Season of the Dragonflies (7 page)

Willow took a very long sip of her martini. She didn't know what to say.

James said, “Zoe's edging Jennifer out.”

The waiter brought three oversize white plates and placed them on the table. “Enjoy,” the waiter said, and James prepared a small saucer of wasabi and soy sauce for Willow.

Willow took one piece from each plate and James said, “Help yourself to more, please. I can't eat this much sushi alone.”

She didn't have much of an appetite now, but she took another piece of yellowtail sashimi from the platter. “She was supposed to stay in music,” Willow said. The pale fish landed flat on the plate.

James said, “But she didn't.”

Willow waited for him to make the next move, but instead he began to eat and they sat in silence, minus the clink and clank of glasses and the soft, hurried talk of lovers and friends all around. Willow sighed. If only this could've been a date. Nothing more, nothing less.

James coughed once and then said, “Any way to get rid of her?”

“Excuse me?” Willow said, and put down her chopsticks. Had James Stein just asked her to commit murder?

“Like an antidote formula?” James said.

“Oh,” Willow said. “Well, no.”

“What's the point of the contract then?” James said, and continued to eat.

Willow folded her hands. Who was he to question her business practices? She said, “It's a formality, I suppose, an agreement that we can terminate the relationship at any point, as can the customer, and that there are terms, like use limits, that must be followed. Certain terms are always understood from the handshake, and it was no different with Zoe, but she broke the most essential of the agreements. You don't cross industries. Our formula is powerful enough to do what it does and without it—I mean, who would want to be without it once they have it? We've always had happy customers, never had to cut anyone off, and no one's ever threatened to expose our service. I don't think my mother or my grandmother ever imagined that someone would want to.”

“Probably not,” James said. “But all businesses experience setbacks.”

Nearly a century had passed since Grandmother Serena launched the company, and not a single setback had hampered the business, not until Willow Lenore became president. “Setback” meant failure: another word Willow wouldn't mind forgetting. The rest of the meal would not taste quite as good as it did at the start, and she stopped eating and let him finish the last pieces. Willow turned down dessert and coffee and pleaded an overwhelming degree of exhaustion. He offered to take the elevator and escort her to her door, but she said, “I can find it.”

“I hope I didn't upset you,” James said.

“No,” Willow said. “I have a lot to think about, that's all.”

“If you need anything,” he said, “call me.” With his hand on the small of her back, James leaned down without a pause and kissed her. The longing she felt those many years ago to kiss him just like this returned with more immediacy than any memory she'd had at lunch. Then he hugged her and said in her ear, “I've wanted to do that for far too long.”

She almost said, “Maybe you could walk me to my door,” but he had already stepped away from her.

“I'll be on the East Coast next week. Could I drop down to Virginia and take you out for a proper dinner?” James said.

“I'd like that,” Willow said, and the elevator doors chimed.

She stepped inside and he said, “Good-bye,” and he remained there until the doors closed. When she arrived at her suite, a bouquet of white roses awaited her in the foyer. The note said:
Flowers almost as striking as your lovely hair. Until we see each other again, be well. —James Stein.

He was too much. Like he'd done this more than a million times. Yet Willow couldn't stop smiling. She pressed the note against her chest and wondered if she would forget this date too. There in the suite flooded by afternoon sunlight, she admitted to herself that these slips could become permanent, along with her loneliness, and she might never experience deep love and romance again before forgetting those concepts altogether. She wished she could stay in L.A. just one more day to share another meal with James. But work called her home; always work called her. Willow dialed the concierge desk and ordered a chamomile tea. She needed something to calm her down after that kiss.

A few minutes later the doorbell to her suite rang, and she assumed it was the waiter. She opened the door with the phrase “thank you” on her lips, but James Stein stood there instead, and she blinked a few times.

“One more kiss and then I'll go,” he said, and leaned down and wrapped her in his arms.

“Why don't you just stay awhile?” Willow said, and gave him a knowing smile.

Without another word, James closed the door behind him.

