Intimate

by Donna Huxley

  'For heaven's sake,' she stopped herself with an exasperated laugh, 'get control of yourself. These are nightmares, not real possibilities. It will all work out somehow.'

  But in her momentary panic she had begun removing. some of her clothes from the closet, as though in preparation for a hasty escape from Marsh. And now, as she contemplated the dresses and shirts that hung in his closet, the idea of leaving this apartment did not seem unreasonable. After last night's cruel quarrel and this morning's dramatic news, she needed time to think. Marsh's bitter, scowling presence was hardly conducive to dispassionate reflection.

  And Marsh himself could certainly benefit from some well-deserved solitude after his lamentable behaviour towards her. Let him think things over as well, she thought. When they had both had time to cool off, she would tell him about her pregnancy, and firmly insist on an equitable solution to their mutual problem.

  Her overnight bag was already filled. Her winter coat lay on the bed beside it. She had moved with a sort of nervous automatism in her preparations to leave. After briefly considering calling Sally, she decided against the idea. Better to stick to her policy of leaving Sally's untroubled college life free of her older sister's complex problems.

  After a moment's hesitation she dialled her office number at N.T.E.L.

  'Debby Johnson, please,' she said into the receiver.

  'Just a moment.'

  A loud click jangled in Anna's ear.

  'Research 4-A.'

  'Call for Debby Johnson.'

  'This is Debby.'

  'Hi,' Anna began uncertainly. 'This is me.'

  'Anna! How are you?'

  'Fine. Listen, Deb, would it be terribly inconvenient for you if I stayed at your place for a couple of nights? Or even just for tonight?'

  'Not at all,' Debby answered brightly. 'I'd love to have you. But are you all right, Anna? You sound upset.'

  'I'm fine,' said Anna, a trifle shocked to realise that her anxiety was so palpable. 'I just need to get away for a little while. Marsh and I… well, things are not going well. I have to do some thinking, and I can't do it here.'

  'All right,' Debby said authoritatively. 'Just relax, Anna. Let me see… I'll tell you what. Do you want to meet me down here after work, or would you rather go over to my place right now?'

  'Perhaps I should go straight to your apartment,' said Anna, feeling loath to set foot on N.T.E.L.'s premises.

  'Okay, why don't you just head right over, and I'll call the superintendent—he'll let you in. But do me a favour, Anna. Don't go back out once you get there. You sound a little nervous, and my neighbourhood isn't the greatest. Just wait for me to get there, all right?'

  'All right,' laughed Anna, touched by her friend's excessive concern. 'I'll see you later. And thanks a million, Debby.'

  After what seemed an eternity of stops and starts in the inner city's crowded traffic, Anna's taxi came to a halt before Debby's ancient brick apartment building. The West Side location was a complex bus ride away from the Loop, so Anna had hailed a cab after stopping at her bank to withdraw sufficient funds for a few days on her own. A maze of unfamiliar streets had passed before her tired eyes during the long ride, and to her surprise she found herself nearly lulled to sleep despite the cab's bumpy progress.

  Debby's superintendent was waiting for Anna, and even insisted on carrying her bag upstairs. Apparently grateful for someone to talk to, he managed to air his opinions on the city's political and economic woes in the two minutes it took to reach the apartment. Mustering a smile, Anna thanked him for his help and gratefully closed the door.

  Now she sat, her emotions drained, among the furnishings she recognised from occasional visits to Debby during her years at N.T.E.L. Debby's knitting basket was on the couch across from the television. Pictures of her parents and brothers stood on a table. A few of the myriad detective novels she devoured each month were scattered here and there. In the middle of the carpet, like a foreign creature standing at sixes and sevens in the midst of all this domesticity, was Anna's overnight bag, draped by her coat.

  Listlessly Anna tried to recall the episodes in her past which had been accompanied by the strange, bereft feelings she now experienced in this lonely silence. There was the time she and Sally had gone to stay with an aunt while their parents attended the funeral of a grandparent. There was Anna's first day at summer camp, when she was eleven years old. And her first day at college, in the unfamiliarity of the dorm. Above all she recalled the first day she had sat at the kitchen table in her family's home, knowing that the place would soon be sold and disappear from her life, for now her parents were both dead. How strange the things of the world seem, she reflected, when one's life is at a crossroads. How unfriendly and foreign the carpets, the windows, the furniture.

