by Alex Witchel
Well, I wasn’t crazy about the tennis part, but the price was right for my majestic raise, and the only thing that really mattered was seeing Paul, talking to him, centering myself somehow.
I checked in and found a message waiting for me. “Running late. Paul.”
That figured. I headed to the room—a suite, actually, and, given the rate, kind of nice. I ordered an omelet from room service and called my machine. No more messages from Bucky. Well, it was a holiday weekend, after all. He was probably up at the cottage with his sainted mother, nursing his own wounds.
True to her word, Carla had dumped him. A week after we met, she called me at work and invited me out for a drink so she could tell me all about it. I don’t know why I accepted—I didn’t want to see her, or Bucky, or Beth. But even people in earthquakes have to confront the wreckage before they start cleaning it up. This earthquake was mine.
We met at Café 43, a place near the magazine that had a wine bar and one of those Cruvinets that were the new big thing. We had Chardonnay, two different kinds. She was just as beautiful as she had been the week before, and she was filled with plans for things the two of us could do together. We could be best friends and find other guys and make Bucky’s life a living hell. She went on and on. I listened, or I thought I listened, but just as in her apartment, I couldn’t seem to register what she was saying.
I went to the ladies’ room and glimpsed myself in the fluorescent-lit mirror. My face looked bloated; my hips looked wide; my arms looked short. I wanted to go home.
I promised to call her.
I didn’t.
That evening I got Beth Brewer’s number from Information and phoned her house. The machine was on. She had a nice-enough voice, now that I listened to it, sort of settled, with a New England accent. I didn’t leave a message; what was there to say? “I don’t want him, Carla doesn’t want him, you can have him”? The one thing I had heard Carla tell me between sips of Chardonnay was that Beth had been furious when, through the office grapevine, she discovered Bucky’s triple crown, but she still hadn’t officially dumped him. She had gone to see her parents and she was hurt but she hadn’t made any decisions. At least that was according to the guys in her office.
Well, I had gone to see my parents, too. I was hurt. And since I hadn’t spoken to Bucky, I hadn’t made any decisions, either. So—the thought hit me then, in my Palm Springs hotel room—what was stopping me from just changing my mind? Yes. After all these weeks of suffering and uncertainty and regret, what if I just decided to forgive him and let everything go back to how it was before—before Beth did it first?
I left the omelet on the room-service cart, went out onto the terrace, and lit a cigarette. From where I stood, I couldn’t tell if Bob Hope’s roof was open or closed. His house was one of those modern things that look like a dumpling with edges. The lights were on inside, and the place seemed warm and homey. I tried to picture Bob Hope in there. I knew he had been married forever to a woman named Dolores and that they had lots of kids, and after he entertained the troops and made everyone laugh he would unwind at this haven on the hill. They were perfect Americans living there, I supposed, in a house you could open and close like a box of Cracker Jack, with the family the prize inside.
I finally turned away and, for the first time, opened Bucky’s letter myself. Even though I’d carried it with me every day, I hadn’t looked at it since Sharon’s reading. But after all, I thought, if I was going to forgive him, I should be better acquainted with his apology. I unfolded it, feeling the indentations of the pen on the paper.
“Written on plane from Minneapolis” was scrawled across the top right-hand corner, instead of the date. “Dear Sanny: Whatever you chose to do with this letter is none of my business—burn it, not read it, mail it back, or even share it with your newfound best friend, Carla Jones.”
I read the sentence again and noticed that Bucky had written “chose” instead of “choose” and I hadn’t even seen the error. I had corrected it automatically. As I kept reading, it happened again and again.
“This woman merely tried to destroy every memory and dream we’ve ever had for each other to make herself feel better, because she knew how much you really meant to me.”
Yes, but you could hardly blame her. It’s every bartender for herself.
