly surprised. She pushed Claire in front of a mirror and Claire had to agree. It did look good. The shoulders were slightly built up to enhance Claire’s narrow ones. But it flared enough to camouflage her hips. It hung from a raglan sleeve in a simple drape without a belt or extra gimmicks. ‘It’s a little plain,’ Tina pointed out. She held up the black one. ‘You get more for your money with this.’

But Claire continued to survey herself in the mirror. She thought of Katherine Rensselaer on the rainy night. She was wearing a raincoat similar to this one. ‘I want it,’ Claire said and only then looked at the price-tag. Reduced. But it was still three hundred dollars!

‘Get outta here!’ Tina said when Claire showed her the tag. She turned and checked the rack, checked the signs above and gave Claire the moderately good news, ‘Twenty per cent extra off any coat bought today.’

‘But it’s already reduced,’ Claire said. It was true. The original price was just a little under a thousand dollars.

‘So? It’s twenty per cent more off the three hundred. At least you save sixty dollars.’ She looked back at the black coat. ‘This one’s only a hundred and forty,’ she said.

But Claire had made up her mind. She looked at herself in the mirror. Somehow, in this coat, she could imagine herself on a London street looking up at Big Ben.

On Tuesday night Tina came over to ‘help with the packing’ though Claire suspected she actually wanted to snoop and report back to the lunch table, if not all of Tottenville. Claire knew that even if she asked Tina not to tell anyone, it would be far beyond her capabilities. Let’s hope, Claire thought, she doesn’t say anything to my mother.

‘Hello, Mrs Bilsop,’ Tina said, her voice sing-song with secret.

‘Hi, Christine,’ Claire’s mother responded, luckily – as usual – not interested. ‘What’s up?’

‘Nothin’ much.’ Then Tina silently mouthed, ‘Did you tell her yet?’ in an exaggerated, cartoon way. Claire shook her head. Luckily, her mom’s back was turned.

‘We’re going upstairs,’ Claire said and, as she led Tina up the steps, she rolled her eyes. ‘Shut up.’ Subtlety was not Tina’s stock-in-trade.

In her own room, the door closed, Claire felt comfortable enough to take out her passport and her suitcase. She had decided not to embarrass herself with Abigail Samuels by borrowing her luggage. The passport was an adorable little booklet. What thrilled Claire the most about it was that behind the picture page there were another dozen pages of Entries/Entrees and Departures/Sorties. Her pages, of course, were blank but soon there would be a departure and an arrival. And a book to fill.

She wondered for another moment how many entries Michael Wainwright or Katherine Rensselaer had in their passports. She shook her head. She was twenty-four and she had never even managed to get this far.

Meanwhile Tina looked over at the bag. ‘Is that all ya bringin’?’ she asked before the suitcase was even open.

‘Well, I’m not quite packed,’ Claire admitted. ‘Oh, there’s my new sweater.’ She took it from the top of the packed pile of clothes and unwrapped the tissue paper. She slipped out of her T-shirt and pulled the sweater over her head.

‘Wow!’ Tina said. ‘Nice.’ She came over and fingered the delicate cables. ‘Feels good. Angora?’

Claire felt a moment of contempt. Angora was as much like cashmere as burlap was to silk but ‘Cashmere,’ was all she said.

Tina looked into the suitcase. ‘You’re the queen of beige. You sure you don’t want to jazz it up a little?’ she asked. ‘Hot pink or a little turquoise? I have a new tube top I think would fit you.’

Claire smiled. It was March, pink and turquoise were not her colors, and she didn’t have the anatomy necessary to hold a tube top up but, she reminded herself, Tina didn’t notice details about other people unless they made good gossip.

Tina, bored with the contents of the bag as well as the contents of Claire’s room, walked over to the desk and picked up an old framed photo taken at their high school graduation party. She smiled at it, put it down, turned and looked over at Claire.

‘Look, you know I don’t mean to hurt your feelin’s when I say this, but you do know it isn’t goin’ to last longer than the weekend. It’s nothin’ personal,’ she added. ‘It’s just the way Mr Wonderful operates.’

‘I know.’

‘And bitches like Joan are just goin’ to be thrilled to watch you fall to pieces when – I mean, if – you know, if Michael doesn’t …’

‘You mean when he drops me,’ Claire said calmly, folding her new nightgown carefully. Then she looked at Tina. ‘It’s not all about Michael,’ she said, forcing herself to use his name. ‘I mean I like him, but I like the adventure more. London! I can’t even imagine it.’ She gestured to the half-packed bag on her bed. ‘I don’t expect anything. I can hardly believe I’m going at all.’

Tina waggled her head in a dismissive gesture she used. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s what ya say now. But afta ya spend a romantic weekend with the guy, ya may get othah ideas. He’s very good at what he does.’ She winked broadly.

Claire folded the silk robe and carefully stowed it in the bag along with the nightgown. ‘I know. He’s the star of the department.’

‘I don’t just mean his work. I mean everythin’. You should see the e-mails some of the women he’s slept with send him.’

‘How have you seen them?’ Claire asked.

‘Oh, it’s not like I don’t know his password,’ Tina said and then, for the first time Claire could remember, she actually blushed. She got up off the side of the bureau she was perched on and crossed to the bed. ‘Look, Claire, what I’m tryin’ to say is that people like Michael Wainwright, they’re not like us. It isn’t like I wouldn’t want to find a guy like him. But guys like him, they don’t go with girls like us. That’s why I’m with Anthony. He has a good job, a pension plan. He thinks I’m gorgeous and sexy. And his family loves me. You’d never even get to meet Michael’s family and if he saw this place …’ she gestured, her fingers with their long, painted nails wiggling at the tiny room, the wallpaper curling away from the wall under the window, the worn nylon carpeting.

And instead of shame, or gratitude, Claire was suddenly filled with such rage that she had to turn her back so that Tina couldn’t see it. She knew Tina didn’t ‘mean anything by it’ but for once Claire didn’t need to hear about how she wasn’t good enough, that she shouldn’t expect too much, and wasn’t going to get it even if she did. She knew all of that already.

Claire calmed herself enough to look at Tina. She was careful to control her voice so that it was neither loud nor shaky. ‘I’m not stupid, Tina. I know there’s nothing like what you’d call a “future” with Michael. I don’t have a real future. And I don’t even have a past. There’s no Anthony taking me to Puerto Rico, and there’s no wedding that I’m saving up for. And anyway that’s not what I want. But just because I can’t settle for some guy from around here doesn’t mean I’m going to make a fool of myself over Michael Wainwright. I’m going to have an adventure.’

As soon as she had spoken, she could tell by Tina’s tightened mouth and her body language how offended she was. Claire bit her lip, picked up the new blouse and began to fold it.

‘All I’m sayin’ is to be careful,’ Tina said. ‘I don’t want to see ya get hurt.’

Claire couldn’t bear to look at her. She just put the blouse in her suitcase and went to the closet. ‘I know,’ she said. Then, looking at the empty hangers and the rejected clothes – clothes she realized she never wanted to wear again – the thought came to her that Tina might be jealous.

In all the years that they had been friends, Tina was the one who did things, who went places, who had boyfriends. She was the one with the big family and lots of family parties. She’d had a sweet sixteen, an engagement celebration, and a string of rejected suitors. Claire had an aunt she never met, never had anything that Tina wanted, not even her good grades. Tina didn’t care about school. And, oddly, Tina would never believe that Claire didn’t want any of the things that Tina had.

Now, it struck Claire almost like a blow to the head that, for the first time, Tina might be envious, and that she felt Claire had also dissed her and Anthony. And with that knowledge Claire felt fear. But it was too late. Claire shrugged. ‘Is there anything in here you want?’ she asked.

Without moving, Tina snorted then shook her head. ‘Hey, it’s not like ya movin’ away or dyin’,’ she said. ‘It’s just four days.’

Claire nodded. Her bag was almost full. She just reached down beside her bed and picked up her knitting and two extra skeins of wool.

‘What are ya doin’? You’re not takin’ your knittin’?’

‘Why not?’ Claire asked.

‘Are ya crazy? Men don’t like to sleep with their grandmas.’

‘Tina, I’m not planning to sit in bed and knit. But he’s working on Thursday and Friday and if I have nothing to do …’

‘… you’ll shop. Or have a facial. There’s a spa on the top floor of the Berkeley. There’s a pool on the roof.’

‘A pool?’ Claire asked amazed. Somehow a rooftop pool in rainy London wasn’t part of her mental landscape.

‘Yes, a pool. Ya know, the kind ya swim in. Bring your suit.’

‘Really?’ Claire didn’t want to bring a swimsuit. She didn’t have a nice one and she didn’t want to go swimming with Michael – she needed to show him her thighs like she needed a spinal tap. But she felt Tina’s eye on her. She walked to the dresser, took out her old blue maillot, put it in the suitcase and closed the lid. She reminded herself to take it out once Tina had gone. ‘Well,’ she said, turning back to her friend, ‘I think that’s about it.’ She looked at Tina.

Tina shrugged. ‘Well, I better be gettin’ home.’ Claire nodded and the two of them silently walked down the stairs. Behind her Claire heard the sitcom, Jerry’s snore and her mother’s chuckle over some television joke. ‘Bye, Mrs Bilsop,’ Tina called.

‘Bye-bye,’ Claire’s mother called back.

