The Crasher (37 page)

“I had a lot to learn. I hope I’ve grown up some.” Ginny felt ashamed. Lee had always been such a wonderful friend and tonight
she’d treated her unforgivably. She leaned over and gave Lee a quick peck on the cheek. “The Literary Lions Dinner… yes, absolutely
right. Quentin Peet’s one of the Lions this year, isn’t he? When is that, I’ve forgotten?”

It was irritating to see Lee flash her catlike grin again. She probably guessed Ginny was playing her game and not so well,
trying to hook some information she didn’t have.

“I’m not sure. Sometime in May, I think. Ask Johnny Peet. He’ll know.” Lee paused, then looked at her anxiously. “Do watch
out, honey chile, won’t you? I hear he bites.”

“I don’t believe it,” Ginny said.

“You don’t believe what?”

It was early on Sunday evening. Johnny had taken her to watch the New York Rangers play ice hockey against the Florida Panthers
at Madison Square Garden and they’d run through pouring rain to grab a cab to Johnny’s home office, where he wanted to go
over the next week’s agenda.

“People say you bite,” she said.

“What people?” He was rubbing his hair dry. Little wet tendrils stuck to his forehead. He looked like a kid. He looked adorable.

“Oh, journalists, writers I know.”

She was in a reckless, challenging mood, because the afternoon had been so wonderful, because Johnny was undoubtedly becoming
more relaxed with her, teasing her, showing her with his quick grins, playful touches and in a myriad little fond ways that
he liked working with her and having her around.

He came over to the well-worn sofa, where she was sitting with her notebook, ready to take notes.

He began to rub her hair dry vigorously.

“Stop! Don’t! You’re messing up my twenty-dollar haircut,” she squealed.

He stopped as if in shock. “What did you say? Twenty dollars? Is that what you pay for that kooky-looking head of hair?”

He was smiling, but she wasn’t amused. “Thanks for the compliment,” she said sharply. “I happen to like this look.” She wasn’t
about to tell him she kept a list of top salons, mentioned in
Vogue,
where, after hours, trainees cut and styled hair for next to nothing.

“And so do I, Ms. Ginny… and so do I.” He brushed her hair back with a strong hand, holding the back of her head, smiling,
looking at her intently. “Twenty dollars?” he repeated.

She felt weak as he held her, but managed to say, “Why… why are you staring at me like that? Yes, twenty dollars if you must
know.”

“I’m trying to understand something… something I’ve never told you.”

“What?”

His hand was still there. Her body stirred as if to say, don’t go away… bring me closer… closer… can’t you tell how much I
want you?

He didn’t react, just stared, then said, “I think it’s the hair, the way it curls so perfectly around your perfect head and
also the way you always stand so tall, such perfect posture…”

She groaned inwardly. Sexually aroused as she was, she found herself thinking about another man in her life; remembering to
stand tall, to think about her posture, was so inextricably linked with Alex.

“So?”

Johnny took his hand away abruptly. “Don’t take it as too much of a compliment, but sometimes, although you really look nothing
alike and, thank God,
are
nothing alike, you remind me of Dolores, my ex-wife, who, if my memory’s correct, wouldn’t dream of paying less than a couple
of hundred
bucks for a haircut not so very different from yours. Not different at all, in fact…”

Ginny was stunned. Dolores the Beautiful?

“That’s crazy,” she said. “I’ve seen her and I am going to take it as a compliment because she’s probably one of the most
beautiful women I’ve ever seen…”

“Outside maybe; inside as ugly as sin.” He was snarling. “When did you see her? You never told me that before.”

“I didn’t think it was important. Oh, I don’t know. Around. At fashion shows, parties…”

“Crash, crash, crash… all part of your modus operandi, right? To see and be seen by the beautiful people.”

The change in his voice, harsh, sarcastic, was so unexpected, tears filled her eyes, even as she snapped, “Now I believe it…
you do bite… you’re horrible…”

He slung a casual arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry, Ginny. I’m really sorry. Perhaps I do bite, perhaps I do, but I don’t
want to bite you, ever…” He pulled her head onto his shoulder. He softly began to talk, his voice, sometimes as he turned,
muffled in her hair.

