Passion's Promise

“It’s really unbelievable. I still don’t understand … and Kezia … good God, girl, you must have known this would happen to him. That story you told me about his being sick … this was what you meant, wasn’t it?” She nodded silently at the receiver and his voice came back sharper. “Wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded so small, so broken and hurt.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“How could I?” There was a long moment of silence when they both knew the truth.

“I still don’t understand how you could involve yourself.

You said in your own article about him that there was a possibility of this. How …”

“Oh shut up, damn you, Edward, I did. That’s all, I did. And stop clucking like a bloody mother hen about it. I did, and I got hurt, we both got hurt, and believe me, he’s hurting one hell of a lot more sitting in jail right now.” There was deadly silence and Edward’s voice came back with a measured venom that was totally foreign to him … except for once before.

“Mr. Johns is used to jail, Kezia.” She wanted to hang up on Edward then, but she didn’t quite dare. Severing the connection would sever something more, something deeper, and she still needed that tie, maybe only a little bit, but she needed it. Edward was all she had in a way, except Luke.

“Do you have anything else to say?” Her voice was almost as vicious as his had been a moment before. She was willing to kick at him, but not dismiss him entirely.

“Yes. Come home. Immediately.”

“I won’t. Anything else?”

“I don’t know what it will take to bring you to your senses, Kezia, but I suggest you make an effort to become rational as quickly as possible. You may regret this for a lifetime.”

“I will, but not for the reasons you think, Edward.”

“You have no idea how something like this can jeopardize …” His voice trailed off unhappily. For a moment he hadn’t been speaking to Kezia, but to the ghost of her mother, and they both knew it. Now Kezia was certain. Now she knew why he had told her about her mother and the tutor. Now she knew it all.

“Jeopardize what? My ‘position’? My ‘consequence,’ as Aunt Hil would say? Jeopardize my chances of finding a husband? You think I give a damn about all that now? I care about Luke, Edward. I care about Lucas Johns. I love him!” She was shouting again.

Three thousand miles away, silent tears were sliding down Edward’s face. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.”

It was the voice of her attorney, her trustee, her guardian. Not her friend. Something had finally snapped. The gap between them was broadening to a frightening degree, for both of them.

“I will.” They exchanged no goodbye and Edward severed the connection. Kezia sat for a long moment holding the dead phone in her hands, while Alejandro watched her.

Tears of farewell slid down her cheeks. That had been two in two days. In one way or another, she had lost the only two men she had ever loved, since her father. Three lost men in a lifetime. She knew that somehow she had just lost Edward. She had betrayed him. What he had sought most to prevent had finally come.

Edward, sitting in his office, knew it too. He walked solemnly to the door, locked it carefully, walked back to his desk, and flicked the switch on his intercom, informing his secretary in the driest of tones that he did not want to be disturbed until further notice. Then, having carefully put aside the mail on his desk, he lay his head down on his arms and broke into heart-rending sobs. He had lost her … lost them both … and to such unworthy men. As he lay there he wondered why the only two women he had ever loved had such a brutal flaw in their characters … the tutor … and now this … this … jailbird … this nobody! He found himself shouting the word, and then, surprised at himself, he stopped crying, lifted his head, sat back in his chair, and stared at his view. There were times when he simply did not understand. No one played by the rules anymore. Not even Kezia, and he had taught her himself. He shook his head slowly, blew his nose twice, and went back to his desk to look over the mail.

Jack Simpson was sympathetic when he called her. But Kezia’s agent didn’t help matters by feeling guilty for introducing her to Luke. She assured him that he’d given her the best gift of her life, but the tears in her voice didn’t console either of them.

Alejandro tried to coax her into a walk, but she wouldn’t move, and sat in the hotel room with the shades drawn, smoking, drinking tea, coffee, water, scotch, scarcely eating, just thinking, her eyes filling with tears, her hands shaking and frail. She was afraid to go out now, afraid of the press and afraid of missing a phone call from Luke.

“Maybe he’ll call.”

“Kezia, he can’t call from county jail. They won’t let him.”

“Maybe they will.”

It was pointless to argue with her; it was almost as though she didn’t hear. And whatever she heard, she didn’t listen to. The only sounds that penetrated were her own inner voices, and the echoes of Luke.

It was midnight before Alejandro finally got her to bed.

“What are you doing?” She could see his outline in the chair in the corner. Her voice sounded strangely old.

“I thought I’d just sit here for a while. Will it keep you from sleeping?” She wanted to reach out in the darkness and touch his hand. She couldn’t find the words again, all she could do was shake her head and cry. It had been an unbearable day, not as tense as the previous day, but more wearing. The endless pressure of pain.

He heard the muffled sobs in the pillow and came closer to sit on the edge of the bed. “Kezia, don’t.” He stroked her hair, her arm, her hand, as her body shook with sobs. She was keening for Luke. “Oh baby … little girl, why did this happen to you?” She was so unprepared, so unused to anything she could not control, and she had seen nothing like this. There were tears in his own eyes again, but she couldn’t see them.

“It didn’t happen to me, Alejandro. It happened to him.” The voice was bitter and tired through her tears.

He stroked her hair for what seemed like hours, and at last she fell asleep. He smoothed the covers around her, and touched her cheek ever so gently. She looked young again as she slept; the anger had left her thin face. The bitterness of what can happen to a life out in the big, bad, ugly world had come as a shock to her. She was learning the hard way, with her heart, and her guts.

He heard her knock gently on his door, and raised his head from the pillow. Sleep had taken a long time to come to him the night before, and now it was only five after six.

“Who is it?”

“Me. Kezia.”

“Is anything wrong?”

“I just thought maybe we should get up.” Today was the day she was going to see Lucas. Alejandro smiled tiredly as he got up to open the door, pulling on his pants as he went.

“Kezia, you’re crazy. Why don’t you go back to sleep for a while?” She was standing there in a blue flannel nightgown and her white satin robe, her feet bare, her hair loose and long and dark. Her eyes looked alive again in the much too pale face.

“I can’t sleep and I’m hungry. Did I wake you?”

“No, no, of course not. I always get up at six. In fact, I’ve been up since four.” He looked at her chidingly and she laughed.

“Okay, okay. I get the message. Is it too early to get you some coffee, and me some tea?”

“Sweetheart, this ain’t the Fairmont. Do you really want to get moving that bad?”

She nodded. “How soon can I see him?”

“I don’t think they let you visit till eleven or twelve.” Christ, they could have had another four hours of sleep. Alejandro silently mourned the lost hours. He was half dead.

“Well, we’re up now. We might as well stay up.”

“Wonderful. That’s just what I wanted to hear. Kezia, if I didn’t love you so much, and if your old man weren’t such a fucking giant, I think right about now I’d kick your ass.”

She smiled delightedly at him. “I love you too.”

He grinned at her, sat down, and lit a cigarette. She already had one in her hand, and he saw that the hand was still shaking, but aside from that and the pale, pointed look of her face, she looked better. Some sparkle had come back to her eyes, a hint of life and the old Kezia. The girl was a fighter for sure.

He vanished into the bathroom and came out with combed hair, brushed teeth, and a clean shirt.

“My, don’t you look pretty.” She was wide awake and full of teasing this morning. It was a far cry from the condition she’d been in the morning before. At least that was a relief.

“You’re just looking for trouble this morning, aren’t you? Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to bug a man before his first cup of coffee?”

“Pobrecito!”

He flipped her the finger and she laughed at him.

“And now that you’ve dragged me out of my warm bed, I suppose you’re going to take two hours to dress.” He waved at the nightgown and robe.

“Make that five minutes.”

She was as good as her word. She was moving very quickly this morning, like a kid waiting for her first trip to the circus, up at dawn, nervous, jumpy, and already tired by breakfast. And they still had five hours to kill before they could see Luke.

Alejandro’s thoughts drifted constantly to Luke now. How was he taking it? Was he all right? What was he thinking? Was he already back to the jailhouse jiving, the cold indifference of lost hopes, or was he still Luke? And if he had already reverted to what he’d once been, how big a shock would it be for Kezia? And how would she adjust to the visit? Alejandro knew it only too well, but he knew that she didn’t. Visiting through a thick glass window, speaking on a static-ridden phone, with Luke wearing a filthy rumpled orange overall that would barely reach to his elbows and knees. He would be living in a cell with half a dozen other men, eating beans and stale bread and an imitation of meat, drinking coffee grinds and shitting with no toilet paper. It was one hell of a place to take Kezia, visiting with pimps and hookers and thieves and distraught mothers and hippie girls who would bring ragged children in their arms or on their backs. There would be noise and stench and agony. How much could she take? How far into this world would Luke lead her? And now it was on his back. It was Alejandro’s baby. Taking care of Kezia.

There was a knock on his door that broke into his thoughts. Kezia again. Dressed and ready to go.

“Boy, you sure look gloomy as hell.”

His thoughts must have showed. “Morning is not my best hour. I can’t say the same for you, though. You look pretty sharp for tea at a truck stop.” She was, as usual, expensively dressed. And there was a brittle cheeriness about her which was beginning to make him nervous. What if she cracked?

“Shouldn’t we call a cab?” They had dispensed with the limousine when they checked into the Ritz, again with an oversized tip to buy the chauffeur’s silence.

“We can walk. I know a place a few blocks away.”

They headed south in the damp air, and crept down the steep hills hand in hand.

“It’s really such a beautiful city, isn’t it, Al? Maybe we can go for a walk later today.”

He hoped not. He hoped Luke would tell her to get her ass on a plane to New York. By the end of the week, Luke would be back in Quentin, and there was no point in her staying for that. She couldn’t visit him until she got clearance anyway, and that could take weeks. And sooner or later, she’d have to go home. Better sooner than later.

The truck stop was full but not crowded, the room was warm, and the jukebox was already alive. The aroma of coffee mingled with the odor of tired men, cigarette smoke and cigars. She was the only woman in the place, but invited only a few uninterested glances.

Alejandro made her order breakfast, and she made a face. He was unyielding. Two fried eggs, bacon, hash browns, and toast.

“For chrissake, Alejandro. I don’t eat that much for dinner.”

“And you look it. Skinny upper-class broad.”

“Now don’t be a snob.” She ate one piece of bacon, and played with the toast. The untouched eggs stared up at her like two jaundiced eyes.

“You’re not eating.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“And you’re smoking too much.”

“Yes, Daddy. Anything else?”

“Up yours, lady. Listen, you’d better take care of yourself, or I’ll squeal to the boss.”

“You’d tell Lucas?”

“If I have to.” A flicker of worry flashed through her eyes.

“Listen, Alejandro, seriously….”

“Yes?” He laughed at the way she was beginning to squirm.

“I’m serious. Don’t upset Luke about anything. If he saw it, that hideous picture in the paper will be bad enough.”

Alejandro nodded, sobered, no longer teasing. They had both seen the small item on page three of the Chronicle that morning: Miss Saint Martin had not yet returned to New York; it was assumed that she was “hiding” somewhere in the city. There was even some speculation about whether she had been hospitalized for nervous collapse. She had certainly looked well on her way to it in the pictures. But they also suggested that if she were in town, she’d probably show up on a visiting day to see Luke, “unless Miss Kezia Saint Martin has pulled strings for private visiting privileges with Mr. Johns.”

“Gee, I never thought of that.”

“Want to give it a try? It may spare you some hassles with the press. It seems pretty clear they’ll be watching for you on visiting days.”

“So let them. I’ll go on the same day as everyone else, and visit just like everyone else does.”

Alejandro nodded. The remaining hours until visiting began to grind by. It seemed like weeks before it was a quarter to twelve.

Chapter 28

“Ready to go?” She nodded and picked up her handbag. “Kezia, you’re amazing.” She looked like an extremely pretty young woman without a care in the world. The makeup helped, but it was the way she carried herself, the mask she had slipped into place.

“Thank you, sir.” She looked tense but beautiful, and totally different from the sobbing woman he’d held in his arms in the City Hall corridor two days before. She was every inch a lady, and every ounce in control.

Only the tremor of her hands gave her away. If it weren’t for that, she would have looked completely unruffled. Alejandro mused as he watched her. So that’s what it was, the hallmark of class, to never show what you feel, as though you’ve never known a moment of sorrow. Just comb your hair, put it back in an elegant little knot, powder your nose, smack a smile on your face, and speak in a low subdued voice. Remember to say “thank you” and “please” and smile at the doorman. The mark of good breeding. Like a show dog, or a well-trained horse.

“Are you coming, Alejandro?” She was in a hurry to leave the hotel.

“Christ, woman, I can hardly keep my mind straight, and you stand there like you’re going to a tea party. How do you do it?”

“Practice. It’s a way of life.”

“It can’t be healthy.”

“It’s not. That’s why half the people I grew up with are now alcoholics. The others live on pills, and in a few years a whole bunch of them will drop dead from heart attacks. Some of them have already managed to die.” A vision of Tiffany flashed through her mind. “You cover up all your life, and one day you explode.”

“What about you?” He was following her down the hotel’s ill-lighted stairs.

“I’m okay. I let off steam with my writing. And I can be myself with Luke … and now you.”

