Going Back (25 page)

“I’m glad you did,” Phyllis said.
“You always keep your social life such a deep, dark secret, Daff.
You ought to open up more, and let your friends help you through
the rough spots. I know you and Andrea have helped me through more
rough spots than I can count, and I appreciate it.”

By Daphne’s estimation, Phyllis’s
love life underwent more rough spots in any given month than
Daphne’s love life had undergone since she’d first become aware of
the opposite sex. But Phyllis had a valid point. It did feel good
to vent some of her misery, to share her pain with a friend. Even
though Daphne could never divulge the specifics, the basics were
true: she loved a man who didn’t love her, and it hurt.

“Have you told him anything about
your feelings?” Phyllis asked.

Daphne shook her head. “He thinks
we’re just friends.”

“How intense is this friendship?
How do you even know that what you feel for him is love and not
just deep affection?”

Daphne winced. “We slept
together.”

“He slept with you, and he thinks
of you only as a friend?” Phyllis erupted. “What kind of a jerk is
he, anyway?”

The kind of jerk
you want to take up with, once he moves to Verona,
Daphne answered silently. “It was...an
experiment,” she explained, recalling Brad’s remark about how
researchers often had to repeat their experiments to make certain
the results were accurate.

Phyllis shook her head. “I’d stay
away from this creep if I were you,” she advised. “He sounds like
the kind who enjoys playing with fire—and you’re the one getting
burned. Steer clear of him. Fall out of love with him as fast as
you can.”

Daphne couldn’t argue. She wasn’t
going to be able to steer completely clear of Brad, but her wisest
strategy would be to get over him as quickly as possible. Her love
was doomed to remain unrequited. There was no point in clinging to
false hopes, wasting time and energy on a man whose biggest dream
in life was to find himself a beautiful wife.

“You’re right,” she agreed. “That’s
exactly what I intend to do. I’ll survive this disaster—we’ll both
survive our disasters,” she concluded with all the spirit she could
muster.

Phyllis smoothly accepted the fact
that the focus of the conversation had veered back to herself. “I
know we’ll survive. You’ll probably go back to finding one of those
safe, boring types you prefer—and I’ll go after Brad. He’ll be
living in the area soon. Maybe he and I can get something going. I
think we’ve got great potential as a couple. What do you
think?”

“I think you’d look great
together,” Daphne answered, wondering whether Phyllis would pick up
on the heavy irony in her tone.

She didn’t. “When is he going to be
moving east?” she asked innocently. “Do you know?”

Daphne knew the approximate closing
date on his house, assuming he ran into no trouble with the bank.
But, out of professional integrity, she would never publicize the
details of his house purchase. “No,” she fibbed. “I really don’t
know.”

“Well, whenever,” Phyllis said,
unconcerned. “I don’t want to rush into anything with him. We’ll
just take it one step and a time, and let nature take its
course.”

“Phyllis.” Daphne knew she couldn’t
keep Brad for herself—he wasn’t hers to keep. But Phyllis seemed to
be making too many serious decisions based on some half-baked
notion that Brad might become her lover. She’d given Daphne good
advice; Daphne owed Phyllis equally good advice. “Breaking up with
Jim for the sole purpose of pursuing Brad seems kind of foolish to
me,” she commented. “You barely know Brad. You haven’t even had
that lunch date with him, yet. What if you don’t like him? What if
he doesn’t like you?”

The odds were quite high, of
course, that Brad would adore Phyllis. She had so much more going
for her than Daphne did. How could he not fall head over heels in
love with her?

Indeed, Daphne was too realistic to
presume that things would evolve in any other way. Given his
choice, Brad would choose Phyllis over Daphne any day. All that
bullshit he’d spouted about how beautiful Daphne was—that had been
nothing more than the sort of speech a tactful man made to the
woman he’d just had sex with. Brad would choose a beautiful woman
over a funny-looking one. Any sane man would.

