Lullaby for the Rain Girl (50 page)

“Good.”

We were silent for a time.

“So what are you writing now, Ben? Another Abigail McGillicuddy mystery?”

“Oh, God! Please don’t mention that name.”

She looked at me. “Why not?”

“Sherry, I hate that damned book. I wrote it in a week just to make money. I put in every stupid whodunit cliché I could think of. I barely even looked at it when it was done.”

“But it’s your biggest success, Ben.” She seemed bewildered.

“Success. Yeah, it was that. It was successful.”

“What’s wrong with success?”

“Well, nothing’s wrong with success. If it’s not for crap like that.”

She looked down at her cup. “I didn’t think it was crap. I thought it was a fun little story. I didn’t think you would write something like that. Everything I ever saw of your writing was always all—all
dark,
all
intense.
I thought you must have had a lot of fun writing something like that.”

“It wasn’t fun. I hated it.”

She seemed somehow hurt. “Well, I liked it. I’d read another one. I mean, even if you weren’t the author. I liked Abigail and Clyde. I can see it like a—a TV movie, or something.”

I shook my head. “It was just...” But I didn’t want to keep hammering on
Leprechauns Can Be Murder.
It was as if I were calling her stupid for liking it. I did write it, after all.

“It was just entertaining. That’s what it was.”

“Well, okay.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being entertaining, Ben. Everything doesn’t have to be heavy and literary.”

“I guess not. I just...it felt, back then, like I was—I don’t know. Compromising my name, or something.”

“You can still write literary things. Lots of writers do it. Light stuff, heavy stuff. Who’s stopping you?”

“Nobody, I guess.”

“Only yourself, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I think you should write more Abigail books. Make money with them. Get as famous as you can. And meanwhile just keep writing the things you care about more.”

I looked at her. I could always count on Sherry O’Shea for sound, practical advice. I found myself wondering a bit exactly why I
did
hate that book so much. So it wasn’t literature. Did that matter? As I thought about it, certain scenes from the book came back into my mind. There were some funny bits in it, yes. Parts that had made me laugh while writing it. It hadn’t
all
been cynicism and anguish. It crossed my mind to wonder whether what I’d really hated was facing the success I’d had with it.

We watched the rain for a while. It kept falling.

“Want some more coffee?” she asked.

“No thanks. I...It’s a shame it’s so wet out there. But we can go, anyway. Maybe I could buy an umbrella. Does this hotel have a little shop?”

After a moment she said, “We could go up to my room for a while.”

I looked at her. Tingles ran up and down my spine.

“Oh,” I said stupidly. “Your room?”

She looked at me.

“Uh—sure,” I stammered. “Yes. Let’s. That would be great.”

We paid the bill. She took my hand and we rode the elevator up to her hotel room. I’d not been there before.

“C’mon in,” she said, unlocking the door.

It was the standard kind of room anyone would expect in a good hotel like this. It was small. The bed, however, looked supernaturally big to my eyes. When she closed the door again she turned to me and we kissed each other, really kissed each other, for the first time in—what? Sixteen years? She felt achingly familiar and yet indefinably different. Time, years. After a long while we pulled apart and looked at each other. I wanted to jump, shout with joy. I also wanted to cry. Everything was tangled within me, confused, overwhelming.

Sherry walked to the window curtains and pulled them closed. The room was mostly dark then.

On the bed we touched each other for a long time. I was glad it was dark; I found myself embarrassed about my aging, fat, sagging body. I wondered if she felt the same about hers. Lord knows we were both bigger and flabbier than we had been. Yet her skin and her scent were instantly recognizable to me. I would have known them if I’d been a blind man led here with no clues or hints whatsoever. The shapes were a little different now, rounder, softer, but somewhere in my deepest memory, in my brain stem, my DNA, Sherry O’Shea was stored, still accessible to my remembrance all these countless days and nights later. We said nothing, reacquainting ourselves with each other. I remembered playing on a Slip ’n’ Slide with her, doing homework together in my bedroom, dancing to “We’ve Only Just Begun.” It all came rushing back into me, memories stagnant and unvisited for close to two decades. God, the vagaries of that ramshackle contraption we call the human heart.

I found myself trembling. My body would not respond.

“It’s okay, Ben,” she whispered. “Let’s just give it time. You’re nervous. You’re shaking.
I’m
nervous.”

“Stupid,” I whispered shakily. “Stupid for us to be nervous. It isn’t like we haven’t done this before.”

“I know,” she smiled. “Thousands of times. But it’s been a while.”

“It has.”

We held each other in the darkness. I found myself wanting to be nowhere else on earth, nowhere but here.

“I love you, Sherry,” I said, hot tears springing to my eyes. “I swear to God, I do.”

She kissed me, held me. “Ben, I love you too. I love you so much.”

We were laughing and crying at the same time, kissing each other’s lips, cheeks, eyes, necks. For a while I was aware of nothing else in the world but Sherry. I didn’t
want
to be aware of anything, anyone else. After a while my body began to respond and we made fumbling love, both of us too excited, too nervous, too frightened. We had to stop a couple of times, and even then it didn’t last long. But it was the best lovemaking I’d ever had.

Later, lying atop the bed on our backs, only our hands touching, our breaths slowing, I said softly, “It’ll get better.”

She giggled breathily. “It was great.”

I laughed. “It was. Not technically. But—great.”

“I love you, Ben.”

“I love you.”

We lay there for a time, our breathing returning to calmness.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

“Yeah. I am, actually.”

