The Ups and Downs of Being Dead (19 page)

But he’d been cut loose. He was no longer tethered to his
business or his family. The world was revolving without him, and it would for a
very long time. Settling back against the glass, he watched the indigo ease
imperceptibly to black.

Once it was dark, he ducked back inside the cockpit.

Suzanne sat on the top edge of the pilot’s control panel
with her legs dangling outside the windshield so she still had a ringside seat
in case she saw anything. Her toes swished from side to side with anticipation,
like a child enjoying something for the first time.

“So, what did your husband do, for a living?” Robert asked.

“He was a contractor. Built houses. Sometimes did big
remodeling jobs.”

“I guess he built your home, too.”

“Five homes,” she said. “He’d build one and we’ve live in it
for a few years, and then he’d want to try something new. More modern, with the
latest updates. Solar panels, heated floors, you know.”

Robert nodded. Then he decided to get nosy, like Maggie
always did.

“How did he die?”

“It was pretty awful,” she said. “He was cleaning our
gutters and slipped on some wet leaves.”

“He fell off the roof?”

Suzanne nodded.

“Geez! Did you see him fall?”

“No. I was working in the front yard. Phil was on the back
of the roof. The house was built into the side of a hill, so it was three
stories high, where he fell.”

“God, what a way to go.”

She leaned her forehead against the glass of the windshield.

“I blamed myself for a long time. If I’d found him sooner,
he might have lived.”

She stared out into the darkness, like she was living it all
again. Robert didn’t know what to say. ‘I’m sorry’ didn’t seem to cut it, so he
racked his brain for something more meaningful. In the end, though, that’s all
he could come up with.

“I’m sorry.”

Slowly, she shook her head.

“He never yelled or screamed. He just fell. I came around
the house with a wheelbarrow of compost and he was—” She gestured with her arm.
“—lying on the ground.”

She studied her hands for a moment, and Robert wondered if
she might start crying. But she didn’t. She raised her head and stared back out
the window.

It dawned on Robert that she didn’t expect him to offer
cosmic words of wisdom. She just wanted someone to listen to her story, and
maybe understand how she felt.

“The doctor assured me he died instantly, that he never felt
a thing, but I never believed him. Not until I was in the accident. I saw that
huge car coming right at me, but I never felt a thing when it plowed over
Angie’s car. I don’t even remember the impact. So maybe Phil didn’t suffer.”

Pulling her head away from the glass, she turned toward
Robert.

“And now Angie’s doing the same thing,” she said. “Blaming herself
for my death. Wondering if I suffered.”

“I don’t think we can help doing that,” Robert said. “When I
saw Amanda get shot, I thought maybe it was my fault.”

Suzanne did one of those nodding things, where her whole
body rocked, not just her head. Then she shook off her sadness.

“I saw your daughter on the news. She looks like she’s about
Angie’s age.”

“Rachel. She’s twenty-four.”

Normally, Robert would have left it at that, or boasted
about how business-savvy Rachel was; what an asset she was to the Audrey’s
Corporation. But somehow those descriptions of his daughter sounded like
blather now. They were facts about Rachel, but they didn’t really give a true
picture of her.

“She’s so talented,” Robert said. “She has this kind of
sixth sense about colors and fabric combinations that most people don’t have.”

“You sound very proud of her.”

“I am.”

“And does she have a boyfriend?”

The sliding glass doors at LaGuardia Airport whooshed open.
Robert and Suzanne tagged along behind a huddle of passengers leaving the
terminal. Outside, a recent snow had turned to slush. Tires of rushing cars
threw showers of dirty water onto the windshields of cabs waiting for fares.

A businessman in overcoat and leather gloves dashed for the
first cab in queue at the curb. A woman in high-heels staggered sideways when a
gust of wind slammed into her.

It wasn’t until they’d hit the main terminal, that Robert
had stopped spilling his guts about his family. Suzanne never batted an eye
when he told her Rachel was gay. In fact, she told him about her great-auntie
Ruth who never got married.

