Lightning That Lingers

by Sharon

  Watching his face above her, she saw his eyes focus in a blurred way, as though the sound of his own voice woke him slightly. He smiled down at her, the wide mouth breathtakingly sensual.

  "Sorry..." he breathed. His eyes had become hypnotically bright. "Sorry... that I'm not... not more eloquent."

  Headily, she eased herself deeper around him. "One small step for man..."

  His laughter was a ragged shiver. His tongue passed between her parted lips and played lightly along the uneven line of her teeth.

  "Why do you like to do that?"

  "I don't know," he murmured, pressing his lips low on her throat. "I love you. I love you." And his hands were gentle on her body, guiding her sweetly as they had in their dance, and again, together, they saw dreams.

  They fell asleep in a square of white winter sunlight, cuddled like kittens under the yellow bedclothes, his love words her lullaby.

  A distant sound pulled her from her sleep. In the first bewilderment of wakening, she didn't recognize it. Orientation took her a dazed moment. Philip's house. Philip's bed. The sound she'd heard had been the front door. There were footsteps on the stairs. She sat upright and looked at Philip's face, pure and blissful in sleep. The steps grew closer. Desperately, she shook him awake.

  Philip wavered into consciousness in time to see Darrell bouncing through his bedroom door in a maroon sweat suit and a suede jacket slung over his shoulder. He stopped on the threshold and stared at Jennifer.

  "Do I know you?" he asked, fixing her with an interested frown.

  "No!" she said, and disappeared totally under the bedclothes.

  Philip watched blearily as Darrell shrugged and raised a hand in greeting.

  "It's one o'clock, you know," Darrell said, settling comfortably against the bedpost. "Sorry I'm a little late, but I had Bruno in to the vet for his shots and he was kind of under the weather so I took him out for a nice walk, and then I had to pick up the Corvette from the shop."

  Filling up inside with pity for Jennifer, Philip sat up numbly and patted the cover over her head comfortingly. One o'clock, he thought. What have I forgotten?

  "We were going to the gym to work out, remember?" Darrell prompted. "You know, run a couple of laps." He ran around the bed and back. "Pump some iron." He dropped in place and did a series of fast muscular pushups. "Then we were going to watch the Bucks and have dinner. Hey, that's okay. You forgot. No problem. I can dig it. Getting it on is important, too."

  The situation was clearly beyond saving. Philip combed his hair back with his fingers, and said gently, "Jenny? This is my friend Darrell."

  A terse and muffled "How do you do?" emanated from the blankets.

  "Hey," Darrell demanded with an unfortunate flash of recognition. "Is that the librarian? Are you sleeping with her now?"

  Philip sighed. "Jenny, do you mind if I tell Darrell I'm sleeping with you?"

  "Not at all," said the hump of blankets.

  Philip looked back at the six feet four inches of soft-hearted hunk who, next to Jack Campell, was his best friend in the world. "Yes, I'm sleeping with her. Darrell, I'm sorry for forgetting about this afternoon, and I don't want to seem inhospitable, but—"

  "Hey, don't worry about it. It's cool. I'm glad to see you get a little action. You're always so fussy about who you make it with.... You want me to leave, right? Hey, really, you know I never would have come in if I knew she was here, but you've never had a chick in here before. You told me it upsets the owls. I'll come back later and we can do dinner." An alternate thought occurred to him. "Unless you don't want to have dinner either."

  The tone was so plaintive that even Jenny, buried under the covers, caught the inflection. She said, "He can come to dinner."

  Below the aviator sunglasses, Darrell's mouth took on a pleased grin. "Great. I'll bring wine. Happy recreation!"

  Philip waited for the front door to close behind Darrell before he peeled back the sheet. His fingers touched the sleep-mussed hair back from her cheeks.

  "I love you," he said.

  "But do you respect me still?"

  "Well, no, but—" He watched her emerge from the bedclothes in her pink loveliness to attack him with a pillow. Shaking with laughter, they twined together, tumbling against each other in a mist of joy.

  "Is Bruno his German shepherd?"

