Still Mr. & Mrs.

by Mary McBride

  Bobby nodded. He knew exactly what his supervisor meant. He just wasn't all that sure he cared anymore.

  Dinner hadn't been too bad, Angela thought, while she cleaned up in the kitchen. True to her word, Mrs. Riordan had come downstairs to the dining room, where Angela had set her place with an ecru linen place mat and matching napkin, plus the good silver and Wedgwood china she'd carefully taken from the breakfront. A sautéed chicken breast and rice and broccoli might not have been considered a gourmet meal, but the strategically placed parsley and lemon wedges had helped make it look decent enough.

  “Did she say anything?” Angela asked when Bobby pushed through the door from the dining room, carrying a plate and an empty water goblet.

  “No, but she left you a handsome tip.”

  For a second she believed him, until his face cracked in one of those killer grins she so rarely witnessed. “Very funny,” she said, taking the plate from him, trying not to trip over her own heartstrings.

  “I didn't even see her,” he said. “She had already made a beeline back upstairs. She must've liked the chicken, though, since she ate every bit.”

  “It wasn't bad,” she said, carefully holding the delicate Wedgwood dinner plate under running water. Angela had taken her own dinner to the bedroom, as much to watch the six o'clock news as not to watch Bobby across the kitchen table from her during their meal. All afternoon she kept thinking about the way he'd looked when he was chopping that damn onion and how she'd rushed to comfort him and what a jerk she'd been. Again.

  She'd looked out the kitchen window when she saw Doug and the other agent running down the driveway, and then she'd raced into the dining room to see what was happening out in front, half expecting to have to rush outside herself to assist in the subduing of an armed intruder. Not quite. The intruder turned out to be a bleached blonde driving a Barbie truck, no doubt the bimbo responsible for making Bobby reek of cheap perfume the night before.

  “Did you ask her if she'd like us to take her out somewhere?”

  His voice came from so close behind her that it startled Angela, and for a split second she thought he was referring to the bimbo before it dawned on her that he meant Mrs. Riordan. The plate she was washing was squeaky clean now, but she kept washing it anyway so as not to have to turn and face him.

  “I asked,” she said, “and she seemed to think it would be nice. Maybe next week. It sounds as if her bridge club tomorrow is enough socializing for the time being.” She aimed a wicked little smile into the sink as she added, “You'll get to see your friend Bootsie again, big guy.”

  “I can't wait.”

  He had moved even closer, and Angela could feel the heat of his body seeping into the muscles of her back, threatening to melt her spine. Between that sensual heat and the warm water running over her hands, she felt literally caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Bobby lifted her hair and pressed his lips to her neck so softly it made her want to weep.

  “Don't,” she said.

  “God, baby, I—” His voice was rough with need.

  “Stop it.” She wrenched the water off, hand by hand, in order not to drop the plate, then moved away.

  “Angela—”

  “No.” Snatching a dish towel from the counter, she wiped the wet plate with a vengeance, nearly rubbing off the blue and platinum bands along its rim. “No.” She said it again, a refusal directed as much at herself as it was at Bobby. It would have taken so very little to change her mind. A glistening in his eyes. A catch in his voice. The slightest trembling of one of those hard-carved lips.

  But he simply stared at her, eyes dry and fierce, his mouth battened down against any betrayal of weakness or wanting. And when he spoke, there was only anger in his tone.

  “Screw it,” he said. “If you want a divorce, go ahead. Call a lawyer. I won't give you any trouble. I'm done with this.”

  After he slammed out of the kitchen, Angela almost couldn't breathe. It felt as if all the air had rushed out with him.

  He slammed out the back door, then just stood in Crazy Daisy's backyard for a bleak moment, wanting to howl, needing to ram his fist into something or someone, wishing lightning would strike him dead. He didn't mean it, what he'd just said about divorce. He meant exactly the opposite, and yet the words had come ripping from his mouth as if somebody else had been speaking.

