Linda starts to cry. I don’t know what to do. She is crying and Len is staring off into space. I inch across the chaise lounge to tentatively put an arm around her. Linda feels so fragile when I touch her. The hurricane is scary on the surface, but fragile within.
“I can see you care about him,” I whisper.
She is suddenly buried against me.
“It’s just been really, really hard. The three of us—Len, Manny and me¬—that’s all there’s been for eight years. The three of us. From London here. Then one day it falls apart. You don’t see it. You don’t prepare. And you are writing letters to your best friend, the guy who’s like your brother, because they won’t let you do anything else. You can’t call. You can’t visit. And he’s not writing back. I’ve been so afraid. Really, really afraid.”
She’s wrapped around me as if she’s holding on for dear life, and I’m uncomfortable and I can’t figure out why she’s wrapped around me instead of her husband.
“He has your letters. They’re in a cabinet in his bedroom,” I inform her gently.
Linda’s face snaps up. “Really? Then why the fuck didn’t he write back?” Linda sits back on her heels. “OK, you’ve seen it. I’m running on my last nerve here.”
I start to move away. She grabs my arm. “No, stay with me. This is going to get awful. They have history together that even I don’t understand. It’s going to get awful and you need to keep me out of it.”
Len is reclined on his lounge chair asleep, and Linda and I are laying side by side as though we are the best of friends, waiting, though I don’t know for what. The fireworks?
“Do you know where I’m from?” Linda asks.
I shake my head.
“The Valley. Encino. I’m a Valley Girl. I miss Southern California. I miss the sun.”
I laugh.
Linda turns on her side. “How did two California college girls end up with this strange herd of British wetbacks? They only want to marry us for the citizenship and the tax advantage. Take my advice. Finish school. Don’t run off with the first Brit who wants to marry you for a green card.”
Linda falls asleep. I sit beside her, watching the sun move across the sky, dip in the horizon, and then the expanding swirl of sunset. The hours are punctuated only by the sound of Jeanette’s clicking heels and Len’s snoring. Clearly, the Rowans are not leaving until Alan returns. It’s evening. Good one, Alan, you could have returned when you promised to!
A sound makes me jump, and the movement of my body jolts Linda awake. There is noise in the foyer. Is Alan back? I start to rise, but Linda latches onto me like a barnacle. “No, stay. This is going to get ugly. Stay with me.”
Len goes from asleep to turbo-charged in a blink of an eye. He’s through the terrace doors. And then there is shouting, lots of shouting, but it is mostly Len, and shouting and breaking glass.
After what seems like a monumental amount of time, I shake Linda off and run toward the great room. Inside I find Alan and Len tangled on the floor, and the room is a mess. I start to move to break it up, but Linda stops me.
“I am not going to fight you, Len,” Alan snaps, trying to break free.
“I’m the one who fucking found you!” It rings through the room with acid potency. “So, is that what you’re pissed about? You’re pissed I didn’t let you screw things up permanently? I happen to love you. And you let my wife cry. You don’t take her calls. You don’t answer her letters. You just disappear, and then come back to New York, smug as you please all secretive and shit. And then you slap us in the face with Arnie Arnowitz.”
“I fucking deserve a little time after eight years,” Alan says, shoving Len back and then sitting up.
“Fine. You can have time. What you can’t do is leave us all hanging around with our cocks in our hand, not knowing what we’re doing, not knowing if you’re all right, and not knowing if there’s a band. Some of us need the fucking work. We don’t have the royalties. Some of us ain’t rich as the Federal Reserve.”
“So is that where we are? It’s about the money?”
“No. It’s about you not telling us you’re in trouble. I thought you kicked that shit. Next thing I know, I’m finding you dead on smack, and they’re bringing you back to life. Fuck you! You were dead, you witless bastard.”
Len pushes back against a sofa, sitting on the floor sprawled and weak, and he is crying.
I’m frozen at the terrace doors, but Linda is suddenly across the room, with Len in her arms, and he’s crying against her.
After several minutes, Linda looks at Alan. “How could you think that it was ever about the money, Manny? Not us. Never us. That’s unfair. Len’s just letting all the garbage out. It’s been rough. But don’t ever accuse us of having it be about the money.”
Alan rakes a hand through his hair. “I never thought it was, Linda.”
Linda brushes at the tears on her face. “You scared the hell out of us, Manny. You’ve really got to stop this shit.”
“I’m working on it.” Alan’s eyes find me and his expression changes into something that looks like apprehension. “Why are you staring at me like that, Chrissie?”
I break free of my thoughts. Alan is still breathing heavy, still trying to calm himself. Before the Rowans, somehow everything managed to remain in my lockboxes. But they are all open again and the mess is here in the room with me, his truth, my truth. I don’t know how I was looking at him and I don’t know what he can see.
I drop to my knees beside him and Alan pulls me fiercely against him. The room is so heavy with grimness, and my thoughts and emotions are in free fall again.
Say something quickly, Chrissie. Something funny. It doesn’t matter if Alan hates the playacting. Right now it is all there is to get me through this. I kiss his cheek. I make an exaggerated face. “It’s the bowl, Alan. The Columbian pottery. I wish Len had broken that horrid little piece over there on your head, but the one he broke was exquisite.”
It’s Linda who laughs, and her laughter, when it flows, is infectious. “I like her. I really do.”
In a minute, they are all laughing, but what I hear in the room is despair.
* * *
I slip quietly from the great room into Alan’s bedroom. The Rowans are hovering in the apartment and somehow I hold it together until I’m alone.
I shut the door and the tears instantly begin to flow. I lie down on the bed, my emotion-drained limbs almost without sensation, and I curl into a tight ball around Alan’s pillow. What do I do? Do I run? Do I stay? I’m so afraid of what being with Alan is doing to me.
I hear Alan open the door. I don’t move. He crosses to the bed, pulling me into his arms, all warm and compassionate.
“I’m sorry,” he breathes.
I want to pull away from Alan. I want to melt into him. I want not to be afraid. I want to know for sure that we are both not totally fucked up. I want him to be all right. I want me to be all right.
“Don’t hate me, Chrissie. Please. I can stand anything else, but not you hating me.”
What does he feel inside of me that he would ask me not to hate him? And what is he apologizing for? I don’t understand him.
Gently, he pulls me full length against him, his face in my hair, and he is kissing my neck. He is sad. Achingly sad. My heart clenches and I cry harder. He kisses me softly across my face, my arms, my chest, and it doesn’t stop until the tears quiet. And he doesn’t pull away.
We lie quietly together, and I feel myself slowly calming, slowly coming back into comfortable order, slowly melting back into him, into this consuming connection I have felt from the start.
I turn in his arms to put space between us. His eyes are midnight black and guarded, and he is afraid too.
“Did you really try to kill yourself?” I whisper.