The Flight Attendant(63)
And then, buoyed by Mayes’s generally can-do attitude and the Washington State Riesling she opened and poured over ice, she called Buckley. Didn’t even text him. The actor suggested they meet for a drink later that evening, after he’d seen a friend’s show at the Barrow, and since it was rare for her ever to say no to a drink, she said yes. They picked a bar in the West Village this time, one near the theater.
Then she collapsed onto her couch and stared up at the Empire State Building. She pulled the paperback Tolstoy from her purse and sipped her wine and read, hoping to lose herself in the narrative and escape the reality of her life—and yet somehow also to glean insights into Alex Sokolov’s. It was an impossible balancing act: if she was reading to learn more about the man who had died on the sheets on which they’d made love, then certainly she wasn’t reading to take her mind off the utter precariousness of her future. Before returning to “Happy Ever After,” she paused on one particular paragraph about Ivan Ilyich that had stayed with her: “He had an affair with a lady who threw herself at the elegant young lawyer.” But the relationship meant nothing to him, “it all came under the heading of the French saying, ‘Il faut que la jeunesse se passé.’?” Translation? Youth must have its fling.
It made her feel old. She reminded herself that she had viewed Alex as but a harmless romp, too.
Eventually she phoned her sister, who was already at her hotel in Westchester, and they picked a time to meet tomorrow morning at the zoo. They’d rendezvous at ten thirty at the fountain near the sea lions, just inside the Fordham Road entrance. She was grateful that she wasn’t going to be alone with the kids. She was actually relieved. It would be such a disaster if she were alone with her nephew and niece when she was arrested.
* * *
? ?
Buckley took her hand as they walked from the bar to his apartment. It was only a few minutes after midnight, and so the West Village was still vital and vibrant, the narrow streets crowded, the bistro tables along the sidewalks full.
“You were checking your phone a lot,” he murmured. She had told him nothing, nothing at all. Either he hadn’t seen the photos in the newspapers that day or he had looked at them so quickly that the fact they were her hadn’t registered.
“I haven’t been reserve in years, but the airline asked me to be available,” she lied.
“Didn’t you say that you’re flying to Rome on Sunday night?”
“They might want me for another route tomorrow instead.” The air was cool, and she wished that she had brought more than a sleeveless blouse. She felt the hair on her arms rising.
“Would you still get to go to the zoo tomorrow? I’d hate to see you miss the sea lions—and your family.”
“We’ll see,” she said, though in her mind, she imagined herself replying, If I’m not at the zoo, it’s probably because (best case) I’m meeting my lawyer and getting my cheek swabbed for DNA. Worst case? I’m being arrested for murder. But she didn’t say any of that. “Tell me more about your audition,” she said. “Tell me more about the pilot. You said it’s a drama.”
“Sort of. Based on the script, there’s also a lot of very dark humor. It’s about a Staten Island drug family. Apparently there will be a lot of scenes on the ferry and a lot of nighttime shooting—and shooting during the shooting. It looks crazy violent. I’d be one of the brothers. Think Edmund in King Lear. I’d be the younger brother and a bastard—literally and figuratively.”
“Do you think you have a chance?”
“Yes, but only because it’s a small role. It’s a recurring character, but not one of the four major leads.” He pointed at a squirrel clinging to a second-story screen window and peering into the apartment. “Peeping Tom,” he murmured.
Looking up at the squirrel from the sidewalk was a huge orange tomcat, his fur so thick that Cassie could see only a bit of the collar. His tail was thwapping back and forth, sweeping the concrete. She thought about her cats at the shelter—and so many of them were her cats in her mind, at least until they found permanent homes—and wondered what they would do without her. Oh, there were other volunteers, but she didn’t know how diligent they were about sneaking in catnip and treats and toys, and brushing the poor things for hours and hours on end.
“When will you know?” she asked.
“If I got the part? Next week, I guess.” Then: “There’s lots of great sibling stuff in the script, too. That’s the kind of material that fuels my jets. My relationship with my brother and sister in real life is pretty complicated.”
“Yeah. Mine, too.”
“Are you and your sister close?”
“Not really.”
“You wouldn’t be friends if you weren’t related?”
“Probably not.”
“Even after all you two endured together growing up?”
“Even after that.”
He asked her what her sister did for a living and then what her brother-in-law did. He found her brother-in-law’s work far more interesting. Everyone did. No one asked follow-up questions when you said your sister was an accountant. But an engineer at an army base that disposed of poison gas and nerve agents? People were fascinated—especially men.