A Stockingful of Joy (34 page)

"What did you just call me?"

"Sweetheart?"

"That is not my name."

"Okay, how 'bout Nellibelle?"

She flinched.
Nellibelle? It made her sound like a cow
.

He held his arms straight out from his side. He reminded her of the Brooklyn Bridge. "Just pull this little string here at my waist, Nellibelle, and everything I have is all yours."

"No, thank you. If I needed a jackass, I can buy one at the local stable." She smiled sweetly.

He laughed. The sound was deep and loud like a tuba, and seemed to go right through her no matter how stiffly she stood there.

"My name is Eleanor, not Nellibelle."

He hitched his hip down on the corner of his desk, but he was still taller than she was. "I had a cat named Nellibelle. She used to crawl into bed with me, curl up and purr."

Make laughter filled the room. She closed her eyes and felt foolish for egging him on. This was humiliating and belittling. When those men laughed at her, it choked more from her than any cigar smoke ever could.

But she would never let him or the other men know it. She didn't respond again. It wouldn't do any good to spar with him.

She just turned and walked away, her spine rigid and her head held even higher than when she had come inside. She slapped her palm flat against the swinging door and paused halfway through the opening.

She looked back at the men. Some still grinned but Donoughue's cocky look seemed to fade before her eyes. That wasn't at all what she expected to see. She had thought he'd be looking immensely pleased with himself.

Instead they both stood there watching each other for the longest time. The laughter in the room died. The silence seemed to stretch out like a long road, the kind that beckons you toward a wondrous thing so far out of reach you had forgotten it even existed.

Something passed between them. Something chilling and intense. Something deep that she had never before felt. Almost spellbound, she could not tear her gaze away from him, even though she wanted to. This one man had a hold over her that she could not control. With sudden clarity she knew how weak and frightened and powerless a small animal must feel when it was caught in a trap.

After a moment Eleanor noticed that the men were staring back and forth between the two of them with expressions of surprise or curiosity.

She straightened her shoulders. "Gentlemen." She let the word hang there, so it was clear that was the last thing these men had behaved as. She fixed her most honest look on Donoughue. "I didn't come here for this."

He started to walk toward her, his expression filled with another emotion she didn't care to see. It was pity.

Her hand shot up. "Stay there." Her voice sounded raspy and sharp, almost as if she was going to cry. "Please. Don't." And for a brief instant she didn't know if she was talking to him or to herself.

He did stop. Just stood there looking at her.

"I'm moving into the flat upstairs." Her words came out in a rush.

The moment seemed to hang in the air like the cigar smoke. It was awkward and she could feel her nervousness. Her face felt hot, and her hands were clenched at her sides.

She knew the moment her words had registered. His face showed it. Now she had his attention for something other than his juvenile entertainment.

"What the hell do you mean you're moving upstairs? I live there."

"I own the building."

"I have a lease from your grandfather. Legally you have to uphold that agreement. And you know damn will I've offered repeatedly to buy this building."

"Yes, you have. Almost as often as you've cursed at me."

"You won't sell."

"You're right. I won't."

"Why the hell not? I've offered you a fair price."

"I just told you why. Because I'm going to live here."

His expression hardened. "Not in this lifetime, lady."

She sighed. It truly was like talking to a brick wall.

He took two huge steps closer. "You are not moving onto the third floor."

She stood a little straighter, the door pressed against her back.

He moved even closer, trying to intimidate her.

She still only stood level with his shoulder. She raised her chin. "You're absolutely right. I'm not moving onto the third floor." Her tone was casual.

"Damn straight." He gave his head a sharp nod as if to say his word was law.

"I'm moving in above you."

His eyes narrowed. He was not a happy man.

"The fourth floor," she explained simply.

"I store my extra supplies and equipment on the fourth floor."

"I know. That's the reason I came here today."

"Well, Nellibelle." He crossed his hammy arms over his chest. "I don't think there will be room for you
and
those weights
and
my sporting equipment
and
the gym supplies."

"There will be plenty of room once you move everything out."

"Like hell I will! I pay rent!"

"Not for the fourth floor, you don't. I suggest you read your lease. You have two days to vacate the fourth-floor loft. Happy holidays, Mr. Donoughue." Eleanor turned and marched right out the door.

She stood with her back pressed against the cold damp brick building. Her chest was heaving from a horrid case of nerves.

What a foolish thing she was. She was no giddy girl, the kind that would get flustered at the mere sight of a man. She was a woman. And not even a young woman.

But one who was forty years old.

Irritated with herself for reacting like she was, she exhaled sharply. Her throat was dry to the point of soreness, and her breath had that brittle taste of cigar smoke.

The air outside was cold now, much colder than it had been before she went inside. Yet here she was sweating as if it were July. She fanned her face a little, and the pheasant feathers on her Sunday hat fluttered.

Just like her silly old heart.

She had met Conn Donoughue on a half a dozen occasions since she took over ownership of the building, and still she reacted to him in the same insane way each time. It was as if he were a huge dipper of peppermint ice cream.

Eleanor loved peppermint ice cream.

And Eleanor loved Conn Donoughue. She had taken one look at him, and suddenly she wasn't the old Eleanor anymore. She was one big heartache. From that moment on, she had known that nothing would ever be the same again. She had fallen for him so deeply and quickly that it was like being slapped right in the face.

He was a boxer who was too young and too handsome, especially for a forty-year-old woman who had long ago accepted the fact that love and passion and desire were not to be a part of her life.

He had smiled at her the first time they met. She remembered being so amazed that someone who was so tall and so big could smile like that. So she had just stood there and stared at him.

