by LaGreca, Gen
“I’ll save you the trouble of returning me to the agency like a broken toaster, Mr. Fleming.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll see.”
That night Cathleen ran away from the Flemings. She took one thousand dollars from a stash that Mrs. Fleming kept in a saucepan under the sink. That was how thirteen-year-old Cathleen Hughes purchased the one-way bus ticket to San Francisco and the phony driver’s license of Nicole Hudson, the character she would play for the rest of her life. A year later in San Francisco, the newly created Nicole Hudson had a job, an apartment, a car, a checking account. In a package with no return address, mailed from New York by a coworker vacationing there, Nicole returned the stolen money to the Flemings, with interest.
The thirteen-year-old’s entry into adulthood was a headfirst dive. Having run away numerous times, she knew there were nationwide hotlines established to locate her. Computer screens across the country would display her picture. She was a thief, besides. If caught, she could be sent to a juvenile detention center or caged for five more years in foster care, until she turned eighteen. If she were stopped at this critical time when she needed rigorous training, her dream of becoming a professional dancer would be ruined. The child had to do what fugitives do: She had to lay low.
She obtained a job in a place that asked no questions—a gentlemen’s club on the outskirts of town. Its management treated the state inspectors well enough so that they, too, found little to question. The adolescent’s pay was excellent and the evening hours perfect for intensive dance training during the day. Although her ballerina’s form did not fit the typical mold for the club, she managed to be more alluring than the other women with her own special assets—the sinewy dancer’s legs, the cascading blond hair, and the remarkable sensuality of a superbly toned body that was grace itself. In the noisy, smoke-filled club, the serious ballerina became a stripper.
She would have done much more to keep her freedom, but fortunately for Nicole, no one else knew that. Her striking beauty and dazzling dance numbers were sufficient to draw hordes of customers to her stage, dropping money at her feet. She broke all of the club’s rules: She did not smile, mingle with the crowd, or dance private numbers. However, her aloofness only intensified her customers’ excitement. Even then her dancing held the rare and stunning harmony of the sensuous and the spiritual that would become her trademark. Because she acquired the largest following of all the girls, the management permitted her to do as she pleased. Hence, she was gaped at extensively but remained untouched. The sublime innocence of the princess, displayed by Nicole in her first leading role at age sixteen and in all of her roles thereafter, was real.
Nicole was not ashamed of her work, because during those years in San Francisco, when she was in charge, her dance training at last was unimpeded.
Now, as she lay in her hospital bed, the helpless prey of despair, she thought again of the last time that she had felt so utterly powerless, when at age eight, she was taken from her sanctuary at St. Jude’s. She heard the distant echo of Sister Luke’s stern but caring voice: When you grow up, you’ll be in charge, little one. You’ll be a great ballerina, and you’ll do as you please. She had come so far. She had blasted out of the railway yard that fenced her. But just as her long-awaited train had reached its starry destination, it had veered into a tunnel! She buried her face in her hands and cried.
Chapter 18
The Phantom Returns
“Hey, what’s the matter?”
The question floated to Nicole from somewhere in her hospital room. Over the desperate sound of her sobs, she recognized the voice of the man who could restore light to her life. She tried to compose herself.
“What is it, Nicole?” David covered her limp hand with two sympathetic ones.
“Something too trivial to involve you.”
“Try me.”
“It’s nothing, really. I’m afraid I’m . . .” the pain still caught in her throat, “wearing . . . my breakfast.”
He glanced at the food stain on her blouse. “Do you have anything else to wear besides your breakfast?”
“There’s a sweatshirt in the closet.”
He brought the item to her. She slipped it over her head while he protected the stitches from catching. Without hair, her features stood out in stark relief, like a stage without a backdrop, stripped of all but its essential elements. Her eyes had grown larger above the gaunt cheekbones, her nose more finely sculpted, her lips fuller. The startling beauty of her face held him.
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“Feel better now?”
“Yes.”
“After a few lessons with your teacher, Mrs. Trimbell, you’ll be eating sushi and escargot.”
She managed a weak smile.
“Meanwhile, I brought you this.” He placed a large plastic cup in her hand.
She sipped what had become her principal nourishment since entering the hospital.
“Hmmm. Chocolate this morning. Thank you!” Nicole, who had never been ill, assumed that all neurosurgeons brought their patients milkshakes.
David examined the incision and asked how she was feeling. “You’re doing fine. You can go home today.”
Her face showed the first sign of eagerness since the surgery, a mere hint of her former radiance, yet the sight made him forget his sleepless night in the lab.
“I’ll ask Mrs. Trimbell to pick you up.” She heard the click of his opening cell phone and the sound of dialing.
Mrs. Adeline Trimbell was a retired scrub nurse whom David had introduced to Nicole. Before becoming a nurse Mrs. Trimbell had been a teacher of the blind. The stout, elderly widow was amenable to moving in with Nicole temporarily to assist her between the surgeries. When Mrs. Trimbell quoted her fee, the dancer was shocked at the modest amount.
“I’ll have to pay you double that. There are lots of things I’ll need you to do for me, and I don’t want to feel as if I’m imposing.”
