Pretend You Don't See Her (3 page)

 
          
From
the time Todd was five, Lacey had started taking him, and later the other
children, into Manhattan to teach the city to them the way her father had
taught it to her. They called the outings their Jack Farrell days—days which
included anything from Broadway matinees (she had now seen Cats five times) to
museums (the Museum of Natural History and its dinosaur bones being easily
their favorite). They explored Greenwich Village, took the tram to Roosevelt
Island, the ferry to Ellis Island, had lunch at the top of the World Trade
Center, and skated at Rockefeller Plaza.

 
          
The
boys greeted Lacey with their usual exuberance. Bonnie, shy as always, snuggled
up to her. “I missed you very much,” she confided. Jay told Lacey she was
looking very well indeed, adding that the month in East Hampton obviously had
been beneficial.

 
          
“In
fact, I had a ball,” Lacey said, delighted to see him wince. Jay had an
aversion to slang that bordered on pretension.

 
          
At
dinner, Todd, who was showing an interest in real estate and his aunt’s job,
asked Lacey about the market in New York.

 
          
“Picking
up,” she answered. “In fact I took on a promising new listing today.” She told
them about Isabelle Waring,
then
noticed that Alex
Carbine showed sudden interest. “Do you know her?” Lacey asked.

 
          
“No,”
he said, “but I know Jimmy Landi, and I’d met their daughter, Heather.
Beautiful young woman.
That was a terrible tragedy. Jay,
you’ve done business with Landi. You must have met Heather too. She was around
the restaurant a lot.”

 
          
Lacey
watched in astonishment as her brother-in-law’s face turned a dark red.

 
          
“No.
Never met her,” he said, his tone clipped and carrying an edge of anger. “I used
to do business with Jimmy Landi. Who’s ready for another slice of lamb?”

 
          
It
was seven o’clock. The bar was crowded, and the dinner crowd was starting to
arrive. Jimmy Landi knew he should go downstairs and greet people but he just
didn’t feel like it. This had been one of the bad days, a depression brought on
by a call from Isabelle, evoking the image of Heather trapped and burning to
death in the overturned car that haunted him still, long after he had gotten
off the phone.

 
          
The
slanting light from the setting sun flickered through the tall windows of his
paneled office in the brownstone on West Fifty-Sixth
Street,
the home of
Venezia
, the restaurant Jimmy had opened
thirty years ago.

 
          
He
had taken over the space where three successive restaurants had failed. He and
Isabelle, newly married, lived in what was then a rental apartment on the
second floor. Now he owned the building, and
Venezia
was one of the most popular places to dine in Manhattan.

 
          
Jimmy
sat at his massive antique Wells Fargo desk, thinking about the reasons he
found it so difficult to go downstairs. It wasn’t just the phone call from his
ex-wife. The restaurant was decorated with murals, an idea he had copied from
his competition, La Côte Basque. They were paintings of Venice, and from the
beginning had included scenes in which Heather appeared. When she was two, he
had the artist paint her in as a toddler whose face appeared in a window of the
Doge’s Palace. As a young girl she was seen being serenaded by a gondolier;
when she was twenty, she’d been painted in as a young woman strolling across
the Bridge of Sighs, a song sheet in her hand.

 
          
Jimmy
knew that for his own peace of mind he would have to have her painted out of
the murals, but just as Isabelle had not been able to let go of the idea that
Heather’s death must be someone else’s fault, he could not let go of the
constant need for his daughter’s presence, the sense of her eyes watching him
as he moved through the dining room, of her being with him there, every day.

 
          
He
was a swarthy man of sixty-seven, whose hair was still naturally dark, and
whose brooding eyes under thick unruly brows gave his face a permanently
cynical expression. Of medium height, his solid, muscular body gave the
impression of animal strength. He was aware that his detractors joked that the
custom-tailored suits he wore were wasted on
him, that
try as he might, he still looked like a day laborer. He almost smiled,
remembering how indignant Heather had been the first time she had heard that
remark.

 
          
I
told her not to worry, Jimmy thought, smiling to
himself
.
I told her that I could buy and sell the lot of them, and that’s all that
counts.

 
          
He
shook his head, remembering. Now more than ever, he knew it wasn’t really all
that counted, but it still gave him a reason to get up in the morning. He had
gotten through the last months by concentrating on the casino and hotel he was
building in Atlantic City. “Donald Trump, move over,” Heather had said when
he’d showed her the model. “How about calling it Heather’s
Place,
and I’ll perform there, yours exclusively, Baba?”

 
          
She
had picked up the affectionate nickname for father on a trip to Italy when she
was ten. After that she never called him Daddy again.

 
          
Jimmy
remembered his answer. “I’d give you star billing in a minute—you know that.
But you better check with Steve. He’s got big bucks in Atlantic City too, and
I’m leaving a lot of the decisions to him. But anyway, how about forgetting
this career stuff and getting married and giving me some grandchildren?”

 
          
Heather
had laughed. “Oh, Baba, give me a couple of years. I’m having too much fun.”

 
          
He
sighed, remembering her laugh. Now there wouldn’t be any grandchildren, ever,
he thought—not a girl with golden-brown hair and hazel eyes,
nor
a boy who might someday grow up to take over this place.

 
          
A
tap at the door yanked Jimmy back to the present.

