by Tessa Dane
As we put our clothes into some presentable semblance of their original neatness, he entered another set of numbers into his phone. I realized that these numbers signaled Tom, for as we left the park, hearing the gate close behind us, we could see him standing by the car, holding the door open.
“I wish I could see you home,” Rand whispered, “but you’ll be safe with Tom.” Rand practically lowered me bodily onto the seat, his last quick kiss on my lips leaving my knees even more shaky, and grateful for his incredible tenderness.
The car took me home in silent luxury, and though I wanted to cry, I felt drained, wanting the sleep that we should have shared after he had built me up to that crashing pleasure. When I got to my bed, I barely got my clothes off, got under the coverlet, crawled to the center of the bed, and fell into the deepest sleep I had ever known.
IV
When I woke, for the first time in my life I was a creature rumpled from lovemaking, yesterday’s clothing all askew around my body.
My normal waking time, when my body roused itself with no alarm, was generally at dawn, even before dawn in winter months. My mother had laughed that I was the only adolescent who naturally rose early. The other side of this was that I also tended to get sleepy early, which did not help my patchy social life. When galas were held, opera openings, ballet festivals, anything lasting into the night, when I attended with my family and was expected to be part of the social display, it was a challenge for me. I would drink several cups of coffee over the course of the day, to charge my body awake at least until midnight. It helped that I was so young, able to coax myself to later hours. I often was going home, or already home, while my peers were madly partying in their after-hours times together. It must have been some sort of relief for my parents, but they did not make a great deal out of it, perhaps afraid to jinx it. They liked what one of my friends called my “lady monk” ways. I was never at a late party. My peers often teased that I was a sleepyhead, but gave up trying to change my stubbornly daylight-oriented body clock. They named me “Cinderella,” and called to me that my midnight hour was fast approaching. This would start around ten PM, which was about how late I could hold out before getting into the family car to be driven home. Our driver was the envy of the other drivers, who had to wait all hours for their young charges to make their raucous ways back to their cars.
One time, when I was talking about my friends’ exasperation with my inability to stay up late, my mother had said that as I got older, “when you are as old as I am,” she had laughed, early nights would be a delicious blessing. Her eyes had been filled with mischief, sympathy for my childish sleeping hours, happiness that I was safely home when others my age were who-knew-where. My mother’s eyes shone that way now in my memory. How I missed her, the familiar involuntary sob at the memory of her face, the tears gathering and burning my eyelids, oh, my mother.
I waited to gather myself to some calmer state, and turned to look at the clock. It said eight AM. I was stunned. How late had I returned? And why was I so slow in getting out of bed? Generally, I was totally awake the minute my eyes opened. What had last night done to me? I smiled to myself at my question, suddenly aware of the most gorgeous scent of roses wafting about me. On my desk in the alcove beyond my bed was a vase of red roses, so heavily, headily wonderful, they were like the roses I had seen and adored in India. I had not smelled such roses since, though I always tried to recapture their beauty with my rose perfumes.
A knock at the door, and a little bell. It was Marilisa, the “upstairs concierge” as we called her, the organizer for a cluster of apartments, getting cleaners in and out, accepting deliveries, sending out orders, smoothing life in ways too numerous to list. I managed to say “Come in,” and ran into my closet-dressing room, trying to get out of my rumpled clothes and into a robe.
“Good morning,” she said cheerily after letting herself in. “The roses smell wonderful.”
“Did you…?” Of course she had, her merriment saying yes, she had brought the roses here while I slept.
“They arrived before dawn,” Marilisa said. “The concierge couldn’t get over their fragrance.” She looked at me questioningly. “Where did he buy them?”
“You know it’s a ‘he,’” I said with a smile.
“Of course it’s a ‘he.’ It’s traditional to send roses…” She stopped, and now it was her turn to blush.
“I don’t know where,” I said, but I suspected he had done some extraordinary magic with the international flower marketers. These roses were the essence of India.
