Hope Street (17 page)

Because he’d despised the kid-glove treatment, he’d deliberately projected strength and hardheadedness.
I’m back,
he’d communicated with his attitude.
I’m strong and I’m coping. Treat me normally.

The idea of, well, not crying on someone’s shoulder but un-burdening himself a little and accepting some heartfelt sympathy…God, that would be nice.

“I’m staying at the Westin at Copley Place,” Moira told him. “Why don’t you close up shop here and meet me at the lounge there. I think it’s called Bar 10.”

“Okay. Give me twenty minutes.”

She nodded, smiled and vanished down the hall.

He entered his office, closed the door and took a deep breath. A drink with an old friend. That was all this was. A chance to catch up with Moira, laugh over old times and—hell, why not?—cry on her shoulder. Wasn’t that what friends were for?

He lifted the phone, punched in his home number and waited.
Just a drink with a friend,
he repeated to himself as he waited for Ellie to answer.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Ellie—it’s me. Listen, I’m not coming straight home.”
A drink with a friend.
“Some people involved in the negotiations today are getting together for a drink, and…”
Some people? Just two people. Why was he lying?

He wasn’t lying. “Some” could be two. He and Moira were “some people involved in the negotiations.”

“No problem,” Ellie said. “I didn’t fix anything for dinner. I guess I shot my load yesterday.”

She’d fixed a delicious meal yesterday, he recalled. They’d eaten, they’d chatted, they’d enjoyed their meal—and then she’d all but slapped him and sent him away. He’d had to drive sixty miles to burn off his rage.

A bolt of fresh anger shot through him, a reminder of everything that was wrong at home. “I don’t know when we’ll be done,” he told her. “Don’t wait up.”

Twenty minutes later, after parking the Z4 in the Westin’s underground garage, Curt rode the elevator upstairs to the lobby and asked for directions to Bar 10. He found Moira waiting for him there, seated comfortably in a pink armchair at a small, round table, still dressed in her chic suit but looking fresh. He himself felt wilted, and as soon as he joined her he loosened his tie. A waitress appeared instantly to take their orders. Moira asked for a cosmopolitan, Curt a Scotch on the
rocks. Once the waitress was gone, Moira leaned back in her chair, looking a little like a queen on her throne, and smiled. “Now,” she demanded, “tell me everything.”

“Everything?”

“I’ve been gone five years. Catch me up. Fill me in. Spare no details.”

Grinning, he relaxed in his own chair and launched into a description of his life over the past few years, considerately sparing her most of the details. He told her about the projects he’d been involved with at work, about the growing size and reach of the firm and the increase in the number of partners. He filled her in on all the gossip: Yes, John Delgado still drank raw eggs for breakfast and never got salmonella. Yes, Ruth Steinberg still played matchmaker and had not a single marriage to show for her efforts. Claude Forrest retired last year and moved to an island off the coast of Maine. Lindy Brinson still dressed like a tart, but she had surpassed Gretchen the mastiff and could now claim the title of Best Divorce Attorney in Boston. Partner bonuses were obscenely high this past year. The firm was working out the economics of expanding its Washington office.

He told her about his new car. He told her that Katie had majored in film-and-television production, and that Jessie was concentrating in political science with the possibility of becoming a lawyer like her father. And he told her about Peter, about how suddenly he became sick, how suddenly he was gone.

Moira sighed and shook her head. “You know me, Curt. Never married, no kids. People think it’s because I’m tough, but it’s really the opposite. I’m too weak. I could never survive that kind of loss. I know I couldn’t. So I’ve avoided it by not letting myself get too attached.”

“You never know what you can survive until you face it,” he
said. “I wouldn’t have thought I could survive losing Peter. Frankly, I don’t know
how
I survived it. But here I am.”

“How is your wife doing?” Moira asked. “Emily, was it?”

“Ellie. And she’s not doing well.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Is she ill?”

Last night, she’d claimed she was—as ill as someone with cancer or multiple sclerosis. “She’s depressed,” he explained. “She still hasn’t figured out how to get past Peter’s death.”

“She’s his mother,” Moira pointed out. “It’s different for mothers than for fathers.”

“That’s a sexist remark,” Curt chided.

