Anne is sitting at her office desk leafing through the physicians listings in the Queens Yellow Pages. She comes across a women’s health center-Dr. Milton Halpern, gynecologist-obstetrician, director.
There’s a tap on the door. Anne quickly shuts the phone book and pushes it aside. “Yes.”
Trent pokes his head in. “I’m off to lunch. Can I get you anything?”
“I’m fine, thank you, Trent.”
When he’s gone she calls the state medical board to see if Dr. Halpern has had any complaints lodged against him. None. She dials his office and requests an appointment.
“Have you seen the doctor before?”
“No.”
“How is next Tuesday at ten-thirty?”
“Could he possibly fit me in this afternoon?”
“The doctor is fully booked.”
“It’s something of an emergency.”
“All right, I’ll book you in at the end of the day. Five-thirty.”
“Thank you.”
“Your name?”
“Kathleen Brody.”
“Your phone number?”
Christ! Anne forgot they’d be asking for a phone number. Her mind races. She considers hanging up, then looks down at her phone. She reads the number aloud, transposing the last two digits.
“All right, we’ll see you this afternoon. Do you know how to get here?”
“I’ll find it.”
Anne leaves the office at four, telling Trent she’s getting a facial. She stops at an ATM and withdraws five hundred dollars and then walks briskly down Sixth Avenue to Thirty-fourth Street. Wedged between an electronics store and a McDonald’s is a tiny wig shop. The interior is poorly lit and crowded with wigs on Styrofoam stands. The owner is an East Indian with a bored, leering manner. Anne points to a short brown wig cut in a pixie-ish Shirley MacLaine bob.
“Very nice wig,” he says.
“May I try it on?”
“No. New York State law.”
“Well, do you think it will fit me?”
“Okay, try it on.”
Anne hastily pins up her hair and pulls on the tight cap and looks in the mirror. For a moment she doesn’t recognize herself
“Beautiful,” the man says.
Anne pays for the wig and leaves the store with it on. She hails a cab and gives the driver the Queens address. As the car makes its way across the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, Anne takes out her compact and with deft strokes applies foundation to her face. Then she darkens her eyebrows and puts on deep red lipstick.
The clinic is in Jackson Heights, a neighborhood Anne has never visited before. She’s surprised at how charming it is-tidy tree-lined streets, graceful brick apartment houses. As they drive, Anne picks out a suitable building and notes its number. The clinic is in a low-slung building just off a slightly seedy shopping street.
The waiting room-worn gray carpeting, plastic chairs, posters of Monet’s water lilies-is a long way from Dr. Arnold’s, with its burnished wood and framed lithographs. Anne is glad there’s no one else waiting. The receptionist is a preoccupied Hispanic woman. Anne quickly fills out the medical history form, listing the address she noted on Elm Street. A dazed young Asian mother, carrying one child and leading two others, comes out of the doctor’s office and stops at the receptionist’s desk. Anne begins to sweat. Hillary Clinton is on the cover of People, but Anne barely has time to pick up the magazine before a heavyset nurse with a brusque maternal air leads her into an examining room. Anne sits in a chair.
“What can we do for you today?”
“I’d rather discuss it with the doctor.”
The nurse raises an eyebrow. “Are you pregnant?”
“I really would rather talk to the doctor.”
“In that case, why don’t you take off your clothes and put on this gown?”
The nurse leaves. Anne has no intention of taking off her clothes. The walls of the examining room are covered with bilingual posters extolling proper pre- and postnatal care. There are photographs of happy families enjoying their newborns. Anne wonders if she’s doing everything she should be in terms of nutrition and exercise. Oh, Christ, women have been having children for thousands of years. She looks in the wall mirror, pats her dark hair. There’s a soft knock on the door and then it opens.
Dr. Halpern looks to be in his early sixties, with curly gray hair and exhausted eyes. His shoes are scuffed.
“Milton Halpern.”
“Kathleen Brody.”
The doctor crosses his arms and leans against a counter. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Brody?”
Anne hears a baby crying in another room. She thought she was the last patient of the day. “I’m pregnant.”
“Yes?”
Anne looks down, runs her fingers along the edge of the chair seat, exhales sharply. “I’m a married woman, and…”
Dr. Halpern takes a pen out of his breast pocket and starts to fidget with it. She looks at him. He holds her eyes and leans forward slightly.
“More than one man could be the father.” Anne looks down at her hands. The polish on her left index finger is chipped.
The doctor takes a paper cup from a holder and fills it with water. He hands the cup to Anne. “These things happen,” he says.
The clinic is overheated. No wonder she’s sweating. She takes a drink of water. It’s been ages since she’s tasted tap water.
“I’m considering an abortion.”
The doctor gives a small nod. “Do you have a regular gynecologist?”
