The Wicked City

“—get in a taxi now?”

“I’m sorry. Lost my train of thought. Taxi where?”

“Is everything okay, Ella?”

“Sure! Fine. Just need another cup of coffee, I think.”

Travis stared at her and spoke slowly, patiently, like he probably spoke to his twins when they weren’t paying attention. That was the kind of guy he was. Never lost his cool. Just like Patrick. “To Wall Street, Ella. Corner of Broad. You’ll be working right at the bank’s headquarters this time.”

“Oh. Right.” Ella knew better than to ask which bank. Instead, she glanced down at the spiral-bound briefing book on her lap, which lay unopened, navy blue cover flat over an inch-thick stack of white paper, held shut by two remarkably tensile, white-rimmed thumbs.

The title seared her eyeballs.

STERLING BATES INC.

MUNICIPAL BOND DEPARTMENT

“Ella? Everything okay?”

“Fine!”

“There’s no issue here, is there? Conflict of interest? Because this is a sensitive project, like I said. Some big names involved. And the whole thing could blow up on us, depending on what we find, which is why we want you on the team. We need our best people, and we need them at their best. We can’t afford a single mistake on this. Got to have your head in the game. Are we clear, here?”

Ella laid her left hand flat on the surface of the briefing book, obscuring the cutout white rectangle of black block text.

“Absolutely clear,” she said.

ELLA’S CELL PHONE VIBRATED AT a quarter to midnight, while she lay flat on the folding table in the laundry room, listening to the sounds from the other side of the wall.

She picked up the phone and looked at the caller ID. Set it down again. The table buzzed beneath her back, at soothing, regular intervals, before lapsing back into stillness. Immediately after it stopped, Ella felt the familiar twinge of guilt. Imagined Patrick flipping his own phone closed, staring despondently at the reclaimed-wood floor in the living room or the tight, golden sisal weave in the bedroom. Or, just as easily, the industrial carpet in his twenty-ninth-floor office at Sterling Bates.

He called every day, sometimes twice. He also e-mailed, not as frequently. Most of those messages sat unopened in her inbox, but not all. Last week, the morning after she met Hector and Jen and came down to the laundry room in the middle of the night, she had such a terrible insomnia hangover at work, she actually forgot she was separated from her husband, forgot what had happened the last time she saw him, and clicked on his name. Automatic response. Started reading before she could help herself.

I AM SO SORRY. I’ll keep saying it, over and over, until you believe me. If you could just see what a wreck I am right now. I know I have a problem. I’m getting help now. I just want to see you and try to explain and apologize. I swear to God it will never, ever happen again. I love you. I love our marriage. You are the most important thing in my world. Please—

She’d clicked away to a spreadsheet. Looked down at her keyboard and tried to breathe. Sipped some coffee while her heartbeat rippled her silk blouse and her head ached and her stomach swam.

Do not reply, she’d told herself. Do not reply.

She’d sent back the flower deliveries that arrived daily at Aunt Viv’s apartment, each one more fragrant and costly than the last. She’d filed the cards and notes in the circular. She’d let her cell phone vibrate into voice mail. She’d restrained her mouse from clicking on any one of the e-mails, until now. She hadn’t even told him her new address. She knew better. There wasn’t an argument Patrick couldn’t win, a deal he couldn’t close. All he needed was a foot in the door.

The phone buzzed again. This time she turned it off entirely and concentrated instead on the music drifting through the walls, a jazz tune of exuberant syncopation, in which a trumpet and a bass and a clarinet chased each other in dizzying circles, making her think—God knew why—of forest animals. That was it. Scurrying up and down trees. This was real jazz, not the junk they played in tourist traps. Sound, bluesy, inventive jazz, and the patrons knew it. They laughed and chattered and danced—Hector was right, the vibration of heels sometimes rattled the floor—and while Ella couldn’t distinguish any particular voice, she was starting to feel like she knew them, these people, communing by night in a Greenwich Village basement. Hiding from the rest of the world, experiencing this elemental music in the shared marrow of their bones.

The first night, she had listened for maybe an hour, standing the whole time, not moving a muscle for fear she might lose. Like the sound would dissolve if she reached out to touch it, or even to approach the gray cinder-block wall that separated her from them. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the table, and the sight of her own mesmerization startled her. Eyes soft and lips round. If the image were of anyone else, she’d have said it was the look of someone in love. When she turned at last and climbed the stairs, five long prewar flights back to her apartment, she went to bed and fell right asleep to the pensive, delicate notes of a piano.

