The Carlton Club (41 page)

Dear Eric, Sorry about last night. Maybe tonight?
No.

Eric, There’s coffee in the coffee maker
. Of course there is. He doesn’t need to be told.

Eric, Here’s a key to the apartment
. Too pushy.

Dear Eric, You are cordially invited for dinner tonight
. Assuming I get home on time.

“Good morning,” he said. He was fully dressed, but unshaven, his hair hand combed. “What are you doing?”

Leslie looked at the crumpled sheets of paper on the table. And the still shiny extra key. James’s key.

“Good morning. I was writing you a note. Trying to,” she said, smiling at him, so glad to see him, so happy about the way he looked at her.

“It’s hard to write me a note?” he asked, moving beside her, resting his hand on her shoulder.

“It is. I don’t really know you,” she said.

“You know I want to see you tonight.”

Leslie reached for his hand, their fingers interlocking instinctively.

“Why don’t I drive you to work? I have to go to my place to clean up anyway.”

“You’d have to pick me up,” she said, her heart pounding. It would be nice to have him drive her to work. It meant they could be together a little longer.

“I don’t have anything else to do all day. Except maybe make my famous chicken cacciatore,” he said, amazed at what he heard himself say. Eric couldn’t remember a weekend when he hadn’t worked most of each day. At least, not since Bobby. He hadn’t really cooked for months, years, but today all he wanted to do was putter around her apartment, cooking for her, waiting for her to call.

Eric smiled. He was looking forward to the day. It made him feel full of hope.

Leslie gave him the extra key to her apartment. He held her hand as he drove her to the hospital.

“Just pull in here,” she said, pointing to the emergency room entrance. It was the safest entrance. It was guarded by police officers.

“I’ll be back at your apartment in about three hours,” Eric said.

“I’ll be here for at least six.”

Eric smiled, leaned toward her and kissed her on the lips. His lips were soft, smooth and warm, surrounded by the roughness of his early-morning beard. It was meant to be a brief, goodbye kiss. But it was their first kiss. It lingered, until, suddenly, Leslie remembered where they were.

She pulled away then, gently, reluctantly. She looked into his eyes and trembled as she saw his desire. She whispered softly, “I’d better go.”

“Have a nice day,” he said, like a husband to a wife. It was the comfortable goodbye of a longstanding relationship, a relationship that had a history and would last forever.

It felt wonderful.

“Is that your famous chicken cacciatore?” Leslie asked, inhaling deeply as they walked into her apartment at six that evening.

“It needs a little more time. Do you want a drink?”

Leslie smiled. He was so at home in her apartment.

“Sure. Thanks. I’m just going to change out of my work clothes.”

Leslie returned in ten minutes.

“You made the bed!” she exclaimed.

“I’ve had a wonderfully domestic day,” Eric said as he handed her a drink. I’ve never had a day like this, he thought. And it’s even better now. Perfect now. Because you’re here. “I know your apartment very well.”

“A little uninspired, isn’t it?” she asked, knowing that it didn’t matter to him, that he understood how busy she was. He knew she spent most of her life at the hospital, not in the small, bland apartment.

“Who is James?” Eric asked.

“James?” she repeated, her heart stopping for a moment.

“
James
1971
. The drawing.”

“Oh!” Relief pulsed through her. Eric had simply noticed the one
inspired
item in her apartment: James’s drawing of the deer in the meadow. “Someone I knew in high school.”

“It’s very good.”

“Yes,” Leslie agreed. Then she added with finality, eager to leave the subject of James squarely in the past, “He was a talented boy.”

“My place is uninspired,” Eric said, realizing for the first time that although his penthouse was stylishly and expensively decorated it lacked personality. It was a sterile showcase not a home.

“Not really,” Leslie began. It was hard to imagine.

“Really. You’ll see. It’s all on a grand scale. The top floor of a condominium building in Pacific Heights. State of the art
Architectural Digest
. But,” he said slowly, “it’s just a place to sleep.”

“This is just a place to sleep, too,” Leslie said. Unless you’re here, she thought. Then it transforms.

“No. This is a place to make chicken cacciatore and read
Moby Dick
and laugh and—” Eric stopped, distracted by her bright blue eyes, wondering how much he should say.

