Catch a Falling Star (6 page)

Then there was the extra security and the parking valets and all of the thousands of details that no one noticed if everything went right and that everyone complained about if anything went wrong.

“Your sister’s on line one.”

Brianna glanced up at Heidi, who’d come to peek her head around the cubicle wall again.

“You know, we have an intercom,” Brianna pointed out.

“Yes, but if I don’t get up and walk around a little during the day, my butt is going to be the size of that woman in
After the Bath
.”

Brianna pictured the Renoir, which hung in the East Gallery. Brianna ran a little more towards Renoir nudes than Heidi did but that was probably because Heidi worked at not resembling said nudes. Maybe Brianna should leave her chair more often.

“Thanks,” Brianna said, and picked up line one.

“Hey.” Natalie sounded a little subdued and Brianna felt immediately alarmed.

“What’s up? You sound … not quite yourself.”

“Oh, I screwed up and didn’t finish my homework on time.”

That wasn’t like Natalie at all, but Brianna knew why. “It was kind of a rough weekend. I’m sorry, I was just so upset about my dad.”

“I know,” Natalie said.

“After all this time — ” Brianna stopped herself. This wasn’t the time or place for that discussion. “So what’s up, Nat?” There was something more than incomplete homework going on.

“I was just frustrated, and then Joe said did I want to study together, and I said no.”

“Okay,” said Brianna, trying to remember who Joe was. Oh, right, lawn-mowing Joe. “And?”

“And I wish I had said yes.”

“Okay,” said Brianna. Natalie always picked times like this to ambush her with something emotionally fraught.
I’m about to lose my job, Nat. Your love life is not high on my list of things to worry about.
But she wasn’t going to dump that on Natalie. She knew Natalie knew everything she needed to know about boys and sex, because Brianna had told her. But she also knew Natalie hadn’t had much time for boys and sex. She’d been struggling to stay alive. So, really, who had the bigger damned problem? A job was just a job.

“So, next time say yes,” Brianna said.

“Maybe there won’t be a next time.”

“This is the kid you got to cut the grass, right?” Brianna said.

“I got him to teach me how, yes.”

“Then trust me, there’s going to be a next time.”

A little sniff. “I was just … I was surprised. And I thought about how I had to let the dogs out and start dinner and all that and so I said no, and he was so embarrassed and sad and then I was, too.” She sounded very confused. That was romance for you, and an excellent reason to avoid it.

“You just tell him that next time you see him,” Brianna said. “Tell him, ‘Joe, I’m sorry, I had some things to do after school but I’m free this afternoon.’”

“What if he says no?”

“He won’t say no.”

“How do you know?” Natalie wailed.

Brianna pictured her sister, who would never be mistaken for a Renoir nude. Small and blonde and beautiful, kind and loving and compassionate.

“Trust me, kid. Unless he’s a complete idiot, in which case you don’t want to study with him anyway, he’ll know good luck when he sees it.”

Matthias looked at the Maltese Falcon on the pedestal. Beverly disapproved deeply, from what he could tell. She’d already tried to break it once, but it was made out of a polymer resin, not glass, so it had bounced.

It was the first discordant note in a life that had had almost none. So he liked it for that. It seemed to promise a way out. He didn’t quite know what that way was, just that it existed, a thing he hadn’t been sure of before.

What he wanted, what he needed, was to be
Matthias
, in a world that wanted him to be a Gustafson and do what Gustafsons always did. Practice in a genteel area of the law, give generously to art and cultural institutions, produce perfectly groomed and well-mannered young Gustafsons to carry on the family name.

Not that there was anything wrong with that. It just wasn’t … enough. He had seen his friend Donald find the right woman, and now the two of them were carrying on the Burke tradition, and they both seemed happy enough, but they also seemed more like business colleagues than intimate partners. Matthias’s parents had been that way, too.

For a long time, most of his life, Matthias had mistaken superficial accord for deep emotional connection. Only in the past few years had he come to understand the difference. He had broken up with his last girlfriend when he found himself falling into the same pattern as Donald and his parents. He had wanted to shatter the superficial accord to find the deeper connection, but Olivia hadn’t been interested. She wanted the superficial accord. Many people did, so he could hardly blame her.

