by Jane Heller
“So?” said Bill, his dark eyes fixed on me now.
“He wasn’t pleased,” I said of the man. “Did I throw a monkey wrench into a big sale or something?”
“What are you doing here, Nancy?” he asked, ignoring my question. He was still standing by the door, one foot in, one foot out, unwilling to commit himself.
“I’d like to speak to you,” I said.
He sighed. “Look, if this is about what happened between us, I said all I have to say at your apartment on Christmas Eve.”
“It isn’t about us,” I asserted. “I came to ask your advice about a piece of jewelry, to ask for your help in evaluating the worth of a piece of jewelry.”
He appeared skeptical but not completely without interest, arching an eyebrow at me as he finally entered the office and perched himself on the edge of his desk. Maybe the word help had sucked him in, as Janice had predicted. “There are plenty of jewelers in New York,” he said. “Why seek me out?”
“Because I respect your expertise, Bill. You seemed extremely knowledgeable whenever you talked about your work.”
“That’s pretty funny, isn’t it?” He wasn’t laughing. “You seemed extremely knowledgeable whenever you talked about your work. Unfortunately, ‘your’ work was somebody else’s and you weren’t knowledgeable, just clever.”
Remember the kiss, I encouraged myself. Don’t let his bitterness scare you off. He still cares. He does.
“I’d like us to try to get past what I did,” I said. “I’ve apologized to you. The apology was genuine. But I’m not here to grovel, Bill; I’m here to discuss jewelry.” No reaction. “Now, may I show you the piece in question? It shouldn’t take long to determine whether or not it has value. Not for someone with your vast experience.”
He didn’t answer right away. He was probably soaking up the compliment, playing out his hero fantasies, getting in touch with his manhood.
“All right,” he said, extending his hand begrudgingly. “Let’s see the piece.”
Victory. I unbuttoned my coat, unfastened the pin from my blouse collar, and gave it to him. “So. What do you think?”
I figured he’d take one look at the thing and toss it in the garbage. Instead, he seemed somewhat intrigued by it.
“Well. Well. Where did you get this, Nancy?” he asked in a way that suggested he was no longer angry at me or less angry at me than he was before. A definite thawing, at any rate.
“It was a Christmas present,” I said, not bothering to add that the present was from a four-year-old. Why not let him wonder who the present was from? I thought. Why not let him wonder if it was from a man, a suitor, a competitor for my affections? Once I admitted it was from a child, he’d guess the pin was worthless, because what kind of a child buys his teacher an expensive bauble for Christmas? No, I was keeping the purchaser of the pin to myself, I decided, to create a little mystery, so Bill might be tempted to spend at least five more minutes with me.
“A Christmas present,” he repeated, studying the piece, as if it were some incredible family heirloom. “That means you only got it a week or so ago.”
“Yes.” It occurred to me that he’d probably known right away that the pin was junk but was either tricking me, to pay me back for tricking him, or was humoring me, to make our visit last a while. “Is it worth anything?” I asked, getting up from the chair to stand next to him. I could smell his cologne—a subtle scent, not one of those dreadful designer-y fragrances that club you over the head with their muskiness.
“It’s hard to say,” Bill hedged. “Jewelry is such a blind item.”
“Right. You told me that the first time we had dinner together.”
“I would have to do some testing of the individual stones to be certain of their value or lack thereof.”
“Okay.” This was fun. We were friends again.
“First I’d examine the large yellow stone under a loup, to see if it’s got a Gemprint.”
“Gemprint?”
“It’s like a laser fingerprint that makes diamonds easy to identify.”
“Diamonds?” My jaw dropped.
Bill smiled—a first for the afternoon. “I’m hardly saying you’ve got a diamond here, Nancy. I’m just laying out the sort of procedure we follow for appraising a piece like this. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? For me to give you a thorough evaluation of the brooch?”
“Oh, yes. Absolutely.” I couldn’t tell if he was pulling my leg or taking me seriously, but whichever the case, he had to be just as eager to patch things up between us as I was, or he’d have pretended to be busy and ordered me to scram.
