Footsteps echoed down the cavernous corridor, and everybody in the room looked up expectantly at the tall, perversely good-looking man who paused in the doorway. At sight of him, Casey’s heart momentarily stopped, and she saw her own surprise mirrored in those blue eyes. So Rob hadn’t told him she would be here, either. She turned accusing eyes on Rob, but he had scrambled to his feet and was pumping Danny’s hand. “I was afraid you wouldn’t make it,” he said. Danny braced a shoulder against the doorjamb and rocked on the balls of his feet until Rob said, “Sit down, man. It may be a while.”
With obvious reluctance, Danny took the only empty seat in the room, the one next to his wife. Not looking at her, he said, “Hi.”
Casey crossed her arms and sat up straighter on the bench. “Hi.”
His gray hooded sweatshirt was rain-spotted. His hood had fallen, and beads of moisture clung to his hair. He slumped, stretching those long legs out halfway across the room. He was wearing new shoes. Three months ago, he’d been wearing two-year-old Adidas with holes in both soles. It wasn’t fair that he should look this good when she’d been so miserable.
The judge’s door opened, and the clerk motioned the Hispanic couple inside. “One down, one to go,” Rob said, and Nancy smiled nervously. Crammed together as they were, thigh to thigh, Casey could feel the heat from Danny’s body, could smell that indescribable scent that was Danny. It had always clung to his clothes, his hair, his bedding.
“I think I need a cup of coffee,” she said with false brightness. “Anybody else want one?”
“I’ll come with you,” Danny said. “I saw vending machines on my way in.”
Casey tried to pretend that walking down the corridor in step with her estranged husband wasn’t an earth-shattering experience. She cleared her throat. “I suppose,” she said, “he’s told you the whole story.”
“Yes.”
“This is the craziest thing he’s ever done. He’ll end up with a broken heart.”
“Probably.”
At the canteen door she reached for her purse, but Danny was quicker. He dropped a quarter into the vending machine and pushed a couple of buttons, and a paper cup dropped into place. They watched as hot coffee trickled into it. “I see you haven’t forgotten how I take my coffee,” she said.
“Jesus Christ, Casey, it’s only been three months.”
“Really? I’ve lost track. But I must say that bachelorhood seems to agree with you, darling. I can’t remember when I’ve seen you looking this good.”
He handed her the cup of coffee and dropped a second quarter into the machine. “If we spoil this for Rob, he’ll never forgive us.” Danny opened the sliding door and removed his cup. “Let’s try to be civilized, for his sake. We can bicker on our own time.”
Ashamed, she returned with him to the anteroom. The wait seemed interminable before the clerk motioned them into the judge’s chambers. The ceremony was brief and impersonal, and Casey tried to look anywhere but at Danny as the judge read the familiar words in a lifeless monotone. But her eyes kept being drawn back to those blue eyes fixed so intently on her face. It was inevitable, the memory of another municipal building, another couple, another wedding. Heedless of the bride and groom, they gazed at each other in mute agony until Rob cleared his throat and said, “Dan? The ring?”
Danny tore his eyes away from his wife’s face and dug in his pocket for the plain gold band, and Casey kept her eyes where they belonged, on the bride and groom, as Rob placed the ring on Nancy’s finger.
Inexplicably, when the judge pronounced them husband and wife, Casey’s eyes filled with tears. It was an unforgivable sin; she never cried at weddings. She searched blindly in her purse for a tissue, and Danny discreetly tucked a white cotton handkerchief into her hand. The intimacy of that husbandly gesture nearly did her in. As Danny congratulated the bride and groom, Casey hid behind him, struggling to regain her composure. By the time her turn came, she was smiling as she gave Rob, and then Nancy, a brisk hug. “Be happy,” she said. “Take care of each other.”
She had baked a cake, and Danny had bought a cheap bottle of champagne, and they celebrated back at the apartment. It was the most peculiar wedding reception she’d ever attended. The bride and groom were terrified of what would happen in the morning when they presented her parents with a fait accompli. The best man and matron of honor treated each other with a formal courtesy bordering on frigidity, and they were all a little relieved to call an end to the celebration.
