CHAPTER 22
Dr. Schwartz took Victoria’s bandages off eight days later and said she was very pleased with the result when she saw it. It was healing nicely. Victoria had been brave enough to see her face-mask bandages in the mirror by then, and she thought she looked ghoulish, though for a good cause. She didn’t regret the surgery for a minute, and when she saw the result unveiled, she was thrilled, despite the bruising, and slight swelling. The doctor pointed out where the swelling was and where she could expect improvement, but all things considered, it looked great, and Victoria let out a squeal of delight. The surgeon had done a fantastic job. And the patient was ecstatic. She said she already felt like a new person.
The only shocking thing, and Victoria wasn’t surprised, since she had been told to expect it, was the extent of the bruising, which was severe. She had two huge black eyes, and bluish discoloration that went down most of her face. But the doctor assured her that it would go away soon, was normal, and she could start covering it with makeup in a few days. She said she’d be quite presentable by the time she went back to school in another week. And it would continue to improve after that as the swelling went down and the bruising disappeared. It would continue to look even better over several months. She put a Band-Aid over the bridge of Victoria’s nose and sent her home. She said she could go back to normal activity, within reason. No sky diving, water polo, or touch football, she teased her. No contact sports. She told her to be reasonable and not do anything where she might hit her nose, and when Victoria inquired, she said that she could go to the gym, but again be sensible about it and not overdo. No jogging, no strenuous exercise, no swimming, no extreme workouts, which Victoria didn’t want to do anyway. It had been freezing outside all week. And the doctor added “no sex,” which unfortunately wasn’t an issue for her at the moment.
Victoria was so happy with the result that she bought a big Caesar salad on the way home, and ate it in the kitchen. She had lost a few pounds from not eating much while she was sleeping her way through her recovery, and the pain pills had killed her appetite. She hadn’t even eaten ice cream, and just to be on the safe side, Harlan had thrown it away again. He called it her “stash.” In the Chutes and Ladders of weight loss, it set her back at zero again every time.
She put on her gym clothes after she ate the salad, and walked the several blocks to the gym, in leggings, gym shorts, an old Northwestern sweatshirt, a parka, and a pair of beat-up old running shoes. Harlan and John were still skiing in Vermont, and the day was crisp and clear in New York despite predictions of snow.
She signed in at the gym, and decided to ride the exercise bike, and put it on the easiest setting since she hadn’t exercised in a week and wanted to start slow. She put her iPod on and was listening to the music with her eyes closed as she pedaled rhythmically along. She didn’t open them until she’d been on the bike for ten minutes, and was startled to see the same very good-looking man sitting next to her whom she’d seen there before Christmas. This time he was alone, without the beautiful woman who’d been with him, and he was looking at Victoria when she opened her eyes. She had forgotten what her face looked like after the surgery, with all the bruising, and she wondered why he was staring at her, and then she remembered and was embarrassed. He was looking sympathetic and pained for her. He said something and she took the iPod out of her ear. He had a light tan on his face as though he’d been skiing, and she was struck again by how handsome he was.
“What does the other guy look like?” he teased her lightly, and she smiled, suddenly acutely aware of the bruises on her face and remains of two black eyes. And she wondered if he had guessed why. He looked more serious then as he chatted with her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make a joke of it. It looks painful. It must have been a nasty accident. Car or ski?” he asked matter-of-factly. Victoria hesitated, with a look of confusion, and she didn’t know what to say. Nose job sounded a lot worse to her, and would have made her feel foolish to a stranger.
“Car,” she said simply as they pedaled along.
“I figured. Did you have your seatbelt on, or was it the air bag? People don’t realize how easily you can break your nose with an air bag. I know several people who have.” She nodded as a blanket yes and felt really stupid. “I hope you sue the hell out of whoever hit you,” he said, still sympathetic, assuming immediately that it was the other guy’s fault, not hers. “Sorry. I’m a lawyer. I get litigious at the drop of a hat. There are so many drunk drivers on the road over the holidays, and bad ones, it’s a wonder more people don’t get killed. You were lucky.”
“Yes, I was.” Very. I got a new nose, she thought to herself, but didn’t say it.
“I just came back from skiing in Vermont with my sister. She was with me the last time I saw you. The poor thing was minding her own business and got hit by a kid out of control on a snowboard and broke her shoulder. She came out from the Midwest to spend the holidays with me, and now she goes back with a broken shoulder. It’s really painful. She was a good sport about it.” Victoria was staring at him, with the information that the beauty he’d had with him was his sister. So where was his wife? She checked, and he had no wedding ring on, but a lot of men didn’t wear them, so that meant nothing. And even if he wasn’t married or didn’t have a girlfriend, she couldn’t imagine him wanting her, even with her new nose. She was still a “big girl,” even with a smaller, better nose.
