“Lead the way.”
Fortunately it was a warm December and the winter storms hadn’t arrived; our walk took us from Union Square east and down into the glass and granite canyon that was San Francisco’s Financial District and over to Bush Street where we managed to secure a table at the most popular restaurant in the city. We were tucked into a corner lit by candles and flickering holiday lights scattered on potted plants.
“Do you live here in San Francisco?” Donovan queried as we waited for the check an hour later and lingered over sweet wine.
“Berkeley.”
“Why not here? This is the first time I’ve been to San Francisco, and it’s an amazing place.”
“I lived here for a short while when I was a little girl. With my grandmother. She lived in an apartment house on California Street not far from Grace Cathedral. That was after we got back,” I explained.
“From where?”
“England. After my dad disappeared we lived here until we found the house in Berkeley. I used to spend weekends with her – probably just to keep me out of my mother’s hair.”
“You haven’t heard from him, or know what happened?”
“There are stories – most aren’t true, I suppose, and no one will corroborate anything said. I have my own theory.”
“Which is…?”
“I think he just left.” I turned to look at Donovan, who looked back tenderly. “My parents were having a hard time – my mother wanted to come back to the States and my father wanted to open an architectural firm in London – he loved restoring the old houses and buildings after the war, and he liked the government contracts that kept falling into his lap. My brother and I were caught in the crossfire of their arguments. One afternoon he didn’t show up. We waited for a week. The British authorities and the American embassy had no explanation. I used to sit on the stoop of our townhouse and think that if I sat there, his taxi would roll up and out he’d bound. Didn’t happen. I was relieved when my mother finally stopped crying and brought us back to California.”
“Maybe that’s why there’s a wall up around lovely Alice,” Donovan murmured, kissing my neck.
“No, it’s being treated badly by men.”
“What if,” Donovan whispered, sliding closer in the booth, “I helped you get over that?”
“It’s not a virus, Donovan!” I laughed sadly. “If you can change the genetic predisposition of men to not look past oneself and one’s needs, I’d be impressed.”
“What if it was the gene pool of just one man?”
“I’d be impressed.”
The wine may have softened my disposition towards Donovan, but my guard was still up. We took a cab to the Montgomery Street BART station where he spent money for a ticket just to wait on the platform with me until my train arrived, a gesture that was kind, if not romantic in my eyes.
“I wish you’d reconsider my offer,” he asked, taking my hand as I glanced down the track at the lights in the next station, a sign of the train’s imminent arrival.
“Donovan, I enjoyed being with you tonight, but I have to sort things out. You can’t just appear out of the ether and expect everything to be like it was in Florence.”
“I think it can be like it was. Give me a chance? I’m trying to reconstruct genetic makeup here.”
The train flew into the station, horn blaring. Donovan pulled me close for a brief kiss and stood on the platform waving goodbye as I left on the train. I saw that image in my mind and dreamt of Florence after I had fallen asleep on the sofa and in my best suit. It made for a night of troubled sleep, which put me in a bad mood by morning. The doorbell ringing frantically had me alert and I yanked the door open to find Dennis and Harry on the threshold with a pink bakery box and a quartet of coffees in a paper tray.
“Oh dear!” Harry greeted.
“Not what you think – or what you want to think,” I grumbled, leading the way down the hall to the kitchen.
“Oh dear!” they sighed in unison.
“Just once I’d like to meet on a Saturday morning and learn that you’d done something wicked and scandalous, and preferably not in a foreign country,” Dennis said bestowing a kiss on my brow.
“Oh I don’t know,” Harry chimed in. “It looks better on a resume if you’ve caused a sensation on the Continent rather than in Kansas, because nothing would shock most Europeans these days.”
“Harry!” I groaned.
“Office Christmas party last night?” Dennis hinted, handing everything to Harry and nudging him gently into the kitchen.
“A date with Doctor Trist,” I muttered and glared at both of them, waiting for a barb or something smartass.
