Darkest Fear

Chapter 8

Win was bored, so he drove Myron to the airport to pick up Terese. His foot pushed down on the gas pedal as though it had offended him. The Jag flew. As was his custom when driving with Win, Myron kept his eyes averted.

"It would appear," Win began, "that our best option would be to locate a satellite marrow clinic in a somewhat remote area. Upstate maybe or in western Jersey. We would then break in at night with a computer expert."

"Won't work," Myron said.

"Por qua?"

"The Washington center shuts down the computer network at six o'clock. Even if we were to break in, we couldn't bring up the mainframe."

Win said, "Hmm."

"Don't fret," Myron said. "I have a plan."

"When you talk like that," Win said, "my nipples harden."

"I thought only the real thing aroused you."

"This isn't the real thing?"

They parked in JFK Airport's short-term parking and reached the Continental Airlines gate ten minutes before the flight touched down. When the passengers began to appear, Win said, "I'll stand over in the corner."

"Why?"

"I wouldn't want to cast a shadow on your greeting," he said. "And standing over there affords me a better view of Ms. Collins's derriere."

Ah, Win.

Two minutes later, Terese Collins — to use a purely transportational term — disembarked. She was casually decked out in a white blouse and green slacks. Her brown hair was up in a ponytail. People lightly elbowed one another, whispering and subtly gesturing, giving her that surreptitious glance, the one that says "I recognize you but don't want to appear fawning."

Terese approached Myron and offered up her breaking-to-commercial smile. It was small and tight, trying to be friendly but reminding viewers that she was telling them about war and pestilence and tragedy and that maybe a big happy smile would be somewhat obscene. They hugged a little too tightly, and Myron felt the familiar sadness overwhelm him. It happened to him every time they hugged — a sense that something inside of him was crumbling anew. He sensed that the same thing happened to her.

Win came over.

"Hello, Win," she said.

"Hello, Terese."

"Checking out my ass again?"

"I prefer the term 'derriere.' And yes."

"Still choice?"

"Grade A."

"Ahem," Myron said. "Please wait for the meat inspector."

Win and Terese looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

Myron had been wrong before. Emily was not Win's favorite. Terese was — though it was strictly because she lived far away. "You are the pitiful, needy type who feels incomplete without a steady girlfriend," Win had told him. "Who better than a career woman who lives a thousand miles away?"

Win headed for his Jag while they waited for her luggage. Terese watched Win walk away.

Myron said, "Is his ass better than mine?"

"No ass is better than yours," she said.

"I know that. I was just testing you."

Terese kept looking. "Win is an interesting fellow," she said.

"Oh yeah," Myron agreed.

"On the outside, he's all cold and detached," she said. "But underneath that — way down deep inside— he's all cold and detached."

"You read people well, Terese."

Win dropped them off at the Dakota and returned to the office. When Myron and Terese got inside the apartment, she kissed him hard. Always an urgency with Terese. A desperation in their love-making. Pleasant, sure. Awesome even. But there was still the aura of sadness. The sadness didn't go away when they made love, but for a little while it lifted like cloud cover, hovering above instead of weighing them down.

They had hooked up at a charity function a few months back, both dragged there by well-meaning friends. It was their mutual misery that drew them, as though it were one of those psychic crowns only they could spot on each other. They met and ran away that very night to the Caribbean on a let's-just-flee dare. For the usually predictable Myron, the spontaneous act felt surprisingly right. They spent a numbingly blissful three weeks alone on a private island, trying to stave off the flow of pain. When Myron was finally forced to return home, they'd both assumed it was over. They'd assumed wrong. At least, it appeared that way.

Myron recognized that his own healing was finally under way. He wasn't back to full strength or normal or any of that. He doubted he ever would be. Or even wanted to be. Giant hands had twisted him and then let go, and while his world was slowly untwisting, he knew that it would never fully return to its original position.

Again with the poignant.

But whatever had happened to Terese — whatever had brought on the sadness and twisted her world, if you will — still held firm, refusing to let go.

Terese's head lay on his chest, her arms wrapped around him. He could not see her face. She never showed him her face when they finished.

"You want to talk about it?" he asked.

She still hadn't told him, and Myron rarely asked. Doing so, he knew, was breaking an unspoken though cardinal rule.

"No."

"I'm not pushing," he said. "I just wanted you to know that if you're ever ready, I'm here."

"I know," she said.

He wanted to say something more, but she was still at a place where words were either superfluous or they stung. He stayed quiet and stroked her hair.

"This relationship," Terese said. "It's bizarre."

"I guess."

"Someone told me you're dating Jessica Culver, the writer."

"We broke up," he said.

"Oh." She did not move, still holding him a little too tightly. "Can I ask when?"

"A month before we met."

"And how long were you two together?"

"Thirteen years, on and off."

"I see," she said. "Am I the recovery?"

"Am I yours?"

"Maybe," she said.

"Same answer."

She thought about that a little. "But Jessica Culver is not the reason you ran away with me."

He remembered the cemetery overlooking the school yard. "No," he said, "she's not the reason."

Terese finally turned to him. "We have no chance. You know that, right?"

Myron said nothing.

"That's not unusual," she went on. "Plenty of relationships have no chance. But people stay in them because it's fun. This isn't fun either."

"Speak for yourself."

"Don't get me wrong, Myron. You're a hell of a lay."

"Could you put that in a sworn affidavit?"

She smiled but there was still no joy. "So what do we have here?"

"Truth?"

"Preferably."

"I always overanalyze," Myron said. "It's my nature. I meet a woman, and I immediately picture the house in the burbs and the white picket fence and the two-point-five kids. But for once I'm not doing that. I'm just letting it happen. So, to answer your question, I don't know. And I'm not sure I care."

She lowered her head. "You realize that I'm pretty damaged."

"I guess."

"I have more baggage than most."

"We all have baggage," Myron said. "The question is, does your baggage go with mine?"

"Who said that?"

"I'm paraphrasing from a Broadway musical."

"Which one?"

"Rent."

She frowned. "I don't like musicals."

"Sorry to hear that," Myron said.

"You do?"

"Oh yeah."

"You're in your mid-thirties, single, sensitive, and you like show tunes," she said. "If you were a better dresser, I'd say you were gay."

She pressed a hard, quick kiss to his lips, and then they held each other a little more. Once again he wanted to ask her what had happened to her, but he wouldn't. She would tell him one day. Or she wouldn't. He decided to change subjects.

"I need your help with something," Myron said.

She looked at him.

"I need to break into a bone marrow center's computer system," he said. "And I think you can help."

"Me?"

"Yup."

"You got the wrong technophobe," she said.

"I don't need a technophobe. I need a famous an-chorwoman."

"I see. And you're asking for this favor postcoital?"

"Part of my plan," Myron said. "I've weakened your will. You cannot refuse me."

"Diabolical."

"Indeed."

"And if I refuse?"

Myron wiggled his eyebrows. "I'll once again use my brawny body and patented lovemaking technique to make you succumb."

" 'Succumb,'" she repeated, pulling him closer. "Is that one word or two?"