put on go to her hips. She had pale, fine skin and eyes that were somewhere between gray and green (but if she was honest – and she always was – closer to gray). Her light brown hair hung straight, cut below the chin in a simple bob. Aside from some pink lip gloss and an occasional (inept) wave of a brown mascara wand, she wore no make-up at all. Now the cold made her lick her lips and wish she’d brought the lip gloss with her.
The buildings on either side of them made a wind tunnel and Claire felt like Dorothy about to be battered by the tornado. Except, of course, there was no Oz. ‘If it’s about the money, hey, I got a few extra bucks,’ Tina offered. Claire blushed. She regretted telling Tina recently that her mother had begun charging rent. ‘Just for you to stay in the room you’ve slept in since you were four years old?’ Tina had demanded, outraged. Claire had nodded. Since Jerry had moved in, her mother seemed more short of cash than ever, though his contribution and the insurance money from her father’s death should have been more than enough for her mother to live on.
‘Ya know, it’s a sin the way your mom treats you. My uncle says if your dad left the house to you, you shouldn’t be payin’ no rent.’ Claire neither pointed out the double negative nor the fact that it was none of Tina’s uncle’s business. Of course, it sometimes seemed that Tina’s uncle – some of her other male relatives too – didn’t have a business. And their wives spent lots of cash and discussed everyone’s. But Claire never criticized – she knew what could happen to people who criticized Tony Brunetti. But if Tina was bossy, judgmental and a gossip, she did have a generous heart. ‘So, you want a loan?’ she asked.
‘No. It’s not that,’ Claire told Tina. They were only a block from the office but the chill was piercing. She tucked her chin down against the wind and tried to adjust her muffler – one she’d knit for herself – so that none of her throat was exposed. At least when they turned the corner, in sight of Sy’s pushcart, the wind abated.
‘Hello, ladies,’ Sy called out over the heads of the other customers on line for their morning caffeine and carbohydrate fix.
‘Hey, Sy!’ Tina replied. ‘Wanna go to Puerto Rico with me?’
‘Nah,’ Sy said. ‘I’d rather stand here in the cold, freezing my nuts off and doling out coffee to rich, cheap bastards.’
The rich cheap bastards on line were too busy reading the Journal headlines or talking on their cell phones to react, but Claire smiled.
‘Yeah. You got the life,’ Tina agreed. When she and Claire got to the front of the line Sy, without needing to be told, put their regular orders into two little bags. He handed them over to the girls with a flourish.
‘Tell ya what,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask my wife’s permission. But screw Puerto Rico. If she says yes we’re going to Aruba.’
‘If she says yes, I’ll buy Aruba,’ Tina wisecracked. ‘Then I’ll sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.’
‘Been there, done that. That’s why I’m pushing this cart,’ Sy said. He turned to Claire. ‘But maybe a cutie like you could sell me the Williamsburg.’ He winked.
Tina was rooting around in her gigantic purse. She looked up. ‘Geez, I barely have enough money for Danish and coffee. Hey, Claire, can you lend me a twenty till Friday?’
Sy, still looking at Claire, shook his head. ‘Same shit, ‘nother day,’ he smiled.
Claire nodded, opened her backpack and handed the bill to Tina. ‘Thanks,’ Tina said, and handed the twenty to Sy. ‘My treat.’
Claire smiled. That was so Tina. Always there with her hand out but always willing to share. She’d give you the blouse off her back – but she’d probably already borrowed your money to buy the blouse. Claire was the kind of person who always had money saved to lend to Tina – who was the kind of person who always needed to borrow some. Claire wasn’t old or experienced enough to know the whole world was divided into those two kinds of people, one never happy with the other. She just smiled at her friend as Tina handed Claire the bag of black coffee and a buttered bagel. As they walked from the cart, though, Claire did idly wonder why she was more comfortable lending than borrowing. It certainly wasn’t her mother’s influence. Her mother owed money not only to Claire but also to most of Tottenville. But neither did Claire remember her late father being open-handed with money. Perhaps she didn’t take after either one of them. Despite genetics she had always seemed completely unlike her parents or her brother Fred.
‘My brothers and Anthony went out last night and got hammered,’ Tina said. ‘Boy, were they hung this morning. They said they missed Fred. How is he?’
The truth was Claire had no idea how her brother was. He had joined the Army and had been shipped off to Germany. Claire had written to him dutifully for the first six or eight months after he left but he had rarely responded and when he did it was only with a brief postcard (no picture). As her letters became more and more difficult to write, Claire had admitted to herself that she and Fred never had much in common. So her letters had petered out. That didn’t mean that her guilt did. Aside from Fred and her mom she had no relatives she associated with. There was an aunt on her father’s side, but Claire had been told that the Bilsops had disowned her forever.
Tina, on the contrary, lived amidst scores of complex ongoing relationships: cousins, second cousins, their wives or husbands, godmothers, goddaughters, and dozens of courtesy aunts and uncles where no blood relationship existed at all. Sometimes Claire was turned off by Tina and her boisterous clan, but now and then she was envious of their closeness and even their feuds. You had to care about somebody to bother to fight with them. Now Fred was away, she only had her mother and Jerry, her mom’s repulsive boyfriend.
‘I guess Fred’s okay,’ Claire told Tina. ‘My mother got a card from Dusseldorf.’
‘Dusseldorf? Who’s he?’
Claire just shrugged. She’d decided long ago that educating Tina was not her job.
They arrived at the enormous glass doors to their office building with the usual couple of minutes to get upstairs. The lobby was crowded and the elevator was, as usual, jammed. The ride in the elevator was Claire’s least favorite part of the day. She had told herself over and over that it was only ninety seconds but she still dreaded it. In the summer people’s sweaty bodies were oppressive and in the winter the smell of wet wool was equally unpleasant. But it probably wasn’t the smell as much as the crush. All those strangers’ bodies rubbing. At that very moment Claire felt the breasts and belly of a large woman pushing against her back while in front, inches from her, she faced the wall of a man’s black coat, almost touching it with her nose. Her coffee had to be cradled directly against the tall man’s back. She was waiting for the day when the bag broke.
She was always relieved when the doors opened on the thirty-eighth floor and she could make her way out of what she thought of as ‘the aluminum sauna’. But her relief was almost immediately replaced by dismay as she remembered her next challenge: Once she had said goodbye to Tina she would have to scuttle down the rows of secretarial desks lined up outside the windowed offices which were ranged around the edge of the floor. Then she would have to turn and make her way down the windowless hallway that led to an even deeper corridor. It, in turn, would bring her to the interior room she shared with half a dozen other ‘analysts’, lorded over by Joan, a woman who proved that a little authority could make one a petty tyrant. Another day, another ninety-two dollars take-home Claire thought.
As they filed out of the elevator Claire hunched her shoulders in her habitual way but Tina, beside her, was jaunty, queen of the floor. How could she be so cheery? Maybe
