by Babe Hayes
Greta leaned forward in confusion. “So why did she leave?”
Steve was staring into his coffee cup. “I didn’t.”
“Oh, so you’re the problem. What’s so bad about getting married? I thought you were going to marry Crystal.”
“No, I wasn’t. I was going to avoid ever getting married.”
He knew that sometime, somewhere, somehow, he would eventually have to have this conversation. He decided that this was the time. He was lost. He could trust Greta.
“Why do people who are nuts about each other always have to get married? Why can’t they just live together? Marriage always screws everything up!” He got up and paced aimlessly around the room. Then he went into the kitchen. “Are there any more of those deviled eggs?” he called with his head in the refrigerator.
Greta waited patiently at the table. “Top shelf, back.”
Steve reappeared, feeling Greta’s fierce eyes. “Don’t look at me like that. Please tell me. Why is that? What does marriage have to do with love?” He took too big a bite of the stuffed egg as if it might serve as a salve. It had no taste either. He sat down wearily across from her.
Greta leaned toward him. Her words carried an urgency, a sincerity. “Most women want to be married, Steve. Marriage is a way of cementing lifelong vows that give a woman a feeling of permanence, of authenticity, about a relationship.”
“Commitment is what you mean, isn’t it? And I can commit. I committed to Crystal. I just don’t want to get married. My dad told me—” Steve stopped and put his chin in his hands.
“Your dad told you what?”
“Marriage has a way of making a good relationship go bad. After he and Mom broke up, we went out and had a few drinks. I was twenty-five. He got pretty loaded and started telling me about how marrying Mom messed up their relationship.”
Greta’s knitted brow tipped him to her intensity. “What did he mean?”
“Well, he said he was nuts about her. They were in their early twenties when they met. After about six months, they started living together. They lived together for about a year, then Mom wanted to get married. Dad had mixed feelings about it. Both of their parents were divorced. He felt that marrying was the first inevitable step to divorce. Mom told him he was crazy. That they were different.”
“And?”
“And they got married. Twenty-five years later they were divorced. Dad was right.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute. Twenty-five years later? Didn’t they have any good times in those married years? And why did they get a divorce?”
Steve smiled in memory. “Yeah, I think they had some great times. But all Mom did was family. Dad kept telling her the kids would be gone some day, and what would she do without them. But she never wanted to be anything but a mom. After my brother and I left, she was lost. I could tell she and Dad didn’t have that old zing anymore. He always had his job and sports to keep him happy. Mom went into a funk. Especially when neither my brother nor I got married. There were no grandkids in the offing. Mom and Dad drifted apart. Dad was right—marriage inevitably ends in divorce.”
From the way Greta was gathering herself, Steve could see he was in for a rebuttal. “Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s say they didn’t get married. How would the story have ended any differently?”
“Well, they would have—” He hesitated.
“Drifted apart anyway? Whether your parents were married or not had nothing to do with their relationship. Your mom got too hung up on family. She never developed any sense of personal worth about herself. Paeton is a world-famous writer. You’re a world-famous—”
Steve laughed appreciatively, breaking into her speech. “Don’t overdo this, Greta. I’ll give you a raise when I can afford it.”
She laughed too. “No, wait. You are world-famous. Steve, two people can mess up any relationship. But if one of the partners really feels the need for the comfort of marriage, and they’re going to live as a married couple anyway, that comfort will make the relationship better for both of them. Splitting up has nothing to do with being married or not being married. Fidelity is fidelity. Wanting to be together is just that. Some of us women would like to have that piece of paper. Steve, the point is that your marriage doesn’t have to lead to divorce. Think about it. I sure would like to hear less groaning around here.”
“Do you think she’d come back if I asked her to marry me?”
“Have you asked her?”
“No.”
Greta put her hands on her hips. “Then you don’t know yet, do you? I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
With that Greta walked from the room. She had obviously made her point. The rest was up to Steve.
Marriage? The sound of the word made his hands clammy. He and Paeton? Married? All that spun in his head was that scene with his dad in the bar. Marriage equals divorce!
But marriage with Paeton? Was Greta right? Could it possibly be different?
#
Steve sat on the edge of his bed. The Monday had arrived to meet Royale Jones to plan the show about Steedly Black’s challenge. But of course, the show would be gutless without Paeton. Had Fred or anyone told Royale that Paeton was in London? Steve thought it was amusing, actually. The media would be loading both barrels for a target of two, and half the target would be missing.
Steve winced. Half missing? His whole life was missing. He hadn’t realized how much even the possibility of some contact with Paeton had given meaning to his life. When she was in L.A., the slight chance she might answer or return his calls gave him hope. But there was no hope now.
He supposed Fred had tried to persuade her to come back for the show. Or something. Oh, what the hell do I care? He would go down to the studio as planned and get some perverted enjoyment hearing the gossip-mongers squawk when they heard the news about Paeton.
He checked his watch as he walked out the door of the Alice house. Maury had offered to fly in for the meeting, but Steve didn’t need any support in the TV arena.