“I do, but it’s complicated…” Anne finishes the water in a gulp. “Oh, Christ, how could I have done this to myself?”
“Are you taking anything for your anxiety?”
“Just something I picked up at the health food store.”
“Does it help?”
“You should have seen me before.”
The doctor chuckles.
Anne stands up. There isn’t much room to move in the office. She sits back down. “I’d like DNA testing of the fetus. I want to know who the father is before I make any decisions.”
“It’s an expensive process. Does it really matter that much?”
“Yes. Will you help me?”
The doctor looks at Anne, studies her face. For a moment she’s afraid he recognizes her.
“You’re in your first trimester?”
“Yes.”
“Well, chorionic villus sampling is not without risks. I won’t recommend it without performing an examination and getting a full medical history.”
“Fine. How soon could we schedule it?”
“Next week. As I’m sure you know, the lab will need a blood sample for DNA matching.”
Anne nods. After her exam, she dresses and leaves, giving the receptionist the five hundred dollars as a deposit.
Anne walks into the apartment at 6:45 and heads for the master bedroom. In her closet, she pulls down an old hatbox, opens it, tucks the wig under the straw hat inside, and replaces the box. Her heart is thwacking in her chest. In the bathroom she picks up a glass and drops it. It shatters with a hollow sound that echoes off the room’s tiles. She carefully picks up the shards of broken glass, leaving several on the floor, sharp and menacing. Deep in the bottom of the bathroom closet, on a shelf filled with half-used tubes of sunblock and hair conditioner, she stashes the vials Dr. Halpern’s nurse gave her.
She heads for the kitchen. The door to Charles’s domain is open, and she walks down the hallway. His outer office is deserted; the door to his inner office is closed. She listens: silence. She knocks lightly. “Charles?” No reply. Just as she’s about to open the door, it opens from within and Emma emerges.
“He’s gone out for a walk,” the young woman says.
What was she doing in there? And with the door closed? Anne looks discreetly over Emma’s shoulder. Everything looks in order. No Charles.
“Just my luck. The one day I get home at a decent hour. How’s everything going here?”
“Just fine, for me. I hope I’m making things easier for Mr. Davis.”
“I’m sure you are.” Anne eyes Emma. She’s wearing a hint of makeup; she never did that when she was temping at Home. And those startling green eyes are so round and luminous.
“I saw the article about you in In Style,” Emma says.
“Oh, God, they made me sound like a cross between Martha Stewart and Donatella Versace.”
“Half the women I meet think you’re the Messiah.”
“That’s my cue to say something terribly cynical and witty. But I won’t.” Anne has an ironclad rule never to condescend to her customers.
“How’s everything at the office?” Emma asks.
“Chaotic.”
“I hope that problem worked itself out.”
“What problem?” Anne asks.
“You got a phone call that seemed to upset you. I think it was my second day working at Home. Anyway, it was raining.”
Anne looks at Emma for a moment. Who is this girl? She walks past her, into Charles’s office. She picks up his pack of Marlboros and takes one out, but doesn’t light it.
“Unfortunately, many calls upset me these days. Home is about to go on-line. Getting there hasn’t been easy. I probably should have kept you. You were good.”
“It was a wonderful opportunity for me.”
“Yes. And now you’re here.”
“I’m here.”
Emma looks as if she’s about to say something more and then thinks the better of it. What the hell was she doing skulking about in Charles’s office?
“I was just on my way out,” Emma says, gathering up her things. “Good night.”
“Good night,” Anne says. As she watches Emma walk down the hallway, Anne decides she wants her out of her house.
Back in the kitchen, Anne pours herself a glass of wine and finishes it in three sips. One glass won’t hurt the baby. Hell, her mother swears she drank two gin and tonics every night when she was pregnant with Anne. She opens the fridge and checks on the chicken she’s marinating in beer and curry and horseradish. They’ll eat at the small table in the library, at the window overlooking the park. She’ll put on Coltrane. And after dinner she’ll run Charles a hot bath…
The kitchen phone rings.
“Hello.”
“Why haven’t I heard from you, Annie? I’ve left three phone messages and two E-mails.”
“Need you ask?”
“Don’t give me that crap. You think my job is a day at the beach? I’m a vice president of a television network, cookie honey sweetie baby.”
Anne laughs-who else could make her laugh at this moment?
“I miss you, Kayla.”
Kayla Edelstein is Anne’s best buddy. They were roommates at Stanford, two eighteen-year-olds from opposite ends of the continent who joyously discovered that they shared a sense of humor, passionate liberal politics, and enough drive to light Cleveland. After graduation they moved to Manhattan together, shared a basement apartment off Riverside Drive, dated and sometimes bedded a series of gorgeous young men, and dived full-tilt-boogie into their careers. Anne got her first job as an editorial assistant at Vogue, Kayla hers as an agent’s assistant at William Morris. Within three years Kayla relocated to L.A., where her rise has been steady and sure. She’s currently head of development for the country’s second-largest cable network. The two friends speak at least once a week and make sure they see each other three or four times a year.
