The Edge of Forever

by Bretton, Barbara

  “Better hurry,” she called over her shoulder as she left the room. “I can’t guarantee anything will be left when you get to the kitchen.”

  The last two sentences practically wrote themselves, and he was just adding the finished bio to the folder when the phone rang. He grabbed it on the first ring.

  “You’re an anxious man, Joseph.” Renee’s husky New York contralto greeted him.”I thought country living distressed people.”

  “There’s no hope for the born New Yorker,” he said. “You should know that.” He lit a cigarette and took a drag. “So what’s up? Does Audrey have a problem with the pages I sent down?”

  “She thinks they’re great. I’m calling about the photos you left with me.” He heard her flipping through some papers. “The ones by Meg Lindstrom. I need a clean set of prints. In fact, I need everything she has on this series.”

  His stomach clenched like a fist. “Personal curiosity?”

  “Professional interest. I showed them to a friend on the staff of People, and they’d like to run the series as part of a feature on new artists.”

  He took a long drag on his cigarette, then stubbed it out.

  “They think Huntington Kendall is the hottest thing in years,” she was saying as Joe’s mind skittered around, trying to absorb her words. “And Lindstrom’s photos are attracting a lot of attention.”

  “For Kendall?” he managed.

  “For both of them. I’d like to talk with Ms. Lindstrom about representing her work.”

  “No.” The word popped like gunshot.

  “She’s already sold the series elsewhere?”

  Damn it to hell. Why had he ever shown those pictures to Renee?

  “Has she left the Colony?” Renee persisted.

  “Then what’s going on, Joseph? Let me speak with her.” She paused. “That is, unless you’ve suddenly become a business manager on the side.”

  He explained that Meg wasn’t interested in pursuing a career in photography at the present time and, without going into detail, hinted that she had a few things to work out.

  “I’m not going to pretend I understand, but I’ll take your word for it,” Renee said. “What does she do for a living?”

  “Drives a limo.”

  “She’s a chauffeur?” Renee made it sound like Meg tortured kittens and small children for a living. “A woman with that kind of talent is a chauffeur?”

  It was the same reaction Joe’d had when he realized the scope of Meg’s talent.

  “Tell her this assignment from People will put a lot of gas in her tank.”

  “It’s not that easy, Renee.”

  “Every time I think I’ve seen it all, I see a little more. You creative types are incredible. I think you all have this romantic notion that it’s better to starve in a garret than compromise your talent with the real world.”

  “Knock it off, Renee. This is Angelique Moreau you’re talking to. I know from compromises.”

  “Your words, not mine,” Renee said. “Besides, your time is coming. You won’t be able to hide forever.”

  As usual, Renee was right on target. But the subject, this time, was Meg.

  “I’ll see how she feels about it, Renee, but I can’t promise anything.”

  “The woman’s frighteningly good, Joe, and so is Kendall. Some national exposure could really get their careers rolling.”

  After he hung up, Joe lit another cigarette, savoring the jolt of nicotine. What had started out as an impulsive act of generosity had suddenly escalated to the point where he held two careers—both Meg’s and Kendall’s—in the palm of his hand.

  “Come on, Joe!” Meg called from the kitchen. “There won’t be anything left for you!”

  He ground out his barely-smoked cigarette and stood. There would be other chances. Hunt was young and burning with genius. Nothing could keep his star from ascending. And Meg was gifted, as well. She was as logical as she was talented, and Joe felt certain that when she wanted the right doors to open for her, they would swing wide and welcome her back inside.

  Love was the one thing that couldn’t be guaranteed, the one thing that could disappear within a heartbeat. A lifetime of loving and growing together couldn’t compare with a fleeting moment in a magazine. Meg had said to stay out of her professional life, and now, at last, he was going to grant her wish.

  He wouldn’t tell her about Renee’s call. She might lose a chance at stardom, but the future Meg and Joe could build together was more important.

  He’d waited thirty-three years to find her, and he wasn’t about to lose her now.

  #

  In the end, it was Casablanca that was Joe’s undoing.

  If one of the late-night cable stations hadn’t picked that night to replay his favorite movie, he just might have been able to forget Renee had ever called. He just might have been able to pretend he made the right decision for both of them. But Casablanca was on, and the same sense of honor that made Rick send Ilsa away also made it impossible for Joe to give Meg anything but the truth. She deserved the right to make her own decisions, both about her career and about their future together.

  It was nearly midnight. He and Margarita were curled up on the sofa, a bottle of Chianti next to him and a box of Kleenex next to her. Meg was already sniffling softly in anticipation of the moment when Rick saw the beautiful Ilsa again after so many years.

  It was now or never.

  He got up and lowered the sound.

  “Joe?” Meg sat up. “What’s wrong?”

  “I took a phone call this afternoon?”

  “I know. The one from your agent.”

  “I didn’t tell you everything she said.”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything she said, Joseph. I’m your lover, not your business partner.”

  Hell. This was going to be harder than he thought.

  “Is something wrong with your manuscript?”

  He shook his head.

  “Was she offering you a million-dollar advance on your next epic?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then what did she want?” Her face was relaxed and smiling, but she was starting to pick up on his uneasiness.

