One Night in Boston

by Allie Boniface

  “That’s the truth,” Max agreed, his double chins bobbing. “What’d you have now, Doug? Couple-a granddaughters?”

  “Three,” Doug said. “Pretty little things, but I’m waitin’ on a boy, tell you that much.”

  “Got to carry on the Major name, right?” That came from Alex Cifonelli, a computer mogul who’d retired last year at the age of forty-nine.

  Jack’s father nodded, his head bouncing up and down as if attached to a rubber band. “We‘ve been here in Boston since the Tea Party. The city wouldn’t be the same without Majors.” He lit his cigar and Jack pushed back his chair. He hated the smell. Always had. And his father knew it.

  “Did you hear?” Doug went on. “Aaron made partner at Anderson last month, and Jack—” he reached over and pounded his son on the back— “I don’t have to tell you how he and Bullieston have taken the entire East coast by storm.” He guffawed as he brandished the cigar, but the laugh turned into a mucous rattle halfway through. Doug whipped out a handkerchief and spat a thick wad into it.

  “Just wish Will would get rid of that pharmaceutical sales job,” he continued. “He can do better than that. Taz, well, I can’t even keep track of what cause he’s bleeding for this time.” He blew a smoke ring across the table.

  Jack had had about enough. “Dad, it’s been nice,” he lied. “I’ve got a lot of people to talk to tonight. I’ll call you next week.”

  His father barely looked up, waving a hand in what might have been goodbye or a dismissal. Jack was never quite sure.

  He glanced at the line behind the bar, which was shorter now that most of the guests had occupied the tables or ventured onto the dance floor. A sea of black filled most of the room, the color du jour for any party, he supposed, though here and there he caught sight of a brave soul who’d donned red or a muted pastel. As one giant mass the guests moved around the room. They shuffled to the music, following pre-determined lines, as the men exchanged handshakes and the women air-kissed each other’s cheeks.

  Jack looked at his watch. Almost eight. Another hour until Paige appeared, and then he could only guess how long she’d want to stay. Sometimes the Deveau Ball went well into the morning hours. He stifled a yawn and visited the men’s room. Washing his hands, he glanced into the mirror. Though he hated wearing a tuxedo, he had to admit that this one, a tailor-made gift from Paige last Christmas, looked terrific. He straightened his tie and smoothed his curls, hoping they’d behave for the rest of the evening. Though Paige had argued just last week that he needed a haircut, he’d balked. He hated the way close-cropped hair made him look twice his age and half his weight. It was the one thing they fought about on a regular basis.

  Back in the ballroom, Jack cracked his knuckles and made his way to the bar. A soda this time, he decided, or he’d be under the table by midnight.

  One woman stumbled into him as she left the dance floor. “Oops! Sorry.” Her words slurred, and she hung onto his arm and swayed for a moment. He gritted his teeth and helped her find her balance, closing his nostrils against cloying perfume. “There you go.” Behind him, someone laughed.

  Jack turned to find the closest exit. He needed to take a walk outside and get some air. But something across the room, someone near the entrance, stopped him. A curve of neck, a shimmer of skin that looked familiar. Was that…? He shook his head. Ever since you saw Stef tonight, you’ve been thinking about her. Stop it.

  He meant to keep moving toward the door. He meant to shove it open with an elbow and take a lap or so around the hotel. He didn’t even care about the rain; he just needed an out. But his head turned as if it didn’t even belong to him. Jack froze. Can’t be. I’m seeing things. He took another look, just to be sure, at the woman who hesitated in the doorway. Wearing some kind of amazing green dress. Glancing around like she wasn’t sure where she was.

  Then the floor tilted beneath Jack’s feet and his breath caught in his throat. He tightened the grip on his glass, blinked, and looked a third time. He must be hallucinating. Ten years had passed since she’d said goodbye and broken his heart. He’d moved on. So had she. There was no way on earth, no reason why, Maggie Doyle should be standing in the ballroom of the Hotel Victoria.

  Except she was.

