Flying High

by Gwynne Forster

  “Ask Audrey if she minds my going along.”

  “Oh, goody!” Ricky grabbed the phone, and within minutes, the coming Saturday would differ vastly from what he had planned.

  * * *

  With twenty minutes free before her next patient’s appointment, Audrey took out her ledger to check her financial position. She had promised herself that she would open her own office before the year was over, and the previous day she’d seen precisely the space and location that met her needs. She didn’t want to begin her practice heavily in debt, and the equipment alone carried a staggering price tag. If she sold some stock, she could open her office in November or December with a manageable debt. Manageable debt! She cupped her face with both hands. She was never free of the dread that hung over her like a dark storm ready to flood the earth. She wouldn’t know relief until seven years had passed and the statue of limitation excluded a malpractice suit. All she had done was accede to an injured basketball player’s pleas that he be allowed back on the court to help the university’s team win the playoff. He shot the winning basket, collapsed and had to be taken from the court unable to walk or even to wiggle his right toes. That mistake haunted her daily, and she knew it was one reason for her thoroughness and the expertise for which she was becoming known.

  She put the ledger away, washed her hands, and checked the waiting room. “How’s your back today, Mr. Long?”

  “Never felt better.”

  “Really? Then you don’t need me.”

  About forty years old—though he gave his age as twenty-nine—neatly dressed, and passable-looking, Leroy Hayes thought far more highly of himself and his looks than he had any right to, at least in her opinion, and his arrogance irritated her.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said in answer to her remark, revealing his teeth in a smile that was both suggestive and arrogant. “I figured now that I’m well, you and me, we could get down to business. I don’t see a thing wrong with doctor-patient relations, but my sister says it’s not ethical, so I’m well as of now.”

  She would see about that. “You’d better let me check. Can’t be too careful about these things, and we don’t want problems with your insurance company.”

  His smile faded. “Well, if you think so, but I’m...uh...well...”

  Even if he wasn’t, she would make sure he stayed away from her. “Go into the first therapy room, remove your shirt and shoes, please, and lie down.”

  After he had waited long enough to be nervous, she joined him and began the exercises. If he was well, it wouldn’t hurt; if he wasn’t, the entire clinic would know it.

  With her thumbs on either side of his spine and her fingers digging into his shoulders, she pressed with all the strength she could muster.

  “Ow! What the hell!”

  “My! I should have been more gentle, but you said you were healed so...” Her left shoulder lifted in a shrug. “It isn’t wise to mislead your doctor. Anyway, I’ve done all I can for you. You’re discharged.”

  He turned over and sat up. “I am? Then we can—”

  “We can’t do anything, Mr. Hayes. I’m not looking for a man. I’ve got one. Let yourself out.”

  She had primed herself for ten minutes of good catharticury, but the ring of the telephone put an end to the pleasure she derived from it.

  “Dr. Powers speaking.”

  “This is Ricky Wainwright. I want to speak with Audie, please.”

  She greeted him warmly. “Did you dial my number yourself?”

  “Uh-huh. Unca Nelson taught me how. He told me to ask you if he can go with us to the library Saturday.”

  “Of course. Tell him we’ll be glad to have him.”

  “Okay. I love you, Audie. Bye.”

  “Hey, wait a minute. I love you, Ricky. I love you a lot.”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  She telephoned her sister Winifred to cancel their Saturday morning shopping trip. One thing was certain: with Ricky along, she and Nelson would keep their libidos in check. Or would they? She had learned that if he caught her unawares, she couldn’t be counted on for discreet behavior. Thoughts of his dreamy brown eyes with those extraordinary lashes, and the way his lips seemed to smile while he spoke, and of that hard mouth on her sent warm flushes throughout her body, and she felt her nipples harden.

  I don’t want to be susceptible to him, but, my Lord, I can’t wait to feel his hands on me again.

  * * *

  Nelson hardly recognized Audrey when she opened her door that morning. In low-slung white linen pants, blue-and-white sailor shirt and sneakers to match, she had the appearance of a teenager, and with her hair swinging around her shoulders, she oozed glamour and sex. He didn’t for a minute think that was what she intended, but it was definitely the effect she created.

  As he gazed down at her, liquid accumulated in his mouth and he caught his breath as it escaped him in quick, short pants. What the devil was happening to him? She knows I want her, but, thank God, she can’t guess how much. He forced a careless smile. For his peace of mind, he’d have been happier if she had greeted Ricky and him in one of her usual buttoned-down outfits. The boy smiled up at Audrey and stretched his little arms out to her, puzzling him as to the child’s affection for her.

  “Looking at you puts me in the mood for...er...sailing,” he said. Halfway through the sentence, his thoughts had swung from fun with her on the Potomac River to a more intimate experience. “After we leave the library, we could go for cruise on the Potomac.”

  “Sounds good,” she said as she hugged Ricky. He wondered why she seemed disconcerted and asked if she was sure she wanted to spend that much time with them.