It wasn’t just people of his class and background who craved the pretense, but he found it almost impossible to discuss with anyone he knew.
Look around you,
Donald would say,
and tell me again this is not enough?
But it wasn’t enough because it was the wrong thing. Matthias had more than enough of what he didn’t want and not enough of what he needed.

He looked at the Maltese Falcon again. He wondered what it would be like to be Sam Spade and to live by a code. A simple code, to be sure, but a code you were true to, no matter what the cost. You didn’t just pay it lip service, or bend the rules to help out your friends.
I won’t play the sap for you, sweetheart.

That made him think of the movie and of the Bogart retrospective at the art house, and he logged onto theatre’s webpage to find out if it was still on, and if so, what was playing.

The African Queen
at eight. Not Matthias’s favorite, but a pretty good one. And you had to like Katharine Hepburn. He lifted his suit jacket from the back of his chair and went into the kitchen to get the car keys from the panel on the wall. He didn’t have to leave a note for anyone to let them know where he was going. The staff had all left for the day.

• • •

“Want to go to a movie?” Brianna asked Nat as she dried the last dish.

Nat looked up from her books spread all over the kitchen table. “No, I really need to ace this quiz to make up for not getting my homework done.”

“Nat, you missed how many points on the homework?”

“Three.”

“Three. Is that a lot? Did you still get an A on the homework, is what I’m asking?”

“I got a B.”

“Oh my god,” Brianna said, clutching her heart. “How will we ever live it down? A
B
? How could you disappoint me this way? I won’t be able to hold my head up in this town anymore.”

“Shut up,” Nat said and turned her attention back to her notes.

“I’m just saying it wouldn’t kill you to lighten up.”

“I’m not the one whose only social life is her little sister.”

“Yeah, your only social life is your big sister,” Brianna countered and put the last dish away. “It’s that Bogart retrospective. It’s
The African Queen
, Nat.”

“Isn’t that what Netflix is for? Or the late show?” Natalie said.

“You can’t watch
The African Queen
on a television screen and think you’ve actually experienced
The African Queen
,” Brianna said.

“Someday, when I have graduated from college and can engage in frivolity,” Natalie said in a very superior way. “But not today. Maybe if it were
Casablanca
.”

“You’ve never seen
Casablanca
.”

“Exactly, so then I might want to see it.”

“We missed
Casablanca
. It was on over the weekend.” Then Brianna wished she hadn’t said anything. They’d spent most of the weekend hardly speaking to each other.

“Mmm,” said Natalie, clearly preoccupied with her studies. “Maybe next time.”

Brianna grabbed her bag and hunted in the hall closet for a sweater. “I’m going to walk. I’ll be home around eleven.”

“Mmm,” Natalie said again.

• • •

Matthias drove the silver Lexus downtown to the art house, trying to remember the last time he’d driven anywhere. It wasn’t that he had a chauffeur, but rather that he hardly ever left the house. He wondered if you could be agoraphobic and simply not realize it.

The problem was that the house had everything he needed and he was never the one who had to go fetch anything and bring it back. He had Beverly for that. He had staff. People came to him, not the other way around. As far as his work was concerned, he was the brains behind the legal wrangling, not the one standing in front of the judge to make a point. He wasn’t even the one who met the clients.

Sometimes he wondered if anyone would even notice if he was gone. The staff was paid through a company that dealt with taxes and paperwork; Matthias just sent that organization a check every quarter. It was possible that Beverly and the others would keep cooking and dusting for months before realizing he wasn’t eating the food or answering the phone.

Maybe he would go somewhere. Take the Lexus, with its full tank of gas, and drive somewhere. Where would he go? He remembered once, when he was just a kid, his buddy Frankie had bought an old Mustang convertible and restored it, and they’d tooled around town one glorious Saturday afternoon. Then he’d gone home and his father had told him it was a bad idea to hang out with the son of a staff member, and after that there’d been a series of formal social engagements with people more like his family.

But he had never forgotten that glorious Saturday afternoon.

