Hot Streak

CHAPTER 15

T he decibel level had been rising steadily since the cocktail hour at the class reunion began. Molly was smiling at one of Marge's facetious remarks about girls' field hockey. Years ago they had all agreed that field hockey was the pits, and their opinions were unaltered by time.

It was comfortable, genial, like old home week, back with the group that had shared every bit of whispered high school gossip. The five friends had kept in touch with the usual Christmas cards, birthday cards, and birth announcements, but this was the first time in ten years they'd all been together again.

In the course of the last two hours, all the pertinent information had been exchanged: who was married, divorced, remarried, moved, working, happy, unhappy, bored, ecstatic. Husbands and ex-husbands had been thoroughly dissected. With a relaxed sigh, Molly leaned back in an antiquated leather chair in the Moose Club's old-fashioned, blatantly masculine interior. Immune to the decorating fads of the last sixty years, the board had resisted change with a stalwart stubbornness that was somehow comforting, Molly decided, gazing at a room untroubled by the passage of time.

“Molly, do I have a piece of gossip for you,” Linda, whose tennis body had remained unchanged, said with a knowing lift of her brows.

“Don't keep me in suspense, then. You know how I adore gossip,” Molly said, resting her head against the timeworn leather that had seen three generations come and go.

“Carey Fersten came into town yesterday with his film crew.”

For a stark moment the noise, the people, the reunion, and her sense of reality were all suspended. Molly was in a vacuum of arrested motion, and she saw him as she had the last time almost ten years ago, two weeks before her wedding to Bart.

Carey was leaning against the carved column of Mrs. Larsen's front porch, the night was hot like tonight, Sweet William and phlox were in bloom, their fragrance as beautiful as his dark, accusing eyes. His pale hair, rough like a dog's coat, shimmered in the moonlight, and his tall, broad-shouldered form in an old polo shirt and worn riding pants was silhouetted against the moon's glow. He'd been detached, withdrawn, his face careful to show no emotion. When she'd asked him why he still had his riding boots on, had he been riding at night, he'd enigmatically said, “Riding clears my head. It's a distraction. And,” he'd added, “Tarrytown's wild at night. I love it.” Tarrytown had been a partially trained two-year-old then, untamed and unbridled like his master.

She remembered touching him on the shoulder, feeling his sweat-damp shirt and wondering how reckless the ride had been; but a moment later he'd pulled away and stood upright, no longer casually leaning against the pillar. “What are you going to do now?” she asked, wanting to say something so their time together wouldn't end, wanting to reach the cool, remote man who stood only a foot away from her but seemed to be a world away.

“Do?” he said in a mildly astonished way, as though she'd asked him to explain the theory of relativity.

“I mean… for the rest of the summer.”

“Oh.” He shrugged. “Ride, I guess. Finish my film, and-” He stopped abruptly, his black eyes burning through her like a flame.

She felt the scorching heat as she always did with Carey, but he seemed so far away. This was their last night together and, other than his heated glance, he was as distant as the moon shining down on them.

“And…” she prompted, not wanting him to stop talking because then it might be over.

“And,” he said so softly the words were almost lost in the tinseled night air, “I thought I'd give you what you came for.” Putting his hand out, he touched the creamy whiteness of her cheek, his thumb sliding slowly between her quivering lips. He gently massaged the lush softness of her mouth, then the pad of his thumb probed deeper, exerting a slight pressure on her teeth, slipping past them to the wet interior of her mouth.

She licked his thumb, and he drew in a sharp breath.

With a startling abruptness he withdrew his thumb and, taking her by the wrist, started across the porch to the stairway, not caring this time whether Mrs. Larsen saw him or not. Pulling her up the stairs in a rapid ascent, he pushed her in when they reached his room, slammed the door shut behind him, and locked it.

He left her standing in the center of the room and, without a word, methodically pulled off his riding boots and stripped off his shirt. With his hand on the zipper of his pants, he looked at her and said, “I don't plan on forgetting this night.”

A moment later he undressed her with swift efficiency and took her the first time standing right there in the middle of the room. Afterward, he carried her to his familiar bed and followed her down, his hard body impatient, as if he hadn't climaxed just moments earlier. For the first time since Vietnam he made love without reserve, because when the world was being blown away, nothing mattered.

