Alex helped me out of the car. “I’ll give you the grand tour later,”
he said. “I imagine you’d like nothing better now than a soft mattress.”
I grinned at the very thought of it: Alex and I tangled under the sheets in a bed that was wider than just one of us. I followed him up the marble steps, smiling as John held the door open for us. “Here you go, Mrs. Rivers,” he said, and I blushed.
Alex brushed past John and propelled me up a glorious, winding staircase that could have been a set forGone With the Wind. “I’ll introduce you to everyone else later,” he said. “They’re dying to meet you.”
What, I thought,have they been told? But before I could say anything, Alex opened the door to an oval sitting room that smelled of fresh wind and lemons. He crossed the room and closed a large bay window, letting lace curtains flutter to rest. “This is the bedroom,” he said.
I looked around. “Don’t you have a bed?”
Alex laughed, pointing out a door that I hadn’t noticed, blended between the blue and white stripes of the wallpaper. “Through there.”
It was the largest bed I had ever seen, stepped onto a miniature platform and pillowed by a big down comforter. I sat on the edge of it, testing, and then I opened up the bag I’d been carrying since we first left Kenya and took out the things I always carried with me on planes: my toothbrush, my toiletry kit, another T-shirt. Wrapped inside the T-shirt was the bottle of snow Alex had brought me in Tanzania, something I didn’t want to risk being broken in the baggage compartment. I set it on the maple dresser beside Alex’s brush and a tall pile of photocopied screenplays.
Alex wrapped his arms around me from behind and pulled my shirt over my head. “Welcome home,” he said.
I turned in his embrace. “Thanks.” I let him unzip my linen trousers and pull off my shoes, tuck me under the covers. I pressed my arms down into the forgiving comforter, waiting for Alex to come to bed.
He turned and started out the door to the sitting room, and I bolted upright. “Where are you going?” I said, my voice jumping at the ends in panic.
Alex smiled. “I don’t think I can go back to sleep,” he said. “I’m just going to get some work done downstairs. I’ll be here when you get up.”
I thought of how I wanted him to stay with me, to make this unfamiliar room a comfortable place. I ran my hands below the sheets to the spot where he should have been. I imagined the late-morning sun in Kenya, and the way we could remain in bed for hours there without the real world creeping through the thin crack beneath the door. But what was I supposed to say to Alex?I’m afraid of being alone in this house. I don’t know anyone here. I need to see you by my side, so that I understand where I fit in. Or the deeper truth:I don’t recognize myself. I don’t even recognize you.The door shut quietly behind Alex, leaving me lost. I told myself to stop acting like a fool, and I fixed my gaze on the jar of snow on the dresser, the only thing in this house so far that I could say was mine.
The sun spilled through the French doors of the bedroom like a spreading fire, an accusation.So,I thought,this is how it begins.
CHAPTERFIFTEEN
“FINLAND.”
“Denmark.”
Alex skimmed his fingers over my ribs. “You already used Denmark.”
I caught his hands and pressed them against me. “Dominican Republic, then.”
Alex shook his head. “Ialready said that. You might as well admit it, you’ve lost. There are only two countries beginning withD.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Is that true?” I asked. We had been playing Geography on a lazy Thursday afternoon, and just for the challenge, we had limited ourselves to naming countries. “Prove it.”
Alex laughed. “Gladly. But you get the map.”
I pretended to move, but Alex kept his arm around me, indicating he wasn’t about to let me go. He was lying on a hunter-green striped chaise, and I was between his legs, propped against his chest. I stared at the sun as it brightened the edges of a cloud it was hiding behind.
“Do you memorize atlases in your spare time?” I teased, already knowing the answer: Alex had learned geography as a child, self-taught, by speaking the exotic names of places he’d rather have been.
Alex kissed the top of my head, and as if the events were connected, the sun stepped out from its shade. “I’m a man of rare talents and sensibilities,” he said dryly, and I wondered if he knew how true that really was.
You see, in spite of what I’ve already told you about our arrival in L.A., all my misgivings about Alex had faded. In the week we’d been home, he hadn’t gone back to work right away, leaving me to fend for myself. Instead, we had skinny-dipped in the pool, played tag in the lush boxwood hedge maze, and danced barefoot, without music, on the veranda outside the bedroom. After dinner, Alex dismissed the staff and he made love to me in a different room each night: on the mahogany desk in the library, the Persian rug in the parlor, the white wicker rocker on the screened-in back porch.This way, he said,you won’t be able to go anywhere without thinking of me.In return, I took him toUCLA, to my office, and showed him my work-in-progress at the lab, a reconstructed Australopithecene femur. I introduced him to Archibald Custer, and Alex indicated he might be inclined to give the department a sizable donation if theyupgradedtheir tenured teaching faculty. This suggestion—which we hadn’t discussed—made me uncomfortable. I was offered an associate professorship and a fine pick of January courses, which I never would have accepted if Alex hadn’t asked me to, as a favor.You’ve changed my life, he’d said.Let me change yours.Alex spent so much time at my side—introducing me to his agent, his employees, his friends—that at one point I asked if I was going to have to support us. Not that that was a real problem. Ophelia had been right—Alex made between four and six million dollars per film, and most of the money was rolled into his own production company, Pontchartrain Productions, for tax purposes. He paid himself a salary, but there was so much left over that even the third of his income that was spread out to various charities topped seven figures every year.
I was rich. Back in Tanzania, Alex had refused my offer of a prenuptial agreement, saying that he meant this marriage to be for life. I now owned half of a ranch in Colorado; half of a Monet, a Kandinsky, and two van Goghs; half of a hand-carved cherry dining room set that seated thirty and cost more than my undergraduate education. But even the most beautiful furniture in the world couldn’t keep me from missing my old red leather wing chair, the first piece I’d bought in California; or from picturing the Salvation Army bureau Ophelia had bought me for Christmas one year, and then painted with peace symbols and daisy chains. My old furniture was worth nothing, did not fit in this house; but when the Goodwill trucks came to pick it up, I cried.
Yet I loved being with Alex so much that for the first time in years I wasn’t looking forward to the upcoming term at UCLA; I saw it instead as something that was going to take me away from him. Still, this kind of life took a little getting used to. I had come to expect the reverent whisper of Elizabeth, the maid, as I walked down the hall to find Alex in the morning; I had become accustomed to writing down that I needed avocados and Neutrogena soap from the market and just leaving the list with Alex’s secretary. When a hack reporter snuck onto the grounds and I opened the bathroom curtains to find a camera lens staring back at me, I didn’t even scream. I calmly told Alex, as if it were something I faced daily, and watched while he called the police.
But we didn’t go out. Alex said it was for my own good, that we should let the novelty of the marriage die down a little before facing the public again. He told me, smiling, that he wanted me all to himself.
But the more time I spent in my gilded cage, the more I thought of Ophelia’s words at the airport. And I knew that no matter how much of a fairy tale I was living now, I wouldn’t really be happy until I could build a bridge from the life I had lived in Westwood to this new one in Bel-Air.