‘Okay, see ya tomorrow,’ Tina said, raising her voice as if it was important for Mrs Bilsop to hear. Claire stood, holding the screen door open, while Tina walked down the back steps. When she reached the walkway, she turned back to look at Claire. ‘Ya know, I love Anthony.’

Claire nodded. ‘Of course you do,’ she said.

‘No. I mean it. I really love him. More than I could ever love someone like Michael Wainwright.’ Claire nodded again. It occurred to Claire that she might not be the only one with an unrealistic crush on Mr Wonderful. She looked at Tina for a moment, then looked away for fear of embarrassing her. We all have our secrets, Claire thought. And our blind spots. ‘Well, have a good night,’ she said. She didn’t know what else to say.

Tina shrugged, walked off and Claire stood there alone, listening to the tippy taps of Tina’s heels against the Tottenville sidewalk. She realized that something in their friendship, such as it was, had ended. Something was very amiss when Claire’s life was more interesting than Tina’s.

Claire went back to the door and stuck her head inside. ‘Mom, I’m going for a little walk,’ she announced.

‘Better take a sweater or something. You don’t want another cold, do you?’ her mother called back.

Claire reached in and took a sweatshirt off the chair by the entrance, quietly closed the door and shrugged into the garment.

Tina was out of sight now so Claire went off in the same direction and made her way down Ottavio Promenade, where a lot of the big new – and in Claire’s opinion – ugly houses were located. They were mostly huge fake Colonials with lots of brick, columns and concrete balustrades. Her father would have hated them, but now they cost a million dollars to buy. The same thing had happened on Hyland Boulevard. There used to be nothing but a woods with little cottages there but since Claire was in kindergarten all that had changed. The area below it, once a dump, was now filled with mansions along the waterfront, each one larger and gaudier than the one next to it.

Claire preferred her neighborhood. On Amboy Road she turned onto Main Street. Egger’s Ice Cream Parlor was closed and so was the Tottenville Bakery. But as she passed it, a heavenly smell of baking cookies enveloped her. No bakery anywhere was better than Tottenville’s, Claire was sure of that. Hungry, she quickened her steps and walked past the bank building and the beautiful public library.

She was home with perfect timing – her mother and Jerry were still distracted by the television. Claire looked around. The house was a big one, and had probably once been elegant. But that would have been a long time ago. For as long as Claire could remember it had been in disrepair, and though her father had been proud of it, he had never been proud enough to accomplish any renovation. But he did, with Claire’s help, take great care of the front yard and side gardens. Now, it was the only house on the street that hadn’t been bought by rich young couples and spruced up. Claire, like her father, had always loved the house and the old apple orchard behind it. But her mother and Fred had only complained about its run-down nature, though it would be too complicated to move.

Claire turned, closed the door behind her and walked up the stairs to her room. Once in her room, she went to look out the window at the overgrown front yard – since her father’s death, Claire had lost her enthusiasm for gardening, perhaps because it made her miss him. The fence around the house had long ago peeled its paint the way a snake shed its skin. The house was still called ‘The Old Bilsop Place’ and Claire had wondered what it had looked like when it was ‘The New Bilsop Place’. But that would probably have been before they had cameras, and if they did, they didn’t waste photographs on houses. Her father had always talked about his family as if they were important, but aside from the house, another grander one called ‘The Bilsop Homestead’ and an old sea chest that had once belonged to the family and was now in the town museum, there didn’t seem to be much evidence of that. Her father had talked about a fight with his own dad, and his sister Gertrude who had weaseled the family fortune away from him, but Gertrude had left Tottenville years before Claire was born – if, indeed, she ever existed, and wasn’t just one of her dad’s fairy tales. She looked up at the night sky and took a gamble and made a wish upon a star.

She turned back to her bed, opened the suitcase, took out the bathing suit and threw it into the wastepaper basket under her desk. Then she picked up the discarded knitting and placed it where the bathing suit had been. She added a third skein of wool, a lovely yellow. She, like the girl in the fairy tale, would knit straw into gold.

ELEVEN

It was Wednesday, the day she was going to London. Claire left home later than usual, just after her mother went to the hospital where she worked as a nurse’s aide, and before Jerry woke up, so neither of them saw her negotiating the heavy luggage. She rolled the black suitcase onto the ferry, off it and up to the office. She had a feeling as she made her way to her work station that all eyes were on her but she told herself it couldn’t possibly be true. She stored the case in the closet behind Joan’s desk, sat down at her own and tried not to think about how this was the most exciting day of her life. She told herself there was still a chance that Michael would cancel, but at ten-fifteen Tina called her and told her he was running late because he had to pack.

Claire hung up the phone and wasn’t quite sure if she was feeling relief or dread at the news. Maybe some of both. Where had she read that reality was the leading cause of stress – for those who are in touch with it? She doubted she was in touch with hers. Wild imaginings – way more unrealistic than her daydreams – kept running through her mind. She tried to keep her eyes on the screen and her hands on the keyboard. She actually felt the sweat in the palms of her hands running to the ends of her fingers. Twice she stopped typing to be sure that she had her passport in her purse, along with the ticket. She did. She also had her money. She wondered whether she should change it into English money now. She decided that at lunchtime she would go out and see if she could find a bank that could help her.

She looked back at the ticket. She was seated in 2B. She wondered if it were an aisle or a window and if there would be someone else in their row. If Michael sat next to her would there be someone between them or at the end? And what would they serve? The flight took off at nine. Should she have a sandwich beforehand? Would they show a movie? They were flying British Airways, so would it be a British movie?

At a quarter to twelve, Claire having done very little work, Tina called again. ‘I’ve just confirmed with the limo service. They’re picking you up here at a quarter to seven. Mike has a six o’clock meeting so he’ll probably be late. But it looks like you’re ready to join the Mile High Club,’ Tina chuckled. ‘We’re all going to meet for lunch a little bit early,’ she added.

‘Oh, I thought I’d just run out and do some errands,’ Claire told her.

‘Fagetaboutit,’ Tina told her. ‘We’ve got something special in mind; you can’t miss lunch today. And if you have to run out to Duane Reade for some condoms or something, Joan will let you or Marie Two will tell her to fuck herself. Which, by the way, would be something I’d like to see her try.’

Claire didn’t react, thinking instead about the teasing and innuendo that would probably go on over lunch. ‘Rubbers’ would be mentioned at least as often as in a B.F. Goodrich tires board meeting. She sighed. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘See you in ten minutes.’

When she entered the lounge, everyone was already there. Claire had brought a bologna sandwich but knew she couldn’t manage to choke it down. When she got closer to the table, she saw that a chair in the middle had been reserved for her and – to her complete astonishment – there was a cake in the center of the table. On it, in blue and yellow icing, Bon Voyage Claire was written in melting script. ‘Oh. Oh my. Thank you,’ she said and took her place.

There were more than the usual lunchers. Even Marie Four, Marie LaPierre, was there. After some joking people opened their sandwiches and Marie Three brought out a bottle of champagne. Tina and Michelle passed out plastic cups and everyone had a sip.

‘Look, we got a little something for you,’ Marie Two said. All the women at the table looked at each other and then Marie Two handed Claire an envelope.

‘Oh, no,’ Claire said. ‘I hope you didn’t …’

‘Hey, no bullshit,’ Tina said.

‘Yeah. Ya gave us all gifts for baby showers, bridal showers and … well, this is for you, from all of us.’

‘Except Joan,’ Tina added.

‘She didn’t have no dentist appointment today. She just didn’t want to see anyone happy. Screw Joan,’ Michelle said.

‘Yeah. Screw her,’ Marie Four agreed.

‘Shut up,’ Marie Two told her. ‘Whadda you know about Joan?’

‘Thank you,’ Claire said. She was really touched. She began to put the envelope in her purse. She felt as if all of them were rooting for her; the representative of their underclass.

‘Whaddaya, crazy?’ Marie One asked. ‘Don’t you wanna see the map we got ya?’ Everyone around the table laughed. And Claire opened the envelope. It was a card, and a paper champagne bottle with sparkle confetti popped up when it was opened. All the women had signed it, and they’d also added cash. Three crisp hundred-dollar bills and three twenties.

‘Mad money,’ Michelle said.

‘I’ll say. I’m mad I ain’t goin’,’ said Marie One.

‘Be sure to do everythin’ Joan wouldn’t do,’ Marie Two said and snickered.

They cut the cake and all of them had a couple of pieces except for Claire who could barely take a bite. She returned to her desk and it was difficult – almost impossible – to believe that in only six hours she’d be on her way to the airport with Mr Wonderful. She told herself sternly that she’d have to stop thinking of him in that way but couldn’t quite manage it yet. ‘Michael,’ she whispered. ‘Michael.’ She thought that Joan glanced at her but she ignored it.

At a little after three, she got a call. To her complete surprise it was Abigail Samuels. ‘I wonder if you could come to my office for a moment?’ Abigail asked. Claire agreed, hung up the phone and her heart sank. Of course, there would be some policy or other that this was breaking and she wouldn’t be allowed to make the trip. She should have known.

She told Joan that she’d been called to Miss Samuels’s office, got up and walked down the hall. Joan’s face, never pleasant, now had a pinched look around the mouth and there was a vertical line on her forehead, slightly off-center, that humped her left brow. Claire could see Joan hadn’t been born ugly, but by fifty she’d have the face she deserved. She supposed she would, too.

