The Last Chance (28 page)

“This is Mrs. Fowler. You sent me about ten dozen white roses, but there’s no card. Who sent them?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Fowler. My assistant took the order. I’ll ask him.” She waited. “He says the man didn’t write a card.”

“Put your assistant on, please.”

“Hello.” A younger voice, also a man.

“Who bought all those white roses?” Rachel asked.

“I don’t know. It was a man. He paid cash and he didn’t want to write a card.”

“What did he look like?” Rachel demanded.

“I don’t remember. Just a man. I don’t know—forties maybe. He had a hat on.”

“Didn’t you ask him for his name?”

“We don’t if they pay cash. But it was such a big order, well, I asked, and I gave him our card because I’d never seen him before.”

“Would you look up his name, please?” She didn’t know why her voice was so sharp with nervousness. She felt as if someone had inflicted these roses on her, not given her a present.

“Oh, I don’t have to look it up,” the young man said, “I remember it.”

“What was it?”

“Mr. Smith.”

Lawrence insisted on throwing out the roses because they were making her unhappy. She kept pacing up and down the bedroom saying, “Oh, shit.” It was like some enormous practical joke that had backfired—but why? What was the point? Was she supposed to be pleased or upset? Who was “Mr. Smith”?

“Well, whoever he is,” Lawrence said comfortingly, “when he comes to visit and there aren’t any roses, he’ll wonder why.”

“But nobody’s coming to visit.”

“Maybe it’s somebody we dropped from our list,” Lawrence said.

“If I was thrilled, which I’m obviously not, what good was it going to do him if he was so sneaky about it?”

“Maybe he’ll call.”

“Things like that are so
mean
,” Rachel said.

“Forget about it,” Lawrence said. “Come to bed. He’s just out a lot of money.”

“Maybe it’s somebody I don’t even know,” Rachel said. “He might have seen my picture in ‘W’ after the party at East Hampton. He’s trying to buy his way into our affections, like Gatsby.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lawrence said. “Let’s go to sleep.”

Rachel got into bed next to his comforting warmth. She felt as if somehow their evening had been ruined by an intruder, and she held on tightly to her husband, wishing that their lives were different, that they didn’t know all those people, that the two of them could just spend their lives alone, from time to time seeing only the few friends they really liked and trusted.

In November John Griffin’s book was finished, and edited by Nikki. He wrote the way he had sex, tirelessly. She’d never had an author who worked so fast. As to being edited, although he was careful and thoughtful about every change she wanted to make, he was reasonable too, and he finally let her make most of them. She thought part of the reason he was so amenable was that he had a deadline: he had to go away on location to make another movie. His novel was planned for publication the following September. She could see his attention already wandering away from the small but important final changes she was making in his book to the script he had at home that he was reading, rereading, and becoming involved in.

When his manuscript was all finished she took him to lunch to celebrate. He let her sign the check. He was leaving for Yugoslavia the next morning.

“You’re a lovely lady,” he said.

“Thank you. You’re a lovely man.”

“I wish I could do something for you.”

“You have.”

“I mean, I want to give you something.”

“You’ve already given me a wonderful book.”

He smiled, pleased. “But I mean I want to give you a present. Or do something for you.”

“Authors don’t have to give editors presents,” she said, laughing. “Even rich authors.”

“I don’t mean as an author to an editor,” he said. “I mean from me to you.”

Nikki looked at him. His face was calm and she couldn’t read his eyes. What am I supposed to ask for, she thought, a piece of jewelry? A hundred dollars? A screen test? Does every woman he goes to bed with want something?

“I don’t want anything,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Would you like to stop at my apartment before you go back to the office?” he asked.

“All right,” she said, pretending to be as casual as he was pretending to be.

At his apartment he made love to her for the last time. They both already knew that Robert had decided to come into the city for the evening. Knowing this was the last time with John for a long time, maybe forever, made her want to let herself go more than ever before, so naturally she couldn’t let go at all. She hated goodbyes. He was as enthusiastic as always, and she had to call her secretary to say she wouldn’t be in that afternoon.

