“But love,” he continued, “love is something else again.” His voice grew more gentle, and he let his body sway closer until his knees were pressed against hers, until he caught the scent of her perfume. “I love you, Margarita. I love your mind. I love the talent you try so hard to suppress.” He reached out and drew his hand lightly along the curve of her cheekbones, the chiseled perfection of her jaw. “I love your beauty, the way you give yourself to me each night. Everything you are is precious to me.” He moved away from her again, knowing that it was imperative that she understand what he was saying to her. “Even if I never had the pleasures of your body again, it wouldn’t change a thing. I would still love you, Margarita Lindstrom. I would still love you.”
He waited. Time stretched around him like a rubber band ready to snap. He wasn't sure he was even breathing. The only thing he knew was that the rest of his life hung on her next words.
She got up from the couch and walked toward him and he waited.
She stopped in front of him and aimed her words at his heart. “Oh, Joe," she said on a sigh. "I think I’ve loved you from the start.”
#
Everything changed with those words.
Their lovemaking grew slow and luxurious, rich with the knowledge that there would be many more nights for them.
Promises were made in the night. Neither one was willing to pretend that what they’d found together was anything less than the kind of love and friendship that would take a lifetime to explore. Details weren’t discussed and no plans were made, but the one reality was that they had pledged themselves to a future together.
And then it was their last week at Lakeland. The yard was filled with the sounds of night creatures scurrying across the hard earth in search of food and shelter. Meg and Joe lay together in their room, bodies covered by the patchwork quilt, and watched the way the light from the stars and moon spilled through the unshuttered window and splashed across the glowing oak floor. Meg felt more incandescent than any star, more magical than the light from ten moons.
Her head rested on Joe’s muscular, amazing chest. Strands of her long, pale hair drifted across her face, and every now and then Joe would smooth them away from her skin, wrapping their silky lengthy around his hand as if to bind her to him forever. She was surprised over and over by the fact that intense physical pleasure could lead to intense spiritual joy.
She pressed a kiss against his hair-roughened chest. “We must have invented this,” she said, her voice lazy with satisfaction. “I can’t believe anyone on earth has ever been this happy.”
He chuckled. The low rumble tickled her ear. “When it’s right, it seems that way.” He stroked her hair and pinpoints of awareness tingled across her scalp. “We keep reinventing what we need to be happy.”
“I didn’t know you were a philosopher.”
“All writers are to one degree or another. We just get to put our own philosophies into the mouths of our characters.”
She thought about the Angelique Moreau books. Despite the high degree of sensuality and excitement in the sprawling sagas, family ties had been the strongest theme, the unbreakable bloodline linking one generation to the next.
“I’m surprised you never married,” she said. “With your background, you should have a wife and six kids by now.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “I thought I’d have them by now, too.”
Her curiosity overcame her natural reticence. “Have you ever been in love?”
“Before now?”
“Yes,” she said. “Before now.”
“I thought I was once.” His eyes closed against a memory that Meg almost feared.”Rita and I went together through high school. We got engaged right after I was drafted.”
“What happened?”
He looked at her, all lightness gone from his eyes. “Time happened. Distance happened. Vietnam happened. When I came back, I couldn’t settle down to be the nine-to-five breadwinner she wanted. Three-piece suits felt like straitjackets, and the idea of ‘happily ever after’ seemed like some psychedelic distortion of reality.”
“What happened to Rita?”
“A nice accountant named Artie DeFalco. They live in Bayside now. A duplex with an eight-percent mortgage, a new car every year and two kids to send to college.”
“You keep in touch with her?” He didn’t seem the type to carry a torch for almost fifteen years.
“My mother keeps in touch with her every Christmas. Ma likes to let me know how respectable people conduct their lives.”
“Poor Joe,” she said, kissing the underside of his firm jaw. “Poor disreputable writer.”
“What about you?” he asked. “Have you ever been in love before?”
“I’ve dated, if that’s what you mean, but never anything serious. When I was in school, I was one of those terribly artsy types who sublimated desire for unbridled creativity. You would have hated me.”
Joe, however, found that hard to believe. “Where did you get the idea that celibacy promoted creativity?” His six months of celibacy had done wonders for his soul but very little for his creativity.
“My sister. Kay was a workaholic, and dutiful little sister that I was, I followed suit.”
“You thought it would make your parents love you more?”
She shrugged. “It couldn’t hurt. Besides, I don’t think I was ready for anything heavy. I had enough trouble keeping my self-esteem afloat with my family. A broken heart would’ve done me in.”
“So you steered clear all the way through college.”
“With the help of my trusty camera and tripod.”
“What about after graduation? Wasn’t there ever one guy who mattered more than the others? Another photographer, maybe?”