They made love like two young animals-he, aggressively with a pent-up frustration, she, with her own devouring need. It was feverish: kisses and touching and plunging madness that left their mouths and bodies burning in the desperate wildness of their passion. It was bittersweet, hours long, and a lifetime too short.

And neither ever forgot it.

Much later, lying in his arms, she'd felt the quiet words against her hair. “I'll take you away.”

Twisting in his embrace, she looked up at him, her heartbeat suddenly rapid. “Where?” she asked, hearing at last the words, however vague, she'd been waiting all summer to hear. He'd said that he loved her, adored her, needed her, but never more. “Could we get married?” she asked, her eyes dark in the moonlit room. It was a woman's question to a man she loved beyond bearing.

“Married?” he blurted out, and she saw his startled look before he quickly recovered. “Sure,” he responded hastily in the next moment, “we'll get married.” He nodded once, a swift dip of his chin, swallowed, and said, “Sure. Good idea.”

And Molly's heart sank. He didn't want to. He hadn't meant that when he'd said, “I'll take you away.” Her mother's words came back to her, the ones she'd overheard long ago when Hazel Brewer was over for tea and they were talking about the old count and his son. “Boys like that marry their own kind,” her mother had pronounced. “And don't even stay married most of the time,” she'd added. “Look at the old count. He hasn't lived with his wife in years.”

Hazel had informed in a breathy voice of disclosure, “Ethel knows everything that goes on up there because her cleaning lady knows the count's stableboy-and she says that young boy is always getting letters and calls from princesses. Can you imagine? Princesses!”

“He'll marry one of them when he's done sowing his wild oats,” her mother had replied. “They never marry young. Why should they?”

Oh, God, why hadn't he responded differently? Molly sadly thought. “It's not a good idea,” she said suddenly, sitting up and moving away. Her heart ached when Carey didn't reach for her or disagree.

“If you want it, it's a fine idea,” he said quietly.

“You don't really want to, though.”

There was a short silence before Carey replied, “I've never thought of it before, that's all.” He shrugged. “I'm not opposed.”

The shrug was too casual, the words too negligent, like saying Cheez Whiz and Hi Hos are fine when you're used to caviar. Her temper flared at her humiliation and at all the differences in their lives, suddenly magnified. “Fuck you,” she snapped.

“Hey,” he said, sitting up. “What was that for?”

“For your damn undying declaration of devotion. For your information, Carey Fersten, I don't want to marry you!”

“Only fuck me, is that it?” The hot anger in her voice sparked his own quick temper and distress. “In between visits from your wonderful fiancй. Someone has to keep your hot little body satisfied when he can't.”

“And it might as well be you, right?”

“Why not? I've got time on my hands,” he drawled, then swore under his breath and said, “Oh, hell, come here. I don't want to fight.”

She shook her head and moved off the bed, afraid that she would lose control, throw herself into his arms, and make him marry her even if he didn't want to. She had some pride. And he had his rich man's world-a world in which she didn't belong. “I'd better go,” she whispered.

“Look, we'll get married. It's okay, really.”

“It wouldn't work, Carey.”

“Why not?”

“I don't really know you. You don't know me. Not like we should.”

“Bull.”

“We don't have anything in common…”

“Jesus God, you can talk something to death.”

“That's what I mean. You don't understand me at all.”

“And Bart does?”

“We grew up together.”

“Sounds boring.”

“It's a good basis for a marriage.”

“If you're trying to convince me, you're wasting your time.”

“Anyway, it's too late. I don't have the nerve to stop it even if I wanted to.”

“You mean you don't want to,” he replied sullenly.

“I don't know…” And she didn't. She was confused, too young to single-handedly resist the full weight of parental opposition, bear the burden of Bart's disappointment, and defy the overwhelming momentum of a small-town wedding only two weeks away. “You don't really want to get married, anyway,” she declared flatly.

“It's not that.” Carey dropped back on the pillows. “It's just kind of sudden,” he explained. “Give me a day or two to get used to the idea.”

“Or a year or two.”

“Look, don't get your temper up. I'm just telling you how I feel.”

“Fear.”

“Not exactly.”

“Thanks a lot.” Damn, everything was wrong. She wanted ardent vows of love, and he stopped cold when the word “marriage” was mentioned. “It was nice this summer,” she said, moving to pick up her clothes. “Let's leave it at that.”

“I don't want to.”

She held her blouse in her hands, and it shown white against her shadowed body. “What do you want?”

“I want you.”

