Snowfall in the City

by Susan Wiggs

  Yet what he had just revealed to her could change everything between them—if she let it. She hated that he hadn’t told her about his injury. But what she hated even more was a deeply shameful realization. If he’d told her, she would have wept for him. She would have raged with him at the injustice, mourned the loss of his lifelong dream with him. But then she would have slunk away in fear. That was the sort of person she was, back then. And it struck her that she didn’t want to be that sort of person anymore.

  “Some building,” he said.

  “Thanks. It’s a co-op.”

  “Places like this are tough to find,” he said.

  “The Board knows more about me than my gynecologist, my therapist and the IRS.” She gritted her teeth, wishing she hadn’t admitted she was seeing a therapist. She opened the door to her apartment and led the way inside. The answering machine had a welcome message—Jenny had arranged for some talent to take Bobbi’s place tonight. That was something, at least.

  Her apartment was exquisite. The spare white-on-white decor imparted a mood of space and cool elegance. She found herself wishing it was a little more...whimsical, maybe. Some colorful throw pillows on the designer sofa, or artwork that actually represented something recognizable. She turned to see Tony studying an array of silver-framed black-and-white photos on a glass-and-chrome étagère. Maybe the pictures conveyed a personal touch, Elaine thought. But no. There were no warm portraits of a laughing family, but merely souvenirs—pictures of her with celebrities, socialites, rock stars, company executives.

  As though feeling her stare, he smiled at her. “Nice—”

  “Please don’t say nice place.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not nice.”

  “It’s not?” He picked up a small Baccarat bowl and carefully set it down. “So why do you live here?”

  She blinked. “No one ever asked me that before.” She’d never even asked herself that question. She lived here because it was on the Upper East Side. The brushed-steel-framed Italian sofa was there because the designer had chosen it for style, of course. Not for comfort. The Venetian glass-top coffee table was there because it matched the sofa. Everything in her apartment went together perfectly. Her designer wouldn’t have it any other way.

  The only thing out of place at the moment was Tony Fiore himself. He was too earthy, too real.

  “It’s a great apartment. People wait for years to find an apartment like this.” She gestured at the tree-framed view out the window. The snow had rendered the world more brilliantly white than her stark interior.

  “You didn’t answer the question, Elaine.”

  “Can I offer you something to drink?” She went into the gleaming kitchen and he followed. She swung open the fridge. “Soda? Beer?”

  “Thanks.” He helped himself to a soda.

  She tried to put herself in his place that night, the night she’d stopped believing in Christmas.

  He’d lost something, too. What must it be like to have a dream as powerful as the dream he’d had, and then to have that taken away? She pictured him watching her from the upper level, trying to figure out what to do now that his entire life plan had shattered to pieces. The horrible truth was, she was afraid to contemplate what her reaction might have been if he’d come rolling toward her in a wheelchair. She’d been young and self-centered and focused on glamour and success. She’d built up such fantasies around the sort of life they would have together, with Tony as a famous hockey player, and she as an international journalist. Maybe, just maybe, he had made the right choice, turning his back on her that night. The person she was back then could not have dealt with him. She’d simply had no resources to love a man who didn’t fit her idealized view of what the future would be. Now, years later, she knew the problem of living a life that looked perfect on paper. It was as one-dimensional as the piece of paper itself.

  It felt so strange having him here, where she lived. Where she slept and showered and talked on the phone. He was seeing her in a different context, and she desperately wanted him to like what he saw. But how could he, when she didn’t even like it?

  “Look,” she said. “About tonight...you don’t have to—”

  “Are you kidding?” He set his soda on the counter and turned to her, and when he smiled, it was like glimpsing a dream she thought she’d forgotten. “You think I’d pass up another chance to spend Christmas Eve with you?”

  chapter ten

  “Ma, it’s not the end of the world,” Tony said, wedging the phone under his jaw as he stood back and surveyed the contents of his closet. If he didn’t have a clean shirt, he was going to shoot himself. “It’s just a change of plans.”

  “Change of plans, he says. You hear that, Salvatore? He abandons his family on Christmas Eve, and he calls it a change of plans.” Gina Fiore always had two-way conversations with people—one on the phone, the other in her warm, yeasty-smelling kitchen.

  Tony’s father, Sal, mumbled something indistinct. He was used to the fact that his wife thrived on drama and, like Tony, secretly found her entertaining.

  “Tell you what...” Tony said. He spotted a crisp white shirt, still in the cleaner’s cellophane, and pounced. “I’ll try to get back in time for midnight mass.”

  “Mass, he says.”

  “It’s the reason for the season, Ma.”

  “What about supper, eh? You’re going to miss the torta di spinaci, the bauletti di maiale, the pandoro.”

  He dragged five different ties from the rack on the back of the closet door. “I’ll live, Ma. I’ll eat the pandoro for breakfast tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh, so now we don’t see you until breakfast. What’s going on, eh, Tony?”

  He took a deep breath, then said, “Well, there’s this girl—”

  “I knew it! Ringrazi il cielo, did you hear that, Sal? Tony’s got a girl. A Christmas Eve girl.”

