Time After Time

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  Liz shook her head.

  Victoria looked unconvinced. "I guess after seeing you two today, my next question is: Why the hell not?"

  "He hasn't suggested it, for one thing," said Liz, hiding behind a wry grimace. "And for another, it's none of your business, dammit."

  "Aha! So you are planning to jump in the sack with him. Good for you! Heck, things are gonna close up down there if you don't use 'em soon."

  "Tori!"

  "Don't Tori me," Victoria said, undaunted. "How long has it been? Years, right? You understand how neurotic that is? Is that what you are at this point? Just plain old afraid?"

  "Don't be dumb. Look, I've been raising Susy—"

  "Oh, like you're the only single mother on the planet."

  "And I've been trying to get a business up and running—"

  "You think everyone else is on welfare?"

  "And ... and he's not my type—"

  Victoria merely laughed out loud.

  "And he undoubtedly wants children—"

  "For goodness' sake, you'd just be bedding him, not marrying — wait a minute," said Victoria, touching her hand to her forehead in lieu of a smack. "That's what this is about? You won't do it without a wedding ring? Oh, sweetie, you have lost touch with reality. Ha. And they shake their heads over me."

  Liz glanced around: the true reality was, they were having the kind of chat that belonged on a couch with pizza and movie rentals. Not here.

  "Thank you for the update on the dating game, Miss Landers," she said. "Now, will you kindly gather up my exhausted daughter and take her home? I'll be there just as soon as I've got my money."

  "And well you deserve it, if I may say so, Liz. Great job. This one really did go perfectly."

  "Pretty much," Liz said, brushing aside the revolting ant episode, about which she'd said nothing so far. "You didn't by any chance see Grant Dade skulking around?"

  "The student nutcase? Good lord, no. Why?"

  Liz frowned and said, "Somehow I don't think he's through with me."

  "Oh, well, let's not think unpleasant thoughts. See you back at the ranch. Don't worry about Susy; I'll tuck her in."

  "Mmmn. And thanks, Tori. For everything." Liz embraced her, then bundled her happy, weary daughter into Victoria's arms for the four-block spiral home.

  After that there was nothing much to do but the final cleanup, most of which was the job of the caterers. Liz gathered up the chairs and umbrellas and resin tables and stacked them for pickup the next day. She bagged the linens and took down the banners and boxed the leftover souvenir glasses, each hand-painted by her with a ruby-red clematis and the year of her Renaissance picnic. She kept one of the glasses for herself, staring into it as if it were a crystal ball. Would there be another picnic, another theme, another year? If only she knew.

  At about the time Liz snapped the last table shut, the last of the guests finally left and Jack came over to lend a hand.

  "Oh, sure, now that all the dishes are done," she teased. He didn't have to offer his help; but she was inexpressibly pleased that he had.

  The caterers, more proficient at breaking down a party than Liz, had done their job, gotten paid by her, and were long gone. Netta — if she had any sense — was in her room with her feet on a hassock and an ice bag on her head. Deirdre must've had Caroline and Bradley en route to their beds. As for Cornelius Eastman, he'd designated himself the driver of a perky female yardhand who'd had a bit too much to drink. That left just Liz and Jack, and a galaxy of stars overhead.

  They walked side by side down the torchère-lined path, taking turns blowing out the candles as they passed. The smell of citronella and paraffin began mingling in the air around them, adding a smoky, sultry ingredient to the heady mix of roses and honeysuckle that were still in bloom upwind of the house. Beneath their steps the gentle crunch of pea-stone echoed their ambling pace. It was a moment of almost magical seclusion, despite the traffic that ebbed and flowed a mere hundred yards away under the nostalgic amber glow of iron streetlamps on Bellevue Avenue.

  They talked in random snatches about the day, and then Jack said in a surprisingly fervent voice, "I don't know how to thank you enough. It was — well, what can I say? It was memorable. Just as you promised it would be."

  Deeply pleased that he was so pleased, Liz smiled and quipped, "Does that mean I'll be getting paid the whole amount this time?"

  "And then some," he said, which suggested a handsome gratuity and also pounded home the fact, as if it needed poundin, that she was a simple working girl and not one of Newport's Four Hundred.

