“See you!” I say, matching her bright tone, and close the door, my heart thumping hard.
She’ll get me. It’s only a matter of time.
As soon as I get to work, I call Luke at work and get his assistant, Julia.
“Hi,” I say, “can I speak to Luke?”
“Luke called in sick,” says Julia, sounding surprised. “Didn’t you know?”
I stare at the phone, taken aback. Luke’s taken a sickie? Blimey. Maybe his hangover was even worse than mine.
Shit, and I’ve nearly given the game away.
“Oh, right!” I say quickly. “Yes! Now you mention it… of course I knew! He’s dreadfully sick, actually. He’s got a terrible fever. And his… er… stomach. I just forgot for a moment, that’s all.”
“Well, give him all the best from us.”
“I will!”
As I put the phone down, I realize I might have overreacted a teeny bit. I mean, it’s not like anyone’s going to give Luke the sack, is it? After all, it’s his company.
In fact, I’m pleased he’s having a day off.
But still. Luke getting sick. He never gets sick.
And he never jogs. What’s going on?
I’m supposed to be going out for a drink after work with Erin, but I make an excuse and hurry home instead. When I let myself in, the apartment’s dim, and for a moment I think Luke isn’t back. But then I see him, sitting at the table in the gloom, wearing track pants and an old sweatshirt.
At last. We’ve got the evening to ourselves. OK, this is it. I’m finally going to tell him everything.
“Hi,” I say, sliding into a chair next to him. “Are you feeling better? I called your work and they said you were ill.”
There’s silence.
“I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to go to work,” says Luke at last.
“What did you do all day? Did you really go jogging?”
“I went for a long walk,” says Luke. “And I thought a great deal.”
“About… your mother?” I say tentatively.
“Yes. About my mother. About a lot of other things too.” He turns for the first time and to my surprise I see he hasn’t shaved. Mmm. I quite like him unshaven, actually.
“But you’re OK?”
“That’s the question,” he says after a pause. “Am I?”
“You probably just drank a bit too much last night.” I take off my coat, marshaling my words. “Luke, listen. There’s something really important I need to tell you. I’ve been putting it off for weeks now—”
“Becky, have you ever thought about the grid of Manhattan?” says Luke, interrupting me. “Really thought about it?”
“Er… no,” I say, momentarily halted. “I can’t say I have.”
“It’s like… a metaphor for life. You think you have the freedom to walk anywhere. But in fact…” He draws a line with his finger on the table. “You’re strictly controlled. Up or down. Left or right. No other options.”
“Right,” I say after a pause. “Absolutely. The thing is, Luke—”
“Life should be an open space, Becky. You should be able to walk in whichever direction you choose.”
“I suppose—”
“I walked from one end of the island to the other today.”
“Really?” I stare at him. “Er… why?”
“I looked up at one point, and I was surrounded by office blocks. Sunlight was bouncing off the plate-glass windows. Reflected backward and forward.”
“That sounds nice,” I say inadequately.
“Do you see what I’m saying?” He fixes me with an intense stare, and I suddenly notice the purple shadows beneath his eyes. God, he looks exhausted. “The light enters Manhattan… and becomes trapped. Trapped in its own world, bouncing backward and forward with no escape.”
“Well… yes, I suppose. Except… sometimes it rains, doesn’t it?”
“And people are the same.”
“Are they?”
“This is the world we’re living in now. Self-reflecting. Self-obsessed. Ultimately pointless. Look at that guy in the hospital. Thirty-three years old — and he has a heart attack. What if he’d died? Would he have had a fulfilled life?”
“Er—”
“Have I had a fulfilled life? Be honest, Becky. Look at me, and tell me.”
“Well… um… of course you have!”
“Bullshit.” He picks up a nearby Brandon Communications press release and gazes at it. “This is what my life has been about. Meaningless pieces of information.” To my shock, he starts to rip it up. “Meaningless fucking bits of paper.”
