The Address, page 3
She was shown into the corner office.
“There you are, my girl.”
Tristan rose and did some kind of balletic shuffle on his way to embrace Bailey. He’d trained with American Ballet Theatre before joining interior design superstar Diego Crespo as an assistant, then worked his way up to boyfriend and business partner. Diego spent most of his time in East Hampton these days, while Tristan helmed the organization. They’d brought on Bailey right out of Parsons School of Design, and Tristan had been her main confidant and party partner until everything had tipped over the edge.
She sank into his hug. “Tristan, I missed you so much.”
“I bet you did, baby. How are you doing?” He held her at arm’s length and she blinked under his penetrating stare.
“I’m hanging in there.” A second wave of sweat, from nerves, not humidity, broke over her.
“Your hair . . .” He didn’t bother finishing the sentence.
“I know, it’s a mess.”
Tristan gestured to the chair and sat on the corner of his desk. He wasn’t a handsome man, at least not as handsome as the swarthy Diego, but he knew enough to dress his lithe body with the perfect colors and cut. Today he wore an azure linen blazer that set off the blue of his eyes. His blond hair, while thinning, was pomaded into place like a schoolboy’s. Impeccably put together, as always.
“Tell me, how was Silver Hill?”
Bailey shrugged. “It was rehab. Lots of talking, lots of people bitching about their sad lives.”
“You’re feeling better?”
“Much better.”
She didn’t mention how most of the time she was dying for a drink, and that once five o’clock hit, she made herself hole up in the East Village studio apartment of her roommate from Silver Hill, where she was temporarily crashing until the girl got sprung. Bailey would pull down the Murphy bed and lie with a pillow over her head to block out the sirens and shouting, hoping it would do the same for her cravings.
“Did you see any celebrities? I heard that Liza Minnelli checked herself in. Did you meet her?”
Bailey hadn’t drunk the Kool-Aid of the counselors there, all that touchy-feely stuff, but the stories she’d heard had been brutal and she respected the idea that it was all anonymous. That some dirt ought not to be dished. Of course, there was no explaining that to Tristan, who lived on gossip.
“No, didn’t see her.” She leaned forward. “But I wanted to thank you and Diego. For everything. I know you guys probably saved my life.”
Tristan waved at her and walked to the chair behind his desk. He paused a moment, dramatically, before sitting down and squaring his shoulders. “It was the right thing to do. You’re just going to have to watch yourself going forward. Only two glasses of champagne at Palladium, then I’m cutting you off.”
“No, Tristan. No more champagne.” She hoped he was joking. “I can’t drink anymore. Or do anything else.”
“Of course you can’t.”
She was eager to get that part of the conversation over with, the one that shamed her to the core. “How is business?”
“Excellent. We just got the town house on East Seventy-Seventh Street, the one that Rebecca Meyer bought in the spring.” He didn’t wait for her to respond. “The renovation started a couple of weeks ago and she’s insisting on importing all the antiques from Morocco and London, if you can believe it. And get this: Last week, Lilly-Beth Latwick flew me by helicopter to her place in East Hampton because her maid had rearranged the throw pillows on the sectional, and she couldn’t remember which way they should go.” He snapped his fingers. “Chopper, baby.”
“Wow. That’s insane.”
“We also landed the Sanfords’ beach house. Massive place, all Zen aesthetic and ferns. I have Wanda on that one. I figure she can’t go wrong when everything will be shades of white. White carpet, white sofas.”
“You better stay on top of her. If anyone could choose clashing shades of eggshell, it would be her.”
“Good point.” He smiled, offering a view of gleaming teeth, like a row of Chiclets.
“In fact, that was why I wanted to stop by today.”
The teeth disappeared.
“I know I blew out of here in a spectacular fashion, but I’d like to make it up to you and Diego. For everything you’ve done for me these past few months. I could work with Wanda, act as a go-between with the Sanfords. You know her people skills leave a lot to be desired.”
Tristan sighed. “I know, darling. We would love to have you back.”
