Trading Up (66 page)

“I don’t know,” she called back. “Chinese?”

“We had that last night.”

“Indian?”

“I think I feel like a steak,” he said. “We’ll order from room service.” In truth, he hardly felt hungry. But good midwestern homilies reminded him that he had to eat to keep his strength up.

He removed his suit and pulled on a cashmere crewneck sweater and a pair of jeans. There was no point, he thought, in even talking about this latest incident.

Nothing could be done; it was too late.

He went into the living room and sat down on the couch. In a minute, Janey joined him. He switched on the TV. The news was on. There was a water-main break in the Bronx; a fire in the basement of a restaurant in Chinatown. A commercial for Prozac came on, followed by a spot for
Entertainment Tonight.
“Who will take home the golden statue?” the blond announcer asked cheerily, as if there were nothing more pressing in the world to think about. “Oscar preview tonight . . .” Janey turned to him. “Are you going to the Oscars this year?” she asked.

He shook his head, not taking his eyes off the television. “Victor Matrick doesn’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Oh,” she said blandly.

The exchange brought the lunch with Victor Matrick to the foremost part of his mind. It wasn’t that he ever forgot any element of the debacle; it was just that the pieces kept shifting, like apples floating in a bucket, one thought momentarily submerged while another one took its place.

He stood up and went into the tiny kitchen, and began fixing himself a vodka.

“Do you want anything?” he asked politely.

“Are you having a vodka?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Then I’ll have one, too.”

So this was how their lives were to be now, he thought, taking another glass out of the cabinet and filling it with ice. They were going to be like two old people who tiptoed around each other and drank steadily to dull the pain.

Except, he thought, pouring vodka into her glass, now he had to make a decision.

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The task that Victor had demanded of him was completely unfair, he thought angrily. It was biblical, like Abraham’s being asked to sacrifice his son, or King Solomon, who offered to cut a child in half to solve an argument. Until today he had somehow assumed that he would be allowed to skate along unsteadily, in the assumption that eventually, everything would return to normal. And he had done his best to
behave
normally, he thought, his deep irritation growing. He was at his desk every day at nine, just as he had always been—he took meetings and went to lunches and supervised programming. But despite his efforts, everything was
not
the same, and everybody knew it. There were whispers in the hallway, and half the time, when some writer was pitching an idea or his secretary was telling him about her children or Gordon was banging on about his sexual exploits, his mind would begin wandering, and he would start going over every element of the disaster, thinking that if only she’d told him, if only she hadn’t been so cheap, if only she hadn’t been so easily taken in . . . and then his mind would come back to that unan-swerable question:
Why?

And then he would look up, and everyone would be staring at him.

And he would panic, wondering what he’d missed.

He went back into the living room and handed her her drink. She took it with a terse, “Thanks,” not bothering to take her eyes off the television.

He looked at her. She was wearing the same designer jeans and sweatshirt—

vixen it said across the front, in fuzzy, dirty, light blue letters—that she’d been wearing practically every day since she’d come home from France. As if sensing his eye upon her, she shifted on the couch and pulled up the waistband of her jeans.

She bathed regularly, he knew that (all too well), but the jeans and sweatshirt were misshapen and appeared distinctly unclean, and he was reminded of that George Bernard Shaw line: “Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house for three days?” And in his rising fury, he bitterly thought,
No, who ever does?
and even though they still slept in the same bed every night, he couldn’t bear the thought of making love to her. Every time he contemplated it, he saw the hideous face of Comstock Dibble—with that sparse red hair and the gap between his teeth—laughing at him.

He sat down on the couch. “Why did you do it?” he asked.

“Do what?” she said, not bothering to look at him.

He took another sip of vodka. “Go out today.”

“Oh,” she said coldly. “Wendy Piccolo told me to.”

“What?” he said, immediately not believing her.

She turned to him. In a tone of voice that implied that somewhere along the line she’d explained all of this to him before, she said, “I was talking to Wendy Piccolo. She told me that I had to go out sooner or later, and I agreed.” 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:25 PM Page 353

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He put his glass down on the coffee table. His eyes narrowed in confusion. “I don’t understand. When did you see Wendy Piccolo?”

“I didn’t
see
her,” Janey said patiently, as if she were dealing with a small child.

“I
spoke
to her on the
phone
.”

“She called you,” Selden said incredulously.

“ Yes,”
Janey said. “She
did
. She calls me every day and we talk.”

“So you and Wendy are friends.”

“That’s right,” Janey said, sipping her vodka. And then she turned back to him accusingly. “Don’t act so surprised, Selden. What do you think? That I’m so awful I can’t have friends anymore?”

“I’m just surprised, that’s all,” Selden said meekly. That was what he always had to do with her now, he had to push himself down and make himself meek in order not to . . .

“Well, don’t be,” she said. She stood up as if she were about to get something from the kitchen, and the moment might have passed if she hadn’t said, “Anyway, I didn’t think you’d mind. Especially since she’s
such
a good friend of yours . . .” He looked at her blank, slightly truculent expression, and with a sickening insight, he wondered:
Would she
ever
begin to understand what she had done?
And then his anger broke free; it tore out of him like a wild animal. Until that moment, he’d been able to keep his anger tamped down; he had not once lost his temper in front of her, he hadn’t screamed at her or shaken her or laid a finger on her (although it had crossed his mind, once or twice), and he hadn’t cried in front of her, although he’d longed to do
that,
too. But now he could no longer control himself.

“You leave her alone!” he shouted.

She took a step back from him—more out of surprise, he thought, than fear, and suddenly, it all came boiling to the surface.

