Hale's Point (18 page)

He took her chin in his hand. “I think I’m going to be a
monster
.” He gave her a quick, hard
kiss, and stood. “Oh! I almost forgot why I came in here.” He reached into the
right-hand pocket of his gym shorts, pulled out a half-empty pack of Camels,
and handed it to her. Then he pulled an unopened pack out of the left-hand
pocket and handed that to her, as well. “I want you to hide those from me.”

“You’re quitting?”

“You need lungs to swim,” he said, on the way to the door. “All
the strength in the world won’t help you if you can’t breathe.” He stood in the
doorway and grinned at her.

Adopting what she hoped would pass for an unconcerned smirk,
she reached behind her, grabbed the corner of a plump down pillow, and flung it
as hard as she could in the direction of his cocky grin. He pulled the door
closed, and it landed with a
whump
and dropped to the floor.

Harley fell back into her pile of pillows, forgetting about
the gap left by the one she had just thrown. Her head slammed into the wall and
she yelped at the sharp pain. She sat up and spent several minutes rubbing the
back of her head, wondering just exactly what she had gotten herself into.

Chapter 8

Shortly after breakfast
the next morning, Tucker took a phone call from Phil.

“You know that old white Victorian house in the village, the
one next to the bookstore?” Phil asked. “It was a funeral home when we were
kids, then an antiques shop?”

“Yeah. This doesn’t have anything to do with my Jag, does it?”

“No, no, no. Doug Ralston bought it. You remember Doug.”

“Sure,” Tucker said. Through the open window facing the front
yard, he watched Harley walk back from the mailbox at the road, flipping
through a stack of letters and magazines. Her hair was still wet from her
morning swim, which she had insisted on taking, and she wore her white
terry-cloth robe and no shoes. She had a naturally graceful, loose-hipped walk
that he found impossible to look away from. “Is he in the antiques business
now?”

“Doug? Not likely. No, he turned it into a club. Folk rock,
mainly, but there’s a jazz saxophonist who plays there on Monday nights.”

“Hale’s Point has a night-spot?” Tucker said. Harley dropped
a letter and bent to pick it up. As she did so, the front of her robe gapped
slightly, revealing the pale, rounded tops of her breasts. That she was naked
under the robe came as a surprise; Tucker had assumed she still wore her swimsuit.

Phil said, “Yes, believe it or not, Hale’s Point has a
nightspot. It’s a good one, too.”

“And the point of all this…” Tucker prompted. Harley pulled
out one of the magazines and smiled at the cover. Tucker ached with curiosity
to know what had made her smile. He shook his head. Who cared? What was the
matter with him?

“The point,” Phil answered, “is that tonight’s band has
canceled, and seeing as how it’s Friday, and the place will be packed, that’s
not a good thing. Luckily, he’s got backup entertainment on reserve at all
times. Bet you can’t guess who that is.”

After a moment’s thought. Tucker said, “You’re not serious.
Not Rob and Jim and those guys? They can’t still have that awful band after
twenty years.”

“Well, not Jim. He’s doing entertainment law in L. A. But Rob
and Larry are still here. Rob does environmental law and Larry teaches history
at Stony Brook. They play together every chance they get. They’re not awful
anymore, either. Pretty good, in fact. Folk and blues. They even write some of
their own stuff now. Why don’t you come check them out tonight? Say, around
nine? It’d be like a reunion. And ask Harley if she wants to come.”

She was close now, on the front walk, her nose buried in the
mail, completely unaware that he had been watching her. “Harley!” he called. He
held the phone away from his mouth, but resisted the impulse to cover the
mouthpiece; he wanted Phil to hear this.

She looked around briefly before squinting at the screened
window. “Tucker?”

“Do you want to go to a folk-rock club with me tonight? As my
date?”

“Damn it, Tucker!” came Phil’s tinny voice over the line. “You
know that’s not what I meant.”

After a pause, she shrugged. “Sure. That sounds like fun.”