T
HE CABBAGE PATCH–STYLE
dolls her grandmother Lily had sewn for her when she was a little girl still sat on her white daybed as if they'd been waiting for Lucia to return. One cloth foot had lodged between Lucia's calves as she slept in the fetal position on the small twin mattress. She woke up in the cabin feeling almost hungover. The queasiness reminded her of nights of heavy drinking with a handsome stranger that led to the next morning's discovery that his eyes were a little too close together and his waistline a little too soft. Here she was in a bedroom she hadn't seen in fifteen years, and she had no clue why coming home had registered as a good idea. Divorce and despair were just as toxic as alcohol, and she had combined all three yesterday.

Mya didn't ask to come in. She never had, and Lucia wasn't sure why she'd expect anything more from her now that they were adults. The sound of her humming announced her. As the older one, Mya could do what she wanted—at least that's how she always rationalized her invasion of privacy. Lucia inched the smooth cotton covers down from her face just enough to see that Mya had sauntered into Lucia's room completely naked except for a pair of fuzzy purple socks. Mya didn't seem to notice Lucia's presence in the room and instead inspected the closet. Slowly Lucia covered her entire head to make sure her sister didn't know she was awake. Mya pulled out a short yellow robe from the closet and then sat down in the rocking chair. The sound of the rocker falling forward and backward on the hardwood floor was almost unbearable. Lucia prayed her sister would just leave.

“That doesn't work,” Mya finally said, and drew back the curtains to let in the sunlight.

Lucia sighed, and the cotton sheet billowed upward with her breath. She pulled down the covers and stared at her sister. And in the sunlight filling her room, to Lucia's dismay, Mya looked like the younger one now, her skin more radiant than Lucia's and her blond hair fuller and brighter. Her lips didn't look permanently dried out, and all the curves of her body were as perky as ever. Had it really come to this? Mya had told her it would, those many years ago right before Lucia took off.
The mountains won't take you back. The city will be hard on you.
The city
had
been hard on Lucia and her body—too much food and drink and exhaust. Not enough fresh air.

Mya lifted a nail file from the pocket of the robe that she kept in Lucia's closet for some odd reason. Or was that Lucia's robe from high school?

“Smells like liquor in here,” Mya said, and worked her nails back and forth.

“I had a few drinks,” Lucia said, and pressed down on her eyelids with her fingertips in an attempt to clear away the blurriness and the headache behind it.

Mya said, “Explains how you got here.”

“I guess so,” Lucia said.

Mya blew the dust from her nails.

Lucia squinted and tried to find a clock in the room. “What time is it?”

Mya stopped filing and peered out the window. “I don't know,” she said, and then stood up for a better look at the sun. She stretched her arms above her head and the robe inched up, revealing her bare buttocks. “About ten thirty-five,” she said. “Maybe ten forty.”

The years of separation were already bearing down harder than Lucia had expected, and she didn't want to leave the bed. She just wanted the little things—a cup of black coffee would do just fine.

Mya said, “She'll be home soon, you know.”

Lucia sat up slowly and placed her feet on the cool hardwood floor. The feel of it reminded her of being twelve years old and not wanting to leave the room to check the fields or go to the factory and distill oil. Mya loved it and woke up early; Lucia sighed and wanted to stay in bed.

“Where'd she go?” Lucia said.

“L.A.”

“She finally accepted a premiere invite?” Lucia said. “That figures.”

Mya said, “Just business.”

Lucia hoisted the duffel bag she'd brought with her onto the daybed and unzipped it. It did not smell fresh. Mya looked offended. That's what she got for having such a sensitive nose. Lucia's hair fell forward, creating a shield around her face. She'd brought home a suitcase full of filthy laundry just like a college student.

Mya said, “So what's the mystery?”

