Part 11 (1/2)

”Are you still going to California?” he asked warily. After the night at the Drake that had been so painful, I was finally able to risk losing him. I'd flown to New York on my day off, and we met in Battery Park. We walked by the river, and I told him he was free to choose whatever he wanted, but I needed things to change, to move forward. I could no longer be in this limbo; he meant too much to me. And if they didn't change, if he couldn't-I was moving to LA when the movie was done.

He'd called that night not to tell me what he'd decided. He wanted me to meet him in Virginia three days later, while the weather was still good, to hike in Shenandoah National Park. He knew I had a break in filming, and he would bring everything, even boots. I just needed to show up. The friends in New York who gave advice would have said he was buying time.

”Can I ask you something?” I said.

”You can ask me anything.”

”Why do you want to see me?”

”It helps me to see you,” he said slowly. ”I don't know...I think of you. I walk by your old apartment, and I think of you. I can't imagine you not being here. Or you being here without me. You're my best friend. I'm closer to you than anyone.”

He pushed a while longer for the trip to the mountains, then changed his tack. ”Just promise you'll sleep on it. You can even decide when you wake up that morning. There'll be a ticket for you at the airport and I'll be there regardless. I won't count on it, but I'll be glad if you come.”

He knew me well. When pressed, I was stubborn. But if I felt like there was a choice, chances were I would acquiesce. In that way, we were alike.

I told him I would think about it.

”Wait. Don't get off,” he said.

”What is it?”

I was lying on the floor, the phone now cradled against my shoulder. The white cord was coiled around my wrist, and the shadows from the traffic made a slide show on the low, laminated ceiling. I knew that, miles away in New York, he had not gotten up from the couch but was leaning forward, his head dropped, his elbows pressed on his knees.

”Just...don't get off,” he repeated. ”Not yet.”

When I arrived at the small airport in Weyers Cave, Virginia, he'd been in town for hours, buying supplies and maps and organizing the gear. We were shy with each other at first, puttering about the car. My eyes adjusted; I hadn't seen him in weeks. In the parking lot of the Super Save, we poured nuts and dried fruit into baggies and transferred the apples, oranges, chocolate, sausage, and hard cheese into food sacks. He opened the trunk and pulled out two boxes of boots he'd bought in New York, unsure of which would fit me better. There were two frame backs, two water bottles, two sleeping bags. By early afternoon, we were on one of the feeder roads that lead to the Skyline Drive. He pa.s.sed me the map with several trails circled. The higher peaks were farther north, but he thought I would like the one at the bottom best-the less crowded backcountry south of Loft Mountain.

For three days, there were hawks, streams, mud, and yellow leaves. It was a final gasp of warmth in what had been the longest Indian summer I could remember.

The last night, we had a fire. It was illegal, but we did it anyway. We were too far for the rangers, too far for anyone to care, and by our tent there was an already blackened circle of stones. My job was to gather twigs, and his was to start the fire and keep it going. We always brought poetry books when we camped to read aloud to each other, and before I left Chicago, he reminded me of that. He packed Seamus Heaney, and I brought Edna St. Vincent Millay, along with the one I always carried, my blue clothbound book of sonnets from the Yale series. I read number 129, the one about l.u.s.t. I'd discovered it over the summer, and it had become my new favorite.

The night was clear. We drank Constant Comment spiked with whiskey, and I lay with my head in his lap while he told me stories of the stars. It didn't matter that I'd heard them before.

I asked him which of the seasons reminded him of us.

”The first snow. I don't know why, though. You?”

The truth was, it was all of them.

”The September part of summer,” I said. ”When it's still hot, but you know the next day it might be gone, and the leaves at Gay Head have bits of red in them.”

He took me by the shoulders and pulled me to him, my hair in the way of his mouth. He brushed it back, and with his hands tangled there, I heard him say he had missed the end of summer with me. I heard him say that he was still mine.

In the morning, we smelled of smoke. He was up before me and had the water started on the tiny camp stove. He was crouched over what was left of the fire from the night before, stirring the ashes intently with a charred broken stick. When he saw me through the tent flap, he called me a sleepyhead and handed me a mug of tea.

We didn't talk about reuniting then, or about any of the things we said we would. Not that day. We packed up the camp after breakfast, and we walked. And when we crossed over the small river, the trail began to veer straight up from the valley.

I can almost see him now, just above me, scrambling on the granite ledge, pointing out the best handholds, the surest footholds. The sky was overcast when he turned back, and I squinted to look up. He asked what I thought my best and worst qualities were and the same for him. And he wanted to know what three things I loved best about him. ”You're fis.h.i.+ng,” I teased. He frowned, but because it was his question, he went first. ”Your hands. The place where your collarbone meets your neck. The curve of your hip when you lie on your side. When you read to me at night. And your letters, I love your letters.”

”That's more than three.”

”I know,” he said, and kept climbing.

