Bells of Avalon

by Libbet Bradstreet

  “Because not everything that happens is worth talking about,” she said and watched his hands lift in the high sign of defeat.

  “Have it your way then. Goodnight, Katie Webb.” He smiled.

  “Goodnight, Mr. Gallagher.” She returned the sentiment and watched him walk away.

  Danny was right. He usually was, but she would never tell him that. The dumpish press agent shoved a key into her hand, which led to her own room rather than a suite of three or four.

  “The call time is 6:30, not 7 or 7:15. I expect you to be ready and waiting in the lobby by 6 o’clock, Caroline.”

  She nodded and stared at the little brass key in the palm of her hand. Even after the dumpish press agent left with the rustling sound of fabric, she turned the key around and around in her hand with dumb awe, admiring how the light dully reflected off the metal. It was an adventure to have a key all her own—a key that opened a room that was all hers. Putting the key to use, she unlocked her door and walked inside. Expecting something special because it was her own, she was disappointed to find it was same as the rest she’d stayed in since she was a child. She sat on the bed and felt her body sink into the mattress.

  She undressed and bathed—put on a nightgown and slid beneath the cool bed sheets, their thread count singing as she slipped inside. She closed her eyes. Sleep came quickly, and the hostage part of her mind knew that that was no good. It was an empty certainty, and there was nothing to be done now. Best to run its course, of course. That sing-songy, warbling old friend of a voice sang out over and over again. She saw the blue tile—always the same color like a reflective sky against something horrible; a hideous pale blue, so weakly-colored and incapable of saving her. But she couldn’t be saved from what had already happened. There was nothing to be done about the past, best to let it run its course, of course.

  In the present world, she was safe in bed. In all the ways that mattered, she was a woman—taller and leaner than anyone expected her to be. That had worried her at first, and it had worried the Meltsners. She’d seen her contemporaries become stretched out by age, their faces becoming pale and long, unrecognizable to the people who’d once watched them on the silver screen. First there was Callie O’Donnell and Freddie Sinclair…and a few years later, The Kingly Kittredge Brothers—known to her simply as Max and Albert. Those children faded away, one by one, irrelevant casualties of the clunking Hollywood machine. She thought the same would happen to her. She’d prepared for it— like taking a hissing gulp of air before being pulled down into the water. But it hadn’t happened to her, not in the same way at least. She didn’t stop to think too long about why she’d been spared…but she knew the Meltsners had a lot to do with it.

  Her face had also remained the same. There were no jarring or confused glances when people who’d known her at thirteen saw her again at sixteen—or now, almost eighteen. Her face had matured, but not so much that you couldn’t still see the little girl inside. In her sleep, she saw a few of those faces change from the children she’d known and into the gaunt adults that would never be welcomed back. Their images scrolled against the blue-tiled sky and then disappeared into oblivion. She saw the Dancer’s hand, splayed out on that shiny blue tile—then heard the tiny but undeniable clink of his rose-gold ring—Russian gold, she’d once heard it called, hadn’t she? A soft but agonized sound came from her throat, as if in answer. Not from the girl pressed against the hard, blue tile—but from the tall woman who slept in catchy bits and pieces in the bed of an expensive hotel room. She jerked from her side in one unconscious, sleeping moment. Her long fingers came to rest over her brow. A bit of shiny, blond hair curled around the other closed eye. The rapid pace of her breathing curtailed. The usual dream terror stopped, and there was dark peace…and music.

