Calling Mr Lonely Hearts Read online

  “I got one for Roxanne, too,” Alice said. “They had a hard time finding one small enough, but they finally did. Do you like it?”

  “Thanks, Alice,” she said. “It’s amazing.” There was no way she was going to wear it—at least not at the same time Alice was wearing hers. Still, she didn’t want to hurt Alice’s feelings. She was afraid that maybe Roxanne wouldn’t be so nice about it.

  But she was wrong.

  That next Friday night, they planned a sleepover at Alice’s house. Individually, they felt they were too old for sleepovers, and they weren’t spending so much time together as they once had. It was Alice’s idea.

  She told them she wanted to drive over to the mall Cineplex to see a movie, but Roxanne insisted they go to the rep theater in Oakley to see Rear Window. Even though she had it on VHS, she wanted to see it for real in the theater, and she told Alice that she wouldn’t go along with the whole wearing-matching-sweaters thing if they went to the mall.

  Del was torn. She was uncomfortable enough about the matching sweaters—and wearing them at the mall would’ve been a complete disaster. So she was grateful to Roxanne for that reason. But she didn’t want to see Rear Window. It had been a couple of years since she’d last watched it with Roxanne, and she found it hard to believe that Roxanne would still want to be reminded of it.

  Alice paid for the popcorn that she shared with Del. Roxanne wasn’t eating. In fact, Del hadn’t seen her eat anything all day.

  During the film, Alice kept whispering, commenting on what was on the screen until a woman in the row in front of them turned around and told her to be quiet. Alice made a face at her but kept quiet until they got to the part where the dog started digging in the garden.

  “That’s where the body is,” she said in a stage whisper. It was as though she’d never seen the film before, when Del knew for certain that she had. “I bet that’s where the body is.”

  “Be quiet, Alice,” Roxanne said, loud enough for everyone around them to hear.

  Afterward, Alice pouted. Even as they sat in Denny’s, drinking coffee, she was bitchy, saying that she didn’t understand why she wasted her time on them, why she’d even gone so far as to buy them sweaters that they probably didn’t like anyway.

  When she huffed off into the bathroom, Roxanne grabbed Del’s wrist.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Del said.

  “Let’s just leave her here. She’s acting like a brat.”

  “She’s got the car,” Del said. “That would be stupid.”

  But she let Roxanne lead her outside.

  They stood in the parking lot, just out of the line of sight from the table where they’d been sitting. Roxanne lit a cigarette and they shared it as they watched.

  Alice came out of the bathroom, still looking irritated. She paused in front of the table and looked around. When Del saw her even look beneath the table for them, she laughed smoke out of her nose, which led to a coughing fit.

  Then Alice sat calmly for a few minutes. She took a compact and some lipstick from her purse and opened both. The waitress came over with the check and left it on the table.

  “We should go back in,” Del said. It was cold outside, and it had been warm in the restaurant.

  “Probably,” Roxanne said. But she didn’t move.

  After another minute or so, they saw a man slide out of his booth and start walking toward Alice. He was much older, maybe as old as Del’s father, and wore a kind of uniform shirt with a name patch over one pocket that Del couldn’t read. His dull brown hair looked oily and his jeans were a couple pounds too tight so that a tiny pooch of belly and shirt formed a kind of puffy ring around the top of his jeans. If his beard hadn’t been so rough, as though he hadn’t shaved for three or four days, Del would’ve guessed he was Joe Working Guy stopping in after his shift at the mattress plant up the road. But it was the look on his face that scared Del. He seemed to be trying very hard to act friendly, normal.

  Alice looked up at him, startled, when he stopped at her table. As they talked, she fidgeted with her napkin.

  Then, to Del’s total surprise, Alice smiled, and indicated to the guy that he should sit down in the chair Del had vacated.

  Roxanne sighed. “All right,” she said. “We better go back in.”

  Del didn’t say so, but she thought leaving Alice alone to be preyed on in the restaurant was one of the cruelest things they’d ever done to her.

