by Rozsa Gaston
Farrah was beginning to like Marianne more by the minute. “You’re right. It is. Except, he isn’t—I mean, wasn’t.”
Marianne gave her a careful look. “What did he do professionally?”
“He wrote ballet scores.”
“He what?” The woman looked at her quizzically as if she’d just spoken in Chinese.
“He was a composer who wrote for ballet.”
Marianne’s look remained blank.
“He wrote music for ballet theater,” Farrah spelled out.
“And you’re telling me he wasn’t a fairy?”
“Definitely not.”
“So with a job like that, I’ll bet he didn’t make any money.”
Farrah stared at Marianne. It was true. He’d worked as a piano tuner when they’d dated. Not exactly a big income producer. But she’d always thought of him as a composer. It had never occurred to her that composing ballet scores might not have paid the rent. He’d won prestigious music awards, hadn’t he?
“It wasn’t an issue between us.”
“No. It was an issue between him and his father.”
“But his father was dead.”
“Just because people are dead doesn’t mean we can’t still have issues with them.”
Marianne was no dummy.
“He probably needed to marry up,” she continued.
“To what?”
“Look. I don’t know anything about you, but your boyfriend probably wasn’t doing as well financially as his father had, and he felt bad about it. So he needed to marry up, and you weren’t the ticket.”
“How do you know that?” Farrah was riled. Was it possible Marianne was getting at the real reason Will had disappeared?
“I’m just riffing here. Do you know what happened to him?”
“Like you said. He married up.” Alexandra Dingle had come from money if she’d read between the lines of The New York Times wedding announcement with any discernment.
“What did I tell you?” Marianne flicked her cigarette to the ground and stomped on it with one brown, high-heeled loafer.
“But what about your story?” Farrah wanted to get off the topic of Will as soon as possible. Marianne had given her so much to think about she’d need the entire trip home to digest it.
“Same story, different circumstances.”
“Come on. It was your story. Tell me some of it anyway.”
“Okay. I went out with this guy Matt for about two years.”
“Definitely not a pansy name.”
“You’re not kidding.” Marianne rolled her eyes at Farrah. “He was a stockbroker. A salesman.”
“Like me.” Farrah wasn’t going to dodge being called a salesperson. She was one, after all.
“No. Not like you. Usually I can spot a salesperson 100 yards away. You don’t have that smug, bullshitty quality.”
“Thanks.”
“Maybe you should find something else to do.”
“Let’s get back to the story.” Marianne was beginning to rock her boat. Deep down, Farrah missed teaching. It had given lasting skills to her students and genuine satisfaction to her. But the gap between her bills and her paycheck had been unreal. Now that she was in sales, she wasn’t so sure that what she was selling people was something they really needed. The only real satisfaction she took in her job was in getting a real paycheck.
“So we went out for about two years. We’d started making plans to move in together. And then all of a sudden, one Sunday evening, we’re on the phone and blam! He says, “Maybe we should take a breather for a few months.” Marianne’s face looked ashen, as if the conversation had taken place the night before.
“What did he say when you asked him why?” Farrah cried.
“He said “Nothing special. I just think it’d be good for both of us to step back for awhile.”
“What??!”
“Exactly what I said. He went on to talk about his basketball league game, the friends we’d gone out with the night before, blah, blah this and that. And then he said, ‘let’s call it a night.’”
Marianne lit a second cigarette, shifting her body as if an old ache or pain had resurfaced. “I asked him, ‘Are you still thinking we should back off for a few months?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I think it’d be a good idea.’ Then he hung up.”
“And??”
“And I never heard from him again.”
“Just like that??” It was unbelievable. Yet, it had happened to her, too. How could life be so strange?
“Just like that.”
Oh my God.” Farrah fell silent. She and Marianne were warrior sisters, survivors of similar bloodbaths of the heart. She looked down at the sidewalk, then up to the sky. Finally, she looked at Marianne. The woman she’d thought so plain and unremarkable had burst into color—hazel eyes blazing, spitting with spirit. She didn’t look defeated at all.
“That is so completely, utterly, and insanely bogus,” Farrah finally said. It felt good to put a name to the bewildering pain they’d both shared.
“Right. And it was. I got the real story a few months later.”
“What was it?”
“His ex-girlfriend had shown up again.”
“How do you know?”
“I found out through a mutual friend.”
“Had she left him for someone else?”
“Yes. Then that guy left her, and she came running back.”
“Why did he take her back?”
“Let me ask you something. If Ballet Boy resurfaced, would you take him back?”
“Funny you should ask. He has resurfaced.”
Marianne stared at her for a moment before speaking.
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m not sure. It’s—confusing.”
“You need to know what the hell happened, so it doesn’t happen again with someone else.”
“Marianne, you’re like some sort of genius. Thanks for talking to me.”
“You know, usually when a salesperson I don’t know very well calls me by name, I think it’s a total bullshit maneuver. But not with you.”
