Valentine (9 page)

“I see. And what did you say?”

Jill smiled, remembering. He had surprised her
with an early Christmas present, tickets to a hit Broadway show she’d wanted to see. He took her to dinner at Sardi’s, and after the show they went dancing. But it was in the theater, in their perfect seats in the center of the tenth row that he must have purchased months in advance, just as the lights were dimming and the overture was about to begin, that he had suddenly turned to her, slipping a small black box from his jacket pocket and holding it out to her. Inside the box was a tiny, beautiful diamond engagement ring.

“Marry me,” he’d whispered.

She had turned to stare at him just as the cymbals crashed, the downbeat that began the overture. It was the second time a man had proposed to her, and she had wisely refused Ted, the corporate tax lawyer. But she knew, even then, that this was different. It
felt
different.

Now, in Dr. Philbin’s office, Jill grinned. “I told him I couldn’t even
think
about it at the moment, but that I’d give it my full attention in the near future. He was actually satisfied with that: one of many reasons I’m in love with him. He still has the ring. I think he carries it around with him.”

“Well, that certainly tells you how he feels about it. How about you, Jill? You just said you’re in love with him. Are you certain of that?”

Jill laughed. “I fell in love with him the second
time I ever saw him. We met at a nightclub my friend Tara had dragged me to, and I liked him. He told me he was a painter, and he invited us to the opening party of his first show. So, we went. Tara had vague ideas of finding another artistic type for herself, and I was intrigued by him.

“I think I fell in love with his talent first. The show was a series of portraits, but they weren’t realistic. He was obviously less interested in details of facial features than he was in the essence of each model, and he conveyed it all with color. This one was happy, this one was angry, this one melancholy: it was all in the colors and the brushstrokes. It was amazing, and I told him so. That was the second time I saw him blush. All these people crowded around him, patrons and critics and so on. They actually backed him into a comer. He stood there pressed against the wall, completely terrified. Then he turned his head and looked right over the heads of the crowd, at me. And he smiled and winked. That’s when I realized how much we had in common, artistically speaking. I hate the whole publicity thing, and so does he. The work—the
doing
of it—is the important part, not what comes afterward. Suddenly, out of the crowd, my hand was grabbed and I was pulled toward the front door. He was escaping from his own party, and he took me with him. We went to a bar at the end of the block and talked for hours. I
didn’t get home until nearly four in the morning. The next day I read this big, glowing review of his show in the
Times
. A couple of days later, he called and asked me out, to Lincoln Center. He’d apparently found Tara and grilled her, and she’d told him I love the ballet. So he took me to the Met.” She laughed again. “He was obviously bored to tears, but he sat there so patiently, smiling through the whole thing. I took
him
to dinner after the performance, and back to my apartment for coffee. Then we—well, we’ve been together ever since. He thought he was getting his revenge for the ballet a few months ago, when I took him to a Mets game at Shea Stadium. The Mets in exchange for the Met. But I blew it by confessing that I love the Mets. I love baseball, period. Now he’s threatening to take me to a wrestling match: I should have kept my mouth shut!”

Dr. Philbin smiled. “So, do you want to marry him?”

Jill shrugged, uttering a small, bemused laugh. “I honestly don’t know. Tara thinks I’m crazy, of course. She hasn’t had much luck in the romance department, which is weird when you consider how nice she is, not to mention gorgeous. She has that famous ‘all-the-good-ones-are-married-or-gay’ philosophy about men, and she may be right. Nate just introduced her to a friend of his—apparently a widower and apparently not gay—and they’re having
dinner together tomorrow night, so maybe she’ll get lucky. Anyway, she thinks I should grab Nate.”

The doctor smiled. “And what do you think?”

Jill was silent a moment, considering. At last she said, “I think I’d better think about it. ‘Decide to decide.’ I may not have much time.”

Dr. Philbin noticed the sudden change in Jill’s tone. She leaned forward, studying her client’s face.

