The Villa

without trouble. "I'll handle the details. Quietly, of course. After all this time, it won't interest the press. Actually, it's hardly more than signing a few papers at this point. In fact, I'm sure all but our most intimate friends think we're already divorced."
    When she said nothing, he got to his feet. "We'll all be happier once this is behind us. You'll see. Meanwhile, I think you should speak with Sophia. It's best coming from you—woman to woman. No doubt that when she sees you're agreeable, she'll feel more friendly toward Rene."
    "Do you underestimate everyone, Tony?"
    He held up his hands. "I simply feel that we'll all be more comfortable if we can keep this friendly. Rene will be my wife, and as such will be part of my professional and social life. We'll all see each other now and then. I expect Sophia to be polite."
    "I expected you to be faithful. We all live with our disappointments. You got what you came for, Tony. I'd suggest you take Rene and leave before Mama finishes her port. I think there's been enough unpleasantness in this house for one day."
    "Agreed." He started for the door, hesitated. "I do wish you the best, Pilar."
    "Yes, I believe you. For some reason, I wish you the same. Goodbye, Tony."
    When he closed the doors behind him, she walked carefully to a chair, sat slowly as if her bones might shatter at too sharp a move.
    She remembered what it was like to be eighteen and wildly in love, full of plans and dreams and brilliance.
    She remembered what it was like to be twenty-three and sliced through the heart by the stab of betrayal and the true loss of innocence. And thirty, fighting to cling to the shreds of a disintegrating marriage, to raise a child and hold a husband who was too careless to pretend to love you.
    She remembered what it was like to be forty and resigned to the loss, empty of those dreams, those plans with the brilliance dulled dark.
    Now, she thought, she knew what it was to be forty-eight, alone, with no illusions left. Replaced, legally, by the new, improved model, as she'd been replaced covertly so often.
    She lifted her hand, slid her wedding ring up to the first knuckle. She'd worn that simple band for thirty years. Now she was being told to discard it, and the promises she'd made before God, before family, before friends.
    Tears burned at her eyes as she slipped it from her finger. What was it, after all, she thought, but an empty circle. The perfect symbol for her marriage.
    She had never been loved. Pilar let her head fall back. How lowering, how sad, to sit here now and accept, admit what she had refused to accept and admit for so long. No man, not even her husband, had ever loved her.
    When the doors opened, she closed her fingers around the ring, willed the tears to wait.
    "Pilar." Helen took one look. Her lips tightened. "Okay, let's forget the coffee section of today's entertainment."
    At home, she crossed to a painted cabinet, opened it and selected a decanter of brandy. She poured two snifters, then walked over to sit on the footstool in front of Pilar's chair.
    "Drink up, honey. You look pale."
    Saying nothing, Pilar opened her hand. The ring glinted once in the firelight.
    "Yeah, I figured that when the slut kept flashing the rock of ages on her finger. They deserve each other. He never deserved you."
    "Stupid, stupid to be shaken like this. We haven't been married for years, not in any real sense. But thirty years, Helen." She held up the ring and, looking through that empty circle, saw her life. Narrow and encapsulated. "Thirty goddamn years. She was in diapers when I met Tony."
    "That's the big ouch. So she's younger and got bigger breasts." Helen shrugged. "God knows those reasons alone are enough to hate her fucking guts. I'm with you there, and so's the crowd. But think of this. If she sticks with him, by the time she's our age, she'll be feeding him baby food and changing his diapers."
    Pilar let out a moaning laugh. "I hate where I am, and I don't know how to get someplace else. I didn't even fight back, Helen."
    "So you're not a warrior." Helen rose to sit on the arm of the chair, wrapped an arm around Pilar's shoulder. "You're a beautiful, intelligent, kind woman who got a raw deal. And damn, honey, if this door finally closing isn't the best thing for you."
    "God, now you sound like Tony."
    "No need to be insulting. Besides, he didn't mean that, and I do."
    "Maybe, maybe. I can't see clearly now. I can't see through the next hour much less the