Once Is Not Enough (64 page)

He sighed. “I got two daughters your age. I work nights so they can study. One goes to teacher’s college . . . the other is studying to be a nurse. And you . . . flower child . . . what the hell are you studying?”

“To love . . . to know . . . to feel. . . .”

“Get into the cab. I’ll take you home.”

“No . . . I want to walk . . . to float . . . to feel.”

“Get in . . . no charge.”

She smiled. “See, you do love me.”

He dragged her by the arm and put her in the seat beside him. “I don’t trust you in the back. Now . . . where’s home?”

“Where the heart is.”

“Look, I finished work at four, but I had an airport call. It’s
quarter to five in the morning. I live in the Bronx. Right now my wife is sitting, waiting with the coffee, picturing me being held up with a knife at my throat. So let’s get with it. Where do you want to go?”

“To the Plaza. My daddy lives there.”

He headed for the Plaza. After a few blocks she touched his arm. “No . . . not the Plaza . . . he’s not there now. The man I loved was at the Plaza . . . now’s he at the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

“Look . . . where do you want to go?”

“The Pierre.”

“What are you? Some kind of a hotel freak? C’mon . . . where shall I take you?”

She looked at his registration card. “Mr. Isadore Cohen, you are a beautiful man. Take me to the Pierre.”

He started down Fifth Avenue. “And what’s your name, flower child?”

“January.”

“Naturally,” he said.

It was beginning to rain when Isadore Cohen walked her to the entrance of the Pierre. She looked up at the heavy gray sky. “Where are the stars? Where did my beautiful night go?” she asked.

“It’s turned into morning,” Isadore Cohen grumbled. “An ugly wet morning. . . . Now go back to wherever you belong.”

She turned and waved as he walked back to his cab. He had refused to take any money, but she had left a twenty-dollar bill on the seat. She tiptoed into her bedroom and closed the drapes. Sadie was still asleep. The whole world was asleep except dear sweet Mr. Cohen who was on his way home to the Bronx. He was a wonderful man. Everyone was wonderful if you took time out to understand them. Like Keith, now that she knew him—he was wonderful too. She undressed slowly and tossed her bag on the chair. It slipped to the floor. She leaned over and picked it up gently. “You, Mr. Bag, are a Louis Vuitton, and I happen to think you are ugly. But they say you are very ‘in.’” She studied the bag. Vera had made her buy it at Saks. (“But I don’t wear much brown,” January had
said. “A Louis Vuitton bag isn’t just brown,” Vera insisted. “It goes with everything.”)

Well, for one hundred and thirty dollars she damn well intended to wear it with everything. Then she laughed. What was a hundred and thirty dollars if she had ten million? But the idea of ten million dollars belonging to her was impossible to grasp. Any more than she could feel that this apartment belonged to her. It was still Dee’s. She wondered if Mike ever felt it belonged to him. But the Louis Vuitton bag that cost one hundred and thirty dollars belonged to her. That kind of money she could understand. She sat on the edge of the bed and stroked the bag. She put the bag on the pillow and crawled into bed.

She wasn’t sleepy. She thought about taking a sleeping pill. She reached for the bottle in the drawer of the night table . . . then put it away. Why should she? She felt too marvelous . . . And as Keith had said, “There will never be this Thursday again”—only now it was Friday and there’d never be
this
Friday again. She lay very quietly and savored the wonderful feeling of weightlessness that flowed through her body. She knew she wouldn’t fall asleep . . . she couldn’t . . . yet she realized she had because the dream came again. First the eyes . . . so clear and blue. The face was vague . . . it was always vague, but she knew it was beautiful. He was a stranger, and yet instinctively she felt he was someone she wanted to be with. He held out his arms . . . and she knew she had to go to him. She felt she was getting out of bed and going into his arms . . . yet she knew she had to be
in
her bed dreaming the whole scene. That was it . . . a scene . . . because she saw herself getting out of bed . . . she watched herself follow the outstretched arms. Yet each time she reached him it was as if she hadn’t come quite close enough. He kept waiting. She followed him into the living room . . . to the window. But now he was outside the window! She opened it . . . the sky was dark . . . filled with stars. Now she knew it was all a dream because it had been dawn just a few minutes ago when she fell asleep . . . a gray sticky dawn . . . so that meant she was still in bed and not standing at the window, staring out at the stars and this mystical man. But this time, she was determined to see his face. She
leaned out the windowsill. “Do you want me?” she called out.

