Punchline

by Jacqueline Diamond

  “I have work to do.” The statement came out low and tense.

  “This is more important.”

  “Are you kidnapping me?”

  “Of course not.” Arguing was useless while she remained in this mood, Darryl decided, and reluctantly dropped her at her office.

  BELLE HARDLY NOTICED the happy buzz of conversation as the rest of the staff celebrated their cosponsorship of the megamall. Having to share it with About Town was only a minor liability, in everyone’s opinion except hers.

  How could she concentrate on her work, knowing Darryl was plotting to take the baby away? Okay, she conceded silently, maybe he wasn’t actually plotting, but there was no way to be sure.

  She’d trusted him when he’d moved into her condo, and all along he’d been using her. The thought of how intimate they’d become hurt deeply. The scent of him lingered on her clothing, and several times she thought she heard his voice calling her before she remembered that she was at work.

  What if he really did sue for custody? With that article about deprived fathers stirring up public sympathy, he might even win.

  She needed to get public opinion on her side. Was it possible Channel 17 might take an interest in reviving the scandal about the drugged punch?

  An unintended pregnancy, a rivalry that was exploding

  into a custody battle Belle hated to think about the

  invasion of her privacy. But hadn’t Darryl gone public by writing his article?

  An ache swelled inside at the memory of how he’d looked on New Year’s Day when they’d awakened together. And how much fun they’d had browsing through malls, and how they’d discovered this past week that they both enjoyed archeology programs on cable TV. She had actually begun to believe that the two of them might belong together.

  But love had to be based on trust. How could he have made love to her, and pretended to care about her, when all the while he was simply researching an article at her expense?

  Biting back tears, Belle picked up the phone.

  AS HE DROVE HOME that night, Darryl braced himself to make further apologies. Surely her anger would have grown cold by now.

  His confidence faded, however, as he noticed his suitcase sitting on Belle’s porch. Even before he tried to fit his key into the lock, an instinct told him it wouldn’t fit.

  It didn’t.

  Worst of all was the note. It said: “D. Watch the Channel 17 News at ten o’clock.”

  He didn’t want to face this alone, so as soon as he got home, he invited Greg over to watch with him. They fixed themselves a snack and sat down to watch the news. “I hope they put the sports on first,”Greg said.

  “I hope we have a massive power failure,” said Darryl.

  They got neither. Right after the headline stories, the anchorman and anchorwoman reminded viewers about last September’s tale of spiked punch and the speculation concerning the two rival editors.

  “Kate Munro has an update for us,” said the anchorwoman. “Kate?”

  The face of the reporter dominated the screen. “I’m here at the offices of Just Us magazine with Belle Martens. She has quite an announcement for us. Belle?”

  The camera pulled back to show a woebegone woman in an old-fashioned sailor dress, her defiant red hair tucked beneath a scarf.

  “She looks seduced and abandoned,” said Greg.

  That, Darryl gathered, was the idea.

  Belle faced the camera. “I’m pregnant. The father is Darryl Horak and it happened after we both drank spiked punch at a party. It was an accident. It wasn’t Darryl’s fault or mine.”

  “What made you decide to go public?” Kate asked.

  “Darryl Horak is trying to exploit my baby,” she said. “First he moved in with me under the pretext of researching an article sympathetic to mothers. Instead, he wrote a story attacking motherhood and invading my privacy. Now he’s threatening to sue for custody! All he really cares about are fame and money.”

  “That’s me—rich and famous,” Darryl grumbled. What a mess! His hope of reaching a discreet understanding was diminishing with every word she spoke on the air.

  And he missed Belle. Even though he knew she had assumed an air of pathos for public-relations purposes, he ached to comfort and reassure her.

  “We’ re glad you let us tell your side of the story,” Kate said. “Of course, you understand, we have to give Mr. Horak equal time if he requests it.”

  Dismay flashed across Belle’s face. Apparently she hadn’t given much thought to the public battle she might be unleashing.

