The Last Dreamer (19 page)

He took two steps backward. “I knew it,” he said, holding his head with his hands. “I FUCKING knew it! How could you be a writer for the
Times
when you didn’t even have one fucking byline? But I believed all your lies! I fucking trusted you!” His voice sounded like an explosion in the quiet room. She resisted the urge to shush him because she thought it would make him even madder. “You were going to write a book about me,” he said, charging at her, shaking his finger in her face. “You were going to make me famous again. You were going to make women want to hear me sing again!”

She held her palms up defensively. “I never said that. I
never
said that I could do all that. I only wanted to help.”

“I knew you were a phony!” he exclaimed, running his hands again through his hair. “I knew it! You never even took out your notebook until I reminded you! You’re no writer, you’re no reporter, you’re
 . . .
you’re
 . . .”
He stopped, grasping for words, pulling at his hair. Then he lunged at the little table near the window and fiercely swept the lamp off it, along with the ice bucket and glasses. They flew into the air and crashed into the wall unit, shattering into pieces. She squeezed her eyes at the sound of the impact. She had never, ever seen such a violent act in real life. The angrier Marc was, the more he withdrew, just like those silent lawyers he dreaded. Even when she had changed her flight and made him madder than ever before, all he had done was throw out a lot of curse words and hang up on her. She didn’t think Marc could ever do what Jeff had just done, and the thought made her wish she were back home, long before she ever saw the Downs Textiles website. Breathing in short, frightened gasps, she ran to the door, but Jeff got there first, and he held it shut.

“All these weeks, all we talked about? Everything a goddamned lie?”

“Not everything, just the
Times
part, and I’m sorry,” she said, starting to cry with fear. “I’m so, so sorry, please let me go.”

“Let you go? What are you, kidding me?” He grabbed her by the elbow. “I took you into my home! I told you about my dad, my wife, my daughters! I fuckin’ made Terry come down here to meet you! That poor, sick bastard who—”

“Poor, sick bastard?” she blurted out before she could stop herself. “After all you said—”

Suddenly there were three sharp knocks on the other side of the door. “Open up!” a man’s voice said. “Security!”

Iliana looked at Jeff, who was looking back at her, his face softening. She knew that they
both
knew that they were going to have to work together, at least one last time. He stepped back and opened the door. A small man dressed in a short-sleeve shirt and tie entered the room, followed by two large men with crew cuts, each wearing a shirt with a “Security” patch on the shoulder. The large men approached Jeff, who backed up to the wall.

The smaller man put his hands on his hips and surveyed the broken glass in the center of the room, then looked at Iliana. “Are you all right?” he said.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“We got some reports of shouting and glass breaking.”

Iliana looked at Jeff, trying to tell him with her eyes that she was going to protect him. “I was carrying
 . . .
I wasn’t looking where I was going, and I bumped into the table and knocked all that over. I’ll pay for it.”

“
You
knocked it over?” the man said, as though he didn’t believe it. “You both staying in this room?”

“No, this is my room,” Iliana said.

“Where’s your room?” he said to Jeff.

“Twelfth floor.”

He turned back to Iliana. “This man bothering you?”

“No, no, he’s not, sir. It was all an accident. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.” She looked at Jeff. His lips were pressed together. She could tell that he knew he needed her right now, and he hated it.

“Do you want me to call the police?”

“No, really, thank you,” she said, trying to sound calm. “No need at all, really.”

“Okay, let me see some ID,” the man said. “Both of you.”

Jeff reached in his back pocket for his wallet, while Iliana picked up her bag from the bed.
Please, please
, she said to herself.
Please let this be over. Please let me go home.

The man examined their licenses. “Ms. Passing?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Mr. Downs?”

“Yes,” Jeff said. She thought she saw Jeff’s eyebrows rise, as if even now he was hoping to be recognized.

“When are you checking out?” the man said.

“Tomorrow,” Iliana said.

“Friday,” Jeff added quietly.

The man walked toward the door. “I think it’s time you went back to your own room, don’t you?” he said to Jeff. “And any more trouble, I’ll make sure you’re arrested. Got that?”

“Yeah. Yes, sir,” Jeff said and walked out, his head down.

Iliana went to the door as the other men also left. There was an older couple in bathrobes standing in the hallway, as well as two blond women who looked like flight attendants. A family with twins about Matthew’s age was peeking out the opposite door. The kids looked shocked.

So I’m finally the center of attention
, Iliana thought to herself wryly as she closed the door.
I finally matter. There’s a corridor full of horrified onlookers to prove it.

Chapter 20

Iliana hardly slept that night, waking up every hour or so. One twenty, two forty-five, three thirty. Sometimes she’d wake and lie in bed for a few peaceful moments. But then she’d remember where she was and what had happened right there in her room, and the realization would hit her in the stomach, as though she were on an elevator that unexpectedly and forcefully plummeted down.