“I guess I didn’t know how to be a husband. My father certainly didn’t. He was always away, getting the story, beating the
other guys to it.” He sighed, long and heavy. “A hero, not a husband.” He talked about his parents’ empty marriage, and his
own, “doomed from the start.”

Once he started, he didn’t seem to want to stop. “I obviously should never have gotten married. They were both against it…
my father, my mother… looking back, I think that made me even more determined to go ahead, although the writing was on the
wall almost from the beginning. I didn’t want to see. I wanted to believe her, just as I guess my mother always wanted to
believe whatever my father told her…”

Ginny shut her eyes to hide the longing growing for him, the bittersweet longing that was getting her nowhere.

She opened them when he chucked her under the chin. “Why am I telling you all this? Why am I wasting your time and mine?”

As suddenly as that first night in the loft, he turned her face to his and gave her the same sweet, quick kiss on the mouth.
This time no phone rang to stop the magic, but, she supposed, some inner voice warned him to go no farther, because almost
immediately he jumped up with a rueful smile.

“Getting late, Ginny. I don’t know what came over me. We have work to do,
n ‘est-ce pas?”

It was later, during that Sunday evening, that Ginny showed Johnny some sketches she’d made of the facial expressions she
frequently encountered when crashing (disdain, shock, disbelief, snobbishness, fury). He liked them so much, he decided he
might use them in the book.

From then on, when he “booked” her (his word), either to crash something or go in his place, or, best of all, accompany him
to an event, he often asked her to bring a sketchbook along. He still called her “partner” and “colleague” and “super spy,”
but he also called her “skinny swan” and “kooky head” and “twenty-dollar baby” and showed her more and more he hadn’t forgotten
she was a woman. No more kisses, but no signs of being “tied up,” either.

With the jewels stashed in the same unsavory place in her toilet, it all added up to the high-wire tension of her life. There
had been no word from Alex and no news of him, either—not from her mother, from Poppy or, thank God, from the police.

It was hard to say she’d grown used to living each day as if it was her last before captivity, but that was the reality. Thank
God, she was busy, busier than she’d been since her Gosman days, working and reporting for Johnny at least twice a week and
designing and making clothes for the fast-approaching wedding.

Several outfits for Esme’s trousseau had been added to the original order, plus a couple from guests who’d heard from the
bride-to-be about Ginny’s “genius.”

As the big day drew near Ginny set the alarm for six and worked till midnight, sometimes even forgetting for a few
hours the secret she was hiding. At last, everything was finished.

The wedding ceremony in the Transfiguration Church on Mott Street was so moving—and Esme in her silver-pink velvet gown so
serene and joyful—Ginny’s waterproof mascara wasn’t up to coping with her continually moist eyes.

As she cleaned up in the cloakroom of the Silver Palace in Chinatown, she tried to suppress her excitement. Any moment now
Johnny would be arriving. Because of a deadline, he hadn’t been able to make the church ceremony, but of the banquet he’d
said, “I wouldn’t miss it for all the tea in China.”

And as she emerged, there he was, holding out his hands, saying with the voice that had the laugh buried in it, “Hi there,
gorgeous. I haven’t missed any of the fifteen thousand courses, have I?”

What had Lee said about her over dinner that night? That she used to look as if something wonderful was going to happen in
the next twenty minutes? She may have lost the look, but for the first time in weeks, Ginny felt an unexpected surge of optimism,
as if life was about to change for the better. It was irrational; there was no reason for it, except for the unmistakable
look of admiration on Johnny’s face.

The reception was jammed. Taking Johnny’s hand, Ginny pushed through the crowd to introduce him with pride to the other bridesmaids—Sue
Jane, with her boyfriend, Ping, who looked like a Chinese Robb Sinclair with an earring in his left ear, and Carol, who Ginny
had decided at the first fitting was just as predictable and stiff as her brother Ted.

As they stood laughing and drinking, there was a loud clanging of gongs. The guests began to clap and cheer, dividing without
direction into two seas of people to make way for the bride, exotic now in the red and gold brocade, on the arm of an obviously
embarrassed groom.

