by Jane Heller
“Well, thanks either way,” Bill said shyly. “No one’s ever told me I look like a movie star before, but I’m not going to try to talk you out of it. Was he a nice guy?”
“Ralph or Jeremy?”
“You’ve interviewed both of them?”
“Oh, yes. I did a lengthy profile of Jeremy when he was promoting Notting Hill.”
Bill scratched his head. “I could have sworn Hugh Grant was in that one.”
“Right you are.” I chuckled. “I’m mixing up my Brits, as you can see, probably because I’ve interviewed so many of them. Why just the other week, I was invited to a reception at the British embassy.”
“And I’ve never even been to England,” Bill lamented. “Too many things keeping me busy here.”
“Like what?” I asked, eager to shift the focus onto him.
Before he could answer, we were momentarily interrupted by the waiter, who announced the evening’s specials.
“Please, do tell me about yourself, Bill,” I urged when he departed. “What made you go into the jewelry business, for starters?”
“Dumb luck, really. I got married right after college and my wife’s father owned a couple of jewelry stores in Virginia. I went to work for him, discovered that I was good with clients and enjoyed being around all those diamonds, and continued to work for him for a short time, even after his daughter and I split up. Eventually, I moved to Washington to take a job at the Denham and Villier store there.”
“Sounds like you had a friendly divorce from your ex-wife.”
“Friendly enough. Jill and I have two kids, and we’re determined to keep them on an even keel. So far, we’ve done pretty well, although now that I’ve relocated here I won’t get to see them as often as I did.”
“How old are they?” I asked.
“Twelve and fifteen. Both boys.” He whipped out his wallet and handed me a couple of snapshots. “That one’s Peter.” He pointed to the older boy, a dark-haired teenager with his father’s aristocratic features. “And that’s Michael.” The younger one was a redhead, with only a hint of Bill in his face.
“They’re very handsome,” I said. “Will they be coming up to New York to visit over Christmas?”
“I wish. Christmas is a zoo at the store, so I can’t take off until New Year’s. They’ll be coming that week, and for presidents’ week in February and occasional long weekends—if they can fit me in. They’re active kids. They’ve always got something going on.”
“And you miss them.”
“And I miss them. More than I can describe.”
I thought of the fathers of several of the kids in my class, fathers like Bob Levin who probably didn’t even know what his son ate for breakfast. I had a hunch that Bill Harris wasn’t like them, judging by the way his eyes looked both pained and proud when he’d displayed the photos of his boys. No, this was a man who cared. I suddenly remembered the other Nancy Stern’s admission—that she wasn’t a “child person”—and doubted very much that she and Bill would have clicked.
During dinner, he related a half-dozen funny anecdotes about his sons, prefacing each one with: “Are you sure this stuff isn’t boring to you?” I assured him that I loved children and wasn’t bored in the slightest. Which I wasn’t. Bill was a good storyteller, I discovered, with a wry sense of humor and an eye for detail. He was especially interesting when he talked about his work, describing his transition from local jeweler to one of Denham and Villier’s head honchos.
“Going from a mom-and-pop organization to a corporate retailer was an eye-opener,” he said. “I thought I’d just glide into Denham’s D.C. store, puffed up with my experience running a couple of suburban mall stores, and they’d make me king.” He laughed. “Before they let me set foot in the place, I had to be trained at the GIA.”
“Is that a branch of the CIA?” I asked, thinking he might have needed a background in covert operations so he could guard all that expensive jewelry.
He smiled. “It’s the Gemological Institute of America. I did my training there, out in California, and then started at Denham at ground zero, gradually working my way up the ladder from a lowly polisher to a salesperson who more than met my quotas, which was how I got promoted to store manager. The slow and steady route.”
“They put you through the paces, is that it?”
“They sure did, but it’s understandable when you consider the value of the merchandise they sell. Denham isn’t going to hand over the key to a showcase to someone they haven’t come to trust over a period of years.”
“Makes sense. I take it the move to the New York store was another promotion?”
“A nice one. The New York store is the jewel in the company’s crown, to make a really bad pun. The D.C. store doesn’t do nearly as much business, especially not anymore.” He laughed again. “A lot of the clients there were politicians buying baubles for their mistresses, but the minute the Lewinsky thing broke, they cut back on their extracurricular activities.”
“God forbid they should buy baubles for their wives.”
“Oh, they did that too, which is why discretion is an important part of my job. It’s a real no-no to stroll up to some guy’s wife and say, ‘How did you like that emerald necklace your husband bought you?’ Ninety-nine percent of the time she’ll say, ‘What necklace?’”
“Men.”
“Men can be louses, I grant you, but the women who come in are pieces of work too. We get the type who tie up our salespeople for hours. They try everything on and can’t decide what to buy or whether to buy, and then they pull out their cell phone and call their mother or sister or girlfriend to come over to help them decide. There are times when I have to step in to close the deal.”
“So you must be a good salesman as well as a good manager.”
His eyes twinkled. “You tell me, Nancy. Am I a good salesman?”
