Opening Belle (32 page)

I think about running to the toilet with my BlackBerry, to get a quick read on the currently open financial markets. Even though I could pull this off without Bruce knowing, the very act seems to symbolize so much more, something to further fray the wisps of dental floss holding my marriage together. When someone is looking for reasons to fight, reasons to justify their own lousy behavior, I'm not the one to give them any. Instead I force myself to sit in my seat, taking big gulps of stagnant air, and try to concentrate on my oration of
Stuart Little 2
for my other two children.

I had a terribly confusing day yesterday, the day before this journey began. I called over to Cheetah Global, to tell them I'd be out of town and that my assistant, Stone, was going to be their coverage for the next week. When this message got relayed to Henry, he called me right back.

“Where're you going?”

“To visit my sister, you remember, Carron?”

“Of course I know Carron but she lives overseas.”

“You sound very genteel with that ‘overseas' thing, Henry.”

“You don't have to be snippy. You do have to meet me before you leave. There's something I have to show you.”

Something about another man demanding things of me seemed way out of line. After my showdown with Bruce, my limited tolerance for drama was kaput. The only reason I'd have liked to see him was to ask how much money he made shorting Feagin Dixon stock.

“Henry, I can't be your Feagin Dixon blankie anymore.” Henry was silent for a moment, so I continued.

“All this time, I'm listening to your so-called concern about my firm and I bet you're shorting our stock.”

“That's not true.”

“I bet it
is
true.”

“Belle, I do some unusual things, but I don't lie to you.”

“It doesn't matter. We're not going out of business.”

“That I don't believe. I am short Bear Stearns. I am short Lehman. And I
would
short Feagin Dixon if you didn't work there. If I were you, I'd cash out now. I'd run.”

“Look, Henry, it's not just that. I mean, this whole account relationship has come to be something more than just business for me. I don't completely understand this dance we still have going on after all these years, but it's one of the things coming between Bruce and me. I need to go away with my family and fix stuff and you need to talk to Stone.”

“Who the hell names their kid Stone and what the hell is his job at that place?”

“You don't say the word
hell
enough.”

“Seriously.”

“Stone is that very expensive backup person you sometimes speak with.”

“I don't want to talk to him.”

“Stop whining.”

“Come meet me.”

“No.”

“You have to.”

“I don't have to do anything. You're going to shove bonds at me and ask me to find buyers where there are none and I can't sell stuff I don't believe in.”

Henry isn't fazed. “You'll be glad you came, Belle. I promise. This will be so good for you.” This time his tone is softer, even caring, something I respond to way better than a demand.

“What could possibly be good for me?” I asked. I started to consider what he meant. Maybe he had an exit plan for me, maybe a job offer or some strategy to salvage the risky bonds we owned. The more I thought about it, the more intrigued I got.

So I went.

•  •  •

Two hours later I stood on the street outside my office knowing I had no time to be there. It's one thing to talk business with Henry on the telephone, and it's another to see him. I watched his huge frame cast a shadow over everyone else on Park Avenue, as he walked like some superhuman—at a crushing pace that had him veering around the mortals in his path. Henry saw me and stared as he came close with the slightly googly-eyed face that admiring boys had when my teenaged breasts were surprisingly new and growing by the day. But from Henry that look really isn't for me, it's about the potential deals he's looking to do, or other trades he's thinking about executing. Maybe the reason he wanted to meet in person was to avoid speaking over taped phone lines about the grim future he foresaw in the financial system of 2008. I decided to start speaking first.

“It's March fourteenth and Feagin Dixon is still in business,” I said in my best Pollyanna voice.

“So I hear.” He pecked me on the cheek. I hated that I wanted to really grab hold of him, to have him hug some of the worry out of me.

“I don't know how to replicate this job in any way,” I said. “I know you think I should be bailing out and selling my stock while it's still worth something, but I like my job.”

“There are other jobs.”

“We have a lot of expenses.”