  Del lay in the triangle of light coming from the bathroom listening to Jock brushing his teeth. They had made love, just as they always did on Tuesday and Thursday nights—a habit they had quickly fallen into after the wedding. She didn’t like to ask herself if that had been his schedule with his dead wife.

  What was Alice doing tonight? Had she realized yet what was happening? Had there been a scene? She had probably called Roxanne. There was so much to know—and yet she didn’t really want to know. Jock hadn’t said it, but she knew he thought Alice had it coming. He just didn’t know Alice like she did.

  Jock slipped back into bed beside her and she snuggled against him. The sex with him was good—much better than it had been with any other man, though she didn’t have all that many men to compare him to. Only her first husband (rough, frequent, impatient, often painful) and three or four guys back in college (repetitive, brief, vaguely ridiculous if not drunken). But tonight she knew she needed more, and it wasn’t simply because she hadn’t had an orgasm. The want felt serious, deep; it pressed against the tender, melting places inside her. She wasn’t sure if it was desire for Jock, or the desperate fear of being in the same place that Alice was at this moment: Alone. Unwanted. Unloved.

  She turned her body toward him and slid her hand up his thigh to touch him, gently, at first. But there was no response beneath her hand and she realized he was lying perfectly still and looking at her.

  “What is it?” she said, pulling her hand back.

  It was dark enough that she couldn’t quite see the look on his face.

  “You surprised me,” he said. “That’s all.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She realized in that moment that she had almost never taken the initiative with him. Had she ever? No.

  “It’s okay,” he said. He turned onto his side, facing her, and stroked her hair. “I’m just kind of done for the night.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I’m sorry.” But there was a small part of her that wasn’t a bit sorry, that screamed, begged, pleaded, and scolded her, that told her she shouldn’t have to be sorry. It felt as though she were being denied something she deserved. She knew it was foolish to think she deserved sex when she wanted it. There was no deserving about it. It had to be mutual, didn’t it? It didn’t matter so much if she played along sometimes when she didn’t quite feel like it. She told herself it was no big deal, and tried not to be ashamed.

  “I love you,” he said. He kissed the tip of her nose. “Sleep well.”

  She would have to wait until Thursday.

  CHAPTER 7

  Week 17 4/7

  “Roxanne, I want you to see the beaches on Jekyll Island.”

  “Roxanne, let’s meet for lunch and talk about a piece for my place in Vail.”

  “Roxanne, I’m renovating a studio in Over-the-Rhine. I want your opinion on the decorator.”

  Sometimes, she thought she would go mad with the voices of men.

  Balanced on the arm of an uncomfortable chair in a corner of the gallery, nearly encircled, she felt like a bohemian Scarlett O’Hara. Only this wasn’t Gone With the Wind, and she wasn’t pining over some wimpy Ashley Wilkes. What she was was bored. Alice had tried to talk her into blowing it off and going to dinner. But all Alice wanted to talk about was how mean Thad was, and all she could think to reply was “I told you so.” The gallery was overfull—unbelievably so for some random ceramicist from Indiana—and she was getting warm. Worse, Del and Jock hadn’t shown up.

  “Tag, honey, would you get
me a water?” she said to one of the several men standing in a semicircle around her chair. “Maybe with a twist of lime?”

  Tag Murray, a real-estate developer almost twice her age, winked at her—she’d chosen him, after all, to do something special for her—and moved away toward the bar set up on the other side of the room.

  She had no biblical knowledge of Tag Murray, though he was constantly hinting that he wanted to change that. His wife, Gretchen, was sweet even if she was kind of homely, and she was on the board of some foundation that had expressed serious interest in a particularly large piece of her work, so she didn’t encourage him. Also, he had a moustache, and she disliked kissing men with moustaches.

  The other two men, Jack Lamb and Terry—she could never remember his last name—were fairly new to her, but they were both so busy comparing stock portfolios as they tried to impress her with their wealth that she thought she might have to send them to separate corners.