He held out his arms. “If I come to you, you have to really love me,” she told him. “I can’t bear to fall in love with you and have you disappear, even if you are only a dream.”

He didn’t speak. But the eyes told her he would never hurt her. And suddenly she knew that all she had to do was jump out of that window and float up into his arms. She put one leg over the sill. And then she felt someone dragging her back. Keeping her from him . . . She struggled . . . And then she woke because Sadie was pulling at her and screaming . . . pulling her inside. She looked at the street below . . . she had been halfway out of the window!

“Miss January! Oh, Miss January! Why? . . . Why!” Sadie was sobbing from fright.

She clung to Sadie for a moment. Then she managed a weak smile. “It’s all right, Sadie. It was just a dream.”

“A dream! You were going to jump out of that window. Thank God I was in the kitchen when I heard the window open.”

January stared out the window. It was dark and there were stars. “What time is it?”

“Ten o’clock. I was just fixing myself some tea and going to watch the news. I tried to wake you at noon and you mumbled something about having been up all night. Mr. Milford called at seven and I told him you were still asleep. He was very concerned. He’s been calling every hour.”

“Don’t worry, Sadie. I . . . I took some sleeping pills this morning. I couldn’t sleep last night. I guess I just slept round the clock.”

“Well . . . will you call Mr. Milford? He’s very concerned.”

She nodded and went to her room. “Can I bring you anything, Miss January?”

“No . . . I’m not hungry.”

She picked up the phone and started to dial David. Suddenly the room went dark. Then bright lights shot through her eyes and she saw him again . . . just for a flash . . . the blue eyes . . . almost mocking her . . . as if she had been a coward. “You would have killed me!” she shouted. “Killed me! Is that what you wanted?”

Sadie came rushing in. January stared down at the phone, which was now buzzing with the phone-off-the-hook-too-long signal. “Miss January, you were screaming!”

“No. I’m . . . I . . . I shouted at the operator because I got a wrong number twice. Don’t worry, Sadie . . . please. I’m going to call Mr. Milford. You go to sleep.”

Then she dialed the number. Sadie hovered by and waited until she heard January say, “Hi, David!” Then she discreetly left the room.

David sounded genuinely concerned. She tried to make her voice light. But the room was growing dark again and the splashing array of colors had returned. “I went to a party,” she said as she blinked hard to make the colors disappear.

“It must have been a late one,” he said. “You slept all day.”

She closed her eyes to block out the flashing lights. “It was late. Some . . . some friends of my father’s . . . actors . . . directors . . .” The colors were gone and she was all right now. Her voice was strong again. “It was a late party . . . it didn’t start until midnight. And then when I got home for some strange reason I wasn’t sleepy. So I read . . . until morning. And then I took two sleeping pills . . . and . . . well . . . you know the rest.”

“How are you going to be able to sleep now?”

“Easy. I’ll read a dull book and take some pills. By tomorrow my time schedule will be straightened out.”

“January, I don’t like this sleeping pill business. I’m against all pills. I never even take an aspirin.”

“Well, after tonight I won’t take any again.”

“It’s my fault. I left you alone. And you shouldn’t be alone now . . . ever. January, let’s not wait out the summer. Let’s do it now.”

“Do what now?”

“Get married.”

She was silent. He had never asked her to go to bed with him since that first time. But his whole attitude since the accident had been different. He was gentle . . . considerate . . . and always concerned.

“January, are you there?”

“Yes . . .”

“Well . . . will you marry me?”

“David . . . I—” She hesitated. But what was she hesitating about? What
was
she waiting for? Another Tom to come along to destroy her? A relationship with Keith . . . and his friends? The full impact of it was just beginning’ to hit her. And even the dream was dangerous. She had almost jumped out of a window. She was suddenly frightened. What was happening to her? Where was the girl she had once been . . . still was. But that girl had allowed a stranger to make love to her in the midst of a room filled with strangers. Yet it had all seemed perfectly proper at the time. She began to tremble . . . she felt unclean . . . violated.

