The Best of Everything (59 page)

She was in her oflBce at nine and sat at her desk with her hands tightly holding the arms of her swivel chair, looking at the telephone as if she could will it to ring. She knew this was silly, he was probably asleep or not here yet, but she could not bear it. She tried to read a manuscript, but she found herself rereading the same paragraph four times and not getting any sense out of it, and so she put the manuscript aside. It wasn't fair to her authors, she might as well just sit and suffer. At a quarter to eleven her telephone rang. Caroline jumped, a startled, involuntary motion, and snatched up the receiver.

"Hello?"

"Caroline," Eddie said.

That voice, that one word, were so close and familiar they made her begin to tremble. Her heart was pounding. "Eddie? Eddie? Hello!" she said brightly.

He sounded relieved and his voice came pouring out of the telephone with more confidence, making her remember everything, bringing him closer. Her lips were almost touching the receiver as if it were Eddie himself. "How are you, Caroline?" Eddie said and, not even waiting for her to answer, "You sound wonderful."

"How are you, Eddie?"

He gave a little laugh. "I was up all night on the plane. I have red eyes and a black beard. Can you see me for lunch anyway?"

"Of coursel What time? Where?"

"Twelve o'clock? Or would one be better for you?"

*T^o, twelve is fine."

"Well, I'm at the Plaza." He paused. "I think it would be better . . . since it's been so long and I just want to talk to you without a lot of strangers listening in . . . could you meet me up here?"

"Yes . . ."

She pulled a pencil out of her pencil holder, spilling the entire supply in the process, and wrote down the number of Eddie's room. "It's a suite," he said, "and it's down at the end of the hall. Just keep walking to your left when you get out of the elevator."

"Yes . . ."

"I'll see you then," he said softly. "Twelve o'clock."

"Yes . . ." And he had hung up.

How businesslike they both had sounded, Caroline thought. Plans, time and place. And yet, that lowering of the voice, his wish to meet her somewhere private, signified emotion, even over an impersonal telephone. She went quickly to the ladies' room, where she washed her face, although she had washed it only two and a half hours before, and put on fresh make-up: mascara, everything, lightly so that it looked very natural. She put more of the perfume at her throat and on her hair, although the scent of the bath oil she had bathed in that morning still lingered, and then she looked for the dozenth time to see if the seams of her stockings were straight. She must have combed her hair fifteen times at that mirror before she was satisfied with the result, although she realized wryly that even in getting in and out of a taxi the December wind would destroy what she had so carefully done. Eleven-thirty. She couldn't go back to her office, she felt too nervous.

She walked down the hall to the office that April used to have. It was funny, since April had left she still sometimes started toward that office, forgetting that it was empty, that April would not be there to speak to her and share her secret. Just because it made her feel better, Caroline opened the door to April's office and walked inside. There was the bookshelf of brightly colored paperback books, the desk completely emptied except for the office-issued blotter and pen-in-inkwell and calendar, and there was the coat rack on which she always used to see April's beige cashmere coat. If April were here they could talk, they could pass these fifteen minutes of waiting. Now Caroline just stood there, and then she turned and walked

slowly back to her oflBce and put on her coat and gloves and walked still more slowly down the hall to the elevator.

When she got out of the elevator on Eddie's floor at the Plaza it was only a quarter to twelve. Caroline hesitated, hearing the metal doors of the elevator click shut behind her. She could hover here or she could sit on the steps or she could take the chance and ring Eddie's doorbell. She bit her lip and walked slowly along the hall, reading the numbers, until she came to his, and then, timidly, she lifted her hand and rang his bell.

There was silence and then she heard footsteps, only one or two, as you hear when someone is just at arm's reach of the doorknob, and then Eddie opened the door. They each stood there in silence, looking at the other. He had not changed, he had not changed at all. His hair was still cut fairly short, a medium sandy brown. His face was freshly shaven, smooth and so handsome she realized she had forgotten quite how beautiful he was. He looked at her intently, almost stared, and then he grinned and said, "Come in, Caroline, come in."