  He grinned, shaking his head. “Look, Ma, don’t get too exci—”

  “Ha. Don’t you tell me. I know what it means when a man spends Christmas Eve with a girl. Didn’t your father and I get engaged on Christmas Eve, eh? Didn’t we?” She paused to blow her nose. “It’s just like when you were in college, and you kept promising to bring someone to meet us. It always broke my heart that you never brought her home, Tony.”

  He knew he should explain that this was a casual date that happened to fall on Christmas Eve. He knew he should explain that Elaine St. James was out of his league, that they’d probably go their separate ways after tonight, that she was no more cut out to be a cop’s wife than he was to be a society husband. He should tell his mother that he’d stood in the middle of Elaine’s designer apartment today and felt like an alien life-form.

  But he didn’t say any of that. Because there was something stubborn about his heart, something that made him think that maybe, just maybe, he and Elaine could get it right this time.

  “Are your shoes polished?” she demanded, businesslike now.

  “Huh?”

  “Your shoes, your shoes. You shine them until you see your teeth reflected, you hear me?”

  Grinning again, he excavated his dress shoes. “No problem, Ma.”

  “And your suit—the one you bought for Uncle Rico’s funeral, yes?”

  “An excellent choice.”

  She rattled off a string of instructions while he held up each tie, looking for the perfect match.

  “I got to get in the shower, Ma,” he said after a while. “I don’t want to be late.”

  “Go, go,” she urged him. “But...Tony?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Bring her home this time, eh?”

  He ripped the cellophane off the white shirt. “I’ll do my best, Ma.”

  chapter eleven

  Elaine’s work on the St. James affair had long been finished. What she was supp
osed to do, at this point, was relax, enjoy the party and make sure everyone had a fabulous time.

  But tonight was different. It was Christmas Eve, the clients were her parents and she was getting a shot at her biggest account to date. In the midst of all this, she was supposed to forget her troubles, forget that her best friend had betrayed her, forget that her boyfriend had dropped her.

  But that wasn’t what was making her nerves jangle on the swift, thirty-one-story rise to the St. James apartment. Smiling tautly at the elevator man, she admitted to herself that the source of her apprehension was something—someone—altogether different.

  There was no denying it. Just being near Tony Fiore, even the very thought of him, made her tingle with an awareness that was actually embarrassing in its intensity. She wasn’t a naive girl anymore, yet with Tony, she felt young and light and full of feelings she had long thought lost to her.

  Catching a glimpse of herself in the smoke-tinted elevator mirror, she detected a splotchy blush on her neck. It was like a red map of the former Soviet Union rising up from the décolletage of her perfect cocktail dress. She hadn’t blushed like this in ages, though it used to be a common and embarrassing trait of hers. The red rash of rapture, she had once jokingly called it when her college roommate had asked her if she had a fever. Agitated, she raised the collar of her coat.

  As they arrived at the thirty-first floor, the elevator man tipped his cap. “Merry Christmas, Miss St. James.”

  “What? Uh, thanks. Same to you.”

  Flustered, she stepped out of the elevator and into the place where she’d spent her over-privileged childhood. It was gorgeous as always, in the gleaming-marble, sleekly chic way of the city’s finest old money roosts. It had a special holiday sparkle imparted by the subtle, elegant touches of the floral designer she’d engaged for the event.

  Graceful and minimalist, the seasonal decor avoided the usual swags of holly and mistletoe in favor of simple elegance. In the foyer, a pair of beeswax tapers flanked a single calla lily in a crystal vase, artfully displayed atop the Louis XVI side table. The living room had been arranged for conversation and dancing. She and the designer had talked her mother out of putting up the traditional twelve-foot tree because it would take up too much space. Instead, the designer had insisted that the “suggestion” of a tree—an abstract stainless-steel sculpture of a branch over the mantel—would suffice.

  Elaine found herself wishing she had argued more with the designer.

  Sinbad, who had no last name and whose talents were booked for years in advance, was warming up on the white Steinway. Elaine surrendered her coat to one of the caterer’s uniformed staffers, who bore it away to the guest room that tonight would serve as a cloakroom.

  Elaine took a few moments for a quick tour. In the vast, well-equipped kitchen, Armand orchestrated the preparations like an air traffic controller. He paused only long enough to greet Elaine, assure her that everything was perfect and on time, and insist that she sample the tamarind-perfumed ceviche.

  “Outstanding,” she assured him, savoring the lime-cured raw fish. Secretly, she yearned for Chex Mix and little cubes of cheese.

  The familiar tap-tapping of her mother’s footsteps drew her back to the huge, beautiful living room, which had been designed by Mongiardino. But the room itself faded to obscurity when Elaine’s mother walked in.

  The press had always been especially kind to Freddie St. James, and for good reason. She had married Banner St. James, whose roots and wealth were sunk deep into the mythos of the city, and she was everything the media wanted from a woman like her: graceful, educated and generous. She was admired by everyone from her bookkeeper’s assistant to the attorney general.

  Tonight she wore a Vera Wang original and Cartier jewels. An invisible fog of Gucci Rush surrounded her.

  “Wow,” said Elaine. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were from central casting. You look perfect, Mom.”

