Songbird

by Syrie James

  “Every weekend? How can we? It’d cost a fortune.”

  “Who cares? I’ll pay for the airline tickets, the phone bills. I’ll do all the traveling if you want.”

  “You can’t fly down here every single weekend.”

  “I can and I will.”

  She shook her head. “We’ll only make each other miserable.”

  “I expect to be miserable five days a week. But we’re going to live gloriously on the weekends.” He slid next to her, stretching one arm behind her along the back of the swing. Lifting the songbird pendant at her throat, he held it up to the moonlight and studied it appreciatively. “Nothing is going to keep me away from my beautiful songbird.”

  “Kyle—”

  “By the way,” he added, “I may have another excuse to come down here. Often.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “I flew down originally for a meeting with a potential client. While I was here, I took a look at a manufacturing plant in L.A. I’m considering buying it.”

  Her pulse quickened. “Really?”

  “I expect to make a decision in the next week or two.” He took one of her hands in his and squeezed it. “If I do buy the company, I’ll be flying down for a week at a time, especially at first while things are getting set up.”

  A small flame of hope lit up inside her. Could it be true? A week at a time? Then the flame died down and a voice inside her cried, What difference would it make? Someday you’d have to leave. Who knows where you’ll end up? And you’ll be back where you started.

  He cupped her cheek in his hand and caressed her with his gaze. “But no matter what happens, I’ll be down here as often as I can to see you. Believe that.”

  A lone tear trickled down her cheek. “I do. I believe you mean it now.” She grasped his hand, pulled it away from her face and held it in her lap. “But I don’t see how it can last, Kyle. One of us will be hurt in the end.”

  He sighed in exasperation. “Desiree, didn’t this weekend mean anything to you? Don’t you care enough about me to even try to make this work?”

  “Yes! I care about you!” she cried. “More than any man I’ve ever met. I wish more than anything that we could be together. I’ll be miserable the moment you leave. But a long-distance relationship can’t work. It’s impossible.”

  “How do you know it’s impossible? Have you ever tried it?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “When I left my husband!”

  Nine

  A tense silence reigned for several moments. Desiree stared straight ahead at the dark stretch of yard beyond the patio light’s glow, unwilling to meet his gaze.

  “Tell me, Desiree,” he said finally, his voice soft and deep. “Tell me what happened.”

  She leaned her head back against the wooden swing beneath his outstretched arm. She sighed, then spoke in a low monotone.

  “I met Steve the first night I arrived in Tucson to start a new job. He was an attorney, very smart, very successful. We hit it off right away, and before I knew it we were living together. One night, about six months later, we were out having a few drinks, and a friend of Steve’s stopped by our table and asked us when we were going to get married. ‘What’s wrong with right now?’ Steve said. I don’t know when I’ve ever been so excited. I loved him, I really loved him, and he said that he loved me. He grabbed my hand and we got in his car and drove all the way to Las Vegas. We got married at one of those little chapels at two in the morning...you know the kind, where a justice of the peace reads a few well-memorized words, and his wife stands by in her bathrobe, smiling and yawning and wishing you luck.”

  She paused for a deep, trembling breath and pressed her palms together, bringing them up against her lips. “Anyway, things were great for a while, but then I lost my job. I applied at every station in Tucson but no one would hire me. Finally I got an offer from a station in Detroit. He didn’t want to move, so....”

  “You left,” Kyle said softly.

  She nodded. When had he taken her hand? She couldn’t remember. But she realized he was holding it now, gently massaging her knuckles with his thumb.

  “We tried to keep the marriage together. We visited back and forth on weekends every three or four weeks. Every penny we earned went to the airlines or the phone company. It worked out fine for several months, but then he missed a visit. Then another. He started having all kinds of excuses why he couldn’t come, why I shouldn’t come to see him. Business problems. This and that. Finally I discovered he was seeing someone else. It hurt so much—I was heartbroken. I was lonely, too, but I hadn’t cheated on him. Then he called me one night...he didn’t even have the decency to tell me in person. He wanted to marry her. He wanted a divorce.”

