Going Back (24 page)

If Andrea were present, she would
be smothering Phyllis in a congratulatory hug right now. But Daphne
was too emotionally drained to hug anybody. She was running on only
five hours of sleep—and a lot of erotic memories. She scarcely had
enough strength to acknowledge Phyllis’s announcement with a nod.
“If you told him to get out, how come you’re here?” she asked,
staring pointedly at the valise.

“I would have gone to Andrea’s,
Daff. I mean, who in their right mind would want to spend the night
in Jersey? No offense intended, Daffy, but, I mean, really. But
Andrea’s already got a house guest. She hasn’t got room to put me
up, too. Unless she put me and Brad in the guest room together,
which...believe me, the idea has enormous appeal, but—”

“Phyllis,” Daphne cut her off,
“what I was asking was, if you kicked Jim out, shouldn’t you be
home and he be on some friend’s doorstep with a suitcase in his
hand? Why did you leave the house instead of him?”

Phyllis sighed. “Well, I’ve got to
give him a chance to pack his things, don’t I? I mean, the house is
in my name, so I’m going to end up with it. But I had to let him
collect his stuff and cart it someplace else.”

“Uh-huh. And how long do you
suppose that’s going to take?” Daphne had visions of Phyllis
camping out in the spare bedroom for weeks while Jim moved his
belongings out of her house one sock at a time.

Phyllis bristled. “Look, it’s a
problem, I’ll find somewhere else to stay.”

“It’s not a problem,” Daphne said,
crossing to Phyllis and tugging her jacket off her shoulders, an
act of nearly aggressive hospitality. “You can stay with me as long
as you like. I’ve got the space. I was only thinking about Jim. As
long as he still has access to your house, he can stall. Possession
is nine-tenths of the law and all that.”

“Is this what they taught you in
real estate school?” Phyllis asked, her expression a mixture of
irritation and fear. “If he isn’t gone by tomorrow, I’ll go back
with a policeman and have him evicted.”

“You can’t have him evicted,”
Daphne explained patiently. “He’s not your tenant. But don’t worry
about it,” she added hastily as she read the panic in Phyllis’s
eyes. “I’m sure he’ll clear out as soon as he can.” She hung the
jacket in the closet and scrutinized her friend. “Why don’t you
tell me what happened?”

“I need a drink,” Phyllis declared,
plopping herself onto the sofa with such force the cushions bounced
around her. “I’m sorry, Daff, but I’m really a wreck. Have you got
any booze? I’m not picky—anything will do.”

“I have some Bordeaux,” Daphne
said, remembering the unopened bottle of wine Brad had brought her,
which was currently sitting in a trash bag in her garage. She had
no other alcoholic beverages in her house, but after having kept
her teetotaling a secret from her friends for so many years, Daphne
didn’t think that now was the proper time to reveal to Phyllis that
she never drank liquor.

“Thanks. That sounds
great.”

“Have a seat,” Daphne ordered her.
“I’ll be right back.” She didn’t want Phyllis following her to the
garage and learning that the closest thing Daphne had to a wine
rack was a three-ply Hefty bag full of overcooked pasta.

It took her several minutes to
exhume the bottle from the trash bag, and several minutes more to
rinse off the clam sauce that clung to the smooth green glass,
gluing a few limp lilac petals to the label. Drying the bottle with
a paper towel, she gazed through the kitchen window at the
late-evening sky. It was still overcast. Even though she was
wearing her eyeglasses, the moon looked murky and dim to her, a
blurred semi-circle of gray struggling futilely to shed its light
through the layers of clouds and mist.

Daphne didn’t believe that the
heavens exerted any mystical powers over the earth, but she found
it apt that such a dismal, gloomy sky was doming her corner of the
planet on this dismal, gloomy night.

All day she had tried to keep
herself busy. She’d done a little gardening, swept the back porch,
read assorted sections of the Sunday newspaper, ironed a few
blouses. It had been a Sunday like any other, except for the fact
that it had followed a Saturday night that didn’t resemble any
other night in Daphne’s life.