  *

  His last errand finished, Dillon leaped over puddles on his way to the truck. Rain soaked him to the skin. All I want is a long, hot shower. He hauled himself behind the wheel and flipped on his lights. A shower and a shave.

  Traffic had slowed, with most of the commuters home to the suburbs by now, he imagined. He watched the lightning carve jagged patterns as he wound his way across the city. Twenty minutes later, he turned into Patriot’s Way Drive, which splintered off in three directions after the first hundred yards. He took the first fork on the left, the one leading to the new section of townhouses, and a quarter-mile later, pulled into his covered parking spot.

  Dillon fished out his keys and took the steps to the second floor two at a time. Thunder rumbled a warning as he stepped inside his two-story end unit. He gave himself a good shake, and water flew everywhere. It dappled the full-length mirror in the foyer, the side table holding piles of mail and magazines, the expensive Oriental carpet his ex-girlfriend had convinced him to buy. Unlacing his boots, he left them by the door, then peeled off damp socks and tossed them in the direction of the laundry room. Helena, his cleaning woman, would probably curse at him in Portuguese, but she’d get over it. He chuckled. She always did.

  His stomach growled, and he made his way into the kitchen. Off came the polo shirt. Dillon draped it over the nearest chair. The lights flickered a little and he slowed. If the power goes out before I get a shower…

  He didn’t suspect his fridge held much in the way of food, but he stuck his head inside all the same. Two six-packs of beer, some cold cuts, a loaf of bread, and three or four take-out containers. Dillon grabbed a beer and left the rest. Unbuttoning his jeans, he checked the messages on his machine: one from J.J., one from his accountant, one from a woman he’d met in a bar last weekend. None important enough to call back tonight. He leaned against the counter and took a long swig. Then another. He headed for the master bath, where he turned on the shower and let the steam rise. Maybe if he got the water hot enough, it would scald the memories out of him once and for all.

  Why the hell couldn’t he stop thinking about Maggie today, anyway? It was almost as if she’d ridden in on the tail of a lightning bolt and decided to stay for the duration of the storm.

  *

  “Is Mags all right?”

  Dillon called the minute he heard about the operation. She hadn’t told him, of course. At nineteen and twenty-one, they no longer talked about things held close to the heart. It was only by chance, by calling home from a temporary job down in West Virginia, that he’d gotten the truth out of his stepmother.

  “She didn’t want anyone to know,” Hillary explained.

  “But I’m family. I’m her brother, for God’s sake.”

  “I know…”

  She didn’t know at all, that was the problem. As far as Dillon could figure out, Maggie hadn’t told anyone about what had happened with Sam, not even her mother. He was the only other person who knew that a few foggy hours on a spring night had changed everything in Mags’s life.

  And God, it pained him every time he thought about that night. Tight-lipped and red-eyed, Maggie had wandered around the house for weeks like it was her fucking tomb. When she finally joined the land of the living again, she looked at Dillon like he was something she’d stepped in on the way home from school. He knew that she held him responsible, that she blamed him for Sam being in the house that night. Hell, he supposed in some way he held himself responsible too. He could have sworn Sam left. He would have put his hand on a Bible and affirmed it in court. But what could he change after the fact?

  “She’ll be fine,” Hillary was saying. “They took out some lymph nodes and tested them. No sign of cancer there…” The thickness of tears fill
ed her voice. “…so she won’t need chemo or radiation. Not right now, anyway. Thank God.”

  Thank God.

  He sent flowers that afternoon, and a card the next day. He called a few times, too, but by then Maggie had returned to college, and her silence told him everything he needed to know. Four years after it happened, she still thought he was her fallen knight in armor, the hero who looked the other way on the night she needed him most. She still thought Dillon should have been able to see through walls and read her mind.

  And because he couldn’t, after awhile he gave up trying to make amends.

  *

  Dillon stepped into the shower and welcomed the steaming water. I tried so many times. He’d kept in touch with his stepmother for a while, even after his father died in the wreck. He sent her emails every so often, and called when he couldn’t get home for Christmas, but part-time landscaping jobs and an itch to travel kept him away most of the time. The chill that grew between him and Maggie didn’t help things either. She ignored him for the most part, the couple of times he did come back. Holidays became a game of who could fill the silence with the worst kind of joke, or who could leave soonest after all the gifts were opened. After she finished college, she found a place in Manhattan. He hadn’t seen her since.

