Hot Streak

CHAPTER 24

A fter a quick shower, Carey tossed on some clothes and padded barefoot into the kitchen to join Molly and his daughter for breakfast. As he stood just inside the doorway, Molly introduced him.

“Honey, this is Mom's friend Carey Fersten. Carey, this is my daughter. She has pierced ears.”

Carey shifted his glance from his daughter back to Molly, surprised at the small shadow of contention in the last two words. “And you don't,” he quietly said with a smile, the taste of her earlobes sweet recent memory.

Molly had always resisted putting holes in her flesh, and had played guardian over her daughter's earlobes, as well. Or had tried to. And while she'd raised Carrie to be independent, it often disconcerted her when she was. “She's so young,” Molly replied, sounding petulantly youthful herself for a brief moment before her jeunesse dorйe expression altered to one of resigned motherhood. “Carrie tells me pierced ears are de rigueur for eight-year-olds,” Molly added, her voice warm with affection as she looked at her daughter.

“Are you dragging your mother into the twentieth century?” Carey inquired, his glance returning to his pale-haired daughter who was calmly gazing at him.

“Mom's kind of old-fashioned sometimes. She used to live in a small town,” she added, as though that explained her mother's conservative spells. “You came back,” Carrie said in the next breath, changing topics with childlike ingenuousness. “I knew you would.”

“Said I would, didn't I?”

“Yup.” And she shoveled another spoonful of Cheerios into her mouth. “Did you and Mom make up?”

Molly blushed. Carey smiled and said, “Yes, I can never stay mad at your Mom.”

“Gonna be here tonight when I come home from school?”

“Really, Carrie,” Molly interposed, embarrassed by her daughter's forthrightness.

“I'm visiting for a couple of days. Want me to pick you up from school?”

She nodded. “And you can drive me there in two minutes, if you want.” Carrie cast a rebuking glance at her mother. “You overslept, Mom. I'm going to be late, and Theresa's going to wonder why you haven't checked in downstairs.”

“It's my fault,” Carey explained. “I kept your Mom up late last night… talking.” The warm hue on Molly's face was the exact shade of the rosebuds on her bathrobe, and Carey tried to remember the last woman he'd seen blush.

“So?”

His daughter's pointed inquiry brought him back to earth.

“I'll drive. You don't have to drive, Carey,” Molly rapidly declared, disconcerted by her daughter's presumption.

“I'd love to,” he replied. I'd love to, he thought, love to drive “my daughter” to school-a simple, ordinary act he'd considered forever denied him.

With a hesitant, “Are you sure?” to which she received a firm, “Yes,” Molly excused herself to get ready for work.

“Do you really make movies? On location? With big budgets and extras like from… people you know?” His daughter's eager tone reminded him of his own voice when he was asking for his first car, years too early.

“Are you really nine?” he asked, amusement rich in his voice. Even with his limited acquaintance with children, she struck him as wonderfully precocious.

“Eight and seven-eighths.”

Controlling an impulse to smile, he said, “That accounts for it, then.”

“Are you going to drive barefoot?”

“Do you mind?”

“Georgia's boyfriend got a ticket for driving barefoot.”

“Who's Georgia? Your mom's old friend Georgia?” he asked in the next flashing moment. “What boyfriend?” he asked immediately, as though he were guardian to a minor. Had Molly had boyfriends, too, although she'd denied it? Relax, Fersten, he cautioned in the next millisecond. This is not the middle ages. She is not your exclusive property. Oh, yeah? his possessive instincts dissented. Remember, these are liberated, progressive times, the logical voice inside his brain declared. And sense and sensibility lasted another millisecond. “What boyfriend?” he testily repeated.

“Her lifeguard boyfriend.”

“Lifeguard boyfriend-as in beach lifeguard?”

“He's a little young for Georgia, Mom says.”

She had looked at another man; he'd kill him. With Molly he had never been dйgagй; irrationally possessive was closer to the mark. “How old is he? What's his name?” A trial lawyer couldn't have been more decisive.

“His name's Scott. He's eighteen.”

