The year of the Lucy

CHAPTER NINE

THE NEXT MORNING Steve went off to work in high good spirits, kissing her soundly in front of the kids. She stared after him, mildly astonished that he actually thought last night's performance had mended all.

She had been completely uninvolved in the love-making, responding out of habit. She wondered vaguely if that's how prostitutes felt, amused at such a thought - amused in an unfunny way. Why Steve hadn't felt her unresponsiveness, she couldn't guess. He hadn't wanted to? Had there really been a time when she had adored Steve and his body, and the expression of their healthy appetites?

No bang, no whimper, not even a gasp. Was that how a marriage ended?

The question, popping unbidden into her mind, was startling enough. She rose quickly, busily clearing the breakfast table: anything to keep from thinking. She filled her coffee cup. None left for Sylvia!

God, how she hoped Sylvia would be early this morning! Talk about needing to sound off… just to hear how silly a notion was… Mirelle gulped. How could she talk around something as devastating as this? You simply don't just up and discount fifteen years of marriage one morning. And you sure as hell don't bring it up as a subject of casual conversation.

Rather desperate for diversion, Mirelle looked around the studio. She didn't have anything to glaze or fire. She had nothing started on the wheel. Her eye caught the Lucy. Okay, rub salt in. That might do the trick.

The Lucy had been relegated to a corner so she pulled it out into the center of the room and uncovered it, backing off until the couch caught the back of her knees. She sank down.

Lucy would have had an answer, at least a solution, or an idea. She wouldn't have wanted me to quit, not when I'd come so far. She never disqualified the hard work required in any marriage: hard work on both sides. But, what do you do, if there's nothing… nothing… there anymore?

Despair, like a cold wave, swept over Mirelle. She began to cry, in gusts that came from deep in her guts. She drew her legs up against her stomach against the racking spasms. Her body was suddenly more committed to the exertion of weeping than it had been to last night's sexual act.

In one sane compartment of her mind, she was appalled at the intensity of her hysterics, yet unable to control herself.

Oh, God, make the phone ring. Let someone come to the door. I'll have to get control then. I'll have to calm down. Someone! Help me!

The door was flung open and Sylvia came bursting in. The shock stilled the next sob in Mirelle's throat. She held her breath with every ounce of strength, determined not to let the sobbing resume. Sylvia! Thank God. Then Mirelle panicked. Oh, my God, what do I say? I can't… I can't talk. She'd know.

"Any coffee left, Mirelle?" Sylvia asked, half-way to the kitchen even as she called.

"Make more." The two short words came out just as if Mirelle was concentrating on a vital detail. She struggled up from the couch and lurched into the laundryroom. She grabbed the first towel in the basket, turned on the tap and started slapping water in her face, still gulping back the remnants of the hysterical contractions.

"You sure are eager-beaver in the studio this morning," Sylvia was saying cheerfully from the kitchen.

Oh, please, stay there a little longer, Mirelle silently entreated as she grabbed a clean bra and pants from the dryer. Yesterday's jeans were gritty with plaster and caked with paint but with a clean shirt over them… She even found a piece of broken comb with enough teeth left to get her hair into some kind of order. She dabbed at her eyes again with cold water but her hands were trembling badly. So were her knees.

"Got a cup down there, Mirelle?"

"Yes."

Mirelle peered at her shadowy reflection in the clear windowpane. One look and she's going to know that I've been crying. And what'll I say? Oh why… Well, you demanded someone's presence. At least it's Sylvia.

High heels clacked on the bare space between hall carpeting and the stair tread. Mirelle, trying to smile, stepped back into the studio, shoulders braced for the inevitable question. But Sylvia's attention was focused on the tray she carried and didn't look at Mirelle.

"Oh, you're working on the Lucy again? That's good. I'm all for charitable works but in moderation."

"Not working. Just checking."

"Coming down with a cold? Your voice is rough."

Mirelle hastily cleared her throat. "No. Frog. Coffee'll help."

"Where's your cup? Ooops!" Sylvia filled it and handed it back to Mirelle, still without looking at her, being intent on not spilling the hot liquid. "You don't happen to have another of those silly pigs, do you? Like the ones you made for Tonia and Nick? Because I have to have something as an inconsequential birthday present and the pig would be sooo appropriate." Sylvia dropped her voice to a droll pitch to stress the fact that the recipient was unlikely to appreciate the obscure insult.

