Даниэла Стил - All That Glitters

Saying goodbye to him was one of the more grown-up things she’d ever done. She didn’t try to stretch their affair, keep it or make it grow or drag it into her everyday life. She kissed him when he left and he cried. “Now go find a nice girl in Vermont and fall in love with her, and don’t go looking for the wild, exotic, exciting ones. They don’t last. That’s the best advice I can ever give you. If you chase that, it’s foam on the sand and you’ll wind up alone like me.” He waved at her as he disappeared into the metro to get to his train to Scotland at the Gare du Nord.

She left for London with Bethanie the next day. They gave up the house in Paris. Bethanie had liked her school there too, and was speaking French. Coco packed her diploma, and then they went home. She had allowed herself to be a child for a season, and now it was time to go home and be a grown-up. She remembered now that childhood and youth didn’t last forever, and it was just as well. She had begun to miss being an adult and working. She felt renewed and refreshed and ready to go back to London, to pick up the reins of her life again.

Chapter 18

When Coco came back to London in June, Leslie was happy to see her. There were changes in her life too. Her Danish boyfriend of the last two years had proposed to her. He had never been married before, and Leslie had been divorced for ten years. They were doing it at the beginning of July. She wanted Coco there to run the office when they went on their honeymoon for two weeks. Coco was delighted for her and happy to do it.

“Did you leave the Boy Wonder in Paris?” Leslie teased her. She had gone over to visit twice, and he had come to London so they’d met. “For a minute I thought you were serious, and then I realized you were just having fun.” She had assessed it correctly.

“He’s in Edinburgh now, and then he’s going home to Vermont.”

“Was he heartbroken when he left?”

Coco smiled at the memory. “Just a little. He’ll get over it. Things like that aren’t meant to last. Nothing does, except the real thing, but that’s hard to find. My friend Sam says that I fall for the flash every time, and I have.”

“We’ve all had our share of those,” Leslie said. She’d had her own good times. But this time she had found a good one, and had decided to grab it before she missed her chance. “We’ve had an interesting proposition I wanted to discuss with you. It’s from an investor in New York. He loves our concept, and wants to open an office there. He wants one of us to help him set it up. You know the city and I don’t. He wants to add to our operating capital, set up an office, hire a staff. It would increase our business exponentially. What do you think?”

“Are you asking me to move to New York and run it? I wouldn’t want to do that. I’d rather live here,” she said. “I’m not ready to live in New York again.” She couldn’t wait to leave after her six months there.

“No, I think he wants us to help him set it up, show him how we work, and then we can go home. I thought three months might do it, till he’s up and running. Does that appeal to you?”

“I would do it for three months. I owe you for the last year, between New York and Paris. I’d have to put Bethanie in school in New York while I’m there, which is fine at her age. When does he want to start?”

“Mid-September, I think. He’s already found office space in SoHo, and he’s interviewing staff now.”

“You wanted to open a New York office when you started,” Coco reminded her. “This is our chance.”

“Will you do it?”

“Yes, I will,” Coco said, wondering if she’d regret being stuck in New York again for three months. But having a fresh influx of operating capital was appealing, and she could spend time with Sam. “I could go as soon as you get back from your honeymoon. That would give me two months to help him set up and stick around for a month after he opens. I’d be back mid-October. That should work.” And she had the house in Southampton where she and Bethanie could spend weekends. And Bethanie would only be in school in New York for six weeks, which would be an adventure for her.

“I’ll get to work on it, and tell him you’ll do it. Thank you, Coco,” she said warmly. “This is a great opportunity for us. We could use our model to open in a number of cities eventually, with the right partners. This one came highly recommended by our bank and a mutual friend.”

They were working on resource lists for the New York office four days later, when Coco got a text from Sam. He was coming to London to see an important investment client and he wanted to have dinner with her. He had successfully developed a whole new aspect to his business, and his firm had grown.

“Do you want to stay with me? Plenty of room,” she texted back, and he responded that he was staying at a hotel, which was close to where he had several meetings lined up. She said she would love to have dinner with him. He was arriving the following week, and she was going to tell him then about her coming to New York for three months.

She was busy with Leslie on their New York project until he arrived, and she picked him up at the commercial hotel where he was staying. She thought he looked unusually serious and was probably tired. She took him to one of her favorite Italian restaurants where they could talk.

He waited until they had ordered dinner and a glass of wine for each of them before he dropped the bomb. They hadn’t spoken as much recently, he was busy, and she had a feeling that his life wasn’t running smoothly, or he was overwhelmed. He seemed stressed whenever they talked, his texts were short, and they never FaceTimed anymore. She assumed that broadening his business had him swamped. She wondered too if Tamar was still depressed. He looked at Coco after a sip of wine. “We’re getting a divorce.” There had been no hint of it till now. She was stunned.

“You’re what? Are you kidding? When did that happen? How did I miss that? Are you in love with someone else?” She assumed that it was his decision, not Tamar’s.

“No, I’m not. Tamar is leaving me. She said she was too young and didn’t know what she was doing when we got married. She thinks I’m too liberal. I’m not Orthodox enough. She says she feels suffocated by our life. She can’t deal with the kids and doesn’t want to. She wants to work, after law school. And it all falls to me. She thinks I robbed her of her youth,” when in fact she had impacted his immeasurably, and cut it short. “She wants to go to law school. She’s been saying it for a while, about law school, not the divorce. That’s new. My mother will have a stroke. Sabra and Liam are getting a divorce too. He cheated on her with his secretary. My whole family appears to be falling apart, except for the two religious fanatics, who seem divinely happy. My sister, the nun, and my brother, the rabbi. The rest of us are a mess.” He looked depressed when he said it and she smiled.

“Holy shit. What happened?”

“Sabra and Liam don’t get along, and he’s cheated on her before. They fight all the time. They’re a nightmare to be around. And Tamar has had some kind of epiphany, which doesn’t include me. We tried counseling, which I didn’t want to tell you. It just got worse.” He didn’t look heartbroken over it; he looked shocked. And Coco was even more so.

“Do you think she has someone else?” It seemed so unlike her. But he was busy, working to support a family of six.

“She’s been going to a different synagogue. I suppose she could be in love with the rabbi, or someone there. She doesn’t think I’m religious enough for her. And I’m not. I wanted to go to a Reform temple, not the strict Orthodox synagogues she prefers. This is going to kill my mother,” he said mournfully. He viewed his mother as fragile, which she was not.