Making It, page 21
She picks up the paper and thrusts it under light from the clock. The words are big enough to read without glasses.
New York Staff Eliminations. Ordinary words, not dramatic at all, yet they set off an avalanche inside her.
So that was what the meeting in London was about.
She sits hard on the bed to resist a sensation of falling.
“You fuck,” she says quietly to the page in her hand. Then, louder: “You fucking fuck.”
“What?” says Kabal, roused by her words. He sits up, squinting. He doesn’t have his contacts in.
She holds up the fax, rattles it in his face. “Am I being fired?”
He looks away.
“When the hell were you going to tell me?”
Kabal turns to the clock, stares at its numbers as if the answer can be divined from them.
“Relax,” he says, turning back to her. “Nothing’s going to happen until the third quarter.”
“What?” she says, leaping off the bed. She despises the sangfroid she sees in his face.
“Don’t take it personally,” he says. “It’s a business decision. It has nothing to do with you as a person.”
She struggles against the rise of her stomach. “You didn’t even try to defend me, did you?”
He reaches for her hand, strokes her ringless fingers. “You’ll get freelance easy, Audrey. I’ll see to it you’ll freelance for us.”
With great difficulty, fighting a feeling of nausea, she bends to slip on the excruciating heels.
“Audrey, c’mon. There’s no need to go.”
She clatters across tile, makes her way to the door. “That,” she says, “is what you should have told them in London.”
She turns a knob shaped like an elephant’s trunk and pulls the heavy door shut behind her.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Where do you want to go today?
—Microsoft
Audrey stares at herself in the elevator, multiplied by golden, unsympathetic walls, confronting sides of herself she is not used to seeing: her profile (too sharp), her legs (too short), her backside (too broad). Her hair is a mess (alas, it is thinning). Without makeup, she looks to be the age that she is. Wrapped haphazardly in sari silks, she appears slightly mad. How glad she is that she is alone, that the stool upholstered in red velvet is empty, that the operator in the turban and brass-button uniform is probably asleep in the lobby.
A soft bell chimes as the car stops on her floor, and soon she is fishing the huge brass key out of her black evening purse, turning it furiously in the elephant’s rump. What had she expected from him? Her eyes sting, and her vision is blurry, but not too blurry to notice that the room seems not to be the same one she left. The clothes she’d tossed aside, hurrying to dress, in glad anticipation of the evening, have been picked up and neatly folded and stacked on the dresser. Papers strewn across the desk have been straightened. Her golden coverlet is pulled back, and a gold-foiled square of chocolate rests on a plump pillow. She takes it, tears back the foil, and bites into it hungrily.
She longs to hear Oren’s voice. Its solidity will steady her. She calculates time in New York—late afternoon now. There, evening has not yet been lived. She imagines herself cavorting backward in time, when she would be free to act differently, change the course of events—but things were already set in motion.
She picks up the weighty black receiver, puts out a finger, slowly dials. She pictures the rings disturbing the air in her apartment, grazing the heavy furniture in their living room, rolling over the shiny wood floors of the hallways, settling on the solid granite counter in their new kitchen. Finally, she hears Oren apologize for their absence and ask for a message. She drops the receiver onto its cradle. She doesn’t trust her voice. Her voice will betray her.
What will she do now? How will she manage? How will she pay four years of private college tuition? She pictures another job, a mirage in the distance, herself a weary wanderer, making a futile approach over sand.
She turns to the window, pushes apart heavy velvet drapes. It’s only 7:00 a.m., yet streets already pulse with activity, clogged with humanity navigating among cars, taxis, rickshaws, tuk-tuks, wandering cows. She stares down at the India she’s been cautioned against, the one that exists a few feet beyond yet worlds away from the scrolled golden gates.
On rooftops below, sleeping figures curl against each other like question marks. Some stand, unfurling themselves from white sheets, stretching toward the sun, already high in the sky.