He had to repress the urge to gasp, and immediately reminded himself that equality existed between the sexes, as well as between age groups. And if he was honest with himself, he had been known to escort a starlet or two in that nubile age group. Although he hadn't been sober at the time. “Has your mom dated Scott?”

“Mom?” Incredulity lit her wide eyes.

Immediately Carey's world righted itself. “She didn't date Scott.”

“Mom doesn't date anyone. She's too busy, she says. Georgia says she's too uptight. Mom says Georgia had more leisure time, and when she has more leisure time she'll ask for an introduction to Mark. Mark's cute.”

“Who's Mark?” His voice had that cutting edge to it again.

“Scott's friend.”

“Another lifeguard?”

“I think so; he has a really great tan.”

“I can see I got here just in the nick of time,” he murmured in a tone very close to a growl. For a man who had prided himself on never experiencing jealousy, the green demons had surrounded him and were coming in for the kill.

“What?”

“We have to get out of here or you're going to be late,” he improvised, the unknown Mark assuming a prominent position on his black list.

“You don't have to worry, you're cuter than Mark.” Dressed in her pink denim pinafore, flowered blouse, lace-trimmed anklets, and pink leather hightops, Carrie looked too freshly angelic to be so perceptive. But she'd read the convoluted chaos of his mind, and after his first start of surprise he immediately thought, What a darling child. It wasn't simply that she was his daughter, she was darling in general. And he told her so after he thanked her for the compliment.

He did drive to school barefoot. Carrie asked questions nonstop, and when she paused for breath occasionally, he asked questions of his own. He wanted to know everything about his daughter, everything he'd missed in the years she'd grown up without him. And when she ran up the steps of the school, he watched her until she disappeared into the building, awed that he had a child, a precocious, beautiful, healthy child.

While Molly spent her day downstairs in the office, Carey spent his time on the phone handling some of the editing preliminaries long-distance. But it was awkward and erratic, frustrating for him and for his crew.

“We need you here, Carey,” Allen said. “I can transfer some of the calls, but not all of them. And when you operate the way you do-with no assistant directors-it all grinds to a standstill, boss.”

“Ask me if I'm happy here in this apartment,” Carey replied, immune to the mild censure.

“Don't have to. Bunnies of happiness are bouncing down the wire to me. The fights at the preliminary edits are reaching flash proportions, though. Hope you can make it back soon. Wishing you the greatest, boss, no offense, but when are you coming back?”

“William and Jock are at each other's throats I take it.”

“You know their divergent creative impulses,” Allen said with sarcastic emphasis. “They're about to name weapons.”

“Shit. Do I have to do everything?”

“You always have.”

Carey sighed resignedly. “Okay, I'll come back tomorrow morning. Arrange for Jess to be ready to take off at nine.”

“Great! No offense, boss,” Allen quickly added.

“One more thing.” Carey hesitated.

“I already sent her back to L.A.”

Carey grinned. “That must be why I pay you so well.”

“We try, sir,” Allen replied with mock modesty, “to earn our princely stipend.”

Dinner that night was orchestrated by Carrie, newly christened “Pooh” to avoid the confusion of their names. Winnie the Pooh was her favorite stuffed toy from babyhood, and when the discussion turned to their similar names, the decision was simple.

“Some people call me Charles,” Carey had offered in the event Carrie preferred her name.

“I want a nickname,” his daughter declared from her spot between her parents in the front seat of the car.

“Should we discuss this?” Molly asked in that parental tone that always reminded her immediately after hearing her voice of a child psychologist dealing with a firebug toddler.

“I want a nickname. I want Pooh like a cousin to Winnie.”

Molly looked at Carey over their daughter's head and lifted one brow in inquiry. “Sounds good to me,” he said, his smile amiable.

“No discussion?” Molly had a tendency to over-verbalize. Carey, on the other hand, made decisions swiftly with a minimum of words. Apparently, his daughter did, as well. “Are we agreed?”

“Is this a town meeting?” Carey teased.

“Call me Pooh.”

“It's not a town meeting,” Carey declared with the faintest of smiles, experiencing instant bonding with his determined young daughter.

