To Survive Her Beauty

Chapter 1

Lawrence Schaeffer was a man people spoke well of.

At thirty, he had built one of the world’s largest digital-marketing companies. Clients praised his judgment; his employees knew he would hear them out. His office stood high above Montgomery Street, with San Francisco spread beneath its windows. To those who visited him there, it seemed that very little could be missing from his life.

His kindness was not reserved for people who could repay it. He remembered names, kept promises, and disliked making anyone feel small. He liked other people, and very much liked to be thought well of by them. Until recently, those qualities had seemed to belong comfortably together.

That afternoon, he sat opposite his oldest friend in the small terrace garden adjoining his office. Planters stood along a glass windscreen, their leaves stirring above its rim. Beyond them, traffic moved far below. Lawrence had asked Nancy, his assistant, to leave half an hour clear.

He had spent most of it asking Hank about his life.

At last Hank set down his coffee.

“You said there was something you wanted to talk about.”

Lawrence turned his cup in its saucer. “There is.”

Hank waited. His hair was gray at the temples, his face lined around the eyes. He had taken off his jacket and hung it over the chair, settling in as though he had nowhere else to be.

“Hank,” Lawrence said, “there is something very wrong with me.”

“Well, tell me.” His voice retained the low, unhurried warmth of his years as a late-night FM disc jockey.

Lawrence looked past him at a branch brushing the glass.

He had always been harder on himself than on anyone else. A sharp answer to Katherine at breakfast could trouble him long after she had forgotten it. He would apologize, be forgiven, and then lie awake considering whether he had apologized out of concern for her or merely to feel better himself.

Lately, there was something else to examine. He had begun looking forward to evenings he could not bring himself to explain to his wife.

That morning, driving to the office, he had switched off the radio to rehearse what he would tell Hank. Twice he had opened his mouth. He had arrived without saying a word.

Now Hank sat within arm’s reach, waiting to help him, and Lawrence could think only of how differently his friend might look at him afterward.

“You’ve always been like a brother to me,” he said.

“You know you can tell me.”

Lawrence looked at him, then away. “I…”

He pressed his lips together. The muscles around his eyes tightened.

Somewhere behind them, a sprinkler clicked against the edge of a flowerpot.

“Take your time,” Hank said.

The terrace door opened. Nancy stood just inside, one hand on the frame.

“Mr. Schaeffer? Steve is on line one. He says it’s urgent.”

Hank turned toward her. “Can he wait a few minutes?”

“No,” Lawrence said, too quickly. “No, I ought to take it.”

He stood and straightened his jacket.

“I’m sorry.”

Nancy stepped back to let him through.

“Lawrence,” Hank said.

He stopped beside the door.

“Call me tonight.”

“I’ll try.”

“Even if it’s late.”

Lawrence nodded and went inside.

From his desk, the view was much the same as it had been in the garden. Without the leaves and their small movements, he found it less comforting.

He lifted the receiver.

“Steve. How’s it going?”

The right words returned at once.

Steve was a client. His new advertising campaign was due to launch the following week, and he had not received the revised material he had been promised. Lawrence listened, asked two questions, and drew a pad toward him. Here was a difficulty he could do something about: a missing approval, a deadline, someone he could call.

“Friday,” he said. “I’ll speak to the account director myself. You’ll have everything before the weekend.”

The tension left Steve’s voice.

“Pleasure to talk with you, Lawrence, as always.”

“And with you.”

Lawrence was smiling when he put down the receiver. He liked Steve. He was glad to have helped him.

A moment later, his cell phone lit up beside the pad.

Katherine.

“Hello, honey.”

“I’ve just found the flowers,” she said. “How long have they been sitting there?”

“They were supposed to arrive this morning.”

“Well, they’re beautiful. I walked straight past them twice.”

Lawrence leaned back in his chair, his smile widening. “I’m glad you like them, sweetie. Sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye.”

“You were busy, Mr. Businessman.”

He laughed. She had called him that when his office was one end of their kitchen table and she had to move his paperwork to make room for dinner.

There was a small commotion at the other end of the line.

“No, sweetheart. Let your brother finish.”

Their daughter protested. Katherine covered the phone, though he could still hear her settling the dispute.

“Sorry,” she said when she returned. “They both need the same pencil.”

“The only pencil in the house?”

“Apparently.”

He could picture the small crease between her eyebrows as she surveyed them, trying not to laugh. He wished he had called her earlier, just to hear how her day was going.

“Are you coming home for dinner?” she asked.