Jill met her gaze and nodded. “I haven’t told him. I haven’t told anyone, not even Tara.” Then, for the first time in the three weeks she’d known about it, she spoke the words aloud.

“I’m pregnant.”

The two men walked out of the gallery and headed down Spring Street toward the little pub at the end of the block. Henry Jason was all set to join them until a last-minute phone call from a hysterical agent had sent him back to his office with a grim scowl.

“This could take hours,” he’d muttered, waving to them as he went. “Next time, boys.”

A chilling wind whipped down the little Village street, causing them to huddle in their coats and hurry the last few steps to the inviting dark warmth of the pub. They straddled barstools, greeting the familiar bartender and the familiar lush on the farthest stool—the only other patron at this hour—and calling for draft beers. Two foam-topped mugs materialized
before them. They relaxed in their seats, and Doug lit a Marlboro and exhaled a stream of smoke.

“So,” Doug said, “when do I get a preview of ‘Conditions?’ ”

“Oh, drop by anytime. In fact, Thursday Jill is coming over to my place to see the paintings. She’s contributing the catalog copy. Don’t tell Henry—he thinks I do it myself. Why don’t you join us?”

Doug thought a moment. “Can I bring a date?”

“Sure! We’ll all have dinner, and then I’ll give you a private showing. I hope you like Ukrainian food.”

“I’m not sure I know what Ukrainians eat, but, hell, I’ll try anything once. Let me see how Tara and I hit it off tomorrow night. If everything’s cool, I’ll ask her about Thursday.”

He studied Doug Baron’s face, smiling at the calm expression that so obviously concealed a fit of first-date jitters. The cigarette in Doug’s hand was trembling slightly. “Hey, Tara’s a nice woman. You’ll be fine.”

Doug smiled and nodded. “I know. I just have to get used to this. It’s—it’s been a while.”

“I’m sorry, Doug,” he said quietly. “About your wife. I didn’t know till you mentioned it the other night.”

“Yeah,” the photographer whispered. “It’s been three years now. Anyway,
you
didn’t have much trouble finding the perfect woman.”

“You’d be surprised. But you’re right: Jill
is
pretty wonderful.”

Doug Baron nodded slowly, not meeting the other man’s gaze.

“She sure is, Nate,” he murmured. “I’m really looking forward to seeing her again.”

He picked up the mug in front of him, drained it, and lit another Marlboro.

The phone was ringing when Jill came into the apartment. She dropped her purse and the bag of groceries on the kitchen counter and hurried into the office before the machine clicked on. She hesitated a moment before picking up the receiver, as she had found herself doing for the last several days. Then, bracing herself, she answered.

“Hello,” she whispered.

“Hello again, Jill, it’s Dr. Philbin. I was reading over your file after you left my office, and I think—I think I may have found something. I’d like to talk about it with you.”

Jill was confused. “What do you mean?”

There was a slight pause on the line. Then the doctor cleared her throat and said, “Well, I’d rather not discuss it on the phone, but—it’s about something you told me during a session a few years ago. Let’s see . . .” Another pause, and Jill could hear pages
rustling. “Are you free Friday afternoon? One o’clock? I have an opening then.”

“Yes, that would be fine. But, please, what is this about?”

She could almost hear the doctor thinking, choosing her words with care. “It’s about—I mean, it
might
be about these cards, about what’s been happening to you.”

“You have an idea?”

“I—I think I might. Friday, then. One o’clock.”

“Dr. Philbin,” she cried before the woman could hang up. “Please, what is it? What have you found?”

Another pause. Her heart was racing: she felt as if she could scream. Then, at last, the voice. “Well, the only reason it caught my eye was the fact that you mentioned Valentine’s Day. It’s something you told me about, something that happened to you in college. Do you remember a young man in Hartley College, a young man named, umm, Victor Dimorta?”

She stared blankly down at her computer for several moments before the name registered. Then her eyes widened.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, my God!”

