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Whenever the nerves got him, or his confidence slipped—whenever most men would have gone for a little Dutch courage—Mike thought about that night with Tracy.
A few kisses was all it had been, but it had been enough. He had fallen for her, cynical head over clay heels. He was already going that way, but those kisses had given him the final push.
The goddess had kissed him.
Liz could picture Tracy’s look of outrage at that word, and Dext’s quickly hidden grin. But Liz had come to think of it all as a fairy tale: the commoner had kissed the goddess and broken the spell, turning her into a woman.
He’d broken his own spell at the same time, or very nearly. The Cat that Walked By Himself had released his own imprisoned heart, and though he’d offered it to Tracy first, now it belonged to Liz.
Was Liz jealous?
Really, after all these years? When all their hair was white, and none of their faces unlined, when both women wore high collars to hide what time did to a woman’s neck—and time was especially cruel when the neck had been as lovely as Tracy’s. When amongst them they had five children and seven grandchildren? When Tracy was so obviously happily-ever-after in love with Dext, and Liz had had Mike as her own for nearly as many years?
Of course she was. But only a little. Only in the way any woman would trade her sallow skin for her friend’s peaches-and-cream complexion.
(Not that Liz had sallow skin.)
Mike had no idea Liz knew it was Tracy he thought of as he fiddled with his cufflinks. The expression on his face gave it all away, the worry left his eyes and a smile lighted them instead. But all these years later, the jealousy held no bitterness at all. It was more like a song in a minor key, the kind that brings tears to your eyes even when the words are cheerful: a pinch of melancholy, to sharpen the pleasure.
The doorbell rang. “That will be the chauffeur,” Mike said in his affected, richer-than-thou voice.
“Just a moment,” Liz called. “You only wish you had a chauffeur,” she said. “Let me see your tie.”
“Right now I wish I was a chauffeur, they don’t have to give speeches.”
“Now, you don’t know that. There could be chauffeur awards where the best chauffeur has to get up and give a speech.”
The doorbell rang again, immediately followed by pounding on the door.
“Well, if there are awards, this guy isn’t going to get one,” Mike muttered.
The pounding got louder. “Hey! Open up in there! We heard there was a prize-winning author inside, and we want his autograph!”
“It’s C. K. Dexter Haven, the man himself!” Mike said, and if Liz was a sillier sort, she could have been jealous about how deliriously happy he always sounded when he saw Dext. They went to the door together, and Mike flung it open.
“It is! It’s Macaulay Connor, Pulitzer Prize-winning author!” Tracy gushed as Mike and Dext hugged. She had a cheap Instamati and was flashing off shots like a deranged paparazzo.
“Give me that, all you know how to do with these is break them,” Liz said, laughing and reaching for the camera. Tracy laughed, surrendering it, and they hugged.
After everybody had hugged everybody—you’d have thought it was years since we saw each other, not just last month, Liz thought—they took turns taking three-shots of each other with the little camera: Dext dipping Liz in a Rudolph Valentino-style kiss while Mike looked on in mock outrage; Dext and Mike with their fists up, Tracy pretending to hold them back; Tracy and Liz each taking one of Mike’s arms to pull him away from the other, and finally, Tracy and Liz on either side of Dext, leaning their heads contentedly on his shoulders.
“So, Mr. Connor—may I call you Mr. Connor?” Dext asked. He was holding his fist under Mike’s nose, a pretend-microphone in his hand.
“Oh, please do,” Mike said. “All my close friends and adoring fans call me Mr. Connor.”
“Mr. Connor, how does it feel to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning author? Do you feel you deserve it, or has some kind of mistake been made?” Only Dext could say that and not have the words bring up Mike’s insecurities.
“Please, Mr. Connor, may I have your autograph?” And Tracy really did have an autograph book, which she held out like a star-struck teenager.
“Of course, my dear, of course. Anything for the little people. Do I feel I deserve this award? Well, the answer is yes and no. Of course I deserve this award, but what I keep asking myself is Mike—I call myself Mike when I’m at home alone—Mike, what took them so long? I should have a whole mantelpiece full of these things.”
“Darling, we don’t have a mantelpiece,” Liz said.
“Do you think that’s what’s been holding you back?” Dext asked. And before Mike could answer, “Is this your wife? Why, I had no idea writers were permitted such lovely wives.”
“I got her just before they changed the rules,” Mike said.
“Mrs. Connor, what’s it like being married to a Pulitzer Prize-winning author?” Dext asked.
Liz had never been quite as good at throwing herself into the silliness-fray. Still, “Oh, my dear, there aren’t words to describe it. I used to envy Fay Wray, the way that enormous monkey carried her up the Empire State Building in the palm of his hand. But that’s nothing compared to cooking dinner for Mr. Connor.”
“Do you cook his dinner?” Tracy asked, wide-eyed. “May I touch your apron?”
“And cut his meat for him,” Liz assured her.
Just then, the car horn honked.
“I told Matthew to keep an eye on the time for us,” Dext said. “That’s one thing they still teach at our exclusive, private schools: how to tell time.”
Mike picked up Liz’s coat and was holding it for her. “Had to let the real chauffeur go, old man? Trying to keep up appearances by pressing your grandson into service?”
“Shh, Tracy doesn’t know,” Dext whispered. “She thinks we still have money.”
“He’s been driving Little Mike and Carolyn crazy, now that he has his driver’s license,” Tracy said. “He wants his own car, of course, but they don’t want to spoil him.”
“So we’re spoiling him,” Dext said. “That’s what grandparents are for. And darling, you promised to stop calling him Little Mike when he turned forty.”
Tracy waved him off. “Except Dext told Matty if he was going to play chauffeur, he had to wear the cap,” she said.
“He loves that cap!”
“Of course he does, dear.”
Liz had been laughing quietly to herself, but the happiness she felt was getting too big to stay inside. She went over to Dext and Tracy and pulled them both into a hug. “I love you both so much.”
“And we do you, too,” Tracy said. “You know we do.”
*
In the car—with the privacy window up, thank-you-very-much—Tracy and Mike had fallen into a conversation about a story of Mike’s The New Yorker had just published.
Liz looked at Dext, who was looking back and forth between them, smiling. He caught her looking and his smile broadened. Sotto voce, he quoted, “Jenny kiss’d me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss’d me.”
“What are you saying, Dext?” Tracy asked distractedly, putting her hand on Dext’s knee but keeping her eyes on Mike.
“Nothing, darling. Just a little nonsense to amuse Liz,” he answered.