“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” the saleswoman said as she delicately placed it on a piece of black velvet. The diamonds burned with an inner fire, and even when I was seven I could have told you that their cuts were perfection.
God, the ring was beautiful. So beautiful that it almost hurt my eyes. It hurt my heart, too.
“Try it on,” urged the devil’s handmaiden.
I slipped it onto the third finger of my right hand. Whew! I felt like a real grown-up. It practically made my wrist clunk down on the counter. It was truly, truly stunning. A Celebration ring indeed.
“It fits you perfectly. It won’t even have to be sized,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper.
I had been to Tiffany’s enough to believe that the man in the gray suit standing next to me, the man pretending to be looking at diamond rings also, was a security guard. Did I look suspicious? Dangerous? I could only wish.
“What’s the price on this?” I asked, feeling my heart lurch.
She whispered, “Thirteen thousand.” Somehow she made that number sound like an unbelievable steal.
I calmly said, “I’d like to buy it.”
As if she heard that statement every ten minutes, the saleswoman said, “Of course.”
I handed her my credit card and IDs. The transaction went quickly, and yes, Virginia, there’s a reason for that.
After reading my driver’s license, the saleswoman asked, “Are you by any chance related to Vivienne Margaux?”
“She’s my mother.”
The saleswoman let out a knowing “I see” and within a few minutes I was standing out on Fifth Avenue, the diamond facets on my hand catching the sun just perfectly.
I sneaked a look at my hand as I began walking downtown. I waited for the traffic light to change. I sneaked another look at my hand.
Then I glanced to my left.
There it was.
Just as inviting as Tiffany’s.
Thirty-three
“THE ST. REGIS! I love the St. Regis,” Claire said as she and Michael turned the corner of 55th Street and the hotel was revealed. He had picked her up at the place she shared with another model near Bryant Park. Then they had walked north on Sixth, then Fifth. He’d kidded that maybe he could buy her a little something at Tiffany’s: another weird Jane memory popping into his head.
“Are you rich, Michael?” Claire asked, laughing.
“In spirit only,” he said. Actually, all he had to do was snap his fingers, and he had most of what he wanted. Literally. Snap! And some cash would appear in his pocket. He didn’t know how it happened, but why fight it? Anyway, Michael’s needs were few; the simple life suited him best.
“Can we go in?” asked Claire.
“Absolutely. We love the St. Regis!”
And suddenly there it was, right in front of him: the Astor Court. Everything about the hotel restaurant seemed to have changed; and yet everything seemed exactly the same. Women in designer outfits, dads treating their kids to lunch, whole families attacking petits fours and Napoleons, tarts and crème brûlées.
“Will that be two?” the maître d’ asked.
“Please. Two,” said Michael, feeling his pulse racing just a little. Now, why would that be? It wasn’t as though he’d see Jane here. Not even eight-year-old Jane.
He and Claire were seated at an intimate table for four, and within moments someone swept away the two extra settings.
“This is fabulous!” said Claire. “Somehow I’ve never been here, after five years in New York.”
Michael smiled at her, glad he could give her this pleasure. His eyes examined every aspect of the room. It almost did seem to have been frozen in time. The music playing was “Love in Bloom,” the trolley was piled high with desserts, porcelain trays were full of tea sandwiches.
Except that there was no imaginary friend eating melon, no eight-year-old girl devouring coffee ice cream with fudge sauce. It was as if the stage had been set, but one of the most important characters hadn’t shown up.
Jane was missing from the scene.
What was he doing? Trying to recapture some of the happiest afternoons of his life. With Claire de Lune as a stand-in for a sad, brave, amazing girl who had kept his heart when he’d left her behind. He looked at Claire. “Is this okay?” he asked.
She beamed. “Of course! I love it, Michael! Any girl would. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a girl.”
He swallowed. “Yeah, well, I did notice that.”
