by Ann Macela
Could he stand waiting? He already had a hurt in his center that nothing alleviated. “It’s not my fault,” he said to his chest, but nothing happened.
“Hell.” He ran his fingers through his hair. He had to do something or he would go crazier than Francie thought he was.
He picked up the phone and dialed.
“Hello?”
“Daria, it’s me. Can I come over? I need to talk to you and Bent. It’s about Francie.”
His sister sounded puzzled, but mercifully she didn’t question him. “Sure, come on.”
“Thanks. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He hung up and headed out the door.
Bent answered the doorbell. “Hi,” his tall, auburn-haired brother-in-law said as he looked Clay up and down. “What’s up? You look like what Zorro drags in.”
“Thanks a lot,” Clay replied as he stepped into the house.
“Problems on the soul-mate front?” Bent asked as he closed the door. “I can relate to that.”
Clay followed Bent into the kitchen, where the cats were lounging on a windowsill and Daria was taking a coffee cake out of the oven. “Oh, my,” she said after she inspected her older brother.
“Don’t say it,” Clay interrupted. “I look awful, or so Bent already informed me.”
“Sit down. Did you have any breakfast?” When he shook his head, she said, “You’ll feel better with some food in you. Bent, why don’t you pour us some coffee?” She cut the cake and served it.
The cake with its cinnamon and pecans tasted good, and Clay’s appetite revived as he ate. He hadn’t had anything since last night, but he couldn’t remember what he had eaten then. A sandwich, maybe. Yeah, he’d fixed himself a sandwich around eight, after the second or third call to Francie. It had tasted like cardboard. He finished off his piece of cake and took a big gulp of coffee.
Daria and Bent put down their cups and gave him inquiring looks.
“I told Francie yesterday about magic, practitioners, soul mates, everything,” he announced, the words like bitter gall in his mouth. “She didn’t believe me.”
“Oh, damn,” Bent said. “What’d she do?”
“Ran out of the house like the banshees of hell were after her. I followed her home, but she wouldn’t let me in the door, and she won’t pick up the phone, either yesterday or today. What’s the matter with the woman? She’s my soul mate. She’s not supposed to act this way.” He couldn’t bring himself to look either Daria or Bent in the eye. He’d failed, and he hated failing at anything, much less admitting it to anyone.
“Take it easy, Clay,” Daria said, putting a hand on his arm. “Let’s go back over what you said. Maybe she just didn’t understand.”
“Oh, she understood all right. Said magic doesn’t exist. Accused me of stringing her a line.”
“Tell us what you said. What an explanation sounds like to a man is not always the same as it is to a woman,” Daria replied.
“She’s got a point,” Bent put in. “Remember, I said something along those lines to you earlier.”
“Yeah, right, okay.” He repeated his “script”: practitioners do magic; they’re not different from other people; they have different talents. Soul mates always found each other, and the imperative bound them together the first time they made love. The sexual attraction was extremely powerful.
“Then I asked her to be my soul mate,” he concluded. He couldn’t bring himself to mention he’d been on his knees when he asked her; that was too embarrassing, especially given her reaction.
“What did she say?” Daria asked.
“She told me there was no such thing as magic, and I’d been playing too many fantasy computer games. I cast a light ball right in front of her nose, and she accused me of being a Vegas magician. She wouldn’t give me a chance to demonstrate on the computer. Then she decided the soul-mate imperative was just a big line to get her into bed. She compared me to some guy named Walt. And, to put the star on top of the wizard’s hat, she told me I’d leave her or betray her as soon as I got what I wanted.” He heard himself almost yelling as he said the last sentence, and he made himself stop. He collapsed back in his chair. “And then she ran out.”
“You told her this all at once,” Daria said. “Did she ask any questions?”
His sister had that intent look on her face she used when she was analyzing personnel interactions for a client. Good, he had been right to come over. She could get to the bottom of this if anybody could. “Yes, I laid it all out,” he answered. “Just about the way Mother and Dad did for Bent, only shorter.”
