Two thrusts and Roger was out, finished. She wasn’t even aware that he had come, so fast and mild was his ejaculation. She felt frustrated and angry, lost between her passion and her disappointment, waiting. He held her for a moment, but he seemed embarrassed. She realized he wasn’t even going to try to take care of what he had started. He was probably nervous, she thought. He probably drank too much. Maybe he’s not really attracted to me anymore. Then he kissed her forehead and went into the bathroom.
She lay there holding on to her fantasy, thinking about Marc Delon.
20
A
FTER
L
ABOR
D
AY
the city came back into its own. It was the start of a new season, no matter what the calendar and the thermometer said. There was excitement in the air again, things to do. Roger had lunch with Wendy.
He had been avoiding her during the summer as best he could. They had met for drinks three times, and lunch once, always platonically. Getting out of the office for lunch was as difficult for her as it was for him, she had said, since she was working very hard, hoping to get a promotion. She had not complained that he hadn’t taken her to dinner, so he knew she was dating new men, probably ones she met in the Hamptons where she had rented her summer house. He was a little surprised that this woman whom he had known as a hysteric was getting herself together so well and so quickly, but he was relieved. Since he had run away from her apartment in impotent disgrace, he had been less than eager to try again.
They met at a steak house in Midtown, where, she told him, she sometimes took clients. In her chic little corporate work suit she looked like she was playing another role for him, but he knew this one was real. Still, it was strange and therefore somewhat alluring.
“My boss likes me now,” she said cheerfully.
“I didn’t know he didn’t,” Roger said.
“He used to complain that I would leave the office for too long. That’s when I was meeting you. Of course, he’s sort of a tyrant. Wants all us little serfs to be right there.”
“You have to be, to produce,” Roger said. He felt like her uncle, not her former lover.
“I know,” Wendy said. She picked at her Caesar salad. “How are you and Olivia getting along?”
“All right,” he said.
“Made-up and happy?”
“Sort of,” he said. He supposed that was an accurate answer. They were back in their bedroom together, they treated each other affectionately and even had sex from time to time, but it had never gotten any better than it had been that unsatisfying night in Paris. He was too nervous. The more he worried about how it would be, the more it stayed the same.
“You could have had me,” Wendy said. “Too bad.”
He didn’t answer.
“Men and guilt,” she said.
“It isn’t guilt,” Roger said, annoyed. “It’s loyalty. And I love her.”
“You used to say you loved me.”
I wish I had never said that, he thought, but he didn’t respond.
“Men and lies,” Wendy said, and smiled.
“You wanted me to lie,” he said.
“Did I? Did we ever discuss it?”
“It was understood.”
“I guess you’re right.”
The conversation had made him lose his appetite. Wendy always knew how to make him feel guilty. “I shouldn’t have said that,” he apologized. “It was cruel.”
“But truthful. I knew it was pretend.”
Pretend
. What a childlike choice of words. She looked so vulnerable he wanted to kiss her. She looked like a little girl dressed in a stockbroker’s suit. Did clients actually trust her? “You deserve a man who doesn’t play-act at taking care of you,” Roger said.
“I know.”
“Did you ever consider going for professional help?”
“A therapist?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Because I was crazy enough to go out with you?”
“In a way.”
“I’ve been in therapy for two years,” she said sweetly. “I told her everything you and I did together.”
“Oh, God.” He hated the idea of her telling a stranger about him and all his weaknesses . . . about his fantasies, his secrets! He felt exposed and ridiculous.
“You’re freaking out.”
“Of course I am. What we did was private.”
“Not always so private,” Wendy said, and laughed. “Remember Julia’s?”
“You told her that, too?”
“It’s what a therapist is for. Do you want to know what she said?”
“I’m not sure.”
“She said you were lucky I was so inventive.”
He let that sink in. Absolution. Praise. He felt a pang of loss. “I
was
lucky,” he said.
“My mistake was wasting it—and me—on you,” Wendy said, in that same sweet, matter-of-fact tone. Her eyes were wide open and innocent. How blue her eyes were. They would never cease to surprise him.
“I told you that,” he said, trying to regain control. “I could have saved you a pile of money on the shrink.”
“You told me that to get rid of me. You didn’t believe it.”
“Is that what she said?”
“I’m not going to talk about this anymore,” Wendy said, and went back to her salad.
“So . . . how was your summer?”
“Great.”
“The house was a success?”
“Absolutely. I went to lots of parties and met lots of men.”
“Anyone you liked?”
“Mmm-hmm.” She put down her fork. “I’m in love.”
