All the Time in the World (36 page)

“Hold on a second,” I say, to both Matt and Scotty. I squat down to loosen the Velcro on George's shoes and pry them off his feet. The boys run into the kitchen, so I stay seated on the floor of the hallway. “I'm sorry about the money. I had to make a call, and I'm sorry if it was the wrong call.”

“I don't care about the money,” says Scotty. “Taking them to something like that, though—isn't Fairchild that woman who screwed you? You might have considered staying at home when Patrick canceled. Taking it as a sign or something.”

I hold the phone away from my head, gripping it while I think of a response that doesn't involve curse words. I want to throw the phone across the room and let the sound of it smashing be my answer to him. “It was all I could think of at the time, so I did it. I don't know what else to say.”

“Charlotte, I'm sorry that Mae left you there alone,” he says.

“Mae is not the one who left me alone,” I say. I glance through the kitchen door just in time to see Matt attempt to pull a Tupperware container out from under several others in the refrigerator. The squelching sounds as cucumbers, avocados and yogurt containers start hitting the floor take precedence over everything else.

“I have to go, Scotty,” I say. “Matthew just caused some sort of refrigerator avalanche. I'm sorry. If you want to take the twelve hundred dollars out of my paycheck, I understand. We'll try to get you on video chat tomorrow, okay?” I hang up.

George and Matt are staring at me with wide eyes and frozen expressions as I survey the mess they made. Matt bends down and picks up one of the avocados with two fingers, holding it out for my inspection.

“We could still eat the top part of this,” he says, cringing, like he expects me to smack him upside the head.

“You know what, boys? I'm gonna cut you a deal,” I say. I take the avocado and set it on the counter. “We need to do something fun right now. Your babysitter needs to do something fun, and that means you guys get to come along. If you'll both go and get your shoes back on with no fussing, I will clean this up, and we'll go out. Okay?”

“Where are we going?” asks Matt, predictably.

“I don't know. Maybe we'll, we'll go down and kidnap Uncle Patrick from his office. We could surprise him and take him out to dinner. Tomorrow is his birthday.”

“Okay!” These boys love surprises, getting them and giving them, and they race to put on their shoes, forgetting what a chore it was to take them off only moments ago.

I pick the vegetables up off the floor and pitch them all, wiping up the yogurt with a sponge and putting the tower of Tupperware to rights inside the fridge. I text the driver who just dropped us off to come back for us in five minutes, but it is less than that before we are down in the lobby waiting for him, shoes on our feet and snacks in hand.

We get in the car, roll down all the windows, and pretend we're on a roller coaster as the driver speeds downtown toward the financial district. The boys are giggling and have taken up the phrase “going to kidnap Uncle Patrick” into a singsongy chant, and I laugh with them and feel my stomach flipping between joy and worry that we'll never be this joyful again. The driver pulls up in front of Patrick's building, and I ask him to wait.

I have to convince the security guard at the front desk that we're not here for sinister reasons (at this point, the cries of “kidnap Uncle Patrick” are no longer helpful). Finally, though, we're allowed onto the elevator. When we get to the floor that Patrick's firm occupies, the place looks almost deserted.

The dark-haired, exotic-looking receptionist is wearing jeans and a loose ruffled blouse, along with Chanel flats and a Roberto Cavalli bracelet. The casual dress seems to suggest that she's been called in for a last-minute Saturday, and I notice that her purse is on the desk, like she's been packing up to leave.

“Hi,” I say, grateful in a silly way that I've at least exchanged my usual yoga pants for a skirt today. I point to a spindly gray couch that looks like it might be made out of felt, with shiny chrome legs, and the boys bounce over and pull out their crayons and colored pencils. I'm glad I didn't pack markers. “We're looking for Patrick McLean. I'm … these are his nephews. We came down to surprise him, to take him out. For his birthday. So, is he still here?”

