Passage of the Night

by Amanda Carpenter

  'I acted wrongly on wrong information,' she stated flatly, spearing a flake of her salmon without making any effort to eat it. She stared at it, her eyes too heavy, too reluctant to meet his. 'You didn't deserve it, Francis.'

  'No?' he repeated, and again the word was a question. She frowned and opened her mouth to pursue it, but he forestalled her with another question. 'Tell me, would you still have done it to someone who did, as you say, deserve it?'

  That brought her eyes up, large and revealingly bewildered as she replied with difficulty, 'I—probably not. My thinking has—changed too much. I'm no longer quite so arrogant.'

  'Funnily enough,' he said, so lightly, holding her eyes, 'neither am I. Kirstie, if other people are prepared to forgive you for your mistakes, don't you think you can learn to forgive yourself?'

  Hearing that mellifluous voice of his shape her name, as always, felt as if he pulled her out of herself. The compelling sensation flared in her eyes an instant before she parried his penetrating observances with a question of her own. 'What makes you think I haven't already?'

  'I know too well how you are ruthless with yourself, far more so than with others. You make allowances for people that you refuse to make for yourself. It was only because you thought I was so reprehensible that you felt compelled to do something. Would you like dessert?' he asked, with another of those disconcerting switches of subject.

  Brought back to the present, she found, to her surprise, that her meal was completely gone. 'Er—no, thank you.'

  'Coffee, then?'

  'Yes, please.'

  She began to gather her silverware together and was detained by his warm, firm grasp on her wrist. 'No, leave it. I told you: I have this fairy godmother, and she's getting paid overtime to come in this evening.

  You wouldn't want to do the lady out of her gambling money, would you?'

  Kirstie had to laugh at that and let the silverware remain in its place, while Francis went back to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee. She was left alone, and the room around her settled into silence.

  Don't you think you can learn to forgive yourself?

  Kirstie stood slowly, and slowly she turned towards the hot sunlight shining on the balcony. She stepped out and leaned against the solid concrete waist-high wall to look down at the street below. Distant honks and traffic noises wafted up; more real were the flocks of birds that perched on and swooped from power lines, and the tops of the trees in Central Park.

  Francis had spoken with keener wisdom than perhaps he knew. Even their differing reactions to the basement garage pointed to it. He didn't need her guilt, nor did he want it. He had as much as said so. She couldn't eradicate what had happened by carrying it with her wherever she went. It was indeed time to let it go, time to stop trying to make amends.

  It was also time to stop fooling herself, for, if guilt had been her crutch, so too had it been the easiest, most acceptable reason for agreeing to see Francis again. She had never dealt properly with how devastating she found him to her self-control and self-containment. She was drawn to him, sexually, intellectually and emotionally, and had been even back as early as the time spent in Vermont. It was the most powerful pull towards another human being she had ever experienced, and the implications tumbling outwards from that realisation alone frightened her to death.

  CHAPTER NINE

  She sensed him before she heard him, standing silently at the open balcony door behind her, and with a quick reflexive turn of her head she saw that she had caught him off guard.

  Reaction tumbled inwards and broke barriers. She wanted to say to him, This was an accident. You weren't supposed to see what was in my eyes, just as I never meant to surprise that look in yours.

  Her gaze was wide and wondering, like a child's. His was patient. A breeze caught the light curtains in the doorway and moulded it over half his torso and one shoulder, and as he moved forward it slid rippling away.

  He covered the distance between them in quiet, contained steps. One of his hands came under her chin and cradled the fragile shape, and he tilted her face up. His eyes roamed each sculptured bone, touched her own grey gaze in a question, became fixated on her mouth. He started to bend his head.

  He never rushed her; he never hurried. Kirstie had blundered along the entire wild range of emotions throughout his languid movements, from startlement, to fear, to flinching anxiety. Now his impossible deliberation shattered her resolve. There was nowhere for her to turn, no form of steadfast principle, nothing to override the compulsion. She tumbled into blind action, wound both arms around his neck, pulled his head down the rest of the way and offered him her mouth.