“No one else?”

“Not till now.”

“That’s no way to live.”

“You know, Alejandro,” she said, when she had climbed into the cab, “the trouble with pretending all the time is that eventually you forget who you are, and what you feel. You become the image.”

“How come you didn’t then, babe?” But, as he watched her, he wondered. She was frighteningly cool.

“My writing, I guess. It helps me spill the grief in my guts. Gives me a place where I can be me. The other way, keeping it all in, sooner or later rots your soul.” She thought once more of Tiffany. That’s what had happened to her, and others in the course of the years. Two of Kezia’s friends had committed suicide since college.

“Luke’ll feel better when he sees you, anyway.” And that was worth something. But Alejandro knew why she had worn the well-tailored black coat, the black gabardine slacks, the black suede shoes. Not for Lucas. But to make sure that the next picture in the paper showed her with it all in control. Elegant, uptight, and distinguished. There would be no collapse at the jail.

“You think there’ll be press when we get there?”

“I don’t think so, I know it.”

There was. Kezia and Alejandro got out of the cab at the front entrance of 850 Bryant Street. The Hall of Justice. It was an unimpressive gray building with none of the majesty of City Hall. Outside, a pair of sentries from the Examiner scouted her arrival. Another pair were pacing at the building’s rear entrance. Kezia had a nose for them, like Luke did for police. She clung tightly to Alejandro’s arm while looking as though she barely held it, and quietly pulled her dark glasses over her eyes. There was a faint smile on her face.

She brushed quickly past a voice calling her name, while a second reporter spoke into a pocket-sized transmitter. Now they knew what lay ahead. Alejandro studied her face as a guard searched her handbag, but she looked surprisingly calm. A photographer snapped their picture, and with bowed heads they stepped quickly into an elevator in the salmon marble halls. It struck Kezia, as the doors closed, that the walls were the same color as the gladioli at Italian funerals, and she laughed.

On the sixth floor, Alejandro led her quickly through another door and up a flight of strangely drafty stairs.

“A breeze from the River Styx perhaps?” There was irony and mischief in her voice. He couldn’t get over it. Was this the Kezia he knew?”

She kept the glasses in place and he took her hand as they waited in line. The man in front of them smelled and was drunk, the black woman in front of him was obese and crying. Farther up the line, a few children were wailing and a bunch of hippies leaned back against the wall, laughing. They stood in a long thin line on the stairs, one by one reaching a desk at the top. Identification of visitor, name of inmate, and then a little pink ticket with a window number and a Roman numeral indicating a group. They were in Group II. The first group had already been herded inside. The stairs were crowded but there were no reporters in sight.

They moved inside, to a neon-lit room which boasted another desk, two guards, and three rows of benches. Beyond it they could see a long hall lined with windows, along which ran a shelf with a telephone every few feet, and a stool to sit on as you visited. It was awkward and uncomfortable. Group I was in the midst of its visit, destined to last five minutes or twenty, depending on the mood of the guards. Faces were animated, women giggled and then cried, inmates looked urgent and determined and then let their faces relax at the sight of a threer-year-old son. It was enough to tear your heart out.

Alejandro glanced at Kezia uncomfortably. She looked undaunted. Nothing showed. She smiled at him and lit another cigarette. And then suddenly the photographers swarmed them. Three cameramen and two reporters, even the local rep from Women’s Wear was with them.

Alejandro felt a wave of claustrophobia engulf him. How did she stand it? The other visitors looked astonished and some backed away while others pressed forward to see what was happening. Suddenly, there was chaos, with Kezia in the eye of the storm, dark glasses in place, mouth set, looking stern but unshakably calm.

“Are you under sedation? Have you spoken to Luke Johns since the hearing? Are you…. Did you…. Will you…. Why?” She said nothing, only shaking her head.

“I have no comment to make. Nothing to say.” Alejandro felt useless beside her. She remained in her seat, bowed her head, as though by not seeing them, they might disappear. But then unexpectedly, she stood up and spoke to them in a low, subdued voice.

“I think that’s enough now. I told you, I have nothing to say.” A burst of flashes went off in her face, and two guards came to the rescue. The press would have to wait outside, they were disrupting the visiting. Even the inmates having visits had stopped talking and were watching the group around Kezia and the flashes of light that went off every few seconds.

A guard called her aside to the desk, as the photographers and reporters reluctantly exited. Alejandro joined her, realizing he hadn’t said a word since the onslaught began. He felt lost in the stir. He had never even thought of dealing with something like that, but she handled it well. That surprised him. There had been no trace of panic, but then again it wasn’t new to her either.

The head guard leaned close to them and made a suggestion. A guard could accompany them when they left. They could take an elevator straight into the police garage in the basement, where a cab could be waiting. Alejandro leapt at the idea, and Kezia gratefully agreed. She was even paler than she had been, and the tremor in her hands was now a steady fluttering. The paparazzi attack had taken its toll.

“Do you suppose I might see Mr. Johns in a private room somewhere up here?” She was rapidly abandoning her determination to shun special favors. The curious crowd was becoming almost as oppressive as the press. But her request was denied. Nevertheless, a young guard was assigned to hover nearby.

A voice called out the end of the first visit, and guards ushered Group I into a cage where they could wait for the elevator without disturbing the next group. It was strange to watch the difference in faces as they left—pained, shocked, silent. Their moment of laughter had ended. Women clutched little slips of paper with orders, requests: toothpaste, socks, the name of a lawyer a cellmate had suggested.

“Group Two!” The voice boomed into her thoughts, and Alejandro took her elbow. The pink slip of paper in her hand was crumpled and limp, but they checked it for the number of the window where they’d visit Luke.

There would be other visitors at close range on either side, but the promised guard was standing beside them. It seemed like a very long wait. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen. It felt endless. And then they came. From behind a steel door, a line of dirty wrinkled orange suits, unshaven faces, unwashed teeth, and broad smiles. Luke was fifth on the line. Alejandro took one look at his face and knew he was all right, and then he watched Kezia.

Unconsciously, she got to her feet as she saw him, stood very straight, to her full tiny height, a blistering smile on her face. Her eyes came alive. She looked incredibly beautiful. And she must have looked even better to Luke. Their eyes met and held and she almost danced on the spot. Until finally he got to the phone.

“Why’s the goon standing behind you?”

“Lucas!”

“All right, the guard.” They exchanged a smile.

“To keep away the curious.”

“Trouble?”

“Paparazzi.”

Luke nodded. “Someone said there was a movie star out here, and a lot of reporters took her picture. I take it that’s you?”

She nodded.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” He didn’t question that, and she wouldn’t have confessed to being other than ‘fine,’ if he had. His eyes momentarily sought Alejandro, who nodded and smiled.

“That picture of you in the paper was the shits, Mama.” “Yeah, it was.”

“I freaked out when I saw it. Looked like you were having a stroke.”

“Don’t be a jerk. And I’m all back together now.”

“Did that scoop hit New York?”

She nodded again.

“Jesus. You must have heard about it from Edward.”

“You might say that. But he’ll survive.” She smiled ruefully.

“Will your?”

She nodded as he searched her face.

“What did he say?”

“Nothing unexpected. He was just worried.”

“What a bitch for you to have to go through that on top of everything else.” It was odd the way they were talking, as though they were sitting side by side on the couch.

“Bullshit. Besides, Lucas, we’ve really been lucky till now. It could have happened long before this.”

“Yeah, but we could have gotten press coverage in a lot better circumstances.”

She nodded and smiled, anxious to turn to other subjects. They had so little time.

“Are you all right, darling? Really?”

“Baby, I’m used to this shit I’m A-1 okay.”

“We’re still engaged, you know, Mr. Johns.”

“Mama, I love you.”

“I adore you.” Her whole face glowed as she melted into his eyes.

They discussed legal technicalities, and he gave her a list of calls to make, but basically he had taken care of all his own business before they came out for the hearing. He had known what the chances were, better than she had.

The rest of their visit was spent on banalities, jokes, teasing, sarcastic descriptions of the food, but he looked surprisingly well. The grimness was not unfamiliar to him. He spoke to Alejandro for a few minutes, and then pointed back at Kezia. She removed an earring again and picked up the phone as Luke looked over his shoulder toward a voice she couldn’t hear.

“I think this is going to be it. Visiting is about over.”

“Oh.” A dim light flickered in her eyes. “Luke …”

“Listen, babe, I want you to do something for me. I want you to go back to New York tonight I already fold Alejandro.”

“Lucas, why?”

“What are you going to do here? Hang out till I get to Q, and then wait three weeks till I get clearance for visits, and see me once a week for an hour? Don’t be an ass, babe. I want you at home.” Besides, it was safer. Even though now, she wasn’t really in danger. Now that he was on ice, all the factions warring against him would be appeased. Kezia was of no real interest. Still, he didn’t want to take chances with her.

“Go to New York, and then what Luke?”

“Do what you do, Mama. Write, work, live. You’re not in here, I am. Don’t forget that.”

“Lucas, you … darling, I love you. I want to stay here in San Francisco.”

She was fierce, but he was more so. “You’re going. I’m leaving for Quentin on Friday. And I’ll put the forms in for you to visit. When they get processed, you can come back. Figure about three weeks. I’ll let you know when.”

“Can I write to you?”

“Does a bear shit in the woods?” He grinned at her.

“Lucas!” The tenseness broke into laughter. “You must be all right.”

“I am. So you be fine too. And tell that idiot friend of mine that he’d better take care of you or he’ll be one dead Mexican when I get out.”

“How charming. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.”

And then it was suddenly over. A guard called something on Luke’s side of the glass wall, and another guard told them they’d had it on the visitors’ side. She felt Alejandro’s hand on her arm, and Lucas stood up.

“That’s it, Mama. I’ll write.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.” The entire world seemed to stop with those words. It was as though he placed them one by one in her heart via his eyes. He said them, and held her close with a look, and then gently he put down the phone. Her eyes never left him as he walked back through the door, and this time he looked back, with a jaunty grin and a wave. She answered with a wave and her most valiant smile. And then he was gone.

The guard who had stood behind them now took them aside and showed them the way to the separate elevator. A cab had been called and was already waiting in the garage. There were no reporters in sight. In a moment, they were in the cab and speeding from the building and Luke. They were alone again, Alejandro and Kezia, and now she had nothing to look forward to. The visit was over. And his words rang in her ears, as his image filled her mind’s eye. She wanted to be alone just then, with the dreams of the recent and distant past. The still new aquamarine sparkled on her trembling hand as she lit a cigarette and fought for control.

“He wants us to go back to New York.” She spoke to Alejandro without looking at him and her voice sounded hoarse.

“I know.” He had expected a fight. It surprised him to hear her say it so bluntly. “Are you up to the trip?” It would be best if she was, to just get the hell out and let her pick up the pieces at home, and not at the Ritz.

“I’m fine. I think there’s a plane at four. Let’s catch it.”

“We’ll have to run like the devil.” He looked at his watch, and she discreetly blew her nose.

“I think we can make it.” Her voice kept him a thousand miles away, and it was the last time they spoke until they boarded the plane.

Chapter 29

The voice on the phone had grown familiar and dear.

“I’m hungry. Any chance that you’ll feed me?” It was Alejandro. They had been back in New York for a week. A week of constant calls from him, unexpected visits, small bunches of flowers, problems he supposedly needed her help to resolve, ruses and excuses and tenderness.

“I suppose I might drum up some tuna surprise.”

“That’s what they eat on Park Avenue? Shit, I eat better uptown. But the company’s not as good there. Besides, I’ve got a problem.”

“Another one? Bullshit. Honest, love, I’m okay. You don’t have to come down here again.”

“What if I want to?”

“Then I shall rejoice at the pleasure of seeing you.” She smiled into the phone.

“So formal. And serving tuna surprise yet. Any news from Luke?”

“Yep. Two great big fat letters. And a visiting form for me to fill out. Hallelujah! Fifteen more days and then I can visit.”

“Keep your shirt on. Did he say anything else? Or just a lot of corny shit I don’t want to hear?”

“Lots of that. And he also said he was in a four-by-nine cell with another guy. Sounds cozy, doesn’t it?”

“Very. Any other good news?” He didn’t like the sound of her voice when she told him. Bitterness had begun to replace grief.

“Nothing much otherwise. He said to send you his love.”

“I owe him a letter. I’ll do it this week. And what did you do today? Write anything sexy?”

She laughed at the thought. “Yeah, I wrote a very sexy book review for the Washington Post.”

“Fantastic. You can read it to me when I get there.”

He arrived two hours later, with a small plant and a bag of hot chestnuts.

“How are things at the center? Mmm … yummy … have another one.” She was shelling the hot nuts in her lap in front of the fire.

“The center’s not bad. It’s been worse.” But not much. He didn’t want to tell her that now. The way things were going, he’d be gone in a month, maybe two. But she’d had enough of her own changes recently, without having to listen to his.

“So what’s this alleged problem you want to discuss with me?”

“Problem? Oh! That problem!”

“Liar … but you’re a sweet liar. And a good friend.”

