The Red Hunter(5)

The first thing was that her (now ex-) husband Ayers wanted to live in Midtown, since it was where they both worked. But she was in love with the East Village and had been since college. That was the real New York City—Yaffa Café and Trash and Vaudeville and St. Marks Books. There was still grit, even though it was very stylized now, and most of those wonderful places were gone or going. And very expensive even then. But she’d found a place she just loved on Fifth Street. Out back there was a garden, and it butted up against a church and an old graveyard, and the windows opened. It was utterly unlike the place Ayers wanted in Midtown, a tower with a doorman and central air, a pristine gym, and Friday socials on the sun deck.

Ayers was not a fan of grit. But he gave Claudia her way, because that’s the kind of man he was. The kind of man who subordinated his wants and needs for Claudia’s. A good man, a darling husband who she knew right away would be a lovely father.

There were gates on the back windows, of course there were. It was the East Village and as much as New York City was gentrified, junkies still busted in and took your stuff if you didn’t have bars on the windows. So they got bars, even though it bummed Ayers out. He loved unmarred city vistas. They were nice gates, painted white, with wrought-iron ivy and twisting branches, and they opened like French doors. Claudia was terrible about closing them and locking them. She forgot sometimes. That was two.

They had been married a year and they were trying to have a baby. Not in that sad, desperate way that people often seemed to. More in a joyful, let’s fuck all the time with no protection because we’re—wink wink—trying for a baby. They’d been trying for about eight months, and no baby. But hey, said Ayers, it’s about the journey, not the destination! Now take off your panties, you little tart.

Because they’d had a glass of Prosecco, Ayers got frisky. Then they messed around, having a quickie with her underpants around her ankles and her skirt hiked up, while he took her from behind over the couch. They were late to meet his parents at Café des Artistes. She never went back upstairs in their charming duplex, but mopped up carelessly in the little bath off the kitchen, putting on lipstick and sweeping up her hair, feeling dirty and naughty and loving it because Ayers’s mother was so proper. Neither Claudia nor Ayers went back to the bedroom to close the gates. That was three.

Claudia and her mother-in-law were almost exact opposites—which was probably why they got along. Claudia admired Sophie’s buttoned-up, ever stylish, cool (not cold, but unflappable) demeanor. And Claudia often caught Sophie smiling at her when she rambled on, or got exuberant, or passionate. If Sophie was pressed linen, Claudia was crinoline. If Sophie was crepe, Claudia was sequins. It worked. And her father-in-law Chuck was a bear of a man, always sweet and looking sleep-tousled, with a big appetite and sudden, explosive laugh.

After dinner, Claudia tried to convince everyone to have one last drink. But Ayers said he was tired, that he had an early meeting and wanted to work out first thing in the morning. That was four.

She was drunk. No, not drunk. Tipsy. Not puking, falling down, ugly drunk, of course—never that. But she was bouncy, giggly, silly. OTM was the code Claudia and her girlfriends used: One. Too. Many. OTM and you might get teary, telling your friends how much you love them, or laugh too loud, or dance with abandon—even though you were a terrible dancer. Which was fine under most circumstances. Perhaps not with your in-laws. But any more and you were going to regret it. Any more and tomorrow was going to be a bad day. Maybe that was the real reason Ayers wanted to go home. Because for his mother, there were limits. Pressed linen, it creased terribly. You could never tell if crinoline had been hugged too long or too tight. I love my mother, Ayers often said, as if such a thing needed saying. But I remember as a kid that she only had so much patience for affection. Claudia had no idea what that meant. Why would you need patience for affection? Claudia had maybe drifted too close to the line; there had been lots of hugging and declarations of affection (from Claudia to Sophie), and maybe Sophie was getting a little stiff. Anyway, if Claudia hadn’t been OTM, she might have noticed as soon as she came home what they only noticed later: That the lights in the kitchen were on, when they hadn’t been before. That a coat had been knocked from one of the hooks on the wall beneath the stairs. If she hadn’t been OTM, she might have seen those things and deduced the truth before it was too late. There was someone in the apartment. That was five.

Ayers was still outside, and Claudia came into the apartment alone. Claudia had taken on Mrs. Swanson, their impossibly elderly landlord. Which meant that she often loaned Ayers out to her. Oh, Ayers will help you with that. Won’t you, honey? They helped her with small things—like changing lightbulbs and getting dead mice away from Mittens, her ginger tabby. When Claudia was at the store, she often picked up eggs, bread, and 2 percent milk, dropping them off on her way upstairs. Usually Ashley, Mrs. Swanson’s daughter came to take the trash out. But Ashley was sick with the flu that night, so Ayers had promised to do it. That’s what he was doing. That was why Claudia went alone into their apartment. That was six.

Stumbling up the narrow duplex stairs, she’d noticed a strange smell. Something musky. She dismissed it. That was one of the reasons she’d wanted to live in the East Village, in an apartment where the windows opened. The city had a smell, especially in summer. And it wasn’t just garbage and bums and dog piss. There were aromas from trees and flowers, from bakeries and fine restaurants, from baristas and something else, hot asphalt and rubber, something indefinably New York. And you couldn’t smell it in Midtown. She thought absently on entering—see, she did it even then—had she forgotten to close the window? Was she too exuberant with Sophie? Was Ayers embarrassed of her? Maybe she shouldn’t have told that story about her friend Misha who had recently dyed her unapologetically long underarm hair neon green and delighted in showing it off everywhere possible. Her absentmindedness often kept her from seeing things that were right in front of her. That was seven.