She would wear the pearls Walt gave herânot the second necklace he'd given her, which was almost identical to the first one. No, she wouldn't wear the second necklace. She'd decided that was Stella's vindictive doing. Stella was Walt's secretary at the firm where Julia's husband, Bud, had been a partner. Stella, of course, was the one who had bought the gifts at Walt's requestâno, at his directionâand Stella, who had always known Julia was seeing Walt behind Bud's back, duplicated the gift out of spite. Walt hadn't noticed. Walt was decidedly self-centered. Of course he had every reason to be proud of his looks and what he had to offer to a highly sexed woman.
Neither Stella nor Julia thought he would notice the duplication. But they both knew that Julia would notice and understand. Julia had passed the pearls on to her daughter, June. June was Julia's and Bud's daughter, in contrast to Julia's son, Malcom, who wasn't.
But when she put the pearls up to her neck as she sat in front of the dressing table in her four-million-dollar One Waterside Square fourteenth-floor Manhattan apartment on 59th Street, overlooking the Hudson River and near the theatre district, she realized she couldn't wear them. She'd spent an hour, Walt's invitation to meet her at the Tavern on the Green in Central Park for lunch laying on the dressing table in front her, working on her face. At forty-eight, showing as young and vital was ever harder with each passing day. She looked out the near floor-to-ceiling glass wall beside her in frustration, pulling herself away from the mirror. It was early summer and a line of small sailboats was treading up the Hudson River below her window. Oh to be young and dancing on the water like those boats again.
She turned back to the mirror. She'd have to do this. She'd accepted the invitation. She'd been waiting for it breathlessly since she'd heard of the breakup. Picking a summer's afternoon at the Tavern on the Green was just too poetic not for this to be "it."
She'd managed with the face, spending several minutes smoothing foundation on an aging spot near her right temple, but she realized now that the wrinkles in her neck would give her awayâthat no amount of foundation would cover those. And the pearl necklace would only emphasize the wrinkles there. With a sigh, she put the pearls back in their box and reached for the Hermes scarf that went perfectly with her tailored suit. She'd learned there. The jacket could be quickly shucked and the blouse had easily manipulated buttons. Walt could be all thumbs and impatient. She'd had a very expensive blouse ripped once. The expense wasn't all that had been embarrassing thereâhe'd bought her a new blouse. She'd had to go down the elevator at the Empire Hotel and across the lobby with a ripped blouse.
It was time. She had covered as much of the damage as she could. It had been easier in the eight months since Bud had died. She could play the shattered widow and look her age. She could wear black and sigh with resignation in the presence of her friendsâthose few of them who stuck with her now that her husband no longer was a partner in the firm.
And then, at long last, there was the message from Walt to meet her for lunch at the Tavern on the Greenâtheir trysting spot on many a summer's afternoon over the years as they had spun out an affair behind Bud's back while he followed the Yankees around the country on away games. Walt hadn't contacted her since Bud's heart attack and death. This, despite the long promised-separation and ultimate impending divorce Julia had heard about in Walt's marriage with Genevieve, who had already retreated back to her native France.
The way was clear now for Walt and Julia to come out of the shadows and be together. That had to be what this invitation to lunch was about. That was signaled by the choice of restaurantâthe Tavern on Green in Central Park on a summer's afternoon.
Julia stood up from the dressing table, giving herself one last, long, assessing look as she wound the Hermes scarf around her neck. She's done would she could. The thirties, maybe. Maybe she had placed herself, black and gray roots in her platinum hairâshe hadn't had time to go to the hairdressersâthankfully being somewhat of a fashion statement now rather than a damnation, into the thirties. The twenties was out of the question, but Walt had pushed past fifty, so maybe she done enough. They'd been illicit summertime lovers for over twenty years. He couldn't expect better than she had managed on short notice.
Giving her hair a last pat and rendering a deep sigh, she turned and left the apartment for the short taxi ride to Central Park and the Tavern on the Green.
