The Promise (7 page)

“I think you're both crazy. He just got out of the hospital this morning.”

“And you, of course, are famous for taking such good care of yourself. Right, Mother?” He cocked his head at her, and she sank down slowly on the couch.

“All right, all rigft,” she said with a slow smile.

“How was the meeting?” Michael sat down across from her and tried to look as though he cared. He was going to have to do a lot of that, because that afternoon he had made a decision. From now on he was going to live for one thing and one thing only. His work. There was nothing else left.

Chapter 8

“Ready?”

“I guess so.” She couldn't feel anything above her shoulders; it was as though her head had been cut off. And the bright lights of the operating room made Nancy want to squint, but she couldn't even do that. All she could see clearly was Peter's face as he bent over her, his neatly trimmed beard covered by a blue surgical mask, and his eyes dancing. He had spent almost three weeks studying the X-rays, measuring, sketching, drawing, planning, preparing, and talking to her. The only photograph of Nancy he had was the one taken the day of the accident, at the fair. But her face had been partially obscured by the silly board-walk facade she and Michael had stuck their heads through to have their picture taken. It gave him an idea though, a starting point, but he was going much farther than that. She was going to be a different girl when he was through, a person anyone would dream of being. He smiled down at her again as he saw her eyelids grow heavy.

“You're going to have to stay awake now, and keep talking to me. You can get drowsy but you can't go to sleep.” Otherwise she might choke on her own blood, but she didn't need to know that. Instead he kept her amused with stories and jokes, asked her questions, made her think of things, dig up answers, remember the names of all the nuns she knew when she was a child. “And you're sure you don't still want to be Sister Agnes Marie?”

“Uh uh. I promised.” They teased back and forth during the whole three hours that the procedure took, and his hands never stopped moving. For Nancy it was like watching a ballet.

“And just think, in another couple of weeks we'll get you your own apartment, maybe something with a view, and then … Hey, sleepyhead, what do you think of the view? Do you want to see the bay from the bedroom?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Just 'sure’? You know, I think you're getting spoiled by the view from your room here at the hospital, Nancy.”

“That's not true. I love it.”

“Okay, then we'll go out together and find you something even better. Deal?”

“Deal.” Even with the sleepy voice, she sounded pleased. “Can't I go to sleep yet?”

“You know what, Princess, you just about can. Just a few more minutes and we'll whisk you back to your room and you can sleep all you want.”

“Good.”

“Have I been boring you then!” She giggled at his mock hurt. “There, love … all … set.” He looked up at his assistant with a nod, stood back for a moment, and a nurse gave Nancy a quick shot in the thigh. Then Peter stepped back to her side and smiled down at the eyes he already knew so well. He didn't even see the rest. Not yet. But he saw the eyes. And knew them intimately. Just as she knew his. “Did you know that today is a special day?”

“Yes.”

“You did? How did you know?”

Because it was Michael's birthday, but she didn't want to tell him that He was going to be twenty-five years old today. She wondered what he was doing.

“I just knew, that's all.”

“Well, it's special to me because this is the beginning. Our first surgery together, our first step on a wonderful road toward a new you. How about that?” He smiled at her then, and she quietly closed her eyes and fell asleep. The shot had taken effect.

“Happy birthday, boss.”

“Don't call me that, you jerk. Christ, you look lousy, Ben.”

“Thanks a lot.” Ben looked over at his friend as he hobbled into the office with crutches and the assistance of a secretary. She eased him into a chair and withdrew from Michael's overstuffed and much paneled office. “This is some place they fixed up for you. Is mine gonna look like this?”

“If not, you can have this one. I hate it.”

“That's nice. So what's new?” The talk between them was still strained. They had seen each other twice since Ben arrived from Boston, but the effort of staying off the subject of Nancy was almost too much for them. It was all either of them could think of. “The doctor says I can start work next week.”

Michael laughed and shook his head. “You're stark staring crazy, Ben.”

