After the Reunion (29 page)

She didn’t want any more interludes. She didn’t want any more partings. She didn’t want any more pain. Dean was too fresh in her mind, and all the men who had betrayed her through the years were hovering at the edges of her memory like so many hateful ghosts. It seemed she was always saying good-bye and smiling, tossing off the perfect exit line, going home to hide her broken heart. What would her last line to Zack be? Have a nice trip? Merry Christmas?

Call me the next time you’re in town, if you don’t mind making sequels?

“What are you giving Zack for Christmas?” Emma asked her.

“Why should I give him anything?”

“Well, I mean …”

“I’m not even going to be with him for Christmas,” Annabel said.

“Yeah, that’s sad,” Emma said. Then she brightened. “You could give him something to remember you by.”

“He has enough to remember me by,” Annabel said sweetly.

“I don’t understand why the two of you have never discussed what’s going to happen next,” Emma said.

“Do you think my life is different from yours?”

“I think it is now,” Emma said.

“No,” Annabel said. “It’s just that the little romances are farther apart.”

It was such a flippant thing to say, and she wished she didn’t have to believe it. But tonight was their last night together, and Zack had suggested dinner in his suite with room service. She supposed he felt it was the ultimate saturation. She found it too painful to contemplate.

The two of them had shown love in every act and word, but neither of them had ever said it. She had to give him credit for not trying to deceive her. Dean had said he loved her, over and over, and yet he had left. Zack would leave with integrity.

Knowing he had integrity was not much compensation for falling off a mountain.

She was to meet him at his hotel at half past six. At five o’clock Annabel called. His suite didn’t answer. She didn’t trust herself to call a second time. “I want to leave a message,” she said. “Please tell Mr. Shepard that Annabel Jones will not be able to see him tonight; something came up. Thank you.”

Then she called Chris. “Can I stay at your apartment tonight? I have to hide, and I need moral support.”

“Sure,” Chris said.

“I’ll meet you at the office in ten minutes.”

And then she ran away to her friend, who would understand.

Annabel sat in Chris’s kitchen, drinking screwdrivers. It suited her furtive and mourning mood. The housekeeper had taken the night off, Alexander was out, as involved as ever in his love affair with James, and Chris’s son Nicholas was staying with friends from school for part of the holiday, as well he might with such a bizarre home life.

“You can sleep in Nicholas’s room,” Chris said.

“Thank you. Isn’t it strange—you were the one who ran away, and I told you it was silly, and now I’m the one who’s running away.”

“Do you want me to tell you it’s silly?”

“No. I just want you to give me another shot of vodka in this thing.”

“You’ll have a hangover tomorrow and feel worse,” Chris said, bringing the bottle.

“I couldn’t feel worse.”

“Why didn’t you just see him tonight and then feel worse the next day?” Chris said.

“Because it would have been more
worse
than I could stand.”

When Annabel was good and drunk Chris put her to bed. “Are you happy with Cameron?” Annabel asked fuzzily.

“Yes.”

“And do you tell each other you love each other?”

“All the time.”

“Do you mean it?”

“Yes,” Chris said.

“What about Alexander? Does he say he loves you?”

“There’s been no occasion for it lately, but I know he does.”

“What’s his idea of an occasion?”

“Go to sleep,” Chris said.

“I wish Zack Shepard loved me, the son of a bitch,” Annabel said, and slept.

The next morning she did not feel wonderful. Chris had left for work before Annabel got up, but there was hot coffee in the coffee maker and a bottle of aspirin next to it, with a note:
Come back for dinner if you’re still alive
. Dear Chris. Annabel pulled herself together and went home to change her clothes.

Emma was in the apartment, and when Annabel opened the door Emma got a strange look on her face, almost as if Annabel had done something to hurt her.

“Hi,” Annabel said. “Night shooting tonight, huh?”

Emma nodded. “You look like you got drunk last night,” she said.

“As a matter of fact, I was.”

“That was a really mean thing you did.”

“What did I do?”

“Dump Zack his last night. Cheat on him.”