His eyes moved to the jacket hanging beside his desk.

“I may be a little late.”

“How late?”

“I’m not certain.”

“All right. I’ll put something aside.”

“Thank you.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Katherine.”

He held the phone a moment after the call ended.

He loved her. There had been no falsehood in the words. He pictured her putting down the phone and finding another pencil, perhaps stopping beside the flowers now that she knew they were there.

Yet he found himself going over the conversation, listening again to his own answers. Had he sounded distracted? Had the pause before he answered her been long enough to notice?

He set the phone facedown and reached for his notes.

The afternoon passed in meetings and calls. By six, he was making his way toward the elevator.

“Leaving early today?” Nancy asked.

“On time, I think.”

“Quite right.”

Her bag stood beside her chair, but a document was still open on her screen. She glanced at the clock, then back at him. He wondered whether she had noticed how carefully he had kept his last appointment from running over.

“Don’t stay on my account,” he said.

“I’m finishing this, and then I’m going.”

“Good. Have a nice evening.”

“You too.”

Inside the elevator, Lawrence stared at the polished wall. Without shifting his gaze, he patted his suit pocket.

The ticket was still there.

Downstairs, he said goodbye to the woman at the front desk and stepped into the cool evening air. He collected his car and drove away.

But he was not going home.

---

At Herbst Theatre, Lawrence left his car with the valet, handed his ticket to an usher, and entered the hall.

Red upholstery, gilded ornament, great murals above the audience: he had admired it all on his first visit. For all its splendor, it was an intimate room. Even from the back, the stage seemed close.

Tonight, he had an aisle seat a few rows from the front.

Near the entrance, a man turned toward him with the beginnings of recognition. Lawrence lowered his eyes to the ticket and continued down the aisle. Ordinarily, he would have stopped. Tonight, a conversation might lead to a question about whom he had come to hear.

There were ten minutes until the performance.

He opened his program, found the violinist’s name, and closed it again.

He slipped the ticket into his pocket. His fingers touched his phone. Katherine had asked when he would be home; he could still send a message telling her where he was.

He withdrew his hand.

Onstage, the piano stood with its lid raised. Someone nearby was discussing another concert; behind him, a woman laughed at something her companion had said. Programs rustled throughout the hall.

Lawrence watched the stage entrance.

At last the lights dimmed. An announcement was made.

“La Fontaine d’Aréthuse, from Mythes, by Karol Szymanowski.”

The applause began, and Celeste Courtois gracefully walked onto the stage, carrying her violin.

Her dress was a deep maroon, almost black until the light reached it. A narrow line of stones marked her waist; below them, the silk fell in long folds that stirred around her feet. Against the dark fabric, her bare arms and shoulders seemed luminous.

Her copper-chestnut hair was gathered low behind her head. Where the light touched it, it shone a burnished red. A loose curl rested beside one ear.

Since the last performance, Lawrence had tried to remember her face without improving it. Now he searched it almost anxiously: the rounded cheeks, the delicate chin, the gray-green eyes beneath fine brows. There was the small mole below her right collarbone.

He remembered the strange tenderness with which he had first noticed it. He had been sitting in this same hall, several rows farther back.

Against the black piano, with the maroon dress beneath her face and that rich copper color above it, she had the completeness of a portrait. His eye could move from one part to another and find nothing that seemed accidental.

Then she turned toward the pianist.

He said something Lawrence could not hear, and she smiled.

It began at one corner of her mouth and spread, lifting her cheeks, changing her eyes. The composure of her entrance fell away. For an instant she looked simply pleased to be there with him, about to play.

Lawrence’s fingers tightened around the program.

He had remembered her beauty. He had not remembered quite how sweet her face could be.

She settled the violin beneath her chin. The pianist raised his hands.

At first the notes were so quiet that Lawrence could still hear someone shifting in a seat behind him. Then the violin entered, and he ceased to notice the room.

The high notes pierced him. He wanted them to continue.

He watched the bow pass over the strings, watched the small, certain movements of her fingers. What reached him was so full of feeling that he could scarcely reconcile it with the composure of the woman producing it.

Her face changed as she listened. A little concentration gathered between her brows, then disappeared. Once she glanced toward the pianist, following something in his playing, and the beginning of that smile returned.

Lawrence leaned forward.

There were passages in which the music seemed to hesitate, to approach something and draw away before returning with a greater tenderness. He waited through each hesitation. When the melody rose, something in his chest rose with it; when it softened, he felt his body yield.

He drew breath when she did.