“And?” she asked innocently. She had no idea what he had been about to say; but she wanted to hear it. She wanted to hear all his thoughts. She wanted to know everything about him.

“And,” Eric continued, honestly, gazing at her, “fall in love.”

“Oh!” she said, startled, unable for a moment to hold his gaze. Then she looked at him again and murmured meaningfully, quietly, “Oh.”

“Oh?” he repeated gently.

The kiss began then, in the small kitchen in Leslie’s apartment. It was a long, deep warm kiss that made her mind swirl and her whole being tremble. The kiss continued, in leisurely sensuous moments, as they ate dinner, becoming wine flavored as they drank the Robert Mondavi chablis. It continued after dinner, gaining intensity and urgency, as they washed the dishes, whispering, laughing softly, touching.

“Shall we go to bed?” Leslie asked finally, sighing softly.

“I don’t want to push you, Leslie.”

“You’re not pushing me,” she said seriously to his concerned and passionate eyes.

“Without even asking I’ve just . . .”

“Made yourself at home? It’s OK. No, it’s
wonderful
. You belong here,” Leslie whispered, knowing it was true.
Whoever you are.

“Oh, darling Leslie, where have you been all my life?”

They made love slowly, discovering each other, lingering over each new discovery. It was a slow, leisurely lovemaking that celebrated the beginning of forever, their forever. There was no need to rush—until the sensations became too demanding, too intense, too undeniable—no reason not to savor this, the first of an infinite number of moments of pleasure. A lifetime of pleasure and love lay ahead for them.

They both knew it as their lips, their eyes, their hands and their flesh affirmed the knowledge quietly, passionately.

Over and over.

“What are you thinking about?” Robert asked.

Charlie stiffened a little at the sound of his voice and continued to gaze out the window at the Pacific Ocean five miles below. In an hour they would land in San Francisco. Tomorrow Robert would return to Philadelphia, and she would return to work and report the tremendous success of the trip to Eric.

These past ten days would be a memory, a dream that had seemed so real at the time but faded quickly under daylight’s scrutiny. In an hour she would wake up and return to the bright, harsh lights of reality. It would be over.

She was thinking, when Robert asked, how easy it had been to be with him. They had had so much fun touring the palaces and shrines and museums, walking for hours through fabulous gardens, dining at the finest restaurants in the Orient, while laughing, talking the learning about the culture. Learning about each other. She was thinking how wonderful he had been during the negotiations. She was in charge, but he was there, watchful, supportive, communicating with her through his eyes.

Charlie was thinking, when he asked, how much she would miss him.

“What, Robert?” she asked, turning to him.

“You’ve been staring out the window for the past hour, thinking, I assume, since your mind is never idle. I wondered what you were thinking about.”

“Everything,” Charlie said.

“That’s what I thought,” he teased. Then he continued seriously, “Were you thinking about the mystery lady?”

Charlie smiled. She hadn’t really been thinking about Eric or the woman that had caused him to cancel the trip. Charlie hadn’t thought about either of them for days.

“I wasn’t, really. But we will know more, soon, won’t we?”

“Maybe. Although I expect Eric will be very cautious. This time,” Robert added carefully.

“This time? As opposed to?”

“The only other time he fell in love. With you.”

“He wasn’t cautious then?” Charlie asked, knowing the answer. Neither of them had been cautious.

“No. He didn’t know it. None of us did. You were so young, so much had happened to you, so many unresolved questions. You were grieving for your mother, trying, by yourself, to understand her inexplicable death. And her inexplicable life. We all underestimated the emotional toll that it was taking on you. You hid it so well. None of us had really experienced a tragedy.” Robert’s voice faded.

Until Bobby, Charlie thought.

“So I wasn’t emotionally equipped to fall in love?” she asked after a moment. She wanted to know what Robert meant.

“Equipped, of course. Probably better equipped than most sixteen year olds. You had learned a lot about love from your mother. Prepared, no. Ready, no. Not until you got the answers that you needed.”

“Which I did, finally, four years later at Christmas. Do you think,” Charlie asked slowly, “that Eric and I could have made it then? If Victoria hadn’t gotten pregnant?”

“I think so, don’t you?” he asked, looking carefully into her thoughtful eyes.