As she crossed the reception area Michael Wainwright was walking in from what Claire figured was a long lunch. ‘Hey,’ he said, a big smile crossing his face and his voice bright and cheery. ‘I meant to call you, but I’ve had the morning from hell and the lunch that matched.’

Claire felt the eyes of the receptionist, Maggie, on her back and had no idea what to say. She just smiled.

‘You all ready?’

Claire nodded.

‘Great. I figured we leave at about seven. Why don’t you wait in my office?’

‘Sure,’ Claire said. ‘I have to go now,’ she added. ‘I was called to Mr Crayden, Senior’s office.’

Michael Wainwright raised his eyebrows. ‘Movin’ up in the world,’ he said and smiled before he turned in the opposite direction.

On her walk down the corridor, Claire wondered at his completely casual greeting. She was flustered, embarrassed, tongue-tied and her heart was racing. To him, it seemed, this was business as usual. And it is, she told herself. He goes off on trips with different women all the time. Remember that. She calmed herself down and got to the corner office. Abigail Samuels’s door was open. But Claire knocked on it before she put her head in.

‘Oh, come in,’ Abigail said and stood. Her office was small but, being next to Mr Crayden, Senior’s, it had a windowed wall and even a small sofa. ‘You’re leaving tonight, I think,’ Abigail said.

Claire nodded. She felt as if every single person in the office was spending their day thinking about her night.

‘Well, I just wanted to wish you well and give you this.’ Abigail took a small wrapped parcel out of her top drawer and handed it to Claire. ‘It’s a guidebook to London,’ Abigail explained. ‘It’s one of my favorite cities. I took the liberty of marking and underlining the places you should be sure to see; some of them are a bit off the beaten track but they’re well worth while.’

Claire looked at the older woman. She couldn’t imagine why Abigail was doing this, but she was touched and deeply grateful.

‘I used to go to London very often with Mr Crayden.’ Abigail’s face softened, and Claire, for a moment, saw the much younger woman hidden behind the soft jowls and the crow’s feet. ‘We had some lovely times there.’

Claire realized the import of what she had just heard and tried not to show surprise. Abigail Samuels and Mr Crayden, Senior had … ‘Thank you very much,’ she said. ‘I’ll really treasure this.’

Abigail smiled. ‘I thought you might also want this,’ she said. ‘It’s just a few pounds that I had left on my last visit but it might come in handy.’ She held up a little mesh bag, pretty in itself, and put it down on the desk. ‘Do you know pounds sterling?’ she asked. ‘Of course, the English haven’t changed over to Euros yet.’ Claire nodded.

Abigail opened the change purse and took out some bills and coins. ‘They’re well organized,’ Abigail said. ‘The smaller amounts are printed on smaller paper. And they’re different colors so you can’t confuse a single with a twenty.’ She looked up and smiled at Claire. ‘Of course, they don’t have singles anymore. All of their one-pound notes are gone. They’ve been replaced by these.’

She placed a small but chunky coin in Claire’s palm. ‘When you give a cab driver a twenty and get seven of these back in change they really weigh your pockets down,’ Abigail smiled. She emptied the purse and pointed out the other, lower denomination coins. Then she folded the bills back into the bag and poured the coins in too. She handed it all to Claire. ‘Enjoy,’ she said.

Claire looked at her in surprise and shock. ‘Oh, I couldn’t.’

‘Of course you can,’ Abigail said.

‘Well, you must at least let me pay you.’

Abigail shook her head. ‘Don’t worry about it, dear. It was my per diem money.’

‘Well, thank you,’ Claire told her. ‘Thank you for everything.’

Abigail just nodded and Claire turned to go. But when she got to the door Abigail cleared her throat and Claire, of course, turned around.

‘Be sure to keep your dignity when you come back,’ Abigail said. ‘Don’t have any illusions about the future, even if Wainwright isn’t married.’ And, as Claire looked at the much older woman, she saw something in the fine face, the large eyes that showed her what Abigail Samuels must have looked like thirty years ago. She had been very beautiful, Claire could see and, just as clearly, Claire could also see that she had loved Mr Crayden, Senior back then. She probably still did. Claire wondered at the strangeness of time passing. Abigail had been a girl, just like her. And she must have had many adventures. Claire wondered if Abigail had ever had any illusions, but she thought not. Still, it didn’t mean that she hadn’t had her heart broken though she seemed so even and calm.

As if Abigail could read her thoughts, she looked directly into Claire’s face. ‘Things were different then,’ Abigail said. ‘In a way I think they were easier. People knew exactly where they stood. Men didn’t leave their wives. Women had lower expectations.’ She looked away from Claire, turning to gaze at the view. ‘Sometimes, even when it isn’t appropriate, people find one another and simply can’t be sensible. That hasn’t changed.’ She looked back at Claire. ‘But don’t become confused,’ she told her. ‘All of them have a different set of standards for their wives than they do for …’

Claire looked at her with compassion. But Abigail, a mystery who had revealed a great deal of herself, didn’t want compassion. ‘I didn’t lose my dignity and I have no regrets,’ she said.

‘I won’t either,’ Claire promised.

TWELVE

Tina finally left Michael Wainwright’s office a little after five-thirty, albeit reluctantly. Once she was there alone, Claire called her mother and told her she was off for a few days to Atlantic City. ‘Wish it could be me,’ her mom said. ‘Tell Christine not to throw all her wedding money away.’ Claire promised she would and felt a little guilty.

‘I love you, Mom,’ she said.

‘Love you, too.’ Then there was some background noise from Jerry. ‘Oh, I gotta go,’ said her mother, and hung up.

Now with nothing to do – Claire didn’t want to be caught knitting by Mr Wonderful – she was tempted to snoop. Who was this man she was about to go overseas with? She was far too polite – and timid – to open the drawers of his desk or look in the credenza behind it, but she did start to examine the framed photos and the diplomas on the wall.

He had gone to Yale, and Claire wondered if he had been in Skull and Bones, the elite club that all of the insiders of the insiders were members of. He had also graduated from Wharton Business School, probably the best in the country. There was a silver-framed picture of a young boy with a good-looking older man’s arm around his shoulder. They both held golf clubs.

Beside that was a photograph of Michael with three beautifully groomed women. The oldest must be his mother, because she looked just like Michael (although Claire reflected that, while Michael’s looks were splendid in a man, they were not as appropriate on a woman). She assumed that the other two women, both of whom looked slightly older than Michael, were his sisters. All four were sitting on a damask sofa, two on the seat and one perched on each arm. Claire, despite her unschooled eye, could tell that this was not a snapshot. She wondered what it would be like to have professional photographers come into your home, instead of just setting the time on the Minolta and running into focus.

There was a photo that did look like a snapshot with a much younger Michael, kneeling on long grass, his arm around a Labrador retriever. Claire stared at the picture. She had always wanted a dog, but her mother had not allowed it. In the photo Michael was looking at the camera, but the dog was giving him a look of complete devotion. Claire reminded herself not to look like that when she and Michael were face to face.

Next to the dog picture there were a few awards for his charity work – Tina had told Claire about the boards he sat on – and tucked under a crystal one which had his name engraved on it there was a folded piece of blue paper. Claire picked it up. Then she saw it was a note, handwritten on heavy vellum paper, clearly with a fountain pen.

Michael,

After yesterday I have no idea what to feel about you. I believed, obviously incorrectly, that I was important to you and we each considered the other as central to our life. In case you don’t know this, let me tell you that I value myself enough not just to be hurt by your continued involvement with another woman, but also to be both angry and strong enough to drop you as I would a toad that had somehow slipped into my hand.

I am dreadfully sorry that I lost my temper with you. It was merely the shock of what I consider extremely bad behavior on your part. I won’t bother you with my recriminations again. In fact, I and my circle will be sure to ignore you in the future.

You may forget, Michael, that I was not just a tennis champion but was also known for my good sportsmanship. A gentleman should also play by the rules and you are guilty of a double-fault. I think you should, as on the court, reconsider boundaries and your serve. I’m too good at my game to bother to volley anymore.

I just regret I kissed a toad.

Katherine

Claire looked up guiltily, folded the letter and put it back under the crystal. It was quite a letter, and it must have had some impact on Michael or else he surely would have tossed it away. To stop herself from further predations on Michael’s personal life, Claire forced herself to sit down. The letter, though, had sobered her. She reminded herself she was only getting this opportunity because someone else more entitled had dropped out. She wondered if life was like that – you only got a slice of the cake when someone else went without.

From her vantage point on the sofa she looked out at the hallway and wondered how many more letters like that Michael Wainwright had stored in the lateral files. Did Tina read them all, the way she seemed to read his e-mail? Did she keep them in a single folder? Did she label it, and how? She couldn’t imagine that Tina was good at filing anything except her nails. But Tina had that easy-going personality that could schedule meetings, briskly dismiss the unwanted and pacify those that required it, make up plausible excuses when necessary and juggle a raft of social engagements and girlfriends.

All of the objects, photos and, most importantly, the note, had made her even more nervous. She was out of her depth and she knew she wasn’t a good swimmer. One slip of the tongue, one cramp in her style and she’d go under. But, she reminded herself, she had no illusions about her relationship with Michael Wainwright. She was a convenience, a diversion, a temp. She had started her job there at Crayden Smithers as a temp and, if she found herself humiliated when she returned, she could easily leave. At her level in the business hierarchy it wasn’t hard to find another poorly-paying job and perhaps she would go back to Staten Island, losing the commute and gaining a little self-confidence.

