Cherries In The Snow (28 page)

What the hell do Isaac and I say to each other? He is searching my face for the cue. ‘Your toe healed then?'

I do a little pirouette, French for twirling. And I know I am going to ditch work, just like I ditched my car the first time I met Isaac Bennett.

So we get into his limo, and I flash back to that time I left my car behind in a Springsteen concert parking lot. Only now I am leaving my love, my Marley, my savior; back into the mess and mire I go. The day after I met Isaac I went back to retrieve my car. I shall not be retrieving my love. Isaac makes a grand gesture of switching his cell phone off. A huge gesture but not a huge deal as the calls will divert to either one of his secretaries.

I resent that my chin hurts from months of Marley's stubble, angry spots have broken out during the last week. Or maybe it's not his stubble but my hurt feelings poking through my skin. I always wanted to be perfect if I ever saw
Isaac again. The way he looks at me, he doesn't seem to notice. ‘Am I still beautiful?'

‘More so than ever.'

‘Wow. You got ripped off then, Isaac.'

He kisses me. I kiss him back. Nothing. I feel nothing for this man. So it's easy to keep kissing. We get back to his hotel room and he undresses real fast before he even touches a button on my shirt. He runs the shower in his all-chrome bathroom. He is in there a couple of minutes before he exits, a white towel around his waist, showcasing newly defined abs. How Isaac to take a shower
before
he has sex.

‘I just got back from L.A.,' I say. ‘Do I smell of airplane?'

He comes close and breathes in at the side of my neck. ‘No. Take your shirt off.'

It strikes me that I do not like being told what to do. Love in the afternoon, like meeting your lover at a Springsteen concert, is all very well. But this isn't love. It's time filled in.

‘Excuse me a moment,' I murmur.

I lock myself in the bathroom. Next to his toothbrush is a Clinique antiaging moisturizer. And next to that is a Dr Perricone antiaging eye cream. I look in the mirror. I cannot do this. He is not him. I write on the mirror with my finger: MARLEY. Then I rub it out with my hand, trying to hold it together. I have to get out of here.

Unlocking the bathroom door, I leave without buttoning my shirt and without saying good-bye.

‘Hey! Hey, Sadie!' He follows me down the hall. I keep walking until I get to the elevator. And he stops following.

As I'm in a cab heading back to work, my cell phone rings. It's Holly. I hear something in her voice I can't quite place.

‘Am I in trouble for not being at work?'

‘I've gone home. Just come here now.'

When I get there, she answers the door then pads back to bed, where, from the rumpled sheets, I can see she has been lying down. There is a bottle of Baileys on the nightstand.

‘Have some,' she says.

‘Okay,' I say with a laugh, ‘for old time's sake.'

‘Vicki told me. That you left with Isaac.'

‘Oh. Are you disappointed in me?'

‘What about Marley?'

‘He's been cheating. I read an e-mail of his.'

She snorts. ‘Cheating, cheating, cheating. Fuck! What a day. What a day.'

She pulls me into the bed and we lie, looking up at the ceiling, drinking Baileys, as physically close and as emotionally far apart as I can remember.

‘It sounded like it was something important on the phone. I'm working on the names. They're almost done.'

‘I don't give a fuck about the names.'

‘You don't?'

‘No.'

‘Oh.' I try to think. ‘I'm stumped, Holly.'

‘Sadie' – she takes a deep breath – ‘Ivy left me.'

I don't hear her because I am looking at her face. She is crying.

‘Why are you crying?'

‘I just told you!' she screams.

‘I didn't hear you. I was watching you cry.'

‘Ivy left me!'

‘Oh.'

‘She caught me with …' – she studies me – ‘some guy. What am I going to do?' she wails. ‘What will I do without my baby?' She is choking on her sobs.

‘Holly … I never realized you cared so much.'

‘What do you mean you never realized I cared? You're my best friend!'

Was I her best friend? Or her handmaiden? Come to think of it, which was Ivy?

‘Holly, it's just … I wouldn't have known you cared so much because … you weren't very nice to her.'

‘What are you talking about? I stayed with her all these years when I could have left her for anyone.'

