Separate Beds

by LaVyrle Spencer

  “You're going to get sick if you continue at this pace.”

  “Good!”

  “All right, I'll go with you, but to make sense, not sex, agreed?”

  He looked at her absently.

  “Whatever it is that's bothering you, let's talk it out.”

  “Fine,” he said, taking her glass almost viciously and depositing it and his back on the table which was littered with dozens of others. Without another word he grabbed Jill's wrist and started pushing his way through the mob.

  When they were halfway to the door someone yelled, “Hey, Clay, hold up!” Turning, he saw Stu Glass's ruddy face making its way toward him, both hands raised above the press of elbows, trying to keep from spilling a pair of drinks. Over his shoulder Stu shouted, “Follow me close, honey; I want to talk to Clay a minute.”

  The two couples converged in the milling crowd. “Hey, Clay, you leaving already?”

  “Hey, Stu, whaddya say?”

  “Haven't seen you around all week. Dad wanted to know if you and your father decided about partridge hunting next weekend yet.”

  The two fell to discussing hunting plans, leaving Bobbi and Jill to exchange small talk. They knew each other only slightly, through their relation with the men, but now, for the first time, Bobbi studied Jill Magnusson more assessingly than ever before. She took in Jill's expensive wine-colored sweater and skirt, that angel's face of hers, and the negligent way Clay Forrester's arm looped around her waist while he went on talking to Stu. If ever two people were made for each other it was these two, thought Bobbi. Jill, with her burnished skin, her cover-girl's features and that glorious mane of hair, and Clay with his sun-drenched good looks, flawless taste in clothing to match the girl's, and both of them blessed with self-assurance, wealthy families and preordained success.

  It struck Bobbi quite suddenly that Catherine was positively out of her class with a man like Clay. He belonged with the kind of girl he was with now. How futile it was to wish she'd used better judgment last Fourth of July, yet, observing Clay and Jill together, Bobbi felt a sting of deep regret.

  All the while Clay talked with Stu he was aware of Bobbi. When at last someone from the crowd bumped through and took Jill momentarily away from his side, and Stu along with her, he got his chance.

  “Hi, Bobbi.”

  “Hi, Clay.”

  The two eyed each other a little warily.

  “What's new with you?”

  “Same old thing.”

  Damn her, thought Clay, she's going to make me ask it. He threw a quick eye at Jill, who stood near enough to overhear anything being said.

  “Have you heard anything from your cousin lately?”

  “Yeah, just today, as a matter of fact.”

  “How's everything?”

  “The same.”

  Clay's eyes shifted away and back again. “I never got that call.”

  “I gave her the message.”

  “Could you please ask her again?”

  “She's not interested.”

  Someone from the crowd jostled his way behind Bobbi, pushing her forcibly closer to Clay. He used the opportunity to insist, “There've been some serious repercussions. I've got to talk to her!”

  But just then Jill recaptured Clay, running her painted nails up his arm in a familiar way, taking his elbow in her own. There are people in this world who have things just a bit too good, thought Bobbi, and others who never get a break. Just to even the scales a little bit, some cunning gremlin inside Bobbi made her call after the couple, “I'll tell Catherine you said hello, Clay!”

  He turned and burned her with a look that seemed to say he'd like to throw a hex on her. But he replied civilly, “Give her my best.”

  When Jill and Clay had disappeared, Stu asked, “What was that all about?”

  “Oh, nothing. We lined Clay up with my cousin Catherine last summer one time, remember?”

  “We did? Oh yeah, that's right, we did.” Then, shrugging, he took her elbow and said, “Come on, let's go freshen our drinks.”

  Clay and Jill decided to drive out to the Interlachen Country Club, a place where both of their parents belonged and where they'd been coming for as long as they could remember, to play golf or eat Sunday brunch. The dining room was half empty, left now to those members who stayed to dance on the small parquet floor to the music of a trio that played old standards. They were seated at a table situated in the lee of corner windows overlooking the golf course, which was lit by single lights strewn along the fairways. The dapples of brightness created a jewelled view from this vantage point in the high, glass-walled room. The course boasted fifty different species of trees. Were it high noon, they'd be seeing every warm color of the spectrum across the expanse below, but now, night having settled over the acres of trees and manicured grass, it looked like something from a fairy tale, the trees shimmering silhouettes against the strategically placed lights.

