The Carson Springs Trilogy: Stranger in Paradise, Taste of Honey, and Wish Come True (18 page)

“How else am I supposed to give you a piece of my mind?” Gerry shook her head in affectionate despair. “I’m serious about that trip. It’ll do you good to get away. You look a little worn out.”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“Seriously, are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Just the usual menopausal stuff.” Sam shrugged. “You know, hot flashes, missed periods, that kind of thing.”

“Do me a favor,” Gerry said. “Make a doctor’s appointment.
After
you’ve called your travel agent.”

“If I go to New York, things will only get more complicated.”

As if in echo of Sam’s thoughts, she felt a sharp pinch on her thumb and looked down in horror to discover the bee wasn’t dead after all. With the scant bit of life that was left in it, it had stung her.

I
AN HAILED A CAB
at the corner of Twentieth and Eighth. Just a few short weeks and already New York had begun to seem like home. The tidal rush of traffic, the teeming sidewalks, the hot belch of sounds like a shot of epinephrine. In Chelsea, where he’d lucked into a brownstone apartment on loan from a friend, you could stay out all night and never be hungry, thirsty, or bored. He even had a favorite hangout, a funky little French cafe down the block where you could sit all morning nursing a grand crème and a
New York Times.

There was only one thing missing: Sam.

Sam, who would be here in just five hours.

His pulse quickened at the thought. He still couldn’t quite believe she was coming. A long weekend, that’s all she could manage, but he’d make it count. There was so much to show her, so much
he
hadn’t seen they could explore together. And far from home she might even forget, for a little while at least, all her reasons why this—
they
—could never work.

He leaned forward, directing the cabbie, “Lexington and Forty-seventh.”

It was shortly before six, an hour when most people were heading home from work. Traffic was dense; he was used to that by now. It’d been three weeks already, with at least another week to go on a job that had been plagued with delays from the start. Starting with the painter improperly hanging two of the panels, which had taken days to correct, followed by a four-day hiatus while the building’s new alarm system was installed. He was now in the final detailing phase when all his months of work came together in a perfectly realized whole.

The way he wished it could be with Sam.

Sam.
These past weeks, however swamped, he’d thought of little else. With other women he’d loved it had always been a case of out of sight, out of mind. But Sam was special. Maybe it frightened him a little, or maybe he wasn’t quite used to it. All he knew was that if she hadn’t agreed to come he’d have gone a little crazy.

As the cab jounced its way up Eighth Avenue he thought of her refusing to let him meet her at the airport, insisting it made no sense. That was Sam for you—self-sufficient to a fault. She must have gotten into the habit with her husband, who struck Ian as having been the self-centered type. Not that she’d said anything against him; just the opposite, in fact. That was the tip-off—if the guy had been so great, why the need to constantly stick up for him? Sam’s marriage clearly hadn’t been as solid as she wanted everyone to believe.

He wondered if her husband had truly understood her. A man who’d preferred her made up and dressed to the nines, who couldn’t see how much more beautiful she was without anything on. A man whose life seemed to have been a constant social swirl, with more room for friends and activities than his wife and kids.

He knew she was bothered by the age thing, but quite honestly he didn’t think of her as older. She was just Sam. He wouldn’t have traded her face—crow’s-feet and all—for any other woman’s. In each one of those lines he saw a life honestly, if not always fully, lived. He saw a generous heart and curious mind. He saw a woman who, in her nearly five decades on this planet, hadn’t been cherished nearly enough.

That was what he longed to do: cherish her. Hold a mirror up to let her see what he saw, how unique and extraordinary she was. He couldn’t predict the future. Hadn’t he spent most of his adult life avoiding such thoughts (along with the women who’d pushed too hard in that direction)? The only thing he was sure of was that he didn’t want to be apart from her.

The taxi lurched to a stop. They were at Lexington on Thirty-sixth, stuck in gridlock. The cabbie leaned on his horn, joining the blatting chorus. “Freakin’ president,” he muttered. “Last time he was in town, it was backed up all the way to Jersey.”

