Body in the Big Apple

Faith stood up and walked toward the altar. She was starting to think like Emma, she realized with dismay.

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65

Someday when things are so busy that I don’t even have a chance to catch my breath, I’ll look back at this time and regret I didn’t enjoy it more. This was Faith’s advice to herself after she checked the messages at work and found nothing urgent. No emergency calls from Gracie Mansion to whip up a quick mayoral dinner for two hundred. Not even a call for a dinner party for twelve. She did have a party to do the following night, and she decided to make another hors d’oeuvre, although there were already several selections. They’d prepared phyllo triangles stuffed with a proscuitto and ricotta mixture and others filled with diced mushrooms and smoked turkey. Then there was gravlax with plenty of dill and mustard sauce on rounds of thin dark rye and toasted brioche. She’d do some spiced nuts and put bowls of them next to the bowls of various kinds of olives she’d already planned. Before she got started, she decided to check the messages at her apartment.

Emma would be getting ready for her fund-raiser—

Faith had forgotten to ask her where it was—but there might have been further instructions from the blackmailers. Emma would leave some sort of message, Faith wanted to believe.

She punched in the code—and beep, “Faith, love, it’s Granny. I’m totally distraught and can’t understand why someone didn’t tell me sooner! I suppose they were trying to spare an old lady.”

Whatever it is, it must be bad. Faith felt a flicker of anxiety. When her grandmother started referring to herself this way, it meant she’d lost another friend or received some other devastating news. Normally, she made a point of ignoring the aging process, and she still had the legs to prove it worked.

“Altman’s is closing! B. Altman! They’re having a 66

gigantic sale and simply gutting the place. I can scarcely take it in. I’d like you and Hope to come to lunch with me at the Charleston Gardens. Remember all those times we used to go there before the ballet?

Humor an old lady and call me, dear.” Two mentions of

“old lady” in one message. Faith hated that Altman’s was closing, too, although she hadn’t been there in years. It had furnished her grandmother and mother’s trousseaux—and first apartments. When Hope and Faith were little girls, Altman’s was de rigeur for party dresses, white gloves, navy blue Sunday school coats, and, of course, Easter bonnets. She felt a sudden nos-talgia for the Charleston Gardens’ rendition of chicken a la king. (And which king was that? British, surely, not French.) The memory was complicated by an equally strong one of Hope losing her lunch in the final moments of Romeo and Juliet, when sister and grandmother took her tugs on their sleeves to mean requests for information—Hope had been a great one for questions like “Why can’t she climb down the balcony and leave?”—rather than the urgent need for the bathroom that it was. The image of mopping Hope up, as well as three ladies from a women’s club on Long Island who had been in the row in front of them, had stayed with Faith as clearly as if it were yesterday. It was the first time she’d ever seen what she later learned was called a “merry widow.” Yes, she’d have lunch with Granny and they could all mourn the passing of yet another treasured New York institution and bemoan the short-sightedness of the philistines responsible—but Faith would stick to the BLT.

Beep: “ ‘ “Hither, page, and stand by me,/If thou know’st it, telling,/Yonder peasant, who is he?/Where and what his dwelling?”/“Sire, he lives a good league 67

hence,/Underneath the mountain,/Right against the forest fence,/By Saint Agnes’ fountain.” ’ ” Richard Morgan! Things were looking up. “I can sing some more verses, too. If you’d like to hear them, meet me for dinner tonight. I know it’s short notice, but I thought I’d still be out of town. Give me a call. Five five five, eight nine four seven. I’ll even not sing, if you’d rather.”

The last message was from Hope. She was at work and had her work voice on. “Please let me know some times when you’re available for dinner, so we can arrange a date and place to meet. Best call me at work.

I won’t be home until late all week.” Hope got to the office well before dawn and seldom left until it was time to tumble into bed. It wasn’t until all the Michael Milken stuff came out, revealing, among other things, that, like many in the business, he rose at 4:00 A.M., sleeping only four to five hours a night, that Faith con-ceded her sister wasn’t seriously disturbed, simply seriously lacking perspective.

She shook her head and dialed Richard. He answered on the second ring.

“Hi, it’s Faith Sibley, and as it turns out, I am free, and trying to remember all those verses has been driving me crazy. Your call came just in time.”

“One so rarely has the opportunity to be of service.

I’m delighted. Now, what’s your pleasure?” That awkward moment had arrived. Where to eat?

And she had no idea how fat his wallet was. Did the absence of an overcoat mean good circulation or an un- healthy cash flow?

“I dunno. What do you want to do, Marty?” Faith had been brought up on black-and-white classic movies. Apparently, so had Richard.

68

“If I remind you of Ernest Borgnine, we may have a problem.”

Faith laughed. “Okay. What kind of food do you like to eat, and if you say everything, I’m hanging up.”

“Don’t do that! Let’s see, there’s wassail. No, how about I dare the impossible and choose for the caterer.

They make great margaritas at Santa Fe on West Sixty-ninth, and the food is pretty good, too.” Faith had been there a few times and liked it. The warm brick-colored walls and soft lighting were any girl’s best friends. “Done. Meet you there at eight?”

“Meet you there at eight. And Faith, I’m looking forward to moving on to the next topic.”

“Me, too. See you soon.” Frankly, at this point in her life, she wasn’t the least bit curious about the forest fence or Saint Agnes’s fountain. She already knew how it turned out.

Richard Morgan was a freelance journalist, and Faith now recalled seeing his byline in a wide variety of publications— The New Yorker, the Village Voice, The New Republic, as well as the Times. She was going to have to be very, very careful. But she brightened at her next thought. She’d be able to pump him for information.

First, it seemed that they needed to find out what each other thought about everything from Leona Helmsley’s trial—“Anyone who goes on record saying, ‘I don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes’ has to take her knocks,” said Richard—to Paul McCartney at forty-seven—“Can he still cut it?” “Flowers in the Dirt has some great moments, but it’s mixed,” said Faith.

Richard had been at Tiananmen Square and Faith listened spellbound as he described what it had been 69

like to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the students as the tanks rolled in.

“Enough about me,” he said.

It had been awhile since Faith had heard these words. Maybe he had a brother for Hope.

“Tell me about Faith Sibley. I want to know everything. All your secrets.” His grin was disarming.

There’s nothing like charm to extract information. He must be very good at what he does, Faith thought, beginning to realize writing wasn’t his only talent.

She gave him the Cliffs Notes version of her life to date. He smiled again at the vehemence with which she declared she would never, ever marry a man of the cloth.

“Good news for the rest of us.”

“Unless you’ve grown up as a PK—preacher’s kid—it’s hard to understand. We never gave the parish anything really juicy to comment on, like running away to join a cult or shaving our heads and piercing our noses. But there were plenty of annoying day-today remarks. ‘Isn’t she a little young for makeup?’