The Most Dangerous Time

by David LaGraff

  Chapter 4

  The best efforts of the hotel suite designers to convert Shutters from a former slum-by-the-sea into a luxury resort were not enough to help Rickie feel like she'd escaped her problems. That would take more than a deep whirlpool tub and a private balcony overlooking the storm-shrouded Pacific. Rickie felt like she had arrived at the exact coordinates of the loneliest spot on earth.

  She stood beside the fireplace with a glass of decent sherry and speed-dialed Hirschfeld.

  "You should never have punctured my tires," she said.

  "Forgive me," he said.

  She almost wanted to. Her resolve to hate him, to punish him, was weakened by her overwhelming loneliness.

  "Why should I? You don't pay attention to me as you should. So what if I didn't order your wine? Judy said to call the police and press charges."

  "I'm sorry, baby," he said. "I punished you, but the real person I'm punishing is myself. It hurts me deeply when I behave like this. Where are you? Judy's?"

  "Shutters. I want you to replace my tires and fix the window you broke."

  "I'll have somebody replace the tires tonight and a crew come out as soon as the rain stops to put in that fancy bay window your friend has always wanted. Will that help?"

  "Maybe."

  "All right then. Now come back to The Dell. I'll send a car to pick you up."

  Rickie sucked up her courage, remembering her promise to Judy. In a voice which felt like it belonged to someone else, she made her declaration of independence.

  "Hershey, I'm not coming back. In the morning, I'm calling Gloria Allred. She's going to sue you to death and splash your name all over TV."

  There. It was out. Instead of feeling relief, her fears began to increase.

  "Baby," he said softly. "We both know you're not going to hire Gloria Allred. You don't need to threaten me to get what you want. Our problem is simple. Everything's been too hard for us both lately. The production company's playing games with me, and your son is fresh out of rehab. We haven't had time for ourselves. Don't you think that's the real problem?"

  "Why do you always refer to Jesse Edwin as my son? He's your son, too."

  "Only my step-son. We haven't bonded like a real father and son."

  "He wouldn't have started drinking again if you'd helped him when he needed you to. When you threw him out of the house, it pushed him right back into the bottle."

  "Rickie, no. He was already into the bottle, and who knows what else? I was right to throw him out. How many times did the neighbors call us about the noise from his guitar?"

  "You could have helped him."

  "Rickie, I can't believe you're blaming me for your son's drinking problem. If you're going to blame anybody, why don't you blame his real father? Oh, I keep forgetting. The drunken Indian skipped town thirty years' ago and hasn't been seen or heard from since."

  "Jesse Edwin's dad had a right to get drunk. He returned from Vietnam with a lot of emotional problems to deal with, something a draft-dodger like you would never understand."

  "I was in film school then. Was it a sin because I copped a student deferment? We couldn't all go over there and set fire to the little men in black pajamas. Some of us had to stay here and hold the country together."

  Hershey, if you were only willing to try, you could still be Jesse Edwin's real father. Fathering is a matter of the heart."

  "I have a heart," he said. "I could be a father to Jesse Edwin if he'd meet me half way."

  "Okay, you win," she said. "The truth is, you're right. His drinking problem isn't your fault. It's mine. Being a single parent wasn't easy on either of us."

  "Yeh, yeh. You're a bad, rotten person who failed your kid."

  "You don't have to mock me."

  "I think you should drop the guilt and start realizing he made his own bed."

  "You are a bastard."

  "Okay, you win. I'm a shit-fucker with a piss tongue. Rickie, listen to me. We've been on the phone two minutes and we're already fighting. What's wrong with that picture? You need to come home so we can work this out."

  "I'm pregnant."

  There was silence on the line for the space of a minute.

  "Rickie?"

  "It's true. I went to UCLA yesterday. Dr. Lerner confirmed it. What I've been going through the past three months isn't about the change of life. It's about the beginning of new life inside of me. Now I'm scared to death. When you landed on my stomach, you really hurt me. I'm cramping."

  There was no cross-examination, only Hirschfeld's labored breathing. "I understand everything now," she said. "When you attacked me tonight, it was a revelation. Perhaps being pregnant has cleared my head. I realized you've never wanted to hurt me, but you are incapable of doing anything but."

  "You need to come here," he said. "Or I need to come there."

  "You need to go straight to hell."

  The judgment, which sprang from her lips from the recesses of a person inside her she was but dimly aware of, relieved her completely of the burden of responsibility for Hirschfeld and replaced it with something else--a growing anger which drove her former self into a corner.

  A high wind shook the outer walls of the suite and banged a loose shutter on a balcony somewhere below. For a split-second, she relished the hugeness of the power she held over Hirschfeld, a power which made her former, submissive life with him seem ludicrous, somehow.

  It was a moment or two before she realized the phone pressed to her ear had gone dead.

  She stepped onto the balcony, threw her head back and shrieked into the face of the storm, dictating boldly into the face of God. Out it all came, her angry plans for the elimination both of new lives and old, her rampaging words equaling in rage the driving storm itself.