Lovers (70 page)

“I was hoping you’d make that decision.” Gigi sat back in the booth and folded her arms. The corners of her lips tilted upward in a tiny smile that seemed to promise danger rather than merriment. Her cheeks were flushed in the
oval of her face, but her eyelids were now lowered decorously over the cooking-apple-green of her eyes.

“Very clever,” he told her. “Low cunning, you gave up on the eternal points-versus-edges debate. And I fell for it.”

“Well?” Gigi was gently relentless.

“I don’t know,” Zach confessed, realizing that for one of the few times in his life he found himself without a ready point of view, an instant attitude, a fully formed judgment about what should happen next.

“Don’t you agree that we should talk?” Gigi asked in a small voice that managed to be simultaneously mocking and sweet, with a tart sweetness that left him needing to hear it again so that he could analyze why it was so strangely sweet, why it broke his heart and mended it again, in a breath.

“Of course we should talk. How’d you get into the screening, anyway?”

“My father. Is that what we’re going to talk about?”

“Why did you come?”

“Idle curiosity?”

“Nobody sits through over two hours of an editor’s rough assembly out of idle curiosity. Nobody sane.”

“You’re right,” Gigi admitted without false hesitation.

“So?”

“I could have been killing time. I could have wanted to sit in the dark and laugh and cry without making any noise so that I almost choked to death. I could have wanted to see you again …” She fell silent, considering the infinity of possibilities that could have brought her to the screening room.

“Killing time?” Zach inquired quickly before she found any more reasons.

“No.”

“Sitting in the dark?” he forced himself to ask, praying that she hadn’t developed a new passion for invisible weeping.

Gigi considered his question thoroughly. Finally, in an
indecisive, almost contemplative way, she said, “No, not that, I don’t think so, not exactly, anyway.”

“The last … the last thing you said?”

“I suppose it … might possibly … have been …”

“You wanted to see me.” He kept any inflection out of his voice.

“Logic would indicate that, yes.”

“How come?” Zach inquired with the utmost he could manage in nonchalance.

“Didn’t you want to see me?” Gigi asked.

“You know God damned well I did!”

“Why?” Gigi asked again, all flaming inquiry.

“Because I adore you,” he exploded. “Because I worship the ground you walk on, because I’d go through walls of fire for you, because I’d climb mountains of ice for you, because I’d swim oceans for you—because I love you insanely, not that you don’t know that! Boy, you’re tough!”

“Am I?” Gigi wondered. “I suppose I am, when I’m provoked, but you haven’t provoked me recently, have you?”

“Recently enough,” Zach said roughly.

“Maybe,” she said slowly, as if she were inventing each word as she went along. “Maybe—although it’s just about impossible to see how it could happen, all things considered, with so many things we don’t see eye-to-eye on—maybe I had some … silly … idea that we could make up our—”

“Gigi, darling
—” He moved quickly, trying to extricate himself from his side of the booth and get over to where she sat delicately picking his brain apart and kiss her into seeing reason.

“Stay right there, Zach Nevsky! Keep a table between us,” Gigi said in a voice that stopped him immediately. “We’ve got to lay down some rules or the same thing will happen all over again, and I couldn’t go through that twice.”

“Gigi, I’m different! This last year I’ve gone through
such unbelievable hell—there’s no way I could be the same person I used to be. I’ve gone over and over the things I did wrong, the way I tried to ride all over you, the terrible things I said—you
can’t
believe that I’m incapable of changing!”

“Not incapable … no, but fundamentally you’re always going to be in love with your work, there’ll always be a conflict between it and me. Isn’t that the way it is?”

Zach uttered a deep, reluctant sound between a groan and a sigh. He’d do anything within reason, anything beyond reason, to be with Gigi forever, but he wouldn’t lie.

“If that’s the sticking point,” he admitted painfully, “we can’t get around it. Without my work, I can’t imagine what I’d be.
I am my work
. It’s half the joy and meaning in my life. But, Gigi, you’re the other half, you’re
all
the other half.”

