No Return: A Contemporary Phantom Tale

by Pope, Christine

  “Christine! Hey!”

  I turned. Randall again. This was starting to get awkward.

  “You still haven’t scheduled that practice time with me,” he continued, planting himself in my path so I had no choice but to stop.

  “Well…” I hedged. Things were complicated enough already. Even though I might admit to myself—deep down—that he interested me, I knew a relationship should be the last thing on my mind right now.

  Randall was a graduate student who sometimes worked as an accompanist for the senior master class. He was also, as Meg liked to put it, a “hottie.” I wanted to pretend I was immune to the charm of his hazel eyes and ready smile, but I knew better than that.

  While I tried to play it cool, he made no secret of his interest in me, much to the disappointment of several other girls in the master class. And although I thought for sure my hard-to-get act would wear after time, he showed no signs of calling a halt to his pursuit. It would have been a lot easier if he’d been someone who didn’t interest me at all.

  He smiled, that easy grin which probably could have melted harder hearts than mine. “The recital’s only two weeks off—”

  “I know that!” I snapped, my tone sharper than I had intended it to be. I was still smarting from that painful session with Dr. Green.

  Randall seemed unfazed. “So why would you turn down hours and hours of free practice time?”

  “I’ve been working a lot of shifts at the restaurant.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Uh-huh.”

  Despite myself, I had to smile. “Okay, so now you’ve succeeded in making me sound like an idiot.”

  “Never that.” He fixed me with those hazel eyes of his. “So what are you doing right now?”

  I was caught. This was my one night off from the restaurant, so truthfully all I had planned to do was go home and slog through that paper. I still had the weekend, though. And while the music history class was important, my marks in the senior master class would actually determine whether I’d get accepted into the master’s program. How I’d ever be able to afford it was a worry for another day.

  I smiled back at him, surrendering finally. “Looks like I’m practicing.”

  “Good answer.”

  I let him take my satchel as he directed me to follow him to the staff parking lot—being a T.A. had at least a few perks, it seemed—so we could drive to his place. Apparently the practice studios on campus were all booked up, he explained ingenuously, and I had to keep from laughing. He was probably right, but his enthusiasm about my having to go practice at his home was all too transparent. Well, if he thought I planned to do anything more than practice, he was going to be sorely disappointed.

  His home turned out to be a well-appointed Spanish-style duplex in the mid-Wilshire area, about fifteen minutes from campus. Although it appeared to have been well decorated in the not-too-distant past—the velvet slipcovered couch and curtains were straight out of the Pottery Barn catalog—right now most of the casually bohemian chic was buried under music scores, empty pizza boxes, and copies of L.A. Weekly.

  “Sorry about the mess,” he said, grabbing a couple of pizza boxes with one hand as he dumped my satchel on the floor next to the piano. “I haven’t been here all that much lately.”

  “Just long enough to order pizza,” I said, and he grinned.

  “Well, it’s fast and easy. My microwave’s on the blink.”

  “And God forbid you’d have to cook something—”

  “Like on a stove?” He gave a mock shudder. “You’re kidding, right?”

  I thought of my lone toaster oven and tiny apartment-sized stove, and decided not to mention the fact that I’d had to get along without a microwave for the past two years after mine self-destructed while nuking a bag of popcorn.

  “Right.” I waited in the living room while he disposed of the boxes and rustled around in the kitchen, doing who knows what.

  It was really a lovely place. Los Angeles still has some amazing architecture, despite the developers who seem determined to raze anything more than twenty years old. Randall’s duplex, probably built in the 1920s, had charming arched doorways, art niches, hardwood floors, and a fireplace that looked as if it actually still worked. And it had been furnished intelligently, which led me to believe the decor was probably the work of an ex-girlfriend.

  The living room was dominated by the grand piano, a gorgeous carved behemoth in walnut, not the standard black Yamaha or Steinway I had come to expect. At least this room was big enough to accommodate the thing; at my bungalow I had been hard-pressed to squeeze in my grandmother’s tiny spinet.