“It’s not. You’re helping me see some stuff I hadn’t put together yet.”
“Well, I hope you don’t get re-involved with him.”
“But what if he was the love of my life?”
“He wasn’t.”
“How can you say that? How would you know?”
“He already caused you too much pain.”
“But isn’t that the price you pay when you really love someone?”
“That’s the price suckers pay to get knocked around. Not a smart woman like you.”
“Marianne—” she hesitated, thinking back to the afternoon before. “I’m not so smart.”
“So you already took him back?”
“I don’t know what I did. I just spent yesterday afternoon with him.”
“And he stayed overnight?”
“No.” Thank God. She’d thought about it, but there was too much she didn’t understand or trust about Will to move in that direction. And the thought of Jude had stopped her. Will had left after a few hours of conversation, which hadn’t cleared up anything.
“How no was that no?”
“It was really a no. I mean—I thought about it—but it ended up being a no.”
“So let me just ask you one thing.”
“What?”
“Does he make you happy?”
“Umm—I’m not sure.” She wasn’t sure what she felt, but she didn’t feel quite as thrilled as she’d imagined she would when she’d fantasized at times about him coming back into her life, begging her to take him back.
“Not elated?”
Farrah thought about it for a moment. She felt gratified, her pride less wounded and more or less pleased that Will wanted her back. But not by any stretch of the imagination did she feel elated. If she got back together with him, she would need to make changes. But the changes she was considering would be even l
ess to his liking. She was beginning to think about getting out of sales and going back to teaching. She could pay her bills now that her debts were paid off and she lived in Riverdale, not pricey Manhattan. Will’s expression of disdain when they’d walked past An Beal Bocht the evening before flashed before her eyes. This time, when the off balance feeling hit her, she felt angry, not anxious.
“No.”
“So there’s your answer.”
JUDE CHECKED HIS watch. It was seven P.M. Would Farrah be home from work by now? He wasn’t sure what her daily schedule was, but he hoped she didn’t work insane hours. Picking up the receiver, he dialed her home number. Uncertainty dogged him as he left a short message when her machine clicked on. Why hadn’t she answered her phone the day before, after the race? Hadn’t they agreed that he’d call, and they’d go out later?
Then, he remembered she’d said only if she was feeling well. Maybe she hadn’t been, and she’d been asleep. That was it. Lucky for him, he hadn’t had to give her his work-related excuse for not being able to keep their plans.
The interview with Missy had gone almost too well. He hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that she’d been flirting with him the whole time, baiting him, reeling him in. For what? She was a married woman. But her story told him she knew how to play men the way Steve Prefontaine knew how to run. She’d probably just been flirting with him because that’s what she did. For fun and for a living. At least, her personal life and her professional one didn’t conflict, the way his did.
Missy’s description of how she’d met her husband when she’d been a saleswoman for a money management firm targeting high net worth clients had given him plenty of material for his latest chapter.
“We were at a conference in Geneva where he’d been in a workshop on tax strategies. I was in the room with my colleague to scope prospects. After we spotted him and checked out his bio in the conference program, we made a bet on who’d end up spending the evening with him.”
She smiled serenely, to let Jude know who’d won.
“How’d that happen?” he asked, a sick feeling settling over his stomach as he took in her drop dead gorgeous full mouth. She’d won her future husband in a bet with a work colleague. When guys did stuff like that it was usually over sleeping with a woman—not marrying one.
“I switched name cards at the seated dinner that night and sat next to him. We ended up in the hot tub at two in the morning with a bottle of champagne.”
Missy looked a bit like the wife of Jordan’s ruler. What was her name? Queen Raina. They both appeared to be born to rule over the hearts of men.
“So then what?”
“None of your damn business ‘then what.’ I hooked him and spent the next six months reeling him in,” she snorted, as if relaying an anecdote on hauling in a marlin off the Florida Keys.
“So, was it all for the best?”
“What do you mean? All for the best? What do you think I was schlepping around the world at high-end conferences for? To make a lousy sixty grand a year? Or double if I was lucky and got my bonus that year?”
“Well, it was a job, right?
“You have got to be kidding.” Her laugh was brittle. The job was a means to an end, Baby Boy. And I was the one in charge of that end. Before I hit the expiration date on my chassis.”
“I’m not seeing an expiration date on that chassis, to be honest.” He tried not to think about Missy’s perfectly sculpted torso next to him. She wore some sort of snug, silky T-shirt with riding insignia on it. What was the point of plastering all those bridles and stirrups and gold buckles on a woman’s shirt other than to attract attention? Women would notice what was on the shirt, men what was in it—a little something for everyone.
“That’s because well maintained chassis don’t grow old. They become classics.”
“Lady, do you ever belong in Greenwich.”
Her laugh was silvery. “You can say that again.”
“What do you do to get your kicks now?” he asked, unable to resist a slight side trip off topic.
“I flirt with boys like you.” She looked straight at him, her luscious brown eyes unreadable.
