by Webb, Peggy
“Yes. You played. I sang.”
“Ahh, my pretty one. Your memory grows weak with age.”
Flannigan hooked the piano bench with his boot and dragged it across the floor. In one smooth motion he sat down, drawing her into his lap.
“You always sat in my lap. Remember?”
“I remember.” Grinning wickedly, Tess leaned so close, the tip of her nose touched his. “But Flannigan... I fear your lap has grown weak with age.”
The rest of the group roared with laughter. The very devil danced in Flannigan’s blue eyes as he tipped Tess’s chin up with one finger.
“Careful, Tess, my darlin’. I might have to prove you wrong.”
She reached up to run her fingers through his hair. “In that case, Flannigan, you’re the one who should be careful.”
CHAPTER TWO
“I was never cautious, Tess.” He locked his hands around her wrists. For a moment his eyes held hers; then he added, too softly for the rest of the group to hear, “Especially with you.”
“What do you mean to do, Flannigan? Put me in handcuffs?”
“It’s a thought.”
Tess had always had a way of gearing up for battle: Her nostrils flared slightly, her eyes turned a brighter shade of green, and her muscles tensed. He could see the signs now, and while he was not cautious, he was sometimes prudent. This was not the time for a battle, especially a battle with Tess Jones.
He reached into his pocket to pull out his harmonica, and Tess gave him an arch smile. They were at a standoff now, with her having the edge. Both of them knew it.
He played a few experimental chords on the blues harp, then smiled at her.
“Are you ready, Tess?”
“I’m always ready. You’re the one who needs warming up.”
Without consulting her on the tune, he played the opening bars of Stormy Weather. She leaned back with a satisfied smile on her face, and when it was time, she began to sing.
He was going to have to be careful all right. He was still hearing siren songs, and right now hers was the most enchanting of all. Ahhh, but it wouldn’t last. He was restless, restless, always on the move. And he was no more willing to drag her around while he searched for his elusive rainbow than he had been ten years ago.
Tess drew him like a magnet, played him like a piano. It had always been that way with them. She would walk into a room, and he automatically gravitated toward her. Even after they had first met, when neither of them wanted to fall in love, they hadn’t been able to stay away from each other. If he wanted to hop into his hearse and drive to the pool hall for a lively game, he called Tess. And if she wanted to stay up all night eating popcorn and watching horror movies on TV, she called him. That’s the way they had been—best friends who hadn’t fallen in love as much as come to a realization that they had always been in love.
He continued playing. Get this over and done with, he told himself. Then get out of Tupelo and don’t look back. He had survived all those years without Tess by never looking back.
He and Tess did three songs, each one harder to endure than the one before. He wished he’d never pulled her onto his lap. But it was too late now. Fortunately Lovey and Jim and Johnny didn’t seem to notice that anything was going on except the music.
And when it was all over, Tess rose from his lap like some regal queen, then turned around and shook his hand. Shook his hand! Ah, she was a cool one all right.
“If you ever need a job as my backup, call me, Mick.”
“If I ever call you again, it won’t be for a job.”
“Then you should be prepared to stand in line.”
“You have lots of gentlemen callers, do you?”
“Yes, but most of them aren’t gentlemen. I prefer the wild type.”
“You always did.”
He pulled a cigar out of his pocket, then leaned down and struck a match on his boot. Cupping the light with his hands, he lit his cigar and took a long, thoughtful draw. Seeing her through the blue smoke didn’t make her any less vivid. If anything, it made her more real to him. During their college days he was always seeing her through the blue haze of smoke in some small nightclub, watching from afar as she dazzled her audience from a tiny stage.
“I guess I was the wildest of all,” he added, needing to know.
She cocked her head to one side and considered for a long time, long enough to make him wish he hadn’t added that last comment.
“Actually, Flannigan, I think the honor goes to my second husband. Carson made the hounds of hell seem tame.” With that parting shot, she left.
He clamped his teeth hard on his cigar and almost bit the end off. Carson. What kind of name was that? It sounded sissy to him. Anyway, he hadn’t wanted to know the name of her second husband. Next thing you knew, she’d be naming her lovers.
She had walked across the room and was standing by Lovey now. He sighed in relief and took a long draw on his cigar, studying her through the smoke rings. He wondered if she’d had lovers too. A woman like Tess—
“I’ll bet everybody’s starving,” said Johnny, interrupting Flannigan’s train of thought. “There’s enough food in the kitchen to feed everybody in Tupelo. You know how it is when somebody... passes on.”
His refusal to mention death was not like Johnny. His friends noticed. Of all the group, he was the most pragmatic, the most forthright. Besides, he was a doctor. Death was something he saw every day. By using a euphemism, he’d told them exactly how much Babs’s death had affected him.
He led them into the kitchen, still talking.
“Most people can’t quite bring themselves to come right out and say what they’re feeling, so they make piles of food to let the bereaved know they care. A lovely custom.”
They scattered around the kitchen, getting paper plates and filling glasses with ice and trying to identify casseroles—all with good-natured jostling and joking.
“This one looks suspiciously like corn.” Jim held up a dish for his wife to see. “Do you think that’s corn, Lovey?”