  "Close. His Doberman. Don't worry about Darrell. He won't have bad thoughts. No one's ever told him that sex isn't a form of aerobic exercise."

  The brown eyes grew wide open as if in shock. "You mean it isn't? Bring me a mirror!"

  He found one in the bathroom and brought it to her. She stared into it with avid concentration.

  "Yep." She studied her eyes. "Lines of dissipation. I see them."

  He ran his tongue over a crescent of freckles on her shoulder. "Those are scratches in the mirror."

  "Oh. You're right. Well, anyway, now I'm a woman."

  He kissed her tenderly. "All woman. How do you feel? Are you sore?"

  "A little. I have the weird feeling that when I get up, I may walk like a cowboy."

  He laughed and pressed a gentle kiss on the winsome curls at the base of her neck, nuzzling his face against her cheek.

  She sighed. "After this. I have a feeling that the rest of my life is going to be a letdown."

  "I'll spend the rest of mine making sure that doesn't happen," he whispered, and let his lips find hers.

  Even then, she felt a thrill of fear. Outside, the world was waiting.

  CHAPTER 9

  He drew a tub for her in his grandmother's bath, enjoying the way her wide-eyed gaze fell on the elaborate pink-tiled walls, the tub's pink and gold Lindspar relief, the life-sized Italian sculpture in the corner of Venus, Surprised In Her Bath.

  Then he sat on a footstool, resting his bare arms on the tub, and watched her bathe. The scent of her skin, fragrant and steamy from the bath, rose around him like a sensual cloud. He dipped his finger in the warm water and let it wander desultorily over her throat where the faint rosiness told him that she was shy yet about having him see her body.

  As she had eased herself gracefully into the bath, he had seen her wince when the sore petals of her femininity touched the water, and he was sorry. This sting of guilt he hadn't anticipated, guilt at having caused her that brief unavoidable pain, guilt at having pulled her from her safe oblivious slumber. Partly what had passed between them was the inevitable outflowing of love, natural and perfect. She was a romantic, reticent to bloom. He had sensed that in her. But also he was experienced, and not stupid. He knew he had done subtle things, some of them probably unconscious, to heighten her desire for him and to make it impossible for her, in her innocence, to fight the experience. Had he taken something from her? Choice? And, he remembered, she hadn't said it yet: I love you.

  Chaucer, who spent a great deal of his day sleeping, came floating through the doorway, silent as a shadow, and landed on Philip's bare shoulder. Absently, he stretched up a damp hand to scratch the downy breast feathers.

  "Aren't his talons sharp?" Jennifer asked.

  "They're razors. He has remarkable control, though. We've had a couple of accidents that were mostly my fault, but he's never hurt me deliberately. Have you ever touched an owl feather? There's nothing softer. Owls have a downy fringe on their primary flight feathers to muffle wing sounds so they can hunt in silence. Here. Give me your hand."

  Chaucer seemed to take exception to the sparkling cascade that ran from her arm as she raised it from the water. He flew off, landing on the wall mirror, knocking it askew.

  "If you have an owl in the house, your pictures never hang straight," Philip said.

  "Have I offended him?"

  "No. He wants to watch us in the mirror. Can you see? Very sneaky, isn't he? Birds seem to love melodrama. Hmm. He's spotted the plastic soap-dish that I knocked into the water."

  Jenny began to smile, watching Chaucer bend toward the mirror to eye the rectangle of white plastic that floated by her knee.
Philip touched the water, the soap dish rocked wildly, and Chaucer's ear tufts went up, giving his face a hilarious expression of surprise.

  "What we have here is an owl IQ test," Philip said. "What is it, Chauce? Come and see. Is it a fishie?"

  Chaucer sailed to the edge of the tub and glared at the soapdish. Jenny gave the dish a little push and Chaucer's head swiveled, following the movement with poised intensity. He leaned closer and closer, his small face ludicrously fierce. Finally he lost his balance entirely, and toppled head first into the water. Philip's long graceful hand scooped up an angry sopping mess of feathers, clacking beak, and wildly flailing wings.

