She would tell him the truth. And she would do it tonight, even if it meant knocking on his door at midnight to do that.
The decision put her into a much-improved mood. When it came time to begin her performance, Rena was cheerful and smiling and just ... right, somehow. She started on a high note with gay, bright songs that brought audience participation and kept the mood of the evening lively.
It became one of those rare evenings when nothing could go wrong. She never hit a wrong chord, not even a wrong note. Her voice was strong and her memory functioned perfectly.
And her audience loved it. The pub was packed when she started, mostly with people who had come in for a counter meal and were drawn by the music to overstay their original intent, but there were a few of her more faithful fans as well.
The drink flowed, the publican was happy, even Rena was as happy as she could possibly be under the circumstances. She was halfway through one of her own compositions, the one that she had always thought of as Ran’s song, before she even realised what she was singing. And then it was two-year-old habit that made her look in the direction where memory said that he would be sitting, encouraging her, loving her.
And he was!
The words choked her! her fingers lost their agility on the guitar strings. Ran? Here? Rena’s mind couldn’t take it in, but instinct saved her performance. Her fingers picked up the rhythm and her voice once again took up the words. She sang it right to the end, never taking her eyes from the tall, lean figure at the corner table.
He didn’t smile; she couldn’t see his eyes past the reflective glasses, but there was something ... an aura about him. As Rena moved into her next number it was as if he were the only person in the room, larger than life, filling the place all by himself.
He was dressed in black, and the sheen of the medallion flashed back to her each time he lifted the glass in his right hand. He was sprawled easily, comfortably, in his chair, sitting as he had always sat when he had listened to her in Sydney.
She could almost, in fact, smell his after-shave, he seemed to loom so large in her eyes. Ran Logan — here! And so the truth was out. No denials now; he might mistake her in any other way through his blindness, but never, Rena knew, could he mistake her singing his song.
Suddenly she felt weak, boneless. She thought she would drop the guitar, fall from her high, backless stool like some spineless rag doll. Because he was grinning, and it wasn’t a friendly grin. It was the cruel, carnivorous grin of a hungry wolf confronted with dinner.
He reached up to take the sunglasses from his eyes, eyes that in the dim light seemed of a sudden to have life ... to be horribly, threateningly alive. And looking at her, devouring her. It was too much.
‘I ... I think I’ll take a break now,’ she said into the microphone. And as she stood up. Ran also rose to his feet. He mouthed a single, silent word, then turned on his heel and strode from the room.
CHAPTER NINE
‘Bitch!’ The word echoed over and over through Rena’s barely conscious mind. He might well have screamed it at her, so loudly did it now seem to dominate everything else.
Without her stool, she would have fallen. Her knees seemed to belong to someone else; her head felt light, disembodied. For one brief instant she thought she would faint, but it was a fleeting impression.
He was gone. Had he, in fact, even really been there at all? Or was it some cruel trick of the lighting, of the mood, of the song she had been singing? The questions raced through her mind, but Rena knew the answers only too well. Ran Logan had been there, had listened, had spoken that single, silent condemnation. Her body knew it.
But how? And where had he gone, vanishing into the darkness, into his own medium, after that startling and unexpected appearance?
Rena laid down the guitar, took several deep breaths, then walked slowly towards the corner where he had been sitting. Maybe her eyes had deceived her, she thought. Then she saw the empty glass, the cigarette still smouldering in the ashtray. And the sunglasses!
Almost without thinking, she picked them up, staring at them as if they were something she had never seen before. But why had Ran left them?
Because he didn’t need them! The answer lanced into her mind even as memory replayed the picture of him looking at her, seeing her. Yes! And when he had mouthed his curse upon her and left the pub, he hadn’t been moving as a blind man. He had strode through the crowded room and out the door with all the power and grace and arrogance she had come to associate with his tremendous vitality.
Ran could see!
