The Drifter(71)
Betsy had offered her their air mattress for a few nights on their living room floor, though she knew Caroline wouldn’t take it, and rattled off some restaurant ideas and tourist alternatives in her usual way, determined to prove that she knew the real New York to anyone who might question her place there. She’d suggested meeting for lunch. She could show her around SoHo, maybe go vintage shopping in the East Village, come back to their apartment for a glass of wine (hence the grout excavation).
Betsy kept her phone on her desk all day as she waited for Caroline’s call. When she didn’t hear from her by seven, Betsy went home, rummaged through the medicine cabinet for something stronger than Pamprin, but came up empty-handed. Then she ordered in Thai food and put on her warmest socks. The phone didn’t ring until 4:00 Saturday afternoon, more than twenty-four hours after Caroline’s arrival, when she called her from a bar. She was there with the Brit and some of his banker friends. It was the first time they’d spoken live without the filter of voice mail.
“Hey, Bets, it’s Caroline.”
“Hey, what’s up? Where are you?” Betsy noted the slightly scolding tone in her voice and vowed to keep it in check. She could have come to town and not called her, she reminded herself. At least Caroline made a small effort.
“We’re at some bar. It’s so fucking cold I can’t stay outside for more than thirty seconds at a time. But listen, I’m going back to the hotel for a shower and a disco nap. Can you and Gavin meet us for dinner?”
Gavin was standing near her in the kitchen and could hear Caroline shouting into the phone, and was shaking his head violently and mouthing, “No, no, no.” He wanted to avoid the drama, and he’d convinced Betsy that she needed to see Caroline alone, without a bodyguard.
“Uh, no, Gavin can’t make it. But I’ll be there.”
Betsy agreed to meet her at Union Square Cafe for dinner at 9:00. It was a freezing night but she decided to walk, thinking the sharp air would help her focus and calm her nerves. At the restaurant, she found Caroline at a long table in the back, wearing a dress far too short and spangly that hung loosely on her now bony frame, surrounded by men in sports coats and Brioni shirts with their own impossibly thin dates. Caroline’s once-thick shoulder-length blonde hair now looked more fragile, verging on white at the ends. Wrinkles were starting to grab at the corners of her eyes even when her smile faded. She had the tan skin of an avid runner in the Sunbelt that looked bizarre in this dark, wintry city, even in dim restaurant light. Betsy waved hello—Caroline was never a hugger—instantly regretting that she’d agreed to see her old, it would be fair to say former, friend in a group situation like this. Caroline waved and extended her index finger, as if to say “Just a minute,” and Betsy nodded. It had been seven years. What difference would a minute make? She took a chair at the end of the table between Caroline’s friend and a slightly bloated guy named Damien who had two full bottles of Heineken perched next to his untouched rib eye on the starched white tablecloth.
“Simon,” said Caroline, grabbing the arm of an only slightly less bloated but much redder in the face man, “This is my long-lost friend, Elizabeth, the one I’ve been telling you about.” She looked at Betsy with a raised eyebrow.
“It’s Betsy, actually,” she said. Caroline rolled her eyes and mouthed “What the fuck?” before she turned to the man on her left, who was in the middle of what he thought was a hilarious story about a mortgage mix-up at work, and didn’t bother to pause for an introduction.
“I’m sorry?” Simon shouted over the din at the table, pulling a Marlboro out of the pack and placing it between his lips.
“BETSY. MY NAME. I’M ELIZABETH AT WORK, BUT MY FRIENDS CALL ME BETSY.”
Or they would, if I had any friends outside of work.
“Oh, right, right. She told me that, too. Do you smoke, Betsy?”
The answer was no, not anymore, but she took one anyway. Outside on the inch-thick ice covering the sidewalk, they chatted for a while about how awful American cigarettes were and how tiny the hotel rooms were in Manhattan. Simon was staying at the Morgan, where the rooms were dark, ghastly, really, but the bar was open til 4:00 a.m. Simon had his priorities. Halfway through their cigarettes, Caroline, who put all of her weight behind the colossal wooden door and just barely budged it open enough for her to slip through, came teetering out, unsteady in stilettos and shivering in a borrowed wool coat. Betsy took a drag of the cigarette with her left, gloveless hand.
“There y’all are,” Caroline said. Her eyes darted immediately to Betsy’s ring. Her ‘y’all’ had always been reserved for special occasions, and apparently this was one of them. She linked her arms around fat Simon’s waist for warmth. “I had a feeling I’d find you here.”
Was this man she was hanging on, deferring to in a way that was so unlike Caroline that she hardly recognized her, really a complete stranger? A client who paid her 15 percent commission?
“Hey, Nanook of the North,” she said, eyeing Betsy’s Army/Navy store peacoat and extra-thick black tights. “Aren’t you bundled up like an Eskimo tonight? I bet you can still feel your toes, though! I know I cannot feel mine. Last time I was here was a year ago August. People say Florida is hot, but this place was Hades.”
Betsy understood this as the dig Caroline intended. She had been in New York and not bothered to call. Betsy’s next move had to be defensive, retaliatory.