Danielle Steel: Crossings

“Oh, my God,” Liane groaned. They had unpacked everything but their clothes. “What in heaven's name were you doing?”

“Looking for Marianne.” Elisabeth said it in a saintly little voice and looked up at her mother with a smile bereft of front teeth.

“You knew I didn't pack her.” Marianne was Elisabeth's favorite doll. “She's on the table in your room.”

“She is?” But both girls began to giggle. They had just been having fun. And their father looked at them as though he would scold them, but he didn't have the heart to, they were too full of life and too much like their mother for him to ever really get very angry at them. And he had no reason to. Mademoiselle ruled them with an iron hand, and Liane was a marvelous mother. It allowed him to enjoy them without having to play the ogre. But nonetheless he admonished them now for a moment in French. He told them that they had to help their mother with the packing, not take everything apart. They had to get everything ready, he reminded them, because they were leaving for New York in two days.

“But we don't want to go to New York.” Marie-Ange looked up seriously at her father, ever the spokesman for the team. “We want to stay here.” Liane sat down on Marie-Ange's bed with a sigh, and Elisabeth climbed into her lap as Marie-Ange continued to negotiate with her father in French. “We like it here.”

“But don't you want to come on the ship? They have a puppet theater, and a cinema, and a kennel for dogs.” He had told her before, but now she wavered as he spoke of them again. “And we'll all be happy in Paris too.”

“No, we won't.” She shook her head, looking into her father's eyes. “Mademoiselle says there will be a war. We don't want to go to Paris if there's going to be a war.”

“What's that?” Elisabeth whispered to her mother as she sat on her lap.

“It's when people fight. But nobody is going to be fighting in Paris. It will be just like it is here.” Armand and Liane's eyes met over the heads of their girls, and Liane could see that Armand was going to have a serious talk with Mademoiselle in the morning. He didn't want the girls frightened with talk of war.

And then suddenly Elisabeth spoke up and broke the spell. “When Marie-Ange and I fight, is that a war?”

The others laughed, but Marie-Ange corrected her before her parents could. “No, stupid. A war is when people fight with guns.” She turned to Armand. “Right, Papa?”

“Yes, but there hasn't been a war since long before you were both born, and we don't need to worry about that now. What you girls have to do is go to bed, and tomorrow help repack all these things you've taken out. Au lit, mesdemoiselles!” He attempted to sound stern, and although he almost convinced his daughters, he didn't even begin to convince his wife. He was putty in their hands. But he was also worried now that they would be frightened about a war in France.

Liane took Elisabeth back to her own room, and Armand tucked their eldest into her bed, and Liane and Armand met back in their own room five minutes later. Liane was still smiling at the mischief of the girls, but Armand was sitting on their bed, taking off his patent leather pumps, with a worried frown.

“What is that old fool doing frightening the girls with talk of a war?”

“She hears the same things we do.” Liane sighed and began to unbutton the beautifully made black satin jacket from Patou. “But I'll speak to her in the morning about the girls.”

“See that you do.” The words were harsh, but the tone of his voice was not as he watched his wife undress in her dressing room. There was always something more to say between them, some further reason why he couldn't tear himself away from her, even now, after an endless day and a long night. He watched the silky cream of her flesh appear as she took off the white organdy blouse, and he hastened quickly to his own dressing room to cast his dinner attire aside, and he returned only moments later in white silk pajamas and a navy-blue silk robe, his feet bare. She smiled at him from their bed, the lace of her pink silk nightgown peeking over the sheets as he turned off the light.

He slid into bed beside her and ran a hand gently up her arm until it reached the smooth satin of her neck, and then drifted down again to touch her breast. Liane smiled in the darkness and sought Armand's mouth with her lips. And there they met and held, in the darkness, their children forgotten, the nurse, the President, the war … and all they remembered as they peeled off each other's nightclothes was their hunger for each other, which only grew sharper over the years, instead of dimmer. As Armand's powerful hand touched her naked thigh, Liane moaned softly, parting her legs to welcome him to her, as she always did, and she smelled the muted spice of his cologne as he kissed her again and their flesh joined, and for the first time in a long time she found herself wanting another baby as he entered her gently at first and then with increasing passion, and as they kissed again with greater fervor, this time it was Armand who moaned softly in the night.

he doorman at 875 Park Avenue stood stolidly at his post. The jacket of his uniform was of heavy wool, and the wing collar he wore cut into his neck. The cap with the gold braid sat on his head like a lead weight. It was eighty-seven degrees in New York in the second week of June, but he still had to stand at his post, cap on, jacket in place, bow tie straight, white gloves on, smiling pleasantly at the tenants as they came in and out. Mike, the doorman, had been on duty since seven o'clock that morning, and it was already six o'clock at night. The heat of the day had barely abated, and he had another hour to stand there before he could go home at last, in baggy pants, a short-sleeved shirt, comfortable old shoes, no tie, no hat. A blessed relief it would be, he thought to himself in his Irish brogue. And a beer he could be usin' too. As he stood there he envied the two men who manned the elevators. Lucky devils, at least they were inside.

“Good evening, Mike.” He looked up from his heat-dimmed reverie to touch his fingers to his cap with mechanical precision, but this time to the greeting he added a friendly smile. There were those in the building he wouldn't bother to smile at, but this man was one he liked, Nicholas Burnham—Nick he had heard the man's friends call him. He always had a friendly word for Mike, a moment to stop and talk to him in the morning as he waited for his car to be brought around. They talked of politics and baseball, the latest strikes, the price of food, and the heat that had been shimmering off the streets of the city for the past two weeks. Somehow he always managed to give Mike the impression that he cared about him, that he gave a damn that the poor old man had to stand outside all day, hailing cabs and greeting ladies with French poodles, because he had seven children to support. It was as though Nick understood the irony of it all, and he cared. It was that that Mike liked about him. Nick Burnham had always struck him as a decent sort of man. “How did you survive the day?”

“Not bad, sir.” It was not entirely true, as his feet, raw, hot, and swollen, were killing him, but suddenly they didn't seem so bad. “And you?”

“It was pretty hot downtown.” Nick Burnham's office was on Wall Street, and Mike knew that he was big in steel, the most important young industrialist in the nation, The New York Times had called him once. And he was only thirty-eight years old. The difference in their stations in life and their incomes never bothered Mike. He accepted things like that, and Nick always gave him handsome tips and generous gifts at Christmas time. Besides, Mike knew that in some ways Nick didn't have an easy row to hoe. Not in this house anyway. As much as Mike liked Nick, he hated his wife, Hillary. A highfalutin, fancy bitch, she was. Never a kind word, never a smile, just a lot of fancy jewels and furs she'd soaked her husband for. When Mike saw them go out at night, more often than not she was saying something nasty to Nick, about one of the maids, or that he was late, or that she hated the people giving the party they were going to. A rotten little bitch she was, Mike always said, but a pretty one, not that that was enough. He wondered how Nick managed to stay such a pleasant man, married to a girl like that.