‘Okay, so you didn't leave her. But you also cheated on her left, right, and center.'

‘That's just dyke politics. You don't understand.'

‘Look. First of all, I don't think you are a dyke. She caught you having sex with a man. And second, that isn't gay politics. They do have committed relationships. If you wanted a free pass to fuck anyone you want, you picked the wrong orientation.

‘So who have you been fucking? Who did she catch you with?'

‘Oh, that…'

‘Yeah.'

‘Well, it's funny you should say that because it's someone you know.'

‘It is? Who?'

‘Oh, Isaac. Isaac, who you used to … Isaac, who you were with this afternoon. How funny is that?

Who would have thought when we were ten years old that we would end up more than a decade later sharing the same guy? Isaac who—'

‘Yes, thank you, Holly. I only know one Isaac.'

‘I'm surprised Vicki didn't tell you. Or Ivy. I know the fat bitch has suspected for months.'

‘Months you've been seeing him? And calling the love of your life a fat bitch doesn't exactly paint you as devoted.'

‘Look, you were with Marley, so who cares?'

‘Why didn't you tell me?'

‘Because I knew you'd get funny. I don't have to ask your permission.'

‘No, but if you had told me while it was happening, I wouldn't feel funny right now.'

It makes sense, her and Isaac, two people who fake an interest in sex. She is not a lesbian. Not if she chooses to be with someone who gives such crappy oral sex.

‘How did you meet him?'

‘That time he called looking for you. I guess he had his people track you down. Anyway, you weren't in. And we ended up having phone sex.'

That column. It wasn't about me. It was about her. I jump out of the bed.

‘Where are you going?'

‘I'm going to see Ivy.'

I hail a cab back to the office. Ivy is slumped at her desk. Rather than comforting her, Vicki has her chair swung around the other way and is jabbering on the phone. I put my finger on the receiver.

‘Go home. Now.'

I wrap my arms around Ivy. ‘How are you, Ive?'

‘A wreck. But a good wreck.'

‘Yeah.'

‘I wanted to tell you …'

‘It really doesn't matter, Ivy. I don't love him. I'm in love with Marley. Only thing wounded is my pride.'

‘Yeah, I know that one.'

‘But you loved her.'

‘Yeah. I did. I do.'

‘Why? You're so kind and so good and so interesting.'

‘I guess I just …'

‘I've been having a bit of a time of it too, Ivy. Marley's been cheating on me.'

I don't want to bogart her tears, so I strain and strain to hold it all in.

‘You what?'

‘I went into his e-mail account and I saw a note to some girl I've never heard of. I know it off by heart. ‘ “Dear Portia, how awesome was last night? Sadie is only out of town until Monday. Let's get together again tonight.'

‘I have no fucking clue who Portia is.' I sigh.

‘I do, you idiot. Portia is the girl who assists him when he's working on a graffiti project. Not an office project. A real project. She looks out for the cops. Sadie, he was working on something for you this weekend. It was supposed to be a secret.'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘I highly recommend that you take the train to his house. And that you be ready to apologize. Profusely.'

She kisses me ever so gently on the lips. ‘Go see that good man who loves you so.'

I decide to walk the bridge, better to think through the conversation about to take place. Something, something cosmic, something as silly and as serious a lipstick makes me turn around. There is my name right next to Montana's, a huge mural in purple, peach, butter yellow … colors I didn't even know you could buy in spray cans. I am a name in the city like Montana, next to Montana, the same size as her. I belong to New York. And to Marley. I have come here from this stupid tiny island in the sea, looking to find something, maybe a new kind of shampoo, or a pair of green shoes, or my name on the gossip page of the paper. And I have found love. Or it has found me, stalking me,
tappy tap tap
, making me catch my breath, and cross the street zigzag to see if it was really following me or whether I was imagining it. I wasn't imagining it.

He opens the door, sleepy beautiful, his eyes red and puffy from crying. I hug him and we sink to the floor, where I cradle him in my arms like a baby.

‘Sadie, what happened this morning at the airport? I don't understand what happened.'

I sob. ‘I hate myself. I hate myself!'

