Chapter 36

Carolyn had moved her clothes into their bedroom and then gone to bed. He sat with a magazine in his lap, watching television unseeingly, forcing himself to wait until his usual hour for bed.

Freshly showered and shaved, he slipped into bed beside her, uncertain whether she was asleep and not really caring. Moving close enough to feel her warmth but careful not to touch her, he lay awake for some time; and he awakened frequently during the night, the perfume of her presence washing over him. They had been apart eighteen days.

The next day he sent roses to the house and made reservations at a restaurant they had gone to months ago, its decor too fussy for his taste but one she had pronounced charming. He brought home a bottle of champagne. “What is all this?” Carolyn asked, smiling and shaking her head, “Christmas?”

He stripped the wire fastening and foil from the champagne bottle and worked at the cork with his thumbs. “Feel well enough to go out tomorrow for just a couple of hours? To some of those fancy stores in Beverly Hills?”

“Sure. But not to buy anything. It’s ridiculous to pay a fortune when—”

“Indulge me. The bonus is just short of six thousand—more than I expected.” He poured the foaming gold liquid, handed her a glass, and lifted his own in a toast: “Princess, let’s celebrate—let’s go spend money!”

Saturday they walked the crowded streets of Beverly Hills hand in hand, looking in shop windows, chuckling at mannequins costumed in army fatigues and wrinkled cotton. “Get rich so you can look elegantly poor,” Carolyn joked. She refused his urging to go into the Rodeo Drive shops but she did go into Neiman Marcus.

Happily reminding himself of the bonus money, he talked her into trying on the well-cut gabardine pants and green silk shirts she was admiring. Stroking the fabrics as if hypnotized, she surrendered to his insistent coaxing and chose two pairs of pants, a skirt, two silk shirts. The saleswoman disinterestedly charged seven hundred and forty-six dollars to his American Express card.

As he carried the packages out to the car he thought exuberantly that he wasn’t through yet. He’d get them out of that house in the Valley next. Maybe buy a place in the South Bay. And only a month or so to go on Carolyn’s new job—he’d make damn sure that company of hers kept its promise about changing her hours back. Now that his marriage was returning to normal, now that that damned woman seemed to have lost her grip on Carolyn—he wouldn’t make the mistake of banking on it but it sure looked that way—he wanted Carolyn as far removed from her as he could possibly manage.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 570