A Fashionable Affair

by Joan Wolf

  “I remember.” Patsy’s voice was softer than before.

  Steve stretched. “Well, this cheese is fine as far as it goes, but what’s for dinner? I’m starving, woman.”

  “Then just take yourself over to the telephone and call out for pizza,” his wife answered sweetly.

  Steve grunted. “Pizza, huh?”

  “Pizza.”

  “Oh, all right.” He got to his feet. “How do you like yours, Patsy?”

  “With sausage,” she answered promptly. She, too, was suddenly ravenous.

  “You’ll stay the night, of course,” Sally said.

  “I was certainly planning to.”

  Sally grinned. “It’s a good thing I’ve got a spare room. Michael will be its next occupant, I suppose. I hope he doesn’t have to stay in the hospital too long.”

  “I hope so,” Patsy echoed, and hoped also that her face was not indicative of her hurt feelings. Of course Sally would expect to take care of her brother. She herself certainly had no claim. She felt tears sting her eyes and hastily looked down to hide them. God, she never cried. She must be more tired than she thought.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sally and Patsy dropped the children at Jane Nagle’s the following morning and proceeded across the island to the hospital. Steve had left the house earlier and called before they set off to say that Michael was doing as well as could be expected.

  His leg was in some sort of cradle and there was an IV in his arm. He was unshaven and haggard, yet when he saw the two of them walk into the room, he grinned. “Come to view the fallen warrior?”

  “Oh, Michael!” Sally went to the bed and kissed him.

  “I know,” he said comfortingly. “It was stupid of me to get shot.”

  Sally laughed shakily. “It certainly was. But I must confess, it’s impressed Steven enormously.”

  He laughed at that, as he was meant to, and then his eyes moved from his sister’s face to Patsy’s. She was dressed in the same clothes she had worn yesterday and the bruise on her cheek had turned the same interesting shade of purple as her outfit. Her eyes were huge and brilliant in her pale face. The expression on his face did not alter and he said, “You even manage to look beautiful with a bruise on your cheek.”

  “I know,” Sally said. “It’s disgusting, really.” She pulled a chair up to Michael’s bedside. “How are you feeling, Michael?”

  “Lousy,” he replied frankly, his attention moving from Patsy back to his sister. “Steve assures me that he repaired all the damages, however, so I can’t complain too loudly. The bullet missed the bone, thank God. A smashed-up thighbone would not have been fun.” He moved his head a little on the pillow. “It was very clever of you, Sal,” he added, “to marry a surgeon.”

  “I was thinking ahead,” she replied readily.

  He laughed and shifted slightly once again. Patsy looked at his hands, clenched tightly on the edge of the blanket, out of sight of Sally’s eyes but not of hers.

  “I’ll be right back,” she murmured, and slipped out of the room and down to the nurses’ station. “Mr. Melville is in a considerable amount of pain,” she told the nurse behind the desk crisply. “Didn’t Doctor Maxwell prescribe something for him?”

  “I’ll look,” the nurse said pleasantly, and consulted a chart. Then she looked at her watch. “He was supposed to get something two hours ago.”

  “And he didn’t?”

  “No. I’ll come now and give him a shot.”

  “Thank you,” Patsy said, and walked back down the hall, inwardly raging. Two hours! Wait until Steve heard.

  Michael was still talking to Sally when Patsy reentered the room. His eyes went immediately to her face and she smiled at him, a smile like warm sunlight in the small and sterile hospital room. “Where did you go?” Sally asked.

  A nurse with a hypodermic in her hand then entered behind Patsy. “Time for a shot, Mr. Melville,” she said cheerfully. “You should have rung if the pain was getting bad.” Michael didn’t say anything but looked once again at Patsy. “If you’ll excuse us for one moment,” the nurse said to Sally and pulled the curtains around Michael’s bed.

  “How late was that shot?” Sally demanded after the nurse had left.

  “Two hours,” Patsy replied.