“You will be wrong for the rest of your life if you believe that I have not and do not love you with the greatest intensity of feeling that any human being can share with another. It is this almost torturous love that I have held for you since I’ve been 17 years old that caused so many emotional confusions inside me—”
The terrace door opened. “Romano!” I dropped the letter onto the glass-topped table and flew into Paul’s arms. He laughed as he hugged me, his crisp white shirt seemingly the same one he had been wearing when I last saw him. His cologne was the same, his tight jeans were the same, he was even wearing his cowboy boots with the pointy toes. I felt as if a genie had granted me a wish, to have him suddenly in front of me like this. And gorgeous! He looked as if he’d walked off a magazine cover.
He lit a cigarette. “Did you eat?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not hungry.” He gestured toward the hill. “So, what do you think of Bob Hope’s house?”
“I don’t know, really. Is the roof open or closed?”
He squinted. “I’m not sure. But it’s a nice night. I bet it’s open.” He saw the pile of yellow legal sheets on the table.
“What’s that?”
“Oh, just Exhibit A of The People versus Bucky Ross.”
“Well, I would say we need a drink first, wouldn’t you?” he asked, going back inside to retrieve a large brown bag containing two bottles of vodka and a carton of grapefruit juice. We drank for a while, and both of us talked almost at once, each sentence bumping into the next in our haste to say every last thing that we had forgotten to mention by phone: the scummy actor from the Rep who had complained about the laundry now trying to get William Morris to represent him, and Paul filching the letter from the pile to answer it himself; Susie Schein seeing Paul’s picture on my desk and wondering what TV show he starred in.
Paul never mentioned Sally, and neither did I. And we seemed to have an unspoken agreement to leave Bucky for later. That night was just for us, to sit and gab, for me to hear more about his new job offer: to be an assistant agent, not at William Morris but at a smaller place, Advancing Artists.
“A big queen runs it who loves me,” Paul said. “They need to build up their television department, and I can do film there, too.” We toasted him. We toasted my promotion.
Eventually, he went back inside and emerged with my omelet, eating the bacon and leaving the green peppers while I steadily worked my way through the bread basket. Just to hear him laugh was restorative. I didn’t even care that we were looking onto tennis courts. I felt that I could breathe again, that I knew where I was even though I had never been there before.
Hours later, when I finally couldn’t keep my eyes open one more minute, he kissed me good night and said he wasn’t tired yet, that he wanted to go out and see what was happening. I knew that meant boys, so I wished him good luck, slid into the air-conditioned sheets, and, for the first time in weeks, slept all the way through until morning.
In the sunlight, I had to admit, the place didn’t look as good as it had the night before. Twigs and scraps of paper floated in the corners of the pool, and I was the only person sitting out there, even though it was already noon. I had left Paul in bed. I hadn’t heard him come in, but when I left an hour earlier he was showing no signs of life.
Feeling the sun bake me, I thought again of the option I’d come up with yesterday: What if I went back to Bucky? What if I just chalked the whole thing up to his being young and confused? He’d gone out and sown his oats and now he was deeply sorry, completely changed, and ready to get down to business. We could get back on track with the dogs and the kids, the summer house and our lives.
Ju
st the thought of it swamped me with relief. All I needed to do was say yes and I would have my life back. Why had I been fighting it all these weeks? All I had to do was say yes.
A shadow fell over my chair. Paul was standing there, wearing sunglasses and shorts.
“We’re out of here,” he said, peering distastefully at the debris floating in the pool.
“What do you mean?” I asked, squinting up at him. “You want to check out?”
“No, but we’re definitely not staying here during the day. There’s a really good hotel nearby—some kind of Marriott, I think. Let’s go there.”
“Any takers last night?” I asked in the parking lot.
He shrugged. “Do you really have to know?”
I shrugged back. “No, I guess I don’t. Touchy-touchy first thing in the morning. Or afternoon.”
We climbed into his car, a red Karmann Ghia convertible he said he had named Walt.
“As in Disney?” I asked.
“As in Whitman,” he said, smiling.
