by Jane Gentry
“Good Lord,” Elizabeth said. “You’ve been addled by the wine.”
“I’m addled, all right,” he said. “But not by the wine.” He gathered his long legs under him and got to his feet. “Come out from behind that oak plank barrier you’ve got between us and walk me to the door. I wouldn’t want Melody to be late for a Saturday detention because I overslept.”
“I’d forgotten about the damned detention,” said Elizabeth.
Steve walked around the table and pulled her to her feet.
Hand in hand, they walked to the front door.
“Want to kiss me good-night in here or out there?” he asked, gesturing with his head toward the porch. “Cara’s in here, the neighbors are out there.”
“The neighbors pay absolutely no attention to anything I do,” said Elizabeth, avid with anticipation. “Cara’s the problem.”
“Cara will come around,” he said. “I’ll see to it.”
She opened the door and stepped outside into the frosty November night. Steve reached a long arm around the door frame and switched off the porch light. The cold dark shadows of the trees and houses closed in around them, and the stars were far away and very dim.
“Well,” he said, putting his hands to her waist. “Shielded enough?”
She murmured assent.
“Still want the kiss?”
“Don’t tease,” she said. “Or I’ll go back in the house and nurse a grudge, and you’ll still be out here in the cold, sans kiss.”
Fat chance, twittered her libido, which knew beyond doubt that she craved that kiss. Wanted it more than anything in the world just then.
On again, off again, as desire warred with anxiety.
On again. Worry about it later. She’d wanted that kiss, wanted it badly, every day after school as she and Steve met in front of Harkness to collect their unrepentant feuders. Wanted it on Saturday mornings, when they talked after they delivered the girls to the reforming dicta of Miss Westcott. Wanted it as they lingered after Saturday detention, waiting for their unreconstructed little rebels to be released.
She deserved that kiss, she’d waited a long time for it, she intended to have it.
And worried about it, briefly, as he touched her cheek. What if this one kiss she wanted so much drove her to throw all reason to the wind? Off again. On again.
He raised her chin with one finger and she closed her eyes. He was too close to see, to close for her to breathe. He kissed her firmly and gently, his lips tasting hers for far too short a time: a get-acquainted kiss, a let’s-see-what-comes-of-this kiss. An invitation to a beginning. Then he hugged her hard and drew away.
It was not enough to satisfy her physical desire, but certainly, emotionally, quite enough for now.
* * *
Elizabeth stupidly padded around her bedroom barefoot with her feet freezing, until she was ready for bed. Then she snuggled under a wool blanket and a down comforter and wondered how cold feet could make her whole body miserable. Since the barefoot padding was an unbreakable habit, every winter night brought the same chill and the same annoyed philosophizing. She tucked her feet into the tail of her flannel nightgown and for the thousandth time, she thought, I need a hot-water bottle.
For the first time she thought, No, I don’t. I need a man.
A man like Steve. The thought warmed more than her feet. She imagined what it would be like to have him share the big bed, to wrap her closely to his naked body, to grow hot against him under the protective weight of the soft, white wool and silk-covered down.
Intruding into this seductive fantasy was Cara, who opposed Steve with the mindless ardor of a fanatic. Cara had no real reason to dislike Melody and Steve. That fact made the situation worse, not better. It was almost impossible to alter prejudice with reason. What would happen to all of them, Elizabeth wondered, if she let herself fall in love with Steve and found that she couldn’t manage Cara, who became more stubborn and less tractable with every passing day?
Steve. She groaned and rolled over in bed. The sexual fantasy had made her body burn, and worrying about Cara made her head ache, and anxiety made her mouth dry, and the combination made her irritable.
I can’t think about this now, she said to herself, and recalled Scarlett O’Hara. I’ll think about it tomorrow.
She tossed. She turned. She yearned.
Damn.
Finally she went to find the books Steve had brought her. She was terribly tired. If she read, she’d relax, and the reading would put her to sleep. A good way to get to sleep, she thought, but not too flattering to the author. She wouldn’t tell Steve that his baby had grown up to be a soporific.
