CHAPTER 19
"This is my favorite room." Maris basked in the familiar comfort of her father's home study, where they were having cocktails.
At the last minute Noah had needed to consult with the contracts manager over a disputed clause, so he had urged her to go to Daniel's house ahead of him. She hadn't minded his being detained.
Since her return from Georgia, she hadn't spent any time alone with her father.
"I'm rather partial to this room myself," Daniel said. "I spend a lot of time in here, but I like it even more when you're sharing it with me."
She laughed. "You didn't always feel that way. I remember times when I'd come in here hoping to coax you away from the work that you'd brought home with you. I made a pest of myself." They smiled at the shared recollections, but Daniel's expression turned somber.
"I wish I had those times to relive, Maris.
If I did, I'd spend more time skating in the park or playing Monopoly with you. I regret passing up those opportunities."
"I wasn't deprived much, Dad. In fact, I wasn't deprived of anything. Most of all you."
"You're being far too generous, but I thank you for saying that."
Maris sensed a melancholia in him tonight.
He'd been very glad to see her, but his jocularity didn't quite ring true. His comic bickering with Maxine seemed forced. His smiles were good counterfeits of the real thing, but they were noticeably strained.
"Dad, aren't you feeling well? Is something wrong?"
He cited Howard Bancroft's funeral.
"It's tomorrow morning."
She nodded sympathetically. "Howard wasn't just your corporate lawyer, he was a good and
#trusted friend." #######################431
"I'm going to miss him. He'll be missed all over this city. For the life of me, I can't understand what drove him to do such a terrible thing."
He was grieving his loss, naturally, but Maris wasn't entirely sure that Bancroft's suicide was the only thing weighing heavily on Daniel's mind. She reasoned that his mood might be in response to her own. She wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs tonight, either. She could attribute her moodiness to two things. Well, actually two _people. Noah and Parker.
Noah's explanation for his meeting with WorldView had been plausible. Daniel had even verified it. Nevertheless, it rankled that they had kept her unaware of something so vitally important to the future of Matherly Press.
She had never been _that busy.
Had she been anyone else, her high ranking in the company would have demanded she be kept apprised. Their personal relationships should not have been a factor. As senior vice president of the corporation, she had deserved to be informed of Blume's poaching. As a wife, she deserved her husband's respect.
That's what had really infuriated her--
Noah's nonchalant dismissal of her anger.
He'd treated her like a child who could be easily mollified with a candy stick, or a pet whose trust could be earned with a pat on the head. His peacemaking platitudes had been textbook standards.
Marriage 101, lesson three: How to Fight Constructively.
The way in which he'd placated her had been more belittling than his original offense. Didn't he know her any better than to think she could be so easily defused and dismissed?
"Maris?"
She raised her head and smiled at Daniel with chagrin. "Did I drift?"
"No farther than a million miles."
"I'm sorry. I've got a lot on my mind."
"Would you freshen my drink, please?" When she hesitated, he waved his hand irritably. "I know, I know. You think I'm drinking too much.
By the way, I saw through that man-to-man advice Noah gave me. It came straight from you."
"I worry about you navigating the stairs after you've had a few, that's all. You're a little
#unsteady to start." ####################433
"If I get drunk tonight, you can carry me up the stairs piggyback, how's that?" Chastening him with a look, she crossed the room to get his glass and carried it with her to the bar. "While you're at it, why don't you have another?" he suggested. "I think you could use it."
She poured him another scotch and refilled her wineglass with Chardonnay. "Why?"
"Why do I think you need alcoholic reinforcement this evening? Because you look like your puppy has run away from home."
True. She was feeling a huge sense of loss. She'd been reluctant to pinpoint the source of it and assign it a name, but in her heart of hearts, she knew its name: Parker Evans.
She resettled in her chair, and as Daniel methodically refilled the bowl of his pipe, she let her gaze wander around the room. She took in her father's extensive collection of coveted leather-bound first editions. They were meticulously lined up on the shelves of a massive cabinet with gleaming glass doors.
She couldn't help but compare this neat and costly library to Parker's haphazardly crammed bookshelves. She contrasted the expensive furnishings and appointments of this room to the wicker chairs and chintz cushions in Parker's solarium. This room had an imported marble fireplace that had been salvaged from an Italian palace. The wood mantel in
Parker's house had been carved by a slave named Phineas.
And she realized that, as much as she loved this house, this room, and the fond memories of childhood they evoked, she was homesick for St.
