Magic (6 page)

“You can stop by my place anytime. Are you good at it?”

“Very,” she said proudly.

“I'm Xavier Thomas, by the way,” he said, introducing himself as he stuck out his hand, when he reached the curb and set her bag down.

“Chantal Giverny,” she said as they shook hands.

“Where do you live?” he asked politely.

“Rue Bonaparte, in the sixth.”

“I don't live far from you. Why don't we share a cab?” She hesitated for a second and then nodded. It was strange the way she kept running into him. He had an explanation for it in the cab.

“I think destiny is involved here. When you meet someone by accident three times, it means something. First at the White Dinner. There were seven thousand, four hundred people there that night. You could have been seated at any table, and we'd never have met. Instead you were at the one next to mine. Then in the food hall at Bon Marché, and now at the airport. My flight from Madrid was two hours late. If it had been on time, we would have missed each other. Instead here we are, which is damn lucky for you, because I don't know how you would have carried that ridiculously heavy bag yourself.” She laughed at what he said. “So clearly, we were meant to meet again. Out of respect for that and the forces that brought us together, will you have dinner with me tonight? There's a bistro I like, which I use as my canteen.” He named the one where she met Jean-Philippe for lunch regularly. It was their canteen too. Their world seemed to be full of coincidences, and she was about to tell him she was tired and wanted to go home, and then decided what the hell. He seemed nice. Why not have dinner with him? He looked young and was obviously not trying to seduce her, just being friendly. And she had a lonely night ahead, without Eric. It always depressed her to come home to her silent empty apartment after she saw her kids.

“All right.” He smiled and looked pleased.

“Let's drop off your bag first, though. I'd hate to walk that back from the restaurant after dinner, although it would be good exercise. I hope your son carried it for you in Berlin.”

“He did. He's a good boy.” She smiled proudly.

They got to her building a short time later, and she took the bag up in the elevator while he waited for her downstairs, and she was back a moment later, having stopped long enough to comb her hair and put on lipstick. She felt like a mess compared to his proper business suit. On the way to the restaurant, he explained that he had been visiting a client in Madrid and had only gone for the day. He said that he was an attorney, specializing in international copyrights and intellectual property. He had gone to see a French writer who lived in Spain and was a longtime client. And Chantal volunteered that she was a screenwriter, and wrote scripts for documentaries, and fictional screenplays for movies.

“I thought your name rang a bell,” he said as they got to the restaurant and he asked for a table on the terrace. It was next to the one where she and Jean-Philippe usually sat, and the owner recognized her, and then Xavier. “Do you come here often?” he asked her as they sat down, and he slipped his briefcase under the table as she nodded. “So do I. Maybe we've seen each other here before.” It was possible, and she wondered if he was right, and their paths were meant to cross. It seemed like a pleasant coincidence to her.

He asked about her children at dinner, and she told him about them, and then he inquired about her work in detail. He was familiar with her movies and had seen several of them and her two prize-winning documentaries, which had impressed him a great deal. He seemed like a relaxed, interesting person who wasn't full of himself and enjoyed her company. And she inquired about his work too. He asked if she was married, and she said she had been widowed when her children were small and had never remarried. And he said he had never been married. He volunteered that he had lived with a woman for seven years, and they had split up the year before.

“Nothing dramatic happened, there's no tragic story. She didn't run off with my best friend. We both worked too hard, and had drifted apart. When we started to bore each other, we both agreed that it was time for a change. We're still on very good terms. The relationship just played itself out.”

“You were smart to recognize it, a lot of people don't. They stay together, hating each other for years.”

“I didn't want to get to that point,” he said quietly. “This way we stayed friends. It worked out for the best. She's madly in love right now, with a guy she met six months ago. I think they're going to get married. She's thirty-seven and desperate to have kids. That was always a major difference between us. I'm not sure I believe in marriage, and I'm fairly certain I don't want kids.”

“You might change your mind about that one day,” she said in a motherly tone, and he smiled.

