Magic (23 page)

Anya was already up and dressed when the baby woke him the next day. He took her to the nanny to change and feed and was startled to see Anya looking serious and drinking coffee.

“You're up early,” he said, as he bent to kiss her. “Happy New Year, by the way. How was last night?” He sat down at the breakfast table with her in his robe and poured himself a cup of coffee, as he noticed that she was wearing slacks and high-heeled boots and not ski clothes. “Are you going somewhere?” He was confused.

“I'm leaving,” she said in a low voice and didn't look at him when she said it.

“To go home?” They'd been planning to stay for a few more days. And then she raised her eyes to his.

“I'm going to London with Mischa Gorgovich.” He knew the name. He had made a fortune in finance in London.

“Why are you going with him?” Gregorio didn't understand what she was saying.

“I'm going on his plane,” she said quietly, without answering his question. “He invited me.”

“Does he know about me and the baby?” Gregorio looked worried. Anya's eyes filled with tears then. She wasn't heartless. Her heart just didn't belong to him or the baby, or anyone for now.

“I can't do this…you…the baby. It was different in the hospital. It all seemed so real then. Now it doesn't. I don't know what to do with her, or how to take care of her. She screams every time I touch her, and all you want to do is be with her. We had fun in the beginning, before the twins. Now you don't want to go anywhere or do anything except take care of the baby. I'm not ready to be a mother yet. I thought I was, but I'm not. I feel like I can't breathe when I'm with her, or with you. And I want to go to London with Mischa.” It was all about her now, not about him or the baby.

“You're leaving me?” He was shocked as he stared at her, unable to believe what she had said. “Are you coming back?” He still didn't understand what she was saying and didn't want to. He had given up so much for her that what she was saying was inconceivable to him. She shook her head in answer to his question.

“I hate Milan, and I can't work there because of your ex-wife.”

“What about us, and Claudia?”

“I think you should keep her. I can't.” She was being truthful with him, but she had the grace to appear embarrassed as she said it, and then stood and went into the bedroom to pack her suitcase. He followed her with an expression of disbelief as she put things in her valise.

“That's it? You just walk out on us and go off with someone else?” She didn't answer and just kept packing until she finished, put her bags on the floor, and turned to look at him as she put on the red mink coat he had given her the day before.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I loved you in the hospital, but it was like being in prison, or on a desert island.” She didn't love him once she was back in the world that seduced her so easily. And staring at her, and seeing her, he knew he didn't love her either. He loved what she could have been, but not who she really was. And he knew now that the only woman he had ever loved was Benedetta.

“Do you want to see the baby before you go?” he asked in a gruff voice, and she shook her head, and then called the front desk for a bellman for her bags.

It was strange and brief and bloodless when she left. She gazed at Gregorio from the doorway and told him again that she was sorry, and he didn't try to stop her. He knew he couldn't. He couldn't compete with Mischa Gorgovich and didn't want to.

“Claudia is better with you,” she said, and he nodded, grateful that she didn't want to take their daughter with her. It would have killed him if she had. And then without another word, she closed the door behind her, as Gregorio stood staring at it, and sat down heavily in a chair. The insanity was over.

He flew back to Milan that afternoon with Claudia and the nanny, and walked around the apartment he had shared with Anya for a few months. There were closets full of her clothes, and a safe full of the jewelry he had bought her. She hadn't taken it to Courchevel, and he wondered if she would contact him to have it sent to London, and assumed she would.

He waited two days before he contacted Benedetta. He sent her an email, several text messages, and a number of voicemails, and she answered none of them. He finally called her assistant and asked for an appointment. Her assistant said she would get back to him after she spoke to Mrs. Mariani, and he was sure now that he wouldn't hear from her, but her assistant called him the next day. He thought it was a hopeful sign.

“Mrs. Mariani will see you at nine o'clock tomorrow morning,” she said in a dry voice. “She has a meeting at nine-forty-five, so she can't stay longer than that,” she announced precisely.

“That's fine. I won't take up too much of her time. Please thank her for according me the meeting,” he said politely.

“I will,” the secretary said, and hung up.