For several minutes, he did not once consider what kind of man he was.

The light moved along her arm. Her fingers traveled the neck of the violin, and for a moment her eyes closed with the ease of someone listening closely to a familiar voice.

He wanted her to keep them closed. Then she opened them, and he could not imagine wanting anything else.

For those few measures, he felt himself entirely hers.

There was no room left for the office or the unfinished conversation in the garden. His attention followed her so completely that even the pauses seemed to belong to her.

During one quiet phrase, her expression softened. From where he sat, it seemed almost affectionate.

He knew she was listening to the music. Still, the thought came.

I wish this were for me.

He lowered his eyes. The program was creased beneath his thumb. He smoothed it against his knee, although the crease would not come out.

He remembered Katherine’s voice on the phone.

I’ll put something aside.

For several bars he scarcely heard the violin.

Then Celeste began another phrase, and before he had decided to look up, he was watching her again.

When the final note faded, he remained motionless. The applause startled him. He joined it a moment late.

Celeste bowed. A little color had risen in her face from the effort of playing. She stepped back, making room for the pianist, and reached toward him so that they could acknowledge the audience together.

Her smile traveled over the hall.

For an instant Lawrence thought it had reached him. Then she turned, and he understood that she had seen only another face among the rows.

As the applause subsided, Lawrence rose and made his way out.

Chapter 2

Outside the theater, Lawrence drew a long breath.

He ought to collect his car.

Instead, he sat on a bench.

The first concert had been an accident. Someone had offered him a ticket, and he had gone because Katherine was away that evening and because he liked music.

That was all.

Afterward, he had thought about the violinist on the drive home. The following morning, he had thought about her while shaving. By the end of the week, he had bought another ticket.

She was in the city for a series of recitals. He had told himself he was returning for the music. Later, he had told himself he was returning to prove that the first evening had meant nothing.

Both explanations contained enough truth to be useful. Neither explained the relief he had felt tonight when she walked onto the stage.

For weeks he had slept in fragments. During the day, work gave him temporary relief: a problem had particulars, a decision could be made, a task could be finished. At night, the same argument resumed wherever he had last abandoned it.

I know what I should do.

He should go home. He should stop buying tickets. He should speak to Hank.

The answers were so plain that he distrusted himself for needing to repeat them.

Then why don’t I do it?

Because he wanted to hear her again. Because he wanted to see her. Because some part of him had begun to resent everything that stood between him and the next performance.

He bent forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

That was the part he could scarcely admit even in silence.

He had never spoken to Celeste. He knew nothing of her habits, her temper, her private disappointments. He did not know whether they would have anything to say to one another across a dinner table.

Yet he had begun to carry her into rooms where she had never been: at breakfast with his children, in bed beside his wife.

At dinner the previous week, Katherine had been telling him about their daughter’s part in the school play.

“Only one line,” she said. “But she says the whole play depends on it.”

Lawrence had smiled.

A phrase from the concert kept returning. He could not remember whether Celeste had opened her eyes before the final note or after it.

“She wants you to practice with her tonight.”

He nodded.

“Lawrence?”

“I’m sorry. What did you say?”

Katherine repeated the story. He put down his fork and listened carefully this time.

He loved his family. He had meant every affectionate word he had spoken that afternoon. Yet alongside that love was a wish he could not reconcile with it. He could find no place in his understanding of himself where both could exist.

How could I be a good man—a good husband—with thoughts like these?

He tried to imagine hearing Celeste once more and feeling nothing unusual. Surely that would be a relief.

Yet the prospect felt like a loss.

How many men had ever felt anything like it? He could not believe it was common. If it were, surely someone would have found better words.

Admiration, desire, infatuation—he tried each in turn and felt how much it left out. Where was the music in those words? Where was the tenderness that had come over him when she smiled, so sudden and so great that for a moment he had wanted nothing except for her to go on smiling?

He knew how it would sound.

A married man. A beautiful woman.

Hank would hear him out. But could Lawrence make him understand what those few minutes had been? Could he explain that he had sat without moving, yet come away feeling that something of himself had remained with her?

His phone vibrated.

A message from Hank.

Still expecting that call. No need to make it a speech.

Lawrence looked at the message for a long time. Then he opened a reply.

There is someone—

He erased it. That made it sound as though there had been an affair.

I haven’t done anything, but—

He erased that too. It sounded like an excuse prepared before an accusation.

On the sidewalk, a woman stopped to search her handbag while her companion held both their coats. Somewhere nearby, someone laughed.