“If you find out, I must know,” she said. “They are so incredible.” And then she looked at me, suppressing a wider smile. “Can I do anything for you?”
“No, thanks Marilisa.” I realized that she had seen me asleep in my clothes, and I left her to her imaginings.
“Okay, call if you need me,” she trilled on her way out. Her work here was her dream job in many ways, and she was very well paid. The man who had arranged all this for her was, yes, Bredon. She was in love with him and in awe of him, so clear from her reactions the few times I had seen them in the same room. Thus I was her special charge. Bredon had picked well. She was wonderful.
I went and enclosed the vase in my arms, inhaling the fragrance of the roses. The traditional small white envelope sat amid the stems, which had been stripped of their thorns. Highend florists did this routinely, as I had seen, with a small stem-hugging collar that clamped under the blossom; pulling the collar straight down, the thorns came off in a shower. The art was to take the thorns but leave the stems looking green and untouched. There is an art to everything, I thought. Especially love.
Rand’s note in the envelope said, “Soon, my Darling. R.” And I marveled again at how he had managed to send these, wondering if he had flown to India. I would ask him when he got back, when I thanked him with words and kisses and my body…I was growing heated just imagining it.
A message light blinked; Robin’s voice. “Dray, I’m in town passing through, quick lunch? Call me if you can meet me.”
I hit the return-redial. “Yes, yes,” I said, still half crumpled, my robe not fully on; I was so happy she was back, even for a day.
She laughed at my eagerness. “I can’t wait to see you either. First we visited my mother’s family. Now we fly out to visit my father’s family. Then I can return to the city and live a normal life. I think.” Her dry, resigned recitation of her duties had me giggling. But then she grew serious. “I shouldn’t be so cavalier,” she said. “I hope I’m coming back here in two weeks or so. It’s open-ended.”
“Are you worried? What’s happening?” I asked.
“The health of the oldest members of both families is iffy,” she replied. “I’m hoping they hang in there. But I don’t want to be too definite about it. You know the old saying, if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans for the future.”
“Or you can tell Her. Maybe She’ll be more understanding,” which got an appreciative chuckle from Robin.
“I’ll pick you up and we can eat near your place, okay? We’ll have maybe an hour, and then I’m off to the airport.”
“Yes, come up,” I urged, wanting to share the glorious roses and news of Rand with her.
She knew immediately that something was afoot. “You want me to come to your apartment to get you?” she enunciated, and at my giggle she said, “Oooh, now I really can’t wait. Noon. See you then,” to my laughing, “yes, yes,” and I felt that happiness of a best friend coming to share news and heart secrets.
I finally got myself into the shower, and into another set of clothes, rushing now so that if Robin did have more time, we could sit here while I told her about Rand. I turned on my computer, did a cursory scan of my e-mails, nothing pressing, and closed down. I also buzzed down to Marilisa, whose cleaning policy for my apartment and a couple of others, were based on shipboard practices: continual attention, and cleanup whenever needed. I was neat and tidy, but nothing could hide the me
ss I had made of my bed, the sheets and the coverlet, and she had the changes of bedding for me in her storage closet. All I had to say was, “Marilisa, my bed…” and she said, “I’ll be right up.”
She and I, on either side of the bed, quickly put on new sheets and a new coverlet. She did the pillowcases, and I retrieved my Watch Bear, a ridiculously menacing stuffed animal over a foot high, that was my appointed sleep guardian. I had brought him to the Blessing of the Animals last year, finding many people with their own little accumulations of toy critters. The priests at Saint Mary’s smiled a lot, but never said a word, blessing all the pets, and blessing pictures of beloved animal companions who had died. I was determined to find a special medal for my Bear, to pin it on him, his own talisman, as he was mine.
Marilisa did a quick sweep of the bathroom, gathering towels against my protests, “They’re still clean,” looking at me with a sly smile, I think not trusting that post-lovemaking towels could be used again. With quick efficiency fresh towels went onto the racks, and she was out the door with a wave at my thanks.
