She had never been to Cafe des Artistes, but it was an Upper West Side institution, and as she planned on becoming a proper Upper West Side institution herself, she thought she and Cafe des Artistes should meet. She had made a reservation for 1:00, and she left the office with plenty of time to get there, even with traffic. Taking cabs was a new luxury, taking cabs even when the subway ran directly to her destination. Her life had changed in many small ways like that, she thought with satisfaction. She had worked hard for these little luxuries, worked hard at the office, worked hard at making Joe happy. She did not begrudge either the office or Joe her sweat equity, she loved both her work and Joe, but sweat equity it was, and now she was getting her returns.
She walked into the richly dim restaurant, and a courtly man led her to her table. The silver glistened, the napkins and tablecloths were stiff and formal and white, like dress shirts, she thought. She looked up at the murals. They were famous, she knew. Redheaded women, nude, swinging from vines. Those redheads never had to work in an office, she thought. They didn't have to save and save to buy a boxy one-bedroom apartment in an unfashionable building in a huge unfashionable complex that might just as well have been in New Jersey as on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Felicity pursed her lips, then smiled. The fleshy naked women in the old-fashioned paintings would be scrawny ancient crones by now. Not to mention dead.
Rich soil for a rich house, Miranda thought, digging in the rose garden behind the Beachside Avenue house. House? It really was a mansion, there just was no other name that fit. It had been built as a show of wealth, not as a shelter. The rose garden had been neglected for years, but the tendrils and vines still crawled vigorously over the trellises. Miranda pulled at the weeds. Henry was taking his nap inside, Leanne was working on the paper she would soon have to present at some epidemiology conference. Miranda, who had no paper to write, no nap to take, was weeding. She did not know how to garden. But she could weed. Anyone could weed. Even a failure, even a bankrupt, even a woman who was silently, odiously betraying her best friend.
Miranda had fallen in love so many times, each of them a dizzying ascent of need and a sickening drop of disappointment. But this was Leanne, Henry's mother, her new friend, this person to whom she confided everything. Except one thing. The most important thing.
How odd, how private, how intimate to keep quiet about your feelings. Miranda cherished her secret. It sickened her, literally, leaving her breathless and queasy, but she somehow didn't mind. She reveled in her misery. Ironic, this Romantic extravaganza all bottled up inside.
It began to rain, hard. Perhaps she would catch pneumonia and die. That would be very Romantic.
Miranda had read plenty of books about women falling in love with women. They were a niche part of her business, a popular subgenre, a little out-of-date now but very big in the nineties. She had sold two of them herself, one to Knopf, a huge advance, quite a coup, she had to admit. The women discovered their real selves, etc. Could no longer live a lie, etc. She had felt some sympathy, yet the whole business had always seemed so unnecessary, extravagant even. An act of excessive imagination, if not sheer will. She had been far too busy falling in love with unsatisfying men to think very much about it, much more than: What would be the point?
You're the point, Miranda thought. Now I know.
She watched Leanne, dry and warm and shuffling papers inside. The rain fell dramatically, and the Long Island Sound waves, waves that had caused so much mischief months ago at this very spot, splashed behind her. She didn't really know how she had gotten from there to here, and she didn't really care. As long as she could stay.
From her vantage point of rain and rose stalks, Miranda saw Roberts enter the room and speak to Leanne. She saw Leanne run her hands through her hair, a gesture of despair. Roberts was showing her a sheaf of legal-looking papers. Leanne threw her head back, staring at the ceiling. She stood and made helpless, questioning gestures, her arms wide and flailing. Her hands became fists, and her mouth opened and closed. Miranda walked through the rain to the window. She gestured weakly at Leanne: Should she come in? Leanne, shouting and waving the papers at Roberts, did not even see her, and Miranda slogged her way to the car and drove to the station to wait for Annie.
Felicity marched through the same downpour. The trees in Central Park, budding but black in the rain, rattled their branches ominously. The doorman held his umbrella for Felicity, and she walked beneath it with as much dignity as she could muster under the circumstances. She was soaked, her mink coat matted and limp, a sad family of vermin drowned and slung across her body. Her hair was drenched, her umbrella blown inside out and abandoned long ago. She had been walking and walking and walking. Her shoes were ruined, of course. In the elevator she could smell the wet fur, musky and animalistic, reeking like a dripping dog.
"Joe!" Her shoes squelched on the marble she'd had installed in the entrance hall. "Joe!"
He came out of the kitchen looking warm and unruffled, a glass of Scotch in his hand. In general, she approved of his meticulous clothing, his careful grooming, his unchanging habits. Now his smooth comfort infuriated her.