The Carlton Club (24 page)

“Was there really a book?” Leslie asked after a few moments.

“Oh, yes. Lynne writes children’s books in her spare time. She had just completed the first book,
Where’s Monica?
She was looking for an illustrator. Not a husband.”

“And she got both.”

“She did. We’ve done two books since
Where’s Monica?
They feature Monica, too, and are actually pretty successful.”

“How long have you been married?”

“We got married the day I moved here. Eighteen months ago.”

“Tell me about Lynne.”

“Lynne. Well,” James’s voice softened as he thought about how to describe the woman who was so much a part of his life and of the happiness he had found. “Lynne has been through a lot. She’s strong and independent. She’s three years older than I am. She’s still a flight attendant because she enjoys it although eventually she may quit to write full time. She’s . . . I’m not really describing her, am I?”

“It’s hard,” Leslie said. The words don’t matter, Leslie thought. I can tell from the tone of your voice how much you love her.

“It is.”

“Do you have children?”

“No,” James said slowly. “And we won’t. Lynne can’t.”

“Oh.”

“It’s OK. She can’t and I shouldn’t anyway. Neither of us should. We both had dismal childhoods, hated our fathers and barely survived the early seventies. Lynne was at Berkeley at the height of the “flower child” era. She did her share of drugs and sex. The doctors have said that because of damage to her tubes from infections it would be almost impossible for her to get pregnant. Besides, while I was poaching my brains with drugs, I was probably damaging my chromosomes, too,” James added seriously.

“I think there are enough normal offspring from hippies and flower children that the chromosome damage theory is out. So you aren’t even going to try?” Leslie asked. A man as sensitive as James and a woman who writes children’s books would make wonderful parents, she thought.

Lynne has never used birth control, and she’s never gotten pregnant. I think the doctors are right. Anyway, we’re quite happy with Monica and all my buildings as our surrogate children.”

“I can tell that you are happy, James. I’m glad,” Leslie said honestly. But part of her wished that things had worked out differently. That she had had a chance to make him happy.

“A lot of it is because of you, Leslie,” James said seriously.

“No.”

“Yes. Believe me. I know what a difference it made to me that you were my friend.”

“My pleasure.” Leslie smiled, blushing.
It made a difference to me, too. I haven’t been able to find anyone to replace you.

James walked her to the door of her apartment. It was almost midnight.

“Thank you, James,” Leslie said.

“It was wonderful to see you again.”

“It was wonderful to see you,” she whispered and retreated quickly inside the door. “Goodbye, James.”

As she heard his car drive away, Leslie began to cry.

Why was she crying? Because James had struggled against all odds and made it? Because James was happy? She was glad he was happy, but he could have been happy with her. It could have happened. It should have happened.

I expected it to happen, Leslie finally admitted to herself.

During all those years she had fantasized about seeing James again. It didn’t consume her. She went for long periods of time without thinking about him at all. Then she would look at the picture he had drawn—the picture that had hung in her dormitory at Radcliffe and in her room in Seattle and in her apartment in San Francisco—and start to think about him again.

She had known that someday she would see him again. And now she had.

Leslie thought about the facts of their reunion. If someone had submitted it as a script for a Hollywood movie, it would have been rejected outright. The audience would never buy it. A man sees a woman he once knew on television, blood dripping down her face because she’s just saved some guy whom she also loves, who doesn’t know it, by putting her finger inside his chest on his artery? He sees her and remembers the letter that changed his life, a letter that had been misplaced until he discovers it one night between acid-induced hallucinations? Then he tells her how he overcame incipient alcoholism and drug abuse to become a successful architect? And illustrator of children’s books? No way! The public has to have a little reality sprinkled in. This is pure fantasy.

Besides, Leslie mused. It doesn’t have a happy ending. The heroes, Leslie and James, don’t end up together. They don’t fall breathlessly into each other’s arms.

Leslie sighed. How often had she wondered where he was and what he was doing? Now she knew. He was very near. With Lynne. Happy. And the fantasy was over.

As he drove away from her apartment, James reached into his pocket for a cigarette. He pulled it out of the package with his lips and reached for a match.

Then he paused. His hand rested for a long moment on the matchbook in his pocket. Finally he took the unlit cigarette from his mouth and returned it to the package. Then he crushed the entire package in his hand and threw it across the front seat of his car.

“How about dinner tomorrow night?” Ross asked Janet toward the end of September. They had just finished a long day of script rewrites for
Peter Pan
. “I’m leaving for New York the day after tomorrow.”

“Oh? Sure,” Janet answered absently. She assumed that Ross wanted to discuss some aspect of
Peter
Pan
or
Joanna
with her before he left.

“What time would be good?”

“Why don’t we just go somewhere nearby after we’re done here tomorrow,” she suggested.

Ross nodded. Janet didn’t notice the look of surprise on his face.

At six-thirty the next evening, they walked two blocks to a French restaurant on Stuart Street.

“What did you want to discuss?” Janet asked after they had ordered dinner and been served drinks.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“No, I just wanted to have dinner with you.”

“This isn’t business?”

