Claudia Silver to the Rescue (9780547985602) (5 page)

“But I didn't have violent sex with Baldy MD,” Bronwyn argued. “And Ruben is thirty-five like I'm Jewish.”

Claudia scowled at her friend. “What are you saying?”

“Ruben is
old,
Claude. Like
old
-old. As in Jimi Hendrix was his guitar teacher.”

“You're telling me Ruben is pushing . . . ,” Claudia calculated and faltered, “whatever it is that Jimi Hendrix would be pushing?”

“When you're black, you don't crack,” Bronwyn offered with a shrug. “I mean . . . right?” Bronwyn deferred to Claudia on this sort of thing.

Claudia indicated a display of folded sweaters, arranged on a card table. “Cute cashmere,” she observed.

“
Listen
to me,” Bronwyn implored, grabbing Claudia's elbow. “One-quarter of Ruben's bravado is his hatred of women, the other quarter is his hatred of white people, and the rest is covering up his age.”

“Now
you're
the one who's mean.”

“Don't you want a nice, smart guy who will actually hold your hand walking down the street during daylight hours?” Bronwyn implored.

“That sounds like pure hell,” Claudia scowled. “Come on. I'm starved. Let's go.” Claudia headed for the exit, but Bronwyn stayed put.

“Is it like Robbie?”

Claudia froze.
“Excuse
me?” she said, very slowly.

“You know. Your mom has Robbie, and you have Ruben. It's the bad-boy thing. Maybe you guys can double-date.”

Claudia wheeled around, her hands on her hips. All on its own, her foot stomped. “Oh my
God!”
she laughed, furious and about to cry. “Shut up!”

“Well?” Bronwyn folded her arms. Her bony elbows emerged from the whimsical holes in her cardigan.

“Seriously,” said Claudia. “Stop talking now.”

“Their names even sound alike. Ruben. Robbie.”

 

On a blustery Tuesday afternoon in late November, the ladies of Georgica Films desperately longed for tuna melts and extra-crispy French fries. But because Ricky was kicking around the office in the bored rage he typically got into when he'd just submitted a bid for a job, the earlobe he'd recently pierced throbbing quietly with the infection he refused to acknowledge, they'd ordered Monster Sushi instead. Claudia had delivered the massive party platter of cut and hand rolls from the lobby with the cucumber still cool and crisp, because Ruben was off.

Not that he'd told her that.

Claudia and Ruben had left the apartment together that morning, strode to the subway stairs, and galloped their descent to the platform. With each step Ruben expertly distanced himself from her, so that while they began the brief journey to the train as lovers, they became acquaintances at the stairwell, and were complete strangers by the time they were smashed together on the rush-hour train. Ruben's hand grazed Claudia's body with the indifference of a commuter.

It was Melvin, the middle-aged Caribbean super of the building, who'd buzzed up to announce the arrival of today's lunch. Claudia's disappointment clutched as she realized she wouldn't have the chance to see Ruben, to wink at him, let alone follow him into the gated stairwell so he could “show her something.”
Where was he?
Where did he go when he wasn't with her, which was most of the time, and when was he coming back? Maybe he had quit his job, maybe he had left the country, maybe he had caught his big break shortly after getting off the train at Second Avenue and become the kept man of an actual rich white woman. Maybe he was on the road with the Digable Planets.

As Claudia approached the front desk, she realized Melvin was looking at her differently. She'd slated him as a grandfatherly working man with a hepcat streak: he wore a beret and a single earring and attended jazz festivals on his vacations. But today Melvin was eyeing her—Claudia was sure of it. What had Ruben told Melvin? She toggled between hoping he hadn't said anything and hoping he had.

Claudia's anxious reverie was interrupted by Gwen, stuffed behind her spindly desk, beckoning her with a plump finger. Gwen, whose girth was mysteriously maintained, as she barely touched her food at work, had offered her typical excuse for not joining the ambivalent shuffle to the lunch table. As ever, she was wrapping up a few accounting tidbits and would be there in a minute. Claudia had her own excuse for lingering at her desk. She was tracing her hand in her journal book, in preparation for painting long fingernails with Wite-Out.

“I need to ask you about something,” Gwen said, as Claudia approached her desk. “Have a seat.” Claudia had never before heard this sort of commanding tone from Gwen, whose requests were usually tinged with apology. “Have you by any chance been bidding on jobs or dealing with clients from home?” she asked.