Should she work until she is officially fired? He said it wouldn’t happen until the third quarter. She should take the time to put together her book, circulate it, negotiate a good severance. But the thought of enduring Kabal’s daily presence—impossible.
She has to get out. She longs to breathe air that has not been interfered with.
She’s been warned against the stream of humanity below. But, really, what is there to be afraid of? What can they do to her that is worse than what’s been done to her by the hands of a lover?
She peels off the sari and pulls on loose cotton pants and a T-shirt. She opens her purse and takes out her wallet to put in the safe—but will it be safe? The welcome packet warned against trusting room safes. The packet said to keep valuables at the front desk. She buries the wallet in a pants pocket and heads for the door.
Once downstairs, she crosses the empty lobby, a thick field of oriental carpet where attendants sleep against walls, rolled up in tablecloths. Heads of lion, tiger, rhinoceros watch from permanent posts on the walls.
They were caught, like her. Then eviscerated.
Behind the front desk, she sees a man in uniform asleep on the floor, rolled up in a tablecloth. She doesn’t have the heart to disturb him.
At the heavy front doors, men in colorful turbans are polishing brass knobs. Will they stop her from leaving? They only nod and open the doors for her, and soon she is tripping down marble stairs, rounding the curve of a drive, passing through cool tunnels of archways, past guards dressed like the ones at Buckingham Palace, who make no move as she passes to the other side of the gate.
It is just after dawn, but already the sun presses relentlessly. There is no reason to hurry. No deadlines to meet, no appointments for which she is already late. The blank canvas of an entire day looms before her, as exotic as any of the sights before her.
She is assaulted by smell. Lumbering trucks blast foul clouds of exhaust at small tooting cars, and the stink of petrol combines with the sickly sweet perfume of flowers: jasmine and marigolds being threaded together into garlands by vendors squatting on sidewalks. Charcoal burns in ovens set up on sidewalks where onions and flatbreads grill in open air.
On a flatbed cart, a man irons trousers, seating the iron on a bed of red coals.
She seethes to think of Kabal at that moment—unfolding squares of a shirt that has been pressed for him, then brushing and brushing his perfect teeth.
She is glad she never told Greta of the affair, glad she hasn’t shared news of it with anyone, glad that each time she’d been tempted to tell Greta or Howard, she’d stopped herself, afraid that the telling would rob her of something. When she goes home, it will be as if the affair never happened. This thought is a source of both consolation and grief.
She navigates narrow sidewalks blocked by vendors hawking an array of items she’s never seen displayed together: used telephones, urns of colored spices, wooden puppets, wooden legs, black socks, padlocks, plastic toys, and paperbacks printed on tissue paper.
She must step around a dentist plying his trade on the sidewalk. A patient sits in a leather chair, holding a tray of implements that look to be from medieval times.
“Pen, Madame?” She is surrounded by little girls in blue school uniforms. “You have pen, please? Stylo?”
The children are no more than six—small, Audrey thinks, to be walking the streets on their own. Paley had not been permitted to do so until he was ten. With regret, she remembers the bouquet of pens in her room, imprinted with the logo for the conference, tied together with ribbon in her welcome bag.
“Sorry.” She shrugs and watches the points of their white scarves disappear into the crowd.
She walks straight ahead so as not to get lost.
“Baksheesh, Madame!”
“Stylo!”
“Pen!”
She hopes she is walking toward the ocean, imagining cool, cleansing waves coursing over her feet.
A temple with altars opens to the street where monkeys cavort on carved wooden statues of gods. The gods are engaged in various sexual positions; she smiles to imagine the implausibility of finding similar icons at home in recesses of churches: Jesus sprouting ten hands, each pinching a girl’s nipple, or the Virgin Mary, topless, milk spurting in fountains from her phalanx of breasts.
She glances down a side street and sees a sliver of blue—the beach is near.