  For some minutes after they were seated, Clay continued staring out at the view below while Jill swirled her wine in its lengthy stem glass. When she'd waited as long as she intended to wait, Jill forced the issue.

  “And who is Catherine?” Even a question such as this reflected Jill's breeding, for her voice grew neither accusing nor harpyish. It flowed instead like the amber liquid around the sides of her glass.

  After a moment's consideration Clay answered, “Bobbi's cousin.”

  Raising the stem glass to her lips, Jill hummed, “Mmm . . .” then added, “Has she got something to do with this sour mood of yours?”

  But Clay seemed far removed again, pensive.

  “What's so interesting out there in the dark?”

  He turned to her with a sigh, rested his elbows on the linen tabletop and kneaded his eyes with the heels of his hands. Then, leaving his eyes covered, he grunted dejectedly, so she could scarcely hear, “Damn.”

  “You might as well talk about it, Clay. If it's about this . . . Catherine, I think I deserve to know. It is, isn't it?”

  His troubled eyes appeared once again, gazing at her, but instead of answering her question, he asked one of his own. “Do you love me, Jill?”

  “I don't think that's the subject of this discussion.”

  “Answer me anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I've been wondering lately . . . a lot. Do you?”

  “Could be. I don't know for sure.”

  “I've been asking myself the same question about you too. I don't know for sure if I love you either, but it's a very good possibility.”

  “That's a little too clinical to be romantic, Clay.” She laughed softly, sending the lights shimmering off her sparkling lips.

  “Yeah, I've been in a clinical mood this week—you know, dissecting things?” He gave her a brief rueful smile.

  “Dissecting our relationship?”

  He nodded, studied the weave of the tablecloth, then raised his eyes to study Jill's flawless face, her hair gleaming beneath the subdued lights of a massive chandelier. Her long fingers with tapered nails glistening as she absently fondled her footed glass, her grace as she relaxed back into her chair, one arm draped limply on its armrest. Jill was like a ten-carat diamond: she belonged in this setting just as surely as Catherine Anderson did not. To bring Catherine Anderson here would be like setting a rhinestone in gold filigree. But Jill . . . ah, Jill, he thought, how she dazzles.

  “You're so damn beautiful it's absurd,” Clay said, a curiously painful note in his voice.

  “Thanks. Somehow it doesn't mean as much tonight as if you'd said it just that way, with just that tone of voice, with just that particular look in your eyes, say . . . a week ago, or, say, four days ago?”

  He had no reply.

  “Say before the subject of Catherine Whoever-she-is intruded?”

  Clay only chewed his lower lip in a way with which she was utterly familiar.

  “I can wait all night for you to spill it out, whatever it is. I'm not the one who has studying to
do this weekend.”

  “Neither do I,” Clay admitted. “I used that as an excuse because I didn't want to see you tonight.”

  “So that's why you pounced on me like a parolee fresh out of prison?”

  He laughed softly, admiring her cool, unruffled presence. “No, that was self-flagellation.”

  “For?”

  “For last July fourth.”

  A light dawned in Jill's head. She remembered quite distinctly the fight they'd had back then.

  “Who was she? Catherine?” Jill asked softly.

  “Exactly.”

  “And?”

  “And she's pregnant.”

  Jill's poise was commendable. She drew in a deep, swift breath, her perfect nostrils flaring into slight imperfection during the length of it. The cords in her neck became momentarily taut before relaxing once more as her eyes and Clay's locked, searching. Then she gracefully braced an elbow on the tabletop and lowered her forehead onto the back of her hand.

  Into the silence, a waiter intruded.

  “Miss Magnusson, Mr. Forrester, can I get you anything else?”

  Clay looked up, distracted. “No, thank you, Scott. We're fine.”

