Chapter 10 #2
It took all of Charlie’s strength not to call her or answer her texts, and when they stopped, he was worried about her.
If anything ever happened to her, no one would know to call him.
He couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to her.
He didn’t know what to do to get her out of his head.
She lived there now, constantly, taunting him, reminding him of how wonderful it had been with her.
He wanted her out of his life now, for her sake.
He was determined not to contact her again.
He wondered if being with a woman would help.
What the French called “chasing one nail with another.”
He went to a bar in Palo Alto one night, when Faye was out with clients, so she didn’t see him leave.
It was a bar where loose women were known to hang out.
The men in the office swore that if you wanted to get laid, you should go to that particular bar, and within half an hour, you’d be all set.
He drove there from the house in Atherton, walked up to the bar and ordered a double Johnny Walker Black Label on the rocks, drank it in five minutes, and ordered another.
“Tough day at the office?” the bartender asked, wondering if he’d gotten fired.
He drank like it. He took a little more time with his second drink, and a pretty blonde with huge implants and a very short skirt and stilettos came and stood next to him at the bar, eyeing him coyly.
She looked cheap but willing, which was all he needed.
He wasn’t sure if she was a pro or not, and didn’t care.
He was usually more discerning about the women he picked up, but all he wanted was someone to get Devon out of his head so he wouldn’t think of her every hour of the day and night and remember her gentle, sensual touch, or exquisite body and her green eyes, which haunted him.
“Would you like a drink?” Charlie asked the blonde, without feeling guilty. She was no innocent. And neither was he. There was a time when he regularly slept with women he picked up at bars. He hadn’t in a long time. And they had always been ordinary women, not hookers.
“Sure.” She ordered a wine spritzer, and whispered to him. “Did you drive here or come in an Uber?” He didn’t see what difference it made.
“I drove,” he said, almost finishing his Scotch.
“Wanna go out to your car and have some fun?” she asked him, batting her fake eyelashes at him, and he decided to go through with it. This was what he had come for.
“Let’s do it,” he said, taking a last swallow of the Johnny Walker, and she took a long sip of her spritzer and followed him outside to his car.
He unlocked it and got into the backseat with her.
He had parked at the far edge of the parking lot under a streetlamp, which was convenient.
She looked at him hesitantly for an instant.
“Do you mind giving me a hundred?” she asked him.
“I want to get my hair done tomorrow.” So she was a hooker, or maybe an amateur.
He pulled out his wallet and handed her two fifty-dollar bills, and she stuffed them in her overburdened bra, as he watched her, and felt her unzip his pants and reach in to free him, and suddenly the reality of what he was doing and his desperation hit home, and he gently grabbed her wrist and stopped her.
He didn’t know if she was going to give him a blow job or a hand job, but he didn’t want to find out.
He was drunk, but not enough to be paying a hundred dollars for a blow job in a parking lot when there was a woman in the world who loved him.
He felt crazy, but saner than he had been when he walked her to his car.
“It’s all right,” she said soothingly, “don’t be embarrassed. I’m a nice girl. I teach school.”
“I don’t know if that’s true or not, but whatever you do, you shouldn’t be doing this.
I’m a mess but I’m a decent guy. One night you’re going to come across some guy who’ll beat the shit out of you or kill you.
” He zipped up his pants, reached for his wallet again, and gave her another hundred.
“I’m sorry. Now call an Uber and go home. ”
“Are you sure? I could go all the way for two hundred.”
“I probably couldn’t after two double Scotches.
I was having some kind of a meltdown, but this isn’t the solution.
” He stepped out of the car and she followed him, looking puzzled.
“Do you want me to call you an Uber?” he asked her.
Under the streetlight, he could see that she was very young, maybe eighteen or twenty, and he felt sorry for her.
“Yeah, sure, that’s nice of you. Thank you,” she said, as they stood there and he called the Uber on his phone, and it arrived five minutes later.
“Take care,” he said, as she got in the car and waved at him, and it drove away. He got behind the wheel of his car and drove home, feeling like he had been insane. What if he’d gotten arrested, or if she really was a hooker and stabbed him and killed him for his watch and his wallet?
He had another glass of Scotch and went straight to bed. He didn’t look at his phone for messages from Devon. He didn’t know what he dreaded most, another message from her, or none.
He called Adam Stein when he woke up in the morning, on his private line. Adam picked up, and Charlie sounded raw. He remembered the night before all too clearly.
“Do you have time for lunch with me today?” he asked.
“Sure. What’s the problem? Something wrong?” Adam already had a lunch, but he was going to cancel it for Charlie when he heard the way he sounded.
“I think I’m losing my mind. I need to talk to someone, a friend.”
“Sure. Why don’t you come to my office. I’ll order in. Better than a restaurant. How about twelve-thirty?”
“Thank you. I’ll see you then.” Charlie hung up, took a long hot shower, and didn’t go into the office. Faye had left early for a meeting, and he was grateful not to see her, or anyone else.
He drove to the city, parked his car, and walked along the Embarcadero for a while, looking at the bay and the seagulls and the boats, trying to find firm ground under his feet again. He felt as though he’d been roller-skating on marbles since he got home from New York, from being with Devon.
Charlie arrived at Adam’s office five minutes early, eager to see him.
The receptionist told him to go in. He knew where to find Adam, in the big corner office.
He had an enormous glass desk and wood-paneled walls, and a breathtaking view of the bay, looking east to the Bay Bridge.
The view was more industrial than on the Golden Gate side, which was residential.
He stared mournfully across the desk at Adam.
Charlie looked woebegone, with dark circles under his eyes. Adam was worried just looking at him.
“Is someone suing you?” he guessed.
“No.”
“Sexual harassment?” Charlie shook his head, thinking of the night before.