He took a gulp of coffee. He wasn’t going to admit how nervous he had been. “I thought it better to tell her everything, including the part about soul mates, before she asked any questions.” He shrugged. “Give her the big picture. Like I do when I’m making a presentation to a client. Let her understand how it all fits together so she could see all the ramifications. She hates what she calls ‘deception,’ and I didn’t want her to get the idea I wasn’t telling her all of the truth.”
Daria and Bent looked at each other, one of those husband-and-wife glances that practically read each other’s minds. Clay began to have feelings of trepidation. Had he done something wrong? He couldn’t see how he could have. But what was he supposed to have done?
“Let’s look at this from another angle—that of our first nonpractitioner,” Daria said, turning to her husband. “Bent, how would you have felt if we had told you everything that day, instead of concentrating on the existence of practitioners and leaving soul mates for later?”
Bent rose from the table and walked over to look out a window, put his hands in his pockets, and rocked back and forth on his heels, his usual stance when thinking hard. After a minute, he turned around. “I think I would have been totally overwhelmed. Learning you all could do magic and then seeing spells happen in front of me were mind-boggling enough. It took me several days to get used to the idea. If you had sprung soul mates on me on top of that, well, I don’t know. Remember, when you did tell me about them, it threw me for an even bigger loop.”
He grinned as he sat back down and looked at Clay. “You know, I fought the imperative, and it was the damn thing’s own fault because, from what we can figure, it kept me from making a commitment to any woman before I met Daria. I, of course, had decided that getting seriously involved just led to my pain and suffering and was determined to never attempt it again. It took me a couple of days to come to terms with the idea, realize Daria was the best thing that ever happened to me, imperative or not, and I didn’t want to lose her. My waffling did confuse the hell out of Daria, and it pissed off Lolita so much she bit me. But that was my reaction. In Francie’s case, you may have another type of problem.”
“I think you’re right, Bent,” Daria said. “Francie doesn’t fear commitment if she’s worried about your leaving, Clay. She wants it. The main problem from my point of view is that she isn’t receptive to the idea of magic. I assume she likes to play those fantasy computer games the way you do, or she reads sci-fi and fantasy, so it’s not like she’s unfamiliar with the fictional version. Clay, did she give you any indication before your talk as to how she viewed the subject of the real stuff ?”
Clay winced in remembrance. “Yeah, she did. I brought up the subject, casually, as an abstract, and she said she didn’t believe in it at all. Something about how she was ‘grounded in the real world,’ whatever that means.”
“Uh-oh.” Bent shook his head.
“Yeah, well, that’s what she threw back at me at first. Then she did a one-eighty and was worried that you, Daria, might have cast a spell on her in our first meeting. I told her she couldn’t have it both ways, no magic one minute and a spell cast on her the next.”
All the disappointment of the previous day came back to him, and he flapped his arms in frustration. “She didn’t answer, but went off on another tangent about soul mates. Said it was all ‘rigmarole.’ Said the only purpose of my story was to get her int
o bed. I had ‘sex on the brain.’ Acted like she hadn’t heard the part about commitment.”
The more he thought about her rejection, the angrier he was getting. He folded his arms across his chest to regain his control. He’d like to hit something, and he knew exactly what, and it wasn’t Francie. “And to compare me to this ‘Walt’ character! And to claim I’d leave her! Or cheat on her! What a load of shit!”
“Clay,” Daria said, “let’s take this apart, one piece at a time. First, are you sure she’s your soul mate?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I have all the symptoms Mother and Dad told us about, and the ones you and Bent mentioned. Outside of this fiasco, we think the same way, have the same likes and dislikes, all that stuff. Hell, she even plays basketball.” He took a deep breath, willing himself to calm down. “Daria, this isn’t some infatuation. It’s not just lust. I’ve never felt this way about a woman before. We just . . . Well, never mind. Leave it at that.” He wasn’t going to tell his sister about their practically setting fire to the place, they were so hot together.