  ‘I’ve got the day free,” she said. “I was a bit surprised that you wanted to spend your Saturday sightseeing.”

  He did not, but he couldn’t take the chance that they might become someone’s target and he wouldn’t be there when they needed him.

  He forced a grin. “Are you suggesting I wouldn’t grab the chance to spend time with you? You couldn’t be serious.”

  He sat with the two of them in the library’s children’s theater with only a small part of his thigh resting on the little chair. Almost immediately, he found himself engrossed in the children’s reaction to the stories and, especially, in their questions.

  “If the cow can jump over the moon, how big is the moon?” one girl asked.

  “Silly,” a boy needled, “cows are so big they can jump over anything they want to.”

  “They don’t jump over the fence,” Ricky said.

  “They don’t want to get out, maybe,” the girl said, “but that’s stupid.”

  Something, maybe an intuition, pricked his senses, and he shifted his gaze to the door in time to see a tall, fair-complexioned, mustached man ease away from the doorjamb and walk out of the theater.

  He tapped Audrey’s shoulder. “Be right back. Take care.”

  Outside the theater, he saw the man with his back against the wall, using his cellular phone. Marilyn wouldn’t put such an obvious agent on a case. More likely, she would send a man who wore a jogging suit and sneakers and resembled a basketball player. This man’s clothes would have suited an undertaker. After making a mental note of the man, he ducked back into the theater.

  “Unca Nelson, can we buy Audie some ice cream?” Ricky asked him as they left the library. “At her house we had ice cream all the time.”

  “Now wait a minute, Ricky. We had ice cre
am after lunch and after dinner. Not all the time.”

  “I thought it was all the time, Audie,” he said taking her hand.

  “I think we’re going to have to forego the cruise today,” Nelson told them. “Something came up.”

  “But I want to go on the cruise with Audie, Unca Nelson. Please. Can me and Audie go?”

  “Audie and I, you mean. Anyhow, we can’t do it today, but I’ll try to manage it next Saturday if Audrey can make it.”

  He had expected Ricky’s temper to assert itself, but instead, the boy turned to Audrey. “Can you come with us next Saturday please, Audie? My Unca Nelson has to do something now.”

  “Anytime after twelve is fine with me.”

  The child’s eyes beseeched him, begging him to promise. He picked Ricky up and looked him in the eye. “Son, a serviceman can’t make firm promises. I have explained to you that my first duty is to our country. If I’m not needed for anything else, we can spend Saturday afternoon together. All right?”

  Ricky nodded, his face alight with an eagerness only a child could show. Nelson glanced over Ricky’s shoulder at Audrey with an unspoken question ablaze on his face, and his heart began to race, for her eyes told him that whatever he wished was his if she could grant it. At that moment, Ricky’s arms tightened around his shoulders, and he gave thanks for that buffer between him and the desire that threatened to bolt out of control. Without taking his gaze from hers, he set Ricky on his feet and took the few steps that separated him from Audrey.

  “Be careful about the messages you send me, Audrey. I won’t forget them, and I will definitely hold you accountable. Can we go now?”

  “Fine. See you Saturday.”

  “Oh, we’ll speak before then. Come.” He took her hand. “Ricky and I will take you home.” He wanted to free himself as quickly as possible. If Marilyn had a security guard on Ricky, he hadn’t been able to identify the person. One thing was certain: the man he’d seen was on someone else’s team.

  * * *

  “He isn’t our man,” Marilyn said when he called her, “but we know who he is. So far, he is about as effective as a tub-thumping rainmaker. However, that could be a ruse. Our gal was sitting two rows directly behind you.”

  He hadn’t seen a woman who... He gasped, and then laughter rolled out of him. What a disguise! He’d thought he was fairly expert at detecting spies, hit men and bodyguards. The woman in the chair two rows back had had the appearance of a grandmother.

  “How old is she really?” he asked Marilyn.

  Marilyn’s laugh amazed him; he hadn’t heard it before. “Thirty-four. She can also look eighty if the situation calls for it. Not to worry. She’s first-class.”

  He hung up feeling less confident about the mystery surrounding Ricky’s young admirer. Marilyn’s actions were proof she suspected impending danger. He hadn’t wanted to tell Lena about it, but he didn’t have a choice.

  * * *

  Audrey looked out of her kitchen window at the gathering clouds that would wash out her jogging for that day. She didn’t remember having witnessed so many storms in early June. She didn’t mind the rain, but she had never overcome her childhood fear of thunder and lightning. She went to the phone and dialed her younger sister.

  “I have to postpone our Saturday afternoon shopping trip again, Winifred. I had to promise Ricky I’d go somewhere with him.”

  “What do you mean, you had to promise him? You’re doing it because you want to. Is tall, honey-skin and handsome going along?”

  She loved Winifred, but the girl didn’t mind jumping into her sisters’ personal affairs, though she kept her own to herself.

  “Nelson is going with us, yes.”