Carey had never seen a Chucky Cheese; the din was overwhelming. With the musical life-size toys and the raucous shouting of scores of children, conversation was impossible. So they ate their pizza while the decibel levels of a rock concert exploded around them. When they'd finished, Pooh took Carey into the game room next door. He was astonished with her expertise on the machines that lined the walls and formed aisles in the center of the enormous room.

“You must come here often,” he said, watching her coordinate two levers with superb reflexes as a careening car went down the computer-style mountain road without crashing into a losing score on the screen. “You're pretty good.”

“There's games in the hotel down the street from us. Mom lets me go there sometimes.” Her concentration was focused on the lighted screen. “Wanna try?” She had accepted Carey with a casual friendship he found endearing, and he marveled at the assurance she exuded. She seemed to take the changes in her life in stride.

“I'll play this one next to you so you can keep racking up your score. Wouldn't want to upset the record you've got going.” And for the next few minutes, father and daughter coordinated hand and eye, and set the machines humming.

Carrie ran out of tokens first, and she calmly surveyed Carey as he decimated a space army on the colored screen battle field. “You're pretty good yourself,” she said with the calm delivery he found so surprising in a young child. Highlighted by the fluorescent green from his game screen, her pale hair framed her face in an ethereal, surreal quality, like an underwater image. The other-worldly image was so vivid, it took him a moment to respond to her question. “I had lots of practice,” he finally said, remembering another surreal world of black violence and red death, remembering the base camps in Vietnam where playing the machines filled the endless morning hours when you were too hung-over to drink. He'd lived on Coke and Hostess Ho Hos those mornings, and had become proficient at the machines. For the next hour he and Carrie tested the two rows of electronic games nearest the dining room, enjoying a camaraderie based on mutual skill.

As they drove home, Molly said, “A person could feel like a third wheel real easy with you two pinball wizards doing your stuff.”

“Teach you how,” they both said in unison, and then laughed at their simultaneous response.

“I don't have time, although,” Molly said with a smile, “I'd be thrilled to learn, otherwise.”

Father and daughter looked at each other and raised their dark eyebrows. The dual effect was a devastating mirror image, and Molly wondered for the dozenth time why she hadn't realized Carrie's paternity years ago. They were so alike: pale-haired, dark-eyed and with smiles that began as grins, then grew into laughter. They'd have to tell her soon, she thought, but not tonight. It was too sudden. She wanted them to get to know each other better before the major announcement was made, although there was no denying their compatibility.

“Mom, you know you hate those games.”

“I never said that.”

“Did so.”

“Well, I suppose I might have said it's not my favorite type of amusement.”

“Right after Ping-Pong, you always said.”

“She doesn't like Ping-Pong, either?” Carey inquired in mock affront.

“Hates it,” Carrie replied with finality. “Mom's not much good at any games,” she added, matter-of-factly, in the way young children had of explaining adult idiosyncracies.

“Oh, your mom likes some games,” Carey said, catching Molly's gaze over their daughter's head.

“She does?” Carrie asked, her dark eyes intent on Carey. “What?” In her memory, her mother had rather systematically rejected all games, period.

And while Molly blushed, Carey replied, “Big people games.”

“Oh, you mean like bridge and backgammon?”

“Don't you dare,” Molly quietly warned as Carey's grin widened.

At her mother's warning, Carrie's gaze went from Carey to Molly and back again. “You mean mushy stuff,” she declared.

“Could we change the subject?” Molly said, not as unflappable as her daughter.

“What do you want for your birthday, Pooh?” Carey inquired, angelic innocence prominent in his expression.

Carrie's interest was immediately diverted. “How did you know my birthday's coming?”

“Er-” the twinkle in his eyes was boyish and lighthearted, reminding Molly of the young man she'd once known before the “international director persona” had taken precedence. “Your mom and I discussed your birthday last night.”

“Thanks, Mom.” Carrie's head swung back toward Carey. “Can you get me a date with Chachi from Happy Days?”

“Charlotte Louise, for heaven's sake!”

“Something smaller, huh?”

“I'm sorry, Carey, I thought I'd taught her some manners.” Molly's apology was part rueful but only mildly serious; after nine years she was familiar with her daughter's frankness.

