Shades of Fortune (68 page)

“His love is better, then.”

“No, not even that. It's just … I mean, look at us, sitting here, two middle-aged people—”

“You still look eighteen years old to me.”

“I told you I was nineteen.”

“You were lying.”

“You knew that?”

“Of course.”

“And you look just the same to me, too,” she says. “But underneath, we're not the same. I think you know that. And for me—I just don't think I could bear it, to go back to the kind of love I felt for you. It was too … grueling, I guess the word is. I'm not saying I regret any of it, because I don't.”

The wind picks up, and there is definitely the smell of rain in the air. “Let me tell you what it was like,” she says. “Three winters ago, Brad and I went on a horse safari in Africa. Ten days on horseback through the Masai Mara. Eight, nine hours a day of hard, rough riding, across rivers and mountains and rock slides, in the most uncomfortable Australian saddle I've ever sat on. It was wonderful, out there in the middle of the herds of animals, but by the third day I wondered if I'd ever walk again without a limp! I wouldn't trade that experience for anything, but nothing could persuade me to live through it again. It's the same with you. I don't want to repeat the experience, even though I know I could, because I've felt perilously close to it in the past few weeks.”

“Have you?”

“Oh, yes. But I've had to force myself to think the way Brad thinks, the way a lawyer thinks. You know, ‘on the one hand, … but then, on the other hand …'”

“A cold-blooded way of thinking.”

“No, not cold-blooded. Not at all. But I've thought, on the one hand, there's the danger, and excitement, of running off into uncharted territory with a man I loved desperately years ago, but really never knew too well. And, on the other hand, there's the comradeship I have with my husband. That's what we have, Michael: comradeship. We've been through a lot together, he and I. I've invested twenty-nine years in my marriage—that's nearly half a lifetime. That's a very valuable investment to me, Michael, and I don't want to let it go. I'll fight very hard to keep that investment, and that's not cold-blooded because it's an investment in a marriage, and in love. Do you understand what I'm saying, Michael?”

“I suppose so,” he says. And then, “But let me just tell you one thing, since you say you never knew me very well. When I started buying shares in your company, it wasn't because I wanted to take it over. It was because I wanted you.”

She laughs softly. “You chose an odd way to go about it.”

“It got your attention, didn't it?”

“Oh, yes. But are you sure there wasn't a little motive of revenge in it as well? Over the way Grandpa treated you years ago?”

“Well, perhaps, a little,” he admits, studying the backs of his hands. “But I'll tell you one thing: your idea of taking your company private is a good one. Right now, Miray is a sitting duck as a takeover target. If I were you, I'd go for privatization. Then nobody could touch you.”

“It's Badger's idea, not mine.”

“But all I really wanted was you,” he says. “And Badger.”

“I don't want to discuss Badger with you now. Badger's a grown man, with big, strong shoulders, who can pretty much tackle anything. I'll just say this much: you may be Badger's father, but Badger will always be Brad Moore's son, if you can see that subtle difference.”

“Yes, I suppose I can.”

“And if you ever say anything otherwise to anyone, I'll deny it to my dying day.”

“I'd never say anything otherwise to anyone, Mimi.”

“Good. Then—” Other gulls have joined the pair on the skating pond, and the late-afternoon sunshine, filtered through the turning leaves, dapples the surface of the water.

“I guess you don't know me very well,” he says, “if you think I'd ever make that sort of claim. I don't think you've ever trusted me.”

“Perhaps that's true.”

“Like a rough ride across Africa. I was that rough on you?”

“Yes, dear heart, you were.” Still are, she thinks.

He looks out. “But I have a broken skate lace to remember you by,” he says.

“And I have a ring.”

“You cried when I gave you that ring.”

“I cried because it was the most beautiful ring I'd ever seen. It still is.”

“Will I ever see your tears again? Tears in your silver eyes?” He stands up, raising his arms high in the air, crossed at the wrists, his fists clenched, and takes a deep breath. “I'll walk you back to the street,” he says, and she also rises.