Thank God. One problem solved.
“But the news got around fast. Of course, how could it not? You were screaming at Mrs. Ashfield-Simmons in the middle of the Oak Room, telling her that her daughter’s apartment was a nightmare. ‘A blend of medieval bullshit and white trash,’ I believe you said.”
Bailey cringed. She didn’t remember any of it. She knew, of course, that she’d made a fool of herself and the company. “I’ll call her and apologize. I’ll write a letter to her daughter, too. I’ll make it all good.”
“It’s already been taken care of. The important thing is you’re okay.”
“I’m sober now, so I’ll probably be twice as productive. I promise you’ll get a real bang for your buck.” God, she sounded like a used car salesman. “I’ll obviously take a pay cut. I understand that would have to be a precondition.”
If he didn’t take her back, she didn’t know where she’d turn. No other interior design firm would touch her now. Not to mention that she only had another week left to crash in the East Village before her Silver Hill roommate returned to claim it. Before Bailey’s epic breakdown, she’d shacked up with a boyfriend named Rocco, who, now that she had better clarity of mind, she could see was really a drug dealer, not a Basquiat-esque artist. So that option was out, as was slinking home so her father could point out that he had been right all along, that she should never have come to New York in the first place.
“Look, Tristan. I messed up. But you know I can run rings around anyone else here, when it comes to interacting with the clients, with the contractors, you name it. My eye is the best, you’ve said that yourself so many times. Even when I was strung out, I was great. Let me have one more chance.”
Tristan peered sideways at her through slitted eyelids. Not good. “Listen, Bailey. You put us through hell. We covered for you this past year. You have no idea how much we covered for you, because we love you and because, yes, you were good. You were the best, and you could have done amazing things here. We all party, we all have a good time, but you took it too far.”
The harshness of his words stung.
“Okay. Wow.” She looked down at the floor, hating the lucidity of sobriety more than ever. “I didn’t realize how bad it was.”
“‘Bad’ is an understatement. I love you, but I’m dropping you.”
Dropping her. Like she was contagious. “You’re being really harsh about this. If you don’t mind me saying it, you’re being an asshole.” She said it with a slight smile on her face, in the same way they used to banter back and forth.
Bad idea.
“You disappointed me then, and you’re disappointing me now. Do you actually have the nerve to waltz in here and practically demand to be hired back?” Tristan twitched his shoulders before tugging on the cuff of each sleeve, a familiar tic that meant the meeting was over. “I love you, and I always will, and that’s why we paid for you to go to Silver Hill, which, by the way, is fucking expensive. So don’t expect any more from us, okay? You wouldn’t fit in here anymore.”
She sat for a moment, too stunned to move.
“I’m sorry, Bailey. But we’re done here. You’re done here.”
Bailey stood outside on the sweltering sidewalk, trying not to think about how good a chardonnay would taste right now. The touch of the glass on her lips, the intense acidity followed by the velvet sensation that all was right in the world. Back when she drank, she could live in the moment. High on weed or on coke, the past and the future ceased to exist. While ensconced in the lush, landscaped grounds of Silver Hill, she was able to see that way of thinking wasn’t helpful, and she had talked about her past openly, more than she had with anyone. But here in the city, no one cared.
If she turned right and headed down the side street, she was sure to come upon one of the dozen Irish pubs that lined the blocks of Midtown. Places where office workers could escape from the monotony of their lives.
The room where they’d had group at Silver Hill was covered in mottos from the program. “One day at a time” and “No matter where you go, there you are.”
Well, here she was: a drippy, pathetic mess, desperate for a drink in a dive bar.
She checked her watch. There was no time for liquid distractions. She was due to meet Melinda at Cafe Luxembourg in the West Seventies in a half hour. That was truly her last chance. The train would be a steamy cauldron of humanity this time of day, the windows slanted open, like the heat of the tunnels wasn’t just as unbearable as the fiery furnace of the subway car. She couldn’t face it. Instead, she headed north on foot, cutting into Central Park at Seventh Avenue.
