A woman appeared in the kitchen and added, “And if the heat lasts more than four days, consult your doctor immediately.” The room burst into laughter, and the woman stepped from behind the counter, taking a deep, theatrical bow, complete with a graceful upward arm sweep. Rook had told her about his mother. Of course, she already knew who Margaret was. You don’t win Tony Awards and show up in the Style section and Vanity Fair party collages as often she did and go unnoticed. In her sixties now, Margaret had gone from the ingénue to the grand dame (although Rook once confided in Nikki that his spelling was grand d-a-m-n). The lady exuded every bit of the joyful diva, from her opening line to the way she entered the great room to take Nikki’s hand and fuss about how very much she had heard about her from Jamie.
“And I’ve heard a lot about you,” Nikki replied.
“Believe it all, darling. And if it’s not true, when I get to hell, I’ll sort it out there.” Then she swept—no, there was no more accurate way to describe it—she swept back into the kitchen.
Rook smiled at Nikki. “As you can see, I believe in truth in advertising.”
“So I’m learning.” She heard ice plinking in a rocks glass and saw Margaret uncapping a bottle of Jameson. Yes, she thought, I’m learning a lot, Jameson Rook.
The news anchor appealed to Rook’s sense of civic responsibility and he killed his air-conditioning. Nikki looked up from her cards, and her eyes followed his shorts and U-2 3D T-shirt as he moved barefoot across the oriental rug to the far wall. He bent to open the sash windows that gave onto his penthouse view of Tribeca, and when Nikki’s eyes drifted off him, it was to the hulk of a distant building, RiverStarr on the Hudson, backlit by Jersey City. The structure was dark, except for the red aviation lamp atop an idle crane balanced above girders awaiting skin. They’d wait a long time.
Margaret took her son’s chair beside Nikki and said, “It is a very good view.” And as Rook bent to open the next window, the doyenne leaned in to whisper, “I’m his mother and even I think it’s a great view. But that’s just me taking credit.” And then, just to be clear: “Jamie got my ass. It got a marvelous review in Oh! Calcutta!”
Two hours later, after Rook, then the news anchor, and then her husband folded, Nikki won yet another hand against the judge. Simpson said he didn’t care, but judging from his expression, she was glad she got the court order out of him before the poker game. “Guess the cards aren’t falling my way tonight for some reason.” She really wanted him to just say “D’oh!”
“It isn’t the cards, Horace,” said Rook. “For once, somebody at this table can read your tells.” He got up and crossed to the counter to peel a tepid slice of Ray’s out of the box and fish another Fat Tire from the ice in the sink. “Now, to me, tonight, anyway, you’ve got a great poker face. I can’t see what’s going on behind the taciturn judicial mask. It could be woo-hoo or yay-boo. But this one here, she’s gotcha.” Rook took his seat again, and Nikki wondered if the whole pizza-and-beer run had been a ruse to move his chair closer to hers.
“My face gives nothing away,” said the judge.
“It’s not about you giving it away, it’s what she’s taking,” said Rook. He turned to her as he spoke to the judge. “I’ve been with her weeks now, and I don’t think I’ve ever known someone so adept at reading people.” He held that look to her, and although they were nowhere close to breathing each other’s exhalations like they had on Starr’s balcony that day, she felt a flutter. So she turned away to rake in the pot, wondering what the hell she was playing with here, and she didn’t mean the cards. “I think I should call it a night,” she said.
Rook insisted on walking her down to the sidewalk, but Nikki stalled until they were embedded in the group departure of the other guests, so she could get away clean. A group seemed the perfect place to fulfill that. Because the truth of it, she reflected on the ride down, was that she didn’t want so much to be alone as not to be paired up.
Not tonight anyway, she thought.
The news anchor and her husband lived in walking distance and made their exit just as Simpson flagged a cab. The judge was heading uptown near the Guggenheim and asked if Nikki wanted to share the ride. She sorted her feelings about leaving Rook hangdogging on the sidewalk versus staying and having to deal with the awkwardness of the good-night moment, or worse, the come-back-up moment, and answered yes.
Rook said, “Hope you don’t mind I sort of Punk’d you into coming over.”
“Why would I mind? I’m leaving with money, jokey boy.” Then she slid way across the taxi seat to make room for Simpson. Ten minutes later, she was unlocking her lobby door in Gramercy Park, thinking about a bath.
Nobody would accuse Nikki Heat of leading a life of indulgence. “Delayed gratification” was a phrase that came to her mind often, usually invoked as a means to talk herself down off some rare flash of anger at what she was doing instead of what she would rather be doing. Or saw other people doing.
So as she ran the tap to revitalize the bubbles in her tub, allowing herself one of her few indulgences, a bubble bath, her mind ran back to thoughts of the road not taken. To Connecticut and a yard and the PTA and a husband who took the train to Manhattan, and having the time and resources to get a massage once in a while or maybe take a yoga class.
Yoga class instead of close-quarter combat training.
Nikki tried to imagine herself in bed with a ropy tofu advocate with a Johnny Depp beard and a “Random Acts of Kindness” bumper sticker on a rusted-out Saab, instead of sheet grappling with the ex-Seal. She could do worse than Johnny Depp. And had.
A couple of times that evening she had thought about calling Don but didn’t. Why not? She wanted to boast about her perfect arm-bar takedown of Pochenko at the subway station. Quick and easy, take a seat, sir. But that wasn’t why she wanted to call him, and she knew it.
So why didn’t she?
It was an easy arrangement with Don. Her trainer with benefits never asked her where she was or when she’d be back or why she didn’t call. His place or hers didn’t matter; it was logistical, whichever was closer. He was looking neither to nest nor to get away from anything.
And the sex was good. Once in a while he would get a bit too aggressive, or a bit too into task completion, but she knew how to work with that and get what she needed. And how much different was that from the commuter guys, the Noah Paxtons of the world? The Don thing wasn’t the be-all, but it worked fine.
So why didn’t she call?
She shut off the tap when the bubbles tickled her chin, and inhaled the scent of her childhood. Nikki thought about the delays, tried to imagine fulfilling purpose instead of needs, and wondered if this was what it would be like in, say, eleven years, when she hit forty. That used to seem like such a long way off, and yet the last ten years, a full decade of rearranging her life around the end of her mother’s, had blipped along like a TiVo on forward. Or was that for the lack of savoring?
She went from convincing her mother she should be a Theater Arts major to transferring to the College of Criminal Justice. She wondered if without realizing it she was getting too tough to be happy. She knew she did less laughing and more judging.
What had Rook said at the poker game? He called her adept at reading people. Not what she wanted on her tombstone.
Rook.
OK, so I was checking out his ass, she thought. Then the flutter came over her, probably embarrassment at being transparent enough to be caught in the act by The Grand Damn. Nikki submerged under the bubbles and held her breath until the pounding of her flutter got lost in the pounding of oxygen debt.