Claudia Silver to the Rescue (9780547985602) (17 page)

Phoebe saw her do it.

So it's like that,
Phoebe thought.

“In general,” Paul was saying, “we should probably talk and confirm our plans before meeting.”

A firm knocking on the side of the phone booth startled Claudia. She turned to see Phoebe staring at her through the glass. No irritated
what the fuck
gesture, just a long, even glare. Claudia held up an index finger. In response, Phoebe flipped her the bird, not rudely. “Can you hold on for a sec?” Claudia asked Paul. Praying that he would hold, Claudia let the receiver hang, then opened her front door, letting the winter air rush in. “Hey!” she greeted Phoebe, holding out her arms, sick with her own irritation. “We were about to call the hounds.”

Phoebe made no move toward Claudia's offered embrace, and glanced at the phone. “Who's ‘we'?” she asked, edgily.

“It's an expression, Feebs,” Claudia replied. She took a step closer and absorbed Phoebe's entire existence in a single sweep, picking up on something that was off, and dropping it just as quickly.

“So who are you talking to?” Phoebe demanded.

Claudia hesitated. “Miss Krinsky,” she lied. In a swift, clean motion, born on the block, Phoebe now lunged for the phone. Matching her speed, Claudia grabbed the receiver and abruptly hung it up. Anguished, Claudia prayed that Paul would forgive her, that he would speak to her again, and all the rest of it. She prayed that he'd understand the road before them would require the deft handling of hairpin turns like this one. “Actually,” Claudia continued easily, “we were just wrapping up. I mean . . .
wrapped.
”

Phoebe frowned, indicating the bustling nighttime avenue. “You were talking to Krinsky out
here?
Now?”

“Bronwyn is on the phone and, well, to be honest . . . ,” Claudia trailed off. Then: “I didn't think it should wait.” She swore to herself that tomorrow morning she'd wake early, no matter how much hash Bronwyn had baked into the brownies, and would return to this very pay phone, and call Ms. Krinsky, at which point what she was saying to Phoebe now would be, retroactively, the truth.

Phoebe folded her long arms. “Because of the D-plus on my book report?” Claudia nodded, wondering if Paul was staring at the phone on his desk and wondering what the fuck was taking her so long.

“Personally,” Phoebe said, “I think that shit could have most definitely waited. Like until you talked to me about it.”

Claudia hesitated. She had never heard this tone from Phoebe. Was it possible that Phoebe sensed her infraction? But Phoebe wouldn't care if she had a new boyfriend, would she? A new boyfriend with some moving pieces? She tried to picture a day when she, Phoebe, and Paul might do something together. A long weekend somewhere warm, with Phoebe in the main hotel building and the two of them in one of the casitas, surrounded by an adobe wall, the breakfast tray ignored for now at the trellised front door. “I was going to talk to you about it first,” Claudia insisted, “but then
she
called
me.
”

“Krinsky called
you?
” Phoebe asked, doubtful. “But she doesn't know I'm staying with you. At least, I never said anything to her about it.”

Claudia shrugged.
Fuck me,
she thought. “I wanted to get back to her before she called Mom.”

Phoebe squinted at her sister. It would be easy to call her on her bullshit, but she wasn't sure where it began. “So when are we going in?” she finally asked, having already planned to return to Paolo Crespi's office during school hours.

“She's going to get back to me with some options,” Claudia replied. “I'll run them past you.” Then: “I promise.”

Phoebe couldn't help herself. “Your work is going to let you go all the way to Bedford in the middle of the day?” she asked.

Claudia hesitated, then nodded. “Sure,” she said.

Phoebe shook her head.
Unfuckingbelievable,
she thought, as Claudia drifted further away on her phone-booth ice floe. She would no more ask Claudia to help her solve the business with the working papers than she would join ROTC. “It's cool that you have a—what d'you call it?” she said, just to see what would happen. “A flexible schedule. At your job.”

“True dat,” said Claudia.

“But you know that I don't care about grades, right?”

“You need a Regents diploma,” Claudia declared.

“For
what?
” Phoebe questioned, stepping to the curb as the light turned green.

“For
college,
” said Claudia. “You won't get in anywhere half decent without your Regents.”

Phoebe shrugged and began to cross the street. “I'm not going to college,” she said. “I'm getting a job.”

“As what?” Claudia asked.

