Zach laughed aloud.
“It is rather funny, isn’t it?” Faith replied, laughing herself. “I can’t pretend we’re something we’re not, after all, can I? Thank you for reminding me of that. I’ll see you outside then, Mr. Dorn?”
“Please, it’s Zach,” he told her. “And I’ll keep my eye on the more wobbly musicians when I get out there, okay?”
“Oh, would you?” Faith asked, and at that moment she looked so much like Janie that Zach could feel his heart start to ache all over again.
“Happy to,” he told her, turning away. He didn’t need to use the bathroom, but he went up anyway, closing the door behind him. It was a large, blue-tiled room with lacy white curtains that looked out on the back lawn and, farther, the sun-dazzled sea. Blue-and-white-striped tents had been set up on the bluffs from which waiters in white tie came and went with round trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres. There were at least a hundred people here, Zach estimated, and yet, unerringly, his gaze fell almost immediately upon Janie. She was wearing a pale lemon-colored, off-the-shoulder sundress. Her red hair was pulled back and held at the nape of her neck by a wide white bow. She was talking to an older couple—both small-boned and immaculately dressed—whom Zach decided must be Alain’s parents. She leaned closer to hear what the older man said, nodded, and smiled prettily at him. Zach looked down at his hands and saw that they were clenched tight—two large, mean balls. He shook them out, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and once again renewed his promise not to do anything to spoil Janie’s happiness.
A few moments later he felt composed enough to go downstairs. The first person he ran into was Louella, her arms full of elegantly wrapped presents.
“We’d almost given up on you! Where have you been?” she demanded in breathy tones. But before he could explain she excitedly went on in a lowered voice, “My God, Zach, you wouldn’t believe who all’s here. The governor, two senators, and—yes—Teddy Kennedy. Janie’s mother introduced me to him. They called him Ted, can you believe it? I mean, anybody who is anybody in the entire state is here. But they’re all so nice, Zach, I can’t get over it. They’re just like real people.”
“Well, they are real people,” Zach pointed out.
“You know what I mean,” Louella told him. “The only ones who act like they’re something special, if you ask me, are Alain’s parents. The mother gave me a pretty fishy eye when Janie introduced me as her maid of honor. She started in on me in that goddamned rapid-fire French and seemed disgusted when I told her as nicely as I could that I didn’t speak the language. God, what a snob! And the old man isn’t much better. I tried to have a conversation with him—but forget it, he pretended not to understand my English.”
“Perhaps he didn’t.”
“He understood Teddy Kennedy’s English well enough,” Louella retorted as she started toward the side door. “I gotta put these gifts in the study. I’ve never seen so many presents in one place in my entire life!”
Remembering his promise to Faith, Zach circulated through the crowd until he at last found the source of the music: four elderly men, dressed in medieval garb, wandered slowly around the grounds and performed with breathy abandon. Zach could immediately spot the two performers Faith had told him about: they lagged behind the two leaders, faces flushed and cloth caps askew. Keeping his distance, Zach followed until the group disbanded for a break, and then shadowed the two malingerers as they edged their way behind one of the refreshment tents. Zach waited until he saw one of them pull a flask from his vest pocket before descending on them.
“Excuse me,” he said, hurrying up, “I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your playing. I used to play a little mandolin myself, back in college. You just never get to hear it anymore.”
“I play the cittern actually,” the man with the flask replied curtly, hoping his unfriendliness would drive the unwanted stranger off.
“Is that so?” Zach asked with acute interest. “May I see it, please?” The man had to return the flask to his pocket in order to hand the instrument over to Zach. And that’s where the flask stayed as Zach managed to keep the conversation rolling with his enthused questions. “So, this is a cittern. What’s the difference, exactly—I mean, between this and a mandolin?”
Ten minutes later, Zach heard a man calling, “Harold? James? It’s time to start again.”
“It’s Henry.” The man with the flask interrupted Zach’s monologue abruptly. “We’ve got to go.”
“Oh, great,” Zach replied, “I’ll walk back with you. You know, I think I’ll just kind of follow you guys around the rest of the afternoon. This is all so interesting to me—I may even take up the mandolin again.”
