“Thank you, honey,” Melina replied, smoothing back her hair. “Shows you what a ten-year subscription to Vogue can do for you. But, no, seriously, I grew up in a dirt-poor dusty little nowhere corner of South Carolina. My first conscious thought was: I’ve got to get out of here!”
Janie laughed. “Mine wasn’t much different, though the circumstances were. I come from New England. Uh, more or less middle class. But I was the young, dumb, ugly duckling of the family. Couldn’t do anything right. Still can’t, as far as they’re concerned.”
“Come now,” Melina said, as their bowls of spicy salad arrived, “surely they’re impressed with your career? Lord, the way Zach and Michael talk about you, I get the impression you’re the hottest thing on Madison Avenue since sliced bread.”
“My parents,” Janie said, sighing, “don’t entirely approve of advertising, you know?”
“Their loss, then,” Melina replied shortly, as they settled down to their meal. “They should be damned proud.”
They talked about the advertising world and Melina’s career thus far at two of the bigger conglomerates.
“That’s why Zach and Michael’s shop appealed to me so,” she confided, after describing the complicated hierarchy at her former agency. “I mean, it was like trying to get ahead in the Roman Catholic Church. I could see it was going to take me decades to make VP. Didn’t much help being a woman. I was amazed, thrilled really, when Zach told me they wanted me because I am a woman. I guess he thought I could help cool Madame Ramona’s hotter flashes.”
“I think you’ve already proven him right,” Janie said kindly. She liked Melina’s openness, the frank way she talked about her ambitions.
“I don’t want to ever have to worry about money again,” Melina told her. “That probably sounds so boring to you, so pedestrian. But when you grow up the way I did, wondering if you’d eat that night, if you’d ever get new shoes again, well, money just takes on a whole lot of significance.”
“Can’t you put some of that behind you now?” Janie responded. “You sure seem to be doing well.”
“It’s not that simple,” Melina answered, staring down into her water glass. “You see, I was an orphan. And no matter what happens to me, no matter how far I get … I guess I’ll just never get over the need for more…” Melina waved away whatever she was about to say. “Let’s talk about something else. Tell me about this glorious-sounding Chanson person. Is he really as handsome as they say?”
“Yes,” Janie answered, blushing, “he is.” She was grateful the restaurant was so dark.
“And filthy rich and single, too,” Melina added, sighing. “Almost makes me want to break my cardinal rule.”
“Which is?” Janie asked.
“Never get involved with someone at work,” Melina told her. “I’ve learned the hard way, believe me. Though, heaven knows, it remains the worst sort of temptation. Zach, for instance. What’s he really like?”
“He’s crazy and wonderful,” Janie answered easily. “A good friend. A hopeless romantic, too, I think. He seems forever in search of true love.”
“And he’s been breaking a lot of hearts along the way,” Melina told her, signaling for the check. “I’ve two friends who have been seriously burned by the man.”
“He’d never hurt anyone intentionally,” Janie responded. “He’s not hard-hearted. He’s just … an idealist, I guess.”
“And you’re defending him like mad,” Melina pointed out. “Don’t tell me you’re in love with him yourself?”
“No,” Janie said simply. “Not Zach.”
“Who then?” Melina demanded gaily. “There is someone, isn’t there? But you’re not going to say.”
Janie shook her head. “No, there’s no one.”
“Liar!” Melina cried, laughing. “I can always tell … it’s like a sixth sense with me. Just give me time, I’ll find out.”
“No, really…” Janie started to reply, and then stopped when she realized she was protesting too much. “And you?” she asked instead.
“No one now,” Melina told her, sorting through change from the check. “But, heavens, I hate to even say this. I did breathe something of a sigh of relief when you told me you didn’t have a thing for Zach.”
“What about your cardinal rule?” Janie asked, surprised that she wasn’t more pleased with Melina’s confession.
“The great thing about rules,” Melina replied, standing up to leave, “is that they can always be broken.”
“Oh, my God, I’m sorry,” Janie said, slamming Zach’s door as she stumbled backward out of the room, the image of Zach and Melina together on his couch throbbing in her mind. It was almost nine o’clock on a Wednesday night, a little under a month after Melina had started her job. Damn! Janie thought as she hurried up the stairs to her office. She knew it had been happening; she had just refused to admit it to herself. Now she had no choice. She cleared off her drawing board, gathered her trench coat and shoulder bag, and turned off the light. She was already pressing for the elevator when Zach came down the hall toward her.
“Sorry about that,” he said. She couldn’t look at him.
“I’m the one who should apologize,” she answered, trying to keep her voice light, “barging in like that.”
“Hey, Janie, I like the way you barge,” he said, touching her arm. “Please, hey, look at me.”
She turned. His hair was wild, his dark eyes bright. His face had lost its pallor. His lips were full, slightly bruised. His funny smile was full of chagrin. Janie looked away again, her heart filling with sadness.
“Come on, Janie,” Zach said, pulling her arm, touching her shoulder so that she faced him again. “It’s really not as bad as that. A little embarrassing for all concerned, but nothing we can’t put behind us. Nothing that should stop us being friends.”