He was wearing a dark-gray flannel suit with narrow lapels and a shirt with hairline blue and white stripes on it, and a plain dark tie. You noticed the suit almost as an afterthought—yes, it was gray-but what you saw first was the way he moved, the way an animal moves inside its coat. When he lifted his arm to help Caroline remove her coat she saw the arm and the hand with complete awareness, not the flannel sleeve, or the cufiF beneath, or the cuff link, if there even was one. She was aware of all this dimly, trying to think of something to say. "I'm a little early," she said.

"I'm glad."

"You haven't changed at all," Caroline said.

"Neither have you."

"You don't think I've changed?"

"Not a bit. I was afraid you would. I was afraid you'd look like those terrible women you see on Fifth Avenue, who always look as if they've just stepped out of the hairdresser's."

"They probably just have," she said, laughing. "They go three times a week."

"And bring their dogs, and strap them to the leg of their chair." He was grinning at her, and then as his eyes met hers his smile faded

and he reached out and touched her arm. "Sit down," he said. "Sit down. I'm so glad to see you."

"I'm glad to see you," she said softly. "Eddie."

There was a window with sunshine pouring in and a tiny, dimly exquisite view of the park below through the transparent curtains. In front of the window was a love seat and a bottle of champagne in a silver cooler. "I have champagne," Eddie said. "I thought it would be fun. Champagne for breakfast. Oh, but you've probably had breakfast, it's so late for you."

She shook her head.

"Remember that Sunday at school when we went to the Ritz for breakfast and had champagne?" he said happily. "I don't even remember what we had afterward."

"Neither do I! I remember I was in the shower and you called me up and you said, 'Let's have breakfast at the Ritz,' just like that, on the spur of the moment, and I'd never been there except for dinner, and then only with my parents."

"It was fun, wasn't it?"

"Yes," Caroline said. "I guess everything we did in those days was fun."

"I remember everything," Eddie said. His face was calm, but his eyes were sad, as if they were looking far back into the past. He leaned forward and pulled the cork out of the bottle of champagne, and it popped. "It doesn't always have to pop, did you know that?" he said. "That's a fallacy."

"Really?"

He poured champagne for them both, into wide crystal glasses, and handed one to her. He lifted his glass and looked into her eyes. *I guess I should say. To reunion."

"That sounds like college alumni. Class of Fifty-Two," Caroline said softly.

"Does it?" He looked into his glass quickly and drank.

"You're not sunburned," Caroline said. "Somehow I expected to see you with a tan."

"Not in the winter. Remember that time we had a picnic on the beach?" he said.

"Revere."

"Yes. And it was much too early so everyone was really shivering but no one would admit it."

"And we ran up and down the beach to get warm." Caroline laughed. "But what a gorgeous day it was, everything so blue and white and sunny."

"Just cold."

"But somebody went swimming. It was you!"

"So it was," he said. "I remember now. God, how sorry I was when I got out there in that ocean, but I didn't dare admit it." He looked at her. "Oh, Caroline . . ."

Their eyes met, and Caroline felt as if she were going to cry. "You never would admit it when you made a mistake, ever," she said in a very small voice.

"That was a long time ago," Eddie said softly. "I was just a child then. It's only three years, but it's been much longer than that, really. Much longer than that."

"That's what you said in your letter," Caroline said. "What did you mean by it?"

They were sitting side by side on the love seat and it was so narrow that if she moved only a few inches she could touch him. She wanted so badly to touch him, even to reach out with her finger and brush his wrist to know that he was really here with her at last, to feel anything of him that was permanent and his, that she could not help herself; she put forth her hand on the velvet cushion and touched the back of his hand. He turned his hand over instantly and closed his fingers around hers. "What . . . did you mean by it?" she repeated breathlessly, her voice catching in her throat.

"That I missed you," he said stiffly. With his free hand he lifted the bottle of champagne. "Let's have another glass, it'll go flat if we don't."

"We . . . ought to have champagne twirlers," Caroline said.

