“Why did I imagine for even a second,” Janie said, “that this would be a pleasant encounter?”
“Hey, sweetheart,” Zach countered, tipping back in his chair, “you asked for it, remember? This was your idea. I’m only here out of courtesy. What in hell did you expect?”
“I thought at least you’d be pleased with how I look…”
“I’ve already said you look terrific,” Zach cut in irritably. “I’m not in the habit of frothing at the mouth over a woman’s appearance, okay? Now let’s get down to business,” Zach continued, signaling for the waiter. “The deal is you’re going to buy me dinner and at the same time explain why you helped ransack my client roster, right?”
He was being ugly, but there didn’t seem to be any other way for him to behave. Every time he advised himself to lighten up, to go a little easier on her, he found himself sounding even more brutal and unforgiving.
“Okay, okay, I get all this business about your creative growth,” Zach interrupted her after she had been trying to explain her frustrations during those last months at D&D. “But why Melina, Janie? There are twenty thousand other perfectly fine advertising agencies out there. Why go to the one place calculated to hurt Michael and me?”
Their dinners had arrived: huge round platters of beef filet and pommes frites, but neither of them was digging in with much enthusiasm. Janie picked up her steak knife, then put it down again. Zach played with his water glass, trying not to stare at her again. And yet he knew, even before she said anything, that she was lost to him.
“It was Alain, Zach,” Janie told him simply. “I’ve never gotten over him. I’ve never for one single minute of my life over the last four years stopped thinking about him. He’s … he’s in my blood somehow. I don’t care if you think I’m crazy. It doesn’t matter. He was what I wanted, more than my job with you—or Melina for that matter. All I wanted, all I want, is to be near him.”
“But are you any nearer him now,” Zach demanded bitterly, “than when you were with us?”
“Yes!” Janie cried. “It’s been … wonderful. From the beginning I was able to work side by side with him. I helped run the meetings—and he listened to me, he respects me. And, Zach, the day after next he’s flying Melina and me to Bordeaux to scout locations for the brochure we’re doing. I’ll see his home, his offices … we’ll stay at the chateau … Zach, don’t you understand? It’s a dream come true.”
“But why didn’t you tell me how important he was?” Zach began. “I would have…”
“As I recall, I tried to explain all this to you nearly a year ago,” Janie retorted. “And you more or less said I was a fat, romantic fool who didn’t have a chance in hell.”
“No, I told you that you could change,” Zach countered miserably, “and—look—you have. I just wanted you to be realistic. I’ve only wanted to help, Janie. I’ve only tried to keep you from getting hurt.”
“You can’t really protect anybody in this world, Zach.” Janie sighed, meeting his gaze and holding it. “I know you did what you thought was best, but you couldn’t change me—I had to change myself. And that’s what I did. You know, sometimes I think you feel responsible for everything that happens—for everybody around you. You’re not, Zach. We’re each of us only in charge of ourselves. And what happens to me next—even if it means absolute heartbreak and unhappiness—well, that’s my problem. All I can ask you to do is commiserate.”
“Okay, think of me as your personal commiserator then,” Zach replied simply, though his feelings at that moment were far too complex for him to decipher. He was afraid for her, and yet he felt enormously proud of what she had become. Wasn’t he, to a certain degree, responsible for her transformation? Yes, for many reasons, he knew this was so. And yet, in his urging her to change and grow, he had never allowed for the possibility that she might outgrow him. He felt helpless and horribly frustrated by a situation he had helped to create. And he listened in a sweet, chaste hell as she talked—lit with a new confidence and animation—about the trip ahead. He kept his own misgivings to himself while his eyes followed the movements of her mouth as closely and intensely as if he were lip-reading everything she said.
Chapter 25
“Ladies and gentlemen, Flight 007 to Paris will now begin boarding at gate number…”
Janie looked up anxiously as the long line began to move toward the boarding gate, then hurried downstairs to the now nearly empty check-in area. Only one of the airline clerks remained from the frantic group that had been handling the overseas flight when Janie checked in a half hour before.
