Forever (6 page)

He smiled wryly to himself. If someone had
told him yesterday that he'd be leaving Sidon today because of
Stephanie Merlin, he would have said, 'You're crazy.' Stephanie was
part of the past, a chapter of his life that was closed. Written
off. There wouldn't - couldn't - be any picking up where they had
left off.

Some things just weren't meant to be.

Like Stephanie. And him.

Stephanie. She would be - what? Twenty-seven
now? No, twenty-eight: she had been twenty-one when they'd met;
twenty- three when they'd each gone their separate ways.

Had she changed much since then? he
wondered. Five years. These days, a lot could happen in that amount
of time.

He stared out at the twisted pines and
walled-in gardens, flashing past, and already he was seeing
Stephanie again, his mind spinning - taking him back into the past
. . .

Back to five years ago, to that fateful
Friday of the Memorial Day weekend. He had just returned from
Nicaragua after six wretched weeks spent tramping around in the
steaming jungle, where he'd documented another war, another
conflict of death and destruction.

He'd called her at the NBC newsroom as soon
as he'd got in.

'It's me,' he'd said from the hotel suite
high above Central Park.

'Hello me,' she'd replied. He knew from her
voice that she was smiling: it was one of the Seven Wonders of the
World, that smile. It started from within and radiated outwards,
and could change the gloomiest day to pure golden sunshine.

'I'm back.'

'Obviously,' she laughed.

'Miss me?' He was fishing.

'Hmmmm,' she said noncommittally.

'Look,' he said, 'when can we meet? My eyes
haven't seen your glorious body in well over a month and a half
now. One more day of deprivation, and I'm liable to regress to wet
dreams.'

'You poor boy.' She made little tsk-tsk
noises. 'And here I was under the impression the Contras put
saltpetre in their food.'

'Want me to prove they don't?'

'It'll have to be late.'

He rocked on his heels, the telephone in one
hand, the receiver in the other. He frowned out across the park.
The weather was unseasonably hot, and a shimmering haze enveloped
the city. He could barely make out the buildings up in Harlem. 'I
was hoping you could make it sooner than later.'

'I'd like to,' she said with a sigh, 'but I
can't, Johnny. Really. I've got to fill in for one of the regular
anchors on the eleven o'clock news.' Then her voice brightened.
'How about we meet right after? Say . . . about midnight?'

'We also serve who sit and wait,' he
quoted.

'Waiting will make it all the sweeter,' she
assured him.

'And me more miserable in the meantime. So
where do we set off the fireworks? Your place or mine?'

Hers was the sprawling triplex on Horatio
Street.

'That all depends,' she murmured
thoughtfully. 'Where are you?'

'The Essex House.'

'Big spender!' There was laughter in her
voice. 'Tell you what. I like the idea of making it in a hotel.
Makes me feel cheap and wanton.'

'In that case, what if I switch to a real
sleazy dive?'

'The Essex House will do just fine.'

When he hung up, he was feeling ridiculously
happy. After six weeks of celibacy, of stumbling through the fetid
rain forest, of battling mosquitoes and diarrhoea, of eating
wretched rations and throwing caution to the winds to document the
lives of the rebels, just hearing her voice again was like tuning
in to some magical, mystical frequency. He realised then just how
deeply she had slipped beneath his skin and taken up residence;
what a difference the very fact that she was there for him made in
his life.

He looked out over Central Park, her voice
still singing in his ears, and knew he was gone.

It had taken him six weeks of separation to
realise he was among that fortunate minority who are destined to
find the love of their lives.

Now he felt like kicking up his heels and
dancing.

And Johnny Stone - ladies' man and confirmed
bachelor - ran straight out and blew over twelve thousand bucks on
a diamond engagement ring at Tiffany's. Then he'd spent the rest of
the afternoon ordering a roomful of flowers, arranging a midnight
champagne supper complete with violinists, and popped over to
Bergdorfs to splurge on a casual but hideously expensive silk shirt
and cotton slacks ensemble. He even got his hair cut.

Nothing was too good for Stephanie.

He danced around, clicking his fingers.
Tonight, after she anchored the eleven o'clock news, he would
spring the proposal on her. Tonight . . .