She piled pillows against the headboard and climbed back into bed with the book. She snuggled down until her head was supported and the light hit the page just right, and opened the cover of Fire in the Hole.
“He had always been afraid of fire,” read the first line. “So afraid that as a child he dreamed at night of licking flames and scarring heat, which made his infant face melt into his outstretched hands.”
And Elizabeth was hooked.
Fire in the Hole was an exhilarating fantastic romp through accidental universes. It braided, looped and spun like a flight of acrobats, across three hundred pages that shimmered with wit and charm. It was a remarkable piece of work for a boy just twenty years old. Jord Varic was the hero, and obviously the young and fearless hero was Steve’s imaginary alter ego.
To Elizabeth’s great astonishment, she liked it very much, just for herself and not because Steve had written it.
Jord Varic, the Fireman, was in charge of a problem-shooting team of astrophysicists who roved through these universes eliminating anything which threatened to destroy the balance of our own. The Fireman was cocky, sure of himself, felt physically invincible and was irresistible to beautiful women. He was very James Bond-y, full of hope for the future and the unshakable belief that good would always conquer evil.
However dazzling the writing, thematically it was so exactly what a twenty-year-old boy would write that it made her smile with tenderness for his youth and innocence.
Though it touched metaphorically on the problems of the world, it focused more on the problems of the studly protagonist, who might get horribly trapped in an alternate universe—except that the youngster, who brandished his hero like a vindicating sword, harbored the very endearing and completely specious idea that nothing horrible could possibly happen to him. The Fireman, like the writer, knew that he controlled his life and his future and refused to be misguided by any notion to the contrary.
The thoughts, the ideas, the thrust of the plot all revealed a great deal of what Steve must have been like as a very young man. She lay back on the pillows, musing. Whatever she had expected from reading his books first to last, she hadn’t thought she’d have such a mirror on his mind. Drowsily she wondered what the other books would tell about him.
Did Steve, like the Fireman, at twenty, believe implicitly that he could wrestle destiny and by his own strength defeat it?
Did he still believe it, the older Fireman who struggled on the cover of The Hail Mary Margin?
She was too sleepy to find out. She sank deeply into a wonderful dreamless sleep which lasted exactly fifty-seven minutes. Then her alarm heartlessly sawed its way into her brain and used no anesthetic.
After a few exhausted moments of groggy resentment, she forced herself out of bed and went to waken Cara.
“Detention time,” she said, switching on the light.
Cara opened her eyes and glared at her mother. “I hate Miss Westcott,” she announced.
“It’s a waste of time to hate Miss Westcott for your own transgressions,” said Elizabeth, whose head ached from lack of sleep. “If you would give up this idiotic feud, we could both sleep late on Saturdays.”
“I’m not feuding,” said Cara. “Melody is.”
“Takes two to tango,” Elizabeth said, leaving Cara’s room to go and dress. “Get out of bed.”
Back in her bedroom she drew the curtain and peered into the dark morning. Dawn had yet to come, though the horizon was lightening in the east. One thick, icy, well-muscled cloud plated the sky gray-black, and a heavy drizzle was beginning to turn to sleet. She stood on the edges of her bare feet to minimize their contact with the wooden floor; it made her ankles hurt, and her feet stayed cold, anyway.
The weather worsened by the second.
Her bed, still warm, invited her to crawl back under the covers, and the comforter waited, curled protectively around the hollow she’d made for herself during the night. With enormous strength of will and considerable rancor for Cara and Melody, she turned to the old wardrobe that held her clothes and began to root in the top drawer for wool socks and a silk undershirt. Heavy jeans. A red plaid flannel shirt. Duck shoes.
Her jeans were cold against her legs. Her feet were cold, under the argyles. Her hands were cold; her nose was cold. And by now, the bed was cold. The wind rose with the sun, and the sleet clicked decisively against the glass.