  Yet somehow, with the passage of time, she had always managed to make a place for herself among people and things which gradually took on the warm supportive glow of the familiar. But she could not help wondering whether such accommodation were to be hers again soon. For months now she had seen the few secure reference points in her life shaken by circumstances, and then finally destroyed. What flat, what furnished room lay ahead for her once her inevitable separation from Marsh became a reality? What future home awaited her new baby next summer? At what hospital would she have the baby? Where would she buy its clothes?

  Exhaustedly she gave up thinking of practical things. Moving Debby's knitting basket to the floor, she reclined on the couch and stared mutely at the ceiling. One thing was sure: wherever she ended up, she would not be alone. Her baby would be with her. And no matter what struggles lay ahead, she would soon find herself feeding the child, buying it toys, playing with it, in a room somewhere…

  Boy or girl? she wondered dreamily. The little hands would wave and grasp at her hair, her face, during the first months. The child would coo with pleasure between the crying spells which would be its only way to communicate its needs. She would carry it around the room, rocking it in her arms to soothe its tears away. She would go to a department store to shop for its first winter jacket, a tiny garment made of quilted, shiny material…

  She had sunk into sleepy reverie when a gentle knock came at the door. Sitting up with a start, she wondered who it could be. Had Debby come home early? Had she lost her key?

  Recalling Debby's warnings about the neighbourhood outside, Anna tentatively turned the knob and opened the door enough to see into the hallway. Dark eyes were staring into her own. A shock of wavy hair, tossed by the wintry wind outside, hung over the strong brow. Concern was in the ebony eyes, along with an enigmatic gentleness she could not fathom.

  She stepped back in involuntary trepidation. In a trice Marsh had entered the room and closed the door behind him.

  Still retreating despite herself, Anna moved towards the couch. The anger and suspicion she felt at his sudden appearance were outweighed by the visceral fear his powerful form evoked.

  He was advancing calmly, a curiously friendly and even mischievous look in his eye.

  'You're not running away from me, are you?' he smiled.

  'No,' she answered shortly, unsure of his meaning. 'How did you know I was here? Why aren't you working?'

  'I am working,' he said. 'I've just finished a job, and I'm touching bases with the people directly concerned with it.'

  'I don't understand,' she said, giving him a wide berth as he sat down. 'How could you know I was here?'

  'That was a piece of luck,' he said. 'I happened to be standing right next to Debby when your call came. You know, Anna, it's funny. You've never had anything but bad luck from N.T.E.L., but I seem to get my best breaks there. First I bump into a beautiful woman who becomes my wife, and then I'm lucky enough to be standing there when she calls up in search of a place to stay.'

  'Debby shouldn't have told you,' Anna frowned. 'I wanted… I want some time alone, Marsh.'

  'Of course you do,' he said. 'What woman wouldn't want some time away from a husband who didn't ha
ve sense enough to put his faith in her? Especially after the poor fool spent weeks making life a hell for her, because of his stupid, stubborn pride?'

  'Marsh, what are you saying?' Unnerved by the tenderness of his demeanour, Anna could not suppress the reflexive suspicion produced by her many angry days with him. 'I don't understand you.'

  'What I'm trying to say,' he smiled, 'is that since the day I met you, Anna. I've been the luckiest man in the world, and too damned stubborn to appreciate the fact. If you're willing to listen to me, I hope I can convince you that I'm not all bad.'

  'If you're talking about last night,' Anna said coldly, 'you might as well save your breath, Marsh. What happened wasn't the end of the world. I didn't leave home today because of one quarrel, but because…'

  'I know,' he interrupted, 'I know, Anna. Maybe you should have walked out on me weeks ago. I'm just happy you hung on as long as you did. It shows that you had something left for me inside you. If it isn't too late, perhaps you'll be willing to take a chance on me—on us—one more time.'