“So how are you?” Kayla asks in a voice that says, Don’t try to bullshit me, kiddo.
“Good.”
There’s a long pause.
“All right, it’s been a lousy couple of weeks.”
“I’ve seen the reviews. Is he totally flipped?”
“Pretty much. I know you think he’s a bulldog, and sometimes he is. But he feels things more acutely than most people. He can’t help himself. It’s part of what makes his work so good. And so difficult for him.”
“Why don’t the two of you come out here, lie by the pool in Santa Monica for a week? You need to get out of that town.”
“Charles is throwing himself into a new book. It’s the best thing. He knows he’s capable of more than Capitol Offense. I don’t care about his sales anymore. I just want him to tap into that magic again; I want him to be great again.”
“So do I, Annie. What about your website? Am I going to love it?”
“You’re going to way love it. It’s the coolest. Sales are going to go through the roof.”
“Why do I get the feeling there’s something you’re not telling me?”
“Because you have a very vivid imagination.”
“If I had a very vivid imagination, would I be in television? What I do have is intuition, and it tells me you’re holding back.”
Anne drums her nails on the countertop. Should she tell her best friend about the shards of glass waiting for Charles on the bathroom floor?
“Maybe I should come out there for a couple of days,” Anne says.
“Pretty please. I could use you right now. I just dumped Fred.”
“But you adored him.”
“I adored his demented sense of humor and the way he nibbled my inner thighs. What I didn’t adore was the fact that he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.”
“You told me he wasn’t like that.”
“ He told me he wasn’t like that. But my intuition didn’t believe him. So I made some discreet calls and met this fabulous call girl-slash-private eye, Sorbonne grad, could be running Paramount but has this Jane Bond lifestyle she loves. Anyway she lured old Freddy into a zipless fuck, and believe me, it wasn’t hard. Best five grand I ever dropped.”
“I’m sorry, Kayla.”
“I’m not. I’m thrilled. Saved by the babe.”
“But you really liked the guy.”
There’s a long pause and Anne can almost hear Kayla’s bravado fizzle.
“Yeah, you’re right, I did. He was so funny. And nerdy. I guess even geeks can be shits. Oh, Anne, I’m thirty-seven and I’ve never had a stable relationship,” Kayla says in a voice that’s starting to crack.
“You will, honey, you will. And, hey, what about our friendship?”
“You’re right. And fuck it-self-pity is the biggest bore.”
“Damn straight. Remember our solemn oath: We will never feel sorry for ourselves. We will always have a cleaning lady, and-”
“Sex is for our pleasure,” Kayla finishes. The two friends break into laughter.
“Oh, God, Annie, I miss you.”
Anne hears the front door open. “Listen, I should run. I’ll call you in a couple of days. Love you.”
“Oh, the genius just walked in? You’re still a lovesick pup at heart, aren’t you? Charles Davis uber alles.”
Dinner doesn’t go as Anne hoped. In spite of the Coltrane and the candles, the mood is about as romantic as a trip to the dry cleaners. Charles is tense and uncommunicative; he has three drinks and only picks at his food. Anne tries-a little too hard-to keep things warm and lively, bringing up the latest movies and political gossip, but it’s obvious that he’s bored and distracted. When she raves about her website she’s rewarded with a condescending “Terrific.” She feels like telling him he’d better hope the website is a success because his royalties on Capitol Offense sure as hell aren’t going to pay for the apartment. She curses herself for buying into his sulk, is too wound up to eat, keeps flashing on the shards of glass, and her left foot won’t stop twitching.
“Charles, why don’t we get away, maybe down to Saint Bart’s, even just for a long weekend?”
He finishes his drink and looks out the window. “You’ve got to stop crowding me, Anne.”
“I wasn’t aware that I was crowding you.”
“You can’t help it. You’re just so full of enthusiasms. Sometimes they’re hard to take.”
“Our marriage is one of my enthusiasms. Perhaps it’s a misplaced one.”
“At the moment it may well be.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that right now I’m consumed by my own struggle and incapable of giving you the attention you deserve. Maybe I should rent a little apartment in Rome for a year.”
Wonderful-the great novelist spends a year in a garret overlooking the Tiber while she sweats it out in New York.
“Don’t expect me to be here when you get back,” Anne says.
Charles gets up and crosses the room. He lifts a painted Balinese monkey off the mantel and stares at its screeching face. “Only one thing is going to save me, to save us, Anne, and that’s a great book. We have to work as a team. I need your help.”