“Do you want his telephone number
in Seattle?” she asked, resigned to the inevitable. She wasn’t
going to be selfish. Brad was beyond her grasp. If Phyllis wanted
to try her luck with him, Daphne wouldn’t stand in her
way.

Phyllis perked up. “Have you got
it?”

Nodding, Daphne unwound herself
from her chair and crossed to the coat closet, where she’d left her
briefcase from work. She pulled her “Brad Torrance” folder from the
briefcase and jotted his Seattle number on the back of one of her
business cards.

She handed the card to Phyllis, who
slipped it into the breast pocket of her shirt. “I’m not sure I’ll
use this,” Phyllis allowed, presenting Daphne with a sheepish
smile. “I don’t know what I would say to him if I called him out
there. I can’t very well invite him on a lunch date when he’s three
thousand miles away.”

You’ll think of
something,
Daphne muttered beneath her
breath. Damn it, but she
was
jealous. No use denying it—she was jealous of her
friend for being so pretty and desirable. Phyllis might become
involved with too many assholes, She might be single-handedly
supporting the branch of the publishing industry devoted to books
about superior women falling in love with jerks. But her social
life was much more exciting than Daphne’s. At least those jerks
intermittently lavished attention on her.

Brad wasn’t a jerk—and he just
might choose not to lavish attention on Phyllis. But he wasn’t
going to fall in love with Daphne. Of that much she was
certain.

“Good luck with him,” Daphne said,
lifting Phyllis’s empty wine glass and carrying it to the kitchen
for a refill. “He’s all yours.”

***

BRAD LOATHED packing.

Since his company was paying for
his transfer, he had arranged to have most of his possessions
packed by the movers. However, certain packing chores he reserved
for himself: the books that had belonged to his grandfather and had
antique value; some irredeemably out-of-fashion articles of
clothing which he needed to sort through and set aside for
Goodwill; the items stored on the upper shelf of the den closet, a
treasure trove of miscellania to which he was sentimentally
attached.

He had already spent an hour in the
closet that afternoon, hauling from the shelf a portfolio of
letters he’d sent to his parents while he was at college, the cedar
cigar box filled with his all-time favorite marbles, the grotesque
Buddha-shaped brass incense holder his very first girlfriend had
given him, with its gummy residue of balsam incense at the bottom
of the Buddha’s belly. The next thing to come off the shelf was an
envelope filled with photographs of Nancy.

After dusting off his hands on his
jeans, he carried the envelope to the sofa-bed and took a seat. He
shook out the photos, then stacked them into a neat pile and
studied them one by one. There was Nancy standing on a dock at the
marina, her glossy auburn hair dancing around her shoulders as she
gazed toward a monstrously large sailboat; there she was at the
beach in an R-rated strapless bikini; there she was, standing with
Brad in front of her apartment building. They were both dressed
elegantly, Brad in a dark suit and Nancy in a revealing
cream-colored sheath that contrasted stunningly with her deep tan.
Her hair was pinned off her neck in a dramatic sweep and her face
was expertly made up. Brad had his arm around her in the photo. She
had asked her doorman to take the picture for them.

She and Brad had gone to an
engagement party that night, he recalled. One of the associates in
her law firm had hosted it at a yacht club. Everyone had talked
about how Nancy would be next, how she and Brad would be hosting
their own engagement party soon enough.

Examining the photograph, Brad was
struck by how wonderfully matched he and Nancy had looked. She was
slender and beautiful, and he was tall and polished. They both knew
how to wear their clothes well. They’d both been born with a
certain implied destiny, and they’d both fulfilled their
promise.

And it hadn’t worked out. To this
day, Brad still wasn’t sure why, but it hadn’t.

Restless, he tossed the photographs
aside and wandered to the window. A fine drizzle descended from the
sullen gray clouds, the perfect counterpoint to his state of mind.
Filling cartons with his belongings was boring, saying goodbye to
neighbors and friends was a grim task, worrying about whether his
pending mortgage application would be approved was nerve-wracking,
and the constant rain depressed him.