“He is,” she says, smiling in such a brilliant way that I am a little bit in love with her. “He's got a few things to finish up, last I heard. I'm sure he'll be done soon. He told me I could go, that he would be done in about a half hour. But I wouldn't mind staying for a while.” She raises her eyebrows, and it's a polite I'll-stay-if-you-want-me-to-because-I-have-Stockholm-Syndrome-for-this-company look.

“No, that's all right. We can wait on our own,” I say.

“Wonderful,” she says as she shoulders her bag. “His office is down that hallway, the last door on the left, if you get tired of waiting. There are all sorts of drinks and snacks in the refrigerator, through the second door on the right. That room also has an amazing city view. Nice to have met you.” She flips a switch behind her desk, and the lights dim.

“You too,” I say, and she smiles again as she glides out the glass doors. The elevator doors open for her as she approaches, either because it's Saturday evening and no one else is here, or because she's Queen of the Elves.

Twenty minutes pass, and I start to get nervous that there's some secret door Patrick will leave from, that I'll have to disappoint the boys with no actual surprise to fulfill all the buildup. I decide to go looking for him. I'll let him know I'm here, and he can pretend to be surprised when he comes out later and sees the boys in the lobby.

“Matty,” I say, “I need to go to the bathroom. Can I ask you a favor? Since you're the oldest?”

If he were a peacock, he'd spread his tail. “Yes,” he says, sitting up straighter, or maybe it just looks like it, since George is drooping over to one side. This whirlwind of a day I've been dragging them around on is starting to catch up with him.

“Can you be in charge of your brother? I don't want either one of you to move from that couch until I get back. You might have to—I don't know—help him color his Smurf or something. I won't be long.”

“Okay,” he says and flips the page of the coloring book. I'm pretty sure he'll take the responsibility for keeping George occupied seriously, so I leave them to their crayons on the spindly couch and walk down the hall toward the door the receptionist pointed out earlier. It's only half-lit, like the lobby after she flipped the switch, the way I imagine most buildings are at night. As I get nearer to his door, it only gets darker. The outer office door is open, the room is empty, and I almost decide right then that Patrick isn't here. Maybe I should try calling his phone. But his office door is only a few feet away. I might as well knock.

The inner door is closed but not latched, and I raise my fist to make my presence known. I hesitate as I hear a noise that I recognize immediately and then almost as quickly try to talk myself out of admitting I heard. I don't know what streak of perversity compels me to open the door at that point, but I do, and what I find is so inevitable that I'm not even surprised.

Her back is toward me as I stand there holding the door open. It's a little too dark to see one hundred percent clearly, but I do catch the occasional glint off her blondish hair, a color close to my own. From the back, I muse, amazed at my own objectivity, she could actually
be
me, except I'd bet the farm, as my grandmother would say, that she's been to a yoga class more recently than I have. She is mostly clothed, but her skirt is bunched up around her stomach, and her legs are slung over his shoulders even though she is sitting pretty much upright on his desk. Yoga, for sure. His hands grasp her waist as he buries himself inside her, rhythmically but not frantically, as if he has all kinds of time to get her off. Each time his hips meet hers, her breath hitches, and she has to brace herself more firmly on her post.

I have maintained such a wild silence since I opened the door that it could go either way, whether I walk away unnoticed or not, but I don't leave. I don't go right away, because I'm fascinated by the silhouette. It could be us, me and him.

He must hear the door creak as I lean against it because he looks up and meets my eyes. He wraps an arm around her back to pull her in and keep her from noticing me in the doorway, but he doesn't stop, and he doesn't drop my gaze. He's not going to stop, and that's okay because I want to watch. So I stand there and watch, and he watches me watching, until finally her legs start to shake, and she says, “Oh God!” He finishes without ever taking his eyes from mine. She lets her legs slide down the sides of his arms, and he locks his other arm around her back to keep her from turning, and casually waves me away as he does so.

My legs feel like jelly as I walk back down the hall, as if I were the one who just came with Patrick.

