Buch lesen: «The Wicked City»

New York City, 1998

ELLA VISITED the laundry room for the first time at half past six on a Saturday morning at the beginning of March. Not that the timing really mattered, she decided later, when her life had taken on its new, extraordinary dimensions and she’d begun to consider the uncanny moment of that beginning. Certain things—let’s call them that, certain things—had a way of tracking you down and finding you, even when you thought you were just going to wash some clothes in a Greenwich Village basement.

She’d moved into the building a week ago, and the hamper in the corner of the bathroom seemed pitifully empty without all the bulk of Patrick’s things. Still, it was time. Standards must be upheld. You couldn’t keep laundry in a hamper for more than a week, whatever catastrophe had interrupted your life. Too seedy. Too regressive. Anyway, Ella’s mother was bound to call her up soon for the morning welfare check, and she would surely ask whether Ella had done her laundry yet, and Ella wanted to be able to say yes without lying. (Woman could smoke out a lie like a pair of shoes on sale at Bergdorf’s.)

She’d already gone out for a run in the damp charcoal streets, but she hadn’t showered yet. (Terrific thing about insomnia: you could do things like go running and do your laundry without having to confront your fellow tenants in a state of squalor.) As she descended the cold stairwell to the basement, she realized that its strange odor was actually the fug of her own sweat—salt and skin, not yet turning to stink. Her hair, badly in need of washing, whirled in a greasy knot at the back of her head, held from collapse by a denim scrunchie that had not been fashionable even during the heyday of scrunchies. Loose gray sweatpants, looser gray T-shirt emblazoned with her college logo—she’d peeled off her running clothes to fill out the wash load—and on her feet, the shearling L.L.Bean slippers Patrick always hated, because they were crummy and smelled like camping. Teeth furry. No bra.

She remembered all these details because of what occurred inside that laundry room the first time she entered. Six thirty in the morning, the first Saturday of March.

A STARTER MARRIAGE, HER MOTHER called it. Ella had never heard the term before.

“There was an article in the Style section just a month or two ago,” Mumma said. “It made me think of you.”

“But we only split up the week before last,” Ella said, staring at the cluster of U-Haul boxes in the center of her new bedroom.

“I never trusted him.”

“You could have fooled me.”

Mumma leaned back against a stack of towels and made one of those gestures with her right hand, like she was flicking out ash from a cigarette that no longer existed. An amputee with a phantom limb. “Oh, I liked him well enough. What wasn’t to like? I just didn’t trust him.”

“I didn’t realize there was a difference.”

“Well, there is. Anyway, it seems the term was coined by a fellow named Douglas … Douglas something-or-other, in some sort of novel he wrote about your generation.”

“Douglas Coupland?”

“Yes! Coupland. Douglas Coupland. Have you read it?”

“Generation X? Or else Shampoo Planet.”

“No, the first one.”

“Read them both in grad school. But I don’t remember anything about starter marriages.”

“It was in a footnote, apparently. I expect you missed it. You’re all in such a rush, your generation. You miss the details.”

“I might have read it and just forgotten.”

“You should take your time. The footnotes are the best part.”

Ella rose from the bed and picked up the X-Acto knife from the clutter on her chest of drawers. Her mother had a way of saying everything like a double entendre. The suggestive throatiness of the take your time. And footnotes. What were footnotes, in her mother’s secret vocabulary? Better not to know. For one thing, there was Daddy. “Starter marriage, Mumma? You were saying?”

“A first marriage, made for the wrong reasons, or because you didn’t have enough experience to judge the merchandise. Like a starter home or a starter car. You trade up.”

“You and Daddy didn’t have to trade up.”

“We were lucky. I was lucky. The point is, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. As long as you haven’t got kids, you just move on. Move on, move up.”

The X-Acto knife had one of those retractable blades, and Ella couldn’t seem to make it work. The edge came out halfway and stuck. “Look, could we not talk about moving on for another week or so? I haven’t even talked to a lawyer yet.”

“Why not? I gave you the number.”

“And the fact that you have a divorce lawyer on speed dial kind of stresses me out, by the way.”

“He’s not on speed dial, and he’s not a divorce lawyer. He’s a colleague of your father’s. He can give you advice, that’s all.” Ella’s mother uncrossed her legs and rose from the bed so gracefully, she might have been Odette. Or Odile. “God knows you won’t take it from me.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it? What about your wedding dress?”

“That was four years ago!”

“And was I right?”

