IN THE DARK

by Pamela Burford

  She watched comprehension dawn—the proverbial "brass ring"!—followed by a look of determination so fierce she didn't know whether to laugh, or to cry for the lost boy who she suspected had missed out on more than carousel rides and boo-boo kisses.

  As Brody passed the metal arm, he raised himself off the painted saddle and stretched far out to snatch a ring from the business end of the contraption. He lunged for it, gripping the pole for balance, as the old leather stirrups creaked under his weight and all kinds of interesting muscle groups bunched and flexed.

  He showed Cat the steel ring he'd snagged. "What happens if I get the brass?"

  "You turn it in for a free ride."

  "They don't let you keep it?"

  "Nope."

  He was already on the lookout for the metal arm as it came around again. "All right, I've got a few more tries."

  After several more unsuccessful attempts, the calliope music began to slow, along with the horses. As the metal arm came within reach, Brody leaned out and made one last grab.

  "Hah! Will you look at that!" He twirled the gleaming brass ring around his finger.

  Cat laughed, absurdly happy for him, pleased beyond measure to see his smile return, on today of all days. As he passed the ring dispenser, Brody tossed the steel rings he'd collected into the plastic bucket hanging from it. She was about to remind him that he had a free ride coming, until she saw him slip something into his jeans pocket as he dismounted.

  One large building housed the carousel and snack bar. Outside were kiddie rides and a miniature golf course. This was a small neighborhood amusement park, swarming with mothers and their young children on a Wednesday afternoon in August.

  Cat and Brody sauntered around the inside perimeter of the building, where assorted diversions encircled the carousel. Along one wall was a bank of video games as well as a handful of old-fashioned pinball machines. Brody's steps slowed as he started rhapsodizing about his college days as the Pinball Wizard. Cat said she wasn't surprised, and kept him moving with a firm grip on his elbow.

  They passed a glass-enclosed booth in which a beturbaned plaster fortune teller, Madame Zena, held playing cards fanned in her stiff fingers. They stopped to watch a couple of preadolescent girls feed her a coin. The metallic grating of an antiquated motor accompanied Madame Zena's unbecoming jerks and twitches, this impressive display culminating in the spewing of a fortune card from a slot.

  One of the girls grabbed the card and read it, her lips moving silently. "Oh-my-God!" she squealed, with a flash of braces. She shared the card with her friend, and the two girls collapsed in giggles.

  Cat and Brody turned a corner and passed a family playing Skee-Ball, rolling balls up an incline, aiming for the highest-scoring circular trough.

  "I don't remember this place being so … retro," Cat said.

  "You came here as a kid?"

  She nodded. "My mom used to take me here all the time. Come on—I'll buy you an ice-cream cone."

  A few minutes later, soft-serve vanilla cones in hand, they strolled outside, watching the horde of children on the Ferris wheel, in the tame little roller coaster, in the miniature wooden boats and cars and airplanes. The sun shone bright and hot in a cloudless sky.

  They stopped and leaned against a chain-link fence, watching a little girl furiously spin the wheel of a handcar rolling along a looping track. She plowed into the car in front of her, occupied by a lethargic boy twice her size, and with scarlet-faced tenacity propelled them both to the end of the course.

  The ice cream tasted like summer, like childhood, when her most pressing concern had been licking it all up before it melted down her hand. Cat glanced at Brody, who was quietly observing the throngs of boisterous youngsters. He didn't share her sticky-sweet nostalgia, she knew. Somehow, she just knew.

  "It's very important to you, isn't it?" she said, and he looked at her. "Making your mark. Achieving recognition."

  He took his time answering.

  She nodded toward his drippy, droopy ice cream. "That's going to be all over your hand in about another second."

  He heeded her warning, and in moments he'd finished off the whole thing, cone and all.

  "Well?" she asked.

  "I'm not sure what you want to hear. Isn't success important to everyone?"

  "To varying degrees—and for varying reasons."

  "Don't you want to be a success?" he asked. "Achieve recognition?"

  "As an office mom?" She smiled.

  "Perhaps as a dry run for the real thing."

