Snowstorms in a Hot Climate (21 page)

“Don’t you want to know what happened?”

Every detail, I thought. “Yes,” I said.

“God, I’m not even sure I know myself. But I’ll tell you one thing, Marla. Something had changed, right from the first moment we met at the airport. I don’t know what it was, and I don’t even know if I can describe it, but it was like we were more careful with each other, not taking anything for granted, more separate, more like friends than lovers. He asked me how I was, and I told him I was feeling good and that I had something to tell him. And he said—I remember his exact words because they seemed so formal—‘Well, Elly, what a coincidence, because I too have things to say to you.’ So we drove into town, to this
quiet funky French restaurant where we sat and drank fancy wine and decided to part.”

“Just like that?”

“Yep, just like that. Incredible, eh? The joint, civilized decision. Or that’s how it felt. I did most of the talking. At least to begin with. Christ, I had my heart in my mouth for the first few moments—literally, it felt—I could hardly get the words out. But the longer I spoke, the more confident I got. You’d have been proud of me, Marla. I told him everything, just as I told you, only a little shorter and maybe a little sweeter. But the truth. I said I thought we were no good for each other anymore. That we pushed each other’s buttons. That loving him had got me caught up in his shadow until I didn’t know who I was anymore. And that even though I wasn’t sure where I was going, I knew it had to be away from him. And when I finished I felt OK. No, that’s not true. I felt more than OK—I felt great. As if I’d been walking round with this bloody great steel band clamped to my head, and now someone had released me. All I had to do was walk away from it. I had made the right decision. I knew it.”

Her eyes were shining.

“What did he say?” I still couldn’t quite visualize it, this torrent of words falling at the feet of His Serene Majesty. Compassion in the face of revolution. Something didn’t fit.

“At first nothing. Scared the shit out of me, facing this great yawning silence. I kept waiting for the anger to break. But then he smiled, took my hand over the table, and said, ‘You sound like someone I met once in Colombia.’ ” She winced.

Good old Lenny, I thought. Big city snake charmer.

“And then he told me he thought I
was
right and it was time for both of us to let go. And of course once he started talking, it was clear he knew it too. He said a lot of things that made sense. About the catch-22 we lived. How my independence had attracted
him; how he’d gone out of his way to undermine it; but how when he succeeded it wasn’t attractive anymore. God, he knew it all. We both knew it all.” A shadow passed over her face, “It’s just we couldn’t do anything about it.”

“Wait a minute. I don’t understand. Are you telling me that Lenny had come all this way to say exactly the same thing to you?” In the pursuit of pleasure one should never forget the quest for truth. It made no sense. Where were all those promises of soft summer reconciliations amid heather and history now? Or had they always been just an elaborate lie to explain a plane he should never have been on?

“No,” she said with a sigh. “That’s the whole point. He had come to say something quite different. He had come bearing gifts. But when he heard what I had to say, he knew it would be no good … that it was already too late.” She stopped and swallowed, frowning at the carpet.

“What gifts, Elly?” I prompted after a while. “What did he offer you?”

“England,” she said almost angrily. “Can you believe it, he offered me England. Home, a trip, a way of repairing the damage. The grand tour, beginning in the Highlands and heading south for tea with a few of the family. All a big surprise. He was going to spring it on me, just get me to an airport and, hey presto, flourish the tickets. But he got cold feet. Thought it might be too much of a shock. So he came to tell me, prepare me. And do you know what he asked? If I hadn’t perhaps guessed already. Guessed! Christ, how could I have guessed? It was the last thing I could ever have imagined.”

“And did you tell him that?”

She nodded hard but said nothing. I looked at her face, the trembling lower lip. Of course the idea had captivated her. Of course she had loved him for it. I had done the right thing in not telling her, even if it had been for the wrong reasons. I watched
her fighting back the tears. “Oh shit, I’m sorry,” she said fiercely. “I did this last night—sat dripping salt into my lemon sorbet, mourning lost chances.” She wiped her hand roughly across her eyes. For as long as I could remember Elly had never carried handkerchiefs. The Hyatt, however, like the Boy Scout movement, was always prepared. From the peach bathroom I plucked a handful of peach tissues. She blew her nose noisily, like a child, then mangled the remains of the tissue in her hands as she spoke.