Anne Island, and Parker's house with its creaky hardwood floors, and the cozy guest cottage with its claw-footed bathtub.
She was homesick for Mike's clattering in the kitchen and the click of the keys as Parker typed in his rapid, two-fingered, hunt-and-peck method.
She missed the oddly harmonious racket of the cicadas, and the distant swish of the surf breaking on the beach, and the scent of honeysuckle, and the feel of the salt air, so heavy it was like raiment against her skin, and ... Parker.
She missed Parker.
"Are you thinking about him?" Daniel asked softly, interrupting her thoughts. "Is he what
#has made you sad?" #################435
"Made me sad? Hardly," she said, giving her head a firm shake. "Has he made me angry? Yes. Would I like to throttle him?
Definitely. He's provoking on every level, starting with how he approaches his profession.
Only rarely does he take a suggestion or criticism without first putting up an argument, which invariably turns fierce.
"He stays hidden away in that house, on that island. Lovely as the house and island are, he uses them as a refuge. He should be out among people.
A writer usually seizes every opportunity to promote his work. But not him. Oh, no. He adopts this lofty attitude and pretends to be above all that, but I know better. The reason he remains a recluse is because of his disability.
"Oh, have I told you that, Dad? He's wheelchair-bound. I didn't learn that until I got there. At first I was shocked because when talking to him over the telephone, I got no indication that he was in any way impaired, except when it came to manners. It took me totally by surprise. But after a while ... I don't know, Dad, it's strange. When I look at him now, I don't even see the wheelchair."
She paused to reflect on that, realizing how profoundly true the statement was. She no longer saw Parker's chair or his disability, and she wondered at what point that had happened.
"I suppose it's the potency of his personality that makes his disability seem not just inconsequential, but invisible. He's got an extraordinary command of the language. Even his bawdy--make that crude--vocabulary is impressive.
"He has a sly sense of humor. Wicked, sometimes. He can be awfully grouchy, too, but then I suppose he's entitled to be. Anyone in his circumstances would be resentful. I mean, he's young, in his prime, so his bitterness over being confined to a wheelchair is understandable and forgivable.
"He's self-conscious of his scars, but he shouldn't be. People, especially women, would find him attractive no matter what his legs look like.
He's not ... not handsome, exactly, but ...
he's got an ... an animal magnetism,
I guess you'd call it. You sense an energy radiating from him even when he's sitting still.
###"When he speaks to you, you're drawn ###437
right into his eyes. The intensity with which he holds your attention makes up for his incapacity. But don't get the impression that he's feeble.
He's not. In fact he's quite strong. His hands are ..."
His hands. When they had kept her head in place for his kiss. When they had trapped her hips and held her still beside his chair. Those times they had felt incredibly strong and commanding. Yet at other times, like when he had plucked a leaf from her hair, his touch had been light and deft, even playful.
When she'd held a seashell in her palm for him to admire, he had traced the delicate whorls with his fingertip gingerly, as though afraid to apply too much pressure and risk crushing it.
A woman would never have to flinch from his touch.
"He's the most complex individual I've ever met," she said huskily. "Extremely talented." She conjured up Parker's face and heard herself saying, "Also angry. Very angry.
You can sense it in his writing. But even when he's relaxed and joking with Mike, his anger is detectable.
"His smiles have a disturbing element. There's a cruelty to them, and that's unfortunate because I don't believe he could be cruel at all if not for the anger. It's always there, just beneath the surface.
"There's a passage in his novel where he describes Roark's anger toward Todd. He compares it to a serpent gliding through still, dark water, never surfacing, never revealing itself, but constantly there, silent, sinister, and deadly, waiting to poison them both.
"Probably he's just angry over being trapped in a wheelchair. But I sense there's something ... something I don't know, something I've missed, like there's one more secret yet to come to light."
She laughed softly. "I can't imagine what it might be. He's sprung so many surprises on me. Not all of them good." She took a sip of wine and raised her shoulders in a helpless shrug. "That's the best way I know to answer your question."
Daniel studied her thoughtfully for a long moment as he continued to pack tobacco into his pipe.
He rarely lighted it. He just liked the ritualistic activity. It gave him something to do
#while assembling his thoughts. ############439
When he finally spoke, it was to quietly say,
"Actually, Maris, my question referred to Noah."
Embarrassed, she flushed hotly. For five solid minutes she had rattled on about Parker.