“Great.” said Tucker. “I’ll drive us there—” he held the
phone close to his mouth and enunciated very clearly “—in my
new Jag
.”

Harley, looking puzzled, walked away, while Phil said, “You
think you’re so smart. You may have your new Jag, but I’ve got something
better. I’ve got a
medical
degree. I
am a
doctor
! A genuine, six-figure
M.D.
Ain’t
no car in the world can compete with that,
even yours. Which is not to say I don’t still want it. I definitely am still
willing to trade you my house for it. I just want you to know it takes more
than a great car
to win over a girl like that.”

“What does it take, Phil?”

“It takes a stack of credit cards so fat you could wrap both
hands around them and your fingers won’t touch. It takes Lord & Taylor,
Bloomie’s
, Saks, Bergdorf’s, and about a zillion more. Oh,
but I forgot! You don’t believe in credit!” He laughed maniacally. “You lose!”

“Tell you what,” Tucker said. “I feel sorry for you, so I’m
going to find you a date. Matter of fact, I’ve already got someone in mind. You’ll
love her.”

“Who? Not Mimi. She’s cute, but she’s not my type.”

“Let
me
decide what
your type is. I’m an excellent judge of these things.”

“Tucker, don’t go inviting some—”

“I’ve got to go now. Harley needs some help with the sun-tan
oil.”

“Tucker—”

“See you tonight.”

After hanging up on Phil, Tucker looked up the
Tiltons
’ number in
R.H.’s
massive
black leather address book, the same one he’d had when Tucker was a boy.

“Mimi? Tucker Hale. Listen, some friends of mine are going to
be playing at the club in the village tonight. Harley and I are going, and we
wondered if you’d like to join us. And there’s someone else I’d like you to
bring….”

Around one o’clock, Tucker left for the afternoon, saying he
had to finish his business with the Jaguar dealer and run a couple of other
errands. While he was gone, Harley attended to the pool maintenance and briefly
exercised
R.H.’s
eight sports cars, which he had
asked her to do twice a week. Then she took her afternoon run, but her energy
had been sapped by the heatstroke, and she ended up exhausted.

When she climbed up from the beach, his Jag was in the
driveway. On the kitchen table she found a Vidalia onion, a head of garlic, a
bottle of Tabasco, a bag of yellow corn-meal, and various other spices and
canned goods. Passing by his room, she saw on his bed a scattering of bags and
boxes.

Upstairs, the door to
R.H.’s
suite
was ajar and she could hear a repetitive metallic scraping accompanied by
labored breathing and an occasional grunt of effort. She closed the door to her
room, stripped, slipped between the cool cotton sheets, and fell asleep.

***

A hand gently kneaded her bare back. She opened her eyes to
find Tucker sitting on the bed, murmuring, “Wake up. Chili’s ready.”

The sheet covered her only to her waist, but thankfully she
was lying on her stomach. Even if she weren’t, he’d seen it all before, she
reminded herself. She had the sense of having slept deeply.

“Come on, honey,” he said, smoothing her hair off her face. “Up
and at ‘
em
.”

“You leave and I’ll get up and at ‘
em
.”
she mumbled. She twisted her head to look at him. “And don’t call me
hon
—” The rebuke stuck in her throat, and all she could do
was stare dumbly. He looked completely different. He looked like a stranger. “You
cut your hair,” she finally said.

“There’s a barber in the village.” He ran a hand over it. It
was very short all over; almost, but not quite, a buzz cut. Most men looked
awful in such an unforgiving cut, but Tucker wasn’t one of them. The absence of
hair showed off the pleasing shape of his head and the sharply carved bones of
his face. He looked both aristocratic and military, like a young Roman emperor.

Standing, he draped her white robe over her inert form and
headed toward the door. “Wake ‘
em
and shake ‘
em
, babe. Cold chili’s a bummer.”

Finding her voice as he closed the door behind him, she
yelled, “And don’t call me babe, either!”

