by Cathy Kelly
‘You’ll never be over the hill,’ he said in a low voice that made her think, ridiculously, about being in bed with him and having him slowly peeling off her clothes.
‘Are you flirting with me, Mr Hansen?’ Izzie squawked to cover her discomfit. ‘I thought this was a friendly lunch.’
‘Cards on table,’ he said, ‘I am flirting with you.’
‘Well, stop,’ she ordered. ‘You’ve just told me about your wife and fabulous kids. I don’t know what sort of women you’re used to meeting, but I’m not in the market for part-time love. I’ve got through thirty-nine years without dating a man who’s still tangled up with his wife and I’m not planning on starting now.’
‘Do you think I’d be here if my marriage was still viable?’ he asked in a low growl. ‘Give me some credit, Izzie. Yes, I have a wife and kids, but we’re separated and we’re only living together for the sake of those kids. Didn’t you listen to me? I told you Elizabeth and I married young. We haven’t been a couple for years, nobody’s fault, it just was inevitable. We finally agreed a few months ago that it wasn’t working on any level and we needed to formalise things.’
‘Oh,’ said Izzie, waiting. Was he serious? Or was he really still in that awful post-break-up stage where he was trying to convince himself it was over and that a rebound would sort him out?
‘I love her, I’ll always love her,’ he said, ‘but it’s like loving your sister. We’ve had twenty-four years together and counting; it’s a lifetime, but the marriage part is long over. We try to appear together for the younger boys. Tom would be able to cope with it if we split up, but Matt and Josh, no. The New York house is so big, it’s not a problem. Lots of people do it: if you have enough space, you can all exist happily together. I have my life, she has hers. Elizabeth’s parents divorced and she didn’t want our boys to come from a broken home. That’s why we stayed with each other, I guess, but it’s too hard. I can’t do that any more.’
‘What if one of you fell in love and wanted to be with another person?’ Izzie asked, trying to understand this strange arrangement. She felt like she was standing on a cliff and was about to fall. She didn’t want to fall without knowing he was going to be holding his arms out.
‘That’s never happened. Before,’ he added the last word deliberately slowly. ‘If it happened, then everything would have to change.’
‘Do people know about this?’
‘Most of our circle know. We’re not broadcasting it, but it works for us. Matt and Josh are still so young. They think they know it all now they’re twelve and fourteen, but they’re still kids. Now they can see their parents living amicably in the same house, they’ve got stability. That’s our number one priority.’
‘I see,’ she said, thinking with a sudden flash of sadness of her life when she was between twelve and fourteen.
‘Do you?’
She nodded and somehow he instantly picked up on the fact that she’d become suddenly melancholy.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘I was thirteen when my mother died,’ she explained. ‘Cancer. It was sudden too, so there was no time. Six weeks after we found out, she was dead.’ She shivered at the memory. It had taken her years to be able to say the word cancer: it had held such terrifying connotations, like an unlucky charm, as if just saying it brought danger and pain. ‘My father and my grandmother tried to protect me from that, but they couldn’t.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It must have been tough.’
She nodded. Tougher than anyone could imagine. In a way, she’d dealt with it by not dealing with it: locking herself up tight inside so nothing could hurt her, not crying, not talking much to anyone, even darling Gran, who was so devastated herself and was trying to hide it for Izzie’s sake.
Dad, Uncle Edward and Anneliese had all been there for her, ready to talk, laugh, cry, whatever she needed. Only her cousin Beth – quirky, irritable, easily upset – had been her usual self. Beth had actually helped the most in the first year. She’d made Izzie cry one day by screaming at her and that simple act of one person in her life not tiptoeing around her, brought Izzie back.
‘Is your father alive?’ Joe asked gently.
Izzie smiled. ‘Yeah, he’s great, Dad. A bit dizzy sometimes; runs out of sugar and cream endlessly and has to rush over to my aunt Anneliese’s house or to my gran’s. Between them, they take care of him – not that they let him know or anything. He’d hate that. But they do. They tell me how he’s getting on.’