Ella banged the bottom of the X-Acto knife on the toaster oven. “You were right about the dress. But you might have warned me about the groom.”

“Oh, darling.” Mumma plucked the knife from her fingers, flicked out the blade with a single nudge of her thumb, and sliced delicately along the seam of a box labeled SWEATERS, CASHMERE. “You wouldn’t have listened to that, either. You were in love.”

IN LOVE. ELLA COULD STILL remember what it felt like, falling in love. Being in love. She remembered it as a certain moment, the first really warm day of that year, a month or two after she met Patrick, when he was away on a business trip in Europe and she was alone for the first Saturday in weeks. She’d put on her favorite cotton sundress, which had lain squashed in her drawer since October and reminded her instantly of Granny’s house on Cumberland Island. The smell of summer. She’d gone outside into the innocent sunshine, bought an iced coffee, and walked by herself in Central Park, entering near the Museum of Natural History and making her way southeast, without any particular goal. As she strolled past the entwined couples drowsing in the Sheep Meadow, she’d gazed at them, for the first time, in benevolence instead of envy. She’d thought—actually spoke inside in her head, in conscious words that she still recalled exactly—I’m so happy, it’s the end of May and I’m in love, and the whole summer lies before us. An immaculate joy had quickened her feet along the asphalt paths, the conviction that the world was beautiful (she’d even sung, under her breath, a few bars of that song—And I think to myself, what a wonderful world—to which she ended up dancing with her father at her wedding, two years later) and that the rest of her life was just falling into its ordained pattern before her. The life she was meant to live, unfolding itself at last. Courtship, marriage, apartment. Exotic, self-indulgent vacations. Then kids, house in Connecticut, school runs and mom coffees. Less exotic, more wholesome vacations. Which shade of white to paint the trim in the dining room. Later that day, she had dinner with her sister and spilled out every detail, every silvery moonbeam over pasta and red wine at Isabella’s. And not once that entire love-struck Saturday did she suspect that Patrick was doing anything other than working—working really hard!—throughout his Saturday in Frankfurt. Thinking of her the whole time. Not once did the possibility of disloyalty enter her head. They were in love! Hadn’t he told her so, before he left on Tuesday? In between kisses. Naked in bed. Warm and secure. I’ve finally found you, he said, his actual words, while he held her face in his hands. What could be more certain than that?

Now she had to go back and recall all those old business trips, every late night at work, every client dinner, and wonder which ones he was lying about. A painfully detailed revision of history and memory.

And that was the worst part. Because she could still remember how wonderful it was to be in love with him.

BUT THAT WAS SIX YEARS ago. Now she had this too-light basket of laundry and this dark, chilly stairwell on Christopher Street, painted in gray and moist against her skin. Only blocks away from the sleek SoHo loft conversion she had shared with Patrick, which had its own washer and dryer and required no stair-climbing of any kind, except on the row of StairMasters in the residents’ gym: eternally occupied, unlike the building stairwells, because you weren’t climbing those steps to go anywhere. My God, of course not. Just to stay skinny. (Sorry, to keep fit.)

Of course, in the cold light of reason, Ella should have been the one to kick Patrick out. Damn it. He should have been the one cramming his belongings into a studio apartment in the Village—It’s charming, Mumma said last Sunday, picking her way between the boxes to peer out the window, into the asphalt garden out back—while Ella, crowned by a nimbus of moral superiority, enthroned herself on one of the egg chairs inside the two-thousand-square-foot loft on Prince Street.

He should have been the one bumping a laundry basket into a damp basement in search of a rumored laundry room, while she flicked her sweaty running clothes into the washing machine off the granite kitchen and sipped an espresso from the De’Longhi. (Not that Patrick would ever do his own laundry, even if he knew how; in his bachelor days, he sent it out for wash-and-fold.)

He should have been spending his weekend unpacking boxes and contemplating the miniature kitchen in the corner. The way you had to step around the toilet to exit the shower. The way you had to open said shower door and prop your foot on said toilet in order to shave your legs. (Not that Patrick shaved his legs, either; at least not since his brief but expensive flirtation with a carbon-framed racing bicycle.)

But she’d been too shocked and angry to consider her rights as the Wronged Wife, hadn’t she? No, wait. That wasn’t right, shocked and angry. Not visceral enough. She’d felt as if a loud steam whistle were blowing inside her skull. As if her insides were melting. As if her legs and arms had no nerves. And how could you think straight when your body was in such disarray?

