An American Love Story (38 page)

“Nina will love this,” he said.

“Yes,” Susan said. “And she’s starting to collect art.”

Nina called to tell her that Laura had taken the shock of Clay’s departure as a cue to go into a frenzied bout of sorting and listing, labeling through her tears. Clay, apparently, had refused to say which of their possessions he wanted and had left the decisions to her. Laura was trying to be fair. She was fifty-five and being dumped; she couldn’t even pretend anymore that she had a marriage. And yet, even in this last sacrificial task of dividing up their past, she was still the wife taking care of the household, trying to do what was best.

“My childhood home is gone,” Nina said sadly. “Even though I don’t live there anymore, it’s so strange …” She was silent for a moment and then she brightened. “Well, maybe this is an awful thing to say about my own mother, whom I love, but I hope you and my father get married. You guys are so right for each other.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course, if you decide not to, it’s fine too—you’re so independent, you could just go on the way you have been.”

“We’ll see,” Susan said.

They hadn’t discussed marriage yet, and Susan wondered if after all these years marriage would be a good idea: she knew how Clay felt about wives, that they were the enemy. The man who considered it the worst insult and put-down to tell her, “You sound like a wife,” who felt they were married in the best sense, perhaps should not be pushed. During her almost sixteen romantic and loving years with Clay it was never as if she were marking time waiting to be the next Mrs. Bowen; their affair and every day with him were her happiness. She had proposed to him, and perhaps she would again and this time he would say yes, or he might even propose to her; but right now he was so pressured and frightened about his career that she knew him well enough to let the other issue wait.

“I’ll be there whenever you need me,” Susan told him.

“I always need the monkey. We’ll be together soon.”

She spent Christmas with her friend Jeffrey and four others who didn’t want to be with their families or who had none. It was a smaller group than ever. The people she knew were settling down; getting married, going steady, or now, since the new AIDS terror
had made them celibate, they were going back to reclaim their parents on the holidays for warmth. Since Jeffrey had always eventually driven away every lover he ever had, he seemed to take to the new celibacy with contentment; he no longer had to tell anyone not to love him so much. The six of them cooked a huge dinner at his apartment, played the new albums, ate and drank too much, and exchanged inexpensive gifts. When she got home she called Clay. He was still out, so she went to sleep, the night disturbed by bad dreams she didn’t want to recall.

He phoned her the next morning. “Where were you so late?” she asked him.

“Oh, you remember I had dinner with my old friend George, whose wife just died. I called you when I got home but you were asleep. Don’t you remember talking to me?”

She tried to think. “No.”

“I said Merry Christmas and you were sound asleep. I got off the phone fast because I didn’t want you to get too awake.”

“Oh.” Susan tried to remember, then to imagine him talking to her, and finally she was sure he had. The wine must have really put her away.

Just before New Year’s Clay told her he had found a rich Arab named Anwar Akmal to put venture capital into his company. “He doesn’t care if it’s a tax loss,” Clay said cheerfully. “It’s fun for him. He’s in oil and real estate, but he wants to get into the entertainment business.”

“That’s wonderful news,” Susan said. She hadn’t heard Clay sound so happy in a long time.

“I have to work on the prospectus with my lawyer. And Anwar wants to be a part of everything, so I have to spend a lot of time with him.”

“You sound really good,” Susan said.

“Well, we’ll see how it goes.”

January and part of February passed, and Clay did not sound happy anymore. His morning phone calls were briefer. He always started with baby talk. “How is the monkey today? Is the monkey dancing, with the cymbals, and the little red hat?” But he didn’t want to hear her problems, he who had always been so sympathetic,
and sometimes he would snap that he had called her to be made to feel better, not upset. So she stopped telling him anything. She was sweet, supportive, neutral; the dancing monkey. He was nervous, frantic, in a hurry, always “up to my eyeballs.” Susan began to hate the expression, or perhaps it was just the way he said it.

He was with his lawyer or his rich Arab, running to dinner meetings that ended too late to call her, turning off his phone to sleep, leaving the office early in the afternoons before she could catch him. He had told her there was no point in her coming to Los Angeles during this busy period because he would have no time to spend with her, so she waited, and took another assignment.

