Arm in arm, we proceeded up the grand staircase. I loved being with him here, but I was aware that it didn’t actually matter where we were, because I had to be dreaming, didn’t I?
We turned left, walked through a large wooden doorway, and then we were standing in one of the most beautiful rooms in the world. Enormous canvases of Monet’s water lilies covered the walls, surrounding us, taking us to a different world.
“Why do things this beautiful make me want to cry?” I asked Michael as I leaned into him. It was an unguarded question, one I’d never have asked of Hugh.
“I don’t know,” said Michael. “Maybe beauty, true beauty, is so overwhelming, it goes straight to our hearts. Maybe it makes us feel emotions that are locked away inside.” He blinked and gave a bashful smile. “Sorry. I’ve been watching Oprah again.”
I smiled back, delighted with this man who could actually laugh at himself. The exact opposite of Hugh: not Grant, not Jackman, not in my life anymore.
We walked around the spectacular room, filling our eyes and our hearts, not speaking for a few moments. After a while, it seemed that we both knew that it was time to leave.
“I’ll walk you home,” Michael said. “Do you mind?”
Did I mind? Of course I didn’t mind. “No, that’d be great,” I said. “It’s not far from here, over on Park. In the Seventies.”
“I know,” he said.
“How do you know that?” I asked, surprised.
He paused. “I just know, Jane. You know how I am. I just know certain things.”
As the afternoon turned into evening, the air got cooler, and the sky grew darker. We walked east, toward Park Avenue, but Michael didn’t hold my arm anymore, and I began to dread saying good-bye. I didn’t know if I could bear to. I knew I wouldn’t have a choice.
On 80th Street we passed an exquisite building. Through its glass doors, we saw that the lobby was filled with French antiques, the walls covered in gold leaf. In the middle of the lobby was a large enameled pot holding the largest gardenia bush I’d ever seen.
“Oh,” I said. “I love gardenias. Their scent. They’re so pretty.”
“Keep walking,” Michael said. “I’ll catch up.”
Nervously praying he wouldn’t disappear, I walked slowly, trying not to look back. A few moments later, Michael was back at my side, holding a single white gardenia. Its fragile edges were tinged with the faintest pink, and the scent perfumed the air all around us.
“How do you do that?” I asked.
“What? Get a flower for you?”
“No. Be so… perfect.” I inhaled my gardenia’s sweet scent, feeling suddenly close to tears.
Not responding, Michael took my arm again, and he felt familiar and warm.
We continued down Park Avenue, and I was trying to elongate every second, walking more and more slowly. But we couldn’t put off the inevitable, and then we were in front of my apartment building. “Evening, Miss Margaux,” said Martin, “Oh, and evening, sir.” Martin gave Michael a look, almost as if he’d seen him before, but that was impossible.
I was dying to ask Michael up, but it seemed too brazen, too presumptuous, too Vivienne. The only thing more awkward than the sudden silence between us was the polite handshake we exchanged. But I couldn’t let him just fade off into the night.
“Michael, I have to ask,” I blurted. “I’m sorry, but I have to. Are you going to go away again?”
Michael paused, and I felt my head filling with extreme pressure, as if my ears might pop. Then Michael took my hand again and smiled kindly.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Jane. I… I miss you already,” he said.
Thirty-nine
I HAD A FAINT SENSE that it was morning, and that I was waking up, and that something about my life had changed dramatically. Then I remembered Michael, and my eyes opened wide. Please, God, let it not have been just a dream, I begged silently.
Feeling fragile, like glass, I slowly turned my head toward my bedside table. There was my white gardenia, the one Michael had given me yesterday.
I touched the flower to make sure it was real—it was—and then I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. It hadn’t been a dream.
So this is how “happy” feels, I thought. The energy, the automatic smile. This is what it’s like to look forward to the day, to believe there could be good things coming. It was a new and different feeling.