At eleven, he watched her on the tube,
eating her up with his eyes and wondering, with irrational
jealousy, how many male viewers were doing the exact same thing at
the exact same time. Then he let the violinists in, doused the
electric lights, lit the candles, and checked the vintage Dom
Perignon. The bottle was icy cold.

Everything was perfect. Wine, woman, and
song.

Eleven-thirty rolled around. Then midnight.
The violinists waited silently. Twelve-thirty... He was half out of
his mind with worry. He called the studio. Her apartment. Her
grandfather. He even called missing persons. All to no avail.

At one o'clock, he told the fiddlers to pack
it in.

One-thirty . . . two.

The candles burned down and sputtered.

Two-thirty. The ice had melted in the
champagne bucket and become tepid water.

She hadn't bothered to call until late the
next afternoon. 'Hope you didn't wait up too long, but a juicy
story was breaking,' she'd told him without apologising. 'I had to
run with it.'

He told her that it was okay, that he'd
fallen asleep anyway . . .

A few days later, they met for dinner at a
little Italian restaurant down on Bleecker Street. He didn't
mention the date she'd broken, and she didn't bring it up either -
she was too wrapped up in the story she was still working on.

'It's a major break for me, but I can't talk
about it just yet,' she'd told him, her eyes bright with ambition.
'But this story will make me, Johnny. You just wait and see. It'll
make me!'

It was while they sipped an after-dinner
sambuca that he popped the Tiffany box on her. Trying to act real
casual, as though it was a little pin or a charm.

He put it on the table in front of her. 'I
got you this,' he said, feeling suddenly awkward and gangly. Like a
kid on a'first date.

'For me? Aw. How sweet . . . ' Slowly she
lifted the lid. 'A diamond!' She was so startled by the engagement
ring that she instantly retreated into flippancy. 'Girl's best
friend, a diamond,' she teased. 'Zsa Zsa's too.'

'I was passing Tiffany's this afternoon when
it occurred to me a little rock might offer your story some
competition.' He kept it cool, not about to make a big deal out of
sitting on the ring for days.

'Hmmm,' she said, picking it up and looking
at it appraisingly. 'It's one way to get a girl's attention, I
grant you that.'

But her heart was racing, and she wanted to
hug him and cry, 'I do! I do!'

But first, she needed to hear him say three
magic little words.

'I'd say it's more than just an attention
getter,' he said stiffly. 'It's supposed to say you're mine.'

' Yours? Like you're putting dibs on me?'
She gave a little laugh. 'Aren't you being just a wee bit
presumptuous?'

This wasn't going at all the way he'd
intended, but he decided to be nonchalant. 'Presumptuous?'

She slipped the ring half on, took it off,
slipped it half on again.

'Has it ever occurred to you that I might
not be anybody'sT She'd intended it as a playful gibe, but she
couldn't help the undercurrent of bitterness in her voice. His
total lack of any romantic sensitivity hurt and rankled. Where was
the champagne? Where were the violins?

For his part, all the wasted effort he'd
gone through in order to be romantic - only to be stood up - irked
him equally. Whether or not she was consciously aware of having
done that didn't make any difference. He'd been deflated, wounded.
And now he felt the need to wound her back.

'In case you aren't aware of it, I've given
you an engagement ring,' he said coldly.

She took it off her finger. 'And that's it?'
She stared at him across the table and waited.

He knew what she wanted to hear, but
somehow, her attitude just wouldn't let him come out and say 'I
love you.' Besides, he was waiting, too - to hear her apologise for
having stood him up; maybe even put two and two together and come
up with four - that if she'd met him at the Essex Hotel as planned,
she'd have been knocked off her feet by violins and champagne and
the whole romantic schmear. But he was damned if he was going to go
through all that lovey-dovey ballyhoo all over again. Once had been
enough.

'If you don't want my engagement ring, then
fine,' he said grimly. 'Just say so. Believe you me, it isn't as if
I've got to go around begging someone to take it. There are hordes
of women who'd jump at the chance.'

It was as if he'd plunged a knife into her.
She went absolutely rigid. But like him, she was never one to show
her vulnerable underbelly.