Every time she called Clay’s office his secretary Penny asked her when she was coming to visit, and every time Susan pleaded work. But one particularly cold and dreary New York winter day, thinking of the California sunshine, Susan said wistfully, “I wish I could be in California.” And after that, as if her mouth had snapped shut, Penny never asked her again.

She wondered if Penny knew now that Clay didn’t want her there.

But then on Valentine’s Day a thick envelope arrived from Clay via Federal Express. Susan opened it. There was a tape cassette and a note in his handwriting, a note so sweet and sentimental that it made all the unhappy thoughts go away. “Dear Susan: All the time I was in Germany before Christmas, I kept hearing this song and I kept thinking of you. Somehow it made me think about how I feel about you.” A song! He’d sent her a song, like a schoolboy. “Since it has never been published in the U.S. I called Germany after I returned and got a copy of the record and I have made a tape for you. With all my love, Happy Valentine’s Day, Clay.” Then he had drawn, in red ink, a heart pierced by an arrow. And, in black ink again, “Valentine. As you know, I can neither aim—or
draw
.”

The album was called
If I Could Fly Away
. She put the tape on her cassette player. Wild, strange, modern music played; electronic, almost martial, and then a voice with a German accent that
was difficult to understand.
Sign in the sky, lain
(?)
we must rise, the time has come, and our dreams have to die.
What kind of depressing song was this to send the person you loved for Valentine’s Day? Was he talking about his career, his broken marriage, his thoughts of becoming famous again? Maybe he thought he wouldn’t make it after all, and wanted to know if she would continue to love him anyway.… She played on.

Now there was something that sounded like German. The words were unintelligible to her. There was a long instrumental, a sort of new age rock. And finally:
If I could fly away, I’d take you on my wings, I’d carry you right back, where everything begins, and we’d find love.… If I could fly away … I’d take you back again, back to the origin of our destiny …
And a lot more strange music. The rest of the side was blank.

The song was bewildering. Fly away on my wings … She remembered how often Clay had told her to get on his back and he would take her for a ride up into the sky.
I’d take you on my wings
 … That must be it. He was going through hard times and he wanted to escape to the happier past, with her.

She looked at his drawing of the heart. There were five drops of red blood coming out. He certainly couldn’t draw, poor thing; it was a bit bizarre to put blood on a Valentine’s Day card. But it was sweet of him to try to draw, and he obviously meant well. Imaging hearing a song and thinking how he felt about her; Clay had never done that before. She decided to come out to L.A. no matter what he said.

She called Dana. “Come stay with me,” Dana said. “Goujon is shooting his special two-hour pilot in Canada. You can keep me company. You’ll have your own guest suite with your own entrance, at the other end of the house—total privacy. It’s ridiculous for you not to have seen Clay for so long.”

“I know.”

“So come right away.”

When Susan told Clay she was coming he said he had a party to take her to and she should bring an evening dress. There would be industry people there, it was important. She knew she had made the right decision.

Waiting in her apartment for the taxi she had reserved to take her to the airport, she looked at the tape again. There was another side. Perhaps there was more to the song that she had overlooked. She put it on side two.

Something strange was in the air. A faraway voice was talking to me. Give me your love, you’ll never feel alone, so give me your love, that’s a sign for you to rise. If I could fly away, if I could change my ways, if I could fly away, could fly back to eternity, I’d take you on my wings, I’d carry you right there, where everything begins, back to the origin of our destiny
 … It was so metaphysical she couldn’t stand to listen to any more of it. What was this eternity, and origin of destiny? The cab was here. She put the tape away.

Dana picked her up at the airport and drove her to Malibu. It was still afternoon in L.A. Susan put her bag in the guest suite, which indeed had the promised privacy, and called Clay at his office. “I’m here.”

“Good. Don’t forget the party tomorrow night.”

“I won’t.”

“I’ll pick you up at six-thirty.”

He didn’t say anything about tonight, or now. “I just discovered the tape you sent me had a second side,” she told him.

“Of course it had a second side,” Clay said, in the loving voice he used to talk to his precious monkey.

It was a weird song, but apparently he had meant it to be a love song.