“Right,” she muttered. Blessedly, the elevator arrived, and she hurried in. Zach followed behind her.
“Please, Zach, don’t…” she began. “What about Melina? Shouldn’t you be…”
“Melina can take of herself,” Zach answered simply. “I think we both know that.”
He flagged down a cab, got her address out of her, and then climbed in beside her.
“Zach, please…” she protested. “I’m not a child. I, too, can take care of myself perfectly—”
“Shut up for a second, okay?” he interrupted. “I want to take you home. I want to talk to you. I miss talking to you, dammit. Okay?”
Things had changed between them since Janie had moved upstairs. With Zach on the old floor, they saw each other less. And it seemed the evenings Janie worked late, Zach left early. Janie had told herself it was due to the move, knowing all the while that something else was at stake. Melina had remained friendly and open, though she hadn’t suggested another dinner, and Janie was too shy to instigate something on her own. But the two women worked well together. The clients they serviced were more than pleased, and recently even Louella had been forced to admit that Melina was no slouch when it came to her job.
“This is very nice, Janie,” Zach said, obviously surprised when she let him into her two-bedroom co-op in Chelsea. It was a rambling prewar building with mullioned windows and working fireplaces. In an attempt to downplay its grandeur, she’d furnished it with secondhand furniture she’d found on the Lower East Side and decorated the walls with her own paintings, cheaply framed.
“This is nice, too,” Zach added, standing in front of one of her paintings. It was a watercolor of a bouquet of peach-colored roses, overflowing a pewter vase. She had painted it at Baldwin over the summer before, preferring the stale heat of her old attic studio to the more stifling company of her family. “Actually, it’s beautiful.”
“Thanks. Those are my favorite roses. Aren’t they a wonderful color?” As she put her coat away, she glanced around the room, trying to see it through Zach’s eyes. Did he wonder how she could afford the stupendous view of the Hudso
n?
“Does that mean you painted it?” Zach demanded, turning to face her. When she nodded assent he announced, “It’s damn good, Janie. God, you have talent! Now, will you stop acting like a whipped calf,” he added as he collapsed without ceremony on her scratched-up leather couch, “and come over here and have a normal conversation with me?”
“Would you care for something to drink?” Janie asked, hovering by the kitchen door.
“Please, I didn’t come here so that you could play hostess,” Zach retorted. “I came to put the record straight, okay?”
“Zach, it’s none of my affair,” Jane answered. “You don’t have to explain anything to me … I mean, Melina is a beautiful, lovely woman. You have every right to…”
“Please, just listen, dammit,” Zach cut her off. “I don’t love her, Janie…”
“Zach, I really don’t want to hear…”
“I don’t care what you want to hear, okay?” he cried. He rose suddenly and walked over to the double windows. The lights of New Jersey beckoned across the river. “I just … want to talk to someone about it. About her. The whole stupid mess.”
“Okay,” Janie said, sitting down on the couch, catching something in his voice she’d never heard before. And it was something she knew all too well: loneliness. “I’m listening.”
“It finally hit me tonight,” Zach said slowly, still facing the river, “that I keep going after the wrong kind of women for a reason. You know, it’s not that life is dealing me a rotten hand … I’m the one who’s picking the cards. I’m the one who’s choosing women like Melina…”
“What’s wrong with her, Zach?” Janie demanded.
“She’s a bitch is all,” Zach answered simply. “Willing to do anything to get ahead. She had me fooled for about fifteen seconds.”
“I think you’re being incredibly hard on her,” Janie retorted. “She may be ambitious, but at least she’s honest about it. And she told me she cared about you … practically asked my permission before…”
“Before what?” Zach snapped, turning around. “You mean, you knew this was going on?”
“No,” Janie answered defiantly, “at least, not for sure. But what difference does it make? You can drop her, just the way you’ve dropped all the rest. Talk about calling the kettle black—look at yourself, Zach! Look how you go around hurting people right and left.”
“I know,” Zach said defeatedly, sitting down next to her. “I know. I hate it. But the problem is—I just don’t care about anybody enough. I don’t love anyone. I never have. Maybe … maybe I can’t.”
“Ever think you’re too hard on people, Zach?” Janie asked. “You should hear yourself talk. Especially about women. This one is a ditz. That one’s shallow. Now Melina’s a bitch. I don’t think you’ve given any of them much of a chance. What’s the average length of one of your … relationships?”
“A month,” Zach muttered. “Six weeks on the outside. But that’s not the point, Janie. Don’t you see? It’s my fault. I keep seeing women who are all wrong for me. I do it on purpose, I suppose. And then I think maybe I can change them, make them different, better. I don’t know.” He leaned forward, his dark hair falling over his forehead. “It’s all screwed up.”
Janie touched his shoulder. “You know who you’re the hardest on?” she asked him. His hand closed over hers, drawing it down to his lap. He shook his head, without looking up.
“Yourself,” she said softly, her heart going out to him. He was the caring older brother she had never known. She was touched—and disturbed—that he had turned to her for help. Until now, they had shared only a light, informal, bantering camaraderie. This evening added weight and seriousness to their friendship. The change made Janie feel wary; she wasn’t used to letting people come too close.
