by Rona Jaffe
“I didn’t plan to eat them,” Zack said.
“No,” she said. “You wouldn’t.” Then she met his eyes with a look that plainly said she could think of something else he would much rather eat, and if he wanted to it was available.
“Kit Barnett,” he said noncommittally, almost to himself.
“Yes,” Kit said. She let her eyes travel down his body and back to his face. “Are you having a good time?”
“I don’t know yet.”
They sipped their champagne, still looking at each other. She was standing very close to him.
“Do you want to go swimming with me?” she said.
“Now?”
“Why not? Can you swim?”
“I can swim,” he said, looking amused.
She dropped her sarong and kicked off her shoes. Now he was looking at her body; good. “I’ll race you,” she said. They drained their glasses and walked to the edge of the pool together and dove in.
She was giddy from the champagne and the euphoria of her conquest. His hair was streaming out under the water, and his long, lean legs moved sinuously as he swam, edged with tiny bubbles. They surfaced, shaking the water from their faces, and went for the other end of the pool. She was planning to let him win, but she didn’t have to; he was fast.
“Gotcha!” he said.
Kit smiled.
They began swimming again, but this time slowly. She dove under the surface of the water and swam through his moving legs, graceful as a porpoise. When she surfaced again she could see that he was impressed. She let her hair fan out like a mermaid’s, and then she did a back flip and swam underneath him again, breathing out slowly, feeling the sensuality of the water and their movements together, and the beginning of arousal. Ah … She really wanted him now, not just as Zack Shepard, but as a man. She put her hand out and gently cupped his cock.
He swam away. Not just away as in a game, but really away: he left her and climbed out of the pool. Kit looked at his trunks and he wasn’t the slightest bit aroused, and then she looked at his face, and the expression there sent her into terror. It was disdain.
He was looking at her as if he’d had every beautiful girl in the world and she was nothing but some kind of sleazy hooker. He looked as if she were not attractive at all, and worse; pushy, inept, unwanted. He looked at her as if she were a kid. Then he picked up a towel and turned and walked away.
Kit felt as if she’d forgotten how to swim. Her arms and legs felt heavy, the water was getting into her nose and mouth, she was sinking, out of control. She thrashed in that terrible terror, soundlessly, afraid to scream, and knowing it would do no good anyway because she was alone. And then the moment passed, and she rose up safely, sputtering, her heart pounding wildly. They were all still eating and drinking there at the side of the pool and they hadn’t noticed anything unusual at all.
She swam to the edge and held on until her heartbeats and breathing were under control. She looked up and saw Zack standing drying his hair, talking to a group of people, nodding and even laughing, accepting a glass of champagne. She had blown it. She would never get the part now. It was over. He might have entertained some thoughts of using her once, but now he never would.
She got through the rest of the party because the thought of going home by herself to brood on how stupid she had been was intolerable. She avoided Zack Shepard, which was easy because everyone wanted to talk to him and he didn’t want to talk to her. She wrapped her hair in a towel and let the sun dry the rest of her, and was nice to the producer who was the host. There was nobody there she wanted to have sex with: she felt completely empty and without desires of any kind. When people finally started to leave, Kit did too.
She went home and huddled in front of the television set all night, wrapped in her quilt, watching MTV. In her head she rewrote the scenario of her scene with Zack Shepard, who was no longer, and never would be again, “Zack, my friend,” and in this new script they swam and laughed and played innocently, and she never touched him. She swam through his legs and ran away. No, better, she didn’t even do that at all—they just had a race and he won.
Of course he won. She should have known before she even started to try to get him that he was way out of her world and she was a damn fool. How could she have been so unprofessional?
The next day, thank God, was Monday, and she could go back to her normal life of classes that filled up her time and kept her fit when she wasn’t working. She did not call her agent. She kept her ears open to hear about other pictures that were casting or about to.
On Tuesday her agent called. “Are you sitting down?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“You have the part in the new Zack Shepard film.”
“What? You’re kidding!” She started to scream with joy. “Oh, I can’t believe it! Oh, my God!” She was so excited she forgot to listen when he told her how much money she was getting and then she had to ask him all over again. “What did he say about me?”
“What did he have to say? Obviously you were the right one for the part.”
Obviously. In spite of everything else.
“Who’s the mother?” Kit said.
“Sit down again.”
“I’m sitting.”
“Sarah Very.”
“Wowww …” she breathed. Sarah Very: two Academy Awards. What a break to be able to work off her.
“Oh, yes,” her agent said impishly, as if he’d just remembered it. “Zack Shepard did say something about you.”
“What?”
“He said he thought this movie would make you a star.”
Kit’s eyes filled with tears. She had always known it would.
Chapter Twenty-four
New York is an enormous candy store filled with tantalizing things to buy, and at no time more than the period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, when love, you are told, means the purchase and giving of presents. Merriment screams at you from every shop window. Of course it is the worst time to be alone. So Annabel, who was alone, was grateful that Emma was working on a movie in New York and was staying with her instead of at a hotel.