Amid a flurry of hugs and congratulations, Casey saw the newlyweds off for their wedding night at a downtown hotel, fully expecting to usher Danny out the door directly behind them. Instead, she found him at the kitchen sink, elbow-deep in soap suds. “I’ll wash,” he said. “You dry.” And although she knew it was a mistake, she couldn’t summon the strength to ask him to leave.
So they worked together in silence, vibrations ricocheting off the walls and ceiling of the room that seemed to have shrunk to half its size. Because she couldn’t stand the silence, and because in spite of herself she cared, she asked, “Are you still working at Tony’s?”
He rinsed a fistful of silverware and handed it to her. “Yeah.”
“Any new gigs?”
“Nothing much. I’ve been driving a cab to put food in my belly.”
She busied herself drying the silverware. Behind her, Danny said, “What do you want to do with this leftover cake?”
“Put plastic wrap over it and refrigerate it. Second cupboard to the left of the sink.”
“I know where you keep it.”
Of course. For a moment, she’d forgotten. While he wrapped the cake, she washed the stove and the table, rinsed out the sink. Danny refilled their wine glasses with the last of the champagne. “We might as well drink it,” he said. “I believe in getting my money’s worth out of things.” He tossed the bottle in the trash, then held up his glass. “Cheers.”
“Since we both already know what a sham marriage is,” she said, “I can’t imagine why you’d want to drink to anything.”
He slammed down his glass so hard the champagne sloshed over the side. “So that’s it? You’re planning to spend the rest of your life punishing me?”
“You hurt me, Danny. Do you have any idea how much?”
“Not enough to justify your Old Testament justice. One wrong move and I’m a pillar of salt, with no chance for redemption.”
“I’m so sorry, darling, that I can’t be more sympathetic to your plight.”
“What do you want me to do? Get down on my knees and grovel?”
“Groveling,” she said, “won’t change a thing.”
“Christ, no. The dirty deed is already done, isn’t it? I can’t take it back, so you’re going to make me suffer every ounce of punishment you can conjure up.”
“What about me? What about my feelings? What about the baby I lost?”
“It was my baby, too!”
“One you never wanted!”
“No! One I never even knew about! One I had to hear about from the mouth of my best friend!”
She crossed her arms. “I think,” she said coldly, “that it’s time for you to leave.”
“You’re throwing me out for speaking the truth?”
“Leave me alone. I’ve suffered enough.”
“Bullshit. You don’t know what suffering is until you see the woman you love bleeding to death on a hospital gurney, and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do except sit and pray to a God you didn’t think you even believed in any more!”
Tears stung her eyelids. “What do you want, Danny? A purple heart?”
“No, goddamn it!” he bellowed. “I want to come home!”
She stared at him in stupefied silence as he slumped onto a chair and buried his face in his hands. “I want to come home,” he said.
In the silence, the kitchen clocked ticked. “I trusted you,” she said. “I let myself be vulnerable, because I had absolute faith in you. And you let me down, Danny.”
“I know I screwed up. All I’m asking for is a second chance.”
“And then a third, and a fourth?”
“It’s not like that. Damn it, I can’t live any longer without you. Every night, in bed, in the dark, I see you.”
She closed her eyes. “Don’t,” she whispered.
“And I remember how soft your skin feels. And how your hair smells like violets. And how you look, lying naked on rumpled sheets—”
“Stop it!”
“—and the way you tremble and cry when I’m inside you—”
“I don’t want to hear any more!”
“And I can’t believe we could let something this good get away.” He rose abruptly and picked up his jacket. “I’ve had my say. You know where to find me.”
And he was gone. Devastated, she slid silently to the floor, wrapped her arms around her knees, and let the pain swallow her up.
