You Were Meant For Me (16 page)

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Evan
stood in the front of Miranda's door with a bunch of lush, apricot-colored roses in his arms. He'd stopped at Zuzu's Petals on Fifth Avenue to get them; unlike the dozen-roses-for-ten-bucks that were hawked at corner grocers all over the city, these flowers had a real scent and would not wilt the next day.
Upset that he'd not been able to get in touch with Miranda, he'd biked over to Park Slope to check on her. But after three rings to her buzzer produced no results, he had to conclude that she was not there. Wait—wasn't that someone approaching from behind the lace curtain? The door opened, and he saw an elderly woman with thick glasses and a light scarf tied over the neatly coiffed mound of her silver hair.

“Are you looking for Miranda?” she asked.

“Yes, but it doesn't seem like she's home.”

“She went back to work,” the woman said. “And I'm glad. I was getting worried. But those friends of hers showed up last night, and I think that made her feel better. She's been so sad since the baby went away.”

“So she's at the office?” said Evan. “Thanks for telling me.” He looked at the flowers, which he'd had to balance very carefully on the handlebars of the bike.

“Would you like me to take those?” The woman's gaze followed his. “I'll put them in a vase and make sure she gets them as soon as she comes in.”

“That'd be great,” Evan said. “I really appreciate it.” He handed her the flowers, but not before adjusting the bow on the pale green ribbon with which they had been tied. Then he went down the stairs, unlocked his bike, and pedaled back home. Until he heard from her, there was nothing else he could do.

A little after six o'clock, he was just beginning to consider his dinner options—frozen or takeout—when Miranda called. Finally. “You okay?” he said. “I haven't been able to reach you, and I was worried. Really worried.” And hurt too, though he did not mention that.

“I'm sorry. I just didn't want to deal with anyone. I went into the office today though; I can't say I'm okay, exactly. But
I'm functioning. You wouldn't believe how restorative a gift from the cupcake king can be.”

“Cupcake king?” Evan did not follow.

“Alan Richardson. He's the man of the moment when it comes to novelty cupcakes, and I got him to agree to come up with an exclusive recipe that we'll feature in print and online too. My boss is over the moon.”

“Must be some cupcake,” he said.

“It will be. But why am I nattering on about this? Have you eaten yet?”

“No, I haven't, actually.”

“Then why don't you come over here and I'll make us dinner? I bought some fresh basil on the way home and was planning on doing a pistachio pesto.”

“I love pistachio pesto,” he said even though he'd never even considered, much less eaten, such a thing.

“Good. See you soon?”

“Soon.”

“Oh, Evan! I almost forgot! Those roses . . . They're extraordinary. Thank you so much for bringing them.”

Evan knew she couldn't see him grinning. “Glad you liked them.”

A little while later, Evan was once more locking his bike inside the gate at Miranda's house. He had not brought wine or anything to eat; she was such a foodie that he was afraid the wrong offering would humiliate him. But he did have another small gift for her; he'd debated about bringing it and then decided yes, it was the right time.

The pistachio pesto—green from the crushed basil leaves and rich from the crushed nuts—was delicious and there was plenty of crusty bread to sop up any that remained in his bowl.
She followed that with a light salad and for dessert she poached plums and served them with whipped cream and a drizzle of melted dark chocolate; Evan could have easily licked the plate.

“Do you always eat like this?” he said.

“Pretty much. Though not lately—lately I haven't been able to eat much of anything.”

“You've been taking it hard, haven't you? Losing Celeste?”

“I have.” She had stopped eating and let her hands drop to her lap.

“I wish you had let me in. I might have helped.”

She looked at him as if she was trying to decide whether this was true. “I appreciate that. But I just couldn't see anyone for a few days. Talking about it would have made it worse.”

He didn't totally buy this; maybe she meant
talking about it to him
, but he didn't want to push it. “And now?”

“Now it's a little better. A little. I don't feel so . . . shell-shocked. I'm functioning again. Sort of.”

He suddenly wanted to kiss her then but thought he should wait for a signal. Maybe she was still too upset over Celeste to be in the mood. Hell,
he
was upset about Celeste. Instead, he helped her clear the table and load the dishwasher; when that was done, he was unsure about what his next move should be. He was not going to assume anything. Then he remembered the gift.

“I have something for you.” He went to get it from his backpack.

Miranda took the flat package and tore off the dark green paper to reveal a wheat-colored linen album; he'd filled it with eight-by-ten prints he'd taken of her with Celeste, a dozen photographs in all.

She did not say anything as she slowly leafed through the
pages. She stopped at one that showed Celeste in her bath, a crown of shampoo covering her head. The next one had been taken in Prospect Park; Celeste was on her back and Miranda was leaning over her, each of their faces mirroring the delight seen in the other. Evan grew anxious. He shouldn't have given it to her; maybe he'd only made things worse. Finally, she looked up.