  “I’m sorry.” A brief silence fell, then he said: “I understand why you had to leave, to go where the work was. But why wasn’t he willing to move with you?”

  “He was only licensed to practice law in Arizona. He’d built up a clientele. How could he leave? When it comes down to it, one person in a marriage has to be willing to move, to sacrifice their career if need be for the other. And I don’t think that’s fair to either one of them.” Which is why I can never marry again, she wanted to say. But somehow she couldn’t bring herself to voice the words.

  His arms tightened suddenly around her. “I think when two people love each other enough, no matter what, they can always find a way to be together.”

  “It’s not always so simple.”

  “It can be.” He stroked her back and shoulders as he hugged her, while rocking the swing back and forth. She clung to him and buried her face against his neck.

  “I don’t want to go through that again,” she whispered, knowing at the same time that she couldn’t bear to let him go. “I’m not strong enough. It took years for my heart to knit itself back together, for me to realize I could survive on my own.”

  His lips moved over her shoulder, her neck, and she felt herself succumbing to his magic touch. “Desiree, you were hurt badly, I know, and I’m so very sorry. But you’ve got to let go of the past. What happened to you before isn’t going to happen to us. It’s not going to be easy…nothing worth having ever is. But we can’t throw this away. Not before we’ve even tried.”

  He drew back and cradled her face in his hands, adding: “Give us time, sweetheart. Give us a chance to make things work.”

  Her eyes brimming with tears, she slid her hands around his neck and pressed her lips against his. His kiss was a warm, sure force. She felt his strength pouring into her body, filling her, making her new. Maybe, just maybe she was wrong. Maybe, somehow, they could make things work. At the moment she couldn’t imagine how, but what did it matter? How could she possibly say goodbye to him, even if she wanted to?

  ***

  “Sign here, please.” The burly deliveryman extended a clipboard and Desiree dutifully signed her name.

  It was Tuesday morning. Kyle had left before sunrise the day before, and Desiree had spent the day and night reliving their long weekend over and over in her mind, her body still tingling from the memory of his touch.

  He’d called her at the station Monday afternoon, and again late that night when neither of them could sleep. They’d teased and tantalized each other over the phone with vivid descriptions of what they’d be doing if they were together. It had taken hours to fall asleep.

  “You’d better let me carry this in for you,” the deliveryman said. “It’s pretty heavy.”

  A good five minutes later, she finally managed to pry open the top of the large, heavy carton. She turned the box to its side, pulled out the contents, and stood it upright on the hardwood floor.

  It was a chair. A delicately carved mahogany chair with a straight back and steel-blue, floral tapestry seat, the kind that would be at home in a long line of matching chairs in an elegant, nineteenth-century dining room.

  She loved it on sight. The smooth grain was stained a deep reddish color, the same shade as her cre
denza, the same shade as his hair. He must have seen it in an antique shop and known how much she’d like it. What a unique gift! How thoughtful! She ran her fingers along the highly polished rung across the back, touched to her very soul.

  That afternoon, the hot line flashed in her control room at the station. Her heart leapt when she heard his voice.

  “Hi, sweetheart. Miss me?”

  “Yes! Oh, Kyle, the chair...it arrived this morning. How did you ever get it here so fast? I don’t know how to—”

  “Do you like it?”

  “I love it! It’s exquisite. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. I wanted to make sure you liked it before I send the other one.”

  “What other one?”

  “You can’t just have one chair, for God’s sake. It’s a matched set or nothing.” He chuckled. “I’ve got to run. I only had a minute between meetings. See you Friday night, right? Let’s eat in. Can you cook?”

  “What?”

  “I asked if you can cook. The only thing I’ve eaten made by your two hands is a freshly squeezed orange, an English muffin, and a salad.”