When he got to the studio, he saw Royale’s famous chartreuse Maserati and Fred’s silver XJ6 Jaguar. Steve felt a pang seeing Fred’s car, knowing Paeton would not be with him as usual. Black wouldn’t be at the meeting because Steve had demanded that Royale keep the slimeball far away until the show. Whatever date they set for the show, Black would be there—after all, it was his challenge.
Steve approached the receptionist.
“Mr. Kaselman. They’re expecting you. Third floor, conference room B.”
“Thank you.” He walked to the elevator.
As he emerged from the elevator into the hallway, he felt something strange and powerful grip him. His senses intensified as if someone had injected him with a massive shot of vitamin B. He worked his shoulders to adjust to the rush. He found himself glancing around to see if there was something he had missed.
He pushed open the door to conference room B.
Ba-zam!
#
Paeton stared at the ceiling in the bedroom of her New York apartment. The children were sound asleep after the long day’s plane ride from Los Angeles. She was congratulating herself on narrowly, but successfully, escaping the eyes and wiles of Steve Kaselman. In a few days she would be on her way to London. She had taken control of her life again. No one could change her mind now. She would start over. She would leave everything behind that had befallen her beginning with that single moment at JFK. Of course, there were still a few loose ends, like subletting the apartment and making arrangements for Rosa to follow. But they could wait until she landed safely in England. She closed her eyes. She welcomed the peace of sleep.
#
On the following Wednesday, her preparations concluded for her trip abroad, she and the children piled into a taxi and honked and swerved their way to JFK. As she stepped from the cab, she felt a niggling. She looked around. Had she forgotten something? She checked her purse. There were the tickets. The children looked fine. She shrugged and watched a
porter wrestle with her bags. All seemed normal. Still, something was invading her senses.
She headed toward her concourse, once again Kelsey’s seat bopping one hip, her carryall the other, and Madison slightly ahead. The cloned departure gates flowed monotonously one to the next until she reached her assigned area, which seemed distinctly different from the others. The niggling became overwhelming. Then she realized—this was exactly where she and Steve had scrambled the babies!
The screaming awareness drained all feeling from her legs.
Suddenly, Madison became extremely agitated, broke away, and raced to a seat in the waiting area.
“Mommy! Mommy! Look!” She was jumping up and down and pointing her small finger at a purple magic-marker heart on the seatback. “It says ‘Paeton and Steve’!”
The top of Paeton’s head went electric! Her vision blurred. She inched toward the graffiti on numb legs, as if approaching an alien.
And there, as impossible as it was, her eyes focused on names clearly spelled out—“Paeton + Steve!”
At first, she thought her mind was playing tricks from the stress she had been under. She had to be imagining the names. She shook her head to clear it. To perceive what was indeed there.
But wait! No! It was Madison who had seen the names and called them out!
“Mommy, who put that there?”
Paeton’s mind was spinning crazily, making everything fuzzy and surreal. Mechanically, she placed Kelsey on the seat next to the one with the names. Finally, she faltered, “I don’t know who could have done that, Maddy.” She had to bring some reason to the situation. She had to answer her daughter with a sensible explanation. “Well, it’s about two other people named Paeton and Steve, honey. It’s simply a—a coincidence.”
“I never heard of anyone else named Paeton and Steve. What’s a co-win-sen-dens?”
Madison’s words rang true. This was no coincidence. This was—?
Steve! Of course. Steve had come along and finished writing the names into the initials. She laughed tentatively.
“Why are you laughing, Mommy? What’s a co-win-sen-dens?”
“What, sweetheart? Oh, it’s just—uh, just something that happens, and we think it’s something that it really isn’t.”
“Oh, well, I don’t think it’s a co-win-sen-dens.”
What was Madison saying? What she was saying made sense. This could not be random. But Paeton knew it couldn’t have been Steve either. The letters were elegant, old-English style. Three-dimensional looking, with a dark border. Steve was left-handed, his handwriting atrocious.
Madison had sat down and was swinging her legs. “When are we going to London, Mommy? I’m tired of airports and stuff.”
Paeton couldn’t break from her preoccupation with the graffiti. “I know, honey. I’m sorry. We’ll be leaving soon. We’ll be—”
She reached down and ran her fingers across the names in the heart. Oh! A sweet pain shot through her chest. The names flashed in iridescent colors, leaping off the surface of the seat. They pranced and paraded in front of her like animated characters. Teasing her unbelieving eyes. She closed them. She flopped down hard into a seat next to Madison. Paeton felt unearthly. Every square inch of her skin prickled as if her entire army of red corpuscles was stampeding to exit. When she opened her eyes again, the heart had courteously returned to its rightful, two-dimensional place on the seatback.
“Mommy, are you okay?”
“Yes, honey. I’m—I’m fine. I need a moment to rest.”
Her legs still numb, she forced herself to breathe deeply. To relax. To take charge. To beat the stress. The nonstop stress that had become her lifestyle since the fireworks that had flowered the heavens on the Fourth of July.
She checked the graffiti. She checked Kelsey. She checked Madison. She made breathing a conscious effort. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Good. Finally, rational thought seemed possible. Paeton could now bring reason to her most recent—should she say hallucinations? Dancing hearts?
