Yes, I Do

by Gwynne Forster

  He rubbed the back of his neck and took in a long breath. “I don’t hold it against you.”

  “I’d better leave.”

  His smile held no humor, and his gray eyes didn’t twinkle. “You won’t forget me, Ginger. Not in this life.”

  He walked to the door, opened it, and brushed her cheek with the tips of his fingers. “No. You won’t forget me.”

  “I don’t expect I will, and don’t you be surprised if I show up in your thoughts sometimes. All the best, Jason.”

  “The same to you, sweetheart. Get home safely.”

  The door closed, and the most intriguing and wonderful man she’d ever met was out of her life. The next morning, she took Swissair 1102 to Lagos, Nigeria, en route home. She wasn’t bubbling over with happiness, but she wasn’t ashamed of herself, either.

  Jason Calhoun closed the door of his hotel room and considered packing his bag and going home. Ginger—maybe that wasn’t even her name—had made the right decision, but for the rest of his life he’d wonder what he’d missed. He could get a woman any time he wanted one, but he didn’t care for casual sex, and he hadn’t wanted that from Ginger. He had needed to explore something in himself that hadn’t been there before he met her, to blend his soul with hers, for he suspected that, with her, he would have known at last who he was. He’d heard that newly divorced individuals had to deal with vulnerability. Maybe that explained his awful need for Ginger. He’d been restless since his divorce, but he hadn’t thought himself particularly vulnerable. He unlocked the bar that stood beside the dresser in his room, opened a bottle of ginger ale, and got rid of the dryness in his throat. Six billion people inhabited planet earth, and one of them had a piece of him—maybe the most important piece—and he’d never get it back.

  Ginger walked into her eleventh floor apartment on Roosevelt Island, closed the door, and looked around. Same place, she thought; just a different woman. In the short span of six weeks, she’d gotten a divorce from one man and came dangerously close to falling for another one. She kicked off her shoes, walked barefoot to her bedroom and called Clarice.

  “Hey, girlfriend, how’d it go?” Clarice asked.

  “Full of adventure. You should have come with me.”

  “You don’t mean that. If I’d been with you, you wouldn’t be moaning about the gray-eyed man.”

  Clarice’s psychic ability made Ginger uncomfortable, but she tolerated it because she valued Clarice’s friendship. “Girl, I don’t want to hear one word about your visions of that man. You got lucky with the color of his eyes. Now, let’s drop it. Do I have any mail?”

  “Yeah. You want me to bring it to you?”

  “No. Thanks for keeping it for me. I need to get a nap so I’ll feel like working. I’ve got a court date day after tomorrow.”

  “I’ll ring your bell and hang it on the doorknob.”

  Ginger didn’t object, because Clarice lived in an apartment several doors down the hall from her.

  She told herself that she hadn’t met a man named Jason, that he was a part of a surrealistic dream. A minute later she swore at herself for demanding his agreement that they not exchange any information about themselves, including last names. Was he married? Did he have any children? Where did he live, and what did he do for a living?

  The doorbell rang and she waited ten minutes before opening it and getting the bag of mail. She loved Clarice, but right then she didn’t want to see her or anyone else. Except Jason. Thumbing through her mail, her gaze caught the schizophrenic handwriting of Steven Roberts, her client and the first party to a divorce. The trouble with Steven was his lack of familiarity with his own mind. She read his letter, rolled her eyes in disgust, and dialed his number.

  “Mr. Roberts, this is Ginger Hinds,” she said after hearing his clipped hello. “I’m afraid it’s too late for you to drop your suit, because Mrs. Roberts has entered a countersuit. I received the notice in my mail today. She’s asking for half of your property and one-third of all you earn in the future, plus full payment of two hundred and eighty-two thousand dollars in loans that she made to you. Your case will be considerably weaker if you drop your demands.”