She knew that. There'd never been any question of his wanting her. The only question was how much, and, weighed against her marriage plans, it appeared he didn't want her enough. “I really have to go,” she said with a small sigh, slipping her arms into her blouse sleeves.

“Are you going to marry him?”

“I don't know.”

“What do you mean you don't know.”

“I mean,” she said with soft resignation, “I have to. I can't back out now.”

“I'm going to throw up.” His brows were drawn together in a scowl.

“Your life is different.”

“Damn right.”

Why didn't he say he couldn't live without her? He hadn't even said he loved her tonight. Maybe her mother was right; Carey's kind played around, but didn't marry.

Why did she persist in this martyrdom? he wondered. If you didn't look out for yourself, who did? He'd never known of a stable marriage, so the notion of a prescription for successful matrimony, all her talk of mutual background as the basis for stability in a marriage, seemed utterly alien. There weren't any stable marriages.

“It's under the chair,” he said to her, pointing out the shoe she couldn't see. Molly had one sandal in her hand and looked lost. Her blouse was unbuttoned, her long legs bare, the partial curve of her bottom visible beneath the hem of her shirttails. When she twisted toward him, the delicate swell of one breast was exposed, as was the supple slope of her hip where it gently flared out from her narrow waist. A waist he could almost circle his fingers around. They had shared so much pleasure and sweetness this summer. “You're going through with it?” His voice was gruff.

She nodded, and his jaw stiffened. He lay motionless and silent in the rumpled bed while she dressed, watching her with dark inscrutable eyes, the room heavy with the odor of warm bodies and sperm. He was distant, so unlike the wildly passionate man who had made love to her so recently. He made her feel like a stranger.

And when she'd started to stumble over a clumsy adieu, her bottom lip trembling with sadness, he'd broken in and said, “Lots of luck,” half-meaning it because he loved her, half-sarcastic with anger.

All she heard was the anger.

“You'll have to unlock the door to get out,” he added in a lazy drawl, as if he were finally through with her now and she could leave.

The next morning Molly tried to talk to her mother after breakfast. She hadn't slept much, torn with doubts, aching with her loss, and she only abstractly listened to her mother's discussion of their scheduled dinner with the Coopers that evening. “Bart will be in town now until the wedding. Won't that be nice, dear? I know it's been hard on you with him gone at school all summer, but if he graduates early and steps into that wonderful internship… Well, what could be better?”

“Mom,” Molly hesitantly began, the words rehearsed a hundred different ways during the sleepless night hours, “did you ever wonder if you were doing the right thing marrying Dad?”

Her mother looked up from the latest change to her seating arrangements for the dinner reception after the wedding, a seating chart she'd been juggling since May. “Would you believe Aunt Mae refuses to be within fifty feet of Gloria Dahlstrom? And George doesn't speak to Harold Mitchel since he ran against him for mayor. Well… they talk if you count a few short phrases and air so thick you could cut it with a knife.” She sighed distractedly and set a small square of cardboard three spaces down the diagram in front of her. Looking up, as if noticing Molly for the first time, she said, “Aren't you gone yet?” She glanced at the clock. “It's almost eleven. You're usually on your way to the beach by now.”

Molly and Carey had spent most of the summer at his private lake, but since Molly couldn't tell her mother that, she'd ostensibly been off to the municipal beach every day. “Not today, Mom. I think it might rain.” Like it's raining on my life, she thought miserably.

“Those days at the beach have given you a beautiful tan, perfect with your wedding dress.”

The tan she'd gotten with Carey. Her mother would die if she knew that.

“Now what were you saying, dear? I heard something about marrying Dad?”

She'd lost her nerve. “Nothing, Mom. Forget it.”

“Honey, if there's something you want to talk about, tell me,” her mother gently insisted, taking note of her unnaturally subdued daughter. “You and I have always been able to discuss things.” They had, but it was trivial stuff, like tears over fights with friends or what to wear to a dance or how Mrs. Hansen was a bear over piano technique. This wasn't the same. This was earth-shakingly different.

Working up her courage again, Molly began, “Did you ever wonder if Daddy was the right man for you?”

“Cold feet, sweetheart?”

Molly nodded. “Sort of.”

