Swiss clock. The house was deserted. Zelda was off. Daphne was spending the night with friends, as was Sam, having recovered from the flu, and Jack was at a party at a friend's before a bar mitzvah the next night. Maxine had bought scotch, vodka, gin, champagne, and a bottle of Pouilly-Fuisse. She was ready for him. She was wearing a short black dress, her hair in a neat bun, diamond earrings, and a string of pearls, and the house was silent.
When she let him in on the dot of seven, Charles entered with the look of a man heading across a minefield. He looked around, listened to the deafening silence, and stared at her in amazement.
“What did you do with your kids?” he asked nervously, and she smiled at him.
“I put them up for adoption, and fired the nanny. I was sad to let them go, but you have to have priorities in life. I didn't want to spoil another evening. They went very quickly.” He laughed and followed her into the kitchen, where she poured him a scotch and soda at his request, and carried a silver bowl of nuts into the living room. The silence was almost eerie. “I'm really sorry about Tuesday, Charles.” It had been a scene right out of a movie. Or real life. A little too much so.
“It was kind of like hazing when I was in college.” Getting put in the trunk of a car with alcohol poisoning might have been easier and more fun, but he was willing to give it another shot. There was a lot about Maxine that he liked. She was a serious, intelligent woman with a booming career in the medical field, highly respected, and she was beautiful as well. It was a combination that was tough to beat. The only thing about her that unnerved him somewhat were her kids. He just wasn't used to that, and didn't feel a need for children in his life. But they were part of the package with her. And this time, at least, she had gotten them out of the way, and they would be able to enjoy an adult evening, which was what he preferred.
La Grenouille had very kindly given him another reservation for eight o'clock that night, and hadn't held Tuesday's last-minute cancellation against him. He went there often and was a good client. Maxine and Charles left her apartment at a quarter to eight, and reached the restaurant precisely on time, and were given an excellent table. The evening had been perfect so far, he observed, but the night was young. Nothing would have startled him now, after the introduction he'd had to her life three days before. For a minute there, he had been tempted to run. But now he was glad he hadn't. He liked Maxine a lot, and she was great to talk to.
For the first half of dinner, over scallops, soft shell crab, followed by pheasant and Chateaubriand, they discussed their work, and current medical issues that were pertinent to both of them. He liked her ideas, and was impressed by her accomplishments. And they were just starting on their souffles when he mentioned Blake.
“I'm surprised your children aren't more critical of him, since you say he's such a no-show with them and is never around.” He realized that that was a real testimonial to her, since she could easily have turned them against him, and most women would, given how little he helped her.
“He's basically a nice man,” she said simply. “Wonderful, in fact. And they see that. He's just not very attentive.”
“He sounds very selfish, and incredibly self-indulgent,” Charles observed, and Maxine conceded that he wasn't wrong.
“It would be hard not to be,” Maxine said quietly, “given what happened with his success. Very few people could resist that and keep a level head. He has a lot of toys, and he likes to have fun. All the time, in fact. Blake doesn't do anything that's not fun, or high risk. That's just his style, it always was. The other path he could have chosen was to pour his money into philanthropy. And he does a fair amount of that, but he's not involved in charity in any hands-on kind of way. Basically, he figures that life is short, he's been lucky, and he wants to have a good time. He was adopted, and I think in a funny way, even though he had nice adoptive parents who loved him, he's always been insecure about life, and about himself. He wants to grab everything he can, before someone takes it away from him, or he loses it. That's a tough pathology to fight. The constant fear of abandonment and loss, so he grabs everything with both hands, and loses in the end anyway. Kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“He must be very sorry he lost you,” Charles said cautiously.
