The Best of Everything (56 page)

She slept finally, fitfully, but when Gregg opened the front door Caroline heard her in her sleep and woke up. Gregg turned on the light in the closet and began to take ofiE her coat. "Oh," Gregg said, "did the light wake you?"

"No," Caroline said.

"I'm glad you're up. We can talk. Are you sleepy?"

"A little."

"Well, you can talk for a while, can't you?"

"Yes . . ."

She sat up in bed and Gregg turned on the overhead light. Everything was in a glare, as it is when you first open your eyes to electric light after sleep. Gregg was standing in the center of the room, all white and gold and wraithlike, her face very pale in the white glare, her eyes dark-circled from too little sleep, her blond hair long and unkempt and wispy around her shoulders. She was still wearing her coat, open, her hands in the coat pockets. And Caroline could see that the pockets were bulging.

"I found out who the girl was," Gregg said. She sat down on the foot of Caroline's bed, and despite herself Caroline drew away a little. "There are two girls," Gregg said, "but the second one he likes better, and she goes there all the time now. The first one doesn't go there any more. She had dark hair and dark skin, I know because she wore dark lipstick and had a black bobby pin. I found the lipstick on some cigarettes they threw away."

So it's true, Caroline thought.

"The second girl is from out of town. Either that or she just got back here from a trip. She left the envelope from a plane ticket from California. I thought at first she was an actress, but then I found a bottle of pills with her name on it, and I can't think of any young actress named Masson, can you?"

Caroline shook her head.

"I called up the drugstore and said I was she and asked them to

renew my prescription and I would call for it. But the druggist said it had codeine in it and he couldn't renew it without a new prescription. I think it was a painkiller, not a sleeping pill, because David has sleeping pills he could have given her. She takes pills for cramps when she has her period. I know that too, because I heard her say she had the curse. Isn't that funny—I know everything about her, what color lipstick she wears, how her voice sounds, what kind of cigarettes she smokes, how big her feet are, even when she has her period, and I've never seen her. And she doesn't even know I know."

"Oh, Gregg . . ." Caroline said. "Gregg, don't . . ."

Gregg was smiling, a tiny, cold smile. "Do you know how I found out? Look!" She pulled her hands out of her pockets, filled with new evidence, more dirty things, and held them out tenderly, as if they were jewels. "I'm going to sort them all out tomorrow," Gregg said. "I got them from his wastebasket. The maid puts all these things out in the back hall in a paper bag, and the janitor comes and takes it away. But lately he hardly has anything to take away."

"Gregg," Caroline said softly, trying not to say the wrong thing, "what good is all this going to do? It's only making you miserable. Look, I can get you a job at Fabian for a while and you'll be busy and you'll meet new people, and you'll be making money, and then at Christmas maybe we can go skiing in New Hampshire or somewhere. You'll have enough money by then. This isn't doing you any good, this hanging on, this . . . scavenging."

Gregg didn't seem to be listening. She had spread out the new evidence on her lap and was busily sorting it out, her tongue in the corner of her mouth, like a little girl who is fixing her doll's bed. "Her first name is Judy," Gregg said. "I think he likes her a lot. His voice is dijfferent when he speaks to her—more tender. Isn't that funny ... I know everything about her. I wonder if he's going to fall in love with her, I mean, really in love. I wonder what she has that I didn't have. . . . I'm going to find out."

Chapter 27

In the beginning of November Caroline had a dream that disturbed her for days afterward. She was not quite sure whether she had been asleep when it had happened or half awake, so that it had the quality of a wish rather than a dream. The dream concerned Eddie Harris. He was so real, to every last detail, and so unchanged, that he seemed to be speaking to her from across the entire spread of the country, like some extrasensory perception. She could tell herself that it was natural to think and dream of Eddie at this time; holidays were aproaching, times for parties, for family, for people to be with those they loved best, if they could. And what did she have? Paul Landis and a series of casual dates who were no more interesting than Paul and did not have so good a character. And a fading daydream of John Cassaro, a daydream she had finally decided was a joke on herself rather than an aid and support. But the dream of Eddie had been so real, his voice had spoken to her with such uncanny exactitude, that all the remembered feeling she had had for him returned poignantly and she could not shake it off for days. Caroline began to wonder whether perhaps it could be possible that Eddie had been thinking of her at that very moment, and that was why she had dreamed of him as she did.