“Hey, it's all right. I asked her, and it doesn't have to be small at all, Pooh, only not Chachi just yet,” he said with conspiratorial delight. “I don't think your mom would approve of you dating. Why don't you make a list when you get home and we can avoid the frown forming on your mother's face.”

Tardily remembering her manners, Carrie said, “You don't have to buy me anything. I mean, if Mom-”

“I want to buy you a present, and your mother doesn't mind. Do you?” he said with unmistakable emphasis.

Molly sighed, knowing she was the only voice of moderation between father and daughter's cheerful insistence. “No, I don't mind, but I'd like Carrie to-”

“Remember her manners. Okay. Make the list a polite list, Pooh,” he said kindly, “and everyone will be happy.” It was going to be an incredible, exhilarating experience to go birthday shopping for his own daughter. Something like a bona fide twenty-four-carat gold miracle. And after all the tragedy of birth defects he'd seen in the offspring of his platoon members, a beautiful, healthy daughter of his own was heart-stopping jubilation. As she sat between them with her hands in her lap, he quickly surveyed the five perfect fingers on each of her hands and thought of Denny's baby boy who was missing all the fingers on one hand. Then a swift perusal of her Reebok-clad feet assured him no deformities existed. Lloyd's baby girl had had six operations on her clubfoot before she was three. And Carrie was free of the other birth defects attributed to Agent Orange too. Thank you, God.

Why them and not me? The question silently looped through his mind… Why, why, why? Maybe he'd been in the hospital when his platoon had been most heavily sprayed; maybe the damn purple heart had saved him from the moonscape they'd all talked about at Ashau when they'd bathed in the bomb craters. Or maybe pure luck had kept him out of the most toxic areas just sprayed for “mosquitoes.”

The Vietnamese birth defects had been reported very early in the Saigon papers, but the military administration had called it VC propaganda. American servicemen had been told the spraying was harmless to humans and animals. Another instance of war contractors placing profits over people. Legal research of the chemical companies after the war had proven they'd known about dioxin's deadly consequences as early as 1957. Carey always had the urge to kill when he thought of the chemical companies' derivative sovereign immunity defense which argued they had been employed by the government as war contractors and, like the government, couldn't be sued. The defense so often used by war criminals: “We were only following orders.”

Brushing a hand over his forehead, he forced away his black thoughts. Count your blessings, he reminded himself. But a twinge of guilt colored his own happiness. How lucky he was and how unlucky so many of his friends were.

“Headache?” Molly inquired, their daughter deep in thought as she mentally cataloged her birthday list.

He smiled. “Hell, no… too much happiness,” he said softly. “I'm not used to it. But,” he added with a small smile, “I'm damn well going to enjoy getting used to it.”

“You're glad I stopped at Ely Lake to look you up?”

“Do fish swim?” he said, glancing at her with a quick lift of his eyebrows and a flashing grin. “I'm considering shackling you and Pooh to my wrist. That's how glad.”

“That's pretty glad,” she teased, “for an independent man.”

“What time is it?” he murmured in return, insinuation clear in his voice.

She looked at the dashboard clock. “Almost nine.”

“Good.”

“It's too early,” she warned.

“When.”

“Bedtime's at nine-thirty.”

“I think I can wait.”

“You have to.”

There was a moment of considered silence before he said, “Maybe…”

“Carey!” Her whisper was hushed, but in the single breathy word, beneath the small indignation, was piquant anticipation.

“You make the hot chocolate, and I'll do the bedtime story.” Urgency threaded lightly through his words, but then his expression changed, his dark eyes surveying the young girl between them and he very quietly added, “May I?”

It was the first time in his life he'd ever tucked a child into bed, the first time he'd told a bedtime story, and the first time he'd had to fight back tears since Dhani Maclntosh. Molly was in the habit of telling an extemporaneous story which drifted off on tangents like an Alice in Wonderland narrative. So Carey picked up the plot and added some creative color of his own with wizards and princesses and a quest for a treasure in emeralds.

“Thanks, Carey,” one sleepy young girl murmured as the chapter ended, “you're nice.”

