Riverside Park

4

Celia Cavanaugh

IT SUCKED BIG-TIME that she had to work. This was the first time in four years that Celia had the apartment to herself over a holiday weekend. But she did have to work, three until eleven tonight, three until two Friday and Saturday, and then three until ten on Sunday. Normally she cleaned up in tips over the weekend but on Thanksgiving? It might be okay today but she knew it would be dead over the weekend. To meet December’s rent she was going to need an extra shift this week.

Celia and Rachel had been assigned as roommates in a freshman dorm at Columbia University. Celia did not have many Jewish friends in the Connecticut suburb she had grown up in, and Rachel did not have many white Anglo-Saxon Protestant friends in the New Jersey suburb she had grown up in, but they had hit it off in a big way and learned a lot from each other. For example, Rachel introduced Celia to lox and bagels, while Celia, Rachel joked, had introduced her to margarine and instant mashed potatoes. Both girls came from affluent families, had parents still married to each other, and had done well in their suburban training in piano, tennis, skiing and keeping secrets.

Celia’s father was a partner at a Wall Street law firm, while Rachel’s last name was synonymous with the largest independent truck leasing company in the world. Her father was really, really rich. So rich, in fact, that he had bought a two and a half bedroom apartment on Riverside Drive so his daughter could move out of the dorm her sophomore year. Celia was welcomed to move in with Rachel as along as she paid sixteen hundred dollars a month toward expenses. Celia’s father asked why the heck should they pay sixteen hundred dollars a month to let her run wild when Celia could stay in the dorm for six hundred dollars a month and let her mother sleep at night. The girls put their heads together and figured out if they could just find someone who’d pay Celia’s rent for the full-size bedroom, Celia could pay Rachel six hundred dollars a month and cram herself into the tiny maid’s room off the kitchen, and then Rachel would have extra cash her father didn’t need to know about.

They advertised in the Spectator and the son of a country-western star was happy to pay sixteen hundred dollars to live in such a nice apartment. After Celia’s mother checked it out and the building and the neighborhood, she told Celia’s father she had no objection to Celia moving in. If Celia wanted to live in a closet that was her business, but the Riverside Park neighborhood was now very in, Mrs. Cavanaugh told her husband.

They moved into the apartment in August and it was really great. Celia’s father built her a loft bed so she could turn around in the maid’s room. Then, on their third night in the apartment, Celia and the-son-of-a-country-western-star shared a couple of bottles of wine, one thing led to another and Celia never slept in the maid’s room again. The next thing she knew, she was smoking cigarettes like the-son-of-a-country-western-star (Rachel put a huge standing fan in the hall to blow smoke back into their bedroom), and suddenly it was November and Rachel was calling Celia at the country-western star’s palatial home outside of Nashville to say that if Celia didn’t withdraw from their English class she was going to get an F because of her absences. Celia wasn’t going to be able to make the time up, the teacher was an asshole. So Celia called the university from Nashville and withdrew from the class. Later when her parents saw the I on her report card she said she had actually gotten a B but the teacher had handed in the grades late.

The lies came easier and more often. Celia and the-son-of-a-country-western-star were drinking a lot and smoking a lot of pot. Rachel said after this school year that was it, Celia was out. Celia said that was fine, they were going to get their own place anyway. In February the-son-of-a-country-western-star wanted to take Celia to Aspen where his country-western-star parent had a place, but Celia explained she had a huge test coming up in history and couldn’t go. But as she watched the-son-of-a-country-western-star packing his bags she changed her mind and went with him, deciding she’d just figure out what to do about her classes later. The solution she came up with was to call the school from Aspen and explain that she had broken her leg in three places skiing, was being forced to stay for medical treatment and could they please tell her what portion of her tuition could be applied to the following year since it looked like she would have to withdraw from school.

“Oh, Rachel’s great, Mom,” Celia would say, dragging on a cigarette outside one of the Aspen ski lodges. “And she says hi. We’ll probably go to the new place on Broadway for pizza tonight.”

When Celia and the-son-of-a-country-western-star finally got back to New York in late March, Celia knew she had better get a full-time job so she’d have some money saved toward school; she had to somehow soften the blow to her parents that she had dropped out. She figured she would pay them back, start school again in the fall and be only fifteen credits behind.

That was five years ago and Celia hadn’t been back to school since.

The week before Celia’s twenty-first birthday, the son-of-a-country-western-star ran away with the newlywed wife who lived on the fourth floor of their building. Celia was at first stunned, then disbelieving, and finally devastated. (The newlywed husband wasn’t so happy about it, either, although he did keep asking Celia if she wanted to come over to talk about it over drinks.)

