Aftermath of Dreaming(37)

“Andrew Madden asked about you.”

“What?” I cannot have heard her right. For someone in my life today to not only know about but bring up this precious buried part of my memories and dreams is the colliding of the worlds I shuttle between.

“He asked about you. At the party, after the show. I was all over the place, talking to everyone—did you see my preshow crowd on the ten o’clock news?”

It takes me a split second to realize she is waiting for my response. Just tell me what he said, I want to scream. Inject it in me all at once, so this tedious trickling can end, then when his words are safely circulating inside, part of me and him-of-then, I can listen at a normal pace, decipher and decode what only I can know he meant.

“No, I missed it, but I saw the news crew outside.” Whoever thinks manners are only important in the South has never tried to survive in Hollywood.

“It’s getting great reviews.”

“That’s wonderful, Sydney, I’m so happy for you.”

“Thanks. It’s been a lot of work, and it just never ends, but you know how it is.”

Actually, honestly, I don’t. My work is small, viewed up close, almost in private. Standing in person before the hordes isn’t something I do.

“Well, you do it great.”

“He wanted to know if we are friends.”

“What’d you say?” I jump right back in with her to Andrew-land.

“Yeah, you know. He asked about your art, if you were still doing it. I told him not that I know of, but your jewelry designs are going great.”

“You said that?” As I move toward the chair to sit down, the veil and the phone cord encircle each other, binding me tighter to this call, so I perch on the edge with the receiver held in both hands.

“He was really happy to hear it; said something about that making sense with how personal and delicate your art was. He asked if you were seeing someone, but I didn’t know, then he said, ‘I care a lot about Yvette, and have for a very long time.’ He wanted me to please tell you hello.”

Hello, Andrew, I silently answer back with the wild hope that he can hear.

“Then a bunch of people came over to us. Christ, that man is never left alone, crowds kept forming and unforming around him all night like amoebas.” I wonder if I’ll hear that used about something else in Sydney’s next show. “And his wife, Holly, is so beautiful. And such a great mom to their two kids. She’s so nice; no one can hate her.”

Oh, right, his wife. Well, hello, Andrew. And goodbye.

I crab-dance around Sydney’s questions about how I met him and were we involved by saying—which is true—that I have to run downtown.



Driving on Beverly Boulevard in the late morning traffic to meet Dipen downtown, the word “care” reverberates in my brain. The way Andrew would say it. In his voice, in my mind. So maybe he has thought about me all these years. Like I’ve thought about him. God, I miss him.





13




The Monday that I woke up in Andrew’s bed at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York, I worked the eleven-to-eight shift at the restaurant in a state of tired ecstasy. The little sleep that I had gotten thanks to our late night and early rise proved to be helpful in muffling my expression of the shocked bliss I found myself in. I appeared extremely, privately glad, but nothing so exuberant as to warrant questions from the other hosts and hostesses, and especially from Lydia, which was good because it felt too personal to talk about at work. Seamus came on that night at six, but by then I was in the reservation room for the last hours of my shift, so I was able to avoid his knowing eyes, thank God, because I have a shot at being a believable liar if the person I’m fibbing to can’t see me, but one-on-one, my truth-telling thoughts are practically pasted on my face, so readable is my countenance. I had the next day off, and on Wednesday was scheduled for the nine-to-four shift, so I figured I wouldn’t be in real contact with Seamus again until Thursday night, and by then his mind would be too roiled with the chaos of the week to remember to ask about Andrew and me.

I called Andrew that Monday afternoon as he had told me to, sneaked downstairs to the restaurant’s pay phone booth—an astonishing blessing that it had a real booth with privacy—and dialed the hotel number, already knowing it by heart like a code to my salvation.

Andrew’s voice was immediately on the line, unlike the wait I had endured the first time. “Where are you?” he said, forgoing a hello.

“At the restaurant, at work.”

“How are you?” The phrase was spoken so sincerely, it made me realize how rarely it is.

“I’m good. It was…” My temperature rose a hundred degrees. “Really nice being with you last night.”

His voice did a sideways and down one shift, moving us into a more private place. “It was wonderful being with you, sweet-y-vette. Do you love me?”

“Yes.” I was relieved he had asked. I hadn’t said it to him when he said it to me, and remembering that had caused a lopsided, one-shoe-off sensation in my head. “I love you, Andrew.”

“Good.”

I thought so, too.

“I’ve got some people here I have to see. What time do you finish work?”

Oh, God, what clothes did I wear here? Was it anything I could see him in?