So instead of waiting to confront Patrick, send Patrick to the doghouse as he deserved, she’d fled into the bedroom—trying not to look at the bed itself—and packed a few things into a gym bag and rushed to Aunt Viv and Uncle Paul’s apartment in Gramercy. Stammered an explanation she didn’t fully comprehend herself. Spent the next week in their guest room, searching the classifieds for no-fee apartments and fending off her friends’ sympathy and her parents’ advice. Fending off the manic trill of her cell phone every few hours, which she refused to answer.

And now here she stood, instead of Patrick, in a Christopher Street basement before a metal door labeled laundry, at six thirty in the morning.

Balancing the basket on her hip while she fumbled with the door handle.

Thinking, At least I’ve got the jump on everyone else, washing clothes this early on a Manhattan Saturday morning. The one time when the damn city actually does sleep.

But as the door cracked open, and Ella stuck in her shameful shearling-lined foot to push it out the rest of the way, a wondrous and unexpected noise met her ears.

The sound of four industrial washing machines and two industrial dryers, all churning in furious, metallic frenzy.

NOT ONLY THAT. EACH MACHINE bore a basket of laundry on top, claiming dibs, waiting to pounce at the end of the cycle. Ella’s eyes found the clock on the wall, just to make sure that she hadn’t somehow missed daylight savings time.

Nope. Six thirty-four.

She let the basket slide down to the concrete floor. Put her hands on her hips. “What the hell?” she wailed. “Who are you people?”

“Oh, hello,” said a male voice behind her, appallingly sunny. “You must be the new one.”

Ella turned so quickly, she kicked over the basket. Jogbra spilled out. Sweaty running shirt. Seven days’ worth of lace panties in various rainbow hues. (Patrick scorned boring underwear.) She bent down and scooped desperately. “Yes, I am. Four D. Moved in last weekend.”

A pair of legs strolled into view, clad in blue jeans and a battered pair of nylon Jesus sandals. “Geez, I’m sorry! Didn’t mean to startle you. Let me—”

“No! I’ve got it.” Ella scooped the last article back in the basket. Tried to find something innocuous to go on top. Something without lace. Something that wasn’t hot pink. Something that didn’t smell. She straightened at last and looked up. “I just wasn’t expecting … wasn’t expecting …”

The man laughed at her dangling sentence, as if he had no idea what had scattered her train of thought, no idea at all that he was young and dark-haired and wore a force field of tousled happiness that fried away the dampness in the basement air. “Not expecting all the washing machines full at this hour of the morning? Sorry about that, too. Just one of the quirks about life inside Eleven Christopher. I’m Hector, by the way. Top floor.” He held out his hand.

Ella transferred the basket to her opposite hip and grasped his palm. Firm, steady, brief. “Hector?” she said.

“My mom’s a classics professor. Was.”

“She’s retired?”

“No. Died a few years ago. Breast cancer.”

“Oh, my God! I’m so sorry.”

“Me too.” He turned away and moved to the second washing machine, which had just finished a thunderous spin cycle and now sat in stupor. “Tell you what. Special deal for the newbie. You jump the queue and take over my machine, and I didn’t see a thing.”

“That would be so unscrupulous. What if I get caught?”

Hector tossed her a luminous grin. “In that case, I guess I’d just take the blame. Pull rank. I have seniority around here. Well, except Mrs. McDonald on the ground floor. She’s been here since the Second World War. Gets an automatic laundry pass.”

“Sounds like you all know each other.”

“We are kind of a tight crew, you might say.” He moved away with his basket of wet clothes. “All yours, Four D.”

“Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.”

“So, that was your cue, by the way.”

“My cue?”

“You’re supposed to tell me your name. Unless it really is Four D.”

“Oh! Sorry. I’m a little slow on weekends. It’s Ella? Ella Gilbert.”

“Nice to meet you, Ella Gilbert. Welcome to the neighborhood.” He set his palms on the edge of the folding table along the opposite wall and hoisted himself up. “Don’t mind me. Just waiting for that dryer to finish up.”

Ella looked at the two machines, clunking in hypnotic circles.

“So what if the owner doesn’t turn up in time? Is there a protocol?”

“Oh, you know. We just take the load out and fold it.”

“No, seriously.”

“Seriously.”

“We, as in the other tenants? You fold each other’s laundry around here?”

“Like I said. Tight crew.”

“I guess so.”

“Once you get to know everyone, I mean.”

To this, Ella made a noncommittal hunh—get to know everyone? What was this, college?—and studied the instructions on the lid of the washer. Realized she was supposed to add the soap first. Started to unload.

