Private Affairs

by Judith Michael

  "How dare you!" The closeness was shattered. "Don't you ever tell me I could learn from—"

  "I wouldn't have to if you'd try to understand what I'm talking about!"

  "You're a misunderstood husband? Is that the line you gave Nicole? Or did she need one? Was she lying in wait? Who found this apartment? Who decorated it? Who plays hostess in it?"

  "Nicole found it, decorated it, and plays hostess in it because my wife refused! What do you think I've been saying? If you'd come here five months ago, when Peter graduated—"

  "All right! I should have! Are you satisfied? You didn't want me— you've forgotten that part, haven't you—but I should have come anyway. Holly would have managed with her grandparents, and I could have kept up my column at least once a week, in between hostessing, and I probably could have kept my mouth shut about anything I didn't like in your work and Keegan and the rest of it . . . but do you know what I think? Nothing would be any better between us. Because you want your own way—"

  "Like an adolescent."

  "Exactly. And adolescents don't have wives and—"

  "That's enough, damn it! If you want to talk about adolescents, talk about Elizabeth Lovell. No husband around, free to do what she wants, making her way in the big world all by herself—as far as the Rodeo Collection, by God!—a social butterfly winging her way to Malibu—"

  "How do you know about—"

  "Hardly noticing her husband is gone—and when she does she's damn glad of it—"

  "That's not true! What are you talking about? I've missed you for five months!"

  "Not enough to live with me. Talk about wanting things your own way!

  If I won't conform to what you want, you write me off. Much more satisfying to posture in front of television cameras . . . you're not even with your daughter, for Christ's sake: the only reason you gave for not moving to Houston!"

  "It wasn't the only reason, and you know it. And I'm never away from Holly more than one night a week; you're the one who dropped that responsibility—"

  "And if you really want to talk about adolescents, I'm not the one who's still sleeping with the lover I had when I was seventeen!"

  The sudden silence settled over them like a cloak, muffling the sounds of traffic, the drone of a plane, the clink of Elizabeth's glass as she set it on the table. "Your spies seem to be working overtime. But they're not—"

  "I don't want excuses or denials."

  "I wouldn't even try. I came here to find out how far apart we were, what we had left—"

  "You pretended you came because of Nicole. But it had nothing to do with her, did it? You came from a bed in Malibu to tell me we don't have much left."

  "I came to ask you that. You just gave me the answer."

  A wave of shame surged through Matt. He turned away, gazing over the parapet at the skyline of the Galleria and the Transco Building. Strange, to be looking at it with Elizabeth beside him; he was accustomed to seeing it with Nicole, telling her what went on behind its closed doors. He started to tell Elizabeth he was sorry, but no words came. Because, he suddenly realized, he didn't know what he wanted. Except time. More time to see what he could accomplish, more time to think about the demands others had on him.

  "Will you stop seeing her?" Elizabeth asked. "Until we know where we are?"

  "No," he said without turning.

  "Then ... do you want a divorce?"

  "No," he said immediately.

  "Matt, please sit down. I'd like to have one quiet glass of wine together before I leave." He met her eyes, wide, clear gray touched with the blue of the sky. "Please," she said.

  He returned to his chair and filled their glasses, emptying the bottle. "Are you sleeping with him?"

  "What difference would it make, since you have Nicole?"

  He gave a rueful smile. "I'm not in love with Nicole."

  "I'm not in love with Tony. Matt, I asked you if you want a divorce."

  "And I said no."

  "Why not? You said we don't have anything left."

  "I didn't mean that."

  "What did you mean?"

  "I don't know."

  "You can't be that vague about yourself—"

  "I don't know! There are too many unanswered questions. What about you? Do you want a divorce?"

  "No."

  "Do you want to live with me?"

  "Yes. But not here. Not as part of Keegan's empire."

  He shrugged. "Nothing's changed."

