by Donna Hill
"Parris, Parris." Nick rushed through the door. "Baby, you did it. I just finished talking with Newhouse. He wants to meet you on Monday."
"Oh, Nick. I can't believe it." Her voice cracked with emotion.
"Believe it. Here's his card." He handed the card to her, and she stared at it in wonder.
"This is for real, Parris. I told you that you would do it. I knew it!"
Spontaneously, Parris threw her arms around him, and he hugged her to him in return. The moment was simple and pure as they let their happiness spill from one to the other. Then suddenly, the mood, the reason for the embrace, shifted. They were no longer two people simply sharing a moment, they were a man and woman who had fought day in and out to keep a seal on their emotions for each other.
He held her a bit tighter, burying his face in the pillow of her hair.... She trembled in his arms...a soft moan escaped her lips. He leaned back and looked down into her face.
"Parris, I--"
"What the hell is this!"
Nick pulled back, not completely releasing Parris's waist.
Tara stood in the doorway, her face a mask of injured fury. She stalked across the room.
"Tara, it's not what you think," Parris began.
"Shut the hell up, bitch. I've had about enough of your shit since you and your country ass came to town."
"Tara!" Nick shouted, his face contorted into barely contained rage.
"You--don't you dare. You have the nerve to do this to me--with her." Tara's voice rose to a screeching pitch. "If it wasn't for me and my daddy's money, you would still be a no-name musician running from club to club trying to put two dimes together."
"That's enough, Tara."
"You wasn't nothin' then, and you still ain't nothin'," she ranted on, pacing back and forth in front of them, pointing and tossing her head in dramatic fashion. "I made you, and I can unmake you. One call from me to my father and you're finished, do you hear me! You think I'm gonna sit still and watch this little no-talent, country hick mess up my life, take what's mine. Hell, no. I'd rather see you dead first."
"There's nothing going on between me and Nick, Tara. There never was and never will be. You can't always believe what you see," she said, with a calmness that belied the fury and humiliation she felt for herself and for Nick. "I came here for one reason and one reason alone, but you'd never understand that."
She snatched up her coat and purse and brushed past Tara and out the door.
"Parris, wait."
She turned, looked from one to the other. "I think you both have some things to work out." She closed the door quietly behind her and slipped out of the club unnoticed....
The next time she saw Nick was when he'd arrived in Rudell for her grandmother's funeral. He'd severed his ties with both of them the same night. Her only regret was that she hadn't been there to see it.
"I suppose you're right," Gina said, easing into Parris's thoughts and pushing them aside. "It does show what kind of man Nick is."
Parris drew in a short breath, cleared her head.
"It does." Nick was a man like her grandfather--hardworking, determined, a man of loyalty and principles. Even in the murkiness that her life had dissolved into it was clear that she'd been blessed with examples to live up to, base her opinions and ideals on, know what she should and should not accept in life and in love. She also knew that the very same examples and teachings were the shackles that were holding her in place.
"While I was back home I found out some things about...my mother."
"Your mother? What kind of things?"
"She's not dead," she began and unwound her story over Gina's stunned gasp. She told about the letters and the revelations her grandmother made.
"Oh, Parris. I don't know what to say. All this time..." Her voice drifted off and in the momentary pause Parris sensed that her friend was thinking the same thing she was; how could a mother do that to her child and why?
"What are you going to do?"
"I leave for France next week."
"What! Just like that? Does she even know you're coming?"
"No."
"Do you know where she lives?"
"No. Not exactly."
"Well, is Nick going with you at least?"
"No."
"Parris! You can't just fly off in search of your long lost mother all alone. I know this is important to you but be realistic. What if you can't find her? You have no way of knowing if that address is any good." Her voice continued to climb the scales. "And if you are lucky enough to find her, what if she won't see you? Have you thought of that?"
She'd thought of all those things. In her dreams she enacted every possible scenario, except the ending. It was like those falling-off-a-cliff dreams. You fall and fall, hurtling through the dark unknown, only to be awakened seconds before what would seem inevitable. You survive the fall. And whatever this trip did or didn't do she would survive the fall.
"I know there's no point in wasting my time trying to change your mind especially since you have a nonrefundable ticket."
They laughed.
"You just make sure you see me before you go head off to parts unknown."
"I will."
"And try to get some for the road."
"Gina! You haven't changed a bit."
"That's why you love me. Talk to you soon."
Parris was getting the hang of this playing house thing. She looked forward to Nick's music coaxing her out of sleep. The scent of him. His laughter. The weight of his presence that took up space that she wanted to share with him.
They talked every chance they got, about anything and nothing. It didn't matter. They riffed off the sound of each other's voices.
When she went to bed at night, she'd watch the light beneath her door blocked by the shadow of his footfalls. "'Night," he would call out but never come in. "'Night," she'd reply and wish that he would. He was waiting for a sign from her telling him that it was all right, that she wanted more than the platonic ideal they'd created. She knew that even as she tentatively knocked on his door the night before she was to leave.
