BEAUTIFUL STRANGER

by Ruth Wind

  Still, he managed to keep it together. Tell her it gaped, get himself under control. Once she straightened, with that surprisingly lusty hoot of laughter, he saw that the bodice wasn't all that bad. He could still see a lovely, rich valley that screamed for his tongue. He was sure it was that valley that those men had been eyeing at her party.

  But he couldn't get the vision out of his mind. It wasn't so much now what he could see, but what he wanted to see. That tiny transparent thing embracing all that alluring flesh, the dark nipples. The vision burned right at the base of his groin, a hurried, steady pulse that pumped blood all too fast into his willing servant.

  Out in the biting night, with a wind blowing down off the snow that was still piled in dark places at higher elevations, he shivered and hunched his shoulders. What was he running from here?

  He turned the ignition key and let the truck warm for a few minutes. Through the windshield, he stared at the house. Light shone through the leaded glass that graced the top third of the arched front windows set into solid, sturdy brick. It promised stability, that house. Stability and protection and calm.

  On the second floor, a light clicked on, and Robert imagined Marissa in her bedroom, unzipping that amazing dress and tossing it onto some massive, carved four-poster bed. He imagined her dark hair tumbling down in a glossy swath to her flawless white shoulders, thought of her, dressed in that elegantly transparent bra and a similarly elegant silk slip, padding on manicured feet into a bathroom with a claw-footed tub and original wood on the walls.

  And with every cell in his body, he wanted to be in there with her, putting his hands on that flesh, climbing into that tub, that bed with her. He thought—no, he knew—that she would like it. That kiss had told him that much.

  What would it hurt? He'd get up before dawn and Crystal would never know.

  But he knew why he wasn't about to go back to her door. Not only because Crystal would scent the subterfuge. Not only because he sensed that Marissa was somehow dangerous even if he didn't care to examine in detail just why.

  He wouldn't go back to that door because he thought of his scarred, tattooed hands on her smooth, perfect shoulders, and in reverse, her small, neat hands against the marks and scars of his chest.

  Different worlds. Way too different.

  He drove home.

  * * *

  Sunday morning, Marissa stopped by the grocery store bakery and picked up a selection of bagels, doughnuts and croissants, some hefty paper cups of latte and a quart of orange juice, then drove to the clinic to see Crystal. She'd dithered over her clothes the slightest bit, finally—rather to her amusement—choosing a crisp, no-nonsense pair of khaki slacks and a similarly crisp cotton blouse.

  To her relief, Robert had not yet arrived. Crystal was ensconced in bed, flipping channels desultorily with a remote. "Want some company?" Marissa said, poking her head around the door. "I brought goodies."

  "Hi, Ms. Pierce." She looked a little confused and surprised. Wary. She was always wary. "Come in."

  Marissa grabbed a rolling table and started taking things from the grocery bag. "What's your pleasure? It would make me very happy if you'd eat that chocolate-covered doughnut so I can stop thinking about it."

  A tentative smile. "I guess I can take it off your hands."

  Arranging the pastries in an attractive way on the bag, Marissa said, "My mother used to hide doughnuts from me," she said, and picked up a cruller defiantly. She held it up, admiring the slanted grooves where glaze had caught, letting her mouth get truly ready for the completely nutritionless, absolutely magnificent flavor. She would eat half of it, and throw the rest away. It was one of the tricks she'd picked up—rather than abstaining from sinful foods, she indulged in them when she really wanted one, but only ate half. Now she bit into it, closing her eyes in pure pleasure. "Mmmm."

  "Jeez, Ms. Pierce. You should be on a commercial." She gingerly ate a tidbit of her own. "Why'd your mother hide doughnuts?"

  "Because I was fat and she wanted me thin."

  "You were fat?"

  Marissa grinned. "Oh, yes." She put down the cruller, wiped her fingers carefully on a napkin and opened her purse. "This is me, two years ago." She gave Crystal the picture of herself and Lance Forrest, dressed up for a country club dance.

  "Oh, man!" Crystal stared at the picture in disbelief. "I wouldn't even have known it was you." She scowled. "Why'd you cut your hair, though? It was so long!"

