Alternate Side(50)

“A golf club makes more sense?”

“And what about you and Jason?” her husband said as though she hadn’t spoken. “There’s a guy who’s an operator. His middle initial is H. I think it stands for Howard, but we all say it really stands for Hungry. He’s one of those guys you’re afraid to turn your back on. He’s sort of Jim’s boy, which is why he was there. I guess he knows something I don’t about you and Harris.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Charlie, he’s just ambitious, like everyone else in town. He doesn’t know anything. And Jim needs to learn how to make risotto. It was like chewing gravel. And how he could trade Polly in for whoever she was…”

“He didn’t,” Charlie said in the darkness as she got under the covers. “One of the other guys in the office told me this morning. Polly left him. She was apparently having an affair with some other doctor for years, and once their youngest kid was out of the house she figured, What’s the point. I hear he’s really a mess.”

“He didn’t act like he was a mess.”

“Yeah, like he’s going to fall apart with the people at that table? He got wasted at some cigar bar last week and told one of the guys that he has sex with that girl all the time because when they’re not having sex she talks to him, and he can’t stand to listen to her.”

“He’ll find somebody,” Nora said. “He’s rich, he’s nice-looking. Maybe he’ll even learn to cook.”

“What do you want to bet Jason knows how to cook,” said Charlie. “He probably studied at the Cordon Bleu after his Rhodes scholarship.”





A petition is being prepared to request that the lot be reopened at the same rate as previously. Please let George know if you are willing to sign.





The lot is closed to all activity until further notice. Any cars in the lot will be towed at owner’s expense.

          Sidney Stoller





The empty lot was a constant reminder. That, and the fact that nothing worked in any of their houses. A dripping tap in the Nolan kitchen kept on dripping. Harold Lessman tripped over a flagstone in the patio that had heaved up during the winter freezes and spring thaws and sprained his ankle. The Fisks were mainly at their house in the country, but their housekeeper, Grace, told Charity that there was a leak in the skylight and she had to put a bucket in the hall. Ricky had made himself essential. They had all made themselves helpless.

“I hear you know the golf club guy,” Phil said, sitting outside the museum with a new sign that said STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS.

“Don’t you think that one will put people off?” Nora said, pointing at the cardboard placard.

“You know, people our age love this one. I’m thinking of using nothing but song titles from now on. Maybe ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ When does the big boss come back from Florida?”

“You really keep up on things,” Nora said.

“I’m a student of my surroundings,” he said. “Who’s your new guy? The skinny one?”

“He’s a temp,” Nora said. “My assistant quit.”

“The snooty tall one? I can’t believe you put up with her for a minute. She never said hello to me, not once. This new guy is a good guy. Smart, too. You think you’ll keep him?”

“I’m thinking about it,” Nora said. Richard was still technically working for the temp agency, but Nora had made it a point to sit down and talk to him after he had rearranged her computer files so that finding anything made infinitely more sense.

“My parents came here from the Philippines,” he had said. “Seven kids, and here’s all they want: a college degree, and then a job where you don’t get your hands dirty. All they know is that right now I work in a museum. No dirt, right?”

“A museum, but not jewelry?” Nora asked.

“I’m not sure they’d get it,” Richard said. “I’m not sure I get it, to be honest. But I like working for you. Where did your last assistant go, if you don’t mind my asking?”

The Met, of course. The pinnacle of New York museums. Madison had sent Nora a note on stationery engraved with her initials. “I learned so much from you,” she wrote, a student of the no-bridges-burned playbook. Apparently she had told Bebe’s assistant that she didn’t think there was sufficient room for growth for her, that the museum was a one-woman show. The woman she meant was not Nora.

“There’s a man on the phone for you,” Richard said as Nora took off her coat. “He won’t give his name, but he said to tell you”—he looked down at his notepad—“fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

“A bumpy night,” Nora said. “It’s going to be a bumpy night. It’s a line from a movie. All About Eve. Everyone gets it wrong.”

“I thought he said ‘ride.’?”

No, he didn’t.

“James?” she said into the phone in her office.

“Moneypenny,” he replied.

That’s what he’d always called her, James Mortimer, ever since they’d ripped through three James Bond movies the month they first met. She was Moneypenny and he was James. Never Jimmy or Jim or, God forbid, as he had once said early on, at a crowded party full of lacrosse players, Jimbo. “You’re blessed,” he said then. “No one can turn Nora into anything else.”