Nick opened the door and her heart stopped beating. The air stumbled in her lungs. The darkness of his eyes was that endless stretch of blackness as she fell through the night toward the inevitable. She would survive. Nick would catch her.
"I..."
He took her hand. "Don't talk. Don't explain."
Gently he pulled her inside and shut the door behind them.
Parris awoke not to the strains of Coltrane but the steady beat of Nick's heart. A flood of peaceful warmth flowed through her, delivering a smile of raw happiness to her mouth. His hard, muscled thigh was draped over her, pinning her to bare flesh. Her senses preened. The air was filled with the scent of them. Heady, muggy, telling.
Nick groaned softly. He nestled her closer. The heat between her thighs pulsed like live wires. She still felt him there, memorized the way he'd loved her--slow, urgent, deep and long. Her muscles hummed with pleasure and as she drifted off to the rhythm of his heart and the warmth of his breath brushing against her hair, she knew why she'd waited.
Parris squeezed Nick's hand as they walked through the doors of JFK airport. Her flight was due to leave in two hours. She wanted to spend every second of it with him, but that was impossible.
"Sure you have everything--passport, wallet, cell phone, something to read?" he added with a half smile.
"Yes." She gripped his hand tighter.
"You'll call me as soon as you land?"
"I promise." She struggled not to cry.
They were next in line.
"Where will you be flying to today?" the cheery reservationist asked.
Parris swallowed over the sting in her throat. "France."
"Are you traveling also, sir?"
Nick and Parris exchanged a look filled with a million questions. "No," he answered.
He curled his arm around her waist and tenderly kissed the top of her head as she handed over
her documents and got her boarding pass in return.
They walked together as far as security would allow him to go.
"I'll call you as soon as I can."
He brushed her cheek with his fingertips and her eyes fluttered for a moment. "I'll be waiting."
Parris joined the security line, glancing back over her shoulder as Nick's image drew farther away until she couldn't see him at all. A moment of panic gripped her. What was she doing? This was crazy and impulsive. There was no guarantee that Emma still lived in Paris at the thirty-year-old address. This was a mistake. But like lemmings drawn to the edge, she kept moving until she was walking down the aisle, finding her seat, holding her breath as the world disappeared and she soared into the clouds.
Chapter Five
Celeste turned the key, opening the door to exquisite nothingness. The abyss was alive, traveling along the champagne-toned silk drapes, woven into the threads of the imported Turkish rugs that drew one's attention to the gleaming teak wood floors, out to the imported antique furniture, upward to the vaulted ceilings. Her emptiness echoed with each footstep, leaving a scent of Chanel in its wake.
Most days the void didn't consume her. Today wasn't a sensation, it was a physical weight that draped her shoulders and clung to her ankles, curving her back and sucking her feet into the mire.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, muffling the sound of the phone. It took a moment for her to register the ringing. She dropped her bag on the oxblood leather couch and reached for the phone on the end table. The caller ID highlighted the number. Briefly she shut her eyes in annoyance, steeled her emotions and picked up the receiver.
"Hello, Mother."
"You would think that with caller ID you could at least pretend to sound happy to hear from me," Corrine Shaw chastised.
There was no point in debating the issue or insisting that Corrine was wrong. She wasn't. Celeste opted for silence, her strongest weapon.
"I'm calling to remind you about tomorrow night."
Celeste fought and failed to contain her sigh.
"It's important for both you and Clinton to meet these people."
"Important to who, you and Dad? Not me."
"You have no idea what's important."
Here it comes.
"That's apparent by this...this job." Her mother sputtered the word as if she'd eaten dirt. "It's beneath you. Beneath us. What will my friends say? Of course you don't care," she continued, stealing Celeste's retort. "But I do. Your father does. We have a reputation. This family has a legacy to uphold."
Begun by your grandfather, Celeste recited in her mind, rolling her eyes. She'd stopped listening to her mother's rant. It never changed. The legacy, the reputation, popular opinion, her disrespect, worthlessness, on and on.
"Celeste!"
Celeste flinched. "Yes?"
"Eight tomorrow. And please be on time."
"Goodbye, Mother. I'll see you tomorrow." She hung up before Corrine could launch into another monologue. The five-minute conversation had successfully drained her of whatever strength she had left.
She took off her shoes and went down the long corridor that featured a Rembrandt, a Picasso and a John Biggers just to piss off her mother.
Maybe a glass of wine and a mindless evening of surfing the cable stations would lift her from her growing malaise.
She should be ecstatic. She'd landed her first deal. The papers were all but signed. Money would change hands soon. She'd finally accomplished something on her own, without the prerequisite of her family name.
Suddenly weary she turned toward her bed and noticed the flashing red light. She pressed the message button and Clinton's voice reached out through the phone lines.
"I'll be working late tonight, sweetheart, but I thought I'd stop by, stay over. Call me."
Next to her mother, her fiance Clinton was the last person she was in the mood to see. The heavy sigh took what little she had left and dumped her on the bed. She stretched out and stared at the off-white ceiling. She tried to pinpoint when she'd begun to feel so utterly disconnected, her usual fire reduced to soot. She knew Corrine was partly to blame. She had a knack for bringing out the worst in her, which didn't take much. Corrine also knew how to make her feel like an incompetent child again, one constantly in the throes of a temper tantrum.