‘Coffee, dessert? More wine?’ asked the waiter.
When he was gone, having cleared their plates and taken coffee orders, Joe leaned forward again.
‘Tell me more about you,’ he urged.
But Izzie felt she’d revealed enough about herself. She rarely talked about her mother, certainly not to someone she’d just met.
‘Hey, that’s enough of me,’ she said, trying to sound perkier. ‘You’re more interesting, Mr Mogul. So, tell me – are you interested in buying a model agency?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘I didn’t think you were but –’
‘But you needed to know where you stood?’
‘Convent education – it gets you every time,’ she sighed.
‘Would Sister Mary Whatever approve of me?’ he asked. She could feel his foot nudging hers under the table.
‘I think you’re probably the sort of guy they had in mind when they told us to bring a phone book out with us on dates,’ Izzie quipped.
When he looked puzzled, she filled him in: ‘If you had to sit on some boy’s lap, you placed the phone book down first, then sat. An inch of paper barrier.’
‘More like five inches if you lived in Manhattan.’
‘Don’t boast.’ She was smiling now.
‘So you might see me again, Ms Silver, now you know I’m kosher?’
‘I might,’ she said.
‘Listen, I have an art collection in my office building –’
‘You didn’t bid on that Pasha picture at the charity lunch,’ she interrupted.
‘I might have, except I was distracted,’ he growled. ‘I have to go to an artist’s studio to look at some paintings tomorrow afternoon. Would you like to come?’
Izzie took the plunge. Looking at art – where was the harm in that? ‘Sure. What time?’
‘Say eleven o’clock?’
‘You said “afternoon”,’ she said, confused.
‘He lives in Tennessee, in the Smoky Mountains. We’ll have to fly.’
Izzie had never been on a private jet before. First, she and Joe were picked up by helicopter and flown to Teterboro airport where a Gulfstream sat waiting on the tarmac. Inside, apart from the crew, there were just the two of them.
‘It’s fabulous,’ Izzie said in awe as she stepped into the cabin. On the inside, it looked smaller than she’d imagined but the luxury was something she couldn’t have dreamed up. Entirely decorated in calm cream shades, there were only eight or nine vast cream leather seats.
The light oak cabinets were topped with marble instead of airplane plastic. It was luxury cubed. Even the blankets laid on the seats felt too soft to be ordinary wool.
‘Cashmere?’ she asked the stewardess standing to attention with a smile fixed to her face.
The stewardess nodded. ‘The seats are a blend of wool and leather, for added comfort.’
‘There’s nothing you can’t do on this plane,’ Joe said, sitting down and reaching out for the glass of cold beer the stewardess had ready for him, without him even asking for it. ‘Watch DVDs, phone outer space – you name it. They’ve even got a defibrillator on board. Have you had to use it, Karen?’ he asked the woman.
‘Mr Hansen, you know I can’t tell you that,’ she said, grinning.
They flew into Gatlinburg but Izzie could only glance at the pretty streets of the historic town before they were driven out of town for twenty minutes to a property set on its own in the foothills of the Great Smokies.
The artist, a man named AJ, made them drinks and ambled round his studio, talking in a laid-back Tennessean drawl. Izzie had worried that the artist might wonder who she was and she imagined an awkward conversation ensuing, but no such thing happened. It was as if, once she was with Joe, she was instantly a member of whatever club they were in at the time. She found that she liked that.
Joe wanted to buy a lot of paintings.
AJ hugged him in a loose-limbed way. Izzie wondered how much it had all cost, but decided against asking. She wasn’t sure if she could take it.
On the flight home, over Cajun blackened fish, a Gatlinburg favourite recipe that the galley staff had prepared in honour of their destination, Izzie idly mentioned her initial anxiety that AJ would wonder who she was.
‘Who cares what other people think or wonder?’ he said, genuinely astonished at such a concept.