A sudden chill ran through her. For how long had he been able to see? she wondered. Had his entire visit to Bundaberg been no more than a horrible, vindictive charade?
Turning quickly, she flashed one hand at the barmaid in a deliberate ‘five minutes’ signal, then ran for the door and out into the street, the sunglasses in her hand. No sign of him. Her five minutes stretched to ten as she scoured the immediate vicinity, moving down the empty footpaths as if the devil himself were in pursuit. No Ran. Finally, Rena had to give it up, and she returned to the pub half expecting to find him waiting, laughing at her.
The rest of the evening passed in a blur. She sang, she played her guitar, but it had lost the magic. Her act now was mechanical, her mind far from the smoky, crowded bar. When it was all over, she didn’t bother to stay for her customary nightcap, but drove immediately back to the flat and the confrontation she knew must be awaiting her.
The drive home was a nightmare, her arrival nothing more than a total letdown. Throughout the twenty-minute trip she ran over and over the things she would say ... must say, invented complicated scenarios, tried to visualise what Ran would say. But when she got home he wasn’t there, and neither was his great black car.
Rena could scarcely credit it. She drove into the now empty carport, got out of her own vehicle, and looked at the empty space beside her as if expecting the black Jaguar to materialise from nowhere.
Then she calmly walked over to bang on the door of Ran’s flat, knowing it was futile but nonetheless compelled to make the gesture.
‘It’s a trick,’ she said aloud. ‘He’s damned well here — somewhere. He must be!’
But it was no trick. He wasn’t in her flat, as she had half expected, and he didn’t arrive at all during the night despite the fact that she sat up until almost dawn waiting for him.
The next two days were a nightmare. She kept expecting him to turn up at any moment, kept looking for his car, for his familiar figure. All in vain. She slept heavily but badly on Tuesday night, only just got through Wednesday without falling asleep at her desk, and simply collapsed when she got home after work to find he still hadn’t turned up.
‘Bastard!’ she hissed at the empty carport. Rena was now convinced it was some devious plot on Ran’s part. He could see; he must know she knew he could see. What was he doing?
She woke at seven, heavy-eyed, slightly disorientated, but immediately certain there was something she should be doing. Class! Of course. Whatever Ran’s failings, he would never forget a commitment, and that was one thing he definitely seemed to feel strongly about, his teaching.
But could she go? Could she face him now in the presence of others? She wondered, pondering over it uselessly until she cried out in despair. She must; there wasn’t a choice.
By the time she had changed and driven back into town, driving far too fast for safety but unable to shirk off her restless energy, she was still fifteen minutes late for class. But Ran was there! The huge black car squatted against the kerb outside the college staff house.
Rena didn’t give herself time to think. That would be deadly, she realised. Instead she leapt from her car and walked quickly, almost running up the narrow steps and into the building.
All eyes were on her as she stepped into the room, but her own eyes were drawn to only one pair, the dark coppery eyes of Ran Logan, who looked at her and saw her. And grinned mischievously.
‘Well ... well,
here’s the heroine now,’ he drawled, and the rest of the class erupted in a cacophony of questions and cheers and congratulations that rang like bells in her head.
‘I ... don’t understand …’ she began, only to be interrupted by Ran’s stronger, deeper voice.
‘I’ve just been telling them how you were instrumental in my regaining my sight,’ he said. But his eyes said something quite different — ‘play along with this, or else!’
‘But how? You never did tell us how?’ It was Louise, her splendid body pressed against Ran’s, staking a definite, unarguable claim.
He didn’t answer immediately, which didn’t please old John one bit. ‘Yes, for God’s sake tell us how,’ he demanded. ‘You may be a great writer, but you’re a lousy storyteller!’
Ran laughed at that, but he made no attempt, Rena noticed, to free himself from the octopus grasp of the redhead.
