A Perfect Life: A Novel Read Free Page B

worked until the day Salima was born, left for the hospital from her office, and was back on air in three weeks. Harry flew in on his plane for the delivery, and just made it. But he already had five children from his previous wives, and never pretended to be an attentive father, and still wasn’t. He saw Salima once or twice a year now and had had two more children since. He had eight in all, and he regarded it as the price he paid for marrying young women. They all wanted kids. He was happy to oblige them, and support them handsomely, but he was an absentee father at best. Salima had been disappointed by it when she was younger, but Blaise explained that it was just the way he was. And Blaise loved her daughter, but there were always a dozen projects and people vying for her time. Salima understood, it was how she had grown up, and she worshipped her mother.
    The marriage to Harry had lasted five years after they became bicoastal, and then they both gave up. The relationship had dwindled to nothing by then, except for a warm friendship and occasional late-night calls between California and New York. There had been no hostility, no arguments, and they waited five more years to get divorced, when Harry wanted to get married again. Until then, he claimed that still being married to Blaise kept him out of trouble. Until he found a supermodel, who convinced him to get divorced and marry her. Blaise had gone to their wedding, and over the years she had wanted nothing from him, except child support for their daughter. They had been legally married for eleven years, butreally only lived together full time as man and wife for less than one. And Blaise was thirty-eight when they got divorced.
    Her relationships had been inconsistent from then on, as she flew around the world doing specials, and her career continued to climb. There had been a brief affair with a baseball star, which had been silly, they had nothing in common. A romance with a politician, which elicited considerable interest in the press. An important businessman, a famous actor. There was no one she cared about, and she never had time. The affairs would end, and they would move on to someone else before she even noticed. And she didn’t care. They were window dressing in her life, and a distraction, and nothing more.
    Her last affair, at forty-one, had been different. When Andrew Weyland took over as their news anchor, he was movie-star handsome and had every woman in the building going weak at the knees. As far as anyone knew, he was married, and Blaise had been the first one he told he was getting divorced. He asked her to keep it quiet, so it didn’t wind up in the tabloids, and literally days after he shared that with her, he asked her out. She hesitated only for a minute, and although she wasn’t immune to his looks either, what she loved best about him was how smart he was. Andrew was brilliant, funny, witty, he had a light touch about everything except love. And their relationship had rapidly grown intense. He was the most seductive, appealing, breathtaking man she had ever met. She fell head over heels in love with him, and when he proposed to her a year after they started dating, she said yes, without hesitation or regret. Even Salima loved him, he had a wonderful way with everyone, even kids. And with both of them in the same business, anddedicated to their careers, it seemed like the perfect match. He was kind and understanding, and even funny, about everything she did. Where other men had been annoyed by her intensity about her work, Andrew admired it, never complained about how busy she was, and gave her great advice.
    Blaise knew, during the year she went out with him, that he still shared a house in Greenwich with his wife and children. He often went there on weekends to see his kids, and had reasonably explained that until the house sold, they were living separate lives under one roof. He had taken an apartment in the city, and most of the time, he