“What’s up? Something wrong with the washer?” Hector asked.

“Nothing, just … I guess you add the soap first on this model.”

“Ella, I hate to have to break this to you, but it really doesn’t matter. Soap first or soap after. Unless there’s a soap drawer, I guess, which there isn’t. Pretty basic machine.”

Ella stopped with her hand on a T-shirt. “But it says—”

“So break the rules. It’s okay. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“I don’t know. The whole laundry room floods with soap?”

Hector laughs. “You are awesome, you know that? Go ahead. I dare you. Be bad.”

Ella overturned the basket into the drum, added half a cup of liquid Tide, and slammed the lid. “There. Are you happy?”

“I am. Felt good, didn’t it?”

“Maybe.” She turned and leaned her bottom against the washer, an act of supreme courage because it brought her back in direct communion with Hector’s face, which had the kind of fresh, animal beauty that made your eyes sting. She’d forgotten what that was like, instant attraction. Not that she hadn’t encountered beautiful men since meeting Patrick; this was New York, after all, colonized by the beautiful, the brilliant, the rich. Sometimes all three in one hazardous, electromagnetic package. But falling in love with Patrick had somehow, blessedly, immunized her against fascination for somebody else. She could appreciate a man’s gleaming charisma—she could say to herself, Well, that’s certainly a good-looking guy, nice style, great sense of humor—without feeling any meaningful desire to have sex with him, even in the abstract, even in fantasy. So it was strange and shameful and utterly unsettling that when she tried to meet Hector’s lupine gaze, she felt her skin heating up and her mind grasping for wit. Like some membrane had dissolved in her sensible, grown-up, married brain, unleashing an adolescent miasma. Wanting to say something sensible and thinking, Your eyes are the color of cappuccino, can I drink you?

“My mom was a rule-follower, too,” Hector said. “It’s okay. I get it. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I’m not ashamed. You guys seriously fold each other’s laundry?”

“Sure. I mean, when we have to. Not just because. That would be weird.”

“What about—well, you know—”

He grinned again. “Unmentionables? If you feel that strongly, Queen Victoria, you can always take them up to your room and dry them on a chair arm. Me, I’ve got nothing to hide. Just tighty whities. Pretty boring stuff.”

“You do realize we’re in New York City, right? A rental building? We’re not even supposed to make eye contact in the hallway.”

Hector shrugged. He wore a fine-gauge V-neck sweater, charcoal gray, cashmere or merino, a bit shabby, exposing a triangle of white T-shirt at the neck. The sleeves were pushed halfway up his forearms. The blue jeans were likewise worn, but to an honest fade: not the awkward, fake threads of a pre-shredded pair. He had enviable olive skin, and maybe that was the key to his strange luminosity—this smooth, golden sheath of his that didn’t show a single line, not even in the fluorescent basement lighting. Just a shadow of stubble on his jaw. Because of course he rolled out of bed like that. Stretched, shook himself. Probably drank a shot of wheatgrass and did fifty naked pushups. “Just the way we operate around here,” he said. “Band of brothers. And sisters.”

“But folding laundry. Really? That’s—I don’t know, it’s so personal.”

“It’s just laundry. And we are kind of personal around here. Anyway, you can’t just dump your buddy’s clothes in a pile and leave the scene. That would be wrong.”

“Why wrong?”

“Do unto others, Ella. Who wants wrinkled T-shirts?”

“Then just do your laundry some other time. After work. What’s with everyone jamming up the laundry room at dawn on a Saturday? I feel like I’ve walked into some kind of cuckoo commune.”

“It’s not that bad, I swear.”

“Yeah, it is. It’s totally a commune. And I’ll bet you’re the mayor.”

“I don’t think communes have mayors, do they? I mean, by definition?”

“You’re dodging the question.”

“Sorry.” He hung his head a little. “Like I said, I have seniority, that’s all.”

“Seniority? You?”

He ran a hand through his hair, which was shaggy and dark and thick, contributing hugely to Ella’s overall impression of Hector as a handsome, unkempt wolfhound. “Is it that bad? I guess I should clean up my act a little more. That’s what happens when you don’t spend all day working for the Man.”

Ella threw up her hands. “Fine. Don’t tell me anything. I’ll just have to figure out all the house rules on my own. Or do my laundry on Monday nights after work.”

“Actually, no. You don’t want to do that. Nights are bad.”

“Bad? Bad how?”

Across the room, the first dryer switched off and let out a series of frantic beeps. Hector jumped from the table. “Oops! That’s me.”

