Full Stop (2 page)

‘The mother-fuckin family', Loretta read as they streamed past, and a line of smaller letters which announced that the bikers belonged to the LI — which she took to stand for Long Island — chapter of Hell's Angels. Feeling a small professional irritation at the omission of the final g — the
mother-fucking
family, she wanted to call after them, or at least point out the need for an apostrophe — she did not catch the clipped remark her driver suddenly flung over his shoulder. A moment later she realised it was not an attempt at conversation, simply a request for the bridge toll, and she handed over her three dollars with relief. They headed into the city, somewhere in East Harlem she supposed, and she began looking at the buildings with real interest although they were for the most part modern and undistinguished. Her driver had relapsed into silence, concentrating on the heavyish traffic, and Loretta wondered how long it would take to get to the Upper West Side; from previous visits she recalled a road through Central Park but she had no idea whether it came out anywhere near Toni's apartment. The cab stopped at a red light and a black woman swung across the road, banging her fist on the bonnet of Loretta's taxi as she passed.

‘Bitch,' the driver said under his breath, without real force, as though it was the sort of thing that happened all the time. Although the woman couldn't possibly have heard she turned and made an obscene gesture, revealing the legend on her shrunken T-shirt: ‘I wanna sex you up'. Loretta gave her head a disbelieving shake and leaned forward as the taxi moved off, reading the driver's name on the laminated licence on the dashboard — it sounded French, confirming her impression that he was from Haiti — before reminding him of her destination.

‘Riverside Drive and 73rd,' she said on a faintly interrogative note, and he grunted exactly as he had at the airport. Loretta sat back in her seat and wiped sweat from her forehead, deciding it was
even hotter in the city than it had been on the expressway. Her eyebrows were wet, not just damp, a phenomenon she had never encountered before. She thought of the play she was going to see that evening with Toni, she had forgotten what it was called, and hoped that the theatre would be air-conditioned. Her original suggestion, David Mamet's
Oleanna,
had fallen through because the play was no longer on in New York.

‘You haven't missed anything,' Toni had told her on the phone, ‘the guy's blown it this time,' and Loretta had left the choice of a substitute to her. Through the car window she saw that the cross streets had declined from the hundreds to the nineties, and by craning her neck she was able to get a view of distant treetops which might, she thought eagerly, be her first glimpse of Central Park.

‘Loretta! How was your flight?' Toni surged forward as Loretta turned the corner from the lift, hugging her and firing off half-a-dozen questions without giving her time to answer. She looked just as Loretta remembered her, slender and elegant with dark blonde hair pulled back from a face which was just too gaunt to be beautiful. Toni's paternal grandparents were Italian immigrants from Reggio-Calabria who arrived in New York at the turn of the century; her father, who was born in the city, still ran his own restaurant in the East 20s. Loretta had never eaten there but she had read a carping review of it in her guidebook, which complained that the food was old-fashioned and the portions too large.

‘Did you take a cab from La Guardia? You didn't have a problem with the traffic? I didn't expect you yet' — she glanced down at the watch on her bony wrist — ‘butit's fine, come inside.' She slipped an arm round Loretta's shoulders and walked her towards the open door of apartment 15G. ‘You've never been here before, huh? I warned you it was small. Down, Honey,
down.
'

This last remark was addressed to the ugliest dog Loretta had ever seen, a thick-set animal which appeared, at first sight, to be made of concentric circles of bulging doggy fat.

‘Honey,
' Toni exclaimed, pulling the dog away from one of Loretta's shoes which it had begun to worry with ferocious growls. ‘It's OK,' she went on, hauling the animal into the apartment by its collar, ‘she has a thing about leather. She's only a pup and she gets kind of over-excited.'

Loretta followed nervously, not at all reassured, and hovered just inside the door.

‘Honey, on the couch,
good
girl. Come on in, Loretta. Are you in a hurry to go somewhere?'