  Cat's smile faded.

  "I said it before." With his thumb he wiped ice cream off the corner of her mouth. "You're very good at it."

  She didn't like how this conversation was getting turned around. "You mean you wouldn't demand that I get a license to reproduce?" she asked, recalling their conversation at his picnic table.

  Do you ever want kids? she'd asked him.

  No. He'd felt that people should have to prove they'd be fit parents.

  Did Brody consider himself unfit for parenthood?

  "It seems to come naturally to you," he said. "I think you have a strong maternal streak."

  Cat looked down, fixed her watery gaze on her cone. Her chin quivered.

  "Cat … what did I say?"

  His tender bewilderment was her undoing. A tear rolled down her cheek and she swiped at it. "Oh God…" She dreaded becoming a bawling spectacle for the raucous young families swarming around them.

  Brody wrestled the remains of her cone out of her hand and tossed it in a nearby trash basket. His arm came around her and he guided her to an isolated corner of the fence bordering the miniature golf course. He kept her back to the crowd milling around the roller coaster, which rumbled along its diminutive track, every mild dip punctuated by earsplitting shrieks.

  "I'm sorry." Cat took a deep, shuddering breath and ransacked her purse for a tissue. "I just seem to be … a little emotional lately. It's stupid. I'm sorry."

  He threaded his fingers through the hair at her temple, a half smile on his face. "Maybe it's just, you know, that time of the month? Women sometimes get a little weepy…"

  The possibility cheered her. "I think I may be a bit, uh, premenstrual." She blew her nose.

  "We passed a little Irish pub down the road. Let me buy you a beer."

  "No. No, thanks."

  "Come on, a drink is just the thing for what ails you. At least, that's what I've been told."

  "I couldn't, I…" She knew why she couldn't, why she wouldn't, even as a stubborn part of her chanted, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not… "Beer makes me sleepy," she said.

  "So?"

  "So then I'll be sleepy and weepy."

  "Sleepy and Weepy. Aren't they related to the Seven Dwarves?"

  "The Seven PMS Dwarves: Sleepy, Weepy, uh … Crampy, Groggy…"

  "Cranky, Antsy…"

  "And Bloated."

  Brody leaned back against the fence and gave Cat an appreciative once-over. "I don't see any bloat. Must be a misdiagnosis."

  Lord, I hope not. "You never answered my question. You're very good at that, by the way. Evading direct questions."

  "Thank you."

  "I asked you about recognition, its importance to you."

  "What's important to me right now is getting you onto my boat." He glanced at the position of the sun, high in the western sky. "It's still early—"

  "Oh no, you don't," she said, chuckling, even as the mere mention of a boat brought on another surge of nausea—no, not nausea, disorientation, she reminded herself. "Stick to the subject."

  He studied her for long moments. "Why do you want to know this?"

  Why indeed? Whatever happened to no entanglements? "I'm just curious about what drives you, what would drive anyone to write fifty-some-odd books—"

  "Fifty-seven."

  "Fifty-seven books in nineteen years, and now this TV thing—" She bit her tongue.

  Brody gave her a wry smile. "I'm not going to slit my wri
sts over 'this TV thing,' Cat. You can mention it."

  She leaned next to him against the fence. "I've seen the scrapbooks you keep, all the reviews, articles about you and your career. Two decades worth." She looked at him. "They're not very flattering, Brody. Some of them are downright virulent." Not about his writing ability, which was universally praised, but about the content of his work.

  "You know what they say. Any publicity is good publicity."

  "What, they can say anything they like as long as they spell your name right?"

  He spread his arms, his smile impish. "Hey, at least they're not ignoring me. You think it's easy generating that level of virulence?"

  She stared at him as the pieces began falling into place. "I'll bet you were a real hell-raiser when you were a kid."

  "How'd you guess?"

  "You must've kept your parents hopping."

  "My office mom, now, she has the patience of a saint. Though she refuses to tuck me in at night. Why do you suppose that is?"

  More evasions. He'd honed the skill to a fine art.

  She asked, "How do they feel about what you do for a living?"

