CHAPTER TEN
Warning, The Past Looks Rosier in the Rear View Mirror
35
Stockbroker
Commandment(s) Broken:
1 - He shalt love me as he loves himself
2 - He shalt not kill my dreams
3 - He shalt not steal my confidence
Friday evening came very quickly, it seemed, even though I was as prepared as anyone can be for ex dating. Since I’d had a budget and discretion, I’d asked Nick to be my photographer.
“Who’s the lucky #1?” He asked at last. “I’ve always wondered who the first guy to win your heart was like. Your mom seemed to like him.”
“You’ll have to keep wondering for a while.” Maybe forever. “I’m going backward—starting with Henry.” A man Nick knew well. And didn’t like.
He hesitated. In the moment of hesitation, I knew I needed him there. I also knew he needed the money. So I put my finger to his lips. “Don’t say no. I need a friend to have my back.”
He moved my finger from his lips and sighed. “Well, if you’re going to use the best friend bat signal, what can I say? Let’s do this thing.”
“You drive,” I said, tossing him the keys to the rental the magazine was paying for. I pulled out the notebook and rifled through the sections, carefully color coded and labeled for each man: Henry was first. I had my interview questions ready and a chart listing the reasons I’d thought he might be the one—and a page of reasons why I’d decided he wasn’t going to be able to avoid breaking all of my commandments.
“Holy Purple Columbine Diana! Your little black book has mutated into the Godzilla of all notebooks.”
“Just drive.”
“So, where do we need to be for this shoot of yours?”
“We’ll start with dinner at La Scala.”
“Start?” He raised a brow.
“It’ll be a whole weekend.”
“What?”
“Didn’t I tell you?”
“No.”
“Oh.” I quickly filled him in on the plans, avoiding his eyes—which were no doubt smoking with anger as the full extent of my betrayal sank in.
“I hope you know what you’re doing.” His voice was gravelly with disappointment as he got behind the wheel without a further word.
I was ashamed at the relief that flooded through me. He was going to do it. For me. It would take me forever to make it up to him. If I ever did.
He held out his hand.
“What?”
“I presume you have carefully mapped our course.”
“I can play navigator.”
He wiggled his fingers impatiently. I placed the carefully redlined map on his open palm.
“Let’s go then,” he said, crumpling the map into his door pocket without another glance.
I didn’t say a word in protest—all I could think of was that I would be face to face with Henry in 32.5 minutes. If Nick didn’t get lost without the use of my map. Even then, it couldn’t take us more than ten minutes to find the restaurant. My stomach tightened involuntarily. The place where Henry had proposed to me on bended knee. For just a minute I wished I smoked so I could tap out a cigarette, light it, and take a deep, calming drag.
“You look like you’re going to your execution, you know? It is only Henry. You can handle him. I’ll have your back.”
“What if I realize what a mistake I made to turn him down?”
“That’s not going to happen. But if it does—” His hands tightened on the wheel. “Then I’ll turn the hose on you until you regain your senses, of course.”
“You are a good friend.”
“The best.”
Nick must have known where the restaurant was already, because we arrived promptly, without one wrong turn and without his giving a single glance at my map.
“Sure you want to take that with you?” He put his hand on my notebook.
“A good article isn’t written with shoddy notes.”
“Are you really sure about this? Now’s the time to turn back if you’re not.” He moved his hand to my arm and looked into my eyes. “We don’t even have to go in there to write the book on Henry.”
I thought of The Plan. I’d already put the series in there. I couldn’t bear to cross out another unaccomplished goal. “You want me fired?”
“Better fired than have your life exposed to people who don’t even care about you.”
“And now it wouldn’t just me fired, may I remind you? You’ve got nothing to photograph if I bail on this piece.”
“I can live with that.”
He could. But I couldn’t. This could be the big break for him, as well as for me. I thought of The Plan. “I know what I’m doing.”
“You think you know what you’re doing. There’s a difference.”
