by Carolyn Nash
“Melanie.”
“Look, Andrew,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m tired. I haven’t slept much. Please, can we just… not… talk about this?”
He didn’t say anything, but his hand moved up my arm and his thumb began to stroke the underside of my wrist.
“Please,” I whispered. I closed my eyes and shook my head. I felt my hair slip down around my shoulders again.
His fingers tightened and he gently pulled my arm. I resisted. “Please,” I whispered again, but then I let him pull me to him. I lay down next to him and he brought his arm around me. I lay stiffly, afraid to touch him, but as his hand stroked my arm, and brushed back my hair, I began to relax against his side, and finally lay full length against him, my head resting on his shoulder. He pulled the crumpled sheet out from between us and drew it up over me then went back to stroking me gently. With no sheet between us, I could feel the tickle of the hair on his legs against my bare legs, the heat where our skin touched, the angle of his hipbone against my stomach, the smooth skin of his chest beneath my cheek.
“I was so scared, Andrew.” The words came out suddenly, surprising me. I hadn’t known I was going to say anything, but once started, the words came of their own volition. “I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.”
The tears trickled across the bridge of my nose and dropped onto his chest. His arm tightened around me, and though he still said nothing, his hand never stopped caressing my arm and hair. The motion was so soothing, and the words kept coming.
“Friday night was bad, but then on Saturday, your fever got so high, and I couldn’t do anything but give you the antibiotics and aspirin for the fever, and then--you were burning up, and… and… I went out to the kitchen, and I came back with some juice and you were lying there, and for a minute, in the moonlight, it didn’t look like… you… were… were… b…breathing. Oh god!” I pressed my face against his chest and clung to him as the tears came in earnest. “I thought you were dead! I thought you were dead.”
The sobs shook me and Andrew held me tightly, stroking my hair, pulling the sheet up around me, cradling me against him as I shivered and held on to him. He began to croon to me softly, telling me it was all right, that it was all over, that I could rest now. He repeated the words in a rhythmic chant, a spell against the pain and fear as he rocked and caressed me.
After a few minutes, the tears began to slow and the sobs quieted to a few sniffles and an occasional shuddering heave. I sniffed, rubbed at my wet cheeks and then tried to push away from him.
His arm tightened. “Don’t,” he whispered. “Please.”
I pushed up enough so that our eyes met. He smiled crookedly. “Please,” he said.
“I have to,” I said as I sniffed gently and batted my eyes. “It’s either that or blow my nose on the sheet.”
Andrew snorted and his arm dropped from around me. “Reason enough.”
I flipped back the sheet, and pivoted around so that I could reach a roll of toilet paper that sat on the floor next to the mattress. I held it so he could see it. “Ah, yes. First class trip all the way,” I said and blew my nose.
He reached over and began to massage the base of my neck. “I’m sorry you’ve missed out on your trip.”
I closed my eyes and rolled my shoulders under his hand. He kept massaging and then his hand cupped my neck and he pulled me back toward him. I eased across the mattress and he lifted the sheet, his arm went behind me and I nestled against him and my head went back on his shoulder.
He rubbed his cheek against my hair. “Thank you, Melanie.”
“Hmmm?”
He cleared his throat. “Thank you for my life. My freedom.”
I smiled against his chest, loving the warmth of his skin against my lips. “You’re welcome, Andrew.”
His lips brushed against my hair. “You hair is like silk.” He drew it back and kissed me just above my left eye.
“Thank you.”
He kissed my cheek just below my other eye. “Your skin is so soft.”
“Thank you.”
“And your mouth…” He tilted my chin up and kissed my lips lightly. “Your mouth…”
Thank you, my lips said as I looked up and saw my reflection in his eyes.
And I was kissing him. I clung to him, trying to press myself closer, closer, and even with one arm he was holding me so tightly I couldn’t breathe but I couldn’t breathe anyway because his mouth was on mine and I felt that fire again flaring, roaring, burning until I didn’t think I could survive, but it was all right to die, because to die like this would be so completely and utterly right.
Andrew moved his mouth from mine and kissed my eyes, my throat, my ear. I kissed the hollow of his throat and ran my hand down his chest, marveling at the feel of his skin beneath my fingers. Underneath I could feel the strong, rapid beating of his heart.
His hand came up under my t-shirt in the back, running up my spine, pushing the material up until he was rubbing the muscles at the base of my neck. He pressed me to him, pulling the thin material of my t-shirt up further. I ran my hands over his bare skin, up his arms, across his shoulders, down the sides of his chest, touching him, exploring, wanting to know every inch of him. The only thing he wore was his boxer-briefs and the bandage wrapped around his lower chest. And it was this, as I ran my hands down his sides that my fingers brushed against just as Andrew was pulling my face around to kiss me again.
“No,” I said against his lips.
“What?”
I put my hands against his shoulders and pushed back from him. His arms dropped to his sides. “No,” I said again.
“Why? Tell me why,” he said.
I sat back on my heels and pulled my t-shirt down. “This is wrong.”
Andrew reached over and took my hand. He smiled. “No it’s not.”
