The Wall: A Vintage Contemporary Romance

by Thea Harrison

  Sara was interested in spite of herself, feeling a thrill of excitement at the thought of her own television special. “You have to be joking!”

  “Babe, you are what is currently termed a ‘hot item’ at the moment. Everybody loves you and everybody wants you,” he said in a worldly tone of voice. It was dropped the next minute when he laughed delightedly. “Can you believe it? Can you really believe it? I knew you were big-time, love, but this is a godsend—think of the publicity from that one night’s viewing!”

  Sara looked at Barry with amusement. Not only was this a high point in her career, but it was a high point in his also. She was his first major star, and his name would become very much in demand because of her success. His career as an agent was skyrocketing right along with hers. Feeling charged up, she stood suddenly and started to pace around the room with long quick strides (seven up, seven back, five to the front door…). She shook her head impatiently and turned to Barry once again. “When do they want me to do it?” she asked jerkily.

  “They want you to start on it right away. If you could pack this afternoon, I could get you a flight back with me—”

  “No way.” Her reply came out without any hesitation.

  He blinked. “What?”

  “I said no way. I’m on vacation, a long, leisurely, much dreamed of, badly needed vacation. No, I won’t come back with you for any amount of money or publicity that this world could offer me,” she said calmly, and sat down to wait for the fall-out from the explosion that inevitably came.

  It wasn’t long in coming. Barry argued, pleaded, stormed about the room and nearly dissolved into tears, but she was adamant. Finally, after nearly an hour and a half of hot argument, he sank down on to the couch, defeated.

  Sara was seated at the piano bench and leaning against the closed top. She couldn’t help but laugh at his total dejection as he sprawled all over the cushions. She said, laughing, “Look, Barry, if I’m such a hot item, as you so sophisticatedly put it, then I can afford to be exclusive, can’t I? I can afford to pick and choose?”

  “A television special,” he moaned into his hands. “Goddamned prime time!” This made her laugh even harder.

  “Can’t you get them to wait until I get back from vacation? I want to do the programme, really—”

  “—you could have fooled me!” he muttered, but she chose to ignore the interruption and went on.

  “—but on my terms. I would like to do totally new songs, at my own discretion, except maybe a few of my best hits, which I’m sure they would insist upon, and I want to have the last say as to whom I work with. The money doesn’t matter…” Barry moaned again, “…and I’ll start only when I get back. Surely that wouldn’t be too hard to work out, would it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said gloomily. “It’ll probably take months to come to an agreement.”

  “Well, then,” she said serenely. He glowered at her from over one hand. Sara abandoned her relaxed position and stood suddenly to stare down at him with a fierce gleam in her eye. “And I will not, repeat not, do the special at all if you so much as send me a picture postcard again while I’m here, do you hear? I mean it, Barry. I don’t want even a phone call.”

  He winced. “Oh, I hear all right. Haven’t a choice about it, do I? Can’t I even drop you a line to let you know if they agree to your terms?”

  She thought about it and then shrugged. “All right, but only one letter. If I’m bothered outside that one letter, I won’t come within a mile of signing a contract!”

  They talked for some time more, then Sara led Barry gently but firmly to the front door and shoved him out, in spite of his protests. She leaned against the door, then did a happy little dance in the middle of the living room floor. Live concerts were really a potent charge emotionally, and concert tours were an excellent income source, but she could reach more people in one television special than she could in months of touring, though it might pay less. It was the chance of a lifetime, a chance that many big-named performers would give their eye teeth for, and it had dropped into her lap like a ripe plum.

  She need not have any doubts about the quality of the special. If Barry could work out the creative terms that she had stipulated, then she could be on the verge of doing one of the best creative performances of her life. With the terms she had insisted on, she could indulge in whatever style of music caught her mood at the time. She was fairly sure that she could make her creative urges known in a style that would appeal to her audience, though it might differ from her past musical expression. And, she told herself gleefully, I still have my vacation.