“Perhaps your husband could get a job.”

I rolled my eyes at him as we walked purposefully toward something that only Henry seemed to know about.

“Do we have a train to catch?” I asked. “Because if we do, I have to be home by tomorrow.”

“Do we ever,” he said, and I saw a very un-Henry thing: he blushed. Farther north, around 60th Street, Henry went into one of those fancy luxury condo buildings, remodeled out of old buildings on Park Avenue, everything except the façade of the building ripped out and replaced by golden glitz. The doorman tipped his hat to Henry in a way that told me he knew him.

We got in the elevator and rose to the penthouse level, giving me the sudden clue that maybe we were going to visit Tim, the master of the hedge fund and Henry's boss. It was well known that Tim liked to go home and nap in the middle of the day. That's how big a deal Tim is—he gets to nap. I smoothed my hair while I thought of intelligent responses to what I imagined would be Tim's insisting we buy back the awful bonds I had sold them. Had Henry set me up again? Was I about to be ambushed by his boss?

When the elevator opened directly into the apartment, there was no Tim Boylan. The entire floor of the building was one apartment. The sight before me made my eyes widen the way Charlie's did when he entered the Chocolate Factory, the way Alice's did when she fell into Wonderland. It was that good. The windows made up the entire outside wall, with one thin seam every ten feet or so, and there wasn't a child's handprint on any of them. Gossamer-fine, sheer curtains puddled loosely on the floor like veils of golden protection from the outside world. The whole place made me think of the perfect movie set for the one about the rich, single banker. I couldn't help but walk from window to window, sucking in the view, touching the linen-colored couches so plush I had to push a cushion down just to feel what luxury can be when Froot Loops and Cheez-Its are outlawed. I gently put my bag down on a white ottoman, thought for a moment that it might leave a mark, and put it on the floor.

“I have to use the bathroom,” I said as an excuse to see more, and in a voice that suggested that nothing here surprised me. I had no intention of letting Henry hear me be impressed. The bathroom was finished with Waterworks fixtures and glass tile in a muted sea-grass tone. Back when I was single, I tore photos from magazines depicting rooms I liked, and always, my bathroom choices had tile just like that. There was the smell of gardenia from somewhere, white gardenia, my favorite flower, and I could smell it but couldn't see it.

My head was pounding as I opened the medicine cabinet to find it full of all unopened women's toiletries, nice stuff from La Mer, La Prairie, the type of cosmetics I used in my old life, before my bathroom got taken over by Power Rangers. I wondered if this place was Henry's second home. Maybe this is where his wife freshens up after a day of being driven around in her Escalade or maybe it's where Henry gets to satisfy his insatiable appetite for women. It was so wrong for me to be here, and I closed the cabinet, letting the magnificent magnets suck it shut.

I brushed my hair and put on the makeup that had made it into my bag this morning but never onto my face. I brushed my teeth and felt the surge of confidence that comes with a nicely tailored suit and a decent haircut and a clear mind. It was time to leave.

When I came out, Henry was on the phone with a glass of champagne in his hand. I walked by him and waved good-bye to whatever the point of this visit was. Something about my being here now seemed a little dangerous. Was this a Henry love shack? Would he be capable of having such a thing? I thought of him dating his wife while engaged to me and answered my own question. He raised his finger in that “wait a minute” signal and I pushed the elevator button just as he got off the phone.

“So you have a pied-à-terre in Midtown to get away from the demands of your Upper East Side life?” I asked.

“It's not that.”

“Is it the secret girlfriend Batcave?”

“Not exactly.”

“You see, Henry? I knew this about you. I knew it the whole time and it's the only thing that kept me sane after you left me.”

“Knew what?”

“Knew that you were capable of something like this. A trysting apartment? Please.”

“What the hell?”

“I just knew you'd always fool around. You're too funny. You're too handsome. You're far too good in the sack. Women do absurd things for you. I couldn't have been married to you.”