  "Oh, no, a lot has changed. You're very successful; you still look up to Keegan—"

  "Not in the—" Matt stopped. He wanted to tell her about those brief feelings of dislike for Rourke, of the pressure of that hand on his shoulder, little seeds of discord over political candidates . . . but he couldn't. He could tell Nicole, but he couldn't give Elizabeth a chance to say she'd been right. And he wasn't sure of that, either. "Not in the same way. We're more equal than before."

  "Then everything is fine." She heard the quaver in her voice and forced herself to smile, sitting straight in her chair. But when she tried to drink her wine her throat closed against it. "It's difficult to enjoy wine on foreign territory," she said almost inaudibly and walked across the terrace to a wooden tub of azaleas, their flowering season long past, and deliberately emptied the glass over it. "You don't want me," she told Matt. "You just think you've burned too many bridges already and you don't want anything else to change for a while. That's why you wouldn't talk to Saul about selling the Chieftain, isn't it? You like the thought of a place waiting for you. Even though you don't plan to come back, you like knowing we're all there. Just in case."

  "I don't want to sell the Chieftain because it's part of me."

  "Part of us."

  "I haven't forgotten," he said.

  "The hell you haven't."

  "I haven't forgotten, but I've gone beyond it! I don't dote on the past! If you could ever learn that, if you could let yourself face the fact that people change, goals change, marriage changes ... we might have something to share again!"

  "If I could face it! You haven't let me face anything else! But I could ask you to learn a few things, too. That people can share their goals, even

  while they're changing, if they want to; that they can build their marriage in a new way together // they really want to."

  Matt's voice hardened. "Is that your explanation for everything? That I haven't wanted to protect our marriage?"

  "Have you?" she asked. "Has it ever had a chance, next to the prizes Keegan offered?''

  "It's not a contest! Damn it, does it have to come down to winners and losers?"

  "Maybe ... If the stakes are big enough. What if it did? Who would win?"

  Once more, silence fell between them. It stretched out until Elizabeth couldn't stand it. She walked through the terrace doors into the living room, and then stopped in bewilderment because she wasn't sure what she would do next. Matt was still on the terrace, only a few feet away, but he had gone so far from her that those few feet might as well have been miles. She looked back, and all she saw, silhouetted against the glare of the Texas sky, was a tall form, a well-dressed businessman, a stranger.

  Somehow, through all the past months, Elizabeth had always believed that if she needed to stretch out her hand to her husband, she could reach him. There was no way she could believe it any longer. He had walked out of the place in her life that had been his, and for the first time in all the years she had known him, Elizabeth felt alone and unprotected.

  She had to get away; she couldn't look at the stranger on the terrace. Walking carefully, afraid of stumbling, she made her way to the foyer and took her purse from the small table near the door. But as she began to open it, Matt appeared beside her. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to make it a contest."

  "Neither did I," she replied. "But maybe that's all that's left when a partnership ends." He was standing so close to her their hands touched, and suddenly she wanted his arms around her so intensely she ached all over. I
nstinctively she reached up, as she had wanted to do earlier, and smoothed the lines between his eyes, but that made the aching worse.

  "I have to get away," she said, almost inaudibly and opened the door. "I hope you find—" She stopped, then pushed the words from her, one by one. "I hope you find everything you want." She looked at him once more, at the lines she hadn't smoothed away after all, and his shadowed eyes. "I love you, Matt," she said, and quickly left, pulling the door closed behind her.

  She ran to the elevator, shivering with the ache inside her, nervous because she thought he might follow her and she didn't know what else to say to him. But his door remained closed and that was what stayed in her

  memory as she took a taxi to the airport and flew back to Santa Fe: Matt Lovell's closed door, separating them.

  It stayed with her, as solid and real in her thoughts as it had been when she closed it, and it was so vivid that when she walked in her own door, at home, and heard the telephone ringing, she thought it had to be Matt, because how could he not have felt exactly what she was feeling?

  But it was not Matt; it was Tony. "I can't talk now," she said. "I just walked in, Tony, and I can't—"

  "I know. I've been calling. Elizabeth, just tell me what happened. I couldn't stand not knowing. If you're packing your bags to return to Houston and live happily ever after, I'll say goodbye. If you're about to join the great army of the divorced, I offer myself as comforter and adoring companion. Please tell me, Elizabeth; I have to know."