It didn’t matter how many blouses
she ironed, or how many weeds she yanked out of the flower beds, or
how many times she brushed a broom over the back porch. It didn’t
matter that she and Brad were mature and sensible, as he’d claimed
they were when he’d proposed that they spend a night in each
other’s arms, or that he believed setting the past to rights was
going to make them both feel so much better afterwards. Daphne
didn’t feel better. What she felt was a deep, implacable love for
Brad—along with the painful understanding that her love wasn’t
reciprocated.

She had known going in that Brad
didn’t love her. She had known that he didn’t love her the last
time they’d gone to bed together, too—only this time, she’d gotten
tripped up on her own emotions. This time, she’d made love to Brad
because he was Brad, not because he was a good-looking, congenial
acquaintance who happened to have wandered away from a fraternity
party at the same time she did.

The only corkscrew she owned was
attached to a bottle opener, and she nearly cut her finger on the
point when she snapped open the hinge. She reproached herself for
allowing her thoughts to drift to last night instead of remaining
in the present. Phyllis needed someone to talk to right now, and
Daphne needed someone to distract her from her heartache and her
anger with herself over her stupidity. As sympathetic as she was to
Phyllis’s travails, she was almost a little bit relieved by the
thought that someone else’s life was in an even bigger mess than
her own.

Poor Phyllis—one more woman trapped
within the spell of this dismal, gloomy night sky. Daphne poured
some wine into a glass and carried it into the living room. She
considered asking Phyllis whether she believed in the power of
weather to influence people’s moods, but that might arouse
Phyllis’s curiosity about Daphne’s dismal mood, so she
refrained.

“This wine is delicious,” Phyllis
said after taking a long sip. “What is it?”

“It’s a Bordeaux,” Daphne told
her.

“I know that. I meant what vintner,
what year...”

Stumped, Daphne shrugged. “The
bottle’s in the kitchen if you want me to check.” At Phyllis’s
puzzled look, she added, “To tell you the truth, Phyllis, it was a
gift. I don’t drink red wine, and I don’t pay attention to the
vintages.”

“So you’re foisting your unwanted
gifts on me. That’s okay, Daffy. I don’t mind. As I said, it’s
delicious.” Phyllis took another sip, then lowered the glass to the
coffee table and sighed. “So. I finally did it.”

She no longer seemed terribly
upset—or even particularly frazzled. Perhaps a few sips of wine
were all it took to put her feelings into perspective.

Perhaps a few sips of wine would
have a similar effect on Daphne, enabling her to view her night
with Brad for what it was: a sexual romp, mutually satisfying on a
physical level and utterly devoid of commitment. She contemplated
jumping off the wagon for about ten seconds, then came to her
senses.”What made you decide to call it quits with Jim?” she asked,
slouching in one of the easy chairs and slinging one leg over the
arm of the chair.

“Brad,” Phyllis said
simply.

Hoping her face didn’t betray her
discomfort at hearing his name mentioned—let alone mentioned as a
co-respondent in Phyllis’s break-up with Jim—Daphne waited for her
friend to elaborate.

Phyllis drank a bit more wine
first. Then she settled deeper into the sofa’s upholstery and
tossed a wavy lock of her ash-blond hair back from her face with a
graceful flick of her head. “Jim hasn’t shut up about Brad, ever
since the party at Andrea’s.”

“Because of the way you looked at
Brad?”

“Well...I admit I did more than
look,” Phyllis whispered with a coy smile.

Daphne took a moment to collect
herself. Were Phyllis and Brad having an affair? Why hadn’t Brad
said something about it? How could he have been fooling around with
Daphne’s close friend behind Daphne’s back? Not that he owed her
any explanations for his behavior, not that he was obligated to her
in any way, but... She trusted him. She trusted him, and he was
apparently doing something more with Phyllis than merely letting
her look at him.

Daphne should have expected as
much. When a woman as ravishing as Phyllis looked at a man, he
would have to be comatose not to notice, and not to want to return
the compliment. Maybe Brad had been lusting after Phyllis as
hungrily as she’d been lusting after him. Maybe after Daphne and
Paul had made their early departure from Andrea’s party a couple of
weeks ago, Phyllis had found some willing soul to take Jim for a
stroll around the block, and then she’d cornered Brad and
propositioned him.

