“Work what out? As long as Jenny is breathing you’re going to nag on and on at me about her. What do you want me to do? Have her killed? So you can be free of her?”
“No, of course not. I just wanted her out of your business.”
“And then what? The next step will be you demanding that I don’t see her at all. What has she actually done to you? Called you a gold-digger. Ooh, how terrible! It’s her manner, Arielle, she has a sharp tongue. If you only knew some of the stuff she’s said to me over the years you’d laugh out loud–”
“She called me a stalker and said you didn’t give a shit about me, that I was frigid and...and...”
“But that was over four months ago – she apologized several times and has been trying to make up for it ever since – she’s been trying, Arielle. Somebody who buys their future sister-in-law a one-of-a-kind Mark Finn wedding dress is not going to try and hurt you.”
“She’s been messing with my mind, sneaking in on my movie deal–”
“She came in on a bad movie deal that was sinking to save our arses! Why did she bail out Billy Gold? Not just because she saw a good business opportunity, but because you and I fucked up. We hadn’t done our homework. Billy Gold was going broke! Yes, that’s right, the whole movie would have gone under because Billy Gold wasn’t good for the money, so Jenny came in to make things right. He told you, himself, that he was having financial difficulties, but you wouldn’t have it, wouldn’t believe him. You were so obsessed with Jenny doing a number on you that you wouldn’t listen to reason.”
“At what point did Jenny get involved?” I’m still trying to work out the Valentina connection.
“I don’t know exactly but the timing was perfect for us all. Why did Jenny not tell us both, earlier? To save us from embarrassment. She thought she could subtly stay in the background and not get involved, except financially. She knew how much this project meant to you. And why did Billy Gold, himself, not mention it earlier? Because of his pride. He’s a big shot producer, or at least was ‘till some deal went sour – he was hardly going to admit to you his state of affairs.”
My brain is racing a thousand miles an hour. “But that doesn’t make sense. It was my idea to have a woman for the role, my idea to take a chance on a gay actress.”
“Exactly, Jenny knew all that, knew how you wanted a woman, a more mature actress to play the lead – you’d mentioned that to her yourself at some point – why do you think Billy Gold was so open to the idea? Because he didn’t have a choice. But as far as a gay actress was concerned, it was Billy Gold who put the idea of Valentina Gimenez into your head, wasn’t it? When Jenny found out about the mess he was in, she took the opportunity to use Valentina as leverage to make it all work out for everybody. And yes, now I realize that my sister did have an ulterior motive – to give Valentina a chance to break into the movies – Jenny was giving her a leg up with her career. Jenny was doing all of us a fucking favor by coming on board. Me, you, Billy Gold, Valentina – all of us would benefit.”
“Why did Valentina pretend she didn’t know Jenny?” I ask with suspicion.
“Because Jenny hasn’t come out of the closet. She doesn’t want her marriage breaking up. She doesn’t want her stepdaughter knowing she’s gay – Sylvie has no idea. Valentina was being discreet.”
“Did you know about Valentina, that she and Jenny were lovers?”
“No, of course not or I would have said something when I saw how flirtatious she was being with you. Jenny never discusses her sex life with me anyway, why would I have known about Valentina?”
I stammer, “She....Jenny...she had it all worked out...to demean me. To get her girlfriend to seduce me so I looked like a fool.”
“You’re really scraping the barrel now, aren’t you, Arielle. She got Valentina on board the movie because a.) she was cheap and b.) she wanted her girlfriend to get a leading role in a film. Valentina was basically going to do the part for free as long as she could rework the script. That was the deal. The fact that you then got into Valentina’s panties had nothing to do with Jenny.”
“I didn’t get into her panties, she got into mine!”
“Six of one, half a dozen of the other, what difference does it make – you two made out, which, by the way, Jenny has no idea about.”
“Bullshit! Jenny set me up! They were in on it together.”
“Oh please. You think my sister is into BDSM after what she went through with our father? Or she’d want her own girlfriend fooling about with another woman? With whips and shit?”
“To punish me to–”
“Oh come on, Arielle, you’ve been gagging for a spanking ever since I’ve known you. You were up for it, Valentina didn’t force you.”