Suddenly I notice he’s tearing up our joint bank statement too.
“Luke! That’s our bank statement!”
“So what? What does it matter? It’s only a few pointless numbers. Who cares?”
“But… but…”
Something is wrong here.
“What does any of it matter?” He scatters the shreds of paper on the floor, and I force myself not to bend down and pick any of them up. “Becky, you’re so right.”
“I’m right?” I say in alarm.
Something is very wrong here.
“We’re all too driven by materialism. With success. With money. With trying to impress people who’ll never be impressed, whatever you…” He breaks off, breathing hard. “It’s humanity that matters. We should know homeless people. We should know Bolivian peasants.”
“Well… yes,” I say after a pause. “But still—”
“Something you said a while back has been going round and round in my head all day. And now I can’t forget it.”
“What was that?” I say nervously.
“You said…” He pauses, as though trying to get the words just right. “You said that we’re on this planet for too short a time. And at the end of the day, what’s more important? Knowing that a few meaningless figures balanced — or knowing that you were the person you wanted to be?”
I gape at him.“But… but that was just stuff I made up! I wasn’t being serious—”
“I’m not the person I want to be, Becky. I don’t think I’ve ever been the person I wanted to be. I’ve been blinkered. I’ve been obsessed by all the wrong things—”
“Come on!” I say, squeezing his hand encouragingly. “You’re Luke Brandon! You’re successful and handsome and rich…”
“I’m not the person I should have become. The trouble is, now I don’t know who that person is. I don’t know who I want to be… what I want to do with my life… which path I want to take…” He slumps forward and buries his head in his hands. “Becky, I need some answers.”
I don’t believe it. At age thirty-four Luke is having a midlife crisis.
SECOND UNION BANK
53 Wall Street
New York, NY 10005
May 23, 2002
Miss Rebecca Bloomwood
Apt. B251 W. 11th Street
New York, NY 10014
Dear Miss Bloomwood:
Thank you for your letter of May 21. I am glad you are starting to think of me as a good friend, and in answer to your question, my birthday is October 31.
I also appreciate that weddings are expensive affairs. Unfortunately, however, I am unable to extend your credit limit from $5,000 to $105,000 at the current time.
I can instead offer you an increased limit of $6,000, and hope this goes some way to help.
Yours sincerely,
Walt Pitman
Director of Customer Relations
49 Drakeford Road
Potters Bar
Hertfordshire
27 May 2002
Mr. Malcolm Bloomwood thanks Mrs. Elinor Sherman very much for her kind invitation to Becky and Luke’s wedding at the Plaza on 22nd June. Unfortunately he must decline, as he has broken his leg.
The Oaks
43 Elton Road
Oxshott, Surrey
27 May 2002
Mr. and Mrs. Martin Webster thank Mrs. Elinor Sherman ver
y much for her kind invitation to Becky and Luke’s wedding at the Plaza on 22nd June. Unfortunately they must decline, as they have both contracted glandular fever.
9 Foxtrot Way
Reigate
Surrey
27 May 2002
Mr. and Mrs. Tom Webster thank Mrs. Elinor Sherman very much for her kind invitation to Becky and Luke’s wedding at the Plaza on 22nd June. Unfortunately they must decline, as their dog has just died.
Seventeen
THIS IS GETTING beyond a joke. Luke hasn’t been to work for over a week. Nor has he shaved. He keeps going out and wandering around God knows where and not coming home until the early hours of the morning. And yesterday I arrived back from work to find he’d given away half his shoes to people on the street.
I feel so helpless. Nothing I do seems to work. I’ve tried making him bowls of nourishing, homemade soup. (At least, it says they’re nourishing and homemade on the can.) I’ve tried making warm, tender love to him. Which was great as far as it went. (And that was pretty far, as it happens.) He seemed better for a little while — but in the end it didn’t change anything. Afterward, he was just the same, all moody and staring into space.