  Laughing, his whole attention directed to the raucously chattering owl as he carefully wrapped it in a towel, he said, "Sorry, old man, you flunked. You're a bird of very little brain. Don't you want Jenny to think you're a wise old owl? This is a soap dish, not a fish."

  He held the soap dish up, and Chaucer attacked it, biting and clawing it furiously.

  "Oh, calm down, it didn't do a thing to you. Always such a fuss. There. Now you've put a hole in the towel. Are you satisfied?" Feeling Chaucer struggle to be released, he set the little owl on the floor and watched him trudge out the door, hunched into his damp breast feathers, trailing water. Philip turned back toward the tub. "Hell probably dry off in the sun. Nocturnal animals love to get their vitamin D from taking sunbaths. Sometimes I have the idea that—"

  Her head was tipped downward. A tiny diamond of moisture twinkled like a gem at the corner of her lips. Coming quickly down on his knees beside her, he saw that it was a tear, that her eyes were filled with them. He felt his heart contract, the movement quick and mechanical like the rev of a fading generator. Afraid to know, but ill from the suspense of even this half-minute wait, he whispered, "Darling, what's the matter?" and was surprised that his voice could sound so rational, so gentle.

  She put her forehead against his cheek, her hair tickling like whiskers from some small soft mammal.

  She choked out, "I was thinking... about how wonderful you are."

  The wound of his guilt healed, as though she had touched him with a sweet chaste spell.

  She ate an orange in the butler's pantry, sitting on the pillow that he had given her half-laughingly, and watched him start dinner.

  "What do you think the chances are of your becoming bored with me quickly?" She bit into a segment and discovered that he didn't buy seedless oranges.

  "Nil."

  "What if I asked you thousands of nosy questions about yourself?"

  "I'd give you thousands of nosy answers. Please, for God's sake, don't be silent. I want to know you're here. Every minute."

  His words gave her a secret shiver of glee, but somehow the nosy personal questions were slow to come. Instead she said, "Do you remember having a butler?"

  "Yes."

  "What was he like?"

  "German. Very Gothic face. His eyes looked like they could burn through the wall. He scared the pants off my mother. But he played a mean game of cribbage, and he taught me how to ride a bike in the side courtyard."

  "Why do you call this the butler's pantry?"

  "This was his domain. He ran the house from here. See the inner window above the maple cupboard? That's the servant's staircase just behind it. He could watch their comings and goings. Through that door," he pointed, "was the formal dining room, and there is a panel missing from the door, as you can see, so he could overhear the dinner conversation and intervene with a new course whenever it was tactful. And you can see the big board of keys hanging on the wall in the corner. Sixty keys, none of them marked. Werner knew by memory what each one was for and where it belonged on the board, so he'd be able to tell at a glance if anyone was using a key they shouldn't be. He was the only one in the house with that knowledge. My mother didn't even know. But when my father let him go, Werner taught the board to me before he left." Philip fell silent for a moment; reflective. "Now I'm the only one who knows the board.... It has a medieval flavor, being rich."

  His tone wasn't defensive, but it was cautious.

  She knew caution too well to miss it in someone else. He never talked about this. Somehow she knew. She remembered hearing Philip's friend Jack speaking late in the night—something about Philip cutting himself off. Treading warily, she said, "I've always had a soft spot for the Middle Ages. What's in that maple cupboard?"

  "This one?" He set the knife on the chopping block, wiped parsley off his fingers, and swung open the cupboard door. Behind was a combination safe that looked like it meant business.

  "And I was wondering where you stowed the family jewels!" she said brightly.

  She was promptly and delightfully seized, her chest crushed against his. "You know what I do to women who try to tempt me into making dumb jokes about my family jewels?"

  "Wildly ravish them on the kitchen table?" she suggested, her voice full of hope.

  "Yes." He kissed her hard, and released her, and went back to the parsley, throwing over his shoulder, "Except when they already have a sore bottom."

  She was about to give him an updated and more optimistic report on the condition of her bottom when he added, "It's a pie safe."

  "What? You're kidding."