I’m lost for words but know that I must be right somehow. I’m all tongue-tied but blurt out, “Jenny was mean to me when she and Sylvie came for dinner, she was hinting that things were going to go wrong to ‘unravel’ themselves and...”
“You know Jenny’s tone can be abrupt.”
I’m standing there stupefied. Everything Max is saying makes sense yet...
“Come here, babe,” Max says. “Let me give you one last kiss before we say goodbye.”
What?? Goodbye? I can feel my breath short, my stomach churning with terror. He’s leaving me. This is real. Kevin was right, I should have snapped Max up when I had the chance. Oh my God!
He walks towards me and holds me tightly in his arms and then runs his fingers through my swimming pool-wet hair. “I’ll miss you baby, but there’s no way you and I are going to work out. I don’t want to play this cat and mouse game any longer. I want a stable relationship, I’m not into roller-coaster rides, sorry.”
“You’re splitting up with me?”
“You split us up last night, Arielle. Not me. You. You broke my heart. You made it clear that our two orange halves will have to go their own separate ways.”
“No! That’s not what I want at all!”
“You can say what you like, baby, but actions speak louder than words. You made your choice when you escaped out of that toilet window last night, leaving a waiting jet and a waiting fiancé like two pieces of discarded trash. Not to mention the reverend in Vegas, and a special surprise I had planned after our wedding.”
“What surprise?”
“It doesn’t matter now, it’s water under the bridge, it’s the past.”
The past? No, this can’t be happening!
He tilts my head back and kisses me. He presses his lips firmly on my mouth and I open it, craving his tongue, desperate for him, his taste, his everything. I wrap my arms around his back and hold him as close as is feasibly possible. Tears are burning in my eyes; my heart feels as if it’s ablaze. Our kiss gets deeper, more ravenous. Tingles dance in my groin, my panties are slick – I need him. I need him inside me, our bodies to be one – I need for us to make love. “Please, Max, give me another chance,” I breathe into his mouth.
He pulls me off him slowly but with a firm grip. “No.”
“Is that all you can say? No?”
He steps backwards but stops and says, “Bye, Arielle. Keep that Mercedes, by the way. I bought it for you – bought it from the rental company, I figured you needed a car. They’ll be in touch. Later today you’ll receive a package from me. A new handbag, cell phone and other stuff. The diamond ring is yours to keep. And I’ve bought you a covered parking space around the corner from your apartment in Manhattan so you won’t have to move the Mercedes all the time when they do street cleaning – you know, otherwise you’ll end up with millions of parking tickets. Oh yes, I got you a pretty condo near Cap d’Antibes overlooking the Mediterranean – not far from where we stayed at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc; the deeds are in your name. In case you fancy a vacation now and then. You’ll love it. It comes with a parking spot, too, because the royal blue Porsche that you drove that lives in my house in Provence? She’s yours now – drive her with care. I’ll have her delivered there.”
&n
bsp; I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Is this all a joke?
But he continues on in a monotone, hardly stopping for breath. “Oh, and of course your Jim Dine and everything you’ve left at my apartment, your clothes and books and stuff I’m having delivered to your new place on the Upper East Side. I’m renting somewhere for you because of your apartment being sublet. If you prefer it, let me know and I’ll buy it for you. Oh yes, and Finders Keepers Enterprises? I’ve done a sweet deal with Cecile. Sweet for her, that is, not me. You and she will be partners, fifty/fifty – I thought you’d be more comfortable that way. I know how you feel about Hollywood and the movie business, so you can get back to doing what you’re truly good at – documentaries. My lawyers will send all the paperwork to you. You decide if the business idea appeals or not.”
I’m speechless, my jaw drops, my eyes are stinging with tears about to flood out at any moment. He has had this all planned out. Spent the day organizing everything to buy me off! He’s breaking up with me and giving me a ‘divorce’ settlement all in one go. There’s no going back now, he’s serious. I start sobbing. I think about Prince – no more walks in the park with him. My life as I know it is over – I’ve lost Max forever.
A voice from above shouts into the garden, “What the fuck is going on down there? What have you done to my sister?” It’s Kevin leaning out of his living room window glowering at Max. But Max ignores him.
