Next To You (17 page)

Eighteen minutes later, Will had postponed his first meeting of the day, and went to Starbucks. He grabbed a coffee and headed for the Walgreens on the corner of Randolph, across from the number 22’s downtown stop. He sipped a pumpkin spice latte, watched from the windows, and waited for the bus to arrive. When the vehicle pulled to the curbside on State Street, he took the lid off the paper coffee cup and gulped the lukewarm brew in one go.

Caroline was easy to spot as she disembarked. She wore a red coat that swished when she walked. Alex lagged behind, exiting the vehicle after she had merged with a swarm of people. Will dropped his empty cup into the trash and went outside, following Alex as he walked in the crowd behind Caroline, crossing the street at the lights with the rest of the pedestrians on their way to work. She made her way into Webb & Fairchild, his attention focused on her until she passed through the large door of the main entrance.

Alex wandered south on State Street and turned left onto Washington. The store had another entrance around the corner on Wabash Avenue. Will trailed behind.

He was inexplicably disappointed when the redhead crossed the street, turned south on Michigan Avenue, and entered a small coffee shop where he shook hands with a bald guy who slapped him on the back.

***

The light in his office was muted, the arched Art Deco windows were tinted to accommodate his sensitive eyes. Despite the light level, Will read the same paragraph for the fourth time. His mind wandered. His mind had wandered between Caroline and the law book on his desk ever since he’d left Alex in the coffee shop, three hours earlier.

More than a simple mind wander, now Will had dissolved into a full-blown daydream. He fancied himself as a Dashiell Hammett character, a noir private eye tailing a dame in danger. Caroline had the Veronica Lake hair, the air of a mysterious past, and a loutish, bearded husband from the wrong side of the tracks. Will crossed the room, reaching for his fedora to complete his little fantasy. His fingertips just brushed against the wool when a gentle rap sounded at his office door.

Bernadine, his no-nonsense secretary, poked her dark head through the door. ‘There’s a woman named Caroline downstairs at reception. She said she’s your personal shopper, and you’re not expecting her, but she’d like to know if she can see you.’

‘Thank you, Bea. Please, ask her to come up.’

Bernadine closed the door with a succinct nod of her dark head.

Will, returned to his desk, closed the law book on his desk, and put on his jacket. He reached into the inside pocket, drew out a small bottle of re-wetting drops, and squeezed liquid into his dried-out contacts. His tinted glasses were folded beside his letter opener on the desk. He grabbed them and put them on.

Who was he trying to kid here? There was a reason he’d followed Alex this morning. Caroline was more than a pretty girl. She was a pretty woman, and the idea of having an affair with a younger pretty woman who had a stalker almost ex-husband appealed to him in a French cinema sort of way—despite the probability of winding up as the transition man. The thing was, he liked being Caroline’s friend, and a fling with a friend would be fun, but what if that fling led to something more?

Something more?

Did he really just think
something more
? A fling would be nothing more than, well, a fling. Eventually, friends or not, Caroline was going to get bored being around someone ten years older. Their friendly fling would lead to awkward moments, the avoidance of meeting each other on the terrace, the hurried, pleasant-yet-sheepish ‘hellos’ in the stairway. They’d end up as neighbors with no more in common than living in the same building. It would all get so complicated.

He headed for the elevator to meet her. Who was he trying to kid here? The reasons not to sink into a romance with Caroline didn’t boil down to being a transition man, how problematic or disruptive to his simple lifestyle it would be, ruining a valued friendship, or even that she was too young for him. The point was he was too old for her.

Wasn’t he?

If he had to ask, then there was another reason why he followed Alex this morning, but the sheer idiocy of the reason made Will laugh out loud because he was
not
having a midlife crisis. He’d had that at the age of twenty-five, when Yvonne said she didn’t love him the way a wife was supposed to love a husband, and he bought that beat-up Indian motorcycle, grew a beard, and rode down to Key West—where he got the worst sunburn of his life. By the time the elevator opened on the softly lit executive level, there was William Murphy, smiling at his own folly, and smiling at Caroline.

Outfitted in a charcoal gray Italian suit. William stood with his legs slightly apart, hands clasped behind his back, a goofy grin on his face.

A bewildering tingle spread through Caroline’s stomach and moved down, down very low, like a whispered
well, hello there, Caroline, don’tcha wanna grab those balls?
She shoved her hands into the pockets of her coat.

