She hung up the phone at the precise moment Victor Cressy walked in the front door.
“Hi,” he said casually, placing the glasses on her desk and promptly uncorking the champagne.
“Oh,” she said loudly as the cork shot across the room, and then tried to sound as casual as she could. “Good shot.” He smiled, his crystal-clear blue eyes fastening on hers, themselves blue though several shades darker. He poured the champagne, which Donna couldn’t help but notice was Dom Perignon, and then slowly put one glass in her hand before picking up his own. They clicked glasses together while Donna fought the sudden fear her stomach might start to rumble. It was almost lunch time and she hadn’t eaten breakfast.
“To us,” he said, his eyes laughing. Is he making fun of me? she wondered.
Donna felt the desperate need to go to the bathroom.
“I’m Victor Cressy,” he said, still smiling, this time with his whole face.
“I remember,” she said.
“I’m flattered.” He took a long sip of his champagne. Donna followed his lead.
He should only know how well I remember, she thought, thinking back quickly to their brief introduction of the night before.
“Donna, this is Victor Cressy, probably the best insurance salesman in the northern hemisphere—” And then he was gone. Dangled before her eyes like so much bait to a
starving fish and then quickly pulled away again, led back into the chaos of Florida pinks, greens and baby blues—lost in the maelstrom of elderly bodies, drinks in one hand, newly signed documents of ownership (Mayflower Condominiums—An Original Concept—For Original Americans) in the other.
That was it, she realized with a start. An entire night of fantasies carved from a few brief words. Though she had tried as hard—and as subtly—as she could, to position herself as close to him as possible at various times throughout the evening, they had never exchanged another word. He never approached her, never tried to enhance
his
position with regard to hers and after several furtive glances at what she decided was an exquisite profile on an extraordinary face, she had lost sight of him altogether. When she had finally worked up enough courage to question someone as to his whereabouts, she was told he had left the party.
And now here he was. Just the way her past evening’s fantasies had promised.
She watched his mouth as he spoke, his tongue now and then appearing with almost snakelike precision to remove any excess of champagne from his decidedly sensual lips, the upper lip being somewhat fuller than its bottom counterpart, giving him the pouty look of a spoiled rich graduate of an all-boys prep school. It was a look she found almost painfully attractive though she couldn’t discern why—arrogance and insolence had never been high on her list of commendable attributes. His voice was forceful but not forbidding—a man who obviously was in good command of his own life, who seemed to know what he wanted. He had an easy control of his words, made commendable small talk, steering the conversation effortlessly
to the party, his immediately positive impression of her when he spotted her amid the fuchsia prints and blue hair, her own naturally brown hair resting just above the understated lilac of her dress. Understated lilac, his term.
“Always this busy?” he asked. She smiled, realizing she had barely said two words since his arrival, preferring to watch him while he talked instead. “Can you take the rest of the day off?” he asked suddenly. She looked around the office, and promptly rose to her feet. That’s right, Donna, she heard a voice say. Play hard to get.
Immediately, he stood up beside her. “We better hurry then.”
She followed his fast pace to the door. “Why are we hurrying?” My God, she speaks!
“I thought we’d go somewhere special for dinner.”
“It’s not even noon,” she said, fumbling with the keys to lock the office up for the weekend. She hadn’t left a note or anything, what if someone came by? There was nobody left to cover.
“We’ll have lunch on the plane.”
“Plane?”
“The restaurant I’m taking you to for dinner”—he paused, not without a touch of smugness, opening the door of his light blue Cadillac Seville, and waiting while she maneuvered herself inside—“is in New York.”
“Is this what you call being swept off your feet?” she asked as they clicked yet two more glasses of champagne together and continued to stare into each other’s blue eyes.
“I’m just sorry dinner has to be so early. I’d forgotten that return flights like to land well before midnight.”
“Oh, this is wonderful,” she assured him quickly. “Something very civilized about eating before six
P.M.