“Don’t you see how people feel about you now?” he screamed. “You’re like a virus . . . a deadly evil virus that harms everyone you come into contact with. You’ve practically ruined my career . . . made me the laughingstock of the entire industry . . . And look what you’ve done to poor Craig Edgers. Your stupid scheme prevented him from selling his book to Comstock Dibble, and now Dibble’s out of the picture and you’ve probably only cost Craig what could be millions of dollars.” He was red in the face and his voice was nearly hoarse as he continued, “And does Craig deserve that? The poor guy only worked his
entire life
to get where he is today, and with one stroke of your evil wand you destroy all his chances. So if you think I’m going to let you get to Wendy . . .”

And through it all, she just stood there, taking it. He couldn’t believe it. She didn’t fight back, she didn’t defend herself—she just let him spew on and on, almost as if she enjoyed seeing the spectacle of him losing control . . .

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And then she turned on her heel and walked out of the room.

He knew exactly what would happen next. She would go into the bathroom and turn on the taps full blast, and then, knowing that he was frightened and contrite on the other side of the door, she would ignore him, bathing herself like a precious piece of china, and when she came out, she would act as if nothing had happened at all . . .

He would wait, he thought, fuming. He would just wait . . .

After about ten minutes, he heard the water stop, and sneaking into the bedroom and putting his ear to the bathroom door, he heard the splashing sound of her entering the water. “Janey!” he said firmly. “This is not something you can just wash away. Do you understand? It can’t be cleaned with your fancy perfumed soap bubbles . . .”

There was no response.

With a sigh, he went back into the living room.

As usual, his anger was short-lived and he was suddenly exhausted. He simply didn’t have the constitution for rage. Although he could be tough in business, Victor Matrick was right: He couldn’t handle a woman like Janey Wilcox, he thought, sinking onto the couch. He put his head in his hands. Despite everything that had happened, he had remained in love with her, he thought. And he clung to the idea that he loved her still. It would be impossible for him not to do so, for if he found that he didn’t love her, he would have to shine that same cold bright light on every aspect of his life, and then he might discover it was
all
a sham . . .

Men can be notoriously simple in matters of the heart, and Selden Rose, unfortunately, was one of those men. He had fallen in love with Janey Wilcox the moment she’d sat down next to him at Mimi’s party, and in the single-minded way of men, he loved her simply because she
was
—because she
existed
—and because he could never quite possess her. He hadn’t really wanted much from her—only that she love him a little and give way to his wishes now and then and stand by him. And with the irrational blindness of a man misguided by what he is convinced
is
love, he still hoped that she loved him, too. For he honestly believed that if she did, despite the odds against them, they would manage to get through this together. When a man falls in love like this, a woman may abuse him terribly, and while he might eventually hate her or call her crazy, it’s nearly impossible to convince him that this isn’t true love.

But women are more complicated when it comes to their affections: They rarely love simply for what is—but for what might be, and more importantly, for how it might affect them. This is why a woman will endure a great deal of abuse in love—as long as she believes there is something to be gained. But when a woman sees that a man can no longer help her, when his actions become detrimental to her lifestyle, she can fall out of love as suddenly and as firmly as an apple falling from a 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:25 PM Page 355

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tree. There is no putting the apple back on the tree, just as there is no going back in love. Her heart closes against the man as resolutely as if he had never existed. And so, as Janey Wilcox sat in the bath, coldly turning her relationship with Selden Rose over and over again in her mind, she saw that it was finished.

Selden was of no use to her anymore. His outburst had told her everything she needed to hear. He was a wimp and a coward—if he’d had any guts, he would have accompanied her to Dingo’s long ago, for no one would have dared to tell the CEO

of MovieTime that
he
wasn’t welcome back. But Selden couldn’t even do that much for her: He had not made an effort to defend her and he wouldn’t in the future; and he hadn’t even believed in her innocence. The tiny bit of affection she had felt for him left her body like water running down a drain.

She didn’t even feel sad, she thought wearily. She would never cry again for any man—not for the Selden Roses of the world, and not even for the Zizis. Now, she thought, it was only a matter of waiting. Despite everything that had happened, she still had her beauty. And she knew as long as she had her beauty, something interesting could still occur . . . and at the very least, there would always be some man who would pursue her . . .

But next time she would be more careful. And angrily sweeping the bubbles away from her body, she was once again reminded of George Paxton. If only, if
only,
she thought furiously. George had tried to ruin her, but she wasn’t finished yet . . .

He must be made to see that he owed her . . . and somehow, she would make him
pay
. . .

Back in the living room, Selden sat woodenly on the couch, thinking about what he was going to do about his relationship with Janey. As he realized once again that he was at a loss, his eye fell on the pile of newspapers Janey had stacked in the corner. And as Janey sat scheming in the bath while Selden sat ruminating on the couch, they both came to the same bitter conclusion: The only person who had come out well in this whole debacle was George Paxton.

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s ev e n t e e n

selden r ose sat in his office, staring at the small Tiffany clock on his desk.

A minute passed, and 10:03 turned into 10:04.

He felt like Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz,
locked in the castle of the Wicked Witch, staring at the hourglass as grains of sand rushed to the bottom.

He had exactly six hours, fifty-five minutes, and forty-three seconds to live.

Two weeks had passed. Two weeks exactly from that fateful day when he’d had lunch with Victor Matrick. His time was nearly up; in a few hours it would be over.

And he still hadn’t made a decision.

That morning, he had woken up and, for several minutes, had stared at his sleeping wife, willing himself to memorize her face. Her skin was smooth, without a line, the color of ivory. There was a blush of pink across her cheeks, and her lips were the shade of ripening cherries. He’d never understood why she always wore that pinkish red lipstick when her own natural lip color was so beautiful—but then, there were so many things that he hadn’t understood about her. Her eyes were closed tightly, as if she didn’t want to wake up, and her hands were loosely clenched in childish fists beneath her chin.