"Oh ... oh, well," she stammered, "yes, he ... I wouldn't say Noah made me
_sad, but I was upset over his meeting with WorldView. I was even more upset that he chose not to tell me about it."
Daniel set the pipe aside and picked up his tumbler. As he contemplated the amber contents, he asked, "Did Noah tell you that he had a meeting with Howard the afternoon he killed himself?"
The manner in which he had posed the question caused her throat to constrict. This wasn't a casual inquiry. "He mentioned it."
"It took place only a couple of hours before Howard ended his life."
Maris lost all appetite for the wine.
Setting the crystal stem on the end table, she wiped condensation, or perspiration, off her palms.
"What was the nature of their meeting?"
"According to Noah, Howard needed him to sign off on the final draft of a contract between us and one of our foreign licensees. Noah approved the amended language and that was the extent of it."
That's what Noah had told her, too. "Do you ..." She cleared her throat and began again.
"Do you doubt that?"
"I have no reason to. Although ..." Maris waited in breathless suspension for him to continue.
"Howard's secretary told me that his meeting with Noah was his last for the day, and that when he left the office, he wasn't himself."
"Specifically?"
"He seemed distressed. I think her exact words were èxtremely upset.`" Daniel took a sip of whisky. "Of course, one event probably has nothing to do with the other. Howard could have been upset over any number of things, something in his personal life, something that didn't relate to Matherly Press or Noah."
But her father didn't believe that. If he did, they wouldn't be having this conversation. "Dad, do you think--was
"Good. I see you started without me." Noah pushed open the double doors and breezed in.
"Darling, I apologize again for making you come over alone." He bent down and kissed Maris,
#then smacked his lips as though tasting them. ##441
"Good wine."
"It is. V." She got up and moved to the wet bar, trying to hide from the men and herself that her knees were wobbly. "I'll pour you some."
"Thanks, but I'd rather have what Daniel is having. Rocks only. It's been that kind of day."
Noah crossed the room to shake hands with his father-in-law, then rejoined Maris on the love seat and placed his arm around her as she handed him a highball glass. "Cheers." After taking a sip of his drink, he said, "Maxine sent me in with the message that dinner is in ten minutes."
"I hope her pot roast isn't as dry as it was last time," Daniel grumbled.
"Her pot roast is never dry," Maris said, wondering how they could be discussing something as trivial as pot roast when only moments ago the topic had been a man's inexplicable
suicide.
"Dry or not, I'm going to wreak havoc on it," Noah said. "I'm starving."
__Of course, one event probably has
nothing to do with the _other.
She clung to her father's statement, desperate to believe it.
This was Noah they were talking about. Her husband.
The man she had fallen in love with, and the man she still loved. Noah. The man she slept beside every night. The man with whom she wanted to have children.
She placed her hand on his thigh, and he, without even a pause in his conversation with Daniel, covered her hand with his own and pressed it affectionately. It was an absentminded, husbandly, and reassuring gesture.
Dinner was delicious and the pot roast lived up to Maxine's standards of excellence. But by the time the lemon tarts were served, Daniel was yawning. As soon as Maxine removed the dessert dishes, he asked to be excused.
"Stay and enjoy another cup of coffee," he told his guests as he stood up. "But I should retire. I'll be up early to attend Howard's funeral. Can't say I'm looking forward to it."
"I need to say good night, too, Dad. Today was long and strenuous."
As they left the dining room, Maris held back and detained Noah. Laying her hands on his
#lapels, she went up on tiptoe ######443
to kiss him tenderly on the lips. "I think I'll go home ahead of you."
He placed his hands at her waist and drew her closer. "I thought you and I had plans for later this evening."
"We do. But I'm about to ask a favor. Would you please stay and help Dad get to bed? I know it's not your place--was
"I don't mind at all."
"He's prickly on the subject of his instability, and it's already come up once tonight. But if you invent an excuse to walk upstairs with him, it won't appear that you're escorting him.
I would appreciate it."
"Consider it done, sweetheart. I'll follow your lead."
At the door, she pretended to remember that she wanted to retrieve an old address book from her third-floor bedroom. "I'll have to look for it. I'm not sure where I left it."
Noah offered to get it for her and suggested that she go ahead of him while he searched. She wasn't sure Daniel believed their playacting, but he went along with it.
When they said their good nights, Daniel hugged her tightly. Then he set her away from him and peered closely into her eyes as though trying to decipher the troubling thoughts behind them. "I want to hear more about this new book and the complex man who's writing it."