  She could imagine that his eyes widened, as they did when he received a surprise. “Well, she sure is a bag of laughs,” Steven said. “Last time she tickled my funny bone like this, she didn’t want quite that much—just a little old house on Cape Hatteras where the dozen and a half hurricanes that stop by there every year could blow my three hundred thousand dollar house smack out into the Atlantic Ocean. She needs to get her head screwed on right.”

  “Now, Mr. Roberts, let’s just work on the things we can control,” she said. “And please don’t talk like that when we’re in court. It won’t do your case one bit of good.”

  “But you listen to me, Miss Hinds. I have never borrowed one cent from my wife.”

  They’d been over that before. She took a deep breath and counted to ten. “Can you prove that?”

  “’Course not. When you’re in love, you don’t keep records on things like that.”

  “Evidently, she did. Let’s concentrate on your charges. You say she’s only interested in sensual gratification, won’t work with you to build a home, acts like a teenager, wants to party all the time, and refuses to speak to you if you don’t join her, while you want to strengthen your relationship with her, save, and build a future. Right?”

  “Right. And I want irreconcilable differences thrown in there.”

  She stifled a laugh. Nobody who’d been through one would think divorce amusing. “That much is obvious, Mr. Roberts. This is the second time you’ve indicated a change of heart about this divorce. If it happens again, get another attorney. Some counseling wouldn’t hurt.”

  “Look, maybe I’ve been too hard on her. She’s got a right to enjoy life. Maybe if her mother had stayed out of it…damn. I must be crazy. I just had a weak moment there thinking about how it was, how perfect it used to be. I never thought it would come to this. See you in court.”

  Tell me about it. She hung up and checked her court hearings. Nancy Holloway was suing her stock broker for fraud, and she figured they had an eighty percent chance of winning. Not so with Jake Henderson, a sculptor, who was suing his landlord for having shut off all services in the hopes of forcing him out of his rent-controlled apartment.

  She called her sister, Linda, to let her know she was back at home, showered, put on some work clothes and headed for her garden. She always had to explain to people that there were two hundred and fifty individually owned outdoor gardens on Roosevelt Island—her little village in the middle of the East River, twenty minutes from Times Square—along with a rose garden that was the pride of the community. Her garden was clear of weeds, which she guessed was Clarice’s handiwork. With nothing better to do in the blistering heat, she walked back to Andy’s Place, the Island hangout for company, food, drinks, coffee, or whatever, and waited to see who’d come in. Minutes later, she was rewarded with Clarice’s company.

  “Hey, girl, what kind of weather is this for April? I thought I’d die out there yesterday getting the grass out of your garden. Sure could use some of Andy’s good old iced tea.”

  Ginger hugged her friend. “You can get the folks out of the south, but everybody knows where they come from. Don’t tell me your strange mind told you I was here.”

  Clarice beckoned the waiter, ordered iced tea for herself and ginger ale for Ginger. “Nobody has to ask you what you want to drink, Ginger. You take your name seriously. Now, about those gray eyes. Where’d you leave him?”

  Ginger pushed back the irritation she always felt when Clarice discussed things she wasn’t supposed to know. “He’s in Harare.”

  Clarice let her have a look of disdain. “Is that so? You and your principles. I got principles, too, Honey, but they wouldn’t let me walk away from that man. What are you going to do?”

  Ginger looked long and hard at Clarice. If the woman was such a great psychic, shouldn’t she
know what was going to happen? She shrugged. “What’s past is prologue.”

  Clarice’s giggle stunned Ginger, because her friend prided herself on her refinement. “From the sound of that, I’d say you’re capable of seeing a few things yourself?”

  Nervous at the turn of the conversation, Ginger gulped down her drink. “I’d better run. How’re things over at the United Nations? Maybe you can tell the Secretary-General whether our country is ever going to pay the UN all that money we owe it.” She slid out of the booth, picked up her garden gloves and trowel, and looked down at her friend. “Please don’t pester me about Jason, Clarice. It’s over, and I want to forget.”

  “Whatever you say. Just don’t say I didn’t—”

  “Clarice, please!” She waved at her friend and walked out into the heat. So much for her attempts to push Jason out of her thoughts.

