Going Back

by Judith Arnold

  At four o’clock, she and Bob parted ways. She had no reason to return to her office, other than to drop off the paperwork from the morning’s closing. Although realtors were sometimes required to work on weekends, they rarely had to work on Friday evenings. Nobody wanted to shop for a house after a long, exhausting week on the job.

  Since she wasn’t in a hurry, and since she wanted to think through what Bob had said about the value of the partnership, she decided to drive back to Bloomfield Avenue by a meandering back route, passing a raised ranch she had a listing on, a split-level she’d sold two months ago and a contemporary on a half-acre that she’d sold last year—and could have sold for twice the price this year. Then she drove to the expanded cape she’d just sold to Brad. She found him standing in the driveway, his blazer slung over his shoulder and his shirt sleeves rolled up, his neck craned back so he could inspect the roof.

  The fact that he happened to be visiting the house when Daphne cruised by didn’t mean she was able to read his mind. It merely meant that this particular house was significant in both their lives at the moment. “The roof’s fine,” she called to him through the open window of her car.

  Brad spun around, then grinned as he recognized Daphne. She pulled her car to a halt behind the silver Toyota, parked at the curb and climbed out. “How do you know it’s fine?” Brad asked.

  “It’s only four years old, with a thirty-year transferable warranty. Didn’t you read the write-up on it?”

  Brad shrugged. “Should I care?” he asked, smiling hesitantly. “What I mean is, should I be thinking of it as my roof?”

  Daphne strolled across the sloping front lawn and joined him on the driveway. “Meaning, is this your house? Assuming the bank approves, yes.”

  His smile grew wider, shimmering with delight. “I didn’t dream about it last night,” he confessed. “But I should have. It’s a dream house, all right.”

  “Even if you’re going to clobber your head on the sloping ceilings upstairs?”

  “Even if.” He turned back to examine the house some more, and slid his arm casually around Daphne’s slender waist. “Daff...did I thank you for all this?”

  “Several times last night,” she reminded him. “More times that I would have liked. You must have kept me up at least thirty seconds longer than necessary with all your thank-yous.”

  “I’m sorry I called so late.” His arm tightened around her for a moment, and then he let it fall to his side and took a cautious step away from her. “There was a whole lot more I wanted to talk to you about, but you were obviously too sleepy to take it in.”

  “Take what in?” she asked, eyeing him with curiosity. His tie hung loose from his collar, implying that he’d once again spent time at his office in New York. Yet he didn’t look frazzled or worn out. His eyes glowed with a brilliance that put the clear May sky to shame, and his smile cut long dimples into his cheeks.

  It was not the kind of expression that made Daphne brace herself for a further discussion of Brad’s parents’ marital woes. What else might Brad have wished to talk about with her at twelve thirty last night?

  He extended his hand to take hers, and she let him lead her to the front steps of the house. He tossed his blazer down onto the concrete to protect her skirt, and she bit back the reflexive urge to make a wisecrack about his Sir-Walter-Raleigh brand of chivalry. Instead, she lowered herself to sit, pressing her legs together decorously beneath her skirt, and clasped her hands in her lap. Brad dropped onto the step beside her, balanced his elbows on his spread knees, and squinted into the late-afternoon sunlight.

  His prolonged silence fed her curiosity. Finally, he asked, “Remember when we talked about a time machine?”

  He was facing the lawn, not Daphne, but she understood that what he was really asking her was whether she remembered the discussion they’d had on her back porch, about the time they’d had sex—and he was also asking her, possibly, whether she was willing to accompany him in a rehash of it.

  She believed they’d already said everything that had to be said on the subject. Probing it further would only make her uncomfortable.

  She didn’t want to be angry with Brad. But talking about the unhappy incident shadowing their past was bound to make her angry. “I remember,” she said curtly, hoping to close the subject before it was too late.

  He shot her a glance, obviously sensing her edginess. “Then you remember that we both agreed if we ever got our hands on a time machine, we’d use it to go back to that night and do things all over again. Only we’d do them right this time.”

