“What you see here, now, is only a small part of the work,” Art added. He signaled for the waiter and ordered whiskey. “This is the marketing part, if you want. But it would not happen if there wasn’t the creative part first.”
“I love this part of your job.” Lucia gave Jon a gentle, slow smile that made him feel quite warm; there was such an eerie echo of Naomi in it. “The concert was great fun; you and your band are well tuned to each other, and your sound is quite full, quite orchestral.” A trace of irony sparkled in her eyes. “And you are quite…sexy onstage. In a classy way, of course.” Her glance flitted over to Naomi. “The ladies were quite taken.”
“I want to say this,” Olaf interupted. To soften his rudeness he brushed his hand over her cheek, which made Sal cough on his drink and quickly wipe his chin.
“I know I tend to be single-minded. Lucia has told me often enough. But I never wanted Naomi to be unhappy.”
There was a second of silence, a moment when they all looked at him and no one had anything to say. Jon noted that the bar had emptied but for them, and the only waiter left was looking at his watch.
“You never thought I was able to decide for myself what would make me happy.” Naomi put her glass down on the table. “You never cared to find out either. For you it was clear that I would go to business school, marry Seth or someone else you would pick for me, and dissolve into the oblivion of the family’s business. Oh, I forgot—and produce heirs, of course, preferably male ones. What a disgrace; you, the owner, the capo of Carlsson hotels, and no son; and your only daughter has other plans.” She rose. “All this talk of peace and love and flowers, Father, won’t lull me into believing you mean a single word of what you’re saying. You still want the same thing: me and, if possible, Joshua too.” With a flick of her wrist she indicated her mother. “I’m surprised you are still married to each other. You could easily have divorced Mom, paid her off and found someone else to give you the children you needed. Too late, isn’t it?”
“Sit down.” Calmly, her tone soft and melodious, Lucia pointed at Naomi’s chair. “You’re just like your father. Both so stubborn, both so easy to flare up. I wonder why, when I’m the Italian and should have the hot temper.”
Jon watched with interest how Naomi’s mouth turned down obstinately, how she dropped back into her seat, no longer cool and collected but in a visible sulk.
“I want you to talk to each other, for crying out loud,” Lucia said, just a little louder than necessary. “I’ve had enough of these icy silences and the animosity and… whatever.” In a truly Italian gesture she shook her fingers at them, reticence and good manners gone. “I’ve so had it. Olaf, you stop being such a bastard right now. I want my daughter in my life, and my grandson, and any other possible grandchildren too. I want to get to know my son-in-law. And you!” She rounded on Naomi. “You stop treating your father like he’s the devil incarnate, as if he wanted to lock you away in a convent or something. He meant well, both for you and for the business. He is right, you know; you do have a talent for it. You did run the Seaside very well. With you running the entire estate, we would all be much easier.” She took a deep, calming breath and settled back into the black leather chair. “You have made it abundantly clear you don’t want anything to do with your inheritance. You refused to touch your money; you even raised Joshua on your small income from the Seaside. For God’s sake, Naomi, he could have gone to the best schools in the world instead of attending that village school in Halmar.”
“He did.” It came out a little sullenly. “I did send him to you to attend boarding school.”
“Yes.” Lucia pushed her hair behind her ear and took a deep drink from her glass. “Yes. So you did.” A fine layer of thoughtful sadness settled over her words. “You sent him to us.”
Jon recalled the day they had gone to Bergen, soon after he had found her, when she had told him Joshua was at Oxford, studying music, and how sad and lonely she had seemed talking about their son.
“I did whatever it took to educate Joshua and let him develop his talents.” Naomi sat, her eyes lowered to her folded hands. “I wanted him to turn into the fine musician he could be.”
“Just like us.” Olaf said it so softly, so thoughtfully that they all looked at him. “Just like me. I wanted to give you the best education to turn you into the fine businesswoman I could see developing in you. You know you have the instincts and the talent for it. You know you do.”
Naomi shrugged.
“You do,” he insisted. “And I still think you would have been happy, eventually, running the estate. It’s not a bad place to be in this world, owning and managing our hotels.” Again his hand took hold of Lucia’s, who held it between hers.
Slowly, sadly, Naomi raised her eyes to him. “But I never wanted to. I always wanted to be free, to write, to travel, by myself. And then…” A small flutter of her wrist in Jon’s direction. “And when I heard Jon sing, I knew where I belonged. It felt as if he was telling me what I had to do. I don’t want to be anywhere else.” She sighed. “This is the most useless discussion ever. Nothing will change.”
“Maybe.” Jon cleared his throat before he went on. “Maybe this is the way of world, and you just feel it more than others because so much is at stake, Olaf.” Enviously, he eyed Art’s tumbler of whiskey. Olaf noticed and, with a lopsided grin, waved the waiter over.