“Don’t worry, you won’t be imposing,” said Mrs. Trimbell, “because you’ll be doing most of those things for yourself.” The crusty voice bore no hint of pity.
“I think she’ll do,” Nicole had told David.
Hence, Mrs. Trimbell had moved into the guest room of Nicole’s Manhattan condominium to become her teacher and companion.
“I have Mrs. Trimbell on the phone, Nicole. She’s coming to take you home.”
“Were my personal belongings brought home from my dressing room at the theater?” The show’s producer had gently requested that Nicole remove her things.
“Mrs. Trimbell can hear you. She says your things were brought home.”
“What about all of the old flower arrangements? Were they brought to my apartment undisturbed, as I specified?”
David stared at her intently while Mrs. Trimbell answered the question on the phone.
“Yes, Nicole,” his voice softened, “the flowers were brought to your home.”
“The wicker basket with the African lilies and the painted vase with the birds-of-paradise and the wooden box with the hyacinths—did they make it okay?”
“Yes,” said David, repeating Mrs. Trimbell’s answer. The tenderness in his voice was a caress. He had no idea that she had saved the withered flowers.
“And the lilies. I got them just before the accident. Are they still alive?”
Nicole heard murmurs from the phone.
“Mrs. Trimbell says the lilies are holding their own.”
“Good!”
David drank in the sight of Nicole savoring his gifts. When she completed the inventory of her flower remnants, he ended the phone call.
“Doctor, there’s one thing we must discuss. I want to know what’s happened with the surgery. I mean, it was illegal. You’re not in any trouble, are you?”
“Nothing I can’t handle,” he lied. His lawyer was burning the phone lines that morning, protesting his suspension. “I’m waiting for a phone call about the matter. I’ll let you kno
w as soon as I learn more and can tell you where we stand.”
“You’re sure you’re going to tell me? Remember, you promised.”
“We’ll talk today. And don’t worry. Okay?”
“Okay.”
If she could have seen him, clad in jeans and a polo shirt on a Monday morning, with no patients to see, having just spent a sleepless night breaking more rules, she would have known that her suspicions were justified.
His squeeze of her hand was like a staccato note. That meant good-bye. During the week of her confinement, she had come to know this faceless man by the touch of his hand on hers. A long squeeze meant that he wanted to give her important instructions, and she was to pay attention. Two hands covering hers meant that he knew she was in pain and that he felt it also. A short squeeze meant that he was leaving and would return later. As he turned to go, she called to him.
“Doctor, there’s one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Did anything come for me? A gift of some kind?”
“You know about the stuff on the windowsill, don’t you? The fruit and candy?”
“Not the things from the theater people. I mean . . . well, I guess I shouldn’t hope for it after what happened, but were there any . . . flowers?”
He suddenly realized whose gift she was seeking. “Why . . . yes, of course! A gift was addressed to you in care of me, so it came to my office by mistake. Flowers, I believe.”
For one cloudless moment, the joy she exuded from the stage returned to Nicole’s face. “Oh, Doctor! Could you possibly have them brought to me?”
“It’s done, Nicole. I’ll get them right now.”
Another staccato squeeze of the hand, and David left to make a beeline for the nearest florist, brushing past Nicole’s next visitor, her agent, Howard Morton.
“Hi, Nickie. How are you doing?” Morton kissed her cheek.
Nicole hated the funereal tone she had heard in her agent’s voice since her accident.
“When the movers took your personal things from your dressing room, they forgot to take these. I figured you’d want them.”
He placed in her hands her first ballet slippers. She recognized their touch.
“I do want them! Thank you.” She hugged the shoes like an old friend.
There was an awkward pause. Morton seemed to have nothing more to say. He poured himself a cup of water and walked around the room.
“So is Darlene going to play Pandora, Howie?”
“Yes.”
“But only until I have the second surgery and get my job back, right?”
Morton said nothing. He knew something Nicole did not. He knew that her doctor was suspended and that there was not going to be a second surgery.
“Howie, my injury is grossly exaggerated. I can actually see you pretty well.” She looked to her right.
“Nickie, I’m on your left,” he said sadly.
Without vision Nicole was discovering that sounds were more difficult to locate than she would have imagined. “Anyway, if I had to, I’m sure I could dance Triumph with my eyes closed.” She emphasized the last two words, as if testing the waters.
“With twenty other dancers out there? Nickie, they’re not going to put a guardrail on Mount Olymp—” He stopped abruptly, as if regretting his words.
“It’s really a moot point, because after the second surgery I’ll pass the eye test for a bomber pilot.”
She sensed a forced cheerfulness in his laugh.
“How about my interview with Gloria Candrell? Have we gotten offers from that? Any movie roles or TV specials? I hope you’re telling everyone that in three short months I’ll be back.”
“We’ll see, Nickie.” He did not want to mention that the calls about her had stopped. “Say, have you thought of writing a book about your accident? I could sell that.”
“I want to dance, not write books!”
Another awkward pause. Then she heard a little thump that sounded like Morton’s cup tossed into the wastebasket.
