Again (21 page)

H
e felt sick. No, not just sick. More like he was on the edge of death, but couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong. That wasn’t right, either, because he knew what was wrong. Or the who of it. Everything else was good. So, his life should be better. But she was the constant thorn in his side, the skipped beat of his heart, the longing that couldn’t be sated.

Things were good at the office. Dan Hammond, his new hire, had skill and talent, as well as a savvy belying his twenty-eight years. The two of them already had bids in on a couple of city projects, and had survived the weeding out process. There were now only three firms they were up against. It didn’t even faze him that one of the firms was the newly formed
Debbs & Gaines.
He was past that betrayal, and the hurt no longer gnawed at his guts.

His nights were better. The dreams didn’t plague him anymore. His sleep was almost eventless, just the regular abstract scenes that had been commonplace in his dream world. That is, before the other dreams had taken over and nearly driven him crazy.

Now, the star of those dreams stood in the doorway—on the arm of someone else. Suddenly the climate of the room seemed extremely warm as he watched the couple enter and head for Sherry. Damn, she looked beautiful tonight. He had almost forgotten how beautiful she was. In the weeks of her silence, he had forced his mind to erase her, just as his dreams began edging her out of focus.

Looking at her now, it was hard to breathe, as though someone had turned down the oxygen in the room. Beads of sweat emerged on his brow. They hadn’t been there a minute ago.

A waiter handed him a glass of champagne. He downed it in two gulps and realized that his thirst wasn’t quenched. He nodded to the waiter and received another glass. Sipping evenly, he positioned himself to casually observe the trio. Sherry’s smile was warm and cordial. Watching his friend, he felt an irrational resentment, knowing even as he acknowledged the feeling, that it was childish and silly. Of course, Sherry was going to be friendly to all of her guests. She wasn’t the keeper of his personal enmity.

Tyne’s smile broadened as the three of them laughed about something. For that second, there was nothing else. In a room of glass and crystal, her smile’s brilliance overwhelmed the glitter and sparkle that illuminated the room. A warmth stirred in his stomach and he wasn’t sure whether it was Tyne or the alcohol. The earlier sick feeling he’d experienced upon seeing her slowly morphed into something pleasurable, something desirable. Something that moved like tentacles through his bloodstream. He sipped and the tentacles spread out. The tension in his bunched muscles seeped away. He drained the second glass as the couple took leave of Sherry, turning to scope the room. Then her eyes met his.

The pleasant warmth torched, became a painful conflagration as those liquid eyes blankly acknowledged his, then quickly turned away. Tyne turned her back to him, and the tendrils spiked like knives, cutting him. They sliced through his guts as he watched her take her partner’s arm in a display of possessiveness that spoke of some intimacy between them.

Something was growing inside him. Something feral, angry. Lethal. At that moment, he would have gladly wrapped his hands around her throat, squeezed until he felt the bones give way. Those lovely eyes would bulge from their sockets, screaming with fear. He wanted to make her feel his pain, the knives tearing through him.

“Hello.” A voice broke into his thoughts. He turned to find a tall, thirtyish redhead standing next to him. She held her own glass of champagne, the rim edged with burgundy lipstick. A pricey scent drifted between them, settling in their airspace. Soft hair escaped from a ball at her nape, and blue eyes peered through silver wire rims that added a sultry sophistication and complemented the silver beaded gown clinging to her slight curves. She reminded him of Karen. He took all of this in even as she covertly checked him out.

“You’re David Carvelli, aren’t you? Well, actually I know you are because Sherry already told me.” Her eyes twinkled with amusement and confidence. This was a woman who had already weighed and measured the odds of both rejection and conquest, and had decided that conquest was more probable. David stemmed the volcano inside him, thinking that maybe here was the distraction he needed to get him through the night. To take his mind off of more violent thoughts.

“Why are you so curious about me?” he asked more abruptly than he meant.

Her confidence seemed to waver a second, then refocused with a renewed verve. She was recalculating the challenge, probably wondering if he was worth the risk. Usually Sherry warned him when someone had marked him, but she hadn’t this time, making him wonder if she was the instigator.

“I saw you one day at Sherry’s office. I was leaving, you were coming in. You looked all intense, brooding. I thought then that here was a man who could stand some cheering up. I’ve been known to bring in the sunshine on occasion. If you’re willing to try me.”

