Byron's Lane

by Wallace Rogers

  We spotted Christina maneuvering between the two groups. Watching her move back and forth between them reminded me of lacing up a brand-new running shoe. She was exquisitely beautiful that night. Her blond hair was pushed up and pinned into an enticing soft bundle on the top of her head. She was wearing half heels, a dark-green leotard, and an off-white cashmere sweater that spilled over her breasts and hips in a tasteful, seductive way. I added Christina’s sense of fashion to the growing list of things I liked about her.

  Christina saw us, waved, and came over to greet us. She gave Adams an almost imperceptible shrug of her shoulders and a playful it’s-not-my-fault look as she walked up to him. She put her hands on his waist and kissed him on the cheek. “Richard invited a few of his friends.”

  Her words were carefully delivered. Her tone put miles of distance between the act and her involvement in it. I hoped Adams was sensing all this.

  She effortlessly launched us into an enjoyable conversation, and I watched Adams cling tenaciously to Christina’s lighthearted banter, often offered at his expense. He seemed to like being teased by her.

  We had Christina to ourselves for all of five minutes. We took no notice that Hunter had returned from his lair in the kitchen. He was quickly on us, like a lion pounces on an unsuspecting impala.

  “May I borrow her?” Hunter’s question was really a statement. “Christina, there are some people over here who want to meet you.” Maneuvering behind her, Hunter put his hands on her hips and gently pushed her toward his friends on the other side of the room.

  “I’ll be right back,” she told us, in soft defiance, as she looked at us over her shoulder. It didn’t happen.

  Adams was gobbled up by his gaggle of friends. I spent my time engaged in short bursts of chat with a constant stream of people who cheerily introduced themselves to me. I met no one from Hunter’s group; for the most part, they stayed camped in their corner of the living room. But I met all of Adams’s neighbors: professional people, a retired couple, and, my favorite, a farmer-turned-writer. He knew better than to try to monopolize my time after he discovered I ran a book publishing business. For his restraint and pleasantry, I gave the man one of my business cards and suggested he send me something he’d written.

  I also took the time to wander around Christina’s house and stealthily observing her from the edge of her hallway. Both Adams and Christina had become hopelessly stuck in the noisy, crowded living room, as far apart from each other as Hunter could keep them.

  There was little evidence of Hunter’s presence in Christina’s house; from the hallway I could see a pair of his tennis shoes on her bedroom rug, and one of his sweaters on top of a dresser next to her bedroom’s open door. No pictures of him or them were anywhere in easy view; no reference hung from magnets on her refrigerator.

  Unlike Adams’s house, Christina’s walls were filled with framed photographs that competed for space with displays of art. Especially interesting was a gallery that filled a wall in her hallway. The photo arrangement consisted of seven pictures. They were all of Christina at various stages in her life: three of her as a child; one that I guessed was her high school graduation picture; she and her daughter; a posed portrait of Christina standing in an English garden; an eight-by-ten picture of her leaning against the rail of a ferryboat, the distinctive skyline of San Francisco in the background. As I looked closely at the pictures, from over my shoulder came a familiar voice. “I took that one,” Adams whispered. By the time I turned around, he was halfway to the living room.

  I stopped at the makeshift bar in the kitchen and poured myself a glass of Adams’s Shiraz. When I reached the end of the hallway, Adams’s friends had already pushed him into their corner of the living room. Engaged in an animated conversation with two of his neighbors, he picked up and put down a bottle of beer on Christina’s fireplace mantle. From my strategic position in the living room’s wide, arched entryway, my eyes sought Christina Peterson. I found her sitting on the carpeted floor, cater-cornered from the place where Adams was standing. Her back leaned up against a couch. Her left hand held a half-empty glass of wine. Her free arm rested on Hunter’s knee. He was sitting on the couch behind her. One of his hands was on her shoulders as he spoke in his coffee-shop earnest way to a man sitting next to him.