“All right. I’ll confess. I just wanted an excuse to see you.” He hung his head like a kid.

“Flattery, dear Alejandro … I adore it” She grinned up at him and tossed him another chestnut. He watched her as she leaned her back against a chair, warming her feet by the fire. There was a smile on her lips. But the spark had gone dead in her eyes. Daily, she was looking worse. She had lost a lot of weight, she was deathly pale, and her hands still shook almost constantly. Not a lot, but enough. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.

“How long has it been since you’ve been out, Kezia?”

“Out of what?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, asshole. You know what I mean. Out of this house. Outdoors. In the fresh air.” He eyed her directly, but she avoided his gaze.

“Oh that. Actually, not for a while.”

“How long is a while? Three days? A week?”

“I don’t know, a couple of days, I guess. Mainly, I’ve been worried about being swarmed by the press.”

“Bullshit. You told me three days ago that they didn’t call anymore, and they haven’t been hanging around the building. The story is dead, Kezia, and you know it So what’s keeping you home?”

“Lethargy. Fatigue. Fear.”

“Fear of what?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet.”

“Look, babe, a lot of things have changed for you, and very brutally and suddenly at that. But you have to get back to doing something with yourself. Go out, see people, get some air. Hell, go shopping if that’s what turns you on, but don’t lock yourself up in here. You’re beginning to turn green.”

“How terribly chic.” But she had gotton the point.

“Want to go for a walk now?”

She didn’t, but she knew that she ought to. “Okay.”

They wandered toward the park in silence, holding hands, and she kept her eyes down. They were almost at the zoo before she spoke.

“Alejandro, what am I going to do?”

“About what?” He knew, but he wanted to hear it from her.

“My life.”

“Give yourself time to adjust. Then figure it out. It’s still much too fresh. In a sense, you’re in shock.”

“That’s what it feels like. Like I’m wandering around in a daze. I forget to eat, I forget if the mail has come, I can’t remember what day of the week it is. I start to work, and then my mind wanders and I look up and it’s two hours later and I haven’t finished the sentence I was typing. It’s crazy. I feel like one of those little old ladies who burrow into their houses, and someone has to keep reminding them to put the other stocking on, and to finish their soup.”

“You’re not that bad yet. You cleaned up those chestnuts pretty quick.”

“No. But I’m getting there, Alejandro. I just feel so vague … and so lost….”

“All you can do is be good to yourself, and wait till you feel more yourself.”

“Yeah, and in the meantime I look at his stuff in the closet. I lie in bed, and wait to hear his key in the door, and I kid myself that he’s in Chicago and he’ll be back in the morning. It’s driving me goddamn nuts.”

“No wonder. Look, babe, he’s not dead.”

“No. But he’s gone. And I’ve come to rely on him so much. In thirty years, or ten adult ones anyway, I’ve never relied on a man. But with Luke, I let myself go, I tore down all the walls. I leaned all over him, and now … I feel like I’m going to fall over.”

“Now?” He tried to tease her a little.

“Oh shut up.”

“All right, seriously. The fact is that he’s gone and you’re not. You’re going to have to pick up your life. Sooner or later.”

She nodded again, dug her hands deeper into her pockets, and they walked on. They had reached the horse carriages at the Plaza before she looked up.

“It must be quite a hotel,” Alejandro said. In a way, it reminded him of the Fairmont.

“Haven’t you ever been in it? Just for a look?” She was surprised when he shook his head.

“Nope. No reason to. This isn’t exactly my part of town.” She smiled at him and slipped her hand through his arm.

“Come on, let’s go in.”

“I’m not wearing a tie.” The idea made him nervous.

“And I look like a slob. But they know me. They’ll let us in.”

“I bet they will.” He laughed at her, and they marched up the steps to the Plaza, looking as though they had decided to buy the place on a lark.

They walked past the powdered dowagers eating pastry to the strains of violins in the Palm Court, and Kezia guided him expertly down the mysterious halls. They heard Japanese, Spanish, Swedish, a flurry of French, and the music that reminded Alejandro of old Garbo movies. The Plaza was more grandiose than the Fairmont, and much more alive.

They stopped at a door while Kezia peeked inside. The room was large and opulent with the endless oak paneling that had given it its name. There was a long elaborate bar, and a lovely view of the park.

“Louis?” She signaled to the headwaiter as he approached with a smile.

“Mademoiselle Saint Martin, comment ça va! Quel plaisir!” “Hello Louis. Do you suppose you could squeeze us into a quiet table? We’re not dressed.”

“Aucune importance. That is not a problem!” He assured them so magnanimously that Alejandro was convinced they could have arrived stark naked, and possibly should have.

They settled at a small table in the corner, and Kezia dug into the nuts.

“Well, do you like it?”

“It’s quite something.” He looked a bit awed. “Do you come here a lot?”

“No. I used to. As much as one can. Women are only allowed in at certain times.”

“A stag bar, eh?”

“You’re close. Rhymes with …” She giggled. “Fags, darling, fags. I suppose you might say this is the most elegant gay bar in New York.” He laughed in answer and took a look around. She was right. There were a number of gay men scattered here and there—a very large number as he took a second look. They were by far the most elegant men in the room. The others all looked like solid businessmen, and dull.

“You know, Kezia, when I look around a place like this, I know why you wound up with Luke. I used to wonder. Not that there’s anything wrong with Lucas. But I’d expected you to hang out with some Wall Street lawyer.”

“I tried that for a while. He was gay.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. But what did you mean when you said ‘when you look around a place like this’?”

“Just that the men in your set don’t knock me out.”

“Oh. Well, they don’t knock me out either. That was always the trouble.”

“And now what? You go back to the old world?”

“I don’t know if I can, or why I should bother. I think most likely I’ll wait for Luke to get out.” He didn’t say anything, and they ordered another round of scotch.

“What about your friend Edward? Have you made peace with him?” Alejandro still shuddered at the memory of the half-crazed voice on the phone at the Fairmont after the hearing.

“After a fashion. I don’t think he’ll ever really forgive me for the scandal. It makes him feel like a failure, since in a sense he brought me up. But at least the papers have cooled it. And people forget. I’m already old news.” She shrugged and took another swallow of scotch. “Besides, people let me get away with a lot. If you have enough money they call you eccentric and think you’re amusing. If you don’t have the bucks they call you a perverted pig and an asshole. It’s disgusting, but it’s true. You’d be aghast at some of the things my friends get away with. Nothing as mundane as my ‘outrageous’ love affair with Luke.”

“Do you care if people get upset about Lucas?”

“Not really. It’s my business, not theirs. A lot has changed in the last few months. Mostly me. It’s just as well. Edward, for instance, had this illusion of me as a child.”

Alejandro wanted to say “So do I,” but he didn’t. She had that quality about her; it had something to do with her size and her seeming fragility.

They left after their third round of scotch, on equally empty stomachs, both high as kites.

“You know what’s funny?” She was laughing so hard she could barely stand up, but the cold air had sobered them both a little.

“What’s funny?”

“I don’t know … everything is….” She laughed again, and he wiped tears of cold and mirth from his eyes.

“Hey, you want a horse buggy ride?”

“Yes!” They piled aboard and Alejandro instructed the driver to take them to Kezia’s. It was a cozy carriage with an old raccoon lap robe. They snuggled under it and giggled all the way home, insulated by the raccoon and the scotch.

“Can I tell you a secret, Alejandro?”

“Sure. I love secrets.” He held her close so she wouldn’t fall out. That was as good an excuse as any.

“I’ve been drunk every night since I got back.”

He looked at her through his own haze of scotch and shook his head. “That’s dumb. I won’t let you do that to yourself.”

“You’re such a nice man. Alejandro, I love you.”

“I love you too.”

They sat side by side and rode the rest of the way to her house in silence. He paid for the hansom cab and they rode up to her apartment, giggling in the elevator.

“You know, I think I’m too drunk to cook.”

“Just as well. I think I’m too drunk to eat.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“Kezia, you should eat …”

“Later. Want to come to dinner tomorrow?”

“I’ll be here. With a lecture.” He tried to look grave but couldn’t master the expression and she laughed at him.

“Then I won’t let you in.”

“Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow …” They both collapsed in the kitchen with mirth, and he tipsily kissed the tip of her nose. “I’ve got to go. But I’ll see you tomorrow. And make me a promise?”

“What?” All of a sudden he had looked so serious.

“No more drinking tonight, Kezia. Promise?”

“I … uh … yeah … okay.” But it was a promise she was not planning to keep.

She saw him to the elevator, and waved cheerily as the door closed, before coming back to the kitchen and bringing out the rest of last night’s fresh bottle of scotch. She was surprised that there was only an inch or so left.

It was odd, but as she poured what was left into a tumbler with one ice cube, the vision of Tiffany’s funeral flashed into mind. It was a dumb way to die, but the others all left such a big mess. At least drinking wasn’t messy … not really … not very … or was it? She didn’t really give a damn, as she smiled to herself and drained the full glass.

The phone was ringing but she didn’t bother to answer it. It couldn’t have been Luke. Even drunk she knew that much. Luke was away on a trip … in Tahiti … on a safari … and there were no phones there … but he’d be back at the end of the week. She was sure of it. Friday. And let’s see … what was today? Tuesday? Monday? Thursday! He’d be home tomorrow. She opened a fresh bottle. Bourbon this time. For Lucas. He’d be coming home soon.

Chapter 30

“Child, you look awfully thin.”

“Marina just called it ‘divinely svelte.’ She and Halpern just walked by.” The wedding had been held over the New Year’s holiday in Palm Beach.

Edward slid onto the banquette beside her. It was their first lunch in almost two months. And now she looked so different it shocked him.

Her eyes were sunken into her head, her skin looked taut on her cheekbones, and there was not even luster where once there had been fire. What a price she had paid. And for what? It still horrified him, but he had promised her not to discuss it. That was the condition on which she’d accepted his invitation to lunch. And he wanted so much to see her. Maybe there was still a chance to regain what they’d lost.

“Sorry I was late, Kezia.”

“Not to worry, love. I had a drink while I waited.” And that was new too. But at least she was still impeccably groomed. Even more so than usual, in fact. She looked almost formal. The mink coat she so seldom wore was thrown over the back of a chair.

“Why so dressed up today, my dear? Going somewhere after lunch?” Normally, she played it down, but not today, and the rare appearance of the mink coat surprised him.

“I’m turning over a new leaf. Coming home to roost, as they say.” Luke’s letter that morning had insisted that she at least try her old stamping grounds again. It was better than sitting home sulking—or drinking, a new habit he didn’t know about. But she had decided to try his advice. That was why she had accepted the luncheon with Edward, and dragged out the fur coat. But she felt like an ass. Or like Tiffany, trying to dress up disaster with breath mints and fur.

“What do you mean by ‘turning over a new leaf’?” He didn’t dare mention the Luke Johns affair, she might have walked out on the spot. And he was afraid of that. He signaled the waiter to order their usual Louis Roederer champagne. The waiter looked harassed but showed he understood, with a smile.

“Oh, let’s just say that I’m making an effort to be a nice girl, and see some of my old Mends.”

“Whitney?” Edward was a little taken aback.

“I said I was being nice, not ridiculous, darling. No, I just thought I’d ‘come back’ and take a look around.” The champagne arrived, the waiter poured, Edward tasted and nodded approval. The waiter poured again for both of them, and Edward lifted his glass in a toast.

“Then allow me to say welcome home.” He wanted to ask if she had learned her lesson, but he didn’t dare. Perhaps she had, though … perhaps she had. And in any case, her little misadventure had certainly aged her. She looked five years more than her age, particularly in a simple lilac wool dress and her grandmother’s remarkable pearls. And then he noticed the ring. He glanced at it and nodded approval. “Very pretty. Something new?”

“Yes. Luke got it for me in San Francisco.” Something pinched in his face again. Bitterness. Anger.

“I see.” There was no further comment, and Kezia finished her drink while Edward sipped his champagne.

“How is the writing these days?”

“It’ll do. I haven’t written anything I like in a while. And yes, Edward, I know. But looking at me like that won’t change a damn thing. I know all about it.” She was suddenly sick of the constant arch in his brows. “That’s right, darling, I’m not writing as well as I should. I’ve lost twelve pounds since you last saw me, I lock myself up at home because I’m terrified of reporters, and I look ten years older. I know all about it. We both know I’ve had a rough time. And we both know why, so stop looking so fucking shocked and disapproving. It’s really a dead bore.”

“Kezia!”

“Yes, Edward?”

He realized then from the look in her eyes that she had had more to drink than he’d thought. He was so stunned that he half turned in his seat and eyed her intensely.

“Okay, darling, what now? Is my mascara on crooked?”

“You’re drunk.” His voice was barely a whisper.

“Yes, I am,” she whispered back with a bitter little smile. “And I’m going to get drunker. How’s that for a fun day?” He sat back in his seat with a sigh, searching for the right words to say, and then he saw her. The reporter from Women’s Wear Daily, eyeing them from across the room.

“Damn.”