• • •

Brianna paused on the sidewalk just outside the art house, suddenly wondering if she’d remembered her house keys. A car turning into the parking lot briefly blinded her with headlights and she held up her hand against the glare before double-checking her bag again.

Had she locked the door behind her? No, she’d figured Nat would do that. So what had she done with her house keys? She’d used them to unlock the front door after work and then … set them on the counter. Really, why hadn’t she put them back in her purse?

Now she hoped she’d remembered her cell phone so she could call Nat and ask her to wait up for her or else leave the door unlocked. But her phone was … on her desk at work. Dammit. She wasn’t normally this disorganized. What was wrong with her? No wonder Mrs. Curtin was exasperated.

Maybe there’d be a phone at the movie theatre that she could use. She sighed and turned toward the door. She heard the chunk of a car door closing quite nearby, then the little bo-beep of the car’s security system engaging. Her car’s security system consisted of Brianna manually locking the doors.

“Hi, there, Brianna. I thought it was you.”

Brianna slewed around at the sound of that whiskey voice. “Mr. G,” she said, her heart skipping a beat. It was really unfair of him to sneak up on her like that. At least when he called she could take a moment to prepare herself. But there he was, all easy grace, dark good looks, charming smile,
very
charming smile. Polished, successful, no tattoo anywhere, way, way out of her league. Not even in the same sport.

“Look at you,” she said, rising to the challenge. “Out at the movies and everything.”

He smiled and came to join her on the sidewalk. “I rub shoulders with the masses occasionally.”

“And we do appreciate it,” she said. “Did you happen to bring your cell phone?”

He didn’t blink at what must seem like a total nonsequitur. He patted his suit jacket pocket — he was wearing a suit, despite the fact that no one wore a suit to a Bogart retrospective. Maybe he’d just gotten off work. Although she recalled that he worked mostly from home. If she worked from home, she wouldn’t put a suit on everyday.

“Do you mind if I borrow it to call Nat? I forgot my keys and my phone and … ” Before she could complete the explanation, he had the phone out and handed it over to her.

“Be my guest.”

“Thanks.” She called Nat, alerted her, and gave Mr. G back his phone, and after that it would be weird not to go into the movie theatre together, so they did, and then it turned out he had forgotten his wallet, which made Brianna feel better about the forgotten keys and cell phone, so she paid for his ticket (“I’ll pay you back.” “You better.”) and after that it would be even weirder not to sit together, so they did, right in the middle of the theatre where Brianna liked it best. Although she wouldn’t have minded being all the way in the back, like in high school, and snuggling with a boy. But Matthias wasn’t a boy and this wasn’t high school, and she needed to remember who he was and who she was, so the middle was great.

“Did you ever read the C. S. Forester novel?” Matthias asked as the lights dimmed.

“The C. S. Forester novel of what?” Brianna asked. He was sitting right next to her, and the art house had narrow seats, so that meant that in addition to sharing the arm rest, their thighs were very very close. And also he was wearing some delicious scent, something citrusy and crisp, not musky like so many men did. She had to make herself lean away from him.

“The C. S. Forester novel
The African Queen
,” Matthias said.

“I didn’t even know there was such a thing.”

“I’ll loan it to you sometime.”

Then the curtains parted — the theatre was old enough to have curtains that parted — and the movie started.

Afterward, Matthias offered to drive her home but she knew better than to accept, because it was just a kind gesture from someone she knew through work, and it didn’t mean anything, but it was getting hard to remember that he wasn’t her friend. A good brisk walk home — alone! — might help jog her memory.

Natalie thought of what she would say to Joe after accounting class. Maybe before, if she had a chance. Then he wouldn’t be running off to his next class. No, after, so she wouldn’t have to sit there and be embarrassed through the entire class if he turned her down. She could run over to the student union and drown her sorrows in ice cream before her marketing class started.

He was on his cell phone when he came down the hall, and he glanced at her but didn’t give his usual goofy smile, but she smiled at him anyway, and then he smiled back, so that was good. She thought about saying something but didn’t, and then went into the classroom and took her usual seat — second row back, not quite in the middle. She could barely pay attention to the lecture as the teacher droned on and on and
on
. She kept trying out different ways of saying her invitation to Joe.