“No. It’s a date.”

“I thought you wanted to talk about the shows. If I’d known it was a date, I would have—” Janet stopped abruptly.

Gotten dressed up, Ross mused. Taken the day off to get ready?

“Would have what?” he asked, curious.

“I would have said no,” she said flatly.

Ross’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“I’m not dating,” she said carefully.

Ross took a swallow of his scotch.

“I hope you’re not waiting for your ex-husband to come back to you,” he said. “Because I happen to know that he is very much in love with someone else.”

Janet looked at him, her eyes foggy.

“I know that,” she said quietly.

They finished their drinks in silence and forced themselves to exchange pleasantries with the ebullient waiter who served the elegantly prepared salad of butter lettuce and shrimp and finely sliced egg whites.

“I had absolutely no right to say that to you,” Ross said, stunned that he had said it and by the surprising emotion, the sudden anger, that had prompted the inexcusable words. “No right at all. I’m very sorry.”

“It’s OK.”

“It’s
not
OK. Why didn’t you throw your drink at me? Or just leave? Why did you stay?”

Ross had invited Janet to dinner because he genuinely wanted to know her. To know Janet Wells. Whoever she was. Janet had captivated him as Joanna. Vital, courageous, energetic and beautiful. Now Joanna was gone, replaced by Wendy, and the enchantment was starting anew. Wendy—Janet’s Wendy—was a wholesome, naive and charming seductress, and she was seducing Ross.

But who was Janet? Were there parts of Joanna and Wendy in Janet? Or was Janet Wells different still? All Ross knew was the shell. All he knew was the quiet professional with the limitless energy and unbounded talent.

“I stayed because we work together. If I had left, we would have had to discuss it, resolve it, later. You’re leaving tomorrow. It might have meant weeks of tension.”

“So this is pragmatic?” he asked gently of the consummate professional he knew her to be. “In the best interest of the show?”

“Ross, I know that Mark is in love with another woman. Let’s be specific, he’s in love with Kathleen. My relationship with Mark ended a long time ago, but I learned something from our failed marriage. I learned that letting anger fester, not talking about things when they happen, is terribly destructive.”

“So you sat here, through the insult and the silence that followed, waiting for me to apologize.”

“I was waiting to see if we could talk about it and trying to decide if
I
should apologize. You asked me out for dinner. I accepted thinking it was business. When I found out differently, well, I insulted you, too.”

“You are really amazing,” Ross said, not understanding her, but wanting to. Liking her. Smiling at her. “Why don’t you date?”

“Something else I learned from the marriage that didn’t work,” Janet said calmly, tilting her head slightly. “I gave up my career for the marriage. Now I am discovering how much all this means to me. I enjoy it. I’m consumed by it. It’s my whole life right now.”

“No time for anyone else?”

“No energy. And no courage. It’s much too soon for me. Even a casual dinner date. It disrupts the balance.”

“A delicate balance?” he asked gently. She exuded such confidence and strength. And such tranquility. But Ross remembered the fear in her eyes in New York. He had to believe her. He had seen her fear.

“I guess so. Getting stronger,” she said.

“I am so sorry I said that to you about Mark.”

“It’s really OK.”

“It’s really
not
OK.”

She smiled. “But we’re OK, aren’t we? Everything is resolved?”

“We are definitely OK.”
Thanks to you.
Ross didn’t add the thanks. It was clear that she wanted to move on, as did he. But he would not so easily excuse his unkind remark, and he would need to think about, to figure out, what had prompted him to make it.

“Good,” she said with relief. “How is the production going in New York?”

Ross smiled. They could make it a business dinner. Then they would both be comfortable.

“I can’t tell. Arthur sounds funny. That’s why I’m going back tomorrow.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“Depends on the situation. I hate to be away at all. I’m so excited about the show we’re doing here.”

“We’ll call you if we make any substantive changes,” Janet said.

“Please do.”

“Will you be staying at the Plaza?”

“No. I’ll be staying with Stacy. You met her that night.”

“The one with her hand on your thigh,” Janet murmured.

Ross raised an eyebrow. Janet shrugged.

“Stacy’s father is a major backer for the New York production,” Ross said, wondering why he was explaining about Stacy. “Stacy’s a model.”

“A cover girl, isn’t she? At least I thought I saw her on
Vogue
a few weeks ago.”

“You’re very observant,” Ross said. Starting with the hand on the thigh observation. “Anyway, I gave Zach the number. No surprises all right?”

“No surprises.”

On September thirtieth James called the Department of Medicine office and asked the secretary to have Leslie call him.

Leslie was in the radiology department, waiting for an angiogram to be completed on her patient. It would be at least fifteen minutes. She returned James’s call from the radiology department office.

“This is Dr. Adams returning Mr. Stevenson’s call.”

“Yes, Doctor. He is expecting your call.”

“Leslie?”

“Hi,” she whispered, her heart pounding. She had been thinking about him, constantly, for the past two weeks, from the moment he had left her apartment. She knew it was over. The story—their story—had ended. She knew it rationally, but she didn’t feel it.

She simply felt restless.