  Yes, she has them all on the run

  But her heart belongs to just one

  Her heart belongs to Tangerine…

  The warm light of the hotel lobby glowed in her mind’s eye. It wasn’t this hotel, of course, but another—one 700 miles to the west. The lobby was snug and warm—web-like chiffon set to section off the guests for whom Tangerine played over and over again in a deathless recital. The chiffon was translucent and smoke grey—but that was fine, it wasn’t blue and hard like tile. The guests were held in a flight of fancy inside the smoky tapestry, but she was outside looking in—just as it had been that night. Some of the guests she knew, but most of whom she didn’t. And while the curtain was sheer, it had been hard to tell one face from another. That was why she hadn’t seen him—not at first. He hovered smugly behind the gray. He smiled, ducking his head, the wings of chiffon dragging across his gleaming gelled hair. He touched the sides of her face with fingers that only wanted what she could give. It was a gentle, patient touch that moved over her shoulders and came to rest at the crook of her elbows. She tasted the liquor on his breath when he kissed her, and the song played over and over again. He pulled away, making a shoestring statement that somehow managed to stamp out what he had just done. She felt her strong legs kick in one barbed movement, and she was awake.

  She opened her eyes and they adjusted slowly to the dim light of the room. She looked to the window and saw through a spire-shaped slit in the curtain that it was snowing. She slid off the bed with another singing squeal from the bed sheets. Opening the drapes to their full sufficiency, she watched snowflakes drift outside her window. For a moment, it didn’t seem as though they were falling at all, but hovering—as though caught in the gravity of a jar. She tipped forward from her crowning height and saw that the flakes indeed fell, one after another onto the slate-gray concrete below. She heard a soft drumming sound. At first it seemed to mark the fall of each snowflake, but grew louder until there was no doubt it was a knocking at her door. She turned, not really believing. When she opened the door, he was turned with his back to her, his face glancing down the hallway.

  “Well, you weren’t joking were you?” she said and leaned against the door frame.

  He looked back at her and smiled, shaking his head and plunging his hands into his pockets. His body shivered and wet bits of hair circled around his temple.

  “Are you alone, Miss Caroline, or have I woken up half the studio’s payroll?”

  “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. What if the chaperone du jour had answered instead of me?”

  “Give me a break, Katie.”

  “Well?” she insisted.

  “I knew you’d be alone…all the suites are up on the 18th floor, we’re on the 12th.”

  “And how do you know that? You steal blueprints or something?”

  “Don’t be a wiseass, Katie. Move over and let me in. I’m freezing.” He pushed past her through the space in the door. She rolled her eyes and poked her head out the door to inspect if anyone had seen him. When she found no one, she softly shut the door again. Danny removed his shoes and peeled wet dress socks from each foot. He draped them over his shoes and removed his jacket.

  “What have you done to yourself? You’re a complete mess,” she said. He looked at her and smiled in a way that said he would never tell.

  “Well don’t just lay them on the floor like a slob. Here, give them to me.” She stretched her hand out palm up. He obliged with a shrug and placed the socks in her outstretched hand. She screwed up her face until an unbecoming, puffy crease gathered above her nose.

  “Disgusting.”

  “Hey, I didn’t make you touch them,” he called from the other room. She sighed and turned on the bathroom light. She looked around for the recessed radiator she’d glanced at blearily while taking a bath hours before. She laid the socks out on the bronzed folds of warm metal and shut the light off again.

  “You could have just left them on the floor,” he grumbled when she reemerged from the bathroom. She crossed her arms in front of her, remembering her thin nightgown. He avoided her eyes and began to pick at his cufflinks.

  “They’ll dry quicker in there. When they do, you’ll have to leave,” she
said. He gave her a lenient look and stood.

  “I believe your room is much nicer than mine,” he said.

  “Have you seen much of your room?” she asked, still leaning against the wall.

  “Yes, and it damn sure wasn’t as nice as this one.”

  “Surely not,” she smiled and looked at his feet on the beige pile carpet.

  “It isn’t. But then again, you’re making them a lot more money than I am these days.”

  Her head bounded up, but he was still admiring the room with amused appreciation. She felt very small all of the sudden,

  “It’s a nice hotel,” she said softly.

  “Nicer than the Palmer House?” He raised an eyebrow and let his hands fall from his hips to the sides of his thighs.

  “Not quite,” she said, “so, how long has it been snowing out there.”