She began a conversation with herself. Reconstructing how Steve had painted the rest of the names in the heart. Okay. Steve had come past this gate. Had seen the initials sometime in his travels. He enlisted a friend. Judging from the flowery art, probably a female friend—she felt a nudge of jealousy—and added the rest of their names. If someone in authority had interrupted them, Steve, with his winning ways, would have explained that the seat had already been defaced, so what was the harm in elaborating on the graffiti a bit? And furthermore, it was in the interest of the most powerful force on earth—love. He and his friend were creating a graffiti valentine, so to speak.
She found herself shaking her head in begrudging admiration. She could picture Steve doing a sell-job on the security officer. She felt another nudge. Picturing Steve was still a problem for Paeton.
And then—bam! It hit her. Whether Steve had written the names, or whether a friend of his had, or whether it was a coincidence, was not the issue. The issue was running! Paeton was running, had been running from too-tight-vest ever since their eyes met in that moment of ecstasy. She smiled sadly as she thought about how she had first named him. Yes, Paeton, the simple message the heart is sending is “Stop running!” Stop running and play out the final scenes with Steve! She had to face him and deal with their relationship—for good or for ill. She had to bring closure to whatever sprang to life that day. She must return to L.A.
Paeton pulled out her ticket to London and tore it up. She enjoyed tearing up the ticket. She was definitely feeling better.
Maddy poked her head around to see what Paeton was doing. “Mommy, why are you doing that?”
For the first time in quite a while, Paeton felt solid. She felt direction. “Because we’re not going to England. We’re going back to Los Angeles.”
“Yea! Goody! Will we see Steve and Ryan?”
A confident smile formed on Paeton’s lips. “Yes. Yes, we will. We definitely will.”
“Goody. I like Steve.”
Yes, she would go back to face her Destiny with Steve Kaselman. She now fully understood that regardless of what airport in the world she traveled to, there would always be a purple magic-marker heart somewhere with “Paeton + Steve” in it. Before her life could move to any new place, Paeton had to embrace or erase the purple magic-marker heart.
#
“That’s great news, Paeton.”
She was talking to Fred from her New York apartment about an hour after changing her plans to fly to London.
“By the way, we did some checking on Steedly Black. The guy was a child star about twenty years ago. Had his own show. You may have seen reruns, ‘Main Street Child?’”
“No, I never heard of it, Fred.”
“Well, he begged his producers to bring his newborn brother on the show. When they finally did, the infant stole the show and Steedly’s career with it. When Steedly became a reporter, he went into the tabloids. Whenever he could, he would try to sabotage celebrities who had newborns. He developed a sick vendetta to stop the celebrity and the child from ever having a chance at any kind of success. His scheme has worked several times. Remember that soap star—Rita somebody—who had a baby and tried to work the kid into the show? Then it came out splashed on the cover of In Your Face that she supposedly didn’t know who the father was?”
“Yes, I do remember. It was Rita Constable. She had a big part on The Sun Still Rises. I used to follow that soap. I don’t think she ever returned to the show.” Paeton thought a moment. “Then that explains why Black was on the plane with me on my way out to L.A.”
“Exactly.” Fred paused. “Well, I’m glad you’re coming back. Are we going to meet his challenge?”
“We’ll beat the pants off him.” A chill passed from her neck to her toes. She had echoed Steve’s exact words. Damn! She would be so elated when she finally resolved her future connection with that jock!
Nonetheless, something was easing in her outlook. She was looking forward to closure. An
d there was only one way to reach that—heed the message of the magic-marker heart. Stop running from Steve Kaselman. Meet him head on!
“That’s my girl.”
“See you in L.A., Fred. Bye.”
Paeton hung up, determination flowing through her. Head on! Face-to-face! That was the only way!
#
Paeton had been so brave at the airport about facing Steve. Now, sitting at Royale’s conference table, waiting for what she knew would be his captivating appearance, she was no longer brave. Her heart pounded out of control. A pain shot through her chest. The conversation on the tape Steve played for her had proved him innocent, but that one instance of proof had not completely banished the terrifying fear of an ultimate betrayal.
She had an urge to get up and run again. She gripped the courtesy pencil placed for all conference members. A few seconds later—crack!—to her and everyone’s surprise, she had snapped it in two.
She felt the blush form on her cheeks.
Fred whispered, “You okay?”
“Fine, fine,” she muttered. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the door push open. She looked up.
Ka-zing!
Guess who!
All her senses sprang to life. His chest looked especially strapping with a black-and-wine-striped body shirt pulled tautly across it. His arms and hands were so sure and athletic. She remembered the one time they made her whole body sing. She attempted to swallow the knot in her throat, avoiding his eyes that immediately searched for hers.
Royale, who had not sat down with the group yet, greeted him. “Steve Kaselman, glad you’re here.”
Steve nodded, “Royale,” and took a seat, his eyes never leaving Paeton.
“Let’s get started.” Royale took her place at the head of the long teak conference table, taking immediate charge.
Paeton couldn’t look at Steve without aching to touch him. She noticed her hands were trembling slightly. Great way to start closure, Paeton!