“Is that all you can say, love? I’m turning myself into an alcoholic and all you can think of is ‘damn’?” She was playing with him now, evilly, meanly, but she couldn’t help herself. She was shocked when she felt his grip on her arm.

“Kezia, that woman from Women’s Wear is over there and if you do anything, anything to catch her attention or antagonize her, I’ll … you’ll regret it.” Kezia laughed a deep-throated laugh and kissed his cheek. She thought it was funny, and Edward felt the sinking feeling of events slipping away from him, out of control. She wanted to bait everyone; she didn’t want to “come home.” She didn’t even know where home was. And she was worse than Liane had ever been. So much more brazen, so much stronger, tougher, m***ore willful … and so much more beautiful. He had never loved her more than now, at this instant, and all he wanted to do was shake her, or slap her. And then make love to her. Right in the middle of La Grenouille if he had to. The ideas suddenly running through his mind shocked him, and he shook his head as though to clear it. As he did, he felt Kezia patting his hand.

“Don’t be afraid of silly old Sally, Edward, she won’t bite you. She just wants a story.” He found himself wondering if they should leave now, before they had lunch. But that might make a scene too. He felt trapped.

“Kezia….” He was almost trembling with fear, and all he could do was take her hand in his, look into her eyes and pray that she’d behave herself and not create a scene. “Please.” Kezia saw the pain in his eyes, and it was like scalding oil on her soul. She didn’t want to see his feelings, not now. She couldn’t handle her own, let alone his.

“All right Edward. All right.” She looked away, her voice subdued again, and noticed the WWD reporter making little notes on a pad. But there would be no further story. Only that they had been seen. She was not going to make trouble. They’d all had enough. “I’m sorry.” She said it with the sigh of a child, leaning back against the banquette, as relief swept over Edward. It made him feel tender again.

“Kezia, why can’t I help you?”

“Because nobody can.” There were tears trembling on her lashes. “Just try to accept that there isn’t a hell of a lot you can do for me right now. The present is what it is, and the past happened, and the future … well, I don’t see it too clearly right now. Maybe that’s the trouble.” She often found herself wondering now if this was what Tiffany had felt. As though someone had stolen the future. They had left her the large emerald ring and the pearls, but no future. It was hard to explain it to Edward. He was always so certain of everything. It made him seem far away too.

“Do you regret the past, Kezia?” But he looked up with horror at the reaction in her eyes. He had said the wrong thing again. Lord, it was hard to talk to the girl. Crucifixion over lunch.

“If you are referring to Lucas, Edward, of course I don’t regret it. He’s the only decent thing that’s happened to me in the last ten or twenty, or maybe even thirty years. What I regret is the revocation. There’s nothing I can do about it now. There’s nothing anyone can do. You can’t appeal a revocation of parole. It’s totally pointless.”

“I see. I didn’t realize you were still that involved in this … this problem. I thought that after …”

She cut him off, with a look of extreme aggravation.

“You thought wrong. And just so you don’t die of the shock if you see it in the papers, I’m going back out there shortly.”

“What in God’s name for?” He was speaking to her sotto voce so no one would hear, but Kezia was speaking in her normal voice.

“To visit him, obviously. And I told you, I don’t want to discuss it. And do you know something, Edward? I’m finding this entire subject inappropriate with you, and this lunch unbearably boring. As a matter of fact, darling, I think I’ve about had it.” Her voice was rising to an unpleasant timbre, and Edward could feel himself squirm inside the starch in his collar. He was hating every minute of it. She drained her glass, looked around the room for a minute, and then looked back at him strangely.

“Kezia, are you all right? You looked rather pale for a moment.” He looked terribly worried.

“No, really, I’m fine.”

“Shall I have them get you a cab?”

“Yes, maybe I ought to go. To tell you the truth, it’s a hell of a strain. That bitch from Women’s Wear has been watching us since we sat down, and all of a sudden I feel like the whole goddamn place is watching me to see what kind of shape I’m in. It’s all I can do not to stand up and tell them all to go fuck themselves.”

Edward blanched. “No, Kezia. I don’t think you ought to do that.”

“Oh hell, darling, why not? For a laugh?”

She was playing with him again, and so cruelly. Why? Why did she have to do that to him? Didn’t she know that he cared? That it tore him apart to see her this way … that he was not made merely of white shirts and dark suits … that someone lived inside the elegant tailoring, a heart … a body … a man. Tears burned his eyes and there was a gruffness in his voice as he quietly stood and took Kezia’s arm. He looked different now, and she sensed it too. The games were over.

“Kezia, you’re leaving now.” She could hardly hear his words, but she could have read his tone from across the room. She was being dismissed like a naughty child.

“Are you very angry?” She whispered it to him as he helped her into her mink. She was frightened now. She had only wanted to play … wanted to … hurt. They both knew it.

“No. Only very sorry. For you.” He guided her toward the door, keeping a firm grip on her elbow. She was going to have no chance to misbehave between the table and the door. The fun was over. And she felt oddly submissive at his side. He cast a few frosty smiles left and right as they made their way out. He didn’t want anyone to think there was trouble, and Kezia looked dreadful.

They stood for a moment at the cloakroom while he waited for the girl to retrieve his coat and homburg.

“Edward, I …” She had started to cry now and held tightly to his arm.

“Kezia, not here.” Enough was enough. He couldn’t bear it anymore.

She swept the tears away with one hand gloved in black suede, and tried out a wintry smile.

“Where are you going from here? Home to lie down, I hope.” And get hold of yourself. He didn’t say it, but it was in his eyes, as he settled the homburg into place.

“Actually, I was going to show up at the Arthritis Ball meeting today. But I don’t know if I’m up to it.”

“I don’t think you are.”

“Yes. But I haven’t been there in so long.” And now there’s Tiffany’s place to fill as the local socialite lush…. Motherfucking old bags. Oh God, what if she said … what if … what if…. She felt a rush of heat follow the wave of pale green and wondered if she was going to faint or throw up. That would make a story for WWD.

Edward took charge of her elbow again and led her out to the street. The cold air seemed to restore her. She took a deep breath and felt better.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to watch you do this to yourself? And for … for …” Her eyes sought his but he couldn’t stop himself anymore. “For nothing. For that … that no one. Kezia, for God’s sake, stop now. Write to him, tell him you don’t want to see him again. Tell him….”

Her words stopped him cold. “Are you telling me this is a choice?” She stood still, watching him.

“What do you mean?” He felt ice trickle slowly down his back.

“You know exactly what I mean. Is this a choice, Edward? Your friendship or his love?”

No, little girl, my love or his. But he couldn’t say that to her.

“Because if that’s what you’re saying … then I’m saying goodbye.” She held out her arm before he could answer and stopped a cab that was passing. It came to a screeching halt just beyond the canopy.

“No, Kezia, I …”

“See you soon, darling.” She pecked at his cheek before he could regain his composure and slipped quickly into the cab. Before he knew it she was gone. Gone. “… then I’m saying goodbye.” How could she? And so heartlessly, without any emotion in her eyes.

But what he didn’t know was that she couldn’t give up Luke. Not for anyone. Not even for him. Luke was her route to escape from the world that had haunted her. Luke had shown her the way out; now she had to stick with him. She couldn’t turn back. Not even for Edward. And alone in the cab, she wanted to die. She had done it. She had killed him. Killed Edward. It was like killing her father … like killing Tiffany again. Why did someone always have to get mutilated, Kezia wondered as she drove uptown, fighting back sobs. And why Edward? Why him? He only had her, and she knew it. But maybe it had to be. She couldn’t leave Luke, and if it was a question of loyalty … Edward could take it. He was so sturdy. He would always weather what had to be borne. He was good about those things. He understood.

Kezia did not know that he would spend the rest of the day walking, looking into faces, looking at women, and thinking of her.

The cab drew up outside the Fifth Avenue address Kezia had given. She was right on time for the meeting. The committee would be beginning to gather. She thought of their faces as she paid the driver the fare…. All those faces … and mink coats … and sapphires … and emeralds … and … she felt a wave of panic sweep over her. The lunch with Edward had left her drained, and she didn’t feel able to cope. She paused for a moment before going inside the building. And then she knew. She couldn’t go in. The prying eyes at La Grenouille had been bad enough. But at least they had to keep their distance. The women on the committee didn’t, and they’d be all over her in an instant, with snide questions and sneering asides. And of course they had all seen the newspaper photographs of her collapsing in court, and read every word of the story. It was simply too much to handle.

The snow crunched beneath her feet as she walked to the corner to hail another cab and go home. She wanted to flee. She had unthinkingly walked back into the insanity of her life before Luke. And even for a day it unnerved her. From cab to cab, from luncheon to meeting to nowhere to nothing to drink to drank to drunk. She wondered what in God’s name she was doing.

It was snowing and she was hatless and without boots, but she pulled the mink coat tightly around her and sank her gloved hands into her pockets. It was only a twelve-block walk to her house, and she needed the air.

She trudged all the way home, her suede shoes soaking wet on her feet, her hair damp, and when she got home her cheeks were aflame and her legs felt icy and numb, but she felt alive and sober again. She had pulled her hair from its knot and let it fall around her shoulders, gathering a mantilla of snow.

The doorman rushed to her side with his half-broken umbrella as he saw her loom from the snow and darkness, and she laughed as he approached.

“No, no, Thomas. I’m fine!” She felt like a child again, and the sodden shoes didn’t matter at all. It was the sort of performance that would have won her days of scolding as a child. Totie might even have reported her to Edward for something like that. But Totie was a thing of the past now, as was Edward. She had seen that today. She could walk in the snow all night now if she wanted. It didn’t really matter. Nothing did. Except Luke.

But at least the buzzing sound had left her head, her shoulders didn’t feel quite so heavy, her spirit felt clean. Even the drinks had been washed away by the cold and the snow.

The doorbell rang just as she peeled off her stockings and stuck her cold feet under the hot water tap in the tub. They tingled and hurt and turned red. She debated answering the door, and decided rapidly not to. It was obviously just the elevator man with a package; had it been a visitor they would have called from downstairs for permission to send someone up. But the bell was persistent, and finally she dried her feet in one of the big monogrammed towels, and ran to the door.

“Yes? Who is it?”

“Cesar Chavez.”

“Who?”

“It’s Alejandro, you dummy.”

She pulled open the door. “Good lord, you look like Frosty the Snowman. Did you walk?”

“All the way.” He looked terribly pleased with himself. “I think I love New York after all. When it snows anyway. Isn’t it great?”

She nodded with a broad smile of agreement. “Come on in.”

“I was hoping you’d say that. They rang from downstairs for ages, but you didn’t answer. The guy said you were home, and I must have looked honest or cold, because he let me come up.”

“I had the water running in the tub.” She looked down at her bare feet which were now almost purple from the return of circulation after the shock of the tub. “I walked home too. It felt great.”

“What happened? Couldn’t find a cab?”

“Nope. I just felt like walking. It was sort of a crazy day, and I needed to unwind.”

“What happened?” He looked faintly worried.

“Nothing much. I had one of those unbearably fancy lunches with Edward, and it was a hell of a strain. Between his dismal failure at not looking disapproving, and the stares of the rest of the people there, not to mention a Women’s Wear reporter creeping up on us … I got a bad case of the freaks. And then to make matters worse, I took myself off to a benefit meeting, and flaked out before I walked in the door. That’s when I decided to walk home.”

“Sounds like you needed it.”

“Yeah. I just can’t play the old games anymore. I can’t even begin to tackle the double life nonsense again, and I won’t do it. That life just doesn’t suit me. I’d rather be here by myself.”

“Are you telling me to leave?”

“Don’t be a jerk.”

He chuckled, and she took his sopping wet coat, and hung it on the kitchen door.

“I must admit, that whole trip sounds pretty bad.”

“Worse … but dahling, how divine you look, isn’t that the wet look by Cardin … oh, and your ring!” She picked up the hand where he had a large rough Indian turquoise. “But the ring is David Webb of course … his nnneeewwww collection, daaahhhling? Ah, and of course sneakers by Macy’s. What an exquisite idea!” She made a face and rolled her eyes. “I mean, Jesus, Alejandro, how can anyone breathe under all that shit?”

“Wear a snorkel?”

“You’re impossible. I’m being serious.”

“Forgive me.” He settled down on the couch after having dumped his sneakers with his coat in the kitchen. “Hell, you used to live that life fairly successfully, didn’t you?”

“Sure. As long as I was sneaking around on subways to meet my lover in SoHo, or flying off to meet Luke in Chicago. Besides, I had to do all that dumb shit for the column.”

“Bullshit. You didn’t just ‘have to,’ you wanted to, or you wouldn’t have done it.”

“That’s not necessarily true. But in any case, I don’t want to do it anymore, and I won’t. Besides, everyone knows I won’t play the game now, so why try to pretend? But the point is what do I do now? I don’t fit there, and Luke’s not here, which leaves me feeling … aimless, I guess is the best way to put it. Any suggestions?”

“Yeah. Make me a cup of hot chocolate. Then I’ll solve all your problems.”

“That’s a deal. Want some brandy in it?”

