'I don't believe this,' she said in despair to the empty room and the uninhabited chairs. A headache was gathering itself at the edges of her skull; she could feel the pressure begin to build at her temples. 'I really don't believe this.'
Petra took a deep breath, walked into her bedroom and, kneeling on the floor, put her head down so that she could peer under the bed. Her eyes had to adjust to the darkness there, and it was a while before she could see the cat sitting on its haunches under the furthest corner of the bed. She could barely make out Renoir's shape; all she could see was the golden gleam of the cat's round and unblinking eyes.
'Come on, Remmie,' she said. 'Come on out.'
But coaxing like that had no effect, so Petra went back into the kitchen and filled three bowls; one with water, one with olives and one with Nibbles. She brought them into the bedroom, put all three beside her on the floor and, once again, looked under the bed.
'Food, Remmie. Olives and Nibbles. Yummy and delicious.'
But that didn't work either and, no matter how much she coaxed and begged, Renoir wouldn't budge. She merely stared at Petra's anxious face as if she'd never seen her before. Petra finally gave up and leaned her aching head against the edge of the mattress, wondering how badly Renoir was injured and what she was going to do. There was no moving the bed in her tiny room without moving the dresser first. And, even if she did shift all the furniture around trying to reach Renoir, nothing would stop the cat from scurrying to another corner before Petra could get her hands on her.
Finally, in desperation, she got a broom out of the closet and used it to push the bowls deeper under the bed. In a few seconds, she was rewarded with the sound of a cat lapping water and she gave a small sigh of relief. Then she went back into the kitchen, got out the Mercy phone book, found the address for the nearest vet and jotted it down on a piece of paper. After much searching, she located the cat carrier, a wooden box with a mesh door at one end and put it on the kitchen table. Then she began an internal debate. Should she drive into Mercy, go to the hospital and get someone to come back and help her with the cat or should she wait in case Renoir did emerge? She wondered how bad Renoir's injury was and how much she was bleeding. She worried about the fact that if Renoir did start moving again she might bleed even more. She fretted until the aching in her head developed into a full-scale pounding and she had to press her hands to her temples in an effort to stop the pain.
By this time Rembrandt was scratching urgently at the back door and whining until he got Petra's attention. She opened the door, let him in and said, 'Now what?' Rembrandt licked her hand and managed to look both anxious and pleading at the same time. Petra sighed and fondled his velvety ears.
'Right,' she said. 'Lunchtime.'
She was in the midst of opening a can of dog chow when she heard a car drive up to the cottage and, looking out of the window, saw that it was Geoff in the Chevy. Petra didn't think she'd ever been so happy to see someone in her life; by this time, she couldn't have cared that he was a detested journalist snooping in the details of her life. He looked absolutely wonderful to her as he stepped out of the car, his blond hair gleaming in the sun, his face tanned and handsome, his lips curving into a grin as he caught sight of her.
Trailed by an eager Rembrandt, Petra ran out of the cottage. 'How's Sunny?' she asked.
Geoff's grin disappeared. 'Not good,' he said grimly.
'Why? What's happened?' Petra had a horrible vision of Sunny laid out on a hospital bed, her eyes closed, her thumb gone.
'She fainted and they've decided to keep her overnight.'
'And her thumb?'
'That's going to be okay although the doctor told Joe it might have limited movement after it's healed.
Petra let out her breath. 'Oh.'
'Anyway, I've come back to get some…' But then Geoff noticed that Petra was still looking alarmed and was now wringing her hands together so hard he could hear her knuckles crack. 'Is something else the matter?'
She nodded. 'It's Renoir.'
'Renoir?'
'She's under my bed and bleeding and I can't get her out.'