The thing I’ve tried the most is just sitting down and talking to him. Sometimes I really think I’m getting somewhere. But then he either just reverts back into depression, or says, “What’s the use?” and goes out again. The real trouble is, nothing he says seems to be making any sense. One minute he says he wants to quit his company and go into politics, that’s where his heart lies and he should never have sold out. (Politics? He’s never mentioned politics before.) The next moment he’s saying fatherhood is all he’s ever wanted, let’s have six children and he’ll stay at home and be a house-husband.
Meanwhile his assistant keeps phoning every day to see if Luke’s better, and I’m having to invent more and more lurid details. He’s practically got the plague by now.
I’m so desperate, I phoned Michael this morning and he’s promised to come over and see if he can do anything. If anyone can help, Michael can.
And as for the wedding…
I feel ill every time I think about it. It’s three weeks away. I still haven’t come up with a solution.
Mum calls me every morning and somehow I speak perfectly normally to her. Robyn calls me every afternoon and somehow I also speak perfectly normally to her. I even made a joke recently about not turning up on the day. We laughed, and Robyn quipped, “I’ll sue you!” and I managed not to sob hysterically.
I feel like I’m in free fall. Plummeting toward the ground without a parachute.
I don’t know how I’m doing it. I’ve slipped into a whole new zone, beyond normal panic, beyond normal solutions. It’s going to take a miracle to save me.
Which is basically what I’m pinning my hopes on now. I’ve lit fifty candles at St. Thomas’s, and fifty more at St. Patrick’s, and I’ve put up a petition on the prayer board at the synagogue on Sixty-fifth, and given flowers to the Hindu god Ganesh. Plus a group of people in Ohio who I found on the Internet are all praying hard for me.
At least, they’re praying that I find happiness following my struggle with alcoholism. I couldn’t quite bring myself to explain the full two-weddings story to Father Gilbert, especially after I read his sermon on how deceit is as painful to the Lord as is the Devil gouging out the eyes of the righteous. So I went with alcoholism, because they already had a page on that.
There’s no respite. I can’t even relax at home. The apartment feels like it’s closing in on me. There are wedding presents in huge cardboard boxes lining every room. Mum sends about fifty faxes a day, Robyn’s taken to popping in whenever she feels like it, and there’s a selection of veils and headdresses in the sitting room that Dream Dress sent to me without even asking.
“Becky?” I look up from my breakfast coffee to see Danny wandering into the kitchen. “The door was open. Not at work?”
“I’ve taken the day off.”
“I see.” He reaches for a piece of cinnamon toast and takes a bite. “So, how’s the patient?”
“Very funny.”
“Seriously.” For a moment Danny looks genuinely concerned, and I feel myself unbend a little. “Has Luke snapped out of it yet?”
“Not really,” I admit, and his eyes brighten.
“So are there any more items of clothing going?”
“No!” I say indignantly. “There aren’t. And don’t think you can keep those shoes!”
“Brand-new Pradas? You must be kidding! They’re mine. Luke gave them to me. If he doesn’t want them anymore—”
“He does. He will. He’s just… a bit stressed at the moment. Everyone gets stressed! It doesn’t mean you can take their shoes!”
“Everybody gets stressed. Everybody doesn’t give away hundred-dollar bills to total strangers.”
“Really?” I look up anxiously. “He did that?”
“I saw him at the subway. There was a guy there with long hair, carrying a guitar… Luke just went up to him and handed him a wad of money. The guy wasn’t even begging. In fact, he looked pretty offended.”
“Oh God—”
“You know my theory? He needs a nice, long, relaxing honeymoon. Where are you going?”
Oh no. Into free fall again. The honeymoon. I haven’t even booked one yet. How can I? I don’t know which bloody airport we’ll be flying out of.
“We’re… it’s a surprise,” I say at last. “We’ll announce it on the day.”
“So what are you cooking?” Danny looks at the stove, where a pot is bubbling away. “Twigs? Mm, tasty.”
