What I Did for Love (7 page)

“Did you?” she asked, giggling.

“Oh, Robin, we never actually got to it! We were, you know, ‘in the throes of love,’ as they say, and I did Mrs. Sanjay’s technique, and he loved it,” at which Robin squeaked, her special sound, and bounced on the chair some more. “But just as we were about to, just at the point, his phone rang…” and I never finished the sentence because Robin screeched out an “eeeeek, oh noooooo…”

She was suddenly serious and angry for me. “And he
answered
it?” She was indignant. “Why didn’t he just ignore it!”

“You should have heard the weird ringtone, Robin. That was no regular call, and sure enough, he sent me home in his car and flew off, I think late last night, maybe to India since that’s the only place I’ve ever smelled roses like this.” I hesitated. “I wonder how he got them here overnight, though…”

“Never mind that!” Robin exclaimed. “You’re going to see him again!”

“Yes! I can’t believe how he affects me, he’s bright and tender and…” I had no more words, I just turned my hands up, surrendering the struggle to describe it.

“And
super
rich!” She looked at me. “Do you know how rich he is?”

“Robin, we’re not exactly poor.”

“Oooh, but the Rands and the Grenvilles and the Strellings and all the rest of that family are really what ‘super’ means when they say ‘super-rich’.” She looked at me with a grin, and said, “I’ll bet you haven’t Googled him.”

“No.” It hadn’t occurred to me.

“Do you know how many guys have Googled
you
?” she said,
“and me, before or right after we meet?”

“I know people do it…”

“Yes, you innocent creature, I know
you
don’t.” She was laughing.

“I’m not an innocent creature. Rand wasn’t the first man to kiss me or to get to third base.”

“Whoever got to third base with you, probably was called out at home.” She was still laughing.

“Well, I’m not naïve.”

“No, that you’re not. You’re more clever than most people can ever imagine.”

“You’re the same,” I told her.

“Yes.” She was. It was not arrogance. It was a simple statement of fact, and it reflected our sameness.

As we started to leave my apartment she turned back one more to inhale the roses’ perfume, lingering over them with a long, dreamy look. Then we were talking as we made our way down to the street and across to a wonderful small café.

Robin was serious now, our earlier conversation evidently very much at play in her mind. “We
are
smart, Dray, and as they say, ‘clever beyond our years.’ We hide it well, but we know ourselves.”

I looked at my friend at she spoke, seeing that she was talking as much to herself as to me, using our familiar pattern of saying our thoughts out loud to each other, no answer needed, but comments lovingly received when one of us did answer.

She went on, “We’re at a top school, we’ve gone to the best schools, and no one puts it together, that all this education may actually have ‘taken’, and that we’re very intelligent, and maybe not wise, but we
know
stuff, and we can think and analyze.”

I wondered if my friend had been getting some “get married and be a good wife” lectures from the oldest members of her mother’s clan. She was on the way to another set of lectures from the great- and great-great aunts in her father’s family. Robin was
an heiress-in-the-making, major monies coming to her from both families. For the oldest in these families, the imperative was to keep the family money safe by making a solid marriage and producing a healthy crop of progeny. I had seen a little bit of it, but my family’s situation was different. Our parents’ families had had very bad luck with health issues. Not many remained of our parents’ extended families, and Bredon and I were clucked over in absentia. Our relatives knew that we were a brother and sister more like Lazarus than like Adam, risen from too stark a knowledge of death, not siblings who were young and newly-made. Our relatives also lived mostly at a distance, though we did have a couple of great-aunts in the New York region, who had been a refuge for me after the bombing. Bredon and I, along with some great-cousins, had dutifully visited them these past Christmases and Easters. No one expected us to be there with light hearts, and I blessed the two ancient ladies for their generous love.

Robin had been silent, allowing my own thoughts to wander. Our companionable togetherness was always this way. Just sitting together, just walking together, without words, warming and wonderful. But now Robin came back to her theme with a restless gesture.

“I don’t think, even now, even with all that women have achieved, that people really believe how deeply smart we are.” She gave me one of her calculating looks. “I wonder if even Grenville Rand, currently the major brain of his family’s empire, knows how smart you are.” Her expression was dead serious.