"I've two rough plaster ones, easily finished and glazed."

"On the shelf here?"

"Over more to the left, behind that plaque. Right there."

Sylvia stretched up, blindly but carefully feeling along the shelf with her hands. Then her fingers located the right shapes and brought both pigs down. She took them over to the window, turning them into the light and chuckling.

"You wouldn't mind, would you? I mean, if you're doing some serious work on the Lucy…"

"No, no. I don't mind at all. I'm sort of worked out at the moment, idling as it were."

"In that case, Madame da Vinci, I want the pig pink and polka-dotted. A raucous pink and a putrid purple for the dots. Could you possibly prostitute your art for little old me?" Sylvia swung round then, her eyes still on the bigger pig, her grin malicious. "How long will it take?"

"To glaze and fire? Two days at the most."

"Sure I'm not interrupting an important phase?" And Sylvia gestured at the Lucy.

"No. Not at all. I'd tell you. Here, drink your coffee and I'll put on the underglaze right now," Mirelle said. She could brush on a glaze without having to look directly at Sylvia.

Sylvia curled up on the couch, watching as Mirelle, with deft small strokes, applied the coating. She gave a shudder.

"I could never work that precisely. My stomach gets wrapped up in knots."

"You're the expansive type. That's why you can't be good with small motor movements and controlled gestures."

"You said it!" Sylvia sounded so unexpectedly bitter and caustic that Mirelle looked up. Her face was still averted but the coffee cup was shaking in her hand.

Mirelle suddenly realized that, if she had not wanted Sylvia's attention, Sylvia had been avoiding Mirelle in an adroit manner.

"Do you know what I was doing when you came this morning, Syl?" she asked, without thinking it over.

Sylvia ducked her head down and rubbed a forefinger on the rim of her cup. "No. What?"

"I was having a first class case of hysterics, praying to Almighty God to make the phone ring or let someone come to the door so I'd have to get hold of myself."

Slowly Sylvia met Mirelle's eyes. Her face, expressionless and almost ugly with its lack of animation, was sadly old. She'd no make-up on which, if Mirelle had not been so self-concerned, would have immediately indicated distress.

"If you could have seen me throwing cold water on my face, tearing clothes out of the dryer so you wouldn't catch me in my nightgown…" and Mirelle started to laugh at the inanity of it. "The two of us playing the same game…"

"Well, I'll be damned." She stared at Mirelle for one moment longer and then began to chuckle. Color came back into her face and the infection of Mirelle's giggles doubled hers. They sat across the room from each other, laughing at themselves.

"Okay, what were you hysterical about, Mirelle?" Sylvia finally asked, wiping her eyes.

Mirelle shook her head, as much at herself as to indicate an inability to answer.

"Oh, things just dumped on me all of a sudden. You?"

Sylvia grimaced. "All right, we'll play it coy a little while longer."

"Maybe if we both talked AT each other at the same time, neither of us would hear what the other said and our terrible confessions would remain secret?"

Sylvia gave Mirelle a long sideways glance. "I think you've got the right end of that stick, my friend. But," and she sighed deeply, "now that we've had a therapeutic laugh at each other, I do feel better." She cocked her head quizzically at Mirelle.

"I feel better, too."

"Good, then these two blind mice can fare forth anew to find that better mouse-trap."

Despite Sylvia's brisk rejoinder, Mirelle recognized that her friend had only the most tenuous grip on herself.

"I wonder if a better mouse-trap would do any good at all?" she said softly.

Sylvia glared at her. "You're nearly there," and she gestured dramatically at the Lucy. "Even this feckless thing," and she pointed angrily at the half-glazed pig, "is cuts above the usual twee gimcrackery. You've got an outlet. You create…" Sylvia broke off, her eyes filming with tears. Instead of giving way, she blinked furiously, knuckling her eyes with brusque strokes. "Can you produce a very very bad purple for the spots?" she asked in a wheedling tone.

Dutifully then, Mirelle took her bottles of coloring from the shelf and found a clean jar. She sprinkled in a few grains of red, blue, a bit of orange luminescent paint, and mixed. Sylvia didn't approve. They spent the next hour trying to extract from the pigments exactly the shade in Sylvia's mind.

"Of course, it'll fire darker, and more vitriolic," Mirelle said when an approximation of the vile shade had been achieved.