Two hours later, Geoff and Petra emerged from the vet's office. The cat, the doctor said, had been attacked by some animal in the bush. She'd had severe lacerations from being clawed and puncture wounds from being bitten. She'd required fifteen stitches and a shot to ward off infection. And she was spending the night in the animal hospital so that she could be watched. The vet hadn't been willing to pinpoint what kind of animal Renoir had come up against, but he ventured a guess at a racoon or fox. He didn't think the wounds had been caused by a bear, he'd said, the teeth marks were too small. Petra's mouth had dropped open when he'd said that. She'd never given a thought to what kind of larger animal life was roaming the bush just beyond the boundaries of the McGinnis cottage. Bears struck her as particularly dangerous, but the vet had smiled at her expression and reassured her that they rarely attacked humans.
Now, as she got into the car, Petra thought back on the afternoon and wondered if she could tolerate one more out-of-the-ordinary event. It had taken them an hour to get Renoir out from under her bed, an hour of moving furniture, removing sheets and blankets, closing the bedroom door and then upending the bed so that the cat had nowhere to go. When Petra had finally picked her up, Renoir had half-heartedly tried to wriggle away, but the sticky, matted fur on her belly, the pool of blood on the floor and the torn flap of one ear had testified to the severity of her injuries. She'd even willingly sat on Petra's lap, wrapped in a towel, as Geoff drove into Mercy. Rembrandt had been the only one who'd objected. They'd fed him lunch and then locked him in the cottage. When he'd realised that they were going to leave in the car, he'd begun howling his abandonment so loudly that Petra could hear the noise over the revving of the engine as they drove away.
'Well,' said Geoff, as he glanced back at the vet's office, 'that's one patient safely in bed.'
'Who's next?' Petra asked.
'Next? Oh, you mean who's going to get pneumonia or fall down and break a leg?'
Petra nodded. 'I'm not superstitious but this is getting ridiculous, isn't it?'
Geoff walked around to his side of the car. 'They say bad luck comes in threes, but I'm not superstitious either.' He grinned at her over the bonnet. 'Still, I think I'll stay away from sharp knives, cliffs, guns and land mines.'
They drove the mile to the hospital and parked in its car-park. Petra took Sunny's overnight case out of the boot and, closing the boot door, straightened up just as Geoff began walking towards the hospital entrance. For a moment, she watched him and, being sensitive after the horrible things she had said to him, noticed just how bad his limp really was. He still needed the cane to keep his balance, and he couldn't pull his full weight on the bad leg. This combination of problems meant that he was forced to go slowly and to weave slightly from side to side. And it wasn't easy for him either. As she hurried to join him, Petra could see Geoff clenching his jaw and the gleam of perspiration on his brow. It occurred to her that Geoff was not only crippled but, quite possibly, in pain a great deal of the time.
The thought of it made her feel such an agonising pity for him and shame for what she had said, that Petra wanted to apologise right there on the spot. 'Geoff…' she began.
'Hey,' he said, giving her a lop-sided grin. 'You don't have to wait for me. I'm a little slow.'
That made her feel even worse. 'Oh, no,' she said. 'I don't mind.'
But she did; she minded horribly for him that he should be reduced to this, to this crawling pace up the hot pavement. She didn't know how he could stand it, to have been reduced from whole to less than what he was, to know that for the rest of his life he would never walk or run without a limp again. Petra thought about her own exuberant good health and finely honed muscles and wondered how she would react if she lost her ability to swim, to move any way she wanted, to walk straight and tall.
For the first time, she saw Geoff in a new perspective. She co
uldn't imagine the horrors that he'd been through, buried under the rubble of Beirut and believing in an imminent death, but she was struck by his courage. A lesser man might have died; a lesser man might have faced diminished physical capabilities with fear, with depression, with a bitterness that ruined his life. But Geoff had done none of these things. He was back at work, trying his damnedest to get a story out of her. And Petra had the suspicion that the only reason he was at Indian Lake was that his boss wouldn't send him back to Beirut with a bum leg. She guessed that Geoff would have wanted to return and plunge right back into the danger that had cut him down; facing once again the chance of being shot or buried alive, of crippling another limb, of losing an eye or, ultimately, of losing his life. That took more courage than Petra had ever known.
