The urge to follow their lead is so strong I nearly scream with it, even as I’m disgusted at my own reaction. But the man reeks, making it nearly impossible for me not to recoil. As I have most of my life, I wear my shoulder bag with the strap angling my chest to deter would-be purse-snatchers; however, my hand instinctively clutches the strap, hugging the bag to me.
Mine, the gesture says, and I am sorry for it.
I am now the only person still under the shelter, although dozens of people swarm the intersection like lethargic ants. The other bus waiters, undoubtedly relieved that I’ve been singled out and they can breathe more easily—literally—hug the curb and storefronts a few feet away, still close enough to easily catch the bus when it comes.
The man creeps closer, forcing me to look at him. He is filthy and unshaven, his posture stooped. Nearly black toes peer out from rips in athletic shoes only a shade lighter, a good two sizes too large. I cannot tell his age, but behind his moth-eaten beard, I can see how thin he is.
He holds out his hand. It is shaking. From the heat, hunger, the DT’s…? I have no way of knowing. I do, however, feel his embarrassment.
Nedra would have emptied her wallet into that hand, I know that, without a moment’s hesitation. But then, my mother’s crazy.
I glance away, my mouth dry, then back.
“Are you hungry?” I ask, the words scraping my throat. I notice a well-dressed Asian woman a few feet away turn slightly in our direction. But I only half see her frown, her head shake, because my gaze is hooked in the gray one in front of me, buried under folds of eyelids. Hope blooms in those eyes, along with a smile. He nods.
The rational part of me thinks, I should take him to a cheap restaurant, feed him myself. If I just give him money, what will he spend it on?
And then I think, who am I to judge?
But before I can make up my mind, a cop comes along and hustles the protesting man away, at the same time my bus squeals up to the stop. I board, behind the disapproving Asian lady, who asks me, as we take seats across the aisle from each other, if I was afraid. I say no.
The bus is air-conditioned and nearly empty, and I feel some of the tension that’s wormed its way into my head over the past few days slink away. We pull away from the stop; outside the man shuffles off toward Amsterdam Avenue, and my insides cramp.
As unsettled as I feel, as unhappy as I am, I still have a job. I still have a home. I still have my friends and my shoe collection and even, I have to acknowledge, my family. Life might be a little bizarre at the moment, but it’s far from horrible.
I pull out my novel, try to reimmerse myself in Gunther and Abigayle’s trials and tribulations, which has the unfortunate effect of only yanking my thoughts back to the men-and-women discussion of earlier. At the moment, I have to admit I’m inclined to side with Terrie on one thing: men are expendable. Their sperm might not be, but they are. I personally don’t need one to survive, or even flourish. I guess, if push came to shove, I could even go without sex. Nuns do. And it’s not as if I haven’t had my share of dry spells. And then there’s my mother, who’s gone without for, gee, how long is it now? Fifteen years?
I mean, really—are they worth the aggravation? Because, much as I’m inclined to agree with Terrie’s theory about how things should be between men and women, I think Shelby’s the realist. Oh, maybe there are true equalitarian male-female relationships out there, but by and large, women do have to defer to the men in their lives in order to keep harmony, don’t they? At the moment, I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, it just is. And right now, I don’t have the energy to be a feminist. I’m having enough trouble dealing with being a woman.
I give up on the book, stick it back in my purse. The Asian woman gets off at Central Park West; I settle in for the short ride through the Park, as I mentally settle in for the next phase of my life. Tomorrow, I go back to work. Tomorrow, I resume my normal, predictable, pre-Greg life. Selecting wall colors, I can handle. Sketching window treatments, I can handle. Charming the pants off a new client, I can handle. Granted, I’m not exactly eagerly anticipating the idea of facing Brice Fanning—my egomaniacal boss of the past seven years—and his inevitable snideties, but at least my work is one area of my life I can count on. I bring in a helluva lot of business, so we both know I’m not going to leave, and he’s not going to get rid of me. So. My plan is to reimmerse myself in my work, which, if not exactly exciting, is at least fulfilling and stimulating. Or at least it was.
And will be again, I vow as another layer of tension shucks off. After all, what’s the point of missing what I’ve never had, right? What do I know about being married anyway? Let alone about living in Westchester? I’m not only used to being single, I think I’m pretty damn good at it.
As of this moment (she says without the slightest shame whatsoever) I’m burrowing so far into my comfort zone, nothing on God’s earth is going to blast me out of it.
Not even the memory of a brief, hopeful smile beneath discouraged eyes.
Five
So here I am the next morning, clicking smartly down 78th Street in my tobacco-colored linen sheath (short enough to be chic but not slutty) and my new Anne Klein pumps, my fave Hermes scarf billowing softly in the breeze, when I notice a small herd of police cars clogging the street about a half block away. Which would, coincidentally, place them just outside the building where the offices for Fanning Interiors, Ltd., reside. It is not, however, until I notice the trembling band of yellow police tape stretched from one side of the entrance, around the No Parking sign out by the curb, on around the Clean Up After Your Dog sign, then back to the other side of the steps that I get that awful, knotty feeling in the pit of the my stomach that this does not bode well for my immediate future.
Still, I’m doing okay until I see the chalk outline on the sidewalk. Somebody screams—me, as it turns out—which garners the attention of at least three of the cops and one sanitation engineer across the street. Okay, so maybe my reaction is a bit over the top, but just because I live in Manhattan doesn’t mean I stumble across body outlines on anything resembling a regular basis. Besides, I haven’t had my latte yet. Not to mention that it’s barely eight-thirty and the temperature/humidity index is roughly equivalent to that on Mars. And I was already in a bad mood because my hair looks like Great-Aunt Teresa’s wig, which, trust me, is not a good thing.
“Jesus, Ginger,” I hear a foot away, which makes me scream again. I pivot, my purse smacking into some gawker who is dumb enough to come up behind a hysterical woman, to see Nick Wojowodski frowning at me. “What the hell are you doing here?”
His rough voice, the creases pinching his mouth, give me a pretty good idea he’s not having a wonderful morning, either. My shaking hand clamped around my still-lidded latte, I stare at him, but all I can think of is that outline. And the dark red stain I saw ooching out from it. I shudder, then say, “I work over there.”
“Oh,” he says, a world of meaning crammed into two letters. By now, onlookers are beginning to clot around us, including a couple of the other designers, the receptionist, the lady who does most of our window treatments.
“Would everybody who works here please go check in with Officer Ruiz?” Nick says, his baritone piercing the burr of voices beginning to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. I hear a gasp or two, but more out of surprise than actual shock. Or dismay. I don’t hear what Nick says next, or what anybody else says, either, because my stomach has just dropped into my crotch and I’m thinking that shape of the outline was suspiciously…familiar. Like it might have belonged to a shortish, balding gay man of about sixty or so who took great pleasure in regularly making my life a living hell. Next thing I know, Nick is hauling me off to one side, encouraging me to take