Jake & Mimi (14 page)

The table beside me is empty now. The couple is gone. A twenty lies in the bill tray, weighted down by a half-filled wineglass,
its edges lifting in the breeze. The waiter returns with my Arrowood and places it before me. I reach for it but then I freeze.
From inside the purse at my feet comes the muffled ring of the cell phone. I look up at the waiter, as if he might answer
it. “The bill please,” I manage to say, and he pulls it from his pocket, lays it on the table, and turns away. The ringing
is steady, insistent. I pull the small black cell phone from my purse, close my eyes, and press the pulsing button.

“Three sixty-four Sullivan,” Jake Teller says, his voice a whisper. “Apartment two. We’re ready.”

•     •     •

Miss Lessing is not herself.

All her delicate routines have fallen to the havoc of the season, and with them mine as well. No longer do I wait in the window
at La Boheme and watch her step onto her block in early evening. Or stand at the clearing by the river for my cherished moments
along the rail. A company car returns her home late each night now, and an hour later I lose her to sleep. This separation
is cruel, but it will pass with the season. More troubling is her behavior tonight.

I sit on a plastic folding chair at a bus stop in the Village, letting the buses go by, one after the next. Across the street
Miss Lessing sits alone at a café table. She is just now ordering a second glass of wine, pressing the top of her dress demurely
to her neck as the waiter looms over her.

An hour ago she lied again to her fiancé, calling him from her apartment and telling him that she was at work. And that she
would be there until midnight. Minutes later I heard the sound of the shower, and then of her hair dryer. Then the rustle
of her jewelry box, and the soft swish of a dress lifted off a clicking hanger.

Another bus pulls into the stop and blocks my view. It discharges its riders and then rumbles away, and I turn my head into
my collar to escape the exhaust. I look up again to see Miss Lessing reaching down for her purse, then into it. She brings
out a black cell phone, listens for only a few seconds, and replaces it in her purse. She pulls her sweater, a royal blue
cashmere, tight to her neck, and places money in the bill tray. And now she stands. She is leaving. Abandoning a full glass
of wine. The waiter looks after her as she steps through the small iron gate that sets off the café from the street.

She looks around, as though to orient herself, and then starts east along Bleecker. I rise and follow her.

I
turn the corner onto Sullivan, and the nighttime noises of Bleecker give way to the quiet of a residential block. In place
of bars and street musicians are small trees and wide, empty sidewalks. The wind is stronger here, and I pull my sweater closer
around me. The buildings are not like city apartment buildings at all. They are low and pretty, only two or three apartments
to a building, and the street doors are wooden, carved, with ornate knockers of silver or brass. The numbers go down as I
walk. 382… 380… 378… I touch my hand to the black wrought-iron railing that separates the properties from the street. 376…
374… Flowers grow along the window grates. I can hear my steps on the sidewalk, and I try to walk more quietly. 372… 370…
Across the street is the lone shop on the block, the Caffe Lune. A man sits by himself at an outdoor table, stirring a drink.
368… 366… Bleecker seems a long way behind me now.

Three Sixty-four Sullivan Street.

I stop. Two large flowerpots, low to the ground and filled with rich earth and roses, stand on either side of a beautiful
mahogany door. The door is closed, but something has been folded and slipped between the lock and the frame. I turn the knob
and the door opens in, and a handbill falls to the ground at my feet. I pick it up.

WHITE SWAN GALLERIES
. A brochure for an art gallery. At the top is the crest, a sleeping, long-necked swan, its bill tucked into its breast. And
below:
NINA TORRING, DIRECTOR
. I look from the brochure to the nameplate beneath the buzzer for apartment two.
TORRING, N
. The name is written in a woman’s hand, in fresh ink, as if she might have just moved in. I lay the brochure on the flowerpot,
step inside, and close the street door behind me.

I stand in a carpeted foyer that smells faintly of forest. Of pine. Someone has put potpourri on the marble credenza outside
of apartment one. Straight ahead is the door to apartment two, and even from here I can see a sliver of light between it and
the jamb. I walk to it. I push it softly, and it opens without a sound. I step inside, into a small kitchenette, and close
the door quietly behind me.

The living room in front of me is beautifully spare. Two silver Kaese folding chairs by the window, a glass coffee table with
a vase of flowers on it, and a couch of black leather. On the far wall hangs a single painting, lit from below, the way you
would see it in a gallery. This is the only light in the room, and it draws the eye to the painting, a stunning Parisian streetscape.
Beyond the painting is a short hallway that leads from the living room to the rest of the apartment. And from down that hallway
comes music.

Violin music, playing very softly.

I look down at the hardwood floor. I slip off my shoes and place them together by the door, then take a quiet step, and another,
until I’ve crossed the living room and stand at the mouth of the hallway. It is six feet long, no more, ending straight ahead
at the bathroom and, to the right, at the open door to the bedroom. I can’t see into the bedroom, but I can see the strange,
muted light that comes from it. And I can hear the soft music. I press my damp palms to my dress. It is just a few steps to
the bedroom door, but I can’t take them. My heart is moving too fast and my breathing… she would hear me. I step back into
the living room. I need just a minute. I go to the painting.

Breathe, Mimi. Slowly
. The painting is of one block in Paris, and the artist has captured everything. The crumbling print of a tattered flyer on
a bus-stop pole. The reflection of a leaf in the top corner of a café window.
In truth lies beauty
. My art history teacher would say that, whenever an artist stunned the class with detail. I concentrate on my breathing and
begin to steady. The colors in the painting are beautiful. The rusted blue of a roof shingle, the red of a child’s dress.
And the light. This must be what they mean when they talk about Parisian light. It seems to pour from the painting, bathing
the shops at one end of the street and then giving way, store by store, to shadow. I look again down the hallway, at the light
from the bedroom door. And back at the painting. I listen to the violin, each soft note achingly clear in the quiet apartment.
It is as if the music were written for this painting. I can imagine standing on the street itself, a busker playing this very
piece just a few feet away from me. “We’ll live in Paris someday,” Mark said once.