It was so good to have Emma to talk to on their rare times together, and to see her things scattered around; to be able to buy food for two again, even to care that there was food in the kitchen at all. They always had part of Sunday together, even if Emma had a date, and it saved Annabel from going into a complete holiday depression. They had fun with each other—they always had.
Annabel had invented and commissioned a novelty item to sell in her boutique for Christmas. In the supermarket, looking at the shelves of soda with no sugar; soda with no caffeine; soda with no sugar and no caffeine; soda with no sugar, no caffeine, and no saccharin; and finally, soda with no sugar, no caffeine, no saccharin, and no salt either; Annabel had decided the inevitable next step was no soda. She had a company make an empty white polka-dotted can with plain white letters on it that read: No Soda; and underneath it said: Minimalism Is Everything. She made a pyramid of the cans in the window next to the clothes, which were also white, and were for parties. Other than that, she made no concession to the holidays, except for thin slices of fruitcake she was planning to serve with the afternoon tea during Christmas Week.
Emma loved the No Soda, and brought cans of it to the set to put on the buffet table with the real food they served to the cast and crew.
“It’s the middle of December already,” Emma complained. “Mom, please take next Saturday off and come with me to pick out your Christmas present.”
“Why don’t you surprise me?”
“Because if you don’t like it you’ll have to spend time returning it, so you might as well more productively spend time choosing it.”
“What did I do to deserve a logical daughter?” Annabel asked happily.
“So does that mean yes?”
“It does.”
An actual day as a buyer instead of a seller, out in the world! But more importantly, a day with Emma,
to wander the streets and stores, to have lunch together, to talk. Emma had already chosen her own Christmas present from Annabel: a selection of designer sweaters from Annabel’s boutique; which was an improvement on her usual casual taste, although Annabel had been unable to persuade her to accept a skirt to go with them. As far as Emma was concerned, everything went with jeans, and jeans went everywhere.
Saturday was bright and beautiful. All over there were families shopping, crowds pushing, and today Annabel didn’t mind at all. She drew out the process of choosing her gift because she didn’t want the day to end. Finally, after a leisurely and festive lunch, Emma dragged her into Tiffany’s.
“I know what you have to have,” Emma said.
It was an Elsa Peretti necklace: a very thin gold chain with a tiny diamond in the center. “It’s too expensive,” Annabel said.
“It is not. You’d go blind trying to see that diamond. And anyway, I’ve been saving my money. I want to give you jewelry. Jewelry is forever.”
Annabel looked away, remembering Dean’s birthday necklace, and then she looked back at Emma and smiled. “Then it’s just what I want,” she said.
Emma made her walk to another part of the store while she bought the necklace, paid for it, and had it gift-wrapped. She was still a child, sentimental and funny … Like me, Annabel thought. There is a part of each of us in the other, and it’s the best part, even though mine is hidden away.
They went out to the street again, Emma looking triumphant, and struggled against the crowd of holiday shoppers towards home. Then Emma shrieked and waved, and was hugging a handsome, dark-haired, intense-looking man in a sheepskin jacket.
“Mom,” she said, as if she had discovered something miraculous, “this is Zack Shepard! Remember, who I worked for? Zack, this is my mother.”
They shook hands. “Emma has never stopped talking about you,” Annabel said.
“She talked about you, too,” he said.
“About me?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well,” Annabel said. They smiled at each other, pleasantly and a little carefully. He was so intense, she thought. Like there was an engine turning away inside of him all the time. And on top of that an overlay of loose-limbed relaxation. It was an interesting combination. Emma’s god in person. Well, well.
“I can’t believe you’re right here in New York,” Emma said. “What are you doing here?”
“Some meetings with the studio people,” he said. He smiled at Emma in a fatherly fashion. “Your daughter deserted me,” he said to Annabel. “She wants my job.”
Emma actually blushed. “No, I don’t,” she said.
“I am not a jealous person,” he said mildly.
“You don’t have to be,” Emma said. “Not of anybody.”
“Where are you two going?” he said. “Do you want to have a drink?”
“Why not?” Annabel said. She suddenly felt wild again, the person who believed life was full of unexpected adventures. “Where shall we go?”
“There used to be a place on the East Side … the Metropole or something. Sort of a bistro. I liked it.”
“Le Metropole,” Emma said.
“Oh, no,” Annabel said. The place she’d had her first date with Dean. Why did people you’d had a bad experience with keep hovering over your life and ruining everything: presents, restaurants, new encounters?
“Is it no good anymore?” Zack Shepard said.
“It’s great,” Emma said. “It’s fun.”
“I don’t mind,” Annabel said.
Zack Shepard peered at her; those director’s eyes, taking in everything. Emma had said he was forty-five. Almost her age. She would exorcise Le Metropole with her daughter and this interesting man; she would have a nice afternoon. He took each of them by the arm, himself in the middle, and marched them there.
