CHAPTER TEN.

The performance of La Boheme was magnificent, but Adam barely paid attention. His mind was racing ahead, his nerves were wire taut.

It had been a week since his meeting with Josh Hillman, and the young lawyer had put together everything he needed to proceed with the divorce, including information that could, if necessary, cast shadows on Lilith's character. Josh had advised Adam to convince Lilith to settle. Going to court meant an ugly protracted battle that could affect his reputation and Ian's stability. Adam, realizing he was right, had agreed to talk to Lilith.

When he and Lilith got home, Adam went straight to the library, took off his tie and poured a brandy. He waited a half hour before he went up to Lilith's room. She was at her dressing table, wearing only a black silk slip.

"I thought you went to bed," she said.

"I was waiting to see you."

"I didn't think you knew where my bedroom was these days."

He stood by the bed. "We have to talk, Lilith."

She began to slowly brush her hair. "I didn't think you even liked doing that anymore."

"I want a divorce."

The brush stopped in midair. Then it resumed.

"Lilith, did you hear me?"

The brush strokes grew more forceful.

"I want a divorce."

She didn't turn around, just continued to drag the brush through her hair with quick violent strokes.

"Our marriage is a joke, Lilith. We don't love each other anymore --"

She swung around and hurled the brush at him. It missed and smashed into a lamp, shattering it. "You don't love me! That's what you mean!" she yelled.

"Lilith --"

"You've never loved me!" She began to cry, great gasping sobs that made her bare shoulders shake. "You never, not for one moment, loved me. Don't you think I've known that?"

Adam watched her, stunned by her outburst.

"You don't care about my feelings, about what's important to me," she said. "You never have!"

Adam had antic.i.p.ated every reaction except tears. He stood, unable to move toward her to offer comfort. "I never meant to hurt you, Lilith," he said.

"Then why in the h.e.l.l did you marry me?" she asked. When he said nothing, she picked up a handkerchief and blotted her eyes. "You married me to get the newspaper," she said. "You made some sort of deal with my father, didn't you? That's all it ever was to you, just a deal."

There was nothing he could say in his own defense. She was right.

She looked up at him, her face pale, her eyes black smudges. "I could always tell," she said. "The way you looked through me, never at me. The way you touched me, never with warmth, never because you really wanted to. The way you made love to me. It was a duty to you, and you always held something back. Like you were waiting for something better." She buried her face in her hands. "G.o.d, Adam, don't you know what it's been like? You're so cruel sometimes, so ungiving."

He had never seen Lilith this way, so vulnerable. It didn't touch him so much as make him feel sad. All these years, he had a.s.sumed she was content with their arrangement. Now, for the first time he saw the pain in her eyes and a reflection of his own emptiness. Theirs had not been a marriage in any sense. It had been a sad, terrible match. Now there was nothing left to do but end it.

Lilith turned back to the mirror. He watched her reflection in the mirror as she struggled to compose herself. "I won't give you a divorce, Adam," she said.

The vulnerable Lilith was gone as quickly as she had come, making it suddenly easier for Adam to go on. "Lilith, what's the point of going on like this?" he said.

"What's the point?" She spun around. "The point, my darling husband, is that we are married. That may not mean anything to you anymore but it means everything to me. I will not become some sad pathetic divorcee for everyone to pity. I care about what people think of me."

That was the response Adam had been counting on. It was his only way out. "Lilith, I intend to get this divorce," he said. "If you force me to, I will take you to court and say you have been unfaithful to me."

She laughed. "Oh, Adam, that's ridiculous! Everyone in town knows you've been going to Sally Stanford's for years. We're both guilty on that count."

"But there's one difference between you and me, Lilith," he said. "I don't care who knows it. I don't care who knows that I f.u.c.k wh.o.r.es. And that my wife f.u.c.ks everyone from Italian gigolos to j.a.panese gardeners. And that she had a little menage a trois with her girlfriend and a famous opera star last month in an opium house on Grant Street."

