Beautiful Day by Elin Hilderbrand Page B

longer socialized with any of his and Beth’s couple
     friends because he couldn’t abide being a third wheel—but it was a holiday, and if
     Doug went home, he was looking at an evening of drinking whiskey and watching a recap
     of Wimbledon on TV. And so he stayed and ate dinner with the Drakes and met up with
     more friends whom he hadn’t seen since the funeral. These friends all mentioned how
     wonderful he looked (he did not look wonderful) and how much they’d missed him (though
     what they meant, he suspected, was that they missed Beth), and Doug realized how limited
     his life had become.
    It was at the end of the night that he’d bumped into Pauline. He was sitting at the
     bar finishing a nightcap when she walked through the room with Russell Stern, who
     was the president of Wee Burn’s board of directors. Russell Stern was divorced himself;
     he’d endured a rather high-profile split from his wife, Charlene, who sang with the
     Metropolitan Opera. Doug wondered for a second if Pauline and Russell Stern were dating.
     He had to admit, the thought irked him.
    Pauline caught sight of Doug at the bar and said to Russell, “You go ahead, Russ,
     I’m going to stay for a minute. Thanks for everything.”
    Russell eyed Doug and waved, then said to Pauline, “You sure you’re okay getting home?
     I can wait, you know.”
    “I’m fine,” Pauline said. “Thanks again!”
    Russell Stern lingered for a moment, and Doug felt both a surge of macho triumph and
     a flicker of worry that, as president of the board, Russell might inflict some kind
     of institutional retribution—a raise in Doug’s dues, perhaps, or revocation of Doug’s
     front-row parking spot. Then Russell left, and Pauline fluttered over.
    She said, “Hey, stranger.”
    He had ended up taking her home that night to the house in Silvermine that he had
     helped her wrest from Arthur Tonelli’s grip. They had kissed on the front porch, then
     in the foyer like a couple of teenagers. Doug had been amazed by his level of arousal.
     He hadn’t even allowed himself to think of sex in years. But with Pauline, his body
     asserted its natural instincts. He had thought they might do it right then and there
     up against the half-moon mail table, or on the stairs—but Pauline stopped him.
    He said, “Are you dating Russell Stern?”
    She paused for what seemed like a long time. “No,” she said. “We’re old friends.”
    “Really?” Doug said. “Because he seemed a little miffed that you came over to talk
     to me.”
    “Just friends,” Pauline said.
    Doug asked Pauline to dinner the following week. He picked a place on the water in
     South Norwalk, where neither of them had ever been before. This was important, he
     thought, for both of them. They had a fine time, and during the dinner conversation,
     it came out that Pauline and Russell had gone to high school together in New Canaan.
     They had dated their senior year, Russell a football star and Pauline a cheerleader.
     They had stayed together for two more years while Pauline went to Connecticut College
     and Russell went to Yale. They had talked of getting
married
.
    “Wow,” Doug said.
    “Then I met Arthur at the Coast Guard Academy, and Russell met Charlene, and that
     was that. Now, we’re just friends.”
    As “Layla” ended, Doug went to the counter to pay his bill. In retrospect, he could
     see that he had been dazzled by Pauline’s ease out in the world alone; he had been
     comfortable with her, and he had been intrigued by her relationship with Russell Stern.
     Pauline was nothing at all like Beth, and so Doug was free from feeling like he was
     replacing her. Pauline was someone else entirely—a friend, a lover, someone to enjoy.
     Doug had never fallen in love with Pauline, he’d never had the sick, loopy, head-over-heels
     feeling that he’d had from start to finish with Beth. And that, he saw now, had been
     preferable. Pauline wasn’t threatening. She wasn’t