Second Love

by Gould, Judith

  'This . . . this is she.'

  'I'm Captain William Friendly, coordinator of the Mountain Rescue Teams.' His delivery was flat and unemotional, level in the way law enforcement officers all over the country learn to speak. 'I'm sorry to have to bother you at a time like this, ma'am.'

  Dorothy-Anne swallowed hard. 'Ms. Flood said you found my husband's plane.'

  'Not found, ma'am. But we've located it.'

  She was confused. 'Aren't they one and the same?'

  'I'm afraid not, ma'am. Not in this day and age. You see, we located it through its electronic emergency transmitter, which sends out automatic distress signals over a special frequency. Luckily, it wasn't damaged upon impact.'

  Impact, she thought queasily. How can such a simple little word adequately describe a major catastrophe?

  She clenched her left hand and pressed it against her throbbing temple. 'Then what's the problem?' she asked shakily.

  'The problem, ma'am, is that we can't get to it. The aircraft is precariously lodged on the western slope of a tremendously steep mountain, right at the edge of a ravine. Normally, we'd lower a search team by helicopter. In this case, however, we're afraid the noise and winds whipped up by the rotor could start an avalanche, sending the plane plunging down a thousand-foot drop. It's in a real bitch of a location, if you'll pardon my French.'

  'But will somebody be able to reach it?' she asked anxiously.

  'Yes, ma'am. But by the slow, old-fashioned method. As we speak, two teams of experienced climbers are climbing the mountain. One is tackling the north face, and the other the south. If all goes according to plan, they should reach the site by this afternoon.'

  Dorothy-Anne shut her eyes.

  The edge of a ravine.

  A thousand-foot drop.

  Just thinking about it was enough to give her vertigo. 'Were there'— she took a deep breath and rubbed her knuckles against her forehead— 'any signs of survivors?'

  'No, ma'am. But that doesn't mean there aren't any. By the same token, I don't want to give rise to false hopes. The aircraft's buried under snow. There's no way we'll know anything until later.'

  Later. 'I appreciate your calling, Captain.'

  'I'm just doing my job, ma'am. I'll contact you the instant we learn anything. You have my word on that.'

  'Thank you, Captain.'

  Dorothy-Anne lowered the receiver and punched the End button. For a long time she sat there, staring out the three-story wall of plasticized, urethaned Disneyesque cedar and glass, her mind on a single word.

  Later.

  14

  Breathing hard and concentrating fiercely, Gloria fought to retain her composure. Her eyes glistened brightly, but the tears that threatened were blinked back. Cloaking herself in dignity, she walked purposefully from the dining room, through the club like lounge, and down the short hall lined with etchings of ballet dancers. Head held high, she made it across the foyer of the Inn at the Opera, and only once she hit the sidewalk out on Fulton Street did her composure crack.

  That bitch! Gloria railed inwardly, her blood boiling furiously. How dare Althea threaten to have me committed again! HOW DARE SHE!

  Gloria was impervious to the buffeting, bone-chilling wind. All she was aware of were the furies howling and shrieking inside her, the demons that clawed and lashed and generated the hatred from which she fed—the kind of pure, undiluted rage that, perversely, sustained and empowered her—and stoked her resolve to deny Hunt and Althea the satisfaction of ever seeing her bend to their will.

  She looked up and down the block, but her limo was nowhere in sight.

  Raising her wrist, she held her tiny diamond wristwatch at a distance and squinted at the dial to bring it into focus. Eyeglasses would have helped, but vanity came first.

  She blinked. Was it possible? Was she really thirty-eight minutes early? Could it be she had thirty-eight more minutes to kill before her car arrived?

  Balls! And all because she'd told that numbskull driver that she'd be tied up for an hour and a half! He would have to take her seriously. Why the hell couldn't he have figured out that something could go wrong with her luncheon, or that she might change her mind?

  Now what was she supposed to do? She was stuck here, behind the Center for the Performing Arts, of all places, and if she wanted a cab she'd have to go back inside the Inn at the Opera and have someone call one.

  No. She wasn't about to set foot in that place again, even if it killed her. Hell would have to freeze over first!