The reminder of how she'd gone on and on about Parker brought color to her cheeks again. "I always value your input, Dad. I'll have a copy of the manuscript sent over by courier tomorrow. We'll get together later in the week to discuss it."
He squeezed her hand with a confidentiality and caring that made her want to crawl up into his lap as she had when she was little, seeking comfort and assurance that everything was going to be fine, that all her concerns were needless, and that there was no basis for her undefined disquiet.
But, of course, she couldn't. She'd outgrown his lap, and her confidences were a woman's, not a child's. They couldn't be shared with her father.
Daniel moved aside and Noah stepped up to hug her. "Daniel's looking a little down in the mouth tonight," he whispered. "Once he's tucked in, I think I'll offer to have a bedtime brandy with him."
###"D. But make it a short one. ######445
I'll be waiting."
Maris didn't go straight home. She had never intended to. Using her father as a pawn to delay Noah made her feel guilty, but only a little. She would never have deceived them if she weren't desperate to rid herself of nagging doubts that had taken a tenacious hold on her.
She took a taxi downtown to the apartment in Chelsea. By the time she reached the door of the apartment, her heart was beating hard, and not because of the steep staircase. She was anxious about what she might find inside.
She unlocked the door with the key she'd had in her possession since the night of her surprise party and, remembering where the light switch was, flipped it on. The air-conditioning unit was humming softly, but otherwise the apartment was silent. She noted that the cushions on the sofa looked freshly plumped.
Moving into the kitchen, she looked into a spotless dry sink. There were no dishes in the dishwasher, not even a drinking glass. The wastebasket beneath the sink was empty, its plastic liner as pristine as when it had been placed there.
Maid service? Noah hadn't mentioned
retaining anyone to clean this apartment, but that didn't mean he hadn't.
Back in the living room she moved toward the room designated as Noah's office. Hand on the doorknob, she paused and said a prayer, although she couldn't specifically say what she was praying for. She pushed open the door.
In a single glance she took it all in, then slumped dejectedly against the doorjamb. The room looked exactly as they'd left it that night. Nothing had been disturbed or changed.
There were no paper balls in the trash can, no reference books with pages marked, no notes stuck to the computer screen or scrawled on ruled legal tablets.
She knew what a writer's work area was supposed to look like. Parker's would have cost an obsessive-compulsive years of therapy. It was strewn with coffee-stained notes, and red pencils whose leads were worn down to nubs, and tablets filled with thoughts and diagrams and doodles, and file envelopes with curled, fraying edges, and unstable pyramids of reference
#material, and paper clips bent out of ####447
shape during periods of torturous concentration.
Yet if one thing were touched or moved on Parker's desk, he would bark at the offender.
He knew exactly where everything was, and he wanted it left the way he had it. Mike was forbidden to clean in the area, as though the disarray contributed to Parker's creativity.
Noah's writing space was immaculate.
Although, upon closer inspection, Maris saw that his computer keyboard sported a fine layer of dust.
The keys had never been touched.
Her heart wasn't beating fast now. In fact it felt like a stone inside her chest as she turned off the lights and left the apartment. She conscientiously locked the door behind her, although she didn't know why she bothered. There was absolutely nothing of value to her inside.
She exited the building and descended the front steps, lost in thought, her motions listless. She was weighted down with dread for the inevitable confrontation with Noah. When he returned from her father's house, he would be expecting his docile wife to be waiting for him at home, eager and ready to make love to him.
That's what she had deliberately led him to expect.
She had led him to believe that she was as moldable as warm clay, gullible, blindly accepting, and he had been easily deceived, because up until recently that's exactly what she'd been.
He would arrive home thinking that their argument about WorldView was a forgotten episode, that she didn't question the nature of his meeting with Howard Bancroft, that she had no reason to doubt him when he told her he had resumed writing.
Meek and mild and malleable Maris. Stupid Maris. That's what he thought of her.
But he thought wrong.
As she reached street level, she noticed a passenger alighting from a taxi half a block away. She hadn't expected the good fortune of finding a cab so soon and raised her hand to signal the driver.
As soon as he received his fare, he drove the short distance to where Maris stood at the curb. But she was no longer looking at the taxi. Instead she was watching the man who had alighted from it as he jogged up the steps of another brownstone, entering it with an air of familiarity, as though he belonged.