Lilith's face went white.

"I don't care who knows any of it," Adam said. "But you do and I know that you do. If you don't give me a divorce. I'll drag you into court and lay out all the ugly details of our marriage for everyone to see. You know how this town loves dirt. It'll be the best-read story in the newspaper."

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she said.

"Don't make me do it, Lilith," he said. "I don't want to hurt you any more than I already have."

As Lilith stared at him he could almost see her mind working, a.n.a.lyzing her position, looking for his weaknesses, sizing up her chances.

"I was going to ask you if there was another woman," she said, "then I realized how absurd that is. There's no room in your life for anyone but you. You're a robot. You have nothing to offer a woman." She gave him a final, spiteful look. "Get out of my room," she said.

"There's one more thing," Adam said. "I want Ian."

She laughed. "You've got to be kidding! What do you want with him?"

"He's my son."

"Oh, you noticed?"

Adam took a breath. "I don't like what you're doing to him. You're turning him against me, Lilith. I won't have it."

"So you've decided to try out for Father of the Year all of a sudden? For G.o.d's sake, Adam, if you cared at all about Ian's feelings you wouldn't put him through a custody fight. Why don't you think of him for once?"

She turned back to her mirror. "You stole the newspaper from me, Adam," she said, as she calmly applied cream to her face. "And someday, some way, I intend to get it back. But you might as well forget Ian. You lost him years ago."

Adam knew now she would agree to the divorce but her words about Ian cut into him. If he wanted him he would have to endure a custody battle and all its sordid fallout. Josh was right; the courts would never grant him custody and putting Ian through it would only alienate him further.

He stared at Lilith's back, at the rippling movements of her thin shoulder blades. Suddenly, all he really wanted was to be free of her forever.

"I'll be staying at the club," he said. "I'll have the divorce papers delivered to you tomorrow."

It was dusk, and the grounds of the Palace of Fine Arts were deserted. Adam sat on a bench alone, near the pond. He pulled his coat collar up against the cold wind that was blowing up from the bay, his eyes trained on the street. He had just come from Josh Hillman's office. Lilith's lawyers had delivered the divorce papers, signed. It had been only eight days since he last saw Elizabeth on the bridge. He shivered and glanced at his watch. When he looked up, he saw Elizabeth coming toward him and he jumped to his feet.

"I'm sorry I'm late," she said. "It was hard for me to get away when you called. Then I couldn't get a cab and had to have my aunt's driver bring me here. I gave him fifty dollars to shut him up." She smiled. "I hope it was enough."

Her smile faded as she noticed Adam's somber expression. "What is it, Adam? Why did you want to see me?"

She was swathed in a silver fox coat, a white scarf wrapped around her hair. Her cheeks were red from the cold and her lips were parted expectantly. She had never looked so beautiful and he had never felt so unsure of himself. What if, after all this, she didn't want him after all?

"Adam? What is it?" she asked. "You look so strange."

He took her by the shoulders. "Marry me, Elizabeth."

Her eyes grew wide. He was acutely aware of the silence, growing unbearably longer with each second she hesitated. He searched her face for a clue to her thoughts. There was a glimmer of the same wariness he had seen in her eyes that day on the bridge, when she said she thought he had wanted her for her money. He grasped her hands. They were icy cold.

"Marry me," he whispered urgently.

"But, Adam --" she said.

"I'm getting a divorce. I love you, Elizabeth. Marry me, please."

The details of her face were growing blurred in the fast fading light but her eyes were locked on his. Suddenly, he felt her fingers curl tightly around his.

"Yes," she said. She smiled, and it grew into a laugh. "Yes," she repeated. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

He clasped her to him, burying his face in the soft warmth of her fur and neck.

Finally, she pulled away. "I have to go home to Atlanta. I have to tell my parents."

His fingers tightened around hers. "When will you be back?"

"As soon as I can." She glanced at the waiting car. "I have to go, Adam," she said.

He wouldn't release her hand.