“In love?”
“Yes, and he loves me, too.” Her face lit up. “He’s a wonderful man. Handsome, kind, sexy, very intelligent, rich, older. All the things I like. He treats me so well . . .”
I thought you couldn’t live without me, Roger thought. “Sounds great,” he said.
“And he’s divorcing his wife for me.”
“Well.”
“I don’t need someone to pretend to love me anymore,” Wendy said. “I have a man who really loves me.”
“I hope you don’t get hurt.”
“Oh, you sanctimonious pig.”
“I just meant it’s sudden.”
“People always know right away.”
He thought back over his own life. “I suppose so.”
“It’s not like I’m a homewrecker,” Wendy said. “He and his wife weren’t happy. It’s just that I’m the only woman he was ready to change things for. He wants to marry me.”
“And you?”
“I always wanted to get married,” Wendy said. “I just never thought I’d meet the right man.”
“And he’s it.”
“Yes, he’s it.”
“I’m happy for you,” Roger said. Now that he was completely free of her he felt released, weightless, like a balloon sailing up into the sky. He also felt strangely sad. This other man, whoever he was, would have all the joys of Wendy’s body and imagination. He could show her off. He would never be bored.
But he would be bored, eventually. He would have to talk to her. Would he notice she had nothing to say? Would he care?
“How do you see the two of you in ten years?” he asked.
Wendy ran her fingers through her hair, in the gesture he knew so well. A faraway look came over her face, and then she smiled. “Best friends,” she said. “Good sex. Two kids.”
“Best friends?”
“Of course,” she said. “That’s essential. Didn’t you know that?”
21
I
T HAD BEEN
six weeks since Olivia had seen Marc Delon in Paris, and now she felt foolish for having had fantasies about him. If he had really been interested in seeing her again, he would have called. She told herself it might have been uncomfortable for him—even awkward and odd—to call her when she was at home with Roger, but he could have phoned her at the office. Nor had he sent her the promised tear sheets of his articles, which would have given her an excuse to call him. No, she was sure he had forgotten her, and it would be best for her to forget about him, too. Their meeting had been a moment out of time; it was what it was.
She thought his life was probably filled with such highly charged moments. How interesting it must be for him, and how interesting it would have been for her. But she didn’t want an affair.
Roger had been on his best behavior, but the barrier between them remained. She wondered if things would ever be the way they were before Wendy came into their lives. He told her it was completely over between him and Wendy now, that she had actually fallen in love with another man whom she was planning to marry, and that he was rid of her. But you’re never really rid of anyone, Olivia thought, because you remember. She wondered if Marc Delon ever thought of her—not that it was the same.
Melissa had called to tell her that she and her brother Nick were giving a seventy-fifth birthday party for their father, Uncle David, to which she and Roger were of course invited, and that everyone in the family had to find a memento from Uncle David’s past and send it to her because they were going to make a commemorative scrapbook. Olivia went through the old family photographs—the ones her father’s second wife Grace had tried to destroy—and found a picture she liked of Uncle David when he was a young man. How handsome he had been! Nick looked just like him. She found a photograph of herself as a toddler, squinting and beaming under a sun hat, at about the same time the other picture had been taken, and pasted them side by side on a sheet of paper.
What should she write on it? What memories came up? Except for herself, they had been wild and happy children who during the long summer days at Mandelay paid no attention to the adults, but the adults had always been there, a comforting framework for their lives. She remembered Uncle David playing croquet on the lawn beyond the formal gardens, under the huge old trees, with Aunt Hedy and his friends. Even now she could hear the click of the wooden mallet on the balls, Uncle David’s cheerful tenor voice and Hedy’s deeper, authoritative one ringing out in the middle distance.
They took their croquet games seriously and always wore white, and when the games were over they went back to the house where Uncle David made drinks on the terrace. She had found that sophisticated. He also did magic tricks, good ones, for the entertainment of the children. She remembered him taking an egg out of her pocket. No matter how she cajoled, he would never tell her how he did it, even when she was grown up. And he was always laughing and smiling. Uncle Seymour, his older brother, worried and fretted—he had an ulcer, he had migraines, and when he came to visit there was always something important about business to discuss. Uncle Seymour smiled when he spoke about the improvements he was making on his own summer place, or when he could tell them how well Julia’s was doing, but Uncle David would whistle a little tune just because it was a nice day.
