The Dollhouse(56)

By the time she opened her mouth to say something, Esme had opened the phonograph on Candy’s desk. She snapped on the record and dropped the needle.

The sound was soft at first; then Esme turned a dial and their voices rang out in the tiny room.

“Too loud,” warned Darby.

Esme turned it up even louder. “Just listen.”

Esme’s voice was as Darby had always heard it, smoky, strong, and low. As if her throat were made of the finest sandpaper, roughening up her breath as it traveled from her lungs. Darby’s own voice, which she’d always believed to be too reedy, softened the tone. The individual strains melded into one voice, Darby’s harmonies pure and on pitch.

“It’s beautiful.” Darby nodded. “You were right. We’re good together.”

“Because your voice is gorgeous.”

“Thanks.”

Outside, a door slammed. Esme grabbed the record, handed it to Darby, and closed the lid of the phonograph. They huddled by the door, listening for sounds of activity.

“I’ll go first, wait here,” directed Esme. “When I give you the signal, head to your room. I’m on duty, so I’m going straight to the basement.”

Darby nodded.

“But you’ll sing with me, right? You promise?”

As if she had a choice. Would Esme have kissed her if she hadn’t wanted her help? The sensation of her lips lingered.

“I will. I promise.”





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN



New York City, 2016


The evening after the talk with Malcolm, Rose opened a bottle of wine and worked her way through Darby’s bebop collection. The recklessness of the music matched her mood. She rummaged through the drawers of Darby’s desk while a Sarah Vaughan record played in the background.

The top drawer contained receipts and ancient office supplies, including a pad of carbon paper. Nothing to provide any inkling of where Darby had run off to. The red light on her answering machine stayed unblinking, no new messages.

Before Stella had gone into the hospital, she’d implied that Darby rarely traveled anywhere. So why had she left in such a rush now? She’d left behind no clues at all.

Rose yawned, the wine kicking in. She grabbed the top issue of The New Yorker magazine from a stack piled up under the desk and carried it to the couch. She’d find a story she’d never usually read, a profile of a sports hero or something like that, and drift off to sleep. But the corner of one page, near the front of the magazine, had been turned over. The jazz listings. In fact, Darby had circled several of the week’s events, and placed a couple of exclamation marks by two. Both were tributes to old bebop heroes. Rose worked her way through the rest of the issues and every one was similarly marked. Circles, exclamation points, and short notations in the margin. Darby had certainly stayed on top of the latest performances. Which explained her late-night forays.

The ladies would make excellent subjects, but she needed Darby’s contribution to make it sing. Darby would open up to her, she was sure of it. Even Bird had warmed up to her presence. She looked down at him now, wheezing into her armpit, and a wave of melancholy washed over her. What she was doing was wrong, stalking the back stairways of the Barbizon like a crazy woman. She wasn’t hanging around the building because of the research or the dog.

She couldn’t bear to sever the last tie with the man who’d broken her heart.

But enough was enough. The next day at work, Rose spent most of the morning scouring the real estate listings for a reasonable rental. The prices were a shock, a reminder of how long ago she’d moved into her apartment in the Village, and how quickly the cost of living had risen. Even apartments out in the farthest corners of Brooklyn were unreasonable, considering the fact that she would be paying for her father’s room and board at the same time.

She’d stopped by a couple of days ago and been alarmed by the change in him. He tried to get up and open a window three times, waiting until her gaze was averted to the book she was reading aloud from. He jumped up with the swiftness of one of those dancers in the old movies, but when he couldn’t manage the lock, he pounded on the glass and tried to roar. The sound came out strangled.

Rose quickly called for the nurses and they resettled him in the chair, but in her heart she knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to leap out the window, replace the antiseptic environment with freedom and the feel of the wind. It was what she would have wanted to do as well.

“How’s the Barbizon project going?”

Tyler stood at the doorway to his office.

Rose minimized her browser, hiding the apartment listings from view. “Fine. We’ve got some footage and started in on the interviews.”

“Make sure it’s not depressing.”

“Sure thing.”

After he’d slammed his door shut with more emphasis than necessary, Rose turned back to her monitor.

Two of the real estate listings up in Washington Heights might work. The photos were nice enough. The rent was high, but if she took some extra freelance work, she could manage it, just barely. Something to ask Jason about.

She made calls to the real estate agents and left messages. Good. She was on her way.

After transcribing Malcolm’s interview, she looked up at the clock. Early afternoon. The best part of being a journalist was you could always use the excuse of research when sitting at a desk became unbearable. And if walking Bird in the park on a glorious summer day, thinking about the ladies of the fourth floor, counted as research, so be it.