Loe raamatut: «The Perfect Father»

One

Cosmo’s Bar and Grille had been a downtown Philadelphia fixture for decades, a five-star restaurant known for its continental fare, its soothing peach-and-gray art deco atmosphere and its continual showcase of good jazz music. But those weren’t the only reasons Chase Buchanan liked to frequent the place. As he made himself comfortable at his usual spot at the bar, he caught the bartender’s eye. Without even asking him what he was drinking, she reached for a bottle of expensive single-malt Scotch and splashed a generous portion over ice in a crystal tumbler.

“Hi, Mr. Buchanan,” she said as she placed the glass before him with a cheerful smile.

“Hello, Sylvie,” he replied.

“I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show up tonight. I should have known you were just working late. Again.”

“Sometimes that’s what it takes to get the job done.”

She shook her head slowly, chin-length blond tresses shimmering with the motion. “You work too hard,” she told him bluntly. “People should work to live, not live to work. You ought to stop and count your blessings sometime.”

“Thanks, but I’d rather stop and count my change.”

Sylvie shook her head at him again and simply repeated, “You work too hard.”

Chase could hardly contradict her, not that he wanted to. Ever since he’d left his position as a junior architect of Bulwar-Melton-Jones Associates to start his own firm, he couldn’t recall a moment when he hadn’t had some major project commanding virtually every scrap of his time. BMJ had been a company without foresight, a bunch of old men with absolutely no imagination. He’d joined them immediately after receiving his college degrees and left them less than five years later. In the fifteen years that had followed, he’d made an excellent name for himself in the field of architectural design. His own company was known for its savvy, its cutting-edge timing and its farsighted vision. He had enough going on at any given moment to demand his complete and utter attention.

Buchanan Designs, Inc. meant everything to Chase. He gave 110 percent to his company. And dammit, he didn’t expect any less from anyone who worked for him.

“Yes, well, that’s easy for you to say,” he finally told Sylvie after an idle sip of his drink. “You don’t have to run this place.”

Her smile broadened. “You couldn’t pay me enough to run this place,” she countered. “You couldn’t pay me enough to run any place. I don’t want to be in charge of anything. I don’t want that kind of responsibility. Too much stress. That’ll send you to an early grave faster than anything else will, you mark my words.” She slung a linen towel over her shoulder and reached into the garnish bin to pop an olive into her mouth. “Not only that,” she added carelessly, “but it eats up way too much of your time. There’s a lot more to life than working, you know. And I intend to enjoy every moment of it I can.”

Although he wanted to disagree with her, Chase didn’t dispute her words. He was quite certain that what Sylvie said rang absolutely true—for Sylvie. But he thrived on being in charge of his own company. For him, working was living. And he was perfectly happy with things that way.

“Living means something different for everyone,” he told her. “For me, and for everyone who comes to work for me, business has to come first. It has to be the one thing in life that’s important. Hell, it has to be life, period.”

She surveyed him intently. “If you ask me, that’s nuts.”

“I don’t recall asking you,” he said with a smile.

Normally, no one—absolutely no one—spoke to Chase so frankly and dogmatically. They didn’t dare. But the attitude was perfectly normal coming from Sylvie. He expected it, and he more than tolerated it—he welcomed it. On more than one occasion she had been his devil’s advocate, and the byplay he enjoyed with her was something he shared with no one else.

What was odd was that Chase really didn’t know Sylvie all that well—hell, he didn’t even know her last name. But he’d been coming into Cosmo’s after work three or four times a week ever since he’d moved his office into the building across the street. That had been two years ago, and at that time, Sylvie had just been starting her own stint at the restaurant.

Somewhere along the way he had altered his schedule to match hers, stopping by for dinner at the restaurant before heading home only on those evenings when he knew she would be working behind the bar. Why he’d done this he didn’t know. But Chase liked Sylvie. He liked her a lot. She was funny and spirited and a welcome change of pace after a long day of stress and high pressure. She was cute in her man’s white dress shirt that always appeared to be two sizes too big, and the neckties she wore with her uniform were always something interesting. She had a nice smile. And somehow she always made him feel better before he went home at night. Already he sensed the day’s tension and irritation easing from every corner of his mind.

He’d even come close to asking her out a couple of times. But he never had. Because he just didn’t date women for very long, and he hadn’t wanted to put an end to the easy camaraderie he shared with Sylvie.

When he looked up from his drink she was eyeing him thoughtfully, and he wondered what was going on in that beautiful blond head of hers.

As if she sensed his inquisitiveness, she asked, “Are you telling me you’d rather work fifteen or sixteen hours a day than go home after the usual nine-to-five to a wife and family?”

Chase grimaced, running a big hand through coal black hair liberally threaded with silver. “God forbid. What a nightmare. Look, I’m forty years old and rabidly single. What does that tell you?”

She shrugged, still smiling. “Maybe that you’re not such a great catch after all?”