“Uh, nope,” Claudia responded, genuine. Claudia didn't take work home with her. Claudia wasn't even thinking about work when she was
at
work.

“I'm just a little confused about this,” Gwen said, handing Claudia the company's most recent phone bill. Businesslike, Gwen scrolled her frosted pink fingernail down a long column. Claudia's home number, with its 718 prefix, formed a solid column down one side of the page, but the numbers that corresponded were completely unfamiliar to her.

Florida.

Puerto Rico.

Panama.

Amsterdam.

Tokyo.

Thirty-seven-hundred-and-sixteen-dollars' worth of calls.

And forty-seven cents.

“We pay an astronomical surcharge for every international call that gets billed to our calling card,” Gwen added.

Claudia blinked. Her face ignited, flames of mortification tearing along her cheeks and searing her eyes. She didn't want to cry at her job, or for that matter, at all. She only wanted to feed the ladies of Georgica Films crumbs enough to resemble connection and camaraderie. She only wanted to cash her crummy paychecks until she figured out where it would actually make sense for her to set her sights.

Claudia sat next to Gwen, the kind, powdery mountain who lived with her mother, dropped her face in her hands, and wept.

Gwen reached out across her Stickley desktop, and she took Claudia's hand. Claudia grabbed it and held on, feeling the snot cascading down her left palm, which was still clamped to her face. She squeezed Gwen's hand like a hurricane victim who has stubbornly resisted the evacuation until now. She felt Gwen's hand squeezing back. The hand was warm and dry, the pads of Gwen's joints plumped around the bands of the delicate twelve-karat rings that Claudia could picture from behind her closed eyes: a claddagh and a gold, filigreed heart.

How could Ruben . 
.
 . ?

Easy as pie, you stupid little motherless punk-ass bitch. All sorts of bullshit goes on right in your own house, and you have no fucking idea.

How am I ever going to pay . 
.
 . ?

You're not.

Oh my God.

Slowly, Claudia raised her face to look at Gwen, still gripping her hand tightly, and shuddered. Gwen handed Claudia a tissue and gave her an understanding smile with her sad eyes, decorated with the glimmery, pale-green eye shadow she'd probably purchased at Duane Reade. Claudia blew, and suddenly realized that Gwen might have known heartache in her life, this exact kind. Maybe she wasn't the devoted virgin, as Claudia had assumed, the ardent devourer of romance novels who had considered taking her vows but seized on a calculator instead. Maybe Gwen knew the rocket launch of desire and its cruel plummet. Or maybe it was just that everything about Claudia was obvious. She had been as fast and sloppy with her secret affair as she'd been with everything else.

“Gwen,” Claudia said quietly, “I did not make those calls.” Gwen nodded, diplomatically. “What am I going to
do?
”

Gwen sighed, figuring she could do a lot with this question. “Don't worry,” she said. “I'll just call the phone company and straighten it out with them. We'll change our calling card number and—”

“Does everyone else know?”

Gwen's reply was a pained grimace. Claudia's tears crawled silently. In the dining room, Faye, Tamara, and Kim's whispers exploded into shrieking laughter.

“I fucking hate family-style lunch,” said Claudia.

“Me three,” Gwen agreed.

“Fast & Sloppy!”
Ricky Green's tense, nasal twang floated over the green glass bricks that formed a half wall around his office. “I need to speak with you, please.”

“He came in early today,” Gwen whispered, with a miserable shrug, “and opened the mail.” Claudia rose. It was a long walk to where Ricky sat, sprawled on his bark-cloth settee. The stereo cabinet was open, and a large ziplock Baggie of Humboldt County's finest had come to rest on the cover of his Bruce Weber coffee-table book, next to which lay a copy of the incendiary phone bill. Ruben's stolen calls had been highlighted, and Gwen's elegant question marks, written in mechanical pencil, decorated the margin.