***
It was nearly midnight when she called him. In the background, she could hear the commotion of a busy bar on a Saturday night: thudding music, well-oiled laughter, the clink of glass on glass. And then his voice, liquid velvet. And a rock-hard fist tightened up in her belly. “Hi,” she said.
Silence. Then, “Hold on a minute.” The phone was jostled and clunked, and then the background noise receded. “I’m hiding in the john,” he said. “It’s quieter in here.”
“I’ve done a lot of thinking,” she said. “And I’ve decided I want you to come home.”
At his end, there was a sharp intake of breath.
“I’m willing to try to put this behind us,” she said. “I don’t know how it will turn out. It’s going to take me some time to get over what’s happened. I’m not even sure I can.” She paused. “But I’m willing to try. It’s a start.”
“That’s all I’m asking for.”
“But if anything like this ever happens again, that’ll be it, Danny. There won’t be any third or fourth chances. I won’t put myself through this again.”
“You have my word,” he said.
She hesitated. Bit her lip. “How soon can you get off work?”
“I can be there in an hour.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
It took him twenty-eight minutes. When she opened the door, they drank each other in silently. He set down his guitar and abandoned his bag of clothes, and in a mutual move they came together, clinging like drowning souls. He kicked the door shut and lifted her off her feet, and she wound her legs around him and let him carry her. He banged his shin on the coffee table and cursed, and Casey snaked fingers through his hair and planted hungry kisses on his chin, his jaw, his ear. Oblivious to everything but each other, they fell onto the couch, his weight pinning her beneath him, their kisses hot and frantic. Weightless, boneless with desire, she whispered a single, breathy word. “Hurry.”
He tugged off her sweatshirt and tossed it, tore frantically at her pants, managed to pull first one leg free and then the other. She unzipped his jeans and peeled them back over his buttocks, and then he was inside her, and she no longer knew her own name. Legs splayed like a trollop, she rode him, oblivious to any reality beyond the few inches of rock-hard flesh that impaled her. Fluid, liquid, boneless, she rolled beneath him in mindless rapture.
The climax slammed into her like a freight train. She cried out, and a ragged sob tore from his throat as she took him with her over the edge. Spent and gasping and shuddering, they lay together in a sweaty tangle. He was still wearing his coat. His shoes. “You’re mine,” she gasped. “Do you understand that? If you ever touch another woman, ever again—” She paused, frantically gulped in air. “I’ll kill you. Do you hear me, Danny? I’ll tear out your heart and serve it for dinner.”
He didn’t answer. He kicked off his shoes, wriggled out of his pants. Pulled the afghan from the back of the couch and, coat and all, rolled them both in it. “If you ever leave me,” he said, “I’ll come after you.”
“I wouldn’t,” she said. “Never—” He kissed her, hard. “Never, ever.” His kiss gentled, soothed, tore at her soul. “Danny,” she whispered. “Oh, Danny.”
Now that the dragons of frantic longing had been appeased, they made love again, properly this time, sans shoes or coat and in their own bed. Afterward, lying in his arms, she asked, “With her, was it as good as it is with me?”
“Christ, Casey, it’s over with. Don’t stir it up.”
“I have to know.”
“It was just sex. Period.”
“And with me...is it ever just sex?”
He lifted his head and looked at her. “I can’t believe you’d ask that. You’re my whole goddamn life. Haven’t you figured it out by now?”
“Promise me we’ll be together always.”
He kissed her forehead. “We’ll be together,” he said, “always.”
After a time, she said, “Danny?”
“Hmm?”
“If anything ever happened to me, would you marry again?”
Sleepily, he said, “Is this a trick question?”
“I’m serious.” She clasped her hands together behind her head and stared up at the dark ceiling. “If I died, would you get married again?”
“If you died,” he said darkly, “I’d die with you.”
“I’d want you to, you know.”
“Die with you?”
“No, fool. Get married again.”
He rolled over and wrapped an arm around her. “What about you?” he said. “Would you get married again?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine living with someone else. Sleeping beside someone else. Sleeping with someone else.”