“I’m sorry to bother you again,” Janie addressed the young man behind the counter, “but did you hear anything further about Melina Bliss? The passenger I was asking after before?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am,” the man replied with a pleasant smile. “I just sent someone to find you. She called here ten minutes ago—she wants you to phone her at this number.” Janie glanced with a sinking heart at the ten digits the man had jotted down in a neat, sloping hand. “There’s a bank of phones behind the duty-free shop upstairs. But you better hurry. Your flight is boarding now.”
“Yes…” Janie replied distractedly. “I know.” She forced herself to run up the stairs, though each step she took felt like lead. The trip that Janie had been looking forward to with such anticipation was about to be scrapped. She should have known that morning when Melina called her from South Carolina to say she was being delayed and would meet Janie at Kennedy that night. No, Janie scolded herself, she should have known anyway. France … Bordeaux … Alain … it was never meant to happen. At least not to Janie Penrod.
When the phone rang in Francine Bliss Simpson’s cramped and overlit kitchen, Melina sprang up from the table where she had been sitting with her two older sisters, crying, “That’s for me!”
Francine and Denise looked at each other sourly and shrugged. Just like Melina, their looks said, thinking everything was for her. It didn’t help matters one iota that, in the general scheme of things, each had to grudgingly admit almost everything was.
She’d come whirling back into their dusty backwater town looking like some television soap opera star. Francine had hardly recognized her when she and her husband had gone to pick her up at the county airport. Her makeup was so perfect, she looked like some little china doll. Her hair was a mass of glossy waves that Francine knew damn right well God had not given her. Nellie at the hairdresser’s said that kind of perm cost upwards of a hundred dollars. And her clothes! They made even the best dresses in Classic Corner downtown look like last year’s hand-me-downs. There was no getting around it: Melina looked and seemed a stunning success. And there was no denying that Francine and Denise were far from thrilled by the realization. Therefore, neither felt much sympathy—in fact, both sensed a minor victory—when a hurricane started to build off the Carolinas, canceling all flights north and ruining Melina’s hoity-toity plans.
“Janie! Where are you? Good,” Melina answered. “God, can you believe this? Some fucking hurricane has grounded everything, and I’m stuck here for at least another day. No … no, Janie, you’re going to have to go alone. I couldn’t get through to Alain—I’m like in the middle of nowhere down here—and I know he was planning on coming to meet us at the airport personally. He’s been so wonderful about all this, considering everything else on his agenda,” Melina went on while her sisters exchanged withering looks. “Someone has to be there for him. You’ll just have to do. Right … okay … I understand. Go already. And try me in New York, or, God forbid, here, as soon as you land. I’ll let you know then what flight I can manage.”
Melina hung up the phone with a sigh and said, “Shit. He’s not going to like this one damned bit.”
“Who is this guy anyway?” Denise asked in a carefully bored tone. “You talk like we should know him or something. Alain Chanson … right? I’ve never heard of him.”
“I’m not surprised,” Melina said, po
uring herself another cup of chicory-flavored coffee. “He’s sort of an international playboy. Family owns Chanson Wines. They’re an account of mine. He’s not the kind of person you’d read about in the National Enquirer, or whatever it is you get down here.” Francine’s home was in the middle of a new development of tract houses ten miles north of town. The ranch-style homes had been thrown up—almost overnight—the year before and had not quite melded into the surrounding countryside of scrub oak and pine trees. The front yard was still half mud, the runoff of rainwater and sewage draining the grass seedlings that Francine’s husband kept trying to plant. Denise, her husband, and two children lived in a similar development two miles closer to town.
“Playboy, huh?” Francine chortled. “Bet you wish he’d play around with you, right?”
“Lord, Frannie,” Melina retorted, sitting down next to her sister. “You are so pedestrian. How in the world do you think I got him as a client in the first place?”
“Melina!” Denise cried. “You didn’t! You don’t!”
