Going Back (3 page)

Brad’s parents weren’t just rich;
they were rich in the way only certain New Yorkers could be. They
weren’t high society, they weren’t glitterati, but they lived
extremely comfortably in a city where only the well-to-do could
live the least bit comfortably. Both of them had descended from
affluent families, and Brad’s father had supplemented what they’d
inherited by buying his own seat on the stock exchange. His mother
didn’t deck herself out in jewels, and his father didn’t collect
Ferraris, but money was a given in the Torrance household. It had
always been assumed that Brad would attend private schools, that he
would dress in clothing from the better stores, and that he would
grow up knowing that he was entitled to certain things simply by
virtue of his being a Torrance.

It was also assumed that if
Penelope and Robert Torrance were in the midst of a marital
squabble, they would live in separate apartments. Expense was not
an issue. The only issue, as far as Brad could tell, was to which
parent Brad would extend his allegiance. So far he’d managed to
maintain his neutrality, but now, with this promotion and transfer
to New York, his parents were both actively campaigning for his
loyalty.

“So, when are you supposed to start
your new job?” Eric asked him.

Brad rolled his head backward until
it was resting against the top of the sofa’s bolster cushion. He
was exhausted. He’d spent the past few weeks overseeing the sale of
his condo, negotiating with various moving companies, and helping
to break in the fellow who’d been promoted to replace him at the
Seattle office of the executive placement firm he worked
for.

Brad knew that in a few months the
move would be behind him. He’d look forward to taking on the
responsibilities of his new position. But at the moment, he didn’t
even want to think about it. He was too damned tired.

“They said I can start whenever I’m
ready,” he told Eric. “But I can’t shake the suspicion that if I’m
not ready within a month or two, I’ll wind up on everybody’s shit
list.”

“It sounds like a great job,” Eric
reminded him, evidently sensing that Brad’s enthusiasm was at a low
ebb. “Vice President of Something, isn’t it?”

“Assistant Vice President for
Marketing Services,” Brad recited. A pompous title, but he liked
the sound of it. More than that, he liked the prestige and power it
encompassed. He was shrewd and talented, and he made it point to
excel at just about everything he considered important: at one time
schoolwork, and now his career, his squash game, his investments.
Being a Torrance might mean taking certain things for granted, but
it also meant putting forth a superior effort to achieve what he
wanted.

Andrea materialized in the doorway
leading to the dining room, minus her magazine. Her hair was a dark
shag of curls and her Mickey Mouse sweat shirt had a mysterious
pink stain on one sleeve. In all the years Brad had known Andrea,
she’d never quite figured out how to put herself together. She was
an attractive, intelligent woman, and he could understand how Eric
would have fallen in love with her. But she was also had a tendency
to look like a bag lady much of the time.

“How’s your mom?” she asked
Brad.

“You don’t want to know,” Eric
answered for him. “It’s one of those stories that makes you realize
we’re a lot less exciting than our parents.”

“Yeah, I tell you, we’ve got to
keep an eye on their generation,” Andrea said, reaching over the
back of Eric’s easy chair and filching his beer bottle. “They’re a
wild and crazy group.” She took a sip, handed the bottle back to
her husband, then crossed to the couch and plopped herself down
next to Brad. “So, Brad, not that I want you to feel unwelcome or
anything, but when do you plan to start house-hunting?”

“The sooner, the better,” he
answered. Andrea’s question didn’t make him feel unwelcome. He knew
she approached all issues directly, and he admired her lack of
coyness. “It’s really nice of you to put me up. But if I start
stinking like a fish after three days, I can always hit the firm up
for a hotel room.”

“You don’t have to move out in
three days!” Eric protested.

“Of course he doesn’t,” Andrea
agreed before turning back to Brad. “But if you’re interested in
finding a house, the person you should get in touch with is Daphne
Stoltz. Did you know she’s a real estate broker? She’s got an
office in Verona, New Jersey, and—”

“Daphne Stoltz?” Stunned, Brad
uttered her name in a taut, raspy voice.