“I’d also do a scratch test, of course.”
“Of course.”
“And a refractive index test, to measure how the light is reflected inside the stones.”
“Naturally.”
“And a specific gravity test, to measure the density of the stones.”
“Density, yes.”
“And then I’d need to test for the proverbial four Cs—carat, color, clarity, and cut.”
“My goodness. I bet all that takes time.”
“Just a couple of days, now that the holidays are over. You don’t have a problem leaving the brooch with me, do you?”
“No. I’d be happy to leave it.” Happy that we have this new connection, Billy.
“Good. I’ll call you when the tests are done and you can come and pick it up. I still have your number.” He actually chuckled when he said that, about having my number, because, after all, it was the other Nancy Stern’s number he’d thought he had. “Or, I could bring it by your place after work,” he said more tentatively. “And then we could have dinner someplace in your neighborhood.”
“Dinner?” I was beyond happy.
“Yes. Unless you’ve written me off as the spoilsport of the century.”
I chuckled at that one. Oh, things were turning out sooo much better than I’d expected. What an amazing about-face he had done. “You’re not a spoilsport, Bill.”
“Not usually, but I’ve been ridiculously rigid about this, about what happened. I see that now.”
“Oh, Bill. I don’t think you’ve been rigid,” I reassured him, marveling at how well this was going. “If someone ever lied to me about their identity, I’m positive that I wouldn’t take it nearly as well as you did. In fact, I’d never speak to the person again.”
“Don’t say that. You don’t know how you’d react.”
“Well, all right. But I do know that I’d be delighted to have dinner with you.”
“Great. That’s great.” He opened the top drawer of the desk, took out a Denham and Villier envelope, and placed the pin carefully inside. “I’ll call you when I’ve appraised the piece and we’ll get together later this week.”
“Your sons have gone back to Virginia then?”
“My sons?”
“Didn’t they come for New Year’s?”
He shook his head in disbelief. “How embarrassing is this? Your visit has gotten me so flustered I forgot about my own children.” He shook his head again. He was flustered, embarrassed. My showing up here must have really shaken him up, I thought with no small pleasure. “Yes, Peter and Michael have gone back to their mother, but I had a terrific week running them around the city. They can’t wait to come back.”
I was about to say, “I’d love to meet them the next time they’re here,” but I kept my mouth shut. I had made major progress with Bill. I had no intention of pulling a Janice and scaring him off.
Chapter Sixteen
On Wednesday, two days after I’d dropped the pin off at Denham and Villier, Bill called to say he’d finished the appraisal.
“So? Did my Christmas present turn out to be the Hope diamond?” I teased.
“Sorry,” he said with a chuckle. “It turned out to be a bad imitation of a bad imitation.”
“In other words, all those stones—even the big yellow one—are fake?”
“Worthless,” Bill confirmed. “I assumed they w
ere the minute I saw them, but I went through the motions, because I didn’t want to disappoint you. Not after what an ass I made of myself over your innocent game of—”
“Bill,” I cut him off. “Don’t. Let’s just be glad that the pin reopened the lines of communication between us.” And, therefore, served its purpose exactly.
“You’re right, of course.” He paused. “I am curious about something though. Did the person who gave you the brooch lead you to believe that the piece had value?”
“Not monetary value—that was my own pie-in-the-sky idea—but sentimental value. Yes, he definitely indicated that it was a source of pride to him.” You’re my favorite teacher, Miss Stern. I picked your present out and wrapped it all by myself. The pin had value because Fischer had chosen it for me—Fischer, who had such trouble expressing his feelings; Fischer, who was starving for love; Fischer, who deserved to be loved. I would wear his pin regardless of its cheesiness. It would always be special to me.
“I have another question.” There was a hesitancy in Bill’s voice, as if he didn’t want to pry but couldn’t help himself. “You said he; that he indicated. I take it the person who gave you the gift is a man?”