Thirty-four
THE HEADY RUSH of spending a fortune on a ring that could be used as a spotlight from a space station was starting to fade, leaving me a little jittery. Like any self-respecting addictive substance. Now I desperately needed to relax, to calm down. And yes, since this was go-to-hell day, to eat dessert. The St. Regis was the perfect place for all of the above. I was hanging on by a thread: My ex-boyfriend was an egomaniac and a complete and utter jerk; my current mother was making me crazy, and had been for decades; I had just spent a huge sum of money on a ring I didn’t need. Beyond that, everything was just fine and dandy.
“Would you like to see a menu, miss?” the waiter asked.
How did he know I was a “miss”? Was it in my eyes? The way I held myself?
I needed to seize control. “No. I’ll just have iced tea,” I said virtuously. “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
Then my sanity returned. Virtuous, schmirtuous—too late. I was wearing a diamond ring that I had bought for myself. “Wait! Hold up. You know what? I’ll have the hot fudge sundae. With coffee ice cream.”
“A much better choice.”
I was enjoying shooting diamond laser beams all over the Astor Court when the waiter returned with my ice cream sundae. The silver dish was bigger than Hugh’s head. There was no way I could finish this whole thing—and ever hold my head up again in public, anyway. How had I managed to do it when I was eight years old? Maybe I had been a little pudgier than I remembered. Or no—much better—it had no doubt been served in a much smaller dish back then. Yes. That was the ticket.
The first luscious spoonful brought everything rushing back. It was all very Proustian, Remembrances of Guilty Pleasures Past and all that good stuff.
How I had loved those Sunday afternoons, here, with Michael, and at Tiffany’s, wherever Vivienne wanted to go, as long as I was included.
My mother and her friends would sit gossiping or doing business, and Michael and I would wander into our own little imaginary world. Was that the last time I had actually felt happy? If it was, then I was more pitiful than I wanted to admit.
I took another spoonful, this time making sure that the ice cream was accompanied by just the right amount of fudge sauce. This was so, so what I needed. This, and the honking big ring on my right hand. I wiggled my fingers, letting it catch the light.
Speaking of pitiful, since I didn’t seem able to avoid it, I had to admit that I still believed in my imaginary friend from childhood. What should that tell me about myself?
And then…
I blinked, looked away, and blinked again.
What the… ?
I had noticed a couple sitting just a few tables away. A nice-looking couple. In fact, a perfect choice for the Jane-and-Michael game.
But that wasn’t what was so shocking.
I put down my spoon, slowly wiped my mouth with a napkin, and really stared.
Suddenly my hands and knees were shaking, and my lower lip was quivering.
The man… ? It couldn’t be…
Michael?
I blinked my eyes rapidly again, like a cat in a cartoon. I started to perspire and continued to tremble.
“Michael” was with a very pretty woman with silky, minky dark hair. She was gorgeous, actually. One of those model-beautiful women who seemed like exquisite freaks of nature. Michael had always told me that he could be an imaginary friend only to children. Eight years old was the limit. That’s why he had left me on my ninth birthday. What, h
ad he gotten promoted or something? Could grown-ups have imaginary friends? If so, where was mine?
Or maybe… maybe it wasn’t Michael after all. I mean, of course it wasn’t Michael, who had been, after all, imaginary.
But it had to be. That smile was unmistakable. The amazing green eyes. He was as good-looking as ever, maybe even more so.
It crossed my mind that I was crazy.
Well, okay, maybe I would just run with that. What could I do about it now anyway? Call 911 on myself? It occurred to me: If I really was insane, then I wasn’t responsible for my actions. It kind of freed me up in a way.
I stood up from my table and headed toward them.
If this man wasn’t Michael… well, I’d throw my arms around him anyway. I’d probably kiss him. I might even ask him to marry me.
The day he left me, Michael had said I’d never even remember him. He’d been completely wrong about that. I remembered every single thing about him. And this was definitely Michael…
Unless I had gone completely insane.
Could go either way.
Thirty-five
“IF I EAT this entire ice cream sundae, (a) it will be all your fault, not mine, and (b) I will not be able to get into the clothes for my shoot tomorrow morning. And (c) I’ll be fired.”