As I had hoped, Robin did arrive a little bit early – maybe fifteen minutes – a bonus of time for us. We hugged briefly as we murmured our hellos, and I stood back to admire her very high heels.
“Five inches!” I exclaimed. “I can’t wear them! Are they comfortable?” I was amazed that she had bought such shoes.
“Yes, I bought them for our outings!” she announced solemnly. “I am so tired of neck strain when we walk together.”
“Robin, for heaven’s sake, I’m just a bit taller than average.”
“And I’m a bit shorter, and you’re not just a ‘bit’ taller. In my next life, please God let me be tall!” She sat in one of the small upholstered chairs in my bedroom, inhaling deeply, “And please, God, let someone send me roses like that! Who is it? Who?” She was practically bouncing on the seat as she asked me.
“Rand….” I began.
“Grenville Rand? Oh, my God!” She was excited and eager. “Tell me, what happened, did you, did he….”
“It was wonderful.” I sat across from her; we were bending toward each other in our excitement. “We went to the Balthus exhibit, and he’s going to be a museum trustee, and then we went to dinner, and then to his place, not his apartment…” The words tumbled one on top of the other, yet she and I could hear each other’s thoughts as well as our words, and she understood everything.
“Did you?” she asked, giggling.
“Oh, Robin, we never actually got to it! We were, you know, ‘in the throes of love,’ as they say, and I did Mrs. Sanjay’s technique, and he loved it,” at which Robin squeaked, her special sound, and bounced on the chair some more. “But just as we were about to, just at the point, his phone rang…” and I never finished the sentence because Robin screeched out an “eeeeek, oh noooooo…”
She was suddenly serious and angry for me. “And he answered it?” She was indignant. “Why didn’t he just ignore it!”
“You should have heard the weird ringtone, Robin. That was no regular call, and sure enough, he sent me home in his car and flew off, I think late last night, maybe to India since that’s the only place I’ve ever smelled roses like this.” I hesitated. “I wonder how he got them here overnight, though…”
“Never mind that!” Robin exclaimed. “You’re going to see him again!”
“Yes! I can’t believe how he affects me, he’s bright and tender and…” I had no more words, I just turned my hands up, surrendering the struggle to describe it.
“And super rich!” She looked at me. “Do you know how rich he is?”
“Robin, we’re not exactly poor.”
“Oooh, but the Rands and the Grenvilles and the Strellings and all the rest of that family are really what ‘super’ means when they say ‘super-rich’.” She looked at me with a grin, and said, “I’ll bet you haven’t Googled him.”
“No.” It hadn’t occurred to me.
“Do you know how many guys have Googled you?” she said, “and me, before or right after we meet?”
“I know people do it…”
“Yes, you innocent creature, I know you don’t.” She was laughing.
“I’m not an innocent creature. Rand wasn’t the first man to kiss me or to get to third base.”
“Whoever got to third base with you, probably was called out at home.” She was still laughing.
“Well, I’m not naïve.”
“No, that you’re not. You’re more clever than most people can ever imagine.”
“You’re the same,” I told her.
“Yes.” She was. It was not arrogance. It was a simple statement of fact, and it reflected our sameness.
As we started to leave my apartment she turned back one more to inhale the roses’ perfume, lingering over them with a long, dreamy look. Then we were talking as we made our way down to the street and across to a wonderful small café.
Robin was serious now, our earlier conversation evidently very much at play in her mind. “We are smart, Dray, and as they say, ‘clever beyond our years.’ We hide it well, but we know ourselves.”
I looked at my friend at she spoke, seeing that she was talking as much to herself as to me, using our familiar pattern of saying our thoughts out loud to each other, no answer needed, but comments lovingly received when one of us did answer.
She went on, “We’re at a top school, we’ve gone to the best schools, and no one puts it together, that all this education may actually have ‘taken’, and that we’re very intelligent, and maybe not wise, but we know stuff, and we can think and analyze.”
