Lost Along the Way(10)
“My husband is a lawyer, and he assures me that we can,” Mrs. Cooper said.
“Well, my husband was a wealth manager, and clearly he didn’t know what the f*ck he was doing, so I’m sorry, but that means nothing to me. It’s not going to be enough to scare me out of here. Now if you’ll excuse me, my wine is getting warm.” Jane went to close the door, but Mrs. Cooper shoved her flabby, bespeckled arm into the door frame. Jane thought about slamming it on her, but she realized that the last thing she needed was a personal injury lawsuit brought against her by her nosy neighbor and her lawyer husband.
“Jane, it’s time you find somewhere else to go. Just for a while, until things die down. Don’t make us do something we don’t want to do.” Mrs. Cooper quickly removed her arm and clasped her hands demurely in front of her.
“Where would you like me to go?” Jane asked, finally beginning to crack.
“Don’t you have anyone who can help you for a while? Give you a place to stay?”
“I told you I don’t have any friends left in the city,” Jane said. She rubbed the back of her neck; the knots that had been there for much of the last year were hard as rocks. She had no idea how to get rid of them. It wasn’t like she could call a masseuse.
“Well, I don’t know anyone who is that alone in life. If that’s the case then maybe you need to reconsider some of the choices you’ve made.”
“Yeah, tell me something I don’t already know. Thanks for the pep talk.”
“I mean it, Jane. Go somewhere before the board meets tomorrow. Believe it or not, I’m trying to help you.”
“Thanks. As soon as the feds unfreeze my assets, I’ll send you a fruit basket.”
Jane closed the door and leaned against it, rubbing her shoulders as if to keep warm. Her life was not supposed to turn out like this; this was not how things were supposed to go. She was a good person, she had married a good guy, she had finally gotten everything she ever wanted, and none of it was real. Not her friends, not her fortune, not even her boobs. And the truth was, she couldn’t remember the last time she had anything real to lean on.
And then she did.
She didn’t want to go running to her mother or her brother. She felt like she had burdened them enough since this whole thing started, plus the press would be staking out their homes, too, in the hopes of her making an appearance. But she had another option. There were two people on earth who knew her better than anyone else, knew the real Jane, the Jane before the marriage and the news reports and the public embarrassment that followed. Jane’s instinct to seek them out after all this time didn’t really surprise her—it only surprised her that she hadn’t thought of it sooner. She had waited long enough hoping that things would get better, thinking that she could somehow hold herself together without anyone’s help. The truth was, she couldn’t, and the only people she trusted to help her lived less than an hour away.
Jane ran into her bedroom and threw some clothes into an overnight bag. She slugged her wine in four large glugs, grabbed her large sunglasses off her bureau, snatched her purse off the floor, and walked quietly into the hallway. She half ran down the hall and exited into the stairwell, knowing that if there was one thing she could count on, it was that none of her rich neighbors would ever risk scuffing one of their Brian Atwood pumps by hoofing it on stairs when the elevator worked just fine. She descended ten flights to the thirty-first floor, which held the building’s gym and laundry facilities, once again betting correctly that none of her neighbors would ever demean themselves by washing their own underwear or working out in a second-rate gym when personal trainers were available at private fitness centers all over the city. One thing she had learned was that people with money tended to be lazy, and if she wanted to be honest with herself, she’d admit it had made her lazy, too. So lazy she didn’t bother to look at her bank statements, to question withdrawals and transfers and stock sales that didn’t make any sense, or to wonder why the same employees seemed to work at her husband’s bank for the entire time she knew him. No one new joined, and no one retired. She should’ve listened to the little warnings that rattled around her brain before quelling them with bottles of champagne, gold bracelets, and the convenient explanation that the firm must treat its employees really, really well.
But she hadn’t, and now here she was, skulking through service elevators in a pair of Reeboks like a cat burglar in broad daylight. She turned the corner past the laundry room and found the service elevator. She pressed the button and waited, tapping her foot, for the elevator to open. Hector, the maintenance man, smiled when he saw her. Over the months since this nightmare began, the two had become friendly. He allowed her to sneak out this way when she needed to pick up wine after the store stopped delivering, and she repaid the favor by supplying him with cans of beer that he drank on the roof when he needed a break from riding up and down in his movable box all day. She entered the elevator and stood silently as she rode it to the basement level, then exited through a small metal door at the end of yet another hallway into the underground parking garage. She used to have a car there, but that had been repossessed too, so no one ever thought to look for her in the garage. Regardless, she kept her head down as she weaved her way toward the exit, reached the street, and immediately hailed a cab. She smiled to herself for winning a small personal victory: the ass clowns with the cameras were still jamming the sidewalk, annoying Mrs. Cooper, trying to further ruin her life (as if that were possible), and she was nestled in the backseat of a taxi, blissfully speeding away from her Upper West Side prison toward freedom and the Triborough Bridge.