He wanted to crush her in his arms and tell her he loved her, tell her he was her father, map out their entire future together, but Molly wanted to proceed more slowly until they knew each other better. Instead, he said, “You're nice, too, Pooh… the very nicest little girl I know.” Bending low, he kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Sleep tight.”

She was staring thoughtfully at him when he straightened, her face framed by the pink-flowered pillow. “Your eyes are a lot like mine.”

The plain words hit him like a jolt, and in a flurry of mental activity he discarded the first dozen unsuitable answers that came to mind. “Lucky me,” he finally said.

“And you play a mean game of pinball.” She spoke the words with a quiet gravity, and he had an irrational sensation he was being graded. An overwhelming feeling of panic assailed him, fear that he would somehow fail this young child's test. He desperately hoped that she would not dislike him once she knew the truth. She meant too much to him.

He smiled. “You and I'll have to teach your mom someday.”

Her little nose curled up. “She won't.”

“Maybe we can coax her to come to London. My house there has a room full of game machines. We'll tell her she can have tea with the queen,” he teased.

“She'd like that. Could she really? I know you're teasing, but somebody has tea with the queen 'cuz I saw a picture once with everyone in big hats outside a red brick mansion. Mom would die of happiness. Why do you have a house in London?”

“Because my dad had one, and now I've got it. I can't promise the queen, but I can line up a duchess or two if we can convince your mom to come.”

“Hey, way to go… we'll work on her together.” Her eyes were alight.

“I'd like that,” Carey softly said.

Molly drove Carey out to the airport, and for the first time in her life she encountered paparazzi upclose and personal. A crowd of photographers were stretched out along the chain-link fence surrounding the airstrip for private planes. The scene reminded her of all the telecasts she'd seen on TV for visiting dignitaries or rock stars or the astronauts returning from some space mission. It was unnerving. As they stepped from the car the crowd seemed to surge into the fence, and dozens of shouted questions sailed across the twenty yards of tarmac.

“What's her name?”

“Is she American?”

“Is she going back with you?”

“Is she why you shut down production?”

“Hey! Turn this way, lady!”

“Would you call this one serious, Count?”

“How serious?”

Ignoring the uproar of questions with a calm based on years of experience, his arm protectively around Molly's waist, Carey guided her away from the clamoring photographers to the sanctuary of the hangar.

“Carey!” Molly whispered, the turbulence of sound following them inside. “Does this happen often?”

“Ignore it,” he replied casually, used to deflecting the attention aroused by his looks, wealth, and reputation.

“Ignore it?” she inquired with mild incredulity. The swell of noise followed them into the quiet of the hangar like a thin wave of haphazard exclamation marks. “How does one become that blasй?”

“Practice.”

She looked up at him in astonishment. “How long does it take,” she quietly asked, a private person in an increasingly public world of instant telecommunications and computer trail dossiers, “to practice up?”

Glancing down at her, he smiled. “Thirty-three years,” he said. “Don't worry, I'll have someone bring your car in here so you won't have to see them again. Oh, shit!” he swore, and pushed Molly behind him just as a flash exploded from close range. “Jesus! Paolo, don't you ever give up?”

The short, stocky man dressed in mechanic's overalls shrugged negligently. “Smile, Count,” he said in heavily accented English, “and bring out the signorina so your fans can see her face, per favore.”

“One of these days, Cerelli, you're going to lose your teeth.” All the blandness was gone from Carey's voice. “Out of here, dammit! Now!” And Mr. Cerelli only snapped a half dozen more shots of Carey angrily striding toward him before prudently turning and fleeing.

“He's resourceful,” Molly said with a touch of irony when Carey returned.

“He's a pain in the ass,” Carey growled, watching the retreating figure.

“You must be profitable for him.”

“Hell, yes, but with Cerelli it's the damn challenge more than the money. I'd be happy to pay him double what he makes to stay off my back, but the bastard's refused. And like some goddamn ferret, he shows up anywhere!”

“Like at the Rembrandt Hotel?”

Carey's head snapped around.

Molly lifted her brows.

“Christ,” Carey muttered, “that picture must have been in every paper in the world.”

“Serves you right, keeping married duchesses out all night.”

Carey groaned. “Could we drop the subject?”

