Going Back

by Judith Arnold

  Phyllis pursed her lips, pretending to be irritated by Daphne’s teasing. Her irritation became genuine when, a few seconds later, Jim sidled up next to her. Daphne considered Jim a fine hunk of manhood, arguably better looking than Brad. Jim was more muscular, with thicker shoulders and a brawnier build. He had a boyishly handsome face, although he frequently appeared slightly lecherous to Daphne, as if he were sizing up every woman he encountered as a potential conquest. Phyllis invariably fell for men who might have sprung physically from the pages of some men’s fitness magazine,. and emotionally from a soft-core porn video. Jim was no exception.

  “Hey, Daphne,” Jim hailed her as he wrapped a possessive arm around Phyllis. “Howzit going?”

  “Fine, Jim. How are you?”

  “Can’t complain.”

  “How’s business?”

  “Well, you know what they say,” he joked with a wink. “No matter whether the economy’s going up or down, people always gotta take a leak.” Jim ran a plumbing supplies company. He spoke in a lazy New York drawl, but his slangy speech didn’t fool Daphne. She knew he was extremely shrewd and professionally successful.

  “There you are,” Andrea bellowed, elbowing her way through her milling guests to reach Daphne. She had on a pair of skin-tight black pants and a gauzy blouse with crystal beads embroidered onto it. Daphne wished she looked as attractive as Andrea did in such outfits. Then again, Daphne wished she looked as attractive as Phyllis did, period. “I found Paul in the kitchen, attacking the ice bucket,” Andrea reported once she reached Daphne’s side. “He told me that I’d find you in the living room. It wasn’t easy, I’ll tell you.”

  “You’ve got quite a mob scene here,” Daphne observed. “How many people did you invite?”

  Andrea shrugged and grinned. “We owed a ton of invitations. I’ve got my people from work, Eric’s got his. No sense wasting a party.”

  “What about Brad?” Daphne asked. As soon as she spoke his name, she felt an undefined stab of panic. She shouldn’t really care about how he fit into the party. She shouldn’t be thinking about him at all. She should just pretend that this was a typical gathering at Andrea’s apartment, not a replay of any other party in her past.

  “Oh, he’s around here someplace,” Andrea remarked vaguely. “So,” she said, turning her dark eyes on Jim, “when are you going to do the honorable thing with Phyllis, already?”

  “What honorable thing?” Jim asked with feigned innocence.

  “Marry her, you jerk.”

  Jim laughed and tightened his hold on Phyllis. “Well, Andrea, you know what they say: why buy the milk, when you can get the cow for free?”

  “That doesn’t sound right to me,” Andrea muttered, eyeing Daphne in search of confirmation.

  In a perverse way, it did sound right to Daphne. But to say so might insult Phyllis, so she only smiled. “I think I’d better give Paul a hand with the ice bucket,” she said, easing away from Phyllis, Jim and Andrea and weaving among the small knots of people clogging the room. She barely missed getting stabbed by someone gesticulating dramatically with a toothpick. She almost tripped over a wiry young man demonstrating a yoga position on the floor. Near the entry to the dining room, she was waylaid by the Perskys, and she chatted with them for a while. Then Eric caught her eye and waved her over, asking her to mediate a dispute he was having with some of his accountant colleagues over the deductibility of property taxes.

  By the time she reached the kitchen, nearly a half hour had passed. She wasn’t surprised to find Paul leaning against the counter, surrounded by two men and a woman, all of whom were engrossed in Paul’s explication of adolescent slang. A glass of ginger ale stood on the counter near where he rested his hips.

  “Now, the word `like’ is perhaps the most versatile word in the typical teenager’s speech,” he explained. “Not only does `like’ function as a conjunction, but it has also evolved into an ellipsis of sorts—oh,” he said, smiling as his eye caught Daphne’s. “Where have you been, Daphne? Your ginger ale is going flat.”

  “No kidding.” Daphne grinned. She acknowledged Paul’s audience with a polite nod, took a sip of the ginger ale and grimaced. Worse than flat, it was tepid. “I thought you were going to deliver this to me in the living room.”

