Who Would You Choose?

by J. M. Bronston

  “Okay. And while we’re doing that, maybe you can explain how you just happened to be at my hotel. I mean, that is such a weird coincidence. I was so careful not to let anyone know where I’d be.”

  “Sure. I will, Marge. I promise. But later. Let’s just enjoy this day first.”

  * * * *

  In the years to come, Marge would remember that London was glorious that day. The skies were cloud-free and the city was bathed in sunshine. They walked along sedate streets that were lined with long rows of stucco-fronted houses gleaming white in the bright light, the air smelled clean as though newly rain-washed, and small neighborhood parks were lush with greenery that spilled out over iron fences. They walked for miles, and Sam’s arm was around her shoulders, and they talked and talked and reminisced about the old days, the days when they didn’t know they were still children, when their passions were roaring but not yet mature, when they resented the protections that surrounded them and kept them safe from their own wild yearnings. “Whatever happened to...?” they asked each other, and “Do you remember...?” recalling their favorite teachers and those they despised. They carefully did not mention that last encounter between them, the night of Sam’s senior prom, the one that ended their relationship. They seemed, both of them, to know that they would have to save that for later.

  So it was indeed a glorious day, and they spent it walking aimlessly, forgetting to get lunch and instead stopping occasionally for a coffee or an ice cream. They walked past Paddington Station and on up to Regent’s Park, to the zoo, and visited the hippos and the gibbons. For a full half an hour, they goggled at the lemurs, who goggled right back at them. They had imaginary conversations with the gorillas and made up stories about the gorillas’ inner primate lives and thoughts and conversations with each other. They left the zoo and walked down to Regent Street, and along the way, when Marge was attracted to the display in the window of a cute little boutique, Sam said, “Wait here a minute. I’ll be right back.” He ducked into a chemist’s and was back right away with some items in a small plastic bag. “I needed a toothbrush,” he said. “Have you room in your bag for this?” She could feel more than a toothbrush in the bag and gave a moment’s thought to what he could have been buying in a chemist’s shop—but then Sam reached into the bag and took out a packet of chewing gum, and she had to laugh at what she’d been imagining. “Some kind of British gum,” he said. “It’s called Air Waves. Want to try it?” She told him she hadn’t chewed gum since she left high school, and he laughed and said, “Me neither, but I’m feeling like a kid today, so let’s do it,” and together they made a game of chomping their gum noisily. And then Marge saw someone she thought she knew coming out of the Kate Spade shop and she hid behind Sam while he shielded her behind a map he opened out wide, pretending to read it while they hustled back to Oxford Circus. It was almost evening by then and Marge’s feet were killing her, so they got onto a bus, climbed up to the upper deck and from their lofty perch they looked down on passersby below and giggled like thoughtless adolescents, as though they were watching exotic and fascinating zoo-specimens, until they reached the hotel.

  Up in her room, Sam called for a bucket and some Epsom salts. She collapsed into the room’s one chair and Sam got down on one knee and unlaced her tennis shoes, resting first one, then her other foot, on his bent knee.

  “You poor thing,” he said. He removed her shoes and peeled off her socks. “I should have realized.” Actually, he was laughing. “What a day you’ve had. Assaulted by a mob in the morning and made to walk miles all over London the rest of the day.”

  “You didn’t make me. I had a wonderful time.”

  “You must be exhausted. Let’s get room service to bring us dinner.”

  “Good idea. I couldn’t walk another step.”

  There was a knock at the door and a maid arrived with the bucket and the Epsom salts. She glanced at Marge, sprawled on the chair, with her bare feet stretched out in front of her.

  “Ah, there you go, luv.” She gave each of them a big smile. “Happens all the time. Folks think they’re good to go all day, and then they’re not. Just give us a ring if you need anything else.”

  Sam thanked her, tipped her, and closed the door after her. Then he filled the bucket with really hot water, stirred in the salts, and set it at Marge’s feet. He rolled up her jeans and she put her feet into the hot water.

