If I Forget You(54)

“Show us what you have,” the bearded one says.

Margot opens the portfolio in front of them. She slowly goes through it.

Blocky Glasses says, “It’s very interesting what you are doing. All this play. The way you use light. Let me ask you something. You ever think of taking it off the wall?”

Margot feels like she should know what this means, but she doesn’t. “I’m sorry?”

“You know, an installation. Greater dimensionality. Perhaps even something time based. Painting is so … well, you know.”

“Yes,” she says, though she has no idea.

It is at her third critique, this time in front of a woman with long gray hair from a school in Vermont, that she finally feels comfortable.

“Oh, I like what you are doing,” the woman says.

“Really?”

“Yes. There is such intentionality here. And confidence. You can just see it in the brushstrokes. Would you describe yourself as methodical?”

Margot nods. “I think so.”

“I want to see what you do when you let go,” the woman tells her. “The talent is obvious. But the work feels constrained to me. If you were to work with me, I would want you to reach deeper, and I think there is the potential for real power.”

An hour later, Margot walks out into the bright sunshine. It is indescribable how she feels, like layers of an onion have been peeled away from her and she is both suddenly raw and very much alive. She wants a drink. This has been a triumph in her opinion, a significant one, and she wants to share it with someone.

Henry, she thinks, I need to see Henry. And she stops on the street then and Googles him with her phone, looking for where his office might be, for could he be there? She is already at NYU.

And then she is walking several blocks to Green Street, and the miracle that is the phone tells her exactly where to go, and soon she is right in front of the town house that houses NYU’s creative writing program. Inside the doorway, there is a directory, and she sees that his office is on the second floor. The place seems mostly empty, apart from a few voices she can hear somewhere on the first floor, and Margot bounds up the carpeted stairs.

She is in a narrow hallway that curves around to the right and she follows it, and the third door is marked HENRY GOLD. The door is closed and the white erasable board on it contains a note in Henry’s handwriting: I might or might not be back.

“Are you looking for Henry?” a voice says suddenly, and Margot turns and sees a slender black man with big red glasses on.

“Yes,” Margot says.

The man looks her quickly up and down. “Are you a friend?”

“Yes,” Margot says, and she doesn’t like this question, as if he knows something terrible and is about to tell her. Henry’s note has unnerved her, though it could be entirely innocent, couldn’t it? The kind of thing Henry would write as a joke?

“Oh,” the man says, looking over at the note. “He hasn’t come here in weeks. I was thinking of trying Ruth, his ex-wife, later to see if she had heard from him. I was starting to get worried. It’s not like him. I mean, he disappears up to Vermont, but he always tells us. Were you supposed to meet him here?”

“No,” says Margot. “He wasn’t … He wasn’t expecting me. I hope he’s okay.”

“I’m sure he is,” the man says.

“Okay,” Margot says, and then adds, “Thank you.”

Back out in the sunshine, Margot is in a panic. She looks up the narrow street for a moment and tries to collect herself. Where is the best place to get a cab uptown? Before she can think, she is running toward Houston Street, and when she reaches a corner, a yellow cab streams by and she raises her hand. And, thank God, he stops.

“Ninety-second and West End,” she says. “And hurry. Please.”

“West Side Highway?” the man asks.

“Yes,” Margot says. “Please.”

They go down a maze of side streets, and at one point the car has to stop dead because a truck in front of them is being unloaded and is blocking the entire street. Morbid images enter her mind: Henry all alone. Henry taking a handful of pills and swallowing them with a stiff drink, Henry doing the unthinkable, the poet choosing to leave this world dramatically. She thinks she might be sick.

Then they are moving again, and once they hit the highway, it is wide open at midday and they are speeding, with the Hudson on her left, past the giant aircraft carrier, and she catches glimpses of midtown through the cross streets, and then they are turning onto Ninety-second, and she thrusts a ten and a twenty at the driver when he pulls over, and he says, “Need change?” but Margot is already out the door.

Margot runs up the sidewalk, and right before she reaches Henry’s building, she sees a man coming out of it and she says, “Wait,” and he stops and looks at her, this middle-aged woman running madly at him.

He is around her age, tall, wearing a suit, his hair full and silver. “You okay?” he asks.

“Can you let me in the building?” Margot says breathlessly. “I’m worried about my friend.”

“Who’s your friend?”

“Henry Gold.”

“I know Henry. The teacher.”

“Is he okay?”

“I think so. I don’t know. Haven’t seen him, to tell you the truth.”