Still grinning, he said, ‘You look like Doris Day.’ Her red coat swung out as she stepped from the elevator.

‘If I’m Doris Day, you’re Rock Hudson. You’re about as big as Rock was.’

‘I think he was taller.’

‘I like Rock Hudson,’ she said. ‘All that clever innuendo with the sexual tension and split screens … He and Doris did that so well. Although, I have to say I prefer his post-argument love scene with Elizabeth Taylor in
Giant
. Her lipstick looks so cute smeared all over his mouth.’

‘What can I do for you, Caroline?’ William said, still wearing a doofus smile.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t call you directly. The number I have listed for you at work is your secretary’s.’

‘I’ll give you my personal line so you don’t have to mess with Bea. Is there something I can do for you, something I can take care of?’

Caroline suddenly felt a silly about things tingling and even sillier for dropping in. This wasn’t home. She’d probably interrupted some hugely important corporate legal project. She cleared her throat with a small cough. ‘It’s a half-business, half-social call. I wanted to remind you about raincoats. You never bought one. We got a number of new coats in this morning, and it looks like you might need one today.’

‘How thoughtful of you to consider my comfort.’

‘I was also wondering,’ she coughed again, ‘if you’d like to have lunch with me. We could discuss closeted gay actors who made it big.’

‘You’re been talking with Dennis, haven’t you?’

‘He loves Montgomery Clift. I lent him
A Place in the Sun
.’ Her stomach growled. Loudly. ‘Pardon me,’ she said.

Will chuckled. ‘How did you know this is the time I usually contemplate my midday meal?’

‘You once told me you get paid a huge salary to deliberate lunch.’

‘
Shh
, Quincy may hear you and reconsider what he pays me.’

‘Sorry.’ She whispered, ‘Is one of the store’s cafés okay with you? I get a discount.’

He whispered back, ‘The Maple Room has a mean chicken salad. I’ll get my hat.’

With his fedora in place and blue-tinted glasses on, they made their way to the ground floor, and outside into the noise of downtown. It was dark, rain threatened. They hurried around the corner of the Collins building toward the Victorian façade of Webb & Fairchild two blocks away.

‘Maybe I can get you into a shirt without a tie,’ she said.

‘How do you not remember I was wearing jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt last Sunday morning, when I helped you move the table on your terrace?’

She laughed. ‘For what, fifteen minutes?’

‘Twenty,’

Still laughing, she stumbled over a passer-by’s foot. William had grabbed her arm before she could fall. She kept laughing, he set her upright, and fixed his gaze behind her. ‘Did you do that on purpose?’ He frowned.

‘It’s really you, Caroline. You really came back.’

Caroline quit laughing and closed her eyes, praying she’d imagined that gravelly smoker’s voice. She let her fingers move down William’s arm, and clasped his solid hand before she opened her eyes and turned around to have a showdown on a Chicago sidewalk.

‘Why couldn’t you just stay away?’ Bethany let a stream of smoke waft from her mouth. ‘Why’d you have to come back here? Alex is a mess again.’

‘Let’s go, William.’ Caroline changed her mind. There wasn’t going to be a showdown. She stepped back from Bethany’s cancerous cloud and pulled William’s hand.

Bethany followed alongside, a lit cigarette hanging between the tobacco-stained index and middle finger of her left hand. ‘Alex said you had a new boyfriend. Is this him? What did you do to the man? I can see he must have one foot in the grave because he already looks like a ghost. Does he know what you did, Caroline? Have you told him?’ She grabbed William’s elbow, the cigarette butt dropping a lump of gray ash on his dark sleeve. ‘Do you know?’

William stopped walking. Caroline’s hand was still in his, and he stiffened the same way she did. Turning, he lowered his head, slid his tinted glasses down, and looked at the older woman without blinking. ‘Madam, kindly take your hand from my arm and leave us be.’

Recoiling, Bethany drew her fingers back, nostrils flaring as she inhaled. Her hands shook. ‘Did you tell him, Caroline? Did she tell you? No mother should outlive her child. No mother should outlive her own child! You should still be locked up. You should still be put away. Other people do it all the time, but you couldn’t kill yourself right, could you? It’s not fair.
You
should be rotting away in the ground, not Drew!’

