Bread Alone Read Online Free Page B

you talking about?”
“That it’s over, of course.”
“Over?”
I turned abruptly. “Is this an echo chamber? Look, I’m not going to make a scene and get tears all over your squeaky-clean car. Just tell me you don’t want to see me anymore, and you can take me home. I’ll live.”
His laugh broke the silence.
“Is that what you think?”
Without waiting for an answer, he got out, locked the door, came around and opened mine. I let him take my hand and tug me gently out of the seat.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” I said. “And when—”
“I know. When you don’t know what’s going on, you get edgy. Come on. Let’s be edgy inside, where it’s warm.”
I’d been to his house a few times, but always in daylight. It struck me as cold and sort of temporary looking in spite of the artsy black-and-white photographs on the walls and the caramel-colored leather sofa, more like a model home than a place where a real person lived. Nothing was ever out of place or dusty. There weren’t any old newspapers or books turned upside down to mark the page. No glasses in the sink. No spare change on the dining room table. No mail stacked by the phone.
At night it looked completely different. Strategically placed lamps glowed, giving the rooms shape and depth. A fire was already laid in the fireplace, an Oscar Peterson tape cued up, more wine chilling in an ice bucket. All carefully planned. For me. He was seducing me. I was amused and touched and exquisitely flattered.
Near my grandparents’ cabin on the Russian River, there was a swimming hole where the water was clear, cold, and deep. On hot summer afternoons, I’d haul myself out, wet and shivering, and lie down on my favorite boulder. It was warm from the sun and smooth from the river, and I loved the feel of its contours under my hands. His body was like that. If his lovemaking lacked spontaneity, he more than compensated with intensity. I’d never before had such attention given to every square inch of my body.
At some point, it began to rain. Gently at first, then increasing in speed and volume till I thought the hill would liquefy and send the whole house sledding down onto Sunset Boulevard, the two of us inside. Finally, toward dawn, the skies relented and we fell asleep, exhausted.
In the morning, I discovered that his ocean-blue eyes were gray. He saw me staring and smiled.
“Contacts,” he said, pulling me over on top of him.
Ten days later, on my twenty-fourth birthday, he asked me to marry him. I was nearly as astonished and grateful as my mother was.
After we were married, I had one spectacular year of selling real estate—spectacularly bad. Eventually my company agreed not to make me pay for my training on the condition that I promise never to work in the industry again. I made a few half-assed attempts to find something else, because I liked having my own money, but then David pointed out to me that tax-wise, it was better if I didn’t work. And I would have more time to do the things he wanted me to do. I didn’t need much persuading.
What he wanted me to do was easy enough. I was to be the Executive Wife—the charming hostess, the source of contacts. He gave me books to read, subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal, the Sunday New York Times, Los Angeles Magazine. He made sure I read his copies of Ad Age. He told me in great detail what was happening at work, what they were doing for which clients, who he thought they might lose, who they were pitching.
We gave parties, went to parties, dinners, benefits, concerts, gallery openings, plays three or four nights a week. There were pro-am golf tournaments, political fund-raisers, walk-a-thons, wine auctions. I served on committees for the Philharmonic, Cedars-Sinai Hospital, Sierra Club. I worked out religiously at LA Fitness, played tennis at the club where JMP paid for our membership. And in my spare time, I did lunch with my “friends,” mostly women with strategically placed husbands that