Until now.
“What are you doing?” she asks him quietly, realizing that he is quite drunk, that the bottle of wine on the table is not Noel’s first drink of the evening.
He drains his glass, setting it back on the table hard enough that she winces, and then he takes the bottle of wine out of its bucket, water dripping onto the dark red tablecloth.
“Not sure, to tell the truth.” Noel fills his glass. “Feeling maudlin tonight, I suppose.”
The bottle sloshes back into the ice, and Noel studies her across the table. “I sometimes think I died that summer, too, you know. Nothing has been the same since.”
“That is maudlin,” Mari says, hoping they can change the subject, but understanding now that this is why Noel wanted to meet her tonight.
“Of course, you and Lara, you’ve both ascended to heretofore unknown heights, so I’m sure neither of you see it the same way.”
Mari doesn’t bother pointing out that Noel’s long slide had started before that summer, that what happened to Pierce and to Johnnie has nothing to do with where he’s ended up.
“Do you ever talk to her?” Noel asks. “Lara? I tried once, you know. Went backstage at her concert in Paris. She had security throw me out.”
Laughing at the memory, he slaps one hand on the table. “They didn’t want to, but I let them because, Jesus Christ, if she had the balls to do it, I deserved it, didn’t I?”
Pierce and Johnnie’s names no longer have the power to hurt Mari, but Lara’s …
“You know, I sometimes wish she’d had the kid,” Noel goes on. “I would’ve liked to have been a father, I think. And lord knows your sister was a handful, but she was pretty. Talented, too, turned out. Would’ve been a good mix of genes at the very least.”
Mari wonders if Lara told Noel she terminated the pregnancy, or if he’s just assuming she did, but the truth is that Lara miscarried two days after Pierce’s death. A loss and a relief all at once, for both of them, Mari thinks.
Now she only shrugs and says, “Last I checked, you’re not even forty, Noel. Fatherhood is still in the cards.”
He shakes his head, lifting his glass. “No, doors are beginning to close, Mistress Mary. I feel them slamming shut on all sides of me. Family?” He slams a hand on the table, their cutlery and glasses rattling. “Bam! Closed. Marriage?” Another slap. “Bam!”
Arabella divorced him in the middle of Johnnie’s trial, heaping scandal on top of scandal. Last Mari heard, she’d permanently decamped to her family’s country estate and gotten very interested in buying Thoroughbred horses.
“Friends? Bam! Rotten lot, all of them, though present company excluded, naturally. Music?” Noel continues, and brings his hand up to once again slam it down, but Mari reaches over, stopping him.
“That door will never close to you, Noel,” she tells him, and she means it. “You mustn’t let it.”
His hand goes limp in hers, and Mari has the strangest feeling he might begin to weep.
“You’re still seeing the best in us,” he says, pulling his hand free. “In spite of it all.”
Mari is grateful when their food comes because it derails this mawkish stroll down memory lane. Soon, Noel is regaling her with tales of how he found this restaurant, of other little holes-in-the-wall he’s discovered all over the world, and by the time the meal ends, Mari feels on much more solid ground.
The air outside is frigid after the warmth of the restaurant. Mari wishes she’d brought a heavier coat because even though the snow has stopped, the night has turned bitterly cold, the kind that slips underneath collars, making her eyes water.
Seeing her shiver, Noel unwinds the paisley scarf he’s wearing.
“Here.” He wraps it around her neck, but holds on to the ends, tugging her close and looking down into her face.
“Mistress Mary, quite contrary,” he murmurs, still smiling that odd little smile at her, and finally, Mari understands that it isn’t mocking or knowing at all.
It’s sad.
She doesn’t know it then, but this is the last time she’ll see Noel. In a month, he’ll leave for Nepal, seeking inspiration, but also wanting to do something grander with his life. It’s an impulse that will kill him, less than a hundred days from now, when the tiny plane he’s flying in crashes into the side of a mountain. Mari will spend the rest of her life thinking about that moment, wondering if he knew what was coming, wondering how Noel Gordon could be snuffed out so quickly.
And there will be a little part of her that thinks, Now it’s just me and Lara.
Now we’re the only ones who know.
She’ll hate how much that thought warms her.
Noel leans down then and kisses her, his lips cold but gentle against hers.
When he pulls back, there are tears in his eyes, and it might just be the frigid air, but Mari doesn’t think that it is.
“I wish I’d never said it,” he tells her now, and she knows he’s thinking of the same moment she was earlier.
That day in the sun by the pond.
Cut yourself free.
“I don’t,” she replies, and he gives a huff of laughter, letting the ends of the scarf drop.
“No, you wouldn’t, would you?”
Then he turns and leaves. Noel Gordon, once the most famous rock star in the world, now just another man on the cold, damp streets of a December night in New York.
Mari starts walking in the other direction, intending to hail a cab at the corner, but she spots a phone booth, and before she knows it, she’s ducking inside, fumbling with gloved hands to pull out the necessary change.
She’d gotten the number months ago, not long after she’d heard that Lara had moved to California. She kept it jotted down on a scrap of paper in her purse, but she’d looked at it so many times, she now knows it by heart.
Punching in the numbers, Mari tells herself that Lara won’t even be home, that this is a wasted call and a stupid whim that she’ll feel silly about in the morning.
So, when she hears Lara’s familiar, “Hello?” Mari is so surprised, she almost hangs up.
She stops herself, though, and stammers, “L-Lara? It’s me, it’s—”
“Mari. I know.”
The last time Mari saw Lara, she was onstage at the Scala in London, the stage lights making a halo around her. She’d played all of Aestas from beginning to end, and Mari had listened in the dark, her hands clenched against her chest, her eyes full of tears.
She hadn’t tried to go backstage, hadn’t even wanted Lara to see her in the audience.
“I don’t know why I’m calling,” she says now. “I just … I suppose I missed you.”
There’s silence over the line for so long that Mari thinks maybe Lara hung up, but then she hears a sigh, and Lara says, “I don’t think that’s it. I’ve been waiting for you to call, actually. I knew you would one day.”
Mari stands there in the phone booth, her breath fogging the glass, the city lights distorted.
“I’m proud of you,” Mari tells her. “I’ve listened to the album more times than I can count. It’s breathtaking, Lara.” She laughs then, self-conscious. “Not that you need me to tell you that, given how it’s sold.”