The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating (18 page)

“Sweetie. Daddy’s got things to do, people to see.”

“Well, I need help.”

He was there within the hour bearing gifts—stockings from Kiki’s, a colorful pile of fitted tees, a well-thumbed paperback of Erica Jong’s
Fear of Flying
.

He gave Charlie’s urn a loving pat—Claire cringed. Then he stretched himself out in Charlie’s chair. “Okay. Let it out.”

“I had sex.”

Ethan’s eyes popped open wide.

“With a person?” he said.

“Don’t judge me.” Claire said and paused for a moment. “It was Bradley Hess.”

Ethan’s fingers rubbed his chin, his eyes narrowed.

“Sasha’s accountant?”

“No! Brad Hess. The actor. You know…” Claire couldn’t think of the name of a movie he’d been in. “Well, he’s in a new movie right now. It opens soon.”

Ethan rubbed a hand through his hair. He was loving this.

“An actor,” he said. “Well, that’s nothing to shake a leg at, Clara.” His smile spread slowly across his face like an oil spill.

“You said you wouldn’t judge and, by the way, he’s going to be big. It’s Jack Huxley’s new movie.”

“This is an interesting twist.”

He folded his arms. He was making Claire nervous.

“It was fun, and it’s over, and that’s that.”

“It was fun?”

“Well … I think it was. There are gaps.”

Ethan got up and walked to the kitchen. Charlie’s weekly delivery from Gourmet Garage was still coming. It was on the counter. It had come just before Ethan arrived. Mixed winter greens, smoked trout, infused vinegars and assorted herbs, and a hormone-free grass-fed leg of lamb. Ethan rubbed his hands together and perused the wine selection in Charlie’s stash.

“It’s a lot to take in, sweetie. We might need to whip something up for this,” he said. He opened a red, took an appraising drink, and brought a glass out to Claire.

“It was complicated anyway. No, I mean, not really. It’s fine. I don’t want to analyze it.”

“You always want to analyze. That’s your thing,” Ethan said putting emphasis on
thing
to make his point.

“Well, I don’t want to now.” The smell of onion and garlic was relaxing to her. She’d taken it for granted for so many years, the fragrance and bustle of a kitchen. Of someone preparing and serving meals. The Malbec made her brave.

“I’m going to L.A.”

“You’re going to L.A. Well, you can’t make someone fall in love with you but you can stalk him and hope he panics and gives in. I love it!”

The small kitchen began to sizzle. Ethan pulled out his iPod and plugged it into Charlie’s speaker. Maria Callas singing
Tosca
. It felt reassuring and familiar—like a prelude.

“Nobody’s stalking anyone,” Claire said. “Richard told Jack Huxley about Charlie’s book. I think he’s trying to muscle me into finishing it.” The music grew louder.
Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore.
Claire raised her voice to be heard over it. “Anyway, he invited us for a meeting.”

“Who invited you for a meeting?”

“Huxley.”

Ethan tasted a shallot off the end of his fork.

RULE
#9
: Always judge a book by its cover.

“Wow. Nicely played by Richard. When do you leave?”

“Next week,” Claire shouted. Ethan turned down the sound. “So I need your help with the manuscript. I’ve looked through it—it’s a mess.”

Ethan pulled out his phone. “Honey, you don’t need manuscripts, you need shopping. Have you learned nothing from me? It’s never the product, it’s always the packaging.”

Six hours and one decadent lamb stew later, Claire was armed with a little black dress, Giuseppe Zanotti heels, and a Halston jumpsuit that Ethan swore would turn him straight—things it felt ridiculous to be buying when the temperature in New York was forty degrees, things that would be perfect for L.A.

She returned to her apartment shell-shocked by the crush of early holiday shoppers. She watched the rain fall down the long picture windows that Charlie had never liked. The smell of pine and sage snuck under her door. Couples were opening bottles of wine; they were warm and at ease. They were flirting, and kissing, and making soufflés, and watching
It’s a Wonderful Life
.

For the next week, Claire worked diligently on Charlie’s book. She fleshed out Huxley’s character. She reread old profile pieces. She marched through conflict, then resolution, then conflict again. Jack Huxley had wild affairs both off the screen and on. Jack Huxley was the nephew of one of the world’s most intellectual men. Jack Huxley played a charming brooder in big box-office rom-coms but funded independent films of Alister McGrath on the side. Jack Huxley was an enigma. Rogue. Heartthrob. Womanizer. Check.