Before her mother’s death, Bailey and her parents would venture into the city a couple times a year from their house in New Jersey, usually to see a Broadway musical where dancers executed fast, furious combinations that took Bailey’s breath away while her father, Jack, squirmed in the too-small seat next to her. But Bailey and her mother always buzzed with excitement the morning before, choosing their dresses with care, as if they might get “discovered” during their big day out. Once in Manhattan, her mother would point out her old haunts, like the building where she attended some posh secretarial school for three months before getting married, and the Horn & Hardart Automat where she and Jack met.
During one excursion, having arrived two hours before curtain, Bailey had suggested they visit the boat pond in the park. She’d brought along a magazine with a photo of a gondola passing under an arched bridge, and thrust it between the front seats of their Volkswagen Beetle. “It’s so pretty.”
“No one goes in the park,” Jack warned. “It’s full of gang members, all dust and graffiti because the city ran out of money to take care of it. It’s a ruin, like the rest of Manhattan.”
Her mother studied the magazine. “What if we walk along Central Park West? We could stop by the Dakota and drop in on your relatives.”
“For God’s sake, Peggy. No one drops in like that in the city. And they’re not my relatives, remember?” The conversation came to a halt as Jack slammed on the brakes, narrowly missing a bicycle messenger. They’d eaten soggy fries and overcooked burgers in a diner to kill the time instead.
Bailey didn’t see the city as a ruin. She saw important people going to important places. She’d wanted to be one of them.
For a while, she had been. But now her fall from grace was complete.
As Bailey got deeper into the park and away from the grid of streets, the air became noticeably cooler. A light wind blew in from the west—thunderstorms were predicted for the afternoon—and the rhythmic whispering of the leaves helped slow the beat of her heart and her desire for a drink. She took a deep breath.
The park was a mess still, that was true. But a private group had taken over the maintenance, and the place was getting spruced up. The trash situation seemed better than ever, no more overflowing bins with rats leaping out of them. Progress.
An ugly chain-link fence lined the north side of the Seventy-Second Street park entrance. Bailey was breathing hard from the walk and the heat and she stopped for a moment, clawing the metal with her fingers and pressing her face into the diamond pattern like a child. The area, recently dubbed Strawberry Fields in John Lennon’s memory, was due to open to the public next month. Five years since he’d been gunned down. Every one of her generation remembered where they were when they found out, as if it had just happened yesterday.
A shout from one of the workers brought her out of her thoughts. A couple of the guys at the base of the excavator stared down at something in the dirt, then called to what seemed to be a supervisor, who ambled over, coffee cup in his hand. The supervisor motioned for the excavator driver to cut his engine and wiped his forehead with a red bandanna. They all stood in a circle, necks craned downward, as if in prayer.
Bailey moved on. The Dakota loomed large as she waited for the light to change. The sides were gray, coated with a century of soot, but it still stood out from its neighbors. No subtle art deco motifs here, this was pure decadence. Gables, windows of all shapes and sizes. A filthy, aging dowager of a building. Bailey counted up four stories and located Melinda’s apartment.
When she was a child, Bailey and her parents had visited Melinda, her twin brother Manvel, and their mother once a year, usually around the holidays. The twins’ mother, Sophia, was a throwback to the old days, encrusted with jewels, even at breakfast, her manner cold and officious. The early family gatherings had always been awkward affairs, the tension between Bailey’s dad and her “aunt” palpable, the economic divide an enormous chasm. Once, Melinda had insisted Bailey stay for an overnight visit. They’d raided the kitchen in the still hours of the early morning, cramming Lucky Charms into their mouths straight from the box while Melinda whispered the gory details of the murder of her great-grandfather, the architect Theodore Camden, in that very apartment. They crept into the dark library and Melinda pointed to the far corner, near the window.
“He was killed by some woman who used to work in the building,” Melinda whispered. “She stabbed him, and he bled to death on this very spot. Begging for mercy. She was crazy, they say. Cut off his finger and kept it as a souvenir. Look closer, you can see the blood.”