Out in the kitchen, I poured myself a large glass of orange juice. My answering machine was blinking urgently at me, and I drank my juice and hit the Play button before it had a heart attack.
“Jane, it’s me. What can I say? I’m so, so sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I feel just awful about the car thing in Brooklyn. Call me and—”
Erase.
“Jane-Sweetie, I think it was a tad cavalier of you to skip lunch. I didn’t get to give you your kiss. And you know, Karl Friedkin is vitally important to—”
Erase.
“Jane-Sweetie, I was just thinking about that fourth-scene entrance in Thank Heaven. I don’t know what Hollywood hack you got to write this screenplay—”
Erase.
I didn’t bother with the other nine messages. I just pressed the Erase button.
I took a shower, letting it run colder than usual. The cold was invigorating, and I felt so alive, skin tingling, blood pumping. As I dried off, for once my eyes didn’t avoid the full-length mirror. You know, I wasn’t half-bad. My skin was fresh and rosy. My wet hair was thick and healthy. Was I overweight? Hell, no. I was voluptuous, with a woman’s curves. This is what a woman looks like, I told myself.
I slipped on pale purple silk panties and walked to the closet, already knowing that I wouldn’t be wearing any of my usual black skirts and shirts today.
I slipped on my favorite pair of soft, comfy, faded jeans. I pulled on a white blouse that I’d always liked. I hooked an old cowboy belt around my waist.
Now I was carefree and happy, comfortable in my own skin, for maybe the first time since I was eight years old.
Just before I left the apartment I held the gardenia to my face and smelled it.
Then I slipped on my new diamond ring and headed for the office.
Forty
“HERE ARE YOUR MESSAGES. Here is your coffee. And that jackhammer-like noise is the sound of your mother’s high heels coming down the hall.”
My secretary, MaryLouise, handed me a mug with a History Boys movie logo on it. I had loved the play and the movie, so there was hope for Thank Heaven, right?
“Mmm. Thank you. This is delicious,” I said, taking a big gulp of coffee.
“Good. I figure when they kick me out of here I can go work at a Starbucks.”
“Maybe both of us,” I muttered. “Baristas forever.”
I began going through the stack of messages. Not surprisingly, the vast majority were from Hugh, and his slimy agent, and his sleazy business manager. The three of them had managed to generate eleven separate calls. They could kiss my denim-clad butt.
“I didn’t even bother giving you the messages from—” The door flew open in the middle of MaryLouise’s sentence. Vivienne was standing there in full fury.
“Your mother. And may I present her now.”
Vivienne stood with both hands on her size-two hips.
It took all my self-control not to say, “Are you ready for your close-up, Miss Desmond?”
First, she gave me my morning kiss.
Then, it started.
“It is almost noon, Jane. Where the hell have you been? And for God’s sake, what are you wearing? Are you going to a rodeo?”
I continued riffling through the messages. There was nothing from Michael.
“I asked you a question,” Vivienne said loudly, leaning on my desk, so as to better get in my face. “In a very civil tone, I should add.”
“Have you got another Splenda?” I asked MaryLouise.
She nodded and opened a desk drawer.
My moth
er looked speechless for just a moment, but of course that was too good to last. She got her second wind as I stirred the Splenda into my coffee. “Well, I certainly want to hear where you were yesterday and yesterday evening,” she said firmly. “I called you so many times, I think I broke the redial button. You don’t have the common courtesy to return your mother’s call? Is your machine broken? Or is this some kind of teenage rebellion, twenty years too late?”
At my continuing silence, Vivienne changed tacks. “I heard about what happened with poor Hugh and Felicia and Ronnie,” she said, making it sound like “Hiroshima called. They said you bombed them.” “I don’t know what on earth is wrong with you. Do you know how angry they all are? And rightfully so. Because you happen to be stubborn, and you happen to be wrong. I know show business like you’ll never know it, and Hugh McGrath is perfect for that movie role. Without Hugh, there is no movie.”
