Too Close

by Hilary Norman

  ‘Marry me, Charlotte.’

  Holly hears it, but remains still. She feels her triumph, physically feels it, down inside her pelvis, writhing and surging.

  ‘I want all those things, too,’ he goes on. ‘The honesty, the permanence, the trust. That’s why I realize now that I don’t just want you to come to LA to live with me – to be with me part-time. I want you – I need you – with me all the time.’

  The eavesdroppers to left and right of them are growing ever more interested. The moment is entirely perfect. Holly shifts in her seat, feels her wetness, wonders if she’s en route to a public orgasm. In Le Cirque, of all places.

  ‘All the way?’ she asks, very softly.

  She watches Jack’s throat work for a moment with emotion.

  ‘Every last inch,’ he says.

  APRIL

  Chapter Four

  Nick had made the move to California six years ago, at around the time Holly had been about to start law school in New York. The West Coast had never figured in his plans till then; as an aspiring painter, he’d set his sights on settling in SoHo or the Village. But right then, in the middle of the summer of 1990, going West suddenly seemed the only sanity-saving thing for him to do – his best chance of putting the past behind him and moving forward.

  Fantasies of living right by the Pacific drew him to Venice Beach. He got lucky, found a second floor walk-up one bedroom apartment in a pink-painted house right on the boardwalk near Sunset Avenue, and beat some hot competition from much cuter Hollywood wannabees to get himself regular lunch and dinner shifts waiting on tables at Figtree’s and the On the Waterfront Café. The rest of the time he spent going to the movies and painting: clever, instant portraits for tourists right there on the boardwalk and more serious stuff up in his apartment, some of which he managed to sell to a couple of the local galleries, steadily carving a small niche for himself as a talented – and cheap – landscape and portrait painter.

  After what he had been through in New York, Nick’s new way of life felt soothing and easy. He seldom ventured much farther afield than Santa Monica, avoided downtown Los Angeles like the plague, grew his hair and a beard, the way he had for a while in college, and melted into the Venice scene. New friends passed gently through his days and nights, and pretty, amiable, spirited girlfriends came and went without fuss or storms. Periodically, Kate’s and Ethan’s letters from Bethesda tried to nudge him towards reality and permanence (Kate’s invariably more sharp and pointed than Ethan’s) but Nick never much resented his parents’ proddings because he was well aware that Venice Beach could only be a temporary bolthole for him.

  He knew that his escape from the ‘real’ world was an indulgence, but he figured he was due some drop-out time, and the new life seemed to be bringing him luck as well as respite. When LA rioted and when Malibu and Topanga Canyon burned in wildfires, Nick stayed home, unscathed; when El Niño turned the weather nuts and the Los Angeles River into a raging torrent, he stayed dry, painting the surf; when movie moguls joined their neighbours to shore up hillsides and stop their homes from sliding into the ocean, he watched them on TV. And even in January of ‘94 when the big quake sent all of his books tumbling off the shelves in his own living room, Nick was out of town – in San Francisco of all places – checking out fresh pastures.

  Almost four years – four decent, sane years – had passed before he finally stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop; before he felt confident enough to believe that he really had left his past behind him on the East Coast and that the time had come for him to put down new roots.

  San Francisco seemed, to him, the perfect choice.

  ‘You can’t move to San Francisco,’ Kate Miller said on the telephone when he broke the news.

  ‘Why not? It’s a wonderful city.’ Nick had visited four times before making his final decision.

  ‘Earthquakes.’ That one word seemed enough to Kate.

  ‘Mom, I’ve been living in LA for four years and it hasn’t worried you that much.’

  ‘It’s scared hell out of me and your dad,’ Kate enlightened him, ‘but at least you kept saying it was temporary so we just crossed our fingers and tried not to think about it more than we could help.’

  ‘What about when I was at NYU? There are fault lines under Manhattan.’

  ‘Don’t try snowing me with science, Nick,’ his mother said drily. ‘In New York, we figured you were more likely to be mugged or murdered.’

  Not to mention arrested, Nick thought.