  "Who?"

  "Your parents."

  His expression settled into a kind of weary defeat. Now he was going to tell her to mind her own business, since she clearly couldn't take a hint.

  "Are they gone?" she asked quietly. "Dead?"

  He sighed, gazing at the little roller coaster discharging its passengers. "One of them is, that I know of."

  The flatness of his tone chilled her.

  "My mother," he said. "She died twelve years ago of cirrhosis."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Don't be. I didn't really know her."

  Cat waited.

  Brody watched as children climbed into the roller coaster. An overweight youth in a Mets cap collected tickets and lowered the metal guard bar in each car, before pulling the lever to start the motor.

  Brody glanced at Cat, briefly. "My mother was a drunk. They took me away from her when I was a toddler." He patted his pockets, obviously looking for the cigarettes he'd left in the car. "She'd neglected me, didn't much mind giving me up. That's what I was told."

  "Your father?"

  "No one knows who he was," Brody said. "Probably not even my mother."

  "Who raised you?"

  "A whole bunch of foster families."

  Cat frowned. "Why a whole bunch?"

  "No one wanted to keep me. Even at three and a half, when I entered the system, I was a handful."

  No wonder, if he'd suffered enough under his mother to be taken from her. Cat thought of Brody as a helpless little boy, acting out in a futile bid for love and attention, being shuttled from one set of indifferent strangers to another—and felt like weeping again.

  "So you never saw your mother after that?" she asked.

  He folded his arms, staring at the roller coaster. "She basically washed her hands of me when she lost custody. But I looked her up when I was seventeen, about to graduate from high school. I thought maybe she'd want to go to my graduation." With a bitter chuckle he added, "I had this stupid sentimental notion of my mom sitting out there, proud as hell, watching her little boy receive his diploma."

  Cat's throat constricted. "It didn't work out?"

  Brody sighed. "I don't know what I expected. No, that's not true. I'd built up this whole big fantasy in my mind. That she'd changed, cleaned up her act. That she really did want me, wanted us to be a family."

  Cat started to speak, and stopped. The only things she could think to say would sound too much like pity.

  "When I met her again, after all those years, she was … well, she was a pathetic excuse for a human being, much less a mother." He was silent a few moments before adding, "Years later, when I learned she'd died, I paid for the funeral. But I didn't go."

  Minutes passed. Brody still stared at the roller coaster, but Cat didn't think he was seeing it. "I've never told anyone about her," he said quietly.

  "I'm glad you told me."

  He looked at her then, and she held out her hand. Slowly he unfolded his arms and twined his fingers with hers. She answered his sad little smile with one of her own.

  "You didn't go to your graduation, did you?" she asked.

  He shook his head. "What would have been the point? With no one there to watch?"

  Cat dragged in a deep breath, fighting the ache in her heart. She squeezed his hand.

  He said, "Sometimes I wonder if he's still alive."

  "Who? Your father?"

  He nodded. "And if he's read my books and what he'd think of me if I'd ended up with Banner Headline."

  Brody was still acting out, she realized, with his outrageous career choices, his abrasive, in-your-face public persona in the form of Jake Beckett. He was seeking validation, or at least attention—a poor substitute for the unconditional love that should have been his as a child.

  "Brody, have you ever considered writing … something different?"

  She wished she could wipe that crooked grin off his face.

  "You know, a departure from your usual, um, biographies," Cat said. "I mean, you have to be tired of writing the same old…" She hesitated.

  "Oh, please tell me my Little Orphan Brody story hasn't taken the razor edge off your talons. It has," he groaned. "You're going to get all tactful on me now."

  "Tired of writing the same old sensationalist trash!" she finished. "Okay? Are you happy now?"

  "Ecstatic. All the support and encouragement I've come to expect from my office mom. And what might this 'something different' be that you think I should write? Cookbooks? Children's stories?"

  "The comic greats!" she cried, ignoring his sarcasm. "A history of the funniest of the funny, from the movies and TV. You love those guys, Brody!"

  "You're talking about—what? A coffee-table book." Judging from his grimace, she might have been suggesting he take up a career in medical waste management.