  “Remember those pictures you gave me of Hunt and his imaginary village?”

  “Of course I remember them. What do they have to do with your agent?”

  He raked his hand through his hair. “I took them with me when I went to New York so I could look at them on the plane.” She nodded. “They were great.”

  “So you told me.”

  “So great that I showed them to Renee.” He felt like a man with his neck poised, waiting for the blade to drop.

  “And?” She wasn’t smiling any longer.

  “I showed them to Renee. Renee showed them to an editor at People magazine. They want to use them in an article on up-and-coming artists.” He swallowed hard. “It would feature both you and Hunt.” If this were an old-fashioned movie, the heroine would toss aside her anger and throw herself into the arms of the hero just before the fade-out. However, this time fantasy woldn’t help him, and the “happily ever after” seemed more and more unlikely.

  Meg said nothing. He decided to take it as a good sign.

  “It’s great publicity for both of you,” he said. “Renee said they’re offering two thousand dollars for the series.”

  She still said nothing. A close-up of Bergman, her face radiant with love, filled the television screen across the room. He was finding it hard to think clearly.

  “Damn it, Meg, say something.”

  “If you’re waiting for a thank you, you can forget it, Joe.”

  He sat down on the edge of the sofa. “Come on. I didn’t announce a second attack on Pearl Harbor. This is supposed to be good news.”

  “For you, maybe. Do you get ten percent on the deal, or will you and Renee split the fee?”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “You had no business showing those pictures to anyone, Joe. They
were for you, nobody else.”

  “Maybe that’s how you felt at the time, but damn, Meg, they’re extraordinary. I was excited about them, so I shared them with a friend.”

  “A friend who happens to be an agent.” The way she said the word agent, it sounded like a four-letter word.

  His fuse grew shorter. “I showed them to my friend Renee, not my agent.”

  “You can tell your friend Renee to rip them up. They’re not going anywhere.”

  “What about Hunt? What about his stake in this?”

  “They can send another photographer to take a new set of photos.”

  “It won’t be the same, Meg, and you know it.”

  “I’m not Ansel Adams. I can be replaced.”

  “Damn it to hell, Lindstrom. Why are you being so stubborn?”

  She was so cool, so calm, but he could tell by the rising color in her cheeks that her control was about to snap. “Don’t try to turn this around on me, Joe. I’m not the one who violated a trust.”

  His laugh was sudden and sharp. “A trust? I didn’t read your diary. I didn’t peek at your bankbook or check your credit rating. Why don’t you keep it in perspective? All I did was show Renee some pictures.”

  “What you did was give personal property to someone I don’t even know. That wasn’t a submission to an editor, Joe. They were snapshots I took for my own pleasure.”

  “For our pleasure,” he said, “and part of my pleasure was sharing those pictures with Renee.”

  “Showing them to her, yes, but why would you leave them with her? Didn’t you wonder why she wanted them?”

  She had him with that one. “Okay, I did wonder about it, but it didn’t seem that big a deal.”

  Her anger increased. “Didn’t you think to ask her what she was going to do with them? Didn’t you think to ask me if it was okay?”

  “Obviously the answer to both of those questions is no. Maybe I was hoping Renee would do something to help you—I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking that far ahead at the time.”

  “Maybe you should start thinking that far ahead.”

  “You seem to be forgetting one very important thing here. I didn’t have to tell you any of this. I could have just told Renee to forget the People assignment and you’d never have found out. We could just go on the way we have been. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?” He suppressed the need to step closer to her, to touch her. “It would have made things a lot easier on me, but I felt you had the right to make your own decisions.”

  “And that, Mr. Alessio, was your biggest mistake. Maybe this time you shave have kept your mouth shut.”

  “Damn it to hell!” Joe slammed his fist down on the tabletop next to him in an attempt to hold back angry words he knew he would regret. Drops of Chianti stained the wood, and he watched, perversely fascinated, as they pooled at the edge, then began a slow trickling down the side. He was as unable to stop the progress of the wine as he was unable to make Meg Lindstrom understand.

  “Just tell me one thing,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest to rein in his anger. “When are you going to stop getting in your own way?”

  Meg suddenly had an overwhelming urge to pick up the bottle of wine and hurl it at the wall behind Joe’s head. The sound of breaking glass and the look of surprise on his face would be worth the cleaning effort afterward. But she managed to control herself—barely.

  “You’re wonderful at analyzing me, Joe, but have you taken a look at yourself lately?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “What about those notebooks you keep on the nightstand? What about all those times you wake up sweating after some nightmare and spend hours writing in the dark?” She saw his body actually jerk in surprise. “Did you think I didn’t know about that? How would you like it if I took those pages and gave them to an editor? Are you ready for that?” She saw a flash of uncertainty in his eyes and part of her reacted with love and empathy. But another part still needed to strike back. “You push too hard, Joe. Why can’t you understand that I’ll be ready in my own time.”

  And that time was coming. It had been barreling down on her since she returned to Lakeland House a month ago, afraid to face her former self. It had confronted her each morning as she evaluated other people’s work; it had haunted her each night as she thought of all she wanted to do, all she could yet be.