“Nope. I’ll take it straight thanks.” He didn’t want to give her an excuse to start drinking. She didn’t need much of an excuse, but he thought she might balk at drinking alone. He was right.

“You’re not much fun, but in that case I’ll have mine straight too. I think I’ve been drinking too much lately.”

“No kidding. When did you figure that out? After A.A. called you with a free subscription, or before?”

“Don’t be nasty.”

“What do you want me to do? Keep my mouth shut till you wind up with cirrhosis?” “That sounds fine.”

“Jesus, Kezia, that’s not even funny. You really piss me off!” And he looked it as she vanished into the kitchen.

She appeared a few minutes later with two steaming mugs of hot chocolate. “And how was your day?”

“Stinking, thanks. I had a minor altercation with my board of directors. At least they thought it was minor. I almost quit.”

“You did? How comer?”

“The usual garbage. Allotment of funds. I got so annoyed I told them I was taking two days off.”

“That must have pleased them. What are you going to do with the two days?”

“Fly out to San Francisco with you to see Luke. When are you going?”

“Good lord, Alejandro! Can you do that?” She was delighted, but he had just spent so much money coming out with them to the hearing.

“Sure I can do it. But not in first-class. Are you willing to sit with the peasants at the back of the bus?”

“I think I can stand it. Do you play backgammon? I can bring my small set.”

“How about poker?”

“You’re on. To tell you the truth, I’m glad you’re coming.

… I was thinking about it this morning, and I think I’m scared to death of this trip.”

“Why?” That surprised him.

“San Quentin. It sounds so awful. And I’ve never been any place like it.”

“It’s not exactly a joy ride, but it’s not a dungeon either. You’ll be okay.” But just to be sure, he was going. Luke had urgently requested that he come out with her. And Alejandro knew he wouldn’t ask unless there was a damn good reason. Something was happening.

“Listen, are you coming out just because you figured I was afraid to do it alone?” The idea amazed her.

“Don’t be so egocentric. He happens to be my friend too.” She blushed faintly and he tugged at a lock of the rumpled black hair. “Besides, after what I’ve seen you come through, I have the feeling that if they were firing M-16’s over your head, you’d just tighten your earrings, put on your gloves, and march right on in.”

“Am I as bad as all that?”

“Not bad, baby—impressive. Goddamn impressive. And by the way, while we’re out there I want to interview for a job at a therapeutic community I mentioned to you once.”

“You’re serious about looking for a new job?” So much was changing.

“I don’t know yet. But it’s worth looking into.”

“Well, whatever your reasons, I’m glad we’re going out there together. And Luke will be so pleased to see you. What a super surprise for him!”

“When are we going?”

“When can you get away from the center?”

“Pretty much any time I want.”

“How about tomorrow night? I got a letter from Luke this morning that said I’ll be cleared in two days. So tomorrow night would be just right, for me anyway. How about you?”

“Sounds perfect.”

They settled back with their hot chocolate, and snuggled into the couch, telling old stories and talking about Luke. She laughed again as she hadn’t in weeks, and at midnight she lured him into almost an hour of dice.

“You know what I can’t handle anymore?”

“Yeah, dice. Lady, you play lousy.” But she loved it, and he was having a good time too.

“No, shut up. I’m being serious.”

“Excuse me.”

“Really, I am. The thing that I can’t handle is the pressure of pretense, and that whole way of life I grew up with is pretense to me now. I can’t talk openly about Luke without creating a scandal. I can’t show anyone that I hurt. I can’t even be me. I have to be The Honorable Kezia Saint Martin.”

“Maybe that’s because you happen to be the Honorable Kezia Saint Martin. Ever think of that?” He rolled the dice in his hands.

“Yes, but I’m not ‘that’ Kezia Saint Martin. Not anymore. I’m me. And I keep worrying, thinking I’m going to blurt it all out or call someone an asshole, or throw a quiche Lorraine in somebody’s face.”

“Sounds like fun. Why not try it?” She roared with laughter as they sat in front of the fire, her legs tucked under her.

“Someday I might just try it. But that, my friend, would be the ultimate grand finale. Can’t you see it in Time magazine? ‘Kezia Saint Martin flipped out at a party on Friday and threw a lemon meringue pie that sprayed five guests. The victims of Miss Saint Martin’s temporary insanity were the Countess von …’ et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Do they serve lemon meringue pies at those parties?” He looked faintly curious.

“No. I guess I’d have to settle for baked Alaska.”

He chuckled at the thought, and reached out and stroked her now dry hair. It was warm from the fire.

“Kezia, love, you’ve got to gain back some weight.”

“Yeah. I know.” They shared a small tender smile, and then with a gleam in his eyes, he rolled the dice in his hands, blew on them and threw, closing both eyes.

“Snake eyes, or bust!”

Kezia chuckled at the results, pinched his nose, and whispered in his ear, “In that case, Mr. Vidal, it’s bust. Hey, you asshole, open your eyes.” But instead he reached out unexpectedly and swept an arm around her waist. “What are you doing, you nut?” His face was barely a breath away from hers, and she thought it was funny. It wasn’t funny to him.

“What am I doing? Making an ass of myself of course.” He opened both eyes and made a clown’s face, checked out the dice and shrugged, but there was a hint of pain in his eyes. How dense could she be? But it was, perhaps, for the best.

He got to his feet and stretched slowly in front of the fire, watching the flames lick at the logs. He had his back to the still chuckling Kezia. “You know what, little one? You’re right I can’t stand the pressure of pretense anymore either.”

“It’s a bitch, isn’t it?” She was sympathetic as she munched on a cookie. It was the first time in weeks that she hadn’t had a drink all evening.

“Yeah … it’s a bitch. The pressure of pretense,’ how well you put it.” She thought he was referring to his job.

“I’m an expert on the subject” But she wasn’t in the mood to be serious. Not with him; they had had too happy an evening. “What brought that into your mind?” The words were garbled in cookie crumbs. She looked up but his back was still turned to her.

“Nothing. Just a thought.”

Chapter 31

They traveled in coach and the flight was dull. The movie was one Kezia had already seen with Luke, and Alejandro had brought some professional journals to read. They spoke during the meal, but the rest of the time he left her alone. He knew how tense she was, and this time he was not amused when she brought out the flask.

“Kezia, I don’t think you should.”

“Why not?” She looked almost hurt.

“Drink what they serve you, that ought to be enough.” He wasn’t preaching, but he sounded very firm. The tone of his voice embarrassed her more than his words, and she put it away. When the drinks came around, she ordered one scotch, and turned down the second.

“Satisfied?”

“It’s not my life, sister. It’s yours.” He went back to his reading, and she to her own thoughts. He was an odd man at times. Independent, lost in his own doings, and then at other times he took such pains with her. She more than suspected that he was making the trip mostly for her, to be sure she would be all right, and he could have lost his job for that.

They had made reservations at the Ritz, and she felt a thrill of excitement ripple through her as they drove toward the city. The skyline began to show as they cleared the last bend, and then suddenly there it was. The new modern cathedral on Gough, the brown licorice silhouette of the Bank of America building, and the lick of fog rolling in from the bay. She realized now how she had longed to see it again. The bay, and the Golden Gate Bridge, with Sausalito and Belvedere and Tiburon twinkling like a forest of Christmas trees at night, if there wasn’t too much fog. And if there was, she would close her eyes, breathe deeply of the fresh sea air, and listen to the lonely bleating of the fog horns. She knew that when she heard them again, Lucas would be listening to them too.

Alejandro watched her as they drove, and it touched him to see her like that. Excited, tense, combing the city with her eyes as though looking for something precious she had left there.

“You love this town too, don’t you, Kezia?”

“Yes, I do.” She sat back and looked at it with pleasure, as though she had built it herself.

“Because Luke brought you here?”

“Partly. But it’s something else too. Just the town, I guess. It’s so damnably pretty.” He smiled and looked over at her.

“Damnably, huh?”

“Okay, okay, so make fun of me. All I know is that I’m happy here.” Despite the brutal things that had happened there, she loved it. It had something no other city she knew had. Her thoughts drifted back to Luke again, and she couldn’t suppress a smile. “You know, it’s incredible, I’ve come three thousand miles to see him for an hour.”

“And something tells me you’d have come six thousand miles if you’d had to.”

“Maybe even twelve.”

“Even twelve? Are you sure?” He was teasing again, and she liked it. He was an easy companion.

“Alejandro, you’re a pest. But a nice pest.”

“I love you too.”

It was one in the morning in San Francisco, and four in the morning for them, but neither of them was sleepy.

“Want to go out for a drink, Alejandro?”

“No, I’d rather go for a ride.”

“The temperance society at my beck and call. How delightful.” She set her mouth primly and he laughed. “Mind your own business. After we drop off the stuff at the hotel, let’s go down to the bay.” They had rented a car at the airport and Alejandro was driving.

“At your service, madam. Isn’t that what you’re used to?”

“Yes and no. But one thing’s for sure, I’m not used to remarkable friends like you. You really are amazing.” Her voice had grown very soft. “I don’t think anyone’s ever done as much for me as you have. Not even Edward. He used to watch over me, but we were never this at ease with each other. I love him, but very differently. He always expected so much of me.”

“Like what?”

“Oh … to be everything I was born to, and more, I suppose.”

“And you are.”

“No, not really. The computer must have blended it all differently in me. Some of the pieces don’t fit, by his standards.”

“You miss the point. It’s your head that matters, your soul, your heart.”

“No, love. You miss the point. It’s the parties you go to, the clothes you wear, which committees you belong to.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Not anymore. But I used to be.” She was suddenly serious, but the moment fled as they arrived at the Ritz. Ernestine, wearing a green plaid flannel bathrobe, checked them in, looking faintly disapproving to see Kezia with Alejandro, and not Luke. But their separate rooms at opposite ends of the hall seemed to appease her. She padded back to bed, and they went back outside to the car.

“To the bay!” He was as excited as she.

“Thank you, Jeeves.”

“Certainly, madam.” They giggled together, and let the car bump over the hills on Divisadero Street. It felt like a roller coaster as the sharp swoops and drops lifted them off the seat.

“Want to stop for a taco?”

She smiled in answer and nodded her head. “Me, I get turned on by the bay. You, it’s the tacos. Welcome home.”

“And not a pizza in sight.”

“Don’t they have pizza out here?”

He made a face in response. “Yes, but we keep them under control. Not like New York. One of these days, a mad onslaught of crazed pizzas will take over the town.” He made fierce monster faces and she laughed.

“You’re a nut. Good heavens, look at that car!” They rolled into a drive-in food place on Lombard, and waiting at the window was a hot rod with the back all jacked up. “You’d think they’d fall on their faces.”

“Of course not. What a beauty … vrooommm … rooom!” He made the appropriate sounds and grinned broadly. “Haven’t you ever seen one like that?”

“Not that I can remember—and I daresay I’d remember—except maybe in a movie. What a horror!”

“Horror? It’s a beauty! Wash your mouth out with soap!”

She was laughing and shaking her head. “Don’t tell me you had one like that! I’d be shocked!”

“Well, I did. A lowrider special. My first car. After that I screwed up my image and got a secondhand VW. Life was never the same.”

“It sounds tragic.”

“It was. Did you have a car as a kid?” She shook her head, and his eyes opened wide in disbelief. “You didn’t? Christ, all kids in California have cars by the time they’re sixteen. I bet you’re lying. I’ll bet you had a Rolls. Come on, tell the truth!” She giggled, furiously shaking her head, as they drove up to the window to order their tacos.

“I’ll have you know, Mr. Vidal, that I did not have a Rolls! I borrowed a crumbling old Fiat when I stayed in Paris, and that was it I’ve never owned a car in my life.”

“What a disgrace. But your family had one, right?” She nodded. “Aha! And it was …” He waited.

“Oh, just a car. You know, four wheels, four doors, steering column, the usual stuff.”

“You’re telling me it was a Rolls?”

“It was not.” She grinned at him broadly and handed him the tacos that had just appeared at the window. “It was a Bentley. But my aunt has a Rolls, if that makes you feel any better.”

“Much. Now hand over those tacos. You may have come three thousand miles to see your old man. I came for the tacos. A Bentley … Jesus.” He took a bite of his taco and sighed rapturously. Kezia leaned back in her seat and began to unwind. It was comfortable being with him; she didn’t have to pretend. She could just be herself.

“You know something funny, Alejandro?”

“Yeah. You.” He was into his third taco.

“No, I’m being serious.”

“Yeah? How comer”

“Oh for chrissake, put a taco in you and you get all full of yourself.”

“No, I get gas.”

“Alejandro!”

“Well, I do. Don’t you ever get gas? Or is that bred out of your?”

She blushed as she laughed. “I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that …”

“I’ll bet you fart in bed.”

“Alejandro, you’re awful. That’s a highly unsuitable remark.”

“Pobrecita.” He was a ceaseless tease when he was in a good mood, but she liked it. He had been so quiet on the plane, but now the atmosphere was festive again.

“What I was trying to tell you, Mr. Vidal, before you got outrageous …”

“Outrageous? Fancy that!” He had switched from tacos to root beer and took a long swallow.