“Okay. You’re soul mates, it’s a given.” She leaned back in her chair and thought for a few seconds. “That takes us to Walt. It sounds like you stirred up an old hurtful episode involving this man. He must have treated her very badly, and she’s still carrying the baggage from the old relationship, so she’s distrustful of any man, not just you.”
“Wonderful.” Clay couldn’t help snarling the word.
“Did she give you any indication what he’d done?” Bent asked.
“I got the impression he left her, but I may not be correct. She used the word betray in there somewhere,” Clay said. “Whatever it was, I think it drove her into those baggy clothes and those glasses she doesn’t need, and she’s been there ever since.”
“What he actually did may not matter if she’s generalized the event to encompass all men,” Daria said. “What about love? Did you say anything about love, about how soul mates love each other?”
“No.” He’d planned on saying the words just after she said yes to being his soul mate.
“No?” Daria’s eyebrows almost hit her hairline. Bent looked skyward and shook his head slowly.
“You didn’t tell her you love her.” Daria made it a statement, not a question.
“She didn’t give me the chance!”
“Clay, a woman likes—phooey, she needs to hear the words.” Her tone implied he was feebleminded.
“I know. But she kept yelling about all this other stuff and . . . Hell!” He ran his hand through his hair, then pointed his finger at his sister. “Look, it wouldn’t have mattered what I said after she threw all her weird ideas at me. I’m telling you that she wasn’t listening to anything I said. Are you?”
What was it with women? Didn’t any of them listen? Why had he thought Daria would be any different or that she could explain Francie? He wasn’t going to let Daria turn it around so everything became his fault. He was doing the best he could, damn it. Francie was his soul mate, for crying out loud. He bent over the table, glowering at Daria, who leaned toward him and glared right back.
She opened her mouth to answer, but Bent intervened, gesturing for a time-out. “Wait. Hold on, you two. Let’s get back to the origin of the problem, shall we?”
Clay’s respect for his brother-in-law went up a notch. Nobody but their parents would have stepped between him and Daria when they were arguing, not even Glori. “Yeah, you’re right.” He made a conscious effort to relax his tense body and sat back in his chair.
“Okay,” Daria agreed after she took a deep breath. “Some incident—probably involving this Walt—caused her to distrust men, but I don’t think distrust will be a problem, once we solve the main issues. She has to accept the existence of magic and practitioners first. If she does, then being soul mates is easy to believe, especially with the imperative driving her toward you. Once she agrees about being your soul mate, the distrust, at least of you, should vanish, I would say. One step follows the other, logically, that is.”
“Assuming she will think logically,” Clay grumbled. “I haven’t seen much evidence of that.”
“Why did you try to explain practitioners by yourself, Clay?” Bent asked. “If Francie had already said she didn’t believe in the possibility of magic’s existence, and if your talents are like Daria’s, not immediately obvious, I would have thought you’d bring the whole family in, the way Daria did with me.”
Clay stood up and paced around the room. Trust his CEO brother-in-law to ask the question he didn’t particularly want to answer. His decision to go it alone now looked like the absolutely wrong one. Unfortunately, he had no response except honesty, and he had to unlock his clenched jaw before he could speak.
“Okay. All right. Because I thought I could do it all myself. Because I’m a total idiot! I thought once I showed her my computer skills, she’d have no choice but to believe me.” And come to his bed last night, although he didn’t say that. Instead he finished with, “But she didn’t give me the chance.”
He slumped back down in his chair and rubbed his suffering breastbone. “She just ran.” Damn, he sounded pathetic, even to himself.
“There is a bright side to this,” Bent said. “I can testify to the fact that her running won’t do her any good. The imperative will make her life miserable until she comes to terms with it and with you.”
“Yeah, but how long will it take?” A flicker of hope fluttered in his chest, but died at Daria’s next words.
