Toxic Bachelors

by Danielle Steel

  Gray told Sylvia at dinner that night, and she smiled at him, wondering what he'd said to the others, and faintly embarrassed by her attraction to him. She hadn't felt anything like it in years, and wasn't ready to share that information with Gray either. But she sensed that the feelings were reciprocal, and he also liked her. She felt like a kid again.

  They had a nice time at dinner. Sylvia sat across the table from Gray, but nothing she said or did gave her feelings for him away. She kissed him and the others on both cheeks when they left them, and promised to meet for dinner at the Yacht Club in Porto Cervo the next day. Gray turned to look at her one last time as they walked away, but she never turned to look at him. She was talking to her niece intently, as they stopped to buy a gelato in the piazza, and Gray noticed again that Sylvia had a lovely figure. And a remarkable brain. He wasn't sure which he liked best.

  “She likes you,” Adam commented as they got into the tender. It reminded him of high school, and Charlie laughed at them both.

  “I like her too,” Gray said casually, as he sat down and looked across the water at the Blue Moon, waiting for them.

  “I mean she really likes you. I think she wants to go to bed with you.”

  “She's not that kind of woman,” Gray said, looking stone-faced, and wanting to protect her from the kind of comments Adam made. It suddenly seemed disrespectful to him.

  “Don't give me that. She's a beautiful woman, she has to go to bed with someone. It might as well be you. Or do you think she's too old for you?” Adam pondered the question as Gray shook his head.

  “She's not too old. I told you, she's too sane.”

  “Yeah, I guess she is. But even sane women like to get laid.”

  “I'll keep it in mind, in case I ever run into another one,” Gray said, smiling at Charlie, who was watching him with interest. He was beginning to wonder if there was something between them too.

  “Don't worry, you won't.” Adam laughed, as the three men boarded the Blue Moon, and Charlie poured them each a brandy before they went to bed. As they sat on the aft deck in the moonlight, the crew weighed anchor and they took off. Gray sat watching the moonlight dance on the water, thought of her in her hotel room, and wished that he could be there. He couldn't imagine being lucky enough to have something like that happen to him. But maybe one day. First, they had a date for pancakes and ice cream in New York. And after that, who knew. Before that, there would be the weekend in Sardinia. For the first time in a long time, he felt like a boy again. A fifty-year-old boy, with an absolutely incredible forty-nine-year-old girl.

  4

  SARDINIA WAS AS MUCH FUN AS THEY ALL HOPED IT would be, with Sylvia and her friends. Two more Italian couples joined them in Porto Cervo, and Charlie took everyone out on the boat for lunches and dinners, water-skiing and swimming. It gave Gray and Sylvia an opportunity to get to know each other better, even with all the others around. And after watching them for the entire weekend, Adam decided they were just friends. Charlie wasn't as convinced, but kept his impressions to himself. He knew if Gray wanted to say something to him, he would. Charlie talked to her quite a bit himself. They talked about his foundation, and the work they did, her gallery, and the artists she represented. It was obvious that she loved her work. It was equally obvious that she liked his friend. And Gray liked her. They chatted quietly with each other on several occasions, they swam together, danced in the nightclubs, and laughed a great deal. By the end of the weekend, all of them felt as though they had become great friends. And when Sylvia and her group left, Charlie and the others went to Corsica for two days. They'd had enough of Sardinia by then, and it wouldn't have been as much fun without them. Gray had spoken to Sylvia quietly before she left the boat for the last time, and told her he'd call her in New York as soon as he got home. She smiled at him, hugged him, and wished them all a great trip.

  From Corsica they went to Ischia, and from there to Capri. They came up the west coast of Italy after that, came back to the French Riviera for the last week, and anchored in Antibes. As always, when they were together, it was incredible. They went to nightclubs, restaurants, walked, swam, shopped, met people, danced with women, and turned strangers into friends. And on one of their last nights, they had dinner at the Eden Roc. It had been the perfect trip, they all agreed.