“What I’m trying to tell you …” she lowered her voice, “is that the weird thing is, I have really come to need you. Isn’t that strange? I mean, I’d be totally lost without you. It’s so nice knowing you’re around.”

He was silent, with a distant look in his eyes. “Yeah. I feel that way too,” he said, finally. “It feels funny when I don’t see you for a couple of days. I like knowing you’re okay.”

“It’s nice to know that you care. I guess that’s what I feel, and it feels good. And I worry that maybe someone’s killed you on the subway when you don’t call.

“You know, that’s one of the things I like best about you.”

“What?”

“Your unfailing optimism. Your faith in the human race … killed on the subway…. Asshole. Why would I get killed on the subway?”

“Everyone else does. Why shouldn’t you?”

“Gee. Terrific. You know what I think, Kezia?”

“What?”

“That you fart in bed.”

“Oh, so we’re back on that again, are we? Alejandro, you’re a shit. And a rude, outrageous shit at that! Now drive me to the bay. And what’s more, I do not fart in bed!”

“You do!”

“I don’t!”

“You do!”

“Ask Luke!”

“I will!”

“You dare!”

“Aha! Then he’d tell me the truth, wouldn’t he! You do!”

“I do not! Damn you!”

The debate continued as he backed out of the drive-in, and finally dissolved in gales of their laughter. They chuckled and giggled and teased the remaining few blocks to the bay, and then they fell talent. It lay stretched before them like a bolt of darkest blue velvet, and there was a veil of fog high overhead, not low enough to obstruct the view from across the bay, but just enough so that it sat suspended on the spires of the bridge. A foghorn hooted sadly far off in the distance, and the lights around the rims of the shore sparkled.

“Lady, one of these days I’m going to move back here.”

“No, you won’t. You’re in love with your work at the center in Harlem.”

“That’s what you think. That bullshit is getting to be more than I want to have to deal with every day. People just don’t get as crazy out here. You never know, maybe that interview I have lined up out here will pan out.”

“And then what?”

“We’ll see.”

She nodded pensively, unnerved by the idea that he might leave New York. But it was probably just talk, to let off some steam. She decided to ignore what he had said. It was safer that way.

“When I see it like this, I want to stop time and stay in this moment forever.”

“Crazy girl. Don’t we all wish we could do that. Did you ever come down here at dawn?” She shook her head. “It’s much better then. This city is like a beautiful woman. It changes, it has moods, it gets all gray and baggy-eyed, and then turns beautiful and you fall in love with her all over again.”

“Alejandro, who do you love?” She hadn’t thought of that since the day they’d shared hot chocolate in Yorkville. He was almost always alone, or with her.

“That’s a strange question.”

“No, it’s not. Isn’t there someone? Even an old flame from the past?”

“No, none of those. Oh, I don’t know, Kezia. I love a lot of people. Some of the kids I work with, you, Luke, other friends, my family. A whole bunch of people.”

“And too many. It’s so safe to love lots of people. It’s a lot harder to love just one. I never did … until Luke. He taught me so much about that. He isn’t afraid of that the way I was … and maybe you are. Isn’t there even one woman you love, as a woman? Or maybe a few?” She had no right to ask, and she knew it, but she wanted to know.

“No. Not lately. Maybe one of these days.”

“You ought to give it some thought. Maybe you’ll meet someone out here sometime.” But deep in her heart, she hoped he wouldn’t. He deserved the best sort of woman there was, one who could give him back all that he gave. He deserved that, because he gave so much. But secretly, she knew that she hoped he wouldn’t find her just yet. She wasn’t ready to lose him. Things were so lovely just as they were. And if he had someone, she would lose him; it would be inevitable.

“What are you thinking about, little one? You look so sad.” He thought he knew why, but he didn’t.

“Just silly stuff drifting through my head. Nothing much.”

“Don’t worry so much. You’ll see him tomorrow.”

She only smiled in response.

Chapter 32

They saw it as they rounded a bend on the freeway. San Quentin. Across a body of water, a finger of the bay that had poked its way inland, it stood at the water’s edge, looking ugly and raw. Kezia kept it in view the rest of the way, until finally it vanished again as they left the freeway and followed an old country road around a series of bends.

The mammoth fortress that was San Quentin took her breath away when they saw it again. It seemed to stand with its body jutting into her face, like a giant bully or an evil creature in a hideous dream. One felt instantly dwarfed beneath the turrets and towers, the endless walls that soared upwards, dotted only here and there by tiny windows. It was built like a dungeon, and was the color of rancid mustard. It was not only fearsome, but it reeked of anger and terror, loneliness, sorrow, loss. Tall metal fences topped with barbed wire surrounded the encampment, and in all possible directions stood gun towers manned by machine-gun-toting guards. Guards patrolled the entrance, and people emerged wearing sad faces, some drying their eyes with bits of handkerchief or tissue. It was a place one could never forget. It even boasted a long dry moat, with still active drawbridges to the gun towers that kept the guards safe from potential “attack.”

As she looked at the place, Kezia wondered how they could be so fearful. Who could possibly get free of that place? Yet now and then people did. And seeing the place made her suddenly know why they’d try anything, even death, to escape. It made her understand why Luke had done what he had to help the men he called his brothers. Prisoners of places like that had to be remembered by someone. She was only sorry it had been Luke.

She also saw a row of tidy houses with flowers beds out front. The houses stood inside the barbed wire fences, in the shadow of the gun towers, at the feet of the prison. And she guessed, accurately, that they were the houses of guards, living there with their wives and their children. The thought made her shudder. It would be like living in a graveyard.

The parking lot was rutted with potholes and strewn with litter. There were only two parking spaces left when they got there, and a long line of people snaked past the guardhouse at the main gate. It took them two and a half hours to reach the head of the line, where they were superficially searched and then herded on to the next gate, to have their pockets ransacked again.

The gun tower stood watchfully over them as they walked into the main building to sit with the rest of the visitors in a smoke-filled, overheated waiting room that looked like a train station. There were no sounds of laughter in that room, no whispered snatches of conversation, only the occasional clinking of coins in the coffee machine, the whoosh of the water fountain or the brief spurt of a match. Each visitor hugged to himself his own fears and lonely thoughts.

Kezia’s mind was filled with Luke. She and Alejandro hadn’t spoken since they entered the building. There was nothing to say. Like the others, they were preoccupied with the business of waiting. Another two hours on those benches … and it had been so long since she’d seen him, touched his hand, his face, kissed him, held him, or been held the way only Luke knew how to hold her. Kisses are different when they come from such a great height, or that’s how it had seemed. Everything was different. He was a man she could look up to, in myriad ways. The first man she had looked up to.

In all, she and Alejandro waited almost five hours, and it felt like a dream when a voice on the intercom squawked out his name.

“Visit for Johns … Lucas Johns….” She sprang to her feet and ran to the door of the room where they would visit. Luke was already there, filling the doorway, a quiet smile on his face. He stood in a long, barren gray room, whose only decor was a clock. There were long refectory tables with inmates on one side and visitors on the other, while guards wandered and patrolled, their guns displayed prominently. One could kiss hello and goodbye, and hold hands during the visit That was all. The whole scene had an eerie unreality to it, as if this couldn’t exist, not for them. Luke lived on Park Avenue with her, he ate with a fork and a knife, he told jokes, he kissed her on the back of the neck. He didn’t belong here. It didn’t make sense. The other faces around them looked ragged and fierce, angry and tired and worn. But now so did Luke. Something had changed. As she walked into his arms, she felt a wave of claustrophobic terror seize her throat … they were lost in the bowels of that tomb … but once in Luke’s arms, she was safe. And the rest seemed to fade. She was oblivious of all but his eyes. She completely forgot Alejandro beside her.

Luke swept her up in his arms and the force of his embrace flushed the air from her chest in one breath. He held her aloft for a moment, not releasing his grip, and then gently set her down, hungrily seeking her lips once again. There was a quiet desperation about him, and his arms felt thinner. She had felt bones in his shoulders where weeks before there had been so much flesh. He was wearing blue jeans and a workshirt, and coarse shoes that looked too small for his feet. They had shipped the Guccis and everything else back to New York. Kezia had been there when the package arrived, everything crumpled, and his shirt badly torn. It gave you an idea of how it had come off his back. Not with a valet, but at the point of a gun. At the time she had cried, but now there were no tears. She was too glad to see him. Only Alejandro had tears in his eyes as he watched them, a radiant smile sweeping over her face, hiding the panic, and a look of intense need in the eyes of his friend. After a moment, Luke’s gaze swept over her head, and acknowledged Alejandro. It was a look of gratitude Alejandro didn’t remember seeing before. Like Kezia, he saw that something was different, and he remembered the urgent plea in Luke’s letters to come out with Kezia. Alejandro knew something was coming, but he didn’t know what.

Luke led Kezia by the hand to one of the long refectory tables, and went around to his side to sit down, while Alejandro took another chair next to her. She smiled even more as she watched Luke take his seat.

“Jesus, it’s so good to just watch you walk. Oh, darling, how I’ve missed you.” Luke smiled quietly at her and gently touched her face with his work-roughened hand. The calluses had come back quickly.

“I love you, Lucas.” She said the words carefully, like three separate gifts she had wrapped for him, and his eyes shone strangely.

“I love you too, babe. Do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Take your hair down for me.” She smiled and quickly pulled out the pins. There was so little pleasure she could give him, each minute gesture suddenly meant so much more. “There, that’s better.” He stroked the silky softness of her hair, and looked like a man running his hands through diamonds or gold. “Oh Mama, how I love you.”

“Are you all right?”

“Can’t you tell?”

“I’m not sure.” But Alejandro could. He could tell a lot more than either of them, each was so blinded by what he wanted to see. “I guess you look okay, but you’ve gotten thin.”

“Look who’s talking. You look like shit.” But his eyes said she looked better than that. “I thought you told me you were going to take care of her, Al.” He looked from one to the other, and at last there was a hint of long-forgotten laughter back in his eyes. He looked almost like Lucas again.

“Listen, man, do you know how hard this woman is to push around?”

“You’re telling me!” The two men laughed and exchanged an old familiar smile. And Luke’s eyes lit up as he looked at Kezia again. She held so tightly to his hands that her fingers ached until they were numb.

It was an odd visit, full of conflicting vibrations. Luke seemed to have a passionate and hungry need for Kezia, which was amply mutual. Yet, there was a rein on him somewhere. She sensed it, and didn’t know what it was. A hesitation, a withdrawal, and then he would say something and she would feel the floodgates open again.

Suddenly the hour was over. The guard signaled, and Luke stood up quickly and led her back to the front of the room for their one regulation farewell kiss.

“Darling, I’ll be back as soon as they’ll let me.” She was thinking of staying out for the week, and coming back to see him again. But right now she was nervous at the sight of the guard, and Alejandro seemed to edge closer. It was all happening too fast. She wanted more time with Lucas … the moments had flown by.

“Mama …” Luke’s eyes seemed to devour every inch of her face. “You won’t be coming back here.”

“Are they transferring you?”

He shook his head. “No. But you can’t come back anymore.”

“That’s ridiculous. I … aren’t the papers in order?” She was suddenly terrified. She had to come back again. She needed to see him. They had no right to do this.

“The papers are in order. For today. But I’m taking you off my visiting list tonight.” His voice was so low she could barely hear it. But Alejandro could, and he knew what Lucas was doing. Now he understood why Luke had wanted him to come out.

“Are you mad? Why are you taking me off your list?” Hot tears burned her eyes and she clung to his hands. She didn’t understand. She hadn’t done anything wrong. And she loved him.

“Because you don’t belong here. And this is no life for you. Baby, you’ve learned a lot in the last few months, and done a lot of things you’d never have done if you hadn’t met me. Some of it was good for you, but this isn’t. I know what this does, what it’ll do to you. By the time I get out, you’d be burnt out. Look at you now, thin, nervous … you’re a wreck. Go back to what you have to do. And do it right.”

“Lucas, how can you do this?” The fears began to roll down her face.

“Because I have to … because I love you … now be a good girl, and go.”

“No, I won’t. And I’ll come back. I’ll … oh Lucas! Please!” Luke’s eyes sought Alejandro’s over her head and there was a barely perceptible nod. Luke bent quickly to kiss her, squeezed her shoulders, and then quickly turned and took a step toward the guard.

“Lucas! No!” She reached out her arms, ready to cling to him, and he turned back to her with a face carved in stone.

“Stop it, Kezia. Don’t forget who you are.”

“I’m nothing without you.” She stepped toward him and looked into his eyes.

“That’s where you’re wrong. You’re Kezia Saint Martin, and you know who she is now. Treat her well.” And then with a nod at the guard, he was gone. An iron door swallowed the man she had loved. He never turned back for a last look or another goodbye. He had said nothing to Alejandro as he left. He hadn’t had to. The short nod at the end said it all. He was committing her into his care. He would know that she was safe and that was all he could do. It was all he had left to give.

Kezia stood in the visiting area, numb, unaware of the eyes that turned toward her. It had been an agonizing scene for the few who had overhead it. It made the men squirm, and their visitors blanch. It could have happened to them, but it didn’t. It happened to her.

