The Phantom Prince

by Elizabeth Kendall

  I had to stay around long enough to collect my degree, so Angie went on ahead by herself. I hung on in Utah until fall, when I decided it was now or never.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I fell in love with Seattle at first sight. My brother and his wife had pulled a U-Haul trailer with all my belongings behind their car, while Molly and I followed in my VW bug. We came into the city early one morning over one of the long floating bridges that cross Lake Washington. It had been raining, and mist was clinging to the tops of the evergreens. Everything that wasn’t gray was green. There were sailboats on the lake, hills all around, and the University of Washington off to the right. I could hardly wait to get going on my new life.

  Molly and I stayed with Angie and her two roommates in her Capitol Hill apartment until I found my own place. The city was a new world to me. There was water everywhere I looked: Lake Washington to the east, Puget Sound to the west, Lake Union in the middle, and a canal with locks that connected them all. Losing my sense of direction, I kept confusing one body of water with another. The street numbering was worse. There was one street called Fortieth N.E. and another called N.E. Fortieth.

  Within a few days I found an apartment I could afford about twelve blocks from Angie’s. I hadn’t realized that rent would be a lot higher than in Utah and that I would have to pay the first and last months’ rent in advance, along with a cleaning deposit. The place wasn’t much—a one-bedroom, first-floor apartment in a 1950s building that looked like a motel. It was furnished with a turquoise naugahyde couch and matching chair, a Formica coffee table, and not much else. The kitchen was the size of a closet, and the refrigerator was the size of a TV set. On one side was a tiny lanai from which I could look up at the tall building next door. Molly, who had just turned three, would have to sleep on the couch until we could afford something better.

  I looked for a job right away. My degree in Business and Family Life wasn’t going to impress anybody, but I thought it could get me a good secretarial job. The University of Washington was my first choice—I was used to being a student—and I was encouraged when the University Personnel Department sent me out for an interview at the Medical School. As I walked out of the personnel office, ten or twelve police cars full of men in riot gear roared by. Trying to find my way across the campus a few minutes later, I came upon a huge construction site where a crowd was milling around with picket signs. Suddenly, a great howl went up from the crowd as some black men pushed a bulldozer off the edge of a hundred-foot-deep pit. As it crashed to the bottom, the riot police moved into the crowd. I stood clutching my map of the campus, lost. When I finally arrived for the interview, I was nearly forty-five minutes late.

  The man who interviewed me (and later became my boss and my friend) told me not to worry about it—that the kind of thing I had just watched happened on Upper Campus, that down here in Health Sciences, things were a lot quieter. What I had seen was one of Seattle’s most violent civil rights protests, an angry demand that more blacks be hired on the construction project. My interview went well and a few days later I was hired as a secretary in one of the university’s medical departments.

  Within a few weeks, my life in the city was taking shape. Not having grandmothers around to take care of Molly was a problem, but I was able to find a good daycare center in the University District. Some mornings Molly cried when I left her, and I didn’t like the way I felt either. I thought it was important for mothers to mother their children and wondered how I could do a good job of mothering when I was at work eight hours a day. I called my parents a lot and wished I could drop by for Sunday dinner, but all in all, I was pleased that I had started my new life.

  Money as always, was a worry. I counted my quarters and dimes carefully. One Saturday I put my clothes in a laundromat washer and Molly and I went across the street to visit with Angie. When I went back to put the clothes in the dryer, I found a parking ticket on my windshield. I leaned against the car and turned the ticket over to see how much the fine was. Twenty dollars!

  I was sitting at Angie’s kitchen table, still crying about the damn ticket, when one of her roommates’ boyfriends came in. “What you need,” he said, “is a night out. Let’s find you a babysitter and go out and get rowdy.” It didn’t solve my money problem, but it sounded good. Angie’s place was headquarters for a bunch of people we knew from Utah and their boyfriends and girlfriends. By nightfall, we had organized a party to celebrate my parking ticket.