“You’re doing all right,” I said. He was doing more than all right. Whenever he looked at me, I turned to Jell-O. “Discretion aside, Denham and Villier must see a fair share of celebrities, Bill, especially at the New York store.”
“We do. Sometimes, we put them in a private room with three or four pieces of jewelry and their favorite alcoholic beverage. Sometimes, we send a few trinkets to their home or office, accompanied by a sales specialist and a setter. Sometimes, as we did recently in the case of Barbra Streisand, we make an after-hours presentation, waiting until the store is closed so there can be complete privacy for the client.”
Barbra Streisand? I tried not to look star-struck. After all, I was the one who was supposed to know everybody.
“But my contact with these people is pretty minimal. It’s the sales staff that usually deals with them. I get stuck with the status seekers.”
“And who are they?”
“They’re the ones who shop at Denham so they can say they shopped at Denham. They won’t deal with anyone but the manager so they can say they didn’t deal with anyone but the manager. I’m talking about people who aren’t comfortable with who they are, Nancy, people with such inferiority complexes that they have to pretend to be important. They’re sad cases, let me tell you.”
“You don’t know how sad.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing. I was just agreeing with you.”
We were lingering over dessert and coffee when it hit me that the date was going so well that it was more than likely that Bill would want to see me again. But I ignored the matter of exactly what I was going to do about the situation, and instead responded to the question he was posing to me at that moment: Which celebrity did I enjoy interviewing the most?
I’m not a bad storyteller myself, having had all that experience in the classroom, so I made up a heartwarming tale about the afternoon I spent with former President Jimmy Carter—how he took me on a tour of the Carter Center in Atlanta, shared his thoughts about world peace over a couple of humble chicken salad sandwiches, and, when it was determined that I wouldn’t be able to fly b
ack to New York that day due to a freakish snowstorm, invited me to stay with him and Mrs. Carter in their home.
“It was amazing of him to do that,” I concluded, marveling at the supposed memory of the president’s supposed generosity.
“He must have enjoyed your company, the way I am right now,” said Bill. “I doubt he opens his home to every journalist he talks to.”
I shrugged in an ostentatious display of modesty. I was about to launch into another riff, this time about my interview with Princess Stephanie of Monaco, when I felt someone tap me on the shoulder.
“Nancy! Fancy meeting you here.”
Damn. It was Victoria Bittner, one of the other head teachers at Small Blessings, the frustrated painter. What was she doing at the restaurant when she should have been home painting?
“Uh, hi, Victoria,” I said awkwardly, as she stood there with her husband, a frustrated sculptor whose name I always forgot. “I didn’t see you come in.”
“Well, I saw you,” she replied, eyeing Bill, eager to be introduced. “But I decided to wait and say hello on our way out.”
“That was thoughtful. This is my friend Bill Harris,” I said, putting her out of her misery. “He just moved here from Washington.”
Victoria and her husband shook hands with Bill and said it was nice to meet him and that any friend of mine was a friend of theirs, blah blah blah. Then she turned to me. “So how did your Thanksgiving play go on Tuesday, Nancy?”
My Thanksgiving play.
Why hadn’t it occurred to me that I might bump into someone I knew? Someone from school, of all places.
“It was a fine production,” I said ambiguously, hoping to give Bill the impression that the play Victoria had asked about was a Broadway show starring a celebrity I’d be interviewing.
“So nobody acted out? Not even Fischer Levin?” she said.
“The acting was superb,” I said. “Fischer was a revelation.”
“Is this Fischer an up-and-comer?” said Bill. “A star of the future?”
Victoria smirked. “They’re all stars of the future. Just ask their parents.”
“I take it you and Nancy are in the same field,” Bill said to her.
“Yeah,” she said. “We both work with four-year-olds.”
“Four-year-olds.” Bill laughed. “I can see why you’d feel that way. From what I’ve read about your business, you must see your share of temper tantrums.”
“Daily. That’s why they pay us the big bucks,” she said dryly.
I was growing edgy, impatient. It was time for Victoria and her husband to run along.
“Well, I guess we’ll be running along,” said Victoria, getting the message exactly. “Welcome to New York, Bill. See you at school on Monday, Nancy.”
“Which school was she talking about?” Bill asked after they left.
“Dog training school,” I said without missing a beat. “Victoria and I have Jack Russell terriers and we can’t do a thing with them.” I was getting good at this. Too good.
Bill signaled for the check. After he paid it, he reached for my hand and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to do this again,” he said. “Like, tomorrow.”
I smiled, flushed with the compliment. He liked me. He did.
“All right, so how about the day after tomorrow?” he said. “I’m serious, Nancy. I had a great time.”
“So did I,” I said.
“Then it’s a date? Monday night for dinner?”
Okay, Nance, I thought. Here’s your chance. This is where you tell him the truth and put an end to your little game.
But if I tell him the truth, he won’t want to see me again, I protested silently, convinced that Bill Harris wasn’t just suave and sophisticated; he was the most honest and decent man I’d ever met, the type of kind-hearted soul who wouldn’t find it remotely amusing that I had spent the entire evening lying through my teeth. I wanted desperately to see him again, that was a given. I hadn’t felt so alive in a long time. Maybe it was the game playing that had heightened my senses and maybe it wasn’t, but I wasn’t prepared to give up the feeling.
