Chapter 1
There was something oddly attractive about monotony. Each morning I could wake up with the dawn and fall asleep at night knowing that nothing extraordinary was going to happen to me. And quite frankly, that worked for me. There was, of course, days when the world was not in tune with my divine sense of the appropriate. Days like Tuesday when I would inadvertently come within ten centimeters of ramming into the back of the 2001 Dodge Viper meticulously parked in my usual parking place. These were the days when I began to regret that I had had the same type of car for the whole of my life, trading in the old for the new every three years or so. Salaries changed, more often for the better, which suddenly made monotony look dull and made me wish I had the desire for the better car something innate told me I could afford. After all, I never spent superfluously and the world did have more respect for more expensive cars.
Turning my mind from the immediate past, I steered my 1998 Toyota Camry down the movable parking lot that made up central Boston, allowing myself to drift backwards to moments of innocent youth. Ironically to some, I had been born in the eyes of the aurora borealis, kissing the very border of Canada at the far tip of Maine. Tall, whispering pines sheltered my childhood, resembling most amusedly, asparagus, making me believe as a child that I was an ant wandering in the midst of a large asparagus garden. As an ant I could imagine bigger things, like cities and careers and colleges—things everyone had told me were not in my near future. Who was I to argue with them?
But the future was nearer than we thought and far different than what we assumed. At eighteen I left the hills of Maine and drifted southward from the dawn, settling in the rural areas of Massachusetts and later in the southern part of New Hampshire, completing my master’s degree at 23. I would continue to move progressively southward, tripping along through the far south and the far west, touching, for a moment, Alaska. As I liked the cool winters and the steady progress into summer, New England appealed to me, calling me back home at the age of twenty-five. I met my husband, became his widow, and surrendered myself to the inevitable coming and going of life. In the same year I lost David, I moved to a suburb Boston and prepared myself for the monotony I needed and yearned for.
I began a new job, working within the confines of a skyscraper, typing ceaseless letters to customers of a shipping company. I worked between the president and vice-presidents’ offices, earning a reputation for raw efficiency and prudish snobbery, but I liked that. I had been married before, it might even have been love; I was ready to work and to succeed, living the high-class dreams of my youth. Love, dating and eventual heartbreak was out of the question. Love was too unpredictable and I was unprepared to forgive God for removing David from my presence less than two years after our wedding day.
Parking my Camry, I promptly punched in at exactly 9:00 and moved to the upper levels of the skyscraper where my desk sat patiently waiting for me.
“Morning, Gene.”
“Mornin’, Sal. How are you?”
“Just fine, Gene, just fine.”
The exchange between Gene and I was nothing new. Each morning it was the same. Gene was a guard who managed to get himself shot within the first year of active duty and remained now a glorified parking attendant for the garage below our building. Essentially, he monitored who was coming in and out, what they were driving, and then catered to their needs, carefully pressing just the right button on the elevator. He was adept at knowing exactly what floor I needed to get to, though it very rarely changed. There were occasions, however, when walking up the stairs was preferable to the company I would have to keep within the elevator.
I let him be proud of the fact that he knew me so well, though I made no secret of my rigid schedule to him or the rest of the employees. It was written in plain black ink, for I never wrote in anything else, on the crisp white pages of leather-bound organizational planner I carried with me. Some people chose to live their lives by the clock, openly losing themselves to the daily pressures of Time; I chose to live my life by the planner, openly keeping control over both myself and the daily pressures of my occupation.
“Hey, Sal. What say you to the club this evening?” Jenny Michaels, a tall red-head of the green eyed, freckled breed walked quickly over to where I was standing, preparing to get my morning hot chocolate.
“I say, ‘no.’”
In response, Jenny’s shoulders immediately sagged and she said, in the same sighing voice she had managed to cultivate over the past six years, “Why not?”
To which I responded, in the same manner I had cultivated over the past six years, “Because I don’t want to.”
Then, because timing had become second nature to both of us, my cocoa gently poured itself into my cup and I was able to leave the coffee room and Jenny behind. Following the usual club scenario provided by the ever-eager Jenny, I moved forward into the central lobby elevator, where Howard, the nearly hairless figure of ever girl’s nightmares, came stepping in with me to begin another session of predictable conversation.
“G-good morning, Sally.”
“Good morning, Howard.”
“Hey, Sal…”
“Yes, Howard?” I altered my tone to a flawless third grade teacher-from-hell tone, knowing the question he was about to ask.
“Will you be at the club tonight?”
I stopped short; Howard was one of the few constants I did not control. This was not the question I was prepared for. My heart began to pound annoyingly within my ears. It was Friday. I never went to the club on Friday. I took a deep breath, trying to calm my mind and my heart.
“No,” I said, calmly.
“Oh.”
Was that it? Was I expected to take that as his only attempt towards conversation? Where was the usual availability question, the pleading, desperate look in his eyes, and the open invitation for another evening? I took another deep breath and vaguely began to wonder if I should try to initiate a similar conversation to the ones I was used to. Then I chided myself. Not everyone had the same respect for sameness as I did. I shuddered as I prepared to leave the elevator. Change had always been beyond me.
I moved onward from the elevator and came to rest behind my desk, extending my hand, palm side up, for the first folder of paper work the president would drop into my hands as he walked by to greet the secretaries in the pool. I would then complete the number of letters left for me and again extend my hand. This time, the vice-president would drop the folder, giving me time to pull out the completed folder the president would pick up from his brief rendezvous with the latest brunette working where ‘such a pretty thing’ shouldn’t be forced to work. But suddenly, on this already bizarre Friday, the president of the company, Mr. James T. Farro, stopped in front of my desk.
After a remarkable pause he said, “Sally?”
“Yes, Mr. Farro.”
“Do you have a life?”
My eyes widened and I replied, “Yes, sir? Why do you ask?”
“It’s Friday. Everyone, but you, goes to the clubs on Friday.”
“I see. I don’t like clubs, Mr. Farro. They don’t suit me.”
Mr. Farro nodded and pushed the gray hair from his blue eyes. “You know what, Sal?”
“Yes, Mr. Farro?”
“I’m sending you on vacation.”
“I beg your pardon?” I choked.
“I’m sending you on vacation. You never do anything and, to be honest, you exhaust me.”
I froze, my pen elegantly posed above a paper I was signing, and my mouth dropping into a shapeless “O.” Lowering the offending pen, I sat back in my desk and tried to organize a coherent thought.
“Have I done something wrong, sir?”
“Hell, no. You haven’t done anything. That’s the problem.” Mr. Farro’s voice was a gruff alto, nothing overly frightening, but his words sent a shiver of fear through me I would be long to forget.
“Must I, sir?”
“Yup. Charge whatever you need to the company, though with your salary and the way you invest I wouldn’t think you need it. That brunette from the pool will come up to take over for the next couple of weeks. Disappear for two, maybe three, weeks.”
“But, sir. I really don’t think…”
“I’m not asking you to think, Sally,” he said softly, his eyes suddenly serious in the thin, handsomeness of his face. “I’m telling you to take a break. You’re life is monotonous, boring even. Don’t think I don’t know that you go home every night to the same things. You need change. Life’s to short to pass it by with dull routine.”
“But where can I go?” I asked softly. I had never contemplated leaving Boston. I had seen everywhere I wanted to see, had done everything I thought I might one day like to do. What else was there?
“Try jumping out of a plane or something. You might like it.”
I shook my head resignedly, “All right, sir. I’ll leave Monday morning.”
“Nope. You’ll leave today. And you’ll leave that obnoxious black book here with me. I’ve had enough complaints about your prudish nature to last a lifetime and half of them relate with that wretched planner you keep zipped to your side. So, pack up your purse and get out of here. You have half an hour.”
“Yes, sir.”
For twenty-nine of the thirty minutes available to me, I stared at the clock on my desk, watching the small second hand tick by, pushing the minutes forward. There was no place to go and nothing to do but resign myself to this odd twist of fate. I looked at the calendar, depressed because it wasn’t the thirteenth and I had no excuse for the strange turn of events. Standing up, I grabbed my purse, which was prepared for the 11:00 trip to the café down the road and left my desk. At the door, I turned back through the glass door, wondering if I should disobey Mr. Farro and grab my black book anyway, but at the moment my hand reached out for the handle, Mr. Farro appeared in the lobby, staring down his beak of a nose and pointed harshly at the door. The hand that stood suspended in the air, moved of its own volition upwards and waved a despondent farewell.
“Damn,” I muttered and exited the building.
I went to the café and sat at the counter, asking myself question upon question and wondering how the hell this had happened to me. Where was I to go now? What was I supposed to do? These were trite questions already asked by hundreds of paperback heroines who wound up with some gorgeous, arrogant cowboy, rancher, cop or duke. These weren’t the questions of reality; these weren’t the kinds of questions I had answers to. Wearily, I drooped behind the counter, feeling myself ooze over a cup of herbal tea and a bran muffin. At that moment, I would have cheerfully jumped out of a plane, if only to break the stillness around me.
I could hear the voices of others, happily chatting away idly, grateful for the day off from their hectic lives. Yet their words did not penetrate me, only the glibness of their emotions, pouring freely from dozens of open traps. I couldn’t help but envy them. I envied their ability to love a day off and to know what to do with it. I envied their idleness, their frivolous natures and even…I was forced to pause in my musings, suddenly caught up in everything my boss had said about me and everything I had known about myself. My life was droll, boring…everything I had thought I liked about it. But suddenly, that had become unattractive, losing its flavor like a piece of gum, over-chewed to the point where it resembled the texture of sawdust. Of all things to envy, it was their happiness I envied the most. I looked at my watch wearily. 10:15. It was far too early for such bleak revelations.
Pulling myself together, I left the café and proceeded to walk down to the busy shop-filled street, searching aimlessly for something to spark my interest. There was nothing that I hadn’t seen before on other aimless walks; there was nothing that compelled me to enter any of the shops or take a turn down a different road. I shrugged my shoulders and sat on a bench, reviewing in my mind the possibilities open to me. There were always the Commons, but I balked at the idea. After all, hundreds of college kids would all be heading in that same direction. The theater district? There was nothing I hadn’t seen. I sighed dejectedly. Why today of all days?
“Excuse me?”
I raised my head to the source of the voice that had suddenly penetrated my bleak reverie. My eyes slammed abruptly into a pair of icy silver ones, sparkling with amusement, and God-willing interest. The face that held the eyes was bronzed and beautiful, and the body that accompanied him was like something from the pages of a Harlequin romance.
“Yes?” I asked, my mouth framing the word with a clumsy stutter.
“I’m looking for the building of Mr. James T. Farro.”
My hand pointed in the general direction of the building. “Just go down there,” I replied wryly.