“I'm thirty-eight years old, and I figure that if I've never wanted them till now, I probably never will. I told her in the beginning. I think she thought she'd change my mind. She never did. And her biological clock was ticking loudly by the time she left, which was another good reason to end it when we did. I didn't want to blow her chances to have kids, if that's what she really wanted.” He sounded like a fair person, and a sensible, practical one. “I've never wanted to be a father. I'd rather put the time and effort into my relationship with a woman I love. Kids don't stick around forever anyway. So you put all that love and time into them, and then they fly away. Hopefully, the right woman will stay.”

“That's very sensible of you,” Chantal said, smiling. “No one ever explained that to me, and I've wound up with children living all over the world. They're having a great time, but I hardly ever see them, which isn't a lot of fun for me. They live in Berlin, Hong Kong, and L.A.”

“You must have done a good job with them for them to have enough confidence to spread their wings like that.” It was an interesting comment for him to make. Jean-Philippe always said the same thing.

“Or chased them as far away as they could get,” she said, laughing, but he doubted it was that. She seemed like a good person, and he could tell she loved her kids, just from the way she spoke about them. She seemed to accept them for who they were, not who she hoped they would become, which impressed him.

“My grandfather and father were lawyers, so they expected my brother and me to be too. My brother became a musician, so I felt even more obligated to carry on tradition, and now here I am, flying to Madrid on a Sunday to see a client. But at least I like the work I do. I wanted to be a criminal attorney, but except for the rare important crime, it was tedious and not very interesting, so I got into intellectual property, and I really like my clients. I never joined my father's firm. They did tax law, and closed when he retired. That would have bored me to tears. It sounds like your kids have interesting jobs.”

“They do. I told them to follow their dreams when they were growing up. They believed me, so they all did. Banker, filmmaker, and artist.” She smiled as she said it, and he could see how proud of them she was.

“That's a great gift you gave them, instead of obliging them to take jobs they hate.”

“Life is too long to do something you don't enjoy doing.” It was an interesting point of view. “I was a journalist first, and I hated it. It took me a while to discover what I love to write. It was particularly hard when I lost my husband and I had to make a living with my writing. It was frightening for a while, but it worked out well. I have fun doing it.”

“And you're good at it,” he commented.

They talked animatedly all through dinner, and it was after eleven when he finally walked her home the short distance to her apartment. “I'd love to have lunch with you sometime, or dinner again, if that sounds all right to you,” he said hopefully, and she couldn't tell if he was just being friendly, or was interested in her as a woman, which seemed unlikely given the difference in their ages. He hadn't asked her, but it was obvious from the ages of her children. And she was clearly considerably older than he was. In fact, there were seventeen years between them, even if she didn't look it. But she didn't flatter herself that he was trying to date her, and there was no reason why they couldn't be friends. She didn't usually have dinner with strangers, but their paths had crossed often enough that she had felt comfortable doing so, especially after meeting at the White Dinner.

“I'd like that.” She smiled easily at him. He handed her his business card then, and told her to call or text him so he'd have her number.

“Let's do it again soon,” he said, smiling at her, “so we don't have to keep meeting in grocery stores or airports.” She laughed, it had been a pleasant, easy evening. “And I definitely don't want to wait until the White Dinner next year.”

“I don't either,” she confirmed, “although I hope you'll come and bring more lanterns and sit near us again. You made the evening for the rest of us.”

“You made it for me too,” he said, suddenly looking intently into her eyes with his intriguing dark brown ones. There was more than friendship there. She suddenly felt a current pass through her, and then told herself she had imagined it. He had very expressive eyes, and a very masculine attitude. The look he had given her had nothing to do with their age difference, or the kind of warm, friendly, brotherly looks she got from Jean-Philippe. Xavier Thomas was a man talking to a woman, no matter what age she was. She wondered if he was a womanizer, but he didn't look it. There was nothing of Gregorio's frivolous ways about him. Xavier just seemed direct and straightforward, and made it clear that he liked her, and that appealed to her about him. He seemed very sincere, and she had a feeling Jean-Philippe would like him, which was important to her, since she respected his opinion. Maybe they could have lunch together one day, the three of them.