Henry looked genuinely hurt, which was oddly appealing in a man wearing a $3,000 suit. We were both quiet for a moment.

“I've missed you,” he said.

“Stop it,” I answer with a catch to my voice. It was unsettling to feel someone be sweet to me when everything else in my life felt mean. I felt too vulnerable. “You're about a hundred years late.”

“I never stopped loving you.”

“You need to cut it out,” I said, drawing my hand across my neck like I meant it, because I meant it. “Really. We're better than this.”

I imagined that conversation more times than I have brain pathways. I rehearsed what I would say, how clever I would be with my pithy one-liners about my life being better without him. But when that moment finally arrived, and that did appear to be that moment, it was just no good. We stared at each other, like we were stuck on the same packed subway with no comfortable place to rest our eyes.

“Too much has happened. We don't even really know one another. Maybe we never did,” I said.

“I know you,” Henry said. “I've never stopped knowing you.”

We then had a staring contest. I blinked first.

“So what is this place, and why did I have to come here?”

“Don't you like it?” He looked hurt. “It's everything that screams your name to me. It's for your birthday next week.”

Henry remembered my birthday was next week when even I didn't. Nobody thinks of my birthday. I looked around to see what he meant. What was for my birthday?

“The art, the fixtures, and the stuff from magazines you used to collect back when you cared about things like your clothes and how many threads were in your sheets. I just thought maybe you'd like to meet yourself again, the real you who takes charge and runs things, the woman who dresses like a hottie and is quirky and funny and completely sex-crazed.”

I waited thirty seconds before answering him. I wanted to get this right, and wanted to say all the rational things I had rehearsed when my mind was clear and not full of the smell of champagne and gardenia. “There are other things to care about now, Henry.” I swallowed hard. “I grew up, you know. I tossed the shit that didn't matter, like the thread count of my sheets, back into the proverbial bin.”

“You didn't have to grow up.” He took my hand in his giant, lovely hand.

I dutifully pulled it back, exactly like I should have. “What, like your wife? Staying a child her whole life because some sugar daddy takes care of her?” I knew I should stop. I was being mean and I'm not mean or maybe I'm becoming mean, but anyway, I had to stop.

“It gives me so much pleasure to take care of her,” he said. “I can take care of you too. You could become you again if you'd let me help.”

There was just enough daddy-ism in his tone to make me find him, for the first time ever, the tiniest bit creepy.

“What happens in this place anyway?” I asked again.

Henry looked crestfallen. “I told you. It's for you and I thought you'd just love it,” he said softly. “Why don't you go see the closet?”

I knew I shouldn't, that I really had to get in that elevator, which by then had arrived. In the next awkward silence, the sound of an elevator leaving without me could be heard, swooshing with that noise of descent.

I walked back toward the one and only bedroom I could see, with its massive bed and eight pillows on the most delicate white duvet. The trim on the duvet was a pale blue gray that looked like—

“Sky before it snows,” said Henry, coming up behind me.

I used to say that was my favorite sleep color, the color of the sky right before snow fell. To me it is the color of calm and happiness and being somewhere safe.

“Yes,” I said. “Sky before the snow is what that color looks like when you're in love. Now I would call it blue-gray.”

I walked over to the closet, full of cute dresses and sweaters and jeans too large for Henry's matchstick of a wife. There were two pairs of Louboutin shoes that looked like works of art. They still had their price tags on them.

“So who
lives
here, Henry?” I asked, letting a delicate cashmere wrap come close to my nose so I could feel what perfect feels like. “Because it doesn't look like a real human does.”

It was then that I saw a ring on the dresser. Not just any ring but a small diamond engagement ring I'd worn ten years ago, back when Henry had no money. I had loved it so but returned it to him via the U.S. Postal Service, dropping it in the mail as casually as a postcard, mailed to his parents' home. I was never certain Henry had gotten the ring back. Now I knew.