“Depends on what kind of cheering up you had in mind.” He reached for another glass of champagne, his senses expanding. The colors of the gowns, the flowers, the intermingling scents of attar, perfume, cologne, hot cuisine, the murmurings and laughter—all were amplified, making his pulse race. Everything was too bright, too loud.

“…up to you.” He caught the tail end of the sentence and realized he had momentarily faded her out. His eyes caught his quarry, in a far corner of the room, far away from him.

She wasn’t going to get away that easily. The alcohol churned in his stomach, fed out to his nerves, emboldened them.

Tonight, things would get settled.

The warmth of Lem’s fingers tingled her bare back where they lay. She ignored the sensation as she and Lem talked with Carole Penzer,
Elan
’s copy editor. Carole was twenty-five, nice, but with a sometimes irritating perkiness that had yet to be tempered by experience. She beamed as she discussed plans to one day become managing editor. Tyne couldn’t help but smile at such naïve optimism. Still, one never knew which way the wind would blow—and what it would carry in: good fortune, opportunity, or something else. Something like the persistent dread she had been fighting since she saw David.

It really shouldn’t be this hard. She had dealt with former lovers before. That was the problem, though. She
wasn’t
dealing. Instead, she was running, as she had the first time she met him and he set her emotions in a flurry. She was being a coward. Instead of going up to him and saying hello, she was avoiding him and hoping to providence that he wouldn’t seek her out.

Lem nodded as Carole admitted that her job wasn’t always as stimulating as she’d like and was something she hoped not to be doing for too long. He commiserated with his own anecdotes, his voice not betraying the disappointment Tyne had detected that rainy day at Starbucks. She tried to listen fully, but her focus wavered even as her body strained against an irrational fear that refused to be contained. There was expectancy, a lull before a hurricane, the itching of the skin when someone was staring into your back, about to plunge a dagger into it.

“Hello, Tyne.”

The conversation stopped as all three turned to acknowledge the newcomer. Tyne’s fear deepened, but she stood calmly, her eyes momentarily focusing to the right of him before they settled on those eyes. Lem’s fingers still rested possessively on her back. She noted that this fact was not lost on David as she watched him stiffen, his eyes narrow. Then he seemed to recall himself and let his features relax. He was going to play casual. She would play along, despite a sudden shift in temperature that was turning her flesh molten.

“David, how are you?” she asked, pleased that her voice was steady. The glare of chandelier lights behind him seem to cast a halo around his head and the illusion was off-putting. Hundreds of people were in the room, including Lem who stood next to her, but they might as well have been in another galaxy. It was a scene from a movie, where the supporting cast dims out and the light brightens around the lovers. All her senses were attuned to the man standing in front of her. A smile played around his lips, but an angry fire burned from his eyes. She knew she could never be alone with him again.

“How do you
think
I am?” His voice was bitter, the planes and angles in his face hard and unforgiving. Lem’s arm enclosed her waist like a shield as he sized up the situation.

The forgotten Carole tittered nervously. “I think I see Sherry over there. I should, um…um…” She left the sentence hanging as she scampered out of harm’s way.

“David, this isn’t the place…” Tyne started.

“Then what place is good for you, since you’ve been avoiding me for weeks.”

She heard the pain in the words, and felt guilt rising to join her trepidation.

“Look, is there a problem?” Lem piped in, his voice a register lower, his grip around Tyne a bit tighter.

David turned his glare on the taller man. “This is between me and Tyne.”

“Well, I think you should let it go for tonight. Like the lady said, this isn’t the place.”

David’s smile was nasty. “And you’re the one who’s going to decide what happens here? You might be in for more than you can handle.”

“Trust me, I can handle anything you got,” Lem said softly, but his fingers bit into Tyne’s waist causing her to wince.

“David!” Tyne pleaded.

Her voice was part of a chorus. Sherry stood at David’s side, staring up at him, eyes furious. Both of them had spoken at once. People nearby stopped chatting, feeling the threat of something in the air.

“What the hell is going on?” Sherry said to David, her voice low, but audible enough to the four of them.

David lost the smirk, and turned a chastened face to his friend, whose expression was livid.