” They laughed. “I don’t really believe I’m here.” She laughed again. Why was she so nervous? He obviously had made no hotel reservations; they weren’t planning on spending the night. She had nothing to worry about except possibly the fact that he had made no hotel reservations and they obviously weren’t planning on spending the night. Why weren’t they? Had he decided on the drive to the airport that he really didn’t find her as attractive as he had originally? No, that was impossible. He wouldn’t have ordered another bottle of Dom Perignon if he didn’t find her attractive.
“So, you don’t make a habit of this sort of thing?” she ventured, moving her hand around in a vague sort of semicircle, hoping he would understand what she meant by “this sort of thing.”
“Only for special people,” he said, telling her in four short words that she was special, but then so had others been. Just enough of a tease.
“Kind of an expensive way to make an impression, isn’t it?”
He laughed. “Well, I guess that depends on your philosophy.” He paused, then continued. “You see, some people want to leave a million dollars behind when they die. I want to die
owing
a million dollars.”
She laughed. “I like your philosophy the best.” She lowered her eyes.
“What are you staring at?” he asked suddenly.
“Your hands,” she said, surprised at her answer.
“Why?” There was just a hint of a laugh in his voice.
“Because my mother always told me to look at a man’s hands.”
“Why?” he repeated.
“Because she always said that that’s what a man makes love with.” Goddamn, she thought. Why had she said that?
His face broke into a grin. “Your mother sounds like an interesting woman. I’d like to meet her.”
Donna smiled at the sudden image of her mother’s beautiful face in front of her. “She’s dead,” she said quietly. “Cancer.”
He reached across the table and took hold of both her hands. “Tell me about her.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “Just seems like kind of heavy stuff for a first date. That’s all.”
“I think I’ve just been insulted,” he said, though he made no move to withdraw his hands and his face was still smiling.
“Oh no, no. Really. I didn’t mean—it’s just that I usually end up in tears when I talk about her, even though it’s almost ten years ago. I know it’s silly—”
“I don’t think it’s silly. I won’t mind if you cry.”
Donna paused. Her mother was smiling at her.
You’d like this man, Mom, she thought.
“She was so lovely,” she began. “She really was this incredible woman. I could talk to her about anything. I can’t tell you how much I miss her.” She stared hard into his eyes, trying to block out the new image that had suddenly interfered with the old, pushed the smiling healthy lady aside and replaced her with a figure less than half her former size, her skin translucent and crawling with minute malignant monsters, changing the smile in her eyes to
eyes that saw only pain. “I’d give anything to be able to talk to her again.”
“What would you say to her?”
She looked up at the ceiling, trying to keep the tears she felt forming from falling. “I don’t know.” She laughed suddenly, feeling the tears recede, seeing only Victor in front of her again. “I’d probably just ask her what to do.”
“About what?”
“About everything.” They both laughed. “I don’t know, I just always felt that if I couldn’t decide something for myself, if I didn’t know what was the right thing to do, or even what I should wear one day, silly things like that, that she’d always be around to tell me what I needed to hear. Sometimes it’s just really nice having someone make your decisions for you. Am I making any sense?”
“Is that why you let me order dinner for you? And yes, you’re making perfect sense.”
She looked around the very dim restaurant. Her eyes were only now beginning to make out the small tables and chairs clustered about the small room. She noticed that even at this hour most of the tables were full. “I just thought that you would probably know what item on the menu was best,” she said smiling, thinking that any man who would fly for several hours and spend hundreds of dollars only to fly back that same evening, had to have a dish he especially liked. “Why did you specify that the lobster had to be boiled exactly seven and a half minutes?”
“Something I learned from an old college professor. Don’t ask me how it came up, but I still have this clear picture of him standing behind his podium exclaiming, ‘Never
boil a lobster for a period any shorter or longer than precisely seven and a half minutes.’”
“Why is that?”
Victor smiled. “Beats the shit out of me.”
It was the first time Donna had heard him swear and it caught her off guard. She laughed long and loud.
“It was a math course of some sort,” he continued. “He must have been talking about precision, I suppose. Who knows? It’s a long time ago. About the only thing I remember about his class actually—except for the seven and a half minutes—is that every time we had a test or an exam, I used to intermingle verses of haiku poetry—my own—amidst the cut and dryness of the arithmetic.”
