Saving Anna Karenina
Part 48
Start with Part 1, and read a short synopsis of the original book.
Pete was reporting his first story for Vanity Fair. It was a coup if he could do it — $15,000 for a tale of the first time traveler. His last story in the Post on Anna come undone had sold as many copies as the 2004 coverage of the Paris Hilton sex tape scandal. They had promoted him to special assignments, and several publishers called asking for a book. Ex-girlfriends called (notably, Melissa), and he heard from guys he hadn’t talked to since he worked at the Star-Ledger. He didn’t have to cover crappy shifts on the copy desk anymore. And now he was on his way to the Hamptons, where Anna Arkadyevna Karenina lived with Kathleen Greenblatt. It was Wednesday. Pete didn’t break into a sweat on his way to the train. Benign white lines traced the baby blue sky.
June had softened the outer boroughs, making Jamaica, Queens, look almost livable. Its spare, proletariat architecture, squinty-windowed apartment blocks and brick row houses were cocooned by bright green leaves, flowers entwined tacky porch ironwork. Then there was the third Kentucky Fried Chicken in a mile of train travel and he remembered why he never left Manhattan except to travel to the airport.
Pete felt pretty jaded at the prospect of the Hamptons. He’d spent a few weekends there over the years with different girlfriends at different summer shares where thin women who worked in marketing at J. Crew or Citibank drank a lot of white wine and then went to bars where guys drank pitchers of beer and slapped each other on the back. Pete always wanted to be that kind of guy when he was a kid. He could talk about sports forever, but he could never pull off the whole charmed life thing.
As he disembarked at the Amagansett train station, a contrary feeling came over him. The leaves were almost florescent along the railroad tracks. In the distance was a golf course. It smelled like 9:00 a.m., even at noon. The only sounds were birds and the distant whinny of a horse. And Pete felt good. His mind was quiet. He decided to walk to town before heading over to the interview. He passed a red brick school, an old white wooden firehouse. Through the trees he spotted several backyard tennis courts.
The town had a square with a big green lawn that smelled freshly mowed. White shingled buildings lined the lawn — a spa, a hardware store, a restaurant, and art supply store. Fountains bubbled inside open shop doors, and Pete decided to get a shave and a haircut. He tucked in his shirt as he walked in the salon, where a tan brunette welcomed him.
Minutes later she was massaging his face, leaning over him in her floral tank top, the scent of perfume wafting from her freckled cleavage. Electronic lounge music played on the sound system, not so loud to drown out the gentle patter of the fountain.
He let her do what she wanted with his hair.
“I’m going to trim the sides a little more, okay?”
“Sure.” He had been going to the same barber for 15 years, an old Polish guy on 49th and 1st. His haircut hadn’t changed in so many years.
“Do you want a blow-dry?” she said later, jogging him out of a trance.
“Whatever.”
“How about combing it back?” she said.
“Okay.” He closed his eyes as she applied something wet and combed through his hair. She brushed her fingers across the back of his neck and through his hair.
“Okay,” she said.
Pete opened his eyes. He looked like a Brooks Brothers ad. There would be ducks in the picture. She had clearly applied gel to get his hair back like that. Gel.
“Okay?” said the stylist, raising her thin eyebrows.
“Yeah, okay,” he said, smiling. It was.
“Do you want a manicure and pedicure today?” she said, cleaning up the station.
Why the hell not?
“A manicure, pedicure, or both? For both it’s 25% off this week.”
Pete didn’t put on his socks after the pedicure. In fact, he threw them away as he left the salon. His loafers were cheap, but they were still loafers.
A school was just getting out as he crossed the green, and little girls in stretch pants ran around twittering with ice cream cones. Where was the ice cream? The shop was over there, said a little girl in a tutu thing. Pete crossed the street and entered a sweet shop filled with mothers and children. They made their own ice cream, said several signs.
Pete sat on the bench and ate his pistachio ice cream, smiling at the attractive mothers walking by. Kathleen Greenblatt’s house wasn’t close enough to walk, so he took out his phone and looked up the nearest cab company. The taxi would arrive in fifteen minutes.
Thirty minutes later, an unmarked sedan honked at Pete as he sat on the bench. He greeted the man driving and got into the back seat, giving his directions. They got off the main road and started down a densely-wooded, leafy-green street. Wood shingled houses and white colonials were set far back on lots, some with big gates, others with white, Cape Cod style fences. Willow trees drooped over the road, and every once and a while they passed a meadow filled with wildflowers and marshy streams. Pete rolled down the window. The ocean wasn’t far; he could smell the salt in the air.
“You are going to visit Miss Anna?” said the driver with a thick accent.
“I am.”
Small community like this with one taxi company and it wasn’t unusual for the driver to know her address. He couldn’t imagine that woman driving herself. “Is she one of your regular clients?” Pete said.
The driver nodded in the front seat. “Very good client. The best,” he said.
Pete took a note of this. It was a good detail. They turned off the road onto a cul-de-sac. The driver pulled up to a circular, gated driveway in front of a modern, sand colored mansion with a flat roof and stucco exterior. Terraces were at two different levels, with trees growing on them. It was a businessman’s lair. Kathleen’s husband.
He paid the driver twelve and got out to push the buzzer. Without any request on the intercom, the gate opened and Pete approached the enormous, carved wood front door. A short woman in khakis and a pale blue polo shirt opened the door before he could knock.
“Welcome,” she said. “Missis Anna is waiting for you.”
Instead of inviting him into the house, she led him around the outside of the house by a cement walkway. It was a shady lot, with groundcover of ferns and trees planted almost like an office park. The windows were made of a dark kind of glass that made it hard to look inside, and several had the curtains drawn. They opened a dark wood gate and reached the backyard, which was filled with a long, rectangular pool made of black stone. There was a woman lying on a chaise lounge, and a poolhouse with a curved, round front — somewhat pueblo, but also like a set from The Jetsons. The woman was standing up and approaching him now, draped in some fluttery thing, and it occurred to him that this tan, healthy-looking person was Anna.
“Well,” she said, touching his arm with a French manicured hand, white tips juxtaposed to bronzed skin. “You’ve come all this way. I’m not sure if you’re a good or a wicked guest.”
This is part 48 of a serialized novella being published each Thursday. It is a speculative sequel to Leo Tolstoy’s novel, Anna Karenina.
