Lovers and Strangers (20 page)

"Dammit, Faith! Listen to what I'm telling you. It wasn't an accident. Eric didn't just slip and fall over the balcony railing. He jumped. He committed suicide. Because of me and—" he grabbed the script out of her hand and slammed it down on the table
"—that,"
he finished, his voice rich with disgust and loathing. For the script. For himself.

There was a taut silence as they stared at each other. Faith's eyes were wide, filled with horror and compassion and the womanly need to reach out and comfort the man she loved. Jack's expression was bleak, filled with anguish and self-recrimination—and fear.
Now
she would turn away from him. It was what he wanted. What he'd intended, but he didn't know if he could stand it. His jaw was clenched tight as if he expected to be struck. Or touched tenderly. Either one would have shattered him into a thousand pieces.

Faith clenched her hands together. "What happened?" she asked softly, knowing he had to tell her. And she had to hear it.

"We argued. We were always arguing that summer, over one stupid thing or another. Eric didn't like my politics. I didn't like his friends. Stupid stuff." He waved a hand dismissively. "He was working as a gaffer at one of the studios but what he really wanted to do was write screenplays. He'd written a couple of scripts for television but they never went anywhere."

"And you?" Faith prompted. "What were you doing that summer?"

"I was an eighteen-year-old, left-wing radical pain in the ass. I wrote for one of the underground, antiestablishment newspapers that were all over the place in those days. My specialty was outraged diatribes against a corrupt and morally bankrupt system."

"So you were both writers."

"Yeah. Both writers." He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "Eric convinced me to write a screenplay with him. He said if we got it produced, I could reach millions of people with my message instead of just the couple of hundred who were reading that rag I wrote for. My job would be to write the bare bones of the story, his would be to refine it, to make sure it was commercial enough to get noticed by the powers that be. Well, they noticed all right, thanks to Eric, and we sold it."

"And?" Faith prompted gently.

"And the producer wanted changes, like producers always do. I got up on my soapbox and refused to make them, said it would be like prostituting our script. Eric and I argued about it for days. We argued about it again the night he killed himself. There was a party going on and he was high—he was high a lot that summer—and he started pressuring me about making the changes again, talking about the money and fame that would come our way. What he was really talking about was security," Jack said reflectively. "We'd never had much of it in our lives and Eric had always been the one who provided what little there was for both of us. But I wouldn't listen to what he was trying to say. In the end, he threatened to make the changes himself. And I lost my temper and told him he couldn't because he didn't have the talent. I'll never forget the look on his face. Never. It was if I'd stabbed him in the gut."

"Was it true?" Faith asked.

"It doesn't matter if it was true or not. I shouldn't have said it to him. But I did. And then I stormed out of the apartment before he could say anything else. I don't even remember where I went or how long I was gone. The next time I saw Eric he was lying on his back in the courtyard. It almost looked as if he were asleep or had passed out, except for the pool of blood behind his head."

"Oh, Jack. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"All because of a few damned unimportant changes to a script that probably would never have made it to the screen anyway."

"Why are you still torturing yourself with it?" she asked quietly, going right to the heart of the matter. "Why do you keep it around when it gives you such pain?"

Jack gave a harsh laugh. "I'd think someone like you would know the answer to that."

"Someone like me?"

"You understand the principle of penance, don't you? Making amends? Offering up an act of contrition?"

"By keeping this script around as a constant reminder of something you can't ever change?" She touched the date on the cover page. "By carrying it around the world with you for the last twenty-five years? That isn't doing penance, Jack. That's self-flagellation. It's martyrdom. You might as well wear sackcloth and ashes. Or sew a big red M for murder on your chest to remind everyone of what you think you've done. Or why don't you just set yourself on fire down there in the courtyard, the way I've read some Hindu penitents do? Or jump off of the balcony and end it the way Eric did? It would be kinder than what you're doing to yourself now."

"I haven't been carrying it around with me for twenty-five years. I'd actually almost forgotten all about it," Jack said, meaning the script itself. He'd never forgotten, not for a single minute, his part in his brother's death.

"Then what—"

"Mueller gave me a couple of boxes of stuff when I moved back into Wilshire Arms. Apparently, some things had been left behind after Eric died and nobody claimed them, so Mueller boxed them up and stuck them in a storage locker down in the basement."

"And the script was in one of those boxes."

"The script. My old portable typewriter." He ran his finger over the platen. "Some books and old bills. A few pictures."

"It must have hurt," Faith said, wishing she had been there to somehow soften the blow, wishing she dared reach out to him now. But there was something about him that told her he wouldn't accept her offer of comfort. Not yet.

"No, actually, it didn't hurt much at all," he said as if that fact had surprised him. "It was kind of comforting, in a way, like seeing an old friend from the past. It gave me a kind of—" he shrugged self-consciously "—a kind of hope for salvation. A way to make amends and maybe, finally, put it all behind me. I was going to rewrite it, make all the changes Eric wanted me to make twenty-five years ago. But I can't."

"Can't make the changes?"

"Can't write. At all. I haven't written a word since Haiti."

"What happened in Haiti?"

