The Wall: A Vintage Contemporary Romance

by Thea Harrison

  “Okay,” she said simply, and gave him a sweet smile. She was still acting casually, but in truth, his sudden approachable behaviour was making her want to sing from pure happiness and relief.

  He leaned his forehead on hers. “I got the bright idea that you were leaving this morning and not coming back,” he confessed softly, rubbing his thumb along the base of her throat. Sara started to laugh at that and he grinned wryly, self-mockingly.

  “But you’re driving me to the airport and I’m leaving my car here!” she exclaimed in protest against such illogical and erroneous thinking.

  “I know, I know. It didn’t sink in at the time, but only when I saw your luggage and realised that you were leaving most of your clothes here did I realise how stupidly I’d been thinking.” He had bent and was exploring her neck with his mouth as he spoke, and she closed her eyes.

  “You’re right, you are a stupid fool,” she sighed. “Mmm! We have to leave if I’m going to make my flight.”

  He murmured reluctantly, “I suppose so. Are you sure you have to go? Couldn’t you…stay for an afternoon nap?” She leaned against him fully, and his legs parted to take her weight.

  “I’d like to, but I can’t. I promised them I’d be there by tonight,” she whispered, and he slowly straightened up. It wasn’t necessarily true. She could have had Barry send the contract to her by registered mail for her signature, even though he preferred her to sign in his presence. But she was feeling the need to get away from Greg’s drugging influence. She needed to take time to be by herself, to think things out. And, she thought, it would probably do him a world of good to have time alone too. At the moment, though, all she could feel was regret for having ever made the plane reservation. All she could think of was the shadowed room upstairs and the things she had learned from Greg last night.

  But he was pulling away from her, with one last kiss, saying resignedly, “If you have to go, you have to, I guess, and I’m not making things easier for you.” No, she thought, you’ve complicated my life infinitely from the moment I first met you, Greg Pierson. You’ve messed up all the order, and the peace, and you’ve driven away my isolation, so why do I feel so terrible? What happened, between the magic of last night, to the shadows of the day? It was at the moment unanswerable, and she sighed.

  Her depression seemed to manifest itself physically, and she felt draggy, worn down. She wanted to sleep.

  They delayed until finally there was no more time to waste, and she had to board the plane. She turned to Greg and opened her mouth to say goodbye, but the words were never uttered. He took her shoulders roughly in a way that somehow spoke of desperation, and hauled her hard against him for a quick, intense, starving kiss. Then he was letting her go and backing away. For a moment all she could do was just stand and stare at him walking away, shaken, scared for some reason, and so totally alone she could have died from it.

  She turned too and quietly boarded the plane.

  Southern California was a climate shock to her senses. She called a taxi and gave him her home address, settling back in her seat to blink bemusedly at the blinding sunlight and the glaring traffic noises. This was what she had missed for the first few nights in Michigan! It was incredible. She had dressed wisely, putting on a light dress underneath an autumn coat, and she had shrugged that off some time ago. The Los Angeles traffic was crazy, the air dense with smog, the freeways winding and intersecting. She felt as if she had been through a major war by the time she had let herself in her spacious apartment. It was empty.

  It was a shock as she looked around the light, tastefully decorated penthouse apartment. She had never even given a thought for its emptiness before. It had been a haven then, a place to run to when everything got hectic. She could shut the door and be alone. Now it really struck her just how alone she really was. Greg was two thousand miles away.

  It was early evening, but she was so tired out, she crawled into bed and fell right asleep.

  Sara shot up and grabbed for the ringing phone, knowing immediately who it must be. No one else was aware that she was back, unless he had blabbed it out to someone. “Hello, Barry,” she sighed.

  “Hey, are you all right?” he asked, instead of greeting her. “You sound as if you have a cold.”

  “It’s no cold. I was taking a nap. The flight wore me out,” she replied, glancing at her luminous clock. “All flights flatten me, you know that. Sorry I didn’t call to let you know I was here—it slipped my mind.” She felt lethargic, heavy, as if she had a fever, and her mouth tasted like lead. She shouldn’t have gone to sleep. She hated it when she slept too heavily and woke feeling this way.

  “Don’t worry your little mind about it, love,” she was told calmly. “Have you had supper yet? Elise is fixing a great meal, and we thought you could come over for it. It’d give us a good chance to talk about things.”

  “All right,” she agreed listlessly. Her head was aching.

  “You sure you’re all right?”

  “Don’t coddle me, Barry,” she told him irritably. “You know I hate to be fussed over.”

  “Well, okay. See you around seven-thirty? ’Bye.”

  Sara weaved her way to the bathroom and stared at her reflection with disgust. Her face was flushed and her eyes too bright. A reluctant hand to her forehead told her that she definitely had a fever, and she cursed fluently. She took out a thermometer and found it wasn’t as bad as she had first thought. She only registered a hundred-degree fever and, having done it many times in the past, she popped a couple of aspirin in her mouth, grimacing at the bitter chalky taste. She never stopped unless she was literally dropping in her tracks, and she had worked ten and twelve-hour days with temperatures such as this.

