Plain Jayne (22 page)

I shake my head.

“Oh, dear God. They’re orgas—I mean, they’re awesome.
There’s a freezer full of them at my apartment. I won’t have to worry about Caroline
eating them, though. Even in her ‘condition.’ She’d rather eat a cow pie. Fewer
calories.”

With that, he backs into the kitchen. I hear
him say, “What’s taking so long with that fork, Paulette? The poor woman hasn’t
eaten all day. I could have forged one out of silver for her myself by now.”

“Oh, you!” Paulette squawks at him. “I merely
got distracted!”

She returns to the dining room with my eating
utensil and says, “So sorry, Jayne. My kettle was about to boil over.” She
leaves me alone again before I can utter a single syllable.

“Get out of that dishwasher!” I hear her cry
on the other side of the door. “You’ll be putting me out of a job, you will!”

While they bicker about division of labor, I
push my food around on my plate and try to calm myself at the news that Luke’s
not going back to Boston to stay. It’s not as bad as it sounds. Yes, he’ll
still be here. But only to sleep. He’ll be gone from very early in the morning
until fairly late in the evening. I may never have to see him at all, if I plan
things out just so. Sleeping when he leaves in the morning; working… somewhere
isolated… when he returns at night.

Silly me, I thought once Caroline was no
longer here, he wouldn’t feel the need to stay here to protect me from her (or
whatever he was doing). I didn’t take into account that they can barely
co-exist in a seven-thousand square-foot beach house, much less an apartment a
tenth of that size. I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to him leaving, but I
was hoping I’d be less distracted and get more work done.

And I still will, I firmly tell myself now.
That workaholic will never be home.

*****

While finalizing plans for Gus to come out to
Marblehead next weekend, the door to the sitting room flies open, and Luke
pokes his head through.

“Honey, I’m home!” he bellows. “And traffic
was murder. Pour your old man a gin and tonic.”

“Who the hell is that?” Gus wonders. I can
practically hear him drooling.

I blush and look down to hide my grin at
seeing Luke, who’s holding one of his hands over his mouth now that he realizes
I’m on the phone. “It’s just Luke. Being silly.”

“Luke-Ass?”

“Yes.”

“Wait a minute. The man who ‘has a broomstick
shoved so far up his ass that you can see the tip of the handle every time he
opens his mouth, which is often, because he loves the sound of his own voice’
is being silly?”

I glance up. Luke mouths, “Sorry” and plops
into the chair perpendicular to the sofa I’m occupying.

“Yes,” I succinctly answer. “Hey, listen. I’ve
gotta go. But you’ll be here next Friday night, right? Do you need a ride? I
could probably ask Luke to have a driver bring you out here.” Luke, himself,
verifies this is true by nodding before letting his head fall and rest against
the back of the chair.

“Uh, yes please! I’d have to be the King of
the Dingleberries to turn down that offer. Oh, girl! This is gonna be so much
fun! Mmm-hmm!”

Before he sprains his southern belle tendon, I
let him go. As soon as I say bye, Luke magically revives.

“The irrepressible Gus, I presume?” he
inquires.

I set my phone on the table next to my laptop.
“The one and only. It’s still okay for him to come stay next weekend, right?”

“Absolutely. He’s welcome to come out every
weekend. Or whenever. Mi casa es su casa.”

I pull my laptop onto my lap and keep my eyes
pinned on the screen while I lie, “He’s busy this weekend.” I clear my throat
and change the subject. “You’re home early.” I try not to make it sound like an
accusation. Or like something a wife would say to a husband.

“Am I?” he replies innocently.

“It’s only 2:30,” I point out as I back up my
work and prepare to shut down my computer.

He stares into space and says, “I dunno. I was
sitting at my desk at work, and I looked at my schedule and saw I didn’t have
any afternoon meetings, and I got this restless feeling, like if I sat there
another minute, I was going to scream. And I thought, ‘Why do I have to sit
here? I don’t.’ I never take all my vacation in a year, so Thornfield owes me a
shit-ton of time. I don’t have any tight deadlines. So I left.” Now he blinks
at me as if he can’t believe he did it. He chuckles nervously. “I just walked
out.”

I raise my eyebrows at him.

“I’ve never done that,” he explains. “Ever.
I’m usually the first one there and the last one to leave. Sally looked at me
like I’d lost my mind when I told her I was leaving for the day.” He laughs
harder at the memory. “Her gum fell out of her mouth.”

“Well, good for you. Everyone needs a break
now and then.”

Before I can stop him, he snatches my laptop from
me and says, “What have you got here? It’s been a few days since you’ve shown
me anything. I’m beginning to think you’re lurking on Facebook and playing
Words with Friends instead of writing.”

“Hey!” I object to all aspects of this
scenario. I don’t like that he’s commandeering my computer or that he’s
accusing me of slacking off. “Don’t read anything I wrote today. It’s… not
right. Yet.”

He systematically ignores me as he opens the
file on my desktop that he already knows is my manuscript. When it asks him for
my password, he turns the laptop toward me and says, “Password, please.”

I hesitate but ultimately type it in for him.
It’s not that anything I’ve written is horrible—or features him, thank God—but
it’s not… there. And he’s going to know right away that it’s not.

Sure enough, after scanning through once, he scrolls
back to the beginning of the new portion and starts typing comments in the
margins.

“What are you saying?” I ask, craning my neck
to try to read it.

Instead of answering, he continues typing at
lightning speed. Then he highlights an enormous section of text and hits the
delete button.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” I screech,
grappling for the computer.

“Saving us both some time later when we have
to make cuts. I can tell you right now, that’s not going to make the final
cut,” he answers, relinquishing my laptop to me.