“They’re Chinese herbs. For stress. You boil them up and then drink the liquid.”
“You think you’ll get Luke to drink this?” Danny prods the mixture.
“They’re not for Luke. They’re for me!”
“For you? What have you got to be stressed about?” The buzzer sounds and Danny reaches over and presses the entry button without even asking who it is.
“Danny!”
“Expecting anyone?” he says as he replaces the receiver.
“Oh, just that mass murderer who’s been stalking me,” I say sarcastically.
“Cool.” Danny takes another bite of cinnamon toast. “I always wanted to see someone get murdered.”
There’s a knock at the door, and I get up to answer.
“I’d change into something snappier,” says Danny. “The courtroom will see pictures of you in that outfit. You want to look your best.”
I open the door, expecting yet another delivery man. But it’s Michael, wearing a yellow cashmere jumper and a big smile. My heart lifts in relief just at the sight of him.
“Michael!” I exclaim, and give him a hug. “Thank you so much for coming.”
“I would’ve been here sooner if I’d realized how bad it was,” says Michael. He raises his eyebrows. “I was in at the Brandon Communications offices yesterday, and I heard Luke was sick. But I had no idea…”
“Yes. Well, I haven’t exactly been spreading the news. I thought it would just blow over in a couple of days.”
“So is Luke here?” Michael peers into the apartment.
“No, he went out early this morning. I don’t know where.” I shrug helplessly.
“Give him my love when he comes back,” says Danny, heading out of the door. “And remember, I’ve got dibs on his Ralph Lauren coat.”
I make a fresh pot of coffee (decaffeinated — that’s all Michael’s allowed these days) and stir the herbs dubiously, then we pick our way through the clutter of the sitting room to the sofa.
“So,” he says, removing a stack of magazines and sitting down. “Luke’s feeling the strain a little.” He watches as I pour the milk with a trembling hand. “By the looks of things, you are too.”
“I’m OK,” I say quickly. “It’s Luke. He’s completely changed, overnight. One minute he was fine, the next it was all, ‘I need some answers’ and, ‘What’s the point of li
fe?’ and, ‘Where are we all going?’ He’s depressed, and he isn’t going to work… I just don’t know what to do.”
“You know, I’ve seen this coming for a while,” says Michael, taking his coffee from me. “That man of yours pushes himself too hard. Always has. Anyone who works at that pace for that length of time…” He gives a rueful shrug and taps his chest. “I should know. Something has to give.”
“It’s not just work. It’s… everything.” I bite my lip awkwardly. “I think he was affected more than he realized when you had your… heart thing.”
“Episode.”
“Exactly. The two of you had been fighting… it was such a jolt. It made him start thinking about… I don’t know, life and stuff. And then there’s this thing with his mother.”
“Ah.” Michael nods. “I knew Luke was upset over that piece in the New York Times. Understandably.”
“That’s nothing! It’s all got a lot worse since then.”
I explain all about Luke finding the letters from his father, and Michael winces.
“OK,” he says, stirring his coffee thoughtfully. “Now this all makes sense. His mother has been the driving force behind a lot of what he’s achieved. I think we all appreciate that.”
“It’s like… suddenly he doesn’t know why he’s doing what he’s doing. So he’s given up doing it. He won’t go to work, he won’t talk about it, Elinor’s still in Switzerland, his colleagues keep ringing up to ask how he is, and I don’t want to say, ‘Actually, Luke can’t come to the phone, he’s having a midlife crisis right now…’ ”
“Don’t worry, I’m going in to the office today. I could spin some story about a sabbatical. Gary Shepherd can take charge for a bit. He’s very able.”
“Will he be OK, though?” I look at Michael fearfully. “He won’t rip Luke off?”
The last time Luke took his eye off his company for more than three minutes, Alicia Bitchface Billington tried to poach all his clients and sabotage the entire enterprise. It was nearly the end of Brandon Communications.