“Why, thank you, Mother,” I said, but she didn’t get the Hugh-you confusion thing. I took another gulp of coffee and let the phone messages drop like confetti into the wastepaper basket.
“You’re lucky I’m here to do damage control,” my mother went on. “We’re going to have to meet with poor Hugh and his people at lunch. Call Gotham Bar and Grill. We’ll meet them down there at one. If they’ll let you into the place dressed like a cowgirl.”
I drank the last of the coffee.
“Are you finished, Mother?”
Her eyes blazed.
“First, I’m a grown woman. I was out yesterday. With a friend. Where we were is absolutely none of your business.
“No, my machine is not broken. But I was busy. This is not teenage rebellion, since, as I mentioned, I’m a grown woman. This is me, acting like a grown woman. I suggest you join me.
“Now, onto Hugh, not Grant, not Jackman, and the role in the movie. That discussion is closed. We will never ever talk about it again. Thank Heaven is my property. I got the funding. I got the studio involved. And I want someone better than Hugh McGrath. Do you hear me, Mother? I never want to discuss it again.
“So I’m afraid lunch with Hugh and his minions is out. I won’t respond to your critique of my outfit because I decide what I will wear, and I’m not really interested in anyone else’s opinions.” Except Michael’s. “And you know what, Mother? I think I look great.”
Vivienne gaped at me as if I had sprouted antennae. She sputtered and stammered for a few seconds, then turned around and stormed away, slamming my door first, then the door to her office down the hall.
“Will that be all?” MaryLouise asked.
“I think that about covers it.”
Forty-one
WHAT WAS GOING ON WITH HIM? More to the point, what was going on with him and Jane?
Hell if he knew.
Michael got into the shower and turned the water to hot. He was going to see Jane today. He felt nervous and excited and happy and kind of filled with dread, all at the same time. It was the most emotion he’d ever experienced, and he felt kind of sick, actually. He stayed in the shower for a long time, then wrapped himself in a towel, wiped the fog from the mirror over the sink, and began to shave.
Feeling as if he didn’t recognize the face in the mirror, he covered it with shaving cream and began swiping smooth tracks with one of those superefficient five-bladed razors.
And then it happened.
Something that had never happened to him before. The unthinkable.
He cut himself shaving.
First time ever.
A dot of red puffed near his chin, then mixed with the shaving cream to form a patch of pink.
He watched this phenomenon as if he were watching a miracle, like water suddenly gushing from a rock, or the dinner with the loaves and the fishes. He finished shaving, rinsed his face, and stuck a tiny piece of toilet paper on the bloody spot.
Incredible. A toilet-paper bandage! Another first.
He dressed quickly in whatever was clean and walked out into the hallway. He turned to lock the door behind him, just in time to catch Patty from the Olympia, sneaking out of Owen’s place.
“Hey, Michael,” she said, blushing prettily in an old-fashioned way. “You nicked yourself shaving, huh?”
“Hey, Patty. Yeah, I cut myself. Isn’t it something?”
“Um, I guess, sure. Well, gotta go. My mom’s staying with Holly. My little girl. I have to take her to school. Then off to work at the pancake factory.”
“Be careful out there,” Michael said. He wanted to point to Owen’s apartment and say, “Be careful in there,” but he didn’t.
Patty grinned. “Hill Street Blues. I loved that show. That’s what the sergeant always said, right? Later, Michael.”
He followed Patty down the stairs, but when he got to the street she was already gone. He hoped she’d be okay. He felt a little responsible, somehow. Maybe he shouldn’t.
Finally he started to focus on his own day.
He had no idea where he was going this morning, but he knew it had something to do with Jane.
“I cut myself shaving!” he marveled out loud, and got some funny looks from passing strangers. “Guess you had to be there.”