When she had to leave he didn’t seem to want to detain her. She saw the partly packed suitcases on the chairs, the already packed ones lined up, the script on his dresser. She was already out of his life, and he was entering the next adventure. Going down in the elevator she consoled herself with the knowledge that she was going to meet her husband for dinner, and so she was just as cold as John Griffin. Or was he cold? If you played a certain game you had to keep to the rules.

Robert was trying hard to be charming. He told her at length about a new case he was working on, and Nikki found herself drifting away. John Griffin … if anyone ever knew! She missed him, and she felt sad.

She lied to Robert when they went back to her apartment and told him she had her period, so he would keep away from her. She couldn’t face the idea of two men in one day. She took a sleeping pill before they went to bed, because even though she was tired, she was nervous, and when she went to sleep she dreamed that she and John Griffin were riding away on a horse together, up into the sky, like in a Chagall painting.

She didn’t have anything to write to him about, but she kept hoping in the office that he might at least send her a postcard. He never did. Well, maybe it took a long time for mail to arrive from Yugoslavia. Besides, he was very busy. But she knew he wouldn’t ever write. One day, at the end of November, she read in the
Post
and the
Daily News
that John Griffin was involved in a new, torrid romance with a starlet in the film he was making.

For some reason it hurt her, although it really didn’t surprise her very much. Why wouldn’t he have an affair? He was a very sexual man. Besides, actors were always in love with whoever was playing a part in their lives at the moment. For a while she had been his costar, and he had been playing his serious-author role. Now he was in another fantasy, across the world. She felt as if she had never really known him, and yet she felt that she knew him as well as anybody. She knew all there was to know about John Griffin. What was she expecting, secrets?

She went home to Wilton for the weekend as she always did. “Look, Nikki,” Robert said. “I want you back.”

“I know,” she said. “I think we’re both close to it, don’t you?”

“No. I’ve changed, but you haven’t. I’ve been making concessions. But you have everything your way.”

“I do?” Nikki said, surprised.

“I drag myself in to that tiny little apartment after a long, hard day at the office, I take you out, I sleep over and have to get up early and take the damn train to Stamford, and what do you do?”

“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“Do you want to come back? Do you want us to be the way we used to be?”

“You mean happy?”

“Yes. Happy.”

“You know I do, Robert. I’m trying. I want everything to be the same. Maybe after a long time marriage just changes.”

“Bullshit! Our marriage never had a chance,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that there are jobs
here
. You could work in Stamford. You could work on the local newspaper—they’d be glad to have you. You think that company you work for is the greatest thing in the world. It’s nothing. It’s just a second-rate company. Why don’t you wise up, Nikki? You’re throwing away your life for false gods.”

“Thou shalt have no other god before me,” she murmured.

“You think those people you work with are intellectuals. They’re just second-rate failures. They’re living in a tight little world where everyone lies to everyone else and people tell each other they’re powerful and important. Do you think anybody outside of publishing even heard of you? Do you think if you left that the world would fall apart?”

“I am the lord thy God and thou shalt have no other …”

“What are you mumbling about?” Robert said.

“What do you
want
, Robert. What do you really want?”

“I want you to quit that job and get rid of that apartment and come home. I want us to share our life together. The girls are grown and on their own and we only have each other, Nikki. I want you to be with me.”

“But you don’t even know me.”

“I know you better than anyone else in the world does.”

“No,” Nikki said. She felt as if she were going to cry. “You just know me longer, Robert.”

“Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“It counts for a lot. It makes it very hard to leave you.”

“You know we can’t leave each other,” he said.

“Robert, didn’t you even wonder why I didn’t get mad when you said what you just did about my job and my friends and my life and my self-respect?”

“Because you know I’m right. Look, maybe I was a little harsh, but I just don’t want you to waste our lives, Nikki.”