“My parents were deeply disappointed when I quit college; they threw me out of the house,” Jon went on. “I had to fend for myself, and those were hard times. Sean, my band leader, and I, we shared a small apartment in Manhattan; and often enough we went hungry. But I was just as stubborn as Naomi. It was the music or nothing for me. I have a feeling this is how it has to be. Joshua…” He took a glass of bourbon when it was offered. “Right now he’s happy at Juilliard. No one knows what he’ll want to do in a couple of years, and I’m bracing myself for surprises. But I can tell you this, Olaf: if he decides to drop the music and join you instead, we will not stop him. I’ve learned my lesson. You can’t control your children. They are not made in our image. They have their own lives, and those may be very different from what we wanted. And I’ve also learned this, seeing you and Naomi: you accept it or you lose your children, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to lose my son. That’s not going to happen. I love Joshua more than my life, and I want him happy more than anything else. That’s all that matters.” He felt a stab of sadness at his own words, but there was a sweet taste of truth to them too. Exhaustion was finally creeping up on him, and he realized they hadn’t eaten yet. It was well after midnight, and he had no idea if any restaurants would be open. With a sigh, Jon looked at his watch. It would have to be room service.
“We should move.” Olaf signed the check and handed it back to the waiter. “I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry. There’s a fabulous little Italian restaurant in the old part of town. I think we should all go there.”
Chapter 19
They hadn’t bought a penthouse, Lucia told them over the antipasti; that was a joke. In fact—she threw a sidelong glance at Naomi—they had moved into the private apartment at their New York hotel. It had a roof garden and a view of Central Park. It was very close to Lincoln Center, and they liked to go out for breakfast to a small café across the street, where they could look at the facade of the opera house and the fountain. They often went for a morning stroll down Broadway, sometimes all the way down to Times Square, once all the way to Chinatown where they had lunch and then took a cab back.
“I love living there,” Lucia said; “it reminds me of home. Manhattan is as lively as Naples,” which made Olaf laugh.
Jon still thought it was quite sinister to see him do that, see the stern, narrow, nordic face brighten up, his teeth blindingly white and quite large, his nose as long and sharp as an eagle’s.
“We know you�
�re Italian.” Sal toasted her with his glass of red wine. “How did you get to meet your husband? A Canadian? May I ask?”
Lucia speared a tiny tomato with her fork and looked at it critically before popping it into her mouth. “I was visiting friends in Toronto over the summer. At the time, I dreamed of being a journalist and living in Canada. I had this obsession with the English language, and so my parents sent me there for a while. The family I was staying with took me to Kleinburg to see the McMichael Collection.” She paused to pick one of the breadsticks from the breadbasket. “God, I fell in love with that place instantly. It was magical, wonderful. I walked down those halls built into the hillside, the silhouette of Toronto in the distance, forest all around me, and those paintings! I remember being spellbound by Lawren Harris and his icebergs and dark conifers, I wanted to travel North and see that landscape for real. They had to pry me out of the museum.”
The heady aroma of garlic and fresh herbs wafted from the platters as the next course was served. Instantly Jon’s stomach began to growl. He could hardly wait until the waiter ladled some of the golden pasta onto his plate.
“We went to lunch at a restaurant in Kleinburg, The Doctor’s House and Livery. I recall the celery soup was excellent, and the apple pie; but I have no memory of the main course because just then this blond young man came in, in riding breeches mind you! My, was he dashing! I fell in love instantly.”
“That’s not how it was,” Olaf interrupted. “She was as aloof as you can imagine, turning her back on me, ignoring me completely. And she, she was dazzling, like a star—the first thing I saw when I walked in, and the only thing I wanted to see. That long, black hair and those velvet eyes, incredible.”
“So what did you do?” Art pushed away his plate to lean forward.
“Oh, I went over to her and asked her to go out with me.” Olaf poked at the pasta on his plate. “And she agreed. We went for dinner downtown and then walked along the lakeshore, and we kissed. I took her home, and we met again the next day. Lucia had to go back to Italy a few weeks later, and I went with her. We got married, right there in their church. I wanted her in my life, and I didn’t care about anything else. End of story.”
Jon’s hand, still holding the fork, sank onto the table. Hunger forgotten, he listened to Olaf and Lucia, the echo of his own life ringing in his ears. He looked at Naomi, who was sitting quietly between him and Sal, not eating, as distant as she could be without getting up and leaving, a cloud of stillness gathered around her like a cloak.
“But…” He did not know how to say it. “Then you know. Then you know how terrible falling in love can be. That’s just what happened to me, with Naomi. When I saw her that day, in that hotel lobby, I knew my fate was sealed. It was final, like a door falling shut, like sudden silence where before there was turmoil and uncertainty.”
“Yes. Yes.” Olaf stared right back at him across the wine bottles and food between them. “You have a good way of putting it. Silence after the turmoil. Yes.”
“It’s my job to put feelings into words and music. That’s what I’m good at; it’s what made me rich.” The meat melted in Jon’s mouth, well doused in cream and cheese. For some quirky reason it made him think of his walk along the lake with Naomi all those years ago, right here in Geneva, and how they had talked about lunch and his disappointment at not being served chocolate for breakfast. “But I’m not nearly as good a writer as Naomi, not by a long shot. The melodies come easily, but I have to wrestle with the words. And she…” He smiled her way. “She just plucks them out of the air. It seems as if they are floating around her, and she just needs to put them together in the right order.”