“Oh do,” the cittern player retorted as Zach herded them back into the crowd, “take up something.”
Perhaps it was Zach’s imagination, but the musicians did sound a bit improved after that. More in tune. Better rhythm. It wasn’t really Zach’s sort of music at all—too sweet and monotonous for him—but he did rather enjoy trailing in the troupe’s wake. The leader, Henry, seemed to Zach to be more than a little talented. A tall, balding gentleman, dressed in ridiculous medieval garb and walking with undaunted pride through the crowd, Henry appealed to Zach’s more eccentric side. When cocktails were winding down and the guests were being ushered into the tents for dinner, Zach looked around for Henry, hoping to have a word with him before the troupe departed. He was stunned when he spotted Henry, now dressed in formal dinner wear, striding toward him across the darkening lawn.
“Zachary Dorn,” Henry announced, holding out his right hand. “Both Faith and I want to thank you for your beautifully executed rescue effort this afternoon.”
“Sir?” Zach replied, more than a little baffled.
“With Harry and Jim,” Henry elaborated, “my fellow musicians? Faith told me you were instrumental, so to speak, in sobering the old boys up. Sorry to have to put you out like that,” Henry went on, taking Zach’s elbow and steering him into one of the tents. “I insist you join Faith and me at the head table. We’re right this way…”
And so, though Zach had hoped to remain at the fringes of the party, away from Janie’s smile and gaze, he found himself seated at her table, between Faith and Janie’s sister Cynthia, and diagonally across from the honored couple. Henry, who Zach now realized was Janie’s father, sat between the Chansons. The rest of Janie’s seemingly endless family ranged down the long table and spilled over onto adjoining ones. There were fifteen or so tables altogether under the airy striped tent, each with a fragrant centerpiece of fresh flowers and aglitter with candelabras.
It was one of the most delicious dinners of Zach’s life: chilled fresh Maine lobster tails dabbed with caviar and sour cream, grilled Cornish game hens served on crisp squares of polenta, salads of wild dandelion and arugula, and grilled fresh garden vegetables.
“Mama worried over this menu so,” Cynthia, Janie’s lovely older sister, told Zach after he had complimented her on the meal. Though Cynthia was Janie’s senior by at least a decade, she was still the epitome of American beauty: shoulder-length blond hair, classical features, a large-boned, athletic body, and a direct blue gaze that Zach sensed did not suffer fools gladly.
“She needn’t have,” Zach said, digging into a slice of warm blueberry cobbler topped with homemade vanilla ice cream. “It’s all superb.”
“Well, she was just so determined to please the Chansons,” Cynthia replied with a tinge of bitterness in her voice. “Wanted to make them feel at home. She decided everything should be local New England produce. These vegetables and the blueberries are from her own garden.”
“It’s all great,” Zach assured her again, glancing sideways at Cynthia. “You sound defensive for some reason.”
“Only because I happened to overhear the Chansons talking before dinner,” she replied in a lowered tone. “I speak French fluently. I’ve lived in Paris with my husband for many years now. So I pick up on t
hings my dear parents and younger sister can’t.” She hesitated and looked at Zach. “I’m sorry. I’m being rude and mean-spirited. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, except that Janie told me you were one of her best friends…”
“I am,” Zach answered. “And you really haven’t told me anything, you know. But you can if you like. At Janie’s suggestion, I’m making a real effort these days to improve my listening skills.”
“Is that so?” Cynthia smiled, and Zach sensed that the Penrod women had broken more than their fair share of hearts. “Janie keeps surprising me. All these years we thought she was drudging away in some grim little ad office—and actually she was running around with men like you and Alain Chanson.”
“I own that grim little office,” Zach corrected her nicely, “and Janie and I are just friends. That’s all we’ve ever been.”
“Pity,” Cynthia replied with a sad smile, “you’re more our style than Alain. Between you and me, I think he’s a bore and the worst kind of male chauvinist. I know too much about his amorous exploits to want him anywhere near my sister, let alone married to her. I’ve never been that close to Janie, you know. I was in college when she was just twelve or so. She was such a shy … lonely kid. I always felt protective and concerned. And now I’m downright worried. I’m convinced that the two elder Chansons are sitting over there trying to calculate our net worth. I overheard her ask him if he thought the Pissarro and Monets in the living room were genuine!”
