Warren Adler 2007 Short Story Contest Finalists

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“Am I dreadfully late?” she asked, offering her cheek to my husband.  “God, the traffic.  Do forgive me, Julia.”  She shook raindrops from her sleek, black chignon and smoothed it with a jeweled hand.  “I must look a fright.”

“Beautiful as always,” Derek said, relieving her of her umbrella.

“Come and meet our friends, Meg and Marshall Wallingford of Crown Publishing; and this is Julia’s law partner, Jeffrey Kearns.  To all may I present Petra Karnovsky, my friend since childhood.”

This gathering had been Derek’s idea, one he had lobbied hard for over a period of weeks.  “The timing’s perfect,” he had maintained, bobbing with the boyish enthusiasm that I found impossible to resist.

“Petra needs a publisher, and Marshall keeps saying ‘send me somebody.’  We’ll invite Jeff as her dinner partner.  It’ll be fun.”  He had raised his right hand, vowing to “take care of everything.”

“I don’t know if Jeff’s up to a whole evening of Petra,” I said, speaking more for myself than for Jeff.  “He’s been a bit reclusive since his break-up with Mark.”

But Derek wouldn’t let it go.  “All the more reason for a party,” he said, sweeping aside my hair to kiss my neck.  “Jeff needs to jump start his life—and what better way  than dinner at our place?”  He grabbed my hand.   “Besides, Petra could use a friend right  now.”

“Fine.  Let her use somebody else’s friend.”  He gave me that sideways ‘don’t be mean’ look that always makes me defensive.

“Okay, so I’m not the fan that you are.  She’s your oldest friend, not mine.  I agree she’s bright and often witty and certainly beautiful, but she’s also tediously self-serving.  If just once she didn’t have to make a grand entrance, be the center of attention, hit on every man in the universe—”  I struggled to lower my voice and my blood pressure, aware that I had overstated my case.  Even if Petra did attract men like cat hair to black velvet, in all fairness I couldn’t quite call her predatory.

To keep the peace, I had acquiesced.

Jeffrey accepted two sherries from the maid’s tray and handed one to Petra.  “So, you’re a dancer,” he said.  His tone reminded me of my father’s expression as he cast his fly into a quiet pool—lips parted, eyes riveted, intent, focused, ready—a special trout-catching look that he wore at no other time.  In a similar way, Petra inspired a special voice in the men who attended her, slightly lower than their normal range, a bit more musical as if an interior smile infused an extra measure of breath and light into each word.  I had heard this voice again and again in the company of Petra.  Young men, old men, drunk, sober, teenaged, foreign—the result was always the same.

“An exquisite dancer,” said Derek in his own Petra-voice.  “You know how some ballerinas distract by the very fact of their delicacy?  You wonder how their fragile frames can withstand such extraordinary strain.  But Petra, who is 5’7” and probably weighs all of —what, 110 lbs.?—conveys such reserves of strength and light-footed grace that the audience never worries whether she’s going to sprain an ankle, pull a tendon . . .  When she dances, she’s magnificent.”

I managed a benign smile at this exaggeration, aware that it revealed more about him than about Petra.  She was talented, true.  But magnificent?  Pavlova was magnificent.

“I no longer dance,” said Petra, casting her green eyes downward.  “Like gymnasts, dancers are old at thirty.”  She raised her left shoulder, her right eyebrow. “So now I merely write about dancing.”

 She sipped her sherry.  “And you, Jeffrey Kearns.  Other than the law, how does such a charming man choose to occupy his time?”

The question, pure Petra, caused a flush to underscore Jeff’s tennis tan.  “I, uh, teach a course in Legal Ethics at the university,” he said.

For the next half-hour I watched Petra work her magic on Jeffrey—rapt attention, the playful swat of reproach, the conspicuous crossing of long, firm legs—and despite his sexual immunity, by the time dinner was served, he had found his own Petra-voice.

I love New York in the fall—especially our view of Central Park in all its autumn glory from the 17th floor.  Marie Clé, our caterer for the evening, had collaborated with Derek on the menu and the wine list without my input as I was in the last stages of a big case and had time to think of little else.  Thus I felt like a guest at my own table and enjoyed it even more.  I had, however, arranged a low centerpiece of yellow chrysanthemums and decided upon a seating pattern, placing Marshall and Petra side by side across from Jeff and Marshall’s wife, Meg.  Derek and I would sit at opposite ends.