They weren't the things I'd imagined he would say. They were sweeter, more considered. The letters especially surprised me. I'd always written to him, and there were many that year-cajoling, seducing, longing, a.n.a.lyzing, pleading, scolding. Long letters that I'd thought had no effect. He shook his head. I save them, he said. They make me think.

Right then, I couldn't go any farther. The new boots he'd bought had given me blisters. He propped me on a flat rock, threw down his pack, dug out the first aid kit, and covered my foot with moleskin and white tape. It'll last, he said, handing me the canteen. We sat for a while looking over the narrow valley, and when we were ready, he took up my pack as well as his. I watched for a moment as he made it over the crest, the rolled neon sleeping bags bobbing off the metal frames.

That is what I love, I will think later, remembering you with both our packs easy on your shoulders. That and the animal way you move on rocks. Your arm around me as we sleep. When you point to the constant stars-Orion, your favorite: hero and hunter. That you ask me this question. And that the mystery of the cord that ties us-even through this last year, through pain and heartache and the attentions of a beautiful woman-remains, whatever we choose when we leave this trail remembering you with both our packs easy on your shoulders. That and the animal way you move on rocks. Your arm around me as we sleep. When you point to the constant stars-Orion, your favorite: hero and hunter. That you ask me this question. And that the mystery of the cord that ties us-even through this last year, through pain and heartache and the attentions of a beautiful woman-remains, whatever we choose when we leave this trail.

It is what I would say to him now.

On the drive to the airport and our flights in opposite directions, I asked him about Daryl, if it was over. He didn't answer right away. His eyes were on the country road, his hands on the wheel of the white convertible he'd rented for the weekend. It had been a fantasy, he said, a way to deal with his fears of commitment. ”She took on the fears of us.” He'd begun therapy a few months before, and it had changed the way he spoke. ”I was enamored, but not any longer.”

I both believed and doubted him. We had decided nothing in the Blue Ridge wilderness, but at the gate, before my flight to Chicago, we agreed to keep talking.

The film wrapped two weeks later. I went to LA but didn't stay long, and when I returned to New York, John took me to a benefit at the Plaza. We left early, and as we stood outside on the red-carpeted landing, the fog was so dense, we thought a cloud had descended on Fifth Avenue. He loosened his tie and slipped his tuxedo jacket over my bare shoulders, and I held the silk gown to one side as we walked. By the Saint-Gaudens statue, a row of hansom cabs waited. ”Let's do it,” he said. I was glad to see him happy. He'd found out he'd failed the bar exam weeks before, and the effects were defeating. With the press, he showed his game face, but alone he had cried in my arms.

He took my hand, and we ran across Central Park South to choose the horse we liked best. When the carriage entered the park, it was quiet, and the fog rolled beside us. It wasn't cold, but we huddled, coc.o.o.ned under thick wool blankets. A sliver of moon, and all around, familiar shadows of the old limestone buildings that framed the park, the shapes and turrets we'd known since childhood.

He spoke first. He was intrigued by the way the last year and the time apart might have changed us. Our relations.h.i.+p would be different and, he believed, stronger. His voice sounded sad, but he said that he wasn't.

”Few people are so lucky to have what we do. I have a lot of hope.”

I had hope too. My trust was frayed, but I had hope.

”Can you forgive me?” His head fell so that it rested on mine, the weight I'd longed for somehow painful, and we pa.s.sed that way through the dark trees. ”This is the first time...”

I waited, listening to hooves on pavement, listening to his breath.

”Yes,” I began.

”It's the first time I thought I might lose you.”

Before Christmas, on our way to stay with friends in Vermont, we drove upstate and looked at land near Albany. It hadn't snowed, but the ground crunched under our feet without give. What did I think, he asked, while the real estate agent waited in the car.

I hadn't wanted to go, I think now, because I knew what ”land in Albany” meant. That he was thinking about it somewhere down the line, a life I feared might subsume me. I thought of his cousins' wives, one in particular. She was ten years older than I was, smart and elegant, and although I didn't know her well, she had always been kind to me. It was nothing she said, but her face held such sadness, even as she smiled. Like a memory of pleasure but no longer.

Before we left, he told the agent no. He agreed it wasn't right. And he asked me then, in that cold field toward the beginning of a new year, whether I could see myself living up here someday, and whether I thought I'd always be an actress.

I said yes to both.

We're in a field in New Jersey not far from his mother's house. We wear jackets and the sun is out. October bright. That night, we'll have a fire. At the far end of the field, there's a bank of trees near a brook, and the leaves are a shudder of pale gold. I'm on Frank, and he's on the new horse, the black one, and as he leans down to pat the glossy neck, I think how gentle he can be.

We've warmed them up and take one quick canter around the ring. I rub my thumb along the rein. I know what comes next. It's what he's thinking of, has been all along. As we drove and talked of other things. In the stable with the saddles and the leads. And without question, once the barn door opens.

I see it in his face, a certain widening of the eyes. The way his jaw gets tight but he could be smiling. He's thinking of the feeling-the flying flat-out run across the field. The feeling where your heart beats against your throat and you know you are alive.