The Last Chance by Rona Jaffe Read Free Book Online Page A

Stars,” or getting tickets to a midnight rock concert, or insisting they stand on line for an hour in the afternoon in the bitter cold because he wanted to see a hit movie the day it opened. He had to see everything, they had to keep running all weekend until she was exhausted. He took her to SoHo because she’d never been, she took him to a revival of an old Humphrey Bogart movie she’d seen the first time it ran, when he’d been too young to see it, and they went to the Planetarium because neither of them had ever been.
    She had gone all over New York with camera crews in the course of her work, but that had been the insider’s New York, the human interest stories, the disasters. Kerry’s was like a tourist’s New York, taking advantage of everything the city had to offer, as if his stay was only temporary. She remembered when she had been his age; she had been the same way, because everything was new, she was on her own, and at last she had some money to go places. The two of them shared all their expenses, like kids his age did, and that was good, because she didn’t want to feel she was keeping him and yet she felt guilty about letting him pay for things. He wouldn’t take much money from his father, just enough to get by until his novel made some money, if he was lucky.
    Perhaps Kerry wanted to do everything this minute because he was young, or perhaps it was because he knew, as she did, that their love was just for now. Neither of them ever discussed that. But even at the happiest moments Margot felt sad underneath the joy. On a winter Sunday they had been ice-skating in Central Park on rented skates, and came back to her apartment just as the early dusk fell. They stripped off their wet clothes and he lit a fire in the fireplace Margot had never used before she met him because she’d thought fireplaces were messy. Outside their windows it was black, inside the warm room it was safe. His naked body was lit with a roseate glow as he kneeled over the logs setting tapers to the kindling, and she thought she had never seen a body so beautiful as his. Young, slender, perfect, like no body she had ever seen. Did young men look that way when she was twenty-three? She couldn’t remember. She hadn’t gone to bed with young men then, she had always been infatuated with older, married men who babied her, and then later, when she began to concentrate on men her own age in hope of finding something lasting, they had already gone to flab from their years as bachelor playboys or office drones. Kerry was looking into the fire with utter pleasure, and then he turned and looked at her with the same look of happiness, and she thought she had never been so happy in her life. At that same moment her throat closed with the beginning of tears and she had to fight them back.
    Through those long, wonderful winter evenings they made plans for the summer. He wanted to take her to the Greek islands. Neither of them had ever been there. They would rent a small boat. For the first time the strange names had the ring of reality. She would take two weeks, perhaps in July. No, he said, better make it the end of September; there wouldn’t be many tourists then and he would have finished his book. She was glad he was the one who set the date farther ahead. At least she would still be seeing him in the fall.…
    She was obsessed with his body and he seemed as obsessed with hers, or perhaps young men just wanted sex all the time. He wore her out, but she didn’t care. She didn’t need sleep, she only needed him. He told her he loved her and she finally let herself believe it. If caring so much made you pay more afterward, then that was a risk you had to take. She felt this could never happen again, she would be different afterward—she would have to act her age. But now there was still time to do all the things she’d missed when she was young.
    There were times, of course, when the world intruded. He took her to a party to meet all his