  “I probably was,” Paul conceded, smiling sheepishly. He introduced Daphne to the three people and then reverted to his grammatical analysis of the word “like.”

  Daphne listened for a couple of minutes, then excused herself and departed from the kitchen. She’d heard Paul speak many times about his students and their idiosyncrasies, and while she usually found his comments entertaining, she wasn’t in the mood to be entertained tonight—at least not until she saw Brad and proved to herself that he could no longer spoil a party for her.

  Where was he, anyway? This party had been thrown to celebrate his impending move to New York—yet he didn’t seem to be present. Puzzled, Daphne meandered through the crowd in the dining room, tossing quick smiles of recognition at some of the guests as she worked her way toward the living room. She traversed it as best she could, this time more alert to the fellow doing yoga on the floor and the toothpick wielder. She checked the sofa, the easy chair, the upholstered window seats. No Brad.

  Her curiosity increasing, she left the living room for the hallway. The bathroom was empty. The door of the guest bedroom was open, and when Daphne peeked inside she spotted one of the stars of talk show in a passionate clinch with one of Eric’s associates at the accounting firm—both of whom, Daphne recalled, happened to be married to other people. She closed the door with a discreet click and continued down the hall to the master bedroom. The door was shut, and she wondered whether her entrance might interrupt a couple in an even more compromising position.

  She tapped lightly on the door, then inched it open. The lamps on both night tables were turned on, filling the room with an amber light and encouraging Daphne to push the door all the way open.

  Brad was seated on the edge of the double bed, his back to the door. His knees were spread apart and his elbows were balanced on them. He propped his head in his cupped hands and stared out the window at the darkening night sky. He seemed oblivious to Daphne—and to the party raging in his honor just down the hall.

  Daphne was startled. Not that she thought of Brad as a party animal, but she couldn’t imagine why he was sitting there, all alone, instead of enjoying the festivities.

  She allowed herself a moment to study him. The cotton of his shirt stretched smoothly across his shoulders and upper back, revealing the sleek lines of it. Daphne decided that she preferred his slim build to Jim’s hulking one. Brad’s forearms were slim, too—he’d rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, and she could see the bronze skin he’d exposed, the dark webbing of hair, the lean muscles tapering down to his wrists. She recalled the afternoon, a couple of days ago, when he’d waved his hands beneath her nose and pointed out the absence of callouses on his fingers and palms.

  Daphne would bet her entire savings account that Jim had calluses all over his hands. She wondered whether Sheila preferred calloused hands on her men.

  Whatever Brad’s reason for isolating himself from the rowdy party down the hall, Daphne wasn’t going to disturb him. She reached for the door knob, intending to close the door and leave him in peace.

  He turned suddenly. As soon as he saw her, his lips curved into a broad grin and his blue eyes widened with delight. “Hey, Daff,” he called to her.

  She was too tactful to ask him why he’d isolated himself in the master bedroom. “I was looking for a place to fix my hair,” she lied with an apologetic smile. “I can use the mirror in the bathroom, though, if you want to be alone.”

  “No, come on in,” he said, waving her inside.

  She didn’t want him to think she’d been lying, so she walked directly to the dresser and examined her reflection in the mirror above it. Her hair looked fine to her, but she patted and prodded it a few times with her fingertips.
>
  “How’s the party?” Brad asked.

  Daphne turned from the mirror and appraised him. He certainly didn’t look like a man desperate to avoid a social gathering. Faint dimples marked his cheeks, and his eyes continued to glow, their brilliant color set off by his thick, dark lashes. “Hot and crowded,” she answered, assuming that Brad must have left the party for the bedroom because he needed a break from the crush of people and noise.

  Just like the last time, Daphne recollected, unable to ignore the obvious connection. Here was Brad, cooling off outside the party, and here was Daphne, finding him.

