Banjo Man (6 page)

Wordlessly Rick picked up one set of chopsticks, and deftly demonstrated the proper way to dip and nibble the delicious morsels. A smile of pure ecstasy spread across his face.

Her stomach suddenly rumbling with hunger, Laurie lifted the chopsticks and fished for the first dumpling. It slid halfway across the platter, eluding capture. Frowning, she attacked again, and the dumpling leaped from the table onto her lap.

Rick’s rich laughter died beneath Laurie’s withering glance. Pulling his upper lip down over his grin, he reached across the table and carefully positioned the chopsticks in her hand, guided her to the platter, tightened the pressure around the tender dumpling, and lifted. The morsel made it halfway to her open mouth before sliding off the end of the chopsticks and across the tabletop.

“Don’t laugh,” she warned, her gray eyes dancing
with silent humor. “I’d like to see what you could do with a string of rosary beads!”

And with that she grabbed a fork and ate her way quickly through a good two-thirds of their lunch.

Rick watched her, his enjoyment of Laurie’s nearness almost as sharp a sense as the different tastes on his tongue. When he couldn’t resist any longer, he narrowed his dark eyes and broke the easy silence. “Laurie, may I ask you a question?”

Her skin tightened, knowing what was coming, but she nodded, carefully keeping her face empty. “Sure, Rick. What do you want to know?”

“Why did you become a nun?”

She lifted one shoulder, a little-girl gesture that tugged at Rick’s heart. “It’s not easy to explain now. But then it was so simple. It was expected.”

She put down her fork and looked right into his dark, shining eyes, wanting him to understand. “You see, I have three aunts who are in the convent. One, my Aunt Dorothy, is only six years older than I am, and she’d come visit and tell us all—there are five of us kids; I’m the oldest—well, she’d tell us all how wonderful it was, having a life dedicated to God, filled with purpose. She’s so good, so … so contented, and she’d look at me and say how I reminded her of herself when she was younger, and how she knew I’d love the holy life.…” She closed her eyes, silent for a moment, lost in her own thoughts. “My younger sister Katy—well, she was never put in this position; Katy somehow managed to be unmanageable from infancy! And no one ever thought of little Maggie as having a vocation—so that left
me
, Laurie to fulfill those hopes. Anyway, it made my mother and father so happy. So proud. And I thought my own—” The words stopped, trapped behind her white-edged lips.

“Laurie, I’m sorry. If this is too hard, don’t—”

“No,” she breathed. “It’s important that I try to explain. If only to myself.” Straightening her shoulders, she continued, “What I started to say was that I thought my own desires and feelings and … dreams were wrong and foolish. How could they measure up to this plan everyone seemed to have for me? How dared I say no, when I obviously was being selfish and childish—”

He broke into her words, his voice harsh with anger. “But you
were
only a child! Your dreams should have been nourished, treasured—”

“Rick,” she said, brushing away her anger with a smile, “in my big, middle-class, Irish Catholic family, common sense, practicality, tenacity, hard work—those are things to be treasured. Not dreams. But my family meant me no harm.”

“Were you harmed?” He asked it softly, his gaze lingering on the faint worry line above her honeyed brows, the solemn set of her delicate jaw, the deep shadows behind her wide gray eyes.

Laurie shook her head earnestly. “No, oh, no. I learned a lot during those years, saw into one part of myself I might never have tried to get to know otherwise. I made many dear friends, rubbed elbows with truly good, fine people. But I could never focus as clearly as I needed to, could never take that leap. I guess it was because”—she hid her smile behind her hand, but not before he had caught a glimpse of it—“I kept dreaming. Even in the convent, when I was trying so hard to adjust, dreams would fill my head at night. And in the day-time, too, when I was walking through the garden on the way to matins, or sitting at a window with the sun spilling through. Or even when I was teaching, when a class went especially well and some eager face would light up with understanding at something I had said. All those times, and so many others, I was filled with the feeling that I had
to be part of this life again. Had to leave behind some of those restraints and be free to step back in, open my arms, and take what might come!”

“Whew! You’re as bad as I am, darlin’. Ask the right question and we do know how to talk, the two of us.”