My, my. Wasn’t our Bill the inquisitive one. So he was wondering who’d been attentive to me over the holidays while he’d been mad at me. “Yes, Bill. The person who gave me the gift is a man.” A man who hasn’t reached puberty yet, but the gender’s correct. “He’s someone I’ve known since September.”
“Ah. Is he someone you work with at school?”
“As a matter of fact he is. But he and I aren’t romantically involved, if that’s what’s on your mind.”
He laughed. “I’m pretty transparent, obviously.”
So Bill was jealous! He wanted me all to himself!
I was pleased beyond belief, finally secure in the knowledge that he cared about me, felt stirrings of love for me. But I had promised myself that if he and I were ever to rebuild our relationship, it would be based on trust, not deception; on truth, not lies. On the other hand, nothing I’d said about the pin or the person who’d given it to me could be construed as a lie, not really. I was simply providing him with a minimum of details, in order to create a tiny aura of mystery around myself, in order not to bore him. That was fair during the courtship stage of a new romance, wasn’t it? Besides, what possible difference could it make to Bill who gave me the pin? He had appraised it, found it worthless, and that was that.
“I propose that we change the subject and talk about when we’re going to get together,” I said jauntily, confidently, “so you can return the pin and I can thank you for bothering with it. Would you like to come here for dinner one night this week? I’m not a gourmet chef but you won’t go away hungry.” Gourmet chef. Right. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually cooked a meal—a meal that didn’t involve the microwaving of something frozen, something someone else, some corporation, had cooked.
“I’ll be there,” he said enthusiastically. “Is tomorrow night too soon?”
I smiled to myself. Yes, his willingness to forgive me seemed awfully sudden, especially given how angry he’d been, but I wasn’t complaining. He was back. We were back.
Bill arrived at the apartment on Thursday night bearing gifts—a dozen long-stemmed red roses. As I opened the box and put the roses in a vase, I flashed back to the afternoon when I had mistakenly received the other Nancy Stern’s dozen long-stemmed red roses. The memory was unsettling. Yes, it was swell that it was I whom a man had thought to woo with roses this time, but it was also just a little creepy that the man who was wooing me with them might well have wooed her with them if I hadn’t insinuated myself into the situation.
“You didn’t have to bring me flowers,” I said, filling the vase with water. Bill was standing next to me at the sink, very next to me.
“Yes I did,” he said softly. “I owe you an ‘I’m sorry.’”
“I thought we decided to get past what happened between us,” I said. “This is a new year, a new beginning. Let’s forget about how we met and all the rest.”
“I’ll try.” He lowered his head and kissed me. I set the vase aside and kissed him back. Our reconciliation was moving right along.
“I missed you over the holidays,” he said.
“Even though you had your boys with you?” I fished.
“Even though. You and I had some real momentum going for a while there, Nancy. I’m hoping we can pick up where we left off.”
“We already have.” He kissed me again. God, love was grand. No wonder people did somersaults in the hope of experiencing it. Still, I had worked hard on dinner and wasn’t about to see it ruined. “Bill,” I said, gently pushing him away, “if I’m going to pull a meal together, we’ve got to save this for later.”
“Okay,” he conceded, “although we could keep doing this and save the meal for later.”
I shook my head and ousted him from the kitchen. The space wasn’t big enough for two, and besides I had to concentrate, really pay attention to what I was doing.
In preparation for the dinner, I had spent the previous evening watching the Food Channel, sitting there in awe as a parade of chefs famous for this four-star restaurant or that best-selling cookbook chopped, diced, and sauteed their way through recipe after recipe using ingredients, never mind kitchen tools, I’d never heard of. I mean, who, not counting Martha Stewart, has a fucking mandoline? After a thoroughly intimidating few hours of Emeril and Bobby Flay and Two Hot Tamales, it occurred to me that these professionals have raised the bar when it comes to inviting someone over for dinner. Thanks to them, ordinary people like me, who aren’t totally sure what cilantro is, can’t just roast a chicken and feel good about ourselves. No, we have to cut the chicken up with our very own poultry shears, then marinate the chicken in a “nonreactive” dish, spread the marinade on the chicken using a boar-bristled brush, blacken the chicken with grill marks that create a cute little criss-cross pattern, and finally serve the chicken on a plate painted with colorful squiggles. Well, fine, I thought. I’m a preschool teacher. I know about squiggles.