###Gradually Maris lowered her arm, #####449
until then not realizing that it was still raised. She motioned the taxi driver to go on. Walking briskly, she quickly covered the distance to the other apartment building.
It was as quaint as the one she'd just left. There was no doorman or other form of security to prevent her from entering the vestibule. She checked the mailboxes. All except one were labeled with a name. Either the apartment was vacant ...
or the tenant in 2A received mail at another location.
Again, she climbed stairs. But it was with amazing calm that she approached the door of apartment 2A. She rapped smartly and looked
directly into the peephole, knowing that it was probably being looked through from the other side.
Nadia Schuller opened the door, and the two of them stood face-to-face. She was dressed for romance, wearing only a silk wrapper, which appeared to have been hastily tied at her waist as she made her way to answer the door. She didn't even have the decency to look alarmed or shamefaced. Her expression was one of smug amusement as she stepped back and opened the door wider.
Maris's gaze slid past her to Noah, who was coming from a connecting room, presumably a kitchen, with a drink in each hand. He was in shirtsleeves, having wasted no time in removing his jacket and tie.
Upon seeing her, he stopped dead in his tracks. "Maris."
Nadia said, "I hope this doesn't turn into one of those dreadful farces à la a Ronald Reagan movie."
Maris ignored her. Nadia was
insignificant. The only thing she signified was Noah's bad taste in mistresses. She
didn't waste any contempt on Nadia.
Instead she directed it all toward the man she had married less than two years ago.
"Don't bother apologizing or explaining, even if that's what you had in mind to do, Noah.
You're a liar and an adulterer, and I want you out of my life. Out. Immediately. I'll have Maxine come over and pack up your things because I can't bear the thought of touching them myself. You can arrange with the doorman a time to pick them up when I'm not there. I don't want to see you again,
#Noah. Ever." #####################451
Then she turned and jogged down the stairs, across the small lobby, down the steps, and onto the sidewalk. She wasn't crying. In fact, her eyes were dry. She didn't feel angry, or sad, or miserable. In fact, she felt
surprisingly unshackled and lighthearted. She had no sense of leaving something, but rather of going toward something.
She didn't get far.
Noah gripped her arm from behind and roughly jerked her around. He grinned down at her, but it was a cold and frightening grin. "Well, well, Maris.
Clever you."
"Let go of me!" She struggled to pull her arm free from his grasp, but he didn't yield.
In fact, his fingers closed more tightly around her biceps. "I said for you to let--was
"Shut up," he hissed, shaking her so hard that she bit her tongue and cried out in pain. "I heard what you had to say, Maris. Every single word.
Brave speech. I was impressed.
"But now let _me tell _you how it's going to be. Our marriage has been and will remain on my terms. You don't order me out of your life.
You don't order me to leave. I leave you only when I'm goddamn good and ready. I hope you understand that, Maris. Your life will be so much easier if you do."
"You're hurting me, Noah."
He laughed at that. "I haven't begun to hurt you yet." To underscore his point, he squeezed her arm tightly, cruelly, his fingers mashing muscle against bone. Although tears of pain sprang to her eyes, she didn't recoil.
"In the meantime, I'll fuck Nadia, I'll fuck whoever I want to, and I don't care if you watch. But you'll stay the obedient little wife, understand? Or I'll make your life, and the lives of everyone dear to you, a living hell, Maris. I can, you know. I will." His eyes glinted with an evil light as he leaned even closer and whispered, "I _will. I promise you."
Then he released her so suddenly she staggered and fell against the iron fence that enclosed trash receptacles, painfully banging her shoulder.
As he turned away from her and started back toward the brownstone he shared with Nadia, he called cheerfully, "Don't wait up."
Too stunned to move, Maris watched him go and
#continued to stare at the empty doorway ####453
long after he had disappeared inside. She wasn't so afraid as dumbfounded. Incredulity kept her rooted to the concrete. Although her arm was throbbing and she could taste blood in her mouth, she couldn't believe what had just happened. Noah? Threatening her? Physically threatening her with an icy calm that glazed his threats with certainty and made them terrifying?
She shivered then, violently and
uncontrollably, her blood running cold with the sudden but unarguable realization that she was married to a total stranger. The man she thought she knew didn't exist. Noah had assumed a role, that's all. He had mimicked a character in a book because he knew she'd been infatuated with that character.
He had played the part well, never stepping out of character. Not once. Until tonight.