Soon she is descending rickety wooden stairs, peeling off sandals, rolling up pants, reveling in the feeling of freedom the sea always inspires. She need never return to the dark, smoky room. When she returns to the hotel, she’ll go to the spa, the all-women’s spa where Kabal can’t run into her.
Sand stretches before her, infinite, glittering. Who will she be without a paid place in the world? A year ago, she’d tossed and turned trying to answer that question. Now she’ll have to come up with a response.
“Bracelet, Madame?” A woman dangles bright bangles, hennaed hands turning them this way and that, angling them to best catch the light.
Suddenly brightly dressed women emerge from the shadows of wooden boats pulled up on the sand. They close in on Audrey, scaring her, shouting, eyeing her hungrily, like predators circling kill. She is their kill.
“Pineapple, Madame?”
“You like silk scarf?”
“Batik for you, Madame? I give good morning price.”
Audrey is tempted to buy the batik scarf. It is made of bright colors that blend together as if the fabric has been made to cry. But she can’t buy it now, can’t bring out her wallet, fat with rupees, in front of them.
“I have no money,” she lies, turning up her palms.
Perhaps she’ll return later, perhaps, with a handful of change. But the women, not knowing her intention, moan their disappointment, singing it out across the sand.
“Look again, Madame, you did not see!”
“I give you friend price, Madame!”
“I give you best morning price!”
Finally, convinced that Audrey cannot be persuaded, they fall silent, retreating to take refuge from the sun in the cool shadow of boats.
Sun presses relentlessly even at this hour. Audrey realizes how exhausted she is.
Wearily, she drops to the sand to rest in the shade of a coconut tree.
She thinks of Oren and his forays to Queens for fresh coconuts. He’d love it here. But he doesn’t like to travel.
There is a rustle behind her, and she turns to see a forlorn-looking girl. She is tiny and frail, no more than eight years old. Her dark-eyed serious expression reminds her of Paley’s. Paley. Soon he’ll be leaving her, taking his childhood with him.
“Hello,” says Audrey. It is the children here she feels most sorry for.
The girl stares intently. She is wearing a torn shift made of gold, gauzy material. It looks to be a castoff princess costume, like the one Greta’s Maddie wore to school for two weeks somehow found its way here.
“Are you lost?” Audrey asks. A ribbon of lace droops from the dirty dress, detached from the hem.
The girl scratches her shoulder, digs her bare feet in the sand. She’s holding something. A piece of paper. With both hands, she unfolds it and offers it to Audrey.
Notice to the Public: The bearer of this proclamation is Deaf and Mute.
Audrey stares at the girl, who looks away.
Any Moneys in Donation will be Appropriated for Schooling.
The notice is typed on an old typewriter. The heading is “The School for Misfortunate Children.” A request for money. A hoax? What does it matter. The girl is poor, a child in need. All those service hours Paley spent to fulfill school requirements: penny drives, clothing donations, assembling cans and blankets for holiday baskets. The girl is the personification of need.
Audrey reaches into her pocket and pulls out her wallet. She fumbles through the thick wad of bills, pulling out a sum she thinks will seem generous. It is not hard to seem generous. Each big, colorful rupee is worth only a nickel. She counts ten into the little palm gray with dirt. But the palm remains open.
“That’s all I can give you,” Audrey lies.
The tiny palm remains steadfast.
Relenting, she counts more bills into the girl’s hand.
Finally, the palm closes around the money. The girl folds the bills and secretes them deep in a pocket. From a pocket on the other side of the dress, she takes out an old plastic pen, half-filled with red ink. She produces a paper, a list titled “Donors,” and gestures for Audrey to add her name to the list.
Audrey shakes her head. Who knows in what way her name might be used? But the girl persists, tapping the point of the pen on the page.