  Perhaps he was able to read her mind. Or perhaps his smile faded for some reason totally unrelated to his memory of that fraternity party eight years ago. Either way, his solemn expression informed Daphne that he didn’t want her company. “Well,” she said with forced brightness, “I guess I’ll be getting back—”

  “Stay a minute,” Brad cut her off, gesturing for her to join him.

  Daphne’s innards tensed up. She didn’t want to sit beside him on a bed and think about the last time she’d found herself sitting on a bed with him.

  Of course, she might be reading much too much into his invitation, his enigmatic gaze, his decision to escape a boisterous party by shutting himself up in a bedroom. Thoughts of that last time might be the furthest thing from Brad’s mind. To bolt at his friendly invitation would be cowardly and rude.

  Drawing in a deep breath, she crossed to the bed and lowered herself gingerly onto it, as far from Brad as she could be without tumbling off the end of the mattress. She arranged the flowery fabric of her skirt primly across her knees and folded her hands in her lap. Then she waited for him to say something.

  Brad’s face relaxed into a smile again, and he hoisted himself higher on the bed, leaning his shoulders against the headboard and swinging his legs up so that his feet brushed Daphne’s thigh. He crossed his ankles and sighed. “It’s great seeing the Perskys,” he remarked, his tone light and cheerful. “The last time I saw them was at our fifth-year reunion. Did you go to that?” he asked, frowning slightly as he tried to remember.

  Daphne shook her head. “I was living in Atlanta at the time,” she said. “It would have cost too much money to fly to Ithaca just for the weekend.”

  Brad had probably been living in Seattle then, and he’d been able to afford the trip. Even without his big salary, she realized, he was rich. Rich and handsome. It didn’t seem fair.

  “Well, it’s good seeing them. Steve told me Melanie’s pregnant, only nobody’s supposed to know about it yet.”

  “If nobody’s supposed to know about it, why are you telling me?” Daphne said, feeling her stomach start to unclench. She was beginning to accept that this was going to be a safe little chat and nothing more, nothing she couldn’t handle.

  Brad laughed. “If nobody’s supposed to know about it, why did Steve tell me?” He flicked a bit of lint from his trousers, then settled back against the headboard again. “It’s good seeing Phyllis Dunn, too,” he said. “She looks fantastic.”

  “She always did,” Daphne pointed out, not at all envious. Having grown up with a pretty sister, and having befriended pretty classmates in college, Daphne was used to being surrounded by women who outshined her in the looks department.

  “Who’s the gorilla she’s got with her?”

  “Jim,” said Daphne. “They’re living together at the moment, but don’t let that stop you.”

  “Don’t let it stop me from what?” Brad asked innocently.

  “Phyllis thinks you look fantastic, too,” she said slowly, wondering whether his obtuseness was just an act or he was truly unaware of Phyllis’s interest in him.

  He snorted in disbelief. “In that case, Phyllis needs those eyeglasses even more than you do.”

  Daphne detected nothing false in his tone. She laughed, amazed. “You do look fantastic, Brad,” she told him. “You’re a handsome man. I should think you’d be aware of that by now.”

  He contemplated Daphne thoughtfully. “I’ve had better days,” he confessed somberly. “Today was a rough one, and I don’t feel fantastic, so it’s hard for me to imagine that I look anything other than wiped out.”

  Daphne smiled sympathetically. “Are you coming down with something?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I had lunch with my mother today,” he said.

  A deceptively simple explanation. Daphne understood that something about his mother was troubling him, and she sensed that he wanted to talk about it. She wasn’t certain why he wanted to talk about it with her, of all people, but he certainly seemed to be looking for a willing listener. “Did your mother give you a hard time?” she asked.

  “Other than the fact that she wants me to live with her instead of moving to New Jersey, no. She gave my father a hard time—in absentia. They’re having problems.”

  “Marital problems?”

  He nodded. “I don’t know what’s wrong with them. They’re so great together. They’re both attractive, accomplished people. They have the same taste in everything. They’re even good in bed, from what I gather. But they’ve gotten it into their heads that they don’t belong together anymore.”