  Then she remembered Greg.

  Chapter Four

  It was dusk when Greg finally came over.

  Sara answered the door almost immediately when he knocked, and she looked into a frowning face. “Come in,” she invited, uncertainly. He crossed the threshold promptly, though, and she breathed an unconscious sigh of relief.

  “You really should identify your caller before you so blithely open your door,” he said tersely, and looked at her with something close to accusation in his eyes. “You didn’t know that it was me just now, did you?”

  She felt taken aback just now, attacked, and was at a loss for a reply. “Yes, thank you, and I hope you had a nice afternoon too,” she finally murmured sarcastically. Her nerves were on edge. She had been keyed up all day, and had been through such a variety of emotions in a relatively short time, and to top it off, she had worried over her feelings for Greg like a dog with a juicy bone. She was not exactly in a calm state of mind.

  Greg was glaring at her, however, and his mouth was held tight. A muscle moved in his square jaw and, staring at it, she decided to back down for now.

  “Would you like some coffee?” she asked, taking a few steps to the kitchen with an enquiring look over her shoulder.

  He declined the offer with a quick shake of the head. “I just stopped by to let you know that I was outside. I’ll go and look around for you now.” Something about the way he spoke, something about the harsh lines of his face and his tense glittering eyes made her react sharply, goaded.

  “Please, don’t go to any trouble on my account,” she told him mockingly, hurt by his inexplicable attitude. Her self-effacing act stung him, she could tell, by his sudden stillness and quick jerk of the head.

  “Stop it!” he said coldly. Those dark eyes, she saw, had that same repelling quality that they had contained the day before, and her heart sank at the observation. He had erected the wall again. He was blocking her out, right now. She hurt.

  “Why should I?” She swung away from him and put some distance between them. It didn’t make her feel any better. “You’re the one who came in here with a great big hostile chip on your shoulder about something! So I didn’t answer my door the way you would like me to! I didn’t ask for this kind of treatment, and frankly, if this is how you’re going to act about merely looking around outside tonight, I’d rather you didn’t!”

  Something flickered in his expressionless face then. He put his back to her and rubbed his neck in a tired gesture. “All right, I’m sorry. Look, it isn’t you, it’s me. I’ve—had a bad afternoon, that’s all.” Sara stood still, fighting the urge to go and put her arms around his waist. It’s too soon, she thought. I can’t. We got too intense, for just a silly argument. Not yet—I’m too unsure. Greg turned and caught the look on her face and suddenly, jerkily as if he couldn’t help himself, came and put his arms around her in a rough embrace. Her arms went around him as eagerly, and they just held each other tightly for a moment. Her head had just sank to his broad chest as she felt an overpowering wave of an unfamiliar emotion, and he jerked her away as abruptly as he had pulled her to him. He stared down into her eyes, holding her face with his two broad, calloused hands. She felt shocked; the depth of torment she saw in those brown eyes rocked her to the core. “Look—” he started, then his lips came down on hers in a crushing kiss, quick and unsatisfying. “I’ll come around and see y
ou tomorrow, okay?”

  Sara’s eyes were huge in her face. She didn’t know what to feel, whether to feel hurt, anger or sympathy. This man tore up her emotions more than any other single human being. She whispered, “Sure,” and thought dully, he’s not coming back. He is not going to come.

  Greg must have been able to read her thoughts on her confused face, for his softened slightly as he repeated, “I will see you tomorrow, Sara, I promise.” Then he was gone, and she didn’t feel any better after his last words than she had before. He shook her up so violently. She brooded all evening long.

  All in all, she had completely forgotten to feel even a little nervous about the dark night, the empty house, and the memory of that tall black shape that moved in the night.

