Chapter 5
Following the meeting that she and Noah had been required to attend, Maris went home from the office alone.
There was a moment, while she was getting mail from their box, that she was tempted to ask the night-duty doorman if he had noticed what time Noah had come in that morning, but she couldn’t think of a way to ask without embarrassing both of them, especially herself.
She had a Thai dinner delivered. As she ate, she reviewed the revisions an author had made to her manuscript, signed off on them, and marked the manuscript ready to go to a copy editor.
She checked her calendar one final time to make certain that she and her assistant hadn’t overlooked an appointment that needed to be rescheduled. She had blocked out the remainder of the week for her trip to Georgia, which might be a tad optimistic considering that the author hadn’t been notified of her pending visit.
But in this instance, begging forgiveness was preferable to asking permission. She had to be assertive. With him, her approach must be proactive and aggressive. Timidity wouldn’t make a dent. Rearranging her busy schedule and making travel arrangements had cemented her determination to go and see him whether or not he was agreeable.
Having put off for as long as possible the unpleasant chore of alerting him to her arrival, she dialed the number that had appeared on her caller ID machine that morning. The telephone rang four times before it was answered.
“Yeah?”
“This is Maris Matherly-Reed.”
“Jesus.”
“No, Maris Matherly-Reed.”
He said nothing to that, not even a cranky What do you want? although his hostile silence spoke volumes.
“I was thinking…” She halted. Wrong tack. Give him no outs, Maris, not even wiggle room. “I’m coming to St. Anne Island to see you,” she declared.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I was speaking English, wasn’t I? Which part didn’t you understand?”
After a moment, he made a gruff sound that could have passed for a laugh. “That’s two. You’re on a roll tonight.”
“Well, I try.”
“So you’re coming to St. Anne.”
“Yes, I am.”
“I gotta warn you, it’s different from what you’re used to. Folks like you—”
“Folks like me?”
“—usually vacation on the more developed islands. Hilton Head. St. Simons. Amelia.”
“This isn’t a vacation trip.”
“No?”
“I’m coming to talk to you.”
“We’ve talked.”
“Not face-to-face.”
“What’ve we got to talk about? The flora and fauna of Georgia’s sea islands?”
“Your book.”
“I’ve already told you that my book isn’t for sale.”
“You also told me that there is no book. Which is it?” She had trapped him. His stony silence indicated that he knew it. “I’ll be arriving tomorrow evening.”
“It’s your money.”
“Could you recommend a—” She was talking to a dead line. He’d hung up on her. Stubbornly she dialed him back.
“Yeah?”
“I was asking if you could recommend a hotel in Savannah?”
When he hung up on her again, Maris laughed. As her father had said, he was protesting too loudly and too much. Little did Mr. P.M.E. know that the more he balked, the more determined she became.
She had just slid her suitcase from beneath the bed to begin packing when the telephone rang. She expected it to be the author. He’d probably invented some very good reasons why it was inconvenient or impossible for him to see her when she arrived tomorrow.
Bracing herself for a barrage of excuses, she answered with a cheerful, “Hello.” To her surprise, a man with a broad Brooklyn accent asked to speak with Noah. “I’m sorry, he isn’t here.”
“Well, I gotta know what to do with this key.”
“Key?”
“We don’t make house calls after hours, ya know. Only, see, Mr. Reed give me twenty extra bucks to get it here tonight. You his ol’ lady?”
“Are you sure you have the right Noah Reed?”
“Deals with books or something?”
“Yes, that’s my husband.”
“Well, he give me this address in Chelsea, said—”
“What address?”
He recited an address on West Twenty-second. “Apartment three B. He axed me to change out the lock yesterday, on account of he’d already moved some stuff in there and didn’t want old keys floating ’round, ya know? Only I didn’t bring an extra key yesterday, and he said he needed at least one extra. So I tole him he’d have it tonight.
“I’m here with the key, but the super’s out for the evening. There’s a note on his door, says call, but a call ain’t gonna help me, is it? I don’t trust leaving a key to Mr. Reed’s apartment with the neighbors. You never know about people, am I right?”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Huh?”
“You said some stuff had already been moved into the apartment.”
“Stuff. Furniture. You know, the kinda stuff rich folks have in their places. Rugs and pictures and shit. Could I afford nice stuff like that? Forget about it. All I know is, I’m ready to get my butt home and in my lounger on account of the Mets game. Only I don’ wanna offend Mr. Reed. He give me twenty extra—”
“Bucks. So you said. I’ll give you twenty more if you’ll wait for me. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Maris left her building and practically ran the two blocks to the subway station at Seventy-second and Broadway. A taxi would take too long to get downtown. She wanted to see sooner rather than later the nice stuff that Noah had moved into an apartment in Chelsea that she knew nothing about. She wanted to learn sooner rather than later why he needed an extra apartment. And she wanted to know for whom he was having an extra key made.