  “Oh, God, that feels so good.”

  He picked up the phone to call room service.

  “What should I order for you?”

  “A hamburger of course. If they have it. With tomato and a pickle.” They both laughed. “And fries. Or ‘chips.’ Or whatever they call them here. As long as they’re French fries.”

  Sam called and made sure his order was understood, and he added a bottle of red wine to the order. When the food arrived, there wasn’t any place in the tiny room to put the tray, so Sam told the young man to put it on the bed. After he left, Sam fixed Marge’s burger for her, spooning ketchup out of a little serving dish, and laying the pickle over that. He put her plate on her lap, and then he fixed his own hamburger. He opened the wine, filled their glasses, and put hers on the small table between her chair and the bed. Then he got himself comfortable on the floor next to her feet, with his back against the bed and his plate and glass on the floor next to him.

  “Okay, Sam,” she said as she picked a couple of fries off her plate. “I can’t wait any longer. I’ve been patient till now. So, are we ready to really talk now? Obviously, the legal business that brought you to London couldn’t have been very important, because you haven’t done a thing about it all day. Either that, or that isn’t the reason you’re here. So, what is it?”

  Sam shook his head and laughed. “Oh, Marge. I can’t talk seriously with a girl whose feet are sore and who’s got them soaking in a bucket of water.” She started to protest, but he held up a hand. “No. No. Let’s have our dinner first, and drink some wine, and maybe get just a little bit buzzed, so we’re all happy. Then, when you’re properly dried off and your feet aren’t hurting any more, we can talk.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  His expression had become so gentle and so serious, she couldn’t help herself. Without thinking, and just as naturally as she might have brushed a wisp of her own hair away from her face, Marge put out her hand and brushed back a bit of Sam’s hair that had fallen over his forehead. And she saw that he closed his eyes ever so briefly at her touch, as a cat might do, being petted.

  “Oh, Sam,” she said. “You didn’t come here on business, did you? You came here to see me.”

  “We’ll talk about it later, Marge. Eat your dinner. Drink your wine.”

  “But you’ll tell me, won’t you? How did you know to come to London? I didn’t tell anyone where I was going? And how did you know where I was staying?”

  “Later, Marge. Later.”

  So they ate their hamburgers and drank their wine, and turned on the TV to catch ten minutes of the latest news which didn’t match their happy mood so they turned it off and promised themselves no talk about the outside world. And then, when they were the tiniest bit tipsy from the wine, Sam got a towel and dried off Marge’s feet. He put the tray of dishes on the floor outside in the hall, to be picked up by the maid. Marge, still barefoot, got up onto the bed and sat cross-legged at its head with her back against the headboard. She scooted over to make enough room so Sam could sit on the edge of the bed, facing her.

  “Okay,” Marge said. “Now it’s time to talk.”

  “All right, Marge, first of all, how did I find you?” He laughed. “Actually, it wasn’t all that difficult. There was your Instagram post from the airport. Actually, I can show you.”

  “From that post? You can’t. There’s no way—”

  “Well, there are ways. True, it’s a little sneaky. But you know what they say.
‘All’s fair in—’” He paused, looking a bit sheepish. “Well, you know what they say. Anyway,” he pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Here, I’ll show you.”

  And there it was, her Instagram post from the night she left for London. Sent from the airport, while she waited at the gate, getting ready to board, and the text:

  Tally ho! going off the grid—into the wild blue—don’t look for me for a few weeks—or months?

  I’ll be in touch when I get back to New York.”

  And pics of her shoes, a glass of wine, the book she planned to read.

  “Look there,” Sam said, pointing. You can see in the background, the information board at the gate. It’s a little indistinct, but I was able to enhance it. Shows your flight’s departure time, the destination—London—and the flight number. Also, the British Airways logo. So I knew where you were headed. Also, the ‘Tally ho!’ was kind of a giveaway—fox hunting and all that.”