Music was playing in the background, a tenor singing an Italian song, one Jon had hummed a million times. He had never understood the words or wondered what they meant, and it had never occurred to him to ask Naomi. Once, only once had he heard her speak Italian, and then it had been in London, the day he had asked her to marry him.
“What’s he singing about?” he asked now, but she did not answer.
“Pavarotti,” Lucia said instead. “The way he sings you might have believed he was from Naples. But in fact he is from northern Italy.” She smiled maliciously. “A butter eater. We in the south use olive oil. He’s singing about an ungrateful heart, about his girl, Catharina, who does not listen to his pleas of love and even ignores him in church.”
“She must have been from Naples too,” Olaf threw in, and mopped his plate with a good-size chunk of bread. “Beautiful, cruel women who walk over men’s hearts.”
Naomi dropped her napkin on the table and rose, pushing her chair back rather forcefully. “I’m tired. I’ll go to the hotel. Don’t worry, I’ll take a cab. You…”—she placed a brief, dry kiss on Jon’s hair—“stay here and enjoy the canolli. You’ll love them, I promise. Good night.” She walked away before anyone could react.
She was already in bed when he got back to the hotel, the sheet drawn up over her head, but Jon was sure she was still awake.
It was dark in the room; the only light came from the streetlamps casting a bluish glow on the ceiling and the walls. He could smell the lake, so different from the ocean—sweet, brackish, almost tepid—and hear the little waves smack against the quay. Even at this hour there was traffic outside; life was going on in the warmth of the summer night. Jon wondered how it must have been for Naomi to actually live here, a young girl of eighteen.
“I know what’s eating you,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt, “and yeah, I agree. Come on, look at me.”
There was no response so he went on. “This was the most unreal evening of my life. I never thought I’d sit down to dinner with your father again, let alone actually enjoy it. Did you know he could be this charming, this outgoing?”
The sheet flew back, and she sat up. Jon’s breath caught at seeing her like that, her hair in a wild tumble and her nightgown straps slipping from her shoulders. The words he had meant to say, every thought of Olaf, drifted from his mind. “You’re so beautiful. You look just like you did that night when we first were here, when you became mine.”
“Don’t change the subject, you miserable man!” Furiously, Naomi slapped the sheet. “You sat there and chatted as if he was your oldest friend, as if nothing ever happened! I felt as stupid as a schoolgirl!”
Jon dropped the shirt on a chair, grinning. “You looked the part too. There was steam coming out of your ears!”
She looked ready to throw something at him, so he raised his hand in capitulation and sat down next to her on the edge of the bed. “God, if there was ever a night I wanted to go differently, it was this one. But here we are, discussing your father. Again, again, when we should be making love, when you should be in my arms, sighing, sobbing with longing, yielding to me, mine.”
Her lips parted in a soft invitation. Jon reached out to touch them, tracing the fine curve with the tips of his fingers. “Since I woke up this morning I have thought of nothing but tonight, of reliving that night when I first loved you, right here in this room. My miracle, my love.”
Gently, with a small smile, Naomi laid her hand over his mouth. “We have to talk about this first, Jon. I’m spooked, both by my father and by you, sitting over the manicotti as if you were Mafia dons, chatting like old friends. You had a restraining order placed against him only a few months ago, and now this?”
Jon took her hand in his and kissed the palm. “If it was me, I’d never face the old bastard again, believe me, Naomi. There’s no one in the whole world I care for less than your father. But baby…” That slipped strap was badly distracting. He wanted to slide his finger under it and pull it down, feel the warm, silken skin, lay his head on her chest and listen to her heartbeat. “You even wanted to go to their house, meet them; you told me they were your parents after all was said and done, and they only meant well. O
kay, so they showed up when and where you never expected them. But honestly, I think Olaf really, really went out of his way to be nice tonight.”
It took her a moment to respond, her voice sad and small. “Jon, he knows he won’t get anywhere by fighting you and so he’s trying to charm you. Nothing has changed. He will never change. All he cares about are his bloody hotels.”
“Maybe.” He caught her around the waist and picked her up, settling her on his lap, facing him. “Maybe, I don’t care. The food was great, the restaurant was nice, and I’m quite taken with your mother. I wonder if you’ll look like her in thirty years? I wouldn’t mind that one bit.”
“You didn’t do this the last time we were here.” Her arms came up around his neck.
“Because you were an innocent young thing; you had no idea what sex would be like.” The long mane tangled around his hands like seaweed. “You had no idea what was in store for you, did you? Did you get from me what you’d expected that first night?”
“Oh yes.” Whispered against his lips, her body a sweet curve against his. “Yes, you were everything I had dreamed of seeing those photos of you in the magazines. How I used to stare at them, at that centerfold; how I wished to take off your shirt and touch you.”
“You were in love with my voice on the radio, with my picture in the magazines; you really fell in love with the rock star?” He cupped her buttocks to pull her closer. “You really are a groupie. Your father was right for once; you are my groupie. How I love it. All right then, let me love you, my sweet little fan.”
Under the Same Sun (Stone Trilogy) Page 18