Lovers (58 page)

Spider sat in the twins’ nursery like a large, loving toy as they climbed over him, feeling that he wasn’t going to move from the floor until they were taken away to be fed. No, he’d feed them himself, both of them, and bathe them too. Contact with their flesh gave him the only comfort he had, and he even got a glow from the feeling of their food in his hair.

“Bow-gow!” Max said to him with a look of heartrending appeal. “Bow-gow!”

“Boo-goo!” Hal cried hopefully. “Boo-goo!”

“You guys want a dog?” Spider asked. “A bow-wow?”

They stood, each holding onto one of his knees, their lower lips thrust forward in their determination to make themselves understood.

“Boo-goo!”

“Bow-gow!”

“Nanny Elizabeth, listen to this! They want a dog! They just said their first word! Bow-wow! Come on, kids, we’ll go out and buy a dog. A bow-wow. Its amazing, yesterday all they could do was wave bye-bye and say ‘mama’ and ‘dada,’ and today they want a dog! Isn’t that exceptionally intelligent of them, learning to express an abstract desire overnight?”

“Not considering the amount of time Burgo O’Sullivan has been spending with them recently, getting under my feet. I hate to have to admit this, Mr. Elliott, but their first word is an attempt to say ‘Burgo.’ He taught it to them just at the very instant they were primed and ready to learn how to speak. Boys are so late in their verbal skills. Very naughty of Burgo indeed, and I told him so, but the damage was done.” Nanny Elizabeth sniffed in disapproval.

“Burgo? That sonofabitch, I’ll fucking
kill
him when I find him!”

Spider sprinted off in search of Burgo, leaving Nanny Elizabeth thinking that poor Mrs. Elliott certainly had
good reason to stay out of the way of a man capable of such jealousy. It was only another name, after all.

“Burgo! You come out of your room, you maggot, you coward, or I’ll kick the door in!”

“There’s no need to shout like that,” Burgo said, emerging from his quarters with the calm confidence of an indispensable man.

“Where’s my wife, you lousy bastard? Don’t tell me you don’t know, the kids blew your cover, you miserable turd! You’ve been hanging around them—since when are you so interested in children, you deceptive, malice-ridden—”

“I don’t know where she is,” Burgo said with dignity. “There’s no need to insult me.”

“Yes, you do!”
Spider screamed, and seized him around his neck.

“She phones me, I don’t phone her,” Burgo sputtered. “Let go!”

“Why didn’t you tell me? You know damn well I’ve been going crazy!”

“I probably would have been forced to in a day or so, considering my sympathy for any fellow man, no matter who he is or how he behaves, but my first loyalty always has been to Mrs. Elliott, and she made me promise on my mother’s grave,” Burgo said with dignity. “Fortunately, my mother is alive and well.”

“What the hell did she say, Burgo?
What
, for God’s sake?”

“Mrs. Elliott asks about the children, each time, and I report in detail, I ask how she is, and she answers that she’s fine—she sounds perfectly all right—and then she hangs up.”

“Thank God!” Spider sagged in relief. “Well, now that I know she’s okay, I guess I’ll have to wait it out until she comes home. She could be absolutely anywhere.”

“One day,” Burgo offered, “I did happen to hear her say something to a person she called ‘Marry John’ or some such foreign name.”

“Marry John? How do you know it was foreign?”

“Mrs. Elliott didn’t pronounce it like an American name. It was slurred, faster than she usually speaks.”

Spider was on the phone to Josh Hillman before he’d finished his sentence.

“Josh, does the name ‘Marry John’ mean anything to you? The
wife of who?
Marie-Jeanne? Billy’s been paying their salary for years? And you didn’t think of them? Jesus, Josh, so what if the house is empty and uninhabitable? Since when would that stop Billy? Oh, you’re sorry, are you—big fucking deal. Now give me that address, you absolute moronic
asshole!”

“Lawyers!” Spider muttered to Burgo, planted a kiss on his forehead, and raced upstairs to tell Nanny Elizabeth the news and grab his passport.

Billy walked along the Rue de Barbet de Jouy, swinging an empty shopping basket. She’d gone to the best local wine merchant to replace the wine that Marie-Jeanne had lent her, and discovered what a rare vintage the 1971 was. He’d promised to find a case for her somewhere or, failing that, to order a wine equally as good.