And she knew that she hadn’t chosen this apartment, after all. The apartment had chosen her.

THE MUSIC NEXT DOOR WAS already having its effect. Her brain settled into a comfortable trance; she wasn’t ready for sleep yet, but she was close. The images shifting in and out of focus behind her eyes, the scenes and ideas, they weren’t the frightful thoughts about Patrick—about Patrick and other women—about her vast, unfamiliar future—about the once-sturdy milestones now scattered about that future like bowling pins—but about other things. People she didn’t know. A champagne bottle tottering on a sofa, next to a man’s black tuxedo leg. Another man, playing a nimble clarinet, except he’s not a stranger, he’s someone you know, and you’re trying to tell him something. Now driving a narrow, tree-bordered highway while a sunset burns behind you. (Somehow Ella knew that Manhattan lay between her and that sunset, though she couldn’t say why.) Sitting down for a drink at a bar, where you know the bartender; you’re commiserating about something. The colors, the colors are so beautiful. A rich, red-streaked mahogany. Gold something. The taste of salt.

Time to go to bed now, Ella. You’ve had your fill. Jazz and conversation. She lifted her head and rose to her elbows, groggy, jostling the cell phone so that it crashed to the floor. She leaned over the edge of the table and reached to the floor, but the phone lay just beyond the tips of her fingers, and for some reason she didn’t want to get down from the table altogether, which was the logical solution, but to snag the phone from her current position, and while she was attempting this awkward maneuver, some woman next door started to scream bloody murder. The music broke up. Ella, startled, fell right off the table to the gray linoleum floor.

For several seconds, she didn’t do anything. Just listened in shock to the sound of that screaming woman, the long, excruciating rip of vocal cords, the bang of furniture turning over. Or was that a gunshot? A man shouted something terse, and the screaming stopped.

Ella rose on her hands and knees. Her heartbeat crashed in her ears; her arms shook. Somewhere in her chest, a gash opened up, as if someone had taken a knife and sliced right down the center of her sternum.

She braced her hands on the table and staggered to her feet. Spots broke out before her eyes, and she realized she wasn’t breathing, that her terror and the downright physical pain assaulting her had frozen her rib cage. Breathe, she whispered. Forced her lungs to act. The cavity inside to expand—painfully—and contract.

On the other side of the wall, silence had fallen. Not a sound, not a note. She thought, I have to call the police. She picked up her phone, which was blank and dark, and pressed the power button.

The light came on. She flipped it open. No bars. No bars, when there had been three or four a moment ago.

Go upstairs, she thought. Go see if anyone needs help.

She turned around, still clutching her phone, waiting for it to find a signal, and ran for the laundry room door. Up the dark staircase, around the corner, down the dim hallway to the front door. She flung the door open and ran down the steps to the wet sidewalk. The drizzle fell softly on her hair and nose and hands; the smell of rotting garbage lay in the air, though the sanitation pickup had come yesterday and the pavement was clear. She wrapped her fingers around the railing that surrounded the basement next door. Not a sound, not a light, not a single sign that anyone lived there, let alone ran an exclusive jazz club into the small morning hours.

“Hello?” she called. “Anyone there?”

No reply. Ella became conscious of all the windows stacked up around her, the curious New York eyes behind them. On the other side of the street, a pair of men walked briskly, heads bent under the drizzle. Probably glancing her way and thinking she was some kind of crazy, some kind of loony, out this late in her bathrobe and slippers, maybe locked herself out, maybe tossed out by her jealous boyfriend. A taxi turned the corner of Bedford and crawled down the street, between the rows of parked cars.

She tried again, a little more loudly. “Does someone need help? Can I call the police?”

Ella knew she was dancing along a fine, narrow line. Seven or eight million people crammed into one city with any number of wackos and crack-heads, you had to look out for each other. On the other hand, you also had to know when to mind your own business and walk on, walk on. Let people take care of their own. Let the secrets stay secret, the hidden stay hidden. Lest you find your own business ripped open and exposed to the world.