Not long after that Rachel came into Celia’s bedroom for a talk. Rachel made a great show of wafting through the smoke and sat down on the foot of Celia’s bed. “You don’t have to pay me for the maid’s room anymore but someone has to pay the $1,703 for this room this month.”

“I start bartending at Captain Cook’s next week,” Celia said, blowing smoke to the ceiling. (She had just smoked a joint with one of the doormen on his break and was still a little out of it.)

“Celia—” Rachel jumped up and kicked her way through the clothes and junk all over the floor to retrieve a handheld mirror from the dresser. She’d brought it back to shove in Celia’s face. “Look at you!”

She hadn’t wanted to particularly, but Celia did. Her shoulder-length brown hair was unbrushed and her brown eyes had purple circles under them. Celia had also gained about fifteen pounds since she had replaced the-son-of-a-country-western-star with Oreo cookies, Cheez Doodles and Guinness in bed.

Celia sat up to stamp out her cigarette. “I’ll move if you want.”

“Oh, Celia, you never sleep anymore, you just keep doing drugs and drinking and locking yourself up in here.” Rachel’s eyes welled up with tears. “I want my friend back.”

Since Rachel had threatened to throw her out the year before Celia didn’t put too much on this threat. For whatever reason Rachel wanted to save their friendship, and did so with persistency which at that point had evoked from Celia mild contempt. Still, there was something about Rachel’s near hysteria that got to her.

“My littlest angel, what is wrong?” her mother asked Celia the next night in Darien, as Celia lay sobbing on her old bed in her old room.

“Everything,” she wailed. “I just feel like killing myself.”

The next morning she found herself in a psychiatrist’s office in Stamford. When she saw her mother’s hopeful expression when she came out she felt enraged. She wouldn’t tell her what she had told the man (which had been pretty much nothing). In the car, when her mother asked if they had discussed an antidepressant, Celia went ballistic, screaming, “I’m not going to be a high-tech zombie! So just forget it!”

“But, Celia—”

“The doctor said if I get all this sugar and nicotine and caffeine out of my system I’m going to feel better. And he said I had to exercise more and get more sunlight.”

“And what about the drinking, Celia?”

“He didn’t say anything about that,” she lied. Actually what he had said was how much alcohol would increase her depression when it wore off.

“I’m going to cut way back anyway,” she told her mother.

“Since you’re only turning twenty-one next week and are already vowing to cut back on your drinking I’m not sure how to take that, Celia,” her mother said, trying to remain focused on the road. This was how Celia remembered her childhood, her mother always driving Celia and her brothers somewhere. “But if you find changing these things doesn’t help, you have to promise me you’ll see the doctor again.”

Although Celia said nothing about it, the doctor had lectured Celia on what a death sentence cocaine could be for someone like her. “You lose the ability to experience wellbeing because the cocaine burns up the chemicals that create it. That’s why so many cocaine addicts kill themselves. They become physically incapable of feeling sensations of wellbeing. Think of a turtle whose shell has been ripped off.”

Rachel was irritatingly elated when Celia said she was going to reform her evil ways. She quit smoking, started running in the park and Rachel went with her to a couple of Weight Watchers meetings so they could both get their food under control. (Rachel tended to be on the heavy side.) Celia started working at Captain Cook’s and was amazed at how well the men tipped her; she was also perversely fascinated by people who drank too much. She swore off cocaine, stayed away from pot and began to sleep again.

All in all she started to feel whatever it was starting to lift. At least she could breathe without wanting to hang herself.

Her stint at Captain Cook’s had worked out well. Mark Cook, the owner (who had sailed on nothing but the Staten Island Ferry), liked Celia from the start because she was really popular with the customers. She also didn’t steal from the register like the other bartenders. Celia was made assistant manager of the bar. Not too long after that, when Celia lied to the other bartenders that the new guy was an undercover cop and the two worst offending thieves quit, Mark promoted her to manager of the bar.

In the meantime, Rachel got her B.A. and entered the master’s program at Columbia in American studies. Although Celia looked and acted a thousand times better since her more wayward days, Rachel still worried about her.

“Oh, Rach, now what?” Celia said, making a strawberry-banana smoothie in the blender. “I’ve given up smoking, drugs and junk food. What else do you want me to do?”

“It’s the stuff you’re dragging home. All this junk all over everywhere.”

It was true that Celia had found a renewed interest in well-made old things again. Finding and dragging home old things was something she had done even as a child. (Her parents said in her last life she must have been Queen Victoria.) “It’s not junk,” she protested, pouring some of the smoothie in a glass and sliding it to her roommate. She looked around and then snatched up a glass inkwell that had been drying next to the sink. “This is a mid-nineteenth century inkwell. It is not junk.”

“It doesn’t have a top, Celia, it’s just more junk. But at least that’s small. What are you going to do with that old window you dragged home the other day?”