  But it wasn't a socialite who was walking alongside Jack among the roses and under the stars; it was Liz. And if he was just now extinguishing the last of the lamps — if that part of the spell was coming to an end — well, it wasn't a socialite he was taking in his arms in the bewitching blindness of the night. It was Liz.

  He kissed her then, a deep, satisfying kiss quite unlike the ones that had left her on fire the other night. This kiss was filled with gratitude and something else: the sense, perhaps best left unsaid, that they had come this far without their attraction for one another having diminished in any way.

  Oh yes, she told herself as she slid her arms around him and slipped her hands across his broad back. I am definitely in love. I am apparently also a fool. So, Lizzie. Happy now?

  She was happy. Despite who she was, and despite who he was, for as long as that kiss lasted — she was happy.

  With a murmur of pleasure, he held her close and called her "Elizabeth" and buried his face in the thickness of her hair.

  Elizabeth. She loved to hear him say the name, every single syllable of it. When she was young she'd longed to be called something perkier, like Julie or Bonnie or Dawn. But that was then.

  And this, she thought, closing her eyes to savor the caress of his lips on her throat, is now.

  They kissed again, and it became clear that the moment for feeling grateful had passed. He kissed her harder now, his tongue probing more deeply, his body impressing hers with a sense of his urgency. His mouth, searing and hot, covered hers: again and again he returned to her lips — as if there were a drug there, and he was hooked. When he finally broke off, his breathing, like hers, was labored and unsteady.

  "This is ... ah ... new, darlin' ... ho boy ... this is new," he said again with a ragged, baffled laugh.

  He framed her face with his hands and kissed her, tenderly this time, and said in a half groan, "You know what comes next ... it has to come next — or I'm pretty sure we'll explode."

  All of Liz's resolve, all of her good intentions, were going by the board. Part of her was still tracking her pointless descent into the quagmire of passion — but the other part was wondering, his place or mine?

  It couldn't be her place — there simply was no way. It had to be East Gate ... and yet ... Cornelius? Netta? Caroline? It couldn't be his place, either — there simply was no way.

  "I don't see how—"

  The sentence got lost in a sharp intake of her breath as he skimmed the curve of her ear with his tongue, nibbling at her earlobe, teasing her, tasting her.

  He solved her agony in half a dozen words. "The carriage house has an apartment," he whispered in her ear.

  "Ah ... I see."

  What Liz also saw, perversely enough, was a line of beautiful women passing in and then out of that apartment. She shut her eyes against the vision; she did not want to know, did not want to see.

  He sensed her hesitation and let go of her, as if he didn't want to be found guilty of applying undue pressure. But his voice was low and urgent as he said, "It's going to happen. Sooner or later it's going to happen."

  Sooner. She wanted it to happen sooner. "But I won't be able to stay long," she said in a soft wail. "Susy—"

  With a hoarse laugh he said, "I'll take what I can get. If you only—"

  Headlights from a car turning into the circular drive flashed across them, bathing them in a ghostly white light that
blinded Liz and drew a swift curse from Jack.

  The car pulled alongside, and Pete, the yard foreman, rolled down the window. "Bad news, Jack," he said glumly. "Do you want to go inside for it?"

  The transformation in Jack was instantaneous. The hot-blooded lover vaporized and in his place appeared a two-hundred-pound businessman. He turned to Liz and said in a distant, formal voice, "If you don't mind waiting a few minutes, I'll make out that check for you."

  Uncertain what signal he was sending, Liz agreed to come into the house with them. Jack left her in the smaller of a pair of reception rooms on the first floor, then took Pete down the paneled hall into the Great Room. Liz heard the double doors close, and that was all. She took it as a good sign that she couldn't hear Jack shouting, as she had the first time she was in the house.

  She tiptoed out to the hall to listen more attentively for the sound of anger. It was quiet — ominously so, she now thought. Her imagination was all over the map of possibilities. More dirty tricks? Worse? Why was it that every time she found herself in Jack's arms, something got in the way? Were they violating some divine order? Was it ordained somewhere that she could only mate with the middle of the middle class? Damn it!