  She laughed. “I can cook.”

  “Great. I’m dying for a home-cooked meal. And I’m dying to hold you in my arms. I’ll see you at the airport. Bye.”

  She smiled at the phone long after he’d hung up. “He’s crazy,” she muttered to herself. “Absolutely crazy.”

  ***

  It took three-quarters of an hour for two deliverymen to set up the new dining-room table and five additional chairs Friday morning. The note that accompanied them read:

  Hope your great-grandmother would have liked this. Love, Kyle.

  Opened to its full oblong size with the two accompanying leaves, the gleaming mahogany table stretched majestically across the room. Everything about the table reminded her of Kyle. Its strength. Its beauty. Its polished sophistication. She knew she shouldn’t accept such an expensive gift, but she couldn’t send it back, either. It blended perfectly with her other furniture and suited the house as if made for it.

  No wonder he wanted to eat in tonight, she thought with a grin as she frosted a dark chocolate layer cake later that morning. She popped a leg of lamb into the oven—his favorite food, he’d told her, lobster notwithstanding—and set the timer to start baking at four o’clock. After closing the table to a small oval, she covered it with a white lace tablecloth—the only cloth she possessed—and set out her best china.

  When she picked him up at the airport after work, they flew into each other’s arms as if separated five months instead of only five days. The aroma of succulent roast lamb enveloped her senses as they opened her front door, and he closed his eyes, savoring the delicious scent. When they finished eating, he proclaimed it the best meal he’d ever tasted, and promptly whisked the chef off to bed to show his appreciation.

  The nights were long with loving, the days warm and fun-filled and far too short. Each morning they exercised and jogged. On Saturday they toured the immense Queen Mary and Howard Hughes’s Spruce Goose, docked at San Pedro harbor. They wandered through the quaint Cape Cod-style harborside shops at Ports of Call Village, where Kyle bought her hand-woven Irish linen tablecloths to fit the table in two different sizes. They had dinner aboard the elegant Princess Louise, a cruise ship turned restaurant, and toasted a passing tugboat with raised glasses of icy champagne.

  On Sunday they rented bikes and rode along the meandering paths at a large tree-shaded park a few miles from her house, then returned home with sunburned shoulders and noses. They made love in the hushed stillness of early evening, the setting sun glowing on their bodies through the open bedroom windows.

  “I’m hungry,” she said much, much later, as they lay face-to-face on the plush area rug in her living room, each wearing nothing but a smile. “I feel like I haven’t eaten in four days.” The brass table lamps on either side of her couch cast a warm glow on the frosty glass of iced tea they sipped together through separate straws.

  “It’s no wonder, after all the strenuous activity we’ve had this weekend,” he said.

  “Are you referring to daytime activity or nighttime?”

  “Take your pick.”

  She laughed. “How many calories do you think we burned up last night? I should go check my scale. I’ve probably lost five pounds by now.”

  “Don’t get too excited. You’re going to gain it all back at dinner. What I have in mind is sinfully fattening.” He kissed her, then jumped to his feet and disappeared into the kitchen.

  “There’s nothing decent in the refrigerator, unless you want leftover leg of lamb. We ate everything else for breakfast.”

  “I know,” he called from the other room. “Let’s order something in.”

  “Great!” A sudden craving seized her and her mouth began to water. A thick, Sicilian-style pizza oozing with sauce and cheese, smothered with... She frowned, shook her head. No. Not his style. A man who serves pâté and champagne and chocolate mousse on a beach picnic, who orders canard a l’orange and salade Lyonnaise in their native tongue, will not go for an everything-on-it pizza.

  He returned with the Yellow Pages. Kneeling down beside her, he opened the book on the coffee table and flipped through the pages. “Is there a place around here that makes a nice, juicy pizza with a thick crust? I always go for The Works—but what do you like? Mushroom? Sausage? Olives? Pepperoni?”

