Chapter 22
For Thanksgiving, they had hot turkey sandwiches in their room at the hotel in Chicago. The revocation hung over their heads, but they had fought hard to ignore it. They rarely discussed it, except once in a while, late at night. They had six weeks till the hearing, and Kezia was determined not to let the threat of it ruin their life. She fought for gaiety with an almost unbearable determination. Lucas knew what was happening to her, but there was so little he could do. He couldn’t wish the hearing away. His own nightmares were back, and he didn’t like the way Kezia looked. She was already losing weight. But she was game. She made the same old jokes, they had a good time. They suddenly made love two and three times a day, sometimes four, as though to stock up on what they might lose. Six weeks was so short. When they went back to New York, there were only five left.
“Kezia, you don’t look well. You don’t look well at all.”
“Edward, my darling, you’re driving me mad.”
“I want to know what you’re up to.” The waiters swished past them and poured more Louis Roederer champagne.
“You’re prying.”
“YES, I am.” He looked sour, and old. She looked tired, and far older than she had so briefly before.
“All right. I’m in love.”
“I assumed that much. And he’s married?”
“Why do you always assume that the men I go out with are married? Because I’m discreet? Hell, I have a right to be that, I’ve learned that much over the years.”
“Yes, but you don’t have a right to indulge in sheer folly.”
No, just a right to misery, darling, and shitty rotten luck. Right, Edward? Of course. Or is it just a right to duty and pain? “Folly, in this case, dear Edward, is a beautiful man whom I adore. We have more or less lived and traveled together for more than two months now. And just before Thanksgiving, we found out … that …” Her voice caught and her heart trembled as she wondered what she was doing … “We found out that he’s sick. Terribly sick.”
Edward’s face suddenly looked pinched. “What sort of sick?”
“We’re not sure.” She was into it now. She almost believed it herself. It was easier than the truth, and it would get him off her back for a while. “They’re attempting treatment, and at this point he has about a fifty-fifty chance of living. Which is why I don’t ‘look well.’ Satisfied?” Her voice was ripe with bitterness, her eyes dulled with tears.
“Kezia, I’m so sorry. Is he … is he … anyone I know?”
Not on your ass, sweetheart. She almost wanted to laugh. “No, he isn’t. We met in Chicago.”
“I wondered about that. Is he young?”
“Young enough, but he’s older than I am.” She was quiet now. In a way she had told him the truth. Sending Lucas back to prison would be like condemning him to death. Too many men hated or loved him, he was too well known, had stirred up too much. San Quentin would kill him. Someone would. If not an inmate, a guard.
“I don’t know what to say.” But his face said what his words couldn’t. There was a ghost in his eyes. The ghost of Liane Saint Martin. “This man … is he … would … does he come to New York?” He was groping for a criterion that Kezia wouldn’t leap at in fury but there were none. Where did he go to school? What does he do? Where does he live? Who is he? Kezia would have exploded at any of those questions. But he wanted to know. Had to. He owed it to her … to himself.
“Yes, he comes to New York. He’s been here with me.”
“He stays in your apartment?” He suddenly remembered her saying that they had lived together. My God, how could she?
“Yes, Edward. In my apartment.”
“Kezia … is he … is he …” He wanted to know if this was someone decent, respectable, not some fortune hunter, or … or “tutor,” but he simply couldn’t ask, and she wouldn’t have let him. Edward felt as though he was on the verge of losing her forever. “Kezia….”
She looked at him then with tears on her cheeks and quietly shook her head. “Edward … I … I can’t do this today. I’m sorry.” She kissed him gently on the cheek then, picked up her handbag, and slid to her feet. He didn’t stop her. He couldn’t. He merely watched her retreat toward the door and clenched his hands very tightly for a moment before signaling for the check.
In the bitter cold of the winter afternoon, she rode the subway to Harlem. Alejandro was the only one who could help. She was beginning to panic. She had to see him.
She walked quickly from the subway to the center, oblivious of how she looked in the long red Paris coat and the full white mink hat. She didn’t give a damn how she looked. On the streets where she slalomed between garbage cans and scampering children, they looked at her as if she were a strange apparition, but the wind was bitingly cold and there was snow in the air. No one had time to be bothered. They left her alone.
There was a girl in Alejandro’s office when Kezia arrived, and they were laughing. Kezia paused in the doorway. She had knocked, but their laughter had muffled the sound.
“Al, are you busy?” It was rare that she called him by the nickname Luke used.
“I … no … Pilar, will you excuse me?” The girl bounced from the chair and scraped past Kezia with a look of wonderment in her eyes. Kezia looked like a vision fresh out of Vogue, or someone in a movie.
“I’m sorry to break in on you like this.” Her eyes looked agonized beneath the white fur.
“It’s all right. I was … Kezia?”
She had crumbled into tears in front of his eyes, and now she stood there, broken, holding out both arms, her handbag askew on the floor, the last of her control dissolved.
“Kezia … pobrecita … babe … take it easy …”
“Oh Christ, Alejandro…. I can’t stand it!” She let herself fall into his arms and buried her face on his shoulder. “What can we do? They’re going to take him back. I know it.” She sniffed and pulled away to see his eyes. “They will, won’t they?”
“They might.”
“You think they will too, don’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do, godammit. Tell me! Somebody tell me the truth!”
“I don’t know the truth, damn you!”
She was shouting and he was shouting still louder. The walls seemed to echo with what they had both penned up—fear and anger and frustration.
“Yeah, maybe they will take him back. But for chrissake, lady, don’t give up till they say it. What are you going to do? Let yourself die now? Give him up? Destroy yourself? Wait till you hear, for chrissake, then figure it out.” The room had been full of his voice and she could hear tears creeping up on him too, but she was quiet. He had brought her back to her senses, to a point of control.
“Maybe you’re right. I’m just so fucking scared, Alejandro. I don’t know what to do to hang on anymore…. I get this rising panic like bile in my guts.”
“There’s nothing you can do, except try to be reasonable and hang in. Try not to panic.”
“What if we run away? Do you think that they’d find him?”
“Yes, eventually, and then they’d kill him on sight. Besides, he’d never do that.”
“I know.” He came close to her again and held her in his arms. She was still wearing the coat and fur hat and her face was streaked with mascara and tears. “The worst of it is that I don’t know what to do to help him, how to make it easier for him. He’s under so damn much strain.”