He pointed to her sweatshirt then. “Northwestern? My sister graduated from there.”
“Me too,” Victoria said in a hoarse croak, which had nothing to do with her surgery. She was too dazzled by him to speak.
“Great school. Shit weather though. I wanted to get out of the Midwest after growing up there, so I went to Duke.” It was in North Carolina and one of the best schools in the country, Victoria knew. She tried to help her students get in there all the time. “My brother went to Harvard. My parents still brag about it. I couldn’t get in,” he said modestly with a grin. “I went to law school at NYU, which is how I wound up here. What about you? Native New Yorker or other?” He was chatting away as they rode the bikes, and it felt very surreal to her, riding along next to this gorgeous man who was telling her about his family, his education, where he came from, and asking about her. And he acted like her face was normal and not black and blue, and she didn’t have two black eyes. He looked at her as though she was pretty, and she wondered if he was blind.
“I’m from L.A.,” she answered his question. “I moved here after college. I teach at a private school.”
“That must be interesting,” he said pleasantly. “Little kids or big ones?”
“High school seniors. English. They’re a handful, but I love them.” She smiled, hoping she didn’t look like a ghoul. But he didn’t seem to think so, and didn’t look bothered by it at all.
“That’s a tough age, judging by myself anyway. I gave my parents a tough time in high school. I stole my dad’s car and totaled it twice. That’s easy to do on black ice in Illinois. I was lucky I didn’t get killed.” He mentioned after that that he had grown up in a suburb of Chicago, and she could guess that it was an affluent one. Despite the workout clothes, he looked well heeled, had a good haircut, was well spoken, polished, polite, and was wearing an expensive gold watch. She looked like a bum, and always went to the gym that way, and hadn’t had a manicure in over a week. It was the one luxury she always indulged in, but she hadn’t gone since the surgery. She didn’t want to scare anyone, explain her bandages, and she wasn’t going out anyway. Now here she was next to the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen, and she hadn’t combed her hair and didn’t even have nail polish on.
Their bikes stopped at almost the same time, and they both got off. He said he was going to the steam room, and with a warm smile he stuck out his hand.
“I’m Collin White, by the way.”
“Victoria Dawson.” They shook hands, and after a few inane words, she picked up her things and left, and he headed to the steam room, and stopped to chat with a man he knew along the way. Victoria was still thinking about him when she walked home. She felt good after some exercise at the gym, and he’d been nice to talk to. She hoped she would see him again.
Her doctor was right, and by the time she went back to school, she could cover most of what was left of the bruising with makeup. There was a faint shadow still around her eyes, but she looked pretty good, and the swelling had come down a lot around her nose. Not all the way, but close. And she loved her new nose. She felt like she had a whole new face. She couldn’t wait to see her parents in June and watch their reaction, if they noticed. The difference seemed enormous to her.
She had just taught her last class of the day, after helping half a dozen students with the college essays they hadn’t finished and were now panicked about, when three of the girls were lingering in the classroom, talking. One of them was the student who had had the breast reduction over Christmas, and the same threesome who had discussed it before. They were best friends. They went everywhere together at school.
“How did it go?” Victoria asked cautiously. She didn’t want to be too intrusive. “Not too painful, I hope.”
“It was great!” the girl said, pulling up her sweatshirt and exposing her bra, since there were no boys in the room at the time. “I love my new boobs! I wish I’d done it sooner!” And then she looked at Victoria intently, as though seeing her for the first time, and in some ways she was, parts of her anyway. “Omigod! You did it!” She was staring at the middle of Victoria’s face, and the other two girls looked too. “I love your new nose!” she said emphatically, and Victoria blushed to the roots of her hair.
“Can you tell?”
“Yes … no … I mean, you didn’t look like Rudolf before. But it’s a definite subtle difference. That’s how it’s supposed to be. People aren’t supposed to shriek and know you did it. You’re just supposed to look better and no one can figure out why. Your nose is great! Watch out though, it’s addictive. My mom does something all the time. Chin implants, botox, new boobs, lipo. Now she wants to reduce her thighs and calves. I’m happy with my boobs,” the girl said, looking pleased.
“And I love my nose,” Victoria admitted happily, since they were all so much more sophisticated than she was, and familiar with the process. “I actually decided to do it after talking to you. You made me feel brave. I’d never dared to do it before.”
“Well, you did good,” she congratulated her, and gave Victoria a high-five.
They all left the room together, and passed Amy Green and Justin in the hall. She smiled broadly at Victoria. She hadn’t admitted the pregnancy yet at school, and it still didn’t show, although it would soon. She was young and her muscles were tight, and she was dressing carefully to conceal it. Justin was constantly with her protecting her like a security man guarding the Hope diamond. They were sweet to watch. “He follows her around like a puppy,” one of the girls said, rolling her eyes as they walked by.