“Do you have suitable storage space, Madame?” he’d asked. “If so, I can try to find you several cases.”

“I have excellent cellars, Monsieur, but I. must wait to decide about an order.”

“At your service, Madame.”

Should she, Billy asked herself, perhaps buy wine? Cases and cases of wine? The best vintages, the most rare, the great treasures? In Paris, even in an empty house, it didn’t feel comfortable not to have wine right on hand in case anyone dropped by. There were always several bottles of champagne on ice in any proper French fridge; no one thought twice about asking for a little “coup” of champagne when they were offered a drink by a friend, because they knew that a bottle would be finished too quickly to go flat. She sighed, disappointed by the lightness of her empty basket.

Today felt like the first real day of fall, Billy thought as
she turned the corner to cover the short section of the Rue de Varenne that led back to the Rue Vaneau. She’d put on a heavy crimson turtleneck and a pair of black trousers this morning, and the tails of a long crimson and black striped wool scarf bounced behind her. She wasn’t in the mood for the Luxembourg Gardens, Billy realized, as if awakening from a fit of indolence that had held her captive.

She was in the mood to swoop down on the Rue Cambon and buy every single new suit in the Chanel collection. Every single coat, every last dress, every chain belt, shoes, oh, yes, dozens and dozens and dozens of shoes! … Uh-oh, she was in trouble! She couldn’t show her nose in the Rue Cambon, right at the back entrance to the Ritz. At Chanel she’d run into at least five women she knew, especially now, in the middle of the afternoon, when everyone had fittings.

But what if she ordered her car and driver? There’d be only a quick step from the curb through the gray glass doors of the shop; she’d keep her sunglasses on, and wear a big silk square well forward to shade her face. She could phone the manager in advance and arrange to be led straight to a private dressing room … could she risk it? She felt as strong a desire to buy something—anything—as she’d felt when she’d bought her house, and she knew that such a mood was a certain sign of dangerous restlessness, of a feverish need to make things happen. She had cabin fever, she was like someone who’d lived through a dark Arctic winter or a long convalescence during which she’d been forced to stay in bed and do nothing but rest her eyes.

If only Sam hadn’t sent that enormous bouquet of fall flowers. And a card on which he’d written, “If you ever change your mind, if the timing is right someday, here’s my new phone number. I’ll always be here for you, my love. Sam.”

He shouldn’t have done that, Billy thought. It wasn’t cricket. She’d made up her mind and it was staying made up, but it didn’t help to have those flowers, arranged in a vase by Marie-Jeanne, standing on the floor of the sun
room in a blaze of russet and gold, reminding her of Sam’s hair each time she looked at them. She’d throw them out, along with the card, the minute she got home she resolved, turning the corner of the Rue Vaneau.

Slumped up against the closed doors to her house was a tall man in a belted trench coat, his long legs crossed at the ankle, as if he’d been there a long time. Billy stopped dead. His back was toward her. He hadn’t seen her. She still had time to wheel around and retreat around the corner.

For an instant Billy apprehended Spider fully; transfixed and pierced by a visceral recognition, she saw him utterly present in the world, in dimensions of time and space, with all his history and all his strength and all his weakness, all his past and all their memories, the whole of Spider Elliott enveloped into a single unique person about whom she had an overwhelming totality of emotion. Suddenly, without the slightest attempt at thought, Billy discovered that she was released and running toward him as fast as she could. She watched him turn instantly at the sound of her footsteps and race toward her, and the world was changed forever.

“No, darling, no, not now, we’ll talk about it later. Ah, Madame Marie-Jeanne, there you are. This is my husband, Monsieur Elliott.” Billy blew her nose and wiped her streaming eyes, fumbling with her key and Spider’s handkerchief and his hand, which she couldn’t let go.

“Oh, Madame, forgive me! He rang, but I would not permit him to wait in the house. I did not know that Madame was expecting Monsieur …” Marie-Jeanne stopped while she was still ahead, looking at Billy for guidance, while she and Spider shook hands.

“Monsieur Elliott has surprised both of us.” Billy turned to Spider. “Come in the house, my poor baby, you look ready to drop in your tracks, I’ve never seen you so exhausted.”

