We all slept in. I eventually made the trip to the kitchen and decided to risk Charlie’s wrath by taking on the espresso machine.
I knocked at their door.
“Who is it?” said Angelina, and laughed. “Come in.”
It was odd to see her in bed with another man. I knew that she was sleeping with Charlie, but this was the first time I had seen it. How had Charlie felt the previous night, watching his wife having sex on the floor with me? Perhaps much the same as I did now.
I walked to the far side of the bed and deposited Charlie’s double shot on his bedside table. He still seemed half asleep. Angelina half sat to take hers, smiled, and sent me an air kiss.
“Ta for the coffee,” Charlie mumbled as I left.
* * *
It was raining again, but softly, and the temperature had dropped. We spent the morning at our computers, scattered around the living room.
For the first time we did not do the croissant run, which was no loss to me.
Angelina brought out some fruit and at lunchtime fetched some charcuterie from the fridge. I didn’t comment on the change of chef. Midafternoon, Charlie opened a bottle of Burgundy. I put my work aside, and sat in one of the armchairs, listening to the rain and watching the fire.
At some stage, we all fell asleep. Angelina woke me as she got up. “I’m going upstairs,” she said, and Charlie followed her.
It seemed my job was done. Whatever their problem, Charlie had solved it in his customary way, with outrageous generosity. Whether or not Angelina appreciated the gift in its own right, she had to acknowledge Charlie’s message: I’ll do anything for you.
After so much, so quickly, there had been an ending. I went outside and sat in the courtyard looking at the blue spruce until the rain started again. I didn’t feel like working. I slipped upstairs and shut their bedroom door, then played the piano for a while.
The sun was setting when Angelina and Charlie reappeared.
“What were you playing?” said Angelina.
“Chopin.” It was “Tristesse,” one of my few classical pieces. No words.
“It was nice. Thank you.” She turned to Charlie. “I’m starving.”
“I don’t feel like cooking,” he said.
The statement would have been innocuous if it had come from someone other than Charlie. Angelina let it sit for a few moments before replying.
“We should go into the village.”
The restaurant was closed, but for three customers they could manage coq au vin if we didn’t mind them eating their own meal at the same time. They were a couple, younger than us, with children who came for good night kisses in their pajamas.
At some point during the meal, we lost Charlie. We had been talking about old times in Melbourne, and I realized he had not said anything for a while. He was playing with his drink, watching us reminisce as though we were the long-married couple. I caught his eye and was about to change the subject when he stood up.
“I need to call New York before they close for the weekend. Catch you at home.”
Neither of us pointed out it was Thursday, not Friday. Angelina stood as if to follow, but he waved us back down.
“Sort out the bill. I need fifteen minutes.”
* * *
Angelina and I walked home in the semidarkness.
“Is Charlie okay?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Things are a bit complicated.”
“You want to give me a few more clues?”
“What happened with you and Claire?” she said.
I let her get away, temporarily, with the change of subject. “Not enough rabbits.”
“You’ve been talking to Charlie. Whatever went wrong with your relationship, it wasn’t that. It’s not true of us, either.”
“Last night—”
“We were talking about Claire.”
“I asked you—”
“It’s important to me. To what’s happening with us now. You’ve hardly told me anything. Except that you wanted to have children.”
“That was the plan, and we didn’t really make a new one. I think we just let it go. Grew apart. Did our own things.”
“Did my being in touch have anything to do with you breaking up?”
I was about to dismiss the question with a quick “Of course not,” as I had when she e-mailed me at the time, but she pushed the point.
“I really need to know.”
“Why?”
“Because … it makes me partly responsible. I thought you were a safe option—as safe as it gets—for both of us.”
“You’re not responsible, beyond reminding me that there was something out there better than the way Claire and I had ended up. I thought, even at this age, that it was worth trying for again.”
“You’re talking about you and me, back in Melbourne?”
“What we had back then.”
“Is that why you came here? After twenty years?”
“Twenty-two, if you’re counting.”
“You must have known it was only the remotest chance.… I can’t believe you held on to it for so long. I’d stopped being sure it was ever there for you, and now you’re saying it’s been there for twenty … two years.”
“Of course it was there. I told you I loved you. I meant it. I do now.”
We were out of the village, on the narrow road to the house. Angelina stopped, turned, and looked at me. I looked straight back.
