A Week from Friday

by Georgia Bockoven

  "Would you please calm down? I'm working as fast as I can."

  She went back to reading the sign, skimming to the bottom, where she focused on the last line.

  shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction, shall be punishable by a fine not to exceed five thousand dollars or imprisonment for not more than one year.

  "My God, Earthquake," she choked, her throat tightening convulsively. "Did you know what could happen to us if we're convicted?"

  "Uh-huh," he answered in the same infuriating monotone.

  "How can you be so calm about all of this?" she screeched.

  "As I started to tell you earlier, if anything happens today, we'll be taken care of; so there's no real reason to get excited about it."

  "Oh, yeah? And just who are these mysterious people who will be taking care of us—legal aid?"

  "The group I belong to has lawyers—good lawyers—on retainer. They handle the cases for anyone who gets arrested during a protest. There's also a fund that pays the fines." His words were emphasized by the click of the wire cutter and the snap of the parting of the last strand of wire. As soon as he was sure the barbs weren't going to come back and snag him, he swung his leg over and hopped down to the other side. "Throw me the sheet."

  Janet stood back and cocked her arm. Just as she was getting ready to let go, out of the corner of her eye she saw a movement. She glanced over to see what it was, and felt her heart sink to her toes. A parade of police cars was coming toward them.

  Earthquake saw them at the same time she did. "Quick, toss me the sign. Maybe I still have time enough to get it up."

  She gave him a look that said she thought he was a few cents short of a dime. "And just how are you planning to get in touch with the press to get this feat recorded?" She laid the sheet en the ground and prepared to raise her hands over her head, just in case she should be asked. "Please…" she begged him. "At this stage of the operation, I think it behooves us not to do anything that might make them mad."

  Glancing behind her, she was stunned to see the entire parking lot full of police cars. As she watched, men in dark blue uniforms left their vehicles and started toward them, their hands resting ominously on their guns. She had a feeling her second scrape with the law was not going to go as easily as the first. She tried smiling. No one returned her smile. She let out a heavy sigh. It was going to be a long day.

  A half hour after Janet had spotted the first police car, she and Earthquake were ensconced in its back seat, heading for a place called Santa Rita. Despite her repeated attempts to tell them she was not one of the people who were supposed to be arrested during the protest, they had handcuffed her and put her in the car.

  "Don't worry, Jan," Earthquake said, sounding worried. "As soon as we get where we're going, I'll call the guy who's the head of our group. He'll get the lawyers down here right away, and they'll have us out before lunch."

  "Uh-huh," she answered unenthusiastically. Since nothing else had gone according to plan today, why should the lawyers?

  "Trust me. I know what I'm talking about on this."

  They left the freeway and headed toward a group of white single-story buildings spread out over an area Janet guessed to be at least a hundred acres. A sign next to the road read: Alameda County Jail, Santa Rita. Be-hind the sign was another guardhouse and another chain-link fence. Only this time the barbed wire was angled to keep people in, not out. Behind the first fence was a second, this one topped with circles of concertina wire. She looked over at Earthquake and saw him pale. His eyes grew wide, and he tried to swallow. Finally he seemed to have realized just how much trouble they were in.

  Because it was visiting day, there was a lot of confusion and a long line of cars outside the gate. The disruption spilled over into the area where Janet and Earthquake were taken for booking, allowing them to escape some of the normal routine long enough for Earthquake to make his phone call.

  Somehow they had convinced the arresting officers that they were who they claimed to be and not part of some terrorist gang, and so they were being allowed more freedom than when they had first been taken into custody. While she waited for Earthquake, one of the men who had brought her in from the car had even offered her a cup of coffee, which she quickly and gratefully accepted. She was almost finished when Earthquake returned, looking more desolate than he had when he'd left.

  "They won't help us," he said, his shoulders slumped in defeat.

  "Why not?" she whispered, trying to keep the rising panic from her voice.

  "It seems the protest that was supposed to take place today was postponed until next week because they had a promise from Time magazine that a reporter would be sent out to cover it. Anyway, now that we've been arrested, they feel they have to call the whole thing off or they'll wind up with egg on their faces. Needless to say, everyone is furious with me."

  "And because of that one little mistake they're refusing to help us?"

  "It's more than that. If they send anyone down to bail us out, it links them to what happened, and they feel that could hurt the organization."

  Janet could already hear the prison doors clanging shut behind her and envisioned her stay as a long one. "So now what do we do?"

  He tried smiling, but his lips only twitched in misery. "I don't suppose you happen to know any lawyers."

  She sighed. "Only one." And she couldn't think of one reason why he would want to come to her aid again.

  11

  Eric went after the brass bell he was polishing with a vengeance, cleaning away dozens of years of neglect with forceful swipes of the polishing cloth. It was a project that didn't require skill or concentration, which was precisely the kind of mindless task he needed that morning because, no matter how hard he tried to prevent it, his thoughts invariably drifted back to Janet. The vibrant blue sky reminded him of her eyes; the breeze, of how her hair looked when it was ruffled by the wind. Even working on The Promise seemed less exciting than before since he was once again thinking of making his eventual odyssey on her alone.

