Henry spoke first. “I bought this place a few years ago and fixed it up with a designer I knew you’d like. I thought we could have our life together again without ruining our other lives. We could have those intense times again . . . so funny, so carefree.”
“Henry, I want to tell you I know exactly what you mean but it wouldn’t work the way you think. We are different people now. We are . . . married people.”
He ignored me. “When I started this project I felt excited again, felt closer to being me again and the cloud in my head cleared up. When I’m in this place that connects us it feels like we live together again, like you are about to walk in. I send you emails from here. I buy you things that I leave here. I got everything ready.”
“Ready for what?” I asked softly.
“Just ready.”
“And then what?”
“And then I’ve just been thinking about how to, you know, respectfully ask you to start meeting here.”
“Meeting here to start everything up again? You did notice that I ignored your non-work emails? That they went unanswered? You noticed that, right?” I whispered.
“Yes, it was perfect. We both had a piece of each other again without destroying the lives we have with our families. I knew you wouldn’t answer those emails because I knew you’d be great at being married. That’s one of the reasons I asked you to marry me. You’re so loyal.”
“Henry, your reasoning is like nothing I can even follow. And that insane performance of yours at the Four Seasons? Where you pretended we never met? That was to make me want you again? ’Cause if that’s true, it didn’t work.”
“It killed me to be so mean to you. But I had to be. I had gotten this apartment all ready but on that day, I freaked out. On the way to the restaurant I still hadn’t told Tim I knew you and then it seemed too awkward to mention so I just acted like we never met. I confessed to him later but that day my head was spinning. I was thinking about us doing business together, about this apartment, how you had turned into such a big shot that you had probably changed and what if you weren’t the Belle I remembered? But then you dropped your earring on your plate and your hose was torn and you seemed so clumsy and adorable and it reminded me that you’re so capable and so vulnerable all at the same time. It let me know you were still you and that this”—he swept his arm around the room—“that this was possible again.”
“Henry, I’m not going to say I saw this coming”—I choked for a second—“but don’t you think we’re a little old to play make-believe?” I asked this gently because Henry seemed unrecognizably shaky and vulnerable. While I wondered many times about his character, I had never once considered him to be mentally ill.
“Belle, you’re right. I’ve been having this pretend life without you. You know, you.” Henry said this with both hands outstretched.
I was trying to follow his gorgeous mouth and the words coming out of it, but this whole thing made me woozy. “Look, I’m not exactly riding on the same train track as you. Um, if you think I’m dumping my life for this beautiful room? Henry.” I shook my head. “I’m speechless.”
“I bought you those clothes, had a moment of Christmas with you right here for the past few years. I gave you these earrings two years ago,” Henry said as he pulled out some shiny earrings with rubies surrounding them from a nearby drawer. Casually he tossed them toward me like they were something he’d bought on the sidewalk. “Can I put them in your ears?” he asked like a little boy.
“No,” I said, though I did take a second to really look at those beautiful stones.
“I bought you underwear I imagined you wearing for me. I filled your bookshelves with your favorite books,” he said.
“You should be committed,” I sighed, feeling overwhelmed that someone could care for me so much, someone I had loved so completely. “Henry, you went from being super-supportive of my career to hating that I even worked to being a cheerleader for me, all in one lifetime. You start dating your wife while I’m in Atlanta, and then there’s the Four Seasons, and interrupting me at the media conference, and how about not sticking up for me when my son yanked your wife’s underwear?” I smiled. I wanted him to smile, to see how silly this was. To prove to me that he wasn’t crazy.
“Belle, baby, how else could I keep you at a distance? How else could I have you in my life but not destroy my own life? This apartment is the solution. What if we had an understanding? A place that always stayed in 1998, and the moment we cross that doorway we get to care for one another the way we used to, where we could be free to be twenty-seven and fully alive again?”