My Harlequin god frowned briefly, “You know the place?” It was the first time I noticed his accent, something Spanish, but formalized as if he had been educated in the U.S. or England.
“I work there,” I said.
“You are a secretary?”
“Sort of…right now I’m trying to find a life.”
Uninvited, the clearly confuzzled bronzed Apollo perched upon my bench. If this was what God had in mind about breaking monotony, we would have to talk. Granted, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the gorgeous creature that sat lazing like a panther with that beautiful smile and fairly intriguing set of interested great gray eyes, but…no, not again. I liked monotony.
“You have another question?” I asked, snobbishly.
“Yes, why are you sitting on a bench at,” he paused to glance at a gold Rolex, “10:30 in the morning if you work there?”
“Because I am Mr. Farro’s secretary and at the moment, he is concerned about my welfare.”
“You are ill?”
“Hardly.”
“I do not understand.”
“Excuse me, but I really don’t have the patience to answer fifty questions from someone who doesn’t even have the courtesy to give me a name.”
“Nicholas.”
“That’s besides the point,” I stood up and hoisted my purse onto my shoulder, fully intent to return to my car and drive as far away from strange Latin princes who have no compunction about asking peculiar questions that have nothing to do with them.
“I’m sorry if I offended you,” he said, sincerity deepening his voice.
I whirled, “You didn’t offend…I just don’t like communication.” I bit my tongue. That was brilliant. Now, not only was I semi-psychotic secretary evidently going through some kind of premature mid-life crisis, I was now a semi-psychotic secretary with a premature mid-life crisis that didn’t know how or have a desire to communicate.
The stranger surprised me with a guttural laugh. I turned, my mouth dropping with a mixture of surprise, indignation and concealed amusement. I raised my finger in a comic gesture that has existed as long as secretaries made fools of themselves in front of beautiful Spanish men. Then, I dropped my finger and sighed.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. We all have off-days.”
“I’m having an off-year,” I said dryly.
He laughed again, “I could easily say the same.” He paused and stood, clasping his hands behind his back. “If it would not be too much to ask, would you mind showing me exactly where this building is?”
“Sure. I have to go back and get my car anyway.” I gestured to him to follow and started to walk. “Is this your first time in Boston?”
“Yes. Do you live here?”
“Yes. I’ve been here a couple of years now.”
“Oh. Do you like it?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes I miss home.”
“Home?”
“Maine,” I said. Maine was where I met David. I shook my head and smiled at the stranger. “It’s not far from here.”
Chapter 2
“So, let me get this straight…you sort of get fired…”
“A temporary leave of absence.”
“Ah-huh. Your boss thinks you have no life.”
“Yes.”
“Which is thoroughly disgusting, by the way.”
“Funny, funny….”
“Then, you go for a walk and on this walk you meet this absolutely gorgeous Latin god, take him to exactly where he wants to go…”
“Which just happens to be where I work…”
“Get in your car and drive away,” Sandy Jenkins said, pursing her lips and giving me a look comprised of death and sarcasm. “Sally, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, but you haven’t had a date in…” She began to tick off fingers and frowned, “over a year?! Sal, that’s pathetic.”
I smiled sweetly, “Oh, but Sandy, you have enough dates for both of us…”
To which Sandy promptly stuck her tongue out.
“Besides,” I reasoned, licking the spoon to the fat-free yogurt. “I’m a widow. I don’t have to date.”
“Widows who are seventy years old and crotchety don’t have to date, not intelligent, semi-attractive thirty-five year old secretaries.”
I sighed, “Ever think that maybe, just maybe mind you, I’m not ready for another relationship, or maybe I’m not meant to be in a relationship? I don’t know, Sand. I like monotony and while two years may seem like a long time in between relationships for you, it’s too soon for someone like me.”
“Someone like you? Only people who are dead can live the kind of life you lead. You come home, make some semi-processed, heart healthy dinner, go to bed, wake up and go to work. That’s worse than monotony…that’s just plain stupid.”
“Why?”
“Because you need human contact, because the human spirit needs something besides boredom and bran muffins…” Sandy frowned and sighed wearily. “Look, I don’t pretend to be a saint. I like to have a good time, but with you, Sal, I don’t know. Ever since David died you’ve shut yourself away from everything. It’s not good.”
“Sandy, I’m not like you. I don’t have the blond hair and killer eyes.”
“Sometime I’ll get you to look in the mirror, Sal. I don’t think you and I see the same things.”
I closed my eyes. “It was five minutes, maybe ten. Besides, he probably has a string of gorgeous, dark haired, dark eyed Latin princesses following him around.” I shrugged, “What would a man like that want with a girl like me?”
Sandy snorted, “Monotony?”
*
Standing on my porch later that night I realized that Sandy was probably right. I was hesitant to give her the full benefit of the doubt; after all, that would be admitting defeat. I took a deep breath and thought again. No, no amount of chai could calm the intense emotions ransacking me. I straightened. No, Sandy wasn’t right, not about me. Sandy was three years younger than me, but feeling every moment of it. Tall, blonde and intelligent, she proved a challenge for most men. She was confidant and funny. But me? I was short, little even, with straight brown hair and green eyes hidden behind a pair of glasses. Men didn’t look at me. It was the Sandy’s of the world that were beautiful, so sayth Cosmopolitan and Vogue. I was different than all those other semi-attractive, thirty-five year old secretaries. And besides, I liked bran muffins.
Sighing, I watched the neighbor’s rugrats tearing up and down the street, howling like banshees on the prowl. In the spring night air they were almost cute. It was then that one of them decided to chuck a large object, not designed to fly, at my head. Pursing my lips and narrowing my eyes behind their glass camouflage, an almost impish desire suddenly swept over me. In a flash of juvenile vengefulness I leapt from my porch into my garden and turned on the hose, much to the little buggers’ surprise. Laughing, I watched them scamper and trip over themselves as the icy fifty-one degree water made that warm spring air feel like a winter snow storm. I grinned. That felt good.
I turned off the hose and walked into the house, closing the screen door behind me in case any of those monstrous excuses for human beings decided to have another go at “Old Sally’s House of Darkness.” HA!
Plucked up with amusement and self-satisfaction I made my way into the kitchen and began the routine task of cleaning my dishes before I prepared dinner. Not a moment later a soft but firm knock tapped at my door. Turning around, my lower jaw fell to the tile floor. Standing in my screen door, tall, dark, gorgeous and very, very wet, was none other but the Latin prince I had met two days before. In my gleeful happiness at paying back my neighbor’s offspring, I had failed to see the dark, lithe form standing at the end of my driveway. Stunned speechless, my hands dripping with sudsy soap bubbles, I stared at the figure standing in my door.
“If you don’t mind,” he said softly, “the night air has suddenly gone quite chill.”
Nervously, I moistened my lips and went to open the door to him, a task made surprisingly difficult by the moist soapiness of my hands. I gestured for him to walk into the house and rushed back to the sink to rinse and dry my hands. Turning around I gasped. Much to my chagrin, the Latin prince had turned himself into a Latin god, simply by being doused with a hose! Thick dark hair was plastered dangerously about his head and face and silver eyes glinted with amusement. He had removed the dark suit coat, whose price I was afraid to ask, and hung it over his arm. His white silk shirt clung to his steel framed body and I felt myself swallow painfully.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, slowly, shaking my head and coming back to the present. “Let me get you a towel.” I turned and scampered down the hallway and pulled a selection of fluffy white towels from the shelves. I was surprised to notice that he had not moved, nor said anything since his initial entry into my house. “I didn’t even see you standing there. I’m sorry.” I handed him the towels. He took them, but continued to look at me. As the seconds ticked by, I was made to feel more and more awkward.
“Look, I didn’t mean to douse you with the hose. It was just…”
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He began to vigorously towel his hair.
“Tell you what,” I said, realizing it was stupid to leave him standing in a draft soaking wet, “Why don’t you go into the bathroom? I think I have some of my husband’s clothes still. They might fit you.” I paused and caught myself. What in the world had I just done?
“I would appreciate it,” he said softly, the understanding light in his eyes oddly reassuring me. Suddenly, he burst out laughing, as if the whole thing was some bizarre joke. “I must tell you how glad I am that you turned on the faucet on those brats. It was quite amusing.” He grinned, revealing straight teeth, “I laughed until I realized that the sprinkler system also sprayed over your driveway.”
I smiled, “It felt good. I mean, hitting the little brats felt good. I’m just sorry it hit you. The bathroom is down the hall. I’ll get you some clothes.”
Showing him the bathroom, I moved into a spare bedroom, cautiously looking behind me to make sure he wasn’t some sick weirdo who liked stalking 35-year-old secretaries or a thief, not that he could run anywhere soaking wet and not be noticed by half the city, but... I made a brief inventory of my rooms and prepared how I would explain any missing objects to the insurance company. Quickly, my heart tense in case he proved to be the object of my fears, I pulled a casual sweater and slacks from a box under the bed. I ran from the room and stopped only in time to walk sedately back to the bathroom. It was one thing to fear him; it was another to lose my dignity. He lounged nonchalantly against the door, waiting for me to return with clothes. His eyes were amused. He knew. Dammit.
“Gracias,” he said, his lips quirking. “Mr. Farro said you were prompt.”
My jaw dropped as he turned and entered the bathroom, closing the hard wooden door in my face. Mr. Farro. I should have known. Grinding my teeth I flopped into a chair in the hallway, fully prepared to assault the impudent son-of-gun the moment he walked into my hands.
But he didn’t.
Time ticked by. Seconds. Minutes. Longer minutes. Really, really long minutes. Well, he wasn’t taking a shower and he sure as hell hadn’t walked out the door. I put my chin on my hand and began to tap a staccato against the mahogany tabletop. At first, there had been some sign of life coming from behind the door. Now, there was nothing. I yawned. Two days into my vacation and I had managed to soak the man who was supposed to meet my boss, but for all I knew was some kind of crazy psycho-killer that had a fascination with secretaries and liked to get wet. Raising my eyes to the heavens I wondered what in the hell I had done to tick God off.
*
Niccolo Tiori de Quisto grinned as he slid from the bathroom window. Suddenly feeling more alive than he had for months, Niccolo jumped down to the ground in the strange clothes and stealthily crept to the front of the house. Staying down, he quietly walked across the yard and then broke into a quick step down the cement walk, feeling his shoes squish beneath his feet. It had taken him five minutes to find something suitable to write on and five more to find a pen. Fortunately, Sally had a small stash of neat papers and pens hidden behind her towels. Once a secretary, always a secretary. He looked back at the house and chuckled softly. Mr. Farro had recommended that he make Sally’s vacation interesting. He had every intention of doing just that.