“Of course I do,” Melina told them, spooning sugar into her coffee and stirring it calmly. During the past few days, since recovering quickly from the melancholy of her mother’s dismal little funeral service, the only excitement Melina was able to find was that of shocking her two dreary housewifey sisters.
“That’s immoral,” Francine pronounced. “I’m sorry for you, Melina. To think you’ve fallen away so.”
“Oh, spare me!” Melina laughed. “What hypocrites you two are! At least I’m up-front about what I do. You bartered your bodies to get your little model homes here, don’t kid yourselves. I’m simply doing the same thing. Only I’m using my head the same time I wiggle my behind because I’m shooting for one hell of a lot higher goal than a ranch-style split level, two kids, and a Chevy.”
“I think you’re being horrible,” Denise said. “What Fred and I share, Melina, I’m afraid you’re never going to know. Marriage is … well, it’s sacred. It has nothing to do with bartering or material things. I’m sorry for you, too. I think your life is probably very sad and empty.”
“I wonder,” Melina replied thoughtfully, “why Fred keeps looking at me the way he does … I mean, considering this sacred thing you have going together?”
“Why, I never…” Denise began to sputter.
“Don’t listen to her,” Francine advised bossily.
“Oh, I was just kidding around.” Melina sighed. “You two are such stiffs! Can’t you take a little joke?”
But the worrisome thing was, Denise had to admit in her heart of hearts, Fred had been staring at Melina whenever he saw her, in a kind of openmouthed, famished way. If she weren’t a good, law-abiding Christian, Denise would almost start to think that life wasn’t fair. Just look at her conniving little sister, a no-good, selfish hussy, anyone could see that. But there she sat with her New York clothes and European boyfriends, pretty and smug and pleased as punch with herself. What Denise would give for just one day in Melina’s trim, aerobicized body! Denise felt her anger ebb as a wave of curiosity washed through her.
“So this Alain,” Denise asked haltingly, “this Frenchman … is he good-looking, Melina? What’s he like?”
Janie saw him before he noticed her, and she felt an urge to turn back to the stuffy, anonymous comfort of the plane. He was leaning against one of the thick, mirrored columns just beyond customs that forested the ground floor of Charles de Gaulle Aeroport. He was looking down—at his watch? at the newspaper he held folded over his right hand?—and his hair fell over his forehead, making him appear a little younger than usual. Precisely how old was he? Janie wondered, as she handed her passport to the customs officer. Surely no more than forty. And yet whatever it was that made him so forbidding and demanding also made him seem much older than his years. He seemed to belong more to Janie’s father’s generation—men who would be forever marked by a war they believed in—than to the radical, liberated sixties that she was born into.
The customs officer glanced at Janie’s passport photo, then at her, then down at the passport again. “Vous êtes tellement plus jolie que votre photo, Mademoiselle Penrod.”
“Merci, monsieur,” Janie replied, smiling and taking back the passport that he pushed through the slotted window toward her. Somehow the simple compliment that she was prettier than her picture made it possible for Janie to find the courage to approach Alain. He was staring right at her but clearly didn’t seem to recognize who she was.
I know that woman, Alain told himself, watching the lovely redhead smile at some silly compliment one of the usually dour customs officials passed out. When she turned and looked in his direction, Alain could easily see why the customs man had brightened so. She was a vision! Tall, slim, creamy-skinned. She had the timeless look of true beauty, like Catharine Deneuve or Sophia Loren. Those cheekbones! Those eyes! Here was a woman who would look just as magnificent twenty years from now. Was she a film star? Alain wondered. He knew the face, but from where? He watched her walk across the floor and decided immediately that she could not be American. There was a charming hesitancy to her steps. Beautiful Americans marched with an aggressive self-assurance that made Alain wince, their high heels clicking like castanets. Americans always seemed to know where they were going—even when they were lost—but this woman stopped twice, looked back, glanced toward him, and then continued on.
Was she French? No. She was too tall, her stride too elegantly long and languorous. But he knew her, he was sure of that. There was something about that face … those eyes…
“Monsieur Chanson?” Janie hesitated before him. He was staring so intently at her, and yet she sensed he still didn’t know who she was. “It’s me … Janie Penrod?”
