New Friends, Old Friends
“My God, I thought you must have been killed during the attack on San Pedro! Where are you? . . . Wait a second.” Without looking at Julie, Mike Donovan fumbled for a pencil and paper from the desk and scribbled for a few seconds. “Right away, sure. Be there in ten minutes. It’s wonderful to know you’re all right. ’Bye.” He hung up, still smiling.
“I . . . guess you have to go,” Julie said, staring down at the negligee in the box beside her.
“I’m sorry, honey. I know you understand. It’s Margie. She’s here in town, wants to meet me tonight at one of our . . . at a restaurant not too far from here.”
“Sure. Be careful.”
He kissed her hastily, grabbed his jacket, and ran out. The echo as the door slammed shut reverberated for a moment, then the apartment settled into an awful, final silence.
Julie looked at the bottle of champagne—still half full, at least—and thought it would be a pity to waste it.
She was still staring at the condensation collecting around the glass bottle when an electronic screech blared from the hallway. Startled, she looked up and noticed the faint bluish haze of smoke drifting down the hall, then the charcoal smell of burning made her nose wrinkle.
Julie raced into the kitchen to yank the steaks out of the broiler, singeing a finger in the process as she poked a hole through the worn pot holder and connected with the broiler pan.
The steaks were ruined, and Juliet didn’t know whether to swear or sob as she held her smarting hand under the cold water faucet. Eventually, she did a little of both while she drank the last of the champagne.
Willie tilted the last few drops from his blender into his glass and sighed. It was well past the Club Creole’s closing time of two A.M., he still had a lot of cleanup chores to do—and he would be going home alone again tonight.
He had gotten Lydia fairly drunk and through carefully casual questions, had learned a few aspects of Visitor security procedures that might be useful to the resistance. His triumph felt a little hollow, however. Lydia had gotten bored with his conversation and had wandered over to another part of the club, and he had seen her leave half an hour ago in the company of a handsome male officer.
Emptying out the bills and coins from the tip glass to count them, Miranda Juarez smiled teasingly at him. “Wil-lie’s in lo-ove,” she sang.
“Please, Miranda, I do not wish to make a joke at this time.” He swallowed the rest of his drink without tasting it.
“Willie, you’ve been putting away a lot of that stuff lately,” Elias said, his expression concerned as he came in from the kitchen.
“It ... is part of my job to put the bottles and clean glasses back in their places.”
“I mean you’ve been drinking more lately.”
Willie looked at him blearily. “You said that we could have as much as we wished of the food and drink here. If you feel I am taking too much, then you may take it from my pay.”
“Dammit, that’s not what I meant! It’s not the booze I care about but you, What you’re doing to your liver or whatever you have inside yourself that you’re pickling.”
“I am ail right.” Picking up a dishcloth, Willie began polishing the silverware on the counter.
“Willie, you did those already twenty minutes ago,” Miranda pointed out gently.
“I am tired, that is all,” he said, and reached for the blender to wash it.
Miranda laid a hand on his arm. “Here, let me. You just sit down for a minute and take it easy.”
He sat reluctantly, watching her as she filled the blender with warm water, added two drops of dishwashing liquid, then turned it on. “That is a good idea,” he admitted. “It is getting cleaned without needing to be scrubbed.”
“As my old parish priest, Father Ramirez, used to say, ‘Blessed are the lazy in nature, for they shall invent shortcuts.’ ”
“Shortcuts?” Willie looked puzzled. “Aren’t they sections of meat taken from cows?”
Elias shook his head, holding back a grin. “You explain it, Miranda,” he said, heading for the kitchen. “I’ve gotta make sure Henri’s got enough scallops for tomorrow’s special.” After Miranda had explained the colloquialism, Willie subsided once more into gloomy silence as his thoughts turned, as they often did late at night, to memories of Harmony. There had never been anything approaching actual lovemaking between them, but somehow Willie hadn’t missed the physical release. Finding out that someone really cared about what happened to him had been the most important discovery of his life. Now, although he knew that Elias, Miranda, Elizabeth, Mike, and Julie were all his friends, he still ached with loneliness. The thought of walking alone to his silent room was unbearable; the thought of lying awake in it was enough to make him want another drink. Anything to blunt the emptiness.
