Neighbors

by Danielle Steel

  “That’s nice of you, but you don’t have to sacrifice yourself to sit here with the workmen. The contractor can do it.”

  “I think I’d rather be here,” she said, and he smiled and walked over to kiss her, and then they walked upstairs to their bedroom, and that was getting harder too. She felt like a liar and a fraud all the time now. Peter was in her heart and mind, and Joel didn’t deserve her lies to him. She knew she couldn’t go on this way for long.

  “Are you okay?” he questioned her. She seemed quiet lately, or distracted. He wondered if they were approaching the witching hour when things turned serious, and girls forgot his warnings in the beginning, when he told them he would never marry them. It usually happened when they were around Ava’s age, twenty-nine or thirty. He hoped it wasn’t happening to them yet. He enjoyed her more than most of her predecessors, but not enough to want a future with her. And if she pressed him, he knew he’d run.

  “I’m just tired,” she said vaguely, “and the dust gives me a headache. Everything is such a mess.”

  “They’ll be finished soon. Maybe we should go to Paris for a weekend, before New York.” He was considerate of her, and thoughtful, to a point. In the end, it was all about him, which was why she was there, to entertain him sexually and otherwise. But he held up his end of the deal and gave her a golden life.

  “Let’s see how the repairs are going by then,” she said, clinging desperately to the only excuse she could think of for not going with him. He didn’t answer, went to take a shower, and came to bed. She was in tears while he was in the bathroom, and forced a smile when he got back, as he walked naked across the bedroom. He had a fabulous body, tall and powerful, and in good shape. He worked hard at it with his trainer. He spent enough time at the gym to keep it that way. Peter was more human and what she loved about him had nothing to do with how fit he was, or his muscles, although he was good-looking too. But he was real. Her relationship with Joel had been satisfying for two years, but seemed superficial to her now, and artificial, and with her recent lies, fraudulent. She was the fraud. Joel had always been honest and straightforward with her about what he would never offer her. He believed in truth in advertising, and never promised what he didn’t intend to deliver. What it boiled down to was that Peter had heart. Joel didn’t.

  He was quiet for a minute when he got into bed, and then asked her a question she didn’t understand at first.

  “Do I hear a clock ticking?” She glanced at her bed table, and the same clock she’d always had was there. It was electronic and didn’t tick. “I don’t mean that one. I mean yours.” He knew women well enough, and what they expected.

  “Oh.” She didn’t answer for a moment. He was handing her an opportunity, and she was afraid to seize it. It was too soon. She hadn’t even slept with Peter yet. “I don’t know…maybe…”

  “I didn’t think you were there yet.” He sounded sad as he said it. They both knew what that meant to him.

  “I wasn’t. I don’t know why, but I think the earthquake changed things. It shook me up.” He hadn’t suspected her interest in Peter, and didn’t consider him a threat. No money, a night guard for a blind old man, a novel he’d never get published. He didn’t see much there, neither the heart, nor the brain, by his standards. Andrew would have concerned him more. He was better looking than Peter, but he was no match for Joel either, in what Joel considered the real world. He assumed that Ava’s strange mood was about her, not other men.

  “You know, even if you’re getting poetic about marriage, even if you find a guy and are married for fifty years, in the end one of you dies, and you wind up alone. What’s the point?”

  “The fifty years before that, of companionship,” she said softly.

  “We have that, you don’t need to be married for that, except if you want kids. And people don’t marry for that anymore either. Not that I want a baby.” They both knew he didn’t. He wanted a woman, and that was it. It was almost generic for him. He turned to look at her more closely then. “Is that what’s happening? You want to get married and have kids?”

  “I think so. Eventually. I always thought I would.” He nodded. He had heard it all before from others, and he was glad Ava wasn’t given to scenes. She was a sensible girl he could talk to.

  “So have we hit that wall?”

  “Maybe,” she said in the smallest voice, feeling like she was on a roller coaster, panicked over what she was doing. She hardly knew Peter. Maybe she was insane to risk Joel for him. “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe we should quit while we’re ahead,” he said quietly. “I didn’t see this coming,” he said with regret.

  “Neither did I,” she answered, meaning Peter. She hadn’t seen it at all, until she walked out to the sidewalk, naked under her bathrobe, five minutes after the earthquake, and saw Peter looking at her with a stunned expression. If she was ever going to believe in love at first sight, he was it. The past month at Meredith’s had only strengthened their feelings for each other. And now she was putting her comfortable, easy relationship with Joel on the line. She thought she had truly lost her mind, and now she was about to lose her security with it. She had a little money put aside in the bank, but not much. She hadn’t started to save for her exit yet.

  “I hate dragging things out till they get nasty. Been there, done that. And I saw my parents do it that way. By the time you get to where you are now, we’re screwed. Is that why you don’t want to come to Europe with me?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. It would give me time to think.”

  “Don’t overthink things, Ava. It’s been terrific. We never thought it would last forever. I’ll be gone for two weeks. That’ll give you time to figure out where you want to go. Find a nice apartment. I’ll pay for the first six months, and the security deposit.” He’d done this before. And he would have paid a year’s rent if she asked him to, but she didn’t. He’d done enough in the last two years. She didn’t want to take advantage of him.

