Just Friends (7 page)

When he opened the door, the first thing that caught his eye was the narrow divan bed. Normally a repository for papers, dirty laundry, broken electrical equipment, and other random articles, it was now a vision of tidiness. The bedspread lay flat and scrupulously symmetrical; in the exact center was a neat pile of folded sheets, with his striped shirt and a ten-dollar bill on top. Next to the money was a note: “For laundry—F.” Jack picked up the note, smiling at the familiar cryptic signature. What a funny person she was, for all her hoity-toity ways. He remembered all the crazy caffeine-fueled discussions she’d presided over at Ambrosio’s; the surprise party she’d organized for Larry when he got his first job in TV; the scores of old movies the two of them had watched together, legs hooked over the seats in front, sharing popcorn with double butter. The nagging guilt he’d been trying to ignore all morning exploded into some much larger emotion—concern? affection? shame? When he asked her where she was going, she’d said “Home, of course.” Except Freya didn’t have a home. Her family lived thousands of miles away in England. Michael had thrown her out. She was alone in the loneliest city in the world. And he was supposed to be her friend.

Jack tossed the remains of his sandwich onto his desk. Stupid woman! Why did she have to be so proud? He hurried to grab his keys and ran to the front door. Wait a minute—what about his bicycle? Jack manhandled it outside, cursing as his sticky hands made him clumsy. He half scooted, half hopped down the path and across the sidewalk, bumped down into the street, and, swinging his leg over the bike, raced in the direction she had taken. Cars beeped at him. A voice yelled, “Hey, bozo, one-way street!”
Yeah, yeah.
Jack sped on regardless. There was no sign of her.

At the intersection he came to a slithering halt. An uptown bus lumbered into view, gathering speed from the corner bus stop. Jack peered inside as it passed, but the windows were smeared with grime, and he didn’t have his glasses on. Anyway, if she wasn’t going back to Michael she wouldn’t be going uptown, would she?
Excellent, Watson.
So, where had she gone?

He wove his way perilously across the stream of traffic, without waiting for the green light, and pedaled head-down toward Seventh Avenue and the downtown bus stop. This is crazy, he told himself, as his ancient bike juddered and squeaked. She could be walking on any of a dozen different streets. She could be in a coffee bar. She could have caught a cab after all—except she probably didn’t have any money.
You’re a bastard,
Jack told himself, clicking the rusty gear into first.

When he was four years old, his parents had divorced, and his mother had taken him and Lane, his baby brother, to live with her in Atlanta. The house on Benning Street was the first he remembered—his bed made of hickory, and a maid called Abigail shelling pecan nuts on the back porch, and a school with girls in dresses, whose sashes he liked to pull. He didn’t remember his mother much—she was out a lot—but Jack remembered being happy. Then one day everything changed. He learned that his mother was to marry again and was going to live somewhere far away. She wanted to take Jack with her, of course she did, but his father wouldn’t allow that; it was time for “the boy” to claim his heritage and learn to be a Madison. Jack remembered the rumble of arguments and late-night conferences and the letters that made his mother’s voice harsh and scary. And then, shortly after his seventh birthday, the arrival outside the house of a big shiny car, his suitcases on the stoop, Abigail sobbing into her apron, and his father, a stranger tall and golden as a god, laying a heavy, claiming hand on his shoulder, saying, “Son, I’ve come to take you home.”

Was that her? Jack squinted at a tall figure in black, walking purposefully. “Freya!” he shouted. But when he got near, it turned out to be a young Indian boy with made-up eyes and lips—a gay cruiser looking for some action.

At Seventh Avenue he swooped left, joining the stream of traffic. Shit, he could see a bus ahead of him, letting out a pair of gym bunnies with their sports bags. There was a line of people waiting to get on. Jack bounced his bike onto the sidewalk and rode down it, swerving around pedestrians. “Excuse me, sir . . . excuse me, ma’am.” He thought he could make out a dark figure with pale hair. Was that her? He started ringing his bicycle bell.