Miranda looked over at him. “You know, Willie, when I was an Army lieutenant serving in Vietnam, I met a wonderful person. His name was Captain Eduardo Perez, and he was tall and handsome, and he wrote songs. He would sing them to me late at night. He had a beautiful voice. They were about love and our beautiful Mexican heritage, and when he sang, it would make the heat and the jungle rot and the blood all go away for a while. Then one day he was killed doing a very brave thing which saved a lot of his men.”
She paused, swallowing as a sudden brightness came into her eyes. “I missed him very, very much. We were going to be married when we both got back to California. For a long time I was . . . empty inside, and I tried to fill it with work. In Nam there was plenty of that for an Army nurse with surgical training. But even the captain’s bars I received couldn’t take the memories away late at night—or the tears. I tried alcohol for a while, marijuana, other things. Then I met Paul. Our relationship was short and sweet, as the expression goes, but it taught me that I was beginning to feel again, and I was ready to go on with my life.”
Smiling, Miranda reached over to squeeze Willie’s hand. “I know you still miss Harmony a lot. But Lydia will be back, or there will be someone else for you, even better.”
Visitors couldn’t cry—they lacked tear ducts. But Willie felt the tightness around his eyes, under the concealing artificial skin, which was his response to strong emotions, and he squeezed her hand in turn. “Thank you, Miranda.”
“Now go home and get some rest,” she said, making shooing motions. “I can take care of what’s left.”
Willie left the club, tasting the warm night air, seeing far above him the stars faded from the glow of the street lamps. He didn’t bother looking for Sirius; it wasn’t visible during the summer at this latitude. Besides, he realized with some surprise, “home” in his mind now meant his small apartment here on Earth.
Mike Donovan’s hands shook slightly as he tipped the last of the second carafe of rose into Margie’s glass. He didn’t know whether it was because he’d had too much to drink or whether he was still getting over the shock of finding out that she was still alive.
She looked wonderful—even more beautiful than he remembered. The hard, pinched look around her eyes and mouth that had reflected her bitterness during their separation and divorce was gone. Her blue-gray eyes were now frank and clear, and her rich laugh came often and easily as their voices tumbled over one another, each trying to bring the other up to date on the past two years of their lives.
Only one other couple lingered over coffee and drinks in the tiny, out-of-the-way Italian restaurant near Glendale that had been one of their favorite eating places in Los Angeles. (Although the food’s not quite as good as Guido’s in New York, Mike thought.) By now, their table candle was sputtering its last flickers deep within its red-plastic-coated glass, and the waitress was vacuuming in the other room.
Donovan was surprised how easily he and his ex-wife had gotten past the awkward chitchat stage. The wine had helped.
on top of the champagne he’d already had with Julie, but it was Margie who was making the difference, making him forget the angry words, the bitterly charged sile
nces. The two years since the Visitors had arrived seemed to have changed her a lot. She was vibrant, committed, and assured. Gone, apparently, was the resentment and frustration which had characterized their former relationship, especially toward the end of their marriage.
Apparently she had found confidence and self-respect in joining the Denver resistance. She showed him a communique detailing the group’s operations, present and planned, to prove it. (“You’re a newsman, Mike. I know you don’t accept assertions without something to back them up,” she’d said with a smile.)
Following her post V-Day release from hibernation in the captured Los Angeles Mother Ship, she had gone to Colorado to live with one of her sisters, she said. She’d deliberately avoided any contact with her ex-husband, deciding, as she put it, “that this was my chance to make a clean break and get my head on straight about who / really was.”
Margie told Mike that she’d landed a job in Denver, working for a local newspaper as an editorial assistant, using an assumed name so people wouldn’t associate her with Michael Donovan, one of the national heroes of V-Day.
