Promises (7 page)

“Not here. We have to sit down. I’ll be quick.” And again she appealed, “We can go where we had tea this afternoon. Please.”

He followed her, and they ordered coffee. Since she was across from him with only a very small table between, they had nowhere else to look but at each other.
Warm air enveloped them in a velvet, perfumed atmosphere. The room might have been scented or else the fragrance was hers. He remembered—what tens of millions of trivial, seemingly forgotten things can resurrect themselves from our stored memories—that she used to put perfume behind her ears. He found himself glancing at her ears, on each of which there sparkled a tiny spray of diamonds.

For a minute nothing happened. And he was angry at himself for being there, for having let himself be led.

She was staring straight into his eyes, “fixing” him, he thought, with a deep, penetrating look. He felt a shiver.

“Don’t you even want to know what happened—afterward?”

“You said—” he stammered, “you said you were going to have an abortion and get married.”

“I didn’t get married to him, and I didn’t have the abortion.”

“What?”

He became aware that he had been holding the coffee cup; when he put it down, the liquid sloshed onto the saucer and soaked his cuff.

“I got as far as the front door of the clinic and then wasn’t able to go through the door. The idea shocked me through and through. I think it was because it had been so shocking to you. ‘It’s wrong, it’s wrong,’ you said. I remember how you looked when you said it.”

He was too numb to say anything but “And then?”

“I left for California. I told him I was pregnant, but he didn’t mind. He liked kids. But then I had a miscarriage. It was just as well, because we only lived together for two years, and the kid wouldn’t have had a father
after all. He wasn’t the marrying kind. He wasn’t even the staying kind. So when he left I went to work for my brother, who had come out to L.A. and became a big-time real estate broker. After a while I met a man, much older, who wanted to marry me. That’s how I got the name Bunting. We lived in an enormous house with pink marble bathrooms, statues on the lawn, two tennis courts—never saw anything like it.”

Adam, recovering speech, made a sharp comment: “It sounds like a racketeer’s house.”

“Maybe he was one. But he was nice. Then he died. He left me a little money, not much at all; he had nine grandchildren. So I went back to work with my brother, and then his son joined the business, things didn’t go as smoothly as they should, and here I am.”

“Why are you telling me all this? It’s no business of mine!”

“I thought you might have been wondering all this time whether there was a kid of yours running around anywhere. I guess it was just an impulse. The same as I had that day when I said good-bye to you.”

“Impulse!” he cried, loudly enough to cause people to turn and stare. “A casual impulse! Just like that!”

“It wasn’t casual. It was painful.”

“Bitch,” he muttered. “You bitch.”

“If I hadn’t met you, I would be able to sleep tonight. Now I know I won’t sleep.”

“What do you mean? What do you want? Come out with it, Randi, and don’t try playing cat and mouse with me.”

“I don’t want anything from you, and I never will. You’ve nothing to fear from me. I’m just so terribly
sorry that I hurt you, that’s all. I’ve been thinking about it all these years, and wishing I could tell you.”

Cat and mouse. She is too complicated for me, he was thinking as he watched her now. Fundamentally, I am a simple man. Or am I? Am I just not as clever as I think I am?

When she put out her hands to touch his, he drew his own away, demanding, “What’s your game? Whatever it is, I don’t want to play it. You’re the past, the dead, forgotten past.”

“Not entirely forgotten. Don’t you ever have moments when you wonder what it would be like if we had—”

He ejaculated: “No!”

“Ah, but you must have,” she insisted gently. “I do. It’s only natural. And it’s only speculation, after all, because I’m quite happy as I am. I hope you are too.”

“Very,” he said now.

First she says she won’t be able to sleep, and now she tells me how happy she is.

One hand, with its shell-pink nails, was playing with her pearls. She knows how pretty that gesture is, he thought with scorn. And raising his cup, he encountered her eyes: soft, dark, and glittering, they were, sloe eyes like the plumfruit.

“It would never have worked, you know. Even though I had been willing to live where you do, or you had been willing to go somewhere else, it wouldn’t. Even in spite of all our love, it wouldn’t. We’re too different, you and I.”

He flared up. “So why talk about it? What’s your point?”

“None, really, I guess. It was just seeing you again that’s brought things back.”

He didn’t want to be reminded of that gray morning, of his despair, of himself walking through that park alone.

There had been melting ice and ducks on the pond. He hadn’t thought about it all in years. Years. He didn’t want to think about it now.

“Well,” he said, “well, here we are. There’s enough material here to fill a book. But since I’ve no intention of writing one, I’d best go.”

Randi stood up. “Yes. Good-bye, Adam. Good luck.”

For a moment they stood looking at each other. Flower face, he thought. Then they shook hands and parted.

For about ten minutes he stayed outside in front of the hotel, just stayed there in the cold night air.

After a while a phrase from Shakespeare popped into his head, that business about life being a stage and all men players. So, briefly, he had played a part with Randi; then the show had closed, the actors dispersed, and everyone had gone home, where each belonged.

“Where have you been?” Margaret cried when he opened the door. “I was beginning to worry. All these muggings in New York—”

“I browsed through the bookstore. I would have bought half a dozen more if we had room enough in the luggage. Hey, what’s this?”

A tray with biscuits and a bottle of champagne in a bucket stood on the table.

“It’s a celebration,” she said.

“Of our holiday. What a nice idea!”

“No, of more than that. It’s the anniversary of the day you proposed.”

Women, he thought. They remember everything.

“It was the next-to-most wonderful day of my life. Next to our wedding day.”

Her face was illumined. Intensely moved, he took her into his arms and kissed her.

