After the Reunion (17 page)

She noticed one of the actors from her recent miniseries; Jed Soames, the one with the box around his name. He was totally drunk, and had never been attractive in the first place, besides being too old. He came weaving over to her. “Dance?” he said.

“Mmm.” She just kept moving, and he lurched along in front of her. Rick was already dancing with someone else.

“What’s your name?” Soames asked. She realized he didn’t recognize her.

“Kit Barnett. We were in
The Monument
together. By the way, you were very good.”

He peered at her. “Did we fuck?”

What a creep! She looked at him coolly, trying to think of the ultimate putdown. “I don’t remember,” she said, and walked away.

There was a projection room, where people were watching one of the producer’s old movies, lounging around on soft, deep couches, and there was a game room where other people were shooting pool and playing video games. Very, very nice, very, very chic. And upstairs there were bedrooms where couples and groups repaired to have sex if none of the other diversions appealed to them. Kit accepted another glass of champagne from a waiter and smiled back at a totally adorable blond guy who was smiling at her. He had on tight jeans, a tight T-shirt with Mickey Mouse on it, and a terrific body. The Mickey Mouse put her off a little, but at least it didn’t have sequins.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m Mac.”

“I’m Kit.”

“You’re beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m not in est, I’m not a vegetarian, and I won’t ask your sign,” he said.

“I hate Rodeo Drive, I don’t jog, and I won’t ask what kind of car you drive,” she said.

“I think I love you,” he said.

“I hope so,” she said. They both laughed. She held up her glass of champagne and let him sip from it. He put his arm around her waist and kissed her. She kissed him back. He was a marvelous kisser, slow and sensuous and not too aggressive. He acted as if he were tasting her. She started to feel it all through her body, and she decided he was what she wanted for this evening. She wanted him right now. But it was too early to go home, and this was a good party. They were standing outside one of the bedrooms, and Kit opened the door with her free hand and then she drew back and looked into his eyes and smiled. He looked so cute and pleased. He followed her into the bedroom. Her heart was racing, and she knew his was too.

It took a few moments for her eyes to get used to the dark. There were gleaming naked figures intertwined on the huge bed; what finally seemed to be a man and two women. The three of them were very busy working on each other, and then the man groaned with pleasure and sat up to change his position. Kit was looking right into his face. It was her father.

All he saw of her was a silhouetted shape because she was standing in front of the open door. But she saw him. She had never heard him make sexual sounds, but she recognized the timbre of his voice. There was no doubt. It was her elusive daddy, the almighty hotshot doctor, in bed with two women he’d probably just met, fucking in front of her very eyes. A wave of nausea hit her, rising from the pit of her stomach into her throat, and she fled to the bathroom and locked the door.

Safe behind her barricade, on her knees, Kit gagged and vomited into the toilet as though she could never stop. She was shuddering and sweating, throwing up all the hate and fear and anger that had been hiding inside her all her life. And in spite of the champagne, and whatever she’d eaten, all it tasted like was pool water.

She tasted the chlorine on her tongue, and thought for a moment she had gone insane. Gallons of swimming pool water were inside her, coming up, and she was a child again. How could this be happening? Inside her head she was screaming to be rescued, and no one ever came.

Finally she stopped, and sat on the cool tile floor resting. The people outside probably thought she was just another drunk. She flushed the toilet, and washed her hands and mouth and sweaty face, and neatly combed her damp hair. The most important thing on her mind now was how to get out of here without her father seeing her and realizing that she knew what he was up to. It was of no importance that she was at this particular party. She had a right to be. This was
her
life, until she decided she wanted some other kind of life. But her father had no right to be here, fucking strangers in front of her. As far as Kit was concerned, he had violated the incest taboo. It was disgusting, and it frightened her. It was a betrayal.

She opened the bathroom door noiselessly and looked out. Her father was still on the bed doing whatever he had been doing with the two women, totally oblivious of her, so she sneaked out of the room. Mickey Mouse was nowhere to be seen. Ah well … She sort of hoped he would be in the hall waiting for her, or in the living room just below, but no. Sex was the last thing on her mind right now, but he had seemed nice and she wished she had a friend. She wandered around for a little while looking for him, and then realized he had found someone else to tell he loved, so she went outside and had the parking guy bring up her car.