“And you're not?”

A cloud passed over Mike's eyes. “I didn't break anything.” Nothing you could see anyway. “I told you, you've got a month. Two if you need it. Why don't you go to Europe with your sister?”

“And do what? Sit in a wheelchair and dream about bikinis? I want to come to work. How about two weeks?”

“We'll see.” There was a long silence and then suddenly Mike looked at his friend with an expression of bitterness Ben had never seen before. “And then what?”

“What do you mean, Mike, ‘and then what?’”

“Just that. We work our asses off for the next fifty years, screw as many people as we can, make as much money as we can, and so what? So Goddamn what?”

“You're in a wonderful mood. What happened? Slam your finger in your desk this morning?”

“Oh for Chrissake, be serious for a change, will you? I mean it. Don't you ever think of that? What the hell does it all mean?” Ben knew what he meant, and there was no avoiding the questions now.

“I don't know, Mike. The accident made me think of that, too. It made me ask myself what's important in my life, what I believe in.”

“And what did you come up with?”

“I'm not sure. I think I'm just grateful to be here. Maybe it taught me how important life is, how good it is while you have it.” There were tears in his eyes as he spoke. “I still don't understand why it happened the way it did. I wish … I wish ….” His voice broke on the words. “I wish it had been me.”

Mike closed his eyes on the tears in his own eyes and then came slowly around the desk to his friend. They stood there for a moment, the two of them, tears running slowly down their faces, holding tight to each other, and feeling the friendship of ten years comfort them as little else could. “Thanks, Ben.”

“Hey, listen.” Ben wiped the tears from his cheeks with the sleeve of his jacket. “You want to go out and get smashed? Hell,
it's
your birthday, why not?” For a minute Mike laughed, and then like a small boy drawn into a conspiracy, he nodded.

“Hell, it's almost five o'clock. I don't have any more meetings I'm supposed to be at. We'll go to the Oak Room and tie one on.” He assisted Ben from the room, and then into a cab, and half an hour later they were well on their way to a major blow-out. Mike didn't get back to his mother's apartment until after midnight, and when he did he required a considerable amount of help from the doorman to get upstairs. The next morning when the maid came in, she found him asleep on the floor of his room. But at least he had gotten through the birthday.

He could hardly see when he got to the breakfast table the next morning. His mother was already there, in a black dress, reading
The New York Times.

He wanted to throw up when he smelled the sweet rolls and coffee.

“You must have had an interesting time last night.” Her tone was glacial.

“I was out with Ben.”

“So your secretary told me. I hope you won't make a habit of this.”

Oh, Jesus. Why not? “What? Getting smashed?”

“No. Leaving early. And actually, the other, too. You must have looked charming when you came home.”

“I can't remember.” He was trying desperately not to gag on his coffee.

“There's something else you didn't remember.” She put the paper down on the table and glared at him. “We had a dinner date last night, at Twenty-one. I waited for you for two hours. With nine other people. Your birthday—remember?”

Christ. That would have been all he needed. “You never told me about nine people. You just asked me to dinner. I thought it would have been just the two of us.” It was a moot point now, of course.

“And it was all right to stand up just me, is that it?”

“No, I just forgot, for Chrissake. This wasn't exactly my favorite birthday.”

“I'm sorry.” But she didn't sound as though she remembered why this birthday was different, or as though she really cared. She sounded miffed.

“And that brings up another point, Mother. I'm going to move out and get my own place.”

She looked up, surprised “Why?”

“Because I'm twenty-five years old. I work for you, Mother. I don't have to live with you, too.”

“You don't ‘have’ to do anything.” She was beginning to wonder about the Avery boy and just what kind of influence he was. This sounded like his idea.

“Mother, let's not get into this now. I have an incredible headache.”

“Hangover.” She looked at her watch and stood up. “I'll see you at the office in half an hour. Don't forget the meeting with the people from Houston. Are you up to it?”