“I … Alej … I … could …” She was disoriented, stunned, lost.

“Come on, love, let’s go home.”

“Yes, please.” She seemed to have shrunk in those last shattering minutes. Her face looked frighteningly pale. This time he knew there was no point in asking how she was. It was easily seen.

He walked her out of the building and to the main gate as rapidly as he could. He wanted to get her the hell out of there before she fell apart. He guided her quickly around the potholes in the parking lot and eased her into the car. He was feeling almost as shocked as she. He had known something was wrong, but he had had no idea what Luke had in mind. And he knew what a bitching tough thing it had been to do. Lucas needed her there, her visits, her love, her support. But he knew what it would do to her too. She would have hung on for years, destroying herself, maybe even drinking herself to death while she waited. It couldn’t have gone on, and Luke knew it. Kezia had been right way at the beginning. Lucas Johns was a man with incredible guts. Alejandro knew he wouldn’t have had the courage to do it. Damn few men would, but damn few men faced what Luke was now facing—survival in a place where his life had been marked. And with who Kezia was, they could have gotten to her first. That had been the worst of Luke’s fears, but now that was over. Everything was, for Luke.

“I … where are we going?” Kezia looked frighteningly vague as Alejandro started the car.

“Home. We’re going home. And everything’s going to be fine.” He spoke to her as one would to a very small child, or a very sick one. Right then, she was both.

“I’m going to come back here, you know … I’ll come back. You know that, don’t you? He doesn’t really mean it … I … Alejandro?” There was no fire in her voice, only confusion. Alejandro knew she wouldn’t be back. Luke was a man of his word. By that afternoon, her name would be inexorably canceled from his list. It would leave him no choice. He couldn’t have had her reinstated for six months, and by then much would have changed. Six months could change a lot in a life. Six months before, Kezia had met Luke.

She was no longer crying as they drove away. She merely sat very still in the car, and then in the hotel room, where he left her under the careful guard of a maid, while he attended to the interview he could no longer keep his mind on. It was a hell of a day to have to worry about that. He rushed through it, and got back to the Ritz. The maid said she hadn’t moved, or even spoken. She had merely sat there, in the same chair she’d been in when he left her, staring at nothing.

With misgivings, he made plane reservations for six o’clock that night and prayed she wouldn’t come out of shock until he got her home to her own bed. She was like a child in a trance, and one thing was for sure, he didn’t want to be in San Francisco with her when she came out of it. He had to get her back to New York.

She ate nothing on the tray the stewardess put before her, and nodded uncomprehendingly when Alejandro offered her the earphones for music. He settled them on her head, and then watched her remove them dreamily five minutes later. She sang to herself for a little while, and then lapsed back into silence. The stewardesses eyed her strangely, and Alejandro would nod with a smile, hoping no one would make any comments, and praying that no one would recognize her. She looked sufficiently vague and disheveled by then to be less readily recognized. He could barely handle her as it was, without worrying about the press. They might set her off, and unleash the flood of reality she was holding in abeyance by staying in shock. She looked drugged or drunk, or more than a little crazy. The flight was a nightmare he longed to see end.

Today had been the last straw, and he ached thinking of Lucas. He ached for them both.

* * *

“You’re home. Kezia. Everything is all right.”

“I’m dirty. I need a bath.” She sat on a chair in her living room, seeming not to understand where she was.

“I’ll run a bath for you.”

“Totie will do it.” She smiled at him vaguely.

He bathed her gently, as he had his nieces long ago. She sat staring at the ornate gold dolphin faucets on the white marble wall. It didn’t even strike him that it was she he was bathing. He wanted to reach out to her, hold her, but she wasn’t even there. She was gone, somewhere, in some distant world hidden from the broken one she had left.

He wrapped her in a towel, she dutifully put on her nightgown, and he led her to bed.

“Now you’ll sleep, won’t you?”

“Yes. Where’s Luke?” The vacant eyes sought his, something in them threatening to break and pour all over the floor.

“He’s out.” She wasn’t ready to deal with the truth, and neither was he.

“Oh. That’s nice.” She smiled vapidly at him, and climbed into bed, clumsily as children do, her feet struggling to find their way into the sheets. He helped her in, and turned off the lights.

“Kezia, do you want Totie?” He knew he’d find her number in Kezia’s address book, if he had to. He had been wondering if he should hunt through it for the name of her doctor, but everything seemed under control, for the moment.

“No, thank you. I’ll wait for Luke.”

“Okay. Call if you need me. I’ll be right here.”

“Thank you, Edward.” It was a shock to realize that she didn’t know who he was.

He settled down for a long night’s vigil on the couch, waiting for the scream he was sure would come. But it never did. Instead she was up at six, and in the living room in her nightgown and bare feet. She didn’t seem to question how she’d gotten home, or who had put her to bed. And he was stunned when he realized how lucid she was. Totally.

“Alejandro, I love you. But I want you to go home.”

“Why?” He didn’t trust her alone.

“Because I’m all right now. I woke up at four this morning, and I’ve been thinking everything over for the last two hours. I understand what happened, and now I have to learn to live with it. And the time to do that is right now. You can’t sit here and treat me like an invalid, love, that’s not right. You have better things to do with your life.” Her look told him she meant it.

“Not if you need me.”

“I don’t … not like that … look, please. Go away. I need to be by myself.”

“Are you telling me you’re throwing me out?” He tried to make it sound light but it didn’t. They were both much too tired for games. She looked worse than he did, and he hadn’t slept.

“No. I’m not throwing you out and you know it. I’m just telling you to go back to what you have to do. And let me do this.”

“What are you going to do?” He was frightened.

“Nothing drastic. Don’t worry about that.” She sank into one of the velvet chairs and took one of his cigarettes. “I guess I’m not ballsy enough to commit suicide. I just want to be alone for a while.”

He got up tiredly from the couch, every bone and muscle and fiber and nerve ending aching.

“All right. But I’ll call you.”

“No, Alejandro, don’t.”

“I’ve got to. I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to sit uptown and wonder if you’re dead or alive. If you don’t want to talk to me, then tell your answering service how you are and I’ll call them.” He turned to face her, with his coat in his hand.

“Why does it matter so much? Because Luke told you to do that?” Her eyes poured into his.

“No. Because I want to. You may not have noticed it yet but I happen to care what happens to you. You might even say that I love you.”

“I love you too … but I want you to leave me alone.”

“If I do, will you call me?”

“Yes, in a while. When I get it together a little. I guess in my heart I knew it was over the day he walked out of the law library at the hearing. That’s when it should have been over. But neither of us had the guts to let go. I didn’t anyway. And the bitch of it is that I still love him.”

“He loves you too or he wouldn’t have done what he did yesterday. I think he did it because be loves you.”

She stood in silence and turned away from him then, so he couldn’t see her face. “Yeah, and all I have to do now is learn to live with it.”

“Well, if you need someone to talk to … yell. I’ll come running.”

“You always do.” She turned, and a small smile appeared on her lips and then vanished.

He walked to the door with bent shoulders, carrying his valise from their trip, his jacket and coat slung over his back. He turned at the door and knew for only the briefest of seconds how Luke must have felt the day before when he sent her away.

“Take it easy.”

“Yeah. You too.”

He nodded and the door shut gently behind him.

She was drunk day and night for five weeks. Even the cleaning woman stopped coming, and she had sent her secretary away the first week. She was alone with her empty bottles, and plates caked with half-eaten food, wearing the same filthy robe. Only the delivery boy from the liquor store was a regular “visitor” anymore. He would ring twice and deposit the bag outside her door.

Alejandro didn’t call her till the news hit the papers. He had to call then. He had to know how she was. She was drunk when he called, and he told her he’d be right down. He took a cab, terrified she would see the papers before his arrival. But when he got to her door, he saw five weeks of newspapers unread and stacked in the foyer. He was stunned by the condition of what had once been her home. Now it looked like a barnyard … bottles … filth … plates … overflowing ashtrays … chaos and disorder. And Kezia. She didn’t even look like the same girl. She was tear-stained, reeling, and drunk. But she still didn’t know.

He sobered her up long enough to tell her. As best he could. But after her fourth cup of coffee, and opening the windows for air, the headlines did it for him, as her eyes scanned the type. She looked up into his face, and he knew that she understood. It couldn’t get much worse for her now. It already had.

Luke was dead. Stabbed on the yard, so they said. “A racial disturbance … well-known prison agitator, Lucas Johns….” His sister had claimed the body, and the funeral was being held in Bakersfield the day Kezia was reading the news. It didn’t matter. It didn’t change anything. Funerals weren’t Luke’s style. Neither were sisters. He had never even mentioned her to Kezia. The only thing that mattered was that he was gone.

“Do you know when he died, Alejandro?” She still sounded drunk, but he knew she was coherent.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

“No, I don’t know exactly. I guess I could find out.”

“I already know. He died in court at the hearing. They killed him. But that day, the day he really died, he died beautiful and proud and strong. He walked into that hearing like a man. What they did to him after that is on their hands.”

“I suppose you’re right” Tears had begun to stream down his face. For what had happened to Luke. For what had happened to her. She was already as dead as Lucas, in her own way. Drunk, dirty, sick, tired, ravaged by memories, and now his death. He remembered that day in the law library, before Lucas walked into the hearing. She was right, he had walked tall and proud, and she had been so sure, so powerful beside him. They had had something he’d never seen before. And now, one was dead, and the other was dying. It made him feel sick. It was all like living a nightmare; his best friend was dead and he was in love with Luke’s woman. And there was no way he could tell her now. Not now that Lucas was dead.

“Don’t cry, Alejandro.” She smoothed a hand across his cheeks to wipe off the tears, and then ran a hand over his hair. “Please don’t cry.” But he was crying for himself as much as for them, and she couldn’t know that. She tilted his face up to hers then, and held him so gently he hardly felt her hands on his shoulders. She looked into his eyes, and then slowly, quietly, she bent over and kissed him, carefully, on the mouth. “The funny thing is that I love you too. It’s really very confusing. In fact I’ve loved you for a very long time. Isn’t that strange?”

She was still more than a little bit drunk and he didn’t know what to say. Maybe she had finally gone crazy from the constant shocks and the grief. Maybe she was mad now. Or perhaps he was. Maybe she hadn’t even kissed him … maybe he was only dreaming.

“Alejandro, I love you.”

“Kezia?” Her name felt strange on his lips. She was Luke’s. And Luke was dead now. But how could Luke be dead? And how could she love them both? It was all so totally crazy. “Kezia?”

“You heard me. I love you. As in, I’m in love with you.”

He looked at her for what seemed like a very long time, the tears still wet on his cheeks.

“I love you too. I loved you the first day he brought you up to meet me. But I never thought … I just …”

“I never thought either. It’s like all the stuff you read in bad novels. And it’s very, very confusing.” She led him to the couch and sat down beside him, leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

“It’s just as confusing for me.” He watched her as she sat there.

“Then why don’t we leave each other alone for a While?”

“So you can drink yourself to death a little faster?”

His voice was suddenly loud and bitter in the quiet room. She had shown him everything he wanted, but she wanted to destroy it before she would give it to him. What a horrible joke.

“No. So I can think.”

“No drinking?”

“Mind your own business.”

“Then get fucked, lady. Just get fucked!” He was on his feet and shouting. “I don’t need to fall in love with you to watch you fucking die! To watch you commit suicide like some pathetic skid-row alcoholic. If that’s what you plan to do with your life, then leave me alone! Oh God, Kezia … God damn you!” He pulled her to her feet and shook her until she felt the world shake under her, and she had to protest.

“Stop it! Leave me alone!”

“I love you! Don’t you understand that?”

“No. I don’t understand that. I don’t understand anything anymore. I love you too. So fucking what? We get attached to each other and love each other and need each other and then the sky falls in all over again? Who needs it, goddamn you … who fucking needs it?”

“I do. I need you.”

“Okay, Alejandro, okay … and now will you do me a favor and just leave me alone? Please?” Her voice was trembling and there were tears in her eyes again.

“Okay, baby. It’s up to you now.”

The door closed quietly behind him, and five minutes later there was the sound of shattering glass. She had taken the newspaper with the ugly article on the front page and thrown it at the window with such force that it had gone through the glass.

“Fuck you, world! Go to hell!”

Chapter 33

At the end of that week, Alejandro saw the same picture as Edward. Edward saw it with pain, Alejandro with shock. Edward had known. Women’s Wear carried it too. Kezia Saint Martin boarding a plane for Geneva. “For a rest from the rigors of the social season.” The papers already seemed to have forgotten her association with Lucas. How quickly people forget.

The papers said she was planning to go skiing, but it didn’t say where, and her hat was pulled so low over her face that Alejandro would never have known her if he hadn’t seen the name. As he looked at the picture, he marveled again at the absence of reporters on their last trip to San Francisco and back. In the state she’d been in, that would really have made news.

