Drew, there’s another one. Her dad poured himself into his work. He didn’t start screwing secretaries or, if he did, at least he was discreet.”
A pitcher of Bloody Marys appeared on their table. Ethan smiled.
“Smooth,” Claire said.
“To the bloody widow.” He raised his glass and ate his celery. “Relax, honey. Time figures things out.”
* * *
W HEN C LAIRE GOT home, there was an envelope outside her door, from Richard. It contained a small white card and a note: “What you need, Claire, is a journey, however brief—R.”
Everyone and their journeys , she thought.
The white card said this:
----
Griot: New York City
I will take you on a tour.
You will end up in a different place.
212.555.1284
----
Claire read the card twice, turned it over, ate a scoop of peanut butter from a jar.
She looked up griot in Charlie’s battered Oxford dictionary.
Noun: A member of a class of traveling poets, musicians, and storytellers who maintain a tradition of oral history in parts of West Africa. Origin: French, earlier guiriot , perhaps from Portuguese criado .
She called Ethan.
“What’s a griot?”
“A griot? Hmm. Well, he’s an historian of sorts. It’s a West African tradition that goes back centuries, although they are enjoying a renaissance in Europe. Why?”
Claire studied the card. “Well, Richard sent me the number of a griot. Can they be in New York?”
“East Village or West?”
“You know griots?”
“If it’s Derek, in the West Village, you should go. He’s got a certain flair. You should follow him. Actually, I think he’s a client of Richard’s.”
“Follow him? What do I do?”
“Just show up where he tells you to go and listen. He’ll tell you a story. Remember when your mother took you to story time when you were a kid?”
“She didn’t.”
“Well, pretend she did. This is story time for grown-ups. He’ll know every sad song that’s ever played out in this town, big or small. Every drunk, every lecher, every swindle, scandal, and sordid act. If he doesn’t, he’ll make it up. Derek’s a bartender by trade; he’s out of work. People drink at home when the economy’s bad.”
It couldn’t hurt, Claire thought. And Ethan said, “If Beatrice wasn’t the olive for your martini, so to speak, you should try him.”
* * *
H IS NAME WAS Derek, it turned out. He was abrupt on the phone but not in an unfriendly way—it was a manner Claire recognized. She had a similar anxiety about words spilled through phones, so unstructured and loose and never a natural end. He told Claire to be at Houston and Sullivan Street at nine o’clock Thursday, and when she arrived he handed her and four other people a white card that he produced crisp and neat from his fingers, like magic. It was blank but for his name and phone number in small Helvetica font.
Derek Fountain, Griot 212.555.1284
And then one word in Garamond: LONGING .
Besides Claire, there was a businessman from Kansas, a woman from Great Neck and her teenage son, and a pale man in leather pants and black hair with bright tattoos that snaked from his wrists up into his sleeves on both arms, and which Claire could not quite make sense of.
They walked two blocks in silence, then Derek stopped and read from Le Père Goriot by Balzac. After he closed the book and replaced it in his backpack, he produced a tarnished flute and began a Chopin étude, then he walked again. The group followed. They walked for thirty-three minutes until they reached a corner at West Twenty-Fourth Street, where the griot broke down the flute, returned it to his pack, and began to speak.
“That, my friends, is the site of the town house where Evelyn Nesbit first maneuvered her rosy adolescent body onto Stanford White’s red velvet swing. White was a wealthy architect. His firm was responsible for the second Madison Square Garden and the Washington Square Arch, among other prominent city fixtures. Nesbit was
A pitcher of Bloody Marys appeared on their table. Ethan smiled.
“Smooth,” Claire said.
“To the bloody widow.” He raised his glass and ate his celery. “Relax, honey. Time figures things out.”
* * *
W HEN C LAIRE GOT home, there was an envelope outside her door, from Richard. It contained a small white card and a note: “What you need, Claire, is a journey, however brief—R.”
Everyone and their journeys , she thought.
The white card said this:
----
Griot: New York City
I will take you on a tour.
You will end up in a different place.
212.555.1284
----
Claire read the card twice, turned it over, ate a scoop of peanut butter from a jar.
She looked up griot in Charlie’s battered Oxford dictionary.
Noun: A member of a class of traveling poets, musicians, and storytellers who maintain a tradition of oral history in parts of West Africa. Origin: French, earlier guiriot , perhaps from Portuguese criado .
She called Ethan.
“What’s a griot?”
“A griot? Hmm. Well, he’s an historian of sorts. It’s a West African tradition that goes back centuries, although they are enjoying a renaissance in Europe. Why?”
Claire studied the card. “Well, Richard sent me the number of a griot. Can they be in New York?”
“East Village or West?”
“You know griots?”
“If it’s Derek, in the West Village, you should go. He’s got a certain flair. You should follow him. Actually, I think he’s a client of Richard’s.”
“Follow him? What do I do?”
“Just show up where he tells you to go and listen. He’ll tell you a story. Remember when your mother took you to story time when you were a kid?”
“She didn’t.”
“Well, pretend she did. This is story time for grown-ups. He’ll know every sad song that’s ever played out in this town, big or small. Every drunk, every lecher, every swindle, scandal, and sordid act. If he doesn’t, he’ll make it up. Derek’s a bartender by trade; he’s out of work. People drink at home when the economy’s bad.”
It couldn’t hurt, Claire thought. And Ethan said, “If Beatrice wasn’t the olive for your martini, so to speak, you should try him.”
* * *
H IS NAME WAS Derek, it turned out. He was abrupt on the phone but not in an unfriendly way—it was a manner Claire recognized. She had a similar anxiety about words spilled through phones, so unstructured and loose and never a natural end. He told Claire to be at Houston and Sullivan Street at nine o’clock Thursday, and when she arrived he handed her and four other people a white card that he produced crisp and neat from his fingers, like magic. It was blank but for his name and phone number in small Helvetica font.
Derek Fountain, Griot 212.555.1284
And then one word in Garamond: LONGING .
Besides Claire, there was a businessman from Kansas, a woman from Great Neck and her teenage son, and a pale man in leather pants and black hair with bright tattoos that snaked from his wrists up into his sleeves on both arms, and which Claire could not quite make sense of.
They walked two blocks in silence, then Derek stopped and read from Le Père Goriot by Balzac. After he closed the book and replaced it in his backpack, he produced a tarnished flute and began a Chopin étude, then he walked again. The group followed. They walked for thirty-three minutes until they reached a corner at West Twenty-Fourth Street, where the griot broke down the flute, returned it to his pack, and began to speak.
“That, my friends, is the site of the town house where Evelyn Nesbit first maneuvered her rosy adolescent body onto Stanford White’s red velvet swing. White was a wealthy architect. His firm was responsible for the second Madison Square Garden and the Washington Square Arch, among other prominent city fixtures. Nesbit was
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