  He turned the bell over, and the clapper struck the side with a pure ringing tone, reminding him of the reason he had paid such a ridiculous price for the antique in the first place. He looked for pleasure in the memory, but it eluded him. Below deck he heard the telephone ring. Most of the calls that had come through in the past few days had been for Susan. Somehow word had gotten around town, erroneously, that she was back, and since he had put the San Francisco number on call forwarding, he had been inundated with people trying to get in touch with her. He considered ignoring the phone now.

  Yet underneath the cool, unflappable facade of the corporate lawyer beat the heart of a dreamer; he couldn't give up hope that Janet would try to get in touch with him. Consequently, in spite of a voice that told him he was foolish to let his hopes build up, he headed down the stairs. By the time he reached the phone, it had rung seven times.

  Janet said a silent prayer as she counted the number of times the phone rang. Please be there, Eric. I really don't want to spend the night in jail. She was about to replace the receiver when she heard his achingly familiar voice.

  "Hello," he said, a little breathless from the hurried flight down the stairs.

  "Eric, this is Janet."

  He was at first too stunned to answer her. There was a broad chasm between dream and reality, and it took him a minute to make the journey. "To be honest, Janet, I didn't think you were going to call. But I'm glad you did."

  She felt like a creep. She had known he would misinterpret why she'd phoned, but she hadn't imagined how happy he would sound or how badly she would feel. "I need your help, Eric…" she said. "Professionally."

  He swallowed his disappointment; it hurt as it went down. "What can I do for you?" This time his voice was cool and dispassionate.

  As succinctly as possible, she explained what had happened that morning. Eric asked several questions and told her he would be there as quickly as he could. He then asked her to give the p
hone to the desk sergeant so that he could ascertain whether the situation was something he could handle or if he needed to contact a criminal lawyer for assistance.

  When Janet returned to where Earthquake waited, she was able to give him a reassuring smile." He said not to worry. He's pretty sure he can get us out of here today."

  Earthquake looked down at his feet. "I'll bet you'd like to forget we ever met."

  How could she be mad at him when he was already so mad at himself? She put her arms around him and gave him a quick hug. "The only thing that could ever make me stop being your friend is if you gave up your dream of making this world a better place for me and my future children."

  He gave her an embarrassed grin. "I'm not going to give up. I'm just going to go about things a little differently from now on."

  "You have no idea how good that makes me feel."

  "Do you suppose we'll be able to look back on this someday and laugh?" he asked, sounding highly skeptical of the possibility.

  She knew he would never believe her if she told him how soon that day would come, so she simply smiled and led him over to the area where they had been told they could wait for their lawyer. They sat, hunched over on molded-plastic chairs, feeling like criminals and passionately hoping for a clean getaway.

  Eric arrived two and a half hours later in a dilapidated pickup he had borrowed from one of the men at the boat yard. It took another hour for him to complete the paperwork for their release and another half hour after that to find Earthquake's motorcycle and load it into the truck.

  Earthquake's presence acted as a buffer between Janet and Eric, allowing them to be polite and formally friendly to each other without their personal conflicts surfacing. On the way home, the road noise combined with fatigue worked its lethal magic on the vanquished protestors, and they soon fell asleep.

  As the miles passed, Janet leaned more and more heavily against Eric. Her head rested on his shoulder, and her breathing was deep and regular. Seeing her again had stripped Eric of all pretense that he could give her up. They might have problems that seemed insurmountable, they might have personalities that seemed impossible to mesh and they might have an incredibly rocky road to travel before they would have a smooth ride—none of it mattered as much as the love that bound them. Now he only needed to convince her they were destined to be together. He had felt that Janet's getting in touch with him for his help might have been the first step in working things out between them. And then Earthquake had explained their predicament, and he had realized the phone call was nothing more than a last-ditch attempt to stay out of jail.

  As they left the Sunol Valley, Eric looked down at her and noted the way the soft waves of her hair caressed her shoulders. A seed of warmth burst in his midsection when he thought of waking in the morning to see those raven curls resting on a pillow beside his own. Life would be so much simpler if he could drop Earthquake off at Stanford and just keep going. He could take Janet back to The Promise with him, set sail and stay at sea with her until they had worked out their problems. The idea seemed so inviting that he had a hard time convincing himself not to give it a try.

  When they arrived at Stanford, Eric gently moved Janet so that she was leaning back against the seat, and then he helped Earthquake unload his motorcycle.

  After receiving directions to Carol's house, he shook hands with Earthquake and told him again that he would be at the hearing and not to spend too much time worrying about the outcome.

  Fifteen minutes later he pulled into Carol's driveway. "Janet…" He touched the side of her face in a lingering caress. Her only response was to softly groan and snuggle closer into his side. "Janet, you're home." This time he touched her arm.

  Slowly she climbed out of the depths of sleep. What had happened earlier, where she was and who she was with came back to her with blinding clarity. With great reluctance she pulled away from Eric and sat up straight. After all that had transpired that day, to have just stayed where she was, pretending the two of them were friends again, would have been like floating on her own cloud from heaven.