  Francis's composure disintegrated. A groan pierced his body, and with unthinking need he clutched her hips to haul her against him. Her knees malfunctioned. She gave into desire and moulded herself to the hard, curved support of his strong body. His hands ran up her back, their urgent pressure wrecking the neat, tucked-in blouse, which came free from her belt and let him explore the contours and hollows of her flesh. His tongue stroked hers with eager tenderness, then he gnawed, concentrated and delicate, on the full, sensitive curve of her bottom lip.

  Her craving turned rabid. She shuddered down her entire length and let her head fall to his shoulder.

  He broke from the luscious ravishment of her lips to dive down the angle of her neck and tease aside the collar of her blouse. He felt as if he had a fever. He felt and reacted as if this had never happened to him before, as if all the other times they had come together in physical need had never been, as if this were the first, the most precious, the only time of his life.

  She turned her face into his gleaming black hair and hardly noticed as he peeled open the buttons of her blouse with trembling, barely restrained care. Then the blouse fell open and for the first time he feasted upon the slight curve of her small breasts, and the quiet, heartfelt sound that came from him then sent her arcing in instinctive reaction into the soft caress of his hands.

  She was lost, so lost, melting into the flaming sensation of liquid pleasure that flickered as his fingers flickered, across her tight pink nipples, coursing through her body. She gasped as, with one muscle-flexing surge, he wrapped one powerful arm around her slender waist and lifted her effortlessly up so that his hungry mouth could nip, and suckle, and stroke across her breasts.

  It was an exquisite, voluptuous agony that couldn't last. Pleasure combined with an ache in her lower back, caused by the strain of their postures, but still she willed the moment never to end, as she bowed head and shoulders over his own bent head and held his face against her. When at last he had to let her sink slowly back until her feet touched the ground, her body slid hard along the quivering length of his so that they both cried out in mutual loss, and he drowned it away in the excesses of yet another explorative kiss.

  Yes, she was lost, careening wildly through a smoky labyrinth towards a molten core, recognising at last the nature of the compulsion which disregarded creed, barriers, life—called love.

  No. In her heart and in her head she said it.

  An echo of the whisper, hoarsely, from Francis, still trapped in the labyrinth, 'Do you have any idea how long it's been since I have made love to a woman?'

  'Oh, God!' she cried, in deepest torment. Made love?

  No.

  'I want to suck you slowly,' he muttered in her ear. 'I want to bury myself in you so deeply I'll never come out. I want to pull you on top of me, take hold of your thighs '

  'Stop it!' Pain, to stop it. She struggled against the tidal wave and panted, despairingly, 'Oh, Francis, it isn't right!'

  His head jerked back, as if he were a puppet on a string. Was he too far gone to hear the voice of reason?

  It isn't right until it is made right.

  There was too much that was uncertain, undefined, and too much of herself was at stake. If they drank now, heedless of all else in their lives, what they partook of could well turn to poison, and she didn't know if they could survive it. Mea
ning to push him away, she brought her hands to his chest. By some inexplicable accident, by her own inherent weakness, when they touched him they stroked taut, shirt-covered muscles.

  His whole body shuddered. He grasped her hands so hard that the bones ground together. 'God don't do that!' he cried. 'I have about as much control right now as a fifteen-year-old virgin!'

  Control was what she was striving for. Dark colour suffused her cheeks, then left her dizzy with desertion and. marble-cold, marble-white. She dragged away from his bruising grip and fumbled to put her clothing to rights, shakily tucking her blouse into place. 'This isn't right,' she forced out, parrot-like.

  The balcony, the air, even the birds were still. 'Why isn't it?' he asked very quietly.

  'This—this preoccupation,' she began.

  'Quite an interesting euphemism,' he said, and the mocking, angry taunt was so accurate, hurt so much, that her eyes flashed hot diamond at him.

