Just Friends (31 page)

They made small talk while Candace sipped her champagne. When her glass was empty, Jack’s father summoned the obliging George to take her on a private tour of the hotel.

“Man’s talk,” he explained to Candace with a wink. “You understand?”

“Of course.”

“Good girl. Now take good care of her, George, you hear?”

He withdrew his eyes with difficulty from her sashaying back view.

“Pretty girl.”

Jack nodded his agreement.

“Not one of those ball-breaking career women you get up here.”

“No.”

“Seems to me she’s not the same woman I talked to when I called your apartment last week—someone with a British accent?” He shot Jack a sly look.

“That was Freya. She’s staying in my apartment.”

“Oh ho.”

“She’s just a friend, Dad.”

“Hmm.” His father winked, and rattled the ice in his drink. “So tell me, son, how is everything?”

“Pretty good.”

“Finished that book yet?”

“Almost. I’ve been sidetracked by a lot of journalism recently. That’s the only stuff that pays.”

“Miss Holly still looks out for your articles, you know.” Miss Holly was Jack’s fourth-grade teacher, now semiretired, who helped out in the archives of the Oaksboro Public Library. “I hear she’s got quite a collection. ‘Course she’s pretty well senile now.”

Jack grunted, and waved a hand as if it were of no importance to him what Miss Holly did. He was well aware of local reaction to the news that he had “gone North” to be—wait for it—a writer! New York was a den of iniquity where people went “hog wild.” Writing was eccentric at best, sissy at worst. A state that had suffered a painful defeat in war—and for Southerners the Civil War was still a raw wound—could not afford to breed sissies. Jack felt that they were all waiting for him to come home with his tail between his legs, admit that he’d finally got that funny ol’ literary bug out of his system, and settle down like a normal person. Not one of them had
any idea
of how difficult it was to write a novel.

His father waved over one of the underwaiters to bring more drinks. This time Jack ordered bourbon. Mentally he rehearsed his speech: the cost of living in New York, the incompatibility of writing fiction and journalism, his certainty that he was on the brink of a major success, if only he could buy himself a little more time. But before he could find an opening, his father leaned easily back in his seat, spread his manicured hands on the table, and began to speak.

“I’m glad we have this chance to talk, son. There’ve been some changes at Madison Paper, and I think it’s only right to let you know what’s going on in the business, even if you’ve never shown much interest.”

“It’s not that I’m not interested, Dad. It’s only—”

“I know. You’ve chosen to do things differently. That’s why I want to talk to you, bring you up to date.”

His father began to drone on about foreign competition and new markets; labor laws and tax breaks; new technologies expensively implemented and takeover threats successfully routed. One member of the Board had died, and another was retiring . . . Jack stopped listening to the words. He thought he knew where this was leading. Sure enough, his father began a long ramble about their search for a new Board member—someone with a connection with the business, someone he could trust—

“Dad, stop right there.” Jack raised his palm. He smiled at his father, to show that what he was about to say was not meant to offend. “I know I’m the eldest son, and I know you’re thinking of my own good, but I have to tell you that I can’t come home to help run the business.”

His father looked so shocked that he added, “I’m sorry, Dad.”

His father burst into a loud guffaw. “You!” he exclaimed. “Run the business!”

Now it was Jack’s turn to be shocked. “Well . . . isn’t that what you’re asking?”

His father brought his laughter under control. “Jack, you’ve been up here in New York
ten years
. What could you possibly know about running a paper business?”

Jack stared at him, feeling utterly stupid. He was aware of the fuddled look on his face, and the dead weight of his hands in his lap.

“Of course, if you wanted to come home, I’d try to find you a position of some kind.” His father frowned dubiously. “But it wouldn’t be very well paid. You don’t have any of the appropriate skills.”

“Well, maybe not. But—” Jack broke off, confused. “Why are you telling me all this stuff about the business, then?” he asked belligerently.

“Because I wanted you to know that, as of next month, we’ll be inviting your brother Lane to join the Board.”

“Lane?” For some reason, Jack pictured his brother in his high-school football outfit, with massive padded shoulders and a helmet masking his features.

“I know he never got the grades you did, but he understands paper.”

Lane?
As far as Jack remembered, Lane never understood anything.

“There was a time when I hoped and prayed you’d come home to Madison Paper, but you haven’t, and it’s too late now. Business is business. I have responsibilities—to my employees and to the community. I need someone who is committed.”

Jack nodded, his mind in a whirl. Lane had a stuffed boar’s head on his wall. He subscribed to car magazines. Lane had gotten one of the Danforth girls pregnant when he was eighteen, and she’d been sent away for a hush-hush abortion.

“Up to now, I’ve given both you boys allowances to help you get on your feet. Lane’s been learning the paper business, and you—well, I guess you’ve been learning your ‘business,’ too.” His father chuckled at this quaint notion. “Of course, Lane is younger than you, but he’ll be getting his Board stipend now, so it all balances out.”

“What do you mean?” Jack was floundering again. “What balances out?”

“I mean that I’ll be terminating his allowance at the same time I terminate yours.”

Terminating!
Jack stared at him, speechless.

“You’ll always be my eldest son, and of course there will be an inheritance for you when I’m gone, but the time has come for you to stand on your own two feet. Hell, by the time I was your age, I had a wife and a down payment on my own house!”

Jack tried to get a grip. “When were you thinking—?”

“Next month is the last payment.”

“Next month?”

His father gave a shark-tooth smile that Jack knew and disliked. “Why wait? You tell me you’re doing well with the writing, and I’m sure you are. Madison Paper is a business, not a gravy train. We can’t carry passengers.”