  As the camera cut away, Darryl realized he didn’t have much choice. He couldn’t allow Belle to cut him off from the baby, and he didn’t like being portrayed as a heartless predator.

  He didn’t want to attack her, either. He just wanted to make the point that kids needed fathers, too. “I suppose I’ll have to go on the air myself.”

  Greg nodded. “Never let a woman get the better of you. You know, I’m really sorry that I ran around on Janie. She’s a special lady. But I can’t let her know that or she’d wipe the floor with me.”

  “You ought to apologize,” Darryl said.

  “Oh?” asked his friend. “Is that what you’re going to do?”

  “More or less,” Darryl answered.

  “WE NEED AN ANGLE,” Belle told her staff as they sat around the Just Us boardroom examining the almost- finished March edition of the magazine. “This is great, and I like our April theme, but May needs punching up.”

  March’s pages had been laser-printed and pasted onto flat boards for final inspection. The key people were there—Tom from traffic, the advertising director, Janie, Anita, Belle and Sandra—all searching for errors.

  They were also taking advantage of the meeting to look ahead. This month’s theme, “Forget Thin—Think Healthy!” was a hit with the staff. Work was under way on April’s issue, based on an idea from Janie: “The Future Starts Here! How to Get a Better Job and a Better Love Life!”

  But nobody was enthusiastic about May’s proposed theme of “Be Ready for the Greatest Summer Ever!” They needed something snappier, preferably a theme that made women feel good about themselves.

  Belle felt as if she’d struck a blow for women when she’d appeared on Channel 17 the previous week. The only problem was that, after the station’s open invitation to Darryl, she kept feeling as if she were waiting for him to respond.

  Of course he would try to get back at her, wouldn’t he? She couldn’t help replaying their conversation in the car, when he’d actually apologized. And he’d mentioned something about a future together.

  Surely she had misunderstood. Darryl couldn’t really care about her. He couldn’t be feeling the same hollowness every day when he ate breakfast alone, and every evening when he came home to an empty apartment.

  “Belle?” asked Janie. “What’s wrong? You’ve hardly said a word.”

  “I’m worried about Darryl,” she admitted.

  “Horak?” asked Sandra, as if there were any other Darryls in Belle’s life. “I hear he’s going to be on the news again tonight.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. “He is?”

  “Going to strike another blow for poor helpless fathers, no doubt,” said Anita. “I suppose he has some good points, but—”

  “It’s so unfair!” Belle burst out. “I don’t even have a coach for childbirth classes, while he’s going to tell the world what a great dad he is!”

  “Childbirth classes?” asked the publisher. “What exactly do they teach you?”

  “How to breathe,” Janie explained.

  “She already knows how to breathe!” Sandra said. “There, you see, Belle? You don’t need a coach. Rewrite that headline, would you, dear? It’s confusing. Then I think we can let this one go.’’

  “Sure.” It was a relief to get back to work.

  When Belle returned home at six o’clock, the night air was chilly. Walking from her car to the condo, she found herself listenin
g for familiar masculine footsteps that never came.

  Irrationally, she missed Darryl. She wanted him to help cook dinner, to rub her back, to put a CD on the player and then laugh when it turned out to be the wrong one.

  As she opened the door, she missed the way his face always lit up when she entered a room. She would never see that look again. The realization left a gray, dismal feeling.

  Inside, a faint fragrance lingered. It was a mixture of after-shave lotion, wine and essence de Darryl. Maybe an exterminator could get rid of it, she told herself grimly.

  As she ate a frozen dinner, she could feel the baby start wiggling. A little foot or an elbow prodded her ribs, then executed a one-two punch that stopped just short of being painful.

  That was a small person in there, someone whose genes carried characteristics of Belle’s parents and grandparents. It was a link in a chain that had begun in the mists of time, connecting her to ancestors she had never thought about before.

  The baby was linked to Darryl’s ancestors, too. He would have enjoyed running his hand across her abdomen and feeling the restless movements.