The taxi’s headlights flashed by. The street lay quiet around her. She turned away from the railing and went back up the steps, and that was when she realized that the two strangers were right about one thing.

She’d run straight out of the building without her key.

“CAN I MAKE YOU A cup of coffee or something?” Hector asked as they climbed the stairs.

Ella opened her mouth to decline. “Sure,” she heard herself say. “I mean, no. It’s so late.”

“No worries.”

“I’m sorry if I woke you up, buzzing you like that.”

“Like I said, no worries. I wasn’t asleep.”

“It was such a stupid thing to do.”

Hector stopped, forcing her to turn around on the narrow stairs and look at him. “Ella, has anyone ever told you that you apologize too much? It’s no big deal. Everyone gets locked out sometime. You buzz your neighbor. Your neighbor lets you in. It’s the code. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now,” he said, prodding her in the small of her back, “you get on up there. I’m going to make coffee. You can join me or not.”

She resumed climbing. “Okay.”

“Okay, you’ll join me?”

“No point wasting good coffee.”

“I also have a bottle of good Kentucky bourbon, if that works better for you.”

“Do I look like I could use a shot of bourbon?”

He chuckled behind her. “Ella, you don’t take a shot of bourbon. You drink it from a glass, nice and slow. With or without ice. You take your time and savor it.”

“Oh. Sure.”

“And yes, by the way. You do look like you could use a glass of bourbon. Didn’t I warn you about going down to that laundry room at night?”

“Yes.”

“And did you listen?”

“Obviously not.”

They’d reached the last landing, on the fifth floor. Ella hadn’t been up this far; she’d glanced, over her shoulder, just before she fit the key in her lock. Just out of curiosity, of course, and not because she was hoping for a glimpse of Hector leaving his apartment, Hector entering his apartment, beautiful Hector taking a pizza delivery in his boxer shorts. But she’d never climbed that last flight of stairs. Nothing up there but Hector’s pad. He didn’t even have a letter after his apartment number; it was just apt 5 on the list of buttons in the vestibule.

His door lay at the end of a short hall, where the stairwell met the wall. He slipped past her and reached inside his pocket. A furious scratching started up on the other side of the door, like something was trying to dig a hole.

“Do you have a dog?” Ella asked.

“That would be Nellie. Vicious attack animal. Watch out.”

Hector opened the door, and a brown-and-white blur shot through the crack and hurled itself into his legs, licking and whimpering, making small, delighted yaps like the bark of a seal. “Nellie! Nellie, babe. There you are. Who’s a good girl? Whoa, take it easy, babe, only been away five minutes, you big numbskull. Down, Nellie. Mind your manners. Look, we got a guest.”

The dog turned—a King Charles spaniel, Ella saw—and unleashed another fusillade on Ella’s knees.

“Get down, Nellie. Jeez. I’m sorry, it’s like she loves everybody. Hope you’re a dog person.”

Ella bent down and stroked Nellie’s long ears, like a pair of brown corn-silk tassels. Angled her face so that the desperate kisses landed just to the left of her mouth, instead of square on the lips. “I totally am a dog person,” she said. “Nellie as in Nell Gwyn?”

“Very good, Sherlock. You’re the only one who’s picked that up.”

“I love history. Kind of funny, actually. My full name’s Eleanor, too. How old is she?”

“Four.” He crouched down next to Ella and put his hand on the spaniel’s wriggling back. “She was my mom’s dog. We got her a puppy to cheer her up, before her final round of chemo.”

“So you’re a very special dog, aren’t you, Nellie?” Ella watched her twist about and return to Hector, calmer now, snuggling her nose into the corner of his elbow.

“Very special.” He straightened and pushed the door fully open. “After you. Yeah, you, too, Nellie. Come on. Don’t give me the puppy eyes, babe. We both know you already had your walk. Shoo. In you go. Show Ella inside. Atta girl.”

The first thing Ella noticed inside Hector’s apartment was the piano, a full-size grand Steinway that stood before the row of three windows overlooking the street. The lid was closed, and a thick plaid blanket covered the entirety of the case. A brass instrument lay on the lid’s edge. Ella stepped closer and saw it was a trumpet.

“Wow,” she said. “You’re a musician.”

“Guilty. Hope it doesn’t bother you. I try to keep it muted late at night, but luckily the other residents actually like hearing my stuff, for some strange reason.”