  'Would you prefer that I call it corrosive obsession?' she lashed, and as it whipped across his face she saw that she had given every bit as much hurt as she had sustained. 'If we sink into this, we won't be dealing with issues, we will be ignoring basic problems. . .'

  His restraint now was total; he had what she had tried for and had failed to achieve: control. 'What are the problems?' Again, very quietly.

  'Our lives!' She was too wrapped up in her own agitation to notice how silken he had gone, and to remember how dangerous that quality of his was. 'What about Louise?'

  'Ah, yes. Louise again,' he murmured, and the silk-covered glove struck. 'We must always remember to consider her thoughts and her feelings. After all, looking after Louise is one of the things you do best, isn't it?'

  'What?' Kirstie turned back to him, and she retreated a step under the sight of his volcanic fury.

  'What kind of life do you have, anyway?' he snarled. 'Or do you have one at all, that's more to the point! Perhaps you get your kicks vicariously by watching Louise's dramas! And when she crooks her little finger or throws a tantrum you just go running back! It's such a good excuse for not venturing out on your own, isn't it?'

  Francis, watching, had not thought it possible for her to go even whiter, but she did, and said between rage-stiffened lips, 'How dare you attack me like that? You know nothing about my life, nothing!'

  'No?' Francis leaned back against the stone support of the balcony wall. 'It looks like a pretty clear picture from where I'm standing.'

  'In fact,' Kirstie said, succinct away from that sensual, riotous confusion, 'I'm beginning to wonder if you know anything at all. My consideration for Louise is irrefutable, but do you still think that I am the same blindly loyal person I was in Vermont. Yes, I would protect her from malice, but I would also protect myself from her malice. She is, after all, a fact of my life, and only one of many. Did you think you could have me, now, without all that entails? And was I supposed to fall into your bed just this once, regardless of the future, your responsibilities, your work that you have made your life?'

  His attack had brought no tears; it had, after all, been reaction to her own ungentle disentanglement. But now, as realisation left him visibly stricken, she found her cheeks grow wet. 'It isn't right until it is made right. It isn't even yet a matter of what the answers are, but what the questions are, and each of us getting our priorities straight.'

  Passion, fury, that brief contempt had died. Keeping well away from her—not a retreat, she knew, but a conscious consideration—Francis said, his eyes very dark, 'Of course you're right. Please forgive me.'

  But she shook her head in denial and whispered, 'We hurt each other.'

  He moved, made as if to speak, and the tears still fell sparkling from the ever-changing grey of her eyes, for she knew that this was the moment he, in possession of his mind and not his senses, would either retreat forever or take that first fateful step forward, and, God help her, she did not know if she had the strength to face his retreat.

  The telephone in the living-room shrilled, shockingly obnoxious in the charged, waiting atmosphere. They both stared at each other, rigid, and Francis turned his head aside to spit a curse with soft vehemence. He strode through the open balcony door, snatched up the phone receiver, bit out, 'Yes?' then snapped, 'I told you I wasn't to be disturbed! As far as the office is concerned, I'm still at lunch! I don't damned well care if it is Tokyo—oh, for God's sake! All right—all right! I'll take the call here!' He hung up and turned to look at her framed in the doorway, his expression bleak. 'I have to take this call.'

  It was not such a blow after all, merely cold. Kirstie felt the winter ice spread through her body and knew that she hadn't expected anything else. She said quietly, 'I quite understand.'

  Some spark of vitality had been extinguished in her, leaving a shell of a woman behind, and Francis frowned at the change in her. 'I don't think you do.'

  Her smile was faint. It did not reach her eyes. She looked at him clearly, wryly. 'In the end, does it really matter?'

  The phone rang again, and he glared at it. All the pressure, all the tension had lined him again with the wounds of his unforgiving game. Kirstie's smile then reached her eyes, her wryness turned on herself. Corrosive obsession, indeed. How could she have entertained the hope that there might be room for her as well? 'Answer your phone call, Francis,' she urged him gently.