“You had better not be messing up my party, David!” she warned. “This isn’t the place to settle your petty resentments, so don’t start anything! If you can’t handle your liquor, I suggest you leave now before you make a scene.”

David opened his mouth to say something, then quickly shut it. Sherry had forced him to see himself through someone else’s eyes, and the image was disturbing. Tyne saw several emotions juxtaposed on his face, all at war with each other.

He turned his eyes to Tyne again, and her breath caught in her throat. The pain was raw, and it shone harshly through prisms of green, gold, and brown. She wanted to say she was sorry for dismissing him so casually, but she figured that time had passed. There was nothing between them now but hurt and animosity, and the best thing was to stay out of each other’s way.

“Tyne…” he started, then seemed not to know what to say. So he said nothing as he turned abruptly and strode from the room, causing curious heads to turn in his wake. Tyne hadn’t realized she had been holding her breath until she began breathing again, slow deep pulls of oxygen that would help calm her racing pulse.

“So, who the hell was that?” Lem asked, his eyes staring at the doorway where his sudden nemesis had exited. Sherry stood for a second longer, staring in the same direction, then just walked away. She had the presence to stop to acknowledge her guests. Tyne figured she was giving some explanation to those close enough to have heard the exchange.

“He’s a friend. Or I guess now, a former friend,” she said quietly.

Lem looked at her. “Well, from what I could see, he probably thought he was more than a friend. Bad breakup?”

Tyne was embarrassed. She didn’t like airing her business, and David had practically broadcast it to everyone within ear distance. She especially didn’t like the impression it might have given Lem, who had always respected her. She didn’t want to appear a heartless bitch who used and tossed away men without batting a lid.

“There wasn’t a breakup. Just a misunderstanding.”

“No, sweetie, that wasn’t a misunderstanding, that was a declaration of war,” Lem looked at her with concern. “Maybe you should get something to protect yourself.”

Tyne was already shaking her head. “It’s not like that. David wouldn’t hurt me. He’s not capable.”

“Tyne, one thing you have to learn:
anybody
is capable of
anything
. I know from personal experience. I had an uncle who you would have thought was the most loving man in the world, but that didn’t stop him from unloading a gun into his wife. Never knew why. And the way that man was looking at you, well, just promise me you’ll take some precautions, all right?”

“Lem, I promise you nothing is going to happen. People get angry without going crazy. He’s angry, I’ll grant you, but there wasn’t that much between us. It was just a thing, a stupid lapse in my better judgment. It won’t happen again.”

“Well, you’re intelligent enough to know the score, so I’ll back off.” He looked around, spotted the table laden with food. “Let’s try to enjoy the rest of the evening as best we can. I came here for a good time.”

Tyne forced the smile and nodded. “So did I.” She pushed David’s face from her mind, intent on enjoying the celebration. But throughout the rest of the evening, no matter how hard she tried, the image loomed large and angry and violent.

At one point, she shuddered as though the Chicago chill had seeped through the caulked windows into the room and entered her bones. She ignored it as she bit down on a mini-drumstick, her tongue tasting lemon butter, her brain registering nothing but a tiny verve of fear.

H
e sat waiting in the starkly cold night. To keep warm, he kept the engine running. A Stan Getz CD was playing, a personal favorite, but not even the alluring strains of the tenor sax could stop the blaze that was steadily building. An ache pounded behind his eyes, and his mouth was dry, the early beginnings of a hangover that shouldn’t be because he had drunk no more than two glasses of champagne.

His body didn’t feel right. The hands that gripped the wheel felt foreign, his fingers unfamiliarly shorter, thicker. He took his left hand off the wheel, flexed the fingers to throw off the sensation of estrangement from his body, from himself. Thoughts canvassed his brain; some he let in, others he flung away, refusing to listen.

But the logical part of him that had now dwindled to just a speck would not peter out, but instead shouted with a dying voice:
This is crazy! Just drive away!
This voice he refused to hear, shutting it out until it was just a whimper, an echo of a pestering insect. He wasn’t crazy or acting irrationally. She was the one who was being irrational. He just wanted to talk to her, find out what he did wrong and try to make things right again. So that she would let him back in. Because he missed her. As much as he tried to deny it to himself, he longed for her heat that kept him warm during the night. He wanted, no he needed, to smell her scent, a pungent mixture of cream and sweat that suffused his room after she’d come, sometimes softly, sometimes violently enough to shift the mattress.