*
Twenty minutes later I finally had had enough. I knocked loudly on the door and waited for a response. I frowned. There was nothing.
“Nicholas?”
No answer.
I closed my eyes, “Oh please, God, don’t let him have passed out.” I put my hand over my eyes and crept into the room. “Nicholas?” I crouched down, feeling blindly for him on the floor. Alright, no body…what in the world…I pulled the hand from my face and gasped. The window was ajar, the curtains blowing mockingly at me. I looked down to the floor. Next to a neat pile of wet, expensive laundry was a note, written in clear black hand:
“Caesar’s Dry Cleaning
224 South Ave.
I’ll pick them up Tuesday.”
*
“Morning, Gene!”
It was nine o’clock on Tuesday morning and I was prepared for battle. Armed with the latest in laundry bag finery, I intended to shove Mr. Tiori’s clothes right into his gorgeous Latin face. After the small mishap with his laundry, I decided that, rather than drop it off at some cleaners I did not know, I’d just do it myself, with the personal touch of firsthand delivery. I raised my eyebrows, waiting for Gene to let me in the elevator.
“I’m sorry, Sal. Boss’ orders.”
Gene looked down at the ground. I felt a cold anger begin to sit within me. Who was Mr. Farro to prevent me from entering my place of work because he felt I was too uptight? There were some things I could have a sense of humor about and take with a grain of salt. I liked the whole vacation bit, and I was trying desperately hard to relax, but stupid incidences with infuriating Spanish business moguls and annoying shipping company owners with an overdone sense of paternal concern were really beginning to piss me off.
“Gene,” I charged, anger snapping in every tendon of my body. “I couldn’t give a flyin’ flip if the Pope told you not to let me in this building. Now I have a special delivery for a Mr. Tiori, so if you don’t let me in this building all hell is going to rain down on you and not even God will have sympathy for the mess I’ll leave behind.”
“But, Sal…”
“Gene,” I said, my tone softening, but not my determination, “I’ve had enough. Let me in the building.”
*
“Get ready, boy. She just scared the hell out of Gene.”
Nicolas grinned, “She’s feisty, James.”
James Farro laughed, “You don’t know the half of it. I’m sorry to drag you into this, but I had to get her out of the building for a while.”
“What exactly is this your planning, James? I admit, I like a challenge, but keeping pent up secretaries from their place of occupation isn’t one of them.”
Nicolas looked at the older man standing at the window. He had known James Farro for most of his life, and his entire professional career. It was James who recommended that Nicolas get away from the pressures of the business world and try to recover from the years of strain that had made Nicolas very wealthy very fast. Now, he had been in the States for six months, and was planning on spending a few more months there before finishing up what he had to do back in Spain.
James turned around and smiled, “Sally Morgan has been with this company for seven years. She has never missed a day; she has never missed a meeting or a company party. As old and corrupt as I am in her eyes, I know damn well I couldn’t function without her. I’m promoting her to junior vice-president. Until then, I’ve got to train this brainless brunette from the pool how to operate a computer.” He gestured to the gum-chewing, promiscuous object in question flirting with the security guard. Nicolas shook his head at such idiocy.
Nicolas laughed, “So you send her on vacation?”
James sobered, “Sally needs a vacation. I don’t like to interfere with my workers’ lives, Nick, but I don’t like to see them hurting and Sally Morgan has been hurting ever since that husband of hers died. That’s where you come in.”
It was Nicolas’ time to become serious. He shook his head. “James, I don’t have the time to soften the heart of a too-old-too-fast secretary.”
“I’m not asking you to play with her heart, Nick. I’m asking you to make her life interesting.” James grinned and nodded towards the door. “Here she comes, boy, give her hell!” With that, Mr. James T. Farro ran into his office.
“Coward,” Nicolas muttered. He leaned back in the chair in front of Sally’s desk and placed his feet upon her desk nonchalantly. The look on her face was hard with frustration and obvious anger. He tried not to grin. He expected this.
“Well, well, well, Mr. Tiori, what a surprise!” She said, her smooth voice hard as steel. “I’ve brought your clothes!” Nick was hardly surprised when she dumped them unceremoniously onto his lap. He looked down at them and frowned. She couldn’t have done what he thought she did…
“Sally…”
“Ms. Morgan.”
“Sally,” Nick repeated as if she didn’t speak. “I don’t wear pink shirts.”
“Y’do now,” She said. “I would have done it had you asked, but you couldn’t handle that apparently. But now this farce has gone on long enough. Where’s Mr. Farro? I want to know how you found my house and why the hell you found it necessary to walk out my window.”
“Actually, I climbed,” Nick said, quietly. He grinned at the green sparks flaring like gold in her eyes. “Mr. Farro gave me your address. I found it by following the directions he gave me. I left you my clothes, which I’m assuming is the “it” in question, because you got them wet. I left out the window because it was fun.”
“I’m glad you had fun at my expense,” she snapped. Nick’s eyes narrowed and he felt the first stirring of annoyance.
“I think you and I should talk,” he said and stood up. “Apparently there has been a misunderstanding.”
“No, I don’t think…” Suddenly, she gasped, her eyes traveled the length of him. He frowned at the horrified expression that came and stayed on her face. Her eyes mirrored the anger inside, but something else appeared, something far darker.
*
At first, I hadn’t noticed the casual sweater and slacks he was wearing. At first I was too blinded by anger to feel the agony that ripped through my body. He expected this, the anger and the assault. He was so confidant, arrogant even, that I would do something as stupid as butcher his laundry and storm into work when I was on vacation that he actually wore my husband’s clothes into work! A vision of David crept into the back of my mind. This man was not David. I calmed the beating of my heart and felt the fear within me freeze into a hardened lump of icy loathing.
“It appears, Mr. Tiori,” I said coldly, “That you expected my arrival today. I would appreciate it, if you, in your apparently busy schedule, could find the time to return my husband’s clothes with a bill for your pink shirt. I will endeavor to find a similar one to the original white form.”
“Sally, I wore the clothes to emphasize the incident, not to offend you,” he said, looking down at me with dawning understanding appearing in the silver river of his eyes.
“Don’t worry,” I said and forced a hard laugh to escape my lips. Fighting back embarrassing tears I said as caustically as I could, “You could never be the man David was in those clothes.”
Turning on my heal, I turned only at the door, “You can tell Mr. Farro that I will let him know my decision as to whether I will return or not in the coming weeks. You too seem to get along just fine. I’m sure you can explain.”
Slowly rocking back in forth in an old oak rocking chair on my porch that night, I watched the red glow of the sun fade over the city skyline. In the tumultuous mixture of cars and subways that still poured incessantly from the buildings, I half-expected to see a long black car out come from the shadows. I closed my eyes and sighed, fighting back tears that would never be shed. It had been twenty years since last I cried, but that day I began to feel the dam cracking within me. What useless frivolity there was in anger and revenge. What a fool I was to think that I could outwit someone like Mr. Farro and his obvious crony, Niccolo Tiori de Quisto. Dammit! I slammed my fists down on the arms of the chair and looked at the sun. Standing up, I paced to the edge of the porch and back to the chair again.
All my life I had worked to this moment. I had worked until I became something and, even though it was a little something, I was independent. I wasn’t stuck in Nowheresville, Maine, with Nobody and Nothing. I went from being that Nobody and that Nothing to living as Somebody with Something. It was so much more than what anyone had ever guessed I could be. I was a professional. I was happy. Happy? Content maybe, but it was better than being locked away in a small town, watching the light fade from children’s eyes as they realize that there is no way out. The chains of family and friends and tradition strangling the life from them, sucking the very center of their souls away so that, deep inside, they die. I had seen it time and again. I was afraid of it. I would never go back.
Yet, a light wind blew over my heated cheeks and I felt, rather than heard, the distant call of a bald eagle echoing in the mountains of my memory. Why now? Why now, when every chain was broken did I hear that call, that faint voice upon the chords of nature’s fingertips that beckoned me home again? Home? I had no home. A suburb of Boston was my place of habitation and an office was my place of work. That was my life. That was the monotony I wanted after years of mental turmoil and emotional upheaval. I liked monotony; I needed monotony and I would be damned if any Spanish jerk thought he could prevent me from finding the peace I craved.
Chapter 3
Nicolas stood looking out the window of his penthouse apartment, watching the rows of streaming headlights filter down through the homeless and the refuse of the city streets. Once he had been there too. He slipped his hands into the pockets of his pants and remembered the morning before when he had so stupidly worn Sally’s husband’s clothes to work. He hadn’t thought about it when he put them on. He had planned on changing into his own laundry once she arrived with his clothes, but then again…he had not anticipated the pink shirt. He knew she was spunky, but what had flared into those eyes was something darker and more violent than he would have given her credit for. He shook his head at the memory of those eyes. No, Niccolo…you don’t have time for that.
Sighing, he turned from the window and poured himself a swig of brandy to clear his head. James had certainly made it clear that it was Nick’s responsibility to get Sally to stay with the company, never mind the fact that it was James’ brilliant idea that ticked Sally off in the first place. Nick took a sip and leaned against his fireplace, watching the lights inside glimmer and faintly wishing he had chosen a house like Sally’s away from the city. He glanced up at the dark eyes peering at him from the mantle. The first set belonged to his mother, who had struggled and worked to keep him alive long enough to learn to fend for himself. Faded and cracked white with age, the photograph was the one thing that he had left, other than a tearless memory of the morning he had woken up for the first time alone. The other pair of eyes belonged to someone else entirely. Marjerita. Her small fist was only the size of his little finger, but her big dark eyes with sooty lashes held all the power in the world. She had twisted his heart from the moment he saw her and his heart had shattered when he was forced to say good-bye.
The shrill ring of the telephone broke his reverie. Walking over the corner table, he picked up the receiver and walked back over to the window.
“Tiori.”
“Nick, where have you been?”
“I’m in Boston.”
“Obviously. That’s why I called this number. What are you doing there?”
“I’ve been visiting an acquaintance. What’s wrong, Camilla?” He asked patiently. A vision of his sister-in-law flashed through his head. He tried not to wince as her voice purred over the phone.
“I was worried, that’s all. Why did you not call or let us know you were leaving?”
“It’s a business problem, Camilla. The family has nothing to do with it.”
“Well, of course, we do! We’re all concerned for you.”
“You need have no concern for me, Camilla.”
“But, Niccolo, Mama is worried too. Please, come home.”
“I am fine, Camilla. I am not a child that needs supervision. I will be home in my own time.”
She sighed resolutely, “Oh, Niccolo, you are so stubborn.”
“Call it a gift. I really must be going, Camilla.”
He could envision her painted lips in a feigned pout, “Well, if you must. Te quiero.”
He shook his head and rolled his eyes, “Adios.”