“January, are you still on?”

“Yes, David. I’m . . . I’m just thinking. . . .”

“Please, January. I love you . . . I want to take care of you.”

“David—” She clung to the phone. “I do need you. Yes . . . Yes. I do!”

“Oh, January! I promise you’ll never regret it. Look, we’ll celebrate tomorrow night at dinner. I’ll invite a few friends. Vera and Ted . . . Harriett and Paul . . . Muriel and Burt . . . Bonnie and—” He stopped. “Where shall we do it? The Lafayette? Sign of the Dove?”

“No. Let’s go to Raffles. That was the scene of our first date, wasn’t it?”

“January, you’re sentimental! I never would have thought it.”

“There’s a lot of things we’ll both have to find out about each other,” she said. “David, do you realize . . . we really hardly know one another.”

“That’s not my fault,” he said. “I . . . well . . . I haven’t invited you back to my place or asked to stay with you because I thought you were too upset and—”

“Oh, David, that’s not what I mean. Strangers can go to bed together.”

“I guess I’m not very demonstrative,” he said. “I mean . . . when I care for someone . . . maybe I don’t know how to show it. But January . . . you don’t either. Know what all my friends call you? ‘Her Coolness.’ Even the newspapers picked it up . . . they called you that in a column yesterday.”

“Do I seem cool?”

“Detached at times,” he said. “But good God, why shouldn’t you? After all that’s happened to you in less than a year.”

“Yes, you’re right. A lot has happened . . .” She suddenly remembered that first night at Raffles. It all seemed unreal. Could she really spend the rest of her life with David . . . live with him . . . sleep in the same bed with him? . . . She began to panic.

“David, I can’t! It isn’t fair to you.”

“What’s not fair to me?”

“To marry you. I . . . I’m not really in love with you.”

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “January, have you really ever loved anyone?”

“Yes.”

“Besides your father?”

“Yes . . .”

He hesitated. “Is it over?”

“Yes.” Her voice was very low.

“Then don’t tell me about it.”

“But David . . . if I know I can love someone in a certain way and I don’t feel that way about you, then is it fair to you? I mean . . . oh, I don’t know how to put it—”

“I understand. Because I’ve loved someone too. And not in the same way I love you. But no two loves are the same. If you keep searching for the same kind of love each time, then you never really love again, because each new affair merely becomes a continuation of that first love.”

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“I was talking to a big shrink at a party of my mother’s. Dr. Arthur Addison. My mother went to him when she began having her changes and got a little depressed. I don’t believe in psychiatry—unless someone is really batty—but I have to admit he helped my mother, and since then he has become a big friend of the family. But, January, the kind of love we’re both talking about only happens to a person once. And since we’ve both had it . . . what we have now is something new for both of us. And we can build it into a new life and forget all the old memories.”

“Do you think we can do it?”

“Of course. Only a neurotic person clings to something that’s
gone. And you strike me as a very levelheaded girl. Now go to sleep and try to dream of me.”

She hung up and thought about their conversation. David was right. She couldn’t bring Mike back or regain what she once had with Tom. That part of her life was over. But how could she shut out the memories? Maybe it was easier for a man. God, if she could just shut out last night. All the feeling of love for everyone was gone. She felt nothing but loathing and disgust. For Keith, his friends . . . but most of all, herself. And then to top it all she had tried to jump out of the window. If Sadie hadn’t come in time, she would be dead. Or would she? Was there something out there? Something calling to her? She looked out the window . . . at the stars . . . then she ran to her closet and found another pair of jeans. She put on a shirt, took a sweater, and grabbed her bag. It was only ten-thirty . . . she would drive to the beach and talk it all out with Hugh. Tell him everything. The happy shots . . . the party . . . the orgy scene . . . and the man with the blue eyes. She would also tell him about almost jumping out of the window.

She crept out of the apartment so as not to awaken Sadie. She knew Dee kept her cars at a garage on West Fifty-sixth Street. She walked over.

There were several garages on Fifty-sixth Street. She hit the correct one on the first try and took it as an omen of good luck. The night manager recognized her and gave her the Jaguar. She left the garage and headed downtown. She recalled Tom’s driver had taken the Midtown Tunnel to the Long Island Expressway. The car handled beautifully.