  She ran her hand through her hair and looked out the cracked windshield at the front of the house. Her gaze dropped to her hands, then to the worn-out floor mat on the passenger side of the seat. She could look anywhere but at him. "I want you to know how much I appreciate the fact that you gave up your Sunday to bail me out of another jam."

  "Coming to your rescue was a lot more interesting than what I was doing."

  Wonderful—she had become an amusing diversion. "Well, I'm sure you'd like to get back to whatever it was you were doing, so I'll let you go now." She started to scoot over to open the door, but Eric reached out and caught her arm.

  "I'm not in any hurry, if you'd like to sit here and talk awhile."

  She hesitated. "There is one thing I don't know what to do with the dress you bought for me." It was the only way she could think of to begin a discussion of what had happened between them last Thursday. What she hoped he would say was that he wanted her to keep the dress and to perhaps even wear it for him that night. Surely he would realize she had the rest of the day free.

  But her question did not at all elicit the response she wanted. Eric only heard that she wanted to dispose of something he had given her and that brought back all the pain and anger he had felt in the limousine. "I don't care what you do with it," he said evenly, his hands tightening around the steering wheel until the knuckles grew white. "Give it away or throw it away. It's all the same to me."

  She covered her hurt by responding to his anger with haughty dismissal. "How could I have forgotten so quickly just how indifferent you are to money?"

  "It's not that I'm indifferent, it's that you're paranoid about it. Money, or the lack of it, doesn't control my life the way it does yours."

  "Easy for you to say. What could you possibly know about the lack of anything?"

  How could he be sitting here fighting with her when what he really wanted to do was take her in his arms and hold her and make love to her until all that separated them became as insignificant as single grains of sand on a beach. "This is getting us nowhere," he said.

  "You're right." Her hand went to the door handle. "Here you've been a real friend and gone way out of your way to help me out today, and my way of thanking you is to behave like a bear with a thorn in its paw." She climbed out of the truck. Before she closed the door she forced herself to look at him, seeking one last glimpse to carry with her. "I want you to know I haven't forgotten that I still owe you for the deductible on the car."

  Eric heaved a weary sigh. Would she never understand that money stood between them only because it was important to her? "Forget it. It doesn't matter anymore."

  Oh, but it did matter, she ached to tell him. Now that they were no longer struggling to see each other, the debt was their only link. She would hang on to that link until every dime was paid back. "I can't forget it," she said softly.

  "Then send the money to your favorite charity. I don't want it." Every payment would remind him of what he had lost and open old wounds like a knife. "I have to go now, Janet. I promised the man I borrowed the truck from that I would have it back before five o'clock." He had to get away from her before he did something foolish like grabbing her and making her come with him to some remote spot where there would only be the two of them and they would have no choice but to talk to each other.

  "Oh—I'm sorry. I didn't know." She stepped away from the cab and closed the door. As she watched him back out of the driveway her hand started to come up from her side to wave goodbye, but she stopped the motion by hugging herself. It was a lonely, forlorn motion that accentuated her feeling of isolation. She turned to walk up to the front porch. The door opened before she had reached for the knob.

  "Who was that man?" Carol asked, not even trying to disguise the fact that she had been watching them through the window.

  "Eric."

  "That was Eric Stewart? He's the one you're letting drift away?"<
br />
  "Letting?" As if she had any choice in the matter.

  "Yes, letting," Carol said with a frustrated sigh. "How hard have you tried to patch things up between you?"

  "Carol, there are some things a patch just won't cover." She hung her jacket up in the hall closet. "I'm going to bed. If anyone calls, tell them I'm not here."

  "Wait a minute," she said with reluctant acceptance of Janet's decision in her voice. "You didn't say how the protest went."

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. "I'll tell you about it later. Right now I want to forget today ever happened." She turned down the hall and went into her bedroom, convinced all she had to do was lay her head on the pillow, and blessed, forgetful sleep would automatically come to her.

  A half hour later, unable to get thoughts of Eric out of her mind even after counting 1,832 sheep, she got up and went over to the closet to get her bathrobe, planning to go to the kitchen and indulge herself with a glass of milk and cookies. As soon as she opened the door, her eyes went to the elegant white dress Eric had bought for her. Without conscious thought, she reached out to touch the silklike material. Letting her fingers absorb the sensuous feel of the fabric, she slid them across the plunging bodice. It was the most beautiful dress she had ever seen: cut to accentuate her best features, classic and yet stylish… and it was her size. How long had it taken Eric to select the dress for her? Who was the friend he had said helped him? Questions she would never ask, answers forever a mystery.

  She couldn't give the dress away, and yet she couldn't keep it. To go to her closet every day and face such a powerful reminder of what had almost been hers was nothing short of masochistic. As soon as she had a free Sunday, she would return the dress to Neiman-Marcus and give the money to Eric. He wouldn't like it, but at least her conscience would be clear.

  On Monday Janet received the results of her midterms. They weren't as good as previous midterms, but neither were they as bad as she had feared. She was amazed to discover her world hadn't collapsed at her first B-minus and that she wasn't in a panic to bring it up by the final.