“The guy who keeps showing up at the house?” Harry asked. “And? And?”
“I appreciate your concern, but let’s have breakfast and save rescuing Alice from her rabbit hole for another day,” I said and threw myself back on the sofa, clutching a pillow. Harry made himself useful by getting our breakfast ready.
Dennis stared at me for the longest time – an uncomfortably long time. “What are you doing?” he finally asked in the sonorous whine of a parent.
“Oh God, here it comes…”
“Alice, you’re miserable. You went to Italy, again, miserable, and you came back, again, miserable.”
“Do you want me to go back so it doesn’t bother you so much?”
“No – but I need to know what’s going on. I don’t want a repeat of Dad or Mom. I can’t live through that again.”
“I don’t drown my sorrow in booze, and the only pill I take is for birth control or an occasional aspirin.”
“Maybe it’s time to let go.”
“I have.”
My statement was defensive and I could tell Dennis was ready for another lob. He threw a grenade.
“You haven’t. No, don’t argue! You haven’t. This Doctor Trist looks and sounds like Quinn’s evil twin. Adam, the Boyfriend from Hell, same thing. I won’t bring up Jeremy or Patrick, or any of the one-week wonders you brought around. Date a blond with blue eyes – a surfer or a car mechanic, walk away from these intellectual basket cases, Alice! Do something different and unpredictable for a change. You’re miserable and you know it.”
“Get used to the 1977 model Quinn, Denny; I’ve pretty much decided on it. Already went for a test drive,” I quipped, jumping off the sofa to change my clothes. Dennis caught my hand and pulled me onto his lap like in the old days.
“You don’t sound convinced to me.”
“Still working out the bugs, if you must know.”
“Such as?”
I drew a long and deep breath, knowing where this would lead. Despite this, I said quietly, “Ever been attracted to someone you knew was just wrong for you for every reason possible?”
“I get it – he’s not so much a Mister Goodbar but a Rocky Road - maybe a Sugar Daddy?”
“Enough of the candy metaphors. He isn’t all bad. Just bits – annoying bits.”
“But I bet he needed to do some serious begging or groveling to earn your forgiveness.”
“Life’s all about second chances. You’ve got that face. What?”
“I don’t like him. He’s not the guy who should be getting a second chance in my book.”
I bristled. “He isn’t here – and Donovan is. And I’m tired of being alone and Donovan wants me.”
“Not the best reasons,” Dennis said flatly as he dumped me off his lap. “Speaking of which do you have any?”
“What?”
“Reasons.”
“He’s an interesting guy, Denny. He’s an archeologist, intelligent; we have interesting conversations that take interesting twists and turns and make me want to read more, be more than I am. I feel grown up around Donovan, I feel sophisticated.”
“That’s it?” Dennis squealed, pushing himself off the sofa to help Harry bring in our traditional Saturday morning brunch, a tray laden with pastries, scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, fruit and the coffees.
“C’mon, Alice,” Harry called after me as I finally went into the bedroom to change.
“I’ll be there in a sec,” I shouted back.
“I’m not talking about clothes, I’m talking about this guy!” Harry said.
“Why do you insist on calling him ‘that guy’? He has a name.”
“Beelzebub comes to mind,” Dennis muttered. He smiled innocently at me when I returned in jeans and a tee shirt.
“Hands off the bacon, it’s mine,” I said, sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table to take my fair share of the food.
“We want to know what it is that you see in this Doctor Trist,” Harry commented, adding low, “Sounds like a comic book character.” Dennis nudged him playfully.
“I told you.”
“You’d say that about a teaching assistant or professor; In fact, I’ve heard you,” Dennis said.
“Okay – the sex is incredible. He’s a fantastic lover; what he does would make you melt, I swear…”
“Alice!!” they both cried at once.