"This is going to be a horror," Sylvia said in triumph. "Honest, Mirelle, it's a shame to do this to such a nice pig," she added contritely.

"He should care. He does what I tell him."

"Can I come back tomorrow and see the damage?"

"With or without?" asked Mirelle coyly.

"What? Tears? Or laughter?" Sylvia grinned back, the shadows lifted from her fine eyes. "Thanks, Mirelle."

"Ha! If you hadn't come when you did… "

Sylvia's hand closed tightly on her arm for a moment and then she whirled off, striding up the stairs. Mirelle followed her to the door, waving as she drove off in her usual gear-grinding hurry.

She caught sight of her reflection in the hall mirror. With no make-up, she looked totally washed out. She was reaching for her purse to get her lipstick when the phone rang.

"Mirelle?" a very hoarse voice queried as she answered.

"Yes?"

"What is the name… hmmmm… of your doctor? Ahhhheemmm. I don't know one in this goddamned town."

"Jamie? You're sick?"

"As nearly as I can… ahhemm… decide, I died last night only no one knows there's a corpse in my bed. I need a doctor!"

"I'll call Dr. Martin immediately."

"Nepotism?"

"What? No, he's not a relative."

"That's reassuring."

"Jamie, you'd joke on your death bed."

"And where do you think I am?"

"Oh, hang up so I can call the doctor. He's very good about coming on house calls."

"He'd better be." With that acid comment, Jamie hung up.

Will Martin actually answered her call. He couldn't make a house call to Jamie until mid-afternoon but he gave her the scant assurance that if the man were able to make a phone call, he'd be able to last until afternoon. He did promise to make Howell his first stop.

It was now 10:45 and Mirelle decided that Howell ought not to have to wait that long for succour. The hell with propriety. The man had no one else in town and Margaret's college was way up in Massachusetts.

She took eggs, milk, bread and some consomme, and made it to his development by 11:02. The front door was locked. She hesitated but she didn't want to rouse him out of bed if she could avoid it. She went around to the back door, which was also bolted tight. She stood by her car, trying to remember the layout of the house, and with sudden inspiration, raised the garage door. The kitchen door was unlocked, although the kitchen was a shambles of unwashed dishes and used pans. She walked through to the hall, which was neat except for the suitcase, hat and coat dumped in the middle of the entrance way. Several days' accumulation of mail had fallen through the door slot. She went upstairs. The first room she peered into had a rumpled bed but no occupant. The second room also had a used bed. The third bedroom, the smallest, was darkened and she didn't at first discern the figure in bed. She walked over, for one moment convinced that Jamie was motionless in death.

"I thought… ahhemm… you were the garbage man," he said in a painful rasp.

"They collect garbage on Thursday on this side of town."

"For all I know it is Thursday and has been… ahhhem… for five mortal long days. Did you call that doctor of yours? Or are you considering me for a death mask? Sorry. I'm indestructible. I've never had a sick day in my life."

Forgetting any lingering shyness, she put a hand on his forehead: he was burning with fever and his skin parched dry. She snapped on the bedside light and he waved irritably at her to turn it off. She saw enough in the brief instant: his eyes were bloodshot with fever, his face white and drawn, with several days' beard. She could hear the rales in his chest as he gathered wind in his lungs to speak.

"I absolutely detest women…"

"At this moment, James Howell, your likes are immaterial. I don't need Dr. Martin to tell me you are very sick. At the least, bronchitis; at the worst, lumbar pneumonia."

She automatically set about smoothing the untucked, disordered blankets and felt the dampness of the sheet. He'd been sweating profusely, which explained the musical beds.

"I'm going to change the bed in your own room. I'm going to get you clean pajamas," she said, walking back to the big room by the stairs. She opened dresser drawers until she found clean, laundry-packaged nightclothes. She scooped up the bathrobe that was crumpled on the floor, and returned to him. "You will get up and change. Quickly. And wash your face. By then, I'll have finished making your bed. If you haven't moved, I'll change and wash you myself."

She said the last as she was searching the linen closet for sheets and pillowcases. She heard him cursing as he lurched out of the bed, the exertion caused him to cough in tight barks that must have hurt his throat dreadfully from the sound of them. She heard further curses over the sound of running water as she stripped the bed and changed it quickly. She lowered the blinds against the brilliant morning sun and cleared the debris on the bedside table.

"Your bed's ready. I'm going to get you some hot soup," she called.

