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Christ… so beautiful…

Rudy was gripped by an odd sense of distortion that made it appear as if each step she took, instead of bringing her nearer, was somehow taking her farther from him. He wanted to jump up and catch hold of her, but he was certain that if he tried to stand up now his legs wouldn’t support him.

“Laur …” Her name grated to a halt in his throat, which felt as if it were clotted with rust.

Now she was standing directly in front of him, on the opposite side of the table, holding on to the back of the chair nearest her as if to protect herself. She looked nervous, her eyes darting off to the bar, over which was hung a large painting of the Plaza fountain. But, Christ, she was here … that was the important thing, wasn’t it?

Rudy forgot his pain, and found his voice.

“You came,” he said. The words came out flat, dull, not at all as he’d intended them. Inside, he felt ready to burst.

“I almost didn’t.”

“Well, now that you’re here, why don’t you sit down?” He gestured toward the chair she was holding on to. He was scared that if he stood up she would bolt. “This place, it’s something else, isn’t it? You ever see so much carving? I feel like I’m in the Vatican or something. Hey, you want something to drink?”

“Nothing. Thanks. I can only stay a minute. I’m already late-the L.I.E. was backed up for miles.”

“This won’t take long. I promise.” He sucked in a deep breath. “So … how’ve you been?”

“Fine. Working hard.” She spoke in the automated

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voice of a grocery clerk or a bank teller wishing him a nice day.

“Yeah, I’ve seen your books. They look great.” He didn’t tell her that he had all seven, that he kept them on a special shelf in his den. “You working on something right now?”

“A couple of things, actually.” She shifted in her chair, looking uncomfortable, and made an attempt to smile that fell short. “I love my work. The trouble is, the money comes and goes. It’s not like having a steady paycheck. But Joe, my husband-” She stopped, but not before he heard the slight catch in her voice.

“Yeah, I heard you got married.”

“Joe and I are separated.” She raised her eyes, and in that millisecond before she recovered herself, he saw something dark and raw in them. Rudy longed to know more, but he didn’t dare ask, because now Laurel was tapping her fingernails impatiently against the polished table top. “Val said you had something you wanted to tell me.” She stared at him, her lovely eyes narrowing the tiniest bit. “I’ll be honest with you. I wouldn’t have come if he hadn’t talked me into it. Obviously, he’s decided to let bygones be bygones.”

“And you?”

“I don’t know what to think. All I know is I trusted you … and you …” She sighed. “Oh, what’s the point in raking it all up again?”

Rudy felt the dull thud of her words as they dropped like stones into the pit of his stomach. He’d known. Christ Almighty, he’d known she hadn’t forgiven him. So why did it hurt so much?

“I didn’t ask you here to let me off the hook,” he told her, speaking quietly, even smiling a bit, though he could feel his smooth mask beginning to crack a little around the edges. “I figure you have a right to feel the way you do. So I’m not asking you for anything. I just wanted to see you.”

Laurel wasn’t smiling … but she wasn’t getting up and walking away, either. Thank God. Rudy felt the room settle about him, and his dizziness begin to fade.

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He watched Laurel fiddle with the mother-of-pearl clasp on her evening bag. “Look,” she told him, “I’m not mad at you anymore. I mean, I don’t go around thinking about you all the time, or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Rudy knew she wasn’t trying to hurt him, but her words cut him deeply. Not to matter … that was as bad, maybe even worse somehow, than her hating him. “So if it’ll make you feel any better,” she went on, “I really don’t need to hear any big explanations.”

“No big explanations. I promise.” He opened his hands, grinning like a magician showing he’s got no tricks up his sleeve. Laurel didn’t have to know what it was costing him to keep from breaking apart into a million tiny pieces. “Just one thing-I still care about you. I always have. You gotta know that.”

“Then why did you do it?” She propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her clasped hands, looking honestly bewildered.

Rudy felt himself starting to shake, and he had to lean forward and grip the backs of his knees to steady his arms. You really want to know? You want to hear that you’re the only person in my whole life I ever loved who loved me back … even a little?

No, he didn’t want her feeling sorry for him. He’d rather have her hate him. Rudy toyed with a napkin, shredding it into tiny bits as he spoke.

