A Hundred Summers (34 page)

When the waiter came to offer us dessert, I shook my head. “Let’s go, Nick.”

“You haven’t had your chocolate cake.”

“I’m not hungry. Take me somewhere.”

“Where?”

“I don’t care. Out of here.”

Nick turned to the waiter and settled the bill. Outside, the rain had returned with zeal, thundering down from the darkened evening sky to flood the running streets. Nick turned up his collar and opened his umbrella. “Stay here, under the awning,” he said. “I’ll find us a taxi.”

It took almost a quarter of an hour, but he snatched one at last as it disgorged a carful of drunken passengers into a jazz club nearby. He bundled me inside, holding his umbrella over my head, and climbed in next to me.

“Where to?” asked the driver, looking in the mirror.

Nick looked down. “Where to? Your apartment?”

“God, no. I can’t stay there, not until it’s been professionally fumigated.”

Nick said to the driver: “Gramercy Park, please.”

I was hazy with wine, hazy with Nick. I nestled into my seat and marveled at his endlessness, only inches away, his infinite capacity to shelter me. I looked through the corner of my eyes at his lapel, and thought that it was the same chest that had hovered in love above me seven years ago, that it had somehow hovered over countless women since, had felt the press of countless eager breasts since, and now here it was again.

The buildings blurred past. I felt as if the taxi were floating down a very fast river.

“What were they like?” I asked. “The women of Paris.”

“Why do you ask?”

“I just need to know. You know me.”

The cab lurched around a corner. Nick stared out the window at the streaming rain. “I don’t remember most of them. I was usually half-drunk. It didn’t matter.”

“Were they beautiful?”

“Some of them, I guess.”

I gripped my hands together in my lap. Even drunk, I felt the words like a blow to the stomach.

“I was trying to prove something, Lily. I was trying to prove that you had meant nothing, that what I had felt that night, what had happened between us that night, meant nothing. That all I had to do was find a woman, any woman, and go to bed with her and there it would be. That you weren’t special after all. And every time, I proved myself wrong. Every time, instead of proving that I hadn’t really loved you, I proved the opposite. I felt emptier than before. Guilty, too, for behaving like such a cad, using them so miserably. For the dishonesty of it.” He turned to me. “So I gave it up.”

“Until Budgie came along.”

“She was the worst of all. The worst mistake possible.”

The cab turned into Gramercy Park.

“How did it happen?”

“Don’t, Lily.”

“I need to know. Did you seek her out?”

The cab stopped on the corner, before the remembered lines of Nick’s father’s spare apartment building. Nick reached into his pocket to find his money clip. “No, I didn’t. I told you, I had given up by then.”

“Then what happened?”

“She approached me at the Ritz, while I was enjoying a farewell celebration with the Paris office. Laid me raw with one of her expert remarks, you know the sort.”

“About what?”

“About you, of course. What else could do the trick? Then once I was sufficiently bloodied, she let me know she was willing, and we went upstairs. I stayed ten minutes and left. I didn’t even undress. I paid for her room on the way out.” He helped me out of the cab and shut the door with a hard slam.

He was right. I shouldn’t have asked. I could see the details now: the elegant room with its panels and gilding and private bath, the velvet bedspread, Budgie spread out invitingly among the scented pillows with her red lips and sleek depilated body and her breasts like new apricots. I had imagined such things before, of course, and more, but this time I knew it was real, that it had happened. The ten-minute coupling, fierce and short. Nick standing up and buttoning his trousers, still breathing hard, his face heavy with arousal, his hair disordered. Nick stopping by the front desk afterward, to pay for her room with crisp franc notes from his money clip. In my drunken mind, I couldn’t seem to hold any image for very long, but an instant was enough.

We passed by the silent doorman with a nod of Nick’s head. We went up the elevator to Nick’s floor. Nick found his keys and opened the door for me. I stepped through into the darkness, warm and slightly damp, though not as warm and damp as outdoors. Nick closed the door behind us and removed his hat, and instead of reaching for the light, reached for me. His thumbs found the tears on my cheek.