  Christina gazed across her crowded living room. She found Adams. His eyes caught the look that Christina threw his way. It was longer than a glance, shorter than a stare, and it was quickly acknowledged by his smile. She took her arm from Hunter’s knee and secretly shook her finger at Adams. Her gesture caused both of his hands to cover his mouth, a mock acknowledgment that he had been caught doing something wrong. He lifted his bottle of beer from its place on the mantle. In an exaggerated way, he wiped off a moisture ring the bottle had never created on its painted surface. His response caused both their smiles to bloom into full-face grins. Conversations in which they each were supposed to be involved swept over the moment. It was gone forever.

  The time was right to kidnap Christina. I made my way over to the place where she sat. I offered my hand to her and tossed at Richard Hunter the same request he had made to Adams and me an hour before: “May I borrow her?” Hunter hardly noticed. He was busy making an important point to the man sitting next to him on the couch.

  Barely touching her offered hand, I pulled her up from the floor. Standing, smiling, she led me outside, across her patio and a grassy patch of backyard, to the two empty chairs on her studio’s tiny porch. The small cottage straddled the edge of her lawn. The place was enchanting—a personification of all I hoped she would be. Built into one of its short walls was a jammed trophy case that testified to her abilities as a golfer. I smiled. Christina displayed her trophies in a private place, hidden from the view of her visitors. A drawing table stood in its far corner. A turntable and speaker box shared space with a stack of old record albums on a deep shelf built into the far wall. Behind and beside the studio was a pond flanked by woods. The place was as far removed from the party as Christina could take me.

  As soon as we were seated on the porch’s white wicker chairs, she spoke. Her voice was so velvet and soft that it caused me to bend closer so I could better absorb its melody.

  “Thanks for rescuing me, Tom. How’s Jonathan doing? Is he okay?”

  Her question caught me off-guard. It told me that she had sensed the struggle inside Adams that he had tried so hard to hide from her.

  “So you know he’s having a hard time adjusting to your situation?” I asked. I caught myself stammering. She ignored my question and surprised me with another.

  “Tom, one of the neighbors told me someone tried to shoot Jonathan Monday night. What’s going on?”

  I stammered some more as I offered her Adams’s explanation of the incident. Though Adams had requested that I not mention anything about what had happened, I couldn’t deny that it had occurred. I had heard no reference to the shooting in any of the conversations I had flitted into at the party. That surprised me; I doubted that police cars in Adams’s driveway and men with flashlights scouring his field in the evening darkness had gone unnoticed. Large houses spread over the hills and fields in that area like a mild infestation of dandelions on a suburban lawn. Most of them afforded easy views of his property.

  “That’s kind of what Jonathan told me,” she said after I had finished. “I only had a minute to talk with him about it in the kitchen. Do you really believe that’s what happened, Tom? What’s being done about it?”

  I told Christina about his meeting at the sheriff’s office scheduled for the following Monday. I didn’t mention the FBI’s involvement. I described Adams’s apparent indifference to the matter to dull her worry. I told her that the police were keeping a close eye on his house until they figured out what happened. Christina wasn’t satisfied with my assurances, but moved on, having convinced herself, like I had, that everything that could be done to protect Adams was in various stages of pro
gress.

  Darkness covered the studio’s porch and hid us from the rest of the party. From our vantage point, we had a clear view into Christina’s house through its huge picture window. The whole lighted living room and all that was happening in it spread out in front of us like a movie on a big screen at a drive-in theater. Adams was pried into a near corner of the room, everybody within hearing distance looking at him. It was a scene with which I was familiar. People were interested in what he was doing, what he was saying, where he had been, and where he was planning to go next. There always seemed to be a discernible hum in the air around Jonathan Adams. Rumors swirled in his wake. I wondered why my friend could never seem to sense his charisma. All he needed was a whiff of it to blow away persistent self-doubt and constant fear of rejection. If only he could see what we all saw.