We found the room service menu, ordered sandwiches. We said little while waiting for the food, our bodies wrapped contentedly together. Finally there was a knock and Sherry slipped on a robe to open the door. We devoured the sandwiches, sitting cross-legged on the bed, naked and giggling, spilling crumbs everywhere. When we were finished we lay down again.

After a long time Sherry turned over and looked at me, propping her head up with her hand. She played with the hairs on my chest.

“Ben?”

“Mm.”

“I’m sorry about...how it ended.”

“Don’t. Forget it.”

“No, I have to say this, Ben. I did a—terrible thing. That night? I was drunk off my ass. I didn’t know what I was doing. Peter and I—yeah, we’d been getting kind of close. We’d kissed once or twice. But that night...” She shook her head. “I just—it wasn’t working, you know? You and me. I wasn’t happy. You seemed so happy. I wasn’t. I just wanted to go home. To Stone’s End. But I was afraid to tell you. I knew you wouldn’t want to go back. So I...I don’t know. I convinced myself that everything would be okay if Peter and I got together. I liked him. He was good-looking. Smart. Funny. I—I never meant for it to happen like
that.”
She pushed some strands of hair out of her eyes. “And then—we went off to his hometown—in Texas, remember? But we hadn’t been gone for a week before I realized I’d made a terrible mistake. Peter was shallow, he screwed around with other girls...the whole thing was just a disaster. I thought of trying to go back with you, but I figured you wouldn’t have anything to do with me. For good reason.” She sighed. “Anyway, you and that girl—Rachel—you were involved for a while, huh? I remember her calling Peter a few times.”

“For a while,” I said.

“Funny, to think of you with her.”

I didn’t speak.

“Anyway, the whole thing went kablooey. Peter and I had broken up within a few months of running off together. I went home, to Stone’s End. Stayed with Mom and Dad for a while. Then I went off to San Francisco State.”

“Ever hear from Peter?”

“Peter? God, no. I have no idea what ever happened to him.” She plucked at the bedspread. “Good riddance.”

We were silent for a while.

“I just needed to tell you that I’m sorry, Ben. For what I did. All those years ago. I’ve never stopped being sorry about it. If I hadn’t done it...Who knows what might have happened?”

“We probably would have broken up, sooner or later. You would have gone back to Stone’s End and done everything the same way.”

“You might be right. I don’t know. It just seems like...we lost it, somewhere. The two of us.”

“We were kids, Sherry.”

“God, we
were,
weren’t we? Were we ever really that young?”

“We were. The world was.”

She dropped her head onto her pillow.

“I’m sorry about it, Ben.”

I reached my index finger to her lip. “I heard you the first time. It’s ancient history. Forget it. It’s time to move on.”

“How?” she asked. “It’s been so long. We’re different people now.”

“We’re not different people. We’re the same people. Just older.”

“Wiser?”

I laughed. “Older.”

“It’s so weird, being with you. It’s like...we’ve been apart forever and yet...it’s like you’ve been in the next room, all along. All those years.”

I touched her cheek, dotted a few of her freckles with my finger. “I have been. I guess we both have. We just didn’t realize it.”

“What now, Ben?”

“Well...” I thought about it. “When do you fly? How long an extension did you get?”

“Until Tuesday. But I can make it longer. I might...” She seemed to hesitate. “I might even be able to look into a transfer. They have an office here, you know. In D.C.”

I smiled and stroked her cheek.

“Would that be okay?” she asked.

“That would be wonderful.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“I travel a lot. I’ll be gone a fair amount.”

“We’ll work it out.”

“Do you—after your divorce is done, I mean—do you want to get married, Ben?”

“Yes. I do.”

She looked at me and suddenly laughed. “This is going so
fast!”

“It’s not so fast. We’ve known each other since we were little kids.”

“What about Rae, Ben?”

“I’ll talk to her. Do you think you can stand living with a sometimes surly teenager?”

“I can try. I’ve always wanted to be a mother. A good mother. Maybe I can be a good stepmother.”

“You’ll be a fantastic stepmother.”

She smiled and touched my face, mouthing
I love you.

I cocked my head, listening. There was a sound.

“Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“Near the door. I heard something.” I got up, suddenly fearful.

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Wait a minute.” I slipped on my pants and moved to the door, placed my ear near it. The sound was unmistakable. It was the sound of breathing. As if some wild animal were inhaling raggedly and then exhaling straight into the space between the door and the frame. The sound was heavy, labored.

“Wait,” Sherry said. “I hear it now. Somebody’s outside the door.”

“Who’s there?” I called out suddenly, my voice shockingly loud in the intimate bedroom.

There was no response. I reached my hand toward the doorknob.

“Don’t open it, Ben,” Sherry said from the bed.

“It’s all right.” I turned the knob very, very slowly, then suddenly in one quick motion pulled open the door.

The corridor was empty.

After a moment, I closed the door again. The sound had stopped. I stood there uncertainly.

“Sherry, do you mind if I call Rae?”

“Hm? Of course not.” She smiled. “Always the good dad, huh?”

I didn’t say anything. I picked up the room phone and got an outside line. I called my number.

There was no answer.

“Not home?” she asked, after I’d let it ring fifteen times.

I came back to the bed. “Maybe—maybe she’s in the shower or something.”

“I’m sure that’s it. Call her back in a bit.”

I sat at the edge of the bed. “I’m worried about her.”

“I can see you are.”

“I—Sherry, would you mind if we went back to the apartment? I’d like to—check on her.”