She thanked him for dinner again when he left her at her building, and she waved as she pressed the door code, then let herself in through the outer door and disappeared. Xavier was smiling as he walked away, all the way back to his apartment.

T
he days after the White Dinner in Paris, once Benedetta got back to Milan, were worse than she had feared. Someone had notified the press that Gregorio's babies had been born, and the paparazzi camped out at the hospital, hoping to catch a glimpse of him, Anya, or the infants fighting for their lives in incubators. And when the hospital stonewalled them and gave them no information, they hounded Benedetta in Milan, photographing her as she came and went from work and at her home. So far all they had gotten was a photograph of Gregorio entering the George V with a somber expression, when he had gone to pick up some clothes. He hadn't left Anya or the hospital otherwise. The hospital had given them a room in the maternity ward, where they were essentially living, spending every hour in the neonatal ICU with their babies, observing the procedures they underwent, and watching their tiny hands open and close and their fingers unfurl. Both twins still had inadequate lung capacity and heart problems, and were constantly at risk. And facing the possible loss of either or both of them, Anya had grown up overnight, sitting solemnly, holding vigil, and praying for her infants in the hospital chapel late at night after visiting hours, with Gregorio constantly at her side. He had become the loving father he had never been before, and the devoted spouse he should have been to his wife. And the agony they were living enmeshed him more with Anya every day. He still planned to return to Benedetta, but he had no idea when, and he never mentioned it to Anya, given the constant terror they were dealing with.

He tried to call Benedetta more frequently than he had at first, but every day there was a new problem to contend with, another obstacle for the babies to overcome. They had named the twins Claudia and Antonio, and Gregorio had insisted on having them christened by the hospital priest, which the press discovered as well. Benedetta felt sick when she read it. Gregorio had a whole life now separate from her, with two children and a woman who should never have happened at all. And whenever he called her, all he could talk about were Anya and the babies, since they were the only people in his universe, sequestered in the hospital in Paris. Benedetta came to dread his calls, and yet he promised constantly to come back to her as soon as he could, which was now in the distant future, probably months away. He was being responsible to Anya and the babies, which some thought was noble of him, but he had a wife in Milan, whom he claimed to love and said he didn't want to lose.

And all the while Benedetta was left to cope with their business and their families and the paparazzi who besieged her in Milan. Weeks after the twins were born, the press was still chasing after her, and ran photos of her looking distraught, since they could get none of Gregorio, Anya, or the babies.

Gregorio's family was as upset as her own when they read the stories. His father was furious with him, and his mother called Benedetta every day, wanting to know when he was coming home, and all Benedetta could say was that she had no idea. The babies were in slightly better condition than they had been in when they were born, but it was too soon to know if they would live, or how damaged they might be if they did. His mother cried constantly on the phone, about the disgrace to all of them, and the shame, and Benedetta had to console her too. Her own mother said she never wanted to lay eyes on him again, and said he had betrayed them all.

Benedetta was so busy dealing with all of them that she hardly had time to think. And they had one business crisis after another to deal with. They had a problem at the mills with a run of silk, which impacted hundreds of garments they had to produce. One of their main suppliers had a fire in China that destroyed three factories, which meant they could not fill a major order for the States. And there was a dock strike in Italy, and they had goods trapped offshore.

Benedetta's life had become a constant round of agonies and problems she couldn't solve. She was the head of their design team, but with Gregorio out of touch in Paris, she had to shoulder his workload as well, and make all the difficult business decisions that he usually handled. Until now, they had been a team. One of his brothers tried to help her, but he had to handle issues at the mills, and couldn't take over Gregorio's role either. For all his lack of responsibility in his private life, Gregorio had a keen sense of business and could always turn a disaster around before it happened. But not this time. Benedetta felt as if she'd been hit by a tsunami when Valerie called her at the end of June. She didn't ask her for any of the details, all she wanted was to let Benedetta know she was thinking of her, and was sorry all of it had happened. And she had heard echoes of their problems at the mills, but she didn't mention that either. She could imagine that Benedetta had enough on her plate without inquiries from friends.