  I stepped around the curve of the piano to look at the name emblazoned in gold leaf above the keys, which, believe it or not, were apparently the original ivory. “‘Baye,’” I read aloud.

  “Never heard of them, right?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not an authority, but—”

  “No, that’s a really obscure reference.” Randall came back into the living room, a glass of red wine in each hand. I opened my mouth to protest, but he just handed the wine glass to me, smiling, daring me to say something, and I took it meekly. He sipped some his wine, waited until I had followed suit, then continued, “Baye was actually the company that made the guts—you know, the sounding board, the strings, all that good stuff—for Steinway back in the 1920s. Then they decided to strike out on their own and start their own company, but their timing was lousy; the Great Depression hit about a year later, and the company folded. But they made some amazing pianos before they went bust.”

  The wine was good. Probably a cabernet, but past that my uneducated palate couldn’t distinguish much except that I liked it. I hadn’t allowed myself to indulge for a long time—couldn’t afford it—and I took another sip. “That’s too bad.”

  He nodded. “It happens. I’m just glad my grandfather actually bought one. Probably because it had the sound of a Steinway without the price tag.”

  “Was he careful with his money?”

  At that Randall laughed, but he didn’t seem all that amused. “Christine, he made Ebenezer Scrooge look like a party animal.”

  “Well, Scrooge was a party animal by the end of the story,” I replied.

  “Touché. But not Grandpa. Still, he did have the good sense to pick up property all over L.A., hold on to it, and then leave it to his grandkids.”

  I lifted my wine glass in a gesture meant to encompass the living room. “And so you’re here?”

  “Did you really think I could afford this place on a T.A.’s salary?”

  I’d secretly been wondering about that but wasn’t going to admit it. “Well, even a T.A.’s salary looks pretty good from where I stand.”

  His smile faded. “I’m sorry about that, Christine—”

  I cut him off. “Why should you be? As if any of it’s your fault!” I bent and picked up my satchel and pulled the sheet music from it. I handed the photocopied pages to Randall. “We did come over here to practice, right?”

  His eyes met mine for a moment, and I sucked in my breath. Under the easy smile and the friendly demeanor I suddenly got a glimpse of the desire underneath, and I felt a tremor go through my body. This could be dangerous, then, probably more so than I had guessed. After all, I’d never really had a serious relationship or experience with anything more than a few awkward dates.

  He took the score from my hand, and the moment passed as he seated himself in front of the keyboard. His fingers brushed mine as he took the music, but the touch was so fleeting I wasn’t sure whether it was by accident or intention.

  Then there was no time for worries about his intentions or my reactions to them, because Randall launched into the opening notes of the aria, and the music stole me away with the first trill.

  “Ah, je rit, de me vois si belle en ce miroir,” and I felt the rush, the warmth of the music flowing over me and welling up from somewhere deep inside, the notes coming out pure and strong, my voice clear, unmarked this t
ime by worry or doubt or fear.

  I didn’t know whether it was Randall’s presence, the half a glass of wine I’d just consumed, or a desire to prove Professor Green wrong, but whatever the case, I had never felt in truer voice. And I could tell, as the last few notes of the aria died away, that Randall felt the same.

  After a moment he finally lifted his hands from the keyboard and looked over at me. “You blow them all away. You really do.”

  I made some sound of demurral, but inside me was a tiny, fierce triumph, because I knew at some level he was right.

  Randall kept his gaze locked on mine, and I could see a sudden shift, just the slightest twinkle in his hazel eyes before the corner of his mouth twitched. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t try to improve perfection, does it? From the top, then—”

  And we launched into it all over again. Then again, and again, until two hours were spent and I was limp with exhaustion and euphoric at the same time.

  Finally Randall closed the piano lid and said, “Well, I think you’ve earned an Italian dinner.”

