Secrets of the City by Anne Roiphe

Author:Anne Roiphe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307421579
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

41

THE PRICE OF SILENCE

Consider Daquinne Johnson, who had enjoyed the attentions she had received from the parking commissioner and certainly bore him no ill will. She liked to fix him his evening drink. She liked to walk past him in the shimmering Chinese robe he had brought her, which had slits at the side and if she tied it just right, allowed the fullness of her breasts to be seen rising and falling with her breath. She liked the small presents he almost never forgot: the pin in the shape of a penguin, the scarf with a design that showed the canals of Venice, in whose blue waters boats drifted and bridges floated. She was not concerned that there was no future for her as Mrs. Neil Maguire. She was not yet twenty and he was an old man, sweet enough but not her sweetheart. What she liked was showing her sister her bank card. What she liked was using his credit card at department stores near her place of work. What she liked was the way her heels clicked on the marble floor of the office building, tap, tap, tap, like an invitation to a party. What she liked was the way Neil wrapped his large arms around her and asked her to guess what was in the package he had brought with him. She liked her bragging rights. She saw no trouble ahead. She wasn’t the worrying kind. She had no intention of ending up with three children and working the night shift at Benny’s Burgers. She was not going to get the short end of the stick.

Daquinne had wept when her mother and her aunt and her two sisters had died in a fire. However, she was not surprised that she was the last member of the family to survive. She accepted condolences from all her co-workers, took a week off, wrote a letter of apology to her dead sister for every mean act that she could remember and then took a walk along the river promenade and dropped the letter into the swiftly moving waters. She prayed for the souls of her family. She prayed for her own soul. But these were prayers of custom, prayers that were expected. Daquinne Johnson was simply not given to religious fervor, although she did have a moment of prayer when Neil Maguire told her their relationship would have to end. She prayed that Neil would have a fatal heart attack there and then. She bought herself a new black suit on Neil’s credit card and told him she needed to get away for a while to recover.

“Away?” he said. “I’ll be back,” she said. “Where are you going?” he asked. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” she said. She did accept a thousand dollars in cash and a luggage set in red leather. Neil thought of this as a good-bye present. Something about the glint in her eye as she opened the door for him made Neil wonder if he had really known her well.

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