by Dianne Dixon
It shot a chill through Ali.
She quickly turned back toward the garden, and the sunlight.
Matt
Matt was a fledgling waiter—there had been complaints about his inefficiency. But now, to his surprise, one of his customers had complimented him.
He’d just delivered a plate of eggs to Mr. Wallace, the man who had hair the color of dried orange peels and always sat at the same small table in the dining area. “You’re getting much better at this,” Mr. Wallace said.
Matt was embarrassed. Grateful for the kindness. Ashamed of being stuck as a second-rate employee in Ali’s restaurant.
“When I said you were getting better, I meant you’re improving as a server.” There was empathy in the look he was giving Matt. “But in the larger sense…things haven’t gotten any better, have they?”
“Not yet.” Matt had been relentlessly looking for other work for five months. And still nothing on the horizon. Nothing between him and the financial sinkhole that was swallowing more of his life every day. He didn’t know how much longer he could last.
“Don’t lose heart,” Mr. Wallace told him. “No tide stays out forever.”
“Maybe…but if it takes too long to show up, you still go down.”
• • •
Several times lately, Matt had thought about suicide. The way he saw it, he was a zero as a man. Completely inadequate.
Danielle was the fiber-thin safety line keeping him from taking his own life. She was the only place where he didn’t feel defective and laughable.
He and Danielle had continued to have emotional intimacy, but no sex. Matt had made it clear he loved Ali desperately and didn’t want to cross that line. Instead, he shared a surprising openness with Danielle. He talked to her about everything that had damaged him, everything that was important to him. He told her some of the details he’d told Ali, and a lot of the ones he hadn’t.
Early in their relationship, one afternoon when Matt arrived at the gatehouse to spend time with her, Danielle had called out to him from the bathroom. He found her in a long, copper tub that was curved at both ends and was unusually deep and wide.
While she lounged in her bath—after telling Matt how to make espresso in the coffeemaker in the kitchen—she chatted to him through the open bathroom door, saying, “You wouldn’t believe how far back my family goes in the movie business. They’ve owned that crumbly old mansion up on the hill for like a million years. Now they rent it out to B-list rock bands or wannabe starlets and their B-list managers. Back in the day, Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino used to hang out up there. That’s why I get to live in this supremely cool space. My parents cut me a deal on the rent.”
Matt had returned with the coffee. But now Danielle was telling him, “Never mind. Put it over there. I don’t think coffee’s what I want.”
“What do you want?” he asked.
She thought for a minute. “I want you to tell me your story.”
Matt groaned and leaned against the wall. “You know my story. I’m a former college professor, now unemployed television writer, who’s so messed up he’s cheating on his wife with a woman he isn’t even sleeping with.”
“Then can you really call it cheating?” Danielle splashed down under the water and came up sleek and shining.
In the light from the arched window and in the gleam of the copper bathtub, Danielle looked as if she belonged to the realm of the spirit more than to the world of the flesh. Somehow, Matt felt completely free to tell her the truth about everything. And he started with what he’d done in those three missing days, just before he’d married Ali.
His story was long and complicated. There was tremendous violence in it, and shame. And he told Danielle all of it.
When he finished, he waited for her reaction, stone-faced and shaking, like a death-row inmate waiting for the needle prick that will kill him.
After a while, Danielle said, “Could you put my robe on me, please?” She came out of the tub, and Matt wrapped her bathrobe around her. “You’ve never shed even one tear about any of the things that happened?”
“What would be the point?” Matt said. “It’s finished. Nothing I can do will change a single minute of it.”
There wasn’t a shred of judgment in the way she was looking at him. “Come. Lie down with me.” Danielle was continuing to abide by the terms they’d agreed to in the beginning. No demands. No strings. No sex.
He was remembering the afternoon in his office when he’d made it clear he didn’t want to dishonor Ali—and Danielle had said, “I don’t want to wreck your home. I’m just offering you breathing space. For a little while.”
That calm, undemanding attitude was what made being with her so easy, so seductive.
When Matt followed Danielle into her bedroom and got into her bed, he was scraped raw by the confessions he’d made. He held on to Danielle as if he were afraid of dying. She said that being surrounded by evil wasn’t the same as being evil. And he cried. Uncontrollably.
After saying it aloud, detailing what he had done, Matt couldn’t imagine ever feeling clean, or light, again.
But that was only because he hadn’t fully grasped the concept of catharsis. The powerful release that would come, now that he’d finally acknowledged the darkest parts of who he was.
Ali
Ali adjusted the flame under a skillet on the stove. “All I said was…the produce guy delivered a bunch of rock-hard tomatoes this morning and—”
Morgan cut her off. “No. That’s not all you said. You also said you have a food writer coming to review your lunch menu today.” She slapped a container of butter onto the counter.
“And suddenly you’re mad because it didn’t occur to me I needed to take revenge for a bunch of unripe tomatoes?” Ali dropped a dollop of the butter into the skillet. “Why does it bother you?”
“Because I don’t believe you. Everybody wants revenge when they get screwed.”
