me, I could be worse. I’m still in business. Are you? If yes, it’s not what you can do for me, it’s I have a job for you.”
“Doing what?”
“Do I know? A client wants someone who can, quote, operate discreetly in the Chinese community.”
“So why did he call you?”
“Apparently, because I speak Yiddish. And he’s a she.”
“I don’t—”
“I don’t either. Come to the Waldorf at four and we’ll both find out.”
“Today?”
“Of course today.”
“Well . . .” Chasing to a meeting with Joel Pilarsky when I’d just fought my way in from JFK wouldn’t have been my first choice; but work is work. “Okay.”
“Good girl. I’ll be lurking behind a potted palm.”
I bristled at the “girl,” but Joel was on the far side of sixty, and I was in fact younger than two of his three daughters.
As I clicked off, my mother’s face floated around the doorjamb. She must have been in the hall, responding to a sudden need to rearrange the linen closet or straighten the family photos. “Who was that? You were talking about work. Was that the white baboon?”
“Bill? No. I haven’t heard from him in a while.” I busied myself with my suitcase. “That was Joel Pilarsky. You’ve met him. I helped him last year when he was looking for that Jewish lady who ran off with the Chinese restaurant owner.”
“In Flushing, I remember! Nobody in Flushing is busy enough, so they make trouble for themselves.”
Well, mentioning that was obviously a mistake. “Anyway, Joel has a job for me. I’m meeting him later.”
“Today? He’s sloppy. He gives you orders. And he sings. You get a headache when you work with him.”
“Only when he sings.” She makes a point of not listening when I talk about work, so how does she know this stuff? “And it’s good to have work. Keeps me busy.”
“Pah. Keep busy so you won’t think about who isn’t calling you.”
“Ma! You don’t even like Bill. And I haven’t called him lately either.”
“If you never call him again, your mother and your brothers will be happy. But for him not to call you? He values himself too highly. Make you go all the way to California.”
“I went to California for Jeannie Chu’s wedding.”
“A month for a wedding?” Her pursed lips told me what she thought of that. Then she waved away the annoying gnat of Bill. “When do you have to go to your job today?”
“Two hours. Plenty of time to shower and change. But first, let’s have some congee.”
Probably taken in by the charcoal silk pantsuit that was my mother’s handiwork, the Waldorf doorman actually smiled at me. In the carpeted, chandeliered lobby, three men conferred over PDAs, no doubt scheduling a very important meeting. A graceful woman rolled a suitcase toward the door. Even the two little boys waiting while their parents checked in wore button-down shirts and were behaving themselves.
In a club chair to my right I spotted Joel, not behind a potted palm but beside one. Silver pots and porcelain cups clustered on the coffee table between him and a neat, plump woman. Joel looked a little chubbier, a little balder than last time I’d seen him, but, with both his yarmulke and his tie askew, his hurried, preoccupied air was the same.
The woman, smiling and saying something, looked slightly younger than he. Allowing for facials, makeup, and the general care we women take of ourselves, that probably meant she was a few years older. She’d smoothed her graying hair into a neat bun. My mother would have approved of the twill cloth and conservative cut of her dark green suit.
Joel popped up, banging his shin as he came around the table. “Great to see you, Lydia. Lydia Chin, Alice Fairchild.”
Alice Fairchild stood and shook my hand. She wasn’t much taller than I: five-four, maybe, or five-five. “I’m delighted you’re available, Ms. Chin. Joel tells me you’re just the woman I need.”
“I hope so. And please, it’s Lydia.”
Joel manhandled a chair over. “Sit. Have some coffee.”
“Is there tea?”
“Oh, good!” Alice Fairchild reached for a pot. “I always feel so lonely among coffee drinkers. Lydia, how do you take it?”
“Milk, no sugar, please.”
“I have to thank you both for making yourselves available on such short notice.” She placed a tiny spoon on the saucer and handed me my tea. “As I was just telling Joel, he was recommended by a contact in Zurich. And of course you, Lydia, were recommended by him.”
“Alice is an attorney,” Joel said. “From Switzerland.”