Three-Day Town

Chapter


2


Among the detached sculpture in the parks and streets, bad as much of it always was… there are still some notable examples which people do not care to forget.



—The New New York, 1909



We slept till after eight the next morning, and while Dwight went out for coffee and breakfast rolls, I checked my email.

Cal wrote that he and Mary Pat had made 100s on their end-of-the-week spelling test and that he was now one level higher than she on one of their long-running computer games. Both of them were going to a classmate’s birthday party the next day.

My friend Portland had finally uploaded some of the pictures she’d taken of her year-old daughter at Christmas. She and Avery named her Carolyn Deborah, and one of the pictures showed her wearing the red plaid dress I’d given her.

Minnie, the sister-in-law who is my campaign advisor, wrote that barring a last-minute surprise, I wasn’t going to have to run an all-out campaign for reelection.

“She says that Paul Archdale’s decided not to run for my seat after all,” I told Dwight when he returned.

“Probably knows he’d be wasting his time and money,” said my loyal spouse, busily unloading plastic bags from Fairway Market onto the kitchen counter.

The smell of freshly ground coffee and warm bagels made my mouth water. Dwight set out milk, orange juice, a block of cream cheese, several slices of smoked salmon, and a small jar of wild strawberry jam. I opened another bag to see an applesauce muffin, a turnover oozing with blackberries, and a little wedge of Brie. A third bag held more packets of deli items.

I shook my head. “All this for breakfast? I’m not letting you go back to that store.”

He laughed. “Try and stop me. You call Mrs. Lattimore’s daughter yet?”

“I’ll do it right now,” I said and scrolled through the list of names on my cell phone’s contact list till I came to Anne Harald.

There were the usual chirps and blips and then four long rings before I heard a woman’s voice say, “You’ve reached Anne and Mac’s answering machine. If you need to reach Anne or Mac before February, find a pencil. Got it? Okay, listen up, ’cause here comes the number to call.”

By then I had grabbed a pen from Dwight’s shirt pocket and scribbled the number on my hand, a 212 area code, which meant it was right here in Manhattan.

A few minutes later, I was listening to a second answering machine message. A different woman’s voice crisply instructed me to leave a short message and a callback number. There was no promise that she would actually call back, but I dutifully gave my number and explained that I was trying to deliver a package to Anne Harald from her mother in North Carolina, but—

At that point the answering machine cut off and left me with nothing but a dial tone.

Exasperated, I ended the connection and helped Dwight finish putting our breakfast together.

The coffee was even better than the aroma promised, and I’d forgotten how delicious toasted onion bagels are with a thick schmeer of cream cheese. I couldn’t decide whether to top mine off with smoked salmon or the wild strawberry jam, so what the hell? I cut it in half and had some of each. Yum!

I told myself I didn’t need to worry about waddling onto the train home, because the city encourages walking. All the New Yorkers I’ve ever known walk miles more than country people, who tend to jump into a car or truck if it’s more than a few hundred feet. Once again, memory stretched back across the years to the winter I spent here with Lev Schuster. A penniless law student, I knew he couldn’t afford cabs, but “Can’t we at least take a bus?” I would whine, only to have him look at me in surprise that I would waste money on a bus when the restaurant or museum or library was only fifteen or twenty blocks away. I grew to hate crosstown blocks, which are two to four times longer than the north–south blocks, and I planned to reacquaint myself with the bus and subway systems as soon as possible.

“What do you want to do first?” Dwight asked me when I emerged from the bedroom warmly dressed in wool slacks, sweater, and sturdy shoes made for walking.

We both had lists of things to do, restaurants to try, and exhibits to see. He wanted to reconnect with an old Army buddy who taught at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and had promised to give Dwight a tour of the place next time he was up.

I had already decided that would be a good time to check out some of the stores along Fifth Avenue. But for today?

“Let’s take a bus down to Columbus Circle. I want to see that exhibit of Madeleine Albright’s pins.”

“Pens?”

“Pins,” I said firmly. “Brooches. They’re not just girly stuff. I’ve read that when she was secretary of state, she used her pins to set the mood for some of her negotiations. We don’t have to stay long if you get bored, I promise.”


Bundled up against the cold, we were waiting for the elevator when the door at the end of the hallway opened and the blonde from the night before appeared. She wore a fuzzy pink sweater over flannel pajama bottoms and her bedroom slippers were stitched with pink rhinestones.

“Oh, good!” she said in her maddeningly familiar gurgling voice. “I was going to slip this under your door but now I can just hand it to you. I’m having a party tonight and I’d adore for you to come.” As the elevator door opened, she gave that impish, slightly conspiratorial smile we were coming to know. “If you’re part of the party, you won’t complain about the noise.”

“You’ll get enough complaints from five and seven,” today’s young elevator man warned her.

“Oh, pooh, Antoine! Who cares about them?” She turned back to us. “Things should get under way around nine-ish and I won’t take no for an answer.”

“We’d love to,” I said before Dwight could think of an excuse to decline.

“That one and her parties,” Antoine said with a grin as he pulled the cage closed. He didn’t look much older than the girl. Of medium height with a reedy build, he had honey brown skin, a very short Afro, and what the kids at home call a chinstrap beard, a narrow line of facial hair that followed the contour of his jaw. “They’ll have her up before the board again, you mark my words.” Those words carried a faint Jamaican accent.

“A New York party!” I told Dwight as we stepped out into the frigid morning sunlight. “A rowdy New York party. It’ll be fun.”