“And he was eavesdropping on me,
Daff,” Phyllis complained, effecting her adorable little-girl pout.
“That’s what hurt so much.”

“Huh?” Daphne scrambled through the
thicket of suppositions that had sprung up around her, trying to
find her way back to her conversation with Phyllis. “Brad
eavesdropped?”

“Not Brad, Jim,” Phyllis explained,
too caught up in her self-righteousness to mind that Daphne wasn’t
paying full attention to her. “I mean, the guy had the nerve to
listen in on an extension when I called Brad. Not that he had
anything especially juicy to listen to. All I did was ask Brad to
meet me in the city for lunch. It’s not as if I’d asked him to run
off to Tahiti with me. But the way Jim was carrying on, well, you’d
think—”

“When did you and Brad have lunch?”
Daphne asked, hoping she didn’t sound too anxious. “Where did you
go?”

“We didn’t go anywhere,” Phyllis
said. “Brad said that his schedule was really jammed, but that
maybe once he was moved into his new house and working at his new
office in the city, we could work something out and get together.
So, when Jim started hurling his filthy insinuations at me, I
figured it was time to throw the bastard out.”

Despite Phyllis’s tough talk,
despite the courage the wine seemed to give her, Daphne noticed a
faint haze of tears collecting along her eyelashes. If Daphne could
feel so mournful about saying goodbye to Brad after spending all of
one night with him, how must Phyllis feel about saying goodbye to a
man she’d lived with for more than a year?

“I’m really sorry,” Daphne told
her.

“So am I,” Phyllis said. “It kills
me to think how much time and energy I wasted on that
idiot.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Daphne
wasn’t fooled by Phyllis’s stoicism. “Ending a relationship like
yours and Jim’s must hurt, even if it’s the right thing to do. You
did love him, after all. It always hurts to realize that a love
affair is over.”

Phyllis’s gaze narrowed
suspiciously on Daphne. “Oh, Daff,” she said, suddenly
compassionate. “You sound like you’re speaking from personal
experience.”

Daphne hadn’t meant to be so
transparent. But Phyllis had known her a long time, and Daphne
couldn’t hide her feelings completely from her old friend. However,
she couldn’t very well tell Phyllis that she was grieving over her
ill-fated fling with Brad, not when Phyllis herself had designs on
him.

“Tell me about it,” Phyllis
demanded sympathetically. “I feel so much better after getting
everything off my chest about Jim. You’ll feel better if you get
everything off your chest, too.” When Daphne didn’t speak, Phyllis
added, “I’m your friend, Daff. Talk to me. Tell me about
it.”

Daphne exhaled.
Phyllis
was
her
friend, and she was undoubtedly right in claiming that Daphne would
feel better if she didn’t keep her emotions locked up. “All right,”
she said carefully. “I’m...it’s no big deal. I’m just...a little
broken-hearted, that’s all.”

“A
little
?” Phyllis snorted.
“Broken-heartedness is an absolute. Either you’re broken-hearted or
you aren’t.”

“Okay,” Daphne conceded, unwilling
to get into a debate about semantics with Phyllis. “I’m
broken-hearted.”

“Who’s the son of a bitch?” Phyllis
asked, automatically taking Daphne’s side. “That red-headed guy,
Paul?”

Daphne appreciated her friend’s
loyalty. “No, it isn’t Paul,” she replied. “It’s...nobody you
know.” She hated having to lie, but there was a limit to how much
she could confide in Phyllis.

“And what did he do to
you?”

He made me fall
in love with him,
Daphne almost
said.
He stole my heart, and he thinks of
me as a sister.
“Nothing, really,” she
hedged. “It’s just one of those things. I love him, and he doesn’t
love me.”

“Why doesn’t he love you?” Phyllis
asked indignantly.

“He never has. He was always up
front about it, Phyllis. It’s my fault, really.” She forced a weak
smile. “There isn’t a whole lot to say. I wouldn’t have even
brought it up, except—”