  'Nothing has changed,' she protested, determined to find out what was behind his apparent change of heart.

  'That's where you're wrong,' he corrected. 'Everything has changed. I've changed, Anna. Why, you'd be amazed at how many things can change in one morning. For instance,' he said with a wry grin, 'there's a fellow over at N.T.E.L. named Porter Deman who's out of a job today. I'm sure that was the last thing in the world he expected to happen.'

  Anna started involuntarily at his mention of the name she thought he had never heard.

  'Porter Deman?' she repeated confusedly. 'How did you…'

  'And,' he smiled with the complacency of the cat who had eaten the canary, 'you have an unlikely friend to thank for getting Mr Deman his walking papers. Can you guess who?'

  She shook her head, dumbfounded by his revelations.

  'A lady named May Reynolds,' he grinned.

  Anna stared at him with a perplexity in which a first tiny hint of confidence glimmered.

  'May?' she said. 'What do you mean? What happened? What are you saying?'

  'Before I go on,' he laughed, taking her hand, 'I want to know if you're going to sit here quietly and listen to me, and not jump up and run away without hearing the facts. If you don't mind a small reproach, Anna, I think your trouble all along has been your tendency to go off alone with your problems, instead of asking yourself who your real friends are. Now, will you trust me long enough to listen?'

  She nodded uncertainly, feeling a stir of renewed faith under the chaos of her emotions.

  'Actually, Anna,' Marsh began, 'I can't blame you all that much for the secretiveness that's brought on your troubles. I'm not an ogre, you know—though I may have acted like one all this time. I can understand what sexual harassment can do to a person. Of course the shock would be terrible, and you would want to forget it at all costs. But hiding the truth from those you love has its own high price, you know.'

  'What have you done?' she asked. 'How did you find out…?'

  'Well,' he said, 'I certainly didn't get the help I needed from you, did I? It took me a while to get my sanity back, after seeing that damned file, and since you wouldn't tell me Deman's name I had to find out for myself. Now that I look back on it all, I can see that you were afraid of what I'd do to that worm if you told me. I have to admit you were right. I was so angry at him—whoever he was—and what he'd done to you, that I let my anger spill over on to you. I should have realised that you would tell me the story in your own time, but instead I blamed you for not trusting me with it from the beginning. I was wrong, Anna, and I apologise.'

  As he spoke, the firm lines of his face softened, and Anna began to recognise in him the brightly introspective man she had found so irresistible during the first days of their relationship.

  'And,' he sighed, 'the whole story was so outrageous that I'll confess I had my doubts about your complete innocence. There's no point in apologising for that, because it's unforgivable. I had my nerve to doubt you, when I was so outraged that you didn't trust me enough to tell me the truth in the first place.'

  'It wasn't a question of trust,' Anna explained. 'It was… shame, and embarrassment, and I don't know what else. I should have told you, Marsh. But at the time, I didn't know what was in that file. I just knew that he'd done something…'

  'I know,' he said. 'I understand, Anna—although I didn't at first. Being as stubborn as you are, I had to figure things out in my own way and in my own time.

  'After our quarrel about the file,' he went on, 'I couldn't forget your reasons for not suing N.T.E.L. to get your job back. The only way to do justice to you, on the assumption that you were innocent, was to get the guy who framed you. In order to do that I first had to know who he was. So I made a call to the lady whose apartment we're now sitting in. She told me the whole story: Porter Deman, you, Barbara what's-her-name, Charles Robbins. She didn't know the details about the classified file you were supposed to have pulled from the computer, but she damned well knew the real reason they fired you.'

  He smiled, his large hand grazing Anna's cheek.

  'I had a lot of male instincts to keep under control,' he confessed, 'and it wasn't easy. But I've had some experience in this kind of thing, so I came up with a plan to get at the truth behind your file. It was pretty simple—the oldest trick in the book, as a matter of fact. Good old May Reynolds, who, as I told you, doesn't happen to be my type—but who is a crackerjack professional and a good-looking woman— went over to N.T.E.L. and got herself a job in your department. This was after I had a little interview with the head of Personnel, Mr Robbins, who had already been contacted by me, and was only too happy to oblige me.'

