they’d been sitting there, she’d heard not a sound from anywhere else in the apartment, and Andrea had given no indication they weren’t alone. Now Louis, in thick black boots and a denim work shirt, emerged from the front of the apartment.
“What’s up?”
“That nasty odor is still hanging around the little room upstairs.”
“You’re kidding me. Really?”
Susan nodded. “Sorry.”
“No, no, don’t be sorry.
“Sure.”
“What time works?”
“Early is good, just in terms of—”
“Early is fine,” he said. “What time are you up and about?”
“We have a three-and-a-half year old, so, I mean, we’re up at seven. But—”
“No problem. I’ll be there at 7:30. Just gotta put it in the old bean.” Louis chuckled, tapping at his forehead, and then headed back down the hallway, murmuring to himself. “Seven-thirty … seven-thirty …”
“He’s working on the sink in the bathroom, which is clogged like you wouldn’t believe,” Andrea explained and then leaned forward and adopted a confidential, just-us-ladies tone. “Hairballs.”
“Ah,” said Susan. What else could one say to such a thing? Andrea rose with a sigh to clear away the teacups.
Susan thought about poor Catastrophe, and about Jack and Jessica, who had so thoughtlessly left the animal behind. Who, Susan wondered, had stuffed that picture in the window frame, before their abrupt disappearance? Who had clutched that photograph with a bloody thumb?
“Enjoy that gorgeous hair of yours while you can, dear,” said Andrea wistfully from the kitchen, and Susan self-consciously brought a hand up to her dirty-blonde curls. “Because when you get old, it will fall out in clumps. In
Susan rose abruptly, thanked Andrea for the tea, and went back upstairs.
7
Susan had forgotten entirely about the faint pinging sound the cable man had brought to her attention on Tuesday morning. But on Thursday night Alex heard it, too. Dinner was over, and the whole family was smooshed on the leather living-room sofa, reading
“Hear what?”
“Dada? Read, please.”
“One sec, hon.”
“Hear what, Al?”
“Read the book, dada.”
Then they all heard it, faint but distinct, sounding from somewhere and nowhere.
“Could it be the smoke alarm?” Susan ventured. “Carbon monoxide?”
“No way,” said Alex, glancing up at the light on the smoke detector, which glowed an unbroken green. “Alarms better be a lot louder than that.”
“Ping!” shouted Alex, and then the noise sounded again, as if in response:
Their search was fruitless, and the noise stopped, and Alex chased Emma up the stairs for bath. Later, after their daughter was asleep, Susan was about to tell Alex about the cat-pee smell, and the awful story of Jack and Jessica and Catastrophe the cat, and the photograph with the bloody thumbprint on the back. But she checked herself, realizing with a prickly flush of shame that the story would have to begin with an explanation of why today was the first time she had set foot in her “studio” since they moved in.
She stood in silence, leaning on the kitchen counter, watching Alex gather lettuce, cucumber, tomato, and red onion from the fridge to start on a salad, imagining his response:
Susan shook her head clear, pulled a knife from the block, and helped him cut vegetables. During dinner she related a funny gossip item she’d read on a fine-arts blog, about one of the big Chelsea gallery owners and his ever-changing lineup of buxom “assistants.” But Alex’s responses were polite and peremptory, and as soon as they were done eating he turned to his computer and the barrage of e-mails he needed to send to prepare for tomorrow. Apparently there had been a screwup that day on the Cartier shoot, when a watch face was scratched by a worthless lighting assistant that Vic had hired for cheap. It was a major setback, and Susan could tell that Alex was deeply worried.
When she went upstairs to sleep, Alex remained in the living room, muttering to himself and tapping away.
Louis arrived to clean the smell from the bonus room at precisely 7:30 the next morning.
“Will wonders never cease,” Susan murmured at the sound of his knock at the door before calling out “just a sec,” pulling her robe close to her chest, and opening the door. Alex had left fifteen minutes earlier, grimly clutching his travel coffee mug, game face on for a trying day. After offering Louis coffee or tea, which he cheerfully declined, Susan got Emma going on breakfast and then stood awkwardly in her bathrobe in the doorway of the bonus room, unable to decide if it made her more uncomfortable to perch there — watching an elderly man on hands and knees, in his jeans and an undershirt, cleaning her floor — or to return to the kitchen and leave him alone in this isolated corner of her home.
“Have you been working for Andrea a long time?” she asked.
“Well, how’s forty years?” Louis looked over his shoulder with a broad, playful grin. “Would you call that a long time?”
“Forty years?”
“I kid you not. Well, now, I guess I’ve only been
Susan nodded as Louis settled back on his haunches, sponge dripping idly onto the hardwood. The guy was a talker, that was clear.
“I’ve been retired some years now, so I’ve got my days free. Thirty-seven years as the assistant principal at Philippa Schuyler, up on Greene Avenue. And I tell you, after all those years keeping tabs on a couple hundred young people, scrubbing the occasional floor, well, I call that a vacation.” Louis’s laugh was low, gentle, and melodious, a slow-played tympani drum roll:
Susan thought with fondness of the assistant principal at her own middle school back in New Jersey. Mr. Crimson. Clemson? Something like that.
“You want to know the truth, I’ve known Howard and Andrea since 1970, if you can believe that. Autumn of 1970. We met right here in Brooklyn, protesting over Kent State, waving our signs in Cadman Plaza. One day I’ll
