In a very short amount of time, she grew to live for and fear his calls. The sound of his voice brought a glow to her heart, even as she held her breath. With each call, she half expected that he’d phoned to tell her he was off to Bosnia, Afghanistan, or Iraq. Although, she supposed, he wouldn’t tell her where he was headed, just that he was going away.
How Max lived his life was out of her hands. Out of her control. She wouldn’t ask him to change for her. She could only hope and pray that he was in so much trouble from the Nassau fiasco that the government had taken away his decoder ring and had crossed his name out of their secret black book.
She knew he carried a pager at all times, and she hoped the government had lost his number. But deep down inside she knew it was only a matter of time before it beeped. There was no doubt in. her mind that it would happen.
It just happened sooner than she was ready, over breakfast the weekend she and Baby had driven up to see him. He’d toasted her a muffin and made coffee and they were supposed to spend the day steaming the horrible wallpaper from his kitchen. She’d brought him a photograph of her and Baby, and she’d put it in a silver frame with engraved and enameled dog biscuits. She’d brought her camera so she could take pictures of him, too. So he’d have a picture of them all together. Her, him, and Baby. Like a real family.
She never got the chance. His pager went off during his second cup of coffee as he was feeding Baby a hunk of bran muffin. Across the kitchen table, their gazes met and she knew. This was it.
Wearing nothing but a pair of white boxer briefs, he rose from the table and walked to the office at the back of the townhouse. The second Lola heard the door shut, her stomach turned and she felt sick. Her head pounded and her heart raced. Her chest felt as if it were caving in, and her gaze flitted here and there around the kitchen. On his coffeemaker, blender, and the magnet bottle opener stuck to his refrigerator. On the wallpaper that would not get replaced.
When Max emerged once more, he carried a duffel bag and his rucksack in his hands. A grim line twisted one corner of his lips, confirming her worst nightmare. Even before he opened his mouth, she knew what he was going to say.
“I have to go, and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
She picked up Baby, then rose to stand before him. “When or if, you mean.”
“We’ll talk when I return.”
She shook her head. Since the beginning, she’d wondered what she would do when this moment came, and now she knew. “I can’t do this, Max. I love you, but I can’t live like this. I won’t be waiting for you when you get back.”
“Don’t do this, Lola. We can make this work.” He set the bags on the floor and moved toward her.
She put out her free hand and stopped him. “No,” she said, even as her heart told her to throw her arms around his neck and hang on. To hang on and never let him go. “I don’t understand why you have to go,” she said, her voice surprisingly calm. “Only that you are going. I won’t ask you to stay, Max. I won’t ask you to stay for me. I would never ask that of you. Besides, I know you wouldn’t anyway. And that is something I don’t understand. Maybe because I love you. Maybe because you really don’t love me,” she said, facing the very real possibility that he didn’t love her. That she wanted it so bad, she’d read more into his soulful kisses than he felt. Than he would ever feel. “Maybe if I were a stronger person, I could watch you walk away, not knowing if you’ll get beaten or tortured or shot. If you’ll die in a Third World country, all alone. Without anyone to hold your hand.” Her voice caught and she shook her head. “I’m not that strong, and I won’t go through this time after time so that you can go off and feed whatever need you have that makes you risk your life for people you don’t know and a government who had you arrested for a crime you didn’t commit just so they could get rid of you.”
“Don’t leave like this, Lola.” He ran his fingers through the sides of his hair. The agony in his gaze cut clear to her soul. “We’ll talk when I get back. Please stay.”
“Say something to make me stay.”
He took a breath and let it out slowly. His hands fell to his sides. “I love you.”
No fair. Those were the three words she’d been waiting to hear. Now they shredded her heart and left her bleeding inside. She was almost sure he’d never said them to another woman before, but they weren’t enough. She felt sorry for him. Sorrier for herself. Sorry for the life they would not have together. “I deserve more. I deserve a man who loves me enough to want to grow old with me.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yes, it is, Max.”
“No!” His hands at his sides clenched into fists. “You’re asking me to give up my life for you. You’re asking me to turn myself into someone other than who I am.”
“I’m not asking you to do anything. I am telling you I love you too much to watch you kill yourself.”
“I’m not going to die, Lola.”
“Yes, you will. Maybe not this time, but you will. And I won’t live my life wondering if today is the day.” She looked one last time into his beautiful blue eyes and forced herself to leave the room, leave Max standing in his kitchen, telling her he loved her, and begging her to stay. Walking away from him was the most difficult thing she’d ever done.
With her dog held to her chest, she walked upstairs into Max’s bedroom and grabbed her Louis Vuitton overnight bag. As her breaking heart urged her to stay, to stay because living with him under any circumstance was better than living without him, she quickly dressed. She half expected to hear the sound of Max’s footsteps coming up the stairs to tell her he’d changed his mind or to ask her again to stay with him. They never came.
Before she left, she glanced about his bedroom one last time. At the double bed with the plaid spread. On his dresser sat a single photograph of him and his father standing on a crumbling porch, an old rosary hanging off one side. Beside it, the picture she’d given him of her and Baby. It was sad and lonely, and she turned from the room and walked down the stairs. Max was in the parlor, looking out the front window onto the street.
With dry eyes, she gazed one last time at the back of his beloved head and the width of his strong shoulders. If he had turned and looked at her, she wasn’t so sure she would have had the strength to walk out the door. “Good-bye, Max,” she said.
But he didn’t look at her, and with her knees quaking and her hands shaking, she walked out of his townhouse. She placed her bag and Baby into the passenger seat of her BMW, then climbed in and fired it up. Without a backward glance, she drove away. She didn’t cry until she’d driven half a mile. She didn’t fall apart until Fredericksburg.
She had to pull her car off the highway into the parking lot of a Best Western. As tears streamed down her cheeks, she placed her arms on the steering wheel and let go. Big sobs racked her chest and pinched her heart.
Until that moment, she’d never known that love could feel so bad. She’d been in love before, but not like this. Not the kind that felt as if she’d been ripped apart.
Lola didn’t know how long she sat in her car before she realized that she couldn’t make the four-hour drive home. Her head pounded and her eyes were scratchy yet watery at the same time. She pulled her dark sunglasses out of her purse and headed into the lobby of the Best Western. She and Baby checked into a room, near the ice machine, and she turned on the television, hoping for a distraction. But nothing distracted her from the pain of losing Max. If she’d thought he’d still be at home, she might have called and told him she didn’t mean it. That she’d changed her mind, that she’d take him under any circumstances for however long it lasted. But she knew he wasn’t home, just as she knew that if she didn’t get out now, this scene would play out again and again and again.