“I had this case once … client of mine loses his custody battle, and he’s so desperate that one day he takes his little girl and splits. Kid’s five years old-never been away from home longer than overnight. Lucky for everybody, the police nab my client before he’s over the state line. ‘So why’d you do it?’ I ask him. Intelligent guy, mind you, a CPA. And he just looks at me with these big sheep eyes and says, ‘I had to.’ ” Rudy paused, scooping his shredded napkin into a little snowdrift about the base of his glass. “I guess I know now how that guy must’ve felt. Doing something you know is wrong, just because you have to.”

He looked up, searching her blue eyes for some hint that she understood. But she wasn’t looking at him. Her

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gaze was on the carved head of a maiden decorating one of the oak pillars.

“I’m sorry.” Rudy pushed the words out. “Jesus, you don’t know how sorry I am. Everytime I think of you and the boy …” He stopped, his throat growing tight.

Laurel sat motionless, staring off into the distance for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, she brought her eyes back to him, and he thought he saw a flicker of understanding in them. But was he only imagining it?

“His name is Adam,” she said softly. “Would you like to see a picture of him?”

Rudy nodded. He watched her pull a slim wallet from her evening bag, from which she withdrew a small photo -a three-by-five taken by some school photographer. It showed a little boy in a striped T-shirt with a huge, gaptoothed grin, and dark bangs falling in his eyes. Rudy felt his heart squeeze. He stared at the picture for a long time before he could bring himself to hand it back.

“You can keep it,” she said. “I have copies at home.”

“Thanks,” he said, gruffly, too gruffly maybe. But he couldn’t let her see how deeply her gesture had affected him. There were so many things he wanted to know. Was she going to be okay living on her own? Did she need anything? Did the boy … Adam … miss his father? But already it was too late … she was rising, her dress rippling about her in soft little waves.

“I’d better be going,” she said. She didn’t say it had been nice talking to him, or any of those pleasant, phony things people say. She just put out her hand, and briefly -so briefly, Rudy was scared he’d imagined it-touched the back of his wrist. ” ‘Bye.”

She started toward the door, then abruptly wheeled. So abruptly, Rudy felt as if the walls around him had come unhinged and were toppling in on him. When he saw the tears shining in her eyes, he felt as if she’d given him some priceless gift.

“You did me a favor, you know,” she told him. “Adam turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.” She smiled this time as she turned to go, even

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waving a little, the small gesture that caused his heart to break.

Watching her walk away, Rudy held his palm, with the photo of her son tucked inside it, pressed against his solar plexus. He felt its heat warming him, soothing the dark ache in his gut.

La

JL/aurel edged her way into the ballroom, and saw at once that she’d come too late to be able to slip in unnoticed. Dinner was in progress, everyone sitting around pinkdraped tables, eating, laughing, talking. Waiters bearing huge serving platters were setting out laden plates; others were pouring wine, refilling bread baskets. She hung back in the shadowy recesses of the Romanesque arcade, feeling sorry she’d agreed to come, wanting only to turn around and go home.

/ don’t belong here.

She felt shaken, too, by her meeting with Uncle Rudy. In spite of her not wanting to, she’d found herself feeling sorry for him. She’d sensed there’d been more to his wanting to see her than he was telling her, and it tugged at her conscience … the feeling that she’d let him down somehow. But that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? She didn’t owe him anything.

Anyway, Rudy wasn’t why her heart was racing now. Or why, instead of slipping away before anyone spotted her, she continued to scan the faces in the huge room, searching for just one. Joe. Was he here? Annie had invited him-well, the two of them, actually-but would he have come on his own? Dolly had to have told him I’d be here. Given Dolly’s big mouth and her even bigger heart, she’d probably engineered the whole thing to try and get them back together. She more than likely had even arranged for them to be seated at the same table.

Laurel felt a moment of dizzying weightlessness, as if she were being plucked up and lifted high. How would he act when he saw her? Had he missed her as much as she’d missed him? Did he want to come home as badly as she wanted him home?

r

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But Joe, she realized with a sinking heart, was not among those seated at the tables. He hadn’t come. He didn’t want to see her. He didn’t miss her at all.