“Nickie, I really need to get to the office.”
She fought the burning sensation in her eyes; she would not cry in front of Morton.
“I know you’re discouraged, Howie, but you’d best be ready for my comeback.” You or another lucky agent, she added to herself.
“Sure, honey,” he said halfheartedly. “You take care. I’ll call you, okay?” He hugged her.
As he left, she had the sinking feeling that she was not going to hear from Howard Morton again. Another person abandoning her! But there was someone she could count on, she thought, resting her head on the pillow and waiting for her flowers.
* * * * *
Soon the stale air of her hospital room was replaced with a luscious fragrance.
“I smell roses! They’re roses, aren’t they?” she cried, as David set a basket of blooms on her sliding table and wheeled it close to her.
“They are roses. Does that please you, Nicole?”
“Yes! Thank you for bringing them!”
She folded her long, limber legs tight against her torso, propped herself up in bed, and ran her cheek along cool, velvety petals. She caressed the blossoms, inhaled their perfume, listened to David’s description of the ensemble, and sighed with delight.
“So they’re a deep burgundy, like a vintage wine?” she said, echoing his account.
“Indeed.”
“I know there’s a letter somewhere.”
David tucked one in the arrangement and pushed it toward her searching fingers.
“Here it is!” she cried, lovingly pressing the sealed envelope to her breast.
“Shall I read it to you?” His voice defied his will by uttering a question that he had resolved not to ask.
“Oh, no! Thank you for offering, Doctor, but I couldn’t let you.”
“Why not?” The rebel voice continued.
“Because this is personal, and, well, you’re a man.”
“I plead guilty to that.”
“And because you’re amused. I hear it in your voice,” she admonished him. “I won’t allow anyone to make light of this matter.”
“I’ll try to show the proper respect.”
She rubbed the envelope between her long, graceful hands, then ran it against her cheek. “Actually, it would be nice hearing this letter read by a man’s voice. Maybe I could let you. After all, even though you’re a man, you’re also my doctor.”
“I’m sure that would make it okay.”
“But I can tell you’re still amused!” She frowned. “Maybe if I told you something about the sender . . .”
“It might put me in the proper frame of mind.”
“Do you have time? I don’t want to impose.”
“I do, and you’re not.” The place where he spent his life was locked to him, so he indeed had time. “Go ahead, Nicole. I’m listening.” He sat on the edge of the bed.
She leaned back against her pillow dreamily. “His name is the Flower Phantom.”
“The what?” He suppressed a laugh, lest he be reprimanded again.
“That’s what I call him. ‘The Phantom’ for short. Actually, I don’t know his name. He sends me beautiful flowers and letters, but always anonymously.”
“I see.” The note of understanding in his two simple words encouraged her to continue.
“The Phantom seems intensely troubled by something. I don’t know what it is, only that he came to my show many times to escape from it, and I somehow gave him hope.” With the supreme grace that becomes instinct through a life of ballet, she brushed a weightless hand gently along the roses as she spoke, caressing them. “I think he has a great passion in his life, something he loves in the same way that I love dancing. But there are obstacles. I don’t know what they are, only that they frustrate him to the brink of giving up this great force in his life. I worry about him, because if he gives it up and if it’s like dancing is for me”—her face tightened in pain—“then there’d be nothing left of him.”
“Maybe.” He detected a lingering sadness beneath the hopeful smile that she managed. “You know, I once saw the Phantom.”
“Did you?” The amusement in David’s voice had vanished, replaced by a solemnity that beckoned her to continue.
“I bribed a florist’s employee to call if someone bought me flowers. That’s how I tracked him down. I wanted to tell him something and to ask him a question. But he ran away before I got the chance. I wonder if he’ll ever reappear.”
She plucked a rose from the collection and brought it to her face. She twirled it, inhaled it, pressed her lips against it.
“If I could have chosen a man among thousands to have written me those letters, I would have selected him. He was handsome. Oh, yes! But he was much more. There was an intensity about him that seemed to penetrate through me . . . to frighten me. I felt certain that the passion I sensed in him was real, and that he felt it not only for his dream but also . . . for me.”
She hesitated, as if she had gone too far. She did not know that at that moment two penetrating eyes were dancing over her with the same ardor.
“I see, Nicole.”
“Every day, I draw his likeness in my mind. I’m afraid that with my blindness, I’ll lose the memory of his face.”
“You won’t lose his face, Nicole. It might be closer to you than you think.” He took the envelope from her. She heard the crisp sound of paper tearing. “Let’s see what this guy has to say for himself.”
“Wait!” A sudden panic pushed her hand out to stop him.
“What is it?”
“I’m afraid that after my injury, he’ll feel differently about me. My agent and the theater people now talk to me with a sickening tone of pity! I don’t want that from the Phantom.”
“Why would he feel any differently?”
“Because he’s normal. He deserves a woman who matches him.”
“Why do you think you wouldn’t match him?”
“I thought I could match him before. Then, I could have offered him so much! But now, look at me,” she said, shrugging. “Of course,” she added, her voice brightening, “if the second surgery works . . .”