Anne goes around the room turning off the lights until the only illumination is the reflected glow that pours through the windows from the city outside. She stands in the middle of the room and steps out of her dress. Charles is watching her. She slips out of her bra and stands there in her soft cotton panties in the beckoning light. She knows that he still loves her body.
“Let’s make love,” she says.
Charles just stands there, looking at her. She can see it in his eyes-desire, faint at first, but building.
She goes to him and kisses him. “Please, darling, let’s forget about the world for a little while. Let’s get back to you and me.”
She pulls off his jacket and runs her hands down his shoulders. Then she unbuttons his shirt, her fingers trembling lightly. She can smell his pine soap, his sweat, the wine on his breath. She pushes his shirt open. She touches his chest, his neck, the warmth under his arms. His eyes are half closed.
Slowly, very slowly, he moves an index finger down the curve of her breast. “You and me?”
“Yes,” Anne whispers.
Charles leans in to kiss her, slipping his hands down the back of her panties and pushing them off her hips, taking control.
They met at a benefit softball game in Bridgehampton. She was twenty-three, winning raves from her bosses at Vogue, besieged by suitors, adoring the East. He was thirty-six, tanned and famous, and when he hit that triple and slid into third base, she was gone. They had a few cursory dates, but they both knew what those were about-prolonging the tension, foreplay basically. When they finally fell into each other’s arms-in a bedroom that looked out on the endless dunes of the Hamptons, the Atlantic glistening beneath a billion stars-it was what she’d been waiting for all her life.
They got married three months later-at City Hall in Asbury Park, New Jersey, just for the hell of it. The first years were bliss. And it wasn’t just the sex. It was exploring hidden corners of Brooklyn on windy Saturday afternoons, arguing over conceptual art at the Whitney, laughing at each other’s imitations of dull or pompous people they met, spending long winter nights reading on the overstuffed sofas in the living room of their Turtle Bay apartment.
Charles was a red-hot ticket in those days, and he made furthering her career a personal crusade. Lunch with the president of Doubleday; dinner parties to introduce her to editors, photographers, and writers; high-profile literary and cultural events- New York magazine named them one of the city’s Ten Most Glamorous Couples. They got a good laugh out of that one. But it all paid off: within a year Anne had a contract to do the first of her popular coffee table books on the “art” of entertaining.
Anne thought their happiness would last forever. Although the erosion has been slow and steady, she has never looked at another man. Still does not want another man.
After their lovemaking-a fierce, greedy, almost impersonal bout-Anne gets up and walks to their bedroom. She brushes her teeth, being careful not to step on the broken glass. She suddenly feels guilty and ridiculous, almost bends down and sweeps up the shards-but no, she must know; it’s that simple. She lies on the bed and pretends to study a contract. Where is Charles? The apartment is so quiet.
Then he materializes-like a ghost-in the doorway. Anne starts.
“Scare you?” Charles asks. He’s naked and has a drink in his hand.
“You’re so quiet.” Even from across the room Anne can smell him, his after-sex smell, pungent and moist.
“Thinking. Thinking is quiet.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“Shhhh.” He puts a finger up to his lips. “Loose lips sink books.”
“Ah.”
“Going to go do some work,” he says.
“Don’t you want to shower?”
“Do I stink?”
“No.”
“Yes, I do. I stink.”
“Well, if you stink, why don’t you shower?”
“Probably because you suggested it.”
Anne glances over to the bathroom. She gets out of bed and goes to him, puts her arms around his neck and kisses him softly on the lips. She presses her body, her hips, against his. “Or we could take one together. Who knows what might develop?”
“Oh, no, I’ve had too much to drink. You’re right, though, I do stink. A nice long shower and I’ll be good as new.”
Anne stops breathing as she watches him walk into the bathroom. His feet cross the black-and-white tiles, he’s heading right for the glass-he misses it. Her breath escapes in a rush.
Then he turns to grab a washcloth.
“Shit.” He turns his foot up and blood is running from the cut.
“What is it, darling?” Anne says, going to him. “Oh, no.” A shard of glass is sticking out of the sole of his foot. “Let me get it.”
She kneels and pulls out the thin shard and then squeezes his foot, watching as large drops of blood fall onto the tiles. “I dropped a glass earlier, I was sure I got it all up. I’m sorry. You get in the shower, I’ll clean this up.”
“ ’Tain’t nothin’,” Charles mutters before stepping into the stall. Anne opens the closet door, ostensibly to reach for a sponge. She leaves the door open, blocking Charles’s view, and retrieves a vial. She gingerly uses a piece of glass to push several drops of blood into the vial, her heart hammering in her chest. She puts the stopper in the vial and quickly wipes up the rest of the blood. Then she walks quickly to the kitchen, opens the refrigerator, takes out her box of Maison du Chocolat chocolates-Charles hates them, eats only Hershey bars-and slips the vial under the top layer. Then she savors a cocoa-dusted truffle.