I wasn’t home when Milly arrived at my apartment with her suitcase. I’d left her a note saying I’d meet her in the dining room of the Plaza Hotel, then gave the headwaiter a twenty to show Milly to William’s table.
I would have liked to have hidden behind the palms to see the faces of Milly and my publisher when they first saw each other, but I knew I’d be caught, so I stayed in the apartment and waited with my most smug smile ready.
I got a little worried when Milly didn’t come back that night, and the next day when she still hadn’t shown up or sent word, I was angry as well as worried. I called my publishing house and was told my publisher had not shown up that morning nor had he called in with an explanation for his absence—but that wasn’t unusual, as publishers do what they please.
By the second night when Milly still hadn’t returned, I was ready to go to the police. Then I got a fax from Milly at 3 A.M. She and William were in Las Vegas and they were leaving any minute on their honeymoon. She hoped I was well and I was not to worry. She’d tell me everything when she returned.
“Ha!” I said aloud, laughing. “I’ll tell you everything.” At last Meg and Will were together again, and I was the cause of it.
I was very proud of myself for what I had accomplished, but the weeks turned into months and still I heard nothing from Tavistock. I was bugging poor Nora until I think she was ready to paint a few 666’s on my living room floor and start chanting in order to get rid of me.
As for me, I was ready to give up hope. I found myself bursting into tears for no reason at all. Was it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? I dreamed about Jamie, about Talis, about Tavey. I thought about them all the time as I stayed in my apartment and waited. But with each day that passed, I became more sure that Talis was not going to appear on my doorstep.
Then one afternoon I told myself that I had to start living again. I couldn’t keep disassociating myself from the rest of the world. Maybe Jamie was waiting for me just outside my door. Maybe—
I filled the tub full of hot, scented water and soaked myself clean, my hair slicked down with some peach-scented stuff guaranteed to make it like an angel’s. I carefully shaved my legs, then rinsed my hair, got out of the tub and slathered my body with some ridiculously expensive body cream. When I was finished, I knew that no flower garden smelled better than I did, but I refused to allow myself to acknowledge the fact that I had no man to nuzzle my neck and tell me how good I smelled.
Wearing nothing but a thick terry cloth robe, I opened my apartment door to get the mail that was brought up to me every day. Since I live on the top floor of the building, the elevator opens only to my apartment, and no one is allowed up without first being announced. So when the elevator door opened, I gasped in surprise.
“Excuse me,” the man in the elevator said in such perfectly spoken English that he had to have studied the language rather than grown up speaking it. “I think I have the wrong floor. My colleague is on floor eighteen but this is—”
He broke off because of the expression I was wearing as I stared at him. He was tall, at least six feet, and he was no blond-haired blue-eyed westerner. He had the kind of golden brown skin that usually meant a Mediterranean origin, and I doubted very much that he had grown up with the same religion that I had.
All in all, he was one gorgeous package. I looked into those dark chocolate-colored eyes and nearly drowned. In those eyes I could see Tavistock and when I looked really deeply, I could see Tally. And maybe if I looked really, really deeply, I could see myself. I could see the man who was the other half of me.
He started to say something but he didn’t say it because for the third time in my life I fainted.
45
Are you all right?” he asked.
I was lying on my couch in my own living room and he was sitting by me, a cold washcloth in his hand and he was pressing it to my face. With his other hand he was smoothing back my damp hair, fresh from washing, and he was looking at me as though he meant to memorize every inch of me. Had I not been through what I had, if I had not known who this man was, I would have been frightened. A stranger caressing my cheek and neck with the back of his fingers, his thumb running over my eyebrow, then down the side of my nose, was not something I would have willingly allowed.
But this man was no stranger. I knew all there was to know about him, except maybe a few things about this life such as his name and where he came from. But those things didn’t matter. This man was mine and had been mine throughout time.
I watched him as he looked at me. Would he remember me? Was the spirit of Tavistock just under the surface?
Abruptly, he seemed to come out of his trance. “Forgive me,” he said, sitting up straight. “I must introduce myself. I am Tariz—” He said several other names but I didn’t hear them. The sounds of his name were made in his throat, and as he sat by me, his hip touching mine, I felt every syllable of his name as he pronounced it. Tariz was all that I needed to know. Talis, Tavey, Tariz.
“You are not well,” he said. “Perhaps you should see a doctor.” His honey-colored skin paled and his voice whispered, “Perhaps you are with child.”
“No,” I said, smiling. “No baby. I’m not married. Not engaged. I am free.”
Tariz didn’t say anything but just kept looking at me intensely. “You will think I am a crazy man, but it is as though I know you. It is as though I…I don’t know how to say it. It is as though I recognize you. Can you understand such a thing?”
“Yes, I understand perfectly.”
“You will laugh, but it is as though I know things about you. But that could not be, since we have never met.”
“What do you know about me?” I asked.
He smiled softly and I thought my heart would melt. “You are afraid of high places and you like…” He hesitated. “You like small animals.” He glanced at a candleholder on the table behind me. “You like monkeys and you…You do something.” He ran his hand over his eyes. “You tell stories. You tell wonderful stories. You make people laugh. No, you make me laugh. You…”
He trailed off as he looked at me, his big brown eyes growing larger, his skin turning paler by the second. “I think…I think—”
I’d never seen a man faint before but I was afraid I was about to. I scurried off the couch, pushed him against the back of it, then went to fetch some brandy. Except that I didn’t have any because I don’t like brandy, so I poured a little Mandarin Napoleon in a glass and took it to him.
“You must excuse me,” he said, sitting up straighter. “I am sure it is, what do you call it? With the airplane.”