by Luanne Rice
Alone in my room I stripped out of my body stocking and put on my white nightshirt. Then I sat in my armchair and dialed Sam’s number in New York.
“Hello?” came his warm, lovely, Sammish voice, answering his phone with a question.
“Bonjour! This is your movie star calling.” I bounced on my seat with excitement. I felt so connected!
“Una?”
I went a little flat. He didn’t sound very excited at all. “Yes, it’s Una. Do we have a bad connection?”
“No, no. It’s fine.”
Then why do you sound so strange? I thought angrily. “Guess what? I got the part! I just finished dinner with Emile, so don’t worry when you read about it in the paper, it was just a regular business dinner with a reporter for dessert, but he offered me the part!”
“That is great. Congratulations. When do you start?”
“Next summer. I have to be in Corsica from June through September. It’s an island in the Mediterranean—French, even though it’s closer to Italy, supposedly very wild and rugged, and…” I was babbling. I took a deep breath and tried to stop thinking what’s wrong what’s wrong what’s wrong…
“I’ve been to Corsica. It’s great for snorkeling, except for the currents. They’re wicked. I know a biologist, got sucked into a cave by a current.”
Here we were, having a transatlantic conversation about our professions. Wonderful. The line went silent for a few seconds. I hated myself, but I had to ask: “Is something wrong?”
Pause. Breath. Longer pause. “No, not really.”
“Come on. Tell me.”
“I said nothing was wrong.”
“Then why do you sound so pissed off?” My voice rose with hysteria on “off.” I fought to keep it down.
“Well, I suppose it’s the photos I keep seeing of you and Emile Balfour all over the papers.”
“Photos? I’ve only been with him twice. Three times, if you count my audition, but then we were in a crowd.”
“Granted, it’s the same photo, but it’s all over town. You’re the new hot couple.”
“I thought we were.”
“Yeah, so did I.”
How touching! Sam was jealous. Instead of feeling warm and loved, however, I felt uncomfortable. I had no idea of how to reassure him. I had been away from him for longer than we had been together in Watch Hill. I turned brusque. “Listen, I’m coming back to New York tomorrow. I just wanted to tell you.” In case you care—what a joke!
“Good. I’m glad. Call me when you get home.”
“Of course.” Pause. “Good night.”
“Good night.”
I had expected him to be thrilled for me, slavering with passion, promising to meet me at Kennedy Airport. When Emile had thought about framing Together Forever with red hearts, it had made me think of reuniting with Sam. I lay on my back, looking up at the beautifully molded ceiling. I was sleepless in the Hôtel de Crillon, but it might as well have been that fleabag in Brussels. Sleepless is sleepless.
Chapter 16
On the flight back to New York, Jason asked me all about my audition and plans to leave the show. We talked nervously, as though our words were converging but our thoughts going in separate directions. I imagined bubbles over our heads. Jason’s bubble contained an image of himself and Terry, back to back, angry expressions on their faces, and the word “Why?” My bubble contained an image of me and Sam, back to back, angry expressions on our faces, and the word “Who?”
“So, after the four months on Corsica, do you think you’ll come back to Beyond?” Jason asked, fidgeting with his ascot.
“I don’t know. I guess it depends.”
“Yes, you might get another movie role.”
“Or maybe Chance will replace me.”
“Oh, I doubt that. He’s so fond of you.”
I tried to think of some polite rejoinder. Chatter was the only way to fill the time, to keep from hoping that Sam had decided to surprise me at the airport.
“He’ll have to find a new love interest for Beck,” I said.
“What did he say when you told him about the audition?”
“I haven’t spoken to him yet. I sent a telegram.”
“I can’t believe you have a movie to do. In some ways, I could kill you.”
“Thank you,” I said, smiling at Jason. It was so nice to have the envy of my colleagues. He knew what I meant; he smiled back at me. It was the only time during our flight that we actually connected. But immediately we went back to our waltz of distraction, asking polite questions, giving polite answers, wondering what would happen back in New York.
