“As per usual. Gillian, is there anything wrong?”
“No. Why?”
“You look as though you’ve had a rough day, as though something hurt.” Very perceptive, Mr. Harte.
“No. Really. Maybe a little tired, but that’s all. Would you like a drink before we go?”
“No, I think we’d better get started.”
“Who are you?” Samantha was suddenly in the doorway, studying the scene.
“Gordon, this is Samantha. This is Mr. Harte, Sam.”
“Who’s he?”
“Someone I work with and a friend of Aunt Hilary’s.” I watched them carefully, afraid she’d set his back up by saying something rude. I knew he wasn’t used to children.
“Can I touch your beard? Is it real?” Samantha approached carefully and Gordon stooped down to talk to her.
“Yes, and it is real. Hello, Samantha.” I watched with trepidation to see if she would give it a yank, but instead she just patted it and I stopped holding my breath.
“Feels kinda like a horse. You know?”
“That’s a compliment,” I interpreted.
“Do you like horses, Samantha?”
“Yeah! A lot!” A lengthy discussion followed, and I was surprised to hear how much Gordon seemed to know about them, and even more surprised when he reached for a pad on my desk and did a few quick sketches for Sam, which delighted her. Gordon and Samantha were discovering each other.
“Gillian, we’d better go now. Samantha, I hope to see you again sometime.”
“Sure. Come back and visit, Mr. Gordon.”
“Mr. Harte, Sam. Goodnight, sweetheart. Be a good girl with Jane.” We exchanged great big hugs and a series of watery kisses, and then Gordon rang for the elevator.
“That was nice of you, Gordon. Thanks.” We were waiting for a cab downstairs and my spirits were restored. It was nice to see Samantha enjoying him.
“I like her. She’s bright and very direct.”
“That’s for sure!” I laughed and shook my head as a cab pulled up and we sped off toward the museum.
The evening was wonderful, it was delightful to be swept along in his wake, being introduced to everyone and having a fuss made over us. Gordon was on the board of the museum, something he had neglected to tell me when he had invited me. Hilary was there, sans Rolfe, looking smashing in a long skinny black knit dress and an equally long skinny white coat. Gordon asked her to join us for dinner afterward, which I thought was nice, but she refused.
This time Gordon took me to Lutece for dinner, where he was received as though he owned the place or, at the very least, paid the rent.
We had run into Matthew Hinton at the museum, accompanied by a striking redhead who clung to his arm as though in desperate gratitude. We greeted each other, but coolly, and it was apparent that he had as little interest in what Women’s Wear had called “his latest love” a week before as I had in him. He was nice, but there just wasn’t much to him.
And I may not have been making the social columns with Gordon Harte, but I was having a beautiful time.
22
Friday was pandemonium. The actors who owned the eccentric dining room stood amidst a bevy of people, ready to begin the shooting. And four hours later we were still only beginning. They managed to get loaded during the shooting, kept the setting constantly rumpled and disorderly, and drove the photographer crazy. At midnight it was over, and I wondered if we had a single usable shot. And we weren’t through yet; we had promised everyone dinner in compensation for their “patience.” At 2 A.M. I finally crawled home, exhausted and feeling as though I were about to die.
An hour after I went to bed, I got up, vomited, had chills, cramps, and panicked, thinking I was losing the baby. I should have called Peg, or the doctor, or even Gordon. Someone sensible. But I wasn’t feeling sensible. I had that wild animal feeling one gets when surprised at feeling suddenly sick. So I operated on reflex and emotion, and dialed Chris.
“Hello?”
“Chris? . . . I think I’m losing the baby, I feel so awful. We worked until one o’clock . . . No, for God’s sake, I mean it. No, I’m not drunk . . . I’m sick . . . what am I going to do?”
“For chrissake, Gillian, stop crying. Why did you call me? I can’t do anything about it, and you know what I told you. Call the doctor. . . . Look, I can’t talk to you now. I’ll call you Monday.”