“When I left Stony Brook, I started a project on old whaling villages. National Geographic was interested in my work, and I didn’t have time or energy for anything else.” She fell silent. “Even my parents were impressed.” She drew her hand across her eyes. “I was on Maui, at Lahaina, working on the series when Kay was killed.” Another long silence. “They were destroyed by it. I reached out to them . . . I thought we would go through this like a family . . . gain strength from each other but—“ She shrugged her shoulders. “That didn’t happen. After that I traveled for a year and you know the rest. I’m now the world’s most overqualified limo driver.”
He thought of the photos he’d left with Renee, photos good enough to excite even his very difficult to impress agent. The idea that the woman capable of taking those pictures was the same woman who spent her days driving a limo to the airport was incomprehensible to him.
“Why do you do it? Do you need the money?”
“Who doesn’t?” she tossed back. Both were aware that her answer was too quick, too glib. “Okay, so I don’t need it desperately,” she conceded when Joe said nothing. “Kay left me a great deal of money and so far the bank sees that it keeps growing.”
“Terrific,” Joe said. “So why aren’t you out there with your camera right now? Why hide behind the steering wheel of a stretch?” He was relentless in his need to know. “You have the talent.”
She pulled away from him and he had to remind himself that this was the Margarita of flesh and blood and not the woman he had created, a character whose actions he controlled.
“I know I’m good,” she said. “Okay, I’m damn good. But after Kay died, it didn’t seem important anymore.”
“I don’t get it.” She looked away and he could see her planning an escape. “I want to understand, Meg.”
“For a long time I was second-best. When Kay died, I lost my incentive. I had no one to pattern myself after, no one to look up to and—“ She stopped.
Joe, however, was able to fill in the blanks. “And no one to beat.”
“How do you top a hero?” she asked softly, brown eyes filling with tears. “What kind of person would even want to try?”
“You weren’t the one who died, Meg. You still have the ri
ght to your own life, your own success.”
He thought of telling her about Renee and her interest in the pictures of Hunt, but the moment was so special, so intensely personal, that he kept silent, afraid his attempt to help would be misunderstood.
“So how do you get back on track?” he asked.
“Oh God, Joe, I have no idea. Look up some of my old contacts in Manhattan, maybe. Compile a new portfolio.” She groaned. “I don’t have a clue.”
“You could stay here,” he said. “You don’t have to go back to New York at all. You could work on that series of photos you took of Hunt’s imaginary village.” He took a deep breath. “I could even contact my agent and have her take a look. Maybe she—“
“Forget it.” Her fire had turned to ice. “Don’t push, Joe. I’ll work it out on my own. I always have.”
“There’s nothing wrong with a few introductions,” he said, feeling annoyed and guilty at the same time.
“I’m not looking for any introductions.”
“Your sister helped you. There’s no reason I can’t.”
“I meant when I said don’t push.” He must have looked more upset than he realized, because she suddenly thawed and reached for his hand. “I have to walk before I can run, don’t I?”
“Why run when you can fly?”
She said nothing. He pulled her closer, and she tugged the quilt up over both of them against the draft that whistled through the cracks around the window. For days, as the pages of his Angelique Moreau novel began piling up beside his typewriter, he’d felt himself gathering speed, gaining strength, recovering his old agility. His future no longer seemed barren; he no longer felt he’d be trapped behind a string of fake names. His own past didn’t frighten him any longer; he’d even begun outlining the Vietnam story he’d put off writing for so long.
He kissed the top of her head. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For the inspiration.”
She moved away slightly and narrowed her eyes. “Inspiration for what?”
“Fire’s Lady. When I got here I hadn't written anything in four months, two weeks, and three days. I thought Angelique was finished. A few weeks ago I would’ve asked you if there was room in your business for another limo driver.”
“What was the problem?”
“Everything and nothing. Maybe I’m getting tired of hiding behind someone else’s name. Maybe I’m tired of writing someone else’s story.” The story about Vietnam, about an American teenager coming to terms with death and new life, was Joseph Alessio’s to tell.
“I still don’t see how I helped you.”
“I’d been having trouble catching the spirit of the heroine,” he began, feeling suddenly awkward and exposed. “For a long time now I’ve wondered if I’d played out my hand. I knew I had to create a high-spirited, strong, beautiful woman to found the Franklin dynasty, but she never came to life.” He hesitated then went for broke. “And then I met you.”
Still nothing from the real Margarita.
“The second I saw you square your shoulders and go back into the church at Anna’s funeral, I knew you were the woman I’d been searching for.”
“For your book, of course,” she said, a smile teasing the corners of her mouth.
“What else?” They both knew it went far deeper.
“And what’s the woman’s name?”
“Margarita,” he said, drawing her back into his arms.
He pulled her on top of him, then rolled over so his body covered hers and their mouths were just a breath apart.
“And what are you up to, Angelique Moreau?” she asked, her dark eyes twinkling.
“Research,” he said.
#
Meg found Joe drooped over his typewriter the next morning, his dark hair flopping across his forehead, his glasses sliding down his strong nose. She stopped in the doorway and held an imaginary camera to her eyes.