  Marge stared at him. And at the picture on his phone. And back again to Sam. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  “But isn’t that illegal—or something—?”

  “Well, not exactly illegal. Not nice, I admit that. Not something I’d ordinarily do. But Marge, aren’t you glad I’m here? And weren’t you glad this morning, when I was there to pull you out of that crowd at Hyde Park?”

  She was still befuddled.

  “But even if you knew I was in London, how did you know—”

  “Which hotel? Well, that was a little more dicey.” He paused, choosing his words. “Yeah, I crossed the line a little on that one. You know how, here in England, you have to hand over your passport when you check into a hotel? And they’re required to record all the information from it? Well, I contacted an old buddy in British army intelligence and asked him to do me a solid. He had a friend at the Foreign Office who owed him a favor and, well, I guess my buddy sort of owed me one. So my buddy’s friend did a cross-check of the hotel passport registrations, and that’s how they found you here. Now we’re all even—me, my buddy and his friend. Bending the rules, I guess, but —”

  “Bending? It sounds to me more like breaking.”

  “Well, maybe, Marge. Just a little. But it’s done and here I am. And anyway—not really broken. These guys deal in life and death stuff all the time. This was just a happy little favor they could do for an old friend and in a good cause. And no harm done.”

  “So you went to all that trouble, calling in old favors, maybe ‘just sort of’ breaking the law a little, and flying overnight, transatlantic, just to spend a day with me here in London? What for?”

  His response didn’t come easily and while he thought about how to answer her, she took the time to study his face. She could see the boy she’d once thought of as “older” still in there, still animating his expression, still giving it the happy, light touch she remembered from when he was, really, just a boy. But what she also saw—or perhaps what she could only glimpse—were the twenty years that lay between then and now. Now there were those twenty years and the man he’d grown into, the man who’d moved on beyond his boyhood, who’d had a love and lost it, a man who’d dealt with serious issues, probably “life and death” as he’d suggested. She could only guess at what was left of the kid he’d once been. His answer now might tell her a lot.

  “What for?” He repeated her question. “Why did I come?” After a long, thoughtful pause, he said, “That’s the hard part to explain. But I’ll try.” Again, there was a long pause, as though he’d rehearsed this part and wanted to be sure he got it right.

  “Every now and then,” he began, “I see your name and your picture in the papers or on TV. I know you’re being successful and you’re doing exactly what you’d always said you wanted to do, and I’ve tried to be happy for you. I believed the door between us was permanently closed and that what was in the past was definitely altogether in the past. I’ve tried not to think of what I felt for you way back then, tried to think we’ve both moved on with our lives.” He stopped, took a deep breath, and forged on. “And then, there I was that evening, it was only a couple of weeks ago, coming out into the corridor from the courtroom, and my mind was full of international banking regulations, and strategizing the case and planning to meet with my team, and a brief the judge had just asked for—and there you were, sitting on that bench out in the corridor, and I swear, Marge, I was gobsmacked, all over again. Just like when I was a kid. Everything fell out of my head and all I could think was, ‘There she is. That’s my girl!’”

  Her face registered her protest, but he stopped her before she could say anything.

  “Of course, you’re not really my girl. I know that. You’re someone else’s girl. And I realized that right away. Not only someone else’s, but the guy who’s sitting at counsel’s table on the other side. So I said to myself, ‘Okay, Sam. Back off. Don’t make a fool of yourself.’ I don’t poach another man’s girl, Marge. I figured I’d just have to be a grown-up and accept that you—and I—and our lives, too—have moved on, and what’s in the past has to stay in the past.

