Sweet Liar (26 page)

When she slipped the dress over her head, the silk slid over her skin, and she wriggled to make it fall into place. For a moment she stared at herself in the mirror. “Maxie,” she whispered, seeing not herself, but another woman, a woman who was sure that she was of interest to men. When she buckled on the shoes, she tossed her foot onto the countertop then ran her hand up her leg.

“Sam!” Mike yelled. “Aren't you ready yet?”

“Keep your shirt on, buster, this baby's worth the wait,” she yelled through the door. She fastened Doc's earrings on her ears, slipped the diamonds on her wrists, then wrapped the pearls twice about her neck.

As she was about to leave the bedroom, she glanced at a couple of Balinese puppets Mike had on the top of the dresser, noticing the foot-long carved stick attached to the hand of one puppet. Carefully, she unscrewed the stick, then used the little brush in a bottle of Mike's white typewriter correction fluid that he'd carelessly left in the bedroom to paint four inches of the end of the stick. When she was finished, she had what was a good facsimile of a cigarette holder complete with fake cigarette. Putting it to her carmined, bee-stung lips, she opened the door enough to tell Mike to turn out all the lights except for the single floor lamp and had to ignore his country-boy cry of “Alll riiiight.”

When she left the bedroom she was no longer the innocent, respectable Samantha, but Maxie, a singer who had men fighting each other to have her.

When Mike saw her slinking down the stairs, he gave a low whistle—and completely forgot about taking a photograph. The Samantha he knew,
his
Samantha, didn't walk the way this woman was walking with her hips pushed forward and her body undulating in seductive movements as she made her way toward him, the diamonds in her ears and on her wrists sparkling. This woman was as different from the woman he knew as Daphne was from an Indiana housewife. Mike found himself backing away from her, for this woman was a bit intimidating; she made him feel as though he should be wearing a tux and offering her gifts that came in long black velvet boxes. When Samantha put the fake cigarette holder to her newly shaped lips, Mike sat down on one of the chairs by the breakfast table and watched this woman who he felt that he'd never seen before.

When Sam was a few feet in front of Mike, she began to sing an old blues song she'd heard Bessie Smith sing.

Many people seem to think that an ability to sing the blues comes from skin color, but it comes from having experienced misery in life—and Samantha had had more than enough heartache and sadness in her short life to be able to sing the blues as well as any other person on earth. Her voice, albeit untrained, was strong from inherited talent, and it was filled with emotion.

Mike watched her and she made him
feel
the words she was singing, made him feel the sorrow of a woman whose man had been stolen by another woman. She was saying the words as only someone who had experienced the emotion could sing them; she sang them the way they were meant to be sung, the way they had been written. It wasn't as though she were a modern folk singer enraptured with the cute songs the blacks used to sing and trying to imitate them for an audience of WASPs. Samantha was the type of woman for whom the song had been written and she sang it with her heart as much as with her voice.

The mournful song was short. When Samantha finished, all Mike could do was stare at her, blinking in confusion, feeling that he was looking at a stranger in a slinky red dress that slithered over her curves.

To his consternation, Samantha walked toward him in a way he'd never seen any woman walk and put the tip of her high-heeled foot on the chair edge between his legs, leaned toward him, and inhaled on her cigarette holder. He was sure he actually saw the smoke she blew out the side of her mouth.

“Well, honey?” she said, and it was
not
Samantha's voice. This woman's voice was lower, raspy almost, and it was very, very provocative—bewitching, the voice of a siren who was quite capable of luring men to their deaths.

“Samantha?” he whispered, and to his embarrassment, his voice broke like a teenager's.

With a sultry laugh that would have done justice to Kathleen Turner at her throatiest, she moved her foot and turned away from him. As she walked away, he couldn't take his eyes from the undulating back side of her, the skin of her back glowing and perfect in the soft light of the single lamp.

“Sam,” he said, calling out to her when she started back toward the bedroom, but she didn't turn. “Maxie,” he whispered and drew in his breath when she smiled at him over her shoulder, and it was a smile of a seductress, a woman who knew what effect she had on men.

