Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“You’re absolutely sure you want to do this?” Gretchen whispers, leaning toward Frannie as they stand in the tight, gleaming elevator.
“Down the hall and to your left,” the elevator attendant says, tipping his cap to them.
The doors open on the sixteenth floor and Frannie and Gretchen step into the hall. The San Remo has a remarkably similar feel to the Dakota, and Frannie fights a shiver. She’s not sneaking around. If anyone asks, they’re here for “background” on Gretchen’s “segment.” It’s a foolproof cover.
“Okay, sixteen-twenty and …” Gretchen pulls them to a stop.
The number 1622 gleams on the white door. The hallway is empty. It’s just them, the red carpet runner, and the clouds out the window at the end of the hall. There aren’t ghosts here. At least, none that have shown their faces.
No one knows Frannie and Gretchen are here, not even Brad. Frannie could choose not to pick at this wound, unravel this thread. She could leave the past in the past.
She raises her fist and knocks before she can talk herself out of it. Gretchen gives her one last hesitant glance before straightening her blazer, morphing into the confident news producer.
The door opens a moment later. Frannie stares at the tall, drawn woman before them, wrapped in an expensive orange-and-black shawl over what looks like black lounge pants and a black cashmere sweater.
Her gray hair is pulled back in a severe bun, her face bare of makeup. Her brown eyes peer at them warily.
“Hi, I’m Gretchen Vaughn, from News 18. Thank you for meeting with us. This is Frannie Goldstein, my associate. You’re Joan Wright?”
“Yes,” Joan says, offering them a tepid smile. “Good to meet you. Please, come in.”
She turns and walks into the apartment, leaving them to follow. Gretchen glances at Frannie and Frannie fakes a confident smile. She’s not sure she’s ever been more nauseous.
Still, she follows Gretchen into the apartment and closes the door behind them with an unpleasant feeling of finality.
“Do you mind if I record our interview? I don’t want to miss anything,” Gretchen says, trailing Joan down the narrow front hallway.
Frannie follows at a slower pace, her eyes dragging along the pictures on the pristine white walls. China, Italy, Spain, Peru—Joan’s been everywhere. She’s posed for photographs in locations Frannie can’t place, atop monuments she’s never seen. All alone.
“Frannie?”
Frannie blinks, having stalled before a photograph of Joan in front of some enormous waterfall maybe thirty years ago, grinning for the unseen photographer.
She hurries to catch up, rounding the corner at the end of the hall into an elegant living room that looks out on the park.
It’s all cream and white antique furniture with glass end tables.
More pictures litter the bookshelves, windowsills, and the mantle over the electric fireplace.
Gretchen pats the seat of one of the cream settees and Frannie awkwardly sits down next to her, trying to look relaxed. Her focus oscillates between Joan, settling herself daintily on the opposite settee, and the pictures.
“I really appreciate you being open to giving a quote, and for meeting with me in person. It’s been fascinating to see where former Dakota Building residents are living now,” Gretchen says, pulling a notebook out of her shoulder bag.
“Mm, I’d imagine you’re getting to go all over the city,” Joan says.
“A bit,” Gretchen agrees. “Though a surprising number of you stayed on the Upper West Side. What is it about the area that kept you here?”
Joan’s eyes flick to Frannie, who’s been staring at a photograph over Joan’s shoulder. A very young Joan and an older man stand in front of the entrance to the Dakota. That must be her father. Frannie meets Joan’s shrewd eyes and forces a smile.
“I was raised here,” Joan says. “It only felt right, when I left the Dakota, to stay in the area. The view of the park, you know, it’s addictive.”
“Certainly seems that way,” Gretchen agrees.
“Do you regret moving out of the Dakota? I imagine your unit would be worth tens of millions today,” Frannie hears herself say.
Gretchen’s foot nudges hers, and Frannie fights a wince. She’s not supposed to be asking questions—at least, not yet.
But Joan doesn’t seem to notice anything’s off. “No. I sold it for a good profit at the time. My view here is significantly better, and I’m sure you’d agree the apartments and the building are more spacious, and brighter.”
To Frannie, there’s little difference between the buildings’ interiors. At least, not in terms of the expensive apartments. She has no idea what the former staff quarters at the San Remo look like. She’d poke around if she and Gretchen were actually here on a fact-finding mission.
“How did you come onto this story? You’re young to be an architecture buff,” Joan says, looking back to Gretchen.