  So.

  So now what?

  Hoofing it held little appeal. And she certainly wasn't just going to stand here, hoping for a taxi to venture by.

  Gloria stood there indecisively, considering her options. Behind her, she heard playful giggles.

  Scowling, she turned around. An attractive young couple—tourists, no doubt—came gamboling out of the Inn at the Opera with leggy grace and headed bouncily east, toward the starkly modern opera house, multiple lanes of Van Ness, and gold-domed City Hall beyond. There was something about the way the young brunette clung adoringly to the man's arm, about the staged, picture-perfect quality of their carefree spontaneity and obvious intimacy, that rasped on Gloria's nerves.

  Lovers? Newlyweds? Honeymooners? Which were they? she wondered, watching them stop and grope each other in a Cinemascope kiss. Well, she could tell them a thing or two about the days of wine and roses! she thought acidly. And as for leaving their hearts in this town—ha! Tony Bennett didn't live here, did he?

  Her disgust at the couple and the city was, Gloria realized, merely a reflection of her own gnawing disgruntlement. As if she needed reminding of what was missing in her life, dammit!

  Was that what she resented? The handsome couple's unquestioning faith that love conquered all . . . or was it the naïveté of youth, their belief that any obstacle was surmountable and that unhappiness was the exclusive province of their wretched elders? A Mustang convertible with the top down sped by, Des'ree blaring, the two couples inside it laughing, bopping to the beat; then, tires squealing, it careened around the corner and was gone, the music fading. And, like the couple on foot, the car's occupants seemed to inhabit some brighter, livelier world than her own. Did she resent not their happiness, but the arrogant confidence of their youth, the uncomplicated, clean slates of their futures? Could that be it?

  Gloria turned, lips twisting in bitterness, and abruptly started walking west—expressly heading in the direction opposite from the one the young couple had taken. She wasn't about to follow in their wake and have to witness any more of their lovey-dovey, smoochy little antics. Christ. Enough was enough!

  On she rushed—not so much walking as fleeing, low heels clacking an ever-quickening staccato as she zigzagged among unfamiliar blocks, crossing whichever pedestrian lights happened to be green at the moment.

  She lost all track of time, all sense of direction. The day's chill and dreariness went unnoticed. So too did the respectability of the city's civic hub as it gave way to grimier businesses, buildings converted into flats, mom-and-pop corner markets.

  Nothing registered. Not even the thrum and vibration of traffic rushing along the raised airport freeway high above her, or the sudden increased stench of exhaust fumes.

  Gloria was impervious to it all: the wolf whistles of construction workers, the stares from drab housewives who eyed her Chanel suit with envy, the scolding tongue clucks of the elderly, who were appalled at her folly: How could anyone wearing such ostentatious jewelry venture into a neighborhood like this? And on foot yet!

  But it never occurred to Gloria that her heavy, 18-karat gold Cartier necklace and bracelet, designed to resemble bamboo, her diamond- encrusted wristwatch, and her assorted rings were an open invitation for muggers. Personal safety was not on her mind as she tore, with the desperation of hunted prey, in whichever direction her legs happened to carry her.

  Nor did she stop to consider the futility of her flight. It was no mere mortal enemy but th
e personal demons of her loveless marriage she was fleeing, and that was one wolf pack from which there was no escape.

  She could run, but she could not hide.

  Two and a half years.

  Two and a half interminable years.

  That was how long it had been since their marriage had hit rock bottom, since she and Hunt had been man and wife in the biblical sense. And even then, that last physical act hadn't been very good.

  On she hurried now, her footsteps quickening as memories snapped and snarled and she tried, for what must have been the thousandth time, to pinpoint exactly where in her life she had made the wrong turn. She was still in her prime . . . wasn't she? Certainly men still found her attractive.

  So why, why was she doomed to be married in name only? Leading, for all practical purposes, the celibate life of a spinster? Would she never again feel the strength and warmth of a man inside her?

  Was her sex life as doomed as her sham of a marriage?

  Oh, Christ!