  “Why didn’t you ring for the nurse?” Sally asked Michael.

  He shrugged. He looked exhausted, Patsy thought. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to get.”

  Sally went to look at the chart at the bottom of the bed. “Every four hours,” she said. “If they don’t give you another shot in four hours, for God’s sake, ring.”

  “All right.” His eyes were already beginning to close.

  “Come on, Sally. He’s going to sleep,” Patsy said softly.

  “All right.” Sally bent to kiss her brother once again. “I’ll be back tomorrow, Michael.”

  Patsy came up after Sally, and she too leaned down and gently kissed the hair that slanted across his forehead. He looked at her for a brief moment. His pupils were already dilated from the drug; his eyes looked black. She wanted nothing more than to sit at his bedside all day and watch over him. But she had no claim. “Take care of yourself,” she whispered, and then, with extreme reluctance, she stepped back and followed Sally out of the room.

  * * * *

  Michael was in the hospital for almost two weeks. Patsy moved back to New York, and in between answering a lot of questions for the Justice Department, she drove out to Long Island five times to see him. But there was always someone there—Sally or a friend or, on one occasion, the same man from the Justice Department who had questioned her.

  There was a barrier between them, and it wasn’t just the presence of other people. Patsy didn’t know what it was, but she was sensitive to the fact that Michael had retreated from her. He was perfectly pleasant, perfectly friendly, but that he had put up a barrier, she had no doubt at all.

  At first Patsy tried to tell herself it was because he was ill and in pain. It would get better, she thought, once he got out of the hospital.

  He left the hospital on a Monday and on Tuesday Patsy drove to Sally’s to see him. He was lying on the sofa in the living room reading the newspaper when she came in. He was fully clothed and stretched out like a schoolboy. A set of crutches was propped up against the wall next to the sofa. Patsy sat on a chair and they talked under the in-and-out-again eye of Sally and in the almost continual presence of Steven. Patsy, who genuinely loved Sally and her family, wished fervently that they would all go away and give her just a half an hour alone with Michael. Then perhaps she would be able to discover what had happened between them.

  She did a cover for a national magazine and shot another camera commercial. The newspapers had gotten wind of her kidnapping, and she found herself besieged by reporters. The Justice Department issued a statement on the subject and warned her to say nothing further. Michael began to walk with the help of a cane and planned to move back into his own home shortly.

  During this stressful time Patsy remained her usual serene, unruffled self. She was polite with the obstreperous reporters, patient with her mother, professional with the cameramen. She was also deeply and profoundly unhappy. She had not known it was possible to be so unhappy.

  He didn’t love her, no longer wanted her, and that it seemed was that. There was nothing she could do. She had found the one man in the world for her, and then she had lost him. And nothing would ever be the same again. It was as simple, and as devastating, as that.

  Michael called her one day to say he had ironed out her situation with the IRS and did she want to come out and discuss it with him? She agreed, and on a dismal gray and rainy day, she drove once again out to Michael Melville’s house.

  He answered the door dressed in chino pants and a dark-green knit golf shirt. He was not using a cane and there was only a slight hesitation in his walk as he led her into the living room.

  “The house looks considerably better than it did the last time
I was here,” she remarked.

  “I got a cleaning service in and I had the walls all repainted.”

  “You also bought some new chairs.”

  “Sally got them for me at some sale.”

  “They’re very nice.” She sat in one of them and looked at him gravely.

  He sat on the sofa and picked up a paper. “Well, let’s get this straightened out, shall we?” His voice was professional, impersonal, as he began to talk fluently about her assets and bank accounts and so on.

  Patsy sat quietly and felt within her a mounting tide of outrage and fury. How could he sit there like that, pretending that there had been nothing more between them than her finances? How dared he? Anger gripped her stomach, an anger she had never felt before. She said, loudly, into the middle of his speech, “You are a selfish, arrogant, and heartless man.”

  He looked up from his list of figures.

  “I hate you,” she said.