  The ticking of the bedside clock was so loud to her that she nearly picked up the offending object to hurl it across her bedroom. It was close to three in the morning and she was still so tense that every muscle was held rigid, aching. And of course, the more she thought about it and fussed, the more rigid she became. She needed a cigarette; her nerves were a total wreck. She couldn’t stop thinking and thinking. Everything that happened to her in the past few days came whirling back, like an old film being replayed over and over and being stopped at the best parts. She threw back her covers in disgust, too warm and so restless that the weight on her legs aggravated her more than anything else, or would have, except that everything else was aggravating her as much as the stifling blankets. And so on and so forth, her mind chanted disgustedly.

  The worst single problem was the quiet. The place was so damned quiet, like a tomb, and she couldn’t rest in such quiet. She wanted someone to honk a blaring horn, she wanted the noise of downtown Los Angeles—no, she wanted—she didn’t know what she wanted.

  One, two, creak. That floorboard, she thought vaguely, is going to drive me crazy one of these days—she froze in sudden horror, the pit of her stomach just dropping away into nothingness and her heart starting to pound so hard that she thought it must surely burst her chest apart. That creaking floorboard was in the middle of her living room. It was such a totally harmless sound, such a completely ordinary everyday sound. Until you realised the context of the sound.

  That creaking floorboard only creaked when someone walked over it.

  There was someone in her living room. There was an actual, real, unimagined and unknown person at that very moment creeping across her living room floor.

  She was so totally, completely, utterly alone in the house, in the dark, in that terrible silence. God, she thought in a silent scream, I can’t move! I’m going to be killed in my bed, because I can’t get my stupid asinine body to move! Three, and a pause, and then four. Seven steps across the open space in the living room, she recalled suddenly, pulling the knowledge out of the darkness like a magician pulling a rabbit out of the hat. One corner of her brain registered this analogy with a stunned incredulity. Seven steps and then the hall, and my bedroom down here, so close, at the end of the hall with the door wide open. Dear sweet heaven, why did I ever leave the door open? But the question was academic and she knew it. There was no reason for her to shut her bedroom door if she lived alone.

  Sweat poured off her body and she shook as if she had a chill. The so quiet steps and the silent night made her want to scream in a mad orgy of hysteria. The horror and the terrible fear almost held her bound to the bed with the crazy desire to go to sleep, to wake and to know that she was dreaming. She wanted to pull the covers over head and feel safe, as if she were a little child hiding from the shadows of the outside night.

  Five!

  The tiny shuffle of sound that she would have never heard had she been asleep shrieked through her head and she nearly moaned. That one sound had ruined irreparably the illusion that she might have possibly imagined the whole thing after all. Isolation. Rape. Death—oh, God!

  After being unable to move for what had seemed a thousand eternities, she suddenly found herself standing by the bed without ever having realised that she had moved after all. Frozen there like a silent wraith, she played over in her mind the remembrance, the echo of creaking bedsprings that had accompanied her rise, and with sudden urgent, shaking hands, she reached down and gently pushed the bed down. The bed creaked again, as if she had rolled over in her sleep. The utter terrible silence that came from the living room told her that whoever it was had frozen and was listening intently.

  She nearly turned on the light and called out to the unknown person. The crazy desire to give herself up and see once and for all who was down the hall was almost her undoing. Then she shook herself violently and thought with a goading desperation. I have to get out of here! I have to run. Where? Where can I go?

  The answer was like a sigh. Greg. Without another second’s hesitation, she silently scooped up her dressing gown that was at the foot of her bed and her shoes on the floor. She slid to the window to look frantically at its latch. The feeling of entrapment, of utter helplessness, of blinding fear was gagging her at the base of the throat.

  Six. She heard that footstep and nearly threw up. Then something clicked in her head like a computer terminal coming on, and her brain was racing faster than it had ever in her life.

  She had a very slight advantage. She was at the end of the hall and whoever it was in the living room was almost certainly unaware of the floor plan of the house. He might have a good idea of where her bedroom was, but he wouldn’t know for sure, and the same necessity for quiet that was hampering her movements was hampering his. If he still thought she was asleep. But at that, she shook her head and was totally unaware of the movement. The silence throughout the house told her that he still thought she was asleep.