  “And maybe you’ll never be ready,” he said, anger and pain in his voice.”Maybe if you keep waiting for the right time, you’ll wake up and find your life is over before you ever started.” He lowered his voice. “Maybe all you need is a push in the right direction.”

  “Not from you, Joe.” She remembered the uncomfortable feeling she always had when Kay’s name opened a door for her. “Never from you.” If she and Joe didn’t each bring a separate entity into their relationship, they would each end up with nothing. “If you really knew me, I wouldn’t have to explain it to you.”

  “Maybe you don’t have to explain it.” His beautiful green eyes glittered from the black-and-white glow of the television screen. Rick and Ilsa were reliving Paris, and Meg’s heart was threatening to break right along with theirs.

  “From the day we met, you’ve been probing every part of my life. Don’t you think I know how you watch every move I make? Don’t you realize I can see that writer’s mind of yours processing bits and pieces of my soul for your book? Do you think I like that? But I let you do it.” A quick memory of the night they first watched Casablanca flashed through her brain, almost undermining all she wanted to say.

  “I understand the creative process and all it takes to get to the end result. Do I harass you about doing your Vietnam book?” He flinched and she was almost sorry, but she didn’t stop. “You have your own boundaries, and I have mine. Why can’t you understand that my methods are different and maybe my goals are, too. Let me find the path on my own.”

  “You’re living in some kind of dreamworld, Meg. No one is going to track you down and leave a note on your windshield offering you the world.”

  “I don’t want the world, Joe. I just want a part of it.”

  “Damn it, don’t you know this has nothing to do with how I feel about you or what we have together? I shared your photos with a friend who happens to be a woman with business contacts. I didn’t ask her to help you. She saw talent, and she acted upon it.” He shrugged his shoulders and Meg wanted to smack him. “Maybe your real problem is with yourself.”

  “If I can’t trust you to respect me on this, how can I trust you with the rest of my life? Maybe what happened here was just the result of too many roaring fires and too much Cinzano.”

  “Terrific,” he said. “Keep looking in from the outside. Keep yourself away from the life you really want. You can go on driving that goddamn limo for all I care. You can pretend to be part of Elysse’s family until you’re a hundred. You can pretend you don’t want the photography and a home and everything else, but I don’t buy it. I want more than that, Meg, and if you had half the courage I thought you had, you’d admit you want more, too.”

  Damn that uncanny writer’s insight that stripped away all of the protective layers and exposed her vulnerable heart. She wanted to draw those layers back around her heart and protect herself from any more pain. I won’t cry, she told herself. I refuse to cry.

  “You’re going too far, Joe.” This hurts too much. “Stop before we lose everything we had.”

  “We had nothing if this can make it disappear.”

  “You can’t control me like one of the characters in your books. I have a history, a past you didn’t create.”

  “I know all about your past. Every time you come close to taking a chance, every time you come close to standing on your own, you put that past up in front of you like a shield.” He paced the room, dragging his hand through his hair as he talked. “I’m sorry your parents didn’t love you enough, I’m sorry your sister died, I’m sorry life hasn’t always been kind to you, but those are the breaks. I’ve been there,
Meg. I know what it’s like to hurt.”

  He stopped and looked at her, as if seeking a response, but she had none to give. She was a raw and aching wound.

  “You can’t let that ruin your life.”

  She stood up, surprised her legs were able to hold her. There was a kernel of truth in everything Joe had said, and the thought of facing that truth, coming to grips with a future she couldn’t control, rendered her speechless. She trembled as if caught in a vicious Arctic wind. On the screen, Bogart and Bergman were entwined in a cinematic embrace, their lips moving rapidly, comically, without the sound. Meg headed for the door, praying Joe wouldn’t try to stop her and terrified he just might let her go.

  What Joe wanted to do was grab Meg and carry her upstairs to that wonderful bed they’d shared. The magic they’d found was real and he wouldn’t let it disappear.

  “I love you, Margarita. Don’t turn away from me.”

  She stopped in the doorway and faced him. He saw pain and fear and – please, God – love. “Let me go, Joe,” she said softly. “If I don’t leave, I may end up hating you, and I don’t want to hate you.”

  He started to move toward her. He needed to touch her, to connect with her. She was slipping away from him, and he knew it. He also knew that this time he had to let her go.

  The sound of her footsteps on the stairs echoed through the house. He glanced at the television where Bergman’s incandescent beauty, so reminiscent of Meg’s own, hit him like a speeding railroad car.

  He picked up the half-full bottle of wine and raised it toward the television set.

  “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

  No wonder he’d always preferred fantasy to reality. In a fantasy, the hero’s heart never broke.

  Chapter Twelve

  Five days, four hours and twenty-seven minutes after Meg walked out the door of Lakeland House, Joe was sitting in Patrick McCallum’s office, doing his level best to get drunk.

  “Is there any more Cointreau?”

  Patrick held the heavy amber bottle up to the light. “No,” he said, tossing the empty bottle into the wastebasket near his desk. “How about some Benedictine instead?”