Moira laughed. “Well, you know me. I’m allowed to be sexist. I’ve got bigger balls than most of the men in this room.” She reached for her drink and he noticed her nails, short but polished a bright crimson, the same color as her lipstick. She might have big balls and a sexist attitude, but she exuded a distinct femininity. Her suit flattered her curves. Her shoes had pointy toes and high heels.

Even though she’d avoided marriage and children, she clearly felt empathy for Ellie. “Your wife carried that boy inside her body. His death must be like having a chunk of her flesh cut out of her. A chunk of her soul, too.”

“I ache for her, Moira—I do. But…” He silenced himself with a sip of Scotch. He didn’t want to sound self-pitying.

“But what?”

“It’s like I’ve lost her along with Peter. She’s just not there for me. I need a wife, and I haven’t got one anymore.”

Moira’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “She left you?”

“No. She goes to work, she comes home, she has dinner with me, she sleeps next to me. But she’s not
there.
” He spared Moira those details, too. Out of loyalty to Ellie, out of his desperate
need to believe his marriage wasn’t really as dead as his son, he refused to spell out in what ways Ellie wasn’t
there.

“That must be hard on you.”

Curt snorted at the understatement.

Moira tapped one red fingernail against the surface of her glass. “Have you gone for marriage counseling?”

He was surprised that she’d give him marital advice. He’d been trying not to let the conversation grow too intimate, but if Moira wasn’t afraid to discuss Curt’s problems, why not?

She’d offered her shoulder. He should make use of it.

“Ellie was in therapy for a while. Her therapist told her she had to heal at her own pace. I don’t think she can begin to fathom what her pace is doing to me. God, that makes me sound so self-centered,” he muttered, shaking his head and taking another sip of Scotch. “She’s in pain. I understand that. I want to help. But…Christ, Moira, I keep fearing she’ll drag me down into the abyss with her.”

“You can’t let that happen,” Moira said gently. “You’ve got to help yourself before you can help her. Like on airplanes, you know how they say you should put on your own oxygen mask before you assist others?”

“You think an oxygen mask would help?”

“I think you need something, Curt. Maybe Ellie can’t give it to you, but your needs are important, too.”

He eyed her speculatively. Had she guessed that his sex life was moribund, that Ellie had denied him—denied them both—that most basic human act, that simple, loving grace? Did Moira believe his need for Ellie was as important as whatever the hell it was Ellie needed?

“You were always one of the good guys,” Moira recalled. “So faithful. So obviously in love with your wife.” She smiled nos
talgically. “I don’t know if it’s still true, but when I was at the firm, half the women working there had crushes on you.”

“What?” He laughed.

“You didn’t have a clue, right? We all used to talk about you in the ladies’ room. We ogled you at meetings and parties. And you never even noticed. You only had eyes for your wife.”

“You ogled me? Really?” He chuckled at the thought of tarty Lindy Brinson leering at him, or Sue Pritchard considering him as a potential husband number four, or Ruth Steinberg scheming to match him up with one of the firm’s women. “I’m flattered. If only I’d known.”

“If you’d known, you wouldn’t have done a damn thing about it.”

He nodded and laughed again. “You’re right.”

She leveled her gaze at him. She was smiling, but it was an enigmatic smile, a questioning smile. “What do you want, Curt? Right now. What would it take to make you feel whole?”

He sensed a change in atmosphere, unspoken ideas churning just beneath the surface. “My son?”

“Besides that.”

God. She knew. She knew what was wrong in his marriage, in his life. She knew what he needed, what it would take to make him feel whole—and unlike Ellie, she didn’t believe his needs made him a despicable person.

“You can figure out what it would take,” he said, his voice low and broken. He ought to be ashamed of himself for thinking what he was thinking, for having a woman he respected witness his desperation.

Moira’s gaze was sharp and direct. “I’m here,” she said, reaching across the table and covering his hand with hers. “I’ll be gone tomorrow, but I’m here now.”

“Moira. I can’t ask—”

“You didn’t ask.” She gave his hand a light squeeze. Her fingers were strong but soft. It had been so long since a woman had touched him with affection. Since a woman had touched him at all. “I hate seeing you like this, Curt. Let me be your friend.”