“It could be, sweetheart.” She leaned over and took a long whiff. “Mmm, smells divine. You should try it.”
“You know I can’t abide corn.”
Laughing, Lovey set the casserole on the table among all the other casseroles and pies and cakes and sandwiches and pickles.
“It’s a feast,” Flannigan said.
“Wouldn’t she have loved it?” Johnny asked, smiling at each of his friends around the table. “Wait a minute. Where’s Babs?”
“I thought you were bringing her,” Tess said.
“Well, I set her on the piano for a minute... Hold everything. Don’t say a thing important. I’ll be right back.”
Johnny came back and put the urn in a place of honor at the head of the table. The group grew quiet. Jim slipped his arm around Lovey’s waist, and Johnny hovered close to his wife’s ashes.
Tess glanced across the room at Mick. He was leaning against the wall, his face gone dark and somber. Suddenly she felt very much alone. She pictured herself, spinning out her years, trailing them thinly behind her like so many bits of colored yarn. And when she was gone, somebody would pick up her purple peignoir and her gold shoes and say, “Is this all that’s left of Tess? Had she no children? No husband? No one who’s going to miss her? Is this all there is of Tess Jones Flannigan Carson OToole?”
She didn’t like to picture herself vanishing, dying and being practically invisible. Maybe it shouldn’t be that way. Maybe her cat would live as long as she did. Maybe he would sit in front of her urn, licking his paws and pretending he didn’t care, but all the same missing her terribly and nursing a broken heart.
She glanced at Flannigan again. He seemed bigger, more vital, more powerful, more real than when she last looked his way. Funny how death magnified the living.
“I’m mad at her, you know,” Johnny said quietly. “She wasn’t supposed to leave me to face the years alone.”
“Anger is natural,
Johnny. You’ll probably even feel some guilt. Most survivors do.” Jim was the one talking.
During their college days he had always been the one to explain their feelings and rationalize their moods. He was a clinical psychologist now with a booming practice. And no wonder, Tess thought. She felt better already. She’d been a little angry at Babs herself.
“What do you think she’s doing now?” Johnny asked.
The group was very quiet, watching him. Jim and Lovey sat side by side on straight-backed chairs, holding on to each other as if death threatened them.
Tess felt a chill creeping into the room. She wanted to push it back, kicking and screaming that it had no business there in Tupelo at the going-away party. But all she could do was look at the urn.
“Hell, Kalinopolis.” Flannigan’s voice boomed around the room, dispelling the gloom. He pushed himself away from the wall and strode across the kitchen. When he reached Tess, he casually draped his arm over her shoulder. “She’s out there somewhere talking about flying with Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh.”
Tess took her cue. She and Flannigan had always worked as a team, keeping a banter going when the group needed perking up.
“If they gave her wings,” she chimed in, “she’s already striped them blue and gold and painted The Johnny K. in big black letters across their sides. You know she never had a flying machine she didn’t name The Johnny K.”
Johnny and Jim and Lovey began to smile. Flannigan and Tess continued their banter.
“Remember that time she bombed the Sigma Chi house?” said Flannigan, squeezing Tess’s arm. She knew the signal. It was her turn.
“It took us a month to find all those plastic donkeys.”
“You were in on that?”
“Heck, yes. Did you think Babs would have had the patience to go round up one hundred plastic donkeys and cut their backsides off?”
The group hooted with laughter.
“You should have seen their faces the next day when they told about it,” Johnny said. “The back-ends of all those plastic donkeys falling out of the sky, and Babs buzzing so low, they thought she was going to take the roof off their frat house.”
“Served them right,” Lovey said. “The very idea. Not inviting the smartest man on campus to join their fraternity.”
“I can hardly blame them. All I needed was a mustache and a gun to look like I’d just left the Family back in Greece.”
They began to talk at once, bringing Babs gently back into their midst by telling old stories of their youthful escapades.
Out of the corner of his eyes, Flannigan could see Tess’s red hair. The subtle fragrance of flowers filled his senses. Being close to her felt too good. He took his arm from around her shoulders and eased away. But not too far.
She was a part of the group, an old friend. Surely he could sit close to an old friend for a few hours while they reminisced. He kept telling himself that. Over and over.
When he discovered he was leaning closer just to hear the whispery, bluesy sound of her voice better, he reminded himself that it was friendship he was feeling—and nostalgia. When his hand touched hers as he passed the chocolate cake, he told himself it was only natural her hands should feel different, softer, sweeter, more electric than any other woman’s hand. After all, they had once been husband and wife.
They were the last to leave the kitchen.
Tess licked one last bit of chocolate icing from her fingers and smiled at Flannigan.
“You were wonderful, Mick. If you hadn’t done something, all of us would have been crying in another minute.”
“You weren’t so bad yourself, Tess, my girl.”
He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek.
“You taste like chocolate.”
“Chocolate used to be your favorite flavor.”
“It still is.” He tipped her face up with the back of his hand. In the fluorescent glare of the kitchen light they studied each other for a long time. His face was so intense, Tess thought he might be going to kiss her.