“I will be. And Mom … I'm sorry about the apartment, but I think it's time.”

She looked at him sternly for a moment and then let out a small sigh. “Maybe it is, Michael. Maybe it is. Happy birthday, by the way.” She bent down to kiss him, and he even smiled despite the terrible ache in his head. “I left you a little present on your desk.”

“You shouldn't have.” There was no present that mattered anymore. Ben had understood that. He had given him nothing.

“Birthdays are birthdays after all, Michael. See you at the office.”

After she left he sat for a long time in the dining room, looking at the view. He knew just the apartment he wanted. Only it was in Boston. But he was going to do his damnedest to find one just like it in New York. In some ways he still hadn't given up the dream. Even though he knew he was crazy to cling to it.

Chapter 9

“Hi, Sue. Is Mr. Hillyard in?” Ben had the look of five o'clock as he arrived at Mike's office door: not quite disheveled, but relieved that the day was almost over. He'd barely had time to sit down all day long, let alone relax.

“He is. Shall I let him know you're here?” She smiled at him, and he felt his eyes drawn to the carefully concealed figure. Marion Hillyard did not approve of sexy secretaries, even for her son … or was it especially for her son? Ben wondered as he shook his head.

“No, thanks. I'll announce myself.” He strode past her desk, carrying the files that had been his excuse, and knocked on the heavy oak door. “Anybody home?” There was no answer so he knocked again. And still got no reply. He turned questioningly to the secretary. “You're sure he's in there?”

“Positive.”

“Okay.” Ben tried again and this time a hoarse croak from the other side urged him in. Ben cautiously opened the door and looked around “You asleep or something?” Michael looked up and grinned at his friend.

“I wish. Look at this mess.” He sat surrounded by folders, mock-ups, drawings, designs, reports. It was enough to keep ten men busy for a year. “Sit down, Ben.”

“Thanks, boss.” Ben couldn't resist teasing him.

“Oh, shut up. What's with the files you brought me?” He ran a hand through his hair and sat back in the heavy leather desk chair he had grown accustomed to. He had even gotten used to the impersonal prints on the walls. It didn't matter anymore. He didn't give a damn. He never looked at the walls, or his office, or his secretary … or his life. He looked at the work on his desk and very little else. It had been four months. “Please don't tell me you've brought me another set of problems with that damn shopping center in Kansas City. They're driving me nuts.”

“And you love it. Tell me, Mike, what was the last movie you saw?
Bridge on the River Kwai, or
Fantasia?
Don't you ever get the hell out of here?”

“When I get the chance.” Michael looked at some papers as he answered. “So what's with the files?”

“They're a decoy. I just wanted to come and talk to you.”

“And you can't do that without an excuse?” Michael grinned up at him. It was like being Kids again, visiting each other's study halls with fake homework to consult on.

“I keep forgetting your mother isn't old Sanders up at St Jude's.”

“Thank God.” Actually they both knew she was worse, but neither of them could afford to admit it. She detested seeing people “float around” the halls, as she put it, and she was usually quick to glance at whatever files they were carrying. “So what's up, Ben? How were the Hamptons this summer?”

Ben sat very still for a moment, watching him, before he answered. “Do you really care?”

“About you, or the Hamptons?” Michael's smile looked pasted on, and he had the ghostly pallor of December, not September. It was obvious he had gone nowhere all summer. “I care a lot about you, Ben.”

“But not about yourself. Have you looked in the mirror lately? You'd scare Frankenstein's mother.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Don't mention it. Anyway, that's why I'm here.”

“On behalf of Frankenstein's mother?”

“No, mine. We want you to come up to the Cape this weekend. They do. I do. We all do. And listen, if you say no, I'll come across that desk and drag you out of here. You need to get out of here, damn it.” Ben wasn't smiling anymore. He was dead serious, and Mike knew it. But he shook his head.