The chili and corn bread were ridiculously good, and Harley
surprised herself by having seconds of both. She offered to clean since he had
cooked. Tucker consulted the kitchen clock and said, “Okay. That’ll give me
some time to do a few laps before we swim. Then we should still make it to the
club by nine. Can I, uh… can I borrow your… stopwatch?”

Harley allowed her stunned expression to metamorphose into a
self-satisfied grin. “Of course,” she said with mock graciousness, unbuckling
the watch and handing it to him.

He accepted it with a sheepish grin and disappeared into his
room. A few minutes later she heard the French doors open and close. When she
looked out the kitchen window, she saw him standing in the dusk at the edge of
the brightly lit pool, clad in a minimal black racing suit, which he must have
bought that day. He had his back to her as he fiddled with the stopwatch, so
she felt free to stare.

He stood with careless grace, his weight resting on his good
leg. His shoulders were well muscled, squaring off a broad back that scooped
down to narrow hips and a compact rear. His short hair and long, powerful limbs
completed the image: injuries aside, he looked not so much like a Roman emperor
as a Roman god, carved in marble at the edge of a temple’s reflecting pool.

He moved to the edge of the deep end, crouched in proper
starting position, clicked the stopwatch, and sprang into the water. As he did
so, she saw his grimace of pain, and winced.
 
She left him—swimming slow, laborious
laps—to change into her white maillot, then joined him in the pool. For about
forty minutes he continued his laps, checking the stopwatch periodically, while
she lazily backstroked from one end to the other.

Now he’s the driven one and
I’m just hanging out,
she thought as the stars drifted past overhead.

His voice interrupted her reverie. “Ready to try this again?”

They took their positions. “One… two… three… go!”

He made it a little farther into the deep end before she
touched the deck, but not much. Nevertheless, he seemed exhilarated, which she
knew owed less to endorphins than to anticipation, the prospect of catching her
and collecting his prize. Shivering, she ran upstairs to shower and change for
the club.

***

Harley hated not knowing the right thing to wear. She had
never been to a folk-rock club, or any other kind of club, for that matter. Did
women wear jeans and T-shirts or nice dresses?

Scanning the half-dozen outfits carefully laid out on her
bed, she chastised herself for her lack of self-confidence.
Wear whatever you want, for God’s sake! Why
should you knock yourself out, anyway? Imagine how Tucker will look.
The
idea of walking into a public place on the arm of a man in faded army surplus
only added to her distress, so she put it out of her mind.

In the end, she chose a white cotton peasant blouse and
tucked it into what she thought of as her gypsy skirt. She had bought the skirt
on impulse, having fallen instantly in love with its sheer, gold-flecked layers
of teal, eggplant, and midnight blue. But she had never worn it, having had no
place to wear it to—until now.

One of the advantages of being small on top was having the
option of going braless if the spirit moved her. She exercised that option now,
so that she could loosen the drawstring of her blouse and push the neckline
down off her shoulders, as she had seen it displayed on the mannequin in the
store. There.
Now
she didn’t look
like little Miss Republican
M.B.
A.

She rarely wore makeup, but tonight she thoughtfully applied
some mascara, brushed on a light dusting of powder, and painted her lips shell
pink. After brushing her hair out loosely, she put on her best silver-and-onyx
earrings, then appraised the results in the mirror and smiled. She tossed a few
things into her smallest handbag and went downstairs.

The door to Tucker’s room stood open, and she saw that some
of the bags and boxes that littered the bed had been opened. She didn’t see
Tucker himself until she stepped into the room, and the sight of him drew an
astonished gasp from her.

He stood in front of the full-length, freestanding mirror,
holding two linen ties up to his chest and frowning. One was floral, the other
a pattern of free-form brushstrokes, both in shades of brown, gray, and a pale,
muted green that exactly matched the green of his crisp, button-down shirt. He
wore khaki trousers, and his belt and shoes were of soft, brown kid. A
putty-colored summer blazer hung over the back of the chair in the corner. When
he looked her way, all she could say was, “Wow.”