Andrea stared at Brad, apparently
bewildered by his reaction. “Daphne Stoltz. From school. You
remember her, don’t you? She was taller than me, with kind of
frizzy light blond hair, eyeglasses—”

“I remember her,” Brad said,
anxious to silence Andrea. He took a deep, desperate swig of beer
and turned to stare through the window at the purple night
sky.

Daphne
Stoltz
. Daffy, everybody used to call her,
with her pale, kinky cascade of hair, her even paler skin, her
green eyes hidden behind a pair of thick-lensed wire-rimmed
glasses. She was a little too tall, a little too pudgy, a little
too undefined. She’d been a close friend of Andrea’s, along with
that stacked chick who used to frost her hair, Phyllis
Something-or-other. But whenever their entire crowd of friends got
together—Andrea and her friends from her dormitory, Eric and his
buddies from the fraternity—Daffy had always been on the periphery,
hanging back, smiling mysteriously and keeping her secrets to
herself. It wasn’t that she was ugly or stupid, but... She hadn’t
been like the other girls. She hadn’t been loud or wild or
aggressive. She hadn’t talked non-stop about herself. She hadn’t
dressed particularly well. All in all, she’d done nothing to make
herself noticeable.

Except for one night, when she’d
approached Brad. Out of the blue, just like that. They had never
exchanged more than stereotypical greetings and superficial remarks
about their classes before that night; they scarcely knew each
other. But suddenly there she was, presenting him with something no
normal twenty-one year old male would ever turn down.

Brad had been a normal twenty-one
year old male. And afterwards, he’d hated himself. Eventually, the
hate had softened to disgust, and then to a lingering guilt. In
time, he had succeeded in convincing himself that he hadn’t really
done anything so terribly unforgivable, that Daphne had probably
been almost as much to blame for what had happened as he was, and
that it was time to put the incident behind him, to forget about it
and move on.

That was years ago. It had been
simple enough to shove the entire incident out of his mind when
he’d presumed he would never see Daphne Stoltz again.

“Daphne Stoltz,” he murmured, half
to himself. Hearing his voice shape her name jarred him from his
thoughts. He scanned his surroundings—a high-ceilinged living room
in an ornate pre-War building on Riverside Drive in Manhattan, with
the man who was arguably his best friend seated across the room
from him, and his best friend’s wife on the couch beside Brad—and
absorbed the fact that his best friend’s wife had some insane idea
that he should get in touch with Daphne Stoltz. “Why am I supposed
to see her?” he asked, scrambling to remember what it was that
Andrea had been telling him.

She scowled. “Jet lag,” she
diagnosed his confusion before explaining, “The reason you’re
supposed to see her is that she’s a realtor. She manages the Verona
office of a small real estate firm. They’ve got, oh, maybe half a
dozen offices scattered around northern New Jersey, and I know
she’d love to show you some properties. Are you interested in
living in northern New Jersey?”

Brad wasn’t going to lie just to
avoid having to see Daphne. He was interested in living anywhere
that would offer him an uncomplicated commute to
Manhattan.

Besides, even if he swore that he
didn’t want to look for a house in New Jersey, he’d probably have
to see Daphne anyway. She was Andrea’s friend, and he was Andrea’s
house guest. One way or another, he was going to have to face
Daphne Stoltz.

“Verona,” he mumbled. He hoped his
discomfort wasn’t evident to Andrea, since she was pushy enough to
question him about it if she noticed. “Where’s that?”

“West of Newark, maybe a half hour
out of the city,” Andrea told him. “It’s got good bus service into
the city—and there’s a train station not far away, in Montclair, I
think. Of course, you could commute by car, but nobody in his right
mind would drive into Manhattan every day.”

Nobody in his right mind would do
business with a woman he’d once treated so shabbily, Brad thought.
At least nobody who had a heart would. Brad wanted to think that,
whatever sins he might have committed in the past, he wasn’t
heartless.

