"Have I mentioned your less than positive outlook on life?" Clive said. "Get going. And by the way," he called to my departing back. "I didn't have nearly as many affairs as you thought I did, and not until it was basically over."
"You sound like Prince Charles," I said. "Trying to justify Camilla what’s-her-name."
"The auction?" he said, treating my comment with the contempt it no doubt deserved.
I hesitated in the doorway, waiting for the parting shot, something along the lines of "by the way, you were no Princess Diana." It didn't come. Instead he said, "Moira and I are attending the gallery opening at the Cottingham. If you're going, we'll see you there." Even Clive, I thought glumly, was being nice to me. At least he had stopped short of asking me for help with an imaginary project. I'd moved three rosebushes before Alex decided they had looked better where they were, and we moved them all back—which couldn't have done the roses much good, regardless of what it did for me. In a related activity, Moira, ostensibly with my help, picked a color for the walls of the changing rooms at her salon that only a creature with a preternatural sensitivity to color could possibly have noticed was any different from the one that was already there.
And anyway, I was fine. I managed to park my car without scraping the curb or hitting the parking meter, something I seemed to have had a propensity to do ever since I'd parted company with Rob—that and slamming file drawers on my fingers and cutting myself on every sharp object within miles—and made my way into Molesworth Cox, Auctioneers. Just as I predicted, it didn't look very exciting. One of the rooms contained a display table that, intentionally or not, was entirely covered in pairs: silver candlesticks, twin Staffordshire china dogs, matching table lamps, salt and pepper shakers, gold cufflinks, pearl and garnet earrings, two of everything. It made me think of my bathroom at home, with its identical bottles of shampoo, tubes of conditioner, packets of mint-flavored dental floss, waxed, two tubes of toothpaste to brighten your teeth and avert gum disease simultaneously, and even two hairbrushes. Only one of each pair belonged there, the other having until recently rested on a shelf in Rob's bathroom before I'd packed up and moved out.
Staring at those identical twins, I realized that if someone actually asked me why I'd done what I had—and my friends were assiduously avoiding doing that, for all their concern—I wasn't sure what I would say. On the surface, Rob Luczka and I were very compatible. We hardly ever argued, I adored his daughter, and we liked so many of the same things. Forced to explain it from my perspective, I would have said something to the effect that we fundamentally saw the world differently. In the end I'd simply told him that the relationship just wasn't working for me. His hurt and baffled expression was now engraved on my brain.
There was nothing at the auction house that even remotely interested me. In fact there was nothing at all at the moment that engaged me. I just didn't care that a shipment had gone missing somewhere between Denpasar and Los Angeles, or even that we'd been selected as one of only two antique dealers to exhibit at a posh design show. As recently as the day before I had been thinking I should sell my half of the business to Clive, and move to the south of France or something, and indeed, had even suggested it to him. He told me to go have a massage.
It was a muggy day, summer's last gasp, the air thick enough to cut, and as I left the auction house, a light drizzle began to fall. A drifter was sitting on the sidewalk, water dripping off his filthy baseball cap, a scruffy dog at his side. It was all so unspeakably dreary. It was five o'clock and another depressing evening alone at home loomed. I had the invitation to the gallery opening Clive had talked about, but I couldn't summon the energy to go. I wanted to do something, something fun, with somebody who didn't know anything about Rob and me, and who would therefore not try to engage me in conversation about how I felt, or invent some completely unnecessary activity to keep me busy. I just didn't know what that something would be.
And then, there it was!
"Lara? It is you, isn't it? Lara McClintoch?" I turned to a woman who looked vaguely familiar. "Diana MacPherson," she said. "Remember me? From Vic? The place on Dovercourt?"
"Vic" was Victoria College at the University of Toronto. Dovercourt was the street we'd both lived on. It was also a long time ago. "Diana!" I exclaimed. "Of course I remember. How are you?"
"I knew it had to be you," she said. "The strawberry hair.
You still look nineteen!" she exclaimed. It was a lie, of course, but a nice one. "I would have known you anywhere. How long has it been? Twenty years?"
"At least. You look exactly the same, too." She didn't, any more than I did. Her hair, once dark, was gray now, and her face bore the mark of experience, some of it, judging by the lines around her mouth, bitter.
"Do you ever see any of the old gang?" she asked.
"Not for ages," I said. "I don't know why, really. We've just lost touch."
"Are you married?" she said. "Kids?"
"I was married," I replied. "Once. But, no, no kids."
"Me, neither. This is so great," she said. "I can't believe I've run into you after all these years! Do you have time for a drink?" she asked. "I'm meeting a couple of our former classmates, maybe three. You remember Cybil, don't you? Cybil Harris. It's Cybil Rowanwood now. And Grace? Grace Young? You have to remember her. And Anna Belmont? There's a chance she'll be there, too."
"Of course, I remember," I said.
"So will you? Come for a drink right now, I mean?" she said. "It would be such fun, a mini college reunion."
I hesitated.
"What am I thinking?" she said. "This is so last-minute. I'm sure you already have something planned for this evening."
Normally I would rather chew glass than attend any event with the word reunion associated with it. The only activity I could think of for myself that evening, however, was watching my toiletries doing the Noah's ark thing in the bathroom, two by two. "I'd love to come," I said.
"That's great!" she said. "We're meeting up at the bar on the top of the Park Hyatt, for a quick one. Some of us are off to another event after. I can't believe I've just run into you like this. This is so great. Do you want to take the subway, or share a cab?"
"I have my car," I said. "I'll give you a lift."
"Great!" she said again. "This is just so much fun! The others will be so surprised!"
The hotel was only a block or so from the shop, so I parked in my usual spot off the lane way behind it. The store was already closed up tight.
"Oh my goodness!" Diana exclaimed, putting her hand up to her mouth. "Is this yours? The shop I mean? Are you the owner? I've walked past this place at least once a week for years, and I've never run into you. I've even been in it. I don't know why it never occurred to me that the McClintoch of McClintoch Swain would be you."
"There's no reason why you should have," I said.
"We always knew you would be a success," she said.
"I don't know that I would actually call this business a success," I protested. In truth, Clive and I are happy when we turn the smallest of profits.
"You're in Yorkville," Diana said. "Don't be so modest. It's one of the fanciest places in town."
"You see it as fancy. I see it as high rent," I said.
"You say tom-ay-to, I say tom-ah-to," she laughed. "Well, I'm a freelance bookkeeper for a small agency. Right now I'm working at a museum."
"That sounds interesting," I said.
"You see it as interesting. I see it as a position in danger of being replaced by a new software spreadsheet program."
"Oh," I said.
"Here we are," she added rather unnecessarily, as we stepped off the elevator at the eighteenth floor and turned left into the bar.