The Guy Not Taken Read online

On a bright, crisp day in September, Jess made her way into the lawyer’s office, still numb from the mixture of grief, shock, and a great flaring, untrammeled joy, and signed the papers that would make Aunt Cat’s apartment at the Emerson hers. The probate period was sixty days. On the fifty-third day, there was a message on her cell phone. “Jessie, it’s your old man,” her father’s voice said. “Give me a call.” She’d had to fortify herself with a dark-chocolate Lindt bar and a glass of red wine before dialing his new number and greeting his new wife.

  “Jess,” he’d said. His voice was warm on the phone. “I know it’s been a little while . . .” The warmth of his voice was now tinged with humility. “A little while” had been since Aunt Cat’s memorial service in August. She could imagine him bowing his handsome head under strange kitchen lights in some Long Island McMansion, with the phone cradled against his shoulder. “I’m going to be in the city on Friday, and it’s about time I take you out to celebrate your new job. Can you meet me for lunch?”

  “Hah,” said Namita, lying prone on a teak bench in the gym’s sauna, post-step-class, when Jess told her. Actually, what she’d said was “hah fucking hah.”

  “You think it’s a coincidence that he ignores you for months and just happens to show up ten minutes before this apartment’s going to fall into your lap? Aunt Catherine was his aunt, right?”

  Jess had nodded. “Yes, but it’s not that. I think he just wants to see me.”

  Namita sat up straight, readjusting the terry-cloth turban she’d wrapped around her hair. Jess marveled that it was possible for anyone to look so indignant while naked.

  “Did Aunt Cat leave him anything?” her friend inquired.

  Jess shook her head. “She never really forgave him for . . . for, you know.”

  Namita raised her eyebrow. “The hair plugs?”

  Jess smiled.

  “Or was it the whole ditching-your-mother-and-marrying-a-woman-who’s-basically-our-age thing?”

  Jess tugged her towel tighter around her chest. In her family, the events Namita had just described were usually referred to simply as The Unpleasantness.

  “So will you see him?” Namita asked, leaning over to pour a ladle full of water onto the pot of hot rocks. Steam billowed and hissed.

  “I’m curious,” Jess said. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to give him the apartment or anything.”

  “You want me to come with you?” Namita called through the clouds.

  Jess shook her head and told her friend that she’d be fine.

  • • •

  Seated in a back booth at the Carnegie Deli on a cold, wet Friday afternoon, her father, Neil Norton, looked like a new penny in a fistful of grimy dollar bills. He was tall and still boyish, with a remarkable crop of thick brown hair, and a few lines at the corners of his eyes that somehow made him look better, not worse. He wore a vintage leather jacket, faded Levi’s, and a gold watch she didn’t recognize. His waist was slim, his smile gleaming, and he looked right into her eyes while they talked, focusing on her as if she were the only person in the room, the way he always did.

  “You look gorgeous, Gorgeous!” he told her as she wiped steam from her glasses and slipped them into her coat pocket. “eBiz magazine. Isn’t that something.” She nodded, charmed and flattered, and ducked her head over the menu, wondering what she could order to show that she was a mature and disinterested woman of the world with no intention of being swayed by his sweet talk, if Namita had gotten it right. What would Aunt Cat order? She ran a finger down the menu’s laminated edge while her father talked, and realized that Aunt Cat would have insisted on the King Cole Bar in the St. Regis. Aunt Cat would have known that there was no way to eat a six-inch stack of pastrami while looking like a mature and disinterested woman of the world, or really, like anything other than a slob.

  When the waitress came Jess had to repeat her order for a tuna melt twice (“What’s that, hon?”). Neil jiggled his legs as he demolished a Reuben, picked fries off his daughter’s plate, pinned her with his insistent gaze, and asked about her job, her friends, whether she was dating anyone.

  “I’ve got new pictures,” he said, sliding a snapshot of a smiling baby across the table. “She just got her third tooth.” With her curly hair and squinty eyes, the baby could have been a twin to Jess as an infant. Then again, maybe all babies looked like that. Or maybe all of her father’s babies did.

  She slid the picture back across the table. “How are you?” she asked.