“You know”—Laurie leaned across the table, grinning, her chin propped on her hand—“I think that was the worst. The single thing that drove me away. The silence. No one to talk to. To hear. To listen. Sometimes I thought I’d explode and go flying into space, whirling in the darkness, searching, searching for someone to understand, to share—”

“Someone to ride to the moon with.”

She gulped air in a gasp. “Oh, is that it? Do you feel it too?”

Rick Westin sat quiet for a moment, a hint of surprise and wariness darkening his eyes. Then he smiled and pushed his chair away from the table.

“Come on, I’d better get the check and walk you back. Wouldn’t want you to get fired and have to return to your old line of work, now, would we?”

Without thinking, he wrapped an arm cozily around her waist as they started back down the Mall, but then she felt him stiffen and his hand dropped to his side. They walked along for a moment, silent.

Rick ached to touch her, but did he dare?

Laurie craved the warmth and delight of his touch; it was such a newfound pleasure! But now what? Would it all start again, the restraint and isolation, the loneliness? All because she had told him—

Oh, she couldn’t stand it! She just couldn’t!

Feeling slightly dizzy with desperation, she slipped a hand around his arm, and held on.

Rick grinned, bent his arm to trap her hand
tightly between his forearm and biceps, and strode on with a new jauntiness in his step.

“Slow down!” Laurie laughed, her heart doing happy somersaults.

“Are you kidding? I could leap, dance, kick up my heels, fling up my cap if I had one, Laurie O’Neill! You make me feel good, darlin’.”

“I’m feeling none too bad myself, Banjo Man.” She giggled, drunk on his excitement. “How do you expect me to work this afternoon?”

“Quickly! And then it’ll be evening, and I’ll look out into the audience and see your bright, shining face. Promise?”

“I
will
try, Rick. Honest!”

“I’ll settle for that. And this.” He lowered his face to hers and she felt his breath warm on her lips and then the dizzying pressure of his mouth, sweet and hot and more delicious than anything she had ever known.

And then he flashed that grin. “Ummm, I could get used to this!”

He waved from the corner, a lean, dark-haired man with gypsy eyes and a banjo. Laurie flung her hand up in response, and then fairly danced up the steps of the Rayburn Building.

The Stage Theater always drew a good crowd. But ever since Rick Westin had begun playing there, four years before, there was hardly ever an available seat. Those early audiences had told their friends, and friends had told other friends, and the word had spread. It was a “must” for out-of-town guests. Students from Georgetown caught the metro and rode over just before show time, hoping to take advantage of a last-minute cancellation.

The man had become something of a folk hero.

It was not, Rick privately thought, what you’d expect for a guy who spent half the year riding his ’cycle through the hills and hidden valleys of the Appalachians, wearing worn jeans and work boots, a banjo strapped behind the seat. But what he learned out there, the banjo playing, the ballads, the tall tales and rowdy jokes, the good ghost stories, all were transformed into magic on the stage. The audience loved him. And every night, from November to April, at eight o’clock, things began to sizzle.

At seven fifty-five a cab slid to a stop at the corner of Sixth and Maine.

Laurie was late! She’d die if she had to walk in once the lights were dimmed. Heads would turn. He’d see her!

It was all her own fault! She had spent all evening deciding not to come. Ellen was glued to the phone, hoping for a long-distance call from her boyfriend, Dan. Laurie could think of no one else to ask. Then, at seven, staring at a frozen TV dinner, she had a swift, absolute change of mind. No more hiding, no more saying no to life, no more turning back.

So here she was, in a silk print dress borrowed from Ellen’s closet, balancing on a pair of sling-back high heels, stuffing a five-dollar bill into the cabbie’s hand and not waiting for change.

“Hey, missy, thanks a lot!”

“You’re welcome,” she called back, and raced to the main entrance.

Handing her ticket to the man at the door, she could feel her heart knocking against her ribs.

He took it, then frowned at her. “I’m sorry, but this isn’t for tonight’s performance.”