  It was her no that had blinded him with anger, that had turned all the passion he was feeling to misspoken rage. No. It was so goddamned cold and final. Not spoken like a wife who merely wasn't in the mood, but like a stranger who considered his touch way out of line, inappropriate, and yeah, even insulting. On a par with the milkman. It made Bobby realize—hit him like a ton of cinder blocks, in fact—that Angela wasn't coming back. Their marriage was dead. Done. Over. Maybe it had been over since the day she walked out, and he'd been too stupid, too full of his own confidence—Angela probably would have said arrogance—to know it.

  He sat on the hard bench in Daisy's gazebo for a long time, trying to come to grips with this revelation. The sky was blessedly overcast, so there was no sunset, thank God, to drag his mood down further. For a man who had a talent for picking up women, he sure didn't know how to keep them. How to keep her. There had never been anybody else he'd wanted to keep.

  She's a keeper, bro. Wasn't that what Billy had said when he'd met Angela that first weekend she came to visit her cat? And said it with such a warm and wistful expression on his face that Bobby was truly able to believe in his own feelings. He was in love with her! That fast! Billy knew it before he did.

  Hell, Angela knew it before he did. He remembered they were sitting at the breakfast table in his apartment that first Monday morning after an entire weekend in bed—blissfully wrung out, sleep-deprived, hung over from touch and taste and all the trials and errors of two bodies coming together—when he'd become intensely depressed for no reason he could even begin to comprehend.

  It didn't make any sense for a man who'd just had the most incredible sex of his entire life with a woman who was unimpressed with his badge because she wore one of her own, a woman who was responding to him as a man rather than a Superman or a Secret Service dick, a drop-dead gorgeous woman who was the emotional equivalent of an open book that he wanted to read again and again until he had her memorized.

  “Bobby, don't look so sad,” she had said, laughing as she spooned up another bite of cereal from her bowl. “It's only Monday morning, not the end of the world.”

  That's what it felt like, the end of the world, but he couldn't say it. There just weren't any words for utter desolation born of sheer happiness.

  While she looked at him, Angela's expression had turned from delicious mirth to sweet sobriety. The most beautiful woman in the world was sitting across the table from him, wearing one of his shirts, and the pink abrasions from his weekend growth of beard glowing on her cheeks and chin, reaching out to him, taking his hand, and saying, “It's not the end of anything, sweetheart. It's just the beginning. For us, I mean. At least, if you want it to be.”

  All he could think then was that he wanted her forever and he needed a ring, so he reached into his bowl of cereal, came up with a soggy Cheerio, and asked her to be his wife. The fact that she said yes still amazed him nearly three years later.

  Except she'd just said no.

  The word kept echoing in his head like the report from a rifle, kept ricocheting in his gut, ripping him apart.

  It was dark when Bobby eased himself out on the half foot of vacant space on his side of the little bed. On her side, Angela was burrowed in the covers, still as a corpse, but her vital warmth and sweet fragrance pervaded the sheets and the quilt and the pillows. He lay there quietly a moment, then drew in a breath so deep it sent a tremor through the mattress.

  He wanted to tell her. Ah, God. More than tell her, he wanted to touch her, to do whatever the hell it was he'd done that first weekend that ended with her saying yes. He put out his hand, resting it lightly on the familia
r curve of his wife's covered flank. She wanted a man who wore his heart on his sleeve. Bobby just didn't know how.

  When she sighed softly in her sleep and seemed to relax more deeply under the warmth of his palm, he wondered if somehow she sensed his love, his need, all the things he couldn't communicate to her when she was awake.

  “I need you, Ange. I feel like I'm dying without you.” He wasn't even sure if he whispered the words aloud or merely thought them, but he knew he felt them. They were breaking his heart.

  9

  For a few minutes the next morning, Angela forgot she was on the brink of divorce. The alarm on her watch tweaked her into consciousness, she opened her eyes on her husband's sleeping face, and her heart blossomed inside her like an American Beauty rose.

  Asleep, Bobby always seemed so vulnerable. All the hard angles softened. All the intensity turned to sensuousness. His eyelashes seemed infinitely long against the delicate skin beneath his closed eyes, and his mouth appeared gentle and sweet rather than the grim line it held during his wakefulness. He was relaxed. Unplugged. Off duty. Accessible in every way.