Ella turned. Hector was already in the kitchen area, opening a cabinet door while Nellie circled his feet. He was wearing a short-sleeved gray T-shirt and sweatpants, his dark hair strewn carelessly back from his face, looking like a canine early in the era of domestication. “Wait. Is that you? Playing at night?”

“Damn. Is it bothering you?”

“No, not at all. You’re amazing. I thought it was—well, coming from downstairs.”

Hector set down a bottle, half-full of amber liquid, and a bag of coffee. “What’ll it be, Ella? Uppers or downers?”

She crossed her arms. “So I have to confess something. I’ve never drunk bourbon before.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

“Then I kind of think you should give it a try. Not that I’m pushing you in any one direction. You probably have to go to work in a few hours, right?”

“True. But I’m really, really not looking forward to it. So …?”

“So … bourbon?”

“What the hell.”

“Atta girl.” He unscrewed the lid and walked toward her. “First, you have to smell it.”

“Like wine?”

“Naw. Nothing so snobby as that.” He stopped before her and tilted the neck of the bottle in her direction. The room was lit by a pair of antique wall sconces—probably original, to the building if not to the room itself—and the glow turned his olive skin an even deeper shade of gold. The two lights appeared as small white dots in his pupils. “Just breathe it in. For your own enjoyment. Preview of coming attractions.”

She leaned forward and sniffed delicately at the opening. “Holy cow. How strong is that?”

“Eighty proof, I guess. But it’s the flavor you’re going for. Bourbon has this distinctive smell. Made mostly from corn mash, instead of rye or barley, like your typical Scotch malt.”

“It’s kind of spicy? Warm?”

Hector tilted the bottle back toward his own nose, right where hers had been, and breathed deep. “Ahh. Almost as good as drinking it. Ice or no ice?”

“Which do you recommend?”

“I like it without. Room temperature. You really get the flavor that way. But if you like your drinks cold …” He walked back to the corner of the room that formed the kitchen and pulled two lowball glasses from an open shelf. It was a funny kind of kitchen, neither modern nor traditional. Simple wooden surfaces and shelves, unadorned cabinets. Almost homemade looking, except everything fit together in perfect lines. A single pendant lamp hung from the ceiling, which must have been at least nine or ten feet high.

“No,” Ella said slowly. “I think I’ll try it warm.”

“Awesome. Hang tight.” He crouched a few inches as he poured, staring carefully at the bourbon as it streamed into each glass. The pendant cast a pair of sharp, thick shadows under his cheekbones, which were maybe a little too high and wide, now that she thought about it, throwing his face out of the fine proportion required for textbook beauty. But Ella admired them anyway. In a completely nonsexual way, of course. Hector straightened, set down the bottle, and lifted a glass in each hand. “Ready?”

Ella moved closer to the counter and reached over to take her glass from Hector’s fingers. “Ready as I’ll ever be. Cheers.”

“Cheers. Now, hold on, there, Silver. Sip slow. Just a taste to start. You won’t like it at first. You have to give it time. Kind of like getting acquainted with someone complicated.”

Ella set her lips on the edge of the glass and brought the bourbon forward, until it touched the tip of her tongue.

“That’s right,” Hector said, watching her closely. “What do you think?”

“It’s—it’s great.”

“Liar.”

She laughed and tried again. “Okay. It’s like being hit by a club.”

“That’s more like it.” Hector took a drink and turned around to lean back against the counter, palming the glass and swishing the liquid gently along the sides.

“Nice kitchen, by the way.”

“You like it? I actually put it in myself.”

“No. Way.”

“Way.”

“You’re a carpenter?”

“I’m a musician, Ella. Actually a composer, which is even worse. So I had to find another trade to keep me solvent, right? Didn’t want to sponge off my parents all my life.”

“You know what? I don’t think I’ve ever met a carpenter in New York. Not one who lives in Manhattan, anyway.”

“I made a deal with the landlord when I took the place. I do all the carpentry-type fix-it stuff around here, and I get a deal on the rent. So what do you think? Feeling better now?”

“Much.”

“You were pretty freaked out, there, for a minute.”

“Yes, Hector. I was pretty freaked out by the screaming woman in the basement next door.”

