The Last Chance (8 page)

“Do you think Jill suspected when she saw us?”

“Maybe. Maybe that’s why she said what she did. I think you and I ought to be more careful.”

He looked around the bar. “There’s no one here we know. From now on we’ll go to very out-of-the-way places.”

“I think we shouldn’t see each other for a while,” Ellen said. She saw the color drain from his normally rather pale face until she was afraid for a moment he might have a coronary.

“That’s silly,” he said.

“No it’s not. We’re too much in love with each other and we’re losing our sense of reality. It’s getting too dangerous.”

“My wife doesn’t
mind
.”

“I don’t want you to leave her,” Ellen said. “Tell her you’ll try again. Please? For me?”

“But when will I see you?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m so confused and upset. I just had a picture in my mind of Jill’s face, and …”

“You’re so good,” he said sadly. “All this time you’ve felt guilty. How awful it must have been for you. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wanted you.”

“I want you now.”

“I want you too,” Ellen said.

There were tears in his eyes again and she hoped he wasn’t going to cry in public. If he did cry it would set her off, that sort of thing always did. She felt so sorry for herself. Why was she doomed to have to make sacrifices all the time? You did one stupid thing—married the wrong man—and then you compounded it by having children, because that was what a marriage was for, and then you were trapped forever. She knew she could never see Jim any more, because he was too unpredictable, too emotional, too dangerous. All the qualities that made him exciting to her were the same ones that had made their love affair self-destruct. Why did this keep happening to her?

He paid the check and they left. They went to their motel and made love for hours. Ellen wanted it to be perfect so she could always remember it.

“I’ll never give you up,” he said. “Never.”

“I know,” she murmured, as one would to a child. They all said that.

March was the beginning of spring and it was the beginning of Nikki Gellhorn’s new life in her New York apartment. Whereas in the country she had always been rather untidy, here she was immaculate. Everything was hers and she wanted to protect it. She had a great many books from the publishing company where she worked, and she brought all the ones she liked best, plus all the ones she herself had worked on with the authors. She arranged them in alphabetical order in the bookcases she’d had built, like those in the public library, but her books were all fresh and clean. She bought a few prints and photographs she loved and had them framed in transparent plastic so they seemed to float on her white walls. She bought a small color television set for her alcove-bedroom and a white fluffy rug to put in front of the fireplace. The leather couch from Bloomingdale’s was a floor model on sale, so she was doubly lucky, because that meant immediate delivery. She went to Tiffany’s in a spurt of extravagance and bought four place settings of Red Dragon china. Not those awful overdecorated wedding plates she had in the country and never used, service for God knows how many people she didn’t like enough to invite home, and not the chipped, mismatched everyday dishes she’d acquired during the years of her childrens’ growing up—these were her own dishes, for herself and her own carefully chosen friends. Meals would be served on a glass and chrome table that doubled as a desk for the work she brought home from the office. She hadn’t bought sheets in years and was shocked at how expensive they’d become. Her bank account was almost down to zero when she finished her decorating. But it was
her
bank account, not the one she shared with her husband.

Robert had never seen her apartment. He remained inflexible. She tried to mention it twice on weekends when they were together, but he turned her off with a look of quiet rage. She told herself he was as entitled to his anger as she had been to hers, but in her heart she was hurt and resentful because of his attitude. He only wants to share when it’s on his terms, she thought. For the first time in all the years they had been married she had no sexual feelings toward him. She knew they had vanished into her anger. While one part of her wanted to be a better wife when she was home, the other part asked her why she felt she had to pacify him all the time. Before, when they had been living together all week, she had felt free to say so when she didn’t feel like having sex. Now she felt she had to do it every time he wanted to, but she couldn’t respond, because it seemed so terribly important that she respond more now.

He misinterpreted her lack of passion and accused her of having a lover.

“You’re crazy!” Nikki said.

“It’s all so obvious,” he said. “You wanted your own place, and now you’re free to do as you like. You don’t need me any more. You have him. You never were able to hide anything from me.”

