Going Back

by Judith Arnold

  “Have you told him anything about your feelings?” Phyllis asked.

  Daphne shook her head. “He thinks we’re just friends.”

  “How intense is this friendship? How do you even know that what you feel for him is love and not just deep affection?”

  Daphne winced. “We slept together.”

  “He slept with you, and he thinks of you only as a friend?” Phyllis erupted. “What kind of a jerk is he, anyway?”

  The kind of jerk you want to take up with, once he moves to Verona, Daphne answered silently. “It was...an experiment,” she explained, recalling Brad’s remark about how researchers often had to repeat their experiments to make certain the results were accurate.

  Phyllis shook her head. “I’d stay away from this creep if I were you,” she advised. “He sounds like the kind who enjoys playing with fire—and you’re the one getting burned. Steer clear of him. Fall out of love with him as fast as you can.”

  Daphne couldn’t argue. She wasn’t going to be able to steer completely clear of Brad, but her wisest strategy would be to get over him as quickly as possible. Her love was doomed to remain unrequited. There was no point in clinging to false hopes, wasting time and energy on a man whose biggest dream in life was to find himself a beautiful wife.

  “You’re right,” she agreed. “That’s exactly what I intend to do. I’ll survive this disaster—we’ll both survive our disasters,” she concluded with all the spirit she could muster.

  Phyllis smoothly accepted the fact that the focus of the conversation had veered back to herself. “I know we’ll survive. You’ll probably go back to finding one of those safe, boring types you prefer—and I’ll go after Brad. He’ll be living in the area soon. Maybe he and I can get something going. I think we’ve got great potential as a couple. What do you think?”

  “I think you’d look great together,” Daphne answered, wondering whether Phyllis would pick up on the heavy irony in her tone.

  She didn’t. “When is he going to be moving east?” she asked innocently. “Do you know?”

  Daphne knew the approximate closing date on his house, assuming he ran into no trouble with the bank. But, out of professional integrity, she would never publicize the details of his house purchase. “No,” she fibbed. “I really don’t know.”

  “Well, whenever,” Phyllis said, unconcerned. “I don’t want to rush into anything with him. We’ll just take it one step and a time, and let nature take its course.”

  “Phyllis.” Daphne knew she couldn’t keep Brad for herself—he wasn’t hers to keep. But Phyllis seemed to be making too many serious decisions based on some half-baked notion that Brad might become her lover. She’d given Daphne good advice; Daphne owed Phyllis equally good advice. “Breaking up with Jim for the sole purpose of pursuing Brad seems kind of foolish to me,” she commented. “You barely know Brad. You haven’t even had that lunch date with him, yet. What if you don’t like him? What if he doesn’t like you?”

  The odds were quite high, of course, that Brad would adore Phyllis. She had so much more going for her than Daphne did. How could he not fall head over heels in love with her?

  Indeed, Daphne was too realistic to presume that things would evolve in any other way. Given his choice, Brad would choose Phyllis over Daphne any day. All that bullshit he’d spouted about how beautiful Daphne was—that had been nothing more than the sort of speech a tactful man made to the woman he’d just had sex with. Brad would choose a beautiful woman over a funny-looking one. Any sane man would.

  “Do you want his telephone number in Seattle?” she asked, resigned to the inevitable. She wasn’t going to be selfish. Brad was beyond her grasp. If Phyllis wanted to try her luck with him, Daphne wouldn’t stand in her way.

  Phyllis perked up. “Have you got it?”

  Nodding, Daphne unwound herself from her chair and crossed to the coat closet, where she’d left her briefcase from work. She pulled her “Brad Torrance” folder from the briefcase and jotted his Seattle number on the back of one of her business cards.

  She handed the card to Phyllis, who slipped it into the breast pocket of her shirt. “I’m not sure I’ll use this,” Phyllis allowed, presenting Daphne with a sheepish smile. “I don’t know what I would say to him if I called him out there. I can’t very well invite him on a lunch date when he’s three thousand miles away.”