“There was nothing more to say. We drank our wine and left. We’d eaten so little that even the chef came out to ask whether the food had been all right. Then we took a cab back here and went to bed.” She paused. I did not ask for details. Then she said, wearily, “And it was then, in the
omnes anima tristus
bit, that he asked me to go with him anyway. For old times’ sake. A way of saying good-bye. ‘Use it as a ticket home,’ he said. ‘You take the single, I’ll have the return.’ ”

I stared at a small smudge of mascara just under her left eye. A few more tears would wash it away. I waited and wondered what she was going to say next, whether if and when the earth moves it really can take with it a woman’s common sense and resolve.

She shook her head. “He made it sound so easy. But it was just a fairy tale. A magician’s last trick. I knew that really. So I told him that I already had my ticket home, via Paris with you. After that I had no plans, and could make no promises. Not anymore.”

“Well done,” I said softly. “How did he take it?”

She shrugged. “One hundred percent in character. Gold-plated Lenny. Said he understood, but that he would probably go anyway. He had always wanted to see Scotland, and there was a friend of a friend … the possibility of setting up another store in London—” She broke off with a sharp little laugh. “My God,
I should have known. Always a subtext to everything. I suppose it was reassuring to discover that under all the sweet-talk Lenny was still Lenny. So we left it at that. The star-crossed lovers fell asleep for almost the last time. In the morning I called you, and here we are—two single women, footloose and fancy-free with Gay Paree on our social horizon. What could be simpler than that?”

What indeed? Elly had made her decision and taken control of her life. Mission accomplished. Nothing else mattered. There were no longer any secrets to conceal. What Lenny did now was his own business. Not hers, not mine. An eye for an eye. One thing was sure. There would be no grouse chasing in the Scottish Highlands for him. I was glad not to know the details. What wasn’t known couldn’t be withheld.

“How do you feel?”

She grimaced. “It’s a bit like pulling teeth—I think I’m still under the anesthetic.” She screwed up what remained of the tissue and lobbed it at the wastepaper basket. It missed.

“So, what now?”

“I’ve got one last obligation. I have to go back and sort out the store. I owe him that much. It won’t take me long. Four or five days, then Indigo can take over till he decides what to do. But you don’t have to come. You could go straight to Paris. Or check out a little more of America. I’m sorry, it hasn’t exactly been the greatest of vacations. You could always stay here. Soak up some sun.”

I smiled. “And what would I do, lying frying on a California beach on my own?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Why don’t you ask J.T. to join you?” she said, with admirably concealed mischief.

“Because two silent people do not a conversation make,” I retorted just a little sharply, remembering the hours between
four and six that morning. “What about Lenny? What are his plans?”

“He has some business here, then he’ll come back to New York. I suppose we’ll spend the last few days together. Maybe go up to Westchester. It sounds corny, but I’d like it to end well. But you know you’re always welcome, I—”

“No. No thanks. There’s someone I want to visit in Boston. I’ll go there and join you later.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.” And I was. After all, I had won. I could afford to be generous.

D
ownstairs in the Tudor bar, wasp-waisted wenches in freely adapted Elizabethan costumes were revving up for the evening trade. But Lenny was drinking alone. J.T. had gone. I subdued a small flash of panic. Elly was upset. Lenny, I noticed, was interested in her distress. I kept my feelings on the matter strictly to myself.

“But I wanted to say good-bye,” she said with a hint of petulance.

“So wait till he gets home and call him.” Lenny sounded almost amused.

“It’s not the same.” Pause. “Did you tell him?”

“Tell him what?”

“About us?”

“No. Why? Did you want him to know?”

“Oh … I don’t know …,” she faltered. “I just thought. I mean we had some good times together, all of us. Maybe he’d like to know.”

“Yeah, maybe he would.”

It was not necessarily a sarcastic remark. I had been playing
the wallflower, keeping my eyes fixed firmly on the fake oak table leg. Now I risked a glance upward. And ran straight into steel blue eyes. Without J.T.’s broad shoulders, the world seemed suddenly very full of Lenny.

