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He looked at her thoughtfully.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Cheerio,’ she said, getting out as the driver opened the door. Cheerio? What’s wrong with you, Izzie? First the weird question about his wife and then ‘cheerio’.
He phoned the next day.
‘Would you like to go on another date?’ he asked.
Date? It had been a date, after all. Izzie hugged herself with delight.
‘Yes,’ she said and squashed the feeling that she’d just fallen down the slippery slope.
From the comfort of her bathtub, sipping her spritzer, Izzie thought about those first days when she felt like the luckiest person on the planet.
Joe was in her head all the time, edging more mundane matters out of the way, like a problem with a model sinking into depression because she’d been dropped from a beauty campaign or a big screw-up which saw five models miss a plane to Milan because they’d been out late partying.
It was a fabulous secret that she hugged to herself. Izzie found herself behaving as if her life was a movie and Joe would be watching her every move.
She wore her best clothes every day, so she’d look fabulous on the off chance that he’d phone. The spike-heeled boots she moaned about were hauled out of her wardrobe to go with the swishy 1940s-inspired skirt that hugged her rear end and made construction workers’ mouths drop open.
They had lunch and dinner twice a week, holding hands under the table, and kissing in the car on the way back to her office or to her apartment. They talked and talked, sitting until their coffees went cold.
But she’d never brought him to her home, had never done more than kiss him in the back of the car. Something held her back.
That something was her feeling that Joe and his life was more complicated than he’d told her. Why else were they having this low-key relationship, she asked herself? It only made sense if Joe wasn’t being entirely truthful about everything and she couldn’t believe that. He was so straight, so direct. She didn’t want to nag him like a dog with a bone. She said nothing and just hoped.
They’d had a month of courtship – only such an old-fashioned word could describe it: walking in the park at lunchtime and sharing deli lunch from Dean & DeLuca’s.
And then, on a sunny Thursday, they’d visited another artist in a giant loft apartment in TriBeCa and Izzie had wandered round looking at huge canvases while Joe, the artist and the artist’s manager discussed business. Izzie felt a thrill that was nothing to do with admiring the artist’s work: the fact that Joe had brought her here showed that she wasn’t a dirty little secret in his life. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have brought her along, would he?
Silvio Cruz’s giant abstract paintings had prompted some critics to compare him to the great Pollock. Even Izzie, who knew zip about art, could see the power and beauty of his canvases, and she loved listening to Joe talk about them.
Joe hadn’t grown up with art on the walls, he’d told her: food on the table in his Bronx home was as good as it got. So she loved hearing him talk passionately about a world he’d come into late thanks to his sheer brilliance.
Finally, she, Joe and Duarte, the manager, took the creaking industrial elevator down to street level.
‘The Marshall benefit for AIDS is on tomorrow night,’ Duarte said to Joe. ‘You and Elizabeth going?’
Izzie froze.
‘Yeah, probably,’ murmured Joe.
‘I hear Danny Henderson’s donating a De Kooning. I mean, Jeez, that’s serious dough. Danny’s been here too, but he just doesn’t get Silvio’s vision,’ Duarte went on, oblivious to the sudden temperature shift in the elevator.
Elizabeth was probably going with him? What happened to the separate lives thing?
On the street, Izzie looked around for Joe’s inevitable big black limo and then realised she couldn’t possibly sit in it with him. She wasn’t sure what was worse: the feeling that Joe had wanted to shut Duarte up and not talk about the party, or Duarte’s assumption that she, Izzie, wouldn’t be going.
If Joe Hansen was officially unattached, then why would anyone assume he’d take his wife to a benefit? And why would he say ‘yeah, probably’ when asked?
There was only one answer and it made Izzie feel sick.
Without saying a word, she turned and walked briskly away from the two men and the limo which had slid noiselessly into place.
‘Izzie!’ yelled Joe, but she kept walking.
He caught up with her, hurt her arm as he grabbed her roughly and turned her to face him.
‘Don’t go,’ he begged.
‘Why not?’ she demanded. ‘You’ve been lying to me. It’s not over with your wife. You lied to me.’
‘It’s over with me and Elizabeth,’ he insisted.
‘Fuck you and your lies!’ Izzie threw back at him.
‘They’re not lies.’ He let go of her and his hands dropped limply to his sides. ‘It’s deader than any dodo, Izzie, it’s just hard to end it all. Elizabeth’s different to me, she finds it difficult to let go. I’ve told her she can have the house here, the place in the Hamptons, whatever she wants. It was over long before you, that wasn’t a lie. But she’s trying to get her head round the fact that I want to leave.’
