She wouldn’t cry. She never cried, no matter how much a thing hurt. Crying denoted weakness. But why couldn’t she meet a loveable, eligible man who could appreciate an educated, independent woman. Not that she planned to lose sleep over it. She had a good life. How many women anywhere could boast a two hundred thousand dollar condo, a six-figure income, and the respect of their peers? True, some of the men with whom she worked had nervous hands and couldn’t keep them off of her, but she could handle that. Still, she’d like to go to work once in a while wearing makeup, a skirt above her knees, and her hair hanging down the way those secretaries did—the girls that men chased and married. Marriage. She longed to find someone to love, marry, and to have children with, but she was thirty-five.
She sucked air through her teeth, disgusted with herself. She didn’t care. She’d made her choice. She had the best of all possible worlds; she didn’t have to be home by six, and she didn’t cook dinner if she didn’t want to. She carried the half empty glass of juice to her modern, fashionable, and rarely used kitchen, emptied it and put it in the dishwasher. No, she wouldn’t exchange places with any woman, not for anything. She stepped into the shower, wiping the moisture from her eyes. Darn that steam. Half an hour later, wrapped in her silk dressing gown, she couldn’t blame the shower for the moisture dripping from her eyes.
Susan awoke early New Year’s morning to the insistent chimes of her doorbell.
“Aunt Grace, what are you doing here so early this morning? You’re not working today, are you?”
“Honey, I never went to bed last night. I made over two hundred and fifty dollars since midnight. You must have been the only person in town who wasn’t in Times Square, and I sure drove a lot of ’em home in my limousine. Never saw such a happy bunch of people. Honey, you got to do something about yourself. You can’t make me believe you’re content to split your life between work and this chrome mausoleum.” Susan yawned exuberantly, hoping to warn her aunt that another topic would be more welcome.
“Aunt Grace, this is New Year’s morning. Please don’t make me start the year with that lecture.”
“All right. All right. But you’re wasting your life. You’re already thirty-five, and in a few more years, you’ll be past your prime—at least according to my book. You can’t make me believe you don’t want a man in your life.” She looked around and waved her hand disparagingly. “This is just a lot of pretense; you can’t fool me. I’m fifty-six, but your manless life would drive me crazy. ’Course, I didn’t do your cause a bit of good coming in here like this. A man should have been the first person across your doorsill this year to bring you good luck.”
She loved her aunt Grace, but she had no tolerance for superstitions and, since Grace knew that, she didn’t respond.
“Would you like some coffee, Aunt Grace? I’m just getting out of bed.”
“Coffee? No thanks. I’m going home and go to bed.” Susan watched an expression roll over her aunt’s face and knew she could expect one of the woman’s brilliant ideas.
“You know what?” Grace asked, her eyes alight with anticipation. “I’m going to do your chart. Let’s see now, I know your birth date. Weren’t you born at noon on a Sunday?”
“You’re the one who keeps track of these things. How would I know?”
“I’ll look it up in my book, and I’ll call you tomorrow. I should have done this years ago, but you’re so scientific, never believing anything. Happy New Year.”
Susan looked out of her bedroom window early the next morning, saw torrents of rain, and decided that she’d better telephone her aunt Grace.
“Are you on call this morning? I’ll never be able to hail a taxi in this weather.”
“I can take you downtown, dear, if you’re in your lobby at quarter to eight.”
Susan dressed hurriedly in a yellow-green woolen suit that set off her silky, ebony complexion and complemented it with brown lizard accessories and a brown, mink-lined rain coat. She stepped into the rear seat of Grace’s private taxi and paused, surprised to see a passenger. A man. And what a man!