She was jolted by the fact that just now, for the first time, she had been introduced to the real Noah Reed.
* * *
"Envy" Child. 15
Key West, Florida, 1987
"Roark?"
He rubbed sleep from his eyes as he juggled the telephone receiver in the general direction of his ear. "Yeah?"
"Were you sleeping?"
It was four-thirty in the morning. He hadn't gotten to bed until after three. The nightclub where he and Todd worked didn't close until two. One of his responsibilities was to close out the registers, and he couldn't do that until the last customer left. After writing all day, then putting in an eight-hour shift, he hadn't merely been sleeping, he'd been comatose.
"Who is this?"
"Mary Catherine. I hate to bother you."
He swung his legs over the side of the bed.
His bare foot knocked over an empty drink can and it noisily rolled across the concrete floor toward Todd's bed. He growled a protest into his pillow.
"What's up?" Roark asked in a whisper.
"Can you come over?"
###"Uh ... now?" ##################455
The strip joint was only a few doors down from the nightclub for which he tended bar and Todd parked cars. Occasionally, during their breaks, they could catch their neighbors' acts. He and Todd had come to know the girls well enough to be admitted gratis. A bouncer let them in through a rear entrance. They watched from backstage. Sometimes they went together, sometimes separately, and they were rarely able to stay longer than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time, but those few minutes relieved the drudgery of their lives.
Their limited budgets had reduced dating to a bare minimum. Thankfully, the trio of exotic dancers had been "neighborly" to them in more ways than giving free peep shows.
One day Roark had volunteered to take Starlight's car to a garage for an oil change and tune-up. What the mechanic did for the car's engine was nothing compared to what Starlight did to Roark's. As thank-yous went, Starlight beat Hallmark all to hell.
But this telephone call didn't have the tone of a come-on, and, much to his regret, Mary Catherine had never shown any romantic interest in him.
She'd treated him in a brotherly fashion, while she flirted shamelessly with Todd and had graced him with several sleepovers.
"Could you, Roark? Please? I'm here by myself and, well ... I need a favor."
His heart thumped with optimism. "Sure. Be right there."
"Don't mention it to Todd, okay?"
That dampened his enthusiasm somewhat, because he would enjoy ribbing Todd about getting a
middle-of-the-night call from one of his regular lays. Where women were concerned Todd was a cocksure bastard.
He pulled on a pair of shorts and a
T-shirt, pushed his feet into a pair of sandals, and let himself out without waking Todd. He hurdled the foul-smelling moat surrounding the apartment building and followed the now-familiar and well-worn path to the girls' building. He took the stairs two at a time, arriving at their door slightly out of breath. Mary Catherine opened the door before he could even knock.
"I was watching for you through the window."
He stepped inside, trying not to give away how crestfallen he was by her appearance.
###She didn't even resemble the stunner ##457
she was when she peeled away the vestiges of her nun's habit and stood in the spotlight gloriously naked, or even when she lay spread-eagled on the roof basting in suntan oil.
Her face was free of stage makeup. Her eyes and nose were red, as though she'd been crying.
Her long, curly hair had been gathered into a scraggly ponytail. Most disappointing of all, she wasn't dressed for seduction. She was wearing an unflattering, oversized Dolphins jersey and a baggy pair of plaid boxer shorts.
"I got you up, didn't I?"
"I was writing," he lied.
"Your lights were out."
"I was plotting inside my head."
"Oh." She twisted the hem of the jersey in her fist. "I hate to ask you to do this, Roark, but
..."
"Is something wrong?"
"I miscarried tonight."
He gaped stupidly and speechlessly.
"A baby." She flipped out her hand.
"Well, I guess it wasn't really a baby yet, just, you know ... Anyway, I need some things, and I'm not feeling too good, so I wondered if you'd run down to the twenty-four-hour market for me."
He swallowed what felt like a bowling ball, then reflexively wet his lips. "Uh, sure.
Be glad to."
"I'd really appreciate it."
"No problem, but are you okay? Should you call a doctor or something? Want me to take you to the hospital? Have, uh, things checked out?"
"No, I'm okay." Taking a deep but shaky breath, she said, "This isn't the first time."
He dragged his hand down over his mouth and chin.
"You didn't do anything crazy, did you? You didn't cause it? On purpose, I mean."
She shook her head and smiled weakly. "No.
Nothing that dramatic. It just happened, Roark.
