Hallie's Comet

by Denise Dietz

  “I’m not mad, Hallie. I just wish you’d accept happily ever after.”

  She wanted to give in to his words, his caresses, the serenity of the landscape, and yet she couldn’t stop her mind from posing two questions.

  Were her trances and paintings the result of unmet sexual tensions?

  Did Knickers and Gabriel disappear because Gabe dissolved all inhibitions?

  Leaning back against Gabe again, she felt him cross her heart with his fingers.

  Maybe I should book an appearance on Oprah, she thought. The ratings would soar. Just like I soar every time Gabe touches my heart.

  * * *

  Hallie chewed the end of her paintbrush.

  Her canvas depicted ballerinas.

  This time, rather than Swan Lake, she had painted Giselle.

  The dominant male dancer looked like Mikhail Baryshnikov, who had made his American Ballet Theatre debut, his U.S. debut, in Giselle. Hallie had seen his performance from inside her mom’s belly, another family joke. Neil liked to say that she painted ballerinas because of that pre-birth experience.

  “I give up,” she told Mikhail.

  Maybe I’ll try again tomorrow, she thought as she joined Gabe in front of the TV. They watched a movie. Afterward it was over, she couldn’t remember if it had been about aliens or alienation.

  In bed, Gabe seemed to understand that she wanted cuddling, not sex.

  Dovetailed against his body, she felt comforted by the perfect fit, as if they were two pieces of a broken vase welded together without any perceptible fissure.

  She fell into a fitful slumber and dreamed she was on top of a mountain, somewhere over the rainbow.

  Was the landscape Oz or Ozone? She saw lions and tigers and bears, oh my, but she couldn’t see one happy little bluebird. Instead, raucous crows perched on the bristled pine trees and stately oaks below.

  “Go ‘way,” she murmured in her sleep. “I’m over the rainbow. I want to see happy little bluebirds fly.”

  In a flash, the glossy-feathered crows vanished, swallowed up by a darkness that descended without warning. Just as suddenly, a comet appeared, its fuzzy head and long tail phosphorescent.

  The comet didn’t streak across the sky. It stayed overhead, suspended by invisible wires. Its luminescent tail seemed to wag like a dog. Or a very skinny, very hostile crocodile.

  She wanted to run away, but her bare feet danced a Michael Jackson moonwalk.

  Illuminated by the comet, several lions and tigers and bears surged forward.

  To her surprise, they were all enormous stuffed animals, the kind you might win at a carnival. Their pacesetter was Gabe’s prop teddy bear.

  As she stood motionless, the animals surrounded her, their plush bodies pressing closer and closer until she couldn’t breathe.

  The teddy bear hugged her. “I love you, Knickers,” he said.

  “I love you, Gabriel.” Hallie whispered the words in the darkness of the bedroom.

  “Don’t leave me!”

  Half asleep, half awake, she couldn’t determine if the plea had been Gabe’s or Gabriel’s.

  “I’ll never leave you,” she cried, turning her head and punctuating her words with soft kisses against the hollow of Gabe’s throat.

  His arms tightened around her. But even in the warmth of his embrace, there was no escape. She could sense the crows gloating. Behind her closed eyelids, she could see the pulsating nucleus of a comet. Only this time it wasn’t suspended. This time it streaked across the sky.

  Her dream faded into nothingness, a whim-wham of vague superficiality. No longer over the rainbow, she had, somehow, clicked her heels three times and wished herself home.

  Home. Gabe meant home. She burrowed closer to him, her face sharing his pillow, her body craving something she couldn’t even identify.

  Possession?

  No. Protection.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “Tell you what, magpie,” Hallie said. “If ‘death and destruction’ is the answer to my quest, I can deal with it.”

  Her black-and-white plumaged companion merely beaked seed from the feeder outside the costume alcove’s open window. And despite Hallie’s fervent declaration, her canvas remained blank.