Victoria thanked the girls again for their good advice and went to her office to pick up some files she wanted to take home. She was touched by their praise of her new nose. She loved it too. She wondered for a minute then if she should have a breast reduction too, and then she remembered what the girls had said, that plastic surgery was addictive and some women didn’t know where to stop. She was going to stop here, with her nose. She’d have to work the rest off the hard way, and she was working at it steadily. The wedding was five months away.
She ran into Collin White again that night at the gym, and they chatted easily as they rode the bikes. He told her what law firm he worked at on Wall Street and that he was a litigator. It was an important firm, and his job sounded interesting to her. And she told him where she taught. He had heard of the school. They talked about nothing in particular, and when they got off the bikes, he surprised her and asked her if she wanted to go for a drink across the street. She looked as big a mess as she had before, and couldn’t believe that he’d ask her anywhere or want to be seen with her. He asked her again as though he really meant it, and she nodded, put on her coat, and followed him across the street, wondering why he’d want to have a drink with her.
They both ordered wine, and she asked how his sister’s shoulder was after the snowboard accident.
“Painful, I think. Those things take a while, and you can’t do much with a shoulder, except time. She was lucky she didn’t need surgery when it happened.”
He asked more about the school where she worked then, and why she’d gone into teaching, and about her family. She told him she had a sister who was seven years younger, had just graduated from USC the previous June, and was getting married in five months.
“That’s pretty young,” he commented, looking surprised. “Especially these days.” He had told her he was thirty-six, and she said she was twenty-nine.
“I think so too. Our parents got married at that age, right out of college, but people did that more then. Nowadays, nobody gets married at twenty-three, which she will be in June. I was hoping she’d wait, but she won’t. It’s all about the wedding. My whole family is temporarily insane,” she said with a rueful grin. “At least I hope it’s temporary. They’re driving me nuts.”
“Do you like the guy she’s marrying?” he asked, looking at her closely, and Victoria hesitated for a long time, and then decided to be honest. “Yes. Maybe. Well enough. But not for her. He’s very domineering, and opinionated for a young guy. He doesn’t let her open her mouth and thinks for her. I hate seeing her give up her personality and her independence just to be his wife.” She didn’t say that he had a huge amount of money, and didn’t think it appropriate to do so. And that wasn’t the point. She wouldn’t have liked Harry any better for Gracie if he’d been poor. The money made him pompous. But his own personality made him controlling, which was what Victoria didn’t like about him. She wanted more for Gracie than that.
“My sister almost married a guy like that. She dated him for three years, and we all liked him, but not for her. They got engaged last year, she was thirty-four, and she’s all wound up about getting married and having babies, and she’s scared to death she’ll miss the boat. She finally realized what she was getting herself into, and they broke up two weeks before the wedding. It was a mess. She was really upset, and my parents were great about it. I think she did the right thing. It’s tough for women,” he said sympathetically, “at a certain age, that time clock starts ticking like a bomb. And I think a lot of women make bad decisions because of it. I was proud of my sister for bailing out. You saw her here. She’s thirty-five, and she’ll find the right guy, hopefully in time to have kids. But she’s better off alone than with the wrong guy. It’s not easy to meet good people,” he said thoughtfully. Victoria had a hard time believing that a woman who looked like his sister didn’t have ten men running behind her waving wedding rings, or at least wanting to date her. “She hasn’t met anyone since they broke up,” he added, “but she’s over it, and she says she won’t go back to him. Thank God she woke up.”
“I wish my sister would,” Victoria said with a sigh. “But she’s a kid. She’s twenty-two, and she’s all excited about the dress and the wedding and the ring. She’s lost sight of what’s important, and I think she’s too young to get it. And by the time she does, it’ll be too late, and she’ll be married to him and sorry as hell.”
“Have you said that to her?” He looked interested in what she said.
“Yes. She doesn’t want to hear it and gets all upset. She thinks I’m jealous. And believe me, I’m not.” He believed her. “And my parents are no help. They’re big fans of the match, and they’re impressed by who he is.” She looked pensive then. “And he’s a lot like my father. That’s a tough one to fight.”
“You’re swimming upstream on that one,” he said wisely. “All you can do is say it and leave it at that. And maybe it’ll work for her. You never know,” he said philosophically. “People want different things and not always what we think they should have, or want for them.”
“I hope it works, but I doubt it,” Victoria added, looking sad for her sister.
“Are you two very different? Other than the age difference.” He got the feeling they were. Victoria appeared to be a smart, sensible woman with her feet on the ground and a good head on her shoulders. He could tell just by listening to her. And her younger sister sounded flighty, young, and spoiled to him, and maybe headstrong and impulsive too. He wasn’t wrong.