“Can I see you?” he asked quietly.

“Yes,” she breathed.

“Tonight? We’ll go for a walk?”

“Yes. I’ll see you at seven-thirty,” she said, silencing the voice in her mind, in her conscience, that thundered No, No, No.

Yes. I will see you. I will be with you.

Leslie dressed carefully. For a walk James had said. Leslie remembered the last time she had gone for a walk with James. It was that April night at Sparrow Lake, nine and a half years before. Then she had worn blue jeans, a light cotton blouse and a blue V neck sweater.

She would wear the same outfit tonight. The blouse and sweater were new. The jeans, her favorite pair, now faded and soft and threadbare, were the same. They had gone with her from high school to college to medical school to residency.

Comfortable old friends, she thought as she pulled them over her hips, noticing that they were looser now than they had been in high school. Leslie tucked the pale yellow, cotton blouse into her jeans and pulled the V neck sweater over her just-washed hair.

What am I doing? she wondered as she looked at herself in the mirror. Trying to turn the clock back nine and a half years?

It was folly to think that they could start where they had left off. James’s life had changed too much. James had responsibilities and commitments.

But James had called. James was on his way over to her apartment.

Leslie opened the door and stepped back, allowing him to enter, unable to look in his eyes.

James had dressed, as she had, in commemoration of the night at the lake. He wore jeans, an oxford shirt with sleeves rolled casually to mid forearm and a khaki windbreaker.

James pulled the door behind him.

“Hi,” he whispered, covering her mouth with his before she was able to answer.

Leslie answered with her mouth and her arms and her body. The years vanished. They were back at the lake, controlled by passion and allowing the passion to control them.

“James,” Leslie whispered, pulling away to breathe for a moment. And to whisper his name.

“Leslie.”

James kissed her as he had that night at the lake. Gentle kisses on her face, her lips, her neck. He began to undress her, not the way a sexually experienced man undresses a woman, but the way a teenage boy discovers the wonderful forbidden secrets of a teenage girl.

James reached under her sweater and unbuttoned her blouse. He touched the soft fullness of her breasts under her clothes. Leslie slid her hands beneath his shirt and felt the strength of his back, strong and cool. She reached for his belt buckle just as she had years before. A remote corner of her mind expected to hear the voices of her friends calling to her because it was time to leave.

But not tonight. Tonight there were no curfews, no interruptions, no uncertainties.

They made love on the coarse rug, partially clothed, like teenagers desperate to be together but afraid of being caught. A stolen moment of teenage passion. It could have happened in a car or in the living room at her parents’ home or on a bed of pine needles in the woods by the lake.

They made love eagerly, like curious teenagers full of wonder and passion. Afterward they lay on the floor exhausted, tangled in each other’s clothes, holding each other.

Leslie closed her eyes and pressed against him, against his strong warm body, the body that had wanted her so much. She could lie here forever. With James.

Her mind spun. What had she done? Gone back to high school? No, the responsible adult in her chided. You pretended to go back to high school to justify making love with another woman’s husband.

But she hadn’t made love with James, Lynne’s husband. Or with James the talented, successful architect. Leslie had made love with James the teenager, the loner, the deer hunter. He was the sensitive boy whom she loved and wanted. The only James she knew. James the boy.

Leslie felt James’s face close to hers and the force of his eyes willing hers to open. When she opened them, who would she be? Leslie the doctor? Leslie the woman? Or Leslie the girl who had just been accepted at Radcliffe? She didn’t know.

“Leslie,” he whispered, his voice husky. A man’s voice.

Leslie opened her eyes, afraid to look into his, but unable to resist. James’s eyes told her of his passion, a man’s passion for her. For Leslie the woman.

“You are so beautiful,” he said, as he began to remove her clothes. This time there wasn’t the awkward eagerness of a teenage boy. This time there was only the graceful ease of a sexuality experienced man.

James removed all of Leslie’s clothes and his, slowly, almost effortlessly as he kissed her. When they were both naked, he pulled her to her feet and led her into her bedroom.

They made love again, slowly, purposefully, carefully exploring each other and learning what gave pleasure, learning the rhythm and desire of the other. They had made love, with others, before. They were experienced, knowledgeable.

But still not in control. As James kissed her, as he explored her with his gentle and inquisitive hands and lips, Leslie’s body responded as it never had before, willing her to move, to touch him, to become part of him. As James felt Leslie’s velvety skin, her soft breasts, the rhythm of her body and the demands of her passion, his own control vanished and was replaced by a need to possess her. All of her. The need was urgent and powerful. It was a need to make their bodies one.

Leslie. His Leslie. At last.

Afterward, James held her, pressed against him, until her heart no longer pounded against his chest and her hands released their grip and rested softly on his back stroking him gently.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, finally, gently caressing the damp tendrils of her chestnut hair.

That earlier I made love with James the boy, she thought. My James. And now I have made love with James the man. Whose James? Mine? No. Lynne’s.

Leslie shrugged. She didn’t want to talk about it. Or even think about it. How could she make herself not think about it?

“Leslie?” he pushed, concerned, gentle, caring.