  Dillon scrubbed from ear to toe. Turning off the water, he reached for a towel and wrung water from his hair. He took his time drying off, savoring the clean feeling, and was reaching for his razor when the power went out. An explosion, an echoing boom, reverberated off the walls of the townhouse. Then everything fell silent.

  “Shit.” He dropped the towel and, naked, made his way to the master bedroom, where he fumbled in his dresser for a pair of boxer shorts. From across the room, he stared out the enormous windows that normally looked onto a tree-lined avenue of upscale residences. Nothing. No glimmer of light as far as he could see.

  “Transformer must-a blown.” He pulled open the drawer in his bedside table and felt around for the small flashlight he kept there. “Hope the batteries work.”

  They did. Dillon followed the pencil-thin beam of light and wound his way back into the living room. A wall of windows should have framed the Boston skyline. Instead, they reflected back the edges of his own furniture, a mirror of black. If he looked hard enough, he could see a smear of white in the distance. Most of downtown, anyway, still had electricity. But from Dillon’s vantage point, it looked as though most of the eastern neighborhoods lay in total darkness. Ten or twelve square blocks, at least. Gonna take the power company a while to tackle this one.

  He padded into the kitchen. He didn’t really mind. While the food at the Hotel Victoria would have been worth a few hours of his time, he wasn’t going to lose any sleep over missing some drunken conversation with a few Boston bigwigs. A sandwich on the couch and a good long nap would fill up his evening hours just fine.

  Looked like this year, Dillon wouldn’t be heading to the Deveau Ball after all.

  8:00 p.m.

  “I’m going to throw up,” Neve whispered, clutching Maggie’s arm.

  “You are not.” She squeezed her friend’s elbow in reassurance.

  Eden waved at someone in the crowd. “I’ll be right back. Promise.” She slipped through a side door and vanished.

  Great, Maggie thought. How on earth do I tackle this? Which way first?

  She took a deep breath and looked around. Chandeliers glowed above them. Music, provided by some kind of tuxedoed orchestra in the back corner, filled the cavernous ballroom. The murmur of polite greetings hummed around them. Maggie took it in slowly, one detail at a time. Men shook hands too hard. Women gushed and puckered their lips to peck at the air beside each other’s cheeks. Everyone looked perfect, gloriously beautiful, but behind their costumes they also seemed hollow, almost brittle, as if someone touched them they might shatter and reveal the everyday faces they wore.

  Maggie squared her shoulders. “Come on. I need a drink.” She resisted the urge to begin knotting her hair into a ponytail. Instead she shook her head and let the full length of it fall down her back. Her shoes, the perfect height and not too dangerous after all, brushed the hem of her dress. As they moved through the door, a few men glanced her way. They eyed Maggie with approval before being yanked back to conversations by their wives. She ignored them all.

  “Wow,” Neve said, glued to Maggie’s right arm. “I mean double-wow. I’m out of my element here.”

  Maggie stopped in the middle of the dance floor, next to a couple trying to waltz and doing it badly. She took Neve by both arms. “You are not. You look terrific. You’re every bit as intelligent and witty and kind and attractive as anyone here. You’re better than they are, actually. You still have your soul.” She narrowed her eyes. “Most of these people probably sold theirs years ago, just so they could afford to be seen in a place like this.”

  The smile pasted on Neve’s face relaxed a little.

  “Let’s just worry about finding Dillon and then get the hell out of here.”

  “What does he look like?”

  Maggie tried to think how her stepbrother might have aged. She tried to imagine how the years might have cut wrinkles into his skin or stooped his shoulders. Had he chopped his hair short? Gotten gray around the temples? Followed through on his threat to cover both arms with tattoos? All she could conjure up was a skinny eighteen-year old with guilty eyes. She’d have to guess at the rest.