“What’s wrong, Lilybird?” He took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped my face.

“It’s too late, isn’t it? It was always too late.”

Nick leaned back against the doorway, while the shadows of the living room took shape behind him. “I want you to know something, Lily. Another thing, an important thing. Every time I kissed a woman, touched a woman, I knew it was wrong. I thought in my heart I was an adulterer. On my wedding day, six months ago, I remembered how I’d once called you my wife, and I felt like a bigamist. I have always belonged to you, whether I liked it or not.”

I couldn’t speak. I breathed, in and out, staring at the patch of floor next to his polished shoes.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I know it’s too much to forgive, but I’m asking anyway. I have been unfaithful in every possible way, God knows, but I cannot live another instant without asking you to forgive me. Not absolution, only forgiveness. Because I will spend the rest of my life repenting for what I did in Paris.”

I looked up. The lights were still off, and his face was shadowed, which was just as well. In the claws of my jealousy, I wanted to know everything. I wanted a point-by-point catalog of names and ages and hair colors, of acts performed and positions assumed. I wanted to know where he found them, how he got them in bed, whether he kept lovers or took a new girl each time. I wanted to know how many, how often, how quickly, how slowly. I wanted to know whether he spent the night. I wanted the merciless details branded on my brain to give me relief from my years of wondering.

“I don’t know if I can do that,” I said.

Nick reached his long arm and took off my hat and set it on the hall table, next to his, under the unlit lamp. “I will fix this, Lily,” he said. “I promise I’ll fix it.”

We stood there in the dark foyer of Nick’s apartment until my feet began to ache and I stepped away, swaying, thickheaded with wine and shock. Nick caught my arm. “Come inside and dry off.”

We went into the living room, and Nick turned on a single lamp. I took in my breath. The place had changed: the furniture was more or less the same, and the art on the walls, but it was jumbled now, lived-in. Nick’s books lay stacked about the tables and floor. A desk and chair sat in the corner, which I didn’t remember, scattered with papers and pens and a slide rule. Against one wall leaned a collection of large rolled-up papers: blueprints, probably. There were architectural models on every surface, made of paper-thin wood glued together with meticulous exactitude. “Are these yours?” I asked, fingering one.

“A hobby. It’s kept me busy in the evenings, this summer.”

“They’re stunning. Has Budgie seen them?”

“No, she’s never been here. She likes the apartment uptown. Listen to me. You’re wet and tired and drunk. I want you to go in the bathroom and take a bath and put your things to dry. I’ll bring you a robe to wear.”

“But . . .”

He held his finger to his lips. “Hush. No arguments.”

I
was
wet and tired and drunk. I went obediently to the bathroom and drew a bath in Nick’s tub, where I washed myself with Nick’s soap and lay staring at Nick’s ceiling. I could hear him in the other room, the kitchen, running water and opening cabinets. The warm water mingled with the wine to produce the most delicious languor throughout my limbs, the steady dissolving of each needle of jealousy piercing my skin.

He loves me. He’s always loved me.

He left. He slept with other women. He slept with Budgie, he married Budgie.

It meant nothing. It
was
nothing. He was using them and thinking of me. He loves me and no one else. He spent ten minutes with Budgie and left.

Then why did he marry her?

Why, indeed?

Did it matter? He hadn’t even slept with her since, or so he claimed. He hadn’t fathered her child. He had no tie to her, other than a piece of paper, a piece of paper that made him a bigamist in his own heart.

My thoughts revolved drunkenly, around and around, among stale old images of Nick in bed with other women and fresh new images of Nick in bed with me, loving me, whispering my name, whispering,
Lilybird, Lilybird.

I rose and dried myself with Nick’s white towel. A knock sounded on the door. “Come in,” I said.