It was a long time till summer. Hard to believe that a few weeks ago she’d been sweltering in her office...that she hadn’t met Steve. Had not wanted a man. Had not seen one who caused thick-coming fantasies so seductive that they engendered a passion she could still feel in her body and taste upon her lips.
She wandered, bemused, down the hall and found Cara still in bed.
“Damn it,” she said.
Cara took one look at her mother’s face and bounded to the floor. “I’m up, I’m up,” she said.
“If you are not downstairs, fully dressed, in ten minutes...” Elizabeth began.
But Cara had fled to the bathroom and was out of earshot.
Elizabeth went downstairs and put on the coffee and a pot of water for oatmeal. The thermometer in the kitchen read fifty degrees. She muttered at the thermostat and turned it to eighty. It was a symbolic gesture; she and Cara would be out of the house long before the kitchen was warm enough to be comfortable. The furnace had to make a considerable and lengthy effort to take the chill off the granite and flagstones.
She stirred the oatmeal and looked around the room, musing. Like a cave in this kitchen, in bad weather. Ought to do something about it. Needs a rug, a nice braided rug with some bright color in it, instead of that tatty grayish thing that’s under the table now. Yellow curtains, get rid of that wretched Philadelphia-conservative navy-and-gold print. Better lights, so shadows didn’t squat in all the corners. Wallpaper, maybe. White paint, cover up that dark woodwork. New clock. Bigger, so she could see it without squinting at it from across the room.
And squinting, she saw that it was six thirty-five and she yelled up the stairs for Cara to come to breakfast.
On the way to school, fortified by the oatmeal and the coffee, she said to Cara, “We’re going out for pizza next Saturday.” Perhaps in seven days, Cara would be used to the idea.
“Great,” said Cara, unsuspecting. “Can I bring a friend?”
“May I,” said Elizabeth, pulling up to the Harkness front door. “Actually—” she took a deep breath “—Melody and her father are going to pick us up.”
Cara stiffened.
“Well, I won’t go,” she announced. She slammed out of the car and stomped up the stairs to the detention hall.
Melody was just in front of her and let the door slam in her face. With an expression of sheer vitriol, Cara yanked it open and stalked inside.
Elizabeth watched anxiously.
Steve tapped on her window. She lowered it and looked at him. The wind tousled his sandy hair and lifted the collar of his scuffed, old, leather bomber jacket. He looked like an adventurer.
“I hope you realize that this pizza venture is doomed,” she said, feeling as certain to be thwarted as Juliet Capulet.
“Let’s talk about it over coffee. Is the Humpty Dumpty’s Diner over by the Bryn Mawr station all right with you?”
She nodded, and he slid into the front seat beside her.
“You do know this thing with Melody and Cara isn’t as bad as it looks, don’t you?” he said, laying his arm across the back of the seat.
“Steve,” she said. “You’ve been writing too much fiction. This is reality. It is exactly as bad as it looks. Maybe worse. You can’t move those two girls around like you can move the characters in the books you write.”
“You can’t move the characters in a book around, either,” he said. “They have minds of their own. But that’s beside the point.”
“Just what is the point?” She started the car with a jerk and rolled down the driveway.
“The point is that they’re two children, malleable and flexible. We’re the parents. If we’re firm and confident, they’ll see that their opposition is useless, and they’ll give it up.”
She glanced at him. He was the picture of firm confidence. His eyes smiled at her from across the seat.
“Oh, yeah, right,” she said. “Cara says she won’t go next weekend.”
“So does Melody. But she will.”
“Interesting picture,” said Elizabeth, after a pause. “Both of them bound and gagged and propped into a booth.”
“An appealing picture, sometimes,” said Steve. “We’d get some relief.”
“Relief? What happened to being firm and they’ll come around?”
“Oh, I’m convinced they’ll come around,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean they aren’t wearing on me. Here’s the diner, right here.”
They could smell bacon as soon as they got out of the car. Elizabeth, who had not intended to eat, began to reconsider. A rasher of bacon, two eggs, cottage fries and two cups of coffee later, she said, “I read Fire in the Hole.“
“Did you like it?” he asked. And couldn’t believe how much he cared about her answer.