When Samantha disappeared up the stairs into the bedroom, Mike let out his breath, then rubbed his arms. He'd been holding his breath and his muscles were tense. Trying to ease the tension in his body, he walked to the glass patio doors and looked out at the night. The woman who had just appeared in this room was one he hadn't known, a woman who had many secrets, a woman who was capable of all manner of things—and Mike wasn't sure she was a woman he especially liked. Maybe she was a woman he'd like to take to bed, since every pore of her body oozed sexuality. Then again, maybe he'd rather not go to bed with her, for the woman who'd just sung for him probably knew more about sex than he did. She was the kind of woman who would fake an orgasm, would fake love for a man. She was the exact polar opposite of Samantha with her openness, her sweetness, her ability to give.

“Well?” Samantha said from behind him.

When he turned, she was Samantha again, face washed shiny clean, hair a tangled mess, her nifty little body concealed under his bathrobe. On impulse, he went to her, surrounded her in his arms, and kissed her soundly, not a kiss of sex or passion, but a kiss of relief, a kiss of welcome home.

“Mike?” she asked. “Are you all right?”

He was holding her so tightly she could scarcely breathe, and it was a while before he could recover himself enough to speak. With a chuckle that even to him sounded forced, he said, “You make me believe in split personalities.” Holding her away from him so he could see her face, he searched it. “Are
you
all right? You were so…so different. You were…”

“Maxie,” she said. “I put the dress on and I seemed to become her. Did I do a good job?”

He pulled her head back down to his shoulder. “Too good. Much, much, much too good.”

“Mike! Is something wrong? All I did was sing a song and, well, maybe vamp it up a bit.”

He wouldn't release his tight hold on her. “It was more than that. You changed. Really changed.”

“A little change never hurt—”

Kissing her again, he silenced her. “Sammy, I don't want you to change. I like you just the way you are.”

As she snuggled against him, Samantha was not at all sure what had upset him so much, but she rather liked his concern. And she liked his compliment. “Mike,” she said softly, “I like you too.” It wasn't until later that she realized the extent to which he was upset because, for the first time, when they went to bed, he didn't try to get her to spend the night in bed with him. Something about his reluctance made her smile as she glanced at herself in the mirror over the dresser. Maybe she should be Maxie more often, she thought. Maybe she should not be so predictable, so very boring, a woman without surprises. Stroking Maxie's dress that was draped over a chair, she smiled, then, on impulse, she took her new pretty sheer white nightgown from where she had hidden it in the bottom of one of Mike's drawers and put it on. Maxie would have worn a white nightgown if she'd wanted to White or black, lace or satin, big and transparent, or tiny and skin-exposing, Maxie would have worn any nightgown in the world—if she'd wanted to.

A
t five minutes to nine on Sunday morning, Samantha was sitting in the center of Mike's bed, knees to her chest, wearing her new white nightgown and trying to give herself a pedicure. The fact that the implements she was using had been in her possession since she was ten years old—they were fitted into a pink plastic case printed with tiny white poodles with blue ribbons on their tails—didn't help the process. So far she hadn't heard a sound from Mike's room, so she assumed he was still sleeping.

At nine, she picked up the remote control off the bedside table and flicked on the TV to watch Charles Kuralt's “Sunday Morning.” She'd been watching the show since they had taken Mr. Kuralt off the road and nailed him to a chair in New York. It interested Samantha to see if he was ever going to get that melancholy look off his face, the look that said, I'd rather be on the road.

In the first few minutes of the show Charles went over the stories that they were going to do that morning, giving each one his special tone of, Can you believe this? Samantha didn't pay much attention to what he was saying until she heard the word
Jubilee,
then her head came up sharply, and her eyes widened as she hung on every word Charles Kuralt was saying.

While the newsman was talking, the camera showed pictures of the exterior and interior of a falling-down old building in a horrible area of Harlem. Rats scurried across the floor as the camera zeroed in on bullet holes in the walls.

“Jubilee still owns his club,” Charles Kuralt continued, “but what with property values as they are today, he hasn't been able to sell it or rent it, so today it sits empty.”