Michael laughed. “Ah, the silver lining. Then you’ll go back to school full-time, graduate, and become a brilliant teacher even sooner.”
She took a bite of the ice cream, a big bite, and made a funny face with food in her teeth, the kind that only gorgeous models and small children can make without grossing people out. Actually, maybe only models. “Is that what you think I should do?”
“Of co——” Suddenly Michael was staring across the room.
“Earth to Michael?” Claire said. “Ground Control to Major Tom?”
Michael was still staring, and thinking, This can’t be happening. Cannot. Must not.
For a moment Michael panicked, then remembered that this was just a coincidence. She couldn’t remember him. They never did. They always, always forgot. That was what made it bearable.
He busied himself with his menu, eyes down.
Then he felt her standing at his table. Feigning nonchalance, he looked up.
Her blue eyes were huge, her lovely face pale. “Michael,” she said.
He didn’t answer her. He couldn’t put any appropriate words together yet. Or thoughts.
Jane spoke again. Not the little girl Jane, the full-grown woman Jane.
“Michael? It is you, isn’t it? Ohmigod, Michael? You’re here.”
Thirty-six
MY VOICE HAD COME OUT shaky and raspy, so that I almost didn’t recognize myself. I was on the edge of being very, very embarrassed. “You are Michael?” I asked again, thinking that if somehow I was wrong, I would have to turn and run.
He took a deep breath, and then he said, “You know me? Are you sure?”
Oh God, this might just be really happening. “Of course I know you. I’d know you anywhere…”
And then he said my name, just that. “Jane?”
The Astor Court is a large room, but it seemed to be closing in around me. The sound in the room was a little off too. Everything was suddenly unreal, to put it mildly. This couldn’t be happening, but clearly it was.
The beautiful woman with Michael was wiping her mouth with a napkin, and then she stood up at the table. “Ah, the mysterious Jane,” she said, but she said it kindly. “I have to go, Michael. Thanks for the ice cream, and the advice.” She gave me a smile, and I blinked, because she really was way more dazzling than I. “Take my seat. Please. Jane.”
Michael rose now, and I was afraid he was about to leave too. This time, I wouldn’t let him leave as I had when I was nine years old. This time, I would take him down in a flying tackle, right here in the Astor Court, if I had to. Right onto the Oriental.
But Michael pointed to the empty chair, “Please, sit. Jane. Jane Margaux.”
I sat, and then he and I stared at each other. It was like meeting someone out of your dreams, or fantasies, or a beloved character from a favorite book. How could this be? Any of it? There wasn’t a logical answer that I could think of. Good thing I had given up on logic when I was twelve and realized I was never going to marry Simon Le Bon. Michael still seemed to be somewhere between thirty and thirty-five. I saw the exact same recognizable pattern of freckles across his nose. His eyebrows, his ears, his hair, and finally, his eyes—they were all the same. Those beautiful green eyes, the kindest eyes I’d ever seen. I’d looked into those eyes a million times, and I was looking into them now. So incredibly green.
The next question couldn’t have been any more honest on my part, and it was something I desperately needed to know. “Michael, are you imaginary?”
He looked uncomfortable. “I guess that’s a matter of opinion.”
“What are you doing here? How can this be happening?”
He threw up his hands. “Honestly, I have no idea. I’m just in New York… waiting… for my next assignment.”
“Oh, so that wasn’t her?” I asked, leaning my head toward the exit.
“You of all people don’t have to ask that,” said Michael. “You know what I do, and it isn’t with grown-ups.” He frowned. “That didn’t come out right.”
“And you just ended up at the Astor Court? On a Sunday? And I wound up here too?”
He shrugged helplessly, looking as bemused as I felt. “Looks like it, huh.”
In a way, it was comforting that he seemed as confused by this as I was.
“Jane.”
I couldn’t believe it was him, Michael, saying my name.
“How did you remember me? That isn’t supposed to happen.”