By the time he reached the bus, she had one foot on the first step of the bus, one hand on the rail.

“Freya! Wait!” he called.

She looked around, blinking, as if roused from a dream. Her eyes focused on him. He’d have said she’d been crying if he didn’t know Freya never cried.

“Jack—? What’s the matter?” she said.

There was no time for tact. “I know about Michael,” he bawled across the other passengers. “I called him this morning. You haven’t anywhere to go, have you?”

Freya’s mouth opened and closed. “Yes, I do.”

“Oh, yeah? Where?” Jesus, she was stubborn. He rolled the bike forward, balancing on his toes.

She stood there, half on, half off the bus. Other passengers pushed past—a couple of old men in skullcaps, some hausfraus with bulging shopping bags, a fat black lady carrying a bunch of wilted flowers.

“Come and stay with me. Just until you get yourself fixed up.”

“No, Jack. You’ve got your writing and all your . . . students. I’d cramp your style.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” Of course, she’d cramp his style!

“I’ll come if she don’t,” chuckled the black lady, her mountainous body aquiver.

“Hey, Romeo, get lost!” barked a voice. It was the driver, mirrored sunglasses flashing, forearms the color of lard bulging from short sleeves. He bared his teeth at Freya in a sinister leer. “Come on, lady. Make my day.”

Freya leaped back onto the sidewalk. The doors closed behind her with a swoosh of compressed air, and the bus took off.

“It’s okay, Jack. Really.” Freya’s eyes flicked up from the sidewalk and back.

“Have you got a place to stay?” he demanded.

“Not yet. But . . .”

“Then come home with me.”

No answer. Her eyes were lowered, her lips pinched tight. He wanted to put his arm around her, but he didn’t dare.

“There’s grease on your jeans,” she said at last.

Jack smiled at this typical evasion. He turned his bike around, making a big production of it, giving them both time. Suddenly he had an idea.

“Frankly, Freya, I need the rent.”

That got her attention. “You? Don’t make me laugh. . . . Oh, God, you’re not serious, are you?”

“Perfectly serious.” Moving slowly, as if she were a jittery horse, Jack took her purse off her shoulder and put it in his bicycle basket. She didn’t seem to notice. “Twenty dollars a day, two weeks absolute max.” He held out his hand, palm upward. “Deal?”

She wavered for about five seconds, then gave his palm a decisive slap. “I warn you, I’m hell to live with.”

Jack nodded. He could well believe it.

CHAPTER 5

“Men are such pigs.” Cat’s dark eyes glowed with sympathetic indignation. “So, then what happened?”

“Well, after he’d fished out his stupid ring and made the waiter bring him a bowl of water so he could clean it up, he told me I wasn’t committed to him. Can you believe it? The creep dumps me, then twists the whole thing around so that it’s
my
fault!”

“Typical male rationalization. I remember when I was going out with Perfidious Peter—”

“He said I didn’t ‘relate’ to him, that I didn’t listen enough, that I was always criticizing him. He complained that I corrected his stories in public.”

“Did you?”

“Only when he was wrong.”

“Men are never wrong.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

Freya and Cat exchanged a smile of female solidarity. They were were sitting opposite each other at a Formica-topped table in a cramped restaurant in Chinatown. A teapot and two cups, pale blue with pink dragons, steamed between them. It was Monday lunchtime. The courthouse district was just around the corner, and the place was bursting with journalists, lawyers, policemen, and paunchy City Hall apparatchiks talking at top volume, as well as local Chinese workers and a group of docile-looking shaven-heads from the Buddhist Temple nearby. Cat spent a lot of time down here in the course of her work as a family lawyer, and this was one of her favorite eateries. Freya had met her here before and couldn’t honestly share Cat’s enthusiasm, but she wasn’t about to complain. Officially, Cat was supposed to be working, but like a true friend she had canceled an appointment to hear Freya’s tale of woe.