  She didn’t bother to hide her relief when Colwyn Spenser, the gallery owner, caught her eye. Colwyn always made her smile. He was a wit and had a schoolmarmish way of holding a finger to his pursed lips when he was trying to make a decision, whether he was judging the artwork of some hopeful painter or purchasing a tie. Alarmingly tall—almost six and a half feet—Colwyn’s skin was darker than she could ever have imagined skin could be, and he was always dressed with care. His round, wire-rimmed glasses sat on a nose that was prominent, patrician-thin, and he kept his white hair trimmed close. She assumed the white hair was premature, but she had no more idea of his age than she did his sexual preference. Her assumption was that if she thought a man might be gay, he probably was. But although Colwyn had a queen’s fastidiousness about him, he appeared to be completely asexual.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” she said, getting up. “The master calls.” She brushed Terry’s arm with a light hand. No need to leave him too disappointed.

  “You looked like you were about to nod off,” Colwyn whispered, leading her away.

  As they passed Gretchen Murray, Roxanne smiled at her. She was wearing a particularly unbecoming shade of raspberry lipstick and one of those handmade jackets covered with bits of patchwork and dangling threads that some fraud was selling for a stupid amount of money out of a Montgomery Road boutique. Roxanne knew the artist’s work. She also knew that the woman had started out styling mannequins for Kmart.

  “Why don’t you take a little time out?” Colwyn said when they got to his office. “The wolves are certainly prowling tonight. You do look delicious.”

  “You’re so good to me,” she said, putting her hand on the doorknob.

  She trusted Colwyn. Born to old-school painters—a portraitist and a landscape painter—he knew a lot about artwork as well as the art business. When she’d visited his loft to talk about him representing her, she’d seen his paintings: massive, highly textured pieces that seemed to emit their own soft, Mediterranean light. It was as if that light were a reflection of Colwyn’s deep-seated goodness. He seemed almost egoless to her, and was probably the best person she knew.

  Now, his brows came together in a mild scowl. “You need to take better care of yourself,” he said. “You’re spending too much time in that studio of yours.”

  It was so nice to have someone looking out for her. She lifted up on her toes and he bent down so she could kiss his cheek. He gave a damn about what happened to her, and that made her happy.

  Later, much later, she wouldn’t remember the moment she met him. She would hardly remember him at all. But when she opened the office door and saw him standing there, she had no thoughts of later, only that moment.

  “Roxanne,” he said. “I’m Varick. I’ve been wanting to meet the woman who created Peace.”

  He took her hand from her side and held it in both of his. Like most people, he had to bend a bit to touch her, but she hardly noticed, the move was so quick and effortless. Disarming.

  She looked back to see if Colwyn was there, but he had moved back into the gallery.

  For a long moment, she had nothing to say in return, and just stared. Had she seen him before? Maybe in a magazine or on the news? He spoke with an accent, perhaps central European. His chestnut silk sport coat was expensive, but slightly rumpled, as though he’d been wearing it all day. Dark black hair, as black as her own, fashionably long, but neat. Eyes that watched her, expectant. But beyond the expectancy, she couldn’t read them. She didn’t like that.

  “Where did you see it?” she said, taking her hand away from his. But she could still feel his touch on her skin.

  She’d worked on and off for almost six months on Peace, the first sculpture she’d done in the child/bird series. The child knelt with a red-tailed hawk perched on its knee, claws digging into the child’s skin. But the child held a rope taut around the bird’s neck so that the bird seemed to strain against it.

  “It’s in my private collection,” he said.

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “A piece doesn’t always stay in the hands of the original purchaser.”

  Peace had sold to Larry and Rachel Rothwell, a St. Louis couple who had a massive folk art collection; they’d bought the twelve-thousand dollar piece for their son, who obviously had sold it. She remembered the son as not particularly smart. He lived with his fiancée in a massive Upper East Side Manhattan apartment owned by his parents. It was his fiancée who had found Peace at a show Roxanne had had in Hell’s Kitchen. She wondered if they’d sold it for drugs or debt or just out of boredom.