“I don’t know,” I said, feeling a weird sense of calm coming over me. “You said I’d forget you, that I’d wake up and not remember you. But the next day I woke up and realized you were really gone, and it was like a safe had fallen onto my chest. I couldn’t get out of bed. I cried for days.”
Michael looked at me, appalled.
“I just… never forgot you. I’ve thought about you every day for twenty-three years. And now here you are, back again. It’s… unbelievable.” To put it mildly.
“I’m so sorry, Jane,” Michael said. “They just… always forget. I never would have caused you such pain if I could have helped it.”
I looked into his eyes, feeling an eight-year-old’s sense of hope. “Well, I’ll think of some way you can make it up to me.”
Thirty-seven
THE NEXT THING I was fully aware of was that Michael and I were walking up Fifth Avenue on a sun-drenched Sunday afternoon and it was like being awake in a dream. Oh, I don’t know what it was like, really. But it was incredible and exhilarating and confusing and disorienting.
When I was six or seven, I had known that Michael was funny and clever and really nice to me. But now, as a woman, as a grown-up, I realized there was so much more to him than that. For one thing, he was a terrific listener, which put him at the head of the pack of everyone I had ever dated.
He said, “Tell me everything. Tell me everything that’s happened to you since your ninth birthday.”
So I did, trying to make my life sound ever so much more interesting and exciting than it had been when I was actually living it. I found I loved making him laugh, and he laughed quite a lot during our walk together that afternoon. Once we were out on the streets of New York he became very loose and relaxed. And so did I. More or less. Sort of.
With a grown-up’s sense of awareness, I realized that Michael loved life and people. He could see the funny side of just about anything, and he was accepting of it, and not cruel. He could laugh at himself, and he counted himself among the ridiculous. I guess I would have to say that he laughed with people, not at them.
“So who was she?” I asked about the brunette back at the St. Regis.
“I don’t even remember another woman. What other woman?” Michael said,
smiling. “She’s just a friend, Jane. Her name is Claire.”
“And she’s a friend?”
“Not that kind of friend… or the other kind either.”
“And what’s that red mark on your neck? Vampire bite?” I asked. “Do I want to hear this?” Not that I was jealous. Of my childhood imaginary friend. God, I guess I had really, really cracked. Well, I was going to run with it.
“I do a little boxing,” he said.
“Huh,” I said, trying to picture it. “Well, I myself spar with my mother on a daily basis, so that’s another thing we have in common.” He threw back his head, and I laughed, and the piercing pleasure I got from that was almost painful.
This was definitely Michael, Michael from my childhood, but now that I was grown up I could enjoy him in a whole new way. His intelligence, the wit, and his looks… my God! There was even something sexy about his boxing, the bruise on his neck, in a totally unmodern, un-PC kind of way. His smile had always been contagious, always filled me with happiness, and it still was, and did.
Of course, even as my heart pounded with a sense of discovery, I left room for the possibility that he would disappear at any moment, that Michael would suddenly turn to me and say, “You’ll forget all about me, Jane. That’s the way it works.”
But it hadn’t happened like that. Maybe it wouldn’t again. I could hope.
“Oh, hey, there’s the Met,” Michael said. “It’s open for another hour.”
Was it less than twenty-four hours ago that I had spent one of the worst nights of my life in there? It felt like a year. But right now, I was eager to go back. Because with Michael, anything was possible.
Thirty-eight
“WHERE SHOULD WE GO FIRST?” I asked him, when we stood in the massive entry hall of the Met.
“I’d like to show you—” Michael began, then laughed self-deprecatingly. “I mean, I’m sure you’ve seen it, a million times. But I always wanted to see it with you. Okay?”
“Yes.” Frankly, at that moment he could have said, “I think I’ll eat a bunch of cat food. Join me?” and I would have said yes. Michael took my arm. It seemed a very natural thing for him to do, but it made me shiver and feel almost light-headed—in a good way. Except, of course, if I actually did faint dead away. That would be not so good.