I wondered if my friend had been getting some “get married and be a good wife” lectures from the oldest members of her mother’s clan. She was on the way to another set of lectures from the great- and great-great aunts in her father’s family. Robin was an heiress-in-the-making, major monies coming to her from both families. For the oldest in these families, the imperative was to keep the family money safe by making a solid marriage and producing a healthy crop of progeny. I had seen a little bit of it, but my family’s situation was different. Our parents’ families had had very bad luck with health issues. Not many remained of our parents’ extended families, and Bredon and I were clucked over in absentia. Our relatives knew that we were a brother and sister more like Lazarus than like Adam, risen from too stark a knowledge of death, not siblings who were young and newly-made. Our relatives also lived mostly at a distance, though we did have a couple of great-aunts in the New York region, who had been a refuge for me after the bombing. Bredon and I, along with some great-cousins, had dutifully visited them these past Christmases and Easters. No one expected us to be there with light hearts, and I blessed the two ancient ladies for their generous love.
Robin had been silent, allowing my own thoughts to wander. Our companionable togetherness was always this way. Just sitting together, just walking together, without words, warming and wonderful. But now Robin came back to her theme with a restless gesture.
“I don’t think, even now, even with all that women have achieved, that people really believe how deeply smart we are.” She gave me one of her calculating looks. “I wonder if even Grenville Rand, currently the major brain of his family’s empire, knows how smart you are.” Her expression was dead serious.
“We’ve only just met, Robin!” I wondered at her steady look, the thoughtful way in which she studied me. “You have reservations about him? Tell me,” I said.
“I don’t know what it is, Dray. I’ve seen pictures of him, he’s handsome enough.”
“Pictures? Where?” Why hadn’t I seen them?
“You don’t follow what they call ‘society gossip’,” she said. Her tone softened. “You’ve kind of had other things on your mind.”
She was right, this insightful friend, how well she knew me. My sense of the proportion of things had shifted, the whole planet had shifted for me, what mattered and what didn’t, everything had different weight now. “So tel
l me the gossip,” I said.
“There isn’t much, just a couple of pictures. He and his family seem to be as camera-shy as your family, even from before…” She looked down, feeling she had been clumsy in what she said.
I did not want her to feel clumsy. What she said was the truth, and I quickly said, “You’re right about my family, and me and Bredon, yes, but I didn’t realize that Rand was that way too.” I thought for a minute. “I’m glad about it. And he said he was never married, I asked him. Did he have a steady girlfriend?” I hesitated, and then asked, with a flutter of wariness and hope, “Is he linked with anyone now?”
“Lots of women would like to be linked with him, but no, no one name,” Robin said. She grinned at me, glad to have some good news.
Time was running on. Her family’s car and driver were across the street; the driver was now out of the car, waiting, and we knew our precious time together was done. We had a quick argument over who was treating whom, which she won, “Since we’re celebrating an almost-there affair,” which made me laugh, we hurried across the avenue, thankful for a lull in the endless city traffic. Today, even the killer bicyclists and truck drivers and speeding cars seemed to have found another place to be.
“Have a good trip, Robin,” I said, hugging her, missing her terribly even as I held her in a good-bye. “Be safe. Come home soon.”
“You’re the best, you know.” She grinned, and gave me a quick little kiss on the cheek before gracefully folding herself into the familiar back seat, just like Rand’s car, just like Bredon’s. I stepped back so that her driver could close the door, and I nodded and smiled at him, wanting to say, “Take care of my friend, drive safely,” but he saw the look, acknowledging it with a serious nod. I bent and waved good-bye to Robin and stood at the curb watching her car disappear onto the eastbound street, to the highway and the bridge and the roads to Kennedy Airport. I sighed, missing her company and Rand’s. I would have to call Bredon and see if he would have dinner with me. I missed my friend, I missed my lover, but I always and forever missed Bredon.