by Bruce Jones
“First you tried to push back, but when I wouldn’t budge, you dragged me inside and locked the door behind us. I turned around and saw you. Gee, I thought, he has skinny legs in his underpants.”
Richard shook his head. “I cannot believe how humiliating this is thirty years later…”
“Then I panicked. ‘What’s wrong with his under shorts? Oh God, he’s got some kind of abnormal growth or something! That’s why he hasn’t called!’”
“But you finally caught on. And started laughing at me.”
“Not at you! Hey, I covered my mouth, at least.”
“Laughing and pointing. ‘You’ve been jerking off!’ I’ll remember those words ‘till the day I die.”
“Oh, pooh. You were proud of it.”
Richard turned away, unable to stop grinning. “I was mortified. Still am.”
Laurie followed him over to the sofa. But neither sat down. “But then,” Laurie told him, “you said the sweetest thing. All red-faced and angry with your poor little underwear all tented out so painfully, and still you said the sweetest thing.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I do. The sweetest thing I’d ever heard, before or since. ‘Well, goddamnit,’ you said, ‘it’s all your fault!’”
Richard nodded at his Coke. “Yeah…and it was.”
After that, neither of them spoke for a time.
Finally Laurie made a half-hearted glance at her watch, sighed and said she supposed she really ought to try the car again. Richard nodded unenthusiastically, agree that yes, she probably should do that, the carburetor was apt to be clear by now.
Well, then, she said, with a little indecisive gesture at the air and smiled shyly up at him and said something about how great it was to see him again and he nodded and said they should really get together sometime and she nodded back and from the way they looked at each other they both knew that was never going to happen but they smiled fiercely through the lie anyway and then Laurie turned to go but was stopped by Richard’s hand on her arm and he turned her toward him and bend to her and let himself get a quick hit off her smell again and then kissed her lightly on the cheek and Laurie smiled her shy smile again and thanked him for the Coke and he said anytime and she sighed again and looked around the living room one more time one more sad time then headed for the front door with Richard watching her thinking then praying please, please, please when her hand touched the knob and--
--she must have read his mind or maybe he’d said it out loud he couldn’t remember but the important thing was she dropped her hand from the door knob and turned back again and came across his parents’ living room rug straight into his arms and straight against his mouth completing the thirty year circle and maybe she was going to pull away again and maybe not but Richard didn’t give her the chance, pulled her close instead and then pulled so hard she thought he might pull her right through him but that was okay because she had what she wanted now and so did he, the warmth of his tongue against hers, the long remembered newly awakened taste of her, sweeter oh far sweeter even than before and neither of them quite remembered how they ended up in his bedroom on his old bed only that they did and again—like the very first time—it all became so familiar it seemed nearly rehearsed which in a way Richard supposed it was and he said oh god when she showed him her breasts and he came sooner than he wanted but that was okay too because they had plenty of time…they had all the time in the world now and twice that to make up for…
FIFTEEN
He awoke at that strange transition between evening and night, a time when a stillness and light steals upon the world so like that of early morning it could masquerade for the same. And for just a moment Richard didn’t know which it was, morning or evening, or how long he’d slept and—as the old bed in his old bedroom was empty but for rumpled sheets—if the whole thing had been a dream. For surely it must have been. A terrific dream, no question there, but only that. Allie was in California, he was here alone in his parents’ old house, it was, depending on reality, either eight oh six in the morning or late evening and Laurie Seasons was beautiful, nude, warm and familiar as his own heartbeat, but still no more than a dream, just another dream to add to his long amassed catalog of them.
Except, he noted, pushing up from the mattress, he was nude as well. And he didn’t usually sleep nude, he usually slept in t-shirt and pajama bottoms and somebody—maybe him, he was still a bit logy to be sure—had made coffee, the smell of it wafting from the kitchen.
He got up, dragged on his jeans sans underwear and padded through the–now he was sure of it—darkening house.