Monday? Monday? What the hell does he mean, “Monday”? Sonofabitch . . . I put on some clothes and went to the emergency room at Lenox Hill Hospital where I spent the night and was treated for exhaustion and hysteria.
I was sent home at noon, feeling sheepish, and still very tired. Gordon called almost as soon as I got home.
“And where have you been so bright and early this morning? I called you at nine. I hear the shooting was a madhouse last night.”
“Yes, it was.” And then I told him about the night at the hospital, omitting the part about my call to Chris.
Gordon was sympathetic, and said he’d check on me on Sunday, and why didn’t I take Monday off?
I slept all day and when I woke up there were flowers from him, a small basket that looked like a nest, filled with tiny blue and orange flowers. The card read, “Work is the opiate of the masses, but it sounds like you had a bad trip. Have a good rest. Apologies from your Senior Art Director, Gordon Harte.” Funny and thoughtful and nice, because it wasn’t pushy and signed “G.” or something equally irritating.
He called again on Sunday, and I was feeling better, but still pretty tired, so he agreed not to drop by, but instead invited me to dinner on Thursday.
As I lay in bed on Sunday afternoon, pleased with the easiness of the Gordon situation, and maybe feeling a little supercilious about it, as though for once I had “control,” the doorbell rang. Who the hell is that? I got up to answer it. It was Gordon.
“Changed my mind. Besides, Hilary says you love having people drop in on you on Sundays. We just had lunch and she sends her love. May I come in?”
“Of course,” but I was angry, really mad. I looked a mess, he had agreed not to come by, I didn’t feel well, and unannounced visits from him constituted an “act of pressure” in my book.
“You don’t look too pleased to see me, Mrs. Forrester.”
“Just surprised. Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Yes. But I’ll make it, you go back to bed.”
“No, that’s all right, I’ll stay up. I’m really fine.” . . . I wasn’t about to get into one of those “now tell me, doctor,” scenes with him on the edge of my bed. . . .
“You look fine to me, but I don’t know much about these things. I’ll make the tea.”
He returned from the kitchen after much scraping and banging, and he sat there looking unaffected by it all, making easy conversation and looking around pleasantly. Samantha was out and the apartment seemed horribly quiet.
I was in the midst of making stiff, pompous remarks about nothing, and looking into my cup of tea to cover the fact that I was uncomfortable, when Gordon got up, came around the coffee table, sat down, and kissed me. His beard felt scratchy, and his mouth felt soft, and I was too embarrassed not to kiss him back. He kissed me, and then leaned back a little, looked down at me, and hugged me.
He hugged me. A nice hug. The kind I had longed for when I was eight years old, and still longed for twenty years later. And there was Gordon Harte, hugging me, while I sat in the circle of his arms and was suddenly in tears.
I tried to make light of it after that, for fear that he was going to try to take it too many steps further, and I didn’t want to get into a scene like that with him yet.
“You want to be wooed, don’t you?”
“What?” It sounded so ridiculous, it made me laugh.
“Mrs. Forrester, we could spend the next few weeks eating dinner together twice a week and enjoying preambles, I could ‘woo’ you, and we could say agreeable things to each other, and in three weeks you would probably agree
to go to bed with me, or we could go to bed now, and enjoy the three weeks more. What do you say?”
“I can’t. I’m sorry, but I just can’t. I know I’d get upset, and I couldn’t handle it. I know myself.” I was almost whispering when I said it, and looking down at my hands clenched in my lap.
“All right.” . . . I was a teensy bit sorry that he agreed so readily, but for the most part I was relieved.
We sat talking in low voices, and listening to the rain, kissing on the couch in my living room for a while, and each time we kissed I wanted him more, and we held each other for longer, until he kissed my breast, and my whole body surged upwards toward his, and we were suddenly hand in hand, heading for my bedroom, still kissing and touching and holding along the way, almost knocking over a lamp, and in a great hurry to get to bed. He took off his clothes, and I noticed with a shock that he didn’t wear any underwear. . . . “Why Gordon Harte, you look so goddam serious all the time, and there you are walking around that magazine all day with no underpants on! What if your zipper breaks?” I was laughing, it really struck me funny.