"You're a managing female," he said in a hoarse voice from the bathroom but, as she descended the stairs, he walked unsteadily down the hall.

While the soup was heating, she gathered up the dishes with congealed and hardened food and put them to soak in the sink. She made a pile of the first class mail, hung up his hat and coat and then carried the consomme and mail up to him.

He scowled at her when she entered the room, but it was a half-hearted attempt at disguising weakness.

"What's your daughter's college address?"

He put down the spoon half way to his mouth.

"That is enough meddling," he said with genuine anger.

"James Howell, you are very sick."

"Thank you, I'll wait for the doctor's diagnosis. I appreciate your phoning him and all this," he said, indicating the fresh linen and the soup, "but that is quite enough. Thank you!"

At that unqualified dismissal, he went back to his soup.

"You are insufferable, James Howell. How long have you been feverish? From the amount of dishes, I'd say you'd been able to feed yourself for at least four days of eggs and toast. The milk in your refrigerator is soured so it's at least a week old. You haven't picked up a newspaper from your front door for five days. And I don't see even aspirin in your medicine cabinet."

"You are also a prying woman."

But Mirelle could see that he was more sound than fury.

"Eat!"

"It's a liquid," he said with precise enunciation. "I'm drinking it."

"When did the fever start?" she asked, lowering her voice at his tacit capitulation.

He grimaced over the heat of the consomme.

"I started feeling lousy in Atlanta but we still had the Camellia circuit to do. I got off the plane Saturday at Philly and came straight home. Oh, look, call my agent. The number's in the red address book on my dresser. Dave'll have to get Heinrich to play at the Tuesday affair. He knows the repertoire. Ohh, hell!"

His hand was shaking enough to spill the soup from the spoon. Mirelle got a towel from the bathroom.

"You are not going to feed me," he said in an unequivocal tone.

"You're quite right. I might lose a finger. But I am going to put a towel where you can spill without drenching your last clean pair of pajamas."

She made the call to his agent, while he glowered at her, relaying the message.

"I'd wondered why I hadn't heard from Jamie," Dave Andorri said. "He's never sick. How sick is he?"

"The doctor's coming this afternoon but I'd say that he has bronchitis. Severely."

"I didn't give you permission to bandy my condition about," said Howell. "Tell Dave I'll be able to play for whosiwhatsis on the 18th as promised."

" 'Tell Dave that I'll be able to play for whosiwhatsis on the 18th as promised'," Mirelle dutifully quoted and was rewarded by a bark of protest from Howell who made an ineffectual grab for the telephone. Dave heard the protest and laughed, remarking that he sounded like he would recover.

"I'd appreciate it if you'd call me again after the doctor comes and let me know if there's anything I can do, Mrs. Martin," the agent said with genuine concern. "Jamie's not just one of the best accompanists in the business, he's a very good friend of mine."

Mirelle kept the little notebook hidden in her hand when she removed the tray. Howell slid down under the blankets wearily, announcing his intention to sleep until the doctor came. Mirelle went to the kitchen and immediately phoned Margaret at her college.

"I'll cut afternoon classes and fly down, Mrs. Martin. You know, I'd wondered why I hadn't heard from Dad. He usually calls me when he gets back home," Margaret said. "You sure he isn't… I mean… it's so unlike him to be sick."

"He is sick but he told me that I was a managing female, that he was really dead and no one had thought to lay out his corpse. Then he made me call his agent."

"Then he intends to live," said Margaret with a laugh of relief. "I'm sure he doesn't mean it… about your being managing, Mrs. Martin…" she added in earnest apology.

"Well, I am, because he has no idea that I have managed to call you. He wouldn't willingly give me your phone number."

"Well, I'm glad you did. Aren't men the living end?"

Mirelle agreed heartily and hung up.

By the time she had finished the dishes and thrown out the spoiled food in the refrigerator, she heard Howell's croaking voice calling. She got half way up the stairs before she understood that he would like ice water. Just as she passed the front door, the bell rang. After fumbling with the lock, she admitted Will Martin.

She felt a trifle silly introducing doctor to patient and retired from the room, ignoring Howell's fierce scowl. When Will came back downstairs to the kitchen, he was muttering under his breath about damned fools who insist they enjoy the best of health. He dialed the pharmacy and ordered several prescriptions sent over as soon as they could be made up.