“How about you, Marla?” He smiled. “Are you feeling deserted too?”

“Hardly,” I said lightly. “He always made it clear his first priorities were his chickens.”

“How right you are.” That seemed to please him. “Well, ladies, since this is, in all manner of ways, an exceptional occasion, I’d say a celebration was called for. I suggest a stroll in the park—take in the evening air—then perhaps a trip across the bay for a little Sausalito seafood. Unless, of course, you two would prefer to dine alone?”

So Lenny had taken her leaving in his stride, had he? This time the razor edge broke through the skin of his charm. She felt it too. “Don’t be ridiculous, Lenny. Of course we’ll go together.”

I shook my head. “Only on one condition.”

That turned both heads in my direction. When I had my audience, I addressed him. “That I pay for the meal.”

Elly winced. Lenny smiled. “Marla, I’d be delighted to be your guest.”

We took a cab to the park. It was a balmy early twilight. For once there was no chill wind coming off the bay, and the gardens were still full of people. There had been some kind of concert or performance that afternoon, and the crowds had lingered on in the sunshine and flowers. There were a lot of bodies on show, most of them brown and many of them beautiful. As befits the city’s reputation, the flesh exposed was more male than female. The pace was lazier than Polk Street, but it was still a parade-ground, a place to see and be seen. It was a strange experience, coming into a world where the roles were so suddenly
and specifically reversed. Here the trade was exclusively male. Being with Lenny was a little like owning a prize racehorse at a track meeting; he turned heads as a matter of course. He seemed supremely unaware of it all. This cannot have been the first time he had tasted the triumph of his bisexual beauty, and he accepted it almost as his due. I admired his detachment, but found it despicable at the same time. There was something monstrous in his confidence.

Outside the park we stood waiting for a cab. On the notice board by the gates, a flurry of colorful posters announced forthcoming attractions. Elly stopped to read them.

“Hey, the Klondyke Klan,” she exclaimed. “Didn’t we see them once, Lenny? Weren’t they the group from Oregon who all live together and train their kids to join the circus too?”

“Uh-huh.” Lenny’s response was casual, but the look he gave her was not. She was already talking to me. “Oh, you should have seen them, Marla. They were great. No animal acts or stuff like that. Just real circus skills. And they had this incredible finale, about twenty-five of them, all onstage, juggling to a speeded-up version of the Saber Dance. Brilliant. They were talking of doing a world tour, weren’t they, Lenny? Did it ever come off?”

“I don’t know,” he said carelessly, as if he was thinking of something else entirely. Across the road a cab pulled up to let out a fare. I stepped out from the sidewalk, and we heard no more of the Klondyke Klan.

An hour later we sat looking out over a picture postcard of the Golden Gate at sunset. All that was missing was a dry-ice cloud to elevate it to heaven. I was unimpressed. There had been too many stupendous views recently. I was gorged on beauty and suffering panoramic indigestion. Maybe it would not be so bad to sit on top of a London bus and watch concrete streaked with bird shit. At least there you knew your enemies. Here there were snakes in every canyon. Even in the cities.

On the other hand, the meal was going well, despite the echoes of that first evening in the East, an occasion where the power structures had been so different. Then I had been the stranger, allowing myself to be wooed. This time I made the running, filling the air with chatter, because silence felt secretive and I wanted to make it clear I had nothing to hide. Lenny seemed content to let me control the show. I did the ordering and chose the wine and, when the waiter poured it into Lenny’s glass to taste, he handed it back to me with exaggerated ceremony. Any tension that there was—and there was—could easily be explained by the circumstances.

For her main course Elly chose salad, declaring that after Nepenthe she associated lobster with bad dreams. The waiter presented her with a plate the size of a small tray and guided her toward a salad bar where someone had expended a good deal of energy doing extraordinary things with vegetables. Knowing Elly’s appreciation of art, I knew she would take her time. For the first time since that morning in New York, Lenny and I were alone together. It was like the silence in the marriage ceremony when objections are called for—that dreadful compulsion to speak, combined with the terror of what you might say—“If anyone knows any reason …” Lenny did.