As they entered the hospital, she admitted with reluctance that she had changed her mind about Geoffrey Hamilton. Quite against her will and her instincts, she had found that she admired him and even liked him. He was still a journalist and her feelings about journalists remained, but the man was not just his profession. He was nice, charming, attractive and kind. His concern over Sunny was genuine; he hadn't hesitated to help with an injured cat. And Petra had discovered that Geoff was easy to get along with, an amiable man when they weren't arguing over their only bone of contention—her. She glanced at his profile as he held the hospital door open for her and suddenly wanted to know more about him. She found herself wondering what women he had dated and what love affairs he'd had. It wasn't hard to guess that, with his looks, Geoff would have rarely spent time alone. Yet, Petra rather suspected that no woman had tied him down for long. Geoff had been a rolling stone, gathering no moss, no attachments, no clinging females that would slow down his energetic pursuit of life.
They found Sunny in bed, tired but out of pain. Her thumb was bandaged and she still looked white as the sheet she lay on, but she smiled when she saw Petra and lifted her injured hand. 'Welcome to my new domain,' she said gaily.
Petra leaned over and kissed her wan cheek. 'How are you feeling?'
'Fine. I don't understand why they're keeping me here overnight. I hate hospitals.'
Joe was sitting at the edge of the bed, holding on to Sunny's good hand. 'It's for your own good.'
'My own good,' Sunny snorted. 'Wouldn't a decent night's sleep in my own bed be for my own good?'
'It wouldn't be for mine,' Joe grumbled. 'Don't want a fainting female on my hands.'
Sunny gave Joe as much of a dirty look as her exhaustion permitted. 'You're just worried about your rummy game.'
'Ah!' Joe said with disgust. 'That'll be the day.'
Petra sat down on the other side of the bed. 'Fighting again, are you?'
'Bickering,' Sunny said. 'We don't call it fighting. Now, did that dratted cat ever show up?'
Petra glanced at Geoff who was standing in the doorway. 'Well,' she said, 'Renoir did make it back but…'
'But…?' Sunny demanded.
'She's spending the night at the vet's. It seems that she ran into a fox or a racoon and needed a few stitches.'
Sunny shook her head in disbelief and then gave them a small smile. 'Well, we can convalesce together. Now, won't that be cosy.'
Petra, Geoff and Joe stayed and talked with Sunny for a while, but it was soon evident that whatever drugs she'd been given for pain and shock were having their effect. By the time they left, Sunny was asleep. They picked up Jennifer at Mercy's only dress shop, stopped at Mercy's only restaurant for hamburgers and finally headed back to the cottage where they found that Rembrandt, frantic in his isolation, had torn apart one of the decorative pillows on the couch. There were bits and pieces of foam on the surfaces of the furniture and on the floor. When they walked, the foam lifted and sifted around them like an indoor snowstorm. Joe held a severe conversation with Rembrandt, but the dog's look of shame only lasted for a few seconds. He was so ecstatic at their return that he followed them around, licking their hands and wagging his tail so hard that his rear end appeared to be gyrating.
Joe returned to the hospital for the evening visiting hours while the rest of them set about cleaning up the cottage and putting Petra's bedroom back in order. By the time Joe returned at ten o'clock, the cottage was clean, Rembrandt was fed and everyone was drooping with fatigue and heading for bed. By ten-thirty the lights were out, and the faint rumble of Joe's snoring could be heard through the cottage. Petra stretched out in her bed, trying to ignore the ache in her legs and the pounding in her head. Her headache had waxed and waned all day, easing to a vague aching before returning to a full pitch of pain. She wasn't used to having headaches, and she didn't know what to do about this one. It didn't respond to aspirin, to darkness or to the cool, wet cloth she'd placed on her forehead. Even with her eyes closed and her body very still, it rampaged through her head, beating angrily at her temples, clawing at the back of her eyes and tightening an iron band around her forehead.
When she could stand it no longer, Petra got out of bed, pulled a terry-cloth robe over her nakedness and slipped out of the door into the porch where the air was cooler. She had intended to stretch out on the daybed that had been built into one corner of the porch and let the night sounds wash over her, but when she got to it and put a hand down, her fingers didn't make contact with the bed's corduroy cover. Instead, her hand touched flesh.