The longer she waited the more doubtful she felt about the whole plan. It wasn’t too late, she told herself, to simply roll her little black suitcase out the door. She could put her ticket and a note on his desk but the thought of him, his smile, his jaunty walk, the ingratiating smile he used when he wanted to get his way, the memory of the feel of his hand on hers stopped her. And, she thought, she would never get to use her passport if she left now. She also wouldn’t be able to face any of the women, not even Abigail Samuels.

Claire opened her purse once again and took out her passport. It was a lovely document and made her feel important. She stared at her own picture and at the pages and pages that were so-far empty. Michael’s passport lay on his desk and, summoning up her nerve one more time, she went over and picked it up.

His face stared out at her neither smiling nor gloomy. It was a far more sophisticated expression than her goofy grin. But that wasn’t what impressed her. It was the page upon page of stamps from immigration and visas. Bermuda. Italy. Germany. Hong Kong. There were stamps from places Claire had never heard of and the booklet was nearly full. She was surprised to see how the official seals were stamped helter skelter, one from the Netherlands stamped right over another from Thailand. She would have imagined it more like a postage stamp collection where each one would be carefully placed to be savored later. Michael’s passport would expire in two more years. What happened if there was no more room in it before then? she wondered. She hurriedly put it down. She didn’t want him to walk in and catch her snooping.

At seven thirty-four, when she was sure that they would miss the plane, Michael – she hoped she had practiced calling him by his first name enough – walked in. ‘God, they talk and talk,’ he said. ‘We better get going.’

Claire stood up and grabbed her coat and the handle of her rolling case. ‘Won’t we miss the flight?’ she asked. ‘We need at least two hours for check-in.’

He smiled at her. ‘Not with Special Services,’ he said. He shouldered his own bag and took the handle of hers. His hand brushed hers and it was so warm against her cold one she nearly jumped. He didn’t seem to notice. ‘Come along,’ he said.

The driver took their bags the moment they reached the lobby. Claire was a little surprised to see that the ‘limo’ was only a regular Mercedes sedan, but the seats were comfy and the driver was so skilled that they reached the airport in less than half an hour. Michael apologized when they got into the car because he had to look at a file for the next morning’s meeting. ‘Just let me get this over with and then we can have a drink and relax on the flight,’ he said.

Claire nodded and spent the time looking out the window self-consciously, watching Queens fly by; the sad two-family houses, the ugly shaft of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, the endless cemeteries and graffiti all depressing her. But as soon as they pulled up to the British Airways departures terminal at JFK everything changed. Porters greeted them, their bags were whisked away, they were escorted to a private elevator by a smiling aide and, when the keyed door rolled open, Claire was confronted with a vast, quiet, taupe-upholstered room with a view of the runways and the sound of the slight tinkle of ice in crystal glasses and the murmur of upper-class voices in discreet conversations.

They were settled on a love seat with a waitress beside them to take their drink order. Claire asked for an orange juice. Michael ordered a Scotch she’d never heard of ‘And two glasses of water, otherwise we’ll get really dehydrated.’ Just as the drinks arrived the smiling aide returned with baggage tags, boarding passes and an apology. ‘It’s crowded right now at immigration,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back to take you through Fast Track in about ten minutes. Your gate is the very last one.’

‘It always is,’ Michael smiled.

‘Do you have any carry-on? I’d be happy to get a cart for it.’

Michael shook his head, picked up his drink and took a sip. ‘We’re just fine, aren’t we?’ he asked and looked at Claire for the first time.

She nodded. ‘Perfectly fine,’ she said and leaned back into the incredibly soft suede of the banquette. Michael leaned over and took her hand. ‘Do you need something to read? It’s your last chance to get a Hershey bar. They don’t have the same candy in London.’

Claire smiled. ‘No,’ she told him. ‘I think I have all I need.’

‘Me, too,’ Michael said, smiling back.

She turned away, embarrassed but flooded with happiness. This was the sort of adventure that Audrey Hepburn had in old movies. She could hardly believe she was here, with him. Outside, in the deep satin darkness, an enormous plane slid into a berth almost beside them. Michael spoke and she turned back to face him.

‘Don’t worry about a thing. I’ve ordered you a kosher meal so you should be all right,’ Michael said.

For a moment Claire looked at him trying not to show her astonishment then she realized he was joking and giggled. ‘Do I really seem Orthodox?’ she asked.

He gave her a lopsided grin. ‘Au contraire. I think you’re very unorthodox. Lurking under that little librarian act is a world conqueror waiting to be set free. Don’t think I missed that.’

Claire wasn’t sure what she would have said, but it didn’t matter because the smiling aide returned. ‘Ready to go?’ she asked.

And Michael took Claire’s elbow and maneuvered her through the dim hushed lounge and out into the harsh fluorescent lights and crowded clattering mass of the terminal itself. At the gate the aide brought their passports to a desk, they were returned, and she ushered them down the jetway and onto the plane.

To Claire’s surprise there was an attendant waiting. She escorted them, along with the aide, to a curtain on the right and into the very front of the plane. Claire knew it existed but she had never been in First Class. ‘You’re in the second row, Mr Wainwright. But if you’d like the bulkhead seat it’s available. You might be more comfortable,’ the flight attendant told him.

‘No, the second row is fine.’

‘Should I sit by the window?’ Claire asked.

‘Sure,’ he told her. ‘Not that there’s much to see.’

He sat down beside her, took a blanket and a small box from the seat pocket in front of her, spread the blanket over her legs and took out one for himself. He handed her the box and she unzipped it. ‘Don’t bother. It has all the usual junk,’ he said. ‘Travel toothbrush, moisturizer, cologne, sleep mask, ear plugs.’ Claire looked at the cunning little box. I’ll keep it forever she thought.

The flight attendant was back, this time holding a silver tray of tall wine glasses. ‘Champagne, water or orange juice?’ she asked.

‘One of each for me,’ Michael said. He turned again to Claire. ‘And for you?’

‘The same,’ she said, surprised and delighted.

‘Here are tonight’s menus. Please select whatever you like, and we do have the express meal. If you’re planning to sleep through the flight, we can bring it to you right after take-off.’

‘Thanks,’ Michael said. ‘I’ve got a meeting first thing tomorrow. I need all the sleep I can get.’

‘I’m going to use the …’

‘It’s right over there, luv,’ she was told.

She walked past the other passengers, trying not to stare, and opened the door to the lavatory.

That too was a surprise. There wasn’t a tub or a shower, but it was an actual bathroom, twice the size of the tiny closets in the back of the plane and filled with all sorts of goodies. There was a glass vase, filled with fresh flowers, attached to the mirror. Small bottles of hand lotion, moisturizer, and eau de toilette, all of them a brand called Molton Brown, were there for her use. There were linen hand towels spread beautifully across the vanity and, once again, as in the cabin, the air smelled good.

When she got back, their seats had become beds and Michael had settled down in his. His jacket and tie were off, his sleeves were rolled up, his shoes had disappeared and she wasn’t sure what he was wearing under the blanket that covered him from waist to toe. Did people in First Class put on pajamas? She gingerly lay down on her bed.

‘Sorry I’m passing out,’ Michael said. ‘Tomorrow will be tough, but I promise I’ll take you out for a great dinner after work.’

She smiled. ‘That would be great.’

‘I’ll tell you what’s great. You’ll have all day to sleep.’ He closed his eyes and grimaced. ‘I’ll be the one slogging through meeting after meeting while you have a massage and a pedicure,’ he mock-complained.

She giggled at the thought. ‘Highly unlikely,’ she said.

‘Well then, go shopping or see the sights.’ He yawned. ‘Good night,’ he said and turned his face to the wall. Then he turned back to Claire and gave her hand a little squeeze. ‘After this flight, I’ll be able to say that I’ve slept with you,’ he said.

THIRTEEN

At Heathrow they didn’t have to wait to get through customs – there was a speed line for VIPs. Claire was thrilled to get her passport stamped but more thrilled to breathe British Air, not the airline, the real thing. And of course there was a driver – Terry, who apparently was Michael’s regular chauffeur – who took their bags and ushered them into a Mercedes. Her first glimpses of London were through the rain on the back windows. Claire did her best to hide her excitement.

Though the day was dreary, the closer they got to London the more interesting the landscape became. First it was rows of connected houses. Then the houses got larger and they had front gardens. She was surprised to see so many flowers in bloom though it was only March. Daffodils waved their cups at her and her mood matched their sunny color. Then there was an entire block of houses with huge windows. They looked very old and the leaded glass and brickwork were complicated and beautiful. ‘What are they?’ she asked.

Michael shrugged. ‘Just houses,’ he said. ‘I think they were once artists’ studios.’ He bent over and gave her a kiss on her forehead. ‘Do you know how cute you are?’ he asked and Claire blushed.

She couldn’t help it. His eyes on her, approving, gave her a little rush. ‘I think so. But I was going for glamorous.’

‘For glamorous you need a hat,’ he said and laughed.

She leaned back into the deep leather seat and, despite the driver, was brave enough to put her hand on Michael’s. ‘I’ll remember that,’ Claire told him and thought I can do this. It’s fun. I can flirt. She turned back to the passing scene. A sign pointed to Hogarth’s House, then on a raised highway they passed a modern glass building shaped like a lozenge.