He hung up the phone and poured another glass of brandy. Camilla was enough to try the very saints. The phone rang again. A vision of the small black receiver plummeting from the apartment suddenly flashed tauntingly in front of his mind. Sighing wearily, he picked the damn thing up.
“Tiori.”
“Nick! Thank God.”
“Jason?”
“Of course. Where are you?”
“Boston,” Nick raised his eyes to the ceiling. He had the most peculiar feeling of déjà vu.
“What the bloody ‘ell are you doing in Boston?”
“Trying to have a vacation.”
“Yeah, right. In America? They don’t know how.”
“So I’m learning.”
“Look, I just called to let you know that everything is ready for when you return. You’ll land in London, we’ll take you in and it’ll all go over like we planned.”
“When do you want me back?” Nicholas asked, pulling out his planner, left empty for the following months.
“That’s just it. I know you’re home is in Spain, but you’ve got connections everywhere. The bloody press is just jumping to get a shot at your bloody head, mate. It’s going to be a slaughter if you return before July.”
“Can we wait that long?”
Jason paused, “Mate, it ain’t gonna make much difference how long we wait. You know that, don’t you?”
Nicholas sighed. This was the last thing he needed after this week. “I thought this was supposed to help.”
“Well, it will, but not much. There’s only so much we can do. These things take time.”
“Alright. What month is it now?”
Jason laughed, “What kind of vacation is this—physical or mental? It’s April, mate.”
Despite himself, Nick grinned, “I seriously doubt if this is a vacation.”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly supposed to be in the first place. Look, just lie low for a bit. Everything’s all set here. No worries. You’ve got me workin’ for ya.”
Nicholas paused, “Don’t remind me.”
“If I were near you, I’d punch you for that. Instead, I’m going to Simms to get roaring drunk on your tab.”
“Have one for me.”
“Will do, mate. I’ll try not to keep in touch.”
Nicholas laughed, “Me too. Adios.”
Hanging up the receiver, Nicholas leaned back on his couch and laughed for the first time in a long while. Of all the things to laugh about, his situation back home wasn’t one of them, but Jason somehow made all dark things funny. Looking at the phone, he pondered something else entirely, which made him sober up drastically. What to do about Sally Morgan?
*
“Uh…earth to Sally, come in Sally…Do you remember what Maine was like?” Sandy was standing at the end of the bed, patiently pulling out all the clothes I was carefully folding into my suitcase.
“Yes, I remember what Maine was like,” I replied casually, putting a soft wool skirt into my case for the third time.
“Then, why are you going back?” Sandy stretched her arms out to her sides and stared at me with eyes as blue and cold as the New England ocean waters.
“My mother remarried.”
“Your mother remarried a year ago.”
“All the more reason to meet my stepfather then,” I said calmly, looking all over my room for my black scarf. “Sandy, where did you throw my scarf?”
“Not telling,” Sandy retorted, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
“Sandy, there are times when I swear we are still twenty.”
“What are you talking about? I am twenty.”
“Twelve times over.”
“Now I’m really not telling you where your scarf is.”
I sighed, all exasperation suddenly creeping into my forehead where it decided to spontaneously transform into the Marine band. I threw my head back, contemplated my war strategy, and prepared the assault.
“If you don’t tell me where you’ve chucked all of my clothing, I’m going to tell Walter you’re not a virgin.”
Sandy’s mouth dropped, and then she grinned. “That’s okay. Neither is he.”
I groaned, “You couldn’t stand the pressure of a moral relationship for a month, could you?”
“Don’t lecture me, Sal. This is my turn to lecture you.”
I turned to look at my best friend, all anger draining from me and melting into a puddle of exhaustion. “Sandy, I need to go home.”
Sandy’s eyes softened. I knew she was trying to understand, which was more than I could say, even for me. “Sally, you have no home. Neither of us do.”
“I have to convince myself of that…” I whispered. “I haven’t said good-bye to the asparagus garden.”
“What?”
“The pine trees. I was an ant in an asparagus garden. Ants can get out of almost anything.”
Sandy’s face registered a variety of emotions, shock, amusement and finally sorrow. “Sal, you won’t be going back to garden. Not even your mother is there anymore.”
“I know,” I said, trying to combat the silly tears that welled in my eyes. I picked up one of the many shirts I had scattered about the bed.
“Maybe you should think about this, Sal,” Sandy said. “What are you running away from? Him?”
“Tiori? No,” I shook my head and smiled, “He’s not worth the effort.”
“Monotony?”
Again I shook my head, pausing to look at my suitcase.
Sandy unfolded her arms and handed me the black silk scarf. “What is it then?”
“Me. I’m running away from me.”
Sandy and I looked at each other. For all her hard core nature, I knew that Sandy was as vulnerable as I was, but at the same time, she was more sure of herself. I was afraid. I was doubting suddenly all that I believed in. My boss had shattered my composure; a Latin jerk had ruined my dignity. Suddenly, the two pillars I had relied on for my existence were slipping from beneath me and I wasn’t sure I could stand on my own. I needed to go home. To walk into the rooms my mother had craved in her marriage to my father, and to remember why I ran away the moment the opportunity came. I had to be sure; I had to know.
“Well, the least you could do was buy some new clothes,” Sandy said, cheerfully despondent. “These are positively dowdy, darling…really, they are.”
I smiled, making the most of my prim and proper voice, “Then we must do something about it, musn’t we?”
“But, of course!”
With that, Sandy picked up my purse and strutted jauntily out the door.
“I like the brown one.”
“I don’t know. I’m kind of partial to the green.”
“Nah, the brown one. Look how elegant she is. Oh look, she even helped the little green one. See…it’s all about the brown one, baby.”
I looked at Sandy and bit into my hotdog. Three hours into the shopping trip we decided that we desperately needed sustenance, and since neither of us were partial to expensive lunches or fast food, we picked the most unhealthy choice of all.
“What about that one?” I asked, pointing to a white swan that swept gracefully into the park’s water, lazily gliding over under the willows.
“That’s not a duck,” Sandy replied, matter-of-factly. “Hey, what did you get on your hotdog?”
I whacked the mangled mob of gooey bread around my mouth and ran my tongue against my pallet, “Mustard and relish. Why, what did you get?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s got sauerkraut on here.”
“I’ve never had that before.”
“Try it.” Sandy and I switched hotdogs and cleared out pallets before sampling each other’s lunch.
I felt my eyeballs mush together and my nose crinkle. “Tha’s disgusthing,” I said, taking my hotdog back and guzzling my coke. “Ick!”
Sandy laughed, “You sound like a five-year-old.”
“Well, that tasted like something you’d give a five-year-old. Lord, it’s a wonder any of us make it to adulthood.”
Sandy snorted, “Most of us don’t, dear.”
I grinned, “Look at that one. Look how little he is. What do you think? I’m thinkin’ he’s an ugly duckling.”
“Yep. That seems about right.”
I smiled and leaned back on the park bench, closing my eyes. Absently I started to hum the first melody that came to mind, feeling the warm spring day fall upon my face and sit upon my shoulders.
“Whatcha hummin’?” Sandy asked in a childish voice.
“Tell Me on a Sunday.”
“What’s that about?” Sandy asked.
“It’s a girl describing how she wants to be broken up with. It’s really pretty in a sad sort of way.”
“I don’t know. I kind of think that songs about breaking up are trite.”
“Not this one. Not this one,” I said and grinned. “She wants a park with chimpanzees, and trees, and a flying trapeze.”
“Thank you, Dr. Seuss.”
I laughed, “I’ll play it for you once.”
“That’s okay. I think I can live without it. What time is it?”
I opened my eyes and looked at my watch. “Twenty-of two.”
Sandy’s eyes widened in panic. “Oh my God, I can’t believe it. I’ve got to run, Sal.”
“Run?” I whined. “We haven’t even accessorized!”
“Tomorrow,” Sandy replied.
I shook my head, “Can’t. I’m going home tomorrow.”
“Why? Tomorrow’s Friday. Look, just stay the weekend, then you’ll miss the Friday traffic.”
“Sandy…”
“Sally…” She mimicked in the exact tone, picking up her bags. “I’ll be at the house around ten.”
I shook my head. “Fine…brat.”
She stuck her tongue out at me and scooted over to the T-station. I sighed and held my empty coke in my hands, watching the animals play and young lovers skipping classes walk along the water’s edge. It had been a long time since I had last sat and watched humankind interacting with each other. I began to sing quietly, “ ‘Don’t want to know, who’s to blame…it won’t help, knowing…don’t want to fight day and night, bad enough you’re going…Don’t wait in silence with no words at all…don’t get drunk and slam the door…that’s no way to end this…I know how I, want you to say good-bye…” I let my voice trail away.
Quietly, a deep lilting voice sang behind me, ever so softly so that I had to strain to hear it, “Take me to a park that’s covered with trees…tell me on a Sunday, please…”
I whirled around and met eye-to-eye with a pair of clear silver eyes, watching me with interest.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Morgan.”
Chapter Four
Nicholas had seen them from across the park. Sally was sitting next to a tall blonde woman, who was clearly designed solely for man-hunting. The two contrasted sharply against each other. While the blonde wore bright, spring colors and walked with assurance, Sally wore demure, quiet colors and walked with the tentative look of a child on his first outing. The blonde was taller, stunningly thin, a model from some magazine. Sally was short, curvy and probably too inhibited to ever enjoy getting her picture taken. Nicholas stopped under a tree and watched the two of them. Sally was laughing at something, her long auburn hair spilling out of its bun. He imagined her eyes sparkling with something other than irritation and coldness and he forced himself to swallow. The blonde woman seemed to sense him watching and her eyes seemed to settle on him, even from a distance. He frowned when he saw her get up suddenly and scoot towards the T-station. His eyes narrowed and he briefly wondered if she at all guessed that he was the source of the complaints he was sure Sally had been making all week. He grinned and pulled his hands out of the pockets of his suit pants and walked out of Sally’s range of vision. Coming up behind her was probably safer than courting a frontal assault.
When he stopped behind her, he was surprised to hear her singing softly to herself. A classic from a musical, he smiled at the pure beauty of her voice. It wasn’t staggering, or even enchanting, just soothing, like the voice of a mother consoling a weeping child. He suddenly felt the urge to pull the sticks that held her bun in place and harass her unmercifully, just to keep that happy, joyous lilt in her voice. He was sure her laughter must sound just as…as what? He wondered. Unique? Pleasant? He couldn’t think of the word. There was probably too many to describe it with just one. When her soft voice quieted into silence, he gently finished the verse for her, almost unthinking. It didn’t register to him that she would hear him until she whirled upon the bench and eyed him with a cold calculation nestled in the flinted jade of her eyes. He shook himself free and armed himself for a battle of sheer wits and stubborn determination.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Morgan,” He said softly.