Charles put down his paper and gave his Mona Lisa smile to the camera.

Leaping out of the bed, Samantha tore through the bathroom and into Mike's bedroom where he was on his stomach, buried under the covers and about six fat down-filled pillows. “Mike! Wake up. You have to come see what's on TV.” He didn't stir so she knelt on the edge of the bed and touched all of him that she could see, which consisted of about a quarter inch of bare shoulder and a curl of black hair.

“Michael! Wake up! You're going to miss it.” He didn't so much as move a muscle; if he hadn't been so warm, she would have thought he was dead. Climbing into the bed with him, she grabbed his shoulders and began to shake him. “Jubilee's on television. Maxie's Jubilee is on Charles Kuralt! Get up!”

One minute he seemed to be sound asleep and the next minute he had grabbed her, pulling her into the bed beside him and began rubbing his sharp-whiskered face into her neck, making her squeal in laughter while he held her down.

“What are you doing waking me up?” he growled in mock fierceness. “It's Sunday and a man should be allowed to sleep.”

Laughing, Samantha was trying to get away from him as his whiskers scraped her skin. “Mike, Jubilee's on television.”

It was then that Mike's face changed and he pulled away from her, moving from hugging her and holding her close to not touching her at all.

“What's wrong?”

“Get out of here.” There was no more play in his voice; he was in dead earnest now.

She could tell that he was very angry, but she didn't know why. Was he angry because she'd waked him up? Some people took sleep seriously, but she hadn't realized that Mike was one of those people. Backing off the bed, she began to apologize. “I'm sorry. I guess I shouldn't have awakened you, but I wanted you to see the show, but maybe I'll go upstairs and set the recorder and you can see it later.”

He turned his head away from her. “Take off that gown.”

It took Samantha a moment to understand what he was saying, for at first she thought he was demanding that she strip, but then she realized that she had on her brand-new, very pretty, very thin, very,
very
white nightgown. Even as the feeling of pleasure began to flow through her, she felt rotten about not remembering his “problem” with white, well, maybe not
too
rotten, but a little bit bad. Had the sight of her in this plain cotton gown affected him
that
much, to make him turn pale, to make him unable to continue looking at her?

“I…I wasn't thinking, Mike,” she said slowly, but even to her own ears the apology sounded insincere. Any man who looked as Mike did, who was as sexy as Mike, who was as sweet and kind and as much fun as Mike was, who was as smart as Mike was, who was as all round wonderful as Mike was, could have his choice of any female on earth. Yet, she thought, he was turned on by
her
—so much so that he couldn't even look at her while she was wearing white.

“I came in here to tell you about the TV show and I forgot what I had on. I didn't mean—” She stopped because he had turned to look at her—and what she saw in his eyes made her take a step backward, for his eyes were filled with something she wasn't sure she understood. There was need and desire and longing in his eyes, but also desperation, as though he were in need of something she had and he'd die without getting it.

Putting her hand to her throat, Samantha took a step backward. It had been a long while since she'd been afraid of Mike, but she was now. As he moved across the bed toward her, she took another step backward. “Mike,” she began, but he didn't speak, just looked at her with those eyes and kept coming toward her with the stealth of a wolf.

Samantha, in a cowardly move, gave a little squeal of fright and ran from the room, shutting the bathroom door behind her, then the bedroom door. She leaned against it, her breast heaving. Maybe Maxie could handle young, handsome men stalking her, but Samantha wasn't quite ready.

It took her a moment to calm her breathing, then she tore her new nightgown off and put on her jeans and a long-sleeved, high-necked shirt that covered most of her skin and went to the library to watch the TV in that room.

It was nearly twenty minutes before Mike appeared in the library and when she looked up at him, she started, for his skin and lips looked nearly blue.

“Are you all right?” she asked, going to him to feel his forehead. His skin was as cold as a salamander's. “Mike!”

Pushing her hand away, he sat on the couch. “Cold shower,” he murmured, obviously embarrassed by everything that had happened that morning. “Has the segment come on yet?”