  “Uh-huh.,” Her hands cramped in her lap, and her knuckles began to turn white. “So what?”

  “I was thinking about it yesterday,” he went on in an annoyingly leisurely manner. Daphne gritted her teeth. No matter how uninterested she made herself sound, he obviously wasn’t going to stop. “I was thinking about it because when I visited my mother’s apartment it was almost like going into a time machine. I grew up there, Daff. I spent my entire childhood in that apartment. And there was my mother, dredging up the complete history of her relationship with my father, and…” The sentence went unfinished asBrad observed the breeze playing through the newly opened leaves of a red oak on the property.

  Daphne forced herself to unclench her hands before her fingers went numb. If he didn’t reach the point he was trying to make soon, she was going to get up and march back to her car.

  “The master bedroom ceiling in this house,” he said abruptly.

  “What about it, other than that someone your height has to be careful?”

  “That’s just it, Daff. It’s low.” At last he turned to her, his gaze penetrating her, cutting through her in search of a shred of evidence that she understood what he was getting at. His voice was soft and gentle when he continued. “We were both thinking the same thing when we were standing up there in the bedroom the other day, Daff. We were thinking about the last time we were together in a bedroom with a low ceiling. It’s still with us, Daphne. The memories are still with us.”

  “All right,” she said impatiently. “They’re still with us. So what?”

  “Imagine a time machine,” he said. “If only we could go back, we could undo the bad stuff.” He paused to let his words rsink in, then added, “We can do it right this time.”

  “Do what right?” she asked warily.

  “Have our night together.”

  “What?”

  “Make love.”

  “Now?”

  “Not this minute, Daff—but the thing is, we can go back, if we want to. We can relive that moment in time. We’ve got each other now, and we can relive it the right way.”

  She allowed herself a full minute to let his suggestion register. As soon as it did, she succumbed to a loud laugh. “You’re insane!”

  Brad appeared wounded. “I am not insane. I’ve been giving this idea some serious thought—stop laughing, Daphne,” he said sternly.

  She smothered her giggles by clamping her hand across her mouth. A couple of hiccups slipped out, but she did a respectable job of regaining her composure.

  Satisfied that she wouldn’t dissolve into laughter again, he resumed speaking. “I’ve been thinking about it. We all go through our lives making mistakes and wishing we could go back and fix them. My parents keep dwelling on all the mistakes they’ve made with each other, instead of trying to fix their relationship. Never once did they try to go back, figure out what went wrong and make amends for it, or do it over the right way. And look at them now—bitter and sniping at each other. Well, for once in my life, I’ve got a chance to go back and fix the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. We’ve both got that chance, Daphne, and I think we’d be making even a bigger mistake if we didn’t take advantage of the opportunity.”

  “What opportunity?” Daphne asked, her amusement replaced by confusion.

  “This opportunity. Eight years after we made asses of ourselves, here we are, good friends. We’ve talked the thing out, but
it’s still lying there between us.” He stared defiantly at her, as if daring her to deny his statement.

  She couldn’t, of course. It was still lying there between them. But even so, what he was implying… “I don’t see how making love is going to fix anything,” she said, wondering if she was only imagining the tremor in her voice. “We may be friends, but we don’t love each other.”

  “Which is why this is perfect,” he explained. “That’s what makes this thing so right. If neither of us loves the other, neither of us can get hurt.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Daphne argued. “And while we’re at it, I don’t believe we can go back in time. We’re eight years older—”

  “Exactly. Eight years older and wiser and more attuned to each other. That’s the beauty of time machines—the time traveler returns to the past and brings his present perspective with him. We can’t miss, Daff. We’re mature and sensible.”

  “If we were all that mature and sensible, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” she muttered. Making love without being in love seemed so cold to her, so mechanical and arbitrary. Wasn’t that part of the reason she and Brad had had such a bad experience last time? They’d made love without being in love.

  No. They hadn’t made love that time. They’d had intercourse, but they certainly hadn’t made love.