“I just wanted to tell you that we love you, and at some point the worst of this will be behind you, and it will seem like a bad dream.” It was all she could think to say to support her friend.

“It's a nightmare,” Benedetta admitted in a breaking voice on a particularly bad day. A container ship carrying goods they needed desperately had sunk in a storm off the coast of China. It was turning into a litany of disasters, and all of them landed on her. “Everything that could possibly go wrong has, and meanwhile he's sitting in Paris with that girl and their babies, and we can't even call him. He doesn't want to be disturbed. It's insane.” The whole situation was surreal, and Benedetta sounded as if she were reaching her breaking point. For the first time in twenty years, she felt that she no longer had a husband. He had cheated on her before, and they had lived through it, but it had never reached these epic proportions. The babies had changed everything, particularly given the crisis circumstances in which they were born.

“Has he said anything,” Valerie asked cautiously, “about when he can come home?” She assumed he was still planning to. He couldn't be stupid enough to leave his wife for a twenty-three-year-old Russian model, with or without twins. Gregorio was badly behaved, but he was no one's fool, and their respective family businesses were so intertwined that there would be no way of dissolving an alliance that had been in existence for more than a century. Doing so could destroy their business and their families', and none of them wanted that.

“All he says is that he can't leave Anya all alone in Paris, and she has no one to be with her. They still don't know if the babies will survive. There are problems with their hearts and lungs because they were so premature. It's all he talks about when he calls me. He acts like they're our babies, and he doesn't give a damn about the business.”

“I wish I could help you. You just have to hang in. Sooner or later he'll come back and return to his senses, and you can sort it out then.”

“That's what I keep telling myself. But who knows how crazy he is now? He's not making sense.” Benedetta sounded overwhelmed.

“Try to stay as calm as you can,” Valerie said gently.

“I'm trying,” she said with a sigh, “but it's not easy. I haven't slept in weeks. I just lie awake and worry about it every night.” And aside from the business she was running in his absence, she had the same worries as any woman whose husband has just had twins with a girl almost twenty years younger than his wife. She was beginning to think he might stay with her, and not come home at all. “What about you? Is everything all right in Paris?” She assumed it was. Valerie and Jean-Philippe had such an orderly life. They were the ideal couple, with three beautiful children, good jobs, wonderful friends, and a perfect home. They were everybody's role model, and Benedetta envied them. She didn't expect the response she got.

“Not exactly. We're having something of a crisis ourselves. Jean-Philippe has a big business decision to make, and it's going to impact my career as well. Or our marriage. I'm not sure which one yet. Maybe both.” Benedetta was shocked to hear it.

“I'm sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“No, we have to work this out ourselves. It's the first really big problem we've ever had.” Benedetta had lived through many bad times with Gregorio, and she was sorry for Valerie, but she had faith in Jean-Philippe to keep a level head.

“He's a good man. He'll do the right thing in the end. I have confidence in you both,” Benedetta said warmly.

“I wish I could say the same. I'm not sure which way the wind is going to blow on this one. And it's already taking a toll. But I didn't call to complain about my problems. I just wanted you to know that I'm thinking about you, and Jean-Philippe and I both send our love.”

“It's so humiliating to have the whole world know about this. I feel like such a fool,” she said, near tears again.

“You're not the fool, Benedetta. He is, for getting himself into this mess in the first place.”

“I look like an idiot for putting up with it. I just want things back the way they were. I don't even know when I'll see him again or when he's coming home.”

“It won't go on forever. It'll settle down, and eventually everyone will forget.” Valerie wasn't entirely sure that was true, in a situation this scandalous, but it seemed like the right thing to say.

