She wondered if she could avoid talking to her at all until after this sojourn in Brooklyn ended.
* * *
On Friday morning Gabrielle took a last look around her elegantly furnished studio apartment on Park Avenue. She was going to miss the thick gray carpeting, the glass-topped dining-room table, the outrageously expensive leather convertible sofa, the mahogany wall unit that hid stereo, television, VCR and compact disc player. She was even going to miss the dreadful modern print that hung in the tiny foyer.
She had rented the apartment at the height of her all-too-brief success on Wall Street, at a time when she’d been thumbing her nose at her protective family. After seeing her very first Manhattan apartment, another studio with a less pricey address, they’d begged her to come back to Charleston. They’d reminded her that she could live there in style as a member of high society. She would not have to eat her dinner perched on a sofa, her plate on a coffee table that barely came up to her kneecaps. She definitely would not have to sleep on that very same sofa. There were nights when she couldn’t find one single comfortable spot on that two-inch mattress that she was tempted to do as they asked.
However, had she returned they also would have expected her to marry stuffy, rigid Townsend Lane, who was destined for greatness, according to her father. Her refusal to set a wedding date had disappointed them. She doubted if it had had any effect on Townsend at all. He’d barely noticed her when she was there. He’d taken her breaking off of the engagement with his usual cool disinterest and gone off to Palm Beach to play polo with Prince Charles.
If her parents had considered her breaking up with Townsend foolish, they found her business ambitions unladylike in the extreme. Women in the Clayton clan were supposed to inherit wealth—as her father’s sweet, but mindless sisters had—or marry it, as her mother had. They weren’t supposed to set out to attain it for themselves. She had disgraced them by doing just that, first with a Charleston brokerage house, then by moving to New York where she could avoid their disapproving, bewildered looks.
After the fuss they’d raised about her leaving home, she had sworn to make it on her own. Even at the outset in New York, she’d refused all their offers of money. She had weathered one stock market crash, only to lose her job a few weeks ago in a subsequent belt-tightening. Unfortunately there were plenty of other stockbrokers and analysts in similar straits, all fighting over the same few openings. Her savings had dipped precariously low. Even so, she knew she couldn’t go home again. She would suffocate under all that well-meaning interference. Ten minutes at home and she would revert to being six again, instead of a cool and competent twenty-six.
She pressed the button on the intercom that connected her to the lobby and requested a taxi. It was an extravagance she could ill afford, but she refused to tote her belongings all the way to Brooklyn on the subway. Besides, it would take at least five trips just to get them downstairs. She refused to make twice that many trips back and forth to Brooklyn. She convinced herself that in the end, the taxi would be more cost-effective.
In the lobby she said goodbye to the aging doorman, who’d taken to watching out for her. He had the manners of a well-trained butler, all icy propriety, with a glimmer of affection that dared to show itself in little kindnesses.
“Now you be careful, miss,” he said when he’d tucked her into the front seat of the cab after helping the driver to load the trunk and back seat with luggage and boxes. “Stop by now and then.”
“Thank you, Robert. I will. You stay inside on rainy days now. You don’t want your arthritis acting up. Next time I get over this way, I expect to see pictures of that new grandson of yours.”
The washed-out blue of his eyes lit up. “You can be sure I’ll have a whole collection of them by then,” he said. “Goodbye, miss.”
“Goodbye, Robert.”
As the cab pulled away, she was surprised to discover a tear rolling down her cheek. She brushed it away and watched until Robert went back inside and the building disappeared from view.
Thankfully the cabdriver, a burly man about her father’s age, wasn’t the talkative kind. He left her to think about endings and beginnings and all that went on in between. She was feeling gut-wrenchingly nostalgic all of a sudden. The driver, Mort Feinstein according to the ID tag located on the glove compartment door, glanced over occasionally. Gabrielle caught the growing concern in his expression and avoided meeting his gaze directly.
As they drove into the neighborhood of the new apartment, the driver’s concern turned to alarm. He pulled to the curb in front of number six-blank-two and stared around disapprovingly.
“It’s not safe,” he decreed.
“No place in this city is safe. I’ll use locks.”
“And stay inside? You shouldn’t walk down the streets. Take a look around.”
“Please, no lectures. Just help me unload my things.”
“You’re a nice girl. I can tell you’re from a fine family. What would they think, they should see this?”
“They won’t see it.”
“You know what I mean. What you want, you want your father should have a heart attack, he finds out you’re living in a neighborhood you can’t go out in even in daytime.”
“It’s not that bad,” she said, getting out and slamming the door. She