  She took a few steps farther down the eerily quiet, dimly lit hall. The longcase clock — Christopher Eastman's clock — chose that moment to signal the half-hour with a deep, resonant bong, sending her leaping out of her skin. Feeling snoopy and guilty she went back to the reception room to wait for Jack.

  The sound of the chime was still echoing in her ears when Liz was overwhelmed by the vivid memory of crawling, swarming ants. Shuddering, she closed her eyes, but still she saw them: horrid things, everywhere! Irrationally convinced that some of them had gotten inside her dress, she shook out the fabric of her hem, then began brushing her bare arms violently, feeling creeping things she could not see.

  By the time Jack returned, Liz had turned on every lamp in the room and was standing in the one place from which she could keep watch on all three windows and the door. For ants? For the ghost of Christopher Eastman? She didn't know, and she hardly cared. All she wanted was to get out of there.

  "Good lord — what's this?" Jack said, taking hold of one of her arms. It was covered in self-inflicted welts from her repeated efforts to brush away the sensation of crawling ants.

  She stared at her arm, aghast at what she'd done. "I don't know," she mumbled. "Poison ivy?"

  "We don't have poison ivy," he said flatly.

  "I know," she said, reversing herself. "But I felt ... itchy."

  "An allergic reaction to the food?"

  "Oh my god — I forgot about food poisoning."

  "Food allergy, I said."

  "You're all right?" she asked with sudden concern. "You don't look good."

  "Nothing to do with the food, I assure you," he said caustically, and then more gently, "You'd better get some calamine lotion on that arm." He went to the one open window, shut and locked it, then said with bitter resolve, "I'm afraid I have to leave. The boat that Pete and Bobby launched this afternoon sank."

  "Sank!"

  "Yeah. Sank," he said, his eyes flashing. "They found a couple of hoses pulled off the head and engine intakes — and the rest, as they like to say, is history. Pete accepts all the blame, of course, but I trust him to have checked the through-hulls when they launched the boat. He always does."

  Liz didn't understand all the boat jargon, but the word sank seemed perfectly clear. "No one noticed it happen?"

  "The boat didn't go down completely — just enough to take out the engines, the electronics, the wiring and the furnishings," he said ironically. "Just enough to slap us with an insurance claim and maybe an emotional-distress suit. Just enough to make sure our premiums go sky high."

  "How did Pete and Bobby manage to find out before you did?" Liz thought to ask.

  "Netta took the call and told my father, who decided not to say anything; apparently no one wanted to spoil the picnic."

  "And the owner?"

  "—is furious. Can you blame him? Christ, one or two more stunts like this, and the yard'll be a joke up and down the whole damned coast."

  His sentiments matched Liz's earlier feelings so closely that she decided to tell him about the ant episode.

  It came out in a confusing, nervous jumble. When she was finished, she said, "I wasn't sure whether it was you or me that someone was trying to sabotage; but now it seems obvious that the prank was aimed at you."

  If there was a connection, Jack certainly wasn't making it.

  He was looking at her as if she'd just stepped out of a space ship. "So you think whoever sank the boat rushed back and — what? Filled our best serving bowl with ants?"

  Liz stiffened and said, "I didn't put it that way. I said someone put sticky candy in the bowl and left it somewhere to attract ants before he — or she — put the bowl on the table. And anyway," she added, rallying, "you're the one who thinks your father's being duped by the mob."

  Jack's laugh was harsh and ironic. "And if I'm right, they sure as hell aren't going to be rifling through the Meissen in the middle of a picnic. Give them a little credit, will you? Ants?"

  "Fine," she said, hurt by Jack's condescending manner. She folded her arms defensively across her chest. "It was just a theory. Maybe you're right. Maybe the ants were intended to discredit me after all — in which case, I'd love to see a list of your suspects. Maybe I'll be able to figure out who's so determined to sink my career."

  "Your career! For God's sake — it was a picnic! A pleasant afternoon; an amusing diversion! I'm talking about the fate of a hundred-year-old shipyard! Never mind its historic significance. Never mind the Eastman reputation. I have sixty-three employees, most of them with families to support, who're counting on me to stay in business. Maybe we're not as big a deal as AT&T — but goddammit, we're a damned sight more critical to society than a — a party planner!"