"Not when Bart has had a coffee break," he added. Then he turned to Mirelle. "Good thing you called and insisted I see him, Mirelle. He's one step away from an oxygen tent. I'd fling him into the hospital right now only they're so crowded…"

"Is he that sick?" Mirelle was alarmed.

"It's nothing that medication and proper food and rest oughtn't to cure. He does have the constitution of an ox, as he boasts, but he needs someone with him in case that lung congestion…"

"I phoned his daughter at college. She hoped to catch the 3:00 plane."

"He said he didn't need anyone!" Will Martin snorted. "Hadn't taken so much as an aspirin. 'Never have any in the house'. " Will did an excellent imitation of James Howell. " 'I'm never sick!' Ha, well, he's sick right now and I've given him a massive dose of penicillin - where it'll remind him that he is. I'll drop in again tomorrow." He cocked his head inquiringly at Mirelle.

"I'll stay until Margaret comes."

"You know the routine to tell her, don't you? Plenty of liquid, not too cold, plenty of rest. I'll want to know if there is any increased difficulty in breathing, or a significant rise in temperature." Mirelle nodded acknowledgment. "Is she a level-headed girl?"

"Seems so."

Will frowned for a moment. "In any case, he's better off at home than in the hospital. No other relatives? No? Will you be looking in?"

"I certainly can," Mirelle assured him, and was then apprehensive.

"Oh, I'm just cautious, that's all, Mirelle. But he's the stubborn type and unless his daughter can keep him in bed, this could easily turn into full-fledged pneumonia."

Mirelle thought of the concert which Jamie intended to play on the 18th and smiled. "I've a lever for her blackmail."

"Okay, then. Give her my answering service number. Eckerd's is sending the prescriptions and a vaporizer. He's to start the tablets tomorrow morning, every four hours, and the codeine syrup ought to inhibit that cough. His throat is raw meat." Will gave another disgusted snort. "And he's never sick!"

"With more people like him, Will, you'd be out of business."

"D'you think I'd mind after this winter?" With a weary shake of his shoulders, Will buttoned up his coat and left.

Mirelle brought Howell his cool water. "On the doctor's orders I phoned Margaret," she said.

Howell narrowed his eyes. "You phoned her before he got here. I heard the click on the extension. Presumptuous female!"

"You know a lot of them, don't you?" she said, lobbing his address book at his chest.

"That's why I can make accurately odious comparisons," he said, his long fingers closing absently about the book. "And you have magnanimously agreed to stay by my deathbed until she comes?"

"I've my orders."

"Managing female!" There was no real malice in his voice, and not much strength. He buried his head in his pillow and closed his eyes.

Mirelle looked down at him for a few moments, thinking how illness brings out the boy in a man. Distracting to reflect that even a sophisticate like Jamie Howell must have been a nice little boy - from time to time. Then she went to change the other beds. She made a neat pile of the sheets. From the marks on them, they must go to a laundry. Margaret would know which one. With the kitchen cleaned and himself asleep, there was little to do now but wait for the drug store delivery and Margaret. She didn't feel that she could unpack his suitcase nor make noise vacuuming the house which was dusty. Nor did she feel as if she could intrude on his music room. The phone rang and she nearly fell over a chair trying to reach it before it could disturb the sleeper.

It was Margaret. She was at Logan Airport, having broken all records getting there, and would fly out on the 2:00 plane. She'd get a cab from the airport in Philadelphia which would get her to Wilmington about 4:00 but did her father have enough money in the house because she didn't have cab fare?

"If he doesn't, I do, Margaret. Just come." Mirelle gave her a slightly expurgated version of Will Martin's diagnosis.

"Imagine! Dad sick enough to ask for a doctor!" She hung up.

If Margaret couldn't reach Wilmington before 4:00, Mirelle wondered what to do about her children. If she flew home about 3:00 to collect Tonia, the boys would be all right by themselves but she didn't really wish to inflict Howell with Tonia. And ten to one, Tonia would drop one of her ambiguous comments at precisely the wrong moment. But, if she arranged for a baby-sitter, that would also be noteworthy…

Mirelle fumed. It wasn't as if she were doing anything wrong, helping a friend. It was ridiculous that she couldn't feel at liberty to stay here. With a sudden inspiration she dialed Sylvia.

"Are you busy from 3:00 to 5:00 this afternoon?"

"Now that YOU inquire, no. Why?"