  When Scott had drifted discreetly away, Jill raised her head and asked, “Is she the reason for the shiner, which I have so graciously avoided mentioning all night?”

  He nodded. “Her father.” He took a drink, gazed out at the lights below again.

  “I'll forgo the obvious question,” Jill said, with a hint of asperity creeping into her tone, “realizing you wouldn't have told me unless the situation were clearly defined and you're certain it is yours. Are you going to marry her?”

  This time it was Clay's turn to draw a ragged breath. He sat with ankle crossed over knee, one elbow slung on the edge of the table. To look at him, at the careless pose, at the classic cut of his tailored clothes, his handsome profile, one would not have guessed the slightest thing to be amiss. But inside he was a knot of nerves.

  “You haven't clearly answered whether or not you love me.” Slowly Clay drew his eyes back to hers, suffering now nearly as much as he could see she was.

  “No, I haven't, have I?”

  “Is it”—Clay searched for the correct word—”superfluous now?”

  “I think so, yes, I think so.”

  Each of their eyes dropped down to their drinks; each of them experienced a touching sense of loss at her words.

  “I don't know if I'm going to marry her or not. I'm getting a lot of pressure.”

  “From her parents?”

  He only laughed ruefully. “Oh, Jill, that's so incredibly funny. Too bad you'll never know how incredibly funny that is.”

  “Sure,” Jill retorted caustically, “Ha—ha—ha . . . aren't I funny, though.”

  He reached for her hand on the tabletop. “Jill, it was a thing that happened. You and I had had that big fight the night before. Stu and Bobbi lined me up with this cousin of Bobbi's . . . Hell, I don't know.”

  “And you got her pregnant because you wanted to set up housekeeping with me and I refused to leave Theta House. How chivalrous!” She yanked her hand free.

  “I expected you to be bitter. I deserve it. The whole miserable thing is a lousy mistake. The girl's father is a raving lunatic, and believe me, neither the girl nor I want anything to do with each other. But there are, shall we say, extenuating circumstances that may force me to ask her to marry me.”

  “Oh, she'll be overjoyed that you have to! What girl wouldn't be!”

  He sighed, thought in exasperation, Women! “I'm being pressured in more ways than one.”

  “What's the matter, has your father threatened to deny you a place in the family practice?”

  “You're very astute, Jill, but then I never did take you for a dumb redhead.”

  “Oh, don't humor me; not at a time like this.”

  “It's not only my father. Mother walks around looking like she's just been whipped, and to complicate matters Catherine's old man is threatening to get vocal about it. If that happens, my admission to the bar is in jeopardy. And to complicate matters even worse, Catherine has run away from home.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “No, but Bobbi does.”

  “So you could reach her if you wanted to?”

  “I think so.”

  “But you don't want to?”

  He drew a great sighing breath and only shook his head forlornly. Then he reached for her hand again across the corner of the table. “Jill, I don't have much time to waste. All the devils of hell seem to be riding on my back right now. I'm sorry if I have to lay one of them on yours, and I'm sorry, too, if the occasion isn't what it should be at a time like this, but I want to know your feelings about me. I want to know if, at some time in our future, when all of this is straightened out, when I've completed law school and gotten my life back in working order, would you ever consider marrying me?”

  Her composure slipped a notch and she cast her eyes aside as they grew too glisteny. But they were drawn back to his familiar, lovable face, of which she knew every feature so intimately. In a choked voice she answered, “Damn you, Clay Forrester. I should slap your Adonis's face.”

  But the softness of her words told him how very hurt she was.

  “Jill, you know me. You know what I'd have planned for us if this hadn't interfered. I'd never have asked you this way, at a time like this, if I'd had the choice.”

  “Oh, Clay, my heart is—is . . . falling in little pieces down to the pit of my stomach. What do you expect me to say?”

  “Say what you feel, Jill.” He rubbed a thumb lightly across the back of her hand while she covered his face, hair and body with her eyes, letting her hand remain passively in his.

  “You asked me too late, Clay.”