He found her in his study. She was in his swivel chair, wearing one of his old Arrow shirts.
Reading his story.
Just finishing it, apparently, because she was setting it down carefully next to his computer, staring at it a moment, then—still not acknowledging his presence in the doorway—shaking her head slowly and making the early evening as perfect as the afternoon with her next words.
“Richard. This is…wonderful.”
Now she looked up at him, the wonder right there in her eyes. “It’s new, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
She nodded like she already knew. “You got…you got so good.”
Thank you would have been the proper response, probably, but instead he said, “Then how come you look so unhappy?”
Laurie pushed up a smile. “I’m ashamed. But very happy for you. Very.”
“Ashamed?”
She looked back at the pages stacked neatly next to his computer. “I didn’t keep up. I mean…I always knew I hadn’t, in a way, just not how much until now. Teaching high school Literature just isn’t the same thing…” And she was shaking her head in wonder again. “How did you ever get so…but I always knew it. Even when we were kids. Always knew you were the genius. I was good, I knew I was good. But there was greatness in you.”
Now it was time for ‘thank you.’ And he said it but added a caveat. “Not always. And not recently.”
Laurie frowned and glanced back at the story atop his desk. “But—“
“Oh, it’s new. I just finished it. But I wouldn’t have. I realize that now, maybe realized it then. I wouldn’t have without you.”
“But I wasn’t—“
Wasn’t there, she’d started to say, but then realized she had been, even if neither of them were aware of it. And upon this realization she nodded slowly, as if to acknowledge it had been a day of realizations. A wonderful day.
“You knew I was coming over.”
“Yes,” he said. “If only subconsciously.”
She was still frowning. It made him smile. Laurie was one of those people on whom a frown could appear and vanish without leaving a trace, even after all these years. And right then, right at that moment, it struck him—struck him hard in the center of his chest and left its ache there. Shit, he thought, I’m falling in love with her. Or I never fell out. Shit, oh shit. I’m in trouble. And that made him smile too.
“I have a confession,” Laurie began “—what are you grinning about?”
“Nothing.” He came to sit on the floor beside her, Laurie in his swivel chair, the only chair in the room. “Tell me your confession.”
She had to look down at her hands a moment, had to chew her lip and show another little frown. “I’ve been stalking you.”
He pushed down a chuckle. “Have you?”
Laurie nodded rapidly. “Maser told me you were in town. Where you lived.”
“Maser told you?”
“He’s my doctor, Richard.”
Of course.
“Stalking me, huh?”
“Pretending to be interested in our old house next door.”
“Why?”
“My disguise.”
“I mean why pretend, why not just come knock on my door.”
Laurie thought about it. “I don’t know. Scared.”
“That I’d be old and fat?”
“Ma
ybe. Or maybe that you wouldn’t be.”
Richard smiled at her “That explains it, then.”
“Explains?”
“My growing ability to write again after months of dredging nothing from the well. It was you. You must be telepathic or electromagnetic or something. Laurie Seasons my unseen Muse.”
But remnants of the frown remained.
“What is it? Don’t picture yourself a Muse?”
She gave a helpless little shrug, looked suddenly fragile as glass. Richard resisted an urge to go to her.
“I don’t…I’m not sure, Richard. I mean, I wanted to come, of course. Oh, who am I kidding, I was dying to come see you. But…”
“But?”
“…there was something else there. It was like--and I know this sounds crazy--” she gave him a sideways, haunted look, “—like I felt compelled to see you. Like I was being…what’s the word? Directed.”
“Directed.”
She nodded. “Guided. Pulled. I don’t know. I told you it was crazy.”
It wasn’t crazy. It was how he himself had felt the moment he recognized it was Laurie sitting in the green Volkswagen next door: compulsive. Drawn. “Is that such a bad thing?” he said. “We were drawn to each other as kids, why wouldn’t we be now?”
She shook her head adamantly. “But we’re not kids, Richard. And you’re married.”