  Freddie smiled and held out both hands. “Hello, sweetheart. Merry Christmas.”

  They leaned toward each other but didn’t touch except for their hands. Both were conscious of not wanting to disturb the other’s porcelain-perfect makeup. Freddie stepped away from Elaine and subjected her to a shrewd study. “Wow, yourself,” she said with genuine admiration. “That dress is fabulous.”

  Elaine had thought so when she’d first put it on. Over a long-sleeved tunic of black Sea Isle cotton, the designer had draped a shimmery mesh of babyfine gold cord.

  “You think?” she asked, realizing how much she had always sought her mother’s good opinion by trying to appear just right. “It reminds me of chains. Didn’t Marley’s ghost wear chains?”

  “Merry Christmas,” called a jovial voice. Banner St. James joined them, timelessly handsome in his crisp Armani tux.

  Elaine greeted her father with cordial warmth, and regarded both her parents with a certain diffuse wistfulness. Despite that she was an only child, they weren’t really a close family. Her most cherished Christmas memory was the year of the biggest blizzard in the history of the city. Socked in by a record snowfall and extended power outage, the three of them had slept together under duvets in the living room around the fireplace. They’d fixed canned soup and crackers for supper, then played board games by candlelight. Something about the slow rhythm of that magical day had fulfilled her more than any international ski trip or luxury cruise.

  She did not doubt that her parents loved her, or she them, but they had never shared the sort of easy, natural affection she sometimes observed in families that were less busy, less self-conscious, less preoccupied with appearances.

  As she smiled with confidence and assured them that the party was going to be wonderful, there was so much she wished for. She wished she could tell them about Bobbi and Byron. She wished she could explain that she’d run into Tony Fiore and was totally confused by him. She wished they could spend Christmas doing something quiet and cozy rather than over-the-top entertaining. But, of course, she couldn’t say those things to them.

  Melanie and Jenny arrived, setting off a chain reaction of preparatory events, followed by the arrival of the guests in convivial clusters. Within a short while, the St. James affair was underway. With Sinbad’s expert playing as a sound track, the party burst into a flurry of celebration that seemed to Elaine to be as staged and visually busy as a music video.

  When Tony Fiore walked into the room, there seemed to be a subtle pause, like a collective intake of breath. Even as Elaine hurried to welcome him, the speculation started, an insistent current of whispers flowing beneath the surface small talk. He was a rising young star, a socialite’s lover, an Olympic athlete.

  As he removed his parka and gloves, he was either oblivious or took the attention in stride, focusing solely on Elaine. He looked wonderful in a dark suit and white shirt that set off a burgundy-colored tie.

  She took his hand, grimacing a little. “You’re freezing.”

  “My hands are always cold. Even when I remember my gloves.” He handed the gloves, along with his jacket, to an attendant.

  Elaine’s parents greeted him with their usual poise, but also silent questions they couldn’t quite conceal.

  “Byron’s not coming,” Elaine said, taking the coward’s way out and breaking the news in the safety of the public eye. “Tony’s my plus-one tonight.”

  “It’s very nice to meet you,” Freddie said, her voice perfectly modulated.

  “He’s an ex-hockey star,” Elaine added, easing into the familiar phony party patter she’d developed into an art. She was an expert spin doctor, adept at making people and products seem larger-than-life. With a simple verbal twist, she changed out-of-work actors into rising stars, has-been artists into cutting-edge visionaries.

  But the trouble was, Tony seemed amused by her spin. When she said, “He’s in law enforcement—”

  He burst out laug
hing and said, “I better get you out on the dance floor before I find out I’m a Kennedy cousin.” He offered her parents a jovial smile, and led Elaine into the midst of the milling couples.

  “I get it now,” he said.

  “Get what?”

  “The reason it wouldn’t have worked out for us.”

  “Really. And why is that?”

  “Your folks. I’m sure they’re great people but I’m not exactly their idea of the perfect guy for their daughter.”

  “Back then, maybe.”

  “And now?”

  “Now that so-called perfect daughter has a mind of her own.”

  “I was counting on that, Elaine.”

  She found herself swept against him, and something incredible came over her, as it had when he’d taken her skating. He moved with the grace of an athlete, his hand firm and secure at her waist. There was magic in his embrace, in the hard bulk of his body and the soft smile that curved his full lips. She was engulfed by his nearness, his warmth, the heady essence of his masculinity.

  As the music filled her, so did memory and emotion, warmed by a contentment deeper and more real than anything she’d felt in years. She’d been out in the cold too long and had gone numb in vital places. Now she was thawing out and she welcomed the surging tingles of pain that reminded her she was alive.

  When was the last time she had danced just for the pleasure of it? Just for the feel of a man’s arms around her and the mindless delight of moving to the rhythm of the music? She couldn’t remember, because these days when she danced in a man’s arms, it was to entertain or conduct business or impress someone. Tony Fiore couldn’t know it, but this was such a gift, to simply be with him for no other reason than to dance. She wasn’t stupid. She knew the reason for this newfound sense of fun and freedom was Tony. He had that effect on her. That was why she’d fallen for him the first night they skated together, and why she’d kept coming back.