Driving home, Kit sang aloud to cheer herself up, to the tune of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” “Snow nose, the cokehead doctor, has a very runny nose. When he goes out to parties, he likes to take off his clothes.” She parked her car in front of her house and went inside and changed to one of the T-shirts she slept in, and then opened a bottle of wine. Her ever-present music was playing on the stereo. She put a nice little bowl on the coffee table and poured all the pills she had taken from the party into it. Very nice, very chic, just like the party she’d left. She tried to think of someone she liked enough to invite over, but couldn’t. “Here’s to me,” she said, toasting herself.

Should she take an upper or a downer? She wasn’t sure what her mood was. When in doubt take a Valium. Kit took three. She finished the bottle of wine and felt perfectly foul. What would happen if she died? Would anyone care? Would
she
care? She took a Quaalude and waited to feel better. She only felt worse; fuzzy, light-headed, nauseated again. She was afraid she was going to black out, so she lay on her bed, propped up on all her pillows because she felt so sick. There had to be an easier way to commit suicide. She thought about it for a while, trying to decide what she really wanted to do. She was miserable and lonely, but she didn’t want to die. She reached over to the phone beside her bed and called the police.

“I took too many pills,” she told the cop on the phone. “A whole bunch of stuff.”

“Who is this?”

“You’d better send someone over. A male cop, not a woman. And be sure he’s cute.”

“I can’t send anyone over unless you tell me where,” he said. It was obvious from her voice that she wasn’t kidding, and from his that he knew it.

“I don’t want this in the papers,” Kit said. “I’m a famous actress and it would be bad publicity.”

“It won’t be in the papers. Just tell me your name and address.”

She did. In what seemed like a very short time two cops arrived; both young, both attractive, one black and one white. She wondered if they always traveled in a mixed set or if the man on the phone wanted to be sure she got what she liked. She managed to get up to open the door for them, and then fell on the floor.

They asked her questions, but she was absolutely incapable of speech. Then they were talking about her, trying to figure out what she’d taken and if it would be lethal. One of them was walking her around the room. She didn’t remember much after that until she woke up to find it was midmorning, and that one of the cops had tucked her teddy bear into bed with her before he left.

Being young and very healthy, she didn’t even feel particularly rotten. She rolled over and went to sleep again, and then sometime later the phone rang.

“How do you feel?” the man’s voice said.

“Who is this?”

“Tip Weiner. One of the police officers who saved you last night.”

Weiner
? A Jewish cop? “I feel okay,” Kit said.

“I put your teddy bear with you so you wouldn’t feel lonely,” he said. “Did you find it?”

“I haven’t slept with my teddy bear since I was seven,” Kit said, “but it was very thoughtful of you anyway.”

“I didn’t know,” he said. “We didn’t take you to the hospital because you seemed okay. Do you remember drinking coffee?”

“Nope.”

“Do you remember me?”

“I remember both of you,” she said.

“I’m the blond one.”

“I hope this isn’t going to be in the papers,” Kit said.

“It’s not. We took pity on you.”

“Thank you.”

“Listen,” he said, rather hesitantly. “It’s my day off today, and I thought I’d come by to see if you were all right, if that’s okay.”

“That’s okay,” Kit said.

“I’ll bring some food. You haven’t got any food in your house I noticed.”

“That’s because if I buy it I’ll eat it,” she said.

“If you keep drinking and popping pills on an empty stomach you could die by accident,” Tip Weiner said. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

He arrived in a civilian’s car, with two armloads of groceries. He was tall and blond and as cute as Kit remembered, and he was wearing a T-shirt and faded jeans. He had bought orange juice and milk and ice cream and lots of salad things and a barbecued chicken, and bagels and eggs for her breakfast. He scrambled the eggs while she made coffee and then they ate together and talked. He was single, and he was going to law school in his free time. He was a lot brighter than most of the guys she’d been seeing lately, and he was also obviously very kind. It interested her that he hadn’t come over only to get laid, although that was probably on his mind, unless he thought it was a big deal just to have breakfast with a rather well-known actress, which she doubted.