"That's the irony of it. Nothing happened in Haiti." He spoke with his head down, his finger tracing back and forth over his and his brother's name on the cover of the script. "Not a damn thing that I haven't seen happen in other parts of the world a thousand times over, a thousand times worse."

Faith reached out and touched his hand, stilling it. "Tell me."

He turned his hand in hers, clutching her fingers in his. "I'd been there about three days, not long, and I was out in the streets, gathering background information for the story I was working on." He didn't look at her as he spoke but his grip was almost tight enough to break her fingers. "A gang of little boys ran up to me, a half dozen of them, eight, nine, maybe ten years old. Dirty, ragged little boys. I couldn't understand much of what they were saying but they looked hungry. All the kids down there look hungry," he told her, his voice low and stricken.

Faith ran her free hand up his arm to his shoulder, rubbing it comfortingly.

"I gave them each one of the granola bars I always carry in my pack, handed them out until I didn't have any left. One of the kids didn't eat his right away, like the others. He ran across the street, holding it close to his chest and calling for someone. Another little boy, younger, about four or five, I think—it's hard to tell when they're so malnourished—came out from behind a corrugated metal wall. The bigger boy showed him the granola bar and then broke it between his hands. He gave the biggest piece to his little brother and then stood there, protecting him from the other kids while he ate it."

His cheeks were wet when he finished telling the story, but Jack didn't seem to notice. Faith reached up and brushed at the dampness with her fingers. He didn't seem to notice that, either.

"It's funny," he said musingly. "I didn't remember that until just now. And I still don't remember anything that happened after that until I woke up in a Miami hospital, two days later."

"A Miami hospital?"

"I lost it," he said, not looking at her. "Went completely off my rocker and turned into a blithering idiot. One of the other American reporters got me out of there and back to a hospital in the States. I guess he figured Miami was the closest."

"You had a nervous breakdown," Faith said softly. "It's nothing to be ashamed of."

"It's nothing to be proud of, either," he ground out harshly.

Unable to bear his misery another minute, another second, Faith stepped forward and took him into her arms. He stiffened but she held on, hard, until he gave in and collapsed against her. She put her hand on the back of his head, then, drawing him down to her shoulder, rocked him like a baby, despite the fact that she was so much smaller than he was. He held on tight, clinging to her like a wounded child while the grief poured through him. She could feel the wetness of his tears on her neck, feel his big, hard body shaking against hers, feel his hands gripping the fabric of her dress as he fought for control. He succeeded, finally, after long terrible minutes, quieting against her. She felt him rub his face against her shoulder, like a little boy surreptitiously wiping away the evidence of his tears against his mother's dress. He was one of those men who would believe it wasn't manly to cry, no matter how much you hurt.

She loosened her arms when he did and stepped back. "Ready for that omelet now?" she said brightly, and turned toward the kitchen.

Chapter 10

"I need two plates, right now," Faith said, cutting the omelet in half with the side of her spatula. "Another second and it'll be overcooked."

Jack held the plates out, one in each hand as she expertly lifted each half of the omelet out of the frying pan.

"Take those to the table, please," she ordered, turning to put the pan in the sink. "I'll be right behind you with the coffee and the bagels."

Jack did as she asked, still a little shell-shocked by all that had gone on before. He knew he'd made a complete fool of himself, but he hadn't been able to do anything but hold on to her and ride it out. She'd held on as long as he had, silent and steady as a rock, her body soft and warm and comforting against his. She hadn't said a word, hadn't whispered empty platitudes or assurances that things would be all right. She was just there. And when he finally drew back, embarrassed by his loss of control, she was completely matter-of-fact, as composed as if she were used to having men blubber all over her like babies.

Without knowing quite how it had happened, Jack found himself clearing off the table, moving his typewriter, packing the script back in the cardboard box while Faith bustled around the kitchen, looking for a bowl to mix the eggs in.

She followed him to the table now, carrying a plate of toasted bagel halves and his coffeepot. She set them down in the center of the table, the coffeepot on the pot holder she'd already placed there to serve as the trivet he didn't have, the bagels next to the little saucers of cream cheese and blackberry jam. She'd set out the silverware in the approved manner, with mismatched glasses of orange juice arranged just above and to the left of the knife and spoon. Folded terry dish towels were tucked neatly under the forks, pressed into service as napkins. It wasn't fancy, by any means, but it was more than he'd ever done for himself.

"This is incredible," he said, as she filled his coffee cup. "You're incredible."

She smiled at him. "Better wait until you taste the omelet before you go making rash statements like that," she said, but his simple praise warmed her. Back home in Pine Hollow, her services to the men of the house had been considered her duty and nothing more. "Eat," she ordered, slipping into the seat across from him.

Sitting there, eating the omelet she'd made as attractive as it was delicious, at the table she'd taken pains to make pleasant, Jack had a hint of how it might be if she was in his life permanently. Already she had cleaned his apartment, cooked his food, warmed his bed—and held him while he'd bawled all over her, all without asking for a thing in return. He suspected she would give and give and never ask for one thing for herself. And he was so needy, he would take and take, until there was nothing left.

"Why in God's name are you still here?"

Faith looked up at him over a forkful of her Mexican omelet, a question in her hazel eyes.