  Jason paid the taxi driver, picked up his bags, and started into the building at Fifth Avenue and 110th Street, the lower edge of Harlem, where he lived in a two bedroom duplex condominium. He walked with legs that fought with his mind, seemingly wanting to go elsewhere, nodded to the concierge, and strode rapidly toward the elevator.

  “I have a bundle of mail here for you, Mr. Calhoun,” the concierge called after him. “Ring me when you’re ready for it, and I’ll bring it up.”

  Jason thanked him but didn’t pause, because he didn’t want conversation or anyone’s company. Except Ginger’s. Unable to stop thinking of her, he cursed himself for not at least having gotten her last name. No promises, no confessions, and no regrets. They had agreed to remain strangers. And in spite of the soul-searing intimacy they’d shared, they knew nothing of one another. Nothing, that is, except that their need for each other had almost overpowered them. He opened the windows to rid the apartment of stuffiness, then quickly closed them as the oppressive heat assaulted his body. He turned on the air-conditioning units, emptied his suitcase, and dumped the clothing into the hamper. After stripping down to his shorts, he got a Coke from the refrigerator, propped himself up on his bed, and telephoned his father in Dallas.

  “I didn’t expect you back so soon, son,” his father said after they’d greeted each other. “How’d it go?”

  “All right, I guess.”

  He had to be careful, because his dad had a sixth sense about him, and keeping secrets from him was hard work.

  “Didn’t you like Mother Africa?”

  He kept his voice even. “Yes. What I saw of it.”

  “Something or somebody got between you and it. Right?”

  Jason enjoyed the last swig of his Coke, set the bottle on the floor beside the bed, and answered, “You could say that.”

  “It’s not a good idea to get involved when you’re on the rebound. I know you think you’re master of all you survey, but don’t forget that Napoleon met his Waterloo.”

  “Right. Come up July fourth and go fishing with me in the Adirondacks.”

  He heard the low growl of a laugh that, for as long as he could remember, had given him a sense of peace and security. “All right. I’ll butt out. Glad you’re back safe.”

  He hung up, went to his computer, and began a search for travel agents who booked tours to Zimbabwe. By midnight, he had collected the names and phone numbers of one hundred and forty-seven such agents, and he gave up the search when he realized that there could be a thousand more. Maybe he ought to hire a private investigator—but who could he tell the man to look for? Churning heat violated his belly, and sweat dripped down his bare chest as the scent of her perfume came back to him, a ghost bent on torture. They’d been magic together, flint and dry grass, and he refused to accept that he’d never see her again.

  Ginger hadn’t seen groups of youth congregating in the streets of Harare. When she’d asked one of the hotel clerks what the young people did for entertainment, she’d learned that the people looked primarily to their families for that, as well as for social life and economic support and that they rarely made close ties with individuals who were not members—first of their family, and second of their tribe. That information had been the germ of an idea for a mother-daughter club on her beloved Roosevelt Island, and she decided to start the club with Saturday morning movies for mothers and their adolescent daughters. Fired up with the idea and its potential, she telephoned Clarice.

  “Think I can pull it off?”

  “You can try, Ginger, but if these mothers had enough control over their daughters to bring them to a Saturday morning movie, would the girls be hanging out in the street at midnight in the first place?”

  She’d thought about that. “Girls will go to free movies. I’m going to start with something like Sleepless in Seattle, and maybe I can get some of the older boys who have good manners and values to speak to them once in a while. What do you think?”

  “The boys will certainly bring them out, but if you want a crowd, get that gray-eyed hunk you walked out on in Harare. Now, they’d stand in line to listen to him.”

  She subdued her rising hackles, took a deep breath, and warned Clarice, “Listen, girl, if we’re going to be friends, you have to stop prying into my life with your…your so-called psychic gifts. Only God knows my future, and you stop painting your crazy pictures of things you can’t possibly know.”

  “Want me to describe him?”

