Chapter 15: Chapter Fifteen

Laura tossed and turned all night, completely alive with loving Dante. She thought of every loving thing they had done together and imagined those that they hadn’t. She’d been a fool to leave him, not to spend the night. Then again, she had been wise; she was lucky she hadn’t stayed.

At seven o’clock, well before the alarm went off, she got up and had a very hot shower. Then she lay back down on her bed, wondering how on earth she could face the working day. The phone rang at eight-fifteen, and she hurried over and answered it.

It was Dante. “Have you forgotten me yet, or do you still love me?”

“I couldn’t very well have forgotten you, could I?” she asked.

“That isn’t the answer I wanted to hear,” he complained. “I was thinking. I didn’t tell you last night how beautiful you are. You’re so beautiful. Women like to hear these things as well, don’t they? Listen, is it all right if I meet you today for lunch? I’m so afraid of losing you. Can I see you?”

She told him where she worked and said he could come pick her up at twelve-fifteen. Though if the weather was bad, he didn’t have to show up, but he should call. Dante wanted to keep her on the telephone, but she had to finish dressing, so she made him hang up.

She went on preparing for work then, feeling a whole lot lighter than she had only minutes before. Going to work was going to Dante. Why hadn’t she told him then that she loved him? Why hadn’t she poured out a balm of loving words on his obviously thirsty soul? Not yet, something in her cautioned, not yet.

This Tuesday morning, the minutes ticked by ever so slowly. Roger groaned that he had gained more weight, and Cecil told Laura he might be giving her some work of a slightly more creative nature (very slightly, she suspected). She sketched furniture over the Ikea ads for the News (photos to go in place of the sketches, naturally) and lost track of time.

“Telephone,” Roger told her. She got up and answered, fearful that Dante would say he’d gotten too tied up to come, but it was Liz, the receptionist.

“You have a visitor,” Liz enunciated in her south of Kensington tones.

“Can you send him back?” Laura asked. She loved the sense of having a man come to call for her in this place where she still felt anonymous, even after four years.

Dante came wandering into the art room, Maxwell’s coat flapping, looking around him with a gaze of cynical amazement. Possibly, she conceded, he had never been in a business office before in his life. He came over to her with a self-conscious air. “What do you do all day?” he asked.

She showed him the ad she was currently working on. “Someone styles the copywriters’ text and designs the ad, then I roll the text through the desktop program and pop it into the layout,” she explained. Her job didn’t sound like much, she realized. “Sometimes I style the direct mail copy,” she added, trying to make her work appear a little more interesting.

“You do this instead of dancing?” Dante asked, shocked. “But why?”

“Don’t be such a dunce,” she told him. “I do it to pay for classes and my apartment.”

“Good,” he responded. “Maxwell will give you a scholarship, and I’ll pay our rent. I don’t mind your working, but this is depressing.” He said that as Cecil walked past, his head buried in an ad printout with dozens of correction markings. Cecil looked up, glanced briefly at Dante, then at Laura.

Laura introduced Dante to Roger. She felt as though she were introducing her fiancé to her father. No, her father would have given Dante an angry, threatening look. Roger was relatively civil, although incurious.

Laura put on her coat and the two of them left the office. Dante held her hand in the elevator. She looked at him. “You need a hat,” she said as they came out of the building.

“Knit me one,” he requested. “And gloves too.” He took his hand from her and put it into his pocket. “Where can we go? I can afford to take you for pizza if you don’t eat too much.” He looked for a cab.

She pulled him back. She was laughing. “A cab to go for pizza?”

He was glad to see she was amused. “It’s too cold to walk.”

“Japanese noodles should be cheap enough.” She led him across Park, to Thirty-third. The wind was fierce and she had to turn her back on it to make progress. “You’re so handsome,” she told him.

“That’s the first time you’ve said that,” he replied, as if that was what made her so unique. “We go great together, don’t you think? We’re both blond.”

“I’m not a pure blonde,” she said. “I’m not that pretty, either.”

He was shocked. “Don’t be stupid.”

She took him to Dortan. Her friend Aki was the maître d’. He had done some freelance ad work at Papp and Rollins. She introduced him to Dante and pointed at the outer-space fantasy paintings hanging on the walls. “Aki did these,” she explained.

“Great,” said Dante. “We have plenty of wall space in our new place. Laura and I are getting married,” Dante told Aki.

Aki was about to offer his pleased congratulations, but Laura shook her head. “He’s exaggerating,” she disagreed.

“Sure,” said Aki. “No rush.” He seated them and went to find their waiter.

Dante looked unhappy. “I didn’t think I’d ever meet a woman like you,” he told her. “Someone not completely crazy about me. Don’t I make you faint?”

