One Touch of Moondust (3 page)

When Gabrielle didn't respond, her mother prodded, “Gabrielle, dear, are you there?”

“What?”

“Is something wrong, dear?”

“No, of course not, Mother.” She injected a note of cheery bravado into her voice. “Everything's just fine. What were you saying about Mrs. Lane's tea party?”

“I was telling you that Townsend stopped in. He asked how you were,” she said pointedly.

“That's nice.”

“Don't you want to know how he is, dear?”

“Not particularly.”

“Gabrielle!”

She rolled her eyes. “I'm sorry. Of course, I want to know how he is.”

“He misses you, dear. I'm sure of it, even though…”

“Even though what, Mother?” she responded on cue.

“Well, I wasn't going to tell you, but since you ask, he's been seeing Patricia Henley.”

“That's nice. I'm sure she's much more suited for life with Townsend than I ever was. She actually likes those awful horses of his.”

There was an audible gasp on the other end of the line. “Gabrielle, what is the matter with you? It's not like you to be so sarcastic.”

“I wasn't being sarcastic. Townsend is happiest on the polo field, as you perfectly well know. Patricia adores horses. She's been riding since she was five.”

“We gave you riding lessons,” Elizabeth Clayton said stiffly, her voice filled with hurt.

“And I hated them. You didn't fail me, Mother,” she said more gently. “You and Father offered me an opportunity to learn all of the social graces. Can I help it if I preferred the
Wall Street Journal
?”

It was a tedious and all-too-familiar conversation. It did, however, serve as an excellent delaying tactic. Any minute now her mother would hang up in a huff.

Coward!
The accusation nagged at her. “Mother,” she began, interrupting further
news of Townsend. “Mother, I really do have to go. I'm busy packing.”

“Packing? Where are you going, dear? You haven't mentioned a trip. Are you coming home?” she inquired, her voice suddenly excited. “Oh, it will be so good to see you. Your father and I miss you terribly. We worry about you up there in that awful, dangerous city.”

Guilt was now added to cowardice. “Actually, no, I'm not coming home. I'm…”
Blurt it out, Gabrielle!
“I'm moving.”

“Oh, are you? It's about time.” Whatever disappointment her mother was feeling that Gabrielle was not coming home was now tempered by swift and obvious relief. “I've always thought that apartment of yours was much too small. Whoever heard of living in a single room? I don't care if it is on Park Avenue, that apartment doesn't suit someone of your background. Why, the closet in my bedroom is bigger than that.”

That was certainly true enough. It had been specially built to accommodate Elizabeth Clayton's designer wardrobe, which included enough hats to supply every woman who turned out for the annual Fifth Avenue Easter
Parade. It was not that her mother was a frivolous woman. She simply needed the trappings to feel secure in Charleston's more elite social circles, from which she'd once been excluded. Gabrielle had learned long ago to tolerate the excesses, since her father actually enjoyed them. It gave him frequent opportunities to indulge his still-beautiful and adoring wife. He'd learned to his chagrin that similar gifts were wasted on his daughter. She preferred lessons in financial management and subscriptions to business magazines.

“The new apartment is larger,” Gabrielle said cautiously, hoping that would be enough information to appease her mother's curiosity. If her mother even suspected the existence of a man like Paul Reed, she'd be on the next flight to New York, clucking over her endangered chick.

“Two bedrooms in fact,” Gabrielle added.

“How wonderful! Your father and I will come for a visit soon, now that you have room for us. Tell me all about it. Where is it? Is it a new building, one of those skyscrapers? I'm sure the view must be quite spectacular.”

“We'll talk about it later,” Gabrielle
hedged, already regretting the impulsive disclosure. She couldn't very well explain that the second bedroom was going to be very much occupied or that the building predated her birth and quite possibly her mother's. Mentioning that it was in Brooklyn would definitely arouse more discussion than she could possibly cope with.

“It will take me a while to get settled and do some decorating.”
Talk about understatements.
“I have to go now, Mother. Give my love to Dad. I'll call you soon.”

