Going Back (9 page)

“No explanation necessary,” Daphne
assured him, navigating her car deftly through the
traffic-congested midtown streets. “I don’t mind
driving.”

“The last time I parked my car on a
New York City street,” he went on, evidently disagreeing with her
about the necessity of an explanation, “my hubcaps got stolen. And
you know as well as I do that in this city, parking in a garage
costs an arm and a leg.”

“There aren’t any garages on
Andrea’s block, so don’t worry about sacrificing your arms and
legs,” Daphne told him. “If someone wants my hubcaps, so be it.
I’ve got insurance.”

“Let’s just hope the thieves are
looking for hubcaps and not a radio,” Paul said ominously. “If they
want your radio, they’ll break a window.”

“And then the alarm will go off,”
Daphne said with a chuckle. “Vigilantes will stream into the
streets. Spotlights will glare. Police from three precincts will
write reports.” The sound of her quiet laughter helped to calm her
nerves.

She had mixed feelings about
attending this party. She always enjoyed seeing Andrea and Eric and
Phyllis—although she could happily do without Phyllis’s Significant
Other—and she was especially pleased that the Perskys would be at
the party, too. Seeing Brad was what made her edgy.

More specifically, what made her
edgy was seeing Brad in the context of a party. The two of them had
gotten along well during their forays into the New Jersey housing
market. They had both proven that they were mature and civilized,
able to function in each other’s company on a professional basis,
able even to loosen up and joke with each other on a certain level.
But house-hunting was business. At a party, there would be booze
and music and hordes of people—all in all, an atmosphere painfully
reminiscent of a night in Daphne’s past that she’d prefer to
forget.

At least she had Paul with her.
Although she hadn’t explicitly mentioned it to him, her primary
reason for bringing him along was for protection. His company would
keep her from dwelling on the last party she’d been to where Brad
was also in attendance. At least she hoped it would.

Apparently persuaded that Daphne
honestly didn’t mind driving, Paul relaxed in his seat as best he
could, given his lanky build. He had the sort of broom-handle
physique that baggy trousers emphasized, and he tended to dress
with enough panache to be considered a far-out dude by his
students. Despite the evening gloom, his hair seemed to glow. Given
its coppery color and its short, curly tufts, Paul’s hair reminded
Daphne of a shredded carrot salad.

In his stylishly loose trousers,
checked shirt and defiantly geeky bowtie, he appeared more
fashionable than Daphne. When she’d picked him up at his apartment
half an hour ago, he had assured her that she looked terrific.
Being a realist, she didn’t aspire that high; she’d be content to
look reasonably good. Attired in a swirling skirt with a colorful
floral pattern and a violet scoop-necked sweater, with her hair
falling in golden ripples around her lightly made-up face, she had
more or less attained that modest goal.

When she’d chosen her outfit that
evening, she had tried to convince herself that Paul was the person
for whom she was fixing herself up. But the closer her car got to
Andrea’s Upper West Side address, the more Daphne suspected she’d
dressed with Brad in mind. Not that she wished for him to find her
alluring—not that she believed such a thing was even possible—but
she did want him to know that she was a survivor. She wanted him to
recognize that eight years after her debacle, she knew how to dress
up and snag an escort and enjoy herself at a party.

Assuming, of course, that she did manage to
enjoy herself tonight.

She found a parking space only four
blocks from Andrea’s building, which she considered a good omen.
Hooking her hand through the bend in Paul’s arm, she strolled with
him down the sidewalk to the elegant apartment building overlooking
Riverside Park. In the mild spring evening, the park exuded the
aromas of reawakening plant life, grass beginning to sprout and
shrubs beginning to bud. By the time she and Paul reached the
building, Daphne was feeling at ease and self-confident.

They had to identify themselves to
the doorman’s satisfaction before being permitted to pass through
the lobby to the elevator. As they rode upstairs, Paul asked, “Am I
going to know anyone at this gathering besides Andrea and
Eric?”

“
I don’t think so,” Daphne replied.
“Not unless you watch daytime talk shows. Rumor has it Andrea
invited a bunch of her TV friends.”