“Estranged, Laurie. And even if I weren’t,” was he really about to say this? “--even if I weren’t it would still feel right. Tell me it doesn’t feel right.”
There were beginning tears in her eyes when she looked up this time, but they’d drowned some of the fear behind them. “That’s just it,” she said, “it feels right to me too. It feels perfect. And I don’t understand that, Rich. I mean, how can it feel this perfect this fast? Isn’t that a little…” she didn’t seem to have a word for it. “It just isn’t me. Yet here I am. And here I want to be. So I guess it is me, isn’t it?”
He finally came to her, enfolded her there on his knees, pulling her into him from his swivel chair. He rocked her and kissed the top of her head, stoked her. He kissed the single tear starting down her cheek. He need so much to say the right thing now. It might have been one of the most important things in his life. But he didn’t really understand it either, no more than she did. So he just held her for a moment and then he thought, maybe it isn’t always necessary to understand, just to accept.
“All I can tell you,” he said, “with perfect honesty and a squeaky clean conscious, is that nothing ever felt so right in the world to me as this moment.”
She held him tight, the knock of her small heart strong against his, and then she looked steadily into his eyes and shook her head in a way that said she didn’t understand and didn’t care at the same time, and she said, “I think it may be a sin, Richard, I think this must be a si—“
But his mouth cut her off, and she groaned gratitude, the deep down sound of it making him hard again against her, changing the sound, raising it to her throat, the tingle of it against his teeth. Her hand grabbed impatiently--his own too slow--guiding his fingers under the shirt to her warm breast, pressing so roughly he feared he must be hurting her.
“It isn’t a sin,” he whispered.
Laurie pushed him down to the rug, stretched across him. “I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care,” hips thrusting, will gone.
“Push, Richard, push all the other thoughts from my mind, like you used to, take me away!”
His desk phone rang.
“Shit!” They gasped it in unison, so desperately angry-funny that they both had to stifle a laugh under laboring chests.
Richard sought her mouth again, tried to ignore the phone, but the ringing was too close, too strident.
“Goddamnit.”
“Can you reach it” she grinned, “without taking it out? —oops, guess not.”
“You are very wicked,” he said dragging down the handset. “Yes, who is it--?”
Laurie reached for him, his bobbing helpless urgency, reached to take him in her hand, keep him warm, but Richard’s own hand clamped her wrist. She looked up anxiously, his warmth already softening in her hand, found his face tight.
“…yes. All right. Room 101, yes. I’m on my way.”
He held the receiver against his chest, not hanging up, not looking at her.
“Richard--?”
He glanced down as if just remembering her presence. “That was Pete Shivers...”
“I remember Pete. Is something wrong?”
“Scroogie,” Richard said, pulling himself up shakily by the edge of the desk, “he’s at St. Jude’s with Maser. They think it was attempted suicide.”
“Oh, Richard!”
He leaned against his desk, looking pale, feeling weak, eyes darting around the study as if seeking answers in the walls.
Laurie pushed up, gripped his arm. “Sweetheart?”
“…car keys…” Richard was muttering, patting his naked chest absently, “…got to find my car keys…”
SIXTEEN
Shivers stood outside Room 101, leaning against a beige wall next to the plastic room number sign, hands crossed over his chest, slightly bowed at the waist as if he were guarding the door and protecting himself from the cold at the same time.
“Pete! How is he?”
Shivers lifted his eyes to Richard, face gray under corridor fluorescence. “Alive.”
Only Richard didn’t like the way he’d said it, or the look on his childhood pal’s face. A nurse hurried toward them from the opposite way; Richard turned expectantly, but she kept on going past. He turned back to Shivers and they entered their friend’s intensive care room.
Richard was surprised to find Scroogie’s eyes open; what was Shivers doing in the hallway if Scrooge was awake? But he wasn’t awake. He just had his eyes open.
“Scroogie? Hey.”