“Well, it was anyway,” she replied sweetly and turned back to people watching.
Uninvited, he sat down next to her on the bench, and propped one knee on the other, feigning a casual air.
“I don’t recall asking you to sit down,” she said wryly, her face covered by a stray tendril he forced his eyes away from.
“It’s a public park.”
“Good to know.” Surprisingly, Sally made no move to leave once he had taken a seat. Nicholas was faintly astonished. It occurred to him that she might actually be enjoying herself so much that she didn’t want to leave. He began to reconsider his game plan. Oh, she’d be more vulnerable now, but destroying a spot that evidently meant so much, or could grow to mean something was not in his books. He didn’t want to play dirty; he didn’t want to hurt her. Dammit, what did he want?
Time passed. He couldn’t have guessed the minutes. He didn’t even notice when he began to watch the people. The small children playing with mom or dad and the grown up children holding hands on plaid woven blankets. He sighed, leaned back further on the bench, unconsciously putting one hand against his head to be more comfortable. He felt his body suddenly relax.
“Falling asleep?” Sally asked him.
Nicholas started and sat up, “Was I?”
She shrugged, “Wasn’t watching. You all of a sudden put down your daggers. I wasn’t quite sure if you were dead or alive.”
He grinned, despite himself. “Which would you have preferred?”
“You really want to know?”
He laughed, “No. I think I can guess.”
Sally didn’t smile. She was still serious. The lines of strain he had first seen on her face when he had come up to her were steadily reappearing, making her look years older than she was. His eyes narrowed. He was bothering her more than she let on.
“What do you want, Mr. Tiori?” She asked, swallowing and refusing to meet his eyes.
Nicholas frowned, “Your boss asked that I be sure that you don’t quit.”
“Really, now. And you assumed that stalking would be the best method of handling this?”
Nicholas shook his head and shrugged, “I’m not stalking you. Actually, if truth be told I had just come here to relax after meeting with some business associates.”
“And you just had to say hello…”
“Sally, if my presence bothers you, let me know…”
“You’re bothering me,” she said without preamble, completely straight-faced, tense as a bowstring and with clear-voiced, deadpan honesty. Nicholas was beginning to wonder what was really behind those glasses and that cold anger.
He stood up. Defeat was a hell of a lot better than throwing a woman into a state of distress. That definitely wasn’t his thing. Had his conquistador ancestors heard about his frightening a secretary out of her mind, he’d be hung and disgraced for all eternity. Sally’s head came up suddenly. He looked down at her face, holding her eyes with his own and said, quite softly and with genuine sincerity.
“Perhaps, we could talk another time when my presence is not so offensive to you.”
“I’m afraid there won’t be much opportunity for that. I’m leaving after this weekend.”
“Home?” He asked, wisely. She was running away. From him? He frowned. For God sakes, why?
“It’s none of your concern,” she snapped sharply. Again, she refused to look him in the eye.
Nicholas sat back down on the bench and replied slowly, “I think it does. I want to apologize for showing you and your late husband the disrespect I did the other day. I did not mean to offend you so greatly.”
Sally’s mouth dropped slightly and her face paled. “It wasn’t that you offended, Mr. Tiori. I kept some of David’s clothes near me in case something like that ever happened. I just didn’t expect to see you in them after the incident.” She looked down at her hands and began to fumble with her two small bags. Nicholas bent and picked them up. Her head shot back up to his face.
Bowing formally, he said, “The least I could do is carry your packages home for you.”
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, “Why would you do that?”
“To restore my honor,” he replied seriously.
“It doesn’t get you off the hook.”
He laughed, “I didn’t suppose it would. Shall we?”
“If you must.”
He laughed again, enjoying the various emotions that scampered across her face. Perhaps it would be fun to open her up, after all.
“Then let us go,” he said. “Let us go.”
*
Nicholas walked with me until we reached his car, a glittering black contraption that was probably worth more than my house. I watched as he casually unlocked the door and opened it for me, gesturing that I seat myself. I slid in, careful not to touch him in any way and slid as far away from him as possible until he shut the door, when I moved back towards the door. Nicholas got in behind the wheel and brought the engine to life. He expertly backed out of a narrow parking space and took off as if driving Boston was nothing more than difficult than driving out in the plains of South Dakota. It was some time before we spoke. I concentrated on the road, never peeling my eyes from the pavement, watching to make sure he was taking me home and not to some strange place. I didn’t trust him.
Suddenly, he spoke, “Sally, I want to make a deal with you.”
I didn’t respond. He looked over at me and frowned. “I’m not going to kill you, you can take your nails from my seating.”
I looked down at my hands and realized that my long fingernails had come close to puncturing the leather interior. What a mess that would have been. I pulled my hands up onto my lap. He made no move to say anything further. I licked my lips.
“What kind of a deal?”
“You go to Maine this weekend. You try to find what you are looking for, though I know you won’t…”
I interrupted him, “How the hell do you know what I’m looking for? How do you know I’m looking for anything?”
He looked at me with all the wisdom of the world in his eyes. “Because you’re a small town girl and I’m an inner city boy. Don’t think I don’t know. You’ll go and not find what you’re looking for. You’ll come back within a week. And then…”
“And then I come running back to Mr. Farro, full of repentance for standing up for myself and walking out the door.” I shook my head and felt the annoyance creeping into every bone in my body. This man was impossible, unbelievable, arrogant, conceited…I looked at his face and realized he wasn’t buying the bait. He was serious! He actually thought I was going to do this! He actually thought he knew what I was looking for! I didn’t even know what I was looking for, never mind some nutty stalker/psycho-killer wannabe who knew old songs from Broadway musicals. I shook my head and laughed with all the amusement of a car about to hit a brick wall. “You are something else, Mr. Tiori. That you most certainly are.”
He didn’t laugh or snort or even react emotionally.
Instead, he pulled the car into the driveway and turned to look at me. “Sally,” he said very softly. “There is a very good reason why Mr. Farro asked you to take this vacation. I’m not here to ruin it. I’m a businessman; you are my latest associate. Make this deal with me. If you don’t find what you are looking for within the next week, hell, two weeks, you’ll come back and I’ll help you find what you are looking for.”
I swallowed. There was something intense in those eyes. I had the distinct feeling this wasn’t the deal he had originally had in mind. I was afraid to look at him too long, yet I felt myself pulled mentally closer. I fought against the look in those eyes. How did he know me so well? He was guessing. He had to be guessing. I felt myself nod against my will.
“All right. It’s a deal,” I said and held out my hand to shake on it.
To my surprise, Nicholas did not take my hand, or kiss my hand as I half-expected him to do. Instead, he nodded, got out of the car, opened the door, let me out, gave me my bags, got back in the car and drove away. Not even thinking, I picked up my bags, stormed into the house, and screamed at the top of my lungs.
Chapter 5
Nicholas sped away from the house without even looking back…more than five times. He felt his knuckles whiten against the wheel. She had offered him her hand…what was he supposed to do? Shake it? Or, better yet, kiss the offending thing like some old world hero of Hollywood born in the wrong century? He growled at the image sitting at the back of his mind. He’d be damned if he was going to kiss anything but those lips of hers. His heart raced at the very thought of…He stopped dead in mid-thought. What was he doing? It was a business deal. It was a way to right a wrong. It wasn’t romance, or passion, or God-forbid anything remotely close to emotion. It was business, like the countless other arrangements and deals, takeovers and rebuilds he had constructed his life around. Pulling his car around to the garage of the apartment complex, Nicholas stopped and stared blankly at the red numbers painted against the gray cement wall. He felt his heart settle back into an unsteady rhythm and his raging levels of testosterone droop decisively downwards. The sudden onslaught of conscious made him feel like gooey slime. There were other things to think about.
Like Sally. Nicholas got out of the car and walked up to the elevators that would take him up to his apartment. He put the key in the elevator and watched through the clear glass panels the city slip further and further beneath his feet. Entering his apartment, he collapsed onto the couch and buried his face in his hands. Sally. What was she running away from? What was she afraid of? What made her look at him with wide emerald eyes full of an entreaty he doubted she even knew was there? Again, the words of Mr. Farro came drifting to the forefront of his mind. Make her vacation interesting. Interesting? Sally wasn’t looking for interesting; she didn’t need interesting. Her life wasn’t the monotony she thought it was. She wasn’t living. There was a stark contrast between coming alive with the morning and just remembering to breath in and out because nature told one it was necessary to do so to survive. Nicholas felt the first feelings of frustration run over him. Dammit. He didn’t need this. He didn’t have the time to sort out the endless puzzle he was sure was behind her frigidity. Nicholas looked at his calendar and sighed. He only had two months to bring someone back to life and time was already running out.
*
Sandy closed the car door for Sally and watched her best friend drive towards Disappointment, Maine. Sandy shook her head and rubbed her hands against her arms. The cold chill ransacking her body had nothing to do with the cool morning air. Sandy knew that Sally was looking for something, but what? What had suddenly made Sally take this about face back to Nowhere where she was still a nobody that did everything wrong? Something had started to collapse the emotional barriers Sally had carefully constructed about herself, but for the life of her, Sandy couldn’t begin to understand why. What was she looking for, going back to the house of hurt that had forced her to run away in the first place? Sandy sighed and uttered a silent prayer that the highway somewhere, somehow would get struck by lightening and Sally would miraculously turn around and get this stupid masochistic idea out of her head. She looked up behind sunglasses and watched the ceaseless, leisurely floating of the clouds. Yeah, right. Why is it that stuff only worked in the movies?
Sandy climbed into her truck and pulled out towards the city. She was meeting Walter for lunch. Walter, who was way too serious, way too emotional and way too clingy to last much longer. Sandy blared her country station and rolled the windows down. She liked the freedom of the wind; it was her guide and role model. Always changing, ever mercurial, the wind never stayed in one place longer than a moment to brush a cheek or ruin a really good hair day. Sandy grinned. That was her, all right. Just enough to stir up trouble and give someone a good time. That’s all she wanted; that’s all she asked for. Laughing with the most relaxation she had felt in a while, Sandy prepared to say good-bye to Walter and move onward with the wind.
*
Standing on the dock by what had been the town lake, I looked at the loons playing under the shade of a giant pine tree. The still evening sun glimmered over the tiny rippled water, scintillating in tiny flecks of brilliant golden light. A wind blew steadily from the trees, but the giant shoots of evergreen asparagus were too high and powerful to let it leak beneath their skirts. I turned my back to the lake, trying to forget the memories of careless laughter that had made modesty fly on the wings of the limp summer breeze as school children of every age clamored for the length of rope that would make them the heroes of jungle lore. That rope still hung on the branch of a wide oak tree. Only now it hung as frazzled and lifeless as the worn tired limbs of the great, knotted oak that stood leaning over the docks as if its back were too sore and it needed someone to lean on for a change. I walked slowly up a steep incline and stared at the single street with long rows of boarded up houses and fallen signs, of broken glass and cracked pavement that resembled something from a fallen Western ghost town. Even with thirty-five year old eyes I could still see the edge of the town, where we’d stop our bikes and look into the wilderness and knew that life ended and began in Nowhere.