  “Do you want me to move out when you’re gone?” she asked him, terrified of what she was doing, and wondering if she’d regret it. But it was going to end at some point anyway. He had never told her he loved her. She had said it to him, and thought she did when she said it. Now she knew she didn’t. She loved Peter, as she had never loved any man before.

  “That’s probably a smart game plan,” he said about her moving out while he was away. He put an arm around her. “I’m going to miss you,” he said, as though she were an old friend leaving on a trip. “I never thought that the roof that would fall in during the earthquake would be us, but it was bound to happen sooner or later. That old expiration date. Suddenly one day it’s staring you in the face.” In his world that was how it worked for him. No woman was ever going to own him again. He didn’t care how much the relationship cost him, at least she wasn’t his wife, and he didn’t have to pay her a big settlement, or spousal support. No fuss, no muss, no kids, no bother. Thanks for a good time, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. That was his take on relationships, and she’d always known it. She just hadn’t expected it to end so fast and simply. He was a businessman, and to Joel, everything was a deal that either worked or didn’t.

  He tried to make love to her when they turned the lights out, and she didn’t want to. She had too much to think about now. He didn’t insist. He knew when it was over. It was like taking a jar of mayonnaise out of the refrigerator and finding that the date had expired. Oh too bad, and you threw it in the trash. And when you had time to think about it, you bought another jar of mayonnaise. They both knew that the end of their relationship wouldn’t kill them, but it was sad. A tear crept into her pillow, as she lay awake. She could hear him snoring, and he had already left for the gym when she woke up the next day. She tried to remember what had happened and what they’d said. Was it over? Is that what they had agreed to? He was leaving for London in a wee
k, and she had to be out by the time he got back. She had no idea where to go. She wanted to tell Peter, but she needed time to digest it first. She needed to mourn it, just for a minute.

  She had a missed call from Peter at noon when he was on his lunch break at work. He didn’t call her again until he was on his way to Arthur’s at five o’clock. Ava had gone for a long walk, and she sounded serious when she answered. Peter blurted out his news as soon as he heard her voice.

  “Arthur says you can stay here whenever you want to.” He sounded jubilant, and she laughed at the irony of it. Whenever she wanted to? How many nights was that? She had to find a job and an apartment now, and had three weeks to do it.

  “Joel and I broke up last night,” she said in a flat voice, which masked the panic she was feeling. She had traded a known quantity for a total stranger. But she had also done it so she could be an honest woman. A month of lying to Joel was enough, she didn’t want to lose herself.

  “You what?”

  “We broke up. It’s over. I’m moving out.”

  “Did you tell him it was because of me? Is he going to shoot me?”

  She laughed at the idea. “He was fine. This was only temporary for him. He always said that.”

  “Are you sorry?”

  She thought about it before she answered, she didn’t want to lie to him too. That was no way to start. “Actually, no. Scared shitless of what I’m going to do next. I have to find a place to live, and I haven’t worked in two years, which is hard to explain, so people don’t think you were in rehab or jail.”

  “I’m sorry. I know this is scary as hell, and it doesn’t seem like enough. But I love you, Ava. We’ll make it work somehow.” He would get a better paying job than the one at the magazine. His hopes and dreams were focused on his writing, but he had to be practical now too, for her sake.

  “At least we’re starting clean. I didn’t want to lie to him anymore. It’s not right. You don’t have to worry about me. I can take care of myself, and the crazy thing is, knowing you for a month, and without ever making love with you, I love you too.” She was smiling when she said it. They were like two crazy kids in love. It felt like riding the roller coaster at the fair. They had ridden up, up, up the steep part, and now they were going to shoot down, screaming and terrified, clinging to each other…but if they survived, it was going to be fantastic. “We’re both nuts, but I love you,” she said, feeling breathless. “I’ll come by to see you later, if that’s okay,” she said. She was going to start looking for an apartment the next day. The roller coaster ride had started, and as they hung up, she felt insanely happy and like an honest woman. It was the best she could do for now.

  Chapter 8

  Two days after their dinner, Charles called Meredith and invited her to spend the day with him in the Napa Valley on Saturday. He had a small rented house there, set amid extensive vineyards on someone’s property, with a river running through it.

  “I go there when I can get away, to clear my head.”

  “It sounds nice.”

  “It looks like Italy, or France. And there are good restaurants up there.” She agreed to go, and he told her he’d pick her up at nine in the morning, they’d make a day of it, and come home late that night, after dinner at Bouchon, one of the restaurants he thought she’d like.

  When he picked her up, she was wearing a white cashmere turtleneck and a warm parka. He had warned her it might be chilly. They chatted easily on the hour-and-a-half drive. They picked up sandwiches when they got to Yountville, and then went to his house. There were vineyards all around them, as far as the eye could see. They walked down to the river and went on a bike ride through the vineyards, and then had a picnic on a table outside his house, looking out over the valley. There was an outdoor fireplace and he built a fire in it to keep them warm while they talked.