  Early, very early, this morning she had painted a new dance sequence. Dominating her canvas, a Shirley Jones clone looked as if she knew that love was all around while a Toulouse Leutrec Moulin Rouge dancer (who bore a striking resemblance to Robert Preston) seemed to be singing: “We’ve got trouble, right here in Colorado, and that starts with C, and that rhymes with D, and that stands for dream.”

  In another time, another place, Hallie’s impression of her Impressionistic painting might have been funny. Or, at the very least, ironic. But right now, this very minute, it was time for some serious O’Brien logic, un-churned by emotion.

  First, she had created the six original Cripple Creek paintings because she couldn’t deliberately bring those events to mind. Same for the bullfight, the fire and the funeral procession.

  Second, her fevered musings had probed her subconscious, so now she couldn’t paint Knickers.

  “Does that make any sense, magpie?”

  Only a few short weeks ago she had quoted Vincent Van Gogh: I dream my paintings and then I paint my dreams.

  Unfortunately, Vinnie’s philosophy didn’t hold true for Alice W. O’Brien.

  When her dreams were subconscious, she painted. If she remembered her dreams, she couldn’t paint, at least she couldn’t paint Knickers and Cripple Creek.

  Dancers were a different story.

  “Shoot, Maggie! I want to paint the Gabriel-Knickers story. Or is it more honorable to leave them alone? If I dabble in their lives, will I change the course of history?”

  Her newly-christened magpie continued to beak seed. It looked like one of those bobbing toys seen from the back window of an old car.

  “Featherbrained mooncalf!” Hallie chastised herself, not the bird. “What makes you think you’re changing history? You’re reliving history. What’s so honorable about that?

  Honor was an old-fashioned word. Honor described one who’s worth brought respect. For example, a person could be an honor to his or her profession. She had never thought about herself in those terms. The paint she spread across her canvas was akin to the lifeblood that flowed through her veins, a vital force. If she achieved fame as well as respect, so much the better.

  Gabe had taken the world by storm, his expressive, sometimes merciless photos establishing his honorable reputation.

  What about Knickers and Gabriel? Knickers had a reputation. Due to circumstances beyond her control, it wasn’t exactly an honorable one. Gabriel, however, was a well-respected artist. Collectors had clamored for his canvasses. But Hallie, schooled in art history, had never heard of him. She knew, from her fevered dreams, that he’d signed his paintings Gabriel no last name, but artists often used one name. Cher. Madonna. Modigliani. Had Gabriel dropped out of sight, suddenly, before his reputation could become firmly established?

  Last Tuesday night she had avidly read Cripple Creek’s promotional pamphlets. They had mentioned such experts (their word) as Pearl DeVere, Nell McClusky, and Lola Livingston, parlor house “denizons.” But the pamphlets hadn’t mentioned a Mary Knickers or Lady Scarlet. Hallie had been disappointed but not surprised. After all, her mother’s carefully compiled computer records and history books didn’t include The Homestretch.

  Legal documents would have burned in the Cripple Creek fire.

  Even if documents or chronicles did exist, Hallie couldn’t investigate. She didn’t know any last names. Lady Scarlet. Mary. Gabriel. Needles in a haystack.

  She pictured a haystack, situated next to a scarecrow.

  Scarecrow. Gabe’s dopey nickname. Gabe wanted her to forget the past.

  He was probably right, so she’d simply concoct her own story ending. The Gabriel-Knickers story, starring Johnny Depp and—

  Hallie tried to envision an actress with ha
ir the color of ripe strawberries.

  “Are you still listening, Maggie? Gabriel and Knickers travel to Paris, have ten children, and live happily ever after. Their paintings hang in the Louvre.”

  The bird flew skyward just as Hallie heard the imperative ring of a telephone. With a sense of guilt, she realized she hadn’t called Marianne or her parents. Funny. In New York, living only a few miles away, she called them almost every day. Well, she’d been sick, hadn’t she? And busy.

  Busy exploring Cripple Creek.

  Busy “trancing.”

  Busy surviving the flu.

  Busy playing tennis.

  Busy painting dancers.

  Busy making love, she thought with a vivid blush.

