Girl in the Arena - Lise Haines [81]
Then I stop long enough to say, —Look, I’ve just lost my mother and you should go figure out something else to do.
But they probably just switch to video mode and I have to keep running.
For blocks the duffel hammers against one hip until I shift it so it hits the other, and eventually I’m looking up at the Flatiron Building, sore and breathing hard, and I just have to stop and put my hands on my knees, looking for air. When I turn back, I see they’ve finally dropped off. I grab another taxi and head over to NoHo and the driver lets me out in front of this Revivalist building where Caesar’s Inc. is located, and it’s all kind of weird because it looks, except for its particular architecture, more or less like any other building in New York, and I don’t know what I expected—a statue of Caligula out front?
I enter the doormanless entry and note that the whole operation takes up four floors, starting on the tenth. I take the elevator. The reception area for the Caesar’s suites is all about gold and black walls and busts of rulers past: Pompey, Julius Caesar, Augustus. . . . I want to jump over the desk and move their heads about on their pedestals to put them in proper sequence, but I know that’s my obsession with history, and Caesar’s is strictly about business, not allegiances.
I look at the woman on the phone in her trim summer dress and tiny sweater, her head shaved more or less like mine. She’s busy, busy talking, and she barely looks up at me, and she’s chattering away, maybe talking with a friend, something about the new Glad Club Med down in the Bahamas, when she suddenly gets it, gets me. That I’m there, not some stream on YouTube.
—Wow, she says, leaping to her feet.
—I’m here to see Mr. Gastonguay.
She starts to tell me how much she loves my hair, then catches herself and asks me to wait right there and walks down the hall at a clip in six-inch erroneously called gladiator heels—it’s amazing to watch the angle of her. She ducks into a large black door and I walk around an odd assortment of almost Roman chairs—no one ever gets the shape right—and trim leather couches and on the tables small crops of grass, which I nervously run my hands over and back.
—Right this way, she says, suddenly looming into view again.
As I follow her down a long hall, hoisting my duffel, I realize that she has a T tattooed in the back of her head as well, and I want to say something. But what do you say other than I think you’re out of your mind? I do have to wonder if this is getting her in trouble around the office, now that Tommy’s reputation has been so eliminated—or if this is somehow cool because this is how I’m branded, and I am a unique entity now, not my fathers’ daughter, not my mother’s child.
We go past a long row of offices and cubicles, windows and water coolers, the sounds of corporate work, people churning away at unknown tasks, and I’m glad that this is not my life. So glad.
Mr. Gastonguay has one of the larger offices with an impressive view of the neighborhood. He is a short, slender man with a thick head of hair, I’d guess early thirties. As he springs from his chair behind his desk he rushes over to shake my hand, and I realize he’s bowlegged.
—I was so sorry to hear about your mother, he says.
Then the receptionist distracts us with beverages while he offers me a seat on the couch. He takes a chair across from me.
—Your father and I lived in the same neighborhood growing up. There was no one like Tommy. He was a standout from the beginning. Really the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet.
When I realize I’m rubbing my wrist back and forth where my dowry bracelet used to be, I stop.
—But you know this more than anyone. And you’ve come all the way from Boston. How can I be of help?
—Well, Mr. Gastonguay . . .
—Please call me LeRoy.
—I’m aware that Caesar’s is banking on a marriage . . . LeRoy.
—Should I offer my congratulations? he asks.
His attitude seems more about genuine curiosity than the promotion of a concept.
—He didn’t realize he