Laurie swallowed hard. “What? But … but there must be some mistake. Rick … I mean, Mr. Westin gave it to me.” With an ice-cold hand she reached down and turned the ticket over clumsily. “He signed his name back here, see, and told me—”

“Oh! Sorry, miss. My mistake.” He smiled. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“That’s okay.” She gave a shy little laugh. “I tend to scare easily. And I hated to come in after the curtain was up.”

“Curtain? I guess you haven’t seen the show before. Go ahead; you’re in for a nice surprise.”

A young girl with a ponytail met her inside the door and handed her a program. “This way,
please.” She led Laurie down a narrow hall, down two steps, and into a good-sized, brightly lit room. It was filled with small tables circled by wooden chairs, all occupied by people whose attention was focused on the stage.

On the stage were a single table and chair, and the now-familiar assortment of banjo cases. And Rick.

He was standing stage left, tuning a five-string banjo and talking to a large group seated at a table up front.

The ponytail swung sideways as Laurie’s usherette called up to the stage. “Mr. Westin, is this who you were waiting for?”

Laurie froze.

Rick swung their way, grinned, and nodded. “Sure is! Now, folks, we can get started.”

There was a hearty round of applause and a few whistles. By then Laurie had melted into her seat, her cheeks aflame, her heart doing cartwheels in her throat.

The lights dimmed and a spotlight caught Rick.

“These first songs are presented exactly as sung by Miss Ada Selves in Hilltop, Kentucky. Miss Ada is ninety-seven, and has a tongue like a whip. She was real particular about my getting the words set down ‘jest right,’ and believe me, I keep tryin’.”

The banjo twanged, and Rick’s rich baritone filled the room with “The Wagoner’s Lad.”

He sang “The Swapping Song” and “The Wayfaring Stranger” and “Cock Robin.”

Laurie listened so intently, it was as if she were trying to absorb him through all her senses. Eagerly she took in the husky baritone, the lightning swiftness of his hands on the strings, the lean, dark power of his body as he moved around the stage. The spotlight found sparks in his hair and eyes; his smile beguiled her.

When he stopped playing, she could almost hear the audience’s held breath before the applause broke out.

Rick brushed an arm across his brow and grinned. “One summer I was ridin’ through Alabama. The bugs were so bad that year, they named the mosquito the state bird.” Accepting their laughter with a broad wink, he slung a different banjo over his shoulder and strummed a few chords.

“Now, here’s one for that ‘fair, pretty lass’ who was brave enough to come see me tonight.” His dark eyes burned into Laurie’s soul. She sat, hypnotized, while all the waves of panic and excitement stilled into a deep, calm pool of happiness.

He sang only to her:

Laurie gulped and held her smile steady, but inside she had begun to tremble. Something was stirring, awakening deep within her, unfolding like a bud, a closed hand, a locked heart. It hurt. How much would he ask, this Banjo Man? And how much did she dare?

The rest of the show was a haze through which her turbulent feelings swirled and stormed. Oh, she laughed at the right places, and applauded, and really did hear the sweet, haunting melodies and the rich beauty of his voice. But it was all filtered through her longing and confusion.

She could watch his hands on the strings, and suddenly she’d be seeing them unbuttoning her blouse. She could hear the stamp of his boot heel in time to the music, and suddenly she was imagining the hard shape of his thigh. Just a flash of white teeth behind his grin, and she felt the hot sweetness of his mouth on hers.

She banished the thoughts by picturing the dark notes and scales written on clean white sheets of paper, and was suddenly swept by the thought that she’d want to make love to him in the morning, so that she could see the wonder of him in pale light filtering through the window.

With a groan she sipped her cola, holding the ice in her mouth till her tongue was numb.

Finally the show ended. Amidst a roar of applause, Rick took his bows, his dark, handsome face exultant, his eyes shining. People crowded to the front, asking about songs and places, wanting him to repeat the “jump” line to the ghost stories so they could go home and scare their kids at bed-time the next evening.

And then they left, in groups and couples, all talking and laughing together, like guests invited to a party. The lights began to dim; the ushers straggled in to clean tables and straighten chairs. There was nothing left for Laurie to do but face Rick alone.

He made it easy. Leaping down from the stage, he strode over and caught her in his arms.