Just Friends (19 page)

“An event of truly world-shattering significance.” Freya snatched the magazine out of Jack’s grasp and slapped it shut. “You do have your own post, Jack.” She bent down and scooped up the small pile. “There’s one here from your father. Shall I read it aloud?”

Jack looked at her with dislike. “Take the bike,” he said.

“What?”

“I said, take the goddamned bike!”

Freya hesitated for a moment, then tossed the letters at his feet. “Fine,” she said.

Bicycling forty-odd blocks from Chelsea to Central Park on a hot Saturday was madness; to do so on Jack’s clanking, three-speed antique, amid crazy traffic and death-jets of pollution, was the kind of suicide mission Freya was determined to enjoy.
I can do this,
she told herself, pedaling across intersections just as the lights turned red, banging on the roofs of cars that crowded her space. Back in the old days she had bicycled everywhere—but that was because she was penniless, not because she was some poseur “artist” like Jack, who thought a battered bike enhanced his boyish, bookish charm, and who could always grab a cab if it looked like rain. When she thought of all the cruddy jobs she had taken just to stay alive in this city—sandwich-deliverer, telephone sex-line receptionist, rollerskating waitress (in obligatory pigtails), human guinea pig in hospital drug trials, the kind of maid employed to clean up other people’s vomit after parties, tour guide in “colonial” costume (complete with a stupid bonnet she called her “Dutch cap”)—Jack’s fecklessness enraged her. He thought he was a hero because he’d survived in New York one whole year before his daddy relented and put him back on an allowance. He’d never missed a meal to pay tuition fees, as she had, or spent a winter sleeping on a strip of foam with a charity-shop fur coat as a blanket. Even now, her bank balance regularly tipped into minus; since the pink dress and poker disaster, she hadn’t dared open a statement. And if Michael seriously intended to sue her . . . Freya groaned. She’d call Cat this afternoon and unleash her on the case.

Freya rose in the saddle as she pumped steadily northward on an incline invisible to the eye but palpable to the calves. One by one, she counted off the landmarks: the National Debt Clock, Macy’s, the Town Hall, the RCA building with its enchanting slim spire, the sinister black glass cube of the CBS building, plonked down on the corner of Fifty-third like a gigantic blank television screen. She had lied when she told Jack she was going to look at apartments. She was going to the park for some privacy, so she could plot her revenge for Jack’s prank.

Sweaty and breathless Freya at last crossed into the park. The whole place seethed with bikers, joggers, lovers, men with babies, women with dogs, children licking ice-cream cones. Slowing her pace, she slipped gratefully onto the tree-shaded cycle track and rode one-handed toward the Ramble in search of an unoccupied spot amid its supposedly “wild” tangle of streams, woodland, and artfully placed boulders. Dismounting faithful Rosinante, Freya wheeled her through the bushes and laid her against a tree. She sat down on a shaded patch of worn grass and took a deep, cooling swig of water from the bottle she’d brought, then reached for the rucksack she had carried in the bicycle basket. From it she drew a pen and notepaper. For a long while she chewed her pen thoughtfully, then she began to write.

After several efforts, she had the letter as she wanted it. She took a fresh sheet of paper and wrote, in erratically capitalized lettering:

You think your such a big shot, but be warNed—the FORCES OF DARKNESS are gathering. I know what’s going on with you and Her. If she gets an A and I don’t, you will be Punished for GROSS moral turpatude and SEXUAL favours. Nobody can be aloud to stand in the way of my GENIUS. So watch your step. Or else.

“A Friend”

Freya reread the letter and smiled with satisfaction. Everybody knew that people attracted to creative writing courses were by definition paranoid and deluded; Freya liked to think of Jack torturing himself by trying to identify the perpetrator out of so many suspects. She folded the letter in two, slid it into an envelope, and wrote out Jack’s name and address in the same misshapen print. Then she took a stamp from her wallet, licked it, and stuck it on at a deranged angle. That should fix him. Suddenly exhausted, Freya lay back against the tree trunk and closed her eyes. The park was extraordinarily unpeaceful. Dogs barked, children whooped, music blared, lovers giggled in the dusty bushes. She endured it until a mountain biker burst sweatily from the undergrowth and ran over her foot. Serenity was what she wanted; she knew the perfect place.

