Reunion (29 page)

A little more faith in herself might have made all the difference. Where would that faith have come from, though? The one thing upon which her entire worth was based—that Mitch had fallen in love with her in spite of her frizzy hair, her unsightly mole, her fatherless history—had been blasted apart by his rejection.

In the first week after, she had hardly been able to get out of bed. Melody would get up after hitting the snooze alarm three times, saying groggily, “You going to shower first?”

And Blue would roll over, putting her back to Mel.

Mel would leave the room, then, a little later, come back to see if Blue was going to get up. “Aren’t you going to work?”

“Leave me alone.”

Hours would pass, Blue sleeping away some of them, then waking to feel crushed again. Mitch did not love her enough. Daniel would not be her father, the grandfather of her children. She would never be a Forrester, never tell her children and grandchildren the story of that New Year’s Eve.

The travesty was that she’d done everything so deliberately right.
She’d kept her sister out of jail, kept food in the refrigerator, made it through high school with decent grades. She’d found a good job, she worked hard, never called in sick when she wasn’t. She’d avoided pointless relationships with immature guys, she’d held out even as Melody, pre-Jeff, was giving in with a different guy every week. She intended to earn some good fortune because, damn it, she wanted out of that dead-end life.

It had seemed to work. She’d fallen in love with a man who had all the decent qualities a girl could ask for: He was educated, he earned a decent living, he was from a good family with parents who treated her like a woman who was worthy of their son.

She had believed, for a couple fairy tale months, that the high road would lead her to the kingdom. Love, it had seemed, really could conquer all.

“Not,” she said. Peep looked up at her and blinked.

Running away had been the worst possible choice, that was more obvious now than ever. At the time? At the time, she’d decided it was the solution to all her problems.

She’d had a very different solution in mind the day she dragged herself out of the house and out to the 7-Eleven store for a newspaper. There, however, she’d run into Marcy Marcy, in all black, with her punk haircut, an Adam Ant T-shirt hanging off one shoulder.

“Hey, Harmony Blue! Long time no see.” Not since the two of them had worked together at the pet store. “How’s the new job? Or should I even ask—you look like hell.”

“I’m—I was sick.”

“Nothing contagious, I hope,” Marcy said, stepping back.

“No.” And thank God; she wouldn’t wish her misery on anyone.

Making a little more effort to seem less hellish, she’d said, “So, what are you up to?”

“Just stopped back home to borrow money from my old man. I needed a snack before I head back to my place.” She held up an open bag of Cheetos. “You?”

“I’m enlisting.”

“Come again?”

“In the Army. They need a few good men.”

Marcy said, “You’re female.”

She shrugged.

Making an obvious show of looking around the store, Marcy said, “No recruiters here.” She popped a cheese puff in her mouth. “Hey,” she said, chewing thoughtfully, “Why don’t you come hang out with me today? It’s not that far—a little place off the Dixie Highway in Harvey.”

Not the greatest part of Greater Chicago, Blue had recalled. “I’m buying a paper. The recruiters run ads,” she said, needing to demonstrate she wasn’t crazy.

“I think we might have a newspaper laying around.”

Blue considered this. “I could save the fifty cents.”

“Right.” Marcy steered her toward the door. “Maybe put it toward your share of the rent after you move in with us.”

“Yeah?”

“There’s room. You look like you could use a change of scenery. But you’ll have to call me Bat. It’s what I go by now. Cool, right? It’s because I’m mostly a night flier.”

Marcy. Even then she’d been genuine, unfettered; not a candle in the dark, a colorfully lighted Christmas tree. It wasn’t Marcy’s fault that, once free of rules of any kind, even those Blue imposed on herself, Blue had swung way out past caution and reason. Marcy hadn’t pushed her to do anything except let go of the grief she had declined to explain. If Blue chose a chemical method to help rid herself of Mitch, if she jumped right into bed with Will, a guy whose greatest ambition in life was to ride his motorcycle around the entire perimeter of North America (as if that were possible) well, that was her business. They were nineteen. In their live-and-let-live world, being of age was a springboard into full adulthood. They’d seen it in their earlier lives: anything goes.

At the end of that first day, she’d handed Marcy two quarters. “Here you go, Bat. I’ll get you the rest after the bank opens tomorrow.”

Now her net worth was closing in on seven hundred million dollars. That fifty cents, for all that today it represented a single droplet in an
ocean of money, had bought her some really good times. Yes, trouble, too, but before then, she’d had fun. The real thing. Craziness and laughter and camaraderie, the intoxicating pleasures of unabashed, uncomplicated sex. It had not been all bad. Now? Seven hundred million was an uncountable number, a long row of zeros that added up to precisely nothing.

Peep stood, arched his back, then jumped down and trotted to the kitchen. At the base of the refrigerator he sat down and mewed once, a request.

She looked at her watch: 6:40. “You’re early—but I’m about to be late. Here,” she set out his food and poured a splash of milk into a saucer for him. “No Froot Loops leftovers tonight, I’m afraid.”

Watching him lap up the little bit of milk, she thought how lovely it must be to live this cat’s life. Some would say that she was just as spoiled, what with her staff, her housekeepers, her business manager—and Marcy, God love her—plus all the freebies people sent in hopes she might give them the slightest public mention. If the public thought her life an endless series of spa visits and shopping, interrupted for a brief hour to do her TV broadcast, they were hugely mistaken. Excepting her visit to the Simonton Street gallery, she hadn’t been shopping since one mad-dash afternoon just before Christmas. As for spas, the closest she’d been to visiting any lately was when perusing them late at night on the Internet. Actually going was a low priority, a pleasant daydream she could squeeze in between meetings and galas and other mandatory social events.

Now, though, she had Key West to dream of. Who needed a spa visit when they had such a house to return to between engagements?