“I don’t want to keep fainting for the next fifty years or so. I want someone who’ll be there for me, someone who can stand up to everything I am and not have to duck around the corner for a drink or another woman. And it’s either that for me, or nothing.” Her face was entirely serious.

“I’m a funny person to promise that,” he said. “But I do promise it. I’m glad. I want it to be that way too.” Her face didn’t relent. “Believe in me a little and it’ll be all right.”

Aki came back, bringing them an order of dumplings, on the house. “We’re getting married, after all,” Dante announced, but not very cheerfully.

“Why do you want to marry me?” Laura asked. “Why me?” Hadn’t Elise told her that Dante preferred to hang out with losers?

“Your eyebrows are very soft,” he said. “You care. I love you. I can feel you inside me. You’re another human being like me.” He threw up his hands helplessly. “I give up. I won’t be able to convince you, will I? I know I’m not good enough for you. I know. You’re thinking of everything I’ve been before. I don’t blame you for doubting me.” He seemed to be feeling low.

Laura’s eyes opened wide. “That isn’t what I meant,” she contradicted. “I meant, I’m not good enough for you. You’re so bright and funny and talented. Sometimes I can barely open my mouth to say anything, I’m so stupid and shy.”

Dante smiled. “You do all right.” He appeared hopeful again. “Come home with me now, will you? Let’s stay warm together—it’s awfully cold out.”

“I have to go back to work.” She looked at her new Christmas watch from the Decters.

“You should quit that place.”

She was annoyed. “And do what?”

“Dance.” He started eating the noodles she hadn’t finished.

“And do what for money?” She couldn’t expect him to be realistic about that in particular.

“I told you. You can work at the Studio a few hours a week for classes. Maxwell will do that for you. I know he likes you, even if you don’t think he does, and even if you don’t like him. You can get other kinds of part-time work too. You have to do it if you’re going to go ahead with your dancing. Or you can kid yourself for the next few years, if you’d rather.” He paused. “Or you can marry Richard and let him support you.”

He was right. To carry on from year to year this way wasn’t any good for her. If she believed in herself as she thought she did, she’d have to take a big chance soon.

She believed in herself, but did she believe in Dante’s care for her? She barely knew him, when she thought about it.

She left him on Thirty-third and Broadway so he could catch the subway and pick up publicity photos for Maxwell. He kissed her on the cheek. “I didn’t get through to you,” he announced glumly. “You don’t want me. No one does for long. I don’t think I’ll be able to get over you, Laura. I think I’ll have to die if I lose you.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Anyway, you haven’t lost me. But I don’t know what I ought to do.”

“Don’t worry about what you ought to do. Stay with me. Come home with me tonight. If you’re not sure, let’s just try it out. Don’t throw it all away. Don’t throw us away.” He put his hands over his wind-burnt ears. “I have to go.”

Laura stopped in Lord and Taylor’s on her way back to work and bought Dante a knit cap from India. She could always do freelance ad work part-time, too. She could try to sell some sketches, become an illustrator, maybe. Managing the money part was simply a matter of having the faith to take a chance. Didn’t she have any faith in anything, or anyone?

She felt depressed for herself, and depressed for Dante. She was afraid she’d been too hard on him. He had told her than a long time ago, when they’d first met. She expected too much of him. She wanted him to be everything she loved in him, but she wanted him to be everything she loved in Richard too. That was horrid of her.

She was half an hour late returning to work. It didn’t matter. She was usually so good. “Was that your boyfriend?” asked Liz. Laura didn’t feel at all sure of the answer. “Hang onto him, sweetheart,” Liz advised. “Or some other woman will.”

Laura tuned Roger’s radio to WYNY, the Country-Western station, since he was out to lunch. Cecil was in his office having a fight with one of the account execs, a woman named Mary Jo. Laura phoned the Studio. Ronnie was working in the office and Laura left a message for Dante to call her. She went back to her computer.

An hour later Richard called and they arranged to meet at about nine at his apartment. She was in a nervous state and had to scroll through the same text several times since she kept losing track.

Dante returned her call shortly thereafter and she walked away to speak more privately. “I feel miserable already,” he said. “So I hope this isn’t bad news.”

“It isn’t bad news,” she answered.

“Is it good news?” He sounded as if he were catching a cold.

“It is sort of good news.” She didn’t mind teasing him since she felt very tender toward him at this moment.

“Come on then.” He caught her expectant happiness.

“I miss you,” Laura said.

“Is that it?” he asked.

“That’s it.”

“That’s not enough,” he insisted roughly.

“You make me faint,” she said and smiled to herself.