  Her father sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. His shoulders slumped inside his beautiful leather jacket. “Well, Jess, I’m actually not so good.”

  Her spine stiffened. Cancer? Heart disease? Had he tracked her down to tell her he was dying? “What’s wrong?”

  Neil rubbed his face again and described the string of bad luck and bad investments that had brought him to his current predicament. Eventually, it emerged that he’d been counting on his beloved Aunt Catherine—who, husbandless and childless, had managed to retain and increase the money she’d inherited from her parents—to, as he put it, “do something for me.”

  “You can’t imagine how it feels for me to ask you this.”

  Jess braced herself, preparing for what she feared was coming: He was going to ask her for the apartment, and she was going to have to tell him no. Then she was going to have to pay Namita twenty bucks for being right. She held perfectly still as he outlined his plan, some complicated scheme designed to maximize the tax write-offs, then segued seamlessly back into apology mode.

  “I know I made a mistake. You should never count your chickens before they hatch.”

  “Or die,” said Jess softly.

  Neil raised his head. His gaze hardened. “When did you get to be such a smart-ass?”

  Jess gave her hair her best Namita-style toss and a little shrug.

  “So that’s it?” her father asked in a harsh voice loud enough to cause the waitresses clustered at the cash register to turn and stare. He pushed his empty plate away so hard that it smacked into hers and glared at her. “That’s it for the old man?”

  Jess got to her feet and looked down at him. At her high school graduation, she’d worn a white dress under her black gown, and wobbly high heels. Afterward, she’d sat on the front porch of her parents’ meticulously restored Victorian, ignoring the barbecue out back, the cake with her name in pink icing, her grandparents, Aunt Cat. Her father was supposed to have been there, but hadn’t showed up, hadn’t even called. After the ceremony, Gloria had locked herself in her bedroom and hadn’t come down for dinner.

  Jess sat on the glider in the balmy spring air for hours as the sun went down and the stars came out and the sweet smell of grilled chicken drifted away. Her cousins and her mother’s friends kissed her cheek and congratulated her as they made their way out to the cars they’d parked on the street.

  It was after eleven by the time Aunt Cat came and sat beside her, elegant as ever in a crisp linen suit and a rope of seed pearls around her neck. She pulled her cigarette case and heavy gold lighter out of her bag, lighting up without asking permission.

  Jess pushed her feet against the boards, setting the glider into gentle motion. Aunt Cat blew smoke toward the gables. “He’s a weak man,” she announced, as if she was picking up a conversation they’d already been having. “He was a weak boy who became a weak adolescent, and I am sorry to say that life doesn’t seem to have taught him much.”

  Jess hung her head, thinking that, weak or not, he was still her father, and he was supposed to have been there.

  Aunt Cat sighed as the glider swung back and forth. “Sometimes there’s no getting around it,” she said. “Why don’t you come visit me when camp’s over?”

  The day her tenure as a counselor in the Poconos ended, Jess had taken the bus to Port Authority, and then a cab to the Emerson, arriving in the entryway with two duffel bags full of summer clothes and a backpack full of books. “The fairy princess!” Del the doorman had called, and she’d
smiled for what felt like the first time since graduation. She’d stayed with Aunt Cat until September, and had spent three weeks every summer for the next four years in the Emerson, pulling art books and old novels off the floor-to-ceiling shelves; soaking in the deep, tiled tub; sitting on the cushioned window seat, staring down at the park, dreaming her dreams of the city.

  Now she stood up from the back booth of the deli and looked down at her father, his burnished hair and gleaming watch, sleek as some exotic bird in the noisy diner. He had the same nose and cheekbones as Aunt Cat, but that was all he’d inherited. Just some of her bone structure, none of her character. Weak, she thought. She reached into her pocket, groping for the key to the front door of the Emerson, and when she found it, she squeezed hard enough to bruise her palm. “That’s all I got,” she said.

  • • •

  “Now, you know, normally the sellers aren’t around during the open houses,” Billy told Jess on a Saturday afternoon, three weeks after she’d first raised the idea of giving him the listing. He’d been bustling around all morning, sticking flowers into vases, shoving laundry onto the highest closet shelves.