  When Angie and I got to the Sandpiper Tavern in the University District, our friends had started to gather. It was dark inside; people were dancing on an elevated dance floor to a jukebox stocked with Beatles and Jimi Hendrix hits, looking as if they had strolled out of their sorority or fraternity houses dressed in jeans and sweaters. It wasn’t so different from Saturday night back home. After two beers, I decided that this was exactly what I needed. After a few more beers I didn’t even feel shy.

  The last bits of shyness disappeared when a tall, sandy-haired man invited me to dance. I had already sized him up from across the room. He looked a little older and better dressed than the rest of the crowd; I figured he must be a graduate student or maybe even an instructor.

  “Do you come here often?” he asked as we danced.

  “No,” I said, “this is the first time I’ve been out since I moved to Seattle.” He asked the inevitable “from where?” and I thought of saying San Francisco or some other place that sounded classy, but I admitted to Utah.

  “Utah!” he exclaimed. “Isn’t that in Wyoming?”

  We laughed about where Utah really was—somewhere around the Great Salt Lake—and carried on as strangers in bars do, till the music stopped.

  I danced with everyone who asked. Drinking and dancing go together, and every time I came back to the table the beer tasted better. I kept trying to catch the sandy-haired man’s eye, but he was usually dancing with somebody else. We smiled at each other across the floor a couple of times, but he didn’t ask me to dance again.

  Later in the evening, a skinny young man asked me to dance and I did, even though Angie and I had just been joking about his taste in clothes. He turned out to be a creep, and looking for a chance to escape, I saw the sandy-haired man sitting by himself, looking sad. I headed for his table.

  “You look like your best friend just died,” I said. He looked up, surprised. “I said you look lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon track.”

  “Is that how you folks from Utah talk?” he said. “What do you call yourselves? Utonians? Utahites?”

  “Utaaaaahns,” I told him in my best hick voice. He laughed and I sat down. He asked me if I was a student. I was tempted to say yes because I didn’t like telling people I was a secretary. I told him I worked at the university, but then I found myself telling him that I made heart valves in the instrument department. I could feel my face turning red, so I started blabbing about living in Seattle for only a couple of weeks, about it raining all the time, about the riot I had seen on campus—anything to keep talking.

  He wanted to know why I had moved away from Utah. I told him briefly that I had been married, that I had a daughter, and that my marriage had ended. I explained that Utah was very family-oriented and that I felt out of place there. He asked me why I didn’t consider my daughter and myself a family.

  “I guess I do,” I said. “But the rest of Utah doesn’t consider us a family.”

  “Actually, I just moved here myself,” he said. “I’ve been living in Philadelphia and going to school at Temple, and now I’ve moved out here to go to law school.” He had a distinctive way of speaking, not really an eastern accent, but more like a British one. His name, he said, was Ted Bundy.

  I knew when I first looked at him, before we had even danced, that he was a cut above the rest of the crowd. His slacks and turtleneck certainly weren’t from J.C. Penney, and the way he moved projected confidence. He seemed to be in control of his world.

  Sitting across the table from him I was surprised at
how easy he was to talk to and how easily we laughed together. He had a smile that made me smile back and beautiful clear blue eyes that lit up when he smiled. He had thick eyelashes, a strong jawline, rich curly hair, and a nice body. When he told me he was only twenty-three, I couldn’t believe it.

  He said he didn’t realize he had been looking sad; he was just thinking about leaving. The couple at the next table got up to go and offered us their unfinished pitcher of beer. I said I was never one to let good beer go flat. Ted wanted to know where I’d been around Seattle. “You haven’t been to the public market? We should go there sometime. You’ll love it.” The chemistry between us was incredible. As I watched his handsome face while he went on about places to go and things to see, I was already planning the wedding and naming the kids. He was telling me that he missed having a kitchen because he loved to cook. Perfect. My Prince.

