She walks past Rose, not bothering to give her a second glance. But Vivian knows, even before she hears Rose’s footsteps behind her, that this woman is following closely behind. Vivian’s pretty sure that there’s no way in hell Rose would let anyone walk around unattended in the Knox.
The Knox
Early February
Last night at the society’s annual masquerade ball, I was delightfully occupied: People ate caviar by the spoonful at my cocktail tables and consumed copious amounts of alcohol from my well-stocked bars. They reclined on luxurious chesterfield couches and distributed illicit substances in my corridors. They shook hands on deals over the finest Cuban cigars and single malt whiskeys—deals they planned to keep and deals they most certainly intended to break. And they did this in the way that Knox members do best: sinful but with the utmost decorum, irrational while philosophical, reckless yet buttoned-up.
It was rather splendid, a proper Knox party that met with my approval.
Today I’ll be achy; today my floors will creak when people walk on them. My rugs will be embedded with dirt, my walls and mirrors smudged with fingerprints. My surfaces will be appallingly sticky, and there will be a fine ash all around. I’ll sag under the weight of discarded porcelain cocktail plates, glass tumblers and champagne glasses, empty liquor bottles. I’ll have a faintmalodorous scent that will grow more offensive as the hours tick by, until they tie up the trash bags and remove them from me.
But it’s of minimal consequence; I don’treallyconcern myself with such matters. Rose will tidy me up, make me as good as new. She always does.
That woman, Vivian, was at the ball; Peter seems quite smitten. I observed her for a time. She’s familiar in a way I can’t put my foundation on. Peter and I were not the only ones intrigued by Vivian. Many others were as well: proper Michael and a jeweler named Xavier, who carries a respectable enough old-fashioned pocket watch. I’ve previously noticed him on occasion. And Rose. Rose was watching Vivian, and I suspect she doesn’t care for her.
It strikes me that there are someveryinteresting things to come. For instance, Graham has not the slightest inkling of the wheeling and dealing Oliver’s doing behind (my) closed doors.
Graham will be most displeased when he learns of his son’s plans.
But Oliver is simply trying to restore the Knox to its former glory. Godspeed, dear boy.
Taylor
Taylor attends the patient confidentiality online refresher course. Clicks the right buttons. Shows up at work. Comes home and brushes her teeth. Places a dirty cereal bowl in her sink, alongside the one from the previous day. Goes to sleep, these days with the bedroom door open, so she can see through to the opposite end of her apartment, out the glass patio door.
One night she gets out her tape measure and runs it along the bedroom window. Prior to moving to Boston, her landlord had assured her and her dad that the window met Massachusetts egress requirements. But now, Taylor feels a sudden need to double-check. It’s thirty-six inches wide and twenty-four inches tall, which passes muster.
After her mother died, Taylor developed a compulsive need to locate the fire exit in every room she enters. It’s become so second nature that she barely thinks about it, simply marking surrounding doors and staircases with an ingrained vigilance.
Once, when she and her dad went to see a movie, she saw how he, too, first craned his neck to note the red exit sign in the theatercorner before settling into his seat. It made her wonder: Is life just a series of escalating anxieties?
The fact that her bedroom window meets egress standards should make Taylor feel better overall, but it doesn’t. With Vivian gone from the hospital, some days have the same tenor as those that followed her mom’s death.
Taylor pesters Aunt Gigi for information on where Vivian went. “She was moved to an undisclosed location,” Aunt Gigi says. That might be all she knows, Taylor concludes, when she’s bothered her aunt enough.
Somehow it becomes the beginning of April, the weather so slowly warming that it’s like watching a piece of frozen chicken defrost on the counter. The wheel turns. Sam’s forgiven her for missing the haircut, and they slip back into their friendship. But something’s different; something is amiss. It’s probably her. She still hasn’t talked to him about Vivian, not even to mention how she was her patient. Guilty conscience, probably.
“Do you want to get some sushi—my treat?” Sam dangles in front of her, more than once. “Or do a workout with me and Bron?” That’s his personal trainer.
“Next time,” she replies, and offers excuses that sound lame even to her: stomach issues, headaches, menstrual cramps.
“You Southern girls get your period a lot,” he says sarcastically.
Sheshouldwork out; maybe it would make her feel better.
One day, on a whim, she tries a yoga class from the place where Vivian had a membership card, Mission Hill Yoga. The class is wonderful, the teacher, Cassandra, wonderful, but there’s no essence of Vivian. Afterward, Taylor feels almost stupidly let down.
She half hopes Sam will stop asking her to do stuff and halfhopes he doesn’t. She’s not sure she deserves him as a friend. She’s not sure what she deserves. Or what she wants. Or anything at all, really. She’s worn slap out, and a now familiar angst resides inside her. The only time it seems to lessen is when she fingers the key she keeps in her jewelry box, like a precious charm, and recalls the innards of Vivian’s apartment. The softness of her patient’s cashmeres, the slinkiness of her satins, the light fuzz of her velvets. It’s probably wise she hasn’t brought up Vivian to Sam, she thinks.
She’s slipping at work: missing a patient’s low potassium blood level, forgetting to order a needed EKG, getting into an unprofessional tiff with the orthopedic resident. Her nurse manager, Jan, has to speak with her—and news trickles up to Aunt Gigi.
“I professionally vouched for you,” Aunt Gigi chides. “Usually one doesn’t get to go from an outpatient ortho center in Bumblefuck, North Carolina, to an ER position at MGH. Get it together, T.J.”
On her commute home from work, Taylor often peers into the storefront of Storied Antiques. It remains empty, with an unchanged window display. The same coral chair and footstool. The same tumbler on the hammered coaster on the same end table. The Emily Dickinson book with a faded blue 1970s cover. She’s looked at the window front so often she could draw it from memory.
She’s also googled Vivian Lawrence plenty of times to no avail. One day, Taylor wonders:Are death records public in Massachusetts?Turns out they are. On the Massachusetts Document Retrieval website, she types in as much information about Vivian as she knows, which is nothing, really. Unknown place of death, unknown date of death (other than the current year). Unknownnames of her parents. Still, Taylor fills it out and pays the forty-five dollars. It will take ten to fourteen business days, and she might not get her money back if they don’t find a record, but at least she feels like she’s doing something.
Then a unicorn of a day appears, a hint of warm weather. The sky clear, the morning air carrying a sea kiss, reminding Taylor of back home.