“She had a companion—that’s what my parents called her
friend—who shared a house with her for nearly forty years. But if you’d suggest
that she was a lesbian, my parents would have had a fit. In fact, they’re
adamantly opposed to same sex marriage.” Suzanne shook her head. “I guess
people only see what they want to see.”

Now, standing at the curb, they had some decisions to make.

“We may as well stay at the Plaza,” Robert said. “I’m sure
you’ll want to see Central Park. And it’s on all the bus lines.”

“The Plaza Hotel? Like the movie?”

“That’s the one. Sorry I couldn’t call ahead for a limo,”
Robert teased.

Suzanne was so excited about being at the Plaza that she
stepped off the bus before it even stopped out front. And as Robert had
suspected, she leaned way back to get a look at the hotel’s façade. Then she
took it a step farther by floating up the front of the building, peeking in
rooms that had their curtains open.

“Get down here!” Robert called.

And she did suddenly swoop back to the sidewalk, but by the
expression on her face, it wasn’t his angry command that had brought her down.

“My goodness,” she said, her voice a bit breathless. “I
didn’t know old men had that kind of stamina.”

“Perhaps you’d like to use the front door, like a normal
person,” Robert said. “And please try to remember that this is the Plaza, and
act accordingly.”

She guffawed like he’d just told the funniest joke.

The cavernous lobby with its Baccarat chandeliers and
elegant split staircase to the mezzanine held Suzanne spellbound, but only for
a moment. She zipped from the gold filigree elevator doors to the champagne
bar, then up the staircase so she could glide back down, her left arm cocked
and palm up like some snooty duchess.

Even if people had been watching, Robert imagined that she
would still have strutted through the lobby.

At the bell captain’s stand, she requested a wake up call.

“For a fee,” Robert told her, “A butler will come to your
room, deliver coffee, open the drapes, draw a bath and lay out your clothes.”

“He would not.”

Robert nodded, suppressing a smile.

Suzanne insisted on snooping through every room in the
hotel.

“You go right ahead,” he told her. “Just don’t leave the
building. If you get lost, you can’t stop someone and ask for directions.”

She saluted him. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

Robert meandered to a secluded corner of the lobby and
pulled a Bela Lugosi. He’d gotten used to the idea that he never got tired or
slept, but sometimes when things got really slow, he’d just shut down, tuning
out sights and sounds. He began referring to it as a ‘Bela Lugosi’ because it
reminded him of a bat hanging upside down in some darkened corner.

At the crack of dawn, Suzanne was back in the lobby, raring to
go.

“So how was your tour of the hotel last night?” he asked.

“A little disappointing. Most of the rooms were dark, and
the heavy drapes were drawn, so I couldn’t see anything. I peeked into the
Grand Ballroom, but there wasn’t much to see.”

“No, I don’t suppose. You’ll have to wait until they’re
setting up for an event.”

She didn’t appear satisfied with that answer.

“Tell you what,” he said. “We’ll get back here before dark
this evening and you can snoop then.”

She smiled, totally missing his dig.

Rush hour was in full swing outside. Cabs were lined up
two-deep in front of the hotel. Robert gave a man in a Kenneth Cole
cashmere-blend topcoat a wistful sigh as the man slipped into the back of a cab
and was whisked away to a meeting somewhere.

Suzanne had already darted across four lanes of traffic and
was standing at one of the horse-drawn carriages at the park.

“Let’s go for a ride!” she said.

First Robert looked up the sidewalk, then made a turn to
look the opposite way.

“It doesn’t look like anyone’s interested in hiring a hack
this early in the morning.”

When her mouth turned into a frown, he mumbled, “Maybe
later.”

As they strolled under the bare trees of the famous mall,
Suzanne gushed, “I’ve seen this so many times in movies. And now I’m actually
walking right down the middle of it.” She spread her arms wide to take it all
in.

“Perhaps you’d like to twirl with your arms out wide,”
Robert said.

It served him right when she actually did spin.

She saw a large banner for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and
immediately wanted to go there.

“Mmmm,” Robert stalled. “Don’t you think Maggie will want to
go, too?”

“You’re right,” she nodded. “Better wait on that.”