“One of the main reasons we broke up was your jealousy of my work and the attention I got,” he said. “Didn’t you know how little all that meant to me—and how much you did? Did you realize that when I couldn’t find you after V-Day, that I’d naturally assume you were dead?” He looked at her steadily across the red-checked tablecloth. “Did you realize that I’d grieve?”
“Yes,” she said, poking her spoon into the remnants of her tortellini. “I . . . loved you too. But I couldn’t face you right then. Especially then, after you became the most sought-after hero in the entire country—hell, the entire damn world!” She pushed the dish away from her with something verging on violence. “I felt empty inside, hollow, like I could never, never live up to your example. Never do anything heroic, never save all those lives. I wanted you to respect me as well as love me . . . but eventually I figured out that was something I couldn’t have until I respected myself.”
“Oh, Marge . . He looked at her, and regret was sudden and sharp within him. Why couldn’t we have talked like this years ago?
She shrugged. “But I did the right thing, I think, getting away awhile, thinking hard about things. I saw your face every night on television, though, when you were doing the anchor spot on that national news broadcast. Every time I saw you I missed you more—and Sean, too. So when the Visitors came back, and I had a chance to help the Denver resistance by serving as a courier, I took it.”
“So what brings you to L.A.?”
“A couple of things.” Smiling, she pushed an envelope across the table to him.
Donovan opened it, and his eyes widened in amazement. An official employee identification card for the L.A. Visitors’ legation fell out.
“I’ve just gotten a secretarial job there,” she said. ”1 suspect it will prove very helpful to your cause—our cause, I mean.”
They talked for a while longer. Mike updated her on what little he knew about Sean and his whereabouts.
She hadn’t any information to add, but the determination he read in her eyes matched his own. “Mike, wherever he is, we have to get him back.”
He looked at her, again struck by how much more she was like the woman he’d fallen in love with thirteen years ago than the one he’d later divorced. Impulsively, he reached across the table to squeeze her hand. “You bet,” he said.
“I know that’s going to take time. Meanwhile, I’d . . . like to stay on here for a while and help the Los Angeles resistance in any way that I can.”
“I . . . uh, we really appreciate that.” Mike eyed the waitress as she walked by pointedly for the third time in fifteen minutes, carrying a broom.
“I guess it’s time to go.” Pushing back her chair, she stood. “I can’t believe how fast the evening went by.”
“Where are you staying?” he asked, glancing at the bill as he reached for his jacket.
“My sister Patty’s.” Her smile turned soft and a little wistful. “Mike, it’s been really great to see you again. Better than I might have expected. I’ll look forward to the next time—soon.”
“Yeah, same here. Stay in touch, Marge, okay?” She nodded, and he scribbled his home phone number on a scrap of paper. Their glances and fingertips met for a moment as he handed it to her. Hastily, he fumbled bills out of his wallet and turned away with the check. After a few steps he turned back apologetically. “Uh . . . would you mind leaving the tip?”
Michael and Maijorie Donovan met several times during the next week. At Ham’s insistence, Mike had not introduced her to the other members of the resistance nor taken her to the Club Creole—-Ham wanted a chance to verify the Denver documents she’d brought first. After making a few wisecracks about old lovers reunited, he had advised Donovan to meet Margie in public but not too crowded places like Redondo Pier or Santa Monica Park. Mike grumbled but, knowing Tyler was right, obeyed.
Some of their rendezvous points were old hangouts from their first dates, which couldn’t fail to wake sleeping memories, but Mike salved his conscience with the recognition that their meetings felt more like the discussions between old business partners than anything more romantic.
Most of the time, that is . . .
He spent a lot of time with Margie, partly because everyone else in the resistance had his or her own projects under way. Ham was busy checking out Margie’s initial information from Denver, while Elias, Miranda, and Willie were promoting shirts and making plans for expanding the Club Creole wearing-apparel line. Maggie hadn’t put in an appearance at resistance HQ for days, although her daily telephone calls reassured them that Chris’s vision continued to improve. Julie was cooped up in her lab, running tests on the red dust variations developed by the Brook Cove group. Nathan Bates was pushing her for greater progress, no doubt motivated by the potential for profit far more than by any overwhelming concern for humanity.
