She stood there, staring at David, her naked image reflected in the mirror.
“Let me get dressed,” she said.
David nodded and left the room. He walked into the large drawing room, pacing up and down, preparing for the confrontation. Surely after all these years, Cissy would not want to hang onto a marriage that was a hollow shell. He would give her anything she—
He heard the sound of Cissy’s car starting and then the scream of tires as it careened down the driveway. David raced to the front door and looked out. Cissy’s Maserati was racing toward the highway. Quickly, David got into his car, started the engine and gunned down the driveway after Cissy.
As he reached the highway, her car was just disappearing in the distance. He stepped down hard on the accelerator. The Maserati was a faster car than David’s Rolls. He pressed down harder on the gas pedal: 70…80…90. Her car was no longer in sight.
100…110…still no sign of her.
He reached the top of a small rise, and there he saw the car, like a distant toy, careening around a curve. The torque was pulling the car to one side, the tires fighting to hold their traction on the road. The Maserati swayed back and forth, yawing across the highway. Then it leveled off and made it past the curve. And suddenly the car hit the shoulder of the road and shot into the air like a catapult and rolled over and over across the fields.
David pulled Cissy’s unconscious body out of the car moments before the ruptured gas tank exploded.
It was six o’clock the next morning before the chief surgeon came out of the operating room and said to David, “She’s going to live.”
Jill arrived at the lake just before sunset. She drove to the edge of the water. Turning off the motor, she gave herself up to the sounds of the wind and the air. I don’t know when I’ve ever been so happy, she thought. And then she corrected herself. Yes, I do. Here. With David. And she remembered how his body had felt on hers and she grew faint with wanting. Whatever had spoiled their happiness was over. She had felt it the moment she had seen David. He was still in love with her. She knew it.
She watched the blood-red sun slowly drown in the distant water, and darkness fell. She wished that David would hurry.
An hour passed, then two, and the air became chilled. She sat in the car, still and quiet. She watched the huge dead-white moon float into the sky. She listened to the night sounds all around her and she said to herself, David is coming.
Jill sat there all night and, in the morning, when the sun began to stain the horizon, she started the car and drove home to Hollywood.
24
Jill sat in front of her dressing table and studied her face in the mirror. She saw a barely perceptible wrinkle at the corner of her eye and frowned. It’s unfair, she thought. A man can completely let himself go. He can have gray hair, a pot-belly and a face like a road map, and no one thinks anything of it. But let a woman get one tiny wrinkle… She began to apply her makeup. Bob Schiffer, Hollywood’s top makeup artist had taught her some of his techniques. Jill put on a pan-stick base instead of the powder base that she had once used. Powder dried the skin, while the pan stick kept it moist. Next, she concentrated on her eyes, the makeup under the lower lids three or four shades lighter than her other makeup, so that the shadows were softened. She rubbed in a small amount of eye shadow to give her eyes more color, then carefully applied false eyelashes over her own lashes, tilting them at the outer edges at a forty-five-degree angle. She brushed some Duo adhesive on her own outer lashes and joined them with the false lashes, making the eyes look larger. To give the lashes a fuller look, she drew fine dots on her lower eyelid beneath her own lashes. After that, Jill applied her lipstick, then powdered her lips before applying a second coat of lipstick. She applied a blusher to her cheeks and dusted her face with powder, avoiding the areas around her eyes where the powder would accentuate the faint wrinkles.