Lush Lives, page 30
If there was a way to prevent Madeline from profiting off Larsen, they would. If she lost face in the process, so much the better.
The elevator doors opened, and Madeline hurried out ahead of Parkie, heels ominously clicking down the hallway. Muted at that time of day to a urinary glow, the dirty windows around the room’s edge failed to illuminate their path. Yet even in near darkness, Madeline appeared to know where she was headed.
Within seconds, she had unlocked one of the line of doors and stepped inside.
“They said it would be somewhere in here,” she called to Parkie. “My eyes are terrible, can you see what this envelope says?” Parkie sighed and shuffled uncertainly forward, sweeping the dark as she walked.
There are times when every instinct in your body tells you not to do something. Following Madeline Cuthbert into cold storage was one of those times. But Parkie did it anyway.
This was her first regret when, as soon as she was midway into the room, Madeline came around from behind the door and slammed it shut, immediately turning the deadbolt on the other side.
“You two sit tight,” Parkie heard Madeline mutter as the clack of her heels grew softer. “This will all be over soon.”
Parkie reached for her phone, ignoring what she knew to be true: there was no signal up here. Nor was the flashlight feature much help in such a pitch-black cavern. But then she remembered what she’d done the last time. By slicing her hands through the air, Parkie found a few of the spaghetti strings and yanked the working bulbs to life.
Now she could think.
“You two.” What had that meant? She banged on the walls with her stick.
“Eleanor!” she yelled as loudly as she could. “Eleanor! Are you up here?”
After a few seconds of banging Parkie thought she heard an impossibly small voice.
“Miss de Groot? I’m. I can’t see a thing and I’m bleeding quite badly, I’m afraid.”
“Shit, shit, shit,” Parkie said, dropping her head. How could this be? How could Madeline have known? Spies. Everywhere. The luminous hands of her chronograph told her they had maybe twenty minutes, if that. Parkie needed to get back down there before her number was up.
And now there was Eleanor to think of. If an injured Eleanor was trapped in another room, Parkie would need to get her out first. How long would that take? How badly was she bleeding? And how in the world could she get them both out and make it to the sale room in time?
She swatted around freely with her cane, feeling like she needed to hit something hard and not finding much in the way of candidates. Suddenly, Parkie realized something: this room was full of boxes. And bubble wrap. And not much mouse poop. Despite the bulbs on strings, this wasn’t number six. Madeline had stuck her in a different plot of the graveyard. Which meant Eleanor might just be in the one to which she had a key. If only she could get there.
“Do you think anything’s broken? What happened?” Parkie yelled into the door. “Can you breathe all right?”
“Madeline said the manuscript was up here for some outlandish reason. I was suspicious and I said so. Then she just pushed me in,” Eleanor said. “Shoved me like a guard would a prisoner. And I caught my arm on one of these jagged metal shelves as I went down. It’s quite profuse. The bleeding, I mean. My skin is somewhat thinner than I thought.”
Good old Eleanor. How were these women of a certain age so brave?
“I’m going to get us out of here, Dr. Kenniston,” Parkie shouted. “Hang on.”
“Yes, please do that, Miss de Groot,” was all Eleanor said in response. Her voice was even smaller than before.
Go time, Parkie thought, feeling the adrenaline kick in as she hadn’t for a very long time. She took a couple of steps back and to the side of the door. Madeline was nothing if not cheap. It had to be one of those hollow-core doors you can buy at Home Depot, didn’t it? It had to be the kind of shoddy balsa-wood dollhouse bullshit someone with a temper, or a black belt, or a fucking silver-handled Victorian mobility aid could punch right through.
Parkie switched up her grip on the walking stick, choking down near the rubber tip with both hands so that her beloved swan was at the other, business, end. She breathed out a big breath, yoga-style though her nose, and swung her stick at the center of the wooden surface with every single bit of strength she had.