  You’ll think of something, Daphne muttered beneath her breath. Damn it, but she was jealous. No use denying it—she was jealous of her friend for being so pretty and desirable. Phyllis might become involved with too many assholes, She might be single-handedly supporting the branch of the publishing industry devoted to books about superior women falling in love with jerks. But her social life was much more exciting than Daphne’s. At least those jerks intermittently lavished attention on her.

  Brad wasn’t a jerk—and he just might choose not to lavish attention on Phyllis. But he wasn’t going to fall in love with Daphne. Of that much she was certain.

  “Good luck with him,” Daphne said, lifting Phyllis’s empty wine glass and carrying it to the kitchen for a refill. “He’s all yours.”

  ***

  BRAD LOATHED packing.

  Since his company was paying for his transfer, he had arranged to have most of his possessions packed by the movers. However, certain packing chores he reserved for himself: the books that had belonged to his grandfather and had antique value; some irredeemably out-of-fashion articles of clothing which he needed to sort through and set aside for Goodwill; the items stored on the upper shelf of the den closet, a treasure trove of miscellania to which he was sentimentally attached.

  He had already spent an hour in the closet that afternoon, hauling from the shelf a portfolio of letters he’d sent to his parents while he was at college, the cedar cigar box filled with his all-time favorite marbles, the grotesque Buddha-shaped brass incense holder his very first girlfriend had given him, with its gummy residue of balsam incense at the bottom of the Buddha’s belly. The next thing to come off the shelf was an envelope filled with photographs of Nancy.

  After dusting off his hands on his jeans, he carried the envelope to the sofa-bed and took a seat. He shook out the photos, then stacked them into a neat pile and studied them one by one. There was Nancy standing on a dock at the marina, her glossy auburn hair dancing around her shoulders as she gazed toward a monstrously large sailboat; there she was at the beach in an R-rated strapless bikini; there she was, standing with Brad in front of her apartment building. They were both dressed elegantly, Brad in a dark suit and Nancy in a revealing cream-colored sheath that contrasted stunningly with her deep tan. Her hair was pinned off her neck in a dramatic sweep and her face was expertly made up. Brad had his arm around her in the photo. She had asked her doorman to take the picture for them.

  She and Brad had gone to an engagement party that night, he recalled. One of the associates in her law firm had hosted it at a yacht club. Everyone had talked about how Nancy would be next, how she and Brad would be hosting their own engagement party soon enough.

  Examining the photograph, Brad was struck by how wonderfully matched he and Nancy had looked. She was slender and beautiful, and he was tall and polished. They both knew how to wear their clothes well. They’d both been born with a certain implied destiny, and they’d both fulfilled their promise.

  And it hadn’t worked out. To this day, Brad still wasn’t sure why, but it hadn’t.

  Restless, he tossed the photographs aside and wandered to the window. A fine drizzle descended from the sullen gray clouds, the perfect counterpoint to his state of mind. Filling cartons with his belongings was boring, saying goodbye to neighbors and friends was a grim task, worrying about whether his pending mortgage application would be approved was nerve-wracking, and the constant rain depressed him.

  Ever since he’d returned to Seattle a week ago he’d been in a funk, apathetic about food and listless at work the few times he’d stopped by his old office or touched base
with his West Coast clients. He was drinking too many beers at night, waking up with too many headaches, becoming short-tempered with his Seattle real estate broker whenever she called to learn whether he had a firm moving date yet.

  Too much rain, he decided. Too many clouds. Too many things left to do before he moved. He could think of no other logical explanation for his touchiness.

  He was on his way back to the sofa-bed to gather up the photographs when he heard his telephone ring. He jogged across the hall to his bedroom and checked the screen. Just a question mark.

  He answered anyway. “Hello?”

  “Brad? Hi, this is Phyllis Dunn.”

  Phyllis. From Cornell. Closing his eyes, he conjured up an image of the voluptuous ash-blond woman with the enchanting smile. If he wasn’t mistaken, he had promised her a lunch date once he started working in New York.