  “Don’t worry,” said Jess. She pulled her still-damp curls out of their ponytail and threaded Aunt Cat’s pearl earrings through her ears. “I’m just going to grab my purse and go to McGlinchey’s.” McGlinchey’s was the bar on the corner where, she hoped, Billy would join her once the open house was over.

  “Okay,” he said, glancing at the clock over the stove. “As long as you’re . . .”

  The door swung open and a short, angry-looking gray-haired woman in a loose sack of a dress, wool socks, and leather sandals hurried through the foyer, trailing a young woman in a navy-blue suit in her wake. “The neighborhood’s really gone downhill,” the older woman observed in a grating, nasal voice, glaring at Billy and ignoring Jess altogether.

  “I’m Billy Gurwich,” he said, extending his hand, which the woman ignored. “Maybe you should get going,” he whispered to Jess, as the woman flung a fringed red-and-purple wrap that reeked of cigarette smoke on the couch, poked one stubby, nicotine-stained finger into the keyhole of Aunt Cat’s antique desk, and finally deigned to notice Jess.

  “You’re the owner?” she barked.

  Jess nodded. The woman studied her, looking her up and down, taking in Jess’s unremarkable figure, her wet hair, and her big brown sweater.

  “Huh. Did your parents buy you this place?”

  “No. Well, actually . . .”

  The woman pivoted on her Birkenstocks and stomped across the room. “Fireplace work?”

  “Wood-burning,” said Billy, winking at Jess.

  The woman squatted to peer up at the flue. After she’d yanked the handle back and forth, she straightened up, grunting softly, and scrutinized the gilt-framed photograph on the mantel, staring at it, then at Jess. “You?”

  “It’s actually my aunt Catherine,” Jess replied.

  The woman’s upper lip curled. “Well, at least you come by that hair honestly,” she said. Jess’s hands flew to her curls. Billy smiled weakly. The woman yanked open the refrigerator door and began to peruse the contents, lifting the jars of jam, the carton of eggs. Jess grabbed her purse and fled.

  • • •

  “Great news!” said Billy an hour and a half later, leaning over Jess’s shoulder where she sat at the bar. There was a soccer game showing on the two television screens that hung above the rows of bottles, and the place was full of rowdy Ecuadorians, many of them in striped team shirts, who’d been swaying around Jess, singing in Spanish on and off for the last hour. Billy’s round cheeks were flushed, his eyes were shining, and his hair stood up straight from static electricity when he pulled off his hat. “Toby Crider wants to come back!”

  “That is not great news,” Jess said. The words came out a little slushy. She hadn’t had anything to eat all day because she’d been too busy helping Billy get the place ready for the open house. Then the horrible woman’s questions, the way she’d pawed at Jess’s things, peered at her photographs, and fingered the food in the refrigerator, as if she already owned the place, as if she had more right to be there than Jess did, had made her change her normal order of vodka and cranberry juice to just plain vodka.

  Billy slid onto the bar stool next to hers, so close that their shoulders were touching. “Leverage,” he said, cupping Jess’s chin in one hand. “It’s all about leverage. Her husband’s a very big deal. Impeccable financials. If she makes an offer . . .”

  “She can’t have it,” Jess said.

  “Oh, it’s not for her, it’s for some kid.”

  “She has children?” Jess blurted. “That’s unspeakable.”

  “Not her kid,” Billy said. He rifled through his briefcase. “It’s her stepson or nephew. Something. He’s finishing up at Wharton, which Toby must have mentioned about a dozen times per room, and he’s starting at”—more rifling—“some investment banking firm, and he needs a place fast.”

  “Listen, Billy.” Jess swung her stool around a little faster than she’d meant to. Their knees collided. “Whoops a daisy,” Billy said, grabbing the base of her chair, holding her steady.

  Jess smiled at him, as the floor and ceiling tilted, and the soccer fans whooped and cheered. “I . . .” she stammered. “I don’t think this is actually a very good idea.”

  “Cold feet,” Billy said. He eased her glass away from her and put his warm hands around hers. “Cold hands, too.” His smile felt like a warm blanket settling around her shoulders, like the first sip of the hot chocolate Aunt Cat used to make every winter the first time it snowed.