The room was cool and silent. High above her head was an elegantly corniced ceiling; a faint smell of polish rose from the wooden floor with its square of green carpet. The paintings that surrounded her—by Gainsborough, Romney, Reynolds, Hogarth—exuded English eighteenth-century confidence and calm. Freya was standing in one room of the Frick Collection, a museum on the Upper East Side. It had been an easy ride across the park; on the way she had passed a mailbox and deposited the letter to Jack. There was something about museums that made her feel safe, perhaps because she had spent so many hours in them as a child, her hand snug in her father’s. The Frick never changed, though occasionally items were moved around; the paintings were old friends. Wandering alone, and at her own pace, through these graceful rooms she felt simultaneously soothed and refreshed.

Normally she bypassed the Fragonard Room, with its rococo furnishings and chocolate-boxy depictions of young lovers, all rosebuds and flouncy dresses. But for some reason, today she stepped inside and found her attention caught by the series of four large paintings known as the
Progress of Love
. It told a familiar story. First,
The Pursuit:
a young man proffering a rose to an alarmed young girl, caught unawares in a flowery garden. Two cupids observe the encounter from their position on a phallus-shaped fountainhead, gushing water. Next,
The Meeting,
in which the young man, dressed in the red of passion, scales a wall to encounter his still-hesitant quarry. By the third painting, she has yielded; complacently she allows him to nuzzle her neck, while a small dog, symbol of fidelity, lies at her feet. Finally, in
The Lover Crowned
, he is in full, triumphant possession under a limitless sky; the happy couple smile out of a canvas awash with symbols of fertility and happiness.

And that was it: “The End”—just like old movies, where the two words actually came up on screen after the final kiss. Freya folded her arms and pursed her lips consideringly. It didn’t seem that simple nowadays. Fragonard depicted love as a game for the young and innocent, in which both parties knew the rules. But there were no rules anymore. No one was innocent; they were guarded and cynical, anxious to keep their options open, wary of being trapped yet terrified of missing out.

What was the secret of true love between a man and a woman, she wondered? Sex, certainly; romance, ideally; domestic stability, probably. Anything else? She shrugged: whatever it was, she hadn’t found it yet. Freya rubbed her upper arms, suddenly cold in the air-conditioning. Could it be that the fault lay with her, that she was
unworthy
of love. Everyone abandoned her, in the end. Her heart welled with self-pity.

A German couple entered the room, arguing about which of them had forgotten the camera, and interrupted her thoughts. Freya shook off her melancholy mood, and moved toward the door. Her eyes swept over the paintings again as she passed, taking in the girl’s blushing cheeks and plump bosom. Though scorning Fragonard’s prettification of love, she couldn’t help feeling a wistful pang for the sheer optimism and energy of youth. There was a smile on her face as she stepped out onto Seventieth Street, only to discover that Rosinante’s rear tire was flat.

This was not a likely area for a repair shop. After stopping to ask several passersby, Freya learned that there was some kind of a bike place several blocks north, and made her way there, hoping it really existed and had not yet closed. She was in luck. In a junky street off Second Avenue she found a big old garage smelling of rubber, with a row of bicycles parked on the sidewalk and a throng of muscled youth inside, clinking spanners, hefting saddlebags, conferring over spinning wheels. As she took her place in the line for the counter, her fingers slipped on the handlebars and Rosinante lurched sideways, ramming the person in front.

“I’m so sorry,” said Freya.

“ ’s okay.” It was a young man with a friendly smile. “I was just trying to persuade myself I needed a Tour de France water bottle, but I’m already way deep in accessory overload. What’s the problem with your bike?”