  “Since I left you,” he answered, without any pause to think about it. She pulled herself from the wall and went to the window to look out. The snow was thicker, falling now in sheets. She tipped to her toes. The gray of the sidewalk was now deadlocked by pure white.

  “I’ve never seen so much snow. Danny, come here and look at this.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” he replied, inspecting the height from a distance.

  “Oh, Danny, don’t be such a baby. It’s not that high up.”

  He stood next to her at the window and pushed back the curtain.

  “Have you ever seen so much snow?” she asked.

  “Not really. We never did get a whole lot of it back in the Palisades, did we?”

  “No,” she laughed, “I’m not sure what to think of it.”

  “It’s pretty enough I suppose,” he said, “anyways, it’s just snow. No big deal.”

  “Well I like it. It’s a big deal to me because I’ve never seen so much before.”

  “C’mon, Katie.” His voice was low and nudging. Somewhere hidden in the soreness of his tone, was his wanting her to look away from the window and at him. She wanted to…but some unswayable part of her kept her eyes fixed on the indifferent flakes of snow. It should have been the easiest thing in the world just to look at him as much as she’d thought about it. But things had never been easy with him.

  “How are Max and Albert?” she asked. Her question was met by silence. She finally heard him sigh and felt a bit of tension ease and shift into something that was easier for her to tolerate.

  “They’re fine, they’re good.” He dropped the curtain back into place and took a step back.

  “That’s good. Do you think they’ll stay here—in the city, I mean?”

  “I don’t know, I guess. Al’s dizzy for some girl out here. He wants to start working for his dad at one of the clubs. Max still has some irons in the fire back home—some teen thug picture or something.”

  “Max in a thug picture?” she smiled and found it easy to look at him then. When she finally did, he took her bare shoulders and turned her to face him.

  “I don’t want to talk about Max and Albert,” he said.

  “No?” she asked with fake naiveté. A naiveté she couldn’t keep up for much longer so long as he kept looking at her that way.

  “Christ, Katie—gimme a break for once, will you?”

  “I can’t help it.” The words sputtered out of her, and she hated the desperate, dumb sound they made in the quiet glow of the hotel room.

  “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to do any of this. You trick me into getting flustered, you do it on purpose—you always have because you know I don’t think as quickly as you.”

  He gaped at her. “I’m not trying to trick you, Katie—is that what you think I’m trying to do? Jesus!”

  “I—I don’t know,” she stammered, twisting her hands. He strode across the room and pulled his blazer jacket up from the back of the chair.

  “I’ll go.”

  She called his name, but he didn’t answer. He fumbled with his shoes, forgetting about the socks that were laid in wait on the ornate-looking radiator. His hurt face alongside the fidgety, embarrassed use of his hands was almost too much to watch.

  “Danny—”

  “What?”

  “Please, Danny, don’t leave. Not like this.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  She looked at him with a pale, pleading face. She held her palms up then dropped them again to her side. He searched her face and, when she said nothing, he rose to his feet and closed the distance between them with a few quick strides. His hands grabbed a hold of her arms. She made herself look at him. His eyes were alert, not glassy like they’d been the night he’d kissed her in the lobby of another hotel.

  “Tell me why,” he said again.

  The words stuck in her throat, where they remained as her eyes darted over his face. For a moment, she thought she could speak, really speak to him. But then it was gone as quickly as it had come. She wanted to touch him, to reach out and feel his arms, his chest, feel the matter of his sturdy body as it stood—really stood in front of her this time. But that would have been more difficult than speaking the words that he wanted to hear. He didn’t understand. She looked at his face, laid bare and sad with a kind of worry never apparent in the boy with many faces he had been. He didn’t understand that if she said those words, they would sound ugly and awkward, a forced other language. He didn’t know what he was asking. She put her hand on his cheek and felt the warmness of his skin. She felt the bristling of hairs that had grown between morning shaves, and it made her very sad. She brought her other hand to his face and began to cry.