“Sure,” he said. Maybe he had a
heart, but he also had enough sense not to let Andrea recognize how
very much he’d like to avoid Daphne. Spending a day with her might
be an uncomfortable experience, but it was preferable to letting
Andrea know that, one night during his careless, thoughtless youth,
he’d been a first-class bastard—and that Andrea’s dear friend
Daphne had been the one to suffer for it.

THE VERONA BRANCH of the Horizon
Realty Corporation was located on the town’s main thoroughfare, a
winding avenue lined with shops and offices. Few had familiar
names; there weren’t many chain-store franchises or national
outlets in Verona’s downtown shopping district. Most of the stores
seemed to be modest mom-and-pop establishments: a hardware store,
an ice cream parlor, a five-and-ten, a bakery, a children’s
clothing boutique.

Brad liked Verona. He’d made up his
mind that he didn’t want to live in New York City, but he hadn’t
really been eager to become a suburbanite, certainly not if the all
the suburbs had to offer were tract houses and big-box malls. No
doubt some suburbs fit that description, but Verona seemed more
like a self-contained village, homey and welcoming. Brad could
picture himself living in a town like this.

He didn’t want to like Verona. He
didn’t want to like anything at all today. He had driven west from
Manhattan in the Ford Escort the firm had rented for him, figuring
he’d kill a day looking at houses with Daphne Stoltz and get the
damned thing over with. Then he could return to Eric’s apartment
with a clear conscience. He could swear to Andrea that he’d taken
her advice and allowed Daphne to show him every house she knew of
for sale in northern New Jersey, that he’d despised each and every
one of them, and that he wanted to try his luck with a new broker
in a different part of the tri-state area. And then Andrea would
have to get off his back.

The only problem was, Verona
appealed to him. The photographs of houses displayed in the front
window of the realty office might have absurdly high prices printed
underneath them, but the houses looked attractive and comfortable.
Brad wasn’t going to reject a promising swath of the New York City
suburbs merely because he didn’t want to have to go house-hunting
with Daphne Stoltz.

She was expecting him. Andrea had
called her last night and told her Brad wanted her to show him some
houses—Brad had considered this a gross misrepresentation of what
he wanted, but he’d kept his mouth shut—and Daphne had told Andrea
to have Brad come to the office the following day. She hadn’t
balked, so Brad couldn’t balk, either. If Daphne was going to be
stoical about this compulsory reunion, so would he.

Inhaling deeply, he straightened
his jacket with a shrug of his shoulders, raked his fingers through
his hair, and entered the office.

The interior was bright. Ceiling
lights reflected off the white walls to give the room an almost
offensive cheerfulness. Huge bulletin boards displaying more
photographs of houses in hung on opposite sides of the room. A
couple of flourishing plants stood in clay pots near the front
window, drinking in the morning sunlight through the glass. Four
desks were arranged symmetrically, two on either side of the door.
Each contained a prism-shaped brass name plate, but none of the
those name plates displayed Daphne’s name.

A man in a suit and tie sat at one
of the desks, talking on the telephone with the receiver tucked
between his ear and his shoulder so he could jot notes on a pad.
The only other person Brad saw was a woman, also conservatively
dressed, using a photocopy machine at the rear of the room. Since
she had her back to Brad, he was able to study her for a moment,
unobserved. She appeared to be middle-aged, with a matronly figure
and dark brown hair arranged in a moderately bouffant style. Brad
couldn’t believe that Daphne had changed—or aged—so
drastically.

The woman pulled a few sheets of
paper from the tray on the side of the machine, then turned around
and revealed to Brad that she definitely wasn’t Daphne. She
presented him with a polite smile. “Good morning,” she said,
tapping the paper into a neat stack. “Can I help you?”

“I’m here to see Daphne Stoltz,” he
answered, then felt compelled to add, “I’ve got an appointment,” as
if to emphasize that this was a business call, not a personal
one.

“She’s in her office,” the woman
informed him, beckoning him toward the rear of the room. Brad was
brought up short by the news that Daphne had her own office instead
of working at one of the desks in front.