Jack took a deep slug of bourbon.
Terminate:
the word crashed and echoed around his head. Resentment burned in his throat. His father spent more on quail-shooting than he did on Jack. Why should Lane get this so-called “stipend,” just because he’d been too unadventurous to forge his own career? His eyes skittered over his father’s immaculate cream suit and dandyish tie, taking in the powerful shoulders and commanding tilt of his chin. Jack swallowed his panic and clamped his own jaw tight. He wasn’t going to beg.

But his turmoil must have shown in his face. His father frowned. “You’re not in any kind of trouble, are you, son?”

Jack looked him in the eye. “No.”

His father’s expression relaxed into a bantering grin. “You mean you always dress like a bum? I guess that’s what’s called a ‘fashion statement’ nowadays. Beats me. New Yorkers used to have such
style
. . . Like her,” he added, his eyes lighting up.

Jack turned around to see Candace approaching them at her new, queenly gait. He stood up at once, rocking the table. “We have to go now.”

“Aw, so soon?” His father rose courteously and took Candace’s hand, smiling down at her. “Maybe you’ll both join me for dinner tomorrow night?”

“I don’t think . . .” Jack began.

“That would be lovely,” Candace said simultaneously.

Jack seized her elbow and propelled her forward, out of the claustrophobic gloom of the bar. They skirted the Astor Lounge, with its palms and marble and cocktail couples, past glass cases displaying handmade shirts and designer ties. Jack wanted to smash one with his bare fist. He made himself focus straight ahead, on a gilt-framed painting hanging at the end of the corridor. It was the portrait of a man not much older than himself—elegant, mustachioed, confident, surrounded by the symbols of his success. Jack made out the name as he approached: JOHN JACOB ASTOR III (1822–90). And here he was, Jack Madison III—penniless, ousted, disenfranchised.

CHAPTER 21

Freya trudged toward the bus stop, her footsteps leaving alternate red smears on the tacky sidewalk. She’d stepped on a tube of Cadmium Red while paying a morale-boosting visit to one of her artists at his studio in Alphabet City. Normally, this was the part of her job she liked best. She loved the smell of turps and linseed oil, the stacked canvases, the clutter of spray cans and staple guns and old rags dabbed with pigment that gave off a heady sense of work in progress. She enjoyed the peculiar intimacy of her relationships with the artists themselves—coaxing them out of the doldrums, sympathizing with their struggles, steering them down new paths, getting them to trust her. Creativity was a mystery. It was like lighting a fire without matches. Sometimes, just sometimes, she was able to fan a glowing spark into flame. There was nothing to beat that moment when they yanked a sheet off an easel or turned a canvas face-out from the wall and revealed, to her privileged eyes, the fresh, raw product of their labors.

But today she had been distracted. Matt Scardino was one of her young hopefuls, whose first solo exhibition was scheduled for the fall. He had called her this morning in a funk, telling her that he was stuck, blocked, washed up. He would never be ready; she must cancel the show. Freya had gone straight over, and spent half the day there talking through his problems and trying to offer solutions. But nothing she had said seemed to lift his gloom. She felt she had let him down, and she was angry and disappointed with herself.

She blinked away a trickle of sweat as she watched the bus crawl toward her through the rush hour traffic. On days like this it seemed impossible to remember why anyone found New York glamorous. Dirt settled on her skin. She could feel her lungs silting up with every breath. Everyone looked hassled and bad-tempered. The city was the color of a dried scab, under a putrid bandage of smog.

The bus was packed. Stray elbows jabbed her ribs. She could smell hot rubber and other people’s sweat. Her chic little work dress stuck to her back. Maneuvering her way to a square foot of standing room, Freya grabbed an overhead handle and stared at the ads that urged her to consider health insurance and cosmetic dentistry. She felt weary of the relentless demands of this city. Wear this. Don’t eat that. Sparkle. Bargain. Push. Win. Go, go, go! Sometimes she wanted to put her hands over her ears and yell,
Wait! Slow down! I want to think.
But there was never time.

A sense of hopelessness and failure washed over her. She had built up her life in New York from scratch—dollar by dollar, job by job, friend by friend—and now it was crumbling to dust. Ever since the Michael episode she had experienced one humiliation after another—and she had a horrible feeling they were all her fault. Just when she needed a friend, Cat was too “busy” to see her—doing what, Freya couldn’t imagine. She was sick of camping in the corner of someone else’s study in someone else’s apartment. Living with Jack, whom she’d always got on with—
always
—had turned out to be a nightmare. But the real nightmare, her overriding obsession, the thought that made her prickle and snap with panic, squeezing out every other emotion, was the knowledge that in two days she was going home for Tash’s wedding.

The apartment was silent, and almost as stifling as outdoors. Jack had done nothing about the ominous clanking of the air-conditioning; now, apparently, it had conked out. If only he were here, she could cheer herself up with a thundering good row. With a sigh, Freya pulled off her shoes, dumped her briefcase, and made straight for the kitchen, where she took a beer from the fridge, flipped off the lid, and drank from the bottle. She undid the top two buttons of her dress and rolled the bottle across her skin. It would almost be worth going to England for the pleasure of being positively cold in midsummer. Almost . . .

Abruptly, Freya set down her beer bottle on the table and headed for the bathroom, unbuttoning her dress as she went. She stood under the cold, cascading water, forcing herself to concentrate on the things she had to do before she left town: bubblewrap Tash’s wedding present, buy her a card, decide what clothes to take, try to cash in the spare air ticket. For there was now no use pretending that she wasn’t going alone. Today was Monday; her flight left on Wednesday night; she had run out of time.
Alone:
the word lodged in her heart like a splinter.