  His vehemence was like a pan of ice-cold water over her. Shocked — nd practically sputtering with rage — she began to say something; stopped; started; stopped; and then, with a final, furious, wordless gasp, swung around a hundred and eighty degrees and stormed out of the room.

  Chapter 14

  The signal cannon at the Ida Lewis Yacht Club boomed across the harbor and up the hill to Liz's bedroom, rousing her from a sleep as profound as a state of coma: eight A.M. She squinted at her little quartz clock. Damn. The cannon was right.

  She had to drag herself out of bed despite having slept solidly. It was catching up with her, she realized: all the unsolved mysteries — little, big, and in between — were having a cumulative effect. Either that, or being in love without sex was exhausting. Whatever the reason, Liz went through her morning routine like a zombie, grateful that Susy was even more tired from the picnic than she was, and still in bed.

  Why him? How could she fall for someone who considered her frivolous? For that matter, how could he — the owner of a yacht yard, for Pete's sake — consider her frivolous? If the society column in the Daily News was anywhere near the mark, Jack Eastman hadn't exactly made a career out of dating Nobel prize winners. What a self-important, condescending ... pig the man was.

  She brushed her teeth with vicious abandon and spat out the toothpaste the way she would've liked to do to the memory of his kisses. Then she took a cold, hard look at herself in the mirror.

  Thirty-six, mother of one, no pedigree, no fortune, no university, no fertility and — unless she had her taste buds removed and a pretty impressive makeover done — no possible hope of being either pencil-thin or blond and blue-eyed. She frowned, then smiled, then squinted at the mirror, tipping her chin this way and that. Nope: a Bellevue Wasp, she was not. Maybe if she sat behind the wheel of a Mercedes convertible? Would that make her eyes less brown, add inches to her height?

  Nope.

  She turned away from her image, blushing at the vanity of her dissatisfaction. This was absurd. Until she moved here — until she met him �
� she had been perfectly happy with how she looked and what she did. When Liz was a teenager, her mother had summed her up very well: her legs were straight, and she'd never robbed a bank. What more, Liz wondered wryly, could any man ask for?

  ****

  That afternoon Liz asked her mother why she'd never been encouraged to go to college.

  Patricia Pinhel, happy in her garden, filled the plastic sprinkling can for Susy, then adjusted the hose flow to "gentle shower" and hung the nozzle over a clump of thirsty pink gayfeather. "I don't know," she said, thinking back. "I suppose because you were the girl. Girls get married and have babies. Then what happens to all that schooling? Down the drain. Whereas with your brothers, everyone realized they'd have to be the breadwinners."

  "As opposed to me, of course."

  Her mother shrugged her shoulders. "Who knew? Besides, look how far you've come without one. Speaking of which: how was your medieval picnic?"

  "Not medieval, Mom. Renaissance."

  "Renaissance, schmenaissance," said her mother. "Did everyone have a good time is the important thing."

  Liz took a pair of old barber shears out of her mother's tool basket and began snipping the tiny faded yellow stars in a mound of threadleaf coreopsis. "It sure seemed like it," she said. "In fact, Francie — she was the caterer — called me this morning to ask whether I can do the same theme for a garden party at Windrise in September."

  "Windrise! Is that the one with the gargoyles? Around the corner from the Breakers? Oh, Lizzie! Just what you wanted, then: to design parties for those kind of people!"

  "Yeah. Yippee," Liz said, snipping away.

  "Now what's wrong? Didn't he pay you again?"

  "Not at all. His housekeeper brought over the check with a big fat bonus first thing today. It's just that ... I don't know ... I thought it would be more—" She snipped off an entire stem by accident. "Fun."

  "Fun! It's a job, Lizzie. It's not supposed to be fun," said her mother. "Do you think your father had fun being gardener to Mrs. Drake all those years? And her the type who wasn't satisfied with anything or anyone a day in her life? But he stuck it out, and he bit his tongue, and she ended up remembering him a bit in her will, which is about the best he could hope for. He didn't go into work every day expecting to have fun. And it helped that he wasn't above walking the dog or doing a dump run when Mrs. Drake needed it. My point being, it would never have done for your father to put on airs."