“I know.” Zach sighed, sitting back. He kept hold of her hand. “People used to tell me that I was born old. I grew up feeling somehow responsible when anything went wrong. And I’ve been one judgmental son of a bitch since I can remember.” Distractedly, he rubbed the inside of her palm with his thumb.
“So you don’t need me to tell you so,” Janie said, drawing her hand away. The Penrods were never a particularly demonstrative family, and Zach’s nearness bothered her.
“Oh, yes, I do,” Zach said, sighing and standing up to go. “You’re a good friend, Janie. And you’re also the most sensible woman I know.”
“Is that to be taken as a compliment?” she demanded.
“Certainly,” Zach replied, heading for the foyer. “In my mind, it’s not the meek but the sensible who shall inherit the earth.”
But what good is the earth, Janie asked herself later as she was getting ready for bed, when you share it only with other sensible people just like yourself? Was she doomed to spend her days with the Louella Muldriches of this world? She didn’t want to be sensible, she didn’t want to be practical if that meant she was going to stay forever rooted in her present life. Somehow, someday, she promised herself as she climbed into bed, Jane Millicent Penrod was going to cut herself free … float upward, drift on gossamer wings into the waiting arms of Alain Chanson.
Chapter 8
Melina Bliss was not quite beautiful and not particularly brilliant. But she was very, very determined. And when she recognized that she wanted something—whether it was a new Armani pant-suit in her wardrobe or a new man in her life—she would drive herself relentlessly until she got it. Rarely did her efforts fail. And when they did, as with Zach, she took careful note of what she had done wrong. Like all self-taught people, Melina learned a great deal from her mistakes.
The bare facts of her childhood as she had given them to Janie—that she was poor and Southern and desperate from an early age to escape—were true. She was not, however, an orphan.
Her father, a shrimper and handyman who traveled up and down the South Carolina coast to make his living, brought in just enough to keep his wife and three girls fed and clothed.
Melina’s mother waitressed at the local Holiday Inn to stretch the family budget, and when Melina’s older sisters each turned sixteen, they took bussing jobs there as well.
Melina, the youngest by five years and the prettiest by far, was pampered and spoiled by her older sisters and mother. She was their baby, their plaything. They spent hours curling her hair and sewing her Simplicity pattern jumpsuits on their old Singer machine. Because of all this fuss, Melina soon came to the conclusion that she was special. Better. Headed for far bigger things than the Holiday Inn and the salesmen and construction foremen whom her sisters were starting to date. When her time came, she refused to bus tables or waitress or act as hostess.
“I despise that Holiday Inn,” she told her distraught mother who had already coerced the manager into taking on yet another Bliss female.
“But, Melina, honey,” her older sister said. “The tips are the best in town … and you meet a lot of men. What more do you want?”
How could Melina even begin to explain how much more she intended to get out of life? She looked at her mother: washed up at the age of forty-five, slaving for a husband whom Melina knew didn’t love her. She looked at her sisters: their slack-jawed weariness when they came home at night, the varicose veins that were already starting to blossom down their legs, their cowlike readiness to take on their mother’s fate. But mostly Melina looked at her father: the burly, beer-breathed monster who had, since she was fourteen, snuck into her room off the kitchen on the nights he was home and fondled her budding little breasts. That was all, just playing and mumbling incoherent things about “his little dolly, his baby girl,” but it was enough to make her sick and angry and ice-cold in her resolve to break free.
“I want to go to college for one thing,” Melina told her mother and sisters. “I’ve already sent out applications to every college and university in the state … I should be hearing soon.”
“But, Melina, honey, we don’t have the money for that kind of thi
ng,” her mother told her sadly. “You’ve got to be realistic. You’ve got to be practical.”
“I am being, Mama.” Melina sighed. “I’m only applying places where I can get financial aid. Then I can get a bank loan to help me with the rest. And I can do work-study for money to live on. I’ve read up on this. It’s going to be fine. I am going to college and I am not going to work at the Holiday Inn.”
It was only a small branch of the state university system, but it offered a full financial package, and it was about as far away from her father as she could get. She got through in three and a half years, piling on as many credits as she could, working thirty hours a week in the bursar’s office to pay for her room and board, and experimenting with her influence over men.
It started with a philosophy professor—fortyish, married, good-looking in a bookish sort of way but starting to go bald. He had given Melina a C+ on a paper about Descartes that she had been quite proud of and, when she objected to the grade, he suggested she come by his office that evening to discuss the matter in private.
He insisted she sit next to him on his canvas-covered couch, so that they could look over the paper together. He pointed out minor errors in her punctuation and slipped his arm around her shoulders.
“Excuse me, Professor Chapin,” Melina said, scooting forward and away from his grasp, “but I still think I deserved a better grade. My arguments are well reasoned, my sources all cited. Except for some grammatical mistakes, I don’t see what I did wrong.” He began to stroke her hair which she wore loose and long, a mass of chestnut curls that fell halfway down her back.
“I’ll tell you what you’ve done wrong,” he muttered, pulling her back toward him by her hair. “You’ve made me lose sleep for this whole goddamned semester. You’ve made me hate myself. You’re making me…”
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