  The window latch was a simple turn lock, and the window one that swung out on a hinge. She could have wept from relief at the merciful God that had ordained such a simple style of window, for it excluded the possibility of a window screen, an obstacle that would have trapped her like iron bars in a prison. She slid her hand to the latch and carefully, oh, so carefully, began to turn it. Her hands were shaking so violently that she was barely able to grasp the handle with her nerveless fingers, but she soon saw the latch come free of its rest.

  Seven. He was at the hall opening. Was it about twenty feet away, or thirty? If the window creaked when she pushed it open, he would hear it as clearly as a gunshot. He would be down the hall in two seconds flat. The fear in Sara’s mouth made her tongue stick to the roof with its dryness. She nearly fainted when she pushed the window out on its hinges.

  It went as silently and as smoothly as the quiet stalk of a panther.

  Sara was small and she was out of that window opening in a split second, pausing only to push the window shut again in an attempt to fool the intruder, then she was tiptoeing around the corner of the house, completely unaware of the sharp sticks that bit into the bottom of her soft feet. She hit the beginning of the path that lead to the beach at a dead run.

  Of course she fell. That funny hitch in the path that was caused by tree roots caught her toes and she pitched headlong into the darkness, to fall bruisingly. Sheer unadulterated panic was gripping her by the throat, though, and she was up and running almost before she could breathe.

  Never had the trip to the beach seemed so long and frighteningly black. He was behind her, she knew, with hands like claws almost to her throat, her hair, dragging her back along the path to that silent house. She kicked up sand as she sprinted, her breath coming in huge agonising gasps. It wasn’t really happening after all. It couldn’t be!

  She faltered at the rise only for a second and then scrabbled up frantically, feeling the cold bitter wind bite through her flimsy nightdress. It was as if she really didn’t have anything on. She was completely unaware of the dressing gown and shoes that she still clutched in a death-grip. Her feet were ice and totally deadened to sensation. She was down the other side of the rise and stumbling along the beach with an iron band around her chest and her hair whipped around her neck.
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br />   It was here that the tears started to fall, for she was in fear’s control, and it was very dark with little moonlight to show the way. She wasn’t sure where the path was that lead to Greg’s house. The murmur of the waves behind her was like a scream of rage, and the gentle wind rustling the undergrowth was a thousand night stalkers, her death on their minds.

  Eternity came and went when she finally found the path and stumbled along it. Little animal-like moans startled her, even more so when she found that they were coming from her own throat. Something black loomed ahead, and she barely paused to ascertain where the door in the silent structure was before she fell on it, pounding frantically and bruising her wrists. She never felt a thing.

  It was terrible, standing at the closed door and begging to be let in while she had at her back the black, silent, infinitely menacing forest. He was going to be too late, she knew, she just knew, for the unknown assailant was right behind her, he was about to grab her and kill her horribly—and a thought struck her, as she stood leaning against the door with her cheek pressed to it. “Oh, dear Lord,” she groaned. Don’t let it be Greg. Please, don’t let it be him. Please!

  The door was jerked violently open and she fell into Greg’s arms, sobbing wildly.

  She heard above her head an uttered ejaculation, and he exclaimed profoundly shocked, “Sara! Dammit, what’s happened? Are you hurt? Are you all right? Oh—hellfire!” This last was accompanied by a shove of the foot to the open door, and the hard arms that had closed around her so tightly loosened. Sara moaned deep in her throat and clung to him, shaking like a leaf, but he was only flipping on a light switch and his arms came back around her, reassuringly firm. He held her to his body heat when he realised that she was as cold as ice. She didn’t protest; she couldn’t have stood alone if she tried. Her head was bent to his wide chest and she was heaving in great gulps of air in an effort to catch her breath after her headlong dash across the beach. It wasn’t easy, since she was trying to talk and cry at the same time, with every gulp.