Phoebe stopped in the middle of the street. Soon, the light would change and she'd be potential road pizza. “You think that bad grades are wrong,” she said, as loud as she ever got, which wasn't terribly.

“I think they're a red flag,” Claudia called, “and so do a lot of other people.” She remained watchful as Phoebe continued on to the other side of Seventh Avenue with no incident. She hoped that she hadn't made Paul angry by making him wait.

“Are you coming?” Phoebe yelled. Traffic surged between them.

“I have to make another call!” Claudia yelled back as Phoebe trudged away.
“We're all good!”
she cried after her.

 

Bronwyn set a Mexican blue-glass pitcher of chilled cucumber water on the kitchen table and heard movement in the hall. “You're lucky my béchamel hasn't cracked!” she called.

At the front door, Phoebe hesitated, having no idea what the older girl was talking about. She pulled off her peacoat and calmly observed the bag of ginger candies she'd removed from Edith's house as they rustled from her sleeve to the floor. She scooped them up.

Bronwyn, puttering to and fro at the stove, looked up to see Phoebe in the kitchen doorway. “Feebs! Fantastic!” she yelped, spotting the bag of old ginger candies in Phoebe's hand. “I thought you were your sister!” Bronwyn snatched the bag. “Can I have those?” she inquired, rhetorically. In addition to the Veuve and the pinot, Bronwyn had licked some of her hash-brownie batter earlier and then pinched a sizable crumb from the pan. She wanted a whimsy to finish her table setting. Shaking out a handful of candies, she artfully placed a pair on each of the Pierre Deux napkins she'd arranged in the center of her purposefully mismatched plates.

“Do you have cigarettes?” Phoebe asked.

“Yes, ma'am.” Bronwyn nodded to the shelf over the stove as she lit a pair of tapers jammed in champagne bottles that were drizzled with the wax of many parties. Phoebe helped herself to a Rothman and a Bic. “Ashtray, please,” said Bronwyn, removing her apron. “And out the window.” She stepped up into the skinny, yellowed bathroom.

Phoebe cracked the kitchen window and tucked herself into the sill, letting one leg drape to the floor and bracing her other foot against the frame. She was ducking her head toward the cupped flame when the bathroom door opened and Bronwyn, patting her face dry, suddenly considered the younger girl from an entirely new vantage, as though noticing her for the first time. “Oh my God,” Bronwyn announced, inebriated. She gripped the edge of the bathroom sink and glared at Phoebe. “I just had the most incredible idea.”

Phoebe raised an eyebrow and French inhaled with extreme skill. “You want me to take off my shoes?” she guessed.

“Fuck that.” Bronwyn had folded her arms tightly. She squinted at Phoebe, assessing the girl with intent. “I have a new job,” she declared.

“Cool,” said Phoebe.

“I'm the new associate photo editor at
Moxy.
” Bronwyn slouched into a kitchen chair. “Have you heard of us?”

Phoebe waved ineffectually at the cloud of smoke hanging before her, as she'd seen Claudia and Bronwyn do.

“It's a very important new title,” Bronwyn continued, reaching for a cigarette and the lighter. “We're
alternative.
Just launching. And we're looking for our first
Moxy
girl. The
face.
Is that something you'd be interested in?”

Phoebe hesitated, letting the wind devour her cigarette. “Do I need working papers for that?”

Bronwyn sighed, unfamiliar with daunting bureaucratic obstacles. “Did Penelope Tree have working papers?” she asked. Phoebe didn't know who that was. “
Moxy
is
authentic,
” she declared. “We're the voice of real teen girls. We have a brain in our heads, and brass ones. We want a real girl for our launch campaign. We just fired our ad agency because
they didn't get it.
We're going to stick with our media buy but handle our own creative. Outdoor rolls out ridiculously soon.”

“So, it's like off the books?”

“Phoebe, I'm telling you I think you could be the new face of
Moxy
and you're utterly stuck in this dreary, practical minutiae!”

“I don't have working papers.”

“This is
fashion.
And lifestyle. It's
culture,
Feebs. Not management training at Bain & Company. We're going to feature every alternative band you need to know. We have a
sex columnist.
She's going to tell you how to give the perfect
hand job.
”

“Damn,” said Phoebe.

“So will you come to the open call?” Bronwyn implored. “It's the Monday after next.”

