Hale's Point

by Patricia Ryan

  Unless you win, thought Harley. Then it’ll take all night.

  She could not go to bed with Tucker Hale—not knowing what she knew now. But she wasn’t prepared for a showdown, either. She hadn’t even decided which of them should be the one to leave. Confronting him without knowing what she wanted would put her in a position of weakness. She needed time. She needed until tomorrow. Biting her lip, she calculated his chances of catching her tonight at thirty, maybe forty percent, thinking, Wouldn’t Liz be proud of me for reducing this situation to numbers.

  “Okay.” she said, positioning herself at the drop-off. Let’s get this over with. “Ready?”

  “Am I ever. I’m really up for this tonight.”

  Harley recalculated his chances at closer to fifty percent.

  “I’m feeling fast.”

  Maybe sixty. Tops.

  She inhaled deeply and let it out. Got to pull out all the stops tonight. Whatever you do, don’t let him catch you.

  “One… two… three… go!”

  Go-go-go-go-go! Harley surged forward, a lightning-fast, unthinking machine. Kick-kick-kick-kick-kick, go-go-go-go-go! She could hear him pursuing her through the water, his strokes quick and powerful. Her heart raced with the panic of the chased animal. He was closing in on her. She could feel the turbulence of the water as he neared. Was he doing the butterfly? She pictured the trophy in his room, inscribed Tucker Hale, 200-Meter Butterfly, First Place—

  The big hands wrapped around her waist just a split second before she touched the deck. He did it! No-no-no-no—

  She grabbed the deck with both hands to pull herself up, but he pressed down on her shoulders, halting her efforts to rise. He was behind her, very close to her. She could hear his ragged breathing, she could feel his heat through the water that separated them.

  What could she say to him? How could she get out of this?

  He gathered her wet hair to one side, and then she felt his lips, warm and gentle, on the back of her neck. His kisses sent shivers down her spine, and she closed her eyes, thinking, I don’t want this, I can’t let this happen.

  Abruptly she gripped the deck and pushed herself up and out of the pool, but he was right behind her, leaping up like a big cat. Before she could rise, he lowered her to the deck, covering her body with his.

  Maybe she could tell him they had to wait until tomorrow. She could claim she still felt unwell. That would give her the night to think of what to say to him. But when she opened her mouth to speak, he leaned down and closed his own over it. He kissed her with a deep and urgent passion, the culmination of six weeks of aching need. His hands traced restless paths over her breasts, down to her waist and hips, and back up to her shoulders.

  Impatiently he untied the straps of her swimsuit and peeled it down to her waist, cupping her breasts with his hands. She broke the kiss, gasping. This can’t happen, this can’t happen.

  Lowering his head, he took one taut nipple in his warm mouth. She groaned as he kissed and suckled her, a groan of both despair and yearning. She wanted to feel his lips on every inch of her body, she wanted him inside her, she wanted to give herself to him.

  How could this be? How could she still want him, knowing what he was? He had the power to make her forget herself, that’s why. When he touched her, she dissolved.

  Summoning all her strength, she pushed him away. Released of his mouth and hands, she quickly turned and sprang to her feet before he could stop her. Standing with her back to him, she pulled up her suit and retied the straps.

  He sat up. “Harley? What’s going on?”

  Without answering him, she walked around the pool to the shallow end, feeling Tucker’s eyes on her the whole time. She lifted her robe from the chaise where she had left it and put it on as he gained his feet and walked toward her. “Come on, Harley, talk to me.”

  She tried to walk away; but he stepped in front of her and grabbed her arm. She tried to shake him off, but his grip tightened. “Don’t freeze me out, Harley. Talk to me. What’s the matter?”

  She looked away from his huge brown eyes. “I just… I don’t want to…to be with you that way. I just don’t want to.”

  “I can see that. You mind telling me why?”

  “Look, I know we had a deal—”

  “Forget the deal. This isn’t about any deal. This is about you and me.”

  She straightened her back. “There’s never been any ‘you and me’.”