“I didn’t get mad because, Robert, I don’t care what you think about me any more.”

“You’re just saying that to get back at me,” he said.

She shook her head, no.

“Go ahead,” he said, “get mad.” He sounded a little frightened.

“I’m not mad, Robert. I’m very hurt, but I’m not angry. You don’t want
me
back. You just want someone to fit in with all your ideas of what your wife should be.”

“You
are
what my wife should be.”

“Obviously not. The way you described me, I wouldn’t want
that
person back.”

“I want to change that person,” Robert said.

“I know,” Nikki said. And she smiled, a cold, deadly smile without any flirtatiousness or humor. It was more a grimace of resignation. “Dinner is at seven.” And she went upstairs to pack her clothes.

The easiest thing to do, she decided, would be to have a lawyer serve Robert with papers. She had nothing else to say to him. She felt bloodless. A year ago, even six months ago, if he had said to her what he had just said she would have argued with him and cried. It would have seemed a betrayal of the grossest kind. But now it just seemed like a nasty little boy kicking and screaming at his nurse. She didn’t want to be kicked and she didn’t want to be his nurse either. She wondered if he really meant what he had said about her. It didn’t matter. He had been able to say it. She could no longer live with a man who had such a deep contempt for the best she was able to do.

They all knew Nikki had left her husband. Nikki told Rachel, Rachel told Margot, Margot told Ellen. Poor Nikki, Rachel said, knowing only her own happy marriage. Poor Nikki, Margot agreed, knowing only the loneliness that kept coming closer and closer, threatening to choke her. Lucky Nikki, Ellen said, and I’m next.

Nikki refused to take alimony, although her lawyer urged her to. He mentioned the many years she had been married to Robert, the sacrifices she had made, the two children she had borne and brought up so well. He talked about inflation, the cost of living in New York, the fears she should have of being fired, or of retirement. Nikki didn’t want anything from Robert, except that he continue to support their daughters until they no longer needed him, even if they didn’t live at home. She knew he would, of course. As for herself, she wasn’t sure if Robert would be willing to support her or not, but she felt that if she was leaving him over his protests the only thing she wanted from him was her freedom.

Ellen was trying to decide what to give Reuben for Christmas. She didn’t have much money, and what little she had was for Jill and Stacey, who both needed new winter coats. She didn’t plan to give Hank anything. It would be too hypocritical, since she was going to tell him the very next day that she wanted a divorce. She finally got an idea for Reuben from a needlecraft book she was promoting. She would make him a needlepoint pillow for what would be their new apartment. At least she would make the front part. Maybe she’d better do it in crewelwork. She hated handicrafts, and crewel was a lot faster than other needlepoint. It wouldn’t cost much if she made her own design and just bought the canvas and wool. She had already decided what to embroider on it: the day of her liberation and the joining of her destiny with Reuben’s, December 26. She bought the materials and started working on the pillow in the office during her lunch hours whenever he had a business lunch. She felt that she had made her first real commitment, and she smiled as she worked on it. Wouldn’t Reuben be surprised and delighted!

Ellen was being remarkably pleasant lately to everyone. Even Thanksgiving dinner went smoothly in her household. The girls helped her cook, Hank washed the dishes, and they all watched those dopey parades on television together. She wanted them to remember her well when she disrupted their lives, so that they would have faith in her and know she would continue to make them happy even though she was exchanging one husband for another. All except Hank, of course. She knew he would be devastated. But he’d had enough years of her life. It was time she thought of herself. If Nikki could make the break when she didn’t have anybody to go to, how cowardly it would be for her to continue to hide here in this pretense of a marriage when a man who adored her was waiting.

Ellen had just finished the
Dece
in her crewelwork when Reuben came into her office. She shoved the thing under some papers on her desk. “What a surprise,” she said. “I thought you had a lunch date.”

“I broke it.”

“To be with me?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, lovely. Let’s go.”

She put on her coat, and they walked to the elevators together, pretending to be casual, even though everyone in the office knew.