  ‘So why not focus on how much more civilized San Francisco is?’ he asked.

  Kate was silent for a moment.

  ‘You’ve made up your mind,’ she said.

  ‘Come and visit, Mom. You’ll love it, too.’

  ‘I don’t doubt I’ll love the city,’ Kate said. ‘It’s the San Andreas fault I’m never going to feel comfortable with.’

  He made the move in the spring of 1994. He packed all his belongings into his red Toyota Land Cruiser and drove up the Pacific coast on State Highway 1, taking his time heading north, spending a day around Big Sur, wanting to experience the wild, precarious sensation friends had tried to describe to him of being right on the western edge of America with nothing but ocean between him and Japan. He hung out for a few hours in Carmel (a place, together with Big Sur, that he would always – stemming from his NYU days of movie passion – associate with Play Misty for Me), then a few hours more in Monterey (Cannery Row, of course – the movie and the novel). And then, with a sudden, strong urge to reach his final destination, he got back in the Toyota and drove non-stop all the rest of the way to San Francisco.

  He staged his arrival the way he’d promised himself he would – the way he’d planned it for the last several months – driving the car up to Twin Peaks, parking and climbing the steep footpath to the summit and gazing for a good long while at the panorama laid out far below. It was sunset, the most perfect time he could have picked, and it was all there – all the places he’d thought about and readied himself for were right there. He had binoculars with him and a map, and he could identify a whole host of movie locations: Russian Hill from the car chase in Bullitt; the Presidio from the movie of the same name; the big Hyatt hotel on Market Street that the Mel Brooks shrink had been phobic about in High Anxiety.

  And, of course, the bridges. Golden Gate Bridge, rust red and delicate from this distance, glowing in the warmth of the sunset, then softly starting to sparkle as its lights came on. All there for him. His new city.

  Home.

  Nina Ford was the realtor who helped him find his new apartment. He had been staying at a small bed and breakfast inn close to Union Street. Once a Victorian farmhouse, it had a library and a garden and was charm itself, but Nick wanted his own space as soon as possible. He had chosen Ford Realty because of a piece about the company in the Real Estate section of the Sunday Examiner. Personally run by two British sisters, the article made it sound a cosy, caring set-up. It carried no picture, but when Nick had finished reading he had an image of two middle-aged, tweedy English types with a mission to make their clients as snug and content as they were.

  How wrong could a man be?

  They had arranged to meet outside a property on Fillmore Street (just a few blocks, Nick had noted, from the supposed site of the Victorian house where Keaton, Modine and Griffiths had slugged it out in Pacific Heights) that Nina Ford said she had thought of as soon as Nick had told her that he was an artist.

  She was right about the proportions and light being ideal for his needs. But, as it turned out, the apartment was the least of it.

  ‘Nick Miller?’ was all she said, holding out her hand, and he was blown away. Instantly. Crazily. Just like that.

  It wasn’t just the looks. Honey hair. Great legs. Long, fine nose. Wide mouth. (All paintable, all gorgeous.) Grace.

  He thought, maybe, it was the smile. That smile set off something behind the eyes (a shade between hazel and amber – tough to capture on canvas) tha
t reached out and touched Nick in a place no one had ever reached before.

  Things have happened to this woman, he thought. Bad things.

  He knew that, suddenly, without question. And that was when he realized exactly what it was about her.

  That look in her eyes reminded him of his own.

  They ate lunch together at Alioto’s on Fisherman’s Wharf, one week after Nick had moved into the apartment.

  ‘I’m an alcoholic,’ Nina told him, right after she’d ordered a bottle of Calistoga water. ‘I’m not exactly sure yet why I feel I have to tell you that, but somehow it seems important that I should.’ She took a breath. ‘I’ve been sober for more than five years now, and my life’s been in pretty good shape for the last three years, thanks to Ford Realty – thanks mostly, I think, to Phoebe, my sister. But whichever way you cut it, I am still a recovering alcoholic.’

  A surge of admiration for her courage hit Nick at around the same instant as one of overwhelming pity, but, sensing that Nina would probably welcome neither, he took his time before responding.