“I think so, too. It felt different, I felt different, for the two months that we had after that Christmas.” Until the call from Victoria that changed everything. Charlie stared out the window, her eyes unfocused, seeing something that wasn’t there. Something that used to be there but was no longer. “But now, as close as we are, as much as we care about each other, so much has happened. Too much.”

“You didn’t intentionally hurt each other.”

“No. We didn’t.”

“But you were hurt. You both were,” Robert said. He looked at Charlie then asked a question he had wanted to ask for the past ten days. “Will you be all right if Eric falls in love?”

“I think he already has. I seem all right, don’t

I?” she asked lightly, uneasily. I’ve been all right for the past ten days, she thought. How will I be tomorrow? How will I be when this dream is over?

“You are a survivor, Charlie. You always have been.”

“What about Florence?” Charlie asked quickly, wanting to change the subject.

“Florence?” Robert repeated, surprised.

Victoria and Eric had not been the only Lansdale couple to get divorced following Bobby’s death. Robert’s and Florence’s marriage, already having outlived its viability and held together in large part by their love for their grandson, crumbled quickly.

“Will it bother you if she falls in love with someone else?”

“No! It would make me happy, assuage a little of my guilt.”

“Guilt?”

“I was never in love with Florence. We got married because of Eric. We stayed together because of Eric and June. It wasn’t unpleasant. Florence was, is, a loving, protective mother.”

“A mamma bear protecting her cubs.”

“She wasn’t very nice to you,” Robert admitted, his brow furrowed, wondering if Florence had done any damage to the confused, tormented sixteen year old orphan.

“Florence was never unkind to me,” Charlie said emphatically. “A little indifferent, but never unkind. I know I made her nervous.”

“You did. Your effect on Eric did.”

“Do you know my most vivid memory of Florence?” Charlie asked, nodding to the stewardess who was checking to be sure that seat belts were fastened for the imminent landing in San Francisco.

“No, what?”

“She threw pennies away,” Charlie said seriously, still bewildered by the memory. “I watched her clean a kitchen drawer once. She just tossed the pennies in the trash.”

“I used to be afraid of Orion,” Janet said, looking up at the stars that glittered above the cottage. It was a balmy August night. The black, moonless sky sparkled with stars, brighter and more plentiful because there were no city lights to compete with their brilliance.

“Afraid of Orion?” Ross asked.

“I didn’t know that he was a constellation. I just knew that he was out there, up in the sky, a huge, ominous hunter. I was afraid he would come after me. I used to hide under the covers when I knew he was out,” she said thoughtfully. It was a silly memory, but it recalled the fright—her fright—of a four year old child.

“I keep forgetting how timid you are,” he said gently, kissing her hand.

“Timid,” she mused.

“Personally timid, professionally bold. It’s a beguiling combination.”

“Have I beguiled you?” she asked, holding his hand against her lips.

“You know you have.”

“Timid, Nebraska country girl and sophisticated city playboy.”

“Playboy?”

“That’s what they say.”

“
They
don’t say that anymore, do they?”

Ross and Janet had been living together for two months.
They
knew it.

“No.”

“Playboys grow up. At least,” he said, pulling her gently, leading her off the porch toward the bedroom, “this one has. Come with me. I’ll protect you from Orion.”

They began to make love the way they had made love since that first night in March. The only way that Janet knew how to make love: traditional, exciting, timid.

That night Ross did something different. He moved down her body, kissing her breasts, then the hollow of her stomach beneath her ribcage, then her navel, then the firmness of her lower abdomen, then—

Janet’s body stiffened. She curled her fingers in Ross’s blond hair, stopping him.

“Ross, please.”

Ross sat up slowly, heavily. He had found another obstacle. Another hidden secret that she hadn’t, wouldn’t, tell him. Something that pushed them apart just when he had been feeling so close to her.

It was something to do with Mark, an intimacy between Mark and Janet, not to be shared with him.

“What, Janet?”

“I don’t—”
know what you’re doing
, she thought. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. She saw the anger in his eyes. Why was he angry?

“You don’t want me to make love to you?” he asked bitterly.

“Yes! It’s just—”

“That some things are off limits? Reserved for someone else? Like your feelings?”