She gave a little cry, but a male voice said, 'Shush, you'll wake everyone up.'
'Geoff!' she whispered. 'What are you doing here?'
'The same as you probably.' She heard a rustling and then he said, 'Here, sit down.'
Petra obediently sat on one end of the bed. Her eyes had become adjusted to the moonlight, and she could see Geoff's shadowy figure in the other corner. He was wearing shorts, but nothing else. Every once in a while a stray moonbeam would play over him, turning his shoulders, face and hair to silver. 'You couldn't sleep either?' she asked.
'Nope. My leg is bothering me.'
His voice was matter-of-fact so Petra merely said, 'Oh, I'm sorry. Does… does that happen often?'
'What—my leg? Only when I spend a lot of time on it—like today.'
Petra sighed. 'It was a hard day. Between Sunny and Renoir…' and her voice trailed off.
'And what's keeping you up?'
'Me? It's my head. It's pounding.'
'Did you try aspirin?'
'It didn't work.'
'Mmmm—I could probably fix it.'
Petra glanced suspiciously at his shadowed face. 'You could?'
'Sure.'
There was a silence that reverberated in Petra's head like the clanging of dissonant bells. The pain was so bad she put her hands to her head. 'How?' she asked.
'Lie down on your back and I'll show you.'
'Lie down…?'
'Assume the horizontal, face up, head in my direction.' His voice, despite its whisper, was clinical and commanding. 'Come on. It won't hurt.'
Petra found that she would do anything if it promised her some relief. Obediently, she lay down so that her head was by Geoff's legs. The next thing she felt was his hands on each side of her face, his fingers warm and taut as they began to smoothly massage her skin. Geoff could barely see what he was doing, but his hands saw for him. They felt the delicate line of her jawbone, the angle of her cheeks, the orbits of her eyes, the tender skin at her temples. With care and gentleness, his fingers moved on her until her tension slowly eased. Petra relaxed, closing her eyes, letting the hands move her head to one side and sighing gently when they soothed the rigid tendons on her neck.
'That feels good,' she said. 'When did you learn how to do that?'
'I had a girl friend once who had taken a course in massage. She taught me what she'd learned and we used to give each other massages.'
'That sounds heavenly.' And erotic. Despite her headache, Petra felt a sudden warmth at the thought of a man and a woman together, naked, hands on each other, easing, touching, stroking.
'It was.'
His
hands were on the back of her neck now, digging deeply into the spasm of muscle. Petra sighed. 'Why'd you ever give her up?'
'Well, I don't actually remember giving her up. It was more like a mutual parting of the ways.' His voice held a wry note. 'To tell you the truth, I don't even remember her name.'
'Oh.'
'But I sure remember those hands.'
It was a while before Petra spoke. 'It sounds as if you've had a lot of girl friends.'
'I've had my share.'
'But not to remember the name of one…'
Geoff sighed and his hands dug into her hair, soothing the tensed muscles of her scalp. 'It doesn't reflect well on my character, does it?'
'Well, it seems sort of…' Petra sought the right word, 'casual.'
'Yeah, well, that's the way it's been. Casual. Easy come, easy go. I haven't had much time in my life for anything else.'
If Geoff was trying to sound nonchalant, he wasn't succeeding, because Petra caught a sad note in his voice. 'Why?' she asked.
His hands stopped moving for an instant and then started again. 'Because I was roaming the earth and writing stories. I never had much time for women, and my work was dangerous. I didn't want to inflict that kind of life on someone else. My risks were my own responsibility.'
'That makes for a lonely life.'
'It hadn't felt that way until…' His voice trailed off, hesitant and unsure.
'Until what?'
'Well, this sounds, I don't know, weak or something, but I hadn't felt lonely until I injured my leg.'
'Why is that weak?'
'Because… because it implies that I only need someone when I'm…' he gave an uncomfortable little laugh, '… half a man.'
That touched her. 'I don't think of you as half a man.'
Love is a Distant Shore Page 9