“Aren’t you the one who says to go with your gut?”
His eyes trained on me, searching for the truth. “Your gut is telling you to do this?”
“It is.”
He let go of my arm. “Okay, then.” He still didn’t look happy.
Henry was at “our” table. The maitre’d was the same one on duty when Henry had made his proposal. I thought it was just a minor coincidence until the waiter arrived at the table with a beaming smile and a bottle of Dom. He’d been the one who’d hailed the cab for me the last time. After I’d turned down Henry’s proposal.
Henry smiled at me as if we hadn’t ever broken up, stood up and came around the table to pull my chair for me. I had told him countless times how much I hated him to do that, but he’d never gotten the message. Always hold a lady’s chair—even if she threatened to clobber him with it—was his mantra and far be it for Henry to deviate from social niceties for someone else’s comfort.
I’d already arranged for Nick to sit at another table, hopefully out of hearing distance. But he went into ostentatious photographer poses, snapping shots as we settled ourselves at the table. Snap. Henry leaning in to kiss my cheek. Snap. Me turning so that the kiss was merely a brush of his lips on the hard edge of my jawbone. Snap. Henry officiating at the pouring of the champagne with gentle press of his palms like the Pope in prayer. Snap. Me putting my hand over my glass and shaking my head no. Snap…was I going to look like a bitch to my readers for refusing Henry’s puppy-eyed plea? Snap. Me taking my hand from the glass and allowing a bit of bubbly to be poured for me.
I took a sip, and glared at Nick. Snap. But he unwrapped from the crouching pelican pose he had adopted and took his seat at his table like a good boy.
Henry raised his glass and his eyebrows at the same time, a gentle chiding for my lack of manners in sipping before toasting. “To old friends.”
We clinked. We sipped. We smiled as if we were strangers newly met, unaware of each other’s flaws and faults.
Henry glanced at Nick for the first time. “Your bodyguard?”
“Photographer.”
“So, someone is finally letting you write for them?”
This is what I hate about Henry most. He says the cruelest things with such a jaunty air that I can almost believe he is unaware of what he is doing. Unfortunately, his words have the same shrinking effect on me regardless of his intent. I felt it —a little shrink-wrapping squeeze to my vital organs. Thank goodness Nick couldn’t see feelings, or he’d memorialize them on film.
The evening has hardly begun and Henry is already busy confirming my fear that was a man who enjoyed breaking my commandments.
<<>>
I feigned distress. “You did know I was going to interview you, didn’t you? I was very clear with your secretary.” And then I felt a twinge of real distress. He’d made me communicate through his secretary. Had his secretary told him, or had she left that part out in fear he wouldn’t agree? Henry was very hard on his secretaries and they tended to last no more than a few months at a time.
He smiled, and his eyes gleamed with satisfaction that he’d worried me. “Of course she told me. I think it is splendid that your magazine is giving you a shot. I always told you that I thought you’d make a fine writer someday.”
Someday. Right.
“Great.” I took out my list of questions and set it next to my salad fork. I turned on my recorder and put it on the table between us. “Let’s get started then.”
He frowned, picked up the recorder and switched it off. “We have plenty of time for questions. Let’s enjoy dinner. I’ve taken the liberty of ordering for you. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.” Part of the job. Fortunately, the job came with hazard pay. I’d need it for a meal that started with champagne, moved on to pate and Kobe steaks, rare. By the time we got to the Mousse Angeline, I’d rewritten my first question twice. He hadn’t answered any version of it yet. But I really wanted to know: why had he thought I would make him a good wife when he didn’t actually seem to like me?
When the waiter brought the cheese plate and Eiswein, I turned the recorder on and flipped open my notebook. “Time to pay for this dinner,” I said, keeping the recorder safely on my side of the table, guarded by the cobalt blue vase with the single orchid that sat between us. “I have a list of questions for you.”
He took a sip of his wine. “Quelle surprise. Ask me number four.”
