Supposedly I’m at the law office of Brockman, Wyatt, and Sanford, but the only signs visible are for City Nails (mani-pedis are twenty-five dollars, a good price) and Brooklyn Burger (now with gluten-free buns). The whole street smells like hamburgers cooking, along with a load of garbage festering near the curb, and the strong perfume of an angry-faced woman who race-walks herself right into me without even bothering to say excuse me.
I square my shoulders and go inside a dingy little hallway. The directory sign is missing all the As, but apparently I’m to go to the fourth floor to see BROCKMN, WYTT, AND SNFORD. When the elevator door creaks open, there’s a magenta-haired receptionist in a black dress who buzzes me in, looking annoyed as hell. A little sign in front of her says her name is LaRue Bennett.
I give her my best Florida smile. “Hello. I’m Marnie MacGraw, and I’m . . .”
“What?” She peers at me. I see that she has a tattoo of a rose on her wrist.
I begin again. “I’m Marnie MacGraw, and I’m here to pick up the keys to Blix Holliday’s apartment, or house, or whatever.”
“Blix Holliday? Do you have any ID?”
“Oh. Sure.” I put down my suitcase and open my purse, which is filled with my boarding pass and my package of gum and my hairbrush and—well, everything except my wallet, which seems to have disappeared. I channel my mother and go immediately into panic mode—the wicked New Yorkers have already stolen my wallet!—but then after I’ve emptied everything onto the counter, with LaRue Bennett watching me, I remember that I put my wallet back in my pocket when I got out of the cab. Sweat is starting to trickle down between my breasts by the time I get out my ID and hand it to her, and she lets out a sigh. Possibly she was on the side of the wallet being gone forever.
She looks it over and then pushes it back to me.
“Okay, well. Charles isn’t here. He’s gone for the weekend. Back Monday.”
“Oh,” I say. “Oh.” I shift my weight to my other foot. “Well, um, I just flew in from Florida. He said I should get here as soon as possible. I’ve apparently inherited Blix Holliday’s house, and I’m supposed to make arrangements, I guess.”
“But he’s gone.”
“Can you reach him? I mean, I was hoping maybe I could at least get the key to the house. I’m to stay there, I think.”
Her face is impassive. “There are stipulations to the will he needs to talk to you about first.”
“Stipulations?”
Oh, yes. Apparently Blix didn’t just do a straight blah blah blah . . . She did things her own way . . . blah blah blah . . . not until Monday . . .
I can see LaRue Bennett’s mouth moving, but my brain has suddenly gotten all staticky. Ha! Did I really and truly think that I had somehow managed to outrun my usual luck, and that I had seriously inherited a building in Brooklyn, New York? Of course there are stipulations! I am the biggest idiot there ever was, falling for this kind of thing again and again throughout my whole life. Thinking Noah was really going to marry me! Thinking it was my turn to be Mary in the Christmas pageant! Even thinking that Brad Whitaker was going to take me to the prom!
And of course the stipulations are going to turn out to be that Blix didn’t leave me the house after all, which, now that I think of it, is totally fine with me. I just wish I had known before I paid airfare and then taxi fare of nearly ninety dollars plus tip to get to a place that smells like garbage and hamburgers. She probably meant to leave the house to Noah anyway, but he was married to me when she wrote the will, so my name got put on it by accident. Probably happens all the time.
“What am I supposed to do next?” I say, looking around the room and starting to panic just the slightest, tiniest amount. Maybe I should forget this whole thing and simply go back to the airport and get a flight back to Florida. Go back to that diner, have another shake and fries, and pretend this never happened. Later this year, I’ll marry Jeremy and have a baby.
LaRue sighs. “I’ll try to reach Charles and see what he can do for you. Go sit.”
The chairs actually do look good. Beige upholstered armchairs with a Queen Anne table between them. Magazines about architecture. Botanical paintings on the wall. I make my way over to the nearest chair and collapse into it as LaRue disappears into the inner sanctum.
My phone dings.
Hope you’re not on your way to becoming a Brooklyn hipster. LOL!
Jeremy.
Yeah. My clothing turned all black the minute I crossed into Brooklyn.
After what feels like forever, LaRue returns with the news that she reached Charles and he’d authorized her to give me the key.
“There’s a letter, too, but he says he wants to be with you for that. He’ll meet with you Monday morning and go over all the details then. Can you be here at ten a.m.?”
“Okay.” I get to my feet and take the manila envelope she offers with a ring of keys jingling inside. Outside, I hear sirens coming closer and closer and the bleating of horns, the squealing of brakes. Hot, spoiled city noises.
I wish I were back at home, floating in my sister’s pool, listening to the hum of lawn mowers.
TWENTY-ONE
MARNIE
“This is it,” says the cab driver who is taking me to Blix’s building. We’ve been in stop-and-go traffic on a huge, busy avenue for quite a while, passing everything from ridiculously pricey boutiques to a giant natural-foods store, little restaurants and cafés with handwritten signs in the windows advertising matcha tea and kale smoothies. But after a while, he turns onto a leafy side street, and scoots over to the curb to let me out. I’m in front of a series of towering brownstones all jammed together and hovering near the street, with wide staircases leading up to the landings.
So this is where Blix lived. I take a deep breath and look down at the address, written on a piece of paper that LaRue Bennett gave me. Blix’s building appears a little worn out, frankly, with rusty-looking wind chimes hanging off the peaked roof over her door and some ragged Tibetan prayer flags clinging to the railing.
Next door, which is closer than you might think, an older woman is sitting on the stoop, drinking a can of Coke and watching me.
“Are you lost?” she calls out to me.
“Not really. I mean, I don’t think so! I think this is the place I’m looking for.”
She stands up. She must be in her sixties or seventies, but she’s wearing yoga pants and a sweatshirt that says FREE TIBET and red tennis shoes, and her gray hair is all nestled in curls around her face like anybody’s sweet old grandmother. “Are you Marnie, by any chance?”
“I am!”
“Oh, for goodness sakes. Marnie MacGraw! I’ve been expecting you. I’m Lola! Lola Dunleavy!” She comes sprinting down the cement steps and over to me and holds out her arms to hug me.
“Lola. Yes,” I say, dimly remembering Blix talking about her friend who lived next door.
“You are exactly who I pictured!” she says. Her eyes, in their nest of lines, are shiny. She grasps my hand and looks as if she might burst into tears. “You’re probably tired and just off the plane, so I should stop talking to you and let you get inside, but oh, honey! It was so sad, her passing, I still can’t get over it. Although I have to say she did it her own way. If you’ve got to pass, and evidently it was time, nobody does it with more flair than Blix Holliday.” She pauses for a moment and closes her eyes briefly and then lowers her voice, leans in. “So do you know everything that’s going on? I mean, did you get the lay of the land?” When she says lay of the land, her eyebrows go up into a little peak.