  Hi Mom and Dad. Sorry I haven’t called, but I’ve been busy loving Mr. Gabe Quinn a lot lately. Marianne told me about this O-word, introduced by Sesame Street’s Elmo. So, naturally, I had to discover its meaning for myself.

  Hallie focused on her blank canvas, primed white after her doltish Music Man distraction. If she retrieved her Polaroid snapshot, the one with the comet, and copied it line for line, color for color, maybe then her paradoxical muse would—

  “Forget the past,” said Gabe, entering the alcove. “We now have a future.”

  “What do you mean we, Drac?”

  He strode forward and nuzzled her neck. “I vant to devour every portion of your body,” he huffed into her ear. “But I’m too excited.”

  “How can excitement prevent you from devouring my body? And what did you mean by your cryptic future remark?”

  “It’s not cryptic. It’s great. Fantastic.”

  “Gabe!”

  “Okay, okay.” He stepped back and gave her a boy-with-his-hand-caught-in-the-cookie-jar grin. “The White House just called.”

  “The White House White House?”

  “No, the purple White House.”

  “But it’s Sunday.”

  “The government doesn’t work on Sunday?”

  “Not unless there’s an emergency. Or it’s something important. Something important just happened, right?”

  “Yup. The President made an important request.” This time Gabe’s smile looked smug. “He wants me, Hallie, for his personal photographer. A staff member called and asked if I could catch the red-eye flight, share breakfast with the Prez tomorrow. I said Tuesday would be more convenient.”

  “Convenient,” she echoed.

  “‘Tuesday will be fine, Mr. Quinn,’ the staff member said, smooth as silk, and why aren’t you dancing for joy?”

  “I might knock over my painting.”

  “What painting? It’s a blank canvas. Let’s dance together. We can borrow two hula skirts from the rack and—”

  “No, Gabe.”

  “Hallie, what’s wrong? I thought you’d be happy for me.”

  “I am happy.”

  “If that’s happy, they’ll have to rewrite the dictionary.”

  “Maybe I’m not dancing because I feel as though I’m losing you.”

  “To whom? The President?”

  “Yes. No. Yes. Won’t he send you on various assignments?”

  “Of course.”

  “Overseas?”

  “Sure. But I’ll come back. And I’ll be careful, very careful, now that you’re waiting for me.”

  “Waiting. Yes. That’s a good idea.”

  “What’s a good idea?”

  “You fly to Washington while I fly home. After my gallery show, we can meet someplace.”

  “That’s a stupid idea. I want you in Washington D.C. It’ll be my home base. We can find an apartment, a house, whichever you prefer, and you can decorate it with unique antiques. We can even build our dream house, the one with the huge kitchen drawers and sloped bath—”

  “No.”

  “No?” He quirked an eyebrow. “Why not?”

  “I’d be living all alone in a strange city.”

  “I’ll introduce you to the President’s wife.”

  “Don’t joke, Gabe.”

  “What else can I do. Beg?”

  “Of course not. You can cultivate patience. And wait.”

  “Until?”

  “Until you’ve established the limits of your job.”

  “There are no limits. That’s what makes it so exciting.”

  “Not to me. I don’t think I could deal with an absentee husband. Or lover. Or friend. I can’t even deal with absentee ghosts.”

  “Aha! Now I understand why you’re so hesitant. You think Gabriel walked out on Knickers and you don’t want history repeating itself.”

  No. I was thinking about Lady Scarlet, who lived on crumbs. And hope.

  Aloud she said, “I hadn’t considered that, Gabe, but you could be right. When we last left Gabriel, he was starting to get rich. And famous. Maybe you’ll get caught up in politics and—”

  “Don’t you trust me, Hallie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you love me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you trust my love for you?”

  “Yes.” She took a deep breath. “Why are you so stubborn? What difference does it make if we wait a few months?”

  “None.”

  His voice sounded curt, too curt. “Our love,” she said, “will survive.”

  “I suppose it will.”

  She wanted to canoodle against him, hug him, kiss him, but she didn’t know how to pierce the invisible suit of armor he had just slipped into. Even his face looked inscrutable, veiled by an invisible helmet and visor.