Ali and Morgan were in the restaurant kitchen. Breakfast service was over, and there was still a while before the lunch rush. Ali was fixing a grilled cheese sandwich for Sofie, who was at the other end of the room, playing in the nursery Ava had made.
Morgan was on her way to a meeting at a museum in Los Angeles and had dropped by the restaurant for a quick visit—a visit that for some reason had escalated into an argument.
Ali was catching a glimpse of what she’d recently mentioned to Jessica—confusion in Morgan, something unresolved.
“Morgan, is there someone you want to take revenge on? Somebody you want to hurt?”
Morgan bit her lip. “Not really. It’s just that every now and then, I want what’s fair. I want to even the score. Sometimes I want it so much it scares me.”
“And if you did something like that, a big act of revenge, what would you get out of it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it would be like putting the period at the end of the last sentence in an old, boring story you’re tired of. Maybe with that period there, you could finally end the story and start a new one.”
“Or maybe you could just decide to toss the boring story and—” The butter in the skillet started to smoke. Without thinking, Ali grabbed the skillet’s handle. The pan was one of her favorites, but it was ancient and the handle wasn’t insulated. The burn across her palm was instant.
She dashed for the sink to hold her hand under the faucet. As she passed Morgan, she could have sworn that—just for a millisecond—Morgan had seen the burn and looked smug.
But then Morgan was suddenly at Ali’s side. Filling a bowl with water and ice. Sliding Ali’s hand into the healing coolness, murmuring, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. Don’t worry. Everything’s fine.”
• • •
Morgan’s visit had left Ali puzzled.
She still had a little frown of worry a few minutes later
when the lunch rush started and she was in the restaurant kitchen answering her phone.
The frown disappeared the moment she heard Matt’s voice. After eight and a half months of unemployment, they’d been handed a miracle, and he was telling her, “I’m here. I’m all settled in.”
Recently, something in Matt had changed. He was calmer, less haunted, like he’d found peace. And Ali had begun very cautiously to let her guard down, to look past his failures and see how hard he was trying to be strong. For her—and for Sofie.
For the first time in a long time, she wasn’t closed off and guarded as she spoke to Matt. “And where, precisely, are you?” she asked.
“In my new office.”
“Is your name on the door?”
“Yes. It’s also on a signed contract. I just finished hanging my PhD on the wall.”
The backbreaking weight that had come so close to crushing her was finally lifting. “Oh my God. Even though we’ve been talking about it for weeks…up until this very minute, I’ve been afraid to believe it was real.”
“Believe it, Al. It’s real. I have a job.”
Ali dropped the phone onto the kitchen’s long wooden table, let out a shout, and did a silly little dance. The cooks and a passing waiter smiled, not understanding the reason for her happiness but pleased to see it.
Ali grabbed the phone and told Matt, “Let’s go out to dinner tonight…to celebrate being saved!”
“Ali, it’s an entry-level professorship in a screenwriting program in a brand-new film department at a very small, unfamous college. If we’re going to make it, we’ll still need to do what we talked about.”
Ali moved out of the kitchen into the privacy of the walled garden, her excitement fading a little. “I know. We can’t afford to keep the house. We have to sell it. I understand that.” She brushed away a few scattered rose petals and sat on a stone bench at the edge of the garden. “For now, I just want to be happy about you having a job.”
Matt’s sigh was deep and contented. “The great thing is…it’s not just any job. I’m in a classroom again. It’s like you being in the restaurant. I’m home. I’m where I belong.”
Ali looked across the garden toward the kitchen’s open door. She could see the staff, busy with lunch orders. She left the bench, needing to get back to work, as Matt was telling her, “Kiss Sofie for me.”
“I will, as soon as she wakes up. Lately she’s been napping a lot.”
“Banking her beauty sleep.” Matt chuckled.
“I’ll give her your kiss as soon as she’s awake. And don’t forget about us going out to dinner to celebrate. How about Smitty’s? Want to see if they can take us around seven?”
There was an awkward silence. Then Matt said, “Ah…that might be a little early. I…uh… There’s an errand I have to run, somebody I need to see.”
Before Ali could ask who he needed to see, Matt told her, “Thank you for sticking by me.” Then he added, “I love you, Al.”
She didn’t reply right away. She hesitated, just for a second. And in that click of time, Matt ended the call.
Ali thought about the odd pause before Matt mentioned the errand he needed to run, and she wondered, Will it ever be easy again to tell him I love him?
But she didn’t have time to dwell on that question. There was something important she needed to do. Something that couldn’t wait.
• • •
Ali crossed the dining area on a mission. Her destination was a small corner table where the bill had just been delivered to Mr. Wallace, the man with hair the color of dried orange peels. He was finishing his usual late breakfast.
“It’s over,” Ali told him, snatching the bill from the table. “This will never happen in my restaurant again, Mr. Wallace.”
He laughed quietly. “You gave me eggs, Ali. Now I owe you money.”
“Because of you, my husband has a job. You’ll never buy a breakfast in this place again. That’s nonnegotiable.”
Mr. Wallace chuckled, obviously pleased. “You’ll stay for a minute and have a cup of coffee with me…also nonnegotiable.”