“I think you would,” he said. “Marriage is something you do well.”
“And you?”
“I believe I’ve already illustrated just how well I do marriage.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, “you seem to do quite well at some aspects of it.”
“Oh?” He drew her closer. “And just which aspects might those be?”
She nibbled gently at the tendon that ran from his ear to his shoulder. “You’re a big boy,” she said. “You figure it out.”
***
Outside the door to the Chens’ twentieth-floor apartment, Rob tugged self-consciously at the borrowed tie and adjusted the suit coat that was two sizes too big. “Are you sure I look okay?” he said for the tenth time.
“You look fine,” Nancy said.
He raised her chin and gently kissed her lips. “Ready?” he said.
“Ready.”
She left him waiting in the foyer while she rounded up her parents. The place smelled like sandalwood, and through the entryway he could see a living room that must have been forty feet long. Its furnishings were sleek, modern, elegant. At the far end, the New York City skyline rose beyond a wall of glass. The hum of a vacuum cleaner echoed from a distant room. Somehow, he doubted that it was Nancy’s mother who was operating it.
She returned silently, her footsteps absorbed by thick carpeting. “I have told my parents that we wish to speak with them,” she said. “They are waiting for us in my father’s den.”
He followed her through a maze of rooms to a small study off the kitchen. The bookshelves were lined with somber-looking tomes in Chinese and English. Nancy’s parents sat side by side on a beige love seat, her mother tiny, ageless, attractive in peach silk and pearls, her father thin and graying, looking dapper in a flawless white shirt and a suit that made Rob’s look like he’d picked it out of a Salvation Army bin. They sat stiffly, eyeing him with cool courtesy.
“Mother, Father,” Nancy said, “this is Rob MacKenzie.”
Mrs. Chen’s face remained wooden as he shook her dry hand. Dr. Chen’s clasp was bony and frail. “Mr. MacKenzie,” he said, in heavily accented English, “I understand you are a friend of my daughter’s. What is it you wish to speak to us about?”
He looked at Nancy. She bit her lip, then nodded. “Dr. Chen, Mrs. Chen,” he said. “Nancy and I�
�” He paused, aware of the poorly hidden hostility on their faces. “We were married yesterday.”
The starched politeness on their faces slowly turned to horrified comprehension. Nancy’s mother began to babble hysterically in Chinese, her voice rising and falling, the words incomprehensible to him but her meaning painfully clear. “Use English, please, Mother,” Nancy said. “My husband does not speak Chinese.”
“Why have you done this?” her mother shrieked. “Is this how an obedient daughter pays back her parents?”
“You insisted that I marry Kim,” Nancy said. “You gave me no choice.”
“And you would prefer this—” Mrs. Chen looked at Rob with venom in her eyes. “—this stranger, to one of your own kind?”
“He is a man, I am a woman. Does that not make us the same kind?”
“What do you know about him?” her mother demanded.
“I know that he is a good man.” Nancy reached out a hand to Rob and he squeezed it, hard. “I know that I love him.”
“Love!” her mother spat out. “Look at him! His clothes are cheap and they fit poorly, his hair is too long, his shoes are worn out. You believe he loves you? Fool! What he loves is your money!”
“Excuse me,” Rob said, “but I’d like to clear something up. I don’t give a damn about your money, Mrs. Chen. I love your daughter. All that matters to me is seeing her happy.”
“And you think she will be happy, living in poverty with you?”
He squared his jaw. “I know I’m probably a big disappointment as a son-in-law,” he said, “but I’m hoping, for Nancy’s sake, that you’ll accept her decision to marry me.”
“Nancy is a foolish child,” her mother said, “and I will never accept you as my son-in-law.” She turned on Nancy. “Have you thought about your children? They will be neither one race nor the other. Are you prepared to deal with that? Are you prepared to deal with the way people will look at you, walking down the street together?”
“Mother, we love each other. What is so wrong about that?”
Coming Home (Jackson Falls Series) Page 15
