Jeff was carefully ambiguous about his personal life. He let Georgianne know that he socialized to a certain extent, insofar as it went with the job, but that he could take it or leave it. Once, she asked him if he was dating anyone special, and he replied immediately, "Yes-you, every Tuesday and Friday." Georgianne laughed at this, but warmly, like a confirmation, and he felt good about it. He always tried to strike a light tone. He didn't want to make any intense declarations over the telephone, at such a distance. If she clammed up or otherwise failed to respond, everything would be in jeopardy. So he would kid her, joke with her, and sympathize with her when necessary. His role was to be there, safe, solid, reassuring, the complete friend. They were, thanks to the telephone, two disembodied souls moving slowly closer together. One day, Jeff was sure, Georgianne would answer his call and he would hear something new in her voice. Understanding. She would realize that he was the man in her life and she would be ecstatic about it....
Late in November, she told Jeff that Bobbie Maddox had introduced her to a single man at a cocktail party. It had been a terrifying experience. Georgianne still felt too close to Sean, and she had hardly been able to talk coherently to the stranger. The man didn't interest her in any way, but she was disturbed by her reactions, her inability to handle a perfectly ordinary situation.
Jeff soothed her and told her that she hadn't done anything wrong, that she had no social obligation to feel comfortable with any stranger who happened to cross her path. The only timetable she had to follow was the one dictated by her own feelings; nothing else mattered. Georgianne sounded much better after talking to Jeff about that incident. Secretly, he was quite pleased. It was still too early for her to have real feelings for another man, but she had never felt the least bit uncomfortable with him; just the opposite. It was a message to Jeff that he had the inside track and was far ahead of anyone else.
The only worry, and it did bother him when he thought about it, was that Georgianne regarded him a little too casually. Sometimes he got the impression that she talked to him the same way she would to a close girlfriend. His greatest fear was that their relationship would solidify at a certain superficial level that included confiding, sharing, and affection, but nothing more. A sanitized, platonic, brotherly load of nonsense. But all he could safely do was to hint at his true feelings and occasionally, lightly, call her "my girlfriend."
Georgianne spent the long Thanksgiving weekend in Boston. She stayed at a hotel and took Bonnie out to a restaurant for a turkey dinner. They went to a football game, a play, a couple of films, and a punk gig at a Cambridge club. They had a great time together, Georgianne said. Jeff wished he could have been there with them. It was just the kind of weekend away he wanted with Georgianne. But it would have been wrong to intrude, and he knew there would be many more Thanksgivings for them.
Georgianne and Bonnie spent the Christmas holidays in Tampa, where the rest of the Slaton family had gathered. Georgianne later admitted feeling miserable, thinking of Sean on Christmas Eve. In a way, Jeff was glad to hear that. The holidays were drab and lonely for him in Santa Susana. He went to a couple of parties but was unable to get in the mood. In the past he had just continued working, but now he couldn't be bothered. He stayed in and drank or went out and drank, mostly alone. He called Georgianne in Tampa on Christmas morning, but their conversation was brief and limited to the usual season's greetings and best wishes. He could hear music and laughter in the background, and he knew it was the wrong time for a longer talk, so he got off the phone. He called her mother's number again on New Year's Eve, but Georgianne was out with her brothers and their wives, celebrating at some restaurant. That night he drove to Triffids and got drunk. He danced with, kissed, and groped a number of merry women. He woke up early the following afternoon, fully dressed but with his pants around his knees. Whoever had returned with him was gone. Considering the amount of liquor he had put away and the blank spot of twelve hours or so in his memory, he decided that unzipping his pants was all he had accomplished. He sat up and let his monster headache do its worst while he stared uncomprehendingly at Georgianne's drawing of the stone wall.
The turning point came in January. Connecticut was experiencing particularly bad weather that month, and Georgianne was growing restless. She complained about the cold, the house, and the loneliness. She still liked her work, and she was happy about Bonnie's progress at Harvard, but otherwise she was coming to dislike the way she lived. Her friends were well intentioned, but she hated being their special project. She was tired of gratuitous advice and she had no stomach for the ritual of being in traduced to single men, none of whom aroused any response in her. She wasn't at all sure she was capable of responding to anyone, but at night, alone, she began to want someone in her life. Georgianne didn't say these things to Jeff in so many words, but he was certain that he understood her meaning perfectly.
His time was coming, and he knew it. He started to plan another trip to Danbury. February, he thought, would be right. It was usually as bad as January in terms of the weather, and even worse psychologically. February was the bottom of the pit of winter, when spring still seems still seems impossibly far away. Georgianne would feel low and blue. He would arrive at exactly the right moment, in the nick of time, and convince her to come out to Los Angeles for a visit. At his expense, of course, unless she absolutely insisted on paying her own way. There wasn't the slightest doubt in his mind that if he could just get her to California, she would want to stay. She would stay.
Jeff was certain that his elaborate, grand scenario had reached its final phase. He thought of it as a very natural progression geared to the seasons of the earth, and he felt he was on the verge of a remarkable achievement. When it is complete, he told himself, I will have plucked Georgianne from the past, transformed her life utterly and mine as well, and saved two people who were going nowhere without even realizing it. And all because he had finally learned how to read and follow his deepest instincts. It was extraordinary how the whole thing had started and grown. A whim had taken over the personal destinies of several people. A gesture of curiosity and half buried longing had snowballed, gaining the momentum of an irresistible force. It gave Jeff a feeling of almost godlike power. The only thing that bothered him was the fact that he couldn't share this knowledge with anyone-for who else on this planet had gone to such lengths for the love of a woman? Jeff was now unique in his own eyes. At the center of this transformation was Sean's killing, which he regarded as the one true act of his life. Even now, months later, it had a magical, religious significance: it was an act of transubstantiation.
Late in January, before Jeff could announce his plans for another trip east, the change in Georgianne became more pronounced. She wouldn't stay on the phone talking as long as she had previously. She always sounded tired, and sometimes his calls actually woke her from sleep. She worked full time at the nursery school now, came home dead tired, and went to bed early. Jeff didn't know how to deal with this new development. It was just until June, Georgianne told him. She liked the work, she wanted the extra money, and, besides, it kept her mind off other things. He saw that she was doing what he had done years before-she was deliberately losing herself in her job. But he didn't know how to talk her out of it, or even if it was a good idea to try.
On the plus side, it seemed to show that Georgianne was taking charge of her life, finding a new strength and sense of purpose. Work was a way of buying time to heal. But there were negative aspects too. The long telephone talks with Jeff were no longer quite so important to her. She didn't need them the way she had earlier. Now they were friendly, brief chats-nothing more. They left Jeff feeling increasingly removed from her.