  Not really caring how she looked, Sara dressed casually for dinner; the only trouble she went to was to take the time to coil her hair into a knot. She did take the effort to hide the blue shadows under her eyes, but the make-up went on like cake and she rubbed it off again. Her skin looked papery white, and felt dry to the touch.

  Elise answered the doorbell and stood surveying her thoughtfully after inviting her in. She was a thin, small woman, with reddish hair, high cheekbones, and snapping brown eyes. She tended to wear heavy makeup. “You look terrible,” she told Sara brusquely.

  She didn’t bother to deny this. She sank on to the cream couch gingerly, feeling the throb of pain at her temples. “I feel worse than I look,” she said dryly, accepting a glass of wine. “If you can imagine that.”

  Elise excused herself so that she could go and check on supper, and Barry ran a critical, assessing look over Sara’s half-reclining body. “It’s a good thing that the network’s officials didn’t get a look at you like this. They’d have ran so fast in the other direction, we wouldn’t have seen them for dust!”

  “Thank you, my loyal agent and manager, for those kind and understanding words of wisdom,” she muttered, then had to laugh. She had just told him that afternoon that she couldn’t stand to be coddled, and he had just taken his cue from her. “Where’s that contract that you’re panting to have me sign?”

  Barry’s eyes lit up and he went to go and get the paper. They spent the rest of the time before dinner discussing the different terms of the contract, and Sara had to admit that it was very satisfactory. All her own specifications had been met, and the fee ended up being very enticing. Barry spoke of the negotiations with his own satisfaction evident in his voice. He had the right, she granted; he’d done a good job.

  Still, she found herself very reluctant to sign the paper. Barry had gone into the dining room to help Elise with the final preparations, and she sat alone on the couch, looking at the rectangle of white before her. Once she signed, she would have an obligation to fulfill. Did she really want that, after all?

  She could have sworn she had effectively put Greg out of her mind, but unbidden, it seemed, his dark visage swam before her. She didn’t really understand it. All of her being longed to be back on that quiet and lonely shore
two thousand miles away, walking hand in hand with a big silent man, a loner, with a stalking dog at her feet. All she wanted to have was the reassurance of his presence, for now and for the rest of her life.

  But she wanted this. She couldn’t give up this life. She wanted to go out on that stage and perform in front of millions of people, with dynamic music, pouring everything she had into it. She wanted to know that people could hear her songs, to know that she was able to communicate to someone in this way. She wanted to make music and, like any true artist, she wanted to be appreciated for that.

  Sara slowly picked up the ballpoint pen that Barry had laid down, and signed her name on the dotted line. She was committed.

  If either Barry or Elise noticed that she was unusually quiet during supper, they didn’t say anything. She saw Elise’s quick sharp eyes on the untouched food on her plate, and noticed that the other woman was being especially kind to her. Probably Elise just thought it was because she was feeling poorly. Sara wished she could believe that herself. Barry drove her home, and she appreciated his concern. She knew he thought she wasn’t acting normally, but what was normal, after all? Her feelings and affections had undergone such a dramatic change in the past several days that she wasn’t sure if she was in touch with herself at all, or if a total stranger had taken control of her body.

  She fingered her baby grand piano in the darkness, back at her apartment. She loved Greg; there was no doubt about that. But the essence of her personality was in her music; she prayed he would understand that. She fervently hoped that things could be worked out, and yet she felt such a dread, a premonition. Looking out over the bright garish lights of downtown Los Angeles, she saw balmy sunshine on a deserted beach.

  She felt like she was being torn in two.

  Shivers racked her body, and she crept into bed like a lost child alone in a tossing sea.

  She overslept in the morning, and when she looked at her bedside clock, shock rippled through her. Her plane flight was in an hour and a half. Sara made to jump out of bed, and she fell back sweating and weak on soaked sheets. The room danced crazily around in front of her blurred eyes, and this seemed so funny to her that she giggled a little before catching herself up sharply. This wasn’t a time for hysterical humour.

  With some effort, she managed to get to the bathroom and use the facilities, but it left her weak and shaking, feeling as if she had just run a marathon race. She groped for the thermometer very carefully, but ended up knocking several things on to the floor anyway. She was beginning to get alarmed; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so sick.

  Bad news confronted her at the sight of the mercury reading, and she groaned softly. Her fever was sky-high, accounting for the weakness and distortion of space. Her fingers on her cheek felt papery dry, and her cheeks were burning up.

  Sara thought of Greg, and his reaction when he had thought she was leaving and not coming back. Her thought processes weren’t working very well at the moment, and the only thing she could think of was getting back to him, and being held in his strong and gentle arms.

  He was safety. He was home. She didn’t think of anything else but this. She didn’t care about the future and she couldn’t think of the conflicts that had troubled her last night. They had faded away with the night’s darkness, and her brow furrowed with the effort to recall her reasons for her own anxieties.

  It didn’t matter; there was no time. She took four aspirins and swallowed them without a second thought. That should help her get through the next couple of hours; it had seemed to bring down her fever last night. Then she dressed in faded jeans and a plain blouse, pulling her glossy hair back into a ruthlessly tight ponytail. Her face no longer swam in the mirror, and she hoped this was a good sign. She did no more than glance at herself, though, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. The area around her eyes felt tight and drawn, and there was a slight yellowish tinge to her usually healthy-looking skin. The blue shadows underneath her eyes now looked like bruises, and her lips were cracked and dry.