He gaped at her before chuckling. “Oh, thanks a lot. I’ll have you know there have been plenty of women who have tried to wrestle me to the ground and have their way with me—their way usually culminating in a leisurely stroll down the bridal path.”

“But you want none of it, is that it?”

He shook his head vehemently. “Absolutely not.”

“Not even the pitter-patter of little feet? You’re not one of those guys who wants to make sure he leaves his mark on the world in the form of a little Mr. Buchanan, Junior?”

He shuddered for effect. “God, no. I can’t stand children.”

Her brows arched in surprise. “Are you serious?”

“Absolutely. I mean, think about it. When they’re babies, all they do is lie there and look at you, commanding that you do everything for them. When they’re children, they’re constantly into things they shouldn’t be into—you have to watch them every moment of the day. When they’re adolescents...hell, forget about that. And when they’re adults, they’re completely ungrateful for everything you ever did for them, for every sacrifice you ever made.”

He sipped his drink again before continuing, “Don’t tell me you’re surprised by the way I feel. You don’t exactly seem like the kind of woman who wants to be dragged down by a passel of kids. You seem to enjoy being single.”

“Oh, I love being single. But I also love kids.” She bent beneath the bar and appeared to be searching for something, then rose again with a wallet in her hand. She flipped it open and thumbed through a bulging collection of photographs housed in the plastic sheets contained within. “This is my nephew, Simon,” she said as she opened her wallet on the bar before Chase. “He’s the most wonderful baby in the world. Look at that smile. You can’t tell me you don’t think he’s adorable.”

Chase offered the photo a perfunctory scan, pretended to be interested and replied dryly, “Adorable. Look, I’m starving. What’s good tonight?”

Sylvie sighed and shook her head at him again. She seemed to be doing that a lot this evening, he thought. As if she were considering him for some major project only to find him lacking in some way. Or maybe not lacking, he amended when she continued to study him as she put her wallet away. That look in her eye was distinctly...interested.

He pushed the supposition away. Probably he was working too hard lately. No doubt he was thoroughly misreading the signals Sylvie was sending his way. She had never once offered him any indication that she wanted to get to know him better, and having heard her bemoan the shortcomings of some of the men in her life, he knew he was in no way her type.

And even if he was, even if she ever did come on to him, Chase knew he would never succumb. It was nothing personal, he reflected. If he were to get intimately involved with a woman right now, he supposed Sylvie was a likely enough candidate to fit the bill. But involvements led to entanglements, and entanglements led to relationships. And relationships, he thought, simply commanded too much time to keep them running properly. Time was a precious commodity. He had very little of it to spare. Therefore a relationship with a woman was the last thing he could afford.

Watching Sylvie as she strode to the end of the bar for a menu, he sighed wistfully. But maybe he had gone too long without the intimate aspects of a relationship, he conceded. When was the last time he’d made love to a woman, anyway? he asked himself now. And who was the last woman he’d made love to? He thought back, trying to recall the details.... His eyes widened when he remembered. No, surely it couldn’t have been that long ago, he told himself. Could it? He shook his head in disbelief. Obviously he really didn’t have time for a relationship.

If only he could find a nice woman with whom he could share a brief, one- or two-time interlude and call it quits. Unfortunately, most of the women who could provide such an encounter did it for a living, and that wasn’t exactly the kind of woman Chase had in mind. He couldn’t make love to a stranger, nor to someone who chose sex for her occupation. For his fantasy fling, he wanted a woman he cared for to at least some degree—and who cared for him in return—but who wouldn’t demand all of his attention after it was over.

“Yeah, right,” he muttered to himself. And what self-respecting woman would concede to an arrangement like that? No one of his acquaintance, that was for sure.

He looked up from his drink and saw Sylvie standing before him, holding a menu out for his inspection.

“Sounds wonderful to me,” she said. “Want to give it a try?”

For one wild moment Chase thought she was offering herself up for just the kind of hit-and-run encounter he had just been imagining. Then he realized she must have been talking to him for several moments without his listening, and that he’d only heard the conclusion of her speech.

“What?” he asked. “I’m sorry, I was thinking about something else. Could you go over that again?”

She gazed back at him with much interest, and he just couldn’t shake the feeling that she was evaluating him in some way. However, when she spoke, her voice held its usual careless timbre, and the choices she offered him were anything but erotic in nature.

“I was telling you that Cosmo is really pushing the free-range chicken tonight, and having had it for dinner myself, I can tell you it’s delicious. But the shrimp étouffée also sounds wonderful to me. I know you love seafood. You want to give that a try instead?”

Chase gazed at her for a moment before replying, noting for the first time that Sylvie really did have the most beautiful blue eyes he’d ever seen. Not a pale, glassy blue, but a deep, midnight blue that bordered on violet. He didn’t know why he hadn’t noticed before.

