Alternate Side(71)

“Is she selling?”

“Who would buy it?” Sherry said. “I hear the Fenstermachers are selling.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Nora said.

Nora was not seeing anyone, although she was surprised at the attempts, most for what the twins had taught her to call hookups. Even Jim, whom she’d run into at a restaurant one afternoon, had asked her for a drink. “I hate to say it, but I always thought you and Charlie were a mismatch,” he said, shaking his head. “No, we weren’t,” Nora said. She figured that would make Jim think the split had been Charlie’s idea, that she was still pining, but she didn’t care. She hated the way so many people acted as though part of divorce was a happy erasure of the past. Only Jenny, of all people, said, “You stayed together for almost twenty-five years, and you had two great kids. Your marriage was a huge success. Don’t let anybody tell you different.”

Bob Harris had called her the week she found her new apartment, as though from forty blocks south he could sense the sound of closing documents being prepared. “I hear you’re getting a divorce and your dog died,” he said. “I’m sorry about the dog. Good dog?”

“The best,” Nora said.

He’d sighed. “That’s a bitch,” he said. “I had a springer spaniel that was worth ten of any person I ever met. Anyhow, now that you’re getting unhitched, any chance you’d have dinner with me?”

“None,” Nora said.

“You sure?”

“My husband works for you.”

“I could ease him out. The fact is, I’ve been thinking about easing him out for a long time. He’s a nice guy, but there’s just something—I don’t know. There’s something missing.”

“Please don’t let him go. He loves his job.” This wasn’t really true, hadn’t been true for ages. But as Sherry Fisk had said what seemed like years ago and was only last winter, without it Charlie would be nothing. He’d be like a vampire looking in the mirror: no reflection. In their world a man without a business card was a man who can’t get out of bed in the morning. Even Ricky had had a business card.

Bob Harris had invited her in to talk that same afternoon, although she had put him off for weeks, despite the fact that she didn’t have a job anymore. His persistence was obviously one of the things that had enabled him to be a success in business. His patience, too. He had waited a long time for Nora to come around. He tapped his hand on his desk, thinking, then said, “What if I trade a couple of dinners for keeping Charlie on?”

“That is cheap and low,” said Nora.

Bob Harris grinned.

“And you are married,” she added.

“Ah. Now how do you know that?”

“I don’t know. That way you know things. You’re married to your college sweetheart and she lives most of the time at your horse farm in Virginia.”

“Alpacas,” Bob Harris said. “She raises alpacas. You know what alpacas are?”

“Pretty much like llamas?”

“Exactly, except people who raise alpacas don’t like it when you say that. It’s like, Stu Ventner. You know him? He tells me he’s on the advisory board of the library. I say, What’s the difference between being on the board and being on the advisory board. He says something, something, something, bull, bull, bull. Whatever. Leeanne says alpacas are friendlier and better-looking than llamas, and you can make things out of their wool, and llama wool is good for nothing. I have no clue whether any of that is true.”

He kept on tapping his hand, looking down at it jumping around as though it belonged to someone else, finally saying, “The truth is that Leeanne and me haven’t been what you’d call legally married for a long time now. But don’t go spreading that around. I don’t want to wind up in one of those stories about the eligible bachelors of New York, which always means the richest bachelors in New York. Then people who do what you used to do show up asking for money and women who are a lot of trouble suck up to you at parties. Sometimes literally. Hell, forget I said that. Why I asked you here in the first place, I’ve got all my ducks in a row on this foundation now, and I still want you to run it.”

“How closely associated will it be with Parsons Ridge?”

“Not at all. Offices elsewhere. Whole different thing. No connection except the money, and me.”

“The Bob Harris Foundation?”

He shook his head. “I already filed the papers for the Beverley Foundation. That’s what it’ll be called.”

“Because?”

“After my mother. She was a second grade teacher.”

Nora sat back. “Well, aren’t you a boatload of surprises?”

“Not if you put on your 3-D glasses, honey.”

“I don’t know.”

“This because your husband, or whatever he is, doesn’t want you to take the job?” Bob Harris was studying her face. He was the kind of man who took a lot of pride in being able to read people, and it seemed he read her correctly. “Hmmph. If I were married to a woman like you I wouldn’t sell her short.”

“Yeah, you all think that. You all think you’ll like it, but when it happens you don’t like it at all.”

“I didn’t say I’d like it. But I’d like to think I’d take advantage of the opportunity.”