A sharp gasp cuts through the music. My legs go weak as I look down the hallway. It was a woman’s gasp. Of pain, it sounded
like. Or of fear. Or… something else. I look across the room at my shoes, paired neatly by the door. A part of me wants to
run to them. But I look again at the light from the bedroom, and after closing my eyes for a second, I hold my sweater to
my neck and walk toward the door. I stop just before it, listening for another sound. From her, or from him. I hear just the
violin. I put my hand on the cool wall and step into the bedroom doorway.

The room is lit only by the light of three lamps. All three are trained on a four-poster bed. And on that bed is Nina Torring.
Her eyes are covered by a black blindfold, and each of her wrists is bound tightly to a bedpost with a tie of white silk.
Her legs are free. She wears a thin silver camisole with drawstring pants, and I see now what made her gasp. Jake Teller sits
at her side, in corduroys and a shirt of rugged blue. He holds a pair of scissors in his hand, and he is touching the flat
metal edge of them to her bare belly. His eyes look straight into mine.

I clutch the doorsill to keep from falling. Nothing — no picture in a magazine, nothing I imagined — has prepared me to be
here. To see this. Her. Real, in front of me. I feel the blood rushing to my head. I force myself to breathe. Jake’s eyes
on me are steady and appraising. He waits a second, then looks from me to a hard-backed chair he’s placed three feet from
the bed. He nods toward it. I look down at the floor. Carpet. The soft violin concerto is coming from a tape player on a dresser
just above the head of the bed. She won’t hear me. I walk to the chair and sit down. I don’t know where to put my hands, so
I clasp them together in my lap. And I look again at Nina Torring.

She is beautiful. Her short blond hair is the gold of Ohio corn, uncorrupted by a single dark root. Her features are delicate,
precise… Nordic. Her eyes, beneath the blindfold, must be ice blue. She is almost exactly my size.

Two of the lamps are standing lamps, one on each side of the bed. The third is a snaking desk lamp that Jake has clipped to
the headboard and brought so low that she must feel the heat of the bulb on her skin. He’s angled it forward, creating a line
of light from her face down the center of her, leaving all beyond it in shadow.

Jake lifts the metal blades to the camisole and begins to cut. He cuts straight up the middle, leaning forward as he does,
lifting the collar away from her soft neck for the last, careful clip. Then he cuts each strap and pulls the ruined fabric
out from under her. Her bra is white lace and opens in the front. Victoria’s Secret. Jake lays the scissors on the nightstand.
He leans down and pulls the knot from her drawstring pants. Her ribs lift and settle as she breathes. Jake lifts the pants
over her hips, then pulls them down her legs and off her, dropping them to the floor beside the bed. Her panties are white
and spare. Not thong, but almost. They cover so little. She brings her legs together, bending them at the knees, angling them
into the covers, away from him. She has the skin of a swimming queen, lineless, the same color beneath her hips as above them.
Her legs are athletic and smooth, and on one small ankle is a raised scar, in the shape of a coin.

Jake traces the backs of his fingers from her hip down one thigh to her knee, and then in a curving path down her calf. She
lifts her chin, and her lips part.

Jake reaches down beside the bed and comes up with a bottle. It is body oil, and he turns the top and pours some into his
hands. It smells of vanilla. He lifts her right ankle, so small in his hands, and rubs the oil into her foot, then pours another
dose into his hands and works it into her calf. She gives a deep sigh as he glides up her leg to the top of her thigh, stopping
just where the lace of her panties begins, then pouring out more and starting down her other leg, working it into her thigh,
her knee, into her ankle, pressing the tiny white scar with his thumb.

He finishes and places her foot back on the covers. Again she closes her legs tight together. Jake slides up the bed, to the
middle of her. He shakes drops of lotion onto her belly, then presses it in with his hands, rubbing in small, tight circles,
stopping just beneath her bra, his thumbs grazing the bottom of the thin cotton. She bites her bottom lip. He pours more lotion
into one hand and works above her bra, rubbing it into her sternum, into her neck, the rich vanilla scent pervasive now, tantalizing.
She needs him to touch her breasts, but he won’t, though each of her breaths lifts them toward his hands. He slips the straps
of her bra off each shoulder and works his hand across from one to the other, pressing hard, his fingers lingering on her
throat, dipping to the top of her cleavage, but never straying to the swell just beneath. She moans softly, bringing her legs
up toward her, then back down.

I press mine tight together.

Jake stands, crosses to the other side of the bed, and sits down at the head. He pours lotion into both hands and starts on
her right arm, moving up from the shoulder, slowly, working the soft knot of her biceps, her thin forearm, and up toward her
bound wrist. Her fingers close into her palms, open, close again, her beaded matte nail polish glittering like sequins in
the lamplight.

Jake crosses back to the far side of the bed and oils her left arm, climbing just as slowly as he did with her right, finally
reaching her pulse point, her wrist, pressing the oil into her palm with his thumb. She swallows hard and rolls her wrists
against the ties.

The final notes of the concerto hang in the air, then fade away. The room is quiet except for the soft rustling of the covers
under her legs. And her quickening breaths. Jake lets go of her left hand, then takes hold of it again. And leans toward it.
And bends her wrist toward the light. She resists, trying to curl her fingers, but he straightens them and holds them still.
What is it he sees? I lean forward. And now I see it, too. A break in her perfect color. A small white circle on her ring
finger.