Claudia Silver to the Rescue (9780547985602) (16 page)

“I feel you,” said Claudia, pressing her palms against Bronwyn's shoulder blades. Her throat had grown tight. She knew it must be a good sign, Bronwyn growing up and becoming a Successful Young Media Professional. Bronwyn's budding career would help her handle everything that was coming, because she might be too busy doing whatever it was that Associate Photo Editors did to care what her father and her best friend were up to in
their
off-hours. Claudia hugged Bronwyn tighter. She couldn't imagine leaving this clinch, nor the permanent deep freeze that must be rolling in. Unless, of course, Paul called.

“Are you okay?” Bronwyn asked.

“Don't let me rain on your parade,” Claudia said quietly.

Bronwyn held Claudia at arm's length, her expression furrowed with concern. “You won't. You
can.
What is it?”

“I . . . ,” Claudia began.
I just slept with your father, and I'm quite certain it's not the last time, so just bear with me here, because if we put our heads together on this I think we'll both realize—
“I got fired.”

Bronwyn's large violet eyes immediately filled with tears. “Oh no!”

“Yup. Shit-canned.” Keeping the
almost a month ago
part to herself, Claudia slapped back the tears that threatened to scuttle up. The relief she felt to finally tell a truth threatened to loosen every secret she'd ever stuffed. She scrambled to outrace disaster.

“Oh, Claudia,” Bronwyn commiserated. “How could those idiots fire you? You're so much smarter than they are!”

“They say blonds have more fun,” Claudia said, letting her eyes, and only her eyes, spill. “But I'm pretty sure it's idiots who do.”

Bronwyn pulled Claudia onto the futon sofa. “Tell me everything.”

Claudia took a moment. Then: “I was born a poor black child.”

“Come on, Claude. Don't do that.”

Claudia swiped at the two fat tears racing toward her jawline. “The first thing I want you to know is that I am one hundred percent thrilled for you.” That part was true. “I have no idea what an Associate Photo Editor does all day, but I look forward to finding out.”

“Thank you.” Bronwyn pressed her hand over Claudia's. “You'll be among the first to know.”

“And thank you for making this lovely dinner.”
Manners before morals,
Claudia remarked to herself, ruefully quoting her mother.

“You're very welcome. Now tell me what happened.”

“I don't know,” Claudia began. “I'm supposed to organize family-style lunch every day, but I just couldn't
take
that shit anymore . . .”

“You just outgrew it, that's all. It was time.”

“I guess.”

“Trust me on this,” said Bronwyn, topping off Claudia's champagne with a twinkle in her eye. “You have perfect timing. Because we are in this thing together, Claude. What did your horoscope in the
Post
say?”

“‘Your mother wears army boots,'” Claudia replied.

Bronwyn shook her head. “You're going to have something, too.”

“Yes,” Claudia sniffled, allowing the idea of Paul Tate as her something to rise, wonderfully, in her mind. She would savor it much later. “I look forward to fetching your cocaine and slippers,” she said.

“No!” Bronwyn bounced and clapped her hands. “
You
got a call, too.” Beaming, she crossed to the answering machine that occupied a shelf on their brick-and-plank étagère. Claudia made quick work of several more olives as Bronwyn hit
PLAY
.

“This is a message for Claudia Silver,”
the voice said, nasal and slightly bored.
“Claudia, this is Shelly Gerson's office over at
Hope Valley.
We got your resumé, and we'd love you to come in and meet with Shelly at your earliest convenience. Please give us a call
—
”

Here, Bronwyn stopped the message. “Did you hear that?”

“Yes.”

“Do you get what it
is?
Ricky had to fire you so you could be available! It's absolutely
incredible.
” Claudia deposited her olive pits into the little majolica saucer that Bronwyn had provided just for that purpose. “Um,
hello,
” Bronwyn admonished. “Why aren't you smiling?”

Claudia sank back against one of Bronwyn's bargello throw pillows and closed her eyes, overcome by a wave of familiar exhaustion. A call from Shelly Gerson's office was “good news,” and given all that Bronwyn had done to make a festive evening, to stand unshakably in her corner, the least she could do was smile pretty. But for Claudia, successful turns were necessary and largely joyless. Did
Australopithecus
man feel joy when he bagged a saber tooth? Did the Artful Dodger bounce around in his slipper socks when he nabbed yet another Covent Garden pocket watch? Successes were how Claudia
survived.
They were peat, potatoes, kerosene. Each one merely begat her bleak strategy for the next. Claudia opened her eyes. Bronwyn had returned to the sofa.

