The Wall: A Vintage Contemporary Romance

by Thea Harrison

  “Sara, reconsider, will you—” he began hoarsely, but she whirled on him in such a fury that he stepped back from the intensity of the blast.

  “My God!” she raged. “Don’t you dare ask me again, Greg Pierson! You still don’t have any idea of what you’ve done to me, do you? You really don’t know! Do you want me to tell you just how badly you’ve hurt me? You’ve become something so isolated, so alien and inhuman, so incredibly unkind—”

  “That’s enough!” he barked out savagely, but she was too enraged to heed him.

  “Not by a long shot, it isn’t!” she shot back swiftly. “Look at me, for God’s sake, just look at me! Do you know what I am? I’m a singer! I’m a performer! I live to make music for other people, dammit! You want me to tear that out of myself, to give it up completely, never to look back? Greg, it’s not a job for me, it’s my whole life! You’re asking me to cripple myself to accommodate your inhibitions, and I—just—can’t! Oh, I don’t need to tell you that I was sorely tempted. I want you so badly, it—it tears at my insides. I wanted to reach out and take what you’re offering me, but it would all be a lie. How long would we last together, do you think? How long of the good before I would get to be resentful and restless? How long before the fighting would start? How long before my love would turn to hate?” She swallowed painfully, grasping her trembling hands in front of her. “I think I hate you already, for even asking it of me!”

  Greg had turned his back to her while she was speaking, and it was symbolic of his entire life. She stared at the broad expanse with a look that was indeed almost hatred; she could see the wall in front of her, coming between them, cutting her in half and killing whatever they had once had. He was rigid, and he looked uncompromising. She felt the utter hopelessness of what she was trying to impart to him, and the bitterness of defeat. He would never come out from behind his wall. It had fused itself irrevocably to his personality.

  “I almost said yes to you,” she said quietly, her voice hoarse from tiredness and pain, and his back grew even more rigid. “But then it occurred to me, Greg, that you couldn’t really love me after all and still ask that of me, and it was all so much more of a lie than I’d ever realised,” her voice shook horribly, and she saw his shoulders jerk. “Some day, some day you’re going to wake up and realise what you’re doing to yourself, and do you know what’s going to happen? That wall will have grown so much by then, and be so monstrously huge, that you’ll never be able to get out again, no matter how you try. You’re going to die of starvation, just waste away from lack of human companionship and understanding, and no one will ever know.” She hesitated and waited for some kind of response, but he was as if he were dead, so still did he stand, and she turned away to the open doorway that led out to the hall. “Goodbye, Greg.”

  She didn’t see his face, for he was turned away from her, and so she was unaware of the silent tears that streamed down his granite-hard face, of the lips that were drawn back tight over teeth clenched with pain. She hadn’t seen his fists, drawn down by his sides, and didn’t know that his knuckles were white and the fingers bloodless from the tension of his tight grip. She was in the hall after saying goodbye, and the words he mouthed were a bare thread of sound anyway, so she wasn’t to know that he whispered hopelessly, “Don’t go. Sara, don’t go. Sara!” But he didn’t call after her, and she trudged upstairs with a heavy heart.

  Her clothes went into her suitcase with an agonising quickness. She kept hoping against hope that she would hear a sound at her open door and turn to see Greg there, accepting her for what she was, loving and supportive of her needs. The house was so unbearably silent. She knew that Greg would not come up those stairs. She rather suspected that he was already too far gone behind that barrier of his. It all was so hopeless.

  She would have given her life for him. If he had been in trouble, or in danger, she would have gladly given her life. She simply could not forsake herself, though, give up her whole nature for him, or anyone else. Relationships, she reflected sadly, are a lot like alcoholism. You get addicted to a person, and no relationship is going to be pure pleasure or pure pain, and that’s why it’s so hard to leave. It’s when the pain outweighs the pleasure that you have to go, and the pain of leaving is the hardest of all.

  Divorce has got to be the ugliest word in the English language.