  Ginger stared at the receiver. When Clarice got started with her soothsaying, she gave her the willies. “No, I don’t.”

  “Okay by me, girlfriend, but I wouldn’t have turned my back on a six-foot, two-inch guy with a washboard belly, a complexion the color of fresh pecans, long-lashed gray eyes, silky black hair, and a smile to die for.”

  Thank goodness Clarice couldn’t see her surprised face. “Maybe he was rough around the edges.”

  “Honey, if that man got any smoother and any sharper, you could use him to chisel stone.”

  Pictures of him flashed through her mind, and her blood sped through her veins, dizzying her. She had to sit down on the edge of her bed, but she wouldn’t give Clarice the benefit of triumph. “Go feed the pigeons.”

  Clarice’s merriment greeted her ears like the mockery of a conqueror, as though she knew Ginger was doomed to remember Jason forever. “I’ve already fed them. See you down at Andy’s Place about four o’clock?”

  Ginger agreed and hung up. She didn’t usually work on Saturday afternoon, but she had to make up for the two weeks in Africa, not to speak of the time she’d wasted daydreaming about Jason since she’d returned home. Unable to concentrate on the case she was preparing, she decided to take some clothes downstairs to the dry cleaner. She dipped her hands in the pockets of the linen jacket she’d worn on the trip with Jason to Victoria Falls, and her fingers brushed a piece of folded paper. Part of a menu.

  She unfolded it and read: Thousands of miles may separate us when you read this, but our souls will never be apart.

  “I will not shed a tear over him. Not one,” she said and wiped drops of moisture from her cheeks. The man hadn’t been made who could cause her to shrivel up in mourning like a dried-up, inedible prune. She brushed more moisture from her face. “Drat you, Jason who-ever-you-are, I could love you to the recesses of my womb,” she whispered, “and I could hate you, too. You have no right to torment me this way.”

  Jason fared no better than Ginger. In the month since his return home, he’d managed to get one case postponed and had gotten a mistrial in another by proving jury tampering. He had a divorce case pending, but couldn’t develop an enthusiasm for it, because the suit reminded him too much of his own divorce. That Saturday afternoon, disconcerted by his inability to do any serious work, he put on a pair of white Bermuda shorts, a yellow, knit T-shirt and sneakers and took the Lexington IRT subway down to SOHO, where his younger brother, Eric, a sculptor, lived.

  He walked around an unfinished form that stood in the middle of Eric’s living room. “What’s that supposed to be, Eric, a modern Aphrodite?”

  “No idea. She just tumble
d out of my head. I was working on her a couple of days ago, looked up at her, and couldn’t believe my eyes.”

  Jason paced around the figure again and again. “Did you ever meet a woman named Ginger?”

  Eric looked up from the spatula he was cleaning. “Ginger who?”

  Jason shook his head. “I couldn’t even guess, but this figure you’ve done here reminds me of her. Something about the set of the shoulders and that ‘I’ll cry tomorrow’ smile. It’s eerie, man.”

  He must have sounded foolish, because Eric stopped cleaning his tool and stared at him. “And you don’t even know her last name?”

  “You insinuating something?”

  “Uh uh. No indeed. I’m saying you wanted her, you still want her, and you don’t know who or where she is. Where’d you meet her?”

  Jason walked to the other end of the room and back. “In Harare. If I knew where she was, I’d be there right now. And that’s all I want to say about it.”

  Eric’s hand rested on his brother’s shoulder, and he spoke in a voice heavy with concern. “I’m sorry, Jason. Man, I really am sorry.”

  Jason shrugged. “I’ve been through floods, hurricanes, the rigors of a law degree, and a nasty divorce. This won’t kill me, either.”

  Eric resumed cleaning his tools. “Maybe not, but it hurts you like hell.”

  “Tell me about it. How about putting that thing away and we go down to Dock’s sidewalk café and get something cool to drink?”

  Eric’s raised eyebrow was proof of his disinterest. “It’s too hot. I’ve never known it to be this hot in April.”