  The pitcher was empty, and the crowd was moving on. I invited Ted to come for coffee with my friends and he said, “Sure.” Since he didn’t have a car, he would come in mine along with Angie and a couple of other people. When we stepped outside, the rush of night air made me realize how drunk I was. We couldn’t find the cafe we were headed for, and as the glow began to dim, Angie and the others decided to go home. When they got out of the car at her house, Ted moved into the driver’s seat and drove me to the babysitter’s house to pick up Molly. The babysitter was wearing nothing but overalls, and when she bent over you could see right down to her navel. I was embarrassed, but Ted didn’t seem to notice. He scooped up the sleeping Molly and carried her to the car. I drove and Ted held Molly on his lap.

  Ted was doing most of the talking now, and I was beginning to feel very sick. He was writing a book on Vietnam explaining how the cultural differences between Americans and Vietnamese contributed to the war. I was a little surprised and a little skeptical, but I was mostly concentrating on driving the car and not throwing up.

  The closest parking space was two blocks from my apartment. Ted carried Molly in and gently put her to bed on the couch.

  “I don’t think I can drive you home,” I said. “Why don’t you just stay here?”

  I was so sick, all I could do was take my shoes off and fall into bed. I remember Ted, still dressed, lying down next to me, then the room turning wildly. I hung one leg over the edge of the bed and put my foot on the floor to make it stop spinning. Then I slept, restlessly.

  I knew Ted was up and walking around the apartment part of the night. Once, I opened my eyes and saw him standing next to my dresser, looking at my bottles of perfume and things. I wished I hadn’t left my birth control pills out, but I wasn’t awake long enough to imagine what he must be thinking.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was seven o’clock in the morning and I felt as if I hadn’t slept at all. I could hear Ted moving around in the kitchen. Never in my life had I brought a man home from a bar. Was this what city life was all about? My head throbbed as I got out of bed, still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, and staggered into the living room.

  Ted was coming out of the kitchen with a cup of coffee for me. Oh God. I hadn’t remembered how gorgeous he was. He didn’t look as if he’d slept in his clothes. He put his finger to his lips and pointed to the sleeping Molly. He didn’t need to shush me because I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  “How do you feel?” he whispered as we headed back to the bedroom.

  “Awful. Incredibly awful.” I fumbled in my purse for aspirin.

  “You’ll feel better after you eat,” he said. “If it’s all right with you, I’ll scramble some eggs and make some toast.”

  “I’m not a breakfast person, really.” The idea of food made me sick.

  “I’ve already started,” he confessed.

  I took a fast shower, put on fresh clothes, and joined him at the table. Molly would be awake soon and I needed to be together when I introduced her to this man that I didn’t even know. I had no idea how to behave.

  Molly and I had planned to go for a ferry ride across Puget Sound. Ted hinted that he’d like to come along, but I ignored the hint and offered to drop him off at his house in the University District. Too much was happening too fast.

  When the ferry whistle blew, I thought my head would split. I couldn’t look at the water slipping past beneath us without getting dizzy. Molly pressed her face to the window while I sat clutching a cup of coffee. I had really blown it, I thought. Picking up men in bars was not my style. Yet I had taken Ted home without a second thought after knowing him for two or three hours.

  I wondered about him. He acted as though it wasn’t an out-of-the-ordinary experience for him, yet he seemed so classy, above that sort of encounter. What would he think of me? What sort of mother would take a strange man home in front of her child?

  Two hours’ worth of Puget Sound scenery was lost on me. By the time the boat eased into the Seattle dock, I had decided that I never wanted to see Ted again. I hoped that the memory of last night would somehow disappear.

  Ted called that night, as cheerful as he’d been in the morning. He wanted to know how we enjoyed the ferry ride and joked about how drunk I’d been and my terrible hangover. But I was distant, still humiliated, and we chatted only a few minutes.

  Monday came and I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened. I was really attracted to this man—not just a little—but I wished I had met him differently.

  Tuesday, someone from the University Personnel Office called my office to verify that I was working there. It seemed a little odd at the time. As I left work and headed for my car, I looked up to see Ted coming towards me across the parking lot.

  “Well, hello,” I blurted out, “I was just thinking about you.” I blushed and felt ridiculous: I hadn’t thought about much else for the last three days.