  She had all her things together, and she went downstairs with her suitcases in hand. It felt like a betrayal, which was hard to justify. If she stayed, she betrayed herself, and if she went she betrayed her love.

  The house was a tomb. Greg had apparently gone out, for which she was thankful; she didn’t know what she would do if she had to face him again. A sudden feeling of panic came over her, and she stowed her luggage away swiftly in the trunk of her car. She felt the need to get out before she destroyed herself with her own need. She backed the car out of the garage, shut it, and was soon driving back to her own cabin. Her footsteps echoed eerily when she entered the front door, and she knew that for her own sanity’s sake she couldn’t stay long. A phone call to the airport secured her a flight in the afternoon, and she made other calls concerning her car being shipped back, careless of the cost and anxious only to get out of Michigan and as far away from Greg as she could.

  It was perhaps revealing of her state of mind to know that she had called in her plane reservation as Sara Bertelli. That alone was a statement and an affirmation of her own self.

  With a few hours on her hands, she went and stood in the bathroom to look at herself in the mirror. It had been a very painful vacation. Her huge and tired eyes stared at herself thoughtfully. She had come away from her work to find out who she really was, and had fallen in love. She had found herself, but at such an emotional cost. She knew her core, and it was the loneliest knowledge in the world, for she had no one to share herself with. It could have been wonderful with Greg. It could have been a celebration of her self and an adoration of his self, and it had all gone awry.

  But she did know herself, and she was no longer ashamed. Going quickly out to the car, she hauled out her suitcase and handbag and re-entered the cabin to closet herself in the bathroom.

  Some time later, a slim, vibrantly beautiful woman with hauntingly sad eyes came out. She was very chic and well dressed, and her hair was coiled intricately at the nape of her graceful neck. Her make-up was skillful and eye-catching, and her bearing distinctive.

  Just as she was preparing to leave, the phone began to ring, and she stopped with a suddenness that nearly cost her balance. She stared at the phone as if it were an apparition from the underworld, and her lips formed Greg’s name. She headed for it and nearly picked it up, but then she thought that if he really had something to say to her, he would be over in person.

  She didn’t really want to talk to anyone else.

  The front door was locked quietly, closed against the interminable ringing of the phone inside. Sara let herself into her car and drove away without a backward glance.

  She parked the car at the train station where it was to be loaded, and filled in all of the necessary forms while waiting for the taxi she had called. It soon arrived, and she climbed into the back while the driver loaded her things. He had stared at her in that familiar, don’t-I-know-who-you-are look, and she had smiled at him wryly, knowing instantly what kind of car ride she was to have on the way to the airport.

  Sure enough, the man asked her all sorts of eager questions, and she handled them all with a charm and a patience that he would remember for the rest of his life. She even signed an autograph addressed to his teenaged daughter, for which he couldn’t thank her enough. He was completely captivated by her, but at the same time he had enough perception to wonder at the almost unbearable sadness in her lovely huge eyes and the lines of tiredness that marred what otherwise he would have considered a perfectly featured face.

  Sara stared out of the car window and silently wondered, when will the world stop seeming so grey and dreary? An utterly devastating dep
ression had settled over her mind, a combination of lack of sleep and the knowledge that every mile the taxi travelled, every mile the plane flew, was a mile farther away from Greg.

  She would never see him again. The thought made her nearly cry, right in front of the cab driver. She would never look into the eyes of the man who meant more to her than anybody else. She would never know what it felt like to sleep in his arms again, to wake to his sweet smile, to hear his rich warm laughter.

  She missed the beach already, and she missed Beowulf. Would the dog miss her? she wondered. The next natural thought faltered. Would Greg?

  Maybe he was relieved to have her gone at last.

  She eyed the parking lot of the airport with loathing. The trip would be hard, harder than the one coming back to Greg, when she had been so ill. The taxi driver was extremely accommodating, opening her door for her, like royalty, and carrying her luggage into the building. He was a really nice man, she thought, as he deposited her bags next to a luggage carrier with a flourish that could have been European. She gave him a handsome tip for his kindness, and he shook her hand vigorously in farewell. It was all very exhausting.