  Audrey imagined her sister’s face taking on its superior facade when Winifred said, “Sis, you are really a case. You want the guy. Nothing wrong with that. If you hadn’t gotten to him first, I would have given him more than a passing glance. That brother is it. I mean, we’re speaking fine, here. Jet-black hair, skin the color of honeycomb, dark brown eyes and those long, silky-black lashes. If you tell me you’re not interested, I won’t believe you.”

  “You sound as if you are.” She didn’t like the trend of the conversation.

  “Not me. I don’t ride bareback, so to speak, but when I see God’s perfection, girl, I bow to it. The only reason that brother’s single is because some stupid woman did a real job on him.”

  She thought of the way his voice made her tingle. “Winifred, for goodness sake!”

  “Hey! Don’t be so uptight. If he’s got the music that makes you dance, go for it.”

  “Listen, Wendy, if you knew as much as you sound like you know, you’d own Microsoft, and I’d genuflect every time your name came up. What about you? Pam told me Hendren introduced you to a great guy last Sunday night. What happened?”

  She knew the man impressed her sister when Winifred didn’t shoot from the hip with a ready putdown. “He was...uh, he was okay.”

  Audrey couldn’t help laughing. “Okay? That’s a rave coming from you. I want to meet him. Something tells me the guy knocked you off your high horse. What’s his name?”

  “Ryan Addison, and don’t tease me about him.”

  If a man had finally shaken her sister from head to foot the way Nelson shook her when she first looked at him, maybe Winifred would be less strident and more compassionate. Loving a man changed a woman. She couldn’t put her finger on the time or incident that had precipitated it, but although she still had her personal goals and meant to see them fulfilled, the prism through which she viewed the world had altered.

  She recognized in herself a gentleness that she used to think of as milquetoast, as a lack of strength and self-confidence in others. And for the first time in her memory, she didn’t avoid eye contact with the bedraggled and the downtrodden.

  “Let yourself get to know him, Wendy. You can’t imagine how much happier you’ll be if you care for someone who feels the same way about you.”

  She heard a gasp. “That definitely doesn’t sound like you, girl.”

  She sat down beside the walnut, marble-top table on which the phone rested, stretched out her legs and crossed her ankles. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I know Nelson’s honorable, that he isn’t like Gerald, and I know that if I can make myself trust him fully, I’ll be happy. He cares for me, Wendy, but you were right when you said some woman did a job on him. He hasn’t told me, but he might as well make a sign and plaster it across his forehead.”

  “What are you going to do?” Though bossy and sharp-tongued, her younger sister loved her, was deeply attached to her and looked to her for guidance.

  She got up, walked to the window, saw again the black clouds that were now lit by lightning streaking among them and drew the blinds.

  “I don’t know, Wendy. We’re not lovers, and I’m convinced I’d better keep it that way.”

  “Yeah? You’d better hope he cooperates.”

  “Tell me about it. We should hang up. It’s dangerous to use a phone during this kind of storm. We’ll talk.”

  After hanging up, she sat there musing over what she’d admitted to Winifred. Oh, hell! I’m not going that way. Daydreaming when I should be working. The bottom falling out of my stomach every time I look at him. I must be out of my mind. When I see him Saturday, I’m going to act as if he’s just another man.

  Saturday afternoon arrived and, dressed for the cruise in white slacks, yellow T-shirt, wh
ite sneakers and yellow socks, she opened her front door and looked into the eyes of Nelson Wainwright. Her heart went on a rampage in her chest, and the bottom tumbled from her stomach.

  He almost smiled. “Hi.”

  She didn’t answer him; she couldn’t, for her jaws seemed wired together when she attempted to speak. Saved by Ricky’s exuberant embrace, she hugged the child, smiled and took her time locking the front door. But before she could remove the key from the lock, his hand closed over hers and, as if programmed, she turned into his arms.

  “No greeting for me?” he asked.

  “Hi,” she whispered, and let her lashes cover her all-revealing eyes. But he tipped up her chin with his right index finger.

  “This isn’t something you can shove into a corner, and there’s no point in praying it will go away. Hell! I’ve stopped trying because I know it’s going to nag us until it has its day. You have to deal with it just as I do.”

  She moved as far from him as the door at her back would allow. “Are you telling me you’re going to pursue this...this—”

  He cupped her face with both of his hands. “I may not have a choice. I’m beginning to feel like the criminal who’s gotten tired of years on the lam and gives himself up because the price of freedom is too high.”

  She imagined her eyes grew to twice their size. “What an analogy! Did you hear what you said?”

  A grim, gray cast settled over his face. “Yeah. I heard it. Let’s go. I got us tickets for the two-thirty cruise.”

  * * *

  “I’m taking the shortcut, and say your prayers that we don’t get stuck in traffic,” he said as they headed down Wisconsin Avenue.

  “I love the breeze back here,” Ricky said, “but I can’t see anything.”

  “You will see plenty, but you have to sit back there in your car seat where you’re safe.”