‘No, course not.' Loretta put down her weekend case and glanced round the L-shaped room, immediately perceiving that there was nowhere to sit. The room looked like a simulacrum of her own the night before, with clothes everywhere and a dress spilling out of a brown paper bag which Loretta recognised as from Bloomingdale's. The dog lumbered up on to the sofa, collapsing on to a green silk blouse and panting with its jaws gaping open. Toni pulled the blouse from under the dog, not before the soft fabric had become spattered with saliva, swept a pile of clothes off the only armchair in the room and motioned to Loretta to sit on it.

‘Sorry,' she said distractedly, ‘I haven't finished packing.'

Loretta surveyed the room, taking in the wide double bed which filled the alcove formed by the short bar of the L. It was at least cool in the flat, although the air-conditioning unit set in the bottom of one of windows was irritatingly noisy. Toni seemed to be feeling the heat, flopping down on the bed and brushing back wisps of hair from her face. ‘What a
day,
' she exclaimed.

‘I thought you weren't going till tomorrow,' Loretta said, wondering why Toni was getting ready for her trip to Long Island a day early. She had already noticed that the sofa's deep red cover, an oriental design which echoed the rugs hanging on the walls, was thick with dog hair and crumbs of soil; it was just as well, she thought, looking down at her chair, that she had travelled in jeans. Suddenly the dog sat up on the sofa, apparently taking a slight movement on Loretta's part as an invitation, and Toni murmured its name warningly. Shooting her a reproachful glance, it subsided into panting rolls of flesh.

‘She's so affectionate,' Toni assured Loretta, still sounding distracted. ‘Are you OK with dogs? I recall you kept a cat in Oxford. She's a full English bulldog, I wanted one for years and Jay got her for my last birthday. I'm sorry about the mess,' she apologised again, looking helplessly at the untidy heaps of clothes. ‘Term's over but I had to rush out and see one of my graduate students one more time before he went home to Kansas. He lives midtown so we generally meet up in a café instead of trailing all the way up to Columbia.' She leaned back on the bed, supporting herself on outstretched arms. ‘This kid,' she said, still not answering Loretta's original question, ‘he's very bright but he will
not
concentrate. It's all free association, if we go on like this he's gonna turn in the first stream-of-consciousness thesis. One week he tells me – OK, this is how I do my first chapter, then I take up this point, then I go here ... Two weeks later it's like the whole conversation never happened.'

‘What's his subject?'

‘Huh, you tell me. I mean, Carver, that's the one thing we're all agreed on ...' She sat up straight. ‘Loretta, can I get you a drink? You like tea, right? Or maybe you'd prefer something cold? How's everyone at St Frid's?' It was a while since Toni had spent a term as a visiting fellow at St Frideswide's, the Oxford college where Loretta taught part-time, and she was still trying to work out who had left or published books or done anything else of note when Toni got up. ‘Kitchen's in here,' she said, crossing the room and pushing open a door, ‘bathroom's next door. I put out some clean towels, and I changed the sheets on the bed.'

Loretta heard a tap being turned on, presumably Toni filling the kettle. She got up and went to the window, stooping to examine the air-conditioning unit. It was turned up high and Loretta wondered if there was any setting which would keep the room cool without making such a din; there were several dials and buttons, and she would ask Toni later. She straightened and looked out of the window at a modern building across the street — not much of a view, she thought, relinquishing her fantasy of
looking out on to the Guggenheim Museum or the Art Deco spire of the Chrysler building. The flat was fifteen floors up, high enough to make her slightly queasy as she looked down on to a broad avenue jammed with almost stationary traffic. Loretta wondered which it was, vaguely remembering names on the Upper West Side from her map — Columbus, Amsterdam, West End Avenue.

‘What street are we on? I mean, what avenue?' she asked, moving away from the window as Toni came back into the room carrying a mug.

‘West End. Riverside Drive's over there,' she added, pointing towards the door of the apartment. ‘You take sugar?'

Loretta shook her head.

‘I didn't think so. Listen, Loretta.' She put the mug on the coffee table in front of the sofa and went back to the bed. ‘I hate to do this to you on your first night. What it is, Jay ...' She paused, and Loretta remembered that Jay was Toni's boyfriend. She knew he played tenor sax in a jazz band, but nothing else about him. Toni said rapidly: ‘Jay totaled his car two nights ago, he was driving back from an out-of-town gig in New Jersey.' She saw Loretta's expression and hurried to reassure her. ‘He's fine apart from a whole lot of bruising. But it's messed up the weekend, I don't have a car so we're gonna have to take the jitney to Long Island –'

‘The what?'

