Walk on Water (13 page)

“You chose your own punishment.”

“I’m surprised I didn’t sing that song in my sleep.”

I wondered if I ever did. Robert had never mentioned it and I had never
slept
with anybody else.

Smoother than a gentle breeze, flowin’ through my mind with ease, soft as can be, well, when you’re lovin’ me, when you’re lovin’ me Ooo!

“In any case,” I said. “I must have converted you.”

Luke looked at me.

“I guess you did,” he conceded.

I laughed lightly and closed my eyes letting the music carry me away.

Love to be right in the waves of your love enchanted with a touch, and, it seems to me we could sail together in and out of mystery. Well I wanna be living for the love of you, alright now, all that I’m giving is for the love of you.

I had loved Luke’s Trans Am probably as much as he had. I wondered what had happened to it.

I wanna be living for the love of you, alright now, all that I’m giving-giving is for the love of you, Oh yes I am…

I had wanted so badly for Luke to see me dancing with Robert on a day when I had been beautiful. I had wanted to show him that he had been replaced, so that maybe he would have felt a little of the recrimination too.

.

THIRTEEN

I
t was early November. The Halloween decorations had just come down and the mall Christmas decorations were beginning to go up. At least the Santa Clause songs hadn’t started yet. Maybe they’d let us get through Thanksgiving first.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and contrary to my usual shopping habits, here I was spending it in the Galleria Mall with Corrine on a fashion mission-critical. As it turned out, the photography exhibit that Luke had invited me to was the headline event of a private museum showing reserved for the high-roller patrons of the Museum of Art. It wasn’t just some outing in the afternoon, but an evening affair, involving his parents no less, so I must have the right outfit. Corrine said that I should go for
business chic.

“Corporate sector,” she had emphasized. “
Not
civil service.”

The problem was that I was on a
civil service
budget, and Christmas was coming, sooner than later. In addition to figuring out what I was going to buy for Mommy, and a bunch of family and friends, I now also had Luke to think about. Despite the fact that my Christmas Club account could only go so far before I would be breaking some
Suze Orman
rule, Corrine had convinced me that I needed the
right
clothes to wear, which meant buying something new.

“It should look like you just came from the office,” Corrine advised as we prowled through yet another rack of dresses with price tags that started well over a hundred dollars.

“We’re meeting at seven,” I replied. “I was going to go home first and change.”

“Even if you do, you need to look like you didn’t,” she told me, holding up a blue dress with dolman sleeves against me. “I bet he won’t go home first. You can’t look like you’re trying too hard. The only way to impress a snob is with confident indifference.”

Shaking her head she returned the blue dress to the rack. Nordstrom’s had to be the tenth store that we had been in today, however I had lost count, and all I had to show for it so far was a pair of
Spanx
-enhanced pantyhose. Ruefully I remembered why it was that I preferred shopping by myself, and better yet online. However, memories of a miserable Mommy in her candy-red dress at the Sterlings Christmas party kept me compliant with Corrine’s instructions. She was smarter about these kinds of things than I was, and I listened to her.

“How do you know he won’t go home?” I asked, following Corrine like a peevish lamb to another rack.

“He won’t,” she answered. “Trust me. Unless he’s got to take care of some medical complication.”

“He doesn’t have medical complications.”

“Okay then. He probably works late all the time. Except when he goes out with you.”

“Or Stephanie.”

“Yeah, right. Stephanie.”

“He does see other people,” I reminded Corrine as I went towards a little black dress that had caught my eye.

“No,” she called me away from it. “You wouldn’t wear it to the office. Not if you had any decorum anyway.”

I came back to stand beside her.

“I don’t know why you keep bringing up Stephanie,” she went on. “He’s taking you to the fancy art exhibit.”

“Because I liked the pictures of his kids.”

“Is that why?” asked Corrine dryly.

“Yes,” I insisted.

“And not because he
likes
you.”

She had moved on to a rack of colorful silk blouses. Luke liked me. He had always liked me. But that didn’t mean that he
liked
me. We were friends, I constantly told Corrine, sounding like a broken record even to me, and this was the digital age.

“At least it’s Thursday night,” said Corrine. “Maybe Stephanie
and
Brian can get some weekend play.” She selected an emerald green blouse with a soft ruffle trim around the neckline and held it up against me. “This might work. You could pair it with a black skirt and add a wide belt, patent leather, and boom—you’re pretty and practical. Like you just took off your jacket. Not overdressed at all. That’s how they know, you know, when we don’t belong. Because we overdo it. It’s like with makeup. You don’t make
up.
You don’t dress
up.
The trick is to make it look easy. Old money’s doesn’t shine.”

How did she know so much about it I wondered but didn’t ask.

“Luke does work for a living,” I said instead as I read the tag on the blouse for size and price. “Just like you and me.”

“You better try it on just to be sure,” Corrine recommended.

I did, and the blouse was a fine fit.

“Gold earrings would look good with it, don’t you think?” I asked Corrine while a clerk rang up the blouse.

I was relieved to be getting away from this adventure under $150.00. Maybe I would even offer to buy Corrine’s lunch.

“Work-size ones,” she reminded me.

“I have those.”

“Do you have a patent-leather wide belt?”

“Sort of.”

“What do you mean
sort of
?”

“I don’t think it’s actually leather,” I said signing the credit card receipt.

“We have some very nice belts in Accessories,” offered the clerk.

“We’ll check them out,” replied Corrine.

On the way to Accessories, I argued that the belt I had at home would do just fine. No one would know the difference. I was not the exhibit after all.

“You most certainly are,” Corrine countered. “Somebody’ll be sizing you up for second-wife material. Didn’t you say his folks were going to be there?”