Chapter 37
When Glory told Parkie everything was going to be okay that morning, it wasn’t like she believed it. Call it intuition or second sight or merely lived experience, beating powerful bad people at their own game isn’t an easy thing to do. When it happens, there are bound to be casualties. Glory had told Parkie, and convinced herself, that she would be perfectly content to follow what happened to the manuscript—the lost Nella Larsen novel that told the story of her great-aunt’s erotic relationship with two unbelievable women—from a remove in Harlem. About an hour after the auction started, she knew better.
Snow had begun to accumulate and the Lyft car, on this Saturday afternoon, was taking forever. It was so slow, in fact, Glory tried to hail a cab while she was waiting. When that didn’t work, she’d briefly considered running all the way downtown, which showed her how irrational with worry she’d become. She hadn’t heard from Parkie in forty-three minutes. And she hadn’t heard from Eleanor in much longer than that.
When she finally got to Cuthbert’s, the big sale room was filled to capacity. An overflow of people with paddles and cell phones and Post-it–flagged catalogues had spread into the small hallway outside the glass doors. Glory wove her way through them into the crowded room and climbed onto an abandoned banquet chair in the back corner. Scanning the crowd, she couldn’t securely identify anyone except Madeline, who was up there slowly waving like a conductor, her attention fixed on the bidders. Manya was supposed to be here somewhere; if that was her black bob swaying toward her neighbor, she might be in the second row.
The room was a cacophony of whispers. It was humming with suspense. In fact, the air was so electric, Glory wondered if the manuscript had already sold before she got there.
And Madeline had won again.
She couldn’t find Parkie, who should be on the phones right now, close enough to get to the auctioneer in time to personally hand her an official-looking form stating that lot 326 had been pulled by the consignor. A notice like that, signed by Glory, would ensure that Larsen’s manuscript would not be sold by Cuthbert’s. Not today. Not ever.
But Parkie wasn’t among the showcase of pretty girls in black with phones plastered to their ears. And neither was Eleanor. And Glory had a very bad feeling not unlike the other bad feelings she’d become attuned to lately, all of which had been warranted in the end, right up to sweet Maisie’s death.
Glory stepped down from the chair, and just as she did, a young, bearded white guy in a funny suit backed carefully away from the phone tables and began slinking toward her, clinging to the wall like a cat burglar in a Pink Panther film.
“Are you Glory?” he whispered on approach.
“Are you Nicholas?”
“Yeah. Hey, so nice to meet you. Listen. I can’t find Parkie,” he said. “She left for the powder room—that’s what the girls said—about half an hour ago. And she didn’t come back. Neither has Dr. Kenniston. There’s no way they aren’t here for your lot. Which’ll be up in, give or take, fifteen minutes, I reckon. I don’t mean to worry you. But I’m worried.”
“Me, too,” Glory said. “She won’t answer my texts.”
“Might have her phone off,” he said. “We’re supposed to. Or she could be somewhere with no service. Which, God’s honest, is like half this building. It’s pathetic.” He cast a quick glance at the phones. “Best get back. Think I’ve been clocked.”
“Hey, can you get a message to someone in the audience for me?”
“You mean one of the bidders?” he said, nervously leaning in. “I can try.”
*
Glory returned to the hallway and found the stairwell. She could only hope, first, that the door to Parkie’s floor was unlocked and, second, that she could remember how to find Parkie’s desk. Fast.
The first thing she realized was that few of the cubes were personalized with more than a calendar or a mug of pens emblazoned with the owner’s college insignia. Here and there was a black and white Vanity Fair–ish photograph, its subjects posing on beaches or in black tie. But really, if it weren’t for the blue-and-white umbrella stand she’d heard so much about, Glory might only have located Parkie’s desk by the process of elimination, which she definitely did not have time for. Once she did find it, Parkie’s lack of personal effects made her search easier still. There were a few desk drawers and a bulletin board, but Parkie was too smart for anything as obvious as that.
Glory sat down in Parkie’s desk chair. It felt like being near her. Maybe the chair smelled like her soap. Or maybe the unergonomic foam seat had molded itself to her beautiful Parkie frame. It was a comforting sensation but it also filled Glory with fear. If Parkie was in any kind of trouble, she didn’t know what she would do. She hadn’t even told the love of her life how she really felt about her.
