The Finishing School

“Not necessary,” he says, leading her out of the office and back to the elevators. “Let’s grab coffee.”


He calls for the elevator and they wait for it in awkward silence. When it finally arrives, they look at each other with relief. “So how have you been?” he asks her, as soon as the doors close, trapping them inside together. “You’re still living in . . . ?”

“Toronto.”

“Right. What do you do there?”

“I’m a writer.”

“What do you write?” Most people assume when she says she’s a writer that she’s a copywriter, a dabbler in poetry, or someone who sits in Starbucks all day working on a screenplay that will never be finished.

“Novels,” she tells him. “Historical women’s fiction. Nothing you’d know.”

“Published?”

“Three so far.”

“Wow. Very cool.”

“You seem to be doing pretty well,” she returns, thinking of his view of Gramercy Park.

“I’m good at design,” he says, not elaborating.

Between uncomfortable stabs at small talk, they both stare up at the floor numbers as they descend to the lobby. She notices he’s not wearing a ring on his wedding finger. His status isn’t posted on Facebook, so she isn’t sure if there’s a Mrs. Foley.

“Kids?” he asks her.

“Not yet,” she says, avoiding the longer version of that answer. “You?”

“Divorced. No kids.”

Her eyes are still fixed on those numbers. Nine, eight, seven. Why is she so happy to hear he’s divorced? When they reach the lobby, he extends his arm to let her out first. “Madame,” he says.

The coffee shop is one of those standard New York institutions you always find in the lobby of these art deco buildings—a long counter with stools, straight-up coffee percolating in glass pots—no lattes and cappuccinos here—and a queue of suits out the door.

“The usual, Jahmir,” Magnus says. Kersti orders a black coffee. Magnus treats.

They settle side by side on a lone bench by the elevators. “Did you get your invitation to the Lycée’s hundredth anniversary celebration?” she asks him, as per the speech she rehearsed all night.

“They don’t know where to find me,” he says, fiddling with the sleeve of his cup.

“I found you.”

“The Lycée probably hasn’t figured out Facebook yet. You going?”

Kersti shrugs. “I don’t know.” She doesn’t mention that she’s been chosen one of their Hundred Women. “I’m still debating.”

“It’s too hard to go back there,” he says, and she figures he means it both literally and figuratively.

“Remember Lille Robertson?” she says, lifting the lid off her cup to let the coffee cool.

“The little weirdo with the white hair and the black nose?”

“She died.”

“How?”

“Breast cancer.”

“Shit. That’s too bad.”

“Have you kept in touch with anyone?” she asks him.

“Me? No. No one.” He’s staring into his tea, distant. “You?”

“Noa and Rafaella. Mostly on Facebook. Noa and I Skype sometimes.”

“What are they up to?”

“Raf lives in Paris. She’s divorced. As far as I know, she doesn’t work. Noa’s still in Rotterdam. She’s got a lot of kids. She’s an environmentalist. She posts a lot of anti–Royal Dutch Shell messages. That’s about it. Well, and Cressida.”

“Cressida?”

“Yes. I was just in Boston visiting her. She’s living with her mother.”

He nods, his expression clouded. She wonders what he’s thinking. He doesn’t ask how she is.

“Anyway, Lille wrote me a letter before she died,” Kersti continues. “And it . . . I brought it, actually. If you want to read it.”

He looks at her as though to say: “What the hell has this got to do with me?”

She hands him the letter. “Her mother sent it to me. She found it unfinished on Lille’s computer.”

“You never spoke to Lille after graduation?” he says. “Weren’t the three of you best friends?”

“I didn’t even graduate. I left right after . . .” She leaves it unspoken. The accident. The fall. “Lille sort of vanished. I was never able to find her on any of the usual social media.”

Magnus unfolds the letter and reads it. When he’s done, he hands it back to Kersti without saying a word.

“Lille didn’t think Cressida fell by accident,” Kersti says.

“I see that.”

“I didn’t know you were there that night.”

“Why would you?” he says. “I snuck in.”

“Why?”

“Does it really matter anymore?”

“I think so.”

“Why?”

“You were the last person to see Cressida that night.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Weren’t you?” A thick man in an overcoat bumps Kersti as he brushes past. “I just want to find out what really happened to her,” she says. “What she was like before she fell—”

“Why? Why now?”

“Timing, I guess,” she tells him. “First I got the invitation from the Lycée, then the letter from Lille. I figured the universe was trying to tell me something, like maybe I need some closure on this. Or maybe I didn’t do enough when it first happened.”

“We were kids,” he says. “What could any of us have done?”

“I know, but now I feel like I can at least ask some questions,” she says, thinking about her conversation with Deirdre the other day. “And frankly, the more I do the more my curiosity is snowballing. I may even write about it for my next book.”

“Cressida was an alcoholic, Kersti. We both know that. You want to know what she was like the last time I saw her? She was wasted.”

“I know she dumped you.”

Magnus looks at her for a moment and breaks into a smile. “This isn’t the place for a real conversation,” he says, checking his watch. “Do you want to have dinner tonight?”

“Sure,” she says, trying to sound nonchalant but secretly feeling like he’s just invited her to the school dance. Do you remember fucking me? She has to bite her tongue in order not to ask him.

“To be continued,” he says, getting up and disappearing inside the elevator.





Chapter 16





LAUSANNE—February 1996



Joanna Goodman's books