"Neither do I."
"I'll be on the phone to you every week."
"Oh, Jeff, that's not-"
"Never mind. I want to. What's a telephone for? And I hope you'll give some thought to visiting L.A. Bring Bonnie. I'd love to show you around; there's a lot to see and do out there. I know you want to go to Florida and Chicago, but think about L.A. too. You have a friend there. One who cares about you."
"Maybe we will. Sometime."
A silence overtook them. Jeff wondered if he'd said too much too quickly, his words creating a vacuum in their wake. But then, he didn't care. He felt instinctively that the right moment had come.
He put an arm around Georgianne's shoulders and turned her face to his. They looked at each other for just a second or two, and then he kissed her on the lips. For him, it was a moment of great fear, and greater excitement. He was crossing an important line. He was kissing her the way a man kisses a woman, seriously, not like a brother or an old friend. She would remember it and think about it, and that, he hoped, would be enough.
Georgianne didn't respond. She felt a tiny flicker within herself, but it died instantly. Her sexual orientation was still to Sean. Her body was numb to any other man. It was too soon. And there, in that house which was hers and Sean's, it was wrong; it seemed, irrationally, almost incestuous. She felt confused and sad. She didn't want this to be happening, not now and especially not there. But she could hardly movethe situation had turned her into dead weight. Finally she moved her face slightly and rested her forehead on Jeffs shoulder.
The only thing he could do was sit there and hold her for as long as was necessary. He knew that the moment had passed. No, that wasn't it. The moment had never really been there except in his imagination. All the same, he had at last kissed Georgianne properly, and he was happy about that. TTWenty years overdue, and all the sweeter for it.
"I'm sorry I'm not better company," Georgianne said weakly after a while. She reached for her drink, disengaging herself a little from Jeff in the process. "It still gets to me, you know. It still gets to me."
It: Sean, Jeff thought. The man was slow to die, but die he would, and his hold on Georgianne would disappear with him. It was just a matter of time. Meanwhile, Jeff had given her something to remember and think about....
The next morning, before he checked out of the ho tel, Jeff called Georgianne, and they had an easy, cheerful conversation for nearly half an hour. No harm had been done, it seemed, although neither of them alluded to that moment the night before. By tacit agreement, it had been placed in a special container and set aside for an indefinite period.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Jeffs long-distance pursuit of Georgianne began the following week. He fell into a routine of calling her on Tuesdays and Fridays. His preparations for each telephone encounter were as ritualistic as those of a baseball player setting himself in the batter's box before the next pitch. He would come home from work early in the evening, remove his shoes, unknot his tie, and unbutton his shirt. He would pour a large measure of malt Scotch into a crystal tumbler and add a splash of bottled water. The drink would be placed on a tweed coaster on the coffee table, next to a clean crystal ashtray, a fresh pack of cigarettes, and a book of matches. Then he would stretch out on the couch, propping himself up at one end with a pillow. He would light the first smoke, take a sip of whiskey, and pick up the telephone. He even developed a certain rhythm for tapping out the sequence of numbers that would bring him Georgianne's voice.
Once in a while, she had something planned for a Friday night, and would tell Jeff on the Tuesday before; then he would call on Thursday or Saturday, and the routine went on.
He liked to think of her taking all his calls in her bedroom: half-dressed, in a pajama top perhaps, or some girlish nightie. The mental image was sometimes so distracting that he lost the thread of the conversation. But it was always easy, reminding him of the many hours he had spent on the phone with his various girlfriends in high school. Two people could often say more to each other on the phone than they ever did face to face. And the connection was usually so clear Jeff had no difficulty imagining that he and Georgianne were in the same town.
At first, he had to make the greater effort. Georgianne found it hard to accept the fact that Jeff really didn't mind piling up large telephone bills. She felt uncomfortable, as if she could hear the meter ticking, but after a couple of weeks she relaxed about it. The telephone had become an important part of her life since Sean's death. She talked to Bonnie every night, her mother once a week, and now she had Jeff on the line every Tuesday and Friday night.
He talked about anything that came to mind. He knew that, for a while at least, the mere fact that they were in constant communication was more important than what they actually said. So he told her about all sorts of things-Los Angeles, the weather, systems analysis, the people he worked with, his aquarium of tropical fish, the bars and restaurants he knew in the area, even defense spending. He managed to give her a better idea of some of the things being done in mo lecular biology, and how Bonnie's field of interest might interface with the work he did. The whole high-tech future was a minor but recurrent motif in his conversation.
Georgianne was a good listener. At appropriate moments she always came up with a reasonable question or comment. There were no awkward pauses or stifled yawns.
For her part, Georgianne talked about Bonnie most frequently. She was still doing well at Harvard and she liked the school and the whole Cambridge environment. Jeff was also given odd bits of news about Georgianne's mother, and her two brothers and their families. It was boring, and Jeff couldn't have cared less, but he always listened patiently. She also told him regularly about her job at the nursery school. She liked working there. The kids were endlessly energetic, and she always went home feeling worn out, but she thought that was good for her and she hadn't regretted a day of it yet. Besides, some of the children were really wonderful. Jeff had to agree that it was a good thing for Georgianne to be doing.
The house soon became a factor. This pleased Jeff. Every time he called, it seemed, he heard about one thing or another Georgianne had to take care of-the storm windows, leaves clogging a gutter pipe, a leak in the dishwasher, loose tiles in the bathroom-never anything serious, just the usual household nuisances. Georgianne was far from helpless, and she coped well. She paid a neighbor's son to mow the lawn, rake the leaves, and when it snowed, to clear the driveway. She was proud of the fact that she could handle prob lems one way or another, but as the weeks went by, Jeff was sure that the whole business of maintaining a house was beginning to get to her.
With time, too, he and Georgianne were able to talk about more personal matters. The telephone seemed to make it safer and easier. She hinted at, then admitted to, being lonely, as if she were somehow to blame for it. He told her it was the most natural thing in the world. She told him about the increasingly open advice she was getting from her friends-she should start to date, she couldn't deny herself that right, she couldn't hide herself away and become old before her time, and so on. She found this predictable and even a little amusing, but it was clear she was also considering it seriously. Jeff tried to remain neutral. If, one evening, she told him that she was going out to dinner or to a movie with another man, he would deal with it then. But he sensed that Georgianne had real reservations about becoming a dating woman again after all these years, and he believed that his reassuring presence on the phone twice a week helped somewhat to lessen her need for male companionship.