“Everyone has that feeling at one time or another, dear,” her mother reassured her. “It's perfectly normal with all this wedding commotion. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't have been easier to have you two kids run off to Hawaii or somewhere.” She smiled and reached over to pat Molly's hand. “You'll get over it, honey. Have you seen the silver service Aunt Edith sent yesterday? It's terribly florid but solid and useful I suppose, and, after all, we all know her-”

“I really mean it, Mom,” Molly interrupted. “I don't know if I want-”

The motherly words of comfort broke in. “A case of the butterflies is typical. Marriage can seem so final when you're young. Now that Bart's back, you two will have your usual fun times together and, mark my words, the butterflies will disappear. He's just been gone so much this summer, the whole wedding doesn't seem real to you.”

“It's not only that. I don't know if I care about him enough.” There, she'd said it, or at least part of it; the part where she didn't have to mention Carey Fersten.

“Nonsense. You two have been chums since grade school. Bart's like a son to us and very handsome, too, I might add.”

Her mother was saying all the things that didn't matter to Molly, talking about Bart as if marriage were based on a list of positive assets. Taking a deep breath, her heart tripping inside her chest, Molly said, “What would you say if I told you I didn't want to get married?”

She watched the blood drain from her mother's face, saw the nervous flutter of her hands spread the seating charts in disarray. “I don't know what to say,” her mother answered after what seemed a very long time. “What do you want me to say?” she asked, bewildered and pale.

“Say it would be all right,” Molly said in a small, frightened whisper.

She always recalled with affection her mother's endearing attempt at understanding. Her face frightfully white, she replied, “Of course, dear, it would be-” she swallowed, and the last word came out more faintly than normal “-fine.”

But Molly could see it wouldn't be fine at all, and the whole crushing weight pressed on her shoulders.

“Tell me what's wrong, sweetheart,” her mother urged. “If it's any consolation, these last-minute jitters happen to everyone.”

Could she tell her mother she was thinking about throwing over Bart, who really was fun to be with and-yes, handsome and a chum, too-because she'd met a young man who made her tingle just thinking of him? Because this young man had hands that could slide over her body like silk and take her over the edge with a practiced skill that was pure heaven? Of course she couldn't. There'd be talk about lust versus love, and how similar backgrounds were the real basis of enduring marriages. There'd be the questions: “Why haven't we met him, dear? If he was serious, why hasn't he come to the house to meet your family?” And then, when they heard who it was, there'd be alarm because Carey Fersten was too wild, too strange, too rich to fit into this small, northern community.

The doorbell rang and for a moment Mrs. Darian looked distracted, her mind filled with disastrous visions of complete chaos. What to do with a thousand-dollar wedding dress. How to return the hundreds of presents. What would the caterers want for reneging on the contract on this short notice? And the band and hall rented for the dance. And the minister! Good God! And the Ladies' Auxiliary who'd been making yards and yards of satin streamers and bows to decorate the flower-decked sanctuary, altar, and pews. And the flowers ordered specially from Oregon where the weather was still cool enough this time of year to allow splendid roses. The doorbell pealed loudly, and this time she heard it. “I'll get it,” she said, and wearily rose from her chair.

Returning a moment later, she carried in a large bouquet of yellow daisies. “They're from Bart.” Her mother's voice was tentative, her expression uncertain. Placing them on the table, Molly saw the card pinned to the bouquet: To my sunshine girl. Love and kisses, Bart.

Molly felt terrible.

“What should I do, Mom?”

Her mother slowly shook her head and she suddenly looked older than she had ten minutes ago. “Whatever you think is right. No-” she quickly interposed “-I don't mean that. Just do what makes you happy. Daddy and I only want you to be happy. Don't worry about the rest.”

Molly looked at the yellow daisies and the hastily scrawled note. There was an energy and cheerfulness about Bart that was captivating and potent. If you stood in his wake, he'd carry you along. She may not love him the way she loved Carey, but what guarantee did she have that their intense passion would last? She'd known Bart all her life. Carey had entered her world like a blazing meteor, as exotic as a far-off star-and just as unpredictable.

“I'll take you away,” he'd said. And that was all he really meant.

“It would be a terrible bother to send back all the presents,” Molly said with a small smile. “Right? And if Liz can't sing at my wedding, she'll throw a fit. Besides, neither you nor I would have the courage to tell Pastor Helms it's off when his daughter is a flower girl. It's gypsy fate, Mom, and the butterflies are better already.”

A faint blush of color reentered her mother's face. “Bart is sweet,” she said hesitantly.

“And handsome,” Molly added with a smile. “What should I wear to the Coopers' tonight?”