Gigi’s entire being, her whole mind and her heart, were concentrated on Zach, on his singleminded devotion to his art of directing. Here was a man, she thought, who was largely defined by his talents, a man born to take words off the paper they were written on and turn them into a form of reality that could move audiences; here was a man who believed totally in his power to illuminate and animate the vision of playwrights and scriptwriters, a man who had proven his abilities; a man who would always need to use his gifts. She had come to terms with Zach’s identification with his work.

“A man who doesn’t care intensely what he does could never interest me,” Gigi said slowly, choosing her words with care. “But, Zach, you can’t be so centered on your needs that you don’t realize that what I do is exactly as important to me as what you do is to you.”

“I do! I would—”

“Wait
. Don’t answer too quickly, Zach. I know that you’d make a valiant attempt to value my work if I made a lot of money at what I did, if I were a success in the eyes of the world. But what if I decided to go to college—I never have, you know—or learn Italian or … oh, make my
own pickles or play the piano or hybridize roses—what if that was how I wanted to spend my time? How much would you value what I did then?”

“I’ve had a whole endless year to ask myself exactly those questions. You were right when you called me a liar and a hypocrite when I promised that I’d take your job seriously—I couldn’t possibly have given you more than lip service. All I could see was that advertising took you away from me, and I tried to make it sound like something no intelligent person could possibly want to do. That was
contemptible.”

“It truly was.”

He looked at her unflinchingly. “Whatever you choose to do with your life will be as meaningful to me as directing a film. I promise you that with all my heart.”

“Then that’s one problem settled. One of several.” Gigi paused to see what he’d say next.

“Gigi, I could shoot myself for forcing myself on you and then … saying that you were asking for rape, that all you wanted was to get my attention.”

“That really stank. Even Ben Winthrop wouldn’t sink that low.”

“I can’t say I didn’t mean it at the time,” Zach said, determined to be honest, “only that I didn’t mean it a hundred percent.”

“What exact percent did you mean it?” she asked with disarmingly wicked interest.

“Too much. Even one-tenth of one percent was too much. How can I ever apologize?” he beseeched her.

“Forget it, you can’t. Just—don’t shoot yourself.”

“Gigi, I know I’m controlling, I’m manipulative, I’m overbearing, and I’m relentless about getting results.”

“You know all that? No kidding? Still … you’re not
all
bad.”

“I’m not?”

“You know yourself a lot better than you used to,” Gigi said gravely.

“A year of missing you almost twenty-four hours a day gave me a lot of time to think.”

“Why ‘almost’?” Gigi demanded.

“Sometimes I fell asleep—after I’d watched
The Way We Were.”

“The Way We Were?
Good Lord, I haven’t seen that in years,” Gigi said in amazement. “Zach, do you think that you’ll ever stop being controlling and all those other things?” Gigi asked quietly.

“Not … not basically. That’s what I am, that’s my character, it’s all part of a piece. If I weren’t sure of my point of view and didn’t need to make it prevail, I’d be doing something different, instead of directing movies. Maybe we’d both be making pickles, maybe we’d build a huge pickle empire together.”

“Not bloody likely,”

“Yeah, that’s going too far. But I promise you one thing absolutely. I will
not
behave like a director when I’m with you.”

“Do you truly believe you could be in charge of the universe on the set and then come home and switch all that off?”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” he said soberly. “I
know
I could. You’re not an actor. I’ll never again try to talk you into living the way I want you to live.
You own your life
. It’s as meaningful and important to you as mine is to me. I won’t make that mistake again.”

Gigi nodded soberly at his words. She could tell how deeply he meant them. “But,” she asked intently, “what about all those location trips that take you away for more than half the year?”

“I’d cut down. I can pick and choose my jobs now—so I’d simply stay close to home.”

“Or … I could come with you, once in a while. We could … oh, God … we could
compromise,”
Gigi sighed, hating to use the horrible word, but realizing it was only fair.

“Compromise?” Zach asked, startled. “You’d really be willing to compromise?”

