without a stitch dropped. She closed her eyes and remained silent wondering, not for the first time, why Tina wouldn’t want to be alone with Anthony. Claire couldn’t imagine wanting to take Tina away on a trip with a lover – if she ever had the chance to make such a trip. She wondered if that made her a less loyal friend or less co-dependent. Or, perhaps, both.
‘So guess what happened with my boss?’ Tina asked. Claire was grateful she had her eyes closed. It made it easier to keep her face blank.
‘He’s at that ultimatum stage again,’ Tina was saying. ‘He wants to keep Katherine around but she’s found out about the on-again-off-again with Blaire and she’s insisting he break it off with Blaire or else.’
‘And will he?’ Claire asked, her tone neutral.
‘Get a grip,’ Tina said and laughed. ‘And even if he did, he’s obstinate and doesn’t like to be told what to do. If it wasn’t Blaire it would be someone else. His big mistake is being honest with them when they ask and theirs is asking.’ She shook her head. ‘Courtney hung onto him for almost a year because she never asked him what he was doin’ on the nights and weekends he didn’t spend with her.’ Tina shrugged. ‘But he ditched her anyway, in the end.’
‘That’s the fate of all his women, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ Tina agreed. ‘He’s the bomb. The only difference is how long they last and whether or not there’s a scene at the end.’
‘Speaking of the end, we’re about to dock,’ Claire said and rose.
‘God, I’m hungry!’ Tina said, as always moving like clockwork to the next item on the agenda. ‘I hope Sy saves the biggest Danish for me.’
Claire gave her a forced smile and filed down the gangplank with everyone else, and they made their walk up Water Street along with a portion of the crowd. A helicopter hovered overhead and Claire imagined from that height all of them must look like ants purposefully streaming into their anthills.
Claire sighed. After her week off, the commute and the job seemed more oppressive than ever. She thought again about going back to college, getting a BA in library science, but what was the point? Libraries were closing down every day in New York. Her own Staten Island branch was only open three days a week – and only in the mornings on Saturday. She simply had to face the fact that she was a caterpillar – albeit a thinner one than she had been – and wouldn’t even graduate to moth, much less butterfly. Claire Bilsop, the social caterpillar.
And now she no longer had her pathetic, secret little crush to dream about, to keep her from loneliness. Nor would she let herself take on a new one, not that she admired any of the other swaggering investment bankers. What was the point? She would deceive and distract herself no longer.
So in a way, the incident with Mr Wonderful had had a salutary effect. It had been a kind of vaccination. A little bit of deadly Mr Wonderful in her blood stream had had its toxic effect, but after a brief illness she had built up Mr Wonderful antibodies.
As they all sat over the lunch table later that day, the conversation drifted back and forth in its usual desultory way. When Tina contributed anything about her boss, Claire was relieved to find herself no longer hungrily grabbing at each syllable, filing it away for future contemplation. She blocked it.
‘Jeez, you look skinny,’ Marie One said to Claire. ‘It must be the new cut.’ They had, of course, focused on Claire’s new hairstyle and everybody approved, except Joan, which made Claire feel certain that it suited her. She didn’t welcome the attention, but she had expected it. She had borrowed a dress and matching jacket from her mother – a black knit with flecks of beige. She felt that after her absence she might as well look good, but Joan narrowed her eyes as if she suspected Claire had never been ill at all.
‘Hey. She was sick. Lay off,’ Tina said.
‘You want some liverwurst?’ Marie Two asked. ‘I got plenty.’
‘Now that would make her puke,’ Michelle said, to be rewarded with a look from Marie Two. Michelle always felt she was better than Marie Two because she had worked for Smithers longer than Marie had for Crayden.
‘Like you can cook,’ Tina replied.
The talk moved to recipes and Claire was glad she was no longer the focus. She was concentrating on chewing and swallowing her egg salad sandwich, though it tasted like sawdust.
‘Vic wants us to go to Vegas, but I said fagetaboutit,’ Marie One said. ‘Last time we went to Atlantic City he dropped six hundred bucks cash,’ she continued as she nervously twirled her diamond ring around her tiny finger. ‘I didn’t know it, but he also got cash advances on our Visa and MasterCard.’
‘I don’t believe in gambling,’ Joan said. ‘Not even the lottery.’
‘Then you won’t get a share of mine when I win,’ Michelle assured her.
‘The odds are better in a casino,’ Marie Two said.
‘They got casinos in Puerto Rico, but that’s not what me and Anthony are going there to do,’ Tina offered.
‘Me, I say Disney World,’ Michelle said. ‘The Magic Kingdom is great for the kids and Epcot is good for the grownups.’
‘Epcot sucks,’ said Marie One. ‘I was never so bored in my life.’
Speaking of bored, Claire could barely stand it. She was suddenly so tired of these tedious repetitions of the obvious that she was ready to throw down her sandwich – or possibly throw it up. Then, oddly, the conversation became riveting.
‘Mr Crayden, Senior is spending the next month in London doing some new business deal,’ Marie Two announced. ‘He may take Abigail with him.’ Abigail Samuels was Mr Crayden’s secretary of almost thirty years. Unmarried, tall and ultra-efficient, she was an office wife and handled every detail of Mr Crayden’s business, as well as a significant part of his social plans. She never lunched with any of the other secretaries. She was a haughty white-haired patrician with better things to do. Claire had seen her, once or twice, eating lunch alone in local coffee shops reading Balzac in the original French. Claire was impressed and awed by her.
‘Lucky Abigail,’ said Michelle sarcastically. ‘She gets to travel. Too bad she doesn’t have a husband or a life.’
Marie Two ignored Michelle, as she often did. ‘Well, Mr Crayden, Junior may also go for part of that time, and if he does, guess who’s invited?’ A series of surprised coos and ooohs circulated the table.
‘Your husband would shit a brick,’ Marie One said.
‘Like that matters,’ Marie Two said. ‘Crayden asks, I go. I never been there.’
Claire felt the hair on the back of her neck rise. She had never traveled much, but if she could go to London! If she had to go to London, so that she wouldn’t be nervous or tempted to cancel. If she were going there to work, so there would be some people she knew, some familiarity … well, she would never get the chance. Analysts were not invited to London.
Tina put down her pastrami sandwich and raised her heavily penciled brows. ‘Hey, maybe that’s got something to do with Michael Wainwright going,’ Tina said. ‘I just booked him a couple of tickets for next