“Should I give you a hand?”

“Naw, I’ve got it.”

“Are you sure? I’m feeling a disturbing need to contribute somehow.”

“Ah, see? Drinking the Kool-Aid already.”

Drinking something, that’s for sure, Ella thought. Realized—the horror!—she was staring at Hector’s backside as he bent to remove the clothes from the dryer. Like a teenager. And then she remembered, like an electric shock, Jesus, I’m married! The way she would sometimes have nightmares, early in her marriage, in which she was in bed with some faceless man, nobody in particular, having sex, and realized halfway through that she had a husband and she was cheating on him, and she would startle awake and stare, heart thumping, at Patrick’s sleeping shoulder and feel such a drenching, horrified guilt that she actually cried. As if she had genuinely, consciously, in real life committed the crime of adultery.

Except this wasn’t a dream. Hector was real. Hector and his pert backside, his unemployed, slacker hotness, stood a few yards away, had a name and a face, and now, in this altered landscape of her life, unexpected and unsought, she had no nearby husband to immunize her. No one to keep her safe from the wolfhounds of New York City.

She turned swiftly for the door. “Guess I’ll be going, then!”

“Wait! Hold on a second.”

Unless he wasn’t real. Unless he was an actor or something, installed here as an instance of charity, or maybe a test. Or occupational therapy. She wouldn’t put that kind of trick past her mother. She wouldn’t put anything at all past her sister, even though Joanie was supposed to be studying in Paris right now.

He certainly looked like an actor. If this happened in a movie—vigorous, raven-locked guy prowls into post-breakup laundry room and purrs all the right things—you would roll your eyes and say, Nice try. Or you would think it was some kind of porn.

“I can’t,” she said over her shoulder.

“Please?”

Ella paused, hand on knob. “You’re a big boy. Don’t beg.”

“Not begging. Just polite, like my mama taught me. So do you have a minute?”

“Not really. I’ve got a lot of unpacking to do.”

“Wow. The brush-off. Was it something I said?”

“No, I’m sorry—”

“Don’t say sorry. If I accidentally shot off some kind of sexist bullshit, just call me on it, okay? My bad.”

“No! It’s not that. I just—” I’m married, she finished in her head. Wronged, scorned, cheated upon, humiliated, separated: all those things. But also, technically, married. And I don’t know if you’re hitting on me or not. It’s only been five minutes. But I think I might have been hitting on you. Was I? And if I was, is that morally wrong or just really, really stupid? Or something else, something that would take a therapist to explain properly and at great length and expense.

“I mean, I don’t want to hold you up or anything. Just tell you about a few things. Rules of the road. In case I don’t see you around, over the next few days. And you end up bringing your laundry down here at night.”

“What do you mean? Are there rats or something?”

“Um, no. Not rats. I mean, there might be rats. Who knows? But probably not. No droppings or whatever.” Hector’s voice had turned a little uncertain, or maybe apologetic was a better word, and the change was so interesting that Ella now swiveled to face him. In doing so, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror that hung, inexplicably, above the folding table on which Hector’s problematic backside had recently been resting. The greasy hair. The flushed, bare face. The baggy T-shirt.

Jesus Christ, Ella, you fucking idiot. (She never swore aloud, but her inner monologue could flame along like a Tarantino movie, when she was angry enough.) What the hell were you thinking? Of course he’s not hitting on you. Unless someone’s paying him to do it. Unless he pities you.

She smiled gently. “You know what? I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to be rude. Just got a lot on my mind, that’s all.”

“No hard feelings. Moving’s stressful. Right up there with death and divorce, they say. I just wanted to say that it’s not Kool-Aid.”

“Sorry? What’s not Kool-Aid?”

“The whole thing.” He slammed the dryer door on his load of wet laundry and straightened. Turned to her. Folded his arms across his lean chest. He had a loping, tensile shape to him, in keeping with the wolfhound aspect. Patrick was more muscular, gym honed, though not quite as tall. “The Eleven Christopher thing. It’s not rats, either. It’s the speakeasy.”

“The speakeasy? You mean like a bar?”

“Like a bar, sure.” He pulled apart his arms and pointed his thumb to the wall, the one with the table and the mirror. Cinder blocks covered in gray paint. “Right there, in the basement. The other side of that wall. Starts up at night. You can hear the music and the voices. People laughing and having a good time. Sometimes you can actually feel the walls vibrate, you know, from the dancing and all that. And sometimes other stuff.”