Darker Than Night

56

Jubal rolled off Dalia and sighed, still trying to catch his breath. Dalia liked to go twice sometimes, once on top, then on the bottom. He couldn’t imagine Claire even suggesting such a thing—not since she’d become pregnant.

They were in Chicago’s venerable and almost shabby Tremontier Hotel, where they were registered under their real names, Dorthea Hartnagle and Arnold Wolfe. It wouldn’t do to let the others in the production of As Thy Love Thyself know they were longtime lovers. Show business could be a small world, and Jubal was married to an actress.

The room was warm and smelled of sex and the rose fragrance perfume Dalia always wore. Jubal had come to love the combined scent. It almost made him hesitate in lighting a cigarette, but he reached over to the bedside table, carefully avoiding Dalia’s overturned champagne glass, and got his pack of Camels and a hotel book of matches. He fired up a cigarette, then leaned his head back on the damp pillow, took a long drag, and exhaled.

“Jesus, that’s good!”

Dalia was staring over at him, grinning. “The sex or the cigarette?”

“All of it.”

“Your wife know you’re back smoking?”

“Somehow that doesn’t seem like the logical question.”

“I guess it isn’t.”

“There’s a lot Claire doesn’t know about me.”

“Yeah, I bet you’re really misunderstood and abused.”

“You know what I mean, how it is.”

“Do I ever.” Dalia rolled onto her stomach and felt around for the bottle of Dom Pérignon on the floor. She found it, then righted the champagne glass and poured what little was left of the bottle into it. She sat up cross-legged and nude on the bed and experimentally sipped champagne.

“Flat?” Jubal asked.

“Yeah, but so am I now, after the way you’ve been bouncing on me.” Another sip drained the glass and she placed it back on the table. “Does Claire know about your sitcom offer?”

“Not yet.” The producer of a pilot film for a proposed new cable sitcom, West Side Buddies, about a group of female-obsessed New York pals and neighbors, had called Jubal’s agent and said he might be right for the part of the Mets bachelor shortstop, Eric. There were no guarantees, but Jubal’s agent said he’d gotten word Jubal had a real shot at the role.

“Then you are going back to New York to audition?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Don’t be an idiot. You want the role, don’t you?”

“Sure. There are top people involved. But it’s in New York, and you’re here.”

“And I’ll still be here when you get back. Go! Astin can stand in for you for a couple of days. You won’t be bailing out on us; everyone will understand.” Astin was Astin Jones, Jubal’s handsome and calculating young understudy. There were people in the cast who thought he might be better for Jubal’s part than Jubal. “Hell, everyone will envy you for the opportunity. If they knew about the offer, they’d be urging you to go for it.”

Especially Astin.

“You afraid somebody’s gonna take your place permanently while you’re away?”

Jubal knew what she meant but played dumb. “We’ve been meeting each other for a long time and nobody’s taken my place.”

Dalia let him get away with it and didn’t say anything. She pretended to check the empty champagne bottle to see if anything more could be coaxed from it.

Jubal drew again on his cigarette, then leaned to the side and snuffed out the butt in the glass ashtray near the base of the lamp. The scent of tobacco smoke now dominated the room.

“Maybe I will go,” he said.

Dalia dropped to her side, then scooted over on the mattress, snaked an arm around Jubal’s neck, and kissed him on the mouth.

“I’ll show you maybe,” she said, smiling down at him.

At the airport Jubal checked in and passed through security faster than expected. Before the flight to Chicago he’d had to remove his shoes at LaGuardia, but apparently what might have been exploding wing tips aroused no suspicion on this end. He went into a gift shop and browsed to kill time.

He wasn’t all that eager to see Claire.

He was going to miss Dalia.

Claire was in another city and he’d mentally pushed her aside; it was difficult now to readjust to her. He was still in a Dalia frame of mind.

Jubal knew he’d done a good job of pretending with Claire. Well, not at first. Initially he’d been shocked, and he supposed glad, when she told him she was pregnant. Then came the marriage, and reality began setting in. Marriage, an infant realer by the hour, genuine commitment, a mutual checking account, mutual everything; it was stifling. None of it correlated with Jubal’s plans.

At first he told himself people had to make concessions in life, that he should grow up. But he wasn’t good at convincing himself. He wanted. He needed. Very badly. And not what he already had. Even he hadn’t realized how selfish he was about his future, his career.

Not that he felt he should apologize for his selfishness. Or feel guilty about it. He and Claire were both in show business, and they knew the kinds of sacrifices that had to be made. It was like a religious cult, acting; esoteric, demanding, unforgiving to those who betrayed it. He’d kept his religion, but Claire was losing hers.

So he’d begun seeing Dalia again. Dalia ran in his blood and had done so long before Claire. Their on-again, off-again romance had survived for almost seven years, mainly because of the sex, which seemed only to get better and more imaginative with time.

During an off period with Dalia, while she was away working on the West Coast, Claire had become a force in Jubal’s life. She’d spun a web that enthralled and hypnotized him, occupying all his thoughts.

But lately, not only because of his deteriorating relationship with Claire, but also probably because of his marriage making Dalia forbidden fruit, and only more desirable, Jubal thought more and more about Dalia. Even making love to Claire, he thought about Dalia.

Dalia was the woman he thought of when he saw the ruby necklace in the airport gift shop showcase.

Dalia loved rubies. She had several ruby rings, a ruby bracelet, and at least one ruby pin that Jubal knew of. He couldn’t recall her wearing a ruby necklace.

This one held a single large stone in a silver setting on a unique silver chain. It reminded the already-lonely Jubal painfully of Dalia. He longed to make her a present of it.

The necklace was overpriced, like almost everything else in the shop. Jubal stood staring at it, considering.

Every addiction is expensive. Even Dalia.

He knew if he didn’t buy the necklace now, it might not be there when he returned from New York, so he decided to purchase it, then conceal it someplace for a while.

“Can I help you?” a voice asked. The graying, matronly woman behind the counter had been observing him in his reverie. “Help you?” she asked again.

Jubal didn’t think she could. Not really. He’d have to figure out a way to help himself.

“That necklace…” He pointed. “The ruby one. Would you show it to me?”

Every addiction…