“Ah,” I sighed. “Very fancy.”
The Marriott was gorgeous, all terra-cotta, built close to the ground, surrounded by lawns and bushes, an oasis of green. We walked around to the pool. The gate was locked and had a sign on it that warned, FOR HOTEL GUESTS ONLY.
“Oh well,” I said, turning to go just as a hotel guest walked past us and opened the gate. Paul slipped in behind her and I
nervously followed. The guest never looked twice. Paul just had that way about him, inhabiting a place as if he naturally belonged there.
Noticing my hesitation, he turned toward me. “What’s the matter?”
“Well, I mean, I didn’t think we could just come in here, if we’re not staying here is all …”
He lifted his sunglasses, and his expression was gentle. “You’ve really had a hard time, haven’t you?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” Suddenly I felt wobbly.
“Normally, you would have walked right in and given attitude to anyone who tried to stop you.”
I felt flustered, as if I had done something wrong. He put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed.
“It’s okay, doll,” he said tenderly. “It’s okay, and you’re okay. And if you’re not yet, you’re going to be.”
My eyes filled. “Promise?” I asked, trying to laugh.
“Promise,” he answered firmly.
We staked out chaises, and Paul sashayed his tight butt past the pool attendant, who promptly rushed right over with plenty of towels.
“How about some lunch?” Paul asked, signaling a waiter, and soon I was eating a huge burger with lettuce, mustard, ketchup, and mayonnaise. I didn’t think about Carla Jones and her perfect body for one second. Paul loved me—I had forgotten how much. And Bucky loved me. No matter how many things happen in life, the people who love you don’t just stop. It takes a lot to love someone. And not only did Bucky love me—had always loved me, in fact—but he was begging my forgiveness on a regular basis, so it absolutely didn’t matter that I had gained at least five pounds—okay, eight—on the Ben & Jerry’s diet over the last few weeks. All right, ten. It would come off.
Paul sipped a margarita, gave the waiter a phony room number and a wad of cash, and fell asleep. I opened a magazine, but before I could focus, I noticed that a few chaises away, a girl was reading Jolie! I had never actually seen anyone do that before. I felt sort of proud, actually. That was my magazine.
I watched her flip a few pages until she got to the Burt Reynolds interview. After a glance at the headline and caption, she moved on. I was incredibly annoyed. That piece had cost me almost two weeks of work, and it was one of the reasons I couldn’t even consider hanging around the lobby of my office building, in case Bucky tried to waylay me there. The writer, Nina Martini, had gotten paid an unprecedented five thousand dollars for it, and all she did was send me four hours of tapes to have transcribed.
Take a breath, Sandra, I thought, imagining my face thrust forward, East Coast white with a grim, set jaw. What was the big deal? This was only a job, after all, not my life. But without Bucky, I had to admit, it had rapidly become my life. If it wasn’t Burt Reynolds, it was some other actor or actress—anyone but me. Because when I stopped to think about me, lately, the terrible truth was that I could not shut up. And I wasn’t only talking to people I knew. Strangers were fine. At the bank, say, waiting on line for a cash machine. Outside, some man would bang on the door for someone to open it instead of taking out his card, and the woman would say, “How entitled do you think they can be?” and I would burst out with “How about being engaged to three women at the same time?” And she would step away sideways, smiling vaguely, the way people do when a homeless woman stands on the corner singing Piaf, for money.
Business lunches were also good opportunities. I had had one recently with an older woman, a motherly sort who owned a modeling agency. She didn’t want her girls only in photos, she told me, but thought they should be written up in features. But before she could get out another word, I started in with the night at the Met and went from there. I was describing my prom dress when she began waving down the waiter, frantic for the bill.
The only person I couldn’t bear to keep talking to about Bucky was Sharon. She was so understanding, so with me, feeling my feelings, while I felt so utterly alone that I couldn’t stand it. And I couldn’t talk to Mom after that marathon weekend. She had turned against Bucky with nuclear force.