  She had enough time for a meal at the airport’s restaurant before the flight left, so she headed in that direction after taking care of her luggage. Everywhere she went, heads turned and whispers passed from mouth to ear excitedly. Was it really she? Dare we ask for an autograph? Sara was used to the attention and never even so much as turned a hair at the amount of notice she was attracting. There was an aura of reserve about her that kept people from coming up and asking for her autograph. Aside from the constant, wearing attention she received from a young giggly waitress, she was left strictly alone.

  She toyed with her salad, eating only enough to keep herself from collapsing from hunger, and she sipped listlessly at her coffee. The brew was pretty terrible, and most of it was left to cool in the cup.

  She wasted away the rest of the time she had left, and finally had to leave her comfortable seat in the restaurant to board her flight. For some reason the airport was crowded that day, and she had to push her way through people to step on to the escalator that would carry her to the second storey, where she would be boarding. Her heart ached.

  Greg, she thought, and she could hear his voice calling her from outside her cabin, that day when he had brought all the firewood over to her place. A pity she hadn’t been able to stay and use it up. The gesture had been nice. Her eyes flooded with moisture. His voice had sounded deep and hoarse from anxiety. “…Sara! Sara, listen to me! Can you hear me? Sara!”

  She gradually became aware of someone really and truly calling her name, and suddenly the world whirled and her stomach lurched, and she had to grab for the side belt for support as she turned to look out over the crowd that she was rapidly rising above. She would have sworn she had heard Greg’s deep voice bellowing out over the babble of the crowd.

  Her eyes swept out over the people, and she shouted, “Greg! Greg, is that you?” and then her eyes found him. He was fighting to get through a thick patch of people, his dark face grim, and his eyes desperate. He found her as she called out, and for a split second they stared at each other as she was pulled farther up and away. She yearned with all of her being to push past all the people lower down on the escalator and throw herself at him, but she just couldn’t. The first move had to come from him. He had to tell her.

  Even at that distance, Greg must have been able to read her need and uncertainties, for his head lifted and he shouted out, “Sara—Sara Bertelli, please don’t go!” She stared, absolutely stunned to the core, and heads lifted at the famous name, faces turning towards her and murmuring. “Sara,” it was a roar of, incredibly, exasperation, “for God’s sake, I love you!”

  He couldn’t really get more public than that.

  She was at the top of the escalator without realising it and tripping over the stationary boarder, as she stared at Greg from the top of the stairs. She was immobile, frozen, while she watched him struggle to get to the bottom of the escalator. Someone came up to her and touched her arm, saying, “Gee, Miss Bertelli, I’d really love to have your auto—” But the person was talking to empty air, for she suddenly found the power of movement in her legs and was racing to the down escalator, murmuring apologies as she wriggled through people. Then she was stumbling down the moving stairs and pushing by two outraged old ladies, squeezing past a portly gentleman, incredulous joy beating at her temples, pounding in her veins. He saw her approach, and changed direction to meet her at the bottom of the stairs.

  Then everything seemed to be going in slow motion, and everything was incredibly clear. Sara was able to remember each movement and jostle and expression on Greg’s face for the rest of her life.

  She reached the bottom of the escalator after an eternity. He came forward between two people, thrusting his broad shoulder aggressively through the slight space between them and ignoring their protests. His dark hair looked ruffled as if he had ran his fingers through it repeatedly, and it glinted like newly minted copper in the harsh fluorescent light. His face was at once both haggard and harsh, with lines running from his nose to the sides of his mouth and in between his heavy brows, and yet at the same time his face was soft and more open than she remembered it. His eyes blazed with a fierce, radiant glow, expressive and vulnerable. Then his two hands were reaching for her eagerly, as eagerly as she was reaching for him, and they fell together urgently.