Bailey leaned forward, squinting, to make out a dark pattern on the floor. Melinda suddenly tweaked her on either side of her waist, making her jump and scream, and they ran back to the safety of Melinda’s canopied bed, crying and laughing at the same time.
The girls had gotten closer once Bailey moved to the city for college, the two of them gradually increasing the dosage and frequency of banned substances in their systems. Manvel, meanwhile, graduated from Yale and headed to the Deep South to do a dissertation on self-taught artists, only returning a few times, including when Sophia died seven years ago.
Melinda had a brashness that Bailey envied, and together they measured their lives by the number of parties attended. But every so often, usually as Bailey’s body expelled the toxins ingested the night before through cold sweats and vomit, she recognized that her mother, had she still been alive, would have been dismayed and worried. Peggy would have taken Bailey aside and given her a thoughtful lecture on her extended absence from their New Jersey home and the sallow, unhealthy tone of her skin. She would have held her accountable. Jack wasn’t up to the task. He’d retreated into his shell as soon as they put Bailey’s mother in the ground.
In rehab, the counselors had asked her lots of questions about her mother’s death, suggesting that Bailey “process” it. She’d fought back, insisting that being left alone at eighteen had toughened her up. There was no need to process anything. The facts were the facts: drunk driver plus Garden State Parkway equaled Bailey packing up her things and starting freshman year at Parsons with hardly a peep from her dad. She’d kept busy with classes and socializing and exploring every dark crack of the city, until Tristan hired her and pulled her into the fabulous world of Crespo & O’Reilly.
Cafe Luxembourg was practically empty this time of day, the waiters standing in pairs chatting in order to fill the empty hours between the lunch and dinner crowds. Melinda wasn’t there yet, so Bailey took a booth seat where she had a good view of the door. It wasn’t long until Melinda swept in, wearing a jumpsuit with enormous shoulder pads, her blond hair in perfect swirls down her back, as if she walked in a bubble that protected her from the humidity that plagued the common man. She threw the Barneys bags she was carrying on the floor and held out her arms.
“Cousin!”
Melinda. Her last hope.
CHAPTER FOUR
London, September 1884
Mr. Birmingham gave a low growl when Sara gave her notice.
“Think you’ll find something better over there, do you?” he asked.
She didn’t answer, and instead made suggestions for a trouble-free transition and offered to interview her successor. The staff threw a small party on her last day, but it had a desultory air. She packed up her bedsit and that was that. On to a new continent.
During the eight-day journey from Liverpool to New York City, Sara spent as much time up on the ship deck as possible, to avoid the stench of seasickness from her cabinmates below. To her surprise, the incessant rolling of the ship didn’t bother her at all, and she found the week off to be something of a delight. She read in peace in one of the deck chairs, with no schedule and no Mr. Birmingham to tell her what to do or when to do it. It was all she could do not to stow away on board and enjoy another week instead of disembarking.
From her favorite spot on deck, she could see over to the first-class passengers, barricaded by a gate, as they wandered the decks in their gowns and were fussed over by the waitstaff. Some of the sharply dressed servers made their rounds with goblets of lemonade on gleaming silver trays. Others brought sugar cookies still fragrant from the oven that made Sara’s mouth water. But she didn’t mind the meals in the second-class dining room, and every morning carried a weak broth and tea to the women in her cabin who were unable to move from their beds. A moan was the most she could hope for in response to her bright greeting.
On the last day of the voyage, a gray drizzle fell as the ship made its way into New York Harbor. The city was made up of a mishmash of buildings crowded together like a mouth with too many teeth. She imagined the ones on the edge of the waterfront being pushed into the sea as more and more popped up to fill any crevices. One dark church spire erupted from the rooftops, and she overheard another passenger say it was Trinity Church. She’d be sure to visit, thinking it might be a calm place where she could gather her thoughts during an afternoon off.