“Have a seat,” Ricky said, patting the space he had made next to him. Despite his fresh juice, the purple-tinted glasses nestled in his Jewfro, and his Arche boots propped casually on the coffee table, he had the gleam of an executioner. Claudia chose the leather African pouf, aware that silence had now overtaken the dining room. Ricky took a loud, final pull on his carrot ginger juice and set the sweating takeout cup on a cork coaster. “So let me get this straight,” he said. “You come in here, and you eat my food, and you smoke my pot.” Ricky reached for the Baggie, once much fuller, and waved it. A few large buds crouched in the corner of the bag, surrounded by shake and a handful of roaches. The crumbs that Claudia had pinched on bold occasion were easily dwarfed by spliffs the size of thumbs that Kim regularly rolled on Friday afternoons in summer, when Ricky had long departed for the Hamptons jitney, but this didn't seem to Claudia like the moment to provide clarification.

“And answer your phones and arrange your flowers, right?” she reminded hopefully.

With his soft-booted foot, Ricky pushed the phone bill across the coffee table. “Speaking of phones,” he said.

Claudia shifted on her pouf, but made no move to touch the bill. “Yeah.”

“I've gotta say, Claude. Pretty fucking shocking.”

Could she and Ricky by any chance find themselves on the same side of this debacle? “I have a theory,” Ricky said, with a sadistic twinkle.

“Actually,” Claudia managed, hating the quaver that betrayed her voice, “I did not make those calls.”

“Oh, I don't doubt it,” Ricky agreed. “Who the hell would you know in Amsterdam? What
I
think,” he said, shifting forward in his seat with a hungry smirk, “is that you ‘accidentally' gave our company card to your thug
shvartze
boyfriend.”

Claudia inhaled sharply. Here was her out, as simple as drop-kicking Ruben under the bus. But she had already been overtaken by a passionate surge of fealty, what the white girl at the SNCC meeting might have felt for Stokely Carmichael. Her position in the revolution was prone, yet she would not sell out to the Man. “He's not my boyfriend,” Claudia said, her voice finding a grim, determined register.

“Okay,” Ricky snorted, “so he's just a thug
shvartze.
”

“You shouldn't say that word,” she warned.

“And
you
shouldn't be doing a lot of things.” Ricky shifted in his seat and produced an envelope. “Look. I have something for you, okay?” He leaned forward and handed it to Claudia. “Open it,” he said, letting his knees sprawl open.

Inside the envelope was a check for one thousand dollars.
Two weeks,
Ricky had printed in block letters on the
MEMO
line. “I'm letting you go, Claudia. Effective immediately.”

There was a pause, during which Claudia fixated on Ricky's handwriting. She scorned the ballpoint pen and his malformed little
w
's. One thousand bucks. A hefty pile of ching. She owed something like that on her MasterCard. A mound of dust. “You,” Claudia repeated slowly, “are letting me go.”

“Effective immediately,”
Ricky repeated.

“But it's the most passive-aggressive phrase in the English language,” Claudia declared, having not even considered the possibility of pleading. Ricky donned a small, bothered smile. “
You're
going to let
me
go. Like you're doing something I'm asking for. And it's a favor. Born of politesse. As opposed to just straightforwardly firing me.”

“You're fired, Claudia.”

“No, I get it.” She rose from the pouf and folded the check in half. It was done.

“Look in the envelope.”

Camouflaged along its bottom fold was a tightly rolled joint, assembled on a roller. It was the only way Ricky knew how to roll them. Claudia would have liked to see him fuss with that shit while riding in between cars on the G train.

“I don't want you to work for me,” Ricky continued, “but I still hope we can be friends.”

Friends.
Claudia plucked the joint from the envelope. “Effective immediately?” she asked, tucking it away with the check. Honestly, she wasn't sure it was even legal, what Ricky was doing. Firing someone without warning. Drugs as a parting gift. “Is this like when you break up with someone,” she asked Ricky, rising from her seat, “and they say ‘let's be friends'? I never saw friendship as a default setting when some other status implodes. It's like its own thing, right? But maybe we can work on that.” Ricky cocked his fluffy head with the air of a threatened Shih Tzu. “You know,” Claudia continued, “hang out and listen to ska records. Eat icing from the can.” She extended her hand and he shook it, baffled. “Thank you for the opportunity,” she concluded.

Claudia circled the glass-brick wall and entered the larger work space. She took a parting scan of the worn, expensive pastel rugs at odd angles, zealously evoking Georgia O'Keeffe according to Ralph Lauren, or something, and the tall windows with the view of cold lavender sky, water towers, and steam pipes, the dust motes dancing in the last, low shafts of today's sunlight. There
was
such a thing as a free lunch, and Claudia had known it at Georgica Films.