‘She gave me a damn great smack across the head, that’s how!’ he roared. ‘And yes, John, I deserved it, too. Now don’t ask me what it did, because I don’t know and the doctors don’t know any more, quacks that they all are. But it sure as hell did something, because when I got up, I could see.’
‘Just like that?’ John’s question entered Rena’s brain, but it was Ran’s answer she was waiting for.
‘Not quite that simple. At first it was just sort of a fuzzy light. The quacks say it’s because I wasn’t focusing properly. But within a few minutes, yes, I could see quite normally.’
Rena couldn’t believe this was happening. And yet Ran was here, looking at her, talking to her. It must have happened ... she blushed at the memory and looked away.
‘What the hell did you do, Rena? Kick him out of bed?’ John’s eyes twinkled, but Louise’s fairly blazed with envy and jealousy at the question.
Ran, damn his soul, laughed outrageously. ‘She’ll probably say yes, John,’ he interjected before Rena could finds the words to speak. ‘But don’t believe her, because she’s a terrible liar.’ And his eyes burned as he stared at her, burned with a passionate intensity Rena couldn’t bear to face.
‘Anyway,’ he said finally, ‘that’s enough of this; you’re here to work, so let’s get to it.’ And the class, for what it was worth, began. For Rena, it might as well not have been. Her mind was little more than a kaleidoscope of impressions, thoughts, worries.
Had Ran really regained his sight because of her pulling him from the bed? She wanted, desperately, to believe it, and yet it sounded so completely unbelievable that she just couldn’t.
And yet he was there ... standing before the class, listening to their questions, answering them, and looking at her! Not once did he take his eyes from her, not even when she refused to meet his gaze, to accept the mocking, mischievous lights she saw in those copper- coloured eyes.
Even when she looked away, she could feel him looking at her, could imagine him stripping away her defences with his eyes, revealing her duplicity, her deceit.
Louise was not amused. She, too, could read the direction of Ran’s interest, and when she looked at Rena it was with scorn.
The evening stretched on into infinity. Rena found she couldn’t concentrate, didn’t care if she did or not. This course wasn’t ever going to give her what she so desperately needed. It couldn’t, because what she needed now had very little to do with creative writing in any context.
And finally it was over. Ran made his final comments, then toured the room making idle chit-chat with various of his students. Louise followed him like a bloodhound; Rena merely looked for the right moment to make her escape.
Rena thought her time had come when Ran was cornered by his two remaining housewives, both of whom seemed bent on extracting every single detail of his miraculous recovery. Moving slowly, so as to draw no more attention than she must, Rena slipped towards the door and then finally, thankfully, through it.
She reached her vehicle and slid gratefully behind the wheel, only to leap with alarm when her door was suddenly flung open and a hand reached in to grasp her shoulder.
‘Going somewhere?’ His teeth glinted in the streetlight and his smile was sardonic, mocking. ‘Why not drive home with me, for a change?’
‘I can’t just leave Matilda here,’ she replied, grabbing at the first excuse that came to mind. Now that her confrontation with Ran seemed imminent, she discovered her fears far outweighed her good intentions.
Ran looked critically at the ancient station sedan, his nose wrinkling in distaste. ‘Not if there’s any chance the civic beautification committee is likely to come by, that’s for sure,’ he replied. ‘But on the other hand, are you sure it’ll make it home?’
His sneering stirred Rena’s already defensive anger. How dared he insult her car? ‘You’ve got a helluva nerve!’ she snapped. ‘I didn’t notice you complaining when Matilda was providing for your convenience.’
‘That,’ he replied, ‘was because I couldn’t see the heap of junk I was riding in. But please yourself; I didn’t come to start an argument.’
‘Well, you’ve a fine way of showing it,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why you bothered to come at all. If you must offer somebody a lift, why not try Louise?’ It was catty and childish, and Rena knew it, but she couldn’t help herself.
Ran only snorted. ‘Credit me with a little taste,’ he said. ‘Shall I put the coffee on while I’m waiting for you at home, then? Or do you reckon a drink would be more in keeping with the occasion?’
