The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo(72)
One Saturday, he came into the kitchen as Luisa was making me some toast. I was drinking a cup of coffee and having a cigarette, waiting for Harry to come pick me up for a round of tennis.
Rex went to the fridge and poured himself a glass of orange juice. He sat down beside me at the table.
Luisa put the toast in front of me and then set the butter dish in the center of the table.
“Anything for you, Mr. North?” she asked.
Rex shook his head. “Thank you, Luisa.”
And then all three of us could sense it; she needed to excuse herself. Something was about to happen.
“I’ll be starting the laundry,” she said, and slipped away.
“I’m in love,” Rex said when we were finally alone.
It was perhaps the very last thing I ever thought he’d say.
“In love?” I asked.
He laughed at my shock. “It doesn’t make any sense. Trust me, I know that.”
“With whom?”
“Joy.”
“Joy Nathan?”
“Yes. We’ve seen each other on and off through the years. You know how it is.”
“I know how it is with you, sure. But last I heard, you broke her heart.”
“Yes, well, it will come as no surprise to you that I have, in the past, been a little . . . let’s say, heartless.”
“Sure, we can say that.”
Rex laughed. “But I started feeling like it might be nice to have a woman in my bed when I woke up in the morning.”
“How novel.”
“And when I thought of what woman I might like that to be, I thought of Joy. So we’ve been seeing each other. Quietly, mind you. And, well, now I find that I can’t stop thinking about her. That I want to be around her all the time.”
“Rex, that’s wonderful,” I said.
“I hoped you’d think so.”
“So what should we do?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, breathing deeply, “Joy and I would like to marry.”
“OK,” I said, my brain already kicking into high gear, calculating the perfect time to announce our divorce. We’d already had two movies come out, one a modest hit, one a smash. The third, Carolina Sunset, about a young couple who have lost a child and move to a farm in North Carolina to try to heal, ultimately having affairs with people in their small town, was premiering in a few months.
Rex had phoned in his performance. But I knew the movie had the potential to be big for me. “We’ll say that the stress of filming Carolina Sunset, of being on set and watching each other kiss other people, ruined us. Everyone will feel bad for us but not too bad. People love stories of hubris. We took what we had for granted, and now we’re paying the price. You’ll wait a little while. We’ll plant a story that I introduced you to Joy because I wanted you to be happy.”
“That’s great, Evelyn, really,” Rex said. “Except that Joy’s pregnant. We’re having a baby.”
I closed my eyes, frustrated. “OK,” I said. “OK. Let me think.”
“What if we just say that we haven’t been happy for a while? That we’ve been living separate lives?”
“Then we’re saying that our chemistry has fizzled out. And who’s going to go see Carolina Sunset then?”
This was the moment, the one Harry had warned me about. Rex didn’t care about Carolina Sunset, certainly not as much as I did. He knew he wasn’t anything special in it, and even if he was, he was all wrapped up in his new love, his new baby.
He looked out the window and then back at me. “OK,” he said. “You’re right. We went into this together, we’ll leave it together. What do you suggest? I told Joy we’d be married by the time the baby comes.”
Rex North was always a more stand-up guy than anyone gave him credit for.
“Obviously,” I said. “Of course.”
The doorbell rang, and a moment later, Harry walked into the kitchen.
I had an idea.
It wasn’t a flawless idea.
Almost no idea is.
“We’re having affairs,” I said.
“What?” Rex asked.
“Good morning,” Harry said, realizing he’d missed a large part of the conversation.
“During the course of making a movie about both of us having affairs, we both started having affairs. You with Joy, me with Harry.”
“What?” Harry said.
“People know we work together,” I said to Harry. “They’ve seen us together. You’ve been in the background of hundreds of photos of me. They’ll believe it.” I turned to Rex. “We’ll divorce immediately after the stories are planted. And anyone who blames you for cheating on me with Joy, which we can’t deny for obvious reasons, will realize it’s a victimless crime. Because I was doing it to you, too.”