“Really?” Paul’s eyes grew round
and bright. “Certified celebrities? Can I ask them for their
autographs?”

Daphne knew from his tone of voice
that he was kidding. “I don’t see why not,” she played along. “A
certified celebrity ought to be able to sign an autograph for a
certified maniac. All in the certifiable family.”

They stepped off the elevator and
walked down the hallway to Andrea’s apartment. Through the closed
door Daphne could hear a babble of voices, indicating that the
party was already in full swing. She had to ring the doorbell
several times before it was answered—by someone she’d never seen
before. “Come on in,” the unfamiliar woman greeted them, waving
them into the entry foyer. “Drinks are in the kitchen, snacks are
in the living room, and Andrea’s in the bathroom.”

“I’m going to get a drink,” Paul
whispered as he ushered Daphne into the living room. “Can I get you
something?

“A glass of ginger
ale.,”

“Bless your sober little heart. I
love it when you drive,” Paul murmured, giving her arm an
affectionate squeeze before he vanished into the dining room en
route to the kitchen.

Daphne rotated to find herself face
to face with Phyllis, who looked breathtaking in a black silk
cocktail dress with a blinding rhinestone brooch pinned to one
shoulder. Not bothering to say hello, Phyllis bore down on her with
an accusing scowl. “Why didn’t you tell me he was gorgeous?” she
demanded to know.

It took Daphne less than a second
to figure out whom Phyllis was referring to; there weren’t too many
gorgeous men having a party held in their honor at Andrea’s and
Eric’s apartment that night. She grinned at Phyllis’s transparent
behavior. “You already knew Brad was gorgeous,” she
said.

“I knew he
was
,” Phyllis said. “I
didn’t know he still
is
. Listen, Daffy, how much would it be worth to you to take Jim
for a walk around the block so I can spend a little time with
Brad?”

Daphne erupted in laughter. “First
of all, we would make it all the way around the block and back here
in under ten minutes. I have the feeling that what you’ve got in
mind might take a bit longer than that.”

“Not necessarily—”

“And second of all,” Daphne
continued, cutting off Phyllis’s protest, “I’m not going to
entertain your date when I came with my own.”

“Oh, right. Where is this guy,
anyway? I’d like to check him out.”

“He’s getting us some drinks,”
Daphne told her. “And there’s no need to check him out. We’re just
friends.”

“Boring,” Phyllis mumbled. “If
you’re just friends, then maybe I wouldn’t be doing anybody any
harm if I did meet him, would I?”

Phyllis was welcome to try her luck
with Paul, but Daphne had no intention of spending the party
keeping Phyllis’s lover distracted while Phyllis prowled around.
“Forget it,” Daphne said. “I’m not going to take Jim for a walk, no
matter how much you think it might be worth to me. I have much
better sources of income, thank you.”

Phyllis pursed her lips, pretending
to be irritated by Daphne’s teasing. Her irritation became genuine
when, a few seconds later, Jim sidled up next to her. Daphne
considered Jim a fine hunk of manhood, arguably better looking than
Brad. Jim was more muscular, with thicker shoulders and a brawnier
build. He had a boyishly handsome face, although he frequently
appeared slightly lecherous to Daphne, as if he were sizing up
every woman he encountered as a potential conquest. Phyllis
invariably fell for men who might have sprung physically from the
pages of some men’s fitness magazine,. and emotionally from a
soft-core porn video. Jim was no exception.

“Hey, Daphne,” Jim hailed her as he
wrapped a possessive arm around Phyllis. “Howzit going?”

“Fine, Jim. How are
you?”

“Can’t complain.”

“How’s business?”

“Well, you know what they say,” he
joked with a wink. “No matter whether the economy’s going up or
down, people always gotta take a leak.” Jim ran a plumbing supplies
company. He spoke in a lazy New York drawl, but his slangy speech
didn’t fool Daphne. She knew he was extremely shrewd and
professionally successful.

“There you are,” Andrea bellowed,
elbowing her way through her milling guests to reach Daphne. She
had on a pair of skin-tight black pants and a gauzy blouse with
crystal beads embroidered onto it. Daphne wished she looked as
attractive as Andrea did in such outfits. Then again, Daphne wished
she looked as attractive as Phyllis did, period. “I found Paul in
the kitchen, attacking the ice bucket,” Andrea reported once she
reached Daphne’s side. “He told me that I’d find you in the living
room. It wasn’t easy, I’ll tell you.”