When they reach the street, he says simply, “Good-bye. Just don't forget me.”

“You told me once I never would. I won't.”

“Well, see you around, kiddo,” he says, and he gives her a little wink.

See you around, kiddo
, she thinks. And she thinks too: Is this parting going to be as matter-of-fact as this? Is this all there was to it for him, just a
so long
, and a
see you around?
Is that all it was for him? Then she remembers that this, after all, is Michael, and there has always been something a little careless about him, a little oh, well, so what. This is a man who asked her to marry him before he remembered to tell her he loved her. This is a man who stuffed his socks every which way into a drawer, who chucked his dirty laundry under his bed, who stored his fireplace logs behind the skirts of a sofa, and who hung up his neckties without bothering to unknot them. He is careless about women, too, treating the hundreds who have wandered in and out of his life over the years as though they were no more important than properties on a Monopoly board, acquiring them and disposing of them as casually as he acquired and disposed of condominiums. All he is doing now is wandering off from her, off into his vast carelessness.

“It wouldn't have worked out for us,” she says, realizing that this is not a great last line. “It wouldn't, because we never took the trouble to think things through.”

He merely shrugs, then turns and begins walking south. After a moment, she also turns, slowly, and starts walking northward.

Oh, yes, she thinks. Even our parting seems careless. But he remembered my tears that afternoon. And he remembered my James Robinson silver eyes. And he remembered, oh, I know he remembered, how I loved him. She feels the first drop of rain on her cheek. It is a raindrop, she will always swear it, not a tear.

Have I let him hurt me again, she asks herself? Dear God, if there is a God, I swore, I will never let him hurt me again. Yet this cannot be a hurt, this time, because this was my choice, my decision. And yet, dear God, if there is a God, will I always miss that hurting? Of course I will.

She continues walking northward.

Then, after a few steps, she stops and turns back to watch his retreating figure. There is very little pedestrian traffic on upper Fifth Avenue at this time of day, and the two of them are alone on this stretch of shaded, darkening sidewalk. Something is missing, she thinks, something is wrong. Shouldn't he have kissed me good-bye? Don't I deserve at least that much? Shouldn't he turn, right now, and see my eyes following him, and turn back to me for that? If this were a movie, there would be that obligatory turn. She can see the scene on the screen. He turns, sees her standing there, watching him walk away, and the lovers run toward each other under the trees, in that mottled, late-afternoon fall sunlight, for that final kiss, with the cool wind from the sea as a benediction. But that doesn't happen, and he doesn't turn, and he isn't going to turn.

Stop
, she commands him with her eyes.
Stop, look back at me. I am one of the most famous women in New York right now, and I was ready to give myself to you. I deserve this much. Stop, look back at me
.

But he refuses to obey her and is walking, instead, steadily away from her, his hands in his trousers pockets, walking with what she has always called his pugilist's walk, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet, like a winning prizefighter returning triumphant to his corner of the ring.

Then she sees that it is not a pugilist's walk, but more of an aerialist's walk, as though his feet were bouncing on a high, taut wire. She thinks: Ah, we are both successful aerialists, two tightrope walkers who approached each other along the high wire, our balancing poles poised, who met, performed a brief duet above the circus crowd, and then retreated. He is a true
Luftmensch
, she thinks, a man who lives on, and in, the air, for aren't making big deals and money and getting rich all things that are as flimsy and transitory and invisible as the thin air itself? Ah, but the difference between this pair of aerialists is that he always spurns the net. She always makes certain that the safety net is securely set beneath her. It is there in place underneath her now. She sees him toss that wayward lock of sandy hair back across his forehead, sees him jut out that purposeful lower jaw. But when her vision clears and her eyes refocus, she sees that the sidewalk is empty now, and he is gone. She turns northward again, toward home.

Of course, all that was nearly a year and a half ago. The privatization plan went smoothly, with a majority of Miray's stockholders voting in favor of it, including the Leo cousins and Michael Horowitz, who did not attend the meeting but voted by proxy. Miracorp came officially into existence on October 15, 1987, just days before the crash that Granny had predicted. As a private company—as Granny had foreseen—it was scarcely affected by the market's collapse.