  “Then what’s been going on here all summer? You mind telling me that?”

  She met his eyes. “I’ve been a gullible little idiot. That’s what’s been going on.”

  “What?”

  She grabbed his hand by the wrist and flung it away.

  “Harley, I don’t—”

  “It’s over.” She circled him, opened the French doors, and went into the house. Glancing back, she saw him reach into his back pocket, pull out his wallet, grimace, and hurl it angrily across the patio.

  She ran to her room, closed and locked the door, then curled up on her bed, shaking from head to toe.

  It took about half an hour for the tremors to cease. She got up and went to the window. The patio was dark. She stood still and listened for a minute; the house was quiet. Carefully opening the door, she walked down the hall to the bathroom, dropped her robe and swimsuit onto the tiled floor, and took a long, hot shower.

  Wrapped in a towel, her wet hair combed straight back, she returned to her room. Tucker was there. She froze in her tracks, staring from the doorway.

  He stood at her dresser, opening the top drawer, which was about chest-high on him. He had traded his wet khaki shorts for olive-green fatigue pants and a white T-shirt. When he saw Harley, he looked up, his eyes lowering automatically to the towel and her bare legs, then returned his attention to the drawer. He felt around inside, lifting a stack of scarves and looking under it. Closing that drawer, he opened the one beneath it.

  “What are you looking for?” Harley asked.

  “My cigarettes.” He pushed aside a jumble of socks.

  “You can’t be serious,” she said. “You haven’t smoked for six weeks. You’re going to start again now?”

  “My motivation for quitting is gone.”

  “You don’t want to be healthy anymore?”

  He slammed the drawer closed and yanked another open. “I didn’t quit for my health. I quit for you.” He glanced at her and then back at the contents of the drawer. It was her underwear drawer, and he blinked at the display of patterns: zebra, leopard, tiger, Dalmatian, snakeskin.

  “They’re not in there,” she volunteered.

  He shut that drawer and opened another. T-shirts. He pawed through them freely. “I wanted to get into decent enough shape to win you. I knew I couldn’t just have you. I had to earn you. I thought, this woman is special. She deserves the best.”

  Finished with the T-shirt drawer, he squatted down and opened the bottom one, hesitating at the neat piles of bras and stockings.

  “They’re not in that one, either,” Harley said.

  He closed it, stood, and looked around. Zeroing in on her night table, he slid open its single drawer, finding it filled with odds and ends: memorabilia, buttons, sewing things, pens and pencils, safety pins…

  “I tried to be the best for you.” he said. “I made myself over for you. I reinvented myself just for you. And meanwhile I waited for you. For six weeks I kept my distance from you, and don’t think for a second it was easy.” He pushed the drawer back in and looked at her. “I thought you understood why I was going to all that trouble. I thought you wanted me as much as I wanted you.”

  He turned away again and went to her dressing table, which also had only one drawer. Rummaging through her modest collection of makeup and toiletries, he said, “I guess I was pretty naive. You’re in the market for some doctor or lawyer, just like Phil said. Not some crippled high-school dropout who makes his living hauling stuff from one place to another.”

  “Oh, please. I
never thought of you that way.”

  “Didn’t you? I mean, I know I’m more than that, I know I deserve you. Maybe I didn’t six weeks ago, but I do now. Only now you don’t seem to know it.”

  He looked around in frustration. No more drawers. Without thinking about it, Harley glanced toward her bed, and Tucker noticed. His eyebrows shot up. “You’re kidding,” he said. Lifting the mattress with one hand, he snatched the two packs of Camels from beneath it with the other. “Is this what they teach you in business school? To hide your valuables under the mattress? I thought that was out of style.” He pocketed the cigarettes, except for one, which he placed between his lips.

  “Tucker, don’t.” Harley walked over to him and grabbed the cigarette away from him.