“Honey, this is August Jackson, one of my regulars. Mr. Jackson, this is my niece, Miss”—she emphasized the word—“Susan Andrews. Susan works about six blocks from you.” Susan turned to greet the man and had to swallow the lump that lodged in her throat. Someone should have prepared her. She wouldn’t classify him as handsome; that was too commonplace a description. He was riveting, that’s what he was. Flawless dark brown skin, thick silky brows and lashes, lean face, square chin, perfect lips, and mesmerizing light brown eyes. She shook herself out of her trance and extended her hand. Pull yourself together, she silently admonished herself.
“I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Jackson.” His hand clasped hers gently, and she noticed that he looked directly at her eyes and didn’t flirt. But he continued to hold her hand and a smile slowly traveled from his lips to his remarkable eyes.
“Hello, Susan. This is a pleasure.” She was sure that her blink and swiftly arched eyebrow betrayed her surprise. The man looked the epitome of sophistication, but his drawl and slow speech were not that of an urban sophisticate. He glanced toward the driver’s seat. “Why are you stopping, Grace? Anything wrong?”
“Have you looked out of the window recently,” Grace asked him and stopped the car just beyond an exit on the FDR Drive. “I can’t see two feet in front of me, it’s raining so hard.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” August said, his eyes back on Susan. “Did Grace say ‘Miss Andrews’?”
“I sure did,” Grace put in quickly.
“How is that? I can’t believe such a lovely lady isn’t married.”
“I suppose if I’m single, there’s something wrong with me,” she said in cool even tones, pulling her hand from his. He’s only a man, she told herself, though her pounding heart and racing blood belied it.
“Ah, Susan, how could you imagine such a thing? You’re very beautiful, and I just think it’s strange that some man hasn’t convinced you to marry him. That’s all.” She didn’t respond, but she noticed that peculiar smile of his start toward his eyes again.
Then he said, “I hope you’re not against marriage.” She wished he’d get off the subject of her and marriage, and she turned to him with the intention of putting the matter to rest. She just hoped he didn’t notice how her heart jumped in her chest when she looked straight at him.
“Mr. Jackson,” she said coolly, refusing to use his first name, “I am not against marriage, but the time, energy, and imagination spent on courting and pretending not to want what one knows one wants is a waste of time. It’s a phoney process, but that’s the way it’s done, and I don’t have time or the inclination for it.”
“Hmm. I see,” he replied drolly and glanced out the window as though inspecting his chances of getting more agreeable company soon.
“What do you see? In developing countries, marriages are contracted by a very simple procedure. Either the parents or the individuals engage a marriage broker or a matchmaker to find a mate. In some places, an astrologer makes the selection. The marriages work just as well, and divorce is rare by our standards.” Satisfied that she’d made her point, Susan crossed her legs and looked out of the window as the water cascaded from above.
“Susan, I’m disappointed that you aren’t romantic,” August drawled in what was clearly a mild reproof. “I thought most women bloomed with lovely music, candlelight, and romance.” Hurt and hiding it, Susan lifted her chin as though that gesture would silence him.
“Most women don’t have my responsibilities.”
“Or your beauty and poise,” he added.
“Why is it, Mr. Jackson, that men can’t talk without getting personal?” She caught his grin from the corner of her left eye.
“Oh, they can, and they do. And when you get to be fifty-five or sixty, you’ll know just what I’m talking about.” Surprised at his dig and concluding that he was smoother than she had surmised, she changed the subject.
> “You don’t speak as if you’re a New Yorker. I think I hear a drawl.”
“Right on both counts,” he agreed. “I’m from North Carolina. Down there, we men aren’t getting familiar when we pay a woman a compliment. And our women know that.” Evidently Grace had been quiet as long as she could, because her words seemed to rush out of her.
“Don’t worry about the time, you all, nobody’s going to be on time for work today. I can just about start now, though it’s still pretty dense. Mr. Jackson, did you say you were looking for your son?” Susan sat forward, aware that with her occult abilities, Grace knew whether August Jackson was looking for anyone and for whom.
“No,” he replied. “I don’t have any children, unfortunately. I’m looking for my brother. We were separated when he was eight and I was ten. I’ve been looking for him ever since. How did you happen to ask?”