Donna was surprised. “Haiku poetry?”
“Yes, you know. The Japanese style verse that’s only seventeen syllables long. The key is to create an entire image, produce something of vivid clarity, a thought painting a picture, inside a very rigid structure.”
“Why did you do that?”
He thought, smiling. “I’m not sure. Maybe to show the old guy that poetry could be every bit as precise as mathematics. I don’t know. Maybe for my own recreation.” He paused. “Why are you smiling?”
“It’s just so nice to have a real conversation with someone,” she said sincerely. “Most guys I’ve gone out with lately don’t really talk about anything, let alone haiku poetry. They just always seem to be steering the conversation over to sex.” She stopped, realizing that in the last several minutes, she had done precisely that. Twice.
“Are you from New York originally?” she asked.
“Connecticut.”
“Your family still there?”
“My father died of a heart attack when I was five.”
“So did mine—but I was twenty-three. Your mother?”
“Dead.”
“Two orphans,” she said, smiling sadly. “I have a sister. Joan. She’s at Radcliffe.”
“Only child,” he responded.
Their lobster arrived, overspilling the plate. They ate in long silences punctuated by short, staccato bursts of conversation and much laughter.
She: “Do you live right in Palm Beach?”
He: “I have a house in Lantana. You?”
She: “An apartment in West Palm.”
More silence. More champagne.
She: “How come you have a house?” Breathholding pause. “You’re not married, are you?” Of course, that was it. He was married! That was why he had to be back that night. Goddamn! Of course! He was married.
He: “No, I’m not married.”
She: “Are you sure?”
He: “Very.”
More silence. Dessert. Coffee. Check please.
He: “Why do you pick at your cuticles?”
She: “Nerves.”
He: “What are you nervous about?”
She: “Life.”
Much laughter. Much hugging on the way to the airport. Sleeping—half sleeping on each other’s shoulders on the plane ride home. Crawling into his Seville at the West Palm Beach airport. Driving quickly to the ocean. Parking the car and listening to the roar of the waves. Was any of
this real? Had any of it actually happened? She looked into his beautiful face. I could love this man, she realized with some sense of panic. I could really love this man.
She hadn’t necked in a parked car in years, more years than she could remember. Donna tried to picture who the boy had been, her mind careening back through at least ten casual lovers, rolling over on assorted beds back through time, pausing long enough to single out one or two who had approached love, perhaps overtaking it only to see it slide backward, rolling slowly into a steady decline like Sisyphus’ mythical rock until it hit bottom. Rock bottom.
This time was nothing like those.
Victor’s lips were gentle, not urgent. His kisses were the kisses of a romantic, not a horny teenager. His mouth was open but not devouring, knowing exactly when and how, and how much. Her mother had been right—he had good hands.
“Why are you stopping?” she heard a voice ask. Her voice. “Who said that?” she laughed, trying to joke, surprised at her own eagerness, her own willingness not to be coy.
“As much as I love the ocean,” he said quietly, his head lowered against hers, his breath gently whisking against her chin, “I’ve never been one for making love in the front seat of a car—or the back seat, for that matter.”
The revelation came as no surprise. She fought the urge to ask, “Your place or mine?” and remained quiet until he resumed speaking several seconds later.
“Besides,” he continued, “I don’t like starting anything I can’t finish.”
“Why can’t you finish?” she asked, again surprised by the urgency in her voice and the disappointment she heard creeping in. They both laughed.
“Because I have to be up very early in the morning,” he answered, taking her hands and intermingling their fingers.
“Going somewhere?” she asked, hearing a loud voice inside her saying, “I knew it was too good to be true; he’s leaving to join the Peace Corps in darkest Africa first thing in the morning!” The voice was so loud and insistent she almost didn’t hear what he actually said in the following instant. “You’re going where?” she shouted, Africa quickly becoming the preferred place to be, as she permitted his voice to penetrate the one now screaming inside her.