The moment the two women hung up, he reached up slowly to remove the headphones. He’d arrived back here from Spring Street just in time to catch the call. He crushed out his Marlboro and rubbed his
stinging eyes. He gazed out the window from his armchair, watching as Jillian Talbot came back into the living room and sat down on the couch. She was facing him: he could see her expression clearly.

Yes, he thought. She’s thinking. Remembering.

The plot thickens. . . .

They called themselves Earth, Wind, and Fire after their favorite rock group, but the other students simply referred to them, collectively, as the Elements. Their real names were Sharon Williams, Belinda Rosenberg, and Cass MacFarland, and they were the three prettiest—and richest—young women in the tiny college on the outskirts of Burlington, Vermont. When they inducted the shy, introverted English major into the club, they assigned her the name of the fourth element. This was a great joke for them, as she had never learned to swim and was deathly afraid of water.

There was nothing they enjoyed as much as a great joke, preferably at the expense of others. But they were the prettiest, and therefore the most popular. The other girls were respectful, the boys attentive, the professors indulgent. They ruled the campus, three little martinets made powerful by their formidable
intelligence, their biting wit, and their facility with lip gloss and blow-dryers. She knew they were not very nice. But after her relatively lonely childhood in New York, her bookish lack of popularity in high school, and her all-too-recent confrontation with her drunken stepfather on the kitchen floor, she felt a sudden need to be part of a group—any group. She had never lived away from home before, and the attention of these three, sarcastic as it was, was comforting. She soon learned that their true interest in her was due to her excellent knowledge of math, and her willingness to “help” them with their calculus homework, the bane of their existence. This, of course, translated into her actually doing the homework for them, but she considered it a small price to pay. She was accepted by them; she was in a clique; she was Somebody.

It didn’t last very long.

She remembered that first meeting, at the beginning of the second semester of her freshman year. A chilly day in the first week of February. The three senior girls—blonde, brunette, and redhead—sitting at the best table in front of the large glass wall and the dramatic view of the snow-carpeted campus, in their tight jeans and form-fitting sweaters with fur coats draped dramatically around them, smoking cigarettes, laughing and calling out as she came so tentatively into the cafeteria, clutching her tray.

“Oh, Jill! Jill Talbot!” This from platinum Sharon. “Come sit with us, honey. We want to talk to you.”

“Yeah,” added Belinda the brunette. “A sort of proposition.”

Sly glances all around.

She’d felt profound surprise, followed immediately by a rush of warmth, of happiness, as everyone in the room turned to watch her step forward to join the Most Important Table. Redheaded Cass—the only nice one, really, when she was away from the others—merely smiled as Jill approached, letting her fellow empresses do all the talking. They grinned, made room for her, and offered her her very first—and last—cigarette.

When the coughing fit had run its course, amid much raucous laughter and slaps on her back, Sharon/Earth plucked the cigarette from her shaking fingers, crushed it out in a dish of Jell-O, and said, “How’d you like to be a member of our little sorority?”

“Oh, yes!—umm—yes, I’d like that,” she’d stammered when she’d found her voice, trying mightily not to sound too eager or—worse—too uncool.

“Faboo!” cried Belinda.

“You’re gonna love us, kid,” added Sharon. “And you’ll be one of us. And you know what that means—right, girls?”

“Too! Too! Very! Very!”
the three shouted in perfect unison.

“That’s our watchcry,” the blonde explained, “because that’s what we are. Stick with us, and that’s what you’ll be, too!” Then, lowering her voice, she continued. “So, we take it that you wish to apply for membership with the Elements?”

“Uh, sure,” she whispered again, still recovering from the thrill, from the overwhelming glamour of it all.

“Faboo!” Belinda repeated before leaning forward and lowering her voice. “But, you know, there is one thing. In order to become a member, you have to pass a little—test.”

“An initiation,” Sharon said.