‘Bethany, go home to Gus,’ Caroline said, without looking back. ‘Please, William, let’s go.’ She squeezed his hand. He began walking, leaving the jittery, distraught woman behind.

‘Go home to Gus?
Go home to Gus
?’ Bethany shrieked. ‘Oh, my God. Oh, my God. That’s right, you better run, mister!’ Bethany shouted. ‘Get rid of her now before she gets rid of you!’

Will led Caroline through the Webb & Fairchild’s front entrance. ‘Come on, Squirt. Let’s go upstairs and have lunch. If you don’t want to eat yet, then you can pick out something casual for me to lounge about in.’

‘She’s going to follow us.’

‘No, she won’t. I think I scared the hell out of her.’

Caroline tried to make light of what had happened. ‘I’m scared of being called
madam
too.’

‘Whoa.’ Will halted suddenly, removing his hat. ‘That was weird.’

‘Calling someone madam?’

‘No, I mean that was the first time I was actually glad someone was afraid of me. The first time I wanted to scare someone.’ He took off his glasses and shook his head, with an odd, thin laugh. ‘I sort of liked it. No, truthfully, I should say, I
enjoyed
it. What’s her problem anyway? Does she need to up her anti-psychotic meds or did she wander away from some mental hospital?’

Hair spilled across her face as she looked down at her feet, and exhaled, ‘She’s my mother-in-law. Or was.’

‘Ah, the Ball-Breaking, Dragon Lady, Mother-in-Law from Hell. You hear jokes, you hear stories, and how very unfortunate for you.’ Will shifted the hair from her face. His hand settled on the nape of her neck, and he gave her a gentle, reassuring squeeze.

She didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Neither did he. He followed her to the Maple Room, where they were ushered to a table.

The recessed, overhead halogen café lights were bright for his sensitive eyes. Will slid on his tinted glasses and looked at Caroline. She knew he was looking at her, but he didn’t press her to talk. He simply sat across from her in their booth, sipped water the hostess had given them, and smiled softly when she finally spoke.

‘Have you ever worn purple, William?’ she said.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You would look really nice in a deep shade of purple. It would make your eyes really pop.’ She locked and unlocked her fingers before she shoved hair out of her face, and folded her hands together. After a huff, she licked her lips and drank half a glass of iced water. Finally, she took a breath, and then she was off, Bonnie Chesterman-style. ‘You know I said I’ve been in a sort of suspended animation? I think I can trust you, William. I think I can tell you anything. My uncle’s told you stories, but I don’t know if he ever mentioned that I spent time in a psychiatric hospital. My parents, my husband, and the baby, it all fell apart. I fell apart and I guess tried to kill myself. The funny thing is, I don’t remember. I don’t remember a lot about the things that happened, and I’m trying to move on with my life. I’m trying to start over. There’s a shirt downstairs in sportswear I’d like to put you in. You can wear it with jeans or a pair of flat fronts.’ Caroline swallowed and reached for her water again. ‘I can trust you, can’t I?’

‘Of course you can trust me. I’m an attorney.’

The glass paused at her mouth. ‘That has to be the best lawyer joke I’ve ever heard.’

‘No, this one is; you’ll like it, it’s clothes related. What the difference between a lawyer and a buzzard?’

‘William.’

‘You can trust me, Caroline. I’m your friend. I’m really your friend.’

She chugged the water, set the glass on the table, and gazed at him for a long moment. ‘Yes, I think you are. You showed me more kindness and friendship in the first week I knew you than people I called friends for twenty years. I know I made it hard for them. Actually, I shut most of them out, but when your closest friends heard words like
anxiety disorder
,
major depressive episode
,
post traumatic stress
, and
postpartum psychosis
bandied about, they probably thought I was nuts. I’ve always been a little introverted and socially anxious, and that may have set me up to some degree, but this was beyond that clumsiness I feel in a group of people. It’s the twenty-first century and there’s still a stigma attached to mental illness, however minor. I must buy into that too because I don’t like to say I was mentally ill.’ She gave an absurd laugh. ‘But I was. And I’m not any more.’

Will waved the approaching waiter away.

Caroline exhaled. ‘I lost my footing scaling some very rocky parts of my life, and I needed help to find a toehold. It’s taken a while to climb back here. I’m sorry I made you feel like you wanted to frighten someone, and I’m sorry you got caught in the middle of Bethany’s shit slinging. I just wanted to have a nice lunch with you.’