  “I miss Jonathan,” Christina sighed. Her eyes never left him as she spoke. “He’s been a good friend—a very good friend. But a woman involved with another man can’t have best friends—even good friends—who are men. I find that to be grossly unfair, but everyone tells me that that’s the way it has to be. What’s the reason? Is it cultural, physiological, or psychological? Why can’t I still keep Jonathan close by as my best friend?”

  I didn’t respond to Christina’s question right away. I was busy observing her. Unlike Adams’s other women, Christina’s attributes didn’t rise from her potential, or her hidden assets. Her qualities were apparent and easily on display: the way she dressed, how she spoke, her accomplishments. Christina Peterson had cast a spell over me.

  I finally answered. “I suppose the reason they say you can’t is a bit of all three.”

  Her eyes were still on Adams. How I had planned this conversation to unfold was fast becoming irrelevant. The subject of Jonathan Adams had started well beyond the point I’d expected we’d finish.

  “So I’ll have to get used to missing him, won’t I?” she said. “I’m upset with him, Tom. I wish he had given me some of the hints that are so apparent now—that I could have been his companion, his lover, the object of his affection. These past four years, I’ve watched him get involved with carloads of other women. Jonathan seemed so quick to start relationships with them and he moved so slowly to start one with me. What was I supposed to think?”

  The cliché about ships passing in the night came to my mind as I listened to Christina talk.

  “I’m involved with Richard now. Very involved, I’m afraid. I’m not sure how that happened. But it’s all moving too fast for me to jump off without getting hurt and without hurting and deeply disappointing Richard and everybody else we’ve involved.”

  I was struck by how similar Christina’s reasons were to Lisa Chandler’s. Their rationale was excruciatingly adult and responsible. Otherwise, when Adams mentioned anything about Lisa and Christina, he described two vastly different women. My mind lapsed back to a childhood spent watching too much television. A variation of Spock’s Vulcan creed on Star Trek pulsed through my brain: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” The principle ran counterclockwise to thoughts and deeds emblematic of our generation, and of the two that had followed ours. I wondered where this rare perspective came from and how it had embedded itself inside Adams’s two most extraordinary women.

  “We are what we know,” Christina said. “There have been three men in my life, besides Richard and Jonathan: my ex-husband, a Mayo Clinic doctor, and a Minneapolis writer. My husband was my opposite. The doctor was too much like me. The writer brought a truckload of issues along with him and into our relationship—issues that could only be solved by years of therapy. And therapy would probably have killed his talent as a writer.” She laughed.

  I wondered how Adams would have fit into her pantheon. The more she talked, the more I understood how Hunter had snared her. He was romantic and attentive, while somehow oblivious to anything soft.

  “Richard is a fixer,” Christina explained. “He makes life easy. I’m hardly responsible for anything. It’s like being on vacation. Things have changed so much these past two months,” she continued. “It’s strange. When I try to figure out what happened, I find myself falling back to Maslow’s theory, his hierarchy of needs: food, water, and shelter; safety; belongingness and love; self-actualization. You know it, don’t you, Tom?”

  I nodded.

  “Richard provides me with almost all of those needs. He’s as good as anyone has ever been to me. I needed to feel love when Jonathan was in Iraq. I hadn’t received a single e-mail from Jonathan for weeks, much less a letter or a phone call. I didn’t realize how much I needed to be loved until the first time Richard touched me—the same time he told me he wanted me to be the center of his life. Maybe I should have been concerned. It probably happened too soon after we met—too fast. But what he said and the things he did were so disarming. I was tired of having to fill my emotional needs all by myself. I was drained. It took an inordinate amount of energy to ignore and deny them. I missed the feeling a woman has when a man desires her so much that he can’t keep his hands off her; the look in his eyes when he’s consumed with passion.”

  Christina stopped for a second, surprised by her candor. She blushed.