For a moment her eyes said I love you too, and then she turned away.
“Adam. You’re crazy. We had an affair. I loved you too, but … twenty-two years.”
“I’ve had a life. A pretty good life. I did love Claire. We had a lot of good times. But every time I heard a sad song, it was you I was thinking of.”
It was true, but not something I had said aloud before, possibly because it would have sounded as pathetic as it did to me now.
Angelina started walking again. “God, I feel so…”
“Flattered?”
“Touched. Guilty. For bringing you here, when you were thinking … more than that.”
“What you should feel is brassed off that I didn’t make a commitment back in 1989. If that was what you wanted.”
“Of course it was what I wanted. Remember I wrote to you? I told you, I screwed up. But I was also saying … You knew what I was saying.”
She squeezed my hand and held on to it. We did not speak for the rest of the walk back to the house.
* * *
Charlie had apparently done whatever he had to do, with time left to open a bottle of plum liqueur and pour three glasses. The faraway look had gone.
“Your turn on the entertainment,” he said.
“I think I’ll stick to piano.”
“Sounds wise. I gather you two used to do a dog-and-pony show in Fitzroy.”
“Not really. Only a few times.”
But I walked to the piano, sat down, and started “Brown Eyed Girl,” the song I had been playing the night we met. Partway through, Angelina came and stood beside me, and joined in on the sha-la-las. She didn’t touch me; we didn’t exchange glances or say anything beyond the words to a song whose lyrics held no special message, but the mood between us had changed, in the same way that it had changed the night Richard walked into that cheap Chinese restaurant and Angelina began to contemplate, for a time at least, letting him go.
When we had finished she touched my shoulder and said, “Do you know ‘Because the Night’ by Patti Smith?” and I said, “And Bruce Springsteen,” and she said, “Loovely,” and I played the first bars and she sang the first line, then broke off.
“Then we did ‘Both Sides Now,’ remember?” I said.
“Of course I remember.”
Of course she remembered. But what was Charlie making of this recounting of special moments? He was the one who had asked for the recital.
Angelina sang the first line of the Joni Mitchell song, with its reference to angel hair that I had no reason to notice that first time, and I picked up the tune on the piano.
All week there had been a certain equality between Charlie and me. If anything, the power had been with him. He could step in, and had stepped in, at any time, with the bottle of champagne and the three A.M. caveman act. I may have been the more active player in the ménage à trois, but Charlie was calling the shots, sitting in his armchair, all but smoking a cigar.
This was different. There was something between us that brooked no interference. Angelina stood so close to me that we were touching as she sang about old friends and change and life’s illusions.
“Do you remember what you played as we left?” she said when we had finished.
I launched into “You’re Gonna Lose That Girl” and Charlie started laughing.
“You never told me that,” he said.
“If I had, you wouldn’t have found it so funny tonight,” she said.
“Can you play ‘Angie’?” he said.
No surprise with that one. I was a couple of verses into the Rolling Stones’ song about dreams going up in smoke and it being time to say good-bye when Angelina knocked my right hand.
“That’s enough.”
“What’s the problem?” said Charlie.
“Not tonight, okay? We’re having a nice time.”
“It’s just a song,” he said. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist.”
“Sorry,” said Angelina, to me. “No big thing. Play something else.”
“One more.”
“Your call,” said Angelina.
I knew what I wanted to play, but was not sure I could remember all the words. I had listened to it a few times on the Eurostar.
I played a Freddie Sharp. Somewhere in space, my dad said the black keys play louder, and I sang “Angelina” with his and Bob Dylan’s voices in my head.
I may have missed the verse about the valley of the giants and the milk and honey. But I did not miss the parts about compulsion and loss and vengeance. Nor did I forget that it was this song that had brought me to her door.
Angelina was pressed against me as I sang the final verse, an apocalyptic vision that had nothing and everything to do with how I was feeling: white horses and angels and unknown riders and tell me what you want and it’s yours.
Playing the piano like the percussion instrument it is, I sang the last line of the final chorus with everything in my soul, a soul that only seemed to exist in the presence of the woman beside me.
Oh Angelina.
Charlie had beaten a retreat.
I drew my hand back from the keyboard and put it on top of Angelina’s, on my shoulder.
“Just tell me what you want,” she said.
It wasn’t a hard question to answer. “I want you.”