"Those sticks with little fins on the end of them? Have you seen those? There's a woman in Dallas who has one she carries around in her purse, it's solid gold with a little diamond set on the tip of each fin, and when she stirs the champagne all the bubbles catch the light." He grinned at her. "It's like every bad joke about a Texas millionaire."

"You still sound a little bit like a New Yorker just visiting there," Caroline said. "Is that how you feel?"

"In a way. Of course, I've made a lot of friends, and some of them are really wonderful people. You know, other . . . young couples."

His voice faded out on the last two words, as if he realized too late how the words would cut her. He covered her hand with his other hand. "It is tme, you know," he said, softly, looking into her eyes. "It's my life, it's the life I have. You've been having fun, haven't you? Is there anyone you're . . . serious about?"

"No," Caroline said.

"I still have the letters you wrote me when I was in Europe," he said. "Isn't that funny? I couldn't throw them out, that was all."

"I don't think it's funny," Caroline said.

"No . . ." he said. "It isn't funny. I read them sometimes, when I'm alone in my office with nothing to do. It's quite often that I have nothing to do. And when I read them I ... I could kick myself for being so cruel to you, for being such a stupid fool. They were such sweet letters, so good. Everything about you as you really are is in those pages, so giving, always giving. And ... I'd read each one when it came, and then I'd go to a party, or a dinner with some diplomats or ambassadors, or counts or something, and I'd think I was having such fun. The young man on his first trip to Paris." He said it with such self-hating scorn that Caroline was filled with pity for him. "I did everything I thought I was supposed to do. I even rode through Les Halles at four o'clock in the morning on a vegetable wagon. Remember that, in F. Scott Fitzgerald? The carrot wagon. Well, this one had carrots on it too, and Helen and I were tossing them around just like in the book, and singing songs, and we had a bottle of red wine—oh, God." He let go of Caroline's hand and put his hands over his face.

"Eddie . . ."

"Have some more champagne, darling," he said finally and reached for the bottle.

"Eddie, darling . . ."

"I missed you so terribly these past three years," he said. "I'd dream sometimes in the middle of the night that I was f alHng oflE a cliff, and I'd wake up suddenly with a jolt—did you ever do that?"

"No."

"Well, it's frightening. And then I'd He awake in the dark for hours and I'd have the terrible feehng that I'd lost someone, and I knew it was you, and you'd never care for me again, and we'd never be together again."

"I love you," Caroline said.

"Do you?"

"Always."

She held out her hands to him and he took her into his arms. "My darling . . ." she said. "Darling . . ." At last she could touch him, at last, and she put her arms around his neck and stroked his hair, so familiar, so soft, and they kissed each other for a while with a fierce, frightened intensity, as if any moment they let each other go they might be parted again and lose each other as they did before, and to lose each other this time after everything that had happened would be more than either of them could bear.

He took his lips away from hers only once, to say, "I love you, Caroline, I love you," and then they kissed again for a long time, and finally he drew away and Caroline put her head on tlie place where his neck joined his shoulder, where she had always rested it so long ago. He put his cheek on her hair and then he brushed his lips across it. "You always smell like tliose little flowers," he said. "Little sweet flowers, lots of them, not any special one."

'It's the perfume I always used to wear."

"I walked into a room once, it was at a party, and there was a girl there with that same perfume on. I went up to her, I don't know why, really, because I knew it wasn't you, but I touched her on the shoulder and she turned around; and it was terrible. It was like seeing someone else's face on a member of your own family."

Caroline smiled and turned her head and kissed him.

"Let's run away," he murmured. "Let's run away somewhere. I don't know where."

"Where?"

"Back to four years ago. Do you think we can do that? Make everything else disappear?"

"If we really try . . ."

He was stroking her face and her hair with his fingertips as if he was trying to refamiliarize himself with them, and then he put his arms around her and held her tightly. "You're just exactly the same," he said.

At that moment Caroline felt she really was the same. Nothing had happened to her during these three years, nothing of any import. She was Eddie Harris' girl, as she always had been, and the world was good. It was their world, because they loved each other,