I caught the subway back to Fifth Avenue, simultaneously bone-weary and buzzing with adrenalin. I let myself in, using the key Mrs De Witt had given me. Dean Martin was waiting in the hallway, standing four-square in the middle of the floor, his compact body radiating suspicion.
‘Good evening, young man! Would you like some supper?’ I said, as if I were his old friend and not someone vaguely expecting to lose a chunk out of one of my lower legs. I walked past him with simulated confidence to the kitchen, where I tried to decipher the instructions as to the correct amount of cooked chicken and kibble that I had scribbled on the back of my hand.
I placed the food in his dish and pushed it towards him with my foot.
‘There you go! Enjoy!’
He stared at me, his bulbous eyes sullen and mutinous, forehead rippling with wrinkles of concern.
‘Food! Yum!’
Still he stared.
‘Not hungry yet, huh?’ I said. I edged my way out of the kitchen. I needed to work out where I was going to sleep.
Mrs De Witt’s apartment was approximately half the square footage of the Gopniks’, but that wasn’t to say it was small. It comprised a vast living room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park, its interior decorated in bronze and smoked glass, as if it had last been done some time around the days of Studio 54. There was a more traditional dining room, packed with antiques sporting a layer of dust, which suggested it hadn’t been used in generations, a melamine and Formica kitchen, a utility room, and four bedrooms, including the main bedroom, which had a bathroom and sizeable dressing room leading off it. The bathrooms were even older than the Gopniks’ and let loose unpredictable torrents of spluttering water. I walked round the apartment with the peculiar silent reverence that comes with being in the uninhabited house of a person you don’t know very well.
When I reached the main bedroom, I drew a breath. It was filled, three and a half walls of it, with clothes neatly stacked on racks, hanging in plastic from cushioned hangers. The dressing room was a riot of colour and fabric, punctuated above and below by shelves with piles of handbags, boxed hats and matching shoes. I walked slowly around the perimeter, running my fingertips along the materials, pausing occasionally to tug gently at a sleeve or push back a hanger to see each outfit better.
And it wasn’t just these two rooms. As the little pug trotted suspiciously after me, I walked through two of the other bedrooms and found more – row upon row of dresses, trouser suits, coats and boas, in long, air-conditioned cupboards. There were labels from Givenchy, Biba, Harrods and Macy’s, shoes from Saks Fifth Avenue and Chanel. There were labels I had never heard – French, Italian, even Russian – clothes from multiple eras: neat little Kennedy-esque boxy suits, flowing kaftans, sharp-shouldered jackets. I peered into boxes and found pillbox hats and turbans, huge jade-framed sunglasses and delicate strings of pearls. They were not arranged in any particular order so I simply dived in, pulling things out at random, unfolding tissue paper, feeling the cloth, the weight, the musty scent of old perfume, lifting them out to admire cut and pattern.
On what wall space was still visible above the shelves I could just make out framed clothes designs, magazine covers from the fifties and sixties with beaming, angular models in psychedelic shift dresses, or impossibly trim shirt-waisters. I must have been there an hour before I realized I hadn’t located another bed. But in the fourth bedroom there it was, covered with discarded items of clothing – a narrow single, possibly dating back to the fifties, with an ornate walnut headboard, a matching wardrobe and chest of drawers. And there were four more racks, of the more basic kind you would find in a changing room, and alongside them, boxes and boxes of accessories – costume jewellery, belts and scarves. I moved some carefully from the bed and lay down, feeling the mattress give immediately as exhausted mattresses do, but I didn’t care. I would basically be sleeping in a wardrobe. For the first time in days I forgot to be depressed.
For one night at least, I was in Wonderland.
The following morning I fed and walked Dean Martin, trying not to be offended by the way he travelled the whole way down Fifth Avenue at an angle, one eye permanently trained on me as if waiting for some transgression, and then I left for the hospital, keen to reassure Mrs De Witt that her baby was fine, if permanently braced for savagery. I decided I probably wouldn’t tell her that the only way I’d been able to persuade him to eat was to grate Parmigiano-Reggiano onto his breakfast.
When I arrived at the hospital I was relieved to find her a more human pink, although oddly unformed without her familiar make-up and set hair. She had indeed fractured her wrist and was scheduled for surgery, after which she would be in the hospital for another week, due to what they called ‘complicating factors’. When I revealed that I wasn’t a member of her family they declined to say more.
‘Can you look after Dean Martin?’ she said, her face creased with anxiety. He had plainly been her main concern in the hours I had been gone. ‘Perhaps they could let you pop in and out to see him in the day? Do you think Ashok could take him for walks? He’ll be terribly lonely. He’s not used to being without me.’
I had wondered whether it was wise to tell her the truth. But truth had been in short supply in our building lately and I wanted everything out in the open.
‘Mrs De Witt,’ I began, ‘I have to tell you something. I – I don’t work for the Gopniks any more. They fired me.’
Her head moved back against her pillow a little. She mouthed the word as if it were unfamiliar. ‘Fired?’
I swallowed. ‘They thought I had stolen money from them. All I can tell you is that I didn’t. But I feel it’s only right to tell you because you may decide that you don’t want my help.’
‘Well,’ she said weakly. And again. ‘Well.’
We sat there in silence for a while.
Then she narrowed her eyes. ‘But you didn’t do it.’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘Do you have another job?’
‘No, ma’am. I’m trying to find one.’
She shook her head. ‘Gopnik is a fool. Where are you living?’
I looked sideways. ‘Uh … I’m … well, I’m actually staying in Nathan’s room for now. But it’s not ideal. We’re not – you know – romantically involved. And obviously the Gopniks don’t exactly know …’
‘Well, it sounds like an arrangement that might suit us both rather well. Would you look after my dog? And perhaps conduct your job-hunting from my side of the corridor? Just till I come home?’
‘Mrs De Witt, I’d be delighted.’ I couldn’t hide my smile.
‘You’ll have to look after him better than you did before, of course. I’m going to give you notes. I’m sure he’s terribly unsettled.’
‘I’ll do whatever you say.’
‘And I’ll need you to come here daily to let me know how he is. That’s very important.’
‘Of course.’
With that decided, she seemed to subside a little with relief. She closed her eyes. ‘No fool like an old fool,’ she murmured. I wasn’t sure if she was talking about Mr Gopnik, herself or someone else entirely, so I waited until she had fallen asleep, then headed back to her apartment.