“Puncture.” Freya sighed with self-pity.

He looked at her in puzzlement.

“Flat tire,” she translated.

“Is that all? Why don’t you fix it?”

“Well. I, er, don’t have the equipment. It’s not my bike.”

“Sure you do.” He showed her a pouch thing strapped behind the bicycle seat.

“I thought that was a first aid kit,” Freya admitted.

He laughed as if she’d cracked a terrific joke, revealing perfectly straight, dazzling white teeth. Freya realized that he was extremely good-looking.

“Listen,” he said. “Let’s go back outside, and I’ll fix it for you. They’ll charge you crazy money to do it here. Come on.”

Freya followed him outside and watched him lean his own machine tenderly against the wall. Then he came over and took the bike from her hands. He was exactly the same height as she. Straight dark hair sprang from his forehead. He was wearing a tight black T-shirt and stone-colored shorts cut high on his thighs.

“Let’s get her on her back first,” he said commandingly. “No, out of the way. I’ll do this.”

Freya watched him flip the bike upside down. He certainly seemed very fit.

“Shit, that’s heavy! You shouldn’t have to drag around a thing like that. I can lift my bike with one hand. Watch!”

He walked over and proudly hoisted his own sleek, slim, gunmetal superbike into the air. His T-shirt rose with the action, revealing a rippled band of caramel skin.

“Amazing,” said Freya.

“That’s the titanium, you see,” he explained seriously.

“I see.” Freya raised her eyes to his and smiled. He blushed! She wondered how old he was. There was a time when she’d dismissed boys his age as cocky little twerps. Now she wondered why she hadn’t helped herself to boatloads when she’d had the chance.

A group of bikers swooped out of the garage. Someone called, “Coming to the park, Brett?”

The young man glanced at Freya. “Maybe later.”

“Please don’t stay because of me,” she said quickly. “I can easily get the bike fixed inside.” It would be awful if he felt stuck with her, like some old lady he had helped across the road and was too polite to abandon.

“Nah, it’s okay. I want to. We can talk.”

So, Freya perched on a fire hydrant and listened to him talk, watching his lean fingers move skillfully around her bike. Brett was an actor—well, mainly a waiter and bar person, if he was honest, though as a matter of fact he was opening next week in a really challenging production—a nonspeaking role, unfortunately, and unpaid, but still, it was a start, wasn’t it? He’d only been in the city ten months, sharing a loft space in the West Village with three others—strangers to begin with, but a great bunch. He’d be getting his own place as soon as he’d landed a good part—ideally something by Mamet or Stoppard: he had some good contacts.

Listening to him, Freya felt an ache of nostalgia. Had they all been this eager and hopeful in the Brooklyn days? Had they been this attractive and energetic and firm-fleshed? Back then, “real” life lay in the future, somewhere over the rainbow, waiting for when they were ready; now they were drowning in it. Brett’s enthusiasm about the details of her own life was infectious. It was “cool” that she was English; “really cool” that she ran a gallery. When she told him she was temporarily living in Chelsea, he thought that was cool, too. Meanwhile, the glances he gave her, which had at first made her wonder whether she had bicycle oil on her face or had suddenly sprouted a varicose vein, confirmed the flattering truth that he found her attractive. Freya began fiddling with her hair and rearranging her legs. Her heart was as light as a bubble.

At length Brett righted the bicycle and squared his shoulders in triumph.

“Marvelous.” Freya stood up and dusted off her shorts. “Thank you so much.”

“No sweat.”

His hand rested in a proprietary way on her bicycle seat. Freya could not stop herself staring at the twin bones of his wrist and the golden hairs that dusted his smooth arm. He squeezed the seat gently, and she felt such a fierce leap of lust that she had to dig her fingernails into her palms.

“Well . . .” she said.

Brett grinned at her, looked off into space, glanced back, bounced on his toes, ducked his head. “I was going to take a loop round the park,” he said. “Maybe get a drink. Hang out. Want to come?”