As far as Mike was concerned, Julie seemed increasingly withdrawn. The few times he’d been able to talk with her on the phone, she had sounded increasingly tense and uncommunicative. He knew she hated it when Bates put the pressure on, worrying that the quality of her scientific research might be compromised. He told himself her aloofness was due to overwork and that she needed some extra breathing room. But the coolness in her voice made him uneasy.
As much as Donovan missed talking with Julie, for the first time in his life, he found he was able to open up with Margie and talk frankly about his own frustrations with his current lifestyle.
“It’s so damn crazy,” he said, sitting on a towel on the beach at Santa Monica, resting his elbows on his knees to stare out across the searing whiteness of the sand at the relentless blue of the Pacific. Above them the sky arched, pale blue, as though the afternoon sun had leached away some of its color. “I can’t imagine life anywhere but here, but I can’t forget that in some parts of the world people can still live somewhat normal lives, have jobs, earn money, raise kids.”
He shook his head ruefully. “No target practice, no M-16s, no crawling around in the underbrush spying on Visitor contingents, no nearly pissing yourself with fear when you feel the heat from one of those laser bolts go by your head. No having to live off handouts ’cause your face is too well-known to hold down a job. I’ve thought about just running away from it all, but how could I leave my friends to keep on facing it? I’d feel like a coward.”
Margie rested her head on her knees, gazing at him sideways. The wind whipped her blond hair, now doubly light because of her tan. “After all you’ve done, nobody couid ever call you a coward, Mike. Your friends would understand that people can endure only so much before they need a break.” He smiled gratefully at her but shook his head. “That may have been so three years ago, but not anymore. That’s part of the thing we’ve all got to face: that life will never be worthwhile again on this planet unless we all give one hundred percent even when we feel like there isn’t anything left.” “But sacrific
ing yourself—”
“Hey, Marge,” he chuckled. “Don’t go nailing me to any crosses. You know what it’s like by now. You do whatever’s necessary, moment to moment, for the greater good, but it doesn’t feel noble or anything when you do it. It just feels like your job—sort of inevitable, I guess.”
She looked away from him, and her words came so softly he could barely hear them. “I guess. ...”
“Hey, here you were cheering me up, and I’ve infected you! Don’t make me feel guilty about that, too!” He laughed and pulled her up beside him. For a second their bare thighs brushed, then they moved apart as though stung. “Let’s get wet. Last one in is a rotten lizard egg!”
The next day, six days after her initial phone call to him at Julie’s, they met along the bike path at Redondo Beach. Margie’s eyes sparked with excitement as she grabbed his arm. “Guess what, Mike? I found out there’s going to be a shipment of power packs from the Visitor legation in the next day or so, and I’d like to help you get them.” She paused alongside a park bench, grinning. “You’ve mentioned how low you’re running, and whatever Diana’s plans, I can’t think of a better or more deserving group of recipients than the L.A. resistance.” Grinning, Donovan shaded his eyes from the red-orange glare of the setting sun to look at her. “That’s great! We sure the hell need ’em. Where are they being sent to?”
“I don’t know yet. I also need to find out the delivery date and time.”
“Well, even that much information is worth a dinner at Taco Bell. Come on.”
That night she wound up following him in her rented car to his apartment, and they talked for several hours more. At one point, Donovan got up from his living room couch to refill their coffee cups for the third time. As he passed the cream and sugar, their fingers touched. Her skin felt incredibly smooth and cool.
She glanced up at him, then down again with a small smile. Their conversation lulled and then slid into a companionable silence. Mike looked at his watch and was amazed to see that it was past three. “My God, I don’t know how it got so late.” Margie looked rueful. “With the strange hours I’ve been keeping, it seems like Patty’s been putting up with me, rather than putting me up, since I got into town.”
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