“Jane?” Alain replied uncertainly, glancing beyond her. “It’s really you? But … where is Melina?”
Of course, Janie reminded herself, it was Melina he had been hoping to see. No wonder he appeared so confused, almost alarmed. “I’m so sorry, we couldn’t get through to you in time … but Melina was unfortunately delayed in the States, and I’m afraid that for the time being only I…”
“Jane, of course, yes,” Alain interrupted. “How stupid of me not to recognize you.” He was far too much a gentleman to add that probably not even her own mother would recognize this thoroughly transformed—and absolutely stunning—creature. “A pity about Melina. But how charming to see you again.” What was he blathering on about? he wondered, taking the big tote bag she was carrying.
She didn’t seem to notice that he was quite uncharacteristically flustered. She gave him an uncertain smile, looked away, and said quietly, “Thank you. Melina said you would be meeting us. I know how busy you are … it’s very kind.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Alain replied abruptly. “I consider it a pleasure.” How arrogant he sounded, he thought, as he heard the harsh, clipped tone of his voice. He felt quite stiff and overly formal, not at all himself. Well, it wasn’t every day that somebody he thought he knew suddenly turned into someone quite different. Remarkably different, Alain thought, glancing sideways at her again. She had changed so drastically, shedding twenty, perhaps even thirty pounds. Physically, she was a new person, a stranger, and an enormously beautiful one at that.
The last time he had seen her, he had been flattered by her obvious interest in him. He had made a casual, almost bored decision to play along, sending her the flowers and book. It had amused him, that was all, providing a temporary diversion from more demanding matters. But one glance at her, and Alain knew the rules had changed. The game was over. She was a woman who now deserved to be taken seriously. No wonder he was so tongue-tied and ill at ease. He felt the silence growing between them as they waited for her luggage at the carousel. He could think of only the most mundane excuse for breaking it, “Is this your first trip to Paris, Jane?”
“The first trip in many years,” she told him, not meeting his gaze. She looked embarrassed, he thought, probably becau
se he was acting in such an awkward manner. What the hell was the matter with him? he asked himself. Had he not dealt with beautiful women all his life?
“I came here with my parents when I was ten or so,” she went on. “Then again when one of my older sisters married a Frenchman. They live outside Paris now. He teaches at the Sorbonne. I didn’t spend much time in Paris, since we toured the provinces mostly, but I think it’s the most beautiful city in the world.” You’re babbling, Janie told herself. You sound like a typical American tourist. Next you’ll be telling him how delicious French cooking is, how magnificent yet daunting you found the Louvre.
“Then we must remedy that,” Alain replied simply. He picked up the bags Janie pointed out as hers and found a baggage cart for them. Janie followed him through the large revolving doors—big enough for both of them and the cart—and saw a uniformed chauffeur leap from a black BMW sedan idling nearby.
“Monsieur,” Janie heard the chauffeur apologize. “Please, let me.” With a shrug, Alain relinquished the cart and helped Janie into the back seat of the sedan. He handed her the tote bag, had a hurried discussion with the chauffeur at the back of the car, then climbed in beside Janie.
“Yes,” Alain continued, turning to Janie and smiling. “I say we spend a few days in the most beautiful city in the world before going down to Bordeaux. There are many wonderful things I could show you. Your schedule is flexible, is it not?”
“Well … yes,” Janie told him. Her schedule, after all, was whatever he intended to make it. Surely he was well aware of that and was only being kind. No doubt he had business to attend to and didn’t feel like leaving for Bordeaux until Melina arrived.
“Would you like that?” he asked, his blue gaze unreadable in the bright morning light. She felt light-headed from lack of sleep, disoriented, but flooded with happiness. She was sitting a foot away from Alain Chanson. It was spring. They were on the autoroute, speeding in the hushed vacuum of turbo luxury, toward Paris. It was everything she had dreamed, and yet it wasn’t a dream.
Changes of Heart Page 20