  “But it was making me crazy, sitting in that courtroom every day, watching Jerry Germaine doing his job against me, and thinking how he must be going home to you every night, and that he was the luckiest guy in the world. It took everything I had to keep my mind on the case. And then I ran into the two of you at the Brahma House that night, and I had a chance to watch the two of you together. What I saw told me you’re not really his girl. Not really. And now, today, you’ve told me, you’ve been together for six years and you’re not even living together. What was it you said this morning—you’re ‘parallel’? Yes, that’s a good word for it. That’s what I saw. Two lives sort of running along together, but not bound, not bonded to each other. And after that night, when I saw that, all I could think was I had to connect with you, find you, talk to you, let you know that I’m here and that I want to open that door that we closed that night, twenty years ago. I couldn’t wait. It was getting into my head, every day, every hour. I can’t work like that. I can’t live like that.”

  “So you decided to come over, spend the day with me. And then? What did you think would happen then? Tonight?”

  She studied his face and saw that he understood her.

  “Marge, I didn’t come here to take you to bed. Though God knows, even now, sitting here on this bed, I feel like I’m eighteen years old again when I was a kid and I wanted you so badly it was painful, when all I could think was I had to sleep with you or I’d bust.”

  “But you can’t—”

  And here, Sam took both her hands between his, and held them to his lips and kissed them gently. And his eyes, which had never left hers, seemed almost to plead with her.

  “I know I can’t. Even if you were willing, there’s no way I’d be able to sit in that courtroom for the next weeks, with Jerry Germaine on the other side, and know that behind his back—you and I—”

  “And this is okay? Your being here with me? Even if it’s just to talk? Just to walk around the streets of London? Just to spend the day together? Just to sit together in this tiny room, with both of us up here on my bed? That’s not behind Jerry’s back?”

  “I know. But I couldn’t stand it. I had to find out how it is between you two. I have to know—are you—in love with him? Is it a lifelong thing?” He rushed on, not giving her a chance to answer. “It’s just—I never forgot how it ended between us, and I’ve been so sorry. A thousand times, I blamed myself, like I was older and should have known better. But Marge—you’re not fourteen anymore, you’re a grown-up woman. And you’re different now. You were sort of a wild one back then”—she began to protest and he laughed and made a gesture to stop her—“a nice wild one, believe me, and you were fun. I don’t see that same ‘fun’ now. Now you’re all adult and serious and a hot-shot big executive. If that’s how it is—okay—it’s not my business. But if it’s Jerry
, if he’s not fun with you, if you don’t have that wild spark anymore because of him, or if you truly want to be only the hard-driving person I see in the papers and on TV, the big executive powerhouse you are now and nothing more, well, okay. But I had to know.”

  He took a big breath after all that.

  “And that’s why I’m here,” he said. “And if you wanted to, I would sleep with you tonight. No, I’d sleep with you this minute.” He stopped, and Marge saw his hunger for her, and she felt her own hunger for him surge through her. “But it would be a bad idea,” Sam said, “and I can’t speak for you, but I’d be sorry later on.”

  She put her hand on his arm and she saw him flinch. She knew he was right, they’d both be so sorry later on. And they were, both of them, grown-ups. So she did nothing more than let her hand rest on his arm, and she nodded, agreeing with him.

  “So that’s it,” he said. “I’ve declared myself. You know why I’m here. And now I’d better go.” He laughed. “Before I forget all my noble words and my damned code of honor.”

  Marge laughed, too. “Oh, you were always such a Boy Scout, Sam. But you’re right. You have to go,” she said. “You have to get out of here. Right now. I mean it Sam. Go now. Leave now and go back to New York.”

  “I will. I’ll head out to Heathrow now. I can catch a plane out tonight.” Her hand remained on his arm and they both knew she didn’t want him to leave.

  “Go,” she whispered.

  He didn’t move. “Will you let me kiss you goodbye?”

  She couldn’t answer—torn between a loyalty to Jerry, her sense of honor, and by her desire for Sam—he was so close, she couldn’t help herself, the smallest nod of her head—

  And Sam had his answer. He made no move to take her in his arms, but he bent his head toward her.

  This was no eighteen-year-old’s kiss. This was a long, slow kiss that made a promise even as it said goodbye.