“Not really. We're good friends. I see him with the kids whenever he's in town. I'm still part of his life in a different way, as a friend and the mother of his kids. He knows he can count on me. He always could. And he has plenty of girlfriends, who are a lot younger and a lot more fun than I am, or ever was. I was always too serious for him.” Charles nodded. He liked that about her, and she suited him just fine. He found her relationship with her ex- husband strange. He almost never spoke to his ex-wife. Without children to bind them to each other, after the divorce there was nothing left, but a fair amount of animosity between them. Mostly, there was nothing. It was as if they had never been married. “When you have children,” Maxine said quietly, “you're kind of stuck with each other forever. And I have to admit, if we didn't have that, I would miss him. This works for all of us, especially the kids. It would be sad if their dad and I hated each other.” Possibly, Charles thought as he listened to her, but maybe easier for the next man or woman in their lives. Blake was a tough act to follow, for anyone, and in her own way, so was she, although she was very modest.
There was nothing arrogant or pompous about Maxine, in spite of her very successful psychiatric career, and even the books she had written. She was very low key, and he liked that about her. He wasn't nearly as much so, and he knew that about himself. Charles West had a fairly good opinion of himself, and wasn't shy by any means about his own accomplishments. He hadn't hesitated to try to strong-arm her into doing things his way over the Wexler boy, and only backed off later when he found out who Maxine was, and how expert she was in her field. Only then had he conceded that she knew better, particularly after Jason's third suicide attempt, which had left Charles unnerved and feeling foolish. He usually hated to admit he was wrong, but had no other choice in that case. Maxine was powerful, but both feminine and gentle. She didn't need to throw her weight around, and rarely did, except when a patient's life was at stake, but never to feed her ego. In many ways, to Charles, she seemed like the perfect woman, and he had never met anyone like her.
“How do your children feel about your dating?” he asked her as they finished dinner. He didn't quite dare ask her what they had said about him, although he wondered. It had been clear on Tuesday night that they had been startled to see him. And she obviously hadn't prepared them, since she had forgotten their date completely. His appearance on the scene had taken everyone by surprise, including Maxine when he walked in. And in turn, with everything that had happened after that, they had surprised the hell out of him. He had told a friend about it the next day, who had roared with laughter at Charles's description of the chaotic scene, and had said in no uncertain terms that it would do him good and loosen him up a little. “Couldn't happen to a nicer guy” had been his comment. As a rule, Charles preferred not to go out with women with children. He found it hard to spend time together when they were so wrapped up in their children's lives. Usually at least they had ex-husbands who took the kids half the time. Maxine had no one to take the heat off her, except a nanny, who was human and had her own problems. There was a lot resting on Maxine's shoulders, and being with Maxine would be a challenge for him because of that.
“They were pretty surprised,” Maxine said honestly. “I haven't dated in a long time. They're used to the women in their father's life, but I don't think it has even occurred to them that there might be someone in mine one day.” And she hadn't adjusted to the idea either. The men she had gone out with briefly had been of so little interest to her, and so unappealing that she had given up the concept.
The doctors she met always seemed pompous to her, or she had nothing in common with them, and they found the demands of her practice and home life too taxing. Most men didn't want a woman or a wife who went to the hospital for emergencies at four in the morning, and had that many demands on them outside the home. Blake hadn't loved it either, but her medical career had always been important to her, and her children even more so. Her cup was very full, and as Tuesday night had proven, it didn't take much for it to run over. There wasn't much room, if any, for anyone else. And he suspected that that suited her children. It had been clearly written on all their faces when he met them, that they wanted her to themselves, and he was not welcome in their midst. They didn't need him. And he suspected she didn't either. She didn't have that desperate quality of most women her age, who wanted more than anything to meet a man. What she conveyed instead was that she was happy, fulfilled, and doing fine on her own. And that appealed to him too. He had no desire to be anyone's savior, although he did want to be the hub of a woman's life. And with Maxine, he never would be. There were both positives and negatives to that.
“Do you think they'd adjust to your being involved with someone?” he asked casually, checking it out, and Maxine thought about it for a moment.
“Probably. Maybe. It would depend on the person, and how well they adjusted to my kids. Those things work two ways, and take some effort from both sides.” Charles nodded. It was a reasonable answer.
“What about you? Do you think you'd adjust to having a man in your life again, Maxine? You seem pretty self-