But was Jack Huxley also serious? Sensitive? Real? Claire was getting mixed messages. How much of Charlie’s manuscript was true to Huxley’s life? Would the story evolve as she got to know its subject better? Richard was selling this as Charlie’s book, under the guise that it was for the most part complete, with Claire just cleaning it up. But the project was turning out to be a lot for her to chew on.

24

Claire did not own a flower-print dress, but after Beatrice’s pronouncement, she bought one. And while Huxley said his lines in front of a replica of a Turkish mosque on the Paramount lot, Claire Byrne batted her eyelashes on a Boeing 757, which touched down in Los Angeles at 11:03 a.m.

Frank Sinatra crooned through her iPod. It was seventy-five degrees and the air felt light as she walked from the plane into the pleasant buzz of LAX. Even baggage claim, through Claire’s new sunglasses, looked pink. On the drive to her hotel, there were tall palms and green grass, there were bright colors and open spaces and panoramas. Here, it seemed, everyone was entitled; there were enough sunny riches to go around.

“We have dinner tonight. Eight,” Richard said.

“Okay,” Claire said, from her room in the Hotel Bel-Air. “Dinner with Huxley. It sounds like a movie title.” She was picking raisins out of breakfast cereal, comfort food. She was rattled, but Richard couldn’t see this through the phone.

Jack Huxley. What would she say when she saw him? What would he say when he saw her? She didn’t remember him leaving that night. God, had she been a complete mess? Did he know what happened afterward?

“The three of us, then? The four of us?” Claire asked. Richard had brought Bridget along.

“Oh, I doubt it. Huxley won’t come alone, he’ll have people there—his agent or lawyer, or assistant. Just be charming and professional. Be yourself. I’ll have to meet you there, I’ve got a meeting with one of my film agents; we might be able to option the rights to something now that Charlie’s dead.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, honey. That was insensitive. I’ll have a car sent to take you to the restaurant. Don’t be late.”

Claire hung up the phone and dialled Ethan.

“I’m nervous,” she said. She lounged across the California king.

“You’ll be fine. Just picture him naked.”

“You’re not helping,” Claire said. “Do you think he knows about Brad Hess? That whole
situation
?”

“The ‘situation’? Sweetie, you’re just having dinner.”

“Right, I know. You’re right. I’ll be fine.” Claire hung up the phone and pressed the button marked
CONCIERGE
.

“Hello, Ms. Byrne, how can I help you?”

He sounded young and well built, and Claire thought of all the ways in which he might help, but settled on hair. “Can I get into the salon for a blowout at four o’clock?”

“Of course. Will that be all?”

“Yes. Thank you.” She hung up the phone and flopped across the bed.

The tide was turning. Claire felt the shifting of sand. For nearly six months she’d been “the young widow.” But something had changed and she had the unsettling sense she wasn’t reading things right. It was dangerous, perhaps, to fiddle with a narrative too soon into the story.

She was prepared to be aloof. To coolly reference the night or to not reference it at all. She was prepared to go all Joan Didion on Jack Huxley. Unflappable. Inscrutable. She’d be a cool customer to his Hollywood dog and pony show.

If she had any luck at all, she’d go to dinner with Richard and Bridget and also Jack Huxley. He’d have his
people
there, they’d exchange pleasantries. She would be amused with his self-absorption, his boorish stories. She’d see he was just another stuffed ego and chalk him up as a souvenir. She’d rehash the details for hours with Ethan. Then she’d file him away as anecdotal material for parties, stories her future lover might prod her to tell. “Claire, tell about that time you met Jack Huxley.”

Yes, that would be best. Then she’d scrap the book—it was boring her anyway—and she would never see Jack Huxley again, except on a movie channel here and there, as she flipped around on sleepless nights when her future lover was gone on business.

If Claire had any luck at all, the night would evolve like that. But Claire was sometimes unlucky. Her husband was knocked dead by a fake bronze, don’t forget. She’d neither moved on nor picked a charity, as Grace had suggested; Charlie’s ashes still sat imposingly atop their coffee table. She flounders.

RULE #10
: If you see your type coming, run.