‘So you’re leaving now? First, you were all staying together for the kids,’ Izzie said, trying not to cry.
‘We did try but it didn’t work. Elizabeth kept getting upset about it, she wants all or nothing, and now it’s a matter of her accepting it and us telling the boys. I promise, Izzie. Don’t go, please.’
Izzie stared at him. She was a good judge of character, damnit, and he wasn’t a liar, for all he pretended to be a shark in business.
‘Why didn’t you tell me the truth straight up?’ she demanded.
‘You wouldn’t have gone out to lunch with me,’ he said, with a small smile that recalled the Joe she knew and loved.
Loved. She loved him, Lord help her, she loved him. Without meaning to, she’d got tangled up in this mess and now she couldn’t just walk out. Still, she needed time to think.
‘I’ve got to go back to work, Joe,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you later.’
‘Let me drop you,’ he said.
‘No, I’ll get a taxi.’
As if sent by an angel, a taxi with a lit sign appeared in front of her and Izzie stuck out her arm. She waved at Joe as she sat in the back and the driver sped off.
‘What’s up with you?’ snapped Carla at work that afternoon. ‘You don’t listen, you don’t talk, you stare into space like a moony high schooler. What gives?’
Izzie hesitated. She and Carla had sat up nights talking men, dissing men and generally deciding that no man at all was better than changing who you were in order to capture one.
‘Surrendered wife, my butt! Why pretend to be Pollyanna to get him, so you can go back to being Mama Alien once he’s married you? Who needs a man that much?’
They knew each other. But something had stopped Izzie from telling Carla about Joe. Perhaps it was a sixth sense or else it was her feeling that this was all too good to be true.
She’d had a feeling that explaining Joe’s complicated family set-up would trigger Carla’s internal Men Are Assholes alarm and there would be no stopping her. Carla wouldn’t understand the nuances of it all.
Well, she would now, Izzie thought bitterly. Now it wasn’t so complicated at all – just another guy trying to mess around on the side, only Izzie Silver, who’d never done the married man thing, was the person he was messing around with.
And how could she explain all that to Carla, along with how she felt about him, despite today? That thinking of Joe made her burn with heat. That his voice made her want to melt. That she was falling for him like the sort of soppy woman she’d never been in her life before. That she was furious with him for lying to her, but somehow her traitorous mind kept thinking What if she stayed with him anyway…?
No, she couldn’t tell Carla until she knew what she was going to do next.
‘Was I staring into space?’ Izzie said. ‘I was only thinking about Laetitia. We’ll need to keep an eye on her because her acne has flared up again and it really upsets her. I told her about the facialist who did wonders with Fifi’s skin, but she says she’s thinking of getting a prescription for something…’
Models using anti-acne drugs to combat skin problems were guaranteed to occupy Carla’s mind. Carla felt that skinny girls who lived on cigarettes and diet drinks didn’t need more medication.
‘She doesn’t need drugs!’ Carla went off on one, yelling and being angry.
Izzie was able to tune out of her job and into Joe.
Carla’s instinctive reaction – if she were told – would be the correct one. There was no future in this relationship. Izzie had to end it, tonight.
The sad thing was, she believed Joe. She believed his feelings for her, but it was all too complicated, too tangled, and he wasn’t ready to walk away from his past yet.
If Izzie stayed, she’d be the evil woman who’d ruined his marriage. The evil woman story played better than the marriage-falling-apart one.
‘Izzie, you’re tuning out again. What’s up?’ demanded Carla.
‘Just tired,’ Izzie said, flustered.
It wasn’t enough that Joe was messing up her heart, he was messing up her job too. She had to get out because, somewhere deep inside, Izzie knew that Joe had the power to hurt her like no man had ever hurt her before.
She was grateful now that their relationship had never become physical. Ironically, she’d thought that tonight might be the night that it did. Still, she was grateful for small mercies. It was as if some psychic force had kept her from making love with him because, once that happened, there would be no going back. Now she had to get out, fast, while she still could.
Before the fight in TriBeCa, they’d discussed going to dinner somewhere fancy at half nine. Izzie couldn’t wait that long. She needed to do this soon, after work, or else she’d explode. She had to get Joe out of her life and try to forget him. Although quite how she was going to do that, she had no idea.
She left a message on Joe’s cell phone for him to meet her at seven in a small bar at Pier Nine. Anonymous and quiet, it would be the perfect setting for telling Joe she never wanted to see him again.
At seven that night, the bar contained a mixed crowd, with studenty types, men and women in work clothes and people for whom fashion wasn’t a mission statement. The walls were jammed with non-ironic movie posters like Love Story and Flashdance, and there wasn’t a cocktail shaker in sight.