This was her fault! All she had to do was answer one of his calls. Just one. Instead she’d shut him out entirely. She’d tossed him away like garbage, like he didn’t matter, like it had been nothing but some sort of sick game between them.

An hour passed, and the combination of cold along with a steadily growing stiffness in his limbs almost decided the matter. He sighed in defeat and set the wheel to maneuver out of the parking space.

Before he got in a full turn, a sedan pulled up and parked a couple of cars in front of him. With only the street lights and a hazy moon, the color was indecipherable, but the car was an older Ford model, something driven by someone with a whole lot of loyalty, or by someone with no taste or money to get something newer. Despite the threadbare look of the vehicle, something made him watch carefully, the hair on his neck moving, causing his skin to itch.

A man got out of the car. David strained to see his features. Same height and lankiness as the guy at the party. The man walked to the passenger side, opened the door, and a woman got out. Even in the darkness, he recognized the silhouette of her profile, the elegant neckline. She was home.

The thudding headache that had receded in the hour came back with a full rush, causing a sharp pain that momentarily caused him to shut his eyes. He didn’t want to watch the pair walk through the entrance of the building. He didn’t want to visualize them taking the stairs to her apartment, then standing at her door while she made her decision. Maybe it would be nothing more than a kiss on the lips. But then kisses could become more. She could open the door, let him inside—inside her apartment, her body, her soul, even. David would forever be shut out.

That wasn’t an option.

They entered her building and he waited. And waited. Ten minutes passed, fifteen. Nearly twenty and he thought about getting out and ringing the bell. Even knowing that when she realized it was him, she would never buzz him up. But he needed to do something tangible, to move his stiff limbs, to walk the pavement, to feel the smooth metal of the bell button beneath his finger. To let her know that he wasn’t going anywhere.

Before he reached for the handle, the entrance door opened and a figure stepped out. Tall and lanky. His proportions seemed abnormal, belonging to a nocturnal creature lurking in the dark instead of a human male. What did she see in this guy anyway? Yet David’s peeve was tempered by a trickle of relief that nothing had happened, couldn’t have happened in so short a time.

The figure got into his car, warmed up the engine then drove off. David sat for a moment longer, then finally opened his door and got out. A chilled wind hit him in the face. The temperature had dropped since he arrived, and the climate was more wintry than autumn. He walked the few steps to the building door, each step seeming like miles. He’d only been here once, a month or so ago. He’d dropped by on a whim only to find her not home and had left without leaving her a note.

But that was when he thought there would be other days to visit. He hadn’t gotten the chance to see her apartment, let alone stay there, or to become familiar with her domestic habits, discover her idiosyncrasies. Sometimes he would imagine waking up beside her in her bed, sunlight streaming through her windows. The fantasy had played out with her making strawberry pancakes for breakfast, after which they would sit down to a leisurely meal at the kitchen table. A hundred times he had tried to picture how the rooms of her apartment were set up, how walls merged into each other, making cubby areas where she would have placed a painting, a knick knack, something that was entirely her taste.

This building was a three-flat that had been converted into a condominium. Hyde Park was sated with such edifices, old brownstones that managed to maintain their veneer of stateliness despite the fading years. The stone lintel along the door was chipped by weather and the door needed a new coating of paint. The bell was cold to his touch, but the chill he felt had nothing to do with the weather.

Again, the tiny voice tried to warn him. He ignored it, and it drifted away on another cold breeze. As he pressed the bell, he imagined it resounding through her apartment. Maybe she was half dressed now, already preparing for bed. It was almost midnight.

The buzzer surprised him. He was sure that she would have intercomed to find out who was calling. He pushed the door open immediately before the buzzer stopped, then took the stairs two at a time, eager to close the distance. He heard the door open, and she said softly down the stairs, “Lem?”

He paused midflight. She was expecting the other one, the man from the party. Which explained why she had buzzed him in so readily. She still hadn’t looked down the stairwell to see who was ascending. Were she and that guy planning a night together? But why had he driven away then?

“Did you forget something?” she asked down the three flights. Her voice was light, even maybe a little flirty. The pain throbbed, and his left hand formed into a fist.

Then she did look down.

And the world stopped.