She felt as if she were seeing the events of the last few weeks for the first time, and she didn’t like how she appeared. She had been unhappy for a long time, there was no doubt about that, but she had chosen a selfish, childish way to deal with it. She had lied and used a bunch of people she hadn’t even known. Life might not have been exciting, revolving as it did around such tedious questions as what to serve for dinner and how to squeeze in Dara’s orthodontist appointment and still get Matthew to basketball practice on time. And Stuart’s rejection of her original email was pretty harsh. Maybe it was reasonable that she had been vague with Rose on the phone the first day she called. But she should have come clean pretty soon after that. At least then she could have gone ahead and written her article. But now, she felt too guilty to even think about it.

And what was worse was that she had done so much damage to her marriage. Yes, she had a right to be angry with Marc. He was wrong to order her around, to tell her where to be and when to get there and what to say, to belittle anything she tried to do that didn’t support him and his career. But she made life rough for him, too. He was right—she never would have wanted to leave New York for Cleveland, and if they had ultimately decided to go, she would have brought it up repeatedly as a sign of how much she would give up for him and how little he would give up for her. They had both been so proud of each other when they were younger, so happy for one another’s achievements—for her cover stories, for his assignment to key projects. He had put her professional photo on his credenza for that very reason. When had it all turned to resentment? He asks her to help him out by meeting the wives of some of his bosses, and she interprets this as an insult to her identity; she asks for a couple of days in LA to pursue a dream of her own, and he acts like a child convinced he’s getting the short end of the wishbone.

Maybe disappointment was inevitable as time passed and opportunities naturally shrank, she thought. Life could never be as thrilling as it was when they were both first starting out. But if disappointment was the normal course of things, wouldn’t she prefer to face it with someone she loved at her side? The answer was yes, and she knew that meant that she had to give her marriage a shot. She and Marc had to commit themselves to talking things out, over and over if that’s what it took, to try to find common ground and reclaim the love that brought them together in the first place. Instead, over these last few months, she had pulled away from him and held a grudge, she had lied and snuck around, and she had walked away from a promise she had made to him. He had behaved badly, too, there was no doubt about that. But she had also secretly forged a relationship with another guy and flown across the country to be with him, knowing that there was attraction on both sides. That was the most horrendous thing of all.

At four a.m. she woke up, sweating. She wanted to go home. She wanted to make sure that home was still there for her. That Marc would be willing to work with her to make things better. She truly had no idea what he might do when she walked into the house. She imagined him flinging her suitcase out the door and telling her in a quiet, tense voice to get out. Marc didn’t get mad often, but she’d seen just yesterday how intensely angry he could get. He had told her to go fuck herself. She was still surprised he had actually said it.

She reached for the remote and switched on the TV, hoping to make the time go faster. The light shot out from the screen in bright rays, and she had to squint for several seconds before her eyes adjusted. The “E” channel was on, and she caught the end of a segment about Ansel Elgort, the young star from the movie
The Fault in Our Stars
. Iliana grimaced as she watched. Another teen idol. Just what she needed.

Turning the TV off, she got up and took a long shower, scrubbing herself twice with soap and washing her hair twice, too. The drain at the bottom of the shower looked green with rust, and as she brushed her teeth, she noticed that some of the grout between the sink and wall was black with either grime or mold. Her stomach was bubbly and her arms felt heavy and weak. She put on the jeans and T-shirt she had planned to take the red-eye in. She packed up her shoes and toiletries and put her notebooks on top.

At five thirty, she gathered her bags and left the room. She figured she could get a cup of coffee in the lobby and then head right to the airport. Jeff had gotten her booked on a one o’clock flight, but maybe she could get on an earlier one. She desperately wanted to get out of the hotel before Jeff and Terry came down for breakfast. She was scared that they’d humiliate her, that they’d call her a stalker so that all the people in the lobby would turn and stare. Maybe a security guard in the lobby would overhear them and would grab her elbow and escort her roughly out of the building, warning her to never come back or she’d be arrested. At least if she left early, she’d have a chance to escape quietly. If she was lucky, Jeff would have decided to sleep a little later.

She scanned the lobby as she stepped off the elevator. There was no sign of Jeff or Terry. The lobby was mostly empty, in fact; nearly all the people were hotel employees, going about the kinds of after-hours jobs that most guests never saw them do, emptying trash cans and polishing the floor. Two men with squeegees nodded politely toward her as they expertly swiped the large sliding doors.

At the front desk, a young woman in a crisp gray suit bade her good morning and asked if she had had a pleasant stay as she retrieved her bill from the computer. She then asked Iliana to wait a moment and went to confer with a man in the doorway of an office behind her. Iliana felt a rush of panic. What if Jeff had made a police complaint after he left her room last night? What if the clerk had been instructed to notify her boss when Iliana tried to check out, so they could call a patrol car? Could it be that she actually had done something that she could be arrested for? She felt her cheeks redden and her legs get weak. She considered running past the squeegee guys and out into a cab. But no, the clerk returned and told her to have a good day.