But Petra would have none of it.  She made sure that she sat with her back to the cityscape and Jeff at her side.  So typical of Petra to change everyone’s plans to suit her own purposes.  I understood her wanting to sit next to Jeff, but why she had changed his seat instead of her own remained a puzzle.  Then it dawned.  In a room with a spectacular view, all eyes naturally turn toward the window—and thus toward the person framed therein.  Petra had, once again, placed herself center stage.

For the next hour the conversation veered, as I knew it would, from the work of a current Pulitzer Prize winner to the future of post-Castro Cuba to the relative merits of candidates in the upcoming election to the latest showing at MOMA. 

“Art enthusiasts are outdone only by oenophiles when it comes to dispensing bullshit,” intoned Marshall in his elegant Londonese.  “I once heard a Châteauneuf-du-Pape described as “hmmm, yes, full—but not crowded!”  Encouraged by our laughter, the Wallingfords, both funny and given to hyperbole, continued to entertain us—in phony  fractured German—with their recent misadventures on a train to Heidelburg.  This inspired Jeffrey, normally somewhat reserved, to burst forth with a naughty German drinking song, insisting we all join in on the refrain.  By the time Marie cleared the dessert plates, the candles had burned more than halfway, and a three-quarter moon swam in and out of the clouds overhanging Central Park. We moved to the living room for coffee and cognac.

Settled on an ottoman at my feet, Derek gave me a conspiratorial smile, and I squeezed his shoulder in affirmation.  Clearly, the party was a success. 

Or was it? 

With all the hilarity, I had forgotten about Petra who, I now realized, had hardly spoken since the fish course.  She had excused herself once during the meal, leaving the table quietly, then slipping back into her place with un-Petra-like understatement.  She rose again now, clutching her evening purse, and disappeared down the hall toward the powder room.  For a fleeting moment I had a notion to follow, then quickly shrugged it away.  If Petra needed my help, surely she’d ask for it.  When she reclaimed her seat on the end of the couch next to Jeffrey, now in deep discussion with Marshall Wallingford, I noticed her pallor.

“Would you like something other than cognac?” I asked her.  “A little port, perhaps?”

“No thank you,” she said with a flicker of—what?  Worry?

Distaste?  Something clouded her eyes, a dark opacity that hadn’t been there an hour earlier, and I wondered again if she was ill.  I wanted to alert Derek, but I couldn’t think of a subtle way to do so.

“Do you still play?” Meg Wallingford asked Derek, indicating the piano.

“Whenever I have the time,” he said.  Derek is too ingenuous to dissemble and demur.  Absolute honesty has always been one of his most attractive qualities.  He smiled at her.  “I could, perhaps, have a go at an Arensky Caprice if you like.”

We had chosen this apartment seven years ago when we decided to start a family.  It offered not only space for a nursery and a glorious panorama of the city but an ideal corner location.  Its two outside walls provided soundproofing for his practicing.  Music was, after all, what kept Derek centered in the otherwise insane world of advertising.  It also helped to assuage our disappointment about my ongoing inability to conceive.
His fingers rippled over the keys in a quick warm-up étude, then settled into the melodic opening of the caprice.  Meg and Marshall listened with pleasure, their heads back and eyes closed.  Jeff pulled a chair near the piano and sat in rapt attention, his elbows on his knees.  I designated myself page turner and stood beside Derek, intent on following the score.  He played flawlessly, the familiar look of rapture softening the angles of his face. We had met ten years ago at The Cellar, a popular Yale hangout, squeezed together at a crowded table of law students all celebrating the last day of exams.  My attraction to him was instantaneous, and when he volunteered to walk me back to my apartment, I was thrilled.  By the time we married a year later, we had sketched out a life plan—two careers, two children, two weeks’ vacation every year.  But the gods decided otherwise.  Derek, it turned out, was ill-suited to the law and quickly changed directions.  He wanted a golden retriever and a house in the country and most of all a family.  I wanted to live in the heart of Manhattan and to start my own law practice.  In the end we compromised: He agreed to a five-year lease on this apartment, and I stopped taking birth control pills.  Seven years later we were still here, still painfully childless, and less able to talk about it with every month that passed.

I pushed away such unhappy thoughts and concentrated on the music.