“We’ve only just met, Robin!” I wondered at her steady look, the thoughtful way in which she studied me. “You have reservations about him? Tell me,” I said.

“I don’t know what it is, Dray. I’ve seen pictures of him, he’s handsome enough.”

“Pictures? Where?” Why hadn’t I seen them?

“You don’t follow what they call ‘society gossip’,” she said.
Her tone softened. “You’ve kind of had other things on your mind.”

She was right, this insightful friend, how well she knew me. My sense of the proportion of things had shifted, the whole planet had shifted for me, what mattered and what didn’t, everything had different weight now. “So tell me the gossip,” I said.

“There isn’t much, just a couple of pictures. He and his family seem to be as camera-shy as your family, even from before…” She looked down, feeling she had been clumsy in what she said.

I did not want her to feel clumsy. What she said was the truth, and I quickly said, “You’re right about my family, and me and Bredon, yes, but I didn’t realize that Rand was that way too.” I thought for a minute. “I’m glad about it. And he said he was never married, I asked him. Did he have a steady girlfriend?” I hesitated, and then asked, with a flutter of wariness and hope, “Is he linked with anyone now?”

“Lots of women would
like
to be linked with him, but no, no one name,” Robin said. She grinned at me, glad to have some good news.

Time was running on. Her family’s car and driver were across the street; the driver was now out of the car, waiting, and we knew our precious time together was done. We had a quick argument over who was treating whom, which she won, “Since we’re celebrating an almost-there affair,” which made me laugh, we hurried across the avenue, thankful for a lull in the endless city traffic. Today, even the killer bicyclists and truck drivers and speeding cars seemed to have found another place to be.

“Have a good trip, Robin,” I said, hugging her, missing her terribly even as I held her in a good-bye. “Be safe. Come home soon.”

“You’re the best, you know.” She grinned, and gave me a quick little kiss on the cheek before gracefully folding herself into the familiar back seat, just like Rand’s car, just like Bredon’s. I stepped back so that her driver could close the door, and I
nodded and smiled at him, wanting to say, “Take care of my friend, drive safely,” but he saw the look, acknowledging it with a serious nod. I bent and waved good-bye to Robin and stood at the curb watching her car disappear onto the eastbound street, to the highway and the bridge and the roads to Kennedy Airport. I sighed, missing her company and Rand’s. I would have to call Bredon and see if he would have dinner with me. I missed my friend, I missed my lover, but I always and forever missed Bredon.

I found my phone when I got back to my apartment, not having missed it while I was with Robin. I was always forgetting or leaving it. Somehow I had escaped the compulsion that sent my generation into a digital day, electronics for every task. Still, I was grateful for the instant connection my phone gave me to Bredon and all who mattered to me.

I started to press the quick dial for Bredon but saw a text waiting. Clicking on it, I read, “Tomorrow night, Darling. R.” I was feeling joyful. Rand would be back, and this afternoon I would run to get my hair streaked some more, to look fashionably brown-and-blonde, and maybe indulge in a whole spa treatment. I called Bredon, who quickly agreed to dinner at seven thirty, late for me, but I had to leave time for the spa. I told him I would come get him at his office, since the spa was nearby. He seemed distracted, but there was that major deal going on that undoubtedly had his attention.

Tomorrow I would go looking for what I never bought: the sexy-frilly underwire bras with matching panties that set fantasies in motion. I hoped Rand would be even more excited when he saw them. On Monday night I had on only the basic white underclothing I always wore, nothing fancy, very comfortable. Now I had a reason to buy at the store most famed for sexy underwear – and I would look for the thigh-high stockings that would leave my panties free to be pulled away easily. I sighed, thinking of it, growing warmer, thinking maybe
it was time to buy some sex toys to satisfy me when I started thinking of Rand, and giggled to myself at the thought. Tonight I would have to pleasure myself into sleep, images of Rand to drive all my desires.