  He put the paper down on the table. “What’s the matter, Red?” he asked quietly.

  He hadn’t called her Red since he had entered the hospital. She stood up abruptly and went to stand before the empty fireplace, her back to him. “You’re worse than Fred,” she said in a voice she desperately tried to keep level. “At least he only stole my money.”

  Her emotions were in such a turmoil that she didn’t hear him rise and cross the room toward her. Then his hand was on her shoulder and he was turning her to face him, and she could no longer hide the tears that were pouring down her face.

  “Sweetheart,” he said on a long note of wonder and surprise, and took her into his arms.

  Patsy turned her face into his shoulder. “You at least could have had the decency to give me a proper good-bye,” she sobbed into his green knit shirt.

  He held her gently for a long moment, cradling her trembling body close to him. “I thought it was the best thing to do,” he said after a while. His hand came up to lightly caress her hair. “I had put you in such terrible danger. And the case was over. It just seemed best.”

  She had stopped crying. “Is that all I ever meant to you? A way to finally get Jack Garfield?”

  The hand on her hair stilled. “Of course not.”

  There was a note in his voice that had not been there before and it emboldened her to raise her head and look at him. There was a white line around his mouth and his eyes were shadowed. He had sounded angry.

  “I love you,” she said simply. “I think you should know that. I don’t want to burden you or make you feel guilty, but I want you to know that. I love you and that’s something that’s never going to change.”

  There was the sound of rain drumming on the porch roof, but other than that, the room was profoundly silent. He gazed intently at her tearstained face, and deep within his own eyes a little flame began to burn. “Do you know I have dreamed all my life of one day hearing you say those words?” His voice was strained and a muscle flickered in his cheek. “All my life,” he repeated.

  She stared into the flame that was glowing in his eyes, then, as the meaning of his words struck her, her lips parted. “Do you mean that?” she asked, her voice deep and hushed and shaken.

  His mouth twisted. “Almighty God. That you could ask me such a question.”

  Thunder crashed in the distance, but neither Patsy nor Michael appeared to notice. They were too busy gazing, in astonished wonder and gradually dawning belief, into each other’s eyes. Then she raised tremulous fingers and touched his face gently, searchingly, like a blind person seeking to imprint the contours of his bones on her mind.

  “But why?” Her voice was barely a whisper, barely audible above the drumming sound of the rain. “If that’s true, then why did you go away from me like you did?”

  “Self-protection, really. I’ve wanted you all my life, and then, finally, I had you, and I had to live with the knowledge that it was only temporary. It was almost worse than not having you at all.”

  “No. Oh, no.” She was slowly shaking her head. “How could you be so wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” He smiled with his lips but his eyes remained grave. “The pain in my leg was a picnic compared to what I’ve been feeling over you.”

  She reached for him at that, holding him tightly enough to strangle him, and saying, “Oh, Michael, oh, Michael,” over and over and over again.

  A flash of lightning illuminated the whole room and, instinctively, Patsy jumped.

  “It’s all right,” he said next to her ear. “It is, quite incredibly, all right.” And he laughed.

  At his words Patsy loosened her grip on him and leaned back to gaze at his face. It was blazing with a look she had never seen before. Thunder crashed above them and she linked her hands loosely behind his neck and smiled at him. He looked so much younger, she thought. Just like that, he looked so much younger.

  “I never thought I’d marry anyone younger than me,” she said.

  “Are you proposing to me, Miss Clark?” Even his voice sounded different.

  “You bet I am, chum. Right now. What do you say?”

  He grinned. “You do me a great honor—”

  “Oh, shut up,” she said rudely, “and kiss me.”

  He complied almost instantly. Five minutes later he raised his head and said huskily, “You pack a bigger wallop than this storm does, sweetheart.”

  “You inspire me,” she murmured. Her eyes were heavy-lidded and very dark, her cheeks were flushed.

  “Let’s go to bed,” he said, the hawk-like look on his face extremely pronounced.

