Danielle Steel - The Apartment

“ ’Bye, Daphne,” Abby said as she strode past her.

“Are you leaving?” Daphne looked surprised.

“Yes, I am.”

“Who’s going to clean the theater before the performance tonight?” She seemed worried as Abby smiled at her.

“You are. This place isn’t just fun and blow jobs, you know. You have to work too. Have a good time.”

Ivan had walked out of his office by then, and was staring at her, unable to believe what she had said. He actually thought he could keep both of them on the hook. Abby realized now that she must have been out of her mind to love him and believe what he said.

“You can’t leave,” he said to her weakly, acting as though he’d been mortally wounded.

“Yes, I can.”

“You’ll turn into a sellout like your parents, and write crap for the rest of your life,” he said ominously.

“Maybe I will,” she said with rage in her eyes, “but I won’t be a starving bullshitter when I’m forty-six, having other people do all the work. Grow up, Ivan, get a job. You’re out of money, and you just ran out of slaves.” Daphne was looking nervous at what she had just heard, and she was staring at Ivan with apprehension.

“I’m not going to clean the theater,” she told him, as Abby picked up her bag and left. “You told me you’d produce my play.” Daphne was nearly in tears, and Abby slammed the door to the theater as she left.

“You have to,” Ivan said to Daphne, sounding stern.

“Fuck you,” Daphne said, and followed the trail Abby had just blazed, and as Daphne left right behind her, she had just saved herself years of pain.

Abby was walking back to the apartment by then, at a rapid pace, with adrenaline pumping in her veins. There were tears running down her face, but she didn’t know it and wouldn’t have cared. When Daphne came on the scene, it made her realize she’d never had him, he had just used her, and he wasn’t worth having anyway. She had been a total fool.

She flew up the stairs on Thirty-ninth Street to the loft, and the others were all at home when she walked in. She looked like a madwoman with her hair flying and tear-stained face.

“What happened?” Sasha asked her immediately, worried about her.

“I just told Ivan to go fuck himself.” There was a look of astonishment on her face as she told them. “I finally realized he was cheating on me with Daphne, and I finally couldn’t stand the lies and excuses anymore. He lied about everything. I’m done.” A cheer went up in the room as she said it, and they all hugged her. She knew she’d be sad that night, when she thought about it, and remembered the good times, whatever they were, but she was twenty-nine years old and couldn’t let guys like him use her anymore. She had to start over, she had to do it right next time, and she had to work with people who kept their word.

Abby had also been writing a lot lately, and had gone back to work on her novel. She had begun to realize that the experimental style she had adopted for him was stifling her own voice. She was not going to let Ivan kill her career by turning her into a puppet for his own use. All she wanted was to get back to work, follow her own path, and try to forget his. In every possible way, personally and professionally, she had wasted three years.

“How could I have been so stupid?” she said to her three best friends as she sat down on the couch and looked at them. “You tried to tell me, and I didn’t believe you. I wanted what he said to be true.”

“He’s a clever guy,” Morgan said sensibly. And the name Rasputin hadn’t been so far off the mark. “He plays on the naïve and gullible, and women who fall in love with him. It’s all smoke and mirrors, like the Wizard of Oz.”

“And I was the idiot in red shoes. What am I going to tell my parents? I threw three years of my life away.” It was all coming clear to her, and it was horrifying, but at least she finally saw the truth.

“They probably knew, and they were waiting for you to wake up. They’ll be happy you did,” Claire said gently, and put her arms around Abby and gave her a hug.

“I think Daphne walked out too. I saw her leave the theater after I did. But there will always be another Abby or Daphne, willing to believe him and become his slave.”

“Sooner or later he’ll run out of slaves. He already has. He’s a lot less convincing and appealing at forty-six than he was even at forty-three, when you found him,” Morgan added.

The four of them had dinner together that night, and talked about it. It was like having three sisters who were there for her when it counted. She was going to call her parents and tell them too, but not yet. They all drank a lot of wine that night and went to bed early. Abby didn’t know what she was going to do now. She was going home for Thanksgiving in a month, as she always did, and she was planning to do a lot of writing on her novel before that. She needed to get her own voice back, and get him out of her head.

