Aftermath of Dreaming(40)

While Tory listened to me, her right forefinger goosed the edge of one of my slides, then she abruptly held out her hand, signaling our time was at an end. “Call Peg,” she said as I stepped down into the real room. “There is much to be done.”

Pushing out the gallery’s door, I noticed “Sexton Space” painted on both sides in small ruby letters, their syllables shouting ownership of the street. I walked to the subway in a daze and waited for the train to take me to work as my Tory experience settled into me and became true, not just a dream. I almost had an urge to tell the people on the platform, shout out my good news—I didn’t care to whom. For a second I considered calling Momma, but figured I should wait until my initial enthusiasm was over so I wouldn’t need any from her, too. Carrie would be thrilled though, and Suzanne. But maybe not. She’d probably find some reason it wasn’t good. And dammit, this meant she’d have to know about Andrew. Well, who cared, look what he had done for me. If that wasn’t an indication of how he felt, what was?

After changing into my uniform at work, I called Andrew at his hotel, but had to leave a message since he wasn’t in. I could hardly wait to tell him.

A few hours later, unable to stand it anymore, I slipped into the phone booth on an alleged restroom run and called Andrew’s hotel again.

“Mr. Madden requested that I find out where you will be tonight, and he wants to know how did it go?” The operator’s voice serving the information was like a tennis ball, impartial to whose point it is, but the only connection the players can have. I felt a sudden affinity toward her, as his messenger.

“Tell him I’m at work until midnight, and it went really, really great.”

When I got home, Andrew’s voice was waiting for me via the small red bleeping light on my answering machine.

“Hi.” Mechanical sounding, but him after all. “This is your uncle Andrew.” That was odd, but sweet somehow. As he took a breath, I imagined his body gradually materializing, each word contributing another layer to his presence there with me. “I’m out tonight, but I’ll call you in the morning, okay, honey? Good. Bye.”

I played it again and again, holding the machine in my lap, as I sat cross-legged on the linoleum floor, the electric cord pulled taut from the wall. I didn’t know what to make of the “uncle” part, though it was sweet the way he’d said it, like a family member who has long been missing and is reconnected by claiming his role.



When we spoke the next morning, Andrew was so thrilled about my Tory interview that he told me to come to the hotel.

“Come around lunchtime—just call before you do. I’ll see you in a little bit, sweet-y-vette.”

Hanging up, I felt as if clouds were under my feet, soft and buoyant and lifting me up.



As Andrew opened his door at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, opened his door to my seeing him again—since I left his bed four days before, left my slides, left his world with mine forever changed—it felt as if we had lived a year together. He was wearing a dark blue T-shirt, jeans, and no shoes, like a comfortably rumpled bed I wanted to crawl into. We stopped in the foyer of his suite, and his body pressed against mine, which was pressed against the wall, and my mouth pressed against his, but for some reason, he wouldn’t allow a proper sexual kiss, so I was quick kissing his neck, cheeks, lips, and ears, while he moved his head whispering near, “You are so f*cking cute; how’d you get so f*cking cute?” over and over, until he took my hand. “Come on, honey.”

I started walking to the bedroom, but he guided me toward the couch.

“I need to finish up a call. Pick out whatever you want.” He pointed at a menu lying on the coffee table. “We’ll order up.”

And go to bed after lunch, I finished for him in my head.

He sat on the couch, reached for the phone, and motioned me to sit next to him.

“Okay.” He returned his attention to the person on the line.

Watching him as he listened, I could sense he was talking to a man.

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Really. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Hmmm.”

I nestled up against the side of his body, his sounds resonating among the many minutes of the other person’s words.

“I don’t agree that that is the way to go.”

Andrew leaned forward, elbows bent and resting on his knees, then he glanced over at me. The menu was still on the table. He looked at it, then back at me with one eyebrow raised, as if I were a nine-year-old refusing to clean my room. I laughed noiselessly, causing a smile of surprise on his face that disappeared when his attention turned back to the phone. I opened the menu, glancing through page after page after page of elaborately explained food. I was so used to ordering the cheapest vegetarian thing that the many options were like picking out candy.

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I would do that.” Andrew appeared to be gathering and accessing information. There was so much space in his power—large open areas for other people to speak in while Andrew’s mind reassembled things, organizing them in ways the speaker couldn’t dream.

So this was how they talked. Men like him in spacious, quiet rooms—their conversations building and edifying so many aspects of so many lives. I imagined them all over Manhattan, points on a grid that extended out to Washington, Chicago, L.A., and beyond. The conversations in my father’s and grandfather’s offices had reached only across the state—their jurisdiction held close by map lines. Or if they did occasionally go beyond, the North was never involved, much less the entire country’s entertainment. Here, in Andrew’s suite, phone conversations impacted far points on the globe.