“I loved it,” she said honestly. She tilted her head and smiled across the table at him. “Is that what you were like, at twenty?”
“I wish.” He shook his head, remembering the boy he had been. “That’s what I wanted to be at twenty. Savior of the world.”
“Do you still want to save it?”
“Oh, yes. The difference is, now I know I can’t.”
“When did you decide that?”
“Somewhere along the way,” he said. “Keep reading.”
“Could I have all of them? The Fireman books?” she asked. “All right now, I mean. I don’t want to have to wait after I finish the next one. I want the third one right there at hand. What’s it called?”
“The Lion’s Whelp.”
“Then?”
“Kalik the Destroyer. The end of innocence.” He didn’t say whether it was his innocence that ended, but the look on his face hinted at it. “Then Fields of Gomorrah.“
Were the subsequent four as psychologically autobiographical as the first? She couldn’t ask.
“When may I get them?” she said.
“This morning, if you want to,” he said. “I have to go by the house to pick up Sammy so I can take him to Lin’s, and if you’ll come with me, you can take home all the books I have.”
“Good offer,” she said. “I accept. When do you have to leave?”
“Ten-thirty or so. Want to kill some time in between?”
“If you don’t mind running an errand with me. I’m going to remodel my kitchen. I decided this morning.” She sipped at her coffee, then added more cream. “Only the Penitentes could feel comfortable in there.”
Steve reached for her hand. “Great idea,” he said. “I never saw a kitchen in such dire need of improvement. What are you going to do?”
“New curtains. Paint the woodwork and cabinets white, I guess. Wallpaper. And a new rug. I hate that gray thing I’ve got now.” Her green eyes looked past him, far away, as if she could already see the transformation.
He could see it, too—Elizabeth in a red shirt and tight jeans, standing at the counter in a blaze of bright light, sipping at wine as red as her lips.
His fi
ngers curled around hers and his thumb massaged gently at the center of her palm. He loved tight jeans.
If we were alone, he thought, I’d put a kiss right there— looking at the dimple beside her mouth. And then I’d unbutton that shirt.
“Why’d you keep it so long?” he asked, feeling a hunger that no amount of breakfast could ever assuage. He cupped his hand around her fist and squeezed gently.
“Inertia, I suppose,” she said, sounding a bit short of breath. She pulled her hand away and toyed with the last of her toast. “I thought I’d go to a carpet store this morning while I wait for Cara to get out of detention.”
“I promise not to offer any advice.”
“You’re welcome to offer advice if you please.” She really didn’t know what she was likely to do, she thought, if she managed to get him alone anywhere. It was so unsettling to look at a man and want to tear all your clothes off, and all his, too.
Steve reached for the check and Elizabeth said, “Let me pay for mine.”
“Absolutely not. I drank about forty dollars’ worth of wine last night. I owe you at least twenty more breakfasts, at that rate.”
She tossed three dollars on the table. “I’ll get the tip, then.”
As soon as they were in the car, Steve said, “That was thirty percent, that tip. You left thirty percent.”
“So?” said Elizabeth. She wrapped both hands tightly around the steering wheel, trying to forget the erotic pressure of his stroking thumb. She backed out of the parking space and crept into the southbound traffic.
“Mad extravagance,” he said. “And from an accountant, too. It’s shocking.”
“Why are all men such bad tippers?” She turned the heater fan to high. Cold air swirled around their feet and ankles.
“I’m not a bad tipper. Thirty percent’s too much.”
“These people depend on tips for a living.”
“I only get six and a half percent. I depend on that for a living.”
“Six and a half? Are you kidding?” Sleet had built up at the edges of the street. Elizabeth turned cautiously onto Montgomery. The tires slipped a little before they caught. She had to quit thinking about sex and concentrate on her driving. Maybe the frigid air blowing out of the heater would have the same effect as a cold shower.