‘No reason,’ Izzie said cautiously. ‘It’s just –’
She stopped. She was scared of so many things around Joe: how intensely she liked him, how powerfully attractive she found him. But there were all those complications to consider. Izzie felt she was on a slippery slope now – she didn’t want to fall in.
Also, she was afraid that, just by being with him, she’d appear like the sort of person she disliked: the all-purpose rich man’s girlfriend. Not that she was his girlfriend or anything yet. He hadn’t so much as touched her, and she wasn’t sure if this was on purpose or not.
I have a career and my own life, she wanted to yell. I like him for who he is, not for how much money he’s got.
He dropped her home in the limo. Neither of them moved. Izzie felt so conflicted: on one hand, she wanted to invite him in and see what happened next. On the other, she wanted to go slowly because this felt so special, so different.
If only he’d do something, say something, then she’d know how to respond.
But he seemed to be playing some gentlemanly game, waiting for her to do something.
‘Have you talked to your wife about meeting me?’ she asked. Why did you say that? she groaned inwardly. How to kill a romantic atmosphere in ten seconds flat.
‘We don’t talk about the people in our life,’ he said brusquely. ‘It’d weird me out.’
‘Because you’d be jealous?’ Izzie asked tentatively.
‘Because we’re trying to keep a reasonable family unit together for the sake of the boys and that might add extra pressure,’ he replied.
And then, he leaned over and kissed her softly on the lips, not a Mr Predator kiss but a gentle, till tomorrow sort of goodbye. Izzie closed her eyes and waited for more, waited to sink into the kiss. But there was no more.
‘I’ll call you tomorrow and thanks for coming with me.’
‘Thanks for asking me,’ she said coolly. She was still trying to work out why he hadn’t kissed her properly. ‘I’ve never been to Tennessee before. Does a two-hour flying visit count as being somewhere?’
He looked at her thoughtfully.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Cheerio,’ she said, getting out as the driver opened the door. Cheerio? What’s wrong with you, Izzie? First the weird question about his wife and then ‘cheerio’.
He phoned the next day.
‘Would you like to go on another date?’ he asked.
Date? It had been a date, after all. Izzie hugged herself with delight.
‘Yes,’ she said and squashed the feeling that she’d just fallen down the slippery slope.
From the comfort of her bathtub, sipping her spritzer, Izzie thought about those first days when she felt like the luckiest person on the planet.
Joe was in her head all the time, edging more mundane matters out of the way, like a problem with a model sinking into depression because she’d been dropped from a beauty campaign or a big screw-up which saw five models miss a plane to Milan because they’d been out late partying.
It was a fabulous secret that she hugged to herself. Izzie found herself behaving as if her life was a movie and Joe would be watching her every move.
She wore her best clothes every day, so she’d look fabulous on the off chance that he’d phone. The spike-heeled boots she moaned about were hauled out of her wardrobe to go with the swishy 1940s-inspired skirt that hugged her rear end and made construction workers’ mouths drop open.
They had lunch and dinner twice a week, holding hands under the table, and kissing in the car on the way back to her office or to her apartment. They talked and talked, sitting until their coffees went cold.
But she’d never brought him to her home, had never done more than kiss him in the back of the car. Something held her back.
That something was her feeling that Joe and his life was more complicated than he’d told her. Why else were they having this low-key relationship, she asked herself? It only made sense if Joe wasn’t being entirely truthful about everything and she couldn’t believe that. He was so straight, so direct. She didn’t want to nag him like a dog with a bone. She said nothing and just hoped.
They’d had a month of courtship – only such an old-fashioned word could describe it: walking in the park at lunchtime and sharing deli lunch from Dean & DeLuca’s.
And then, on a sunny Thursday, they’d visited another artist in a giant loft apartment in TriBeCa and Izzie had wandered round looking at huge canvases while Joe, the artist and the artist’s manager discussed business. Izzie felt a thrill that was nothing to do with admiring the artist’s work: the fact that Joe had brought her here showed that she wasn’t a dirty little secret in his life. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have brought her along, would he?