Around six o’clock she was feeling almost normal, so she excused herself and took a shower and dressed. She realized that her house was filthy. She’d been on such a merry-go-round that she hadn’t even noticed. She was embarrassed that he would see the mess, because she was basically a clean person. They had the chicken and salad for dinner, and afterward she took him to bed. He was a very good lover, as she had hoped he would be. He stayed all night, and after that they started to go together. Kit really liked him, as much as she was capable of liking anybody, and he seemed to be in love with her.

She wondered what Emma would make of this adventure when she told her. It was just like Emma’s mother being saved by the fireman who came back the next day to go to bed with her, except of course Emma’s mother had been married and had run away afterward. But Kit had no intention of running away, at least not for the time being.
What is it about us
, she thought,
that makes us want to get saved
?

Chapter Fourteen

For a while now, Annabel had realized she was in love with Dean Henry. It was a bittersweet feeling, full of complications. He was twenty-six—soon she would be forty-seven. He would be twenty-seven soon, and already she could see he was fretting that his youth was passing by too quickly. What was she to say; that being young was a state of mind, that when he was thirty he would look back at this time and think he’d been a baby, that youth was highly overrated anyway? Any more platitudes? She had allowed herself to fall in love with him after years of protecting her feelings, and while she spent her days in moments of happiness and excitement, she also knew there would be no forever for the two of them.

She could console herself by thinking that judging by the marriages she’d seen there was no forever for most people. It was small consolation. She had never been like “most people.” She only wanted Dean; she had him now; she wanted their happiness together to last.

It was spring again, and she went to Europe to the collections. This time she did not look for any young man to have a fling with, and she phoned Dean several times just to hear his voice. With the time difference and his erratic schedule she caught him only once. She was impatient to be home with him again. She wondered if he was cheating while she was away, and chided herself for being jealous and silly. If he were so anxious to cheat, he could do it while she was in New York. She worked such long hours, and his time was flexible enough to do what he pleased. That was the trouble with being in love … you cared too much. You wanted your love object to be happy, but only if you were the one who made him so.

He seemed happy. He was thoughtful and romantic. He continued to be insatiable in bed. After they made love he almost purred, like Sweet Pea. When Annabel stroked his thick black hair Dean moved his head in her hand, the way a cat did, sensually, to feel the touch of her palm, to push into her, to be cosseted. She loved the unabashed selfishness of his sensuality because there seemed to be a vulnerability in it too. He was so open. He wasn’t afraid to show his need. He knew she wouldn’t refuse him, or leave him.

They had been living together six months, and her life had changed in so many ways she wondered if she could ever bear to be alone again. She had someone to talk to, and to be quiet with, to read the paper with and have meals with, to take walks with, to go to the movies with on the spur of the moment. Her apartment was filled with the sounds of a human being she loved. His clothes and favorite objects were there. One day she left a note taped to the refrigerator: “Going to the supermarket. Write down anything you want.” And he wrote back: “Love.”

For his birthday Annabel took him to The Four Seasons for dinner. They sat side by side on a dark brown leather banquette facing the pool in the high-ceilinged, airy, tree-filled Pool Room, and ate gigantic crisped shrimps with mustard sauce, and drank champagne; and held hands under the table the way they had on their first date. She’d had the chef make a little birthday cake for a surprise. Dean’s present was a vastly extravagant six-foot-long cashmere scarf with a fringe at each end, in a wonderful shade just lighter than navy blue that matched his eyes.

She’d given a scarf like that to Max, on the last birthday of his life, but his had been white. When she chose the scarf for Dean, Annabel hesitated for a moment, remembering. She had loved Max, and she loved Dean, in a different way. She decided it was neither macabre nor sentimental to have given them both the same present. Both of them had more panache than any man she had ever known.