An accident of nature. The first time, yeah, I went to a clinic and had it sucked out. But this time it came out on its own. I started feeling bad at work. Cramps, you know."
He nodded sympathetically, although she could have been talking about ice sculpting, for all he knew about it. In fact he probably knew more
#about ice sculpting. ##################459
"I was invited out with the other girls to a private party. But it had all the makings of an all-nighter, so I begged off, came home, went straight to bed. Woke up about an hour ago in a ... a mess." She raised her shoulders.
"No more baby."
He saw tears shining in her eyes, but she quickly turned away and reached for a small slip of paper and several folded bills. "I made a detailed list. Name brands and sizes. Figured you wouldn't know what to get if I didn't."
"You're right about that," he said, trying to sound goofily cheerful and failing miserably.
"This should cover it."
He took the list and money from her. "Anything else?"
"I think it's all on there. I'll leave the door unlocked so you can just come in when you get back." He nodded and turned to go, but she touched his arm and brought him back around. "Thanks, Roark. Really. Thanks."
He patted the small hand resting on his arm.
"Go lie down. I'll be back soon as I can."
When he returned, she was stretched out on the sofa, one arm across her eyes, the other hand resting on her abdomen. She lowered her arm and smiled wanly at him as he approached on tiptoe.
"Find everything?"
"I think so."
"Did I send enough money?"
"Don't worry about it. Why aren't you in bed?"
"Well, as I said, it's kind of a mess."
At the end of a short hallway one of the bedroom doors was standing ajar. He set the sack of purchases on the floor beside the sofa. "Here's your stuff." Then he started down the hall toward the bedroom.
"Roark, no," she protested weakly as she sat up.
"Take care of yourself, Mary Catherine.
I'll take care of this."
He did, but it wasn't pleasant.
For one thing, it was much more difficult to remain detached than he had imagined it would be. He couldn't get it out of his mind that the "mess"
represented a human life, which had started out
#exactly as every human life did. For ###461
reasons that would never be known, it had decided to give it up, cash in early, let go. It was said that miscarriages were blessings in disguise, that it was the natural way for a uterus to discard an imperfection. Nevertheless, knowing that a life had ended tonight was depressing as hell.
Also she must have been fairly far along, because there was more bloody substance than he'd expected.
As efficiently as possible, he stripped the linens, including the mattress pad, and crammed them into a plastic trash bag he found in a kitchen pantry. He sealed it tightly, then carried it out to the Dumpster behind the building.
On his way back through the apartment, he heard the shower running in the bathroom. He found fresh linens in a hall closet and remade the bed.
He was finishing up when she came into the bedroom, looking scrubbed and wearing another ensemble of loose T-shirt and baggy boxers.
He swept his arm wide to indicate the bed.
"Climb in." She did, sighing with relief as she lay down. "Everything all right?"
"Sure."
"Did you take some of the Tylenol?"
"Three. Figured they couldn't hurt."
"How about some tea?"
"You've done enough."
"How about some tea?"
She looked up at him. "You'd really make me tea?"
"Do you have a kettle?"
"I don't think so."
"A microwave?"
"Of course."
Five minutes later, he was back with a steaming cup of tea, packets of sweetener, and a spoon. "I didn't know if you took sugar or not."
"Two, please." As he stirred the sweetener into her tea, he glanced over at the TV. The sound was muted, but she was staring into the screen. "I love this movie," she told him. "I bought the video and m/'ve watched it a thousand times.
Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant."
"A winning combo. Careful, it's hot," he said, passing her the mug. She made room for him beside her on the bed, and he sat down, leaning back against the wall. "What's it about?"
"She's gorgeous and in trouble. He's handsome
#and comes to her rescue. She's scared. ####463
He's suave. They fall in love in the end."
They watched the video in silence until it played out, then she clicked off the TV and he took the empty cup from her. "Thanks, Roark, that helped. Nobody's ever made me tea before."
"My mom always made me tea when I was sick."
"Was she nice to you?"
"Real nice. I was lucky."
"Yeah, you were. My old lady kicked me out when I was fifteen."
"How come?"
"She caught her boyfriend waving his weenie at me."
"Why didn't she kick him out?"
She laughed as though that were funny, although Roark hadn't meant it to be. "You're a nice guy, Roark." When he grimaced, she added, "I meant it as a compliment."
"Well, thanks. Must say, though, I'd rather be thought of as dashing and dangerous."