  At her astonished expression he added, “What? Don’t you like pizza?” His eyes narrowed and he wagged his index finger at her. “It’s un-American not to like pizza.”

  She burst out laughing and threw her arms around his neck. “I adore pizza! I was afraid to admit it. I thought you only liked gourmet food.”

  “There’s a time and a place for gourmet food, and a time and a place for junk food.”

  “That is so profound.” She kissed him, still laughing. “Want to hear a secret? I’m a closet junk-food junkie.”

  His arms glided around her waist. “Really? A chocoholic and a junk-food junkie? I’m impressed. What’s your favorite?”

  “My favorite what?” Her hands combed adoringly through the silky short hair at the back of his neck.

  “Junk food.”

  “Oh!” Her lips followed the movements of her fingers. “Well, a Big Mac of course. They put the greatest sauce on those things. A Big Mac, hot salty fries, and a chocolate shake.”

  She spread kisses down his neck, across his shoulder. His breath hissed in through his teeth.

  “That’s your favorite?”

  “Yes...no, wait. Big Macs are my second favorite. My first favorite are S’mores. How I used to love those. I haven’t had one in years.”

  He pulled her more closely against him. “What are S’mores?”

  “You haven’t heard of them?” She settled against him, loving the feel of his strong arms around her, the warmth of his skin. “We used to make them on Girl Scout camping trips.” His mouth and tongue paid an inordinate amount of attention to the soft skin behind her ear, and she gasped, arched her neck, and closed her eyes as she struggled to continue. “You...toast marshmallows over the campfire until they’re hot and gooey, then squish them between two graham crackers and a square of chocolate. The…hot marshmallow makes the chocolate melt…sort of like I’m melting right now…” She heaved a deep, ragged sigh. “They call them that because they’re so good, you always want S’more.”

  “I’ll bet.” He cradled her back over his arm as his mouth charted a fiery trail down her neck to the valley between her breasts. “I’ll have to try one some day.”

  “What’s your favorite?” she murmured throatily.

  His hand slid up the outside of her thigh, then swept over the curve of her hip to cup her bare bosom. “I always like a nice juicy...breast.”

  “I presume you mean...chicken breast.”

  “Presume all you like.”

  “That’s not a junk food,” she said hazily.

  “It’s not? What were we
talking about? I got distracted.” His lips closed around the object of his affection and he lowered her to the soft carpet.

  “Kyle. Wait. The pizza...you forgot to order the pizza.”

  “The pizza can wait.” He spread her thighs apart with his own and covered her with his warm, hard body. “Right now,” he whispered huskily, “I want S’more.”

  ***

  Before sunrise Monday morning he sat on the edge of her bed, dressed in a dark blue three-piece suit as he kissed her goodbye.

  “I wish you’d let me take you to the airport,” she said as she held him fiercely against her chest.

  “There’s no point. You’d only be stuck in morning traffic.” He stood up. “I’ve got a busy week of negotiations coming up. I may not have time to call every night.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you.” She couldn’t stop the tears that trickled down her cheeks. Damn! She didn’t want to cry every time he left, didn’t want him to see her this way.

  He leaned down and kissed her again. “I need you, Desiree,” he whispered. She watched him go through a blur of tears.

  It was the longest week of her life. She bought a stack of cards at a stationery store and sent him one each morning. Tuesday she sent him a cuddly, stuffed toy lobster of plush red velour, as big as a bread box, which she found in a children’s boutique. I’m hungry for you, her note read.

  She didn’t hear from him all day. When she tried calling him at the office, his secretary said he was tied up in meetings, and he didn’t return her call.

  Wednesday she had a mixed flower arrangement sent to his office, with a note saying, Let’s do business together. She called him that afternoon, but their conversation was cut short soon after he thanked her for the flowers.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t called, honey,” he explained. “I’ve been wining and dining clients all week. I’m in the middle of negotiations for an important contract and I just don’t have time to talk.”