He had been telling her he loved her. I always have, he was telling her; I finally had to face it. They had looked into each other s eyes and she knew it was true, their hands touched and they both knew they belonged together. But of course! Caroline thought when she awoke and lay in bed with her eyes shut, clinging to the last wisps of the dream. Why didn't I think of it before? It was so real and so strong an image that she felt as if she had been fated to find Eddie again and remind him of her existence.

The next day in tlie office Caroline thought of him from time to time all day, and when evening came the desire to write him a letter came to her, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. This is nonsense, she told herself, it's just something I want to do, so I'm

making up all sorts of excuses for it. If I could ever find out where Eddie is, I'm sure he wouldn't answer my letter anyway. And I'd never know whether he got it and didn't want to answer, or forgot to answer because I'm nothing at all to him even as a remembered friend, or whether he didn't get the letter at all; and I'll always wonder and it will hurt me. Nevertheless, the next day she called Information and asked for the address of the Lowe Oil Company in Dallas, Texas, and wrote it down. Somehow she was sure he would be working for his father-in-law, in some bright public-relations way, because she understood Eddie well, even after all this time. He would have to work there. If he didn't, then she could never find him, because she certainly couldn't write to him at his home, even if she were writing out of curiosity and no baser motive.

It was curiosity, really, Caroline finally realized. It was three years since Eddie had broken their engagement, and many things had happened to her, so naturally she was curious to find out what had happened to him. The people who are part of our past and help to make our present what it is always stay in our minds, if only because we always wonder what would have happened if things had been different so long ago. Did he have children, had he changed, had he grown stuffy, as so many of the boys had whom she had known at school? Why shouldn't I write to Eddie, Caroline thought. I'm no danger to him, I'm just a curious friend.

So at the end of the week she finally wrote to him. It was a short letter.

Dear Eddie, she wrote, on the typewriter and on her oflBce stationery. It occurred to me that it has been three years since I saw you last, and since so many interesting things have happened to me since then I thought I'd write and tell you about them, and I hope that you'll write and tell me what's happened to you. That sounded stilted and foolish, but Caroline could not think of any other way to put it. She reread what she had written several times and then tore it out of the typewriter and threw it away. Dear Eddie, I was looking through my old college photograph album the other day and I came upon some pictures of you, taken years ago, and they reminded me of you. So here I am, a voice from the past, and an inquisitive one. So many interesting things have happened to me since I saw you last that I thought I'd tvrite and tell you about them, and I am curious to hear what the years have brought to you. Oh, God, that

sounded as if they were both a hundred years old! How was it that she could write such fluent and intelligent letters to her authors but for Eddie Harris, someone who really meant something to her, she was nearly illiterate? She finally let it stand and went on to tell him of her job as an editor, trying to make it sound as if she had a great deal of prestige and led a gay, mad life taking well-known authors out to lunch and cocktails for literary discussions and guidance. She told him that she had her own apartment in New York, with an actress he might have heard of (making it sound as if he would have heard of the successful ingenue Gregg Adams if he kept up with the theater), and that she was having fun. And how are you? Do you have any children? I remember you always played the piano so well —Z hope you fiavent given it up. She signed it, finally: As ever, Caroline. "As ever" was good, it could mean everything or nothing. She put the letter into an air-mail envelope before she could lose her nerve and addressed it to Eddie Harris at the Lowe Oil Company and marked it Personal. And now that she had been so reckless, and had gone to all this trouble already, she scribbled "Please Forward" on the front of the envelope. At least she would know he had received it, at least she wouldn't keep buoying up her hopes with false excuses if he didn't write back.

She put tlie letter into her out box and watched the mailboy take it away. It was done. But it was not irrevocable, she could run to the mailroom right now and snatch the letter back and tear it up. Knowing that she could, she left the oflBce immediately and went home, and when she got there, safely away from any sane thoughts of salvation, she began to think: It takes two days for a letter to get to Dallas. Say three, to be absolutely sure. And a week for him to answer, at the outside, and then three for his letter to get back to me. Two weeks. I won't think about it any more until two weeks from today.