  Marissa took the picture back and looked at herself. In the picture, her hair tumbled in thick, glossy waves past her waist. "I got tired of hiding behind it."

  "What were you hiding from?" The dark eyes were intent.

  Marissa thought of the windbreaker Crystal wore and the way her hair hid her face, and took a moment to consider her answer. It wasn't something she'd articulated before, but it was probably time. "The world, I guess," she said slowly. "My father told us from the day we were born that men would only want to marry us for our money."

  "So you decided to be fat so they'd have to really love you," Crystal said. It wasn't a question.

  "Very wise, my dear." She'd reached the halfway point in the cruller, took a teeny tiny little crumb more, then wrapped it up in a napkin and threw it away. "I think it was also a way of sort of controlling the world, you know what I mean? My sister and I had no freedom at all, but they couldn't control what we ate."

  "So why don't you have to hide anymore?"

  "You know—" she picked up her paper cup of latte "—I don't know. Maybe I just decided to take my chances with the world. Be happy anyway." She sipped her coffee. "Now you."

  "Me?"

  "Yeah. What are you hiding from?"

  Crystal touched the rise of her belly, an almost protective gesture. "Bad people, I guess." Absently she stroked the round. "When I was little, my favorite movie was The Invisible Man because I thought that would be such a great thing, to just be able to be invisible."

  "It's not so bad here, though, is it?"

  Her face shuttered instantly. "Not at home."

  "School is bad."

  A shrug. Subject closed. Accepting it, Marissa leaned back comfortably, letting the quiet fall. Beyond the hospital window, aspens shimmered in an invisible wind, pale green against the blue backdrop of mountains.

  "Do you like movies?" Crystal asked, eyeing the doughnuts.

  "Have another. Please." She pushed the table a little closer. "I love movies. My sister and I watched them by the zillions."

  "Yeah? Me, too. The video store was right around the corner and my mom used to rent big ole stacks for me even when I was really little. All the ninety-nine-cent ones, you know?"

  "Sure! Keep 'em for five days."

  Crystal actually smiled, and sat up a little. "She put the VCR in my room with this little TV that was kinda small, but had real good color, you know? It was like totally safe and quiet and nobody bugged me." She picked out another doughnut, sitting up completely straight now, more animated than Marissa had ever seen her. "Then this boyfriend of hers? He rigged up cable to the apartment and even found this little box to get the pay channels, so I could watch movies twenty-four hours a day." She took a bite of doughnut, gestured with her hands. "I watched all the big ones you know, the first day they came out on Pay-Per-View, and in between I saw everything else—even those ones with the little box with English in them, you know what I mean?"

  Tickled at such an outpouring, Marissa nodded. "Subtitles."

  "Right. The French ones are pretty boring most of the time, but I liked some of the Japanese ones. You ever see them?"

  "Sometimes." She considered and decided to be honest. "I actually like the French ones. They make a lot of historical romances."

  "Yeah, some of those are okay. There was this one? A queen and this poor guy in France during some disease? It was so sad. They fell in love and all that, and then he got killed at the end. I cried for a day."

  "Queen Margot! I love that movie!"

  "Yeah, that
's it! You like the sad ones?"

  "Some of them." Marissa frowned. "I don't like it when there's no reason for it to be sad, just bang, somebody dies. But I love it when there's some lesson in the sadness."

  "Exactly!" Crystal tossed her hair back. "Like in Dangerous Liaisons, he dies because he did something awful and that's part of the lesson, that if you treat people like that, you know, take advantage of real love, then you have to pay the price." She licked a little sugar from her finger. "And in Romeo and Juliet, the parents are so stupid that their kids get killed over it." She paused a moment, narrowed her eyes. "And sometimes it's a message—what's the word? Maybe like a metaphor?—to make something real to you that wouldn't be. Like in Titanic, if he had lived, it would have still been a good romantic story, but he stands for all those people who did die. You know? And so you get it. Your heart is just trashed because you want him and all those other good people to live."

  Marissa blinked, then grinned broadly. "Wow—that's the best summation of the purpose of tragedy that I've ever heard, Crystal."