“I almost got a blow job in a parking lot from a hooker last night. I didn’t but that’s when I figured I should call you or a shrink, or both.
” Adam was his closest friend as well as his lawyer.
They had gone to grade school together. They’d grown up together.
“I feel crazy. I met a woman this summer. She’s everything I could ever want.
Smart, beautiful, talented, successful. She’s a famous artist, a painter.
She’s a wonderful person, kind, decent. She’s everything Faye isn’t, and never was, even when we liked each other. ”
“And she wants money. She’s blackmailing you,” Adam guessed.
“Not at all. She doesn’t want anything from me. She just wants to spoil me and love and treat me like the hero in a fairy tale.” He looked miserable when he said it.
“And Faye wants everything you own in a divorce?”
“Probably. But she doesn’t know.”
“Do you love this woman?” Adam looked at him intently. Charlie didn’t look crazy. He looked shattered, broken.
“Desperately. I love everything about her. She’s perfect for me. I spent time with her in the Hamptons this summer, and I just spent a week with her in New York. She lives there. I left her the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and I haven’t answered her messages since.”
“Why? Is she married?” Adam was trying to figure out where the problem was, and he couldn’t so far.
“She’s a widow. She’s lost everyone she ever loved.
Her parents when she was a kid, her husband, her son, her grandmother.
She’s alone. But I can’t do it. I can’t.
She reminds me of my mother. What if the same thing happens to her?
Faye and I don’t love each other, we never did.
I realize now that I’ve never been attached to anyone for my whole adult life, except Liam.
What if I love this woman? If I make a life with her, and she leaves me, or something happens to her and she dies?
I don’t think I’d survive it. I think after my mother died, at some gut level I decided never to love anyone again.
And I haven’t. It’s all been superficial, women I don’t care about and don’t love, who don’t love me, and Faye, who’d be fine if I keeled over dead tomorrow.
We live together like strangers. It works for me.
I’m closer to the guy who mows my lawn. But this woman, I would die if something happened to her. ”
“So what are you doing about it?” Adam asked him.
“I walked out on her. I abandoned her for the second time. She’s better off without me.”
“I agree with your analysis. Your mother was such a lovely person that I was traumatized when she died. My mother took me to a shrink, because I was terrified my own mother would die after that,” Adam said.
“My father sent me away, and I haven’t loved anyone since, except my son.
And he’s independent and not a big risk-taker.
But if I stay with this woman and I love her, which I do, and something happens to her, it would kill me.
I can’t take the chance. I ran,” he said with tears in his eyes, “and I’m still running.
I ditched her. I haven’t contacted her since I left New York, after we spent the most incredible week of my life together. ”
“You can’t run away from love forever,” Adam said seriously, worried about his friend.
“Maybe she’d outlive you. She’s not going to die because your mother did—and look at the life you live with Faye.
You’re like strangers. I’m closer to my barber than you are to your wife.
” They both knew it was true, and Faye would have agreed.
“There’s no risk factor like that. Nothing hurts.”
“It’s like being dead. You can’t run away from this woman because you love her, that’s insane.”
“That’s how I feel. Crazy. All I want to do is be with her, and I’m scared to death to be dependent on her, and too attached to her. I have freedom now. I do what I want. I don’t owe anyone explanations. I don’t care about anyone except Liam. And her.”
“Charlie, that’s not a life. You’ll be alone forever if you don’t take a chance.”
“I thought I would be and it was fine. Until I met her. She must hate me by now. I disappeared on her for a week this summer, and it nearly killed her. She must feel even worse now.”
“You have to deal with this. You’re sane about Liam, why can’t you be sane about her?”
“Maybe because she’s a woman. I thought I could save my mother and I couldn’t. I tried to make all kinds of deals with God.”
“I remember how it was. It was awful,” Adam said, still moved when he thought about Charlie’s mother. He still remembered her distinctly, and how sick she had gotten so quickly, and then she died. “You can’t live like you do with Faye forever,” Adam said firmly. “Would you divorce her?”
“She’d take half of everything I have. Faye isn’t famous for being merciful, or fair. She likes money.”
“We all do. You can afford to give her a hell of a lot.” Charlie had always been generous. “Your freedom is worth it.”
“I’m not sure Devon would even speak to me by now. It’s been two weeks. And she doesn’t take abandonment lightly. She’s been badly wounded, especially when she lost her son. He was five.”
“What’s her name?” Adam asked, curious. He pulled his computer toward him as Charlie told him, and he googled her. He found her immediately and stared at her. “Oh my God, Charlie…she’s amazing. She has credentials a mile long. Important ones. She’s painted everyone but the pope.”
“She was supposed to do my portrait in January for the bank,” which would be impossible now. They’d have to cancel the commission.
“To hell with the bank. You have to get sane about this. She’s not your mother, you’re not thirteen, and she’s not going to die…not soon, anyway. Why don’t you go back to New York and talk to her. Or at least call her.”
“I don’t even know if she’d see me by now.”
“If she loves you, she would. What are your options? A life with a woman you don’t love whom you barely speak to and getting blow jobs from hookers in parking lots, or a real life with a woman who loves you?
” He made it sound as bad as it was, and Charlie looked depressed.
“You cannot run out on this woman because your mother died. This woman is alive and loves you, from what you say.”
“I’ll think about it,” Charlie said. He hadn’t touched the sandwich Adam had ordered for him, and he looked sick with grief and worry.
He stayed for a few more minutes and then he left. He went to his office and looked unhappy for the rest of the day. Everything Adam had said made sense. But Charlie was terrified of getting attached to anyone, especially Devon, because he loved her so much.
He promised himself he would call her by Christmas. That was the best he could do for now. And by Christmas, who knew if Devon would speak to him. Christmas was twelve days away.