  We fell into talking as easily as we had at the tavern. We agreed on dinner at my place, he suggested steaks and wine, and I tossed him the car keys. We went to a supermarket I hadn’t discovered before. It was huge and spotlessly clean, with wide aisles and no long lines at the cash registers. I learned later that it was the classiest supermarket in town. The mom-and-pop store near my apartment was a grimy little place that did most of its business in Thunderbird.

  Ted knew a lot about food and wine. He chose the steaks, a loaf of French bread, and salad greens, then took me across the street to a wine store. “This should be good,” he said, taking a bottle of French red wine off the shelf. I was impressed by any wine that had a cork in the bottle.

  We collected Molly from the daycare center and went home to cook. I was impressed with Ted’s skill in the kitchen; he had left it spotless after Sunday’s breakfast, and now he took command.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have any fresh garlic, would you?” he asked.

  “Oh sure,” I said and got it out of the cupboard. At last, I thought to myself happily, I finally did something right. I put the bread in the oven and made the salad while we talked nonstop about ourselves, the city, politics—all the things people talk about when they are first getting to know each other.

  Molly was testing the water, demanding a lot of attention. Ted told me he hadn’t been around little kids much, but he was charming with her. After dinner he asked her if she had a favorite book he could read to her. She loved stories, and she ran and got Teddy Bear of Bumpkin Hollow.

  “Ah, yes,” Ted said. “I know this story well. Freddy Bear of Bumpkin Hollow.”

  “No, no,” giggled Molly. “It’s TEDDY Bear of Bumpkin Hollow!”

  “I see,” Ted said. “Teddy Bear of Pumpkin Hollow.”

  “Bumpkin,” said Molly. And so it went, Molly hanging on Ted’s every word, waiting to catch his silly mistakes.

  We put Molly to sleep in my bed, and as we did the dishes we talked again about the Northwest. Ted was not from the East Coast, as I had assumed, but from Tacoma, a city about thirty miles south of Seattle. He knew the region well and was delighted at how enchanted I was with his native territory
. He wanted to show me all his favorite places.

  When Molly was finally asleep and the bottle of wine was almost empty, he asked me if I would spend the weekend with him in Vancouver, British Columbia. I said yes. He kissed me goodnight and went home, but when we kissed it was clear that we both wanted more.

  I called Angie with the good news. I tried to maintain a little bit of cool; I didn’t want to set myself up for a big fall, but it is hard to be cool when you’re wearing an ear-to-ear grin. Angie would be away, but she said I could leave Molly with her roommates.

  Friday morning Ted came to take us to work and daycare so he could take the car to the gas station to fill it up and check the tires, the oil, and whatever else. In a corduroy sports coat and a tie, he looked like a young man going off to a law office to research an important case. The day flew by.

  I was excited, but I was also scared. Would I be nervous and tongue-tied during the three-hour drive? I needn’t have worried. He talked about growing up in Tacoma, becoming a Boy Scout and selling American flags door-to-door. He said that when he owned a house, he was going to put a flagpole out front and fly the American flag every day, not just on holidays. I didn’t know if he was serious or not.

  We talked about Vietnam. My brother had been there, and I had been afraid he was going to die there. I didn’t think America belonged in Vietnam. Ted and I agreed that the overkill—the use of napalm and bombs—made it plain that we were out to destroy Vietnam rather than save it. Ted told me that he had not been drafted because he was 4-F. He had broken his ankle when he was back East, and it hadn’t healed right, but the draft board in Tacoma didn’t think a broken ankle should keep a young man out of the service, so he was having a running battle with them.

  We arrived in Vancouver about seven-thirty. It was almost as beautiful as Seattle at night. Ted had wanted to stay at the Hotel Vancouver, an elegant old hotel in the heart of the city, but he found that they didn’t have any rooms so we drove down the block to the Devonshire. I stayed in the car when he went in, wondering how he was going to register. Mr. and Mrs. T. R. Bundy had a nice ring to it.