“There wasn’t a nonstop flight to Paris when I got to LAX, so I flew to New York by way of Atlanta, or maybe it
was Chicago, I’ve lost track, and then I missed the Concorde and had to wait five hours in New York … I could have made it faster by rowboat. I need a drink—I’m about to fall down anyway, just from happiness. I want to kiss you for the next two days. Two weeks. Two months.”

“Madame Marie-Jeanne, I wonder—would it be possible to borrow two bottles of wine from you, and two glasses?”

“Of course, Madame. Where would you like the tray, Madame?”

“Oh, in the sun room … no, on second thought, could you bring it upstairs and leave it on the floor outside of my room? And I think I noticed some debris and dead flowers in the sun room.”

“I will dispose of them, Madame, and sweep. Carefully.”

“Thank you, Madame Marie-Jeanne.”

Marie-Jeanne hurried back to her house to find the wine and tell Pierre the latest. The tall, blond type in tennis shoes she introduced as her husband was even better looking, to her taste, than the handsome redhead of yesterday. Would tomorrow bring a tall, dark man with one black shoe? Working for Madame Ikehorn was better than going to the cinema. And the way things were going, she must remember to order more wine.

“Spider, please let’s wait to talk till tomorrow, you’re so tired you’re falling apart,” Billy said, concerned at his loss of weight and his sunken eyes, which were more evident now that he’d showered, shaved, and put on her white toweling bathrobe that didn’t even reach his knees.

“I can fall apart later, first I have to get things straight with you,” he said stubbornly. “It’s all I’ve been able to think about, and I need it a hell of a lot more than sleep.”

“I haven’t let myself think about anything we said to each other that night,” Billy countered. “I knew I was in pure denial, but at least I don’t look as ghastly as you do. I
ate and slept and walked my feet off … a week at a spa couldn’t have been better for me.”

“I didn’t eat and I didn’t sleep because I knew how guilty I was. I was vile in ten thousand and one ways I’ll never forget or forgive myself for, but once I stopped being angry, I started trying to figure out why—
why
had I been such a bastard to you, why had I refused to give your plan for a decorating catalog the respect I’d give any idea of yours,
why
had I made those cheap, nasty digs about your money and acting like a Lady Bountiful and not knowing jack shit about finance?”

“Did you ever manage to figure it out?” Billy asked coldly, feeling herself flush at this reminder of words she’d been blocking out of her mind.

“Yeah, finally, after I realized that the only other time in my life I’d been cruel on purpose to a woman was when Valentine and Josh were having an affair.”

“You knew about them?” Billy asked, taken off guard. “Valentine told me, but I thought no one else knew.”

“She told me too—after we were married.”

“We’re both good about keeping secrets,” Billy said thoughtfully, “if nothing else. But what does a brief love affair between two other people in 1977 have to do with you and me in 1984?”

“I was jealous of Josh—I didn’t even know who he was then, just some mysterious lover who kept Valentine busy and preoccupied—and I didn’t even know I was jealous because I didn’t realize I was in love with her. I was eaten up with fury because she didn’t have the time to work with me that she used to have, because her attention was turned away from me and toward someone else.”

“So?” Billy asked, completely puzzled.

“When I came home that night—was it only a week ago?—I found you like your old self again, all glowing and splendid and carried away with the excitement of your new idea—I felt … 
jealous
of its potential to take you away from me—”

“Oh, come on, that’s crazy! You’ve never known me as anything but a working woman—”

“Since the kids were born, you’ve stayed at home with them and I’ve come back every night to a wife who’s been right where I expected her to be all day long, doing what I expected my beloved everyday wife to be doing. I’d forgotten what it was like to live with an electric, high-flying woman who can make big things happen with a touch of her magic wand, a vastly powerful woman in her own right, who doesn’t need me, who has the freedom to go after anything in the world that interests her—”

“Are you trying to tell me, Spider Elliott,” Billy broke in incredulously, “that you, of all men, wanted me to stay home forever and take care, of the children and wait for the high point of my day, the marvelous minute when you finally showed up for dinner?”

“Yeah. Ain’t that a pisser? In my heart of hearts, that’s
exactly
what I wanted. An old-fashioned wife like my mom. A return to the 1950s, basic, unvarnished, barbaric, against everything I thought I believed. Once the thought crossed my mind, a bell rang and it hasn’t stopped ringing. I wanted you to be just like everybody else. I wanted to be the boss of you.
I wanted you to be the little woman.”