Dream Girl(11)

“I don’t know anything about this, Margot. Sorry. A waste of a trip for you, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, it’s such an easy trip,” she says. “I took the Acela, not even three hours, although the cab ride here—well, the cab was very dingy. Besides, I thought you could use some hel—”

“No,” he says. Then, in a gentler tone: “I have Victoria during the day, a nurse at night. There’s no need—and no space.”

“But the place is huge,” she says, twirling around, then heading for the floating staircase that was his undoing.

“No,” he says again, his voice stern enough to arrest her stride. “There are only two rooms, my office, and a study, and the night nurse uses that. As for my bedroom—” His mind casts about for something, anything, that will keep Margot out of the master bedroom suite. “It’s being treated for bedbugs.”

It is the perfect thing to say. Margot not only retreats from the stairs, she grabs her coat from the sofa and puts it on, as if it will protect her.

“That’s why I’m up here,” he says, pleased by his own inventiveness. It’s the closest thing to writing fiction he has done in months. “Eventually they’ll have to fumigate. But for now, they’ve managed to contain the damage to my room. They took out the old stuff, of course, but they’re in there, just waiting. The nurse went in the other evening to get my favorite pair of reading glasses from the nightstand and when she came out, her ankles and wrists were circled with bites.”

Margot buttons her coat to the top. Has she had work done on her neck? It’s impossibly smooth.

“Maybe I should stay nearby,” she begins.

“There is no nearby,” he says, hoping she can’t see the Four Seasons on the other side of the harbor.

“That thing people do now, the Air thingy.”

“They don’t have that in Baltimore,” he says. “At least not around here.”

“I have to have somewhere to spend the night.”

“There’s an Acela every hour until nine,” he says. “Buses go later still.”

“You won’t believe the meal I had,” she says. “Or the wine. Worse than an airplane. But the meal—it was the stingiest little cheese plate, I couldn’t believe it.”

“Well, it’s really just a snack bar,” he says.

“No, I mean the meal they serve at your seat.”

So she had booked a first-class ticket, which meant she paid $150 extra for a mediocre meal and an assigned seat. How very Margot. He wonders who paid for her ticket. For all he knows, she has written his credit card information down somewhere and still uses it for purchases. He will have to check the statement.

Victoria returns, her arms laden with groceries and mail. She is clearly puzzled by Margot’s presence and her quizzical look reminds Gerry that Margot seems out of place in any remotely normal setting. At black-tie parties, art galleries, in first-class airline lounges, Margot fits in. But not in Baltimore, not in Gerry’s apartment.

“This is—” He pauses, not wanting to describe Margot as a friend, which she isn’t, and it seems rude to describe someone as a former anything.

“Margot Chasseur,” she says, reaching for Victoria’s hand with her long, bony arm. But Victoria’s hands are not available. She hugs the grocery bag more tightly to her chest. Victoria is quite slender, but Margot, despite her fashion-model height, has a way of making everyone else seem large and awkward. Gerry used to like that. He had felt very heroic next to her, a man capable of caring for a sought-after woman, and not just financially. Only the best men could afford a Margot.

“’Lo,” Victoria says, a sullen teen meeting her father’s new girlfriend.

“Victoria, can you run Margot up to Penn Station when you leave tonight? She’s taking the train back to New York.”

“I don’t have to go tonight—” Margot tries to interject.

“She was kind enough to come and check on me,” Gerry says, knowing that the only thing to do with Margot is to keep talking, insistent on one’s version of things. It’s what she does, after all. “But, obviously, she can’t stay here—the bedbug problem in the bedroom—and there’s no place in Baltimore that’s really appropriate.”

Victoria nods. She’s a quick one.

“I just need a corner,” Margot says. “I barely take up any room. The sofa looks marvelously comfortable—”

“If you leave now, she can make the four thirty,” Gerry continues. “Put the ticket on my American Express, then head home, as your day will be nearly done.”

“I don’t want to be a bother—”

“Not a bother at all.”

“Perhaps we could have dinner first, and I could take a later—”

“Dinner’s sorted and I’m afraid I have Victoria buy things in very small portions, as I hate to be wasteful.”

Margot gives up. For now. She will be back if she doesn’t find a man soon. Gerry’s going to ask Thiru to take her to lunch. He will tell Thiru that it’s a favor to him, that Margot has spoken often of writing a memoir. (She has, but all she has are the usual party-girl memories of the 1990s, already done, and done better than she ever could. Also, Gerry would inevitably figure large in anything Margot might write, and Gerry does not need that.)