  She glanced at him, simultaneously intrigued and dismayed by his beguiling grin. Whether or not they loved each other, he was a hypnotically good-looking man, and she was a woman who hadn’t been intimate with a man in a long time.

  “You’re tempted,” Brad said, interpreting her expression accurately.

  “Well…” She smiled reluctantly, recalling the many times she’d thought about how she wouldn’t kick Brad out for eating crackers in bed. “I think what you’re proposing is…kind of dangerous.”

  “No, it’s not. We’re friends. And I promise you, it’s going to be good. We’ll do it right, negate the past, and it’ll make us feel so much better afterwards.”

  She felt a strange fluttering inside her, a warm, erotic tug when he said, “It’s going to be good.” She didn’t agree with him that it wouldn’t be dangerous, but she knew it would be good. She just knew it.

  And as far as the danger... Phyllis and Andrea were always berating her for her tendency to avoid risks. Maybe they were right; maybe she spent too much of her life playing it safe. And where had that gotten her? She was a thirty-year-old single woman with a respectable career, a lot of debts, and the social life of an amoeba. A night of sex with a friend had to be better than that.

  “I thought you were leaving for Seattle next week,” she reminded him, groping for any justification to turn him down.

  “Monday afternoon,” he confirmed. “That still leaves this weekend—unless you’re already busy.”

  She laughed nervously. Now it was her turn to stare at the leaves of the majestic oak tree across the lawn. “I don’t know, Brad. It seems so unromantic….”

  “Talking about it makes it seem that way,” he agreed. “But in actual practice, it’s going to be the most romantic night of our lives. That’s part of where we went wrong last time, Daff—we weren’t romantic. This time we will be.” He warmed to his subject, curling an arm around Daphne’s slightly hunched shoulders. “We’ll have an intimate dinner a deux first. Candlelight, mood music, the works. How does that sound?”

  “Romantic,” she admitted. “Are we supposed to have this romantic dinner at a restaurant, or am I supposed to cook it?”

  “Whichever you prefer,” he answered. “I’d cook it myself, except that I don’t have title on this house yet, and I don’t think it would be an intimate dinner if we did it in Manhattan, with Andrea and Eric in the next room.”

  “All right, I’ll cook it,” Daphne decided. If they were aiming for an intimate dinner, they couldn’t go to a public restaurant. Daphne wasn’t the world’s greatest chef, but she would be able to concoct something reasonably romantic.

  “What sort of music should we go with?” he asked. “Classical? Jazz?”

  “Definitely not rock and roll,” she said firmly. They’d had rock and roll the last time, and she wanted this time to be completely different. “Strauss waltzes?”

  “Mozart’s better than Strauss,” Brad said.

  “All right. Mozart.” She laughed again, less nervously. It amazed her to think she was actually considering Brad’s insane idea—more than considering it. Somehow, without being aware of the precise moment, she’d crossed the line from considering to contributing to the plan.

  But she had crossed the line. That much was clear. She was not only contributing, she was actually looking forward to this romantic evening with Brad. For once in her life, she deserved to be romanced, to be reckless and sentimental and utterly swept away. If Brad was right, one romantic night would eradicate her memories of the least romantic night of her life. And even if he was wrong, what did she have to lose? A few hours? A lonely Saturday night?

  “This weekend, huh.”

  “Tomorrow. Six o’clock? No, let’s make it five,” he amended. “The earlier we start, the more time we’ll have together.”

  If the evening was a flop, they wouldn’t want to have more time together. But if the evening was a flop, they wouldn’t be any worse off than they already were. She had enough faith in Brad to believe that their friendship would survive, even if they were as rotten in bed this time as they’d been last time.

  “Five o’clock tomorrow,” she confirmed. “I think maybe we’re both insane, Brad.”

  He pulled her toward himself and landed a light, surprisingly tender kiss on her lips. “We’re going to go back and conquer the past, Daff. If that makes us insane, so be it.” He touched his lips to hers again, then slid her eyeglasses back up her nose to their proper place. “Between you and me, I think we’re doing something downright rational.”