“Dana says hi,” Susan said. “We might come into town a little later.”

“Well, you enjoy being with Dana, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“So?” Dana said after Susan had hung up and met her in the kitchen.

“He didn’t say anything about tonight.”

“All right, let’s go into town, and I’ll shop and you visit Clay at his office. Surprise him.”

“He didn’t seem to want to see me.”

“Don’t be silly. Drop in. I’ll go look at an exercise bike for my sins, and if he invites you to dinner just tell me.”

For some reason Susan was afraid to bother him. He was her
lover and they had been apart for two months, but he was also her best friend, anxious and struggling, and she didn’t want to interfere. But that was ridiculous. She could at least see him, and if he had business plans for tonight she would go back with Dana.

Penny was pleased at her unexpected arrival, but when Susan walked into Clay’s office he looked up from his desk startled.

“I came to say hello,” Susan said. She felt strained, unwanted, standing on his threshold like a casual visitor. He seemed uncomfortable. She remembered when his face used to light up when she came into the room.

“Where’s Dana?” he said.

“Shopping.”

“You shouldn’t leave her alone.”

“It’s all right.”

“Let’s get a drink,” he said. He got up and ushered her out of his office in an instant. “I’m leaving,” he said to Penny.

“Have fun.”

He took her to the bar of a restaurant down the street. It was too early to have a drink, but they sat there at the empty bar sipping harsh house wine by the glass and eating peanuts. Clay talked about business, and how to adapt her drug article. Work was obviously the only thing he cared about. He didn’t touch her, and somehow it seemed natural that he not; almost as if they had been together all along and this was not a reunion but simply a continuation. And yet, she felt uncomfortable.

“Do you want to have dinner?” he asked.

“I’d love to. But I have to call Dana.”

“Bring her.”

“I’ll see if she’s free.”

Susan called the store from the restaurant’s pay phone. “He asked me to dinner. He wants you to come too.”

“I’m not coming—you two should be alone.”

“Why don’t you come?”

“No, that’s silly. I’ll see you later. You have your key, just bring him home to your little wing and pretend it’s your house.”

“You’re a wonderful friend,” Susan said. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure. Anyway, I just bought a fifteen hundred dollar bicycle.”

“Is Dana coming?” Clay asked.

“No.”

“That was rude.”

“She has other plans,” Susan said. She had never seen Clay evince such concern for Dana’s feelings before. He paid the bill and took her to one of the small restaurants they used to love. It was still so early that the restaurant was empty too. She forced herself to drink more wine to prolong the meal, feeling out of sync, wondering what he would do next, feeling somehow that she had only borrowed him.

“I’m still going to do
Like You, Like Me
,” Clay said. “I never give up. There are some people I’m going to talk to. These things are cyclical.”

“I know.”

“Anwar loves it.”

“Good. Tell me about Anwar.”

“What’s to tell? He’s very rich. Lives in the Hills. Mid-forties, has a wife and several kids.”

“Just one wife?”

“Oh yes. A lot of cars though.” Susan smiled. Clay paid the check. “Did you rent a car yet?”

“I’m picking one up tomorrow.”

“Good. This is a long trip for me, driving you all the way back to the beach, and then coming back here. I’m busy, and it’s tiring. I never understood why Henri wanted to live so far away. It’s pretty, but lately with the traffic … And he’s even older than I am.”

“You’re not old.”

“Yes I am. Tomorrow night I’m getting a limousine.”

“I’ll have my car after that, I can meet you in town,” Susan said. “No problem. I’m on vacation.”

He drove her to Dana’s house and Susan let him into her suite through her private entrance. Her bedroom had been decorated very prettily, with expensive white linens on the king-size bed, soft lighting, and wide shutters affording privacy. She had no sooner
locked the door than Clay was undressing, pulling down the bedcovers, reaching for her. He seemed frantic, as if he had missed her more than she had realized. A token moment of foreplay and then he was inside her. She was unexpectedly, instantly, wildly aroused. But he came immediately, and got out of bed and put on his clothes as quickly as he had taken them off. Susan just sat there, staring at him, still aroused, now bewildered. Then he made for the door.