  When he was sleeping, he reminded her of the little boy in the photograph that Billy had given her shortly after they were married. Bobby was about three years old in the faded Polaroid, playing with a pail and shovel in a sandbox, smiling like a frail-shouldered, shaggy-haired urchin at whoever held the camera. “This is just to prove that he was a kid once,” Billy had told her, adding with a wink and a wistful smile, “For about five minutes, anyway.”

  That one faded print was the only picture of her husband when he was a child. There wasn't a single picture of Billy. In the Callifano house, the failure to take pictures of babies, toddlers, and teens on every conceivable occasion would have been considered child abuse. Her mother had a steamer trunk of photographs just of Angela alone, which she'd dragged out during one of their visits home.

  “This is our Angela on her first day in kindergarten. Oh, and here she is on Halloween dressed as a gypsy princess. Such a cutie! This is Christmas morning, when little Miss Snoop tried to act surprised at the new bike Santa brought her.”

  “Enough already, Mom. Bobby really doesn't want to see six million pictures of me before I even had boobs.” Angela had reached out to pull the album away, but Bobby wouldn't let her take it. He held on tight.

  “What's this one, Rose?” he asked, apparently savoring every image and pose, maybe even considering them the outright manifestations of a parental love that he and Billy never had. Typical of Bobby, he never told her in so many words, but he did buy a camera, tons of film, and half a dozen photo albums as soon as they returned to D.C. But after Billy was killed, the camera went into a drawer and the empty albums gathered dust on a shelf.

  It was all Angela could do not to edge closer to Bobby while he slept, to meld her warmth into his, to defend him from bad dreams and worse memories and all the things he wouldn't speak of. Instead, she carefully slid out from under the covers on her side of the bed, deciding to let Bobby sleep in. Lord knew he could use an extra hour or two after tossing and turning most of the night. It nearly broke her heart when she'd slipped the bedspread over him and he sleepily murmured her name.

  By seven-thirty, she had brewed a pot of strong coffee and made a quart of orange juice. She put the last of Mrs. Ito's heavyweight, homemade bran muffins on a plate, then sat sipping her own coffee until it was time to take Mrs. Riordan's tray upstairs. She glanced at the blue binder, still in its place on the table, then idly thumbed through it until she came to the back page, where she'd written the three California attorneys’ names and numbers.

  Rod! She'd completely forgotten to call him last night. How could she have forgotten? A glance at her watch told Angela what she already knew. It was before six on the West Coast now, way too early to roust him out of bed. She knew, unless he had a studio call, Rod never awoke before ten or eleven. Her knowledge wasn't firsthand, of course, since she'd never spent the night with him, but he'd laughed once and claimed the reason there was a crack in dawn was because he'd put it there with a hammer when he worked so many early-morning jobs as a carpenter. Then he'd laughed at his own joke, which tended to annoy her when she didn't think it was all that funny. Come to think of it, none of Rod's jokes were all that funny. She wondered bleakly if Bobby's rare but brilliant wit hadn't spoiled her forever.

  When did Rod say he was leaving for Mexico? Was it today? No, tomorrow, she was sure. Sort of. What was wrong with her, for heaven's sake, that she hadn't paid attention to her almost fiancé’s schedule?

  Nothing, she thought, answering her own question. Nothing was wrong with her. She'd just been distracted, that was all. Distracted and a little overwhelmed by her persistent sexual feelings for Bobby, by the memories they shared, and even by her useless, knee-jerk jealousy of a tacky blonde in a turquoise truck.

  All of that had nothing whatsoever to do with her feelings for Rod Bishop. She was crazy about him. She adored his openness, his willingness to admit fear and pain and passion. Rod, if anybody, should have been the one to inspire rampant jealousy in her with his studio-imposed dates with beautiful, busty starlets and his legions of drooling, devoted fans. She should've been jealous of all that, shouldn't she? God. Why wasn't she? Instead, here she was being a green-eyed monster because Bobby was getting it on with some honky-tonk hussy in Horseblanket, Illinois.