Terry met Jason at the airport. Coming through customs, we could see him craning his neck and waving madly.
“I knew it,” Jason said, exhaling a long breath. His face and neck glistened with a thin sheen of sweat. “I bought him a present in Stuttgart, just in case.”
For the first time in nearly three weeks, I had to hail a cab.
My apartment smelled like dust and old sunlight. I opened a window to let in some October air. Oktoberair. It made me think of Germany and beer. Then I began looking through my mail. Going through the motions as though I were improvising for Emile Balfour: woman returns home alone from Europe. I didn’t even have a dog waiting for me at some kennel. For a second I considered calling Margo or Lily, to fill in the details I had been too cheap to include in my telegrams, but I didn’t. I sat at my kitchen table feeling very far from home.
I had told Sam I would call when I returned. Dutifully I dialed his apartment number, but he did not answer. He would still be at Columbia, and I didn’t have his office number there. I considered calling the switchboard. Then I remembered how hurt I had felt in Paris, and I went into my bedroom to sleep off the jet lag.
Some enchanted promontory…sleeping, I dreamed of Watch Hill, Sam, and the black zone of shore. Suddenly I was in a romantic New England Brigadoon…Beyond the Bridge…over the rainbow…where things could happen that would never happen in New York or real life. I slept, wakened, slept, wakened. The word “fitfully” flew to mind in one of those dream-scoured moments of awareness. That same instant I grabbed the phone and dialed Sam’s number.
“Hello?” He answered his telephone, as he had when I had called from Paris, with a question.
“Hi, Sam. I’m back.”
“You’re in New York?”
“In fact, I’m in my apartment.” In my bed.
“Have you had dinner yet?”
Dinner? What time was it, anyway? “No, I haven’t.”
“Okay, what’s your address again? I’ll be right over with something. Unless you want to come here.”
He was coming over. I ran to the bathroom and examined my eyes in the mirror. Cloudy and shadowed. I splashed cool water on them, wishing I had time to lie down and cover them with damp tea bags for ten minutes or so. I pulled on a pair of faded jeans under my white nightshirt and paced the apartment until he arrived. He rang the doorbell downstairs and I buzzed him in. Then I paced in a two-foot-square patch of foyer while I listened to the elevator rise on its ancient, creaky cables. First floor, second floor, up, up, up. Then the elevator doors opened and Sam Chamberlain was standing in my hallway. He was right on the other side of my door. I had been all through Europe and returned to New York, and at last Sam and I were separated by nothing vaster than a door. No ocean, no transatlantic cable, no “Celebrity File.” I waited half a second after his knock, then pulled open the last barrier.
We stood there staring at each other. His hair looked longer, not quite as messy as it had in windy Watch Hill. His tan had faded, and there were tiny white lines around his hazel eyes. The eyes of a faun; they gleamed and smiled at the sight of me. I took it all in: the blue oxford-cloth shirt, the brown tweed jacket, his khaki trousers. The only unfamiliar apparel were his shoes, black wingtips instead of holey sneakers or bare feet. He held an aromatic bag of Chinese food in his left hand.
“Hello,” he said, stepping int
o my apartment, swinging his arms around me and pressing the hot bag of food into my back while he kissed me, long and lovingly, until I was unsure whether I was melting from the back or from the front.
“It is so good to be back,” I said into his mouth.
“It is so, so good to have you back,” he said into mine.
I took the bag from him and placed it on my spotless kitchen counter. Holding hands, we walked into my bedroom, to my bed still warm from my recent, fitful sleep. Warm orange light from my reading lamp cast cozy shadows around the room. The lampshade was amber glass painted with two frolicking figures; I had bought it from an antique dealer who had told me it dated back to the 1800s. Sam looked at it, then at my bookshelf, my tall mahogany bureau, my wicker rocking chair, getting acquainted with it all. Then he looked back at me and we started kissing again, as though we had an unspoken agreement to not break physical contact for more than seconds at a time. Pressing close, I could feel his erection through our clothes. It dug into my belly. Our mouths partly open, our kisses were softer now, because we knew we had all the time we wanted. They made me feel as if I might faint.