There was a certain peace of mind in knowing that there were two weeks of no man's land, during which she could be neither hurt nor shocked nor disappointed, because nothing that could happen within those two weeks would be any fault of hers. Afterward she could begin to wait, and go to the maihoom before the mailboy could even bring around her letters, and berate herself, and wonder whether Eddie thought she had been trying to get him

back. Afterward could come doubts, but now there was peace. Oddly, Caroline felt happier than she had felt all year.

On Tuesday afternoon John Cassaro called her at her office. She recognized his voice instantly but did not quite believe it. For a moment Caroline had the thought that this was some kind of an odd practical joke. But on the other hand, she had known, secretly, that they would meet again, and she felt so strange—aloof, away from him and his charm, able to take care of herself. The manuscript clerk came into Caroline's office with an armful of manuscripts while Caroline was on the phone and Caroline impatiently waved her away. The girl was a gum-chewing cow, she liked to wait around until you were oflF the phone so she could engage you in ten minutes of meaningless conversation about the manuscripts she was bringing.

"I didn't have any trouble finding you," John Cassaro said. "The operator knew right away who you are. She said, Oh, yes, Caroline."

"Is that what she said? Caroline?"

"Mm-hm."

She knew then that he was teasing her, and she liked him for it. "Oh, I'm famous here," she said happily.

"You must get more phone calls than anyone else around."

"I don't know."

"Hey," John Cassaro said, "my pigeon misses you. He's so miserable he's switched to Alka-Seltzer."

Caroline laughed. "That's a hang-over," she said. "You can't fool me."

"Why don't you come on over and see for yourself?"

"Well . . ."

"Come on over after work and have a drink with me."

My one date with John Cassaro, Caroline thought. Do I want it tonight? Or do I want it ever, at all? "I can't," she said lightly. "I have another date."

"Oh? With your boy friend?"

"I have no boy friend."

"Then slough him ofiF and come over to see me. He hasn't got a pigeon like mine. Hmm?"

I'll het he hasn't, Caroline thought. "I can't," she said with more resolution.

"You do like him."

"It's not a question of that. But if I stood him up and lied to him , . . then if I ever broke a date with you you'd never beheve me." Now what had made her say that? She didn't have anything at all to do tonight, except sit home and think of Eddie, and yet she'd said no to John Cassaro and then thrown out that hint that she'd like to see him another time.

"You're right," John Cassaro said. "You're a hundred per cent right. You're a nice girl. Have a good time tonight."

"Thank you."

"Goodbye."

He hung up first, and Caroline replaced the receiver slowly, realizing for the first time how nervous she was. Her hands were cold and she had an empty feeling inside, like being hungry. She tried to imagine what it would have been like if she'd gone to John Cassaro's hotel suite for cocktails. She would have been more nervous than she was now, and he would be stalking her, shooting charm at her like poisoned arrows, and the whole experience would have unnerved her. She didn't really mind that she had said no, even if he never called again. She was quite sure he would never call again. You couldn't hurt the pride of a celebrity like John Cassaro and expect him to take the chance of its happening again. He was through with her, before anything had even started. But Eddie might write. . . . And that was why she would have been so unhappy at John Cassaro's apartment, because her heart would have been elsewhere. She had to admit to herself at last that she was much more interested in whether Eddie still thought of her, so interested in it that she didn't dare even think about it.

Some mornings if Caroline came to the oflBce ten or fifteen minutes late the first mail was already there, tucked under the leather edge of her desk blotter. It was easier that way, these last few days; she had one fewer mail delivery to wait for like a caged animal in her cubicle. Despite her resolution not to care, she was thinking a little, thinking that perhaps her letter had gotten there in only two days, and that he had written the day he received it. When she came into her office on Wednesday, at a quarter past nine, the mail was there, protruding out of the blotter's leather edge like a white fan. And one of the envelopes was made of blue tissue paper with red, white and blue air-mail edging around it. She snatched it, her heart pounding. The name and address were handwritten and evew