“Uh, surprise me,” he finally said, not altogether certain he was talking exclusively about his dinner selection. “I’m not really sure what I want.”

“Okay.”

As she turned to ring up his order, he observed with much interest the efficiency of her actions. He liked to watch Sylvie. She moved freely and easily, completely unconscious of her own gestures, utterly comfortable in her surroundings and with herself. That was something Chase had never quite been able to master in himself. There was still a lingering essence of self-consciousness within him, a quiet little voice that would never quite let him forget the meagerness of his beginnings or the fear that he might end up a nobody.

Yet he never tried to completely quell his fears. Because he knew they were what caused him to be so driven. Success and wealth had come to him earlier than he had anticipated, and now that he’d had a taste of how good life could be, he’d be damned if he’d ever do anything to jeopardize his position.

Even if that meant spending the rest of his life alone, he thought. In the long run, he knew he’d be a happier man because of it.

* * *

After ringing in Mr. Buchanan’s order, Sylvie handed it off to one of the waiters headed back to the kitchen, almost hitting her co-worker in the face with it as he passed. She apologized sheepishly as she spun back around. Business at Cosmo’s that evening had been slow, even for a Tuesday night, but her timing had been off completely since coming in to work several hours ago. As she frequently did at times like this, she couldn’t help wondering yet again why she hadn’t put her degree in humanities to better use than tending bar.

Maybe, she decided as she ran a blue grease pencil under the last of the drinks orders at the service bar, it was because no matter how hard she looked, there was never, ever a listing in the classified ads under the heading Humanities.

“Order up, Sylvie.”

She spun around to find one of the waiters scooting a plate of oysters Rockefeller precariously close to the edge of the bar, and she snatched it up just as it was about to go over the side.

“Keith!” she called out to the swiftly departing server after she’d placed the appetizer in front of a well-dressed couple seated at the bar.

Keith turned. “What is it? I’m in the weeds big time.”

She threw him what she knew was her most beguiling smile. “Got a minute?”

He smiled back as he returned to the bar. “Sure. But just one. And just because it’s you who’s asking.”

She tried to feign a more intimate interest in him. “Mind a personal question?”

His smile broadened. “How personal?”

“You, uh, you graduated from Princeton, right?”

He nodded.

“And you’re going to Villanova now? Law school?”

Another nod. “What’s this leading up to, Sylvie?”

She extended her index finger onto the bar, coyly drawing a few idle circles in the remnants of a spilled beer. “What, um...what’s your G.P.A?”

“Three point ninety-eight. Why?”

Sylvie looked at him, taking in his blond hair, blue eyes and slender build. Nice genes, she thought. And his coloring was identical to hers, so if she asked him to father her child, the baby would resemble her no matter what. “Oh, I was just thinking,” she began again. “I need to ask you about some—”

Her words ceased when Keith cried out, bent over suddenly and cupped a hand over his left eye.

“What?” she asked, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he muttered as he straightened. He manipulated his left eyelid gently over a red, watery eye. “I just got something in my contact. It’s okay now.”

Sylvie studied him more closely. “You wear contact lenses?”

“Yeah, I’m blind as a bat without them.”

“Oh.”

“Now, then,” Keith continued, wiping away the last of the tears. His eye was still quite red and puffy. “What was this personal question you wanted to ask?”

“Your eyesight is really bad?” Sylvie asked.

“The worst. Everyone in my family has lousy eyesight. I don’t think any of us made it out of childhood without getting a pair of glasses. Mine have lenses as thick as Coke bottles.”

She nodded. “I see.”

“And this personal question?” he asked again, clearly interested in getting as personal as possible with Sylvie.

“Uh,” she hedged. “Never mind. I forgot what I was going to say.”

His expression fell. “Oh. Well, if you remember...”

“I’ll let you know.”

When Keith was out of sight, Sylvie pulled a well-worn scrap of paper from inside her shirt pocket and unfolded it. Keith’s name was midway down the list, beneath a half dozen or so others that had been crossed out. Leonard had been her first choice as the ideal candidate to father her child, but she’d learned he had recently become engaged. William, the second of her male acquaintances on the list, had just returned from a skiing trip with both arms and one leg in a cast. Jack, whose wavy brown hair she had loved, also had a brother in prison, and Sylvie simply didn’t want to risk the felony gene turning up in any child of hers. Donnie, she’d discovered, had worn braces all through junior high and high school.

So far, none of the candidates Sylvie had considered with good genetic potential for fatherhood was working out at all. There always seemed to be something that just didn’t quite set well. Edgar had been close, she recalled, but there was that big bump on the bridge of his nose that, despite his assurances to the contrary, she wasn’t quite convinced he’d suffered in a fight. It might just be a congenital condition. And Michael...well, he had been just this side of perfect. But he’d confessed to having absolutely no musical inclination whatsoever. And Sylvie wasn’t about to give birth to a no-talent child.