We drew apart. Sam’s expression looked startled for an instant, as if he hadn’t quite expected to see me standing there.
“What?” I asked, amused, but he only smiled and shook his head.
“I can’t believe you’re back.”
“I can’t either. This feels different from Watch Hill.”
“It’s not.” He stared directly into my eyes, beginning to unbutton my shirt buttons. I wore no bra; Sam lowered his head to my breasts and began to kiss my nipples. He undid his belt. I heard the scratchy sound of his zipper going down. He eased me onto the bed; I lay back, watching him undress in the orange light. His erect penis stood at a sharp angle to his flat belly, bobbing as he bent to pull off his pants, then as he came to me and pulled off my jeans. He gazed at my body which I knew was very pale. I made a self-conscious move to cover my breasts with my hands, but he took my hands in his and held them out on the bed. Lowering himself onto me, his body felt hot. It made me forget the cool October air swirling around us. He kissed my throat and the hollow of my neck and then my mouth until I felt as though I might faint again. He kissed me all the way down my body. I closed my eyes and felt him let go of my hands. Then he was gently probing me with his tongue, until I shuddered into a violent orgasm.
But he wouldn’t let me rest. He knelt above me, so that I was looking straight up at his body, and I reached for his narrow hips, pulling them down so I could kiss his penis. I was shivering from the chilly air because I no longer had the heat of his body against me. He must have known; he came down beside me and rolled me onto my side, and began to move in a slow rhythm like waves of good jazz. He thrust in and out; we had never done it that way before, his front pressed against my back, and I shivered with boldness. I touched myself with my own fingers, which excited him further and made him move urgently, reaching around to touch my breasts, rolling the nipple of first one, then the other, between his fingers, making me groan with pleasure. I felt myself starting to come, and as I began to, I felt it growing in him, felt him grip one breast, and heard his sound, a fierce exhalation that made me think of a warrior, and we both climaxed, I about twenty seconds later than he.
They were the longest twenty seconds of my life.
“That was amazing,” he said, grinning, holding me tight.
“Now are you convinced that the ‘Celebrity File’ was nothing?” I asked, snuggling under the covers into Sam’s armpit.
“Yes. I’m very relieved. I know it sounds mental, but you should have been here, walking into a drugstore and seeing your face smiling up from every tabloid in town. With Pretty Boy Emily.”
“Emile,” I corrected. “He’s not bad at all. He just wants some free publicity.”
“Oh, sure. But I bet he made a pass at you.”
I still was unsure of how to interpret that last night at the Crillon, when Emile had touched the back of my neck. My father would have said it was a pass. In any event, I wanted to test my powers. “Well, a little one. But it was firmly rejected.”
“But you were probably tempted. After all, you and I haven’t been together for long, and you couldn’t have felt as though you had much of a commitment to me.”
“Well, yes and no,” I said, suddenly feeling profound. “I mean, we haven’t pledged undying love to each other, but on the other hand, we did say that we loved each other.
“Even though I didn’t get one letter the entire time.”
“You’re kidding. I sent a bunch to Nuremberg. The day you left, in fact, I wrote a long one in the turret room. Matt and Margo insisted I stay there.”
“They did?” I had a great image of Sam, alone and lonely in the turret room, writing me a letter on the same bed where we had made torrential love during the lightning storm. “I never got any letters at all. Did you get mine?”
“Three of them,” he said. “They kept me from completely believing that news story about you and Emily.”
“I am really sorry about that,” I said, not feeling sorry at all. It was wonderful to know that Sam had suffered the same doubts I had. Insecurity had not been mine alone, a fact which caused me pause and relief.
“You are forgiven. Now tell me about the movie.”
I spared no details. I synopsized the story, then told about the audition, the offer, the arrangement for next summer.
“Four months, huh?”