“Oh, I dabble in astrology and clairvoyance, though I’m at my best when I do charts,” she said proudly, “but since I saw a young boy in the stars, I thought it was your son.”
“I’ve never married. Wasn’t in a position to until just recently and, now that I could consider it, I find that these New York women are too much. I’m not going to start running around in a tuxedo every night, hanging out in bars, and competing for the attention of maître d’s. This place is a mad house. Aramis cologne is out and some kind of ‘noir’ is in. Would you believe one of our secretaries looked down at my feet and said ‘oh gee, are those…?’ Her voice seemed to die, literally, before she said, ‘no, I see they’re not Guccis.’ Those shoes cost me one hundred and thirty-nine dollars plus tax, and she scoffed at them because they don’t have a Gucci label.”
“Not all of our New York girls are like that,” Grace hastened to say, having discovered his single status. He continued as though it were his favorite grouse.
“These women have such superficial values, Grace. Do you think one of them would get on a public bus, however clean, with you? When she’s by herself, yes. But if you’re paying, these New York girls are subject to demand a stretched out limousine just to go to a neighborhood movie. I’m used to a different type, one who wants to be with me for myself rather than for the admiration and envious looks she gets from other people.”
“Now, don’t you worry none,” Grace insisted, “we’ve got nice girls here that’s different. You just quit hanging around those corporate secretaries and take a good long look at some of the other ones.”
Susan refused to look either at her aunt, whom she wanted to throttle, or at August Jackson, who excited and infuriated her at the same time. She got out at her office building after bidding the man a cool goodbye.
August leaned back in the corner of the cab, doing his best to keep the grin that he knew Grace could see in her rearview mirror off his face. He hadn’t lied, but he’d phrased his conversation in such a way as to tell Susan Andrews that she could get off of her high horse or not, he couldn’t care less. She was cut from cloth that he liked, and when he liked something, he explored it. Fully. Talk about a double whammy. She’d poleaxed him. No indeed; she hadn’t seen the last of August Jackson.
“Is she really like that,” he asked Grace, “or was she putting me on?”
“Well, Mr. Jackson, she thinks she’s like that.”
“Thinks? You mean she isn’t?” This was getting more interesting by the minute.
“She hasn’t given herself a chance to find out what she’s like. She thinks life is work and chasing goals.”
“Nothing wrong with going after a goal, depending, of course, on what it is. Maybe what she needs is a new one. Maybe more than one.” He found himself warming up to the subject. Susan Andrews had some traits that he liked, and one of them was a distaste for superficiality. He tuned in to Grace’s next words.
“That’s what I keep telling her. She wants to get married, but she doesn’t want to. No, Mr. Jackson, the truth is she refuses to be bothered with the nice little rituals that you have to go through before you get married.” He smiled inwardly, appreciating Grace’s niece more with the seconds. “Very interesting.”
“Is it?” an obviously disapproving Grace wanted to know. “She’s really a wonderful person, socially conscious and all that…you know…a good girl. But she’s just so cut and dried.”
“Hmm.” Socially conscious, was she? His adrenaline stepped up. He intended to get to know Susan Andrews.
“What does she do for recreation?” he asked, trying to get a rounded picture of her.
“I’m not sure she knows what that is, Mr. Jackson.”
“Hmm,” was all he said as Grace pulled up to the curb in front of the forty-story office building in which he worked. After giving her a receipt for the ride, he turned to go with just seven minutes in which to get to the twenty-second floor conference room. He pivoted around when Grace called out to him and beckoned him to her side of the cab.
“Could you give me your date, day, and time of birth? I’d like to do your chart.” August smiled. He had become fond of Grace. She wasn’t old enough—maybe fifty—to be motherly, but she’d pass for a wonderful older sister. “I won’t misuse whatever I find,” she quickly assured him.
“I’m not afraid of that,” he said and gave her the information.