  “I love this,” she said, looking more relaxed than he’d seen her. “Every time I go out with you, you remind me of what I’ve been missing. This is heaven. Scott and I came up here a few times when we first moved to San Francisco, but one of us was always on location. Our lives were complicated then, and people followed us around wherever we went. That’s why we bought the big house in the city. We figured we’d have privacy, and we did. Kendall hated it when people stopped us for autographs when we went out, or wanted pictures of us with them, or the paparazzi caught us in some private moments. I guess it was a hard way to grow up. She hated everything about our careers. It must kill her that her daughter is pursuing that life now. I was happy Kendall didn’t want it. It’s hard to lead a normal life with all that going on. And I guess the parents of her friends at school talked about us.

  “She was older and already married herself in New York when Scott left me, but it was a nightmare. The press was after us constantly. He went to the Cannes Film Festival with Silvana, for the film they were in, and everything exploded after that. Kendall’s take on it was that if I’d been home more, and not working all the time, it wouldn’t have happened, but I think Scott would have done something like it anyway. He was bored and she was young, and I was gone a lot, and he had a hard time with my success. His affair with Silvana might have blown over, but he would have done it again with someone else. I filed for divorce right after Justin died, since I blamed him for that. Kendall thought I nearly destroyed her father with the divorce and never forgave me for it. But it must have worked out for them. He and Silvana are still together fifteen years later. Her career tanked after one movie, but I think being married to Scott Price was enough for her. I retired then, because of my son, but I was tired of the Hollywood hype anyway. The box office pressure. You never really know what the truth is. With or without Silvana, our marriage probably would have run out of gas at some point. It took me years to figure that out. Justin’s death just made it all more dramatic and tragic, and finished us off. It nearly killed both of us. Scott stayed drunk and on drugs afterward for two years, and I vanished. You can’t come back from something like that as a couple. Too much had happened. He got his career back on track though, after he went to rehab. He’s done some very good films in the last few years. He’s a talented director. He’s a Hollywood legend now,” she said to Charles, and there was no bitterness in her voice. It was the story of her life, and she accepted where it had led her. She had learned to live with the losses. Scott was ancient history for her now.

  “It can’t be easy to have a decent marriage and bring up kids in Hollywood, with that kind of fame,” Charles said sympathetically. He wanted to understand what had happened to her, why she had run away and hidden for so long. Their lives had been so different.

  “That’s why we moved to San Francisco. But all that crap follows you wherever you go. Fame is a hard game to play. You pay a high price for it, and even though we tried to protect them, so do your kids. Kendall married a very conservative young banker from a stuffy family with old money and she got as far away from it as she could. I don’t blame her. And now her daughter wants everything we had. Hollywood families are like circus families. They love to dance on the high wire without a net. It’s in their blood.” Charles smiled at the comparison.

  “People envy it, they have no idea what it’s about, or the toll it takes,” he said wisely.

  “They envy it until you become too famous, and then they hate you for it. They only love you for a while.”

  They walked back into his little house then, and he lit a fire inside. She loved the smell of the wood burning as she snuggled up to him. The house itself was small and cozy, with a living room with a big fireplace, three bedrooms, and an inviting country kitchen. Charles said it was perfect for an occasional country weekend, or if his kids came to visit, which they didn’t do often. He went to visit them instead.

  At the end of the day, the October sun went down and the evening was cold. She had brought a skirt to wear to dinner at Bouchon, but Charles told her she didn�
��t have to change. She lay on the couch next to him, totally relaxed, as he leaned over and kissed her, and then sat up, admiring her.

  “How can you still be so beautiful?” Charles said, as he cupped one breast with his hand and she didn’t pull away.

  “Daphne says I’m a good witch.” She smiled at him.

  “Then you’ve bewitched me. That I’m willing to believe.” It was dark in the living room as he slowly unbuttoned her blouse, unhooked her bra and bent to kiss her breast. Making love was barely a memory for her now, but she wanted him, and reached out for him, and then he took her hand, and they walked into his bedroom, and he peeled her clothes away, as she held her arms out to him, and they lay on the bed together, and made love as though everything was new and the past faded away. She held him in her arms afterward, at peace.

  He tried not to think of who she was, and only that she was a woman he cared about, but the moment he looked at her, she took his breath away again. He had just made love to Meredith White, it felt like a dream to both of them.

  “I want to forget who you are,” Charles said to her in a hoarse voice after they made love.

  “What does that mean?” She looked happy and sated, and felt as though she was in the right place with the right man. She had no idea how they had found each other, but she was glad they had.

  “It means I want to forget that I’m making love to the most famous movie star of all time. It intimidates me.”

  “You know better. You know who I am now. That’s all that matters and all there is.” She felt as though they were on equal footing, and she liked that too. Neither of them was bigger or better or more powerful or important than the other. They were just a man and a woman who were falling in love with each other.

  “I keep thinking that I would never have met you if the earthquake hadn’t happened. You’d still be a recluse, and I’d be puttering around at loose ends.”