He told himself how wrong this was.

Then he told himself it wasn’t. He couldn’t exist in Ellie’s no-man’s-land anymore, that strange, dark place where she was neither fully alive nor as dead as Peter. He’d stayed there with her as long as he could, done everything in his power to lure her out into the light. He’d begged her to rediscover what it meant to be alive. Nothing he’d tried had worked.

But he was alive. That wasn’t a sin. He had no reason to be ashamed. All he wanted was to live.

And Moira—his friend—was giving him that chance.

No more words were necessary. He tossed a twenty-dollar bill onto the table, and he and Moira left the bar.

E
LLIE WASN
’
T SURE WHY
he had to go to California. The negotiations on that deal he was handling for the MIT professor had been all but completed in Boston a week ago. Just a few details still had to be ironed out, he’d told her. Couldn’t details be ironed out long-distance? Wasn’t that what phones and faxes and overnight-delivery services existed for?

Curt had insisted that the ironing would go more efficiently if he flew out to California, and so he went. He’d left on Wednesday and would be back in time for dinner Sunday. Four days.

Ellie had grown inured to the emptiness of her house during the day. But nighttime was different. She and Curt had rarely spent a night apart before Peter’s death, and never since then. True, they had huge problems looming between them, but as
long as they shared a bed, Ellie was convinced that those problems would eventually work themselves out. Curt had been so patient, and she was trying, really trying, to get back to where she’d been.

Even though they hadn’t made love since the day Peter had fallen ill, Ellie depended on Curt’s presence in bed. His warmth soothed her. His respiration lulled her. His weight balanced the mattress. With him off in California, the bed seemed as vast as the Sahara, and just as lifeless.

“I’m a big girl,” she told herself. “I can handle his absence.”

And to her amazement, she discovered that she could.

She returned home from work Thursday, entered the silent house and decided to fix herself a real dinner. She pulled a pork chop from the freezer—God knew how long it had been there; it was as hard as a rock—and defrosted it in the microwave. She measured rice and water into a pot and set it on the stove to steam. While the pork chop broiled, the phone rang.

Curt had become the official phone answerer after Peter’s death. For so long, Ellie was afraid to speak to callers; she feared she’d burst into tears if someone dared to ask how she was. So Curt had gotten into the habit of answering the phone when it rang, and all these months later, they were still in that routine.

The sudden, shrill chime of the phone jolted her now, and it took her a moment to remember that Curt wasn’t around to answer it. She squared her shoulders, marched across the kitchen to the wall phone and lifted the receiver. “Hello?”

“Hi, Ellie, it’s me.”

Curt’s voice sounded metallic through a crinkle of static. He was probably phoning her on his cell rather than the hotel phone. The lousy connection notwithstanding, she was glad he’d called. “Hi. How are things going?”

“Pretty well. We’ve worked out nearly everything. Just a few more tweaks and we’ll be there.” He fell quiet for a moment, then said, “How are you?”

“I’m fine.” She realized he might take that as an automatic response. “Really, Curt. I’m good. I’m just fixing myself some dinner.”

“Great.” Another pause. “I had a free minute and thought I should check up on you.”

“You don’t have to check up on me,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound testy. “I’m okay.”

“All right.” Pause. “I’m not sure if I’ll have a chance to call tomorrow. It’s just…we’re on kind of an odd schedule.”

“They’ve got your time booked up. I understand. If you can squeeze in a call, that would be nice, but if you can’t, I’ll assume you were too busy.”

“Right.” He sighed. “I’ve got to go, Ellie. I’ll be back on Sunday.”

“I hope the rest of the negotiations go well. I’ll talk to you if you have a free minute. If not, have a safe flight home.”

They said goodbye and she hung up. He must have been pressed for time, calling her from wherever the negotiations were taking place. California was three hours behind Massachusetts, so he’d phoned her in the middle of his afternoon, which meant he’d probably still been at work. He’d sounded brusque and cool, the way he talked when people were nearby and could eavesdrop on his end of the conversation. She would have liked to ask him how his flight out had been, and whether he would have a chance to travel around San Francisco. She’d never been there, but she’d heard it was a spectacular city.