  “Don’t worry. I know you said we were just going to test the waters, but now we’ve got a fish on the line. A big fish. I’m going to get you . . .” He bent, smiling, so close she could feel the heat of his skin, the prickle of his cheek against her ear, and whispered a number so extraordinary it made her gasp out loud. She gulped down the rest of her drink while he beamed at her, eyebrows raised, face expectant. “So? What do you think about that?”

  She smiled woozily, then leaned against him, resting her head on his firm shoulder, closing her eyes, breathing when he breathed. He smelled like wet wool and Irish Spring soap as he eased one arm around her shoulders, giving her a squeeze before detaching himself to pull out his wallet and pay for the drinks. “But where will I go?” Jess’s voice was tiny, lost in the clink of ice against glasses and the roar of the soccer fans. Billy, busy with the bartender, either didn’t hear or couldn’t answer.

  • • •

  “You don’t understand,” she told Namita as they waited in line for the movies the following Friday. “This woman. Horrible Toby. She’s like a stubbed toe.”

  “Let me hear it,” Namita said.

  Jess groaned. “She keeps showing up. Three times, so far! The last time she didn’t even call! She just leaned on the buzzer until I opened the door.”

  “What does she want?”

  “Measurements for window treatments,” Jess said, wincing as she remembered the sound of Toby’s tape measure snapping up and down the walls while Jess had huddled in the kitchen, counting the minutes on her microwave clock until Toby departed. “And once she brought her feng shui consultant.”

  “But of course,” Namita said. “Listen. Radical thought. You could just tell her to forget it. Tell her the place isn’t for sale anymore. Take it off the market.”

  Jess hung her head. Telling Horrible Toby that the deal was off would mean telling Charming Billy the same thing, and she just couldn’t make herself pull the trigger, even though she’d tried. She’d gone to the Hallahan offices that very afternoon to make her plea in person. Billy had walked her to Citarella, bought her a yogurt parfait, held her hands across the small round table, and asked whether the problem was selling to Toby or selling at all.

  “Selling at all,” she’d said eagerly, finally glimpsing a way out of the mess. “I mean, I’d been getting antsy, but now that I’ve been thinkin
g . . .” She stared at her lap. “I’m just not sure I’m ready.”

  “Don’t worry,” he’d said. “You’re ready. You can do this. And we’ll find a place. A perfect place.” He smiled at her and she felt herself floating away, born up into the ether on we and perfect.

  Billy leaned across the table, gray eyes kind. “Tell me what you want.”

  She looked at him and blushed. His smile widened. “Okay, besides that,” he said. “What do you want in an apartment?”

  “A view,” she said. “Of a river, or trees.”

  He nodded.

  “And a neighborhood,” said Jess. “Where I’d know people. With a pizza place and a bookstore and a coffee shop and a park. Maybe Brooklyn?” Billy lived in Red Hook.

  He nodded. “I can show you some places you’ll love,” he said. “Someplace that’s perfect for you. For Jess Norton, not Jess Norton’s great-aunt.”

  She nodded. Just right for her. She pictured an apartment, cozier than Aunt Cat’s, a one-bedroom that the two of them could afford on their own; a brownstone on a side street with high ceilings and big windows overlooking a tree-lined block, with a galley kitchen where she and Billy would cook dinner together, hip to hip. They’d walk along the snowy sidewalk in the wintertime to buy Billy a Christmas tree, and have brunch every Sunday at one of the neighborhood cafes, and fall asleep each night together, snug beneath the blankets under a skylight admitting a wedge of the starry night sky.

  Eight years had passed since she’d inherited her aunt’s apartment—eight years gone, as if she’d fallen asleep at twenty-two and woken up almost thirty. In all that time, she’d believed Aunt Cat’s place to be her paradise, her promised land, her reward for surviving her father and New York City. But now, with Billy beaming at her, she could see it differently. Maybe the apartment was really just the round room at the top of the palace tower where the princess pricked her finger and slept for a hundred years. Now she had Billy, Charming Billy, and he would kiss her and lead her home. To Brooklyn, and a little place to call their own, a safe little nest with maybe, someday, a cradle in the corner of the bedroom, a rocking chair set in a slant of sun.