“Bye Arielle, take care.” Max squeezes my hand and walks off with purpose, as if he can’t get away from me fast enough. The fact that he has been so generous when he didn’t have to be has made it all so much worse. I collapse on the lawn and roll into a fetal position howling with painful tears as if someone has stabbed me in the heart.
Because someone just has.
14
THE ONLY GOOD THING that has come of this black hole in my life is my rekindled relationship with Kevin. We’re closer than we ever have been – even before our mother died. He has made a hundred-and-eighty degree turnaround – we have talked things through; the anger, the guilt, the blame on both sides about John. I’m clinging to him like never before.
Right now he’s my lifeline.
I stayed on several more days with him in San Francisco, moping about his apartment mainly, nursing my wounds. Max only called once, to check a delivery had arrived: a beautiful red Hermès Birkin handbag, replete with gift vouchers for Neiman Marcus and Barneys (‘to replace make-up or anything lost – about time you had a bag that suited you’, his note said) a new cell phone and the keys to my new apartment. After making sure the number was going through okay, he hung up. He was polite but matter-of-fact as if I meant nothing to him at all.
I wailed for hours, cradling my designer bag like a dog with a bone – a sad reminder of what a fool I’d been to crawl through that ladies’ room window. Surely I could have done things differently? No wonder he’d had enough. Normal people don’t escape through toilet windows. Normal people don’t behave the way I have done.
A Birkin – all those times I’d been going about with my over-sized handbag and now, finally, this one is perfect. Still big enough to fit everything I need inside but so stylish and chic. The perfect pocketbook named after the Francophile British actress, Jane Birkin, who fell in love with the sexy French singer, Serge Gainsbourg. It brought back with nostalgia the moment when Je T’aime....Moi Non Plus was playing, after Max had dressed up as a fireman and just before he asked me to marry him.
He sent me the perfect purse at a price, not because of how expensive these bags are, but the price of unhappiness – a continual aide memoire of the fool that is me, Arielle Watson. I hold the Birkin close to me and start crying again. How I wish I could turn back time. He wanted to make me Arielle Knight, and all I could do was run.
I know I can’t possibly accept any of these ‘pay-off’ gifts – I call to say I want to give everything back, but he doesn’t pick up.
A RECAP ON WHAT’S BEEN going on with me.
Just when I was thinking that the world couldn’t get worse, a hurricane struck. Entire coastal stretches along the east side of the country were destroyed, five million without power, and the death toll rising daily. Scores of people died in New York City alone, more than in any other previous natural disaster to have occurred there.
It quickly shook me out of my self-pity, realizing that I was/am one of the lucky ones in the world. Cecile, not so. Her aunt was a victim of the superstorm’s wrath. She lived in Queens in a neighborhood which was first ravaged by flood waters before a raging fire burned everything to the ground, leaving nothing but a pile of ashes, debris of wrecked cars and dead trees reflected in the oily, knee-deep water.
Cecile is broken-hearted. I thought of what Max had said a couple of weeks earlier when we were talking about choices we make in life and he said something like: “Maybe Cecile’s had a relatively lucky life. Perhaps she’s never been a victim of circumstance or ever had to battle with personal demons.”
Poor Cecile, she’s certainly been a victim of circumstance now and will be haunted by demons for the rest of her life.
When Charles arrived back from visiting his parents, I knew it was time to leave. I had options. Go back to New York and settle into my new apartment, the one Max has organized for me. Luckily, the Upper East Side is still in working order, not the case for some other parts of Manhattan where the storm wreaked havoc. I had only seen photos of the apartment, a stunning two bedroom pre-war co-op just around the corner from where my place is (which is sublet for another ten months and I can’t break the contract). He said he’d buy it for me if I liked it. I can’t even imagine what it would cost, but a lot, and I don’t feel comfortable with all these ‘gifts’ he has showered me with – I want to return them: a condo in the South of France, two incredible cars, a parking space in the city. Things which remind me of him, remind me that I played it all wrong – that I screwed up yet again. Things which I don’t deserve.
Another option for me was to drive across America. I had to take the Mercedes to New York so I thought I might as well make a trip out of it.