The boys are coloring nicely, or rather, Matt is coloring nicely, and George is holding three crayons and having trouble sitting upright, his eyes are so droopy. I pull George onto my lap and try to pry the crayons out of his fingers, but he insists, “Me hold it!” and goes to sleep with his head on my shoulder and his legs to one side of my lap. Matt is lying on the floor on his stomach, and it's not long before he quits holding his own head up and goes to sleep face-down on a picture of Smurfette with pink hair. I don't know how much time passes before Patrick emerges from the half-lit hallway. There is no moving without disturbing the kids. It might be ten minutes, or it might be an hour. The blonde girl is nowhere to be seen, and I'd just as soon not know what her face looks like anyway, so I don't question it.

“You brought them here?” he asks.

“We thought maybe we'd surprise you and take you out to dinner for your birthday. It took a while to get downtown. I'm glad you're still here. They would have been really disappointed if, you know, if you weren't.”

He looks at his watch. “I guess it's a little past their bedtime now.”

“They had some Goldfish and banana on the way down to hold them over, so I guess that will have to do today.”

Patrick looks down at his sleeping nephews. “I'll call a car to take us back uptown.”

“No need. Ours is waiting.” I don't ask him why he's coming uptown with us even though the birthday-surprise plan is already ruined. It seems like a given.

He carries Matt and I carry George, and we meet the town car downstairs. We load the kids in first and buckle their belts, and Patrick climbs in after them. I have a sudden flash of limbo, where I almost bolt up front to sit with the driver, but I don't make the decision quickly enough. Before I know it, Patrick has his finger and thumb around my wrist, guiding me into the car. The driver shuts the door, and I notice the screen is up. It must be standard procedure.

I roll down my window about three inches so that I can feel the air, as if I can expel the palpable communication between us into the night. I have to find a way to release what's in my belly, from my neck to my knees, and it has to be soon. I've been playing fox in the henhouse with him for so long that I don't even think I know who's the fox and who's the hen anymore. What I do know is that
he
knows what's going on inside me, that the perfect marriage of accident and design that happened this evening could produce no other result.

I am wedged between the door and his body. He has his eyes on me. I have my eyes on him.

The car is flying up toward Houston, and his hand is on my knee. I put my head back against the seat, and he is moving it, the hand, almost without me noticing, he is moving it slowly up and down my tights-clad thigh. I didn't think I had the capacity to clench any further, but I do. It's a hard left onto the Bowery, and I think we're going to get held up by Union Square. It's the button on my skirt now, and it doesn't make a sound, which is the only way it can be because the kids are right there next to him. All he needs is his hand really, and it's barely even touching me. There's a fabric barrier between his skin and my skin, but it almost doesn't matter what's there because I need this so badly, and I'm going to have it. As we lurch forward onto Park to speed uptown, it's his thumb, his knuckle, his hand, and I am straining and trying not to interrupt our silence, and he can tell that I'm about to fail because right when I get to the top, just before the fall, he puts his other hand over my mouth, and my fingers clutch his hair and the back of his head, and any sound I make is absorbed into him.

When he is sure that it's okay to let go, he does, and I shift to adjust my tights and button my skirt. His fingers are on the side of my face; he wants to turn my chin and look at me, but my eyes are watery, and I don't let him. The thing about release is that it's a slippery slope, and if I let him look at me, I might laugh or cry or moan or pee my pants, none of which are desirable actions in the moment. He seems to understand, and he settles his fingers on top of mine and lets me hold his really tightly for the rest of the ride.

The driver pulls around to the side entrance of our building, and we manage to get the kids up to the apartment. We work together, without saying a word, to get them de-shoed and into bed. Patrick motions me out into the living room, shutting the door to the hallway behind us.

The decorations for Matt's birthday party are laid out on the coffee table. I've been doing my best to sketch the section of Central Park we'll be setting up in for the party, and totaling up the number of trees that will need to be adorned.

Patrick examines the streamers. “Pink and yellow?”

“Matt picked a color, and he let Georgie pick the other color. It was sweet.”

“Matt wanted pink?”

“Yeah. I talked him out of the glitter ones.”