Audrey shakes her head again, and the girl sinks to the sand to sit beside her. The girl reaches for Audrey’s wrist, lifts the gold cuff that encircles it, and stares at her reflection in it. The bracelet was from Tiffany’s, a Tadd, Collins gift for twenty years service. The bastards. She wonders how much it will fetch if she sells it. Audrey slips it off and puts it on the girl, who smiles at herself, exposing dark teeth, and Audrey plays with the idea of taking her back to New York, finding a doctor to cure her (if indeed she is deaf), an orthodontist, dress her in the latest little girl fashions.
What a surprise she’d give Oren. Of course, the idea is impossible.
As if sensing the loss of this alternate future, the girl takes off the bracelet and slides it back onto Audrey’s wrist.
They sit a while longer, looking out to sea. Audrey feels as if she is watching her life, or life as she knew it, retreat inch by inch with the tide until the girl sighs heavily, stands abruptly, and reaches out a hand to be shaken. The girl’s hand is so frail that it feels as if Audrey is shaking a bundle of twigs.
She watches wistfully as her would-be daughter walks away, until her silhouette is swallowed by the shadows of fishing boats.
Only then does she notice: the girl left her pen. There it stands, upright, deliberate in the sand. Why would the girl leave behind something of value?
Stylo, Madame?
It is as if she left it in payment for something. A chill moves up Audrey’s spine. She reaches into her pocket. The wallet is gone.
Her money. Passport. Wedding ring.
She leaps up, pounds across the sand, until she sees the girl in the distance, slowly mounting a flight of wooden stairs to the street.
“Hey!” she calls. “Hey, little girl!”
The girl keeps walking, giving no sign she’s heard Audrey. Perhaps she is deaf.
When Audrey reaches her, panting, she puts hands on the girl’s shoulders and spins her around.
“Give me my wallet,” she shouts in the girl’s face.
The girl blinks, uncomprehending.
Audrey’s shouts alert the saleswomen who emerge from the shadows of boats where they’d been sheltering themselves. Bright silks flutter across the sand. She feels as if she is being rescued by many Nadimas. Poor Nadima.
“You need help, Madame?”
“My wallet,” she says, and half-cries, half-shouts her story to them.
Everything, everything is being taken from her.
If the women are surprised she had money, they don’t show it. They only look concerned. The women encircle the girl and speak rapidly at her. She spits at them, David against Goliaths. The sarong seller crouches, levels her face with the girl’s, and spews a stream of words Audrey can’t understand.
Why are they helping me? Audrey wonders. What moral compunction induces them to come to my aid?
When the woman shouts, “Polizia!” the girl shouts something back. Audrey recognizes it as the universal tone of denial. The girl is, of course, neither deaf nor mute, and Audrey seethes at all the many ways she’s been had.
Audrey needs the ring back. And, with it, her life.
“Tell her,” Audrey says to the sarong seller, “that if she gives back my wallet, I’ll give her my bracelet.”
She watches the girl’s face as the promise is made. The girl’s crying stops. Her eyes flicker to the gold.
It’s then that Audrey notices the little girl’s pinkie finger moving with a barely perceptible gesture, pointing down to a dune in the sand.
The clever girl has buried it! Audrey drops to the sand and begins to dig with her hands. She cries out and lifts the wallet, sand streaming from its folds.
The money is untouched. The ring is still there. She feels giddy as she fishes the ring out of the pouch and slips it onto her finger. As the ring passes over her knuckle, her body floods with relief.
The girl has stopped crying, but her face is streaked with tears. She hiccups and gazes at Audrey expectantly. Audrey slips off her bracelet and hands it to the girl, who slides it onto her wrist and holds it so it doesn’t fall off.
“You give her reward for stealing? Bah!” The sarong seller spits a stream of betel juice into the sand. Audrey turns to her and opens the wallet. She counts note after note into the sarong seller’s reddened palms, and into other hands pushing forward, until all the money in the wallet is gone. She cannot believe how much lighter she feels. She turns to make her way back to the hotel. The girl’s pen is still standing upright in the sand. It looks like a marker for a tiny grave.