By seven-thirty when I arrived at Bredon’s office, I was glowing from a facial, my nails and toes were done, my hair sleekly shaped and falling freely for a change. I was wearing a chic dress and matching sweater-shawl in a pale green that favored my hazel eyes. Bredon had our mother’s dark hair and eyes, while I had our father’s brown hair and lighter eyes. Yet our faces were similar. No one could doubt that we were brother and sister, and people often commented on how much we looked alike.

I anticipated a compliment, a twinkle, some happiness when Bredon saw that I had made myself glamorous. But all my happy humor faded as I walked out of the elevator and saw Mrs. Andrews standing there, waiting for me.

Her tension was obvious to me even through her habitual formal posture. She gave me that special look that I had first seen three years before, the look that great-souled, loving women give to motherless girls. That look could undo me at first, so that I had to teach myself the painful control that little boys learned, not to cry. The first time I did it, the pain wracked my body, and I understood what so many boys forgot as they grew into men, they forgot the pain of suppressing their tears. For men, the disappearance of that memory seemed unimportant, since the important thing was not to cry, not to be weak, not to be a girl.

That control over my tears had become autonomic, where the body seems to act on its own. I felt that reaction now, steeling myself as I saw Mrs. Andrews’ loving and concerned look. But drawing closer to her, I also saw a concern larger than her compassion for me. Bredon. When our parents were lost, she had turned herself into his mother too. This never-married woman, very private, very formal and businesslike, the perfect front desk person for Bredon’s office, was transformed by our profound despair, her love for us hidden except to our discerning eyes.

The look on her face had to mean that Bredon was facing trouble. I had never seen this look before, but I sure did know it now, seeing it this first time. I felt a shudder and my stomach felt queasy. Oh God, I prayed, my brother, my brother. Those were the only words of prayer I could think of, but I was sure that God was listening with a compassion infinitely beyond even that of the loving Mrs. Andrews.

Bredon came out of his office with a crisp step, his posture erect, his appearance impeccable. He kissed my cheek and gave me a quick look of admiring appraisal, but I could see that he had much on his mind. When I saw his face, I realized that we should have met at his apartment or mine, to have a serious talk.

“Thanks so much for staying, Mrs. Andrews,” my brother told her, his warm tone seeming to ease her heart a bit.

“Yes, thank you,” I added, smiling at her, pretending I realized nothing.

She took her cue, nodded her “good-nights,” and disappeared into the elevator. Once the doors had closed I asked Bredon, “Would you rather we just went home and talked?” It would be his choice of “home.”

“No, Dray, it’s all right. I’ve made reservations; the car is downstairs, let’s get something to eat.”

We said little to each other on the way to the restaurant, except for Bredon’s compliments for what the spa had managed to do to make me shine. The worst of the traffic had passed and we got to the restaurant quickly.

Happily it was a week night, and although Bredon’s was a known face among the city’s financial and cultural notables, this little restaurant knew how to arrange quiet, private seating, keeping the lights low. Bredon also favored this place because he – and I too – hated the banging about of dishes and doors in busy, less exclusive kitchens. In this restaurant, clatter and noise could get a bus boy or any staff member fired, and tips were too good to let carelessness cost them their jobs. The restaurant was
called “La Reine Tranquille,” The Tranquil Queen, for a reason. It was a place for quiet dining, low voices, and almost invisible table service.

Bredon’s appearance at the restaurant caused the usual quiet stir among the staff, the chef peeking out to wave at him, an order quickly given, wine ordered and poured. Once done, the staff disappeared, knowing not to keep coming to the table while we were talking. No asking, “Is everything all right?” or the other nonsensical and interfering things that wait staff were taught to do in most restaurants. One of the staff always kept an eye on Bredon, but from a respectful distance. If something was not right, Bredon’s expression would tell them soon enough.

I was almost afraid to start our conversation, feeling my brother’s preoccupation with what had to be heavy news about his big gamble. When I made the dinner date, I had wanted to tell Bredon that I was mad about Rand, that I was going to see him tomorrow, that I had seen Robin, and all my large and small news. Instead I focused on Bredon, his air of distraction stirring fear in my heart.

“Bredon…” I began, and my questions did not need to be asked.