Olivia found another photograph of herself as a tall and gawky teenager, and pasted it beside the two others. Next to it she put a photo of Uncle David, still a handsome man, taken at about that time at some Mandelay party. Then she went through her recent scrapbooks and found a photograph of herself in her office, seated in front of her framed diplomas, holding Wozzle. She pasted that alongside the others. She didn’t add a recent picture of Uncle David, because he knew how he looked, he saw himself in the mirror every day, and this was a tribute to the past. Below the pictures she wrote:
Dear Uncle David, Thank you for the magic. But don’t you think I’m old enough to know how you got the egg into my pocket? And also how you stay so young?
Actually, the last line was pure flattery. But if you weren’t nice to someone on his birthday, when would you be?
Love, love, Olivia
, she wrote, put the paper on cardboard in a big envelope, and mailed it to Houston, to Melissa.
It suddenly occurred to her how strange it was that her mother had never given a birthday party for her father, although she always gave one for herself and for Olivia. Was it because he was only a son-in-law, not a Miller, an outsider? Her father said giving a party for him would be silly. He had been cagey about his age for years, but when he was finally seventy-five he decided longevity was an asset and began bragging about it. But Lila had cancer by then, and probably she hadn’t been up to celebrating. Then, later, Grace had planned to give him an eighty-fifth birthday party, but he never made it; he got sick and then he died. At least he’d had a happy life in spite of everything. He always said how lucky he was.
Uncle David’s party was going to be in New York, at Nick and Lynne’s big new apartment, which most of them had not seen. Roger had agreed to go with such alacrity that you would think he had always gone to every family function as a matter of course. Luckily they didn’t have to worry about a present, because the family was all chipping in to send Uncle David on a cruise around the world. It had been Nick’s idea. Usually the family bought some large silver thing, but Nick believed his father should have some last adventures before it was too late, and Melissa agreed. Olivia wondered if Uncle David was still seeing his woman friend, and if he was going to take her along on the cruise and just not mention it. Did seventy-five-year-old people still have sex? She remembered when she was a kid talking to her cousins and discussing whether or not people in their forties still had sex. And then one afternoon in the office, when she was least thinking about Marc Delon, she looked up to see who her next appointment was with and there he stood with Spot.
She was a little embarrassed to see him in the flesh after her fantasies about him, but she smiled warmly. “Hello,” she said. “How nice to see you again. Is it time for Spot’s checkup already?”
“No,” he said. He seemed almost bashful.
She stroked Spot’s silky ears. “Well, how are you both doing?”
“I’m okay, but his paw hurts, I think.”
“Which one?”
Marc lifted Spot’s right front paw and Olivia inspected it thoroughly, looking at it, pressing it. “He’s not complaining,” she said.
“He was.”
“I don’t feel anything.” She tossed a dog biscuit and Spot bounded after it. “Not limping.”
Marc shrugged.
“When did you notice it?”
“Last week.”
“It seems to have gone away.”
“Well . . .”
“I could take an x-ray if you want, but I honestly think it’s unnecessary.” She looked down at Spot who was standing before her wagging his tail. “This is not a dog in distress.”
“I know,” Marc said mildly. He paused. “I have to make a confession. I really came here because I’ve been thinking about you and I didn’t have the nerve to call. Could we make a plan to have lunch together, or a drink?”
He was afraid
, she thought, surprised and pleased. He didn’t forget after all. “Of course,” she said.
“What about this afternoon when you’re finished?”
Here is a man who makes plans to do things within the next moment, she thought, amused at how young he was. That afternoon was one of Roger’s gym days after work. Even if it weren’t, she was entitled to see a friend; it was harmless. “I could do that,” Olivia said.
“Should I come and get you, or should we meet?”
“I’ll meet you,” she said, and immediately felt guilty because she realized she was hiding him. But it wouldn’t be right to have him show up again; it would cause talk in the office. “Six o’clock. Tell me where.”
“The bar at the Carlyle?”
It was expensive, and he’d said he didn’t have much money. “Are we celebrating something?” she asked.
“No. I just wanted to go somewhere nice.”
How sweet; she was touched. “That would be lovely,” she said.
The Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle had playful murals on the walls, and little tables with bowls of nuts and baskets of homemade potato chips on them. It was flatteringly dim but bright enough so you wouldn’t go there if you were hiding. A pianist was playing rather loud background music. They both ordered white wine.
“Spindle Legs is in my book,” he said.
“Lila is immortal at last.”
“Cheers.” He raised his glass.
“To your success.” She raised her glass and touched his lightly as their eyes met and held.
“What have you been doing since I saw you?” he asked. He was still fixing her with his moonstone gaze, looking really interested, as if her life were something exotic and strange.