  “You should come to St. Bart's this winter,” Adam urged Gray. He always flew there to meet Charlie on the boat for a week or two over New Year's. Gray always said that a month on the boat in the summer was enough for him, and they all knew why he hated the Caribbean. It had too many bad memories for him.

  “Maybe sometime I will,” Gray said vaguely. Charlie said he hoped he would.

  The last night was always nostalgic, they hated to leave each other and go back to real life. Adam was meeting Amanda and Jacob for a week in London, and taking them to Paris for a weekend, and staying at the Ritz. It would be a gentle transition for him after the luxuries of the Blue Moon. Gray was flying straight from Nice to New York, which was going to be a shock for him. Back to his walk-up studio in the Meatpacking District, which had grown trendy, but his studio was still as uncomfortable as it had ever been. But at least it was cheap. He was looking forward to calling Sylvia as soon as he got home. He had thought of calling her from the boat, but didn't want to make expensive calls on Charlie's bill, which seemed rude to him. He knew she'd gotten back the previous week, after her trip to Sicily with her kids. Charlie was staying in France, on the boat, for another three weeks, in splendid solitude. But it was always lonely for him when the other two were gone. He hated to see them go.

  The morning they left, Gray and Adam drove to the airport together in a limo the purser had rented for them. Charlie stood on the aft deck and waved, and was sad when they were gone. They were his closest friends, and both good men. For all their vagaries and hang-ups, Adam's comments about women, and weakness for very young ones, Charlie knew they were decent people and cared a great deal about him, as he did about them. He would have done anything for them, and he knew they would for him too. They were the Three Musketeers, through thick and thin.

  Adam called Charlie from London, to thank him for a fantastic trip, and the next day Gray sent him an e-mail saying the same thing. The best ever, they all agreed. It was hard to imagine, but their trips got better every year. They met terrific people, went to wonderful places, and enjoyed each other more with each passing year. It made Charlie feel sometimes that life wouldn't be so bad if he never met the right woman. If that happened, at least he had two remarkable men as friends. Life could be worse.

  He spent his last two weeks on the boat doing business by computer, setting up meetings for his return, and making a list of things he wanted the captain to attend to to maintain the boat. In November, they'd be making the crossing to the Caribbean, and Charlie would have loved to be on it. He found it relaxing and peaceful to do so, but he had too much going on this year. The foundation had given nearly a million dollars to a new children's shelter, and he wanted to be around to see how it was being spent. When he finally left the boat in the third week of September, he was ready. He wanted to see friends, and get to his office. He had been gone for nearly three months. It was time to go home, whatever that meant. To him, it meant an empty apartment, an office where he upheld his family's traditions, sitting on the boards and committees he served on, and spending time with friends, going to dinner parties or cultural events. It never meant a person he could come home to, someone waiting for him, or to share his life with. It was beginning to seem less and less likely that he would ever find that person, but even if he didn't, he still had to go home. There was nowhere else to go. He couldn't hide from reality forever, sitting on his boat. And there were always Gray and Adam in New York. He was going to call them as soon as he got home, and see if they wanted to go out for dinner somewhere. They were in fact someone to go home to, and the brothers he had come to love. He was grateful he had them.

  The flight to New York was uneventf
ul, and unlike Adam, Charlie flew commercial. It had never seemed worthwhile to him to buy a plane. But Adam traveled more than he did, and it made sense to him. Charlie knew, from an itinerary Adam's secretary had sent him, that he was flying back to New York that night too. He had been in Las Vegas for an entire week, after his travels in Europe with his kids. He'd had an e-mail from Adam himself too, asking Charlie if he wanted to go to a concert with him the following week. It was one of those megaevents that Charlie loved and Gray said he hated, and it sounded like fun to him, so he had e-mailed back that he would join him. Adam wrote back that he was pleased.