  I opened my mouth, but he didn’t even give me time to let the protest cross my lips.

  “And a bottle of chianti, I think,” he added, daring me to argue.

  “Sounds decadent.”

  “Absolutely.”

  That was the end of the argument. He whisked me off to a lovely restaurant only a few miles from house, an intimate little place called Cucina, where we had entirely too much pesto and chianti and amazing fresh-baked bread, and all sorts of conversation. We were both that rarity, natives of Southern California, but his tales of his extended family and growing up in Larchmont Village with his well-to-do but domineering grandfather, lawyer father, writer mother, and apparently teeming hordes of brothers, sisters, and cousins were as foreign to me as if he’d grown up on the other side of the continent. Nothing could have been further from my quiet childhood in Pasadena, where I had been the only child of an only child, and my mother estranged from her own family back in Wisconsin. Certainly there had been no visits from her relatives, and I had grown up knowing only one set of grandparents.

  Randall and I talked about so many other things, of course, of music and art and all the seemingly endless distractions of student life, comparing professors and fellow students and pointless papers and the whole crazy mess of it, until we were the last couple in the restaurant—it was a weeknight, after all—and we finally emerged into the cool night air. We both shared a guilty glance at our watches, and he bundled me into the passenger seat of his older-model but meticulously maintained BMW while apologizing for the hour.

  “I do tend to run off at the mouth,” he said. “Youngest child syndrome—always looking for attention.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, somewhat dreamily, enjoying the luxurious warmth of the wine in my stomach and the happy afterglow of a good meal. “My first class isn’t until ten tomorrow.”

  “Well, that’s something.”

  We finished the rest of the drive back to the parking lot in silence, broken only by my giving brief directions as to where my car was parked. At that hour only a few cars remained, and Randall pulled up in the space next to my shabby Honda.

  I climbed out a little awkwardly, pausing to collect my satchel from the back seat, then rummaged through my purse to find my car keys.

  Randall followed me to the driver’s-side door, where we both paused. The yellowish light from the sodium vapor street lamp overhead cast odd shadows on his face, bleaching the color from his eyes, making him suddenly a stranger.

  The words—“thank you for a lovely evening”—didn’t even make it to my lips before his mouth was on mine, his arms encircling me in an embrace that was both shocking and expected. How else, after all, could this evening have ended?

  I hesitated for the slightest fraction of a second—so slight it was hardly a hesitation at all—then let myself surrender to the pressure of his lips, the warmth of his body against mine. The adolescent fumblings I had suffered in the past were nothing compared to this, nothing to the heat I could feel rising in my own body as I kissed him back, let his tongue explore my mouth as I tasted him, tasted the chianti on his lips.

  We pulled apart finally, and for a moment we were silent, watching one another.

  “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he said finally.

  I touched my swollen bottom lip. “I have some,” I said, and managed a shaky laugh.

  “Oh, God, Christine, I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s all right,” I interjected hastily. It wasn’t as if I had tried to stop him, after all.

  “Well—”

  “Well,” I repeated. “It’s almost midnight. I really do need to get home.”

  He stood by silently as I turned the key in the door lock, but spoke when I tossed my satchel on the passenger seat.

  “I hate to see you go.”

  Deliberately, I sat in the driver’s seat. “I know, Randall, but I’m not ready for that yet—”

  “Of course not,” he said immediately, and I was gratified to see that he actually meant it. “I’ll see you in senior seminar tomorrow, though—I’m accompanying.”

  I smiled, and held his gaze. “I’m glad.”

  He smiled, too, and then let me shut the car door. Thank God the car started. Lately I’d been given to uttering an invocation to whatever powers may be that the damn thing wouldn’t strand me twenty miles from home. But after a little introductory cough the Civic kicked right in, and I was able to navigate my way through the empty parking lot with whatever calm my rattled nerves would allow me.