“It's precious,” she said. He could see her trying not to cry. “Precious and beautiful and perfect.” Then she set the album on the counter and opened her arms; Evan was across the room in
seconds.

I
t was a slow afternoon in July; Jared and Diego were the only ones left in the office. Jared was ready to head out soon too, but there were a couple of important calls he needed to make first. And while he was here, he could have Diego finish some filing that had been mounting up. Only where was the kid? Smoking weed in the men's room? Jared walked all through the office and did not see him. Had he left without signing out? He was getting school credit—not much, but still—for his work, and Jared needed to keep track of his hours.

He had just finished the first of the calls when he heard the door open.

“Diego? Can you come in here?”

Diego walked into Jared's cubicle with that sullen look on his face; he seemed never to be without it. “You need me?”

“That's the idea,” Jared said. “I've got some filing for you to do.”

Diego said nothing but took the stack of applications from Jared's hands.

Jared resisted the loud, exasperated sigh he was dying to expel and watched him go. Most of the interns had worked out pretty well—a couple had gotten real, paying jobs, and one had gone on to college. Tiffany was a perfect example. Whenever he ran an open house, he had Tiffany sit at the sign-in desk. The girl was pretty, polite, and had a nice way with the prospective buyers. Diego was another story. On the one occasion Jared had positioned him at the desk, he'd spent the whole time glued to his phone. No hello, no eye contact—he'd even forgotten to have some of the people sign in. The kid was a total washout.

“Get rid of him,” Athena had said. “If you want this mentoring thing to work, he's got to meet you halfway.”

But Jared did not want to give up on Diego. At least not yet. So he kept him in the office, where he could monitor him more closely. Diego did whatever clerical chores he was asked to do but without any sort of enthusiasm or even apparent interest. Still Jared had hopes of reaching the kid.

Diego walked—or more aptly
strutted
—back into Jared's cubicle. “Filing's all done. Can I go now?”

“There's one more thing.” Jared handed Diego another batch of applications.

“File these too?”

“No. Athena needs to see them first,” Jared said. ”Put them in a folder, write a note for her, and leave them on her desk, okay?”

“Sure,” Diego said. And as he turned away, he added, “Whatever.”

This time Jared did sigh—not that Diego appeared to
notice. Maybe Athena was right about this one—he really was going nowhere. He thought about this as he made the second call, which took longer than he'd expected. While he was still on the phone, he got up and went quietly into Athena's office; he hated to think that he was spying on Diego, but he did want to make sure the applications were where they were supposed to be. Sure enough, they were. It was only Diego who was somewhere he shouldn't have been; he had opened Athena's top left-hand drawer, the one where the petty cash was kept. When he saw Jared, he slammed it shut in a hurry.

Jared ended his call. “How much?” he said.

“What are you talking about?” Diego looked nervous, though; in fact, he looked guilty as hell.

“How much did you take from the drawer, Diego?”

“Me? I never took nothing, not a cent.” Indignation had replaced guilt.

“Really? Then what were you doing in there?”

“You told me to put the folder—”

“
On
the desk, not
in
it.”

“What are you going to do? Frisk me? Or do a strip search—full body, cavity maybe?”

Jared walked over to the desk and brought his hand down hard on its surface. The resultant smack made Diego start a little. Good. Maybe he was getting somewhere. “Why would I frisk you?” he said. “Do you think being here is like being in jail? Punishment of some kind? Because if you do, you should just walk away. Walk away now, Diego. No one is making you stay. Certainly not me.”

Diego stood there, nostrils flaring like a restive horse.

“What's eating you, anyway? Don't you like working here?”

“It's not so bad,” Diego said. “At least
you're
not so bad.”

“Who is, then?”

“All those white people coming through here. They're the ones with attitude. They think they own the neighborhood. Hell, they think they own the world.”

“And stealing from Athena is going to fix that?”

“I told you: I didn't take nothing. I—”

“Come on. Just drop the act, okay? I'm not going to ask you again how much you took; I'm going to walk out of here in a few minutes and just let you put whatever it was back.”

“How do you know I won't just take it all and clear out? Never come back here.”

“I don't,” said Jared. “But I'm willing to take a chance.” He let Diego process that and then added, “You didn't answer my question. How is stealing from Athena going to fix the white-people problem?”

“She's worse than they are! She's such an Oreo, acting all false and smiley with them. Makes me sick.”

Oreo. Jared had heard that one for years, like he'd personally betrayed his people and his race by being smart, ambitious, and wanting to swim in a wider sea. “Sit down.” He pointed toward one of the two chairs facing Athena's desk; Diego sat down and Jared sat next to him. “I don't know if white people
own
the world, but they have a lot of power, and if you want in, you have to play nice. That's what Athena figured out. She's not an Oreo cookie, but she sure is a smart one. She's made something of herself. And you can too. Only you have to decide you're going to join the party—not spit on it.” Jared got up. “I'm going back to my office. You can do the right thing. Or not. It's up to you, Diego. It always is.”