  He picked up the receiver, spoke into it. She gathered her bag off the floor by the couch where she had left it, and walked out of his apartment.

  'Wait!' Francis shouted, and, if she had but seen it, this was the harshest blow she had dealt him yet. He hesitated just that instant too long, then slammed the receiver down and raced flat out for the lift down the hall. The doors were closing, and Kirstie's eyes were covered by one hand. She didn't see him. Though he knew it was useless, he continued to the gleaming metal doors, placed his hands on them, and after a long moment bent his head.

  Then he straightened, turned with terrible composure and walked back to his apartment, glitteringly beautiful and not merely empty but desolate. The phone was ringing again. After a thoughtful moment, he sighed and picked it up. Then after a lengthy, statistic-oriented conversation, he checked the time and made a few more phone calls.

  Get your priorities right.

  *

  Kirstie sat at the breakfast table on Friday morning, her exhausted head in her arms. She had weathered the storm of doubt and regret, and now felt empty, drained of everything but conviction. All her whirling confusion had been burned to ash by the passage of the night, spent in unsleeping torment with improvident disregard for her own stamina. By some extraordinary sense, she thought at times that she could touch Francis's own restless conjecturings, his unstinting search for the truth to his own needs.

  Had she moved too fast, had the conclusions she jumped to yesterday been, by any chance, wrong? She didn't think so. Walking out on Francis had not been an act of pique for the moment, but one of clearsighted ruthlessness, forgoing all the heartbreaking discussion and drawn-out pain.

  By leaving him she had shown that she would not accept second place, and would not, out of consideration for him, beg or coerce anything out of him that he was not willing to give. Could he change? Could he lessen the all-consuming demand on his time, thinking and life to make room for tenderness? Just as importantly, could he do so without future reproach?

  She didn't know. She couldn't guess whether the phone would some day ring for her, and had to exist, for the sake of her own sanity, without hope, for hope without realisation was unbearable.

  Her own priorities had fallen into crystalline simplicity yesterday with that instant, awesome recognition of the depth of her love for him. Love, more potent than passion, more considerate than selfishness, had broken that consuming fever and brought her to peace at last.

  She would give him anything, even if what he needed most was nothing at all.

  The sun was rising; at long last the night was over.

  She called, out of the de
pth of her exhaustion, for endurance and somewhere, somehow, found it. Life went on, even after revelations that brought one to a standstill. There were duties to be performed, there was work to be done, and after a shoulder-shaking sigh Kirstie rose from her seat and made coffee.

  Distantly she heard the sounds of the shower running and knew that Louise would be down shortly for breakfast, and the start of her day. Louise, beautiful and dangerous, had always known far better than she how to survive. She found it in her heart to pity simple, kind-hearted Neil who had fallen in love with Louise only to be slashed to the quick.

  Her sister had gone out last night, glittering with glamour and illicit excitement. Kirstie had already been locked in the silent privacy of her bedroom and so had not witnessed Louise's whirlwind return to the house, though she'd heard it in the emphatic slam of the front door, and other sounds that heralded the climactic end of either a successful evening or disaster. Louise's reaction to both ecstasy and fury were the same, violent in nature and tempestuous.

  Kirstie knew she was about to face the aftermath, and braced her weary self for Louise's entry half an hour later.

  'Good morning,' she said quietly, as behind her the kitchen door swung open. She reached into a cupboard for a mug. 'Would you like a cup of coffee?'

  'Yes, please!' replied Louise briskly. Kirstie poured it and turned, halting for a moment at the picture before her.

  For Louise that morning was staggering. Dressed in a stunning outfit of royal blue and high-heeled pumps, her lustrous blonde hair twisted into an elegant knot that emphasised a long, tempting neck and heart-shaped face, each feature delicately, artistically 'tinted with tasteful make-up, she wore her beauty like a burnished tiara, hard, jewelled and sparkling.