  "Now, hear me out!" she demanded. "This would be a way to expand your readership, establish yourself as a serious biographer."

  "I don't write puff."

  "I'm not talking puff. You can give a thorough and honest—and respectful—accounting of a celebrity's life without whitewashing it. I know you've compiled information over the years about Chaplin and Fields and all those guys. I've seen your files, the clippings and notes."

  "That's called an interest, a hobby. Not research. I've spent nineteen years building a reputation. Do you know what would happen to it if I came out with a coffee-table book?"

  "Will you stop calling it that? Forget it. Forget I said anything." After a moment she added, "I guess your work would just duplicate what's in the bookstores. I mean, it's not like plenty of well-researched, comprehensive books haven't already been written about those guys."

  Cat heard something that sounded suspiciously like a snort of disdain. She bit back a self-satisfied smile.

  Brody pushed himself away from the fence. "Enough lollygagging. There's work to do. Lies and sleazy innuendo to pen."

  They ambled toward the parking lot. This burst of industriousness was rare for Brody. Cat was relieved to see him throw himself into his work rather than mope over the lost head-writer job.

  "Didn't you already send the manuscript on Nolan Branigan off to Leon?" she asked.

  "Yep. I'm starting a new project. The Demons."

  "You're writing about a major league ball club?"

  He nodded, placing a hand on her waist to guide her around the kiddie boat pond. "You wouldn't believe what I've dug up about the players and management."

  "I probably wouldn't," she agreed. "Do you?"

  His smile told her that really wasn't relevant.

  She asked, "What are you going to do without me around to read the racy stuff to and watch my ears turn red?" The way he'd done with the Branigan book.

  Brody's smile faded. He didn't look at her. Cat's nape prickled. She grabbed his arm, planting them both at the edge of the
parking lot.

  "Let me have it, Brody. Whatever it is, tell me right now or I'm not budging an inch."

  He turned to her with a grin so warm and beguiling she knew she was in trouble. "I couldn't bear to part with my office mom."

  "What have you done?"

  "I called Nana. Hired you on for another month."

  All Cat could do was gape at him.

  "What?" he said. "Is it so terrible working with me? I thought this job was pretty much a plum. Later hours, you get to sleep in—"

  "I never sleep in!" she hollered. Especially not now, with a queasy stomach nudging her awake. "How could you? You know how much I wanted this over with—how awkward this is for me!"

  "What can I tell you?" he asked dryly. "I'm a sadist."

  "Are you hoping I'll sleep with you? Is that it?" she yelled, ignoring the wide-eyed matron ushering her brood out of a nearby minivan. "Because let me tell you something. That is not going to happen!"

  "Your devotion to Mr. Perfect is immensely heartwarming. Can we discuss this in the car?"

  "There's nothing to discuss! You're not going to change your mind. You're just going to threaten me some more."

  Now it was his turn to gape. "Threaten you!"

  "You'll tell Nana about us and she'll fire me." Brody's silence told her he was still prepared to sabotage her career. Cat stalked past him, blindly heading for his Porsche Boxster, a sleek convertible in pale metallic jade green. Brakes squealed nearby and a driver cursed her out.

  Brody's voice followed her. "You act like it's torture working for me! What did I ever do to you?"

  She turned and impaled him with an oh-come-now look.

  He joined her at the car. "What, just because we slept together once, you can't get past that and—"

  "Why are you doing this to me? What happened between us was a mistake, Brody."

  "A horrendous mistake—I believe that's the way you put it." Cat couldn't recall saying anything so insensitive, but if she had, that would account for his bitterness. Was that why he was doing this, then—to avenge his bruised pride?

  He obviously assumed she didn't want to work with her "horrendous mistake" while she was supposedly in love with another man. The truth was so much more complex and confusing. Brigit had been nagging her to get a pregnancy test, and even though Cat was certain she wasn't expecting—I'm late, is all—she'd been inclined to humor Brigit and do it, but only after her assignment with Brody had ended and she knew she'd never have to set eyes on him again.