Claire dressed for dinner, but she was careless. She forgot all about Beatrice. Like the heroine in a Hitchcock film, she forgot the one crucial thing. She made the obvious mistake. Instead of the flower-print dress, which she’d recklessly shoved to the bottom of her bag, Claire Byrne wore the Halston. She didn’t know it—it didn’t occur to her as she relaxed in the chair during her blowout in the salon that afternoon—but she was about to take a turn for the worse.

It was Aristotle who said it: “All human actions have one or more of seven causes,” and then he named them: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.

Charlie had used this idea to open the sixth chapter in
Thinker’s Hope
, the chapter in which Aristotle was attacked by postmodernists.

It was by
chance
that she’d met Charlie, it was our
nature
to not be alone, it was a
compulsion
to have sex, it was a
habit
to smoke. There was no
reason
to anything;
passion
, Charlie had said, mutually excluded the rest: and
desire
, yes, desire—desire was Jack Huxley. It was the point of Charlie’s book. No one in the entire modern world would have tried, even briefly, to argue against that. Jack Huxley launched a thousand ships. Jack Huxley smiled and it was one of those rare smiles, the smile Fitzgerald gave to Gatsby. Jack Huxley dazzled—no, wait, it was much more than that. He smiled and an angel got his wings. He smiled and women on other continents became heavy with child; he smiled and mayflies started screwing in the dead of winter. Jack Huxley smiled and watermelons burst from frozen ground.

“Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” That wasn’t Aristotle, it was Newton, but it was about the forces of two bodies. Charlie and the
Man Walking
. Walter White and Sande. Claire and Charlie. And now Claire and who? Jack Huxley? Jack Huxley’s smile spun ordinary objects into jewels.

Jack Huxley was the uncertainty principle.

Jack Huxley led to the room of smoke and mirrors.

*   *   *

C
LAIRE WAS LATE
, it turned out; not deliberately, but she was glad it had worked out that way. When she walked into the restaurant there was one man in the room who was instantly recognizable—that was Richard. There was another man who was not. She’d sold him short in recollection. She’d met him, they’d flirted, she’d thought he’d brought her home, she may have been a complete ass in front of him, she didn’t know. His aura should have been dulled; instead it had amped way up. The air around him should have staled; instead, it was rarefied.

Jack Huxley looked up, and Claire watched him watch her cross the room to their table. In a romantic comedy she would have tripped and spilled somebody’s wine and he would have looked on benevolently. As luck had it, though, she traversed the room unscathed and it wasn’t indulgence Jack Huxley showed, but curiosity. Ah, the smile. Claire’s heart stumbled, stopped, then caught itself again.

The power of a smile—the crazy, dizzy, electrifying, and completely disproportionate unreality of a smile. It’s just a smile, for Christ’s sake. It’s facial muscles, a contraction, a reflex, it’s a mindless social tic. But when it’s done right, Tony Bennett starts to sing in the background of one’s mind, and on his heels, Barry White. Claire Byrne felt her breath pull in and let out. She felt her heart rise and fall like a Ferris wheel, round and round. All of this from a glimpse of white teeth. If it was a shock of pale ankle that set off the Victorians, for Claire it was a smile, this one here. His eyes stopped on her eyes; they connected. A meteor, the great star formerly known as Jupiter, the northern lights of possibility, came shooting out through the man’s eyes, and his teeth, and his strong square solid chin. There was a flutter, a crinkle, the unveiling of kryptonite in the hypnotic power of all this.

Caution was sucked from the room, Claire heard the
fwoop
.

“Hello,” Claire said. Jack Huxley stood and took her hand. “Claire,” he said, and he kissed her cheek. “You look lovely.”

“You’re late,” Richard observed quietly. But his irritation, tonight, was charming. Life and all its petty inconveniences were for her amusement. Richard stood, too, kissed both of Claire’s cheeks—she offered them graciously. Bridget grinned, that sweet childish grin, and took Claire’s hand. Richard had been wrong. Jack hadn’t brought an agent or a lawyer or an assistant or a friend. He’d come alone. “We’ve ordered starters,” Richard said. “And drinks.”

Claire felt deliriously calm. Gravity relaxed its hold on her. Something could happen or nothing could happen, and either way, in this room, it was fine.

They sat down; they exchanged pleasantries. Claire wondered if Jack knew about the rest of that night. Bradley Hess had never called her. Did men boast to each other of these things? If he knew, he was coy, asking questions about Charlie’s work, about Claire’s writing. He asked question after question, he listened, he watched her eyes. Bridget sucked on the olives from her martini.