I looked over at Paul, who was still asleep. He would give me the best advice. In the meantime, though, maybe I should finish the letter. Refresh my memory.
I wiped my hands carefully on a towel before pulling the yellow sheets from the envelope and picking up where I’d left off: “Damn it, Sanny, my life is not worth a shithole without you and I was so scared to be 100 percent with you because you were the only person in this world that I did not want to fail in front of.”
See? What was I worrying about?
“I can live without you, but not if you for one second believe that I fell out of love with you and that I am a sick, lying scumbag.”
How nicely put. But wait a minute. He could live without me?
“Sanny, if this is to be my last letter and last communication with you, thank you and I will love and have the most intense emotional commitment to you for the rest of my life, notwithstanding whomever you or I chose to be with.”
How could I have forgotten that part? After all, Sharon had read it to me. This was not good. Could it be that he wasn’t home this weekend because he had found someone else to “chose”? But how could he have found someone so quickly? Who was she? Carla had dumped him. I had dumped him. Beth Brewer had—
I felt cold suddenly, as if someone in the pool had splashed me. Of course Beth hadn’t dumped him: Bucky Ross was the catch of her life. Her entire hometown was probably waiting for her to creep off the next plane and admit that the big bad city was a big bad idea and dash down the nearest aisle with a fine, upstanding sales manager for L. L. Bean as fast as her little legs could carry her.
Finally, Paul opened his eyes.
“Listen,” I said, frantic. “I think Bucky is with Beth.”
“What?” he asked groggily.
“Beth. You know—Door Number Three. I think Beth forgave him. And because I didn’t, she’s going to get to marry him and make little Betsy Rosses and I’m going to have to start going out with doctors and rabbis. I fucked up. I should have forgiven him sooner.”
He yawned. “Sandra, I always thought you were too smart for a girl. But now I know you’re not.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, flustered.
“Bucky didn’t just cheat on you the way a husband would cheat,” he said. “He’s at the beginning of his life, not bored in the middle or desperate at the end. There’s no explanation for what he did—that I can see, anyway—other than something so deeply screwed up I would think you’d do anything to avoid it.”
“But maybe it’s diffe
rent because we’ve been together for nine years,” I argued. “Maybe it is like we’re an old married couple. Maybe we’re the exception to the rule, and maybe that’s why I should forgive him.”
Paul lit a cigarette with an air of exaggerated patience. “I think it’s noble of you to want to forgive him, Sandra. People need to forgive each other more.”
“Just like Dennis forgave you,” I said, more sharply than I intended.
Paul frowned. “Sandy, do you remember when Dennis and I broke up?”
I certainly did. Dennis was the older man, the one with the opera tickets, and he and Paul had been the loves of each other’s lives, but Paul was such a maniac, drugging and drinking and screwing all the time, that Dennis couldn’t take it anymore. He left.
“And remember I was devastated,” Paul went on, “and you told me to keep my chin and my cheeks up because sooner or later someone else with a million bucks would be glad to give me a roll? Well, you were right, they have. But I lost the one guy I cared about, and I was the one who fucked it up. Now he’s moved back to Australia and it’s completely my fault. I told you when it happened that I was going to fly to Australia, that I was finally going to see a shrink, make it work. But you never heard me, because you had the official best relationship on the face of the earth.” He sighed. “The point, Sandra, is that I actually could have done something to change and I could have saved that relationship. I just don’t think you’re in the same position.”
My face burned. “Paul, I’m sorry. I’m sorry about Dennis. I had no idea how horrible I was. It’s just that—Well. I had no idea, I guess. About anything, including the official best relationship on the face of the earth.”
“It’s okay,” he said, jabbing at his hair. “You’re an evil bitch, but you’re my evil bitch.”
When I didn’t laugh, his tone softened. “Don’t feel bad, Sandy. No matter what you said, I would have done what I did. I fucked it up all by myself.”