Dreams Are Not Enough by Jacqueline Briskin

Author:Jacqueline Briskin [Briskin, Jacqueline]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 1987-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

37

Hap did not fight the same way the men of her youth had, shouting with hard blows to emphasize a point, nor did he turn petulant, like Barry. Reserved courtesy was his style. He kept to his own territory in their king-size bed, and beyond the bedroom walls treated her as if she were a fellow houseguest to whom he had just been introduced. Alyssia was generally the first to extend the olive branch, not because he was in the right, though she conceded that almost without exception he was, but because she was positive a prolonged quarrel might cause an irreparable tear in the fabric of their relationship.

Showing PD to the room he’d occupied before, she was already atremble with the need to surrender. But how could she, when she owed an incalculable debt to her guest? She went slowly down the flight of stairs to the master bedroom, finding Hap in the low-slung easy chair, reading the same script. He hadn’t turned a page in twenty minutes, but she couldn’t know that.

“I’d like to discuss Transformations,” she said. Her voice was level though her hands trembled.

“Of course.” Gravely, he marked his place. “But what’s the point? We aren’t doing it.”

“We?”

“I’d prefer that you didn’t, but of course I can’t tell you what parts to take.”

Alyssia heard in Hap’s tone a modicum of the aloof precision that Rosalynd Cordiner used on her.

“Well I can’t ignore PD!” she snapped. “And I don’t see how you can either—he’s your cousin. His family’s your family! Don’t you give a damn about family? Or do only the dirt-poor learn to help one another out?”

“I refuse to be involved with heroin.”

“Lang’s not sticking needles in you. He’s financing a film.”

“Taking his money means I condone the needles.”

“Terrific!” She was shouting now. “PD or one of your other relations get their skulls bashed in while Mr. Morally Superior Cordiner soliloquizes about right and wrong!”

She ran into the dressing room. As she yanked on slacks and a loose sweater, she grew more and more frightened that Hap would decamp. Throwing open the door, she shouted, “I’m going into town!”

She drove the mile into Bellagio, parking in the square that abutted the little town’s ancient, square-spired church. Striding down a cobbled alley in the direction of the lake, she ignored the tall, narrow houses with flowers that fell raffishly from every cranny—normally the little town’s opera-buffa vistas delighted her.

Reaching the lake, she hurried past the ranked, outdoor tables where locals were leisurely taking their afternoon snacks, continuing to the end of the promenade, where she paid to enter the gardens of the Villa Melzi. The extensive grounds bordering the shore were empty in the twilit mist. As she passed the little Moorish temple where Liszt had composed, her footsteps crunched slower on the gravel and she hugged her arms around herself. I’ll have to use strategy, she thought bleakly. She considered it wrong to bring psychology to bear against anyone, and to work Hap seemed the ultimate treachery to love.

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