‘Ugly, huh?’ Michael asked. ‘They call it The Ark. It does look a little like a ship.’

‘Have you been to London often?’

Michael shrugged. ‘It depends on what you mean by often. A couple of dozen times?’ A couple of dozen times! That was twenty-four or more visits and he didn’t think that that was often. He shrugged again. ‘Do you like London?’

Claire had known this moment would come, and though she had thought of other strategies, she had decided there was no option but the bare-faced truth. ‘I’ve never been,’ she said.

‘Really?’ He paused. ‘How old are you? If you don’t mind me asking.’

Claire knew he was thirty-one. The difference in age between them wouldn’t account for twenty-four trips: unless he had made all his visits in the last seven years. ‘I’m twenty-four,’ she told him.

He smiled. ‘You don’t look a day over twenty three and a half.’

When the road lowered she nearly gasped at the view in front of her: this was the London she had expected, the one she had seen in movies. On the right there were Victorian buildings, most of them with signs advertising hotel rooms. On the left there was one monumental building after the other. She was dying to ask what they were but was far too shy. Luckily, Michael followed her gaze.

‘That’s the Natural History Museum. Never been there. And this one’s the Victoria and Albert. Big sucker. Full of furniture and musical instruments and decorative arts.’ The traffic was heavier and so was the rain. ‘That’s Brompton Oratory,’ he said. ‘Pretty inside.’

Claire looked at the pillared building and had no idea what a Brompton or an oratory was but she didn’t feel up to asking.

‘We’ll be at the hotel in another ten minutes, sir,’ Terry said.

‘Do you mind if I just change and run out on you?’ Michael asked.

‘No.’

‘Thanks,’ Michael said. ‘My meeting today will be a ball-buster. They don’t send me over here to play Mr Nice Guy. Except, of course, to you.’

Claire stood in the center of the room slowly turning around and trying to take it all in. It was spectacular, yet very restrained. How was it possible? she asked herself. It looked as if the walls were made of cloth and when she went over to touch one she found that they were, indeed, upholstered with a striped silk in beige and green. Where the fabric met the wooden paneling a silken cord divided them, the exact color of the green fabric stripe. There was a damask-covered sofa with a plethora of fringed throw pillows, an antique sideboard with a huge gilt mirror over it, and real paintings in carved frames. At the entry there was an alcove with a huge bunch of flowers in a Chinese vase, lit by a tiny light above. But most spectacular of all were the two windows that extended almost from the carpeted floor to the ceiling. They opened onto a tiny balcony that overlooked a beautiful, green park.

The curtains were green damask, like the sofa, but that was only the top layer. Underneath there was another pair made of filmy cream lace, and behind those there was a net curtain that let the light in. Claire was about to open the window and step out onto the balcony when there was a knock on the door. She jumped and before she could react there was another knock. She wasn’t sure what to do but since Michael, in the shower, certainly couldn’t hear she went to the door. A man in a blue uniform stood there, a brass luggage carrier behind him. ‘I have your bags, miss,’ he said.

‘Oh, thank you. Bring them right in.’

One by one he carried each through the living room and into the bedroom, which was decorated in blue and white. She followed him. The noise of the shower here was louder and Claire became nervous that Michael might step out of the bathroom undressed. Luckily, he didn’t.

‘Shall I hang this up for you?’ he asked holding Michael’s shoulder bag. Claire had no idea and just nodded. He opened a door that was also upholstered in the blue and white fabric of the rest of the room and revealed a large closet with fabric-covered hangers, drawers, shoe racks, and – for all Claire knew – a little man who ironed clothes as part of the service. ‘Shall I put your case on the luggage rack?’ he asked. She nodded again and he pulled out a contraption that seemed to be made of four crossed sticks and some fabric bands. In a moment it opened into a kind of stand and he placed her bag on it. Then he opened the mahogany armoire against the wall. Claire figured it was another closet but instead there was a television, a fax, a stereo, a refrigerator, and a small bar stocked with crystal glasses, a bucket full of ice, and wine already cooling in it.

He handed her a remote control. ‘Shall I show you how to operate it all, then?’ he asked. Claire shook her head. She hadn’t come to London to watch TV and she was sure Michael knew how to do it all. But she realized, with a kind of horror, that she would have to give a tip to this man. ‘Is the temperature all right?’ he asked. ‘And would you like a fire?’

There was a fireplace in the living room, but Claire had thought it was only for show. ‘Is it cool enough?’ she asked.

He smiled. ‘If it isn’t, we could turn down the temperature in here,’ he said. ‘Lots of our guests keep a fire going through their whole visit.’

Claire smiled. ‘I would like one,’ she said, ‘if it’s no trouble.’

‘It’s no trouble. I’ll be back in a tick.’

He left and that gave Claire enough time to rummage through her purse to find the envelope that Abigail had given her. But did she give him a pound coin? Or two? Maybe she was supposed to give him a five-pound note. The trouble was, she didn’t know what she would have tipped in dollars back in New York. She had never stayed in a Manhattan hotel room in her life. She decided on the five-pound note and when he returned with an armful of logs and some newspaper she had it ready in her hand.

He kneeled at the hearth, looked up the chimney and put in two logs and some newspaper, laying the rest in a brass pot. ‘I’ll just put these here beside the fender.’ Claire had no idea what a fender was but she nodded. When the bellman had lit the paper and flames were licking over the logs, he stood and dusted off his knees and smiled at her. ‘Anything else you need, just call Housekeeping,’ he said.

‘I will,’ she promised, though she couldn’t imagine doing so. He walked to the door and was out in a moment. Then she realized she still had the five-pound note in her hand. She ran to the door. ‘Oh! Please! Please sir.’

He heard her and turned around. Awkwardly she held out her hand with the money folded in it. ‘For you,’ she said and he smiled and didn’t even look at the amount.

‘That’s very kind of you.’

Flustered, she closed the door and went back into the bedroom. She unzipped her suitcase to see whether everything had been crushed and wrinkled, but just then Michael emerged from the bathroom looking pink, shaved, refreshed and perfectly dressed. He walked over and put his hands on her shoulders, while his hazel eyes glimmered with mischief. ‘There is nothing I’d like to do more than lie down on the bed right now with you,’ he said. ‘But work won’t wait. I hope that you will.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘When do you think you’ll be finished?’

‘With work or you?’ he asked with a sly little grin. She blushed and looked away. Michael laughed. ‘I won’t be any later than seven,’ he said. ‘I’ve booked Mr Chow’s for half-seven. If that’s where we feel like going.’

Once again, Claire wasn’t sure what he was talking about but she nodded. His closeness, the smell of him, the heat from his shower or simply from his body seemed overwhelming. And when he put his hand on her chin, raised her face to his and kissed her – really kissed her – for the first time, she knew what the Victorians had meant when they wrote about ‘swooning’.

‘Ummm,’ he said. ‘Something to live for.’ He let her go. ‘See you around seven,’ he said. ‘Take a nap, have room service, order anything you want, Harvey Nicks is just a block away and Harrods is two streets beyond. That ought to keep you busy,’ he smiled, and, throwing his raincoat over one arm, he picked up his attaché case and was gone.

Alone, Claire walked over to the bed. It was higher than beds in America, and covered with a fluffy quilt in the same blue print as the walls. There was also a kind of crown above the headboard with blue fabric that draped all the way down to the floor. Claire kicked off her shoes, climbed onto the bed and jumped. Up and down, up and down, three or four times until she was breathless and allowed herself to fall in a heap in the middle of the beautiful coverlet. She felt as if she was in the Princess and the Pea, but there was no lump in the bed. It was all unbelievably perfect, and far, far nicer than anything she could have imagined. She wanted to look at every picture, every ashtray, vase, and pillow. She wanted to take photographs so she would never forget any of it. But first she had to go to the bathroom.

That was a whole suite in itself. A counter at least ten feet long with two sinks in it had a silver framed mirror over it and an orchid in a low ceramic bowl. A marble shelf that seemed to float on the wall below the mirror had glass bottles of shampoo, conditioner, hand cream, body cream and shower gelée as well as glass jars with silver tops filled with cotton, Q-tips, make-up sponges, and – the best one – wrapped hard candies. Claire lifted the lid of that one, and read the bit of paper. ‘Jermyne’s Boiled Sweets’, it said, and though that didn’t sound very inviting she popped one into her mouth and it tasted exactly like an orange slice.

In the mirror she could see the glassed shower behind her. It was as large as the bathroom she shared with her mother and Jerry in their house in Staten Island. Next to it was the longest bathtub Claire had ever seen, with another host of little bottles of soaps and unguents. Lastly, there was the most adorable little kidney-shaped vanity table with a blue and white skirt and a bench that matched the bedroom fabric. A silver lamp, like a candlestick shaded by a pink silk shade, stood on either side, and across the back a three-way mirror reflected her mid section. Claire actually laughed out loud in delight.

She ran back to the bedroom, fumbled through her suitcase and found her cosmetics bag. It was only a Ziploc, but she took it back to the bathroom, laid out her brush and comb, her lipstick and blusher, her Oil of Olay, and her tubeless toothpaste. Then she sat at the vanity, looked in the mirror and brushed some color onto her face. She smiled at the three faces before her. ‘Aren’t we having fun?’ she asked aloud. ‘You’re not in Kansas anymore.’