  “It’s almost noon,” she said. “Do you want to leave for Cripple creek?”

  “We can attend the melodrama at the Imperial Hotel, Hallie. The curtain rises at four-thirty and we already have our tickets. But right now I need to make some phone calls, canceling next week’s photo sessions. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll take a cloud bubble bath…” She paused, hoping he’d suggest they bathe together.

  Instead, he turned on his heel and walked briskly through the open doorway.

  He didn’t slam the door, but she heard the sound of a slam just the same.

  “Congratulations,” she called, much too late and much too low.

  TWENTY-SIX

  “Hiss!”

  “Boo!”

  “Yay!”

  “Ahhhh…”

  Hallie half-heartedly shouted along with rest of the audience. Why couldn’t she get into the spirit of the melodrama?

  Because her spirits were too low, that’s why.

  Gabe looked as if he’d been painted with ice; a thick coat of Cadmium white tinged with royal blue.

  What was his problem?

  She tried to concentrate on the players strutting across the stage, but her mind kept wandering.

  What had she done wrong?

  “Boo!”

  “Yay!”

  Yay for Alice W. O’Brien! She had finally broken free from her time warp by offering Gabe unrestricted freedom. He’d be totally involved with his new job and he wouldn’t have to worry about a wife or lover or friend.

  Obviously, he didn’t appreciate her self-sacrifice.

  He was nothing more than a bullyragged jellyfish!

  She had offered him elbow room and he’d mistakenly assumed “Brush off.” With a capital B, and that rhymes with C, and that stands for cold shoulder.

  Perhaps he even equated her with Jenn.

  How unfair!

  Sadly, she waved goodbye to William Shakespeare Quinn, her first-born. Because she knew that this morning’s rift could never be resolved. Gabe wouldn’t even discuss it. He’d spent the afternoon tracking down his clients. Most were at the Denver Broncos game, squelching the perception that women weren’t interested in football, thank you very much.

  Then Gabe had showered (alone) and joined her in the family room. Where, in an alien voice, each word coated with ice, he had apologized for the delay and complimented her on her outfit.

  “Yo
u look like a spring garden,” he had said, referring to her smock-dress, appliquéd with colorful flowers. It was a dress she often wore to her gallery openings since it required a pair of high-heeled boots and made her look older.

  Well, at least taller.

  During the drive to Cripple Creek, Gabe had kept the discussion inconsequential.

  And he kept apologizing for ruining her afternoon, her last afternoon.

  No more appeals to stay. No more pleas to join him in Washington.

  “Boo!”

  “Hiss!”

  “Boo!”

  Tomorrow she’d call Josh, say goodbye, and casually discuss the reason for his brother’s chilly attitude. She would ask Josh what the hell she’d done wrong and—

  “Earth to Hallie.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s intermission,” said Gabe. “Would you like a glass of wine?”

  “Dare I test the attitude? I mean altitude?”

  If he noticed her slip of the tongue, he ignored it. “I think you’re safely insulated,” he said. “After all, you’ve been here a week. That’s plenty of time to adjust.”

  While they both sipped white wine, he talked about the melodrama, ironically called In Old New York.

  How could he remember so many details? He’d been preoccupied, too.

  “Are you having fun?” he asked.

  “Absolutely,” she fibbed. “This is a fun way to spend my last night.”

  Did he wince? Or had she imagined it?

  They returned to their seats. She endured another half hour of boos and yays while her emotions churned. First anger, then despair, then regret, then anger again. Why was Gabe so cold and polite? Why was he treating her this way?

  I did nothing wrong!

  The players took their bows then presented an Olio, where they performed in front of the drawn curtain. They were good, very good, but Hallie wanted to leave. Whether Gabe approved or not, she wanted to walk down Myers Avenue one more time. One last time.

  She didn’t even care if she tranced. Trancing was better than living with unanswered questions.

  What if nothing happened?

  Then she’d concede that Gabe was right, that Knickers and Gabriel had lived happily ever after, after all.