“I’m taking it to storage,” Celia said.

“It’s weird, Ceil,” Rachel continued. “I don’t know anybody else who has a stone fireplace mantel lying on their bedroom floor. Do you?”

That made Celia laugh. And then Rachel laughed, too.

“We used to laugh all the time,” Rachel said. “Remember?”

Celia nodded, feeling a little sad. When had everything gotten to be so hard?

“You spend too much time alone,” Rachel continued. “If you didn’t go to work I don’t think you’d speak to anybody.”

It was true, she had gone from being outgoing to wishing most of the time that people would leave her alone. She made all kinds of excuses to get out of family things. Her oldest brother was a lawyer like her dad and the other was a research scientist. This did not leave a whole lot of room for Celia to talk about her career in bartending. Even her mother was working on a master’s degree at night at Fairfield University, in what Celia didn’t even know. (She was almost afraid to ask what a Cotillion debutante who hadn’t held a job in thirty years wanted a master’s degree in.) The whole Cavanaugh family was so programmed for success Celia’s throat tightened whenever she was around them.

At one time she had been a success in her family’s eyes. She had made the National Honor Society in high school and made the varsity soccer and tennis teams. She had always been a class officer, and as a senior had been voted most popular, most likely to succeed and best legs. She remembered being happy, feeling full of energy.

Now, even in her reformed state of living, Celia felt as though everyone she had grown up with had run ahead and she couldn’t catch up. It was as if she was stuck behind a wall of glass. She could see them but could not reach them. Rachel saw it because Rachel was the one who had to make up excuses for why Celia always ducked calls from old high school friends.

Celia pretty much ducked calls from everyone at this point.

After Celia encouraged Rachel to sign up for Match.com, the roommates’ relationship improved because Rachel had something exciting going on in her life to focus on and all Celia had to do was listen to her talk about her experiences.

Celia’s alarm went off at 2:15 p.m. She dragged herself out of bed, showered and put on her Captain Cook’s uniform, which consisted of tight-fitting black jeans, a long-sleeved blouse (with billowed sleeves and plunging neckline; aye, like a pirate), and tucked a clean black-and-white bandana in her back pocket, which she would put on at the bar. She knew she should call home to wish everyone “Happy Thanksgiving,” but if she did then she’d have to talk to all the relatives and deal with the questions her parents had not come up with satisfactory answers to: When was Celia going back to school? Was she seeing anyone special? Had she decided on her career?

She called her mother’s cell phone. She knew it would be turned off but she also knew her mother would check it later when she hadn’t heard from Celia. “Hi, everybody. I just wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving and tell you that I had a very nice day here but missed you guys and now I’m going to work. I hope dinner was good and Uncle Keith didn’t break any chair legs in the dining room or anything again. Love you!”

A cold wind blew at her back as Celia walked to Columbus Avenue. Sometimes the wind off the Hudson was so strong between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive people had to walk backward to reach their buildings. And this was only November. Just wait.

The restaurant was busy but the bar was slow. “Three Diet Pepsis, a Shirley Temple and a zombie,” one of the waiters said, putting in his order. “Identify the unhappy patron at that table.”

It was a nice group that worked here. Most of them had come to New York to be actors.

Celia flicked the channels of the two TVs over the bar. She turned the sound up on the NFL game and turned the sound off on the college game. The busboy brought in a couple racks of clean glasses and set them down on the bar. “Do you want me to put them away?”

“Not until you’re twenty-one,” she told him, smiling. Jason was terribly shy and young for his age, but he was a good worker.

Celia hefted the trays down into the bar and started putting the glasses away.

“Um,” Jason said.

She looked up. “You’ll be in the back?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Thanksgiving is the first day of Suicidal-Thoughts Season,” a regular sighed to Celia. He was divorced, this one, and had moved into the city after his wife in the suburbs threw him out of the house. Why, he was not saying, but Celia suspected it had something to do with the way he drank. Celia almost never expressed an opinion about anything that mattered to her customers—like the way they drank—because the tips were much better if she didn’t.

“I’m just thankful Thanksgiving’s only once a year,” another regular said from across the way, a heavily made-up woman with many miles on her. She’d been working at the Board of Ed for twenty-five years. She drank the house rosé over ice. She once told Celia she hung out at Captain Cook’s because it was a nice place, the people were nice and if she should happen to find a man in here sometime then she would feel a lot safer about getting to know him.

Another regular, the unpublished writer, came in and sat down at the bar. He had on a tie and jacket, which was unusual for him.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” Celia said. “What may I get you?”

“Arsenic or new in-laws,” he said, loosening the tie. “Irish Mist on the rocks.” He rested his elbows on the bar, watching her. “My agent’s going to fire me,” he said glumly, “I just know it. Asked me if I wanted to meet him for a beer. He lives around here.”