“Okay, but only if I can tell you what a hero you are.” Ali signaled for a waitress, then slipped into a chair. “Mr. Wallace, I need you to know how much—”
The waitress arrived with the coffee, and Mr. Wallace used the interruption to say, “It must be good for Matt to be back in the saddle. He went a long time without employment. That’s a tough thing for a man, not being able to find work. I know.” Mr. Wallace waited until the catch in his voice was gone. “When this restaurant first opened, if you hadn’t let me sit here for hours on end, while I made phone calls and sent out my tattered résumés, I would’ve never gotten on my feet again.”
Ali started to speak—Mr. Wallace stopped her. “When my son told me about the new film program he was starting, and about the job opening for an instructor in screenwriting, it was not only my pleasure to give him Matt’s name, it was my obligation.”
“Most people wouldn’t have thought of it. That’s what makes you amazing,” Ali said. “Matt told me he only mentioned his background to you once, in passing, months ago. You didn’t even know him then. It was the first time he’d ever waited on you.”
Mr. Wallace laughed. “It was the second time, actually. He was cleaning up the plate of eggs he’d just spilled, apologizing for his shortcomings as a waiter, explaining that his background was in teaching and writing for television.” Mr. Wallace’s tone was deeply emotional. “Matt never mentioned he was desperate to find work. He didn’t need to; it was in his eyes. The same look that was in mine every morning for quite a while, whenever I had to face the mirror and shave.”
“You’re an angel, Mr. Wallace.”
“As are you, dear Ali. We’re all meant to be each other’s angels.” Mr. Wallace opened his wallet and laid out a generous tip for the waitress. “It’s not enough to sit back and rejoice when we receive our miracles. We need to look for opportunities to pass the bounty along. It’s the only decent way to live.”
• • •
When they’d finished their coffee, Mr. Wallace went off to work and Ali went back into the busy rush of the restaurant’s kitchen. Eventually, Sofie woke up from her nap. And the day passed.
In the days that followed, Ali assumed she and Matt had only each other—and Mr. Wallace—to thank for their success in emerging from their darkness, whole and safe.
Ali didn’t know about Danielle, or about the trips Matt made to the gatehouse after he’d found his teaching job.
Matt
When Matt answered the phone, Aidan immediately asked, “Where are you?”
“In the car,” Matt told him.
“Have a minute?”
“Yeah. It’ll take me a while to get where I’m going. What do you want to talk about?”
“What happened to you with Darling was crap,” Aidan said. “And since I was the one who talked you into taking the job, I feel guilty as shit.”
“It wasn’t your fault. No need for guilt on my account.”
“I was raised a bloody Catholic. I’ve got the whole fucking world to feel guilty about.”
Matt grinned. “It’s good to hear from you. I’ve missed you.”
“Then this should make you very happy. I’m putting together a major deal on a film. Set in the Australian outback. I want you to be part of it. It’ll mean a tough eight or nine months, but it’ll be an ass-kicking adventure and the money’s huge. Say yes so I can get you, and what happened to you on that fucking television show, off my conscience.”
Matt said nothing.
And Aidan asked, “Did I mention the money was huge? Massive amounts of zeroes with a plentiful supply of commas separating them?”
Matt still didn’t respond, and Aidan insisted, “Like it or not, mate, you’re a damn fine scriptwriter, and I want
you making movies for me.”
Matt hadn’t been keeping up his end of the conversation. He was remembering the night of Ali’s rape and how, if he hadn’t been so engrossed in his work, things might have gone differently. He was remembering what an all-consuming business show business was.
“Well?” Aidan asked. “What do you say?”
“Thanks, but no thanks. I’ve accepted a teaching job. The classroom’s where I’m meant to be. I’m happy there, and it gives me time at home, time with Ali. I don’t think there’s any amount of money I’d be willing to trade for that.”
Aidan told him to think it over. Matt said he didn’t need to.
He didn’t have a single regret about declining Aidan’s offer. He loathed show business, never wanted to go near it again.
Just as he ended the call, Matt turned into the driveway of the old limestone mansion, heading toward the gatehouse and Danielle.
• • •
Danielle wasn’t there when Matt arrived at the gatehouse. He had to wander the sprawling property, looking for her.
He found her in the garden with a trash barrel nearby, cleaning debris from the basin of a large stone fountain near the entrance to the mansion. She was wearing an elegantly long, black skirt and a fitted cashmere T-shirt with sequined cap sleeves. For any woman other than Danielle, that outfit, paired with what she was doing, would have been absurd—but on her, it seemed perfectly appropriate.
She held up an empty vodka bottle and a waterlogged basketball shoe. “Can you guess what went on at the big house last night?”
“I’m thinking the tenants had a party.” Matt reached over her shoulder, scooping a green nylon wig from the fountain and tossing it into the trash barrel. “Do your parents give you a break on the rent in return for your services as a groundskeeper?” he asked.
“Uh-uh. They have a guy…but when I saw the mess, I figured they could use some help.”
“Will you tell your folks you’re the one who did the cleanup?”