  “Jonathan kept me an arm’s length away from him. He’d run us right up to the edge, and then he’d stop. When we were intimate it was wonderful. But I often had the feeling he was holding back. I couldn’t figure out why. The times I enjoyed most with him were the times when he let down his guard after he drank a little too much.” Christina smiled. The look on her face was the same one she had in the picture on her wall of the ferry boat ride on San Francisco Bay.

  The smile that curved her upturned lips straightened. Her tan-and-green eyes opened wider. I was flattered that she quickly felt comfortable in my presence—that she was so at ease that she had already shared intimate thoughts with me.

  “I was beginning to think I was past my ability to make a man want to take me to bed with him—that I had lost my attraction that way. Richard put that to rest. I hope you don’t think I’m superficial, but that’s important to women.”

  The experience she described had surely been a pleasant one for Christina, but her face was drawn and she frowned as she tiptoed around its edges.

  “But let’s go back to Maslow and Jonathan Adams,” she said. “Jonathan has the unique ability to fill my need for self-esteem. He respects me; he listens. He values my opinion. He’s even helped me see flashes of self-actualization. He gives that part of himself so easily, so readily; most importantly, so sincerely and so transparently. I expect he shares that quality with all of us who love him. That’s the reason we fall in love with him. Richard can’t do that. No man I’ve ever been with can do it like Jonathan does. But I needed to feel security and belongingness, too. Like every human being, according to Maslow, I need those things first.”

  Falling in love was an elaborate Kabuki dance for Adams. Only he understood and appreciated the intricate moves he had developed and painstakingly refined. His dance was intended to have shown three women that he was in love with them. Like Kabuki, Adams’s way of communicating this was a dying art form. The presentation took too long. The moves were so subtle that they went unnoticed.

  I decided that evening at Christina’s house, at Richard Hunter’s party, that love allowed to flourish in full bloom was more dependent on good timing than it was on great chemistry.

  I encouraged Christina to talk more. She told me the same life-story that Adams had shared with me on Thursday night. I pretended like I hadn’t heard it before. As I listened, I decided that Christina was a prisoner of her outstanding qualities: honesty, loyalty, maturity, and steadfastness. Her Scandinavian roots—compassionately nurtured, tempered by fairness—produced a compelling need to set and respect boundaries—something as iron inside Christina as it was cheesecloth inside Adams. Richard Hunter’s headlong dash into her life had taken her by storm and overwhelmed those boundaries. H
unter had made himself so much a part of her space that getting him out of it would cause monumental upheaval.

  But Christina’s thoughts as she expressed them that night, her words, their tone, her gestures, suggested the door was still open for Jonathan Adams. But it wouldn’t be open long.

  “I love Jonathan, Tom. But I can’t do anything about it now.”

  I seized upon the word “now.” I bagged it for evidence so it could be dissected and analyzed later. I memorized and replayed the velveteen softness of Christina’s voice when she said it.

  I had had Christina to myself for a long time. A few guests were starting to leave and a stern look from

  Hunter, suddenly standing on the lawn a few feet in front of us, was meant to remind Christina that she had an obligation as cohost to thank them for coming. Our remarkable discussion was abruptly ended.

  Christina was gone. Adams was made inaccessible to me by a phalanx of friends and neighbors, so I sought out my new friend, the writer-turned-farmer. We cut ourselves loose from the group. I enjoyed his bag full of stories about his adventures in dairy farming, and his homilies about country life, until his wife came and pulled him away from me with a gentle reminder that he had twenty-five cows that expected to be milked at dawn the next morning.

  As Hunter increasingly became the party’s center of attention, the closer he drew Christina to him. It was painful for Adams to have to watch. His dwindling flock of friends could distract him from the spectacle no more.

  “I think it’s time for us to go home, Tom. How about it?” he asked.

  I would have left sooner.

  After we made our perfunctory good-byes to Hunter and his crowd, I preceded Adams out the door by a full minute. We figured that might afford him a pretense to leave what was left of the party as quickly as possible: “Tom must be outside waiting for me. Better go.”