“But, dear, you haven't given me the new address or phone number.”

“I'll call you with it later. The phone's not even installed yet. Bye, Mother. I love you.”

She hung up quickly, before her mother could force her to divulge any more details. Her mother could have been used by the military. She had ways of extracting the most personal disclosures when you least expected it. Once, right in the middle of a conversation about Gabrielle's high school geometry homework, she'd gotten her to confess that there had been boys at Melinda Sue Wainwright's slumber party. She still didn't know how her
mother had done it. She'd learned, though, that it was best not to prolong a conversation with her mother when she was trying to protect any intimate secret.

She wondered if she could avoid talking to her at all until after this sojourn in Brooklyn ended.

* * *

On Friday morning Gabrielle took a last look around her elegantly furnished studio apartment on Park Avenue. She was going to miss the thick gray carpeting, the glass-topped dining-room table, the outrageously expensive leather convertible sofa, the mahogany wall unit that hid stereo, television, VCR and compact disc player. She was even going to miss the dreadful modern print that hung in the tiny foyer.

She had rented the apartment at the height of her all-too-brief success on Wall Street, at a time when she'd been thumbing her nose at her protective family. After seeing her very first Manhattan apartment, another studio with a less pricey address, they'd begged her to come back to Charleston. They'd reminded her that she could live there in style as a member
of high society. She would not have to eat her dinner perched on a sofa, her plate on a coffee table that barely came up to her kneecaps. She definitely would not have to sleep on that very same sofa. There were nights when she couldn't find one single comfortable spot on that two-inch mattress that she was tempted to do as they asked.

However, had she returned they also would have expected her to marry stuffy, rigid Townsend Lane, who was destined for greatness, according to her father. Her refusal to set a wedding date had disappointed them. She doubted if it had had any effect on Townsend at all. He'd barely noticed her when she was there. He'd taken her breaking off of the engagement with his usual cool disinterest and gone off to Palm Beach to play polo with Prince Charles.

If her parents had considered her breaking up with Townsend foolish, they found her business ambitions unladylike in the extreme. Women in the Clayton clan were supposed to inherit wealth—as her father's sweet, but mindless sisters had—or marry it, as her mother had. They weren't supposed to set out to attain it for themselves. She had disgraced
them by doing just that, first with a Charleston brokerage house, then by moving to New York where she could avoid their disapproving, bewildered looks.

After the fuss they'd raised about her leaving home, she had sworn to make it on her own. Even at the outset in New York, she'd refused all their offers of money. She had weathered one stock market crash, only to lose her job a few weeks ago in a subsequent belt-tightening. Unfortunately there were plenty of other stockbrokers and analysts in similar straits, all fighting over the same few openings. Her savings had dipped precariously low. Even so, she knew she couldn't go home again. She would suffocate under all that well-meaning interference. Ten minutes at home and she would revert to being six again, instead of a cool and competent twenty-six.

She pressed the button on the intercom that connected her to the lobby and requested a taxi. It was an extravagance she could ill afford, but she refused to tote her belongings all the way to Brooklyn on the subway. Besides, it would take at least five trips just to get them downstairs. She refused to make twice that
many trips back and forth to Brooklyn. She convinced herself that in the end, the taxi would be more cost-effective.

In the lobby she said goodbye to the aging doorman, who'd taken to watching out for her. He had the manners of a well-trained butler, all icy propriety, with a glimmer of affection that dared to show itself in little kindnesses.

“Now you be careful, miss,” he said when he'd tucked her into the front seat of the cab after helping the driver to load the trunk and back seat with luggage and boxes. “Stop by now and then.”

“Thank you, Robert. I will. You stay inside on rainy days now. You don't want your arthritis acting up. Next time I get over this way, I expect to see pictures of that new grandson of yours.”

The washed-out blue of his eyes lit up. “You can be sure I'll have a whole collection of them by then,” he said. “Goodbye, miss.”