  “What, Katie? What is it?” he shouted, giving her shoulders a shake. When she didn’t tell him, he pulled her into him. When she didn’t resist, he circled his arms around her body in a pleading hug, plunging one hand into her hair.

  “Jesus, Katie—just tell me what happened,” he said into her hair. “For once don’t make me beg.” She grabbed a handful of his shirt, and her face came up for air over his shoulder.

  “I can’t,” she said and her hand went up to touch the back of his head. “I don’t want you to go.” Her words were soft against his ear.

  “I won’t,” he said, “I won’t.”

  He pulled away, and she saw that any cheer he’d once had was long gone. What remained was little more than a weary, almost father-like expression. She watched him walk to the chair, drape his damp jacket across its back. He sat on the edge of the unmade bed, and for the final time, removed his shoes and placed them in a neat union beside each other. Katie shut the curtains, the novelty of snow having faded, and walked into the bathroom. She saw the wilted black socks splayed out on the radiator where she’d left them. They were near dry to the touch. She pulled them up to do the rest of their drying on the towel rack. She switched the light off again. When she returned, a part of her expected to find him gone, having crept out despite his assurance of staying. But he hadn’t gone. He sat where she had left him. He’d removed his shirt and was fiddling with the clasp of his silver watch, until the slack of the band fell loose and snakelike at his wrist. He dropped the watch on a bedside table. It clanked against the wood like the dead thing it was. He switched off the remaining lamp and the room cut to darkness. She looked at the outline of his shoulders hunched in the dark. He straightened himself when he saw her.

  “Come here,” he said.

  He reached his arm out to her without standing. She walked to him and placed her hand in his. He held it for a moment, and seemed to study the shape of it in the dark. He gently pulled her down beside him, and they slipped between the squealing sheets. He turned on his side so they were face to face—the shape of his own so familiar. She’d watched as the soft freckles of his face had faded into the chapped features of a man. She didn’t know if that made things easier or not. It was only the beginning of what she understood about them being together in this way. He gathered her face in his hands and kissed her for a long time. When he pulled away this time, there were no shoestring words to
stamp out what he had done. She whispered his name, but he didn’t answer. She felt him shift in the dark, but kept an arm hooked around her shoulders as he moved to lie on his back. When his breathing became heavy, she laid her cheek against his chest and fell asleep.

  The soft rattle of Danny’s watch against the bedside table woke her. She sat up, and the sheets squealed. He rolled up the cuff of his sleeve and fastened the silver hanging slack of his watch. He didn’t look at her. He fussed with his shoes for a few seconds with his back to her before his head snapped up. He looked around the room impatiently.

  “They’re in the bathroom,” she said.

  He whirled around, too quickly to temper his expression into something more neutral for her benefit.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Your socks.”

  “Oh.” He disappeared into the bathroom and returned with the black socks, still wilted but dry.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Time for me to go.”

  Looking at him standing over her like a gruff businessman made her feel raw inside. He smoothed his mussed hair, but lingered—maybe to make sure he’d left no evidence of himself behind.

  “I’ll see you a bit later then?” he asked.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” she said and got out of bed. He looked at her as though he would say goodbye, but his eyes only looked up and down her body. He said nothing and left. She shut the door softly behind him, not caring to look for who might have seen Daniel Gallagher leave her room at such an early hour.

  They rode in the same car as the night before. The dumpish press agent joined them again; but today, chatted amiably with the driver as they drove through the heart of the city. Danny kept his eyes out the window as Canal Street and series of townhouses passed by. He turned away and closed his eyes as they came to 6th Avenue. She studied his profile as he laid back, his expression dreary and tired. She saw he’d managed a change of clothes and a shower from the looks of the damp hair at his neck and smoothly shaved chin. When they arrived, he disappeared into the mass of bodies filling the studio lobby. She thought maybe he’d been pulled away, but it was more likely he’d gone again without saying goodbye. His disappearance made her feel weightless, as though she’d unwittingly anchored herself to his presence.