 
          
“Come
in, Steve,” he said.

 
          
Thank
God I have Steve Abbott, he thought. Twenty-five years ago the handsome, blond
Cornell dropout had knocked on the door of the restaurant before it was open.
“I want to work for you, Mr. Landi,” he had announced. “I can learn more from
you than in any college course.”

 
          
Jimmy
had been both amused and annoyed. He mentally sized up the young man. Fresh,
know-it-all kid, he had decided. “You want to work for me?” he had asked, then
pointed to the kitchen. “Well, that’s where I started.”

 
          
That
was a good day for me, Jimmy thought. He might have looked like a spoiled
preppie, but he was an Irish kid whose mother worked as a waitress to raise him,
and he had proved that he had much of the same drive. I thought then that he
was a dope to give up his scholarship but I was wrong. He was born for this
business.

 
          
Steve
Abbott pushed open the door and turned on the nearest light as he entered the
room. “Why so dark? Having a
seance
, Jimmy?”

 
          
Landi
looked up with a wry smile, noting the compassion in the younger man’s eyes.
“Woolgathering, I guess.”

 
          
“The
mayor just came in with a party of four.”

 
          
Jimmy
shoved back his chair and stood up. “No one told me he had a reservation.”

 
          
“He
didn’t.
Hizzonor
couldn’t resist our hot dogs, I
suppose …” In long strides, Abbott crossed the room and put his hand on Landi’s
shoulder. “A rough day, I can tell.”

 
          
“Yeah,”
Jimmy said. “Isabelle called this morning to say the realtor was in about
Heather’s apartment and thinks it will sell fast. Of course, every time she
gets me on the phone, she has to go through it all again, how she can’t believe
Heather would ever get in a car to drive home on icy roads. That she doesn’t
believe her death was an accident. She can’t let go of it.
Drives
me crazy.”

 
          
His
unfocused eyes stared past Abbott. “When I met Isabelle, she was a knockout,
believe it or not.
A beauty queen from Cleveland.
Engaged to be married.
I pulled the rock that guy had given
her off her finger and tossed it out the car window.” He chuckled. “I had to
take out a loan to pay the other guy for his ring, but I got the girl. Isabelle
married me.”

 
          
Abbott
knew the story and understood why Jimmy had been thinking about it. “Maybe the
marriage didn’t last, but you got Heather out of the deal.”

 
          
“Forgive
me, Steve. Sometimes I feel like a very old man, repeating myself. You’ve heard
it all before. Isabelle never liked New York, or this life. She should never
have left Cleveland.”

 
          
“But
she did, and you met her. Come on, Jimmy, the mayor’s waiting.”

 
          
IN
THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, LACEY BROUGHT EIGHT POTENTIAL buyers to see the apartment.
Two were clearly window-shoppers, the kind whose hobby was wasting realtors’
time.

 
          
“But
on the other hand, you never know,” she said to Rick Parker when he stopped by
her desk early one evening as she was getting ready to go home. “You take
someone around for a
year,
you want to kill yourself
before you go out with her again, then what happens? The person you’re ready to
give up on writes a check for a million-dollar co-op.”

 
          
“You
have more patience than I do,” Rick told her. His features, chiseled in the
likeness of his aristocratic ancestors, showed disdain. “I really can’t
tolerate people who waste my time. RJP wants to know if you’ve had any real
nibbles on the Waring apartment.” RJP was the way Rick referred to his father.

 
          
“I
don’t think so. But, hey, it’s still a new listing and tomorrow is another
day.”

 
          
“Thank
you, Scarlett O’Hara. I’ll pass that on to him. See you.”

 
          
Lacey
made a face at his retreating back. It had been one of Rick’s edgy-tempered,
sarcastic days. What’s bugging him now, she wondered. And why, when his father
is negotiating the sale of the Plaza Hotel, would he give a thought to the
Waring apartment? Give me a break.

 
          
She
locked her desk drawer and rubbed her forehead where a headache was threatening
to start. She suddenly realized that she was very tired. She had been living in
a whirl since coming back from her vacation—following up on old projects,
getting new listings, catching up with friends, having Kit’s kids in for a
weekend … and devoting an awful lot of time to Isabelle Waring.

 
          
The
woman had taken to calling her daily, frequently urging her to come by the
apartment. “Lacey, you must join me for lunch. You do have to eat, don’t you?”
she would say. Or just, “Lacey, on your way home, stop in and have a glass of
wine with me, won’t you? The New England settlers used to call twilight ‘sober
light.’ It’s a lonesome time of day.”

 
          
Lacey
stared out into the street. Long shadows were slanting across Madison Avenue, a
clear indication that the days were becoming shorter. It is a lonesome time of
day, she thought. Isabelle is such a very sad person. Now she’s forcing herself
to go through everything in the apartment and dispose of Heather’s clothes and
personal effects. It’s quite a job. Heather apparently was a bit of a pack rat.

 
          
It’s
little enough to ask that I spend some time with Isabelle and listen to her,
Lacey thought. I really don’t mind. Actually, I like Isabelle very much. She’s
become a friend. But, Lacey admitted to herself, sharing Isabelle’s pain brings
back everything I felt when Dad died.

 
          
She
stood up. I am going home and collapse, she thought. I need to.