The Wicked Redhead. Beatriz Williams

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      Travis sat back in his chair, still clicking the pen. He bounced a few times, causing the chair to squeak. His window faced east, and the gray sun balanced at the back of his head. Between the buildings, where Queens should be, there was nothing but cloud. His lips stretched into a smile.

      “Can I ask what you’re planning to do?” he said, in a tone of absolute pity.

      Ella returned her portfolio under her arm and smiled back. “Nope,” she said, and walked out the door, right past her dumbstruck husband.

      BUT PATRICK NEVER STAYED dumbstruck. He always had something to say. He chased her down the corridor of cubicles and caught up when she reached the one she’d claimed with her suit jacket.

      “Ella,” he said, “wait.”

      “I have nothing to say to you.”

      “Did you get my flowers?”

      She turned. “First of all, how did you get my address? From my family?”

      “No.” He hesitated. “From Kemp.”

      “Oh my God. How illegal is that?”

      “We’re still married, Ella. I have the right to know where you’re living.”

      “And I have the right to get a restraining order, if I need to.”

      He took her elbow and spoke in a low, heartfelt voice. “Don’t. It doesn’t need to be like this. Come home, Ella, please. I mean, seriously. You left our place for some shithole in the Village?”

      “I left you because you were cheating on me, and it’s not a shithole. It’s—” She stopped herself before she said magical. “It’s a special building.”

      “It’s a dump. You can’t live there. It doesn’t even look safe.”

      Ella removed his hand from her elbow and reached for her suit jacket. “It’s the safest place I’ve ever lived, and I’m not moving anywhere, especially not with you.”

      “For God’s sake, Ella. I just quit my job for you! Managing director at Sterling Bates, and I threw it all away just to prove to you—”

      “Look. I don’t know the real reason you quit the bank, Patrick, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t it. This conversation is over. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer pretty soon. As they say.” She dodged his reaching hands and slung her laptop bag over her shoulder. Headed for the elevators, followed by every pair of eyes on the floor, and she didn’t care! Maybe a little, but not really. Didn’t care, for once, that everyone in the office had just heard the soap opera that was Ella Gilbert’s life. That her husband had cheated on her—too bad she had no time to rehash for them the full story, the visceral details, the grunting-sweating-banging of an orange-skinned hooker in the stairwell of their own apartment building—and that, as a result, Ella was divorcing him. Omigod, poor Ella, did you hear? She passed Rainbow, whose awed eyes followed her all the way to the glass doors, while Patrick followed, saying something, some blur of words.

      As she found the door handle, Patrick reached out to cover her hand.

      “Ella, you can’t just cut me out of your life,” he said in her ear.

      She stared at Patrick’s hand, his left hand. The gold wedding band that circled his ring finger, engraved on the inside (she knew this because she had ordered it herself, picked out the Roman lettering as both traditional and masculine) EVD TO PJG, 6*13*96. He had nearly lost it on their honeymoon. Nearly lost it while they were swimming together off some beach in Capri, because a ring was such a new, unfamiliar object to him, and he kept jiggling it on his finger like a toy hoop. Off it came. He was distraught. Dove for it, again and again, even though Ella begged him to stop because each time he plunged under the water and the seconds ticked by, panic took hold of her stomach. Then he came up at last, triumphant, brandishing the plain gold band between his thumb and forefinger like he’d recovered some pirate’s diamond from the seabed. Salt water dripping from his skin. He handed Ella the ring and made her put it back on his finger, right there in the chest-deep water, and she did as he asked, wiggling it all the way down to his knuckle. He’d snaked his arms around her waist. “That’s the last time,” he said, when he was done kissing her, which took some time. “It’s never coming off again. You’ll have to bury me with that ring on my finger.”

      And now, here they were. Ella stared down at the shining band that reflected the fluorescent office lights, at his big hand covering hers, and she remembered thinking, in the sunlit moment while she kissed Patrick on that beach, how lucky she was. How lucky she was to have found a man who loved her so much.

      With her own left hand, which contained neither engagement ring nor wedding band, she plucked Patrick’s fingers away.

      “Honestly, Patrick?” she said softly. “I don’t think we have anything left to say to each other.”

      A QUARTER OF AN hour later, Ella pondered this lie as she sat on a Starbucks stool, drinking a fresh latte to replace the one she’d left behind earlier. Her phone buzzed from her laptop bag. She waited for the buzzing to stop, waited for another minute or two after that, and then she tilted the bag toward her and plucked the phone free. Hector again. She put her fingers to her temple and stared at the screen, Hector’s name—just that single word, Hector, formed of tiny green LED lights, followed by his phone number—until it blinked out. Until her ribs ached. Until the joints of her fingers turned white, she was gripping the phone so hard.

      She put it back in her bag and took out the note.

      You have to face him sometime, Dommerich, she told herself. (She was now addressing herself by her maiden name again—that was something, right?) If she couldn’t yet trust herself to listen to his recorded voice, to God forbid speak to him, she could at least do him the courtesy of reading the note he’d left behind for her, when he slipped out yesterday before dawn and caught his flight to L.A. The flight he’d already rescheduled in order to spend Saturday night in bed with her.

      Ella. Think I’m supposed to wake you up and say good-bye right now, but it might kill me. [There was a clumsy drawing of an arrow and a heart, with you written next to the arrow, and me written next to the heart.] Stay here, sleep in my bed, drink all my booze, play my piano, listen to my band watching over you. Think of everything we have left to do. Don’t be afraid. Back soon. H.

      Back soon.

      Today was Monday; Hector would return to New York on Saturday. On Saturday morning he was going to come bounding through the door, he was going to call her name anxiously, he was going to scoop her up and demand to know why she hadn’t returned his calls, hadn’t picked up the phone, hadn’t let him know she was okay, that she loved his apartment, she loved Saturday night, she loved him like he loved her.

      What was she going to say?

      Don’t be afraid, he wrote. My band watching over you.

      But Hector had it wrong. She was afraid, yes, but she wasn’t afraid of the band playing inside the apartment building on Christopher Street. They had kept her company Sunday night, when she had buried herself under the covers of Hector’s bed and wrapped her arms around her stomach and cried. The clarinet had played her something beautiful and comforting, until she loved that clarinet almost as much as she loved СКАЧАТЬ