Carla would love this place, Izzie thought briefly, then realised she couldn’t tell Carla about it because there would be nothing to tell after tonight.
There was no future in this for her except heartbreak. God, she earned her living telling young beautiful girls that there was no future in it for them with the moguls they met at parties. They were just fodder for the rich; disposable people in a world of disposable income.
Look who’s talking now. Stupid, stoopid.
She sat there with her drink for fifteen minutes, hating herself, and finally moved on to anger because Joe was late. How dare he?
After everything he’d put her through, how dare he be late now?
Furiously, Izzie moved off the banquette, pulling her handbag after her.
‘You leaving? I’m sorry I’m late.’ His body, solid in a charcoal grey coat dusted with tiny diamonds of rain, blocked her way. He looked penitent, tired. He wasn’t playing a game with her, she knew instantly. But their whole relationship was based on mistruths and she hated that.
‘Joe.’ She slumped back into the seat, suddenly exhausted. ‘I wanted to see you to say I can’t do this any more. It’s not right, it’s not me. I was never comfortable with the idea that you still lived with your wife, split up or not, and today made it plain that I was right about that. I don’t want to be the other woman. I never auditioned for that.’
He’d moved in to sit beside her.
‘I know, I’m sorry,’ he said, sounding resigned. ‘Go, Izzie, you’re right. I’ve nothing to offer you.’
He had something to offer her, she thought, a moment of yearning in her heart. He had. But he was still married to someone else, still involved with someone else because of their children. Why couldn’t this be easy?
Joe was off the banquette and on his feet in one fluid gesture. He moved with such elegance, he was comfortable in his own skin.
When she’d woken up that morning with their dinner ahead of her, Izzie had decided that she wanted to feel that skin naked against hers. She wasn’t a silk underwear sort of woman. She did simple black, white or nude briefs and bras. No frills or lace. Until some invisible magnet had drawn her into Bloomingdales and the lingerie department where she’d gone crazy, doing more damage to her credit card bill. She could feel the results of that craziness, soft and very different under her clothes.
Going to bed with him now, the first and last time, was a strange idea. Yet maybe not. If she could have him, feel him touching her just one time, then perhaps she could leave. Like immunotherapy: one touch and she’d be for ever immune to him. Her heart would send out little antibodies so she wouldn’t want him again.
An anti-Joe shot.
Izzie closed her eyes.
‘Do you want to go?’ he asked. Softer, definitely.
‘Do you want me to?’
‘No.’ Low with wanting her.
‘Really?’
‘Really. I wanted to be honest with you, but when I met you, I knew you wouldn’t see me again if I told you how it really was. It’s over with me and Elizabeth, I promise. But I didn’t think you’d believe me, not at first.’
She kept her eyes closed and thought about his wife, Elizabeth, and the sons, the duplex in Vail, the listing in Fortune, the assistant’s assistant, all the things that were making this impossible. Then she opened her eyes and looked at him, that face she felt as if she’d known in another lifetime because how could you commit someone’s face to memory in such a short time? Reincarnation made sense suddenly. She and Joe had known each other in another life, for sure.
Perhaps he was meant to come into her life sooner, but he was here now. He was the one, she knew it.
‘I don’t want to go.’
He didn’t sit beside her: he bent and took her head in his hands, fingers cradling her skull with passion and gentleness, and crushed her mouth to his. She was just as ferocious, hands digging into his shoulders, dragging him down to her. This was what they hadn’t done, this type of kissing. They’d been so careful, dancing around it, both knowing that if they touched, properly, then there would be no going back.
Izzie moaned, knowing she was lost.
They pulled apart, two sets of bruised lips, two pairs of eyes black with desire.
‘Let’s go,’ Izzie said.
There was a car waiting outside the bar for him: a discreet Town car that smoothly drove up as soon as Joe raised his finger. It was always a different driver, Izzie realised, as he helped her into the leather backseat. Someone like Joe would absolutely have a regular driver, but that driver would know his wife, run errands for her, take the kids to school.
He couldn’t risk that driver seeing her again after the Plaza lunch. She was a guilty secret, to be hidden until it was all sorted out with his wife, the wife who didn’t want it to be over. Izzie, who’d never been hidden in her life and who’d often longed to be small for a day just for the experience, forced herself to brush the thought away. She was a secret. So what? It wouldn’t be for long, just long enough for Joe to end what was already over.
In her apartment, she didn’t think twice about saying, ‘I bet you didn’t know they made apartments in this size, huh?’
‘I didn’t come for the real estate,’ he said.
‘What did you come here for?’ she said.