  His hand closed around her wrist. “The first time you did that, it was kind of cute. It’s lost its charm.” He took the cigarette back and released her wrist. Producing a pack of matches, he lit up, grimacing as he inhaled. He sat on the edge of her bed and rubbed his neck, then looked up at her, his eyes briefly drawn again to the towel in which she was wrapped. “So, what now?” he asked, leaning forward, elbows on knees. “What do you want? Level with me this time, Harley. Tell me what you really want. You want me to get lost? Just tell me the truth this time.”

  The truth. “I know you want to see your father. And this is more your house than mine, so I’d feel funny asking you to leave. I don’t mind if you stay. As long as…as long as you understand—”

  “That I’m to keep the hell away from you,” he finished, meeting her eyes. “That I’m not to call you honey, that I’m not to touch you or tell you how much I want you. I’m not to think about you every waking hour, imagining what it would be like to take your clothes off and make love to you. I’m not to wake up in the middle of the night in a sweat because I’ve dreamed about you again. Right?” Harley just stared at him, unable to speak. He closed his eyes, lowered his head, and sat that way for a few moments, the ash growing longer on his unsmoked cigarette. “The thing is—” he looked at her, and she saw the honest confusion in his eyes “—you just didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would let things get this far and then yank the rug out from under me.”

  Her response was immediate. “And you didn’t seem like a drug dealer. I guess we’re both full of surprises.”

  His gaze never left hers. The ash from his cigarette dropped onto the rug, but he didn’t notice. Finally he said, “That’s what this is about?”

  She said, “I found two articles from the Miami Herald in your father’s desk this morning—”

  He stood. “Show me.”

  After a brief detour to the bathroom to substitute her robe for the towel, Harley led him to the study. She opened the drawer and pulled out the first newspaper. Sitting in the leather swivel chair, he crossed his legs with graceful ease-something that would have been impossible for him six weeks before—and read the article in its entirety with no change in expression. When he was done, she handed him the second article, and he read that, as well. Still holding the newspapers, he sat back and studied her for a minute.

  When he spoke, his voice was a soft rasp, and his words seemed to have been chosen with care. “I can understand how this must have made you feel, finding all this out. Your childhood was ruined because of your parents’ dependence on drugs, I know that. That’s a big part of the reason I didn’t want to tell you about Miami. I didn’t want you to think I was connected in any way with drugs, and I certainly didn’t want you to know I’d been in prison. Something I found out after I got out was, people aren’t interested in why you served time, whether there was any justice in it or not. The very fact that you were in there at all, brands you as a criminal permanently. The stigma is almost impossible to erase.”

  She folded her arms. “You’re assuming I’ll agree with you that there was no justice in your being sent to jail. That’s assuming a lot.”

  He nodded slightly, as if he had expected her to say this. “I was convicted on the basis of Chet’s testimony. He swore in court that I’d been away from the house all night, that he’d heard me return half an hour before the police got there. I swore that I’d been asleep since eleven o’clock. It was a little more complicated than that, but that’s the gist of it. As soon as Chet’s father found out what happened, he arranged for this high-powered, silk-suited lawyer to coach him through his testimony. I was represented by this overworked young public defender who didn’t seem to know a damn thing about me or the case except that I had to be guilty as hell or they wouldn’t have arrested me in the first place. Anyway, the jury believed Chet, and I was convicted on all counts and sentenced to spend half of the rest of my life behind bars.”

  “You’re saying you were innocent?”

  He nodded.

  She said, “I’d find that a little more plausible if there was any reason for Chet to have invented that business about you being gone all night. But why would he have lied? You and he were friends. You turned down a record deal for him. If anything, he would have been grateful. He would have felt like he owed you.”

  He sighed wearily and looked at the floor. “You’d think so. But some friendships are more… one-sided than others. People always tried to warn me about Chet, but I was… I believed in loyalty. And I never thought he’d actually do anything to hurt me.” He absently patted the pocket of his T-shirt, seeming vaguely surprised to find the cigarettes there. He pulled out the open pack, looked at it for a second, then tossed it in the trash. Then he did the same with the full pack.