  She stuffed a few things carelessly into her overnight bag and swept up her handbag. A quick call to the cab agency she used frequently ensured her a ride to the airport, and after a very short wait, she was climbing into the back of a battered car. The cabby was cheerful and talkative, and Sara fought the urge to scream at him to shut up, all the way. The trip was around half an hour long.

  Her shirt was sticking to her back when she finally got out of the cab. The heat was intense, unseasonally so, and it hit her already overheated body in overwhelming waves. The pulse at her wrists and throat pounded painfully. With great concentration, she weaved her way through the bustling crowds. It seemed to take forever, but she was finally boarded and sinking into her spacious first class seat.

  She dozed fitfully for the whole flight, refusing all food and sipping listlessly at the proffered drinks. As she stared with lacklustre eyes out of her window at the sunny, cheerful landscape, it suddenly occurred to her that she hadn’t really eaten for a good twenty-four hours. Her last meal had been with Greg, yesterday, at lunch, and she had been so tied up in emotional knots that she hadn’t been able to eat very much. She hadn’t eaten anything last night. It seemed odd to her that she wasn’t even hungry after such a time, then the thought just slid away. She was wrapped in cotton wool, and the rest of the world didn’t matter any more.

  Someone shook her gently by the shoulder and she opened huge dull eyes to stare at the kind concerned face of the young stewardess who had attended her on the flight. “We’re about to land, miss,” she was told firmly. “You’ve got to fasten your safety belt.”

  Her fingers fumbled to do so, and the young woman suddenly sat down in the empty seat beside her. “You don’t look very well,” she said suddenly, touching Sara’s forehead with a tentative finger. “You’re burning up! Are you going to be all right?”

  Sara smiled briefly, wanly. “I will be, sooner or later. I had to get home, and couldn’t afford to miss the flight, but I’ve got someone meeting me at the airport.”

  The other woman hesitated. “Well, it’s good that you’re going to be met, but I think I’ll stay close by, just in case. Frankly, you don’t even look like you could stand up! I think I’ll just keep you company until your friend arrives.”

  “Please don’t feel you have to,” Sara attempted to demur, but much to her secret relief, the young attendant insisted.

  The descent of the plane had her head spinning around and around, and it never really stopped spinning, even after all the motion had ceased and she was standing along with the other passengers in preparation for disembarkment. The nice young stewardess had to take care of several things, but when Sara carefully walked to the exit of the plane, she found the girl right along beside her. She really was very nice, Sara concluded fuzzily. She was obviously concerned and caring, and she made it known in the most tactful way. Sara could feel her watching and assessing her, and she knew that the other girl was wondering if she would have the strength to disembark, but she never so much as touched her arm. The stewardess stayed close by, though, and kept up an undemanding chatter.

  The grey tiles on the floor kept moving in the oddest way, but with the knowledge that it was all her imagination and that the floor wasn’t really moving at all, Sara was able to present the appearance of normality as she walked with the stewardess through the airport. It was much smaller than the international one in Los Angeles, and less crowded, but Sara was much weaker and just about at the end of her strength.

  She had never really taken to travelling, and was never at her best on trips, and this second flight in as many days, on top of her high fever, had sapped all her energy. She felt her heart pound and her ears ring and she thought with a lurch, I’m going to faint, for the first time in my life. The walls receded in the most peculiar way, and she concentrated fiercely on staying conscious. It worked for a few moments. She was unaware of having stopped moving and that she was standing right in the middle of a busy wid
e hallway full of moving people. All she could think of was how ridiculously inappropriate it would be if she were to make like wet spaghetti all over the floor in front of so many people.

  A voice called her name, “Sara! Sara, what is it?” and she saw Greg coming to her, a frown on his face. She blinked huge tired eyes, and they filled with tears as she looked at him. His face blurred away. He was angry, but really she couldn’t help being ill. She was trying her very best not to be.

  The voices of the stewardess and Greg passed her by, and she knew they were talking to her, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying, because that rushing sound was roaring in her ears again and the walls were sliding back—really, that was very bizarre! She couldn’t remember any other building that did that. She felt so very awful that she took in a funny little breath and tried to tell Greg, “I feel quite ill,” but all she heard was a far-off whimper as the darkness came in on a high tide. It all just slipped away.

  All she wanted was to be held and to be loved, and she hurt so badly, all over her body. It made large tears slip from her closed eyelids, she felt so lonely and sick. Someone murmured, and she was picked up gently and carried into a building. At that, some of her senses seemed to become abnormally sharp, and she recognised every stick of furniture that they passed as Greg carried her into his house. It was all very strange. She stared foggily about, realised what must have happened at the airport, and she suddenly felt very frustrated and angry at the whole world. She hated being ill, like every healthy individual does, and she was a terrible patient.

  “Put me down, dammit, I can walk,” she muttered weakly, irately, and felt Greg’s chest heave as he laughed under his breath.