Derek’s blond hair, a bit tousled and smelling of shampoo, caught the light as he played, and I resisted reaching into its thick waves.  I love this man, I thought, feeling my throat constrict. When the final note sounded, Marshall led a short round of applause.

“Well done, old dear,” he said.  “You haven’t lost your touch.”  A pleased flush spread across Derek’s cheeks as he lowered the lid over the keys and rose.  As his eyes swept our guests, a look of dismay replaced his smile, and I turned to see what was amiss. While the rest of us had been intent on the music, Petra had removed herself.  This was uncharacteristic as she loved to hear Derek play.  I slipped down the hall to the bathroom and knocked lightly on the closed door.  But she wasn’t there.  Nor was she in the other bathroom or stretched out on any of the beds.

“Her umbrella and raincoat are gone,” said Derek, looking hurt.  “I guess she left.”

“Not everybody likes Arensky,” I said, trying to keep it light.

After Jeff and the Wallingfords said good-night, Derek and I turned out the lights and stood together in the dark looking out at the scrim of rain sweeping across the city. 

“Something’s wrong with her,” he said.  “I can feel it.”

“Probably PMS.  Even ballerinas get it.”

He turned away.  “No, really.  She wasn’t herself tonight.”

“Rather refreshing, wouldn’t you say?”  I meant it as a joke, but Derek took it badly.

“Sometimes you can really be a bitch, you know?  I have to call her.”  He turned on his heel and walked to the bedroom, shutting the door behind him.  He was right, of course.  I was a bitch where Petra was concerned.  She caused all my old insecurities to surface.  It wasn’t just that she was beautiful and I was not, or that the history she and Derek shared bonded them in a way that somehow excluded me.  It was an underlying fear of abandonment informed by a childhood spent inside my parents’ rotten marriage.  My anxiety was legitimate.  Daddy had, after all, left us in the end.  While the adult part of me believed in the solidarity of our union, my child-self skated on thin ice, conscious that, for all my career success, I had failed Derek in my most important role.  I vowed to rise above the despair that had followed our three unsuccessful attempts at in-vitro fertilization.  Tomorrow, I would call the clinic and initiate the process one more time. Derek emerged after ten minutes, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt.

“She doesn’t answer,” he said, his face grim.  “I’m going over there.”

“I’ll go too.”

When our cab pulled up in front of the brownstone on E. 35th Street, no lights burned in Petra’s second floor apartment.  Derek rang the bell three times, then pulled his cell phone from his pocket and tapped out a series of calls.  He paced up and down the sidewalk in his yellow slicker, waiting, speaking, and waiting some more.  Finally, he returned to the cab, his face white and drawn.  “Metropolitan Hospital,” he said to the driver.  Then to me: “She was admitted an hour ago.  She must have had an accident.”  We rode in silence through the rain-slick city streets, the slap-slapping of the windshield wipers marking off the seconds.   Twenty minutes later we stepped from the dimly lit elevator and crossed to the nurse’s station, squinting against the glare. 

“Petra Karnovsky,” said Derek to a man in scrubs, who scanned a chart and directed us to a room at the end of a long hall.  Derek tapped twice on the door, then cautiously pushed it open.

Petra lay in the semi-darkness, one thin arm flung across her eyes.  Her silken black hair—freed from its fastenings—fanned out across the pillow.  At Derek’s approach, she opened her eyes, looking wounded and vulnerable, and at that moment I felt something brittle inside me break loose, fall, and shatter.  I watched from the shadows by the door as he took her hand and bent to kiss her cheek. 

“What happened,” he asked softly.  “Why are you here?”  Then he sat on the edge of the bed, blocking her from my view.

For a moment the only sound in the room was the rain pelting against the window.  Finally, she spoke, her voice froggy with tears. “It would have been a girl,” she said.

With enthusiastic marketing by Crown Publishing, Petra’s autobiography, Bells on Her Toes, has enjoyed a modest success during the past year.  She writes of her family’s deprivation during her early childhood in Russia and her rigorous, sometimes brutal, training as a ballerina.  She describes the excitement and loneliness of a career with the New York City Ballet, her recent marriage to her childhood friend (“the only man I have ever loved”), and their mutual delight in the impending birth of their child—a son. 
She even credits “dear Julia,” who befriended her, then “graciously stepped aside.”