  Pained moments spun by while the piano player tinkled some old tune and a few dancers moved across the floor. At last he picked up Jill's hand, turned it over and kissed its palm. Returning his gaze to her face he whispered, “God, you're beautiful.”

  She swallowed. “God, you are too. That's our trouble. We're too beautiful. People see only the facade, not the pain, the faults, the human failings that don't show.”

  “Jill, I'm sorry I hurt you. I do love you, you know.”

  “I don't think you'd better bank on me, Clay.”

  “Do you forgive me for asking?”

  “No, don't ask me to do that.”

  “It mattered to me, Jill. Your answer mattered a lot.”

  She slowly pulled her hand free of his and picked up her purse.

  “Jill, I'll let you know what comes of it.”

  “Yeah, you do that. And I'll let you know when my space shuttle leaves for the moon.”

  This time it happened so fast that Clay saw nothing. He stepped out of the Corvette in the driveway and a husky shadow slinked swiftly from behind the bulk of a pyramidal arborvitae. Clay was yanked roughly around, slammed against the fender of the car just as a meaty fist smashed into his stomach, leaving no mark, breaking no bones, only cracking the wind from him viciously as he doubled over and dropped to his knees on the ground.

  Through his pain he heard a grating voice informing, “That was from Anderson. The girl's run off to Omaha.” Then heavy, running footsteps disappeared into the night.

  When Bobbi called the following evening, she sounded breathless. “I ran into him at a party last night, Cat. He asked about you again and said to tell you it's really important. He had to talk to you.”

  “What good would it do? I'm not marrying him and I don't need his money!”

  “Oh, jeez! You're so obstinate! What harm can it do, for heaven's sake!”

  But Marie passed along the hall just then and Catherine turned her face toward the wall, couching the mouthpiece furtively. But from the knowing glance Marie had flashed her way, Catherine suspected she'd heard the last remark. Quietly she said into the phone, “I want him to think I've left town.”

  Bobbi's v
oice suddenly became critical, scolding. “If you want to know what I think, I think you owe him that much. I don't think it's enough for you to insist that you don't need a single thing from Clay Forrester. Maybe he needs something from you. Have you considered that?”

  Dead silence at Bobbi's end of the line for a long moment.

  Catherine hadn't considered that before. She clasped the receiver tightly and pressed it against her ear so hard her head began to hurt. Suddenly it tired her immensely, having to think about Clay Forrester at all. Her emotions were strung out to the limit, and her own problems were more than she wanted to handle without taking on Clay Forrester's too. She sighed and dropped her forehead against the wall.

  Bobbi's voice came through again, but very calmly and quietly. “I think he's in some kind of big trouble over this, Cath. I don't know exactly what because he wouldn't say. All he said was something about serious repercussions.”

  “Don't!” Catherine begged, her eyelids sliding shut wearily. “J-just don't, okay? I don't want to hear it! I can't take on any of his troubles. I have all I can do to handle my own.”

  Again there followed a lengthy silence before Bobbi made one last observation which was to gnaw at Catherine's conscience mercilessly in the hours and days to come: “Cath . . . whether you want to admit it or not, I think they're one and the same.”

  Chapter 6

  The wide blue curve of the Mississippi River glinted beneath the autumn sky as it cut a swath through the campus of the University of Minnesota, dividing it into East Bank and West Bank. The more heavily wooded East Bank wore the school colors, maroon and gold. Homecoming was approaching, and it seemed almost as if the grounds had festooned themselves for the event. Stately old maples wore ruddy tones in startling contrast with the fiery elms. Constant activity churned along Union and Church Streets as homecoming preparations advanced. On the lawns students soaked up summer's warm leftovers. Pedestrians dawdled, waiting for buses in the shaded circle before Jones Hall. Bicycle wheels sighed through tumbled leaves. Ornamental stone parapets adorned gracious old frat houses down along University Avenue, their retaining walls, steps and balconies draped with idlers, slung there like lazing lizards. And everywhere couples kissed, heads bare to the afternoon sun.