Ian peered up at the Chrysler Building’s spire, glittering above the boxy gray high-rises around it. When he was four, his mother had shown him a photograph of it in a book, telling him it was one of the world’s seven wonders—which for a long time he’d believed. Gigi, born and raised in New York, had spoken so wistfully of her native city he’d often wondered if she wasn’t sorry to have married his father and moved away. Her passion had been the art scene, which even at a young age Ian, on the rare occasions he’d accompanied her to New York, had found to be more bullshit artists than the real thing.

He wondered what Sam, a woman for whom loving her children was as natural as breathing, would have made of Gigi. She was curious about his childhood, he knew, but he didn’t quite know what to tell her. It wasn’t that his mother hadn’t shown him affection. But Georgina—Gigi to family and friends—had been mostly selfish and vain, a failed painter who’d turned to promoting young talent, invariably male.

He would never forget the day, sent home sick from school, that he’d walked in to find his mother posing nude on the living room couch for her current protégé, a coarse and pretentious young artist named Carlo. Ian was twelve. It was the first time he’d seen his mother naked.

Gigi had regarded him with mild annoyance, asking, “Darling, what on earth are you doing home this time of day?” There wasn’t a hint of embarrassment in her voice. Nor did she reach for the yellow silk robe lying in a puddle at her feet.

“My stomach hurts,” he’d said. It was true; he’d felt as if he might throw up.

“Well, for heaven’s sake, go lie down.” It was more than two hours before she finally tiptoed into his room, to see how he was doing. Ian pretended to be asleep while she felt his forehead. A few minutes later he heard the sound of the shower and the soft murmuring of Gigi’s and Carlo’s voices. He was certain his father wouldn’t have approved, but Ian never said a word. What would have been the point? Wes was hardly ever around. It was as if Gigi and he led separate lives, with Ian, their only child, rattling about in the empty space between.

Ian was fourteen when his mother became ill. What he remembered most about that time was the pall that had hung over the house. All those protégés and fair-weather friends had vanished overnight. No one visited Gigi in the hospital, and only a few sent flowers. Her bitterness knew no bounds. Ian wasn’t sure how much of it was because she was dying, and how much because she’d been brought face-to-face with the shallowness of her existence. She’d refused even the solace of her husband and son. When they came to see her she would turn her face to the wall, pretending to be asleep.

After she died, Ian turned away, too. He ran wild, staying out all night with friends, drinking too much. His junior year he flunked all but one course, and that was art. Wes laid down the law: If he didn’t clean up his act, drastic measures would be taken. Ian didn’t care; he was beyond caring. In a final fuck-you, he got wasted the night of his junior prom, and with a group of friends broke into a teacher’s car. Hours later the cops caught them joyriding in West Hollywood, a trail of empty beer cans marking their path. The following day, Ian was on a plane to New Mexico.

It was at Horizons, a wilderness program for wayward boys of wealthy parents, that he finally learned to cope. Not just with his mother’s death, but with never really having had her in the first place. His counselor, a plainspoken black man named Leander Fisk, had provided the key.

“Ain’t no such thing as accidents,” he’d said one night as they sat huddled around a campfire, Leander and fifteen exhausted, mosquito-bitten boys. “Y’all were put here on this earth for a reason. Your job is to figure out what that reason is.”

Leander was a living example. He’d grown up in the Deep South, hating and fearing whites. All that had changed one fateful day in 1969 when he was marching in a civil rights rally and a white man he didn’t even know shoved him to the ground to take a bullet intended for Leander. Leander swore on the man’s grave to devote the rest of his life to promoting racial tolerance.

Ian’s destiny had been to seize upon the one thing of value that Gigi had given him: a love of art. From then on, he’d worked tirelessly, graduating from UCLA in just three years before going on to earn his master’s in fine art. In time the rift with his father began to heal. He would never quite forgive Wes, but he now saw his dad as someone who’d tried his best—even if he’d fallen short of the mark. Ian could only hope he’d be a better father to any kids Alice and he might have.

The taxi jerked, and they were once more on the move. Minutes later it was pulling to a stop on the southeast corner of Forty-seventh and Lex. He paid the cabbie and got out. As he battled the tide of commuters spilling from the revolving glass door just ahead, Ian felt like the proverbial salmon swimming upstream. He didn’t mind. While these people were jockeying for cabs and seats on the subway, he’d be settling in with his brushes and paint on the twenty-eighth floor, Johnny Coltrane on his Walkman, and all of Manhattan at his feet.