“No,” she said, trying not to smile, but his reactions to her made her feel good. Of course, she thought, this was how all men felt
before
they went to bed with a woman—especially before they went to bed with her. It was much better to allow Mike to fantasize about her than to do what he seemed to think he wanted her to do and go to bed with him, because if she did, he'd probably ask her to leave his house forever. Or maybe he'd just fall asleep during the process of bedding her.

“No,” she said, “you haven't missed it. I think it's on next.” She handed him half a toasted bagel slathered with cream cheese, which she'd had delivered.

Sitting beside her on the couch, he ignored the bagel and, instead, took her chin in his hand and lifted her mouth to his. He kissed her for a long time, sweetly, not aggressively, no thrusting tongues, no tearing at her clothes, no hands on her body except those warm fingers on her chin, and that long, long kiss of yearning was almost her undoing. Turning to him, she put her hand on his shoulder and opened her mouth under his. Her body seemed to liquefy, to turn into something warm and soft and yielding as her neck bent back into what should have been an impossible position, but she wanted to blend into him, to lose herself in him.

When he pulled his lips away from hers, she was too weak to sit up and would have fallen back against the couch if Mike's hand hadn't caught her.

“Why, Sam?” he whispered. “Why do you tell me no? How much longer am I supposed to wait? You want a marriage proposal first? Because if you do, then will—?”

She put one finger over his lips, not wanting to hear the rest of that sentence. She didn't want to talk about her reasons behind what she did, didn't want him to know the truth about her, at least not yet, not when what they had was still so fragile. Maybe someday, maybe later, she could tell him the truth about herself.

Uttering a curse word, Mike grabbed the bagel that was still in her hand, except that now the bagel was a bit crushed from where Samantha had clutched it during Mike's kiss, and there was as much cream cheese on her fingers as on the bread. She had the disconcerting experience of Mike picking up her hand and slowly, languorously, sensuously, licking every morsel of cheese off her fingers.

“Your show's coming on,” he said, her little finger in his mouth.

“Huh?”

“Your show. Jubilee, remember?”

“Huh?” He was licking her palm.

“Maxie. Jubilee. Death. Destruction. Massacre. Remember?”

“Huh?”

Putting her now-clean hand on her lap, Mike turned her to face the TV, but it was some minutes before she could focus clearly enough to see the program about the life and career of the ancient musician. The camera showed Jubilee, who, for all his hundred and one years, looked energetic and spry, and his mind was obviously as good as it ever had been.

Mike pulled her back against him as they watched, as they saw the trashed-out building that had once been an elegant nightclub done in blue and silver in the Art Deco style. Jubilee talked some about the club, about the entertainers, about how the ladies had worn their furs and the men had brought their mistresses, but it had ended after the massacre, and he'd never had the money to rebuild the place.

At the end of the segment, Samantha put the mute on the TV and turned to Mike. “Is Harlem very far away?”

“In philosophy or miles?”

She grimaced. “Miles.”

“New York's an island, remember? Nothing's very far from anything else.”

“So if I told a cab driver that I wanted to go to Harlem, he'd know where to take me?”

Mike didn't say anything for a moment, just looked at her. “Tell me you're not thinking what I hope you aren't.”

She got off the couch. “I'm going to visit Jubilee, if that's what you mean. And I'm going to do it now, before anybody else realizes that the man is still alive.”

Standing in front of her, Mike put his hands on her shoulders. “You mean the man who tried to kill you, don't you?”

She pulled away from him, not wanting to think about that time. “Maybe Mr. Johnson knows something about that night, about why my grandmother had to leave her family, about what justified her causing so much unhappiness in our family. Maybe—”

“Is there anything in this world I can say to persuade you not to go?”

She shook her head. “No, Mike, there's not. I would like it if you went with me, but if you don't want to, I'll go by myself.”

“To Harlem? Tiny blonde you to that area of the city by yourself?”

“Is it as bad as on TV?”

“Yes.”

She swallowed then took a deep breath. “Yes, I'll go by myself if I have to.” Even as she said it, inside, she was begging Mike to go with her. There was a limit to a person's bravery.

“Okay, get dressed. Wear something plain, not something with a label.”

Nodding, she turned away and went upstairs to change.