“I’m not hiding anything from you, you jackass. If I had a lover, which I don’t, I’d tell you.”

“You call me crazy and jackass,” Robert said. “Thank you very much. Are you going to call me cuckold next?”

“You make me so mad I’m going to kill you!” Nikki screamed. Her voice seemed to echo in the room. They both stared at each other. Damn him, damn lawyer, with all his precise words. Damn his literal mind. He was probably imagining the ways she might murder him now—gun or poison? Unaccountably, she wanted to laugh, but she knew it would enrage him, so she cried instead. That always worked.

“Don’t cry,” he said.

“I’m so alone … you don’t care about me,” Nikki sobbed. She felt so upset at having to cry to win him over that it made her cry in earnest. She couldn’t stop crying. Robert became genuinely concerned. He took her in his arms.

“Don’t cry, Nikki. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. Do you want to come home?”

She shook her head, no. “I don’t have a lover, and now you’re mad at me and mean to me and I don’t have you on my side any more and I’m all alone.”

“I’m always on your side,” he said, patting her back, stroking her damp hair. He handed her a wad of Kleenex to blow her nose.

“You won’t even come to see my pretty apartment.”

“I’m hardly ever in New York,” he said.

“Aren’t you even curious?”

“Sure,” he said.

“I could give you a key.”

“If you like.”

“Don’t you
want
a key?” she asked.

“It’s your apartment, you’re paying for it. It’s up to you.”

She had stopped crying and had become coy. “Wouldn’t it make you feel like my lover if you had a key?”

“It would make me feel castrated,” Robert said.

“
Why
?”

“Because you should have a key to
my
apartment.”

“I do. This house.”

“This is our house,” he said.

“Robert, stop, stop, stop doing that horrible thing you do, being so precise. You use words like weapons. You’re always looking for shades of meaning. For God’s sake can’t we just feel things any more?”

“You’re the one with the problem of not feeling,” he said.

She didn’t answer. There was nothing she wanted to say.

But when she was in New York during the week she was happy. She met friends and authors after work for drinks, she took certain business guests to dinner instead of lunch, and investigated new restaurants she’d always wanted to try. She discovered that there was one great drawback to living alone in the city; she had to have a dinner date or she got depressed. The days were busy, and it was wonderful to come home to her little apartment, take a bath, watch the evening news, change her clothes, but she had to go out. The thought of eating alone made her almost frightened. Even if she had a manuscript to read overnight, she preferred a quick dinner with a friend to sitting in bed with a container of yoghurt and the manuscript. She didn’t feel like cooking for herself. She had never eaten dinner alone in her entire life. First it had been her parents, then the dormitory, then she had been married to Robert. Even on the few occasions when he’d had to work through dinner she’d had the twins for company. She associated meals with conversation and love. The television set was no substitute.

She told Margot her silly problem, but Margot didn’t laugh. “Now you know,” Margot said. “The greatest thing in my whole relationship with Kerry is knowing he’ll be there in the morning to have breakfast with and that he’ll have dinner with me every night.”

“You mean I’m not weird,” Nikki said.

“Not weird. Just single. In our culture, food is a social event. Breast-feeding, mama love, and all that. I did a little story on it once on the show. The thing about how old people living alone won’t cook and get malnutrition. They just get so damn depressed that they don’t care.”

“I still buy too much in the supermarket,” Nikki said.

“That’s better than what I did before Kerry. I didn’t buy anything. I lived on cottage cheese and ice cream.”

“One night I’ll take the two of you out to dinner,” Nikki said. “On my expense account. You can tell Kerry I’m trying to steal him from his publisher.”

“We’d love it.”

Rachel Fowler called and said she wanted Nikki to try her new gym. Nikki signed up for twice a week in the mornings before work. Rachel had an enviable wandlike body, but she wasn’t very graceful. Nikki had twice as much energy as she did. They signed up for the same classes anyway. Their companions were two sixty-year-old women who had been going to exercise classes all their lives and were better than they were. Nikki loved getting up early to go to the gym and care for her body instead of getting up to commute. She had become so accustomed to waking at six that she always woke up before the seven-o’clock alarm rang.