“She’s more like my parents,” Victoria said honestly. “I’ve always been the odd man out. I don’t look like them, think like them, or act like them, or want the same things. Sometimes it sounds like we didn’t have the same parents. We didn’t actually, because they treated us very differently, so her life experience and her childhood were completely different from mine.” He nodded as though he understood, and she had the feeling that what she was saying wasn’t unfamiliar to him.
He looked at his watch then and asked for the check. “I’ve enjoyed talking to you,” he told Victoria, as he paid it. “Would you like to have dinner sometime?” he asked with a hopeful look as she stared at him. Was he crazy? Why would he want to go out with her? She thought he was much too good for her. “Like next week?” he added more precisely. “Just something easy, if you’d like that.” He didn’t want to snow her with a fancy restaurant. She was a kind person and easy to talk to. He wanted to spend a real evening with her, getting to know her, not show off and try to impress her. He wanted to know more about who she was. He liked what he’d heard so far. And he liked her looks, even with her bruised face.
“Yes, of course, I’d like that,” she blurted out when he looked as if he expected an answer. She didn’t add “Why?” She could only assume that he wanted to be friends, and liked having someone to talk to. This was obviously not a date.
“How about Tuesday? I’ve got a partners’ meeting Monday night.”
“Of course … yes … sure …” She felt like an idiot burbling at him.
“Could I have your number or your e-mail?” he asked politely, and she jotted them down and handed them to him. He put them directly into his phone, and slipped it back into his pocket with the piece of paper, and thanked her. “I’ve really enjoyed meeting you, Victoria,” he said pleasantly, while she tried not to focus on how handsome he was. It was too unnerving.
“Me too,” she said weakly. This was very odd. She liked him, but she thought a man like him shouldn’t even be talking to her. He should have been with some drop-dead-gorgeous beauty, like his sister, who had no dates. Go figure. The world was too strange.
They left each other in front of the gym, and she walked home, thinking about him and trying to figure out why he had asked her to dinner. She told Harlan about it when she got home, and explained that it wasn’t really a date, he just wanted to be friends.
“How do you know that?” Harlan looked surprised by what she said. “Did he say so?”
“Of course not. He’s too polite. But it’s obvious. You should see the guy. He looks like a movie star, or a business mogul, or an ad in GQ. And look at me.” She pointed to her workout clothes. “Now you tell me, would he date a woman that looks like me?”
“And he was wearing black tie at the gym?”
“Very funny. No. But guys like him don’t date women like me. This is friendly, not a date. Trust me. I know. I was there.”
“Sometimes romances start out that way. Don’t rule it out. Besides, I don’t trust your interpretation. You don’t know shit. All you know is your parents telling you that you’re not deserving, you’re not worthy, and no one will ever want you. Believe me, tapes like that play so loud, you can’t hear anything else. Even when it’s clear otherwise. I’m telling you, if this guy has any brains at all and eyes in his head, he knows you’re smart, funny, a good person, bright as hell, good looking, have f*cking unbelievable legs, and he’d be the luckiest man in the world if he got you. So maybe this guy is no fool.”
“It’s not a date,” she insisted again.
“I’ll bet you five bucks it is,” Harlan said firmly.
“How will I know if it is?” She looked confused, while Harlan pondered the question.
“Good point, since your radar is out of whack and you have no decoding skills. If he kisses you, obviously it’s a date, but he won’t if he has any manners, on a first date. He sounds smarter than that. You’ll just know. If he asks you out again. If he looks interested. If he makes nice little gestures, touches your hand, looks like he’s enjoying you. Oh f*ck, Victoria, just take me with you, and I’ll tell you if it’s a date.”
“I’ll figure it out for myself,” she said primly. “But it isn’t.”
“Just remember, you owe me five bucks if it is, by any of the aforementioned criteria. And no cheating. I need the money.”
“Then start saving, because you’re going to owe me five bucks. It’s not a date.” She was sure of it.
“Don’t forget your new nose,” he teased her. “That could swing the vote.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” she said, laughing. “The second time he saw me, I had bruises all over my face and two shiners, and I wasn’t wearing makeup.”
“Oh my God,” Harlan said, rolling his eyes. “You’re right. It’s not a date. It’s true love. Double the ante. Make it ten.”
“You’re on. Start saving.” He gave her a brotherly shove as they both left the kitchen and went back to their rooms. She had a stack of papers to correct. And the mystery of whether Collin White had asked her for a date would be solved soon enough. They were having dinner in five days. He hadn’t asked her out over the weekend, which made her wonder if he had a girlfriend. She had been through that with Jack Bailey, and hoped it wasn’t another situation like that. But this was nothing. She was sure. Just dinner with a friend. And it was less scary that way anyway.