He had reddish blond hair, deep blue eyes, and an angled face that was unforgettable; it haunted her at the most awkward times. There was a bump on his nose. But she liked it because it gave character to what would have been a too handsome face.

At that first meeting, she had come to her senses a little late and realized he was watching her stare at him. She'd felt herself blush, so hot that she had been certain her face was as pink as a cabbage rose. She had felt so very silly. Forty-year-old women should be past the age of blushes and sheep's eyes and other flirtations.

Years ago she had thought she was through with those white-hot dreams of desire and love, the ones that grow up with you. The same ones where she would awake in a deep sweat because her own body didn't know that what she was experiencing was just a dream.

Since that first meeting, at the strangest times during the day, she would feel dizzy and light-headed. She would stare off at nothing almost as if she were searching for a reason why this was happening to her.

But the only explanation she could come up with was Conn Donoughue. He had brought all that youthful craziness and hope back. Feelings that should have died long ago. Sometimes it seemed to her as if the world just didn't work right.

He had invited her to dinner soon after that first meeting. She had forgotten herself and had gone out that evening feeling like a young girl again. All through dinner he had been charming and attentive. She just fell all that much harder for him.

He danced with her and pulled her closer than a man should. He would lean down to say something to her, and she could feel his breath in her ear and goose-pimples covered her from head to toe. He took her back to Mrs. Waverly's and kissed her under the lamplight on the stoop.

And while she was trying to calm her heart, he went and ruined everything.

He leaned against the building with his arms crossed in that male way he had, and suggested they "get down to business." He wanted to buy the building.

She was so humiliated that she had refused his offer with a stubbornness that he didn't appear to understand. And perhaps neither did she.

From then on they'd been adversaries.

He hounded her to sell. She stubbornly refused. She had even resorted to dropping by unannounced and pointing out infractions in the lease agreement.

It was her right. Besides, it irritated him, which was the reason she did it.

Eleanor straightened and pushed away from the building. She adjusted the velvet collar on her wool coat, pulling it up around her neck as if it could block out everything she was feeling. A minute later it was snowing those small and white wet flakes that seemed to melt just the instant before they touched you.

She squared her shoulders and walked down the sidewalk without glancing back. Snowflakes sprinkled her face and floated in her mouth. She went as far as the corner where the cable car stopped every half hour, and stood there for a minute. But she wasn't looking for the car or listening for the ringing of the trolley bell.

She was staring at the windows of the gym.

It wasn't even five o'clock, but lamplight shone in shapes of dim yellow boxes from a window on the third floor. She had forgotten how very dark it could get at this time of year.

She wondered if he was reading the lease. It was there on that paper in black and white. The top floor and the roof had been excluded from the lease agreement by her grandfather.

She knew why. Half the roof was paneled with long panes of glass that framed the night sky and made it look as if it were lifted right from a Van Gogh painting.

Gramps had always fancied himself somewhat of an astronomer. She'd heard him say that someday he would move his telescopes and charts to the old building. If the stock market did well, Gramps had been determined to renovate someday, perhaps even turn that building into a small neighborhood observatory.

But then her family had always been filled with hopeless dreamers. She never knew if for Gramps it was only a far-off dream or if he would have actually done it. Although it hadn't mattered because he never had the chance.

The market crashed in 1893. And so did their world. After two years of struggling and unexpected poverty, Gramps died. The only thing he still owned was the building, which was leased for five years to the gymnasium.

At that moment the cable car clanged its way up the street, and the people who stood on the corner began to crowd together. Heat from the anxious huddle of commuters blocked out the cool air for a brief moment. Blessedly the snow had stopped falling.

Eleanor shifted to hold her place at the edge of the curb. The cable car clacked to a stop, and the crowd swarmed forward. She jumped up the steps, dropped two pennies into the coin box with a clink, and turned to look for a seat.

Rows of couples stared back at her: men and women, fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, friends and lovers. She gripped the handrail above her as the car filled, then the trolley jerked forward. For the hundredth time she wondered how she could feel so alone in a city that was so very crowded.

A husband and wife sat next to where she stood, her hand in the leather strap that hung from the handrail above. The couple was talking about what to buy the children for Christmas.

She turned away only to see a handsome young pair across the aisle share a long look of first love. They shifted closer like turtledoves when the cable car turned another corner. She saw the young man discreetly take a hold of the girl's hand. The girl looked up shyly, and they exchanged a smile so full of feeling it hurt for her to watch.

She stood there tall and stiff and feeling achingly empty inside. At that moment she was more lonely than she could ever remember feeling. It was as if she were on the outside of a huge window where she could only look on as the world merrily went by on the other side. Over the years she had thought she'd gotten used to this lonely life, accepted it the same lost way someone learns to accept going through life on a wooden leg.

But all around her people chattered and laughed. She stood there, her body rocking to the cable car motion, her mind rocking with an odd mixture of loneliness and desire.

The car moved down the blocks while she stood there not seeing anything. People got on. People got off. But even when there were empty seats, she did not sit because she didn't notice.

At a crowded intersection, the brakeman clanged out "Jingle Bells" on the trolley bell. That did make her smile.

Ten minutes later she was off the trolley and moving down the street toward her rented rooms. It was raining now, and she began to run past the pushcarts filled with vegetables and fruits that refrigerated trains brought up from Florida, past the couples shopping for supper.

She only had a half block to go when the winter skies just opened up. Rain was coming down so hard it could blind you if you looked up into the sky.

She made a dash for cover under the red canvas awning at the Paris Café. She huddled there watching the rain splatter down as if the sky were a river. With the downpour came a gloomy darkness, and the lamps outside the café fluttered on.

Startled, she turned around. There, through the windows, she could see the waiters setting tables with candles and roses and wineglasses for two.