  Gasping, she abruptly lurched to a halt, then slumped back against a dirty stuccoed wall to catch her breath. Her lungs were burning, and a stitch pierced her side. And God, were her feet ever killing her.

  These shoes, she thought wryly, lifting one Manolo Blahnik-shod foot and massaging the ankle, were not made for pounding the pavement.

  She clenched her teeth. Might as well face it, Glo. You can run as fast and as far as you like, but you'll never outdistance your demons. There's only one thing that can keep them quiet and at bay.

  And she knew what that was.

  A drink.

  Yes! That was exactly what she needed! A nice little swig to fill the perpetual pain of emptiness, soothe her multitude of sorrows.

  Turning around and facing the wall, she unsnapped her handbag and furtively took out her flask. It felt alarmingly light, and when she shook it, no liquid sloshed around inside.

  Damn! She must have finished it off in the ladies' room in the restaurant.

  Fingers shaking, she stuffed it back inside her purse.

  Now what?

  A bar, what else?

  Yes. She needed to find herself a nice, cozy little bar where she could nurse a guilt-free little comfort drink or two.

  Only now that she turned back around to look for one, her head swiveling slowly, almost mechanically, like some searching, preprogrammed radar dish, did she notice how seedy and unfamiliar her surroundings looked.

  Good Lord, why, there were derelicts—derelicts!—passed out in doorways and along the sidewalk! And a long shuffling row of them lined up in front of a soup kitchen across the street.

  The homeless! Where the hell . . .

  Her eyes sought out the nearest street sign in panicky, intense bewilderment. Howard Street! Now she was totally confused. When the hell had she crossed Market, that wide, diagonal thoroughfare that cut a swath and separated South of Market from the rest of San Francisco? Surely she hadn't crossed all those lanes with their planted medians without noticing?

  But she must have.

  Shit! Once again, tears stung in her eyes. Silently she cursed Althea. If the old bitch hadn't made lunch so miserable, then she wouldn't have felt the necessity to flee and end up here, South of Market—on Skid Row, of all places!

  Good heavens, she thought with contempt, I wouldn't be found dead in any of these dives!

  She stepped forward on the cracked sidewalk, her molars grinding as she looked up and down the street, searching the dense, exhaust exhaling traffic for an unoccupied taxi.

  An exercise in futility.

  Then her heart skipped a beat as she spied the rusty sign, its crippled neon and optimistically winking martini glass dangling out over the sidewalk: WHITE ROSE SALOON. Cocktails.

  Well, well, well, she thought. What do you know? And only two doors down . . .

  Then she made a face and sniffed disdainfully.

  A Skid Row hangout, no doubt.

  She hesitated, almost able to taste the wonderfully soothing balm of drowning her sorrows.

  Oh, what the hell? A drink is a drink, she decided.

  And before she could change her mind, she squared her shoulders, marched purposefully to the White Rose, and yanked open the door.

  Once inside, she instantly recoiled, her nostrils twitching in disgust. It was cave like. Very warm. Very dim. And very, very shabby. The reek of spilled beer and stale smoke all but overwhelmed.

  Momentarily undecided, she stood just inside the door, blinking her eyes and waiting for her sight to adjust to the darkness.

  Slowly things came into focus. Undulating waves of warped linoleum confettied with cigarette butts. Figures hunched corpselike over the bar, as if glued to their stools in front of the fly-speckled mirror. A potbellied bartender poring over a racing form. And, mounted on the wall above him, a soundless TV set spasming with bad reception.

  Nobody occupied any of the tables. No one was speaking to one another. Even the jukebox was silent, the only sound provided by one of the patrons, who emitted long, grinding snores.

  Well, so what? I didn't pop in for scintillating conversation. Nor did I expect the Ritz. All I want is a drink and anonymity.

  She made her way to a little table at the far end of the room, where she pulled out a rickety bentwood chair. She sat down primly, put her purse on the table, and started to place her elbows on it, too. Then, spying a sticky spot, she thought better of it, and folded her hands in her lap.

  After a while the bartender shuffled over. 'What'll it be, lady?' he wheezed, sounding put out.

  'A double vodka, please,' Gloria ordered. 'Straight.'

