Frozen Butterflies Read online

  “Very funny,” he said.

  Elinor laughed, and I laughed with her to lessen the tension between the two, or three, of us. I know I didn’t succeed though.

  “How have you been, Nick?” Elinor asked.

  “Good, good.”

  “Good,” she said, punching his eyes with hers. Then she abandoned her empty glass on the table.

  “OK,” she said, “I think I’d better go. I have an audition early tomorrow. Thanks for inviting me, Ellen,” she called to Mrs. Levitt in the other room.

  “Thanks for coming, dear,” Mrs. Levitt responded from somewhere far off.

  Nick waved to Elinor to say bye, and she evaporated in the hall.

  Mrs. Levitt brought us some turkey and white wine she thought we might like. We stayed and chatted with the rest of the family for a while. Nick talked about the blog, our posts, their success, and the purpose of our visit.

  “Are you guys . . . dating?” Ethan asked.

  “No, we’re not. We’re friends,” Nick said, looking at me.

  So, no, we were not dating. We were just having sex, regularly, day after day. I faked a smile—or tried to.

  We stayed there for a while. I mostly listened to their chats—sometimes present but most of the time absent—and when it was past two a.m., Ethan and Ann, the last two guests besides us still there, rose to leave.

  “It’s such an honor to have Nick in New York. Since the divorce, he does everything to avoid the city,” Ethan said.

  “And Elinor,” Ann added, and laughed.

  “You’re drunk, sweetie,” Mrs. Levitt reprimanded her. “Do you want me to walk with you to your apartment?”

  “No, Mother. I’m fine. I aaaam fiiiine,” she said, and turned to me. “It was such a pleasure meeting you, Susan. You have all my sympathy. Nick is not easy. But he’s a good heart. I hope you’ll be patient with him. My little brother really is a good heart.” She hugged Nick and pretended to whisper something in his ear, which in fact all of us heard.

  “It’s so clear you two are dating. Why are you hiding it?”

  “I agree with mom, you’re drunk, Ann.” Ethan said, as he dragged his sister to the door. “We’ll see you later this week, Nick. Sleep well.”

  “Good night,” Ann shouted from the elevator.

  We said goodbye to Mrs. Levitt and left.

  “I’m sorry you had to learn about Elinor like that,” Nick said as soon as we were alone, back in our room. “It’s hard for me to talk about her. We got married when I was twenty-four. She was twenty-two. It lasted five years, and then I caught her cheating with my best friend and . . .”

  “And you decided to leave New York.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have kids?”

  “No, of course not. I would have told you that.”

  Would he?

  I put on my pajamas and got into bed. He poured himself some scotch, sat on a chair, and started leafing through the pages of some newspapers. I felt the distance between us and hated it, but I thought he needed I. Or maybe I did.

  Day One In New York

  New York is such a fascinating city, especially in November. It’s cold, but not as cold as it gets in December or January, and it snows sometimes, but not as often as during those months. The leaves have changed their color, and sometimes it rains, but not hard. It’s fall. I missed that in California.

  The day after our Thanksgiving dinner we woke up late in the morning. I moved to free myself from the blanket and go to the bathroom. I didn’t intend to wake Nick up, but I did.

  “Good morning,” he said. “We must have been exhausted last night. I don’t remember much after my scotch. And you were already sleeping when I came to bed.”

  I didn’t respond. It took me forever to fall asleep, and I did hear him when he came to bed.

  “Are you hungry?”

  I said that I was. We went to a bakery across the street, grabbed drinks and pastries, and walked to Central Park. Once there, we sat on a bench and watched kids playing baseball as we ate our breakfast.

  “I love this park,” he said. “It perfectly captures New York’s poetry of hot dogs, street performers, dreamers, and businessmen . . . It’s beautiful. Naked beauty.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s honest, real. I don’t get how people can miss this. I could never have enough of it.” He pointed somewhere in front of us, but nowhere in particular.

  While we were sipping our drinks, he pulled a notebook from his backpack. The notebook contained our notes on Andrew and many ideas, charts, and questions with no answers. After talking them over, Nick resolved to call Matt. Matt gave him the name of Andrew’s agent, Pete Folberg, who lived in Montreal. Folberg had a nice website that listed Andrew at the bottom of a long list of published authors. For each author there was a link to another page with information about their life and major works. Andrew’s page contained just a brief biography and a short description of The Truth About Me, apparently, his only “major” published work.

  Nick called Folberg and stayed on the phone with him for quite a while.

  “So what did he say?” I asked him when he hung up.

  “He said that the last time he spoke with Andrew was over a year ago, when Andrew sent him Lies. Folberg told Andrew that the novel wasn’t what he was expecting, and that angered Andrew. They had an argument over the phone, and Andrew said he’d publish the novel through someone else. But as far as Folberg knows, the novel hasn’t been published. I told him I disagreed with his assessment of Lies and described how successful Andrew’s journal was on the blog.”

  “And?”