“I wondered the same thing,” Zach said, trying to soften her anger. He could almost feel the heat of her sisterly outrage radiating from her strong body, and he felt warmed by it. Here was someone who truly loved Janie, who wanted to protect her, and see her happy. They had a lot in common.
“Don’t you worry about this at all?” Cynthia demanded, meeting his gaze.
“Yes,” Zach told her, looking away and across the table at Janie. She was sitting erect, almost frozen in perfect posture. Alain’s arm was draped possessively across her shoulder. He worried that she had bartered too much for what she was getting. He worried for her spontaneity. Her dreaminess. Her soul. And he worried deeply that Alain’s commitment to her was no more lasting than that of a victor to his newly acquired spoils. A sportsman to his trophy. In another year or so, with Janie saddled with a baby or two, Alain would be off again seeking new conquests. And that could shatter Janie’s life forever.
“Yes, I worry. But you have to let people make their own mistakes, Cynthia. It’s too late to warn her now.”
“You’re right,” Cynthia replied. “I should have been a better sister years ago. I should…”
“Dance with me,” Zach interrupted, scraping back his chair. It was a night for celebration, not recrimination, Zach told Cynthia as he guided her to the dance floor that had been set up at the far end of the tent overlooking the sea. Zach danced with Cynthia, and Faith, and Janie’s other sister, Victoria. He avoided Janie, though he watched her surreptitiously all evening—a swirl of pale yellow dress and soft red hair, the bright throbbing center of his aching heart. At one point, as another dance began and Zach saw Alain pull Janie into his arms, Zach found Henry at his side, watching him.
“She’s a beautiful woman now, isn’t she?” Henry asked Zach proudly.
“She’s always been beautiful, sir,” Zach corrected him and, in the brief silence that followed, realized he had said far too much. He thanked Henry for his hospitality, made record time back to Boston, and took Elise to bed with such fervor that she once again began to plan a wedding of her own.
Chapter 42
“I know for a fact that City Slickers loved our original campaign,” Janie told Michael and Zach. “Remember? ‘You are what you wear?’ All we did really was take off from there, shoot the models from the back, add a few bells and whistles. As you can see,” Janie added, pushing the printed ad across the conference table toward them, “we dropped the headline, ran City Slickers big across the bottom, and added the tag ‘For people who are going places.’ ”
“Not bad,” Michael mused, staring down at the ad over his glasses. “Nice layout. Very hip. So why aren’t they happy?”
“They’re not making their projections,” Zach replied. He opened up a manila legal file that held a dozen or so ruled pages of Zach’s scrawled notes. “Research has been putting in marathon hours, and I think we now have a pretty accurate picture of City Slickers’ expansion efforts. Over the last six months they opened up stores in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, L.A., and San Francisco.”
“That jibe with what you know, Janie?” Michael asked.
“Yes,” Janie said. “They were hoping to expand into ten markets, but started to cut back when things didn’t seem to be going as well as they’d hoped.”
“How bad is it?” Michael demanded, turning to Zach.
“Pretty ugly,” Zach told him, running his right hand through his already tousled hair. He threw his pencil on top of the open file, stood up, and paced the length of Michael’s office. Janie was surprised that the carpet wasn’t worn down the middle from the years of Zach’s nervous tracking from the conference table, to the plate glass corner window, and back. He had on a light blue cotton shirt, rolled at the sleeves, and unbuttoned at the neck. His tie, as usual, was loosened and flapping against his chest. His jeans were a faded dark gray, his beautifully tooled leather belt was well worn, only his shoes—a blazing red pair of racing Nikes—seemed to have been purchased within the last decade. And yet, her sister Cynthia was right, there was something oddly attractive about Zachary Dorn.
Janie had been pleased and a little overwhelmed when both her married sisters had come into her childhood bedroom after the engagement party and proceeded to conduct a postmortem on the evening. She had never been in their confidence before, never shared their secret adult opinions, and so she was eager to hear their views on anything and everything. The three women talked long into the night.