  “They’re adults,” Daphne gently reminded him. “They must know their own feelings.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Brad argued. “They’re a perfect couple, Daffy. They’ve been married for thirty-five years. I love them both—and I’m convinced that they love each other, too.”

  “Sometimes love isn’t enough,” Daphne pointed out. She was speaking hypothetically, having had too little experience with love to be an expert on the subject.

  “Love and marriage both?” he posed. “Call me old-fashioned, but I believe in marriage. I believe it’s there to hold two people together until they can figure out how to make their love stronger. I guess it doesn’t always work out that way.” He sighed. “I don’t know what it is that’s tearing them apart. Worse than that, they don’t seem to know what the hell it is.”

  Despite his pensive smile, Brad was obviously anguished about his parents’ difficulties, which surprised Daphne. So many people got divorced these days. She imagined it must be hard to take when your own parents were splitting up, but it wasn’t as if Brad was a little boy caught in a custody battle.

  If her parents were considering a divorce, she’d be upset about it, of course. But Brad...

  He’d never revealed his vulnerability to her before. That was why she was so surprised by his sensitivity about his parents. She’d always thought of him as rich and handsome, but never human enough to suffer. He had always seemed so confident, so positive of his strength and good fortune, so secure of his place in the world. She simply couldn’t imagine Brad Torrance as the victim of an emotional upheaval.

  Except that here he was, in front of her very eyes, obviously emotional. “Maybe they’ll work it out and get back together,” she said. She had no grounds for such an optimistic prediction, but he needed cheering up.

  He offered her a small grin. “I hope so,” he said. “They really do belong together. I’m just hoping they realize that before they do something they’ll regret.”

  Daphne returned his smile. How strange, she thought, that the last time she’d found herself sharing a bed with Brad they’d engaged in the most intimate of acts, and yet she felt closer to him now than she had then. “Buck up, Brad,” she said. “Put it out of your mind for now. There’s a party out there just waiting for you to make the scene.”

  He nodded and pushed away from the headboard. “You’re right. I guess I’d better go face my fans.” He smiled again, a heartfelt, radiant smile that penetrated Daphne with its warmth. He leaned toward her and kissed her cheek. “Thanks,” he whispered, standing and then extending his hand to help her to her feet.

  His kiss meant nothing, she reassured herself. It was the sort of kiss friends gave friends, the sort of kiss that punctuated a moment of gratitude. It meant nothing at all—and it meant so much tha
t Daphne reflexively tightened her fingers around his as she rose from the bed.

  They left the bedroom together. Brad released her hand as soon as they entered the hallway, allowing her to walk ahead of him. Two of Andrea’s actor friends were staging a mock fist fight before a spellbound crowd in the arched entry to the living room. To avoid interfering with their performance, Daphne and Brad detoured into the dining room. It occurred to Daphne that she still hadn’t managed to have a drink, and she continued on into the kitchen, planning to fix herself a glass of cold soda.

  She wasn’t shocked to discover that Paul was exactly where she’d left him the last time she’d seen him. He had undone his bowtie, allowing the ends to dangle from his collar, and his audience had changed. But he was still leaning casually against the counter and discoursing on the peculiar characteristics of his students. “What they consider rock-and-roll is really nothing more than the product of a few technicians and a few big businesses,” he pontificated. “Today’s so-called rock music has little of the down-home grittiness of the old Stones or even the Beatles.”

  “Where’s your on-off button?” Daphne interjected, poking him in the ribs. She turned to his audience and grinned. “Pick a subject, any subject. Paul will talk about it ad nauseum.”

  “What he was saying was interesting!” argued an overly made-up woman with multiple earrings in each ear.

  Paul laughed good-naturedly. “Not to worry, folks—Daphne is the love of my life. She’s allowed to insult me whenever her little heart desires.” He wrapped his arms around her, planted a loud kiss on her forehead, and then let go of her. “Let me guess, love-of-my-life—you want some of that ginger ale I promised you an hour ago.”

  “Better late than never,” she said, scouring the counter in search of a clean plastic cup. She found one, handed it to Paul and caught a glimpse of Brad hovering in the doorway, watching her.