  Her face was pressed painfully into his jacket as he strained her to him, nearly breaking her ribs. She didn’t mind; she wouldn’t have cared if the roof came crashing down around them; she would have smiled sweetly if someone had come up and bashed her on the head. Nothing mattered outside the press of his cheek on her hair and the pressure of his arms around her. She knew that she must be holding him as tightly and as painfully as he was holding her, but all she saw when she lifted her head to look into his eyes was a deep and steady strong glow of happiness.

  The murmurs around them and the fingers pointing didn’t matter in the least. Sara couldn’t care less, and she was immensely touched and amused to see Greg reacting with a supreme indifference as he tilted up her chin with an exquisite tenderness to bring his mouth down on hers in a gentle, giving, healing kiss that lasted just exactly for ever. She never heard the scattered applause about them; she was too wrapped up in the man holding her, and her own delirious happiness. She could have sworn that she had literally seen the smoking ruins that he had stepped over in order to reach her in liberation.

  The wall had crumbled to rubble at last.

  Excitement was tense within her, almost making her sick to her stomach, heightening her senses. Her eyes, made up skillfully and dramatically, were huge and brilliant, glittering and sparkling. They were the focus of her face. When one looked at her compelling features, the eyes always drew the gaze. Her black hair was styled into a profusion of glossy curls cascading all about her face and shoulders, and her skin-tight outfit was very, very black. It fitted like a body suit, cut low on the shoulders and encasing the legs, and was worn with a glittering silver overdress that was very transparent. Her silver high heels were dashing, sleek, emphasising her height. She waited in the wings, patiently submitting to the fussings of the make-up artist, the hairdresser, and the costume designer, but she paid no attention to any of these. She was alone, isolated, preserving the build-up of power and energy that would spill out of her in just a few moments.

  People ran back and forth behind the stage curtain. Directions were called out quietly, positions were being taken. The special was being filmed live, and the months of work and creative output and musical effort were coming to their culmination tonight. Sara listened to the audience out in front with her breathing shallow and her luminous eyes slightly dilated. It was almost exactly like a live concert, the difference being that millions of people would be seeing her perform instead of mere thousands. She was as tense as a live wire.

  The celebrity guests wer
e close by, being prepared just as she was, but she paid them no mind either. All of her being was focussed on herself, her hypnotic state of preparation. Nothing could go wrong, she knew that instinctively, with that inexplicable, intuitive realisation that sometimes comes to an artist.

  It was almost time. Her heart thudded, roared, pounded. Her hands shook and her lips compressed. She was sick, she was fine, she was like a thoroughbred horse quivering and intent on the starting gate opening up to the most gruelling and important and vital race of her life. A few more seconds only, just a few more, then she would be going out on that stage, moving in front of so many people, in front of so many…her head turned slowly, her eyes sought out the darkness backstage, and she caught sight of the tall silent man who stood in a small oasis of stillness in the frantic movements around him. His eyes were on her and her only, fixated, concentrated. They just looked at each other for a long moment when their gazes locked. Her own were fierce, slightly mocking, strangely pleading and compelling under delicate black winged brows. Greg’s were dark, intent, searching and approving. He nodded to her slightly, once, and it was all that she had needed. It dispelled the doubts and fears of the past few months in one careless sweep. He understood, she realised finally, he really understood.

  Then the curtain was raising and she was grabbing the microphone and stepping strongly out on to the stage, her movements lithe, eager. The music pounded out a heady beat, quick, tense, lilting. The crowd caught sight of her moving, glittering, arresting figure and roared, clapped, screamed. The energy that she had tremblingly held in for the past few days burst forth in the dynamic and riveting melody of her song. She had to hold the microphone down a bit, a little bit away from her lips and slender throat, for the musical sound coming from her was overwhelming and powerful, elemental and earth-shattering. She could have dropped the microphone altogether and sung loud enough to fill the entire auditorium, the power pulsed so in her veins. Her body moved gracefully to the sounds, compellingly; people could not tear their gaze away. The crowd drank her energy up, just soaked it in like a sponge, and that was okay because she had more to give inside of her.