Silvio Cruz’s giant abstract paintings had prompted some critics to compare him to the great Pollock. Even Izzie, who knew zip about art, could see the power and beauty of his canvases, and she loved listening to Joe talk about them.
Joe hadn’t grown up with art on the walls, he’d told her: food on the table in his Bronx home was as good as it got. So she loved hearing him talk passionately about a world he’d come into late thanks to his sheer brilliance.
Finally, she, Joe and Duarte, the manager, took the creaking industrial elevator down to street level.
‘The Marshall benefit for AIDS is on tomorrow night,’ Duarte said to Joe. ‘You and Elizabeth going?’
Izzie froze.
‘Yeah, probably,’ murmured Joe.
‘I hear Danny Henderson’s donating a De Kooning. I mean, Jeez, that’s serious dough. Danny’s been here too, but he just doesn’t get Silvio’s vision,’ Duarte went on, oblivious to the sudden temperature shift in the elevator.
Elizabeth was probably going with him? What happened to the separate lives thing?
On the street, Izzie looked around for Joe’s inevitable big black limo and then realised she couldn’t possibly sit in it with him. She wasn’t sure what was worse: the feeling that Joe had wanted to shut Duarte up and not talk about the party, or Duarte’s assumption that she, Izzie, wouldn’t be going.
If Joe Hansen was officially unattached, then why would anyone assume he’d take his wife to a benefit? And why would he say ‘yeah, probably’ when asked?
There was only one answer and it made Izzie feel sick.
Without saying a word, she turned and walked briskly away from the two men and the limo which had slid noiselessly into place.
‘Izzie!’ yelled Joe, but she kept walking.
He caught up with her, hurt her arm as he grabbed her roughly and turned her to face him.
‘Don’t go,’ he begged.
‘Why not?’ she demanded. ‘You’ve been lying to me. It’s not over with your wife. You lied to me.’
‘It’s over with me and E
lizabeth,’ he insisted.
‘Fuck you and your lies!’ Izzie threw back at him.
‘They’re not lies.’ He let go of her and his hands dropped limply to his sides. ‘It’s deader than any dodo, Izzie, it’s just hard to end it all. Elizabeth’s different to me, she finds it difficult to let go. I’ve told her she can have the house here, the place in the Hamptons, whatever she wants. It was over long before you, that wasn’t a lie. But she’s trying to get her head round the fact that I want to leave.’
‘So you’re leaving now? First, you were all staying together for the kids,’ Izzie said, trying not to cry.
‘We did try but it didn’t work. Elizabeth kept getting upset about it, she wants all or nothing, and now it’s a matter of her accepting it and us telling the boys. I promise, Izzie. Don’t go, please.’
Izzie stared at him. She was a good judge of character, damnit, and he wasn’t a liar, for all he pretended to be a shark in business.
‘Why didn’t you tell me the truth straight up?’ she demanded.
‘You wouldn’t have gone out to lunch with me,’ he said, with a small smile that recalled the Joe she knew and loved.
Loved. She loved him, Lord help her, she loved him. Without meaning to, she’d got tangled up in this mess and now she couldn’t just walk out. Still, she needed time to think.
‘I’ve got to go back to work, Joe,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you later.’
‘Let me drop you,’ he said.
‘No, I’ll get a taxi.’
As if sent by an angel, a taxi with a lit sign appeared in front of her and Izzie stuck out her arm. She waved at Joe as she sat in the back and the driver sped off.
‘What’s up with you?’ snapped Carla at work that afternoon. ‘You don’t listen, you don’t talk, you stare into space like a moony high schooler. What gives?’
Izzie hesitated. She and Carla had sat up nights talking men, dissing men and generally deciding that no man at all was better than changing who you were in order to capture one.
‘Surrendered wife, my butt! Why pretend to be Pollyanna to get him, so you can go back to being Mama Alien once he’s married you? Who needs a man that much?’
They knew each other. But something had stopped Izzie from telling Carla about Joe. Perhaps it was a sixth sense or else it was her feeling that this was all too good to be true.