  ‘I’m glad you told me,’ he said.

  Her eyes flicked away from his, escaped for just a moment, then returned, steady again. ‘I’ll understand if you find it too much of a problem.’

  ‘Why should I find it a problem?’ Nick’s question came naturally.

  ‘Many men do,’ Nina answered.

  Nick looked at his glass of Chardonnay. ‘Does this bother you?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not anymore. Not much, anyway. I’m used to it. I’m a working woman in a major American city – I have to be used to it.’

  The power of suggestion hit Nick with a sudden, intense urge to take a long sip of the wine, and it took a ludicrous effort to tear his attention away from the glass.

  ‘What made you start drinking? I mean—’ He broke off.

  ‘What made me a drunk?’ Nina smiled a gentle, sad smile. ‘My mother was an alcoholic for most of her adult life. She killed herself in 1987. On her fortieth birthday. I was nineteen, Phoebe was seventeen. We handled it very differently.’ Nina paused. ‘Phoebe’s the kindest person I know, but she has a lot of straightforward common sense which seems to help her cope with bad things. It never occurred to Phoebe to think she might take after our mother.’

  ‘But it did to you.’ Nick no longer wanted his wine.

  ‘Not consciously. Until our mother died, I’d always enjoyed a degree of social drinking, but afterwards, I simply seemed to blunder right on where she’d left off.’ She grimaced. ‘A bottle of vodka in a session. Very ugly.’

  ‘Very painful,’ Nick said.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Nina paused. ‘Maybe my becoming a drunk was genetic, or maybe it was more to do with learned behaviour patterns – or maybe it was just some kind of self-destructive fear or guilt – but for four years I did do my level best to follow her.’ She looked away from him, out at the bay. ‘I’d almost managed to go all the way when my father and Phoebe stopped me.’

  Their chowder arrived and they both picked up their spoons and made an effort to eat, to be normal.

  ‘You don’t look especially like an artist, you know,’ Nina said.

  Nick smiled. ‘What do I look like?’

  ‘Hard to say.’ She made a little show of studying him. The thick, slightly wavy dark hair. The keen, gentle, toast-brown eyes. The straight mouth and slightly angular nose.

  ‘You could be many things,’ she said. ‘Doctor, architect.’ Her eyes danced just a little. ‘Streetfighter?’

  ‘You mean the nose.’ Nick lifted his left hand to touch it. ‘It got a little bent out of shape one night in New York.’

  ‘A mugging?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ He offered no more details, and Nina didn’t pursue it. ‘My father’s an architect,’ he said.

  ‘In New York?’

  He shook his head. ‘Bethesda, Maryland.’

  ‘Washington clients?’

  ‘Mostly.’ Nick paused. ‘Does your father live in San Francisco?’ He wanted the rest of the picture.

  ‘He lives in Scottsdale, Arizona,’ Nina answered. ‘His name’s William, and my mother’s was Joanna.’

  ‘Both British?’

  Nina nodded. ‘My father’s a pilot. He was a flier in the RAF, but he gave that up because my mother hated the long separations. He compromised by starting up a small civil freight aviation company outside London, but it was always a financial struggle – so when this amazing American came along offering Dad a partnership in his own company, my father couldn’t resist.’

  ‘Did your mother hate moving to the States?’

  ‘I think my mother hated everything by then. She was a very unhappy person. Oh, she loved her family, but I don’t think we were enough for her.’ Nina shrugged. ‘She wanted more. She claimed she wanted our father on the ground like most normal husbands, but Dad knew that if he gave up flying altogether he’d be miserable, too.’ She paused. ‘Phoebe doesn’t think it would have made any real difference to our mother – she says that her unhappiness went right through to her core.’

  Their entrées arrived, cold Dungeness crab for Nick and cioppino – a Sicilian shellfish stew – for Nina.

  ‘I don’t think you do take after her,’ he said, abruptly.

  ‘No, I don’t think I do either. Not entirely, anyway.’