“Working,” she said lightly. “Trying to re-enter real life. You never sent me those articles you wrote.”
“I brought them,” Marc said. He looked away finally and took some tear sheets out of his briefcase. “Here. I hope you read them.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Too busy.”
“I’ll read them.”
“Good.”
She put the tear sheets into her handbag, and when she looked up at him he was staring at her again. “Why are you looking at me that way?” she asked, to make him stop. He made her feel like blushing, and that unnerved her.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said.
“Well, thank you.”
“Roger must tell you that all the time.”
“Of course he does.”
“He’s lucky.”
“Terribly lucky,” Olivia said with a little laugh. “Have you found a new girlfriend yet?”
“No.”
“You will.”
“Maybe.”
For some reason right now she didn’t want to think about his finding a new girlfriend so quickly. “You know what I never asked you?” she said. “Which books influenced you when
you
were a child?”
“I was spared gruesome fairy tales,” he said. “I liked adventure stories. The ones I felt comfortable with strangely enough had an adult figure in them, a kind of mentor. I always liked the idea of traveling through life with someone who knew the terrain.”
And do you still? she thought. “Sort of like
Star Wars
,” she said.
“Sort of.”
“And what have you been doing since you got back from Paris?”
“Just my book. And thinking about you. I didn’t call because I felt stupid. I thought: What does she want with me? She has a life, a husband.”
Roger isn’t my husband, she thought, but she said nothing. He might as well have been. What
did
she want with this beautiful young man who apparently had a crush on her?
“Anyway . . .” Marc said.
“Anyway what?”
“Here I am.”
“So I see.”
“I was so overwhelmed by that story you told me,” he said. “I thought: Here is a woman who was told as a little girl that she had to stay home and give her mother everything she had, forever, or go out and be killed. But she went out bravely and made a life for herself. I admire you.”
“Thank you,” Olivia said. “My family still thinks I’m a little odd. Two divorces, unusual clothes.”
“I like your clothes.”
“Thank you. We do have a few other mavericks. I had two cousins who were stuntmen.”
“Stuntmen!” he said, pleased.
“Unfortunately they both died before their time.”
“I’m sorry.” He obviously assumed it had been in accidents, and she didn’t amplify. Now she remembered dating, it was all coming back to her—the revealing of interesting tidbits of information, the holding back of anything that sounded too neurotic, such as a history of family suicides.
“I had a cousin who was a ballerina,” he said. “She could have been famous, but she died, too.”
“Of what?”
“Anorexia.”
Suicide, Olivia thought. We do have something in common. “How tragic,” she said.
“I know. She never had a sense of her worth.”
“It’s easy to lose,” Olivia said.
“But you have it.”
“I try.”
“I’m trying, too,” Marc said. “At this stage of my life, still in the struggle, sometimes it’s difficult.”
“It’s supposed to be.”
“Well, I’ll be famous one day, and then I’ll come back and impress you.”
“You impress me now,” Olivia said.
“Do I?” He smiled wickedly. “Do you think we could fall in love?”
Only if I were completely crazy, she thought. “I’m taken,” she said gently.
“Just kidding.”
“I know,” she said.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe I’m just kidding,” he said. His eyes were innocent, his mouth turned up at the corners, he was adorable. She remembered Alys saying once, bitterly, that she was thinking of pretending to be married in order to attract a man, because married women were safe.
She looked at her watch. “I’ll have to go soon.”
“Would you like another glass of wine?”
“I think I’d better stay sober with you.”
“I’m flattered you think I’m so dangerous.”
“I’ll read your articles and call you,” she said. “Thank you for the drink.”
On the street he offered to hail a cab for her but she said she’d rather walk because it wasn’t far. His lips brushed her cheeks, soft and sensuous. “Thank you for seeing me,” he said, and then he was gone into a taxi, off to his evening. She walked away, toward home.
And then she realized that she was completely, unaccountably euphoric. What does that say for my sense of self-worth, she thought, that I need him to flirt with me to make me feel this way? And then she was sorry that he wasn’t there so she could say it to him. But of course it was just as well that he wasn’t and that she couldn’t.
She got home before Roger did, and began to prepare dinner. She remembered the softness of Marc’s lips on her face, and imagined what they would feel like on her mouth. When she closed her eyes he was there. If she had just turned her head, a little bit . . . It wouldn’t be sensible to say anything to Roger about her drink with Marc. She didn’t know what to say about it anyway. She would have to make it sound like it had been nothing, and that would ruin the fantasy. But of course that was all it was going to be.