“My intuition says it won’t be quick,” she said. “If, as we surmise, this Walt business triggered her apprehensions about you, I think she will need to settle that old ghost herself. As far as magic is concerned, would you like Glori and me to pay her a visit? We could throw on our illusions, and Glori knows more showy spells than Mother does. If she can’t convince Francie, there’s always Mother and Aunt Cassie.”
“No.” The idea of his two sisters, much less his mother and aunt, demonstrating spells for Francie scared Clay silly. She’d run so far he’d never find her. A visit from the family would have to be his last resort. He returned to his original idea: surely if he could talk to her, show her some programming on a “neutral” computer, it would do the trick. “Thanks, but not yet. I’d rather keep you two in reserve. The imperative convinced Bent. Maybe it’ll have the same effect on Francie.”
“Man, I hope so, for your sake,” Bent said.
Daria looked dubious, but smiled and patted him on the hand. “We’re here if you need us.”
“I thought this soul-mate process was supposed to be easy,” Clay complained. “Look at Mother and Dad. They didn’t have this kind of trouble.”
“Speaking of our parents . . .” Daria raised her eyebrows.
“No. Definitely not. Do not tell them anything about this.” Holy hell, his parents descending on Francie would send her right off the deep end. He thought of something else. “And do not tell Glori, either. I can’t take any of her teasing right now.”
“All right. I’ll cover for you. How’s your sting going? Any possibility it can help you with Francie?”
“No, she’s out of that, thank goodness.” Clay told them how the plans for trapping the hacker were progressing. When he was finished, he rose. “Thanks, both of you, for listening to me.”
“We didn’t do much,” Bent said as they walked to the door.
“You helped me clarify the situation,” Clay replied, realizing he told the truth. He did feel a little clearer in the head now.
“Give it time, big brother.” Daria gave him a hug. “If you want us to talk to Francie . . .”
“I’ll let you know.” He walked to his car and gave them a wave as he drove off. On the way home he remembered he might see Francie at basketball on Tuesday. He’d leave her alone until then, let the imperative chew on her for a while. She’d be softened up, and he should be able to talk to her at the Y. Maybe if they were in public, she’d hear him out.
He was her soul m
ate. She was his. He loved her. She loved him. He was certain about that.
Wasn’t he?
Damn right, he was.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The week had certainly not started well. On the way to her basketball league, Francie reviewed the past two days.
Monday had been bad enough.
“Are you all right?” Janet, the office mother hen, had asked with a worried look.
“Where are those great new outfits you’ve been wearing? This is so dull, it makes you look like a frump,” Sue, the office fashion plate, had opined, rubbing Francie’s sleeve between two fingers as though the material was shoddy.
Even Herb. “Look, I understand how difficult this has been for you, with your friend in it and all. If you need to take some time off, I think we have the hacker problem in hand,” he had suggested, taking her aside.
“You look like you’re coming down with a cold,” pregnant Peggy said as she offered her a cup of her “special” tea. “This has all sorts of vitamins and minerals in it.”
Francie accepted the tea, agreed about the cold, and gave everybody else vague answers as she wrapped her bulky brown sweater closer around her drab green dress and pushed her smudged glasses back up her nose.
At least the “cold” fib explained her red eyes and runny nose. Maybe she was catching something, the way her eyes kept tearing up. It didn’t, however, explain the pain in her middle. She’d have to make a doctor’s appointment soon.
Tuesday had been worse.
Those disturbing—and arousing—dreams of Clay had returned overnight, and she woke to tangled sheets, her usual morning sluggishness intensified to hurricane strength. The pain under her sternum had become a constant nothing could alleviate, neither antacids nor aspirin nor milk. Only her sense of duty and responsibility to her job drove her out of bed.
To wake herself up, she had chugged coffee until she was floating. Anything was better than sliding into a drowsy state where those damn dreams resurfaced and set her body to tingling, then aching. Luckily, someone had brought doughnuts to the regular Tuesday morning meeting, and the glazed pastry added another layer of protection.