“You’re meeting him here?” Celia asked, pouring the whiskey. “On Thanksgiving?”

“I figure he wants to get it over with and tell me I’m going to be a fucking insurance salesman for the rest of my life.”

“And with that kind of language not a very successful one,” Celia observed, making everyone, including the writer, laugh. She wiped down the bar in front of him and slid a saucer of Chex Mix toward him. “He’s not going to have anything bad to say,” she said, “not on Thanksgiving Day. He wouldn’t have called you.”

“You think?” He was looking up at her with a kind of gratitude that translated into excellent tips. But that was not why Celia had said it; she meant it. She felt sorry for him. He’d been trying to sell something he’d written ever since she started working here.

“When’s he coming?”

“I haven’t called him back yet.”

“Call him,” Celia told him.

“You think?”

“It’s Thanksgiving, I’m telling you, he must be calling with good news.”

“I don’t know what it is you should be doing for a living, Celia,” the guy thrown out of the house in the suburbs said, “but it’s sure not this.”

Celia tossed the towel into the laundry bin and gave him a saucer of the peanuts she knew that he liked. “Why not this?”

“For starters, you sound like Martha Stewart and look like one of those women on Friends.”

“She does,” agreed the lonely Board of Ed lady.

“Thank you,” Celia said.

“Celia used to go to Columbia, you know,” the writer said. Celia imagined he was building her credentials up in his mind so he would do what she had advised and call his agent back.

“Ceil,” a waitress said breathlessly, careening into the bar. “I need two margaritas, a strawberry daiquiri and a mudslide as fast as you can make ’em.”

“Got it.”

A cold blast of air came in when the door opened. Celia glanced over and saw a man in overalls and a parka coming in. Keeping his coat on, the man slid onto a stool and briskly rubbed his hands. “Tenant blows uppa his stove and blamesa me. On a Thanksgivinaday, this I don’t need.”

Celia poured him a draft.

The second bartender for the night shift appeared. “Sorry I’m late, Celia.”

“You haven’t missed much,” she said, putting ingredients for the daiquiri, margaritas and mudslide in three of the bar’s six blenders and passing the order on to him because it was time for her break.

“Think it’ll get busier?”

“Not until nine, when people get back into the city,” she said, untying her apron and putting it under the bar. She went into the kitchen where, as usual, the crew was careening about swearing in different languages. (Their chef’s dyslexia was pretty bad.) Celia walked over to the dishwashing area. “Jason,” she called, and then she left the kitchen and headed for Mark’s office. She unlocked the door and went in.

She was standing examining the shift calendar on the wall when he knocked. “Come in and close the door,” she told him.

He did as he was told.

“And lock it,” she added, walking over. While he was turning the dead bolt Celia placed her hand on the small of his back and felt him freeze. “Yes, I want to,” she whispered into his ear. “Very much.” She let her hand slide down and smiled to herself. Amazing.

She led Jason over to the low filing cabinet that also served as a makeshift table in the office. She sat down and pulled him to stand between her legs. And looked up at him. And smiled.

The teenager’s eyes were half-closed and his breath ragged. It had been two weeks since the last time. While he just stood there Celia undid his belt, his pants, worked his zipper and then pulled his jeans down.

She took a sharp breath when she looked down. He tried to help her take his Jockey shorts down but his hands were trembling and Celia pretty much had to do it. As she sat back up it brushed the side of her face. She took hold of him and smiled, looking up. “You’re really something,” she whispered. Then she hastily stood up to take off her jeans and panties and moved back down onto the file cabinet. Jason grabbed at her thighs to pull her legs up and she scarcely had time to guide him into place before he shuddered and caved.

One of the hazards of an inexperienced teenage boy. The upside was Jason had been a virgin, free of disease, and now only knew the most acute desire to get into her. Which was fine with her.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“It’s okay,” she whispered back, pulling his head down to rest on her shoulder, “because you still feel so good inside of me.” She was looking up at the clock. She had maybe ten minutes. She shifted, tightening her legs around Jason to keep him there, and started to whisper things to him. Nice things. About him, about his size and how he felt inside of her, about what she wanted him to do to her. It was not long before she felt him growing large again. The progress was slow but steady, and although he was not quite yet fully erect, she started moving against him because she had grown tremendously excited. He began thrusting back, making her moan a little, which got him more excited, and his increasingly harder thrusts made Celia’s hips start to rise. She told him what was happening to her, what she was feeling, and then Jason became almost frantic, rhythmically banging the cabinet into the wall. She cried softly into his neck as she came and then shuddered violently; moments later he grunted loudly and collapsed on Celia, damp with perspiration.