He sat for a long time in the small office with the paint peeling off the walls, looking at the picture, at the hat pulled low over the face. At the word, Geneva. And what now? When would he hear from her again? He still remembered the kiss of the last morning he’d seen her, only a few days ago. And now she was gone. He felt heavy, as though he were nailed to the chair, glued to the floor, part of the building and crumbling like the rest of it. Everything was going to pot in his life. His job stank, he hated the city, his best friend was dead, and he was in love with a girl he knew he could never have. Even if Luke had wanted it that way, as Alejandro suspected he might have…. There was something about Luke’s insistent summons to come out with Kezia that last time. Luke knew she’d need help. But it was never meant to be. He knew that, and Kezia must know it too. It was all very crazy, and he had to work out his own life. But he kept staring at the word, hating it. Geneva.

“Someone here to see you, Alejandro.” He looked up to see one of the kids poke his head in the door.

“Yeah? Who?”

“Perini’s probation officer, I think.”

“Tell him to get fucked.”

“For real?” The boy looked thrilled.

“No, not for real, asshole. Give me five minutes, and send him in.”

“What’ll I do with him for five minutes?”

“I don’t know, dammit. Do whatever you want to do. Beat him up, roll him, kick him down the stairs. Give him coffee …. I don’t give a shit what you do.” Alejandro threw the newspaper off his desk and into the garbage.

“Okay, man. Okay. Don’t get all pissed off.” He had never seen Alejandro like that before. It was scary.

The hotel in villars-sur-Ollon suited her purposes perfectly, high up in the mountains and in a town that was crawling with schools. There were virtually no tourists there, except a few visiting parents. She stayed in a huge hotel that was mostly uninhabited, and took tea with seven old ladies to the sound of violins and a cello. She went for long walks, drank a lot of hot chocolate, went to bed early, and read. Only Simpson and Edward knew where she was, and she had told them both to leave her alone. She didn’t plan to write until further notice, and even Edward had respected her wishes. He sent her weekly letters to keep her abreast of her financial news, and expected no response, which was just as well, because he got none. It was the middle of April before she was ready to leave.

She took the train to Milan, spent a night, and then went on to Florence. She mingled with the early spring tourists, toured the museums, wandered in and out of shops, walked along the Arno, and tried not to think. She did the same in Rome, and by then it was easier. It was May. The sun was warm, the people were lively, the street musicians were funny, and she ran into a few friends. She had dinner with them, and found that the urge to jump up and scream had finally left her. Little by little, she was healing.

In the early weeks of June, she rented a Fiat and drove north to Umbria, and to Spoleto where later in the summer the music festival would be held. And then she drove through the Alps, and eventually into France.

She danced in St. Tropez in July, and gambled in Monte Carlo, boarded the yacht of friends in St. Jean-Cap Ferrat for a weekend, and bought new Gucci luggage in Cannes. She began to write again when she drove up through Provence, and spent three weeks lost in a tiny hotel, where the terrine was superb, better than any pâté she had eaten.

Luke’s book reached her there, hesitantly sent to her by Simpson, with the reviews. She opened the package unsuspectingly one morning, bathed in sunshine as she stood barefoot in her nightgown on the little balcony outside her room. She could see hills and fields beyond, and for almost an hour she simply sat cross-legged on the balcony floor with the book in her lap, holding it, running her fingers over the cover, but unable to open it. The jacket design was good, and there was a marvelous photograph of him on the back. It had been taken before she had met him, but she had a copy of the same photo on her desk in New York. He was walking down a street in Chicago, wearing a white turtleneck sweater, his dark hair blown by the wind, his raincoat slung over his shoulder. One eyebrow raised, he was looking sarcastically into the camera with the beginnings of a smile. She had squeezed the photograph out of him the first time she had seen it.

“What the hell do you want that for?”

“You look so sexy in it Luke.”

“Jesus. You nut I hope my readers don’t think so.”

“Why not?” She looked up, a little surprised, and he had kissed her.

“Because I’m supposed to look brilliant, not sexy, silly lady.”

“Well, you happen to look both. Can I have it?” He had waved an embarrassed hand at her, and gone off to answer the phone. But she had taken the photograph, and framed it in silver. It was a glimpse of the real Luke, and she was glad it was on the book jacket. People should see him as he was … people should….

She had looked up after what seemed like hours, the book still cradled in her lap, unfelt tears rolling steadily down her face, misting the view. But she had been looking into the past not at the fields in the distance.

“Well, babe, here we are.” She spoke aloud and smiled through her tears, using the hem of her nightgown to wipe her face. She could almost see Lucas smiling at her. It didn’t matter where she went anymore, she carried him with her in a warm, tender way. Not in the agonizing way that she had; now she could smile at him. Now he was with her, forever. In New York, in Switzerland, in France. He was a part of her now. A comfortable part.

She looked far into the fields with a soft shrug and leaned back against the legs of a chair, still holding the book in her hands. A voice seemed to tell her to open it, but she couldn’t, and then as she watched the face in the photograph yet again, almost expecting him to move along that long-forgotten street in Chicago, it was as though she could see his face growing stern, his head shaking in teasing annoyance.

“Come on, Mama, open it, dammit!”

She did, gingerly, carefully, not wanting to breathe or to look or to see. She had known, known it when she touched the book, but seeing it would be different. She wondered if she could bear it, but she had to. Now she wanted to see, and she knew he had wanted her to. He had never told her, but now it was as though she had always known. The book was dedicated to her.

Fresh tears ran down her face as she read it, but they were not tears of grief. Tears of tenderness, of gratitude, of laughter, of loving. Those were the treasures he had given her, not sorrow. Luke had never been a man to tolerate sorrow. He had been too alive to taste even a whisper of death. And sorrow is death.To Kezia, who stands by my side wherever I go. My equal, my solace, my friend. Brave lady, you are the bright light in a place I have long sought to find, and now at last we’re both home. May you be proud of this book, for now it is the best I can give you, with thanks and my love.L.J.

“… and now at last we’re both home.” It was true, and it was late August by then, and she had one final test Marbella. And Hilary.

“My God, darling, you look divine! So brown and healthy! Where on earth have you been?”

“Here and there.” She laughed and brushed her hair from her eyes. It was longer now, and the harsh angularity of her face had melted again. There were small lines on either side of her eyes, from the sun, or whatever, but she looked well. Very well.

“How long can you stay? Your cable didn’t even give me a hint, naughty child!”

Yes, she was back in that old familiar world. Dear, darling Hilary. But it amused her to be called a naughty child. Hell, why not? Her birthday had come and gone in late June. She was thirty now.

“I’ll be here for a few days, Aunt Hil, if you have room.”

“That’s all? But darling, how awful, and of course I have room, how absurd.” She was currently having room for at least fourteen others, not to mention the staff. “’Why don’t you think about staying longer?”

“I’ve got to get back.” She accepted an iced tea from the butler. They stood near the tennis courts where the other guests played.

“Get back to where? My, Jonathan has improved his serve, hasn’t he?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Of course, how silly of me. You don’t know him. Perfectly beautiful man.”

He looked like a carbon copy of Whitney. It made Kezia smile.

“So where is it you’re going back to?” Hilary returned her attention to Kezia, over a well-chilled martini.

“New York.”

“At this time of year? Darling, you’re mad!”

“Maybe so, but I’ve been away for almost five months.”

“Then another month can’t possibly hurt.”

“I’m going back to do some work.”

“Work? What sort of work? Charity? But no one’s in town in the summer for heaven’s sake. Besides, you don’t work, do you?” For a moment Hilary looked slightly confused. Kezia nodded.

“Yes, I do. Writing.”

“Writing? What on earth for?” She was quite bemused, and Kezia was trying hard not to laugh. Poor Aunt Hil.

“I guess I write because I enjoy it very much, as a matter of fact.”

“Is this something new?”

“No, not really.”

“Can you write? Decently, I mean.” But this time Kezia couldn’t help it; she laughed.

“I don’t know. I certainly try to. I used to write the Martin Hallam column. But that wasn’t my best work.” Kezia wore a mischievous grin. Hilary gaped.

“You what? Don’t be insane! You … Good God. Kezia, how could you!”

“It amused me. And when I had enough of it, I retired. And don’t look so upset, I never said anything mean about you.”

“No, but you … I … Kezia, you really amaze me.” She relieved the butler of another martini and stared at her niece. The girl was really quite strange. Always had been, and now this. “In any case, I think you’re a fool to go back in August.” Hilary had not yet recovered. “And that column doesn’t run anymore.” Kezia giggled; it was as though Hilary were trying to trap her into admitting that she hadn’t actually written it. But that was wishful thinking.

“I know, but I’m going back to discuss the terms on a book.”

“A book based on gossip?” Hilary blanched.

“Of course not. It’s sort of a political theme. It’s really too long to go into.”

“I see. Well, I’d be thrilled if you wanted to stay … as long as you promise not to write naughty things about all my guests.” She tittered sweetly, as it occurred to her that this might make for some very amusing gossip of her own. “Did you know my niece used to be Martin Hallam, dear?”

“Don’t worry, Aunt Hil, I don’t write that kind of thing anymore.”

“What a pity.” Her third martini had softened the blow. Kezia watched her as she accepted her second iced tea. “Have you seen Edward yet?”

“No. Is he here?”

“You didn’t know?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You have been off the beaten track, haven’t you? Where did you say you’d been all this time?” Hilary was watching Jonathan’s serve again.

“Ethiopia. Tanzania. The jungle. Heaven. Hell. The usual spots.”

“How nice, darling … how really very nice. See anyone we know?” But she was too engrossed in Jonathan’s game to listen or care. “Come darling, I’ll introduce you to Jonathan.” But Edward appeared on the scene before Hilary could sweep her away. He greeted Kezia with warmth, but also with caution.

“I never thought I’d see you here!” It was an odd greeting after so much and so long.

“I never thought you would either.” She laughed and gave him a hug that reminded him of old times.

“How are you, really?”

“How do I look?”

“Just the way I’d want to see you. Tanned, healthy, and relaxed.” And also sober. That was a relief.

“And that’s how I am. It’s been a long bunch of months.”

“Yes. I know.” He knew that he would never know the full story, but he was certain it had come close to destroying her. Much too close. “You’re staying for a while?”

“Just a few days. Then I have to go back. Simpson is in the midst of making a deal for me, for a book.”

“How perfectly marvelous!”

“That’s how I feel.” She smiled happily, and hooked her arm in his, as he prepared to lead her away for a walk.

“Come. Tell me about it. Let’s go sit down under the trees over there.” He removed two more iced teas from a silver tray and headed for a gazebo far from the courts. They had a lot to catch up on, and for the first time in years she seemed willing to talk. He had missed her very badly, but the time had done him good as well. He had realized at last what she represented in his life, and what she could never be. He too had made peace with himself and the people he dreamed of, as much as he ever would. Most of all he had accepted what seemed to be his role. Acceptance. Understanding. As life’s trains passed him by. The last lonely gentleman standing on the platform.

Kezia was almost sorry to leave Marbella, for the first time in her life. She had come to terms with a thousand ghosts in the months she’d spent alone, not only Luke’s ghost, but others. She was even free of the ghost of her mother. At last. And now she had to go home.

It was funny, on the plane home from Spain she remembered something Alejandro had said a long time ago. “That whole life is a part of you, Kezia. You can’t deny it.” Though she didn’t want to live it anymore, she no longer needed to exorcise it either. She was free.

It was a pleasant flight, and New York was hot and muggy and beautiful and throbbing when she arrived. Hilary was wrong. It was exciting even in August. Maybe no one who mattered was there, but everyone else was. The city was alive.

There were no photographers to greet her, nothing, no one, only New York. And that was enough. She had so much to do. It was late Friday night. She had to go home and unpack, wash her hair, and first thing the next morning, she would take the subway to Harlem. First thing. She had flown home from Spain for her book, but to see Alejandro too. It was time now. For her anyway. She had planned it for a long time. And she was ready. For him. For herself. He was part of her past, but not the part she had put away. He was the part she had saved for the present.

And the present looked and felt splendid. She was unfettered now, unbound and happy and free. She tingled with the excitement of all that lay ahead … people, places, things to do, books to write, her old conquered world at her feet, and now new worlds to conquer. Above all, she had conquered herself. She had it all now. What was there to fear? Nothing, and that was the beauty of what she had found. No one owned her anymore, not a life-style, not a man, no one. Kezia owned Kezia, for good.

The days with Luke had been treasured and rare, but a new dawn had come … a silver and blue morning filled with light. And there was room for Alejandro in her new day, if he was around, and if not, she would ride laughing and proud into noon.

To Beatrix with all my love, D.S.

Published by

Dell Publishing

a division of

Random House, Inc

1540 Broadway

New York, New York 10036

Lines from “Getting There” by Sylvia Plath are reprinted from ARIEL (1965) by Sylvia Plath. Copyright © 1963 by Ted Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., Faber & Faber, London, and Olwyn Hughes.

Copyright © 1976 by Danielle Steel

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

The trademark Dell^® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

eISBN: 978-0-307-56674-4

July 1989

v3.0

Table of Contents

Cover

Other Books By This Author

Title Page

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Copyright