“He can’t hear you,” Shivers said behind Richard.
Richard stared at the maze of tubes and lines trailing from Scroogie’s sheet-swathed form to the winking machines around him, the IV drip on the other side of his bed. The patient’s hair was combed, he was pinked-up, might have been just lying there resting, perfectly fine, if it weren’t for all the tubes, the sober pall hanging in the air. Scroogie’s blue eyes stared at the wall. Or maybe somewhere beyond it.
“Where’s Kildare?” Richard said, meaning Maser.
“He’ll be back. He’s been running around the hospital like a mother hen, personally selecting the staff he wants attending Scroogie. He’s in good hands.”
They both knew Shivers didn’t need to say that, but it was good to hear anyway; it even brought a wan smile to Richard’s lips. “What happened, Pete?”
Shivers came around Richard to the bed, put a palm on Scroogie’s brow and smoothed back his red-gray hair. “Only got quick details from Maze. Said he woke up around eleven or so with a bad feeling, couldn’t go back to sleep, finally called Scrooge, worried. Scroogie answered, said everything was fine but didn’t sound right after awhile. Then I guess Scroogie just suddenly stopped talking. Maze called his name several times, but Scroogie was silent. Next thing he knows Scroogie is on his doorstep, drunk out of his gourd, brandishing one of Sally’s kitchen knives.”
“Shit.”
Shivers sighed, nodded. “Maze did his best to calm him down but Scroogie said he couldn’t stand it anymore and tried to cut his own throat. Maser kept him alive while he phoned 911, then fireman carried the big lug to the ambulance. Maser knows what he’s doing.”
“I know he does,” Richard smiled. Then: “Where the hell is Sally?”
“At her mother’s in Queens. They weren’t getting along. Scrooge and Sally, I mean. After Pete called me I phoned Sally in New York. Luckily Scroogie made sure I had all his emergency numbers years ago. She’s on her way, first flight she can get.”
Richard nodded, hesitated. “Maze called you first?”
Shiver nodded, looked over at Richard�
��s expression and poked him on the arm. “Don’t get all pecking-order jealous on me, Rich. Mine was the first number Maze could remember is all, he was pretty goddamn rattled. He made sure I called you after. Christ, if it had been me, I’d have forgotten my own number.”
“I’m not jealous,” Rich smiled. Then he jumped. Scroogie had closed his eyes. “Look!”
Shivers grabbed his arm. “Easy. He does that. Keeps them open for awhile, then closes them.”
Richard came closer and bent to search Scroogie’s face. It looked serene. “Does he see us?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Hear us?”
“No, I don’t think he’s here, Rich. Maze called it neuro-something-coma, stage one, I think. Did you know Scrooge was diabetic?”
Richard shook his head in surprise.
“I guess only Maser knew. Scrooge wasn’t even supposed to be drinking. Apparently he’s in some sort of diabetic coma. You’ll have to ask Maser.”
“Is it--”
“He doesn’t know that either. Or he isn’t telling us. But he sounds hopeful.”
Richard nodded obligingly, “But that’s part of his job, right?”
Shivers sighed.
* * *
Richard had a dream as crystal clear as reality.
In it, he was back at Lake Chunanche, the little resort lake he and Allie used to drive up to from L.A. once in awhile. It was dusk and he was coming down the pine studded hill from the cabins toward the already dark, flat waters. He could feel the gravel through the bottom of his tennis shoes. Then he heard a splashing noise and saw two figures swimming together close to shore, parallel with the pebble beach. As he drew near, Richard could see that it was Allie and Alan Grant, their old producer friend from CBS. They were swimming together, skinny dipping. They treaded water awhile and smiled at each other and Richard wasn’t the least surprised when they embraced. As Alan reached up to cup her breast, Allie turned her head and saw Richard watching from the shore. She just watched Richard quietly and let Alan continue to fondle her and kiss her neck. “Well,” she said finally, “what did you expect?”