“Click, click.” She grinned at him when he jumped in surprise. “I call it Writer in Torment.” She crossed the room to him, an envelope tucked under her arm. “Is my namesake giving you trouble?”
He pulled her across his lap, and she laughed. The envelope fell to the floor near them, but it went unnoticed as he pressed kisses along her throat and shoulders.
“I know how to handle Margarita,” he said, demonstrating with hands and mouth just how accurate a statement that was. “It’s these damned biographies that are doing me in.”
She leaned over and glanced at the piece of white paper sticking out of his portable. “’Thomas Preston was born in Manhattan in 1931. He attended the Parsons School of Design, and after graduation he—‘” Meg stood up and looked at Joe.
He raked his hands through his already tousled hair. “Is it as bad as I think it is?”
“It stinks.”
“You’re blunt,” he said. “I’ll give you that.” He reached for the cigarette resting on the edge of the nearly overflowing ashtray. “I’ve written so many of these the past few weeks that I can do them blindfolded.”
“I know what you mean. I’m alphabetizing things in my sleep.” She glanced at his empty coffee cup and poured him a refill from the carafe on the credenza behind his desk. “Maybe some caffeine will rev your motor.”
He grinned at her, his good humor clearly restored. “I know a few other ways to rev my motor.”
“Keep it in neutral a few more minutes,” she said as she bent down to retrieve the envelope. “I want you to take a look at these.”
#
Meg handed him a stack of photos then stepped away from the desk. It took less than a millisecond for Joe to recognize them as her work.
“Where did you find these?” he asked, not looking up at her.
“With Anna’s personal papers.” She cleared her throat. “I thought maybe we could use them for the first section of the final chapter.”
Maybe we could use them? The photos were exactly what they’d been needing.
“This is the one.” He gestured toward the shot of Anna and a group of young dancers. “That look of exultation on her face—that’s the essence of Anna.” He looked up at Meg. “It’s yours, isn’t it.”
Her smile was both nervous and proud. “Yes.”
“You took all of them.”
She nodded. “I may have resigned myself to just being a footnote in the Colony’s history, but a photo credit would still be nice.”
His smile was slightly self-mocking. “No pseudonyms?”
“It’s just a start,” she said slowly, as if she were sorting out her feelings before she gave them voice.
He put the pictures back down on the desk. “So what do you expect to come of this?”
“Nothing.” She laughed and spread her hands open wide. “Everything. God, I just don’t know, Joe. I’ve been getting so restless these past weeks, so aware that time is slipping away.”
He stood up and took her in his arms. “Time won’t slip away from us. We’re going to have all the time in the world.” He thought she understood that finishing their project didn’t mean their relationship was finished too. Things between them had gone too far for that.
Her cheek was cool and soft, but he could feel her warmth beneath the surface. “I know that. I was talking about my work. There’s no guarantee the world is waiting for me. None of my old contacts are even in New York anymore.”
“So we’ll find out where they are and go to them. I can always ask Renee to—“
She pulled away from him. “Forget it, Joe. I let Kay pave the way for me, and it backfired. Let me worry about my own career.”
She tried to soften her words with a smile but Joe still felt stung. “I’m not talking patronage. It’s called networking.”
“I call it interference.”
“Writers rely on contacts and intros all the time.”
“I’m not a writer.”
“Fine,” he said, seriously pissed. “Do it yourself.”
She waited quietly for a
few moments. He could feel her dark-eyed gaze on him, but he didn’t look up.
“Have you had breakfast?” she asked finally.
He nodded but said nothing.
“Want more coffee?” She was sounding less conciliatory by the second.
He shook his head.
“Fine,” she said, storming toward the door. “Sulk all you want, Alessio. I’ll be in the upstairs library.”
Joe worked alone for the next few hours. The library was directly over the study, and he could hear the sounds of her footsteps on the parquet floor as she paced back and forth. Six steps to the left, six steps to the right, pause near the window. Then six steps to the left again, six steps to the right. He even found himself typing up the rough draft of a bio in the same staccato rhythm of her heels against the floor over his head.
Finally, around two o’clock, the footsteps stopped, and he assumed she’d finally settled down at the desk like a normal person. So when she popped up at the door to the study around three-thirty bearing a piping-hot pepperoni pizza from the shop in town, he was taken totally by surprise.
“Enough with the sulking.” She crossed the room toward him, pizza held high. “How about we bury the hatchet?”
He removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Peace offering, is it?”
“If you kick in on half the price, it is.” Her dark eyes danced and he knew she had worked through her irritation with him.
“I still think you’re stubborn as all hell,” he said as he stood, stretching his aching muscles.
“And I still think you’re too damned pushy.” She headed toward the door. “But right now the most important thing is that pizza.”
He was two sentences away from finishing the bio of an important art critic. “Let me wrap this up and I’ll be right there.”
The Edge of Forever Page 14