‘I didn’t know there was an occasion,’ Rena replied. ‘And it’s my intention to make an early night of it, if you don’t mind.’
‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions,’ was the enigmatic reply. ‘I’ll see you there.’ And he was gone, closing the door behind him as if he were afraid that to slam it might cause further problems for the elderly car.
Rena muttered an angry curse as she wheeled the old car around at the first intersection, only too aware that Ran’s larger but more modern machine had already done a U-turn and that he was ghosting along the road ahead of her at speeds she dared not try to match. Especially not on the highway, where Matilda tended to shudder and wheeze at anything beyond the legal limit.
Sure enough, he was waiting for her when she arrived, standing on his veranda with hands on his hips and a look of amused expectation on his face. He was there to open the car door for her, too, obviating any ideas she might have of fleeing directly to her own flat.
‘Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly,’ he grinned. ‘Only stop looking so apprehensive, dear Rena. Or is it Catherine tonight? Just remember that confession is good for the soul.’
Her stomach leaped. So this was to be the way of it, a direct assault laced with mockery and humour ... or what Ran Logan thought was humour? His hand was on her elbow, gently but firmly insisting that she accompany him.
Once inside, he deposited her in one armchair and her handbag in another, then stepped into the small kitchen and poured each of them a drink without asking if Rena wanted one or not. His eyes, when he handed her the glass, were unreadable but bright with expectation. Then he took his own seat across from her and spoke.
‘Here’s to being able to see again,’ he said, lifting his glass in a toast. ‘Now tell me, woman of a thousand names, just what the hell you’ve been playing at?’
‘I haven’t been playing at anything,’ she retorted. ‘It’s been anything but a game, I assure you.’
‘Humph! Don’t bother with assurances; it’s explanations I want,’ he snorted. ‘And you can start with explaining why all this silliness of the secret identity. Surely there must be some sane, logical reason why you couldn’t have just told me who you were in the first place.’
‘No.’
‘No?’ His voice hardened angrily. ‘For God’s sake, woman ... first you run out on me, then when we finally meet again you lie to me, deliberately deceive me ... and you deny there’s an explanation?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You damn
well did!’
‘I didn’t. I said there wasn’t a sane, logical reason for it. And there wasn’t ... my word there wasn’t,’ she sighed. Then realisation of what he had said seemed to focus in her wildly whirling brain.
‘And what the hell do you mean, I ran out on you? I did no such thing, and you very well know it! It was you who ran out on me, once you’d got me into bed and had what you wanted. And don’t you dare try to deny that, either!’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ he said wearily. ‘But the truth of that can wait. I want to know about why you felt you had to deceive me here ... in Bundaberg ... now.’
‘I hated you, that’s why!’ Rena’s fragile control began to slip, then lost any semblance of balance. ‘Just how do you think I felt, finding you here of all places? I ... I couldn’t believe it, at first. And to find you ... blind ...’ she shuddered at the memory of it, then plunged on, recalling all of her feelings, her anger, her confusion.
‘So you decided a little revenge was in order.’ He grinned. ‘My word, it must have given you a helluva shock to have me turn up here in this flat. I’d give a million dollars to have been able to see your face!’
‘It’s not funny,’ Rena cried. ‘None of this funny; it’s all been nothing but a cruel, horrible …’ She just couldn’t go on.
‘Oh, what tangled a web we weave ... etcetera, etcetera," he crooned sadistically. ‘Well, I must admit you got your revenge the other night, although the climax was a bit different from what you expected, I’ll bet. Are you satisfied with it, Rena? Or does having given me back my sight take away some of the satisfaction?’
‘Oh!’ she stuttered, unable to believe the cruelty of his accusation. ‘I ... I ... oh, you utter, unspeakable bastard! I was not seeking revenge, and I’m at least as glad as you are about your sight coming back.’
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