What would be Parkie’s clever hiding place? Glory asked herself, swiveling from side to side in the tiny square of space until it came to her. She lurched forward, tipping the heavy umbrella stand on its side. There within the embossed circle of carpet underneath was the key to the graveyard.
Back Glory went into the stairwell and up and up and up she ran. Three flights to the eighth floor. Was that the right one? She prayed she’d remembered. With each floor, the stairwell grew dirtier and darker, until at the top of unlit number eight—even at her exhausted speed—Glory nearly ran headfirst into the metal door.
She turned the knob and then. Sweet Jesus.
Come on!
Of all the doors in the whole unsecured fucking place, this one had to be locked?
“God dammit,” she screamed into the darkness, pounding a fist on the door.
“Is that you, Glory?” responded a British voice a few seconds later.
Glory heard footsteps and then, bam, the door flew open and there was Manya. And there, thank God, was Parkie standing next to her. There they both were, silhouettes backlit by a dangling bank of bulbs. There they were. Looking like the powerful women she knew them to be.
The front of Parkie’s gray Chanel suit was coated in what looked like sawdust, and there was a run in her stockings three inches wide. “You came for me,” she said excitedly.
“I did,” said Glory, still panting from the stairs and slightly amazed she’d found them.
“But you have to do one more thing,” Parkie said. “You have to go get the key from my cube. Eleanor is bleeding and I can’t break down her door. It’s an old one and it’s metal. I’m worried she’s—”
Glory didn’t try to process any of what she’d heard. She merely handed Parkie the key, which Parkie handed to Manya, who went running back down the hallway in her thirteen-hundred-dollar pumps like an Olympic sprinter.
“What else, babe?” Glory asked.
“You stay with Manya and Eleanor—Manya went down to call 911 before you came. They should be here soon. I have to get back to the sale. There may still be time.”
As they waited for the elevator to thunder up to the eighth floor, Parkie put her arms around Glory. She knew Parkie had to get to the salesroom but she didn’t want to let her go.
“I love you,” Parkie said, giving Glory a quick kiss near her ear as the doors opened. “Thank you for saving the day.”
“Thank you for—” Glory said. It was all she had time for before the elevator slammed shut and Parkie was gone.
Parkie had said something about Eleanor. About Eleanor being hurt? Glory was about to try to find Manya when Manya called to her from down the hallway. It was the right key, and Manya was already kneeling at Eleanor’s side, dabbing at the nasty gash still pooling bright red from her forearm.
“Have you got a T-shirt under that?” Manya asked Glory in a remarkably even and pleasant voice.
Glory had thrown on coveralls, without even thinking, or caring, how much she would stand out in the Cuthbert’s crowd. No wonder Nicholas had recognized her.
She nodded.
“Take it off and tear it into strips. Do it. And do it quickly.”
There was something thrilling about the way Manya spoke to her, the self-assurance behind the request, which was not a request. It was a command. Glory was taking off her clothes and tearing up her shirt in no time.
Once she had done as ordered, she ran the strips into the little room where an ashen-faced Eleanor lay on her back, babbling words that, to Glory, made no sense at all.
Manya doused Eleanor’s arm with clear fluid from a bottle she’d apparently removed from her enormous somebody-Italian bag—it looked to Glory like contact lens solution—and cleaned up the wound. Then she wrapped the jagged flap of skin with speed and precision and gently raised Eleanor’s arm over her head, speaking to her in the same calm voice.
“You’re a jack-of-all-trades,” Glory said, deeply impressed. “Good thing you got my message. I never would have known how to do that.”
Manya looked across at her with a faraway expression in her dark, intelligent eyes.
“You would if you’d been trained for it,” she said. “Back in London. Before all of this I was . . . I am. A nurse.”
*
“No, babe, I was still with Eleanor and Manya when that happened,” Glory called to Parkie. “We didn’t know if you made it before the buzzer or not. Then the paramedics came. So we just went straight to street level for the ambulance. It wasn’t until I got your text that I knew.”
Glory was still pretty wired. She was having trouble concentrating on the simplest things. Like washing her face and getting ready for bed.
