475: “I haven’t seen . . .”
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 3 continues
“I haven’t seen a single cab,” says Matthew. “Maybe if we walk a bit.”
“We could take the T.”
“In that coat? Besides, I’m just not a subway person.”
“Oh, come on. There’s a stop up here.”
They walk to the subway in silence and start down the steps. At the foot of the steps, a janitor is stolidly and ineffectively mopping something. Matthew is immediately certain that it’s blood. Belinda and Matthew stop, and the janitor looks up at them. He stops mopping and steps back to let them pass, but to continue downward they will have to walk through the blood or ask the janitor to move. They exchange looks. Belinda shudders and pulls the coat tighter around her. They turn and walk back up the stairs.
“God!” Belinda says when they’re outside again. “Was that blood?”
“I think so. Let’s start walking and hope we find a cab.”
“I look like a pretty obvious target in this coat, don’t I?”
“For muggers, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe not. Maybe they’ll figure that any guy walking with a woman in a white mink is probably armed.”
“There’s a cab,” Belinda shouts. She runs into the street, waving her arm. The coat falls open, and the wind presses her dress against her body, taut with effort and fear. The taxi stops, and they get in. Matthew gives his address, and Belinda huddles against him, chilled and disturbed.
“I’m going to take the coat back,” she says.
“Don’t do that,” Matthew says. “You like it, don’t you?”
“I like it, but it’s too much for me. It’s just too much.” She puts her head on Matthew’s shoulder and doesn’t say anything more for the rest of the ride. In her pocket, she flicks her thumb across the edge of the card.
When they reach Matthew’s apartment, the fare stands at one of those awkward amounts that doesn’t allow easy keep-the-change tipping. Matthew hates asking cabdrivers for change. The cost of a cab ride, he reasons, is cheap compared with the cost of a meal in a restaurant, and the tip a cabdriver gets is tiny compared with the tips Matthew gives waiters. He doesn’t like to seem to be the kind of guy who counts nickels when he reaches his destination, and he doesn’t want to hold the driver up, delay him from going on to reach his next fare, so he usually calculates the tip as he approaches his destination, continually recalculating as the fare changes, and then always rounds the tip up to the nearest dollar. He hasn’t been paying attention on this ride, and when they reach his building he reminds himself that he is the companion of a woman in a white mink. He hands the driver a ten and says, “That’s fine, thank you,” calculating, as he climbs out of the cab, that he has tipped more than fifty-two percent.
The concierge barely looks up when Belinda and Matthew enter the lobby. This one, a student at a nearby music school, is wearing a headset and tapping drumsticks on an electronic drum pad. The tapping makes only the softest sound in the lobby, like the scuttling of small rodents in corners, but in the headphones it makes the sound of a full drum set, at a level likely to induce premature hearing loss and certain to mask the sound of any request or demand a resident might make. The elevator door opens. Belinda steps in, and then she squeals when the car hops upward suddenly. Matthew, in the act of stepping into the car, strikes his toe against the rising lip of the floor. He lurches against the back wall, catches himself on the grab rail, and exclaims, “God damn!” The doors close. Through the narrowing space Matthew can see the concierge, still drumming.
“Are you all right?” asks Belinda.
“Yeah. Sort of. I hurt my toe.” Belinda presses the button for Matthew’s floor. “I stubbed my toe,” Matthew says with something like astonishment. “I don’t think I’ve stubbed my toe since I was a kid.”
[to be continued]
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