There was no question about what she would do. She’d kiss him back... for old time’s sake.
Abruptly he released her.
“Good night, Tess, my girl.”
“‘Night, Mick.”
They went up the staircase together, conscious of each other and not wanting to be and not knowing what to do about it. At the top they hesitated, looking at each other. Mick started to say good night, but he’d already said that. In the end they merely nodded and went their separate ways.
Mick closed his door firmly behind him, then lay in the dark thinking about the taste of chocolate on her skin and the way her hair had swung around and touched his face when she turned her head. He didn’t even try to sleep.
o0o
Across the hall, Tess tried. Lying alone on her clean sheets with her hands folded resolutely across her chest, she closed her eyes. She stayed that way for two hours, glancing at the bedside clock every now and then to see if she was making any progress.
But she couldn’t fall asleep, even in the peaceful darkness of her small southern hometown, even with the tranquil murmur of crape myrtle branches against the windowpane and the friendly patches of moonlight on the ceiling.
Rather than toss and turn and, worse yet, try to name the cause of her unexpected wakefulness, she untangled herself from the covers and scooped OToole off the bed. He complained loudly, but she kissed the top of his head and shushed him.
“Be quiet, OToole, and help me find my shoes.”
He was no help at all, sitting in her arms glowering, but she found them anyway and slipped them on. Then she grabbed her silk peignoir and flung it over her shoulders.
She decided to go down to the kitchen again. She’d figure out what to do once she got there. When she was growing up, her aunt Bertha had told her that most of the world’s problems could be settled in a good cozy kitchen. It was one of the few things Aunt Bertha had ever said that made sense to Tess.
Her high heels sank into the plush carpet as she made her way out of the bedroom and down the stairs. The urn was sitting on the hall table next to a bouquet of gardenias. On impulse, Tess decided to take Babs with her.
“You always did love gardenias,” she said as she plucked the urn off the table.
With OToole in one arm and Babs in the other, she had quite an armload, but Tess didn’t mind. She felt better already. Having friends around always perked her up.
She put her cat and her friend on the kitchen table and began to rummage through the cabinets.
“Do you still keep champagne here?” She searched in the back of the refrigerator—finding the bottle at last. The cork was tight and the wire over it wouldn’t give. She always did have trouble with corks. That had been the only good thing about Carson, her second husband. He had been handy with corks.
“Come on,” she said as she struggled with the wire. “If you cut my finger and the cork flies like a missile, I’m going to scream.”
“Drinking alone, Tess?”
She almost dropped the bottle. Mick Flannigan stood in the doorway, his chest bare and his jeans as tight as sin. He was the last person she wanted to see right now. It was all his fault that she was up in the wee hours, rambling around the kitchen.
“What are you doing down here, Mick?”
“I might ask you the same thing.” He took the bottle from her and deftly popped out the cork. He wasn’t about to tell her that he’d been lying awake in his bed, listening for any movement from her side of the hall.
“I came down for a late-night chat with Babs.”
“Will I do just as well?” He handed her the champagne, then hooked a chair with his bare foot and pulled it out for her.
“No.” She sat down, then leaned back in her chair and gave him a bold once-over. “I’m not in the mood for a half-naked man tonight.”
The thought of her being in the mood for any half-naked man except himself made heat climb over his chest and up his nec
k. He knew if he didn’t rein in his temper, there would be the devil to pay. Tess could match him word for word, the hotter the better.
Hooking another chair, he sat facing her, almost close enough to touch. Almost, but not quite.
“In that case, my darling, I could shuck these jeans.”
“Don’t bother. I’ve already seen it all.”
She propped one elbow on the table and poured herself a glass of champagne, taking her time so that each drop seemed to come out separately and do a song-and-dance routine before it finally hit the glass. Out of the corner of her eye she could see exactly how she maddened him.
“Quite frankly, Flannigan, you don’t interest me anymore.” She tipped the glass toward her lips.
“If I wanted to, I could make you eat those words, my girl.” He reached out and caught her wrist just as the first drop of golden liquid fell onto her tongue. Lord, she was tempting.
“Fortunately for you, I’m not in the mood,” he said finally, as he let her go.
“Well, now...” She settled back into her chair and slowly circled her tongue around her lips. When they were glistening with champagne, she smiled at him. “We’ve established that we aren’t attracted to each other anymore. What else is there to talk about?”
“We used to have plenty to talk about.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“So it was.”
An uneasy silence fell upon them. To cover the awkwardness, Tess concentrated on drinking her champagne.
Mick watched her throat as she swallowed. He remembered how her skin felt under his lips, deliciously cool, even in the hottest part of summer, and how her pulse fluttered at the base of her throat, like spring leaves dancing in a breeze.
To get his mind off her skin, he leaned back in his chair and studied her clothes. She wore a gown that would make saints lose their crowns, a bit of creamy satin dripping with ostrich plumes. Until this very moment he didn’t know how much he’d missed those frothy, sexy gowns of hers. And the dancing shoes. He glanced down at her feet. She still wore those outrageous sequined shoes that sparkled when she walked.
His throat got tight, and he began to feel soft and sentimental.