“Where is your . . . ? Oh, got it,” she said, finding the toothpaste in a drawer.
They were at Parkie’s. For the first time. And it wasn’t nearly as weird as Glory had imagined. With Eleanor at New York Pres for observation, it made sense to decamp to Parkie’s, a few blocks away. They were tired and it was closer. Parkie had protested at first. But Glory had always wanted to see her place.
“It was pretty surreal,” Parkie said. “I mean, I literally busted out of the elevator when Madeline was giving fair warning on lot 325. It was a good thing we filled out the notice of withdrawal ahead of time. Even though I practically forgot it was in my pocket. I really didn’t know if I could do it at that point, physically, I mean. But when Madeline announced lot 326, ‘an uncensored novelette attributed to Nella Larsen,’ I got this rush of energy and climbed up on the dais in front of everyone and handed her the slip. She stared at me like she might kill me with her eyes. But I just stood there beside her for all the world to see. And the room started to get the way it gets when something out-of-the-ordinary happens—restless, almost panicky. And then she said it: ‘Lot 326 has been withdrawn from the auction and will not be sold.’”
“My heroine,” Glory said. “I wish I could have seen it. But, so then what? I’m surprised she didn’t try to push you off the stage.”
Glory had finished in the bathroom and came now into the tiny bedroom, with Parkie’s double bed all the way against one wall. She slipped off the too-big robe she’d borrowed and climbed under the covers. Parkie slid over.
“Then I actually whispered—or I like to think, hissed—in her ear. I don’t even know for sure what I said. But something like, ‘You better hope we don’t tell anyone what really happened upstairs. Eleanor and I will be in touch about our very, very generous severance packages.’ And then I just bounced. Walked onto the street, got your texts, and cabbed to the hospital.”
“Boss bitch,” Glory purred in Parkie’s ear. “Like I said.”
“Back at you. How did you know to do any of that? I can’t believe you found the key. If you hadn’t. God. Who knew Eleanor was a hemophiliac?”
“And who knew anything at all about Manya?” Glory said. She laid her face between Parkie’s breasts, rubbing circles on her belly with the flat of her hand.
“You know I like to hear you talk,” Glory said. “Whatever you say stays with me. Makes me think. Makes me miss you. I don’t know how else to explain it. I remembered about the graveyard and I just knew that’s where you’d be. When I sat in your chair, it was like I could feel you hiding that key.”
“What else can you feel?” Parkie asked, sliding her hand down Glory’s chest, over her stomach, and inside her thigh.
“That I love you, too,” Glory said. “And I want this to be the way it always is. Wherever we are. Whatever we’re doing. Lifting each other up. Catching each other if we fall. Or if we’re headed in the wrong direction. Like I have been.”
“Like we both have been. Mostly me, as I think we both know. But I’m done making excuses,” Parkie said. “Better together?”
“Yes, we are,” said Glory.
It was the first time she’d said the words. But Parkie didn’t say them back this time. It’d been the heat of the moment outside the elevator. Maybe Parkie regretted it. Glory repositioned herself so that Parkie could no longer see her face.
“You know I want this always, don’t you?” Parkie said. She kissed Glory’s forehead and pulled her closer. “Can you do that?”
Glory smiled into the softness of Parkie’s skin, feeling her pounding heart, knowing her love was real. Happy to be anywhere as long as they were together. “For you, Parkerson, I can definitely do always.”
Epilogue
The show sold out. Manya’s idea to coordinate the opening of Glory’s first solo exhibition with the release of Nella Larsen’s heretofore unpublished last novel proved irresistible to the press. That Glory’s home/studio was revealed as the site of the novel’s love affair was simply too poignant a coincidence to ignore. Brooklyn bookstores ran out of Passing. Even Quicksand was selling like hotcakes. The exhibition handily drew the author’s admirers to the artist’s work and vice versa, which only seemed appropriate, since one of Glory’s newest and largest paintings was called Sanctuary. If the story with that title proved to be Larsen’s undoing, the lovers she’d taken a decade later had invited her into their Harlem brownstone and redeemed the word for her. At least Glory hoped that was the case.