“Frannie actually works in the Dakota. She’s my roommate and gave me a tour. I guess I caught the bug,” Gretchen replies casually. “Do you have any particularly fond memories of your time there?”
Frannie almost feels bad for roping Gretchen into this.
But the longer she sits here, the more it feels like a good decision.
All these photographs of Joan alone around the world; the staid, perfect interior of the apartment; the perfect view she couldn’t give up—all of it speaks to her not wanting to let go of the Dakota. Of trying to recapture what she had.
Of knowing what and who she left behind.
“I went to a few spectacular brunches at Lauren Bacall and Jason Robards’s apartment,” Joan says, a little sparkle flitting through her eyes.
Frannie sits up straighter. “Really?” she can’t help but ask.
Joan chuckles. “They always had an excellent spread, and the records they would play—it was marvelous. I guess that’s what I remember most fondly, the people. We’d dance in that apartment with them. Truly charming.”
Frannie’s interest curdles in her stomach. She knows who we would have been.
Gretchen scribbles notes beside her, and then jerks, her hand moving to her thigh. She digs in her pocket and pulls out her phone, glancing down at it without showing the screen. “I’m so sorry, that’s my boss. Could I take a short call?”
Joan nods and points her across the hallway to the next room. Gretchen gives them both a grimacing smile and stands up, then scurries away with the phone to her ear. Frannie watches her go, unsure if that was their decoy plan or an actual call.
Joan and Frannie sit in silence for a moment. Joan watches Frannie, and Frannie finds herself turning away to avoid her gaze. It leaves her searching the photographs beside her on the windowsill overlooking the park. Her breath stalls in her chest.
There’s an older gold picture frame in the corner of the windowsill, holding a yellowing photograph of a much, much younger Joan and … Elsa. They’re standing together by a window, chatting, their fingers barely linked. Elsa’s wearing a black dress, Joan a pair of pedal pushers.
It must have been shortly before Elsa died. Her hair is the same. Even in this black-and-white photograph, she seems to glow. Her head is thrown back in the laugh Frannie loves so much, while Joan smiles at her, besotted. How could she not be?
The window behind them looks out on Seventy-Third Street.
“Something interesting over there?”
Frannie blinks and drags her gaze back to Joan. Sitting there in her fashionable scarf, lines on her face, but still hale in her late eighties.
This is what Frannie will look like someday. And Elsa will never look a day older than that photograph. Not a day older than she does now.
Frannie and Joan, they both loved—love—the same woman, but they’re sixty-one years apart.
“Did you recognize something?” Joan prompts.
Frannie swallows, her throat suddenly dry. But she can do this. “Oh, I just—the apartment you’re in here,” she says, pointing to the photo with a shaking finger. “I recognize it. And the woman you’re with—I must have seen a picture of her somewhere.”
Joan’s brow creases and her eyes dart to the photograph. Her spine goes straighter, and she slowly turns to look back at Frannie. They stare at each other for a long moment.
“Why are you really here?” Joan asks.
Frannie fights against fidgeting. She’s not some immature underling. She’s a woman very much in love, facing the woman who abandoned her lover.
“I’d like you to come back to the Dakota with me today,” Frannie says, her voice only slightly shaky. “Elsa deserves closure before you’re no longer here to give it.”
Joan doesn’t so much as twitch. “Closure.”
“Yes,” Frannie says, trying to sit just as straight and tall as the older woman. “She deserves to hear that you shouldn’t have left her there. That you should have stayed with her. That it was selfish of you to leave, and that you regret it.”
Anger replaces her anxiety as she speaks. Joan left. She nearly broke Elsa entirely. Elsa deserves to be told it was wrong. To hear that she matters just as much as anyone with a pulse. To have the chance to have more than what she’s convinced herself she’s allowed.
“You’re the one making a mistake,” Joan says calmly.
“How can you—”
“She’d never have sent you here. She has far too much pride. You’ve fallen for her. I’m not surprised. She’s magnetic, incredible.”
Frannie wets her lips. “But you still won’t come back?”
“She’s dead,” Joan says. The word comes out clipped, but it hangs around them, echoing through Frannie’s ears. Joan holds up a hand before Frannie can so much as open her mouth. “Leaving that haunted building was the best thing I ever did.”
“Even though it left you both alone?”
“You may think you see a life devoid of a partner in these photographs, Miss Goldstein, but who do you think is behind the camera? I made the right choice. What do you imagine will happen as you age?”
Frannie swallows, hard. “That doesn’t matter.”