She liked Rachel, particularly in a leotard looking embarrassed because she couldn’t touch her toes. “Listen,” Nikki told her, “if I looked as gorgeous in a leotard as you do I wouldn’t care if I couldn’t touch my
knees
!”

“I’d rather be smart than pretty,” Rachel said.

“I think you’re both.”

Rachel actually blushed.

Sometimes when Rachel’s husband was working late she invited Nikki to their apartment for drinks. That still left the problem of dinner though, so Nikki asked Rachel to go out to dinner with her.

“You mean, leave Lawrence alone?”

“Why not? He’s out with the boys, you can go out with the girls.” Nikki giggled, a habit she’d gotten into years ago to cover up when she was being tough. “Let him know you have a life of your own. We’ll have more fun without him.”

“Oh, I’d really like to,” Rachel said tentatively.

“Let him miss you a little.”

“He wants me to have friends.…”

“I’m your friend. Come on. I’ll be your date.”

They went to a restaurant where Nikki was known. They ate fattening things, shared a bottle of wine, and split the check.

“I never eat like this,” Rachel said, sounding both pleased and horrified. “I’m always on a diet, all my life.”

“This is good for you once in a while,” Nikki said, this time using her mother voice. “You’re too uptight. You have the most beautiful body I’ve ever seen and one meal won’t hurt it.”

“I’m really having a good time,” Rachel said. They were lingering over the last of their coffee. She glanced at her watch.

“Don’t keep thinking about him,” Nikki said. “You’re allowed to stay out late. You’re a big girl.”

“I feel so guilty.”

“Why? Does he feel guilty when he leaves you alone?”

Rachel shook her head, no. “I guess it’s different. He’s out supporting me.”

“Well, let me tell you about business, my dear girl. Half those meetings are bullshit. They’re together because they want to be. They could transact business in the office in the morning. But the drinking and the eating and the telling funny stories is all part of the game they invented to get away from their wives.”

“Why do they get married, then?” Rachel said.

“We’re convenient.”

“I thought you had a very happy marriage.”

“I do. It’s just that I’ve been working most of my adult life and I know about married men.”

“It’s as if you and I are on opposite sides of the moon,” Rachel said. “I see them when they’re putting on one act and you see them when they’re putting on another. The only man I’ve ever known who’s completely honest with me is Lawrence. When he ignores me at least he’s being honest.”

“Oh, husbands ignore their wives all the time,” Nikki said.

Rachel looked at her in some surprise. “I never really knew you before, Nikki. There’s a lot of anger in you, isn’t there?”

“Sometimes.”

“How does your husband feel about your having a life of your own in New York?”

“He hates it.”

“But you do it anyway.”

Nikki shrugged and grinned at her. “If one of us is going to be mad, it might as well not have to be me.”

“I really admire you,” Rachel said.

She says “really” every other sentence, Nikki thought. I wonder if she’s “really” as dumb as she seems.

When they got out on the sidewalk Rachel immediately looked for a cab. The restaurant had no doorman. It was a nice night, not cold. “Let’s walk,” Nikki said.

“Walk?” Rachel said in horror.

“Yeah, walk. You can work off some of those calories.”

“We can’t walk around here at night,” Rachel said.

“I was planning to walk home. I do it all the time.”

“Nikki, nobody walks around New York City at night.”

“Who are all those people, then? Apparitions?”

“We’ll walk to the corner and get a cab and I’ll drop you off at your house.”

Nikki thought it was funny how Rachel kept looking around while they walked to the corner. You’d think someone was going to materialize from behind a garbage can and pounce on her. They got a taxi and drove to Nikki’s building first.

“I didn’t know you don’t have a doorman,” Rachel said.

“Rachel, you may not know it, but most people don’t have doormen. Most people don’t have chauffeured limousines either.”

“Don’t make fun of me. I can’t help it if I married a rich man.”

“Then you can pay for the cab,” Nikki said and laughed. She kissed Rachel good-night. “Tell Lawrence you had a terrific date tonight.”