Chapter 10
When Charlie got to the house in Atherton, it was dark and empty.
Faye wasn’t coming home until the next day.
It was a relief to find no one there in the silent house.
His feelings were raw and his heart was aching.
He felt fear engulf him like tar, and he lay down on his bed in the dark.
It was late in New York by then, one in the morning, and he couldn’t call Devon to hear her voice—she would be asleep by then.
He was back in the real world, his world, a world without warmth or love or feelings or anyone to spoil him who could disappear tomorrow.
He understood how to live in his world. It was like the plastic box Faye’s salads came in—empty and transparent and functional.
He didn’t know how to exist in Devon’s world, a universe of grace and beauty and warmth and love.
It was like being in heaven, and being cast into hell afterward, as he landed back on earth.
She texted him the morning after he arrived.
She was worried, he could tell. She had expected to hear from him—they had been so close for eight days, so fused together like one person, one soul, one vision of life, in harmony with each other.
“Did you get home okay? I miss you. I love you, D,” it said.
He read it and didn’t answer her. He felt paralyzed, unable to speak or communicate, as though she had cast a spell on him that condemned him to a silent darkness without her, and he didn’t know how to escape, or break the spell.
She texted him at his lunchtime, and again when she finished work.
He read the texts as though they were written by someone he didn’t know.
But the person he didn’t know was himself.
He was lost in a frightening darkness, where he could see nothing, hear nothing, do nothing, and was alone.
He was in agony, and had to go through the motions in his office, pretending that life was normal, when there was nothing normal about it.
He had been cast into a hell ruled by fear and was hiding from his demons. At every turn, they would find him.
Faye came home from Aspen that night, and found his door closed and locked when she got home.
“How was New York?” she shouted through the door on the way to her room.
“Fine,” he answered. “How was Aspen?” He could speak when he had to. The demons would let him.
“Cold as hell and gorgeous,” she answered. “The lifts are already open. I got in a couple of good runs.”
“Great,” he said, praying she’d leave him alone, and she did, and went to unpack.
He didn’t see her in the morning, which was a blessing.
He couldn’t bear talking to her or anyone else.
Devon called again that day, and he didn’t take the calls.
He didn’t know what had happened to him, except he did.
He could live in the icy, empty, dead environment of his marriage to Faye, but the tenderness and deep love that Devon lavished on him, with every minute kind and loving gesture, ripped him wide open, and his guts were all over the floor and he couldn’t get them back in.
All his feelings and fears were on fire and laid bare.
She had broken him open like a child’s piggy bank for the pennies he had inside.
He was emotionally bankrupt, and he knew it.
His mother had taken his ability to love another human with her.
His father had frozen the little that was left.
The demons had eaten him alive and left only hair and bones instead of a whole person.
He wasn’t whole, he knew it now. He couldn’t even fake it.
He had nothing to give her. He was nothing, except the cardboard person who had lived with Faye for twenty-three years.
She expected nothing from him, and gave him nothing in return.
If she had been more like Devon, they would have gone up in flames even sooner.
He hungered for everything Devon had to give him, but he couldn’t tolerate it.
His wounds were too raw, his heart too damaged.
He thought of their lovemaking and how easy it had been because of her.
She made it so easy to love her. For so many years he had slept with women he didn’t care about, as a form of physical exercise with no soul to it, and with Devon he came to life again, and then died when it was over.
He felt like a robot whose wiring was all screwed up, and no one could fix it.
Devon kept calling day after day, and his heart ached every time he saw her texts and messages, and after a week she gave up.
He silently begged her forgiveness, and hoped she would recover quickly from the pain he was inflicting on her, but he knew it would be far worse if he stayed with her, for both of them, when she discovered that he was only the shell of a man, with nothing inside.
Now she knew, and she could walk away and recover.
He wanted her to forget him as soon as she could.
He knew the pain he was causing her, and he ached for her, but his fears were more powerful than his compassion and his love, and his terror was in full control.
He was powerless against his fears and the cruelty they made him commit.
Knowing it only made it worse. He hated himself for it, while still loving her.
—
When Charlie didn’t send her a text from the car or when he got on the flight, Devon thought he had fallen asleep.
They’d had late nights with their lovemaking, and run around all day, and gone out in the evenings.
She was tired too, but it had all been so magical and perfect she felt like she was flying.
The next day, she imagined him at meetings.
She kept trying. She doggedly kept calling, thinking he was swamped.
By the end of the second day, she had a sick feeling in her stomach.
By the third day, panic had set in. She didn’t understand.
What had happened? Had she said something?
Done something? They had both been so happy.
The fourth and fifth days were a blur. And then she knew, on the sixth day.
He was never going to call her again. He had run, as fast and as far as he could.
She was never going to see him or hear from him again.
It was like a death, an agony she knew so well, where nothing makes sense and you want to run the film again and again to see where it went wrong.
Whatever the reason, whatever excuse he allowed himself to use, he had cut her out of his life.
She felt like he had killed her. He had stabbed her a thousand times in the heart, a million, like a crazed attacker who had to destroy her, and he had.
She had trusted him this time, which made it even worse.
She had nothing to protect her from the blows or the pain.
Her soul was bleeding. She had a commission to do and she could hardly get through the days.
As it became clear to her that he was never going to see her again, or speak to her, or respond, it nearly brought her to her knees, and she had to pretend to function and concentrate on the painting to survive.
She had been through it before with Jean-Louis and Axel and her grandmother.
But she wasn’t painting portrait commissions then.
She was in school, or doing little projects.
It took a monumental effort to pay attention to the painting she was working on.
Fortunately the subject was very nice and easy to work with.
He had brought his dog with him, a giant bullmastiff who looked like he could kill a man in one bite, and thought he was a lapdog.
He tried to sit on her lap several times, and licked her face.
He added some comic relief to an otherwise grim picture.
She felt like her heart was going to fall out of her chest every day.
She felt dizzy and sick to her stomach. Charlie had done it again.
He had abandoned her. First he had come as close to her as was humanly possible and let her think that he loved it too, and then with one cruel lethal gesture, he had flung her off a cliff onto the rocks below, and killed her.
She was in agony every minute of every day, keening for him, pining for him, remembering each moment they had spent together and how perfect it had been.
And now he was punishing her for it. As sweet as it had been, he needed to make it that much more brutal now.
She felt like she was dying. And hoped she would soon.
She couldn’t stand the pain of the loss for much longer. He had abandoned her, again.
After a week, she hoped he might wake up and come to his senses and contact her, but he didn’t.
She didn’t reach out to him again—there was no point.
She used every fiber of her being to concentrate on the painting she was supposed to do, before the subject accused her of being a fraud, sued her or demanded his money back, and destroyed her reputation.
She had gotten a good beginning on the dog, but she hadn’t even begun to sketch his owner.
And for once, she didn’t allow him to see her progress, or lack of it. She painted all day and got nothing.
And at night, after he left her apartment, she lay in bed and cried herself to sleep. It was a vicious circle of tears and torment day after day, and night. She had been there before and it was agonizingly familiar. He brought all the other deaths and losses back in vivid memory. Even Axel.
—