“Oh, Margaret,” he said.

Then he opened the bottle with a triumphant pop, poured two bubbling glasses full, and made a toast.

“To love!” he cried, raising his glass. “Bless it, and bless us always.”

O
ne morning in the middle of January, Adam, raising his eyes from a stack of charts on his desk to answer the telephone, heard an unexpected voice.

“Hello! This is Randi. Are you shocked?”

Actually he was, but he replied calmly, “Not shocked, but surprised. Are you calling from New York or California?”

“Neither. I’m here in Elmsford. I’ve taken a six-month sublet on a garden apartment in Randolph Crossing, and I’m in Elmsford for the day on business.”

He felt a stirring, an unwelcome sense of nuisance. He wished it were possible simply and crudely to tell her not to bother him.

“I’ve so much to tell you, Adam. I’m sure you’re busy right now—”

“Yes, I am,” he said.

“So I thought maybe we might have a sandwich together. Whenever that’s good for you. I’ll be in town all day.”

“I have an appointment, a business lunch.”

“Then how about a quick drink, twenty minutes of your time around five? Just for old friendship’s sake?”

“Randi, we were never ‘friends.’ ”

“But we can be friends now, or I hope we can. Nothing more than that, Adam, I assure you. I told you when we met in New York that I have no designs on you. You seem to be afraid that I have.”

She had perhaps not intended to provoke him with the remark, but to his ears she seemed to be making a fool of him, as though he were some sort of male spinster.

“I assure you that never entered my mind,” he retorted.

“Good. I was about to wish you well and hang up. So then, will the coffee bar at the Hotel Bradley be all right? It occurs to me that you might not want to go home with liquor on your breath.”

“I’m free to go home in any condition I please, Randi. What do you think I am?”

“Five-thirty, then?”

“Five-thirty.”

Before he went back to his charts, Adam passed a few minutes to contemplate a brief fall of thick, wet snow-flakes, settling and melting on the windowsill. The slow drift and the gray air were suddenly dispiriting; the energy that had pressed him to work so briskly only minutes ago had left him. What the devil had made him acquiesce to a pointless meeting this afternoon? There was no reason in the world why he should meet her, and there were several reasons why he should not. If there were any way of reaching her, he would call her
now and cancel. And he stood there with his back to the room, staring into the snow.

Still, she did not seem to have had much luck with her life. You could certainly argue, he reflected, that it was her own fault, and you would be right, but where would that leave common compassion? When you thought about it, a total rejection would really be too harsh, wouldn’t it? And he wondered curiously what she might possibly be planning for herself. An apartment in Randolph Crossing was very out of the way. And what was she doing here in the first place? She had been talking about a choice between California and New York. Perhaps she was about to be married?

Then he thought, I really was rough with her. And he remembered how agreeably she had spoken to him that time in New York, how she had admired Margaret and asked about their children. No, there could be nothing wrong in giving her a few harmless minutes of his time this afternoon.

“The last time I saw you, I’m afraid I bored you with my dreary troubles,” Randi said. “Now I can tell you that things are looking better.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

She seemed more familiar to him than she had seemed when they met in New York. She looked midwestern, dressed as small-town women are in the middle of a snowy winter with a thick woolen cap and a heavy windbreaker. But when these came off, he saw a coral choker and a silk scarf printed with cabbage roses.

“I don’t remember whether I mentioned that I once worked in real estate in California.”

“You told me.”

“Well, I’ve applied for a license here, and as soon as it comes through, I have a job waiting. It’s in a small agency run by half a dozen women, but the area’s being developed, and it’s a good opportunity for me, I think.”

“What brought you back to this area?” he asked.

“One of the women who run the agency knew my brother, and so the contact was made. Anyway, the Midwest is home, and I decided I wanted to come home. That’s all there is to it. There are two main areas opening up,” she continued with enthusiasm. “One has huge houses that remind me of California. But it’s the other that I would love to live in. Wonderful little houses in a wooded area with enormous yards.”

Adam was asking himself while she talked what she might want of him. He had in his field no contacts that could be of any use to a real estate broker. Actually, he was tired of the subject, having been too often bored by Fred Davis’s talk of malls and mortgages. Nevertheless, he listened and watched her. Randi’s voice had a mesmerizing effect, as did the way her fingers played with things. Not nervously, as high-strung women played with them, but lightly, touching the coral at her throat or pushing a strand of hair away from her cheek.

“Randolph is really growing. I guess people are attracted because it’s one of the few places in the state that has some hills. And being only fifteen miles from Elmsford, it’s convenient. So I expect to do well. I’m a good broker. I guess it’s because I enjoy meeting people, all different kinds, and trying to match them up with the right house. It’s funny how I can generally tell after ten minutes or so what their tastes are.” She smiled. “Now you, you don’t care where you live as long as
there are bookshelves and a workable kitchen. Do you still make your special chili?”

“Good Lord, you remember that?”

“I remember everything, Adam.”

He looked away from her, glancing obliquely at a pair of Japanese men across the aisle, and wondering what they might be doing in a place like Elmsford. Abruptly, he had become uncomfortable.

“Now tell me something about yourself, will you? Here I’ve been doing all the talking and haven’t let you get a word in edgewise.”

“That’s all right. I don’t have that much to tell.”

“Don’t be silly. Of course you have. Everybody does.”

“I suppose I have if you’re interested in computer engineering, microchips, and stuff.”

He was aware that in an awkward way he was trying to put her off and to keep his privacy. But she persisted.

“Oh, I’ll listen if you want to talk about them, but I’d always rather hear about people. Your children must be pretty grown-up by now, aren’t they? I forgot how old they are.”