He stepped out of the elevator, using his keys to unlock the doors to the reception area. He paused just inside. The offices of Aaronson Asset Management always took a moment or two to get used to. In an era of sleek lines and minimalist decor they were a throwback to another century. Marble floor and walnut wainscoting, reproduction Sheraton desk and chairs, even a Waterford crystal chandelier. All in all, more suited to a Wall Street bank than a modern high-rise.

His mural spanned three walls above the wainscoting, depicting various vintage Manhattan scenes: the view from a boat docking at Ellis Island, circa 1900, the year Julius Aaronson, great-grandfather of the firm’s present-day CEO, first arrived in this country; the Wall Street stock exchange just before the crash of 1929; steelworkers clambering over girders on the partially completed Empire State Building.

He was peeling the tarp from the scaffolding in one corner when the door to the office suites swung open. A petite, curly-haired young woman in a tailored charcoal pantsuit appeared: Julius Aaronson III’s daughter, Marissa, or Markie, as she liked to be called.

She brought a hand to her chest with a breathless cry. “Ian! You scared me. For a second I thought you were my father.”

He shrugged amiably. “What if I had been?”

“I’m supposed to be on my way to Amagansett,” she explained. “Big family do. I told Dad I had a dentist’s appointment. He doesn’t approve of my working late. In fact, he doesn’t approve of my working at all. Not in the hallowed halls of finance, that is. He’d have preferred it if I’d become…well, an artist.” She smiled coquettishly, revealing a dimple in one cheek.

She was really quite pretty—in an Ivy-League-brat sort of way. Her eyes were a light toffee brown, her skin strikingly porcelain against the Sephardic blackness of her hair.

“You won’t get rich that way,” he said with a laugh.

“I’m rich already.”

Ian was disarmed by her candor. “Why does that not surprise me?”

She eyed him closely. “You don’t look as if you’ve missed too many meals yourself.”

Ian thought of the early days, how noble he’d felt spurning his father’s offer to help. He’d do it on his own, or not at all…which was basically a load of crap. He should have taken the money, as a loan if nothing else. It would’ve meant fewer commissions, and more time for what he enjoyed most.

“I get by,” he said.

She stepped back to admire the mural. “I can see why. You’re very good.”

“Thanks.”

“It reminds me a little of Diego Rivera’s
La Creación.
”

He was amused by her efforts to impress him, yet felt no need to encourage her by telling her that he, too, was a great admirer of Rivera.

She glanced at her watch—slim, expensive. “I was just about to call for takeout. Care to join me?”

“Maybe another time.” He gestured toward the scaffolding. “I’m behind as it is.”

She tried not to look disappointed. “Me too. I’ll grab something to eat at my desk.”

“Don’t work too hard.” Ian swung up onto the platform, where his paints and brushes were neatly laid out on a rag.

Markie flashed him a fetching smile on the way back to her office: at least ten thousand dollars’ worth of orthodontics, all of it directed at him. Ian had no doubt she’d find plenty of takers, but could think of no polite way to let her know he wasn’t interested.

Hours later he was dabbing with his brush at the buttons on a stockbroker’s greatcoat when he happened to glance up to see that it was a few minutes after eleven. Jesus. Where had the time gone? If he didn’t hurry, Sam would get to the apartment ahead of him. He hastily cleaned and stowed his brushes.

He was waiting for the elevator when Markie slipped up alongside him. He didn’t think it was a coincidence, but forced himself to ask pleasantly, “Off to Amagansett?”

She rolled her eyes. “Between you and me, I’d rather go home and crash.”

The elevator doors thumped open, and they stepped in. “That’s exactly what I plan on doing,” he said.

As if she’d only just thought of it, Markie offered casually, “Listen, why don’t I drop you off?”

“That’s nice of you, but I’m all the way over on the West Side.”

He could see that Markie Aaronson, only child of Julius Aaronson III, wasn’t used to taking no for an answer. “It’s no bother. This time of night everything is two minutes away.”

Ian was left with no choice. “Well, in that case, thanks.”

They rode the elevator down to the garage and minutes later were speeding south on Park Avenue in Markie’s sporty little Mercedes convertible—a gift from her parents, no doubt. “Where to?” She raised her voice to be heard above the din of traffic.