  “Do you want to see it?” he said. “Do artists enjoy viewing their own work once it’s placed, or are you like a writer who never wants to see what she has in print because she wants to fix what isn’t perfected?”

  “Is it here? In town?” she said. She was curious, wondering how he displayed it. Was it among other pieces or shoved into a dark room, by itself ? She thought of her sculptures that way—almost worried about them. Her hands had given them life. If she didn’t need the money to live, she might never let them go.

  Something about this man made her defensive. She prided herself on being able to read people, to see through to their emotions, but she couldn’t see anything of him at all behind his eyes. There was something disturbingly familiar about him—not his looks, or his manner, but something else. She had a feeling deep in the pit of her stomach that was like a memory.

  “May I call you?” he said. “Perhaps I can convince you to come and see it in its new home. We can have dinner.”

  She noticed the faint scar in the shape of an arrowhead on his cheek. A childhood accident, maybe? A champagne glass flung by some angry woman?

  Taking a square of notepaper from Colwyn’s desk, she wrote down her cell phone number. As she held the paper out to him, she half-wanted him to touch her hand again so that she might get a better sense of him. But he took the paper by its edge and eased it into his pocket. In return, he gave her a card with his first name and a last name with a lot of consonants in it.

  “Thank you for your time,” he said. He was out the door of the office before she could respond.

  She looked after him for a moment, then ran a finger over the back of the card. It was expensive beige stock, and engraved. Who carried engraved cards these days?

  When she emerged from the office, she found Tag Murray and Jack Lamb waiting near the door. Tag smiled, holding out the water she’d asked for and looking as though he expected her to pat him on the head.

  But she found herself wanting to be hurtful to this man who was so obviously desperate for her approval. There was a tension inside her that needed relief, even if it was only the small relief that minor cruelty could provide.

  She rested her hand on Tag’s arm and got close enough to him that, as she whispered up to him, her hair fell in a languid stream across his sleeve.

  “I really don’t have time to play games with you, Tag, and I don’t think I want to,” she said.

  Not bothering to check the look on
his face, she continued on across the gallery and out the door. If she expected to see this Varick person outside—and she told herself she didn’t—she was disappointed. A different man stood beside a parking meter about twenty feet away. He was shorter than Varick and wore a sweatshirt with a hood draped close about his face, but he quickly turned away when he saw Roxanne looking at him. Pervert.

  The idea of hanging around the gallery no longer appealed. She headed for her car with the thought that she might stop somewhere else on the way home and order a decent glass of wine.

  CHAPTER 8

  Week 17 4/7

  Why did everyone in the restaurant seem to be staring at her?

  Alice opened her menu, not really paying much attention to the words printed on the fragile paper inside the tired, leather-trimmed cover. She always had the same thing, anyway.

  Two businessmen drinking what looked like scotch checked her out as they pretended to have a conversation. Did they think she was blind? Stupid? And the underdressed woman at the next table had her eye on the sweet ostrich handbag resting at the left of Alice’s plate. Alice glared at her, resisting the urge to do something wicked like sticking out her tongue, until the woman looked away.

  Les Deux Freres was an old-school restaurant, dimly lit, with cherry-paneled walls and plush appointments: velvet-covered chairs and turn-of-the-twentieth-century paintings and servers in crisp black-and-white uniforms. Her father had brought her here for every birthday since she was six. As a child, seated with him (and her mother before she died) in the main dining room, eating cake with ganache and chocolate shavings, she’d felt like a princess.

  Tonight she needed to talk. She needed Roxanne, even if all she was going to hear (again!) was that Thad probably wasn’t coming back and she should get it over with and call a lawyer. But Roxanne was too busy for her. Roxanne had never, ever wanted a husband. Only lovers, and the more, the better. Alice and Del had been the ones who had, long ago, made and compared notes on the men they would marry.