I left my hand limp and lifeless in his. “Yes. Yes it is.”
“Tell me why.”
Because you’re going to leave me. You’re going back to Caren, and when you do, it’s going to be harder than I think I can bear. But if this happens, if we make love, when you go I’ll break into so many pieces I’ll never be able to put them back together.
“Because,” I said. “The last couple of days, this situation. You’re feeling grateful; I’ve been taking care of you. And now it’s like we’re in the eye of the storm. We’re hiding away here, away from the world, away from your life, your friends, and we can’t hide, and we can’t make something here. We’ve only known each other a few hours, really, and you practically have a fiancée, so we just shouldn’t, that’s all.”
Andrew looked at my hand resting in his and gently pulled his out from under it.
“Not practically,” he said.
“What?”
“She is my fiancée.” Andrew sat back and rearranged the sheet and blanket over him. He wouldn’t look at me. “I shouldn’t have kissed you. I’m sorry.”
At some point, during my Physics days, I had read about tiny black holes in the universe that moved through the cosmos occasionally colliding with stars or planets. Collision brought mass destruction as the worlds imploded, collapsing inward at an ever faster rate as the enormous gravity of the black hole pulled relentlessly. I knew the truth of it now, because one had lodged just under my breastbone and it was pulling me rapidly, unrelentingly down. But even as I dropped, I fought back automatically, struggling against the destruction in the only way I knew how.
“Andrew,” I said, my voice calm.
“Yes?” he said.
“Do you remember what I told you in the hotel room about apologizing?”
“Oh.” The merest shadow of a grateful smile pulled at his lips.
“And you said it would never happen again.”
He nodded somberly. “Yes, I did.”
I crossed my arms beneath my breasts, pressing hard against my thumping heart. “Well, what do you have to say for yourself?”
He hung his head. “I’m truly sorry.”
There was an awkward silence. Andrew shifted up in the bed, rearranging the sheet and pulling the blanket up to his waist.
“So,” I said, a little too loudly. “Do you feel up to some lunch?”
“Great. Yes, I’m starving.”
I grinned, but I could feel my lips began to quiver, so I turned toward the door. “Coming up,” I said and headed for the kitchen.
CHAPTER 11
I dropped all but one of the bundles I carried by the front door, and walked quickly down the hall to the bedroom.
“Got it!” I waved the small brown package triumphantly in the air as I pulled off the black and silver cap.
Andrew sat on the mattress, staring at the door as I walked in, one shoe balanced in his hand, the other already on. He was dressed in his jeans and my blue sweater. The blankets were tossed into a heap beside him. For a moment he looked relieved, but when he spoke, his voice was tight with anger. “Where the hell have you been?”
I dropped the package on the end of the mattress and started pulling off my coat. “Hey, you’re dressed. You must be feeling better.”
“Never mind about how I’m feeling.” He tossed his shoe away and it thumped against the wall at the head of the bed and dropped to the wooden floor with a loud clatter. His eyes narrowed. “It shouldn’t have taken you more than an hour, and hour and a half, tops. You’ve been gone three hours and fifteen minutes.”
I hung my coat on the hook in the closet and slipped the sunglasses off. “You know I had to get you some sneakers and a shirt,” I said mildly.
“Three hours and fifteen minutes to buy sneakers and one shirt?”
I walked over to Andrew and stood looking down at him. He had to bend his head back to meet my eyes. “And go to pick up your package while making sure all the while that I wasn’t being followed,” I said. “And by the way, your Uncle “Marley” wasn’t in when I got there. And I couldn’t exactly tell his secretary to track him down because that well-known fugitive, Andy Richards had sent me, now could I?”
“I guess not,” he said.
“I sat on that couch for an hour, trying to watch all the doors at once, sure that either the police or Beer Belly and Short Blond would come bursting in at any second.” I laughed, but Andrew didn’t smile.
He reached over beside the bed and picked up the newspapers that I’d left on the kitchen counter. He tossed them at my feet and I looked down at the photo of one Melanie Brenner, girl fugitive. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
I shrugged. “It didn’t come up.”
“You didn’t tell me because you knew I wouldn’t let you go.”
“Wouldn’t let me?”
“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t let me?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t let me do anything, Andy. I decide what I do and what I don’t do.”
“Andrew and not when it comes to something like this.”
“Something like what?”
“Trouble that I got you into.”
“I told you before you didn’t get me into anything, Andy. I did.”
“This is my problem. You should have stayed out of it.”
I kicked the paper across the floor. It slid to a stop against his foot. “Your problem? It looks like it’s my problem now, too.”
“It wouldn’t be if you’d gotten the hell out of it when I told you to, back at the airport, or at the hotel.”
“What, and I was supposed to take off and let you bleed to death, knowing that you were too goddamn stubborn to give up and see a doctor?”
“I couldn’t. What use is it to live if everything important in my life is taken from me?”
“What use is your work or your girlfriend or anything else if you’d died,” I shouted. “Do you remember, Dr. Richards? Do you remember that I almost watched you die? Did you ever once think what that would do to me?”
