The Lover From an Icy Sea (5 page)

Kit kept his ecstasy to himself. “Very good,” he tossed off easily, as if to suggest that yes, maybe he could forget her in ten days. “Does early afternoon work for you?”

“
Early afternoon is perfect,” she answered. Say, one-ish?”

He was about to answer her suggestion with a confirmation, but suddenly lost his train of thought while staring at her face. Groping for something—anything, really—to get the conversation back on track and not allow this first, brief meeting to come to an end, he looked down at his feet.

“
By the way, I was admiring your rug when I first came in. I’m afraid I can’t quite identify its provenance.”

“
Oh, that,” she said rather too haphazardly, even as Kit thought he detected a certain pleasure at his observation of it and now at his question. “It’s an Aubuisson. I picked it up at practically a yard-sale price. I thought it might complement the décor.”

“
Really?” Kit was intrigued. “Then you like junk sales?” He was already beginning to assemble a short list of things they might have in common—even if the pronunciation of this particular rug wasn’t one of them. Daneka, in the meantime, registered Kit’s misinterpretation and welcomed the opportunity to correct him.

“
No, it wasn’t a junk sale, precisely. I got it at auction. I don’t remember exactly what I paid for it, but I think it was in the neighborhood of $40,000, plus or minus. The slight smugness of her smile played havoc with her attempts at nonchalance.

Kit’s feet instinctively rose up off the rug. He was dumbstruck. The equivalent amount of money would’ve paid his rent for two years, would’ve kept entire families in New York alive for as long, would’ve maintained a small African village for probably much longer. Not to mention the hidden cost, on average, of a pair of child’s eyes for every such hand-woven rug. And his goddamned shoes were on it! No less, the stain of his mispronunciation. Certainly—he made a quick mental note—the authority of someone who could afford to throw forty grand down on a foot-warmer outweighed any dilettante’s knowledge he might possess on the subject of rugs.

Daneka had already risen from the sofa and was extending a hand. Kit extended his own, which she grasped warmly. Unusual in his experience, she continued to hold onto it as she led him to the front door. He wondered whether this was some European custom he was unacquainted with, or whether she had simply forgotten—or was too befuddled—to drop his hand. In any case, he relished these extra few seconds of physical contact with her and was in no rush to withdraw his hand from hers.

Daneka, meanwhile, knew exactly the effect she was producing. Kit would’ve felt predictably awkward walking the length of the room with his right arm crossing his own body in order to maintain the parting handshake which she had launched and was holding fast to. Daneka didn’t wish to discomfort him precisely. But she did wish him to be slightly off balance—and to fix the memory of these last few seconds in his head, at least until Sunday afternoon.

The fact is, Kit would not forget those few seconds—or the preceding ten or fifteen minutes—for the rest of his life.

Chapter 6

Until today, Kit hadn’t been in the least self-conscious about the condition of his apartment, the scarcity of material comforts he had to offer, or the condition of the neighborhood. He’d always quite liked the dirt, the garbage and the noise. But he’d also never entertained anyone quite like Daneka before.

For the first time in months, he dedicated an entire Sunday morning to cleaning. He pulled the bed sheets from his bed, bundled them together with everything else that could possibly be machine-washed, and took it all down to Louie’s Laundromat. He next decided to put his apartment in order, first vacuuming, then concluding with a mop and bucket of soapy water. He even took Windex and paper towels to the windows, which he hadn’t touched in years since the skylight provided him with all the natural light he needed.

With only his laundry left to pick up at noon, he stripped and took a shower.

Fifteen minutes later, he put on a clean pair of jeans, sandals, and a long-sleeved black T-shirt, brushed his hair, picked up his wallet, and prepared to set out to retrieve his laundry—although not before grabbing a bottle of white wine from beneath his worktable and putting it on ice. He didn’t know exactly where any of this was going, but he wanted to be ready.