He arrived promptly at her office the next day, which gave him a strange feeling since his own had been just down the hall, in another lifetime. He tried not to think of it as he walked into her office in an impeccably tailored dark gray suit, with a white shirt and navy tie.

Benedetta noticed that he was as handsome as ever as he walked in and looked at her with his smoldering eyes that used to melt her. They no longer did. There was a time when she would have dissolved at his feet. But she was relieved to feel that he did nothing to her now. Those days were gone. She sat down behind her desk and motioned to a chair across from her.

“Thank you for seeing me,” he said soberly. They had not laid eyes on each other since July when he had come to tell her that he was leaving her for Anya, and she responded by wanting a divorce. It had been almost six months, and everything had changed. But he told himself that they were the same people, and had loved each other for a long time. This wasn't an affair like Anya, which had been fireworks for five minutes and burned itself out. The only thing that had prolonged it and made it more serious was the twins.

“It seems ridiculous for us to avoid each other now that you've moved back here,” Benedetta said coolly. “This town is very small. We don't need to hide. I understand you're working with your brothers now.” She had the good taste not to mention Anya or the child.

“It's a big change,” he said quietly. “They run an antiquated business, as you know.”

“But it works.” She smiled at him. He had the feeling he was looking at a stranger, not the woman who had been his wife. He noticed too that she was thinner and had done something different to her hair, and she was wearing an enormous Indian diamond bangle that had a lot of style. He liked it and wondered if it was real and where she got it. She didn't usually buy pieces like that, and was given more to traditional jewelry. She and Miuccia Prada were known to have the most beautiful jewelry in Milan.

“You look well, Benedetta,” he began cautiously.

“Thank you, so do you,” she said politely.

“I don't know where to begin. I came here today to ask you something, and tell you something too. I want to tell you how sorry I am for what happened. I was a fool, and I put you in a terrible situation. A bad situation that got completely out of hand.” She nodded agreement and wondered if he had really come just to apologize and beg her forgiveness. If so, he was a better man than she thought, not that it mattered now. “I really didn't know what to do once the babies were born.” She nodded again and looked pained. It was not a happy memory for her.

“We don't have to go through all that, Gregorio. We both know what happened and why.” He agreed with a remorseful look, and knew he was getting in deep waters.

“I just want you to know how bad I feel about it, and that I know how wrong I was. I can assure you nothing like it will ever happen again.”

“I hope not,” she said sternly, “for the sake of whatever woman you're with. No one deserves to go through that.” It had been hell for her, and for him too, but he had signed on for it, she hadn't. “Thank you for apologizing.” She glanced at her watch then. She only had twenty minutes left, and he hesitated for an instant.

“I want to ask you humbly, and with my deepest apology, if you would come back to me, Benedetta, if we could try again. We threw away twenty years.” He had tears in his eyes when he said it, and Benedetta's eyes were hard as she gazed at him in disbelief at what she'd heard.

“I didn't throw them away. You did. When you had the affair with her. And all the others. And you told me you were leaving me for her. I only asked for the divorce then. I wouldn't have otherwise,” she reminded him.

“She's gone. She's not coming back. And I don't want her to. It was momentary madness on my part.” Like so many others, she thought, but she didn't say it. “I will have full custody of the child, she doesn't want her, and I do. She's a wonderful baby.” He smiled when he talked about her, and for an instant Benedetta was touched, but not by the rest. Clearly he cared about his daughter, but he had made a mockery of their marriage for twenty years, and she had put up with it. She no longer wanted to. And she was in love with Dharam now, genuinely and fully. Not Gregorio. He had missed the boat. At last.

“I can't,” Benedetta said sincerely, as she looked across the desk at him, and she wasn't even angry suddenly. She felt nothing for him except pity. He had run off with someone else, had babies with her, and when she dumped him, he wanted to come back. Benedetta had read the tabloid stories too, as had the entire world. Anya was making a spectacle of herself in London with Gorgovich and said it was over with Gregorio.

“Why not?” he asked Benedetta. He didn't even ask if there was someone else. It never even occurred to him, but she wouldn't have told him if he had. It was none of his business. “We have loved each other for more than twenty years.”