  ‘Maybe I’m being presumptuous,’ he went on, trying to choose his words carefully, ‘but you don’t seem an unhappy person to me. What happened to your mother was tragic enough to mess anyone up. But from what little I’ve seen of you, I’d guess you have quite a capacity for joy.’

  Nina smiled. ‘I think maybe I do.’

  Nothing had become automatically easier, she confided in Nick, when she’d stopped drinking. There was a string of failed relationships with men – business types, professionals and academics who all seemed to expect, from her outer image, things that Nina could not and had no desire to deliver. Mostly, of course, what they did not want, Nina said, was a drunk on their hands, neither for the risk of a blemish on their own reputations nor for the constant, ongoing battle against the ugliness, the repulsiveness of relapse. And so Nina had made a decision to toughen up by building a wall around herself and allowing no one to enter her heart. At the time she met Nick, she had not accepted a date with a man for more than two years.

  ‘What made me different?’ Nick asked. ‘My fighter’s nose?’

  ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘If you want to tell me.’

  ‘It was your eyes.’

  Nick laughed. ‘My eyes are plain, ordinary brown.’

  Nina didn’t laugh back. ‘They’re not ordinary at all. They’re kind. And they’re honest. And they seem to see a lot that other people don’t.’

  ‘I’m an artist. I need to see.’

  ‘But none of those things were what made me agree to have lunch with you today,’ Nina said.

  Nick kept silent. He remembered his own thoughts about Nina’s eyes the day they’d met at the apartment. He knew, suddenly, what was coming.

  ‘There’s pain in your eyes,’ Nina said. ‘The kind I’ve seen over the years in my own mirror.’

  ‘Is there?’ Nick said.

  For three months, they spent every spare moment together, falling more in love with every passing week. Six months later, they had first pick via Ford Realty of a pretty, detached clapboard Edwardian house on Antonia Street between Pacific and Faber Avenues in Pacific Heights.

  It was perfect for them both. Near the summit of a north-facing hill, close to Lafayette Park and the relaxed buzz of Upper Fillmore shopping, the house had big, high-ceilinged rooms, log-burning fireplaces, hardwood floors, a pretty back garden with a stone barbecue and weeping willow, a garage for Nina’s Lexus (the Toyota could rough it on the street) and great views from the third floor. Nick had problems about accepting that, for the moment at least, the lion’s share of the financing would be Nina’s, but Phoebe Ford – physically dissimilar to Nina
, with William’s red hair, pale, almost pure white skin and a more fragile build – told him that since Nina had fallen so hard for the house, it would be little more than macho selfishness to ask her to settle for less.

  ‘Besides,’ Phoebe said, ‘you’re a terrific painter, and we all know you’re going to be famous some day and hang in MoMA and get paid megabucks and be able to buy all the houses you want.’

  Nick liked Phoebe a lot.

  In April of 1995, five weeks after they moved to Antonia Street, they were married in their own garden under the willow tree. Kate and Ethan Miller came from Bethesda, William Ford from Arizona, and the Millers’ pleasure at their son’s and new daughter-in-law’s happiness was transparent. But the mistrust in Nick that Ford had displayed, equally openly, from their first encounter, continued right through the simple marriage service and beyond – though Phoebe’s patent joy for both Nina and Nick went a long way towards making up for her father’s grudging behaviour.

  Places in and around San Francisco ceased to remind Nick of old movie locations, and became landmarks and lodestars of another kind. Maiden Lane, off Union Square, was where he and Nina had first walked hand in hand; California Street was where they’d shared their first Vietnamese dinner; Golden Gate Park was where they’d played their first game of tennis; Sausalito’s waterfront at night was where they’d had their first kiss.

  Life with Nina was all Nick had ever hoped for. She was warm and considerate, sexy and humorous, gentle and intuitive. Even in her down-times, when her mood swung low and she became darker and went to more AA meetings – sometimes with Nick, sometimes alone – and when only Bill Regan, her AA sponsor, seemed wholly to understand her needs, Nick still knew that he loved her more than he’d ever loved anyone.

  He came across Firefly when he was searching for glue in the bottom drawer of an oak dresser that Nina had brought to their kitchen from her former home on Telegraph Hill.