“Yes, four months, which seems like a long time but probably won’t feel like it.” I spoke breezily, trying to disguise my fear that the idea of an upcoming four-month separation would prove to be more than our precarious reunion could take. But I had a fantasy: that he would get grant money to study seaweed on Corsica or nearby Sardinia, and that we could live together like Anya and Domingo in a white bungalow with bougainvillea dripping over the windows. We would get married by the black-clad parish priest (his sturdy hat topped by a black pompom), and spend summer afternoons shredding olive leaves and giving each other open-mouthed kisses on the hillside. The steep hillside. Keeping Sam/Domingo away from dangerous underwater currents and Gangster. Marriage to Sam. The thought made me slide closer to him.
The next day Sam left for work while I slept late. I called Lily just before noon.
“Darling, welcome back!” she said in a tone so sure and confident it made me suspicious. No one her age should have the authority to say “darling.”
“Did you get my lamb?” I asked.
“Yes, we did. It was sweet. Henk loved it too. You were so darl—dear to do it.”
“I’m glad you liked it.” Alarms were ringing. Lily sounded less like Lily than she had the last time I had spoken to her. There was a veneer, a coating that was not quite dry, and I would see if I could crack or at least bend it. “Will you and Henk come for dinner? I’d love to see you, and I want you to meet Sam. Remember Sam?”
“The voice from Watch Hill?”
“Right. How’s tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow. Hmmm. I’d better see. Can you hold on?”
“Sure.” I waited patiently while Lily covered the mouthpiece and shuffled through some papers.
“Actually, it turns out, tomorrow isn’t very good.” Lily paused, and I could hear her sharp breath, as if she were crying.
“Lily, what’s wrong?” I asked.
Pause. “Nothing at all. What makes you ask that?” She made it sound as if that was the worst question in the world.
“I don’t know. You sound…upset.”
“I’m not upset.” More wobbly breaths. “We got your telegram. Congratulations on the movie.” Her tone was flat and nasal.
“Thank you. As a matter of fact, I’d love to celebrate with you. How’s about I take you out for lunch? I’ll buy you a milk-shake. Are you supposed to drink lots of milk?”
“I thought you wanted to have dinner with me and Henk,” she snapped, ignoring my question. “What’s the matter—don
’t you like Henk?”
“I do like him. But I’d like to see you alone once in a while. Aren’t we allowed to tell a few secrets?”
Snort. Bitter laughter, the sort Delilah would laugh when she wanted to drop hints to Beck: you don’t understand at all. “Una, I know you’re not married, so I can’t expect you to understand. But no. I don’t have secrets from Henk. If you want to see me, you’ll have to see both of us.”
This was bizarre. I felt as though I were having a carousel dream, the sort where you keep going round and round, never getting anywhere, unable to get off. If I asked Lily and Henk to dinner, she declined. If I asked her out to lunch alone, she accused me of hating Henk. Did I hate Henk? I was beginning to think so.
“Okay,” I said. “I would like to have dinner with you and Henk. When will it be most convenient?”
“‘When will it be most convenient?’” Lily said, mocking me. “You’re so formal. I swear, Una. I feel as though I don’t know you.”
“I’m beginning to feel the same way about you,” I said, listening to my voice rise to a screech. It was out of my control. Lily and I sat at opposite ends of the phone wire, at opposite sides of the city, weeping.
“Please tell me what’s wrong,” I said.
“Nothing. Honestly. I’m sorry, I’m just tired. Being pregnant makes me so tired.”
“I really want to see you.”
“I really want to see you too. And I want to meet Sam. Margo says he’s great.”
“He is.”
“Okay. I’ll call you tonight—after I talk to Henk. All right?”
“Okay,” I said, hanging up the phone and falling into the sleep of the jet-lagged. But Lily never called.
Chapter 17
During the weeks that followed, I introduced Sam and he introduced me to some of our closest friends.
At the Schutzes’ brunch one Saturday morning, in honor of the show’s awards and of my role in a Balfour film, Sam and I stood in the stark gray living room of the Park Avenue penthouse, staring out the terrace window into the November fog, while Billy held both Sam’s hands in hers.