  “Tall. Six-two or so. Squinty eyes, sort of hazel. Dirty blond hair. He used to wear it long, past his shoulders. I don’t know about now. If he still works out, then he’s muscular, really cut.” Always did care about the way he looked in the mirror, she thought. He and Sam, regulars in the weight room after school. The image of them together brought bile to the back of her throat.

  Neve nodded. “Okay. I’ll start looking.”

  “Ma’am?” A waiter slowed beside them. “Champagne?”

  Maggie grabbed a glass. “Oh, yes.” Her heart hadn’t stopped its choppy rhythm since Eden handed over the keys to the valet guy. Sure, she’d attended one or two fancy charity events, back when she was working in New York. A thousand years ago. But in places like this, where every other woman wore skin-tight black and a half-pound of make-up, where they all voted Republican, joined the Junior League and pretended to love their husbands while they had affairs on the side, a red-headed single Democrat in a deep green dress flopped around like a tubby salmon on shore.

  Maggie forced her nerves away and took two scallops wrapped in bacon as a waitress skimmed by. “You hungry?”

  Neve shook her head. “Not really.”

  Maggie looked around the room. Already, her head ached from the effort of smiling, of pretending not to stare at anyone who resembled her stepbrother, of rehearsing the words she’d say when she finally saw him again.

  The music stopped for a minute as the band took a break. Conversation swelled. Cocktail forks clinked against fine china. Glasses rang as people toasted each other. A tape of jazz music took the place of the band, and despite her heavy heart, Maggie’s toes tapped inside her shoes. A tall man with shaggy hair brushed by them, and she studied the curve in his spine until she was sure it wasn’t Dillon.

  Neve pulled on her arm. “Someone’s staring at you.”

  “What? Where? Is it him?”

  “I don’t think so.” Neve nudged her. “Over there.”

  Maggie turned and looked, not sure if she wanted to see Dillon or not. She thought she was prepared. She thought she was ready. But whatever words might have come out of her mouth fell away. She stopped breathing. Something jumped inside her chest.

  “It’s not him,” she whispered. Yet she couldn’t stop staring.

  “Well then, who is it, and why does he keep looking over here? He’s cute, and he’s been watching you for the last five minutes.”

  He would have stayed with you forever, you know.

  It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t give him what he wanted…

  Mag
gie tore her gaze away. She’d made a mistake, that was all. Her eyes had mixed up her brain and spliced in a photograph of a long-gone love, and though she’d thought for a moment that she recognized the man, she knew she was wrong. She had to be. Because if Jack Major were standing in the Hotel Victoria ballroom, if the one man she’d given her heart to had somehow reappeared on this rainy evening, she might as well find a place to hide right this minute. She couldn’t do it again, not tonight of all nights. She couldn’t see him. She couldn’t talk to him without remembering the last time they’d touched and she’d felt herself break into a million little pieces at their goodbye.

  Memories tangled inside Maggie’s head. For the first time all day, thoughts of Dillon vanished. A decade of heartache and sad, slow mending filled the space of a few seconds slipping into place. Against her will, she looked again. She watched him and saw the struggle on his face that she imagined mirrored hers. Then Jack walked toward her, and she searched for the right kind of smile. She searched for the lie that would say she’d forgotten about him, about them, about what she’d hoped for all those years ago and what she’d finally learned to live without.

  Jack crossed the room almost before he realized what his feet were up to. As if a string stretched from his heart to the woman in the green dress twenty feet away. She stared at him as if she were seeing a ghost. He had no idea what he’d say. Wasn’t even sure, for a brief minute, if it was her at all, except for the shock in her eyes that probably looked a lot like his own. The crowd surged around them, and for a minute he lost her.

  “Jack! Hey, good to see you here.” A rough arm pounded him on the back, and he turned, annoyed. Armand Stevenson, one of the vice-presidents heading up to the New Hampshire office, offered a hand. The scent of whiskey panted close to Jack’s face as the guy leaned in for the shake. “Quite a night, huh? What a place! Gina kept telling me I‘d be impressed, but I never…”