Forty-two
NORMALLY (IF YOU COULD SAY THAT), he had coffee and pastries with “friends” in the morning. But today he needed to see Jane again, to talk to her. At least one more time. So he took a long walk and ventured into the building where she worked, which had at first seemed like a good idea but now was starting to feel like a big mistake, one of a series. What was he doing here? What did he hope to accomplish?
“Hello,” the woman at the reception desk of ViMar Productions said, startling him out of his fugue. “You must be an actor, right? Do you want to drop off your résumé?”
Michael shook his head. “Why would you say that?”
“Uh, have you ever looked in a mirror?”
He was trying to decide what to say next when a scary image from the past came striding through the big red swinging doors behind the receptionist. It was Vivienne, and God, the woman was living testimony to the fine art of plastic surgery. How many tens of thousands of dollars had been spent to pull that skin into such taut smoothness? Talk about miracles: She hadn’t aged a day.
There was a touch of plastic-surgery shininess to the forehead; the cheekbones stood out a little too prominently. But she looked good. A little frailer, but still quite striking. And energetic, of course.
Vivienne focused on him. Michael knew that even though he had seen her a thousand times, she was seeing him for the very first time.
“Well, hello,” Vivienne said, turning on the full-wattage charm. “I’m Vivienne Margaux. I know all the leading men in New York. So why don’t I know you? Don’t tell me you don’t speak English.”
“All right, I won’t tell you,” Michael said, and smiled pleasantly.
“A million-dollar smile, too,” Vivienne said, extending her hand. Michael took it. It was soft and smooth. Good Lord, she’d even had plastic surgery done on her hands.
“I don’t know why our paths haven’t crossed before. But it’s a pleasure to meet you. Who are you here to see?” she asked, the smile never leaving her face, her head tilting to one side in a coy, schoolgirl manner.
“A friend of mine works here,” Michael said.
“Oh. Really? Who’s your friend? If I might be so bold.”
“I’m here to see Jane,” Michael said.
The smile disappeared. “I see,” she said. Just then, with perfect dramatic timing, Jane walked into the reception area.
She froze for just a second, surprised to see Michael at the office. Then a lovely, slow smile came across her face, and Michael couldn’t look away from her. She walked toward him and gently peeled the piece of tissue from his chin—as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do.
“He feels pain” was all she said.
“He does. And he bleeds.”
Vivienne spoke up. “I just met your friend, Jane-Sweetie.”
“Good,” Jane said. “What’s his name? He won’t tell me.”
“Michael,” answered Michael.
“Michael what?” Vivienne asked.
“Just Michael,” Jane said, and then she pushed the button to summon the elevator.
“Oh, like Sting or Madonna.”
“That’s right,” said Jane serenely. Michael could tell that Vivienne was burning for more information, but if Jane didn’t want to indulge her, he certainly wouldn’t.
“Ready for lunch?” Michael asked Jane.
“Starving.”
“Jane, you just got here,” said Vivienne. “We have meetings and phone calls—and this thing with Hugh is not settled.”
“Okay, bye,” Jane said sweetly, as if she hadn’t heard her.
The elevator doors whooshed open, and she and Michael stepped in.
As the doors closed, Michael said, “We almost didn’t make it out of there alive, Bonnie.”
“Almost, Clyde. But we did. Don’t look back. She’ll turn us into pillars of face powder.”
“I’ll try not to,” said Michael.
Forty-three
IF I COULD TAKE one experience in my life and make it last forever, I’d choose the moment that I saw Michael waiting for me in the reception area of my mother’s office.
Not seeing him at the St. Regis for the first time.
Not walking up Fifth Avenue with him.
Nope. It would be the moment at the office. Because that meant he was real. And it made everything else real: Yesterday at the St. Regis. Our museum field trip. The gardenia that he gave to me. It had all actually happened. Which probably meant there was a Santa Claus, an Easter Bunny, a George Clooney.
“Let’s get far away from here,” I said to Michael.
“Okay. Where would you like to go?”