“You’ll not find it,” a voice said behind me, cool and matter-of-fact.
I whirled to see a face transformed. Gloria Sutton. The tall, raven beauty that had been the town’s pride and joy, though now her face was older, with the peculiar pattern of web-like wrinkles hidden under cover-up and foundation, and long raven hair tied up in French twist and seemingly coming from a bottle of deep ebony Revlon. Her blue eyes looked at me with the same cool disdain that had been there when we were younger. The color hadn’t changed much over the years. She smiled coldly and came to stand beside me.
“Won’t find what?” I asked softly. Gloria no longer intimidated me, and maybe she sensed that, because the cold smile and icy look faded from her eyes. Staring at the nothingness that had sprung from our childhood lives suddenly made us both realize that there was nothing there to fight over except old shadows and forgotten lies.
“Whatever it is you’re looking for,” Gloria replied. “Whatever that happens to be.”
I laughed shortly, a soft soundless smirk of air that held no humor. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”
“Because you never said good-bye, and for some reason something in us makes us need to convince ourselves we did the right thing. Only now, there’s nothing to say good-bye to.”
“What happened?” I asked. “How did it end?”
“There was nothing to end,” Gloria said, derisively. “When Mayor Procktor died, his widow hopped the country and eloped with some Swiss watchmaker. Sheep without shepherds tend to get lost.” Gloria looked at me through the tops of thin glasses, “So do people.”
“What about Reverend Simms? Did he ever marry Virginia Holden?”
“Nope. She married Michael Walker.” Gloria began to laugh. “Reverend Simms took such a fit he switched parishes. From what we hear, he’s no longer a Reverend.”
I laughed. Upon sobering I shook my head at the whims of a small town. “Where’s my mother, do you know?”
Gloria looked at me surprised, “She married again when your father died.”
“I know. I was planning on coming home a couple of years ago prior to the marriage, but it fell through.”
Gloria nodded, “She’s a good distance from here. They have a house about two hours South of here and a beach house on the coast. It’s April so they might have already moved in there.” Gloria pulled out a pad of paper and scribbled some directions down.
“Thanks.”
“Sure.”
“I think I’m going to go,” I said and moved towards my car.
Gloria’s voice stopped me, “Sally…”
I looked up into her eyes that had suddenly darkened with something I couldn’t understand. “Hmmm?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“I never told anyone.”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t your story to tell.”
I climbed back into my car and pulled away from the town, stopping only briefly to see the form of Gloria retreat into a long gray car I hadn’t even seen pull up on the side of the road. So it had been Gloria all those years ago. I had never really thought about it much, but now some of the pieces made sense. ‘Course now, it was too late, which I suppose was why it was so easy to brush it aside. After all, it didn’t bother me anymore. I had put the past behind me. Picking up the highway, I picked up the piece of paper Gloria had given me and worked on finding my way to my mother’s new life and I couldn’t help wondering what she would say when I walked through the door.
*
But Walter wasn’t letting go so easily. Sandy sat facing him in the middle of a Chinese restaurant, not evening noticing the oozing pile of lo mein sitting in front of her. Walter was smiling sweetly, talking incessantly about everything and nothing. She had the sudden peculiar feeling that Walter knew what was up.
“Walter,” she began.
“What’s up? I’m sorry. Did I interrupt you before? No…anyway, as I was saying…did you hear about the recent economic setbacks? Fortunately, my portfolio is yeah wide,” he gestured with his hands, “and I can recover easily enough. How about that sky today? Wasn’t it a lovely shade of blue? Speaking of blue, what do you think of the blue in that painting? Did you know that Van Gogh washed his brushes out in his mouth?”
“Walter,” she began again. She took a deep breath and shook her head at the sudden onslaught of verbosity that had temporarily wowed her. That was the most Walter had ever said in one breath before and she’d be damned if she didn’t think he had broken some kind of astronomical record.
He looked up innocently behind his spectacles, “Yes?”
Sandy paused and frowned. “How’s the shrimp?”
He started as if she had thrown him a left hook instead of a stupid question, which was clearly what he expected and really what she had been trying to say in the first place. He paused before answering.
“I think…it’s been around a while,” he said slowly.
Sandy sat back as if he had struck her. The understanding and clear look in his golden eyes told her more than she needed to know. He knew as well as she had known that she was planning on letting him go that very night.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I think so too.”
To her surprise, Walter didn’t try to fight back and she began to wonder if this was the right decision. They had been together for six months, which was far longer than the brief stints she usually allowed for. The oddest part was the attraction. He wore spectacles, for God’s sakes and red suspenders with black suits. ‘Course, there had been some serious perks in other areas, but that didn’t hide the fact that he was obviously some emotionally needy individual who had suddenly decided to cling to her. And it didn’t even come close to explaining why in the hell she had allowed him to do it. She watched as with the utmost of grace and dignity, Walter stood up and paid the bill for the untouched food that still sat on the table. Walking out to his car, a modest but fashionable Lexus she hadn’t seen before, Walter paused before she got into her truck.
“Sandy…”
“Hmmm?” She turned around.
Walter took of his glasses for the first time since she had known him and shrugged off a nerdy suit coat for a more casual trench. Sandy suddenly felt very confused.
“I want to thank you.” His voice was serious, clear and melodic, not higher pitched or uncertain. Sandy had the unnerving sinking feeling that she had blown something that was a lot more than what she thought it was.
“Why?”
He shrugged, “You took me as I was. No one had ever done that before. You made me happy. I’m sorry I couldn’t do that for you.”
Sandy stood dumbfounded as he cradled her face within his big, gentle hands. Then he placed the sweetest of kisses upon her lips and turned ruefully away, but never looking back.
Climbing into her truck, Sandy began to rhythmically pound her head against the steering wheel. That kiss had been so different from his often-clumsy attempts. Sandy realized that that son of a gun had been more experienced and more world-wise than he had let on. He knew what she thought she had needed and had given it to her, even though it wasn’t really what she wanted or needed after all. Dammit. Turning on the ignition, she switched her country for some really hard, out-of-date, rock that probably maintained the entire over-the-counter pharmaceutical industry and watched his Lexus—and a part of her heart—drive away.
“Shat,” she muttered and prepared to down at least two pints of Ben and Jerry’s over this one.
*
“Oh my God…”
As I pulled up to the large white and metal gates that framed the front of a long driveway, I felt myself triple check the directions Gloria had given me. Suddenly feeling remarkably stupid, I began to wonder if this wasn’t some semi-neurotic, vindictive, psycho-game Gloria was trying to wig me out with in order to get back at me for being alive. I parked my car in the cul-de-sac that curved around large tailored trees that looked like the belonged in Beverly Hills rather than Maine. This was unbelievable. I could just imagine sticking a hundred versions of my house inside the white fortress that loomed out of the woods. No wonder my mother remarried to this guy. Vaguely, I realized I knew absolutely nothing about him. That got me worried.
I approached the large red door cautiously, drawing on an old doorknocker that resembled something from a Charles Dickens’ novel. I sighed and banged three times on the door. My hand was still raised idiotically, when a tall elderly gentleman with an excruciatingly aquiline nose opened the door. Holy cow. She had a butler. My mother had a butler.
“The master and the madam are not interested.”
“Eh?” I asked, my nose pushing my glasses up as I looked at him in an expression that probably registered stupidity and confusion. “I’m not here to sell something.”
The old guy looked down at my shoes and then up at my clothing, a casual combination of wool skirt and sweater. His nose wrinkled in obvious disdain and his one eyebrow lifted to his pointedly low hairline.
“I wouldn’t have guessed.”
He held the door open and gestured for me to enter. He took me over to a morning-room salon with a marble fireplace and fluffy fancy pink chairs and black furniture. I tried not to frown. Walking into this room suddenly brought visions of Queen Victoria meeting the cast of Trading Spaces. I half-expected him to inform that Her Majesty would be present in a moment. Instead, I got a curt, “Don’t sit on the furniture. The master will be down to greet you in his own time.”
I watched the stiff-backed butler stride away back to his position at the door and raised my eyes to the heavens. Standing in the center of the room, I allowed myself to mentally explore the place. Though quite unorthodox in her sense of the decoratively appropriate, my mother’s choice of anachronistic Victorian elegance meets modern flare wasn’t really grotesque, just really weird. In a moment of idealistic pleasure, I let my mind envision my new stepfather. He would be older, since mother was fifty-three, with a casual air of sweaters and pipe smoke. I smiled at the jovial image that crept into my mind.
“May I help you?”
I turned and stifled a gasp with a chocked cough that caused the red color to creep up to my forehead. Oh, bravo, Sal. I regained my shaky composure enough to manage to say,
“Perhaps, I have the wrong address. I’m looking for Angela Wood?”
“My wife, now Angela Rourke, lives here, yes. I’m sure she has three of whatever your selling, so you may go.”
I was dumbfounded. This young, blonde-haired, straight-faced aristocrat with the piercing blue eyes was so far from my image of my brief moment of happy delusion I had just experienced that I didn’t know quite what to say. Unexpectedly and incredibly inappropriately, the thought that my clothes must really be dowdy crept into my mind. Did I really look like a saleslady that had nothing better to do but visit rich people in the back of who-knew-where?
I swallowed and said, “I think you must be mistaken. I’m not here to sell anything.”
“I’m atheist,” the man said abruptly, glancing back at his pile of paperwork in his hands.
“I’m not proselytizing either.”
He sighed, obviously annoyed, and pulled his glasses angrily from his nose. “Then what in the hell do you want? I’m a busy man; I don’t have time for this, and I know my wife doesn’t either.”
Before I could even reply, the object in question came bustling into the room. I felt my jaw hit the floor. Dressed in head-to-heel designer luxury, my mother was the epitome of the fashionable world she had so long desired to be part of. She didn’t see me at first, but looked questionably at her husband, who pointed ominously at me. In a moment of suspended time she turned around and froze in a mixture of awe and inexplicable sorrow.
“Hi, mom.”
Chapter 6
Chapter 6
“Oh, Sand, it was terrible…you should have seen her face.”
“I can just imagine. The prodigal child of a prom queen wannabe returns wearing a wool skirt.”
“That’s not funny.” I sighed and put my head against a cool pane of glass. “He’s younger than she is. Hell, I think he’s younger than I am.”