  Maybe she was wrong to try to close him out. If only he hadn’t threatened to sue for custody!

  A tiny hope was born inside her, that on the news tonight he would tell the world he had no intention of trying to take away this baby. Then maybe they could be friends again.

  She really could use his help. After she’d told her parents about the pregnancy a few days ago, Belle had hoped they would offer to stay with her in May when the baby was born.

  Instead, her mother had explained that her sister, Bari was expecting a baby in July. After two years of infertility treatments, she’d finally become pregnant again but was having problems.

  Bari had to stay in bed until her due date. She needed her parents there to watch four-year-old Mikki, and of course they’d agreed.

  Belle wanted everything to turn out well for her sister. She had called Bari immediately afterward to offer best wishes. But she felt awfully far away from her family right now.

  The scary part was that when she thought of the word family, Darryl came to mind. Well, she would just have to watch and listen to what he had to say.

  She clicked on the TV and collapsed onto the couch. After a few minutes, the Channel 17 news team announced they had Darryl Horak’s response to Belle’s announcement about her pregnancy.

  Her hands twisted in her lap. Say the right thing. I don’t know what that might be, but you‘re the one who did me wrong, so it’s up to you to find it.

  On camera, Kate Munro and Darryl stood in his living room. Or what used to be his living room. Now wood chips littered newspapers spread on the floor, while a power saw lay on the couch.

  “What are you building?” asked the reporter, standing at a safe distance.

  Belle’s heart leapt. He was making her a bookcase—a peace offering. But her hopes were dashed with his next words.

  “A crib!” Darryl indicated a skimpy framework of boards. “I’m just getting started, as you can see. We’ll be running a series of articles in About Town for fathers on how to build things, how to be your kids’ soccer coach, how to take them camping—you know, the stuff dads do best.”

  As he spoke, he ran one hand along the crib’s railing. The structure shuddered. With a stiff smile at the camera, Darryl gripped the railing to steady it.

  “I’m not putting my baby in that thing!” Belle announced to the screen. She couldn’t believe the man was still trying to prove that fathers made superior parents, especially not with this pitiful attempt at carpentry.

  “We’ll have experts writing the articles, of course,” Darryl added. “This is kind of an experiment here.”

  “So you are planning to sue for custody?” pressed the reporter.

  One leg of the crib wobbled. Darryl glared at it.

  “Mr. Horak?” said the reporter.

  “Belle needs to understand that kids need fathers, too,” he said as the crib shifted off-center.

  Kate regarded his handiwork dubiously. “Are you sure that thing is made right?”

  “Actually, the directions were missing from the kit but I thought I could figure it out.’’ Darryl gave the leg a light kick to straighten it.

  The response was prompt and startling. A screw flew out, and then the entire crib imploded, boards shifting and falling until the structure lay shattered on the floor. Still holding the railing in midair, Darryl stared at it in shock.

  The scene returned to the newsroom, where the two anchors were clutching their sides trying to stop laughing. Belle clicked off the set.

  It annoyed her that Darryl had made a point of how fathers were better than mothers at carpentry and sports and camping. After all, Just Us was running an article in the May issue on women, sports and the outdoors.

  That was when inspiration hit. It didn’t come out of the blue; it was more a matter of pieces fitting into a jigsaw puzzle.

  The magazine would sponsor a weekend campout for women only! With a little expert guidance, they were going to hike, fish, pitch tents and learn survival skills. It was a perfect opportunity to refute Darryl’s point and promote Just Us at the same time.

  Best of all, it would give Belle something to keep her mind off the fact that she wished he were here so they could laugh about that stupid crib together.

  SOON IT WOULD BE Valentine’s Day. Sitting at his desk staring blankly at his computer, Darryl wondered whether there was any point in sending Belle flowers.

  She would only throw them in the trash. The way things were going in his life, he might as well throw himself in the trash.