“Cheat? Are you saying
cheat
? My health is too fragile to listen to this standing up.” Annabel went into her bedroom and Emma followed her. “What did he do, call?”

“He was here.”

“Ah.” It hurt. He had cared enough to come looking for her. Or perhaps he didn’t have anyone else to have dinner with at the last minute.

“He came at midnight,” Emma said. “He wanted to know if you were back yet. I said I thought you were out with him. I felt like a fool. Your stuff wasn’t here—I knew you were out for the whole night. I just assumed it was him. You always bring everybody else home. I tried to cover it up, but he knew. He knew you weren’t coming back.”

“How did he know?”

“He asked me and I told him,” Emma said sheepishly. “I felt terrible, but he was going to wait. He thought you were at a business meeting. He honestly did. He just couldn’t imagine that you’d go out with someone else on his last night.”

“I was at Chris’s,” Annabel said. “I was too afraid of another good-bye.”

“Well, look on your dresser,” Emma said. She didn’t wait for Annabel to get up, she ran over to the dresser and grabbed something that looked like an envelope. “He said to give it to you, that it was your Christmas present. I guess he was going to give it to you at dinner. He looked really upset; he just dropped it on the table and walked out.” She put it into Annabel’s hand.

It wasn’t an envelope; it was a folder containing an airline ticket to California, made out in Annabel’s name.

Annabel called his hotel, but he had checked out. She called the airline club and had him paged, but he wasn’t there. That night she began calling his house in Los Angeles. He either wasn’t in or wasn’t answering his phone. She called again early in the morning, and then got the phone number of his office from information and called there when business hours began. They said he was out of town. She called his house again that night, and the next. She called his office. Still out of town. “Where?” she asked. They didn’t know, but he would be calling in. Annabel left a message. He never called her.

How could he not call her, when she wanted to apologize, to explain? But he didn’t know that. She’d blown it.

Emma and Chris didn’t have to tell her; she knew it too well. She got through Christmas somehow, trying to pretend she wasn’t miserable for Emma’s sake. Even if Zack had gone to a desert island for the holidays he would have to come back to start his picture. Misery held her in a vise, and she went through her days, hours, minutes, by rote. Once in a while, at night when she couldn’t sleep, she telephoned his house, just to hear the phone ringing in a place that was his. She wondered what his house looked like. She would have been there with him now if she hadn’t been such a coward.

Wherever Zack had gone, she wondered if he had brought another woman with him. Probably. He certainly had a choice. And maybe he would begin to care for that woman, the way he had cared for
her
. He and Annabel had had only six days. No, five … Five days did not make a life. But it had been a beginning, and she had ruined it.

She had the plane ticket. Maybe one day she’d just show up on his doorstep. The young Annabel, the wild one from years ago, would have done just that. She would be standing there with a bunch of roses in her hand.

But this was the older, wiser, wounded Annabel, who probably would not. The Annabel who had run away from one good-bye too many would never risk being thrown out of an ex-lover’s house.

For her Christmas present Zack had wanted to surprise her with the invitation she had wanted more than anything; to stay in his life. She had not even gotten him a Christmas present. If he accused her of not understanding him at all, he would be right. But why did he have to wait until the last minute to surprise her? She was not the maiden in the tower waiting to be swept away by the noble knight. She had a life, a career, feelings. He didn’t understand her either.

What did he think life was, anyway; one of his movies? Adults made plans, adults did not play games. But she knew he could as easily say that to her. Being angry at him only made this time of not knowing more bearable.

Chapter Twenty-five

That year, 1983, Christmas came on a Sunday, so most offices closed early on Friday and stayed closed until Tuesday for a long holiday weekend. For people with something to do and somewhere to go it was a pleasure; for those with nothing and no one the weekend would seem endless. For people who were in love with people who were married to others, it meant they would probably celebrate Christmas at Friday lunch on the twenty-third.