  “Romance isn’t supposed to be rational,” she argued, just for the hell of it.

  Brad grinned. “If that’s the case, Daff,” he said resolutely, “we’ll just have to redefine romance.”

  Chapter Eight

  DAPHNE LIFTED the lid and peeked inside the pot. The simmering clam sauce looked savory and smelled even better, but she couldn’t resist adding another pinch of oregano to compensate for the fact that she’d used only about half the amount of garlic the recipe called for. No matter how much she relished the flavor of garlic, she wasn’t about to put a hex on her romantic evening by cultivating bad breath.

  Linguini with clam sauce wasn’t terribly exotic, but Daphne figured that it was a meal she couldn’t ruin. She’d spent well over an hour Friday night thumbing through her various cookbooks in search of the perfect dinner menu for her tryst with Brad, but anything that sounded even remotely romantic—souffles, pressed duckling, assorted meats marinated in cognac and set aflame—were well beyond the limits of her culinary talent. Linguini was fattening, but a gain of a few pounds wasn’t going to make that much difference, considering how much thinner she was now than she’d been eight years ago. And anyway, she’d prepared a huge tossed salad. She could fill up on that while Brad gorged on the pasta.

  Satisfied that the extra oregano added the requisite zest to her sauce, she set the lid back in place, checked the wall clock above the sink, and let out a slow breath to calm herself. Brad was scheduled to arrive in ten minutes. Her strategy was to avoid any strenuous mental activity in those ten minutes. If she thought too much—if she thought at all—she would probably wind up thinking about what a ludicrous idea this was.

  Instead of thinking, she left the kitchen to check the dining room table setting one last time: beige linens, brown Ironstone place settings, two brown tapers protruding from silver candlesticks. Then she wandered to the living room and inserted the CD of a Mozart piano concerto she’d signed out of the library that morning. From there she journeyed to the bathroom to appraise her appearance one final time.

  She’d fretted over her outfit ev
en longer than over the menu, but all in all she wasn’t dissatisfied with her choice. The blouse she had on was a shiny cream-colored satin, and she’d left the top several buttons unfastened to offer an alluring glimpse of what passed for cleavage on her small chest. She had tucked the blouse into a pair of loose-fitting gray trousers that would have looked fabulous on Katharine Hepburn in a nineteen-thirties movie. Actually, Daphne decided, her build was a lot like Hepburn’s—tall, broad-shouldered and reasonably leggy. Unfortunately, her face wasn’t anything at all like Hepburn’s, but Daphne had done her best to maximize her meager assets, adorning her eyes with a hint of green shadow and a tawny mascara, highlighting her cheeks with a pink blusher, blow-drying her hair before the curls had a chance to kink. She’d dabbed her throat with cologne and put on earrings that dropped like two elegant gold tears framing her jaw.

  The doorbell rang. She experienced a brief clutch of fear somewhere in her lower abdomen, then shook it off and strode from the bathroom, stopping in the living room to turn on the stereo before she answered the door.

  All she saw at first were flowers: red roses, pink roses, baby yellow roses, white lilies, several sprays of lilac and a few other blossoms she couldn’t identify, all bunched within a feathery nest of green ferns. A hand held the enormous bouquet, so Daphne felt it reasonably safe to assume that a human being was somewhere in the vicinity. She curled her fingers around the tissue-wrapped stems and pulled the bouquet aside to find Brad behind the flowers, grinning.

  He was wearing a navy blue jacket, a pale blue shirt and khaki trousers. The effect was preppy in the extreme, but Daphne liked it. She liked the way the skin of his neck glowed a healthy golden color beneath the open collar of his shirt, and the way the fading dusk light played mysteriously over the sharp lines and planes of his face. She liked the dark density of his hair, the intriguing shimmer of his eyes, the minty scent of his aftershave, the stark white evenness of his teeth as his smile expanded.

  Some distant corner of her brain rattled to life with the abrupt understanding that, in a matter of hours, she was going to be in her bed with Brad, naked, making love with him. But she shunted the thought away. It was simply too disconcerting.