“Is he cute?”
“Sandy…”
“Hey, I’m just…”
Suddenly a voice interrupted the conversation. “You are low on minutes. Please add minutes at your local participating Walmart.”
“What was that?”
“My calling card,” I replied. “I think I have twenty-minutes left on it.”
“Where are you?” Sandy asked, confusion coloring her voice.
“A phone booth at a gas station.”
“Is it that bad?”
“Well, it wouldn’t exactly be appropriate to say that I think my mother is the social-climbing winner of all time and my new stepfather is the biggest…dammit!” I broke off and stared blindly out at the stream of cars filling up their tanks.
“What?! What’s wrong?” Sandy’s voice changed immediately to concern.
“It’s his fault. This whole miserable escapade is his fault.”
“Your stepfather’s?”
“No.”
“Huh?”
“Tiori. He said this wouldn’t work. And look what’s happening. I’m tearing my mother, who I haven’t seen in over a year, apart and mocking a stepfather I don’t even know.” I gave a frustrated half-scream, “That man is the spawn of Satan.”
“Um…Sally…”
“Oh no. Don’t even bothering arguing about this one. It’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy and he got it into my poor innocent little brain that I was going to fail and wa la! I did! See…I knew that man was Satan’s child, worse yet, he is Satan…”
I could hear Sandy smothering her laughter over the phone. “Sal, why don’t you just come home?”
“Ah ha! See, that’s what he wants me to do. I go home with my tail between my legs, remorseful and regretful because I managed to lose something that I don’t know how I lost even though I know I want it back but don’t quite know how to get it back when I don’t know when I even lost it in the first place.”
“What?! Sal, this isn’t a matter of pride; it’s a matter of commonsense. Come home.”
“Not on your life. That son-of-build rat’s wreaked havoc on my psychological stability and I’ll be danged if I go home to tell him he was right. I’m going to work it out with my mother. Just you wait and see.”
“When can I expect you home?” Sandy asked wryly.
I frowned and retorted as dryly as possible, “Friday.”
Twenty minutes later I was seriously regretting that decision. I had pulled into the driveway with no difficulties and had told the butler for the tenth time that I was Sally Morgan, the former Arlene Morgan’s, daughter, who yes, was single and yes, was a secretary, and that I was there to see my mother, who, yes, I had not seen in over a year, which yes, made me a very lousy daughter, thank you very much. After getting through Captain Stuffy’s invisible claws, I went on a mild adventure to find the bathroom. Since there were six in the house, it really shouldn’t have been a problem, but apparently the architect had been some kind of eccentric lover of crossword puzzles and had managed to put all the rooms together to look like one of them. Bathroom number one was horizontal next to a vertically facing patio, not to be confused with bathroom two that was vertical next to a horizontal back porch or bathroom number four, which was on the other side of the house away from bathroom one, that was put next to plunger because it constantly needed fixing, though it was really interesting to see a room in the shape of a plunger. Thus, after relieving my bladder of an extraordinary amount of pressure, I commenced to find the kitchen…that was, of course, next to butcher knife, where my mother kept all the meat. I was not surprised to find my mother docilely peeling carrots for a dinner salad.
“Hi, mom,” I said, and plunked down on a stool by the counter.
She turned to look at me for a moment and then turned away to angrily begin cutting the carrot. A strange eerie vision of a Stephen King movie flashed before my mind.
“Something wrong?”
“It took you twenty minutes to go five miles down the road?”
I nearly laughed in surprise. I got up and poured myself a glass of orange juice. Nice to see you, mom.
“There were a lot of people. It’s the only gas station for a while.”
“Really?”
I shook my head. “Mom, I’m thirty-five years old, I can handle myself.”
“Which is exactly why you came home, of course,” she said and turned to look at me with her arms folded across her chest. “Speaking of which, it would be nice if you would buy groceries at some point this week.”
I frowned, “I’ve been here two days, if that.”
“Yes and you’ve eaten five meals.”
“Mom, the butler eats with you,” I said, suddenly losing my taste for the orange juice and wishing I hadn’t poured it after all.
She rolled her eyes, “He’s not the butler. James is on vacation this week. That’s Charles’ father, Howard. He likes to pretend he’s the butler.”
“Ah.” Suddenly all of “Howard’s” references to my being a terrible daughter began to take on a different kind of feel. Suddenly I saw my mistake. What I was looking for wasn’t in this house. Yet…I couldn’t go back to where I now knew it was. I wasn’t ready for that. Dammit, Tiori was right!
“I tell you what. Since you know what you like, why don’t I just give you the money for the groceries?” I asked.
“That won’t be necessary,” the cool voice of my stepfather said, as he walked breezily into the room to plant a loving kiss upon my mother’s forehead. I felt bile creep up into my throat.
“No, Charles. Sally has always been taught to take responsibility and I refuse to allow her to usurp her privileges. A little help now and then will not go amiss, especially where she owes me so much as it is.”
The bile managed to flow into my mouth where it sat like a bitter tea on my tastebuds. I’m not sure what irked me more—the fact that she said it or the fact that she meant it.
Dinner was no better. I had no desire to eat the food that sat before me or talk to anyone at the table. My stepfather seemed to have no trouble with anything. He was busy reading the paper like every polite gentleman does at the dinner table. My mother had no difficulties at all, her hands going carelessly from one fork to the next and one glass of champagne to another. Howard was too busy playing with the cooked peas and making airplane noises to care much about anything but whatever it was Howard cared about. I felt as if I were on the outside of glass cage, watching as three very different people sat together at a dinner table, each in their own form of denial. My stepfather who was trying to deny that I existed, my mother who was trying to deny the fact that she was the reason my stepfather was trying to deny my existence because she was my mother, after all, and Howard, who for all reasons of commonsense and decency, was trying to deny reality. I excused myself before mother served desert.
It was two o’clock in the morning by the time I had everything packed. My skin was crawling all over with some innate sense that everything here was wrong. Sandy was right; this wasn’t a matter of pride. I needed to go home for my sanity. Home? What was home? Maine wasn’t home. At least not this side of Maine. And what about the Maine of long ago? Was that home? Was that dried up forgotten place all that I had left to cling onto after all this time? Was that it? I closed my suitcase and buttoned my jacket up around my neck. Or was home some suburb in Boston watching the hours tick by on a great round face of an office clock and marveling as the days turned into years? Suddenly I felt a horrifying ache stab me in the chest. For the first time in two years…I missed David.
Picking up my suitcase, I wandered down the hall until I found stairs, next to the library, and walked out to the front foyer. On the front table where my mother left cards for old fashioned callers, I put a check for fifteen-hundred dollars. Five hundred for the fund my grandfather left me to get out of Maine, and one thousand because it was a grand and my mother loved grand things and that’s all her life, and mine meant to her. She had made it, oh so pointedly clear, that her new life, with her new husband, new home, new money and new denial, had nothing to do with me. And closing the door behind me, I said a silent farewell to last person I had left to love.
*
Nicholas stood in the Sally’s driveway, leaning against his car, listening to the cicadas singing quietly in the bushes. What he was waiting for or why he was even waiting he didn’t know. After all, the deal was one week and it was still Wednesday night and like any woman who was about to be thwarted, Nick knew that Sally would stay until 11:59 Sunday night. Yet, there he was, standing in the driveway, waiting for a set of pale white lights to come pulling up the paved drive and Sally to step out of the car and then…and then, what? Would she scream at him that he was right or wrong or that it was his fault what he knew would happen did? Nicholas shook his head and pulled his hands from his coat pockets and got out his keys. This was ridiculous.
Perhaps it was the way the lights were coming that caused Nicholas to turn back around in the driveway. Perhaps it was the slow and steady pace of the vehicle, and the sudden creeping of the hairs on the back of his neck that made him stop before he left. As expected, the small silver car pulled into the driveway and Sally looked at him through the glass. In the moment of light and shadow, Nicholas saw a clear crystal glimmer form like a film over her eyes, and the well-shaped lips tremble. As she stepped from the car, her hair fell loose in the evening breeze and she appeared like a forlorn nymph who had suddenly seen an end to dreams. And then he knew, why he had come.
Without thinking, without speaking, Nicholas led the shattered shell of Sally Morgan into her house. Sitting her down at the table, Nicholas began to fumble around the kitchen for coffee and coffee filters. Sally just watched him. He could feel her eyes piercing little holes into his back, turning from sorrow to anger. He found the coffee and proceeded to make a strong batch that was sure to keep them up all night. When it had finished, he handed a mug out to her and sat on the other side of the table, waiting for the storm.
But it didn’t come. Instead, Sally surprised him. She went into a cupboard, pulled out a couple of spoons, and methodically began to eat peanut butter. He didn’t join her, but watched as she very carefully spooned the perfect spoonful and began to nibble at it like a five-year-old with a precious sugar treat.
“I though women only ate ice cream when they were upset,” Nicholas commented, breaking the silence after a quarter of the jar disappeared.
“Normal women eat ice cream. I eat peanut butter.”
“It didn’t work out?”
Sally looked at him from above her glasses, “What was your first clue?”
“I think I realized it when you finished half the jar a second ago.”
Sally grinned and looked reminiscently at the jar of JIF, “Once, when I was seventeen, I was so frustrated that I ate three jars of peanut butter.”
Nicholas frowned and shuddered, “Three?”
“Yep. Three jars of JIF peanut butter. It took three years before I could touch the stuff again and even then, it was only a spoonful.”
Nicholas took a sip of his coffee and pretended to understand why women ate with depression. He sighed and leaned back in his chair, loosening his tie and top button. “Want to talk about it?”
“Nope.”
“Sure?”
“Positive.”
“Why?”
“Because you already know what happened.”
“Not really,” He said honestly. “I can only guess.”
Sally raised her eyebrows over her spoon, “Happy guessing!” She drove her spoon into the peanut butter like a dive-bombing stealth fighter.
Nicholas didn’t push the issue further. There was something more to what happened that what happened in the time she was home. Sally’s secrets went far beyond her home in Maine. Realistically, Nicholas realized that he would probably never know all of them or even come close to discerning who Sally Morgan really was in the two months he had left to keep her at work or whatever it was he was doing. He was startled in his reverie when she asked through another spoonful of sticky peanut butter,
“What about you?”
Nicholas turned to look at her in surprise. “What about me?” He asked, a little sharper than he had intended.
She eyed him dubiously over the spoon, not the least bit intimidated by his reaction. “Who are you?” She asked.
He shrugged and looked down into his coffee. Without even thinking, he reached for his spoon and stole a spoonful of peanut butter. He didn’t see Sally’s mouth quirk.
“I was an inner city boy that worked until I became something other than an inner city boy.”