  "I'm not packing for Houston. But I don't want to talk, Tony—"

  "You don't have to. Just listen. Now that you've told me you're not packing I have something else to say. Are you listening?"

  She closed her eyes. "Yes."

  "Well, then. Bo and I have been working on a schedule of interviews of wildly famous people who are living or filming or writing or whatever in Europe. We decided yesterday to pair mine with yours, the way we do in America. What do you think?"

  "About what?"

  "I told you to listen. 'Private Affairs' would focus on American tourists or temporary workers who want the experience of living in Europe. Probably Paris and Rome; we're still ironing out the details. Are you following me? My famous people and your unknown ones—in Europe. How the world looks when you're famous; how it looks when you're unknown; how it treats you; how you feel about being an American, famous or unknown . . . and so on, limited only by our fertile imaginations. When we're finished, Bo wants to turn it into a book. I don't care a hoot about that, but it's right up your alley, isn't it? And you could write your column from Europe, too; is there any rule that says 'Private Affairs' has to be done only in America? I need you, Elizabeth; you're wonderful on my show; the contrast between your people and mine is so damned exciting, to everybody . . . and I work better when you're near me. I promise I will be a gentleman, but I also remind you that I adore you. What do you think?"

  The rush of his words had cut through her other thoughts. "You're asking me to come to Europe with you."

  "How well you put it."

  Behind her closed eyes, Elizabeth saw Matt standing on his terrace

  with the Transco Building in the distance. She saw his study with Nicole's amber eyes and small smile framed in silver; she remembered his silence and closed door. She held the telephone tightly in her hand. "Yes," she said.

  T

  .he Plaza Athenee has a warm grandeur that overcomes even the grayest rain of Paris in November, and Tony sighed with exaggerated relief as he and Elizabeth walked to the registration desk in the corner of the lobby. "May and June are the best months, and September, of course; why did we choose November for this caper? Never mind; I know the answer." He handed Elizabeth's passport to the official behind the ormolu desk. "We want to devastate the competition in the ratings sweeps in February. More important, it gave me an excuse to lure you to exotic spots where I am irresistible. And you see, here we are, registering at the Plaza."

  "Only one of us," said Elizabeth lightly. "You're staying at the Ritz." "True, that was the plan. How quickly one forgets." She smiled, liking him for his easy companionship. In the week since she had agreed to go to Europe with him— the first time since I was seventeen that I said yes to Tony —he had not said a word to show that he knew that yes meant everything would be different between them. Even now, in the silken luxury of the Plaza's lobby, he waited. And Elizabeth, keyed-up by the strangeness of a city and a continent she had never seen,

  lightheaded from twenty-four hours without sleep, felt grateful and, once again, affectionate.

  For days, preparing for the trip in Santa Fe and then meeting Tony in Los Angeles, she had felt no affection at all; in fact, she wasn't even sure she liked Tony Rourke. Why in heaven's name had she agreed to go to Europe with him? But at the same time, she was excited about the trip, a new adventure that she wanted more and more the longer she thought about it. On the plane her doubts grew stronger; she didn't know what she wanted. And then she heard Matt's voice in her mind, as she had since leaving Houston. . . . she gave me what I'd been wanting from you: she listened, she admired, she encouraged me.

  Fourteen hours later, when they landed, her thoughts were going in circles. It was almost a relief to discover they barely had time to stop at their hotels to change before plunging into work.