Chris’s office closed at noon on that Friday, and she and Cameron were going to have lunch together. After some deliberation she had bought him gold cufflinks. They were simple and dignified, and if his wife asked any questions he could say he had bought them for himself. On Thursday he took Chris to Cartier. If anyone
else
asked questions they could pretend they were choosing a surprise for his wife. In actuality, he had told Chris, he was giving his wife a fur coat. He bought Chris a bracelet made of three gold rings attached together; one white, one yellow, one pink. It was expensive, but she would tell Alexander, if he asked, that she had received it from Annabel.

James had left New York early for the holiday, to spend Christmas with his parents. Alexander was wearing new gold cufflinks. Chris did not ask him anything.

Ah
, she thought,
La Ronde
.

She was giving Alexander a new attaché case; black, of fine leather, elegant. And she knew he was giving her the same thing, because he had asked her what she wanted. Hers, however, was tobacco brown. Identical, functional presents seemed to suit their new relationship. They were as close as twins, loving but platonic, dependent on each other … and, although Alexander did not know it, each in love with someone else.

She was still amazed that she was able to be in love with two men at the same time. And she knew she could never have been able to deal with Cameron if she didn’t have Alexander, nor with Alexander if she didn’t have Cameron. She had tried. But she was different now. The dream she’d had all her life of perfect love was gone forever. The strange thing was that she was often quite happy lately anyhow.

“Merry Christmas,” Cameron said at their holiday lunch. They tried to ignore the fact that their Christmas, and probably all the other important holidays, would always occur on a different day from the rest of the world’s.

“Merry Christmas.”

He had brought her quite naturally and openly to the same kind of restaurant he used to before their affair started. They did nothing differently in New York. They slept together only on their business trips to California. He called her at home whenever he wanted to, since he was known to be a workaholic. She did not call him at home because she was only his employee, although of course she would have called him if it were a business emergency.

They had champagne because it was Christmas, and because they were in love. They exchanged their presents. With the gifts they had each written a cryptic message on one of the small white cards stores like Tiffany’s and Cartier gave out; those dignified little white cards so suitable for every occasion, to write something short and trite, or something secret and incriminating, to hide in your wallet and reread when you were alone.

Each of them had written:
Thank you
. It meant the world.

“Sometimes I wish things had been different,” Cameron said.

“So do I,” Chris said. “But they can’t be, so I don’t think about it.”

“What we have works,” he said. “It wouldn’t work any other way.”

“Why not?”

“Because both of us want what we already had,
and
each other.”

“All I know,” Chris said, “is that I’m very happy with you.”

“I’m glad,” he said. “Because I love you.”

“I love you too.” For a moment they held hands under the table. It felt alien to her here, uncomfortable, where there were different rules. Then she relaxed and let the warmth of his hand seep into her skin. “I would die without you,” she said.

“You won’t ever have to be without me.”

“Good.”

She had told him once that her husband was in love with someone else. She had not said it wasn’t a woman, so of course Cameron had assumed it was. He never asked her personal questions about her marriage, nor did she ask him any, since they both felt such things would be not only painful to discuss but a betrayal of the others. Besides, they liked to keep their private world encapsulated.

They finished lunch at half past three. “I still have to buy some presents,” he said. “I always leave it till the last minute. I’ll call you over the weekend.”

She would have liked to ask if she could come with him, but she didn’t. In the street they kissed each other good-bye lightly, as friends and colleagues did everywhere, and said Merry Christmas again. Then they set off in different directions. She turned around once, but Cameron was gone. She went home, hoping Alexander would already be there waiting for her.

They had decided not to go anywhere this Christmas. Nicholas would be with them for a week, and then right after New Year’s he was going away again, skiing with a friend from school and the friend’s parents. She and Alexander had gotten theater tickets to some of the hit shows, for the three of them and whomever Nicholas wanted to bring along. They had all been invited to a party on Christmas Day. At least at home they could pretend things were normal, despite the fact that she and Alexander had separate rooms. At a resort or a hotel they would have to make an issue of it. She would not sleep in the same room with him; she couldn’t. Even as friends. Their relationship was still too complicated for them to be such comfortable friends as that.