  Not even this seemed to deter her. "I think about it a lot," she said, nodding. "Tragedy kind of makes the bad stuff make sense sometimes, you know? Like this teacher said once that stories create order in our lives."

  "What order do you find in tragedy?"

  She narrowed her eyes. "Well," she said slowly, looking into the distance as if the answer were written there, "there are lots of different kinds, you know? Like there's the ones when somebody gives something up for somebody else, and the ones when the tragedy is the reason the whole story happens, and the ones that the death or whatever seems really sad, but it really shows that the character grew somehow. Like in Last of the Mohicans, when the sister steps off the cliff?" She put her hand to her chest. "I cry and cry and cry over that one, every time, but it's really beautiful in a way, you know, because she showed how brave she was by doing it."

  A shiver of excitement and amazement crawled up Marissa's spine. She'd known Crystal was bright, but she obviously had a very literary bent of mind, a sense of structure and the meaning of literature, all gleaned from movies. It was tragic that Crystal hated school so much.

  Marissa would have to figure out some way to gently illustrate all the possibilities awaiting such a mind, and she was doubly excited that her sister was coming to town. It seemed almost fated.

  Now she said only, "Do you like only the sad ones?"

  "No way." She grinned. "I like all of them. Funny, sad, happy, silly. Scary. All of them."

  "What's your number-one favorite?"

  Her eyelids fell, and the shoulders almost imperceptibly hunched forward. "I have a lot."

  "You don't want to tell me?"

  She lifted one side of her mouth and rolled her eyes. "It's not that. It's just that everybody gets it wrong, why I like it, because they think it's my age, that I'm just stupid, that I don't know about good movies or that I have some crush."

  "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

  From the door came a raspy, low voice, laced with amusement. "I think you should tell her, babe."

  They both turned to see Robert coming in, a paper bag from the bakery in his hands. Marissa had been lost in the conversation, enjoying it so much that she forgot to anticipate his arrival. The sight of him sent a thick, hot ripple over the surface of her skin. Dressed this morning in a simple, long-sleeved Henley and jeans, his hair gleaming in its braid, a quirky smile on that wide, mobile mouth, he looked like everything good in life.

  His dark eyes tangled with Marissa's for a single second. Marissa flashed on the taste of his tongue against her own. She looked away.

  "More doughnuts!" Crystal said, laughing. "I haven't seen so many doughnuts since I was little!"

  "We want to fatten you up, little girl," Robert said. He pulled a second chair over and settled easily. "You guys talking movies?"

  "She gets it," Crystal said. "Unlike some people here."

  "You don't like movies?"

  He shrugged. "Take 'em or leave 'em." He took out an apple fritter and Marissa found her gaze lingering on the long, dark length of his beautiful fingers. He had such great hands.

  "You gonna tell her, Crystal?"

  "No," she said emphatically.

  "It's all right. Another day." Marissa stood up. "I just came by to cheer you up a little. I'll let you two visit."

  "Oh, don't go!" Crystal protested. Then she looked horrified. "I mean, I guess you have lots to do."

  Robert raised his eyes to her. "I'm going to take her home as soon as Ramona gets here. I already rented a big pile of movies. If you wanted, you could come over and watch with us a little later."

  There was something in his voice that made her want to put her hands on his face, on his neck. It struck her with a sense of surprise. He sounded vulnerable. As if it mattered. "I'd like that," she said. "I'll bring the popcorn."

  She picked up her purse, trying not to look at the length of a jean-covered thigh, lean and hard looking, trying not to imagine what it looked like without the cloth. "See you later."

  "Bye, Ms. Pierce," Crystal said. "Thanks."

  Marissa couldn't remember how to walk normally. She was aware of his eyes on her back, maybe even on her rear end, and the perusal made it feel too big, too full of movement. She turned into the hall with a sense of relief, and relaxed into her normal stride. A little bubble of happiness rose in her and she swung her purse like a girl. He liked her a little. She could tell. He was trying hard not to, but—

  "Marissa, wait up!"

  She turned. He half jogged to catch her. "Look," he said, "I wanted to apologize for last night. I said some pretty rude things and I'm sorry."