He gave me a jaundiced look, finished reading the invitation, and stuck it in an inner pocket of his parka before pulling on his gloves. “Luna DiSimone. Why does that name sound familiar?”

It did, but I couldn’t place the name either. “We’ll Google her when we get back,” I said.

We hurried down Broadway to the nearest subway station so that we could buy fare cards for the bus and trains. From behind, a sharp wind pushed us along, and I would have moaned about it except that I noticed that the people we passed who were heading into the wind all seemed to have their hats pulled low and their scarves high. The wind whipped tears into their eyes and gave everyone red noses. I turned up the collar on my coat, rewrapped my scarf an extra turn around the back of my neck, and tried to match Dwight’s long strides. No sauntering for him either.


The exhibit of Madeleine Albright’s pins at the Museum of Arts and Design had so much historical documentation that Dwight almost forgot that they were costume jewelry and enjoyed the witty symbolism. Who knew that woman had such a sense of humor?

From there, we rode a bus down to Chinatown, where we turned into full-out gawking tourists. We bought toys for Cal and his cousins and lengths of exquisite red-and-gold silk for Kate and for Dwight’s mother, who both like to sew. I saw a charming tea set that was almost beautiful enough to convert me from iced tea, but reason prevailed, to Dwight’s relief. Both of us were already loaded down.

Lunch was dim sum at a place that wasn’t much bigger than a broom closet, but the shrimp dumplings were perfection. When we came out of the restaurant, the temperature had dropped even further, although the wind had died down a bit. The sky clouded over and a light rain began to fall. Mindful of our heavy paper shopping bags, we headed for the subway and arrived at our stop on the Upper West Side minutes before the rain began in earnest.

“As long as it’s not snow,” we told each other as we rode up in the elevator.

“Eighty-five percent chance of snow before midnight,” Antoine told us cheerfully. “Hope the weather doesn’t spoil your visit.”

Back in the apartment, I realized I had left my phone on the kitchen counter and discovered I had a voice message from that 212 number: “This is Sigrid Harald. I believe you have something of my grandmother’s for my mother? Please call me before four o’clock.”

I glanced at my watch. Ten till four. I hastily punched in the numbers and this time was answered on the first ring.

“Ms. Harald?”

“Yes?”

I explained who I was and that Mrs. Lattimore had sent something to her daughter.

“What is it?”

“I have no idea. It’s a small but rather heavy little box.”

Sounding clearly puzzled, Ms. Harald said, “I wonder why she sent it up now when she knew my mother was going to be away for six weeks?”

“I gather she didn’t want to trust FedEx or UPS and she knows my husband is a sheriff’s deputy.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“And you know my grandmother how?”

“I think we’re distantly related through her Stephenson kin,” I said, realizing how stereotypically Southern I must sound to this no-nonsense voice. “But we’re staying for a week in Kate Bryant’s apartment because she’s married to my husband’s brother and—”

“Oh yes. Now I remember. Kate said you’re a judge, right?”

“Right.” Jake Honeycutt, Kate’s first husband, was Mrs. Lattimore’s nephew, and Kate had kept in touch with his people for her young Jake’s sake.

“Look, my mother’s in New Zealand and I have an appointment down here in the Village in a half hour. Would you mind opening the package and telling me what it is?”

“No problem,” I assured her, happy to have permission to satisfy my own curiosity. “Hang on a minute.”

There were scissors in a pencil jar on the kitchen counter and a few snips revealed a sturdy cardboard box. Inside, something was swaddled in newsprint and bubble wrap, and inside that—

“Dear Lord in the morning!” I said before I could stop myself. I’m not a prude. I’ve leafed through the Kama Sutra and I’ve seen my share of naked men, but this was not something I would ever have expected from someone as proper as Mrs. Lattimore.

It was a bronze statuette, about six or seven inches tall, roughly cylindrical, and so intricately modeled that it took me a minute to sort out the intertwined arms and legs and other bodily appendages and to decide exactly where those appendages were and what they were doing. Dwight glanced up from our digital camera, where he was reviewing the pictures we’d taken that day, did a double take, and then grinned broadly as he snapped several shots of me turning that thing in my hand.

“What is it?” I heard Ms. Harald ask.

“Um… uh…” I examined it up, down, and sideways, and each view was more lascivious than the last.

Dwight took it from my hand and pointed out a particularly inventive position. “We should try that one,” he murmured with an exaggerated leer.

I put my hand over the mouthpiece to hide my laughter. “In your dreams.”

“Mrs. Bryant?” The woman’s voice was becoming impatient.

“It’s a little statuette,” I said. “Looks like bronze.”

“A statuette? Of what?”

“Well, I think it’s three men.” Even as I spoke, I discovered at least two more faces and another penis amid the tangle of arms and legs.

“You ‘think’? Is it abstract?”

“Oh, no,” I assured her. “It’s realistic. Very realistic. It appears to be several naked men who are”—I searched for an appropriate word—“who are… um…pleasuring each other.”

Dwight chuckled, but there was blank silence from the other end.

“Ms. Harald?”

“And my grandmother sent this to my mother? Perhaps I should come up this evening after all. Would ten or ten-thirty be too late?”

“Not at all,” I assured her. “But someone down the hall has invited us to a party at nine. You might ought to follow the noise and check for us there first. I’ll be wearing a red sweater.”

“Then I will see you at ten-thirty,” said Ms. Harald.