FOURTEEN

Claire walked purposefully toward the corner. In her bag was the guide to London that Abigail had given her as well as the pounds. She also had her dollars and needed to find a bank to go to change them. She looked around her. Every single thing was different. It wasn’t like the hotel or the flight: – it wasn’t just rich people’s air – but the air did smell better, at least to her. Of course there were crowds – almost as many as in the usual walk she made up Water Street – but there wasn’t the elbowing and rudeness. People seemed to make their way out of the small streets and the subway in a more orderly and polite fashion. She had asked at the hotel front desk where she might get on a bus: she didn’t want to do the obvious tourist thing and be one of those dumb groups she saw on Wall Street all the time, gaping from a bus or running after some impossible woman waving a red umbrella.

It was a little warmer here than in New York but the sky was gray and the air had a promise of rain so she buttoned her new coat and was grateful for it. She looked around her and felt as if she looked close enough like everyone else. Now she was aiming for Knightsbridge and Sloane Street. The man at the desk had told her, ‘Walk out of the door, turn right then left. You’ll be on Knightsbridge. Look for Sloane Street on the left and the bus stops are just there.’ But there didn’t seem to be a bridge anywhere. She kept walking but soon her attention was caught by a window display. She’d never seen anything quite like it. A swimsuit without a body was suspended in the air. At the end of it there was a huge scaly fish tail. On the other side, where the head should be, only a long blond wig, reaching to the bottom of the window and cascading across the sandy floor, stood in for the absent mermaid. Discreetly written in the sand was a message Bathing costumes on two. Claire had to stop and wonder what it meant.

She immediately realized there would be no problem in converting her money into sterling. There seemed to be little offices to change currency everywhere. The sign at the one she went into had little flags of every country with two columns beside each that were headed We Buy and We Sell. She changed a hundred dollars, feeling very sophisticated. She could do this, and all by herself.

At the next corner she found Sloane Street and a bus stop. She wasn’t sure why – perhaps it was because she was so used to her long ferry trips every morning – but she felt as if she’d be safer and more comfortable on a bus. The sign explained not only the numbers and times but also which buses ran at night. There was a vast choice – it was a busy corner – but it didn’t really matter to Claire which direction she went in. The first bus that came along was a twenty-two and, to her delight, it was a red double-decker. First, a wave of people got off the wide platform at the back then people beside her began to board and following them, she did too. Right in front of her was a small spiral staircase to the upper level. She began to climb up it then the bus lurched and she nearly fell down it. She grabbed at the railing and as the vehicle moved into the flow of traffic she climbed to the top.

She wasn’t sure why, but on top the bus was virtually empty. Later she would learn that she was traveling in the opposite direction to most commuters, out to Putney where people lived and traveled into the center to work. Unconscious of that she simply smiled at the opportunity literally before her – the front seats on both sides of the bus were available. She almost ran down the center aisle and nearly fell again when the bus pulled to an abrupt stop. But once she was in her seat she was thrilled. It seemed as if the bus had no motor: she was looking straight out at the traffic and the people who moved like powerful tides in front of her. And to each side were shop windows and above them glimpses into apartments with window boxes, terraces and a world’s variety of curtains, blinds and shades.

Sloane Street was long, but at the end of it she was settled enough to enjoy looking down on Sloane Square and finding it on her map. King’s Road seemed a bazaar of delights: clothing shops, cafés, restaurants, pubs (which looked so much more inviting than bars back home did) and a swiftly moving stream of pedestrians.

She had a few pages for notes at the back of the guidebook and began taking some. There was a stop called ‘World’s End’ which seemed, actually, to be in the middle of everything.

When the conductor got to her she apologized. ‘I don’t have a token,’ she told him. ‘Or a Travelcard.’

‘It’s all right, luv. You c’n buy a ticket right ‘ere from me. Where’d you get on, then?’

‘Sloane Street up near Knightsbridge. Is there a bridge?’

He laughed, showing a gap between his front teeth. ‘That’s a good one,’ he said but Claire had no idea what was funny. ‘Where you gettin’ off?’ he asked.

‘Well, I’d like to go to the end of the line,’ she told him.

‘Putney Bridge. You’ll see a bridge there, me girl.’

‘But I’d like to stay on and come back.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t ‘elp you with that part. You’ll ‘ave to get off and get right on again. Regulations.’

She nodded. ‘But will the bus go back?’ she asked, nervous that she might be stranded.

‘If not this one then another,’ he told her. ‘There’ll be a queue of them lined up, like as not. Fag break for the drivers.’

She blinked but asked no questions.

‘It’ll be one pound,’ he told her. She rummaged through her change purse and remembered the chunky golden coins. She handed him one and he returned a ticket that he cranked out of a machine strapped around his waist. ‘‘Old onto that, luv,’ he told her. ‘They’re makin’ us redundant, they are, and it will all be computer cards. You’ve got an antique of the future,’ he said and laughed. ‘I guess that’s what I am.’ He laughed again, turned and made his way down the aisle of the bus from handgrip to handgrip without even a lurch.

Claire looked out of the windows, fascinated. Everything, even the rare graffiti had charm, at least to her. When they turned a corner and she saw a pub with the sign outside declaring it the ‘Slug and Lettuce’ her delight was, even to her, almost unreasonable. Why it should make her so happy didn’t matter. Though if she had thought of it, Claire might have ascribed it to the general glow she had because of her pleasure in Michael. But there are places that can be found by each of us, places we may have never been or never thought of that, in themselves, hold a mysterious key to our happiness.

FIFTEEN

Early that evening Claire stared at the hotel closet in complete confusion.

She had had a wonderful day so far. After the bus reached Putney Bridge she had walked over the bridge to Putney itself and explored that pleasant, residential area and its exotic – to her – stores. Then she had bought a sandwich at an Italian deli – this time, just like the ones at home – and eaten it on a bench in a pretty park back on the north side of the river. She decided to return to the hotel on foot, and found her way via the Fulham Road, where she was delighted by the windows and windows of antiques – all set as if they were tiny rooms. A diner table and chairs illuminated by a chandelier, a royal-blue sofa with golden sphinxes for arms and legs and two chairs flanking it. Best of all was a four-poster bed with enough purple hangings to drape a church.

She had hurried back to be in good time to get ready for her dinner date with Michael, but now here she was, with no idea where they were going and, even if she had, she wouldn’t know what they wore there.

Of course, she didn’t have a wide choice. She could wear the skirt along with her expensive silk blouse but perhaps a skirt wasn’t formal enough. She decided to put off making the decision and instead did her hair, remembered Tina’s advice to her and put on a little extra mascara, struggled into a pair of navy control top pantyhose and had just got the blouse and skirt on when she heard Michael in the living room. She snatched up her earrings and walked to the door. He was going through some papers at the desk and even as he stood there a fax came rattling through. But once the noise abated he looked up.

‘Wow. You look good enough to eat,’ he said. She felt a flush start at her chest and move to the roots of her hair. Now he’d looked back down at the fax. ‘I’m starving,’ he said. ‘How about you?’

‘I could eat,’ she said.

‘Great. Feel like Chinese? But Chinese like you’ve never had before.’

‘How about English food, I mean, we are in London?’

He laughed. ‘You must be joking,’ he said. ‘Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding? I don’t think so. Simpson’s is fine once but that trolley gets old fast.’

She didn’t like to ask what he meant. ‘I’ll leave it up to you,’ she said.

He nodded, looked at the fax again and picked up the phone. ‘Can you confirm my booking at Mr Chow’s?’ he asked. ‘Seven-thirty. We’re eating unfashionably early.’ He hung up the phone and smiled at her. ‘We might have other things to do after dinner,’ he said.

She looked away and put on her earrings. Was she as visibly nervous as she felt?

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ve just gotten news that I’m going to have to go out to a business dinner on Saturday. Do you think you can amuse yourself?’ She nodded. ‘They have great room service here,’ he continued. Just then the phone rang with their booking confirmation. He took the fax, tore it into strips and threw it into the wastepaper basket.

For a moment Claire wondered why, but supposed that there might be some business she shouldn’t be privy to. He came from around the desk, took her arm and gave her a kiss on her temple. ‘Umm. You smell good.’ She realized she had forgotten to put on perfume, but her shampoo must have been good enough. ‘Ready to go?’ he asked. She nodded and the two of them walked out the door and to the elevator.

There he let go of her and then, facing her, put a hand on each of her hips and drew her to him. ‘That feels good,’ he said. He moved against her. ‘A little appetizer,’ he whispered. And just then the elevator doors opened to reveal three Japanese men in business suits. Michael was completely unruffled. ‘Hooray,’ he said, ‘the gang’s all here.’ And he led her onto the elevator.

They walked to Knightsbridge, crossed the very busy road and Claire read the instructions painted on the street that told her to look right instead of left and left instead of right. She wondered how many Americans had been knocked over by buses before the reminder had been painted. They walked up a small but charming alley – everything seemed charming – and Michael opened a door that seemed to be a glass bubble. The restaurant front was very narrow. ‘This place was the rage ten years ago,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t get a seat no matter who you were. But you know how it goes: really exclusive, desirable hot spot, impossible to book, too much publicity, taken over by tourists, abandoned by the chic, and open to everyone.’