  He said, “I’d served seven months of my sentence when they called me down to the warden. Seems Chet was at the controls of a Beechcraft Sierra filled with cocaine and heroin that lost power somewhere over Texas. He tried for an emergency landing, but ended up hitting this grain silo dead-on. The engine went up in flames, and the cabin with it. They got him out, but he was… He lived for six hours. He was conscious most of that time, but he knew he was dying. He talked nonstop, they said, and he was surprisingly coherent. He told them about the night he borrowed my Piper Comanche without asking, for that drug run that got intercepted, and about how he set me up for the conviction to protect himself. The police tape-recorded his confession, the investigation was reopened, and I was completely exonerated. They released me on Christmas Eve, sixteen years ago.”

  He took a deep breath and met her eyes. Unsure what to say, or what to believe, Harley just stared back. He opened the drawer and replaced the two newspapers, saying, “Apparently Chet’s father didn’t see fit to fill R.H. in on the final chapter. For all I know, he thinks I’m still in prison. He’s probably glad people think I’m dead. He probably wishes I were.”

  Still, Harley couldn’t think of anything to say. Rising, Tucker walked to the doorway. “What I just told you is the way it really went down, Harley. You can believe it or not, it’s your choice.”

  He turned and was gone.

  ***

  If only the truth were a matter of choice, but it wasn’t. It was a matter of facts.

  The next morning, Harley drove to the library of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, in search of the facts.

  “Do you have back issues of the Miami Herald on microfiche?” she asked the clerk, an emaciated young woman with black-dyed, buzz-cut hair and a pierced nose.

  The clerk turned a page of her magazine. “Year?”

  “Uh… sixteen years ago. December twenty-fourth.”

  Seven minutes later the clerk handed over the microfilm, saying, “You gotta return it to the desk when you’re done.”

  Harley sat down at a microfiche reader and inserted her film. Clutching the knobs, she leaned forward to inspect the miniature white-on-black pages as they scrolled down the screen. Nothing on page one, nothing on page two, nothing on page three… Surely there would have been some kind of public statement about his release. If it had really happened, that is.

  Finally, after ten minutes of searching, she found what she was looking for,
was hoping to find but fearing she wouldn’t—a small item with no picture, buried dozens of pages into the paper. The words leapt out at her: Tucker Hale Released From Prison Today.

  Frantically she twirled the focus knob, squinting to make out the story: Tucker Hale, twenty-one, falsely convicted on five counts of drug trafficking, was released from prison this morning….

  She slumped in her seat, resting her forehead against the screen. “Thank God,” she whispered. “Thank God.”

  Her chair tipped over and clattered to the floor as she stood, but she barely noticed. Grabbing her purse, she jogged toward the door.

  The clerk’s voice followed her as she sprinted from the building. ‘“Scuse me. Miss? Hey! You gotta return that film to the desk. I told you!”

  ***

  Half an hour later, Tucker sat next to Harley on the stone wall overlooking the beach, numb from emotional overload. First, the phone call that had come while she was gone, leaving him reeling. Then Harley’s return and unexpected apology. He wanted to accept it graciously, but he wasn’t feeling particularly gracious at the moment.

  He spoke slowly. “I just wish… I don’t know. I wish you hadn’t found it so easy to believe the worst about me. I know it’s hard to discount something you read in black-and-white, but a little doubt would have helped.”

  She nodded, staring glassy-eyed over his shoulder at the sun sparkling on the corrugated surface of Long Island Sound. “I’m sorry I didn’t question it. I jumped to conclusions. I think I did it because I was scared.”

  “Scared of what? Me?”

  She transferred her gaze to her hands, clenched tightly in her lap. “You hit the nail on the head that first night, before you left, when you said I was afraid of anything messy or unexpected in my life. I didn’t expect you in my life. And I sure didn’t expect to…to grow to feel anything for you. I’m sorry I couldn’t handle it. I messed everything up. I’d like to…to wipe the slate clean and start over, if we could. I promise I won’t bring my preconceptions and prejudices into our relationship. I mean, now that you’ve explained how it was, what really happened—”