Nonie, with her own money now, has set up shop as a currency trader—a foreign exchange, or FX, as they call it, specialist, with her partner, Roger Williams. They have opened an office on Pine Street, with a small cadre of employees, and their firm, Myerson & Lahniers, appears to be doing very well, even in these uncertain financial times. It should be pointed out that there is no one named Lahniers in the firm, but that is not uncommon. There was no one named Rhoades in Loeb, Rhoades & Company. The name was added for cachet, which Nonie has done, picking the name at random out of the telephone book. It is often useful, in a firm like this, to append one Christian-sounding name, and Lahniers had that right, Christian-sounding ring. For some reason, Roger Williams did not want his name on the firm's masthead, even though he is the mastermind behind the firm's success. There are rumors, to be sure—nothing specific—that there is something shady about Roger Williams's past, even rumors that Roger Williams is not his real name. It is not that this Roger Williams is an Ivan Boesky—not in that league at all. Just a lot of questions about where he came from and who he really is. There is nothing at all illegal about what firms like Myerson & Lahniers do. There are dozens of firms like theirs in the city. It is fast-paced, nerve-wracking work, but spot traders' desks can often show a net profit of between $150,000 and $200,000 a day. Not quite $8,000 a minute, perhaps, but O.K.

There are also rumors that Roger Williams and Nonie may marry, despite the marked difference in their ages. But, to this, rumors that Roger Williams already has a wife somewhere have been added. Oklahoma City has been mentioned, but I am only repeating gossip. It is a little odd that Roger Williams will not be interviewed and refuses to be photographed. But Nonie, who enjoys high visibility, handles the press.

The mystery of the identity of the Mireille Man, and the authenticity of his scar, was kept alive almost to the end of the ad campaign. Then, just when the public was beginning to lose interest anyway, Mark Segal released the news of the model's name and the fact that the scar was another example of the cosmetician's art. This produced a nice final flurry of publicity for Mireille, which, as you know, is now firmly established in the pantheon of fine American fragrances.

Meanwhile, the formula for Mireille remains a secret, locked in a vault in Mimi's office, known only to Mimi, Badger, and one or two of their top, most trusted chemists. Using what are known as gas chromatography tests, competitors have tried to “fingerprint” its essence, but so far they have been unsuccessful. But I suspect that one of its key ingredients is Bulgarian rose absolute, don't you? I know that when I splash it on my face I envision Bulgarian peasant maidens, in long dirndl skirts and babushkas, or whatever it is that Bulgarian peasant maidens wear, gathering rose petals at dawn in the foothills of the Balkan Mountains overlooking the Black Sea. Foothills facing east, toward the rising sun.

In any case, by the campaign's end, both models' careers were finished—the victims of overexposure, as anyone could have told them. Perhaps someone did tell them, but people usually only listen to what they want to hear. Oddly enough, of the two, Sherrill Shearson was the more clever in terms of managing the money she earned. She invested shrewdly in East Bronx real estate, and though it would be unfair to call her a slum lord, the East Bronx is the East Bronx, and the income from her rentals has made her a reasonably rich woman. In January, she married a dentist from Forest Hills, and they are now a part of the country club set out there.

Dirk Gordon was less fortunate, despite his suavely knowing and worldly persona. Having read somewhere that the most likely places for singles to meet one another were bars and Laundromats, he and a friend decided to put all their money into a barcum-Laundromat on Second Avenue. It was to be called The Laundry Bag, and its slogan was “We Do Your Thing.” It failed miserably, and Dirk lost all his money in the venture. When last I heard, he was working as a salesman for Coca-Cola, or perhaps it was Pepsi-Cola. He is still occasionally recognized, and since I like to imagine such encounters, I imagine someone saying to him: “Hey, didn't you use to be big in TV commercials?” And his reply: “I'm still big. It's the commercials that got small.”

Granny Flo died at Christmastime, and you may have seen the headline in the
Times: