Hale's Point (9 page)

He slid his hand up her leg, pausing briefly at the top
before continuing along the round contour of her hip, bare and smooth.
Caressing the taut flesh, he breathed a low moan into her mouth.

Realizing she had let this go too far, she abruptly broke off
the kiss. “Tucker…” He unbuttoned another button. “Tucker…” And another. “Tucker,
no
.”

He froze, one hand on her hip, the other poised over a button
near her waist.

She had evidently said the magic word.

“No,” she repeated.

He considered this. “No for real, or no because that’s what
you’re supposed to say?”

“For real.”

His forehead came to rest against hers, as if some of the air
had gone out of him. After a few moments, he said, in a quiet voice, “It could
be really great.”

She was actually tempted, which amazed her. Biting her lip,
she shook her head, and again said, “No.”

He sat back, his hand trailing from her hip to her thigh,
where it stilled. Just as quietly as before, he asked, “Are you a virgin?”

Harley was tempted to lie, because, at twenty-three, her
virginity was becoming something of an embarrassment. Opting for the truth, she
said, “Yes.”

His expression didn’t change, she was relieved to note. He
wasn’t at all surprised or put off. “You shouldn’t let that stop you. It could
still be really great. I’d make sure of it.”

With a small shake of her head, she said, “I couldn’t. Not
with someone I just met. Not the first time.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “All right.” Again he reached for the
little heart-shaped buttons, this time to slip them back into their holes one
by one, bottom to top.

She felt a need to explain. “It’s just that I—”

“
Shh
, it’s all right. Really.”

He finished
rebuttoning
her gown,
replaced the shoulder, and smoothed the skirt down to her ankles. Taking up his
cane, he rose. “Oh, here.” He picked up
Priorities
for the Successful Manager
and handed it to her. “I lost your place. Sorry.”

At the door, he said, “Good night, Harley.”

“Good night, Tucker. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He looked momentarily distracted, as if there were something
he wanted to say, but thought better of it. “Yeah. See you in the morning.”

As the door closed behind him, she sank back against the pillows,
closed her eyes, and released a long, shuddering breath.

Chapter 4

In the morning
he was gone.

Harley didn’t realize it until after her six-o’clock swim,
when she passed by the maid’s room on the way to the kitchen. The door stood
open and the room looked empty. She said his name, and upon hearing no answer,
walked in. The bed was unmade and his guitar leaned against the back wall.
Otherwise, there was no sign that he had ever been there.

She toured the house, then the property, looking for him,
occasionally calling his name. She even checked the beach, in case he had
managed to make his way down but couldn’t get back up. No Tucker. He was really
gone. He had left.

She went to the kitchen, turned on the radio, and made some
coffee.

He might have said goodbye.

She thought about their argument at the pool yesterday
evening, and his coming to her room later. He was right when he said she wouldn’t
let him near her. Brian had said the same thing during their brief
relationship; that she was cold and
ungiving
, that
she discouraged intimacy, not just sexually, but emotionally.

Was it true? She didn’t
feel
cold. Her reactions—to Tucker, if not to Brian—were too warm, inappropriately
so.

She took a sip of coffee. It tasted like acid.

Why inappropriately? Because, of course,
he
was inappropriate. He was a nonconformist, a man of exasperating
honesty for whom compromise was impossible. After a miserable childhood of
pitying looks and being thought odd, of being the outcast, all she wanted now
was normalcy. She craved the mainstream; she had struggled for years just to
fit in and be like everyone else.

She lifted her chin. There was nothing wrong with her. She
had acted appropriately. She had no reason to feel guilty. Where was it written
that you were some kind of ice goddess if you didn’t jump into bed with a man
you had just met?

She was glad he was gone. Still, she would have driven him to
the airport. She had
told
him she
would drive him to the airport.

For several minutes she sat at the table, willing herself not
to cry.

***

The radio said it would be a cloudless day of high, possibly
record-breaking, heat and humidity. She liked hot weather, and decided to spend
the day weeding and cutting back the perennial borders. She interrupted her
work only briefly for a light lunch and a reapplication of
sunblock
,
and then threw herself back into it, grateful to have something physical to do.
It was dirty work and she wore comfortable old clothes for it: a chambray
shirt, oversize tan walking shorts belted with a red bandanna, and her
grungiest running shoes, plus sunglasses and a Walkman.

It
was
a hot day,
brutally hot, but she immersed herself in her work, laboring mechanically and
virtually without pause. The effort she had to expend just to muscle through
the heat and keep going served to steer her mind from the subject of Tucker
Hale, although from time to time his image seemed to waver on a ripple of warm
air, then dissolve.

The sun burned like a blowtorch in the sky; everything she
touched felt like it was about to burst into flame. Looking anywhere but at the
ground made her feel queasy, so she just bent her head over her work, digging
and cutting with an automatic relentlessness. She had never perspired so much,
and her clothes were quickly soaked through. Sweat dripped onto the plants she
was clipping and ran into her eyes, stinging them. She took the bandanna from
the waistband of her shorts and tied it around her forehead, and that helped.

In the interests of mood management, she chose her most
upbeat tapes for the Walkman, mainly Beethoven. The
Ninth Symphony
was perfect; it made her feel exhilarated and
empowered. She made short work of the borders edging the front walk and got
started on the driveway. Beethoven’s
Seventh,
however, was a mistake. She had forgotten about that really soulful part
halfway through that always filled her with sorrow. Instead of turning off the
tape, as she knew she should, she turned the volume up. Then she put down her
weeder
and sat on the grass next to the blacktop driveway,
suddenly very tired.

Harley checked her watch. It was 2:09 p.m. She had worked
almost nonstop for over six hours. Her head throbbed and she felt slightly
nauseated. At least she was no longer sweating so hard; that wet, sticky
feeling was gone. When she realized that was probably because she had drunk
nothing all day but a little mineral water at lunch, she felt sheepish. She
should have considered her fluids, as she did when she was running. She should
have taken some breaks, and she should have worn a hat. She also should have
quit hours ago.

She was so stupid.

Harley tried to stand, but things shifted and then she felt a
sudden jolt of pain and something hard under her head: the driveway. She lay on
her back, her body absurdly heavy. The blacktop felt very warm beneath her,
almost hotter than she could stand, but not quite. She closed her eyes, took
off her sunglasses, and draped an arm over her face. The beautiful, solemn
music filled her ears and her mind, and she gave herself up to it, losing
herself in its sadness.

Yes, she was very stupid. She would go through life being
stupid and doing stupid things. So much for the theory that Columbia M.B.A.
candidates were intelligent people.

After a while the driveway began to vibrate, as if there were
a subtle tremor in the earth. The vibrations stopped, and presently a shadow
fell over her.

She opened her eyes and squinted at the dark form blocking
the sun; someone was crouching over her, reaching toward her. As she groped on
the driveway for her sunglasses, a large pair of hands plucked the earphones
from her ears, and silence rushed in to replace the music.

“I said, are you all right?” came the familiar, rusty voice.

Tucker?
She dropped the sunglasses
and just stared. The thought occurred to her that he might be an illusion
conjured up by the heat. She reached up with a trembling hand to touch him, but
her arm fell like a deadweight across her chest.

“Harley?” The hands cupped her face. She could see him
clearly now. He looked distraught. “God, you’re on fire. Honey, what’s wrong
with you?”

“I’m stupid.” she murmured. Her eyes closed of their own
accord. She felt his arms wrap around her. Her head rolled back like a newborn
baby’s
, and he gripped it firmly with one hand and held it
upright. Her eyelids were too heavy to open.

“Wake up, Harley. I’ve got to get you inside, and I can’t
carry you. You’ve got to walk.” Harley struggled to open her eyes, then forgot
the point of her struggle and allowed herself to drift off again. “Wake up!
Wake up!” he commanded. “You can do it!” Panting with the strain, she forced
her eyes open. “Good girl,” Tucker sighed.

She peered over his shoulder. Something large and dark stood
on the driveway behind him, swimming on waves of heat. She concentrated, and it
took form: a black convertible sports car, very smooth and shiny in the bright
sun. She squinted to get it in focus, then shook her head, but that was a
mistake; the world spun sickeningly, and she slumped against him. He held her
tight and she clung to him, breathing in his now-familiar scent and listening
to his heart pound. He felt warm and solid, the only solid thing in a spinning
world.

***

“This is
your
bed,”
she objected as he whipped aside the covers with the arm that he wasn’t using
to hold her up.

“Consider it yours.” It was all he could do to get her as far
as the maid’s room. No way were they going to make it up those stairs. Her legs
gave out again, but he managed to steer her onto the twin bed as she was
collapsing.

“That’s all right,” he said, more to himself than to Harley,
who appeared to be senseless. He straightened her out so she lay on her back,
untied her shoelaces, and pulled off her dirt-encrusted running shoes. “That’s
all right, hon. No more walking. You did real well.”

He sat on the edge of the bed and wiped his brow with the
frayed hem of his T-shirt—
damn
, it
was hot—then untied the damp red bandanna that Harley had been wearing as a
sweatband. Whenever he had a fever as a child, his nanny used to gauge it by
kissing his forehead, insisting that the mouth was much more sensitive to
temperature than the hand. He leaned over Harley and pressed his lips gently to
her forehead; it felt like something out of an oven. Without meaning to or
thinking about it, he kissed her lightly before drawing away.

He looked around the room. It did not surprise him that
R.H.
still hadn’t installed air-conditioning. The old man
had always condemned what he called “frivolous technology.” Of course, “frivolous”
was in the eye of the beholder. State-of-the-art gym equipment was apparently
not frivolous. Neither were small airplanes, large sailboats, and fast cars,
with which he had always surrounded himself. They were his passion—a passion
that had rubbed off on Tucker—and owning dozens at a time was not frivolous.
Owning more than one telephone—black, rotary dial— was.

Tucker remembered having seen a fan in the maid’s closet when
he stowed his duffel bag there. Now he set it up and turned it on, aimed at
Harley. He removed her ponytail holder with the two big red plastic balls that
prevented her from lying
faceup
, and spread her hair
out on the pillow, a corona of bronze silk. Then he dampened a clean washcloth
with cold water and laid it on her forehead, which caused her to mumble
something incoherent and shake it off.

“Easy,” he whispered. He blotted her face gently with the
washcloth, noting how pale she was, although color was beginning to rise in her
cheeks. Her beautiful lips, which had looked white, were red again. Was that a
good sign? He felt helplessly out of his depth, here. He sighed and held her
head still, the washcloth pressed to her forehead.

Phil
Zelin
would not be out of his
depth here. Phil, the cabbie’s son from Brentwood, the friend from the wrong
side of the tracks whom
R.H.
had at one time not even
permitted in the house, was a doctor now, some kind of great high Pooh-Bah of
internal medicine. Tucker knew this because Phil was the only person from his
youth with whom he was still in touch. About once a year, one of them would
pick up the phone and call the other, and they would talk for a couple of
hours, just like old times.

Tucker tossed the washcloth into the bathroom sink, went to
the study, called the Stony Brook University Medical Center, and, after about
five minutes of being transferred around, was finally put through to Dr. Philip
Zelin
.