“It never has.”
“What if you get in an accident? My grandmother always said. . . .”
And he roared with laughter, and walked over to help me take off the rest of what I had on. . . . “Gillian, you’re beautiful.” He sounded as though he meant it, and for the rest of time our bodies rolled together, merged into each other, touched and fell away, and joined again. We made love, and lay together feeling close, and familiar, easy with each other. We had become friends. We had fallen in like. It was the first time in my life that I didn’t feel I had to shout “I love you” to justify doing something that I had been told all my life was not a nice thing to do. Instead, we hugged and laughed, and I felt right with the world.
It was better with Gordon than it had ever been with Chris, which seemed odd to me because I didn’t love Gordon. But that afternoon I stopped being angry with Chris. I didn’t make love with Gordon to wreak vengeance on Chris for Marilyn. I made love with Gordon because I wanted to, and I liked him. Nothing more than that.
And I lay in Gordon’s arms, smiling, while he drew figure eights around my breasts with his finger, and I thought of the poem on the flyleaf of Hilary’s book . . . “he who kisses the joy as it flies, lives in Eternity’s sunrise. . . .”
23
In every possible way, October was a good month, a warm month full of people and things to do. Samantha was happy at school and, while I hadn’t come to love New York, I had done a little better than just resign myself to it. New York was being good to me, it was looking its best, and was on its best behavior. There is a time of year in New York, in the fall, which comes suddenly, and doesn’t last long, but is enough to make you love it for the rest of the year. If you go away then, you will always think of New York in golden hues, but if you stay you see the filth, the soot, the slush, and, later, live in the stench and torrid heat of a New York summer. But in the fall, it becomes beautiful, it is red and gold and brown, it’s clear and windy and crisp, the streets look cleaner, people step as though walking to a march, the smell of hot chestnuts is everywhere, young people are in the city on weekends, making it look as though there are some nice young people who live there after all, because summer weekends are over and it’s too early for skiing. It’s the time of year I love best, and if there is a warm spot in my heart for New York it is for that city at precisely that time of year. And the spell it weaves for two, or three, or four weeks in the late autumn.
And as though the city itself had planned it that way, on my last year in New York, those magical weeks happened, and were crisper and livelier and more beautiful than ever before. To me, New York is like a bitch of a woman, she’s too much to handle, and I don’t admire her lifestyle, but, in deference to what she is and what she stands for, I have to admit it when she moves out in style. And in October she does.
Gordon and I were seeing each other two or three times a week, went some place really “nice” about once a week, met some place after work sometimes, or one of us cooked dinner at his place or mine. Halfway into the month, we pooled our resources and address books and threw a party. It was crazy and fun, crowded and full of amusing stereotypes, like most parties in New York.
Gordon had a full schedule, and I had enough to do, so that it never became an everyday thing.
There were no assumptions made about each other’s time, but everything just seemed to fall into place, like the weather. And life moved on.
Halloween came and went leaving Samantha richer and happier with the loot she had collected from our building and Gordon’s. He had taken her over to his place to test his neighbors’ mettle, and she was delighted. By then, she and Gordon were fast friends.
We decided to spend Thanksgiving together, quietly, at my place, and I was just leaving the office to pick up our turkey when the phone rang. It was Julie Weintraub.
“Hi. I just spoke to my doctor, and it looks like you’ve got the job for another month. How’s that for a bitch? Actually, I’m enjoying the rest, and there are a couple of interns worth staying around for. Who needs John Templeton with a setup like this?” Her words sounded funny, but she sounded disappointed. Lying on your back with pins in you, and traction pulling at you, just isn’t a whole lot of fun, interns or no. Given a choice, I’d even take Eloise Franck. Poor Julie.
“Have you told John yet, Julie?”
“Yeah, I just called him. He ought to be barreling down the hall any minute with the good news.”