‘The jitney. The bus. And it's full tomorrow, all booked up, so we have to leave this afternoon. The other thing is, now we don't have the car, Honey isn't so used to people that I totally trust her. Not for three hours, which is how long it can take to the Hamptons at this time of day. All you need to do is walk her twice a day, her food's in the kitchen –'

Loretta stared at her. ‘You mean you want me to look after ...' She turned to the animal, realised how rude she must have sounded and tried to retrieve the situation. ‘I mean, of course, does she have any special ... No,
stay.'
She put out a hand as the dog heaved itself to its feet and began plodding
across the sofa towards her, its paws sinking into the cushions. It sank back on to its haunches, giving Loretta the same reproachful look she had seen a few minutes before, and it crossed her mind that at least it seemed to be obedient.

‘She won't be any trouble, really,' Toni said pleadingly. ‘I'm sorry to dump this on you at short notice, I called the theatre and they said maybe you could sell my ticket. It's near the end of the run but there are always a few people who show up on the night –'

‘Oh God, the theatre,' Loretta exclaimed, too worried about the dog to have thought of it before.

‘I'm
sorry,
Loretta. Didn't you say you had a friend in town? Maybe he could –'

‘John Tracey,' Loretta said quickly. ‘My ex-husband. He's flying up from Washington tomorrow.'

Toni grimaced. ‘Shit. I booked a table for dinner after the show and I was hoping ...' She went to a cupboard, her voice muffled as she yanked open the door and hauled a holdall into the room. ‘I feel so bad about this but there isn't anything I can do. Jay fixed it with his parents weeks ago –'

‘His parents?' Loretta hadn't realised that this was the purpose of the trip to Long Island.

Toni seemed mildly embarrassed. ‘His father's a Minister, I only met him once but he's big on family.' She laughed nervously. ‘Jay's parents, they go to church like you and I go to the
bathroom.
They have a sign in the yard — you know, it lights up at night. “We want to share God's love with you”.'

‘You mean he's an
evangelist?
Like Jim Bakker?'

Toni shrugged. ‘Don't ask me, I was raised Catholic. I don't know much about these Protestant sects.'

Loretta said: ‘You really have to go tonight?'

Toni held out her hands, palm up. ‘I'm
sorry,
Loretta.'

‘It's my fault,' Loretta said generously. ‘I should have given you more notice. I'll be all right.'

Toni gave her a regretful smile and changed the subject. ‘Is Christopher meeting you at Heathrow?'

‘Christopher?' Loretta sipped her tea, realising Toni was out of date about her love life. ‘That finished ages ago, before I went to California. He wanted us to live together and I really couldn't ... I just don't
want
to live with anyone. You know the old saying — you start off sinking into his arms and end up with your arms in his sink? Every relationship I've had starts as an affair and ends up with a row in Sainsbury's on Saturday morning. You know, those stupid arguments about what to have for dinner and whose turn it is to put the rubbish out. I've had it with domesticity,' she finished, suddenly and unexpectedly feeling better about Sean.

‘You're not scared of being lonely, Loretta? I mean, it makes a lot of sense in principle ... But what about when you're old? Really old, I mean?'

Loretta smiled. ‘Older than I am now? I have lots of friends, and you can be even lonelier in a bad relationship. I was amazed how much better I felt when my marriage ended.'

‘I hear what you're saying,' said Toni, ‘but...'

‘But what?'

‘What about children?'

Her voice was suddenly strained. Loretta shrugged and said lightly: ‘It's not an issue for me.'

‘Really?' Toni sounded unconvinced, as though she was about to say something else, but instead she got up and began folding clothes. ‘Do you mind if we — I don't find it easy to talk about it.'

‘Of course,' said Loretta, baffled. She hadn't brought up the subject.

‘It's not easy at this age,' Toni blurted out, her back to Loretta. ‘I mean, you think there's still time and then ...'