  “He listened to what I had to say, but didn’t know how to get hold of Andrew. I asked him for ideas, clues on where he could be. He suggested we talk to the company Andrew was supposed to work for and gave me its name and address. He also said that Andrew loves old movies and often goes to theaters that show them. That might be another lead.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We should keep an eye on art-movie houses ’cause we might find him there.”

  “That’s crazy. Do you have an idea of how many of those theaters there are in New York?”

  “Fewer than you think. And in any event, it’s better than nothing. Also, I think I have a sense of the movies Andrew might like,” Nick said.

  I remained silent and thought about what we should do next. At times the very idea of our search seemed hopeless.

  When it was early afternoon, we left the park and started to walk to the publisher.

  “Why did you say your father was a jerk?” I asked, trying to crack some of Nick’s silence.

  “I said he was a jerk because he was. He had many affairs, which he didn’t even try to hide from my mother, and he was never at home. I have trouble remembering a single dinner with him. I remember my mother, my sister, my brother, and me sitting at the dining table and wondering where he was. At some point, we were so used to dining without him that if he showed up it felt like having a stranger at the table, and we would all stay silent most of the time. No laughs, no stories about school and friends, no chats about dreams and plans for the future. We didn’t trust him. He wasn’t family.”

  “What did he do for a living?”

  “He was a journalist.”

  “Ah . . . a journalist, like you. Interesting . . .”

  “Why interesting?”

  “It’s interesting that you chose the same career as someone you dislike so much.”

  “I think I had no choice. Reading and writing was my calling, and despite my contempt for him, I liked his job. I thought it was fascinating. When I was younger, we were close, and he initiated me into this vocation. He worked for a small independent newspaper in the city. He used to take me to his office, and sometimes he’d give me his drafts to read and comment on before publishing them. He liked my comments and edits, or pretended that he did. Who knows? But, at that time, I believed him. I felt important, happy, and I slowly
convinced myself that I was good at his job. And then I became good, and his job became mine.”

  “What happened then? When did your relationship fall apart?”

  “First, I think I disappointed him because of my grades in school. Then, there were his affairs. I hated him and his lies. At some point we stopped talking to each other, and then he died.”

  “When did that happen?”

  “Right after my separation from Elinor. I was twenty-nine.”

  So that was part of his puzzle. And yet I felt there was more.

  “And you? What’s your story with your father?” he asked.

  “My mother died when I was seven. My memories of her are confused. I do remember a few things we did together, some of her gifts, but mostly I remember the door of her bedroom closed to the rest of the house, and to me and my father. I remember her saying that she was ‘tired’ and needed to sleep. She would close the door to her room and would not come out for days. My father was working hard, and I spent much of my time with my grandmother, who lived with us here in New York. In fact, she still lives here, in the same house where we all lived. Haven’t seen her in forever. Anyhow, after my mother died, my father became almost nonexistent. We didn’t communicate, didn’t know how to, and things haven’t improved much since.”

  “What happened to your mother?”

  I hesitated.

  “You know, I’m not even sure. The official story, the one my father told me, is that my mother had an aneurysm and died. November second. But who knows whether this is what happened . . .”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t know. I just feel that it’s not what happened.”

  Nick looked at me and then grabbed my hand and held it as we continued to walk. I had to look twice to convince myself that it was actually happening. Then he squeezed my hand more tightly. Perhaps to reassure me that I was right. Or to work off his own pain.

  “You see that theater?” he then asked.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s one of the oldest independent movie theaters in the city. They’ve been showing vintage films since before they were vintage. Let’s see what they’re showing tonight. Maybe we could come after our visit to the publisher or after dinner.”

  We looked at the marquee on top of the theater, which might have originally been white but now looked gray and dirty. The sign said, “City Lights.”

  “Have you seen it?”

  “No,” I said, and he looked at me in disbelief.

  “Are you serious? It’s a beautiful silent movie from the thirties. A movie Andrew might like. You might like it too.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “It’s a love story.”

  A love story. Perfect timing, I thought. I smiled, and we continued to walk.

  When we arrived in front of the publisher’s building Nick rang the intercom and said we were reporters there to ask a few questions about one of their employees. Someone told us to go to the seventh floor. The door opened, we took the elevator, and went up.

  The offices of the publisher were in a vast loft that had gray carpet on the floor and white desks spread across it, some of which were separated by little half-walls, but mostly they were open and visible. There were big windows, and the office looked luminous. I thought I might have found it hard to work there, as there was too much light, no intimacy at all.

  A man in his late forties came to the elevator, shook our hands, and said he was the vice president.

  “My assistant said you wanted to talk about one of our employees?”

  “Yes, John Andrew Pratt.”

  “Andrew . . . sure. Let’s go to my office.”

  We walked across the room to the farthest end, where there was an office surrounded by glass.

  “We love the light here,” the host said.

  “It seems so,” Nick commented, perhaps sharing my feeling of unease.

  “May I ask, before we talk about Andrew, why are you interested in him?”

  “We like his work,” Nick explained, “and we’re interested in his backstory. We’d like to interview him.”