“You’ve got quite a mob scene
here,” Daphne observed. “How many people did you
invite?”

Andrea shrugged and grinned. “We
owed a ton of invitations. I’ve got my people from work, Eric’s got
his. No sense wasting a party.”

“What about Brad?” Daphne asked. As
soon as she spoke his name, she felt an undefined stab of panic.
She shouldn’t really care about how he fit into the party. She
shouldn’t be thinking about him at all. She should just pretend
that this was a typical gathering at Andrea’s apartment, not a
replay of any other party in her past.

“Oh, he’s around here someplace,”
Andrea remarked vaguely. “So,” she said, turning her dark eyes on
Jim, “when are you going to do the honorable thing with Phyllis,
already?”

“What honorable thing?” Jim asked
with feigned innocence.

“Marry her, you jerk.”

Jim laughed and tightened his hold
on Phyllis. “Well, Andrea, you know what they say: why buy the
milk, when you can get the cow for free?”

“That doesn’t sound right to me,”
Andrea muttered, eyeing Daphne in search of
confirmation.

In a perverse way, it did sound
right to Daphne. But to say so might insult Phyllis, so she only
smiled. “I think I’d better give Paul a hand with the ice bucket,”
she said, easing away from Phyllis, Jim and Andrea and weaving
among the small knots of people clogging the room. She barely
missed getting stabbed by someone gesticulating dramatically with a
toothpick. She almost tripped over a wiry young man demonstrating a
yoga position on the floor. Near the entry to the dining room, she
was waylaid by the Perskys, and she chatted with them for a while.
Then Eric caught her eye and waved her over, asking her to mediate
a dispute he was having with some of his accountant colleagues over
the deductibility of property taxes.

By the time she reached the
kitchen, nearly a half hour had passed. She wasn’t surprised to
find Paul leaning against the counter, surrounded by two men and a
woman, all of whom were engrossed in Paul’s explication of
adolescent slang. A glass of ginger ale stood on the counter near
where he rested his hips.

“Now, the word `like’ is perhaps
the most versatile word in the typical teenager’s speech,” he
explained. “Not only does `like’ function as a conjunction, but it
has also evolved into an ellipsis of sorts—oh,” he said, smiling as
his eye caught Daphne’s. “Where have you been, Daphne? Your ginger
ale is going flat.”

“No kidding.” Daphne grinned. She
acknowledged Paul’s audience with a polite nod, took a sip of the
ginger ale and grimaced. Worse than flat, it was tepid. “I thought
you were going to deliver this to me in the living
room.”

“I probably was,” Paul conceded,
smiling sheepishly. He introduced Daphne to the three people and
then reverted to his grammatical analysis of the word
“like.”

Daphne listened for a couple of
minutes, then excused herself and departed from the kitchen. She’d
heard Paul speak many times about his students and their
idiosyncrasies, and while she usually found his comments
entertaining, she wasn’t in the mood to be entertained tonight—at
least not until she saw Brad and proved to herself that he could no
longer spoil a party for her.

Where was he, anyway? This party
had been thrown to celebrate his impending move to New York—yet he
didn’t seem to be present. Puzzled, Daphne meandered through the
crowd in the dining room, tossing quick smiles of recognition at
some of the guests as she worked her way toward the living room.
She traversed it as best she could, this time more alert to the
fellow doing yoga on the floor and the toothpick wielder. She
checked the sofa, the easy chair, the upholstered window seats. No
Brad.

Her curiosity increasing, she left
the living room for the hallway. The bathroom was empty. The door
of the guest bedroom was open, and when Daphne peeked inside she
spotted one of the stars of talk show in a passionate clinch with
one of Eric’s associates at the accounting firm—both of whom,
Daphne recalled, happened to be married to other people. She closed
the door with a discreet click and continued down the hall to the
master bedroom. The door was shut, and she wondered whether her
entrance might interrupt a couple in an even more compromising
position.