Nick poked his arm through the door. A dark striped robe dangled from his hand, impossibly large. “It’s too big, I know, but you can roll up the sleeves.”

I took it from him, wrapped it around me, and rolled up the sleeves. The ends dragged a good six inches on the white floor tiles. I spiraled my wet hair in the towel and emerged, clean and sleepy and tipsy. I came right up to Nick and put my arms around his neck. “I love your bathroom,” I said. “I love your apartment. I love you.”

Nick put his hands on my arms. “Lily. You’re drunk.”

“So are you. We drank together.”

“We drank roughly the same amount, but I’m twice your size.”

“Kiss me, Nick.”

He kissed my forehead and took my arms. He brought them gently around between us. “I want you to drink some water, take some aspirin, and go to bed.”

“Will you join me there?”

He searched my face. “Do you want me to?”

“More than anything.” I reached up on my toes for him, but my kiss landed on his chin.

He drew my hands up to his mouth and kissed each one. “Lilybird. I’m going to sleep on the sofa tonight.”

I came back down on my heels. “What?”

“You know it’s best.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Drink your water,” he said. “Take your aspirin. Go to sleep.”

“No.”

“Yes.” He was firm. He set me away and brought me a glass of water. I drank it, swaying. He refilled it from a pitcher in the icebox. I drank that, too, with a pair of aspirin.

“See? I’ve been a good girl.”

“You’ve been a very good girl.” He picked me up and carried me down the hall. My head lolled against his shoulder. Nick’s shoulder, Nick’s arms.

“Is this the same bedroom as before?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you sleep here?”

“Yes. But not tonight.” The world swayed as Nick drew back the sheets and deposited me in the bed. It smelled of him, overwhelmingly of Nick.

“Just like Budgie,” I murmured. “You take care of everyone, don’t you? Even Kiki.”

He unwrapped the towel from my hair and kissed my forehead. “I’m going to fix this, darling, I promise. I’m going to untangle this mess and make everything right.”

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine Budgie letting Nick go, releasing him from whatever collar she had placed on him, letting him divorce her and marry me. The image eluded me. What match was Nick, strong and upright and honorable, next to Budgie?

“I’m sorry, too, Nick. It’s my fault, too. I never fought for you, did I?”

“You shouldn’t have had to. I should never have doubted you. Now, go to sleep.” He kissed my forehead again, smoothed my hair away, and rose to leave.

“Nick?”

“Yes, Lily?”

“I have to tell you something. I don’t want to hide it. The last night, the Labor Day party. I let Graham . . . in the car . . .”

“
Shh.
I know.”

“You knew?”

He stood there by the bed, looking down at me with infinite kindness. “I went to find you. Everyone was buzzing about Budgie’s news, and I wanted you to know the truth. They said you’d left the party. I saw Pendleton’s car outside your house, and the lights were off inside. I turned around and went home to pack.”

I turned on my side, facing him. My eyelids were drifting. “Were you angry?”

“Angry at
you
, Lilybird? No.” He went to the door and turned off the light. “I figured I deserved it. Now, go to sleep.”

I AWOKE,
perfectly sober, a few hours later. I lay among the sheets, damp and breathless with heat, and stared at the shadowed white ceiling above. I thought,
This isn’t Seaview. Where am I?

I rolled my head to the window and saw a man’s shape outlined against the faint city glow. A large shape, smoking a cigarette, the light falling on his bare shoulders.

“Nick?” I whispered.

“Go back to sleep, Lily,” he said, without turning.

I swung my legs from the bed and rose. Nick’s robe slipped from my shoulders. I pulled it back up and tightened the sash. The room was dark; I was guided only by the hushed glow in the window, by Nick’s body like a beacon before it. The rain drummed down in waves against the glass.

I placed one hand on his back. The skin was as smooth as polished granite beneath my touch. “You’re supposed to be sleeping.”