Behind them came Ted’s parents, ramrod straight, his father in a tuxedo, his mother in an elaborate tiered evening gown with
a small train. Ginny felt disloyal, but she couldn’t
help thinking back to Dallas and a certain Robespier creation, which hadn’t flattered that wearer either. Ginny scolded herself.
Just because she hadn’t been asked to design anything for Ted’s mother. She told herself she was glad she hadn’t been asked.
It was hard for Caucasians to equal Oriental elegance anyway, particularly in the splendor of the Silver Palace, and particularly
when Esme’s parents and the procession of her relatives who followed were now all in full Chinese ceremonial regalia.

“Aren’t they breathtaking?” Ginny sighed.

“You are,” Johnny responded, bending to kiss her hand.

She was cocooned in pleasure as the night of celebration went on. She sat next to Johnny, thighs touching, at a closely packed
table with Sue Jane, Ping, and four more of Esme’s relations.

The restaurant was festooned with balloons and swagged from ceiling to floor with brilliant crimson and silver drapes. On
every table were dark red velvety roses, tied with matching velvet ribbons in elaborate silver cups, arranged by Perri-water,
a new florist-find of Esme’s.

Ginny inhaled the exquisite aroma of the roses, joined in the laughter and the merriment as one delicious course followed
another and Chinese musicians delivered what to Ginny’s ears was a cacophony of strange sounds. Every so often the music stopped
as someone grabbed the microphone to make a speech or a toast—some hilarious, others just hokey—but who cared, everyone was
having a wonderful time.

When a downtown group Esme had told Ginny was “really hot” began to play, Johnny pulled her onto the dance floor to dance
cheek to cheek, body-to-body close. She wished she could hold the moment forever; she had never been happier.

There was only one jarring note. “Excuse me,” said a familiar voice. Oz’s weird, pale face appeared over Johnny’s shoulder.
What on earth was he doing here? Then she remembered. Way back she’d met Oz through Esme’s introduction.

What nerve, he was trying to cut in. She couldn’t believe it

“No, Oz,” she said angrily, trying to hold on to Johnny.

To her added fury, Johnny stepped back with a graceful little bow, laughing as he said, “Come on, Ginny. I can’t have you
all to myself all the time.”

“Loosen up, Ginny,” said Oz as he tried to steer her around the floor. “Why are you treating me like some ogre? Why do you
never return my calls? Who exactly do you think you are anyway? Do you know how successful I am now? Loosen up, for God’s
sake. After all I did for you!”

She was as stiff as a board. She knew it and she wanted Oz to know this was the way she would always be with him. She prayed
the music would stop and to her relief it did, almost immediately. She rushed away, leaving the photographer red-faced, in
the middle of the floor.

“Who’s that? An old boyfriend? He looks as if he could kill you,” said Johnny, still amused. “Can’t say I blame him. You were
pretty rough.”

In the excitement of the cake cutting, with more speeches and toasts, she soon forgot about Oz; and then came the precious
moment when Esme looked around for her and tossed the wedding bouquet almost into her lap.

“You look like a little girl,” Johnny said, as she buried her nose in the sweet-smelling flowers. He was smiling at her in
the way he’d smiled the first night he took her home from the Pierre, the way he’d smiled as he’d studied her face so intently
on West Seventy-seventh Street.

The bridal pair left the restaurant in a hailstorm of rice, and as the party wound down, Ginny knew she’d drunk too much rice
wine, too much Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, too much champagne, too much of everything. It had to be the reason she told Johnny
as they waited for a cab, “I never, never, never want to go home again.”

He had a solution. “Come back to my place.”

It seemed the most natural thing to do. And it wasn’t to the office part of “his place” either, but up to the tenth floor,
where she saw for the first time the apartment where he lived as opposed to worked.

Darkly paneled, richly draped, paintings softly lit, bookcases overflowing with books, and photographs in silver frames on
polished wood tables, the apartment had an understated grandeur that stopped Ginny in the doorway. “Wow,” she said, trying
to think of the right words. “This looks… rich.”

“What did you expect? That I live in a hovel?”

As she stood unsteadily, examining a small, elegant bronze, Johnny came up behind her and started to kiss the nape of her
neck. “Oh, Johnny.”

If she’d ever thought she was in love with Ricardo, this was the moment of truth. There was no comparison. Her feelings for
Johnny ran deep, too deep. As much as her body was ablaze, she tried to hold back, knowing that while she’d already made a
commitment, Johnny had not.