miles apart, Steph and Jessie had kept in touch and had remained close. Jessie had even visited the Carltons’ home in Harrison occasionally.
“It’s good to hear that you haven’t lost your sense of humor,” Steph said.
Jessie sat on the edge of the bed and began to pull the pins from her carefully arranged titian French knot. An attractive, green-eyed redhead, she had freckleless ivory skin and a slender figure with ample curves in all the right places. “My funny bone is still intact. Actually, I feel a little sorry for the jerk. I get weekly reports from some of our old supposedly well-meaning friends who think I need blow-by-blow accounts of their comings and goings, pardon the pun. I understand that he’s going to marry the bimbo. She has the brains of a thumbtack and giggles all the time, but you know all the stories about the seven-year itch. Rob always was a bit slow. It took him thirteen years to feel it. I hope they’ll be very happy, snarl. I’ll retract my claws now.” Jessie’s voice dropped. “Anyway, maybe she’s good in bed, better than I ever was.” Jessie was amazed at the knot of bitterness that was lodged in the pit of her stomach. She and Rob hadn’t had a volcanic sex life but she had been content. Content. What a horrible word to describe a sex life.
“Do I hear a note of self-pity?” Steph asked. When her comment was followed by a long pause, she continued, “Cut that out, Jessie.”
“I know. It’s just that I thought we were happy. I feel duped, somehow.” She stood up and walked to the window, overlooking the backyard. She raised the sash and inhaled the fragrance of freshly cut grass. “And suddenly I feel very lonely, very foreign here.”
Steph changed the subject quickly. “Are you changing your name back?”
“No. I thought about it, but so much of my business life is under the name Hanley that I’m going to keep the name. And, after all, it’s so much easier to pronounce and spell than Florcyk.”
“Lord knows you’re right about that,” Steph said. “Remember, in school, how we always waited for the teacher to get to your name the first day. No one could ever say it right.”
Jessie smiled. “Remember Mr. Honeywell? He never did learn to pronounce it. He got as far as Fler-cuck and called me that all year.” Jessie pictured their senior English teacher. He had held all the girls spellbound with his sensual reading of eighteenth-century English poetry.
“God, he was something,” Steph said with a small sigh. “I still get the hots just thinking about him. He had the greatest buns in those tight jeans he wore.”
“A tight, flat rear and that fantastic bulge in the front. We speculated for hours about whether he wore padding in his shorts.” Jessie smiled. She hadn’t thought sexy, outrageous things like that in years, and, she suddenly realized, she missed it.
“And what about men in your life?” Steph asked. “Are you dating yet?”
“Yes and no. There’s a guy I’ve known for a few months. We’ve been to dinner a few times in the past few months and I think he’s interested.”
“And you? How do you feel?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m not ready yet. Steve, that’s his name, Steve’s sweet and kind and thoughtful. But I feel, I can’t explain it, sort of closed in.”
“So come back here and stay with Brian and me for a few weeks or longer.” Steph had been trying to convince Jessie to visit for months. “You’re selling the house so you have to move anyway. Let someone in your office handle the arrangements and get the hell out of town for a while.”
“Oh, Steph, I wish I could.”
“Why can’t you?”
“I have responsibilities here.”
“Like what?”
“Like the office.” Jessie owned Ferncrest Realty, a small but successful real estate agency specializing in newly built town houses. “And selling the house. Packing, organizing, you know.”
“You’ve told me over and over that the office runs like clockwork. I’m sure you hate to admit that it can get along without you, but it can and it will. And how will it feel showing strangers through your house, knowing that they’re criticizing your landscaping and your wallpaper? You don’t need that right now.”
Jessie looked down at the backyard. She remembered planting most of the red, white, and pink azaleas that blazed in full bloom along the foundation. “I know that, but I don’t mind selling the house. It was always too ostentatious for my taste. Rob was the one who wanted a big, showy house in which to entertain. His lawyer told me that he wanted to keep it, buy me out but I told him no. I won’t have Rob and bimbette living here.” Her eyes misted as she stared into the master bath and took in the new fixtures she and Rob had had installed just a month before ‘the event.’ “I just can’t bear that.”
“I understand, Jessie. If, God forbid, anything like that ever happened to Brian and me, I wouldn’t want him to live here either.”
“Everything has two sides, you know, and sometimes my feelings change from minute to minute. There’s a big part of me that still feels the history in here. So much entertaining: the bridge games, the country club crowd that Rob wanted so much to be a part of, barbecues on the deck.” Jessie tucked the phone between her ear and shoulder and, with all the pins now removed from her long, red hair, combed her slender fingers through the strands and rubbed her scalp. “That’s all over now.”
“So, why stay there? Come to Harrison and stay with us. You know this huge old place has plenty of room. You could have the entire end of the house you had when you were here two years ago. All the privacy you could want, and all of my company you can stand.”
“Oh Steph, it sounds so tempting.”
“I wish you’d come. Harrison has so much to offer you, especially at this point in your life. It will be like old times. Girl talk, movies. We can lounge by the pool and talk about life, love and good sex, not necessarily in that order.”
“What about my life here? I’ve got to find a place to live.”
“Do it later. You don’t want to make any long-term decisions right now anyway and you can certainly afford to dump most of your stuff. Put things you really want to keep in storage and split.” Jessie paused, so Steph continued, “It would be so great. You and me, on our own near the big city. Nobody gleefully keeping you up to date on Rob’s escapades. Just Broadway plays, expensive restaurants, museums, Bergdorfs, Bloomingdales, Saks, Lord & Taylor’s, the works.”
“Not too many restaurants,” Jessie said, running her palm down her flat stomach. “My figure couldn’t stand the calories.”
“Calories are overrated.” Steph stopped suddenly. “Whoa. Wait a minute. Was that a yes I heard?”
Jessie flopped back onto a stack of pillows. “Why the hell not? For a couple of weeks anyway.”
Steph squealed like the girls had when they were kids. “Wonderful. I never believed you’d actually agree.”
“Are you sure you’re not regretting your offer now that I’ve said yes?”
“Of course not. It will be great. I don’t mean to push my luck but how soon can you get