“I'd love to, Ben. But I can't I've got Kansas City to worry about, and forty-seven thousand problems with it that we just can't seem to solve. You know. You were in that meeting yesterday.”

“So were twenty-three other people. Let them handle it. For a weekend at least. Or is your ego such that you can't let anyone else touch your work?”

But they both knew it wasn't that Work had become his drug. It numbed him to everything else. And he had been abusing the job since the day he walked into the office.

“Come on, Mike. Be good to yourself. Just this once.”

“I just can't, Ben.”

“Goddamn it, man, what do I have to say to you? Look at yourself. Don't you care? You're killing yourself, and for what?” His voice roared across the office and hit Michael with an almost physical force as he watched his friend's face convulse with emotion. “What the hell's the use, Mite? If you kill yourself, it won't bring her back. You're alive, damn it. Twenty-five years old and alive—and wasting your life, driving yourself like your Goddamn mother. Is that what you want? To be like her? To live, eat; sleep, drink, and die this Goddamn business? Is that it for you now? Is that who you are? Well, I don't believe it. I know someone else in that skin of yours, mister, and I love that other person. But you happen to be treating him like a dog, and I won't let you do it. You know what you should be doing? You should be out there, living. You should be out there making it with that good-looking secretary who sits outside your office, or ten other broads you meet at the best parties in town. Get off your ass and get out of your casket, Mike, before—”

But Mike cut him off before he could finish. He was leaning halfway across the desk at him, shaking, and even paler than he had been before. “Get the hell out of my office, Ben, before I kill you.
Get out!!”
It was the roar of an injured lion, and for a moment the two men stood staring at each other, shaken and frightened by what they had felt and said. “I'm sorry.” Mike sat down again and dropped his head into his hands. “Why don't we just let this go for today?” He never looked up at Ben, who walked slowly across the room, squeezed his shoulder, and walked out, closing the door quietly behind him. There was nothing left to say.

Michael's secretary looked at Ben questioningly as he walked past, but said nothing. She had heard Mike's roar at the very end. The whole floor could have, if they'd been listening. Ben passed Marion in the hall on the way back to his office, but she was busy with something Calloway was showing her and Ben wasn't in the mood for the usual pleasantries. He was sick of her, and what she was letting Mike do to himself. It served her purposes to have him work like that; it was good for the business, for the empire, for the dynasty … and it made Ben Avery sick.

He left the office at six thirty that night, and when he looked up from the street, he could still see the lights burning in Mike's office. He knew they would still be lit at eleven or twelve that night. And why not? What the hell did he have to go home to? The empty apartment he had rented three months before? He had found an attractive little apartment on Central Park South, and something about the layout had reminded Ben of Nancy's place in Boston. He was sure Mike had noticed that, too. Maybe that was why he had taken it. But then something had happened. What little life had been left had gone out of him. He had begun this insane work thing, a marathon of madness. So he never bothered to do anything with the apartment. It just sat there, cold and empty and lonely. The only furniture he had put in it were two folding chairs, a bed, and an ugly old lamp which stayed on the floor. The whole place rang with empty echoes; it looked as though the tenant had been evicted that morning. Ben got depressed just thinking about coming home to such a place, and he could imagine what it did to Mike—if he even noticed his surroundings anymore, which Ben was beginning to doubt. He had given him three plants for the place in early July, and all of them had been dead by the end of the month. Like the ugly lamp, they just sat there, unloved and forgotten.

Ben didn't like what was happening, but there was nothing anyone could do. No one except Nancy, and she was dead. Thinking about her still gave Ben an almost physical pang, like the twinge he felt in his ankle and his hip when he got tired. But the breaks had repaired quickly; youth had served him well. He only hoped it did the same for Mike. But Mike's breaks were compound fractures of parts of him that didn't even show. Except in his eyes. Or his face at the end of a day … or the set of his mouth in an unguarded moment as he sat at his desk and looked into the distance, at the endless stretch of the view.