“That’ll teach you to meddle.” I answered, winking. “But I know you’re looking for black marks against him. So I’ll tell you what’s bugging me.” I paused. “He’s condescending, so much so that I feel like Eliza Doolittle a bit more than I should.”
“That’s it?” Dennis queried, baiting me.
“He doesn’t pay attention sometimes – it’s as if he’s waiting for me to finish what I’m saying so he can top it with something, or prove me wrong – instruct me, as if I were intellectually his inferior.”
“Which you are not,” Harry interjected, patting my hand.
Again I hesitated. “I always feel I have to keep my guard up with Donovan. It’s like he’s not telling me the whole story. He’s deadly charming – like a character out of a Jane Austen novel.”
“Well, you’ll have to make up your mind about this Doctor Donovan Trist who sounds like he stepped out of a Dickens novel – maybe he’s Uriah Heep’s great-great grandson. And is that a real name, anyway, Donovan Trist? I mean, really?”
“He’s going to break my heart twice more…”
The light changed in the room as if a cloud had passed over the morning sun and Dennis suddenly looked different, older, and I was afraid.
“Sometimes, two wrongs make a right, Faery Princess. Let’s eat.”
“What?!” I squeaked. “What did you say?”
Dennis got up and headed towards the kitchen. I followed him straight into the Curiosity Shop.
“Alice!” the Proprietress snapped grabbing my arm as I passed by the counter. “One never divulges what one knows! That changes everything. Not everything should change. Remember that, will you, child?” She took my book from its shelf and placed a miniscule gold star on a page, carefully and deliberately, as if wanting me to pay close attention to her actions. “Time is short; time is running out. There’s only so much people can do, Alice.”
“I’ll go back,” I offered.
“You’re agreeing with me?” the Proprietress asked, feigning shock.
Dennis was at my side then. “She’ll let you think that,” he said, winking at me. And then, taking my hand, said, “We haven’t gone for a walk together in a while.”
Out in the street, we marveled at the brilliance of the sun, the deep blue sky and the songbirds that seemed to be perched on every branch. On a day like this, the village looked every inch like Castle Combe in Wiltshire, with cottages and shops made of thick stone with split stone shingled roofs. There were charming front yard gardens teeming with hollyhocks and roses, Canterbury bells, daffodils and lilies, a village from my dreams, someplace I’d always wanted to live. The dreamlike quality continued, too, for as soon as I thought of someone, they would appear on the street – here was Jane Austen walking with her Mr. Darcy, Joan of Arc was window shopping with Marie Antoinette, and there was Quinn Radcliffe at the corner by the little church.
Chapter 10
Dennis tightened his grip on my hand as we walked towards the church, ignoring the whispers and stares of such luminaries as Marilyn Monroe and Queen Elizabeth the First, the composer of my favorite piece, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Otis Redding, who was singing Here Comes the Sun.
“You have to do this,” Dennis whispered as we moved closer. Then he was gone and I was left to face Donovan, not Quinn, alone.
Once again the scenery changed, but rather than the creamy, rich strands of watercolor and oil paints, shards of brightly-colored glass fell around me like snowflakes and I was moving at a fast clip through Union Square. It was Friday night in that week before Christmas in 1977, and it was another disappointment.
I could hear Donovan’s feet on the pavement, his calls for me to stop. Off in the distance a Salvation Army band played “Good King Wenceslas,” and carolers were strolling in Dickensian costumes while they warbled “Silent Night.”
“Alice, please!”
“All you do is plead!” I shouted. “Why don’t you think before you act – or make up a more convincing lie!”
“Let me explain!” he begged, catching me up halfway through the square. We stared at each other for the longest, most uncomfortable time. I grew tired of waiting and snapped, “I’m here. Say what you have to say.”
“She’s a grad student, in my seminar. The class wanted to go for drinks to celebrate the end of the session.”
“It looked like you were celebrating pretty hard!”
“Look, I’m pretty drunk right now, not in my right mind.”
“Finally the truth! Bye, Donovan.”