“Alain is divinely handsome,” Victoria commented at one point, “and such an elegant dancer. We didn’t have much of a chance to talk, Janie … is he fun to be with?”
“Fun?” Janie replied, wrinkling her brow. “Well … he’s actually a pretty serious man. He has very strong, deep feelings about things, you know.”
“Things?” Cynthia asked lightly. “Such as?”
“Oh, family, for instance,” Janie replied, smiling from one older sister to the other. “Tradition. Society. The Chansons go back ages and ages.”
“So do the Penrods,” Cynthia said. “I must say, I thought his parents were a bit … standoffish.”
“I think they were just a little surprised,” Janie said, quick to defend her future in-laws, “by how informal we all are. I think they were expecting a lot of servants and limousines and so forth. Instead, you know, there’s Faith with her fingernails rimmed with garden dirt and Henry picking them up at the airport in the Jeepster.”
Victoria laughed aloud and said, “I saw Henry’s new beagle puppy chewing on Monsieur Chanson’s cane at one point. That probably didn’t endear them to us either.”
“Well, if our manners don’t please them,” Cynthia said acerbically, “I bet our millions will.”
“What do you mean by that?” Janie demanded quickly, a blush rising to her cheeks.
“Oh, nothing, dear,” Cynthia replied hastily, remembering Zach’s wise admonition that Janie had to make her own mistakes. She reached across the bed and took her younger sister’s hand. “I’m just happy you’re happy. My one regret is that it’s taken so long for us to get together … as sisters. It’s a real joy to see how you’ve turned out, Janie … you’ve made an exciting life for yourself … and found some great friends.”
“You’re right, Cyn,” Victoria said. “If I were not a happily married woman, I would fall head over heels for that Zachary Dorn.”
“Me, too,” Cynthia had said, adding, “There’s something very special about him. He’s not
your standard gorgeous hunk, but he has something all right. You could feel it … as soon as he took you into his arms to dance.”
“That’s for sure,” Victoria agreed. “I even saw Faith flirting with him! What’s his story, Janie … were you two ever an item?”
“Oh, no,” Janie muttered, but she could feel her face flush red. “I mean, Zach’s always been … we’re just friends.” Except they really weren’t anymore. He had avoided her at her own engagement party. She had waited all night for him to ask her to dance, but he had left without so much as a good-bye to her. And that had hurt her, more than she cared to admit to herself … and certainly more than she would ever tell anyone else. One thing she was certain about—it was Zach, not her, who was constructing the barriers. Despite the fact that they were putting in long hours together at the office, he seemed to take little interest in her personally. Gone was the laughter, the joking, the flashes of affection and insight. Janie resented the loss. It was, in a very real sense, like losing a best friend.
It hurt even more that he had made such a positive impression on Janie’s family. Typical Zach, Janie thought, swooping in and charming the daylights out of everyone—and totally ignoring her in the process. To make matters worse, Janie sensed that Alain and his parents had not fared quite as well in her family’s eyes. Was it the language barrier? The difference in cultures? Or had the Chansons behaved, as Cynthia claimed … well, the only word was snobbishly? And Alain, who was usually much more relaxed and outgoing in public, had withdrawn alongside his parents. Of course, he hadn’t known half the people at the party. But even as Janie introduced him to her family and their friends, she could sense his critical evaluation of their stature and worth. She couldn’t help but notice that he was warmer and more deferential to the political luminaries in their midst, and flip and dismissive with the waiters. But as soon as she found herself objecting to his behavior, she immediately thought up reasons for excusing it. The entire week before the party he had been traveling on business; he was undoubtedly tired, probably jet-lagged. He was concerned about his aging parents. Little wonder he stuck by them and tried to interpret the rather chaotic circumstances for them. He was doing his duty, after all, and no one could fault him for that. His manner toward Faith and Janie’s sisters had been polite, impeccable. It wasn’t Alain’s fault that he didn’t have Zach’s damned boyish charm.
Changes of Heart Page 33