Life Blood --XI---Page 35

Heading home, finally, I told myself to try to calm down. I was determined to help Sarah get over her trauma, though truthfully I was too tired to really think straight at that moment. So instead I decided to let everything rest for a few hours and try for some distance. In fact, I began imagining myself in a hot bath, gazing at my now-wilting roses. Home Sweet Home.

Mine was a standard one-bedroom in a building that had been
turned into a co-op five years earlier, the owner offering the
individual apartments to the tenants. I'd stayed a renter, however,
passing up the "low" insider price, $138,000, because I didn't
really have the money, and when I did have it someday I would
want something bigger. I wished I had more space—a real dining
room and a bigger bathroom would do for starters, along with
some place for more bookcases. And if a baby should someday
miraculously come along . . .

I'd often thought you could tell a lot about somebody from
where and how they lived; it's revealing as a Rorschach test.
What, I often wondered, did my apartment say about me?

A decorator might conclude I'd done up the place with love,
then lazily let it go. They'd decide I cared about nice things, but
once those nice things were there, I neglected them. It would be
true.

I'd covered the walls of the living room with pale blue cloth,
then hung a lot of framed pictures and old movie posters. Okay, I
like movies. For me even the posters are art. My couch was an
off-white, more like dirt-colored actually, and covered with pillows
for the "feminine" touch. I'd hoped you'd have to look twice to
realize it was actually a storage cabinet in disguise, with drawers
along the bottom of the front. The floor was polished hardwood,
rugs from India here and there, in sore need of a vacuuming, and
even a couple of deceased insects that'd been there for over a
week. That sort of said it, I thought glumly. I'm a workaholic slob.
        The bedroom revealed even more about me. The bed was a
brass four-poster, queen-size, partly covered by an heirloom quilt.
It hadn't been made in a week. (Who has the time?) The room
itself was long and divided into areas for work and sleep.
Opposite the bed itself was an antique English desk, on which sat

my old Macintosh, and next to that was my file cabinet, the

indispensable part of the "home office" the IRS loves to hate. On
top of it was a stack of marked-up scripts, notes scribbled all over
them in six different colors. You never realize movies are so
complicated till you see a breakdown sheet. Camera angles and
voice-overs and . . .

Next to the bed was a violin case and three books about
Indian ragas. What was that about? somebody might wonder.
Some kind of Indian music nut? I was, albeit a very minimally
talented nut.

The kitchen was the New York efficiency kind painted a

glossy tan, the color of aerosol olive oil. The cabinets contained
mostly packages of pasta, instant soup, and coffee filters. Not
even any real food. I live on deli takeout these days. An inventory
of my fridge at this moment would clock two cartons of "fresh
squeezed" orange juice, a half quart of spoiling milk, a bag of
coffee beans, plastic containers of wilting veggies from the corner
salad bar, and three bottles of New York seltzer. That was it.
        God help me, I thought, my mind-state turning even more
morose. This is my life. I had become that retrograde Woman of
the Nineties: works ninety hours a week, makes ninety thou a
year, weighs ninety pounds, and thinks (pardon my French)
Cooking and Fucking are provinces in northern China. Well, the
ninety-pounds part of that obscene quip didn't fit—and it wasn't the
nineties anymore, anyway.

In any case, was my apartment a place to raise a child? No earthly way. Like Carly, I'd have to spring for some decent space, preferably with a washing machine. . .

A parking slot was open right in front of my building, a minor
miracle on this day of uncertain events. As I was pulling in, I
glanced over to see a man walking past, not catching the face but
sensing something familiar in the walk. He was in the process of
unbuttoning a Federal Express uniform, peeling away the top to
reveal a dark suit. He certainly seemed to be in a big hurry,
carrying an unmarked shopping bag. Maybe, I thought, his shift
was over and he was meeting his wife, or a friend.
        I wondered if he'd left a package for me, and told myself to
check with the super. Not the usual delivery guy—did they come
on Sunday now?—and also . . .

Where was the truck? They always parked right here by the
building.

I was still so upset over Sarah, I couldn't immediately process
those illogical observations, so I just grabbed my pink roses,
dripping from the bottom of their paper wrapping, and opened the
car door. It was definitely good to be home. I loved my Chelsea
neighborhood, where you got to know the locals, running into
them in the delis, the little restaurants, the dry cleaners. Just like a
small town. If you worked at home, the way I sometimes did, you
even got to know the mailman and the delivery guys for UPS and
FedEx. . .

Hey! That guy. I finally placed the walk, a kind of a strut. He
was the slimeball who'd been outside Paula Marks' building last
week, carrying a gun and threatening me. What's he doing here?

My pulse went off the charts. Was he one of Nicky Russo's wiseguy crew after all? Had he come back, with his pistol, to pay me a return engagement?

My God.

Chill out, I told myself, take a deep breath. He's leaving. Just try and find out who he is.

Roses in one hand held up awkwardly around my face, I

slowly ambled down the street after him. I didn't have to go far.

Within about a hundred feet, he unlocked a long black Lincoln

Towncar, stepped out of the FedEx camouflage, tossed it onto the seat along with the bag he was carrying, pulled the cap off his bald head got in, and sped away.

The license plate looked different from the usual, but I got what I needed: DL and a string of numbers.

Uh-oh, I thought. Was he leaving a package bomb for me?
        I turned back and let myself into the outer lobby, glancing
 around as I did. There were no parcels anywhere, just blank,
brown tile.

My apartment was 3A. The name on the bell was M. James. As I stepped through the inner lobby—still no package—a rumpled face appeared in the doorway just to my left. The sign on it,
flaking, said SUPER.

"Oh, hi." The voice was Patrick Mooney, our superintendent, who did not normally emerge to greet those arriving. But there had been complaints from the building's managing agent that he could never be found for emergencies, so he probably wanted to appear available, even on Sundays. His voice was slurred from some midday medicinal Irish whisky. "Thought you were home. FedEx guy was here earlier looking for you."

Oh, boy. "Did he leave a package?"