At one point Emma said that she and Amy would come too, because Johnny was on business in Phoenix, but then it was cancelled so she changed her mind. A ten day drive just with me on my own didn’t appeal at all, especially with the way I’m feeling right now.
I spoke to Cecile several times and she advised me to stay away from New York, just for now. Meanwhile, all she wants to do is spend time with her family.
The third option was to visit my father in Costa Rica, which is what I decided to do.
That’s right, Max did call a second time but only briefly to ask what arrangements I had for the Mercedes and how I was planning to take it back to New York. I told him I didn’t want the car, but he was adamant I keep it. He came up with a plan. Sylvie and a friend of hers were going to fly to San Francisco, pick it up, and deliver it to New York for me. They’d drive across the country, very carefully, he’d instructed them, with utmost respect for the car, he’d warned. I consider it his car, anyway; his money paid for it. Sylvie and her friend stayed with Kevin and Charles for a couple of nights, before setting off on a sightseeing trip of a lifetime. By that point I had left for Costa Rica.
So here I am now at my father’s in his romantic house made of bamboo, away from the aftermath of that hurricane, away from the aftermath of my messed-up life. ‘At least you’re still alive,’ Kevin reminded me. ‘And not, as you feared,’ he said, ‘some victim of Jenny’s.’ Perhaps he had a point.
I have thought about Jenny a lot. Mulled over everything. Maybe Max is right...I’m paranoid, being unfair, I’ve watched too many crime shows on TV. Whatever, I made my bed and have to lie in it now. He doesn’t want me back. I could hear it in his voice when we spoke those two times. Businesslike. Polite but cold. Unemotional. How it kills me to hear him talk to me that way.
Now I spend the days looking at the ocean, watching the waves rise and fall, listening to the surf a
nd sound of birds. I have penned several letters to Max. Not emails but real letters on paper. But they end up in the trash, crumpled up – like my thoughts, confused, shocked, as if the last five months have been one long dream, as if this phantom Brit never existed at all, that he was just a figment of my imagination.
Speaking of dreams, I am possessed. Not by needle-dick and company. No. That seems to be over. I am possessed, obsessed by Max. Not only does he occupy my thoughts in the waking hours, but when I close my eyes, too. Constantly there. He is in my subconscious, my conscious, flowing through my veins, beating in my heart. He is everywhere. I see his peridot-green eyes sparkling with happiness looking down on me while I sleep. But when I open my lids, there is emptiness; my soul is like a void of black, a deep, dark cavern of misery. Misery I brought upon myself.
I have been trying to reach Natasha all this time. I even asked Sylvie if she could get her number for me, I was that desperate. Finally, I got it and left Natasha a message, but she hasn’t called back. I need answers. Is Max just in denial? Denial about how crazy Jenny is, or was he speaking the truth? Whatever, I realize that I was no match for his beloved sister. As Kevin pointed out, Blood is thicker than water. Max is taking every word of that to heart, polishing each letter of that phrase like a soldier polishing his boots. Until it gleams and shines like a mirror.
Blood is thicker than water.
“What’s up, Arielle?” I nearly jump out of my skin, but it’s only my dad coming up behind me. He lays his warm hands on my shoulders and gives me a little squeeze. “You’ve been very silent lately, sweetie, very introvert – that’s not like you at all.”
I turn around, holding one of his hands on my now bony shoulder – I can hardly eat at the moment. “I’m sorry Dad, sorry I’m being so dull and boring.”
I look up at his handsome, rugged face. His sand-blond hair falls limp about his high cheekbones, his crow’s feet are etched in hard lines around his dark blue eyes that reveal a man who has lived life. Suffered and pushed himself to the limits. His face is a map. He has a reckless air about him mixed with a soft vulnerability, which makes him hard to resist. I think about Cecile and see how she must have fallen head over heels in love with him but ran because she needed to protect herself. He could break a heart, because you want more from him, and he isn’t able to give more. He is a self-absorbed person, yet kind and caring. Self-absorbed, because it’s hard to penetrate his shell. What is he thinking? she must have wondered, why can’t he open up?
My Dark Knight Page 18