Chapter 7 #3
It came down thick and fast and silent in the orange light from the one lamp over the dock doors. Sansom Street was already gone. Everything was gone. There was nothing out there but white, and the dumpsters, and the edges of the brick walls, soft as bread.
Caroline stood at the edge of the dock in her green velvet dress with no back, and her bare arms, and she shook.
It wasn’t the cold. It was everything else.
It was the names. Ed Lundgren. His wife’s Dee.
It was the stupid joke, and the room laughing, and how it had felt to hand him the microphone and have him take it and know what to say.
It was him not coming up onto the stage until she asked.
It was him standing at that bar all night with a glass of club soda, looking at her across the room and then looking away, over and over, like a man trying not to touch a stove.
And it was the spoon. It was him walking across that floor and taking the mistletoe away before anyone could lift a phone.
Before anyone could hurt her with it.
She put both hands over her face.
She was so angry. She was so angry at him that her whole body burned with it, even out here in the snow.
She was angry that he was good at this. She was angry that he had kept every single one of her terms, and she had wanted, twice tonight, for one second, for him to break one.
She was angry that when he’d come in the doors with snow on his shoulders and looked up at the mezzanine, her heart had gone over like a car on ice.
She was angry that she still knew what his hand would feel like on her bare back, and that all night she had known exactly where it wasn’t.
“Stop it,” she whispered into her hands. “Stop it. Stop it.”
The metal door opened behind her.
She turned around fast. It was Luz, in her good black dress, holding Caroline’s old wool coat.
“Here,” Luz said, and put it around her shoulders. She didn’t ask anything. She stood beside Caroline on the dock and looked out at the snow.
“That’s a lot of snow,” Luz said.
“Yes.”
“The mayor’s on the news.” Luz held up her phone. “They’re calling a snow emergency. Two feet by morning. They’re shutting down the trains at eleven-thirty. They want everybody off the roads by midnight.”
Caroline pulled the coat tighter. “It’s ten o’clock.”
“I know. People are already leaving. Your dad’s getting a ride home with Patricia’s driver. Carla’s gone. The band’s packing up.” Luz looked at her. “You should get Stephanie to come get you. Right now. Before it’s too late.”
“Stephanie can’t drive in this. Her car’s from 2009.”
“Then a cab.”
“There won’t be a cab.”
Luz was quiet.
“You go,” Caroline said. “You live in South Philly. Go now, while the trains are running. Take the staff with you. Send everybody home. I’ll lock up.”
“You can’t lock up four hundred people’s worth of party by yourself.”
“I’ll lock the doors and leave the rest for Monday. Go, Luz. Please. I mean it.”
Luz looked at her a long time. Then she kissed Caroline on the cheek, fast and hard, and went back inside.
* * *
Hadley’s was empty by eleven-thirty.
Caroline had walked the last guests to the Walnut Street doors herself.
Ed and Dee Lundgren. The Desais. Phil Bristow, who was very sorry, and wouldn’t stop saying so.
She had seen Patricia’s driver help her father down the icy front steps and into a black car.
She had sent the last of the caterers out the loading dock at eleven, and the night guard had called at eleven-fifteen to say that his street in Delco was closed and he couldn’t get in, and the day guard was waiting to catch the last train out of Suburban Station. Caroline had told him to go.
Outside, Walnut Street had disappeared. The snow was piled against the bottom of the glass doors. Nothing moved on the street. Not a car. Not a person. The streetlights stood in the white like candles.
Caroline turned the big brass key in the front doors and heard the lock go over.
She turned around.
The atrium was dark except for the tree.
The forty tables stood in the gold light with their chairs pushed back and their white cloths rumpled and half-empty glasses everywhere.
The birch trees glittered along the walls.
It was very quiet. The only sounds were the old building settling and the far-off hum of the heat.
And at the other end of the atrium, by the bar, in his tuxedo with his bow tie undone, stood her husband.
She had thought he’d left an hour ago. She had watched him walk toward the doors.
He was holding his phone. He looked at it, and then he looked up at her across the whole dark room.
“My driver can’t get through,” Connor said. “They’ve closed the Schuylkill. They’ve closed everything.” He put the phone in his pocket. “The mayor says nobody drives.”
Caroline stood with her back against the locked front doors and the key in her hand.
Her own phone buzzed. It was a text from Luz. Made the last train. Everyone’s out. City’s shut. Are you okay?? Where are you going to sleep?
Caroline looked up from the phone at the empty store, and the dark, and the snow piling against the glass behind her.
And at the only other person inside Hadley’s.