“Where do you live?”
“I have a villa in Spain,” he said softly and shrugged. He took another chunk of peanut butter.
“Do you like Spain?”
“I was born in Venezuela, but I moved to Spain with my wife,” he said, stealing himself for the blow.
“You’re married?” She inquired.
“Was.” His voice was stark. He could feel old memories coming back to him. But Sally surprised him again out of his reverie.
“Ditto.”
“Spain, the villa, or Venezuela?” He asked comically.
“Oh, the villa, of course. It’s a twin with my one on the Riviera and the other one in Greece,” Sally’s voice dripped with amused sarcasm and looked longingly at the empty jar of peanut butter.
Nicholas peered down into the bottomless pit. “Y’know what’s worse than being an inner city boy who’s always right?” He asked absently, not really knowing what to say next.
“What?”
Nicholas frowned and passed his tongue over his mouth. “I really hate peanut butter.”
*
“You shared a jar of peanut butter?” Sandy looked at her friend, completely mindblown at the news Sally had dropped on her lap.
“Yeah. He was waiting in the driveway for me to come home like the weird stalker-guy that he is and we shared a jar of peanut butter.”
“That’s really weird.”
“No kidding. He doesn’t even like peanut butter.” Sally was staring absently into outer space, her spoon spinning around and around in her cup of tea. Sandy tried not to laugh.
“So, tell me about him.”
Sally shrugged, “I don’t know who he is. He was born in Venezuela, has a villa in Spain, makes a lot of money and is an apparent divorcee or widower. My guess is divorcee cause he’s really weird like that.”
“So you’ve said,” Sandy cut the tuna salad sandwiches she had made and put one in front of Sally, which seemed to wake her up a bit. Sandy took a swig of Coke and offered one to Sally, who for some reason, didn’t appear to want her tea. She sat down and looked Sally levelly in the eye, “What happened when you went home?”
“The usual. I did everything wrong. I was asked to pay for groceries. I didn’t get to know my stepfather; he preferred his paper. My new step-grandfather has a butler-complex and mother is trying to deny my existence.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Sandy said gently. “What happened when you went home?”
“Gloria was there. I didn’t go back to the place.”
“I didn’t think you would,” Sandy said.
Sally looked up at Sandy and pushed the red-brown hair from her face. “What am I going to do, Sand?”
“You’ll know. Just give it time.”
Sally pushed her tuna away. “Sand?”
“Yep?” Sandy began to eat her sandwich and pretended to not know what was coming.
“Got any peanut butter?”
Chapter 7
“Sand, do you realize that this is the first Saturday night in three years you’ve spent with me?” I asked, chucking a kernel of popcorn into the air and catching it with expert precision. Sandy looked at me in astonishment. “Years of lonely Saturday nights,” I replied to her unanswered question.
Sandy sighed with false nonchalance and flopped down next to me. “I was in the mood for a good chic flick.”
“Dumped Walter?”
“Yeah…earlier this week.”
I shook my head and turned to face her on the couch. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Sandy rolled her eyes, “Um…let’s see…you were busy? C’mon, Sal…it’s not that big a deal.”
“I think it is,” I said, with absolute serious. Putting the bowl of popcorn on the table, I muted Hugh Grant and crossed my arms over my chest, giving Sandy the scary schoolmarm look I had saved for the moment she did something really stupid, like break up with Walter.
Sandy picked up the popcorn bowl and reached for the clicker. I pulled it away. She leaned back into the sofa and sighed in pure exasperation. “It was going to happen. You know how I hate to be tied down.”
“Tied down? Sandy, I have known you for a long time.
You’re my best friend, but it seems to me that I’m always the one that needs the help. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I haven’t seen things. I should have guessed earlier about Walter, but I’m not going to be oblivious anymore. Walter was right for you. He was handsome behind those spectacles and he had good taste despite the God-awful red suspenders. He was kind and intelligent, stable and calm. What was he lacking that you needed so much?”
Sandy swallowed and moved to scoot away from me. I grabbed her arm. She turned to look at me and I was surprised at the tears in her eyes. “Sally, I let myself fall for the perfect man and he made my life hell. Walter was perfect; he gave me everything I needed, but I don’t want that. I want someone who isn’t what I need. Who’s different.”
“Sand, you can’t change who you fall in love with.”
“But you can choose to love them in return. I choose not to,” Sandy said with great determination. “And it hurts like a bitch, but sometimes you just have to suck it up and deal because that’s the shatty load in life y’get.”
“Bull.”
Sandy looked at me in surprise. I don’t know where it came
from or how it even happened, but suddenly I wasn’t Sally Morgan anymore, semi-psychotic secretary. I was Sally Morgan, widow and friend and human being who was suddenly very afraid to see another one of myself appear right before my eyes. I was rubbing off on Sandy the wrong way.
“Sandy, I’ve been to that hell, but the difference between you and I is that I chose it, knowing what I was going into. I can’t love someone, Sandy, not in the way you can. And yes, it hurts, but that’s my fate and my lot. And yes, I suck it up and deal with it, but you don’t have to. Don’t do it! Don’t get so caught up in your idealistic world of singleness that you miss what’s out there. I’ve chosen that! There’s no way out for me. There’s no way to get back what I lost! Sandy, I love you, you’re my best friend, but there is a better love than friendship. I couldn’t give it. You can. And unless you want to be sitting around all day, watching Hugh Grant and whatever-his-name-is, then you’ve got to stop this. Please.”
Sandy sat down again next to me. “How?”
“Tell him you’re sorry,” I said simply, knowing damn well that it was never that simple.
“It’s not that easy.”
“It’s not supposed to be,” I replied gently. My mind flashed back to the first moment I had seen David’s grave after the funeral. I closed my eyes and hugged a pillow tightly against my chest, feeling the age-old tides of regret freeze my heart. Cold. I was always so cold. David had said I was cold.
“Sally?” Sandy asked.
“Yeah?”
“What happened when you went home?”
“The first time?”
“Yeah.”
“I met David.”
“What happened the night David died?” Sandy looked at me squarely, her voice a soft echo of its usual strength.
I shrugged my shoulders, “I didn’t say I was sorry.”
Sandy nodded. “Sally?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you have Rambo?”
“Huh?”
“I need to see some men get blown up.”
I laughed and turned Hugh Grant off. We didn’t talk anymore that night. I didn’t tell her everything about David and she didn’t tell me everything about Walter. We just sat and watched fake blood and bad dialogue and cute guys getting blown up, because we were friends and both of us needed a friend, she, because she had thrown the love of her life away, and me because I had yet to find him.
“Sally?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
*
“Jason?”
“Eh now? Who is this? If you’re some kind of telemarketer than bugger off, it’s six o’clock in the morning on a bloody Saturday.”
“I’m no telemarketer,” Nicholas said softly, standing in a warm silk robe, gazing out his bedroom window at the streets below.
“Nicholas?”
“The one and only.”
“What’s wrong?! What do you need, mate?” Jason’s voice took on a concerned edge.
“I want to push back the date.”
“What? You called me at six o’clock in the morning on a bloody Saturday to tell me you wanted to push back the date? What’s goin’ on with you, mate? ‘ave you lost your bloody mind then?”
Nicholas sighed, “I need more time.”
Jason snorted and then began to chuckle. “It’s a woman, isn’t it?”
“This is important, Jason.”
“They always are.” Jason sighed, “Look, mate, things are heating up over here. Camilla is making a terrible ruckus ‘cause you ‘aven’t come home yet. Everything is all set for you to return in July. How much time will you need?”
“Not much. There’s something I have to do.”
“Mate…”
“Jason…I’m just asking for a little more time.”
“You’ve got till September, Nick, but for God’s sake, be careful. You can’t risk anything right now, especially with Camilla on the hunt.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem. Now, I’m going back to sleep before getting roaring drunk on your tab again.”
Nicholas grinned, “Don’t spend it all in one place.”
“What, with the amount you pay me, how could I not?”
Nicholas rolled his eyes, “Right. Good-bye, Jason.”
“Good-bye, loverboy.”
Nicholas hung up the phone in his friend’s ear. Despite himself, he laughed. Nicholas looked at the phone in his hand and wondered if he should call Sally, but he realized that it was too late to do much of anything. Wearily, he drained a glass of water and crawled into bed, shucking his blue robe as he fell. For the first time in weeks, he began to sleep with ease.
*
“ ‘Don’t want to know who’s to blame…it won’t help knowing…amazing grace, how sweet the sound!…I wish I was in Dixie…away…away…’” I pushed my broom away from me in a classic Elvis stance and began to speak to my audience. “That, ladies and gentlemen, was just one small example of the kind of music and wide vocal talent given to Sally Morgan. Just another small town girl, with a big city voice. She’s just made her first album, which has sold 20 bazillion copies, a record in every country and county in the world.” I then proceeded to belt out an obnoxious version of some highly inappropriate song and began to striptease with my washcloth. At this moment in my life, I didn’t wonder if I was psychotic or not. This was Sunday morning in Sally Morgan’s house.
“I’ll give you twenty dollars to stop,” a cool, laughing voice said from my screen door.
I turned around and positively glared at Mr. Nicholas Tiori de Quisto. “I’ll have you know that that number sold half a bazillion copies.”
“Really?” He asked me, surprise mirrored on his face. “I thought it was the ‘Dixie’ number myself.”
“That song is a classic patriotic song.”
“Which is why you don’t know all the words?” He asked, oh so sweetly. I threw the wet cloth at the screen. He expertly dodged. “Trying to get me wet again?”
“Why would I do that?” I asked, all innocence.
Nicholas laughed, “I have no idea. Sally?”
“Mmm?” I proceeded to dry my dishes and put them away.
“Can I come in?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“You haven’t said the magic word…” I said seriously.
“Please?”
“Trite. Try again.”
“Pretty please?” He asked, blinking his beautiful silver
eyes like a young coy girl.
I frowned, “Nope. Try again.”
“Peanut butter?” He asked, hopefully, his face perking up at the thought.
“Uh uh…”
“I know!”
“What?”
“Lunch!”
“Huh?”
“Lunch. Y'know, that thing that comes after breakfast?”
I looked at him skeptically over my glasses. “That’s not the magic word.”
“Really…” he said softly. He sighed dramatically, “Then who will I share my picnic with?”
Gently, his eyes met my eyes and I felt the first scary feelings of emotion creep over me. Oh no. Not again. I reminded myself for the tenth time that I needed and liked monotony. Without thinking, I unlocked the door. To my surprise, Nicholas didn’t come in. Instead, he waited quietly on the porch, giving me the time I needed to get ready. It was too early for lunch, so I vaguely wondered where he was taking me. But I didn’t ask any questions and before I knew it I had walked out the door.