A waiter raced past her with a little rush of warm air. Laurel stepped back, hugging one of the mirror-panelled columns. Up on the velvet-curtained stage at one end of the ballroom, a portly man in a tuxedo was making an announcement. In a few moments, he said, the prizes would be announced and then everyone was invited to help themselves to dessert.

“And if you think the judges had a tough time picking a winner,” his jokey, talk-show-host voice boomed out over the room, “just wait until you come up and try choosing something from among that mouth-watering array… .”

Scattered applause and a few affable groans.

Laurel caught sight of her sister at a table near the stage, seated between Aunt Dolly and a coarse-looking man with a stubbly gray crewcut. She was holding court, telling some story or joke that had everyone at her table leaning forward, their eyes fixed on her, their faces glowing. Annie, as usual, was absolutely in charge, on top, handling everything and everyone as she always did-perfectly. Even wearing the dress Laurel had worked so hard on-which, despite how upset she’d been, Laurel had finished and sent to her sister-Annie managed to look as if she didn’t need anyone’s help, as if she could take on the whole world all on her own.

Laurel felt suddenly, achingly, out of place, as if she could never, ever fit into Annie’s world-the world Joe loved and was comfortable in. Was that maybe why he hadn’t come tonight… because he knew that it wouldn’t work? That she could never, ever be what he wanted?

It’s Annie he wants. And I can never be like her.

But did she even want to be? Was it fair of Joe to have married her, expecting her to fit some ideal that wasn’t her at all?

/ don’t want her world, Laurel thought now as she watched her sister deliver the punch line of her story with a flourish of her slim olive-skinned arms that was sending

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her audience into gales of laughter. Right now, Laurel longed to be home, tucking Adam into bed, reading him a story that would put him to sleep halfway through. She didn’t want crowds of people admiring her; she just wanted a husband who loved her, a little boy who still crept into her bed at night sometimes when he was scared and needed a hug.

And if Joe can’t see that… then I don’t want him, either.

She could survive without him.

But right now, at this moment, it was all Laurel could do to pull herself free of the invisible weights dragging her down, and slip quietly out the door.

/\nnie, holding her knotted fists in her lap where no one could see them, watched Seth Hathaway lean into the microphone. “I’m delighted to announce the judges’ number one choice in the category of general excellence …”

She held her breath. Please, please … let it be me … I need this so much.

“… Le Chocolatier Manon.”

Annie felt as if she’d been slapped, a rush of heat to her cheeks, followed by a sharp stinging sensation at the back of her nose.

Applause filled the room, nearly drowning his next words, “And in second place … let me tell you, folks, it was a close call… let’s give a nice hand to Tout de Suite.”

DC

JL/olly saw the look on Annie’s face, and her heart sank. Nothing but the best is ever gonna satisfy that girl. Nothing. It wasn’t enough that Tout de Suite was the envy of chocolatiers all over America, all over the world. Or that in six years Annie had accomplished more than plenty who’d been around for decades.

No. As Annie rose to her feet on a nice round of applause, the strained look on her face seemed to say / want more. That girl wanted …no, needed … to be

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first. Not just on account of Felder, either. Anything less, and she’d go around feeling she was a failure.

Eve had been the same way, Dolly recalled. So much more than just talented, she’d had fire in her belly. When Eve walked into a room, people sat up and took notice. She made them notice. Rehearsals to which hardly anyone paid attention, she treated like command performances, throwing herself into her parts as if she’d been born for the sole purpose of playing them; and then, even off the set, becoming that character. As Billy in Storm Alley, dyeing her hair red, taking up smoking, and listening to country-and-western music-which Eve had always hated, because it used to remind her too much of Clemscott.

It struck Dolly then, a kind of epiphany: I could have been a star, too … I just didn’t want it bad enough. All those years, resenting her sister, and it hadn’t really been Eve’s talent, or her own lack of it, that had stood in her way. Syd, the bastard, had been right about that all those years ago-she’d had drive, but no unquenchable, insatiable hunger. She’d wanted top billing the way a thirsty kid wants a popsicle on a hot day; Eve had needed it the way a drowning person needs air.