  He missed her. All he’d wanted to do on TV last week was to make Belle see that the baby needed him, and instead he’d made a fool of himself.

  Darryl would never get the smell of sawdust out of his carpet. And he would never get the memory of that collapsing crib out of his mind.

  Neither, he felt sure, would Belle.

  This ends here, he decided. No more feuding. No more proving himself. He would let time work its magic, and maybe by the time the baby was born in another four months she would forgive him.

  Outside his window, the sky had gone dark, although it wasn’t quite five o’clock. On nights like this, a man ought to be heading home to a hot meal and some stimulating conversation, preferably with a peppery redhead.

  A light tap on the door preceded Elva’s entrance. “Sorry to disturb your blue funk,” she said. “I came to tell you I figured out who betrayed our theme to Just Us.”

  Darryl had almost forgotten. “Oh, yeah. Well, who’s the quisling?”

  “I did a little checking on who might have seen our posters. Then you mentioned that you’d noticed a certain person at Sandra Duval’s New Year’s party. When I confronted her, she confessed.” Elva’s voice floated back as she headed for the hall. “I’ve got the little rat right here.”

  For one heart-thumping, irrational moment Darryl thought it might be Belle. Then he saw Mindy gritting her teeth as Elva propelled her forward.

  “You?” he demanded, trying to work up a head of steam for Elva’s benefit. Personally, he no longer cared, especially since he and Sandra were making great progress on their joint project.

  “I’m sorry,” Mindy said. “Please, Mr. Horak, don’t ruin my career.”

  “Line her up against the wall!” said Elva. “I’ll throw the first dart!”

  The model turned a yellowish green shade. Darryl felt a wave of sympathy. After all, his magazine hadn’t suffered any real harm. “It’s okay,” he said.

  “No, it’s not okay.” Elva fixed him with a piercing stare.

  He didn’t want to terrify Mindy, but neither could he afford to offend his art editor. Maybe he could pacify Elva and get some information at the same time. “Have you been at the Just Us offices recently?” he asked.

  Mindy nodded hesitantly. “Just to take a little Valentine’s present to Mrs. Duval. Kind of a thank-you for having me
at her party.”

  “How about giving us a scoop on whatever they’re up to these days?” Darryl didn’t expect her to know anything of value, but he was hungry for any details about Belle. “You help us out, and we’ll call it even.”

  The model licked her lips nervously. “Um, well—”

  “This had better be good,” growled Elva.

  “There’s just this—this campout thing,” Mindy said.

  “Campout thing?” he prodded.

  “Belle said you claimed that men are better at taking kids camping,” the model ventured. “So Just Us is going to sponsor a Strong Woman Campout in May. To coincide with a special issue on women and sports.”

  “Belle’s going to take a bunch of women camping to prove me wrong?”

  “I guess so,” Mindy said.

  “She can’t,” Darryl said. “The baby is due in May.”

  “The campout’s in early May and she’s not due until late May,” explained the model. “That’s what she said. She claims even a woman who’s eight and a half months’ pregnant can handle a campout.”

  “That’s insane,” said Elva.

  Darryl didn’t doubt that, under ordinary circumstances, Belle could pitch tents and light camp fires. But a few weeks before the baby was due?

  “Can I leave now?” asked Mindy.

  “We’d have learned about the campout pretty soon, anyway,” countered Elva.

  “She’s off the hook.” Darryl waved them both away.

  The model scurried out the door as fast as her high heels would take her.

  “Oh, all right,” Elva said as she, too, departed. “I suppose the little traitor has learned her lesson.”

  Darryl scarcely heard her. His brain was crowded with images of terrible things happening to Belle—a mountain lion attack, a brushfire, a UFO kidnapping.

  But maybe he was being overprotective. Or domineering, as she would no doubt claim.

  She was a grown woman and had the right to make up her own mind. Besides, he had resolved to make peace, which meant staying out of Belle’s way.

  Grimly, Darryl pushed aside any thought of interfering and went back to his work.