‘So to speak,’ Ruth grinned.
‘No, really,’ I grinned back. ‘I actually finished a sweater.’
‘Won’t Paul notice that you’re missing?’
I shook my head. ‘Paul’s in Colorado Springs.’
‘What the hell’s he doing in Colorado?’
I tore off a bit of toast and dredged it through the egg yolk remaining on my plate. ‘The Navy-Air Force game is today. He’s flown out on a party plane with a bunch of his Naval Academy buddies.’
Ruth gave me a look that I’d often seen on our mother’s face whenever we were trying to pull a fast one. ‘He’s going to have a cow when he finds out!’
I shrugged. ‘“It’s much easier to apologize than it is to get permission,”’ I said, quoting Grace Hopper.
‘So, how come you’re not going to the game, Hannah?’
‘No scientific instrument yet invented is sensitive enough to measure how little I care about football.’
Ruth smothered a laugh with her napkin. ‘Want me to come to New York with you? I could get Neelie to cover the store for the day.’
Cornelia – nicknamed Neelie – was my widowed father’s girlfriend. The Alexander girls – my sisters, Ruth and Georgina, and I – thoroughly approved of Cornelia Gibbs and couldn’t imagine why our father hadn’t asked her to marry him yet. It had been almost a decade since our mother’s death. But we knew from experience that there was little to be gained from pushing the man. There’s not much you can tell a retired navy captain. They’re accustomed to being in charge.
‘I appreciate the concern, Big Sis, but some challenges simply have to be faced alone.’
The waitress appeared, and Ruth held out her mug for a refill. ‘It’s your funeral, Hannah, but for heaven’s sake, be careful!’
An hour and a half later, I parked my car in the Amtrak garage at BWI and bought a ticket on the next train to New York City. I thought I had the Train Thing under control until the Northeaster actually pulled into the station and it was time to climb aboard.
One step forward, two steps back, the heebie-jeebies had taken hold. Except for the conductor, I was alone on the platform.
‘Are we holding you up?’ asked the conductor. ‘You getting on or just sightseeing?’
I took a deep breath, and dashed up the steps into one of the middle cars before I had a chance to change my mind.
Three hours later, I got off at Penn Station.
Miraculously unscathed.
It’s a twenty-five minute hike from Penn Station to 39 Fifth, but cabs can be expensive, so I ruled them out. I had no appointments, no schedule to keep, so I’d planned a leisurely stroll along a route that would take me past Macy’s windows and down Broadway. I took my time doing it, too, zigging across town on the numbered streets and zagging down the avenues, enjoying the exercise and the crisp fall air.
Thirty-nine Fifth turned out to be a handsome, seventeen-story apartment building situated between 10th and 11th streets on the edge of Greenwich Village, just a couple of blocks north of Washington Square. Unusual terracotta frescos decorated the façade at the building’s third-floor level. I ducked under the fancy green awning that sheltered the entrance from the elements and rang the bell.
When the doorman appeared on the other side of the glass, my heart sank. He was probably in his early thirties. At the time Lilith Chaloux lived here, he would have been struggling with fractions in elementary school.
The door opened a crack, and he peered out, followed by a blast of superheated air.
‘Can I help you, ma’am?’
‘I hope so. My name’s Hannah Ives, and I’m organizing a high school reunion. One of my classmates used to live in this building. Apartment Four-B? Lilith Chaloux?’
‘Which high school?’ he asked.
‘Cardinal Spellman,’ I ad-libbed, naming the only high school I knew of in New York City that didn’t have ‘PS’ and a number attached to it.
‘Right. Well…’ He scratched the back of his head, as if actually thinking. ‘Nobody named Chaloux in this building now, and there’s two women with a baby in Four-B, so I’m afraid I can’t help you. When did you say she lived here?’
‘In the 1980s.’
‘Way before my time, you know?’
I smiled. ‘Yes, I guess it was. Well, thanks anyway.’
I had expected to be disappointed, but the news still stung. Thinking that a cup of coffee might improve my disposition, I walked around the corner to University Place where I remembered seeing a Dean and Deluca café. I bought a takeaway cup of the house blend, then strolled back the way I had come.
On the corner of 10th Street and 5th Avenue stands Ascension Episcopal Church, a red stone building surrounded by an iron fence. I crossed to the other side of 5th Avenue and leaned against the churchyard fence, sipping my coffee, observing as residents came and went from Lilith Chaloux’s old building.
At a bus stop across the street, someone was watching me, too – a husky guy wearing a New York Yankees ball cap and sunglasses with odd, glacier-blue lenses. He was reading the Post, waiting for the bus, glancing up at me from time to time. Did he think I was a bag lady?
His scrutiny, however innocent, was making me nervous, so I wandered halfway down 10th Street, admiring the church’s splendid stained-glass windows and lamenting that they had to be protected by Plexiglas sheets, but understanding why.
Back at my station in front of the church a few minutes later, I was relieved to see that the guy wearing the blue sunglasses had gone. I alternated between Googling on my iPhone – the stained-glass windows were by John LaFarge, I learned – and keeping my eye on Lilith’s old building. My patience was rewarded (finally!) when a pair of elderly women emerged from 39 Fifth being led by a large German shepherd dog. The women were dressed in nearly identical bulky, oversize cardigans, black ankle-length skirts, and neon-pink jogging shoes. They resembled each other so closely that they had to be sisters.
As I watched, the dog dragged his mistress south along 5th Avenue toward Washington Square, heading, as I soon found out, for a play date with an exuberant young golden retriever at the dog run in the park.
I chucked my empty coffee cup into the nearest trash container and followed.
The sisters had been sitting together on a bench for about ten minutes, watching with wry amusement while the dogs frolicked, before I plucked up the courage to join them.
‘I hope you’ll excuse me for interrupting you,’ I said, ‘but I just noticed that you came out of Thirty-nine Fifth. Do you live in that building?’
‘I’m sorry, dear, but we don’t take surveys. I know you’re just doing your job, but…’
I raised a hand, chuckled. ‘Please, don’t worry! I’m not taking a survey. I’m just trying to track down somebody I used to go to high school with.’
The woman glanced nervously at her sister, who smiled, nodded and gave her a light, go-ahead-she-looks-harmless-enough-to-me punch on the arm. ‘Why, in that case, yes, we live at Thirty-nine Fifth Avenue.’
‘My name is Hannah Ives. I live in Annapolis, Maryland, now, but I used to go to Cardinal Spellman with a girl named Lilith. Lilith Chaloux.’
While I explained about the imaginary reunion, I pulled Lilith’s picture out of my handbag and handed it to the older of the two women.
‘I’m Elspeth Simon, and this is my sister, Claire.’ Elspeth held the picture close to her face as if she’d forgotten her reading glasses, turning it this way and that in the bright sunlight, then handed it to Claire. ‘Yes, that’s Lilith all right. Lovely girl. She lived in our building for quite some time.’