“I’d love to have dinner with you on Monday night,” I heard myself say.
Bill sank back in his chair and positively beamed. “You know, you’re not what I expected. From Joan’s description.”
“Well, I explained about my hair and how I—”
“I’m not talking about your hair, Nancy,” he interrupted. “I’m talking about you, your personality, your accessibility. I had this idea that you would be snooty or self-absorbed or taken with yourself—and I see enough of that stuff at the store. But you’re not. You’re more than just a good listener. You’re—” He stopped. “This is silly. I’m not going to start piling on the flattery on the first date. You’ll have to wait until Monday, although the nicest surprise about you is that you like kids. Joan gave me the impression that you didn’t.”
“Joanie had me mixed up with someone else,” I said.
“You think so?”
“Trust me.”
Chapter Seven
Bill offered to walk me home, but I fed him a line about needing to stop at the twenty-four-hour market for a quart of milk. He asked if I wanted him to walk me there and then walk me home, but I said that I tended to take a long time when I shopped, was an inveterate browser, and usually ending up buying more than I came for.
Brother. I make the man sound like the most gullible turkey around, but the thing is, I was more adept at bullshitting than I ever imagined I’d be.
Janice called at eight o’clock on Sunday morning to find out how the date went.
“I’d rather tell you in person,” I said, shivering because I was in a cold sweat. Janice had woken me out of a deep sleep, and I’d been dreaming that Jeremy Irons and Ralph Fiennes and Hugh Grant were chasing me across London Bridge, which, of course, was falling down.
“Was the date that good or that bad?” she asked.
“Both,” I said. “Let’s meet this afternoon and I’ll explain.”
“Great. How about the Barnes and Noble in Union Square?” she suggested. “I hang out there on Sunday afternoons now.”
“So you can do research for your reading group?”
“No, so I can meet men. Barnes and Noble is the new pickup place.”
“Ah.”
“Then I’ll see you there? Two o’clock?”
“If you’re sure I won’t cramp your style,” I said.
“You won’t. Just try not to cry,” she said. “I think that’s a turnoff.”
At two o’clock, I met Janice in the magazine section of the store. When I came upon her, she was chatting up a disheveled man in combat fatigues, who was leafing through the latest issue of Guns & Ammo.
I grabbed her by the elbow and herded her over to the café. “That didn’t look very promising,” I said.
“I suppose not,” she agreed, “although he had nice eyes.”
We ordered a couple of coffees (well, I ordered a coffee; Janice ordered a V8), and I began to describe my evening with Bill Harris.
“He’s much handsomer than I expected,” I said, “but not at all conceited. The opposite, if anything.”
“God. I absolutely love that when the really good-looking ones don’t understand how good-looking they are. It’s so—I don’t know—real.”
“That’s the thing,” I said excitedly. “Bill’s real. A regular guy. A nice guy. He didn’t spend the entire night obsessing about his washboard abs.”
“Are they?”
“What?”
“Are they washboard abs?”
“Possibly, but I didn’t lift up his sweater and measure his fat-to-body ratio.”
“Oh, so you didn’t have sex?”
“No. It didn’t even come up. Not that there wasn’t an attraction between us. But I sense that Bill is the type who likes to take things slowly, so he can get to know the woman first.”
“Divorced?
”
“Yes. With two kids. But even that part sounded normal, sensible. He and his ex-wife actually make a point of getting along, for the sake of the children.”
“What a concept.”
“The only uncomfortable part of the date had to do with the celebrities I supposedly interviewed. I screwed up their names a few times, but I straightened out as the night went along.” I told Janice about the appearance at the restaurant of Victoria Bittner and her husband and how I managed to wriggle out of trouble there.
“Excellent. Now, what happened when the date was over and you told Bill you weren’t the other Nancy Stern? Did he get the joke or go ballistic?”
“Actually, that’s where things got a little rough.”
“So he did go ballistic. You’re not hurt, are you, Nance?” She checked me for bruises.
“I’m fine, Janice. Things got rough because I didn’t tell him the truth when the date was over.”
She sat back in her chair and stared at me. “No?”
“No.”
“And the reason for this is?”
“Oh, Janice. I couldn’t. The words just wouldn’t come out of my mouth. I was enjoying myself too much, I guess. See, Bill and I established a genuine connection, right from the start. It was if we were on the same wavelength.”
“Except for one teeny weeny detail: He thought you were someone else.”
“Yes, but aside from that, we were totally in sync. I realize I haven’t dated as often as you have and that almost any man would look good to me these days, but I felt different when I was with him—more alive.” I was so alive I was gesturing wildly with my hands and knocked my coffee cup over.
“Look, Nance,” said Janice as I wiped up the spill, “I’m glad you had fun and it’s reassuring to learn there are still nice guys out there—even if they had to import this one from Washington—but what are you going to do if he asks you out again?”
“He already did. We’re having dinner together tomorrow night.”
She immediately launched into the chorus of the old Motown song “Quicksand.”