Forcing herself to take deep breaths and try to relax, Iliana walked to the front of the hotel, conscious of every step. She wheeled her overnight bag to the bellman and asked him to call her a cab. As he went outside into the light of early morning, she bought a cup of coffee from a smiling, young clerk at a kiosk. A few people rushed by her in pairs or groups, talking in animated tones about business deals. She could hear isolated words and phrases—shipping dates, backlogs, deadlines, receivables.

Iliana realized that she had become used to traveling with her family, encouraging the kids to watch their step, hold on to the railing, stick together, look at the fountains, see the tall buildings. She had forgotten how lonely it could be, even in the middle of big cities, to be traveling alone. Looking down at her coffee, she decided she really wasn’t in the mood for it. She was walking to a trashcan near the elevator bank to throw out the cup when a set of elevator doors opened. She looked up, startled. Inside were Jeff and Terry.

Iliana gasped when she saw them, and they looked stunned, too, so that the elevator doors started to close before they got out. Jeff reached out a hand, and the doors reopened. The two stepped out and stood opposite her. There was no one else nearby. She didn’t know how angry Jeff was or what he was capable of doing. She was scared he might smack her into the marble wall nearby, or blast her verbally, calling her a crazy bitch or something uglier.

But the worst he did was shake his finger at her. “Now you stay away from me,” he said, speaking more loudly than he needed to. “Do you hear me? I will call the police. I will file a report against you, do you understand?” The speech sounded rehearsed. Maybe he had come up with this script last night. Fine, she thought. Let him frame her as a lunatic, if then he’d leave her alone. It was no skin off her nose to let him relive his glory days as a stalked performer for one more morning.

“No problem,” she said, starting to walk away.

“I can make life very difficult for you. I know you have a husband and children,” he said, following her, raising his voice still more. Evidently his performance wasn’t done. Iliana turned back. Jeff looked smug, enjoying the attention he was drawing from the hotel staffers. He wanted to publicly embarrass her, and it was working. A few businessmen who had come out of a nearby elevator were looking over, as were some women walking through the front doors. The squeegee guys had stopped working and were stealing sideways glances over, too. Terry was rocking back and forth on his feet uncomfortably. His eyes were long, droopy ovals.

“Listen,” Iliana said in a low, angry voice. “We
both
were somewhere we shouldn’t have been last night—”

“I should expect it by now, and God knows I should be flattered,” Jeff said as he walked past her, ostensibly talking to Terry but clearly playing to the people in the lobby. “I guess it comes with the territory, but sometimes you just wish these fans would get a life.”

He put on his sunglasses and shook back his hair, a move that would have seemed more useful back when his locks were long and shaggy. The lobby was filling up more, and several people were looking at Jeff and whispering, as though they couldn’t quite put their finger on who he was.

Watching him with a mixture of anger at how he had embarrassed her and relief that he hadn’t done anything worse, Iliana felt a light tap on her shoulder. She turned and saw Terry right next to her, his forehead sweating, the buttons of his checked shirt straining over his belly.

“Terry, I—” she said, starting to apologize.

“I’ll make sure he leaves you alone,” he said quietly, then walked off to join Jeff. Iliana felt her eyes fill. It was hard to believe that this poor sick guy, whose life had essentially collapsed after the Dreamers, was feeling sorry for
her
.

She arrived at the airport to find that all the earlier flights were booked, so she wandered around the gift shops and snack bars until her one o’clock flight was finally called.

Back in New York, it was cold and drizzly, and the traffic on the Grand Central Parkway was stop-and-go all the way to the Whitestone Bridge. She tried to lean her head back and close her eyes, but the vinyl upholstery felt sticky and uncomfortable, and the taxi’s fitful starts and stops jerked her shoulders and head first one way, then the other. The shocks on the car were practically nonexistent, and her low-grade headache turned into a burst of sharp pain each time the car slammed into a pothole, which seemed to happen every two or three minutes.

She was anxious to get home, but scared, too. Scared of what would happen with Marc. Scared that they’d never get past this week. She didn’t want to lose him, she didn’t want to break up her family. She wanted to find a way that she and he could move on together.

By the time she arrived home, it was almost midnight. The lights in the front of the house were all out. After she paid the taxi driver, she made her way to the front door, wryly thinking as she entered how relieved she was that the locks had not been changed and her key still worked. She hauled her bag past the door and took a few steps into the living room. She was about to collapse into a chair when she noticed that something was different. There was a strange smell in the room, sort of woody, like furniture—no, it was a little lemony, too, like furniture polish. She turned on one of the table lamps, looked around, and gasped. There in the corner was a small cherry writing desk with pewter drawer handles and a roll-down top.

It was just like the desk her parents had given her for her twelfth birthday.