At ten minutes to one, Daneka’s taxi pulled up at the corner of Third Avenue and St. Marks Place, where she told the driver to stop, then paid him and slipped out. She’d already decided she wanted to walk the last few blocks in this neighborhood she hadn’t visited in well over a decade.

She found, to her amazement, that much of what she remembered of the East Village had remained unchanged. Sure, there were already signs of Starbucks-creep in excess. But otherwise, the Orpheum and all of the old landmarks were still there, as nonchalant and constant as the heat and smells of summer that would soon settle in like swamp muck and remain until late September.

A gentle but persistent breeze blew on this particular late-spring afternoon. Perhaps too eager in her anticipation of warmer days, Daneka had dressed for summer. A cotton dress, cut low in the front, hugged her waist and stopped just above the knee. Black high heels, topaz earrings and—slightly out of sight—matching panties completed the ensemble. Otherwise, nothing. No stockings, no bra, no other jewelry. Both men and women stopped whatever they were engaged in to admire her as she passed, which she did with the ease and elegance of a mid-size leisure craft at full sail. Her dress billowed out occasionally as the wind took hold along the vertical seam, secured at her waist by an invisible tie. The material, practically weightless and no match for whimsical breezes, at times hugged and caressed the rounded flesh of her breasts, thighs and buttocks, only to spring loose and flap open, as if in answer to the unspoken wishes of this ad hoc crowd of gawkers. For the few minutes she needed to cover the distance to Kit’s front door from where the taxi had dropped her off, Daneka owned the street. Walkers, strollers, gawkers, runners, bikers, roller-bladers—even those just hanging out on the stoop and caught up in the act of bartering stories or drawing pictures in the air—she owned them all. And she commanded their attention as if by magic wand, but without even once having to wave it.

When she finally crossed over First Avenue and arrived at number 111 just short of Thompson Square, she saw that he lived in a brownstone quite common to the skylines of both Manhattan and Brooklyn. To one side, Jenny’s Café; to the other, Tatiana’s—a consignment café, of all things. She giggled soundlessly as she wondered whether Kit was in any way consigned to this Tatiana. She looked across the street: St. Dymphnas. Apostrophes, she noted, were decidedly an afterthought in this neighborhood. Though “EAT ME!”—just two doors down, was anything but.

She noted the entablature, which, from street-level, appeared to be of genuine oak—unusual for this part of town—and counted the stories: five. An accommodating stone stoop, and generously-proportioned windows, if not exactly floor-to-ceiling. She couldn’t yet know whether Kit’s apartment looked out onto the street, or back onto a courtyard, but she guessed that a photographer would’ve demanded something with plenty of natural light.

Daneka mounted the six steps of the stoop and looked for Kit’s name on the tenant registry. She found it—as well as a pushbutton located adjacent to the number twelve—which suggested the top floor and a good view of both the street and the space behind the building. Here, where nothing rose over five stories, his apartment wouldn’t be lost in the shadows of taller tenement or office buildings. Instead, he’d have a clear shot at the stars at night—and, at dawn, a panorama of dark, rain-soaked, and age-stained water towers standing like blackened scabs against the sky.

It was just past one o’clock when she pressed the button next to his name. After a couple of seconds, she heard a buzzer in response to her own original signal, also the electronic release of the bolt on the front door, leaving it open for her to walk through. She ignored the double signal, waited a few seconds, then pressed the button a second time. Again, an answering buzzer—which she again ignored as she crossed her arms and turned towards the street. A buzzer sounded a third time. She ignored it. Like birds calling to each other, one buzzer might respond in length and tone to the other in carefully choreographed timing and syncopation—until one or the other simply didn’t. And then the other might try another or a third time, hoping for an answer. But if no answer came, the first caller always had a couple or three options: desist; call another candidate; or fly over and join the second caller on the same branch for a little avian tête-à-tête.

Kit was no bird, but he got the idea. He opened the door to his apartment and bounded down the five sets of stairs to ground level. When he reached the front door, he threw it open and greeted Daneka like a happy puppy.

