One Fifth Avenue - Candace Bushnell [39]
“You’re my best friend, too.”
“We understand each other. We’ll always be friends.”
They went back to her apartment. She had an antique four-poster bed she’d had shipped from England; that year she’d spent two months in London doing a play and become enamored with the idea of English country houses. Philip was propped up on his arms above her, his hair falling into her face. They made love hard and seriously, astounded by how good it still was, which once again brought up the issue of being together. He asked about her schedule. She was flying to Europe and was supposed to go directly back to L.A. but said she’d make a detour and spend at least a few days in New York. Then she went to Europe and got stuck there for an extra two weeks and had to go directly back to L.A. Then she started a movie that was shooting in Vancouver and India. Six months passed, and she heard from someone that Philip was getting married. She got on a plane and flew to New York to confront him.
“You can’t get married,” she said.
“Why not?”
“What about us?”
“There is no us.”
“Only because you don’t want there to be.”
“Whether I want it or not is irrelevant. It doesn’t exist.”
“Who is she?” Schiffer demanded. “What does she do?”
Her name was Susan, and she taught at a private school in Manhattan. When Schiffer insisted, he showed her a photograph. She was twenty-six, pretty, and utterly bland. “After all the women you’ve been with, why her?” she asked.
“I’m in love with her. She’s nice,” Philip said.
Schiffer raged and then begged. “What does she have that I don’t have?”
“She’s stable.”
“I can be stable.”
“She’s in the same place all the time.”
“And that’s what you want? Some little mouse who will do everything you say?”
“You don’t know Susan. She’s very independent.”
“She’s dependent. That’s the real reason why you want to marry her. At least be truthful about your motives.”
“We’re getting married on September twenty-sixth.”
“Where?”
“I won’t tell you. I don’t want you to crash the wedding.”
“I’m not going to crash it. Why are you so worried? I bet you’re getting married in her parents’ backyard.”
“Their country house, actually. In East Hampton.”
She did crash the wedding by enlisting Billy Litchfield to help her. They hid in the hedges surrounding the property. She watched Philip in a white linen suit say “I do” to another woman. For months afterward, she justified her behavior by claiming Philip’s marriage was like a death: One needed to see the dead body in order to believe the soul was really gone.
A little over a year had passed when she heard from an agent that Philip was getting divorced. His marriage had lasted fourteen months. But by then it was too late. Schiffer was engaged to the English marquis, an aging glamour boy who turned out to have a vicious drug habit. When he died in a boating accident in Saint-Tropez, she went back to L.A. to restart her career.
There was no work, her agent told her—she’d been away for too long, and she was over thirty-five. He said she ought to do what every other actress did and start having children. Being alone in L.A. without work to distract her from her husband’s death slammed her into a deep depression, and one day she didn’t bother to get out of bed. She stayed there for weeks.
Philip had come to L.A. in that time, but she’d made excuses not to see him. She couldn’t see anyone. She could barely leave the house in Los Feliz. The thought of driving down the hill to the supermarket exhausted her, it took hours to work up the energy to gather her things, get in the car, and back it out of the garage. Steering the car along the hairpin turns, she looked for places where she might drive off the road and into a steep ravine, but she wasn’t sure an accident would result in death, and it might leave her worse off than she already was.
Her agent forced her to lunch one afternoon at the Polo Club. She could barely speak and picked at her food. “What’s wrong with you?” he