“Fair enough. But it’s all good now, right? We went back down, didn’t hear anything. If someone was really in trouble, you’d be hearing something, trust me. Plus, Nellie would go nuts, right? Dogs are sensitive to all that stuff. Smarter than we are.”

“I guess so.”

“That’s why the other tenants don’t mind me playing at night,” he said. “Drowns out anything from downstairs.”

“Like screaming?”

He shrugged. “Some weird shit goes down sometimes.”

“I don’t understand. Why don’t the police get involved?”

“Who knows? Maybe the owner has an arrangement. Look, it’s New York, right? We cater to every taste in this town. As long as it’s consensual, you can have your letch as long as I have mine.”

“I don’t know. That screaming didn’t sound consensual to me.”

Hector shrugged. “Look, my bedroom window overlooks the back. If I see anyone bleeding or hiding a body, I’ll call the police. Is it getting any better? The bourbon?”

Ella looked down at her glass, which was less full than she thought it would be. “Actually, it kind of is. Like drinking fire, but in a good way.” She pushed off from the counter and wandered back to the piano. Nellie, who had settled into an alert, silken pile at Hector’s feet, leapt up to follow. Her claws scrabbled like jacks on the wooden floor.

“You like music, then?” Hector called after her.

“Love music. My grandmother’s a cellist. She taught me how to play the piano first, then she let me play her instrument.”

“No kidding? You can play the cello?”

“Played it all the way through college. But I was never going to be as good as her. I mean, I loved it. I was a passionate player, you know? I just couldn’t get my fingers to move like hers.”

“You want to jam a little?”

“Jam? Right now?”

“Sure.” Hector moved past her and set his glass on the piano lid. “No cello, but I’ve got a string bass you can try.”

“You mean, like, jazz?”

“If you like. Jazz, whatever. I can do pretty much anything.” He flipped open the keyboard cover and stood there, washed by the yellow street lamp outside, bare arms lean and poised, head turned a little to one side. His fingers started to run along the keys, awakening a ripple of delicate sound that went straight to Ella’s belly. He nodded to the corner. “Bass is over there.”

Ella took a deep breath and swallowed down the rest of the bourbon. Her throat burned, her brain gasped for air.

“How about some Beethoven?” she said.

AN HOUR AND ANOTHER COUPLE of glasses of bourbon later, they were sitting side by side on the piano bench, thigh by thigh, playing Gershwin. Laughing. Ella had discarded her bathrobe, and her bare arm moved next to his bare arm. Muscles plucking in rhythm. Nellie lay curled under the bench, snoring softly in the rests between measures.

“See, the thing about Gershwin, which I love,” Hector said, “is that he isn’t one or the other. He’s deep, so deep. I mean, the notes are, like, revolutionary. But he’s talking about you and me. He isn’t afraid to connect at an emotional level.”

“He’s not trying to show off to the academy,” Ella agreed. “He writes for his audience. He wants to move you.”

“He gets you right here.” Hector makes a quick fist and presses it to his chest, almost without missing a note. “Lyrical. But complicated and unexpected, right? And it’s so effortless, you don’t realize how genius it is until you take it apart.”

Ella made a last arpeggio and lifted her hands away. “I once acted in a school production of Porgy and Bess, believe it or not.”

“No kidding. Who did you play?”

“Bess. We only had one African-American girl in my class, and she hated singing. It was kind of weird, but it worked.”

“Awesome.” He closed his eyes and flowed into “Summertime.” “You must have lived in some serious white-bread suburb.”

“Yeah. Grew up in Arlington. My dad’s a lawyer.”

“And your mom?”

“Law professor. And she models, believe it or not. Just for fun, and I guess to keep her ego stroked. Not that it needs stroking. She’s like this glamorous fiftysomething who looks good in everything.”

“Ha. I love your mom. My girlfriend’s a model.”

Ella, in the act of swallowing the very last drop of bourbon, started to cough. “Wow. Nice.”

Hector laughed. “It’s not like that. What do I look like, some kind of smarmy modelizer? Hanging out in clubs?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Naw, I don’t have the bank for it. They’re expensive, those girls. Also kind of young. No, she’s a hand model, actually.”

“A hand model.”

“You know, like Nivea advertisements. Gloves and jewelry. Especially jewelry. She’s in that Tiffany engagement ring ad on the subway right now.”