  “Mmm,” Patsy breathed, “I thought you’d never ask.”

  She had thought that nothing could be better than the passion they had shared previously, but she found, to her enchanted astonishment, that she was wrong. His touch was so gentle. How could such gentleness be so incredibly erotic? He looked at her as if she were a miracle and, for him, she felt like a miracle—a miracle of love, of passion, of surrender. “Oh, Michael,” she whispered, “how I love you.”

  “Patsy.” He entered her easily, his hands still caressing the smooth creaminess of her waist, her hips. He kissed her neck, her shoulders, her throat, and began to move inside her very slowly. It was like going mad with pleasure, building and waiting, building and waiting, a master musician orchestrating his symphony to the final crashing conclusion of wild, exultant, soul-shattering triumph.

  After a long time Patsy, cradled close against him, heaved a great sigh. He laughed deep in his throat. “Feeling good?”

  “Feeling fabulous. As well you know.” She turned her head and kissed his bare shoulder. “You didn’t hurt your leg?”

  “I have no idea. If I did, it was worth it.”

  She sat up. “Let me look.” The healing scar looked perfectly normal, so she lay back down again. “Looks okay,” she reported. “It’s a darn good thing that bullet didn’t get you a few inches higher.”

  “I’ve thought of that possibility many times,” he said fervently. “Believe me.”

  She chuckled and settled her head comfortably into the hollow of his shoulder. “Mother will be out of her mind with joy,” she offered after a minute.

  “Why?”

  “She has been praying for me to get married for years. She never approved of my modeling, you know. ‘So terribly public, Patsy dear.’’

  Michael laughed at her imitation of her mother’s accent. “Modernism was never your mother’s strong suit.”

  “Emphatically not,” Patsy said.

  “I’ll tell you something my mother once said to me, though,” he offered. “She said, ‘When you consider that Patsy is the only child of older parents, and when you consider what a spoiled selfish brat she could have turned out to be, you have to take your hat off to Anne Clark.’’

  “Well, my mother’s most recent comments about you weren’t nearly so complimentary. She was furious with you for getting me kidnapped. Couldn’t understand it at all. ‘Michael was always such a responsible boy,’ she kept saying. B
ut she’ll be pleased as punch with you if you marry me.”

  “I’ll promise her most faithfully never to get you kidnapped again.”

  “Thank you, darling. I would appreciate that.” He kissed the top of her head and she continued on a note of inquiry. “Did you mean what you said before—about loving me all your life?”.

  “I did.”

  “But you never once hinted ...”

  “There wouldn’t have been any point. You never thought of me in that light. There was always that damn year between us in school.” He was right. She never had thought of him in any way that was remotely romantic. “Do you know when I first realized that I loved you?” he asked.

  “When?”

  “It was when we were still in junior high. You and Sally and I were walking home together from school one day and we saw an old man lying at the side of the road. There was a bunch of kids standing not far away, staring and making comments. The old guy was obviously drunk.” He raised himself a little so he could see her face. “Do you remember what you did?”

  “Of course. I thought he might be hurt and I went over to him to see if I could help.”

  “You did. And it turned out he had cut his head on the curb when he fell. And you sat down there right in the street, and put his dirty, smelly old head in your lap, and told me to call for help.” He smiled at her. “It was then that I knew I loved you. And no matter how hard I tried, I’ve never been able to love another girl since.”

  She looked into his eyes. “But, Michael, if that’s true, then why were you so standoffish when we met again?”

  “Was I?”

  “You know you were. That first night. I did have to seduce you.”

  He kissed the little crease of bewilderment that furrowed her brow. “I was afraid,” he said. “When you’ve wanted something for so long, all your life almost, and suddenly there it is—all you have to do is reach out your hand and take it—it’s frightening.”

  “Oh, darling.” Her voice was very soft. She reached up and touched the lean cheek that was so close to her. “Sally thought you loved Jane and that she jilted you.”