Jared sat quietly at his desk. He was not going to check Athena's petty cash; he had no idea how much she kept in there
on any given day, so he wouldn't have been able to tell if Diego had put the money back or not. Anyway, if Diego decided to turn things around, it wasn't going to be because Jared had shamed or scared him into it; it would be because he wanted to. A little while later, Diego appeared before Jared yet again, this time with a sheet of lined paper in his hand. “I wrote a note to Athena,” he said. “Want to see?”

Jared took it from him. Diego had gone through the applications himself and marked the ones he thought had red flags; he made an itemized list detailing each one and why. “She'll appreciate this,” Jared said. “Good work.” And for the first time in Jared's recollection, the kid smiled.

The sky was still light when Jared left the office and headed home. He walked quickly because he was planning on going out again tonight, only it was business, not pleasure, that was taking him away from Lily. The two of them had settled into a viable rhythm. Supah arrived five mornings a week to take care of her; he got home around six to take over. He'd feed and bathe his daughter and then sometimes Olivia would come over so he could go out for work or to meet friends. If he wanted to go somewhere straight from the office, he arranged it so that Olivia would arrive at the apartment just as Supah was getting ready to go; both of them had keys to his place, and the transitions had so far been pretty seamless.

Of course there were some bumps in the road to new fatherhood. That was normal, right? Lily could go off on these crying jags that went on for more than an hour. Was it gas? Colic? Missing Miranda Berenzweig? Damned if he could tell.

When this happened, it was like the subtly shifting pitch and tenor of her screams were being channeled directly to his brain and he felt ready to explode. The business of changing her diapers didn't get any less gross. Ditto dealing with her
throwing up, which seemed to happen with some regularity. She might wake him four times during the night and then again at the crack of dawn. He was exhausted and losing weight—not that he needed to—and was starting to look pretty haggard. He hadn't given any thought to a vacation, and his love life had stopped dead in its tracks.

He wished he could connect Lily with the feelings he'd had for Caroline. They had met at a club, and their chemistry had been instant and explosive. Everything they did together had that impulsive, pushing-the-envelope kind of feel—driving to Atlantic City on a whim and spending the entire night in a casino, a midnight swim on a Montauk beach, blowing an entire paycheck at Saratoga.

Sometimes, just sometimes, when he walked into the room and Lily smiled at him, or pressed her tiny head against his chest, he'd feel the pull toward her and he'd get it—the connection, the love. But those moments were often obliterated by the daily grind of caring for her, a grind that was not shared with a woman he loved. With Lily's mother.

Jared let himself into the apartment, took Lily from Supah, and popped her into the high chair for her supper. Then it was a bath and pj's; he had no time to eat or even change. Tonight he was meeting with a skittish client who was teetering on the edge of making an offer on that garden apartment in the building on 117th Street.

Those apartments were
not
moving; it was like the incident with Isabel Clarke and that berserk cat had jinxed it and the apartments remained, unappreciated and unclaimed, on the market, which was really bad news. If a place sat around too long, prospective buyers began to wonder why, and soon the apartment developed what he privately thought of as bad buying juju. It was a real shame this little gem of a
property had fallen victim to the syndrome, and he was hoping that the meeting tonight would turn things around.

The only trouble was that Olivia was late, damn it. He checked his watch and his phone as he impatiently waited for her; Lily was all ready to be put to bed, and he could tell she was tired—rubbing her eyes with her fists and opening her mouth in a series of luxurious yawns. He laid her in the crib and turned out the light; when he looked in on her again, she was asleep. But still no Olivia.

He had texted her three times without getting a reply; he was standing at the window, looking out at the street and willing her to appear, when his phone pinged with an incoming message
. Sorry I'm late. Be there in 5.

Finally! But he still had to get out of here or he wasn't going to get there on time. Should he wait for Olivia or leave now? He darted into the baby's room to check on her; her little onesie-clad rump was in the air and her cheek was mashed against the sheet. She snored lightly. Olivia would be here any minute. And his client, a high-powered finance guy, was such a stickler; he knew that being even two minutes late might piss him off and ultimately screw up the sale. Jared decided to risk it.
Late. Have 2 leave now. Lily asleep. Just let yourself in. See u around 10,
he texted.

Then he was out the door. He hadn't gone a block when he stopped to text Olivia again. To his relief, she texted right back.

Here now. Lily still asleep. Don't worry.

Jared stared at the tiny letters before slipping the phone back in his pocket. Lily was fine, totally fine. Great. He had a good feeling, a
selling
feeling, about this showing, and he hurried down the subway steps, eager to meet his
client.