  Placing a finger under her chin, Marsh tilted Anna's face towards his own and grinned with rueful humour.

  'Poor Anna,' he said. 'You really haven't had much luck with men recently. Chuck Robbins is a nice guy, and he was terribly guilty about letting you go. He'd suspected there was something in your story, but hadn't bothered to investigate it thoroughly. When I had his secretary print out your personnel file, he nearly had a heart attack. Of course he could see the malice behind it, so he knew he'd made a big mistake.'

  'Was all this the reason why he didn't answer me when I sent him the copy you'd ordered?' asked Anna. 'I never forgave him for that, you know.'

  'For that, you can forgive him,' Marsh nodded. 'He was protecting our operation, which had to be secret. For the rest, Anna—for not believing you in the first place, and for not investigating Deman himself—you can forgive him if you have a charitable heart. He was scared to rock the boat, I suppose. Of course, once he'd seen the doctored personnel file and talked to me, he had no choice but to go along with us.

  'So,' Marsh continued with a deep breath, 'May, under an assumed name, and dressed in her sexiest outfit, went to work at N.T.E.L. Before a few days had passed, the inevitable happened. Deman cornered her in a back room and told her she'd better have dinner with him, or else. She refused, politely. The next day it was the same thing, only he put the screws to her a little more—dinner with me, or you're fired. Fearfully, May accepted the invitation. At dinner, he put his cards on the table. A good personal relationship is the key to a good working relationship. And so on. Does that ring a bell?'

  Anna nodded, flushing anew under the memory of what she had suffered at the hands of Porter Deman.

  'Well, we couldn't stop there,' Marsh went on. 'Heroically, courageously, Miss Karff—that was May's alias—resisted Deman's threats. It went on for several weeks—weeks during which, across town, you and I, both as stubborn as ever, were giving each other the silent treatment.' He paused. 'I'll get around to apologising properly for that later. And to making it up to you somehow, Anna. I acted like a pig, and I'll never forgive myself.'

  'Marsh, if only I'd known that you were trying to help me all along,' Anna sighed. 'Why didn't you tell me? Why did we have to go on the way we did?'

  'Several reasons,' h
e sighed. 'There was May's cover to consider, and we still didn't have definitive proof of your innocence. After all, there were no traces of Deman's own hand on the computer, either with the classified file or with your doctored personnel file. But most of all, Anna, I'm afraid it was because our quarrel had escalated itself out of all proportion to the situation. I was still mad about the way you'd hidden things from me, and I was in no mood to let you off the hook until I had the goods on Deman. When you sent that file back to Robbins without telling me, it seemed that you were determined to go on keeping your secrets. And last but not least,' he frowned, 'was your new job at Ariel. I couldn't help thinking you were planning to walk out on me as soon as you'd made enough money. Was I wrong, Anna?'

  She shook her head in chagrin. 'I'm afraid not,' she admitted. In retrospect she realised she had given Marsh ample reason to fear that her commitment to him was fragile indeed. And now she recalled the probing intimacy of his lovemaking during these unhappy weeks. Her own tormented emotions had blinded her to the wellsprings of affection and commitment his touch had communicated, in spite of his anger.

  'Well,' he returned to his story, 'Deman used all his wiles to try to cajole and threaten young Miss Karff into giving him what he wanted. He's really an eloquent man, in a grotesque sort of way—a born blackmailer. What he didn't realise was that every one of his finely turned phrases was going right through the mike in May's bra and into a tape machine at an office across the street.' He laughed. 'Some of those nights when I was working late were quite entertaining. Well, Miss Karff refused and refused, taking pains not to be too alluring in her demeanour, so that no one could accuse her—us—of entrapment. Finally, Deman resorted to the tactics he had used against you. "You've had it, Miss Karff, you're finished at N.T.E.L. I'll get you fired and no one will believe you," and so on. That was this week.'