I started down Stockton Street towards the BART station.
“But I’m sober enough to know I’ve hurt you, Alice!” he called. “Please – stay and listen!”
Spinning about, I stood upstream of pedestrians shoving their way past me to get to the nearest sale and waited.
“Please, sit down. Hear what I have to say,” he said and gestured towards a bench facing the southern end of the square and fronting Macy’s and Neiman Marcus. “I’m making a promise to you, Alice, here and now. I’m baring my soul to you. I can be a sonofabitch; I’m careless about others’ feelings.”
“Clearly! I see there really is truth in wine.”
“But I want to change. I do. All I can see is your loveliness and know that is what I want – your loveliness of person and soul. I love you. If you could see your way to forgive me, of loving me…”
“Could you say that while sober, Donovan? You see, it dawned on me last night at my brother’s that you need an awful lot of wine to say what you think and mean. I noticed that in Florence, too. I came from that – both parents. I don’t want that in my life anymore.”
“I’ll get help.”
“Would you?”
“For you, yes.”
“For yourself, Donovan. Would you?”
“Yes.”
I watched a couple cross the square hand in hand, laughing, their heads close. The man was hanging on to his sweetheart’s every word.
“Could you be like that?” I queried, nodding towards the couple.
“Him?” Donovan was pointing at the man and looking at me.
“Could you give me that kind of attention?”
“I did!”
“Could you do it without expecting something in return? Do it just because you want to? Because you know it would make me happy, make me smile? Listen to me? You see, all a woman ever wants is to be appreciated, to have someone’s attention and sympathy when she’s troubled – and once in a while, to have her own way. And could you do it sober?”
Donovan reached for my hand and drew me down on the bench beside him.
“For you, yes,” he said at last.
“And time,” I added, as he leaned in to kiss me.
“We have our whole lives…now kiss me, Alice.”
“You hurt me – some wounds take longer to heal.”
“Never again, I promise!”
I let him kiss me then, a
nd moved away. We sat as silently and detached as if we were two strangers waiting for a Muni bus, watching people come and go, hearing snatches of conversation, pretending the other wasn’t there. Did Donovan want to be one of those couples walking arm in arm across the square, whispering to one another and planting kisses on foreheads and cheeks, laughing about little secrets, private little jokes?
I wondered.
“It’s early still – we could catch a movie or a late dinner,” he offered. “I could use some food in me right about now.”
“Or we could take a cab to the opera house to see this new production of Balanchine’s Jewels you said you were dying to see,” I hinted, my voice as soft as my expression.
“Oh geez, I didn't think you’d get the tickets,” he sighed and then caught himself, looking away quickly.
“I didn’t get dressed up for a movie. We had tickets to the ballet. If you didn’t want to go to the ballet, you should have said something.”
“If I had, we would have had this argument yesterday.”
“This isn’t the best of ideas; I can see it now,” I sighed and slid off the bench. Without a goodbye I hailed a taxi and got in. When I arrived home forty-five minutes later the phone was ringing. In one movement, I disconnected the phone from the jack and threw it on the floor.
Imagine my surprise when the phone kept ringing.
I stared at it, hoping it wouldn’t grow fangs or chase me around the living room. It wouldn’t stop ringing until after I picked up the receiver.
“Alice! Come into the kitchen!”
I obeyed the Proprietress and sheepishly pushed open the kitchen door to find myself at the Shop.
“What are you doing?” Sigmund Freud demanded.
“I was going to ask the same thing!” Marie Antoinette added.
“What do you expect when you don’t tell her the rules?” Joan of Arc defended.
“That’s what you’d like to think – that she doesn’t know what she’s doing,” Richard the Third chimed in.
“Where’s my stuff?” I went to the corner table and found it empty. “I’ve had enough. I want to go home.”
“Silly child!” the Proprietress snapped. “Whether you like it or not, you are home – for now.”
Tallis' Third Tune Page 17