“I’ll do better than that,” he promised her. “And I’ll make a lot of money, too. We’ll get by. The photographer I went to before does a lot of agency work and wants to take some test shots of me.”

“A man or a woman?” Laura probed.

“Neither,” he answered. “Listen, I have to go change. I’ll see you later. Don’t forget me.”

Cecil was waiting for her at her workspace. “Is it serious?” he asked pleasantly.

She was embarrassed. “It’s serious,” she said. “But I’m not sure which man.” She blushed.

“Have them both,” suggest Cecil. “Everyone does that nowadays.”

“No,” she objected, horrified. “I’m from the Midwest.”

“Even in the Midwest, they do that now.” He gave her a direct mail letter to style. That was her “more creative” task.

Laura walked into the Studio and saw Dante standing in the office talking to his “girlfriend.” That made her feel chilled and sick inside. She didn’t want to go up to him and say hello. She wanted to go to the ladies room and sob like a child. The way Dante had last night.

Melissa walked out of the office and glanced over at Laura. Laura wasn’t clear if Melissa knew who Laura was or not. Dante saw Laura too and came out and put his arms around her hungrily. He cuddled her as if they were in private, making her turn ten shades of red. “Are you down?” he asked sympathetically.

“I’m jealous of that awful woman,” she sputtered.

“Don’t be. She helped me hate myself, that was all.” He put his cheek against hers, melting her upset. “All right?”

She gave him a somewhat mistrustful look and handed him the Lord and Taylor bag. “I bought you a present.”

He took it. “Because you adore me?”

“Because you needed it.” He opened the package. “To keep you warm.”

“Thanks,” he said, then leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Don’t do too much for me though. I mean it. Let me find a way to do more for you. Oh, Maxwell gave me tickets to Chicago for two weeks from tonight. All right?”

“Maxwell does a lot of things for you.” Laura watched Melissa walk out of the building, turning for a last glance at Dante and Laura as she went.

Dante observed Melissa at the same time. “People like to help me out.” Laura felt a tension between Dante and her. “It isn’t always ugly, as you think,” he snapped.

Laura put her arms around his waist and sank her head onto his chest. She stayed like that a minute, then let him go. “I do trust you,” she told him. She was completely sincere. “I trust you,” she repeated.

Everything was all right then. “Go warm up for class,” he instructed. “I’ll meet you after.”

“Oh,” she said. “I can’t. I have to go talk to Richard.”

His eyes went deadly. “If you spend the night with him again, I’ll do something serious,” he threatened. She couldn’t imagine what he might do, so she smiled. He grabbed her arms. “Don’t smile about it. If you cheat on me, I’ll go crazy.”

“What do you take me for?” she demanded, insulted. “I told you there was nothing between us.” No, she had told Richard there was nothing between her and Dante.

“No, you told me you were going to marry him.” For once, Dante’s handsome face became distorted. She pulled away.

“You can trust me a little too.” She was angry. “And you can give me some time. You come to me and tell me that you love me, that you want to marry me, that you can’t live without me, that you once were rotten but now you’re entirely reformed, and you expect everything from me all at once. It isn’t that easy for me, Dante. Please. Give me some breathing room.” She looked around to see if they were being overheard.

“All right,” he agreed, chagrined. “I’m sorry. I’m insecure. And for good reason, in this case.” They stood there. He pushed her toward the changing rooms. “Go on.” She walked away, her eyes still on him. He tried to smile.

The class didn’t go badly, but it didn’t go well. Laura was able to concentrate somewhat, but not altogether. She wondered if Dante was able to keep his mind on his work, no matter what. She hoped he could. She thought he must be able to. She loved him then, thinking of him as a dancer, as an entity apart from her, independent, totally absorbed in his work.

The struggle within her was about that too. She wasn’t only afraid that she wouldn’t be able to depend on him, she was also afraid that he would depend on her too much. And what if she should disappoint him? Relationships were a delicate balance—that much was obvious—this being with someone but still being oneself. Many couples, she believed, gave up the balancing act and let one personality overwhelm the other. Soon, both were sunk; later came the rage and recriminations.

Laura walked into Richard’s apartment unable to speak, she was so frozen though. He took her hands in his own to warm then, then put his arms about her, heating her with his body. Grateful, she gave in to his ministrations. He took her coat, put her on the sofa, and brought her a large mug of hot milk. He pulled off her shoes and socks and warmed her feet, again with his hands, then wrapped her legs in a blanket.

“How wonderful you are,” she said. “This must be a moment from a Chekhov play.”

“And you’re about to tell me that you’re departing for Moscow,” he guessed shrewdly.

“No, I feel as if I’ve been in Moscow for the last twenty-four hours or so already. Someplace very unfamiliar, anyway.” She gave him an anxious glance.