“I, on the other hand, have been quite virtuous,” Molly replied, mischief and a touch of resentment blending in her voice.

“Have the last ten years been a contest?” Carey asked.

“It appeared as though you were attempting to set records.”

“Are we having a fight? Because if we are, let's fight about something more interesting.” It was the primal masculine response to discord in general and inquiries into infidelity in particular.

“Weren't they interesting?”

Carey grimaced, considered briefly, and said, “Not particularly. Any more questions?” By now there was a certain terseness to his responses.

It fell, however, on the fearless ground of Molly's pride. “Only one,” she crisply replied. “Could you keep Cerelli away from me? I don't care to be in every paper in the world as your latest fling.”

“Okay. I'll have both his knees broken.”

“No!” she exclaimed. “You wouldn't, would you?” she finished, contrite and confused and feeling slightly out of her depth.

“Look, honey, I'll do what I can, but seriously even broken knees would only slow him down for a few weeks. Now,” he said “can we not argue?” Pulling her into his arms, he softly murmured, “Personally, I've never been happier in my life. And if the future goes according to my pollyanna plan, I intend to make you equally happy. Okay?”

His arms held her tightly, and she had to arch her neck to look up at him. It was cool inside the cavernous hangar, undisturbed by the morning sun held at bay outside the large open doors. For a moment she felt as though they were in some ancient pagan temple.

“Okay,” she murmured without further thought. Suddenly discord seemed trivial. Her smile was strong enough to banish images of a dozen irritating Cerellis.

“I'll be back as soon as I can,” he whispered, not wanting to leave.

“When?” she asked, not wishing to relinquish him, either.

“Tomorrow… the next day.” And then Allen's insistent reminder overrode his own potent wishes, and he amended, “Probably a couple of days. Do you want to come back with me?”

“Can't,” she breathed just before his lips brushed hers.

“I'll try and wait two days, then.”

“Why wait?” It was a breathy invitation, a flirtatious promise from a young woman who had until very recently relegated her own sexuality to a future place on a future list of future leisure time.

Carey's head came up, and his sweeping glance took in the quiet dim, interior.

“I haven't done it in the backseat of a car since that night at Lake Fourteen,” Molly teased, reaching up on tiptoe to nibble his earlobe.

Bending his head, he kissed her very hard. He'd also remembered that night, had recalled it fondly countless times. “Let me show you,” he said a moment later when his mouth lifted from hers, “the inside of my plane.”

“That is the smoothest line I've ever heard.”

“You're the only one who's ever heard it.”

“I find that charming,” she said, her chin resting on his chest.

“And I find you irresistible-Excessively so at this exact moment. Damn the photographers.” And, sweeping her into his arms, he carried her to the gleaming jet parked outside.

An hour later, Carey flew back to northern Minnesota and Molly drove home to face her busy schedule at the office. There were fewer photographers now; most had grown tired of waiting, and had left. So Molly didn't notice the gray sedan in the traffic behind her, following her on the freeway back into the city. Nor did she notice the man across the street from the Mart parking lot hastily fit a telephoto lens on his camera and run through twenty shots as she left her car to enter the building. From his vantage point near the wooden fence of Molly's small garden and yard, Paolo Cerelli noted with surprise and pleasure, the young girl walking toward the garden gate. An artist beneath his lucrative commercial profession, he immediately recognized the resemblance to the man he'd come to know intimately through the lens of his camera. “She's quite beautiful,” he murmured over the hum of the automatic shutter. “Like her father,” he added. That explained why production had been shut down so suddenly.

Cerelli had been following Carey for nearly a decade, since he'd appeared as the barefoot boy director-everyone's darling at Cannes-with his first full-length film and walked off with the prize. And Cerelli knew how serious Carey was about his movies. Once production began, he was thoroughly dedicated, even in his enfant terrible stage when women and drugs were taking a great deal of his time. Even then, the cameras rolled every morning with the young director on the set bright and early doing his job. Nothing had ever interfered with Carey's film-making. Until now.

After the pale-haired girl disappeared into the garden behind the fence, Paolo packed up his film and drove to the airport. He was anxious to express his newest photos to the sensational news magazine that paid him so well.