Bill and I kept our hands off each other while he sipped a cocktail and I did the chicken. (That’s another thing about the chefs on these shows. They don’t cook chicken or make chicken or even prepare chicken; they do chicken.) He ooh-ed and ah-ed as I brought the food out and said I must have spent a lot of time and effort on the meal, which, of course, was true and nice of him to notice. We sat in my living room at the small round table that doubled as a dining room table, ate the chicken, as well as the potatoes and green vegetables I had julienned with my brand-new mandoline, and talked about my job at Small Blessings. As this was previously uncharted conversational territory for us—the other three times we’d had dinner together I’d talked about my job as a celebrity journalist, remember—I had loads of stories to tell Bill, and, to my delight, he seemed even more engaged than when I’d prattled on about Kevin Costner. He loved hearing about the children, loved hearing about Janice and Victoria and the others, loved hearing about the conflicts I’d had with Penelope over the years.
After dinner, we adjourned to the sofa for coffee and dessert.
“This is so nice,” he said contentedly.
“Oh, you like the apple pie.” I’d gotten the recipe from my mother, not from the Food Channel.
“I love the apple pie, but I meant this. Being here with you. Restarting our relationship.”
“It’s wonderful.”
“To think we wasted all that time during the weeks we were apart,” he said. “To think I wasted all that time being angry when I could have been with you.”
“Please don’t beat yourself up about that, Bill.”
“I know, I know. But I’d like to make it up to you, like to make up for lost time.” He took me in his arms and kissed me, over and over and over. And then he unbuttoned my blouse and kissed my throat and neck and breasts. And then he…well. The point is, it soon became clear to
both of us that the living room sofa was limiting, that we needed to spread out. I suggested we repair to the bedroom. “I don’t want to rush you,” Bill whispered.
“You’re not rushing me,” I said, panting.
“You’re sure?”
“Very.”
With a tremendous sense of urgency, I grabbed Bill’s hand and led him to my bedroom.
“I’ve wanted this since the first time we went out,” he murmured as we stripped out of our clothes and climbed between the sheets.
“Me too,” I said breathlessly, “only I was pretending to be the other Nancy Stern so I didn’t think my feelings were appropriate.”
“Let’s forget about the other Nancy Stern,” said Bill as he began to make love to me.
“I already have.”
Bill was a wonderful lover, thank goodness. It would have been tragic had he been so well endowed and then turned out to be clumsy or selfish or just plain dull as dishwater in bed. And, judging by the number of “Oh, Gods” he’d moaned, I must have been more than satisfactory in his opinion. Of course, there will be some of you who think it was ill-advised of me to sleep with him after only four dates, just as there will be others of you who wonder why I waited four dates to sleep with him. All I can say is, it felt right. My instincts told me to go for it. What’s more, I was due for it.
As we lay there in my bed, which hadn’t seen such activity since the men from Dial-A-Mattress installed my new box spring, I thought how lucky I was to have found Bill, how my life really had changed since I’d met him. Naturally, I wished I hadn’t gotten together with him at the other Nancy Stern’s expense, and naturally, if I’d had it all to do over again, I would have told Bill the truth after our first date—at least I hope I would have—but I was grateful for small blessings, just as Janice and I had resolved, grateful for what I had, not yearning for what I didn’t; grateful that Bill Harris and I were in love.
Not that Bill declared his love that night at my apartment. Such a declaration would have been too trite, not worthy of him. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry is tempted to say “I love you” after terrific sex, but it’s the men who mean it who don’t feel the need to blurt it out. That’s what I told myself anyway.