But it was more than that. She'd lived within the vise of her mother's grasp for nearly three decades. She was only able to break free during her college years by getting to know other cultures, different ethnicities, people from all walks of life, something that her grandfather had quietly encouraged, much to her mother's dismay. She'd often question the credo that her parents and their circle lived by--those that didn't have, weren't worthy of attention. In the minds of the Shaws, wealth was privilege without responsibility. She'd learned how to protect herself from being punctured too deeply by her mother's caustic tongue. So it wasn't that. What she'd begun to realize during the past few days was that this engulfing sensation of doubt about the validity of her life and her own happiness had come into question again after meeting Parris McKay and Nick Hunter. What she saw in them was a possibility that she'd never imagined, a realness that for her entire existence had eluded her.
Over the years, she'd thrown stones at the glass window of her wealth and status, from her choice of friends to working a real job. She hadn't walked away from the shards of glass but pretended to walk over them, like some mystic traversing a bed of nails and not getting hurt. But she had been hurt, little by little, and as she was diminished her resentment at herself grew. Resentment over her weakness to leave behind the things she professed to deplore. She was trapped by the trappings, and the fear of what life would be like without them held her in place.
When she met Nick and Parris she also met an unrecognizable part of herself--envy, an emotion that never before had a place in her life. She wanted what they had and she wanted Parris's courage to face the unknown.
She had neither. That realization was at the core of her current state of ambivalence. Until she found the way and the will to combat it she'd continue to dance off beat to their music.
The doorbell rang at ten. Since Celeste had arrived home she'd gone through the rituals of preparing for Clinton's arrival. When she opened the door she transformed into the only Celeste that he knew.
"Hello, sweetheart." He leaned down from his six-foot height and kissed her briefly on the lips, before breezing inside.
Clinton Avery was the only son of William and Phyllis Avery, heir to a multimillion dollar fortune built on oil and shipping that dated back three generations. Clinton, like Celeste, had been groomed in the world of "better than." His education had been mapped out before he was born. When William and Phyllis decided the time was right for a child, they'd begun the application process to all of the elite nursery schools in the city. Nothing would ever be too good for their child. It never was. Up to and including forging an alliance with his golf and country club buddy Ellis Shaw and the promise they'd made to each other on the eighteenth hole to wed their children and secure their fortunes.
And Clinton reeked of Ivy League privilege from the cut of his naturally blond hair and his tailored Italian suits, down to the spit polish of his wingtips. Clinton, easily mistaken for a young Robert Redford or a Brad Pitt of Troy fame, was, if nothing else, good to look at. He was highly versed in the most obscure facts, which would make him an ideal candidate for Jeopardy!, but of course that wasn't becoming of an Avery. His family's inherent snobbishness was inextricably tied to old Connecticut money, the musty smell an aphrodisiac to the nouveau riche. However, beneath the expensive suits and two-hundred-dollar haircuts, and a zealous belief that money can buy you everything, he was really a good guy. And all the money he spent on mastering the art of tantric sex was worth his company.
They'd been officially seeing each other for three years. In their world of rarified air, "seeing each other" meant that you'd been photographed by the press, seen at all the major ev
ents together and shared a secret getaway that all the right people knew about. When asked if "you're an item," you look at each other adoringly and say "no comment." The goal, of course, was not to quell curiosity but to stoke it.
Her best friend, Leslie, barely tolerated Clinton "and his ilk," although she barely tolerated anyone. But according to her, Clinton was too full of his own nonimportance.
"I'm bushed." Clinton loosened his tie, dropped his briefcase in the foyer and went straight for the bar. "Bitch of a day," he groused, moving bottles to find the cognac, his drink of choice. "Fix you one?" He held up a short tumbler in question.
"No, thanks."
"Do you know that in less than a decade the white race will be the minority?" He tossed down a deep swallow and she watched his cheeks glow from the inside. His lips pursed.
Celeste knew that the question, like most of Clinton's questions, was rhetorical. He simply phrased his statements as questions to give one the impression of being included in the conversation.
"Hmm," she murmured before staking out her spot on the couch. Clinton loved making love on the couch. It was almost as if he considered it somehow decadent. She watched his sea-blue eyes darken as he approached her. "I saw on the news that the market took another dive."
He nodded. His jaw clenched. "A bloody mess." He took another swallow of his drink and sat down beside her. His hand caressed her bare thigh. "Things are bad all over. Even with all of our diversification we've already been hit hard." His hand inched higher.
Celeste allowed her mind to wander while Clinton prattled on about futures and industrial averages. She had no intention of interrupting him as long as he was making every nerve ending of her body jump and sizzle. She couldn't conceive of being without. It didn't factor into her train of thought. But she sensed more than heard Clinton's deep fears of impending doom. His touch, which had been featherlight and electrifying, had become tight and tense with unspoken urgency.