The restaurant was still full of people; exuberant holiday shoppers having a late lunch, or an early drink. It was quite noisy and jolly; not the romantic place it had been when Annabel went there so long ago for her lunch with Dean. The three of them wanted white wine, so Zack ordered a bottle. He had a warmth and spontaneity about him that Annabel liked, and she began to relax and enjoy herself, and let Dean float away right out of her head. Zack was talking enthusiastically about the new film he was going to make.
“I have a good friend in that movie,” Emma said. “Kit Barnett. Her mother went to Radcliffe with you, Mom—Emily Buchman.”
“Oh, yes, Chris interviewed her,” Annabel said. “The cookie lady. She was Emily Applebaum and we all had rooms on the same floor in Briggs Hall.”
“She always writes to the alumnae bulletin about her daughter,” Emma teased. “You never write about me.”
“I don’t even read the thing,” Annabel said. She smiled at Zack. “I do not have the fondest memories of my college years.”
“I had very little to do with mine,” he said. “I spent most of my time in the dark like a mole.”
“Doing what?”
“Either editing film or going to the movies.”
“And were you popular?” Annabel asked.
“I don’t think I noticed.”
She laughed. “I wish I had known you. You seem more levelheaded than I was.”
“I think I was a nerd,” he said, smiling.
“You could never be a nerd,” Annabel said.
She was flirting again, she was happy. He made her feel wonderful. No wonder Emma was so fond of him. She had never met anyone with so much energy.
“Do we have time for another bottle of wine?” he asked.
“Of course,” Annabel said, without even looking at her watch. They had nowhere to go, and this was like a party. What a shame that such an attractive man had to live all the way in California, where she was sure he had someone. Everyone seemed to have someone. She wondered if he thought she did. Emma was sitting there quietly, looking pleased, no, impishly self-satisfied, at the way her mother was getting along with Zack. The matchmaker. It occurred to Annabel that before Dean she had never wondered for an instant whether a desirable man who liked her had another woman waiting for him at home. If he had, she wouldn’t have cared. She would not have thought of herself or the other woman as any kind of a threat to each other.
But now she had found herself vulnerable, and that changed everything. Not enough, however, to keep her from thinking that Zack Shepard was extremely sexy.
Emma went to make a phone call and left them alone together. He looked at his watch. “I have a meeting in half an hour,” he said, “but I was wondering if you were free tonight for dinner.”
“As a matter of fact, I am,” Annabel said.
“About eight?”
“That would be lovely. How should I dress?”
“The way you are now is fine,” he said. “I was just going to go to a little Italian place I like downtown. It’s my secret place and I don’t tell anybody about it. You make a restaurant famous and then you can’t get a table.”
“You don’t look like a serious eater,” Annabel said.
“I am a serious everything,” he said.
Emma was thrilled. “Don’t come home tonight, Mom,” she said. “If you come home I will consider this evening a failure.”
“Are you living vicariously through me?” Annabel said.
“No, no, he doesn’t want me, he wants you. We had a purely professional relationship. You two are perfect for each other. You’ll have a wonderful time.”
“And what are you going to be doing?”
“I should sleep, but I got talked into going out dancing with some of my friends who I haven’t seen for a while.”
Zack arrived fifteen minutes late, apologized, and whisked Annabel down to the Village in a cab. They sat at a large table in a small, brightly lit little restaurant, and he ordered an enormous amount of food. “You don’t have to eat it all,” he said. “Just taste it.”
Ah, garlic, she thought after the first bite. There goes romance. B
ut it was said that if both people ate garlic neither one noticed. Besides, since Emma had banished her for the night she had taken her toothbrush along with her makeup. Zack was looking at her.
“I just have to tell you,” he said, “that you are absolutely knockout gorgeous.”
“Thank you,” she said, amused and moved.
“Now eat,” he said. “Isn’t this great?”
“It is.” The veal was so tender she could cut it with her fork; the salad crisp and fresh, the pasta perfect. She remembered her first meal with Dean. They had not eaten anything. It had been instant, crazed, moonstruck, adolescent passion. With Zack she had the feeling that he enjoyed each moment in its own time. He had meant it about being a serious everything. She wondered if he were a serious lover.
“Have you been married?” she asked.
“Once, when I was young. Neither of us wanted children, and by the time she changed her mind neither of us liked each other enough.”
“And did you change your mind too?”
“No. Never.”
“How refreshing,” Annabel said.
“Most women would have said selfish,” he said.
“I’m not most women.”
“That’s obvious from hello,” he said. They smiled at each other. “I think you were right; I wish we had known each other twenty years ago. I might not have been able to handle it, you would have scared me, but you would really have enriched my life.”
“It’s twenty-five years,” Annabel said, “and I wouldn’t have scared you. I never scared anybody.”
“I can’t imagine why not,” he said.
“I was always too accessible,” she said calmly. “And I was different from everyone else.”
“You don’t think that’s frightening?”
She thought about it. “Maybe it was. Coming from that stiff, totally priggish time right out of the Middle Ages …”
“You know what scares people the most?” he said. “I mean, not counting things like the neutron bomb, or being poor, or sick, or dying; you know what people really can’t deal with?”