“And did you like it there?” he asked calmly.

“Like all strange places, it was exciting and terrifying, both.” She was grateful to him for making speaking about this so easy.

He took her hands. “I feel happy,” he said. “I’m glad that you’re going to marry me, even if it isn’t completely real.”

No, he wasn’t making it easy; he was making it difficult. “Richard, I’m not pregnant,” she said. “I never was. I told you that in the car. I was simply nervous and it made me sick to my stomach, that’s all. Dante and I… we haven’t been lovers. I told you that too. For some reason, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“I see,” he acknowledged. “I’ve behaved stupidly again.” He smiled at her in an intimate, deep regret. “I thought you needed me,” he said. “I thought how nice your needing me was.”

Now, her face was more than warm. “Did you ever think that you might need me, Richard?”

“You know that I must have thought that,” he said quietly, taking her hand again and kissing her fingers. She touched his face.

“But you never said so?” she went on.

“I had reasons not to. Dante. Elise. I still gave those reasons, though, don’t I? Don’t we?” His face was flushed with feeling. “I never knew if you could care for me. Could you?”

The emotion was strong in her again—the loving him, the caring for him. That was an agony to her, worse than any hurt that she might feel for herself alone.

Tears dripped slowly from her eyes. “Let me tell you first that Dante wants to marry me. And that I think I may marry him. Yes, Richard, I could care for you. I do care for you. I have all along. In my own stupid way.” They reached for one another at the same instant and embraced. Their hearts seemed to be beating out the same rhythm, the rhythm of the ocean waves.

“It’s all right,” Richard said, soothing her. “Everything’s all right.”

“Is it? I’m hurting you though.” She touched him to stop the pain, knowing that her touch would actually increase it.

“I know,” he said. “But whatever is good for you, will be alright.” He smoothed her hair back. “Do you love him?”

“Yes, I think so.” Her eyes were still leaking and he handed her a tissue from the table.

“Oh, Laura, I’m only sorry because he’ll hurt you,” Richard said.

“He says he won’t.” Laura smiled. “I believe him almost.”

Richard’s eyebrows went up. “I didn’t get a very good impression New Year’s Eve.”

Laura blushed for Dante. “That was something of a false impression,” she explained.

He didn’t see it her way. “Laura, marry me anyway. On any terms you like. A marriage of the two of us will be good for us both. Something’s right between us, isn’t there? Something that can grow. What if whatever you have with Dante burns out sooner than you’d hoped.”

“No, you don’t know him,” objected Laura. “He wants it to work, for himself, not just for me. It’s important to him. And he knows himself so well. He knows what all the dangers are. He won’t let our relationship fall apart. And if he won’t, then I won’t either.”

Richard smiled gently. “Well then, I’m glad.”

That was the difference between the two of the men. Why Laura was going to marry Dante and not Richard. Dante wouldn’t be glad if it were the other way around; he would be desperate. Perhaps Richard was healthier and more mature, but passion seemed a more irresistible quality in love. Yet would Laura give up Dante at this point if Richard showed he could love her deeply enough? Honestly, the question was a puzzle to her, but she thought not.

“Leaping into the unknown is difficult, Richard,” she said finally. “To be willing to join into the great uncertainties of life. That’s what I’m learning… that more than anything, life is uncertain, that knowing oneself is greatly hard, but knowing the results of what we do is entirely impossible. That’s why I have to take this risk. Taking the risk for what you want and believe in, that’s the main thing. The only thing.”

“Yes,” Richard agreed. He smiled. “Sometimes caution may have its place though.”

She smiled too. “By all means. Let’s fling ourselves into life cautiously. Will you kiss me good-bye?”

She thought her question, her offer, was right. They had so much between them, so much that could be said only by that kiss. He took her in his arms and stroked her shoulder. “My dear Laura.” They kissed in great seriousness, holding back nothing of all the years they might have had together. They were good years, too, beautiful years of generous loving. But those were not the years that Laura had chosen, that was all. She had chosen years with a few more highs and lows.

“Oh, Laura, I hate to let you go.” They smiled at one another.

He brought her coat. “May I come up and visit Grandfather Turner?” she asked.

“With Dante?”

“I wonder what they’d make of one another.” She shook her head. “Dante would make him laugh, but Grandfather Turner wouldn’t quite approve. Of course not. You’re the sensible choice for me. We all know that. Even I know that.” She laughed. “Though for a while I wasn’t really sure. In fact, Richard, I suspected that you weren’t quite a gentleman.”

“I?” He raised his eyebrows.

“With women.” Her face became rosy. “I believed that you led a sinful life.”

He was amused. “I haven’t always been a perfect gentleman,” he admitted. They both smiled.