“Thank you for calling me. It means a lot to me, and I'm sorry you and Jean-Philippe are having problems too. I'll say a prayer for both of you.”

“Thank you,” Valerie said with tears in her eyes. And when they hung up, both women wiped away tears. The men in their lives were causing them considerable grief. Even Jean-Philippe, who was usually a perfect father and husband, had destabilized their life and was upsetting Valerie.

And at the beginning of July, Benedetta had a less important decision to make. They were supposed to go to Sardinia with friends the following week, and she didn't know whether to go. She asked Gregorio when he called.

“How can you expect me to think of a holiday at a time like this? How can you even ask me? My son's heart stopped for several seconds today, and they had to massage his heart to revive him. Do you think I give a damn about our holiday in Sardinia on Flavia and Francesco's boat?” He sounded outraged and pushed over the edge. Benedetta burst into tears at the other end of the line.

“Are you serious? I've been living this nightmare with you. I'm running the business and dealing with dock strikes and disasters at the mills, a fire in the factories in China, the goddamn paparazzi who won't leave me alone because of you and your whore, and you act like an indignant father when I ask about our vacation? Why don't you just stay there with her? You are anyway. Never mind, don't worry about Sardinia. I'll decide for myself.” And with that, she hung up on him, and he called her back instantly and apologized for what he'd said.

“It's just such an upsetting situation here. You should see them, they're so tiny, they look as though they couldn't possibly survive, and Anya just isn't equal to dealing with it. I have to be here for her.” And he expected his wife to understand and sympathize.

“Of course,” Benedetta said in a dead voice. She couldn't listen to him anymore. On the one hand, he had instantly become the responsible devoted father, and on the other, he wanted her to understand how worried he was about the babies and their mother, which had nothing to do with her, except that all of them were ruining her life.

“I think you should go to Porto Cervo with Flavia and Francesco and relax. And hopefully by the time you come back, I'll be able to come home, at least for a while.”

“Are you planning to commute now between her house and mine?” Benedetta asked in an icy voice.

“Of course not. And Anya and the babies won't be able to leave Paris for months. It will be September or October before they can go home.”

“And where are you planning to be until then?” Benedetta asked him, and he said the same thing he always did now.

“I don't know. I'm just living from day to day.”

“So am I. And I can't run a business that way, or my life. You're going to have to figure out what you're doing soon.” She was tired of listening to him tell her that the babies were at death's door, as though that absolved him from what he was doing to her. And if he was going to stay with Anya, she wanted to know.

It was the first time she had said that to him, and Gregorio was shocked. “Is that a threat?”

“No, it's a reality,” she said quietly, but there was steel in her voice. “We can't go on like this forever. It's not fair to anyone. This was all going to be over when she had your babies, and you wrote her a big check and came home. It's very different now. Your babies may be damaged and may need your help for a long time. You don't seem to want to let go of her, and you're dignifying her as the mother of your children. There's no room for me in this story anymore.” She hadn't expected it to turn out like that, and neither had he. But he hadn't anticipated what might happen to the twins, or the bond it would form between him and Anya once it did. Somewhere between their birth and the weeks of sitting by their incubators, he had begun to have deep feelings for her that he'd never had before. He had fallen in love with her. But he loved Benedetta too and had so much history with her. He didn't want to let either woman go. He didn't say it to Benedetta, but she had sensed it for weeks. He was attached to Anya now in a way he hadn't expected to happen. He and Anya were partners now, while he still pretended to Benedetta and himself that he was coming home to her. He was making promises to both of them that he couldn't keep. He could only be with one or the other, not both. He was assuring Anya all would be fine, and telling Benedetta that he'd come home, and their marriage would survive, and resume as before.

“Of course there is room for you,” he said to Benedetta in a raw voice. “You're my wife.”

“That can be changed,” she said coldly. “I'm not going to live like this for long.”