She drew a deep breath. 'In that case,
here!

She slapped the ring down in front of him,
snatched up her purse, and got to her feet. She looked down at him,
her every inch quivering with barely controlled anger.

'Give it to one from your admiring hordes,'
she whispered hoarsely. And swiftly, before her tears could show,
she bit down on her pale lip, turned on her heel, and marched
out.

He stared bleakly after her. Good God! What
on earth had happened? Wretchedly, he rubbed his face with his
hands. How could he have let things get so totally out of hand? Was
he insane? He didn't want to hurt her - he loved her,
goddammit!'

Too late now, he wished he could turn back
the clock or eat his words.

As soon as he'd got back to the hotel, he'd
tried to set things right. He called her to apologise, but she
slammed the phone down the moment she heard his voice. And
that
got him riled up all over again.

The bitch! he'd thought. Well, if that was
the way she wanted to play it. then fine!

Some things obviously just weren't meant to
be.

He looked out through the dusty windshield.
They were coming out of the A1 Jabal Ash Sharqi mountains. Below,
the sprawling city was spread out across the dusty plain. Damascus.
The first leg of the journey back.

But back to what? To a love that had never
been given its chance to bloom? To offer condolences and then slip
away quietly and disappear? Or to acrimoniously pretend that what
they'd once shared had never been?

God, when he thought about it! The
stupidity! The ruffled male pride - that damned wounded ego! He'd
given up so easily, returning the ring to Tiffany's first thing the
following morning.

He hadn't seen Stephanie again, and she'd
never got in touch with him either. Neither of them seemed to
realise what was good for them.

But somehow, her grandfather knew. For
weeks, Carleton Merlin had called him, urging him not to give up.
And, he surmised, the kindly, shrewd Colonel Sanders look-alike had
been on Stephanie's case, too.

But Carleton Merlin might as well have saved
his breath. Neither of them was willing to make the first move to
patch things up. They were both so intractably, so foolishly, so
youthfully stubborn!

And meanwhile, five years had somehow
managed to slip past. Five years . . . five of what could have been
the best years of both their lives.

And the worst thing was, he still loved her,
God help him!

He shut his eyes.

Just thinking about her made his heart
ache.

God, do you ever give second chances?

New York City

That first night. How endless it seemed. It
was as if morning might never come.

Worn out though she was, Stephanie didn't
think she would sleep a wink: the ache and loss within her were too
great. She left Waldo in the living room, covered the cage with a
sheet, and spent the entire night in her grandfather's bedroom,
clinging to the belief that she would somehow feel closer to him
there.

But without him, the grand, shabby gentility
of the high-ceilinged room seemed different . . . bigger . . .
empty. It was as if with his death the apartment had lost its
soul.

She prowled the room in a state of
agitation. This bedroom had been his favourite of all the rooms,
and as he'd got older he'd spent most of his time in here. This was
where his favourite pieces of furniture and most treasured books
had ended up. Here, pushed against a wall, was the Empire sleigh
bed in which he'd slept, and which doubled as a couch. Here, all
around, were the cornice-topped mahogany bookcases which groaned
under the weight of thousands of volumes, from the top of which
classical marble busts looked down with sightless eyes. Here, too,
was his mahogany desk, pushed into the three-windowed bay which let
the light pour in, and out of which he'd been able to gaze while
working. His old, manual Remington typewriter, which he'd refused
to part with, was the same one he'd had since he'd been a young man
- on it he had written the biographies for which he had become so
celebrated. And, scattered all around it, were the paraphernalia of
the writer: the piles of notes and manuscript pages, bowls of
rubber bands and paper clips, reference books, beakers holding
pencils, and little bottles of Liquid Paper. There was the big
crystal ashtray she'd always remembered him having; now it held the
dead remnants of a half-smoked cigar: one of his Monte Cristos. If
it hadn't been for the sleek red multilined telephone, the
state-of-the-art stereo system, and the thirty-six- inch television
and VCR, it could have been a stage set for a nineteenth-century
gentleman. But Carleton Merlin had not been one to begrudge himself
the finest in up-to-the-moment electronics.