Phoebe pulled on her cigarette and peered out the window into the air shaft's permanent dimness. “I should ask Claude,” she said. Despite Phoebe's frightening new doubts about Claudia, the notion of her sister's permission seemed comfortingly necessary. She reached for Bronwyn's wine and took a gulp.

“Treat yourself to a glass,” Bronwyn said, nodding to the cheerful rack of blue glass goblets she'd installed over the counter.

“This is glass,” said Phoebe, pouring a few inches of wine into an empty tahini jar. It was hard to imagine what a conversation with Ms. Krinksy was going to do for anybody. It was easier to imagine wandering into Covenant House with all her worldly possessions stuffed in a pillowcase, begging for a bunk after getting the boot. “Claude's not going to want me to do something like that.”

Bronwyn was disbelieving. “What do you
mean?
You're a beautiful girl, Phoebe. A lot of successful women in a lot of different fields started out as models. Take a look at whatshername, you know, the blond. Mike Nichols's wife.”

“Claude wants me to go to college and become, I don't know. Respectable.”

“You already
are
respectable.”

“Yeah, right.”

Claudia's boots clomped in the hallway. “Honey, I'm home!” she called. In a fluid motion, Phoebe stubbed out her cigarette, flicked the butt out the window, set the ashtray in front of Bronwyn, gargled a swig of pinot, grabbed a Granny Smith from the hanging basket, took a bite, and returned to her perch in the windowsill.

As for Claudia, she had sworn to herself that once she returned to the little party she'd behave appropriately. “Hey, DJ, we've got no tune-age,” she complained from her bedroom. “How can the two of you live like that?”

“Do you want me to talk to her?” Bronwyn asked Phoebe. Despite her stocking feet, the vibrations of Claudia's heavy footfall shook the framed posters as she approached.

“You're full-on tripping,” Phoebe replied through her mouthful of apple.

Bronwyn lowered her voice. “But do you want to come to the casting call in a couple of weeks?”

“Maybe.”

“Neneh Cherry?” Claudia asked loudly, unseen in the living room.

“Sounds good,” Bronwyn replied over her shoulder. She leaned closer to Phoebe. “You can tell Claudia after you get the gig.”

“I guess,” Phoebe said, doubtfully.

Claudia strode into the kitchen. “Hey,
ladeeez!
” She grinned. “Let's get this party started! Somebody give me a cigarette. Not you,” she said to Phoebe, grabbing a chunk of hash brownie from the pan on the stove and shoving it into her mouth.

Bronwyn swatted Claudia good-naturedly. “Those are for dessert!”

Claudia wedged herself into the windowsill and put her arms around Phoebe. Despite everything, Phoebe decided to lean her body into Claudia's. “Hey,” said Claudia, kissing Phoebe loudly on the cheek, “it's dessert somewhere.”

3

L
OVE, CLAUDIA HAD BEEN LEARNING,
was not without its awkwardness. Sometimes she experienced mild distress about possibly looking like Paul's daughter, even though nobody could see them in the miniscule Jane Street elevator. There was the big emptiness afterward, when Paul's town car, arriving mysteriously and purring patiently, swallowed him as his frank lust dwindled to appreciation, his gloved hand waving farewell as he glided away. There was only one way to survive the departures, and that was to turn every cell in her body toward
next time.

Claudia now had access to the glittering best midwinter Manhattan had to offer between the hours of noon and three on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Thursday nights starting at eight, and Friday mornings until 7:40. In just over a fortnight, she'd sipped the best of the new Beaujolais at several bistros tucked below street level on the farthest eastern edge of midtown. She'd had beers and shots in the back of Corner Bistro, Paul's favorites on the jukebox once again, but now the formerly senseless lyrics to “Box of Rain” promised that love would see them through.

There had been a too-brief gallery trawl along Fifty-Seventh Street, during which, with wit, wisdom, and semiotic insight, Claudia had analyzed the outrageously priced French advertising posters from the 1930s that Paul could well afford to buy. Paul apparently loved Claudia's wit and wisdom. The smarter and funnier she was for him, the more he stood behind her, cupping her ass under her jacket and breathing outrageous suggestions in her ear. That is, until Paul thought he recognized a member of his co-op board, and was forced, briefly, to pretend that he and Claudia had never met. Back out on the street, they made a quick recovery, and soon, Claudia had beautiful new black leather gloves.