“Just flirt?” Why had he fallen into such a predictable semantic trap? Nervously, he trained his eyes on the road ahead.
“Sure, darling. Just like making a bet.”
“You’re a risk taker.”
“You got that right.”
“And do you usually win?”
She crossed her right leg over the left, her well-defined right knee cap aimed at him like a battering ram. “I’ll leave it for you to decide.” She leaned over and flicked the hair off his forehead.
He hoped she hadn’t felt the sweat beaded underneath it. She was a player, and he was being played. He shouldn’t have liked the feeling. Yet here he was bathing in the warm waters of his passenger’s smooth amoralism. He should have been counting the seconds until he could unload her, but instead he hesitated before letting her out of the car when he finally pulled up in front of the gatehouse at the beginning of her Belle Haven property. There was something about being in the hands of a skilled master; he couldn’t help but want to find out what kinds of new tunes, new tones she might be able to extract.
At home Jude checked his answering machine, then his e-mails. Nothing. Nervously pacing in his living room, he tried to figure out his next move.
When the phone rang, he jumped. Was Farrah finally calling him back?
Checking the caller ID, he saw “Private caller.”
“Hullo?”
“It’s me.”
He hated it when women did that. Who the hell did the owner of “me” think she was? Whoever she was, she wasn’t Farrah, judging by the silky smugness of the voice on the other end of the line.
“Yeah? This is me, too. Who’s speaking?”
“Missy, silly. I thought of a few other pointers we didn’t get to earlier.”
“Like what?” The underarms of his T-shirt were suddenly drenched in sweat. What the hell was it with these Fairfield County divas? Especially this one.
“I thought we might go through them over a drink.”
“A drink?” Alarm bells went off in all directions. This was morphing into something way beyond an interview, a ride home or a personal training session.
“One by one. Each little pointer more interesting than the next.”
Missy’s silky voice stroked his ear, the way her small, skillful tongue might. Lord. Anne had told him Missy’s husband was out of town. Holy shit. Was he being propositioned?
“I—um—I’m waiting for a call.”
“I’m waiting for you to tell me where and when.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“I’m not taking no for an answer.”
“I beg your pardon?” He couldn’t believe his ears. This woman was straight out of central casting. Except this wasn’t a play.
“You can’t imagine how it looked on the security camera when you reached over to unlock my door when you let me out. My husband wouldn’t be happy to see it.”
“I was helping you out of the car,” he sputtered, wishing he’d gotten the passenger seat door lock fixed instead of trying to put off taking the Ford Taurus in for servicing until he got his first check for delivering How to Marry Money.
“So when and where?”
A beep sounded on the line. Another call was coming through.
Without thinking, Jude frantically searched for the call waiting button on his new phone. Finally, he located it.
“Hello?”
“Jude? It’s Farrah.”
“Oh God.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, great to hear from you. Could you hold on a minute? I’m just finishing up a call on the other line.”
“Sure.” Her voice sounded delicate, uncertain, the opposite of smug.
I—let me just get rid of this other call,” he stumbled, trying to figure out how to switch back to Missy withou
t hanging up on Farrah. Then it occurred to him it might be the best of all possible ideas to just disconnect the woman. She was out of control. Plus, he needed time to think. What the hell did she have on him? Was she planning to show it to her husband?
Looking down at the buttons at the bottom of his phone, he tried to remember which one it was that clicked off of one call and onto the second. Was it hold or flash? What was the one in the middle? He was so nervous he couldn’t remember what the guy in the store had told him when he’d sold it to him two days earlier. Cursing his pride in being a technological luddite, he pressed flash, his thumb clumsily hitting the side of the middle button, too.
“Hello?”
Dial tone. He hit flash again.
Another dial tone.
Frustrated, he smashed his thumb down onto the flash button.
Dial tone on both lines. What had he done?
“WHEN AND WHERE, Big Boy?”
“Excuse me?” What was a female voice doing on the other end of the line?
“Who is this?” the crisp female voice snapped.
“Who’s this?” Farrah demanded, her street instincts rising. Who the hell was the woman on the other end? Someone Jude had been talking to?”
“I’m a friend of Jude’s. Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of Jude’s, too.”
“I think he mistakenly conferenced us then got disconnected,” the silky voice said. “You know men. They’re so stupid.”
“I know what you mean,” Farrah agreed, her anger with Jude trumping guilt over insulting him to a total stranger. But the woman had already hung up.
She put down the phone as an acid taste rose from her stomach to somewhere deep in her throat. When and where, Big Boy? What had Jude been discussing with this woman? Was she someone he was dating? Or just sleeping with? She burned, remembering the times she had used that same term with Will. Thank God it hadn’t been the Sunday before.
A minute later the phone rang in her hand. She stared at it a moment, her decision hardening like crazy glue. The last thing she needed was another man in her life with complications. Better to cut Jude loose before things went any further. It was all she could do to figure out what to do about Will.
“Farrah. Hey, how are you?”
“I’m—fine. How’s your friend?”