“Goodbye, Robert.”

As the cab pulled away, she was surprised to discover a tear rolling down her cheek. She brushed it away and watched until Robert went
back inside and the building disappeared from view.

Thankfully the cabdriver, a burly man about her father's age, wasn't the talkative kind. He left her to think about endings and beginnings and all that went on in between. She was feeling gut-wrenchingly nostalgic all of a sudden. The driver, Mort Feinstein according to the ID tag located on the glove compartment door, glanced over occasionally. Gabrielle caught the growing concern in his expression and avoided meeting his gaze directly.

As they drove into the neighborhood of the new apartment, the driver's concern turned to alarm. He pulled to the curb in front of number six-blank-two and stared around disapprovingly.

“It's not safe,” he decreed.

“No place in this city is safe. I'll use locks.”

“And stay inside? You shouldn't walk down the streets. Take a look around.”

“Please, no lectures. Just help me unload my things.”

“You're a nice girl. I can tell you're from
a fine family. What would they think, they should see this?”

“They won't see it.”

“You know what I mean. What you want, you want your father should have a heart attack, he finds out you're living in a neighborhood you can't go out in even in daytime.”

“It's not that bad,” she said, getting out and slamming the door. She opened the back door, began removing things from the back seat and piled them up on the sidewalk. Still shaking his head, the taxi driver began getting the suitcases out of the trunk.

“You stay here,” he said. “I'll take them inside. What floor?”

“Four.”

He rolled his eyes.

“I'll help,” she volunteered.

“If you help, who'll watch? Stay.”

Just then Paul emerged from the building. His jeans were just as faded and just as snug as the ones he'd had on when they'd met, but he had buttoned his shirt either in honor of her arrival or in concession to the near-freezing temperature. He smiled at her, a slow, breathtaking smile that made her wish for a minute
that he was her lover and that they were embarking on a mad, passionate affair.

Without saying a word, he took the full load of luggage from the taxi driver. Mort looked him over carefully, then nodded. He turned to Gabrielle. “Maybe it'll be okay.”

“What was all that about?” Paul asked when the taxi finally had pulled away and they'd hauled everything up to the fourth floor landing.

“He doesn't think I should be moving into this neighborhood.”

Paul opened his mouth. She spoke first. “I don't care to have this discussion with you, too.”

“Fine.” He nudged the door open with his foot and stood aside for her to enter. She found…chaos. At least she hoped that's what it was. Surely it couldn't be his idea of furnishings.

A sofa that sagged dangerously in the middle had been shoved against one wall. Two chairs in a similar state of disrepair were situated haphazardly in the middle of the room. None of the pieces matched. An orange crate had been placed in the midst of this unlikely
arrangement. A mayonnaise jar filled with marigolds had been plunked in the middle of it. As a gesture of welcome, it was a nice touch. As decor, it was frightening. She was terrified to look in the other rooms. Squaring her shoulders resolutely, she walked down the hall.

Each bedroom had a twin-size bed with a mattress that dipped in a way that set off desperate warning signals in her back. There was a scarred four-drawer dresser in each room. Each had a jar of marigolds on top. At least he was consistent, she thought with a sigh.

She dropped her suitcases in the room with the least offensive bedspread—pink chenille with a minimum of tufts missing. She would have to use the tiny dressers in both rooms and both closets for her clothes. She might not have her mother's acquisitive nature, but she did own more than two dresses. Maybe Paul could at least keep his clothes downstairs while he worked on the apartment.

When everything had been dragged inside, she turned to Paul. “If you'll just give me my keys now, I'll start settling in and you can go
on doing whatever you were doing before I arrived.”

He dropped the keys in her hand, picked up more of her bags and hauled them down the hall.

“Thanks, really, but I can manage the rest of this,” she protested.

“No problem. Until we get these things out of the way, we'll just be stumbling over them.”

“Don't you have work to do downstairs?”

“Not today. I took the day off so I could welcome you properly.”