Magic Hour by Susan Isaacs (cheapest way to read ebooks .txt) 📕

Lynne played with the veins in the back of my hand. I suddenly realized that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make myself love her. There was nothing more about Lynne I cared to know. Not about her job, her family, her pastimes, her feelings.

But I wanted to know every single course Bonnie had taken at the University of Utah. I wanted to know her brothers’

names, who she’d voted for in 1980 and why, what her first sex experience had been like. I wanted her to tell me how a bunch of Jews wound up in Ogden, Utah. I wanted to see Cowgirl. I wanted to read her new screenplay and her descrip-tions of bathing suits for the fat-lady catalog. I wanted to meet her old man, haul him away from the new wife and the bridge games and go hunting with him. I even 368 / SUSAN ISAACS

wanted to bird-watch with Bonnie—or at least watch her watch birds. I wanted to go running with her. Camp out.

Fish for trout. Take her on a whale watch off Montauk. I wanted to tell her all about my work, my entire life. Watch the Yankees and her 1940s movies with her. Make love to her.

“You’re quiet,” Lynne said.

“Yeah. I’ve got a lot on my mind.” I thought: Maybe all this is camouflage, and what I really want is custody of Moose.

“What are you smiling about?” Lynne demanded.

“Nothing much.”

“Tell me what else is new.”

I shifted, trying to sit up straighter, but she was wedged in so close to me I couldn’t move. “Oh, Lynne, I’m so sorry.”

She knew, but she asked, as if expecting a passionate denial: “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know where to begin. I don’t know what to say.”

“Oh, God.” She got up out of the chair, stood before me.

So fabulous-looking. Such a nice person. Responsible. Solid values. Hardworking. “What is it?” It would make so much sense to marry her. “Are you drinking again?”

“No.” I don’t have to say anything at all, I thought. I can let it ride. Close the Spencer case, sort things out. It made sense to take my time. Lynne was so right for me; there must be a way it could work.

“Is there someone else?”

I should stand up, take her in my arms. Say, Someone else? With you around? Of course not! I sat, paralyzed.

“Yes,” I said at last.

“Who is she?”

“Someone I knew a few years ago.”

“Have you been seeing her?”

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“No. It’s nothing like that. I just ran into her again recently and realized.”

Lynne started to cry. “Realized what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Realized what, Steve?”

“That I want to be with her all the time.”

At last, I was able to make myself move. I got up and put my arms around her. I wish I could say I was filled with grief. But I didn’t feel anything except sadness that I was hurting her. She was such a decent person and she loved me, or at least loved the man she thought was me, and loved the idea of loving someone who needed her help in getting through life.

She pulled away and gazed up at me. Everything she did was so pretty, even her crying. Two lovely, parallel tears coursed down her cheeks. She swallowed and regained some control. “You don’t love me?” she asked.

I took her back into my arms. “Lynne,” I said, into her glorious hair, “you’re a wonderful person. You’re beautiful, kind, patient—”

“You don’t love me.”

“I thought I did. I truly thought I did.”

“Are you going to marry her?”

“No. I don’t know. I don’t know a lot. I don’t feel in control anymore, that I understand anything that’s going on.

It’s all just happening. When I came here, I was only thinking I’d spend a few minutes with you, touch base. In my wildest dreams, it didn’t occur to me that we’d be having this conversation. I wish I’d been better prepared….” She started to cry again. “I wish I could have made it less painful for you.”

She pulled out of my embrace. “My mother ordered the invitations.”

“I’m sorry.” What was I going to do? Tell her that her parents, Saint Babs and the Scourge of Godless 370 / SUSAN ISAACS

Communism, would be breaking out the champagne, tearing the invitations into confetti, throwing it into the air in jubilation?

“Is she prettier than I am?” Lynne wiped her cheeks.

“No.”

“Younger?”

“No. Older.” Then I added: “Older than me.” Her beautiful brown eyes grew big with disbelief, as though beholding a Medicare card in a liver-spotted hand. “Not too much older,”

I added.

“Does she have a good personality?”

“Yes.” It was gutless, but at that moment I wished more than anything that I hadn’t told her there was someone else, only that it wasn’t working out and the blame was all mine.

I was a too-old sad case, simply not the marrying kind. But Lynne would be tolerant, compassionate, like a nurse with an invalid who has a long convalescence before him. She’d wait, helping me recuperate, helping me become a better person.

“What does she do?”

“She’s a writer.”

“Is she from the city?”

“No.”

“Is she rich?”

“No.”

“What is it? Sex?” I didn’t respond. “Is that it?”

“It’s a factor.”

“It was fine with us. It was.”

“Yes, it was.”

“You owe me an explanation, Steve.”

“I know. I know I do. Forgive me.” What the hell could I tell her? The truth. Not the whole truth, but at least no lies.

“You’re everything I admire. When we first started going out, I couldn’t believe you were for real, because I thought: No one can be this decent; it’s some sort of an act. But it wasn’t. I came to

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understand that you’re everything any man could want in a woman.”

“Then why don’t you want me?”

“Because you are so wonderful. Because I’m a messed-up guy and I can’t live up to your high standards.”

“But I’m not telling you to be anything except what you are.”

“But see, Lynne, what I am doesn’t necessarily want what you want. I can’t live the