I immediately hit “Control” and “Z” to bring
the text back. Reading through it, I suppose he has a point, but I, and I alone,
have delete privileges. And I don’t delete anything. I cut it and put it in a
separate file labeled “Cuts,” in case I ever want it back again. That’s what I
do now, while he smirks at me. Then I read his comments.

Comment: This is pedantic.

Comment: I like this, but I’m not sure it
goes here.

Comment: This is good.

Comment: Move this to the end of Chapter
Two.

Comment: This is not-so-good.

Comment: It’s obvious you don’t have anyone
here during the day to force you to take breaks when you go on your Kleenex
rants.

I look up at him and narrow my eyes. “Very
funny.”

Again, he confiscates the computer, but this
time he closes it and sets it on the coffee table. “Come on. Let’s go
swimming.”

“I don’t know…”

“It’s gorgeous outside. I couldn’t believe it
when I walked out to the gazebo only to find it empty.” He stands and offers me
a hand up.

I don’t take it.

Using my own power, I rise from the couch and
avert my eyes when I tell him in a tone that’s as blasé as possible,
“Sometimes, especially after lunch, it’s too hot out there. I’d rather work in
here.”

What I don’t tell him (and
never
will,
because it’s pathetic) is that I start to miss him in the afternoons, and there
are more reminders of him in this room than out there. Plus, it
does
get
hot in the afternoons.

He readily accepts my explanation. “Race you
to the pool?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so? You mean no racing, but
you will go swimming?”

He looks so hopeful that I can’t stand to tell
him no.

“I’ll go swimming,” I allow, like it’s the
biggest imposition ever.

As he leads the way upstairs to the bedrooms,
he says, “Oh, good. Because I was going to throw you in, no matter what.”

Chapter Eighteen

Gus isn’t busy this weekend. Unless you count
staying out of my way and giving me some quiet alone time with Luke. That
sounds bad. Or like I have shady motives. I don’t. But… Paulette has weekends
off, and last weekend, after Caroline’s departure, it was nice when it was only
the two of us. I got a lot of writing done. Good writing. Writing that made
Luke smile.

And today, after several hours of isolation in
the gazebo, the work I presented to him made him grin and say, “You’re so
close. So close. Next week, let’s talk about blending the old with the new and
figuring out where we can get the most emotional bang for your buck. It only
needs to be one sentence. That’s all it takes. One sentence that knocks the wind
out of the reader and says, ‘You’re my bitch, now.’”

I laughed at that, but he wagged his finger at
me. “I’m serious. Did you read that Womack excerpt I sent you?”

“Yes,” I replied dully, rolling my eyes.

“Admit it; it made you cry.”

“It stung my eyes and nose a little bit,” I
allowed.

“Liar. You wept like a baby.”

He was right, but there was no way I was going
to give him the satisfaction of saying so. Because so what? We all know Womack
is a master manipulator of emotions. You can see it in the self-satisfied
expression on his face in his author photo. If pictures could talk, his would
say,
“That’s right. You’re gonna bawl when you read this, so have your
hankie ready, because I’m about to own you. But first I have to go to the bank
and count some of my money…”

The point is, I delayed Gus’s visit, because I
wanted another weekend like last weekend. I wish every weekend could be like
that. I
do
miss Gus, though, so by next week maybe I’ll be ready for an
interruption to the routine that’s probably becoming a mite too comfortable.
I’m not yet ready this week.

“Why doesn’t anyone call you ‘Dr. Edwards’?” I
ask Luke now while we’re cutting up vegetables to put on the homemade pizzas
we’re making for dinner.

He pops a raw mushroom slice into his mouth
and then spits it promptly into the kitchen sink with a “Blaaaagh!” before wiping
his lips and calmly replying, “I’ve only had my doctorate for a few months. I
guess it hasn’t stuck yet.”

“It never will, if no one ever calls you
‘Doctor,’” I point out while chopping a green bell pepper and precisely placing
the pieces on top of the first layer of mozzarella on my pie.

“That’s fine. I don’t want anyone to call me
that.”

His indifference is puzzling to me. “Why not?
You earned it.”

He makes my fastidious topping placement look
haphazard as he concentrates on making his pizza perfectly symmetrical. After
several seconds of silence, he finally answers, “I got my Ph.D. for one reason
and one reason only:  to keep me too busy to spend any time with my… with Caroline.
Career advancement was a decent bonus, but… I needed an excuse to be away from
her on weekends and to avoid family functions. My thesis was an excellent
diversion.” He looks up and takes in my open-mouthed expression. Testily, he
says, “Don’t judge me, alright? You have no idea.”

“I’m not judging!” I insist.

“Yes, you are. You’re thinking that a
doctorate degree is a lot of effort and expense to put forth, when I could have
simply gotten a divorce. And you’re right.”

In his defense and in an effort to soothe his
temper, I mention, “Well, there
was
a professional advantage, too.”

“Exactly.”

“But you didn’t care about that as much.”

He sighs. “No. Okay? I didn’t. Actually, I did
the math and figured out that it was cheaper to get my Ph.D. than it was to
divorce Caroline. There. Happy?”

I toss another layer of cheese over my
veggies. “No. Why would that make me happy?”

“Because I’m confirming your belief that I’m a
whore.” He looks out the kitchen window at the pool. “I stay married to someone
I don’t love because I don’t want to give up the comforts I’ve become
accustomed to as a member of her family. I don’t want to give up this house or
my apartment or my car or the Patriots season tickets or… or… the reserved
tables at my favorite restaurants.”

“I’m sure you make enough to support yourself
comfortably.”

He laughs bitterly. “Not like that. And
anyway, she’ll bleed me dry. I’ve tried to leave before. It never works.”

“Are you done?” I ask, nodding toward the
pizza on the stone in front of him.

Blinking, he looks at me and then down at it.
“I guess.”