  “I see. How did you know he worked for us?”

  “His former agent gave us your name and address and thought Andrew might be working here.”

  “He was. He was one of our best colorists. He worked here until last September, and then quit. He said he wanted to work on his own stuff. In fact, he mentioned he’d completed a novel. He thanked me for the opportunity we had offered him and said he wouldn’t be coming back the next day. He’d finished his last assignments and wasn’t going to accept more. Yeah . . . that was the last we saw of him. He stopped working for us the next day. It was quite unexpected, and shocking I’d say.”

  “Do you think there was something else that led him to quit? Did he look upset when he spoke to you?”

  “Let’s put it this way. Andrew never struck me as happy. His demeanor was always serious, thoughtful, sometimes dark, certainly not happy. And perhaps he felt especially uncomfortable here. Our people are usually extroverted and outgoing. We like to laugh here. I don’t think he liked that. But he did seem to have something in mind, something he wanted to pursue outside of here. This job might have been an obstacle.”

  “Did you try to convince him to stay?” I asked.

  “I did. I told him he was among our best colorists. I asked him if he’d be willing to train some of our employees and maybe work part time, but he refused. He really seemed determined to end his relationship with us. Although, I believe we always treated him nicely.”

  “Do you have any clue, any idea of where he might be?” Nick asked.

  “Sorry, I don’t.”

  We thanked him and left.

  “Were you actually expecting to find something more?” I asked Nick once we were out. He seemed disappointed.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I was hoping he was still working there.” He looked at me and added, “We’ll keep looking. Maybe we should check with Mrs. Ross again. Sometimes people don’t remember everything the first time you ask them to remember. They need time to think about your questions. But if you come back to them after a while, they might surprise you with incredibly helpful details they had forgotten when you first talked.”

  He checked the time and said,

  “If you’re still in the mood, I think we could walk back to the theater and see City Lights.”

  As we walked to the movie theater, Nick seemed distracted, his mind on something. I couldn’t say what.

  We arrived at the theater a few minutes before the movie started, bought our tickets, and sat in the back. There were very few people there. As soon as we took our seats, an organ rose up from below the stage. An organist wearing a suit that looked like it was from the 1920s started playing. A short, simple, happy melody. I had never seen anything like that. He played for a few minutes, then stopped, and welcomed the audience to the show. He said a few things about the film we were about to see, bowed, and walked off the stage. The red curtains went up, and the movie began. It was probably one of the most beautiful films I’d ever seen. It was silent, but I thought that even if there had been sound, the Tramp could have not told the blind flower girl much more than he conveyed without words.

  We carried the silence and intensity of the movie with us on our way to dinner. We had probably talked about dinner options before, but I could not remember, or I was lost somewhere. The place was across from Washington Square Park, an Italian restaurant that looked enchanting from the outside.

  “I like this place. It gives you the feeling of being in a charming European village,” Nick said, and I wished we could take part in that kind of romance, although I knew we couldn’t. The place just didn’t belong to us. Its colors didn’t. We were still light-blue and purple. Or, at least, that’s what I saw.

  When we entered, I noticed a fireplace in the middle of the room. I loved that. The atmosphere was intimate, with dim lights and lanterns spread around the room. It wa
s almost full but not crowded and not noisy. Our table was all the way in the back, somehow shielded from the rest of the room by a wall with an open arch and violets nicely creating the illusion of a balcony. Perhaps one in Italy. The candles smelled like fresh orange. I felt inebriated by their scent, the wine, Nick—although I could barely see him in the dim lighting. The food was not great, just OK. But the wine was superb. I had a glass while waiting for my lasagna, and I got a little drunk. Nick ordered the same, and then a chocolate mousse for two and more wine. It was after the second glass that he started playfully reaching for my plunging neckline.

  “People can see us,” I said, although I’m not sure why, as I certainly didn’t care.

  “I can barely see you. Nobody can see us. But I think we should go. We need to.”

  We had barely touched our food. A bit later, we were back at the hotel. I left the curtains open since I didn’t want to miss that beautiful view of the cathedral from our bed.

  “Don’t you want to close the curtains? The sun will wake us up tomorrow,” he said.

  “But we would miss the moon,” I said.

  He kissed me, and we made love. And then we fell asleep. The sun did not wake us up the day after, and I’m still glad for that loud spark of moonlight.

  Day Two In New York

  Nick called Mrs. Ross in the morning. He told her what we had discovered and asked her if she had anything more to share with us. She remembered a friend of Emily’s who lived in New York. Andrew might have contacted her. She gave Nick her name and her parents’ address. They lived on the Upper West Side, right on the northwest corner of 72nd Street and Central Park West, in the Dakota Apartments, where John Lennon had lived and died.

  Emily’s friend was Christine Bass. Her father had been a famous writer, her mother an artist. Christine was no longer living with them, but when Nick called and asked about her, Mrs. Bass said Christine would be home for dinner, and we were both invited. Emily and Christine had been close, and Emily’s death had been harsh on Christine.