“I don't love you anymore, not like that. I'm sorry about what happened, for both of us. A lot of people got hurt, not just us—our families, people who believed in us, people who lost their jobs when I had to restructure the business. And most of all the two of us, maybe even your child. But I can't do it again. I believed in you for all those years. I trusted you to do the right thing in the end. I don't anymore. I could never trust you again. And there can't be love without trust.”

“I learned my lesson. It was a harsh lesson for me too.”

“I hope you did. And so did I.” She stood up then, she had heard enough. “Thank you for the offer, it means a lot to me,” she said sadly, “but I can't do it again.” He looked shocked, as though he had been sure he could convince her to try again, but he couldn't. Even if Dharam didn't exist, she would never have gone back to him.

Gregorio sat staring at her for a long moment and then stood up.

“Will you think about it?” She shook her head in answer.

“I would be lying to you if I said I thought I could do it. I can't. And I never lied to you, Gregorio. Never.” She couldn't say the same for him, and he knew it too. He had woken up too late. Way too late.

He stood up, put his head down for a moment and then walked to the door, and then he turned to glance at her with his smoldering brown eyes. “I will always love you, Benedetta,” he said dramatically, and she didn't believe him. She wasn't sure he ever had, or was capable of it. And now he was saying it to get what he wanted. He was desperate to come in out of the storm and bring his baby with him. And she was sure he wanted to come back to their business. He was trying to turn the clock back and break her heart again. He started to walk out of her office and then stopped to gaze at her. “Call me if you change your mind,” he said, and she shook her head and smiled at him.

“I won't,” she said firmly, and with that, he closed the door behind him, and walked down the hall of what had once been his business, as he wondered what to do next. Plan A had failed.

And in her office, Benedetta was thinking about him, and didn't feel anything at all.

T
he night before Jean-Philippe went back to Beijing, he and Valerie had a quiet dinner with the children in the kitchen. He gave them their bath afterward, read them stories, cuddled with them on their beds, and tucked them in. He missed that so much when he was in Beijing. And Skype just wasn't the same as holding and loving them. He was sad when he got back to their bedroom, and talked to Valerie for a long time. She was coming to Beijing herself in a few weeks, to run the shoot for
Vogue
for the April issue. She had everything organized and the photographers and models booked. Her assistant had helped her pull the clothes, and she was taking it all with her, and two assistants. And they were hiring ten of the models she had seen in Beijing. It was going to be fabulous, and he was going to stay at the hotel with her again. She'd be busy most of the time, but at least he'd see her late at night. And then he'd be back to Paris for a week in February. She looked strangely calm about his leaving this time, which worried him. He hadn't completely forgotten his concerns about her getting involved with another man while he was away.

“I have something to tell you,” she said as they lay on their bed. His bags were already packed. “I talked to my editor. They're interested in China now. They would accept my being a contributing editor there for a year. Not forever, but for a year. The editor-in-chief isn't going to make any moves about her own job till then. They're going to let me go to Beijing, starting in June. And if I still want the job as editor-in-chief, I'd have to come back. But if I do it, that would give us a year together there. By then, you'll have been there almost two years, and you could come back. But I can spend a year there with you with the children, starting in June. I might even be able to continue my consulting job. They're more and more interested in the Asian market, and they want me to scout locations for a store. I could be their point man there while I'm in Beijing. What do you think?” He was stunned into silence for a minute and then held her tight.

“I think you are amazing. I never expected you to do something like that. And I saw how wrong I was to pressure you once I got there. Are you sure you want to do it? It's not a great place to live.” She hadn't met a single person who had told her they loved it, and many who didn't, but she could do it for a limited amount of time, and it was an interesting opportunity for her too.

“I can do it under these circumstances,” she said, and he could see she meant it. She was a brave woman, and a strong one, especially to make the move with three very young kids.

“Oh, my God, Valerie. How do I ever thank you for something like this?”

“Come back to Paris when your two years are up. Don't reenlist,” she said seriously.

“I won't. I promise.” But he was already on the trail of some very major deals that would be profitable for him, and she could understand that better now that she had been there, and she still had a lot to learn about it. But she thought it would be fascinating to work there for a year. “I have to get a bigger apartment,” he said immediately. And a better one, in one of the nicer areas where foreigners lived.