“What?” I stared at the list in confusion. I’d already prepared myself to ask the first question.
“Shake it up a little. Don’t start with the first question. That was always your problem, Diana. You treat every list like it contains the original Ten Commandments. Carved in stone and unbreakable.”
Leaving the table was not an option, even though I had decided, while I tried to eat my field greens without trailing leaves between my lips as I chewed, that I had not overlooked Henry as my true Prince Charming. My orders were very specific. A weekend. Or I’d be paying for this dinner myself.
I opted for acting like the investigative journalist I wanted to be someday. “Good insight. I must have been quite trying for you while we were dating.”
“You were a challenge. I like a challenge.”
“I see. Is that why you proposed? So you could be challenged for the rest of your life?”
He buttered a cracker with Brie before he answered. “That was question one, wasn’t it? Ask me four instead.”
I looked down at my notebook.
Q1: Why did you think I’d make a good wife? (Had to ask again, since he still hadn’t answered it.)
Q2: Were you surprised when I said no? (Of course he was, his jaw hung open, and he dropped the ring in my water glass.)
Q3: How long did it take you to recover from my rejection? (That one I didn’t want to know, but Olivia had insisted.)
Q4: What did I miss by not marrying you?
“Okay. Four it is,” I stalled, trying to think of a way to phrase it. I sucked down my eiswein and popped a green grape in my mouth for an excuse to chew and not talk.
He just smiled, sipped his wine, and waited.
“One thing I think my readers would love to know is whether I may have missed something special being married to you. You know,” I babbled, now that I’d begun, “like breakfast in bed every morning, or a life of adventure and travel.” I forced myself to stop. If I was going to be a reporter I had to speak less and leave room for him to answer. Even if I didn’t really want to hear the answer.
He templed his fingers and his brow knit. His eyes met mine. “What are you afraid you missed?” he asked. Of course.
Being tortured with conversations like this one every day of my life. Not that I could say that. “I’m here to find out about you.” I waited, pen poised above paper, recorder capturing the clink of silverware and whispers of other people’s conversations.
“Let me think about it.” He signaled the waiter for the check. “While we go for a carriage ride. You always liked the carriage rides.”
No. I didn’t. How could a man be so good at knowing how to frustrate you, and still not have a clue about what you actually liked to do? The smell of horse and exhaust was not at all enticing to me.
“We can’t. I got tickets for the late night show at The Comedy Corner.”
He frowned at me. “I hate stand up. Everyone thinks their personal complaints are so funny. I am not amused by people who can’t ride the subway without a guide.”
“That was one guy in one show. Not every comedian complains about the subway.” Not that Henry would know, since he walked out right after the first comedian’s first joke the only time we’d ever gone to a comedy club.
“I’d rather go for a carriage ride, if you don’t mind.”
I did mind. But I didn’t want to squabble in front of the waiter, who had brought me the bill. I tried not to squeak when I saw the total. The tip alone would be as much as the last pair of shoes I couldn’t afford to buy. Thank goodness for the company credit card. I thought of one way to persuade Henry to go to the comedy club. “This show’s been sold out for a month. I had to call in favors to get the tickets.” To be truthful, the magazine had been given two. But I’d never have scored them if I wasn’t doing this article.
“You asked me on this date, remember? You’re supposed to explore whether you should have said yes to me.” He stood up and held out his hand to help me up. I hated that. “A carriage ride in the moonlight is much more romantic than a comedy club. So say yes this time.”
Romantic. I suddenly remembered why we had dated for six months. I was a sucker for a guy who could milk a romantic moment in the moonlight. I stood up and blurted out, “I’m allergic to horses.”
“You are not.”
Nick came up behind us and snapped a picture. “Yes, she is. I’ve been witness. She’s deathly allergic to horse’s asses.”
I wanted to kiss him. I’d forgotten he was on the job, too, which probably didn’t speak much for my reportorial skills.