Lucia stood up in the jeans and T-shirt she'd worn on the plane, and the entire room smelled like sweat and gin. Was it possible her mother had kept her clothes from high school? She wished Mya wasn't in the room to witness her slide open those drawers. But she was, so Lucia did, and there inside the top drawer was fifteen-year-old underwear pressed and folded, and in the drawers below, overalls, leggings, midriff T-shirts, flannel shirts, and a wrinkled spaghetti-strap dress with a white flower print. Lucia's high school boyfriend had given her this dress for her seventeenth birthday. Ben chose it because the flowers in the pattern reminded him of the Lenore family flower. Lucia didn't care much for the style of the dress, but she still remembered his thoughtfulness, how proud he'd been to offer her the box over a dinner that he'd cooked and how quickly he conceded that he hadn't wrapped it himself.

Lucia unfolded the dress and held it up to her body like a child's dress-up piece, a wrinkled and shrunken relic. Many years had passed since she thought much about Ben White. A pang of guilt flashed through her body whenever she did, so she chose to ignore the idea of him completely. And this had been easy to do during the first years of her marriage. But later, during the aftermath of her worst fights with Jonah, her thoughts tended to drift toward Ben. Lucia had no idea what he was up to now. Mya probably knew, but there was no way she would ask her sister. She balled up the dress and stuffed it back in with the other clothes that would never fit her again. Why had her mother kept all this stuff? Did her nostalgia run so deep?

Mya flipped through Lucia's closet and then handed her a simple blue linen dress with high slits on both sides of the legs. It smelled like cedarwood. Her mother always kept fresh cuts in the closet.

“It's Jonah?” Mya said.

Lucia turned around to remove her clothes.

“Another woman?” Mya said quietly.

“What makes you say that?”

Mya said, “He always seemed like that kind of guy—at least that's how Mom described him. Looking for the better thing all the time.”

What about Jonah could've possibly given Willow that impression? Willow and Mya did always see what Lucia couldn't; all these years, that's how it had been. Still, if it had been Mya's failed relationship Lucia wouldn't have said this to her face, even if she believed it. Lucia finished tying her dress, refusing to turn around. She said, “He cheated on me, so we filed for divorce.” Mya let out a small sigh that mimicked boredom. Lucia wouldn't tell her or their mother the truth, that Jonah went to one of his friend's art openings alone because Lucia had stopped enjoying dates with him a long time ago—and sex, for that matter, the warming of her groin when he touched her a distant memory, as if she'd only seen it in a movie. She refused to go out to support his friend's bad high-end graffiti art. But then she felt guilty, and Lucia asked her friend Nina to go with her. They caught Jonah making out with a Calvin Klein designer ten years younger than Lucia and at least four jean sizes smaller. The sight of the two of them in such a passionate embrace actually relieved Lucia, since she hadn't had sex with Jonah in almost a year. She felt sure it was all her fault—she was too depressed about her career, and her life headed forward with no purpose or real momentum. She couldn't convince herself she was attractive enough to have sex with Jonah, whom the entire Manhattan art world masturbated over these days: “Our post-postmodern Duchamp delivered in a golden canvas.” Lucia hated Marcel Duchamp's work, but that was the man her husband had become, and everyone loved him. Lucia wanted her response to his indiscretions to freeze with her feeling of relief, but inevitably the bile of bitterness settled and Lucia just felt old. Not that she'd dare tell Mya something so personal and humiliating, considering Mya somehow managed to look as young as that girl.

“The two of you can work that out,” Mya said. “It's just sex. Turn it into some kind of fantasy or something.”

Lucia stiffened. She'd arrived home only last night, and from the start Mya had acted like she wanted Lucia to turn around and go.

Mya said, “But I guess you should make him squirm for a day.”

Lucia shook her head, too tired to respond. She and Jonah and their curdled marriage were done, but she didn't owe Mya an explanation.

Mya immediately followed up with, “And the acting? How's that going?” As if she wasn't satisfied with how uncomfortable she'd made Lucia already.

“Willow didn't tell you?” Lucia said, and she finally turned around but dodged Mya's stare. She pushed the dirty laundry she'd brought home to the floor and sat on her bed.