She cried as she lay in bed that night, but she was tired and drunk and ashamed. Things could only get better after that.

Abby waited a few days before she called her mother and told her what had happened. Joan Williams wasn’t angry at her—she was relieved.

“We knew he wasn’t right, but you had to see it for yourself,” she said gently.

“I wish I hadn’t taken so long. Three years. What a waste of time,” Abby lamented.

“I’m sure you got something out of it, and it will come out in your writing,” her mother said confidently. She had faith in her daughter, her talent and fine mind. Ivan couldn’t take that from her. And much to her amazement, she found that her mother was right. With the pure rage that was spewing out of her for Ivan, her writing was stronger, clearer, and more honest than it had ever been. Her anger fueled her, and she was doing the best work she’d done in years, as she holed up in the apartment, writing day after day while the others went to work. But she wasn’t shirking. She was writing. This was what she had been meant to do all along, and she put her fury on paper. It was her way of driving Ivan out of her head and life forever. At long last. And healing would come when she had.

Claire felt as though she were living a fairy tale, and her mother could hear it when she called her. She could tell that something had happened, and she asked if she’d gotten a promotion at her job. It never even occurred to her mother that a man had come into her life and Claire was in love. Her dating life had been so nonexistent for so long that her mother could only assume that the lilt in her daughter’s voice was related to work. Claire never lied to her, although she said very little about George, even to her roommates. She didn’t want to jinx it, and just wanted to enjoy what they were sharing privately for a while. But sounding hesitant, she told her mother about George.

“When did that happen?” Sarah was stunned, but happy for her. She could hear how elated Claire was.

“A few weeks ago, about a month.”

“How did you meet him?” She was equally cautious, not wanting to intrude on her daughter.

“He’s Morgan’s boss.”

“The one who’s a whiz on Wall Street?” She seemed shocked.

“Yes.”

“He has a lot of money,” her mother said, dazed for a minute, and Claire laughed.

“Yes, he does. We’ve been flying all over the place on weekends in his plane. Florida, Vermont.” He was taking her to a party in Boston the following week. And there were all the other places they had talked about in Europe. They had a lot of dreams and plans.

“That must be a little overwhelming, isn’t it, dear?” She was worried about her, but pleased too. She didn’t want her to wind up with a broken heart, and Sarah vaguely remembered that he was something of a playboy, which wasn’t surprising for a relatively young man who had made a fortune. He had the world at his feet, and now her daughter in his arms. She hoped he was sincere about her, and not just playing.

“Is this serious?” her mother asked, adjusting to it rapidly, and hopeful.

“It’s very new, but it seems like it, for both of us. He says he’s been waiting for me all his life.” Sarah smiled at her end of the phone. She was thrilled for her daughter. It was what every woman wanted to hear.

“That would certainly be life-changing for you,” Sarah said thoughtfully.

“Yes, it would,” Claire responded.

And then she thought of something. “Are you still coming home for Thanksgiving?”

“Of course.” She always went home for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. She didn’t want to disappoint her parents, especially her mother. The holiday would have been awful for her without her only daughter, alone with a morbidly depressed husband who barely spoke to her.

“Do you want to bring George home with you?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it.” But she didn’t want him to see how dreary her parents were. Their holidays had been grim for the last several years, with her father making constantly gloomy comments, about the state of the economy and the world. She didn’t want to drag George into it, although she might have to someday, but not just yet. She was planning to warn him that she had to go home for a few days. She hated to leave him, but she had no other choice.

As it turned out, when she mentioned it to him, he was relieved too.

“Don’t give it another thought,” he reassured her. “I hate holidays with a passion. They always upset me. I hated them even as a kid.” No wonder, Claire thought, with his parents dead and living alone with his grandmother, but she didn’t say that to him. “I usually go skiing in Aspen for Thanksgiving, and the Caribbean for Christmas and New Year. You spend it with your family and don’t give it a second thought.” And he seemed delighted she hadn’t invited him to join her. He wouldn’t have gone anyway, but he didn’t want to be asked and have to turn her down. It was working out perfectly for both of them. Thanksgiving was still a month away, but he was pleased to have the conversation behind them. Now they could go their separate ways for the holiday, and he promised they’d fly out to San Francisco for an ordinary weekend, so he could meet her parents.