She has never done this with a man before, but she takes her own card out and tucks it into his shirt pocket, taps it closed with the palm of her hand. She feels her face tighten again. Too forward. Too flirtatious. Too easy.
It used to bother her terribly, as a teenager, that her mother and grandmother had worked the streets. She thought it might rebound on her someday, that she would find herself too much in love with love. Or that it might be dirty. Or that her friends would find out. Or, worse, that she might ask a boy to pay for it. She was the last of her high school friends to even kiss a boy: a kid in school once called her the Reluctant African Queen. Her first kiss ever was just after science class before social studies. He had a broad face and dark eyes. He held her in the doorway and kept his foot on the frame. Only the constant knocking on the door from a teacher separated them. She walked home with him that day, hand in hand, through the streets of Poughkeepsie. Gloria saw her from the porch of their small house and smiled deeply. She and the boy lasted all the way through college. She had even contemplated marrying him, but he went to Chicago to take a trading job. She went home to Gloria then, wept for a day.
Afterward, Gloria said to her that it was necessary to love silence, but before you could love silence you had to have noise.
— So you’ll call me, then? she asks him.
— I’ll call you, yes.
— Really? she asks with arched brow.
— Of course, he replies.
He extends his shoulder playfully. She rocks backward as if in a cartoon, her arms spread wide, flailing. She is not sure why she does it, but for a moment she doesn’t really care — there is an electricity to it, it makes her laugh.
He kisses her again, this time on the lips, quickly, smartly. She almost wishes her co-workers were here, that they could see her, bidding goodbye to an Italian man, a doctor, on Park Avenue, in the dark, in the cold, in the rain, in the wind, in the night. Like there might some secret camera that beams it all back to the offices in Little Rock, everyone looking up from the tax forms to watch her wave good-bye, to see him turn his body in the back of the cab, his arm raised, a shadow on his face, a smile.
She hears the hiss of the taxi tires as the car pulls away. Then she cups her hands out beyond the awning and runs some rainwater through her hair.
The doorman smiles, although it has been years since she’s seen him. A Welshman. He used to sing on Sundays when she, Gloria, and her sister came to visit. She can’t quite recall his name. His mustache has gone gray.
— Miss Jaslyn! Where’ve you been?
And then she remembers: Melvyn. He reaches for the small bag and for a moment she thinks he’s going to say how much she’s grown. But all he says is, in a grateful way: They put me on the night shift.
She is not quite sure if she should kiss his cheek or not — this evening of kissing — but he solves the dilemma by turning away.
— Melvyn, she says, you haven’t changed a bit.
He pats his stomach, smiles. She is wary of elevators, she would like to take the stairs, but a teenage boy is there with his hat and white gloves on.
— Madame, says the elevator boy.
— You staying long, Miss Jaslyn? asks Melvyn, but already the gate is closing.
She smiles at him from the back of the elevator.
— I’ll call up to Mrs. Soderberg’s, he says through the grille, and let them know you’re here.
The elevator boy stares straight ahead. He takes great care with the Otis. He doesn’t engage her in conversation, his head tilted slightly to the ceiling and his body as if it’s counting out rhythm. She gets the sense that he will be here ten years from now, twenty, thirty. She would like to step up behind him and whisper, Boo! in his ear, but she watches the panel and the small circular white lights as they rise.
He pulls the lever, aligns the elevator and the floor perfectly. He slides his foot out to test his workmanship. A young man of precision. — Madame, he says. First door on your right.
The door is opened by a tall Jamaican nurse, a man. They are momentarily confused, as if they should know each other somehow. The exchange is rapid-fire. I’m Mrs. Soderberg’s niece. Oh, I see, come in. Not her niece, really, but she calls me her niece. Please come in. I called earlier. Yes, yes, she’s sleeping now. Step inside. How is she? Well… he says.
And the well is drawn out, a pause, not an affirmative — Claire is not well at all; she is at the bottom of a dark well.
Jaslyn hears the sound of other voices: a radio, perhaps?
The apartment seems as if it has been sunk in aspic. It used to terrify her and her sister as children, on those occasions when they came into the city with Gloria, the dark hallway, the artwork, the smell of old wood. She and her sister held hands as they walked down the corridor. The worst thing was the portrait of the dead man on the wall. The painting had been done in such a way that his eyes seemed to follow them. Claire would talk about him all the time, that Solomon had loved this and Solomon loved that. She had sold some of the other paintings — even her Miró, to help pay the expenses — but the Solomon portrait remained.
The nurse takes her bag and settles it in the corner against the hat stand.
— Please, he says, and he motions her toward the living room.
She is stunned to see six people, most of them her own age, around the table and on the sofa. They are casually dressed but sipping cocktails. Her heart thumps against the wall of her chest. They too freeze at the sight of her. Well, well. The true nieces, nephews, cousins, perhaps? Song of Solomon. He is dead fourteen years but she can see him in their faces. One, almost certainly, is Claire’s niece, with a streak of gray in her hair.
They stare at her. The air like ice around her. She wishes that she had taken Pino upstairs alongside her, so he could help take control, calmly, smoothly, or at least draw attention. She can still feel the kiss on her lips. She touches them with her fingers, as if she can hold the memory of it there.
— Hi, I’m Jaslyn, she says with a wave.
An idiotic wave. Presidential, almost.
— Hi, says a tall brunette.
She feels as if she has been nailed to the floor, but one of the nephews strides across the room. He has something of the petulant college boy about him, chubby face, a white shirt, a blue blazer, a red handkerchief in the breast pocket.
— Tom, he says. Lovely to meet you, Jaslyn, finally.
He says her name like something he wants to flick off his shoe, and the word finally stretches into rebuke. So he knows about her. He has heard. He probably thinks she’s here to dig. So be it. Gold digger. The truth is, she couldn’t care less about the will; if she got anything she would probably give it away.
— A drink?
— I’m fine, thanks.
— We figured that Auntie would’ve wanted us to enjoy ourselves even in the worst of times. He lowers his voice: We’re making Manhattans.
— How is she?
— She’s sleeping.
— It’s late — I’m terribly sorry.
— We have soda too, if you want.
— Is she …?
She cannot finish the sentence. The words hang in the air between her and Tom.
— She’s not well, he says.
That word again. A hollow echo all the way down to the ground. No splash. A constant free fall. Well well.