“Is it the interview?” Bronwyn asked, baffled by Claudia's nonreaction. “Do you want to borrow something to wear?”

“Maybe,” Claudia allowed. She wondered how she would emerge victorious from the first firing of her so-called career, get Phoebe through junior year, and wreck her roommate's childhood home between now and the immediate future, plus put together a smart ensemble for her
Hope Valley
interview with Shelly Gerson.
Nose to the grindstone and all that,
she reminded herself, grimly.

Bronwyn sighed, determined to coax her friend into enthusiasm without losing her patience. “I think we're going to be very rich old women,” she predicted, crossing to the answering machine and hitting
REWIND
. “I think I'm going to have a place near Cap d'Antibes, like Tina Turner.” The tape wheezed backward. “And we'll sit on striped chaises and read and chat and have fabulous streaks of white in our hair, like Mrs. Robinson, and look back on all this . . .”

“And then we'll die,” said Claudia.

“This is no time to be thinking about mortality, Claude,” Bronwyn admonished. “We're twenty-four. Now's when we think about
immortality,
okay?” She hit
PLAY
.

“This is a message for Claudia Silver,”
the voice repeated, sounding even more bored the second time.

“Oh shit, my brownies!” Bronwyn remembered, dashing back into the kitchen.

“Claudia, this is Shelly Gerson's office over at
Hope Valley
. 
.
 .”

“They're the good kind of brownies,” Bronwyn called.

“Hash brownies on a Thursday night?” Claudia dug deep for a second wind. “I thought tomorrow was the first day of the rest of my life.”

“We got your resumé, and we'd love you to come in and meet with Shelly at your earliest convenience.”

“So eat half!”

Just then, the phone rang.
“Please give us a call,
” Shelly Gerson's
Hope Valley
staff member droned on,
“and we'll set something up for you
. . .
”

Claudia sprang up, panicked by the relief she would feel to hear Phoebe's voice. “I got it!” she cried, finding the cordless phone among Bronwyn's Murano glass paperweights. “Hello?” she answered.

In the next room, the old stove door creaked open. “Tell Phoebe to get her butt over here,” Bronwyn called. “This lasagna is a thing of beauty.”

“Claudia?” the voice asked. “I need to talk to you.” It was Paul Tate. “Are you alone?”

Bronwyn appeared in the kitchen doorway with a lasagna in her mitted hands and a glad expression. “Is it Feebs?” she asked.

Claudia shook her head. She knew it was too soon for Paul to call here, too dangerous. Bronwyn frowned.

“No, I'm not,” Claudia said to Paul.

“Well, we are eating in ten minutes,” Bronwyn warned, as she disappeared into the kitchen. “Lasagna béchamel, unlike revenge, is a dish best served hot.”

Claudia took a pause, wondering what Bronwyn would come to mean, exactly, by “revenge.”

“Claudia,” Paul said. “We need to talk.” With her eye on the kitchen, Claudia backed down the hall toward her bedroom. She braced herself for Paul's apology, for his lament. Furiously, she tried to sort out whether she should ask for his help with the job thing before or after he pleaded with her to burn his number. She stood in the middle of her little bedroom and closed her eyes. “I need to know if you feel like I do,” he said.

“I . . . I don't know,” Claudia hesitated. It all depended on how he felt.

“What happened with us this afternoon. It was . . . ,” Paul trailed off, his voice husky.

Us.
If there was an “us,” then all of this was really happening. Claudia glanced at her desk, then down at her feet in her striped kneesocks. One day, fairly soon, this sad little room would belong to somebody else.

Us.

“Claudia . . . are you there?”

“ . . . Yes.”

“Can I . . . keep going?”

“Yes.”

“I've never . . .”

Claudia lay back on her futon and touched her fingertips to her mouth. It was tender and swollen from her hours entwined with Paul. Claudia breathed in and out a few times, not deeply. She could hear Paul breathing, too. “Are you there?” she finally asked.

“Yup,” Paul replied. Somehow, that was enough. “Claudia . . . I want to see you again.” He hesitated. “And again.” Claudia closed her eyes in the holy silence. “And can I tell you something else?” he asked.