“Ross,
no
. What are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” he said with carefully controlled rage as he dressed, “that you can’t just give little parts of yourself. We’re in much too deep for that. I’m in much too deep. Maybe you aren’t in this relationship at all.”

“Ross, where are you going?” The fright in her voice almost stopped him. Maybe it was something else. Maybe it wasn’t Mark, a memory of Mark.

“I’m leaving. I’m going to my place in the city,” he said, emphasizing his use of my. In the past months he had called his condominium in the city
our
place, but tonight they weren’t sharing. They were separate. Again.

“Ross,” she whispered to his back, tears of confusion spilling from her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“This every sixth night call is almost livable,” Eric said.

Leslie curled against him on the sofa. The past six weeks, since she had simultaneously left San Francisco General Hospital and become an R-
3
, had been wonderful. They spent five of every six nights together. Even when she got home late, after her on call night, he was there to tuck her into bed, to crawl in with her and to make love with her when she awakened in the middle of the night or in the morning.

Even on the nights when Leslie was rested they stayed home. They preferred to cook dinner together, alone, than to share each other with the world. They read
Moby Dick
aloud and talked and went to bed early.

“Mmmmm. Livable. But not the real world,” Leslie said.

“Aaah. The work issue,” he said, kissing her hair. They had discussed this before.

“Now, if you would alternate reading chapters about our friend the great white whale with reading selections from my stack of the unread
New England Journal, Annals of Internal Medicine,
and
American Journal
, I would be a happy and well-read resident,” she said, frowning at the stack of ever accumulating literature that needed her attention.

“And what will you do while I’m studying contracts, financial reports, land surveys, blueprints?”

“I’ll take a nap or a bubble bath. Or I’ll just watch you.”

“Very helpful,” he teased. Then he said seriously, “Do you think we can work effectively under the same roof? Or are we going to have to enforce time apart?”

Leslie knew that before he met her Eric often spent his nights and weekends working. He had to. He had that kind of job. And that kind of personality. So did she. They both had careers that came home with them, went to sleep with them and woke them up in the middle of the night. They always would.

“We have to be able to work under the same roof,” she answered seriously. It had to become part of the life they were building together, part of making it livable, part of making a forever.

“I know, darling. And we can. Workaholics can conquer all obstacles, even passion. We start this weekend.”

“Right. Let’s discuss the ground rules. Can we touch while we’re studying?”

“Touch?”

“Just feet, maybe?”

“Maybe.”

“Good,” she said, kissing him. “Why don’t we start the weekend after next?”

The telephone interrupted what might have led them into the bedroom for the night.

“Who could that be?” Leslie asked, pulling away.

“Anybody. It’s only seven-thirty for the rest of the world. Even though it’s our bedtime.”

“Hello?” she answered, laughing.

“Hi, Les, it’s Janet. Am I interrupting?”

“Janet, you sound upset,” Leslie said quickly. She hadn’t heard such flatness in Janet’s voice since the October night that Mark left. “What’s wrong?”

“Ross and I had a fight. Two nights ago. He left. I haven’t spoken to him since.”

“A fight about what?”

“Oh, Leslie, I don’t know. I think the specifics triggered some bigger issue. But I don’t know.”

“Well, what were the specifics?”

“Oh. I can’t really even talk about it,” Janet said. I wish I could, she thought. I wish I could just ask Leslie.

“Janet, why don’t you come over? We’ll talk,” she said, looking at Eric, smiling at him, feeling warm and generous and so lucky.

“No. Leslie, I don’t even know why I called. If I talk to anyone, it should be Ross.”

“You’ve had misunderstandings before. Things that weren’t even really conflicts once you discussed them. You two tend to get your signals crossed,” Leslie said buoyantly, trying to encourage Janet, feeling on shaky ground since she didn’t know the issue. Still, it was true Ross and Janet had a history of misinterpreting each other. They needed to talk.

“I do need to talk to him. I’m just trying to build up the courage.”

“Why don’t you come over?”

“No. It’s not over, anyway. I’m two hours away.”

“I’ll be here.”

“Thanks. How are you? How’s Eric, whoever he is?”

“I’m fine and he’s fine. Let me know, OK? Keep in touch.”