* * *
For all the time she's spent getting ready, Julia had arrived more than a half hour early. She could show so eager as to beat Walt to the restaurant, so, rather than enter the tavern, she crossed 66th Street inside the park, drawn by the sound of young men yelling. New York's spring had come late and shoved itself into early summer. The azaleas and flowering trees were still on display, and she was drawn not only by the cries of young men but also by the glorious color of the foliage. The view was entirely different here than from her nearby apartment building. Her apartment overlooked the bustling river traffic on the Hudson and the Palisades Park on the other side of the river.
She was drawn by the full-throttle of young men's voices because she was a warm-blooded woman. She was sexually attracted to men, young men in particular. She enjoyed watching them in action and considering each as her dream guy. She had linked up with both Bud and Walt when they were young, sexy, and sexual men too. The aging process had not changed her attraction to young men. The young men in this case were engaged in a impromptu baseball game on a field marked with several baseball diamonds at the southwest corner of the park, above the Victorian Gardens. With a sigh, she stood there for several minutes, enjoying watching the beautiful young men dancing around on the fieldâpicking out an imaginary dream guy.
Ah, to be young againâwith a young loverâshe thought. Well, it would be enough to have a young lover, whether or not she herself could recover her youth.
Pulling herself away from her voyeur fantasies, which included one of these young men pulling her under a cascade of azaleas and having his way with her, she turned and worked her way back to the tavern. Part of her wanted Walt to declare himself today and put a ring on it after all of these years of summer trysts, but another part of her wished she could be carried away by a younger model. She'd waited all these years for Walt, though, and this very likely was "the day."
He stood up from the table as soon as he saw her enter the restaurant. She waved off the maĂŽtre-d and walked to him, aware of all of the eyes turned to her as she walked. What did they see? Were they attracted to her or did they half-way recognize her without knowing why? Or did they see a forty-eight-year-old woman foolishly trying to recapture her twenties?
She guessed, though, that it only mattered what Walt saw, and she could see not only a welcoming smile on his face but, beyond that, the gaze of lust that she knew could be there. He had been a consummate lover, if impulsive, insistent, and largely self-absorbed. It had been all about him in sex, but he'd done it so well that he had satisfied her as well.
Seeing Walt standing at the table as she approached gave her a bit of a shock. If it hadn't been for that lustful gleam in his eye, she might have been taken aback. He had aged. It wasn't just her. He was more slack jawed than she remembered and had put on a few too many pounds. Of course he'd always lived the high life with food and drink. It was, certainly, the eight months of not seeing him that had brought this change to her eyes, but what was more likely was the length of time they'd been "sort of" together before that. The aging process had come on slowly over their two decades' affair. It was the eight-month's absence that brought it into focus.
Still, he was a handsome man for his age, and she was quite aware of his sexual power and equipment, so she reverted immediately to how she was coming across to him. It seemed she was passing his inspection well enough.
Even more than Walt, though, was the response to her of the young male waiter who was holding the chair for her. Heâhis name proved to be Matt and he was to be their serverâseemed mesmerized by her. With a thought to the voyeur session she'd just had with the young men playing baseball, she felt a little chill run up her spine at his overtly worshipful attitude. There was something vaguely familiar about this young man, but she couldn't quite grasp what it was. She put it into the back of her mind. It was Walt she'd come to see, and she well knew that he demanded her full attention.
But, God, he was drop-down gorgeous. The waiter, Matt, that was.
So, she still had it. That gave her strength to face Walt and whatever reason he had to invite her to lunch at the Tavern on the Green on this beautiful early summer's day.
As they waited for their food and then while they ate it, their conversation was dominated by chit chat that was initiated and controlled by Walt. All that time, Julia was thinking "Is this when he tells me he and Genevieve have divorced?"
But it never was.
He first got out of the way a litany of gossip about the people in the firm and how wellâor badlyâthey were doing since Bud died.
I thought they were doing just fine when Bud was alive, Julia thought. Regardless, she no longer gave a shit how the firm was doing. She'd gotten Bud's share of the firm out of it and invested in real estate.