Leon Uris by Topaz Page B

blankly, not drinking in his words, but only feeling their thud as another of his well-phrased rejections.
    “I’m going up to see Michele,” she said tersely. “I’m thinking of going off with her on a trip.”
    “Where? When?”
    “I don’t know. France, to your father’s. Switzerland, Outer Mongolia. Some place where I don’t have to be a daily witness to your demise.”
    Coming home these days, he thought, is not my idea of heaven, but I never thought of a home without Nicole. If I don’t know how to quit and if you love me, then, God, woman, accept it for what it is and try to make things a little easier.
    “For whatever it means,” André said, “I still love you dearly and I don’t want to go through life without you.”
    Nicole took her hand out of his, folded her napkin, and stood. “Give Juanita de Córdoba my regards,” she said.
    André watched her leave the room, stinging from the slur. Damn it! Juanita de Córdoba had no place in this conversation! It was the unpredictable quiltwork of a woman’s mind, the determined illogic of ending up with a stab.
    Or was it so illogical? André ticked the ash from his cigar and spun his cognac around slowly. Wasn’t this the real heart of the matter and wasn’t Nicole’s intuition perfect?
    Lord knows he had tried to keep the affair with
    Juanita from his wife and Lord knows he was a fool to think he could. He had intended to live with Nicole forever and let things go on as they were. Yes, even to love Nicole in that certain way that two decades of marriage dictated.
    But his real love, though denied and buried, belonged to Juanita de Córdoba. How many days and weeks and months had he gone on without daring to think about her, shutting this longing for her out of his life?
    But the thrill and the hunger for Juanita never failed to renew itself.
    In this moment of honest appraisal, Nicole understood perfectly.
    André had tossed around his decision of whether or not to go to Cuba for the Americans. In the end the scale tipped in favor of the trip because Juanita would be there. And even though he denied it to himself and justified it otherwise, this was the truth.
    His lips touched the cognac snifter .... “Juanita ... yes ... I am afraid I love you very much ... I am sorry for that ... for both of us....”
    He drew himself from the table and made his way slowly to the head of the steps. A ray of light from Nicole’s room fell over the hallway and down the stairwell. He stood motionless, waiting until her door closed at last.
    “Nicole,” he whispered to himself, “please, please understand. Juanita is an unreachable dream ... an illusion ... but I must be allowed to dream. It means nothing between you and me. You are my wife and I love you ... in a different way....”
    André found himself standing before Nicole’s door knowing it was not locked. Somehow he could not bring himself to open it and go to her with his thoughts flooded with Juanita de Córdoba and the coming nights with her.
    Nicole lay in her bed tensely, listening for his every movement, praying the door would open. Praying to see his shadow move to her, stand over her, sit by the edge of the bed. She wanted the touch of his hand stroking her head, for him to draw back the sheets and come beside her.
    Much of it tonight would be a lie, she thought, but God, I want him.
    And she fell into despair as the sound came of his door shutting and wet tears formed on her pillow.
    It turned midnight. André continued to toss in the dark, unable to sleep. The phone rang. He switched on the lamp and lifted the receiver. “Devereaux.”
    “Hello, Daddy.”
    “Michele. How are you, darling?”
    “I’m fine. I understood you were going away. I just wanted to say good-bye.”
    Her voice sounded strange and shaky.
    “I mean,” she continued, “we’ve been missing each other and really haven’t had a chance to sit and talk for months.”
    “Yes, come to think of it, it has been quite a