Her smile faded. Her eyes lost their
sparkle and seemed to look inward into something that caused her unhappiness. "No, that's Todd."
Roark didn't know how to respond to that and reasoned that it was best to say nothing. He slapped his thighs and moved to get up. "Well, I should be--was
"Wait, Roark. You've been so sweet. I mean, really fuckin' great. I hate women who're clingy and needy, but I don't want to be alone tonight. Would you stay? Just until I fall asleep?"
"Okay. Sure."
"Lie down."
Awkwardly, Roark stretched out beside her on the bed. She snuggled against him and rested her head on his shoulder. He placed an arm around her.
"Maybe tomorrow you should call a doctor," he suggested.
"Yeah. He'll likely want to do a D and C. Yuk."
Roark's thought exactly. He had a vague idea of what was involved in the procedure, and he preferred keeping the idea vague. "You weren't on the pill?"
"No. They make me fat," she explained.
"And he forgot to bring condoms. At least he told me he forgot them. Guess I was stupid
#not to insist." ########################465
"Damn straight. Pregnancy's not the worst that can happen."
"I know, but he's the type who'd be careful about disease and stuff."
"So this guy wasn't random? I mean, he's somebody you know well?"
"Roark, don't ask, okay?"
"Okay."
"Let's talk about something else."
But they didn't talk. Not for a while. They didn't even move, except for his fingers sifting through strands of her hair, which was fanned out over the pillow, drying from her shower.
"My name's not really Mary Catherine," she confessed softly.
"No?"
"It's Sheila."
"That's pretty."
"I just use Mary Catherine for the nun bit."
"I figured."
"I thought you might. You're smart. Me, I quit school when I left home, middle of tenth grade. I'm an idiot."
"I don't think so."
"I know so. Anyway, when the customers get tired of the nun act, I'll work up something else, and I'll probably change my name to fit the new act. I'm playing with an idea.
Want to hear it?"
"Love to."
"I thought I could maybe be a mermaid? You know, I'd have this tail that was all pearly and shimmery. I'd wear a long, flowing wig that came down to my ass. Maybe even to my knees."
"You'd be a knockout. You could call yourself Lorelei."
"Lorelei?"
"Like the siren. In mythology." She stared back at him with misapprehension. "She had a beautiful singing voice," he explained. "She used it to lure sailors into the rocks where they would shipwreck."
"No shit? I gotta remember that."
"I can write it down for you so you won't forget."
She propped herself up on her elbow and regarded him with patent admiration. "See?
You're so fuckin' smart."
###He laughed, and she laughed, and then ####467
they looked at one another seriously for a long moment, and then she said, "You can play with them if you want to."
Immediately his eyes dropped to her chest. She raised the hem of her T-shirt up over her breasts. The objects of his affection and fantasies, what he had admired from afar, were inches from his eyes, his fingertips, his lips. She was giving them to him. A gift.
But when he extended his hand, it was to lower her T-shirt back into place.
"What's the matter?" she asked. "I can't screw tonight, but I could blow you."
"That's not necessary."
"You think I'd be doing it just for you? Think again." She slid her hand down to his crotch and took his penis in her hand. "I've been wondering what you packed. Starlight's a lying bitch, but I can tell she was telling the truth about you." She squeezed him, and he caught his breath. Blood rushed to the pressure point made by each of her fingers.
But he moved her hand away from him. "I'd be taking advantage of the situation."
"So?"
"I wouldn't feel right about it, Sheila."
"Jesus, most guys would kill for an offer like this. Are you for real?"
"I'm real, all right. I'll be cursing myself in the morning."
"Well, you can jerk off in the shower while you watch us sunbathe." She giggled at his astonishment. "We're not _that ignorant, Roark. Why else would y'all take so many showers? And at the same time we're sunbathing?"
She smiled and lay back down, snuggling against him again. "Truth is, I couldn't have given you my best tonight. I really do feel like shit, you know?"
"Go to sleep, Sheila. When you wake up, this'll seem like a bad dream."
"You're sweet."
"So are you."
He stroked her back, and caressed her hair, and continued to hold her even after she had fallen asleep. When he returned to his apartment the following morning, Todd was already up and pecking away at his keyboard. "Where've you been?"
"Walking on the beach."
Todd squinted at him suspiciously.
###"Alone." #######################469
"Who is she?"
"Alone," Roark repeated testily.
"Huh." Todd went back to his typing, saying only one thing more. "Coffee's made, but I used the last of the milk."