Pug Hill - Alison Pace [74]
I hit the stop button on the clock radio with as much force as I can muster, wonder if maybe an alarm that simply beeped would be a better choice for someone like me, and head for the shower.
Work is the same as it’s been in this last week or so, the same with its new competitive feeling in the air, the same in that everything about it now is so different. I think May has had this look on her face, this look like she’s excited about something, and about to tell us something else, too. But I could just be imagining that. I have a feeling also that maybe Sergei knows something that I don’t, and that this something might be something bad, or at least bad for him. He’s been slamming things around a bit lately. Well, not slamming them around exactly, but generally handling his canvases and panel paintings with slightly less care than you’d think should be applied to priceless masterpieces of art.
I manage to work well on the Rothko throughout the morning, though yes, I am still on the red. I’m not sure but I think that might be a different Old Master landscape on Elliot’s easel. It’s getting so hard to keep track.
Right at lunchtime, the phone rings, breaking the morning silence, signaling the shift in the day.
“Hope,” Sergei says loudly from his side of the room, “it’s for you.” Oh, for the love of God.
“Hello,” I say cautiously, as I pick up my extension.
“Hey, Hope, it’s Pamela, and guess where I am?”
“I give up,” I say once I have guessed incorrectly, Paris, and ’Cesca.
“I’m at the Boat House in Central Park, right near you. Can you get out for lunch?” I picture the Boat House in my mind: it is so close, just right across the road from Pug Hill. I think how maybe just being there, even if there aren’t any pugs, might help me figure out what to say for my speech.
“Hope?” Pamela says, sounding slightly less than patient.
“Stay right where you are,” I tell her. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. I’ll meet you right in front of the Boat House.” In truth, even at a quick pace, it’ll take me closer to fifteen minutes, but I fear if I say that, Pamela will suggest coming up toward the Met and meeting me halfway, which will inevitably mean Serafina on the corner of Seventy-ninth and Madison. And it’s not that I don’t like Serafina—I quite do; you can get an excellent pizza there—it’s just that now that I’ve thought of it, I really want to go to Pug Hill.
“Okay,” Pamela says, not suspicious of me at all, I don’t think.
“Great,” I say, and then, after a futile look up at the basement windows, “is it still raining?” Thankfully, it’s not.
As I put down the phone, I glance over at the big table on the far side of the room. Sergei has just taken a seat, May is nowhere to be seen, and Elliot is still over here, all but making out with his easel. Stealthily, I slide out the door. I quickly buy two pretzels from a street vendor, carrying them with me as I hurry through the park toward Pamela.
As I approach her, standing right outside the entrance to the Boat House, Pamela eyes my pretzels suspiciously.
“Hi, Pamela,” I say brightly so as to foster the feeling that my next idea will surely be a good one. “What do you say to going right over there and sitting for a while at Pug Hill?” I ask, motioning with my pretzels, and adding on what is obvious, “I’ve brought pretzels.”
“Really?” she looks at me quizzically. “I mean, uh, isn’t Pug Hill just a weekend thing? Won’t dogs not even be there?” Pamela looks like she regrets not suggesting Serafina, and worse than that, she looks like she’s no more than two seconds away from saying, “I figured we’d just eat at the Boat House Café once you got here.