He could hardly sleep that night, what she had told him was so exciting. They had found a compromise that worked for both of them. She had done it. And he knew that what she had negotiated would save their marriage. It was the greatest gift she could ever give him, and he bounded out of bed the next morning, ready to conquer the world, excited to go back to China, and more in love than ever with his wife. She was smiling at him as he dressed after his shower.

“I love you, you're a fantastic woman,” he said, and kissed her, and she laughed.

“As they say where I come from,” she said in English, “you're not so bad yourself.”

Before Jean-Philippe left, he called Chantal from the airport to tell her the good news about Valerie and the children coming to Beijing. She was stunned, impressed by his wife, and happy for him that it was working out. She sounded terrible when she congratulated him. She said she had the flu, and he told her to take care of herself and then got off.

Chantal had caught a rotten cold and stayed in bed for a week. It turned into bronchitis and a sinus infection, and she was miserable. She finished her script about the concentration camp, finally, but she felt too lousy to go out for nearly two weeks, and she was living on whatever she found in her kitchen cupboards. She didn't care, she wasn't hungry, and she'd been depressed for a month. She still missed Xavier terribly, but was more certain than ever that she had done the right thing.

It had been raining for days and it turned into snow and sleet the day she finally went to the grocery store and the pharmacy, for the antibiotics her doctor had called in. She bundled up in an old duffle coat and a wool beanie, and she was soaking wet by the time she got to the market, and then the pharmacy, and she trudged home with a bag of groceries, her head down in the wind, wondering if her flu would turn into pneumonia. She felt like Mimi in
La Bohème
as she had a coughing spell and walked into someone at the crosswalk, not looking where she was going. It was a man with a woman next to him. She collided with him, glanced up, and gasped when she saw it was Xavier, and she knew just how bad she looked. Her nose was red, her lips were chapped, her eyes were watery. She was deathly pale and had a coughing spell as soon as she saw him, and nearly strangled when she saw the girl he was with. She was a waiflike blonde who couldn't have been over nineteen years old. He had gone from one extreme to the other, predictably, she thought.

“Are you all right?” he asked, catching her by the elbow before she fell. And the irony of it was hideous. The girl was wearing almost the same outfit as Chantal, only she looked adorable and Chantal felt like Methuselah's grandmother, and she couldn't stop coughing.

“I'm fine,” she managed to choke out, “I have a cold. Don't get near me, you'll catch it.” She smiled at the girl, who was uninterested and waited for Xavier to move on. The weather was so awful, with sleet coming down in sheets, that none of them could stand there long, but he was worried about Chantal. He could see how sick she was.

“You should go home,” he urged her, while she assumed he just wanted to get her away from his fourteen-year-old girlfriend. It was a Saturday, and they were obviously spending the weekend together since it was still early. “How've you been?” he asked before they all ran off to escape the weather.

“Great,” she said, which was unconvincing given how sick she was. “Happy New Year,” which the French always wished each other until the end of January, ad nauseam, and then she waved to both of them and scampered across the street with her grocery bag and package from the pharmacy. It had been a shock to see him, and she was still feeling shaken when she got home and took off her wet coat and her boots. Her feet were wet too, and she put on another sweater, made herself a cup of tea, and took the antibiotic before doing anything else. Then she sat down, replaying the scene in her mind of running into Xavier and his beautiful new girlfriend. She hated the fact that she herself looked so bad. Couldn't the fates have been a little kinder when they slated them to meet that morning? She was sure it was a sign to prove her right and show her she had done the correct thing by breaking up with him.

She wrapped herself in a cashmere blanket and went back to bed still in her jeans and sweater, and put on warmer socks, while wondering if the flu was going to kill her, or maybe she'd just die of a broken heart. People in the eighteenth century had done that, and she wondered how. She just felt like shit and looked worse, but she didn't seem to be dying. She just felt like it. And when the downstairs bell rang half an hour later, she ignored it. She didn't get mail on Saturdays, and if it was a registered letter from some credit card company, she didn't want it. She had all the credit cards she needed, and whoever it was was sitting on the bell and wouldn't let up. Grumbling, she got out of bed and went to the intercom in the hall and asked who it was.