  “Hi, Phyllis,” he said, wondering why he was disappointed that the caller was Phyllis and not someone else. He hadn’t been expecting any calls; he didn’t even know who it was he was hoping to hear from. All he knew was that, for some inexplicable reason, he didn’t really want to be speaking to Phyllis Dunn right now. “What’s up?” he asked with forced courtesy. “Are you in Seattle?”

  “No. I’m home, on Long Island.”

  “Oh.” He waited with uncharacteristic impatience for her to state her business. “So? What’s up?” he asked brusquely when her silence extended beyond a few seconds.

  “Well, I just thought I’d call and see how things were going for you.”

  How the hell did she think they were going? He was overburdened with tasks still awaiting his attention before he left Seattle, and he was sneezing from the dust he’d raised by removing the items from the top shelf of the den closet. “Everything’s going all right,” he said, silently exhorting himself to remain polite. Surely Phyllis hadn’t called all the way from Long Island to listen to him complain about the trials and tribulations of packing.

  “I can’t tell you how happy we all are that you’re going to be living back east,” she remarked in a bubbly tone.

  Brad drummed his fingers against the edge of the night table and glanced at his alarm clock. “Yeah, well... It’s nice to be moving somewhere where I already have a circle of friends in place.”

  “I thought you might be interested to know,” Phyllis went on, “that Jim and I broke up.”

  “Jim? Who’s Jim?”

  “He was my Significant Other. You met him at Andrea’s party, remember?”

  Brad entertained a vague memory of a big, handsome hunk of a man hovering around Phyllis that evening. “Oh,” he said lamely as another, clearer memory infused him, one of Daphne telling him that he was a home breaker.

  He suppressed the urge to curse. Surely Phyllis hadn’t ended her relationship with this Jim guy because of something Brad might have inadvertantly done. What had he done, anyway, other than tell her that perhaps they could meet for lunch someday?

  Consider yourself forewarned. He could hear Daphne’s laughter-filled voice speaking the words from across a small, round table in an Italian restaurant. He could picture her, with her thick eyeglasses and her wild hair and that funny, lopsided smile of hers. That was the day she’d told him about being invited to become a partner in her real estate firm, and he’d taken her out for a fattening dinner to celebrate her professional coup.

  His mind’s eye focused on her hands folded before her on the tablecloth. He pictured the delicate amethyst ring adorning her right hand, and her smoothly filed fingernails. Three nights later, those fingernails would be running the length of his spine, digging into the muscled flesh of his shoulders, holding him deep inside her...

  “What?” he blurted out, abruptly aware that he’d missed everything Phyllis had just said. He ignored the unnerving tension that gathered in his groin at the memory of the night he’d spent with Daphne. It had been an amazing experience , but it was over and done with and he had no intention of obsessing about it.

  “Well, I wanted you to know that I’m hoping we’ll be able to renew our friendship when you get back. Jim was so possessive, but now that he’s out of my life, I don’t see why you and I can’t get to be friends.”

  “We already are friends, Phyllis,” Brad noted. Was that the right thing to say? Did he even care? “Look, Phyllis, I’ve got to go. I’m really bogged down in work, and I’m kind of...in a hurry.”

  “Of course. Let me just give you my phone number, and you can give me a call once you’re all settled in at your new house.”

  “Now that you’ve called me, it’s in my phone,” he said.

  “Well. I’m looking forward to seeing you.”

  “Good talking to you, Phyllis,” he mumbled. “Take care.” Disconnecting the call, he let out a long breath.

  There had to be something wrong with him, something beyond his boredom over packing and his disgust with the relentless rain to explain his lackluster reaction to Phyllis’s call. She had contacted him to announce her availability, and his response had bordered on rudeness. He ought to be jumping at the opportunity she offered. It wasn’t every day that an attractive, well-educated, sophisticated woman telephoned from the other side of the continent just to let him know she was unattached and interested in him.

  Yet he felt nothing, neither excitement nor revulsion. He had nothing against Phyllis Dunn—but he sensed, deep inside him, that he had nothing for her, either. If a fleeting memory of his carefully plotted one-night-stand with Daphne Stoltz could do more to his libido than Phyllis’s blatant innuendoes about wanting to be “friends” with Brad, something was seriously out of whack.