Mirelle explained.

"Isn't that just like a man?" was Sylvia's comment. "Say, if you had to clean out the fridge, should I pick up a few essentials for the girl?"

"Would you? That would be a tremendous help." And between them they concocted a list of what might tempt an invalid that a daughter, probably unused to cooking, could prepare. Sylvia would drop the groceries off on the way to Mirelle's house.

While she waited for Sylvia, Mirelle mused again on how much she liked the woman. No coy questions, no arch suggestions about why Howell called Mirelle. And today, too, when Sylvia had been so depressed.

She answered Sylvia's soft knock on the front door and ushered her into the kitchen where they unpacked the shopping bags.

"My mother had a sovereign convalescent remedy," Sylvia said with a sour expression as she waggled a butcher's package about. "Where are the pots? I need a double boiler. Having beef tea prepared by my mother's own lily white hands was nearly an incentive for me to contract an illness. Ah, thank you." Mirelle discovered the double boiler. "We'll just put the beef in the top, water in the bottom, cover well, and leave for about half a hour." Sylvia followed her own directions. "Throw the meat out - he doesn't have a dog? Well, give that cat of yours a treat then - But the residual juice… hmmm, concentrated protein, easily digestible and it tastes incredibly good as well as being incredibly restorative to all those depleted red blood corpuscles. For that recipe I have forgiven my sainted mother some of her lesser transgressions."

Then the irrepressible Sylvia tiptoed out of the kitchen and essayed a brief exploratory tour of the lower floor.

"He must make a good bit of money tickling ivories while his canaries sing."

"Shush, Syl, he'll hear you."

"Nah!" Then she looked at her watch. "Ooops. I've got to dash."

"Wait! What will you tell the kids?"

Sylvia raised her eyebrows in mock innocence. "The truth! You're sitting up with a sick friend!" She drew her features into an exaggerated expression of noble piety.

"Who's that?" They could barely hear Howell's croak.

The pharmacy truck pulled in just as Sylvia sneaked out the door.

"Your medicine is here," Mirelle answered truthfully, taking the package from the boy.

"These'd choke a horse," Howell said, examining the tablets with suspicion. He sniffed the cough medicine and turned his nose away in revulsion.

"It's not how it smells, but how effective it is in relieving that cough," Mirelle said and poured him a spoonful. "Or are you that fond of hacking up your throat lining?" His teeth connected audibly with the spoon. "Don't eat it!"

"It smelled vile and tasted viler!" Jamie gave a histrionic shudder, then pointed a finger at her chest. "I heard females cackling in my kitchen."

Mirelle laid a quick hand on his forehead. "You're delirious!"

"I must be or I'd have you in bed with me." Mirelle laughed, as much at the thought of anyone wanting her in bed, other than Steve, as at Jamie's rakishness in his present circumstances.

"It's no laughing matter to be invited to bed with me, young lady," he said, in a grand manner at variance with his unkempt appearance.

"Doubtless, but not prudent in your infectious state. I'd court respirating disaster as well as a scarlet letter."

Jamie gave her an odd glance and then flopped over onto his back, coughing at the slight exertion. He punched the pillow under his head to prop him up sufficiently to glower at her.

"Just what did that sawbones say was the matter with me?"

"A touch of bronchial pneumonia."

"A touch?" Howell was indignant. "I've sustained a knockout."

"So you admit that you're sick? Enjoy it while you may: you're due to recover with proper rest and nursing."

"Nursing? From Margaret? She's a baby herself."

Mirelle cocked her head at him. "So you'd prefer to go to the hospital?"

"No!" His explosive negative made him hack painfully.

"I have the feeling that Margaret will be quite capable of looking after your basic needs."

He glowered, plucking at the covers with petulant fingers as she left to check on the beef tea.

"What'n'hell's this?" he asked suspiciously as she returned with the steaming cup.

"It's good for you. Drink it. Slowly. It's hot."

He hadn't quite waited for her advice and must have burned his mouth with the first sip. Before he could complain, a look of pleasurable surprise crossed his face. "Hmm, it tastes good." He sipped more judiciously and with evident relish. "When is my junior Nightingale arriving?"

"About 4:30. Plane gets in at 3:15."

"Did she have enough money for the taxi?"

"Now that you mention it, no."

Howell chuckled. "I always buy a round-trip ticket for her. That way I know she'll be able to get home. But I've never known Mags to have cabfare. God knows she gets enough of an allowance from me."