“It's me, Xavier!” he shouted into the intercom against the wind, and she groaned. “I'm soaking wet. Can I come up?”

“No…why?”

“I need to talk to you.” She wondered if his girlfriend was with him, but she didn't want to ask.

“What about?” She negotiated through the intercom, and she could hear the wind howling outside.

“I'm pregnant. You can't abandon me like this.” He sounded desperate, and she burst out laughing. She shook her head and pressed the buzzer to let him in. She heard him shout thank you, he knew the door code to the second door, and a minute later she heard the elevator and her doorbell, and she let him in. Water was running down his face in rivers, and his wool cap was soaking wet. There were pools of water in the hall where he was standing, as he looked at her. “Thanks for letting me in.” They walked into the kitchen, and she handed him a towel and put the kettle on for tea. She still had the kind he liked, and she made him a cup without asking, as they both sat down at the kitchen table.

“Your girlfriend is very pretty,” she said as they both sipped the tea, and he set his down.

“She's not my girlfriend. She's my nephew's new girlfriend, and I promised to help her with her law school exams. I knew you'd think that when I saw you.”

“What am I supposed to think on a Saturday morning? Not that it's any of my business.” She tried to sound nonchalant about it, but she wasn't. And she gave a hideous hacking cough as he watched her intently.

“Look, Chantal, I love you. I have just spent the most miserable month of my life since you dumped me. You ruined my holidays. I can't live without you. I don't want a younger woman, or any other woman. I want you. Can you possibly try to understand that? What the hell are we doing? You look like shit, and you sound like you're dying. I can't think straight. I've never been as happy with any other woman as I am with you. Can't we please give this another chance before you die of consumption in your garret, and I throw myself into the Seine?” She was smiling at him in spite of herself. They had a good time together. She had tried to forget that, but it was still true.

“You're very dramatic,” she commented.

“I'm very dramatic? I talked to a redhead for half an hour, and you dumped me. How dramatic is that?”

“It seemed appropriate at the time,” she said primly, as she gave them each a refill of tea and noticed that it was snowing harder outside.

“It was not appropriate. It was insane. But I swear, I will never talk to another redhead at a party, no woman under ninety, and you can blindfold me anytime we go out. Come on, Chantal, give us a chance.” He looked at her pleadingly, and she smiled at him. There was no escaping him. She loved him, and he was too good to be true.

“You screwed up my wish,” she said reproachfully, thinking of the lantern at the White Dinner.

“I screwed up
your
wish? You threw me out! May I remind you that you packed up all my stuff in a suitcase and dumped me? How friendly is that?”

“I was upset.”

“Yeah, me too. The bag is still packed, by the way. I cried every time I started to unpack it, so I didn't. And Merry Christmas to you too. Your timing sucked.”

“I'm sorry.” She looked remorseful and gazed at him tenderly. “I'd kiss you, but you'd probably die from whatever I've got.”

“I don't care,” he said, and kissed her so hard he took her breath away. “There. Now we can die together.”

“I just took an antibiotic. I might survive.” She was smiling at him, and he smiled as if he had just won the lottery. He kissed her several times and then followed her into her bedroom, and she patted the bed next to her, and he climbed in. They pulled up the covers like two kids with their clothes on, and snuggled beneath the comforter, as the snow fell and covered the rooftops, and they talked all day, made dinner together, and fell asleep in each other's arms that night. And when they woke up in the morning, with the city covered in snow, he glanced around the room as though he were lost.

“Did I die and go to heaven?” he said, looking at her, and she grinned.

“No, I did,” she confirmed.

“You couldn't have,” he said, smiling at her. “You took an antibiotic yesterday, so you can't be dead. Want to go out and play in the snow?” She nodded, and a little while later they went out and made snowballs and threw them at each other. They came back drenched from the snowballs, their hair wet and matted to their heads, with snow on their eyelashes, and they laughed till they almost fell down.

They peeled their coats off when they got back to her apartment, and she frowned at him.

“We need to take a hot bath or we'll both get sick, and I'll get sicker. Trust me, I'm a mother, I know these things.”

“If you say so,” he said, as she ran a bath, and they both took their clothes off and climbed in. They lay in the tub smiling and talking to each other, and then he kissed her, and it all began again.