  News from Gray had been scarce in the past few weeks. Charlie assumed he was working, and was lost in his own world at the studio, after not painting for a month while he was on the trip. Sometimes Gray disappeared for weeks, and emerged victorious when a particularly tough spell with a painting had been beaten into submission. Charlie suspected he was in one of those. He was planning to call him sometime that week. And Gray would be surprised to hear from him, as always. He totally lost track of time whenever he was at work. Sometimes he had no idea what time of year it was, and he didn't leave the studio for days or weeks. It was just the way he worked.

  The weather in New York was hot and muggy, and it was late afternoon when Charlie arrived. He went through customs quickly, with nothing to declare. His office had a car waiting for him, and as they approached the city, the bleakness of Queens depressed him. Everything looked dirty, people looked hot and tired, and when he opened the window in the car, the air was like a blast of bad breath in his face, tainted with exhaust fumes. Welcome back.

  When he got to his apartment, things were even worse. His cleaning staff had aired out the apartment, but it still smelled musty and looked sad. There were no flowers, no sign of life anywhere. Three months was a long time. All his mail was waiting for him at the office, whatever hadn't been sent to him in France. There was food in the refrigerator, but no one to prepare it, and he wasn't hungry. There were no messages on the machine. No one knew he was coming back, and worse yet, no one cared. For the first time, it made Charlie stand there in his empty apartment and wonder what was wrong with him and his friends. Was this what they wanted? Was this what Adam aspired to, with his constant efforts to stay unattached and go out with coeds and bimbos? What the hell were they thinking? The question was hard to answer. He had never felt as lonely in his life as he did that night.

  For the last twenty-five years, he had been sifting through women like so much flour, looking for some microscopic point of imperfection, like a mother monkey searching her baby for fleas. And inevitably, he found them, and had an excuse to discard them. Which left him here, on a Monday night, in an empty apartment, looking out at Central Park, and couples wandering there, holding hands or lying on the grass, looking up at the trees together. Surely, none of them were perfect. Why was that good enough for them, and not for him? Why did everything have to be so perfect in his life, and why was no woman good enough for him? It had been twenty-five years since his sister died. Thirty since his parents' death in Italy. And all these years later, he was still standing guard over his empty life, watching with ever greater vigilance for barbarians at the gate. He was beginning to wonder, in spite of himself, if it was time to let one of the barbarians in. However frightening that had seemed till now, it might finally be a relief.

  5

  IN SPITE OF A DESIRE TO SEEM “COOLER” THAN THAT, Gray had called Sylvia the night he got back to New York on the first of September. It was the Labor Day weekend, and he wondered if she'd be away. It turned out she wasn't, much to his relief. She had sounded surprised to hear from him, and for a moment, he wondered if he had heard her wrong, or misread her, and was doing the wrong thing.

  “Are you busy?” he asked nervously. She sounded distracted, and not entirely pleased.

  “No, I'm sorry. I have a leak in my kitchen, and I have no idea what to do with this goddamn thing.” Everyone in her building was off over the long weekend.

  “Did you call your super?”

  “Yes, his wife is having a baby tonight. And the plumber I called said he can't get here till tomorrow afternoon, for twice the rate since it's a holiday. My neighbor called that it's dripping through his ceiling.” She sounded exasperated, which was at least familiar to him. Damsels in distress were his specialty.

  “What happened? Did it just start out of nowhere, or did you do something?” Plumbing was not his area of expertise either, but he had a sense of how things worked mechanically, which she didn't. Plumbing was one of the few things she couldn't do.

  “Actually”—she started to laugh sheepishly—“I dropped a ring down the sink, so I tried to take the damn thing apart, before it wound up in the Manhattan sewer system. I got the ring, but something went wrong, and I couldn't get it back together fast enough. I seem to have sprung a major leak. Now I have no idea what to do.”

  “Give up the apartment. Find a new one immediately,” Gray suggested, and Sylvia laughed at him.

  “You're a big help. I thought you were an expert at rescue work. Some help you are.”

  “I specialize in neurotic women, not plumbing issues. You're too healthy. Call another plumber.” And then he had a better idea. “Do you want me to come over?” He had just arrived from the airport ten minutes before. He hadn't even bothered to glance at his mail. He had gone straight to the phone and called her.