Lawrence watched them with a strange envy. They seemed able to proceed from one ordinary action to another without first proving themselves worthy of doing so.

He tried again.

I need to tell you something.

His thumb hovered over the send button.

Once he sent it, Hank would answer. There would be questions. Lawrence would have to hear his desire described in another person’s voice. His friend might be kind. He might be understanding.

But afterward, he would know.

Lawrence put the phone away.

Tomorrow.

The word brought a moment’s relief. Then he recognized it as the word he had used yesterday.

The valet stood beneath the theater lights. Lawrence rose, intending to walk a little before asking for his car.

The breeze felt nice.

He loosened his tie.

---

He walked past the first turning that would have taken him back. Then another.

What had begun as an unwelcome thought had become a test he set himself every few minutes. To leave it unexamined seemed dishonest; to examine it was to summon her again.

If I can choose what I do, why can’t I choose what I want?

His shirt had begun to cling to him. He stopped outside a darkened shop and saw his reflection in the glass: a well-dressed man, slightly disheveled, standing alone.

He looked much as he always had.

That seemed intolerable. How could he feel so changed and look so ordinary?

He thought of Hank waiting at the garden table. Had he stayed in his chair another minute, perhaps the words would have come. But he had stood up. He had taken the call. Afterward, he had spoken easily to everyone except the one person he had meant to speak to.

Lawrence began walking again.

The breeze feels nice.

He repeated it until the sentence lost its meaning.

He imagined approaching Celeste after a performance. He imagined finding a reason to see her again. He imagined Katherine discovering it, his children looking at him with an incomprehension he could not bear.

Each scene acquired the force of a memory, although none had happened.

When he tried to imagine choosing differently, his thoughts returned to the ticket—to the relief he had felt when his fingers found it in his pocket.

You said you wouldn’t go back.

He had.

And he had gone back.

To his exhausted mind, that failure seemed to foretell every choice he would ever make.

His phone vibrated once more. He did not take it out.

The evening became night. Windows shone above the streets, and restaurant doors opened briefly upon the sound of conversation. He walked until his feet hurt, then continued without attending to them.

By the time he stopped, he had reached Mercer Bridge.

Traffic passed behind him. Below, the water was ink-black, broken here and there by reflected lights. He had crossed this bridge many times, but never on foot at this hour.

I must protect my wife. My children.

He pressed his hands together. They were trembling.

They will miss me, yes. But is it worse to die loved or to live hated?

He stood with the question as though there were no other possibilities.

Somewhere beyond the argument were facts he knew: Hank had asked him to call; Katherine was keeping his dinner; he had made no promise to Celeste and received none from her.

But whenever he reached for those facts, his thoughts returned to what he might become.

He had imagined his wife’s hatred so often that he no longer questioned it. He could scarcely remember that he had never given her the chance to answer.

At last he took out his phone.

Katherine’s message was brief.

Will you be much longer?

He touched her name.

For a moment he pictured telling her that he was frightened. Not explaining everything, not defending himself. Only saying where he was and that he did not know what to do.

He began to cry.

“Jesus above,” he whispered. “Forgive me.”

A car passed. Somewhere a horn sounded.

He looked again at his wife’s message.

“I…”

---

The news reached Hank the following morning.

Katherine called him after speaking with the police. At first he could not understand what she was saying. He asked her to repeat it, then wished he had not made her say it twice.

Later, there would be questions he could not answer.

What had Lawrence told him? Had he seemed different? Had he said why?

Hank could offer only the broken beginning of a conversation. He had known that something was wrong. He had not known how much remained unsaid.

At the memorial, the speakers called Lawrence generous, devoted, a good man. Those who had worked for him told stories; those who had known him longer added stories of their own. There was laughter as well as crying.

Katherine recognized the man they described. She could have told them a hundred more.

When they spoke of how much he loved his children, their daughter pressed closer to her. Katherine put an arm around her and kept it there.

Hank had prepared a speech. It began with the year they had met and ended with a story Lawrence used to tell badly.

“He was a brother to me,” he began.

Then he had to stop.

For a moment he was back at the garden table, with Lawrence standing before him, straightening a jacket that needed no adjustment.

He looked down at his notes until he could read them again.

At home, Katherine still found small evidence of the life Lawrence had expected to continue: a book left open, a shirt put aside for washing, a note about something he intended to do that weekend.

The flowers remained on the entryway table.

Through the following days, she watered them almost without thinking.

She had liked the flowers.

She had wanted him home.