  "So did I, Robert." She shook her head. "I'm sorry, too."

  He stuck out his hand. "Friends, then?"

  She accepted the offering. Put her small hand into the engulfing breadth of his strong palm, felt the heat of his fingers close around hers. And it was just as electric as each touch before now had been. She looked at his mouth, remembered the full thrust of his tongue against her own, and to her horror, her nipples pearled.

  He noticed with a little exhalation, and he shook his head. "We're going to have to deal with this sooner or later," he said roughly, holding her hand tightly.

  "Maybe it would be better if I didn't come over."

  "Crystal likes you. It would hurt her." He looked at her mouth, closed his eyes. "We'll just … take it easy."

  "All right." She pulled on her hand. He pulled back. "Why do you think it happens like this?" he said, stepping closer. "Out of nowhere?"

  It wasn't out of nowhere on her part. "I always saw you, Robert. You just never saw me before."

  He moved even closer, until his hips and hers were nearly touching. "Yes, I did."

  She rolled her eyes. "Right."

  "You used to have this green dress," he said. "With gold on the hem. Your hair fell all over it, like a pelt. And you wore red lipstick in those days. Bright red, like something sinful." His eyes were intent. "You've always been beautiful, Marissa. You just didn't know it till now."

  With a soft little cry, she pulled free. "I'll see you later," she said. It was her turn to bolt.

  She rushed home like a demon was following her, breathing on her neck, raising the little hairs on her body. There was a kind of roar in her ears, making it hard to think clearly.

  She changed into bike shorts and an oversize T-shirt, and dug out her in-line skates and pads. There was an almost frenetic edge to her movements as she carried the stuff out to her car and drove to a little parkway with a network of good concrete. On a park bench, she put everything on—helmet, knee pads, elbow pads, wrist protectors—and struck out.

  She skated hard in the bright day, skated around and around the network of walks. In a little while, her heart stopped racing and she could breathe more easily, and she could think again.

  He had seen her before. In her favorite green dress, wearing red lipstick because it
made her teeth look so white. With her hair swinging all around her like a cape she hoped hid the rest of her.

  He'd seen her. She could just imagine it, him sitting in a booth with his buddies at the Wild Moose Inn, eyeing the beauties waiting for a dance. She could just imagine what had been in his mind when she danced, the jokes his buddies probably cracked about her exuberant dancing.

  To her horror, she found she was very close to tears. Urgently she dashed off the path, tripped on a stick and went sailing. Her left elbow and knee crashed into the gravel, but the pads took the brunt of it. Her wrist twisted a little as she landed, and she yelped.

  For a minute, she didn't move, catching her breath and waiting to see if any alert of pain went up from any part of her. Only the wrist. Rolling over to sit on her rear, she admired the thick gouges the heavy plastic pads had taken on the left elbow and knee.

  A boy on a skateboard stopped. "You okay?" Surprise lit his face. "Ms. Pierce?"

  She chuckled. "Yeah, it's me. Thanks for witnessing my big spill."

  He grinned. "You okay?"

  "Fine, thanks."

  "Cool." He gave her a thumbs-up and skated off.

  With a sigh, Marissa stayed where she was. A big something going on here. Was she grieving for the lonely girl she'd been? Or was she angry that Robert had noticed her now?

  Maybe both. She zipped open the Velcro holding her knee pads on, wincing a little when her wrist protested, then followed with the elbow pads. Wrist was definitely pretty sore. Maybe even broken. With a frown, she took off the right wrist guard, and her socks, then laced everything together and slung them over her shoulder, leaving the left wrist guard on until she got home. It would keep it immobile until she could look at it properly. Barefoot, she made her way back to her car.

  It was one of those airy spring days, threatening to be windy, but only just gusty at the moment. Overhead, the sky was as blue as … she eyed it and smiled, unable to think of anything just that color. Van Briggle pots, maybe. Very blue, anyway. The grass below her feet was tender and new, her skates a solid weight over her shoulder. She ambled easily, smiling softly at a toddler and her father, who smiled back appreciatively. A knot of young teens played Frisbee.