One Fifth Avenue

She opened the book, read two paragraphs, and put it down, feeling guilty. What she’d read was better than expected. Two years ago, she’d read half of James’s book in first draft and had become afraid. Too afraid to go on. She’d thought the book wasn’t so good. But she hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings, so she’d said it wasn’t her kind of material. This was easy to get away with, as the book was a historical novel about some character named David Bushnell, a real-life person who’d invented the first submarine. Mindy suspected that this David Bushnell was gay because he’d never married. The whole story took place in the seventeen hundreds, and if you weren’t married back then, you were definitely homosexual. Mindy had asked James if he was going to explore David Bushnell’s sexuality and what it might mean, and James had given her a dirty look and said no. David Bushnell was a scholar, he said. A farm boy who was a mathematical genius and had managed to go to Yale and then invented not just the submarine but underwater bombs. Which didn’t quite work.

“So in other words,” Mindy said, “he was a terrorist.”

“I guess you could say that,” James said. And that was the last conversation they’d had about the book.

But just because you didn’t talk about something didn’t mean it went away. That book, all eight hundred manuscript pages, had lain between them like a brick for months, until James finally delivered the copy to his publisher.

Now she found James on the cement pad in the back of the apartment, drinking a Scotch. She sat down next to him on a chair with metal arms and a woven plastic seat that she’d purchased from an online catalog years ago, when such transactions were new and marveled over (“I bought it online!” “No!” “Yes. And it was so easy!”), and wriggled her feet out of her shoes. “Your galleys have arrived,” she said. She looked at the glass in his hand. “Isn’t it a little early to start drinking?” she asked.

James held up the glass. “I’m celebrating. Apple wants to carry my book. They’re going to put it in their stores in February. They want to experiment with books, and they’ve chosen mine as the first. Redmon says we’re practically guaranteed sales of two hundred thousand copies. Because people trust the Apple name. Not the name of the author. The author doesn’t matter. It’s the opinion of the computer that counts. I could make half a million dollars.” He paused. “What do you think?” he asked after a moment.

“I’m stunned,” Mindy said.

That evening, Enid crossed Fifth Avenue to visit her stepmother, Flossie Davis. Enid did not relish these visits, but since Flossie was ninety-three, Enid felt it would be cruel to avoid her. Flossie couldn’t last much longer, but on the other hand, she’d been knocking at death’s door (her words) for the past fifteen years, and death had yet to answer.

As usual, Enid found Flossie in bed. Flossie rarely left her two-bedroom apartment but always managed to complete the grotesque makeup routine she’d adopted as a teenaged showgirl. Her white hair was tinted a sickly yellow and piled on top of her head. When she was younger, she’d worn it bleached and teased, like a swirl of cotton candy. Enid had a theory that this constant bleaching had affected Flossie’s brain, as she never got anything quite right and was querulously insistent on her rightness even when all evidence pointed to the contrary. The only thing Flossie had managed to get partially right was men. At nineteen, she’d snatched up Enid’s father, Bugsy Merle, an oil prospector from Texas; when he passed away at fifty-five from a heart attack, she’d married the elderly widower, Stanley Davis, who had owned a chain of newspapers. With plenty of money and little to do, Flossie had spent much of her life pursuing the goal of becoming New York’s reigning socialite, but she’d never developed the self-control or discipline needed to succeed. She now suffered from heart trouble and gum infections, wheezed when she spoke, and had only television and visits from Enid and Philip to keep her company. Flossie was a reminder that it was terrible to get old and that there was very little to be done about it.

“And now Louise is dead,” Flossie said triumphantly. “I can’t say I’m sorry. Nobody deserved death more than she. I knew she’d come to a bad end.”

Enid sighed. This was typical Flossie, completely illogical in her analyses. It came, Enid thought, from never having had to really apply herself.

“I would hardly call her death ‘just deserts,’” Enid said carefully. “She was ninety-nine. Everyone dies eventually. It’s not a punishment. From the moment we’re born, life only goes in one direction.”

“Why bring that up?” Flossie said.

“It’s important to face the truth,” Enid said.

“I never want to face the truth,” Flossie said. “What’s good about the truth? If everyone faced the truth, they would kill themselves.”

“That might be true,” Enid said.

“But not you, Enid,” Flossie said, pushing herself up on her elbows in preparation for a verbal attack. “You never married, never had children. Most women would have killed themselves. But not you. You go on and on. I admire that. I could never be a spinster myself.”

“‘Single’ is the word they use now.”

“Well,” Flossie said brightly, “I suppose you can’t miss what you never had.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Enid said. “If that were true, there would be no envy in the world. No unhappiness.”

“I was not envious of Louise,” Flossie said. “Everyone says I was, but I wasn’t. Why would I be envious of her? She didn’t even have a good figure. No bosom.”

“Flossie,” Enid said patiently. “If you weren’t envious, then why did you accuse her of robbery?”

“Because I was right,” Flossie said. Her wheezing increased, and she reached for an inhaler on the coffee table. “The woman,” she said between gasps, “was a thief! And worse.”

Enid got up and fetched Flossie a glass of water. When she returned, she said gently, “Drink your water. And forget about it.”

“Then where is it?” Flossie said. “Where is the Cross of Bloody Mary?”

“There’s no proof the cross ever existed,” Enid said firmly.

“No proof?” Flossie’s eyes bulged. “It’s right there. In the painting by Holbein. It’s hanging around her neck. And there are documents that talk about Pope Julius the Third’s gift to Queen Mary for her efforts to keep England Catholic.”

“There’s one document,” Enid said. “And that document has never been shown to be authentic.”

“What about the photograph?”

“Taken in 1910. About as real as the famous photograph of the Loch Ness Monster.”