surface was still soft and rubbed out all the rough edges. You know what I mean: old men with faces as smooth as a baby's bottom.”
Across the deck, through the windows, the animated faces of the crowd inside the restaurant lent a sort of shared solitude to our own conversation, a sense that what we had to say was private and strictly between ourselves. I wondered for a moment what someone sitting inside would have thought had they looked out and seen the way we were leaning toward each other across the table, looking for all the world as if we wanted nothing so much as to be left alone. I guessed that even the waiter, who after all had heard her voice, must have thought I was madly in love with her.
“Why are you smiling?”she asked, laughing again at me with her eyes.
“Nothing,”I halfway lied. “I was just thinking about the way we think about things because of the way they look— Lawrence Goldman's face, for example. Now tell me, how did they meet and why does it make the way they live now seem so odd?”
The story of how Lawrence Goldman met his wife, and what happened when they did, was one of those astonishing tales that have been whispered so many times and in so many places that it becomes the kind of legend everyone believes even when, or perhaps especially when, they are almost certain it cannot possibly be true. It was the kind of story everyone wants to believe, because it tells everyone what they want to hear. Some thought it meant that even the powerful would do anything for love; others thought it only proved that the rich did what they wanted and never gave a damn about whom it might hurt.
They met at a party given by Lawrence Goldman and the woman to whom he was then married in honor of someone called Richard McBryde, a new vice president recently hired away from a large developer in the East. Lawrence Goldman was then forty-six years old and had been married for exactly half his life. His two sons were still in college. Richard McBryde was in his early thirties, and his wife, Amanda, was only twenty-four. From the moment he first saw her, Goldman could not take his eyes off her. There were sixteen people gathered around the perfectly decorated dining room table, but all through dinner he talked only to her. When dessert was served, he got up from his chair and with a strange, troubled look in his eyes announced he had to leave.
“I just remembered,”he said as he put his napkin down on the table. “I have to go to Los Angeles for a few days.”Then, for just a moment, he stared down at the table as if there were something he was trying to decide. When he raised his eyes he looked directly at Amanda McBryde. “Why don't you come with me?”
There are those who later claimed it was not even a question; that it was more like a decision he had made for both of them, a decision she had somehow authorized him to make. That was the sort of judgment that could be made after the fact. At the time, no one could do anything but watch with open-eyed amazement as Amanda McBryde rose from her chair and, without so much as a glance at her husband, left the room with a man she had met for the first time barely two hours before.
Like every story told often enough to become something of a legend, there were serious differences of opinion about where this had all happened. In some accounts, the dinner had been held in Goldman's lavishly furnished apartment in San Francisco; in other versions, it had taken place at the Tuscan-style villa that had just been constructed in the middle of his Sonoma vineyard. There were even those who claimed that Lawrence Goldman and the young wife of his most recent employee had not flown off to Los Angeles or anywhere else that night; that they had instead walked into the palm-lined darkness of the cool California night, driven away from the white stucco Santa Barbara mansion with the red tile roof and the private beach, and stopped at the first motel they found on the
Across the deck, through the windows, the animated faces of the crowd inside the restaurant lent a sort of shared solitude to our own conversation, a sense that what we had to say was private and strictly between ourselves. I wondered for a moment what someone sitting inside would have thought had they looked out and seen the way we were leaning toward each other across the table, looking for all the world as if we wanted nothing so much as to be left alone. I guessed that even the waiter, who after all had heard her voice, must have thought I was madly in love with her.
“Why are you smiling?”she asked, laughing again at me with her eyes.
“Nothing,”I halfway lied. “I was just thinking about the way we think about things because of the way they look— Lawrence Goldman's face, for example. Now tell me, how did they meet and why does it make the way they live now seem so odd?”
The story of how Lawrence Goldman met his wife, and what happened when they did, was one of those astonishing tales that have been whispered so many times and in so many places that it becomes the kind of legend everyone believes even when, or perhaps especially when, they are almost certain it cannot possibly be true. It was the kind of story everyone wants to believe, because it tells everyone what they want to hear. Some thought it meant that even the powerful would do anything for love; others thought it only proved that the rich did what they wanted and never gave a damn about whom it might hurt.
They met at a party given by Lawrence Goldman and the woman to whom he was then married in honor of someone called Richard McBryde, a new vice president recently hired away from a large developer in the East. Lawrence Goldman was then forty-six years old and had been married for exactly half his life. His two sons were still in college. Richard McBryde was in his early thirties, and his wife, Amanda, was only twenty-four. From the moment he first saw her, Goldman could not take his eyes off her. There were sixteen people gathered around the perfectly decorated dining room table, but all through dinner he talked only to her. When dessert was served, he got up from his chair and with a strange, troubled look in his eyes announced he had to leave.
“I just remembered,”he said as he put his napkin down on the table. “I have to go to Los Angeles for a few days.”Then, for just a moment, he stared down at the table as if there were something he was trying to decide. When he raised his eyes he looked directly at Amanda McBryde. “Why don't you come with me?”
There are those who later claimed it was not even a question; that it was more like a decision he had made for both of them, a decision she had somehow authorized him to make. That was the sort of judgment that could be made after the fact. At the time, no one could do anything but watch with open-eyed amazement as Amanda McBryde rose from her chair and, without so much as a glance at her husband, left the room with a man she had met for the first time barely two hours before.
Like every story told often enough to become something of a legend, there were serious differences of opinion about where this had all happened. In some accounts, the dinner had been held in Goldman's lavishly furnished apartment in San Francisco; in other versions, it had taken place at the Tuscan-style villa that had just been constructed in the middle of his Sonoma vineyard. There were even those who claimed that Lawrence Goldman and the young wife of his most recent employee had not flown off to Los Angeles or anywhere else that night; that they had instead walked into the palm-lined darkness of the cool California night, driven away from the white stucco Santa Barbara mansion with the red tile roof and the private beach, and stopped at the first motel they found on the
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