“
Why didn’t you come on up?” he asked ingenuously, never thinking for a moment that on his Lower East Side turf, Daneka might still be operating according to her own Upper East Side protocol. She ignored his question, forced a smile and extended a hand.

“
I just love it here. It’s so…campus-like!” she said.

Kit’s smile collapsed as if the puppy in him had just been slapped for a too-eager puddle in the middle of the floor. “Nice to see you here at last,” was the best wool sock he could now drop at her feet. The tremors of anticipation he’d allowed himself to enjoy since their meeting Friday afternoon suddenly faded into foolishness. The cleaning? The wine in the fridge? What had he been thinking, anyway? She wasn’t a fucking client; she was merely a prospect—and he, to her, a random vendor with a service to offer. Which she could take or leave at will, from him or from anybody else with a camera and enough spare change to place an ad in the paper. Goddamn it! Kit thought and inhaled deeply. He needed to keep in mind who he was, who she was, and what this was really all about.

“
It’s a few flights up. Sorry, no elevator,” he mumbled as he held the door open for her to pass through—which she did, though without any word of acknowledgement.

“
Yes, I figured that twelve would be on the top floor. Nor did I really expect to find an elevator.” They were stuck in a conversational cul-de-sac. Kit tried to maneuver out with a gesture, indicating that she should precede him up the stairs.

As she climbed just a few feet ahead of him, Kit registered the clickety-clack of her heels on the tin planks of the staircase. At the same time, he noticed how the muscles in her calves flexed and rose each time the tip of her shoe touched down upon a plank and pushed off again. The tautness of those muscles continued right up her leg and then disappeared beneath her skirt. Yes, she was a client—or, more to the point—she might become a client. But that fact didn’t keep her from being gorgeous.

When they reached the fifth floor where Kit had left the door to his apartment slightly ajar, Daneka walked straight through. Once inside, she glanced around in a businesslike manner and noted the skylight. The fact didn’t surprise her. She offered no comment, but simply seemed to take it all in in one cursory inspection. She then got right down to business.

“
Where’s your set?”

“
I make it. ‘Depends on the subject—or the product, really. What you want to do with it. What you want to project. How you want to position the product against what your competition is offering.”

“
There’s no competition. It’s not a question of product positioning.”

Kit’s eyebrows arched as the next word out of his mouth trailed off into a long ellipsis. “O-k-a-y.”

“
We’re not talking product. We’re talking person. She’s not pushing anything. As I’m not. What I have in mind is more in the way of portraiture.” Daneka swiveled on one heel and looked Kit straight in the eye. “Do you do portraits, Kit?”

The walls of Kit’s apartment were fairly covered with his work, much of it award-winning material. Most of the work was portraiture—in some cases, just a headshot; in others, full-body. He chose to ignore that she didn’t care to comment on his work, or simply didn’t see it. In either case, her lack of acknowledgement confirmed what he’d suspected when he’d first seen the artwork on the walls of her own apartment: for her, art was ornament.

“
Head and shoulders only, Ms. Sorenson?” he asked in a deadpan tone of voice.

“
No. Full-body.”

“
I might have to practise,” he answered, with just the hint of a smirk in his voice.

“
Can I use your little boy’s room?” she asked, as if this request somehow followed naturally from her previous declaration.

“
Of course,” Kit answered as he gestured in the direction of his bathroom. “Right behind you.”

Daneka looked over her shoulder and visually located the bathroom door. She walked to it, opened it, stepped inside and closed it, all in one fluid motion. Kit went to the kitchenette to get a glass of water. As he passed the counter, his eyes fell upon an open pack of cigarettes. He took one out and put it between his lips. He then opened the freezer door and extracted a handful of ice cubes while he reached, with the other hand, for a water glass. He dumped the ice cubes into the glass and turned on the tap water. He was about to fill his glass when he remembered his host’s duties, then reached for a second glass and a second handful of ice cubes. He was filling both when Daneka stepped out of the bathroom. Although he had his back to her in that instant, he heard the bathroom door close.