  "No. It's a pie safe. When the cook made pies or whatever goodies, they were locked up in here until the butler served them."

  "Those must have been some pies."

  "Probably. Or they were starving the servants. It wasn't used by the time I came around. My father said it was ridiculous. He didn't like having to brave waking up the butler when he wanted to snitch pie at midnight."

  "How about the big cupboard? What did they keep behind there?"

  He gestured like a game show host. "Our young contestant, the lovely librarian from Emerald Lake, who, by the way, lost her virginity this morning, has chosen Door Number Three. And awaiting behind it—" he swung it open to show another vault that looked like it would have felt right at home in Fort Knox—"is the safe for the Brooks' china and Sheffield silver." He pulled the vault door open and she saw that it was empty. "The Brooks family has to start saving box tops for a new collection."

  She had been raised to believe that financial matters were deeply personal, and there was something uncomfortable about asking a lover what his income was, but darn it all, this was relevant. She drew a breath that left her feeling lightheaded. "Philip," she asked, "are you rich or poor?"

  There was a food cooler behind a heavily glazed window in the wall over the counter, that once had been used with huge blocks of ice during the summer months. During the winter, it was a natural refrigerator, and he pulled out a package of Emerald Lake bluegills and started to unwrap them, giving himself time to be sure he had the right words. An apology would have been an insult; softpedaling, foolish. Thank God, this part of it wouldn't make any difference to her anyway. To him, that knowledge was a luxury.

  "In a list of income levels in last week's Journal I found mine—after taxes—under the heading proud to be off welfare. The taxes on this place ought to be listed in Guinness."

  He glanced at her and found she was watching him with friendly interest, her brown eyes peaceful. The image returned of seeing her that first night at the Club, her face among the maze of faces, her burnt honey eyes looking at him differently, as a man instead of a lab animal. He had seen the regret and disappointment come into them when he began to dance. After that, she had treated him like an enemy and he had had to open up his soul to her to show her that he was real again, a process that had not been without its terrors. Here they were together. It should be simple, and yet it wasn't. The idiocy of his job stood between them, more now than it ever had. There was nothing he could do except to anticipate grimly the moment she realized how much.

  "What people think of as the great Brooks financial empire has been overextended since the Depression. There was a brief comeback during the Second World War when the railroads did pretty well hauling scrap metal, but after that things tottered
for years. And my parents were... very gentle people, not business brains. They made the best decisions they could, but it wasn't enough." A memory surfaced, like a sharp stab, of his father sitting with him on his bed at dusk, explaining in a raw unfamiliar tone that they had failed to save his heritage for him. "To have kept it alive they would have had to love money more, and they couldn't. Lily Hill was our summer house. When I was sixteen they had to sell the house in Chicago and we moved back here permanently. They both died within three years of stress-related things. Dad had a congenital heart defect. I remember the day I came back after college and turned the key in the front door and stepped into this huge pile, knowing that I was the only person left in the world it meant anything to. When my parents died I grieved for them intensely, and then the grief left and I just seemed to shut down inside...."

  "Philip—I'm sorry."

  He came to her, cupped her face and kissed the tip of her nose. "It was a long time ago."

  "You... couldn't you find work as a biologist?"

  "Not close enough to live here. Not that would pay enough to take care of the taxes."

  "It's important for you to keep the land." She made her words a statement, and even so, saw emotion tighten in every muscle in his face.

  "The land is a wildlife preserve. It's been in my family for generations. I'd sell the bones of my ancestors to a dog kennel before I'd let developers slice it up into sublots. God knows I don't want to keep it. I've been trying to give it to the state but they only want to accept it as a park...." He reminded himself consciously not to leap on a soapbox. "Parks are fine. They have a place. But people don't have to have every damn acre of the earth to tramp over. Some animals adapt to public access, but many species are profoundly disturbed in the natural course of their lives—finding food, caring for their young, selecting mates. All you would have needed was one trip to Yellowstone Park ten years ago to see the bears begging at car windows like hookers." The soapbox. One more sentence; that's all you get, Brooks. He could see the distress building on her face. "Park land tends to serve people, not animals."