Ghosts of Manhattan: A Novel(56)

I knock as loud as I can without hurting the door or myself. I finish a second assault and hear the door latch turn. The door opens only a quarter of the way and Sybil fills up the available space.

“Nick?”

Damn. I hadn’t thought about this. Kids could be here too. I’ll just tell her I need to speak with Oliver privately and we’ll find some room. “Hi, Sybil.”

She firms up her position and her arm tenses behind the door, giving the sense that she would like to close it. She’s backlit by a huge chandelier and it makes her skin look cold and out of focus. There’s an opalescent sheen to her like a Renoir bather. “What can I do for you?”

“I’d like to speak with Oliver for a minute.”

“He’s not here.”

Son of a bitch. She reflexively leans back a bit to get out of the way of the door she’d like to slam. She seems to be operating on instinct and her instinct is screaming that I’m not a friend to her.

The phone starts to ring and she looks behind her, torn. I guess it’s the doorman sounding the alarm. Her manners prevail over instincts. “One moment, Nick. Come in.”

I step into a small foyer that opens to a huge living room lit by the chandelier. There’s a hallway to the left that looks like it leads to bedrooms and one to the right leading to the kitchen. I don’t see any kids.

She picks up a phone from a writing table in the living room. It’s one of those new phones meant to look old, made of brass and porcelain with a fancy cradle so the phone hangs vertically. “Hello . . . Yes, he’s here . . . Yes, fine . . . Thank you, Sam.” She cradles the phone.

“Is Oliver out of town?”

“He is.” I’m certain she knows exactly as much as I know, which is an incomplete and unhealthy amount, but she’s chosen defiance over sharing sympathies. She’s lumped me into the enemy camp and I have the urge to break her veneer and see her whimper through a confession.

“Business or pleasure?” I try to make it sound as customary as exchanging a greeting and that I don’t care about an answer.

“He’s golfing. He flew to Palm Beach early this morning to play. He might be back tonight. Probably first thing tomorrow.”

“Avid golfer.”

“At least once a week, year round. In the winter that means more travel.” She catches that this could sound like a complaint, so she brightens her face and rambles on. “He’s at the Everglades Club today, which is a great old course. One of Oliver’s dear friends is a private client money manager in Palm Beach who’s struggled with alcoholism. He moved to Palm Beach after rehabilitation for a quieter life, and Oliver visits him often to support him and help him along.”

This all sounds hollow. She’s trying to make his golfing seem altruistic, but it sounds false and makes me think of potpourri spray over crap. The mix is worse than just the crap. “I just can’t get into golf. It seems like a holdover from nineteen fifties misogyny. Who wants to spend a whole day on a golf course except a person who would rather not be at home?”

Now it’s her turn to brush away a comment. “With Oliver it’s really about helping a friend. They bond over golf and Oliver’s helped him to be two years sober, which he credits almost entirely to Oliver.” I get the sense she badly wants to believe this. She seems like a person acting not in the pursuit of life but in the avoidance of death, a child under a bed hiding from an intruder.

“Rehab is for quitters. I think Keith Richards said that. Genius.” Even I don’t know what I’m talking about now. I’m still pissed but I’ve lost sight of what I can accomplish here. It might be good if Sybil passes on to Oliver that I was here and that I know, but I don’t think she’s able to confront him and she’ll say only that I stopped by to say hi.

She smiles at my comment, willing to pretend that she thinks I was trying to be funny. Is it possible that Oliver is in Florida helping a friend in need and being a good guy? No way. He’s a fraud. He’s a movie set of a western town.

“The Everglades Club is sort of stuck-up, isn’t it?”

“Oh, well, we always have a nice time there. Oliver has made some very nice new friends.”

I know she knows. We each know everything the other knows and I’m sick of this game. “Sometimes people can have more fun with new friends than with old friends. Don’t you think?”

At this point it would be reasonable for her to tell me I’m rude and ask me to leave, but she acts dumb. I’m sure she’d like to kick me out, but she’s not comfortable doing it. I feel a little like a bully, but I’m just trying to shake some sense into her.

“I don’t know. I love new friends and old friends.”

“What about Oliver?”

“What about him?” This isn’t a challenge. It’s asked timidly, hoping I won’t answer in a cruel way.

“Has he found new friends to love?”

“Nick, I don’t know what you’re insinuating, but you sound awful.”

“You don’t know what I’m insinuating. Not at all?”

“I do not.”

I pause and shake my head, piling on as much judgment as I can. “You two have the perfect codependent dysfunction. You pretend to like the same things and dislike the same things and you accept each other’s lies and wear it around thinking nobody’s going to notice. Even worse, you recycle his crap and expect to be congratulated for it. But you know it’s lies, don’t you? He hands it to you and you know it and you don’t care. It’s not real.”