“You’re going to like it at our new place,” she told Peep. “Good sunlight, and lizards to chase!—or watch.” She stroked his head, noting his graying whiskers. What a comfort he was; she really ought to give him more attention. A bit of milk was a poor substitute for hours together on the couch. There must be a good bookstore in Key West; when she got back there, she’d stock up for the summer. Peep would see so much of her he’d think he’d gotten a new keeper.

“What do you think? We’ll drink out of coconut shells, and our lemons—make that
my
lemons, or what a sourpuss you’d be, ha—get it? Sour puss?”

Peep looked at her, licking milk away from his mouth.

“My
lemons will come straight off the tree.” Not out of a top-end stainless steel refrigerator like this one. She didn’t even know the name of the person—the woman? the man?—who shopped for her lemons, who arranged them so neatly in a hand-glazed bowl, which some other nameless, genderless person had purchased.

Suppose that tonight she and Mitch did pick up where they’d left off so long ago. Suppose they could spend the upcoming summer together, lazing in lounge chairs on her patio, reading aloud from whatever book of stories he loved these days. She’d bet a good chunk of what was in her bank accounts that he’d be willing—maybe even happy, to watch
Pride and Prejudice
with her. And they could invite Daniel and Lynn to dinner once a week, catch up on the latest Key West residents’ dramas—maybe Daniel would be able to manage his boat again by then, and they’d do sunset cruises around the mangrove islands.

“I can think of worse things,” she said.

itch waited in the lobby holding a bouquet. “Flowers!” Blue said. “How thoughtful of you, thanks.” She held them to her nose. “They smell heavenly.”

“They do. You can’t imagine what I went through to get them,” he said.

“Oh?”

He shook his head and didn’t elaborate.

As they drove to their destination, a North Shore estate that, when she was small, she’d thought was a castle, Mitch talked about how well the
Lions
pilot had turned out. She listened and was pleased, but was also distracted, by a familiar musky aroma that wasn’t the flowers, and wasn’t her hair spray. She was just about to ask him to identify it when it struck her how she knew it: it was Julian’s scent.

Never mind.

She left the bouquet behind in the car when they stepped out onto the pale cobblestone drive, then climbed wide stone steps between carved stone balustrades, entering the house through a doorway that could accommodate a small yacht. The hosts’ house was as she’d described to Mitch, the huge marble foyer filled with the sounds of conversation and orchestral dance music. A twelve-foot-wide crystal chandelier dappled light down onto everyone beneath it. Mitch shook his head and said, “People live like this?”

“Probably they use three rooms at the end of one wing,” Blue said, nodding to anyone who caught her eye as they made their way inside.

By sight she knew few of the people they encountered, though when introduced their names were all familiar.
Real estate
, she briefed Mitch, sotto voce.
Hotels.
In contrast, everyone recognized her.
Blue! So lovely to see you. Loved your Jimmy Buffett interview!
She always used this contrast to her advantage; in conversation, it was safe to assume that the people she spoke with believed they knew all about her, so she made the discussion all about them.
Are you a Buffett fan? Which song is your favorite? I’ll be sure to tell him.
They felt flattered and important, and she revealed nothing—except tonight, when she revealed a man in her life, “my old friend, Dr. Mitch Forrester.”

“You must feel so conspicuous,” Mitch said when they’d made it into the ballroom.

A waiter stopped and offered champagne. They each took a glass, and Blue said, “No, but I’ll bet you do.”

“Lord yes. How can you not?”

“I’m used to it,” she said. This satisfied him. The real answer was more complicated. She didn’t feel conspicuous in such a crowd because she understood that when people saw her, they almost never saw
her.
She was a sort of tourist attraction that everyone wanted to stand by and have their picture taken with, hardly taking notice of the attraction itself. If this made her feel a little empty sometimes, devalued, it also made her feel safe.

Mitch seemed to be holding his own nicely with this crowd so far,
which was promising. As past companions had noted, it wasn’t easy to be
Blue’s sidekick.
Four times Mitch was asked, “And what do you do?” as though he might confess to being her tennis instructor. He had returned the volleys with aplomb: “I’m an English professor and Hemingway scholar. You must have missed seeing me on the show.”

She said, “How are your dancing skills these days?”

“Passable, I’d guess, though it’s been a while. Would you like to dance?”

“Let’s finish our champagne first. If I’m not mistaken, it’s Louis Roederer,
Cristal.”

“It’s wonderful—and expensive, no doubt.”

“They could fund a dozen college scholarships with what they’ve spent on it tonight.”

“But if it gets guests to part with their money for the museum …”

“We would anyway. Most of us already have. In fact, most of us were unaware of how much we gave until someone briefed us on it, in some cases right before we got here.” She hadn’t known until this morning. A half-million.

“So this is mostly an excuse to have a party,” Mitch said.

No museum fund-raising gala was complete without a bevy of society photographers, all hand-picked for their skill at knowing the hierarchies of who must be photographed, then who should be, then who shouldn’t be, and finally, who should be encouraged to be photographed with whom. The tiny bursts of flashes while she and Mitch moved, better than passably, over the polished dance floor were no surprise. The surprise came several dances—and glasses of champagne—later: Mitch’s kiss, at the end of one beautiful waltz.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for weeks—since you showed up at Mom and Dad’s for dinner.”

“Have you, now?”

“Well, I’m not saying I knew it at the time …”

“How does Julian feel about your being here?”

Mitch sighed. “He’s worried about my mixing business with pleasure.
Whereas Brenda thinks I’m throwing her over just so I can go dancing in billionaires’ homes with America’s Favorite Talk-show Host—all caps; that’s Julian’s expression for you, not mine.”

“Oh?” This was deflating; Julian thought so little of her?