Two hostesses rushed forward and took Claire’s raincoat. They were led up a spiral staircase to the main room. Each table had a light within that shone upward, making a circle through the tablecloth. Claire had never been to a restaurant that had gone through the cycle that Michael described. For a moment she wondered why he wasn’t taking her to the kind of place that was ‘a desirable hot spot’. Was it because he didn’t want to be seen with her? She looked down at her outfit. It wasn’t bad, but if it was a size ten instead of a size fourteen it certainly would look more stylish. Then she told herself to get a grip. She’d never been to a restaurant remotely like this. She should be grateful.

The place was mostly empty and they were given a table in the corner. As the waiter helped her into the banquette seat she knocked her head against the light fixture hanging from the low ceiling. She became flustered and horribly embarrassed but Michael laughed and shrugged. ‘Everyone’s been doing that for ten years,’ he said. ‘You’d think they’d fix the design.’ He leaned forward and took her hand. She refrained from using the other one to rub her forehead and hoped that a lump didn’t form.

Michael was talking and she tried to overcome her discomfort and focus on what he was saying. ‘Chow started the whole movement. Before him there was no pan-Asian, no fusion. Not that his is really fusion. It’s hard to define. Maybe Chinese crossed with French.’

It was only then that she realized he was talking food not politics. For a moment she thought of Katherine Rensselaer and how she would know exactly what kind of food Mr Chow’s served, when they’d started serving it, where they had other restaurants, who had invested in them – and she had probably gone to school with Mr Chow as well.

The waiter came with menus. She looked at hers briefly. ‘It all looks good,’ she said.

‘How about I order for us both?’ he asked. ‘We can share. You know, family style.’

Claire thought of eating with her family. For them it meant the food was served with resentment and eaten in silence. But she smiled. Sharing with Michael would be delightful, and thinking of what they would share later sent a little thrill from her chest to her …

‘You have to try the gambei,’ he said. ‘They say that it’s fried seaweed, but it isn’t. People played guessing games about what it was for years. Whatever it is, it’s sensational.’

The idea of fried seaweed made her not just nervous but queasy. She didn’t like sushi and didn’t want to get sick and spoil the evening. Perhaps she could just push it around on her plate. ‘Then maybe the special chicken and I love his sweet beef. It sounds like a lot of meat but it isn’t really. The portions are small. Does that sound okay?’

She nodded and knew she’d better speak soon even if she didn’t know quite what to say. ‘I do like vegetables.’

‘Oh, they come along with the rice. Not too interesting but they’ll do. And would you like wine?’ She nodded, and he consulted with the waiter and the sommelier. There was a pause and Claire desperately thought of what she should say next. But he beat her to the punch. ‘I think Tina told me you live nearby,’ he said. ‘I mean near to her.’

Claire nodded. ‘Yes, we commute together every day.’ Thinking of that long ride made her heart sink. ‘I hate taking the train but the ferry ride is wonderful. It’s different every day.’

‘They take different routes?’ he asked. ‘Is it because of the weather?’

She laughed. ‘No, it’s the weather that makes it different.’ She began to describe how the famous sight of the Battery and the New York skyline never ceased to amaze her. ‘The light comes off the water in a hundred different ways,’ she said. ‘When the sky is really blue and cloudless the city looks … well, it’s much better than Oz. And sometimes on the foggy days it disappears. That huge city with all the people just goes away and even when we pull into the slip there’s no sign of it. That’s my favorite. It’s all like a ghost city.’

Michael was smiling at her. ‘It’s not quite enough for me to jump at a condo in Staten Island,’ he said, ‘but maybe a visit would be worthwhile.’

She smiled at the thought of him on the ferry with her and Tina. But the idea of him in her house was more than she could begin to imagine. ‘Tottenville is a strange place,’ she said. ‘You know it’s one of the earliest settlements in the harbor. My father’s family lived there since before the Revolution. Or at least that’s what he used to tell us.’

‘My father’s family had to run away during the Revolution,’ Michael laughed. ‘They backed the wrong side. That doesn’t stop my mother from being a member of the DAR, though.’

Claire tried to imagine his mother, and thought just how dismayed she would be if Michael brought Claire home. Not that he would of course. He had all of those women whose mothers were also in the Daughters of the American Revolution, who weren’t size fourteen, and who had gone to boarding school and the Seven Sisters and the Ivy League colleges and the elite business schools. She tried to think of movies like Working Girl and Maid in Manhattan and Pretty Woman where the classy hero falls in love with the plucky, beautiful plebeian. The problem was that of the three she was only plebeian.

‘So what does your dad do?’ Michael asked.

‘He’s dead.’ The question had taken her by surprise and she realized the answer was too blunt.

‘I’m sorry. My dad died when I was twelve.’

‘I was nineteen,’ Claire said, surprised that they had this to share. ‘I miss him a lot. I guess I was his favorite.’

Michael smiled. ‘I would imagine so,’ he said. ‘I can’t say I was my dad’s favorite. Actually, he didn’t notice me much. He worked a lot and I wasn’t very good in school so there wasn’t much to brag about. My brother was the star.’

Claire looked at Mr Wonderful and thought perhaps things hadn’t always been wonderful for him. She tried to imagine him as a neglected twelve-year-old but it was impossible. He was so self-assured and he always seemed not only to know just what he wanted but how to get it.

The food arrived then, served with a lot of ceremony by two waiters. So family style did not mean taking it from a platter on the table but having the servants share it out, Claire thought. She looked at the tiny green curls grouped beside the fragrant rice and promised herself that no matter how bad fried seaweed tasted she would manage to swallow it down. She was offered a pair of ivory chopsticks but shook her head. Michael accepted them and for a moment she wished she had too, but what was the point? She might be able to pick up pieces of chicken but certainly not the separate grains of rice and these tiny green whorls.

‘Bon appetit,’ Michael said and gestured for the waiter to fill her wine glass.

To her surprise everything was delicious. The crispy green stuff certainly didn’t taste like seaweed, but melted in her mouth in a way that was both sweet and salty. The chicken and the beef were equally tasty and Claire realized that she was wolfing the food down. She forced herself to put down her fork and drink from her wine and water glasses instead.

Meanwhile, Michael regaled her with stories of his bad behavior in prep school, college, and grad school. It seemed as if his school life had been nothing but pranks and fun. She thought back to her dull days in Tottenville public schools and instead told him about her lunches with the Maries, Michelle, Tina and Joan. Somehow when she built up a little enthusiasm she became funny – or at least he laughed – and she began to play up the ridiculous aspects of all of the women and their lives. Michael asked questions and seemed fascinated. If he was slumming, or if she was betraying their trust, Claire didn’t care. If she could find a way to entertain and charm Mr Wonderful she was going to do it.

By the time dinner was finished, Claire felt relaxed and happy. She managed to leave the table without banging her head, made her way unsteadily past the other tables and let Michael help her into her coat.

On the way back to the hotel she giggled a lot and at the corner, by a store called the Scotch House, he pulled her into a doorway and gave her a kiss that she melted into. ‘There’s something about you,’ he said. ‘You’re adorable. You’re not like anyone else I know.’

Claire was sure that was true. How many Bilsops from Tottenville had Michael Wainwright ever met? But she put her arms around his neck, held her face up to him and waited for him to kiss her again.

SIXTEEN

As Claire walked beside Michael along the hallway that led to suite 617, she felt almost overwhelmed by the possibilities of what would come next. The flight, her day in London, their dinner, all seemed to run together like a glorious dream. She actually felt dizzy. Maybe it’s the jet-lag, she thought.

For Michael, she reminded herself, this was no big deal. He had done it before. He would no doubt do it again. Just then, Michael gently enclosed her hand with his own. ‘I had a wonderful time,’ he said.

‘So did I,’ she responded. And she had. But Claire couldn’t help but think of Katherine Rensselaer and Blaire – Whatever-Her-Name. Had he sounded so sincere with them? Katherine had called him a toad, but he seemed – in so many ways – like a Prince Charming. She also knew that whatever happened between them during this trip probably wouldn’t be remembered – at least by him – when they got back to the States, but … but she didn’t care. She was charmed.

Michael released her hand so that he could fish in his pocket for the key and unlock the suite door. He held it open and ushered her in before him. As she entered the foyer, he put his arm around her waist. Claire melted, though she tried not to let it show. Should she stop him? Should she let it continue? She knew not to have sex on a first date but … this certainly wasn’t that. He nuzzled her neck and then walked them through into the living room. Perhaps he wasn’t going to do any more than this? Why did Claire feel so disturbed by that idea?

Instead Michael tightened his grip, cradled Claire in his arms and – at last – he kissed her again gently. ‘You’re very lovely,’ he whispered. ‘I’m not sure I noticed that before tonight.’

Claire didn’t know what to say. She was momentarily shocked, not by his words, but his honesty. And how should she respond? She certainly didn’t want to thank him. That would be ridiculous. She wasn’t accustomed to anyone complimenting her, never mind taking hold of her and kissing her the way Michael just did. Luckily he kissed her again and she didn’t have to think.

This kiss was deeper, and delicious, but Claire pulled away enough to look him in the face. Then, totally surprising herself, she said nothing, just pulled him back to her. She kissed him, hungry for his mouth. It was just as she had imagined it would be. He teased her with the tip of his tongue along the inner edge of her upper lip. It was … wonderful. She began to shiver. Michael left her mouth and kissed her cheek. ‘Maybe we could get more comfortable. We don’t have to stand here in the middle of the room.’