  He’d been thinking a lot about Daphne since he’d returned to Seattle. Most of the time, when he thought about her it was in the context of their friendship—or of his new house. She’d express-mailed a signed copy of the sales contract to him, and she’d phoned him a few times to keep him abreast of the progress being made on his mortgage application. Their calls were generally rushed, and they concentrated almost solely on business, but he couldn’t blame Daphne for that. She was a busy woman.

  He was always happy when she called, always delighted to hear her voice. After each call, he would find himself daydreaming about living only a couple of miles from her, being able to call her at the spur of the moment and meet her for dinner somewhere, or drop in on her and shoot the breeze for an afternoon. Frequently, when he thought about his dream house, he thought not about the house itself but about its proximity to Daphne’s modest L-shaped ranch house with its colorful, well-tended flower beds.

  Usually, when he thought about Daphne, he tried not to think about the night they’d spent together. As fantastic as that had been, it had been planned essentially as a one-shot deal, arranged with specific end in mind. They’d accomplished what they’d set out to accomplish, and there was no sense in dwelling on it. Brad didn’t love Daphne. He saw no reason to think of her as a lover. Eventually, he presumed, his body would accustom itself to that reality and he’d stop suffering from those unnerving jolts of arousal whenever he visualized Daphne’s fingernails in his mind.

  He trudged back to the den, determined to work his way through the remainder of the closet before calling it quits for the day. At the doorway he halted to survey the cartons stacked along one wall, the bookshelf already emptied and the one still waiting for Brad to tackle its contents. His gaze came to rest on the photographs of Nancy scattered across the sofa-bed.

  Maybe she was the reason for his malaise.

  They’d broken up six months ago, and he hadn’t seen her since. He’d spoken to her only twice, when she’d contacted him to ask him what he wanted her to do with the toiletry items he had left in her bathroom. He had asked her to put them in a bag and drop them off at his office, but the day she’d stopped by with the bag he’d been out for lunch with a client, so, through no deliberate design on his part, he had avoided coming face to face with her.

  He wanted to resume his affair with Nancy
about as little as he wanted to start something new with Phyllis Dunn. Yet he felt as if he owed Nancy something. A goodbye, at least. As far as he knew, she wasn’t even aware that he was leaving Seattle.

  Hoping that tying up a few more loose ends would restore his mood, he returned to his bedroom, lifted his cell phone and punched the speed-dial button for Nancy’s number. She answered almost at once.

  “Nancy? It’s Brad,” he identified himself. “Are you busy right now?”

  “You mean, this minute?”

  That had been an irritating trait of hers, he remembered—she always demanded precision, even in the most innocuous of conversations. But Brad didn’t respond with one of his sarcastic retorts. Instead, he said mildly, “How about in a half hour? I thought maybe we could meet somewhere for a drink.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to tell you something.”

  “In person?”

  “Obviously, in person,” he snapped, having exhausted his supply of patience during his chat with Phyllis.

  Nancy considered his invitation. “All right,” she said. “Where do you want to meet?”

  Thirty minutes later, Brad was seated in a café, stirring the ice cubes in his glass of cola-and-lime. He had thought about ordering something harder, then decided against it. When he’d taken a sip of the non-alcoholic beverage, he’d fleetingly thought of Daphne, the only person he’d ever known intimately who avoided liquor.

  He kept his gaze riveted to the doorway, watching for Nancy and wondering what great insight, if any, he would have when he finally saw her. When she swept through the door, fifteen minutes late, he experienced nothing beyond a twinge of regret.

  She was as beautiful as he remembered, far more beautiful than she appeared in the photographs. Her hair was longer than it had been when they were a couple, but just as lustrous with red highlights. Her figure was still in perfect proportion. She was wearing a clingy blouse that displayed her bosom, and a swirling skirt of a slinky material that did equal justice to her hips and legs. As soon as she spotted Brad, she brushed off the hostess’s assistance and strode regally through the lounge to his table.