Trust Exercise(82)
When an unknown number called, Claire only answered because she was just getting out of the shower and was blind from the steam. The rough voice that asked for Claire Campbell startled her with how familiar and unplaceable it was. She’d been wrapping herself in a towel, her hair a wet nest. No one ever called her at that hour of the morning now that her mother was gone. When she realized who it was her first reaction was to fear that she’d further offended him. How had he gotten her number? Of course she’d left it with the office when she made the appointment, but she didn’t recall this daylight explanation until afterward.
“I regret the way our conversation ended,” he said. He seemed to have to bend his voice into the phone the way a giant might bend his head through a doorframe. “Your surprising me at school as you did left me little maneuvering room. There are strict protocols. You must understand.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, shivering. “I didn’t know where else to find you.”
“I want to help you. But such matters can’t be discussed on school grounds.”
They made a plan to have lunch. A few hours in advance of it, when she was struggling with what she should wear, he called and told her lunch was a bad idea also, as he was a highly recognizable person. “Besides, Sofie and I can treat you to a much better meal here at home than we’d get at Butera’s. And, it will be easier to talk.” The mention of Sofie relieved an unease Claire had not been aware of until it dissolved, so similar was it to so many other species of unease, most predominantly her unease about whether she would get her answer. Preoccupation with the dread irresistible object marginalized every other concern. Now the meal would be dinner. He turned out to live in a rare high-rise with its own underground parking garage that she didn’t see until she’d parked on the street. A somnolent lobby attendant pointed her toward the elevators without lifting his eyes from the horseshoe of tiny TV screens behind which he sat. Her destination was the top floor, eighteen—a novelty in this city of sprawl where Claire had never known anyone to live in a building with more than two floors. Leaving the elevator she gazed a moment out the corridor window at the orange-and-gray dusk before ringing his bell.
Claire imagined Sofie perhaps soft and flossy-haired and submissive; or sleekly haughty and European; or complacently Bohemian in tatty blouse and many strings of clacking beads. Wife of the great man, she could only exist in reaction to him. But what kind of reaction was she? He answered the door in a black turtleneck and black slacks, his still-copious hair like steel wool brushed straight back from the cast-iron face. Claire noticed in spite of herself that the beard had been trimmed. Its black-on-white stripes looked as if freshly painted. The beautiful apartment tempted her to gape with admiration in every direction, an impulse she tried hard to control while running her eyes over the laden bookshelves and dark tapestries, the little wooden tables inlaid with small tiles, the extremely large plants that touched her as she passed with the ends of their rubbery leaves. Classical music was playing. He led her through the labyrinth of European-looking things—Sofie had to be the European option, with a silver chignon and long, papery arms hung with thin tasteful bracelets—to a living room half in darkness from its view of what must be Memorial Park. An open bottle of wine and two glasses sat on a tray. Claire accepted a glass and sat sipping self-consciously. She rarely drank except at workplace holiday parties, and this was better-tasting wine than anything she was used to. She held the stem of the glass tightly pinched. He cupped his glass in an upturned palm, with the stem notched between his fingers. The way he held it bothered her in some indescribable way. He sat opposite to where she perched on the couch and saying almost nothing watched her while she talked as if she had to talk to breathe, about how beautiful the apartment was, and how beautiful the view was, and how unique it was he had one when everyone she knew lived in houses.
“You can take the New Yorker out of New York,” he said at last, “but you can’t take New York out of the New Yorker.”
“You’re from New York?”
“I’m from a sleepy little town called Bensonhurst, originally. But I ran away long, long ago, and my travels ended here—where yours began. I want to know about you, Claire. My story is not interesting.”
For a long time she answered his questions. He was very good at asking questions, so much better than the online Listeners. This was what it must be like to have an actual therapist. Even the room, with its intellectual and faintly foreign furniture, seemed like a therapist’s office. Perhaps not the wine. He refilled her glass while she was talking, for some reason, about her father’s being forced into early retirement. She understood without having been told that some code to which he adhered required that he know her before he let her know herself, although he behaved as though his careful rummaging through her life would reveal what she sought after all her own rummaging hadn’t. Each time she arrived at the end of an answer he slid a fresh question beneath the stream of her talk so that despite herself her own talk rippled on, uninterrupted though it was she herself who meant to interrupt, to finally stop answering and to ask what he had to tell her. Then he stood abruptly and said, “We should eat.” Unsteadily she followed him down a corridor narrowed by bookshelves to a small dining room. The table was already set, with two more glasses, another bottle of wine, food already in large shallow bowls. “Ceviche,” he said. “I hope you eat seafood? Sofie is a magnificent chef specializing in foods of her native Caribbean. If not for her I would have given up eating a long time ago.”