“When I think of all the hoops I jumped through for him!” Freya continued. “Drinking skim milk because of his cholesterol count, not seeing my friends so we could ‘
beee
together,’ pretending I liked those dreary concerts he took me to.” Her brow cleared momentarily. “One good thing: at least I won’t have to sit through that bloody Ring cycle.”

“At the Met? Freya, those tickets are like gold dust. And you’re practically German: How can you not like Wagner?”

“All that yearning and churning.” Freya shuddered. “And my mother was Swedish: quite different. I’m a totally kraut-free zone.”

“Well, I’m Italian, and I adore Wagner. He’s so romantic.”

“Not the
R
-word. Please.” Freya pressed a hand to her forehead.

“Of course. I’m sorry.”

A Chinese woman in worn slippers halted by their table and gave a surly jerk of her head to show that she was ready to take their order.

“I’ll have a number five,” said Cat. “What about you, Freya?”

“I couldn’t eat.”

“Of course, you can eat. Now hurry up and decide.”

Freya stared at the inscrutable menu. A Bloody Mary with extra Tabasco was what she wanted, but they didn’t serve alcohol here. The restaurant specialized in
tong shui
, a type of Chinese health food that tasted good but had an eye-of-newt and toe-of-frog quality that always made her scrutinize each mouthful for alien substances.

“You choose,” she said. “Nothing with more than four legs.”

When the waitress had gone, Freya finished her story, then sank her chin in her hands and fixed Cat with a mournful look. “Be honest, Cat. Why doesn’t Michael want to marry me? What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing!” Cat was gloriously emphatic. “You’re gorgeous, smart, funny. What’s wrong with
him
is the question. If I could get my hands on that Michael, I’d feed him through my mincing attachment. Hmmm . . . Minced Michael—I could add him to my collection.”

Cat always invented epithets for her men. There’d been Simian Simon, Rod the Bod, Dandruff Dylan. It was her form of self-defense when relationships ended. But they weren’t talking about Cat’s men. Freya wrenched the subject back to herself.

“I find the only man in New York who actually wants to commit—but he doesn’t want to commit to me. Why not?”

Cat considered. “You don’t think—?”

“What?”

“You don’t think he could have found another woman?”

“Michael? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“In that case, he probably got cold feet. Personally, I blame the media. Every time you open a magazine, there’s another article about how desperate women are to get married. No wonder men are scared. If you ask them to pass the butter they flinch. Ten years ago it was HIV; now it’s single women: the new plague. Run for your lives!”

Freya giggled, forgetting for a moment how miserable she was. Cat always made her laugh. They had met years ago, at a tap-dancing class of all places, where Cat had broken her ankle while attempting a double pick-up. Freya, temporarily homeless, had ended up taking care of her and sleeping on her pullout bed. The two of them had bonded over chilled vermouth, fiery
penne all’arabiatta
, old Bruce Springsteen tapes, and killer games of backgammon. Freya had discovered that Cat’s Latin temper, Columbia-educated mind, and I-want-it-and-I-want-it-
now
attitude of the native New Yorker concealed the most generous heart she knew. Cat adored her family, a huge Italian American tribe based in Staten Island. She knew all her neighbors in her apartment block by name. She had a passionate social conscience and contributed hours of free legal work to those who couldn’t afford the fees. Despite her feminist principles, you could make her cry by telling her that Rhett and Scarlett never did get back together again. Their relationship may have started out by Freya looking after Cat, but both knew that the reverse was now true. It was Cat who cooked Freya meals when she was down, listened to her moans about Lola, bought her a potted plant every time she moved apartments (it always died), and picked up the pieces when some man let her down. Freya had many close acquaintances in this town—friends in the art world, a few of the old Brooklyn gang, people who invited her to parties and dinners and did the kissy-kissy bit when they met—but Cat was a real friend. Freya trusted her absolutely.