"She'll earn it this time."

Howell started to snort in agreement but was seized with a violent spate of hard coughing. Mirelle handed him a box of Kleenex just as the phone rang. It was Dave Andorri.

"Does he need anything?" the agent asked solicitously when Mirelle had told him the diagnosis.

"Hmmm. Have you got a blonde," asked Mirelle, all innocence as she noticed Howell's fierce glare, "about 24, size 10?" She neatly ducked the pillow which was flung in her direction.

"He'll live then," Dave said with a chuckle. "But will he be well enough to play on the 18th? I've got a mighty particular primadonna who will raise an unholy stink if Howell isn't at the keyboard."

"I've told him that if he's a real good boy and obeys her, Margaret will let him up for that concert." She sidestepped the box of Kleenex which Jamie lobbed at her. The effort restarted the cough so she was saved his snide commentary.

"Is that him coughing like that? He is sick. But Margaret's a good kid. They've got a nice relationship."

"Even if he doesn't give her a decent allowance."

"I beg your pardon? Well, tell him I'll call tomorrow."

She hung up and gave Howell Dave's message.

"Mirelle…" Jamie began when he got his breath back, "you're a…"

"Managing female," she said, staring him down.

His glare dissolved unexpectedly into a smile. "A quality which I didn't suspect in you and which I appreciate, despite snide remarks to the contrary. What have you done with your children, oh devoted mother?"

"Sylvia's baby-sitting."

"Does she know you're holding the hand of a sick friend?"

"It was her suggestion, and her beef tea recipe." She reached for the empty cup, lying on the spread.

His hand, strong-fingered, closed about her wrist, jerking her off her feet and forcing her down to his level.

"Jamie!"

He held her eyes in an unfathomable gaze before he smiled oddly and deliberately rubbed the hand he held across his stubbly beard.

"Hey, your face is like sandpaper."

"I'll see to you another time, me proud beauty!" he said with one last baleful leer and then turned away from her.

Disturbed by the intensity of his expression and the unexpected strength in a man weakened by fever and coughing, Mirelle hurried down to the kitchen. His grip, angrily strong, had left white marks on her wrist. And why had he turned so abruptly violent? She had only been trying to lighten his illness with her teasing. Restless, she emptied the dried meat cubes out of the double boiler and put them into a sack to bring home to Tasso: that is, if he'd consider them fit to eat. She washed and tidied up the kitchen, delaying the time when she might be called up to HowelPs room again. She was relieved to hear the noise of a car in the drive and opened the front door to see Margaret hurrying up the walk.

"I owe him a fortune," she told Mirelle breathlessly.

"Come and get it," called Howell from above and Margaret, with an apologetic smile at Mirelle, rushed up the stairs.

Mirelle could hear the obbligato of her greeting and questioning against his rasping counterbass. Then Margaret was clattering down the stairs again with a wallet in her hand. She paid the cabbie, retrieved a small case from the back seat and came flying back to the house, looking exceedingly pretty with her flushed cheeks and windblown hair. She looked not a bit like her father except for the jawline.

"I can't thank you enough, Mrs. Martin. Dad's said how you've browbeaten him with old maid nurses and beef teas, whatever they are, and he promises he'll behave for me."

Mirelle laughed and gave Margaret the doctor's instructions, adding that she'd be happy to do any shopping or fetching that might be necessary.

"Dad also said I'd better send you home now. Your children will be missing you."

"I'd better go, truly. Call me."

As Mirelle drove home, the hand which Jamie had rubbed against his unshaven cheek still tingled from that pressure. She could almost feel the strong fingers tightening again.

That night, at dinner, wondering why, she told the family all about Howell's distress call and waiting until his daughter arrived from college.

"Trying to keep that commission alive?" was Steve's query.

"I could hardly have left him alone in the condition he was in," Mirelle said. "He might not have lived to pay up."

"You aren't smart about charge accounts but you know how to handle your own art business," Steve said. "Speaking of which, is it absolutely necessary to buy seven pairs of underpants for Tonia at one time? Why did we buy that dryer?"

"The pants are special ones, each labelled with the day of the week…" Mirelle began to explain.

"Oh, for God's sake…"

"… and Susan Harper has them and Susie Miller and Karen Arnold…"

"So Antonia Martin, of course, has to have them?"

"Of course!"