for Claire but that was against Joan’s policy. Not that Marie Two believed in any policy but her own. Claire ignored their conversation until the volume rose. And she heard her name. Then Joan and Marie were standing at her desk. ‘She’s already working on …’ Joan was saying.
‘I don’t give a shit what she’s working on. Mr Crayden needs this and Boynton’s stuff can wait.’
‘You can’t just come in here …’
‘Watch me.’ Claire lifted her head. Marie Two was standing before her with a thick sheaf of papers. ‘God, you look sick,’ Marie Two said.
‘I’ve caught a cold.’
‘No shit, Sherlock. You shouldn’t be here with that. A, you should be in bed. And B, you’ll get everyone else here sick, too.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Claire apologized.
‘Madonne! What’s wrong with you, Joan?’ Marie Two asked, glad to use any excuse against her enemy. ‘Can’t you see you should send her home?’
Suddenly the idea of her bed, her pillows and the puffy quilt over her seemed not only irresistible but imperative to Claire. Her mother and Jerry would be out of the house. There would be silence and comfort. A cup of hot, hot tea. Then a nap. And maybe, after that, some soup with buttered toast. She could eat and drink and read in bed without her mother accusing her of being antisocial. And if she used up an entire box of tissues from mopping her brimming eyes, she had an excuse: she was sick.
‘Do you think you have a fever?’ Marie Two asked and, like the practiced mother she was, placed a hand on Claire’s forehead. ‘You’re burning up,’ she said. ‘Joan, call the car service.’
‘She lives all the way in Staten Island. And I don’t have a client to charge it to. Boynton’s over budget,’ Joan protested.
‘Oh, charge it to Cigna. Mr Lymington puts his Cuban cigars on their expense sheet. What the hell will one taxi ride matter?’
Claire sat there passively as if they weren’t talking about her. She felt light-headed and distant, as if she was already slowly moving away from them in a vehicle. Donna, the apprehensive analyst who sat beside her, was looking from Marie Two to Joan. So, Claire finally noticed, were the rest of the analysts in the room. Her shame and misery would be complete, if she could feel anything. But she was beyond that.
‘She’ll get us all sick,’ Donna said. ‘There’s no air circulation in here.’
A buzz of conversation began but Joan put a stop to it by raising the phone to her ear. ‘I’m sending you home,’ she told Claire, as if the idea had come to her spontaneously.
The rest was a blur. A car was called. Marie Two bundled Claire into her coat, Donna carried her purse and knitting bag and they took her to the elevator. ‘Car number 317,’ Donna said. ‘That bitch Joan didn’t want to do it,’ she whispered. ‘Like it’s her money.’
The elevator arrived. Claire wobbled as she got into it. ‘You okay?’ Marie Two asked. ‘I gotta get back to Mr Crayden or he’ll pitch a fit. Just go outside. The car will be right there.’ Claire nodded as the doors slid closed. In the still moment before the elevator began its descent Claire began to cry again. Oddly, the unexpected kindness of people – in movies, on television or in books – always made her cry and now, as the actual recipient of the concern, she began to sob again. It wasn’t just about her cold, or the miserable scene the night before, or the collapse of her small hope. Her entire life, suddenly, felt pitiable. In that moment, in the elevator, she had a glimpse of herself as others probably saw her: a single, slightly overweight woman still living at home and working in a dead-end job. No profession, no romantic prospects, and nothing likely to change.
The elevator continued its downward trip as Claire’s feelings continued to sink. Why, she asked herself, didn’t she have an ambition, a goal? Why was this good enough for her? She had run out of energy. Worse, as the elevator reached the lobby she realized she’d run out of Kleenex again. There was no way she could be seen in this condition, but though she scrabbled through her purse and pockets she had nothing at all to absorb her tears and smears. All pride gone, just as the doors opened on the lobby, she wiped her nose and her eyes on the cuff of her new green coat, now so despised that it didn’t matter to her at all.
Then, as she stepped out onto the marble floor of the lobby she was almost pushed over by Michael Wonderful Wainwright. He grabbed her arm – the snot-free one – and steadied her. ‘Sorry,’ he said then looked at her for another moment. ‘Claire? Is that you?’ She was beyond face-saving, beyond artifice, beyond caring.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sick?’
‘Yes,’ she repeated. He probably expected some sort of minimizing explanation, one that would make him feel better. That she was mildly flu-ish, not to worry, it was just allergies/sinus/pneumonia/SARS/plague and he shouldn’t be concerned. The cancer of hope was in remission.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. She wondered idly how many times he’d already said that word to her.
‘I’m going home,’ she told him and pulled her arm away.
‘Okay. Well, I hope you feel better. And thanks for that work last night. It really saved my ass.’
She just looked at him for another moment and told herself to remember forever that men like Mr Wonderful did not ask women like Claire out for dinner. They asked them for favors, for notice, for admiration. They asked them to balance their checkbook, to juggle their love life, to pick up their tuxedo from the dry cleaners, to shop for a gift for their client, mother, or lover. They had them order out, order flowers, order supplies. Then they gave them a hundred bucks. She’d been stupid and deluded and ridiculous to think otherwise.
‘I have to go,’ she said and tried to turn and walk away with a shred of dignity. Impossible when you were holding a knitting bag and had a runny nose.
It was only when she walked out of the lobby that she recalled she still had the hundred-dollar bill in her pocket. She wished she had remembered that before so she could have given it back to him. The car was waiting. Claire sank into the back, more grateful for the shelter than she ever had been for anything.
‘Tottenville?’ the driver asked. ‘Staten Island, yes?’ Claire nodded, put her head down and closed her swollen eyes.
Perhaps she slept. Perhaps she dreamed something. She wasn’t sure. When the car pulled up to her house she roused herself. The long ride was over. Claire, feverish and achy, reached into her purse, took out the hundred and handed the bill to the driver. ‘But is paid for,’ he protested.
‘It’s a tip.’
‘But tip is paid, too.’
‘Keep it,’ she said. ‘I don’t need it.’
Almost tipsy, she got out of the car and slammed the door. If only it was that easy to get Mr Wonderful out of her life.
Claire was in bed for five days. It was, after the first twenty-four hours, only a mild cold. Once she managed