  At five till eight, rather than drive herself crazy with recrimination, Angela took Mrs. Riordan's tray upstairs. As on the previous day, the president's mother was already dressed, this time in a pink-and-gray tweed skirt and jacket that reminded Angela of a Chanel, probably the only designer whose name she knew or whose clothes she could identify. She was more familiar with designers of bullet-proof vests and holsters than she was with those of haute couture. Of course, that was bound to change in her future life with Rod.

  “I trust you and your husband are comfortable in your quarters,” Mrs. Riordan said, pulling a chair up to the table where Angela had placed the tray. “The bed is rather small, I realize.”

  “It's fine,” Angela said, feeling her heart shift slightly in her chest as she pictured Bobby still asleep there, trying hard to ignore her reaction. “That's the last bran muffin, Mrs. Riordan. Mrs. Ito left her recipe. Shall I make more, or would you like a change?”

  The woman looked at her as if Angela had just accused her of a capital crime rather than merely suggesting she alter her diet or change her routine. “I see no reason to change,” she answered stiffly.

  “Well, I'll bake some more, then. I don't suppose you'll want your regular lunch with your bridge group coming at eleven-thirty, will you?”

  “No. If you'll prepare several trays of the crackers and cookies I bought yesterday, that ought to suffice. And the sherry, of course.” A smile flirted with her lips. “Those old bags enjoy their afternoon tippling.”

  Angela laughed. “My mother plays canasta with a group of ladies who use it as an excuse to drink Manhattans and whiskey sours.”

  “Is your father still alive?”

  When Angela responded yes, Mrs. Riordan nodded somberly and said, “Well, at least your mother has that. I do hope she appreciates it.”

  “She does, although since Pop retired, I think it's taking her a while to get used to having him underfoot all day long.”

  She nodded again, took a sip of her coffee, then returned the cup to its saucer. Her voice was level and stern when she said, “Underfoot, my dear Mrs. Holland, is far better than six feet under, and you may quote me on that.”

  “Yes, ma'am.” Angela felt her cheeks flush. What an insensitive thing to say to a woman who so obviously missed her late husband. “I'm so sorry. I didn't mean—”

  Mrs. Riordan dismissed her apology with a brusque wave of her hand. “Never mind about that. Speaking of husbands, is yours intending to hide from my friend Muriel this afternoon?”

  “Muriel?”

  “Muriel Rand,” she said. “The old crone who l
et you in when you arrived the other day. Oh, wait. She probably introduced herself as Bootsie, didn't she? The silly fool.”

  Angela could hardly suppress a laugh. “She did appear to take quite a shine to Bobby. But I'm sure he can handle it.” What's one more? she was tempted to add. For all she knew, Bootsie Rand was the great-grandmother of the blond bimbo. Tackiness no doubt ran in the family.

  “Muriel tends to make a fool of herself in the company of men,” Mrs. Riordan said as she broke off a bit of muffin and began to butter it. “Even when she was a girl. She was infatuated with my husband, you know, before he began courting me. I don't know that she's ever truly forgiven me for taking Charles away from her all those years ago.”

  “I think the senator made the right choice,” Angela said.

  “Yes, well, if he'd married Muriel, it would have altered the course of history, wouldn't it? There wouldn't be a President William Riordan in the White House now.” She rolled her eyes. “Muriel's son is some sort of underworld figure in Florida these days. A bail bondsman or bounty hunter or some such thing. Of course, she does see him fairly regularly, especially since her cancer diagnosis. I wish I could say the same for my own son.”

  Bootsie had cancer! That probably explained her short, punk hair. She tucked that little kernel of information away in the back of her brain. As for the rest of Mrs. Riordan's statement, Angela merely nodded in agreement, not wanting to appear too knowledgeable about the president or his busy schedule. Bobby may have thought that Mrs. Riordan knew they were agents, but Angela wasn't so sure.

  “I suppose you and Robert intend to have children one of these days,” Mrs. Riordan said. “Or are you one of those modern, professional couples who only feel disdain for family life?”

  “Oh, no, ma'am. Just the opposite.” Her answer was as sudden as it was sincere until she reminded herself that the modern, professional couple in question would probably be visiting a divorce court rather than a maternity ward.