“Not all the time,” Gigi amended hastily, “far from it, but I wouldn’t want you to turn down a truly wonderful script you were dying to do because it meant a few months of travel. Now and then, that is.”

“How could you get away from your job?”

“I’ve decided to freelance,” Gigi admitted. “Immodest as it sounds, I seem to be outrageously in demand. I’m never going back to a regular job. Whatever it takes to be a team player or a businesswoman, I don’t have it. I’ll work on my own things—and, oh, Zach—they can be just about anything I want!”

“You mean,” Zach ventured, looking at the clear presence of a multitude of possibilities in her eyes, “you could do your work anywhere?”

“Don’t get carried away,” she remonstrated immediately. “I want a real home, I don’t intend to be the female equivalent of the Ancient Mariner or the Flying Dutchman. And—now listen carefully to me, Zach Nevsky—there are two more things that you have to agree on. First, you can’t be available to needy actors every night of the week. I’m not prepared to share you on a daily basis with your groupies. It’s your own craving to tell people what to do that’s the problem. You’ve got to discipline yourself, cut them down to three nights a week, and throw them out by ten o’clock. I’d like to limit you to two nights a week, but I know you too well, so this is another compromise and I want full and grateful credit for it.
Continuing
credit … never take it for granted. And second, Zach Nevsky, if you invite people for dinner, I want to know about it well before they show up, and if they don’t know my name I’m throwing them out. Before they eat.”

“I agree to everything,” he burst out. “I’ll sign any document you want, in blood.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Gigi responded, trying to look away from the shape of his demanding, reckless
mouth, wringing her hands together to keep from putting them in his. “I trust your word.”

“What … what … name were you planning on using for dinner guests?”

“Gigi,” she said, allowing him to look into her eyes and see his destiny flower.

“Gigi Nevsky?” he pleaded, entreaty as strong as passion.

“It seems to have a certain … inevitability …” Gigi whispered, looking at him helplessly. How had she been able to exist without him for an entire year? The rapture of uncomplicated love was wearing down her defenses.

“May I please come and sit next to you now?
Please?”

“Oh, yes!” Gigi was prodigal with permission, unconstrained, blissfully released from the hard questions that she’d had to nail down once and for all before she could allow this difficult, miraculous, invasive man to once more take charge of her heart as he had so many years ago. Her first real love and, if truth be told, her only one.

“Darling, I’m taking you home right away,” Zach told her exultantly, in instant command of the situation, now that he knew she wouldn’t mind. “I love you so much I can’t—damn, you left your car at the studio.”

“No, I didn’t. My father picked me up and dropped me off.”

“You just … went out, like that,
without
a ride home?” Zach asked in disbelief. Nobody, absolutely nobody who lived in Los Angeles, would do such a wildly impetuous and reckless thing.

“What’s so strange about it?” Gigi laughed, with a gesture of noble negligence.

How long, she wondered, was it going to take before it finally sank in that he’d met his match? She had to give him another few weeks to figure it out for once and for all. Men took longer to understand certain things than women did, Gigi thought, so transfigured by love that she was prepared to be amazingly generous.

Zach swept her up in his arms and kissed her lips over and over in front of everybody in the crowded pizza place, provoking a rising storm of cheers, hoots, and whistles. Gigi finally heard them and kicked mildly, in half-hearted protest. Zach finally came to his senses and carried her off to his car. Lying safely cradled against the vast warmth and strength of his chest, she felt so incomprehensibly happy that it was too much to cope with all at once. She turned her mind to details, her head began to spin busily with plans for the wedding, a really small wedding, just Billy and Spider and her father and Sasha and everybody’s kids and Josie and Burgo and … oh, no!—Ma! She could manage Ma, Gigi told herself firmly. And now Sasha would be her sister-in-law as well as her stepmother. Sasha Nevsky Orsini and Gigi Orsini Nevsky? How on earth had that happened? Gigi dismissed the complications in free and airy jubilation. There were so many better things to think about.