Her mother let out a breath. “Are you sure, dear?” she ventured.

But Molly had seen the expression of relief. “I'm sure, Mom,” she lied with a pleasant smile, while a poignant sadness inundated her soul.

The feeling of sadness and things left unsaid had stayed with her over the years. Not that it mattered. She'd married Bart two weeks later, and Carey had gone out to school at USC the next month. Except for occasional newspaper and magazine articles with photos depicting America's finest young director, Carey Fersten had disappeared from Molly's life.

The snippets of information available from newsprint revealed very little of the man, although the bare bones of his life in the ensuing years were known to her and millions of other people. He won the Cannes Film Festival Prize at age twenty-five with his first major work. She read of his sudden defection from Hollywood a year later to make more esoteric films; his numerous liaisons with well-known beauties all over the world, his marriage to a young German countess-cum-actress, his divorce two years later. And now. Here on the Range. Here in this town, making the immigrant movie he'd talked about years ago.

How could his name still stun her after all this time? So many years had passed, so much had happened: her marriage; the birth of her daughter; the business; the divorce; so many edges had blurred, memories tarnished.

But not his.

That image in the moonlight was as fresh and pure as a rose under lucite. And as disturbing as it had been that night in August.

With heroic effort, Molly shook away the shattering remembrance, forcing her face into a polite social smile. Share as she had with these friends of her youth, she had never completely shared Carey with them. He'd been too special, too different, and perhaps she'd known her feelings were too intense to share. “So the world-renowned director is back in this little burgh,” she said in a neutral tone. “He's going to find it dull as dishwater after his travels.”

“Want to see him again, Molly? Hmmm?” Marge teased. “There was something between you two that spring and summer, even though you wouldn't admit it. Now that you're divorced, why not look him up?”

“No thanks,” she said in a deliberately cool voice. “Too much competition from all those glamorous beauties.” She shrugged, but was annoyed to feel her face flushing. “Every paparazzo photo shows at least one groupy clinging to his arm, and usually there's more. He's probably never heard a woman say ‘no'.” Every one of those pictures she'd seen over the years was cinema veritй, sharp in her mind: the one taken when he and some duke's wife were slipping out of the back door of an exclusive hotel in London early one morning; the full array of shots taken with telephoto lenses on the Greek island where everyone was bathing au naturel; those in St. Moritz with a deposed monarch's youngest daughter smiling up at him; and the nightclub scenes with starlets entertaining one of the handsomest men in the world. “At my age, with an eight-year-old daughter in tow,” Molly reminded them, her face set now to disclose no emotion, “I don't stand a chance against all that fair pulchritude surrounding him. I'll settle for the memories and leave the flash-and-dazzle Carey Fersten for the jet set.”

“His films aren't like that at all,” Nancy, who'd flown in from California, interposed. “Quiet, intimate mood pieces. No flash and dazzle anywhere.”

“His life apparently doesn't follow his art, then, because lean, suntanned, sexy Carey Fersten is almost always ‘where the action is',” Molly rebutted.

“How do you know?” Linda remarked, and for a moment Molly had the distinct impression her friends were defending him.

“Because I read-”

“Those articles aren't always true,” Georgia cut in, her voice moderate, her eyes on the slight flush reappearing on Molly's cheeks.

“None of the publications have been sued for libel,” Molly replied.

“Well, those kind of pictures and headlines sell; they could be innocent friends,” Linda acknowledged.

“Like hell,” Molly said. “And don't forget Sylvie von-what's-her-name, the young wife and actress of slightly blue reputation. That was real.”

“But not long-lasting,” Georgia reminded her.

“Do me a favor, will you?” Molly retorted in a small huff of exasperation. “Stop gushing over him. He could be a saint in monk's clothing, misunderstood by the world at large, but I'm not interested. It all happened ten years ago, for God's sake.”

“So you don't want to see him,” Marge declared.

“No. You can't dredge up the past. People change, times change, circumstances change. It's impossible.” But even as she emphatically pronounced the trite maxims, a tiny voice deep in a forgotten, locked-away corner of her mind cajoled, I wonder what he looks like in real life, stepping out of the photographs? Does his hair still glisten in the moonlight? Are his hands still as gentle? With sheer willpower, Molly wrenched her mind from the disturbing thoughts and, upending her rum, finished it in one great gulp. “Another drink, anyone?”