I saw him wince. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t mean…”
“Yes, you did,” he said, the anger spent. “And you’re right. I didn’t think. I should have let you call the police then. I should have never left LA. If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t be in this trouble now.”
“It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not.” He looked down at my photo surrounded by newsprint. “I want you to help me get to a phone,” he said. “I’m going to call them now. I’ll tell them you had nothing to do with any of this.”
The disposable phone was in my purse, but I wasn’t about to tell him about it, at least not at that moment. “Andrew.” He wouldn’t look at me. I eased down on the bed next to him. “Please, Andrew. Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter how we got here. We’re here now. They know I could have left any number of times. They know I helped you of my own free will. If we don’t get the evidence to clear you, I’ll be charged as an accessory.”
“Jesus,” he groaned, and turned away.
“I know you didn’t want any of this to happen. It just did. Neither one of us planned it.”
“Well, I should have,” he said angrily. “Same old idiot Andy Richards as I’ve always been. Same old self-centered jerk.”
I looked at him, startled.
“Jesus, you too, huh?” He looked away. “You believe it too, don’t you? No feelings, no self-doubts. My whole life people have treated me like I’m some kind of damn Ken doll, solid plastic to the core.”
“No.”
“Bull. I’ve known it for as long as I could remember. And don’t think I haven’t used it. To get my way, get what I want. I’m good at what I do, but you think I got an associate professorship fresh off one post-doc because of my research? No. I got it because the dean figured I’d bring in the big bucks, my friends’ and my father’s. A grant here, a grant there and we can pick up that new sequencer and a new electron microscope. Hell, let rich boy have a corner to play in, we’ll make up for it when the dollars start rolling in. Besides, won’t he look great in the P.R. photos, in the annual reports, on the letterhead? And now the latest, taking your life and totally destroying it because I had to have my way.”
The bitter words spilled out and I cocked my arm back and punched him as hard as I could on his upper arm.
“Ow!” he cried.
“Don’t you think maybe your position at the University might have had something to do with the fact that your research has been on the cutting edge since graduate school? Don’t you think your three books might have had something to do with it? Don’t you think the fact that you’re an excellent teacher might have influenced the decision, at least the tiniest bit? No, I didn’t know you had self-doubts, but I’ll tell you one thing, I know now that you’ve got the market cornered in self-pity.”
“Uh.”
I scrambled up from the bed. “Okay, you know you’re good-looking, I know you’re good looking, the whole world knows you’re good-looking. But you didn’t have anything to do with that. Your parents’ DNA did. But you have had something to do with the work you’ve done, and I know--because I’m not some idiot, fainting female--that your work has been exceptional, and that your books are inspiring. When I read your first one, it was like it… it… lit a fuse inside me. The way you described the action of a typical cell: DNA, proteins being made, the cell surface and the way it interacted with the environment around it. It was beautiful, amazing. That book changed my whole life, and I’m not going to sit here and listen to you bad-mouth the author of it. Now, I’m hungry, and I’m going to fix lunch. Do you want some?”
He stared up at me.
“What are you going to do if your face freezes like that?”
He shut his mouth.
“Fine. You’re not hungry; I’ll fix lunch for myself.”
I turned to go.
“That’s not necessary,” he said. “Lunch is fixed.”
He jerked his head toward the patio table outside. I looked out to the little wrought iron table on the patio which had plates and covered dishe
s on it. “You made lunch?”
“Yes,” he said. “Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I thought you’d be resting, considering what we have in front of us this afternoon.”
Andrew shook his head and picked up the small brown package I’d brought. He hefted it in his hand. “I couldn’t rest. It was a long three hours and fifteen minutes.”
“Oh,” I said, then stepped around the end of the mattress and walked out the doors into the late-morning sunshine. The table had been set with paper plates, plastic forks resting on paper napkins, and clear plastic cups. Across from the two place settings a cut down plastic soda bottle held white and yellow daisies, pink and red geraniums and some yellow, red and violet snapdragons, all plucked from around the garden. Two covered plates sat on each side of the flowers. I lifted the napkins draped over them. One had wedges of orange, apple and pear arranged around a cluster of grapes. The other plate was piled with sliced sourdough French bread and cold cuts. An old galvanized metal bucket sat in one of the extra chairs. The neck of a two-liter bottle of diet Pepsi stuck up through some melting ice.
I heard Andrew’s footsteps come up behind me, but I didn’t turn around. Even though I gave myself a full ten seconds, when I spoke, it still came out a little breathless. “Andrew, this is really very nice.” I reached out and touched the petals of one of the red geraniums. “Very thoughtful.”
His hand came up and rested on my shoulder. I could just see the ends of his fingers, brown and strong-looking against the white of my t-shirt. “Aw shucks. Tweren’t nothin’ ma’am.” His voice had completely lost the self-pitying tone and the anger. In fact, he seemed almost cheerful. “I hope there’s enough. You must have worked up quite an appetite with that speech.”
“Oh, shut up, cowboy. You deserved it.” I moved out from under his hand, making it seem as if I were only reaching out to tuck a napkin in before the breeze could take it. Ever since The Kiss, I’d had trouble enough having Andrew near me; his touching me was impossible.