Ever since he’d returned to Seattle
a week ago he’d been in a funk, apathetic about food and listless
at work the few times he’d stopped by his old office or touched
base with his West Coast clients. He was drinking too many beers at
night, waking up with too many headaches, becoming short-tempered
with his Seattle real estate broker whenever she called to learn
whether he had a firm moving date yet.

Too much rain, he decided. Too many
clouds. Too many things left to do before he moved. He could think
of no other logical explanation for his touchiness.

He was on his way back to the
sofa-bed to gather up the photographs when he heard his telephone
ring. He jogged across the hall to his bedroom and checked the
screen. Just a question mark.

He answered anyway.
“Hello?”

“Brad? Hi, this is Phyllis
Dunn.”

Phyllis. From Cornell. Closing his
eyes, he conjured up an image of the voluptuous ash-blond woman
with the enchanting smile. If he wasn’t mistaken, he had promised
her a lunch date once he started working in New York.

“Hi, Phyllis,” he said, wondering
why he was disappointed that the caller was Phyllis and not someone
else. He hadn’t been expecting any calls; he didn’t even know who
it was he was hoping to hear from. All he knew was that, for some
inexplicable reason, he didn’t really want to be speaking to
Phyllis Dunn right now. “What’s up?” he asked with forced courtesy.
“Are you in Seattle?”

“No. I’m home, on Long
Island.”

“Oh.” He waited with
uncharacteristic impatience for her to state her business. “So?
What’s up?” he asked brusquely when her silence extended beyond a
few seconds.

“Well, I just thought I’d call and
see how things were going for you.”

How the hell did she think they
were going? He was overburdened with tasks still awaiting his
attention before he left Seattle, and he was sneezing from the dust
he’d raised by removing the items from the top shelf of the den
closet. “Everything’s going all right,” he said, silently exhorting
himself to remain polite. Surely Phyllis hadn’t called all the way
from Long Island to listen to him complain about the trials and
tribulations of packing.

“I can’t tell you how happy we all
are that you’re going to be living back east,” she remarked in a
bubbly tone.

Brad drummed his fingers against
the edge of the night table and glanced at his alarm clock. “Yeah,
well... It’s nice to be moving somewhere where I already have a
circle of friends in place.”

“I thought you might be interested
to know,” Phyllis went on, “that Jim and I broke up.”

“Jim? Who’s Jim?”

“He was my Significant Other. You
met him at Andrea’s party, remember?”

Brad entertained a vague memory of
a big, handsome hunk of a man hovering around Phyllis that evening.
“Oh,” he said lamely as another, clearer memory infused him, one of
Daphne telling him that he was a home breaker.

He suppressed the urge to curse.
Surely Phyllis hadn’t ended her relationship with this Jim guy
because of something Brad might have inadvertantly done. What had
he done, anyway, other than tell her that perhaps they could meet
for lunch someday?

Consider
yourself forewarned.
He could hear Daphne’s
laughter-filled voice speaking the words from across a small, round
table in an Italian restaurant. He could picture her, with her
thick eyeglasses and her wild hair and that funny, lopsided smile
of hers. That was the day she’d told him about being invited to
become a partner in her real estate firm, and he’d taken her out
for a fattening dinner to celebrate her professional
coup.

His mind’s eye focused on her hands
folded before her on the tablecloth. He pictured the delicate
amethyst ring adorning her right hand, and her smoothly filed
fingernails. Three nights later, those fingernails would be running
the length of his spine, digging into the muscled flesh of his
shoulders, holding him deep inside her...

“What?” he blurted out, abruptly
aware that he’d missed everything Phyllis had just said. He ignored
the unnerving tension that gathered in his groin at the memory of
the night he’d spent with Daphne. It had been an amazing experience
, but it was over and done with and he had no intention of
obsessing about it.