He blew out a silent breath at that near catastrophe. It had
taken hours to tour the dinky museum in the suburbs of St. Louis. He imagined
it would take days to get through the MET.

He also steered Suzanne away from the zoo, knowing that
she’d want to gawk at every animal in the place. Instead, he took her to the
park’s classic carousel. Hot or cold, rain or shine, there were always children
riding the painted horses.

Suzanne paused to watch the children’s faces as they rode
by, smiling and squealing for their mothers or nannies to watch.

A young boy raced to his mother, sitting on a park bench,
and stuck his foot forward for her to tie his shoe. The instant she bent over,
a young punk appeared from nowhere, reached over the back of the bench,
snatched the woman’s purse, and tucked it under his jacket.

She never saw a thing.

“Oh, my God!” Suzanne cried as she ran toward the woman.
“Your purse! He’s got your purse!”

But the woman was oblivious to Suzanne. She sat up with a
smile on her face, then finally glanced down and realized what had happened.

“He’s right there!” Suzanne screamed, her finger pointing at
the kid as he ambled away. “Right there!”

Frustrated, she wheeled around to Robert.

“We’ve got to do something!”

“Like what?”

Clenching her fists in frustration, Suzanne growled at him,
then turned and ran after the punk. She caught up with him, skirted around in
front, and skidded to a halt. The kid walked right through her, of course.

She leaped onto his back and tried pounding on his
shoulders, but it was useless. Robert followed her halfway to the ice rink
before she finally gave up and slid off the thief’s back.

Robert sidled up to her.

“Feel better now?” he asked.

“I wanted to help.”

“I know.”

A look of utter frustration furrowed her brow. He braced
himself for a tirade.
Why didn’t you stop
him
?
You should have done something
.
Or perhaps she would sulk for the rest of the day.

She did neither.

“How awful to live in a city where you have to be on your
guard every second,” she said. “I used to leave my purse in the grocery cart
all the time while I shopped.” She clicked her tongue. “I wouldn’t last a minute
in New York.”

As they strolled back towards the south entrance, she
clapped her hand to the side of her head.

“I can’t believe I jumped on his back. You must have thought
I’d lost my mind.”

‘No!” Well, maybe.

“I suppose I looked pretty ridiculous slapping and kicking
at him like that.”

“You reminded me of Catwoman.”

“Catwoman? Really?”

Oh, great. Now Suzanne would get all defensive, looking for
some deep, hidden meaning in his comment. But she had a smile on her face, like
she was flattered. Robert took a chance.

“Yeah. She kind of pounced on people, didn’t she?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t watch the show.”

“Me either.”

Suzanne giggled.

“You never saw her?”

“Well, I’ve seen pictures. You know, in the cat suit. And
the way you were clawing and hissing at that kid, it’s what I imagine she did
to the bad guys.”

She meowed, then pretended to lick her hand.

At the entrance to the park, Suzanne asked, “Where to next?”

“I thought we’d catch one of those double-decker buses and
take the tour.”

“Great! For someone who doesn’t know much about New York,”
she said, “you know a lot.”

They were waiting at the curb when Suzanne turned to Robert.

“So, am I more of a Julie Newmar Catwoman, or Lee
Meriwether?”

“Neither,” Robert said, going for points. “Michelle
Pfeiffer, definitely.”

Wrinkling her nose in a sneer, Suzanne said, “Let’s try and
keep our flattery in the right decade at least.”

The bus had just turned onto Seventh Avenue when the driver
announced that Times Square was coming up, and right away Suzanne wanted to get
back off.

“We just got on,” he said.

Next was the theater district and Suzanne got antsy for a
closer look.

“Matinees aren’t until two o’clock. There won’t be anything
to see this morning,” he told her.

Then, of course, she saw Madison Square Garden in the
distance.

“Maybe we should just get off the bus and walk,” she
suggested.

“Maybe we should take the whole tour so you can see where
everything is you want to visit.”

Good God, she’d be dragging him from one end of the city to
the other for the next eight days. He had to come up with an excuse to ditch
her, quickly.