I froze in place, forcing Corrine to come back to me.

“Oh come on, Rae,” she said. “You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it, about the possibility. I mean you watch
Lifetime
.”

I had dreamt about it, true enough, but it was a fantasy, not worthy of something as rational as thinking. And it had never been said out loud.

“Isn’t that what you want?” Corrine asked. “To be with him?”

I was with him. We had the
this
. I was satisfied. Corrine and I were standing in the middle of the aisle, forcing people to walk around us. I collected myself enough to move over to a rack of colorful scarves. This was what I could give for Christmas. I would just have to buy them from another store, a cheaper one. Weren’t they all made in China anyway?

“Are you okay?” Corrine asked standing close to me.

“These are nice,” I said about the scarves.

“Look, I don’t blame you,” she said. “The disabled thing would make me a little nervous too. But you say he’s really fine in spite of it, and—”

“Corrine,” I cut her off. “That’s not it.”

“Then what?”

“Luke’s not in love with me.”

“Rachel—”

“He’s not.”

“He’s crazy about you,” she insisted. “You can’t convince—”

“It’s not the same,” I said shaking my head. “I know. I know what it feels like…to be in love. He doesn’t feel that way about me. He never has.”

“But he loves you.”

I smiled.

“Yeah,” I said, feeling a warming wave from the truth. “That’s what makes us such good friends.”

I did have
this
.

“He’s just not
in love
with you?” queried Corrine skeptically.

“That’s right,” I replied.

“And you think that makes a difference?”

Of course it did. If Peter had been in love with Mommy I might have known him. He might be more than a high school picture. So yes it made a difference; the difference between billowing white and choking pink; between
ever
-after and
once-
upon-a-time.

Corrine found the perfect belt and I paid for it. Then she talked me into shopping for new shoes, insisting that we had to buy shoes to match the belt to be on the safe side. I preferred the warehouse-type shoe stores where the prices were more reasonable and the salespeople didn’t hover around, but Corrine was not to be deterred, and I made my peace with it, although I was holding fast about the heel height.

“Come on, Rachel,” she argued for the latest designer pair I had rejected. “Three inches is nothing. Plus they make your legs look so good.”

“It’s a museum, Corrine,” I argued back as I checked myself out in the floor mirror. “Lots of walking and standing around.”

“So sit in his lap and ride.”

The shoes were really nice, but completely out of character, a pair of outliers that I would never feel comfortable in and Mrs. Sterling would know it. I’d probably trip and fall right on my ass.

“Luke knows I wouldn’t wear a pair like these to work,” I ignored her sarcastic suggestion. “Just show me kitten-heels,” I spoke to the salesperson. “One-inch if you have them.”

“I don’t know,” replied the salesperson doubtfully. “Not in a pump. We don’t have very much in that style in the store. Have you tried our online catalog?”

“Call around to your other stores,” interjected Corrine sharply. “She has to have them by Tuesday.”

But the exhibit was Thursday night. Corrine knew that. There was no need to dial-up the pressure.

“It’s okay,” I spoke up, embarrassed for the salesperson and myself. “We can shop around.”

“Well let me see what we have in the back,” he offered, not willing to give up on a sale just yet.

“Who buys shoes online?” fumed Corrine once the salesperson had gone to do his search.

“Actually a lot of people do,” I told her removing the designer heels and returning them to their box. “Me for one.”

“Without trying them on first? How do you know they’ll fit?”

“They don’t always,” I conceded. “But most of the time they do. You just have to stick with the same basic style and preferably the same brand.”

“How boring!”

There it was again, that word.

“Not really,” I said sullenly.

“You gotta jazz things up a little sometimes, Rae,” Corrine counseled.

“Won’t that be
trying
too much?” I countered frostily.

“Oh we’re getting a bitchy I see.”

“I’m not bitchy,” I snapped under my breath. “Or boring. I just know what I like and I don’t have to spend all day looking for it.”

“Touché!” laughed Corrine, snapping her fingers as she drew the letter Z in the air.

However, by the time we were leaving the store Corrine and I had made up, and I had a new pair of black patent-leather pumps. The heels were too chunky for Corrine’s tastes, but they did match the new belt and they had cute little bowties on the toe-box. They were also marked down for clearance so at least I was ending up just over my $150.00 mark.

Passing through the jewelry department, a sale on 14karat gold earrings caught Corrine’s eye and she stopped at the counter to admire the merchandise. I was determined to stick to the earrings I had at home, so this time Corrine was shopping for herself, and I was patiently waiting.

Then I saw Luke. He was at another counter, with a friend, a man. A salesperson was showing them ladies’ watches. It was almost surreal, like seeing Mrs. Sterling that day at the mall, but why shouldn’t he be here? Luke hadn’t seen me, and I debated whether or not to go over and say hi. Should I bother them? It would mean introducing Corrine to Luke; and after our earlier conversation regarding
second-wife material
, what if Luke was buying a present for Stephanie-the-teacher? Corrine would feel sorry for me and I would feel stupid.

Perhaps it was my staring too long but Luke looked away from the watches and our eyes met. He smiled and I did too. Now I had no choice but to take the risk. Touching Corrine on the arm I said, “You’ve been wanting to meet Luke Sterling. Well here’s your chance.”

Luke was rolling towards us.

“Hi!” I greeted him brightly once he reached us.

This time with his faded jeans, he was wearing a charcoal gray t-shirt with long sleeves and a Texas Rangers baseball cap. Usually I kissed him hello, but with Corrine watching I didn’t know what to do. She would only read things into it.

“Hey!” he returned. “What are you up to?”