“You can tell me anything, Paul.”
Paul.
It was funny how saying his name out loud was borderline unbearable.

“What you need to know,” Paul continued, lowering his voice to a murmur, “is you've got the sweetest ass I have ever seen in my life.”

“Whoa,” said Claudia, suddenly flushed with heat and about to dissolve. “You have got to get out more.”

Paul laughed. “Trust me on that one.”

Bronwyn appeared in the bedroom doorway in a mild huff, brandishing her bottle of pinot. “Um, hi, hate to interrupt. But hosting a celebratory meal, here. Guests of honor, us.”

Claudia raised her head from the bed. “I'm getting off.”

“I want to watch,” Paul said on the phone. Bronwyn stood there, tucking a blond tendril behind her ear. Claudia raised her index finger in the international sign for
one sec
. Hand on hip, Bronwyn cemented her stance.

“Do you like when I talk like that?” Paul asked. “Is it too much?”

“Yes,” Claudia said, her index finger still raised.

“Should I stop?”

“Probably. For now.” Bronwyn stepped into Claudia's room and reached for the phone. Just as Claudia thrust out her hand in a halt, there was a beep. “Call waiting,” Claudia announced to Paul and Bronwyn simultaneously. Bronwyn paused. Paul breathed. Claudia pressed the button. “Hello?”

“Hi, Claudia, this is Annie.” Annie Tate sounded brisk. “May I speak with Bronwyn, please?”

“Actually, I'm on the other line,” Claudia said. “Would it be okay if she calls you ba—”

“I'm returning her call, darling,” Annie trilled, brightly trumping Claudia's business with her own. Claudia hesitated. It was enviable, Annie Tate's sort of mother love, and its unfamiliarity stirred Claudia's shame. There was the temptation to just go ahead and tell this lovely lady—her rival, apparently—just exactly who was panting evenly on the other line.

Claudia clicked over to Paul. “I have to get off right now.”

“Call me back on my direct line at the office.”

“In a few minutes.”

“I'll wait.”

Claudia clicked the call waiting again and handed Bronwyn the receiver. “It's your mom,” she said, wishing she'd confirmed that Paul was no longer on the line.

“Hi, Mommy,” Bronwyn said, cradling the phone as she wandered back to the kitchen.

 

At the corner of Seventh Avenue and Seventh Street, Claudia waited for the light to change. Across the street, glowing yellow, with its front door shut snugly from the cold, the phone booth, because it held the promise of Paul, looked more like a cozy little home than any place she'd ever lived.

Once inside, Claudia closed the door firmly, and wished there was a velvet curtain to pull, and a roaring fire, and a wing chair and ottoman upholstered in witty Brunschweig & Fils fabric, and a side table with a glass of champagne and a few slices of buttered baguette and chicken-liver pâté and cornichons, and a pedicure, and a pair of Moroccan leather slippers with funny curled toes, and a plaid mohair dressing gown in muted grays and creams with a thick silk cord, and a place by the beach, and her college loans paid off, and a job. She dialed Paul on his direct line.

“Hey,” he answered with a warm chuckle, knowing that it would be her.

“When last we left our heroine,” Claudia began, then paused. She hoped Paul was smiling.

“You're brilliant,” he said.

“Aw, shucks.”

“You are,” he insisted. “Brilliant and beautiful.” Then: “You're not used to being told that, are you.”

As it wasn't a question, Claudia was unsure of the correct response. “Actually, I'm sick to death of it,” she said. “Enough already.”

“We should discuss logistics,” said Paul, with a slight tinge of apology. “I know it's not very sexy, but we're both busy people, with plenty of, uh, moving pieces.”

“I think our moving pieces are actually quite sexy,” Claudia teased, emboldened. It was then that she spotted a familiar silhouette, very tall and very lean, gloveless hands jammed in peacoat pockets, long mane twisted into a knot and held with a chewed pencil, approaching her well-appointed sidewalk cottage from the direction of Flatbush Avenue. Despite the long stretch of city sidewalk between them, the sisters' eyes met magnetically, at which point Claudia's typical relief at the sight of Phoebe plowed headlong into a fierce, new covetousness. Wanting nothing to interrupt the delicious naughtiness of her fireside chat with Paul, she turned her back.