  It was morning in Paris, and they were met at the airport by Bo Boyle, who had been there for three days with a television crew, filming background shots and confirming interviews. "Your schedule for today," Boyle said as they walked through the terminal. "Tony interviews Sidney Kidd, world-famous author of novels of terror, in Paris to study ancient torture chambers for his next book. The interview is in a dungeon; if his descriptions get too gory, cut him off and ask him about scenes with sex and beautiful people. Lizz—Elizabeth—has a young man from Vermont who came here to be the world's greatest painter; works instead in a meat market on the Rue de Buci. I know you like to choose your own people, Elizabeth, but we have so much to do and so little time that I risked choosing one for you. I have names for the rest of the time in Paris, and then for Rome; you can select from them after today. Now, as far as Kidd and the Vermont meat cutter, I have background notes for both of you; I have photos, I have lists of suggested questions—"

  "But no heart in that sunken chest," Tony said. "Elizabeth and I have spent fourteen cramped hours aloft. When do we take a nap, wash our weary bodies, comb our rumpled hair, and drink gallons of restorative coffee?"

  "You weren't cramped; you lounged in first-class comfort. You have an hour for combing your hair and downing gallons of coffee; you can take a nap before dinner. But when have you ever needed a nap?"

  He never did, Elizabeth thought. In Paris even more than Los Angeles, Tony Rourke exuded an inexhaustible nervous energy. Even when he rebelled against Boyle's schedule, after the taping of his dungeon interview and Elizabeth's with the young man from Vermont, he did it light-heartedly, as if nothing could spoil his mood. "Enough for today," he

  said, watching Boyle drive off in one car while he and Elizabeth sat back in their limousine. "It's raining and we've done our duty. We are now going to transform ourselves from working people to civilized citizens of Paris. I wangled a reservation at Taillevent for dinner and though you don't know what a miracle that is, I expect to be admired, nonetheless. The Plaza," he said to their driver, and they drove through the steady gray downpour to the glowing warmth of the hotel where Tony escorted Elizabeth to the reception desk.

  "If Madame will follow me," the official said, and led them through the lobby, past palm trees and vases of bright gladioli that seemed to blend into the murals of the walls, to an elevator, and then along a hushed corridor. "Madame's suite," he said.

  "Madame's suite," Tony repeated when they were alone. "And what of monsieur? Of course the Ritz is quite pleasant—I have nothing against it —and my room there will certainly help keep the rumors down, but I thought we would—"

  "So did I," Elizabeth s
aid. The day of work, the atmosphere so far from home, Tony's closeness, and the recurring memory of Matt's voice had wiped away her confusion and reluctance. She was barely aware of the beauty of the rooms, with their cut-velvet wall panels and silk taffeta drapes and, in the bedroom, flowered silk drapes and bedcovering and two enormous armoires awaiting her clothes; far more powerful was an inner voice saying, Damn it, why not? Her fingers shook as she unbuckled her raincoat. Then Tony's hands were on her shoulders, removing the coat, and as quickly as it began the shaking stopped.

  "Let me look at you," he said. "My damned producer has kept us so busy I haven't had a minute to gaze at you in private." She wore a burgundy suit and amethyst silk blouse—warm colors and simple lines chosen for television, but also perfect for the warmth of her golden beauty. "Exquisite. A little paler than usual, but that only makes your loveliness more bewitching. Dearest Elizabeth, I have waited for you so long."

  He slipped her suit jacket back from her shoulders and Elizabeth let it fall to the floor as she moved into his arms. She felt a brief shock of surprise as she put her arms around him—the shoulders were not as broad as she was used to, the muscles of the upper arms not as strong, the mouth pressing on hers not as firm—but then it was gone. Of course everything was different, but it wasn't important; she was so hungry for the warmth of arms holding her close, of urgent lips on hers and the murmured endearments that made her feel young and desirable that nothing could interfere, nothing else mattered.

  With one hand, Tony unbuttoned her blouse and bent his head to kiss her throat and move his lips in small kisses to the shadow between her breasts. He undressed her slowly, his mouth following his hands, refusing to let her do anything for him. "Let me," he murmured. "I've dreamed of this so often; next time we'll do what you want. . . ."

  She lay on the bed, watching him pull off his clothes. "I feel as if I'm seventeen again," she said. "You did the same thing then, undressing me first, only I was afraid to look at you. I'd never seen a naked man."

  "Did it frighten you?"