"Don't worry," she said. "It will work out. It will be different this time. I'm not sixteen. I'm twenty-seven. My father can't tell me what to do anymore. This time, I won't listen to him. This time, I'll listen to my heart."

She leaned into him. "Oh, what a wonderful life we're going to have together," she whispered against his cheek. "I'll share your dreams. I'll make you so happy. We'll have children, so many children. I love you, Adam."

She pulled away and with a final smile ran across the lawn. He stood watching the car's lights creep up the hill until they were gone. He sat down on the bench and looked up at the Grecian statues on the colonnades but they were lost in the dark. He looked to his right down to the water. The fog was creeping in from the ocean and the lights of the East Bay flickered and went dark.

His life, he knew with a sudden aching certainty, was never going to be the same.

PART TWO.

ELIZABETH 1937.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Adam and Elizabeth were married a month later.

It was a small ceremony, held in the rustic sanctuary of the Swedenborgian Church in Pacific Heights. Elizabeth's sister flew in from Atlanta to be the maid of honor but her parents refused to come. Adam, realizing he did not really feel close to any man, asked Josh Hillman to be his best man. There was no one else in the small candlelit church to hear the tender ceremony.

Elizabeth wanted a honeymoon in Paris but Adam felt it was unwise because of the growing threat of war in Europe. They decided on a week in New York.

They arrived at the Waldorf-Astoria in late afternoon on a balmy day that promised summer. In their suite, Elizabeth went immediately to the window and gazed down on the busy street below.

"I like this city," she said. "There's so much to do here, so much to see."

"We've been married less than a day," Adam said with a smile, "and you're bored with me already."

Elizabeth came to him and slipped her arms around his waist. "I will never be bored with you," she said.

He kissed her, almost formally. She gave him an inquisitive half smile and kissed him back, a deep kiss that left him stirred. She brought up her left hand to examine the thin gold band.

"Why didn't you want a diamond?" Adam said.

"I like the way this feels," she said.

"I'm sorry we couldn't go to Paris."

"Oh, Adam, I don't care about that," she said softly. "We're finally together. That's all that matters."

He stared at the face before him, the one that had haunted his dreams for so many years. He took her face in his hands and kissed her.

When she pulled back, she was breathless. "We should take off our coats at least," she said. She drew the drapes, muting the dusky light. She kept her eyes on him as she began to undo the b.u.t.tons of her suit coat. Adam's hands moved mechanically toward his own clothes, his eyes on hers. He looked away for a moment to slip off his belt. When he looked up again, his fingers froze.

She was standing by the window in her slip, her hair freed from its coil at her neck. The white satin slip pulled across her hips, outlining the soft curve of her pelvis and the tips of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Adam stared, mesmerized, as he felt himself growing hard. He had known she was beautiful but not like this. He had relied on his dreamy memory of a girl. This was a woman before him...his wife.

He shrugged out of the rest of his clothes and went to her. At the first press of her body he felt he would explode. He fought back the urge, drawing on a mental trick he had learned from one of Sally Stanford's prost.i.tutes, and guided her down on the bed. He had always been vaguely ashamed about going to prost.i.tutes but he had learned much about pleasing women from them, things he could now bring to Elizabeth. He didn't expect much sophistication from her. She had been a sheltered teenager, and what could she have gained from a marriage to an old man like Willis Reed?

He was fully prepared to be the patient teacher. But at this moment, delirious with the feel of her flesh against his, he was fighting for control. He had to hold back. He had to perform.

He was losing himself in her body, kissing her, feeling her, trying to be gentle. Finally, when he could stand it no longer he positioned himself above her. Her eyes stared up at him, clear and steady. Slowly, he inserted himself inside her and immediately had to shut his eyes.

Then the wave reared, and he began to move inside her, helpless.

Suddenly, he felt her inner muscles grow tight, then tighter, her wet warmth gripping him. Stunned, he could only stop and the wave subsided.

"Wait for me," she whispered.