Susan bumped into one of her peers as she stepped off of the elevator. “Keep your hands to yourself,” she warned Oscar Hicks, one of the other senior lawyers. She had stopped trying to figure out whether he touched her because he found her irresistible—something she doubted—wanted to control her as a woman because he couldn’t best her as a lawyer or whether he was an insensitive clout who’d been lucky enough to get a law degree. She went into her office, closed the door, and got to work. August Jackson wouldn’t try to demean a woman. Now where had that thought come from? She picked up the phone and buzzed her secretary.
“Lila, cancel my nine-thirty staff meeting and reschedule it for two this afternoon. I’m sure this morning’s storm delayed a few people.”
“Yes, Ms. Andrews.” Susan maintained strict protocol; none of her staff addressed her by her first name. She sat back in her chair. And she was going to put Oscar Hicks in his place once and for all, next time he gave her the opportunity.
Three afternoons later after dropping off three of August’s colleagues, Grace said to him, “Well, I did your chart, and I’ll say you’re one fine human being.”
“Thank you, Grace. I take it that’s not all.” He leaned forward, waiting to hear what she had to say.
“Well, if you don’t mind my saying so, you and Susan are a perfect match. I’m never wrong, Mr. Jackson, and believe me, you’re perfect. I’ve been doing charts since I was a teenager, and I’ve never found such a perfect pair. I just did hers earlier this week.”
“What else did you see?”
“You don’t shoot pool, do you?”
“I wouldn’t know how to hold a cue stick. Why?”
“Well, this showed you getting out from behind a ball that had an eight on it. I’ll work it out further, if you want me to.”
“Well, I don’t know, Grace, I’ve never paid much attention to this sort of thing.” He didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but he doubted you could look at the stars and determine a man’s future.
“If you don’t believe me,” she argued, “next time Susan rides with us, ask her if I’ve ever been wrong in anything she knows about. Just ask her.”
Anxiety knotted his insides, and he couldn’t help smiling at himself. “When will that be?”
“I can pick her up when I take you down tomorrow morning. Okay?” She’d played into his hand. He’d already decided that he wanted to see Susan Andrews again; he’d state his own case.
Her aunt’s offer of a lift surprised Susan; Grace usually waited to be asked. She had reliable corporate clients whom she drove to and from work weekday mornings and, occasionally at other times, if she was free, when they beeped her. But she didn’t solicit anybody’s business, including that o
f her niece. She had her customers, and they gave her as much work as she could handle.
“You’re picking me up this morning?” she asked Grace.
“Well, I’m not doing you a favor,” Grace said bluntly. “August doubts my word, and I want you to verify what I told him. I’ll be there at quarter to eight.” Grace hung up. Susan stared at the phone for a minute, then shocked herself by tossing her pinstriped suit aside and grabbing the royal blue one. She draped a red scarf around her neck and left her fur coat hanging open as she walked from the building to the taxi in twenty-one degree weather. Let him think what he liked.
“Good morning, Susan,” August greeted her. “Are you always so lovely?” She jerked around to give him a good silent censure only to find him grinning broadly.
“Oh, you…” she sputtered, unable to hide her pleasure at his compliment.
“Grace says her charts are never wrong.”
So that was it, Grace had done his chart. “She never has been, at least not to my knowledge.” Why did he fold his hands and lean back in the seat looking as though he’d just won a big lottery?
“Aunt Grace, what’s going on here? What have you been doing?”
“Nothing. I just did his chart, and he acted like he wasn’t going to take it seriously. I did yours, and I did his, and I never saw the likes of it in my life. If I was superstitious, I’d quit charting.”
“You are superstitious.” She turned to August. “My aunt doesn’t tell things she sees that are really bad, so what did she say?”
“Well, if you’re sure you want to know.”
“I want to know.”
“She said you’re the woman for me. My perfect match.”
Her handbag slipped to the floor as she half stood, forgetting where she was. “She said what?”
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