  A major mistake. It was Skid Row hooch and tasted it: the tiny exploratory sip scorched her throat. It was like drinking burning napalm. Pulling a face, she shuddered involuntarily, cursing herself for not having specified a decent brand.

  Still, it's better than nothing, she told herself, powerless to resist it, to do anything but toss it down.

  She raised the glass mockingly.

  'To absent bitches,' she toasted bitterly, hatred flashing from her eyes. 'Here's to your ill health, Althea!'

  And bracing herself, Gloria tipped back her head, lifted the glass to her lips, and bolted the contents in one long chugalug, her throat muscles flexing and contracting, working overtime to swallow gulp after gulp. Finally she slammed the empty glass down on the table.

  And not a moment too soon. The rotgut didn't punch her in the gut; it detonated. Instantly she felt her eyes water, her face turn ashen, and her stomach convulse. Her features distorted in disgust as she hunched over the table, pressing the heel of one hand against her stomach and clapping the other over her mouth.

  Oh, God! She stifled a groan. I'm going to be sick!

  She clenched her teeth, fighting the urge to heave it back up—

  —when snap! The wave of nausea diminished and was gone.

  Ahhh, sweet surcease . . .

  She felt a rosy inner glow spreading throughout her system.

  Gone were her troubles, gone were her cares.

  Another round, and she'd be cooking!

  Twisting her head to get the bartender's attention, she became aware of an unmistakably masculine presence. Then she saw from whom it emanated.

  One of the men at the bar had swung around on his stool and was lounging casually back, both elbows resting on the bar rail. Swiveling slowly, deliberately, from side to side on the stool.

  The better to showcase his Levi's-sheathed pelvis.

  Something about him gave her pause.

  He was young to be a patron here; somewhere in his mid-twenties. Tall and dark, with virile good looks. Liquid bedroom eyes—either smoky black or dark brown; in this light, she couldn't be sure which, but they held a challenging glint that she imagined could turn very hard indeed.

  Certainly not a man to trifle with.

  And yet...

  Yet he was the best-looking male animal she had come across in... well, in forever. And, he was giving her
the kind of leisurely, brazen examination that caused her skin to tingle and a flush to rise to her face.

  Her first cognizant thought was: Good Lord. He's coming on to me!

  From across the room, he flashed her a very white, lopsided grin.

  He wants me, she thought.

  And then, surprising herself: I want him, too!

  Nor was he a bum. Down, maybe, but certainly not out. Besides, what did that matter, when she was luxuriously aware of the strong body, both muscular and lean, that lurked, barely concealed, under his brown leather windbreaker, plaid work shirt, and snug, faded Levi's?

  What indeed.

  He had all the right stuff. And in all the right places.

  This was the high dive. The jump-off point. Now or never.

  Instantly she felt a wave of guilt. Breaking eye contact, she quickly looked away. She knew she was acting prudishly: brows pinched into a frown, lips compressed in uptight disapproval, fingers clenching her glass.

  Her empty glass.

  Immediate problem: how to get the bartender's attention without giving that sexy, macho stud any ideas.

  The dilemma resolved itself. She felt more than heard the bartender approach.

  'What's the best vodka you serve—' she began, turning to him. And then the cat got her tongue.

  Because it wasn't the bartender. It was him—him! The guy who'd been eyeballing her.

  The breath caught in her throat.

  Amazingly, he was even better looking up close. His eyes weren't brown or black after all, but a shadowy cobalt, and his long, hard body seemed barely able to contain its raw power.

  He was six feet tall and exuded testosterone. Had a face sunned to an even tan, a certain air of danger, and what looked like a designer stubble. Plus attitude out the wazoo.

  She thought, My God, he's a knockout! And from his cockiness, she knew that he knew it.

  He flashed her a lupine grin; his teeth were whiter than brand new bathroom tiles. 'One vodka comin' up,' he said.

  Gloria started to protest, but he silenced her with a look. Fascinated, she watched him turn on the heel of his Westerns and return to the bar.

  He should have been in pictures. Where else did one see such a horny, hip-swaying, groin thrust of a strut?