‘No. No, my darling.'

Then he rocks me back and forth in his arms on the floor. ‘Oh, my darling. What's wrong with my baby?'

I choke on my tears. ‘Don't call me that.'

He is quiet, leaning his chin into my shoulder. He just keeps rocking me back and forth. Finally I get enough of a grip to talk. ‘Marley. I've done a terrible thing.'

‘You've done several terrible things. You yelled at me at the aiport to fuck off and told me you never wanted to see me again in front of a terminal full of strangers, but you wouldn't tell me why. You ripped my daughter's tutu. I suppose that it was less terrible than it was just really bizarre.'

‘I thought you were cheating on me. I read your e-mail. It said “Portia … Sadie … out of town … let's get together tonight.” '

‘But that's because—'

‘I know now.'

‘You went into my e-mail?'

‘I'm so sorry.'

‘I went into your phone messages.'

‘You did? Oh, thank you, thank you.' I smother him in kisses. ‘So we're two paranoid jerks in love.'

‘I don't know why I did it, Sadie. I didn't want to. But I had to. Love is the drug, man.'

Then I remember what I've done. ‘I kissed Isaac. I saw him at Sephora and I went back to his hotel and then we kissed.'

He starts to loosen his grip on me.

‘Please don't let go. Oh, God, please, I beg you, Marley, you can leave me in ten minutes, but if you let go of me right now, I swear to God I'll die.'

‘A lot of God in this room for someone who doesn't believe.'

‘I believe in you.' I slump back on the floor like a snow angel in Montana's toy debris. Marley is just watching me. I see the lashes and I remember the time in the pool when water was on them. Surrealist Man Ray droplets on his eyelashes with the sun bursting through them. The droplets now are from his own eyes and they are imperfect. I beckon to him and
he leans forward and one of them drops onto me. It's as though these were my last words on a hospital bed, on a beach, on a life raft. Even then I know: ‘One day I will die. One day I will die for real and this will haunt me, my bourgeois slut heartbreak version of what it is to die.' Still, bourgeois slut heartbreak can feel real. And that's what matters.

‘I kissed him and nothing else happened. That's the truth. I tried to be with him, but I couldn't. Because he wasn't you.'

‘I believe you.'

‘You do?'

‘I do.'

I clasp him tight as a crucifix. ‘Please take me to the bathroom. Wash me. Fix me.'

He bathes me in the water, dips my head down, and I am being cleansed. I am being anointed. ‘I think I might be one of those crazy girls.'

He laughs. I don't know where he found that laugh, where he could have been keeping it for a time like this.

He is crying and cleaning me up at the same time.

‘You're making me tidy.'

‘That's what dads do.'

‘Am I your little girl?'

‘No. You're my lover.'

He kisses me. I kiss him back.

‘Can you taste him?'

‘No. I can't.'

‘Marley?'

‘Yes, my baby?'

‘There is no novel.'

‘I know.'

‘You knew?'

‘Yeah. But you didn't want me to say. So I didn't say. I don't care. I only care that you wasted that energy pretending
to write a novel when you could have been, say, writing a novel.'

‘Marley.'

‘Yes, my baby.'

‘I haven't had cystitis in a long time.'

‘I noticed that. Clever girl.'

‘I love you.'

We go to sleep together curled up on the bed. I wake up and watch him for a while. He smells of paint. The whole room does. An eye on the time difference, I creep out of bed and pick up the phone.

‘Dad, can you come see me?'

‘We could make it out at Christmas. It would be nice to have Christmas in New York. And I'd like to meet your man.'

‘I'd like you to meet him too.'

I don't tell him that they have already met, two young fathers, in the playground in my head.

Marley painted a new mural for Montana in her New York bedroom. Using a special glow-in-the-dark paint, he put stars on the ceiling and clouds on the walls. The paint was still drying the first night she got here, so she slept in our bed between us. In the night I felt her warm body against mine and remembered being between my parents on a Sunday as my dad read the papers and my mum snoozed. Hell, I wasn't her mum. But I felt I could be someone's mum one day. It didn't seem so far from me, so much like another breed, a different version of woman.