  “Something tells me you don't know what to do either. Besides, I look disgusting. I haven't combed my hair all day.” She had stayed home doing paperwork, and the Sunday Times crossword puzzle. It was one of those lazy days when she had nothing important to do. Sometimes it was pleasant being in town while everyone else was away, although by the end of the day, the solitude usually got to her, with no one to talk to, which made it nice to hear from him.

  “I look disgusting too. I just got off a plane. Besides, you probably look better than you think.” How disgusting could she look? He couldn't imagine her looking anything but terrific, even with uncombed hair. “Tell you what, you do your hair, I'll do the sink. Or I can do your hair, and you do the sink. We can take turns.”

  “You're crazy,” she said, sounding good-natured and amused. It had been a boring, lonely Sunday on a holiday weekend and she was happy to hear from him. “I'll tell you what. If you fix the sink, I'll buy you a pizza. Or Chinese takeout, you pick.”

  “Whatever you want. I ate on the plane. I'll change into my plumbing clothes, and be over in ten minutes. Hang on to your hat till then.”

  “Are you sure?” She sounded embarrassed, but pleased.

  “I'm sure.” It was an easy way for them to see each other again. No anticipation, no fancy clothes, no awkward first date. Just a leak in her kitchen sink, and uncombed hair. He washed his face, brushed his teeth, shaved, put on a clean shirt, and was out the door ten minutes later. He was at her door another ten minutes after that. She lived in a loft south of him, in SoHo. The building had been renovated, and looked very sleek. She lived on the top floor, and the art he saw everywhere as soon as he got off the elevator looked serious and impressive. It wasn't the kind of work he did, but he knew it was what she sold. She had some major artists in her own collection, which caught his eye immediately. It was easy to see from the look of the apartment that she had great taste.

  She had made the same effort he had, washed her face, combed her hair, brushed her teeth, and put on a clean T-shirt. Beyond that, she was barefooted, wearing jeans, and she looked happy to see him. She gave him a quick hug and looked him over.

  “You don't look like a plumber to me.”

  “I couldn't find my overalls, sorry. This will have to do.” He was wearing good shoes and a clean pair of jeans. “Did you turn off the water?” he asked, as she led him to the kitchen. It was all black granite and chrome. It was a beautiful place, and she told him she had done most of the design work herself.

  “No,” she said, looking blank, in answer to his question abo
ut the water. “I don't know how.”

  “Okay,” he said, muttering to himself, as he slipped under the sink. There was a steady cascade of water, flowing from the sink through the cabinet beneath, and she had towels all over the floor. Gray was on his knees looking for the shut-off valve, and asked her for a wrench. She handed it to him, and a minute later, the water stopped. Problem solved, or at least put on hold for the moment. He emerged from under the sink with a broad smile, and wet jeans from the knees down, from where he had knelt.

  “You're a genius. Thank you.” She smiled back at him and then glanced down at his jeans. “Sorry, you're all wet. I'd offer to dry your pants, but it might be a little forward to ask you to take them off on a first date. I'm a little out of practice, but I think that's probably not the thing to do.” On the other hand, she knew that if she didn't, he would be miserable sitting through dinner in wet jeans. And besides, she assumed correctly, he was tired from the trip, he didn't need to be wet and uncomfortable too. “Maybe we ought to skip dating etiquette for this time. Take off your pants. I'll put them in the dryer. I'll get you a towel. We can order a pizza delivered.” She came back with a white bath towel five minutes later. It was a big fluffy luxurious one. She pointed at her guest bathroom, where he could change. He came out a minute later, carrying his jeans, and with the towel wrapped around his waist. He looked funny wearing it with a shirt, socks, and shoes.

  “I feel a little silly,” he admitted with a sheepish grin, “but I'd probably feel sillier eating dinner in my boxers.” She laughed at him then, and he followed her into the loft's main room. She had an enormous living room filled with sculpture and paintings. It was an incredible backdrop for her art. He noticed a number of important artists represented as he looked around the room. “Wow! You've got some great stuff.”