“Come on, you know everybody here wants you back. All anybody ever says to me around here is ‘when’s Julie coming back?’ ” which wasn’t entirely true, but I thought it might help.
“Bullshit. But that was a nice try. I saw stats of your last issue by the way. Looks good to me. Maybe I won’t have a job anymore when I get out of this place.” . . . And that was something I knew was worrying her.
“Bullshit to you, lady. I’m just making like a Kelly girl here. Purely temporary. I’ll start wearing white gloves if it’ll make you feel any better,” and she broke into a more Julie-like laugh. . . . “Listen, seriously, what did the doctor say? How’s it mending?”
“I don’t know, nobody tells me much of anything. All I know is that they want to reshift something, which means yet another orthopedic surgeon, and the operating room again, which is not exactly my favorite scene. It also means another four weeks. Kinda depressing,” and that’s just how she sounded.
“Well, keep the chin up. Might as well get it all done now rather than have to go back in six months. That’s nothing to mess around with. Besides, you don’t think I’m going to break my ass for you here every six months, do you?” and I heard Julie chuckle again. “I’ll come up and see you this weekend and give you all the news . . . which reminds me, you remember that little love seat in John’s office?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I hear Lucius Barclay humped Eloise on it yesterday afternoon,” Lucius being the faggy beauty editor. Even women’s lib couldn’t get upset about our having a male beauty editor. There was absolutely nothing male about Lucius. Nothing.
But the crack had served its purpose, and Julie was in hoots at the other end of the phone.
“Hey, listen, don’t do that to me . . . it hurts,” and then more chortles and chuckles. . . . “Anyway, you got it wrong. I heard that story this morning: Eloise humped Lucius,” and we both laughed.
“Okay, Julie, gotta go, but I’ll come by this weekend. Anything I can bring you?”
“Yeah. Sex.”
“What about all those interns? Listen, save one for me. Hang in there, Julie, we miss you. I can’t wait to give you this job back anyway. I want to start collecting unemployment.”
“Screw you, you don’t qualify. Gotta work six months and then get fired. And if you think I’m gonna lie here for six months, you gotta be nuts. So just take damned good care of my job. . . . See you soon. Hey, and Gillian? . . . Thanks.�
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“Don’t be an ass. The thanks go to you, now get off the goddam horn before we get sentimental, or I get fired. See you . . . take care.” Poor Julie, it didn’t sound good, and I wondered what the score really was, as the phone rang and I was told that “Mr. Templeton would like to see you in five minutes, Mrs. Forrester.”
Half an hour later, when I came out of John’s office, I was not feeling like laughing anymore.
John had spoken to Julie, as she had said, but he had spoken to her doctor too. Julie was not healing at all, and her hemoglobin was low. They suspected bad news. They weren’t sure, but they “suspected” it, and they were going to operate to find out. They thought she might have bone cancer. Julie didn’t know.
When John had finished talking, I felt weak, and rotten, and sick. He told me not to tell anyone. And thank God he had the good taste not to mention the possibilities of extending my job into a permanent one. I would have thrown up at that point, or burst into tears.
As it was, I walked straight back to my office, shut the door, and leaned back against it with tears pouring down my face, wondering how in hell I was going to face Julie on Thanksgiving Day. It was one of those horrible soap opera ironies that happen all the time, sometimes even to people you know.
The following day, Sam, Gordon and I had Thanksgiving dinner. It was lovely and comfortable, and I tried not to think about Julie.
At that point, I was five months pregnant, and hadn’t seen Christopher in over ten weeks. I still missed him but I had settled in. I was happy with my job, enjoying Gordon, and rolling along nicely. The baby was more mine than Chris’s, and men on the street didn’t look quite so much like Chris anymore. They were beginning to look a little more like Gordon, and a lot more like themselves.
So when Gordon left my apartment shortly after midnight on Thanksgiving night and the phone rang at two, I almost fainted when I heard Chris on the line.
“Gill, I’m at the airport now. I’ve got a film to do in New York for the next month. The plane gets there about six hours from now. American Airlines. Meet me.”
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