Of course not. But where to go? Claire felt a moment of real awkwardness. If she moved to the sofa was it coy? If she moved to the bed was she being forward or premature? The truth was that Claire was wild about Michael; she knew that she would do anything he asked. But she didn’t have enough experience to know how cool or how eager she should be. And who does? Making love with anyone for the first time is almost always awkward. Even the most experienced man, the most confident woman, feels a little unsure. But Claire didn’t know that and so she felt very unsure.

She also felt Michael’s hands leave her hips and go up her stomach, her rib cage and then lightly rub her breasts as he negotiated the buttons on the front of her blouse. Claire heard herself groan. She shivered again. He was pressed against her and, through their clothing, she could feel the intense heat of his body. She was paralysed against the wall; the only sense that seemed to be working was the sense of touch. And this felt so natural, and at the same time so unbelievable, so unexpected. She couldn’t think. She shivered again. ‘You’re cold,’ he said and he cupped her face in his hands. ‘Let me warm you up.’

He pulled her to the sofa, and her awkwardness disappeared. Thank god she had not walked toward the bedroom! She’d try to relax and let him lead. Every motion he made was like a dancer, graceful and flowing. Now he helped Claire onto the cushion and as he did, his hands slid under the shoulders of her shirt and he pushed it gently down her arms revealing her new white lace bra. Michael bent down and his tongue glided from her neck down to the small cleavage that was created by the uncomfortable underwire. Claire wondered what he would think if he took it off and the cleavage went away. Then she told herself to relax. His tongue flicked against her skin and the sensation was so delicious that she couldn’t contain the moan that escaped her lips. ‘Oh, do you like that?’ Mr Wonderful asked.

She couldn’t speak. She only nodded. Michael maneuvered himself next to her and pulled her closer. She nestled her head against his chest. He took her hand and placed it on his shirt, indicating to her that she should help unbutton it. Claire, in her dreamlike state, still managed it without difficulty. His chest was flat and slightly furred, just in the middle, with soft straight down. The scent that came from his skin was dizzying. She closed her eyes as she breathed, then laid her cheek on his exposed skin. She took her index finger and slowly dragged it down to his stomach. She felt the smoothness and heat of his skin. ‘Are you ticklish?’ she asked.

‘Tickling isn’t what I’ve got in mind,’ he replied. ‘Unless that’s a euphemism for making love to you.’ He looked down at her. ‘But I won’t rush you. You tell me when.’ He placed his hand behind her head and ever so slowly laid her on her back on the sofa, kissing her as she reclined. My god, Claire thought. This is so … magical.

She was surprised but grateful when he got off her and scooped her up and carried her into the bedroom. He placed her on the duvet and meticulously removed her shoes and then unzipped the back of her skirt. Claire was shaking from the chill and thrill. He then took the coverlet from the bottom of the bed and slid it over her body.

He took off the rest of his clothes, right down to his shorts, then sat on the edge of the bed and discreetly took off his underwear before he climbed in next to her. He wrapped his arms around her and for a silent moment they lay under the coverlet. Her heart was beating hard and she could feel each thump between her legs, an ancient drum beat. The bed felt so smooth, the sheets so cool and fine, the quilt so light. Claire held her breath. She felt Michael’s hip press her thigh. His breathing slowed; then she realized he had adapted his to match her own. Without a word they rolled into one another and pressed hard against each other, kissing passionately.

‘Are you still cold?’ he asked, in between kisses.

She shook her head while still maintaining the connection of their lips.

‘You’re an angel,’ he whispered.

Claire felt her muscles tighten. She had always wanted to hear these words but knew she shouldn’t dare believe them. Yet the temptation was enormous. Michael pulled away from her to look in her eyes. She smiled and tried to put all thoughts out of her head. Michael caressed her cheek and she breathed a sigh of contentment. Here she was in the arms of Mr Wonderful. Better still in bed with Michael Wainwright.

He nudged her onto her back and then laid himself directly over her. She wasn’t surprised by his skill but was by his strength and gentleness. Could it be because she was willing? His tenderness was genuine. He cradled her head with his hands and held her face to his and kissed her deeply. He stroked her hair. ‘You’re an angel,’ he murmured again. He buried his face in the nape of her neck. ‘Mmmm, you smell delicious.’

Claire kissed him passionately. She couldn’t decide which use of his mouth she preferred: him speaking or him kissing. He was also very crafty with his hands. They moved effortlessly from her breasts to her thighs and up again to her mouth, each time becoming more probing, more intimate, more responsive.

Claire had only made love with Bob and that had been awkward and unsatisfying. But with Michael it was different. He registered the slightest shifting of her body, every change in her breath. He knew what she wanted without Claire having to say a word. Since she didn’t like to ask for things, this was the best of all worlds. He was patient, precise and playful, but she also felt such an exchange of emotion that she lost herself. As they made love, Michael kept his lips on hers, and Claire thought he had a hundred variations of kissing, all of them in sync with all his movements as well as her own. He removed his lips only long enough to look at her or when he lowered himself to her nipples and down the length of her torso.

Michael brought her to climax first with his tongue and then his fingers. Claire couldn’t breathe. This was a wonderful experience. She had never had any of this with Bob. Claire had no idea how much time had passed when he finally slipped inside her for the first time. He was such a powerhouse that she was entranced just watching his body moving over hers. His concentration, control and coordination were astounding.

At last, they both collapsed in sweaty exhaustion and he fell asleep with Claire still engulfed in his embrace. After a few moments of reveling in it all, she drifted off into a slumber deeper than Sleeping Beauty’s.

In the morning, without an awakening kiss, Claire startled herself out of sleep. In the semi-darkness she had one of those moments of dislocation. Where was she? It wasn’t her ceiling. Then she turned her head and saw Michael, still sleeping. The events of the night before flooded back. Claire smiled and felt herself blush.

While Michael slept, she simply looked at him; at his long arm lying on the sheet, his chest moving under the covers and how the light from the street was shining on his face. She felt safe, comfortable, happy. It was a feeling she wasn’t accustomed to.

Claire sighed deeply soaking in the satisfaction of the feeling. Happiness this deep was something you could not hold onto, especially with Michael, and at least she was wise enough to realize it. She wasn’t thinking about the sex, though it had been exquisite. It was simply looking at Michael, feeling the warmth, comfort and protectiveness that staring at him brought her. It was pure joy.

Slowly, so as not to wake him, she lifted her head to gaze at his sleeping face. Even without animation, his features had a beauty and liveliness that made Claire wonder. From their conversation the previous night she felt Michael Wainwright was not just another pretty face. After all, in his own way, Bob had been very handsome. But unlike Bob, to Claire’s complete surprise, Michael seemed to have a depth of feeling, a sense of compassion and understanding that had been blocked in Bob.

As if feeling himself observed, Michael opened his eyes. ‘Hello,’ he said, his voice dipping somehow in the middle of the word, making it sound like a self-assured greeting. Claire felt herself blush again and this time it did embarrass her. She fell back on her pillow. Michael raised himself on one elbow, bent over her and kissed her. He lifted his head. ‘Go back to sleep, angel,’ he told Claire and tucked the sheet in on either side of her.

SEVENTEEN

When Claire opened her eyes again Michael was already dressed, his back to her as he loaded his pockets from the top of the bureau. He picked up the last two objects: the comb he tucked in the breast pocket of his jacket and the watch he strapped onto his left wrist. He was ready to leave!

She sat up suddenly and he must have seen her reflection in the mirror before him. She couldn’t see herself but she could see his face, and the way it changed from concentration on his task to an open smile. ‘Good morning,’ he said. Surely he likes me, Claire thought. His smile was so warm. He didn’t have to smile, she told herself.

Michael turned away from the mirror. As he came toward the bed he reached out for her hand, then kissed it quickly. ‘I didn’t want to wake you,’ he said. ‘I thought if I couldn’t sleep until noon, at least one of us could.’ He pushed some stray hair off his forehead. ‘As they say over here, “I’m knackered.”’

‘What’s that?’

‘Tired. Exhausted.’ He grinned.

Claire glanced at the clock beside the bed. ‘Oh, I won’t sleep very long,’ she told him.

He turned to go, giving her advice over his shoulder. ‘Well, change your plan. Sleep in. Then call down for breakfast, eat it in bed and then get your hair done.’ Claire was about to ask him if he thought she needed ‘doing’ when he turned back, but just to grab his raincoat and walk back to the door. ‘Gotta go or I’ll be late,’ he said. ‘I should be back before seven.’

She jumped out of bed, ran to the door and managed to get there before he was out. ‘Bye-bye,’ she said and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. He smiled at her but she saw that he was already distracted, thinking of work.

‘Bye,’ he said and closed the door behind him.

She stood against the door and caught sight of herself in the mirror. From this distance she looked like a woman in a movie, or on TV. For a moment she wondered why the prepositions were different: you’re in one and on the other. She smiled at the irrelevance. Michael had been both on and in her. That was obvious. Her hair was disheveled but in a sensual, luxurious way. And behind her the set was equally sensual and luxurious. The beautiful woodwork, the fabric on the wall, the soft carpet, the chair in the corner; it all looked like a scene from someone else’s life, the kind of life she had not even imagined. But it is happening, Claire thought. It is happening to me. Because of him. Then, with a start she ran to the French doors and peeked out. If she opened them and stood just slightly outside, on the balcony but hidden by the curtain, she would be able to see Michael leave the hotel.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.