  Crazy or not, ill-timed and ill-advised as it might be, I knew, even after one evening together, that I was dangerously close to falling in love with Randall Cagney.

  “Impossible,” he said, pushing the envelope with the 8x10 photographs inside away from him.

  “I’m afraid so, sir.” Jerome shifted his weight almost imperceptibly from one foot to the other, the only betrayal of his discomfort. “I thought it suspicious that she would leave her car there for so long, so I waited—”

  Waited with the patience of a spider, and captured the evidence he had so long feared. Nothing in Christine’s life had borne any evidence of a lover or even a casual boyfriend, and now this, this—

  “Randall Cagney,” Jerome supplied. “A graduate student and teacher’s assistant. More importantly, a talented pianist who works as an accompanist for the vocal program.”

  He could feel the anger growing, the sinuous beast that was already tightening his innards into knots. Rage, and the impulse to kill, to remove any obstacle in his wake. Under the desk, his hands clenched, bitter fists eager to reach out and destroy.

  “Get out,” he said, and was only slightly gratified to see Jerome immediately turn and practically flee for the door, moving more quickly than he had ever seen him do so before. Apparently his rage was visible even behind the mask.

  Alone again, he returned his focus to the object of his fury, the photographs shoved carelessly back inside the manila envelope. He pulled out the first one; it showed an almost-empty parking lot with two nondescript cars parked next to one another. A man and a woman stood next to the driver’s door of the smaller vehicle, and it was obvious what they were doing. His arms were around her, as hers encircled his torso; their mouths were locked, her face almost obscured by the back of the man’s head. But he would have known that fall of curly dark hair anywhere, that graceful curve of cheekbone. Christine.

  How could she? How could she, when he was so close to having her?

  A sudden violent gesture, and the photographs flew off the desk to scatter on the Persian rug. He didn’t need to see more—they were all variations on a theme.

  Why now? Why, after a youth of apparent solitude, a college career where she had carefully avoided any sort of romantic entanglements, had she finally succumbed?

  Randall Cagney. His mouth lifted—the side that could lift, anyhow—in a grimace. He didn’
t know much about him, other than what Jerome had just related, but he would soon know much, much more. Everything, really, from the amount in his bank account to the brand of underwear he wore.

  Soon, very soon, Randall Cagney would be in for a series of most unpleasant shocks. Perhaps he would be forced to reconsider his connection with a certain Christine Daly.

  He pressed the speaker button on the intercom. “Jerome, get back in here. I have another assignment for you.”

  Chapter Three

  He awoke, screaming, from a nightmare of blinding pain, the flash of sharp blades, restraining hands. His breath came in loud tearing gasps, and he slammed a hand down on the empty space in the bed next to him. Of course there was no one to comfort him as he lay alone in the darkness. There never had been.

  A moment passed before he felt steady enough to stand. Despite the absolute blackness of the room, he had no problem navigating his way from the bed to the table by the window where he kept a decanter of cognac and a few Waterford snifters. With a hand that shook only a little, he poured himself several fingers of a rare vintage from an ancient French label, then drank deeply, with utter disrespect for the quality of the liquor.

  “God damn it,” he said aloud finally. His voice—his one beauty—was ragged. He pulled out a chair and sat down, closing his eyes, even though he was surrounded by merciful darkness.

  The nightmares had begun in early childhood, just after he had stolen the first fleeting glimpse of his face. That one look was allowed by a careless nanny who had left him unattended just long enough for him to wander into his mother’s bedroom—his parents had taken separate quarters not long after his birth—and peek into the elaborate Venetian-style mirror that hung over her dresser. One shocked look started him screaming, and he had been quickly scooped up and carried out by the butler—but the damage was done.

  The surgeries started soon after. His clearest memory of the years between three and six was of masked surgeons bending over him, the lowering of the oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, the weeks and months of pain that followed. He always recuperated at home, never at the hospital—too many prying eyes—and never was he allowed to want for anything. Anything except peace, of course.